Bryn Donovan and Laura Yamin

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Welcome to the What to Read Next podcast. Today's guest is Bryn Donovan. In this episode, we're talk about her time traveling Duke, which is a magical set in Chicago, realistic world. It's a little bit magical. Just bear with me. We had a time traveling Duke, who comes into 2025 and he's shocked about the situation.

He's not happy about this time traveling, moving forward. But it has the best of the both worlds. It has the ideas of what we love about Jane Austen novels or regency novels. Think about little bit Bridgeton with the sensitivities of 2025. I really love this book. I feel like a little bit of magic.

This book is for you. In this episode . We talk about brand's out , greeting card job that she had, and many more recommendations for you to binge on. So enjoy this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.

Laura Yamin: Hi, Bryn Welcome to What podcast.

Bryn Donovan: Thanks so much for having me.

Laura Yamin: So happy to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Bryn Donovan: So I am a [00:01:00] former greeting card writer, a former. Hallmark channel employee and I am a blogger. I have a blog about writing and living a positive life called Bryn donovan.com and I What else? I live in Chicago with my husband and our two rescue dogs.

Laura Yamin: Oh my gosh, I love this.

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: so much to talk about. So

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: does that mean? Do you just write little slogans and stuff like that for green cards or,

Bryn Donovan: Yes, absolutely. Greeting card messages books for kids. I wrote about 10 kids books. Just anything that gets copy. Audit.

Laura Yamin: yes.

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: That's awesome. So let's talk about her tribe traveling Duke. So

Bryn Donovan: Yes,

Laura Yamin: is

Bryn Donovan: that's.

Laura Yamin: it's part of the, there's a knight book that's her first book in the series, but they can be read standalone. There's

Bryn Donovan: Absolutely. Yes.

Laura Yamin: them out of order. You can

Bryn Donovan: Yes,

Laura Yamin: The time trialing Duke and then go back to the first book to

Bryn Donovan: totally. [00:02:00] Yeah.

Laura Yamin: like that.

It's a little bit, I would say it has a little bit world building, but it's set reality of Chicago,

Bryn Donovan: Yes.

Laura Yamin: great. So if you're interested a little bit out of this world, like maybe some magical things are happening but you don't wanna feel like you're spending too much time with it just

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: you that sense.

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: and I think her time traveling joke is a good mashup between Regency 2025

Bryn Donovan: Yes. Yes,

Laura Yamin: is like the perfect teaser. As I was telling you, it was like a perfect teaser for Bridgeton coming back because we do get the sensibilities of the pop modern music, but with Regency style.

Bryn Donovan: definitely. Yeah, absolutely.

Laura Yamin: So

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: us about like her time traveling. Duke, what is elevator pitch? I think I shared like the high levels.

Bryn Donovan: Absolutely. So the elevator pitch is something like magic meets science, and sunshine meets grumpy when a love spell, whisks a regency era duke [00:03:00] into modern times. So my girl, rose Novak, has not had a great success in her dating life. And so she does this little love spell to meet an old fashioned gentleman, but as she's doing the spell, she can't help but think about this guy in a portrait she saw at the museum where she works.

The next thing she knows, she has this Duke from the early 19th century. Standing in her apartment and he is not happy to be there.

Laura Yamin: No.

Bryn Donovan: So then he feels bad. She doesn't know how to get him back right away. And they have to work together to get him back into his own time.

Laura Yamin: Yes, and he actually wanted to turn double backwards, not

Bryn Donovan: Yes. He's a science guy, he's an amateur astronomer, real smart guy. And he thought, I am gonna figure out the secret. For going back in time because he lost his [00:04:00] wife at an early age and he wants to go back in time to be with her again and relive those days again. And so when Rose brings him, when he finds out that he's jumped forward in time, he's like forward.

Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Yeah, so

Is like back to the future out of order. Then where I think about

Bryn Donovan: yes. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: it's like he's actually moving forward and still going backwards,

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: reality is that he wanted to go the. And it's a, it's magical and systems, and there's a painting. And the painting he's actually in a pa.

The painting

Bryn Donovan: Yes.

Laura Yamin: but it's not because of him, which is surprising at a time. That was the whole point of him being in the museum and being him

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: It's actually the painter, actually one who.

Bryn Donovan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it messes up another piece of art at the museum because she whisks him forward in [00:05:00] time before the painter has a chance to paint him in. He just did the background,

Laura Yamin: Yeah.

