Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, November 13, 2015

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 167 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me this week is Kristan Higgins.  Kristan is a New York Times bestselling author of many, many books, and we’re talking this week about what it’s like to write romance, writing sibling relationships and dog relationships into your books, and we also talk about what she’s reading and recommending right now.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Because I Love You, the new Forever Love story from author Jeannie Moon, on sale November 17th.

And we have a podcast transcript sponsor this month.  The podcast transcript for this episode is being sponsored by Jenna Sutton, author of the Riley O’Brien & Company series, published by Berkley and available in print and eBook.  The first novel in the series, All the Right Places, follows the heir to a global denim empire as he fights his attraction to the company’s new accessories designer.  If you like smart, sexy, contemporary romance, this series is for you.  You can read an excerpt at jennasutton.com, connect with Jenna on Facebook at jennasuttonauthor or on Twitter @jsuttonauthor.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the episode, but if you’re thinking, that sounds like holiday music, you may be right.  But I have a particular holiday album that’s totally awesome, and I promise you won’t hate it, I swear, swear, double-pinky-crossing swear.

So now, without any further delay, on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  So, for anyone who has never heard of you, which is, like, you know, three people maybe?

Kristan Higgins:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Would you please introduce yourself?

Kristan:  I am Kristan Higgins, an author, and author of fourteen books I think now?  Thirteen or fourteen?

Sarah:  Nice!

Kristan:  Yeah, and have known you since my first one, I think.

Sarah:  Really?

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Has it been that long?

Kristan:  It’s, I remember I met you very early in my –

Sarah:  Wow.  That’s cool!

Kristan:  Yeah!

Sarah:  That’s very cool.  Well, your career has not sucked.

Kristan:  It has been great, you know.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  I, I don’t know why certain books and authors get the kind of attention and buzz they do, but I am just really lucky, I think.  I mean, I work hard, of course, but yeah, I’ve had a great career, and it’s kind of short, too.  I have not yet been published for ten years, so I still feel kind of new.

Sarah:  It’s a good feeling, though, because you still don’t, you know, you don’t take it for granted.

Kristan:  No, I don’t think I’m the type to take it for granted.  I always say, like, I’m the long-suffering middle child, you know.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  I, I, I always expect to be ignored and put, you know, put in the corner.  [Laughs] Like Baby!  And so I think that it’s really served my career well, because I don’t go in with a sense of, oh, I’m a great author, and clearly, you know, I, because my books are read, and – I go in with a sense of I, I don’t know what I’m doing.  I’m just going to try really hard.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  I’ll hate everything I do before I love it, and, so it keeps me honest, you know.

Sarah:  I was at a, a launch party recently; I was invited to the launch party for Jennifer Weiner’s most recent book, and I was like, why are you inviting me?  But it was at Dylan’s Candy Bar on the East Side, and I was like, I have to go, ‘cause candy.

Kristan:  Nice!

Sarah:  Like, the whole place is made of sugar, right?

Kristan:  There’s chocolate, yeah.

Sarah:  So I went, and I, I was talking to her for a minute, and I’m like, do you ever get to a point where you’re look, like, standing in the room full of people for your launch and you’re like, what the hell is going on and why are all these people here?  And she’s like, every time.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Every time I look at this, and I’m like, is this seriously happening to me right now?  Like, wow!

Kristan:  Yeah.  I know, there’re definitely those surreal, beautiful moments where you think, like, I can’t believe I’m here!  And that, you know, every time my publisher has a party or, you know, or there’s a line for me at a book signing or something like that –

Sarah:  Oh, the line at the book signing is the, like –

Kristan:  Yeah, it’s so, it’s so…

Sarah:  – there are three whole people waiting in line to talk to me!  Oh, my God!

Kristan:  [Laughs] So it really is something, you know, to go on book tour and have all that sort of glamorous part of being an author –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – is just wicked fun, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  – you know, it’s, it’s such a, it’s such a kick in the head, you know.

Sarah:  Yep.

Kristan:  Like, I always come in, and, like, the first thing I do is take a picture of the crowd.  I’m like, I can’t believe you guys came!

Sarah:  That’s so cool!

Kristan:  You know, I’m not Kristin Hannah.  Did you know that?

Sarah:  Yeah.

[Laughs]

Kristin:  So –

Sarah:  If you were expecting a more different Kristin, I am not that one.

Kristin:  [Laughs] Right.  Right?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  But, yeah.

Sarah:  Have you always been a writer before you were published?  Were you always writing things, or did you just –

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – sort of go, I got an idea; I’ma write it down now?

Kristan:  Nope, I, I was lucky that I was always a writer.  So I think that’s a lot easier to come into fiction writing when you have a writing background.  So I worked in advertising and PR right out of college up until I had my daughter, and then I was a stay-at-home mommy and still am.  My son is a junior in high school, and my daughter is in college now, but – so I, I thought, you know, my son was approaching school age, and it was getting to be time to think about going back to work, ‘cause my poor husband was working two jobs, you know –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – and I said, I’ve got to contribute somehow.  So I didn’t want to go back to work, ‘cause I really did enjoy being home.  I love to clean – [laughs] – I love to bake, I love my children, so I was like, how can I do all those things and bring in a little income, and I thought, you know, I’ve always read romance.  I bet I could write a romance novel, and, and so I, I started work on one, my notorious potato famine romance.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Potato famine romance.

Kristan:  The, the po-fam subgenre in historical romance.

Sarah:  Of course!  There’s many.

Kristan:  Po-fam has not yet hit, but I have high hopes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  So I started outlining this.  I had, I still have a 93-page outline, and I started writing it, and it was so depressing, I – can you imagine why?  It was set during the Irish potato famine.

[Laughter]

Kristan:  People were dropping like flies from tuberculosis and malnutrition, and I –

Sarah:  Hey, nothing says hot, sexy romance like tuberculosis.

Kristan:  [Laughs] You know, you laugh, Sarah, but –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Kristan:  – move over 50 Shades –

Sarah:  Yes, it’s true.

