Bryce Oakley joins me to chat about Never Mine, Colorado, future adventures she's going to take with her wife and daughter, and much more!
Check out her Amazon page to purchase her books:Amazon.com: Bryce Oakley: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
Follow her on Twitter @ Bryce Oakley ✨ (@BryceOakleyy) / Twitter
And check out her webpage: Bryce Oakley | Queering Your Romance
Join my Patreon for exclusive content from your favorite authors like Would You Rather. It's only $5 a month! Sapphic Book Review is creating Bonus fun with lesfic authors | Patreon
Bryce Oakley joins me to chat about Never Mine, Colorado, future adventures she's going to take with her wife and daughter, and much more!
Check out her Amazon page to purchase her books:Amazon.com: Bryce Oakley: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
Follow her on Twitter @ Bryce Oakley ✨ (@BryceOakleyy) / Twitter
And check out her webpage: Bryce Oakley | Queering Your Romance
Join my Patreon for exclusive content from your favorite authors like Would You Rather. It's only $5 a month! Sapphic Book Review is creating Bonus fun with lesfic authors | Patreon
Hi, I'm Laura green and this is the Sapphic Book Review Podcast, the show where I visit with the best writers in lesfic. I love reading and these books and writers means so much to me. I hope you learn something new each week about your favorite authors. Enjoy the show, and be sure to subscribe. Welcome to the Sapphic Book Review Podcast. I have a lot of favorite authors. But I only have a few whose books are comfort reads that I returned to again and again. Today's guest is one of those authors whose books always make me feel like I'm visiting with old friends. And I'm thrilled to have her joining me today. Bryce Oakley, Welcome, and thanks for being here.
Bryce:Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Laura:The last few months haven't been easy for you and your family. How is your daughter doing?
Bryce:She is such a little fighter. For anyone who might not follow me on Twitter, my daughter was born very prematurely in December. And so we've been in the NICU, we're on day 112. So she has battled a lot of tough things. But she is strong and awesome. And the end is in sight. Maybe we'll be home by Mother's Day. That is my new goal. It's a long term goal.
Laura:That would be great for Mother's Day for you and your wife.
Bryce:Yeah.
Laura:Never Mine was one of my favorite books of 2021. I adore everything about it. If you could jump into the book, would you be Willa working at the zoo, or Sage playing on the US Soccer Team? And who would you cast in a movie based on the book?
Bryce:This is such a good question. Like I think Oprah would be proud.
Laura:Totally. I think She would be jealous.
Bryce:She wishes that she could figure out questions like this. I think I personally identify more with Willa, simply because I am not sporty like in any way. I'm not the sporty kind of lesbian. I'm the Willa kind of lesbian. And the zoo is awesome. Yeah, definitely. I identify more with Willa there and I think I would like working at the zoo more I love animals. And as far as casting them that I feel like that is such a hard question. I always have, you know, actors or models or singers or athletes in mind when I am like casting you know what the character looks like, so that I can base their appearance off of something. As far as Willa I think Amanda Seifried would be perfect for her. She's like sweet, but not like cutesy.
Laura:I think she has an edge.
Bryce:Oh, totally. And for sage I cannot figure out the perfect actor for Sage. I I kind of had like Ashlyn Harris meets Abby Wambach in mind when I was writing her.
Laura:Ashlyn Harris is my girlfriend.
Bryce:She's such a babe with that haircut.
Laura:And the cheekbones. Come on.
Bryce:Totally Oh my gosh, I love her. And she's an incredible athlete, but also a total babe.
Laura:And I love her wife and her daughter. I'm not just objectifying her. Ok, I'm totally objectifying her.
Bryce:So if Ashlyn Harris can act. She's got the role. That's it. I don't even care if she can act.
Laura:Who cares. She doesn't need to just stand there and kick a ball or not.
Bryce:Not one would notice.
Laura:I was rereading the book last night. Are we done seeing the last of them? Because I feel like we're not.
Bryce:Honestly, I love them. I love them. And they are so fun to write about. I wrote a second epilogue for them even. I just I love them. So I would never say never.
Laura:Okay, excellent. The Kaleidoscope series features the members of an all girl band finding love. I adore all the books but I think Midnight is my favorite. Because of Zoey and Pia, well mostly Pia.. Do you have any musical talent and which of the women are your favorite?
Bryce:Um, I I cannot play any instruments. I did want to be a famous singer when I was younger. So I was very involved with choir and singing lessons and singing competitions. But now I mostly just sing in the car in the shower very loudly and without caring if I'm pitchy. And as far as favorites. Domino is one of those characters. She just kept jumping onto the page over and over, she would not get out of the scene. And every time I was like, Oh, who's in the scene Domina would just show up even when it wasn't her scene. So I love her. I am initially based her personality off of my wife, and then she kind of just became like so much larger and wilder and noisier than I ever imagined.
