Show notes
Emily Bleeker is a best-selling author whose dual-time-line novel When We Were Enemies moves between a World War II prisoner of war camp in Indiana and the feverish fame of contemporary Hollywood in a story that was partly inspired by her own family history.
Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and today on Binge Reading, Emily talks about intimate betrayals made in the promise of fame and tells the remarkable story of how a serious health crisis gave her the Eureka moment when she was determined to write fiction.
Now she’s an award-winning best-selling author with 2 million readers worldwide.
Links to places and things mentioned in the episode
Camp Atterbury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Atterbury-Muscatatuck
Operations Allies Welcome
https://www.dhs.gov/allieswelcome
What Emily is reading now:
Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein;
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Love-Brainwashing-Attachment-Totalitarian/dp/1138677973
What You Do To Me by Rochelle Weinstein,
https://www.rochelleweinstein.com/books/what-you-do-to-me
Strong Like You by Travis (T.L.) Simpson.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/178619792
Where to find Emily online:
Website: emilybleeker.com
Email: [email protected]
Introducing Book Club favorite Emily Bleeker
Emily Bleeker – dual time line saga from WWII POW camp to contemporary Hollywood
Jenny Wheeler: But now, here’s Emily. Hello, Emily, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Emily Bleeker: Hello, thank you for having me.
Jenny Wheeler: Emily, When We Were Enemies, which is your seventh book and the one that we’re talking about today, is partly set in a POW camp, a prisoner of war camp in Indiana during World War II.
And it dips into aspects of your own family history. I wondered if you’d like to start by just giving us an idea of how it all came together.
Emily Bleeker: Yes, sure. It was years and years ago. My dad told me a story about how my grandmother worked in a POW camp in Mississippi, and I had no idea what he was talking about because I did not even know that was a thing. So it went in one ear and out the other.
But I have just become more interested in my grandmother’s life and her story.
I decided to do some research on the topic and found out that was a real thing during World War Two.
And the other interesting part of that story about my grandmother is that she met an Italian priest there. She was married to my grandfather and they had a platonic friendship that continued for the rest of his life.
He would draw pictures on postcards and send them to her every so often throughout the rest of his life.
Italian POWs in US camps
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I must admit, I didn’t realize that that the U. S. had European prisoners of war, like Italians and Germans and people from the continent shipped to the U. S. to be put into camp.
So that was a revelation to me as well. Tell me, just getting back to your grandmother, did that priest go back to Italy? Because I gather quite a few of them stayed on the states afterwards.
Emily Bleeker: Yes, he did go back to Italy. He didn’t stay, though you’re right. Many did. Many joined the Italian Service Unit.
More than 90 percent of the POWs joined that unit after World War II and then became a part of the U. S. Army. So doing service missions, mostly building ships and things like that.
Jenny Wheeler: And I think it becomes clear in the story as you read it, if I remember correctly that Mussolini actually collapsed and the Italians more or less came over to our side before the war officially ended.
A few months before perhaps the war ended, those prisoners were no longer quite the enemy, were they?
Emily Bleeker: That’s very true. In fact, a lot of them were conscripted. Many times there is a tradition of hiding their sons so that they wouldn’t be conscripted into the army at that time.
It really was a very conflicted. They were not conscripted. or brainwashed as the German soldiers were.
There was this belief that once the Italian soldiers got on to the field, they would just start fighting and know what to do. But actually it was the opposite. They were like, “Oh my gosh, this is war.” And they ran away in a lot of cases and were like, “we don’t really want to do this. This is not really what we’re up for.”
Emily’s family links to the story
Jenny Wheeler: When We Were Enemies is a multi-timeline story. Part of the story is set in that POW camp, part of it is contemporary, and then there’s the middle generation between those two timelines.
You’ve got three timelines running, three generations of women and two of them with special relationships with priests, one way or another.
Just getting back to your grandma, was she Italian? Could she speak the language with the priest?
Emily Bleeker: No, that’s where things were different. Definitely. This isn’t her story, but it was definitely inspired by her.
But she did not speak Italian, so it’s interesting because they became friends without being able to speak the same language for quite some time, so they both picked up on the language, and they mostly communicated through art, so that’s why he would send her the postcards with his drawings.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. In your story, the contemporary character, Elise, her grandmother works in the POW camp, but she is of Italian heritage. She speaks the language. And so she ends up being appointed a translator, but she feels the slight a problem of being too friendly with the Italians and being accused of being a traitor herself.
That obviously was not the case in your family background.
