14. Sarah Mayberry Interview: November 15, 2011

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello again, and welcome to the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from smartbitchestrashybooks.com, with me is Jane Litte from dearauthor.com, and this week’s podcast is delayed; my deepest apologies. I have been delayed by what I am told has been called Snowtober. We had a snowstorm of about five to six inches of snow where I live in northern New Jersey on Halloween, and since all the trees still had leaves on them, they all came down, it’s a hot mess, and some people are still without power, which I find astonishing. But thanks to many, many power crews from Alabama and Mississippi and Florida and all parts south of the Mason-Dixon line, power is being restored, and I have finally have time to sit down and edit the podcast, which of course was really not on any energy company’s list of priorities. But it was on my list of priorities, so now it’s done! Yay! I apologize for the delay.

Also, I have to tell you I think every major weather event is going to have to have a name. If it’s not a hurricane with a proper name, then we’re going to name it something stupid like Snowtober or Snowmageddon? Snowpocalypse? Any good snowstorm this year, we’re going to have to come up with some ridiculous amount of hyperbole to make it a good name. If you have suggestions, let me know, because this is just entirely amusing to me.

This podcast, however, is extra, extra awesome. Jane and I got on the phone with Sarah Mayberry from Australia, and this interview is so much fun; hence, it’s an hour long. It is wonderful. She talks about her books, the authors that she loves; she talks about being a romance writer and also being a soap opera writer; and she attempts an American accent, so get ready!

And here we go:

[music]

Ms. Wendell: So first of all, thank you staying, for staying up so late to talk to us.

Ms. Mayberry: It’s fine; I, I usually don’t go to bed till about now anyway, so we’re good.

Ms. Wendell: Well, now you’re going to start getting giddy and inappropriate, right?

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] Yeah. Well, I’ll do my best!

Ms. Wendell: Okay, good. I always, I, I actually do tell myself that, you know, even if today is really bad, the world can’t end today, because it’s already tomorrow in Australia.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] We, we would get you a message somehow.

Ms. Wendell: Yeah: really bad crap’s going to happen today, you guys. Just go back to bed.

Ms. Litte: – New Zealand book last night, or a book set in New Zealand, and they said in the text of the book a way of saying things that is something like, “you’re hot as” or “you’re sexy as.” Is that an Australian saying too?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, like, you know, “he’s as hot as” kind of thing?

Ms. Litte: Yes.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we would say something like that.

Ms. Wendell: So it’s not “hot as something”, it’s just “hot as”?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah. Like, I guess the, leaving the comparison up to – [laughs] – all right, I’ve never really thought about it, but yeah, he’s –

Ms. Wendell: You’re hot as Murray Wiggle.

Ms. Mayberry: You’re – yeah, whereas my husband says, “Hotter than a bike seat in summer.”

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: I almost just spit yogurt out. That is funny! So –

Ms. Litte: It’s not laziness that you can’t finish the comparison; it’s kind of graciousness, allowing the other person to fill in the blank?

Ms. Mayberry: To fill in the blank, it is! It’s, yeah. I suppose you guys, did you guys ever have a game show called Blankety Blanks? I imagine not.

Ms. Wendell: Uh-uh.

Ms. Litte: No.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] It was one of those game shows where they would say, “I came home the other night, and my wife was cleaning blank off the kitchen table,” and people had to fill in the blank, and if you got the most popular response you got good points.

Ms. Litte: Oh, so that’s like the Family Feud here.

Ms. Wendell: Yeah, it’s like the Family Feud. Although here in America, I do have to say, we like things explained to us in minute and somewhat amazing detail.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs]

Ms. Litte: Did you see the recent Family Feud viral video that went around? It was, the question was, name the top, like, ten things, or whatever the list is, of things that can be spread?

[Laughter]

Ms. Litte: And, like, the numb-, the first response was pot or a joint? And that was, like, the sixth response, and then the next response was collection plate, and that dropped in under the joint.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] Was legs one of the answers?

[Laughter]

Ms. Litte: I – no, my first response was butter.

Ms. Mayberry: (FLAG _____ 5:06-07)

Ms. Wendell: That was exactly where my brain went.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, or the Vegemite, one or the other, but yeah. [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: Okay, I will be honest with you: I have tried Vegemite. How do you eat that? It’s like little, it’s, it’s so incredibly salty, yet it’s a breakfast food!

Ms. Mayberry: It is, and you know what, you don’t ever put a lot on. You, you, the secret is to have really, like, the most low-fiber white bread, toasted –

Ms. Wendell: Mm-hmm.

Ms. Mayberry: – with lots and lots of butter, and then you just kind of wave the Vegemite over the toast.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] You just sort of sprinkle it like fairy dust?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah, just, just like the, kind of like, a just a kind of like smoke of Vegemite over the top of the toast, and, and then it’s quite palatable, but look, to be honest, we have a jar in the cupboard, and it’s probably been there two years. It doesn’t, you don’t go through a lot of it. [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: Oh my gosh, somebody’s going to revoke your Australian passport.

Ms. Litte: So Vegemite is a survival food.

Ms. Mayberry: Is it?

Ms. Litte: Well, I mean, it, it lasts forever.

Ms. Mayberry: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, it’ll be there with the cockroaches for sure.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] So when the world does end –

Ms. Mayberry: Yes.

Ms. Wendell: – in Australia or in the US, there will be Vegemite and cockroaches for those who survive.

Ms. Mayberry: And Twinkies, apparently.

Ms. Wendell: So have you thought about writing post-apocalyptic fiction with Vegemite and cockroaches? You know what, I think there needs to be some post-apocalyptic Harlequin Presents.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs]

Ms. Litte: Well, Sarah doesn’t write Harlequin Presents, though; she writes Harlequin Superromances.

Ms. Wendell: That’s right, that’s right; I beg your pardon.

Ms. Little: One of the things I wish about Harlequin Superromance, though, is that it did have more open-door bedroom scenes, and not because I’m salacious, although maybe you want a term me that, but because I do think that in modern-day romances, sex is an important part of a person’s relationship.

Ms. Mayberry: Oh look, I very, very firmly agree with that, and I mean, I also think that the, it’s also the traditional payoff for a romance. I mean, all the tension, and you can – I mean, maybe it’s different in a Love Inspired; I haven’t read one of those – but all of the tension in a romance novel typically is about whether they’re going to do it or not, and it’s, it’s kind of like getting someone to the top of the rollercoaster and then just going, okay, you can get out now! Suddenly you’re on the ground and they say, you had a great ride, you really enjoyed it, and I, I find myself, particularly if somebody, an author’s done the tension really, really well, I feel really pissed off if they shut the bedroom door!

Ms. Wendell: So what are you working on right now?

Ms. Mayberry: I am about halfway through a book for Superromance that I’m calling The Grief Book.

Ms. Wendell: Oh God. Ladies and gentlemen, Sarah Mayberry is ripping your heart out; get ready.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] It’s, it’s going to, it’s kind of really interesting, because it’s – well, I hope it will be, but – the heroine is, her best friend was married to him, and she dies in the prologue, and so the sort of first part of the book is the two of them sharing their grief with each other, and, and then sort of as they sort of get to know each other as people and not as, with this other person in the middle of them – you know what I mean –

Ms. Wendell: Right.

Ms. Mayberry: – it becomes something else, but then, of course, there’s all this kind of guilt attached to it, particularly for him, but also for her as well. It’s, you know, a little bit like, you know, oh, I saw what my friend had, and now I’m just kind of stepping into her shoes, and, and obviously, there’s, there’s a couple of kids and all that sort of stuff, but I’m, as I said, I’m sort of thirty thousand words into that at the moment, and yeah! It’s good!

