Sarah, Elyse, Carrie, and RedHeadedGirl gather to talk about successful recommendations we’ve made to new and curious readers interested in trying romance. From curating a broad selection of books as an introduction to specifically pimping books we know have a multi-level appeal, we talk about our favorite recommendations, books that seem to entice many different readers, and which books we love just for sheer crazy sauce. We also discuss how many readers are introduced to romance by a person who gives them a brown paper bag full of books. “Bag full of books” is among our favorite word combinations.
And because we’re, well, us, we talk about weird sex scenes we’ve read, wonderful and funny sex scenes we’ve loved, managing chronic pain and reading BDSM stories, and interesting female inventors in history. Plus, we discuss at length (heh) the expectations of tentacles, and what new books we’re going to end up recommending frequently.
Note: Elyse is a little fuzzy, and I think she might have been in a wind machine.
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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
We also mentioned:
- Kraken Rum, Elyse’s favorite
- The Chuck Tingle episode of the podcast
- The Shelly Laurenston interview on the podcast
- Margaret Knight, inventor
- The Tens Unit recommended by Elyse, one with heat and one without heat
- The lawn banner Wanna Cuttle?
- Our review of Decadent by Shayla Black
The RWA Signing! July 29, 2017, from 3:00 – 5:00pm!
Hundreds of romance authors in one place, and all proceeds of book sales go to literacy organizations. Some of your favorite authors are likely to be there, like Alyssa Cole, Tessa Dare, Courtney Milan, Julie James, Cecilia Tan, Beverly Jenkins, and Jill Shalvis. And, for the first time, I’ll be signing, too – yay!
The signing is at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort in Pacific Hall. Saturday, July 29th from 3-5pm. And if you come and find me (I’m in the Ws near the cashiers) and mention the podcast, I have a special sticker for you – if you’d like one. Get all the details at: https://www.rwa.org/literacy.
And here’s Orville, Executive Sound Engineer, helping me with recording this episode:
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Thanks for listening!
This Episode's Music
Our music is provided each week by Sassy Outwater, whom you can find on Twitter @SassyOutwater.
This is from Caravan Palace, and the track is called “Queens.”
You can find their two album set with Caravan Palace and Panic on Amazon and iTunes. And you can learn more about Caravan Palace on Facebook, and on their website.
Podcast Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Too Scot to Handle by Grace Burrowes. This New York Times bestselling series with its “heartfelt emotions, humor and realistic, honest characters [is] a fan favorite,” raves RT Book Reviews.
In this second book of the Windham Brides series, Burrowes delights Regency romance readers once again with an irresistible rough-around-the-edges Scot who takes on saving an orphanage to win over the fiery, intelligent woman who captures his heart.
As a captain in the army, Colin MacHugh led men, fixed what was broken, and fought hard. Now that he’s a titled gentleman, he’s still fighting-this time to keep his bachelorhood safe from all the marriage-minded debutantes. Then he meets the intriguing Miss Anwen Windham, whose demure nature masks a bonfire waiting to roar to life. When she asks for his help to raise money for the local orphanage, he’s happy to oblige.
Anwen is amazed at how quickly Lord Colin takes in hand a pack of rambunctious orphan boys. Amazed at how he actually listens to her ideas. Amazed at the thrill she gets from the rumble of his Scottish burr and the heat of his touch. But not everyone enjoys the success of an upstart. And Colin has enemies who will stop at nothing to ruin him and anybody he holds dear.
As Tessa Dare puts it, “Grace Burrowes is a romance treasure.” Don’t miss Too Scot to Handle, on sale wherever books are sold this Tuesday, July 25th.
Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 257 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. We are a podcast about romance fiction and the women who read and write it. And I am Sarah Wendell; I’m from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me on my desk is all of my cat, and I cannot tell you how many mammals are involved in the recording of this intro. I’ll have to share a picture, ‘cause there is so much cat on my desk right now.
Today is one of your favorites – from the feedback that I’ve received – types of episodes: Bitches Assemble! Elyse, Carrie, Redheadedgirl, and I got together to talk about successful recommendations we have made to new and curious readers who are interested in trying a romance. From curating a broad selection of books as an introduction to specifically pimping books that we know have a multilevel appeal, we talk about our favorite recommendations, books that seem to entice many different readers, and which books we love just because they’re completely full of crazysauce. We also discuss how many readers are introduced to romance by a person who gives them, literally, a brown paper bag full of books. It is always a brown paper bag, but then again, “bag full of books” is a really great word combination.
And because we’re us, we talk about weird sex scenes, wonderful and funny sex scenes, managing chronic pain, reading BDSM, and interesting female inventors in history. Plus, we discuss at length – heh-heh – the expectation of tentacles and what new books we’re going to end up recommending frequently.
Now, Elyse is a little fuzzy in this recording, and I’ve done my best to clean that up, but I think she might have been in a wind machine, so I’m sure her hair looks terrific now.
This episode of the podcast is being brought to you by Too Scot to Handle by Grace Burrowes. This New York Times bestselling series with its “heartfelt emotions, humor and realistic, honest characters [is] a fan favorite,” raves RT Book Reviews. In the second book of the Windham Brides series, Burrowes delights Regency romance readers once again with an irresistible, rough-around-the-edges Scot who takes on saving an orphanage to win over the fiery, intelligent woman who’s captured his heart. As a captain in the army, Colin MacHugh led men, fixed what was broken, and fought hard. Now that he’s a titled gentleman, he’s still fighting, this time to keep his bachelorhood safe from all of the marriage-minded debutantes. Then he meets the intriguing Miss Anwen Windham, whose demure nature masks a bonfire waiting to roar to life. When she asks for his help to raise money for the local orphanage, he’s happy to oblige. Anwen is amazed at how quickly Lord Colin takes in hand a pack of rambunctious orphan boys, amazed at how he actually listens to her ideas, amazed at the thrill she gets from the rumble of his voice and the heat of his touch, but not everyone enjoys the success of an upstart, and Colin has enemies who will stop at nothing to ruin him and anybody he holds dear. As Tessa Dare puts it, Grace Burrowes is a romance treasure. Don’t miss Too Scot to Handle, on sale now wherever books are sold.
Now, I have compliments. These are so fun, so get ready. Here we go:
Charles B.: There are birds currently lined up on a rooftop watching you. No one is sure why, but the rumor is it’s because you are a minor deity to all birds.
To Eileen: Yesterday, one of your friends from elementary school thought about the best day that they had with you and hoped that you were having an equally good day now.
And to Debbi S.: You are the human personification of kindness, cupcakes, excellent chocolate, and sparklers, especially the kind that don’t burn your fingers.
Now, if you would like a compliment or you’re wondering what this is, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. We are so close to our Patreon goal, I am, I am flabbergasted! Because of the Patreon supporters, I’ve started transcribing early episodes way, way back in 2009. Once we cross the goal, I will start in on transcribing the remaining seventy, and we are so close! That’s so cool! And also, thanks to Patreon supporters, I will be bringing microphones and recording equipment to RWA. Actually, as this episode is airing, I will be at RWA with my recording equipment that I was able to bring because of Patreon supporters. Thank you for supporting the show, and thank you for making pledges that help make the show better and better. If you’d like to have a look and join in, you can go to Patreon, that’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash SmartBitches.
Speaking of RWA, which as this episode airs, that is where I am, and this episode will drop on Friday, July 28th, which means that tomorrow – tomorrow, July 29th! That is tomorrow if you’re listening on Friday, July 28th – tomorrow, Saturday, Romance Writers of America will be hosting the annual “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing; you should totally come! If you’re in the Orlando area and, you know, you like humidity – even if you don’t like humidity, you should come. The signing is at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort, Pacific Hall, Saturday, July 29th, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Some of your favorite authors will be there. I know Sylvia Day will be there, Jill Shalvis, Beverly Jenkins, Alyssa Cole, Tessa Dare, Courtney Milan, Julie James, Cecilia Tan, and also, in the Ws, me! Yay! I’ll be signing. I’m near the cashier lines, so come say hello while you’re waiting in line to buy fourteen bazillion books. Mention the podcast, and I will have a special sticker for your if you would like to have one, or you can just introduce yourself, ‘cause it’s really cool to meet you! You can get all of the details at rwa.org/literacy, and you can find me in the Ws facing the cashier line. Usually we’ve got plenty of air conditioning.
The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and how you can get this music for your very, very own.
And of course, because this is a podcast episode wherein we’re talking about making recommendations, we talk about a lot of books, and as always, please don’t try to look them up while you’re driving or walking the dog or doing whatever it is that you’re doing – dyeing wool or washing or cleaning the house. Do not worry! I will have links to all of the books that we mention – and there are a considerable number of them – in the podcast entry for this episode at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. You can also find most recent episodes and links to books in the iBooks store at our iTunes page, iTunes.com/DBSA.
