107. An Interview with John Jacobson

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to another DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Jane Litte and John from dreaming in reviews. You may have interacted with John online at one point or another. He blogs at dreaming in reviews, he blogs at Heroes and Heartbreakers, he’s very active on Twitter, and he has been a romance reader since he was in high school. Now he’s in college, and since we know he’s a big fan of the podcast and listened to about, like, six or seven episodes driving across Pennsylvania, Jane and I wanted to interview him and talk about what he’s reading and what he’s really enjoying right now.

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

And now a word from our sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Scandal and the Duchess, an all-new e-novella in the popular Victorian-set Mackenzies series from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. I will have links in the podcast entry about this book and all of the other books that we discuss.

And now, on with the podcast and our interview with John.

[music]

Sarah: So if you would please, sir, introduce yourself and tell the lovely people who are listening who you are.

John Jacobson: Hello, my name is John Jacobson. I am currently a sophomore at Ithaca College. I have run my own book review blog, Dreaming In Books for four or five years now. I have also written for Dear Author at various points in my existence, and I am currently writing off and on for Heroes and Heartbreakers.

Sarah: So you are currently how old?

John: I am 19 going on 20.

Sarah: And you started blogging about romance when you were 15?

John: I think it was 15.

Sarah: Okay, dude, that’s a big holy shit right there, ‘cause at 15, I couldn’t even do my own hair reliably, much less blog about book.

John: I don’t know if I could do anything else reliably.

Sarah: [Laughs]

John: I just – I, I knew that I could blog about books and go on the Internet, so I think I used the one skill that I had reasonably mastered and just went with it.

Sarah: [Laughs] What made you start a romance blog?

John: Well, the blog is partially romance, partially YA, although anyone who knows my reading habits knows that I read romantic YA, so, I, in some way I’ve always read romance, just genre romance in a YA form, I guess. I started it because I had seen book blogs for the past couple years. I had actually been reading your blog and Jane’s blog since probably, like, my last year of middle school, so like eighth grade maybe? And it just seemed really fun, and I wanted to kind of get in on the conversation, so I started a blog and then shit happened, and now I’m here.

Sarah: [Laughs] Shit happened, and now I’m at Ithaca.

Jane Litte: So tell us what you’re doing now.

John: So I am a sophomore at Ithaca College. I am a, an Integrated Marketing Communications major. It’s a really long title for a really simple major. Essentially, it’s just marketing with a communications bent, so I’m focusing a lot on media, advertising, public relations, statistics, and market research kind of areas, and I am minoring in our honors program as well as Creative Writing if I can get the paperwork done. I’m just kind of lazy, so I haven’t done that yet.

Jane: When I was in college, I don’t remember reading for pleasure much. Do you have any time to do that?

John: It’s a hit and a miss. It depends on the courses that I’m taking and the time that I allot myself. I’m the kind of person that will be doing work for different clubs and organizations pretty much every day, so I tend to go to bed at 3 a.m. a lot. Nice. Sarcastic. But I do take the time to read when I can, especially with Heroes and Heartbreakers now; I’m kind of using that as a reason. Well, I have to read for this, so I can pull out the romance novel and take some time where I don’t have to worry about, you know, reading, like, three different textbooks or, you know, making, like, five different Excel sheets for, you know, five different organizations. I can kind of take a step back and give myself a mental breather for half an hour or an hour or, you know, whatever I can manage.

Sarah: When we first interacted with you, at least when I did, I think you were 15 or 16, and I know that you weren’t allowed to win any of our contests because you were under 18 years of age, which is a total frigging bummer, and I remember that you really, really liked Harlequin Presents.

John: Yes.

Sarah: Is that still true? Do you still love Harlequin Presents? Were those the first romances that you read?

John: They were not the first that I read, but I still love them. I blame Jane.

Sarah: [Laughs] I blame Jane for a lot of things.

John: I –

Jane: Harlequin Presents are awesome!

John: Yes, exactly! I – because of Jane, I have found an awesome category line that I read, and I have a couple of them with me here at school and God knows how many on my Kindle. I, I just, I love the Presents line. I think I found some of my favorite authors there. I am an avid fan of Sarah Morgan. Her books are phenomenal, and I’ve just, I’ve loved seeing her grow. I’ve enjoyed Michelle Reid, I’ve enjoyed Lynn Raye Harris, Maisey Yates. There is some very intellectual and fascinating women writing Presents novels that are making them very subversive and intriguing, so I’ve used that as a reason to stick with the line, but they weren’t the first books that I read. I think the first romance novel that I ever read was Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey. Oh, that was a book.

