Tag: Funny Guy

A Charity Auction and a Zillion Guest Posts

As you probably know, Hurricane Helene barreled into Appalachia in late September, causing widespread devastation. I live in coastal Virginia, and we’ve traveled in the affected area many times. It’s a beautiful region of the country, and the images of bridges and towns being swept away in an instant was horrifying.

Wanting to do something to help, I donated to the Western North Carolina Indie Authors auction. The auction goes live TODAY and ends on October 20, so get browsing!

Up for grabs is a set of books from me. I’ll send the winner signed paperback copies of Chick Magnet, Funny Guy, and Bad Reputation immediately and then, as soon as I have them in hand, I’ll add an ARC of Bold Moves. Chick Magnet and Bold Moves are both set in small (fictional) towns in southwest Virginia, so it’s especially poignant for me to be able to offer those to the highest bidder in this auction.

Continue reading “A Charity Auction and a Zillion Guest Posts” →

The Cover You’ve Been Waiting For…

I’ll get right down to it: I’m so excited to be able to share the cover for Bad Reputation with you! Designed by the incredible Caroline Teagle Johnson, it absolutely captures the vibe of the book. Plus it’s objectively lovely.

If you need to hear the pitch again, Bad Reputation is a workplace, friends-to-lovers romance about two people with bad reputations who just might be able to change their lives–if they can only resist falling for each other. I absolutely adore this book, and I hope you will too.

You can preorder Bad Reputation at Amazon and add it to your Goodreads shelves now. And if you happen to be a reviewer, I do have an ARC request form here. I don’t have my ARCs yet, but I love to plan ahead.

And while I have your attention: Funny Guy is on sale this month in North America. The ebook can be yours for just $1.99 at Amazon, and the paperback is currently discounted too if you need a copy of Sam and Bree’s pining-filled, late night comedy romance for your shelves.

Get This Stand Up Guy On Sale

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.

Becoming Us

Coming Soon: Getting together was the hard part, right? The cover shows a box with the words: Becoming Us: A Funny Guy Extended Epilogue, Emma Barry. Inside the box is a couple. A white woman with long red hair holding hands with a white woman wearing khaki pants and a button down shirt.

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.

Incoming Charity Auction!

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.

It’s This Stand Up Guy’s Time to Fall

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.

Continue reading “It’s This Stand Up Guy’s Time to Fall” →

SNL on the Page and Screen

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.

Continue reading “SNL on the Page and Screen” →

Funny Guy Cover Reveal!

Isn’t the cover for Funny Guy amazing? Well, the blurb is even better:

From the author of Chick Magnet comes a heartfelt friends-to-lovers story about what can happen when a funny guy and his childhood best friend are stuck together in a small New York City apartment.

Sam can’t escape the smash hit “Lost Boy” because, well, he is the lost boy. His pop-singer ex immortalized him in a song about his childish ways, and now his comedy career is on the line.

At least he still has Bree, his best friend and confidante. Bree has always been there for Sam, but she’s never revealed her biggest secret: she’s in love with him. To help herself move on, Bree applies for her dream job across the country―and doesn’t say a thing to Sam.

But as Sam tries to resuscitate his career, he turns to Bree for support―and maybe more. In the confines of her tiny apartment, they share a different dynamic. A charged dynamic. But she’s his friend. He can’t be falling for her.

Except he is.

Are his feelings for Bree just funny business? Or is their smoldering attraction the real deal?

It’ll release on May 16, 2023, but you can preorder it on Amazon and add it to your Goodreads shelves now.

And while I have your attention, I had a wonderful chat with Meg and Liz at the Make Out Already podcast about Chick Magnet. You can listen here, and you should because they’re charming.