Kristan:  So, so I thought, okay, I’m obviously not writing the, the right thing for me, so I said, I don’t know, I’m pretty funny, right?  And I should write a contemporary romantic comedy.  So I started to write what became Fools Rush In, and it was my first completed manuscript, and I got an agent, and she sold it to HQN, a division of Harlequin HarperCollins, and I’ve been with them ever since.  So, like you said, my career has not sucked.  I sold my first book.  I’ve been under contract since that day.  I’ve been really, really lucky.  It’s, it’s a kick in the head.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  One thing I love about listening to writers talk about how they decided that they were going to write a romance is invariably a lot of writers will be like, you know, I bet I could write one of these.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And it’s always, like, a challenge.  Like, the idea is actually quite difficult.  No one is ever like, ah, please, I could totes write one of those in a weekend.  Those are easy!

Kristan:  Well, the people who –

Sarah:  The people who do that, they don’t finish.  [Laughs]

Kristan:  There you go, right, exactly.  They, they say, like, oh, it can’t be that hard, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  – and of course it is, you know.  No matter how basic an idea is, of two people who fall in love, you know, you have 400 pages to fill, so it is, it is quite difficult, and that’s something that people don’t, don’t understand a lot of times is that, you know, we really work so hard –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – and think so much, and it’s such a consuming job.  But, but, yeah, I mean, I didn’t just write to earn money.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Of course!

Kristan:  I also –

Sarah:  It is a benefit, but no.

Kristan:  I didn’t, but I didn’t realize it until I heard Cathy Maxwell talk one day, and she talked about the writer’s imagination, and she said, you know, if you’re like me, you grew up telling yourself stories, and you didn’t know that everybody doesn’t do that.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  And that was me!  I, I was, you know, like, a dorky kid.  I’m a dorky adult, so that makes sense.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  But, you know, I read a lot, and in the summertime, I would go down to our basement and spend my summer reading in the, in the cellar, ‘cause it was cool, and, and my parents couldn’t find me to do chores –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  – and, and I would emerge, like, in September to go back to school paler than when I left in June.  So I always read, and if I read a book I didn’t like, I would change the ending, or if I read a book I loved, I would keep inserting scenes and, and that’s kind of how I entertained myself.  It also explains why I didn’t go on a date until I was nineteen and a half years old.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well, you know, you, you’ve got to find the right guy who appreciates somebody with a vitamin D deficiency and hangs out in the cellar all the time.

Kristan:  [Laughs] I still have that, by the way.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, I think most people do.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  But it’s interesting to hear writers talk about it when they – when they approach writing romance, it’s never like, oh, this is going to be easy.  It’s, okay, maybe I can do this.  Maybe this is something that I can do because I’ve enjoyed them so much.

Kristan:  Yeah, I, I read romance, you know, for decades before I started reading one.  I read thousands of romance novels, and I felt like I understood the structure, the challenges that the characters have to face, and, and why they’re so gratifying to read, and why they, they’re so important, you know, the way they uplift and model what a good relationship should be.

Sarah:  I also think that readers, some readers at a certain point will start to say, okay, this really worked for me, but this book didn’t.  Why?  Why did this work?  Not just, okay, that was great; next book.  They, some readers will start to question and start to actually look for that structure.  What was it that made this book really awesome for me, and then this one just didn’t do it for me at all?  What was the difference?

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And then once you start analyzing, one, it makes it easier for you to find more books that you like, but two, you also start to pay attention to what makes a good book good.

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And that’s a hard question to answer, even for writers.

Kristan:  Yeah.  I mean, I, I know that what I was not interested in doing was writing a very, two beautiful people who are very accomplished and very evolved trying to find romance.  I wanted people who were a little more real, a little more raw, people who were also very emotionally honest.  Like, you know, we might be stupid, but we’re recognizing the fact that we’re, we’re stupid.  We’re, you know, we’re doing this because we don’t see an option.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  So, like, my new book, If You Only Knew, opens with an ex-wife, Jenny, at the baby shower for her ex-husband’s new wife.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s not painful or awkward –

Kristan:  Yeah, right.

Sarah:  – but is something that has totally happened to many people.

Kristan:  [Laughs] So she knows she shouldn’t be there, and she knows, you know, this is pathetic, but we’ve, you know, we’ve been in those situations where you’re pretending to have fun, and you’re thinking, I just wish I hadn’t come, and she’s thinking, but I had nothing to eat in my apartment, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs] This is free food.

Kristan:  – I knew the food would be great, and, and also, if I didn’t come, everyone would be talking about me, so I may as well show up.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  So, you know, on the one hand you, you recognize this character who is not perfect and not necessarily completely strong and evolved, but you recognize her because you’ve been in that situation too.

Sarah:  And you’re also, with your new book, If You Only Knew, you’re also writing about characters who are starting over after divorce –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and characters who are having marital problems.

Kristan:  Yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  You’re starting with a lot of problems, and you’ve had marital problems in your other books.  You’ve, you know, there’s, there’ve been side characters that have also had major marriage problems.  I think one of the things I like a lot about Just One of the Guys is the fact that the marriage problems make everyone else sort of sit up and get over themselves a little bit.

Kristan:  Yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  Seeing something go wrong makes people value what’s right.  When you’re writing about these characters, though, they’re older –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – they’re, they’re not the, the typical age range for romance heroines, which I really appreciate, because I think that it’s about time that more romance characters aged up a little bit.

Kristan:  Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Sarah:  But that’s a lot of problems to start with.  You’re starting with a lot of painful, painful things.

Kristan:  Yeah.  Yeah, and I mean, it’s, it’s true that the more uncomfortable your characters are, the more satisfying a read it is, because happiness is boring to read about, you know.

Sarah:  That’s why it has to end there.  [Laughs]

Kristan:  Right, that’s right.  We end on that note, and it’s nice, you know, to have those scenes where the hero and heroine are coming closer together, and you can see the relationship potential, but, yeah, you know, you have to have a, a story.  Sometimes I’ll get a comment from a reader of, you know, like, oh, you know, Ethan was so perfect, or, or Jack was so great.  Why, why did she hesitate?  I’m like, because then the book would end on chapter three.  [Laughs] You know, so, then you wouldn’t have a book to read.

