Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, September 4, 2015

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 157 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are Jane and Susan Donovan.  We are going to talk with her about her writing process, her contemporary series, and what she thinks about writing character-driven romance.  We also talk about cover art, what her editor calls gentle fiction, and how her illness affected her writing, plus we have some surprise information about a dinosaur-themed holiday anthology that you will not want to miss.  No, really, you will not want to miss this.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Falling for Danger, the third book in Chanel Cleeton’s sexy contemporary romance series, Capital Confessions, on sale on September 15th.

And we have a podcast transcript sponsor, which is always awesome too.  This podcast transcript will be sponsored by Married Sex, a novel by Jesse Kornbluth.  When a husband convinces his wife to join him in a tryst with another woman, there are unintended consequences in this sharply observed erotic tale about the challenges of modern marriage.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is, though I bet you can guess, ‘cause my love affair with this album has not ended yet.

And I am all for a quick intro, so on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  Can you please introduce yourself for the lovely people who are listening, and most of whom are on the treadmill, I’ve learned.

Susan Donovan:  Okay.  Well, that’s not bad.  That’s actually pretty good.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susan:  I am not on a treadmill.  [Laughs] I’ll just be – full disclosure – not on a treadmill.  I am Susan Donovan, and I write contemporary romance, usually with a bit of a comic twist and a little bit of sexy stuff and sometimes a little bit of suspense or mystery thrown in.

Sarah:  Fabulous!  Now how long have you been writing?  A really long time, right?

Susan:  Well, yeah.  I mean, it doesn’t feel like it.  It’s so weird; I still feel like a newcomer.  Isn’t that bizarre?  I don’t know what –

Sarah:  Well, the industry keeps changing.  [Laughs]

Susan:  Yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  It’s new, like, every other week.

Susan:  Yeah, I, I started, I had always had this fantasy that I would have my first novel written by the time I was forty, which was great when you’re twenty, ‘cause you never really think you’re going to be forty.

Sarah:  No, it’s a long way off.

Susan:  Yeah, and then one day I woke up and I was thirty-nine – [laughs] – and I had kids and I was working at a part-time job, and I thought, okay, well, if I’m going to do it, I better get started typing.  So I did.  And by the next year I had written three novels and had a contract for my first book and then a second book to come, and that was in 2001 that I got my first contract.  My first book was published in 2002, and I’ve been going ever since.

Sarah:  So I want to start by asking you, Susan, about your upcoming book, because it’s coming out September 1st, and then I want to ask you about this box set that’s coming out in October –

Susan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – ‘cause that, we’ve got to talk about that too, but let’s start with Moondance Beach.

Susan:  Okay.  Okay, yes.  Moondance Beach, it’s, it is, I guess, by comparison, it’s my legitimate fiction release, and it’s –

Sarah:  [Laughs] As opposed to what, the other books weren’t real?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Or the one that’s in October?

Susan:  Yes, yes, yes.

Sarah:  Ah, okay.

Susan:  Anyway, yeah, so this is my third and last installment in the Bayberry Island series, which I’ve had a great deal of fun with, and this last book is the story of the last Flynn child, the oldest – his name is Duncan, and he’s an injured Navy SEAL, and he is home doing rehab – and this very reclusive artist who paints mermaid paintings – she’s very famous and well-to-do – who has basically loved Duncan from afar since she was a child.  And as it turns out, it’s the most intense book in the series, it’s the most serious book in the series, and it’s still, it’s still funny, and it’s still got all the same quirky characters, but it is, it actually turned out to be a very intense book!

Jane:  Do you feel like that is a departure from your previous works that are more lighthearted or, not comedic, but have a humorous touch?

Susan:  I don’t know if it’s a departure as much as maybe an evolution.  The characters just lent themselves to it, and I went with it, and instead of trying to shoehorn it into more of a kind of a madcap thing, which I sometimes do, it, it is a very deeply emotional story, and I pretty much just let the characters tell me, you know, what they wanted to do with it.

Jane:  It’s like you are more of a, I hate using the terms pantser and outliner, but it sounds like the characters directed the story for you and that you didn’t do, necessarily, a lot of plotting before?

Susan:  I am in between a pantser and a plotter.  I don’t even know what that would be called.  A, a pantster?  Or, or a plot – I don’t even know what to call it, but I’m in between the two.

Sarah:  A Post-it-noter?  Maybe you’re a Post-it-noter.

Susan:  You know what I am?  I am a, I am a Post-it-noter and a, and then index-carder.

Sarah:  I love a good index card.

Susan:  Yeah.  And I, with every book, I do have books that I plot out more de-, in more detail, I have to say, but in general, I start out with a premise, and I know where I start, and I, I know where I want my characters to end up, and then I know basic guideposts within the story that I want to reach, and the rest of it, I really feel like if I don’t surprise myself, I’m not going to surprise the reader at all.  And, and that’s just kind of the way I’ve always gone about it.

Jane:  I, I love these Mission:  Impossible movies, and my family and I went to see it last weekend or the weekend before, whatever the opening weekend was, and at the end of the movie, there’s a lot of twists and turns in the story, and at the end of the movie there’s some – without giving it away – there was a lot of foreshadowing of the end of the movie, and I wondered if the, the writers for Mission:  Impossible started with the end of the story first, ‘cause if you start with the end of the story first for the Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, you can see how they get, easily get to the point at the end, which seems complicated and surprising as you’re the watcher and watching the story unfold, although maybe everyone guessed what would happen.  I am the dumbest viewer.

