Sarah has a long and goofy chat with Sassy Outwater about her life with brain cancer, and her life with two alpha guide dogs. We cover her adventures as Tumor Killer Girl, and talk about BDSM safety when you’re blind, owning your body and brain, glass eyes, diversity, music, and much more. Grace, Sarah’s extremely elderly cat, makes a guest appearance – the podcast equivalent of a photobomb – around 5:30. She says hi.
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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
We also discussed:
- Retinoblastoma
- Scribd must Comply with Americans with Disabilities Act
- Sassy’s panel at RT: Screw the Stereotypes: Everything You Need to Know About Writing Badass, Sexy Disabled Characters
- You can find Sassy on Twitter: @SassyOutwater
- JAWS for windows- FreedomScientific.com
- The International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference
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This Episode's Music
The music in this episode was provided by and performed by Sassy Outwater. The first piece played during the intro is called “Rumba for SB,” and features Sassy on the harp. The second, which played during the outro, was Fiddler on the Loose, featuring Sassy on the fiddle.
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Transcript
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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 135 of the DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me this week is Sassy Outwater, who you may be familiar with as the fine, fine provider of all of our fresh and funky music here at the podcast. Sassy, if you didn’t know, is a reader and writer of romance, and she and I have been friends online for a number of years, so I invited her on to have a chat, and we talked about just about everything. Sassy is currently looking at surgery for a brain cancer tumor that should be removed soon, if not really soon, but we also talk about her life with two alpha guide dogs; her adventures as Tumor Killer Girl, as someone who has had cancer for all of her life, as she puts it; and we talk about BDSM and being blind and glass eyes, diversity, music, and what happens when you have a guide dog in the dressing room with you when you’re trying on lingerie.
The music that you’re listening to – you will never guess – was provided by Sassy Outwater, and that is Sassy herself. This episode I’m featuring both of the pieces of music that she performed. This is “Rumba for Smart Bitches,” and that’s Sassy on the harp. At the end, we’ll have Sassy on the fiddle. I wanted to get live music, but her fiddle’s tailpiece was being replaced, and that was something we giggled over for at least 25 minutes, because yeah, who doesn’t want to talk about your fiddle tailpiece?
This podcast is also brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Chasing Danger, the new novella in the sizzling-hot Deadly Ops series from New York Times bestselling author Katie Reus. It will be on sale and available on April 21st wherever fine eBooks can be downloaded.
I hope you enjoy this interview with Sassy. We talk about a lot of different things, so if there’s a link you’re looking for or you want to find out more about something, check the show notes, because I will have links to just about everything we discuss, and if I miss something, feel free to email me.
And now, on with the podcast.
[music]
Sarah: What, what, what’s up with your brain?
Sassy Outwater: Ah, dude. So, so my cancer – retinoblastoma is a rare cancer in that it’s one of the genetic ones. I have a mutation. I have what’s called the RB1 mutation where I will get different types of tumors throughout my body and throughout my life, and –
Sarah: And that’s what took your sight originally, right?
Sassy: Right. I was starting –
Sarah: And you were, like, a baby?
Sassy: – God knows what – yeah. Retinoblastoma, I was diagnosed with it when I was six months old. It’s a pretty rare cancer, but it’s definitely something that you want, like, parents and doctors to screen for.
Sarah: This is the one where you can sometimes catch it by seeing how a baby’s retina reacts to a camera flash?
Sassy: Exactly. We always say, know the glow, because it looks like a white glow in a child’s eye.
Sarah: As opposed to standard red eye –
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: – that everyone else is getting.
Sassy: Exactly.
Sarah: Interesting!
Sassy: One of the treatments that was used on me as a child was radiation, and they used a crapton of it to try to keep the tumors from spreading, because retinoblastoma is a very fast-growing tumor in a child’s eye, and in the 1980s we thought, oh, just dosing a kid up with radiation, I mean, it’s the best treatment we’ve got to save their lives at the moment, so let’s do it. But that has pretty significant effects on a kid’s brain when it’s developing that show up about thirty years later, which now it’s about thirty years later, so my pituitary gland is shutting down in some ways. It’s having some major hormonal production issues, so that causes all kinds of eating and food-related problems, and then –
Sarah: Ugh!
Sassy: Oh, yeah, it’s, it’s classically so much fun.
Sarah: Can you, can you, can you move things with your brain?
Sassy: You know, I’m really working on the glow-in-the-dark telekinesis thing, but –
Sarah: I was just going to ask, I mean, is there, like, a superpower that comes out of this too?
Sassy: Dude, that’d be so great! I know! You know, I, I’ve been telling people, okay, if I, if I just start glowing when we’re in bed together, you really need to just let me know –
Sarah: [Laughs] Surprise!
Sassy: Try to figure out how to turn this into a romance novel, but it –
Sarah: The glow-in-the-dark bride.
Sassy: Oh, yes.
Sarah: Congratulations, by the way.
Sassy: Thank you! I got married! Oh, my God, what just happened? [Laughs]
Sarah: Eh, fuck cancer! Let’s get married!
Sassy: Right? That was kind of the attitude was – surgeon told me that the tumor had grown and that I needed to seriously consider neurosurgery the week before the wedding, and his response was, just go get married. We’ll deal with it when you get back.
Sarah: I like this person!
Sassy: I do too. That was such a gift, in that, I’m not, he didn’t – he refused to discuss the surgery with me, he refused to discuss fate, he refused to discuss anything other than, congratulations, go learn how to be a wife.
Sarah: Go get married. Come back later.
Sassy: Right, right.
Sarah: I totally support that medical plan.
Sassy: I do too. I’m like, that’s my prescription. I can, I can, I can get on board with that.
Sarah: So now you have to have brain surgery because the one, the tumor that’s been hanging out in your brain is growing.
Sassy: They got two of the tumors in 2008. One of them was too small to get at the time and is in a very weird location. You have these holes inside your head called cavernous sinus where the cerebral spinal fluid lives, and it cushions your brain from being smacked around too hard, and my tumor’s up against that, right next to a, the carotid artery, so they have to break lots of bones to get there. It’s not deep inside the brain; it’s on the surface of the brain, which is great. They’ll be able to get good margins on the tumor and get it all out, so I won’t need any follow-up chemotherapy or anything. The chemo doesn’t work on this particular type of tumor, but they need to be able go in there, and the bone is already damaged from the radiation that I had as a kid? It doesn’t grow like normal bone does, so they’ll look at 3D printing replacement bone or, or, you know, using a substance like plastic that they can mold into the shape of my bones, and that will eventually calcify back into real bone. So that’s the big issue we’re up against right now, is how to go into the already radiated space and hope that things will heal well and hope that they don’t come back.
Sarah: On one hand –
Sassy: Because they’re messing with radiation.
Sarah: Yeah, I was going to say, on one hand, holy shit –
Sassy: Yeah.
Sarah: – but on the other hand, what area of your skull are we talking about? I mean, could you get, like, a 3D printed, like, accessory?
Sassy: [Laughs] That’d be so badass.
Sarah: [Laughs] Like, could you get, like, a 3D-printed fascinator?
Sassy: I need antennae. Oh, my gosh, I want antennae. That’d be so awesome.
Sarah: Oh, my gosh, yes! You could have antennas and a fascinator! You could have both!
Sassy: I know.
Sarah: Look, my library has three free-D printing. I will totally go to the library and print you up some hats.
Sassy: That would be so cool. Yeah, it’s right up in front. Like, right behind my forehead in, in the right temporal area.
Sarah: Are you telling me you could be a unicorn?
Sassy: Oh, totally. It’s right there.
Sarah: You are Twilight Sparkle, and I am going to lose my mind right now.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: This is awesome.
Sassy: I, I want to be able to appreciate the sparkle, though. That’s the problem. See, like, I can’t see if I’m sparkling –
Sarah: Ohhh!
Sassy: – so it’s like, I could be in a business meeting and start, like, getting my sparkle on and –
Grace: Meow.
Sarah: People would know and you wouldn’t, and they wouldn’t tell you.
Sassy: It’s like the, it’s like the teenage boy in math class who’s getting a hard-on looking at the girl in front of him, and he can’t do anything to prevent it, so we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see if they return with any kind of great discoveries. Maybe there’s, like, a whole lost fantasy land in there or something.
Grace: Meow.
Sarah: My older cat, Grace, is always present when I do a podcast, ‘cause I start talking, and she shows up. So you’re going to hear her meowing, because she has decided that she needs to be a guest on this podcast too.
