Podcast Transcript 75: Reviews and Responses, Plus Listener Email and Recommendations

Here is a text transcript of DBSA Podcast 75. What We're Reading, and When You Re-Read a Series. You can listen to the mp3 here, or you can read on! 

This podcast transcript was constructed of excellence by Garlic Knitter, who is a wicked-fierce transcriptionist.

 Here are the books we discuss:

 

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to another DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me is Jane Litte from Dear Author.  We were together recently in the same space and in the same location, which generally tends to upset major fault lines, but we were okay this time, except that when we recorded a podcast, somehow the digital recorder picked up a weird sort of vibration or noise in the background, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t isolate or remove it.  I did dampen it a bit, but still it’s kind of bothersome.  That said, the conversation we had was so interesting, I didn’t want to scrap it, so I apologize profusely for the weird background noise, and if you have theories as to what it might actually have been, I would love to hear them.  I’m just assuming maybe aliens.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  I’ll have more information at the end of the podcast, and Intermix would like you to know about Erin McCarthy’s Believe, a sexy romance of redemption, secrets, and seduction, available on January 21.

And now, on with the podcast, and again, my apologies.

[music]

Sarah:  So, you wanted to talk about Maya Banks.  Tell us about Maya Banks!

Jane:  Well, I didn’t want to just talk about Maya Banks, but there are two authors who wrote recently about some writing experiences –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jane:  – based upon reader response.  Or maybe even three.  We could talk about three different authors.  So, Maya Banks published a book that was actually a promotional book that – from Penguin last week.

Sarah:  Yes.

Jane:  And it was called…

Sarah:  Yes, it was one of the Penguin sponsored books, it’s –

Jane:  After the Storm.

Sarah:  – After the Storm.

Jane:  And it was released January 7.

Sarah:  Right.

Jane:  And I guess there were a number of readers who were disappointed by the book.

Sarah:  Yes, I read the reviews.

Jane:  And on January 8, Maya Banks posted on her Facebook page an apology letter to her readers, and she talked about how she knew that this was a book that a lot of readers were anxious for.  It was, I think, the last book in the Kelly Brothers series –

Sarah:  Right.

Jane:  The last brother she had, she was going to write about.  She felt a lot of pressure, and she felt terrible that her fans were let down, and what she said in the letter was, I understand, I hear you, and I hope you’ll give me another chance to meet your expectations.

Sarah:  Which, in my opinion, is something of a holy shit.

Jane:  Right, so she had 672 people like the post, 12 people shared it, and 451 people commenting, and everyone talking about you’re great, thank you so much, we’re totally here for you, and it was, you know, I don’t know, I think there’s a smaller subset of people who actually buy the book that interact or would even see the Facebook post…

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jane:  But I think it’s great that she came out and said it, although I think some people thought maybe she was only exacerbating, you know –

Sarah:  By acknowledging the bad reviews, she was only making the situation more obvious and worse?

Jane:  Right.  Right.  So –

Sarah:  It’s possible.

Jane:  But whatever, whatever was public, it seemed like it went over really well, and then Dahlia West, who wrote the motorcycle club book, and I think I talked about it a while back, ‘cause I enjoyed it, but I didn’t enjoy the second one, and she – Because the second one was such a huge change.  The first one was this kind of funny, sweet romance, and the second one was this hardcore BDSM kind of not total, what’s a total power exchange, but he, there was a scene in there in which the woman isn’t quite sure she’s into it, and she’s questioning, she kind of feels like it’s humiliating, what he wants to do, and he gets angry, and she says, well, I just, I just wonder if you all want is a pet.  And so he gets angry and treats her like one, so he has her crawl around on her hands and knees, eat out of a dog dish –

Sarah:  Oh, boy.

Jane:  – takes her outside –

Sarah:  You talked about this during a podcast, and how –

Jane:  – and then takes her outside, and she, to make, and makes her pee on the lawn.

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh.

Jane:  So, it was like –

Sarah:  And she wasn’t 100% into it, so it was extra-disturbing.

Jane:  I – And, because you’re not supposed to BDSM out of anger –

Sarah:  Right.

Jane:  – which I felt like he was doing, like, that was a real punishment, not a, not a –

Sarah:  Constructed punishment.

Jane:  – sexual punishment, like a scene, but like he was trying to – It was just really uncomfortable, and I felt really sick reading it, so she wrote on her blog that, you know, maybe she wasn’t ready to write that type of book.

Sarah:  Wow.

