Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, February 5, 2016

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 179 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  With me today are Carrie, who is also from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and bestselling author Jim C. Hines.  We talk about his book Revisionary, which just came out and is the end of his Libriomancer [Magic Ex Libris] trilogy, something Carrie is most bummed about.  We also talk about fantasy, librarians, magic, ordering books for yourself from your school Scholastic Book Fair catalog, smoldering tribble spiders, and fighting antagonists that are bigger than a god’s mom.  

I do have a correction:  during the course of the interview, I mention that I thought Jim was one of the first dude guests we had, if not the first.  He’s not the first.  In episode 132, I interview Dr. William Reddy all about the history of love stories, so if you like (a) medieval history and (b) the history of emotions and romance and how romance is portrayed, you should totally look at 132, ‘cause it’s really cool!

Our music each week is provided by Sassy Outwater, and she has just given me a dump truck full of new digital music, which of course actually doesn’t have three-dimensional matter, but I have new music, and this is some of it, and I will tell you at the end of the podcast who this is, should you wish to buy it for your very own, which I’m sure you do, because all the music she provides is really rad, and I’d buy it all too.

A quick housekeeping note:  if you would like to sponsor an episode of this podcast right here you can email me at [email protected].  The podcast sponsorship and the transcript sponsorship are both available for the month of February.  Email me for details!

And now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah:  Okay, well, I’m required by law to inform both of you I’m recording this.

Carrie Sessarego:  Okay.

Jim C. Hines:  Wait, wait, what do you mean recording?

Sarah:  I am taping everything you say and preserving it in a very secure location known as my laptop hard drive.

Jim:  Okay, I, I have just one question then.

Sarah:  Yes?

Jim:  What is taping?

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Sarah:  Well, I have these large reels, and they, the, this slide of tape goes from one to the other.  You know, I actually had to learn how to edit reel-to-reel, like, physical audiotape in college?

Jim:  Oh, cool!

Sarah:  It took forever, it was super annoying, and now I’m like, wow, I just slice two pieces of virtual tape, and this is way faster.

Jim:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  I used to work in Alaska in this little tiny radio station.  It was just like the one in Northern Exposure, and we had, everything was reel-to-reel.

Sarah:  So, like, you had to queue up a cassette to play music?

Carrie:  Oh, honey.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  We had no cassettes.  No, we had big reels.  We, we had the –

Sarah:  Nice!

Carrie:  We had big reels that had, like, the news on them, and then we had cassettes, and we would plug in the cassettes.

Sarah:  Okay, that’s awesome.

Carrie:  It was pretty awesome, ‘cause we could play, like, anything we wanted.  And then we had to read messages, so all the villages would, would send their messages into the, the radio station, ‘cause this was, like, you know, pre-Facebook, and we would broadcast them, and some of them were really funny, and some were super depressing.  It was always a whole bunch that were like, Dear Mary, it’s Joe.  Please come home.  The babies need diapers.

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Carrie:  There were always, like, tons of those.  We’d rattle them off, and then we would play break-up songs.

Jim and Sarah:  [Laughter]

Sarah:  Okay, that’s, I would totally read that if it were a book.  I would, like, 200% read that.

Carrie:  Oh, I started, I started a memoir, a memoir of my time in Alaska, and it’s in a box in my garage, so –

Sarah:  Get out that box, dude.

Carrie:  I’ll dig it out for you, Sarah.

Sarah:  Okay.  So, Jim!  Would you please introduce your lovely self, because I’m pretty sure that you are one of the first or earliest male guests we have ever had on the podcast.  Thank you for being our dude.

Jim:  Oh, wow.  I, I –

Carrie:  Whee!  Sorry.

Jim:  I am honored.  Thank you!  Yes, my name is Jim Hines.  I am apparently the first dude, and I, I’m going to put that on my business card now.

Sarah:  You’d better!

Carrie:  Yeah!

Jim:  I, I write fantasy novels mostly.  I’ve written about goblins and kick-ass fairy tale princesses and am just wrapping up a series about a magic-using librarian from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who can reach in and pull things out of books, which is lots of fun because, you know, that’s how you get to go chasing vampires and waving a light saber around.

Carrie:  I have a question about that series.

Jim:  Okay.

Carrie:  Is, is Revisionary really the last one?

Jim:  I’m sorry.  Yeah, pretty much.

Carrie:  [Tiny voice] Oh.

Sarah:  Oh, ma-, see, this is horrible, because on one hand, as romance readers, we really like knowing that the end is, is an existing thing.