[Laughter]

Jane:  Seriously, I, I will watch things and be like, oh, I never saw that coming, and then my, you know, daughter, who is a, a middle-schooler will be like, Mom!  That was, that was so obvious from, like, the ten-minute mark, and I’m like, oh, okay.

[Laughter]

Jane:  So maybe everybody saw the ending coming, but I did not, and I thought, well, that’s, I wonder, and I obviously don’t know, ‘cause I don’t know who wrote the story, but –

Susan:  My guess is –

Jane:  – I just thought knowing the ending made it so much easier to see how the story had unfolded.

Susan:  Right.  And, and my guess is the writers did in fact know exactly where they had to end up and built the story around that.  If it was cohesive and solid and, you know, no extraneous, you know, junk, that’s probably exactly what they did.

Sarah:  We’ve got this big set and this airplane, and we have to make it take off.  How do we get there?

Susan:  [Laughs]

Jane:  Very fir-, that’s actually one of the very first – like, I was worried when I was going in to see the movie that I had seen all the great parts, but that’s actually the very first scene in the movie.

Sarah:  Wow.

Jane:  So the whole trailer that they show you almost has nothing to do with the story that’s told in the movie theater.

Sarah:  Wow, bummer, dude.

Susan:  – that’s very interesting.  One of the, one of the things I have found as a writer is that when I’m doing the more pantser kind of thing, I will write the story, and I will put in things I, I don’t know why they’re there.  I really don’t.  And, but, but I let them stay.

Sarah:  Right.

Susan:  And then by the time I get to the end, I realize why I put them in, and it’s really a bizarre experience, and I, it’s like my subconscious is writing as I am writing, you know, with my brain, and it’s, it’s fascinating how that happens, and I have learned over the years to just go with it, and if, if I write something that I have no idea why it’s there, you know, I’ll just go with it and see what happens.

Sarah:  I did an interview with Lauren Willig for a podcast last week, and she was talking about how she knew that the last Pink Carnation would be the story of the person who is the Pink Carnation in the whole espionage world that she built –

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – but she didn’t know who her, her love interest would be, and she had this one scene of this guy by a fire totally, you know, dusty and decrepit looking, and she walks up looking like she just left a tea party, and he’s like, who the hell are you?  And that’s the only scene she had, and this was years ago.  And so as she’s writing the series over the, over the years, she gets to the point where she meets a character and she, and her, she’s like, oh!  That’s the guy by the fire!  Oh!  And I’m like –

Susan:  Right.

Sarah:  – if that happened to me, I would be a little freaked out.

Susan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, my, my brain is doing things that I’m not aware of.  Whoa!

Susan:  It is, it is a little creepy, actually.  You know, we, we have this illusion that we are in control – [laughs] –

Sarah:  Nope.  Nope!

Susan:  – and sometimes we’re not.

Sarah:  Nope.

Susan:  There’s something else going on there under the surface, so.

Sarah:  So with the new story, with, with Moondance Beach – I almost called it Moonbeach Dance, which is no, which is a totally different movie.  That’s like a, a movie about something else.  This is sort of a, a, a – it’s not quite friends to lovers, but it’s not quite second chance.  Like, she’s had it bad for him –

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and he had no idea, which I have to say is one of my, my, my catnips.  Like, oh, I like that plot.

Susan:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Are there particular conflicts that you find that you really enjoy writing?

Susan:  Hmmm.

Sarah:  Or, like you said, is it the characters that sort of say, okay, well, you know, here’s my problem.  You want to fix that for me?

Susan:  Yes, it is, it’s absolutely –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susan:  – it’s absolutely character-driven.  Sometimes an idea will appear in my head as part of the plot, you know, when I have the heroine and the hero at odds in some way as part of the external plot, but often they appear and it’s, it’s internal stuff, and I have to just kind of let that come out as I write, and, you know, for Moondance Beach it’s a little bit of both.  Duncan is, he’s going back.  He is not staying.  It, he couldn’t even imagine staying in, on that island.  He got out of there after high school, and he’s really managed to never come back except for a couple year, a couple days in a row around the Mermaid Festival every summer and – so he has no intention of staying, and he’s working really hard to finish his rehab and get back to the Navy, and so that right there is an external conflict, but –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susan:  – he is so conflicted internally.  [Laughs] He’s just a complicated, hot mess inside, and that was, that was really pretty fun to work with.  He’s a, he’s a very intense man.  Very serious and very focused and driven, and he has really no understanding of his heart.  It’s never something he’s explored, so, and whereas the, the heroine is all heart, all emotion, all feeling, and, and they kind of come together and just don’t know what to do with each other, so.

Sarah:  One of the things that I’m curious about with the heroine is that she’s reclusive.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Her, her, her job is a secret –

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and she is hiding from, like, everybody –

Susan:  Yes.

Sarah:  – even though she’s kind of famous as an artist.  I don’t –

Susan:  Yes.

Sarah:  – I’m really trying not to give away too many things here, so if I, if I drop a spoiler, let me know –

Susan:  Okay.

Sarah:  – and I’ll totally take it out.  [Laughs]

Susan:  Sure.

Sarah:  Trying to be, trying to be diplomatic and circumspect-ful here, but she is hiding and is famous but completely hidden.

Susan:  Right.

Sarah:  How does she do that?  How do you see that being done in a, in a time like right now where you can find people so incredibly easily after, you know, two seconds on Google?

Susan:  Mm-hmm.  Well, I mean, I don’t think she’s hiding in that no one knows she exists, because she does have a life –

Sarah:  Of course.

