131. Sarah and Elyse Discuss Hibernation and Comfort Reads

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 131 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me this week is Elyse, who you heard from last week when we were interviewing HelenKay Dimon.  This week, Elyse and I are talking about hibernation and comfort reads.  Elyse is moving from one job to another and took a week off between them to decompress, so we talked about what she’s reading while she’s trying to de-stress, books that really make her happy when she’s trying to relax, and we talk a lot about reading and how we read and what we read.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Hot and Bothered, Crystal Green’s sexy new romance in the Rough and Tumble series, set in the dusty outskirts of Vegas.  Download it on March 17^th.

And we have a sponsor this month for the podcast transcript.  If you prefer to read the podcast as opposed to listen to the podcast, that’s an option.  Also, if you’re hearing impaired and can’t listen and you want to participate, you can read it.  Every month, garlicknitter, who is a professional transcriptionist, takes a break from professional transcription and does our very unprofessional podcast [garlicknitter: and loves every minute of it!].  This month, the podcast transcript is being brought to you by Forever, publisher of Once and Always, the sweet and sexy new novel by Elizabeth Hoyt, who’s writing as Julia Harper, and that’s on sale now.

I will have information about Once and Always and Hot and Bothered at the end of the podcast and also in the podcast entry.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.

And now, if you’re like Elyse, grab a blanket, curl up, huddle, get warm – unless it’s, like, 90 degrees Celsius where you are, in which case, find some air-con – and now, on with the podcast.

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Sarah:  I mean, you have important nothing to be doing right now.

Elyse:  I, I really do.

Sarah:  I mean, you have a lot of nothing on your agenda this week.

Elyse:  I would like to point out that I’m wearing flannel owl pajamas –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – I have not taken a shower, and I am wearing a lime green gaming headset.

Sarah:  That is fantastic.

Elyse:  Yes.  So, you know, I’m between jobs intentionally.  I quit one job and took a week off, and now I’m going to start my new job next week, and so I’m kind of having my mental break in between the two.  ‘Cause I’m, I went from one very stressful job to what I think is going to be another very stressful job, so I’m having –

Sarah:  You like your job.  You, like, you like what you do.

Elyse:  Oh, I love what I do.  I, I, I mean, I think you’ve picked up on the fact, just from talking to me over the past couple of years that I’m kind of crazy, and I need that stress in my life.

Sarah:  But you also like what you do and that you, you like the industry that you work in, and even though it’s stressful, you enjoy your job.

Elyse:  Absolutely.  I think my previous job that I did, that I’m leaving, that I did for four years, the thing that was stressful with that was that I was always on call, right?

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  And I worked for, I worked for a company and I managed about half of our domestic accounts, so most of those were, were pretty big accounts and, and so, you’re kind of on call 24/7 to the customer, ‘cause I work in transportation, which is a 24/7 industry –

Sarah:  Course.

Elyse:  – and I didn’t realize it until, I think, I was putting in my notice that in, you know, four years, I don’t think I took a vacation day or a sick day when I didn’t work.  So I pretty much worked every day for four years.  And –

Sarah:  Good God.

Elyse:  Yeah.  I know.  [Laughs] We even went on vacation in Mexico, and I was answering emails in Mexico.  So, you know, I’m, I’m ready to take a step away from that and, and the new job won’t be as, as much on call, as much needing to be available all the time, but it’s going, I’m starting up a line of business within a company, so there’s going to be, I think, some long days.

Sarah:  Yes, but at the same time, you’re, you’re the boss now.

Elyse:  I know; I have minions!  I’m so excited.

Sarah:  Ooh!  You have your own minions!  And you’re not all by yourself at a customer’s location.  You’re going to have, like, the company of people who work on the same company with you.

Elyse:  Right.  Right.  It’s, it’s very exciting, but I’m doing my decompression time right now.

Sarah:  What can – I’m, I don’t, I don’t know how much to ask you about your job.  Like, is there anything that you do that you want to talk about in terms of how it relates to what you read?

Elyse:  I don’t think anything I do really relates to what I read, to be honest with you.  My job is really not exciting, but I think the only thing that sometimes maybe plays into it is that, you know, transportation is still a really male-dominated industry –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and I am almost always the only woman at the table.  I am definitely the youngest person, the blondest person, the littlest person.  Sometimes I think I get, like, testosterone overload?

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  And, and that is part of the reason that I turn to romance novels.

Sarah:  I remember you telling me that when you had surgery, somebody at work was very uncomfortable that you said the word ovary.

Elyse:  Right, and I was, it’s a, it’s a friggin’ ovary!  Yeah, just yeah.  What’d you have surgery on?  Oh, my ova-  I don’t want to know!  I don’t want to know!

Sarah:  [Laughs] Okay, great.  But you know, had it been, like, you know, a, a tendon, it would have been fine.

Elyse:  It would have been fine.

Sarah:  Of course.

Elyse:  You know, the thing that always makes me laugh is – and, you know, I’m sure you know this about me, but I have a very foul mouth, and –

Sarah:  I have noticed.  That, that comes from truckers?

Elyse:  No, I think that was just, I, honestly, it’s a familial trait that I have inherited.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Awesome!

Elyse:  But I have a very foul mouth and a very crude sense of humor, and it makes dudes really uncomfortable when, you know –

Sarah:  Someone who is little and blonde and cute lets, lets rip with some foul language?

Elyse:  Yeah!  I mean, I, like, you know, the first time that I’ll, I’ll be in a room with a bunch of these guys and someone’ll say fuck and they’ll be like, oh, I’m sorry, it’s like, you know, fuck you and your fucking apology, right?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Like, not the first time I’ve heard it, dude.  So, yeah, it’s –

Sarah:  We work in trucking.  That’s just how we roll.

Elyse:  They tend to be surprised by my capacity for swearing and also my capacity for crude joking and inappropriate humor.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Which, truthfully, I am completely unprepared to work in any sort of other legitimate industry, because transportation is just –

Sarah:  That’s where you curse.