Sarah: Wh-, whoa. Gentle R-? Whoa! Gentle Rogue.

Jane: I think it’s amazing. Let’s just pause here for a minute and think of how amazing it is that John in 2014, or 2010 when he started reading – whatever, 2008 – his first experience was a Lindsey! I mean, probably one of my –

Sarah: It is amazing.

Jane: Yeah, one of my first experiences was probably with a Lindsey. I mean, it’s just kind of amazing how enduring her work is.

Sarah: It is, she’s omnipresent and sh-, and it’s almost like every group of readers that discovers romance ultimately at some point reads a Johanna Lindsey. Like, you can’t get through the genre without hitting at least one.

Jane: So, John, you’re kind of in that New Adult age. What do you think of that subgenre?

John: I’m a known advocate for it. I’m not going to lie; I really enjoy it. I like that, I like that they’re essentially genre romances, but they have the college-aged protagonists that they have, the heightened emotion that they have. Most, you know, most of the time, the protagonist is in college or just out of college, and I mean, a little more focused than genre romances that just happen to have characters in that age range. I really like it because I think there is a lot that our culture puts on the college experience. Like, having been here for over a year now, I’ve felt a lot of different pressures regarding the college experience and, you know, the kind of, like the kind of experience I should be having. And it’s nice to be able to pick up books and realize that, you know, if the writing is really good and the authors are, you know, going beyond, like, the same couple story tropes that – you know, there are a bunch of different characters with a bunch of different college experiences, and it makes you feel very comfortable, and it makes you feel like you can have your own individual experience in college and it’s okay. So I really like reading it, but I also like that it kind of gives a way of showing younger characters having sex and having sexual relationships with each other, and it, you know, gives the opportunity to show that with hook-up culture and with, you know, just first-time sex and people have sex, you know, all the time for enjoyment, and people that kind of have uneasy relationships with sex, like – my biggest issue with a lot of YA is that even when it deals with sex, the sex often has to be dealt with in a very specific manner in order to be seen as appropriate. New Adult won’t necessarily have that limitation, and I think that opens doors for a lot of possibilities, and I think students and readers that read up are going to discover these books where hopefully they’re in high school, you know, or middle school, you know, whenever they decide that these are the books that they want to be reading, you know, they could read these books and realize that, you know, they can have sexual relationships while they’re younger, and it doesn’t have to be unhealthy and weak or gross or super taboo.

Jane: Why do you think that – you know, there’s a lot of debate about whether there should be sex in YA at all, and I guess from what I hear you saying, you think that there should be, because that’s representative of people’s experiences. Not that every book should have sex, but that there, there’s nothing wrong with it. How do you feel about sex in YA books? Do you think it’s important or not important? In what?

John: I think it’s important to show sex. I obviously don’t believe that every book should have sex. You know, that depends on the author, it depends on the target audience, it depends on the type of story, it depends on the characters, but I think that more YA needs to be dealing with sex just because a lot of teenagers are having sex at earlier ages, and even if they’re not necessarily having sex at earlier ages, we’re more aware of the fact that teenagers have sex lives, and seeing depictions of honest and healthy sexual relationships between people their age might give teenagers who read YA the ability to deal with that in a more, in, like, a healthier manner. I dealt with a lot of things in my life by kind of looking to the books that I read and figuring out what aspects of those books applied to my situation and which ones didn’t, and I think it gave me, like, a good ability to kind of assess, you know, where my life was and figure out a way to deal with it that was healthy, because I had read so many books that dealt with, you know, different problems in different ways. But, you know, sex is still kind of like an unknown factor in some ways. Like, you know, I don’t think I have a bad sex life, but it’s nice to be able to think about, you know, oh, well, the books that I’ve been reading have helped with that, and I think that if I had stuck with YA and hadn’t gone on to adult romance, I wouldn’t know as much about sex as I do, and I wouldn’t have been as comfortable with it, and I feel like that would have become a problem, and I don’t want that to become a problem for the many other readers that are going to be reading YA and kind of using that as a way to deal with some problems in their life that they might not be able to talk about otherwise.

Jane: So what are some of the New Adult books that you’ve read recently that you’ve enjoyed?

