Five Questions with Novelist and Podcaster Becca Freeman

We talk about “The Christmas Orphans Club” and friend books

Continuing the holiday romance theme I have on Instagram, I’m excited to share a Q&A with Becca Freeman, author of The Christmas Orphans Club and co-host of the Bad on Paper podcast.

I was lucky enough to meet Becca at a launch event for The Christmas Orphans Club at East City Bookshop at the end of September. She was so lovely and charming that I was thrilled when she agreed to an interview.

In addition to her book and podcast, Becca is the co-founder of RomComPods, a scripted fiction podcast studio, and the creator of a fabulous new Instagram account, Famous People Reading, which features pictures of … famous people reading. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Tell us about The Christmas Orphans Club.

It is a holiday friend-mance, which is a term I’m trying to make happen. It is my “fetch” if I were Gretchen Weiners. The book follows a group of four friends who are each alone on Christmas for a different reason. They built a decade-long tradition of spending the holiday together, having these fun, outlandish adventures around New York City.

The book is told in alternating now and then timelines. In the past, we get to see the greatest hits of their past Christmases and how this friend group got made. In the present, one of them announces they are moving from New York to LA. The group is grappling with that inflection point — a kind of second coming-of-age — with people starting to get more serious about jobs and relationships. They’re grappling with how to grow up without growing apart.

What drew you to writing a friend-mance?

I always get excited when I find a book about a group of friends. It doesn’t happen that often. I’m a huge romance reader but it never entered my mind to write a romance. I wanted to write a book about friendship. I think it’s because it’s something I’m obsessed with in my own life. As an unmarried woman, my friendships are the most enduring relationships in my own life outside of what I was born into.

We spend so much space talking about romantic love and so much less about platonic love. It was something I wanted to see reflected on the page.

What are some of your favorite friendship books?

One of my all-time favorites is Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, which follows a group of four women in their post-college years. I also really love The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, although it does overlap into a romance as well because some of the friends get married.

There’s another book I love called How Could She by Lauren Melching. We did this for a book club for the podcast years ago and it was one of our most polarizing books. People thought all the female main characters were terrible. I thought they were very relatable. I don’t know what that says about me.

With the two timelines, how did you approach writing it?

I wrote it straight through. There were a few scenes that got added later. The actual jumping of time back and forth stayed the same from the first draft to the end. Now that I'm writing a second book, it feels kind of remarkable.

Everything surprised me, I didn't outline. I knew what was going to happen at the midpoint — there was going to be a fight between two of them and I knew what the fight was about. That’s alluded to from the very first chapter.

I knew who was going to end up with who and what the relationship status would be at the end. In between, I made up everything, so I was constantly surprised by things that happened. There was some kind of weird, unexplainable, almost mystical element to it.

Did writing a Christmas book change your relationship to the holiday?

Not necessarily. I don't feel a strong desire to read any Christmas books, having just spent so much time writing a Christmas book and now writing a second one. So, that’s definitely changed.

But other than that tiny sliver of my reading life, it hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for Christmas. If anything, I feel like because I've been talking about it so much, I’m excited to get to do some of these Christmasy things, like go to see the Nutcracker.

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Thanks to Becca for chatting. You can follow her on Instagram, check out her podcast and buy her book.

For even more holiday romance goodness, I recommend “ExMas,” a new romcom starring Leighton Meester of “Gossip Girl” fame. It’s kind of a PG-13 Hallmark movie with some genuinely funny scenes. Becca suggested “The Christmas Contract” as a holiday “One Tree Hill” reunion. 

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