Elyse:  It is, and, you know, stuff happens here that does not happen anywhere else.  It’s like, so what happened at work today?  Oh, well, they had to shut down the port ‘cause they found a human foot in the salt shed again.  Right, like, that’s my job.

Sarah:  Aaaah!

Elyse:  Right?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  There was a foot.  A foot of snow?  No.  No, no, a foot.

Elyse:  No, like a person’s foot.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oh, God!

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  So you work in those places where –

Elyse:  I get to visit –

Sarah:  – like, CSI –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – is shot.

Elyse:  I get to visit very not-nice places, because ports and rail yards, generally speaking, are not in nice areas of the country.

Sarah:  Oh, my goodness.  So, you’re, you’re off for a week between X stressful job and future stressful but somewhat exciting job.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  And you are hibernating for a week.

Elyse:  I have been so lazy and slept so much that the cat is starting to look at me like, what the hell, man?

Sarah:  [Laughs] So –

Elyse:  This is my gig.

Sarah:  [Laughs] The whole sleeping thing all day?  That’s my job.  He, now he’s worried about his job security.

Elyse:  He is!  He’s –

Sarah:  See, you’ve made him worry.

Elyse:  And he’s going to be pissed because I’ve worked from home pretty much for the past year, and so I’m going to be going back to an office five days a week.  He’s going to be like, what?

Sarah:  What?

Elyse:  What?  Your job is to stay home and meet all of my needs.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So what books have you set aside to read during your week of decompression and, and stress alleviation?

Elyse:  Oh, my God.  I got so – so, one of the things I’ve ranted about for Smart Bitches is that I’m a paperback reader primarily –

Sarah:  Yes.

Elyse:  – and I have, like, a little fortress of books on, like, my end table here.  My husband was telling me, he’s like, you could build a little house out of books –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – in the back yard, and then you could go live in your little book house while you’re hibernating.  So as I was –

Sarah:  Like, four people just sat up and were like, that’s a great idea!

Elyse:  I know.  [Laughs] So as I was wrapping up my previous job – I had to do some traveling, some training – I kept going on to Amazon and ordering, or Barnes and Noble and ordering books that I wanted to read while I was gone, and I would get these text messages from my husband like, eight packages just showed up for you.  Like, what, what are you – are you building a bomb?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  You know, what is all of this?  So I have this huge stack o’ books, and it’s glorious, and I’ve been really into steampunk lately.  I didn’t think I would like that.  I’m veering into Carrie S. territory, but it turns out I really love steampunk, and I bought a bunch of steampunk books, and I’m having so much fun with them.

Sarah:  What is it that you like about steampunk?  Because you’re primarily a contemporary, suspense, and historical mystery reader.

Elyse:  Yeah, I think, well, I, you know, I do like some fantasy books, but I’m the worst type of fantasy reader, because I have zero patience for exposition and infodump, but I want a really rich, immersive worldbuilding experience, and I think I just felt like fantasy writers were not doing that.  Like, I hate, I hate when people are like that.  I don’t want 800 pages to set up the world, and so I think the thing that’s awesome with steampunk is it kind of comes – you, you already know what you’re getting into, and each author, obviously –

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  – their world is slightly different, and some are more paranormal, some are more, like, clockwork, and there, there is worldbuilding, but, like, the foundations are already set for me.

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  And so you don’t have to spend all of that time, necessarily, getting to know the world.  You can jump right into the story.

Sarah:  Plus, you wrote about historical mysteries, and a lot of those are set in the Victorian era.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  And so is a lot of steampunk.

Elyse:  And a lot of steampunk has, I don’t want to say necessarily a mystery element, but, but, like, an action element.  It’s, it’s very, you know, unlike a historical romance where, you know, the, it, it’s just about, sometimes, that relationship building.  Steampunk usually has a little bit more going on.

Sarah:  There’s an action element.

Elyse:  Yes, and so that’s a lot of fun.  I’ve been reading Bec McMaster’s series.  I just finished Kiss of Steel, and I’m reading Heart of Iron right now, and it’s a really heavily paranormal steampunk world, and it’s, it’s set in England, an alternate Victorian England, and the, the country is run by a group of, of people called the Blue Bloods or the Echelon, and they’re kind of – vampirism is caused by a virus in her world, and so when you’re infected with the virus, you, you’re granted, you know, the supernatural strength and long life and healing, and you have to drink blood, but you’re not a true vampire.  At some point, after many, many, many years, they go through a phase where they become a vampire, and it’s, it’s like the Nosferatu bat-faced, ugly, killing, scary vampire, and at that point, they’re, they’re executed, but up until that point, basically it’s, like, seven noble houses, and all of the vampires are dukes, because that’s how that works.  And –

Sarah:  Because of course they are.

Elyse:  Of course they’re dukes!  So they run the show, and so you’ve got normal human beings who are excluded from being infected with this virus because they don’t want common people being infected, and they, they want to keep this power among their group, and the heroine in the book is on the lam from this, this group of powerful vampires.  Her father was trying to develop a cure for the virus, and that scares them, because they don’t want to be vaccinated out.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  I just made that a verb.  Vaccinated out.  And, and she’s –

Sarah:  [Laughs] You’re going to take our specialness away.  Noooo!

Elyse:  Exactly.  And so she’s, she’s on the run, and she’s living in Whitechapel, and Whitechapel’s run by, he was just a, a normal guy from the slums that one of the, the Blue Bloods infected, thinking it would be funny to see what happened when you infected a common person –

Sarah:  Oh!

Elyse:  – and he got in trouble for it, but now he, he runs, he runs the rookeries, and he was the only one who was ever able to drive the Echelon out, and so they kind of let him have his piece, and he rules over the slums, and – so he’s got a very cockney accent and wears leather pants and is a bad ass, and she has to ally herself with him to keep her family safe.

Sarah:  Of course.