Sarah:  Right, ‘cause the, the conflict is the story.

Kristan:  Right, right.

Sarah:  Now, the, the newest book, If You, If You Only Knew –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – is being marketed as women’s fiction.  Is that right?

Kristan:  Yes.

Sarah:  I, I have to say, I really wish there was a better term – [laughs] – but that’s the one we’ve got!

Kristan:  I know, I know.  It’s, it’s the one we have.  It’s, it’s fiction about women, you know, and it’s written by women.  The protagonist is usually a woman or, or more than one, and yeah, it’s sort of condescending that the, the industry has, has fiction and then women’s fiction.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  You know, it could be said that Wally Lamb writes women’s fiction, but –

Sarah:  Nicholas Sparks writes women’s fiction.

Kristan:  Well, yeah, you know, but –

Sarah:  With cancer and death.

Kristan:  Right.  [Laughs] But that’s the term.  As you said, that’s the term we have.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  So, it’s still got a, a, what I think of as a lovely romance in it.  I really enjoyed that element of the book, but it’s not, it’s not just about finding the right guy, and it’s definitely about two sisters and their love for each other.  I think it’s a great book to read if you are a sister.  I’ve gotten a lot of, a lot of mail saying, I bought this book, and then I bought one for my sister because –

Sarah:  Aw.

Kristan:  – I want her to read it too.  Because these sisters are very devoted to each other, and yet they’re both kind of going through some tumultuous situations, especially Rachel, the older sister.

Sarah:  One of the more frustrating things that I find sometimes in romance is – though not so much recently – is that there can only be one good female in the book, and all the other females have to have something wrong with them so that the heroine looks better –

Kristan:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – by comparison, and then that’s, that’s changing, which I love, but it’s interesting to have not only the romantic repair and the romantic relationship, but also the, also the family relationship –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – be important to the story.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I mean, one of the –

Kristan:  And I’ve always –

Sarah:  Go ahead.

Kristan:  – I’ve always written about families.  You know, that’s a, I come from a big family, you know, I’ve got, I think I have seventeen aunts and uncles.

Sarah:  That’s a lot of aunts and uncles.

Kristan:  Dozens of cousins, and –

Sarah:  I don’t envy you at the holidays.

Kristan:  It’s, it’s a lot of fun.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  They were just out for pizza last night.  But I think that, you know, to remove someone from their family is unrealistic.  You know, whether you have a horrible family or a wonderful family, they’re part of who you are –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – and that was something that I wanted to incorporate into my books.  In a realistic way, too, where you don’t always get along with certain siblings, and, and you might not have a wonderful relationship with your mom.  So, in If You Only Knew, we do have sort of a fraught family relationship.  The girls are, they’re both pretty devoted to their mom, especially Rachel.  They’re mom is a widow who has not gotten over the father’s death and is a bit of a buzzkill in terms of, of, every time she comes in, she’s like a little black rain cloud, you know?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  But we all know people like that, too, and, and that’s not all there is to the mother, you know.  I write, there’s a really lovely scene towards the end of the book where she kind of comes through, but, but I love that.  I love that stuff.  That’s what interests me is, you know, a 40-year-old woman still dealing with her mom –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – because most of us do.

Sarah:  Yep.  And it’s also, it’s also realistic, I think, to portray the way in which women have roles assigned to them, and they may not feel comfortable putting that role down.  Like, if you’ve been widowed, then you are a widow, full stop.

Kristan:  Yes.

Sarah:  Like, that is your role now –

Kristan:  Right.

Sarah:  – and you’re a mom, and you’re a, you’re a, you’re someone one’s wife, and so you have these roles assigned to you that come with baggage and expectations.  It can be really hard to put those down.

Kristan:  Yeah, and nobody pigeonholes you like your family.

Sarah:  No.

Kristan:  You know, you’re the creative one, or you’re the, the, the talented or the smart one.  You know, in my family, I’m the quiet one, believe it or not.

Sarah:  Which is really funny.

Kristan:  [Laughs] But, you know, it always gave me personally the opportunity to listen to the stories that were being told and observe and kind of, you know, see the interactions and see the dynamics and stuff and – in a way that if you’re in it, you don’t see it as much.  But, yeah, you know, in this book, Rachel is the sweet one, and she’s the wife and mother, perfect Rachel, you know, and, and she is very sweet and very kind, soft-hearted, and then Rachel is the creative one, and, and the mom is the widow, you know, and that’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to her is losing her husband.  So I think it’s a really rich part of my writing history is, is the families and the multi-generational aspects of that.

Sarah:  And it’s, it’s, it’s still uncommon to find large families, you know, to inhabit within characters.  It’s a lot easier to orphan and isolate your characters –

Kristan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – then send them out in the world.  Go fight a dragon!  Thanks, bye.  [Laughs]

Kristan:  Right.  We, we, we laugh.  All the dead parents, you know.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.  Lots of dead parents.

Kristan:  Oh, we have so many dead parents.  I would hate to live in contemporary romance –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  – because I’d be headed for the, you know, the off ramp, and there’d be an accident.

Sarah:  Be miserable.

Kristan:  Small plane accident, carriage –

Sarah:  Oh, there’s always an accident.

Kristan:  [Laughs] We love dead parents.

Sarah:  Yes, we do, as much as we love cutting the heads off heroes on the covers.

Kristan:  [Laughs] Hey, I think, I’m very proud of those covers.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So I wanted to ask you also, ‘cause you have a book coming out on January 1st, the last Blue Heron book.

Kristan:  Yeah!  Well, it, you know, probably the last Blue Heron book.  My editor refuses to let it go, but –

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s not a bad thing.

Kristan:  Yeah, no, I love the Blue Heron series.  In fact, I even have a prop, Sarah.