Now, I received an email from somebody who said they had been looking for a way to contact me about the show and they couldn’t figure it out, and I realized I give the contract information in the outro but not the intro, so I’m going to tell you now in case you didn’t know: if you would like to email me and you have ideas for the podcast, or you want to give me feedback, or you want to ask for a book recommendation, or you want to ask me for advice – I get a lot of email asking for advice – this is awesome! You should totally do it, and there’re two ways, whichever one is easier for you to remember. You can email me at [email protected], or you can email me at Sarah, that’s S-A-R-A-H, at smartbitchestrashybooks.com [[email protected]]. Either way, those email messages come to me, and it’s really cool to hear from you, so if you would like to make a suggestion or have an idea or you want to ask me a question, please email me! Or just email and say, I want to ask all of you; we like to get together anyway.
Speaking of getting together, it’s time for us to do all the talking. Now, on with the podcast.
[music]
Sarah: I had so many requests for a group Bitches podcast. Apparently, these are the most popular episodes. You guys, all of the, all of the group episodes we’ve done, the only episodes that are more popular were the ones with Chuck Tingle and Shelly Laurenston.
Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]
Sarah: So you’re, like, the most popular guests!
Carrie: Oh, boy!
Elyse: You were, you were serious that I can be drunk, right?
Sarah: Of course I was serious that you can be drunk!
RHG: She would never joke about such a thing!
Elyse: Because –
Sarah: What kind of question is that?
Elyse: – I walked into Chez Dewey just a little bit ago, set my Out of Office for tomorrow, and poured myself an adult beverage.
Sarah: Are we having Kraken rum?
Elyse: We are having Kraken rum and Coke Zero, and it’s Chez Dewey because he pretty much runs the joint and lets Rich and me live here.
Sarah: Well, it’s nice that you pay the mortgage for him.
Elyse: Right! And provide petting and food.
Sarah: Obviously! So I wanted to talk to you guys about the books that you recommend to romance readers or new romance readers, people who haven’t tried romance before. Because I know, Redheadedgirl, you said that you had just recently recommended a bunch of books to someone.
RHG: I create, I curated a bag.
Sarah: You curated a bag.
RHG: Yes. I went through my donate box and my donate pile and the other books sort of scattered around my house. This friend of mine was like, so, I’m trying to get into romance, and I went, I can help you with that.
Sarah: I was going to say, that’s, like, the, the magic words.
RHG: Yeah. Let me help you. Would you like a bag of books? And she was like, yes, those are the most beautiful words in the English language.
Sarah: How big of a bag would you like? is another question I have asked.
RHG: [Laughs] Yes, and –
Sarah: Would you like to have to drive home with these books, or would you like a walking load?
RHG: Yes. Well, I mean, it’s Boston. No, no one –
Sarah: No one drives.
RHG: – actually owns a car, so. I needed to, I mean, I needed to be able to bring this bag on the subway, and she needed to be able to bring this bag home on the subway, so it was, like, a, a reusable grocery bag full of books.
Sarah: That’s a beautiful thing.
RHG: And I walked in holding it, and she looked at it and went, oh! When you say you’d curate a pile of books, you do not mess around. I said, no, I do not fuck around, and she went, oh, thank fucking God, we can swear.
[Laughter]
RHG: This is, like, a, a new friendship that we’re still kind of like, how do adults make friends? I don’t know.
Sarah: I know, it’s very hard.
RHG: It’s weird. When I was initially, said, do you want a bag of books? We didn’t quite have the, so, what do you like to read, like, that’s not romance, so maybe I can narrow it down? So I just went with a broad survey, because a lot of my, my donate pile is stuff I got at RT or stuff that gets sent to me or stuff that is left over from meetups –
Sarah: Right.
RHG: – that is meant to be donated or the-, I keep saying that I’m going to drop off stuff in the various Little Free Libraries around town, but that requires effort on my part, so I have these intentions.
Sarah: I have driven from Little Free Library to Little Free Library – there’s about six in my neighborhood – but some of them are –
RHG: Yes.
Sarah: – so clearly not welcoming to romance. Like, you open it up and it’s just, like –
RHG: Yeah, I just don’t care.
Sarah: – it’s like wall-to-wall Franzen, and I’m like, I can’t, I can’t subject my beautiful books to this environment. I have to take them somewhere else.
RHG: [Laughs]
Sarah: I mean, I don’t, it’s not so much the libraries, that I feel bad for the books. Like, I don’t actually believe that they’re sentient little bundles of paper, but I would still feel bad, you know, having them –
RHG: That they got Franzen all over them.
Sarah: Right? I mean, that seems disrespectful. So do you remember some of the titles –
RHG: Don’t we all?
Sarah: – that you, that you put in the bag?
RHG: Yes. I did have a copy of the first book in the Crows series, which I have not read, and I’m kind of at the point where I’m not going to because y’all won’t shut up about it, and I’m very perverse and annoying that way. And I was like, Sarah and Elyse love this book, and so do a lot of other people, so you try it. I –
Sarah: And it’s, it’s funny you say that, because Shelly Laurenston can be a very specific taste. For a lot of readers, she’s like cilantro.
RHG: Right! Well, you know, this, bleah, I, this was deliberately curated as a broad survey: I don’t expect that you’re going to like all of these?
Sarah: Of course.
RHG: But you will definitely, I think, from this pile, get an idea of what you do like.
Sarah: Right.
RHG: And once we have narrowed it down, then we can go from there.
Sarah: Right.
RHG: I know that she is a big Phryne Fisher fan, so –
Sarah: Well, she’s an excellent human being!
RHG: Oh, yeah, exactly. She’s an excellent human being; she has, you know, fine tastes in, in many things. So I had a couple of 1920s, 1930s-era stuff. I believe I had the Secrets of Nanreath Hall, which is a World War I, World War II split-focus –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
RHG: – book. I included The Spymaster’s Lady, because of course I included The Spymaster’s Lady. You cannot go forward without Jo Bourne; you just cannot do it. It –
Sarah: And that’s a good one, because that, that shows off dialogue –
RHG: So many things.
Sarah: – yes – dialogue skills.
RHG: So many things: dialogue skills; plotting skills; like, rip-your-heart-out skills. And I also included Asking For It –
Sarah: Oh!
RHG: – and when we were going through the pile I was like, this is a qualified recommendation. If this works for you, it’s really going to work for you –
Sarah: [Laughs]
RHG: – but if you read the back of this and go, I am not into this, then it’s not going to work for you. So –
Sarah: I don’t know that many people who looked at the book description for Asking For It and were like, eh?
RHG: Yeah.
Sarah: That was a pretty nice guess.
RHG: It was either, OH! – yeah. It was either, OH! or oh.
Sarah: Yes, exactly.
RHG: And she looked, she read the back of it and went, OH!
Sarah: Well, there you go!
RHG: So –
Sarah: Well!
RHG: – there you go.
Sarah: Well done!
RHG: Yeah, thank you. And I think there was an Eloisa in there and a Kleypas and maybe a McQuiston? So, yeah. I, I feel pretty solid. Like, I was just going for the broad survey and going, okay, try this. You’re going to be on a plane for a while, so go forth and have fun.
Sarah: Now, you actually helped me with making recommendations, because I don’t know if you know this, but I get a lot of email, and a lot of that – oh, my God – and a lot of that email is, hey, I just discovered your site, and I was hoping you could recommend something for me to try. You know, because I think when you roll up to the site and there’re twelve-plus years of reviews and all of us talking about all of these things, it’s kind of like, I don’t know what to touch first; like, what do I do? So I get a lot of email like, can you help me? And I’m, I have a, a standard set of questions that I usually ask, but one of the things that I recommend very, very often, especially if the email indicates that they’re also going to share those books with a mom or an aunt is, I recommend the shit of Deeanne Gist.
RHG: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: The World’s Fair trilogy, Tiffany Girl, all of those books. I mean, it’s, and I have to explain, like, they’re part of the Christian imprint of HarperCollins, but there’s not a whole lot of direct intervention with God, and Jesus does not show up and have dialogue in these books. It’s very subtle, and they’re wonderful historicals, and I figured out those were sort of broad-appeal books because of the way in which you’d reviewed them, so thank you.
RHG: Oh, well, thank Deeanne –
Sarah: Yeah, no kidding.
RHG: – for writing such great books.
Elyse: You know, this is, this reminds me of, when I was a little baby Elyse, the first romance novel I read was a Kathleen Woodiwiss that I found in our basement that had belonged to my mom at some point, but she didn’t really read romance, so when I told her I liked it, she was like, oh, well, go talk to your aunt, who was an avid, avid romance reader and just had stacks of books everywhere. So, did I tell you guys the Bertrice Small story?
RHG and Sarah: No.?