Susan:  – out in the world.  She does art shows, and she does gallery openings, and she does interviews, and so she’s out there as herself, but the thing is is that her public persona is really not who she is, and I think that that’s, that’s the, the situation.  Instead of her being in hiding, she’s just extremely private, and she just goes out and does her things in the world, and then she comes home, and she works, and she hunkers down, and, you know, that’s where she feels at peace is in her own home and studio.

Sarah:  I imagine a lot of writers feel that way.

Susan:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susan:  Oh, yeah!  [Laughs] You know, yes, and for some writers it’s, it’s just excruciating to go out into the world.  All they want to do is go home and get in their jammies and get back in front of the laptop.  And then for other writers it’s a little bit easier.  I’ve always been a bit of an extrovert.  You know, I came at fiction writing through newspaper journalism, which, you know, I was a report.  You can’t be an introvert and a reporter at the same time, so I already had a kind of an extroverted personality when I went into fiction writing, so I kind of like that stuff.

Jane:  And writing contemporaries for quite a long time, since the early 2000s, and you’ve, your covers have gone through kind of every sort of permutation of the popular cover trope.  You started off with, not the comet, not the comic characters, but kind of that feel, the chick lit feel to them, and then they’ve gradually diff-, changed.  Do you have a preference?  Like, was there a period that you said this is, these are the covers I really loved?

Sarah:  You mean it’s –

Susan:  Yeah, oh, that’s, like, I got some covers I really love.  I got some covers I really don’t love.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You really do have everything!  You have sketches, you have lipstick, you have dresses!

Susan:  I know, I know, and honestly, some of these covers have nothing to do with the story content at all, and some of the covers don’t do the story justice at all.  You know, like, I’m looking at it, one of the covers in particular right now, it’s on my wall, and every time I look at it – [laughs] – I just wwlyegh!

[Laughter]

Susan:  But you know, and, and here’s the thing:  what do I know?  You know, when my publisher comes to me and says, do you like this cover?  And I say, you know, I –

Sarah:  No?

Susan:  – I don’t know, I, I don’t know.  I don’t really like that color.  What do I know what captures a reader’s attention?  I don’t know all that marketing stuff.  They’ve done studies; they, you know, they know how many seconds it takes for a reader to make a decision about the design of a book.  I mean, they’ve done all this stuff.  I don’t know, but I have reactions to my covers when they’re given to me.  And you’re right, I have gone all across the spectrum with some really low points in between, and my last series came out from NAL/Penguin/Random House, and I think they did a really exquisite job with these covers.  They’re the most beautiful covers I’ve had, I think, aside from maybe one or two in the past.  But my editor at NAL is very specific about what she wants to call these books, and before I started writing for her, I really had never heard the expression, and that’s gentle fiction.

Sarah:  Oh, that is an interesting term!

Susan:  Yeah, gentle fiction.  And so, the covers, I think, are very much, you know, gentle fiction.

Sarah:  You mean the Bayberry Island covers.

Susan:  Yes, mm-hmm.

Sarah:  They are very gentle fiction.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  They’re, they’re, they’re pastels –

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and sky colors and roads and beaches and trees and Christmas tree, ‘cause you got have a Christmas tree.

Susan:  Right.

Sarah:  I mean, wow!

Jane:  So there’s a cover, there’s a Christmas cover with a cat on it, and I think that cover is ridiculous, but I was told that that is one of the bestselling, like, Christmas anthologies, so you’re right; you never know what sells, but so you’ve got to tell us what the covers you don’t like.

Sarah:  And can I just say how funny I think it is that, that the Dog Walkers trilogy is all women in evening gowns?

Jane:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Do they walk dogs in these dresses?  ‘Cause I can’t walk my dog in a dress like that.

Susan:  You know, this is a perfect example, okay – [laughs] – of what the hell does Susan know?  Okay, so I was shown this, the first cover, and I loved it.  I thought it was beautiful.  I was just really, really intrigued by it.  I thought it had lovely motion and everything.  All right, it had nothing –

Sarah:  It’s beautiful!

Susan:  – nothing to do with the story, but it’s a beautiful cover.  The other two were just as beautiful and just as flow-y and elegant.  Also nothing to do with the story inside, and it just, as a marketing tool, it didn’t work.  And –

Jane:  I think that you’re trying to reach the Susan Elizabeth Phillips crowd, but she’s not who I would say is gentle fiction.  [Laughs]

Susan:  Well, well, I mean, and believe me, these stories about the dog walkers, they weren’t gentle fiction.  They were, they were pretty rowdy.

Jane:  Oh, well then maybe that was the – ‘cause I look at those and I think Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

Susan:  No.

Jane:  Like, who do you think, Sarah, when you look at those?

Sarah:  No, I, that’s pretty much where my brain goes.  The, the dancing movement makes me think that, it’s like a subtle coding for contemporary comedy almost?

Susan:  Yeah, yeah.

Jane:  Really?  I didn’t see comedy in ‘em.  I saw, they, they look more women’s fiction.  Like, when you have a woman on the cover, to me, the, the marketing signal is that this is more women’s fiction.

Sarah:  Interesting, but so –

Susan:  Well –

Sarah:  – Susan, that, the signals didn’t work.

Susan:  [Laughs] No, they didn’t, and let me tell you, I was very seduced by the covers for one reason:  the book that came before that had an absolutely horrible cover.  Horrible cover, and I hated it with, with a deep passion.  I hated that cover.

