In this episode, Elyse and Sarah interview Sarah MacLean, New York Times bestselling author of historical romance. We talk about Billionaire Dinosaurs, but more about her upcoming book, Never Judge a Lady by her Cover, which comes out Tuesday, 25 November. We cover identity, the need for Regency pool boys, and the strange ways MacLean’s book has appeared as a sort of Easter egg on NPR.
Here are the two links to the NPR blog posts about the Dunkin’ Donuts’ Cronut, and the Papa Johns Frito Chili Pizza. (Yes, that’s a real thing).
PLEASE NOTE: Spoilers abound! At about 19:00 in, until about 27:00 or so, there are some plot spoilers about Never Judge a Lady and I apologize for that. Also, another apology: this is not the world’s greatest audio for Elyse, and I’m not sure why it’s muddy when she speaks, but I did my best to clean it up.
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The music this week was provided by Sassy Outwater. This week’s music is called “Calgary Capers” and it’s by Peatbog Faeries from their CD Dust. You can find them at their website or at iTunes.
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This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Cowboys for Christmas, a holiday anthology featuring three all-new, steamy cowboy romances from Kim Law, Terri Osburn, and Liz Talley.
Claire, Georgia, and Mary Catherine couldn’t be more different, but they promised they would be there for one another no matter what. And when they all gather in Holly Hills, Texas, for Mary Catherine’s Christmas wedding, they’ll find they have one thing in common: hearts that are about to be branded—by unforgettable cowboys.
In “Love Me, Cowboy” by Terri Osburn, wallflower Claire would be more excited about the wedding if it didn’t mean running into Mary Catherine’s brother—the bull rider she once had a scorching one-night stand with…
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Download it November 18th!
Transcript
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[music]
Ms. Sarah Wendell: Greetings, and welcome to episode number 116 of the DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Elyse, who reviews for Smart Bitches, and Sarah MacLean, who writes historical romance novels. We talk extensively about billionaire dinosaurs, because that is a very important topic, but we spend more time talking about Sarah’s upcoming book Never Judge a Lady by her Cover. We talk about the need for Regency pool boys and the very strange way her book has been showing up on NPR’s website.
A couple of things you need to know: first, I’m not sure what happened, but we do not have the world’s greatest audio for Elyse. I think it’s because it’s extremely cold where she is in Wisconsin, and the cold was just interfering with everything. That’s my theory. It’s a completely crappy theory, but that’s a theory, either way. I tried to clean it up, and I apologize that I couldn’t scrub all of the background noise out. Second, about 19 minutes in, we get very spoiler-y about the book. If you haven’t read it yet, which is likely, ‘cause it comes out on Tuesday, and today is Friday, you might want to skip this one or skip that part or just skip ahead, starting at about 19 minutes until about 27 minutes roughly. I apologize for the spoilers. The timing didn’t work out perfectly, ‘cause the book comes out in five days, but we wanted to talk to Sarah about all of the things that are going on in this book, because there’s a lot of buzz about it already.
This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Cowboys for Christmas, a holiday anthology featuring three all-new steamy cowboy romances from Kim Law, Terri Osburn, and Liz Talley. You can download that on November 18th.
I also have an offer from Audible that I found when I was searching through some of my affiliate stats. If you go to AudibleTrial.com/DBSA, you can sign up if you’re not already an Audible member and get a free eBook. I am not sure if that is better or worse than any other offer that’s out there right now, but if you were thinking, I like audiobooks, I should listen to more of them, AudibleTrial.com/DBSA might be a good option.
The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.
And now, on with the interview.
[music]
[Note from your friendly transcriptionist, garlicknitter: I’m not saying there are too many Sarahs – how could that even be possible? – but Sarah M and Sarah W is just going to be confusing, so in this episode, the participants shall be addressed a bit more formally than usual.]
Ms. Sarah MacLean: Hello.
Ms. Wendell: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.
Ms. MacLean: I’m thrilled to talk to you, and I do nothing with my evenings, so this is great. You are my excitement for, like, the next year.
Ms. Wendell: Well, remember, you have a book launch coming, so –
Ms. MacLean: I know.
Ms. Wendell: A little bit of, a little bit of evening work will be involved.
Ms. MacLean: Book launches aren’t exciting. They’re more like just, they make you want to pee on things.
[Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: They just make you tired.
Ms. MacLean: As my friend Cat finished her first book, like, two years ago, she finished her first manuscript, and she emailed me and she was like, so, it’s done, and now all I really want to do is print it out and pee on it, and I was like, that is a really remarkable way of expressing how it feels to finish a book. [Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: But yet, I know the feeling.
Ms. MacLean: Just kind of hate it enough to want to urinate on it. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Like, I’m so glad to get you out of my life, but yet you are mine. Zzzzz.
Ms. MacLean: Yes, I mark you.
[Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: Well, Elyse has several questions for you. Elyse, fire when ready.
Ms. Elyse: So first of all, I loved Never Judge a Lady –
Ms. MacLean: Oh, I’m so glad.
Ms. Elyse: There was a lot of squeeing when we got the ARC for that book, and it was squeeing well earned, ‘cause it was awesome.
Ms. MacLean: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. Thank you. Thank you.
Ms. Wendell: There was a lot of all-cap emailing going on.
Ms. MacLean: Oh, yay! I love that!
