let me set the scene…it’s midnight in Paris. we’re sitting at Experimental Cocktail Club finishing our nightcap when it hits me that I haven’t so much as drafted my sunday series (this very Substack you’re reading right now!) which is supposed to go out on…well, sunday.
rest assured, the whole leaving it until the last minute bit isn’t for lack of caring about the chance to land in your inbox, but things have been a bit BUSY!!
I tell my friend Jenna—who I’m sitting beside at the bar, recapping our day—that when we get back to the hotel, I need to start, finish, and send my newsletter.
“wait, what happens if you wake up in the morning and you relize there are typos? can you…edit it?” she asks. I giggle.
naturally, Jenna is referencing the fact that we’ve had A DAY, and coming back to write a coherent thought might be a slight challenge. after the most fantastic breakfast (pictured above) complete with Cédric Grolet pastries, we went to Monet’s Gardens in Giverny and had a wonderful afternoon reading sesh (West Village Book Club is having a secondary May meeting here in Paris on Wednesday!) on our balcony at Le Meurice, before the endless shared Israeli plates we devoured at Tekés. I could keep going by recapping what we did the night we arrived, yesterday’s festivities, and what we have on deck for the next few days, but I’m going to save my Paris highlights for next week alongside a very special guest’s expert commentary on the City of Lights.
so, back to the business of getting in your inbox! fortunately, the magic of a time difference means that me drafting this to you in my hotel room (it’s 12:26a) means that sunday is not yet over in the States. which also means that means at home, it’s still mother’s day.
this is a tricky day for so many, and if you’re one of the people for whom today isn’t sunshine and roses, I’m sending you so, so much love. family stuff can be complicated, and incredibly heavy—know that you’re not alone if today isn’t Instagram-perfect.
and to my own momma, I wish you were here in paris with me today. you took me to this magical city when I was 17 and it charted the course of my life in more ways than one. not to be dramatic…but I quite literally wouldn’t be where I am today without you and all you’ve sacrificed to give me and Brooke a beautiful life. I love you endlessly ❤️ xKD
meet Emma Rosenblum
Emma Rosenblum is chief content officer at Bustle Digital Group, overseeing content and strategy for BDG’s lifestyle, parenting, and culture & innovation portfolios, including Bustle, Elite Daily, Romper, NYLON, The Zoe Report, Romper, Scary Mommy, Fatherly, The Dad, Gawker, Inverse, and Mic. Prior to BDG, Emma served as the executive editor of ELLE. Previously Rosenblum was a senior editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, and before that a senior editor at Glamour. She began her career at New York magazine. She lives in New York City, with her husband and two sons. Bad Summer People was her first novel and Very Bad Company (out May 14th) is her sophomore novel.
Kayla Douglas: Emma, tell us a bit about your background as a writer and the path that led you to your work in the media world.
Emma Rosenblum: I've always known that I wanted to write for a living, if possible. And I’ve always loved writing funny things—when I was in junior high school, I won a Scholastic Writing Award for “humor” (it was an essay about my hypochondria, titled “Sick of This”). After college, I got into magazines. I was an editor at many places, including New York, Glamour, Bloomberg Businessweek, and ELLE, before taking on my current role, as the Chief Content Officer at Bustle Digital Group. I’ve kind of pinged back and forth between editing and writing at most of my jobs. I love to write profiles, and also personal essays. I enjoy editing, too—getting a great writer to execute on an exciting idea, and working with that person to bring it to life, is such a satisfying creative process.
KD: What prompted your leap into writing fiction while balancing your already demanding career?
ER: My current job is very managerial—I oversee our editorial, creative, and fashion teams across all our sites, as well as work with our executive team on company strategy. But I missed writing! I wanted to get back to doing creative work, but nonfiction seemed like too much on top of my day job (plus, I didn’t have a great idea, anyway). So I decided to give fiction a whirl instead, though I’d never written any beyond some terrible short stories in college. I started with a chapter of Bad Summer People, which I wrote during downtime in between Zooms. Then I just kept going.
KD: What were the seeds of inspiration behind VERY BAD COMPANY? What's the premise?
ER: The book follows a group of executives at an adtech startup as they go on a team building retreat to Miami. After a big night out, one of the executives disappears, and that’s when everything starts to unravel. Everyone is lying and scheming and jockeying for more money while trying to figure out what happened to their coworker.
My inspiration was twofold. Firstly, I’ve been on company retreats, and the summer camp-meets-corporate work dynamic cracks me up. Colleagues doing trust falls, partying together late into the night, then having brainstorm sessions the next day? It's so ripe for parody. And secondly, I’m obsessed with stories about startups built on lies, like Theranos and WeWork, among many others. I figured that combining those two elements would create a combustible, hilarious setting.
KD: What do you hope readers take away from your latest novel?
ER: I’m not sure I hope for a specific takeaway, but rather a fun ride getting there!
KD: How was the process for writing your debut, BAD SUMMER PEOPLE, different from VERY BAD COMPANY? In what ways was it similar?
ER: It was pretty similar! I had an idea, I had a loose ending in my mind, and I kind of just found my way through the dark from that point. I wrote when I could—during odd hours when I didn’t have meetings, a bit on the weekends and after work. I’m not a big outliner but maybe I should be? The books have a similar structure, in that they start with “something bad” happening and then rewind to tell the story. And they both have multiple POVs. Each one took me around 4 months to write, but I must say, I’m working on my third book now, and it’s going…slower. At some point, something in my life will likely have to give, but for the time being, I’m going full steam ahead with all the balls in the air. Why not, right?
KD: There seems to be a common theme in your books of "rich people behaving badly" that we're seeing across the media landscape right now (The White Lotus effect?). What draws you to this concept being at the heart of your stories?
ER: When I set out to write Bad Summer People, it was just post-Covid, and everything still felt really heavy in pop culture. All I wanted was a fun, popcorn-y escape. What’s more fun than rich people behaving badly? Working in media, living in New York City, I do have, er, exposure to people who might have too much money and too much time on their hands. I had a feeling that readers would eat up books set in that world. The drama, the greed, the lack of self-awareness—it’s all catnip to me.
KD: Tell us about the most recent work of fiction that left you with a book hangover.
ER: Ohhh, this is tough. Probably anything Tana French. She’s a genius.
KD: What book is on your TBR pile that you're most excited to pick up?
ER: This is shameful, but I still haven’t read Yellowface, and I really can’t wait to. I just need time. Will I ever have time? Who knows.
KD: The Sunday Series was conceptualized as a love letter to my favorite day of the week. If we were with you in your neighborhood on Sunday, where would you take us to spend the afternoon?
ER: My husband and I live on the Upper East Side with our boys, who are 8 and 6. Our weeks are insanely packed, so we like to keep Sundays relatively free. After a lazy morning, we’ll head across the street to Carl Schurz Park to kick around a ball or just walk along the waterfront. We’ll grab lunch at Mansion Diner on York Avenue (the best Matzo ball soup in New York City, trust me), and then possibly make our way over to Central Park, via my favorite bus in Manhattan, the M86. An afternoon sundae at Glace on Madison is a lovely way to end the day.
KD: Where can readers order VERY BAD COMPANY and keep up with you?
ER: You can find Very Bad Company everywhere books are sold, and news and reviews on my website.