125. An Interview with RedHeadedGirl and Courtney Milan

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 125 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is RedHeadedGirl, also of Smart Bitches, and Courtney Milan.  We are going to talk about her new book, Trade Me, which came out on Tuesday, because once RedHeadedGirl finished it, she said, could we please do a podcast with Courtney Milan ‘cause I have all these things I want to ask her about, so I said, okay.  So we talk about the book, we talk about what Courtney’s reading right now that isn’t her own work, what’s up with future books in this series and other series, and there’s also appearances by some pets, possibly mine, definitely hers.  This podcast is way better with pets; I think I’ve just reached that point.

The music that 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 this podcast is being brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Wicked All Night, the latest sizzling-hot novella in the Wicked Lovers series from New York Times bestselling author Shayla Black, available on January 20^th, which was this week, wherever fine, fine books are sold.

I hope you enjoy this interview.  We had a really good time discussing New Adult, historicals, billionaires – lots of discussion about billionaires – and, like I said, dogs.  And now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Courtney Milan:  How are you doing?

Sarah:  We are all good.  How are you?

Courtney:  I’m doing great.

Sarah:  You mean it’s a release week and you’re not completely losing your mind?  You’re, like, sitting around like no big thing?

Courtney:  My husband and I went out to breakfast this morning.  We went to this great new Cajun place we’d never gone to before.  It was awesome!  They had beignets and everything, and chicory coffee.

Sarah:  No.

RedHeadedGirl:  Mmm.

Courtney:  Oh, so good.

Sarah:  I, I, I have jealousy now.

Courtney:  So I feel great.

Sarah:  Amazon listed your book!  What more do you need, right?

RHG:  [Laughs] Eventually.

Courtney:  Oh, my God.

Sarah:  You must have been so peeved.

Courtney:  It usually goes live in, like, two hours.  I don’t know, apparently having all the processing power in the world is sometimes not enough.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Having all the servers and hosting all the things just doesn’t make it work sometimes.

Courtney:  Seriously.  Just, what are you going to do?

RHG:  Refresh constantly?

Sarah:  That’s what I was doing.

Courtney:  That’s what I was doing.  Yeah.

Sarah:  I didn’t want to post the review until the Amazon link was, was valid because the first thing that happens if you post a review of a book that people want to buy and they can’t buy it is that they get really mad!

Courtney:  I know, I know.

Sarah:  Totally understandable reaction, so –

Courtney:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – I was in, like – and my, my kids had it off, so I was in, like, Toys R Us refreshing my phone.  Just a minute, I need to see if there’s a book.  Okay, let’s go to the next store.

Courtney:  Lately it’s been taking, like, more than twenty-four hours to go live, and I’m like, what?

Sarah:  Whoa.

Courtney:  So that would’ve been bad.

Sarah:  That would complicate a release date.  So have you been pleased with the, with, with the response so far?

Courtney:  Yeah, I have!  It’s been very interesting.  Since this is my first contemporary – I mean, this is, this is a book that I had no idea how anyone was going to respond.  Like, literally nobody.  It was just sort of like, oh, okay.  Let’s see what happens.  So –

Sarah:  One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a mix of, wait, Courtney Milan wrote a contemporary with an Asian-American heroine?  And why did you wait so long to write an Asian-American heroine?

Courtney:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It’s like two opposite spectrums.  There’s very little, oh, okay.

Courtney:  Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting.  Well, you know, there’s also people who, there was also people who were like, you know, I’ve wanted to read you, but I don’t really read historicals, and so I can start with this.

RHG:  Oh, fools.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  Well, I’m not going to agree with that.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  That just sounds terr-, no, I mean, like, I think that’s fine.

RHG:  No, but the great things that they miss!  I’m sad for them.  I’m sad.

Courtney:  Yeah, well, you know, there’s some people, you know – I, I have to, I understand.  There’s some things I just don’t read at all ever, even if people tell me, this book is the best book ever, I’m like, I do not read books about fake countries with princesses.  I do not, I do not.

Sarah:  Wait, what?  You don’t?  Why not?

Courtney:  I don’t.  I, I don’t know.  I just, it’s, you know, I, somebody can tell me it’s the best book.  I might even buy the book, but I will just not read it when it comes down to it.

Sarah:  Huh.

Courtney:  It just, I, I think I’ve read, like, one or two of them, and I don’t know, it’s just – there’s something about it that seems so twee to me that I just can’t get past that.

Sarah:  You mean all these, all these, like, magical Middle Eastern countries where no one is Muslim and there’s no praying at all?

Courtney:  Or they invent, like, some tiny country in Europe that apparently exists in the Alps and the Alps alone…

Sarah:  Lich-, like Lich-, Luxembourgsteining?

Courtney:  Exactly, exactly.  I, we can’t do this.  I’m going to start making fun of these books.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  It’s not going to sound good.  No, they’re perfectly, they’re perfectly fine books.  They’re just not for me.  No.

Sarah:  No, I totally understand that.  I generally can’t read suspense.

Courtney:  So, I, I get that.  Yeah, I’m not a big suspense reader either, so –

Sarah:  I far too often wander into situations with children in peril, and that’s the end of it for me.  Like, RedHeadedGirl, your review of Selma.  There’s children in peril, and I was like, well, thank you for the warning.  I’m not going to be able to see that.

RHG:  Yeah, you –

Sarah:  You were thinking of me, weren’t you?

RHG:  I was thinking of you.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  The, Sarah’s going to want to see this movie, and she needs to – this is, like, the fact that it opens with, with the Birmingham church bombings is going to just set her off –

Sarah:  Yeah.

RHG:  – and it’s not going to be fun for anybody.

Sarah:  That’ll be nightmare city for Sarah.  I, I know my brain.  My brain and I have worked out a, a very casual agreement:  no romantic suspense, no children in peril, I get eight hours of sleep, life is good.

RedHeadedGirl, you said you had questions.  Bring them on.

RHG:  Oh, I mostly just kind of wanted to gush.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s totally acceptable!

RHG:  I –

[Dog barking]

Sarah:  So does Courtney’s dog.

RHG:  Hi, puppy!