Sassy: I shut the dogs in the other room. I, I told them that they were not allowed to discuss things like bones and guide-dog-related things while I was doing this, so they –
Sarah: Do they, do, do, do Whidbey and Kodak talk to each other?
Sassy: Kodak talks to everybody. Kodak is a very vocal person. He likes to discuss everything with everybody, especially his dad. He likes to tell Prattik off.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: He’s my husband. He likes to inform him when dinner’s late. He likes to inform him when pets are late. You know.
Sarah: Yeah. Well, Kodak is in charge. He’s the retired seeing-eye dog, so he’s –
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: – naturally the boss of all of you.
Sassy: Correct. It’s his universe; we just live here. But –
Sarah: Of course! And he’s responsible for you not doing it right.
Sassy: Ferdinand, the new guide dog, doesn’t say a word. He’s very quiet, but the other day we were sitting there and, and Kodak had a brand-new bone and was happily going to town on it, and Ferdie comes sneak-attacking across the room, just creeping up on him, pounces on Kodak, scares the craps out of, crap out of Kodak. Kodak jumps up and looks at him. Ferdie just calmly takes the bone –
Sarah: Mine.
Sassy: – as Kodak is barking at him, and leaves. I’m like, you did not.
Sarah: [Laughs] Living with two seeing-eye dogs –
Sassy: That was rude!
Sarah: – that’s like, that’s like a, the canine version of Navy SEALs, right? You’ve called them –
Sassy: Oh, my God!
Sarah: – the Navy SEALs of dogs, right?
Sassy: They will figure out ways –
Sarah: So you’re basically living with two alpha males.
Sassy: I am! They will figure out ways to torture each other! It’s just, like, they will devise particular strategies to get what they want. It’s like watching two war generals try to share a house, you know?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: There’s not enough room in here for all this testosterone.
Sarah: And they’re fixed, which is really amazing.
Sassy: They are, but their brains are not. I mean –
Sarah: No. They think they’re the men.
Sassy: For a guide dog, like, that’s the thing. Their, their brains are used to going ninety miles an hour –
Sarah: That’s right.
Sassy: – when they’re out working, so when they’re at home, you can’t shut their brains off. It’s like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory? You know –
Sarah: Yep.
Sassy: – his brain is always going, whether or not he has some sort of physics quandary to work on. So, like, Kodak, a few months ago, I heard this giant clattering and banging in my kitchen, and I go in there, and he’s standing in, in the middle of the kitchen with a bar full of chocolate in his mouth, which he had crawled into my baking cupboard to get, knocked over all of my baking dishes. The chocolate was in the very, very, very back of the cupboard, behind –
Sarah: Oh, you’re not going to notice.
Sassy: – a giant stack of things, and he devised the plan to open the cupboard, get into the cupboard, knock over all these things, get the chocolate, and come out with it. Luckily, he hadn’t opened it or taken a bite, but he’s just standing there like, look what I did! I’m like –
Sarah: I’m so awesome, I can’t believe you hid this chocolate from me. What in the world were you thinking?
Sassy: Right. It was, it was a clear sign of, hey, human, I can figure you out. [Laughs]
Sarah: My sense of smell is, like, so better than yours.
Sassy: Right, right.
Sarah: Seriously. Challenge me harder next time. [Laughs]
Sassy: Yes, it is. It’s – welcome to life with a guide dog.
Sarah: So – right – so when you’re having surgery –
Sassy: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – what is your prognosis with the surgery? Is it like, we get this out and you hang out on the planet for a while longer?
Sassy: Yeah!
Sarah: Good, I like this plan!
Sassy: Yes! Surgery should be just fine. There’s not a lot of – it’s, it’s a minor surgery, as far as brain surgeries ago, which is – okay, brain surgery is brain surgery, oh, my God, that’s scary, but – [laughs] – if you were going to –
Sarah: It’s near the surface. You can get to it.
Sassy: Yeah. For –
Sarah: You can get it out.
Sassy: – for a brain surgeon, this is like –
Sarah: Eh.
Sassy: – a stroll, pretty much. Other than the bone issue and creating the bone to replace what they’re going to go drill and break –
Sarah: U-ni-corn. Say it with me.
Sassy: Yes. [Laughs]
Sarah: Sparkly horn.
Sassy: Sparkly.
Sarah: Oh, look, it’s Sassy. She’s horny again!
Sassy: [Laughs] That’s it. That newlywed juice, whatever they give you.
Sarah: [Laughs] I am really glad to hear that you’re going to have surgery and things are going to be okay.
Sassy: Things are going to be okay. They’ll have to keep scanning me. That’s the, the thing with, when you mess around with tissue that’s been given a crapton of radiation, other things can happen, so we’re not out of the woods. They have to keep watching for other tumors, but this’ll be the first time in six years that there is not a guest sharing rent-free space in my head. Dude, get the fuck out. So, it’ll be –
Sarah: Eviction notice has been served.
Sassy: Totally. Screw you, tumor.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: So I do this thing where when you go into the hospital, I’ve had, like, dude, yo, thirty years of, of cancer treatments. I’ve honed it into a science. So when I go in the hospital –
Sarah: I’m sure there’s a wing named after you at this point.
Sassy: Oh, dude, there has to be. But if not, there’s a superhero that – somebody about a year ago was like, oh, Tumor Killer Girl. You’re Tumor Killer Girl, so it became, like, kind of my little mantra, and it stuck, and I created this idea in my head of what Tumor Killer Girl would look like. She’s like my armor. If you have to go be clinical with a whole team of doctors –
Sarah: You’re Tumor Killer Girl.
Sassy: You can’t be an emotional, crying mess, that the idea of, oh, my God, someone’s going into my brain! What the hell if I wake up and can’t remember my own husband? You get scared, you think like that. That’s what brain surgery does to you. It’s creepy.
Sarah: Of course.
Sassy: And/or you experience something, and you’re like, is that me or is that the brain tumor?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Sassy: How do I feel about this? I don’t know, ‘cause how does the brain tumor feel about it? You never know what reaction is yours and what reaction is something that something else is causing. It’s freaky.
Sarah: Yep.
Sassy: So you –
Sarah: Brains are weird.
Sassy: They are freaky!
Sarah: With or without tumors, brains are weird.
Sassy: Yes, and then you, you know, you get into this territory, and it’s a whole new world. I’ve, I’ve learned – I knew how to deal with eye cancer. I had no idea what brain stuff meant until six years ago when I had to start learning all of this. And boy, has that been a journey.
Sarah: Eyes are relatively small. I mean, they have a function. They don’t think on their own.
Sassy: They, they, they do. Brains have so many functions, I can’t even. So, you know, to start messing with that is like, let’s go play god, and that’s kind of the way neurosurgeons think is, let’s go play god. So when you have to deal with it, you have to be incredibly clinical and think about your emotional care later. You have to deal with the medical stuff, and you have to support your family and friends around you who have to hear, oh, my God, I have to go back in for major surgery and –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Sassy: – this is what we’re dealing with, and we have to discuss mortality, and all of these things come up, and that’s living with cancer. You have to be the caregiver and the patient at the same time in many aspects. So Tumor Killer Girl allows me to do that. She’s kind of that alter ego armor that goes on when I walk through the hospital door, and I kind of decided, you know what? Like, we need to, she needs to become a superhero. We need to do something with this whole Tumor Killer Girl idea, so I started talking to artists who draw and create Tumor Killer Girl, and we will be doing very cool things with her to try to raise awareness for retinoblastoma and for cancer care in general. How do you cope with it on the emotional side? Sure, you have to go and get all these damn treatments, but what about the rest of you that mentally and emotionally has to go through this?
Sarah: I think that’s amazing, and, like, I could picture you guys doing something like capes and giving them to kids so they can become –
Sassy: Oh, totally.
Sarah: – Tumor Killer Girl and Tumor Killer Boy and, and –
Sassy: That and, like, computer games. When, when a kid gets to take charge and learn advocacy skills by playing a computer game and being in control of, of the situation –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Sassy: – rather than feeling out of control, like –
Sarah: Yes.
Sassy: Being a cancer kid does amazing things to you, ‘cause you learn to communicate like an adult from a very early age, but you also miss out on being a kid.
Sarah: Yep.
Sassy: So you don’t learn how to do that, so learning how to give and take control through the use of a computer game or a video game or a comic book where you see somebody else do it can be very –
Sarah: Empowering, I imagine.