Elyse:  So, as I wrote in my review, anyone who has ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and had a thing for Spike will love this hero.

Sarah:  [Laughs] It’s sort of like Victorian steampunk Spike?

Elyse:  Yes.  Not, he, he does not bleach his hair, but other than that, dead on.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s – no one’s going to like that.

Elyse:  No, no.

Sarah:  No one’s going to like that at all.

Elyse:  No.  That’s not a thing.

Sarah:  Yeah, of course.  So what else are you reading?

Elyse:  My husband and I are reading together a series of books.  They’re not romance at all, but they’re really funny, and they’re also steampunk, strangely enough.  It’s the Johannes Cabal Necromancer series.  We’re on the most recent book, and I think people who really like Neil Gaiman, who really like Terry Pratchett would like this series.  So the first book is Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, and it’s a steampunk, kind of paranormal world, but it’s very dry.  It’s kind of satire.  It’s incredibly funny.  So, Johannes Cabal is a necromancer, and there’s a good reason for him being a necromancer, you find out later on, but the first book opens, he sold his soul to the Devil for, to get ahead, kind of, in his, his quest to be able to bring someone truly, truly back from the dead – not like a zombie but, like, restore them to life – and he realizes that in order to do his work, he actually needs his soul back.  So he goes to hell, and he goes to the Devil, and he’s like, so, I know I sold you my soul and everything, but I kind of need it back now.  And the Devil’s like, what?  ‘Cause that just doesn’t happen.  He’s like, no, really, I, I need it back now.  Like, we need to come to some kind of agreement so I can get my soul back, and Johannes Cabal is this very dry, acerbic character who is completely unimpressed by everything –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and chaos is always going around, on around him.  He’s kind of like the straight man to the entire world the author has built, and it’s just really, really funny.  And so the first book is he has to complete these tasks in order to get his soul back to continue his research, and he’s just very, like, kind of put out, like,fine, this is delaying my science, but –

Sarah:  [Huffs] Fine.

Elyse:  – all right.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  And, yeah, and, and they are.  They’re just, the author’s voice is just wonderful.  And –

Sarah:  And those are books that you guys have in common.  Like, you’re both reading those.

Elyse:  Yes.  Yes, we are reading those together.  I’m actually reading them out loud.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s cool!

Elyse:  Yeah.  So, my husband is dyslexic, and he, it takes him forever to, to read a book, and so he loves audiobooks, Audible, all of that stuff.  A lot of times we’ll find a book that we’re both interested in, and I will read out loud.  We’ll read it together that way.  So, it’s, it’s –

Sarah:  That’s really cool.

Elyse:  It’s like a, it’s like a Norman Rockwell painting.  The two of us all cuddled up in bed, the cat, and we’re reading.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I think I just got sick.

Elyse:  Yeah.  But, like, there was a lot – and, and it’s one of those books that I’m having a hard time reading out loud, ‘cause I keep having to stop to laugh.  Like, there’s a point where he’s describing these zombies crossing, this horde of zombies, this army, crossing a river to get to him to destroy him, but they’re not particularly bright and also not excellent at swimming, and so they, they’re, the ones that are kind of bloated from the putrefaction process are just floating away down the river with bewildered expressions, and he describes it like floaty toys designed to traumatize small children, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I mean, they’re just, they’re really funny books.  So there’s four books in the series now, and for a while, they were actually kind of hard to get in the United States, and I think finally they –

Sarah:  Finally, they were made available?

Elyse:  – they picked up on the fact that people, people really liked these books.  Let me see who the author is; I think it’s Jonathan L. Howard.  And we’ve read the first three, and they are, they’re just really very funny, excellent books.  And the author breaks the fourth wall; he talks to the reader in little footnotes, too, and if, if you like, like I said, like, Gaiman or Pratchett or any of those authors that have a voice kind of like that, where they really play on the absurd –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and, and are cynical, definitely, definitely a good choice.  Yeah, Jonathan L. Howard is the author.

Sarah:  That’s awesome.  So what do you find particularly restorative when you’re looking for a book that is going to be soothing?  What are you looking for?

Elyse:  It really depends on my mood.  I mean, it, it changes quite a bit.  I’ve been reading, like I said, a lot of steampunk and a lot of romantic suspense, but adventure, action adventure romantic suspense.  I bought all of Elle Kennedy’s Killer Instincts books, and I’ve been working my way through those, and those are books where it’s a group of mercenaries who are all dudes –

Sarah:  Of course.

Elyse:  – right, and a group of, like, spies, assassins, who are all ladies, and in each book, you know, one pairing of them has to kind of work together to save the world, and of course in the process, they, you know, they fall in love, but the nice thing about the books is, is that the, the female characters are also very, very interesting and dynamic and, and tough.

Sarah:  And they do stuff.

Elyse:  And they do stuff.  Yeah, like, one of the books, the, the female character is a, like, a master of disguise.  Like, that’s her whole thing; she’s really good at changing her appearance and her mannerisms, and she’s like a chameleon, and you know, she can go from place to place and people won’t recognize her, and the dude in that book is more – if I’m remembering correctly – he’s more of a, like a tech guy, where he’s not, he’s still very tough, but he’s not, like, the guy walking around with no shirt and a shoulder fire rocket.

Sarah:  Of course.  Aside from the steampunk, what did you buy?  Like, what are the things that you bought, and what made you buy them?

Elyse:  Oh, my God.  What made me buy them?  I was up at, like, one in the morning in a caffeine- and Amazon-fueled fugue state.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I’ve been there.

Elyse:  So I bought all of Elle Kennedy’s Killer Instincts series.  I have the first two books by Katie Reus [roose].  I think it’s Reus:  R –

Sarah:  I think it’s Reus [ray-us].

Elyse:  Reus?  Okay.  So she’s got Targeted and then, is the first book, and that’s, I’m really excited to read that, ‘cause the hero actually changes his face.  Like, he’s had surgery –

Sarah:  Oh!