Jane:  And that kind of, not an apology like Maya Banks had written, but kind of an acknowledgement that –

Sarah:  I have heard what you have said, and I understand how you fell.

Jane:  Right, and that makes me feel like, okay, I’ll give you another chance because you’re, you’re not going to take me to scary places again.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And it’s not a response of, well, you just don’t understand my creative process.

Jane:  Right.

Sarah:  You just don’t understand what I was trying to do.

Jane:  Which is actually how Susan Fanetti came off, because Susan Fanetti wrote that book where – I talked about that on the podcast – where she chops off the head of one of the girls in the book, and then there’s all the young girl rape in the stories, and she wrote a post about how she’s a big feminist, and she’s exploring feminism through this, this paradigm.

Sarah:  It’s like the author version of I’m sorry if you were offended.  [Laughs]

Jane:  It was!  And she was trying to explain away, and she’s like, you know, so-and-so, the main character, Lily, people talk about why didn’t she do this or why wasn’t she more able to protect herself, and she’s like, well, she’s not, you know, an Avenger, and I thought, well, none of your male motorcycle club main characters get hurt.  Are they Avengers?

Sarah:  Right.

Jane:  They’re always able to – None of them are raped.  None of them get their heads cut off.

Sarah:  Nope.

Jane:  None of them are tortured, so –

Sarah:  Why is it okay they only do that to the female characters?

Jane:  Right.

Sarah:  Like, I don’t buy your, I don’t buy her answer.

Jane:  So, I felt like, if you juxtapose those three different opinions, you have Maya Banks on one extreme –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jane:  – who’s like, look, I failed you, I fucked up, give me another chance.

Sarah:  I’m sorry you were disappointed –

Jane:  Right.

Sarah:  – and I own it.

Jane:  And then there’s Dahlia West, who’s like, maybe I shouldn’t have gone there, I wasn’t ready yet.  And then there’s Susan Fanetti, who’s like, you just didn’t get it.

Sarah:  Yep.  Well, one of the things that I’ve been listening to while I walk the dog is a book by Brené Brown about vulnerability and how vulnerability is a way to make a connection with someone better than any other tactic.  If you can demonstrate empathy through connection, then you make a very lasting contact with someone on a personal level, so basically, Maya Banks’s vulnerability in saying, I have seen your reviews, and I understand how you feel, and I am sorry I failed you, and I’ll hope you’ll give me another chance, that’s a lot of vulnerability, especially for a very huge, bestselling author!  And I had, okay, I had so much respect for that post, because I thought there are so many other cases with, I’m sorry if you were offended, you just don’t understand, and screw you guys anyway.  Like, there’s, it’s a complete reversal. 

The other thing that I thought was extraordinary about Maya Banks’s post is that she didn’t, she didn’t throw anybody under the bus.  You know, when you publish a book in New York, the book goes through so many different people and departments.  Like, it’s the author’s name on the cover, but a buttload of people have a piece of involvement in how the book is made, how it looks, how it, how the story goes, what words are used, what the cover copy says.  All of that stuff is in the control of a lot of other people beside the author, and what Maya Banks did was not acknowledge anyone else except herself.  This is on me.  And she didn’t throw her publisher under the bus, she didn’t say, oh, well, my agent said this; it was all her.  I had such tremendous respect for that, because I’ve seen other people, in self-publishing and New York publishing, try to blame someone else.  And even if it’s true, it’s still, it’s still a unique response. 

It makes me think of the book, it was Navarro’s something, it was a Lore Leigh book about some guy named Navarro, and there was a scene missing, and it was a sex scene, so of course the Lore Leigh readers noticed that the scene was missing, because it went from them kissing and then jumped to them, like, putting their clothes back on.  [Laughs] If you’re going to leave something out, don’t make it the sex scene if you’re a Lora Leigh fan, because they’re going to notice that is missing.  You could, you could have eliminated a couple of fight scenes, no big deal, but you don’t take the sex scene out of a Lora Leigh book.  That makes people very sad, because that’s part of what her fan base is looking for, she writes incredibly creative sex, and the response from that, if I remember correctly, was pretty tepid.  It was sort of like, oh, yeah, there was a mistake, and it happened, and, you know, we’re going to put the extra scene.  No.

Jane:  She said she was going to put the extra scene up, but it took, like, a week, which told me –

Sarah:  That it hadn’t existed.  [Laughs]

Jane:  – it hadn’t existed!

