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Emma Lord Biography

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“Most of the things I could wish for I can't have. It's big stuff, like how I wish Poppy were still here and we weren't selling Bean Well. Or medium stuff, like I didn't worry so much about where I stand with Leo and Connie, or I wasn't one ping in my parents' inbox away from getting busted for skipping out on summer school. Or stuff that wells up in me from some place I can usually keep quiet--I wish I were old enough to do whatever I wanted, to go out and take photographs all over the world instead of the same sleepy suburb over and over and over again. I wish I didn't feel like a problem my parents had to solve.”

AngstWishingTeenage Angst
Book:You Have a Match
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“Not to mention, assuming an owner of a business is a guy is just not my mom’s MO. Long before she dreamed up the idea for Big League Burger and helped build it up to the veritable empire it is today, she was almost too progressive a feminist for a place like Nashville, where she jokingly but not-quite-jokingly would clamp her hands over our ears anytime a line in a country song said something about girls with painted-on jeans or sitting on tailgates, saying it would make us 'the complicit kind of cowgirl.”

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“An hour and a half later, we are the proud parents of two massive sheets of Monster Cake, some impressive concoction called Unicorn Ice Cream Bread, three dozen Kitchen Sink Macaroons, peanut-butter-and-jelly cupcakes, a three-layer Paige creation dubbed Sex-Positve Brownies ("Slutty Brownies," Pepper explained, "but Paige took a course on feminism and sex work, so."), an ungodly amount of banana pudding, and a bunch of misshapen cake balls we rolled around in melted chocolate and stuck in the fridge.”

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Book:Tweet Cute
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“I tap the link, and it opens up a bright, cheery, robin's-egg blue web page. P&P Bake, it's called. It's clearly one of those WordPress blogs converted into a website, but that doesn't make it any less captivating--- the pictures on the posts are so vivid, I can practically taste them through the screen. I scroll down, glancing at the dessert names, lingering on the pictures. The most recent is Tailgate Trash Twinkies, which are apparently a homemade cake roll infused with PBR; I scroll down and see A-Plus Angel Cake, and Butter Luck Next Time Butter Cookies, and then--- And then, on Halloween, there's an entry for Monster Cake. My breath stops before it can leave my chest, my entire body stiffening on the couch like a corpse. There's no mistaking it. I may have a bad habit of eating Pepper's baked goods so fast, it threatens the time-space continuum, but the bright colors and gooey mess of that cake are so distinct in my mind and in my taste buds, I could see it in another life and immediately identify it. Yet my brain still refuses to process it, and I'm still scrolling as if I'll blink and it will disappear, a vivid, sleep-deprived teenage hallucination. But the further I scroll the worse it gets. The So Sorry Blondies. The Pop Quiz Cake Pops she and Pooja were eating the other day. A few things I've never heard of before, with irreverent, silly names, some of which must be Paige's, but others that are so distinctly Pepper it stings to read.”

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Book:Tweet Cute
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“But no matter what else happens, this one thing my mom has always had a weakness for--- Monster Cake. A perilous invention from childhood, the day Paige and Mom and I decided to test the limits of our rinky-dink oven with a combination of Funfetti cake mixed with brownie batter, cookie dough, Oreos, Reese's Cups, and Rolos. The result was so simultaneously hideous and delicious that my mom fashioned googly eyes on it out of frosting, and thus, Monster Cake was born.”

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“They’re connected,’ he continued, his voice husky. ‘What one sees, they all see. What one experiences, they all feel. And when one finds prey, more follow.’ He swallowed hard. ‘They’re faster than us, stronger than us, and when there’s more than one you’ve got next to no chance, which is why we have to—’ ‘What do they do once they find you?’ His dark eyes fixed on mine, the bad one open just a crack. ‘They feed.”

Fantasy Young AdultPost ApocalypticDystopian Science FictionYa Horror
Book:Anomaly
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“So is this the Grandma's Special?" The grin that bursts on my face almost cracks from the cold air. "Wow. My mom really does like you." Pepper is poised with it in front of her mouth and raises an eyebrow at me. "Do you trust me?" "Not a bit. Take a bite." She does, and I prop my head on my palm and lean in close enough she has to muffle a laugh as she chews. "Well?" I demand. "Finally willing to concede that our grilled cheese is vastly superior?" She looks like she's about to give a begrudging nod, but then her eyes go wide. "The secret ingredient." She peels apart the grilled cheese, staring at it and then up at me, her face so incredulous. "It's sweet bell peppers?”

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“On clear nights, I’d sit out on the porch and gaze up at the stars. So many of them, scrawled across a sky so vast it made my head hurt. And I’d tell myself that if the stars could do it – if they could exist for billions of years in isolation – I could do it, too. I’d just pretend I was a star, that’s all. A ball of energy, burning up, light years from anyone and anything.”

Ya FantasySpeculative FictionPost ApocalypticYa HorrorYa Science FictionYa Dystopian
Book:Anomaly
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“Pie?" I narrowed my eyes at her, and then down at the container in her hands, where there were chocolate hand pies lined up in neat rows. The So Sorry Blondies were all gone by then, devoured between me and Paul and the rest of the dive team, and the memory of their deliciousness was too fresh for me to resist another Pepper Evans creation. I took one of the mini pies with a wary hand, just as she pulled out her phone, tapped it a few times, and smirked. I stopped chewing. "Did you just tweet?" I asked, my mouth full of chocolate. Pepper swept her bangs back with her fingers, and this time the gesture was calculated and breezy. "Did I?" I scowled into my phone screen, lowering it under my desk so Mrs. Fairchild wouldn't see. This one was just a GIF of Regina George from Mean Girls--- "Why are you so obsessed with me?" "At least your pie is better than your tweets," I mumbled. But the smirk on Pepper's face only deepened. "Those are from the Big League Burger bargain menu, by the way." My mouth dropped open. Pepper turned her eyes back to her textbook, burying her smirk in it. "Enjoy.”

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“Please, I could take you in a race in a heartbeat." She laughs out loud. "Wanna bet?" "Sure. Let's go." She follows my eyeline to the edge of the pool like she might actually race me, but then I reach forward and tug her cap off her head in one swift motion, her blonde hair spilling into the pool in wet tangles around her face and shoulders. "Foul!" Pepper crows, yanking it back from me. "You know, for someone named Pepper, you're pretty salty about losing." She groans at my pun as she shoves her hair back into the cap, but then counters, "For someone named Jack, you're pretty bad at knowing when to hit the road." "Wow, Burger Princess, sick burn." And damn if she hasn't gone and done it again--- distracted me right at a peak moment for me to most fully make an ass of myself. The soccer ball is sailing over our heads, and Pepper's already plowing through the water with the focus of a shark, halfway to where it's about to smack into no man's land. Not on my watch. I reach out and grab her ankle and yank her back the way she's done to me too many times to count, but unlike me, she seems to be expecting it--- expecting it so readily, she snaps her body through the water like a rubber band, using me as an anchor for momentum, and before I know it, she's got a palm squarely on top of my head and is dunking my entire body underwater.”

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Book:Tweet Cute
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“If I couldn't escape the guilt, there was nothing left to do but lean into it. And leaning into it is what led me to grabbing the forty dollars my mom leaves out in the front to order food if I ever need it, schlepping miserably down to the bodega, and collecting everything I needed to make Paige's infamous So Sorry Blondies from the summer before she left for college. I pull them out of the oven now, the smell wafting through the kitchen---the brown sugar and butter and toffee against the richness of the dark chocolate chips and toffee against the pockets of dark chocolate caramel sauce. A little bitter and a little sweet.”

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