Emily Bleeker: No, it was something that was more inspired by reading through newspaper articles and through other historical documents about what the feeling was at that time, and how there was this fear, we speak, there were internment camps for Japanese Americans, and there were some internment camps for Italian Americans.
It was definitely not as big of a presence, but there was a fear there. I’m not Italian, but my husband is a hundred percent Sicilian.
From Indiana to Hollywood
I got to spend a lot of time talking with his family and what their whole experience with that wasn’t actually his, I think it was his grandfather was a POW in a camp, but the camp was in India.
But they say that he came back all fattened up that he came back chubby and they were actually surprised by that fact.
Jenny Wheeler: Elise is the descendant of Hollywood royalty too, because the character who starts out in the POW camp, Vivian, becomes a singer and sings on stage for the troops and ends up having quite a career in Hollywood, but Elise is not at all drawn to the idea of fame like her grandmother and mother were.
I wondered if that whole idea of fame, which has become so huge now with the Insta influencers and so forth, the Kim Kardashian’s of this world, whether that was also this was also part of what drew you to the story?
Emily Bleeker: Absolutely. I think multi-generational fame and wealth can be a curse.
I have to say I haven’t experienced it personally, but I definitely think that I have experienced this idea of dreaming for a book career and then getting it and realizing that life is still life.
And that job that was a dream, is also still just a job, and that there are pluses and minuses to both sides.
I’ve become quite interested and fascinated with that and especially with the people who reject that idea of chasing after fame, and in the story. Elise’s siblings are also famous. So she is the only one who says ‘I’m not sure I want this.’
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. And we won’t give any storylines away, but the people who want fame are so willing to almost trade anything to keep it that she feels quite betrayed in the end by some of the things that happen in the name of chasing after that prominence.
The challenges of being a priest in a war
Emily Bleeker: Yes.
Jenny Wheeler: The other interesting question that the book raises is the difficulties and conflicts that priests may encounter, particularly in times of war.
Would you like to talk a little bit about that in both generations, really?
Emily Bleeker: Yes. I was raised Mormon, so I was not raised Catholic. Exploring more about Catholicism was interesting for me, but I do think that every religion has those limitations that they have to push back against and ask themselves questions about and really explore.
And so when it comes down to the storyline with the priest and war, I found that there were a lot of examples of priests, especially in Italy, who made the choice to join those brothers around them and go and fight, and to serve their fellow man by being a spiritual companion.
And I thought that was such an interesting take because they didn’t have to. As a priest you didn’t have to be in the army, but that many of them chose to. I found that such an interesting act of service,
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, because they’re there really to serve the men around them. They’re not particularly there to fight, are they?
Emily Bleeker: No, it’s about serving their fellow men.
Jenny Wheeler: I gather that as part of your research, you did visit a prisoner of war camp. Tell us about that.
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Camp Atterbury – 110 years of service
Emily Bleeker: Yes, I actually went to Camp Atterbury. It was absolutely fascinating. Camp Atterbury is still a military base. They do have a museum that has all of the information about the POW camp, has different artifacts, and they have preserved the chapel in the meadow.
I was able to go and see that, which was absolutely amazing to go and see this chapel that was built out of scrap materials, and the interesting thing about the Italians that I learned is that they were very religious.
The Germans came through and were not very religious, but the Italians in almost every location that I researched made at least some attempt to create a chapel so that they could worship. which I found really interesting and beautiful.
Also the US was dedicated to following the Geneva Conventions and saying, yes, we will let people have their own religion. We will follow these rules because we would like everybody else to follow these rules too.
Jenny Wheeler: I gather that Camp Atterbury has recently celebrated its 110th anniversary and it still is an operative camp. Tell us a bit about what’s been happening there in the last decade.
Emily Bleeker: Yes, the thing that interested me the most the funny thing is I know somebody who actually trained there for the National Guard, but I didn’t find that out until I started posting about all of this and so I talked to him about it and he said it’s actually like pretty old school.
Particularly the barracks are pretty old school, but the thing that I found very interesting is that after the U. S. pulled out of Afghanistan, there was something called Operation Allies Welcome, and that meant that any refugees from Afghanistan were welcome in the United States, and Camp Atterbury was one of the places that they were housed, and then also where services were provided to rehouse them and help them start a new life in the U. S. if that’s what they wished.
I found that to be a lovely parallel because just like when the Italian prisoners came, even though they were prisoners, there was an outcry in the area saying, we don’t want our enemies here. And then as they worked alongside the different people from the U. S. countrymen.
