Totally Booked: LIVE! In this special episode of the podcast (in-person at the Whitby Hotel with a live audience!), Zibby interviews bestselling author Emma Rosenblum about her delicious, addictive, and slyly observed new novel, MEAN MOMS. Known for her sharp wit and insider takes on elite social circles, Emma dives into the world of competitive moms at a NYC private school, where one mysterious new arrival shakes everything up. She and Zibby talk about writing satire with heart, the insanity of mom groups, and why sometimes entertainment is the message. Plus, Emma shares the scoop on her next novel—based on an idea Zibby gave her!

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Emma. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked. So excited to have you here to talk about Mean Moms. 

Emma: I am very excited to be here. As I said, this is my first time doing an interview about Mean Moms. We are just starting on the, the press for it. So I'm glad it's you Zibby. 

Zibby: I would expect no less. Um, let me read you all a little bit about Emma Rosenblum. If you don't know a lot about her, although maybe you've listened to my what, three podcasts with her already, I'm totally booked. Emma Rosenblum is the best. Selling author of Bad Summer people and very bad company. Previously she was the chief content officer of Bustle Digital Group, the executive editor of L and before that, an editor at Bloomberg Business Week, glamor and New York Magazine. She lives in New York City with her family. Yay. Um, by the way, before we talk about anything else, I just saw the announcement that Bad Summer People is going to be what? A show, a movie. What is it? 

Emma: Going to be adapted into a TV show. Fingers crossed, you never know, but, um Sarah Michelle Geller is attached to executive producer and Star in it as one of the leads.

So that was exciting because I love Buffy and when that deal came through I was like, yes, thank God we're gonna be best friends. We haven't met yet, but I can like see it. It's like Sarah and Freddie Prince Jr. And me and my husband together. 

Zibby: Double dates. 

Emma: We're gonna be.

Zibby: Trips. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Zibby: White lota style. 

Emma: I'm manifesting it so, I can't wait.

Zibby: Stay tuned for that. We'll be keeping our eyes. 

Emma: That's more important than any actual TV show getting made. 

Zibby: Yes, I would like a TV show made just so I can be friends with her. That's all I need. Perfect. Okay. Mean Moms. This is so funny. I mean, I love all your books and I love the way you write and maybe because I am a mom here in New York City, it is particularly relatable to me, but I laughed out loud like a hundred times. I even like started reading passages out loud to Kyle. I was like, this is so funny. And it's just you're, you're quick, dark wit. And I'm like, what is she thinking about me now is basically what I'm thinking because you have this running mono. 

Emma: So everyone always thinks about me now when they, they meet me and they're like, oh my God. Like what is she going to put in one of her books? But no, it's with love. It's all, I love this life that I've made in New York City and I love the moms that I know. And it's not based on anybody. It's just the idea of moms together in a group, whether it's in New York City or anywhere else. There, there comes certain dynamics with that, that I find very funny.

So tell everybody what mean Moms is about. So mean Moms is about a group of mothers at a private school downtown in Tribeca. Ish. Ish. Uh, and they are kind of a click in the school. And at the beginning of the school year, a new mom comes to town and uh, she's kind of mysterious. She's very beautiful. She's from Miami, she's divorced.

They don't really know that much about her. She becomes friends with them. And then all this mysteriously bad stuff starts happening to all of them. So one gets hit by an scoter there, one is opening up a spa and they get robbed. You know, I don't wanna give it all away, but there's these kind of darkly funny things that start to happen to their perfect lives that, uh, causes big disruption in drama. And you don't know who's doing it or why, and so by the end, you know who is doing it and why. 

Zibby: Even without a plot, oh, sorry. Even without a plot, the book would be hilarious because every paragraph is, has like 20 different cultural references. And I know you've been in like the zeitgeist your whole career and all of that, but all the brands and all the.

Archetypes of moms and all of the, you know, the mom who only wears the workout stuff and the mom, but you don't do it in a flat way. It's just so funny. So talk about how you figured out like which of the characters was gonna be which, and were you really just looking in the at drop off and pick up and scouting out your targets?

