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
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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 winnerTurning a traveler's life into escapist romcomsAn educator's heart turns to author needsHow Covid curtailed more adventuresHer 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 - escapist rom coms
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.
