This week I am talking again with Kate Noble and Kate Rorick, conveniently the same person, about the upcoming tv show The Librarians. We talked about this during a podcast interview I did with her over the summer. So why am I bringing it up again?
Carrie recently sent me an article from Variety magazine that says the tv series, which premieres December 7, is going to be also premiering within days around the world. So everyone gets this show brand new at the same time. Yay!
So we talk about the show, the episodes she wrote, and also how success is judged when the way we watch tv constantly changes. I also answer listener mail about novellas and podcasts.
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This Episode's Music
The music this week was provided by Sassy Outwater, and this piece is “Sonata for Piano, Op. 26: Fuga: Allegro Con Spirito” by Samuel Barber, and it’s performed by Jade Simmons. It’s from her album Revolutionary Rhythm, which is on sale as an mp3 at Amazon or iTunes.
Podcast Sponsor
This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Holiday on Ice —an original holiday novella in the Play-By-Play series from New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton. Download it November 18th!
In this original holiday novella in the Play-By-Play series, New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton gives readers the gift of “plenty of romance, sexy men, hot steamy loving, and humor.” (Smexy Books)
Superstar hockey player Patrick “Trick” Niemeyer and dancer Stella Slovinski have picked up where they left off a year ago, resuming their hot, uncomplicated affair. Stella refuses to call it dating, or a relationship. But lately, Trick is looking for more…
Stella’s been burned before—in a relationship she never talks about—not with her family, not with her friends, and definitely not with Trick. But now it’s the holiday season and Trick is determined to give Stella his heart wrapped up in a bow. He knows Stella is the right woman for him, but he’ll have to melt the ice surrounding her heart to keep her from walking away.
Includes a preview of Jaci Burton’s QUARTERBACK DRAW and LOVE AFTER ALL.
Transcript
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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to another DBSA podcast. This is episode number 115. I’m Sarah Wendell with Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Kate Noble, also known as Kate Rorick. I did an interview with her last summer which you may remember, in which we talked a little bit about her television show that she’s writing for, The Librarians, which is a reboot of a series of movies that starred Noah Wyle. Now you may be thinking, why are you talking about a TV show? I mean, that’s kind of annoying, and if you are allegedly outside the U.S. – and I say allegedly because apparently people think that there are countries outside the United States, that there are countries other than the U.S. in the world? Which is completely hilariously wrong, we all know that – but hypothetically, you would be thinking, I don’t get TV shows when they’re new. This is not applicable to me. Not true! This show is going to premiere internationally on the same day, December 7th or the 8th. This show is going to be on, very likely, on a universal network channel near you! Wherever you are! Even if you’re allegedly outside the U.S., which I think is pretty freakin’ cool. So we talk about the show, talk about the episodes she wrote, and how success is judged when the way that we watch TV constantly changes. I also talk about listener mail which involves novellas and podcast recommendations. Anything that we talk about during the podcast will be in the podcast entry which will be on the site when this episode goes live.
The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and where you can buy it.
This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Holiday on Ice, an original holiday novella in the Play-by-Play series from New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton. You can download it on November 18th.
And now, on with the podcast interview with Kate Noble, or Kate Rorick, or both, because they’re the same person. So convenient; I love when that happens.
[music]
Sarah: One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about The Librarians is not only because it’s really friggin’ cool and I saw a preview for it and was, like, about to shimmy off my couch, but Carrie, who writes for me, sent me an article from Variety about the fact that the show is going to be premiered within twenty-four hours all around the world.
Kate Noble/Rorick: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So, like, people in different countries – allegedly – I am told there are countries other than us? –
Kate: It’s, I’ve, I’ve been to a couple. There, you know, Canada, that’s –
Sarah: Yeah, I mean, apparently, they set up large sets and masquerade as other countries just to trick us, but apparently, maybe, possibly, there are other countries aside from the United States, and they all get this show within twenty-four hours.
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: That doesn’t usually happen.
Kate: No, it doesn’t usually happen, but I, I think that this show, the, this kind of show, it’s heavily serialized, so there’s so much, there’s, there’s so much story that happens with any particular episode that, and the way that we communicate now is that, I’ve got Twitter from England, and I have to block them when Doctor Who comes on the air, because I –
Sarah: Or Downton Abbey.
Kate: Or Downton Abbey, because I don’t want to be spoiled.
Sarah: Yep.
Kate: So I think that that’s, that’s a reaction to the globalization of the way we consume media.
Sarah: So that’s, so that’s actually really smart.
Kate: Yeah. Well, I think so.
Sarah: Yeah. Like, whoa. Like, I, I feel like all of Tumblr is going to be like, this is amazing!
Kate: I hope so!
Sarah: We can all animate the .gifs at the same time.
Kate: I hope Tumblr freaks out. That would be awesome, but it’s such, like, it’s such a fun show. We had so much fun making it.
Sarah: So, I know some people are familiar with it and some are not, so if you could, is it possible, as deeply involved as you are in the story, to explain whatThe Librarians is.
Kate: All right, well, there, I will tell you as much as I can, but there’s – like I said, it’s a heavily serialized show, and I don’t want to, like, spoil anything for anybody, so I’ll, I’ll try to do this without spoilers. Basically, there’s –
Sarah: There are Librarians.
Kate: There are Librarians. There, over the course of the past decade there’ve been a couple of movies about the Librarian, who is Flynn Carsen, played by the lovely and delectable Noah Wyle.
Sarah: Flynn Carsen?
Kate: Flynn Carsen.
Sarah: That’s, like, the greatest romance hero name. That’s, like, my top romance hero name of the day.
