Here is a text transcript of Podcast 109: A New Interview with Elyse. You can listen to the mp3 here, or you can read on! 

This podcast transcript was carefully handmade with utmost care by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.

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Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, October 3, 2014

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to another DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me this week is Elyse. This podcast is definitely not going to be safe for work, because we talk about the erotic tropes that she likes, we talk about power dynamics, we talk about manicures, her love of time-travel romance, we talk about ménage, knitting, Longarm, and a bunch of other not-safe-for-work things.

Two important notes: First of all, at around minute 22 to about minute 27, we discuss a historical romance wherein there is a rape scene, and Elyse goes into some detail about how the scene works in the larger context of the novel, but I wanted to make sure that if this is a trigger for you that you knew that you could skip that section or just skip this episode altogether. And finally, there’s a little bit of audio garble when she’s talking, and I apologize for that. I did my best to fix it.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, who never garble anything. They are the publisher of The Affair, the brand-new, red-hot e-serial from New York Times bestselling author Beth Kery. The Affair began on September 16^th, and you can download new installments on Tuesdays. It’s in progress, now available wherever eBooks are sold.

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and how you can buy it for your very own, because of course that’s what you want to do. And as always, every book we mention will be linked to on the podcast entry.

And now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Elyse: Yes.

Sarah: So you wanted to tell me about a conversation you had about why you really like fiction where there, there is an erotic dominant.

Elyse: I don’t even know how this came up. I think my husband and I, we were having, like, one of those moments where you’re just kind of lying around talking about nothing –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: We were talking about, there was some kink or something that we heard about, or some fetish, and we were both kind of doing the thing like, who would be into that?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: You know what I mean? Like, I can’t remember what it was, but –

Sarah: Turkey basters, live mice?

Elyse: Something goldfish. There’s, like, there’s actually –

Sarah: No.

Elyse: Yeah, I don’t – yeah. So anyway, then we were kind of talking about, you know, why we read what we read or why are people interested in what they’re interested in? And I was kind of realizing that for someone who is completely not into, like, pain at all –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – I read a lot of contemporary romances that feature, like, a dominant-submissive relationship –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – which doesn’t always necessarily involve pain, but I think, ‘cause when I read contemporaries, I like it when they’re hotter –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – but even, I think, it translates to, like, Harlequin Presents and stuff, I like it when there’s more of a powerful alpha male character, and I was trying to figure out why that was, and I think it’s because I have this really crazy busy, stressful job where I have to make a million decisions, and I have to make them quickly –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – and, like, when I get home at the end of day, I don’t even want to decide what I want for dinner. Don’t ask me any more questions. And so I think I like the fantasy of, you know, just having some dude go, hey, by the way, I’m a billionaire Argentine playboy, and I’m going to take care of everything if you want to come live in my hacienda, and you just have to chill. Right? ‘Cause that sounds really fantastic to me. I don’t think it would be in real life, but the fantasy of just, like, lying back and letting someone else take care of everything, I totally get that.

Sarah: So when you read about dominant and submissive romances, what are the kinds of specific erotic tropes that you like best? Like, do you go for, like, boss/secretary or random billionaire, you know, kidnaps you and takes you to his island or whatever it is that billionaires are doing lately? Do you like, you know, the mysterious alpha guy who sort of stalks her and keeps watch over her in a totally-creepy-but-not-meant-to-be-creepy fashion? Like, what are your favorite erotic tropes?

Elyse: Definitely, I, I like the billionaire thing, because it’s a lot more fun when he’s rich, right.

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, it’s one less thing they have to worry about. Like, finances? Never going to be a problem.

Elyse: Let’s be honest: If you had to pick your alpha male Dom, why not go the billionaire route, right? Like –

Sarah: Of course!

Elyse: – if you can choose, it’s going to be billionaire and not the sanitation worker. I, I’m just throwing that out there. But I think I like kind of, not even, not, like, kidnapping and stuff like that so much, but sort of like when, like, like in the Maya Banks series that had, what was it, like, Burn, Fever, and Rush. It was, like, this guy would see a woman and be, you know, just infatuated with her and fall in love with her and just take care of everything, take care of her for life. Right, you’re set.

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: You know, kind of like the protector, the caretaker, but still in a very sexy way. And I think, you know, a lot of that calls back to the old-school romances that I read –

Sarah: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Elyse: – when I first got started, like, a lot of Johanna Lindsey and stuff. And there was also definitely a power dynamic there, because the heroine was, you know, 17 years old –

Sarah: Yep!

Elyse: – a lot of the time, and the hero was, like, in his thirties.

Sarah: And he was always mysterious, and, and there wasn’t a whole lot of, you know, deep emotional exploration of his feelings.

Elyse: Well, he didn’t have any.

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, he had some.

Elyse: Well, he –

Sarah: He had a semi-sentient being in his pants.

Elyse: Right. Well, his feelings are, like, horniness, which leads to –

Sarah: Anger.

Elyse: – and anger, yeah, and maybe gas.

Sarah: [Laughs] Or sleepiness.

Elyse: Sleepiness, yeah. Or even, you know, I, I really love Gothics, and I started reading Gothics before I read romance, and you know, you would have the heroine who’s usually, like, the governess or –

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: – the ward, you know. Again, there is definitely a power dynamic there where he was, you know, above her in some way or had, kind of, control over her situation.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. And that he could ruin her life very easily and get away with it.