[mechanical noise]

Sarah:  [Gasp!]  Look at this!

Kristan:  A blue heron!

Sarah:  That’s adorable!

Kristan:  Keep it in my office.  Yeah, so, this is Anything for You, and, and it’s the story of Connor O’Rourke, Colleen’s twin and the owner of O’Rourke’s Tavern, and the woman he has loved for twenty years but has failed to make a steady relationship with, and that’s Jessica Dunn, the white trash high school slut who’s been in the books since the very beginning.  She was in The Best Man as the heroine’s nemesis, kind of, and the hero’s old friend and fuck buddy.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And yet again, there’s a character who has a role assigned to her –

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – that’s really hard to get rid of, especially because it’s a sexual role.

Kristan:  Right, and, you know, it was, Jessica was a character just, you know, kind of popped out fully formed as a secondary character.  She’s the tough, beautiful, kind of reserved woman.  Faith in The Best Man, the first Blue Heron book, is very intimidated by her, and, and she keeps showing up, and she softens a little bit in the second book, and we see a little bit more of her hopes and desires when she gets a job at Blue Heron.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  And, and then in this book, it was, it was really fun to write a bad girl.  You know, bad boys are such a staple of romance literature.  You know, the, the guy who slept around, he’s just too hot for words, and then he’s, you know, he’s slain by – what is your term for it?  The sparkling –

Sarah:  Magic Hoo-Ha.  [Laughs]

Kristan:  The glittery hoo-ha.

Sarah:  The sparkly, glittery, magic hoo-ha.  There’re many terms for it, yes.

Kristan:  So, I, I didn’t really plan to write the return of the bad girl, but she was.  She, you know, I had to be true to the character I had written in, in the other books, and I thought, this is going to be fun to, to write about a girl who did sleep around, somewhat unapologetically, and we learn more about her reasons for doing that in this book, but I gave her a past, and, and it was a pretty rich, sad, and interesting past, and it was a lot of fun to kind of explore that and think about what it would be like to be Jess and, and, you know, be in a relationship, sort of, with Connor.

Sarah:  It’s interesting, because in romance, I think, if the genre is, is itself a community, and that includes the characters and the way we look at the characters, we’re still figuring out how we, as readers, negotiate the presence of a character who is female and has her own sexual agency.

Kristan:  Yes.

Sarah:  We are totally fine with bad boys who sleep with everybody, but when –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – the heroine, when it’s the female who has an active sense of sexual agency and pursues sexual relationships with other people, like, as a, as a, as a reaction, the, there can be a lot of negativity thrown as a –

Kristan:  Yeah!

Sarah:  – at a character like that.

Kristan:  Yeah, and, and yet again, we all know that girl.  You know, we all know that girl in high school with the reputation and, and what happens to her, you know.  I mean, she’s often the secondary character.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.  She’s a morality tale.

Kristan:  She’s a morality tale:  don’t be like her.  You know, poor Jess, never want to college, never escaped Manningsport and has always been a waitress.  So I really loved writing about her, because she, you know, as, as you read the book, you’ll find that she’s got an incredible moral code, despite her history, and, and in fact her history is part of that moral code.  But, yeah, it’ll be interesting.  I’m sure that there are going to be readers who will say they didn’t like her because she is very tough and very, she was very sexual, and, and I, I don’t know.  I love her, you know.  I love her, I admire her, and, and I think you’re right.  I think it’s high time that women got to be, to, to own that aspect of themselves and not apologize for it.

Sarah:  And I think that there are more young people that I have met who are unapologetic about their own desire for sexual, you know, sexual agency, and if they decide that they want to have a hookup with somebody one night, that’s totally fine, and it shouldn’t be a problem.  And it shouldn’t be a problem –

Kristan:  Right.

Sarah:  – and yet in fiction, especially in romance, it often is.

Kristan:  Right, right.  And in Waiting on You, I had written Colleen’s character, and she has a bit of a reputation too, but it was more manufactured.  It was, it was almost a defense mechanism for Colleen, and some readers wrote to me and said, like, how many guys did Colleen sleep with, you know?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  It’s important to know that number.  We need to know.

Kristan:  [Laughs] So I, but I, I had kind of brushed that aside a little bit in Colleen’s book.  You know, she had this reputation as being sassy and sexual, but she really, she really talked the talk without walking the walk.  Jess is the, the real deal, you know, and, and as I said, she operates from this place of morality and protection for her brother that I think is really admirable.

Sarah:  So I want to ask you about reader reactions to your stories.  I know that you talk a lot to readers of your books.

Kristan:  Yes.

Sarah:  You’re, you’re very active talking with them on Facebook; you have a lot of social media presence.

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  What are some of your reader reactions to your stories that you continually hear?  What are some of the things that you really love to hear about?

Kristan:  I love that people say they, they’ll be thinking about this book for a long time.

Sarah:  That’s the best.

Kristan:  Yeah, that’s the best.  And I get that a lot, that, that my characters, they, they appreciate that they’re real, that they’re not perfect, they’re not perfectly beautiful.

Sarah:  They’re not super wealthy.

Kristan:  They’re not, they’re usually not super wealthy.  I think I’ve written one character who was, and I immediately bankrupted her in the first chapter.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  But they, they like that they can really relate to those, those characters, not just in looks and situation, but I think also in the, the emotions that they, they deal with.  That, that moment where you’re sitting at your ex’s wife’s baby shower because you couldn’t figure out how to get out of it.  I think a lot of writers, like Robyn Carr leaps to mind, she writes women as we wish we were.  You know, they’re very strong, they seldom make a bad move.

Sarah:  They know what to do.

Kristan:  They do, and, and I write characters as we actually are.

[Laughter]

Kristan:  So –

Sarah:  Which is, what do I do now?  Crap.

Kristan:  We screw up a little, we back off when we shouldn’t sometimes, we, we don’t address things that need addressing, but eventually we do.  The other things I hear a lot are, you know, the books are so funny.  They are also, you know, they’ll make you cry.  They make me cry when I write those scenes.  And, and, and then on the negative side, the, really the only consistent comment I get is my language, because I do drop the f-bomb a few times.  I, I’m very –

Sarah:  [Gasp!]

