Emma Barry

[00:00:00]

Laura: Hi Emma, welcome to What to Read Next Podcast.

Emma Barry: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

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

Emma Barry: So my name is Emma and I write contemporary romances and I live in Virginia with my husband and our teenage twins and a bunch of different kinds of pets. And I teach college literature and composition and then do writing in the evening.

Laura: Oh my gosh, I love this. And you have a couple books that I'm actually interested in talking. First off, Bad Reputation, which comes out this month. It is definitely a celebrity, someone normal romance. So she works in the industry as an intimacy coordinator. Tell us the elevator pitch for it. Oh

Emma Barry: So the elevator pitch is that a Hollywood himbo is attempting this kind of career resuscitation as the new hottie on a historical romance show, kind of like Bridgerton or Outlander. And he's really focused, like this has got to be the part, right, that's got to like make his [00:01:00] career. And he finds himself there.

Falling for the new intimacy coordinator on the show, which kind of endangers all of the things that he has worked for, and he has to kind of decide, like, is it worth the risk to his career to pursue this woman that he's very drawn to?

Laura: my gosh, I am so excited. I'm excited for the audio. So I'm waiting till it comes out on KU because then you get the

Emma Barry: I am so excited. I've just heard the audio. It's Erin Jedlock and Summer Wharton, and they are awesome. Awesome. Aaron Judlock had actually read one of my earlier books and I kind of requested him because I thought he did such a good job with this earlier audio and I just thought he'd be a really good fit for Will and I, a really good fit for Cole because he was so good at playing Will and I was right.

He's awesome.

Laura: Oh my god, I am beyond now you're just like, gimme the audio now.

Emma Barry: Very soon.

Laura: So before that you also had chick magnet, which is a chicken influencer. Romance it, which is like, it there is influencer for everything. So obviously chicken influencers is, it's one of them. Talk to us about Chick Magnet.[00:02:00]

Emma Barry: Yes, so Chick Magnet is about a woman who is a backyard chicken influencer, and this is totally a thing. If you have not, like, looked at the chicken influencers on Instagram, totally a thing. And she has just gone through this terrible breakup with she had been dating this YouTuber, it was like very public, very messy, and so she's moved across the country.

She's very excited for this fresh start except her across the street neighbor has been hate watching all of her content, and he is a veterinarian. not so much enamored of the backyard chicken movement. And so they sort of have this antagonists to friends to lovers thing where they are like stuck seeing each other all the time as neighbors.

And then they kind of both realize, I think that they are healing in different ways or dealing with different kinds of trauma and they sort of help one another heal. So that, that is

Laura: And it's Chick Magnet. It's also available on Kindle Unlimited. So if you're done with power rotation, then you can go to Chick Magnet and you can go to some of your books. So very exciting. So talk to us about your romance journey. Like, how did you get started, whether it's [00:03:00] writing or reading, or what was your romance journey look like?

Emma Barry: That's such a good question. So I started reading romance when I was breastfeeding my kids. So that was like 13 years ago. And I had just gotten a Kindle and I was not sleeping at all and I had twins and it was just wild. And I was on maternity leave. And I decided to read one romance because I was in graduate school at the time and I was studying popular women's literature actually of the 19th century.

And it sort of occurred to me that there was this big genre out there that I had not read any of. So I was going to read one singular romance, okay? I literally googled, like, what is the best romance? Because if you're going to read one, you want to read, like, the best one. And I found a list on the blog all about romance, and the top one on the list was Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase.

And so I bought that book for my Kindle and read it, and it was great. I mean, it was like life changing. I need to send Loretta Chase an email actually and be like, Dear Loretta, you made slash ruined my life. And I loved [00:04:00] this book. And it was like, it felt like being a kid again. Like I had been, I was reading all the time for school, but I think I had forgotten how to read for fun.

And I think I'd forgotten to love books and not just think about books. And there are pleasures of reading analytically. And I would never want say that there aren't, but I think I had forgotten those. And so here I was reading this book and it was amazing. So I was like, okay, I'll read another one. And then it was like, I looked up six months later and I'd read like 200 romances.

It

Laura: Yeah, that's what it is.

Emma Barry: I breastfed babies and I read romances and that was like a 24 seven job for like, Six months. And so then, it was like November, so that had sort of started at the beginning of the year, and it was National Novel Writing Month, and so I was like, well, it'd be sort of fun to write a book, like singular.

