129. Listener Email: Library History, Dancer Heroes, and a Brief Chat with RedHeadedGirl

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of the DBSA podcast.  This is episode number 129.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are all of you.  I asked a question recently about library history and I have some responses on that.  I have some writers who are asking how much of a send-up of a genre is too much.  I have questions about whether or not there are any dancer heroes in romance, and more.  If you are the type of person who listening to one person’s voice for 45 minutes will drive you a little bonkers, probably not a good episode.  I could try to distort my voice, but that would just be annoying, so you have been warned, I guess, or cautioned, maybe, is the better term.

But don’t be afraid that it’s all just me, ‘cause it’s not.  At the end, I have a brief, quickie, micro interview with RedHeadedGirl.  We talk about 50 Shades, her experience seeing the movie, why she almost got in a fight in the theater, and her recommendations should you be thinking of going to see this film.  What should you bring with you?  I think it starts with F, ends with K, and has LAS in the middle, but that’s a guess.  We’ll see what she has to say.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and where you can buy it, because most of the music that she has produced is pretty frigging rad.

This podcast is also going to have a lot of book mentions, so please don’t try to write them down if you’re driving or riding a bike, or even riding a stationary bike, ‘cause if I’m, like, walking on the treadmill or riding a stationary bike and I try to write something down, apparently there’s only so much hand-eye coordination I have, and it doesn’t apply to my lower body if I’m writing something.  So, please don’t endanger yourself!  On Smart Bitches and on Dear Author, we have podcast entries, which I’m told are also called show notes, and in those show notes/podcast entries, we have all of the books we’ve mentioned, and if we miss one or you can’t find it, you can always email us, but please don’t write and drive.  It’s not safe.  ‘Cause you knew that, though, ‘cause you’re very smart.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of The Billionaire and the Virgin, the first in an all-new series from the New York Times bestselling author of the Billionaire Boys Club, Jessica Clare.  You can download this on February 17^th wherever your fine, fine eBooks are sold.

And now, on with the podcast!

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Sarah:  A while back, I had an email about libraries, because we’ve been talking a lot about libraries here at the podcast, and someone emailed me to ask a question, and I didn’t know the answer, so I said, if you know anything about library history, please tell me.  So, I don’t have the okay of the person who asked the original question to use their name, but this is what they wrote:

On an earlier podcast, you talked about the resistance from publishers to putting eBooks in libraries, the inflated prices libraries have to pay, and the HarperCollins twenty-six-checkout limit.  It occurred to me that many of the same concerns would have been raised by publishers when libraries first started.  I can imagine a publisher saying, why would we put a book in a library when a hundred people could read it instead of selling a hundred copies to each reader.  I know eBooks have added certain elements to the argument, but it seems to me that some of them would be pretty much the same, so I was wondering how did libraries convince publishers back in the day that it was a good idea for them to have their books available in libraries?  Or were things so different then it wasn’t an issue?

Sarah:  I don’t know the answer, so I asked, and I received a message from Jess, who blogs at www.theproductivelibrarian.com – that’s a really awesome URL – and this is Jess’s response:

“Thanks for passing along the thought-provoking question!  I worked on this with a friend so the response is a team effort.

“I assume the listener is referring to the first public/lending libraries.  The first libraries in antiquity up to pretty recent history were really more repositories of information than what we think of libraries now.  The earliest libraries didn’t deal with publishers because publishers didn’t really exist.  Early libraries were less about spreading information than about storing information.  Even academic libraries didn’t delight in circulating materials until pretty recently.  Some books were kept chained to the walls and tables while researchers were expected to use them in house.”

Sarah:  Did anyone else just have a sudden idea of early library BDSM erotic romance?  Just me?  Okay.  Anyway.

“I couldn’t find any evidence that publishers had a problem with libraries as we know them when they started to take hold.  Here’s my theory (and please note this is on libraries in the US):

“When public libraries started to grow, publishers weren’t as powerful as they are now.  Also, books were expensive items and less available to the wider population.  Publishers would not have seen one sale being borrowed 100 times as a loss of 100 sales.  Rather, it would be a sale.  There was also the first sale doctrine.  The first sale doctrine guarantees that you can do whatever you wish with something you want.  You can resell it, give it to a friend, lend it (like a library), or throw it away.  It’s yours.  That has been recognized by the Supreme Court as far back as 1908.  Even if publishers had a problem, there was nothing they could do about it because libraries were within their rights in the first sale doctrine.  So what has happened?  Now we have more mega publishers who have more power.  Literacy has boomed leading to a bigger book buying market.  Technology has boomed allowing books to be published, sold, and controlled on a wider scale.  Now with ebooks, different principles are followed.  Because libraries aren’t purchasing physical items (print books) but rather purchasing access (even if it is perpetual access), publishers can argue it is different from the first sale doctrine.

“This is a theory.  If anyone can find evidence, I’d be excited to hear it.

“Sarah, Thanks so much for highlighting these issues.  Spreading the news about ebook issues is a great way to show support for libraries.  I am an academic librarian so my issues are a little different but every bit of conversation helps.  It’s never easy explaining to students that I have to pay $150 for a single use ebook when the paperback is $30.