Kate: If, if he was to be a romance hero, he’d be a beta. He would absolutely be a beta.
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Kate: He’s very –
Sarah: I’m so on board! Let’s watch, let’s go.
Kate: [Laughs] But he’s, he’s the Librarian, and he, of the Metropolitan Library that has a secret collection of all the world’s historical objects and mysterious and mystical objects and, and mythical objects.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kate: Like, you’re going to find the Holy Grail in there. You’re going to find the Fountain of Youth in there. You’re going to find, I think you can probably find a pirate ship, like the Jolly Roger, in there, if I recall correctly. [Laughs]
Sarah: Cool!
Kate: And he’s always worked alone. He’s always had a guardian, you know, somebody to shoot the gun, essentially, so he doesn’t get killed, and, but he’s always worked alone, but stuff happens.
Sarah: Convenient, since it’s a television show with episodes.
Kate: Yes, that makes it so that he finds it necessary to assemble a team of Librarians, and while Flynn Carsen is a bit of a polymath – he knows lots about lots of stuff – our team of Librarians know, are, are very specific. They’re a team of experts. Like, we’ve got an art historian, and we’ve got a, a, a mathematical genius and, and synesthete. I can’t say, I can’t pronounce words –
Sarah: Synesthete? Synesthete? The one where you can, like –
Kate: Yeah.
Sarah: – where numbers have a color, and, and things like that?
Kate: Yeah. Exactly.
Sarah: And these are all played by people no one has heard of.
Kate: No, Rebecca Romijn you’ve heard of.
Sarah: And Bob Newhart.
Kate: And, well, and Bob Newhart, yes.
Sarah: And Jane Curtin and John Larroquette, and we’ve never heard of any of those people, and Noah Wyle is, like, a complete no one that anyone, no one has ever seen.
Kate: No, and, and Christian Kane, you know. He’s, he’s, nobody’s ever heard of him either.
Sarah: No. No, he’s not, he’s not a dreamboat or anything.
Kate: No, he’s not really, really handsome in person, either.
Sarah: [Laughs] That must just suck for you.
Kate: It was terrible. It was just –
Sarah: [Laughs] So, how many episodes have you written? What was your role in the development of the new show?
Kate: Well, in the show we have, it’s, it’s a ten-episode first season –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kate: – and the pilot, the, the, the season premiere is actually the first two episodes, so what we did is that there’s a, a writing staff, and we all got in a room together. There were four of us, plus the show runner, so five people total, and we basically broke down what the show was going to be, what the characters were, the characters’ relationships to each other, and, and what, like, in our wildest fantasies, what would our episodes be, and the great thing about this show is that it’s, the way it’s set up, you can, like, do a lot of different stuff in terms of, of, of your wildest fantasy of what you want to write for a television show. Like, we, we have some episodes that are very psychological horror. We have some episodes that are, are, like, straight-up thriller. We’ve got some just absolutely ridiculous ones. One of mine is the absolutely ridiculist, I think. I, I claim the ridiculousness of that particular episode.
Sarah: [Laughs] Is, so, is each episode they have to add to the collection or they have to figure out something’s going on with one of the artifacts? It all ties into the artifact area in which they work.
Kate: Yeah. There are artifacts out there in the world that they have to go collect. There are artifacts out there that have, you know, gone astray. There are just random things that are happening that they are getting clues about that they should probably go investigate, because they are outside the realm of the normal.
Sarah: Ah. Good thing they’re Librarians.
Kate: And it’s – yeah. Well, you know, they’ve got a, they’ve got research underneath their fingernails.
Sarah: That’s right.
Kate: They, they know what they’re doing.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Is there a romantic element to the show?
Kate: Oh, yeah. There’s –
Sarah: All the tingles! Tingling! Okay, got to go set my DVR again.
Kate: What can I say without giving stuff away?
Sarah: All you have to do is say yes. If you don’t want to say anything more than that, that’s totally fine.
Kate: Yes. There’s – when you have handsome men such as Noah Wyle and Christian Kane, and you have beautiful women and, such as Rebecca Romijn and Lindy Booth and whatnot on the show, there is going to be some sort of romantic, you know, moving pieces around.
Sarah: Darn, I’m so disappointed. What a terrible, terrible thing. There, the, the Variety article is really, really, really scant. It’s basically, here’s what’s happening. Two important people say, we are pleased or thrilled. It’s, like, the PR spin. Someone has to say they’re thrilled or pleased or very pleased – it’s, like, the law – and then –
Kate: Charmed and enchanted.
Sarah: Yes, exactly. They have a very basic desc-, description that The Librarians centers on an ancient organization hidden beneath the Metropolitan Public Library –
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and they’re supposed to preserve magic and keep it hidden, and also look really good doing it.
Kate: Yes. That’s good. Yeah, that’s it. But you did a much better job setting up the show than I did.
Sarah: [Laughs] So, what were some of the things that, if you can explain –
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – about your work with The Librarians that you really enjoyed, in terms of writing for it and then, and then creating the show?
Kate: I, one of the things that I really enjoyed, I think, was what I was saying about it, we, in our wildest fantasies, what kind of show would you write, and this show allowed each of us to write our, essentially our wildest fantasy, and they’re all very different. The fact of the matter is that we can have very, very different kinds of episodes, but it’s all the same show.
Sarah: Yes.
Kate: So, I, I enjoy that. I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who, and it’s got a little, it’s got a little touch of the Doctor Who on it, where, you know, like, you could be on a planet, or you can be in history, or you can be a lot of other stuff, but it’s a, it’s, it’s that, it’s the fun episodes of The X-Files. You get to, you get to play in a world with magic and –
Sarah: Yep.
