Show notes
This week on Binge Reading, delightfully fresh and funny romcom from Amy Poeppel. Her latest romp, The Sweet Spot is a tale of spurned love, revenge, and the healing power of friendship.
Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Amy talks about her fourth laugh out loud escapade. The Washington Post said of The Sweet Spot; “She puts more planes in the air than an ambitious air traffic controller, and gracefully lands each one.”
Marathon Mystery Giveaway
In our giveaway this week, a Marathon Mystery Giveaway. Fifty books from popular fiction authors, including one from my own in the Gold & Blood mystery Series, an old California series.
Book#1, Poisoned Legacy, a full length mystery, and Book #4, a New York Christmas novella, a romance with a mystery element and a prequel to the series.
Take your pick, just go to the link for free downloadable books. There’s forty-nine others as well as my own, so you’ve got plenty of choice.
FREE MARATHON MYSTERIES
https://books.bookfunnel.com/mysterymarathon/pvjp91o04m
You’ll find the link in the show notes for this episode on the website, www.the joysofbingereading.com.
And remember, if you enjoy the show, do leave us a review somewhere so others will discover us and great books they love to read.
Links in the show
Links to things mentioned in the episode:
Amy’s Funny book promo videos:
The Sweet Spot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrCKEkNcXtE
Musical Chairs; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IffxAo-QMh4
Books Amy loves or is reading right now:
Kaye Gibbons:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Kaye-Gibbons/1240808
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ellen-Foster/Kaye-Gibbons/9781442343290
Steven McCauley: https://stephenmccauley.com/ https://stephenmccauley.com/
Elinor Lipman: https://elinorlipman.com/
Steven Rowley: https://www.stevenrowley.com/the-celebrants
The Celebrants: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62049729
The Guncle: https://www.stevenrowley.com/the-guncle
Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead (A Pulitzer Prize winner)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60194162-demon-copperhead
Curtis Sittenfeld: Romantic Comedy, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62628727
Where to Find Amy Poeppel online
Amypoeppel.com
Facebook and Instagram: @amypoeppel
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15061378.Amy_Poeppel
Please Note: this is a “near as” transcript, not a word for word rendering, but an account which intended to convey accurate meaning and intent – as the spoken and written words differ.
Introducing Romcom author Amy Poeppel
But now here’s Amy. Hello there, Amy, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Amy Poeppel: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk.
Amy Poeppel – fresh and funny romcoms
Jenny Wheeler: You’re an established romcom author. And this is the fourth book that you’ve written. They’ve all done very well. This one has got a lovely premise.
Three women, Lauren, Olivia, and Melinda, all with totally different motives and not necessarily at the beginning, good motives, get involved in either caring for or at least investing time in the welfare of a little baby who happens to be without his parents because of difficult circumstances.
That’s part of the setup of the story.
You describe it as “a love letter to family friendships and Greenwich Village.” Tell us something about this fourth novel.
Amy Poeppel: I wanted to write a book that took place in Greenwich Village because that’s where I live. That is my neighborhood. It’s beautiful.
I happen to live in faculty housing at one of the biggest universities here, which is N Y U.
I live in this large, very strange faculty dorm almost, which is I think a novel in and of itself at some point. I think that should be the next novel that I write.
But I walk around this neighborhood all the time and you see faces over and over again, even though this is a big city, but Greenwich Village feels like a village.
We have these beautiful brownstones. I’m always walking around Washington Square Park and looking up at these beautiful, iconic brownstones, and I just wondered “what goes on in there?”
I got this idea that I wanted there to be three women all in the area, who don’t know each other, but at the start of the book, have pretty quickly every reason to hate each other.
They end up overcoming that and not only becoming friends, but they bond over this little baby that really has nothing to do with any of them, but he becomes their problem.
A ‘love letter to Greenwich Village’
Jenny Wheeler: It’s funny that you use that phrase “a love letter to Greenwich Village,” because you’ve got a couple of very funny tongue and cheek short clips about the book on your website and I think on YouTube as well, which play on that thing of how unfriendly people are in New York.
Amy Poeppel: Yes it’s something I was trying to get across in this book, which is that Greenwich Village, for example. Very charming, very beautiful. But it’s also gritty. It’s gross sometimes. The day after Halloween when all the students have gone out partying, it is.
