Podcast Transcript 94: An Interview with Kate Noble and Kate Rorick

Here is a text transcript of DBSA 95. An Interview with Kate Noble and Kate Rorick. You can listen to the mp3 here, or you can read on! 

This podcast transcript was meticulously built using locally sourced ingredients by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.

 Here are the books we discuss:

Book Pride and Prejudice Book The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet Book The Librarian - Quest for the Spear DVD

Book Law & Order Criminal Intent Book Compromised Book The Summer of You

Book The Game and the Governess Book Please Ignore Vera Dietz Book Lady Windermere's Lover

Book Eleanor & Park Book Fangirl Book Yesterday's News

 

The show Kate is currently writing for is The Librarians, and you can read more about it at TVLine.

We also talk about the current retelling of Emma, called Emma Approved.


[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to another DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and this is podcast number 95! – Woohoo! – An interview with Kate Noble and Kate Rorick, who are conveniently the same person. Kate Noble has a book coming out later this summer called The Game and the Governess, and Kate Rorick has a book coming out called The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, which is connected to the transmedia Lizzie Bennet Diaries that were online last year.

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this.

And our podcast sponsor would like you to know about One Night with a Quarterback by Jeanette Murray. This hot title is available for download June 17th, so go find it, and thank you to InterMix for sponsoring the podcast.

One last thing: I have a request for listeners. I need some help to help compile a podcast, so make sure to listen to the outro after we do the interview.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kate, and now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Kate Noble/Rorick: Why is there no video? Is this just an audio call?

Sarah: Yeah, it’s just audio. I don’t, I don’t subject you to video. I hope you didn’t, like, get up and put on mascara.

Kate: Oh, no, but I did clean my kitchen, which is behind me.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Well, I’m really sorry I put you through that for no reason! I’m sorry!

Kate: It’s okay. [Laughs]

Sarah: Hey, your kitchen looks great, you can –

Kate: Oh, thanks, I appreciate that!

Sarah: You can blame me. [Laughs] I have a whole list of stuff that I want to ask you about.

Kate: I’m having a very strange summer, in the, so much that I’ve got two books coming out that are written under two different names that are a month apart in release dates, so I’m –

Sarah: Oh, no pressure.

Kate: No pressure whatsoever.

Sarah: So which one’s first, Lizzie Bennet or –

Kate: Lizzie Bennet’s coming out June 24th, and The Game and the Governess is coming out July 22.

Sarah: I love this crap with publishers where the ARC that I have is dated August 2014, and yet I happen to know that July, what did you say, 24th?

Kate: 20, 22nd.

Sarah: Yeah, July 22nd is, is, is in July.

Kate: It’s, I know, it’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: I don’t understand that either, and the Lizzie Bennet book counts as a July book, and I’m just like, okay, sure, why not.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: You guys have fun.

Sarah: And the thing that makes it difficult for me is that I like to talk about books and talk about different things that are happening right around the time that they are on sale, not because I have, like, this, you know, burning urge to talk about everything that’s brand new, but people get really pissed off if I talk about something that’s on sale that isn’t, or excuse me, that I like that isn’t on sale yet, ‘cause my whole reason for being, in, in part, is to enable people’s poor impulse control. Like, that’s part of the whole –

Kate: Yeah –

Sarah: – purpose for –

Kate: – do you like, oh, this is here now. Go link to it, bam, you have it immediately.

Sarah: Clickety-click-buy!

Kate: Exactly!

Sarah: And I am just as susceptible, so if I’m like, oh, this is available in July and then I look and it’s August, I’m like, you know, publishing, you’re making me, making me look stupid here.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So let’s start with the Lizzie Bennet diary, or excuse me, The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet. This is a parallel diary to the web series, right?

Kate: Yes, exactly.

Sarah: She remembers a lot of dialogue. I’m really impressed with her.

Kate: You know, she forgets nothing.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: She has, she has, like, an eidetic memory. Um, no.

Sarah: And scripts, too.

Kate: Yeah, well, scripts are helpful. She remembers a lot of dialogue, but it’s also very, very clearly that that’s what happened.

Sarah: So when did the, when did the opportunity to write a book come? Is it, was it during the series? Was this always planned, or was this sort of like, hey, this would be great! Let’s do this too?

Kate: Well, it wasn’t always planned. We did the series, which was, like, a, a lot of fun, and just an amazing amount of, of people responded to it, and we’re still kind of thunderstruck that so many people liked it so much. And after that was done, we talked a little bit about, you know, maybe we can turn this into a book, maybe we can see, explore what would happen thereafter, and someone at Simon & Schuster Touchstone, when we got to talking to about it, like, we really like this idea. We really love the series, we really want to be able to capitalize on the, the story that you’ve told, because it’s great, and we’d love to see, like, what happened behind the scenes. And that’s sort of how it came about, more or less.

Sarah: But it’s not, it’s not behind the scenes of the actual development of the show, it’s, it’s behind the scenes –

Kate: No.

Sarah: – of the character.

Kate: Exactly, because there’s a lot –

Sarah: So it’s like one more layer.

Kate: There’s a lot that didn’t happen on screen, and this is, is a huge transmedia project so that there are layers already built in.

Sarah: Of course.

Kate: There was, you know, layers of video, layers of Twitter, layers of social interaction in media and photographs and stories told in different ways. This is just almost another layer to the transmedia.

Sarah: And another way to have the, the story in convenient portable format –

Kate: Exactly.