“Jess”

Sarah:  Given what little I know about library history, that seems to make sense and fits in with what I know, but if you know other things or you have a different answer or you have actual cited sources – ooh, sexy! – please, email me!  [email protected].  That would be awesome.

And as far as libraries and first sale doctrine and all of these issues about how we get the books that we want to read when we are a library patron, I feel like I have stumbled into one of those sort of secret worlds in, you know, how, like, in paranormal romance the heroine falls down some steps, and then some guy bites her, and all of a sudden there’s this world she didn’t know about!  And all these people she could never see before, and she sees them all!  And – yeah, I kind of feel like, like that’s how it is with libraries.  I sort of stumbled into this completely rich, opulent, very complicated world all about books where there’s this language that I don’t quite speak, and I spend a lot of time going, wait, huh?  So if you have done anything to help me correct my huh? I really appreciate it, so thank you very much, Jess.

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Sarah:  Our next two messages deal with sports romance because we spoke at length about sports romance in a recent podcast.  Do you know it’s actually really hard to say sports romance?  It’s a lot of sibilant Ss going on in there.

This first email is from Camilla:

“Hi Ladies!

“I broke my iPod and I’m just catching up podcasts now.  I’m currently listening to the Sports Romance episode.  Oh my god!  I am screaming!!!!!  Bad-ass lady athlete, Rugby, Basketball!  They’re all here!  Players: A Sports Romance Anthology.

“My book (Submission Moves) is included here but sadly, it’s not what you’re looking for.  It’s an MMA romance with a one night stand trope (for Amanda).

“Cheers!

“Camilla”

Sarah:  Okay, why that didn’t come up when I was searching for sports romance, I do not know, but I will link to Players – a Sports Romance Anthology in the show notes, should you wish to check it out.  And thank you very much, Camilla.

We have a second message about sports romances, as well:

“have you read any of Rosalind James’ books – rugby union/NZ?  or another NZ author – Danielle Hawkins (Chocolate Cake for Breakfast) featuring a heroine who is a vet & a hero who plays professional rugby union.  FYI – there is a HUGE difference between rugby union & rugby league – well, to my mind anyway.  And going back ages, there was discussion about books featuring dairy farming – once again, Danielle Hawkins (Dinner at Rose’s) or Michelle Holman (Divine).  Divine is very funny & covers a lot – sex change/dominatrix phone sex/and a aged care facility that is very clean (due in part to the dominatrix sex line!)  I do enjoy your podcasts (listening in Australia).  thanks!

“Karen”

Sarah:  Okay, Divine is a book that has a sex change, transgender dominatrix phone sex, and an aged care facility that is very clean because of the dominatrix sex line.  I feel like every now and again I discover a book, and I’m like, that can’t be real, and then I look it up, and yes, it’s real.  So, Divine; let’s look this up.

Okay, I found it.  And I have to be honest with you guys; my slightly uuuuuhhhhhh hesitation alarm, and it’s not even like, oh, I don’t think I’m going to like this but, oh, this, this could go bad, in a bad way.  This could, this could be uncomfortable for many people, so that’s, that alarm went off, so keep that in mind.  Here’s the description, and I believe that this is, yes, this is from HarperCollins New Zealand, published November 2008.  This is the cover copy for Michelle Holman’s Divine:

“What do you do when your husband leaves you for another woman — and ‘she’ turns out to be him?”

Sarah:  Let me translate that:  the, the heroine’s husband has left her and is undergoing transition to become a woman.

“Tara Whitehead finds out the hard way when her husband decides he’d rather be a woman.  [S:  Well, my explanation was not necessary.  Anyway.]  With no money, she’s about to lose her gorgeous home, and her ‘friends’ no longer return her calls.

“Fate, in the unlikely form of her husband’s reprobate uncle, intervenes.  Determined to pursue gentle Miss Lillian, he leaves everything to Tara’s daughter, and moves into the local retirement village.  With nowhere else to go, Tara heads for a quiet life in Divine, as fast as her designer stilettos will take her.

“Instead there’s the handsome dairy farmer she keeps clashing with, a scurrilous property developer, and a disgraceful incident at a PTA meeting.  And mud.  Lots of mud.  With manure.  When the mysterious Sian makes Tara an unexpected offer, her life moves from slightly unhinged to hilariously bizarre — and the sleepy little town of Divine will never be the same …”

Sarah:  I don’t know how to translate this feeling, but the, I mean, the only auditory explanation I can give of this feeling is, ohhh, crap.  Like, when people who are transgender are used as comic relief or as plot devices, that makes me go, g-g-guh.  I don’t even know how to translate that, but that’s the feeling I’m getting.  However, this review on Amazon from Book Lover from GA totally makes me day [laughs]:

“Even though it’s be easy to dislike Tara for being beautiful and the perfect woman, you can’t help but empathize with her while she tries to do what’s best for Jen, her 15 year old daughter…”

Sarah:  So we have a very perfect stiletto-clad heroine whose husband is going through transition, but yes, there’s a dairy farmer, that is absolutely true.  You never – you, you ever go through, like, down the rabbit hole on Amazon?  Like, you click on a book, and then you click on another book, and then you click on another book, and all of a sudden you’re like, how did I end up looking at this?  And then the next time you log into Amazon, its recommendations are completely messed up.  I’m going to end up doing that with this book, because everything else that has come up has made me go, wait, what?  Huh?  What?  Wait, what?  Huh?  Oh, okay.  What?  Also available, by the way – [laughs] I don’t know why this is coming up on my recommendations – When Zebras Discover Motorbikes:  How to influence people, situations, and results.  Yeah.  I think it’s time for me to stop looking at Amazon.

