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Sandy Barker turned an adventurous travelling life into fiction and half a dozen books later she’s still going strong, with her latest, The Dating Game, described as the perfect escapist romcom for the holiday season.
Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and in today’s Joys of Binge Reading episode Sandy talks about how a meeting with her husband in Greece launched her career as an author, and how a fascination with reality TV inspired The Dating Game…
We’ve got three E book copies of The Dating Game to give away to three lucky readers, so enter the draw for the new festive promo Joy to the world on our web site the Joys of Binge Reading.com or on the Bring Reading Facebook page.
Before we get to Sandy just a reminder you can support the podcast for the equivalent of a cup of coffee a month and get exclusive bonus content while you do including access to Behind the Scenes stories, tips on who is coming up in future episodes so you can read the books beforehand, and insights into our featured authors – like Sandy – in the Getting to Know you quickfire questions
But now, here’s Sandy, Hello There Sandy and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
- Why writing what you know can produce a winner
- Turning a traveler’s life into escapist romcoms
- An educator’s heart turns to author needs
- How Covid curtailed more adventures
- Her passion for TV dating shows.
- Co-writing a darker crime novel
Where to find Sandy Barker:
Website: https://sandybarker.com/
Facebook: @SandyBarkerauthor
Twitter: @SandyBarker
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17595844.Sandy_Barker
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Introducing Romcom author Sandy Barker
But now, here’s Sandy.
Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Sandy, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Sandy Barker: Thank you so much for the invitation, Jenny. I’m really thrilled to be here.
Jenny Wheeler: Your latest book is called The Dating Game, so we’ll get right into it and talk about this book. It’s based on a reality TV show with eerie similarities to things like Married at First Sight or The Bachelor.
It’s an unusual and creative take on things. I wondered how you got inspired to do it. Are you a fan of those sorts of reality shows for a start?
Sandy Barker: I do like a good competition reality show. Last year when we were in deep lockdown – because I’m based in Melbourne, Australia – my colleagues said, how about we watch The Bachelor and have a sweep stake of who wins.
It was a little bit of a bright spark in our working week, so we all put our hands up for that.
We were watching along, catching up with each other the next morning in a chat thread. After the first one, I was inspired to write a recap of the episode, just for entertainment purposes. I posted it to our team chat and it went off. They loved it. They were like, this is hysterical. It’s so funny.
Please keep doing these. It was timely because it became the Love in Lockdown series of The Bachelor here in Australia. We went into lockdown in the middle of filming, so they were having all these video dates, which were really uncomfortable.
Writing humorous recaps for girlfriends lead to The Dating Game
The recaps kept going and I mentioned them to a friend of mine who writes World War II fiction but she’s always got these great ideas for chicklit romcoms. I mentioned the recaps and she said, send me one. I sent it to her and she said, you need to write this as a book. I was, what? A series of The Bachelor? She goes, no. You create a show like The Bachelor and you send her on there undercover, but she’s the one who writes the recaps.
I was like, oh, that’s really cool. I pitched the idea to my agent. I sent her one of the recaps and pitched her a little bit of the idea and she goes, that’s great. I like that. Write chapter one. I went away and wrote chapter one and got a sense of who this woman was because she’s nothing like the personality that writes the recaps. That person is very sarcastic and acerbic. I sent it off to my agent and she said, I think this is really fun. Let’s pitch it to your publisher.
It snowballed from there. I put together the synopsis, pitched it to the publisher. We pitched it along with some other books in my series, as well as a follow-up to my Christmas book, and they loved it. I actually got another four-book deal off the back of The Dating Game. That’s how it came about.
A passionate follower of TV dating shows
And yes, I do watch those shows. I’m currently watching The Bachelorette. It’s a really fun season because she’s both same sex attracted and attracted to men, so they’ve got men and women contestants on there. It’s a great season. I’m really enjoying it. I did recap the very first episode on my blog as the character from The Dating Game, so that was fun. A little tie-in for readers of The Dating Game.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s hilarious. For people who might not be quite clear about what you’re talking about when you say recap, it’s like a TV commentary/gossip show that you might publish in a daily newspaper or something, isn’t it?