Sarah: – when you’re not online.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: ‘Cause, you know, people do like their convenient portable format versions of Pride and Prejudice. There are many of those.

Kate: I’m aware.

Sarah: Yeah. [Laughs]

Kate: I, I’ve seen many of these convenient portable versions. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, those book things. They’re just, they’re just going to be the wave of the future, I tell you.

Kate: I, you know, I think so. I think that they got a, I think they’ve got a good track record.

Sarah: So you said that you were really surprised by the response. That was actually one of my questions. I remember seeing you at a book signing, and I never remember which book signings are which, because they’re always in a beige ballroom.

Kate: Yes.

Sarah: Like, every book signing is in a beige room. So you were in a beige room, and I said hello to you –

Kate: [Laughs] Hello.

Sarah: – and you gave me one of your business cards for the Lizzie Bennet project, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and I was like, oh, that’s cool! And then a couple months later, everyone in my Twitter stream was screaming about it! And I was like, wait, really? This is so cool! It came, it became huge.

Kate: It was like, I joined the project, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries project in their fourth month, I believe.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: We, we divided the production up into months, essentially –

Sarah: Right.

Kate: – so we would shoot ep-, eight episodes at a time, so you would get a month’s worth of content done at a time. They only, when they first started, they only had financing to do, like, the first three months, and they were like, and if, and if that’s all they got to do, that’s all they got to do, essentially.

Sarah: Right.

Kate: It built up enough steam that they managed to eke out a fourth month and a fifth month, and I came onto the writing staff on episode 35, where they just got back from Netherfield, so they were already sort of slightly building steam when I came on, so I wasn’t there for the first couple of months. They were just all like, nope, we’re going to, we’re going to see how many people we can reach, because people seem to like this story.

Sarah: Yeah, you know.

[Laughter]

Sarah: People, people don’t get tired of it, either.

Kate: Well, I, I mean, it’s 200 years old, so how can –

Sarah: Right! I mean, it’s like –

Kate: – you possibly get tired of it?

Sarah: That’s a whole bunch of generations who are not getting tired of this story. If you think of the, the number of different iterations, the number of visual versions, the number of written versions, the spin-offs, multiple sisters, zombies –

Kate: vampire hunters [Laughs]

Sarah: – assorted crime fighters, vampires. I mean, there’s so many different versions of the book.

Kate: Death Comes to Pemberley.

Sarah: Totally! Why the hell not?

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: A social media aspect in a whole transmedia – I honestly didn’t get it until I saw this. Now that I understand how it works, I understand it in process. Did you have to explain to a lot of people what transmedia was?

Kate: Yes, but more than that, I had to have it explained to me first.

[Laughter]

Kate: The person who explained it to me is Jay Bushman, who is the transmedia editor on our show –

Sarah: Right.

Kate: – and he was, like, instrumental and would be like, no, we can tell this part of this story over here. It’s going to be on Twitter, and it’s going to be added content, and we’ll, we’ll start with one layer, and then we’ll build down to the Lydia layer, and if you want to go further down, you can go down to the Gigi layer –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: – and it’s just like, oh, okay! That’s, that’s a lot of stuff.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: When do, when do you sleep?

[Laughter]

Sarah: How big was the white board in his office?

Kate: I, I would imagine it was quite, quite large.

[Laughter]

Sarah: The funny thing about this particular project is that, much like romance, we know what’s going to happen in the very, very end –

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – like, we know the major plot points that are going to be hit, but even if you know it’s coming, the way in which this project in particular was developed made it really enticing to keep after the next part, even though you knew what was going to happen.

Kate: The old story translates very well to modern audiences, as evidenced by the fact that people are still reading this 200-year-old book, but also that it’s, there’s something universal about Elizabeth Bennet, or Lizzie Bennet in our version. She’s very smart, and she’s also incredibly judgmental. She figures out how to be herself, essentially, and how to, to make up for her judgmentalness.

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: And in our version it’s just, it, the fact that she talks to the audience, more or less, is, sort of invites them into her world.

Sarah: Absolutely. When you were working on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries –

Kate: Okay.

Sarah: – one of the things that I found so interesting about the response to it was that different people, including a lot of different writers and people who would cover television in recap format, were following this very closely and didn’t like some of the decisions that you made, particularly with Lydia. Did you notice any of that feedback? Did you watch it, or were you kind of like, I can’t look at this because I’m working on this part over here?

Kate: Well, a little bit. I mean, because we do shoot ahead. It’s not like what we, what aired yesterday we had filmed the day before. No, what aired yesterday had filmed a month and a half before. We knew with Lydia that it was going to be very controversial, but the fact of the matter is, is that Lydia had been done so well, had been drawn into such a really strong character by, mostly by Rachel Kiley, who was the writer who was responsible for the vast majority of the Lydia storyline, and by Mary Kate, the actress who plays her –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: – that you have to, you have to let them go all the way down the ride, essentially.

Sarah: Right.

Kate: And I think that we, we serviced the story in the best way possible for them.

Sarah: So what parts were you in charge of? If she was in charge of Lydia, did you have particular characters or scenes, or were there elements that you were in charge of for this one?

Kate: I ended up doing a lot of Darcy.

Sarah: Oh, that just sucks, man!

Kate: [Laughs] No, I, yeah, I came on, and they were like, oh, you’re the romance novelist! So!

Sarah: Here, have a shirtless man.

