I s*** you not, I definitely Googled ‘How to write a book,’ at one point,” laughs Taylor-Dior Rumble, the author behind the first romcom to be released by Stormzy’s #Merky Books imprint at Penguin. The Situationship, which marks Rumble’s publishing debut, now looks set to be one of the biggest hits of the summer, a raw, witty and zeitgeisty look at the modern dating dilemma of undefined romance.
The 26-year-old southeast Londoner had been grafting as an apprentice journalist at the BBC, where she had been working hard to pitch stories about the experiences of Black women since she landed the gig aged 18. Her articles covering the politics of Black hair and colourism in Hollywood started to attract interest from the publishing industry. Then, one day, an agent emailed her asking if she’d be interested in writing a book; Rumble assumed it was spam. By 2019, Rumble left the BBC and started working with Stormzy’s imprint to write The Situationship. It took, she says, “a chaotic two years to complete”.