Sandy Barker: Yes. It’s a bit like Gogglebox, (Channel 4, UK) but on the page. It’s kind of a running commentary of the silly things that happen, and it’s the catty comments we might say in our own living room but not share with a wider audience.
The personality in the book is called Anastasia Blabbergasted and her recaps are published in an online magazine – which is a made-up magazine, just like the show is a made-up show. It’s a recap of what happened in the show, but with a funny slant and a bit of commentary.
Jenny Wheeler: It’s laugh out loud funny. You’ve got a very good wit. I was reading it late at night in bed and I got to the bit where Abby Jones goes on a date riding a horse when she’s absolutely terrified of horses.
Laugh out loud funny gives a lift to dark days
It’s almost cruel what happens, but I absolutely broke out into laughter in the middle of the night in my bedroom. I thought this is a real gift, to be able to have a good old laugh like this and something as silly as this. It’s really fun.
Sandy Barker: Thank you. Yes, I know that a scene is working if it makes me laugh while I’m writing it, and I know that it’s really working if, when I come back to edit it, it still makes me laugh out loud. I’m glad that’s been the experience for people because it is very light. It’s supposed to be pure entertainment and escapism. I wrote the whole thing while I was in lockdown and I think people have had enough of seriousness for a while. Let’s escape into something a bit lighter and funnier.
Jenny Wheeler: One other funny little aspect of it is that although the show itself is UK based, they send all of the contestants and the producers, et cetera and it’s all filmed in Sydney, Australia, so they’re all outside of their comfort zone a little bit as well, which adds extra spice to the whole thing.
Sandy Barker: Yes. Because my publisher and my agent are both in the UK and I was living in UK at the time, I was querying everybody. That’s why it all got secured over there. There is always a UK connection to my books, but also an Australian connection because I’m an Australian. I either write Australians going and traveling with a UK connection or I will want to bring them here. My agent had originally said, are we setting this in the UK and I was like, I kind of want to write Sydney again. I love Sydney. I’ve lived there for about 10 years, and I’m like, no, I want it set in Sydney.
Bring on a bit of Aussie/Brit rivalry to add to the mix
I played with the premise of the show and said, it’s going to be filmed in Sydney. Half of the contestants are going to be British and half of the contestants will be Australian, so there’s be this kind of Aussie/Brit rivalry in the manor. The Stag is British as well and the producer and the director and the crew are all Australian, so it was nice being able to play with that.
Also, Abby is quite a serious person. She writes as Anastasia, she writes these recaps, but she’s quite a serious person. She wants to be a serious journalist. She does do that in her own time, trying to research articles. She wants a big break and so she is a fish out of water in this reality world, having to be on screen. Throwing her into Australia as well is enhancing that fish out of water aspect of the book.
Jenny Wheeler: I see from your website, if I’ve read it correctly, that there are going to be more installments of The Dating Game. Is that right?
Sandy Barker: I haven’t actually planned anything else for Abby and the gang. I have got a series running. My very first book out with One More Chapter Is called One Summer in Santorini. There are three books in that series currently out and books four and five are coming out early next year.
I have planned a follow-up to my Christmas book, which is called The Christmas Swap. That came out around a year ago and at that time I had written it as a standalone. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do a follow-up, but I have decided to bring all of that group back together again, so that’s what I’ll be working on. That’s the next book to write. I haven’t started writing that one yet.
The tricky aspects of turning a solo book into a series
Jenny Wheeler: Oh great. I did see that reference to series, I wasn’t quite sure which one. You recently put in a Twitter post about continuity problems with your series and jokingly said, what do you do when you suddenly discover in book five that somebody is doing something that’s been totally contradicting what they said in book four. How are you going with that one?
Sandy Barker: It’s funny. The Holiday Romance series, I started writing the book that became One Summer in Santorini years and years ago. The next two books in the series I wrote in 2018, so to go back and start writing these characters again, I went back and re-read those books and made some notations. I have my little style guide, my little character Bible.