[Laughter]

Kate: No, Darcy was never shirtless. Here, have a torso from the neck down.

Sarah: Yeah. [Laughs]

Kate: But, yeah, I, I ended up doing a lot of the building of their romance, which worked out great for me. I was fine with it; I was like, yes, this is catnip. I can handle every single moment of this. Let’s have Darcy in an afro wig; it’ll be great!

[Laughter]

Kate: Yeah, and that, that was really sort of where I was, I, I ended up, I guess. But everybody sort of, you know, on our writing staff had – We, we factioned off very well because there were things that – Margaret Dunlap, our co-executive producer, was really strong on the Charlotte stuff –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: – and their friendship, so that sort of naturally gravitated. She, she naturally gravitated to that. Jay Bushman, again, transmedia editor, very keen on the Gigi storyline, so he gravitated towards that.

Sarah: Right.

Kate: We just all sort of, like, we didn’t pick and choose, and obviously we could write whatever. We naturally gravitated to certain storylines.

Sarah: That’s very cool. What about Emma Approved? How are you involved in that? You’re now a producer of that one, right?

Kate: Actually, I am no longer on Emma Approved.

Sarah: Oh, bummer! I didn’t know that.

Kate: Well, that’s ‘cause I got a job in TV. [Laughs]

Sarah: Ah, man, you know, television, just screwing everything up! What did you do?

Kate: I got a job on a show called The Librarians, which will be on TNT on the fall.

Sarah: Oh, please tell me all about this, because you said “librarians,” and my internal plot prairie dog just stuck his head out of the ground and said, what?

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: Tell me more!

Kate: Well, there was a series of movies starring Noah Wyle called The Librarian and Quest for the Spear and the Judas Chalice over the course of the past decade, and they decided to turn that into a television series, so it’s a lot of chasing magical objects and artifacts. It’s a whole lot of fun. It’s, it’s, it’s sort of the fun episodes of The X-Files meets Doctor Who meets any show on the CW. [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay, so, people will be listening to this podcast, and right as you just said those three things, many, many people will be screaming, when is this coming on?

Kate: It is coming on the air, I believe it airs the first Sunday in December.

Sarah: [Gasps] Oh, my God, it’s so long to wait. Aah! This is so exciting!

Kate: That’s, that’s television production! It takes forever! [Laughs]

Sarah: Damn, TV! Get on the Internet! Don’t you know how that works?

Kate: But I was involved on Emma Approved for the first five months of its, of its, of its existence, so I, I, I was there for a little while, but unfortunately, getting a job on TV meant that I was exclusive to their media rights. You know, I, I couldn’t write for something else as well.

Sarah: Oh, television, you’re so silly. Don’t you understand? So are you, are you enjoying working on The Librarians? What it, what type, what sorts of things are you doing?

Kate: Very, very much. I actually just a couple weeks ago got back from Portland where we were, I was filming my first episode that I wrote for them.

Sarah: Holy crap, that’s cool!

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: So you’ve written scripts before, though. You wrote –

Kate: Oh, yeah!

Sarah: – you wrote for Law & Order

Kate: Criminal Intent.

Sarah: I was going to say, it’s not Law & Order: Someone Got Raped, it’s Criminal Intent.

Kate: It’s Law & Order: Vincent D’Onofrio Leans Over.

Sarah: Yes, that’s it, thank you. First of all, it is amazing to me how is there, how there is now almost two to three generations of people, because I know that my, even my husband’s great-grandmother, when you hear the Law & Order noise, people just sort of freeze and go, what?

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: Duh-duh, what? Like, it’s, it’s, it’s almost –

Kate: They should just install that in court rooms.

Sarah: Shouldn’t they? [Laughs]

Kate: Something like a bell that they put on so that they can, so that it’s like, everybody come to order.

Sarah: Duh-duh! What, uh, Law & Order’s on. Got to stop. And –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – and I, I should make that my husband’s ringtone, ‘cause he would be like, what? You’ve got to stop that. Every time it happens I turn around. So you used to write for Criminal Intent.

Kate: Yes.

Sarah: What other television shows have you written for?

Kate: I went to college for television, to, to work in television and film, and when I graduated, I got the first job that I could, which I was a production assistant on a Woody Allen movie.

Sarah: Whoooaaaa!

Kate: I’ll give you my entire resume.

Sarah: Yeah! Oh, my goodness.

Kate: It was The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and it’s, you know, it’s the one before Small Time Crooks, so no one ever actually saw it. After that, I ended up being a P.A. on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Sarah: Production assistant is kind of like editorial assistant. You work 90-hour days, and you get paid about $17,000.00, right?

Kate: Yeah, something like that.

Sarah: That’s, they’re equivalent, okay.

Kate: But they, they do feed you, which is, you know, it cuts into your, to your salary, so, as long as you –

Sarah: Oh, yes.

Kate: – all the time is spent, is at work, then you don’t actually have to buy anything in the real world.

Sarah: Yes.

Kate: I was a P.A. there for their first 13 episodes, and then we, we broke to see if we were going to get another, what’s called a back nine?

Sarah: Right.