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: Well, I love that most of – actually, you know what, I kind of love that all the time. Even when I read, like, like, my very, very favorite review ever is a one-star review on Goodreads that goes on for, like, pages and pages in all caps about how much she hates the book, and I’m like, you are so passionate about this, I have obviously done my job. Like –
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: – obviously, I’m glad to have been part of your life for this.
Ms. Wendell: I mean, that’s what you want, really. Any review with strong emotions, positive or negative –
Ms. MacLean: Yeah!
Ms. Wendell: – is going to make another reader go, oh, really?
Ms. MacLean: Yeah. My fear is, like, 10,000 three-star reviews.
Ms. Wendell: Oh, yeah. Just ask Elyse and me, the hardest thing to write is a review that’s sort of like, meh.
Ms. Elyse: Yes, absolutely.
Ms. MacLean: Yeah. It was a fine book.
Ms. Wendell: That, that was, those were some words.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Elyse: I just wrote a review for The Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay, and that was the most fun review I’ve written in ages.
Ms. MacLean: And I read that review and adored it.
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: Adored it. I think, yeah, there was, like, so much about it that I loved, but I actually tweeted my favorite line from it. Which now, of course, I’m drawing a blank on, but I’m going to look it up. But yes. That books sounds, first of all, like, that book arrives on your desk, and of course you’re going to read it.
Ms. Wendell: Oh, yes.
Ms. Elyse: Well, it’s also fifteen pages.
Ms. MacLean: Oh, is it short? [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: All the dino porn is very, very short, and it’s all, like, $2.99 for, you know, sixteen pages.
Ms. MacLean: And do you think that it sells like crazy?
Ms. Wendell: It does now.
Ms. MacLean: Yes.
Ms. Wendell: But one of the things that the review does is that it makes it clear that if ever there was a moment where you were looking at the title of that book and you thought, it can’t be that bad, Elyse answered affirmatively, yes, yes, it can be that bad.
Ms. MacLean: Of course it’s that bad, but it’s gloriously bad.
Ms. Wendell: Yeah, I mean, if you’re going to go bad, go big.
Ms. MacLean: Mm-hmm. The line was, “I don’t know if Salmonella was a concern, but I’d be worried.”
[Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: Well, you’d think that that would be a concern.
Ms. MacLean: Of co-, well, yeah, I mean, I don’t, I don’t want to hang around with lizards ‘cause of that.
Ms. Wendell: I mean, I had a reptile birthday party for my older son when he was three or four, and like, the kids had to wash their hands sixteen times.
Ms. MacLean: Ooh, yeah.
Ms. Elyse: So, did they bring the reptiles into your home?
Ms. Wendell: Oh, yeah, it was great. We had a, a boa constrictor and a tortoise and a lizard and a big-ass albino giant snake – I forget which kind it was – but I have pictures of the kids, and they’re all like, oh, my God, oh, my God, this is amazing and scary, but very cool, and very scary. Let’s all stay at the wall. Like, they were all lined up on the wall like it was –
Ms. MacLean: Oh, that seems horrible.
Ms. Wendell: – it was, it was a real good birthday party, but yeah, they had to wash their hands a lot ‘cause they were touching reptiles.
Ms. MacLean: Yeah.
Ms. Elyse: Well my question is, was it, like, a legitimate enterprise that brought the reptiles in, or was this some guys with, like, a big panel van that this is what he –
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] No –
Ms. MacLean: That’s amazing. First of all –
Ms. Wendell: – no.
Ms. MacLean: – now I’m envisioning Sarah at, like, the local strip mall, like, waving down a guy –
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] Hey –
Ms. MacLean: – with a lizard on his shoulder.
Ms. Wendell: – dude, you got a snake? I need a snake. C’mere, sir. There is a guy who walks around New York with a cat on his head. It, it’s not so far to believe that there would be, like, a guy wandering around Jersey with a lizard.
Ms. MacLean: Character.
Ms. Wendell: Not in his pants, like, on his shoulders.
Ms. MacLean: Sure. So, Elyse has done her job well. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Maybe she saved people from, from spending their money on something truly, egregiously bad.
Ms. MacLean: Well, because really, like, that book seems like it would be terrific, and so, you know, Elyse has really saved people.
Ms. Wendell: Yes, definitely. Or at least saved them from forced gay by a dinosaur.
Ms. MacLean: Right, yeah.
Ms. Elyse: Right, and I’m still not sure what forced gay means. Like, I’m – that’s kind of grammatically incorrect, but also ambiguous, right.
Ms. MacLean: And as you pointed out, not really gay. Like, this is a totally different thing if you’re with a dinosaur.
Ms. Elyse: Right. I think if you’re having sex with a giant lizard, like, the gay thing is the last, last thing you really need to be concerned about, right? I, I think you’ve got probably bigger issues at hand.
Ms. MacLean: Right, like Salmonella.
Ms. Elyse: Right.
[Laughter]
Ms. MacLean: Of course, The Billionaire Dinosaur Gave Me Salmonella was the alternate title. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Yeah, that’ll be the sequel. Salmonella and Other Problems with the Economy.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: I like that the desi-, I like that the dinosaurs made good stock investments –
Ms. MacLean: Oh, yeah.
Ms. Wendell: – and that was the root of their economic, their economic achievement, that they had made good stock investments. That, that’s really all you need to control the world economy.
Ms. Elyse: Can I tell you how proud I was to have worked the repeal of Glass-Steagall into this?
[Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: It was, it was pretty, it was pretty amazing.
Ms. MacLean: Had you been waiting for that your whole reviewing life?
[Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: All right. So, Elyse, what is your first question for Sarah-who-is-not-me? Other Sarah? You can ask me other things, but I know nothing about this book in terms of what went into writing it, ‘cause I didn’t write it.
Ms. Elyse: So, when I finished Temple’s book and I found out the big reveal about Chase, I was pretty shocked, because you did a phenomenal job, I think, of keeping – I, I, so my question is, how did you not write, like, with gender pronouns? Did it involve a lot of drinking? Did you pull out your hair? I mean, how, how did this happen? And were people guessing? Did you have readers who were totally guessing? ‘Cause I didn’t.
Ms. MacLean: So, that, that’s a two-part question, so I will take the first part first. The writing part of it is, was, it slowed, it slowed me down. I mean, frankly, that, these books have been slower to write, as all of my readers will attest, and the truth is that any time I had Chase in a scene, I had to really slow down and think carefully about a couple of things. Both, yes, there is the basic, like, how to write a scene without using gender pronouns is, like, a fun little task that I recommend that anybody try, because it does sort of, it takes time and energy, and those scenes read really differently than all the other scenes in the book, I think, but also, you know, I wanted it to be, my goal with this was really two-fold. Like, one, yes, I wanted you to get to the end and go, [Gasp!] oh, my God, I can’t believe she’s a woman, but also I wanted you to get to the end, say that, and then say, what?! I’m going to go back to the beginning and re-read everything, ‘cause that can’t possibly be the case, and I wanted, when you did the re-read, for it to be totally obvious that Chase is a woman.
Ms. Wendell: Oh, no big deal.
Ms. MacLean: Yeah, so that –
Ms. Wendell: That’s not, like, a really big thing to try to set up across several books. Damn, girl!
Ms. MacLean: So, but now I think what’s interesting is, like, I, look, I, it’s always been obvious to me –
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: – so, so, you know, there were definitely moments where I worried that I pushed it too far, like maybe it was too obvious. Like, there was a scene in Temple’s book where Temple gets really angry with Chase and says, you’ve been playing fucking mother to us –
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: – for, you know, five years, and, and I was like, it’s going to be so obvious, everyone’s going to know that this is what this is, but luckily, a lot of people just took it as the insult, which is what I had hoped for it to be, you know. So, so that’s really that. That’s the writing piece of it, and you know, thank God for that. You know, I have amazing critique partners who, whose job it was to catch any moment where I, where I revealed Chase, and then we slowly brought, there were, you know, four or five people at HarperCollins who knew that Chase was a woman. My editor, obviously. All these books were copyedited by the same person to keep it, you know, a tight, a tight rein on who knew. So, actually, interestingly enough, the whole, like, circle of trust of who Chase really was, there were about, there are now, there are thirteen people in the fictional world who know who Chase really is – [laughs]. There were probably about thirteen people in the real world who knew it too. But to the rest of your question, I was accosted in a bathroom in Texas in the fall of 2012, right after Rogue came out, by a woman who, like, literally backed me into a corner in the bathroom and said, I think Chase is a woman. And I was so shocked by it that I said, well, Chase would be really horrified to know that you think that.
[Laughter]
Ms. MacLean: And then I ran out of the bathroom and I grabbed Sophie Jordan, and I was like, [gasp] oh, my God! Somebody knows! I blew it! It’s obvious! And luckily, she was just a really close reader. But I, if you’ve read the acknowledgements of this book, that woman is mentioned, ‘cause I feel bad for lying to her.
[Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.
Ms. Elyse: I think one of the things you have working in your favor, at least, I think, part of the reason that – I mean, I, you have a, an inherent bias, right? And so I always assumed that Chase was a man, and I never really looked any further to suggest otherwise. And in fact, when the big reveal happened and I realized that Chase was a woman, I was kind of conflicted, because on the one hand I thought, that’s going to be a really, really amazing book, and on the other hand I thought, but I built up this dude in my head who’s really fascinating, and I want to read his book too, right?
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Elyse: I wanted, I wanted it to be a choose-your-own-adventure where we got both options at the end –
Ms. MacLean: Yeah.
Ms. Elyse: – just purely, like, out of selfishness?
Ms. MacLean: Yes.
Ms. Elyse: But –
Ms. MacLean: It would have been hard to write. [Laughs]
Ms. Elyse: Yes.
Ms. MacLean: Well, I think you’re not alone, and I think that, and we, certainly, yes. It’s a trope, right? Like, I, I knew going in as a lifelong romance reader that everybody would just assume Chase was male, because he was, at the time, he was the most powerful. He was the one who’d brought them all together. He had, he was, you know, arguably the one with the most destroyed past and the most destroyed reputation, and so I knew that if I laid all that, all that brickwork, you know, readers, longtime romance readers wouldn’t have any, there would be no question that he was male. So, yes, I definitely played with that trope, you know. I was aware of it, and then, you know, the truth is that we talked a lot about when to reveal it. You know, there was some discussion about, you know, figuring out a way not to reveal it until literally you opened the first page of this book, ‘cause all, every Scoundrels book, the prologue is the moment of the hero’s fall. So we talked about what if we release the whole, release the book, and we wrote the cover copy in an obscure way and, you know, literally, readers open the book and on chapter, chapter, or prologue page one, you realize Chase is a woman. And I, we, both my editor and I were worried that if we had done that, we would lose readers, because of exactly that. Like, I, I have many, many, many emails from people desperate for Chase’s story because he’s so hot.