Sarah:  I have headphones on; otherwise, mine, mine would be joining in.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  Yeah, and we’d get this, this feedback barking.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Courtney:  If I didn’t have headphones on, then my dog would hear yours, and he’d be like, what?  We’re barking now?  We can do that!

RHG:  Okay!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That would be, like, the fourth or fifth pet that has made an appearance on this podcast.  There’s a lot of pets on this podcast.

Courtney:  That does not surprise me one bit.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So, gush away.

RHG:  I mean, I think the, the moment that the, the book was sold for me was when Tina went off on Blake in class, which is a thing that I have wanted to do many times –

Courtney:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – and I did a couple of times in law school, which I was, I was, like, in a place to do that because I was a nontraditional student, I was in my thirties, and when you’re in your thirties, as opposed to your early twenties –

Courtney:  My God.

RHG:  – you have so fewer fucks to give.

Sarah:  Oh, I love this.  I’m approaching forty, and my fucks are diminishing, like, exponentially every day.

Courtney:  It’s true, it’s true.

Sarah:  It’s wonderful.

RHG:  And you just have a moment where you’re like, okay, I know that you are twenty-two and you don’t actually understand how the world works, so let me teach you a thing.  Or two.

Sarah:  I am not here for your silliness.  Sit down.  [Laughs]

RHG:  Exactly.  Exactly.  Let’s, let’s talk about what poverty actually is, and just Tina trying to describe to Blake what a bag of rice means, and that she’s given a giant pile of money, and the, the thing she does to feel like she isn’t poor anymore is just to buy fresh mangoes.  It’s just like –

Courtney:  Mangoes are awesome.

RHG:  [Very quietly] I hate mangoes.

Courtney:  [Also quietly] Really?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I’m, I’m, I’m with her, unfortunately.  Mangoes and cantaloupe and honeydew have this textural thing that I am just not on board with –

Courtney:  Wow.

Sarah:  – but I understand the love of expensive tropical fruit because I have a deep love of pineapple.  Mm-mm, love pineapple.

Courtney:  You know, okay, that would be a total derail, I’m not going to say –

Sarah:  Feel free!

Courtney:  I’ll do this briefly.  My sister and I were talking about what tropical fruits taste like, and so if you ever want to do something fun, type in “mangoes taste like” or “papayas taste like” in Google and see what autocomplete comes up with.

Sarah:  No.

Courtney:  It’s really interesting.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Is it going to be, like, feet?

Courtney:  Mangoes taste like fish.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  I do not understand that one.

RHG:  I’m sorry –

Sarah:  No, I’m pretty sure they don’t.

Courtney:  Papayas taste like vomit?  True.  That’s what I think.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  But it’s, it’s so fascinating the way different people taste different things.  I’m just going to throw that out there, and then we can go back to actually talking about the book, but I just want to say, every time somebody, there’s something I love that somebody else doesn’t like, I always assume that we just have different taste buds, and they’re tasting something completely different than me.

Sarah:  I, I always figure, I like in books that people either adore or hate two things, like cilantro.  Some people think it makes the, it makes a dish so much better, especially if it’s –

Courtney:  Oh, my God, that’s me.

Sarah:  – and I, you know, I love cilantro, and then I have friends that are like, it tastes like soap.  How do you love this thing?  So if you’re writing a book –

RHG:  It’s a genetic thing.

Sarah:  It totally is.  It’s a tongue genetic thing, but if, if you’re writing a book, you either want people to be like, oh, my God, it tastes like soap, or this is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, because nobody’s interested in a review of anything that goes, eh, it was there.  Those were some words.  They were in an order.  I haven’t seen any, oh, my God, this tastes like soap, though.

RHG:  No, there’s been a lot of people who are like, wow, billionaires, though.

Sarah:  Yeah.  I’ve seen that.

RHG:  It’s –

Sarah:  But at the same time, I think that the – do you write your own cover copy, Courtney?

Courtney:  I do.

Sarah:  That’s hard.

Courtney:  But I do it with, I do it with the help of friends, because I am really bad at it.  I am really, really bad at it.  Pretty much –

Sarah:  I think, I think the cover copy for the novella I self-published in December was maybe six lines, and it took four and a half hours for me to get those six lines.

Courtney:  Oh, Jeeze, that’s good.  I spend a couple weeks.

Sarah:  I, I, I empathize.  Here are all the things that happened!  I’ve got to get this down to twenty words.  But one of the things that the cover copy does so well is it centers the story very much on Tina –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and so, from the outset, when you approach the book, even if you’ve got billionaire fatigue, which I totally empathize with, you operate into the book initially by saying, all right, this woman is totally going to take the piss out of this guy, and it’s  going to be awesome, bring it on!  And then, hey!  First chapter!

RHG:  Right.  And the, the, the book understands that just because he is a billionaire doesn’t mean that he’s a totally self-made man who got everywhere by the sweat of his brow, and the straps of his boots.

Sarah:  Don’t forget his bootstraps!  Don’t forget his bootstraps!

RHG:  I was getting there, I was getting there.

Sarah:  Okay.  Can’t not mention them.  The, the thing that I liked about Blake was that you really captured this sort of, sort of, an ignorant comfort level.  Well, I’m very comfortable.  I assume everyone else is too.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  I have no problems.

RHG:  I only spend $15,000 a month; it’s not that much.

Sarah:  No!

Courtney:  Play the whole game with – you know how everyone thinks they’re not that rich?  You know?

Sarah:  Yep.

RHG:  Yeah.

Courtney:  And there’s all these people like, oh, my God, you know, I only make, like, a million a year –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  – and that goes so fast, you know.  And so, like, Blake and his dad, Blake’s like, you know, I only have, like, a single billion.  It’s like, you know, come on, it’s a billion –

Sarah:  I only have one jet.

Courtney:  – I’m barely even in, like, the top, I’m not even in the top thousand richest people in the world.  Shit.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  My, my, my accomplishments are largely meaningless at this time.

RHG:  Yeah.

Courtney:  Yeah, I know, seriously.  So he, so, so, everyone has that point of comparison in their head where it’s, it’s like you’re always very aware of the people ahead of you and not so much aware of the people behind you.

