290. The Art and Magic of Designing Book Covers: An Interview with Regina Flath

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome to episode number 290 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and today I am speaking with Regina Flath, who is a designer, illustrator, and book cover designer at Random House Children’s Books.

This podcast was suggested by a listener named Hannah – thank you, Hannah! – who heard Regina speak on a panel at New York Comic Con. Regina is a designer who specializes in YA covers, and her bio is adorable. It says that she’s “100% constructed from witchcraft, yarn, sewing needles, and snacks. She’s a friend to imaginary creatures everywhere.” Regina is also the designer behind some very popular covers, including When Dimple Met Rishi. We had a lot to talk about. You’ll hear the behind-the-scenes details of cover development, the fun parts and the not-so-fun parts, and the jobs that a cover has to do beyond looking alluring on a digital or a physical shelf. Regina shares how she figured out early what she wanted to do and why she targeted book cover design and illustration. We get the full story of the development of the cover, back cover, and inside images for When Dimple Met Rishi, including whose handwriting is on Rishi’s cup. Regina also talks very candidly about diversity initiatives inside her publishing house and the ways in which she’s often the lone diverse voice in a meeting and how exhausting and uncomfortable that position is. We also find out which book featuring LARPing made her extremely happy and which romance authors are her auto-buys. And you get to find out when or where you can hear Regina regularly discussing witches in popular culture. Hint: she has a podcast!

I learned a tremendous amount from this conversation and, as I said during the interview, my favorite parts of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood were always the tours of places like how crayons get made? So this is all about how the beautiful covers that we love get made, and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you again, Hannah, for writing in to suggest this interview, and thank you to Regina for taking the time to speak with me.

Now if you have suggestions of someone you’d like me to interview or talk to, you should email me at [email protected], and if you have a request for recommendation or you’d like to ask me some things, you can also record a voice memo and email it to me at [email protected]. Don’t be scared; you’re going to sound awesome!

Today’s podcast is sponsored by a podcast! How cool is this? Today’s podcast is sponsored by – you know I like this name – Heaving Bosoms: A Romance Novel Podcast, in which two best friends, Erin in Alaska and Melody in New Jersey, gush, giggle, snark, and snort their way through a different romance novel each week. If you love fangirling about your latest read with your best girlfriends, you’ll love listening to Erin and Melody do a deep breakdown of their favorite, and occasionally not-so-favorite, romance novels. The recaps come with a heaping dose of unconditional friendship, openhearted feminism, and hilarious tangents. Come for the romance, but stay for the self-love recommendations they use to cap off each episode. We all need the reminder, right? From Julia Quinn to Courtney Milan to Tiffany Reisz, Erin and Mel are tackling every kind of smooching book they can find, and they’re always taking suggestions. We recommend starting with two favorite episodes: episode 14, When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tess Dare, or episode 16, Love Hacked by Penny Reid. Just don’t listen around the kids, because, like your favorite books, these two can get a little explicit. You’ll find Heaving Bosoms on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your fine podcasts. And thank you to Heaving Bosoms for sponsoring this episode!

Today’s podcast transcript is, as always, compiled by garlicknitter – thank you, garlicknitter – and is sponsored by A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen. If you like Sarah MacLean and Tessa Dare, you will love this Regency romance. August Faulkner has returned with his eye on expanding his business empire. He is a duke, a scoundrel, and a titan of business and wears his roguish reputation with, as a badge of honor. Clara Hayward is the respected headmistress and is above reproach, but ten years ago she shared a scandalous waltz with August and, despite herself, has never forgotten the feeling of being in his arms. Can these opposites find a second chance at romance? RT Book Reviews raves, “What a way to start the Devils of Dover series!” A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at kellybowen.net or forever-romance.com.

Now, I have some compliments to give out, which is another favorite part of the intro.

To Megan S.: You constantly fill things. You fill your life with art, you fill the world with a little extra joy, and you fill your friends with exuberance and appreciation. Nice job!

To Kat C.: Yesterday, one of your friends thought about the most perfect time they had with you and hoped that you could experience that much fun again as soon as possible.

And a special message to Elizabeth M.: It really is going to be okay. Keep going. You’ve got this.

If you would like a compliment or you’d like to support the show, I humbly invite you to have a look at our podcast Patreon. Your support means the entire world to me. Patreon.com/SmartBitches. When you make a monthly pledge, you’re helping the show, you’re helping me commission transcripts, and you’re helping make the show more gooder in the future.

I also want to thank some of the patron, Patreon patrons personally. That was a lot of Ps in a row. So to Leah, Mina, Sherry, Sonia, and Tiffany, thank you so much for supporting the show and being part of the podcast community!

Other ways to support the show? Uh, totally! Leave a review wherever you listen, however you listen. You can tell a friend, you can subscribe, whatever works! But thank you for hanging out with me each week.

Ooh, and! I have a new resource for you: should you be looking for more romance-focused podcasts to listen to – of course you are! – head to RomancePodcasts.com. That’s RomancePodcasts.com. You will find a post I created with a list of the podcasts I know of that focus on romance fiction. Some are from a writing perspective, some are for readers looking at individual books, but they all talk about our favorite genre, so if you need more podcasts to listen to, I totally understand! RomancePodcasts.com.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the show as to who this is and where you can buy it. I will also have a terrible, terrible joke, so bad I actually got my husband with it, and he glared at me ‘cause he was mad? [Laughs] And I will have information about what’s coming up on Smart Bitches this week.

And speaking of Smart Bitches, if you got to the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, of course I will have links to all of the things that we talk about, Regina’s website, her portfolio, and all of the books that we mention.

And now, without any further delay, on with the podcast.

[music]

Regina Flath: I’m Regina Flath. I’m a senior designer at Random House Children’s Books. I am a book designer, and I’m occasional podcaster about witches in pop culture, and I make stuff. I have a toddler. You might hear her in the background. Yeah.

Sarah: I’m very excited that there’s a possibility of toddler.

Regina: [Laughs] Yes, there is definitely a chance of toddler.

Sarah: So here’s how I ended up contacting you to be on the podcast. I regularly say on the podcast, if you have ideas, if you have suggestions, if there’s someone you think I should talk to, please tell me. So I had an email from a listener named Hanna, who was at New York Comic Con and heard you on a Women of Color in Publishing panel.

Regina: Oh, yes!

Sarah: And she was like, Sarah, seriously, you need to talk to Regina. She designed When Dimple Met Rishi, and I was like, oh my God! You know who made that?

Regina: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, one person? You know the person who made that? Oh my gosh! I was freaking out, I was like, okay, this person’s super cool. Just get, you know, get it together, Sarah. Okay, so, like, go to her website. And then I go to your website, and I see this whole collage of all of the covers you’ve done, and I’m like, there is no effing way that this person’s going to even know who the hell I am or want to be on a show –

Regina: [Laughs]

Sarah: – where I’ll be like, you have some incredible art that I’m going to talk –

Regina: Thank you.

Sarah:  – about and ask lots of questions. So then I emailed you, and you were like, oh my God, yes! And I was like, [gasps] this is the greatest email I’ve ever sent! So thank you so much!

Regina: Awesome. I, it was funny when I got the email. I was at my desk, and, you know, I’m surrounded by my colleagues, and I’m, I’m in a cube, I’m not in an office or anything, so I get the email, and then I’m, like, having, like, a little bit of a quiet fangirl moment, until, like, I couldn’t anymore, and then I was like, Ray, Gina! Like, let me tell you about this thi-, like, I’m going to be on this podcast, and there’s this romance blog, and nuh! And everyone’s like, yeah, it’s cool; cool story.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: That’s, that’s fine, for you. I guess that’s exciting for you? Great. I was like, no, you don’t understand.

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, I’m excited, and you’re excited, so that means this is going to be awesome.

Regina: Lot’s of excitement all around.

Sarah: So you design covers for YA books at Penguin Random House.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So how did you get started in cover design? That’s a very specific design field, right?

