Interview with Bari Beckett

Full disclosure: this interview was recorded at the Bloomfield Township Public Library in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and has been edited for clarification.

Hello Everybody,

We have something special on Book Reviews by a Chick Who Reads Everything today. Our guest is the author of the book Big Love. Please welcome, Bari Beckett.

Bari: Hello! Thank you for having me.

Emily: Of course! How are you doing today, Bari?

Bari: I’m doing great. It’s sunny out and warm, my kind of weather.

Emily: Absolutely, and as we do this interview in a library, where it’s nice and cool and quiet. What was the catalyst for writing Big Love?

Bari: You know, I am online dating. I’m divorced, and I met someone. He’s a recruiter for hockey. He owns his own company. But I never really met him. I talked to him and everything, and then, he found someone else before I could meet them. But I did a story off of it. What would it be like to be in love with a person like that or any person really, but it got me to writing. How it started was I wrote [to] him like I texted him the sexy note saying what I would do if we were with your friends at a table. I would pass you a note to meet me in the bathroom, and then he wrote this really romantic sexy text back.

Emily: Ooo!

Bari: So then what happened was I started writing these little mini stories. So I would write him one, and then, he would love it, and then he met someone, but I continued to write the stories, and that’s why it’s 40 short stories. But really, it’s one book about the same characters into their 90s.

Emily: Wow! That’s really wonderful. I’m glad that you were inspired to make a book like this because if anything, books are always about imagination. Yes, there’s a lot of things that are based on some reality, but sometimes we take too much of the truth. I’m glad that we still act like every story that we put on is still based in some form of imagination.

Bari: Exactly! It’s like that, and I think everybody wants somebody to really love that, you know, and then you know, I write hot spicy romance. But really wanting this spice to communicate your love is one of the ways, and that’s what the book’s about.

Emily: Oh, that’s wonderful. To you, what is big love?

Bari: Big love is big. It’s gorgeous love. It’s like loving somebody for who they are and who they’re not and being really intimate with them because you want to express how much you love them. But also outside the bedroom, being okay with the way like some of their weirdness do you know? And, just loving them like one of the things in the book, one of my favorite ones is called “The Dance.” It’s one of the chapters, and it’s really romantic, where he looks at her across the room, and they can read each other. And, they come together to dance. And then, they make this beautiful love, but it’s like they know each other, and that’s what Big Love is all about, just really being there for each other.

Emily: That’s so wonderful. I was just looking at that chapter, and I definitely see where you’re coming from with the big dance and just how much love they have for each other whether it’s private or public.

Bari: Exactly.

Emily: What are some ways people can tap into big love? I know you discussed being out and open about your love and accepting your partner no matter who they are, no matter their flaws.

Bari: You know, love is different for everyone. So, my way of love is expressing, you know, really being straight with them and telling them, “Hey, I love you. And, I love you for all these reasons and even the goofy ones.”

And, that’s why in the back, I have pages where they can make up their own love stories because love is different for everyone.

Emily: Absolutely! I’m glad you mentioned those blank pages at the end because my next question was about that. One of the most unique things about this book is that there are over 60 pages, which allows readers to tell their own love story. What made you think of that?

Bari: I just thought that people sometimes forget after a number of years of being married of why they’ve been married. And, even single people, what do they want in a relationship? What kind of love story do they want and how can they imagine it? So, it’s for the couples that maybe it’s stopped getting spicy, and they start spicing it up by reading these. I encourage them to read what they wrote to each other and then act it out. And, it’s for the single people to really imagine what it would be like to have this love story you’ll always want and create it.

Emily: It’s so wonderful. Even my husband and I have been looking at parts of Big Love. We have a good relationship, but in any relationship, we always can be better, and there’s things that we want out of it, and we’ve been doing more of it. Thank you, Bari.

Bari: You are welcome. That’s the purpose of the book. That makes me happy. Even though it’s hot and spicy, there’s a purpose to the book. The purpose is that people forget how much they really fell in love and that, you know, being spicy in the bedroom is a good thing and that kind of gets you closer together.

Emily: Big Love is one of those books, where it’s very much chasing your dreams and passions, especially when it comes to relationships. What do you say to women who hesitate to chase after their own dreams? 