Sarah:  I’ve got to write some sex!  [Laughs]

Jane:  ‘Cause, ‘cause if it had been, if you had, if it had just been missing, then wouldn’t you have been able to post it right away?

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jane:  But it, yeah, it took, like, at least a week or something for that to appear.

Sarah:  That’s hilarious.  I mean, one of the things that I see discussed in conferences a lot, and online, is should authors respond to reviews?  And in this case, she was responding to reviews, she did a great job.  And I’m not saying the only appropriate response is to say I’m sorry I failed you, give me another chance, but she responded in a really unique way.

Jane:  There was a self-published author who I think is picked up by a mainstream publisher, and she wrote this Facebook post, and I think it was in response to YA authors reading their – or middle-grade authors reading their reviews.  Did you see that video?

Sarah:  Yes!  Where all the middle-grade, they were all reading their, they were all reading their bad reviews.

Jane:  Right.  So –

Sarah:  Yes.  It’s performance.

Jane:  Right.  So, then, this indie author admitted that, like, every part of her books were based on some part of her family.  Like, her hero is based on her husband –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  – and another character is based on her best friend, and a kid in the book is based on her own kid, and then there was another character, like, based on her mother or something like that.  And so she has her family members kind of respond –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  – to the reviews, and I’m like, wow, I don’t think you should go there.

Sarah:  Ohhh.  How do you search Amazon reviews, ‘cause I want to show you a response that I saw.

Jane:  Well, you have to search the book.

Sarah:  Oh, I can’t remember the book, damn.  Wait, I bet I can find it.  Hang on, I’ll just use my computer.  I have a person who reads my site who’s a regular correspondent with me over email because she likes to tell me what she’s reading, and she’s a nun.

Jane:  Oh, right, I saw you –

Sarah:  Yeah, and she sent me the most upset, angry rant about a book that she just hated and was –

Jane:  What are the nun’s favorite books?

Sarah:  She has told me a couple times what she likes in terms of historicals and – I’d have to look through my email history to pull up the specific titles – but she likes to send me links and, you know, people send you links that are usually very spot on and relevant.  So pull up In Between Lies by Shawna Hill.  So, Sister Gloriamarie wrote me an email and pasted the description of the book and said, there are spelling errors in the description.  This is the author’s description of her novel, so I thought I should leave them in, because they should have warned me.  And then she went on to rant about how much this book made her angry because she found the writing dense and really poorly constructed with a limited understanding of how things like commas work, and she was really upset.  And, you know, when you’re really upset, it helps to send people an email and say, I’m really angry about this book!

Jane:  Right.

Sarah:  Because people have feelings like that about books all the time.  So, if you pull up In Between Lies by Shawna Hill, she posted her review to Amazon after she sent it to me.  She says, you know, I just thought I should warn other people, and the author responded.  So, yeah, there’s Gloriamarie, so she responds, and the author responds, and it’s, well, clearly you’re one of those people who likes to tear a book apart.

Jane:  Oh.

Sarah:  And clearly there’s something wrong with you, and people with issues such as yours (dislike of things and have an insatiable urge to tear them down) seem to think that by breaking others down at whatever cost is acceptable.  Just think about the things that you enjoy, have pride in, and maybe even create.  How would you feel if someone attempted to smash up, tear down, and destroy what you did?  You should really think about that before you write a review such as the one you wrote here.

Jane:  And then she writes at the end, thank you for your comments, and have a great day!

Sarah:  Yes, exactly!  And then, what I love is (a) Sister Gloriamarie says, what’s really sad about what you wrote is your inability to own up to your mistakes.  Perhaps you should hire me as an editor.  Because all of the things that she lines up in this review are all writing errors, comma errors, and description errors.  Like, she says something, in the book it says –

Jane:  Her comments to these negative reviews are so insulting.

Sarah:  Yes.  They’re very insulting.  So, one of the things that Gloriamarie brought up –

Jane:  I’m up-voting your review, Gloriamarie.  I’m saying it’s helpful.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Gloriamarie, we’re up-voting you, girl.  Fifthly, the author is verbose.  “Coming from a family that had a huge potential of being overweight…”  There were so many awkward sentences.  “The woman’s face was a rich cocoa brown in complexion and flawless.”  Wait, so the rest of her body was some other color?  What does that mean?  “She threw the cordless phone down and snatched off the black suede dress.”  How do you snatch off your clothing?  Is it, is it like the tearaway with the snaps on the side, you just rip it clear off?  [Laughs]

Jane:  You know, I actually watched a video on how to remove your T shirt.