Sarah:  Very true.  What was your point of entry into this series?  Like, what made you want to write this?  Was there a single thing, or was it sort of like a culmination of experiences?  Because I’ve heard you talk in conversations and on panels before about your frustration with portrayals of middle class and lower class people in any historical period, and issues with diversity, and also issues with poverty, but I’ve never seen you coalesce them into one book before.  This is kind of the first time for that.

Courtney:  Yeah, it kind of is.  For me, actually, I think what happened was, I was talking to a friend about how I could never write a billionaire book.

Sarah:  Those are, those are words you should never say.

RHG:  Ah.  [Laughs]

Courtney:  I should never do that, because – and I think I said, you know, if I ever wrote a billionaire book, he would never buy her a single thing.

Sarah:  Ooohhh.

Courtney:  In the course of the entire book.  Because I have to say, I really, I hate that as a – this is, like, I know it’s such a well-loved trope, you know, the rich dude who comes in, and he buys her, like, you know –

Sarah:  A computer.

Courtney:  A computer or a gorgeous dress –

Sarah:  Car.

Courtney:  – or a car or something like that, and –

Sarah:  And it doesn’t hurt.

Courtney:  I hate it so much, and like, all the time I’m sitting there, he bought her a car – oh, my God, the insurance.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  It’s like, the insurance on that car is –

Sarah:  She’s going to have to pay taxes on that car!

Courtney:  I know!

Sarah:  That’s a gift!  She has to pay taxes –

Courtney:  I know!

Sarah:  – on the value of it.  That’s a, that’s a debt.

Courtney:  I mean, it’s just like, there’s, like, all this stuff that, like, you know, it just, oh, my God.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  So, so, I just have, like, this, you know, the, the, these, these reactions to it, or, like, you know, he buys her a dress but, like, you know, you can’t just wear a dress.  You have to have shoes, and you have to have pantyhose, and if you have to have, like, you know – it’s not as simple as he buys you a dress and you’re done, right?  And you have this, like, really great dress, but, you know, you have, you –

Sarah:  You need the right undergarments.  You need to get all –

RHG:  You need to get undergarments, you need –

Sarah:  You need the right bra –

RHG:  – and makeup and all –

Courtney:  Gah!  So, and it’s, you know, like, anyone who’s ever actually shopped for clothing knows that –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  – like, the dress is, like, not – you know, it may be the most expensive item on the list, but you could spend, like, $150 easily on everything else to make it so that you actually look like something other than somebody wearing their, her mother’s dress-up gown.  I don’t know; I have this thing where, like, all these things, they always just give me the total heebie-jeebies.  So I was like, I could never write a billionaire book because he could never buy her anything –

Dog:  Bark!

Courtney:  I know, somebody’s driving past; it’s very hard.  So he could never buy her anything, and if I ever did write a billionaire book, then I don’t know how I could stop from making fun of him constantly about, like, capital gains tax and, and all the many things that I find extremely, that make me queasy about billionaires, period.  So – and then I said that, and I was like, but what if I wrote a book making fun of him?

Dog:  Bark!  Bark!

Courtney:  About being a billionaire?

Sarah:  And apparently the dog is in favor.

Courtney:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I totally agree.  This is a great endorsement.  I hope you put this in the cover copy.

Courtney:  I can’t write one of these books?  You know, I’d spend my entire time making fun of the billionaire.  Then I was like, wait –

Sarah:  That would be fun!

Courtney:  – I could write a book where I spent my entire time making fun of a billionaire.

Sarah:  The nice thing about this particular setup is also that often the billionaire fantasy, in whatever era or subgenre it’s appearance, appearing in, relies on the hero being largely perfect and not having to do very much to change.  He’s a, he’s, you know, he’s perfectly emotionally adjusted, has pectorals for days, you know, stomach muscles that could work as, as those things that you put in the road to slow your car down.  I mean, he’s all set, and in this particular case, he has work to do.

RHG:  On many levels.

Courtney:  Yes.  That’s the other thing.  I, I, I have a real problem with anyone who’s a businessperson who doesn’t actually do business.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  No, and I mean, like –

Sarah:  Jesus!  You have got some high standards!  [Laughs]

Courtney:  No, I know, but it, so often it just feels like these people, like, they just own things.

Sarah:  They fuck around on the Internet all day and email girls.  [Laughs]

Courtney:  Yeah!

Sarah:  It’s so true!

Courtney:  You know?

RHG:  Email girls, when really, they should have been texting – Christian Grey – I’m sorry, what?

Sarah:  The idea that people own or operate these businesses and they don’t keep them very busy?  I mean, I run a blog and I work a lot!  [Laughs] I mean, come on!

Courtney:  I know.

Sarah:  Forget a multinational, billion-dollar corporation that employs hundreds of thousands of people.

Courtney:  I know, I know, and, and, and I’m also always really confused about what their business plan is?

[Laughter]

Courtney:  You know, I mean, my problem – so here’s, here’s one of my problems, and it is actually a real problem in a sense, that I nitpick everything that I’m looking at, and I, and, and, so, you know, like, when I read contemporaries, I have to read someone like Julie James who I feel like approaches the contemporary world as a real one?  That sounds so terrible, oh, my God.

Sarah:  No, I totally understand what you’re saying.

Courtney:  But, but you now, I think there’s some people who, they want the fantasy of the big-shot lawyer –

Sarah:  Yes.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Without –

Courtney:  – but they don’t, you know –

Sarah:  – without the workload.

Courtney:  – they put the big-shot lawyer in there, and the person, like, you know, I don’t think you can have a big-shot lawyer who doesn’t understand what fifteen minutes means.  Right?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yeah.

Courtney:  That’s, and, and that’s, that’s a very specific mindset that just, you know, like, this is somebody –

Sarah:  You get a quarter hour.

Courtney:  – who literally, literally bills every five minutes of their day.

Sarah:  Yep.

Courtney:  It’s –

Sarah:  I have that problem, too, with contemporaries where I feel like, like when I’m writing review notes, the, the shorthand that I use is head of Zeus?  Like, they sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus, and they’ve moved to wherever, or they have shown up in a particular location, and they have no baggage, no backstory, no culture shock.  If they move from one side of the country to the other, they don’t have any recognition that where they are living now is visibly and temperature different from –

Courtney:  Right.