Kate: Because the standard television series on network television – It’s not so much anymore, but, you know, a decade ago – was – God, it was a decade ago [laughs] – is, is 22 episodes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: So what they’ll do, is they’ll order 13 up front, and if it’s going well, they’ll order a full season; they’ll order a back nine. We broke, we waited to see if we were going to get that back nine, and while we were doing that, I went and I became a writer’s assistant on a puppet show called Bear in the Big Blue House. [Laughs] It’s a children show very well known for its potty training episode. There was about, after Bear in the Big Blue House, there was about a year there where things got a little havey-cavey, so I ended up working at a commercial house that was specialized in making Olive Garden commercials. You know, you can get really, really tired of seeing Olive Garden commercials. I don’t know if you realize that. [Laughs]

Sarah: I only see them, like, once every third day, and I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Kate: And while I was there, I actually started working on Compromised, what was my first book.

Sarah: Ah!

Kate: And that’s because I, with being paid even less than I was being paid as a P.A. on a television show.

[Laughter]

Kate: And I was –

Sarah: That’s not good!

Kate: I was about to go crazy, and writing a book was, it, it was cheap. [Laughs] It, it was actually free, and it kept me, you know, from spending myself into debt, because it was like, oh, I can, I can, instead of going to the movies, I can spend the next three hours typing. So, that’s –

Sarah: And tell myself a story that I like better anyway.

Kate: Exactly!

Sarah: So what led you to reading, writing romance?

Kate: I’d always been, I’d been reading romance since I was 13 or so, and I actually, I did a HaBO with you from, looking for my first romance novel, and I found it! Thank God!

Sarah: Hey, I’m telling you, the, the Bitchery knows everything. It’s kind of scary.

Kate: They do!

Sarah: It’s freaky!

Kate: And I was kind of amazed that they were able to, like, just, like, search and find it.

Sarah: Oh, it’s ba-da-da-da-da-da and ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom, and we’ve got it. I have, I have a HaBO going up this week, and it’s about, it’s a contemporary romance where the heroine is a lingerie model who has an ulcer, and she gets kidnapped, and she has to go whitewater rafting, and she’s worried about losing her bottle of Maalox, and I am not making any of those things up.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: And I am so excited, because I have –

Kate: I have, I, I kind of want to read that now.

Sarah: I know! Me too! I am like, please, God, someone, let someone please identify this book, ‘cause it sounds amazing! [Laughs] So you wrote Compromised because it was free entertainment.

Kate: ‘Cause I, ‘cause it was free entertainment for me, mostly –

Sarah: Of course.

Kate: – and I kind of wanted to see if I could.

Sarah: Well, you know, it’s not like it’s hard. You know –

Kate: Well, no, it’s nice.

Sarah: – everyone, anyone can do it. [Laughs] It’s like getting into television: anyone can do it.

Kate: Exactly. [Laughs] When I finished Compromised and I was actually done with the Olive Garden job, I –

Sarah: Do you ever eat there?

Kate: I was living in New York City at the time, and there’s not a lot of Olive Gardens, and –

Sarah: No, there’s one in Times Square, and you should not go near it.

Kate: No, yeah, you shouldn’t go to any restaurant in Times Square. But now I live in Los Angeles and, also, not a lot of Olive Gardens! .

Sarah: So convenient.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So then you, how, how soon after you wrote Compromised did you get your book deal?

Kate: It took me about a year to finish Compromised, and it took me about another year to figure out how to get an agent.

Sarah: Right.

Kate: And this is me, like, tentatively dipping my toes in the water of, what, what is this RWA thing?

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: Oh, they have a conference in New Jersey. Oh, they have chapter contests, and maybe I can send in my chapters and get back a lot of feedback that was really, really harsh –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: – but actually helped quite a bit. If nothing else, taught me how to take criticism.

Sarah: You don’t say.

Kate: Yes.

[Laughter]

Kate: So it took me about another year to get an agent, and then it took that agent probably six months to sell the book. Once, once we got on a, on a, on a rhythm with each other.

Sarah: Right. And now you’ve written, is it eight? nine?

Kate: The Game and the Governess coming out July 22nd

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: – is the –

Sarah: Which is August, I know.

Kate: – is the seventh historical, full historical romance. I have a couple of novellas and –

Sarah: Always count the novellas; they totally count.

Kate: Okay.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s my rule.

Kate: And the Lizzie Bennet book is eight, I guess.

Sarah: Nice! Well done!

Kate: Yeah! Well, I mean, I’m, by necessity, because I, I write for my day job as well as my night job, I only have so much bandwidth, and I’m, unfortunately, that makes me a book-a-year author, as opposed to a two-or-three-book-a-year author.

Sarah: It is hard to be a book-a-year author right now –

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – but – as you know, I’m a big fan of your books, and I, and I, I have many that I have happy-sighed over, and they permanently live on my digital reader, and I’ve told you this, and it was –

Kate: Ahh.

Sarah: – really an embarrassing moment of squee on my part, so I apologize, but it –

Kate: That’s fine.

Sarah: I think being a book-a-year author when you write a book that is really, really good and is going to have a very long, it’s going to have longevity in terms of being able to be recommended. It’s not – historical doesn’t go away. It comes, becomes popular, and it becomes less popular, but there’s still people who go, ooh, historical? Yes, please.

Kate: Yes, historical is the bread and butter of the romance industry –

Sarah: Yes.

Kate: – it’s always going to be there. It may not always be the one thing you reach for, but it’s, it’s –

Sarah: It’s perennial.

Kate: Yes. It’s always going to be there.

Sarah: I love how, I, and I happen to love historicals. One of the things that I, I’ve really liked about your historicals is that you mix a bunch of different very familiar things in a new way, so you have heroines who are very popular in society, only they have to leave society and go be in the country, which is somewhere they don’t want to be.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: And in, in, in a hot summer that turned out to have been, what was it, the coldest year ever? [Laughs]

Kate: I, I, yeah, that was one really bad – you’re talking about The Summer of You, which –

Sarah: Yes.