They really found that they came to be able to appreciate them as people, too. There was a lot that I read about Operations Allies Welcome where the community came together. They wanted to make sure to get clothes, food, whatever they could to help out these allies, these refugees that came over from Afghanistan.
The life threatening challenge that sparked writing
Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. When We Were Enemies, it’s either your seventh book. You’ve sold 2 million copies and you’ve got a Wall Street Journal bestseller list to your credit. How did you actually get started on this road?
Emily Bleeker: It’s a long story, so it goes far back. It goes into my 20’s, even though I didn’t think I was a writer.
I was an elementary school teacher and then I was a stay at home mom. But in my 20s, I had cancer and I was given a 30 percent chance. to turn 30. And I had two little kids.
And so, when I turned 30, when I made it past the five years, when I was given back all of this time that I thought potentially I could have lost, I made some goals for myself.
One of them was to learn a new instrument, so I learned guitar. But there were a couple of others. One of them was to write a manuscript, and I didn’t think I would get it published at all.
I just thought I would write it for myself, and that was just a goal for myself. But when I started sharing it with friends and family, they said you should try and get this published, which just opened this whole new door of challenges.
I started going down the path of ‘what’s the very next step?’
That was the question I constantly asked. ‘What’s the very next step?’ I’ll do that. And then I’ll probably be done.
But every time I did the very next step, I’m like, okay, I’ll try the next one. About five years altogether later, I had a publishing contract, an agent, a publishing contract, and I was a published author.
It was an interesting winding road to get there.
Wreckage – debut novel that was an instant hit
Jenny Wheeler: How amazing. And that first manuscript, was that fiction or was it based on your previous life-threatening experiences?
Emily Bleeker: It was fiction. It was Wreckage, which was my first novel
Jenny Wheeler: Ah, Wreckage was a big seller in its own right, wasn’t it? And it had quite a wide scoping vision for it. Tell us about Wreckage.
Emily Bleeker: Wreckage came to me while I was watching a TV show where there were only two people that were telling a story that of how they had been left on a boat after their ship sank.
And there were tons of people on this raft but only two people telling the story, and they ended up being the the saviors in every story that they told.
And I asked ‘what if they’re lying?’ So that was my big question
I always want to say that I’m sure these poor people were not lying, but I simply asked the question, what if they were, what would somebody lie about on TV?
What would they want to hide? And so that’s the story of Wreckage where you have part of it, where they’re lying.
You’re lying. They’re lying in the present to the interviewer. And then you get. to flash back into the past to when they had a plane crash in South Pacific and then see what the true story was.
Jenny Wheeler: They ended up on a island in the South Pacific after their plane went down. At the beginning, were there just the two of them or were there others at the beginning as well?
Emily Bleeker: There were others at the beginning as
Jenny Wheeler: And did those people survive to tell their story?
Emily Bleeker: I don’t think I can tell you that.
When I’m Gone, the second was even better
Jenny Wheeler: That’s all part of the story. That’s fantastic. But that was an amazing hit for a debut novel, wasn’t it?
Emily Bleeker: Yes, it did it, really to this day. My husband said to me the other day ‘what is it about Wreckage?’
It just calls to people. There’s something about it, it’s that thing that you can’t predict, with publishing and with writing, you just never know what’s going to hit people in the exact right way.
And that one did.
Jenny Wheeler: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Did you have to face that issue of having a brilliant first book and how on earth am I going to top this with my second and third? Did you have to go through that?
Emily Bleeker: Absolutely. I was very nervous about my second novel, which is When I’m Gone. Surprisingly, When I’m Gone actually has done even better than Wreckage.
I was very lucky to have that one hit twice as strong. I still, once again, don’t really know what it was about those first two, that they just really caught fire.
I feel like I have a lovely fan base. They are really loyal and seem to like my overly emotional stories. I’m grateful for that.
But I feel like I feel that every time. I never write a book and I’m like, ‘ah, this will be fine.’ I’m always like, ‘oh, I hope people like it.’
Jenny Wheeler: Now tell us about When I’m Gone because it also does have an amazing premise. I think you must have a gift for these high concept stories. I think that’s what they call them, the high concept books, which have got a hook which you immediately think Oh, I wonder what happens? Tell us about When I’m Gone because it’s another amazing one.
A book that came out of painful life experience
Emily Bleeker: When I’m Gone… as I said, I had cancer and after I had cancer, I was like, I will never watch a movie or read a book about cancer ever in my life, is too triggering.