Sassy: – psychologically empowering, yeah. Yeah.
Sarah: I was writing about that today. I reviewed a documentary I watched called Happy. One of the things that the documentary made me think about was a series of children’s educational videos that my kids like called BrainPOP, and they did one where they summarized all the world’s religions, which was kind of amazing that they managed to do it, but the very simple explanation of Buddhism was that all negative feelings come from possession or control. When you lack possession or control, you have negative feelings, and so the steps toward enlightenment include giving up possession and surrendering control. And so when that sort of registered in my brain, I’d been thinking about it, so when I saw this video, or this documentary for Happy, it talked about how a lot of your happiness and your ability to be happy is hereditary, because people inherit things like depression and anxiety and, and, you know, your brain chemistry is a complicated and whackadoodle thing in there.
Sassy: It is.
Sarah: Things go on in your brain that people don’t understand even now.
Sassy: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: But a large part of your happiness is also under your control if you understand how your brain chemistry works. If you have a, a tendency towards depression, then strengthening your ability to receive dopamine by engaging in activities that create dopamine will help you feel better in the long term, in addition to other things like getting medical help, and al-, also finding doctors that take you seriously, which is, like, the important first step and often the hardest one.
Sassy: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: So having control over the things that affect you negatively is enormously powerful, because it can elevate your baseline happiness to ex-, you know, substantial levels.
Sassy: People, you know, I think, Sarah, just, like, subtweeted through that whole conversation that, like, sex, crazy, amazing, kinky sex and romance novels and all those great dopamine-releasing things that we, like, totally know work.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: They do work, and I think she just prescribed a shit-ton of great sex.
Sarah: Everybody have sex!
Sassy: Yes! [Laughs]
Sarah: Everyone should be having sex! It will make you feel good!
Sassy: Get laid!
Sarah: If you are feeling bad, go have some orgasms. All will be well!
Sassy: Well, you know, I was just reading – yes, I read articles on the clinical effects of BDSM. We all know what Sassy does in her spare time now.
Sarah: Woohoo!
Sassy: But, you know, like, I was just reading a, a comment that that much dopamine can cause major brain alterations –
Sarah: Yep, makes you happy!
Sassy: – and you believe really good things in your brain, okay. You don’t think pain is going to, like, make you, a punishment is going to make you have good brain stuff, but it totally does.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Sassy: And psychologists are proving it now, so yeah, go get laid.
Sarah: And also –
Sassy: It’ll keep you from getting cancer. TIME magazine I don’t think will publish that one. They haven’t gotten back to me on it, but I totally support that idea.
Sarah: [Laughs] So BDSM will prevent you from getting cancer?
Sassy: [Laughs] Okay, good sex – if you’re into S&M, be my guest, but at least go do things that are going to make your brain and body feel good, because life is too damn short.
Sarah: Life is very short.
Sassy: Yeah.
Sarah: So, one of the ways in which I met you was over Twitter.
Sassy: Yep.
Sarah: Because I was at a conference tweeting about a presentation, something about blind readers, and you started replying to me and said, well, some of that’s right, but other, other parts of that presentation are totally wrong. And I was like, really?
Sassy: Yep.
Sarah: ‘Cause, ‘cause I mean, can be honest with you, I have been known to fall under the spell of a guy and a voice and a khaki pants and a plaid shirt –
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: – on a stage with a microphone and a screen and believing that he’s actually backed up what he’s saying.
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: I realize now that there is some fallacy on my part in assuming that the guy in the polo and the khakis has done his homework all the way back, but hey, live and learn.
Sassy: It’s the khakis. I, I really think it’s like, the sighted people in the khakis that just –
Sarah: Sighted people in khakis! [Laughs] Beware, everyone. Pleated khakis and a polo shirt are the, the first sign of demonic intervention.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: So I have learned a lot from you about how blind people read romances.
Sassy: Yep.
Sarah: And, and that y’all read a lot of ‘em.
Sassy: Oh, hell yeah.
Sarah: And that you read faster than sighted people.
Sassy: I think Angela James can totally beat me out. Like, she can go faster than I can, but yeah, we’re pretty quick. [Laughs]
Sarah: Because you listen to your books –
Sassy: Totally.
Sarah: – and you get used to hearing the, the sound of your books go faster and faster and faster and faster.
Sassy: Yep.
Sarah: ‘Cause I remember, we did a presentation at RWA, you and, and me and Prattik and –
Sassy: Who I wasn’t married to, I didn’t even know I was going to get married to at the time.
Sarah: No, really?
Sassy: Totally!
Sarah: Oh, my gosh.
Sassy: Remember that?
Sarah: I’m all, I’m, I’m all squidgy right now. Oh, that’s so cute!
Sassy: It was cute. It was very cute – we met at a conference. Like, that’s how we, we originally fell in love.
Sarah: See, and, and here you are talking shit about khaki pants –
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and conferences brought you your husband.
Sassy: I don’t know what he was wearing that day.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: I just know that he asked for a cup of tea, and I went, dude, a guy who asks for a cup of tea in a room full of, like, soda drinkers and no, ooh, I have to, I have to hook up with this.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: Tea will tell you, yo, it’s better than red wine.
Sarah: Well, and, well, he’s blind and you’re blind, so he could tell you that he’s never worn khakis in his life and not being lying, ‘cause he doesn’t necessarily –
Sassy: Honey, have you worn khakis ever in your life?
No response. He’s got strep throat; he’s excused.
Sarah: [Laughs] He’s probably, like, gesturing like, what?
Sassy: He’s in the other room doing something with headphones on and speech talking to him, so he probably didn’t even hear me, and, either that or he goes, oh, she’s talking to Sarah. Random yelling will happen.
Sarah: [Laughs] So what are you reading currently that you really liked?
Sassy: Tiffany, Tiffany Reisz. Rice? Reese?
Sarah: I believe that it is Rice.
Sassy: Rice. Yay-hey! Tiffany, don’t kill me. She knows I love her; hopefully that’s okay. I am going through her The Siren and The Saint series [the Original Sinners series], and I have been, like, savoring these books over a year-long period and just reading one at a time. Yes, we get back into Sassy’s BDSM-fascinated life, but this series is so realistic and so well-crafted and so psychologically deep that it goes way, way beyond the BDSM for me and gets into –
Sarah: There’s a lot going on in those books.
Sassy: – religion studies and personal mindset and personal problem-solving skills and, dude, it’s deep, yo. [Laughs]
Sarah: Mm-hmm. She’s, I, I’ve said this before, she is such a tremendously talented writer.
Sassy: She is incredible.
Sarah: She writes in a genre that does not do it for me –
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: – so I don’t read a lot of her stuff, but, like, solely on a technical level, she is incredibly gifted.
Sassy: She is. I have mad respect for that woman, yo.
Sarah: Can I ask a question that just popped into my brain? ‘Cause you know, brains are weird?
Sassy: Right, yep, go.
Sarah: All right, so you’re, you’re blind –
Sassy: Yep.
Sarah: – and you’re in a BDSM scene.
Sassy: Yep.
Sarah: Are you the Dom or the sub, or do you switch?
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: And if you’re the Dom, do you have to, like, identify where the person is? Does that affect the way you use, I’m, I’m guessing –
Sassy: It does!
Sarah: – it does affect the way you use a tool that you’re, that you are going to use that is an extension of your body that hits something that you can’t see?
Sassy: It, yeah, you have to know – okay, this, where, yeah, Sassy knows about this stuff from firsthand experience. Yes. You have to –
Sarah: You don’t have to answer my totally nosy questions if you don’t want to.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: You can be like, girlfriend, you just crossed the line.
Sassy: I’m out, I totally am. I am out. I totally don’t care.
Sarah: Okay.
Sassy: Yes, this is my life. Yes, you have to be very careful in that the whip does not wind up smacking the blind person or the, I’m sorry, you’re – if you are the blind Dom, you have to make sure that your whip doesn’t smack your sub in the face. You have to know what you’re doing and where you’re going, but you know, as a, a submissive, you’re blindfolded half the time anyway, and as a Dom, you’re using, or you should be using, all of your senses to create the scene and to play safely and consensually and sanely, and so coming up with more creative ways, such as shorter whips or different textures or techniques, you, you learn to alter, just like you would with an ability – if you had a busted shoulder, you’re not going to use a cat-o’-nine tails that weighs 50,000 pounds, you’re going to use a lighter riding crop. You’re going to figure out ideas to alter your sexual pleasure to meet your body’s needs. That’s a, the whole theory of good sex. It doesn’t matter ability or disability, alter the situation to fit what you can safely and comfortably and pleasurably, passionately accomplish.