Emma: I mean, my whole, uh, as my career and as a journalist and as a writer, I'm always. Observing, um, quietly observing. I'm part of it, but I also find myself to be somewhat of an outsider looking in, in certain situations. Not that you would necessarily know that if you, if you know me, but, um, the, there was something once that struck me, um, at some mom interaction where this mom was.

So nice. She was so kind, like dripping with, you know, the, just, she wanted to help everybody and so the funny thought in my mind was like, what if she's actually psychotic like that to me, I was like, she might be like a. Serial killer. She's that nice. And so I sort of ran with that as part of the book. But, you know, the, the mom interactions together can be so genuine and lovely and fun and funny, but also so fake and so mean.

I mean, there's just so much stuff that I was watching as my kids were getting older and as I was. You know, a mom in the community, and again, there are these archetypes of like the mom that works. So she's like never around and that's like a thing, right? Or the mom that's always working out and or the mom that seems to like know everything.

How do you know everything? How do you know like the place to go where your kid is? Playing soccer or the exact field on Central Park where they're doing baseball. Like there is that one mom that's just a fountain of information. So I was just sort of picking up these little things and then I wanted to bring them to life in characters.

But as you said, the the challenge is to not make it flat, to make it feel like these are real people. So I hope that throughout that, with those sort of observations there, these are still real characters that you're following through and you wanna kind of know what's happening with them and you kind of hate them, but kind of love them too.

Zibby: Well in your book, the mom who knows everything is Morgan. Mm-hmm. Right. And you mentioned in the book that the moms think she should start an ask more Morgan Substack. 

Emma: Yes. 

Zibby: With all of her tips. You have to start that. 

Emma: Well, I don't know anything. 

Zibby: It doesn't matter. It could just be like completely false, really funny information. 

Emma: Oh, that's a good idea. Like a parody.

Zibby: For for like promo. 

Emma: Yes. 

Zibby: That is promo.

Emma: I mean, now I know stuff because people give me the information. But yes, there is a specific mom. I wonder if she'll read that and be like. I know this is me, but it's not really her. But the idea that everybody on all the chat groups are always like, let's ask.

Zibby: Well, there's somebody like that in every group. Right? 

Emma: Exactly. 

Zibby: I mean, there's always someone, there's always the mom who knows so much more. I know exactly who to ask. 

Emma: Yes. Exactly. 

Zibby: Sometimes it's like specific, like this is the mom I ask about anything sports related or.

Emma: Yes. Or like the academic mom. 

Zibby: Yes.

Emma: That like knows all the tutoring stuff. Uh, and there's also a mom in there that's kind of the ethereal cool mom that dresses really interestingly and is just a little bit more beautiful than everybody else, but like in an unkempt way. And I feel like there's one of those in every group also. Uh, so, you know, and then, but then all of these people have their own secrets and there's a lot of. You know, there's a lot of stuff that's going on below the surface. 

Zibby: Well, you find out pretty early on that of these three best friends, one of them is actually sleeping with the other one's husband in such a blase way. It's like not even introduced with much fanfare. It's just like, oh yeah. I was like, wait. The same people that I get that right. Yeah. 

Emma: You know, I like to have affairs in my books, not in real life, but like, I find that idea that, again, it's, it's sort of, you go into the, the party or the, the, the school function and you think to yourself, I wonder if like one of these ladies is having sex with one of the husbands. Like, that would be so amazing. So I always just make it up in fiction. 

Zibby: What are you wondering in this room? 

Emma: Nothing. These are all perfect, lovely people with no secrets. 

Zibby: I don't know. I know, I wonder what you, uh, where your head is going for, for all of them. Um, so the whole, what you see is not what you get sort of underlies.

All of your writing and surprises then of course have to follow because what does it mean? So tell us a little bit about your past two books for the people who maybe didn't read those and what the sort of common theme is in all of them. 

Emma: So I, I think you've nailed it a little bit in that I do, I find like fakery and sort of like surface level. Social interactions and dynamics and sort of the whole Peyton place of it all, and the drama. Very fascinating. I love that. I love that people are fake to each other and then go to the other room and are like talking shit about each other. That is like my lifeblood in fiction. Not like, I don't, I, I don't necessarily do that all the time, but like.. 