Ms. Wendell: Well, that’s cruising altitude, so you’re doing just fine.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah, I hope so! And the great thing about it is I’m stealing, I’m stealing my friend’s profession for it. She’s, she’s a ring designer, a wedding ring designer, and she made my wedding ring, and –

Ms. Wendell: That’s cool!

Ms. Mayberry: – she, I went to her studio, actually just yesterday, and had a look at the way they manufacture the rings and everything. It was a-mazing, man. Like, they actually, they were just starting a ring when I got there, like, from absolute scratch, so they had these little strips of metal, and they had a, a crucible that they were heating up and making a, an alloy and pouring into a mold. It was just, it’s, like, deeply medieval –

Ms. Wendell: Whoa!

Ms. Mayberry: – and incredibly cool, and I’m actually quite excited to get back to my book so I can put all this detail in now and bore the absolute tits off readers.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: You know, ridiculous details about faceted gems and, you know, metallurgy and – [laughs].

Ms. Wendell: Okay, I think that is so cool, and I seriously cannot wait to read that. That is so interesting. I don’t think I’ve read a, a, a ring designer hero or heroine before. I’m sure there are, because every profession has pretty much been explored, but that, I haven’t read that, and that’s so interesting.

Ms. Mayberry: It is really, it is really interesting, and she’s one of the few, I think probably the few in Australia even, but definitely in Melbourne. She’s the, one of the only bespoke ring designer who makes a living off it, you know. She’s, she’s really, really busy ‘cause she does beautiful things, of course, so.

[music]

Ms. Litte: So didn’t you, Sarah, write – maybe, so it was another New Zea-, or Australian author – write about a female gemologist or someone who was searching – maybe it was Karina Bliss who did that. No –

Ms. Mayberry: No, Kelly Hunter did one about, she had to go to central Australia to find the gems for a, a showpiece she was trying to make for some competition?

Ms. Litte: Yes, yes.

Ms. Mayberry: (FLAG _____ 11:08) that rings a bell.

Ms. Litte: And the boy – or, the boy – the hero went with her?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah.

Ms. Litte: Yes.

Ms. Mayberry: And I can’t remember, he was sort of her driver/protection or something like that, kind of –

Ms. Wendell: So they had to head for Uluru and look for, look for a rock?

Ms. Mayberry: Opals and whatnot, yeah.

Ms. Wendell: Cool! So what do you think is one of the things that readers most like about Australia and setting in Australia, because I’ve noticed now that as books that are set in Australia, and also New Zealand – and I know that they’re two separate countries, and I don’t mean to just lump you together like you’re the same – I know that happens, and it’s sort of like when North and South Dakota get lumped together, and they get really pissed off about that too.

Ms. Mayberry: Australians don’t mind so much, but New Zealanders get really snaky about it.

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: Well, there’s more of you than there are of them. So, so many books now are set in Australia and in New Zealand, and I’ve noticed that the language is not changing as much as I think it used to, that the, that the custom terms and the, the local way of speaking and some of the, some of the, the language hasn’t been changing as much, which I love, because I like knowing about colloquial language. Do you think that that’s true, or am, am I misreading?

Ms. Mayberry: You know, I think it very much depends on where the books are edited. I suspect that a lot of the books that come through the English or the London office get a different treatment than, than certainly my books do coming through Toronto. You know, there’s obviously just the issue with, with spelling, and there’s a lot of commonality between English and Australian English in terms of, you know, like, we call the, the trunk of the car a boot, and we call the front of the car –

Ms. Wendell: A bonnet.

Ms. Mayberry: – a bonnet, yeah, and all that kind of stuff, so, and so do the English, so I suspect that some of those things don’t get fiddled with as much as they do when I – I mean, like, I, I don’t even get mom. Sorry, I can’t have mum; I get mom, which sometimes is frustrating, but I –

Ms. Wendell: I don’t understand that. I promise you, on behalf of America, I can handle a U. The, the letter U is not going to, like, lead me to jump out the window. If it’s colour or if it’s mum or mummy, it’s okay. I can handle it! It’s just a U!

Ms. Mayberry: I think, I think that the, the rationale is that sometimes it throws the reader out of the text, and, and I’ve seen enough comments on judgings and whatever else about (FLAG _____ 13:41) spellings and colloquial language and stuff to make me think that there are, for some readers, that, that is what happens, but then equally, you know, I get heaps of letters from people saying, you’re an Australian writer, and you’re writing Australian stories, and they should have Australian spelling and Australian references in them, and you know, be proud of your heritage!

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] Yeah, I can understand that. But Australians cuss a lot, right?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh yeah. (FLAG _____ 14:07-09) [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: But that doesn’t make it into the book. That doesn’t make it into your books!

Ms. Mayberry: No. No, it doesn’t. Well, no, there’s, there’s quite a few shits in there.

Ms. Wendell: Oh, that’s good.

Ms. Mayberry: But I’m, I don’t think I’m ever going to get a fuck in there, and that’s, that’s very much – I mean, look, if you’re ever going to do it, you get it in a Blaze, and I know some Blazes have, have that, but I was never, I, I was sort of always careful, I guess, to not go there, I suppose.

Ms. Wendell: Not a member of the fuck club. That’s really disappointing.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah. [Laughs] Yeah.

Ms. Wendell: So what’s something that you think American readers might misunderstand about Australia? Have you ever come up against a, a sort of a misconception that a lot of people have about Australia?

Ms. Mayberry: Ah, well, look, I mean, ridiculous things like that they think that there are kangaroos and things like that everywhere. That’s –

Ms. Wendell: You mean you don’t have a kangaroo?!

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: It’s not, like, your purse? You just sort of hand it your wallet, and it puts it in the pocket and comes on out to the grocery with you?

Ms. Mayberry: That, that would be great instead of, you know, you could just take your kangaroo to school instead of a backpack. But –

Ms. Wendell: That’d be awesome!

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] No, we don’t, and I’m trying to think of – well, you know, I, I, look, I’ve had, in, you know, traveling through America, I have people say, oh, you’re from Australia; wow, you speak good English!

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: Okay? But, mm, I don’t, I don’t know. I mean, I, it’s sort of hard for me to answer that question. I think it’s probably easier for you guys to, to tell me what your conceptions of Australia are, you know what I mean?

Ms. Wendell: Well, I have a, a strange love, I have a very strange and deep appreciation and love for Australia because you gave me The Wiggles, which often enabled me to shower, and I’ve seen The Wiggles live a couple of times, and I also have a friend who is Australian. She comes from the Sunshine Coast, and her, her family lives in a small town right on the beach, and she married an American and now lives in Atlanta, so I hear her talking about, on, just on Facebook, answering questions about Australia, and there, at one point, I know, on The Wiggles’ videos, there was one character who wore a giant hat and had little bits of cork hanging off the brim of the hat, and for the life of me, I could not figure out what that was about. That’s the one thing I don’t understand: why you’re hanging bits of cork off your hat.

Ms. Mayberry: Because there’s lots of flies and –

Ms. Wendell: That’s what that is?!

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, that’s to keep the flies away from your face. You know how – yeah, like how horses swish their tails around to keep –

Ms. Wendell: Right?

Ms. Mayberry: – the flies away? It’s, it’s the, kind of the, the hat equivalent of that, and I mean, there, there’s a, a slang or a colloquial term for the, the Australian salute, which is, you know, if you’re at a barbecue or whatever, everybody’s waving their hands around their face, trying to keep –

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] Ah, well, you know. I know you all tie your kangaroos down, sport.

