Happy Place Book Club Meets: Rekindling intimacy in marriage, with Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees
Apr 30, 2026
Emlyn Rees, author and co-writer who uses music-driven time travel, and Josie Lloyd, co-writer exploring long-term love and nostalgia. They chat about using mixtapes as a time device, plotting alternate relationship timelines, the messy truths of parenting, and the practical joys and tensions of writing together.
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Time Travel As A Relationship Lens
- Time travel served as a device to examine long-term love rather than a sci-fi plot.
- Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees chose mixtapes to trigger nostalgia and revisit relationship moments authentically tied to music.
Dining Table Maps For Multiverse Plotting
- The authors planned alternate timelines on a dining table with lining paper and divvied chapters between them.
- Emlyn and Josie wrote alternate chapters so each could surprise the other and use music-based chapter titles drawn from their own playlists.
Golden Rule Shapes Time Travel Ethics
- The couple set a 'golden rule' not to change major past events because altering big moments could erase their children.
- That restraint creates moral tension and explains why small temptations snowball into bigger deceit between characters.