Kristan:  – very …

Sarah:  So there’s no actual fucking, but you use the word fuck.

Kristan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You could use that as your website tagline.  Kristan Higgins:  using the word fuck, but no actual fucking.  [Laughs]

Kristan:  That’s right.  I, I do have a reputation, too, for closing the door on love scenes, because I don’t write them well, and I think I write the lead-up very well, and then, to me, if I keep going, and I have, and I have tried, the scene becomes diluted because of the technicalities of inserting tab A into slot B, so I do like to keep it relatively clean.  You know, sexy to a point, and, and I get a lot of mail saying, thank you.  My teenager can read this; my mother can read this.  I’m not ashamed to give it to my grandmother.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  So I have a, a pretty diverse age group in terms of my readership.  But the cursing is funny.  Because I write those cleaner romances in terms of love scene description, I do get a lot of Christian readers –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  – and they’ll say, like, oh, my God!  Your language!  Oh!  You know.  They don’t mind people sleeping together before marriage or, you know, they don’t –

Sarah:  But the f-bomb, ohhh-ho!

Kristan:  That’s a problem, yeah, so I do say, I, I always write back to everyone who writes me a letter, and, and I, and I say, you know, I appreciate hearing your thoughts on that, and where I come from, and in my generation, this is kind of how people talk, and I can appreciate that it was, you know, it, that it bothered you.  Thank you for telling me, and I’m glad you read the book, you know.  And I am, you know.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Kristan:  So.

Sarah:  When you’re, you’re looking at the last Blue Heron –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and your editor doesn’t want it to end –

Kristan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – but do you know what you’re working on next?  Is there something coming up after Blue Heron that you’re starting to work on?

Kristan:   Yeah, I’m working on a book, another women’s fiction, for lack of a better term, called On Second Thought, and it’s set in the same town as If You Only Knew.  It’s, it’s, I guess you’d call it a connected book, rather than a series.  So you’ll run into some of the characters from If You Only Knew, and that one comes out next winter, and after that I’m really not sure.  I’m not one of those authors who plans what to write next.  I have to finish it first, you know.

Sarah:  And you have also talked about how there’s always a point where you’re writing a book where you’re like, okay, this is terrible.

Kristan:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  About 265 pages of misery, give or take, and, you know, again, I think that it serves the end product really well, because nothing goes unquestioned, and I consider all options, and, so when I do kind of pick the path that the characters will take, it’s not because it just, I just had this flash of inspiration and I ran with it.  It’s because I looked at everything I could have possibly done, which is why writing is hard for me.  You know, it’s, it’s not one of these things where, you know, an entire book will just flow out of my fingertips in eight weeks.  That did happen once, and I’m really eager for it to happen again.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Sort of like your brain was cogitating.  All right, stand back!  Book is ready.

Kristan:  [Laughs] Right!

Sarah:  I have what I call word labor where if I can’t figure out what to say or what, if I’m, if I’m thinking about writing something, whether it’s a review or I’m working on something longer, and I, I need an idea, I need to do something, I need to figure out what to say – and this would happen even in college – I would be like, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to say, and then all of a sudden, my brain would be like, all right, I’ve got it.  Here come words, grab a pencil.

Kristan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And I have to just sort of grab a pencil and start writing down everything, because my brain has decided it is time to serve up the words.  I call it word labor; I don’t have any control over when the word labor happens.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Just sometimes I get my brain going, oh, oh, oh!  Hey, hey, I know exactly what you want to say here.  That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s kind of awesome.

Kristan:  It’s so great, isn’t it?  I, I have, I call them moments of grace where I’m typing and some sentence appears on the screen from my subconscious, and I say, oh!  Oh!  That’s what this book is about!

Sarah:  Yep.

Kristan:  That – here we go.  This is, this is who this character is.  And it just takes a while for those moments to, to come, and then often, too, I’ll sort of, like, go into that trance of writing where I’m just writing, writing, really fast –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – and then I’ll go back and read it, and I’ll, I won’t remember writing it.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  And I’ll say, that’s pretty good.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I have that problem; I never recognize my own writing.  Ever.

Kristan:  Right!

Sarah:  I once remember reading a, a quote in the beginning of a book that was from a review on my site, and I thought oh, well, somebody else must have written that, I don’t think that’s my writing, and I looked, and I’m like, oh, that was me!  Oh, okay.

Kristan:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  I don’t ever recognize my own writing.  It’s weird.

Kristan:  Yeah, sometimes there are entire scenes that I’ve forgotten about.  When I, I – I write the book, you know, first draft and all.  I’ll putter with it as I’m writing the first draft.  I don’t write completely through to the beginning.  I have notes in my manuscript:  move this chapter here –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – how ‘bout this, that kind of thing.  Cut all this crap.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kristan:  But when, then I overhaul it, and I send it to my editor and my agent, and then I’ll do the, you know, the smaller edits, her, Susan’s revisions, and, and the line edit and the copyedit, and then it’s, you know, six months, sometimes, before I get my author copy, sometimes more, and then I’ll read the book again, and it’s really, sometimes I’m shocked, like, oh, I forgot this entire scene!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  Or this character, you know, because in that interim, I’ve been working on a completely new book with a whole new set of characters, and, and I, I really do kind of forget.  Sometimes I’ll get a, a, like, a letter saying, oh, when are you going to write Bob’s story?  And I’m like –

Sarah:  Who’s Bob?

Kristan:  – I’m not sure who that is.  Yeah.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Bob who?  Can you explain to me who Bob is?

Kristan:  Are you sure that’s my book you’re talking about?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  …right?  So –

Sarah:  Now, you also wrote an article recently about how people talk about romance, and, well, you had a very fine, well-supported soapbox that was –

Kristan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – it was excellent, and it, that article went really, really far.  Are you still hearing about that?

