A Loaded Question

My husband returned from golfing on a few Sundays ago and asked sheepishly, “Do you want me to read your book?”

I didn’t answer him right away, instead, I asked who he had been playing with that morning.  Sure enough, of the foursome, two were husbands of friends of mine. They had asked him about the book, it had just released days before.

My husband has never asked to read anything I’ve written, and to be honest I never really wanted him to while I was in the hell that is querying and submitting over the years.  I was getting daily rejections from strangers, I didn’t want to add him into the mix.  I wasn’t keeping my writing a secret. He always knew what I was working on, and I always involved him in the status of the manuscript, whined about agents and the process, and of course indulged him whenever I got news, a request for full or some small encouragement from an agent or publisher. He was part of the process.

Until I wrote a romance.

I told him I was taking a new approach, had an idea for a romance short story that could become a series that I would pitch to smaller, friendlier publishers and skip the whole agent-rejection masochism. “Sounds like a good plan,” he said and left me to write and submit without much  input this time.

I never offered to have him read Reality Re-Do, he never asked.  He celebrated with me when I signed a contract with the extremely friendly and wonderful publisher, The Wild Rose Press, encouraged me through edits and even gave a thumbs up when he saw the cover. He was my first fan.

But he's never read it.

And now, a month later, all of our friends have. 

We were at a small gathering yesterday and my friend’s husband asked my husband what he thought of it.  When he replied he hadn’t read it, he seemed uncomfortable and gave his standard answer, “I don’t know. It’s weird, isn’t it?’

Immature answer or not, this is the question I’m left with – is it weird to have my husband read a romance I wrote? It’s not explicit in any way. It’s  sweet, with ‘behind closed doors’ scenes. Now that he’s asked this loaded question, I don’t know how to answer, “Do you want me to read your book?”

To paraphrase my husband, I’ll pose the question to you – “Is that weird?”

Would love to hear if your spouses read your romances and their reactions.