Ms. Mayberry: Yes. Sport, yeah. [Laughs] Thank you, Rolf Harris.

Ms. Wendell: I love Rolf Harris.

Ms. Litte: Do you drive on the right or left side of the road?

Ms. Mayberry: We, we drive on the left. So the opposite to you guys.

Ms. Wendell: And the driver is on the right side of the car, right?

Ms. Mayberry: That’s right, yep.

Ms. Wendell: And your seasons are reversed, so you’re about to have summer.

Ms. Mayberry: We are perilously close to summer, yes.

Ms. Wendell: Now, I asked this question of Stephanie Laurens, and she said this was not a problem for her, but she’s writing historicals and she used to live in England, so I want to ask you the same question: do you ever write and put, and, and you’re setting the book in Australia; do you ever move the characters out of Australia and then have to think, wait, what season is it in which month?

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] Yeah, I have when I’ve written, I mean, I’ve written a couple of, I wrote three Blazes that were set in LA, and I’ve been, I’ve gone to Paris, and I’ve written another one that was in Long Island, so yeah, I do. I –

Ms. Wendell: Oh, Long Island is very exotic.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] It was Cape May, so actually that (FLAG _____ 18:03-04)

Ms. Wendell: Oh, Cape May is south Jersey! That’s awesome! I didn’t know you wrote a book set in Cape May. Where’s my pen? Where’s my pen?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, it’s, it’s an anthology; it’s a little short with Kasey Michaels and –

Ms. Wendell: Oh hell yeah! All right, get that, get that pen, write that down. Where’s my pen? Now Sarah Mayberry’s like, shit! I told her about it! Crap!

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: Cape May. All right, Jane!

Ms. Litte: So how long does it take you to write a book?

Ms. Mayberry: I try to write three thousand words a day. That’s my, my deal I have with myself to be a professional person and still have a life. So if I, if I can, if I do that like a, a dedicated, professional person – [laughs] – I will have, you know, fifteen thousand words a week, and then, you know, you can do the maths on the word count. I mean, a Super at the moment comes in at seventy-five. Mine tend to be long. I mean, I think almost all of mine have, have been over eighty at some point when I finished ‘em. I’ve had to sort of rip through them, and my editor has then gone through and torn some more out of it. I, I’m a big plotter, so I do a lot of planning in advance for my books, so there’s not a big rewriting stage, so usually once I’ve finished I go back through it a couple of times. I do what I call a, a red-pen edit where I print it out and I go through it with a red pen and just try and clean it all up as much as I can. And, and then, you know, I send it in to my editor, so, you know, in a perfect world I, I, I suppose I could write one in five to six weeks, but that’s not the way it works. [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: So it’s usually more a couple of months?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah. Yeah, I like to give myself, you know, in, schedule-wise, I think I probably give myself ten to twelve weeks. And I, and I, you know, ‘cause things go wrong. I, I, you know, I go, I go off my plan sometimes, or I, I get partway through the book and I think, God, what, what crack was I smoking when I came up with this idea? And I have to go back and –

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: – re-, rethink the whole thing. I mean, the one that I’ve got out at the moment, all they need, I just, I started that book four times. It, it was just, absolutely did my head in until I finally sort of sat down and had a good talking-to with myself and sorted myself out, but I, I, I, I started that book thinking that I wanted to do this story about this uptight, rich guy and this warm-hearted hippie chick, and I realized sort of on my fourth attempt to write the first couple of chapters that I had come up with a situation and not real people, and that’s –

Ms. Wendell: Ah.

Ms. Mayberry: I had to sort of go, okay, let’s just throw all that out, and I think the only thing I really kept was the setting – [laughs] – and the characters’ names.

Ms. Litte: Do you want to write single titles in the future versus the category books?

Ms. Mayberry: Yes, I would love to write a single title. I did write a single title, not last year, the year before, in first person, and I shopped it around to a couple of publishers, and the American publisher said they weren’t interested because it had an Australian, it was set in Australia and had an Australian heroine, and the Australian publisher told me that it wasn’t as interesting as they thought it would be –

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: – when I pitched it to them. But, you know, hindsight, I, it, you know, I can see all the problems with it, and I will possibly try and fix it, but I just don’t have the time to do that now, and I, I have, I have made a schedule for myself for the next twelve months, and, and, and part of that schedule is putting aside some months to do a single title attempt, another one, so.

Ms. Litte: Will it be in the first person again, or are you going to go a different route?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, it’ll be third person. Yeah. That’s, look, I mean, that’s what I do with Superromance, and you know, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? [Laughs]

Ms. Litte: So how many Superromances do you write a year? What’s your contract for?

Ms. Mayberry: Probably somewhere between maybe three and four is what I end up producing. I, I, I’ve sort of, the last couple years I’ve done an anthology, a little novella, as well, so I end up writing maybe three books and a novella in a year. I’m about to sign a contract for five books, but I won’t do five books in a year. Boldly going to try and write four Superromances next year; we’ll see how that turns out.

Ms. Wendell: Ooh, yay!

Ms. Litte: So are you intrigued at all by the self-publishing movement?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh yeah, I mean, look, like, find me an author who isn’t really. [Laughs] It’s, you know, you look at that and you, you think, I mean, we, I don’t think it’s probably any great secret, we get six percent of the recommended retail price, and when you work out what that is per book, it’s, you know –

Ms. Litte: Oh.

Ms. Mayberry: – I’m not, I’m not buying a sheep station.

Ms. Wendell: Do you want a sheep station?

Ms. Mayberry: You know what? I, I am quite partial to a lamb roast, but I don’t require a whole, a whole sheep station. No, no, I wouldn’t. [Laughs] But yes, I mean, the, the point I was making is that it would be fantastic to, for example, be able to write two books a year and live comfortably and not feel that constant pressure, you know. And, you know, I mean, I, I’m also, I’m writing scripts as well, and it just, it would be, it would be nice to get a decent return on the amount of effort that you put in, really. I mean you never ever, I never stop working. I’m always thinking about the book; I’m thinking about the next book; I’m thinking about what my next contract will be. It’s, it’s, I mean, and I think that’s just part of being a writer, that you, you’re always kind of, there’s some part of your brain that’s always stealing ideas from the ether or what people are saying in a seat next to you or something you’ve seen in the distance or whatever, but it would be, it would be nice to sort of feel that there was one thing that you didn’t have to worry about, I guess. And so in that respect, I think that self-publishing is very enticing and, and attractive, but also I hugely, hugely, hugely value my editor, and I would never even think about putting a piece of writing out that hadn’t been through that editorial process in, in some shape or form, and I think being able to find, finding that for yourself, you know, sort of freelance self-publishing world is, is going to be a voyage of discovery for, for people. Certainly for me if I choose to do it. I am, I’m exploring the options. I have a, a novella that I’ve half written. It’s not even a novella; I know it’s going to be about forty thousand words by the time it’s finished, and I, and I want to try and publish that myself next year, but I’m giving myself plenty of time to try and get that right as well. I want to, I want to have it edited, and I want to have the time to go through it and get it formatted properly and get a good cover and do all the things that make it as professional, hopefully, as my other books.

Ms. Wendell: So if you self-publish your own novella, are you going to make it about a third more expensive for Americans, since most books for you are about a third to a half, a half more expensive for us? Than for us?

Ms. Mayberry: Gosh, that’s so tempting!