Regina: Mmmm, yes, sure. Yeah. I went to school for illustration initially, thinking I was going to be a full-time, freelance illustrator for picture books, and so I went in for illustration at University of the Arts, and I pretty quickly realized that if I was going to work from home full time and only occasionally see people or talk to actual humans and not just my email, that I would go insane –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: – and so I was like, all right, can’t do that. Have to change, have to change tracks. So from there, I met the creative – I don’t know if she’s still creative director or has a different title now, but creative director at the time of Scholastic, Elizabeth Parisi, and I kind of fell in love with her and what she did, and I was like, okay, that’s what I want to do. I want to have your job. So that was probably my junior year. From there, I switched my portfolio, and I did, I did two portfolio final projects: one illustration solely to, you know, final, finalize my credits for that course, and then I also did a, another design-specific, book-design-specific portfolio, because that’s what I realized was what I wanted to do. So in my senior portfolio day, I met an art director who was looking for a designer, happened to be looking for a designer, and I was very aggressively pitching myself, like, no, you know, I’m here with these illustrators, but book design is really what I want to do, and so on, so forth, and I got the interview, and I got the job right, right before graduation, which was in oh nine? ’09? Right around when the, the market was really not doing so hot?

Sarah: Yeah.

Regina: So it was a very panicky time for, for everyone, but it was very fortunate for me, so that’s – I started, you know, initially designing picture books, middle grade, and occasionally YA, and as I progressed through my career, it was clear that YA was the thing that I liked to do best and that I did do best, so I kind of meandered my way to exclusively doing YA covers.

Sarah: That is really interesting, especially because it means that for, for yourself at a young age, you knew you wanted to be an artist; you knew yourself well enough to be like, wow, being alone in my house all day is a bad idea for me.

Regina: [Laughs] It would be bad for people around me, I would probably have some murderous tendencies. You would see me on the news.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: I wouldn’t be on a podcast; I would be –

Sarah: And then you –

Regina: – on America’s Most Wanted.

Sarah: – you had that moment where you’re like, okay, this is what I want to do.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Do you still remember that moment? Did it really resonate with you?

Regina: Yes and no. I mean, I’ve always, gosh, I’ve always been very driven – #Slytherin – from, like, the earliest that I can remember. I knew I wanted to do something in the arts. I knew very quickly I wanted to work with books, so, like I said, book illustration was kind of like the thing I wanted to do for, for a while, but when I met Elizabeth, like, I, it was, like, around a week-long, it was, like, a week-long epiphany of, like, oh, like, this lady is really amazing, and she’s so cool, and she does these things, and I could work in an office with other people who will talk to me and –

[Laughter]

Regina: Yeah, and, and books. Books, specifically; I always was a very avid reader, and kind of realizing that I could take my passion for reading and my passion for art and my abilities there and, like, kind of, you know, pigeonhole my way into a very, like, as you said, very, like, specific career choice was like, oh, yeah, this is – get out of my way, this is what I’m going to do!

Sarah: Really cool. Because I, I have not had that experience, I sort of made up my own job, so I think it’s, I think it’s – generally speaking, I always personally find people who know themselves to be terribly interesting? Like, oh –

Regina: [Laughs]

Sarah: – you figured your shit out! That’s so amazing! [Laughs]

Regina: Yeah, yeah. In some ways more than others, but yes.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So one thing I know about book covers, especially since my field of experience is, is romance, which has a whole other kind of cover style, I know a cover –

Regina: Yes!

Sarah: – has a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and I was wondering if –

Regina: Correct.

Sarah: – as a designer, you could talk about what are the things a book cover has to do in a very short amount of, of interaction with a prospective reader? I mean, it could be, like, a glance, and you need to be able to do a bunch of things. What are some of the things a cover has to do?

Regina: What are some of the things a cover has to do once it’s on the book and on a shelf or in your Amazon Other people bought this?

Sarah: Yeah! Yeah, yeah.

Regina: So there’s a, there’s a lot of different things that it’s expected to do, and some of those things change, depending on the genre, right, so you want something that’s going to grab somebody’s attention, and that’s the very first thing. You, you want something that, with just half a second of a glance, you go, hmm! What’s that? Or, oh, wait, let me look closer at that, ‘cause I think I saw this, but it couldn’t be that, and just kind of get you to engage. And then once you’ve engaged and you’re taking more than half a second to look, then the, then the specific requirements of your genre start to come into play, right. So if I’m designing for YA, right, it needs to say, this is a YA book. This is a YA book within this subgenre, you know. Say it’s When Dimple Met Rishi, right. It’s a contemporary romance, so my first glance is going to be YA and then contemporary romance, and then it’s going to kind of funnel down the hierarchy, and that hierarchy isn’t decided by me. It’s decided by editorial and then, to some extent, sales and marketing. They say, like, okay, this book is, you know, a contemporary rom-com with a diversity aspect, and I want it to say all of those things, right. Ideally, the, that positioning is really clear from the get-go, so when I’m doing my job, I can figure out how to get all of those things to talk to you when you’re looking at a cover. It’s not always clear – [laughs] – from the beginning, which causes a lot of comedy of, of errors on my side and a lot of stress for me when there’s not that clear positioning, but, but, yeah, im-, immediacy is, like, oh, let me look closer, and then once you’re in that look-closer, then you’re going on the hierarchy what is most important for the consumer to know.

Sarah: What are images that say this is YA versus this is romance? Like, you have to communicate that so quickly. Are there elements that you can identify that say, okay, this is going to be a YA versus, well, this would be romance or this would be fantasy?

Regina: Absolutely. So with YA specifically, you’re making the distinction between adult, YA, and then something younger like middle grade and chapter books, right? Adult covers tend to be more conceptual, even when you’re talking about something that’s within a subgenre like romance or sci-fi or whatever. YA gets conceptual, but it also is a little bit more literal than adult would ever be, right, so when you have a YA cover, you’re expected to tell a little bit more about what the story is. When you get even younger than that and you’re looking at, like, middle grade, for instance, that is hyper-literal, right. You are looking precisely at, there’s a cast of four characters, here they all are, here’s what they look like, they’re running through a field, and they’ve got their dog companion or whatever. It’s, like, very exactly what you’re going to find in the content. And then picture books is interesting, because it goes kind of in the opposite direction, where it could be that, or it could be super abstract, because a picture book buyer is an adult, versus a middle-grade or a Young Adult buyer could be a person of, you know, twelve and up or, you know, nine and up or whatever the case may be. So it has a lot to do with your audience. So if you’re looking at some imagery and it’s a little bit more literal, that’s what’s going to separate it, like a YA romance from, say, an adult –

Sarah: Wow.

Regina: – romance. Plus age of the characters, stuff like that.

Sarah: So if you were going to be designing romance covers, have you done any romance covers?

Regina: Oh God, I want to so bad!

[Laughter]

Regina: I’ve done, I’ve done New Adult, and, you know, I’m sure, as you know, New Adult is that, it’s not exactly regular romance. It’s not really YA. So I’ve done a couple of those, but I’ve never done, like, legit, full-on, this-is-an-adult-romance book, which is a dream of mine. One day it’s going to happen; I’m going to do it. But, no, mostly I’ve done YA romances, which are, as I said, they have the constraint of the age group.

Sarah: Yes, and, and YA and New Adult also have, New Adult has a very specific look now too. And as a person who is not a designer –

Regina: Yes.

Sarah: – I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it, which makes it very frustrating to try to communicate it to someone else. Like, okay, you’re going to go to the bookstore, and you’re going to look for this. I can’t tell you what that is –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – but then when I see it, I know it.

Regina: Right.

Sarah: That’s, that’s the kind of lack of language that you have to translate between editorial and sales and design, right?

Regina: A hundred and ten percent.

Sarah: [Laughs] I’m really sorry!

Regina: No! No, I, I tell this all the time to people who are interested in starting careers in, in book design, which is if you’re not, if you’re not a people person, and if you’re not vaguely interested in psychology, let’s say, you’re not going to have a good time being a, a book designer or a commercial in-house designer, because so much of what my job is is talking to somebody, having them tell me something, some kind of reaction, some kind of feeling about what they’re looking at, and then translating that into something that I can actually work with? Because, for instance, you know, you look at a, a cover and be like, oh, this is good, but I want it to pop more. And so pop could mean contrast; pop could mean the size of something needs to get larger; pop could mean, I want the colors to be more saturated; pop could mean, you know, this person in particular doesn’t respond to this type of imagery but wants a different type of it. Like, you’ve got to kind of – [laughs] – you’ve got to kind of psychoanalyze the, the source to figure out what the next steps are.