John: I really enjoyed Make It Count by Megan Erickson. I, it, it’s a book from, I think, Harper Collins’s digital-first imprint, Harper Impulse, or something like that. And I enjoyed the book because the heroine was very, you know, feisty, spunky, happy. Like, I enjoy a heroine that has a lot of wit and will give it back to the hero time and time again in a book, because strong women are cool. And I love the book in particular because it dealt with the fact that the heroine was living with a learning disorder and that it had been ignored throughout her public high school experience, and how she kind of dealt with that, along with falling in love with a guy that was very intellectual, and how the social pressures kind of, you know, made their relationship difficult. And there were other conflicts as well, but I just enjoy seeing that, because we don’t see a lot of that type of mental ability in, you know, New Adult or even, like, adult romance or YA. And I also liked it because it wasn’t an issue book. It was, it had its funny moments, it had its angsty moments, but it was balanced. So I really enjoyed that one.

I also recently read Boomerang by Noelle August, which is another one that’s kind of from the William, like, William and Morrow slash, like, Harper Collins family, I guess. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much, but it’s very classic rom-com. The hero and the heroine end up both getting, like, an internship at the same online dating website, and they end up falling for each other, and, you know, there’s, of course, the series of quintessential bad dates and the I can’t love you and I can’t have sex with you because we’re working together, but we’re attracted to each other, so eventually we’re going to have sex. So –

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, that was a short book.

John: I mean, it, it’s a conflict that you’ve read time and time again, but it was so enjoyable, and I just liked reading a New Adult rom-com, because I do get a little overwhelmed with all of the emotion, so that, it was a good breather book. So, that, that’s kind of what I read last.

Sarah: A, a breeder book.

John: Breather book.

Sarah: Are there any male/male New Adult that –

Jane: Not breeder as in the types of – [laughs]. You know, that’s a specific type of erotic romance.

John: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, Oh, God. Oh, God.

Jane: Well, John is almost 20 now. I feel like I can say that.

Sarah: Yeah, I, I think that you can. He’s above 18. He’s eligible for some things that we can talk about. But we just can’t drink with him yet. Are there any male/male New Adult that you would, had, have encountered that you would recommend?

John: I should put a disclosure and say that I do consider myself friends with the author of this one, but I really enjoyed Heidi Cullinan’s, Cullinan’s New Adult books. She is very good at writing m/m with a lot of variety in conflict, and her characters always kind of challenge you. She writes a book that’s very long, but it’s very rewarding. I’m trying to remember the, I’m actually going to look up the title –

Sarah: Is this the one where the, the, the cover, it’s a guy, and he’s standing in front of a blackboard? Only –

John: Yeah. Love Lessons, I think.

Sarah: Love Lessons. That was, wait, that was New Adult?

John: That was New Adult. Sam-hane, or Samhain – I never know how to pronounce it –

Sarah: Sam-hane.

John: Sam-hane. They did not, I don’t think, market it as New Adult as much, but it was New Adult. It was a college romance. I know that the author, I think, considers it New Adult romance, and based on the book, I would consider it New Adult. It does have a lot of genre-slash-m/m trappings, but it felt New Adult to me. At least in –

Jane: Have you –

John: – in the genre.

Jane: Have you read Sarina Bowen’s The Understatement of the Year?

John: No, I have not. I think I downloaded her first book because it was a daily deal on your website, though.

Jane: Yeah, it was 99 cents. That was the one that I gave the dollar guar-, the guarantee, the money-back guarantee.

John: Yes. I, I have –

Jane: Oh.

John: – though I have not read it yet.

Jane: Okay, so, Sarina Bowen writes, well, she write – this is kind of ironic, John, because Sarah and I had a podcast, was it last week, Sarah?

Sarah: Yes, it was last week. It was an hour, it was awesome, and it didn’t record.

Jane: So anyway –

Sarah: So we’re going to talk about Sarina Bowen again!

Jane: Yes.

[Laughter]

Jane: So Sarina Bowen is my new author crush, and I was explaining to Sarah that I have really loved all of her New Adult books. I have not read the novella yet, but I hear it’s really good, so I went – I’m just not a fan of novellas – so I went and read, she has two adult contemporaries, and they’re really kind of – just because they’re slightly out of college, I don’t necessarily categorize them as New Adult, or excuse me, as not New Adult, but regardless, they’re categorized as contemporaries, and I was telling Sarah that I felt guilty, but I really hated the very first contemporary, Coming in from the Cold, and Sarah liked it, but I had, I was telling Sarah that when I was reading it, I started arguing with the characters, and the, the arguments that I was constructing reminded me of, like, a men’s rights activist, and I told Sarah that any book that makes me espouse the views of an MRA deserves to be crushed beneath the heel of my stiletto, but basically, that’s how –

Sarah: Never ever ever-ever ever mess with Jane’s stilettos, by the way. Bad idea. Very bad.