Kate: – I set in 1816 because it followed directly from the events of the previous book, Revealed, so I was kind of locked into that timeline, but it turned out 1816 was the coldest year on record because of an Indonesian volcano. It’s called The Year Without Summer.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, oops.

Kate: And I’m kind of like, you know, I’m just going to have to let that one go.

Sarah: Yep, you’ve just got to let it go. Historical fantasy, just for a little while.

Kate: Yes.

Sarah: Just pretend it’s –

Kate: This is one, one little pocket of heat in England.

Sarah: Yeah, just pretend, pretend you were the precursor to steampunk.

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: Without the punk part, just the steam. It was hot right there.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: Just where the heroine was was very steamy. That’s all you need to know. [Laughs] So you started writing this series that doesn’t have to be read in order featuring a bunch of interlocking characters, some of whom are related to each other and some of whom are not, and they –

Kate: I –

Sarah: – they take all the expected things and then they relocate them, so if we have a, a society person, she’s going to be in the country. If we have someone who is a widow, she’s going to be reinvented during an entirely different season years after her original one. Or you’re just going to send her to Venice, like you do.

Kate: Well, I, why not. That is mostly because I have a very short attention span. I would get very, very bored if I was writing, because most, again, I started writing books to entertain myself. If I was writing a book set in London after a book set in London after a book set in London after a book set in London –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: – I would be like, I’m, I’ve been here.

[Laughter]

Kate: That was half the reason that I have sent people to the country, on a road trip across the German countryside, and to Venice, and also, the Regency world is much larger than, than England.

Sarah: Nuh-uh! For real?

Kate: For real! There was stuff going on elsewhere!

Sarah: Wait, you mean there were countries other than England?

Kate: I, I was shocked when I found that out too.

Sarah: Wow. I’m amazed. So what are some of the things that you’ve learned researching the period of the Regency outside of England?

Kate: Albrecht Dürer had hit his, the zenith of, of his popularity 300 years after his death in the early 1800s, which worked well for me. Albrecht Dürer, the, the German Renaissance artist –

Sarah: Venice!

Kate: – was actually part of Austria back in the day because of the Napoleonic Wars and was completely financially insolvent and had, had essentially wasted itself, because it was a port town, and then ports opened up elsewhere, and it’s like, well, to keep our, you know, our finances in shape, we’re going to make this a party town!

[Laughter]

Kate: And then –

Sarah: So they just became like Daytona.

Kate: Yeah, essentially, and then the Napoleonic Wars happened, and Napoleon invaded, there was, you know, and it got broken up and put into part of the, the Austrian-Lombardy empire or something like that, and –

Sarah: Of course.

Kate: – it’s like, and, well, you guys can’t party anymore, so they had no money, so what did they do? [Laughs] They essentially, they, that was, like, the beginning of the decline of Venice was the Napoleonic Wars. So –

Sarah: That’s really interesting.

Kate: So that’s, that’s, like, the broad history, I guess, I learned.

Sarah: Wow.

Kate: There will be several historical, you know, connoisseurs out there who are listening to this podcast and are going to be like, that’s not right!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: What is she talking about? [Laughs]

Sarah: So now you have The Game and the Governess, which is a new series, not related to your previous characters.

Kate: No, we are breaking free. We are doing something new.

Sarah: And where are they, in Regency Finland?

Kate: [Laughs] No, they are, well, they’re in Regency country –

Sarah: Sweet!

Kate: – at least the first one is. The, it takes place in a small town in Leicestershire called Hollyhock, which is based on a small town called – I’m going to get this name so wrong – Ashby de la Zouch.

Sarah: Whoa! How come you didn’t use that in the book? [Laughs]

Kate: ‘Cause I needed, I needed to make the name fictitious because I needed the town to be fictitious so I could, you know, mess with history. ‘Cause I have morals like that, I guess.

Sarah: Morals, God! All right, fine.

Kate: Again, I, I was burned when I made, you know, 1816 a really, really hot summer, because –

Sarah: And a lot of readers would be like, dude, dude.

Kate: No, I, I caught it before any of the readers did and just, like, I’m going to apologize for this on my website really quickly.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So having done television where you have to either follow legal procedures or –

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – work with a very well-known 200-year-old piece of literature that zillions of people have either watched or read, you’re saying that you’re attentive to detail.

Kate: I try to be. I –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: – I’m attentive to detail until the detail, tail gets in my way, and then I’m like, screw it.

Sarah: Yeah, screw heat. We’re going to, we’re going to go for cold now. [Laughs] It’s awesome! So in The Game and the Governess, the hero –

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – is a lord with exceptional luck who switches place with his friend and secretary who is not a lord.

Kate: No. He is, well, most secretaries weren’t.

Sarah: No, of course.

Kate: Yes, he switches places with his friend who, they, they met during, during the wars, obviously, and they became very good friends, and then he hired his friend. I don’t know about you, but hiring your friends can be a very tricky proposition.

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: There’s a lot of resentment that built between, on, on the secretary’s side more than on the lord’s side, because the lord was pretty much oblivious to all of this, because he’s a pretty oblivious guy.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: Because if you’re lucky, what do you have to worry about?

Sarah: Right, you’re a lord. Oblivion comes with the package.