Book four, which I’m currently editing and about to hand over, I finished writing about a year and a half ago, and I just finished writing book five. In book five she says something like, how’s Bali? I’ve never been. I’m like, hang on a minute. Now I’m editing book four, which I hadn’t really looked at for over a year, there’s this whole scene where she talks about going to Bali.
I’m like, okay, I think we need to change that. I like the scene in book four about her going to Bali, so I’m going to change it in book five where she goes, oh yeah, I only went to Bali that one time when I got sick. It was funny to find those things. I know that readers of a series are likely to catch those, so it’s good when I do catch those.
One Summer in Santorini – where it all started
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, absolutely. It’s good you caught it at this point. You have mentioned One Summer in Santorini. There’s a lovely story about that as well, because you had very much based that book on personal experience that book. Tell us about that.
Sandy Barker: I started writing that book as a love letter to my partner, Ben. We met in Santorini. People would say to us, how did you guys meet, because he’s American and I’m Australian. We’ve lived in the States, we’ve lived here and people ask, how did you two meet? And we’re like, we met in Greece. Then we tell the story, and they’re like, that’s so romantic.
I thought, if I’m going to start writing seriously I might as well start with a story that is a really good meet cute. It is a romantic story of how two people meet. The very first part of the book about these people meeting on the pier as they are about to go on a sailing trip – that is a slice out of my life. Then there are a lot of characters in that book who were inspired by real people.
It does diverge from reality where I introduce a second love interest. In real life it was just me and Ben, the cute American boy, but in the book there is a second love interest as well. That story continues in book three, A Sunset in Sydney. It’s the continuation of the love triangle, but it was inspired by my real life meeting my partner. We have been together for 15 years now.
The Christmas Swap – The Holiday meets Love Actually
Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. Switching back to your Christmas book, The Christmas Swap, I wanted to do this chat at this time of year because we will be using this episode in December as a Christmas episode. That book struck me as being a bit of a cross between The Holiday and Love Actually. It’s got elements of both those very popular Christmas movies. Three girlfriends swap locations and families for Christmas, then each one ends up with an unexpected new love interest. Are you a big fan of Christmas movies yourself, and how did you decide to do this one?
Sandy Barker: I love Christmas so much. I’m like the 52-year-old, 5-year-old child at Christmas. I seriously love Christmas. I’m like, can we put the Christmas tree up yet? Can we put the Christmas tree up yet
? Even if we’re going away for Christmas, we still put up the Christmas tree. I’m all about Christmas stockings and traditions. I’ve got British family, I’ve got American family, so you put those two together and the Christmas traditions is tenfold. We have the Christmas cookies, but we also have the Christmas pudding.
I love Christmas. I knew that I wanted to write a Christmas book and I’ve had Christmases around the world – the UK, the US, Australia, even in Mexico one year, so I’m like, I want to write about some of these different Christmases.
What if I have this one character and I write her three subsequent Christmases. I didn’t really like that idea. Then I thought, what if I had three friends who live in three different countries and they swap Christmases? How would they know each other? I figured that out, and that happens in the prologue of the book. They all meet when they’re traveling with their parents when they’re children. They meet at Kids’ Club at this resort in Maui when they’re 11 and they stay in contact.
Different countries, different Christmases and lots of surprises
Then as they become adults, they meet up to travel together. They are each other’s best friends. They’re very different people but they’re very close, almost like sisters. One of them, Chloe, the Australian, lives in Melbourne. It’s mid-year, middle of a miserable Melbourne winter, and she gets a call from her parents that they’re going on a cruise for Christmas. She is devastated because she loves Christmas and she wants to have proper Christmas.
She’s moaning to the other girls and the British girl, Lucy, says, you can come here. It’s very traditional. We have a very traditional Christmas, family oriented and everything else, but it won’t be a white Christmas because we rarely have those in England. I wish we would have a white Christmas. I can’t remember the last time we did. She is obsessed with Christmas movies. She’s like, Love Actually – snow. The Holiday – snow. While You Were Sleeping – snow. I wish I could have a snowy Christmas.