Sarah: Or could, they could be talking about their grandfather, who they called Pop?

Regina: Exactly.

Sarah: [Laughs[

Regina: You have no idea, and then once you get through that internal process, then, you know, it goes out to the author, and then the author’s got feedback that you also have to hope that the editorial person interprets correctly, and then the author’s dog has feedback. You’ve got to interpret that correctly, and you’ve got to funnel all of that into your final cover. There’s a lot of voices, but a lot of that, you know, a lot of the job is figuring out that language and how to make it actually useful.

Sarah: Right. Now, I want to ask you a question about the actual process, ‘cause you’ve, you’ve mentioned some parts of it that there’s editorial that has input, and that you, you break down this hierarchy of what the book is, what genre, what the emphasis is, how they’re going to angle it, because the cover is also part of the marketing plan –

Regina: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – so you not only have to inform the reader, but you have to inform the, the person who’s going to buy the book to put it in a store.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Sort of like, you know, following the – [laughs] – I’m going to, I’m going to date myself here, but my favorite parts of shows like Mister Rogers and Sesame Street –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – the conveyor belt footage of how crayons get made or, you know –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – how things get made, so could you take us on a little bit of the conveyor belt of how a book cover comes to be?

Regina: Sure, yeah. It’s actually pretty timely, because we just finished our launch for the, the summer, no, Summer ’18. We’re not going to start Spring ’19.

Sarah: Oh, publishing! You ever know what day it is?

Regina: No, I never know what year it is. I know what day it is, I never know what year it is, and people get really confused, and I like to think of myself as, like, an alien time traveler, something like that, and no one else finds it nearly as charming as I do when I don’t know what year it is. But, yeah, so, conveyor belt.

So I, I’ll, we’ll start with a kickoff. Editorial will meet with the design team and say, hey, these are our books. Here’s a little bit about what they’re probably going to be, ‘cause at this stage in the game, there may or may not be a manuscript, right? So once all of those pitches come in from editorial, internally, the rest of the design team and myself, we all take a look, and we give our preferences to the art director. Say, hey, like, this sounded right up my alley, or I have worked on so many books with this one particular editor; please don’t assign me any of her books this season or there will be blood on the floor.

Sarah: [Laughs] So there’s actually, like, bidding.

Regina: Oh, definitely, yeah. So we, we do that internally, and, you know, sometimes we do, like, short straw, like, ugh, you’ve got work on this nightmare! Have fun! You know. So once we kind of figure out our assignments, then we start, like, going in as far as starting the design process, which, again, is a little bit different, depending on a project, right. If I have a book that has a manuscript available, I’m going to try to read it, ‘cause it makes my job a little bit easier. It also helps, again, with the psychology bit. If I’m pitching an idea to editorial and I can back it up with editorial content and be like, oh, well, I’m using this because this happened in the book like that, the likelihood that my cool idea will get approved goes way up, right, so definitely read the manuscript if I can. If there’s not a manuscript, I’ll read whatever is available. There’s a cover memo which will tell me that initial positioning, right. What’s the genre? What are the, what’s the hierarchy of things that we want to say with the front cover? What is the initial print run? This is important for me to know because if it’s a high print run, I’m going to have more money to sink into my cover costs and maybe be able to do something cooler. If there’s a lower print run, then I’m restricted in what my art costs can be.

Sarah: Right.

Regina: I might be relegated just to stock imagery and, you know, or whatever, and then I’d have to make a really strong case for why spending more money on cover imagery would be beneficial, right. There’s a little more risk there. So then I start from there, kind of coming up with concepts, and sometimes I start with a really strong idea, like for instance, with When Dimple Met Rishi. I got pitched that idea without a manuscript, and I was like, all right, I’ve got five cover ideas ready. Let’s, let’s do this. But there are some times when I have a, a book that comes across my desk, and I’m like, I don’t know what the heck to do with this, and I’ll just start randomly searching stock images, looking to jog an idea, so it could go in a couple of, couple of different ways. Then I start making comps, I show them to the design team, narrow it down. Then I show those refined comps to editorial, narrow those down. Then that process goes on for as long as it needs to until it goes to the publisher, and then it goes to sales and marketing. Then they hate it. I start over again.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: The process goes on until, okay, design is fine with it; editorial loves it; sales loves it. Then it goes to the bookstore that shall not be named, and then they hate it, and then I start over again at, like, the eleventh hour right before we’re supposed to start, like, releasing the jackets to production, and then the process goes all over again, and then the bookstore that shall not be named says, okay, great, we’ll up our buy to X, so then you release your, your jacket mechanical to production. They send it off to the printer. The jackets get shipped with, like, the binding specs and whatever to all of the different warehouses. All of the pieces come together; the jackets get wrapped around the books and then shipped off to the bookstore. And then possibly shipped back. There’s, like, a weird – [laughs] – there’s a weird holdover from a long time ago where, you know, bookstores, books, bookstores can ship returns back to the publishers, which is, like, a really weird business of publishing thing.

Sarah: Yes. That you kind of almost work on consignment for some titles. It’s –

Regina: Definitely, yeah.

Sarah: The idea that a bookseller has so much input into a cover blew my mind. I remember a couple of years ago, I think it was Harlequin was rereleasing an older Jenny Crusie title, and a book buyer –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – said, I will buy, you know, X thousand more if there’s a dog on the cover, and so they’re like, all right –

Regina: Yep.

Sarah: – dog on the cover, and Jenny Crusie –

Regina: Yep.

Sarah: – was very upfront about saying, you have to give me the book back to put a dog in the book, ‘cause there’s no dog in the book. If you’re going to put on the cover –

Regina: Yep.

Sarah: So she rewrote a couple of scenes to add a dog because the book buyer wanted a dog on the cover, ‘cause a dog on the cover was going to sell.

Regina: First of all, bless her for putting a dog into that so that that poor cover designer didn’t have to hear some, you know, something on social media like, I got this terrible thing that happened to my book, ‘cause honestly, it’s not our fault.

Sarah: No, you’re not, you’re not making the decisions; you’re interpreting the decisions.

Regina: So we’ve just got to, at the end of the day, you know, there are times when you can make something really awesome, and it flies through, and all of the stars align, and then there are times when, you know what, as a designer, you are a pair of hands –

Sarah: Yep.

Regina: – that knows how to use InDesign, so get ready to be piloted.

Sarah: Yep. By people who don’t understand design and want to tell you about how things pop, and maybe they mean Grandpa, and maybe they mean soda –

Regina: Yeah.

Sarah: – and maybe they mean increasing the contrast.

Regina: Exactly. And you know what, that’s fine. It happens. It all comes together. Books get made.

Sarah: Yes! So what parts of the process are fun? Which parts are you like, yes! This is going to be awesome!?

Regina: Mm, when you first start, it’s always fun, ‘cause nobody has told you no yet. That’s probably the best part, is right when you get that kickoff and you’ve been pitched a book and sky’s the limit. You don’t know what the print run is, you don’t – it could be anything, and you’re like, yeah! I could do, I could do this really cool thing that I’m really – [laughs] – really into, or I could, you know, try this different artist that I’ve been meaning to work with or whatever, so that’s really fun. And then, honestly, just, like, the whole process has its really fun moments, provided that you’re not on your fiftieth iteration of it.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: Like, which has happened to me so many times, where I’m like, okay –

Sarah: I hate this book, I hate this book, make it go away.

Regina: – version zero five one, zero five two, zero – like –

[Laughter]

Regina: Yeah, so, but even at that, sometimes it can be fun because, you know, I don’t know, you’d be a weirdo like me who’s like, yeah, really – you’ve now, you have challenged me. Like, you’re challenging me to this duel.

Sarah: [Laughs] The gauntlet has been thrown.