Kate: – craziness, and it’s –
Sarah: Travel and magic.
Kate: – it’s, that’s, that’s the most fun part about it to me.
Sarah: My favorite episodes of The X-Files were always the ones where they had to go somewhere.
Kate: Well, yeah.
Sarah: I could not have cared less about Mulder’s house –
Kate: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and then putting the tape on the window, and his office is dusty. Like, when they actually had to go travel somewhere, and I was like, this is awesome. So, you’ve basically blended magic, the unknown, travel, and hot Librarians.
Kate: Yes.
Sarah: How is this not going to do well? Like, I don’t see –
Kate: [Laughs]
Sarah: – how this happens in this universe. And, you know, I mean, I, I, I, I’m, I don’t, I’m actually – I feel really bad saying this to a TV writer, but I’m actually really bad at watching TV.
Kate: That’s okay.
Sarah: Because I don’t always trust TV writers to have an end in mind, and because I’m a romance reader, and because I read so much in the novel structure –
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and because I read the romance novel genre, I particularly like the ending. I like knowing it’s there. And so I feel in a lot of shows that I get started with that ultimately there comes a point where the ending could have been here, but then there was renewal, so they come to another ending, and then maybe there was syndication, so there’s another ending, but it’s not really an ending, and then you get to a point where there was no ending except what might have happened, and I, and it just, I, I just get so frustrated, because I feel like there are so many shows where I have started where the ending was some nebulous possibility that never happened. And then it got cancelled. Because there was no ending.
Kate: That’s fair.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Not to totally talk shit to your face about your actual industry, but that’s, this is why I struggle with television, so I am so excited about this show, in part because it, it, there’s, there’s all of the larger elements, but the, the story, it doesn’t have to have an ending. Like, there has to be a set of things that are going to happen in each episode to bring that story closure, but there’s still more stuff that can happen.
Kate: Yeah. What you’ve described is procedural television, and it’s why Law & Order is still on the air after twenty-five years.
Sarah: Yes, thank you! I don’t know there was a word for that. Holy shit! There’s a word for that?
Kate: Yeah, well, there’s a – we have words. We’re writers.
Sarah: Oh, my God, it’s like magic!
Kate: [Laughs] But –
Sarah: What is it, you just do things with the alphabet. So that’s called procedural, where there’s a world –
Kate: Procedural – well, where you, essentially, where there is, the story of the episode is, if you look at it like Law & Order, the story of Law & Order is one episode, one crime, you are done in an hour, essentially.
Sarah: Yes. Chnk-chnk.
Kate: You have similar characters, you have characters that carry through. They might have a very small storyline, but it’s not overwhelming; the story of the show is the procedural.
Sarah: Correct.
Kate: It’s the, CSI, it’s the, you’re going to solve a crime in an hour. It’s the, it’s the medical mystery, it’s House, whatnot.
Sarah: Got it. Which is why there are so many cops and medical shows.
Kate: Yeah, cop, doctors, lawyers, and cops.
Sarah: Although the lawyers, now, the lawyer shows tend to have much larger storylines for the characters. Like, you can’t drop in in the middle of The Good Wife and be like, wait, what’s going on? ‘Cause you’re not going to know.
Kate: The Good Wife, The Good Wife is am-, is a crazy hybrid, and it works for that show, and it –
Sarah: It works super well for that show.
Kate: Yeah, but it doesn’t, it’s not going to work for Law & Order, essentially.
Sarah: No. Not at all. Although I would have been okay if Jerry Orbach had a very long romantic thread through that story before he died, ‘cause I liked him the best. But anyway.
Kate: I think everybody liked him the best.
Sarah: I definitely like him the best. I, the show’s not the same without him.
Kate: Yeah, well, that, first, to be technical, that show’s no longer on the air. [Laughs]
Sarah: It’s on right now! What are you talking about? It’s on, like, five channels on my television. I could find five different episodes right this second. It’s happened.
Kate: And therefore, Jerry Orbach lives forever.
Sarah: That’s right! It’s immortality!
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Is there immortality in The Librarians? They’re not immortal, right?
Kate: I, I can’t say anything!
Sarah: You can’t say? Oh, crap, something’s going to happen.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Just like a, I’m like a, I’m like a spoiler dog. [Sniffs] I smell the spoilers; I’m going to –
Kate: Well, the, the problem with The Librarians is that everything’s a spoiler at this point.
Sarah: ‘Cause there are so many things that happen –
Kate: Yeah.
Sarah: – it’s all stuff that’s going to happen –
Kate: Exactly.
Sarah: – and you can’t really talk about it.
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Yay.
Kate: So I was kind of confused when you wanted an interview, because I was like, I can’t say anything, but okay.
Sarah: [Laughs] There’s a show with people on it, they’re good, and there’s books.
Kate: Yes.
Sarah: Although, I mean, we’ve already talked about The X-Files, Doctor Who, travel, librarians, Noah Wyle, and other hot people. I’m imagining people are, like, now pulling over to right down the date and time.
[Laughter]
Sarah: And one of the reasons I wanted to do this is because I think it’s so cool that the show is going to go premiere for the whole world at the same time.
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: That, I hope that becomes the standard.
Kate: Well, it, I, I think it would be great if it was. It’s just a matter of –
Sarah: International distribution.
Kate: – international distribution. There’s, there’s still a lot of, a lot of country lines being drawn, and it’s, think it, think about it with books. You sell your foreign rights, essentially –
Sarah: Exactly.
Kate: – in books, and they come out two years after the first book came out, but you could have gotten that first book if you really, really tried to, in, in Indonesia when it was first released.