Sarah:  – where they were.  They, they, they spring fully formed from the head of Zeus at page one, and there’s no – and I don’t mean I need, like, pages of infodump or I need emotional baggage that’s going to be weepy and miserable.  I just need somebody to have existed before the story started, and too often I get the sense that they did not.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  Right.

Sarah:  That bugs the crap out of me, so I know exactly what you mean.

Courtney:  Right.  Or just, you know, like, I feel like I’m, I’m such a, I, I can be so detail-oriented, I can get really bogged down in details, and when I’m reading a book and the details don’t line up for me, then I just, it’s, I just can’t believe in it.  So –

Sarah:  I totally get this.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So how, how long have you been working on this book?  Do you nitpick your own work to an extreme and have to sort of set a, set a date, like, okay, you’re done now.  Like, no more.

Courtney:  Well, it’s – I think what happens is I first get an idea for a book, and I nitpick it into, like, not, you know, book not happening –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – you know.  Here’s this idea that I have, but it could never happen because X, Y, and Z.  And then gradually, I solve those pressure points.  Ooh!  But X is actually a good thing, because if I make X happen, then, you know, I don’t, I, I can skirt around Y and Z, and, like, so, so, I don’t know, it’s – the hard part is always the, getting to the point where I know what book I’m writing, and once I know that, it goes fairly quickly, but getting to the point where I know what I’m writing is, is the hard part.

Sarah:  Do you start with character or conflict?

Courtney:  Whatever comes first.  I don’t –

Sarah:  Whatever comes first?

Courtney:  I, I, I change things about characters up until the very last minute.  And I change conflict up until the very last minute.  I don’t know, I just, neither really comes first.  I, I, there’s – the thing is, I don’t, I don’t feel like they’re unrelated things.  I feel like, sort of, the conflict is the crucible that you boil the characters in, and you have to have the right characters that will boil in that conflict, and if you don’t, you need to change the characters, but sometimes you have to take the characters you have and figure out what’s going to make them really work and, and, and make that conflict work.  I don’t know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of like, I want to say it’s like building something clockwork.  You know –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – all the gears have to fit.  I, I’m not sure which gear comes first –

Sarah:  Of course.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – but sometimes I’m, I’m, I’m unusually, in fact, tinkling with – tinkling – tinkering.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Either way.

Courtney:  Tinkering, tinkering!  God damn it, that’s the word I’m looking for.  I’m usually tinkering with both character and plot at the same time, so I don’t have a –

Sarah:  So, you’re, you’re, are, are you trying to tell me it’s difficult to write a romance novel?  ‘Cause there’s a lot of people who seem to think it’s really easy.

RHG:  It’s super easy; it’s shocking.

Courtney: You just sit down and you pop one out.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Fully formed from the head of Zeus.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Boing.  And they bounce across the floor.

Courtney:  Well, I mean, the thing is, I think it’s really easy to write a bad romance novel.

Sarah:  Oh, yes!  We’ve reviewed many of them!

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Courtney:  But, but even a bad romance novel is still going to take more time than people think.

RHG:  – people think.  You can’t just crap one out in an afternoon.

Courtney:  Right, exactly.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  I mean, I can’t crap out a review in an afternoon.  Well, I can.  [Laughs]

Courtney:  I read this law review article on copyright that referred to romance novels as something that didn’t require a lot of invention but nonetheless got copyright protection?

Sarah:  [Gasp!]

RHG:  Are you fucking kidding me?

Courtney:  And I was like, you want to know what doesn’t take a lot of invention?  A fucking law review article that spends 95% of its time rephrasing what has come before.

Sarah:  Burn!  Oh, my lord.

RHG:  I know.

Courtney:  But yet, well –

Sarah:  Law review!  Somebody put that on their resume.

Courtney:  Oh, hell yeah, somebody probably got tenure because of it.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Oh, there’s no justice in this world!  Fucker!

RHG:  Hell no, and I went to law school just to make sure.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Mm, yes.

Courtney:  Oh, my God.  Yeah.

Sarah:  In the current book, the heroine’s best friend is a transgendered individual.

Courtney:  Yes.

Sarah:  Can you talk about that and the next book a little bit, or is that not something that you can bring up yet ‘cause it’s in progress?  I’m always a little wary of asking about a book in progress, because there’s a, there’s a, there’s a point where you can’t really talk about it, and I don’t want to be like, here, talk about this thing you can’t really say words about.

Courtney:  I, I can’t say a whole lot of words about it, but I can say some things about –

Sarah:  Okay, bring it.  Bring in the words.  I’ll record them.

Courtney:  So, so I can tell you about the hero of the book.  He is, he plays with lasers at LBNL.

Sarah:  Nice!

Courtney:  He is, when the book starts, he has just won a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Sarah:  Something you know about.

Courtney:  Something that I actually have not personal direct experience, but secondhand direct experience, because my sister just got one?

Sarah:  Which is pretty rad.

RHG:  Congratulations.

Courtney:  It is pretty fucking rad, I know.  My sister is amazing.  My, actually, you know, I have to say, I’m really lucky.  My family is amazing.  But the interesting thing is – and I’m going to have to talk to her about how much I’m allowed to borrow from her –

[Laughter]

Courtney:  – but, okay, so I’ll tell you this about her.  I’m not going to bor-, I’m not going to import this all completely.  One of the things my sister said is that success can be really terrifying, and it’s sort of like, you know, you have this entity come down with this big, giant wand, and they smack you in the forehead, and they’re like, congratulations!  You’re an official Genius™!

Sarah:  You’re like, fuck!  [Laughs]

Courtney:  And you’re like, holy shit, no!  I was just being a regular person before!  So –

Sarah:  And now people have expectations of me to do weird shit in the middle of the day!