Again, I fell for my same line, and so I was going to write one. So I wrote a book and it was terrible, and I was so mad that this book was bad, like I couldn't, [00:05:00] I kind of couldn't believe that I had written this terrible book, so I got a bunch of books on writing a book, which I had not done first, you would have thought I would have done the research, before I did it, and tried editing the book, but it was just so flawed in its kind of concept that didn't work out.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to write a second book to like incorporate all the stuff I've learned. So I wrote a second book and it was better, but it wasn't good. So I was like, okay, now I'm, now I know, right now I understand. So I sat down and I wrote a third book. But then I had a new problem, because it was clearly good.

Well, okay, it was better, I guess I should say. It felt good for me. So then I was like, I want someone to tell me that my book is good. I need external validation. So I entered this pitch contest on Twitter and got a request, and I sent it in, and then I had a book offer. And like, that's literally what happened.

And then that was like, nine years ago. So then I just kept on writing books. So it was total accident, and it happened. Because of Google and my Kindle, basically.

Laura: there we go. And so how [00:06:00] does reading romance now looks different from now that you've been writing you've been not in grad school and your kids are older.

Emma Barry: Yeah.

Laura: it look like do you still think about it from that because you're also like an academia, so you're probably analytical like oh this is a structure, this is how it looks like.

Can you turn off the brain reading romance now that you're writing romance or is it now it's just like the brain is on because it's part of the job to yeah. Yeah,

Emma Barry: I find that I can turn my brain off on a reread more easily than I can the first time through. So the first time through I am reading it either from a craft perspective often, or I'm reading it with like my analytical hat on, right? And thinking about like, the way the book talks about gender, the way the book talks about class or whatever.

But when I often feel like when I read a book for the first time, I'm auditioning the book for reread. Like I'm a really dedicated reread. And so like, if a book kind of makes it through into my reread this, I literally have a reread this folder on my Kindle. Like if [00:07:00] it gets into there, I find that on a reread I am able to get that joy of reading back.

And so, I, I hope that I never lose that again because that was really what falling in love with romance was about for me. And so I would be so depressed if I lost that capacity to get swept away in a book. Okay.

Laura: I've been reading romance is 2016 I had a similar aspect I was underemployed and I had like nothing to do, and I found a listicle on YouTube and then I read all the books because I was like reading on my phone and just like no one was like doing it so I was reading and I ended up reading like 300 books in like the span of like, no time.

And now it's because it's part of the job and it's part of the stuff it's built different so I had to go find another genre, like similar genres. reading cozy mysteries like there's no tomorrow, because it's just giving me the same feeling of like discovering a new thing that you don't that you can turn off their brain and have this escape of it.

Yeah.

Emma Barry: And it's [00:08:00] exciting too when you find a new genre because it's like an undiscovered country and there's all these books to read, right? And so like when you've been in the world for a while you know what you like and you know what you don't like and it can seem like there's fewer choices whereas at the start it's like the world is my oyster.

Like there's like thousands of books to read and that's really exciting too, I

Laura: Yes, it is. So let's check some book recommendations. Do you have any books to recommend our listeners to pick up?

Emma Barry: Well, of course. I have a lot. So I'm going to, I'm going to give you five books that I have read in the last couple of years that I could not put down. And some of these were rereads in the last five years, but books that there's nothing really that ties these together. They're wildly different genres, but they're books that I think we're are unputdownable and that I loved.

And I'm going to start with Slow Horses by Mick Herron which is a spy thriller. And the setup is basically that the people who to go work at this place called Slough House are like rejected MI5 spies or they're MI5 spies who have messed up and so they get assigned to [00:09:00] this location as a kind of punishment.

But of course, like, Everyone at Slough House ends up getting pulled into these, like, world altering, spy plots in different ways. And so, I started reading them because there's an adaptation of the first three books on Apple Plus. And so I watched the first one, the first season, and I loved it.

And now I'm on, like, the first season. Book 8 of the series, and I'm like really upset that there's not a book 9 yet and they're just, the voice in them is wonderful, there's all of these characters and all, the books have all of these different POVs, and they're just repulsive, and the pacing is amazing, the one content note that I would make, is the guy who kind of runs Slough House can be very irascible, I guess would be the nice way to put it, but he can be really terrible to different people in different ways.