Sarah: That is really cool.
Sassy: Yeah.
Sarah: So anyway, now that we took a right turn into I’m really fucking nosy –
[Laughter]
Sarah: – please go back to telling me what books you’re reading, ‘cause you know, that’s a totally appropriate transition, right? Sure! Yeah.
Sassy: Well, the, let’s see –
Sarah: Somebody right now who’s listening to this podcast is yelling, NO! Go back to that part!
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: If you have questions about Sassy and whips, you can email us at [email protected], and I will get her back on the phone, maybe even while she’s on mind-altering drugs.
Sassy: The, the cancer drugs, yeah, ‘cause – or the, the dopamine, but no, nothing else.
Yes, so Jeffe Kennedy, oh, ho, ho, ho, The Talon of the Hawk?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Sassy: It’s coming out, and I got an advance copy, and ooh, my God, it’s so good! This whole series has been amazing, and to watch her grow as a writer from the days where she just, she was writing erotica, to now, where she’s writing these great high fantasy concept series, but she’s still so focused on character development?
Sarah: I love good character development.
Sassy: She is the queen of it. Like, her Going Under and her Under His Touch series [Falling Under series] I love, because it’s erotica, but she doesn’t focus just on the, the sexytimes. She focuses on what’s happening to the character’s psyche, for both male, but primarily female-driven, heroine-driven – she’s really focused on what happens to you as you enter into an erotic relationship like this, and that it does have far-reaching consequences through the rest of your life and not, normally they’re really, really good consequences, other than just I had fabulous orgasms. They affect other parts of your life, and she, she’s really one of the only erotica writers – I know I just mentioned two erotica authors, but those are pretty much the only two in erotica that I read regularly right now, besides Alisha, which you recommended to me, A Gentleman in the Street, a while ago, and I devoured in, like, a night.
Sarah: Did you like it?
Sassy: Oh, my God, I loved it! I totally loved it. Again, it gets more into the character’s head rather than just her body, and I love that. I really, really think that that’s kind of an emerging trend in erotica is that people are realizing that it goes far beyond what happens in the bedroom. It’s not – romance novels aren’t just bodice rippers; it’s all about –
Sarah: What?! Stop!
Sassy: No, I mean there’s so much more.
Sarah: You just stop right now with that silliness.
Sassy: Erotica is now turning into a lot of character analysis and character transformation, and I love it. I really like where that trend is going.
Sarah: Well, it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense, because if you are going to own your sexuality and you are going to own a part of you that desires something that is considered deviant –
Sassy: Yep.
Sarah: – then you’re going to own a major piece of your own confidence, because you’ve identified what you want – which is hard enough, ‘cause brains are weird, man – so you’ve identified what it is that you want, what gives you pleasure. You’ve identified that it may not be the most standard, vanilla, acceptable, socially-aware thing that, that, that you could’ve, you know, stumbled into. You’ve found something that not everyone understands, but enough people do that you can go do it. That’s going to affect how you carry yourself in other areas of your life. That’s absolutely true.
Sassy: It is, and I’m glad that authors are finally putting those two connections together. I mean, we see it in reality, but I’m so happy that erotica, especially in the, the BDSM side of erotica, is, is making that leap and going, there are tremendously beneficial psychological qualities to owning and accepting what you are. It’s like saying, you know, there’s, there’s coming out of the closet when you are BDSM in a way. There’s admitting that, that you have these tendencies. There’s acknowledging your demons and harnessing them up and taking them out for a spin. That’s kind of what you’re doing when you get into, to playing with non-vanilla kink and –
Sarah: Or having brain surgery.
Sassy: Or having fricking brain surgery. Open up my brain; it’s okay. Whatever’s in there, go for it. I’m going to be asleep. I don’t know and I don’t care. Dude, the people who have to go through brain surgery awake, yo, I, that would freak me out.
Sarah: I don’t know that I could do that.
Sassy: You know, I, I happened to be flipping through a TV channel, like a, TV channels a week before my first neurosurgery, and they had, like, one of those Nova specials or something, and they were showing a neurosurgery, and I don’t know why this happened to pop on my TV at that time, but it did. And it showed a guy, and they were stimulating Broca’s area, which is your speech manufacturing center, and they were asking him to count, and they would apply electrode stimulation to his brain to move through and learn where they couldn’t cut and where they could cut, and there would be situations where he’d be going, one, two, three, fooooo-, and he couldn’t produce the word five because they were applying electrode stimulation to that area of his brain that was responsible for doing that, and he couldn’t do it.
Sarah: Oh, that’s freaky!
Sassy: It is freaky, and you have to be awake to go through that mapping process so they know where it’s safe to, to excise the tumor and where it’s not. Luckily, my tumor is not in an area where they have to do that to me, but there are plenty of people who do have to go through that, and you know, I’m freaking out enough with my own little surgery here, yo. If you, if you have to go through something like that, you got my love, man. [Laughs] That’s intense. So –
Sarah: That is intense. But you’re going to own that part of your body too.
Sassy: You have to, and that’s, that’s what we were discussing. You have to own your body. You have to own, and owning your body means owning your brain. Owning your demons and what comes out of your brain, not just tumors, but feelings, emotions, thoughts. They’re all part of sex. Women don’t just, like, get off. Women, you have to have emotions, the clitoris, and the mind all in the same place to achieve an orgasm if you’re a chick. You have to bring them all to class and sit them down in front of you. I mean, the guy says, you know, he has a hard enough time finding the roadmap downstairs to stimulate the clitoris. Well, he’s also got the, the emotional and mental faculties that he’s got to stimulate too. And part of doing that better or improving upon that is learning to own what you like and what you don’t like in the bedroom, and I love the fact that now in erotica we’re saying, it’s okay to have non-vanilla tendencies, it’s okay to have these different ideas of what you want, and it’s okay to express those and own those and let those have ripple consequences throughout the rest of your life. ‘Cause they’re going to. You’re going to have more confidence. You’re going to be stronger. You’re going to be more able to handle decisions in other parts of your life when you have decided to accept what you are and what you want –
Sarah: Yep.
Sassy: – in the bedroom.
Sarah: It’s true.
Sassy: I know how that works.
Sarah: And plus, if you are curious, and we, I know many, this has been mentioned by many readers, if you’re curious about something sexually, reading about it means that you have the ability to explore it in the comfort and privacy of your own imagination.
Sassy: Totally. And I think a lot of people, that’s why Fifty Shades of Grey, I think, was such a big success –
Sarah: That’s part of it, absolutely.
Sassy: – was that people suddenly felt like, you know, since the 1960s, S&M was something that you did in the, the, the privacy of your own imagination or your own home. Dominas were people that stayed in dungeons for business men who could afford their $1,000-an-hour services or whatever, and you know, sex in that context was never societally accepted until somebody published a mass-market book that kind of said that this is, people, regular college-age kids, and everybody else can and does do this, and it’s, you know, not a bad thing. Suddenly everybody in Middle America could, you know, go play with handcuffs and not feel so guilty about it, and –
Sarah: God willing, they did it safely.
Sassy: Yeah, that’s the issue.
Sarah: Yeah.
Sassy: Well, okay, no, no, let’s, let’s get into that, ‘cause Christian Grey, not safe. Christian Grey, sociopath.
Sarah: You don’t say!
Sassy: Right?
Sarah: [Laughs] I am the only source of information you need. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Sassy: I know this has been discussed ad nauseam, but dude, it – no. Just no.
Sarah: [Laughs] So what you’re saying here is no.
Sassy: No. That is not how S&M works.
Sarah: And nuh-uh.
Sassy: That is not how – no. That’s, that’s dangerous. There’s a difference between being dominated and being stalked. There is a difference between being ravished by your Dom and being abused. There’s a difference between submitting your own will and having it taken away from you. And there is a difference between saying, I want somebody to make decisions for me and to take control so that I don’t have to assume responsibility for this part of my life, and saying to somebody, take control of me because I don’t want to face my own psychological issues; therefore, if you’re in control, I don’t have to think. There’s a big difference, and there’s, to be in a healthy BDSM or D/s relationship requires that you have a high level of self responsibility and self awareness and self confidence and that you don’t give those things away, and the first thing Christian Grey does when he comes in is say, give these things away to me. And yeah, I do worry. Okay, maybe it’s foolish, but I do worry that some people are going to see that as a healthy relationship, and it’s not. It’s just flat-out not, sadly. And it looks good from the surface, but it’s really not.