Elyse: Okay. So, I’m probably, like, fourteen at the time, and we would go to my aunt and uncle’s house for holidays, and my aunt would send me home with, like, two paper shopping bags filled with romance novels. Just whatever she had read and was done with went in the bag. So we’re driving home from Chicago back to where we live. It’s, like, either Thanksgiving or Easter, and I take the top book off the pile in the bag to read on the car ride home. It is a Bertrice Small book.
Sarah: Oh, God.
RHG: Oh, Lord.
Elyse: Specifically Hellion.
Sarah: Oh, God!
Elyse: ‘Kay. So –
Someone: [Laughs]
Elyse: – let me set, let me set the scene for you guys: my parents are in the front two seats. I’m sitting in the back seat with the family dog and my little sister, and I start reading this book, and I’m pretty naïve fourteen-year-old. Like, I understood the mechanics of sex pretty thoroughly, but things like, I don’t know, bondage –
Sarah: Yeah.
Elyse: – dildos –
Sarah: Yep.
Elyse: – magic sex wizards, things – those were in that book. At one point, the hero, and I’m not making this up – well, he, I don’t think he was the hero; I think it was just some guy she was sleeping with. He might have even been the evil sex wizard – inserts grapes into her vagina and then sucks them back out and eats them. I am reading this and, like, looking up constantly with huge, wide eyes, like my family is going to somehow read my mind and know what I’m reading, and I’ll be completely horrified, but at the same time, I can’t stop reading because it’s the most scandalous thing I’ve ever read in my young life. It was a very, very interesting car trip.
RHG: Yeah! Also, yeast infection ahoy.
Elyse: Don’t put grapes in your vagina.
RHG: Don’t do that! Don’t do that.
Elyse: Don’t put, don’t put grapes in your vagina. Just –
RHG: Just don’t.
Elyse: – PSA. ‘Cause, like, the grapes aren’t consenting, right. Just leave the grapes alone.
Sarah: I’m still stuck on the evil sex wizard.
Elyse: He, so, the, the premise of the story, it’s like a medieval romance –
Sarah: With an evil sex wizard.
Elyse: – and she meets her husband, and they fall in love, and they have a lot of sex, but then he’s kidnapped by a sorceress or something who lives with her brother, and, and they’re both, like, they’re both, like, evil sex witches, wizards, or whatever.
Sarah: ‘Kay.
Elyse: So in order to get her husband back, ‘cause he’s now been, like, completely bespelled and doesn’t know who she is, she kind of, like, goes undercover and has sex with the evil sex wizard so she can somehow get her husband to remember who he is and get him out of there.
RHG: All right, well, I need to read this immediately, obviously.
Sarah: [Laughs] You were –
Elyse: It was, it was –
RHG: God, I love Bertrice so much.
Sarah: You were the one who, you’re the one who calls her Fucking Through History, right?
RHG: Somebody else, I mean, full, to be completely fair, somebody else came up with that term.
Sarah: But you are using that term to describe her.
RHG: But I’m using that term.
Sarah: Yeah. ‘Cause it’s accurate!
RHG: Because that’s what it is.
Elyse: I don’t think this one had a lot to do with history.
Sarah: Are you trying to tell me that magical sex wizards aren’t real?
Elyse: It was, like, vaguely medieval. Vaguely.
Sarah: Okay. So is Game of Thrones.
Elyse: And – well, yeah. I mean it was, yeah, it’s that level of medieval realism –
Sarah: Right.
Elyse: – I think. And I just remember, you know, normally after a three- to four-hour car ride, the first thing I would do is run into the house and pee and literally, literally, the first thing I did was run into the house, pull down the Webster’s dictionary, and look up dildo, because I didn’t know what that word meant.
Sarah: [Laughs]
RHG: Ohhh!
Sarah: Poor little baby Elyse!
RHG: Yeah, poor baby Elyse.
Elyse: Yeah.
Sarah: Well, I know your mom’s a nurse. Like, was she, like, oh, no, I’ll tell you what this means?
Elyse: I wasn’t going to ask her in front of my stepdad. Like, there was no way in hell that question was going to come out in front of my stepdad.
Sarah: That seems like a good decision on your part.
RHG: Sure. Solid.
Elyse: Also, my mom is a nurse, and so from, she was an ER nurse and a psych ward nurse, and so from her perspective, when I would kind of ask her about things like that, it wouldn’t be like, oh, let me tell you about the beautiful act of love. It would be like, and then this one time I had to remove this thing from this guy’s ass, because if you’re going to put something in your ass, you make sure it has a flanged end. That’s abdominal surgery, okay? Do you know how many blood vessels you have down there? So it’s not like, it, it’s a pretty, pretty graphic understanding of human sexuality.
Sarah: So anything that you brought up eventually would make it, its way to, and yeah, I pulled one of those out of guy’s butt once.
Elyse: According to her, an average night in the ER involved one removal of something from someone’s rectum.
Sarah: Who accidentally fell down on it.
Elyse: Yeah.
Sarah: Always.
Elyse: While it was lubricated.
Sarah: Well, of course! These are, these are slippery accidents that happen. Now, one question I have: do you suspect that paper bags were deliberately designed to hold a shitload of paperback books? Because how many times have you heard someone say, and I got a brown grocery bag full of books, and they all fit in there perfectly?
Elyse: I used to get, is it Macy’s that had, like, the little, that has the little brown bag –
Sarah: That’s Bloomingdale’s.
Elyse: – big brown bag? Bloomingdale’s, okay.
RHG: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elyse: I used to get so excited, ‘cause those were the bags my aunt gave me, and if I pulled up and there was a big brown bag, I knew I hit the jackpot.
[Laughter]
Sarah: It wasn’t shoes or clothes; it was –
Carrie: I, I am such a nerd that I know how the paper bag was invented.
Sarah: And it wasn’t, it wasn’t to hold paperbacks?
Carrie: I – well, okay, the modern one, maybe. So – and I’m going to really embarrass myself because I’m too, like, migraine-y foggy to figure out how to, like, open other tabs and Google – I think her name was Molly King, but, quick, somebody Google – maybe it was Molly Knight. Shoot. Okay, American woman, anyway. She was an inventor, and her very first invention was actually a device that would make an industrial factory machine stop spinning if something was caught in it, which, if you know your industrial history, you can imagine that that saved, like, a lot of lives, because people were constantly, and particularly girls and women, their hair would get caught, their dresses would get caught, and they’d be mutilated or killed by these machines.
Sarah: Carrie.
Carrie: And then she, when – yeah?
Sarah: Margaret Knight.
Carrie: Thank you! I was close! I was close. So –
Sarah: You were very close! I wouldn’t have been in the same county –
Carrie: Yes!
Sarah: – so you did well.
Carrie: I’m such a nerd. So then she went on to invent the pap-, a paper bag. Actually, it was a paper bag folding machine, and that’s why paper bags, whether they’re little lunch bags or grocery bags, have the shape that you see today, even though now, of course, they’ve changed the folding machine. It had the original design, it’s, like, super cool and steampunk-y and awesome, but it’s a really beautiful machine. That’s why they have that specific shape, because of the invention she came up with to automatically fold them.
Elyse: You know what? I love that we sat down to do a podcast about book recommendations, and we’re, like, seventeen minutes in, and we’ve already discussed Elyse reading about vagina grapes and how paper bags were invented.
Carrie: Yeah, also, she was the first American woman to get a patent in her own name, and when she went to court, the judge, one of the arguments against her was that she could not have invented the paper bag folding machine because she was a woman, and a woman would not be able to think of something as clever as a paper bag folding machine because of our vagina problems. They, you know, those pesky genitalia just keep us from being able to think clearly, so there’s no way that that would happen, but the judge said that was a stupid argument, so – oh, for a long time in American it was illegal for a woman to own a patent in her own name, so she was the first, and it was for the paper bag folding machine.
Sarah: Which, now the original machine is now in the Smithsonian.
Carrie: Yeah, like – yes!
Sarah: You can go visit it, and many other cool things.
Carrie: I, I would love to visit it someday.
RHG: Well, Sarah, you can go visit it, like, tomorrow.
Sarah: I could, but it’s, like, a hundred degrees here, and there’s going to be thunderstorms, so the paper bag can wait until I can breathe easier.
Carrie: It’s been around for a long time, and it’ll still be there in the fall.
Sarah: It’ll be there. Carrie, do you have any books that you have recommended to people who’ve been curious about romance or romance-adjacent genres?
Carrie: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! So, well, yes. And I really try to personalize it. I will say that when men ask me to recommend something, usually – oh, this is just so exciting. I am hosting a slumber party as we speak, and the tween girls know that they’re not allowed to interrupt me during the podcast, so they’re sliding things under the door.
RHG: Again?
Sarah: Again! We did this last time! They were, last time they were cooking.
Carrie: And, and when they’re not, the cat and the dog are very concerned that I’m in a room with the door shut, so these little paws keep coming under it.
Sarah: Are you allowed to pee alone in your house? ‘Cause no one is allowed to pee alone in my house.