Zibby: You obviously do that. It's okay. 

Emma: I mean, everybody does that. Gossip is a thing. That idea that people have different levels and that they're different people to in different social situations and with different crowds is very interesting to me. And I feel like that infuses a lot of, um, my writing and the characters. It's a lot of kind of funny social satire and then you go into the characters internal thoughts and it's not at all what they're actually thinking is what they're saying.

And I just love that and I love sort of bringing that out. I find that very funny and fun. Um, and I think also the idea of. I think the, the dynamics, the social dynamics amongst wealthy people, people who are motivated by money, people who are motivated by status is, is very interesting to me. And that infuses all of my books.

Also, I mean, I live in New York City, I worked in media. I, I've been around people who are very motivated in business, motivated socially, and that kind of drive is also, I think. You know, throughout all three of my books For Mean Moms, it's more about the social status of these women and, and kind of what their lives, um, mean to the other women in, in the school.

My other book, very Bad Company, was a lot more about being motivated purely by. Money and, um, stature in a company and then bad summer people had a little bit of both for sure. Um, and so those, those are all throughout and I think in mem moms also mem moms is less specifically focused on money except for there is a character who, who needs it, but, um, they're all just very wealthy. So that's not kind of the drive. 

Zibby: But they're still always trying to keep up. 

Emma: Yes. 

Zibby: And they're so competitive, even though they're friends. You have some funny joke about how one person's Architectural Digest was two pages longer than the other friend's profile and how she was still so annoyed about that. She was annoyed. That was unfair. 

Emma: Totally unfair. Oh my gosh. But these are valid feelings. Again, I don't like to, I don't, when I write characters, I'm not. Judging them as good or bad people. They're just people. They are real friends with other. These women do actually enjoy each other's company and value, you know, the things that the other person brings to their life. Um, and their pain is real. Uh, it's not just because they're, you know, wealthy and or maybe competitive in certain ways. It doesn't lessen their actual feelings. And so I, that again, that's why I think I can write these characters without making them caricatures. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Emma: Because I feel that they're real people and that, you know, you can't discount. Just because someone's like something doesn't mean that it's not worthy of. Uh, uh, being on the page or, or their motivation should be clear, I think. And so I try to do that. 

Zibby: Well, in mean moms, you also go into the next generation of snarks, so to speak, and you have twin boys, and you have the girl who won't wear the love shack fancy dress that her mom gets her and only wants to wear champion sweatpants and whatever else, which I totally get. I have a child who I, I was just saying this the other day, to my husband. What is with this whole sweatpants style, like everybody just wears sweatpants. Like my son, we went out to dinner and then he went to meet his friends. He literally like went home, changed and put on sweatpants. It's like, what are you doing? You're going out of this. 

Emma: It's a thing. 

Zibby: It's a thing. 

Emma: I know for girls too. 

Zibby: Can we change that? Yeah. For girls too. I don't know. It's probably just rebellion against their annoying mothers who are like, why are you wearing that? I am not an annoying mother. 

Emma: I'm an annoying mother 

Zibby: Say I am like the coolest mom there is.

Emma: Yeah. No, I, I The kids are not, um, huge characters in the book. It's definitely, um, about the dynamics between the moms, but the kids pop up here and there and the kids are all good. I mean, it's, it, eh, but they're. But generally you have the, the children to me in these situations are generally the voice of reason.

At least one of the main characters has a daughter, the one who wears sweatpants, who's very much looks at her mom like. With that critical eye of why are you, why do you care about all this stuff that's happening with your friends, and why do you need to be exactly like them and dress exactly like them?

And so she's kind of in my mind, the, the, the person who is seeing it, the clearest and she's young, but, um, I think that's probably true sometimes of real life. As you, as you get older, you kind of lose that. You know, you can, you can lose that clear-eyed adolescent like eye roll in a way, particularly women when they, you know, are aging and trying to fit in.

And it's so hard to be a mom. And it is, and I have so much sympathy. And this is not anything mean about moms. This is, I mean, I, I am one and all my friends are, are mothers. Um, but there's something about the combustible thing that happens when, particularly in a small school environment, when everybody just gets a little crazy.

