Making each other laugh: romcom co-authors Mel Campbell and Anthony Morris open up about writing their latest novel. They have another life as key reviewers for Screenhub.
28 Aug 2019
Mel Campbell and Anthony Morris
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Writing and Publishing
Film critics Mel Campbell and Anthony Morris often squeezed their novel writing in between screenings. Image Markus Stone.
The best part of writing together is when one of us cries. Usually it’s Anthony, bursting into tears from laughing so hard at a stupid joke that is never going to make it into our finished book.
That’s one of the big advantages of writing as a partnership: you can always take things too far, leaving the other to draw the line. Unless they’re laughing too, in which case either you’ve got a hilarious bestseller on your hands or you’re both in a lot of trouble.
Mel Campbell is a freelance cultural critic and university lecturer who writes on film, TV, literature and media, with particular interests in history, costume, screen adaptations and futurism. Her first book was the nonfiction investigation Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit (2013), and she has co-written two romantic comedy novels with Anthony Morris: The Hot Guy (2017) and Nailed It (2019).
Anthony Morris is a freelance film and television writer. He’s been a regular contributor to The Big Issue, Empire Magazine, Junkee, Broadsheet, The Wheeler Centre and Forte Magazine, where he’s currently the film editor. Other publications he’s contributed to include Vice, The Vine, Kill Your Darlings (where he was their online film columnist), The Lifted Brow, Urban Walkabout and Spook Magazine. He’s the co-author of hit romantic comedy novel The Hot Guy, and he’s also written some short stories he’d rather you didn’t mention. You can follow him on Twitter @morrbeat and read some of his reviews on the blog It’s Better in the Dark.
