Emma Barry is a teacher, novelist, recovering academic, and former political staffer. She lives with her high school sweetheart and a menagerie of pets and children in Virginia, and she occasionally finds time to read and write.
I was delighted to make a donation to the Equity in Publishing auction put together by the lovely folks at Kaye Publicity. The KP team was amazing at supporting the releases of Chick Magnet and Funny Guy earlier this year, and I can’t recommend them highly enough if you’re looking for publicity.
I’m offering a set of signed copies of Chick Magnet and Funny Guy plus a 30-minute video chat with me (on Zoom, Facetime, or Skype, whichever you prefer). I’d be happy to answer all your burning questions about my books, my writing journey, my chickens, the name of my sourdough starter, etc. You can bid here if you’re interested!
Funny Guy is on sale for the month of September! Until 9/30, you can get Bree and Sam’s story for just $1.99 in the United States, $1.99 in Canada, $1.49 in Australia, and £0.99 in the UK. This is the first time it has been discounted in North America, so if you’ve been waiting to buy it–or to recommend it to a friend–now is the time. Funny Guy takes place In New York City in the autumn and it has lots of cozy vibes, so it’s also an excellent seasonal choice.
I also highly recommend the amazing audiobook, read by Teddy Hamilton and Lucy Rivers. It’s aces.
I can finally share my career news: I get to write more books!!!!
I cannot express how excited I am to continue working with Lauren Plude and the incredible team at Montlake and how grateful I am to my agent, Sarah Younger, for making this happen. Lauren and Sarah are the best, and I am the luckiest of ducks to have them in my corner.
Contracts can take a long time, so I’m almost done writing Comeback Kid. I’ve been living with these two all summer, and it’s been lovely. Cole’s a big softie with a heart of gold who’s paddling so hard to get back on top. He’s going to come face to face with some seedy truths, but because he’s a hero, he’s going to try to fix them.
But he’s fallen hard and fast for someone he absolutely shouldn’t have: Maggie. She’s a high school drama teacher who accidentally ended up in Hollywood after getting fired for directing a controversial play. So she’s got things of her own to prove, and she doesn’t want to have a crush on this guy. Except she does. She really, really does. It’s delicious.
Anyhow, I can’t wait for you to meet them and everyone working on Waverley (they’re making a steamy adaptation of a Walter Scott novel). I talked more about the book in today’s newsletter–and I may have shared an exclusive extra as well.
So more from me soon! But in the meantime, I cannot believe how the last year has played out, and I’m so grateful to be able to continue writing love stories with the help of this wonderful team.
I’ve spent the summer in my writing cave, sitting on some AMAZING news. But the dots are almost above the Is and the crosses on the Ts, because I’m going to be able to share soon. At the same time I drop that announcement, I’ll be sending out an extended epilogue for Funny Guy called Becoming Us.
I meant for this to be brief and cute, but I just kept writing and writing and writing. The next thing I knew, it had turned into a 10K novelette. Don’t worry: Sam and Bree’s happy ending is never in doubt. But we do get to see these two learn how to make their relationship work day to day.
If you aren’t signed up for my newsletter, you can do that here. I hope this will be flying into you inbox in the next week or so.
It’s been an age, and I’m so sorry about that! I have fun and exciting book news (!!!) that I cannot talk about yet. But as a result, I’ve been stuck in my writing cave since late May. I’m approaching the finish line on a draft though, and I hope to emerge–phoenix-like–from the ashes soon.
But on Thursday, July 13th, I’m going to stick my head out to be on Romance Happy Hour, and I would absolutely LOVE to see you there. You can join Shana Gray, Dawn Luedecke, Dylann Crush, and me on Facebook or YouTube at 8 p.m. CT. I’m going to read from Chick Magnet, and I’ll be giving away a print copy. I’m certain it’ll be a great time.
The release week for Funny Guy has been so lovely–and the book has only been out for two days! You can grab your copy at Kindle/KU and Audible if you haven’t already.