And I don't know if it's, and in the joke, this is actually not in the, in the galley, but in the finished copies, I, I played up a little bit, one of the characters experiences with perimenopause. And so that's also a joke within it of like, it's all just hormones, you know? Um, and, but I do think that something happens in women's forties where they just start to go a little insane, which I enjoy. And I'm, I like to write about that. 

Zibby: So this book is so entertaining. This is like a pull out the popcorn. Like I am just completely entertained. I am laughing. I am taken out of myself because I just am laughing at everybody. Is there a deeper message or like something you're like, is it that we're all in this together and like we just kind of have to laugh it off? Or what is it you're tr What is like if there is. 

Emma: Everyone always asks me this about my books. I'm like.

Zibby: You don't, you don't have to have a deeper message. It can just be entertainment, which is great too. 

Emma: It is. Literally just entertainment. 

Zibby: Okay, great. 

Emma: It is using my, it is my own funny thoughts to entertain people and to, you know, get them through a long haul flight or a beach weekend and to read it and to laugh and to come away, you know, either out of a reading slum. Because a lot of people have told me that their books help them get out of a reading slump 'cause they're so fast and they're just, as you said, popcorn fun. And I just to take the piss a little bit out of a certain type that, um, I think takes itself very seriously. 

Zibby: Love that. So can you talk a little bit about your experience with Bustle, with running a massive company, with having your eye on trends and people and writing and working with so many others, like in this journalistic environment that is rapidly changing and is now all online? How do you stand out? How do you learn how to market based on all of the things that you've learned? 

Emma: Well, that's a, a good question. I, in September, stepped back from my. Full-time job at Bustle and in media, which was a big deal for me, having worked full-time in media for, for 20 years. Um, and now I'm focused mainly on writing, which has been an interesting transition. I, I think. I wasn't necessarily prepared with how, for how like solitary writing is, and I don't necessarily think I'm that much more productive without a full-time job writing my books. Um, I sort of used to just fit in my writing when I could, and now sometimes I'll find myself for an hour at the computer and I'm like, where did the time go?

I guess it went to the New York Times, I mean like I just have, it is like the time stretches in a way that's not necessarily conducive to my own working style. Um, but I still find myself, because I was in media for so long, being very up on everything, it's just a habit. Um. I read everything all the time. People say to me, and this was always an annoying thing for people on my staff, where they'd say, did you see that? And they'd say one word of the headline. I'd be like, I already read that. Like it's just something where it's like the news consumption part of my brain is so trained that I can't really turn that off.

But I do think that helps with my writing, which is very kind of topical and about what's happening in the world right now. I mean, it's obviously not political, but like just the idea that. To be infused in, you know, on online culture. As someone who's into my forties now, I think is actually very good. I mean, it is kind of time washy obviously, because now I'm not putting it to use by assigning articles and, and you know, editing cover stories or whatever.

But. The idea that I kind of know what's up, like is I think something that starts to differentiate as you get older and you see people who are, who don't know what's up. And I try to have conversations with them and I'm like, how did you not read all of this? How do you not know what's happening with the twenties? And they're just like. Because I'm a mom and I have two kids and you need to calm down. But so I can take all that energy that I have and put it into my fiction, I think, and sort of like take it off to the side because it starts to be kind of useless in a way beyond that. And that's been an interesting thing. But, um, I, yeah, I do kind of miss the like. Hustle of it. 

Zibby: So how do you get your news? This is totally off topic, but I am feeling like this is a really weird time in the world to get news because some, I just get through Instagram most I get from my husband forwarding me what he finds. I like leave my newspapers kind of stacked in the kitchen and often don't even open them anymore. I don't trust those news sources. Then there's Apple News, just like what is the best way, I need to be more efficient and I need to get the news and I wanna be up on it. Totally. What is the answer? 

Emma: I mean, I am a, I always, I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, not cover to cover, but just, I'm going through their app. I'm going through the today tab on their app. The news papers now are very good at laying out stories in a way where you're like, okay, I sort of got it. Right. Like, and I listen to the headline podcasts for all of them. So they're just giving you kind of the 20 minute summary of what's happened that day.