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: Like, if he did all of the dastardly things that you think that he’s thinking about doing, if he did them, it wouldn’t matter.

Elyse: Right!

Sarah: Like, it would, it would be not be a big deal.

Elyse: Right, because, you know, historically, she’s powerless too, because she’s a woman.

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: So – yeah, so I don’t know. That’s my thing, like, my Harlequin Presents, alpha billionaire, dominant, I don’t know.

Sarah: That’s cool!

Elyse: But I’m picky. He can’t be an asshole, right. Once – ‘cause a lot of them are assholes, and –

Sarah: That’s a hard line to stay on one side of.

Elyse: It really is. I think, you know, if the, if, if there’s not an element of, I think, like, genuine joy in that relationship, I don’t want to read about it.

Sarah: Yep.

Elyse: If he’s just kind of a, kind of a dick – and, you know, I think definitely the heroine redeems him throughout the course of the book or helps him open up emotionally – but a lot of them really, you know, especially the old-schools you go back to, he was, he was just a jerk.

Sarah: Yep!

Elyse: And that –

Sarah: And he had the emotional maturity of a rock.

Elyse: Yes. Yes. I think that’s one of the things that I’m seeing more and more in contemporary romance that I love is having a hero who can be strong and mysterious and all that, but also have a lot of empathy. And I think that’s very important.

Sarah: The other thing that’s interesting about how the heroine influences the hero in stories like that is that it’s re-, not only is it really easy to cross the line into, he’s a giant asshole, why are you with him? but it’s also very easy for her to turn into a manic pixie dream girl.

Elyse: Yes.

Sarah: Where hi-, where her crazy, madcap shenanigans teach him the meaning of life or some crap like that. It’s very easy to fall into tiresome cliché.

Elyse: Yeah. My least favorite trope is when – and this was more of an old-school thing – when the heroine would do something really stupid and put herself in physical jeopardy to teach him a lesson.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: I was actually, I’m re-reading a Johanna Lindsey book now –

Sarah: Oh, that happens quite often!

Elyse: Yeah.

Sarah: I’m going to go down this dark alleyway by myself in my nightgown and my bare feet! That’ll show him!

Elyse: So, in the beginning of the book, she is 17 years old, and she’s, like, a partial, she partially inherits her grandfather’s ranch, and her brother who also inherited it is in college, and so she wants to run the ranch, ‘cause she knows everything about ranching. She grew up on a ranch, and her dad’s like, you can’t do that, you’re a lady, it’s not safe, you can’t make responsible decisions ‘cause you’ve got ovaries, so to teach her dad that she can make responsible decisions and be an adult, she runs away from home and masquerades as a 14-year-old bounty hunter named The Kid who’s a boy, because that really –

Sarah: Why wouldn’t you do that?

Elyse: Right, that, that, I think that proves her point excellently.

Sarah: I mean, there’s no better way to demonstrate your ability to function as an adult than to run away from home and pretend to be a bounty hunter.

Elyse: Right, yeah, absolutely.

Sarah: Did she give herself, like, long blond braids and a mullet and have sea life in the mullet, like, like, like Dog the Bounty Hunter?

Elyse: No, but there is – so, the, they, when she meets the hero, the hero thinks she’s a 14-year-old boy, right, and I –

Sarah: Oh, that’s always fun.

Elyse: Right. I love not only when the hero has that moment where he questions his sexuality – like, I’m attracted to this other male – but also, like, the terrifying realization that he might be a pedophile? Right? In old-school romances, like, not only am I attracted to this dude, but he’s underage, and his –

Sarah: Uhhhh –

Elyse: Lindsey totally skirts that. He is not attracted to her at all, because she’s filthy. Like, she has not bathed –

Sarah: Of course!

Elyse: – and the hero is actually at one point looking at her hair, and it’s, like, all matted, and kind of reflecting about the fact that there’s definitely critters in there, and I just found it hilarious that she skirted the whole I’m-strangely-attracted-to-you, you know, even though you’re –

Sarah: Despite that you’re a, you’re a young boy.

Elyse: – right – by making her just really dirty. It’s like that, that Judith McNaught cover with the seashell and pearl on it.

Sarah: Oh, yeah! That’s, like, totally subtle!

Elyse: Now that I’m thinking about it, I want to a heroine who has Dog the Bounty Hunter hair. Right?

Sarah: Who doesn’t, who doesn’t want Dog the Bounty Hunter hair? I mean, really?

Elyse: Yeah, absolutely. Or, well, I think his wife is pretty fabulous too.

Sarah: Oh, their, both of their hair is incredible. A long time ago, I was challenged to a mullet competition, because someone suggested, Kristie J. suggested that I did not know what a mullet was, and I took great offense to this, and it sparked an international incident –

Elyse: Okay.

Sarah: – where she and I had to come up with examples of mullets. Now, the problem was, she was representing Canada –

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: – and I was representing the United States, and I attempted to claim Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr.

Elyse: [Gasp!]

Sarah: – for my team, because they were in Pittsburgh, and they had majestic hockey mullets, and their mullets were grown in the U.S. I believe that they were not imported. Those were homegrown American mullets on gentlemen from other countries, and they said no, it’s not okay, because Mario Lemieux is Canadian and you can’t have him, so I had to, I had to acquiesce that I had lost that point, but I ultimately prevailed by pointing out that nothing, there is no mullet, not even Kiefer Sutherland’s mullet, is as great as Dog the Bounty Hunter. There are barnacles in the mullet.

