What to Read Next Podcast or Cafe con Historias PR Recording - Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka and Laura Yamin

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Welcome to the What Your Next podcast. Today's episode we got Emily Ley and osteo brca,

We talked about their latest release, which is seeing other people, which is a little bit of touch paranormal, a little bit of magical with ghosts and a lot of grief and just. Just a, just an enjoyable conversation. In this episode, we talked some book recommendations, how they met as a couple, and how they start writing, and what's the difference between writing ya as well as writing contemporary adult romances.

Let's get to the show.

Laura Yamin: Hi Austin. Hi Emily. Welcome to the What's Your Next podcast?

austinandemily: Hi. We are so happy to be here. Hi there.

Laura Yamin: So happy to have you both here. I was telling you before the show, I've been a huge fan of your work from start for ya and then to your adult contemporaries, and now you're doing a little bit of paranormal, which I love. So you have dabble into somebody's faces.

You got The heiress book, which God bless. We got a lot rich people with him badly, and we got. Some like merge in trouble and whatnot. [00:01:00] So talk to us about how did you meet? Actually, let's do a meet

austinandemily: Yeah. How did we meet? That's a long story. We mu we have evidence that we met in middle school, but neither of us remember it. Right. We became friends in high school. We had like every class together and we started dating in our senior year of high school. A little bit of a friendly rivalry.

Yeah. We are high school sweethearts and. That led us all through a long distance relationship in college, which was no fun from the long distance angle, but very fun from the relationship.

Laura Yamin: Yeah.

austinandemily: Then, promptly moved back home to LA where we have lived and written together ever since.

Our writing relationship came long after our relationship. Relationship. It was, sort of something that, that when we first met and started dating, it really wasn't even a component of our love story for a long time. But then when we did pick up. That piece, writing love stories said in high school and then, eventually as characters who sort of grew into their relationships was very natural for us because we could draw a lot from those feelings and those experiences.

Yeah. And our writing has kind of evolved as we've grown. [00:02:00] We started writing in ya because we fell in love in high school Of course. And that felt like that's what a love story is to us. And then as we got older and we got married, we were like, writing ya is great, but there are also these like other things that we are going through that would be interesting to explore in fiction and so that's why we made the jump to adult.

Laura Yamin: I love this and I'm so glad you made a dunk adult. 'cause that was like my

austinandemily: Thank you.

Laura Yamin: and then I went back to your,

austinandemily: That's awesome. Thank you.

Laura Yamin: went to ya. I was like, oh my gosh. They have like so many books. And so, so

austinandemily: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: like the difference because writing for ya is a different, different population that you're at targeting, different marketing group that you're targeting.

Their needs are very different. Their constrictions are very, they're there, they have parents, they have things to, they have things, they're at school and stuff that an adult, you may have some flexibility depending on the age group they might have. Obviously adult. We have jobs and stuff.

austinandemily: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: What's been like the difference between, from both area, from both groups that you're writing for?

What's your favorite part? What's the least favorite part? What gives you the flexibility for both of them?

austinandemily: [00:03:00] Yeah. It really is what you were saying. I remember don't school. Yeah. When we were writing ya for several books and we were writing our first adult, we were like, oh, I'm so glad that we don't have to like come up with a school schedule class roots. Like what is the class schedule? I don't wanna have to figure that out.

And then also like. What is we need to have like the parents in the house and the siblings in the house and it's just like all these people that you need to like populate and figure out what you're doing with, whereas an adult, we were like, well, you know what, if they're don't live anywhere near their parents, we don't really need to have them on the page and like all of that stuff.

But then as we get and then into more adult, you're like, well, what is this person's career like in high middle? And how do I do that realistically in ya? It's kinda like you don't really need to have. You can just be a person. You don't need to like have a career or like a certain special interest.

You can just be going through something and then an adult, it's like, okay, we gotta figure out all these people's careers. And so that kind of took over the place of the high school schedule. So yeah, it did a little bit, from a philosophical and a character and a life outlook. Ne neither one do we prefer to the other.

