128. Mysterious Loner Dudes & What Jane’s Been Reading

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 128 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Jane.  Yay!  We are talking about listener email, we have a question about mysterious loner dudes and parents who are hooked up by their meddlesome children, and we also talk about what Jane’s been reading.

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

And this podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Bear Attraction, the new sizzling-hot novella in the Shifters Unbound series from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley.  This will be available on February 17^th, and you can find it wherever your fine paranormal Shifters Unbound eBooks, and other eBooks, are sold.

I am all for short intros today.  How do you feel about short intros?  I feel great about them, so now, on with the podcast.

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Sarah:  Our first piece of listener email is from Halley.  I think it’s Halley.  If it’s Hailey, I apologize.

“Hi Sarah and Jane!

“Love the podcast and I’m very excited to finally be writing in with a question for a possible future podcast or the wider Bitchery.  A friend just started reading historical romance – she inhaled Tessa Dare’s Goddess of the Hunt and then texted me in all caps asking for more recommendations.  I was happy to oblige and thanks to lots of podcast listening I was able to immediately rattle off my fav historicals:  Sarah MacLean RIGHT NOW!  The rest of Tessa Dare!  Lisa Kleypas!  Julia Quinn!  Select early Stephanie Laurens (because really, at this point they’re sort of all the same).  LORD OF SCOUNDRELS!  She’s reading and loving everything.

“Her typical romance read is a contemporary and she loves some MLD (Mysterious Loner Dude – the epitome of a MLD is Jordan Catalano from My So Called Life.)  This is popular in New Adult and YA, and morphs a bit in contemporary romance into the angst brooding type, I guess.  But in historical romance?  The rake is more of the reformed bad boy.  And I’m sure there is a brooding lord somewhere – of course there is! – but I can’t think of any off the top of my head who are perfect historical MLDs.  I ask the bitchery for help so that I can encourage my friend to continue her historical romance binge.

“Thanks in advance!

“Halley”

Jane:  I, I really love the phrase moo-, moody loner dude, and the books that sprung to mind were Westerns.

Sarah:  You know, that’s really funny that you say that, because I was developing my list of recommendation, and at the bottom I wrote, I have no knowledge of historical Westerns, and I suck – [laughs] – so I’m glad you have ideas.

Jane:  Well, the very first book that came to mind was Connie Brockway’s All Through the Night, and Colonel Jack Seward, he is definitely, I think, the prototypical moody loner dude.  He was an orphan rescued by a powerful man and trained to be a tool for the Home Office’s secret committee.  He basically does all the dirty work for them.  He is, I, I think, on every page, the very definition of moody loner dude –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  – and even the way that it ends kind of fits his moody loner dude status.

Sarah:  It is a really perfect description for some heroes, isn’t it?

Jane:  It is.  I thought about Prince Charming by Julie Garwood or the hero in Savage Thunder by Johanna Lindsey.

Sarah:  I confess that all of the Lindseys blend together in my brain, except for the one with the silver hair and the fact that she’s kidnapped and put in a harem.  That one stands alone.  All of the other Lindseys are, like, in this mental Lindsey soup where I mix up all of the plots and then just stick a Fabio cover on it in my brain, and that’s it.  So, do you remember which one that is?  ‘Cause I, I don’t.

Jane:  Yes.  Savage Thunder is the unfortunate book that features the, the hero, calls the hero a half-breed.

Sarah:  Oh, ouch!  Cringe!

Jane:  I know, but it’s, it’s the product of its time, right?

Sarah:  Yep!

Jane:  Hopefully, if it was published today they wouldn’t use that pejorative term, but nonetheless, at the time he did.  It features Colt Thunder, who’s the half Native American, half – I have no idea what the other part is.

Sarah:  Alien.

Jane:  Right.  So, Colt Thunder is this –

Sarah:  Is there a better hero name than Colt Thunder?

Jane:  There has certainly never been a better name.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oh, man.

Jane:  So, Colt Thunder was this Native Amer-, half Native American.  He was a part-time Army scout, and the heroine is this very wealthy duchess.  Her –

Sarah:  Of course.

Jane:  Her husband, an older man, died and left her all of his money that he could leave that was unentailed.  He tells her, you know, use my money.  Don’t give any of it to my family.  Enjoy your life.  So the family wants that money, and they’re trying to kill her –

Sarah:  As you do.