Ms. Wendell: Wouldn’t that be tempting? You know what, America? It’s $8.99! Suck it!

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: I, I will, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? But no.

Ms. Wendell: And you know what, I would totally understand. [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: I would, it would be really nice to make it the same price for everybody! [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: What?! What you – what? Oh my God, scandal!

Ms. Litte: Can we talk about –

Ms. Mayberry: (FLAG _____ 26:18) we, we pay for cars over here compared to you? My, this is a sort of constant irritation to my husband, but we pay, like, three times as much for a car as you guys do.

Ms. Wendell: Oh my God, really?

Ms. Litte: Because of the import tax?

Ms. Mayberry: You know what? I, we actually can’t work it out. I, nobody will ever be straight with you. They say that it’s about shipping, differences in currency –

Ms. Wendell: That’s not possible, because I live near Port Elizabeth in New Jersey where all the cars come in. This is where all the cars come off giant cargo ships and are unloaded, and if you drive over it looks like a sea of parked cars –

Ms. Mayberry: Mm.

Ms. Wendell: – and they’re all covered with, with white plastic to keep them from getting scratched and dinged up. It’s like peeling off a giant fruit rollup that’s, all the cars are shrink-wrapped, and they get on trucks and they drive all over the east coast. That’s the main – so our, our cars are imported, a lot of them, and, you know, we don’t have the most gloriously friendly import taxes either, although I’m sure they’re lower than yours, ‘cause that’s what America does: we tax lowly and then complain that we don’t have enough money.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: I’m amazed that you pay two to three times for a car. Good God!

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, well, you know, like, I mean, you can see what we pay for books. Only recently have they dropped dramatically, and that’s because there’s been so much competition from Amazon and Book Depository and, et cetera, but you know, until reasonably recently, this Lisa Kleypas book that I have in my hand – [laughs] – that you guys, it says on the back $7.99 for you, and in Canada $9.99. We probably would have paid twenty-two, maybe twenty-five dollars for that?

Ms. Wendell: Holy shit! Really? It’s a paperback, yeah?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah! Oh yeah.

Ms. Wendell: Bloody hell!

Ms. Mayberry: And those trade-size paperbacks, we’re getting up towards thirty bucks.

Ms. Wendell: Oh my God, I feel like I need to come to Australia with a suitcase full of books and set up a table on the street and be like, ten dollars! Come and see me.

Ms. Litte: Well, the reason I asked if it was taxed is when I was in Korea they explained that – and Korea has a lot more auto manufacturing than Australia, obviously – but the import tax on a non-Korean vehicle was enormous, and so what car, what non-Korean car manufacturers did to get their piece of the pie was to license the designs of their vehicles to Korean manufacturers. So my husband would notice that, hey, this looks like the Lexus blah-blah-blah, and the person would be like, yes, we imported that design, and we, but it’s, it’s made under the, you know, Hyundai or whatever –

Ms. Wendell: Daewoo.

Ms. Litte: So that was, so if you saw someone driving around with an actual Mercedes, that meant that they paid probably three to four times the US cost of that because of the import tax, and then you knew that they were really, really wealthy.

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: And that they had a really, really big stick shift.

Ms. Litte: Right!

[Laughter]

Ms. Litte: So I didn’t know if it was import tax, because –

Ms. Mayberry: (FLAG _____ 29:23) I think it probably is partly that. I, I, I think there’s that, and they also have a, there’s a luxury car tax that they introduced here as well, just because they could, for a car that’s more than seventy thousand. But, you know, like, a seventy-thousand-dollar car in America would be pretty right up there.

Ms. Wendell: Oh yeah, that’s a high cost. That’s a, that’s a, that’s a pretty high-end car.

Ms. Mayberry: That’s, it’s an entry-level BMW or Mercedes over here.

Ms. Wendell: A lot – ‘cause, you know, our economy is also in the shitter, and there’s, the car ads that I’ve seen during American football and baseball – ‘cause the World Series is going on, so there’s a lot of baseball on television – the car commercials that I see, instead of seeing the higher-end models like Lexus or Cadillac, I see people, car manufacturers, advertising that this car is just under twenty thousand dollars, but here’s all the things that it comes with.

Ms. Mayberry: Hmm.

Ms. Wendell: So it’s like, it’s like twenty thousand American dollars is now this mark of, that’s what a good car could cost if you go with us, and, and it has power windows and power doors, and maybe it has a cassette player, lucky you.

Ms. Mayberry: A cassette player! [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: My old car had a cassette player. I think my current car is – it’s used – I think my current car might have a cassette player, and my kids are like, what’s that? Well, honey, it’s a magical, magical thing.

Ms. Litte: Let’s talk about Sarah’s books so that, should we get a little promotion for her?

Ms. Wendell: Yes, let’s promote the shit out of her! Hi, Sarah, we’re here to promote the shit out of you. This, by the way, this is going to be the NC-17 podcast, ‘cause you know, when I read erotica I, I won’t say “cock,” I say chicken, and you know, now we’re just dropping the F-bomb. Australia, man, you’re a bad influence.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah.

Ms. Wendell: All right, so which – I have a question, though. Do – and I know you get this question a lot – of the books that you’ve written, do you have a favorite or one that you think of and you go, hell yeah, I kicked ass on that one?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh. You know what, I don’t get asked that a lot. [Laughs] I’m sure everybody, I’m sure all writers say, oh, it’s like asking me to pick one of my children!

[Laughter]

Ms. Litte: Oh, I have heard that before.

Ms. Wendell: Yes.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah. [Laughs] You know what –

Ms. Litte: (FLAG _____ 31:21) on Anderson Cooper, apparently there were mothers admitting to having favorites, so be that mother.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: Oh, I love when television talk shows do that.

Ms. Mayberry: I, I think, I’m, I really like Anything for You, which was my third Blaze.

Ms. Litte: Love that book!

Ms. Mayberry: And I also really loved Below the Belt, which was my boxing book, and I, I, that one really sticks in my mind for me, because that was one of, was a book where I made lots of writing learnings; I had lots of writing learnings – that’s very good English, isn’t it?

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: While I was, while I was writing that book I, I –

Ms. Wendell: You done learned some stuff with that there book?

Ms. Mayberry: I did, yeah! I, I had a few sort of writing epiphanies, if you will, and I kind of went, ohhh! Okay! Okay! That’s how you do that! Okay! And, and I sort of felt like , yeah, I kind of became a little bit more aware of craft and things with that book, so that’s, that’s got a fond spot.

Ms. Litte: So what’s a fan favorite, and what do you think is the least favorite book of your fans?

Ms. Wendell: Oh, that was one of my questions too.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] I can tell you what my least favorite book is: it’s Below the Belt! You know, as I’ve said, I think to you, Jane, in, in email once, who knew that other women didn’t want to read about a woman being punched in the face for a living? Apparently they don’t, and – [laughs] – so that book was, that, that book is, of all of my books, the absolute lowest sales, like by gazillion miles. The most popular books, I think it’s probably be a little bit of a tie between Her Best Friend and Anything for You, and I mean, obviously, it’s the best friends, they’re both best-friend stories, and, and people just love that! They love the best-friends thing.

Ms. Wendell: I will say, you do friends-to-lovers with a great deal of skill, and it’s not an easy, it’s not an easy type of plot to write.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah. Well, I do enjoy it. In fact, my single title attempt is going to be another one. [Laughs] So I am, I’m going to, I’ve, I’ve done the one where she was in love with him for ages, and I’ve done the one where he was in love with her for ages, and this, this next one I want to be that, that they are genuinely both friends, and it kind of hasn’t really occurred to them before. And, and I want something to sort of reset their friendship so they kind of go, hey! Look at you!