Sarah: Right. And if you’re selling the print rights for an international book that could take two years, but five minutes on Google will find that person the digital version somewhere.
Kate: Exactly.
Sarah: Most likely in a format that they can access.
Kate: Mm-hmm. If they’re, you know, open to piracy.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Kate: [Laughs]
Sarah: So, here’s a question that we were talking about, and I wanted to ask you a little bit more about it. We were talking about rating systems –
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and how you know a show is a success, because I didn’t realize this, but there are actually systems that track not only the people who watch a show live, but the people who DVR it and watch it later or stream it on Hulu. Like, there are actually ways to track who’s doing what with a show to measure its success.
Kate: Well, there are, but they’re not, it’s, it’s – everything’s changing, because the way that we watch television is changing. For the last forty, fifty years, the standard of rating systems has been the Nielsen’s rating system –
Sarah: Right.
Kate: – and that is, there are something like 25,000 Nielsen households in the country, and they are statistical representations of the rest of us. And, and being statistical representations, what they watch is, they, what they think the rest of us are watching.
Sarah: Right.
Kate: So –
Sarah: It’s like a cross-section of TV viewers. And the, the Nielsens
Kate: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a poll, essentially, it’s a, it’s a –
Sarah: It’s, like, a sample.
Kate: It’s a sample.
Sarah: This is why there’s so much Law & Order, because there’s, like, five Nielsen families who are, like, complete Law & Order junkies, and that’s why, right? [Laughs]
Kate: Well, that, and they do really well in re-runs.
Sarah: Yes, yes, they do. Chnk-chnk.
Kate: It’s also that – [laughs] – it’s, it’s problematic because the way that we watch television is changing and has been changing, and with the advent of cable, you would think that people could actually, like, tell what you’re watching on cable, that they could record it actually individually, you wouldn’t need this Nielsen box, and especially with the advent of Internet watching, watching on your iPad, on streaming services, Hulu and Netflix and whatnot, it changes how, the fact that we are changing how we are watching television is changing how we determine what’s, determine what’s a success.
Sarah: Well, I mean, in publishing, we don’t even have an accurate gauge of how many books are sold across all formats. Like, it, it can be very difficult to figure that out, so I’m not surprised that television and, and television has a similar problem.
Kate: I, I do believe that there are best-faith efforts on the parts of the publishers and on the parts of the –
Sarah: Totally.
Kate: – television executives. It’s just a matter of, like, there are so many people, and there are so many units –
Sarah: Yep.
Kate: – and how do you keep track of everything?
Sarah: Especially with books, where each different edition might have a different ISBN number, and how do you catalogue that, plus how do you track all of the sales, and even our measures of success in publishing aren’t, much like the Nielsens, they’re not exactly the most accurate sample. Like, the New York Times book review is a sample of a certain number of bookstores, but it doesn’t always accurately represent what sells in other areas, what sells in a completely, like, local area, what sells nationally. That, that’s not an entirely accurate sample, any more than the Nielsens are.
Kate: Yeah.
Sarah: So, what is, what is same-day plus three or plus seven?
Kate: Well, what it is is that you’ve got your live ratings, you’ve got the people that, you know, tune in at eight, at 8 p.m. to watch the episode of The Big Bang Theory, which I don’t know if it’s actually on at 8 p.m., ‘cause I don’t watch that show live.
Sarah: [Laughs] I don’t know that many, I mean, what do we watch live? Sporting events? The Olympics?
Kate: Sporting events, well, right. If you –
Sarah: We don’t even watch the Olympics live, ‘cause that’s time delayed.
Kate: If you look at the Nielsen ratings, like, for the past – I, I looked it up last night, ‘cause we were talking about it – football is the first two on the Nielsen ratings, and then it’s, like NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kate: – The Big Bang Theory, and then more football. So, those, those are the things that are, that garner live ratings, essentially, but there’s also – a couple years ago, they started to take into account people that record on their DVR, so live plus same-day is one rating, and then there’s live plus three, which is plus three days, and live plus seven. So those ratings make a very, they, they can make a very different, paint a different picture.
Sarah: Right.
Kate: Because you may not watch a television show the minute it airs –
Sarah: Nope.
Kate: – you may watch it the next morning while you’re making breakfast. You may watch it, you know, two days later when you actually have time to sit down and watch television.
Sarah: Or now, with, with, with shows like the ones on Netflix that are, that are produced, and all of the episodes are released at once, you may sit down and watch a whole season at the same time.
Kate: Yeah, well, the, Netflix has a very different model of how they do business –
Sarah: Yep, yep.
Kate: – and they can, they can offer all of their episodes, all of their seasons at once, they can do a binge-watching model, because (a) they’ve discovered that people binge-watch – Netflix has probably all of the data that we want, they’re just not releasing it –
Sarah: Oh, I know, they’re like Amazon in TV Land.
Kate: Yes.
Sarah: I know this about them. Like, TV people are so frustrated ‘cause Netflix won’t give them any data, and I’m like, oh, my God, they’re like Amazon! They must date. I bet they date.
Kate: [Laughs]
Sarah: I bet Netflix and Amazon go out on really hot – like, there needs to, I bet there’s, I would bet you there is Netflix/Amazon fanfiction.
Kate: I don’t want to look that up.
Sarah: [Laughs] I’m telling you, there is some slash Amazon/Netflix. Netfic. Amazon Netfic. I’m going to start writing it now, and then watch, I’ll be a zillionaire, ‘cause somebody’ll totally buy it. But anyway! Netflix has a totally different model –
Kate: Yes, because –
Sarah: – and they dump all at once ‘cause they know people binge.