You have to watch where you step. It’s disgusting. And New York is that way. It’s both wonderful and it has this kind of terrible, smelly, gross side to it. And with Lauren, my character Lauren, she makes pottery and I wanted her to make beautiful things, but I wanted them to reflect that same combination of two things at the same time.
So when I had her making this beautiful pottery, I decided, let’s have her signature thing be that she paints cockroaches on them or slugs on them, or dead animals or something, because I just wanted to reflect that same idea that things can be beautiful and lovely when you look at them in a certain light.
And then on a different day, in a different mood, in a different situation, you see it quite differently and maybe they don’t look quite not quite as rosy.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I must admit – Lauren’s pottery. I did think that it was a pretty brilliant idea. Probably somebody has already done it, but I can’t imagine that being a very high selling item in one of those design stores.
Amy Poeppel: Prefers ‘COM-edy’ to ROM-ance
Amy Poeppel: Yes. Something with an edge. I and that to me is very much what New York is all about. Things tend to happen. They’re not too pretty, they’re not too cute.
There’s always a bit of an edge to it and what you referenced before. Yes, if your listeners go to YouTube and put in my name and the book title, either the Sweet Spot or Musical Chairs, you can see these book trailers.
I like to communicate something about the book without it being something in the book, if that makes sense.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. The Sweet Spot has had a lot of great reviews and it’s generally agreed; it’s fresh, funny, slapstick. A comedy of errors, and it’s obvious that you have found your “Sweet spot” with romcoms. Did you start right from the beginning writing in this genre?
And why do you enjoy it so much?
Amy Poeppel: Well, I definitely lean more toward the “com” than the “Rom,” Most of my books do have some sort of a little romantic element in there somewhere.
But straight up pure romance readers might be disappointed simply because the love aspect of the book often comes about in another way. It might be the love of found family or the love of friends or something like that.
I do like to work a little romance into the book, so I think romcom is a perfectly suitable genre.
I think that’s probably the one I’m writing in. I would say that I always wanted to write comedy. I always wanted to make people laugh. I don’t shy away from having difficult situations in my book and heartfelt situations because families are full of difficult and heartfelt situations.
But I never want to lose sight of the fact that what I love to do is see the bright side, see the funny side, see the something humorous in whatever bad situation we come across.
Laughter is the best medicine. It’s true!
And I try to do that personally in my own life. When I’m going through some sort of a hardship, if I can laugh, it’s medicine for me.
It doesn’t fix it. It doesn’t fix everything. But in the moment, it can bring a lot of. joy and what might otherwise be a very difficult situation. So that’s definitely the “com” side is really important to me. I like in these times that are sometimes dark to give readers something to laugh about.
Jenny Wheeler: There are a lot of very funny situations.
One of those three main characters, Melinda, is set on wreaking vengeance on the other two, because she’s got a personal vendetta against them.
And you think up the most creative ways for Melinda to take out her wrath. That had me smiling.
I was thinking, oh, I would never have thought of doing something like that. That kind of feeling. Did you have fun making up those terrible things she did do them at times?
Amy Poeppel: I have to be honest, I had a wonderful time making up some of the terrible things that Melinda did.
I’m almost 60 years old myself, I’ve got a lot of female friends. We’ve all been through a lot. Melinda definitely goes through a lot in the course of this book, and she changes quite a bit and redeems herself.
A generation feeling a whole lot of rage
But I really wanted to capture what so many of my friends and I are feeling, which is just a lot of reason to feel rage.
And rage is propulsive. Rage can be fun. It can yes, also be destructive, no question.
And certainly in Melinda’s case, it goes too far and she knows when it goes too far. She knows she’s gone too far, but especially the early stunts that she pulls, I had so much fun doing that.
I just thought to myself, Lauren has three young kids in school. This woman. has control over a lot of the things happening in that school.
And I thought, wow, could she make this woman’s life miserable? So for any of your listeners who’ve had to do things like upload health forms for school, imagine if the school secretary-receptionist is the person who could make everything delete and you have to re-upload everything again.
Or she ends up having Lauren go home with almost all of the school pets or, she just tries to just make her life a little difficult. And just also put Lauren on notice,
Jenny Wheeler: You wrote a great description of what you wanted to achieve, and you’ve referred to it already in terms of “not just straight romance.”