I do think we need more dairy farmers in romance, though.  I follow a dairy farmer on Twitter – I think I’ve mentioned this? – and his, his life is actually really interesting and very, very busy.  Like, it’s four in the morning; I’m going to go milk 2,000 cows.  Dude!  Thank you, ‘cause we had cereal this morning.

Karen also mentioned in her email Rosalind James’s Escape to New Zealand series, and I have read book one of that series, and I’m pretty sure I mentioned it before.  The Rosalind James New Zealand Escape series is all about New Zealand, shockingly enough.  What I really like about the first book was not the characters so much as the setting.  There’s so much detail as the heroine, who is an American, takes a vacation in New Zealand, meets a guy who she doesn’t know is a super-famous rugby player, ends up having a whirlwind romance with him, going back to home, and then realizing she wants to move back to New Zealand.  There’s so much detail, because she’s obviously the audience surrogate enabling us to understand what’s different about New Zealand as she discovers what’s different about New Zealand.  It was fascinating for me, because one of the things that the heroine notices was the difference in attitude towards working all the time versus doing other things with your time other than work, which I know is a very strange idea to Americans, but apparently happens in other countries.  There are also these other countries aside from America, did you know?  This is all news to me.

The thing I liked about it was the richness of the detail about New Zealand, and I remember when I talked about it before – and I don’t remember if it was on the podcast or if I was just talking with Jane – I liked the detail more than I liked the characters, so I would actually skip over the dialogue, which is something I never do, so that I could read more about the detail of New Zealand.  Their conflict was pretty minor.  Is she going to move to New Zealand to be with him or not?  Is she going to be okay with being the girlfriend of a famous person?  Probably.  It, it was kind of circumstantial, low-stakes conflict, but the setting totally sucked me in, so I recommend it, but not quite as a romance, just as sort of an experience of reading.  If you want to travel someone else, somewhere else where, when you’re reading a book, if you want to take a journey in your imagination while you’re reading a book, that would be a great choice, and there’s definitely sports in that one, yes.  I can’t, I can’t believe I forgot to mention that one, ‘cause it’s, like, all rugby.

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Sarah:  This next email is from a writer named Christine, and if you have any input, I would love to hear from you.  Our email address is [email protected].  Christine writes:

“Thanks so much for doing the DBSA podcast – it really makes my week!  I have a topic on my mind that I’m hoping you can work into a future episode, and it is as follows:

“My friend and I are both novice (pre-professional?) fiction writers and we get together once or twice a month to walk and talk about writing.  On our most recent walk we were talking about genre and wondering if most successful, published authors write with genre conventions in mind and aim squarely for the middle, or if most write with genre conventions in mind but try to do something different with them – aiming for the edges if you will.  Or maybe successful authors don’t allow themselves to get bogged down worrying about such things?

“This was prompted by both of us having an ‘I’m writing/have written this thing but I’m not sure exactly what it is’ moment.  For example, if one *hypothetically* wrote an urban paranormal romance wherein one spent a lot of time deliberately undermining conventional tropes of the urban paranormal genre for the sake of humor, would one then present that book to the world as a true urban paranormal?  Or might one find that they had written themselves out of the urban paranormal club by being a smartass?

“Anyway, I think it would be cool to hear how a variety of authors relate to their chosen genre, or maybe how an agent/publisher-type person views the limits of genre as far as marketability.

“Thanks and happy reading!

“Christine”

Sarah:  I can definitely ask writers that question, but I think the problem is, first, if you ask a writer, you’re going to get a different answer with every single person, because some people pay very close attention to what is selling because they are trying to make money, especially if they’re self-publishing.  They’re operating a business; they’re going to want to know what is popular.  If what is popular right now is contemporary small-town romance and it seems to be evolving into a more chaste and low-sexuality direction, then maybe that’s what they’re going to try to write.  Or maybe they don’t give a flying turd, and they’re going to write whatever they want!  It varies person to person.

The thing is, when you’re talking about genre convention, you’re also talking about genre expectation and the expectation of the reader, and that’s something you really don’t want to monkey around with.  The obvious one is the happy ending.  Don’t market something as a romance, say it’s a romance, and then kill one of the protagonists.  [Laughs] To quote Beverly Jenkins from the Library of Congress convention:  If you’re going to kill somebody at the end, get out of our genre.  To which I said, hell, yes.

