The first time I sat down to write a fictional story (about 13 years ago), I wrote a screenplay jam-packed with stuff a 20-something year old guy thought was cool.
There was a bank heist gone wrong. Guns. Bad guys. Car chases. Explosions!
Since then I've become a father to two amazing girls, and for a long time my writing career was put on the backburner.
(Turns out, you suddenly have a lot less free time as a parent.)
But in early 2021, after many long months of COVID lockdown, I wanted to try writing something straight from the heart, something that better reflected who I am now — nostalgic, sentimental, both excited for and terrified of watching my girls grow up — and I wanted to try it as a novel.
So I came up with the idea of a bunch of dads trying (and hilariously struggling) to connect with their daughters at a weeklong summer camp retreat.
There was just one problem. 'Heartfelt novels by and about dudes' wasn't exactly a thriving literary genre.
There are plenty of books written by and mostly for men, of course.
But those are usually confined to genres like military or historical fiction, or SciFi. Basically, anything with weapons and/or spaceships and possibly murder.
Men also read somewhat prominently in biography and memoir.
But books about family and relationships and (gasp) love from a male perspective? That seemed to be fairly uncharted territory.
So where did that leave me and my idea to write a book that was funny and heartwarming and all about fatherhood?
I wasn't sure. But I knew the story I wanted to tell and I knew that I wanted to take great TV dads like Bandit from Bluey, Phil Dunphy from Modern Family, Carl Winslow from Family Matters, Alan Matthews from Boy Meets World and so many others — and see them represented on the page.
So I wrote the book anyway.
Holding an early draft of the manuscript in 2022Evan Porter
As I went along, I kept searching for more books like what I hoped to write. Generally, they were few and far between, but I was eventually heartened to find that they did exist.
Authors like Jonathan Tropper, Nick Hornby, Matthew Norman, and Richard Roper were doing amazing things in male-centered fiction that didn't involve guns and aliens, but rather focused on emotion and relationships and even romance.
Still, even with those guys blazing the trail, that didn't make things any easier when I started pitching my finished novel, Dad Camp, to literary agents.
A lot of them told me they just weren't sure what the market was for a book like mine. Who's going to read this? It seemed unfathomable that actual dads would read it, so surely it had to have crossover appeal to the childrens market, or it needed a strong romance element to draw in female readers.
Many even liked the story a lot but just didn't know how to pitch it to publishers.
It's easy to see why my book, Dad Camp, was a hard sell. Men just don't read in large enough numbers.
You can hardly go anywhere on the Internet without running into the "why don't men read" discourse.
That's because the facts are inescapable:
Around 80% of book sales come from women. Every study and survey and data set you can find shows that boys read less than girls starting in childhood and the gap only gets worse and worse as they get older.
Why don't men read more? Well, there are a lot of theories.
A lot of men report finding reading fiction to be a waste of time, that they have to be productive with their 'downtime' instead — which would explain why men are actually big readers of non-fiction, which is deemed more useful.
(Weirdly, that mindset doesn't seem to stop men from watching movies or television or spending tons of time gaming.)
Other theories say that men's brains just aren't wired as well for inhabiting the mind of different characters and empathizing with them.
And then there is the self-fulfilling prophecy of it all. Since men don't read, boys don't have as many good reading role models, and the cycle continues on and on.
The proven benefits of reading for men
Us dudes with our "linear thinking brains" like hard data, right? Well it's difficult to argue with the science behind reading fiction. It's extremely clear cut.
When you read fiction, you exercise your brain's Theory of Mind, or its ability to understand that other people are thinking and feelings and experiencing different things than you are.
People who read fiction frequently display more creativity, more empathy for others, and more skill in social relationships.
I'd like to see a non-fiction or self-help book that can achieve that.
And get this, some data even shows that readers live longer than non-readers!
So instead of spending a fortune on reducing your biological age and doing things like having young people's blood injected into your veins, just try picking up a $17.99 paperback novel.
In the end, I was lucky enough to find an agent and publisher that believed in Dad Camp as much as I did.
Seeing Dad Camp on shelves at the bookstore for the first time was a pretty special feelingEvan Porter
And I'm really excited that it's out there in the world finding its audience of, not just dads, but moms and daughters and anyone who knows or loves a dad.
One last point from my research that really stood out was that men are apparently extremely reluctant to pick up books from female authors — a perspective, you could argue, we desperately need!
I'd like to hope that, one day, my book could be something of a bridge, and show more men that it's actually good and fun to read about relationships and family and romance.
Once you cross that bridge, there's a whole world of amazing books and storytellers waiting for you — and the positive impact those stories have on your brain and well-being will be well worth the effort.