Kate: They know people binge, but they also can dump all at once because they’re not, their money does not come from advertising, their money comes from subscription fees.
Sarah: Right.
Kate: So they don’t worry, necessarily, about ratings over time, because those minor adjustments determine how much people pay to have their thirty-second advertisement within your episode of The Big Bang Theory.
Sarah: Right.
Kate: What they’re determining is how many people sign up for their service and retain their service based on these shows being available.
Sarah: Right.
Kate: So, that’s, that’s what matters to them.
Sarah: Right. Whereas with a network show, or even a show on cable, you want to maintain viewership across the show, because that’s when your advertiser spots are –
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – but if they’re recording it, you also want them to see those, you, you also want to see the numbers of people who are recording it and watching it later –
Kate: Because that –
Sarah: – because that’s still valuable information.
Kate: That still determines the popularity of a show, and –
Sarah: Right.
Kate: – it’s – the DVRs are tricky because people fast forward through commercials. I watch most stuff on, like, Hulu or, like, streaming services like that –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kate: – and you sort of have to sit through the commercials, but since so many, since streaming viewing is such a small percentage –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kate: – they don’t make a lot of money off of my viewership. They would make more money off of my viewership if I was watching it live.
Sarah: Yes.
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: But yet we, we – one of the things that I think is fascinating about how we, how, the way we consume entertainment generally has changed –
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – is that we want to tailor everything to our expectations and our needs, so I may not want to watch TV on my actual television; I may want to watch it on a small screen close to my face where I can wear headphones and it’s my private thing. I may want to watch it on the train, where I don’t have Internet. Everyone wants to tailor their television watching to their own experience.
Kate: Well, the people that are fitting in their entertainment around their lives, essentially.
Sarah: Yes.
Kate: Which is, as a consumer is actually much better, and I, allows me to consume me more –
Sarah: Yep.
Kate: – quite honestly, because at eight o’clock at night, I’m putting my kid down. I’m not able to watch television.
Sarah: Nope.
Kate: Ten o’clock at night, I’m more likely to be able to do so.
Sarah: Whereas my – the older that I get, now that I’m all, all old and stuff, I don’t act-, I got to bed at ten. I get up, I actually have a reminder on my clock, ‘cause I never know what time it is. I actually have a reminder on my phone that says, go to bed, damn it, at 9:50 p.m., because otherwise I’ll sit there and be like, holy crap, it’s twelve, I’m going to be a basket case, and I don’t do well on no sleep. So I don’t watch anything at ten. Like, people are, in the morning on Twitter, oh, yeah, Conan and Craig and things online, and I’m like, yeah, late night shows? I watch those at, like, seven in the morning, ‘cause I’m not awake at that point in my life.
Kate: [Laughs] No, I watch The Daily Show while I watch break-, while I eat breakfast.
Sarah: Totally! And you’re, you, you have it even worse, because if you’re on the West Coast, like, live events on the East Coast are on at, like, four o’clock in the afternoon for you.
Kate: No, well, I mean, the only time I watch anything live, like, we have to break out the bunny ears, and I live on the side of a, of a mountain –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kate: – so we have to, like, the bunny ears do not work. They, they don’t, they work in a very specific pattern, like, out on the balcony, like, and they can hold for an hour or two –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kate: – so I only watch stuff live if it’s, like, the Oscars –
Sarah: Yep.
Kate: – or the Golden Globes, and that’s, that’s my catnip, and I’ll drink a lot of wine and enjoy the hell out of myself. But, so, for me, like, those events, those are very, very rare.
Sarah: Yeah. And I, and, and if you’re not watching it live, a show like that, there’s not a lot of point in watching the whole thing later. You’re just going to watch someone’s –
Kate: No.
Sarah: – highlight reel.
Kate: But that’s on at 5 p.m. over here.
Sarah: Yeah, that’s just – I, I have, I have always been, I remember as a little kid being so confused by the fact that if I was allowed to stay up and watch the Oscars, it was, like, eight or nine o’clock, and I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it was dark, ‘cause I was on the East Coast, or on the Eastern time zone, and it was, like, in the middle of the day where everyone was. Like, oh, I just finished lunch, and then I had a nap, and now I’m here at the Oscars, and I’m like, the sun’s out! Where are you people? Like, I had no idea how large the difference was.
So, with the, with, with the show that you work on –
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and the shows that you’ve worked on, with YouTube and online shows like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, that’s kind of an obvious measure, because the number of YouTube views is right there.
Kate: Yeah, that’s –
Sarah: You can measure followers and engagement. I mean, that’s all stuff that you can quantify.
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Is it hard to go back to TV where it’s a little bit less quantifiable?
Kate: No, it’s not hard. That’s not really a consideration. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah?
Kate: Yeah, it’s, I, I don’t really think about television or, or the writing that I do in that way? I mean, I did The Lizzie Bennet Diaries because it was my chance to write Pride and Prejudice –
Sarah: Of course.
Kate: – and that was, like, that was the draw for me. It, if it was on the Internet, if it was, you know, it could have been a backyard stage play –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kate: – at, at summer stock, and I still would have been like, sure, let’s go.
Sarah: You would have been, let’s do this! So, the, the ratings for you as a writer are something that you know, you are aware of and that you have to be aware of, but that’s not what you’re actually focusing on when you do your job.
Kate: No. First of all because you, you do your job much further in advance.
Sarah: Of course. Especially in television.
Kate: It’s, in television, yeah. It, but in book writing, too, you do, like, I’m, the book I’m writing right now is not going to come out for another year, so I, I have to, I, I can’t think about it doing well. I just have to think about telling the story that I want to tell.