Sarah:  I kind of really want to know which one it is.  [Laughs]

Jane:  Well, I’m looking.  I’m going to, let me guess:  is it the – let’s see, you were in some anthologies, so –

Susan:  No, this is not an anthology.  I’m not a, I’m not a naked man on the cover fan myself.

Sarah:  Was this the lipstick heart?

Susan:  No, no, no, I actually kind of like that cover.

Sarah:  I was going to say, I kind of dig that one.

Susan:  Yeah.

Jane:  That’s probably my favorite cover, ‘cause I felt, I feel like that cover kind of evokes what the content of the book was about?

Susan:  Yes, yes –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susan:  – I like that cover a lot.  I think that visually it’s, you know, stunning.  No, the cover I’m talking about, I have two covers in particular that I absolutely despise, but there’s nothing I can do about it, you know?  I mean, it is what it is.  One is The Girl Most Likely To…, a pink book cover with a little blonde head sticking up over –

Sarah:  Oh, she’s in a dressing room!

Susan:  Looks like, for me it looks like saloon doors.

Jane:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, my God, you’re right!  [Laughs]

Susan:  That’s all I could think of, and I’m thinking, okay, no saloon in this book.  [Laughs] So anyway, that was really, really disturbing to me.  I hated that cover.  And then another cover I hate was I Want Candy.  Oh, my God.  Just not what I pictured.  But what are you going to do, you know?

Sarah:  Those are, those are both the sort of cartoon character covers.

Jane:  Yeah.

Susan:  Yes.

Sarah:  And I never, I never went for those either.

Susan:  But you know, you can do that well.  Cheri on Top, which is the one that came out before I Want Candy, is very well done.

Sarah:  Oh, it’s great, but it, the, but the Cheri on Top cover, she’s, she’s not the centerpiece of the –

Susan:  Right.

Sarah:  – she’s, like, a third or less of it.

Susan:  Yes, exactly.  Yeah.

Jane:  See, for me, the covers tell me what type of book it is –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jane:  – so at the time that would have told me it was, like, a funny kind of, you know, chick lit sort of story.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Jane:  So I, when I look at covers, they deliver a message to me based on what I, my previous book experience.

Susan:  Right.  Right.  And, you know, like I said, my gut reaction is not always right in terms of how well the book is going to do with that cover and what it conveys to the reader.  You know, my, my focus is on the story inside, and sometimes, you know, sometimes the covers feel right, and sometimes they don’t.  And, you know, it’s, you’ve just got to let it go, ‘cause this is one of the five million things about publishing that can drive you absolutely crazy if you let it.

Sarah:  And, you know, there’re a lot of things that you do have control over, and there’re a lot of things that you don’t.

Susan:  Right, exactly, and you just have to focus on the things that you do have control over.  And really, as a writer, it’s, it’s the story.  It’s pretty much it, and, you know, and even that is not 100% in your power to control, so.

Sarah:  You know, I don’t want to dwell on this, but I did want to ask you about your illness and your subsequent, would you call it an injury?  Reduction in total mass of your body?

Susan:  [Laughs] Yeah, well that too.

Sarah:  Minor trimming.

Susan:  It, it was a –

Sarah:  [Laughs] I wanted to ask you about it, and also because one of the, one of the things that we, you and I had discussed over email was how it affected your writing.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  But I don’t want to reveal too much or go in the wrong direction, so I’ll just leave that there for you to sort of say, okay!

Susan:  It’s okay.  You know, it’s not a secret.  I did in fact, was featured in a movie.  You know, the, the romance, what was it called –

Susan and Sarah:  Love Between the Covers –

Susan:  – yeah.

Sarah:  – the documentary.

Sarah:  And I was in the documentary, so obviously it’s not a secret.  I have a blog, and I have written about it, but basically what happened is I was on top of the world, on top of my game professionally, personally, just in the best place I’d ever been in my life in 2011, and in December of that year, I thought I had the flu.  I ended up getting violently ill and going to the hospital.  They put me on a medevac, and I was sent to Maryland Shock Trauma in Baltimore.  I lived in Maryland at the time.  And I had, I was in septic shock, and they told my family I would die, and they found an infection behind my left knee.  There was no ever, never did the doctors find any kind of scrape or cut or anything, how the infection got in there, but it invaded my bone and my muscle, and I ended up having my leg amputated from above the left knee.  And I was in the hospital three months, I had over twenty surgeries, and basically I got home in March of 2012, and I was, I was nothing like the person that left that house in December.  I mean, it was just a complete loss of my life, and I had to rebuild it.  It took a really long time, and in the, in the time, in that period of time, my brain was not working right.  It, my brain had not, I don’t know if you would characterize it as brain damage, but it wasn’t making the connections I needed to make as a writer to put a story down, and, but I did write anyway.  I, I just kept trying and trying and trying.  But basically, you know, we’re looking at, let’s see, it’ll be four years this December, and I would say only for the last six months or so, six to eight months, have I been back to myself.  It has taken that long.

Sarah:  Wow.  So the –

Susan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – so the illness just affected everything about your, your brain –

Susan:  Everything.

Sarah:  – your personality –

Susan:  Oh, everything.  Everything.  I mean, I, you know, I lost all function of my body with septic shock.  I couldn’t breathe, my, I was on dialysis –

Sarah:  Holy hell!

Susan:  I was told that I would never regain, you know, my, my function of my kidneys again.  I was told that I would be on dialysis for the rest of my life, and anyone who knows me knows what my reaction to that was!

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susan:  Oh, hell no!

Sarah:  Exactly.  So I assume your kidneys are whipped into shape now.