Jane:  – so she’s in America on this grand vacation.  She’s gone, like, all over the world having a grand old time.  She comes across Colt Thunder.  He, I think he saves their carriage or something, and he, she falls immediately in lust with him, and she doesn’t understand why he’s so resistant to her.

[Laughter]

Jane:  And she, and he keeps telling her that he’s not accepted by white ladies like her, and she doesn’t understand that.

Sarah:  Course.

Jane:  Course, and it’s –

Sarah:  Of course.

Jane:  – it’s just a fanta-, he’s just a very moody –

[Laughter]

Jane:  – dude who’s alone.

Sarah:  He’s a lonely, grumpy man.

Jane:  And Jo Goodman, I swear, every hero of hers is at least a loner dude, if not a moody loner dude.  I love her books, by the way.

Sarah:  Do you have a favorite of hers that you would recommend?

Jane:  I, I’ll say this about Jo.  She is a slow wri-, her books are slow.  I mean, they just take a while to kind of unfold, but I really enjoy that from time to time.  You feel like you’re going on a journey.

Sarah:  I remember you once said that – [laughs] – someone had been complaining that a certain book was slow, and you were like, yeah, so Jo Goodman must seem like James Cameron to you.

[Laughter]

Jane:  I really love the historical One Forbidden Evening.  She’s got –

Sarah:  Moody and grumpy?

Jane:  Yeah, not, not – he’s just moody, I think.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  She’s also moody.

Sarah:  Oh, even better!

Jane:  One of, and I can’t remember which book of the Dennehy Sisters, but one of them is a nun –

Sarah:  Of course.

Jane:  – which is lovely, awesome.  I really liked Kissing Comfort.  It’s set in San Francisco, which I think is an underutilized historical setting.  Oh, Shannon McKenna writes the moody loner dude too.

Sarah:  She’s different from Cara McKenna.  I have to remind myself of that every time.

Jane:  Do you really?

Sarah:  Yes!  It’s a problem.  My brain is a sad and confusing place for me, but yes.  It’s the McKenna.  I just see the McKenna and go, oh, the one who wrote about the prison guy and the librarian.  No, different McKenna.

Jane:  So, Behind Closed Doors is the book I always recommend.  He is a moody loner dude who stalks the heroine.

Sarah:  Oh, that always works out well.

Jane:  I love that book.

[Laughter]

Jane:  Don’t you think Dane Hollister from Dream Man is a moody loner dude?

Sarah:  You know, now that you say so, yeah.

Jane:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I mean, it’s not a historical, but yeah, he’s, he’s a moo-, moody loner dude.

Jane:  Yeah, he lives by himself.  He – [laughs]

Sarah:  He doesn’t like humans.

Jane:  Doesn’t like other people, other than his partner.  Yeah, I think he totally falls under the moody loner dude status, and also Mackenzie’s Mountain?  He is a huge moody loner dude.  Now, he has good reason to be moody and loner dude.

Sarah:  Which, which, which author wrote Mackenzie’s Mountain?  My brain is –

Jane:  Linda, Linda Howard.

Sarah:  Linda Howard, thank you.

Jane:  It was the – I think his name is Wolf Mackenzie, right?  And –

Sarah:  Well, that’ll do it.

Jane:  – and he – right, Wolf – Wolf is the, the name that you give the moody loner dude.

Sarah:  Yeah, it’s kind of a signal.

Jane:  He’s the, he’s the Native American who was accused of raping a woman, which he didn’t do.

Sarah:  Hence being, hence being moody and lone-, and a loner.

Jane:  Right.

Sarah:  The one with the nun heroine, I had to look it up because I did not know that this was a thing that had happened in, in the romance world?  That would be Mary Francis Dennehy in Only in My Arms.

Jane:  Okay.  There you go.  It’s actually a pretty entertaining book.

Sarah:  “…faithful to the Apaches who raised him.  Now sentenced to hang for a crime he didn’t commit…”  Oh, his name is Ryder.  That is totally a grumpy hero name, especially if you’re about to be hung.

Jane:  You know who else is kind of a moody loner dude?  I loved Sharon Shinn’s thirteen houses.  I don’t, didn’t love them all, but Mystic and Rider, the name Ryder made me think of that.  Okay, I just have to say do not, anybody, read The Thirteenth House.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Okay.  No one should read this ever?

