I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You comes out today!

It’s a “reverse love story” about a British artist who earns a small fortune by selling a painting that he made for his wife… right before his wife finds out he’s been having an affair. So he races around Paris trying to win her back.

The author, Courtney Maum, is responsible for some of the best stuff you’ve been reading on the Webernets, including the impressively funny Celebrity Book Reviews at Electric Literature, so you will want to start reading this book immediately.

We asked the author one question.

How are you celebrating the publication of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You?

Courtney Maum: Not to sound like an ass-hat, but I try to celebrate every day of my life because this stormy, glorious human adventure could end at any time, so the fact that I have a book coming out gives me a reason to turn the music up. For professional and personal reasons, I got to spend the two months before my book came out in France, and was thus able to revisit some of the places I wrote about, which was surreal and indulgent in the best of both ways. A high point was meeting the mayor of Saint-Briac, the seaside town in Brittany where one pair of in-laws in my novel have a country house. Monsieur le Maire promised me he’d read it and stock copies in the village bookstore, which made me so happy I skipped all the way up the cobblestone hill to my car. We had ham and cheese galettes that day with local cider, which felt like a celebration, and the savory pancakes tasted so good with the cider I wanted to celebrate that, so I did by going on a walk along the craggy cliffs with my daughter, which merited another celebration because, faced with the alternative, it’s pretty damn stupendous to be healthy and alive.

Get the book here.

– Brian Hurley