Bryn Donovan: so now they have a painting in the museum that the Duke is missing from. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: So talk to us about how, what led you to create this world, because this world is it's a little bit magical. At the same time we're setting in a real institution with the Art Institute of Chicago and it's very Chicago, which I love, even though I was barely there. Maybe I'll go back to the future or maybe I'll go back to the past. Try it. Talk to us about creating this world and setting up, because you're meshing up different genres into this what is contemporary, but it's a little bit of other genre matchups. Yeah.

Bryn Donovan: Absolutely. So I have always loved. The kind of rom-coms that I used to watch like in the 1990s, the just the the ones that you got a really positive vibe from.

Laura Yamin: Yeah.

Bryn Donovan: but I always wanted them to be sexier, which the books [00:06:00] are a little spicier. Okay. But that always appealed to me and.

The Art Institute of Chicago, to me, it is a magical place. So when I was little, we took a trip. I grew up in, in central Illinois and we didn't travel much, but we took a trip to Chicago as a family. And the first time I went into the Art Institute of Chicago. And I saw the George O'Keefe clouds over the staircase, and I saw the al windows.

If you've seen Ferris Bueller's Day off, you've seen those windows and I would. I just, I get goosebumps talking about this. Literally, I just thought it was just the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. I hadn't seen many places then, but I still feel that way about it. I still think it's just such a wonderful place.

And so it, I think because of that, it was really natural for me to set something magical in there. And I've, yeah, I've always loved. Those kinds of story ideas that [00:07:00] have that twist of of magic and yeah.

Laura Yamin: Yeah, I love this idea of setting up, I have been to checkout the Art Institute to checkout a couple times and it's, I think it's magical. And don't get me wrong, I've been to the med multiple times in a

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: because I live in New York, but I found out that Chicago, like it was just like this place of spending a day and just. , It doesn't feel crowded as other museums. And it

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: you just to browse around and to spend time and exploring and seeing exhibits and seeing like the, like what it actually offers.

Bryn Donovan: That is so right. I'm so glad to hear you say that it is actually huge and it's the biggest collection of impression to start outside of. Paris. It's just enormous. But yes, you feel like you could, you're not being shuffled along, that you're just this independent person who can just wander and have it, you, yeah. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: I think that's like the beauty of it. So if you're ever in Chicago, I think you must have a must up here.

Bryn Donovan: [00:08:00] Yes. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: the Museum of Natural History.

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: I'm not sure of the name, there's also yeah.

Bryn Donovan: Yeah. The Field Museum.

Laura Yamin: Museum. Both are gray, but I think the Art Institute, I would say prioritize,

Bryn Donovan: It's so wonderful. Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Brent, talk to us about the books you read.

You read, like what kind of books do you tend to read?

Bryn Donovan: I do read in my own genre, so I do read Contemporary Romance, but I read. Almost every kind of book there is. I won't read Diet or personal finance. Those are the only two things I don't care about.

Laura Yamin: That's fine.

Bryn Donovan: The only two, everything else I'm curious about. And so my first love was fantasy, which probably comes through, in this writing.

I came to romance late because I had the wrong idea in high school, and I thought it was all about, I. All the attractive people getting together, like the homecoming queen and the homecoming king. And I like, good for them, but like I, I just thought, it's not about me. [00:09:00] And then when I read the genre, I realized that it was a lot broader than that.

Like even my character Rose is plump, she's not so perfect. You know what I mean?

Laura Yamin: Yeah.

Bryn Donovan: And, yeah, when I actually started reading it, I realized there was a lot more to it to that. So I came to romance a little bit late, but I read all kinds of, so I read mystery literary fiction.

My MFA is in poetry, so I read poetry and history, a lot of history. And another weird books. I read a lot of neuroscience and brain science. Yeah. Just a real big range. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: I love this. Yeah, I can see the fantasy working in this book, at least in this like the magic system. The magic

Unquote

Bryn Donovan: yeah.

Laura Yamin: But there's also this sense of the Jane Austen Regency takes and

Bryn Donovan: yes.

Laura Yamin: it, like the different specific, because he has a passion astronomy and actually like building that.

Space continuum. So I can see that

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: [00:10:00] here

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Today's reality, which is a contemporary romcom and the spiciness and all the elements that we love about a romcom,

Bryn Donovan: yes. Yeah. Yeah. It took a lot of research too, because I had to figure out what did he know about the universe in his time, and of course I wasn't gonna embrace any scientific theories about time travel, but I wanted to be familiar with them.