Then Jules, who lives in Colorado is like, you can come here for Christmas. There’s always snow, so much snow. She is sick of these snowed-in, freezing cold Christmases. She goes, honestly Chloe, I wish I could come to Melbourne and have a hot Christmas. Then they all go, hang on. So they swap Christmases for the year.
I write romcoms and this book is not going to win the Pulitzer Prize. It was never intended to. They all meet a love interest which one reader found very unrealistic and told me so in a one-star review, but pretty much everybody else just goes for the ride and it’s been really well received across the world.
It’s fun and funny and the love interests – I couldn’t even choose which is my favorite because they’re all gorgeous. There are lots of little surprises and it alternates chapters between the three of them. It was a really fun book to write.
Sandy Barker – Long distance romance – Christmas Swap 2 is coming
Jenny Wheeler: With that sort of story, you have to suspend disbelief don’t you, and as you say, go for the ride.
Sandy Barker: Yes, you do. Absolutely. It’s super fun, and what’s been fun is coming back to that story. I’m rereading it now to get ready to write the follow-up because it’s not all happily ever after. It is kind of happily ever after at the end of the book, but we can have some reality. Some of these people are doing long distance relationships, some of them are trying to figure out things together.
The next book is going to start with, what is the reality of living in England when your boyfriend lives in Colorado? What does that feel like? I can write the long-distance relationship really well because Ben and I experienced that for two and a half years. It’s fun to explore the reality that is the undercurrent of the books but on the surface they’re just good fun.
Jenny Wheeler: When will this next one be out? I guess it’ll be 2022 Christmas.
Sandy Barker: Yes. The Christmas Swap 2. I’m calling it The May Ladies Christmas, which is what the girls called themselves because they’re all born in May. It will be the follow-up to The Christmas Swap. I think it’s coming out in October next year in eBook and then it will be November in print.
The popularity of Christmas books for readers
Jenny Wheeler: It’s wonderful about these Christmas books because they have a perennial life, don’t they? I’ve noticed with other authors. They come around every year, new readers discover them, because there are people who seriously look for Christmas stories, aren’t there?
Sandy Barker: Absolutely. It’s one of the reasons I wanted a Christmas book because most of my books are considered “summer reading”. With the summer reading, I wanted to have books out there that maybe a new readership will find every year.
I’m very, very careful in my books not to date them. I don’t mention the year or anything. Even over New Year’s Eve, we don’t talk about what year we’re going into because I want new readers to be able to find them and not be pulled out of the story by those sorts of things. So yes, the Christmas stories are very much perennial.
Particularly in the UK, they love them, and you see them lining them up on their bookshelf. Sometimes they’ll even reread them in the same way that we rewatch those Christmas movies. I’m a big fan of those as well. I have to say The Holiday is definitely up there in my top Christmas movies and I will happily rewatch that one every year. It’s just so swoony and lovely. I love both of the love interests in that too. I love Graham and Miles. They’re both such beautiful men.
I call it research, Jenny, because when you’re writing romances, you should watch and read romances and oh, I liked that aspect of that character, I’d like to build on that for a new character in one of my books, you know?
An adventurer’s bucket list in the year(s) of Covid
Jenny Wheeler: Switching away from the specific books, your website is titled Off the Beaten Track. You say there that you love travel and adventure. From what you’ve mentioned already, that’s really clear. You’ve got a lengthy bucket list.
I would imagine that travel has been very much curtailed over the last 18 months or so. What are a couple of things on your bucket list that you’re hoping to achieve soon, like in the next 12-18 months?
Sandy Barker: That’s been the trickiest part of the past 18 months for us, not being able to travel. We met traveling. We always traveled together while we were living apart and we’ve traveled a lot since, so the bucket list stuff has turned a little bit more inward. It’s more about reconnecting with people who are overseas.
My sister, brother-in-law and nephew live in the UK and by the time we see them again, it will have been over three years. We did a 2018 sabbatical for 13 months. We lived and worked in different places and we lived with them for four months. That’s a really tight knit family unit not to be together for such a long time, so seeing them is really important.
