Books: "Bad Reputation" By Emma Barry

 

Bad Reputation

By Emma Barry

Montlake; paperback, 297 pages $16.99; Kindle eBook, $5.99; available today, Tuesday, October 1st

Emma Barry is an acclaimed romance novelist, teacher,  former political staffer, and recovering academic. She is the author of Funny Guy and Chick Magnet, as well as the Political Persuasions Series, whose books include The One You Want, The One You Need, The One You Hate, and The One You Crave.

In the new stand-alone release, Bad Reputation, Barry takes the reader to the world of Hollywood and filmmaking, and about how you can get a do-over on your career when everyone thinks they know who you are, but you know they're wrong.

Cole James has a reputation as Hollywood's favorite himbo, and he is at the point that he feels it no longer suits him. Still most known for the character he played on a soapy teen drama decades ago, Cole's fans can't separate the real man from the role, but the hope is that changes with his new role in "Waverly," the smash-hit historical romance series.

Maggie Niven is in a similar spot, as she is sick of her own notoriety, which came from being fired for directing a divisive play. She has taken her fight against censorship to the public, and when Hollywood calls, she becomes the new intimacy coordinator for "Waverly." It's a job that is tougher than she imagined, and Cole isn't what she expected.

In addition, Maggie is more than Cole dreamed of, and as filming gets underway, the cast's old trauma lead to real intimacy, and they struggle with feelings they shouldn't have. Having an affair would destroy both his comeback and her new career.

However, the show must go on, and they understand if they want a happy ending, Maggie and Cole will have to start doing things their way.

In this excerpt, we're introduced to Cole as he's taking part in a fan convention: "Cole James had a lot of regrets. Enough to field a Little League team. Enough to pack a Costco-size case. Enough to fill a keg...which made sense because several of those regrets featured kegs. But behind a signing table at Aughties Con, Cole would've put playing his doppelganger, Cody Rhodes, on Central Square, at the top of the list.

Sure, the part had made Cole famous in the star-of-a-soapy-teen-drama way. The kind of famous that landed you on the cover of Us Weekly and at the People's Choice Awards. The kind that had him in demand for fan conventions two decades later.

But Cody was the Halloween costume that Cole would never get off. Their names even sounded the same. 

Take right now. The woman at the head of the autograph line stumbled forward. She was about Cole's age, in her early forties. From her Team Cody shirt to her reluctant giggles, she was clearly psyched to meet him and mortified to be so clearly psyched.

Sympathy mixed with the coffee in Cole's gut. That morning, he'd gotten on the elevator with Park Chan-wook, one of his dream directors to work with, and Cole had nearly forgotten his own name. Celebrity was a hell of a drug.

With the smile the fan expected, Cole extended his hand. 'Hey, how are you doing? I'm Cole.'

The woman blinked, hard.

'It's nice to meet you...?' He trailed off, hoping she'd supply her name. It was so much better when they gave Cole their names. It made this feel more like a conversation and not an appointment, which, okay, it was.

The woman was still doing an ice-sculpture impression - and the people behind her in line were growing impatient. 

'I'd love to sign that for you.' Cole pointed to the poster she was clutching.

Without speaking, the woman pushed a poster from Central Square's second season at him. Ah, the year when MIT had kicked Cody out because they thought he was running his sometime girlfriend Madison's cheating ring. Falling on that grenade won him her eternal love...until he lost it by sleeping with her best friend. Again. Things had ended with a cliff-hanger when Cody fell asleep while his joint lit his duvet on fire. In those twenty-two episodes, Cody had made some bad choices.

Life imitated art, he supposed.

Cole held up a sparkly gold gel pen. 'Should I sign as Cole or as Cody?'

At that, she regained the power of speech. 'Oh, please sign as Cody.'

Of course. It was always Cody.

Because no matter how many times the character had kissed the wrong girl at a party, fought with his grandfather about his inheritance, or gotten sucked into a Lithuanian crime syndicate, fans forgave him. They got Team Cody tattoos and had his vow to Madison - through thick and thin, baby - engraved in their wedding bands. Through all ninety-two episodes of banana-pants drama, they loved Cody Rhodes. And for almost twenty years now, they had shared that same devotion with Cole.

'Of course.' With a smile, Cole wrote Cody Rhodes across the tight black t-shirt he wore on the poster. The color had varied, but it had always been tight. The shirt was almost as much of a draw as the biceps under it. 'Thanks for coming out today.'

'I wouldn't miss it for anything.'

Cole's career would've withered if that hadn't been true. He hadn't been much of an actor in his Central Square days - he wasn't much of an actor now - but things had come easily to him then. And the combination of stardom and being twenty had been corrosive.

Showing up to work drunk after all-night parties in hotel rooms? Yeah, he'd done that a few times - and he'd had to live with his terrible performances, tabloid coverage, and pissed-off coworkers. His first agent talking him into investing in an RPG adaptation that had gone way over budget and bombed? That was a rite of passage for jackasses. Being so clueless and self-obsessed that he'd missed the showrunner being garbage to the female writers? He'd discovered that after Central Square had gone off the air, when Cole had been broke, unemployed and without an agent at twenty-four. Exactly where he deserved to be.

Two things had gotten him through: the enduring popularity of Cody Rhodes, and Drew Bowen, the agent who'd agreed to sign Cole when he'd been lying in the gutter. Everything that had come afterward, Cole owed to them...and Cody wasn't even real."

Text copyright © 2024 by Emma Barry, Published by Montlake.