Jim:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  Like, the, the ending is part of why we’re reading, but at the same time, you don’t want a series to go on and on and on without end, ‘cause we like the end –

Jim:  Right.

Sarah:  – but on the other hand, when it’s a really lovely series, it’s like, oh, bummer!  It’s the last one!

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  Well, if it helps, I am playing with the idea of maybe self-publishing some, some mid-length extras?

Sarah:  Yes, do that.  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  Okay.

Sarah:  We support that plan!

Carrie:  And, and honestly, I have no grounds for whining here, because I still haven’t read the goblin books or the princess books, so it’s not like you haven’t left me with, you know, a, a plethora of other reading material.  But I, I don’t like really long series, and I really didn’t want this one to end.  I really, I really loved it!

Jim:  Well, thank you so much!

Carrie:  You’re welcome!

Jim:  Aww!

Sarah:  When you finished it, did you, like, think, wow, I’m going to miss this world I was playing in for so long?

Jim:  Yes and no.  I, I mean, it’s, I love these characters.  I’ve gotten to know them a lot more over the course of the four books.  I’ve gotten to see them grow and develop.  I’ve gotten to play with a lot of the ideas, which is all so much fun, and that’s hard to let go of.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jim:  At the same time, I have gotten the story pretty much where I wanted it to be when I started out.  There was an actual, you know, larger arc of – basically, I wanted to poke at some urban fantasy stuff.  You know, like the whole idea that our world can, can be magical, but we’ll keep that all secret and nobody will know, because humans are so good at keeping secrets.

Sarah:  Oh, oh, yeah, we keep things quiet.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  We don’t use anything –

Jim:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – to talk to each other, not even messages on a shortwave radio in Alaska.

Jim:  No, I mean –

Carrie:  No, no, not that.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Yeah.  [Laughs] So, I mean, part of what I wanted to do with the series is show that secrecy crumbling, and by book four, I have broken it.  I have broken lots of things.  I, I apologize for spoiling it if, for anybody who is reading, but I, I got the characters to a place I wanted them to be.  I got that story to a place I wanted them to be.  I’m ready to go do something new.  But, yeah, I’m going to miss it.

Sarah:  I can understand that.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.  Well, and one of the things that I really admire about the series is I think in, in a series – you see this more on TV where the seasons just go on endlessly, but you, you see it –

Jim:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  – in book series, too – you want your characters to grow and develop over time or it’s boring, but you don’t want them to change so much that you lost sight of who they are or have them change in some kind of implausible way, and I thought all of the characters, not just the main character, they, they had a really plausible growth that was also really dramatic growth.  Where, where Isaac is at the end is so far from where he was at the beginning, but I, it felt organic.  I, I, I bought it, so I, I like that a lot.

Jim:  Aw, thank you!  When I was writing the princess books, the original idea I had in my head was that these would be more episodic.  More like some of the mystery series where you can just pick up any book, and it’s a mystery, and at the end everything is mostly reset back to where it started.  And I know not all mystery series are like that, but that’s the example that came to mind.  And I started writing it, and I realized, oh, apparently my brain will not allow me to do that.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  I, I’ve dec-, I, I don’t like it, I don’t buy into it, I don’t get invested if the characters aren’t changing from book to book.

Sarah:  Well, lack of change and static, static characters is, I think, one of the reasons why series that go on and on and on and on tend to sort of bum out readers, because, well, they, they haven’t, they haven’t changed.  They’re just cycling through similar adventures.  It’s, the change –

Jim:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – is part of why you’re reading and writing.

Jim:  Or sometimes in fantasy you’ll get, you know, your, your hero keeps getting more powerful with each book, and so –

Sarah:  Eventually – [laughs]

Jim:  – every sequel is just getting more and more ridiculous.

Sarah:  You thought that was bad, just wait ‘til the next book!

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Now we will fight the gods, and then we will fight the gods’ mommies and daddies!  And then we will fight – I don’t know, what, what’s bigger than God’s Mom?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Yeah, that came out kind of wrong, but –

Sarah:  What’s bigger than God’s Mom?  That sounds like a joke that someone would tell, like –

Jim:  It sounds like an awful bad joke, yes.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – on a, on a, on a playground in, like, sixth grade.  [Laughs]

Jim:  It’s, it’s like the dead baby jokes.

Sarah:  Yes, or you, it’s, it’s almost as bad.  When you were coming up with the idea of the Libriomancer series –

Jim:  Mm-hmm?