You say you like to write funny stories in which “interesting driven women figure out who they are and what they want, fix their mistakes and build a life on their own terms and even find love.”
Now, that sounds like a lifelong project!
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Women: We’re marvellous at re-inventing themselves
Amy Poeppel: I also, speaking of my wonderful women friends, my age, I’m just forever impressed at how well women manage the chapters of their lives.
We go through so many different iterations of ourselves and we reinvent ourselves so beautifully, I think.
So I really did want to pay tribute to that and those three women, the three main characters in the book.
But Evelyn also, and she’s our sort of outsider, but slightly older character, not much older, but I wanted each of those women to find a way to reinvent themselves and come out in a better place than they started.
And if not better, because it might not necessarily feel better at the outset, but I want them to come away with something interesting and having accomplished something that they didn’t necessarily ever see was going to be part of their life.
So yes, that reinvention, especially women, is just fascinating to me because I think we’re incredible at it actually.
Evelyn: The grandmother who won hearts
Jenny Wheeler: Evelyn is actually lovely. She’s the grandmother that gets called in an emergency to help come and look after the children for what was going to be a few days at the beginning.
She’s quite rigid and she’s got very definite ideas about how they should be living their lives and she doesn’t approve of their rather laissez faire attitudes.
But she evolves in a really interesting way through the book and it was lovely to see an older woman make lots of changes as well.
Amy Poeppel: Yes, and to really open up her heart a little bit and to see that there’s more to life out there than the small world in Boston that she was living in, and that there’s more than one way to live your life and to be considered a success or have happiness or any of that.
But I did want her to be the very quick house guest to come in, see things from her perspective so we could see somebody else taking in this brownstone that they live in, but maybe not go home.
Maybe be the house guest that tends to linger. So yes, I love that character. I’ll tell you a little – not a secret about the book, but an interesting fact, which is that the first draft that I wrote of this book, I wrote the entire book in first person from Evelyn’s perspective, all 400 pages.
Evelyn coming into Greenwich Village, seeing the situation. The entire thing was first person. It ended up not working for a number of reasons, and I had to start all over again from a blank document.
I kept a few elements of the story in there, but for the most part, I really did just have to start over again.
When it comes to outlines: ‘Do as I say, not as I do’
But that experience, I don’t think that was a waste of time for me at all, because you always learn something when you’re writing. I got to know that character really well. It helped me understand her perspective.
So, in the new version of the book, when I ended up with the one chapter that was Evelyn’s, it was so much fun to sit down and write that because I felt like I knew her as well as I know anyone else in my life, as well as I know my own sisters.
I felt like I really had a grasp for who she is.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely. I was going to ask you about your writing process and because one reviewer, did say that you landed more planes than a New York air traffic controller does with the plotting.
And I thought maybe you had started as one of those people with a huge outline that you wrote to, but obviously not for this book anyway.
Amy Poeppel: I’m a big believer in outlines and I would encourage anyone to try to write one if they can.
I taught high school English for years and I always told my students, you’ve got to start with an outline.
For me, for writing fiction, I find it very difficult. I have done it before and ended up throwing the entire outline away, I think because of the way I write.
Everybody is different and there is no right and wrong way of doing any of this.
But for me it’s all about getting to know the characters and the only way I can get to know the characters is to write.
And then I get a quarter of the way in and I say, ‘oh no.’ That’s not what she would do. That’s not what she would say.
Writing a lot of wrong words to find the right ones
Because I get to know the person a little bit better, so I go back and correct as I move forward.
And it’s hard for me to know where we’re going until I know who they are, because I don’t always know how they’re going to react to certain situations.
I have to write a lot of the wrong words before I can get to the right ones. This book – I’m working on a new book right now – and I spent a lot more time thinking before I put pen to paper.
I mean metaphorically because I strictly use a laptop. But I spent a lot of time walking and thinking and traveling for this book. I was on a book tour for this, for The Sweet Spot and instead of jumping in I was thinking.
I was starting to get nervous because I was thinking, I’ve got to start, I’ve got to get some words on the page.
When I finally did sit down to write, it came easily to me because spending that time thinking about the characters and what I thought their issues might be and where I might want to have them end up. I think that’s helped me this time working out a few things in my head.