Jane: So that was really frustrating with me, but The Understatement of the Year is this m/m book, and as you know, John, I don’t read a lot of m/m –

John: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – but this one, it features two hockey players, and one is a hockey player who had just come out, and I think he was outed maybe against his will, or he had not been, he had not been real – he hadn’t hid it, but it hadn’t, but he went to this small, private, Catholic college, and they kicked him out. So then he goes to this Ivy League college, and he joins the hockey team, and lo and behold, on the hockey team is his first love, who is so far in the closet he’s in Narnia.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Ah, gay Narnia. That should totally be the name of a club, right? Gay Narnia?

John: I think it would be called The Wardrobe, but –

Sarah: [Laughs] Yes, you’re totally right.

Jane: So he, he is so far in the closet he’s in Narnia having sex with the Snow Queen. Well, not really the Snow Queen, ‘cause Bella, who he is having sex with, is a really awesome character who deserves her own book, but he struggles with his own sexual identity. And, so, I don’t read a lot of books, but I have read a lot of opinion pieces about m/m, and one of them is that they’re, people are tired of the coming out story –

John: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – and so maybe because of my unfamiliarity, I thought this was a really interesting book, but he struggles with his sexual identity, and he both loves and hates his fir-, this new guy, this new guy, the one that, that had come out. He loves him because, you know, those are his feelings, but he hates him too, because it brings those feelings forth. It was a lot more angsty and less flirty, but I thought it was real emotional. I would love to hear what you think of that story. You have to read it. That’s your, that’s your holiday/Christmas/Thanksgiving break assignment.

John: I think I can manage that.

Sarah: You’re giving him assignments? That’s so mean.

John: I, I think she’s allowed to. [Laughs]

Sarah: All right, that, that, all right, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I won’t stand up.

Jane: It’s going to be like a class project. Can you, can you do, like, your own structured projects at school yet or not?

John: I’m, I’m not really sure. I do know that I’m actually taking a queer studies class right now because last semester a student had actually organized this whole thing through our student government to get a queer studies minor started, because we don’t have one, even though anybody that kind of knows what Ithaca is kind of knows that our town is known for being very, very gay, so I don’t know why we didn’t have it, but we’re kind of on that path, and this class is the first step. So of course I signed up for it, and part of the class is that I get to do a kind of like overall project of my choosing, so if I really wanted to, I could probably do a project about m/m or coming out stories or something similar to that. I actually have thought about involving the romance community in it, ‘cause I love it so much, and it would give me an excuse to, like, talk to a whole bunch of people and read a whole bunch of books.

Sarah: I have a question on your, you were mentioning earlier how if, if you, you know, we Google you, your, your picture comes up – it’s a very cute picture at Ithaca’s site, by the way – what is More Love Letters? Tell me about that.

John: Oh, it’s a part of this national organization called The World Needs More Love Letters. Essentially, the goal of the organization, at least from a, like, college campus perspective is that we will write, like, anonymous love letters and we’ll hide them around campus, and we will also write love letters towards people that have been nominated. So for the love letters that we hide, we just write, you know, short, sweet, positive letters that say, you know, you look really fabulous today. Go and kick ass and take names. And the, the goal is to kind of have people just, you know, find them randomly and pick them up, read them, and get a jolt of positivity throughout their day.

Sarah: That’s adorable.

John: And then the bundles, like, a lot of times, especially, like, in college, you know, a lot of people go through homesickness, they have a lot of, you know, they have issues going on in their personal lives, they get very stressed out, or even, you know, they do something great, but people aren’t really, like, talking to them about that as much. A lot of times, what their friends will do is their friends will come to us and give us the general situation and basically say, like, this is what’s going on in this person’s life, and I really think they need a little bit of love. So what our organization will do is we will get our general body together and we will write love letters to this person that we don’t know based off of, you know, their story, and, you know, we only use, like, first letters, like, it’s all anonymous, and we will gather all these letters together, put them in a bundle, we’ll deliver it to this person’s friend, and their friend will give it to them on a personal level and, you know, hopefully make them feel a lot better.

Sarah: Can I nominate Jane just so that we can see the look of complete aghast horror on her face as all of these letters complimenting her show up on the porch?

John: [Laughs] I’m totally fine with that. I don’t –

Sarah: I think this is a great idea. Jane, what do you think?

Jane: I think that you’re trying to traumatize me.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yes, of course I am. That’s the entire goal right there. Only, only Jane would be traumatized by love letters.

Jane: See, I do think that that is a really amazing thing, though. I do. When I was in college, I felt very much a fish out of water –

Sarah: Ditto.