Jane:  Oh, I don’t know.  It’s so depressing.  Yes, read it if you want to be depressed.

Sarah:  Oh, okay, great.

Jane:  I don’t –

Sarah:  So there’s twelve houses, and The Thirteenth House is book two.  It’s like they’re –

Jane:  Yes.

Sarah:  – it’s like this, this series is trolling me – I’m never going to remember that – but the first one is Mystic and Rider with an I.  Oh, so Mystic has a Y, but Rider has an I.  Oh, okay.

Jane:  Yeah, because Mystic, it’s, it’s, it, that’s the heroine, and Rider is the king’s guard that’s sent to protect her.

Sarah:  Ooh.  It’s funny; you and I both like the mysterious loner dude hero, although we like –

Jane:  Oh, love them.

Sarah:  – we like, we like them in different forms.

Jane:  Yeah, you don’t like the stalker dudes, and they don’t bother me.

Sarah:  Yeah, I don’t like stalker dudes, and I don’t like people who are, I don’t like heroes who can magically scent the heroine’s arousal, the fact that she’s a submissive, maybe possibly also what she had for lunch or where she’s been walking, ‘cause he can also smell the dirt on her shoes.  That sort of preternatural sensing of arousal thing, or he can tell by the way she breathes that she’s into being tied up and spanked – I mean, no.  No, no, no, no, no.  I, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that just, yeah, that doesn’t work for me.  I don’t mind the alpha dudes.  The stalking I don’t particularly enjoy.  Do you have any other suggestions?  ‘Cause I have some, but they’re slightly different.

Jane:  Go ahead.

Sarah:  Okay.  So my, my thought was, in the letter, she specifically mentions Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life –

Jane:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – and the thing about Jordan Catalano is that it’s really easy for the mysterious loner dude to become a manipulative loser dude, because if he’s withholding emotionally to see what the heroine will do next, he’s just being a manipulative dick, and I was never convinced that Jordan Catalano wasn’t entirely made up of manipulative dick.

Jane:  Is this where I confess that I’ve seen, like, one episode ever of My So-Called Life?

Sarah:  That’s totally fine –

Jane:  Okay.

Sarah:  – ‘cause I’ve seen, like, six –

Jane:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – and then I was like, this guy’s a dick, and I’m not that into it.

Jane:  And now all I know about Jordan Catalano is that he’s grown up to be this pretty attractive guy who apparently has the hugest dick ever?

Sarah:  Oh, my Lord, I saw some pictures online of apparently the, the outline of his tur-, of his non-turgid member – [laughs] – and it’s like halfway down his leg!

Jane:  Yeah, and – well, I can’t remember who said, who said this about his dick, but it, it was like, they said something was, like, was a Praetorian guard?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Okay, I am now making a note in the show notes:  link to dick pics.  This is what happens when we record together.  Somewhere, all of the ladies from S&M Book Obsessions are cheering.  Yay!  But with Jordan Catalano in the historical setting of the mysterious loner dude, I think in historicals there’re four variations of mysterious loner dude.  There’s Inaccessible, with emotionally withholding and setting up very firm boundaries; there’s the Loner, who is reclusive and wants everyone to leave him the hell alone; and then there’s just Absent, where he’s not actually present in the book very much, despite being a character.  So, for example, Darcy could be a mysterious loner dude because he’s not in the book all that often, and when he is, he’s really confusing.

Jane:  It’s much easier to carry off the mysterious loner dude when it’s told in the first person from only the heroine’s point of view.

Sarah:  Totally true.  Because that’s why Edward and then Christian Grey and then all Twilight era style books, that, they qualify as mysterious loner dudes because you don’t ever hear from them.  The trick, especially with historicals, I think, is to make someone who’s a loner, who’s inaccessible, or who’s reclusive remain somewhat mysterious even when you’re in their point of view.  And that’s pretty hard.

Jane:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So, here is my list of historicals that are all the European variety.  In terms of Inaccessible and Loner, and also with very firm boundaries, I think Flowers from the Storm qualifies because you don’t understand what he’s actually thinking when you’re in his point of view, and when you are in his point of view, it’s very rare.  You already have this puzzle of the hero’s inability to communicate clearly, plus the amount of mystery that is involved in the story itself because so much is unveiled slowly along the course of the plot.