So that’s a major reader expectation, and a major genre convention for the entirety of romance, pretty much.  We like the happy ending, the happy finale.  Don’t monkey with that.  Within each individual subgenre, underneath the great romance umbrella – which could probably shield the earth at this point, it’s so big – there are reader expectations when it comes to certain conventions of genre.  If you think about mysteries, you expect the crime to be solved; you expect order to be restored.  If you’re thinking about urban fantasy, you’re going to be looking at a worldbuilding system of magic where, or otherworldliness in which there is some sort of disorder that needs to be understood or fought.  There’s probably a large Big Bad, may take you over several books, but there are expectations of the reader that go into genre conventions.  So when you’re looking at conventions and looking at the typical elements of a particular subgenre, what you’re also talking about is reader expectation based on what you’re saying your book is.  So if you say it’s urban paranormal, I am not expecting, say, Almack’s or pelisses or anyone driving a phaeton, ‘cause that would be something in the historical genre, unless you’re writing steampunk.

In terms of writing something where you undermine conventional tropes for the sake of humor, well, is it a gimmick, or is it a plot?  If it’s a gimmick, then that’s probably a very limited audience for your book, because the thing is, in order to do a send-up of a genre, or in order to, as you describe, undermine the major points of a particular subgenre and turn those tropes upside-down, you need the audience to already understand what those tropes are before you turn them around.  So if you’re going to market this book to an audience of people who are very familiar with urban fantasy or you can get a couple of well-established urban fantasies to be like, this is hilarious!  You should totally read it!  That might help you, but by doing a send-up of something established, you’re relying on the audience to understand what it is that you’re doing, and to do that, they have to under-, already understand all of the things about the genre that you are upending.  Now, that said, any author who subverts a genre that is very, very popular, like, for example, urban fantasy or historical or even contemporary, the potential for subversiveness is always, always welcome, at least by me.  I know that, for example, Jane really likes the Harlequin Presents by Susan Napier – or Napier?  Napier? – because they are very subversive.  They take the established ideas of a Harlequin Presents, and they play with them a little.  But what happens is if you’re not familiar with those, you may not see that part.  You may not see the parts that are being subversive, because you’ll see the parts that are so closely adhering to what is already expected of a Harlequin Presents.  Do you see the difference?  I’m talking to you like you’re in front of me.  You’re not in front of me, but either way, there’s a difference between making an entire parody or making a complete undermining of a particular set of plots and tropes and expectations, sort of like the New Adult parody of all the other New Adult books, the name of which is escaping me.  I tried to read it, and it didn’t work for me because I don’t like New Adult and I wasn’t familiar enough with what she was doing with the books to make them funny, but I know people who have read a lot of New Adult who found it hilarious because it was a perfect send-up of what had already been done over and over by many New Adult authors.

So what I’m saying here is if you want to undermine an established genre, you have to stay on the right side of gimmick.  You don’t want to make it too much of an inside joke, so much reliant on insider knowledge that anyone who encounters it who isn’t familiar is not going to understand it.  That already limits your audience.  But if you’re trying to take one major element of urban fantasy and turn it all around, hey, go for it!  The bottom line, though, is whatever you like writing, if you’re enjoying it, keep doing that.  It’s good for you, and eventually, because it’s the Internet, you will probably find someone who wants to read it too.  It may not be the widest possible audience, but it’s going to be somebody, because no matter what you’re into, someone else is into it as well.  You just have to find that person.  So good luck, and keep writing.

[music]

Sarah:  Okay, one more email, and then it’s time for RedHeadedGirl.

This message is from Adelaide:

“How are you?  Big BIG MASSIVE fan.  I love listening to your podcast (and I listen them again and again), and yes I bought all your recommendations (well.. almost all since I am not much a fan of historical romance.

“Anyhow, I am wondering if you can recommend me a book with the muscular heroes being some sort of hot shot dancers (preferable ballet. but I am not picky, I will take any I can get).

“Recently I completely utterly fell in love with this beautiful, mesmerising music video of ‘Take Me to Church’ (music by Hozier, directed by David LaChapelle, ballet dance by Sergei Polunin)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-tW0CkvdDI… [S:  And I will have a link to it on YouTube in the podcast entry; don’t worry.]

“O.M. Holy schmolly.. when Sergei flies up in the air, and does his turns… O.M.G.. he is just so beautiful..  I must admit that I have watched this clip no less than 538 times, and I have so many romantic daydreams all somewhat involve ballet dancers, and all of a sudden, I wish I know some books with ballet heroes!!!  I read few new adult angsty romance with ballerina heroines..  I don’t particularly like those angsty, self-conscious heroines.  Could you please, pretty please, recommend any book with male ballet heroes with strong female heroines (who may/may not be ballerina???)  in my daydream, my heroin as newspaper reporter who sent to interview the hero, the new principal dancer (who happens to be as hot as Sergei)…

“Thank you very much!!! 😀

“Cheers

“Adelaide”

Sarah:  Okay, yes.  Yes, actually.  Male dancing heroes is not unknown but not super common, and that video is amazing.  So first off, I asked Jane, and Jane knows things.  She suggested Grease Monkey Jive by Ainslie Paton, which features a hero and heroine who have to take dance classes.  He’s not quite a professional dancer, but it’s up there.