Susan:  Everything is fine.  Everything is fine.  I had to have a pacemaker put in because my heart went on the fritz when I was in septic shock.  I mean, really, I was, like, squashed flat.  There –

Sarah:  Wow!

Susan:  – there was just no other way to describe it, and it took three and a half years to climb out of that hole.  And it was also an emotional hole, too, because I ended up, you know, really depressed, ‘cause I had lost, you know, my life.  I had, that familiar person that I was was gone, and I had to find an-, another way to be in the world.  I also had PTSD really bad, and it shocked me that I would end up with PTSD of all things, you know.  But apparently, when you’re just cruising along in your life and everything is great and then all of a sudden your entire life explodes, that’s what happens; you get PTSD.  [Laughs] So, it’s been wild.  And one of the things that it did in, in terms of my writing, I think that I’ve been kinder to myself as a writer, and as a human being.  I just, I have learned to, I’ve learned to just figure out what’s really important here and then let the rest go, and I have done that with writing, and I, you know, I managed to write all of these Bayberry books in my recovery period, if you can believe it or not.  I mean, that, that is shocking to me, that I, I wrote essentially four novels and two novellas in that recovery period of three and a half years.

Sarah:  Dude!

Susan:  Yeah.  It’s –

Sarah:  That’s kind of hardcore.

Susan:  It’s kind of superhuman shit, but I –

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yes, it is!

Susan:  – I just did it ‘cause if I didn’t, I don’t know if I’d ever get back in it.

Jane:  So when you look at your writing for those three books and your previous writing, do you see a difference?  Because I know that my father’s death had affected me more than I thought, and when I look back kind of pre my father’s death and post my father’s death, I see differences in how I viewed the world and how I view just, my interactions with people and that sort of thing.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.  Absolutely, and as it turned, as an experiment, I was writing a book when I got sick, and I just put it aside because I couldn’t go back.  It was the weirdest thing, but it was, I was resisting the story that I had created, and I didn’t want to go back, and I tried over and over and over and over again, and I just turned it in last week – [laughs] – and what was so weird about it was not only was the, the overall feeling not right for me anymore, but going back to this thing that I had created was very traumatizing for me, ‘cause I was stepping back into this world, and I wasn’t that person anymore, and it was really, really tough.  So I finally finished it last week.  I ended up having to change a lot about it, but as it turns out, you know, I don’t usually say this, but I swear, I think that book’s, like, the best thing I ever wrote.  [Laughs] And it’s, it’s kind of interesting.  It’s the third book in the Bigler, North Carolina series with Cheri on Top, I Want Candy, and this one’s called Unwrapping Taffy, and the sister, she’s pretty much, I just, I created this monster in the first two books, and then they said they wanted a third book – [laughs] – and I had to, I had to somehow pull this woman out of, you know, complete and total bitch territory and turn her into a sympathetic character.  It was pretty tough, so, but I had a lot of fun with it.

Sarah:  And that’s coming out sometime next year, right?

Susan:  Yes, sometime in 2016, yes, and it was supposed to be released in 2013, so that’s how –

Sarah:  Eh, better late than never.

Susan:  Absolutely, that’s what I think.  And, you know, when writers say to me, oh, my God, I, I’m, I’m late on my deadline – shhh!

[Laughter]

Susan:  You get no sympathy from me, babe!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, let’s, let’s talk about your October release!

Susan:  Oh, goodness, okay, all right, so –

Sarah:  Because, yeah, I want to hear all about this.

Susan:  Okay, so, 2013, these dinosaur porn books came out, right?  I –

Sarah:  Yep!  Taken by the T-Rex –

Susan:  Exactly.  I –

Sarah:  – Triceratops –

Susan:  I couldn’t believe it.  I just could not believe it.  I laughed so hard, and I decided as a joke I was going to write dino porn, you know, short stories, and they’re, they’re satirical, they’re, they’re, oh, my God – I’m writing under a pseudonym.  Her name is Pebbles Rocksoff and –

Sarah:  [Laughs] I cannot tell you how much joy that pseudonym gives me.

Susan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, it’s not measurable on Imperial or metric systems.  Pebbles Rocksoff!

Susan:  Oh, God, I have to tell you, there are people, that’s my nickname now.  People just call me Pebbles.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susan:  So, yeah, anyway, the books, the first one was The Bodice Raptor.  The second one was –

Sarah:  The Bodice Raptor.

Susan:  Yes.

Sarah:  Oh, mercy, I need to sit down.

Susan:  Oh, God.  And the second one was Rex and the Single Girl, and then the two books that are coming out, Debby Does Dino and then A Cretaceous Triple Xmas.  I mean, it’s just probably the funniest thing I’ve ever written, and I get these reviews from people and emails from people, and they’re hilarious, you know.  This one guy wrote, you know, I, I wrote this, or I read this, and I laughed so hard that I cried, and then I just continued to cry for all humanity.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susan:  Oh, how low can we go?  So –

Sarah:  I continued to cry for all of humanity.

Susan:  Yes.  So they’re fun.  They’re just fun, and it’s coming out at Christmas, four little stories all together, and my pitch line for it is For the girl who has everything:  absolutely everything else.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Is it kind of almost sort of liberating in a kind of screw you kind of way to be like, all right, so, I know y’all think that romance is porn.  Now let me see what, let me just show you what happens –

Susan:  Yes.

Sarah:  – when I actually write porn.  [Laughs]

Susan:  Oh, yes, oh, yes.  It is very liberating.  I am, I have come up with some amazing stuff.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I think that, I mean, there’s the Triassic era, that could be a whole bunch of threesomes.