Ms. Elyse: Well, he is.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs] Yeah. [Laughs more]
Ms. Elyse: I think one of the other things that worked in your favor is, more with old-school romance than more recent historicals, a lot of times when the heroine assumes sort of a masculine identity or persona, she also compensates for it in a way, and, or, or apologizes for it, and Chase is completely badass. Chase will ruin your life and buy your secrets and humiliate you and have absolutely no issue about it, and so, again, from a gender bias way, it reads initially as a very masculine character, because it’s completely unapologetic.
Ms. MacLean: Yeah, well, I mean, thank you. I’m glad that that’s true, because I think the balance and the struggle with any romance novel, right, is that as much as we want to write – and I mean, I, I like to think that I start every book wanting to write a really powerful heroine first and then everything else kind of fills in – but as much as we want to write a really powerful heroine, the reality is that in romance, like, readers, myself included, like to see the heroine kind of set back a bit, set back on her heels, and we like to see her kind of need the hero for something. But the truth is that I had spent three books setting up, like, the most powerful dude in London – [laughs] – and so I didn’t have a choice. I mean, I had, I had the character I had, and that part was hard, but the truth is that, like, you just, I mean, she had to, I knew on chapter one, page one, she had to be set back, right. She had to need something, and that had to be the hardest thing for her to, the bitterest pill for her to swallow. Like, the idea that there was something she couldn’t give herself.
Ms. Elyse: I think –
Ms. MacLean: Or she couldn’t get for herself.
Ms. Elyse: That was probably my favorite scene in the book was right in the beginning when Chase, Georgiana is at the ball, and there are these group of women who – I can’t remember the one woman’s name – but they’re, they’re talking about her behind her back in a way that she can hear them, and they’re being really mean, and she’s letting it slide until they bring her daughter into the mix, and then she just lays into this woman and kind of, like, flays her open verbally in front of all of her friends, and I was like, I love this, because you get to see who Georgiana is and the fact that she really, she appears to be a passive character, and she accepts the censure of society, and underneath that is this very, very strong woman, and she’s willing to sort of suffer these indignities on her own behalf, but when some, they bring in someone she loves, like her daughter, she becomes very, very tough.
Ms. Wendell: It’s really hard to endure that much censure. When you’re excluded or in, in other ways excluded from society, it takes an enormous amount of strength to put up with that. That’s not something you endure if you’re, if, if, if you don’t –
Ms. Elyse: Yeah.
Ms. Wendell: – have some sort of strength already.
Ms. MacLean: Mm-hmm. And that scene’s been written, right, a million times. That sort of, you know, heroine receiving, like, in the moment of receiving censure from society, but again – and, and I have to say, I’m actually really glad that that worked for you, because, I mean, I knew Chase had to vow to destroy her, and then she had to make good on it, right? And so, and that’s not something a heroine in a romance novel usually does, and so, you know, I, Mary, who’s the character you’re talking about, like, systematically over the course of the book, like, she loses everything. She loses her suitors, she becomes a pariah in society, all done through, through Chase, and so there were definitely moments where I was like, how unlikeable is she going to be? Like, how do I offset this behavior, the behavior of Chase, with, like, the honesty and nobility of Georgiana, and that’s – I’m glad that it, it worked for you.
Ms. Elyse: Yeah, I remember reading that and thinking that I should feel bad, but then not feeling bad.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs] I’m glad!
[Laughter]
Ms. MacLean: ‘Cause Mary, ultimately, she gets let off the hook, so, that was me. I’m not entirely certain that Chase would have let her off the hook, honestly, but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t let her sort of be so destroyed. [Laughs]
Ms. Elyse: So that kind of leads into my next question was, again, one of the things that impressed me is you have a heroine who has three distinct personas, right, so she’s Georgiana and, who’s the sister of a duke, and she’s Anna, who’s a prostitute, allegedly, and then she’s Chase. It was interesting to me that you managed to keep all three of those separate, yet they were part of the same character. And I don’t think there was any point in the book – I think this is what impressed me the most, ‘cause there’s no point in the book where I got confused as to who she was supposed to be at that moment. I cannot imagine, as a writer, pulling that off, so, did you ever, I mean, was it kind of like this crazy multiple personality, who is Chase supposed to be at this moment? Did you have a lot of notes?
Ms. MacLean: The hardest part of this book to write for me was the first 75 pages, and when I say hardest part, I mean I probably rewrote the first 75 pages eighteen to twenty times, for lots of reasons. I also, I had a baby in the middle of all of this, and –
Ms. Wendell: Oh, like that’s an excuse.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs] – and what’s interesting about that is I was writing, you know, I wrote 200 pages of the book before I had the baby, and – and now I’m sort of going off on a tangent, but I’ll come back around – and, and I was writing, you know, 200, I wrote 200 pages about a heroine who had a baby, right? Or who had a child and, like, was doing, her whole motivation was to protect her child, and then I had a child, and I was like, oh, wait a second. What I wrote before and what she really would be thinking in this moment are not the same thing, right, so there were, there were things that just suddenly didn’t ring true to me, now that I had my own sort of squalling goblin, but the, the truth is that, you know, the beginning was really hard because there, you know, at one point there was a scene where, a scene with Duncan and Anna where before he knew who she was in there, and it got confusing, and so for me it was really important. Again, I’m really thrilled that it worked for you, because it was really important that whoever she was in the moment, the reader knew, and I think that most, you know, the benefit of writing romance and writing really deep POV, which is how I write, is, unless you were in Duncan’s POV, and Duncan knew pretty quickly that she was Anna also, and that was a choice that I made because I had to get, when you’re writing a triple identity, you have to get one of them out of the way pretty quickly in order to make it a little bit easier to read, but you as the reader almost always heard about her as Georgiana, so you were in on the joke, I guess, in every scene, no matter who she was playing. I –
Ms. Wendell: How many Post-it® notes were involved in the construction of this story?
