You know the old saying, “A good writer reads” well, I’ve not been the best writer over the last few years. Between the world completely collapsing, struggling with work and health issues, and Wally having his own things, I’ve had a hard time really engaging with the things I love, like reading or writing.
Through this reading drought, I still bought new books to add to my to-be-read pile, hoping they would trigger something that would get me to read them. But outside of reading the graphic novel version of Fanmail by Rainbow Rowell, and in fact dipping back into the original novel for a bit whilst I waited for the final graphic novel to come out, I didn’t read anything that wasn’t an Instagram or other social media post.
It was, in fact, scrolling social media that started my journey back into reading. In my endless doomscrolling, I came across ads for Vertical Shorts. If you’ve not come across this growing part of the film industry, the simplest way to describe them is short soap operas made for the vertical screen and social media attention spans. These short dramas often have similar or the same storylines that are as ridiculous as the most insane stories played out in mainstream soaps or South American Telenovelas, but they are about 1 hour long and cut into about 1-minute-long episodes.
This wasn’t the first time I’d stumbled upon (and gotten drawn into) these short soap operas. I’d stumbled upon some clips on Facebook or Instagram before, but I held firm against downloading the apps. There were a few shows I never saw the endings of, but for some, I was able to find the full versions on YouTube. I held off on getting the apps, as I had no idea how trustworthy they were. Anyway, when they started to pop up in my feed again with new stories, well, I was hooked again. This time, I was more drawn in, and so I downloaded a few of the apps so I could watch the full shows.
You may be wondering how my new addiction to Vertical Shorts turned into my getting hooked on reading again. Well, when I downloaded the apps, I found other shows I liked, including one called Bound By Honour – a mafia romance with some very sexy scenes. (To be honest, that was the real draw this time. I saw some clips of some really sexy scenes, so I thought, let’s dive deeper, haha.) When I looked into the story, I discovered Bound By Honour, the Vertical from ReelShorts, was actually based on the novel by Cora Reilly. I’ve always had a thing about film or TV adaptations that I like to read the source material first if I can (I failed at this with The Lord of the Rings). So I jumped online and not only ordered the Bound by Honor book but the next 2 books in the series as well as a few other books recommended to me that were similar.
Well, I consumed Bound by Honor quicker than I’ve ever consumed a book in my life – except for that one time I finished a book in a night because I was afraid to fall asleep after I got into a car accident. And then dove into the other books I’d purchased and read them in 1-2 days, along with the other Bound by books.
Along with speeding through these new books, I was consuming verticals daily (too much time spent on them, to be fair) and found a few others based on books. This is how I also discovered The Words by A. Jade and Vicious by L. J. Shen: they both had ReelShort vertical dramas made based on them, and I wanted to read the books before watching the dramas.
All these amazing books have sent me into a spicy fiction spiral, and now I’m obsessed with them! I’ve started following authors and also booktokers who focus on spicy fiction. My fav is Tierney Page, who also happens to have her own book series, so of course I bought it – it’s amazing. With this newfound love of reading, I will be working on some book reviews and starting a new Instagram account to focus on talking about these books. I may also be moving up the timeline I had in my head for my own spicy fiction novel…stay tuned.
Also, if you want some fun content to distract you from the craziness of the world, I recommend checking out vertical shorts. The actors are amazing, the scripts can be samey sometimes and cheesy other times (and yes, occasionally make your eyes roll in the worst way), but they are soo fun to watch. I also love that these crazy little productions are giving jobs to so many talented people who would likely be locked out of the mainstream film industry because it’s become so closed off from new talent, new ideas and just anything new in lieu of chasing money.
Let me know if you find any new shorts to watch or spicy romance novels!