Elyse:  – so you wouldn’t – it makes me think a little bit of Face/Off?  Do you remember that movie?

Sarah:  Yes, I do.

Elyse:  It was really horrible, but – so that’s, it’s a, Deadly Ops is the series.  So I’ve got Targeted, I’ve got Bound to Danger.  I bought – I, I normally don’t go into the paranormal, but in my fugue state, I picked up a book called Her Perfect Mate by Paige Tyler.  It’s an X-Ops series, and it’s like adventure romantic suspense, but also shapeshifters.  So they –

Sarah:  Well, shifters are good for that.

Elyse:  Right.  So the hero is a feline shifter –

Sarah:  Of course.

Elyse:  And the hero is like a CIA-type spy, so she’s got kind of, I think, a one-up on him, because, you know, she can turn into a cat and eat your face.

Sarah:  Of course.  Are there any orcas?

Elyse:  There are no orcas.  I’m taking a break from my aquatic –

Sarah:  [Sigh] Pity, pity, pity.

Elyse:  No orc- – You know what, I think an orca shifter in that situation, though, that would be a limiting animal to change into, because, like, what would you do.  Like, people’d be shooting, and you’d be, like, in the middle of a warehouse, and boom!  You’re an orca, and now you’re screwed, ‘cause you’re just flopping around on the floor of the warehouse.  I mean, aside from scaring people, that’d be, like, the worst animal to train, turn into.

Sarah:  So how do romances and reading help you with stress?  Is this – ‘cause I know, for me, reading is the only time when I do one thing.  At any other time, I’m doing at least three things.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Sometimes four things at the same time, and –

Elyse:  Yes, I’m exactly that person.

Sarah:  So for example, in the evening, I am helping somebody with their homework, cooking dinner, packing lunches, feeding the, the zoo, and I’m doing all of these things concurrently, and that’s a habit.  Like, I know how to layer that work so that it, things get done while I’m doing other things.  Reading is the only time where I’m ever doing just one thing, and I don’t, I mean, I should count petting a cat and reading as two things, but they just, they kind of blend into one thing, because if you read and pet a cat, it’s not like, you know, competing energies.

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  They all go together.

Elyse:  And that’s why we had to get our cat, because I realized my cat-to-book ratio was severely off.

Sarah:  Yeah, you, you must attend, you must attend to that ratio.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  So when I’m reading, it is, it is, for me, like plugging my cell phone into the charger; it is what sort of refills my batteries and I, and I can go do four other things again for an hour.

Elyse:  Yes.  Yeah, I am exactly the same way.  Like, I cannot sit and watch TV or watch a movie and, and do nothing.  I have to be –

Sarah:  Oh, no.

Elyse:  – knitting or – and, and, you know, it kind of drives my husband nuts ‘cause I’ll constantly be getting up and doing stuff, and he’s like, we’re watching a movie, and I’m like, I know!  I am watching the movie.

Sarah:  I’m, I’m watching it too; don’t worry!  [Laughs]

Elyse:  But you’re right; with reading, it’s, it’s downtime, and I think for me it’s, it, it occupies my whole brain.  I can’t read and think about other stuff that’s going on or worry about other stuff or be doing the grocery list in my head, because I have to devote all of my mental energy to reading.  Whereas if, like, again, using the watching TV or knitting or any, working out, you know, mentally I can be somewhere else.

Sarah:  Totally.

Elyse:  And so, in that respect, it’s really restorative.  The other thing that we’ve talked about a little bit on the site is that I have fibromyalgia, and so I will go through periods of time where I’m in enough pain that I can’t do the other things that I want to do? And, you know, I, I get a lot of hand pain, and so a lot of the crafting that I want to do, I just, I can’t.  I don’t have the manual dexterity –

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  – and, but reading is always there.  I’ve never felt so awful I couldn’t read, and so it’s, it’s kind of like your, my little safe haven.

Sarah:  I notice also when I’m watching TV and I’m cross-stitching, it’s as if the, the, the stitching or the, the crafting occupies the sort of manic, Jack Russell terrier part of my brain.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  What are you doing?  Let’s go do a thing!  Why are we sitting here?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Why are we sitting here?  Are we sitting here?  We shouldn’t be sitting here.  It occupies my easily-distracted part of my brain, whereas reading occupies both my desire to enjoy a book, but also, if it’s a good book, the Jack Russell terrier part of my brain is totally on board.

Elyse:  Yes.  Yes.

Sarah:  Isn’t that weird?

Elyse:  No, I don’t know.  I’m the exact same way.  I don’t sit well.  I think we, I was emailing you like a crazy person after I had surgery this summer.  Like, I can go back to work now, right?  I can go back to work.  I can’t sit here anymore.

Sarah:  Nope.

Elyse:  Why am I on bed rest?  I can go back to work.  Let me go back to work.  What do you think?

Sarah:  Sit down, dumbass!

Elyse:  Yes.  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  They just cut open my abdomen.  I’m fine.  I can go back to work.  I have to have, I have to be mentally occupied.  Not necessarily physically occupied, but definitely mentally occupied, and reading, it really does that, and, you know, from the fibro perspective when I’m having a lot of pain, it also mentally distracts me from just sitting there thinking about the fact that I don’t feel well, and –

Sarah:  Especially the action, because there’s going to be adrenaline in what you’re reading.

Elyse:  Yes.  Although I found when I’m feeling really, really crappy, I want, like, big, cushy, happy historicals that have giant circus tent skirts on the cover and –

Sarah:  [Laughs] I need big skirt books now!  Big skirt books, STAT!

Elyse:  Yes.  Yes.  And, so it depends on the mood.  Sometimes I want the action, and sometimes I just want, like, a garden party in, you know, in London somewhere and a bunch of dukes walking around in tight pants.