Jenny Wheeler: You bring in that idea of The Sweet Spot very nicely in the book, because there is a bar called The Sweet Spot, which has a fairly central part to play as well.
And each one of the characters in a different way and in a different part of the book seems to recognize for themselves, oh, this is a sweet spot for me, or this is my sweet spot.
It’s nicely threaded into the book.
Making life uncomfortable in the enviable brownstone
Amy Poeppel: Yes, and coming up with the idea for the bar was so much fun because I wanted this family to get to the privilege of living in this brownstone, but I didn’t want to make life too easy for them.
So first I filled it with things that weren’t their own things that they were going to have to live with, and, set up a situation where they couldn’t just clear out the house.
Then I thought, well, let’s also not have it be one of these. Absolutely beautifully renovated brownstones. Let’s give them an unrenovated brownstone with the big air conditioning units in the windows and really terrible appliances, and a kitchen that needs to be gutted and redone.
And I thought, that’s good. They’re pretty uncomfortable now.
And then I thought, what if I could make them a little bit more uncomfortable?
I was walking around my neighborhood and I thought, ‘Let’s put a bar in the basement’ because that’s happens here all the time.
You might have a dry cleaner in the basement or a bakery and I thought, no, let’s have a bar in the basement, because that would create a little extra mayhem.
Also it would be a really nice place for happenstance. It would be a good meeting place where people could encounter each other.
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Life imitated art in Musical Chairs
And the scene where I have Melinda comes into the bar for the first time, she kind of ducks in, and happens to meet Philip. And then the bartender Dan, who ends up becoming important to her.
That scene at the bar – that was just so much fun for me to bring those people together in that setting. and then I, of course, I thought the bar should be called the Sweet Spot because it’s just a great name for a bar
Jenny Wheeler: Yeah, it is. Really nice. you mentioned your book Musical Chairs and I noticed online that you have a disclaimer on the website, which I’m sure is tongue and cheek, but it says “the book is definitely not autobiographical,: and I just wondered why you felt you wanted to pop that on there.
Amy Poeppel: Yes. So again, if you look on YouTube and you put in my name Musical Chairs, you’ll see a very funny video that I made with my family on exactly this topic. I had written the book.
And I decided to have musicians in the book. And I happened to have children who are not only musically inclined, but two of them were actually pursuing music professionally.
So classical music is part of my life now. And then the book was already finished and Covid happened, and we all got locked down in this house that we have that’s absolutely falling apart in Connecticut.
And all three of my adult children moved back home and one of the main driving forces of the book is that this woman comes to her Connecticut home, which is falling apart just like mine.
Taylor Swift would be on The Sweet Spot playlist
And her two adult children moved back home. But that was purely an accident and I just thought, this is crazy. I feel like I’m living the life of my main character now.
A lot of it was wishful fulfillment fantasy for me because of course her daughter ends up meeting a guy who’s a fixer upper who can just fix anything.
That’s literally, you want to know what like my fantasy life is? It’s a fixer upper, a guy who will come see that something’s broken in my house and just fix it. That’s, to me, that’s just the dream. That’s part of where that came from.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s funny. It’s a life imitating art, isn’t it?
Amy Poeppel: Exactly. Yep. Exactly.
Jenny Wheeler: For that book, you had a playlist, which you put up too, and I can understand because it is a musical book, but if you had a playlist for The Sweet Spot, what do you think it would be?
Amy Poeppel: Oh, that’s such a fun question. I picture classic rock songs for everything that takes place in the bar.
But I also like the idea of some sort of Frank Sinatra, New York themed songs. I would definitely have some of that in there too, some jazz because of The Sweet Spot, has jazz trios come.
And then of course I would have to throw in a Taylor Swift song because I. have Melinda living right on Cornelia Street across the street from where Taylor Swift actually lived when she was in New York. I would have to throw in a little Taylor Swift also.
Amy Poeppel: she loved books so thought she would be a librarian
Jenny Wheeler: But I gather that actually in real life you don’t particularly like to write to a playlist?
Amy Poeppel: I don’t really. Music featured very heavily in my book Musical Chairs, because the main characters they live and breathe classical ensemble music.
That playlist was really fun for me to write because the pieces were all mentioned in the book someplace or other. But that was an exception for me. there’s definitely less music in my other three books.
