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.
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.
One thing that you might not know about me is that I love classic Hollywood movies. As a kid in the 90s, I had most definitely seen more movies made before 1970 than from after it. The first letter I ever wrote to a celebrity? It was to Bob Hope. And yes, he sent me an autograph back. Most of my favorites were musicals.
This Saturday, I get to bring all that knowledge to the table when Brianne Gillen, Jen DeLuca, and I talk the 1948 Judy Garland-Gene Kelly musical The Pirate over at the Love’s Sweet Arrow YouTube channel. This movie is, quite simply, bananas. If you’ve ever wanted to watch Kelly with a mustache wearing short shorts and dancing with a sword in front of a wall of flame, this movie gives it you. No, really. It does.
Now that I have you attention, you can sign up to attend the event here, and I’d love to see you.
Just a heads up that I’m planning to send a newsletter on Monday with a Valentine’s Day extra: an alternate chapter for Chick Magnet in which things gets considerably more steamy on Will’s porch. I’ll talk more about this in the newsletter itself, but writing the scene with extra heat helped me to get over my mid-book slump and finish the book. So while I fully love the final (lower-heat) version of the chapter, it’s fun to look back and ponder, “what if?”
Friends, release week for Chick Magnet was BONKERS in the best way. I have done more promo for this book than for anything else I’ve written before. As a result, I wanted to put together a roundup post so that readers could find all those articles, podcasts, etc. in the future.
I’ll update this with more stuff as it drops–because not all of it is out in the world yet!–but here’s what I have so far. I am omitting reviews because I’ve been doing my best not to read those. ; )
I did a Q&A with Chick Lit Central. You may be especially interested in the link to my favorite ramen recipe.
It is almost inconceivable that I’m sitting my office where, two and a half years ago, I started writing this book, and now I’m writing the release day post. That’s right, Chick Magnet can now be yours! You can grab a paperback at Amazon, get it for your Kindle, and pick up the audiobook at Audible (read by the wonderful CJ Bloom and Aaron Shedlock).
This is a grumpy-sunshine romance about a small town veterinarian and the backyard chicken influencer who moves across the street from him, the one he doesn’t want to like, but whom he can’t stop watching. It’s about two people who are bruised underneath the masks they put on for the world. But as a result, they can’t help but see through the other’s disguise. It’s also about the joys of kittens, of coaching kid’s soccer, of prying neighbors. It’s about whispering secrets in the dark and kissing on your porch. And chickens. There are a lot of chickens.
So many people helped me write this book, it’s almost embarrassing. Without Genevieve Turner, Olivia Dade, Sarah Younger, Lauren Plude, everyone at Montlake, and everyone at Kaye Publicity, this book wouldn’t exist…or you wouldn’t have heard about it. I’m just so grateful to all my friends, family, and readers for their support.
I’ll have a big roundup soon of all the coverage for Chick Magnet, but if you’re a fan of Liz Donatelli’s Reader Seeks Romance, I had the chance to talk with her, which you can watch here.
Emma Barry 