Sarah: Right. Is there a, a scene or a moment or a specific part of one of the episodes that you’re really excited about seeing or that you’re, it is your favorite? Like, what, is there a scene or a moment that we should all watch for that you’re really excited about?
Kate: I co-wrote an episode with another writer, Paul, who’s awesome, and it takes place at a science fair, and I’ll just say that, and I really, really enjoyed that episode, so –
Sarah: So at the science fair, we should be paying attention, ‘cause that should be fun.
Kate: Yes.
Sarah: Okay, cool!
I hope you enjoyed the interview with Kate Noble, or Kate Rorick, who are, lucky for me, the same person, but before we go, I do have some listener mail that I wanted to share with you, because listener mail is awesome.
This first email is from Elizabeth, who writes:
Dear Sarah and Jane,
I love the podcast. It brings joy to my life. My only disappointment is that it’s only once a week, but yes, you have lives and stuff. [S: It’s amazing to me. I, I have not only live, but also stuff. Like, it’s kind of incredible. And the stuff always needs cleaning, which is really annoying. Anyway.]
I have a question that I’ve been pondering, and I’m still not sure how to frame it. I’ve read a number of novellas that are half books in a longer series. In other words, they’re book number 0.5 before book 1. I am assuming authors issue these to try and tease the series they’re promoting, but does this work for most people? And I am guessing at the correct reason they do this. I think the novella format is hard for many romance authors to pull off, so my reaction to many of them is, meh, fine. But I’m not really inspired to read more unless I’ve already bought them on sale, to which Elizabeth says, curse you, SBTB/DA sales.
Sometimes, however, they’ve almost put me off the entire series. For example, This Wicked Gift by Courtney Milan. I picked it up when you mentioned a slew of Milan books on sale this summer. Milan’s a go-to author of mine. I usually super-duper like, love, or really love her books, but I couldn’t stand this novella. I would not have read another Milan book if she hadn’t already hooked me with other books, and I’d purchased the next two in the Carhart series, which I ended up loving and super liking. I posted my review on Goodreads and saw another reviewer who had a similar negative reaction to Gift, but she wasn’t a Milan fan already and wasn’t about to try more. I told her she should, because doesn’t everyone listen to random strangers on Goodreads? and she’s going to give it a try, but back to my question. What gives with this preponderance of introductory novellas, and are people actually getting hooked on series because of them?
Again, thank you so much for the podcast. I’ve been gardening all summer, and this has been my companion, and now that we’ve entered the polar vortex – yay, Minnesota – it’s my housework distraction enjoyment, so thank you, thank you.
Sarah: You are very welcome. Now that we all have lives and stuff, and the stuff needs cleaning, I’m happy to distract you. But as for your question, I have absolutely no idea the motivations of an author writing anything. Like, I know diddly-poodle about it. However, I have theories. I think that sometimes readers do get hooked on a series from the introductory novella. This Wicked Gift didn’t work for you, but I do know that Unlocked, which was the prequel novella, I believe, to the Turner series, that hooked the hell out of me. I love that novella.
When a writer is very skilled with the shorter format, the novella can be a really great interstitial opportunity to revisit an established world, particularly a world that has already been built, sort of in the urban fantasy sense, like Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series or her Guild Hunter series, or a novella could be an opportunity to visit a world that’s familiar to many readers, such as the Regency historical world. If you can enter and have a short visit and get the full story in a shortened amount of time, many readers, myself included, like that. They don’t always work as a hook for me. I don’t think that there has been a time – and I’m thinking really hard right now; I’m sure you can hear the gears turning – I don’t, I don’t think that there’s been a time where I’ve read a novella and been like, get out of my way, I need everything else in the series right now. But if I had the novella and the rest of the series, I’m very happy, much like you.
I did, however, this week, read the introductory novella to Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series, which was part of an anthology called Playing Easy to Get, and the, the novella was called “The Warlord Wants Forever.” I had never read it because I didn’t want to buy the anthology, and I had never seen published on its own, but when I was doing a trial of Scribd it was in there, so I grabbed it and I read it. I don’t know if that one would have hooked me on the entire universe of that series because there were a lot of things where I was like, worldbuilding, paragraphs, description, no dialogue, lots of description, skip, skip, skip, ooh, more people talking. But having been made very familiar with the world and having read a lot of the Immortals After Dark series, I was really happy to read that particular novella because it got me a, you know, got me a visit with the world that I hadn’t read in a while.
I do know, though, that self publishing has made it easy to write and publish a novella, so authors who may want to fill in the gap between two books may deploy the novella for that purpose. But I’m curious about your thoughts on novellas. Has a novella hooked you on a series? Does it work for you as a reader? Do you grab the novella first, or do you read it later? Do you read the first book and go back to read the introductory novella at some later time? What are your ideas on novellas? What do you think of them? You can email us at [email protected], ‘cause I’m actually very curious about your opinion.
This next email is from Amy, and Amy writes:
Dear Sarah and Jane,
I am a huge fan of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Dear Author. I visit them both on a daily basis. [S: Jane and I say, thank you.] It’s become my routine to listen to your podcast every Sunday while I am cleaning. [S: Everyone’s cleaning! You’re either on the treadmill, or you’re cleaning. I love this. Can you clean on the treadmill? Maybe? My treadmill needs cleaning. Hm. Anyway.] I am always excited when I miss a Sunday and have two to listen to instead of one. Unfortunately, I have to clean more than once a week, so I was wondering if you could recommend any other fun podcasts.
Thank you for being so awesome and for all of the great recommendations you have provided over the years.