Sarah:  Why, wait, what?  [Laughs] I just want you guys to know that Jane and I are actually together because we’re both at Digital Book World, so in between recording the podcast, we’ve been sitting here and just talking about things.  We’re not going to get much done today; it’s not going to be a very productive morning.  [Laughs]

Jane:  Right.  So this is how you –

Sarah:  Take off your shirt in a faster way.  Here’s a guy –

Jane:  There’s this guy, he’s snatching off his shirt.

Sarah:  Whoa!

Jane:  See?

Sarah:  He is, okay, okay, so how would you do that with a dress?

Jane:  I don’t know, but have you seen the shorts that make the dress?

Sarah:  Yes!  I love that.

Jane:  I would never wear that as a dress.

Sarah:  But it totally worked on that guy!

Jane:  [Laughs] Yes!

Sarah:  That was totally a new adult cover dress, too, the one-shoulder shorts pulled over?  The wrong basketball shorts with – that’s a new adult cover dress.

Jane:  So, we should –

Sarah:  All you have to do is put them in the rain.

Jane:  We should write Tousled 2, and we’ll have the short dress of the cover.

Sarah:  You could snatch it off!  [Laughs]

Jane:  It gets snatched off – we could have an animated cover –

Sarah:  Oh, God.  [Laughs]

Jane:  – you know, where she’s, like, taking off the one –

Sarah:  You mean, like an animated avatar on Twitter where it keeps making you twitch?  [Laughs]

Jane:  Well, you know, ‘cause Konrath says the next big thing is going to be animated covers.  Can you imagine, like, a whole screen of animated covers?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oh, God.  Imagine animated romance covers.  Oh, God!

Jane:  I want to see some thrusting.  That would be the –

Sarah:  I wish to see the pec pop of love.

[Laughter]

Jane:  The pec pop of love!

Sarah:  I wish to see The Rock’s pectorals doing a samba, one after the other, on the cover of a book.

Jane:  So, like, you have the step, you know, and for historicals, you’d have the flower on the front –

Sarah:  The floral and words.

Jane:  – and then you’d open it up, and then there’d be like coitus on the –

Sarah:  Bow-wow-wow-wow.  [Laughs]

Jane:  We could have a soundtrack.

Sarah:  Oh, God!  I think that that is our next, that’s our next big thing, that we’ll make lots and lots of money on animated romance covers.  [Giggles]

Jane:  I actually, I think that there is some sense of change that can be done for covers –

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Jane:  Like –

Sarah:  I’ve noticed a lot of changes in covers.

Jane:  But I think that retailers would be like, hell to the no, we’re not going to do animated covers, ‘cause that would be a terrible –

Sarah:  It’s terrible for their design.

Jane:  Right, because, like, even, so, when you go to shop at MYHABIT, which is the Amazon version of the discount high-end –

Sarah:  Right, it’s their Bluefly.

Jane:  Right.  Or Gilt, or whatever.

Sarah:  Right.

Jane:  So, when you go there, if you hover over the cover or over a thing, then the model will turn around.

Sarah:  Right.

Jane:  But when you first bring it up –

Sarah:  It doesn’t do that.

Jane:  – it doesn’t.  So, they’re going to have to figure out some way, if they want to have animated covers, that you bring up a still image, and then if you mouse over, you can see it do its –

Sarah:  [Porn music sounds]

Jane:  Right.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Wow.  So, what do you think?  Should an author respond to a review at all?  Is it really an individual, case-by-case basis?  My blanket answer is usually, don’t, because ass-hurt always shows.

Jane:  I think –

Sarah:  And there’s no ass-hurt in the Maya Banks response.  Like, there’s no level of ass-hurt that I can determine.

Jane:  No, I think that –

Sarah:  Seems genuine.

Jane:  – all you can say as an author is, thank you for giving my book a chance.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jane:  Or, thank you for reading; I appreciate your thoughts.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jane:  No matter what the review is, good or bad.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jane:  But I think it’s a mistake to in any way imply that the reader didn’t read it right.  Because the reader is the one who decides their own reading experience.

Sarah:  Yes.

Jane:  You can write the book, but what they take from it is what they take from it, and that’s as valid as the positive review.

Sarah:  I totally agree with you.

[music]

Sarah:  You guys, I have no idea what happened with the digital recorder when I was with Jane.  I’m not sure if it was picking up subway vibrations, because we were on a lower level, below street level, or if there was an HVAC fan that I didn’t see or hear until I played the tape, but I’m seriously really sorry for the weird background whiffle noises in the back there.