Sarah:  Yep.  And I, I don’t know what it is exactly about historicals that can be so comforting.  I think it’s partially the distance of time.  Like, the idea of once upon a time, a long-ass time ago is when this happened, so there’s this distance, and it sort of adds a, a layer to it that is much more functional as a comfort read for me, but I also find that when I’m really, really miserable about something, reading older Carla Kelly Regencies works really well, and they are, there’s a lot of them set in war, so I’m reading about, like, the Napoleonic War in Spain, walking around with characters, and I find it incredibly immersive, and I come out of it – ‘cause it’s, they’re, they’re not that long – I finish the book and I just, I feel so much better, and I’m like, that was weird.  You’re reading about war – [laughs].

Elyse:  Yeah, I think for me, it’s kind of like the comfort of a really organized room, right, where everything matches, because when you’re reading this –

Sarah:  Yes!

Elyse:  – historical romances, it’s, we’re not going into, oh, and then, you know, Mrs. So-and-so in the kitchen had a horrible, hacking cough that day because of the black lung, right.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  Like, everything is clean and pretty and, and you’re cutting out all of the, the kind of mundane and, and unpleasant reality from the situation, right.

Sarah:  And there are rules –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – and you know what’s going to happen within those rules.

Elyse:  Like, I always, in my mind, in, when I’m reading historical romance, everything is, like, very brightly lit and colorful –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and pretty, and there’s been an interior decorator there, and it doesn’t look like my house where, you know, there’s crap piled on the table that needs to be sorted through.  It’s like everything is in its place perfectly –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – and to me, that’s, like, very mentally, very mentally restorative.

Sarah:  There is an order, and –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and the order is part of the, the worldbuilding.

Elyse:  Exactly.

Sarah:  Whether it’s a social order or an order of events, there’s, there’s a, there is a sequence and a boundary that will be respected.

Elyse:  I think – and, and it’s part of the escapism.  I don’t know if it was you and I or someone else who was having a conversation.  I was really put out, in my romance novel, that the heroine was talking about her period, not because I’m grossed out by discussing periods, but because in my world, when we’re in Romance Novel Land, there are no menstrual cramps.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That would never bother me.  It would be the language that she used if it didn’t fit her character.  Like, the biggest thing that yanks me out of a story is unrealistic dialogue or dialogue that is a plot point, as opposed to something that someone would really say.  I was reading something, and I forget what it was, and there was this guy, it was a male character, and he said something about a quaint little chapel in a village, and I was like, there’s no dude that says that.

Elyse:  I challenge you to find a dude who says quaint.

Sarah:  Quaint little.  It was like, no.  And it, and it was, it was, it was the way that he was talking about the building that he was in.  Like, he was describing it to people who were standing in it with him.  He wasn’t describing it to people who weren’t there.  They, he had to label it, even though they could all see it, and I was like, this is just layers of not right.  No!  And then I was all pissy, ‘cause I’m very demanding, apparently.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  No, I don’t think so.  I mean, I think that continuity is, is important.  I hate that, when a character starts talking in a way that’s, or behaving in a way that’s totally out of character, and you’ve, you’ve been building up to this thing the whole story, and then you’re like, who is this person?!  What have they done with him?  You know, it’s like the pod people came for him.

Sarah:  That realization of love came very quickly; we’re only on page four.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right, exactly.

Sarah:  So if you have your comfort reads with you now, you have steampunk, historicals, is there anything that you find completely not fitting with your desire for comfort reads?  Like, what are the things that you’re not going to look at?

Elyse:  I don’t read a lot of suspense when I’m looking for comfort reads, just because I think it goes down a darker path for me.  For me, when I – I will get emotional hangovers from books.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  I mean, it can really influence my mood profoundly, and so if I’m reading a book where very bad things have happened to people, that, that’ll kind of hang with me for a couple of days, and that’s not really what I’m looking for.  I have to be in the mood for that.

Sarah:  I understand that.  Book hangovers that you know are going to affect you that way are, are very difficult.

Elyse:  And we were talking about book catharsis, like, looking for books specifically –

Sarah:  Yes!

Elyse:  – that make you cry.

Sarah:  Yeah, RedHeadedGirl brought that up in the last podcast recording.  What are the books that you can read that were, that will let you cry it all out.  If you need catharsis –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – where are you going?  That’s a different kind of comfort.  Catharsis and comfort are totally different things.

Elyse:  Yeah, I’m looking more for comfort right now than catharsis, but I’ve definitely gone down that path with books before.  Jane Austen is really high on my comfort reads list, again because everything feels kind of neat and structured and –

Sarah:  Yep.  There are rules and codes.

Elyse:  – and also, I’ve read them a million times, so even mentally, the energy that it takes going into reading them, I think, is, is less than if, if I had never read those books before.

Sarah:  Yep.  Are there certain books that you re-read a lot?

Elyse:  I almost never re-read.

Sarah:  Really!

Elyse:  Really.  Yeah, there –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s interesting.

Elyse:  – there are a couple books that I will re-read; like, Jane Austen is one of them.  There’s a handful that I’ve gone back at different points in my life and read, and the meaning of the book has really changed for me?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  The example I always use is Jane Eyre, right.  So I think I read that when I was fifteen –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – for the first time, and reading that when you’re fifteen and then reading it as an adult, you know, in your thirties –

Sarah:  Two totally different things.

Elyse:  Totally different!  You know, I mean, I remember when I read it in high school being like, I don’t, why – of course you put your crazy wife in the attic.  What else are you going to do with her, right?

Sarah:  [Laughs] That makes perfect sense!

Elyse:  Why are, why are you so upset?  I’m missing all the subtext here.  And then as an adult, reading them and being like, oh, boy, this is really veryproblematic.

Sarah:  That’s not good.

Elyse:  I, I read, when I was, like, middle school or early high school, I read all of my mom’s James Bond books by Ian Fleming, and I loved them, and then I re-read them years later, and I was like –

Sarah:  What?

Elyse:  – sweet holy misogyny, Batman!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right?  Like, this is – nope, I completely  –

Sarah:  That is messed up.

Elyse:  He’s not a good person at all in those books.