I also think Lisa Kleypas’s Tempt Me at Twilight qualifies because first, with all of the Hathaways, there, the whole series sort of explore, explores class boundary, and so there’s already a boundary in place between the hero and the heroine, but in Tempt Me at Twilight, that’s the one where Poppy Hathaway marries this rich hotel owner who’s really enigmatic and distant, and he has this whole hidden life that he’s not willing to share, so he has a sort of a boundary.  He’s not a miserable loner dude all the time, but he’s, definitely qualifies as grumpy.

Now here’s a question for you:  do you think that Lord Ian Mackenzie qualifies as a mysterious loner dude?

Jane:  Who?

Sarah:  The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie?

Jane:  Oh.  I – no.  No.  Maybe if it was told only from Beth’s point of view?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jane:  I feel like because you got his point of view, he is very straightforward and not at all mysterious.

Sarah:  She’s a, so he’s a mystery to her, but not to the reader.

Jane:  Correct.

Sarah:  That’s a, and then see, that’s a hard balance.  Like, there’s a whole bunch of books that are, that are like that.  Like, The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie is one, and then To Sir Phillip, With Love by Julia Quinn is another, where he’s not mysterious to the reader, but he is mysterious to the heroine.  And it’s not quite the same thing when the, when the reader has all of the information about the hero and is just waiting for the heroine to catch up.

Jane:  I don’t, I don’t know that he was so mysterious to Beth either.  I mean, I felt like she understood him, and that was the unique relationship that they had.

Sarah:  That’s true.  The other ones that I wrote down in terms of grumpy and reclusive, or just grumpy, are England’s Perfect Hero by Suzanne Enoch, With This Ring by Amanda Quick, Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh, and The Summer of You by Kate Noble, which I like a lot, because the hero in that one is trying to clear his name because he’s suspected of being a highwayman, like you do.

The other thing is that the, the, the mysterious loner dude can also develop over several books.  Like, the hero of the Deanna Raybourn series that starts with Silent in the Grave.  He’s sort of an extra-grumpy, reclusive, migraine-suffering Sherlock Holmes type of character, and so he’s, he’s very much distant from the heroine’s point of view and from the reader’s point of view, and I don’t think, if I’m remembering correctly – and like I said, my memory is a big puddle of mess – I don’t think you get his perspective either.

But I think that covers a lot of historical, and thank you for filling in the Westerns, ‘cause I really did write down, I suck, I have no knowledge here.  [Laughs] I need to read more Westerns.

[music]

Sarah:  This next letter is from Ash:

“Hi Sarah and Jane,

“I feel like every time I fall in love with a series I come right here to ask for suggestions.  Is that weird?  Did I mention I love the podcast yet?  No?  Well I do.  Thanks.

“Basically I’m on this under-appreciated Netflix binge right now.  You know what I mean right?  All those shows that only lasted a season or two and got cancelled and they had great potential and awesome actors?  Yeah those.

“So I’ve been watching Life Unexpected which was a show on the CW a few years ago.  Anyway, the show revolves around this teenager (Lux) who goes looking for her biological parents to get their signatures for her emancipation.  Well things go awry and she ends up being placed in their custody in true tv magic.  On top of that they had a one night stand in high school and haven’t seen each other in 16 years.  So there’s that.

“Basically I’m looking for books like that.  Here’s the thing though:  I want books that are about the parents not the kid.  I want a romance where the parents have to come together because a kid they gave up comes back into their life OR I am looking for a romance where a kid/teen/young person comes into a couple’s life.  You know the ones where the hero has just discovered he has a kid he never knew about?

“Is this hard?  I feel like this should be hard.  I love those caregiver alphas (Kristen Ashley anyone?) and I’m just stuck.  I’ve been Googling like crazy and just keep getting Netflix reviews for Life Unexpected.  Why does the internet see ‘Books like Life Unexpected’ and assume I want the show?  I found the show already and I’m looking for something else.  C’mon Google!

“So any help would be appreciated.

“Thanks!

“Ash”

Sarah:  Whatta ya got?

Jane:  You know, that was a tough one for me –

Sarah:  That was really hard for me too.

Jane:  – primarily because I don’t like books with kids.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  So –

Sarah:  I forgot about that!