Kate: [Laughs] So on a bet, they switch places for two weeks to see if Ned, Lucky Ned, the Earl of Ashby, would be able to woo a lady into loving him in, in a two-week period of time, without the benefit of his title.

Sarah: Oooh.

Kate: Needless to say, things go awry.

Sarah: Nothing goes according to plan in a romance novel, especially when bets are involved.

Kate: I know.

Sarah: So is next going to be John Turner’s story?

Kate: Yes, next is John Turner’s story.

Sarah: [Whispers] Sweet.

Kate: But I was actually, like, working on it while, when you called me, so –

Sarah: Oooh! Awesome. I hope I didn’t inter-, interrupt poor John’s sexytimes.

Kate: Oh, no, no, John, John, John doesn’t have any luck at all.

Sarah: Aww!

Kate: Getting to the sexytimes is very, very difficult.

Sarah: Aw, poor John.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: So was it, was it cool to go back into your own Regency, as opposed to Jane Austen’s Regency?

Kate: Very much. I mean, I was very pleased to be able to just be like, all right, these are all my characters. These are all my people. I, I get to control every single movement, because when you work in television, it’s a very collaborative experience. It’s, what you –

Sarah: We, we have a writing team; it’s not like in, in, for example, in England, when there’s one guy who writes all the episodes.

Kate: Not only that; what you’re writing is not intended to be the final product.

Sarah: Right.

Kate: What’s intended to be the final product is the, the show itself, so what you’re writing is essentially a document to be interpreted by the art department, the props department, the locations department, to, so that they can figure out what they need to do to bring this to life, so your words are not particularly precious.

Sarah: Right.

Kate: If I write a scene where a guy walks down a hallway, that has to be a very, very important scene, or else you will get a phone call saying, do we really need this scene where the guy walks down the hallway, because if we do it, it’s going to take us two hours to shoot, we’re going to have to move the trucks –

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: – we’re going to have to set dress it, and there’s nothing actually that happens in this scene that’s pertinent to the whole plot, so you could be –

Sarah: So your hallway is a pain in the ass –

Kate: Essentially.

Sarah: – and your hallway needs to go.

[Laughter]

Kate: I’ll tell you, I, in this – I’m going to try to do it without giving away too many plot points – in this past script that I just wrote that I was up in Portland shooting, I wrote that somebody, one character, when we meet them, they are covered in goo. [Laughs] Okay?

Sarah: Which is always good.

Kate: I, I would, I just wrote it very quickly to be like, this is a very nice detail that’s going to help sell what happened to this character. We had four meetings about the goo. It was all –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: It was like, okay, so should it be clear, should it be green, what – and it’s like, oh, my God, if I had known –

Sarah: [Laughs] Is it, are we talking, like, you can’t do that on television goo or are we talking like, Ghostbusters goo?

Kate: Exactly! That’s exactly what they’re getting into.

Sarah: Is somebody going to feel so funky? Like, what, what – and you know there was somebody in an office somewhere in Hollywood going, y’all, Kate wrote goo, and somebody else went, ah, man.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: God damn it, goo? Goo is a pain, man! Let’s just put him in a hallway instead.

Kate: No, actually, what, the, the sign of a, of a really good props department or locations department or whatever is you see something like that and be like, oh, cool!

Sarah: Yes!

Kate: Let’s see what we can do!

Sarah: [Laughs] I have a friend who works, she’s actually the mom of one of my sons’ pre-school friends, and she works in props and set dressing for major television shows, and the one that she most recently worked on was Nashville

Kate: Okay.

Sarah: – and so she used to tell the most amazing stories of sourcing things for, like, they’re going to the Grammys or, you know, they’re, they’re in an awards show, or they’re at a diner or at a club, and she would have to talk about how she sources not just one of a thing but, like, a whole bunch of tables full of the same thing, because there has to be a huge room full of people for this scene. It was so cool. But then she planned her whole wedding by telling people that it wasn’t a wedding, that it was a, it was a photo shoot, so she got everything, like, at cost.

Kate: [Laughs] She got everything for free.

Sarah: Yes, exactly! It was awesome!

Kate: Now, that’s, that’s, that’s exactly how you should do it. Having, having planned a wedding in the past, yes, that’s exactly how you should do it.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a photo shoot, yeah. It’s just, it’s a photo shoot. Here, yeah, sure, here, have a cake.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: Enjoy! [Laughs] Now that you are working in television with TNT –

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and then you have this book in, do you have, the Lizzie Bennet diaries, which is June/July, and then The Game and the Governess in July/August, are you going to take a really, really long nap from, like, September to November?

Kate: I wish I could, but –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: – I, I – you don’t know this – I am eight and a half months pregnant.

Sarah: You are?!

Kate: Yeah, so –

Sarah: Oh, congratulations!

Kate: Thanks! So, I’m actually going to have a baby in between the release of both books.

Sarah: Girl, what the hell! [Laughs] Like, you, oh, my God!

Kate: I am never going to sleep again.

Sarah: Nope, sure not. I regret to inform you, no. Actually, my, my most useful piece of advice that I ever received when I had my older son was that the first three months are baby boot camp. You are more tired than you have ever been. You are not in control of anything. You follow a very small being’s schedule, and they do things in three-hour increments, and this whole sleep when the baby sleeps thing is who, or hooey. Total hooey, ‘cause you know what you need to do when the baby sleeps? You need to pee and do laundry and possibly eat something that’s still hot when it’s ready and that you don’t have to go do something in the interim. But then after the three months of baby boot camp are over, you think, I totally got this. I understand! And then that’s when the little person sort of wakes up and goes, oh, you’re totally there? This is awesome! Let’s hang out! And it becomes completely awesome. The first three months are hard, but you can totally get through it.

