How to Interview An Author in front of a crowd, Including Random Questions.
Text Appeal is as Enticing as the Title Promises: A wrap up of the conversation I had with Amber Roberts about her book, Star Wars, all things nerdy, and even pronunciation.
Last week, I packed my whole family up for an eight hour road trip to Vermont because I love Amber Roberts and her book Text Appeal (and maple syrup) that much. One thing that you should know about me is that I fell in love with Vermont a decade ago when one of my very best friends, Alison, got married there. In part because it was beautiful and in part because of the maple syrup wedding favors, which came in adorable little maple leaf glasses like this:
The state was so gorgeous that it lingered in my heart and my head and poured out onto the page when I wrote my witchy romcom, which is set in a fictional Vermont town. Since I wanted to visit the state again, and I wanted to talk to Amber about Text Appeal, everything came together perfectly amongst sparkling lakes, Victorian houses, and foreboding moose-crossing signs. They put maple syrup into everything! Coffee. Cream cheese. Booze. It’s all fucking delightful. Then there’s the Ben & Jerry’s factory: I toured the flavor graveyard and then I went to an actual graveyard for a project I’m working on. I lounged by a crystal clear lake and hiked amongst tall trees and stayed in a delightful A-frame cabin that the Bergman brothers and Chloe Liese would probably approve of, and that I am absolutely certain will inspire new projects for me.
It was a writing and reading treat, the absolute best part of which was my discussion with Amber about her book at Northshire Books in VT (be sure to visit if you’re ever in Manchester; they’re delightful and they also have a Saratoga location).
So to celebrate my first ever live author interview with Amber, I transcribed our chat and then abridged it because the original transcript was something like 16 pages long.
Order Text Appeal from your local indie or library, and enjoy this opportunity to get to know a fantastic author.
AUDREY: Publisher’s Weekly called this book “An enormously satisfying friends-to-lovers tale with a You've Got Mail twist.” How much did You've Got Mail influence this book, and what else influenced it?
AMBER: You've Got Mail influences everything I do ever in my life, because it’s fantastic, but I didn't intend for the You've Got Mail twist when I first started writing the book. A lot of what influences me in writing is anything nerdy, anything geeky, and generally if it can be some kind of small reference that people are going to pick up on and be like, “I get you, I see what you’re saying” that’s kind of where I’m influenced.
AUDREY: So the epistolary element, working with that, I really loved how you updated that for 2023 with the text messages. How did you go through and format that?
AMBER: In my very first draft, I didn't think ahead and I put just all of the text messages in italics, which was impossible when it came time to go through and revise my book. I didn't know who was talking and who was saying what or what was going on, so I had to kind of adjust things there. I learned my lesson, but I struggled a lot with the text messages because I also had to make sure they all sounded like they were coming from different people. I had to jump into the heads of 50 different people texting in their different ways as I wrote.
AUDREY: Did you have to, like, scroll through your own messages for that?
AMBER: Oh I tried not to do that! That’s dangerous, but yeah, a little bit. I also found myself evaluating messages that I was receiving and how different people talk to me and there were some really fun things that you can pick up where you can tell who texted you before you look at the name, like some people when you get the “heeyyyy” you know who this person is, and what’s going on, there’s some great gossip here. It’s really actually kind of interesting to look and see how personalities come through in just text messages.
AUDREY: You did such a lovely job that each character really felt distinct in the text messages of this. I wanna jump into Lark, who I absolutely adore, and I think anybody here who is a woman or knows a woman that works anywhere can identify with one of my favorite scenes, because it just makes my blood boil. Lark pitches an idea and then a man in this conference with her pitches the same exact idea in slightly different words and gets the credit for it. Tell us a little bit about how you dug into this very serious issue of gender roles in STEM and being a woman in a tech industry.
AMBER: As a woman in a STEM field, I’ve experienced a lot of the things I wrote about, and that's kind of why I started writing. It’s like one of those things a lot of women in tech and then women not even in tech, kinda like wink, wink, nudge, nudge talk about a lot, but it's not really something that people very actively approach in a book or in writing. I really wanted to just kind of do that. Partly from my experience, partly what I've heard from friends of mine and colleagues of mine who have had similar experiences
AUDREY: You nailed it. I read that and I thought, I felt like I’ve been there, I work in education not in tech, but definitely a lot of people can understand that moment with Lark. I also love how you handle one of the more risky parts of this book which is Lark texting, actually sexting for money, and then her friend Teagan selling sex toys for a living. So how did you balance that kind of destigmatizing sex and really having a lot of open and healthy conversations about consent and about sex in this book?
AMBER: I feel like in the last five or ten years there has been an explosion in people being more willing to talk about these things. Just a lot of people shedding purity culture upbringings that they’ve had and people learning that they can accept themselves and other people for who they are and what they’re interested in, so I think that some past books, The Roommate by Rosie Danan, and some of those other books they really paved the way for me to also be able to approach these topics, and I was actually starting to query this book when The Roommate came out, so I was really excited to see this space was there. It existed, but I think that having authors before me who have also been working to destigmatize these areas really helped me to be able to dig into them.