And then I did what any sensible human being does, and I asked Twitter, and as you know, Twitter knows everything.  And now I have a list of ballerina and dancer heroes, some heroines, but mostly heroes, and as always, I will link to all of these books in the show notes.  Please don’t scribble and drive.

First up, from reader Theresa Walenta comes Fever Dream by Annabel Joseph.  Theresa says both characters are ballet dancers.

And two people recommended Dance of Dreams by Nora Roberts.  This was recommended by Maliha Aqeel and Carly Silver, and Maliha, if I mispronounced your name, I apologize.  The hero of that book is a ballet dancer, so I suspect you may want to run, not walk, towards the Nora Roberts book Dance of Dreams.

Saltypepper, who I talk to a lot, recommended Dance with Me by Heidi Cullinan, as did several other people.  That is a male/male romance, and you’ll probably find a few more ballet dancer heroes in male/male.

Another recommended by Helen Magnus is Making Promises by Amy Lane, which is also a male/male where one of the heroes is a ballet dancer.

Sarah Brady and Carly Silver both recommended Amorous Liaisons by Sarah Mayberry, and Margaret Willison, who you may know on Twitter as MrsFridayNext recommended a book called A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson.

Ducky McDuck recommended Dancer by Colum McCann and says that there are bathhouses galore, and Laura Xixi – I believe I pronounced that right, and if I didn’t, again, my apologies – she recommends Moving in Rhythm by Dev Bentham, which I’ve read.  Dev is very talented.

And wait, there’s more!  Carrie Lofty and Lorelei Brown write a series under the name Katy Poi-, Katy Porter – oy! – Carrie Lofty and Lorelie Brown write a series under the name Katy Porter, and the Club Deviant series features, as author Carrie Lofty put it, bad boys with rhythm, and a few other people recommended that series as well.

And there’s one particular book that came up in the recommendations that I feel like everyone needs to know about:  KC Kahler and the author Jessica Evans recommended The Muse.  Per the author, this is Pride and Prejudice set in a ballet company.  Darcy is the choreographer, and Elizabeth is a dancer.  That would be The Muse by Jessica Evans.  I can almost hear all of you going, [gasp] ooh!  Yeah, ‘cause I totally made that noise.

So, Adelaide, I hope that satisfies your desire for a reading list of romances where the hero dances or is a ballet dancer, and if you read any of those, I hope you will let me know what you think.  And thank you for writing to us.

And now, a brief interview with RedHeadedGirl:

RedHeadedGirl:  Hello.

Sarah:  Good afternoon!  How are you?

RHG:  I’m so snowbound.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  So much snow.

Sarah:  Are you one of the people that the mayor of Boston had to tell not to jump out the window into snow?

RHG:  No, because I don’t live technically in the city of Boston.  I live in one of the suburbs.

Sarah:  Have you jumped out the window into the snow?

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  That sounds dangerous.

RHG:  Well, of course it’s dangerous, but –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – we’re all going crazy!

[Laughter]

RHG:  That’s not the point!

Sarah:  Are you still stuck in your house?

RHG:  I was able to get out last night, but – [exasperated noise]

Sarah:  Have you started cooking with the snow?

RHG:  No, although I was thinking about going to the grocery store and getting food coloring and putting colored water in spray bottles and doing art outside.

Sarah:  I did that with my kids when we got not, not anywhere near as much snow as you.  The first storm was, was big, heavy, wet snow, and it rolled up and made a snowman really easily, and the second one was a lot finer, and it froze, so I had the kids go out back and spray paint the snow with bottles.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  What helped is that I have dogs, and so I only had red and blue, but the dogs took care of yellow.

RHG:  Good dogs!

Sarah:  So between –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – between the two dogs and the two kids, we had a full rainbow; we were good.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s kind of satisfying to turn it into something else.  I mean, you could sculpt, like, a giant peen.  You know, if you get the right color combination, you could make a big old 50 Shades of Grey tie and then watch what happens.

RHG:  [Laughs] I just might do that.  I –

Sarah:  That sounds fun.

RHG:  As, as I have, you know, shown you the guys the pictures that we don’t have a front yard.  We have, like, a three-foot swathe that’s got a couple of bushes on it.

Sarah:  Yep.

RHG:  And that drift is well over my head at this point.

Sarah:  You can always just use a cookie sheet, sit down, and slide.  You might end up like –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – you might end up in, you know, New Hampshire.

RHG:  It’s true.  They, they do have a snow farm at MIT that is known as the Alps of MIT.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I saw pictures of it today; it was impressive.

RHG:  Yeah, and the MIT police are like, don’t climb on it!  And people are like, how about you go fuck yourself?  What are you going to do?

Sarah:  [Laughs] What are you going to do, climb up here and get me?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I got crampons; you got shoes.  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So I wanted to ask you about – I know you wrote a review –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – the 50 Shades of Grey movie.  Is it lingering with you?  Is it like when I eat rosemary and for days afterward everything tastes like rosemary?