Ben is from the US and so seeing his family is really important. We’ve got some older family members that we want to make sure we get to see very soon. No one knows how much time we all have. And we love New Zealand. We’ve been there so many times I feel like it’s our home away from home. We think our first international travel will be to New Zealand, because that seems the most feasible, but it’s also one of the places that we absolutely love the most. So definitely that.
Sandy Barker’s next fun thing – Living on a boat
The big thing on the bucket list at the moment is we want to have a stint sometime in the next couple of years when we live on a boat. Not a sailboat, a yacht style boat, electric or petrol, whatever, but somewhere we can putter about and do day trips out on the boat, moor at the marina and live boat life.
We are really keen and we’re investigating the best way to do that. It’s not cheap. It’s not cheap if you buy the boat, but it’s actually cheaper if you buy the boat and then sell it later. We’re investigating what that can look like, or where even in the world we want to be doing that. That’s probably number one on the bucket list.
Jenny Wheeler: There are quite a few places in the world you could do that.
Sandy Barker: Yes. We’re in investigation mode at the moment and seeing how feasible that is.
Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. Tell us a bit about your life before you began writing fiction. Are you writing fiction full-time now or do you still have some other engagement as well?
Sandy Barker: I call myself a career educator. I started as a high school teacher in the mid-nineties. I gave that up when I moved to the States to be with Ben. We lived in Seattle, so I worked for a tech company there and then when we moved back to Australia in 2013, I started with Pearson which is an education company, mostly known for publishing. But I’ve always worked in professional development, so I worked in adult learning and adult training and development.
Combining writing with a ‘proper’ job
I still do. I’m down to four days a week now. I used to be full-time and was writing books in my early mornings and weekends. I still do. I pretty much work every day, so this morning I got up at 5am and went straight into editing. I did that for three hours and then swapped the laptops over and logged into work. I’ve just delivered a training session and now we’re chatting. I work between those two modes.
There are some days when I’m on the computer for 12 hours and I need to sit down, because I have a standup desk. So, I’m doing both. At the moment I’m in editing mode. I’ll edit the next book in the series, which is called A Sunrise Over Bali and get that across to my editor.
I’ve just had some feedback on A Wedding in Tuscany, which is book five in the series. That’s due at the end of the month. I will take on that feedback from my agent and get that across and then I’ll start writing The Christmas Swap. There’s always something on the go.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you enjoy having that variety or would you ideally like to be a full-time writer? Is that your ultimate goal?
Sandy Barker: It is my ultimate goal but I’ve always said that even when I can step away from paid work like what I do for Pearson, because I really do love education I would still find a way to be an educator. I would probably put my hand up for the Romance Writers Australia and do a long form course and facilitate that.
Thoughts of author education in the future
I do a lot of stuff off my own bat where I’m supporting other authors or doing little mini sessions and what have you. I think I would expand that and potentially hang out my own shingle to do online learning or one-on-one coaching or that sort of thing for fellow authors and pass on what I’ve learned from doing the work and from my writing community.
I love being an educator. I love it as much as travel. I’ll always have a hand in that, but the intention is to be able to support myself full-time as a writer.
Jenny Wheeler: That leads us on beautifully to this question, which I like to ask everyone because we get so many different answers. If there was one thing you’ve done in your writing career more than any other that’s the secret of your success so far, what would you consider it to be?
Sandy Barker: Oh, I love that question. Even though it’s not the part I enjoy the most, I think the part that has got me to where I am is the craft of pitching. Writing that pitch letter and figuring out who to submit to, who to pitch your books to – agents and publishers. All of the administrative pieces behind that, crafting those letters, crafting the synopses. That is something I threw myself into wholeheartedly the year we were on sabbatical.
I wrote two books during that year as well, but I also did a lot of work around trying to figure out, how do you even get your foot in the door, and once you have your foot in the door, what do you need to be able to produce? You need to have a really good tight first three chapters. You need to have a really good pitch letter. All those things and having the tenacity to take the No’s.
