BookLab: The Art of Storytelling with Kathleen Barber

Jennie Nash hosts a #amwriting podcast BookLab with guest Kathleen Barber, author of Truth Be Told and newly released Sisterhood Above All (co-written with Amayah Shaienne), and discusses Barber’s range across thrillers and romance, her character-first approach, and how RushTok inspired an authentic sorority-rush thriller featuring Madison, Shay, and Ava as tensions escalate and someone dies. They define RushTok as viral TikTok coverage of University of Alabama sorority recruitment and note its broad international fascination.

In the BookLab, they evaluate three first-page submissions by asking “Would we turn the page?” They praise Heather’s Trust Me for strong voice, vivid Austin setting, and an intriguing problem hook, with minor notes about genre context. They decline Odeon Omega due to unearned logistics and too much dialogue despite an intriguing title/advert. They find Empty Spaces compellingly written but confusing from too many names and unclear stakes, suggesting more interiority and clarity.

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Connect with Kathleen

Visit Kathleen’s website to find her books and more: https://www.kathleenbarber.com

Transcript

Jennie: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a book lab session where we answer the most important question about your first pages.

Would we pick up the book? Would we turn the page? Today, I have a really special guest with me. I have Kathleen Barber here, who is so many things. She’s the author of Truth Be Told, which was adapted as a series on Apple TV, Follow Me, Both Things Are True, and just brand new, like it came out four days ago, Sisterhood Above All, with, I’m gonna try her name, Amaya Chen?

How do you-

Barbara: Yeah. Uh, um, yeah. That’s, that’s very close. I think it’s Amaya Chen.

Jennie: Okay. Yeah. Uh, so we’re gonna hear about that in a minute. Um, I haven’t, I haven’t cracked it open yet, but I’m so [00:01:00] excited for it. Um, Kathleen’s also an Author Accelerator certified book coach and a former attorney, and she lives in Washington, DC with her family.

So welcome, Kathleen.

Barbara: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Jennie: So I watched your unboxing the other day. It was so fun, and I didn’t realize that we had scheduled this right on top of, like the actual- Oh ... launch of your book.

Barbara: No, that, that’s okay. It’s, it’s great. Um, it gives me something to think about that’s not just, like, spiraling.

Like, is anybody gonna read my book? Is anybody gonna like it? Um, so it gives me something else to focus on.

Jennie: Well, it’s so interesting you say that because I think of you as this really seasoned pro and, you know, it’s been really interesting for me to watch your career because you’ve written some really different kinds of books.

You did a ... Well, your first book was obviously a big thriller and a huge success, and at one point, you pivoted to romance, and now you’re doing ... Well, I, I saw that book list [00:02:00] called Sisterhood Above All, a soapy thriller Yes. Yes ... which is such a great description, and you did it with a collaborator. So you just seem interested in story to me.

Barbara: I, I am. Yeah. I’m always very ... I always start a story with the characters. Um, and so then their story kind of spirals out from there. Um, yeah, so I, my last book that came out before this one was, was a rom-com. Um, and I was really nervous when I started writing it. I was like, “How am I going to write this when I’ve been writing suspense and thrillers before?”

And it turns out that, like, at the heart of it, stories are stories, and people are people, and, you know, in a romance, happy things happen. In a thriller, bad things happen, but things still happen.

Jennie: Amazing. So give us the overview of the brand new book, ‘cause it’s, it’s really juicy.

Barbara: Yeah. Yeah, so I’m really excited about it.

Um, Sisterhood Above All is a thriller set during sorority rush, and so it follows three different [00:03:00] women who are involved there. There’s Madison, who is the president of what’s she perceives as to be the coolest sorority on campus, so she’s kind of the gatekeeper, and there’s Shay, who is the president of a rival sorority and trying to shake, shake up the Greek institutions, and then there’s Ava, who is a potential new member.

She’s going through rush. She’s desperate to join Madison’s sorority, um, and she might be a little too desperate. Uh, so you know, it’s a thriller. Bad things happen. Somebody dies, um, you know, and things kind of spiral out, spiral out of control.

Jennie: But tell us about the collaboration, ‘cause it’s- Yeah ... so interesting how that came about and how it went and-

Barbara: Yeah.

You know, it was, it was a lot of fun. Um, I, like many writers, write alone, and I had never really considered collaborating with anybody before, um, but- But when I was kind of talking about this, I, I’d been pitching my agent a sorority themed thriller for a while. [00:04:00] Um, and at one point when, when Rush Talk was getting really big a couple summers ago, she was like, “This is the moment.

This, you should write this book, but I think that in order to make it feel more authentic, we should bring in somebody who’s living this in this moment.” Um, so one of her colleagues found Amaya, who, um, was up until very, very recently an active member of a sorority at the University of Alabama, and brought us together.

And Amaya and I got along right away, and we both had kind of the same vision for what we wanted the book to be, and so collaborating with her was, was a lot of fun in a way that I had been nervous that it wouldn’t be. But it was, it was a really good time, and I’m really, really proud of the book.

Jennie: So for those who don’t know or weren’t following, can you tell us what Rush Talk-

Barbara: Yeah

was

Jennie: or is

Barbara: or- Yeah ... shall be? Yes, yes, yes. So, um, so if you’re gonna join a sorority, um, you go through, you go through recruitment and which is very slangily [00:05:00] called rush. Um, and so on TikTok a few years ago, um, people started sharing about their experiences during sorority rush, but specifically, uh, during sorority rush at the University of Alabama.

Um, and it really took on a life of its own, like people were watching it like it was, you know, a television program. Uh, they made a documentary about it, which, you know, I’ll, I will let you make your own conclusions about the documentary. Um, but people just got really, really into it, and people... And it was kind of appealing to people who had gone through sorority rush at some point, were thinking about going through a sorority rush, or who were just invested in, you know, watching people have these kind of outlandish experiences and, and share them.

So, um, it

Jennie: was a lot of fun. My understanding was that it got very, very popular in other countries?

Barbara: I- it’s definitely... [00:06:00] Yeah. You know, um- So sorority, some, some sororities are international. Not, not all of them are. Um, but by and large, when they say in