Elyse: [Laughs]

Sarah: He is a walking aquarium. He has sea life in his mullet! How do you not top that?

Elyse: It, I, yeah, I think my favorite is the fact that his wife wears, like, special tactical gloves with the fingers cut off so that –

Sarah: Of course!

Elyse: – her big Jersey nails come through.

Sarah: That’s right! Hey, those nails are deadly, man.

Elyse: Oh, yeah, you’re not screwing around. Every time I come back from Jersey, by the way, for work, I reflect on the sadness of my manicure.

Sarah: [Laughs] I live in Jersey, and my manicure is quite sad too. I don’t even have a manicure right now, actually.

Elyse: I go into the office, and I just realize I’m not, it’s not good.

Sarah: No, and, and the thing is, I don’t know how women type with those nails, but they do.

Elyse: I think, yeah, and, but the weird thing is –

Sarah: It sounds like clogging. Like they’re tap dancing. [Laughs]

Elyse: – long nails, and then when you don’t have long nails, you have to relearn how to type –

Sarah: Yep.

Elyse: – because – and text – so there’s, like, a week where all my text messages are really messed up, ‘cause I don’t have nails anymore. That went off track quickly. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. Mullets, nails, Jersey, Hi! The other thing you said you wanted to discuss, and I’m curious about your thoughts on this, Highlander time travel.

Elyse: Oh, my God. Well not just Highlander, but time travel in general. And I have a Help A Bitch Out, and I’m glad you reminded me.

Sarah: Oookay.

Elyse: So I went through a phase where, and this was probably, like, mid to late ‘90s, I loved time travel romance.

Sarah: Well, that’s all there was, so it’s a good thing you loved it. [Laughs]

Elyse: So, first of all, Outlander I read probably, I think I read it the year I graduated high school, went into college, and the time travel romance I had read prior to that was obviously not kind of in a similar vein and wasn’t 800 pages long and stuff, but there was this Western that I’m trying to remember, and I, I can’t remember the title, I can’t remember the author, I kind of remember what the cover looked like, so this would have been mid to late ‘90s, and the heroine was a bounty hunter that traveled through time to catch a bad guy, who also traveled through time. And I don’t remember how they did it, ‘cause that was insignificant. I was reading it for the boning.

Sarah: That was insignificant; I was reading it for the boning. Well, of course you are! And was this one of the ones that had a postcard in the middle, and there was going to be sex at least five pages before or after that postcard in the middle of the book?

Elyse: I think not only did they a postcard, Sarah, but the postcard was a scratch-off.

Sarah: Ah, yeah!

Elyse: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: Oh, excellent.

Elyse: These are the facts I remember: She went back into the old west, she was a bounty hunter, and I – this sticks out in my mind ‘cause it still horrifies me – she would disguise herself by using colored contact lenses, and when the hero found her contact lenses and figured out how she was changing her eye color, he was like, look at that, she sticks magic glass in her eye! And it was just, like –

Sarah: Oooh.

Elyse: Anyone who had hard contact lenses at any point in their life is still traumatized by that, so I remember the magic glass –

Sarah: She sticks magic glass in her eye.

Elyse: – and I think he was the sheriff of the town or something like that. I believe he was also part Native American, which was a requirement. I believe they made love in a waterfall –

Sarah: Who doesn’t?

Elyse: – that may have been on the cover, but the part that I really remember, that if anyone remembers this book they will also remember, is there’s a scene where she’s at his, like, ranch or whatever, and she gets her period, and so his housekeeper, whatever, brings her whatever the Wild West equivalent of a, you know, maxi pad was, and she’s like, no, I can’t deal with this, and she asks for cotton and string and some other things, and she made her own tampons.

Sarah: What?

Elyse: Yeah, she just rolled her own tampons like you’d roll a cigarette in the Wild West, and –

Sarah: Wowww!

Elyse: – business, so that’s what I remember about this time travel romance. If anyone out there remembers it, let me know in the comments, ‘cause it was pretty glorious.

Sarah: She’s got her period, so she makes her own tampon.

Elyse: That’s resourceful.

Sarah: That’s pretty impressive. I’m –

Elyse: There wasn’t an applicator or anything, but –

Sarah: Yeah, but you know, everyone’s had to use o.b. in a pinch.

Elyse: Right. Yeah, exactly. Just, she was pretty badass. So what were the, let’s see, I had some other time travel romances to recommend. There was the whole Katherine Marie, is it Katherine Marie? I always want to say Katherine Marie Moning, ‘cause I think it’s more –

Sarah: Karen.

Elyse: Karen Marie –

Sarah: Karen Marie Moaning or Moning or –

Elyse: Moning, yes.

Sarah: Moning.

Elyse: She, before she wrote the Fever series, she wrote a series of Highlander time travel romances, and I think the first one was Through the Highland Mists or Into the Highland Mists, and it’s about a modern-day woman going back in time, and time travel in those books involves fairies. Not like –

Sarah: Of course it does.

Elyse: Not like the kind you see in, like, cross stitch, but, like, the –

Sarah: [Laughs] Right, the dangerous kind.