Jenny Wheeler: What got you started in writing at the beginning? Was there once some light bulb moment where you thought, oh, I must just write a book, or I’m not going to be realizing my future?
Amy Poeppel: It’s funny because I’ve been a reader my whole life. And I thought as a very young girl that because I loved books, I should become a librarian.
That was my goal for quite a long time. Then I studied English and ended up becoming an English teacher and that fit me pretty well because I really do love sharing with young people books that I think can just really change one’s entire viewpoint.
So to get to do that with young students, not young. I taught 11th and 12th grade, but I just mean young minds, that was really great.
The Texas “trainer book’ that’s stayed in a drawer
And I also did a lot of theater right out of college. And I think that those things, my love of books, my love of theater, and my love of even teaching, the sense of an audience, none of that really came together for me.
I didn’t publish my first book until I turned 50. I was doing all of these other things, raising my three boys. Teaching. I worked in admissions for a long time for a private school in New York City.
And it wasn’t until I was in my late forties that I started dabbling in writing and I wrote this book about Texas, because I’m from Texas originally.
And it was one of those amazing serendipitous things where I ran into a woman who knew that I had written this book, and I said, I don’t even know what to do with it now.
I’ve written this book and it was really the book I wrote to learn how to write a book.
So she, sent it to a friend of hers who was an a literary agent, and she said, there’s things I like about your voice, but I can’t sell that book.
There’s just no way that I could sell that book. Is there anything else you’re thinking of working on?
And at the time, I was working in this admissions department at a private school and I said I’d really love to write a book about admissions department, New York City families, the lengths that they’ll go to get their kids into just the right school.
A new career at age 50 – terrifying and wonderful
And she said, try to write that book and I’ll see what I can do.
I was just about 50 by the time that book actually was finished and sold.
This is a new career for me. This is really stretching me in ways that are sometimes terrifying, but good. I think it’s a good mental exercise to have, to learn a whole new career later in life.
I think it’s all been very positive. I’m really glad I’ve taken this next step. It’s been great and I would just say to anyone out there listening, if you have a book in you, all you can do is sit down and write it. That’s the first thing is you can’t just sit and think and just have the idea.
I just go ahead and sit down and write it and it may never see the light of day. My first certainly didn’t. But you never know. You never know in the first book, that might not quite work. Might help you write the next one.
Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned your acting background, and I wondered if you were ever tempted. To record your own box because they are in audio.
Amy Poeppel: They are. I’ve never really thought about doing it.
Although I would absolutely entertain the idea because when I go out to do book events, I love to read. I always do something very short, because I think it’s hard to hold people’s attention for too long in that kind of a setting.
But I love to read from my own books, so I would consider it, I would also consider, for example, my book in the drawer, the book that never got published. – I would consider writing a screenplay for that.
Topping up the creative juices
Because there are things about that story that I think still worked, it just didn’t hold together as a work of fiction. But I would consider trying my hand at screenwriting.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s sounds fun. Turning away from the specific books to talk a little about your wider career.
I see that you split your time between Germany and the US because of the demands of your husband’s career. Tell us a little about how that works and when you’re writing in a different place, does it feel like a different experience?
Amy Poeppel: Yes, my husband works in New York City and he has a job in Frankfurt, at a neuroscience institute there.
We go back and forth quite a lot. The downsides is I never know where my shoes are.
I never know where anything is because we go back and forth so often. The upside is getting to travel.
We live in Frankfurt and if anyone looks at a map, Frankfurt is smack in the center of Europe and it’s very easy to hop on a train and get almost anywhere in four hours.
You can go pretty much anywhere you want. It’s been really an amazing thing.
I can work anywhere. The main thing that I need for working is no interruptions. So as long as my husband’s at work and I’ve got the day to really focus, because my kids are ‘grown and flown.’
As long as I have the time and the quiet, I can work on a plane, I can work in Germany, I can work in New York.
It doesn’t make a difference to me. What I do notice is that getting out and about is helpful. As much as I love to hunker over my laptop and really focus on the work, whenever I get stuck, wherever I am, I always find it helps to just get out and see a little bit of your neighborhood, see a little bit of the world around you.
Maybe go to something, anything stimulating, go to a museum, go to a cafe and eavesdrop, almost anything like that can really just perk me back up if I’m feeling at all stuck.