Regina: Exactly. So sometimes that can be fun too, when you finally get something through. And then when you have a really big book and you’re like, okay, let’s have a special effects meeting with production. That’s also super fun.

Sarah: What kind of special effects can you do? ‘Cause I am old enough to remember when there were hologram covers, and then there were –

Regina: Oh, there still are!

Sarah: And then there’s, there was, like, the, the, the Zebra logo was a hologram, and then they had the kind where you tilted it one way and tilted it another way, and it would, the, the image would sort of move a little bit?

Regina: Lenticular.

Sarah: Thank you! I was looking for that word, and it was not going to come out of my brain. Thank you.

Regina: Mm-hmm. FYI, len-, lenticular is way too expensive for, for what I do.

Sarah: I think it’s –

Regina: But maybe one day.

Sarah: – for most books, really.

Regina: Yeah, unless it’s, like a novelty or something, you probably don’t have the budget for lenticular on a cover, but I have a book that’s coming out, it’s the newest Kiersten White. It’s actually going to be revealed on Wednesday, which is very exciting, but I got to do so many special effects! I’m really stoked about it.

Sarah: What are some of the special effects that you can add? Like, what, what, what constitutes a special effect on a book cover?

Regina: Anything that’s not straight matte or straight gloss is considered a special effect, so spot UV is a special effect. Spot, you know, spot gloss is a special effect. You can have a gritty matte, which makes it feel a little like very fine-ground sandpaper?

Sarah: Yes.

Regina: You could have soft touch, which is my favorite, which makes it feel kind of velvety.

Sarah: I think my second book had that!

Regina: Yeah!

Sarah: I think it did.

Regina: It did.

Sarah: It did?

Regina: Yep.

Sarah: You want to hear the funniest story?

Regina: Yes.

Sarah: So, my second book – I don’t know the words for these things, so you can tell me, much like you did with lenticular –

Regina: Okay.

Sarah: So, the, the, the original edition of Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels has this really lovely sort of fuzzy cover on the outside, and then it has a special paper on the inside cover.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It’s a, like a pink paper with little dots on it.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And it’s in the front, and it’s in the back.

Regina: Endpapers?

Sarah: Yes, thank you. And it’s gorgeous!

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So I gave my mother-in-law a copy of my book, because this is what you do, and she goes, [gasps] oh, Sarah, I love this paper! Did you get this at Michaels?

Regina: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, I was in the basement with my glue stick gluing this paper inside every single book, and I was like, yes, I did. Yes, that is exactly –

Regina: That’s delightful. There is nothing like mom to humble you before everyone.

Sarah: I know! She’s like, I want to know where this paper’s from. I’m like, I couldn’t tell you, ‘cause it was a really awesome design team who made this happen. I had nothing to do with this! [Laughs]

Regina: That’s awesome.

Sarah: So when you have a cover reveal, when a cover reveal goes up –

Regina: Yep.

Sarah: – as the designer of that cover, are you super excited?

Regina: Most of the time, yes, because anything that’s got a, anything that’s got a media reveal or a timed reveal means that it was, like, a big – Big, capital B – Big Deal.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Regina: Right, so that means I’ve probably sunk more time and more effort, you know, whatever, into developing it, so I’m usually pretty excited, like, oh, there’s going to be a cover reveal, and on top of that, I have to be in the office at a specific time to press the button that uploads it to all of the –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: So, like, I kind of have to be involved at that level at the very least. But, no, specifically, for this one on Wednesday, this new Kiersten White, I’m super invested, because like When Dimple Met Rishi, it was kind of my baby. Like, it was kind of, it was my concept, it was my art direction, you know, I worked really closely with the photographer. Like, I put a lot of love into this, and it was pretty much soup to nuts my work, versus there are, there are other covers, for instance, where I’ll come up with a concept, and I’ll execute it, and I’ll have to go back and execute it a few different ways or, like, add in, you know, a dog or, or whatever.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: There’s, like, a little bit more outside input that goes into the final. In this case, there isn’t, so I feel more invested, because I want it to do even better – [laughs] – because I have so much that I’ve already invested in it, so it makes sense.

Sarah: That totally makes sense. Do you read the comments to a cover reveal, or do, do, do any of them bother you, because, you know, everyone knows everything about design.

Regina: Yes, they do. Occasionally, I’ll read them, usually when it’s, usually when it’s cover reveals and the, like, the first couple of days, it’s usually pretty positive. I, I tend not to go back after that, because –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: I actually, I had a really funny thing happen to me recently where somebody on Twitter was posting about one of the Tamora Pierce repackages that I designed and went on this rampage like, this is terrible design –

Sarah: What?!

Regina: – and this is, you know, these are so much worse than the original, and, you know, design is, you know, so terrible now because they have to do all the blah-de-blah. Then I was like, well, I’m so sorry that, to hear that. I, I’m sure a future repackage will be more to your taste when they repackage this again, and then the person was like, oh, I didn’t mean to tag you in that. [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, people –

Regina: It’s like, all, all right. Thanks. But that was probably, that was probably the most brutal and almost the most hilarious.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: Like, there, there have been other times. I really like, there’s one, there’s a book blogger that does cover snark? I don’t know if you follow her, but she does cover snark for YA, and it’s delightful and says all kinds of mean or silly things about the covers, and I really enjoy that, because –

Sarah: [Laughs] You enjoy it!

Regina: Well, ‘cause some of the, some of them about my covers will be, like, definitely deserved, and I feel like, yeah, you’re so right about that, you know.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: And, and that’s, and that’s kind of fun, you know.

Sarah: That’s amazing!

Regina: You’ve got to, at the, at the end of the day, there, there are some, there are very few projects that I feel super emotionally invested in, because, you know, it’s commercial design.

Sarah: Right.

Regina: Right, it’s, it’s a product. It’s not, I’m not coming to work to make Art, you know?

Sarah: No, you’re making a commercial –

Regina: I’m, I’m –

Sarah: – marketing product.

Regina: Right, so it’s a little bit easier to, to read the weirdo comments.

Sarah: So which of your covers – and this is a terrible question – are your favorites?

Regina: Mm-hmm. Mm. Well, Dimple is up there. As I, as I had mentioned, it was soup to nuts, everything in that cover and that package was all me –

Sarah: Nice!

Regina: – as far as the art direction, the design, the –

Sarah: Nice job! [Laughs]

Regina: I mean, you’re – thank you! There, there were some weird things that I can sort of talk about, but for the most part, like, that’s one of my favorites, because it’s had a lot of success, which is wonderful. It’s got a really beautiful Indian model on the cover, and again, it was my, it was my conceptual and execution baby, so I feel attached to that. This new Kiersten White I feel, oh, nervous and super – [laughs] – super excited about that one. Let me think. The, the very first Tamora Pierce repackages that I did, which are Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen, those are up there right now, because that, those two are the first of eleven Tamora Pierce books that I’ve done now, and that’s pretty, like, like, crazy weird exciting that, like, I’m, I made covers for this titan in Young Adult fantasy that I read as a kid and – so that’s fun. And then probably Diary of a Haunting, which doesn’t really do a ton of justice to it online, but the hard copy, the jacket is acetate –

Sarah: Ooh!

Regina: – so, like, the image on the front cover is a girl sleeping on a bed, and in the ceiling, on the ceiling’s corner is another faceless girl, like, hanging out? Like, this is scary, right, but when you take the acetate cover off, it’s just this innocuous picture of this girl sleeping on the bed. And then when you have the jacket by itself, it looks almost like a film negative, ‘cause it’s just black printed on this clear acetate, and that’s pretty cool, ‘cause it got an award for, for package design from the New York Book Show –

Sarah: Nice! You must be pretty psyched about that!

Regina: Yeah, and then – yeah, it was pretty cool, and then I got, I got one this year. I, I actually came in first place this year for series design for the Night World repackages that I did. L. J. Smith had a series of books called Night World that I did –

Sarah: They’re gorgeous!

Regina: – pretty cool packages for –

Sarah: And the –

Regina: – so I got, I got to work with the same artist for the Buffy cover too, and that’s cool just ‘cause Buffy, you know.

[Laughter]

Sarah: One thing, one of the things that I love about the, the L. J. Smith package, looking at your website – and I will definitely –

Regina: Uh-huh?