Sarah:  He’s a, he is a mess.

Elyse:  He is a mess.  He’s a deeply messed-up man.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  But no, I almost never re-read.  All of my books kind of get – ‘cause again, I read paperback – all of my books kind of get recycled out –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  When I’m done reading them.  They, they either go to the used bookstore or to friends or somewhere, so my house is kind of like a constant in-processing, out-processing of stacks of books.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yeah, mine too.  I, I know that pain.

Elyse:  And I wish I could read digitally, because it’s, it’s easier, but for me, again, I think, one, there’s the mental neatness.  It’s harder for me to keep track of stuff on a device, as opposed to when I have the physical –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – copy of the book, but the other thing for me is that one of the things with, with fibro is that you have a hard time sleeping.  Your sleep patterns are irregular, and it can be difficult falling asleep or staying asleep, and I found I have to have time at the end of the day where I am not looking at a screen.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  It doesn’t matter if it’s E Ink or any, like the, I cannot be looking at a device that is plugged in, because it’s harder for me to shut off my brain and go to sleep after that, so I have to have that paper copy of a book in my hand.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  Which I read, you know, usually before I go to bed for a while.

Sarah:  I completely understand that.  I have, I’ve read on devices for a while now, and I have a program on my phone, which is what I use to read predominantly now, called Twilight, that takes the red, or excuse me, takes the blue out of the screen, which is part of what stimulates your brain, the blue light?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So I have it on my computer, and I have it on my phone, but even then I will make myself turn off all the screens before I’m about to go to sleep, because otherwise, it just, it wakes part of your brain up.

Elyse:  Oh, yeah, and I think, for me too, I, I look at a screen all day, and –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – I don’t want to, at the end of the day.  I want to be unscreened, and I have to, I’m trying very hard to keep myself from looking at my phone all the time, because I am one of those people, I’ve become the staring at your phone nonstop and not experiencing the world around you person?

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  So I’m, I’ve been working on, on that.  Now I have a Dewey cat who says, hi, I want to be on the podcast.

Sarah:  Hi, Dewey.  My cat is sitting right here.  She’s very quiet, though.

Elyse:  He’s, I’m, I’m on his new blanket where he lives now, and we can come and visit him, and he’s happy to see us, but this is his blanket, and –

Sarah:  Get off.

Elyse:  – and, yes, he lives here.  Thank you.

Sarah:  Yes, he’s very upset.  [Laughs] So, are there any books that you would recommend to people that you’ve read.  I mean, it’s only, it’s, it’s short into your week of, week o’ quiet and comfort, but is there anything that you’ve read that you want to recommend to people?

Elyse:  Definitely the Bec McMaster series, if you like steampunk.  I also started reading a series called Bannon & Clare by Lilith Saintcrow, and they’re not strictly romance – there’s a romance arc that continues through the, the three books – but it’s about a sorceress.  It’s a steampunk world, and the, the woman is a sorceress –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and the man is a mentath, which is like a, basically like a human computer.  He’s just, like, that smart.  He’s kind of a, a Sherlock Holmes character, a little bit?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  Where he’s a little bit dysfunctional in his everyday life because he has a hard time – you know, he’s always seeing patterns and, and his brain kind of functions solely on logic, so things that are irrational throw him for a loop.  Basically, because the, the industrial revolution did not take place, they rely on these, these mentaths to do, basically, all the, the computation that you need to, you know, the economy and for shipping and all kinds of things, and someone is going around killing them off.  And so she is hired by the Queen to find this guy – he’s one of the remaining few – and keep him safe, and then the two of them have to figure out who’s committing these murders.

Sarah:  Right.  Cool!

Elyse:  The thing about Lilith Saintcrow, though, that I think is a little weird that I’ve noticed from her other books is that she just kind of throws you into the world and doesn’t necessarily explain things?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  And so you feel a little bit like you’re going by the seat of your pants as you’re reading, and eventually things start to make sense, but she never really breaks from the storytelling to be like, and this is what that is.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  Let me describe it to you.

Sarah:  Are you going to read the new Jennifer McQuiston series?

Elyse:  Of course, and actually, I just got my shipping notification from Amazon.  That book is on its way!

Sarah:  Oooh!  Are you excited?

Elyse:  I am very excited.  And Laura Lee Guhrke has a new series I want to read too, about American heiresses?  There are two books in the series already published, and the third one just came out, and they’re about American heiresses in London looking for, basically, like, a titled husband to go with all of their money, as you do.  And so that’s kind of exciting to me, ‘cause I watched a series on the Smithsonian channel called, I think it was like Million Dollar Heiresses or something.  It was a nonfiction series about all of the very wealthy American nouveau riche women who went to England and really propped up the aristocracy –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – because they had no money.

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  And I did, I did not know that Winston Churchill’s mother was an American, and that was the situation –

Sarah:  Really!

Elyse:  – in his family.  Yes!

Sarah:  I did not realize.  Well, I mean, that whole idea of marrying an American for, to secure the fortune was one of the things that I really liked about the Wallflower, Wallflower quartet by Lisa Kleypas?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Because that’s Lillian’s setup.  She’s very, very wealthy and not impressed at all by other people in London.

Elyse:  Yeah, I’m trying to find the first book in this series – hang on one second, ‘cause I’m Googling here – where the, the heroine is British, and her job is – oh, it’s called How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days, and her job is basically that – is she British or American?  She’s established in London, and her job is that these heiresses come over, and she prepares them for how to move in the social circles and how to behave to basically land a, a rich hus-, or, or a titled husband, and the hero is a duke that is kind of a rogue or a scoundrel, and she wants nothing to do with him and wants to kind of keep him away from her girls, so it’s a little bit of she’s very buttoned down and proper and kind of working within the rules of society, and he’s not at all that way, and it’s a, it’s a, one of the many scoundrel dukes –

Sarah:  Aww.

Elyse:  – that were hanging around Regency London in that time.  So that, yeah, I’m looking forward to reading that one.  The one that just came out is Catch a Falling Heiress, and that’s by Laure Lee Guhrke.