You never know what you’re going to overhear or who you’re going to see, like what kind of encounter you’re going to have.
And for me, all of that stuff is interesting.
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Splitting life between New York and Frankfurt
Jenny Wheeler: And in Frankfurt. What’s your neighborhood like there?
Amy Poeppel: Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s just lovely. it’s a very busy, lively neighborhood with lots of fun restaurants and bars and shops, and I can walk to everything.
I almost never drive in Frankfurt. There’s just no reason to get into a car. Between the public transportation, the scooters, and walking, it’s a small city so I can get pretty much anywhere in the city.
Within 20 to 30 minutes I can get pretty much anywhere. But it’s a lovely neighborhood. I’ll be going back there next month and I’m very excited because it’s summer and so all the restaurants will have their tables outside and it’s like Greenwich Village and that there are a lot of very beautiful tree lined streets. I love it there.
Jenny Wheeler: And how’s your German?
Amy Poeppel: My German is absolutely terrible. Terrible. I’ve been going to Germany for 30 years now.
I lived in Berlin for a couple of years when my kids were small, and then my German got pretty good, I have to say. I was very much able to function, watch television. I got really good. Then I had a big break from going, and boy, when I tell you I lost it, I feel like I just lost it.
When I go to Germany now, if I walk into a shop and speak German, they’re always very sweet and they answer me in English. And I’m like, I’m trying here.
And so sometimes I’ll answer in German again and they’ll answer in English, and finally I just give up and say, ‘fine, your English is so much better than my German. Let’s just communicate that way.’
But my regret is that I now again, I have trouble reading in German and I have trouble watching TV. I feel I miss all the jokes.
The ‘secret of success’ in publishing
I have a little bit of a hard time keeping up, unless it’s a really good crime show or something where you know there’s a formula and you can figure it out.
Jenny Wheeler: If there was one thing that you would see as quotes,” the secret of your success” in your writing career, what would it be?
Amy Poeppel: Probably a lot of luck. A lot of luck.
And then two things. One is just persistence. It’s really hard and you’ve just got to keep going. Even when you think you have nothing to say or you think you have to start your entire book over again or anything like that.
So there’s persistence. And then really listen to people. Be willing to take criticism.
Don’t be too precious about your words. If your editor says that this isn’t working, believe them, it’s not working.
And be willing to get back and redo it. The only people I think who have a lot of trouble with that are people who don’t want the criticism.
They think that what they’ve written is perfect. Nothing ever is, and they’re not willing to listen and erase a chapter and start over.
A bucket list item – writing a screen play
Jenny Wheeler: When you started out, what was your goal and have you reached it? Was it simply to write one book or did you want to see a TV series?
Amy Poeppel: Oh, good question. I think on some level I’ve achieved it. On some level.
Just getting a cover on my first book was pretty much all I ever dreamed of. Now that I’ve been doing this for a while, I do think that you push the goal line a little bit. I would love, for example, to write a screenplay or a stage play someday.
That’s something that is on my bucket list of things I’d like to do. I’m currently under contract to write two books right now, so I’m working on the first of those two. I would really like these next two books to be books that I am as proud of as I am the first four. I want to keep that bar that I’ve set for myself where it is.
That’s important to me. I don’t ever want to look at my books on a shelf and be like, ‘oh, but don’t read that one. It’s not very good.’ I want to feel that each of my books has its own strengths and shines in its own way.
Jenny Wheeler: Yeah, that’s lovely. We always like to ask our authors, about their reading habits because this is The Joys of Binge Reading.
When I started out it was the with thought of those ‘whale’ readers, as they call them, who go from book to book, and if they discover an author, read their back list. Mostly, we have multiple authors who already are published so our listeners can do that.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been a binge reader yourself, but tell us a bit about the reading habits and just a couple of books that you’d recommend that are available right now.
What Amy Poeppel is reading now
Amy Poeppel: Absolutely. I’ve always been a reader and I always read.
I’m not one of those people who, when I’m writing a book, I have to stop reading.
In fact, I find that It’s one of those things that can be very stimulating, I think. I’ll read something and it’s so beautifully done and I’ll go, ‘Ooh, how did she do that? Or how did she make me feel that?’
I am always reading. I am also a binge reader and I really started out as a binge reader because I remember falling in love with an author named Kaye Gibbons and reading every single book she ever read.