Laura Yamin: Yeah.

Bryn Donovan: you,

Laura Yamin: Yeah.

Bryn Donovan: So it took a lot of research. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: All right, so let's talk some book recommendations. Do you have any books to recommend or listeners to pick?

Bryn Donovan: Absolutely. So even though I read all across Genres, I will stick to romance for this. I will say Love is an open book by Chandra Bloomberg that came out this year. Okay. So two that have. A lot of pining, but this first one is sweet. And then the second one is steamy. So pick whichever one you want, but there's a slow burn with a lot of pining.

So loves an open book with Chandra Bloomberg, her romance author, [00:11:00] hero in, and then when grumpy met Sunshine by Charlotte Stein. Which again, slow burn but, and a lot of pining, but steamier and I really enjoyed both of those for. The smart dialogue, just really intelligent and heartfelt writing, and let's see. I love other romances set in Chicago, so I will say the accidental Pinup girl by Danielle Jackson. I loved the characters in that. I like, oh, Lana Harper's Thistle Grove series, beginning with Paybacks of Witch. Those were influential for me in writing this book, in writing something that had the magic in it and that heartwarming element to the, those were I thought very inspiring.

Ashley Poston dead Romantics and seven year slip. I just really enjoyed both of those and. [00:12:00] Felt it felt like real magic, in places you had those moments. So that was wonderful. And oh gosh. So the author's name is escaping me, but spell the spell shop I really enjoyed also. Yeah.

Yeah. Sarah Dur. I'm sorry, I can't remember.

Laura Yamin: put the show,

Bryn Donovan: Yes.

Laura Yamin: The show notes. Don't worry about it. The

Will have the

Bryn Donovan: yeah. But which is more, maybe more fantasy. But but those were some that I just really loved. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Yeah, that, that's a, like a cozy fantasy. So it's still it's not, it's again, it's not this like high stakes fantasy where

Low stakes, like your nervous system will actually, thank you for reading this.

Bryn Donovan: absolutely. And it's a funny thing about low stakes romance because sometimes if you're watching a movie that's low, low stakes or reading a book. Sometimes I'll think about it and think, okay, I'm, I'm watching a movie and she's gotta pull off the Pumpkin festival. But if I was in charge of it in real life, it would feel like high stakes.

I don't wanna screw up the town [00:13:00] Pumpkin festival. You know what I mean?

Laura Yamin: Yes.

Bryn Donovan: So a lot of what we call low stakes, like in real life, you would feel,

Laura Yamin: Yes.

Bryn Donovan: Pretty anxious about it,

Laura Yamin: Yes. As someone who used to plan events for a living,

Bryn Donovan: right.

Laura Yamin: like stressful. It is

Bryn Donovan: Yeah. Like book one in this series. Her night at the museum, like you would call it low stakes. Nobody's going to, nobody's gonna die. No one's shooting at them, but there's a statue that's missing, and Emily wants to get a job here, and she's the prime suspect for stealing the statue.

Like in real life, that would make you anxious.

Laura Yamin: Yeah, she actually has to talk to an FBI and

Bryn Donovan: Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Simple thing. It's not as fun as it does.

Bryn Donovan: Oh. But I think the whole, the thing is part of low stakes, I think is just the whole tone of it, where even if she's talking to an FAI agent, you're like, things aren't gonna get really grim, yeah.

Laura Yamin: There she's not. She may get arrested for a day, if [00:14:00] anything, but you Not really. She's not gonna go to prison.

Bryn Donovan: The whole tone of it lets you know that you're safe. We're not gonna,

Laura Yamin: Yes.

Bryn Donovan: yeah. Yeah.

Laura Yamin: Awesome.

Tell us we're gonna find online.

Bryn Donovan: Oh, sure. Mainly honestly everywhere, but mainly my blog, bryn donovan.com. But I am on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Blue Sky Facebook. I'm gonna be rebooting my YouTube channel in the new year, so anywhere you like.

Yeah. Yeah. So

Laura Yamin: this to your YouTube channel, but thank you,

Bryn Donovan: yeah.

Laura Yamin: Michelle.

Bryn Donovan: Absolutely. Yes. Thank you so much. It's wonderful. Yeah.

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