And then I wrote this book. But it was based on this idea that when my kids. were little. I had an 18 month old and a three month old when I was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma.
And I was told, like I said, that I had a 30 percent chance of making it five years and I asked myself, will my children even remember me in five years, even if I made it all the way to five years, would they be able to pull up memories.
And so, I started writing journals with them. It was more journals about what they were doing, and so it made me think about what does someone do when they know that potentially they could be gone soon?When I’m Gone is about a woman who wrote letters to her husband when she knew she was dying, and she planned to have them delivered for six months after her death, and it revealed a secret.
Some of it was advice, but it also revealed a secret that she just felt she couldn’t tell him in real life.
It covers that journey and her husband, Luke, becomes obsessed with these letters and with this secret.
Jenny Wheeler: That is just amazing. Yes. Your books fall into the wider category of women’s fiction or, certainly from what you’ve now said, emotional family stories and they’re verging on domestic thrillers in some case.
Have you got any thought about how you categorize them? Do you think of them in any particular niche?
Emily Bleeker: I don’t, I like the general term book club fiction because then they can be just about anything.
I have a hard time putting myself in one box. I think that I would lose a lot of joy writing if I just had to stick with exactly one specific subgenre.
So I like that idea. It gives me a little bit of flexibility, gives me a little more freedom, and then I can come up with, my brain, honestly, is just always coming up with stuff that it’s like, how about this?How about that?
So really. it’s just narrowing them down into what’s possible, what works, what I want to write too.
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What Emily has learned from performing improv
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Turning away from talking about the specific books to looking at your wider career. You did mention in your bio online that you enjoy performing with a local improv group. And I wondered, number one, if you tell us a little bit about that and two, if that helps in any way with your writing, I’ve got this idea that people who do improv probably are very good at doing dialogue or coming up with a quick solution to something when they put on the spot, tell us a bit about that.
Emily Bleeker: I started doing improv because it was one of those goals was to get back on stage. I hadn’t been on stage since I was a teenager. And so one of my goals in my thirties was to get back on stage. I started taking classes and after I took all the classes, I auditioned for the team and it’s just snowballed from there.
And then I married an improviser. So now we both are very busy on stage and off stage.
At first I thought improv had nothing to do with writing. And if you want to know the truth, the first time I went to a class, I used my maiden name.
I didn’t use my – what was my married name before I was divorced – at the time, but still, I didn’t use my author name.
I because I was like, I don’t want anyone to know I’m a writer. I just want them to see me come in and just be a blank slate because I felt intimidated by it all.
I felt like that it’s so different coming up with something standing on the stage in front of an audience than behind my computer screen.
But as time has gone on, I’ve realized that it helps me immensely. I draft far faster and cleaner now.
I’m able to get my head into a place where it’s like improvising on the page, and I think writing helps me as an improviser too. It helps me understand plot and storyline and tension.
It’s interesting now. I’m starting to see myself more as like a creative person rather than just a writer or just an actor or just a musician, but like more like. someone who just is creative
What is the one thing Emily credits with her success?
Jenny Wheeler: And you did mention in those goals that you were talking about, learn a new instrument. So, you were already a musical person, it sounds like, so what do you play?
Emily Bleeker: I learned piano when I was young. I’m not very great at it, but I do sing, so I’m going to count that as another instrument too. So that’s probably the main thing that I enjoy doing. I do it for fun with karaoke, but I also do musical improv on stage as well.
Jenny Wheeler: And that’s with a guitar.
Emily Bleeker: Sometimes. My husband sometimes will use his ukulele, but I am more likely to use piano.
Jenny Wheeler: If there was one thing that you would credit with your career success, and sounds like this might be difficult for you because it’s been amazing the way that you’ve pulled it all together, but if there was one thing, what would it be, do you think, to account for your success? One, either talent or character trait?
Emily Bleeker: I will say resilience. It’s just to keep going, I think that you can look at someone’s career and think that it’s a trajectory all going up.
But honestly, every has the ups and downs and it has some hills and some valleys and I definitely have had those.
And it’s just this mindset of trying to not take it personally, trying to make goals that are reachable goals and then focusing on those rather than some big thing, like I want to be on the New York Times bestseller list.
Of course, everybody wants that. But what I really want to do is finish my next chapter. And now I want to finish half of my book. And now I want to finish all of my book. I think that’s what keeps me going and gets me going through it all. It is just always taking that next step.