But there's a [00:04:00] fundamental difference, which is that a lot of the time when we're writing in ya. We're writing about characters making the big decisions that determine who they're gonna be for the first time. And when you're writing adult, you are working with characters who've made those decisions and are reckoning with who they've become.

And both of those are really interesting. And we kind of enjoyed exploring them as they go, who kind of, how is this gonna affect me? Who am I gonna become versus how do I unwind some of the damage that I've done to my life? Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Yeah. So, which is like really life, when you're a teenager, you're trying to make sense of trying to be an adult, and then when you're an adult you're like, I kind of wanna go back to be a teenager. Right?

austinandemily: That was easy.

Laura Yamin: and I don't have any like reckoning and I can just be a first time doing a lot of new things and new experiences, so,

austinandemily: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: So let's start with seeing other people, which is a dabble into a little bit of paranormal. We got some ghosts. It's not, it's paranormal light. It's not.

austinandemily: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Romantic, but So talk to about like your writing process and like, it's still romance is [00:05:00] still relationships. We're

austinandemily: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: with like connections and talk about dating aspect of it. 'cause we got ghosting. It's not like literally ghosting.

austinandemily: Yes, we did think that was fun. Yeah. To rip. Yeah. It was one of those, I think that you were just like, we should do a book about people who are, I just thought of a title and Yeah. I thought of it as like a pun, basically. Yeah. And then it kind of evolved from there. How do we build a story around this?

And as we built that story, in, in every book you sort of look for what piece of yourself you're gonna put in what part of. Of life you're gonna tap into to give that story depth. And, grief is something that everybody has gone through in one way or other. And a lot of our books, I would say all of our books before then, ha hadn't really had a reason to deal with that.

And this one, the more we worked on it, the more we kind of realized that this was an inevitable place and a good place to kind of deal with a lot of those feelings and realities. Yeah, it became. [00:06:00] It really did become a meditation on grief, but in like a gentle way because there are, there's still this romance and it's still just like, we feel like it's a very upbeat and uplifting book, even though we are saying we are seeing these ghosts and you can't really talk about ghosts without talking about dying.

Right. Moving on.

Laura Yamin: Yeah, so.

austinandemily: All that these characters are having a romantic relationship, which kinda like you mentioned this, the dating aspect that like it speaks to the fact that as you're going through this stuff, you're also trying to rebuild a semblance of a life. And that's even trickier.

Laura Yamin: Yeah, let's talk about the breakout tour. I know this is like your previous release 'cause you have plenty of for listeners to break up. You have a healthy back list now to

austinandemily: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Talk about the breakout tour. 'cause I think that's like a fun celebrity one that.

austinandemily: Yeah, we were inspired. We really love to talk about like artists who, and their relationship to their art and like that is something we explored in the roughest draft and then we were clearly we're not done with that idea. So this like how much of 'cause we find [00:07:00] ourselves doing it, you put a lot of yourself into what you are making.

It's unavoidable. And that I think is why. People love art made by human beings. Yeah. Over ai, it's like, we want, it is, it adds this extra element of like, you are putting yourself into it. And that is, we like to connect with other people and you wanna connect with people through art and the breakup tour, we wanted to go at it from what is it like to like put your own personal pain?

Into a huge hit song that lots of people connect to. That is one side of the story. But then what about if you were the subject of that song and you did not put yourself into it, but you find you, you were the muse for a song that became huge and we just thought that was such an interesting idea to tell a story about.

Yeah. It deals very much with both how much you put yourself into art, but then specifically the kind of public. A forced exhibition of it. Having to live and represent those feelings for a crowd for money over and over.

Laura Yamin: Yeah, and it's

austinandemily: Oh, thank you.[00:08:00]

Laura Yamin: I found it. I found it for me, like just because you think about the art that you put in four and then like it's personal, like sometimes it's like sometimes artists, they're. And you're sharing

austinandemily: Right.

Laura Yamin: like, and people and the audience have an opinion and fortunately in this world where we have social media and everyone's so accessible, people have an like,

austinandemily: Everyone's kind of thing.