Carrie: Oh, no, no, no, there’s no peeing alone.
Sarah: [Laughs] There is no solitary peeing in my world.
Carrie: There’s no solitary peeing. So, anyway, where was I? Oh, so one thing that’s kind of funny is that I – it’s, it’s sad but funny – is that I have reached the age at which many of my peers are getting divorced. So I have suddenly been recommending, and in fact collecting at used thrift stores and giving away, copies of Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie like mad, because they just, that is just therapy for them. Like, they, they really, really, really need that book.
Sarah: That’s a good choice.
Carrie: The main character in Fast Women is a divorcee, and people who have read that book will know what I mean when I say that two of the women to whom I have given that book went on to what we call having a Riley moment, which is a reference –
Sarah: Having a Riley moment?
Carrie: Yes, it’s a reference to a stage that is described in Fast Women. It’s the transitional, casual sex that divorcees have before they move on to a real relationship, just to prove to themselves that they still got it.
Sarah: Your friends –
Carrie: Thanks.
Sarah: – who are getting divorced also might like Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories by Jennifer Crusie. They’re short pieces of fiction –
Carrie: Oh?
Sarah: – that surround the novel Crazy for You, but in the stories, there’s a, three, three women, and one of them is left and is, and her husband leaves her, and that’s one of the best stories in the whole collection, so your, your friends might also like that one too.
Carrie: Oh, cool. I also, I get a lot of recom-, questions from men who want to try romance, and most of the men –
Sarah: That’s cool!
Carrie: It’s way cool! Most of the men who ask me that are interested in science fiction and fantasy, so to them I usually recommend Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Komarr, and A Civil Campaign, not in that order, because it mixes romance with some good, hard sci-fi worldbuilding. It’s kind of a world in which they can feel comfortable as a reader, where walking into, like, a Regency romance for a lot of dudes would, like, sort of throw them off. And then the other one I recommend a lot to men is Riveted, which is a steampunk by Meljean Brook. I am not drunk, and I did not take any Excedrin yet, but I have that little migraine fog, so I’m like, oh, this room is so glittery and shiny right now. But, yeah, Riveted is really good steampunk, and one thing I like about it is that the worldbuilding and the adventure are as solid as the romance, so if they’re not accustomed to reading a book that’s all-around romance, you know, I feel like they can kind of ease into it.
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: And then in the summer, I do find myself, like, recommending The Windflower right and left, ‘cause I think The Windflower is, like, the best summer book ever written for summer.
Sarah: What makes you, what makes you think of summer with The Windflower? I mean, I agree with you, but I’d never thought of the book –
Carrie: Because beach, pirates, beaches, ocean! Don’t we all go to the ocean? Well, you know what, a lot of you guys live, like, you’re in Boston, you can go to the ocean all the time, but for a lot of us, like, summer means that’s when you go see the ocean.
Sarah: Huh.
Carrie: So you read The Windflower because pirates!
Sarah: Pirates, obviously.
RHG: That story checks out.
Carrie: Ocean, tropical islands.
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: And, and The Windflower is smart, so do not misconstrue my next term: it has a certain fluffy element. I would say not fluffy so much as just fun.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: Like, The Windflower exists to give the reader a really good time. It’s like a mental vacation, but not a dumb vacation. It’s smart, but it’s dedicated to just making the reader really happy, which I also think of as a summer thing. And then you guys also know that I walk around with copies of Jane Eyre, like, literally. Like, I collect them at thrift stores and will hand them out to people like, you know, do you have a moment to hear about our queen and savior, Jane Eyre? So that, Jane Eyre is one that I hand out constantly, but that’s not so much romance specific. Like, I just tend to kind of throw that one at everybody.
Sarah: Do you guys have, do you guys have loaner copies of books that you keep one at home and then have one to loan out?
Carrie: Oh, I have lots of loaner copies.
RHG: [Laughs]
Carrie: I have a lot of Terry Pratchett loaner copies that aren’t loaner copies, they’re gift copies, because whenever anyone around me is going through a crisis, I give them Terry Pratchett books, because they’re funny, and they make you laugh, but those aren’t romances, although there is some romance in Terry Pratchett. But, like, like, I kind of hoard those for, like, when people have, like, the big crises.
Elyse: I, I never give out a book with the expectation of getting it back.
Sarah: Yeah, me either.
RHG: Yeah, if it’s one that I want back, then it doesn’t leave the house.
Sarah: Yep. Elyse, what about you?
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: What, what books have you recommended to people? You recommended the Hellion? Do you give people the book and then, like, a, a bag of grapes?
Elyse: No, I don’t. Weirdly, probably one of the authors that I’ve recommended the most is Tiffany Reisz, her Original Sinners series, and I say weirdly because I feel like people come to me looking for more erotica recommendations than they do for romance recommendations? I don’t know if they just assume that I know all the kinky authors off the top of my head. I’m just going to figure that’s probably it.
Sarah: They can tell by looking at you –
Elyse: But I think of a lot of –
Sarah: – you’ve read about grapes, so you have seen some shit.
Elyse: I have read about – I was introduced to vagina grapes at the young age of fourteen, so I’ve seen some shit since then?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Elyse: Okay?
RHG: It’s true; I did not read about –
Elyse: I’ve been prepped.
RHG: – apple, vagina apples till I think I was twenty.
Sarah: Wait, wait, wait, there’re apples too?
Elyse: There’s apples?
Carrie: What?!
RHG: It’s in Anne Rice’s erotic –
Sarah: Ohhh.
RHG: – Sleeping Beauty trilogy?
Sarah: Apple.
RHG: There’re apples and, and honey in the vagina, served on a platter at a party.
Sarah: Okay!
RHG: Yeah. Oh –
Carrie: Do you mean there’s, like, a platter of apples and honey at a party and some of the apples go into the vagina? Because –
RHG: Oh, no; no, no, no, the, Beauty is on the platter –
Carrie: – oooh–
RHG: – with the apples and honey; the apples are in her vagina.
Sarah: Are, are this –
Carrie: I see, but the vagina is attached, it’s attached to a person, though, right? Even if it’s, like –
RHG: It’s attached to a person, but I mean, really, the intention is just, just the vagina, maybe the boobs.
Carrie: Right, right, right. Okay.
Sarah: Are, were they sliced, or are they whole?
RHG: They’re sliced.
Sarah: Okay, I was going to say, ‘cause that, um, yeah. You know what? I don’t even know why I’m bothering to ponder this so much. I shouldn’t –
RHG: I really don’t know either. I don’t think Anne Rice did.
Sarah: [Laughs] Well, I’m a gangster blogger. She has no time for me.
RHG: [Laughs]
Sarah: So you were saying, Elyse, now that you’ve read about grapes at the tender age of twelve and you’ve seen some shit, you recommend Tiffany Reisz. That’s, that’s a really interesting recommendation.
Elyse: I’ve had a lot of people come to me, I think after Fifty Shades hit the zeitgeist, that basically said, I, I liked this book, but the writing was really shitty, and I was like, yes, I know. Come here, my child, and allow me to introduce you to better erotica authors, and one of the things that’s interesting about the Original Sinners series is that there’s not, actually not that much sex in it. There’s just a lot of kink in it.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: So it’s actually not super sexually explicit in a weird way. It also features a heroine who is completely owning her sexuality, the fact that these are things that she enjoys, the fact that she wants to have rough, you know, sex sometimes. She’s a switch, so sometimes Nora is the dominant, and sometimes she is the submissive, so there’s none of that waffling of being ashamed of this part of her life or conflating wanting kinky sex with being somehow emotionally or psychologically damaged, but there’s also the angst of that kind of forbidden relationship, because at the very beginning of the Original Sinners series, Nora has broken up with her longtime partner and Dominant, and they have a very angsty relationship where they were, they’re very much in love, but they can’t seem to make it work together, so it appeals to that, that element of kind of the Christian Grey/Anastasia Steele, you know, really having this very dramatic, maybe melodramatic relationship, but without all of the bullshit, if that makes sense.
Sarah: Totally.
RHG: But in Fifty Shades of Fucked-Up, Elyse.
Elyse: Yeah.
Sarah: Stay away from the grapes.
Elyse: Yeah, you, no.
[Laughter]
Elyse: So it’s, it’s about a complex, adult relationship and also just enthusiasm for, like, this sort of joyous enthusiasm for having hot, kinky sex and being completely unapologetic about what turns you on and what makes you happy.
Sarah: One of the things that I, I struggle with is that Tiffany Reisz is such a very talented and evocative writer; she can describe things in ways that are just breathtaking; her writing is so skillful. The things that she’s, she writes about are not the things that I read, and so it’s like, I can recommend her as an author –
Elyse: Yeah.
Sarah: – that I haven’t read because her kink is not my kink. It’s a weird place to be in.