Sarah: So aside from books you don’t like, are there any other books you do recommend?
Sassy: [Laughs] I just found out that Lois McMaster Bujold is coming out with a new Vorkosigan saga book where Cordelia falls in love again, and I’m so excited, but that’s not out for, I think, like, a year or something. The new Louise Penny book is on its way, and I can’t wait to read that one. I think it’s coming out this summer. Right now I am reading –
Sarah: Neuroscience journals?
Sassy: Sometimes.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: It’s not romance, so I don’t know if it necessarily qualifies to go here, but Blood Song by Anthony Ryan?
Sarah: We all read more than one type of, of book.
Sassy: I’m so guilty of that.
Sarah: Yeah. So, seriously, do not worry a – Blood Song?
Sassy: Blood Song by Anthony Ryan is totally a high fantasy series, epic fantasy.
Sarah: Ooh, you could get elf ears!
Sassy: You know what, that would – I –
Sarah: I’m, I’m still on your, I’m still on your 3D printing, and I’m going to be here for a couple hours. I think elf ears are an option for you.
Sassy: I am mad obsessed with elves. Like, for the, the RT balls and stuff like that, I’ve always been, how could I make an elf costume or –
Sarah: You got the long red hair, you got the floating skirts –
Sassy: I totally do! [Laughs] Elf or mermaid. I, there’s not a way to have a headpiece that turns into mermaid, but that would be so cool.
Sarah: I mean, I actually have –
Sassy: Tumor Killer Girl is going to be part mermaid. I’m telling you.
Sarah: I actually have points in the cartilage of my ear on, it’s hereditary so my ears have points in the middle.
Sassy: [Gasps] She’s an elf!
Sarah: I know! I tell my kids, well, I’m part elf. And they’re like, [gasp!] really? And I’m like, yes, that’s why I’m so petite.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: ‘Cause I am short. I’m part elf!
Sassy: You must have elf superpowers to make your kids behave too, right?
Sarah: Yes, I have the power of smartass.
Sassy: [Laughs] Yes, you do.
[Laughter]
Sarah: And sarcasm, that’s my secondary power.
Sassy: I, I –
Sarah: I’m a master of sarcasm, but, you know –
Sassy: – never known anyone with more superpowers in that field than you. [Laughs] She has a lock on it, you guys. So, yeah, Blood Song. The book is, like, twenty hours in audio, and I’m not – Prattik puts on an audio book, and he speeds it up, like, five times the normal speed. I’m like, I can’t do that. I’m too much of an audio engineer. When I’m not reading romance books, I do the music business –
Sarah: Yes, I know, ‘cause all the music we have comes from you.
Sassy: – for a job. Yeah, that’s my job.
Sarah: Yay!
Sassy: So I can’t listen to the audiobooks at, like, double or triple or quadruple or whatever their speed. I have to listen to them at regular pace, so it slows me way down, but this book is, like, twenty hours long. But it’s really, really good. Violent, bloody, but it’s really, really beautifully written and deep character point of view. It’s, it’s a great – it’s like the Patrick Rothfuss The Name of the Wind series [The Kingkiller Chronicle series], but different in that it’s a little bit more episodic rather than just reminiscing from the character’s point of view, so it’s, it’s amazing.
Sarah: I’m going to have to get this for my husband, because he really loves the Patrick Rothfuss books.
Sassy: Yeah, this is similar to it in a lot of ways. It’s, there’s warrior training. At first, they almost seem like ninja, like an alternate history to Japan, but it’s not. It’s, it’s, as you get deeper into the book, you realize that it’s more, there’s political machinations, there’s war, there’s dead people, there’s love, there’s a beautiful redheaded maiden, ‘cause there’s always a beautiful redheaded princess. What’s up with the red hair? Like, every –
Sarah: I don’t know; you tell me, Miss Redhead.
Sassy: – romance character – [laughs] – I’m like, red hair, green eyes. Oh, I could be that character; that’s so creepy.
Sarah: [Laughs] Only if you have the green eye in, ‘cause I know you have a purple eye.
Sassy: I did have purple eyes. Now I have green back. I got green right after RT last year.
Sarah: Do you have, do you – wait, do you have both of your eyes are glass eyes? I thought it was just one.
Sassy: No, both.
Sarah: Where did the purple ones go? They would have gone with the elf ears.
Sassy: [Laughs] You really want to know?
Sarah: God damn it, where’d they go? Did you lose them? Are they in your brain?
Sassy: No. No, they’re in – no!
Sarah: They fell in, and they’re rattling around your brain!
Sassy: They’re in my underwear drawer
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: So if anybody –
Sarah: Burglar surprise!
Sassy: Yes! If anybody opens the drawer, there’s this eye looking at you. You don’t belong in here! Get out! [Laughs] I don’t see them, so it doesn’t bug me, but anybody who’s in that drawer that shouldn’t be, there’s an eye looking at you. I know, that, that is totally creepy, and everybody just lost, lost mad respect for Sassy Outwater, but I’m good.
Sarah: No, I think everyone’s like, dude, if I had glass eyes, I would straight up leave ‘em in my panty drawer too.
Sassy: [Laughs] I did it , I started doing that when the exterminators had to come in and spray years ago when I lived in California; they had to come and spray for termites, and they were like, we’re going to gas your whole house. We’re going to open all of your drawers. We’re going to inspect all your products to make sure there’s nothing that’s going to kill you if you ingest this horrible, toxic gas that we’re going to pump your home full of.
Sarah: Right, of course.
Sassy: I’m like, good, you’re going to open my underwear drawer. I’m going to leave something there to remind you that I don’t want you in there. [Laughs] So I did it. It was horrible, but I did it. I’m just sad I couldn’t be there when they opened that drawer.
Sarah: See, I think that’s awesome.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: So you don’t have the purple ones; you’ve got green ones.
Sassy: Yeah, I still have the purple ones, but I wear the green ones. I, I’ve got – every five years or so, I have to get – and they’re plastic; they’re not glass – they’re, like, little shell-looking things that just slide over the implant in your eye socket. And about every five to seven years you have to get them replaced, ‘cause plastic wears out, and things change, and you gain or lose weight, and shape changes, and – so you get them replaced, and they paint these things with, like, single-hair brushes, silk brushes. They paint the veins and the – you know, if you look at my eyes, they look totally normal, totally real.
Sarah: As, I thought you only had one glass eye. I didn’t realize there were two.
Sassy: Yeah, see? They look totally normal, and they –
Sarah: That’s amazing.
Sassy: – they paint these things painstakingly, and they – you know, I go in there, and I’m like, the color’s not exactly what I want. I have to take them for a test drive and show a bunch of people, and everybody’s like, oh, there’s too much yellow, or there’s too much blue, or whatever. So you get to custom make the exact color of your eyes. It’s badass.
Sarah: This is going to make your Twilight Sparkle unicorn cosplay so much easier.
Sassy: It’s going to be so much better!
Sarah: Yes.
Sassy: There are, there are ocularists, or prosthetic eye makers, who have made, have put, like, diamond dust into people’s eyes to, like, make them sparkle or glimmer.
Sarah: So, wait, her eyes could actually glint?
Sassy: Totally.
Sarah: [Gasps] That’s amazing!
Sassy: I know. I’ve thought about it, but I haven’t been that brave yet. Maybe someday when I have a million dollars, you could get, like, diamond eyes, you could get – somebody got an eye that looked exactly like a golf ball.
Sarah: Aaaaaaaaah!
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: All right, I’ll be honest with you; that would wig me the hell out. Especially, and if every dimple of the golf ball was another tiny little pupil, I’d be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa.
Sassy: [Laughs] So Amanda apparently was next to me at Park Street the other day, but we both had really crappy days. Somebody had jumped in front of the Boston subways and I got caught near that, and I was freaked out and so sad by that –
Sarah: That is horrible. I, I was on a train –
Sassy: It was –
Sarah: – that someone jumped in front of, and it, it, it has stayed with me for years, so –
Sassy: It was traumatic. Anyway, I’m not going to get into that, but Amanda and I both apparently happened to be near each other, and she tweeted me while I was on the subway, and I’m like, yeah, that was me.