Elyse: Yes. Yes. And one of her char- – and so sometimes the heroine goes back in time in the books, and sometimes the Highlander comes forward in time, but they were really good, and there was one character in the series, Adam Black, who was, I think, Fae or part Fae, who’s, like, a trickster character.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: If you read the series, the whole point of the series was to get to the Adam Black book, ‘cause he was Loki before there was Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, and it was worth the wait. So you’ve got to read the whole series, but then the Adam Black book is the best one.

Sarah: Of course it is! So, do you still read time travel?

Elyse: Yeah! It’s hard to find now, though.

Sarah: It is. I mean, I think, I think the most prominent example of time travel that we have is the, the Susann-, Susanna Kearsley books, which aren’t so much time travel as parallel story lines with characters sort of slipping into past lives, not so much traveling through time.

Elyse: Yeah, I mean, I remember when time travel was like –

Sarah: It was It!

Elyse: Yeah.

Sarah: There – did you ever read the Nora Roberts time travel ones?

Elyse: I’m going to make a, I’m going to confess something to you right now. I’ve never read a Nora Roberts book.

Sarah: [GASP!] Oh, my goodness! There are so many! You have so much to, to read.

Elyse: I think that’s why I never started. I think it was kind of this panic that there were too many to, you know, where do you – ?

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I, there are a lot. I actually did a thread, which Nora Robert should you read first? And I figured, okay, that makes sense. And then, I, I didn’t realize this, but if you Google which Nora Roberts, which Nora Roberts should I read first, that’s the thing that comes up top on the, on the Google search, so we have a ton of traffic just from people looking for the first Nora Roberts to read. [Laughs]

Elyse: I actually have one of hers on audio. Let me see. It was really cheap on Audible, so I downloaded it, and it’s –

Sarah: There are three kinds of Nora. Well, there’s four, actually. Four kinds of Noras.

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: So which one do you have?

Elyse: I have – I think it’s Key of Light.

Sarah: That’s a para-Nora.

Elyse: Okay.

Sarah: That’s probably, that, that’s the first of the Key trilogy. She writes a bunch of trilogies, lots of trilogies, and there’s four different kinds of Nora Roberts novels. There’s the para-Noras, which are some sort of paranormal element, and she was one of the first to write witches and people who had paranormal powers, and in the first witches, which was the Donovan series that she wrote for Silhouette, there was three or four of them in the end, the women are the ones who have powers, and the guy, and there’s only one dude who has power. The rest of them are all women who are like, yeah, I can kill you.

Elyse: Mm-kay.

Sarah: Want to see? Then there’s para-Nora vampires, para-Nora witches, the, the ones that’s, the, the trilogy that’s going on right now is a witches in Ireland. Then there’s the straight contemporary Noras, and those are just straight contemporary romance. Like, the Bridal quartet is like that. The Chesapeake quartet is like that. There’s no real paranormal elements, and they’re not suspense. There’s often a mystery that needs to be solved, but there’s no actual killer who’s doing gross and disturbing things during the course of the story. Then there’s the romantic suspense Noras, and when I was writing that article for the Amazon Kindle Love Stories and they want to know, like, what books scared the crap out of me and which were sort of fun scary books? Blue Smoke by Nora Roberts scared the absolute poodle out of me, because you spend so much time in the head of a sociopathic arsonist, so not only is he setting people’s homes on fire, but he watches his victims, and he memorizes their schedule, and he figure out, figures out what day is the day when none of the neighbors are going to hear her scream, and then you’re with him while he’s committing this crime, and I’m like, I cannot handle this! And I can’t stop reading, because if I stop now, this will be the only thing I think about, so I have to finish the book. It was so, it was so graphic. Ggghhhh. Book scared the crap out of me.

Elyse: That sounds like something I would like, actually.

Sarah: Yeah, you would like Blue Smoke. It is seriously suspense-y creepy. And the heroine is an arson investigator because when she was a kid, someone set her family’s restaurant on fire, and they, I think that part of the question is who, who did it? Who, who set fire to her family’s restaurant, but she was obsessed with becoming an arson investigator, so she does. And the hero is this guy who’s, like, he’s a carpenter, and he’s totally happy to be working at his house, and he’s very laid back, and one of the things that Nora does really well, especially in romantic suspense, is that she has alpha heroines and heroes who are very chill.

Elyse: Okay, I’d like that too.

Sarah: There’s a couple of her really chill, interesting dude heroes. There’s that guy from Blue Smoke. There’s Carter from the first Bridal quartet book which is…I have to look it up, ‘cause it’s a title, and I don’t remember those, ever. But the hero is a professor, and he’s really got it bad for the heroine, and he has no idea how to approach her, so there are all of these scenes where he is asking his friend for advice, who gives him absolutely terrible advice as what he should do with this girl. Book one of the Bridal quartet is Vision in White, and that’s where Carter is. And then the other one was Tribute. Tribute you would probably like because that one – [laughs] – there’s also, one of the things that Nora Roberts also does is she writes competence porn. She will write in, in a job or a profession or something where you get an, a stunning amount of detail. So with Blue Smoke, it’s arson and fire starting, and with Tribute, it’s the home improvement one, which has a ghost, I believe, and it has a heroine who’s a, who’s the, who’s a former child star and the granddaughter of a movie star who died under mysterious circumstances, but her neighbor across the street, who’s the hero, is a graphic novelist, and he’s adorable. He’s super nerdy, and he’s just so great. I, I knew this was suspense, and I knew I wasn’t going to like it, but I totally read it for the hero, ‘cause it’s adorable.