Jane:  I don’t read those books.  I think that they’re out there, but I don’t read them.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  And, and the whole parent trap story, where you’re bringing parents together, it – not necessarily one’s that had been married before – but that’s always too twee for me.  So I have none.  I really thought I was stumped.  But I, I blame it on the fact that I just don’t like kids in books, and if there’s kids, then generally – but the fact of the matter is that there’s tons of books that are about parents falling in love, and in fact, when I read that email I said, well, isn’t this the secret baby trope?  Or, you know, the Harlequin Presents forced into marriage because I accidentally got preggos?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yeah, I know that’s your favorite.

Jane:  I don’t mind it.  I don’t – I hate the secret baby trope.  I think, I think, you know, back when I was a young reader I, I thought the secret baby trope was awesome.  And, and then after I got a little older and then particularly after I had my daughter I thought, this is the cruelest thing a woman could ever do to a loving father.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jane:  And I, ever since then, it’s just like, it is a barrier that is almost impossible for me to get over.  Like, the only time it really worked was there was the India Grey Harlequin Presents where she tried really hard to get the information to him, but he was am-, he was amnesiac – [laughs] – due to a car accident and so turned her away repeatedly, and so that was the one time I thought, yeah, the secret baby, you know, she did everything she could –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  – and got turned away.  Anyway, so that’s what I – tho-, those were the books that sprang to mind when she wanted to see parents getting together, and those are the only ones I could think of.

Sarah:  Have you read the Joanna Wylde series?

Jane:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Would Reaper’s Stand qualify?

Jane:  No.

Sarah:  But he’s a parent, right?

Jane:  Yeah, but their kids don’t get them together.

Sarah:  Well, I, my understanding was that the – from the way I interpreted the letter, anyway – was that she wanted books that were similar to the idea that parents are being brought together, not necessarily by their kid, although I could be completely misreading, ‘cause I had to close my browser because Skype wasn’t working, so I could be misreading that one.

Jane:  I, no, I, it doesn’t, that doesn’t qualify because his parenting – well, first, all of his kids are adults, and second, they have no bearing on –

Sarah:  They have no influence and presence in the, in the, the getting togetherness.

Jane:  Correct.

Sarah:  So she wants books that are about the parent, not the kid.  The parents have to come together because of a kid they gave back on, they gave up comes back into their life.  Oh, yeah!  No big deal.  Where the hero has just discovered he has a kid he never knew about.  I feel like that’s – all right, fair estimate – forty-five percent of the Harlequin backlist?

Jane:  Ri-, isn’t that the secret baby trope?

Sarah:  It’s pretty much secret babies, but the thing is, she’s looking for, you know, kids who are sentient and talking and somewhat have their own autonomy.  All of the secret babies are mostly babies.

Jane:  Well, that’s true.  I, I just don’t –

Sarah:  Hand them to the nanny, and off you go for sexytimes.

Jane:  Yeah, I think I would, I would go to Harlequin and look at the books that have older children on the cover.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yes, you can tell because they’re really somewhat creepy looking and they always have this vacant stare.  [Laughs] Oh, bad Sarah.  The, I, I feel horrible that I have nothing off the top of my head that really fits.  I mean, there are secondary characters that get together in the background of other books, but they’re not brought together by children so much as maybe one of the hero or heroines who sort of sometimes serve as a child surrogate or, like, a child influence.  Like, you should go talk to him, ‘cause I’m young and I know what sex is, and you’re old and you don’t.  Which is not a thing that anyone actually says.  But I suck that I haven’t had, I, I don’t have any specific recommendations, which is good, ‘cause then we can turn it over to the listeners and they can be all like, duh!  Duh, what about this one?  Someone out there is much better versed in the secret baby world than we are.  Probably many people.

So, what are you reading?  Anything you want to talk about?

Jane:  I read this book by Julianna Keyes.  Julianna Keyes wrote this book called Time Served, which is coming out, I think, next month or this month.  Next month.  And it’s a little kind of, the sexual dynamic reminds me of Willing Victim, and it kind of has that sort of blue collar tone to it as well.  The hero served time in prison for a crime he, he did, and a violent robbery, and he admits that he was dumb and he got caught up in a bad crowd, and so it wasn’t like he took the fall for someone or he was wrongly accused.  He was a, he was a bad dude.  The girl was his high school sweetheart, and he really loved her, and kind of like in the middle of the night she leaves and goes away to college and doesn’t tell him, and so they have a really crappy breakup.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Uh, yeah!