Sarah: – link to all of this, so do not worry.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: The spines all line up to form a larger picture too –

Regina: Uh-huh.

Sarah: – so the series has its own design as well.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: That’s so cool!

Regina: Yeah, because they’re, they’re, the books already existed, so we had the spine widths available, ‘cause as I mentioned, sometimes we –

Sarah: Right.

Regina: – we don’t know, know how the manuscripts or whatever, but because they already existed and it was a repackage, I knew, okay, I’m going to have this much real estate to design something for the spines, so they definitely need to have, like, a connecting thing there, and the concept for those was that, you know – we don’t say paranormal romance anymore. Passé, right? – But when I was looking at them, it was like, okay, how are you going to approach these differently? And in the books they have this weird, like, secret society of paranormal creatures, and I was like, all right, my play is the, each book is, like, an Illuminati-style handbook for a supernatural creature, so each cover is going to kind of reflect the creature that takes the most emphasis in this particular book.

Sarah: Oooh!

Regina: So if you’re reading them, each cover has a visual reference to whatever the symbols of that particular – whether it’s werewolves or, you know, vampires or whoever’s starring in that particular book, there’s a little nod to what’s going on in their story –

Sarah: Okay, that’s seriously cool. So the cover is, like, a puzzle or almost like a piece of fan service to people who are in –

Regina: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – on the secret of the book.

Regina: Correct, and then each book is printed on a one-color paper-over-board and embossed with foil, and then the insides of the books are printed one-color? So normally the inside of a book is black, but I was like, okay, guys, but what if we don’t print a jacket at all, and then you give me the jacket dollars so that – [laughs] – we can have the interior be, you know, green if the outside of the book is green, or red if the outside of the book is red.

Sarah: Whoa!

Regina: So that’s pretty fun too. So each book is a different color inside that matches the color of the case.

Sarah: That’s seriously cool.

Regina: Yeah, it was a lot; that was a fun project.

Sarah: So the Tamora Pierce redesigns are –

Regina: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: Poor, poor you, you’re going to have to listen to my terrible description of design. These are the –

Regina: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – this is the one where the first book is purple, and it almost looks like a night sky, but it’s actually a, almost like a, a pin or a broach going through –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – like a sword broach going through, I think, velvet?

Regina: Yes, that is precisely what it is.

Sarah: Oh, go me! Good job!

Regina: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Sarah: And then the second one is a clasp on braided hair, a very close, close –

Regina: Correct.

Sarah: – frame of a, of a crown on braided hair.

Regina: Yep.

Sarah: How did you construct those images? They’re gorgeous, and they’re so in line with what YA fantasy looks like right now. How did you come up with those images?

Regina: So those, again, those books are some of my favorites ‘cause I did, I came up with those my first day at Random House?

Sarah: Right!

Regina: So, you know, they, ‘cause they hired me on, and they were like, my boss was like, oh, I have this project that I think is really going to be right up your alley. We need to repackage all of Tamora Pierce.

Sarah: Oh!

Regina: Enjoy. And I was like, oh, no pressure. Like, no – [laughs] – no big deal. So I was, I was reading through, and I was like, okay, so for Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen, she’s a spy, right, so I was like, how do I say lady spy with this imagery? And I came up with the idea of this sword and broach things, and I contacted this artist that I love working with, Luke Choice, who’s, like, my main man 3D guy, and I was like, Luke, I got this big project. Like, you’ve got to help me out with this, and he was like, all right, I’m in. We can do this thing to the timing and everything. We had to work out timing and budget whatever. I was like, she’s a lady spy. I want a broach that has the sword and, like, the outside of the broach, you know, is going to have some kind of, like, etching in it, whatever, and then we came up together with this idea of, okay, the etching around the outside would almost be like a, like, you know, one of those decoder rings?

Sarah: Yes.

Regina: So in my head it was like, the way it would work is, depending on where you shifted the outside ring, it would tell you, like, a secret message?

Sarah: Ohhh, cool.

Regina: [Laughs] So, like, we were, like, totally, like, nerd alert on this whole thing. But anyway, so he’s a 3D artist, so I gave him the concept and some basic sketch and reference, and he built that art for me, and then I kind of directed him from there. And then the same thing for book two: I was like, all right, book two is about a queen, so I want, I want the sword, swords in there, two swords for book two, and have it going through this, like, crown-like thing in the hair so that there’s this abstract background of a texture, the way the velvet is kind of this abstract-y texture, and that the focus is in on this, like, cool metal piece of, you know, ornament.

Sarah: Okay. So, When Dimple Met Rishi.

Regina: Yes.

Sarah: How did this cover become what it is? I love everything about it.

Regina: [Laughs] But so Dimple. I got, I think I mentioned, I got pitched the concept for Dimple without reading anything yet.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Regina: And I was like, I got so, it’s this, you know, Indian arranged marriage rom-com teen girl, you know, thing, and I was like, I’ve got so many ideas. So I made sure that the acquiring editor put in extra money in her P & L when she was setting the book up so that we could have money for a photo shoot? I was like, trust me, you want to do this.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s not going to be – I was going to say, that’s not a stock image.

Regina: Mm-mm, no. This started out, Dimple started out as a very low-expectation book, right. It didn’t have, like, a big marketing campaign, and it didn’t, they didn’t really expect it to go very far, right. So –

Sarah: Silly people.

Regina: – I was like, okay, definitely put in extra money for this, ‘cause I’ve got some thoughts.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: And so initially, the cover was going to be what appears on the back cover?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Regina: And I did a location shoot, and I came up with sketches first, just, like, Sharpie doodles that I did, and then I hired a photographer, and I did model casting myself, which was really challenging because finding diverse models, there aren’t as many model agencies that, like, stock is the wrong word, but you know what I mean, like, in their portfolios, it’s harder to find diverse models, especially boys, ‘cause in this case, I knew it was going to be this, like, rom-com, and I wanted to show the boy on, on the, on the cover. It was important to me to show both of them. And so, hired the photographer, hired the models, and this scene in the book that, when I finally got a manuscript to read, where she throws the coffee in his face, I was like, this is it, this is perfect, ‘cause this is when the whole thing starts to go down and, you know, I, I had, I, I actually was thinking about one of the things that you had said in one of your books about Big Misunderstanding?

Sarah: Yeah.

Regina: And I was like, this is it! This is the Big Misunderstanding! This is what’s got to be on the cover! Which, I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it until just now, but you totally influenced that cover, so go you.

Sarah: Oh my gosh, I’m so honored!

Regina: [Laughs] But so anyways, so we went on location, and we threw twenty-two coffees at that poor boy –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: – in March, in March, too. It was cold!

Sarah: Oh, poor guy!

Regina: Poor boy. He was such a good sport. And, dude, that, the cover model, she was so sadistic about it, it was delightful. I had such a blast. She was like, aw, yeah! Coffee time! Like, it was, it was so good.

Sarah: She had the perfect, what the hell is happening right now? expression on her face, too. Like, boy, you have earned this coffee –

Regina: Mm-hmm, she was great.

Sarah: – and you’re going to go away. And it’s the same model on the front and the back, right?

Regina: Correct, yeah, the same model for all of the shots on the, on the jacket, so before we went out into the cold to throw coffee at that poor boy –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: – I did have the photographer shoot three other cover concepts for me, ‘cause whenever you do a photo shoot, you always want to have backups, ‘cause there’s always, something goes wrong or, like, one idea gets rejected, you need to do something else, and when you sink that much money into something, you want to make sure that you hedge your bets a little.

Sarah: Right, of course.

Regina: So my three cover concepts that I shot that day were the location shoot which is on the back, the image that ended up on the front cover, and then on the inside flaps, where it’s just the hand kind of coming out from the side, like, that was another concept, right. So, so, yeah. So we shot all of those things, and then I spent a while working with the back cover image and retouching it and putting type on it and bringing it to lots of meetings. In the end, it was decided that the couple, the two of them, was not going to be a strong enough cover image for this book, ‘cause at this point there was, because we had reads in –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Regina: – people started to get more enthusiastic about this book and thought, maybe, okay, this is actually going to go some place, right. So more expectation means more people, like, voicing their opinions.