Ms. Wendell: What do you think it’ll be that resets their friendship, or can you not give it away yet?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, I can, I’m happy to talk about it; if somebody wants to steal my idea, they can go right ahead! But – [laughs] – it’s, he’s, he’s going to have a, a cancer scare, and –

Ms. Litte: Oh, I was just going to say, is he going to lose a ball?

Ms. Mayberry: I haven’t hund-, hundred percent decided on what the, the near-death experience will be. At the moment I’m toying with a, a brain tumor, actually, and – just ‘cause there’s some sort of interesting things that come with that – and, so yeah, and just these – and, and she’s going to give up work for a while to look after him, and, you know, as they wait for his pathology results, et cetera, they sort of get to know each other in a different way.

Ms. Wendell: Awesome.

Ms. Litte: So fifty/fifty without the male best friend bonding. [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah! [Laughs]

Ms. Litte: All right, so you have a new book coming out next month.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, All They Need.

Ms. Litte: And I, I wrote to you and said that I had some problems with it, but that I enjoyed it.

[Laughter]

Ms. Litte: I think all of my emails to authors are, are, are in that vein. I love, I liked it, but – [laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: Well, I, I, I think the thing with, as I said to you, I think that, that the thing with a book is that I, I bring all my things to the table and put them out there, and you bring your experience of the book and your interpretation of the book to the table as well, and then there’s this new thing, which is your experience, I guess, that comes out of those two things, and, and sometimes that’s deeply satisfying, and sometimes it’s frustrating. [Laughs]

Ms. Litte: Well, I did enjoy it. I don’t know; Sarah, have you read it yet?

Ms. Wendell: I have not. I suck.

Ms. Litte: Okay, one of the things that I liked about Sarah’s new story is that it features a working class family. The heroine is a woman who had gone overseas; she met this guy; she fell in love; they got married; she found out he was really well off. He had political ambitions and social-climbing ambitions, and he was always criticizing her for not helping him move forward, and over the year – I can’t remember exactly how long they were married, but over the years that they were married, he really began to erode her self-confidence, her joy in life, to the point where she was really kind of a shell of who she was initially, and eventually she gets the courage and, and strength to leave him, and she gets divorced, and part of the divorce settlement, she gets money and she buys a set of cottages. And I’m not sure where it is; I’m really bad with geography and, and really bad with geography I’m not familiar with, so Sarah Mayberry, you can jump in and tell us where it is that she owns these cottages?

Ms. Mayberry: On the Mornington Peninsula, which is – so Melbourne is in a, a sort of a horseshoe-shaped bay, I guess, and Melbourne the city is at the, the top of the horseshoe, and the Mornington Peninsula is kind of one of those sides, and it’s, so it’s right down one of those sides. It’s about an hour out of the city, and it’s got beaches and trees, and it’s lovely!

Ms. Litte: And it also has a dilapidated estate which used to host some really amazing gardens in Melbourne. The hero is Flynn, and he was a landscape architect, and then his father starts showing signs of early Alzheimer’s, and so he abandons his dreams, and he has to take over his father’s business empire, and they’re very well off. So he understands that this estate is up for sale, and he’s going to go see it because he has a yen to do more creation and less just wheeling and dealing. So he takes his girlfriend, who he’s been living with, out to the coast to stay at Mel’s cottage and to, to take a look at the property. And there’s a prologue, and the prologue is a, a scene at a party where Mel is, went there with her husband, and Flynn is there doing his rounds, his social rounds, and he says something. He, he, this is in his thoughts, and I really kind of thought that it kind of encapsulated what attracts Flynn to Mel and then what propels their attraction later. Maybe Sarah Mayberry, you could read it. It’s the, it’s on the one, two, third page.

Ms. Mayberry: I have to go get it; hang on a sec. I, I know, I think I know what you’re going to say, actually. [Laughs]

So they’re, they’re at a society party; it’s a hot night. All the men are in black tie, and all the women are in lovely dresses, and he’s standing with a bunch of his friends, and there’s this sort of cry from down on the, the grass, the lawn, and he and all the rest of the people go to the, the terrace balcony, and they all look down, and there’s Mel, the heroine, and she’s talking to an, an elderly couple, and it, it appears that one of the, the elderly woman has dropped something into the bubbling fountain that’s in the middle of the lawn, and – so which bit am I going to read? [Laughs] So the bit that you like, Jane, is, so this is, this is the first description of Mel, I guess:

“She was easily the tallest woman at the party – at least six feet tall – with broad shoulders that would put a lot of men to shame. Her breasts were full and round, her hips curved. As much as Flynn was wary of Owen’s naked ambition, he’d always liked the other man’s wife. There was something about Mel Hunter that always made him want to smile. Maybe because she was often smiling herself.”

Anyway, she then proceeds to hitch up her skirt and climb onto the edge of the fountain, and she gives a man her hand so that he’s stopping her from falling in, and she reaches in and she saves this woman’s diamond bracelet from the fountain, and just when she’s sort of holding it aloft and saying, yay! Look what I’ve done! The man who’s holding her hand slips, and she falls into the fountain.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: And steps up – you know, when she comes up out of the water, her dress is a bit transparent and, you know, people can see her, her, her nipples and her pink-and-white striped underpants, and everybody’s sort of deeply amused, I guess, at, at her or by her, and then she sort of says a couple of things to make it something that, that she’s part of the joke rather than the joke. And then her humiliated husband comes and puts his coat around her and ushers her out of the party, and there’s a sense that she’s been, she’s in big trouble, I guess. And, and the hero, Flynn, feels bad for her because he thinks that she was actually really brave and, and, and ballsy, I guess, and yeah. And that’s, that’s the last time they see each other until the, the book starts again in eighteen months’ time when, when Mel’s divorced from her husband.

Ms. Litte: And one of the things I really liked about the story was that Flynn falls for Mel fairly, not fairly quickly, but he comes to a realization that he has strong feelings for her, feelings that he hadn’t ever felt for anyone else. They share a lot of common interests: she loves gardening and the land, and he does too, and she’s very close with her family, and he’s close with his family, and she’s a good listener. But Mel has had a very bad marriage, and she lost herself in the marriage, and, and she’s rediscovering her independence and appreciation of who she is as a person, and as much as she’s attracted to Flynn, and as great of a guy he is, she doesn’t ever want to get married again. And I felt that that was a little different of a twist on the romance, the woman not wanting to get married, the woman being commitment-phobic, and not only was she commitment-phobic, but she had a really good reason for not wanting to be married again. You know, she enjoyed her relationship with Flynn, and she enjoyed the, the physical benefits of having that relationship with Flynn, but she was very scared of being married again, and, you know, statistically speaking, women don’t remarry very frequently, and so I felt like it had a real ring of authenticity about it. And I thought that you did a great job of showing how well Flynn integrated with her family, and her family was very working class and something outside, I would guess, of his regular social experience, and he seemed to fit in seamlessly there.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah. Well, I sort of figured with – I mean, I – Flynn, Flynn’s a good guy, you know, and I, I, I do want to write a hero who knows what he wants, and, and he, he has been brought up with privilege, et cetera, but I do, I do think that character and the way you are to the people around you, you know, a lot of that stuff comes from your parents, and he has fantastic parents, and you know, they’re very, very loving, supportive parents, and I think that, that he’s a very generous soul. And you know, I sort of figured, though, you know, he’s a landscape gardener; he would have been working with guys who, you know, do heavy labor for a living a lot, so it’s not like he’s riding polo ponies around –

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: – for the –

Ms. Litte: So when the story opens, the very first chapter, you have Flynn with his, a long-time girlfriend. He’s actually living with her, and they go to Mel’s cottages, and – what was the re-, what was the thinking behind having Flynn in a relationship in the beginning?