Bari: Right. I’m 64 years old, and I’m not embarrassed to say it, and I am living my dream as an author right now. And, one of the things I do is a couple of things. I have a Facebook page called Dream Up, where women older can get support and live their dreams and advertise what they do. Women own businesses, you know, get skills, and I just started it for that reason because the characters in the book are older. And, you know, we think women after a certain age don’t have passion, don’t have love, and we are the same people. We just happen to have a lot more wrinkles and gray hair. So yeah, so that’s what encouraged me. I’m a really creative person and writing makes me, it calms me and makes me so happy. So, everybody still has a dream, whether you’re 20 years old or whether you’re 80 years old, I want you to be able to. I want to encourage people to not give up.

Emily: Lovely on that! I have to confess that I cried while reading parts of it, especially when you were defining big love. What kinds of reactions have you gotten from people about the book?

Bari: It’s just, you know, a love story. People think it’s smut. You know, people would think it’s a smutty book, but when you read the book, it’s really truly like a Romeo and Juliet book, you know, like it’s just love, and that’s what that’s part of the reason it’s big love. So, and that’s why there’s parts of it that there isn’t, you know, sex in it. There’s you know, what does it mean to be in love? And, you know, like one of my favorite things I say is that the man reaches his hand out and makes sure you don’t walk behind and look beside him. 

Emily: I remember that part. It was so beautiful.

Bari: And, then the spicy part, you know, I write about that too is, you know, one of you sleeps naked, and one of you wears something a little fancy. And then, if that’ll spice up your ‘cause you’re there, you know, how do I say it your love life.

Emily: That’s certainly wonderful. How does your husband feel about the book?

Bari: I’m not married. I’m single. I think if I had a husband because I’ve learned from this book, I think it would be magical. And, I’m committed that other women and men have magical relationships. It helped me to figure out what I wanted in a relationship. So, as I was going through it, I was like the reader.

Emily: That’s really nice because I imagined that anybody would see themselves in this book to various degrees because love is different for everybody. And, I’ve heard they’ll find different things that they’ll get attached to.

Bari: Exactly.

Emily: I run the “Adapt Me Podcast,” where a guest and I talk about books that have never been adapted and how we would go about it. Who would you cast as yourself and your fantasy lover in a possible adaptation?

Bari: I love Minnie Driver, but she’s getting older. I don’t know how old she is. She’s not as old as me. And…..I don’t know who I put, for he would have to be calm and sturdy and tall cause the guy in this book Big Love is tall, so I don’t know I would have to think about that.

Emily: I certainly have some options. You got Robert Redford, and he’s still alive.

Bari: That actually would be great. I want to show young people that there is a life for you after you grow up, you know. And, I want to show people that are my age or, you know, you’re in your 40s and you’re like, “I don’t want you to be counting the years. I want you to be living the years.”

Emily: And, that’s the beauty of it. You know how we always try to live life to the fullest and pursue our dreams as much as we can, and sometimes it just gets caught up in everything. So, I’m glad you mentioned that.

Bari: Thank you.

Emily: Besides being a writer, since we’ve talked a lot about dreams, what are some of your own dreams?

Bari: I am writing a book called Ungraceful, and it’s about a girl Grace that’s ungraceful.

Emily: Oh no!

Bari: She’s in her 30s, and she’s never really stepped out in her life. She has a mother that’s very perfect. And she’s like ballerina perfect and always wanted a daughter that was perfect. And, she got Grace. 

Emily: Ah geez!

Bari: So, it goes from there. I’m still writing it. It’s going to take me to write it. So, it’s a story I’ve had in my head for 10 years, and I hope eventually it becomes a movie.

Emily: Oh, that will be wonderful. That sounds like a wonderful, powerful story.

Bari: Thank you.

Emily: Besides Ungraceful, what are some other projects that you are working on now?

Bari: I have The Frenchman out. Sometimes, books are based on experiences I had, and I met a Frenchman that was a producer at the Whitney in New York. And, it started from there, and then, I met somebody that I actually fell in love with in an elevator.

Emily: Wow!

Bari: We looked at each other, and we fell in love. So, that’s the second part of the book and how it transitions into that. So, that also is out right now.

Emily: For readers who constantly check on Book Reviews by a Chick Who Reads Everything, I will have my review of The Frenchman out in the near future.

Bari: Great!

Emily: Indeed, where can people find you?

Bari: Well, they can find me on baribeckett.com, or they can email me if they have any questions or anything at barilynn1218@yahoo.com. I’m on Amazon. Our books are on Amazon, Etsy, and Kobo Worldwide.

Emily: That’s absolutely perfect! So, thank you so much for talking to me today. This was so wonderful.

Bari: Thank you!

Emily: You’re very welcome.

Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates. Also feel free to email me here for any review suggestions, ideas, or new titles!