What Emily Bleeker is reading now
Jenny Wheeler: We also always like to ask our authors about their reading tastes because this is a popular fiction show and so we usually are talking about books that you’d read for entertainment or relaxation or even escapism. Do you read for those purposes and what are you reading at the moment that you’d like to recommend?
Emily Bleeker: Mostly, I read really heavy non-fiction. I just finished a book called Terror, Love, and Brainwashing about cults, like about cult thinking.
But I have always loved fiction. I love literature. I love classic literature. But I also love just about any fiction. I just read What You Do To Me by Rochelle Weinstein.
I just read Strong Like Me that’s by Travis Simpson. That’s a young adult book. I do read popular fiction, but I really love nonfiction right now.
And I think it’s just because I live, my brain lives in fiction so much, so I’m like, I want to get some real stuff. I’ll make up some stuff, but I do love supporting other writers.
Most of what I read are writers who we share, our books with each other and I really enjoy that. I enjoy seeing what they’ve created.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you have to read much in terms of research for your own books? As soon as you said Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, I thought, Oh, maybe you’re going to be doing something about cults in one of your books.
Emily Bleeker: I would absolutely love to, but this one, no. I’ve just finished once and I’m editing right now. I’ve got some books under my desk that I’ve been referring to.
What I just wrote is a companion book to When We Were Enemies.
This is about Hollywood, old Hollywood. And I have three others under here too that I was holding my computer up with.
I do a lot of reading research for books. For this book, I also watched a lot of YouTube videos of old videos or stock videos a lot of documentaries.
I do a lot of research. Especially with historical fiction, it gets my brain in the right place.
A companion piece and a follow up story
Jenny Wheeler: And so tell us about that book. Is that a fictional novel? That’s like a second, a sequel to When We Were Enemies?
Emily Bleeker: Yes, I’m calling it a companion piece. I think that’s what we’re calling it. It’s Vivian Snow’s story. Vivian Snow, who you only get her pre famed story in When We Were Enemies.
And then, she has passed away in the present timeline. This is her whole, the rest of her life story. So it is her becoming famous, the rest of her complicated relationship with Trumbello, everything that comes after that.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s great. Because there is quite a gap there that there’s lots of details about what happens there that you don’t really get to know in that first book. So sounds fantastic. And when is that coming out?
Emily Bleeker: That’s going to come out next late summer. I don’t think it has an official date yet. We are about to announce it, I think, tomorrow. You’re getting a little spoiler here.
Jenny Wheeler: And so, we’ll know by the time this is posted, we’ll know the title.
Emily Bleeker: Right now, the working title is When We Dared to Dream.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. And how did that one come about? Was it a publisher saying this would be an obvious thing to do? Or did you feel Bye. Bye. Oh, there’s so much about Vivian. Yeah.
Emily Bleeker: I loved Elise’s story.. I feel like we got to a place where we feel comfortable with her story. Vivian’s story, I feel like it was beautiful, but there was so much more there, and I knew that I was going to write her story, whether someone wanted to publish it or not.
I started writing it and I asked my agent, what do you think? Do you think this is a possibility? She reads some of it and says ‘I love Vivian’s story. Let’s give it a shot. And immediately. My publisher was like, Yes, we need this story.’ Which made me very happy because I just like I knew there was going to be a question about what Vivian’s the rest of it.
I’ve been asked for every book I’ve written, if I’m writing a sequel, every single one and this is the only one that I look at and I’m like, This one I definitely know needs more.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you get attached to your characters?
What Emily Bleeker wishes she knew then
Emily Bleeker: Normally by the time I’m done with a book, I’m pretty much done with my characters. But I feel like with this book, it was two storylines. And though it was two books together, I didn’t get tired of it.
I didn’t get tired of Vivian. I’m still not tired of Vivian. I won’t tell you what happens in the book, I’m not going to be writing anymore, but I just liked her as a person, and I found her story really compelling.
She really came alive for me.
Jenny Wheeler: Looking back down the tunnel of time, if there was one thing about your creative career you’d change, what would it be?
Emily Bleeker: I Think that I would have protected my writing time more back years ago. I feel like I’m doing better now, but also my kids are older. I think that I knew it was a career, but it’s also hard to call it your career. Like it, this is my job, this is my job. I pay the bills with my writing, but it just is so hard to protect it as such when you’re writing from home.
Like during COVID, I had my kids here learning next to me on their computers the whole time. I still don’t know exactly how I could have done it, but I think I would go back and figure out how to give myself permission to treat writing.as my career earlier on,
Jenny Wheeler: And of course, before you’ve actually got to that point where you’re earning, it still is almost a temptation to regard it as a hobby and in a way it almost protects you that if you don’t earn money from it, you won’t feel you’re a failure too.