Elyse: And it’s weird because, you know, I think for me, when I read about BDSM, it’s strange because I personally have kind of a strange and dysfunctional relationship with pain. I don’t, I, I intellectually understand that there’s an intersection between plain, pain and pleasure. I’ve never experienced it, and I think physiologically I probably can’t because my body processes pain so dysfunctionally and so incorrectly, and so there’s also this part of me that’s reading about this and being fascinated by the idea of actually engaging in something that would be painful to you –
Sarah: On purpose.
Elyse: – and finding, kind of going into that subspace or, or finding a, an erotic release in that, because it’s so foreign from my experience.
Sarah: Now I’m wondering if anyone has done a study or a, an examination of people who are into the BDSM scene who also have problems with chronic pain or fibromyalgia and if there is an overlap.
Elyse: I, I don’t know. Like, I can just speak to my, my own personal experience with fibro. When I, very often when I should be in pain, I don’t feel that pain, so I’ve actually injured myself and not known it –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: – so I think as a person who suffers from fibro, I’d be, like, the worst submissive ever –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Elyse: – because it would be like, oh, were – oh, was that a flog? Like, what, what was going on back there? I totally zoned out. What’s happening? Right? So, a lot of times when you, you should be feeling pain, you don’t feel any pain at all, and then conversely when there’s no reason for you to feel pain, you feel pain.
Sarah: Feel pain everywhere.
Elyse: Right.
Carrie: I almost have the opposite problem with pain, where, like, I keep waiting for this high pain tolerance to happen, and it does not happen. Like, people walk up and, like, poke me, and I’m like, aargh, get away! Like, I’m just, like, super – it’s not even super sensitive – like, super irritable. Like, if, if somebody were to walk up and swat me on the butt, I would, like, end them. But I also know that there are people who say that if you’re having a lot of chronic pain and it is kind of sometimes the same pain signals are going through your body, so something like really light pinching or really light slapping sometimes can redirect that, so I can picture how for some people, maybe that would sort of distract their nerve impulses and give them some relief because it would make everything sort of go in a different direction –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – which breaks that cycle. I don’t know. That’s not a medical opinion. I’m just wondering.
Elyse: No, I, that’s, that’s actually very accurate. I mean, I have a TENS unit, which is, mine – there are different varieties of TENS units, so mine is the kind you can buy over the counter; I actually got it from Amazon. So it, it’s basically, like, two little sticky pads that you put on an area where you’re experiencing pain, and it sends an electrical impulse to that area, and you can up the intensity or the type of impulse you’re getting, whether it’s like kind of a kneading sensation or a tapping sensation, and what it does – it’s not, it’s not painful; it feels weird, but not painful – is it –
RHG: Kind of like –
Elyse: – dis-, yeah, it disrupts the, it disrupts the pain signals.
Sarah: Right.
Elyse: So –
Sarah: It confuses them. It’s like, it’s like arriving –
Elyse: Right.
Sarah: – to your nervous system –
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: – with a bag of apples and grapes and saying, okay, get ready.
Elyse: Exactly. I’m never going to eat fruit again, you guys.
[Laughter]
Sarah: You’re going to get scurvy because of this podcast, huh?
Carrie: Yeah.
Elyse: And I’m just, I just yesterday finished the new Tiffany Reisz book, The Red, which is an erotic fantasy; it’s very much like a fairytale.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: It was so outstandingly good. So it is, this woman who runs an art gallery called The Red, she inherited it from her mother; it’s, like, half a million dollars in debt. She swore to her mom that she would save it, so of course mysterious, handsome dude arrives at the art gallery, and he’s like, hey, heard you guys are in some financial trouble; that really sucks. I’m a big art lover. I will pay you in art worth a million dollars if you have sex with me one night a month for twelve months. And she’s like, sure, makes total sense, right? And every one of their, their sexual encounters, he sends her a photo or marks a page in a book of a piece of artwork, and that is what inspires their role play.
Sarah: Whoa.
Elyse: So, like, the first scene they do together, she, it’s, it’s inspired by Olympia by Manet –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: – who, it’s a painting of a prostitute – presumably a prostitute – but she’s staring directly at the viewer, and it’s, like, a very confrontational, yes, I am lounging on this bed naked waiting for my lover, deal with it kind of expression, and that’s kind of where they take their, their first scene. But it is definitely Tiffany Reisz, which means it is not appropriate for all readers, and not everyone will be into it. There’s an awful lot of kink that happens in the book.
Sarah: How would you, or to whom would you recommend that book?
Elyse: When I was reviewing it, I just threw in everything that I could think of that happens, so if you are interested in, in role play, in BDSM, in, there’s, there’s group sex, there’s anal sex. I mean, if, if you can have sex a certain way, it’s in this book. So I think it’s not, but it’s never – again, it’s, it’s a woman who’s very empowered by her sexuality who has no misgivings about what’s going on. It’s two consenting adults who are entering this relationship very enthusiastically, and who have a, I think, a very good and healthy respect for each other and their boundaries.
Sarah: Do you have books that you recommend to new readers pretty consistently?
Elyse: I think it depends on what they’re looking for. Like, to me, I really love Tessa Dare and Eloisa James, but I think a lot of Regency romance is really coded for people who’ve read Regency romance? And it’s hard for people who haven’t read historicals to really dive into that world, because you don’t get a ton of worldbuilding or context in the Regencies that are coming out now; it’s just assumed that you know what’s going on.
Sarah: I often find that I’m most often asked for historical recommendations, and I typically do recommend Tessa Dare and Beverly Jenkins, Theresa Romain, and Kate Noble as well, because they, they have that sort of blend of historical detail and interesting characters with that sort of – [exhales] – I want to say comfort, and I, and I don’t mean that, like, in a way that says there’s no emotion in the book, ‘cause there’s a lot of emotion in the book, but there’s a certain historical, once-upon-a-time, comforting element about reading their writing. Even though Beverly Jenkins is writing about some really difficult things, I trust her so much that her, her books are engaging but also very reassuring. You know what I mean?
Elyse: For mystery readers who want to get into romance, I recommend a lot of Nora Roberts’ romantic suspense.
Sarah: Do you have some that you recommend in particular? ‘Cause I, I have to ver-, I have to be very particular. Like, some of them, like Blue Smoke still scares the shit out of me when I think about it.
Elyse: I ask what mysteries they’ve read to kind of judge how much roman-, or what kind of romantic suspense to recommend, ‘cause if you’re a long-time mystery/thriller reader, Nora Roberts isn’t going to freak you out. I mean, you know, if you just finished Red Dragon, you’re fine.
Sarah: [Laughs] Carrie, what were you going to say?
Carrie: I do not generally like stuff about BDSM because I just have, for many reason, a huge block about it, but I do try to read more to just try to sort of educate myself about it, and Rebekah Weatherspoon wrote a book called Sated. It’s part of a trilogy, and that has become one of my very, very favorite books! I just love it, and it’s very light on actual pain. It’s pretty, you know, low grade in terms of what the couple does, but there’s, some of the tropes that come up a lot in kind of the post Fifty Shades of Grey era are happily missing from Sated, so no, neither of the people are recovering from abuse. I know there are actually people who do recover from abuse and find BDSM to be kind of therapeutic, but a lot of times it’s written like, well, once they’re fixed, they won’t like it anymore, which is really insulting, and there, there’s no suggestion of that in Sated; it’s just, like, a happy thing that people do. And the, the characters are diverse, and one of the really cool things is that they have this really cute sense of humor, and so much BDSM stuff is, like, super serious. Super, super serious and very grim, and, and, and I actually have a story about going with my choir to a leather bar, which I found hilarious because everybody there, in fact, was super serious. And – [laughs] – and in Sated, you know, they’re, like, giggling and stuff, and when it’s time to, like, you know, stop giggling and get down to business they do, but overall, it’s not this, like, you know, super self-important activity. It’s a big part of their life and it’s something that they really, really enjoy, but they have a sort of a sense of lightness.
Sarah: I love when there are characters that have lighthearted or silly sex. And that’s pretty difficult to write, because usually, often sex scenes in a romance are amping up the tension and can’t resolve too much of the tension; otherwise, it completely deflates all of the build that’s been already established. It’s like the Moonlighting curse, only in a book.
Carrie: Yeah, I often will skim sex scenes or skip them, and one way to keep me in it is to do something that makes me laugh. Like in, I can’t remember if it’s Chain Reaction or Chain of Command, but they’re both by Zoe Archer and they’re science fiction romances?
Sarah: She writes great sex scenes.
Carrie: Oh, my God! She, I never skip her sex scenes because they’re important to the character development. But in addition to that, in one of them, you know, one of these women is this really tough, you know, military person, and they’re trying to have sex in, like, a, a swamp or something. Like, it’s not a congenial environment, so they don’t want to be, like, taking off their clothes and lying down, and she’s trying to take her pants off, and they get tangled up with her boots, and it’s hilarious. Like, she’s hopping around, and it’s, it’s great because, you know, really, that would happen –
Sarah: Yep.