Sarah: Ha-ha! Funny you should ask, Amy. Recently, my husband gave up watching football. He gave up on the NFL altogether, something I had done a couple years ago, and because he listened to sports radio to and from work, he started listening to podcasts instead. So we have had, he and I, several conversations about the podcasts that we like and why, and I have recently subscribed to a whole bunch of new ones that I’ve been enjoying, and so I will share them with you now.
First, my number-one go-to, hot-damn-there’s-a-new-
The other podcasts that I really like are Travel with Rick Steves. Now the trick is, with Rick Steves, I usually download the ones that are places where I’ve either been, am curious about, or desperately want to go, and I really like the ones where he interviews people who are writing cookbooks or have written cookbooks or have anything to say about food, or who are tour guides in the towns or cities or countries in which they talk about, because then you’re going to hear from someone who is showing you where they live and why they love it, and I really like that part.
Another podcast that my husband and I both really enjoy is America’s Test Kitchen. Now, we watch America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country on television, and the host, Chris Kimball, can come across on television as a little condescending, a little rigid, although there are moments where he dresses up in a costume and it’s just incredible. There was one where he dressed up as a shrimp, and I, I think it traumatized some level of my optic nerve, because my vision hasn’t been the same since. The podcast, however, is really warm and friendly and entertaining, because they take calls from people who have cooking questions, they interview people, and they talk about not only recipes but also kitchen gadgets and food stories. Like, stories about food. There was an October 24th episode about a story from the 1940s or 1950s about a day where meat fell from the sky and how this could have happened. The one episode that I really, really enjoyed was from this past week, November 7th. It’s episode number 332, where Chris Kimball interviews New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells. Pete Wells is the guy who wrote the review Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant, easily the most scathing negative review I have ever seen and could never even hope to achieve that level of hilarity. Because they’re talking about reviews and what it means to give a positive review and a negative review of a restaurant, you can imagine that this was somewhat relevant to my interests, but the discussion that they had about what you’re doing when you write about a thing that other people consume, whether it’s food or entertainment or the experience of dining, was also very interesting.
Another podcast that I recommend very highly is called Good Job, Brain! Good Job, Brain! is a podcast that’s based on trivia, but it’s for people who ask one another different trivia questions, and they have a recurring theme for each episode so that everyone devises a set of questions for the others, but all of those questions relate to the theme. And they’re, they’re also very funny. They have great chemistry, and the trivia questions are both outlandishly weird and also very familiar, and there’s something very addictive to listening to people answer trivia and being like, I know that one! This is something that we like to listen to together, my husband and I, particularly when we’re in the car.
But the one that I am the most addicted to right now, to the point where I listen to it while I’m cooking and my kids come in the kitchen and are like, where’s that voice coming from? is This American Life. I started listening because in a recent Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, Linda Holmes was talking about how the podcast that everyone is completely bonkers over right now, Serial, is effectively a long individual episode version of a story on This American Life. As, as she put it, look, Serial is like This American Life. If you like that, you’ll like this, and I have not listened to Serial, but This American Life is all of my catnip. It is stories about individual people who you might never, never otherwise hear about. The themes of each episode are, they’re really clever. The ones that I really liked recently were “My Pen Pal” which included a story about a young girl who started a pen pal correspondence with Manual Noriega that went on for a couple of years until he invited her and her mother down to meet him and to meet the people of Panama, and it was obviously quite a political stunt on his part, but to hear her and her mother talk about it is really fascinating. The other podcast that I recently listened to from This American Life is episode number 509 – it says so right here – which took a look at how an individual person’s life can be changed by what is or isn’t on a document, whether it’s a birth certificate or a medical result. That one was really compelling listening, but the production of the stories and the way in which they find these stories is really interesting, so that’s a podcast that I have been listening to almost regularly.
I have tried a couple others, and I haven’t grabbed onto them, you know, with a full subscription and I listen every day, but I also know that if you are listening to this podcast, that you probably have others to recommend, so if you have podcast recommendations that you would like to share, I would love to hear them, and I’m sure Amy would to.
You can email us – do you know the email address? I bet you do. It is [email protected]. That’s S for Sarah, B for Bitches, J for Jane, podcast atgmail.com, and we would love to hear from you about novellas or your ideas about podcasts that you think we would like, or if you have an idea for an interview or something we should feature or something we should talk about, we want to hear that too.
And that is all for this week’s episode.
[music]
The music that you are listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is “Sonata for Piano, Op. 26: Fuga: Allegro Con Spirito” composed by Samuel Barber, and performed by Jade Simmons. It’s from her album Revolutionary Rhythm, which you can find as a CD or as an .mp3 at Amazon and other places where music is sold, and I will link to both Amazon and iTunes and anywhere else when the podcast entry goes up.
This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Holiday on Ice, an original holiday novella in the Play-by-Play series from New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton. You can download it on November 18th, which conveniently is on Tuesday. And hey, it’s a novella in a series, an established, ongoing series. Clearly, this is a thing that works. And also if you haven’t read or seen the Play-by-Play series, you should look at them because that’s pretty much the pinnacle of hot cover art, and I’m not sure anyone could possibly do better, and the series is pretty smoking hot, too. If you like hot contemporary with sports themes, you’d probably like that series.
I think all of the issues with the podcast feed on iTunes have been worked out, but if you’re still having trouble please email me at [email protected], or you can email me at [email protected]. I check both addresses. We are on iTunes, we’re on Stitcher radio, we’re on PodcastPickle with all of the finest pickle-themed podcasts. We should totally do an episode on pickles, now that I’m thinking about it. Hmm. And that’s not just a euphemism. Either way, wherever you are listening to podcasts, we are probably there, and if you’re having trouble finding us, I would be happy to help you find us more, because the more places we are, the more places we can talk about romance novels with people.