Emily Bleeker: I don’t. And I, you know what? I love that. Thank you for saying that because I don’t think you have to earn money to be a writer.
I wish maybe that’s what I should say is I wish I had realized I was a writer a long time ago because I didn’t let myself call myself a writer out loud until I had an agent, even while I was querying, even after I’d written a manuscript, I felt very shy about calling myself a writer.
And I do wish that I had been bolder with that and believed in myself a little bit more.
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On Emily’s desk: The next 12 months
Jenny Wheeler: Yell us what you’ve got on your desk for the next 12 months. What’s Emily as author looking at over the next 12 months?
Emily Bleeker: I am finishing the edits on this book, which will probably take me until the beginning of the new year. Plus, When We Were Enemies is about to launch in December. We’ve got all of the promo stuff for that. And then we have the new book next year. And then I have to decide what I’m going to do next.
There are some big decisions to make. What, especially now that I’ve finished two books that are from the same storyline from the same era to what are we going to go to next? And I don’t have that answer yet.
Jenny Wheeler: are you one of those people who keep a notebook with all sorts of thoughts in it about what you could do next?
Emily Bleeker: Yes. And I have so many ideas I want to do. And the hard thing is knowing, because especially when you’re pitching, you’re dedicating time to writing a proposal, a synopsis, 50 pages, like that’s an investment of work and time.
And I try to be pretty careful about which one, but that doesn’t mean that you always get that one picked.
I’ve definitely had proposals turned down before, so it’s hard. It’s hard to assess that, but I’m really enjoying historical fiction. I’m really enjoying, getting immersed in a different time period I’m thinking that’s what we’re going to keep doing.
Jenny Wheeler: Great. Do you enjoy interacting with your readers and where can they find you either online or in person?
Emily Bleeker: I love connecting with my readers. I really do. It’s actually one of the great unexpected joys of being an author, is getting mail from people, getting emails. I just am blown away by the way that people can respond to something that like I wrote on my couch, I’m like, Oh, Like I think it’s beautiful.
So I love it. I have a website, emilybleeker. com.
You can email me, you can get all of my social media through there. On social media, I’m pretty easy to get in touch with.
My email is just [email protected] And in person, I’m all over the place right now.
I have a book launch in December, so that’s going to be in Chicago, so I have an improv show that we’re going to be doing as my book launch and I’ve got all of the information about where things are is on all my social media and my website as well if people want to come on out, because, I’m also going to Indiana.
I’m excited about that. I’m going to go to Indiana and do a book signing out there. Right close to Camp Atterbury. So that’ll be cool too.
Emily Bleeker loves Zooming with Book Clubs
Jenny Wheeler: Great. And I gather you also do quite a bit of book club stuff or you provide information and questions for book clubs, don’t you?
Emily Bleeker: I do. I don’t think I have my questions up for this book yet, but I do. And I love zooming in with book clubs. I absolutely love connecting like that. If people reach out to me through my website, also they can sign up for my newsletter to get information about when things are happening too.
If people reach out to me through my email or website or social media, usually, as long as we can make it all work.
I love zooming in on those.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s beautiful. Look, thanks so much for your time, Emily. It’s been great talking and you talk about resilience. Honestly, you blow me away with your resilience.
Emily Bleeker: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And thanks for having me. You’ve been a delight. You’re fun to talk to.
Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful. Thanks so much.
Emily Bleeker: Thank you.
If you enjoyed Emily you might also enjoy..
Lily Graham’s Dual timeline dramas…
Lily Graham’s dual timeline fiction always finds hope in heartbreak – a result she says of being inspired by people who overcome adversity to pursue their dreams.
It’s something Lily had to learn to do very early in her own life.
LISTEN TO LILY
Next week on Binge Reading
Next week on Binge Reading, we’re entering the Christmas season with a series of bright and lively reads from Christmas story experts. First up as Michelle Major and The Christmas Cabin, an endearing second chance romance.
Laura and Ben were married briefly as youngsters. But it didn’t work out. Now in the weeks before Christmas, they are meeting again on their old home ground years later, but so much has changed in the meantime.
That’s next week on Binge Reading.
Just before I go a reminder, if you enjoy the show, leave us a review so others will find us too. Word of mouth is still the best way for others to discover the show and great books they will love to read.
That’s it for today. See you next time and happy reading