I’m mostly here, however, to plug an upcoming romance charity event for a great cause: the Meet Cute Bookshop is putting together a Romance for Reproductive Justice Auction on 6/10 and 6/11.
I’ve donated a set of signed and personalized paperbacks of Funny Guy and Chick Magnet, and you can peruse the full auction here. There’s some AMAZING stuff that I will happily fight you for.
And while we wait, let me drop some links for things I’ve written and interviews and podcasts I’ve done to promote Funny Guy.
I did an Instagram Live with Kelly from Boobies and Newbies celebrating my release week. About halfway through, I talk about the inspiration for Sam (it might not be who you think!) and at the end, I drop some hints about my WIP.
How do you write difficult but likeable characters (because Sam is, to put it nicely, extremely difficult)? I try to answer that question in this essay!
We have a number of iconic pairings in romance. Grumpy-sunshine, innocent-experienced, and morally good-morally evil, to name a few. A decade ago, the legal scholar Dahlia Lithwick added another one to the mix: Chaos Muppet-Order Muppet. Essentially the idea is that all Muppets are either forces for entropy or forces for organization and structure. Animal and the Swedish Chef? They’re Chaos Muppets. Sam the Eagle and Bert? Order Muppets. And these opposites tend to attract. Think about Miss Piggy and Kermit.
Up until now, my characters have mostly been Order Muppets. When I have written the occasional Chaos Muppets (Vivy in Free Fall comes to mind), they’ve been minimally chaotic. But Sam in Funny Guy is not minimal chaos. Sam is the full tornado.
It can come as absolutely no surprise that Funny Guy is inspired by Saturday Night Live. Not in the sense that the characters are based on any specific performers or writers–I’m fighting a losing battle, I realize, but let me repeat: no, Sam is not supposed to be Pete Davidson–but in the sense that SNL has cast a long shadow over my life.
I first discovered the show in the early 1990s while at a sleepover. I was a recent transplant from Montana to Dallas, Texas, and I felt like the shabbiest of country mice. When a friend I was trying to impress insisted that we should stay up and watch it, I was only too happy to oblige. And I found myself tuning in for most of the 90s and early 2000s.
So many of the jokes my husband and I make originated on SNL. I can’t say lover without saying it in Rachel Dratch’s voice. Without fail, if I ask my husband what a dish I’m cooking needs, he’ll respond, “More cowbell.” “Lazy Sunday” gets stuck in my head all the time. If the show has lost a little of its edge over time–where’s today’s “White Like Me” or even “Who wants to eat“?–but we do still get viral moments such as Bowen Yang’s iceberg.
That said, if you want to read about SNL, what should you pick up?
Last year, I perused all or parts of almost two dozen books about the show. I have recommendations, which I’ll break into three categories: histories of the show, cast memoirs, and fictionalizations.
Chick Magnet–my grumpy-sunshine, small town, veterinarian and backyard chicken influencer romance–is on sale for the first time EVER. For the entire month of May, Chick Magnet can be yours for just $1.99. You can add the audio (read by the incredible CJ Bloom and Aaron Shedlock) for only $1.99, which I highly recommend doing. And the paperback is less than $10 at the moment. So pop over to the ‘zon and grab it!
This is the kind of news that I share with my mailing list. In today’s missive, I also discuss the backstory for Funny Guy, which will be out in two weeks. You can sign up for my mailing list here if you’re so inclined.
It’s that time again: stuff your e-reader day! Just go to RomanceBookworms.Com, and you’ll find links to more than a thousand free books, organized by subgenre. This time, I decided to include The One You Need, a friends to lovers romance in which an every guy blogger helps a socialite non-profit fundraiser clear her name in a money-laundering scandal, and they fall for each other in the process. If you’ve been looking for romances that feature gentle male main characters with dad bods, this may be the book you’ve been searching for. It’s one of my favorites, and it’s never been free before. So click fast!
I quickly skimmed through the list, and I would especially recommend checking out the titles by Jeannie Lin, Carrie Lomax, Jackie Lau, Chace Verity, Zoe York, Lucy Eden, and Genevieve Turner.
Emma Barry 