AUDREY: That’s wonderful; your book felt a lot like The Roommate in that it was just so healthy and engaging and embracing this idea of communication, like of not having issues where people are not talking to each other, which is interesting, because some of the characters did struggle with communication, and that kind of takes me into a question about Teagan.
AMBER: My favorite.
AUDREY: I was so angry with her at the beginning of the book. She makes some mistakes, she does some things that they have to work through in their friendship, and I just thought that was so lovely that you had this really strong friendship arc as well as the strong romance with Toby. So how did you balance doing the two things, developing one of the best friendships that I've read in a romance novel where it really felt authentic like they grew and they evolved together. How did you balance that, the friendship and the romance?
AMBER: I don't know about everybody else, but my relationships with my friends have always been very big parts of my life. From like, calling my best friends before dates and saying “I don't know what to wear” or saying “this guy is kind of weird; I don’t know what to do.” Friendship has always been very intertwined in my relationships so it just was natural to me to have them both in the book. I’m also always rooting for that weird best friend character in every rom com movie or book, I always kind of relate to them.
AUDREY: I always feel like that’s me.
AMBER: I think that I always wanted to make sure that the friends were represented because it's not just a story about falling in love, it's a story about discovering yourself, discovering who you are and what you like, and also learning how to grow up.
AUDREY: All the characters feel like they grow so much and I think that's what makes it feel so well rounded and lovely; you just did a tremendous job with this book. Loved it. So I was wondering if you wanted to talk to us about your first line in the book and if that happened in the first draft or later on.
AMBER: I’ll read it: “There comes a time in every woman’s career when the only thing that’ll make any of it worthwhile is punching out the obnoxious mouth breather who sits at the desk next to hers.”
AUDREY: It’s what you want in a first line.
AMBER: So that line was not my original first line. I twas in the first chapter, it was maybe the third paragraph and I ended up bumping it up because it basically said everything you needed to know about the entire book. It set the tone and it just really told you who Lark was even before you knew who Lark was.
AUDREY: I haven’t had a chance to listen to the audiobook yet, but both times I read this book I could hear Lark saying this in my head from line one, which is just an incredible thing. So later on in the drafting. You mention references, like lots of wonderful little nerdy gifts. A lot of times when I was reading this I felt like there were gifts specifically for me, like Star Trek and Firefly. What other specific fun nerdy interests do you have? Just like, list some.
AMBER:It’s a trap. I am very much into Star Trek, Star Wars
AUDREY: Do you want to show us your shirt there?
AMBER: “A woman's place is in the resistance.” I feel like I grew up basically anything nerdy was basically fed to me, thanks mom and dad. And I ended up making friends with a bunch of nerds because we all got along; we all knew how to sit in a room together and read quietly without having to talk or go anywhere. So if I could lose myself in any world, I would do that, and that's especially true in sci-fi and fantasy worlds in general. So those are the places i live in my head
AUDREY: What would you say if you had to pick your top 5 nerdom fantasy worlds?
AMBER: Oh no! In no particular order. We have—this is hard—Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, and Buffy. That was hard.
AUDREY: I feel like you passed a very important test there and there's a little bit of all of that in this book.
AMBER: There’s a bit more than a little!
AUDREY: This is a romcom, we know that it has an HEA, but at what point do you feel like you the author knew the two characters loved each other, like they were in it, they had fallen?
AMBER: There were two instances at very different points in the book that completely mirror each other in a way that lark says something she encourages toby in this lovely lovely way and then a few chapters later he reciprocates with nearly the same sentiment and that actually happened completely by accident because I don’t outline so when it happened I was like, OK. Wait. We are on the right track here. This is working. It was just them coming together in that way separately but still together that really sealed it for me
AUDREY: Yeah that they’re both listening and giving not just the advice they want to get but what the other person needs. So, Toby who is an artist, and I know this is a hard question, but if Toby were to draw you as a superhero, as he does illustrations and comic art, what superhero would you want to be?
AMBER: Does Princess Leia count?
AUDREY: That's a great choice! I feel like Toby would love that answer. Alright, so, was there a moment when you knew, I know you said you’ve written other books too, most of us have, was there a moment when you knew that this was it, a moment that felt different, that you had done something really special? Because it IS special.
AMBER: I started this book for Nanowrimo. I don’t know if you pronounce it na no re mo or na no wri mo, I’m in the re mo group
AUDREY: Oh no I’m wri mo
AMBER: So I was there for nano wri mo, a month of writing and the goal is to reach 50,000 words toward a first draft of a book, so 50,000 is what qualifies as a novel in publishing. You have 30 days to do it, like 1600 words a day; I got half way through the month and I had already hit my 50,000. I was like this is going somewhere and I'm not terrified of revising this because I know what I need to do to fix this. I write the messiest first drafts, I call them zero drafts. I knew what I had to do, I knew what pieces were wrong and how to adjust them. That's when I was like OK, maybe I can do this for more than just a month out of the year. And here we are.