Jane: – so I think getting an anonymous letter would have been lovely.

Sarah: I think it’s a, I think it’s an amazing organization. I’m going to have to make sure to link to it when I post the podcast entry.

So aside from Heidi Cullinan and Make It Count, what books would you recommend to people right now if they were listening and they wanted something to read? What books have you been pushing on people? And have you gotten your boyfriend to read a romance yet?

John: Not yet. It’s on the list of things to do. So far I’ve gotten him to read Howl’s Moving Castle and Weetzie Bat, which is a very strange YA novel that’s kind of like a giant fever dream. Like, I’ve never taken hallucinogens, but I’m pretty sure this book is like what it is like to be on hallucinogens –

Sarah: [Laughs]

John: – so of course I’m like, well, my boyfriend should read this so he understands my life. So –

[Laughter]

Sarah: This is, this, this book will make you understand me.

Jane: So what is your boyfriend doing right now?

Sarah: He’s probably rolling his eyes and cringing, is my guess. So aside from the fever dream, you haven’t convinced him to read a romance?

John: He, he is open to reading a romance. I just haven’t gotten the right book yet. I’m very particular about trying to give people the right recommendations.

Sarah: I understand this very well.

John: Yes.

Jane: All right, so what is the right book? Like, what is, what is it that you think that your boyfriend would like to read? Maybe we can come up with some one, thing.

John: He’s really into steampunk, so that’s, that’s his big thing. I know that for his birthday, months ago, I got him two different steampunk novels. One was reviewed on your website, Sarah, which is why I purchased it. It was Silk and Shadows or something like that? It was, the premise involved, like, Sherlock Holmes’s niece, and it seemed steampunk-y.

Sarah: Yes.

John: And the other one that I purchased for him was the first in a steampunk series written by A. A. Aguirre, you know, which is Ann Aguirre and her husband writing together. It’s like an, you know, like an urban fantasy, steampunk kind of series. So he seemed to really enjoy those. I’ve been debating picking up a copy of Dragon Boundby Thea Harrison to give him, but I’m not entirely sure if the overly romantic parts of that will sit well with him, since he’s not super big into the romantic relationships.

Sarah: Jane, what do you think about –

Jane: What about – ?

Sarah: I was just going to ask you, what about Meljean Brook?

Jane: Yeah, I was going to say what about – and maybe skipping over The Iron Duke, which has a very classic H. P. trope and going toward something like the second one that kind of is more action-adventure-y with the –

Sarah: The Iron Seas?

Jane: Yeah, the Iron Seas. Riveted, I think, is really romantic in a, in a non-shmoopy sort of way. I mean, the hero is Other, you know, he’s – and the heroine is, too. I mean, all of her books are about Other, and so the third one, Riveted, features this guy who’s pretty much made of metal, and the heroine is on a, what I called the steampunk rumspringa. She’s coming away from her –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Jane: – well, I mean, she lives in this isolated town that’s all lesbians. Not all lesbians, but it’s all women, many of whom are lesbians, and she’s off to find her sister, and as she’s looking for her sister, she comes across David, and they meet and they fall in love, but he is searching for his mother, who had come from her town, and she has to keep her village a secret because that’s the key to their survival. And so, there’s the, there’s the impossible conflict. They fall in love, she can’t tell him about where his mother is, and he’s – Meljean does worldbuilding better than anybody else, and the steampunk is just really tremendous, and I think it gives you both kind of the atmosphere that you would find in a traditional fantasy book, but the romance that the, the romance lover needs or wants. I mean, The Kraken King is excellent, too.

John: I will definitely pick up a copy of one of those to give to him. I know I have The Iron Duke on my Kindle, but I’m saving that for myself, based on what I’ve heard about the general premise and how that relates to classic romance, but I look forward to trying Meljean, and I look forward to pushing it on him.

Sarah: [Laughs] I like this plan. So what, like I, like I asked earlier, what books have you been pushing on other people?