Ms. Mayberry: I, I wanted, I wanted to give him a reason to, I guess, discount Mel as a possibility when they reconnected with each other. I wanted to show that he felt that he was emotionally unavailable, and I, I wanted to show that, not just tell it. I wanted to, for him to, when that woman, (FLAG Hayley? 45:00), basically she gets down on her knee and she asks him to marry her, and he realizes that while he’s been kind of doodling around, I guess, with her, taking comfort from – ‘cause they’ve been friends for a long time and, and lovers for a relatively short time – he’s been sort of taking comfort from this, this friendship that’s become more in a time when his life is in upheaval, but she has always loved him, and it’s been a lot more for her, and he, he ends up hurting her, and he, I think he really takes that to heart, and so when he starts finding himself attracted to Mel, one of the things that makes him hold back is this understanding that he’s hurt this other woman and that he, he thinks that he’s a bad bit at the moment.

Ms. Litte: So you love Lisa Kleypas.

Ms. Mayberry: Yep.

Ms. Litte: What are some other, the authors that you like?

Ms. Mayberry: Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Ain’t She Sweet is one of my top ten. I love Rachel Gibson’s See Jane Score. It’s one of my absolute favorite books as well, one of my comfort reads. I love Loretta Chase’s historicals, Laura Kinsale, Laura Lee – I don’t know how to say her last name – Laura Lee Guhrke, is it? I’m very, very, very fond of Kristan Higgins Just One of the Guys.

Ms. Wendell: I love that book. I love that book a lot.

Ms. Mayberry: Yes. It’s a fantastic book. And gosh, I’m probably leaving out heaps of my favorites here. I, I’m, I also, I read a bit of fantasy as well, and I, I love Robin Hobb’s and George R. R. Martin and Tolkien.

Ms. Litte: So you have quite the coterie of, of romance writers in Australia. Are there many in Melbourne?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, there’s heaps in Melbourne! We have a, we have a monthly luncheon where we go to this fabulous hotel in the city where they have this amazing smorgasbord, and they, or we, call ourselves the Melbourne Mob, and we, we all, you know, it sort of depends on who’s free and who’s not on deadline and all that sort of stuff, but you know, sometimes – I mean, the Christmas lunch is going to be huge, but –

Ms. Litte: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: – you know, it, it varies from between six people to, you know, a dozen or whatever, and, and we all hang out, so, you know, Marion Lennox and Stephanie Laurens and Anne Gracie and Fiona Lowe and Joan Kilby –

Ms. Wendell: Good gosh! I think, I think we need to go for that lunch. What do you think, Jane? I think we need to –

Ms. Mayberry: – Keri, Keri Arthur –

Ms. Wendell: I think we need to crash that lunch.

Ms. Litte: How is romance writing received as a career for, for you in Australia? Is it different than in the US?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, I, how is it received in the US?

Ms. Litte: I, I think with some derision. [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah! Yeah, no, it’s not different.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: I, I think the, the great thing that I have is that I, I also wrote, I write for a soap opera, which is probably the most derided form of screenwriting as well –

Ms. Wendell: Mm.

Ms. Mayberry: – and so I, I have this fantastic double whammy. Tonight we went to a, a pre-shoot party for a television series, ‘cause it’s in, my husband works in television, and I was, I was hoping to be able to brag to you that I met Guy Pierce, because he’s starring in this thing, and of course he didn’t turn up to the pre-shoot party.

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: Or if he was there, I didn’t see him, but – which is probably just as well for both us – but I was talking to the man who’d written the script; he’s a very accomplished and well-respected Australian screenwriter, and – [laughs] – he’s all, so, Sarah, what do you do? And I said, oh, I, I write romance novels, and he didn’t hear me the first time, so I had to say it twice, and then –

Ms. Wendell: Oh great!

Ms. Mayberry: – and, and I, and I write scripts for Neighbors. And – [laughs] – Chris said to me on the way home, you know, you looked a little embarrassed, and I said, yeah. I guess, I mean, look, I’m, I’m not ashamed of what I do. I’m really proud of what I do; that’s why my name is on my books. But I guess there is, you always kind of feel like there is this wall of other people’s perceptions and expectations, people who don’t understand the genre. I, you know, those articles that you, we constantly read in the various newspapers and, and whatever about how trashy romance novels are and how they’re ruining people’s lives and all the other ridiculous kind of things, I, I guess I just, you just get a little bit sick of it.

Ms. Wendell: And you’re sort of ready for the negative comment.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah, not that anybody – you know, to be honest, nobody’s ever said anything to me about writing romance novels, although some-, you know, sometimes you get the, oh! You know, so is there really a formula? That’s my favorite question. And, oh, and then people ask you how much money you make as well, which is also –

Ms. Wendell: Oh!

Ms. Mayberry: – excellent. But more with Neighbors, people will, will feel very, very free to slag that off. [Laughs] And I do always sort of think, gosh, you know, if somebody came up to me and said that they were a doctor, if I, I would say, God, I hate doctors, I, I, every time I go to the doctor they always, I always feel like they’re pushing something on me that I don’t want, you know, I imagine, I just wouldn’t say that to someone, but people feel quite free to, to criticize things that are in the public domain like, well, like a soap opera, I guess.

Ms. Wendell: Yes.

Ms. Mayberry: Not so much the, the romance writing, I guess.

Ms. Wendell: And of course the minute you publish a book, a giant truck – or I believe it’s lorry in your part of the world – pulls up to –

Ms. Mayberry: It’s a truck!

Ms. Wendell:  – oh, it’s a truck? It’s not a lorry. Where’s lorries? In, in Eng-, in England?

Ms. Mayberry: I think lorry is UK, yeah.

Ms. Wendell: Okay. So a giant truck will pull up to the front of your house and unload a crate of money, because that’s what happens when you publish a book. A, a giant pot of money is delivered to your front door every day, right?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah! Yeah.

Ms. Wendell: Of course.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] That’s why I have that sheep station.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] How do you not have a sheep station? I want a sheep station. Although it makes me think that the sheep are, like, pumping gas at the, at the gas station.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] I think maybe, I think a sheep station would be really high maintenance, actually.

Ms. Wendell: And kind of smelly. I mean –

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah.

Ms. Wendell: – sheep don’t smell very good. I don’t know why there’s all these rumors about men and sheep, ‘cause they just don’t smell very good.

[music]

Ms. Wendell: Yeah, so you’ll start to adopt the accent of who you’re listening to? So I’m not alone in that?

Ms. Mayberry: No, no, if I start speaking in an American accent, I’m not taking the piss out of you. [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: Can you, can you imitate Americans? ‘Cause I suck at imitating Australia.

Ms. Mayberry: Look, you know, I probably think I can, but I bet I, I can’t, you know? [Laughs]

Ms. Litte: We want to –

Ms. Mayberry: I think the Australian accent is really hard to do. I, there are very, very few actors that have pulled it off. Even Meryl Streep didn’t get it.

Ms. Wendell: No, and, and it’s, it’s almost like, it’s almost like adding an I to every vowel so that there’s an I at the of it, and I still can’t do it very well. But we want to hear your American accent! And we’re recording.