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs and laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Were there, like two tablets? Like, do you have a wall art of Post-it notes?
Ms. MacLean: I do have a wall art of Post-it notes. I mean, now I’m working on a new book, but yes. That is how I work, and there were a lot of them. I can say many, many, many. I mean, I was stupid, right? Like, most people write a double identity, and I wrote a triple identity, and it was really ridiculous and took a lot of energy and was hard to do, and now, I regret it. [Laughs]
Ms. Elyse: So which identity do you think best represents who Chase is as a character? Is it Chase the, the club owner, or is it really a combination of the three of them?
Ms. MacLean: I mean, I think it’s, I think it’s probably Chase, the club owner, and with, like, a, a pretty decent mix of Georgiana, the sister of the duke, and Chase, the club owner. Anna is the mask, and that’s why I felt really comfortably, comfortable kind of, like, revealing her to Duncan early in the book, because she’s, she’s fully a mask, right? She’s not really a prostitute, she’s not really, she’s, there are a lot of things about her that aren’t true. But Chase is very real. Like, I mean, when she, she lived that life, she knew she wanted to live that life. I mean, in my head, she conceived of Chase back during the Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart, there’s a line where she says to her brother, like, she refers to herself as a fallen angel and then says she’s going to ask him for a favor. So I sort of envisioned that, like, at seventeen, she had, she was playing a long con, and she knew she needed the mask of Anna in order to get there.
Ms. Elyse: So speaking of Chase being a real person, one of the things that Sarah and Carrie talked about in a previous podcast is this disservice I think that is done to women in history through formal education with what women were supposed to be like and what they were supposed to do, and you completely miss out on all the amazing stories about what women were actually doing through history.
Ms. MacLean: Mm-hmm.
Ms. Wendell: Carrie and I did a nearly forty-five-minute podcast about all of the amazing Victorian women that Carrie has researched who were adventurers and scientists and spies and travelers, and they all came up with socially acceptable reasons like, I have an illness, and I need to take the air, but I would like to take it in as many locations around the world as possible. Bye!
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: And, and, and Elyse is totally right. I mean, only a few of them I knew of, and only because they were part of my local curriculum because they were from Pittsburgh, and –
Ms. MacLean: Uh-huh.
Ms. Wendell: – Madam C. J. Walker is a badass. Otherwise, we know very little about these women.
Ms. MacLean: That’s true.
Ms. Elyse: So was Chase based or inspired on any actual historical character, or did – ? One of the things that’s interesting about The Fallen Angel, there’s a, a woman’s side to the, the casino where women can come and gamble and they have their own thing going on. I mean, how much research did you do into that, or is this completely fictitious?
Ms. MacLean: There is no evidence that there was an established female casino in London at the time, but there is a lot of evidence that women would go to, like, tea parties and sewing circles and, like, basically, they would go to book club and then gamble. They would wager and gamble and drink and sort of do all the things that men were doing, and that’s the, really, the thing that – I mean, of course they did all the things that men were doing. Imagine, you know, if your husband was out every night at his men’s club and you were expected to sit at home and needlepoint, right? Like, it’s hard to imagine Sarah Wendell doing that, right?
Ms. Wendell: Wait, am I, am I, am I, like, just by myself in a quiet room?
Ms. MacLean: Yeah, I mean, you could have friends in.
Ms. Wendell: Because I’m totally down with that, just for the record. That sounds great.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: But yes, I know exactly what you’re saying.
[Laughter]
Ms. MacLean: So –
Ms. Wendell: But yes, the husband is not allowed to go out and have all the fun without me.
Ms. MacLean: Exactly! That’s, you would be pissed if every night he was like, oh, I’m going to my club again.
Ms. Wendell: Yeah.
Ms. MacLean: You’d be like, well, where’s my club? So, in part it’s, it’s not based on anything specific. It is, like, The Fallen Angel is my Hogwarts, right? Like, the idea is that whatever the book is that needs to get written, there’s something in, the, the Angel sort of twists and turns and becomes the club that it needs to be in order to serve the, the book, and, you know, there are things that I knew. There’s a map; there is an actual map of the Angel in my office, and, like, I knew there were certain things, like, I knew the boxing ring existed. I knew Cross’s office was reached by, you know – I knew there was a whole web of, of private passageways that Cross designed, and I knew there was a ladies’ side, right? ‘Cause it seems like they deserve it.
Ms. Wendell: Totally. Why the hell not?
Ms. MacLean: And there probably was something like this. There just, you know, women are lost to history, and so probably our place, their spaces are as well. Imagine how horrified a group of, like, crusty men would be to discover that there was a women’s casino. They would destroy all the evidence of it.
Ms. Elyse: Yeah, I think that’s one of the things that when people make comments to me about romance novels being unfeminist, it’s like, we’re literally re-writing history from a female perspective. How, how is that not a feminist endeavor? Speaking of research, there were Regency swimming pools? For real?
