How Do You Like Your Tea?

 Tea is a wonderful and warming drink on an autumn or winter day. Or, if you’re Ted Lasso, it’s garbage water.

And that’s the point of my rhetorical question. Everyone has a preference for how they like their tea, or if they indeed like it at all. Some people want milk, some sugar, and some both or neither. Some put the milk in first. Others say the tea goes first. Iced, or hot? Oolong or Earl Grey or Darjeeling? Orange Pekoe? How many times should you stir? If you don’t like tea, transpose this question to the typical martini and all its myriad of options: shaken, stirred, olives or gin, dirty or dry, vodka or vermouth.

Avid readers of any genre have preferences. If you read romance books, you might enjoy — or turn up your nose to — various tropes you find. Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Fake Marriage, There’s Only One Bed at the Inn, and so forth. The only true constant is the Happily Ever After part.

I write stories that involve some physical change. It might be a body swap or a transformation (and people have preferences on that too) or something else. Readers want to know the details.

Among the most common questions: is this voluntary, or is it forced? Is the transformation temporary or permanent? Will the character’s personality change, or will it remain the same? Are they aware anything has happened or have they been totally immersed in their new shape and life?

I invented The Man Flu Series so I could tell more than one kind of story. Some of them would be voluntary, some not. Some reversible, some not. I wanted the freedom to decide that this story, this new entry in the series, would not be exactly like all the others. That’s the kind of approach I take in writing. I don’t like covering the same ground twice.

On the other hand, I’m pretty consistent about how I drink my tea.

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