I also like knowing that whether you’re cleaning or you’re on the treadmill that you try to talk back to us. That’s awesome. If you do want to talk back to us, email us, or call our Google voice number, which is 1-201-371-DBSA. We would absolutely, I swear I am not even kidding, love to hear from you.
But in the meantime, on behalf of Jane and Kate Noble and myself we wish you the very best of reading. Thank you so much for listening and have a great weekend.
[gorgeous music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
So many podcast recommendations!
Like Sarah, I adore the PCHH guys (Gene and Kat are definitely excellent additions, as is Petra.)
The bulk of my favourite podcasts are book related:
Book Riot
Bookrageous
Books on the Nightstand
Oh, Comics!
Reading Lives
Others are:
Stuff Mom Never Told You
On the Media
Natually, DBSA is in there too. 🙂
I do data entry, so I listen to my podcasts at work.
Audio books are too distracting for me to do while working, so I listen to a lot of old time radio, travel shows, and few interview shows.
Currently I’ve been focusing on a series put together by the guy who runs The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio podcast called The War by Adam Graham. It’s covering America’s involvement in WWII through what was on the radio at the time. Going through the timeline, there’s a mix of news programs, music shows, drama, comedy, speeches, etc. It’s been really fascinating. Particularly the commercials, like I know rationing happened, but they’ve really been bringing home how much of a shortage on things there really was.
Always love Welcome to Night Vale.
For cooking you might want to check out How to Tour Italy. There’s a whole string of segments called “There’s No Such Thing As Italian Food,” that highlights that each region has its own dishes and styles of cooking or the local wines. It’s how I heard of Rosetta Costantino’s cookbook My Calabria.
I find Rick Steves’ voice a little grating, but I give him another shot as I’m looking to replace one of my travel casts.
I started listening to PCHH after a passing mention on DBSA a while back (when you did a PCHH-ish “guess which title / summary is made-up” quiz, I think), and I have been firmly hooked ever since. Belated thank you for that rec, because that show is just delightful.
They’re both part of my rotation while sewing on weekends – DBSA, PCHH and Ask Me Another from NPR. It’s craft show crunch time, so I’ve recently supplemented those with (the?) Self Publishing Podcast, Science Friday, and StarTalk Radio (with Neil DeGrasse Tyson), as well as reconnecting with my love-it/hate-it old favorite the Savage Lovecast. And Welcome to Night Vale is “gather ’round and listen like it’s ’40s throwback radio hour” time with my husband.
I’m happy about more book-related recs, though (thanks, @mischa!)
I listen to the DBSA podcast and Destiny Romance’s Heart to Heart hosted by the marvellous Kat Mayo.
Also, I enjoy Sawbones which is a show about the history of medicine and how badly people got things wrong in the past. It’s hosted by a husband/wife team. She is a doctor and he’s the comic relief. It’s usually very funny (occasionally sad) and always very interesting.
We also listen to There’s No a Such a Thing As A Fish which is a podcast by the Qi Elves where the team of 4 Elves discuss their favourite fact of the previous 7 days and the Sleek Geeks podcast which is about science and numbers and is produced out of the University of Sydney.
Finally, I listen to the Savage Lovecast hosted by Dan Savage where he gives sex advice. It’s usually eye-opening to say the least.
If I find any more time to listen and don’t have an audiobook on the go, I also sometimes listen to Conversations with Richard Fiedler. He has a daily interview on the radio and the show is also available as a podcast. They’re fascinating and informative and very entertaining.
I like “Answer Me This!”.
You are welcome, @Colorwheel!
I love listening to “The Moth” stories, another series that comes from NPR. Also, The New Yorker:Out Loud, has various writers talking about the pieces they did for the magazine, or reviewing books, art, TV and movies. It’s a wide variety of topics so just about anyone can find something to her taste. Right now I’m listening to an episode from last year in which Jill Lepore talks about Jane Franklin(Ben’s sister).
Podcasts I listen to other than DBSA:
Anglofilles
Stuff you missed in history class
Looking through the comments, I think I am going to be adding some new stuff for my podcast feed!
Getting to this a little late, but Alton Brown’s podcast is a must-listen. I also like UnFictional, similar to TAL produced by a local public radio station in LA, and Joy the Baker, though they’re on hiatus while she is on a book tour.
No such thing as too late — thank you for the recs!
The Sex Nerd Sandra podcast is fantastic! She interviews loads of interesting people about sex and communication and relationships–which are all things romance readers tend to be interested in. The podcast covers heterosexual vanilla topics as well as LGBT sexuality, kink, and sex work.
I listen to way more podcasts than I could list, but I think the ones I look forward the most besides PCHH and yours are Galactic Suburbia and The Writer and the Critic. Both are speculative fiction podcasts from Australia, and both have a lot of discussions from a feminist perspective. The Writer and the Critic discusses specific books, while Galactic Suburbia usually take on topics of the day, but both are great in my estimation 🙂
I also recommend the Alton Brown Cast, America’s Test Kitchen Radio, Joy the Baker, The Splendid Table, and The Suze Orman Show. I have a long commute so that’s when I do the bulk of my podcast listening.
Has anyone suggested that you interview a librarian during an episode of the podcast? (When I first read this episode’s title I thought that that was this episode’s topic.) As an academic librarian, I think a public librarian could speak to ebooks, reader’s advisory, as well as big picture topics like how reading, publishing, and the library have changed in the past decade from a library perspective.