And sometimes, and I think the book is clear that's like not good and that the way that he is mean, but every, but I think a tender hearted reader might find Jackson a little bit too far. So that would [00:10:00] be my one cautionary note is that Jackson Lamb can be a jerk. So.

Laura: Where I'm adding the series because this sounds like up my speed of like, it's a series, there's spies, there's some thrillers, there's multiple point of view, it's a little mystery. So it gets me, again, the world's my oyster and I'm exploring mystery thrillers and all the crime fiction that's out there.

Emma Barry: These are, they're really delicious and they feel very different than a lot of other spy books to me because again They're not like the James Bond spies These are supposed to be like the crappy spies right except they do get drawn into these James Bond things But they're very fallible. I guess in a way that spy characters aren't often like allowed to be

Laura: Yeah. Oh, so exciting.

Emma Barry: My next recommendation would be, like, one of my favorite contemporary romances, and that's Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn and the setup here is that the female protagonist and her friends they win the lottery. And so each of the three books in that series is what one of the three friends does with her winnings.

And here, the [00:11:00] character quits her job. So she's been, like, a corporate lawyer and she was not, like, happy in that career. And so she wants to make amends for some of the things that she did. So at the start of the book, she goes to this house to apologize to a family and she faints in the driveway.

And so the brother of this guy whose case she had settled, like, revives her, he's an EMT and she's essentially like, is there anything I can do to make up for what I did? Did to your family through her kind of job. And he's like, well, you could pretend to be my fiance. And so it's this fake relationship.

It's very angsty. I will say like, I think this is that like a punch you in the feels kind of romance, not a like bubblegum romance. But if that is a thing that you like, you would love this book. I just think Kate's writing is amazing. I think this book it made me cry. It made me laugh. Like one of my, The funniest scenes I can think of in contemporary is in this book.

But it's just also like a gorgeous love story between two people who heal each [00:12:00] other. And I just, I loved every moment of it.

Laura: I love this series. The series I remember reading in 2020. I was like, I was calling it Kate Claiborne era. And I was just binging her books. And they're just so they're different, but they're so good. Like it's just so

Emma Barry: They are so good.

Laura: it's because like, it's just this writing. It's like, it punches in the feelings, but there's deep emotions.

And at the same time, It's a warm, cozy vibe too. Yes.

Emma Barry: have read the kind of single titles that she's done since, like Love Lettering, and I feel like people should really go back and read that first series because I'm like, no, that's where the brilliance started. No, I feel like, go back. If you've read the later books, they're amazing too, but the early ones I felt like were equally good.

So yeah, so that would be my second pick would be Kate Claiborne.

Laura: Your next recommendation is one of my favorite Nigerian little books that could,

Emma Barry: Oh my God, it's, this

Laura: out loud funny.

Emma Barry: It's so good. So the book is My [00:13:00] Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and I don't like crime books, even though I know I have a thriller and a crime book on this list, but I picked this book up on Alyssa Cole's recommendation and I came home and sat down to read it and I literally read this book in one sitting.

I like, I was like, kids, make yourself sandwiches for dinner. Mommy is reading. I just, I feel like anything I could tell you about the book would ruin it, other than to say it begins with a woman scrubbing blood off a wall from the man that her sister has killed, and this is her most, her sister's most recent murder.

And so like, that's how it starts, and then, Everything else is just absolutely wild. I did not see any of the plot twists coming. It establishes this world beautifully and then turns the world upside down. And it's hysterical and it's gripping and it's just, it's great. Like, I cannot say enough good things about this book other than to say, I cannot imagine something that's less outside my wheelhouse that I loved more.

Like, it's so good.[00:14:00]

Laura: I had the same feeling. I was like, I don't know what I love. I love reading social path. And I was like, well, let's just read this. And it's like a female social path. And I'm like, let's just do this. And it's so like, because you hear from the point of view, not from social path of view, but from a sister's point of view.

An older sister, who as an older child, older daughter, like I can see the pain and the weight of your shoulders and having to deal with your siblings, misbehaving. And in this case, killing.

Emma Barry: Yep, if you are, and I am also an older child, I think if you are an older child, you will love this book so much, then it like flips it, right? I mean like it's, I don't know, I think it's a, it's wildly smart and just unputdownable. Such a great book.