Ms. MacLean: There were Regency swimming pools! Thank God. [Laughs] I mean, I assure you, there was going to be a swimming pool in this book, and so I would have figured out a way to do it, but luckily, there were, like, five swimming pools; there are documented five swimming pools in London in the early 1800s.
Ms. Wendell: They must have smelled so funky.
Ms. MacLean: I know. Let’s not talk about it.
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: Especially because, I think it was my husband, somebody said to me when I wrote – ‘cause I, there’s a very, there’s what is, I’m coming to realize, as I read, like, early comments about the book, a rather, like, serious sex in a, in a swimming pool here, and I think it was Eric who was like, well, how does the pool get cleaned after they have sex in it? [Laughs] And I was like, let’s not discuss it. Let’s just pretend –
Ms. Wendell: We don’t need to worry about those things with beings in romance land.
Ms. MacLean: They were like – exactly!
Ms. Wendell: We don’t worry about cleaning the pool, we don’t worry about morning breath, we don’t worry about many, many disgusting things.
Ms. MacLean: Well, let’s just put it aside and say –
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: – Duncan is very smart and, like, early chlorination. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Yes.
Ms. Elyse: And where did they get the water for the pool?
Ms. MacLean: I know. But, you know – [laughs] – where did they get the water for the pool? I don’t know is the answer to that question.
Ms. Wendell: Well, I do know that in, in Judaism, we have a, we have the mikveh, which is –
Ms. MacLean: Oh, yeah.
Ms. Wendell: – collected rainwater, and that’s been around for, you know, zillions of years, and I know that hammams have been part of Arabic culture for just as long, and they’re both equally warm and awesome bodies of water that I highly recommend everyone visit. It, it doesn’t seem impossible that they could have collected rainwater or at least brought it to a low level point in an area where it could then become a pool.
Ms. Wendell: The, the, the cleaning –
Ms. MacLean: But wouldn’t –
Ms. Wendell: – the cleaning part, though, I’m not, I’m not sure how –
Ms. MacLean: And there were the Roman baths, right?
Ms. Wendell: Of course.
Ms. MacLean: Like, that’s a thing, so –
Ms. Wendell: Yep. And then there was Bath.
Ms. MacLean: And there was Bath.
Ms. Wendell: Where they had baths.
Ms. MacLean: They did. They took baths.
Ms. Wendell: Conveniently named, that place.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Elyse: You guys aren’t seeing the larger question, though, which is, were there Regency pool boys?
Ms. MacLean: I – That’s a good question. I – Not in my book, but sh-, there should have been. That’s a – See? That’s a whole ‘nother scene I could have written. We should have talked before. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Well, there’s your next series: Regency pool boys.
Ms. MacLean: Yeah, you think that’ll sell? [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Uh, yes, actually.
Ms. MacLean: The Regency pool boy turned by dinosaur boss gay.
Ms. Wendell: That’s exactly what needs to happen to that dinosaur, actually.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: So, what are you working on right now?
Ms. MacLean: I am working on the new series, which is called Scandal and Scoundrel, and it is, basically, it’s like TMZ in the Regency, so I’m taking modern celebrity scandals, and I’m giving them a Regency twist.
Ms. Elyse: Oh, my God.
Ms. MacLean: Or in this case, a pre-Victorian twist. So, my first book – I guess I can share this – my first book is loosely based on Beyoncé/Jay Z/Solange at the Met gala.
Ms. Wendell: Wait, where, where, where she –
Ms. MacLean: Where Solange –
Ms. Wendell: – smacked the crap out of him in the elevator?
Ms. MacLean: – yeah, punched Jay Z in the elevator. My heroine is Solange, and it, it is not an elevator, but I’m not going to say very much more about it. But that is the beginning, that is the inciting incident of my next book, which is called The Rogue Not Taken.
Ms. Elyse: You can’t see me, but I’m bouncing up and down ‘cause I know this right now.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs] And you know, and you actually know the heroine. It’s Sophie from –
Ms. Elyse: Oh, yes!
Ms. MacLean: – Lady, Never Judge a Lady.
Ms. Wendell: All right, I, I need to send both of you a link. I just received an email from Mary, and Mary wanted me to know about something that – I can’t believe she actually sent this during the podcast – so, I’m sending you both a link.
Ms. MacLean: Okay.
Ms. Wendell: All right, it is an NPR link. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Sarah.
Ms. MacLean: Oh, I’ve seen this.
Ms. Wendell: But as you –
Ms. MacLean: Which one is it? There are two of them.
Ms. Wendell: If you scroll down through a bunch of guys eating Papa John’s Frito chili pizza, check out the third picture down as, I think that’s Peter –
Ms. MacLean: I don’t know the guy –
Ms. Wendell: – who hosts Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, but check out the background, Elyse.
Ms. MacLean: It is Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me. And last week’s post, I will send you a link.
Ms. Wendell: This is amazing. So, in the middle of a, a whole discussion of Papa John’s Frito pizza, which No –
[Laughter]
Ms. Wendell: Which, just, just, just, just No – and they, they caption a picture of the pizza with Fritos all over the top of it as “blurring the line between ‘recipe’ and ‘spilling your Fritos in exactly the right place.’”
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: In the third picture down, in the background, there’s straight-up a dude reading your book!
Ms. MacLean: Yes. Last week, they put a Cronut on my book.
Ms. Wendell: What are they doing with your book and all this food?
Ms. MacLean: I have no idea. I have no idea.
Ms. Wendell: Like, is your book running around NPR headquarters?