Susan:  Well, I got, this last book is a threesome.

Sarah:  Yes!

Susan:  It involves, it involves the two – well, I guess it, it’s a group thing.  It’s the two Hampton sisters from Boise, Idaho, who get sent back in time, and then the Germ-, her, the German boyfriend of one of the sisters who’s responsible – his space-time capacitor sent them back into time – he sends himself back because he misses his girlfriend so much, so it’s the three of them in the Land Before Time, in the land of really, really horny dinosaurs.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah, yeah, and the Land of Good Times, apparently.

Susan:  [Laughs] Yes, exactly.

Sarah:  You know, I, I think it’s kind of awesome, because, I mean, you’re writing them under the name Pebbles Rocksoff!

Susan:  Yes, I am!  I truly am.  If you would like, I would be happy to read a small portion of it.

Sarah:  Oh, yes!

Susan:  Would you like that?

Jane:  You have to, every, for every curse word, you have to say chicken instead, so we can get past the Apple censors.

Susan:  Chicken.

Sarah:  Right, so instead of cock, you have to say chicken.

Susan:  Okay.

Sarah:  Or rooster; rooster works too, ‘cause it’s also a cock, but chicken.

Jane:  Right.  Or dino, whatever you want to, whatever animal you want to insert.

Susan:  Okay.  All right, I can do that.  Let me just read the very beginning of Debby Does Dino.

Jane:  Awesome.

Sarah:  Debby Does Dino.

Susan:  It’s a threesome of prehistoric proportions.

Jane:  [Laughs]

Susan:  Okay.  

Debby Hampton was a dancer.  She had talent.  At the end of every shift, she had the singles stuffed in her thong to prove it, and Debby had been in many dubious situations over the years, ones that left her concerned for her safety.  Take, for example, the recent bachelor party gig at the southeast Boise International House of Pancakes.  It wasn’t her finest hour, plus it took weeks to get the butter pecan syrup out of her wig, but never ever had Debby found herself in a situation like this, stuck in the primordial tropics of the Cretaceous period without her stun gun.  “Damn you, Heather,” she muttered to herself.  As usual, Debby knew the crisis at hand was entirely her sister’s fault.  When would she learn not to pay attention to that conniving ho?  When would Debby finally understand that just because Heather was two years older, it didn’t make her any wiser or hotter?  Debby closed her eyes in the silence, taking a deep breath of humid, strangely clean air.  She tried to piece together how this messed-up situation had come to pass.

So that’s the beginning.

Sarah:  Oh, my.

Susan:  Yeah.  Oh, and it gets, it gets really, really good.  I’ll read the very end of this story.  Debby comes back into time while her sister is getting it on with a dinosaur.

Sarah:  I am just fascinated by the number of people who, who, who think about, you know, dinosaurs having sex.  Like, they laid eggs!  They – never mind.  I’m thinking about this too much.  Please read, because that’s much more interesting.  [Laughs]

Susan:  Okay.

“Do you mind?”  Heather dropped her head into the thick ferns and closed her eyes in frustration.  This was unbelievable.  Heather was certain that moving to Los Angeles would put an end to her little sister’s jealous pestering, yet here she was, following her to Mongolia 100 million years in the past.  Her savage lover suddenly turned his attention to the other human female in the vicinity.  He nudged his birdlike beak into the wind and began sniffing.  Sure enough, the creature withdrew his gigantic cudgel from Heather’s tiny female opening and walked away as if she meant nothing to him.

“You snooping little bitch!”  Heather sat up, covering her nakedness with stray branches and leaves.  “How did you find me?”  Debby rolled her eyes and jutted out one hip.  Heather had to admit that her sister looked good.  Maybe all those years of pole dancing had paid off.  In fact, Debby looked almost as hot as Heather herself.  Impossible.

Okay, so then Debby finds one of the dinos and goes at it in front of her sister, so it’s pretty creepy.

Sarah:  I, I, I think you had a little too much fun, didn’t you?

Susan:  I did.  I absolutely did.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oh, my.  So, between Moondance Beach and dino ho-ho-hos –

Susan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – what else are you working on?

Susan:  Well, I am writing more romance.

Sarah:  Yay!

Susan:  I am writing some women’s fiction, as well.  I am stretching my wings a bit, just really trying to see where I can go.  My editor for Moondance Beach told me that she really got a women’s fiction feel out of that book and wanted me to try my hand at it, so I’m doing that.  I’m writing women’s fiction and romance, and I am going to be doing some other projects in the future that have nothing to do with romance, and I am also working on a screenplay.

Sarah:  Wow!  Cool!

Susan:  Yeah, yeah.  And I’m also working with someone who is writing a pilot based on one of my, my novels, so, a pilot for TV, so I’ve got my hands in a lot of different pies right now.

Sarah:  I want to ask you, ‘cause you mentioned you were writing women’s fiction, and I know what that means, and you know what that means, but I also get the feeling that a lot of times readers don’t quite know the difference between romance and women’s, women’s fiction.  How do you see the difference between these projects?

Susan:  Well, I think that the, the one thing that I can put my finger on is that the requirements in a romance of how the hero and the heroine interact and the requirements at the end of the story as to how the happy ending turns out, you don’t have to follow that in women’s fiction.  It can be outside those lines a little bit.  Well, it can be outside the lines as much as you want.  The way I’m writing it, it’s, it’s still, there is still a central committed romance or an exploration of the possibility of that.  So it’s, it’s a very subtle difference.  I think that a lot of people thought my Dog Walking series was more women’s fiction than romance.  It was focused on four women who walked their dogs together in San Francisco.  Even though everybody had a romance, you know, a lot of people thought it was more women’s fiction.  So it’s a very murky, muddled thing, and I really think that people call themselves whatever they want, you know, in terms of what kind of author they are.