AUDREY: Talking about drafts, was there anything that you really loved that got cut in any of the revision stages or any of the drafting process that you can tell us about?
AMBER: Some really great puns ended up getting cut. A lot of the puns. There were maybe too many puns.
AUDREY: That's not possible.
AMBER: OK, so I did a whole thing where one of the people that was texting Lark shows up in a cafe. He went into a cafe and she recognized him from his profile picture and he was a jerk so she went over to him and I can't remember exactly how it went down but she said “I'm all hot and bothered. Bothered by you, and you can thank global warming for the hot”
AUDREY: That’s a gem.
AMBER: It got cut.
AUDREY: I'm really glad that you shared that with us. So two more kind of silly questions. Sorry to ask this; I know as a dedicated, die hard Star Wars fan how difficult it is to pick, but what is the best movie in the star wars franchise?
AMBER: I feel like I'm being set up because we had a text exchange earlier about Solo and how you felt about my stance on Solo.
AUDREY: But it's not the best in the franchise! This is not a setup.
AMBER: OK, so then The Empire Strikes back
AUDREY: I think that's a valid choice. I would say Rogue One.
AMBER: OK, so this is true. Rogue One is the one that I’ve watched the most. So I agree. This is we are in agreement
AUDREY: I think we’re on the same page then
AMBER: Also it has my very favorite actress in the entire world in Rogue One.
AUDREY: I like Solo a lot. I know it gets a lot of bad rap in the Star Wars community but it’s just got way too many capes to hate. It's really weird but really good.
AUDREY: Nothing to do with the book other than it’s tech related. The thing that we all share on the internet, the little move picture with the words on it, pronounced J-IF or G-IF?
AMBER: It’s a GIF!
AUDREY: See, I’ve been saying it J-IF
AMBER: It's a graphics interchange format!
AUDREY: Favorite pun or joke overall, outside of the book. Mine is definitely when you drive past a graveyard and say hey, people are just dying to get in there.
AMBER: You know on the pavement where it’s painted and it says stop ahead? They’re all still looking for that head. I had to match your level
AUDREY: Listen, you're bringing the level of puntastic humor; that's amazing. Do you face-cast characters at all?
AMBER: I do. If anybody wanted to make a movie, Jack Quaid for Toby. For Lark, Lark’s difficult. I don't know if I have anybody in mind for her. I’ll have to think about that one. Teagan. I can’t remember the actresses’ name but in cowboy bebop, the live action version, Valentine. That's kind of how I picture Teagan.
AUDREY: Is there anything you can tell us about what you're working on next?
AMBER: So I have another one that is more gentle than Text Appeal. Text Appeal is very snarky and sarcastic and in your face. But another one that I have is more feeling and less raging, and it really focuses on place and sense of home and belonging.
And on that note, I know I can’t wait to see what Amber writes next!
Treat YO’ SHELF this month: Three August releases that I stayed up all night (literally) to read
With Love, From Cold World by Alicia Thompson made me sob for love of the beautiful bi KING that is Asa, and for Lauren and her organizers and her he’s-still-bi-when-he’s-with-me speech. This is one of my favorite books of all time. Fun fact, my name would have been Asa if I were a boy. This book has the greatest start to an acknowledgement section that I’ve seen to date.
Rent to Be by Sonia Hartl, which put my broke ass in a book in a way that I had never seen before. I felt seen, and like all of Sonia’s books, it was hot and heartfelt, and I’m sure I’ll read it again and again and again. This book has the greatest dedication that I’ve seen to date (so it’s no surprise that this is blurbed by Alicia Thompson, of the above book, on the front cover; feels like I have a type™️ of book that I adore)
Marry me By Midnight by Felicia Grossman, which is the most charming gender-flipped, Jewish Cinderella story. I love a historical romance that is smart, realistic, and warm. Isabelle and Aaron were both so voicey and wonderful, and I loved that they were two distinct voices, both very Jewish, absolutely reminding readers that there is not just one single way to be Jewish (or anything, really) and also maybe to be cautious about what one does outside in gardens. Or not to be cautious at all, depending on how you take it. Wink wink.
There are truly so many fantastic new releases this month, so these are the three right in front of me, but don’t sleep on any of the books out right now; I feel like I have been constantly swiping things into my online and in person shopping carts and just spending way to much money on books and way too much time stalking my library hold waiting list. Champagne problems, really.
Stay tuned for a monthly newsletter with updates about what I’m working on every month around the 15th! You can find my socials and other fun stuff here.
Thank you SO MUCH for coming to my weird tiny state and filling yourself with maple everything and making my launch event an absolute DREAM <3 <3 <3