RHG:  Not really.  I mean, I’ve talked about it with a lot of people.  It isn’t sticking with me the way –

Sarah:  A good movie?

RHG:  – like, like a good movie, or –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – a profound movie, or – like, when I went to the Imperial War Museum in London –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  – it, that haunted me for several days afterwards.

Sarah:  So on a scale of one to Imperial War Museum, this is, like, a two.

RHG:  Yeah.  It happened.  We wrote about it.

Sarah:  It was a thing.

RHG:  I catharted myself.  It’s done.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  There was drinking.

RHG:  There was so much drinking.

Sarah:  Do you recommend that people who go to see this, if they are not in the 50 Shades fandom – and more power to you if you are; I’m not knocking your choices at all – but if you’re not in the fandom and if you are not totally into the idea of the movie, but you are going to see it, do you recommend flasks?

RHG:  Yes.  I mean, there are so many other ways you could spend two hours of your life and so many other ways to spend your twelve to fifteen dollars –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  So, I mean, ultimately, I recommend just not going to see it.

Sarah:  I can also recommend not seeing the SpongeBob movie, because that thing was terrible.

RHG:  [Laughs] God.  It did not look good from the previews.

Sarah:  You want to know what the terrible thing is?  And my kids even identified this rip-off.  We see a lot of kids’ movies, so we see all the kid movie previews.  I think I saw the entire movie of Annie with Quvenzhané Wallis in the previews, because I saw so many long-length previews, I’m pretty sure I saw the whole damn movie before another movie started.  Like, I didn’t need to go see it.  But in the SpongeBob preview, there’s this whole section, ‘cause it’s The SpongeBob Movie:  Sponge out of Water –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and in the preview there’s this whole section where they’re all three-dimensional CGI interacting with Antonio Banderas, and every time I see him I think, oh, yeah, you are going through a divorce, aren’t you?

RHG:  Wait, wait, what, whoa, whoa, wait a second.  [Laughs] Antonio’s in this movie?

Sarah:  Antonio Banderas is the evil pirate!

RHG:  This is what he’s doing?

Sarah:  He’s divorcing Melanie Griffith.  I am presuming that that had an, an influence on his decision to be in this film.

RHG:  Man, he was the best Zorro ever, and now he’s doing this?

Sarah:  He’s like a bad drunken Zorro pirate in this movie.  It’s terrible.

RHG:  I’m so sad.

Sarah:  So, you know, there’s Antonio Banderas and three-dimensional SpongeBob and all of the other characters, and I was like, okay!  You’re going to do something interesting and different.  You’re going to make them three-dimensional and interact with people in the real world.  Nonono, that was the last fifteen minutes of the movie.  The other part of the movie, they were plain old animated characters doing stuff like they would on television, and then maybe the last quarter, if that, was the CGI animation where they’re having this ridiculously overstated battle with, with skuzzy pirate Antonio Banderas.  Don’t use the money that you would have spent going to see 50 Shades on SpongeBob is what I am saying here.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  You can take that movie money and see many other things.

RHG:  Many other things, or buy some ice cream.  Yo, get a cheapy mani-pedi or whatever –

Sarah:  Or go to the dollar theater and see, like, fifteen movies!

RHG:  Exactly!  You have better ways to spend your money –

Sarah:  If you’re not a fan.

RHG:  – but if you have to go –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – if you have to go, for God’s sake, bring booze.  It makes it much easier.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Are there specific cues at which people should drink?

RHG:  One of the things that we attempted to do was we would take a drink every time Anastasia bit her lip.

Sarah:  Oh, God.

RHG:  And that’s why, one, I ran out of booze in the middle of the movie –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – and I was pretty smashed.  Like, at some point, I leaned over to Amanda, who had seen it the night before, ‘cause her friends had said, oh, we’re going to see 50 Shades!  Here’s your ticket; we’re paying for you!  And she’s like, fuck!  Nobody told me!

Sarah:  [Laughs] She had to see it twice!

RHG:  She had to see it twice!

Sarah:  I did not even know that!  Ooh!

RHG:  I know, I know.  And I leaned over, and I was like, I’m so drunk.  When is this over?  And she’s like, hold on.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Not for a while.

RHG:  Yeah.  And about fifty minutes, five hours, I’m not sure, later, I was like, seriously, how much more time do we have?  And she’s like, ten minutes, and the worst line in the movie is coming up.

Sarah:  Wow.  Which one is that?  Laters, baby?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Was it painful?

RHG:  So bad.

Sarah:  It’s, it’s that bad?

RHG:  Like I said in the review, Dakota Johnson was a bright spot, the idea that female sexual pleasure is an actual thing was a bright spot, and the “Crazy in Love” cover was a bright spot, and that’s it.

Sarah:  Well, my understanding is that she is considerably talented and did a lot with what she had to work with –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – but Jamie Dornan, not so much.

RHG:  Cardboard boy, cardboard every –

Sarah:  Cardboard, cardboard, cardboard?

RHG:  Cardboard.  Yeah.

Sarah:  So I understand you almost got in a fight with people in front of you at the movie.

RHG:  Kind of, yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Was this after you were drunk?