Sarah:  It’s true, and I think the terms that we use to describe different types of books get more and more specific because it makes it easier for readers to identify what it is that they like and then go find more of it.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.  Well, I do know in my women’s fiction, I get to write a heroine who’s older.

Sarah:  Yay!

Susan:  Which is really important to me.

Sarah:  That’s something a lot of readers have asked for.

Susan:  Yeah, yeah.  And, you know, my heroine is, is older and in a place in her life where she is, you know, clearing the decks and trying to figure out who she is, and so that’s a, that’s a, kind of a much different approach than with a romance, where the heroine is often discovering who she is within the context of a romance.

Sarah:  Very cool.

Jane:  Our heroines are not en vogue but definitely something that readers want, even within romance.  I, you know, Kristen Ashley is writing late forties, early fifties heroes and heroines, and I, and there are others as well, so I, I think that there’s definitely an audience out there for those types of books, and I, I think readers do know the difference between women’s fiction and, and romance.

Susan:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Jane:  I, I think that ultimately they want that kind of good feeling that arises out of the, the connection that the female character has with a male character, or two characters, regardless of their gender, have for each other –

Susan:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Jane:  – and that the amount of time which the story spends on the development of that connection defines what, whether it’s a romance versus a women’s fiction.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.  Well, I will say this, that independently published authors have a lot more leeway.  If you’re traditionally published, I have found that your characters need to be within a, a tighter framework.  So, for example, a character that I wanted to be forty-two has to be thirty-four.  You know what I mean?  So, there’s a lot more room if you’re, if you’re self-published.

Sarah:  What, what are some other things that you like about self-publishing?

Susan:  Well, I haven’t really done much of it yet?

Sarah:  Aside from, you know, the dinos.

Susan:  The dinos, yeah.  I’ve done some, well, yeah, that was pretty much it.  I did a, something for Amazon, but it was, it was with their publishing program, so that wasn’t really independent.  I’m just now experimenting with it, and I am writing things right now that are not intended to go to a traditional publisher, so in that regard, I do have experience, and I can say that it is awesome.

[Laughter]

Susan:  Because I can go wherever I want to go, and I don’t have, you know, when you work with an editor for a while, you know, I worked with one editor for a decade, her head, you know, her voice was always in my head.  I knew exactly what she would say – [laughs] – and so that, you know, steered me, and when you don’t have that editor that you’re writing for, it’s a totally different experience.  You, I have found that I just let myself go.  Why not?  You know, who’s, who’s going to stop me?  [Laughs] So it’s, it’s really liberating, and like I said, I’m just starting, so I have no idea how the market will respond, you know.  How readers will respond to getting a Susan Donovan novel that is maybe a little bit different.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susan:  I don’t know!  We’ll have to see, but I, you know, I think it’s really important for me to follow my bliss here, and if I am feeling different inside, I want my books to reflect that, and so I’m giving it a shot.  We’ll see what happens.  And who knows, I mean, I may end up selling these projects to a traditional publisher.  I don’t know.  I really don’t know.

Sarah:  I do have one last question.

Susan:  Absolutely!

Sarah:  Is there anything that you’ve read recently that you would really like to tell people about?

Susan:  Hmm.  You know, I read, if anyone were to look at my Amazon purchase record, they would – [laughs] – I, I read everything.

Sarah:  I feel like when you die, you know, there’re always these people who are like, okay, I need a friend who’s going to clear my browser history?  I also need someone to clear my Amazon purchase history.

Susan:  Oh, oh, absolutely.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susan:  But I read a, a real variety of things and a lot of nonfiction.  Right now, I’m reading a great book.  It’s part of my research, actually.  I didn’t even touch on this, but a few years ago, Celeste Bradley and I wrote a book, a combined historical/contemporary.  It came out as A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man, and it also was released in trade paperback as Unbound, and –

Sarah:  I read that under the first title!

Susan:  Yes, yes, and we had been under contract to do a followup of the book, and of course I got sick, so that was just stopped.  So we’re writing that now.  We’re finishing it up now, and it is a, oh, my gosh, what a great story.  So fun.  Again, it’s another, you know, historical/contemporary that blends together into one cohesive story as women have parallel experiences, and so I’m doing res-, doing research for my character, and my hero is a, he is a, an art theft investigator, and he also –

Sarah:  Oh, cool!

Susan:  – poses an art thief, so my heroine, when she encounters him, she thinks he’s a thief and falls in love with him anyway, which is – [laughs] – kind of fun.  But anyway, so I’m reading this book called Priceless, and it’s written by Robert K. Wittman, and it’s a real-life – what was that, what was that movie came out with Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo?  Oh, gosh.

Jane:  Oh, it’s the, with the art thief.

Susan:  Yeah!  What was it called?

[keyboards clicking]

Sarah:  We’re all going to Google at the same time!  [Laughs]

Susan:  The Thomas Crown Affair.

Sarah:  Yes.

Susan:  Okay.  It’s a, this guy is the real-life kind of Thomas Crown character, but he tells it from what it’s really like, and so I’m loving this book.  He’s an FBI agent who’s undercover as a thief or a crooked art dealer.  It’s really fascinating.