Jane:  So I mean, it’s kind of like, well, you kind of have kind, two kind of unlikeable people.  They reconnect after he’s out of prison.  She’s a lawyer.  She’s trying to angle for a promotion within her law firm, and they’re working on this class action suit regarding medical illnesses caused in a, a factory.  So she runs into him again.  There’s a lot of attraction there, lot of unresolved issues, and she can’t really bring herself to admit that she wants him, so he says, you don’t have to admit it, you only have to say no, which she never does.  I thought it was a very gritty book, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  And I, it had, to me, a similar dynamic to Willing Victim in some way, and then I read another book of hers called Just Once, which I enjoyed, who – speaking of moody loner dudes, she totally writes that.

Sarah:  Really!

Jane:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Julianna Keyes?

Jane:  Yep.  And I liked Just Once.  It’s about a travel writer who had a bad experience and decided to return to a – I think it’s set in Montana or Wyoming – summer dude ranch, and she’s in charge of the housekeeping staff.  She’s trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life.  The head wrangler is a moody loner dude, and they have a romance, and, it’s, it’s a cla-, there’s a little class issue there, and, and in the Time Served there’s a much bigger class issue as the heroine grapples the fact that she wants to move away from her past, which she associates with a lot of shame and embarrassment.  And the hero is this, you know, blue collar guy, and he’s kind of unapologetic about it, and she has to make a decision as to whether her vision of her future includes someone who isn’t as polished and refined as she thinks that her life should be.  I thought the class issue was really well done.

Sarah:  That is interesting.

Jane:  Yeah.  And very authentic, and plus I thought she nailed all of the lawyer parts really well.  So then she had another book come out, and I didn’t realize it, and I bought it and read it couple nights ago, and the hero is a huge jerk, and he knows he’s a jerk.  It was an interesting read, and I’m still unsure of whether I liked it or not, because the hero is such an asshole.  And he does it intentionally.  I mean, he really intentionally does it because he’s emotionally stunted.  He worked as an interrogator for the government, and as you can imagine, the things that he did was not, were not very good.  And so he’s pretty divorced from his emotional side.  He feels like he can’t, whatever soft feelings that she needs from him, he doesn’t have, and so I mean, on the one hand, you do feel sympathetic for him, but on the other hand, man, he was an ass.  So, I don’t know, and I don’t mind the asshole hero, but he, he was an asshole too far for me.

Sarah:  Wow.  That, that’s a lot of asshole.

Jane:  Yeah.  And then I read Radiance, which I’ve been recommending, by Grace Draven.  That’s a science, it’s not a science fiction, it’s a fantasy romance, and I was over at Amazon –

Sarah:  Oh, are these the ones where it was like there was, there was sex, and it was horrible, how could you write such terrible, filthy scenes?  And, like, half of the Internet was like, buy it right now!

Jane:  Right.  I, and it’s so funny, ‘cause when I read those reviews about it having graphic sex, I’m like, I don’t remember those scenes.  [Laughs] Oh –

Sarah:  I must, I must be disturbed because I, I, I didn’t think it was that dirty.  [Laughs]

Jane:  Yeah, I mean, obviously my meter is all askew, but I don’t –

Sarah:  Too much dirty sex.

Jane:  But I don’t remember there being so mu-, I remember, like, maybe two or three mild love scenes?

Sarah:  But the author used the word cock!

Jane:  She did.

Sarah:  That’s just terrible, according to that one review.  How could you possibly?

Jane:  I don’t know.  I’m, I’m disappointed in her for, for sure.

Sarah:  Anything else you want to recommend?

Jane:  No, but I do recommend Radiance.  I think it’s a great fantasy romance.  It is the beginning of at least one more book.  I mean, there’s a couple books there, but the, there’s no cliffhanger to the romance.

Sarah:  Did you read Karina Bliss’s Rise?

Jane:  Yeeeaaah, kind of.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Does that mean you skimmed, or you didn’t finish, or you just read the last page?

Jane:  I didn’t finish.

Sarah:  What point did you stop?

Jane:  I don’t know; thirty-five percent in?