Kristan:  Totally.  I do!  It’s been, it’s been shared on, on Twitter more than 20,000 times.

Sarah:  Nice!  Isn’t it amazing when that happens?

Kristan:  I just, it’s never happened.  I’ve had a few blogs go viral, but not quite to this extent, and it was, it was in Publishers Weekly, so it was a great place to start.

Sarah:  So it’s a much larger audience, yes.

Kristan:  But it was about my irritation with people who don’t respect romance, and I, I think the title of it was “Never Read a Romance Novel?  Grow Up.”  Because I’m tired of people who dismiss it so quickly, like, oh, I read books, I read literature, you know, and, and I think you’re missing some of the best-written books out there because you think they’re vapid and insipid, and, and by and large, those comments come from people who have never read one.  And if you think, you know, there are billions of people reading these books, this genre, are you really smart to dismiss that?  Don’t you think you should know a little more about it before you put it down?  So, yeah, it was a lovely soapbox to write, and it was extraordinarily gratifying to see how, how much support it got in the community, from fellow writers, from readers, from bloggers.  I think, my publicist told me that the average soapbox piece is shared a thousand times, so we’re still –

Sarah:  Well done!

Kristan:  – still going for it, yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  It, it, it is almost bizarre how frequently that pattern repeats too, ‘cause I wrote about this last week, that there’s, there’s always a moment where someone outside the genre can choose to respond to it, and there’s, like, a set of very tired jokes and phrases, and you can almost –

Kristan:  Yes.

Sarah:  – you can almost have a drinking game that would be very dangerous for the health of your liver.

Kristan:  [Laughs] We would, yeah.

Sarah:  No, we, we don’t want to do that.  Based on the way that people talk about romance, do you think that the language about the genre, from people who are outside of it, do you think that that language is changing a little bit?

Kristan:  I do.  I think, you know, in, in the course of my three, four decades of reading romance, romances have gotten a lot better.  They are no longer rapetastic, to borrow one of your words.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I’m very grateful for that fact too.

Kristan:  [Laughs] They, they’re no longer the, the, you know, the forty-year-old and the sixteen-year-old.  There’s no more kidnappings and falling in love with your rapist and that kind of thing.  I think, so, that, that has, that has changed the language a lot, that heroines are so in control of the relationship in the stories, because I think that’s true in life.  I think that women set the tone of the relationship.  They generally see the guy they want, go for him, you know.  Often he’s just a happy passenger, like, you know.

[Laughter]

Kristan:  And –

Sarah:  Wait, what?  You’re, what, oh, you’re here.  Okay!

Kristan:  Right!  You know, sure, honey.  You know, whatever you want, because we’re so emotional, we’re so intuitive as a gender.  You know, I’m, I’m generalizing, but, but I also think, too, what’s happened is that the, there’re some incredibly well-spoken, well-educated women writing romance.  So you have Julia Quinn and Eloisa James and Sarah MacLean and Courtney Milan, you know, lawyers and, and Ivy League grads and – in fact, I was just asked to teach a class at Yale, which is very thrilling for me.

Sarah:  Nice!  Congratulations!

Kristan:  Yeah!  And I’m just so pleased that they’re recognizing it as a, as a genre that deserves some, some time.

Sarah:  What are you going to be teaching?

Kristan:  I don’t know.  They just, they just invited me to speak, so.

Sarah:  That’s awesome!

Kristan:  Yeah!  Yeah.

Sarah:  So Elyse, who reviews for me, has some questions that she asked me to, to put to you.

Kristan:  Okay.

Sarah:  She, she sort of identified you as the leader in the dogs-on-the-cover phenomenon.

Kristan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Was it your idea, or did they just put a dog on the cover of one book and then were like, whoa, this is awesome!  Can you write about more dogs?

Kristan:  Yes.  Well, in the beginning of my career, I did not have any say over the covers.  I remember my editor sending me the cover of Fools Rush In, and it was pink and adorable, had a little Border collie on it, and I said, oh, my gosh, I, that’s so cute.  I love it.  Do you want me to sign off on it?  And she said, oh, no, they’re already printed.

[Laughter]

Kristan:  Oh, good.  Thank you for spelling my name right, and – so I had no say.

Sarah:  Kristan with an A.  Yeah.

Kristan:  They just, you know, they, they, they said, we’re thinking – I think, I think I was told they were thinking of a dog for the cover, and I said, great, ‘cause there’s an adorable dog in that, and then they just kind of ran with it.  So I didn’t have any say for quite a while, but I do for, I think, one book, The Perfect Match, they took the dog off the cover, and I requested that they put the dogs back on.  So two of the Blue Heron books don’t have dogs, and I said, you know, I don’t write dogs into the story because I want a cute cover.  I write dogs and sometimes cats into the story because I’m a big believer in pets, and they’re really important to me.

Sarah:  Mine are here somewhere.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Nope, they’re under my chair.

Kristan:  My dog is, is right there.

Sarah:  Yep.

Kristan:  She’s lying in the sun there.  And it’s a very organic part.  It’s like having a family, you know.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  My characters have families, and they usually have a pet.

Sarah:  It also shows that a character can take care of something or someone.

Kristan:  That’s a, it, it shows a –

Sarah:  You know, you can’t just be like, I’ma go out all night.  You can’t!

Kristan:  Right.

Sarah:  The dog has to go out.

Kristan:  It’s a commitment to something selfless, you know?  It’s a selfless commitment.  And, and it’s also, you know, the love that you get from a pet is so important, especially, I think, when you’re single and, you know, you’re taking some, some body blows in the romance world, and, you know, you come home to your dog, or you cat jumps up on your lap, and you just feel like, good, I’m, I’m so grateful for you.

Sarah:  We were talking about that this morning, Elyse and I, and I, and, and I, and I said, you know, I think dogs pretty much embody the unconditional love and happy ever after of a romance.

Kristan:  Yeah, definitely.