Carrie: – you think. You know? Like, you wouldn’t just magically take off your clothes like a Chippendales stripper and get going. You’d end up hopping around – [laughs] – on one foot trying to take off your pants! So –
Sarah: I struggle to take off my pants on a regular day at the end of my wake, waking time ‘cause I’m tired! Forget if I’m, you know, aroused in some way. You know who else writes really, has written really funny sex scenes? Victoria Dahl.
Carrie: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: Some of her contemporaries have hilarious sex scenes, and either they’re in a weird place, like inside a cop car or, there was one where the, where at the end of it, the guy is like, I am sex ninja!
[Laughter]
Sarah: I, I laughed for, like, a good three minutes after that. Writing funny, happy sex is a real gift. Are there – I know, Elyse, you mentioned Nora Roberts, and Carrie, you mentioned The Windflower. Are there books that you guys have recommended that have the, have always worked? Like, these, this is, this is definitely going to work for you.
RHG: I don’t think there is such a book.
Sarah: I haven’t found it.
Carrie: Yeah, I haven’t found it.
Sarah: That’s really a trick question, ‘cause I have not found one that is, works for every reader.
RHG: And thank God, ‘cause I think that book would be real boring.
Sarah: Yep. And –
RHG: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and it’s funny; if I think about the different reader interests like a big Venn diagram, there are some books that will hit the most overlap, so if you like contemporary romance with smart characters and good dialogue and great worldbuilding and people who have interesting jobs, I can think of, like, four books right away that are going to work for you. But there, there’s, there’s no one book in a subgenre that works unilaterally for every reader, and I always feel bad for people on Twitter that I see, like a couple of years ago, Lord of Scoundrels went on sale for, like, the first time ever. It was like $1.99, and I think it sold so many copies –
Carrie: Oh!
Sarah: – that it hit the New York Times, like, a week later, because everyone on Twitter was like, you must buy this now! And there was this very quiet group of people on, on Twitter saying, I, I, I didn’t, I didn’t really like it. I, it didn’t work for me.
RHG: [Laughs]
Sarah: And I was like, I’m really sorry, ‘cause, you know –
RHG: Aw.
Sarah: – like, a good eighty percent of the world seems to have loved that book at this moment, so it can be very alienating to be like, nope. Nope, that didn’t work. Are there any other books that you guys talk a lot about to people or just consistently say, oh, no, that’s just one of the best? It’s just great.
Elyse: Well, The Orca King.
Carrie: Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie is, like, a major, major book for me, like, a personally major book for me, and I, what I find is I tend to oversell it. I, I go so on and on about how fantastic it is that by the time people read it, they’re like, o-kay.
Sarah: I’m just, I’m just in awe of the fact that Elyse says The Orca King, and then in the next breath Carrie says Bet Me, and these two books are now –
Carrie: I didn’t even hear it! The Orca King! Oh, my God, The Orca King is beautiful.
Sarah: [Laughs] I mean –
Carrie: I mean, well, I mean, the review of The Orca King was beautiful. I do find myself frequently explaining to people that I’ve read a Chuck Tingle book and that it was actually quite good.
Sarah: Oh, Adam –
Carrie: I just, I mean –
Sarah: – Adam read one. Which Chuck Tingle did you read? You read the one about setting up a business in somebody’s butt, right?
Carrie: I’ve read-
RHG: I mean, which one? They’re all like that.
Sarah: No, it was very specifically –
Carrie: Mine, mine was Pounded in the Butt by my Holiday Something Something Politically Correct Something Something Holiday Starbucks Cup, and –
Sarah: Oh, the politically correct Starbucks cup, or, or religiously –
Carrie: – Starbucks cup.
RHG: The, the plain red.
Sarah: Okay, so the one that Adam read –
Carrie: Right, yeah!
Sarah: – the one that Adam read is Living Inside My Own Butt for Eight Years, Starting a Business and Turning a Profit Through Common Sense Reinvestments and Strategic Targeted Marketing. Now, Adam was –
[laughter]
Sarah: – an economics major, and so he was, like, ready to read this book, and he came out of the entire experience so confused.
Elyse: I actually listened to The Orca King on audio.
Sarah: You listened to The Orca King on audio?
Carrie: [Laughs]
Elyse: It was an audiobook. So, to put this in perspective, this is the book about the orca shifter –
RHG: I don’t think that there is any perspective.
Elyse: [Laughs] This is the book about the orca shifter with the time travel penis.
RHG: Yeah.
Elyse: It is the most fucking crazysauce book I’ve ever read, and I just remember, I’m listening to it on audiobook at work while running reports, and there would be extended periods of time where I’d just be kind of staring wide-eyed into the middle distance –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Elyse: – and people would be like, people’d be like, are you okay? Are you, like, are you having a seizure? What’s going on?
Carrie: [Laughs]
Elyse: And I would have to be like, let me tell you about what is happening –
RHG: [Laughs]
Elyse: – in my ears right now.
Sarah: I was going to say –
Elyse: So I feel like a lot of –
RHG: Audible, Audible, this is your next ad!
Carrie: This is your next ad, yeah.
Elyse: And act- –
Carrie: I –
Elyse: – actually, it has a really good narrator –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Elyse: – which makes the fact that it’s so fucked up –
Carrie: Oh, my God.
Elyse: – all the more jarring because you, she’s got the, kind of like an Irish lilting accent, you’re getting into it, and then you’re like, did they just travel through time because of his penis? What the fuck is happening right now?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Elyse: Is she sexually attracted to a whale?
Sarah: Well, yes, ‘cause he’s the Orca King!
RHG: Orcas aren’t whales.
Elyse: Aren’t – dolphin, sorry. Sorry!
RHG: I’m just saying.
Elyse: They’re the wolves of the sea, Redheadedgirl.
Sarah: Wait –
RHG: Just saying.
Sarah: – orcas are not whales –
Elyse: Right.
Sarah: – despite being called killer whales. They’re actually dolphins.
RHG: Right.
Sarah: Of course.
RHG: Right.
Elyse: Yeah. Yes.
Carrie: I, I find myself talking about Someone to Cuttle a lot, and I regret that now I can’t remember who wrote Someone to Cuttle, and also that book Elyse read about the tentacle people on the submarine, which, as far as I’m concerned, that’s the title. Like, I, I –
Elyse: The World War I U-boat tentacle monster.
Carrie: Yeah! What was that, Elyse?
Elyse: All I re- –
Carrie: Because I start ranting about the biology, and I’m like, I don’t see why we can’t have – this is my new rant, and I think it’s hilarious that this is now a thing that I discuss publicly all the time – why we can’t have, like, more biologically interesting stuff happening here. Like, if you must, if you absolutely must have a tentacle fetish, then wouldn’t you want to make use of the fact that every, every sucker has, it can be manipulated by the octopus separately –
Elyse: No, because –
Carrie: – at one time?
Elyse: No, because –
Carrie: If I were writing tentacle porn, I’d put that in! I’m just saying!
Elyse: Carrie, you and I have discussed this. Octopuses can taste from their tentacles, and the tentacles always go in the ass. Always.
Carrie: I know! Then – the first time I met Courtney Milan, like, one minute I’m fangirling out, I can’t believe I’m in the same room with her, and five minutes later I’m going, you know what, there’s tentacles, I’m just saying, you could have a really cute epilogue, right, where the mom is yelling at the kids, dad is not a trampoline, and he’s just a bear in the middle of their, like, living room that they navigate around all winter, and then these, you should work these things in!
Sarah: Yes, you could work them in.
Carrie: I, I didn’t expect that I would find myself feeling so passionately about this topic, but I, I really do. It bothers me; it’s –
RHG: Okay, well, Carrie? Someone to Cuttle was by Luna Loupe.
Sarah: Yes. Yes, it was.
RHG: So, there’s that.
Carrie: Yes, it was.
Elyse: Yeah, I think the, the submariner tentacle book was really upsetting to me because basically the monster on the U-boat that had enslaved his crew to have tentacle butt sex with him was described as like a Lovecraftian Elder God, and I’m like, what kind of shitty fucking Elder God do you have to be that you got a U-boat? You got a shitty U-boat. Like, you don’t get your own planet, you don’t get a moon, you don’t get some fucked-up dimension where people who are crazy from looking into it, no. Here’s your U-boat, Steve. You are a disappointment to all the other Elder Gods. I feel like I’ve been so corrupted by all the tentacle erotica I’ve been exposed to now. The other night, Rich and I were watching Life, which is the alien movie with Jake Gyllenhaal –
Carrie: Oh –
Elyse: – and Ryan Reynolds, who aren’t the same person, as it turns out; they’re actually two entirely different people. But any –
RHG: Not only that, but Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper? Also different people from those other two!
Elyse: Fuck! Really?
RHG: What the fuck, man!