John: One book that I’ve – I haven’t been pushing it recently, but one that I always like to discuss if I’m pushing books is a book called Suicide Watch by Kelley York. Now, I do want to mention for anybody listening to the podcast that if you look into this book, there are some trigger warnings for having suicidal thoughts and for living with depression in particular. It’s a very heavy book, and it’s kind of New Adult? It kind of straddles the line between YA and New Adult because the main character is 19 years old, and he is out of high school, I believe, or almost out of high school, and he essentially, like, was living with this woman, and she passes away, and he is kind of like in charge of himself, and he doesn’t really know what to do with his life, and he’s been feeling very depressed, so he ends up going on this online forum for people that are feeling, you know, living with suicidal thoughts, and he ends up meeting these two other people that he becomes friends with. And it’s like, it’s a premise that on the surface sounds very ridiculous, and I think the author’s aware of the fact that it sounds ridiculous, but as the story unfolds, it becomes so tender and sad, but, like, beautiful and romantic at the same time. And I’ve since read some reviews that have very, like, very accurately described the issues that this book has in relation to dealing with those things, but as somebody who dealt with those feelings on a personal level, I connected with it a lot when I read it, and I love recommending it because I think it’s very difficult to find a dark book, either New Adult or Young Adult, that describes the feelings so well but does it in a very minimalist way. It’s not melodrama. It’s not over the top. It’s so minimal and subtle that it almost makes it worse –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

John: – but it makes it better at the same time. It’s just, I read this book in the car with my mother, and I usually do not show emotion around my mother, and I was ready to cry, so –

Sarah: It’s interesting, though. It makes me think about what you said earlier about how you’re, you’re looking for more New Adult that deals with gay and lesbian relationships because it’s, it’s very validating to see a character who is your age going through similar life experiences in a similar location in their education and in their personal life dealing with all of the intense emotional crap that you deal with when you go to college. It, it’s, it is very validating and very powerful to see yourself or pieces of yourself in the books that you’re reading. So it’s interesting to see not only the sexuality and the identity but also the emotional and mental health aspects also showing up in what you read. That’s awesome! You’ve got lots to choose from. I did not have so much when I was your age. You’re very lucky! I had to walk up both, both, the hill both ways in the snow, backwards, barefoot, with no books.

John: Starting with Johanna Lindsey and Judith McNaught, I feel like I have come a long way too, although in a significantly shorter amount of time.

Sarah: [Laughs]

John: ‘Tis a far cry from when I was reading Whitney, My Love in my bedroom.

Sarah: What did you think of Whitney, My Love in your bedroom?

John: Uh –

Jane: Well, did you read the original or the sanitized – ?

John: I read the –

Sarah: The, the book with the spanking or without the spanking?

John: With the spanking.

Sarah: But not the good kind of spanking that gets, like, a fun warning on a book. This was the bad kind of spanking.

John: No, this was the bad kind of spanking.

Sarah: So what did you think of Whitney and her spanking?

John: So, my, my, one of my best friends from high school, her mother had given her romance novels at, like, 13, because she had really enjoyed reading them, and, you know, my friend had read them because she’s super intelligent and enjoyed them at the time and then kind of forgot about them, and a couple years later she passed them on to me and told me, oh, you should read these, you should read these, and then her mom comes in to the room and says, oh, you should totally read these. These books are awesome.

Sarah: Okay, I like her mom a lot.

John: Oh, yeah, her mother is amazing.

Sarah: [Laughs]

John: Just phenomenal. And she – so she gave me her old, battered copy of Whitney, My Love, and she had, I think she has, like, three copies of this book because she’s such a McNaught fan, and I took the book home and then, over the course of two days, I just, like, I just inhaled this book. Like, it just –

Sarah: It’s hard not to read it, right? I mean, the, she writes crack.

John: Oh, she is such crack, and this book and A Kingdom of Dreams, like, those are, like, I, I love them so much. The good book noise just comes out with these books. And I know that they’re bad, but I know that they are wonderful at the same time.

Sarah: They are truly a unique part of, of the genre, and, and Lindsey and McNaught and Deveraux, for me, like, you, you –

John: Oh, Deveraux is interesting.

Sarah: You, you pick them up, and there’s some of them, I cannot put them down; once it’s time to read, I shall be reading, and everyone can leave me alone. Even – the one that always gets me, and I don’t, I, I will not allow myself to own a copy, because I’ll just read it constantly, is Silver Angel by Johanna Lindsey. This book is completely bonkers.

John: I think I have a copy of that on my Kindle, and I know that the premise is bonkers.

Sarah: It’s, it’s about an English lady who, or young woman, who is kidnapped and put in a harem, of course, but the actual sheikh has a twin brother who’s English, of course, and he’s the one who’s, who’s pretending to be his brother, so he can’t actually have sex with all of his brother’s wives – there’s, like, a bunch of them – but this, this blonde woman from, from England, that’s okay. He’ll have her hang out in his room, but he won’t actually have sex with her for a while, because reasons. The best is the old cover where she has this, like, waterfall of white hair heading out the door and down the hall, and it’s, it’s so ridiculous, and yet, I pick it up, and yep, there goes four hours, and I’m done! No more, no more time, going to read now.