But before we go, we do have listener mail!  Yay!  This email is from Kathryn, who says:

Hello, Sarah and Jane!  I have got to say your last podcast about re-reading series was a lot of fun to listen to.  Sarah, I am with you on the Bridgerton series.  I inhaled that series when I first read it and can honestly say I don’t really remember what happens in more than half of them.  That being said, the only book in the Bridgerton series I can and have re-read numerous times is Romancing Mister Bridgerton, the fourth book in the series.  Out of all the siblings, I felt I really empathized and could understand Penelope and Colin’s relationship, as it was the most normal one in the series.  The whole idea of coming out, so to say, with your past secrets or your innermost secrets was the lost and relatable main theme of the series.

The one series that I can and have gone back and re-read in order is the Quinn Brothers quartet from Nora Roberts.  I don’t even notice the little bit of time travel your brain has to do to follow along with the series being set almost 20 years ago.

Cheers!

Kathryn 

Oh, the Quinn brothers.  That, seriously, that is, like, way up there with among my most favoritest Noras, especially the second one.  Isn’t it funny how you can re-read something that takes place way, way, way in the past, and you’re like, yeah, totally on board!  No worries!

I have another email response about re-reading as well.  This one is from Christine.

I just read your podcast – sounds silly, but true – from my newsletter, and I wanted to comment that Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series is definitely worthy of a re-read.  It holds up well and is just as interesting the second or third time around.  I think I’ve read the first three in the series at least three times, but they are so long that it requires a real dedication to the task.

Also, in a different genre, when A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson came out, book 14 in the Wheel of Time series started by Robert Jordan, I spent the previous year listening to all the books as audiobooks to catch up again – not enough time to re-read the whole thing at a thousand pages each.  I find audiobooks are a great way to re-read something, as it’s easy to listen to an audiobook while doing household chores, and I’m not always able to sit down with a book.

Christine, you’re totally right; I always listen to audiobooks when I’m walking my dogs or am cooking something that I don’t have to think about too much.  I have never read the Jordan series, and I haven’t read the Outlander series, but they are both books that, if you’re going to re-read them, that is some serious commitment.

This email is from Carrie , who says,

I have a recommendation.  I just re-read Before Jamaica Lane by Samantha Young, and it was awesome.  This is the third of the On Dublin Street series, which I love.  Each of the three are different tropes, all played to their full potential.  Book one, On Dublin Street, is a guarded, strong-willed girl worn down by a confident, strong-willed guy.  Book two, Down London Road, is proud but kind girl letting herself be helped by a nice guy.  Book three, Before Jamaica Lane, is friends-to-lovers fabulousness.  I hope you’ll read, if you haven’t read already, and sincerely hope you enjoy them as much as I did.  Full disclosure:  There are novellas in the series, but I haven’t really liked them.

Thank you, Carrie; that’s awesome!  I think Jane has read all of those, because, well, that’s exactly the kind of stuff she adores.  But I will give it a try!  Thank you!

And finally, this email is from Breanna, and she is responding to our podcast all about reviews – not this one, an earlier one.  Breanna writes:

I’m writing to you with a problem I have been encountering with reviews.  I started reading romance books about 18 months ago after reading one too many mystery romance books that resulted in a not-even-kind-of-happy ending and left me feeling really unsatisfied.  I now read almost nothing but romance.  I have often utilized Goodreads and its rating system as a method for finding books, though I also read a select few blogs, including Smart Bitches and Dear Author.  [S:  Thank you!]  My problem is that the rating system seems so skewed.  I typically only look at the number and the blurb of the book; reading reviews tends to reveal more about the book than I want to know, and also the tags that are used on Goodreads can give away the plot points. 

Similarly, when I read the blogs, I look just to the rating or the grade given.  I have for some time felt as though any book rated below 3.5 didn’t deserve to be read, and anything above a 4.15 must be fairly good.  More and more, though, especially with new releases, this has come to be a totally unreliable way of finding good books.  I have read books that were rated above 4.15 by the following authors, and they are truly terrible, with bad and/or simplistic writing, gross characters, not-interesting plot, and crappy dialogue, including Harper Sloan, Belle Aurora, Raine Miller, and Abbi Glines.  I’ve been trying to be much more discerning about my purchases since reading their books.  It’s my impression that books pre Fifty Shades of Grey might have more honest and thoughtful ratings, whereas there seems to be a lot of people reviewing books now who think that Book X is the OMG Best Book Ever when it’s not. 