Ms. Little: (FLAG _____ 52:50) read something from your, a, a book of yours –

Ms. Mayberry: Oh!

Ms. Litte: – (FLAG _____ 52:54) an accent.

Ms. Mayberry: I, well, I don’t – I, I’ll tell you what I’ve got sitting here. I have Lisa Kleypas’s Smooth Talking Stranger, which –

Ms. Wendell: Which is a book we love!

Ms. Mayberry: It’s an awesome book. It’s my comfort read.

Ms. Wendell: Is that a book that you reread a lot?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh yeah, that and Blue-Eyed Devil are just godhead as far as I’m concerned. When I grow up, I want to write like Lisa Kleypas.

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] Those are not bad books to have as your, as your favorites. Okay, so here’s you and an American accent: bring it!

Ms. Mayberry: [American-ish accent] Jack took Luke’s carrier from me and carefully locked it on to the base. He paused to murmur – see, I’ve lost it.

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: That was pretty good!

Ms. Litte: I don’t know; it sounded more like Jersey shore to me than –

Ms. Wendell: [Jersey-ish accent] Whatta you talkin’ about?

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah.

Ms. Litte: Do you watch a lot of Jersey Shore, Sarah?

Ms. Mayberry: I didn’t watch any reality TV at all. I –

Ms. Wendell: I just want everyone to know they’re from New York. That’s all I want everyone to know; they are all from New York.

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: What do I, what do we watch? We watch, I watch The Daily Show as much as possible, ‘cause I, I’m in love with Jon Stewart.

Ms. Wendell: I don’t know many people who aren’t.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah. [Laughs] I have a, even my husband is in love with him as well. I think we would have a fight over him, actually.

Ms. Wendell: Now that’s a real Jersey boy right there.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: What other American shows do you get that you watch? Is most of your television a split between American and Australian? ‘Cause I know that Canada, Canadian television stations pay an absolute crapton of money importing American television shows and have a very smaller segment of their own programming, which is kind of funny, considering that Canada is such a huge country. Is that true of Australia as well, or do you get a lot of US programming?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, no, we get a lot of US and, and British, and we have, we have quotas for local content here in Australia, which thank God.

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: Because we just, we didn’t have any local television production otherwise. I mean, we, my understanding – you know, obviously, my husband works in television industry – when they acquire American TV shows, they buy a, a lot of shows packaged together, so they might get, you know, NCIS and – God, I can’t even think of the show – Supernatural and Desperate Housewives all packaged together, and they, they get a pretty good rate for that, and the production values that you guys have for your television over there, because your market is so big, I mean, they’re incredibly high, and then you come over to Australia and, you know, the idea of you guys spending a million dollars per episode on a television show is pretty –

Ms. Wendell: Normal.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, normal. For here, that’s just like, dude, sell all your kidneys and livers and –

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: – it’s, it’s, it’s crazy putty, and so it’s really hard for, you know, I mean, local audiences are always their own worst critics, so they’re, they’re always, we’re always comparing Australian drama with American drama, which has these amazing production values and, and, you know, so and, and –

Ms. Wendell: And special effects.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah, so there’s this sort of cultural cringe. I think it’s getting better. You know, we’ve had a few television shows, in the last few years particularly, that have been sort of uniquely Australian that have, have, I think, sort of shed that old sort of cultural cringe factor, so.

Ms. Wendell: I’ve always thought that the production values of all The Wiggles shows that I’ve watched were extremely high. I always thought that most of Australia was in primary colors.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] My, my husband has a story from when he was working on Neighbors, which is the, the soap opera that I still write for. At one point they were advocating with the producer that they needed some new, young, hot guys on the show, some teenagers, and so the producer went up to Sydney to talk to some casting people and whatever else, and he came back and he said, oh, I’m really, really excited. I’ve got some, you know, great news for everybody, and everybody around the story table was going, great! Did you get us our hot guy and a hot girl? And he said, Ed, I did better than that! I got The Wiggles!

[Laughter]

Ms. Mayberry: He, he, he got The Wiggles there on Neighbors. They even drove into Ramsay Street, which is the famous street that Neighbors is filmed on.

Ms. Wendell: Right.

Ms. Mayberry: It’s actually, it’s actually a cul-de-sac, but –

Ms. Wendell: Right.

Ms. Mayberry: – I don’t know why it’s called Ramsay Street. And they, yeah, they, they drove in their funny little Wiggle car in their little skivvies, and yeah.

Ms. Wendell: That’s brilliant. I love it.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs]

Ms. Litte: So how were the ratings for that show when you –

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, absolutely through the roof, of course.

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: So you still write for Neighbors.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah! I just handed a script in today.

Ms. Wendell: That’s so cool! Are the, are the episodes available online? ‘Cause I don’t think we get it here. I don’t think we get that in the States.

Ms. Mayberry: No (FLAG idea? 57:42). No, they’ve tried in America a few times.

Ms. Litte: Soaps have really undergone a transformation here in the US, and they’ve all been canceled, and now they’re online.

Ms. Wendell: Mm-hmm, they’re all downsizing.

Ms. Mayberry: Okay, so people can stream them and download them and –

Ms. Wendell: Mm-hmm.

Ms. Litte: But it’s –

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, that’s interesting.

Ms. Litte: – it’s a big change. I mean, I think, ‘cause I’ve talked to a couple people about this, that they blame working mothers and DVRs –

[Laughter]

Ms. Litte: – for the decline in soaps, that there just aren’t as many people, women particularly, staying at home and watching that type of television. Even the stay-at-home moms are super busy, and they don’t, they’re not watching soaps, and the athletes that watch soaps aren’t sufficient enough in numbers to keep the soap operas going.

Ms. Wendell: Well, have you seen the economy? We’re all trying to get some money, not staying at home watching the soap operas. I, I have to confess, I was never a soap opera fan, because the minute the two couples, a couple has a happy moment, you know in the next episode one of them’s going to get, like, possessed by Satan, or, or a helicopter’s going to fall on her head or, you know, they’re going to be like, switch bodies with their evil twin. I mean, something bad’s going to happen. There’s never a lasting happiness, and if there is, it’s just so much sex with the L-shaped sheet, where it covers her breasts, but it’s down around his groin.

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] It is, it’s, it’s, it’s like a, falling in love on a soap opera is like painting a target on your back.

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: It really is! You’re doomed!

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah.

Ms. Litte: Have you ever read, have you ever read the book Again by Kathleen Gilles Seidel?

Ms. Mayberry: No.

Ms. Litte: Oh, oh. Well, I would really be interested in, in hearing what you think about it. Again is a, a book she wrote, and it features a, a scriptwriter for a soap opera, and the soap opera is, like, a historical soap opera, kind of like Northanger Abbey, maybe.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah.

Ms. Litte: Or not Northanger but Dow-, is it Duntown Abbey?

Ms. Wendell: Downton.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Ms. Wendell: Downton Abbey.