Courtney:  I’m really not a genius, I swear!  I’m just a regular, normal person.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  So, it can be really interesting to, sort of, like, see how that will play out, and I’m not exactly sure exactly how that’s going to play out with him, but –

Sarah:  I read a couple interviews with Chris Thile from, who’s a, who’s a mandolin musician and was part of a band that I loved called Nickel Creek, and he won a MacArthur grant two or three years ago, and he, he said something in one interview where he was like, I woke up the next morning expecting to feel different, and thank God, I didn’t.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  Yeah.  That’s, I think that’s, that’s the way it feels.  It’s sort of like, I’m going to be very interested to see exactly how that plays out.  I really like both characters.  I have some plot elements I am still going over in my mind.  I have a lot of research to do.  Like, a lot.  There, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to go in the hopper before it turns into a real book.

Sarah:  I like how you, you phrase the sequential pro-, projection of the series.  At some point, and then some point later this other book will show up, but, you know, no dates.

Courtney:  [Laughs] Yeah.

Sarah:  I would love to schedule a lot of things in my life that way.  At some point.

RHG:  At some point.  I know my, my Canadian co-host of my podcast is super-excited, ‘cause it looks like the hero of book two is Asian?

Courtney:  Yes.

RHG:  She is so thrilled to see a representation of her relationship, where her husband is Korean-American –

Courtney:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  – and there’s so few Asian-American heroes and even fewer interracial relationships, and she’s –

Sarah:  With Asian heroes?

RHG:  – is super –

Courtney:  Yeah.

RHG:  – super-excited to see that, and she wanted me to tell you.  [Laughs]

Courtney:  That’s awesome.  He is, he’s going to be, he, there, there are some things I, I can’t say about him because I want you to discover them on, on your own, but he is, like, the perfect mix of sort of, like, genius plus bad boy.  I love it so much.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I guarantee you, like, four or five people listening to this podcast just sat up and went, give it to me now!

RHG:  Yep.

Courtney:  Yeah.  He’s, so, he, he has tattoos, and he rides a motorcycle, and he –

Sarah and Courtney:  – plays with lasers.

Courtney:  And he just got a MacArthur Genius Grant.  There’s, there’s a lot of cool stuff about him.  But the, the thing is, I think a lot of people, when they think of scientists, they just imagine, like, these sort of like white, nerdy guys with glasses and pocket protectors, and they’re –

Sarah:  Not so true!

Courtney:  – you know, don’t, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of white, nerdy guys with glasses and pocket protectors, but there are actually a lot of people who sort of, like, you know, they’re a scientist because they don’t want to have to give a shit.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  You know?  That’s something that will be fun.

Sarah:  What other questions do you have?

RHG:  I kind of wanted to talk about how – I said this in the review, that one of the underlying themes of the book seems to be that we become the person who would have saved our parents, and how Tina is that in a very literal sense, and Blake is kind of that in a less tangible sense?  That he’s trying to figure out how to be his father without his father’s problems, which he doesn’t know all about until, you know, the climax.

Courtney:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  And how that kind of all worked together, and I thought that was really well done.  Did you kind of intend that to happen, or did that just sort of appear like Zeus, or somewhere in between?

Courtney:  It, well, it goes both ways, though.  You know, I think Tina saves her parents, but Tina’s parents also save her in many ways, and Blake’s dad saves him too.  And I don’t know how, how obvious this is, but, you know, Tina’s very aware of what she’s putting into keeping her parents afloat, right?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  But there’s a lot of stuff going on with Tina that is a direct result of the things that her parents are doing.  So, as an example – and I don’t want to give too many spoilers for the book – there’s a point in the book where something bad happens to Tina –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – and the reason that the bad thing she’s facing is not deportation to China, which would be, just think about how disastrous that would be for somebody who’s lived in the United States and grown up in the United States for fourteen years.  The reason that she’s not facing deportation to China is because of her mother’s work –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – and because her mother made sure that as soon as she turned eighteen and could file for U.S. citizenship, she did, even though this is at a point when her dad was unemployed and didn’t have any money and all of this stuff.  Right?

RHG:  Right.

Courtney:  So it’s not – I don’t know that, I don’t think this is as simple as saving your parents.  I think it’s as, I think it’s more like I sort of wanted to explore all the ways that, that safety nets play out and how different they can be in what they mean to different people and how they, how they show up culturally.  Blake and his dad are very insular, it’s like there’s just the two of them, and Tina’s situation is almost exactly the opposite, that there are so many people who are part of her safety net –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – and who, and yet, you know, obviously they don’t have the resources – collectively, their resources are, like, you know, one, one-millionth?

RHG:  Right.

Courtney:  – of what Blake and his dad have?  But still, there’s so many people who are part of it and who can provide emotional support and who can provide things like, you know, like, Tina’s able to get Blake a job at almost no notice because somebody knows her mom.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  You know, so there’s, so one of the things I wanted to explore was sort of, like, how that played out, and what it felt like, and, you know, what it felt like for people to have the people they rely on increase and grow and change and all that stuff, so I don’t, I, I don’t know that, that I would put it the same way you did?  But I think it’s more a matter of learning how to be part of a system that saves people in general –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – instead of – I don’t know.  But I don’t know if that makes any sense.

RHG:  Well, I don’t, I don’t mean entirely in the, the, saving each other in, like, the handhold-y kind of way, but in the way that your personality kind of grows into the voids that your parents have?  So, for example, ‘cause some of the – God, I hope my mom doesn’t listen to this [laughs] – ‘cause some of the issues that mother has, I developed so that wouldn’t have those issues.  I have my own that are completely different, and any kids I have will probably grow into those voids.  It’s –

Courtney:  Oh, I see what you’re saying.

RHG:  Yeah.  And so, it’s not necessarily we become the people that will save our parents, but we become the people who would have saved our parents, and Tina sees her mother trying to save her wedge of the world, which I want to get into the Falun, how do, how do you pronounce it, Falun Gong?  I want to get into that in a minute.

Courtney:  Yeah.

RHG:  And she sees the strain that this causes on her family, so she has been kind of grown into the person who is trying to hold herself together – I don’t know if I’m explaining this well.

Sarah:  Makes sense to me.  I’m, I’m understanding.

Courtney:  I was listening.  Keep going.

RHG:  [Laughs] So she’s can both attempt to help as many people as possible, but also means that she isn’t in this never-ending pile of poverty.  So she’s wants to become a doctor, not because she really wants to become a doctor but because that has money, and with that money she can do things.  Even though she might not be happy, at least she’ll have enough, and her family’ll have enough, as opposed to making these amazing cakes.  [Laughs]

Courtney:  Yeah.