Kate: Okay. Actually, I was talking to Sarah MacLean the other day, and she’s like, yeah, the first six weeks are SEAL training, so –

Sarah: Pretty much, yes. Baby boot camp, that’s what I call it. Baby boot camp.

Kate: Yep. So I’m, I’m prepared for that, but I’m also kind of like, but, but really, I just, when do I, I can write when he’s asleep, right? And, and so many people shook, shaking their heads at me and just going like, no, you’re not going to want to do that. [Laughs]

Sarah: You’re actually not going to have the brain cells in the right order to get it done.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, your brain’s going to be like, um, food, food now. Food now thing food with food now? With thing. Go get it. And your husband’s going to be like, what?

Kate: [Laughs] Okay. Well, that’s good to know. That’s –

Sarah: Yeah, just be ready.

Kate: My entire life’s going to fall apart.

Sarah: Nah, it’s not going to fall apart, it’s going to take a very brief hiatus, and then you get the back nine. And it’s awesome!

Kate: Okay. Awesome!

Sarah: There you go!

Kate: That’s a, that’s a good way to put it.

Sarah: Exactly. You’re just waiting on the back nine. And the back nine comes around, oh, six, eight, maybe 10 weeks, and then it’s awesome!

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: So do you know what you’re having?

Kate: Yeah, it’s going to be a boy.

Sarah: So you, are you going to name it Darcy?

Kate: No, although I have gotten several Jane-Austen-related clothing and, and books –

Sarah: You should, I should think so! [Laughs]

Kate: And one does say Pemberley Swim Team established 1813. And I was like, you know what? This, this kid can wear this shirt. I’m good with that.

Sarah: That is a completely – I want that shirt! Do they make that in grown-up size? I totally would wear that!

Kate: I, I don’t know. The Internets can tell you.

Sarah: Yeah, right? So are you watching Emma Approved as it goes on?

Kate: Of course!

Sarah: What do you think of it so far? Do you like it?

Kate: I, I enjoy it immensely. I think that it’s a very, it’s a very hard character to adapt because she is a – again, Jane Austen herself said, this is a character who no one but myself will much like. So you as the creator have to like the character and just be willing to go with that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: And I think that she’s, it’s coming along really well. I’m, I’m very excited to see what they’re going to do next.

Sarah: I think that there is generally a resistance to women who are supremely confident and are not afraid to show you that they’re confident.

Kate: [Laughs] Yes.

Sarah: I think there’s an instant reaction to smack that down as hard as possible, and Emma is definitely one of those characters.

Kate: Yes, and there are moments where, where she betrays vulnerability, like, in, in the book especially, and that’s more her internal monologue, and that has to – translating that to the screen is difficult.

Sarah: Very difficult.

Kate: But I think that it’s coming along. I think that it’s going to, it’s doing quite well. It’s, it’s not as open to interpretation as, as Pride and Prejudice, because everybody can very easily graft themselves onto Lizzie Bennet. I mean, you, everybody sees a small part of themselves in Lizzie in some way. Or a very large part. Emma stands outside of that

Sarah: Yep. So what are you reading right now? Have you read anything that you’ve really enjoyed, or has your world been writing for Noah Wyle and then writing historical romance?

Kate: What have I read recently, other than What to Expect When You’re Expecting?

Sarah: Oh, God, don’t read that book. Everything’s going to kill you!

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: My gums are bleeding. You’re going to die. The end of, the end of every question in that book is you’re going to die. That book, every, that book is like –

Kate: [Laughs] That’s not the case –

Sarah: It’s totally true!

Kate: – it’s only, like, 75% of them.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah! Well, I noticed that I have this weird patch on my dry skin on my – You’re going to die! I mean, they always end each segment –

Kate: I think you’re confusing it with WebMD.

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, no, WebMD is even worse. No, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, they always draw out the worst possible conclusion, and every other thing is, and then there could be, you could, you could die.

Kate: All right, well, other than the book that’s going to kill me –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: – I, let’s see, I just finished a YA novel from a couple years ago called Please Ignore Vera Dietz, which I, I enjoyed quite a bit, although it’s very – it’s not necessarily a book that you enjoy, that you sit down and you go like, oh, this is going to be fluffy and fun. No, it’s a, it’s very, very sad and introspective, but I really enjoyed reading it. Oh, I know Miranda Neville’s got a book coming out in a month which I’m looking forward to, Lady Windermere’s Lover, and I, honestly, I’m just all, the rest of my brain is like, okay, I will, I have to write now, and when I write, I have a hard time reading.

Sarah: Oh, I understand that. When I am working on something that’s longer than a blog post, which is pretty often, I end up reading nonfiction.

Kate: Yes.

Sarah: Because it doesn’t interfere with what I’m trying to do.

Kate: Yes.

Sarah: Hence, What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

Kate: Yeah, well, also, like, I’ll read something completely outside of the genre. Like, I will read James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane because they have absolutely nothing to do with my, my Regency novel world. [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow, I just looked, I just looked up Please Ignore Vera Dietz. This is dark.

Kate: Yeah, it’s very dark.

Sarah: Wow.