John: I was that way – over the summer, I picked up an old Virginia Henley book. I think –

Sarah: Ohhh, crack.

John: It was called Seduced, and I was seduced by Seduced.

Sarah: [Laughs]

John: Like, I would have to put it down after a couple, after a hundred pages or so just to digest everything that happened, because it, it’s one of those books where, like, you know, you have the twins, and they’re both gorgeous, and they both look so much alike, even though, you know, one is male and one is female –

Sarah: Of course.

John: – and then, of course, the brother gets lost in some boating accident, and they think he’s dead, so his sister impersonates him, and literally, 400 pages of this book, like, the hero has no idea that the hero-, like, the heroine is masquerading as her brother. And it was, I just could not put it down, because I was so fascinated by how stupid the hero was.

Sarah: [Snickers]

John: Like, it took him 400 pages –

Sarah: [Laughs]

John: In an old-skool novel, a lot happens in 400 pages.

Jane: What’s interesting about those chick-in-pants books is that so few of those books actually acknowledge the real overarching problem, which is – and, and it’s not a problem, but it would be from the hero’s perspective in those books – he’s attracted to a man in a –

Sarah: Or someone that he thinks is a man.

Jane: Right, so why, you know – and then all of a sudden they’re a woman, and all of his feelings are made, validated. I mean, there’s some, something a little wrong with that scenario. And there’s a book that was published in the 1980s, and I cannot remember the name of it. I have reviewed this book, but the hero knows that the heroine is a, a woman right away. She, she had been raped, and then she decided after her rape to dress and act as a man. I mean, so she – I can’t even remember how these two characters meet, but they meet, and he knows immediately that she’s a woman, but he kind of is delighted that she’s dressing as a man, and he takes her out, and he showers her with affection – as a man – and the rumors start to generate that he’s in love with a man, that he’s a – what, what was the term that they even used back then? I can’t remember; there’s a term. I think it starts with, with P, like pederast, or something like that?

Sarah: Pederast. Pederast, but pederast was a person who liked young boys.

John: Yeah. That, that’s like –

Jane: Well, yeah, well, yeah, I mean that –

John: Yeah. I’ve, a lot of times, men just had close friendships back then, so, that, a lot of times I think it would just be said that they, they were very good friends, or they were – confirmed bachelor was another term that was used a lot in the, that kind of historical time period. So –

Sarah: Confirmed by whom?

John: I, I don’t know. Apparently, the pe-, women that tried to get into his pants. I honestly have no idea.

[Laughter]

John: I think I remember in Gentle Rogue, it was considered okay because he knew, like, right away, and he actually was kind of a, like a huge asshole about it. Like, the scene where he makes her wash him to make her uncomfortable in the hopes that eventually she’ll just give up and, like, reveal that she’s a woman. I don’t know. I don’t know if I could read that again. But I kind of want to. Is that bad?

Jane: No, ‘cause there are tons of books that we read that are, like, wrong.

Sarah: Yes.

Jane: I mean, and Johanna Lindsey has penned 90% of them. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, and, and I, I, I read them. I think it’s, I, I’ve, I don’t remember exactly who said this, but I saw, I think it was on Tumblr, that it’s one thing to enjoy something knowing that it has serious problems and another thing to defend something you, you like as if it has no problems and those who criticizes it, criticize it are incorrect. It’s two different things, so if you’re fully aware of all the ways in which it’s wrong and you enjoy it, you go ahead and enjoy your wrong, ‘cause there’s a lot of wrong to be enjoyed.

John: Good, because I’m planning on a re-read of Whit-, Whitney, My Love at some point, and –

Sarah: Oh, I cannot wait to hear what you think of it again.

John: I –

Sarah: It gets more crazy the more often you read it. Trust me, I know this.

John: [Laughs] I trust that. I, there’s, something about the sweeping old-skool historical romances just works with me on a very fundamental level. I, I –

Sarah: I understand totally. Works for me too.

John: I just think it’s the sweeping worldbuilding. Like, I find myself reading historicals from, like, that writers are writing now, and I just wish that there was that, the sense of total – like, the, the encompassing of the reader in that time period. Even if the –

Sarah: It is completely absorbing, yes.