RHG:  So that’s, that’s kind of what I meant.

Courtney:  But you can also see that that creates its own void, too.

RHG:  Right.

Courtney:  Yeah, it’s, it’s very interesting.  I think both Blake and Tina are very protective of their parents in slightly different ways?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  And yeah, Tina definitely is trying to fill that void, which is a pretty big void, all things considered.

Sarah:  So what did you want to ask about the Falun Gong?  I hope I said that right.

Courtney:  I, I’m not going to correct anyone’s pronunciation because I am not really good at pronouncing things in Chinese either.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All right, then.  Woohoo!

RHG:  I, I was, actually, I was a little bit excited to see that that was kind of the thing, the plot point that the deportation issues kind of turned on.  I have seen the practitioners out on Boston Common.  I had never seen anyone talk about that particular issue in any sort of mainstream way that, I thought that was really cool.

Courtney:  That is something that I just had in my head for a really long time, ever since I encountered them in the immigration context.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  And I think the reason I, I kept it there is because I think when you, when you hear the whole story, it makes almost no sense.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  To, to Westerners, and I am very Western.  Like, it took me years trying, of trying to get my head around it to sort of understand what was happening –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – and why there’s a reaction and what’s really going on, and even just trying to sort out what is true and what is not between communist propaganda and counter-propaganda.  It’s, it’s just a, like, a mess.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  For people who are listening who aren’t familiar, can you, is it possible to give a sort of microcosm summary –

Courtney:  Sure.

Sarah:  – of the, the, the imbalance or the precarious balance?

Courtney:  So, so the basic idea is Falun Gong is a system of exercises, and if you’ve, if you’ve seen Tai Chi or people practicing Qigong, it’s something like that.  And that’s a, you know, people who practice it will probably say, no, no, no!  But, you know, broad-level overview, it’s along those lines.  And like many Asian cultures, it’s not, you know, like, if you know anything about yoga, you know that yoga is not just a physical practice in the East.  That there are sort of like, there’s a spirituality associated with the physical practice, and that the two are not easily separable, okay.  So, it’s not really a religion as we think of it, but it is not purely exercise as we think of it.  It is sort of exercise with a spiritual component, okay, and there were, near the end of the ‘90s or so, in China – as you know, China is not a huge fan of religion, and that’s an understatement, and the communist regime is very, very jealous of concentrations of power in anyone but the Communist Party.  And so near the end of the ‘90s, there were probably millions of people who were practicing Falun Gong, and they would get together in the park and they would practice and, you know, all of this stuff, and they, the Communist Party started getting a little worried about it, because they didn’t like the idea that there were these people.  And in particular, there’s the, the guy in charge of Falun Gong, whose name – I never remember names of anyone, and I want to say, I think it’s Li Hongzhi, but I’d have to look it up – but in any event,  you know, he had followers, and they don’t like, they didn’t like the idea of somebody having followers, so they banned the practice.  And to their amazement, people protested it, and they didn’t know the protest was coming.  So, like, 10,000 people showed up to protest in Beijing, and they were like, the fuck did these people came, come from?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  And that, it scared the shit out of them, basically.  You know, like, all these people care, and this is just sort of like what happened with, like, almost no organizing over a weekend?  This is scary.  So they cracked down on it, and they cracked down on it really, really hard.  Everyone agrees at – not everyone; the Chinese government doesn’t agree – but, you know, like, most state departments throughout the world recognize that what happened in response to the Falun Gong practitioners was terrible.  They were put in forced labor camps, they were forcibly re-educated, they were tortured to try and get them to stop practicing Falun Gong, and that didn’t work so well.  Or it did, depending on how you look at it.  The only question people have is the degree to which it’s happening.  There are people who have been saying that they are, there, there have been, you know, executions.  It’s, it’s pretty, I want to say it’s over the top.  Or at least, it’s something that sounds completely, I mean, like, it, it’s very difficult for us to understand a government saying, you can’t do this form of exercise, and we’re going to torture you until you stop, but that is sort of what happened.

Sarah:  And so, in the context of the book, Tina’s mother – I mean, I’m trying to, I’m trying to figure out a way to, to sort of explain how, what her role is and how she operates without spoiling things.

Courtney:  She’s a facilitator.  Okay, so –

Sarah:  That’s a really good word.  Thank you for saving my ass there.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  – facilitator, right?  She’s the person who has been through the immigration system and who has helped other people go through the immigration system, and she’s the person who’s going to sit you down when you come into the country and say, okay, this is what you need to do, okay.

Sarah:  Yep.

Courtney:  We need to start with this.  You need to get asylum.  In order to get asylum, you need to do X, Y, and Z, and no, do not go and talk to the, to the, to DHS on your own.  Get a lawyer first, ‘cause if you do it on your own, you’re going to fuck it up, right.  So she’s, and she’s like, and here are good lawyers that I, that we know have actually helped people do it.  So she’s sort of this facilitator.  She know what you’re supposed to do and who you’re supposed to talk to, and, you know –

Sarah:  How to navigate it.

Courtney:  – if you’ve just escaped from China, then you probably don’t have any money, so she’s also the person who knows who you can go to, to, who will help you, you know, get established.  So –

Sarah:  And so she helps people navigate –

RHG:  The hellhole that is the U.S. immigration system.

Sarah:  Yes, basically.

Courtney:  Correct.  That’s right.  She helps people navigate the U.S. immigration system.  And she also helps them on the back end, because even if you do get asylum, then there are other issues that arise if you’re only a permanent resident of the United States and you are – if you commit certain kinds of crimes, you can still be deported.  It’s, so it, it’s kind of a mess.  She’s basically the person who tries to help people stay in the United States and figure out what they can legally do.

RHG:  I, I really like the scene with Blake and Tina’s father and how Tina’s father was, was explaining how even though, yeah, he, he can’t walk very well because the Chinese government destroyed his knee, it still led to pretty much everything that was good in his life.  I thought it was a really sweet small moment.  It, it explained Tina in a different way that I think she doesn’t even realize it does?