So what are you reading right now that you want people to read?

Elyse: So, right now, I am reading, I just finished and I gave it to, kind of threw it out there to RedHeadedGirl and to Carrie to see if they would read and want to do a joint review, ‘cause it was so good, I wanted someone else to read it with me: What a Wallflower Wants by Maya Rodale.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, you had, you were, like, squeeing all over the email.

Elyse: Holy shit.

Sarah: Why did you like this so much?

Elyse: I, I cannot remember a book that caught me in the feels that hard.

Sarah: Really.

Elyse: So first of all, one of the things that we complain a lot about on Smart Bitches is when authors use rape as a backstory as just kind of like a plot device. You know –

Sarah: Yeah, it’s a shortcut to emotional depth in the backstory, and it’s not properly dealt with. I hate that a lot.

Elyse: And she does the complete opposite of that. So, it’s a Regency romance. The heroine is named Prudence, and she appeared in the first two books in the Wallflower series, and you find out that Prudence was raped, and she was raped at a ball. So it was, she’s at, she’s at a ball, she’s trying to, her friends are engaged and getting married, and she’s starting to feel like she’s on the shelf, and this Lord Dudley guy approaches her and kind of takes her hand and leads her down this hallway, and she’s reflecting on the fact later on that, you know, as a lady you’re taught you don’t make a scene, even if you feel like something about this is wrong. Even if he’s not letting go of your hand, you keep your mouth shut. You don’t yell. You don’t do something that would embarrass you. So even though she is surrounded by all of these people, he gets her alone in this dark corridor, and he assaults her. And so the rest of the, the book takes place later on, and she’s kind of reeling, not only from the fact that she was, she was raped, but from the fact that all of the rules she’s been taught as a lady really did her a disservice, right.

Sarah: Wow.

Elyse: You don’t fight back. You don’t make noise. And one of the things she reflects on, she was grateful that no one found her, because then she would have had to marry.

Sarah: [Gasps] Ooh.

Elyse: And so she, she thinks about the fact that if someone had tried to come to her rescue, she would have been married to this guy, and he could have legally done this to her as many times as he wanted throughout the course of, of their marriage, and so she was lucky that no one found her. And the other thing that I think she did really well was the, there is a rape scene in the book, and it’s semi-graphic, but it’s not sexualized at all, right. It’s very much, this is about him exerting power, this is about violence –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – and, and she’s almost kind of –

Sarah: So, if that’s a trigger for somebody, they should not be reading this book.

Elyse: Do not read this book –

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: – yeah. I mean, if, if, if, this book is, like, major trigger warnings. She doesn’t want to have anyone touch her. She’s got, you know, all kinds of PTSD from this, obviously. So she finds a, a, an aristocratic man who’s gay, and they’re going to get married, and so it’s like an arrangement for the both of them, right. And they’re on their way to, I can’t remember if it was his, like, country seat or whatever, and they get beset by a highwayman. And her soon-to-be fiancé looks at her, and he’s like, well, just, you know what, go out there and give that guy what he wants.

Sarah: [Gasps]

Elyse: It’s like – yeah. And she’s like, screw you, dude, and she manages to sneak out the other door of the carriage, and she runs away, and she’s literally, like, walking through the woods by herself, no idea where she is, in the countryside, completely alone, and she is bound and determined she’s not going to depend on anybody ever again, right.

Sarah: [Disgusted noise]

Elyse: She’s going to handle shit herself.

Sarah: Yeah.

Elyse: And she meets this guy on the road who’s the hero, and so he’s driving down the road, and he sees this really, like, dirty, in-distress woman, and he’s trying to give her a ride, and she’s like, nope, keep going. And he’s like, well, I’ll just, you know, give you a ride to the inn, and she’s like, no way, dude, I’m walking. See you later. And so he goes to the, the inn ahead of her and buys her a room and makes sure the innkeeper knows she’s coming and waits for her to get there safely. And so she gets to the inn, and, and the rest of the book, the majority of it takes place where they’re rained in. So these two people are stuck at the inn, and there’s just this torrential downpour. It’s washing out roads; they can’t go anywhere. So it’s a forced proximity book.

Sarah: I do like that.

Elyse: And the hero is just this wonderfully – he’s such a good beta hero. He’s so, you know, empathetic and sensitive and just genuinely kind, right. He is like a genuinely kind-hearted person, and I tweeted Maya Rodale, and I’m like, did you make him Tom Hiddleston? ‘Cause I think if Tom Hiddleston was a romantic character, this would be him, right.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah.

Elyse: In real life, he’s, like, a naturally nice person, and her response was like, oh, I didn’t know who that was, so I looked it up, and yeah, he kind of looks like him, and I’m like, nonono, never mind, you missed the point.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: But, you know, throughout the book, he picks up on the fact that something has happened to her to make her afraid of men specifically, and he’s not stupid, and so he kind of figures she must have been assaulted in some way, and he approaches it from this place of just absolute empathy that I think is really important and really kind of unique in romance novels like this. One of the things that drives me nuts is when there’s a rape backstory and the hero’s immediate reaction is almost like anger on behalf of the heroine. Like, my response to you having been assaulted is now I must find this person and kill them, because in some way, this was a slight against me now. Does that make sense?