Elyse: So they’re on, basically, the, the premise is this bunch of astronauts are on the International Space Station, they find some life on Mars, they bring it back to the space station to study it, and of course it becomes, like, this malignant tentacle monster that eats people, and I expected every second there to be, like, some tentacle butt sex happening, and it never happened, and I’m like, this isn’t how this works! When you meet terrifying alien creatures with tentacles, it ultimately culminates in butt sex! I just, it was disappointing.
Carrie: I feel like it’s cheating the reader. Like, I don’t really want to read tentacle butt sex, but if I’m going to pick up a book that is clearly promising me tentacle butt sex and that is what I’m into – and no shame; I accept it if you’re into, you know, consensual tentacle butt sex, then knock yourself out! – they should deliver! Those, those, like, erotica books are, like, super pricey for being, like, two pages long.
RHG: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: I’ve only had, like, a quarter of a rum and Coke, you guys, and I feel like Sarah’s just sitting at her desk with her hands in, like, her head in her hands like, we were talking about book recommendation!
Carrie: Right! [Laughs]
RHG: Sarah has no control over this conversation because she’s still jetlagged.
Sarah: It’s true, I am, and also, I was, I was actually thinking, you know, what is the most fucked-up book that I’ve read that I can tell people about? I mean, and I haven’t gone the way of tentacle/cuttlefish/were/shifter/living in your butt, starting a business books. The, the one review that still gets an incredible amount of traffic is Decadent, and the whole plot of that is just completely off the wall, but that was not one that I wrote. That was one that was written by Candy. And the, the, the driving plot point of that book is that the heroine has to learn how to have threesomes because she wants to sleep with this rock star who only has threesomes.
RHG: Wait, is this, I’m fu-, fucking her ass, saving her life?
Sarah: Yes, it is.
RHG: YAY!
Elyse: [Laughs]
Sarah: It’s a glorious review.
RHG: Well, Sarah, you can still, like, I have spent an embarrassing number of years kind of occasionally taking a look through tentacle porn, and yours is still, like, in the top five, so.
Sarah: Oh, I’m really pleased. Thank you. I did write tentacle porn, and yes, of course, there was anal.
Carrie: But there was actual tentacle action, not like a big tease.
Sarah: No, no. There’s –
RHG: That’s right.
Sarah: – there’s actual tentacle porn, and I – y’all, I wrote that on my birthday. That was, that was a very strange birthday.
RHG: Happy birthday to you.
Sarah: Right? And it had to be anal! You can’t have tentacle sex without anal. You’re right, it’s like a, it’s like a requirement.
RHG: It is a requirement.
Sarah: Also, Carrie, I just found a lawn banner for your house that says “Wanna cuttle?” and it has a little cuttlefish on it, so if you want to, like, decorate the yard with a cuttlefish and invite cuttle cuddling, you can do that!
Carrie: It’s a what? [Laughs]
Sarah: It’s a little, little flag for your lawn, and instead of, like, having, like, a sunflower or, you know, Welcome or a rooster, it has a big cartoon cuttlefish, and it says “Wanna cuttle?”
Carrie: Um.
RHG: I think she needs it.
Sarah: I, I, I agree!
Carrie: I’m like, that’s either the best or the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard of. I do like cuttlefish.
RHG: It can be both. It’s 2017, Carrie. We are embracing the power of And.
Carrie: You know, you guys know I do love my cephalopods, but generally I love them in a platonic way.
RHG: You can platonically cuttle!
Carrie: I could platonically cuttle! And cuttlefish are adorable. Can we just, you know, say they are adorable.
Sarah: Unless they’re shifting into creatures who want to bang. Then they’re not so adorable; they are sexy.
Carrie: Well, in Someone to Cuttle, they shift into very attractive gay men.
RHG: Right, but they don’t actually bang in cuttlefish form, which seems a waste.
Carrie: I know, right? And I was kind of like, you know, both relieved and disappointed simultaneously. It was, it was an odd sensation. It’s like –
Elyse: Like you don’t want to look, but you also kind of want to look.
Carrie: Do what it says on the tin: if you promise, you know, A, you should deliver A.
RHG: Right.
Carrie: If you promise B, you should deliver B.
Sarah: And if you promise slot A into tab B with tentacles, that’s what you’re going to get!
RHG: Then it’s the weirdest IKEA build ever.
Carrie: Right.
RHG: Sure.
Sarah: Are there any other books that you guys would like to just recommend before we wrap up?
Elyse: Here’s Sarah, putting us back on the rails again.
RHG: Right.
Sarah: Well, you know, jet lag.
Carrie: It’s the moderator’s job. For historicals, I always recommend What Happens in London by Julia Quinn because I think that book is hilarious. And I often also recommend Lord of Scoundrels because who doesn’t recommend Lord of Scoundrels?
Sarah: I have listened to that book, and I have to say, the audio for it is terrific. What about you, Redheadedgirl? Any books you want to recommend just generally?
RHG: I am working on for the review for this, but for the Rec League that, that we did some weeks ago now, for me –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
RHG: – it was books about Edinburgh and York? Somebody recommended A Queen from the North –
Sarah: Ooh!
RHG: – and I don’t have the author’s name, but you’ll find it. And it’s an alternate history in which the War of the Roses didn’t really end?
Sarah: Uh-oh!
RHG: And it’s now modern times, and the, the Prince of Wales needs a wife real fast for reasons, and he proposes to basically the last daughter of the House of York, and ridiculousness and shenanigans ensue, and it’s really, really good.
Sarah: Awesome!
RHG: I could not put it down. I was at the Tall Ships Regatta in Boston a couple of weeks ago, and I’m like, ships, or I could finish my book.
Sarah: Yep.
RHG: Ships or I could – the ships’ll be there. I need to, I need to read this for a bit. So that, that is my current recommendation.
Sarah: Awesome. Elyse, are there any books that you want to mention?
Elyse: I’ve been giving out a lot of copies of Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai.
Sarah: That book is really fucking good.
RHG: It’s so good!
Elyse: Every person who I’ve given that book to has said to me, like, I finished this in one sitting. Thank you for making me exhausted the next day at work.
Sarah: Yep. That’s definitely the kind of emotional, sexy, larger story arc, lots of different reasons why things are the way they are book that you can recommend to a whole bunch of different readers.
Elyse: I think it’s really hard to write a contemporary where there is, like, a convincing reason two people can’t be together because of their families?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: And she pulls it off. Like, there’s, there’s enough context there that it makes total sense.
RHG: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Yes, because at some point you want to be like, okay, you’re all adults. Just play the fuck-you card and move on with your life, and then in this situation, there’re enough reasons why that’s not possible. It’s such a good book. God, that book is great.
RHG: It’s still, my favorite part of RT was just sort of the inhuman noises that people –
Sarah: [Laughs]
RHG: – would make when they saw that there were copies of it out in the wild.
Sarah: Yep. Like –
[Gasps!]
Sarah: Yeah, it’s, it’s like, it’s not Good Book Noise, ‘cause you haven’t read it yet. It’s deeply anticip- –
RHG: It’s I Need That.
Sarah: Yeah.
RHG: I Want That.
Sarah: Gimme, gimme now!
RHG: I’ll roll you for it.
Sarah: [Laughs] These floors are hard, and I will take you down!
RHG: Mm-hmm.
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this week’s episode! I want to thank all of the Bitches for hanging out with me, and if you would like to tell us about a recommendation that you made to a curious romance reader or someone who’d never tried romance at all, I would love to hear about it. You can reach me at [email protected], or you can email me at [email protected], or you can email me a voice memo, and I’ll use that voice memo in the podcast, if you’re feeling super brave and rad, which you should totally do!
And if you would like to subscribe or leave a review or tell a friend about the podcast, that helps as well, because you know what we should do is convince more people to try romance, right? Like, that’s a great goal!
And speaking of romance, this episode is brought to you by Too Scot to Handle by Grace Burrowes. This New York Times bestselling series with heartfelt emotions, humor, and realistic, honest characters is a fan favorite, raves RT Book Reviews, and in the second book of the Windham Brides series, Burrowes is delighting romance readers once again with an irresistible, rough-around-the-edges Scot who takes on saving an orphanage to win over the fiery, intelligent woman who’s captured his heart. As a captain in the army, Colin MacHugh led men, fixed what was broken, and fought hard, and now that he’s a titled gentleman, he’s still fighting, this time to keep his bachelorhood safe from all of the marriage-minded debutantes. Then he meets the intriguing Miss Anwen Windham, whose demure nature masks a bonfire waiting to roar to life, and when she asks for his help to raise money for the orphanage, he’s very happy to oblige. Anwen is amazed at how quickly Lord Colin takes in hand a pack of rambunctious orphan boys; amazed at how he listens, he actually listens to her ideas; amazed at the thrill she gets from the rumble of his voice and the heat of his touch. But not everyone enjoys the success of an upstart, and Colin has enemies who will stop at nothing to ruin him and anybody he holds dear. As Tessa Dare put it, Grace Burrowes is a romance treasure, so don’t miss Too Scot to Handle by Grace Burrowes, on sale now wherever books are sold.