Laura: it is unforgettable. The next one is Cat Sebastian's We Could Be So Good, which is, I, Kat is a friend of the show. She writes queer historicals where they're cozy comfort. They're not they're not supposed to be like this like angsty, like just a warm comfy [00:15:00] blanket, which is my kind of bug.

Emma Barry: is I just think it's the most wonderful book and like it now we were talking like it before you started recording like the fall vibes and this book has such strong fall vibes like it makes me want to like put on a jazz record and make some soup and put on a sweater and like such a strong sense of place like if you look at those pictures of like the 50s, 60s New York, and just feel, like, intense longing for that world, this book will, like, plunge you into that in, like, the best way.

Like, I have pressed this book in the hands of everyone that I know and, like, just need to keep doing that because it's so gorgeous.

Laura: It is so gorgeous. I actually worked in, I worked in New York actually about 15 years and for about six years I worked in one of the buildings where the newspaper is, like the printing row area, which is now like a university, but it's like, it's just brought me back. I'm like, oh, like, my office could be like 1950s, like this newsroom and stuff like that.

It's just a fun, and I love the cat actually jumps around historical So she's not just focusing on just one era, [00:16:00] that she jumps around and she does have some new contemporaries in the 20th century, which is, we need more, now, like, we need more of that.

Emma Barry: Yes, and I and very few writers in historical today I feel like have been able to do that. I mean, I think Alyssa Cole is someone else who is, and a Beverly Jenkins, but I think so many writers in contemporary end up, and I don't know if it's choice or publishing or what, but I feel like they end up in kind of one spot, and they write regencies or they write Victorians, and I love that Cat has done like a range of things.

I, I just think that's so ambitious and so awesome, and she does them all well. It's kind of annoying, actually.

Laura: And then the final title is Hilary Mantel's historical novel A Place for Greater Safety, and I have not heard about this book, so tell me all about it.

Emma Barry: Okay, well, it is wonderful. So I was gonna say, one, I read this book because of a podcast and the podcast was Mike Duncan's Revolutions, which is like a narrative historical podcast, and every season, he's actually, it's finished out, which I'm very sad about, but every season follows a different revolution.

And so the third season is the French Revolution. It's like [00:17:00] 50 episodes. This is a commitment. But I finished that that podcast and really wanted to understand why Robespierre had turned on the Dantonists. And this is like a very niche detail, but I want to say from the start that if what I just said makes no sense, you may not want to read this book because it really plunges you into the French Revolution, but there is no attempt.

to, like, orient you. And so, like, if you know nothing about the French Revolution, I mean, I guess you could just approach it as it's just a pure novel, but I think it might be a little confusing. If, on the other hand, you're like, Yes. Why did Robespierre turn on Danton and Demoulin? Then like, this is the book for you.

It is huge. And I read it in like four days. Like it was like, like totally absorbing. It's really focused on these three men, on Georges Danton, on Camille Demoulin and on Maximilien Robespierre and the relationship between them. And essentially, Makes an argument about why they had this big split, a big split that [00:18:00] leaves some of them dead and really like imagines that comes out of personality and psychology and I was totally convinced by the world and was totally convinced by what Mantel was doing and even though I knew the end, like I knew what was going to happen, I just, it built so much momentum for me and I just could not stop reading this book.

So if you're fascinated by the French Revolution, I cannot recommend this book more. I actually enjoyed it, I think, even more than her Cromwell trilogy. And so highly recommend. But it probably has a very specific reader.

Laura: it is all good. As someone who has like vague notions about the French Revolution, maybe this is a hyper fixation of like, going deep dive on the French Revolution. Maybe this is like, one of the many books you can go down that rabbit hole. So

Emma Barry: Yeah. Or like, listen to the Mike Duncan. It's great. Totally recommend. And then you'll be like so teed up

Laura: yeah. So you're like,

Emma Barry: of greater safety.

Laura: so you have like an issue point and stuff. So awesome. Emma, tell us [00:19:00] where you can find me online.

Emma Barry: So I am on the web. My website is authoremmaberry. com. And then I am on Instagram under the same handle. And then I'm on Blue Sky under the same handle. And so, would love to connect with others, opinionated bookish people, and especially people who are interested in, contemporary romances, maybe about celebrities and intimacy coordinators.

Laura: And by reputation will be available October 1st, right?

Emma Barry: Yes, it will. And it will be available on NKU and on audio and paperback and an ebook.

Laura: Awesome. Thank you for being in the show.

Emma Barry: My pleasure.