And obviously I'm not, I'm more cultural, so I, I always am going to go straight to culture and lifestyle news rather than the sort of like hard hitting everything. But I, because I'm reading the sort of top stories, I kind of know what's happening. And then, because also I still, even though it's, I hate it so much am on. Twitter, X, whatever. Um, I monitor it. I don't actually post on it. Um, I know what's happening. You still do know what's happening. If you're on Twitter and all I follow on Twitter are journalists because that's was, that's what my profession was. So if you're following journalists on Twitter and you can scroll through for 20 minutes, you're like, okay, I kind of like understand what's happening.

And it's all different news sources. It's The Atlantic. It's New York Times. It's New York, whatever. Um. And, but I find that my attention because of the phone and because of, you know, all of our collective attention problems, um, has gone a little bit and I'm finding it harder to get through. The long form stuff that I used to like easily be able to just like breeze through and have and sit through.

And now I'm starting to be like, uhoh, what's it's happening to me too. It's like that weird zombie movies where you're like, oh my God. Like I always have been reading everything about this happening to people. And I'm like, it's, it's me. Now I'm the zombie. Like I can't focus gone to the other side. I know.

Zibby: So as a content producer and someone who. Acknowledges like the rest of us, that we don't have the bandwidth to necessarily ingest like so much information all the time. And yet we're both writing books, right? Why stay to this format? Why do, and why are people still committed? Like, why do we all believe and why is it true that people still consume books and yet it's harder and harder to consume like a movie versus a short video?

Emma: Well, my, because my expertise is in. Media and digital media and in magazines. Um, I can speak more to that. The, the book form, um, is completely separate from the way people consume other media online. It is, it's, it's an escape for most people, particularly. I mean, you see how well romantic does, you see how wells like, it's, it's like this kind of format that doesn't.

It like perks up different kind of like pleasure center for people. People do not read articles on the internet anymore. It's just like not a thing. Um, people may be a little bit like our age and older are still kind of sometimes reading articles, but younger people do not read. So it is, it's completely true. It's, uh, we, I mean I've worked at number of digital media companies. We saw our traffic plummet. From, you know, millions and millions to zero. So like, you can put an article up on Bustle, which used to, at some point, you know, you would put up an article and know that it would get 300,000 clicks. Like, it just would, it gets now like eight, 8,000. Like, it doesn't, and it's not because people, it's, it's also because what it's getting served to people. It's because Google has changed the algorithm and news and, and, and articles like that don't get surfaced anymore. I mean, it's very complicated, but it's true. And it's, it's slightly depressing, but like the art form has moved away from that to short form video, which is what people do consume.

And then books, thank God, have been left as this little, like jewel. I believe that people do not associate with their daily scrolling habits, so they're not, it's, it's an entirely different. Mindset that you're going when you're going to sit down and read a book and you're sitting and getting a manicure, or you're at the beach or you're in your bed going to sleep than it is any other media. Now, granted, I can't speak to tv. I do think, or, and movies. I do think people still watch tv. Movies are a different story, but that's not my expertise. 

Zibby: I, it used to be with my older kids. Like watching a movie would be such a treat. In fact, I, at one point I was like, we're only allowed to watch movies when it's raining out, which was my random rule because all they wanna do is watch movies.

Emma: Yeah. 

Zibby: And now my younger kids are like, Ugh, we have to watch a movie. It's so long. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Zibby: Are you kidding? You're not even that. You're like seven years apart. What is going on? 

Emma: Yeah. Crazy anyway. 

Zibby: Yeah. Um, well thank God we are still here to talk about books. 

Emma: I know. And fiction, fiction is so different too.

Zibby: Fiction. Fiction is so different. Um, when you're writing fiction, how do you get into that mental space? Like how do you say, I'm putting away the emails. Do you need like to block out big, I mean, chunks of time? I know you have it, but do you use it? I know you.

