The Joys of Binge Reading

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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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} 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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Amy Poeppel – Fresh Funny Romcoms