I just finished reading Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography –

Sarah:  Oh, cool!

Susan:  – which was very cool.  What, what an interesting dude.  You talk about genius and ego –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susan:  – combined into this out-of-control superhuman.  Oh, my God, that guy was just amazing.  But it’s all through his own viewpoint, and it’s totally skewed, and it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating.  I, I really loved the book.

I’ve been reading a lot of women’s fiction.  I read My Notorious Life by Kate Manning, about a midwife in post-Civil-War era New York City.  I read At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen, about post-World-War-II Scotland and a woman who goes there with her boyfriend, who’s hunting – or her husband – who’s hunting for the Loch Ness monster, and of course –

Sarah:  As you do.

Susan:  – never finds him, but her life is, you know, turned upside down by the trip.  And then I read recently The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, who is probably one of my very favorite authors.  The Secret Life of Bees she wrote –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susan:  – and I remember reading that book and putting it down and sobbing because I knew that I would never be able to write a book that perfect, and it just disturbed me so deeply, because that book was absolute perfection.  And then about a week later I saw her interviewed on Oprah or somebody, and she said that it took her a decade to write the book, and I was like, eh, okay, never mind.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All right, I feel better now.  I’m all right.

Susan:  Yeah, just, you know, I just wrote mine in ten weeks, so it’s a little bit different, and so, never mind.

Sarah:  Okay.

Susan:  But anyway.  I love her; I think she’s a fabulous author.  So that’s, that’s what’s been going on with me lately.

Sarah:  That is some cool reading.  Can I make a recommendation that you might enjoy?

Susan:  Sure, please do!

Sarah:  I listened to a book recently called Letters from Skye, S-K-Y-E, like the island.  I’m listened to it, which I thought was a different experience because it’s narrated by four people.  There’s a, there’s a, it’s not quite present, because it’s not present day, but there’s a past and a present story in the, in the book, and so part of the story takes place in 1912, and part of the story takes place in 1940, and in the 1912 storyline, there’s a woman who lives on the Isle of Skye.  She begins a correspondence with an American who admires her poetry, and at first she’s kind of like, how did my poetry get to America?  Publisher released, like, nine total copies.  What’s going on?  They start this correspondence, and then the contemporary, more contemporary part is in 1940, just at the beginning of World War II with the character’s daughter, but I listened to it because both, both the Scottish actresses and the male actors who read the book in pieces, ‘cause it’s – I, I have a big thing for epistolary novels – they wrote, they read the letters in different sort of styles and voices, depending on how the times change, and it was so absorbing to listen to.

Susan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  But since I, since I know you and Celeste both write parallel storylines –

Susan:  Right.

Sarah:  – I think this might really appeal to you, ‘cause it’s slightly different from what you’re doing, and I know a lot of writers don’t like to read what they’re writing or something too –

Susan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to write something too similar, but this was, this was slightly different, and it was just so interesting to hear.

Susan:  That sounds great!  I probably would enjoy it, and no, it’s really not, you know, anything like what we’re writing, which is a courtesan in 1820 who gets washed up on the shores of Spain and doesn’t remember who she is, and then a, a modern sexologist, a Harvard professor in 2015 who is in search of paintings, mysterious paintings that, that may in fact feature this courtesan.  So it’s totally, yeah, it’s a very different story, but I love parallel time period stories –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Susan:  – I just love them.

Sarah:  Me too.  And this is, the book that you’re writing with Celeste Bradley, that’s Breathless, right?

Susan:  Yes, Breathless.

Sarah:  And that’s sometime next year as well.

Susan:  Yes, mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So we’re going to get women’s fiction, dino porn –

Susan:  Yep!

Sarah:  – and contemporary/historical dual storylines next year.

Susan:  That, that is me.  [Laughs] And, and you know what?  It’s, it’s really bothered a lot of people because it’s hard to put a brand on that, but –

Sarah:  It is.

Susan:  – but you know what?  Honestly, the, the dino porn is just an exercise in hilarity –

Sarah:  Of course!

Susan:  – and it’s, it’s under, not under my name.  It’s just something that I did for fun, and it ended up taking off because people thought it was just so hilarious.  It’s really not what I’m about as a writer –

Sarah:  Of course not!

Susan:  – but, you know, I do, I do write quite a few different things, and when I go off into another area entirely in a couple years, I’ll have that to add to my, my list, but, you know, I’m really, I’m not ready to talk about that yet, ‘cause it’s just a little too early, so.

Sarah:  Of course!

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  I want to thank Susan Donovan for taking the time to hang out with us, and I hope you enjoyed our interview.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Falling for Danger, the third book in Chanel Cleeton’s sexy contemporary romance series, Capital Confessions.  Download it September 15th.

The podcast transcript this week will be, as always, compiled by garlicknitter, and it is sponsored by Married Sex, a novel by Jesse Kornbluth.  When a husband convinces his wife to join him in a tryst with another woman, there are unintended consequences in this sharply observed erotic tale about the challenges of modern marriage.

If you have questions or suggestions or you want to know about a book that we talked about, you can email us at [email protected].  We love hearing from you, but as always, all of the books that we mentioned will be in the podcast entry on Smart Bitches.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is “Strictly Sambuca.” This is by the Peatbog Faeries, and it is from their new album, Blackhouse.  You can download it on iTunes or Amazon or wherever you get your fine and excellent music.

Future podcasts will include Jane, me, other people, talking about romance, because that’s how we roll here.  And on behalf of Susan Donovan, Jane, and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[fine and excellent music]