RHG:  Oh, yeah.  The theater we went to has a, it’s arena seating, it’s classy as hell, and –

Sarah:  Oh, are you in, like, a big Barcalounger?

RHG:  Like a big Barcalounger.

Sarah:  I love that.

RHG:  I couldn’t get us seats in the little alcoves off to the side with recliners.  What I did is I got us seats in the very back row so no one would actually see us when we pulled out our flasks.

Sarah:  Okay, that makes sense.

RHG:  But, but the problem with that is, is that you can see people when they pull out their phones.

Sarah:  Which is very distracting, ‘cause they’re brighter.

RHG:  They’re brighter as, bright as fuck.  Bright as fuck.  This theater has a big problem with that; when I went to Selma, there was, like, the first twenty minutes, there were employees sort of scanning and talking to people throughout the first twenty minutes of –

Sarah:  What?!

RHG:  – get up and go get an employee and say, that person is still using their fucking phone, and at about an hour in, two people down –

Sarah:  That’s annoying.

RHG:  It’s terrible.  Two people down in the very front row had their phones out for over five minutes before I finally yelled, and I scared the shit out of the guy sitting next to me.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  I felt really bad about that.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  No.

RHG:  The people sitting in front of us, the woman pulled out her phone during the first dungeon scene and started filming it, and I was like, well, that is tacky as hell, but at least it’s not bright so whatever, and then she flipped through a couple of apps that were really bright.

Sarah:  [Frustrated groan]

RHG:  Yeah.  Yeah, and like, even the filming wasn’t that distracting, because it was still dark and the screen was dark, so –

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  – whatever.  It was the flipping through the apps.  Like, if you’re that addicted to Twitter – and I’m really addicted to Twitter; sometimes it is hard, which is why I put it in airplane mode so I don’t get the notifications –

Sarah:  Oh, so you mean you actually self monitor your own Internet use?

RHG:  Yeah!

Sarah:  What is that?

RHG:  I know, I know, it’s crazy.  It’s crazy.

Sarah:  That’s just crazy.

RHG:  Like, if you can’t manage to do that for two hours, don’t go out in public and make people interact with you.

Sarah:  Or don’t go in the movies opening night and there’s assigned seating and people are probably paying for a babysitter and, you know –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – how much per ticket?  Like, fifteen dollars per ticket?

RHG:  Yeah, it was, I think, $12.79, plus the Fandango convenience fee.

Sarah:  Yep.  The only thing that saved the SpongeBob movie from being something that actually made me angry about loss of money was that we saw it at the dine-in theater, and people brought me French fries, and that tend to, tends to pacify me.

RHG:  Yeah, that does help.

Sarah:  Here are some fried foods.  You can endure –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – skuzzy Antonio.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It was very sad.

RHG:  I’m so sad now.

Sarah:  So –

RHG:  I was just thinking, like, what is he up to?  And now I know, and –

Sarah:  Yeah.

RHG:  – I wish I didn’t.

Sarah:  No, it’s better that you don’t know.  I’m sorry.  Are you reading anything you want to talk about?

RHG:  No, I’m sort of trying to find my next big thing.  I’ve started and stopped a bunch of things.  I do have the recommended nine-, what, 1970s bear erotica that somebody wanted us to read?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  I do have that.  I haven’t read it, but I think this is going to be my – oh, my God, there’s underlining and stars in it.  Holy shit!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  But if there’s not bear erotica –

RHG:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  – do you want erotica of a different type?  Like, do you want to discover the next big what-the-hell erotica?  Like, we’ve had dino, dino erotica, lots of dino erotica, and we’ve had orca, orca erotica and giant peens and, you know, there were haunted HDMI cables –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Are you looking for the next big what-the-hell erotica?

RHG:  You know, I, I always think that those are better when they just find you.

Sarah:  Oh, totally.  You don’t want to go hunting for them, because –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – that way lies madness and the desire for a shower.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  What is the last thing that you saw on television that made you go, holy shit, this is awesome!  Was it Agent Carter?

RHG:  It was Agent Carter.  I watched that last, or the most recent episode last night, and –

Sarah:  It gets better and better.  How does that happen?

RHG:  We’re in a, in a Golden Age of TV, and I’m so happy about it.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I feel like I won some sort of prize.  Like, there are all these shows?  That are good?

RHG:  Yeah.  I, I think the, the fact that there’s more TV channels than ever before, and there’s more money going into TV and more channels that are willing to take risks is definitely paying off for everybody.

Sarah:  Oh, I agree, and I’m not much of a TV watcher; I’m actually very bad at watching TV, ‘cause I’m bad at remembering what time it is, so I never actually catch things.  DVR was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

RHG:  Yep, that’s where we are.  Agent Carter.

Sarah:  Agent Carter’s awesome; everyone should watch it.

RHG:  Absolutely, and I found out that I can get her hat.

Sarah:  What?

RHG:  Yes!

Sarah:  You can get Agent Carter’s hat?

RHG:  Yes.  Stetson reintroduced a – it’s called the Stetson Aviatrix.

Sarah:  Ooh.  Oh, of course it is.