Sarah: Right. I, her experience gives him proprietary rage.

Elyse: Right. And, and, you know, I think, for him it was sadness that she had gone through this, and he treats her so respectfully throughout the book and so carefully, and, and they don’t touch for a majority of the book at all, and at the same time, they’re absolutely falling in love with each other, and there is this sexual tension that he will not act on. And it’s just, it’s just beautifully, beautifully done.

Sarah: So even though there’s a significant rape trigger in this book, this book hits you in all the feels.

Elyse: You, I am so in love with her hero, like, it’s not, it’s, it’s probably not healthy, ‘cause he’s not a real person, but I am madly in love with him.

Sarah: Awww.

Elyse: Yeah, he’s just, like, he’s this wonderful, sensitive – but he’s still strong and sexy, and you really, you really like him. And it is actually a very surprisingly erotic book for a historical.

Sarah: Wow. Well, the escalating tension in a lot of romance now, I find, is increased when there, there are so many more boundaries to sexual contact or even physical contact.

Elyse: Yeah. And, and there’s a scene where they’re traveling back to London together, and they’re staying, they’re posing as a married couple so as not to kind of have questions asked, and they stay in the same room one night, and she’s okay with it, as long as he doesn’t come near her, and she acknowledges that she has these sexual feeling for him, but she’s afraid to act on it, and, and she talks about the fact that in some ways she feels like her body was taken from her, because now she’s very closed off, and so there’s a scene where he just, he, he sits in a chair, and he’s telling her kind of like, if they were making love, what he would do, and he basically, like, guides her through masturbation so that she can realize, like, hey, you can have orgasms, and this stuff feels good, and it’s okay. It doesn’t have to be a bad experience.

Sarah: Whoa.

Elyse: You can do this on your own. I’m not going to touch you. I’m going to stay over here so I don’t cross any of your boundaries.

Sarah: Wow.

Elyse: Maybe I should have prefaced that with Kat, it’s time to put on Radio Disney. Now that –

[Laughter]

Sarah: Kat’s kids are now going, what?

[Laughter]

Sarah: Hi, Kat’s kids! They have their own podcast. They’re the backstreet, the Back Seat Bookworms.

Elyse: That’s awesome. I thought you were going to say Backstreet Boys.

Sarah: No, they’re not the Backstreet Boys.

Elyse: That’s awesome. I love it. So yeah, that’s What a Wallflower Wants, and it’s just a beautifully done book. It really is. Everyone should go buy it. Go buy it.

Sarah: Wow. What else are you completely in, in love with? Or is that the book that’s sort of taken over for you right now?

Elyse: That book, I had lots of good book noise after that. There are a lot of books that were just released or are being released that I’m really excited about. Tiffany Reisz wrote a Gothic for Harlequin Shivers.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: I have just started that. I’m only a few pages in, but I’m very excited for that. I’ve got a lot of Gothics. I’ve got A Matter of Grave Concern by Brenda Novak that’s coming out in October, and that –

Sarah: That was one of the books you said you were excited about.

Elyse: Yeah, and that one actually involves resurrection men, which is kind of a very creepy Victorian thing. I don’t know if you know about that. Those were –

Sarah: No.

Elyse: Those were shady dudes that if you were a doctor or scientist, be-, because this was, you know – I think Carrie talked about it in her podcast, the, the clash of religion and science –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – in the Victorian age – you would pay these shady dudes to go dig up a body out the cemetery so that you had something to basically –

Sarah: Work on.

Elyse: Yeah. And they were called the resurrection men, and it, it was such a prevailing thing that, I mean, you could pay, like, little street urchins to go hang out in the graveyard at night so nobody dug up your loved ones, and it was pretty disturbing when you get right down to it. So that, that book is coming out. What else is new? I’m saving Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover by Sarah MacLean because I know once I start reading it, it’s going to be a one-day –

Sarah: When are you saving it for?

Elyse: For a day that I, I can completely block my calendar, and I don’t have to go outside, and I can just read a book.

Sarah: [Laughs] I think RedHeadedGirl is really sad that no one’s talked to her about it yet.

Elyse: I’ll, I’ll – Saturday might be the day. Saturday might be the day, then we can discuss.

Sarah: Okay, good, ‘cause I want to hear what you guys think of it.

Elyse: Already, the cover is amazing.

Sarah: Isn’t it gorgeous?

Elyse: It’s so –

Sarah: The cover is incredible. They did a great job with that cover.

Elyse: Have you seen the cover of The Duke of Dark Desires by Miranda Neville?

Sarah: No.

Elyse: They knocked that one out of the park too. That –

Sarah: Really?

Elyse: I am a total cover whore, ‘cause I still, I still read paperbacks, so I want my covers to be beautiful and colorful and, you know, not have really badly Photoshopped dogs on them.

Sarah: Oh, you ask way too damn much there.

Elyse: Or three arms that you don’t know where –

Sarah: I, I am personally ready to stop the abuse of Photoshop tattoos.

Elyse: Oh, yep. And it’s always a tribal one, too.

Sarah: Yes, it’s always a tribal one, and it’s always gray –

Elyse: Yep.

Sarah: – and it’s always fugly.