Laura:I'm glad you don't think your wife's nosy.
Bryce:No, I'm the nosy one.
Laura:In the adventurers Joey and Kendall have an adventure jar. If you didn't have much more important concerns at the moment, what kind of adventures would you and your wife put into your adventure jar?
Bryce:I asked her this question. And she immediately said, traveling through the rainforest, she wants to go back to the rainforest. She lived in Ecuador for a few months, and has been trying to convince me to get back there. So I think the adventure jar would be the only way I would agree to that. And as for me, I think I would in terms of big adventures, I would love to travel back to Australia. I lived there for two years, and I cannot wait to get back. You know, once COVID isn't like terrifying, which it still is.
Laura:No, it's totally over.
Bryce:It's fine Right? In terms of like taco truck adventures, definitely smaller things like going camping, I really want to visit this town called Salida. I really want to go stay the night at a cute little hotel there. And really, I just want to do like very small normal things with my wife and my daughter, like take the stroller to the Botanic Gardens and stuff like that. I just can't wait to like introduce my daughter to every cool thing that I like and see what she likes and enjoy all of that.
Laura:That's really sweet. In Just My Type, the book you wrote with Lucy Bexley, Ero is a 2000 year old vampire. If you could live that long, which era in history, what erayou most like to experience?
Bryce:My answer is a little nerdy, I would love to go back in time to the early 20th century in Ireland, there was an incredible literary revival around that time. The politics were, you know, a little dicey, but just this huge resurgence of the Gaelic language was happening. And I just think it would be super incredible to experience. You know, you have like Yeats and Joyce and Lady Gregory and Cole Park, and I just have always really loved that era and literature and just so much going on. I think it would be incredible to experience
Laura:Have you the chance to do any writing, and if so, what are you working on?
Bryce:I have been writing a little I've surprised myself that I've been able to creatively get in that headspace. I'm definitely the type of writer who, if I'm too, too anxious or too sad or too happy, I It's hard for me to like focus and, and write so I have been writing a little and I am working on such a cool project. I'm so excited about it. It's a collab that I can't divulge secrets about yet. But my story is about a woman who is desperately trying to find a date to a prom for pride. And so she goes on dates with a bunch of cool women and then realizes that love might have been a little closer all along than she realized.
Laura:Oh, interesting. You wrote the flippin fantastic series with Stephanie Shea and Lucy Bexley. Why do you think the three of you click so?
Bryce:Well, honestly, it's just I love them. I admire their work. I admire their writing. I admire who they are as women. Stephanie Shea I say this all the time. I think she is like one of the best writers. I love, love, love her writing. And Lucy And you and Lucy are both Dorothy's. and I are so similar. We have like our personalities, just mesh so well. And we have the three of us have a really similar sense of humor. And we tend to like all the same things and hate all the same things. And that's really fun. We so are.
Laura:Which of your books are you the most proud of?
Bryce:Honestly, I am so proud of every book that I write simply because I get to wake up and do what I love every day and people read them. And that means so much to me. And I never thought that I get to live my dream of being a writer full time and I just feel so, so grateful to everyone who's ever read one of my books, but in terms of just picking one book that I'm proud of. I'm really proud of The Adventurers. I wrote it during a really tough time personally COVID was just starting. I was trying Get out of a job that I hated and returned to an another job I also hated. So it was it was a time of a lot of personal turmoil. But I'm so proud of all the messages of joy and hope in that book. And I, I still just I love that book.
Laura:I love that book, too. I gave that to them for Christmas, and they loved it as well.
Bryce:Oh, thank you.
Laura:It's one of those books that's a great escape.
Bryce:It is. I think that timing wise for it to happen, you know, two months into everybody being locked down for COVID. It was it was a really good time for fun and escape.
Laura:Yes, when we couldn't do that for years. So you've written several Christmas books? What are some of your favorite holiday traditions from childhood? And how excited are you to have Christmas with your little girl this year?
Bryce:I am so so so excited to introduce my daughter to Christmas. Christmas is one of my Well, it is my favorite holiday. And we've kind of had a running joke that she must have sensed how excited I was for Christmas. Because she came two days before Christmas. She must have just really wanted to experience with it with us. So last year was a little untraditional because we were in the hospital. And it wasn't fun. But I am super excited to introduce her to all of my family's traditions. I'm really big on cooking and baking and decorating, like all of the decor. And I'm also really guilty of decorating on November first, that to me is when Christmas starts. So So I hope that she loves Christmas just as much as me. Oh, actually my favorite tradition ever that we just started. My wife and I started a few years ago. We drive around and look at all of the Christmas lights in our neighborhood. And we drive to like the rich neighborhood and, and check out their scenes while listening to Christmas music and drinking hot cocoa and it's just like a really lovely time. So I can't wait to that with her.