Sarah: Aww.
Sassy: But I was like, you know, I need to get a pair of, like, dragon lady, like, red slitted eyes to wear –
Sarah: Fuck yeah!
Sassy: – when I have a crap day so that, like, when people come up to me, oh! Cute puppy!
Sarah: And they pet him when they’re not supposed to.
Sassy: And I’m like, please don’t pet the dog, and I look at them, and I want to just be able to give them the look like [growl], you know? [Laughs] Back off.
Sarah: Don’t pet the guide dog! [Growl!]
Sassy: That would be so awesome, ‘cause, yeah, if I say, don’t pet my dog, that doesn’t mean sneak attack ‘cause the blind lady won’t know. That means, back the fuck off! Don’t touch the dog! I don’t walk up and pet your eyeballs, don’t pet mine, right? I think the red eyes would discourage a lot of unsolicited doggy flirtation. [Laughs]
Sarah: So if people who are listening don’t know, if a guide dog has the bar handle up and is walking a blind person, they’re working, and you can’t pet ‘em.
Sassy: They’re working! Yeah, please don’t.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: Please don’t pet, make eye contact. The, the dog is my eyes. Just – I don’t, like, try to make eye contact with you unless I’m flirting with your or being creepy –
Sarah: Or you have those dragon eyes in and you’re trying to scare the shit out of me. [Laughs]
Sassy: Or I have the dragon eyes in and it’s like what the hell.
[Laughter]
Sassy: Let the dog do its job. You can, when you pet or distract a working dog in any way while they’re guiding their human, you can endanger that human. Like, that’s their life. The dog is in charge of my life when he’s guiding me around, so, like, don’t let me get walked off a curb or into an ice bank or whatever. Like, this winter, Boston sucks. Like, I live in a, a pretty well-plowed, good area, but it was so horrendous to try to get around with 110 inches of snow or whatever we’ve gotten this year. The dog had to do 90% of the work, and if he had gotten distracted while he was walking me across the ice in the middle of the street, that could have, like, really disastrous consequences. So, yeah, let the dog do its job. I know we see puppy! And it’s so cute, and it’s so amazing to watch, ‘cause they’re like little celebrities on four feet, but they’re really, really doing an intense job, and they have to learn to, to balance the, the job requirements. You don’t distract a Navy SEAL when he’s on a mission; don’t distract a guide dog.
Sarah: Or you get the dragon –
Sassy: There’s my soapbox.
Sarah: Or you get dragon lady eyes.
Sassy: Or you get dragon eyes! [Laughs]
Sarah: And then you’re going to be in trouble.
Sassy: Plug: if you want to know more about guide dogs, or if you want to, like, you have more questions, you can always find me on Twitter and ask. Especially authors, if you have research questions, I totally don’t mind discussing or answering.
Sarah: Speaking of –
Sassy: Yeah.
Sarah: You have a panel at RT that I want to hear about.
Sassy: [Squeal!] I do! Oh, my gosh, I’m so excited about this panel. Yeah, but if you have questions, just ask!
Sarah: You and your brain, minus your tumor, right?
Sassy: Hopefully. If I have surgery – you’ll find out April 9th when I’m going to have surgery, so we’ll know then at what point, what day I’m going to go in for surgery, but hopefully it’ll be minus the tumor and/or surgery will be very soon after RT. This panel is all about Screw the Stereotypes. I’m so sick of reading books where the disabled character gets out of bed and puts her pants on and inspires everybody in the book. Or –
Sarah: You mean your job isn’t to serve as a life-inspiring piece of admiration and, and self congratulations for me?
Sassy: Dude, I’m not your inspiration porn! We’ve discussed this!
Sarah: God damn it.
Sassy: [Laughs] Go get off on something else.
Sarah: Okay, ‘cause you know, now I’m pissed because I have been designing my Applejack costume to go with your Twilight Sparkle head, but fine. If you’re going to be like that.
Sassy: See, I will totally be your inspiration porn for your costume at RT. I will not –
Sarah: Okay, fine.
Sassy: – be your inspiration porn because I’m blind and I know how to pronounce my own name. Dude, no.
Sarah: [Laughs] Okay, fine, I can accept that. Please go on. I’ll try to hide my hurt feelings.
Sassy: No, but that’s the books that I read sometimes is this disabled character who can’t accept their disability or doesn’t want to or life is totally limiting. I read a Catherine Anderson book about a blind character, and she couldn’t walk around this guy’s ranch by herself, her, the hero’s ranch by herself because she would fall into the pond, and I’m like, dude –
Sarah: What?!
Sassy: – that is so messed up, because the last time that I checked, I can walk around just fine by myself. It’s called a white cane. There is nothing wrong with using it. And we get –
Sarah: So, wait, if you’re –
Sassy: – orientation mobility services. We know how to use that white cane. We’re not helpless.
Sarah: So, (a) when you’re not beating off people trying to pet your dog or use you as inspiration porn, your white cane, you know when it hits water as opposed to earth?
Sassy: I totally do!
Sarah: You are so full of shit.
Sassy: I told you I have superpowers!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: Like Daredevil, I can hear the heartbeat of someone, like, fifteen miles away. No. But I mean, I’m really, like, excited by books like Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga or Tessa Dare’s – come on, brain, work – Romancing the Duke where, where the character has a, a disability or a, a perceived – it can be something as simple as a perceived PTSD or mental hang-up about something. Vampires are a great example of, of disability. It’s something that sets the character apart. It’s something that makes a physical different in the char-, difference in the character’s body. Yes, vampires would be considered disabled citizens, probably, in our world. Because they, they’re –
Sarah: And it makes people treat them differently, too.
Sassy: Anatomically different, and they get treated differently, exactly. So whether you are a werewolf, a vampire, a blind duke, a deaf character, whatever, we want to talk about the role of disability in different genres, so what is the role of disabled character in sci-fi versus what is it in erotica.
Sarah: Ooh!
Sassy: What is it in historical romance versus what is it in high fantasy, and we want to talk about how we can create diversity. Diversity in books – I really get ticked off about this, this is my personal pet peeve. When we limit diversity in publishing to the idea of race or sexual identity or something else and we forget that disability is part of that, and when we forget that religion is part of that, or we forget that there –
Sarah: Thank you!
Sassy: – are a million different types of diversity –
Sarah: Yep.
Sassy: – and I’m so excited that this panel is happening this year because of all the talk about diversity in publishing, and I’m going, yo, there are disabled people here. We count too.
Sarah: So it’s you and Tessa Dare, Linnea Sinclair, and Damon Suede.
Sassy: And Jeffe Kennedy, yep.
Sarah: And Jeffe Kennedy.
Sassy: It’s going to be one hell of an awesome panel. I’m so excited.
Sarah: When is it? Do you know what day?
Sassy: I am not set up for the RT website.
Sarah: You know what, don’t worry about it. I will look it, I will look it up, and I will link to it in the podcast entry, so if people are going to RT –
Sassy: Yes.
Sarah: – they can add it to their agendas. The, the RT website is a, is, I think, a continually enormous moving-parts work in progress, but the way in which you can –
Sassy: It is.
Sarah: – you can design your own agenda is pretty friggin’ rad.
Sassy: Thank you, Trent! We love you! [Laughs]
Sarah: The whole idea where you can, like, there’s an app, you can select the things you want to go to, and then the app will be, like, yo! Time to go to that thing you said you wanted to go to.
Sassy: I loved that last year. My whole thing was, like, laid out moment to moment, I knew exactly where I was supposed to be and when and how much time I had to walk the dog in between sessions or go, you know, de-, de-stress my brain for two seconds in my room. I, it was perfect.
Sarah: So, I have one more question for you.
Sassy: Okay.
Sarah: There was a big decision, a big legal case decided that Scribd –
Sassy: [Sigh]
Sarah: – needs to be blind accessible. I had no idea that it wasn’t.
Sassy: They’re still in, in the process of, of doing this, but yes.
Sarah: How is it not accessible? I mean, I know that there is some software or some programming that your screen readers can’t read. Could your screen readers not read or access any of Scribd books?
Sassy: Right. Like, Kobo, Nook, Scribd, a lot of these services are still not accessible. We’re getting there. I mean, app for Kindle, some Kindle devices are accessible to some print-disabled readers now, but the iOS app is totally accessible. Bookshare is always out there. All these services are out there, but there’re still a lot that are not, and blind people are kind of sick of it and saying, get on board, get up, fix this, and companies are saying, no, we don’t want to.
