I want you to meet Lulu Dare
Get ready for Grit Guild, babes.
Babes, are you ready for Grit Guild? I’ve got us a leading lady and a bit of a rough plan. First chapter is going to drop on Friday and I am bloody pumped.
Don’t know what Grit Guild is? It’s my choose-your-own-adventure rom-com creation adventure experience the Pearler paid subscribers are going to embark on over the next twelve months. [It’s $6 a month to be a Grit Guild member]. Each month Grit Guild babes will get a novelette chapter and a link to some polls that will help dictate where we go next.
For example, some questions the Grit Guild might be asked are:
Should she make out with the hot lumberjack or should she go home?
Should she reply all and tell her boss to get fucked or should she write an eloquent resignation letter?
Should she move to Greece and write her novel or should she cut off all her hair and buy the neon pink boots?
I imagine the deeper we get into the story the deeper the questions and plot turning points will be. Do I have any idea what’s going to unravel in the story? Very little. But do I have some mega rad interactive storytelling plans to unravel for you. Yes! I’m talking MEGA FUN ADVENTURE IN REAL LIFE plans. She is hyper-fixated and she is excited to create whole other ways to tell this story to compliment what’s happening here at Substack.
Now, I have a leading lady, a glorious love interest in mind, a setting and the romance tropes we’re gonna play with…
GRUMP AND SUNSHINE AND ENEMIES TO LOVERS WERE TOO CLOSE TO CALL IN THE FINAL TWO INSTAGRAM POLLS…SO, YOU’RE KINDA GET MY VERSION OF BOTH IN…
What should the working title of this glorious adventure be?
There’s two working titles which I need you all vote on…
Now, I’m really bloody excited to introduce you to the woman we’re gonna spend the next eleven months with...the glorious Lulu Dare.
Lulu Dare has her life running like a well-oiled, perfectly color-coded machine. Lesson plans? Sorted weeks in advance. Fridge? Stocked with identical meal-prepped containers. Underwear? Ironed. Because wrinkles are chaos, and Lulu does not do chaos.
She’s the kind of woman who triple-checks her hotel booking, reads every single menu item before setting foot in a restaurant, and carries a first aid kit in her handbag... just in case. Lulu thrives on structure, loves her students, and finds deep satisfaction in a well-executed spreadsheet. Spontaneity? Unpredictability? Mess? Absolutely not.
At thirty-five, Lulu is a grade three teacher who has spent the last twelve years in the same cozy-but-slightly-suffocating suburban routine. She’s an expert in patience, organization, and answering the many (many, many, many) questions her kids have for her, but when it comes to her own life? Let’s just say she’s been playing it safe for a long time.
She’s a romance novel girl, at least, in theory. Her bookshelf is alphabetised, with a dedicated (and slightly hidden) section for smutty paperbacks. But love? Real, messy, exhilarating love? That’s for other people. People who know how to flirt (she does not). People who go on whirlwind dates (she has literally never). People like her best friend Pascoe, an erotic fiction writer and part-time dominatrix, who is constantly telling her to “harness her inner goddess” while Lulu nods and changes the subject.
She isn’t awkward; she’s just oblivious. The cute bookstore guy? Definitely just being nice. The barista who draws little hearts on her coffee cup? Probably does it for everyone. She doesn’t not want romance - she just has no idea how to recognize it.
Her life is lovely. It’s structured. It’s safe. But lately, it’s also feeling a little… underwhelming. A little too predictable. A little not enough.
Lulu Dare is craving more. More adventure, more excitement, more something, but where does a woman who irons her pillowcases even begin?
CHAPTER ONE DROPS ON FRIDAY FOR THE GRIT GUILD.
Babes, i’m so excited to co-create and write and swoon together. I’m excited to have a monthly community project and create rom-com smutty joy together. I’m excited to keep sharing my words with you.
I hope your January was magic. Mine was. I’ll write a Pearler on the grit i’ve turned to pearls soon.
Thanks for being here. I think you’re a mega freaking babe. Relax your shoulders, fix your posture, drink some water and repeat after me:
I am open to seeing and receiving magic and recognising my inherent glorious, pearlescent worth.
I am worthy of glorious, delicious joys and surprises.
Love,
Claire.
Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live, love and work on without acknowledging the liberation of Palestine and honoring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else.