The writer’s life – learning to live with rejection
The No’s are not easy. It’s not like you get a no and go ‘Yippee!’ You get a No and it’s a bit of a dent. Sometimes it can be overwhelming depending on what else is going on. It can be the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. Then you pick yourself up. Having that tenacity and learning that part of the business – because it is a business.
I think the people who succeed in securing a publisher and/or an agent, they are the people who, every time they got a No were like, okay, I need to hone my pitch. I need to hone the synopses. I need to make it even better. I need to continue to look out for new people joining, new agents emerging, new publishing houses that are emerging and may be a good home for me. Just learning and understanding that part of the business.
Jenny Wheeler: Great. This is The Joys of Binge Reading, so turning to Sandy as reader – do you like binge reading and have you got some books you would like to recommend to listeners?
Sandy Barker: I am always reading and I’m usually reading three or four things at the same time. It’s a bit like watching several different shows at the same time. I treat it like that. I love World War II fiction, so I have saved this as a treat for myself.
What Sandy Barker is reading now – favourite books
Natasha Lester’s latest book (The Riviera House) is out. She is a fantastic author. Her research is unbelievable. It takes her two years to write a book; it takes me about three or four months. Her research is amazing. She always has a fashion angle, which is really interesting to me, or an art angle. I really like reading about the mid-20th century and her stories are epic, they’re brilliant. I love anything by Natasha Lester.
My favorite author in my genre is Lindsey Kelk. She continues to be my favorite author. Her I Heart series are eight of the books that are a fantastic binge read. If you pick one up, you’ve got seven more to go. Super fun
. It’s very much fish out of water romance of British girl discovers her boyfriend cheating on her and is at her best friend’s wedding as the maid of honor.
She gets on a plane in her gown and flies to New York on a whim and ends up living there, as you do. That is the premise of the whole series, this British woman living in the US. It’s brilliant, so fun. All of her books are set in different locations, which is great. So definitely recommend her.
It’s hard to think about who you recommend on the spot because I read so widely. I love crime fiction. If anyone wants to ping me on social media, they can send me if they’ve got a really good lead.
My sister said about six months ago, have you read Alan Lee?
I was like, No. I started reading his book and I literally read four back-to-back. These are so fun, really fun main character. He’s got his tongue planted firmly in his cheek but there’s good crime fiction as well. He’s a private investigator and I loved it, devoured them one after the other.
Books Sandy likes to Binge Read
So yes, I do binge read. If I discover a new author, I’m that reader, I’m like, what order do I need to read these books in?
Sometimes I contact the author. Do I need to read these books in specific order? They’ll be like, no, any order is fine. I’m like, okay, that’s fine because I really need to know, and I’ll start at the beginning.
Julie Houston’s books are fantastic for that actually. She was one of the authors I contacted and I said, Jules, do I need to start anywhere? She goes, maybe start here.
Most of her books are set around this particular village. They are all interconnected stories, but they don’t necessarily follow on from each other chronologically. She is a brilliantly talented author.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. Both Natasha and Lindsey have been on Binge Reading and I agree with you. They’re both fantastic.
Sandy Barker: Oh, look at you. Oh my God. That’s brilliant. I love it. I’m in very good company there.
Jenny Wheeler: Next year we’re going to have Kate Quinn.
Sandy Barker: Wow. And you asked little old me to be on the show. I’m very excited about that.
Looking back – what would Sandy change – if anything?
Jenny Wheeler: Looking back down the tunnel of time, because we are coming to the end of our time together, at this stage in your career, if you were doing it all over again, what, if anything, would you change?
Sandy Barker: I would self-publish sooner. The book that became One Summer in Santorini I self-published at the end of 2017. Then while I was writing the other two, I had self-published A Sunset in Sydney and I was about to do that with That Night in Paris. That’s when I got the publishing deal. But I would do that sooner.
Also, I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to query with books you’d self-published. A lot of people tell you that you can’t query books if you’ve self-published them. You have to choose. Are you self-publishing or are you going down traditional route?