Courtney:  Yeah.  I think it also explains Tina’s parents in a way that to some degree Tina’s baseline is that she is worried about her parents not paying bills and falling behind and all this stuff.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  And her parents’ baseline is, nobody’s trying to fucking kill us anymore.

Sarah:  This is awesome!

RHG:  Yeah.

Courtney:  Like, it, it, you know, so, so, so, from their point of view, like, Jesus, everything’s great.

Sarah:  Whereas from her point of view, no, this is a very big problem.

RHG:  – point of view, everything’s terrible.  Everything is terrible.

Cat:  Meow!

Courtney:  Right.

Sarah:  I think another pet is about to appear on the podcast.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I have a cat who’s yelling at me because it’s 2:30, and he thinks that’s dinnertime.  Early birds – all my cats are elderly.  They want the Blue Plate Early Bird.  It’s time for dinner!  I’m going to go to bed at 4:00.  Come on!

Any, is there anything else that you would love to tell people about the book?  Or is there anything you’d like to ask about the book?

RHG:  Not, not about this book, although if we could get into the Worth Saga a little bit?

Courtney:  I, I don’t know what I would say to you.  I’m still bad at talking about my books.

[Laughter]

Courtney:  God, I don’t know.  Who are these people who can, like, go and tell anyone to buy their book.  I’m just like, I don’t know, maybe you’ll like it.  Try reading it.  Or not.  If you want to.

Sarah:  I always get as far as, oh, yeah, book, my name on it.  Right.

Courtney:  Yeah.  Uh-huh.

RHG:  I wrote a thing.  Please go read it.

Courtney:  That’s exactly what I feel like, honestly.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  I wrote this thing.  I wrote this thing.  Maybe you will like it.  If you have liked other things of mine, maybe you will like it.  But also, maybe you will not, ‘cause it’s different.

Sarah:  [Laughs] You need to put that in a book trailer.

RHG:  Well, I do, I, I have seen a lot of people who are like, well, normally I don’t read YA –

Sarah:  Or New Adult.  Or New Adult.

RHG:  – or billionaires, or first person, or first person present, but I’m going to read this because Courtney has never led me wrong before, and I have not –

Sarah:  No pressure or anything, Courtney.

RHG:  – yeah [laughs] – not seen anyone who has been actively unhappy with that decision.

Courtney:  Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll show up.

RHG:  Yeah, probably, but not right now.

Sarah:  It’s a good thing.

Courtney:  Yeah, it’s fine.  I mean, I, I think every book of mine has had somebody who has been disappointed with it.  And that’s totally fine.

Sarah:  So would you be willing to talk about the Worth Saga?

Courtney:  Sure, although God only knows how that will turn out.  Here, let’s go.  I’ll just make stuff up.

RHG:  [Laughs] I, I have a friend who had never read romance before, and I was like, here’s a list.  Started with The Duchess War, and then has been, like, pestering me every release date.  When’s it coming out?  When’s it coming out?  When’s it coming out?  When’s it coming?  You have to remind me.  Oh, my God.  But she is very anxiously awaiting the Worth Saga.

Courtney:  Here’s the thing:  like, after I finished the Brothers Sinister, I sat down and I tried to write the Worth Saga, or the first book in the Worth Saga, and I wrote, like, you know, 35- or 40,000 words, and I, I was not happy with anything I’d written.  And I think that the real problem that I had was that I was just so burned out on writing historicals that I was just putting words on a page, and I just knew it was – like, I’m not going to give you something I’m not happy with.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  So I took a break, and I wrote this book.  And so, like, at the point when I know I have a book that I’m excited about, I will know how long it will be until it’s up.  I am not at that point with the first book, and I think it’s going to be a lot easier now that I’m going back to it, after having taken a break from historicals, because I really, really think I needed that –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  – but I, I don’t want to make any promises at this point.  I will make promises as soon as I can make promises, but the only promise I will make you is that I don’t want to release a book that I feel like is not up to my standards and that I’m not – if I’m not excited about it, why the fuck should I inflict it on you?  Oh, I’m sorry.  Why should I inflict it on you?  That’s what I –

Sarah:  You can totally f-bomb as much as you want.

RHG:  Have you listened to us before?

Sarah:  We f-bomb all over the place.

Courtney:  I have.  I know, I know, but I just, every once in a while I remember that I should be a professional, or I should say, a fucking professional.

Sarah:  [Laughs] You should absolutely be a fucking professional.

RHG:  Right, like –

Courtney:  That was –

RHG:  – the first time Sarah and I met, she slammed my hand into a car door, so –

Sarah:  I still feel guilty about that.

Courtney:  Ooh, nice.

RHG:  [Laughs] And the worst part about it?  Was the unimpressive bruise.  No visual evidence of the abuse, so.

Courtney:  Well, you know, you don’t always get everything you want.

RHG:  I understand.

Courtney:  This is one of those things where I could, I could sit down this week, right  now, I have just been sort of like trying to dig myself out from under this pile of emails and regular mail and things I was supposed to do a year ago –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  – that sort of piles up as book releases go on?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  And I’m hoping by the start of next week I’m going to go back to it and take a look, and hopefully everything will magically come together, and if it does, then I’ll tell you, and you will be, and then you will know, and all of this stuff, but you know, I, I just don’t have a good idea.

Sarah:  So here’s an easier question.  Are you ready?

Courtney:  I’m ready.

Sarah:  Have you read anything that you would really like to tell people about?

Courtney:  Oh, God, yes!  I can answer that so easily!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I knew that you could!

Courtney:  I love talking about other people’s books!

Sarah:  You don’t say!  Me too!

