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Cliche sayings and stories are cliches for a reason - because people seem to love the familiar. In cinema, we see variations of the same storyline all the time, but a vast majority still enjoy the predictability, so we keep coming back. Well, before there were movies, there were books, and people who love literature know writers have been telling variations of the same story and romance tropes since they first put pen to paper. Writers' HQ, an organization that runs writing retreats and online writing courses for bada*s writers with no time or money, released an image series of Accurately Titled Novels, - that are all too familiar.

The hilarious series of fake books perfectly parodies famous novels from murder mysteries to vampire-romances to period pieces. These covers take a witty stab at some of our favorite literary tropes so often used by professional writers. The idea originated from the mind of Writers HQ co-founder, Sarah Lewis, 'I made the original Disaffected Working Mother With Awful Husband cover and sent it to Jo to take the piss out of my own bad writing as I was utterly sick of myself,' she explained to Bored Panda, 'It also happened at the same time we had both read a lot of stories about sad men and people drowning, so we made a couple more of these book names.'

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For a while, the creative covers were more of a public inside joke than anything else. "We posted them on Facebook and no one paid any attention, so we forgot about it and occasionally made more bad writer covers to send to each other as a joke." 

Their book art was busted out of anonymity when it caught the attention of Star Trek: The Next Generation actor, Wil Wheaton, "I went on holiday and Jo decided to post them all on Tumblr, when Wil Wheaton of all people came across them. I turned on my phone to like a billion notifications. That was two years ago and people are still commenting on them. P.S I was a teenage TNG nerd and I fangirled for MONTHS."

As book-lovers and authors, Lewis-Hammond says the real name jokes are all in good fun. "We're not being b*tchy about any particular book or genre, but it is funny that you can punt out a generic idea and get a flood of comments saying, 'Oh, that must be XYZ or ABC," when we didn't necessarily have a specific book in mind," adding, "We both read and write a lot and were trying to make each other laugh by pissing about with tropes. It escalated A LOT." 

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Podunkus
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

But you got the Editor off your back, so that’s at least something.

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Writers' HQ was set up to run writing retreats and online courses for badass writers with no time or money. As two smol writers we felt the literary establishment was entirely aimed at rich Boomers who take themselves far too seriously and wear way too many scarves, so we created a place where we get to talk about the writing we love at the same time as helping writers who need help with time, space, money and general support, and where we also get to make each other snort tea out of our noses. 

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Podunkus
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4 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

With a forward by Brittany Begpacker, travel guide award winner and NTY bestselling author of “Not on MY Dime!” and “Seventeen Countries on $17 — If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It.”

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Podunkus
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Those aren’t chickpea pods, so I guess I’ll have to read the book to find out about the string bean connection.

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Bob Beltcher
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Just like Eddie Murphy said. Go take that self trip to Jamaica.

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