Kate: But it’s also very good, so, you know –

Sarah: Excellent. You know, if you liked this, you might like Eleanor & Park.

Kate: I have Eleanor & Park on my iPad, and I haven’t read it yet.

Sarah: It is incredible. So is Fangirl. Fangirl especially. Actually, you should totally read Fangirl because, I think, it would, because you have dealt so much with fandom –

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – in dealing, in, in writing Lizzie Bennet, I think you would really Fangirl because it’s about a fanfiction writer who is very, very famous in the fanfiction world but in her real life is, has no idea what she’s doing as a college freshman.

Kate: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: Oh, gosh, it’s, I, I, I just made vowel noises at people when I finished reading it, just like I [vowel noises] so good.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s one of those books I forgot how to use consonants when I talked about it for a while, it was that incredible.

Kate: Yeah, I have to read very, very dark and depressing things while I’m writing something I, that I find fun and enjoyable, so –

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s like reverse manipulation.

Kate: I write very – on, on The Librarians I write very, it’s, it’s a very fun show. It’s like, it’s running around, and it’s finding all this stuff, and it’s, it’s finding, you know, education and, and magic being really cool! And then I go home and I watch, like, Ray Donovan, and –

[Laughter]

Kate: – and The Bridge, and the most dark and depressing television shows that ever came out of Sweden that you’ll ever find. Just –

Sarah: What is with Sweden? My Lord.

Kate: I just, I think it’s the lack of sun.

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: Everything’s very moody.

Sarah: Although I did read a book that was translated into English by a Sweder, Swedish writer named Katya, or Kajsa Ingemarsson, and it was all set in Stockholm, it was all Stockholm –

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and it was, it, it wasn’t quite a romance; it was more like what would have been called chick lit, except she wasn’t going shopping all the time. She’s trying to figure out her life, but it, the, the sense of place was so strong that I would read this book and then, like, two hours would go by, and my husband was like, why didn’t you get anything done? And I’d be like, ‘cause I was in Sweden. Sorry.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: It, it was that powerful. Like, I was in Sweden; I hung out in Stockholm for, like, seven straight hours while I was reading this book. It was called Yesterday’s News, and I was like, this is the first Swedish book I’ve ever read where, like, no one dies. There’s no organs, no, and no entrails, no mystery. She’s trying to figure out how to, you know, run her life and get over her ex-boyfriend, which is, like, apparently what happens in the summer in Sweden when people aren’t, you know, dying in the winter.

[music]

Sarah: And that’s all for my interview with Kate Noble and Kate Rorick. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. I had to write down, like, eight or nine things that I needed to look up after we talked, including The Librarians, because holy crap, I want to watch that, and I’m not really good at watching TV; it is not a skill that I have. I mean, I can actually sit and look at the television, that’s not a problem; it’s trusting television story writers, which I’ve talked about here before. I, I don’t do that very well.

Now I said in the intro – did you know that this is called the outro, and the other part’s called the intro? I, I read Podcasting for Dummies, and I know many things now; it’s very exciting. At least, that’s what the book called it. Everyone in, in actual audio is probably like, that’s not really what it’s called, but anyway – I said I needed to ask for your help, and here’s the part where I ask for your help. Are you ready? We, by which I mean Jane and myself, are going to do a podcast wherein we talk about books for young readers, including the young readers who live in our homes, so if you have suggestions of books that a young person that you know has really enjoyed and would recommend to other people, we would really like to hear about it. We want to do a podcast all about books for young readers, especially young readers who might possibly one day grow up to be romance readers because, well, that’s what happened to us, right? Somebody gave us a romance, and then it was all awesome from there. So if you could call in to our Google voice number or email us or, you know, just yell out the window, we want to know what books you recommend for young readers. And if you have a young reader who would like to call us or would like to email us personally, that’s cool too! Just make sure (a) that the young person has your permission and (b) tell us what name we should use.

The email address is sbjpodcast@gmail.com. The Google voice number is 1-201-371-DBSA. Please remember that that is a U.S. number, so if you are calling from overseas, you have to make sure that there’s, like, not horrible, horrible fees, although, you know, all of you outside of the U.S., I think, have much better cell programs than we do, so I’m totally jealous.

Either way, we want to compile a podcast all about the favorite books that our young readers really like, ‘cause one of the cool things about being an avid reader, I think, is that we can turn the children that we know into equally avid readers. So if you have ideas, you want to make a recommendation of a series or a book or something that’s really rocked the world of a young person you know, please let us know. And that’s an upcoming podcast; could you guess? Woohoo.

Next week I have an interview with Zoe Archer and Nico Rosso, both of them at the same time. They’re not the same person.

And InterMix, our podcast sponsor, would like you to know about One Night with a Quarterback by Jeanette Murray.

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. This is – yes, you are correct – this is the Peatbog Faeries, and this song is called “Room 215.” It’s from their album Dust, and if you’d like to buy a copy or buy more Peatbog music for all of your musical needs, I will have links in the podcast entry so that you can go and find all of the Peatbog Faeries you might ever want to have. You should have lots of Peatbog Faeries, though; this is kind of obvious, right?

Thank you again for listening. We really appreciate how much you enjoy the podcasts, and I love hearing on Twitter or by email how much you like listening. It is really fun to do the podcasts, and I’m so glad that you are enjoying it. So, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, Kate Noble, Kate Rorick, Jane, and I wish you the very best of reading. Thank you again for listening.

[merry music]

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