Sarah:  – what was sort of your inspirational sort of point of entry?  I hate to ask, how did you get the idea?  Because usually ideas come from a lot of different places, but I know with many writers there’s, there’s usually a moment or an idea where they go, oh, okay, I know exactly, I know how to enter this world.  Did you have one of those moments?

Jim:  Kind of.  I had an editor named Kerrie Hughes who sat down with me and said, I want you to write me a short story for an anthology, to which I said, cool, editor wants to, wants me to do something and will give me money.  Yay!

Sarah:  That’s usually the reverse.  Like, I would like to write this thing and give it to you for money.  Now the editor’s –

Jim:  Yeah!  I mean, this was –

Sarah:  – the editor’s, like, asking for – nice!

Jim:  Wow!

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Yes, I will be happy to take your money!

Sarah:  Thank you, drive through!

Jim:  But she was doing an anthology, and she wanted me to write about Smudge, who was the fire-spider character from my goblin series.

Sarah:  Huh!

Jim:  And he, you know, Jig the goblin had this little spider who ran around and set things on fire, and –

Sarah:  As you do.

Jim:  Right!  And somehow Smudge had become one of the most popular characters I’ve ever written, so I’m sitting there telling this editor, yes!  I would be happy to write for your thing!  And she wanted it to be present day.  Okay, so you need me to bring my fire-spider into the modern world.  Ahhhh, okay.

Sarah:  That’s totally what the modern world needs, pyromaniac spiders.

Jim:  Absolutely.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  I would vote for that spider.

Sarah:  Let’s have that spider run.

Carrie:  Another tribute I have to the book, by the way, is I have horrible arachnophobia, and the fact that I’m very fond of Smudge is quite an accomplishment, although I’ve noticed that when I picture Smudge in my head, I sort of edit out the legs.  Like –

Sarah and Jim:  [Laughter]

Carrie:  – in my head, he’s like a little smoldering tribble, and, and I, yeah, yeah, but, but yeah –

Sarah:  Smudge the smoldering tribble.

Carrie:  – the fact that you made me like a spider is high praise indeed.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  That was one of the things, when I was doing the goblins and started writing Smudge, it was, that, that sort of, you set yourself a mental challenge, and just to make your life more difficult.  I wanted to write a lovable spider, ‘cause I don’t like those things either.  I, I –

Sarah:  Am I the only one here who likes spiders?  I like spiders!

Jim:  Yes.

Sarah:  Spiders eat the bugs that bite me and give me rashes and hives –

Carrie:  Yeah –

Sarah:  – so, like, I’m a big fan.

Jim:  I, I appreciate what they do.

Sarah:  Yes, but they are kind of creepy.

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And they have big teeth.

Carrie:  I think they’re fabulous if I don’t have to see them –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – and, and if, if we have an arrangement where they will never touch me.

Sarah:  That’s a, that’s a solid arrangement, unless, of course –

Carrie:  Right, yeah, I just –

Sarah:  – it’s Smudge, the smoldering tribble spider.

Jim:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  I – yeah.  But, yeah, no, Smudge is, like, a whole other category, and yes, I, he’s wonderful.

Jim:  Smudge is just a –

Sarah:  So you had to bring Smudge to now.

Jim:  Yep.  And ended up –

Sarah:  Piece of cake.

Jim:  – writing this short story about – it was a different Isaac.  It was not the character from the books, but it was an Isaac who pulls Smudge out of the books and has to go track down a magic bad guy at a science fiction convention –

Sarah:  As you do.

Jim:  – and that was the birth of libriomancy.

Sarah:  Well, that’s cool!  ‘Cause, no, nothing ever happens at con-, conventions of any kind.

Jim:  Oh, no.

Carrie:  Oh, no.

Jim:  I, I have been told that all science fiction and fantasy authors have to write at least one convention story in their lifetime.  It, it’s just one of the rules.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And it’s also, I think, a, a common habit of fantasy and science fictions writers to skewer their own community and their own tropes on a very regular basis.

Jim:  Well, yeah.

Sarah:  It’s, it’s a fun collection of sort of semi-serious, semi-sarcastic self-skewering.

Jim:  We are aware of what the world sees when they look at us, yes.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And, yeah, you’re still having a really good time!  More power to you!

Jim:  Oh, absolutely!  I’m still taking my sonic screwdriver to ConFusion this weekend.

Sarah:  Well, duh!

Carrie:  Well, duh, who wouldn’t?  And do you want to tell our listeners just a little bit about how magic works in, in your series?  Like, what are, what are the rules for how it works?

Jim:  I would love to!

Sarah:  I assume you have them written down, possibly calligraphed, framed on the wall, right?