Now you can find all of the books that we mention in this episode and links to all the things we discussed at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and you can find our recent episodes and links to iBooks store, iBookstore – yeah, that’s right – iBookstore content specifically at iTunes.com/DBSA.
The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. This is “Queens.” This is Caravan Palace. This is their two-album set, Caravan Palace and Panic, available at iTunes and Amazon. You can find them on Facebook or on their website, caravanpalace.com. Seriously, I love this album set. Even when I’m not editing the podcast content I listen to this, ‘cause it’s so great!
And one last thing: if you are in the Orlando area and it’s not Saturday, 29th of July, it’s before Saturday, the 29th of July, or it’s Saturday the 29th and it’s not three o’clock yet, you should come on down to the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort, Pacific Hall, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Romance Writers of America is hosting the “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing. There’re going to be literally hundreds of romance authors, all in chairs at tables with their names on them, and then between them and the name, or maybe in front of the name, are books. Right? Awesome. Books. You can get them signed, and then you can buy them, and then all the proceeds go to literacy organizations, and they’ve raised over a million dollars, so this is a significant, significant fundraiser, and you can come meet people! It’s really cool! You can meet Alyssa Cole and Tessa Dare and Julie James and Cecilia Tan and Beverly Jenkins and Jill Shalvis, and then out in the Ws, over by the cashier will be me! Yay! Exciting! I’m really, really excited; I don’t know if you could tell. You can come find me, mention the podcast. I have a sticker for you if you would like one, and I would really like to meet you! I will have books, I will have stickers, and mostly I just want you to introduce yourself and say hello, because it’s really, really cool to meet all of you. So come find me at RWA literacy signing. You can get all of the details at rwa.org/literacy.
And that’s about all I’ve got! I have no more cats interrupting me. I will post a picture of how Orville was helping me with this editing, ‘cause it was a big sprawling amount of cat. But on behalf of everyone here, including all of the mammals who live in my house, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and if you are traveling home from RWA this weekend, thank you for bringing me with you and safe travels! I’ll see you next week.
[slinky music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Fruit Salad
My expectations of tentacles have been shaped by way too much exposure to hentai (“THAT’S NOT HOW THE FEMALE BODY WORKS. WHY ARE DUDES”). Awaiting the transcript so I can get some context…
The tentacle reference has me curious – like Ren, I await the transcript to learn more (and can I say, thank you for providing the transcripts since I can’t hear?) I’m a biologist, so my first thought is always going to be cephalopds. However, I’m also an avid follower of Humon’s “Scandinavia and the World”, and her “Love and Tentacles” comics spring to mind as well: http://scandia.store/product/the-love-and-tentacles-book
Awwwww Orville! Does he let you tickle that gorgeous tummy?
As it turns out, the tentacles were pretty much what I expected. 😀
The only thing I really remember about those Anne Rice Beauty books was the vaginal penetration with the jeweled hilt of a dagger. I was probably 13 and had just run through Lestat and grabbed everything with “Anne Rice” on the cover and it was very much “WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ.” I mean, I’d been reading romance since my age was in the single digits because that’s what was in the house, so I thought I was pretty worldly, but that day I realized I didn’t know shit.
Oh god, now I’m getting flashbacks to something about butter (don’t put butter in your vagina) and a cat (cats can’t consent, so keep them away from your vagina, as well).
I don’t read much erotica, but it seems like it shouldn’t make you want to board up your hooha to avoid having random objects crammed in it.
Loved today’s pod. When the Bitches assemble we always get such a free-wheeling discussion. The vagina fruit had me laughing on my dogwalk at 6am. I kept waiting for someone to mention Susan Johnson I can remember at least two books that have plums inserted into the vagina. Can’t quite recall the titles but they were both historicals in the Bertrice Smalls style with lots of kidnappings, harems, and aprodisiacs.
Ice only listened to the first 10 minutes so far, but omg yessss the bag of books in the closet of the pizza joint I worked at was how I was introduced to romance. Especially Nora Roberts.
I actually can’t read her anymore, I keep seeing the Nora formula and I get bored.
Oh I love Victoria Dahl’s contemporaries! Her books are always fun and sexy reads.
I love the Original Sinners series, but I want to have a deep conversation about how morally stressed I felt about some of the relationships in the book!
There’s also the lemon in Elizabeth Hoyt’s ‘To Beguile a Beast’. The hero tries it as a contraceptive(?) on the heroine, and then uses the lemon juice to turn her on. But all I could imagine was a possible ‘puckering’ of the skin going on down there for her.
Crystal F.
Lemon?!? I’m clenching at the thought, Ren’s boarding up is clearly needed.
Half a small lemon is known as a historical contraception method- it’s essentially an attempt at a diaphragm. You could also try a sponge soaked with vinegar or lemon juice.
What? I know things.
@Redheadedgirl: Don’t forget crocodile dung.
I wonder if some of these methods were contraception via scaring away men. “In the name of Anubis, with what have you dammed your fertile delta now? I will not be paddling my boat up that fetid stream tonight!”
So, I still needed to find something to fill the Ripped Bodice bingo square for non-mammal shifter, and I found myself reading that damn cuttlefish-shifter thing.
Damn you, Carrie. I can’t unread it! Good thing it was only 12 pages long. I don’t even want to know what kind of drugs it would take to come up with that idea.
But I’ve checked that box, and never have to go there again.
@Jazzlet Yeah, I went back and re-read the scene and he does ‘work it in’ like a diaphragm as Redheadedgirl mentions. I’m like dude, stop, there’s better ways to make lemonade.
I lent it to a friend who doesn’t normally read romance, but she does enjoy erotica and we write erotic fan fiction/science fiction together. She felt the same way, loved the book, but that made her cringe. Then again, with some of the ideas *we’ve* come up with…
“And she was like, yes, those are the most beautiful words in the English language.” Ahh, truer words were never spoken!
I’m trying to figure out how I got started in romance, I was a voracious reader as a kid-I think my gateway author was Jean Plaidy/Victoria Holt. My first real romance novel was Kathleen Woodiwiss-Shanna-which I read my junior year in high school. By the time it got me to me, it was well worn and dog eared-that was 1977 I think. I was deeply in love with my first boyfriend, and I was blown away by the sex scenes!
I was lucky enough, that boyfriend’s mom was a huge romance reader-one wall of her basement was filled with Harlequin romances. I would come visit, and go home with a huge brown bag (how much do I love you guys talked about brown bags and their inventor!) full of books. It was like paradise! Not only did I have my very hot first boyfriend, but his mom was a huge reader?? Who wanted to share her books with me? I look back and I couldn’t have ordered a more perfect first love!
Elyse, can’t believe I never read Hellion, I feel like I’ve read most of Small’s books. I can just picture you though, in the back seat of the family car, with your mind getting blown by one of her novels. My freshman roommate and I came back as soon as the dorms opened, after Christmas-with the express purpose of just reading romance novels. We bought a bunch, traded them back and forth-and I remember that feeling when we would finally venture out of the room, like “do they know what we are reading?”. I think we were much more naive about sex back then, but also more free-that was before anyone had heard about AIDS.
Sorry for the long post, this was a great podcast!
Bought and read A Queen from the North on the strength of this podcast.
It was clearly gripping enough that I finished it within 24 hours, but also flawed… and not just because it needed another proof-reading.
If you do a review, please let me know so I can join the discussion. I’d be particularly curious about any review that compared A Queen from the North with Lilah Pace’s His Royal Secret. 🙂
Is it sad that I have already listened to this episode twice? SO much fun. So many recommendations. And the slightly amusing realisation that I definitely owned Decadent but I’m sure I never read it after being a bit meh about the first in the series ‘Wicked Ties.’ I probably gave it away at some point. Now I kind of regret that but I wont be buying it twice! XD
Thanks for another lol podcast. Seems appropriate that to my ear Elyse sounded a bit like she was in an aquarium. Given all the tentacle talk…perhaps she was?! ;D
I have received and given many a bag full of books. Sadly, we don’t have many brown paper bags in circulation these days where I live and still the books pile up!
Thanks for the many recommendations and joyful discussion (except for the grapes and apple slices, ew!). Just grabbed A Queen From the North because I’m a sucker for AU romances!
Just heard this today, and the tentacle discussion made me think of the famous Hokusai erotic print, “Diving Girl with Octopus” — which was made 200 years ago.
Check it out at: http://www.akantiek.nl/hokusai%20p1290.htm
i don’t remember if it was carrie or amanda but could someone give more context on recs they make for dude friends into genre fiction willing to try a romance?
Devra, podcast #256 has some recommendations for Sarah’s husband in the comments. Is that what you were looking for?