Ms. Litte: It’s kind of like that, although I don’t watch Downton Abbey for the same reasons Sarah doesn’t watch soaps. I, you know, I’m a romance reader, and I want the love and Happy Ever After, and you just don’t get that from that. But she writes for a historical soap opera, and I’ve always been impressed with Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s ability to kind of capture the essence of the character in which she’s writing, and, and, and the, the soap opera is really well depicted, and it seems like Kathleen Gilles Seidel knows all about screenwriting, or soap writing, like she was a soap writer at one time. She’s not, but that’s kind of the feeling I got when I –

Ms. Mayberry: (FLAG _____ 1:00:36) I’ll, I’ll, I’ll see if I can find it. Yeah, that would be interesting. [Laughs] ‘Cause I think, I mean, look, it’s a little bit different down here in Australia. The, the Neighbors story method is quite unique in that it’s actually a, a story structure that they’ve, they’ve sold around the world as a way of making, economically churning out lots of – ‘cause Neighbors does five half-hours a week, so it’s a really high output in terms of, you know, both shooting schedule as well as plotting and writing, so. So they have this, this structure where they have a story team and storyliners and a story editor, and they all sit around coming up with what I kind of refer to as, I mean, they’re called storylines, but I think of them as being like the book of the movie, if you will, and then those individual storylines for each episode are then farmed out to freelance scriptwriters, which is what I do now, and then they come back in house and are edited to obviously get that continuity across the, the episodes, and that was such an efficient way of making television that they exported that to the UK and all through Europe, and, and that’s a bit different to the way America does it.

Ms. Litte: So how did you fall into scriptwriting for the soap opera?

Ms. Mayberry: Nepotism, frankly.

[Laughter]

Ms. Wendell: That’s always a good way.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah. My, my now-husband and I went, we did the same writing degree, and he was much more interested in writing screen, script, screenplays, and he really pursued a career writing and ended up getting a job on Neighbors, and while he was doing that, I was working in publishing a magazine and – a trade magazine – and he used to come home, and we’d obviously talk about what they were doing around the story table, and I would always give him ideas to take into work, and he would always say, you know, you, you’re actually really good at this. You know, you should do this, and, and I was always, in the back of my mind, thinking, ‘cause he made it sound like such fun, and it is a lot of fun to sit around a table with a bunch of other writers and make fart jokes all day, and he –

Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: – he – but I never wanted to work with him, so I didn’t actually try out for a job on Neighbors until Chris had pretty much, you know, had a, was, was full to pussy’s bow, if you will, with – [laughs] – so he was –

Ms. Wendell: Full – wait, hold up – full to pussy’s bow?

Ms. Mayberry: [Laughs] Is that not a saying that you guys have?

Ms. Wendell: I’ve never heard that! What the hell does that mean? It’s brilliant!

Ms. Mayberry: It actually usually means that you’ve eaten too much, and you’re like –

Ms. Wendell: What’s a pussy’s – like the, the bow around a cat’s neck?

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: Oh my God, I’m using that every day.

Ms. Litte: [Laughs]

Ms. Mayberry: (FLAG _____ 1:03:25) neighbor uses it all the time. So he, he arranged for me to have a week’s trial, and yeah, and I, and I was. I was, it sounds so egotistical to say this, but I was good at it! [Laughs] And they offered me a job pretty much on the second day, I think, so that was very cool. And good fun. Two years, two of the most fun years of my life.

Ms. Wendell: Wow.

Ms. Litte: Oh, so you’ve only been doing it for two years.

Ms. Mayberry: Oh, no, that, I, that was ages ago. That was two, 2000, I think? I did, I did two years in-house –

Ms. Litte: Okay.

Ms. Mayberry: – and then we moved to New Zealand, and I did a year on a soap opera over there as well, and then I got published! And I, I went freelance.

Ms. Litte: Do you miss the interaction with the other writers?

Ms. Mayberry: Oh yes. It’s enormously good fun. It’s just – ‘cause, I mean, you know, writer, writing is solitary. It’s just you and the computer, and I think it’s why there’s so many writers on Twitter and – [laughs] – various other social media where we’re all talking to each other, ‘cause you don’t, it is, it is, can be very, very lonely and isolating, and being able to sit around a table with a bunch of other writers and have this sort of shared creation experience, again it’s not really something that you, you have as a novelist, because – I mean, it’s one of the things I like about being a novelist is that you’re in charge of everything, but there is something incredibly dynamic and energizing about working collaboratively with other writers as well, and it’s, it’s also really humbling, and it taught me an enormous amount about both myself and just story and, and, and that even though you can be really wedded to something, there’s always a different way of telling a story, and sometimes it’s just a different way, there is no wrong or right, and I always try and keep those lessons in mind when I’m both editing my own work and when I’m getting revision notes and things like that. I’m, I always try and stay open to the possibilities, because, you know, sometimes there is a better way out there.

Ms. Litte: So do you use a critique partner, or do – here’s one of my concerns, because you, you say – and it’s not about you; it’s just about writing in general, and maybe this leads to kind of the inauthenticity I see in some writers, particularly when they’re trying to represent professional women – and, and that is, because you’re so isolated, do you, do you feel like perhaps your connection to maybe, you know, the world outside isn’t as strong, and, and so you have trouble writing, you know, relatable characters. I mean, I’m not saying that about you, because I think your writing is very relatable, but do you ever struggle with that because your writing, because your career is so solitary, so isolated?

Ms. Mayberry: Look, I don’t, I, I understand what you’re saying. I, I’ve never had that particular problem. I do, I do, I, I have read books, though, where – particularly, for some reason, boss and secretary books – where it was so obvious to me that the writer had never been in an office. [Laughs] Had, didn’t understand how, you know, admin stuff worked, any of that sort of stuff, and, I mean, so I think the, possibly there are some writers who have, let’s just say, got married, had kids, and then started writing, and maybe they haven’t had a career outside of the home, or they’ve had a limited experience outside of the home. I mean, I didn’t go freelance until I was in my, in my thirties, so I’ve, I’ve had a, a life out there, and I still, you know, I still go in-house and work with other people and various other things, like, so I, I get around.

[Laughter]

[music]

Ms. Litte: I was thinking that from now on we can only have guest authors with accents, because it’s not any fun to have it without.

Ms. Wendell: No. We absolutely have to have all the authors with accents.

Ms. Mayberry: Or, or if you have people from North America, then they have to speak with an accent.

Ms. Wendell: Yes.

Ms. Litte: Even a faux one, yeah.

Ms. Mayberry: Yeah, like pirate or something, or –

Ms. Litte: [Laughs]

Ms. Wendell: Oh, who can we get to do a pirate accent?

So that’s it for this installment of the podcast, a nice, extra-long version, which we like in romance. Many, many, many, many thanks to Sarah Mayberry, who stayed up until about 1:30 her time, in the morning, to talk to us, and thank you to you for listening.

If you have any suggestions, or if you know of an author who would be willing to talk like a pirate while we interview her, you can email us at sbjpodcast – that’s S for Sarah, B for Bitches, J for Jane, podcast at gmail dot com [[email protected]]. And future podcasts will absolutely involve author interviews, because hey, if we can call Australia in the middle of the night and reconnect three or four times, we can absolutely call someone a little bit more local to both of us.

If you’re enjoying the music this week, it is, as usual, provided by Sassy Outwater. This is from an album she produced. This is Jason Hemmens, and you can find him online at jasonhemmens.com; that’s J-A-S-O-N-H-E-M-M-E-N-S dot com. I’ll have links on my site, and Dear Author will also have links to his stuff. This track is called “Forgotten,” which I picked because I didn’t want you to think we’d forgotten all about the podcast, ‘cause believe me, we hadn’t. I also have original music from other artists for future podcasts, so it should be very cool, and thank you to Sassy Outwater for giving us the awesome music. I love that we feature new music with every podcast; I think it’s so cool, especially because I get to listen to all this cool stuff before we add it to the, to the vocal part of the podcast.

So that’s it for this week. This is a very long podcast, so I’m going to stop talking now and let the, Mr. Hemmens finish out the podcast music. As usual, we wish you the very best of reading, and thank you for joining us.

[lovely music]