John: Even if the research wasn’t totally accurate, if it worked, like, like regardless of whether or not Bertrice Small, like, is accurate about some of her stuff, like if I read a Bertrice Small book, I am invested, and I feel like I am in whatever time period I’m in. The closest, like, the closest historicals that I can think of right now that feel that way to me, I think Jeannie Lin writes some wonderful ones, and I think the – I read an Isobel Carr book that I really enjoyed, because she seems to do a lot of interesting, like, things with women of the time period and kind of like looks at the women that people didn’t necessarily think about or don’t necessarily write about in most historicals.

Sarah: The other thing about older historicals is that if you look at the physical book, like, if you actually find the copy from, you know, the ‘80s and the early ‘90s, the print was smaller. There were more frigging words in those books. There’s a lot more words, and a lot more words used to develop the world in which you were, in which you were reading, and, and experiencing these characters. So the, the feeling of being, I think you said encompassed or completely absorbed into that universe is partially, I think, because they had more words with which to describe things, and they did it in a way that wasn’t trite or familiar or, at this point, clichéd. I’m totally know exactly what you’re saying. I miss that experience too. But you know, Jane killed the historical, so it’s all her fault.

[Laughter]

Jane: I, you know, the fact of the matter is I love historicals, and they were truly my first love, but John is right. There, there’s been something lost, and I don’t know if it’s the worldbuilding. I, I was talking to another historical romance reader, and we said that some of the historical romances we read are so antiseptic. Like, there, there’s no emotion in them.

Sarah: Yep. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Antiseptic is the perfect word.

Jane: And they’re also lack this kind of chemistry between the characters. Like, I would love to see some of the angst and emotion of a New Adult in a historical, and it just seems like that would be a perfect setting. There’s so much inherent political and class and social issues that could give rise to those, those stories, but we’re just not seeing them, or at least, I’m not seeing them.

John: I would agree. I don’t see them that often. The few romance, historical romances that I’ve read that have been published in the past few years have felt very – they’re like cotton candy. They’re very sweet, and they just don’t quite have that substance going down. Like, when I think about historical romance being published today, it’s all like cotton candy to me.

Sarah: They are, they’re fluffy, and there’s not a lot of significance and, and weight to the emotion, or emotional depth to the plot?

John: No, and all of them are named after children’s picture books.

Sarah: I hate that trend so much, I wish it would die a thousand deaths already. I hate it so much. However, I do want to recommend Rose Lerner to you. You might really like her books.

John: Didn’t she write In for a Penny?

Sarah: Yes. Did you read that?

John: Okay. I have not read it. I just have a scary ability to memorize titles.

Sarah: Dude, I don’t have that ability. Can you teach me that ability? ‘Cause it would make my life a lot easier.

John: [Laughs] I do not think so, but if we ever meet in person, I will try to help. I don’t know. Or I’ll just buy you a drink and make you forget about it.

Sarah: [Laughs] Thank you, I appreciate that. Because honest to God, I cannot remember titles half the time, and it’s just a bit of a problem.

[music]

Sarah: And that is all for this week’s podcast. I hope you enjoyed our interview. I want to thank John for taking time out of his evening to talk to us, and I’m curious what you think of our discussion about sex in YA and what role or place it has in stories that are marked specifically for young adults. I’m curious what you think. I – obviously the Young Adult genre encompasses things from elementary to middle grade to ninth and up, or eighth and up, or whatever you call that older YA. Either way, I’m curious what you think about the idea of sexuality present in YA novels.

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. If you have identified this as Peatbog Faeries, you are correct! And you win a prize. Your prize is that you should buy yourself a book today. This song is “Room 215,” and it is from their album Dust, and I will have links to all of your Peatbog Faerie locations online in the podcast entry.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Scandal and the Duchess, an all-new e-novella in the popular Victorian-set Mackenzies series from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. I will have information about that book in the podcast entry too, along with links to all of the books we talked about, including the crazysauce old-skool romances that John and me and Jane all like so much.

If you like the podcast, we have a feed, we’re on Stitcher, we’re on iTunes, we’re on PodcastPickle. We’re in a lot of places. And if you are listening and you have ideas or feedback or you want to respond or you want to yell at us or something, you’d like to tell Jane she’s wrong, that is always okay, you can email us at [email protected], or you can leave us a message at our Google voice number, 1-201-371-DBSA. Please do not forget to give us your name and where you’re calling from so we can work your message into an upcoming podcast.

Future podcasts will include me and Jane talking about romance novels. We’re going to try do our re-recording of the podcast that I lost – seriously, I can’t tell you how bummed I am that this didn’t record, ‘cause it was a great conversation. Hopefully enough time has passed that we’ve forgotten what we said and we’ll sound really clever when we do it again.

Until then, Jane and John and I all wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.

[merry music]