Ms. MacLean: I can only assume that HarperCollins sent the book to wherever, to, to the book person at NPR, it was on top of a pile of stuff, and then last week, they put a Cronut on it.
Ms. Wendell: Of, well, like you do.
Ms. MacLean: Take, to take, like, they were like, we need to take a picture of this Cronut, and like, they literally reached, and like, this was the first book that they pulled off the shelf. But then I think they were just amused, and so now it’s a thing, and I never want it to end. I want them to eat that, like, Kentucky Fried Chicken thing with the two fried chicken breasts as buns? I want that next with my book in the shot.
Ms. Wendell: God, poor Chase, she’s going to get greasy.
Ms. MacLean: She is. She’s a dirty girl.
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] So they’re just using your book as a food prop –
Ms. MacLean: And I’m fine with it. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: Dude. I should say so!
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: “The real failure here is that Dunkin’ Donuts didn’t call it the Crunkin’ Cronut.” Oh, God! Oh, God.
[Laughter]
Ms. MacLean: Right? How weird is that?
Ms. Wendell: That’s very strange.
Ms. MacLean: And I swear to God, this, today, when the blog post went up and a reader sent it to me and was like, do you know someone at NPR? And I was like, I really, honestly don’t. And then all afternoon my friends have been texting me, like, who do you know at NPR? And I’m like, this is not good marketing! [Laughs] Right? I mean, it’s awesome, but – I do not know anybody at Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, but I would like to. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: What is up? Okay, I must know what is up with the multiple shots of this book –
Ms. MacLean: Right?
Ms. Wendell: – because, oh, my goodness.
Ms. MacLean: It’s amazing. It’s amazing. But we, I love it, and I never want it to end. [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: I mean, it’s just so subtle and absurd, it’s, it’s perfect. You couldn’t plan it better.
Ms. MacLean: Yeah.
Ms. Wendell: You know what I mean?
Ms. MacLean: It’s amazing.
Ms. Elyse: Now, you want Carl Kasell to read an excerpt from Sarah MacLean’s book.
Ms. Wendell: Oh, sweet Moses.
Ms. MacLean: Right? Like I want to fl-, I would, I would happily fly myself to Chicago for that moment. Like, I would do any-, I would fly both of you to Chicago with me.
Ms. Wendell: I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m game; let’s do this. [Laughs]
Ms. MacLean: So –
Ms. Wendell: I’m Carl Kasell.
[Laughter]
Ms. MacLean: Right? [Laughs] Amazing.
Ms. Wendell: So, is, are there audiobooks of these, of, of the series?
Ms. MacLean: There are audiobooks of the six –
Ms. Wendell: Do you like the narration?
Ms. MacLean: I have to be honest, I have never listened to one of my audiobooks all the way through, because it really weirds me out. So –
Ms. Wendell: I can totally understand that.
Ms. MacLean: – I don’t know that, I don’t think, that doesn’t mean I don’t like the narration; it just means that it really weirds me out to hear it, ‘cause it, it never sounds like what it sounds like in my head, right? Like, I, I lived with these people, and I lived with Chase for a long time. But I will say, I haven’t heard the audio of Never Judge a Lady, but I do worry that she will be, like, breathless audio romance heroine –
Ms. Wendell: Nooo.
Ms. MacLean: – and that is a big worry for me, ‘cause, like, she is not breathless audio romance heroine. So –
Ms. Wendell: No, the, the, the narrators that I have heard and that I have, and the, of the, of the women that I have interviewed and spoken with at different conferences, they are not breathless. They are throaty, deep, sexy voices that are just, they just sound amazing.
Ms. MacLean: Okay. Good.
Ms. Wendell: They just sound incredible.
Ms. MacLean: Good.
Ms. Elyse: Many years ago I listened to a Stephanie Laurens book on audio, and I had to stop when I got to the sex scene, because the narrator was a dude, and he sounded like he was a very distinguished, older gentleman, like you would call him Smithers, and he would be a butler.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs] Yeah?
Ms. Elyse: – to the sex scene, I was like, nope! Nope, nope. Not –
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs] Well, the, the narrator for this book is a woman named Justine Eyre, like Jane Eyre, and I, she has not narrated any of my other books, but I did listen to a, to a sample of her narrating a Lisa Kleypas book, and it was terrific, so –
Ms. Wendell: She narrated some free short stories for, of Nalini Singh’s for Tantor Audio, and I linked to them last week. They’re amazing.
Ms. MacLean: Oh, good, I’m glad.
Ms. Wendell: She’s terrific.
Ms. MacLean: She’s also beautiful, p.s. Like –
Ms. Wendell: Good voice and hot?
Ms. MacLean: And really gorgeous.
Ms. Wendell: Not fair.
Ms. MacLean: I know. Yeah. When you Google her, her, like, Wikipedia page comes up, and she’s just stunning. So.
Ms. Wendell: Of course.
Ms. MacLean: You can imagine that, that it, that she is Chase.
Ms. Wendell: So, say more about what you’re working on now, if you can. And if you can’t –
Ms. MacLean: I have the second scandal, which I’m not going to get into, but I know what the second book is. And then I’m sort of waiting for some celebrity to do something ridiculous. [Laughs] So –
Ms. Wendell: Oh, that’ll happen tomorrow.
Ms. MacLean: – at any point, like, TMZ is going to report something, and that’s going to be my third book.
Ms. Wendell: So, is there, like, a TMZ gossip rag newspaper?