Sarah: Yeah.

Regina: So I was like, all right, you guys are torturing me with this cover image of this couple. I’m, I, really quickly, before one of the meetings, took the image that is the front cover, I did the lettering for the coffee cup, and I was like, okay, but how about this instead? And they were like, oh, this is great! Let’s – [laughs] – let’s do that!

Sarah: Nice!

Regina: All right. I am still using this image that I have retouched and worked on and loved for so long. It’s going on the back cover. Screw all of you. I don’t get any back cover copy because I say so.

[Laughter]

Regina: It was a whole thing. The editor and I worked really closely together, and she, her name is Jen Ung, and she’s just so delightful and such an advocate for diversity in publishing and diverse cover images and stuff, and she was like, yeah, you get no back cover copy.

[Laughter]

Regina: You know. So, so, yeah. So in the end, it all came together really beautifully, and, yeah, that’s pretty much the story of Dimple.

Sarah: So When Dimple Met Rishi, that’s your handwriting.

Regina: Correct.

Sarah: That’s adorable!

Regina: And, dude, when people started posting images of themselves with the, with the coffee cup and, like, the title on their coffee cup, it was like people were cosplaying a thing that I made! Like, that’s bananas! That was –

Sarah: It’s adorable!

Regina: That was one of, like, the highlights of, one of the highlights of my career was getting all of these images flooding my Twitter feed and my inbox of people re-enacting the Dimple cover.

Sarah: I just sent you a link in the recording software.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I think this person’s Twitter feed has, has been taken down, but the image is still there?

Regina: Ah, nice!

Sarah: Isn’t it? She’s holding up the book and, and the caption –

Regina: Yes!

Sarah: – was originally brown author, brown book, and her skin, her skin tone matches mine.

Regina: Yep.

Sarah: And when I saw that come up when I was searching for the back cover, I saw that, and I’m like, oh, is that the model? Because this person looks just like her!

Regina: Looks very similar, right? [Laughs]

Sarah: That is incredible. Oh my goodness.

Regina: Yeah. So that was really cool. Yeah, and I got, oh man, I got so many nice notes from, from people just saying, like, how thrilled they were to be able to see themselves on a cover, and, like, I, you know, I feel that. I feel that.

Sarah: That’s really cool.

Regina: Yeah.

Sarah: And so did you design the, the mehndi, the henna on her hands as well, or was that just, was that just part of something that the, that the whole creative team came up with?

Regina: So I have, because of the arranged marriage thing, I was like, okay, like, first, how, like, I’m, I’m thinking about showing mehndi, and I want it to be approp-, like, culturally appropriate –

Sarah: Right.

Regina: – and not just like, I went to the boardwalk, and this is what happened: so I worked with a makeup artist who –

Sarah: [Laughs] I went to the boardwalk? Got my name on a grain of rice, and I got some mehndi.

Regina: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah! Cultural appropriation by the seashore.

Regina: Yeah! I grew, I grew up near the Ocean City boardwalk, so I know what I’m talking about.

Sarah: Yep, yep, yep. We can –

[Laughter]

Regina: But, yeah, so I was like, okay, I, it’s going to be, like, I want it to be related to wedding mehndi, and I want it to, you know, kind of have that vibe, and so I worked with the makeup artist, who brought in a book of wedding designs, and, like, we picked kind of from there what would be both, design-wise, visually attractive and, like, within the realm of reason for somebody who was going to get married. One of the cover concepts that you didn’t see anywhere is, I was going to have the title written in mehndi on her hands, like on the palms of her hands, so, like, you would see on the cover image, like, two cupped hands that had the title written in the designs –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Regina: – right. So that was a little bit of a collaboration between myself and the makeup artist to get that together.

Sarah: That’s incredible. That cover is just so happy-making. It is such a delightful image.

Regina: It is. Thank you, yeah.

Sarah: No, thank you, dude!

Regina: [Laughs]

Sarah: One of the things that Hannah wrote to me originally when she was like, dude, you need to talk to this person, was that on the panel at Comic Con in New York, you talked about what goes into cover creation and the frustration of having to deal with this type of institutional limitation in viewpoint, which is putting it gently –

Regina: Sure.

Sarah: – or generously, and then later, when I was doing some research, in Verge, someone wrote about your panel and mentioned that there are quotas imposed on how many books featuring mainly people of color are promoted or picked up at a particular time and that the –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – leadership at the top tiers tends to be white dudes, so the business decisions that come down are mostly not inclusive. Is that, is that still the case?

Regina: It, it is to a degree. I think what’s great about Penguin Random House is that they have been going out of their way to work on diversity initiatives and inclusion things, and, like, I’m on a coun-, a diversity initiative council at work and stuff like that, so there is very much a consciousness around those kinds of decision-making things, and it is starting to move in a way more positive direction.

Sarah: Good!

Regina: Course, that said, one of the things that I talked about in panel which is still true for me is that there are times when I’m in a meeting and I’m the diversity, and just to be clear, I’m half Filipino and half American, and I pass for white, and so when I’m, I’m the person that has to be like, well, I don’t know that this is, I don’t know that this is okay, it, it becomes really uncomfortable for me, because to look at me you would think, what does she know? Right? But also I feel all the more, not pressured, but all the more like it, it’s my responsibility to –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Regina: – to be that voice, because otherwise there is no other voice, necessarily? Like, people might not, by the nature of their experiences, think about that kind of thing. So publishing is pretty white –

Sarah: Yep!

Regina: – and I think that a lot, internally, as far as, like, being in a publishing house, think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it is such a small community, and once you’re in the community, like, you kind of know everybody, and the people who end up getting, you know, invested into this group tend to be the people that the people in the group already know, right? So there is a bit of homogeny that happens if you are a person and your whole social circle looks one way, and then there’s a job opening that you know about, and then you tell your social circle, which is already homog-, do you know what I’m saying? Like, there’s a little bit of that.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely. I, I have joked many, many times, just in romance publishing, that there are maybe six to nine total people, and they all switch places and move to a different house when someone rings a bell.

Regina: Yeah, it’s, it, it’s a lot like that, I think, in publishing at large.

Sarah: Yeah.

Regina: I mean, like I said, there, there are definitely initiatives to try to break that mold –

Sarah: Right, because –

Regina: – but –

Sarah: – they’re aware of the, of the problem, but you’re still –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – you’re still the one who has, often, the responsibility of reframing the conversation and pointing out to your colleagues and often supervisors, uh, hey, that was racist. But not with that word maybe  –

Regina: Yeah.

Sarah: – ‘cause the word racist makes people freak out.

[Laughter]

Regina: Right, exactly. So, yeah, it can be a little bit, it can be a little bit touchy, but it is luckily now the kind of thing that more people are talking about and investing time and energy into, and, like, you can definitely see – at least, I know, where I’m at – you can see it’s, you can see the impact of these changes starting to come to light, and I know that industry-wide it is something that people are very aware of.

Sarah: I’ve also noticed in your, in your portfolio, you use a lot of images of people of color.

Regina: I do. In general, if I can, if I have the choice, I choose to work on books that feature people of color, and when I do, I make it my priority to show them on the cover, because, again, like, just like the notes that I got from people like, hey, I saw myself on the cover. Like, I, I remember feeling that way?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Regina: Like, there’s not, when I was reading YA and, like, kind of in that age group, there’s not a ton of, like, weird little brown girls –

[Laughter]

Regina: – hanging out on the cover? Like, the chances of me seeing someone even remotely like me –

Sarah: Were very slim, yeah.

Regina: Definitely not going to happen. So, you know, having the ability as a designer to make those kinds of choices and influence that choice, whether or not it happens to be the cover in the end, is something that’s always been important to me as a person, and I was thinking about this recently. I have had, I think, four New York Times bestsellers?

Sarah: Nice job!

Regina: Thank you, and of those four, the only figure, the only, like, person that appears on them is Dimple, and the rest are other types of imagery. So, like, that feels like a pretty awesome track record for – [laughs] – you know, for my work and for, for diversity in my work, so that’s pretty fun. But, yeah, no, it’s important to me, so.