Sarah:  Catch a Falling Heiress.  Hate when they fall out of trees like that.

Elyse:  But they have those big skirts, so it poofs out like an umbrella, like in Winnie-the-Pooh, and then you just drift down very slowly.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yes, of course.  That works every time.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  Much like if someone’s on the fourth floor of a building and you stretch a blanket out between four people.  That totally works as a trampoline.

Elyse:  Abso-, yeah, no, absolutely.  That does not lead to a compound fracture ever.

Sarah:  Ohh, no!  Don’t be silly!  [Laughs] Well, with –

Elyse:  And then –

Sarah:  – yep, go ahead.

Elyse:  Well, there’s a book that has been getting a lot of press, and I’m kind of interested in reading it, called The Girl on the Train.

Sarah:  I have seen this everywhere.

Elyse:  But it’s one of those where it’s like, oh, am I going to like it, or am I going to hate it because it got all this attention and it’s going to suck?  But it’s kind of a psychological suspense, which I like.

Sarah:  Yeah, it’s sort of Gone Girl style.  Have you read the synopsis of it?

Elyse:  I have, and I’ve read Gone Girl, and I actually really liked Gone Girl.

Sarah:  You might really like this.  Hi, Dewey.  You might really, really like it, then, from what I understand.  I mean, this is not my type of book, but it, it plays with the idea of culpability and the extremely unreliable narrator in a way that you might really like.

Elyse:  Right.  And there are, there’s a series of thrillers by an author called Linwood Barclay.  Fear the Worst, I think, is my favorite that he wrote, and he writes the psychological suspense books where something weird happens.  In Fear the Worst, it’s this man who, his seventeen-year-old daughter is living with him for the summer.  They’re divorced, and she goes back and forth between mom and dad, and she’s getting ready for work – she works at a hotel at, like, the front desk – and she never comes home from work, and he’s starting to get worried, and he goes there to see if she got there safely, and they’re like, we’ve, we’ve never heard of your daughter.  What are you talking about?  And his daughter goes missing, but everything that happens compounds the story in a way.  Like, something is definitely wrong, and he’s not getting the whole truth, and you start to wonder, is this guy just nuts or, you know, what’s going on?  But he, and he does that with all of his books, where you reach this point where you think, there’s no way he can resolve this and have the main character maintain his sanity, but he always does, and at the end you’re like, holy shit, that really did all fall together and make sense.  And they’re not books where there’s necessarily a lot of danger present physically, you know, in the moment, but it’s, it’s that psychological something weird is happening here and I can’t make sense of it, and, you know, people are maybe being dishonest with me that – those books are really fun to read if you’re, if you’re in the suspense mood.  And that’s the kind of stuff I really like, as opposed to, like, the serial killer breathing down the back of your neck.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yeah, utterly not my thing, but when you talk about it, I’m like, well, that sounds, that sounds kind of cool.

Elyse:  And they’re like crack because you get far enough into there where you have to resolve the story, right.  Like –

Sarah:  Right.  You can’t not figure this out.  You have to figure it out.

Elyse:  Exactly.  Exactly.

Sarah:  Especially if it’s been twisty enough and you know there’s more twists, you can’t stop, presuming that you know the end, ‘cause you’re wrong.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right.  Right.  And they’re very clever in, in how, you know, he, he paces, I think, that you, you have a hard time even finding a, a good spot to put the book down.

Sarah:  Do you like sort of whimsy stories?  Like, whimsical journeys and things like that?

Elyse:  Not really.  You know, I’m reading Soulless by Gail Carriger –

Sarah:  Carriger, yeah.

Elyse:  – and that’s, that’s steampunk, but for me it’s missing kind of that grittiness that I like.  It’s almost a little too, too whimsical?

Sarah:  Yep.  I was wondering, because it sounds like you and I have similar tastes, except that I like whimsy and you like gritty.

Elyse:  Yes.  Like, I want it to take, I, I imagine, like, a very dirty, coal-dusty London in, in my steampunk.  I want my historicals to be very, every-, everything’s very clean and nobody gets tuberculosis, and I want my steampunk to be kind of, and my mysteries to be kind of gritty.  Oh, and Eloisa James has a new book coming out.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s right!

Elyse:  I’m so excited.  And I, I’m doing kind of – I know you’ve talked about this – I have this thing where even if I get an ARC of the book fairly early on, I hold off reading it until it’s close to the publication, because if I love that book, I’m going to squee all over the place, on Twitter, on Facebook, and then it’s just like you’re a jerk, because other people want to read that book –

Sarah:  And they can’t.

Elyse:  – and they can’t.  And you want to –

Sarah:  And delaying the squee is not good either.

Elyse:  No, and you want to talk to other people about it.  You want to do good book noise together.

Sarah:  Yes.  Good book noise, when it’s like a humblebrag good book noise, that does no good.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  When it’s like, I read this book, and it’s so great, and you can’t!  No, that’s, that’s not going to work.

Elyse:  No, and a friend just send me a book, too, by Mary, is it Balogh?

Sarah:  Balogh, yeah.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Rhymes with Kellogg.

Elyse:  Seducing the Angel, and –

Sarah:  What?

Elyse:  Yeah, I think that’s the title.  Hang on a second.  Yeah, Seducing an Angel.  It’s part of the Huxtable quintet.  So it’s an older book of hers, but she said that I would absolutely adore the hero in this book –

Sarah:  Ooh.

Elyse:  – and I’m very big on heroes that you adore, so we both like the same television show, the, The Mentalist, because we both think Simon Baker’s adorbs, and I also like kind of the, the reformed trickster, con man, rogue hero, and that’s who this guy is, and I’m very excited to start it, and I’m pacing myself, ‘cause I know I’m going to have to start this one when I can read it straight through.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  It’s, it’s one of those that I’m not, probably, going to put down, ‘cause I tend to read historicals in one big bite.  I don’t know if you do that too.  Like, I can put down suspense, and I can put down steampunk and stuff, but for historicals, I tend to just plow my way through it.