Sarah:  Ouch.

Jane:  Did you read it?

Sarah:  I did.

Jane:  You know what?  I, I love Karina Bliss.  This just did not work for me, and I have to admit, it might have been, I might have been prejudiced because I’ve never been interested in this character.  He’s been in past books, and he’s always been an asshole.

Sarah:  But you were just saying you like the asshole.

Jane:  I know.

Sarah:  Characters, not, like, actual assholes, sorry.  I need to be more specific.  [Laughs] Sorry!

Jane:  I, I don’t know.  I, I could not connect.  I thought, you know who I had in my mind?  And I know this is wrong.

Sarah:  Hmm.

Jane:  I kept thinking the, the, the rock star came off so old to me.  Like, Paul McCartney old.

Sarah:  Or Steven Tyler old?

Jane:  Yeah!  Yeah, Steven Tyler, exactly!

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yeah.  Having seen pictures on the Internet of his feet, which I will not link to in the show notes because it will make everyone sick, I can understand why that would be off-putting.

Jane:  But you liked it.

Sarah:  I liked it.  I struggled to get through the last quarter.  Once she leaves him and goes back to New Zealand for a little bit, I felt like all of the action in the story came to a crawl, and I had to convince myself to go back and finish it.  But once I convinced myself to go finish it, I liked the ending because the action picked up again, and I hit the last page and was like, oh, but I – that’s it?  So I’m a complete jerkwad because I was irritated that it was slow, and then when it sped up and finished, I was irritated again.  It’s just impossible to please me.  I did not picture Steven Tyler for this guy.  I pictured someone like, like someone from a, from a heavy metal band that’s been around for a while and is still very talented, so maybe like one of the dudes from Metallica who isn’t a complete asshole to the Internet.  The, the age thing didn’t bother me.  The very slow redemption of the hero, I thought, I, I kept looking at it both as a reader and then clinically, like, how is she going to redeem this hero?  What are the points where he’s going to reveal his soft and nougat-y center so that we can all appreciate what a softy he is?  And she didn’t really do that, which I had respect for.  He knew that he was an asshole, and he knew that he had to make amends, but what I found interesting was that his sobriety was not because he had a problem with alcohol and drugs.  He probably did, but the only reason he sobered up and started drinking water and green tea and eating healthfully and never eating fried foods and being completely clean with his lifestyle in every possible respect was that he was terrified that he was going to lose his singing voice if he didn’t clean up everything.  So it was still a selfish motivation.  He was still a complete selfish bastard.  He was only interested in preserving his way of maintaining his incredibly opulent lifestyle.  So he –

Jane:  And, and that didn’t bother me, and that –

Sarah:  That didn’t bother me either, but what I thought was interesting was that he went through all of the steps that someone who is going sober does without doing the process of going through Alcoholics Anonymous or, or Narcotics Anonymous.  It wasn’t a, a, like a rehab prescribed step-by-step recovery from, from alcohol and drug abuse, but he still went through all the things where he realized, I was an asshole, I defrauded people, I was a complete schmuck, and need to stop being such a schmuck, even though schmuck is my natural way.  He had to go through all of the recovery steps on his own as sort of part of evolving as a character, and I had a lot of respect for the way that was done.  I didn’t think she was as interesting as he was.

Jane:  She was not.  She was very bland.

Sarah:  And I thought that, you know, in some ways that she, she knows she’s bland.  Like, she says something like, well, we’re the, we’re the, we’re the backdrop that char-, that colorful characters build on, that, that society doesn’t exist without those of us who just do our thing.  But in the beginning, she’s a Pulitzer prizewinning biographer.  That’s pretty unique.

Jane:  Yeah, I don’t think she had to be as bland as Bliss made her out to be.

Sarah:  Yeah, I agree.  She was pretty…bland, and she easily, not succumbed, but she was easily absorbed into his world.

Jane:  Right.  Didn’t you expect her to be a little more skeptical?

Sarah:  Yes!  Thank you, that was exactly what I was reaching for.

Jane:  Where, why was – I just was like, where’s your biographer curiosity?  Why aren’t you questioning things?  I just, I guess I felt like she was such a limp dishrag, and he was such an asshole, you know, and my HP asshole-to-doormat ratio is pretty high.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yes.  That is very true.  The asshole-to-doormat was very high in this one.  But at the same time, when they were in his world, I thought that Bliss did a really great job writing the actual performances.