Sarah: Well, it, on the one hand, I, I have a lot of empathy for having to be the person to go, okay, hold on, time out. All the time –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – having to reframe, ‘cause reframing and doing that work is exhausting, and it’s labor that you don’t get paid for, but on the other hand, you’re work is so exquisite that, yes, I’m glad that you’re there!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now, I, I, I know I’m taking up a lot of your time, but I have two more things I’d like to ask you about.

Regina: Yeah!

Sarah: I want to ask you about being a romance reader, because Hannah also –

Regina: Yes!

Sarah: – revealed, she’s like, and then someone asked her about a book, and she said Nalini Singh, and I was like, yes! And I was the only person in the room who cheered!

[Laughter]

Regina: I know! I, I think I remember that moment, too. I was like, yeah, one other romance reader!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: You and me!

Sarah: So you like Nalini Singh.

Regina: Oh my God! Yes!

Sarah: Who else do you love, and who else are you reading right now?

Regina: Hoooo! This is a big question.

Sarah: Bring it!

Regina: I love Nalini Singh. I love Jeaniene Frost. Those are the two, Jeaniene Frost and Nalini Singh are the two that I recommend the most to people in my social circle because they tend to be people who are already readers of sci-fi or fantasy –

Sarah: Right.

Regina: – and so that’s, like, my opening. Like, okay, but you know, like, you know how you really like Spike and I really like Spike? Let me tell you about Bones. You know?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: And so, like, that, I have been the gateway drug to Jeaniene Frost for many a friend through that pitch, and then the other person I really love is Courtney Milan. I was in a book club at work that was like, hey, let’s read other books that are not books that we have to read for work, and I was like, all right, kids, we’re going to read a romance novel –

Sarah: Yeah!

Regina: – and no one had read a romance novel before.

Sarah: What?!

Regina: And I had all kinds of preconceived notions about bodice ripping. I was like, let’s read Courtney Milan, and let me show you the light that is romance. [Laughs] And it was spectacular; I converted at least six people to romance, and –

Sarah: Well done!

Regina: – I felt really good about preaching the – [laughs] – the good news of romance. I sound like a cult leader; it’s fine.

Sarah: No, that’s what I do! That’s, that’s my job. You’re doing great at it. [Laughs]

Regina: Right. Yeah. Yeah, so, so those three are definitely my, my, my go-tos. There was a – oh God, I’ve got to look up who it, who it is – there’s an, there’s a woman who wrote a romance novel that’s a contemporary, and I never read contemporaries because – I’m going to sound really terrible about contemporary romance for a second.

Sarah: That’s okay!

Regina: When I’ve read contemporary romance in the past, it’s been, oh, I’m, I really hate my body, and I’m going to think about my thighs a lot, and then there’s this guy, and he, you know, he’s too good for me, and, and I have really low self-esteem. And I just, I can’t handle that? I –

Sarah: Nope. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Regina: It’s just not something I can deal with.

Sarah: If you would like contemporary recommendations that avoid that entirely, let me know.

Regina: Yes! And I read, I read Karina Halle. I read – let me see if I can find which book it was, ‘cause it was specifically, I knew it was for me, because there was a LARP plotline, and I’m a big LARPer, because nerd alert!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: I just got back from a LARP – [laughs] – a couple weeks ago. What was it called? Smut.

Sarah: Smut.

Regina: Yeah, it was called Smut, and it was about two people who were in a writing class together, and they’re, like, the guy and the girl are both really, like, closet nerds? And then, like, all this nerdy stuff, and then there’s a LARP at the end, and oh my God, it was Un. Believable. And I was like, this is it, this is my entry into contemporary romance. I know, like, I, I have seen the light.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: Karina, Karina Halle is the light. And then, of course, I went and I read, like, everything else that she’s ever written, and she’s delightful on Twitter too –

Sarah: Yay!

Regina: – so maybe we can give a shout-out to that lovely person. So anyway, yeah, that’s, that was that. So, so that’s my contemporary person, and then, other than that, I like to read, I like to read erotica. I started – oh! [Laughs] – this is, are you ready for this? I didn’t realize that romance novels were not for children when I was young –

[Laughter]

Regina: – because my mom doesn’t, is not a reader and so didn’t look into anything that I was reading –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: – so I read a lot of Nora Roberts when I was twelve, and I made the switch pretty quickly from Anne Rice to A. N. Roquelaure?

Sarah: Yeah.

Regina: At, like, fourteen.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: So my collection of erotica and BDSM erotica is impressive –

Sarah: Awesome!

Regina: – to say the least, so if you have recommendations therein, send ‘em my way. I’m all about that.

Sarah: Oh, not a problem. What titles in BDSM erotica do you recommend most?

Regina: Hmm. That’s tricky, because it dep-, it depends on what you’re into, right. Like, once you start getting into the, to the kink portion –

Sarah: Right.

Regina: – of erotica, like, there are a lot of hard limits for people –

Sarah: Yep.

Regina: – that feel very uncomfortable by certain types of fantasy things, right? I know that a lot of people are talking now about Fifty Shades, ‘cause a new movie is coming out and everything like that. I’m like, whatever; do your thing. I pers-, this is not erotica, but my, one of my favorite books of all time is the Kushiel’s Dart series –

Sarah: Oh, yes.

Regina: – and so that’s probably, again, it’s one of the ways that I convert people both to epic fantasy and to romance – [laughs] – just by, like, let me tell you about this sacred sexual worker who’s the best BDSM hooker you’ve ever met!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: She saves the day with sex and smartness! That’s probably my, that’s probably my favorite. Like, I’ve read, you know, I’ve, like, read the books, and –

Sarah: Right.

Regina: – all the, you know, Sleeping Beauty books and all those big names, and then, like I said, I have a ton of other stuff, but it’s just kind of a mire of other stuff.

Sarah: Would you like some nerd BDSM erotica?

Regina: Yes!

Sarah: Okay.

Regina: What kind of question is that?

Sarah: Right, I was like, oh, I think I have a book series for you. Delphine Dryden, D-R-Y-D-E-N, has a series called The Science of Temptation. The first one is called The Theory of Attraction, and then there’s The Seduction Hypothesis and The Principles of Desire; it’s a trilogy.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It is about a bunch of really geeky nerds and, and scientists and researchers, and they all live near each other; they all live, they work in and around a medical center; and they are all involved in various ways in BDSM. The –

Regina: I’m so there.

Sarah: The first one I really liked was because the hero is a laboratory scientist. He –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – is not very specific about being neuroatypical, but he likes things exactly the way he likes them. He jogs at exactly the same time; he does everything –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – on a schedule and keeps his lab the way it should be, and he likes the control, and also he’s a Dom, because control.

Regina: ‘Cause clearly, yeah.

Sarah: Obviously. And his neighbor, she has this massive crush on him, and he ends up having to ask her for help because he needs to enter a social situation with the university that he’s not comfortable with because it’s fundraising and schmoozing, and he’s just like, can I just go to my lab and you guys handle this? No, you have to come and talk to humans!

Regina: [Laughs]

Sarah: So she has to teach him how to interact with these schmoozy fundraising events and then learns that he’s into dominance and wants to learn about being a submissive. So she’s teaching him, and he’s teaching her, and they’re all both super nerdy, and then there’s two more, and I really hope you like them.

Regina: Oh my God, I’m so, so there.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: I mean, like, ‘cause the other thing that I’m really into is fanfiction? I read a lot of really dirty fanfiction –

Sarah: Yep.

Regina: – and God, I love me some science bros, so I’m –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Regina: – I’m like, I’m so, I’m so there.

Sarah: Awesome!

Regina: I want all of it. I’m very excited about this.

Sarah: The one thing I, last thing I want to ask you about is –

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – your podcast, Which Witch Is Witch? This is the most –

Regina: Yes.

Sarah: – adorable concept, and I love it!

Regina: [Laughs] Thank you!

Sarah: And also, your episode with Sabrina was my favorite, because Sabrina the Teenage Witch, in all of her incarnations, is my favorite.