Elyse: I think if, you know, if you’re going to Photoshop a tattoo on it, make it one that, like, the hero got on a bender and he regrets, right. Like –

Sarah: No, like a Happy Meal, like a McDonald’s Happy Meal with the big eyes.

Elyse: I just, I literally just bought another one of the – remember that book I reviewed? I, it was like Their Virgin Princess or something. It was a ménage book –

Sarah: Yes.

Elyse: – and it took place in a fictitious Middle Eastern country. So, I bought the next book in the series, which is Their Virgin Secretary, and I’m, I’m looking forward to the craziness that will ensue. I feel like there has to be a healthy dose of crazy in all the ménage books.

Sarah: It’s always more fun that way.

Elyse: Yeah, and you know, when I first started reading them, I was woefully naïve –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – and it sent me down the rabbit hole at PornHub because I had to, like, how does DP really work, right?

Sarah: Wait, isn’t there gravity? Gravity has to be at play here, right?

Elyse: Right, right. Well, you need, I think you need a spotter, honestly. Like, someone standing off camera who’s going to make sure that nobody falls, ‘cause you break a penis. My sister the nurse has told me horror stories.

Sarah: You can break a penis?

Elyse: Mm-hmm. Yeah. If it’s, if it’s engorged and, like, there’s enough trauma, you can really – it’s not good.

Sarah: Wow.

Elyse: So, yeah. So, I, I’ve learned a lot, and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – my theory is the two dudes have to be drift compatible, like in Pacific Rim, ‘cause, I mean, if you’re not on the same wavelength – she really doesn’t do a whole lot. It’s all up to them.

Sarah: Right. There was a series, and I remember reading the – I judged a, a contest a long time ago for an erotic romance chapter of RWA, and it was a series, it was a historic romance series, erotic romantic series about triads with two dudes and a girl and how they would set up these relationships with one another. The, the descriptions of the physical mechanics were fascinating.

Elyse: Yeah, I wonder – I mean, be honest with me romance novel writers or erotic writers, do you draw, like, stick figures of people boning? See, I’m reading another ménage book. You know what blows my mind about these, though? ‘Cause they’re always really, again, ‘cause of the power dynamic thing, they’re always, like, billionaires or sheiks or something, and if there’s three dudes and a lady and they’re all really busy, powerful people, like, how do you make time when everyone is in the mood? Right? And has, and has free time. ‘Cause that’s hard enough with two people, let alone three of them, four of them, and one of them’s running a country.

Sarah: Yep.

Elyse: I always wonder about in romance novels too, because they never, they never talk about the heroine being on a juice fast, right, so –

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s, no, the heroine is never on a juice fast, ever.

Elyse: Things we talked about today that we weren’t expecting to.

Sarah: It, it, it always end up in butt sex somehow.

Elyse: I was laughing at the Longarm post today.

Sarah: Oh, God. That, that still amazes me, that, that romance is called trashy and pornographic, yet there has been a Longarm novel published every month for, like, 20 plus years.

Elyse: Well, and I used to work at a, a family-owned bookstore, and it would crack me up, because we –

Sarah: Please don’t tell me you had Longarm.

Elyse: Oh, yeah, we had Longarm. There were a couple others, too, that were very similar to Longarm, and we used to carry ‘em because these, it was typically older men would come in and buy them every month, and I, my, my boss at the bookstore was, was a fairly conservative lady, and I remember I used to get the referrals‘cause I was the romance novel girl that worked there, and so it would be like, well, you can talk to Elyse about those books, because I knew about those books.

Sarah: [Gasps]

Elyse: [Laughs] Which was fine. I was like, yes, I do. But the Longarm ones, I sat down and I flipped through them once, and they’re really very sexual, and –

Sarah: Oh, that’s, that’s one way of putting it.

Elyse: Yeah, and, I mean, we don’t, we don’t mince words, you know, in terms of, there’s no flowery euphemisms for stuff.

Sarah: Oh, no, not for Longarm. Mm-mm.

Elyse: And I had to always wonder, too, because he did a lot of horseback riding, if he was as, like, hung as they said in the book, he had to have a lot of issues –

Sarah: How did he – ?

Elyse: I don’t know.

Sarah: [Laughs] This is my personal favorite. This is – okay, Kat’s kids, you need to, Kat, you need to hit mute, ‘cause this is, like, seriously inappropriate. So, it seems like in one scene at least, there’s somebody who has experienced an orgasm the likes of which they have never experienced until they had sex with Longarm.

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: [Laughing] This is my favorite sentence. So she’s, oh God, oh God, oh God, never ever ain’t felt nothing like this. Oh, there it is again! Like, like, thank you, drive through. And she says, well, shit, I think I’m going to pass out, and then she slowly rolled onto her side. This is, this is the sentence. This just kills me. I have to stop laughing. Okay.

Longarm’s unbending dingus made a loud sucking –

I can’t even get through the sentence. I’ll have to try again. Okay. [Laughs]

Longarm’s unbending dingus made a loud sucking plop as it exited Bathsheba’s dripping snatch.

Elyse: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it referred to as a dingus.

Sarah: I, I know I need to search dingus Longarm – oh, God! [Laughs]

Elyse: That sounds like something my grandmother would have said, right. Like –

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, God. His dingus makes many appearances in other books.

His dingus rang like a brass dinner bell.