Jane:  Oh, yeah, I, I mean, the, the, the rock star stuff, or the concert stuff, was well done –

Sarah:  Oh, so interesting.

Jane:  – but –

Sarah:  She didn’t stand up to him as much as I wanted her to.  I wanted her to make him squirm more than she did.

Jane:  Right, right!  Put the screws on him, and, you know, or at least, if, because he was such an asshole, she needed to be, just, she just came off weak to me.

Sarah:  I wanted her to not only be stronger, but I also wanted her to call him out on the things that she noticed.  Like, she noticed that he was avoiding her, and she noticed that he was avoiding things and leaving holes in his biography and was, he was playing her, basically.

Jane:  Right.

Sarah:  She, she doesn’t ever call him on it in a way that happens that he can acknowledge, that – she doesn’t ever, like you said, she doesn’t ever put the screws to him and make him acknowledge that he’s being an asshole to her even though he said he wouldn’t be.

Jane:  But, and, and I think she should have gone in with more skepticism.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jane:  I don’t know.  Maybe I don’t know biographers and I’m just, I’m sure I’m superimposing my own biases.  It just didn’t –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jane:  It just didn’t work for me, which is too bad because I really love her, and I really love her writing, and I think, I hope it’s super successful, even if I didn’t like it.

Sarah:  But I can tell you, she talks about the other books in the series that I wanted to tell you about.  Next up is the, the, the guy in the band who had his wife and two kids with him, and the rock star, Zander,  was like, why is there, why are there small children backstage?  Why is your family with you?  This is a terrible idea.  Jared and Kayla are the next people in, in the series.  They get a novella, and then Zander’s assistant, Dimity, is the next heroine.

Jane:  And she’s intriguing.

Sarah:  She’s very intriguing.  She starts off, I think, as, like, her backstory is that she was a past fling of Zander’s, and she takes absolutely none of his shit.  Like, she had more backbone that I wanted Elizabeth, the heroine, to have.  So if, if she’s going to write Dimity, I want to read that book.  Like, I’m still interested in this series, and I, I’m hon-, I have to be honest, the rock star thing has never really done it for me, which is weird, ‘cause I love behind-the-scenes stuff, but the whole rock star subgenre has not really turned my crank at all.  Maybe I’m just getting too old and too ornery and too difficult to please, and I need to go be a loner distant asshole somewhere.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  I hope you enjoyed our discussion and are probably mad because now you want to buy a lot of books.  This is my problem too, and I’m, I’m with you.  I fully empathize.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Bear Attraction, the new sizzling-hot novella in the Shifters Unbound series from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley.  You can download it on February 17^th.

The music you’re listening to was provided Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is called “Ascent of Conival” and it is by the Peatbog Faeries.  This is from their album Dust, which I have totally bought and hangs out with me on my phone when I walk the dogs pretty much every day.  You can find it on their website or at iTunes or wherever your fine music is sold.

If you have questions or suggestions or ideas or things you’d like us to talk about, you can email us, because we love the email.  It’s really awesome!  We are at [email protected].  That’s S for Sarah, B for Bitches, J for Jane, podcast at gmail dot com, and you can pretty much ask us anything.  I mean, I don’t have any lottery numbers, and if you really want me to connect my bank account to yours, probably not going to happen, but if you have ideas of what you’d like us to talk about, if you’re looking for book recommendations, or if you’d like us to do an interview, please feel free to email us.

In the meantime, on behalf of Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading and a great weekend, and I don’t know if it’s an Easter egg if I tell you, but if you stay till after the music, there’s a little extra something from Jane and me.

[merry music]

Sarah:  This is a p.s. from Halley’s letter:

“PS.  I love all the new interviews but I miss hearing Jane’s voice every week.  I’m sure she’s very busy and if possible, I’d love a brief update on whatever she is able to talk about regarding the law suit – even if that’s just ‘I can’t say anything.’”

Sarah:  I have three email messages here asking how you are about that thing you’re not supposed to talk about, and I don’t even know how to ask you that question.  How are you about that thing you’re not supposed to talk about?

Jane:  [Big sigh]

Sarah:  Well, that about answers it.  How do I even transcribe the noise you just made?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I’m not even sure!