Sarah: Let me, let me just ask you a quick question: so you’re, you’re, you use an iPhone, and the –
Sassy: I totally do.
Sarah: – and, and the iOS, most Apple OSs have been natively accessible to visually impaired readers.
Sassy: Ever since 2009, yes.
Sarah: So, like, since the Mesozoic era of the Internet.
Sassy: [Laughs] Right.
Sarah: Which is, like, a long-ass time ago. And so if you have an app and the app is on your phone, the phone makes the app accessible for you, but the –
Sassy: If –
Sarah: If –
Sassy: If they design it correctly based on Apple’s guidelines for designing accessibly. Things like Uber – I’m going to call you out –
Sarah: There’s – oh, you can’t call Uber out about anything. They don’t do anything wrong ever. They’re not creepy or subject to weirdly suspicious hiring practices or anything like that.
Sassy: [Sigh]
Sarah: I mean, you can’t call out Uber. Anyway, go ahead.
Sassy: They’re being sued nationally for refusing transport for people with guide dogs. They’ve done it to me, they’ve put somebody’s –
Sarah: No!
Sassy: Oh, totally. They’re being majorly sued –
Sarah: Oh, my gosh!
Sassy: – by the National Federation of the Blind right now. They –
Sarah: Do, but you guys have sticks! Why would you piss off an entire population of people who have sticks and know how to use ‘em? Not to mention dragon eyes?
Sassy: Or dogs.
Sarah: And dogs.
Sassy: Dude, I can, you know, I can teach my dog so it, like, bites the driver that refuses it or something.
Sarah: Kodak –
Sassy: I don’t, but I –
Sarah: – drop an air biscuit. On it, mom!
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: You have dogs, sticks, and dragon eyes. Why would you fuck with this population?
Sassy: There was an Uber driver that took somebody’s guide dog away and put him in a trunk. I mean –
Sarah: [Gasp!]
Sassy: Yeah. That one freaked me out. I’m like, oh, hell no. So they’re beginning to, but they, in January, they released a, an update to their app that didn’t follow Apple’s iOS design guidelines, and subsequently they broke it.
Sarah: So you can’t use it.
Sassy: So we can’t hire Uber cabs in certain situations. Repeated attempts to contact Uber and say, hey, look what you did; can you fix this? have gone unanswered. Hulu, right now. Their product right now, with the voiceover, sucks, because they did this update, and they forgot that, oh, yeah, Apple says how to design for blind people, and blind people watch TV too – what a concept. So I’m really pissed off that anytime I want to go watch Scandal or Gray’s Anatomy or any show that I like to watch, I can’t get in there without having to restart the app about fifteen times. It’s stupid. So, yes, I mean, they’re accessible, but it requires that companies be compliant with the accessibility guidelines that Apple so handily makes available for companies to use, review, and otherwise put into practice.
Sarah: And so –
Sassy: Accessibility is, like, a two-way street. You’ve got to –
Sarah: What?
Sassy: – employ it for it to work.
Sarah: No.
Sassy: I know, right?
Sarah: It’s, like, just magically shows up? That’s what I thought.
Sassy: Well –
Sarah: So you can’t use those stores, either. You can’t –
Sassy: Nope.
Sarah: – go to the Kobo store. You can’t use the Scribd interface.
Sassy: But that’s what the, the judge’s ruling was unique in that he said, Congress in the ‘90s, when they created the ADA, intended this –
Sarah: Which is the Americans with Disabilities Act, right?
Sassy: – Disability Act, sorry – intended this act to be –
Sarah: You blind people with your shorthand and your initials.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: Sorry.
Sassy: – S&M, ADA.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: Sorry, I’m flinging it all out there. So when Congress wrote the ADA, probably under the duress of somebody’s BDSM tendencies, but –
Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, geeze!
Sassy: [Laughs] It’s Capitol Hill, what do you want?
Sarah: That’s true.
Sassy: [Whip sound.]
Sarah: I need whip sound effects for this podcast.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: So Sassy says [whip sound].
Sassy: Right. So –
Sarah: Ow!
Sassy: [Laughs] – when Congress wrote the ADA, they intended it not just to apply to physical accessibility, such as wheelchair ramps for a building, but they also intended it, in hindsight, for the digital space, which did not fully exist way back when. So this judge came down in this ruling and said, look, Scribd, you’re supposed to make this accessible. Just like you would have to make a brick-and-mortar bookstore accessible, you need to make a digital bookstore accessible. And the Justice Department has often said that A11Y, which is the, the coder abbreviation for accessibility, applies to the digital space as well, but this was the first time, really, that a judge came down against a publisher or a book provider and said, the same laws apply to you digitally that apply to you physically with regard to your place of business. Make it accessible. And that’s a huge win for us because, like, the other night I read three articles on self-driving cars, then I went to go buy a bag of dog food on a website, and the website was not accessible. I swear that I will be dropping my kids off at soccer, soccer practice and driving myself around in a self-driving car before I will be able to go successfully use the Internet to buy dog food on any website I want. Because the Internet is so vast, and people are so unaware that accessibility of websites is as important as accessibility of physical businesses.
Sarah: Yep.
Sassy: So.
Sarah: One of the things that we struggle with with the, with the tournament is that the software that we use is not screen reader accessible –
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: – and there’s nothing that we can do to that software to make it compliant, and it’s the only one of its kind –
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: – so my solution is that I call the blind people on Skype and do their brackets for them.
Sassy: Which is the most amazing business practice ever in the history of ever.
Sarah: Oh, not really! It’s kind of fun!
Sassy: It is totally awesome that – you know, when I brought this, this problem to, and when other blind people brought this problem to the romance industry – and this is why I’m so sad lately that we’re kind of, like, having so many issues, because I watched people bend over backwards to go, oh! I never thought about print-disabled readers before. What do I have to do to be accessible? What do I have to do to change things just a little bit so I can gain all these amazing great readers and contributors and fans and people? And friends. And people have changed so much in the few years that I’ve been hanging around this business, and they’re still changing, and more and more authors are figuring out as they start publishing, oh, there’s a whole swath of readers that I can’t reach this way, so I’m going to do it this way, and that’s what I love about the romance community is that we’re willing to look at things the way that other people need them to be looked at to make the, the whole market better for everybody. That includes SBTB and the accessibility features –
Sarah: Thank you!
Sassy: – including Sarah’s phone calls. [Laughs]
Sarah: Well, I, I, I try to make the site as accessible to everybody as possible, and, and I try to, you know – if somebody wants to link to their preferred retailer, I try to make that happen. Someone asked if I could make all the Amazon links go to smile.amazon so that every purchase that they made, they automatically made a charitable donation to the, the nonprofit that they designated. Those are –
Sassy: Which is so cool!
Sarah: Those are all changes that I can make. It’s not like it’s difficult. There’s some things I can’t do, but –
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: – you know, those are all little things I can do. After doing the session with you at RWA a couple years ago, actually using a screen reader to read websites completely blew my mind, because it made no sense to my brain what I was hearing. Because it’s basically reading what the site looks like, top to bottom, left to right, so title, bar, menu button, and then the name of the button –
Sassy: Yeah.
Sarah: – and I was like, I don’t even know what the heck this is saying.
Sassy: That is the coolest thing. Jaws for Windows is a Windows-based screen reader that most of us use, and you can get a free demo of it for, like, forty minutes at a time, and if you ever want to hear how your website sounds to a blind person or you just want to hear something really kind of freaky and cool or hear how we experience life, or if you’re writing a blind character and you want to just play around with it, go to FreedomScientific.com, install this demo, and then go look at your website. It’s a totally different experience, but it’s totally doable in most situations, and if it’s not – okay, confession: I just gave this talk at, at the International Technology for Persons with Disabilities. One thing I do is Blind Chick, which is all about sexuality and fashion and things as a, a blind person. I do a series of blog posts and presentations on how that all works. Yes, blind people can have fashion sense and, and be style junkies too. So –
Sarah: Really?
Sassy: I know, right? So I had to go to pick, it’s, it’s your wedding. You have to have lingerie for your wedding. You have to have sexytimes clothes.
Sarah: Please! Half the time I like wearing lingerie ‘cause I feel awesome.