Emma: Uh. No, I just talk, it's so bad. I toggle back and forth, like I'll write 300 words and then I'm like, oh, check Instagram. And then I go back like it's, it's like a constant struggle to like stay on the page. I should probably have some kind of. Method where I just like lock away my phone, but as a mother I'm like, I need my phone. What if someone throws up at school and I need to, you know, I, I can't, it's hard for me to like completely put it away. Also, again, you know, it's your connection to other people, particularly now as a person who's not like at an office all the time. It's like, that's the sad truth is that your phone is where you're. Seeing emails and messages and texts and dms or whatever. Um, but I, I can, if I'm in the story, I'm in the story and I'm like, with the characters, it's not that hard for me to sort of.

Go in and out, stand up, get a snack, come back. I try to get through like 2000 words a day, and if I don't, I'm kind of mad at myself. 

Zibby: Are you working on another one now? 

Emma: I, oh my god, I haven't told you it was from an idea from you. 

Zibby: Yes. Finally, I throw out ideas all the time and no one ever does anything I suggest. 

Emma: You told me last summer, so it's, yes. I have another book that's coming out next summer. Um, and I'm in, you know, I'm almost done with it and, um, it, it about a country club in Greenwich. The one you told me about was in the Hamptons and someone in the morning dies. And the country club gets shut down. Do you remember the story that. 

Zibby: Oh yeah, I told you this. Yes. 

Emma: The country club gets shut down for the day. The police come because it becomes an active crime scene. And everybody who's at the country club, it's like high time in the summer and there's hundreds of people there. There's supposed to be a wedding there that day. So there's all these people that are like stuck there from the wedding.

Uh, they can't leave because the police have to interview everybody. About this death that's happened. And again, it's like a darkly funny take. And by the end, you know, what happened with the death and if it was a suicide, it wasn't, if it was, you know, an accidental death, if it was a murder, whatever. Um, and everybody's kind of intersecting. There's different areas where people are kind of huddled. The pickleball courts, the tennis courts, the golf hut, the like pool area. And you sort of go between all of those places throughout the day. 

Zibby: Oh, I'm so excited. I mean, this is a terrible story, but at.

Emma: It's a terrible story. 

Zibby: It's a, at a country, at this golf club, uh, that we used to belong to for a short while. It was closed as I tried to go there for lunch one day, and it turned out that someone had hung themselves on this overpass in the country club. 

Emma: And that's, that's not what happens in my book. 

Zibby: And that this person. Was actually a guest. And I was like, why would you on a golf round as a guest at someone else's country club, decide that is the moment.

Emma: Yeah. 

Zibby: To, to kill yourself. I, it just seemed like so random and I was like, what a crazy story this is. Like, what? Anyway, i'm so.. 

Emma: But it was a detail, a specific detail that you told me where you said, and all the moms were so annoyed because they had to go pick up their kids from camp or what, and just like.

Zibby: Everybody was stuck.

Emma: Rearrange their day. Because this annoying guy killed him himself. You know, so, like.. 

Zibby: That's true. 

Emma: I was like, that's my book. I'm gonna do that. Where people are super annoyed. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Emma: Even though someone has fallen to their death from the top of a clubhouse. So it's set in, this is like a Greenwich thing. 

Zibby: That's amazing. 

Emma: I know. I'm, I need, I, I have some friends in Greenwich. I'm trying to do more research about them because that is not my natural habitat. 

Zibby: Yeah. Well set it in the Hamptons. 

Emma: Habitat. Uh, sorry. 

Zibby: I said, said it in the Hamptons. Well, okay then people would know. 

Emma: Then yeah. 

Zibby: I better end up in the acknowledgements is all I'm saying. 

Emma: You will because.. 

Zibby: Okay.

Emma: You said to me this would be a good book for you, and I took it and ran. 

Zibby: Thank goodness that was, that just made my whole day. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Zibby: Well, Emma, congratulations on Mean Moms Can't Wait to Read whatever that's ends up being called. 

Emma: I think for now it's titled, um, I think. Members Only. 

Zibby: Oh, love it. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Zibby: Amazing. 

Emma: Thank you. 

Zibby: Thanks so much for coming. Congratulations. 

Emma: Thank you

Zibby: Mean Moms.