No one told me that, so I was querying these books. I’m like, these books are out there, I’m getting really good responses, but I’d like to broaden my audience. I’m looking for my literary home. They’re like, we love the books, let’s publish them. So that rule doesn’t exist. I would get them out there sooner.
One Summer in Santorini sat in a drawer for a really long time because I was afraid. I don’t know what I was afraid of. I was just afraid in general. I don’t know if I was afraid of failure or success, but I was afraid. It was the encouragement of Ben my partner to say, let’s just do this. Let’s make the decision that you’re going to self-publish, and then keep working and writing more books.
What Sandy Barker romcom author will be working on in next 12 months
So I did that and this is how it turned out, which was my ultimate goal – to get a publisher. That was a way to do that.
Jenny Wheeler: You have mentioned what you’re working on but give us a quick recap on the next 12 months. What do they look like for you?
Sandy Barker: The next 12 months is going to be three more books out with One More Chapter. A Sunrise over Bali, which is book four in the Holiday Romance series, A Wedding in Tuscany, which is book five and then a follow-up to The Christmas Swap called The May Ladies Christmas.
I have also co-written a very different book, a sexy crime thriller, contemporary drama/crime thriller with my friend who is a British author who lives in Auckland called Fiona Leitch. She and I have the same publisher and the same agent, and we decided to collaborate on this project. We are in the final stages of prepping that for our agent to send out to publishing houses. That could be four books out in 2022. You never know.
Jenny Wheeler: Fabulous. Did you find it different writing that kind of crime thriller to what you’re doing?
Sandy Barker: Yes, absolutely. I had the idea for a really long time. We call it Big Little Lies meets Gone Girl. We wrote it in two parts. We’ve got two different main characters and I wrote the Big Little Lies part – the suburban drama, a little bit of psychological drama – and she wrote the crime thriller part because the two parts are connected by a horrific crime. It was really fun to do that.
Co-writing a dark crime novel – Sandy Barker’s next advenhture
It’s much, much darker than anything I’ve written before. As I said, I had the idea for many, many years and I pitched it to Fiona and she was like, that’s amazing, let’s do it. She writes crime fiction and I was like, she’s going to be a great partner. And she was. We learned a lot about each other and I have great respect for her and her process. She has a very different process to me but it came together really well.
We gave it to our agent. We are going through her second round of feedback at the moment to get it in tip top shape and then it will go out to publishing houses. Fingers crossed.
Jenny Wheeler: I’m ashamed to say I don’t know Fiona’s work. I’ll have to look her up.
Sandy Barker: Her publisher is in Britain and her books are set there. She has a book out that won a competition with Audible. It was first published as an audio book and that’s called Dead in Venice. It is hysterically funny. It’s about a crime fiction author who has writer’s block and takes herself off to Venice.
She has a follow-up to that book called Murder Ahoy, and then with One More Chapter she’s got The Nosey Parker Cosy Mystery series. Three books are out. One book is coming for Christmas, I think it’s coming out in a week or two, and then she’s writing books five and six in that series. She writes both sides of crime thriller – the cosy mystery where there’s no blood and gore and then the more crime fiction-y. She has written a couple of other self-published books too. One’s a romantic comedy, which is great. She’s a fantastic writer. She can pretty much do anything. Do look her up.
Where to find romcom author Sandy Barker online
Jenny Wheeler: Thank you. Do you enjoy hearing from your readers and where can they find you online?
Sandy Barker: Yes, absolutely. Anyone who sends me a message, I will always reply. It’s lovely to hear from readers. They can find me on Twitter @sandybarker. My website is sandybarker.com. It’s got all my socials on there. Instagram social is sandybarkerauthor. Facebook Sandy Barker author. I think if you just Google me.
Jenny Wheeler: Lovely. We will put links to all of those sites on the show notes for this episode. Sandy, thank you so much for being with us today. We’ve had a fantastic time talking. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Sandy Barker: It’s been great. I can’t believe it’s gone so fast. Thank you so much, Jenny, for having me.
If you enjoyed Sandy you might also enjoy Lindsey Kelk’ s I Heart Rom Coms
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