Sassy: So I went to this store to buy lingerie about a month ago, and walked through the mall and realized that I didn’t know where I was going ‘cause the cab driver had dropped me off at the wrong entrance to the wrong mall, so I went to the security desk and I asked if there was somebody who could help me to get where I needed to go, and of course, now I’ve got to tell this six-foot-something, burly security guard who’s nineteen that I need to go to the lingerie store, and I’m like, this is going to be awkward! So this guy has to take me to the lingerie store. I get in the lingerie store. She’s fitting me, life is going great, it’s this totally posh place, and my guide dog is lying under the bench being so good, and then he stands up and starts getting ready to ralph.
Sarah: Oh, no!
Sassy: And I’m topless in the dressing room, and I’m like, okay. Gotta hold the dog’s head –
Sarah: And you know that sound, right?
Sassy: What?
Sarah: You know that sound the minute it starts. Guh, guh, guh.
Sassy: Oh, you totally do, and you’re like, I am –
Sarah: Oh, shit!
Sassy: – topless right now with a bra on and this saleslady standing here, and I don’t want my dog to barf all over her dressing room. Grabbed a trash can.
Sarah: Oh, God!
Sassy: And that’s like, it’s like taking a two-year-old out in public.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: Seriously. So –
Sarah: So bra shopping with the barfing guide dog.
Sassy: So I decide that for the, the sexier things I want to go online and go shopping. I get to the website, realize, ugh, it’s not accessible. When you say the color is Isis, that really doesn’t tell me what color something is. That tells me that it’s either (a) a terrorist organization that wants to hold my boobs –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Sassy: – or (b), or (b) it’s some weird color that I have never heard of before, and yes, I remember seeing color, so I know what most colors look like, and that was not one of them that my mom ever described to me, so I call up the company and say, okay, I want to buy this product. What color is Isis? That’s not accessible for your blind customers because I, I don’t know what that means. Her response was, well, don’t you have somebody there that can help you with that? Yeah, his name is Stan. I keep him stashed in my top desk drawer. He sits there and watches football in my desk drawer when I’m not using him for lingerie identification. Come on! No, I don’t keep a sighted person around for this.
Sarah: Like, so wait, the answer is you should have a sighted person?
Sassy: Yes! I should always have a sighted person available to describe my lingerie to me before I purchase it online.
Sarah: Oh, for God’s sake. I’m looking online right now, and –
Sassy: I’m going to go after a creepy next-door neighbor –
Sarah: – I don’t even know what color Isis is. I’m going to assume blue because it makes me think of iris, or iris blue –
Sassy: Right.
Sarah: – but I –
Sassy: Like, somebody’s going to want to rename that color before the terrorist organization –
Sarah: Now I’m looking, now I’m going to look at, like, the, the, the really ostentatious home furnishing catalogs with all the doofy color names and be, be like, aw, man.
Sassy: Yeah. It’s, it’s weird. Okay, equating colors with emotions or textures or something is, is one thing, but when you start equating it with, like, odd concepts, you literally hobble –
Sarah: Shoelace.
Sassy: – part of your market. And then when you, your customer service rep has the guts to say, oh, don’t you keep a person around for that? No. I mean, I don’t. I, I don’t keep a sighted person in the house for just such purposes. I don’t believe in holding sighted people as slaves. I mean, I know you guys are light-dependent, but that’s enough slavery. I don’t need to, like, hold you hostage to identify my shopping preferences for me. [Laughs] You know, little things like that, when you’re an author and you are designing your website or when you’re a reader and you’re writing a blog or something –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Sassy: – just making little choices like that when you think about how people would interact with color, or cognitive disabilities, how would somebody with a, a sensory disability or cognitive disability interact with your website? Put yourself in their shoes for two seconds, and it kind of changes your perception of how you design your site and what you put up there.
Sarah: Of course.
Sassy: And the thought process that goes into creating that content.
Sarah: Huh. I completely agree.
Sassy: Sarah’s brain is fifty miles away right now, y’all. [Laughs]
Sarah: I, I, I’m sort of digesting everything you just said. And also my enormous cat has leaped up, and I, and I was, I was actually afraid that I was about to hear the barfing noise.
Sassy: [Laughs]
Sarah: I, I thought that he had heard the suggestion –
Sassy: I jinxed you.
Sarah: – of hey! Is it time to hurl? I could so do that right now.
Sassy: At least it wouldn’t be in a lingerie dressing room. That was a low. That was a new –
Sarah: That’s a definite Blind Chick low.
Sassy: It was a – [laughs] – new and special moment I would rather not repeat.
[Laughter]
Sassy: Oh, I aimed the whole thing right into the trash can. Topless, with just my pants on and my bra on. It was great. I’m like, I need to catch this on video.
[Laughter]
[music]
Sarah: Well, that was a long episode. I hope you enjoyed that. I want to thank Sassy for taking the time to hang out with me on Skype for a little over an hour, and also I want to thank Grace for making her pretty much regular appearance. I can’t think if there has been an episode where I haven’t had her meowing at me in the background. She’s seventeen and a half. I can’t tell her what to do.
And in addition to my very melodious cat, this podcast was also brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Chasing Danger, the new novella in the sizzling-hot Deadly Ops series from New York Times bestselling author Katie Reus. Chasing Danger will be available for download on April 21st.
The music you’re listening to is Sassy Outwater and conveniently provided by Sassy Outwater. That’s Sassy on her fiddle, and this is “Fiddler on the Loose.” I’m not sure who that is on the piano, but let’s just pretend it’s Sassy as well, and she’ll correct me later.
If you have questions or ideas or suggestions, or you want to ask Sassy a question, or you have some feedback, or you have something you want to tell us about, please email us, ‘cause it’s awesome when you do. Our email address here is sbjpodcast, that’s S for Sarah, B for Bitches, J for Jane, podcast at gmail dot com [[email protected]]. We welcome all of your creative and interesting email, except for the one person who keeps telling me about SEO optimization. All of my Ss, Es, and Os are totally optimized, but thank you very much for thinking of me.
And in the meantime, on behalf of Sassy and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading, and have a great weekend.
[musical flourish]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
I’m downloading this and can’t wait to listen. Thanks so much for the nod, Sassy Sweetheart. You are a ROCK STAR!
I just “discovered” Tessa Dare, and I think she’s delightful. Fans of Julia Quinn and Eloisa James would enjoy her writing.
So much fun to listen to this! Thanks for making my Friday morning zippy and thought-provoking.
Sassy’s purple eyes in her underwear drawer made me think about my father’s fake leg that he used to just leave hanging about in the kitchen or leaning by the front door. He had both of his legs, this was just purely for a gag. I haven’t a clue where he got it.
My father was, perhaps, a little bit… off.
I don’t know if the leg was a prosthetic, it looked like a real leg. I believe it was wood. sometimes he would put his knee in it and lean on it just so and you couldn’t tell without really looking at it, that it wasn’t his leg. He’d have a whole conversation with a person, leaning in the doorway, and get them all riled up about something. (He was always a bit cantankerous, so this was not a surprise to anyone.) Then he’d reach down and yank his leg off and wave it at a them like he was gonna hit them with it.
There was always much laughter (after all the swearing).
Hmmm, good times…
I always appreciate when you talk about accessibility issues. I have an eye condition called keratoconus, and will probably be having a cornea transplant within in the next few years. (I am in no way comparing this to anything Sassy has been though.)
I can’t read print books anymore unless I have my huge, heavy contacts in (glasses don’t do much for me), so I depend on ebooks so I can adjust the font. I’ve also started having to use some of the accessibility features on my phone.
But even then, my eyes get tired really fast. I have been wishing that audiobooks weren’t so expensive for people with visual impairments. I jump for joy the day my Audible credit arrives.
Thanks again for the wonderful podcast! Sassy is truly an inspiration. 🙂
Great podcast! Super informative and I couldn’t stop laughing. Thanks, ladies!
So this morning my mother and I are in the car on the way to an appointment and I’m telling her about the podcast and the purple eyes in the underwear drawer and how this blind chick is just awesome. I told her all about the music, and the producing, and the advocacy, and the writing, and just All The Stuff. Then I said, “And her name is Sassy!”
My mom- “Well of course it is.”
Yep. When you’re right, you’re right.
Good luck Sassy.
Yes, good luck Sassy!
Sassy, it’s so great to hear about you after hearing your wonderful music! I have to ask: have you ever met author Libba Bray, who also has a great sense of humor and a glass eye? I’m imagining you two coming up with new and novel places to store your eyes (but the underwear drawer is inspired).