Laura Yamin: they know you, they have an idea, this is what it means and this is how it is.

And you're like, but it isn't our, what is it

austinandemily: Yes.

Laura Yamin: And then having the other subject matter, who was the reason why being there, like having that conflict feels like a fertile ground for a break book,

austinandemily: oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Laura Yamin: Awesome. So what kind of books do you tend to read? Do you tend to read like in the contemporary romance or other genres altogether and you

austinandemily: We read everything, yeah. We really do. We try. 'cause sometimes when you, like when you're getting into a new genre, you like read really widely in that genre. And then you like make friends in the genre and you like read all their books and then you get blurb requests [00:09:00] and you read all those books and then sometimes you're like, I just like, I'm trying to write a romance right now.

I can't be like reading a romance right now. I need to go read something else. So we're like, we read romantic, we read Thriller, we read a lot of Ye, a lot of adult like, and I'm, now that we have a baby, we're gonna be reading a lot of books.

Books at.

Laura Yamin: got little baby books going

austinandemily: Yeah. Got peekaboo books going on. So really you c we you can't find a genre, I guess We don't read a lot of nonfiction.

No, we don't. That's it. We don't a lot of nonfiction. We

Laura Yamin: should

austinandemily: actually, if we had more time, we probably would. Yeah. One day maybe it's, yeah. But you know, as our backup goes we're very. We like a lot of different kinds of things and we're kind of restless in terms of what we want to write, and so our inspirations are constantly changing.

We get bored and we say, we've never done this before. This would be cool to try. And with that comes an ever expanded reading list.

Laura Yamin: Yes, I love this. And you should definitely, if you have time, listen to some pop culture nonfiction. I

austinandemily: Yes.

Laura Yamin: will be,

austinandemily: yeah. We should list.

Laura Yamin: some TV show, oral histories, you're

austinandemily: Yes. [00:10:00] Oh yeah, absolutely.

Laura Yamin: So awesome. So do you have any books to recommend or listeners to pick up?

austinandemily: Yes. Everything she does is Magic by Bridget Morrissey. It's perfect for like Halloween just coming up. It's really great street behind a and it is about it's set in like a kind of like Halloween town, the movie, like, it's just like a town that's obsessed with Halloween and it's about. This girl who is a witch, but like secretly and how she has to get this mortal girl to help her join her coven.

And it's just like, it's so much fun. It has the perfect like autumn vibes and it's like, it's a sic ya Romance. Definitely recommend. And then also we just this book just came out as the Best Worst Thing by Lauren Oakey. That's the other one we're written all the time. We actually just had the pleasure of doing an event with Lauren last night, and this is, it's really one of the best.

Things we've read all year, it's fantastic. It's about a woman who has been dealing with infertility for a while and through sort of a Hail Mary stroke of luck. Finally, her surrogate the pregnancy takes, and it's [00:11:00] exactly what she's always wanted. On the same day, she finds out her husband is cheating on her and this explosion of her marriage as this other longstanding goal.

Comes together, forces her to reevaluate her life and seek out new love. And it's really, it's just everything about her is great.

Laura Yamin: I actually, that's my, I had another guest actually share about this and she's

austinandemily: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: add

austinandemily: Yes. It's so good. It really is.

Laura Yamin: be.

austinandemily: Yes.

Laura Yamin: like, I am here for, messy

austinandemily: Yes.

Laura Yamin: of your

austinandemily: Exactly.

Laura Yamin: pieces all together,

austinandemily: Yes.

Laura Yamin: I love this. So Emily and Austen, tell us where you can find you a line.

austinandemily: Mostly on Instagram. You can follow me, it's ws inc. And then through me you can get to Austin and we also have a website, which is Emily Austin wright.com. But we are most active on Instagram.

Laura Yamin: Awesome. Thank you so much for being in the shower.

austinandemily: Oh, thank you for having us. Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to the What three next. For more book lists, cozy [00:12:00] reads and library tips, visit the what three Next block.com. Your next great read might be waiting there.