Sarah:  Oh, oh, absolutely.  No question.  I’m the same way.  I am going to start reading, is it England’s Perfect Scoundrel or England’s Perfect Hero?  An older Suzanne Enoch book that I found on Scribd that I’m really excited to read, and I’ve been saving it for vacation, but I have to read it at a time when I won’t be interrupted, because if I’m reading a historical and I’m interrupted, I get really, really peeved.  I don’t want to come back to the present.  I’m in the past!  Please piss off and leave me alone!  And I, and if I’m interrupted, I just get ornery.

Elyse:  Oh, yeah, I am 100% with you, and I have to make sure I’m not doing it too close to bedtime, too –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – because then I will be up ‘til 3:00 in the morning.  I make terrible reading choices before bed.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Which is why you guys see messages and emails from me at 3:30 in the morning –

Sarah:  Hi!  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – because I, I am still awake.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have had to, like, muscle through a day with a whole pot of coffee because I stayed up all night reading.  And it turns out you can’t call in to work for that reason, right?  Be pretty sweet, if you could be like, hey, I was going to come in today, swear to God, but I was reading this book, and it was really good, and I didn’t sleep last night.  No.  It’s unacceptable.

Sarah:  No, the, the people are not understanding about that.  People are not understanding about that choice, and I don’t get it.

Elyse:  But fortunately for me, and my industry being male-dominated, I can just call up with female problems so they don’t want any, like, they don’t want to know.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I had a cramp – Okay.  Okay.  Yep.  Nope, don’t come in.  What, what do you need off?  Like, a month?  Is that – how long?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Is that enough?  Just, just don’t say ovary.

Elyse:  Just don’t, whatever you do, do not say ovary.  Yeah, that cracks me up.  Sometimes I feel walking around the office, like, my ovaries and, and uterus are so powerful, because they terrify the dudes.

Sarah:  Everyone around you.

Elyse:  It’s like I have this secret nuclear weapon in, in my belly, right.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I remember we did a discussion about what book would you call in sick to work on its release day?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Like, I, oh, I had a bad burrito.  I’ve got to stay home on Tuesday.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yeah, it’s new book Tuesday diarrhea.

Sarah:  Yes!

Elyse:  I think it’s like – [laughs] –

Sarah:  New book Tuesday, bad burrito.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Exactly.  But, but there are those, and, and you know, Avon and a lot of the historical publishers put their books out on Tuesdays, and it’s awful.  It’s like, do it Friday, you guys!  Come on!

Sarah:  No, it’s always Tuesday.

Elyse:  Have some consideration for us!

Sarah:  New releases have been on Tuesday for a long time, and what’s horrible is that some bookstores, if they have too many new releases on a Tuesday, they have to start shelving them a little bit early –

Elyse:  Yep.

Sarah:  – and so you’ll go in and be like, I got this book!  And other people will be like, [gasp] I hate you!

Elyse:  Yep.  I was at Barnes and Noble yesterday, and I saw they had a couple, couple books out a day –

Sarah:   A day or two early.  Yep.

Elyse:  – early, yeah.

Sarah:  Whereas if you order the digital version, sometimes it shows up at, like, 12:01 a.m. on the day of release.

Elyse:  And you forget that you ordered it, so –

Sarah:  Oh, yes, it’s, it’s a gift.

Elyse:  – it’s like the best surprise ever.

Sarah:  A gift from your past self.  There was –

Elyse:  It feels – Yeah.

Sarah:  There was a book on sale, Fool Me Once or Fool Me Twice, whichever it was, by Meredith Duran, was on preorder sale for $1.99, something like six months in advance, and I was like, y’all, buy this for yourself, and then come March, the book shows up, you’re going to be like, wow!  I am the greatest person ever.  Thank you, Me!  You’re welcome!

Elyse:  I love opening those packages, ‘cause it’s like, I don’t remember – oh, there goes my productivity.  Right.

Sarah:  Yeah, it’s like, oh, oh, this?  I did do this to myself.  Oh, yes.

Elyse:  Yeah, so I’m not getting anything done today.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Awesome.

Sarah:  Woo-hoo!

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  I want to thank Elyse for taking the time to talk to me, and good luck at your new position, Elyse.

Future podcasts will include me talking to people about romance.  Also Jane.  I’m also working on an upcoming interview about twelfth century romantic poems and the origination of those poems during the twelfth century, which should be interesting, because history, right?  History and romance, always good.

This podcast has been brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Hot and Bothered, Crystal Green’s sexy new romance in the Rough and Tumble series set in the dusty outskirts of Vegas.  Download it on March 17^th.

And this month we are very happy to have a podcast transcript sponsor who is helping underwrite the costs of our transcripts.  Every podcast gets an upcoming transcript with all of the details and many, many words added to garlicknitter’s on-base dictionary in her Microsoft Word, because we say weird things.  And this podcast transcript and all of the transcripts this month will be brought to you by Forever, publisher of Once and Always, the sweet and sexy new novel by Elizabeth Hoyt, writing as Julia Harper, and that’s on sale now.

Our music in every episode is provided by Sassy Outwater, who is truly excellent.  The music that you are listening to, and hopefully I’m helping you feel mellow, is by Three Mile Stone, and this song, appropriately, is called “Snug in the Blanket.”  You can find out more about them at their website or on iTunes.

As always, every book that we discuss will be featured in the podcast entry, along with or sponsors for the transcript and for the podcast.

Any attention you pay to any of those books is much appreciated, but if you’re like, no!  I want to tell you about a different book!  You should email us at[email protected].  If you have ideas, questions, interview suggestions, you want to recommend a book, you want us to recommend a book, you want to tell us what we should be doing?  That’s totally cool!  Totally email us, please.

And in the meantime, on behalf of Elyse and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[mellow merry music]