Laura:One of our favorite family vacations was to Colorado where you were born and raised and still live. What are some of your favorite places to visit and why do you love your state
Bryce:I really do love Colorado. I will never leave it so much? even though it is so expensive to live here. And yeah, I will never leave. I'm a lifer. One thing that I really do love is my family still lives here. And I'm really close with my sister and brother. They're like my best friends. And so, being around family is really important to me. But also, it's just it's beautiful here. There's outside activities to do all year round. And I really love that some of my favorite places to visit in terms of places around Colorado. I love Telluride an Ouray are beautiful. I I've been a Ouray a handful of times and it's just the cutest little mountain town and there's hot springs. I really, there's like one recurring thing in my books. It's hot springs. I love hot springs. And yeah, so Telluride and Ouray and there's this adorable little town that we found when we were camping a few summers ago called Marble and it has all of these kind of like rundown. What is it like marble processing factories, and you can like walk around all these marble ruins. It's so cool. Definitely something that you would not expect to find in Colorado. And then I grew up in Loveland. So that's about an hour north of Denver. And then I lived in Fort Collins and Fort Collins is known for craft beer, like New Belgium and ODell and a lot of really good beer. So whenever we want to hang out at breweries and stuff, we go to Fort Collins.
Laura:We had a great time except we went to the Royal Gorge.
Bryce:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Laura:And on the way back, we took the directions and it was like a one lane dirt road on the side of a mountain for like 30 miles
Bryce:Yeah, that happens and no guardrail.
Laura:No guardrail, no. And my partner was pretty sure we were gonna die. And I was actually think it was gonna happen, of course the kids were in the back. They didn't care. They had their phones.
Bryce:Yeah, you had to play it cool.
Laura:Yeah. I was like, oh, it'd be fine. But I kept looking over going holy cow, we're gonna die
Bryce:I've found myself on those roads.
Laura:Yeah, you couldn't turn around you just had to go and then a car would calm and you're like squeezing over.
Bryce:I hate that. I hate that and you never think that two cars are going to fit and you just have to inch along.
Laura:It's terrifying. That is the only thing I don't like about your state.
Bryce:It's not so good at roads
Laura:No not great at that. I have a lot of pet peeves a lot. What are some of your pet peeves?
Bryce:I have always kind of consider myself a really chill person. But if I can hear someone chewing or like making too many mouth noises, it just drives me up the wall. I cannot stand it. I cannot eat with someone who's like smacking their lips. or chewing with their mouth open. I think that that is my biggest pet peeve that and when my wife throws her clean clothes on top of the dirty laundry pile that drives me nuts, because then how do you know what is clean? And can be rewarm? So, between those two, I think that besides those things, fairly chill person I would hope.
Laura:How did you meet your wife and who the wooing?
Bryce:I met my wife. Nobody ever believes me when I say this, but I met her at a queer women's camp in California. Autostraddle the website put on, my dogs just jumped. jumped into the room. Okay, all right, Jelly Bean. Um, so I met my wife at gay camp. Basically, Autostraddle. puts together well, they used to put together a summer camp called A camp and it was just like, 300 queers on the side of a mountain in California for like five days. It's so fun. It was it was so fun. I don't know if they're putting it on anymore. But so I met my wife there. She was trying to take bondage lessons from a friend of ours. And I walked into my cabin and my friend Ryan said, Hey, can Maddy practice these knots on you? And I took one look at my wife and said, yeah, definitely. Definitely a unique meeting story.
Laura:That's a very book thing. You should write that.
Bryce:I know. But people would be like, That's unbelievable. Yeah, and then, as far as the wooing, I asked her this, who do you think did the wooing and she is adamant that it is her? But I'll be honest, we were long distance for a while because we met in California. She was living in Vegas. I was living in Colorado, and I was convinced for the first two weeks that she was misremembering me and thought that I was someone else. Mainly because she is a total babe. And I was like, There's no way.
Laura:Dude, you're a babe. You're a total babe.
Bryce:Well, thank you. Laura. I appreciate it. thanks for the compliment. But yeah, I was I was convinced that she was misremembering me, and then she flew out kind of on a whim and and you know,
Laura:Here we are
Bryce:Yes, here we are.