Ms. MacLean: Well, I’ve written a lot of newspapers in my, in my career, so there could be. As of right now, it’s really more like, the concept is that the book itself is that, like, is, you know, the headline, so every chapter – as of right now, and this is obviously a work in progress – every chapter has, like, a TMZ-style headline. I’m toying with, you know, a couple of different stylistic ways to make it really feel, you know, celebrity gossip-y.
Ms. Wendell: [Laughs] You need to do, like, the Upworthy series.
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs]
Ms. Wendell: You won’t believe what this duchess did next!
[Laughter]
Ms. MacLean: Yes. Oh, my God, now, I might steal that. That’s hilarious. Yeah! Like –
Ms. Wendell: Feel free!
Ms. MacLean: – ten, ten things that this marquess didn’t tell his, you know, marchioness, or –
Ms. Elyse: So –
Ms. Wendell: He thought it was a standard trip through Hyde Park, but then she did this!
Ms. MacLean: [Laughs] Exactly. So, yeah! I mean, I’m having a lot of fun with it actually, because it’s a little – I mean, I, I said to myself, I’m going to write a lighter series, and of course it’s not as light as I had sort of intended. There’s, I just can’t do it. But it is a little more, it’s really different than, you know – four books of, four books in the Rules of Scoundrels series, four books in a London gaming hell in the 1830s, it ended up getting pretty dark in some of the places. Some of those corners were really dark. [Laughs] So it’s nice to kind of be writing a little more, a little lighter.
Ms. Elyse: So, I have a special request, and you can just completely ignore me –
Ms. MacLean: Yeah.
Ms. Elyse: – but I totally think Azrael should have a book because I’m intrigued by him –
Ms. MacLean: Mm-hmm.
Ms. Elyse: – and I need more Azrael.
Ms. MacLean: I love him. I love him, and in, in my perfect world there would be, like, a novella or a book that’s, like, Azrael and Mrs. Worth, who’s Bourne’s, I don’t know if you remember, but Bourne has a housekeeper who’s really gorgeous, really, really beautiful, and I sort of have this, like, fantasy that they’re, that they end up together.
[music]
Ms. Wendell: And that is all for this week’s podcast. I want to thank Sarah MacLean and Elyse for taking the time to talk to us. I apologize again for the very strange, fuzzy, muddy audio. I hope it wasn’t too excruciating to listen to. Some day, when I locate my venture capitalist and pin him to the ground, I will build a gloriously awesome recording studio. It’ll have, like, a hot tub, a Regency hot tub. There’ll be a pool boy, possibly some cravats. It’ll awesome, but right now I’m doing my best. I apologize. I learn something about audio editing every time I do a podcast, so, it’s a long process. Either way, I apologize.
This podcast has been brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Cowboys for Christmas, a holiday anthology featuring three all-new steamy cowboy romances from Kim Law, Terri Osburn, and Liz Talley. You can download it on November 18th.
And if you’re wondering, I bet I know who this music is, you’re probably right. This is the Peatbog Faeries. This is called “Calgary Capers.” Our music is provided every week by Sassy Outwater. You can find her @SassyOutwater on Twitter, and you can find the Peatbog Faeries on their website or on iTunes or Amazon or anywhere music is sold, pretty much.
Future podcasts will include Jane and me interviewing a librarian about acquisition, building a romance collection, and things that drive her absolutely bananas. And if you enjoyed the podcast or you have an idea or you have a question you wish we would ask Sarah MacLean, you can email us at[email protected]. You can call and leave a message on our Google voice number, which is 1-201-371-DBSA. Don’t forget to give us your name and where you’re calling from. Or you can find us online on our respective websites, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Dear Author; when we post the podcast entry, there’s always a comment section, and you can tell us what’s up. What you think. What problems you have. What ideas you have. What books you recommend. We like book recommendations. It’s always kind of expensive to know us and talk to us, but we love a good book recommendation.
But in the meantime, wherever you are, I’m presuming it’s probably cold, and if it’s not, you’re very lucky, Sarah MacLean and Elyse and I wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.
[capering music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Oh, excellent! I noticed both those appearances on the NPR blog and wondered about them (mostly to get jealous that other people already have their hands on a copy), and I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed and that someone is talking about it 🙂
Though if there are spoilers I think I’m waiting till after my copy gets here to hear what you have to say about the matter.
(And in general thanks for the podcasts, I really enjoy listening to them!)
Thank you for the spoiler alert. Now just to remember to come back and hit click. Even to hit click without spending money.
Thank you! I loved never judge a lady and I can’t wait for the next series!
To answer the question about where the water for the pools in Regency era London came from, the earliest public swimming pools (or baths) in London were built on natural springs (there are a few streets in London which hint at the old locations for these, like Coldbath Fields Lane).
Did the podcast feed URL change when the website was redesigned? I just realized Downcast didn’t load the last two episodes. I was able to delete my old subscription and create a new one, which seems to be working fine.
It sort of did? It wasn’t supposed to, but because of the new site, some folks did have to unsubscribe and resubscribe. I’m sorry about that!
Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me is at it again– go look at their most recent Sandwich Monday. Two book sightings.
I went to a birthday party that a friend and his wife had organized for their son, and they had a company called “Zoo to You” bring a bunch of animals for the kids to see/learn about/pet. As I recall there was, among others, a hedgehog, a chinchilla and, yes, various reptiles, including an albino python. Best. Kid’s party. Ever!