RHG:  Yeah.  [Laughter] With any luck, I will have that at RT.

Sarah:  Well, I’ve noticed since Agent Carter – and it’s, it’s hard for me to identify – either my eyeballs and brain are now trained to notice those things or there are more of them and I am being pitched them because we also review things like Agent Carter, but there is – I, I was sharing with you guys the Lily Baxter series set during World War Two.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.  Which I am, I’m excited about downloading that and reading that.

Sarah:  The Shopkeeper’s Daughter sounds really good.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, I kind of want to rearrange the reading schedule and read it, like, right now.

RHG:  Yeah.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Which is bad ‘cause I have a schedule for a reason, and if I rearrange it I’ll forget what it was that I was reading next, and then I’m all done.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  ‘Cause Present Sarah and Future Sarah, we don’t remember anything that Past Sarah wanted us to do.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  We just have to nod and follow along with instructions.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yeah.  Have you read Code Name Verity?

Sarah:  I have not read it.  I’ve heard that there’s –

RHG:  Oh –

Sarah:  – gross, copious weeping at the end, so I have to sort of save that.

RHG:  There, there, there is, yes.

Sarah:  I have to save that for the right moment.  Like, that’s not going to be a vacation read for me, ‘cause then I would just snowboard into a tree.

RHG:  No.  No, that should just, that should be a straight-up PMS read and just cathart it all out.  Get it all over with at once.

Sarah:  Is it me, or is there more World War Two stuff now?

RHG:  I think there is.  I was kind of expecting there to be more World War One stuff, given that it’s the anniversary of the start of World War One?  That was last year?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  But –

Sarah:  And Downton Abbey.

RHG:  And Downton Abbey, and I really suspect that Captain America, ‘cause that first movie came out in, what, 2011?  So this would be about the right time for any World War Two stuff that was inspired by that to start –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  – hitting the shelves.

Sarah:  You’re right.

RHG:  I suspect that was a big part of it.

Sarah:  I bet you’re right, because a lot of the Avenger origin stories have links to that time period.

RHG:  Yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  Plus, we all know people who were alive at that time.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  That’s not such ancient history that everyone who lived through it is dead.

RHG:  Yeah, yeah, but they are dying off, so –

Sarah:  Yep.

RHG:  – I think there’s a, a push to immortalize their stories as best we can.

Sarah:  I notice that with the interview I did with Denise Kiernan, who did The Girls of Atomic City –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – which was all development of the nuclear bomb in this secret government town in Tennessee where no one knew what was going on because no one asked questions ‘cause they were told not to – that’s the part that blows my mind –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – not only did the government build a town I six months, but everyone who was asked to work there was asked not to ask questions, so they didn’t.  Like, that alone is amazing to me –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and all of these women who are still alive and who still, who will talk about it are still a little circumspect sometimes about the specific details of what they did, ‘cause they were told not to talk about it.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  You know, it’s just, you know, nuclear physics; no big deal.

RHG:  Or, like, the women who were code breakers at Bletchley Park –

Sarah:  Have you been watching that show?

RHG:  I love that show.

Sarah:  I want to add that to my list of things to start recording.

RHG:  Yeah, you should.

Sarah:  So the code breakers –

RHG:  Yeah, they couldn’t talk about what they did for thirty, forty years after World War Two ended, and it was finally declassified?  They would go back to their normal lives and be, oh, yeah, I was a secretary.  I mean, you know, I was helping the government –

Sarah:  I answered the phone.

RHG:  – but, you know.

Sarah:  I took that one plug out of that one hole and plugged it into another hole to connect phone calls.

RHG:  Yep!

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s extremely book-heavy and recommendation-filled podcast.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Yes, I will link to every book we mentioned, as much as possible, and I will also link to the gorgeous ballet dancing, The Bletchley Circle, Agent Carter, the Stetson Aviatrix, and the Imperial War Museums, should you be curious.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of The Billionaire and the Virgin, the first in an all-new series from New York Times bestselling author of the Billionaire Boys Club, Jessica Clare.  You can download this book on February 17^th.

Our music each week is provided by Sassy Outwater.  This is an artist named Michael McGoldrick.  This track is called “Mackerel & Tatties,” and it’s from his album Aurora.  You can find the album at Amazon or at iTunes, or wherever fine pieces of music are sold.  You can find Sassy Outwater on Twitter @SassyOutwater.

You can find me on Twitter @SmartBitches often, you can find RedHeadedGirl on Twitter @RedHeadedGirl, and you can find Jane on Twitter @DearAuthor.  We’re pretty much on Twitter all the time; if you need a book recommendation, we’re usually there, and if we’re sleeping we’ll wake up, and then we’ll help you out.  Not a problem.

Future podcasts are in the works – mwahahaha!  We have interviews with authors about romantic suspense.  Elyse is dying to interview HelenKay Dimon, so we’ve set that up, because I just have to hit record, and Elyse is just going to squee all over nine continents.  It’s going to be great!

Either way, on behalf of RedHeadedGirl, everyone who is awesome enough to email us, Jane, and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great week.

[dancing music]