Sarah:  Because that’s sort of a, a micro version of the relationship that you want to have.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That you –

Kristan:  And she is now licking herself.  Just –

Sarah:  Oh, in a minute, mine, mine will try to dig a hole in the carpet, because I can’t record without a pet being a guest.  I used to have a cat – she died earlier this year – and she would hear me recording and come in and start yowling.

Kristan:  Yeah, I’ve had –

Sarah:  Like, she’d start talking on the podcast.

Kristan:  – without me knowing it, like –

Sarah:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Kristan:  – sitting at the table behind me and –

Sarah:  Mrow!  Yeah.

Kristan:   Yeah.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, do you get to test the canine cover models?  Elyse is very curious as to whether or not you get to just sort of roll around in a room full of puppies and be like, this one!

Kristan:  Oh, that would be so great.  I, no, I don’t, but I –

Sarah:  Ah, bummer!

Kristan:  – I, I send stock art pictures of, like, I would like this kind of dog, so the, the dog in Anything for You is, is a pit bull, and, and they have a real bad reputation, you know.  You go to any pound, and it’s filled with pit bulls, and, and yet, they can be the sweetest dogs, too.  So I wanted –

Sarah:  They’re ferociously intelligent.  It’s horrible when you –

Kristan:  Yeah!

Sarah:  – see what terrible humans do to them.

Kristan:  Exactly, exactly.  So, I, I wanted a really sweet-looking pit bull for this cover, and so I, I picked the picture.  They gave me a bunch, and I said, this one!  He’s so cute!  You know.

Sarah:  Aw!

Kristan:  So –

Sarah:  When we were filling out our homeowners’ policy for our new home, we had these really weird, specific questions to answer.  One of them was, you know, do you have an alarm?  I’m used to that.  Do you have a trampoline?  Well, no.

Kristan:  Oh, yeah!

Sarah:  Do you have dogs?  Yes.  Are they any of the following breeds?  And it was pit bull, Doberman, there was another breed that I hadn’t really, wasn’t very familiar with, and I was like, mine are very small, somewhat bananas –

Kristan:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – Spaniel blends?  So, no, they’re not on this breed list, and I thought, you know, it’s good for your home to have a dog, but it’s bad if it’s a particular breed?  Like, that’s a –

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – terrible assumption to make about an entire type of dog.  But yet it gets done.

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So good on you for putting a pit bull in the book.

Kristan:  Thank you!  Yeah, he’s a very sweet puppy.

Sarah:  Are they all rescues, pretty much?

Kristan:  One character bought a dog.  Grace in Too Good to Be True bought a dog from a pet store, and she was just sort of – I, I didn’t really think about it back then, but every other animal is a rescue.  And all my animals have always been rescues.

Sarah:  Mine too, yeah.  It’s nice, because you know, like, hey!  I’m going to take care of you; you’re going to take care of me –

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – it’s all good.

Kristan:  Yep.  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s not like there’s a shortage of animals who need a home.

Kristan:  Exactly.  Yeah.

Sarah:  So, this is the hard question.  I warned you in advance.

Kristan:  Okay.

Sarah:  I always ask the hard question.  What books have you been reading lately that you have really enjoyed?  I ask this question without warning, and people are like, God!  That’s so hard!  You cannot ask that without telling me in advance.

Kristan:  I, yeah, I, I do tend to have a pile of books that I’m reading at one time, you know.  But right now I’m reading After You by Jojo Moyes, which is the sequel to Me Before You, and I really, I really love it, and I’m, like, sneak-reading it.  I carry it with me everywhere, so, you know, my son takes thirty seconds to get from his high school to my car and, hey, I’m reading.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Kristan:  But it’s, it’s wonderful.  She’s such a, an amazingly talented person.  And then I’ve read some really dark stuff this year.  I read The Girl on the Train, which I loved.  I think it’s sort of refreshing for me, as an author, to read the antithesis of what I write, you know?

Sarah:  Yes.

Kristan:  So I, you know, The Girl on the Train is about a raging alcoholic, unreliable narrator, miserably unhappy person.  I couldn’t put it down!

[Laughter]

Kristan:  It was fantastic!  What else have I read?  I’m reading, I just started sneak-reading Robyn Carr’s upcoming book called What We Find, and I, like, I read the first page, and I’m like, oh, stop!  I have to put it aside because I’m, I want to finish Jojo’s book first.  I read, The Nightingale was one of the best books I’ve read probably this decade, by Kristin Hannah.  It’s about, a story of two sisters in Nazi-occupied France, and oh!  My God, what a book.  It’ll be read a hundred years from now.  It’s that, that good, that beautiful.

Sarah:  Wow!

Kristan:  Everybody should read that.

Sarah:  That’s from earlier this year, and I’m, I’m sad this is the first I’m hearing of it.  This, you’re the first person who’s mentioned this book to me.

Kristan:  Oh, it’s been stuck right there on the NYT bestseller list, and I’m, I’m so happy because the book is so worthy, and it’s an important book.  It’s a his-, you know, based on historical fact, but it’s just so beautifully written.  It’s wrenching; I won’t lie.

Sarah:  Good to know.  [Laughs] I appreciate the warning.

Kristan:  Yeah.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Do you – I have never read Jojo Moyes.

Kristan:  Mm-hmm?

Sarah:  What kind of reader do you think would find, if there, what kind of romance reader would find her books good and interesting?

Kristan:  Well, I wouldn’t say she’s necessarily a romance writer, but in some respects she reminds me of Sophie Kinsella.  You know, she’s quite funny, but also her characters are, they have a long way to go.  You know, they’re, they’re very, I would say, emotionally unaware.  You know, stuck in a relationship for seven years with an absolute jerk, that kind of thing.  I love the way Sophie often opens with a woman at the worst point in her life, you know.  You know, just down and out and miserable, and then the car splashes muddy water on her – [laughs] – and you know, it just – Jojo does that too.  You know, you’re, you’re in this ridiculous job that’s so bad, you’re in a terrible relationship, your family walks all over you, but the evolution of the character is so beautiful, and the, the depth of emotion that she uses.  I don’t know anyone who’s sorry for having read her.