Regina: Yes, well, for obvious reasons, she’s awesome. Yeah, Which Witch started as kind of a, just a funny conversation between me and my buddy Derrick, and we were like, you know, we have these really in-depth analyses of pop culture with each other all the time. I bet people, other people would be interested – [laughs] – in this, and even if they’re not, this would be a fun thing to do!

Sarah: Right!

Regina: So, so we started Which Witch just for a laugh for the two of us, ‘cause he likes to edit audio stuff, and I like to do research – who knew? – and then we just went from there, just talking about witches and pop culture, and we came up with a rubric for what makes a witch, so some of the witches that you see featured on the podcast are not explicitly coded as witches –

Sarah: Right.

Regina: – in pop culture, but we see them as witches, and then we explain why, based on our little rubric, and it’s just a fun time to talk about interesting, powerful, female characters in pop culture.

Sarah: I really, really enjoyed the episode about Practical Magic and Simply Irresistible.

Regina: Oh. [Laughs]

Sarah: But –

Regina: That was a good time.

Sarah: Yeah, but in particular, and Leia Organa and Leeloo.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I, when I started that episode I was not entirely on board with the idea that Leia was a witch, but you totally convinced me.

Regina: Yes, definitely.

Sarah: Especially after the, the most recent, The Last Jedi.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Okay, I got it, you’re right, I completely agree, I was wrong.

Regina: Definitely a witch.

Sarah: Yep.

Regina: Definitely proves it.

Sarah: Yep.

Regina: Several times.

Sarah: Yep. You’re totally right.

Regina: Vast magical powers.

Sarah: [Laughs] So I usually ask people what they’re reading, but you have already gone through this incredible list of books that we all want to read, so my, my last question is, what are you working on, or can you not talk about it?

Regina: What am I working on now? Well, as I mentioned, we’re, we just had our launch, so that’s done, and I’m currently, like, in between seasons, but I think I mentioned a couple times the Kiersten White book –

Sarah: Yes.

Regina: – that’s coming out; the cover reveal is on Wednesday. It’s called The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein –

Sarah: Whoa!

Regina: – and – yeah! – and it’s a retelling of Frankenstein from Elizabeth’s perspective, and it is unbelievable. Like, it’s really good! And super fun and really dark and gothic and delightful in all of the right ways, and so that’s coming out. Let me think what else is coming out that, that I’m working on. I have a Brandon Sanderson book that’s coming out called Skyward.

Sarah: Ooh!

Regina: So that’s going to be out. I don’t know when the cover reveal for that will be. Probably in a couple of months.

Sarah: Is there any title in romance that you wish more people –

Regina: Uh-huh.

Sarah: – knew about or would read?

Regina: Well, I mean, I’ve got to say, like, I tend to start my romance proselytizing with Slave to Sensation –

Sarah: Right.

Regina: – because I always tell people, like, you could read this series and cut out all of the smut – not that you would want to, but you could – and it would still be a really interesting, super intense worldbuilding, super-cool character, you know, kind of thing, and if you’re into that, if you’re the kind of sci-fi, you know, fantasy reader who likes that sort of thing, like, you add in all that smut too? I mean, how could you go – like, what more could you ask for? So. So, yeah, I usually start there.

Sarah: That’s a very good place to hook people, and then you won’t see them for, like, months.

Regina: [Laughs] For months! Yeah.

Sarah: Like, you won’t see them at all for, for days and days.

Regina: Mm-mm.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Regina for talking with me, and I want to thank Hannah for suggesting this interview. I had a really, really good time. I learned a lot, and I hope you enjoyed it as well!

If you have suggestions or ideas or questions, or you’d like to request recommendations, you can email me at [email protected]. You can also record a voice memo and send it to me there. That is also awesome. And you can find me on Twitter @SmartBitches.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by another podcast! I love this. Today’s podcast is sponsored by Heaving Bosoms: A Romance Novel Podcast, in which two best friends, Erin in Alaska and Melody in New Jersey, gush, giggle, snark, and snort their way through a different romance novel each week. If you love fangirling about your latest read with your best girlfriends, you’ll love listening to Erin and Melody do a deep breakdown of their favorites and occasionally not-so-favorite romance novels. The recaps come with a heaping dose of unconditional friendship, openhearted feminism, and hilarious tangents. Come for the romance, but stay for the self-love recommendations they use to cap off each episode. We all need the reminder, right? From Julia Quinn to Courtney Milan to Tiffany Reisz, Erin and Mel are tackling every kind of smooching book they can find, and they’re always taking suggestions. We recommend starting with two favorite episodes: episode 14, When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare, or episode 16, Love Hacked by Penny Reid. Just don’t listen around the kids, because, like your favorite books, they can get a little explicit. You can find Heaving Bosoms on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Each episode of this podcast has a transcript, and each transcript is hand-compiled by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter! [You’re welcome! – gk] Today’s podcast transcript is brought to you by A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen. If you like Sarah MacLean and Tessa Dare, you’ll love this Regency romance. August Faulkner has returned with his eye on expanding his business empire. He is a duke, a scoundrel, and a titan of business and wears his roguish reputation as a badge of honor. Clara Hayward is the respected headmistress and is above reproach, but ten years ago she shared a scandalous waltz with August and, despite herself, has never forgotten the feeling of his arms. Can these two opposites find a second chance at romance? RT Book Reviews raves, “What a way to start the Devils of Dover series!” A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at kellybowen.net or forever-romance.com.

We have a podcast Patreon, and your support is deeply, deeply appreciated. You help me keep the show going. You help me expand our reach and do live shows, and you help me commission transcripts for episodes that don’t have them yet. If you would like to have a look, the Patreon is at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Pledges starting at one dollar a month make a deeply appreciated difference.

And I also want to thank some of the Patreon folks personally, so to RJ and Lander, Malina, Sue, and Georgina, thank you very, very much for supporting the show.

Are there other ways to support the podcast? Of course there are! You can leave a review wherever you listen. You can subscribe, you can tell a friend, whatever works, but if you hang out here each week, I am deeply thankful. Thank you for hanging out with me.

I also have a new resource for you. I put together a list of all of the romance-focused podcasts that I could find, so if you got RomancePodcasts.com – that’s more than one podcast; RomancePodcasts.com – you will find a post with a list of all of the podcasts that focus on romance. Some are writing, some are readers, some are both, but all of them take a look at our favorite genre, so if you’re looking for more podcasts to listen to, RomancePodcasts.com.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. Thank you, Sassy! This is Peatbog Faeries’ live album, Live @ 25, and this track is a new one I haven’t heard before called “Shifting Peat and Feet.” You can find this album on Amazon and on iTunes, and you can find the Peatbog Faeries on their website.

Coming up on Smart Bitches this week – we have this whole website that goes with the podcast; you knew that, right? I’m sure you did – Saturday, we have our roundup of books that we’ve been hearing and talking about, plus a Romance Wanderlust from Carrie on Sunday. Next week, we have a review of a royal romance that sounds like something many of you will like, the return of Caption That Cover, and reviews of gothic romance, YA fantasy, and more. I hope that you will come and hang out with us.

Of course in the podcast show notes for this episode, I will have links to the things that we talked about, as well as all of the books that we mention, and there were many of them.

But as always, I end with a terrible joke, and I really like this joke a lot because I totally said it to my husband, and he thought I was serious, and, and then glared at me when he realized I was telling him a joke. So this one is, really makes me happy. Okay, you ready? [Clears throat]

So, did you know that the first French fries weren’t cooked in France?

This is the point where my husband was like, oh, really, was it Belgium?

No! Nonononono, the French fries weren’t cooked in France. They were cooked in grease!

[Laughs] You should have seen the glare! It was epic! Like, eyebrows down and, like, super annoyed. Oh, it was awesome. Thank you to GamingNZ – I’m going to guess that it’s Gaming New Zealand, so N Zed – for that joke, because it completely made my day. Oh! [Laughs] Cooked in Greece! Okay! And thank you to everyone who sends me bad jokes now, because it’s, like, the best part of my inbox.

So on behalf of everyone here, including the cat who wants to crawl into the sound box, I wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend. We will see you here next week.

[shifty music]