Elyse: That’s – I’m, like, picturing that, and it’s disturbing. Where’s the flavor?

Sarah: He almost called it a dingus again. It would be better if he didn’t.

Elyse: Yeah, my, my grandmother used to refer to, like, lady business as a hoozie, like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: Sue’s licking her hoozie again, so that makes an appearance in our family quite frequently. I’m going to have to add dingus to the –

Sarah: I do not understand; romance gets a bad name for having sexual content, and yet the content of Longarm is so much worse.

Elyse: Because, because I, romance is marketed towards women, and –

Sarah: Of course, and we’re not allowed to have sexy thoughts.

Elyse: If I have learned one thing in my adult life, it is that the world at large is scared of vaginas –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – and it’s, they’re scared you’re happy. Like, the happier your vagina is, the more threatening it is to national security, the sanctity of marriage, the church. Happy vaginas, there is no room for happy vaginas in the world. It’s all very frightening.

Sarah: Ohhh, you’re so right.

Elyse: Isn’t that depressing?

Sarah: It’s so sad. But you know, the older I get and the more I break my give-a-shit, the happier I am.

Elyse: I – yes! Yes. Absolutely. Cracks me up, too, like – so I work in a very male-dominated industry –

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: – which then, salty language is used, as is crude humor. I’m totally fine with that. Whenever I throw down, the dudes all freak out.

Sarah: Yep.

Elyse: Like, they, we, we were in a meeting or, like, standing around the lunch table or something, and someone was making a joke. This guy had left his shoes at work, and we were trying, like, who the fuck leaves their shoes at work, right?

Sarah: [Laughs] Did they go home barefoot? I mean, I used to keep a change of shoes under my desk, but –

Elyse: Well, I do that too. I, I have heels under my desk that I wear all the time, ‘cause I don’t walk in and out of the building in them. But he left his shoes, and they were huge, they were like a men’s size 16, so that –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – of course, everyone was laughing about, you know, the correlation between, you know, ha, ha, he must have a big penis, and I looked at him, and I’m like, that, that’s bullshit, because I have tiny feet, and I have a huge dick. And all of these guys were completely freaked out that I made a dick joke. They were like, [gasp] what?! What?!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: These are the same guys that are like, so, what, what happened? Why were you out for surgery? And I’m like, oh, I had to have an ovary – And they’re like, no, no, don’t tell me! And it’s like, it’s an organ, you guys!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: Relax!

Sarah: Oh, gracious. So are there any other books you want to mention?

Elyse: I’m reading that history of, or that Knitting Around the World book.

Sarah: Do you like it?

Elyse: It’s a beautiful book.

Sarah: Yeah?

Elyse: I just, put together visually, it’s gorgeous. I did not know that knitting originated in the Arab world and came to Europe with the Crusades.

Sarah: So what other knitting patterns are you going to do in the future?

Elyse: I like knitting shawls and scarves and cowls. I guess I like having a warm neck. I think I have this fantasy about being an elegant French woman where I can just, like, throw on a shawl and I look all put together.

Sarah: Of course.

Elyse: Like – But I’m not. I was amazed at how many people that come to Smart Bitches knit too, so that’s really cool.

Sarah: Oh, the, the, the traffic was incredible.

Elyse: Awesome. I’m excited. I want to develop more Smart Bitches knitting patterns.

Sarah: I think that everyone is in favor of that idea.

Elyse: Boss! I have, I have, like, little Regency mitts in my head, and –

Sarah: Ooh!

Elyse: – all kinds of stuff, yeah.

[music]

Sarah: And that’s all for this week’s episode. Thank you to Elyse for hanging out with me on Skype for an hour and talking about all the inappropriate things that we could fit into one conversation. I mentioned this at the beginning, but in case you missed it, every book we talked about I link to in the podcast entry, so if you’re driving or you’re on the treadmill or you’re driving on a treadmill, which I would kind of want to see how that works, you’re thinking to yourself, hey, what book was that? There’s a whole entry full of links to all the books we talk about, so don’t worry, you don’t have to write them down while you’re driving. ‘Cause you should not write or text or use the treadmill while you drive, at least unless your car is powered by a treadmill, which would be an entirely different podcast.

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater, and you should totally find her on Twitter and congratulate her, ‘cause she totally just got engaged, which is so awesome! This music is by Caravan Palace, which is a French group, and this song is called “Cotton Heads” from their album Panic in the U.S.A. I will have links to the album as well, should you wish to own this fine, fine music for your very own.

This podcast is also brought to you by InterMix, publisher of The Affair, the brand-new, red-hot e-serial from New York Times bestselling author Beth Kery. The Affair began on September 16^th, and you can download new installments on Tuesdays wherever eBooks are sold.

If you like the podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, you can find us on iTunes, you can find us on PodcastPickle – I bet Longarm subscribes to PodcastPickle – and we’re also on Stitcher. And if you have ideas or feedback or questions or recommendations, or you really want to know something about Carrie or Elyse or RedHeadedGirl or anyone, you can email us at sbjpodcast@gmail.com or you can call our Goggle voice number at 1-201-371-DBSA.

Future podcasts will feature me, and Jane possibly, both of us, talking about romance novels, ‘cause that’s what we do here. And if you’ve subscribed and if you’ve been listening, we really appreciate it, and Jane and Elyse and I all wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.

[fine, fine music]