Jim:  These things are etched in stone, Sarah!

Sarah:  Oh, of course, I beg your pardon!

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  This is –

Sarah:  What a stupid question!  I’m so sorry!  [Laughs]

Jim:  Big plaques up in my office.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Carrie:  Yeah, if you have, like, massive tablets, I, like, you know, with them inscribed, you know, stone tablets, I would totally buy them and put them up around my house like this weird little Stonehenge arrangement.  And the rules as the series goes on, the rules kinds of get, get pushed, the boundaries get pushed a lot, always in pretty internally consistent ways, which is quite awesome.

Sarah:  So, you know, the building code for science fiction writers and fantasy writers is not drywall or Sheetrock; it’s stone tablets.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  Absolutely.

Sarah:  I love this plan.  Okay, so aside from your building codes, explain your magic.  [Laughs]

Jim:  Right.  Libriomancy, invented by Johannes Gutenberg, the idea being, basically everybody has at least some miniscule magical ability.  Not enough that most of us can do anything with it, but what Gutenberg theorized is that when people read, it engages the imagination in a way that triggers that sort of magical potential.  Okay, by itself not very useful, because you don’t have enough magic to even, like, heat up a flea, assuming you wanted to cook a flea – sorry, still thinking about Smudge –

Carrie:  Okay.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Smudge does like a toasty flea for dinner?

Jim:  He does.  He likes to cook his food.

Sarah:  It’s very civilized.

Jim:  What Gutenberg theorized is that, okay, if we create books that are physically identical, then those books can serve as kind of an anchor for all of those different people’s belief, and then somebody who is a little more magically gifted can reach into the book, tap into that belief, tap into that magic, and use it to create whatever is in that particular scene.  The rules – obviously, it needs to be a mass-produced book, you know, which is why he was inventing the printing press.  The things you pull out of the book cannot be physically bigger than the book.  It, it has to fit.  There are some books that Gutenberg realized we don’t want people messing with this, so he developed a way to lock those.  So nobody can go into Tolkien and pull out the One Ring and become Gollum.

Sarah:  ‘Cause you know that’s, like, number one on someone’s list.

Jim:  Somebody would do it, yes.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s like, you know, if you invite, if you invent time travel, 99% of people are like, oh, yes!  Go back, kill Hitler, that’ll fix everything.  Everyone who, who wants to enter books is going to be like Ring, now.

Jim:  I’m going for the lightsaber.  But yeah.  And over time, you can overdo it.  If everybody’s reaching into the novelization of Star Wars and everybody’s getting the lightsaber out, that book gets damaged.

Sarah:  Right.

Jim:  Reaching in once is like a small leak in the dam.  If everybody’s doing it, it starts to crumble, it starts to crack, the whole thing explodes, bad things happen, and then nobody can use the book anymore.  Beyond that, like you said, the rules have kind of evolved a bit, because I wanted to treat this more like science, where these are the things we think we know, but the best part about science is discovering something that doesn’t work the way it should and then getting to say, wait a minute, these rules are different.  This is – the rule about needing mass-produced books.  Because you need that physical object, electronic books should not work for libriomancy, and that’s how it was in the first book, and, and I had people grumbling about this, and it’s like, why do you hate electronic books?  Why are you so old-fashioned?

Sarah:  You’re so mean, Jim.

Jim:  Wait for it.

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  Because then in the later books we meet somebody who can pull things out of eBooks, and Isaac has this wonderful moment of that’s so cool!  How can you do that?  Why can’t I do that?  Damn it!  Let me try again!  And he just gets so frustrated and so delighted at the same time that something we thought we knew was wrong, and now we get to know new things.

Sarah:  Wait, so learning and changing your point of view creates a form of magic?

Jim:  It doesn’t create the magic so much as – the, the person who does it is a teenager named Jeneta.  She’s playing on her cell phone, and she pulls a snake out of a book in the middle of algebra class.

Sarah:  Oops!

Carrie:  Oops!

Jim:  Yep.  Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Sarah:  Would have made my algebra class a lot better.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Jim:  Isaac is, is open-minded enough to say, instead of, you know, this is a fluke, this is an aberration, this is wrong, this is just cool!  This changes what we know.  Now I can learn more things.  I think that’s what –

Sarah:  Well, that’s not the right attitude to have!

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You don’t, you clearly don’t spend enough time on the internet.  [Laughs]

Jim:  Ugh!  Have you met me?

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Sarah:  Yeah, I, I met you on the internet, actually.  [Laughs]

Jim:  [Laughs] Yes.