Laura:Wow, that's awesome. Do you have any hidden talents that would surprise us?
Bryce:Hmm. This is a great question.
Laura:Obviously, not sports.
Bryce:It's not sports, shockingly. Not super coordinated. I was an asthma kid. So I was definitely like, I have a note from my doctor that I can't run the mile. Yeah, I've always been trying to get out of running the mile. I'll be honest.
Laura:Same.
Bryce:But in terms of talent, I am extremely, extremely good at like bar trivia. My mind is a steel trap for useless facts and like pop culture. And anything. I love weird trivia, and yeah, that's what I'm really good at.
Laura:You and I should get along well, because if someone was on AllMy Children or Days of Our Lives in 1985, to like, 2000, I can recognize them on a TV show and point out the character name, who they were married to on that show, and their rel name
Bryce:And when they were in a coma.
Laura:All the time.
Bryce:I just I love that kind of useless knowledge. I love it.
Laura:There's no room for anything good up here.
Bryce:Don't ask me about math. Don't ask me about the quadratic equation. But I will tell you now that I'm like, I can remember everything. My mind has just gotten totally soft. So maybe not so good in a crisis, but really good at bar trivia.
Laura:Excellent. Tell me your three favorite lesfic books.
Bryce:I cannot pick. I cannot pick. So I will say the three most meaningful ones to me. Well, the two most meaningful ones and then a recent one that I read. So the very first less book book I ever read was Jericho by Ann Mcman Have you ever read it?
Laura:I have, it's a rite of passage
Bryce:Totally. And it came out at a time where I I didn't even know that lesbian romance was a thing and I had a friend send it to me and I became totally addicted. So I absolutely would put that as one of my top three simply because of like what it meant to be what it opened my eyes to and then in a similar vein, Kiss The Girl by Melissa Brayden was probably the first first lesfic book I read where I thought I could I could write like this like I could do this. This is awesome. And I want to do this. And then it took me like another four years to actually do it. And then a recent favorite that I've read in the past year was Stephanie Shea's Chef's Kiss. Ah, I just love that book. I love Val and Jenn, I'm such a fan girl for Stephanie Shea. I'll be honest, but really that book, I was just like, this is incredible. I'm so proud of her. And also I need to step up my game.
Laura:And I was like, Where can I find Jenn Coleman? And can I tie her to my bed?
Bryce:Right? Seriously?
Laura:I don't even feel bad about it.
Bryce:Oh, not at all.
Laura:Well, this has been great. Thanks so much for joining me. It's been wonderful chatting with you.
Bryce:Thank you so much for having me.
Laura:Thanks for listening. And thanks again to Bryce Oakley for joining me today. Be sure to go to her Amazon page to purchase her books and check out her website Bryce oakley.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at Bryce Oakley. To support this page, you can click on the buy me a coffee link or to listen to your favorite authors playing hilarious games of would you rather become a patron at www.patreon.com/sapphicbookreviewpod. it's only $5 a month, and it's so much fun. Here's a preview of my Would You Rather game with Bryce Oakley? Thanks so much. And until next time, happy reading. Would you rather have a tennis lesson from Serena Williams? Or a soccer lesson from Megan Rapinoe
Bryce:soccer lesson with Megan Rapinoe Oh, easy.
Laura:It would be fun and if she could bring her friend Ashlyn Harris along.
Bryce:Yes!
Laura:Even if I get a tennis lesson from Serena Williams, I'm not gonna play tennis like Serena
Bryce:Oh, 1,000%. Like, I feel like I would be so intimidated by her talent and how cool she is as a person that I would just be like, well, and I hate tennis. I took a I took a tennis class in college. I got a B in tennis.
Laura:I got an A, I rocked it.
Bryce:You got an A
Laura:I did.
Bryce:I got a B and that was with me calling the teacher coach even though he was like, I'm not your coach. I was like, I will be calling your coach.
Laura:Maybe that's how you got it.
Bryce:Probably. He was like please never come back.
Laura:I think if I were with Serena, she would serve the ball and I'd be so mesmerized that it probably would smack me right in the face.
Bryce:Okay, totally fair.
Laura:Would you rather own your own plane or your own boat?
Bryce:Ooh, perks to both. I hate flying. I'm not I'm not a good flier. I'm like, taking anxiety pills before flying. But my wife is afraid of the ocean and any large body of water. So I think that if it was on a boat. I'd be alone and if plane she would be.
Laura:That's not gonna work out
Bryce:Really hard to say but can I own my own train or something?
Laura:Oh, sure.Let's modify it.
Bryce:Okay, yeah, I'm getting a train.
Laura:I didn't even think to ask that. Who knew?