Sarah:  Awesome.  Thank you.  I, I really enjoy, especially right now, books about people who are either waking up and making changes because something sucks –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – or being forced into a position of having to start over, or having the opportunity to choose –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – to start over.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That sort of major pivot in your life –

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – makes for really interesting reading because it’s painful.

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  Yeah.  It’s, the book I’m writing now has, has, again, two female protagonists, and they both have a huge life change within three weeks of each other, and, and it is, it’s, it’s really gripping to say, like, now the world is completely different from yesterday –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – and I have to make all different choices on everything, and it’s, you know, as someone who has a stable, long-time marriage and I, I live on the street where I grew up, and it’s, I love exploring that as a writer, ‘cause, you know, ‘cause I, I have such a happy, boring life.

[Laughter]

Kristan:  But, so I love to put characters in those new situations.  Like, you have to move, you have no money, or something’s got to give because your ex has, has just married somebody else.  Whatever specific –

Sarah:  Someone dumped you.

Kristan:  Someone dumped you, yeah.  Often someone dumped you, or you know, you just say, nope.  No, I can’t keep doing what I’m doing anymore.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  And it’s so satisfying, ‘cause in, in books, characters do that.  They say, no more.  I, I want better.  I’m going to go for it.  And in real life, a lot of people don’t.  They just stay the same, and so I think that’s another reason that, that readers love romance is because the character keeps pushing herself and himself to, to deserve more –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – and, and really work for it.

Sarah:  And change is really uncomfortable.

Kristan:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  But you, you get used to it –

Kristan:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – when you do it enough.

Kristan:  Yeah, there’s a lot of facing up in, in my books, a lot of facing up to the past or, or the relationships that, that didn’t work out.  Being able to let go and move on, and it’s just, it just feels so good to, to write that.  You know, it’s almost a, an antidote to all the times that you look at your, your friend or your, you know, relative or something and you say, here we are, twenty years later, and you’re still exactly who you were and where you were, and –

Sarah:  And you’re complaining.

Kristan:  – still complaining about it.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Still complaining about the same things and not changing any of them.

Kristan:  Right, right.

Sarah:  Hmmm.  Is there bourbon at this holiday?  ‘Cause I, now I need some.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  But it’s also true that I think, in a lot of ways, one of the undervalued aspects of romance fiction is that it constantly sends a message that humans, not just the heroine or the hero, but all humans deserve emotional happiness.

Kristan:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That, that it’s important, and it’s okay to make difficult changes to go find your happiness, and it’s okay to say, I’m not doing what you expect me to do, and I’m not taking on this role that’s been put on me.  I’m, I’m out of here.

Kristan:  Yeah.  Yeah, and the, how hard that is.  You know, it does take 400 pages just to get to that point –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Kristan:  – because, you know, you have to go through a lot to get to that point where you say, you know, my old ways are done now, and I’m, I’m now the person who’s brave enough – and in my books often – to face life alone, you know, and to not retreat back into the, you know, Cheetos-eating, TV-binge-watching character we may have met in chapter one, you know?  To really, to really kind of, like, take care of your own life and your own happiness, and, and then, by doing that, that’s when you earn the love of that wonderful character.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I want to thank Kristan Higgins for taking the time to hang out and talk with me.  

If you are curious about some of the books we talked about or you would like to read the article that Kristan wrote on Publishers Weekly, I will have links to the article and to all of the books we mentioned in the podcast entry, also known as the show notes.

And if you would like to email us or email a question or you have a suggestion, you can email [email protected].  We love your email because you are all smart and awesome, and if you’re on the treadmill right now, you are almost done, so keep going.  You’re almost finished.  I promise it’s worth it when you’re done.

This podcast was sponsored by InterMix, publisher of Because I Love You, the new Forever Love story from author Jeannie Moon.  Download it on November 17th!

The podcast transcript this week is brought to you by Jenna Sutton, author of the Riley O’Brien & Company series, published by Berkley, available in print and eBook.  The first novel in the series, All the Right Places, follows the heir to a global denim empire as he fights his attraction to the company’s new accessories designer.  If you like smart, sexy, contemporary romance, then this series is for you.  You can find an excerpt at jennasutton.com and connect with Jenna herself at Facebook at jennasuttonauthor or on Twitter @jsuttonauthor.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is Deviations Project.  This is their holiday album Adeste Fiddles, and this is the “Coventry Carol.”  Now you might be thinking, why are you using holiday music?  It’s just after Halloween.  Well, the way I see it, the decorations may come out a little too soon after Halloween, but for us there’s only a handful of Fridays between now and the end of the year, and if you haven’t heard Adeste Fiddles, it’s pretty rad.  So, I will be having some mellow, awesome music between now and the end of the year, and oh, my gosh, if you hate it, you’re like, no, no, no, make it stop! email me at [email protected].  I’m always looking for interesting suggestions to music that I can use during the podcast.  Sassy is a cool, super-duper, awesome music producer, and a lot of these tracks she has been involved with professionally, so it’s pretty rad to have such good music.  And Adeste Fiddles is really awesome.  I mean, it’s up there with Peatbog Faeries, and would I lie to you?  I would never lie to you.

And speaking of things that are awesome, there’s another awesome thing that I would like to tell you about.  We have our own page on iTunes.  How rad is that, right?  It almost makes up for the fact that we had to change the name of the podcast, ‘cause iTunes doesn’t like the word bitches, but they do like our podcast!  Thank you, iTunes.  So if you are checking out iTunes and are like, I want to see this cool page, it’s pretty rad.  itunes.com/dbsapodcast.  That’s itunes.com/dbsapodcast.  You’ll see the last month’s worth of episodes, plus books that we featured in the podcast, and it looks pretty spiffy ‘cause, you know, iTunes looks pretty slick.  So thank you to iTunes and Apple for designing us our own little page.  It’s pretty rad.

So on behalf of Kristan Higgs and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[mellow, awesome music]