She wrote a lovely book called Ellen Foster. A tiny slim little book that I remember reading in an afternoon and then getting her entire back list.
Steven McCauley is a Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts author who I just love. As soon as I hear he’s got a new book out, immediately I go. I have to read it.
Elinor Lipman is another one. My recent reads that I really enjoyed, I just finished reading Steven Rowley’s new book called The Celebrants.
He wrote a wonderful book a couple of years ago called The Guncle that I just loved, absolutely laughed in. It’s wonderful. And his new book, the Celebrants, is a really cool idea about a group of friends and watching them go through life and meet during these incredibly important moments in their lives.
I laughed a lot and really, and cried and really enjoyed it.
Big name contrast in favorite authors
I loved Barbara King Solver’s new book. Demon Copperhead. That was fascinating. Speaking of a great first person narrator she just did a beautiful job and I learned a lot about the opioid crisis in certain areas of the United States, and it’s a really well written book.
And finally I’ll end with Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy. I really enjoyed that as well.
Speaking of romcoms she has a character in there who’s a very famous musician. And when I wrote my book Limelight, I have the 18 year old version of that man in her book. I read Romantic Comedy and I thought, oh, I hope my musician, he was only 18.
I hope he grows up to be a man, as wonderful as the man in her book, romantic comedy. I think that’s my fantasy is that my character Carter would grow up to be a man. As wonderful as that.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s gorgeous. That really is gorgeous. looking back down the tunnel of time, if there was one thing about your writing career that you’d like to change, what would it be?
Amy Poeppel: Start sooner. I wish I had started sooner, even if nothing had ever got published, even if it had all just been for me. I wish I had just written more. would sometimes get a little idea of something and I just didn’t follow through and I wish I had followed through more.
Jenny Wheeler: It’s a day of Book Clubs and I think your books are the sort of books that book clubs love to be able to get together and chat over. Do you do book club, digital meetings? And if so, how can people get hold of you to arrange them?
Book Club Zoom visits – we can thank Covid
Amy Poeppel: I love doing book clubs. Covid has been so awful, but one of the really interesting things that came out of Covid is the idea that a book club of 12 people would invite you to join them. For me, that didn’t really happen until Covid.
So I love to do that. And if you go to my website, which is just my name, amypoeppol.com you’ll find all the different ways to reach me. My email address is on there.
But I really enjoy it. I think what a lot of book clubs like to do is they like to meet and discuss the book themselves and then have the author pop in after they’ve had a chance to discuss the book openly so they don’t hurt the author’s feelings, maybe, or just to get to share their own thoughts.
I love to come to book clubs, so definitely listeners should reach out and let me know their schedules and I would be so happy to pop in.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful and it’s interesting that it was partly as a result of Covid that started happening.
Amy Poeppel: Yes, because I’ve had people invite me and I go to in-person book clubs when I can, if it’s local and I can go somewhere.
I love to, I just went to an event about 18 women or so in a church building in Bridgewater, Connecticut, and had the best time. They were the most engaged bunch of readers.
They were just lovely and they had homemade brownies – so win. That was just fantastic.
But it is nice that this idea that Zooming is so easy. I went to a book club about two weeks ago in California, but on Zoom, but they were all together in their living room and had a TV screen and she hooked her computer up to it so I could see all of them, which was really nice.
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Was the baby okay? And other sequels…
And other times they’re just virtual book clubs where everybody’s in their own home. And that’s great too. I think it’s social. I think it’s fun to talk to people and I love to get readers thoughts on characters and the choices that they make. For me it’s a lot of fun.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, it is interesting. I saw a comment online that one reader had said they wished, there was a little bit more of Lauren in The Sweet Spot. People have these feelings of one character or another. They want to know more about them, don’t they?
Amy Poeppel: Exactly. Yes. And that’s fun for me to think about. Or sometimes people will say, well, if there were a sequel, where are they now? Like, where are these characters now?
And is the baby okay? And did they keep in touch? And I love to talk about that sort of thing because yes the baby’s okay and I think they all did keep in touch because I think they became very important to each other.
But that’s the sort of conversation that I love to have and absolutely welcome.
Jenny Wheeler: Yeah, that’s right. If you’re worrying about your Limelight character and what he’s like now in real life, they are very real to you, aren’t they?