Courtney:  Okay, so first of all, the book that I read that I am super-excited about that should be out at the very beginning of February is Alyssa Cole’s Radio Silence.  I don’t know if either of you have read it, but it’s – I don’t want to call it New Adult because it’s not.  It’s – but it is.  It’s an, it’s a post-apocalyptic story, and it’s called Radio Silence because nobody knows what the apocalypse is when the story starts.  It’s just, the radios go silent, the power goes off.  No explanation from the government.  Like, the authorities disappear, and nobody knows what’s going on.  And so the heroine and her best friend who is – oh, God, I’m so bad with names – I think the best friend is named, the best friend is named John, and the heroine is – oh, shit, why didn’t I look up the names before I did this?  I never remember names of anyone.  They travel to John’s cabin in the northern part of the United States, but of course they’re going by foot, and the story starts when they’re almost there.  Arden, that’s the heroine’s name.  The story starts when John and Arden are almost at their parents’ cabin, and they’re attacked by somebody who smacks John over the head and, just when everything seems to be about lost and Arden thinks that she’s going to bite it too, John’s brother shows up to the rescue.  So, a combination of a lot of things:  it’s a cabin romance; it’s a my, my-best-friend’s-older-brother romance, which I love so much; it’s a post-apocalyptic romance, which I also love.  Like, I love pretty much everything about this book.

Sarah:  Cool!

Courtney:  Read it!

RHG:  I’m sold.

Courtney:  And I also – do you want more?  Can I keep going?

Sarah:  Totally keep going!

Courtney:  I don’t know if you’ve read Rose Lerner’s latest book?

Sarah:  Sweet Deception?

Courtney:  No, this is – so, Sweet Disorder was her last book.  This book is True Pretenses.

Sarah:  Thank you!  God, I get them all mixed up.  Durr.

Courtney:  I know, I know.  And it is –

Sarah:  I do have it; it’s next on my –

Courtney:  Oh, God.

Sarah:  – my, my list.

Courtney:  Read it now.  Read it now; it’s so good.

Sarah:  But I’m reading something really good right now about a magician who works with paper.  I want to finish that!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  Well, read that too.  Okay, read it next.  Read it next.

Sarah:  I cannot buffet my books.  My, that’s a sign that my brain needs to go watch TV.

Courtney:  No, I understand, I understand.

Sarah:  So tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, ‘cause this is next, and I’m really excited.

Courtney:  Okay, so this is an amazing book, okay.  It’s about Ash Cohen and his younger brother Rafael.  So many, so many, so many good things about this book.  One of them is that, so Ash and Rafael have been con men all their lives, and the only people that they’re ever honest with is each other –

Sarah:  [Sighs happily]

Courtney:  – and this is the book where this starts, that starts breaking down.  They start, like, not being able to communicate, and having been part of this really, really insular but tight family and then having that break down, and, you know, Rafael wants out of the life as a con man, and so Ash is like, I, I know what we’re going to do.  We’re going to find you a wealthy woman to marry; it’s going to be perfect.  And then Ash starts falling in love with the woman that he finds for his brother.

RHG:  Of course he does.

Sarah:  [Sighs happily again]

Courtney:  It is so, so, so awesome.

RHG:  Yeah, I saw – did Dear Author review this one?  I think I saw a review of this.

Sarah:  Well –

Courtney:  I don’t know.  I haven’t –

RHG:  But I –

Sarah:  – Rose Lerner was a guest on a blog post on All About Romance where Dabney had asked her about what would have been the, the social consequences of being publicly Jewish during that period of time.  You know, would there have been negative consequences, would anyone have been violent towards him?  And she quotes some of the writing about Jewish people from that time period.

Courtney:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Jewish noses bobbing up and down is the one image that is just galloping through my brain since I read that.  It’s –

Courtney:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s fascinating.

Courtney:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So I don’t know if I’ve seen it reviewed, but that particular entry, just the way that she wrote about the way that Regency society and the very, very Anglican com-, culture of that period of time looked at, how they saw Jews and how they viewed Jews is one aspect of the story that I’m really, really excited to read about.  Which sounds terrible, like, yay!  Anti-Semitism!  Can’t wait!  But nonetheless, I’m totally curious.

Courtney:  You know, I, I think she handles it really, really well, right?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Courtney:  Because it’s not, it’s not a book that’s like, you know, going to beat you into the ground about how everyone’s anti-Semitic.

Sarah:  Right.

Courtney:  But it, it doesn’t skirt around the issue, but it also, you know, there’s so much hope and so much good stuff and, oh, my God, I can’t even tell you about this other stuff ‘cause it’s spoilers, but it’s so good!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Courtney:  Like, there’s a part that, there’s a part in the relationship with his brother where I just, like, you know – [sigh] – you get the whole, like, you know, eyes prickling up and being like, oh, my God, I can’t!  I can’t!  I don’t know, brothers, I, I have this thing with brothers.  And they, she does it so well.  I love it.

Sarah:  I have a thing about men in, male characters who are comfortable having feelings.

Courtney:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Especially familial feelings –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – like loving their families.  You know, not all men are emotionally bereft barnacles of emptiness.  To, to have men who have comfort with the feelings that they have for their siblings?  And it’s not just, oh, you are my younger sister and I must protect your virginity at all costs or else I am not a good man?  No, no, no –

Courtney:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – no, no, no, no, I don’t give a flying crap about that.  The men who are actually comfortable having loving feelings for their family, I just – yeah.  Catnip, please.  More.  Yum.  Yay!

Courtney:  Yeah.  Yeah, I, I think that’s, I, I love, love, love that book.

Sarah:  I’m totally excited.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  Thank you to Courtney Milan for hanging out with me and RedHeadedGirl for an hour and talking about her book and other books and more books and more things.  I hope you enjoyed the interview.

Future podcasts will include me and possibly Jane and potentially other people talking about romance.  On deck, I have Amanda talking about sports romances, so if you have suggestions or questions or ideas, or you would like to challenge Courtney Milan to not write something which would then cause her to write it, you can email us at [email protected].  We really like listener email, and I really like having a podcast where I get to feature all of your intelligent questions.

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  This is “Mackerel & Tatties” by Michael McGoldrick from his album Aurora, and I will have links in the podcast entry – also known as the show notes, I have learned – on Smart Bitches, and it will also be on Dear Author.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Wicked All Night, the latest sizzling-hot novella in the Wicked Lovers series from New York Times bestselling author Shayla Black, on sale January 20^th.

If you’re curious about the books we talked about or you want to know more about them, I will have links to the books as well in the show notes, or podcast entry, depending on which you would like to call it, but in the meantime, Courtney Milan, RedHeadedGirl, Jane, and myself all wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[lovely music]