So, my question is, what might be a good method for discerning whether a book is going to be interesting and compelling?  Do other readers have good methods or go-to sources that don’t lead them wrong?  I’m not too picky about genres or tropes, I just want to read a good story.

Also, I would like to add that I am a licensed social worker, and in regard to the conversation in podcast 73, I can say with certitude that I would never be okay with one of my clients being dragged into any nefarious activity or actively participating in it.

Thanks,

Breanna

Okay.  See?  I knew the social worker thing was wrong, and so did Jane.

As for figuring out reviews, part of the problem, I think, is that you are looking at books in a particular genre with a particular fan base that behaves in the way that you’ve identified.  That’s new adult.  New adult readers are extremely positive about the books they adore, and it can be very hard to figure out what you want to read when you’re looking for critical reviews that outline positives and negatives.  It may be that new adult is not the genre for you. 

The other thing is that all of Goodreads is not a good representation of an individual’s taste.  Your reading taste does not align with all of Goodreads.  The trick of Goodreads is finding out which reviewers like the same books that you like and for similar reasons, and then you follow them and see what they’re reading.  You don’t have to read all of their reviews, because like you said, the plot points and the major trope themes can be given away in the tags, but if you do a little bit of research and look at the books that you have adored and then find reviews that bring up the similar things that you liked and disliked, those are people whose tastes align with yours, and that is the most powerful recommendation engine that you can generate online.  It seems really uncool to refer to people reviewing books as an engine, but you know what I mean. 

There are people whose tastes are the exact opposite of mine, and they love everything I hate, so they come to the site and they read my reviews, and then if it’s a book I like, they steer clear of it, and if it’s a book I didn’t like, they’re like, I’m going to buy that now!  Once you’ve identified where someone’s reading tastes align with yours, you can use that person as a resource and see what they’ve discovered that they like that you might also like.  If you’re taste on books is aligned with Dear Author and with Smart Bitches and with a specific reviewer on either of those sites, those are the people who you should continue to follow, obviously.  You can find different reviewers are similarly aligned with yours on Goodreads.  The trick is to identify and follow them individually and not look at the cumulative review for a book. 

I’ve said on the site before that I like it when the Goodreads reviews are flipping me off.  I like a higher number of threes and fours than fives and ones, and a review where one person says, this is the greatest thing ever, and then the next person says, oh, my God, I hated this, also makes me really curious, because I want to figure out where I fall in that lineup.  But the best I can give you is to identify the people in Goodreads who are reading books that you like and liking them for the same reasons and then looking to see what they do.  I hope that’s helpful.

If you want to email us and ask us for specific recommendations, and this goes for pretty much anybody, email us and let us know what romances you’ve adored and what you’re looking to read, and we can probably come up with a couple recommendations of new or older books that might appeal to you.  But I hope that that was helpful.

[music]

Sarah:  And that’s all for this week’s podcast.  I hope you enjoyed it, and again, I really apologize for that weird background noise.  I don’t know what that was, but we won’t record in the basement of a hotel again, I can promise you!

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the Peatbog Faeries, and this is called “Ascent of Conival” and it’s from their album Dust.  I’ll have links in the podcast entry as to where you can find the song or the whole album, because everyone needs more Peatbog in their life; I think that’s just a general rule.

Our sponsor Penguin InterMix would like you to know about Erin McCarthy’s Believe.  In bestselling author Erin McCarthy’s newest romantic story, Believe, Phoenix is only two days out of jail when he meets Robin, a party girl with her own secret past.  When the past collides with the present, who will find peace, and who will be hurt?  Don’t miss the newest eBook from Erin McCarthy, Believe, available January 21 wherever books are sold online.

And you know what else is awesome?  Sending us email.  If you have ideas or want to respond to something we’ve said, or you’d like to tell us that we’re wrong about something, you can totally do that!  Our email is SBJPodcast@gmail.com.  That’s S for Sarah, B for Bitches, J for Jane, podcast at gmail dot com.  You can also call and leave us a message at our Google voice number 1-201-371-DBSA.  Please don’t forget to give us your name and where you’re calling from so we can include your message in an upcoming podcast.  And speaking of, someone totally left us a message, and I’m really excited about it!  Yay!

Thank you again for listening to the podcast, and wherever you are, Jane and I wish you the very best of reading.

[awesome music]