Amy Poeppel: Yes, exactly.
Jenny Wheeler: We’ve partly covered it, but always our wrap up question is, do you like to interact with readers and where can they find you online? Just give us an idea of your social handles?
Where to find Amy Poeppel online
Amy Poeppel: Yes. You can always reach me, as I said, through my website, which is just amypoeppol.com. I’m on Instagram at @AmyPopol, so just my name, one word. I’m also on Twitter, although I have to say less so lately, I just opened my first, I. TikTok account. We’ll see how that goes. I, it may go nowhere.
I feel like I’m about as extended as I can be on social media. But yes, you can always ask questions on Goodreads. Goodreads has a little question and answer things.
Sometimes I’ve had readers reach me that way. And I have readers that are friends now, like readers who read my first book and they have followed me through all my books.
There’s a woman who lives in Oregon. I’ve never met her. Her name is Donna. She was one of the first people who read my first book, Small Admissions, and now as soon as I get an advance copy of my book, I get in touch with her and say, ‘Donna, have you moved? Can I send you a copy?’ Because I feel like she’s been with me on this journey from the beginning.
I couldn’t do this without readers. I think most authors will tell you, we’re so grateful to our readers. What would we do? We would be writing just only for ourselves, which is, valuable in its own way. But to share these stories with other people and to get to hear their thoughts on them is really what makes this profession so worth it.
All the hard work, all the lonely days in front of your laptop, those are the things that make it worth it. I would encourage you to always, I love it when. somebody reaches out to me on Twitter or on Instagram and says, I just read your book and really liked it. I love it.
What Amy Poeppel has got going in next 12 months
Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. There’s always one that I do ask that I’ve just overlooked at the, but right at the end. Over the next 12 months, sitting at your laptop, you mentioned you’ve got two books that are due.
Are they in a similar vein and are you carrying on in the way that you’ve been going? Tell us just a little about what your next 12 months looks like.
Amy Poeppel: Absolutely. So this book, I’m about a third of the way through now. It’s very much a similar vein in that it’s families in turmoil. Finding the humor in the turmoil.
I’m leaving New York City for this book, so this book is going to take place in Dallas, Texas, which is where I’m from, and in Berlin, Germany.
Families from those two places, for reasons that you will eventually find out what they are going to swap homes, for what they think is going to be about a year.
They have different goals, actually, at the outset, of how long they’re each leaving. Fleeing, I should say, fleeing home.
Again, it’s a comedy, two families, the two women in the two families, their children, and how their children end up meeting.
And it’s definitely a comedy. There will be a little bit of romance in it as my other books do, as for the book after that. I have no idea. The sky is the limit.
Do you want to spend the next year with these people?
Even while I’m writing this book, I’m thinking about it. I have an editor who I work with who said to me one time, who do you want to spend the next year and a half with, because that’s really what it feels like.
These are the people that you surround yourself with for a year or so. And I remember when I started Musical Chairs, I remember she said to me, do you want to spend the next year with these people?
And I thought about it for a little bit and I thought, ‘I do. I really do want to spend the next year and a half with them.’
That’s what it’s like. I’m already thinking what kinds of people, what world do I want to throw myself into, after the one that I’m writing now?
Jenny Wheeler: Amy, that’s just a wonderful way to finish off. Thank you so much. You’ve been so generous with your time and with your information.
Amy Poeppel: Thank you so much for having me, and I wish happy reading to all of your listeners.
Jenny Wheeler: Thanks so much.
If you enjoyed Amy’s romcoms you might also enjoy… Elissa Sussman
Eissa Sussman’s hilarious break out rom com, Funny You Should Ask, is a witty romance built around the whole question and dynamic of celebrity journalism.
Ten years ago, Chani interviewed Hollywood star Gabe. He was at that time the next James Bond, and the story she wrote about him then has haunted her career ever since.
LISTEN TO ELISSA
Next week on Binge Reading
Australian bestselling international author Fiona Lowe and her contemporary thriller, The Money Club.
A small town, stung by a local buddies Ponzi scheme. It’s a gripping exploration of modern greed as Fiona unpicks the moral quagmire of those who trade on the bonds of their closest friendships and family for money.
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That’s it for today. Happy reading and see you next time.