Sarah:  That’s really cool.

Jim:  No, I, I love Isaac.  I love that he is just this passionate geek who – I, even when things are trying to kill him, he can look back and say –

Sarah:  Whoa!

Jim:  – that mechanical monster thing is really, really awesome!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  I have to destroy it now so it doesn’t eat my face, but wow!

Sarah:  That is really cool!

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Jim, did you watch the TNT series The Librarians?

Jim:  I do watch that, yes.

Sarah:  It seems like it has a, a, a shared sensibility.

Jim:  It does.  I think they go a little bit sillier than I do?  But –

Sarah:  Yes.  They are, they are very silly.  They’re silly nerd-bait is what I call that show.

Jim:  But yeah, at its core, that whole, you know, books are magic, knowledge is wonderful, we will be smart and geeky, and we will have fun with it –

Sarah:  Yes!

Jim:  I had actually been toying with a spin-off.  You, I, I know Carrie has read Revisionary at least.  At least, you’ve got Isaac, and then you get his three libriomancer assistants, and I was thinking, we’ll do a spin-off.  We’ll have, we’ll follow these three other libriomancers with Isaac in the background, and then The Librarians started, and it was the older, more experienced Librarian character with his three new Librarians, and we follow them, and it was – you’re killing me, TNT!

Carrie and Sarah:  [Laughter]

Jim:  You – either stop stealing my sequel ideas or let me write for your show.  Either way.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Well, you know, one of the major, one of the head writers or the story editor for The Librarians is a romance writer.

Jim:  Really!

Sarah:  Yeah, Kate Noble, who is one of my favorite historical romance authors also writes for television under the name Kate Rorick, and she’s the story editor for The Librarians, so if you wanted to have a conversation with her, I could introduce you.

Jim:  You – I may take you up on that.

Sarah:  Okay, no problem!  [Laughs]

Carrie:  It all started here.

Sarah:  Yeah, it all starts here.  I, I, I know random shit.

Jim and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  And this is what happens when you spend lots of time on the internet.

Sarah:  Really, honest to God.  I, I, I was actually waking up my son this morning, and he and I are, we’ve moved into a house with, with forced air, as opposed to radiators, and I’ve only ever had radiators, so this, like, new kind of heat, this new-fangled thing is just like –

Jim:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – biz-, just bizarre to me, but he and I are both really, really dry ‘cause of the forced air, ‘cause it, with –

Jim:  Right.

Sarah:  – and I’m like, I read this cool thing on the internet!  And he’s like, don’t you do that every day?

Carrie and Jim:  [Laughter]

Sarah:  And I was like, yeah, yeah, I do.  [Laughs]

Jim:  Isn’t that, like, your job?

Sarah:  It is, like, totally my job.  Woohoo!  I have the best job ever!

Jim:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So what are you going to work on now that the Libriomancer series is coming to an end?  And is this – forgive me for not knowing the answer to this, but is this your first hardcover?

Jim:  This series was the first one they did in hardcover, yes.

Sarah:  Yay!

Carrie:  Woo!

Jim:  So what comes next?  Well, there’s the self-published stuff I might dabble in with more Libriomancer stories.

Sarah:  Yay!

Jim:  There is a middle-grade fantasy novel that I wrote over the past few months and just sent off to my agent.  That will – well, the working title is Tamora Carter:  Goblin Queen –

Carrie:  Ooh!

Jim:  – and it’s sort of a portal fancy from the other side of the portal?  You know, a couple of humans go across the portal.   Tamora is here back on Earth saying, wait, where did my friends go?  What’s happening?  What’s this stuff leaking into our world?  It’s the first middle-grade I’ve ever done; it was a lot of fun; I have no idea what’s going to happen with it, but, you know, hopefully it will become the next Harry Potter.

Sarah:  Well, of course it will!

Jim:  That’s the game plan.

Carrie:  All right, that seems like a solid plan to me.

Jim:  Great!

Carrie:  I have a question about future projects.

Jim:  Okay.

Carrie:  You have done two anthologies about the importance of representation –

Jim:  Yes.

Carrie:  – Invisible and Invisible 2.  Are we going to get an Invisible 3?

Jim:  Possibly.  I am starting to think about it more.  If I do, I think there are a couple of things I’m going to do differently.  One is I’m going to try and bring in a co-editor because –

Sarah:  That’s a lot of work, dude.

Carrie:  It is.

Jim:  Well, and it’s not just the work, but the fact that it’s this straight white dude who’s curating all these essays about the importance of diversity?

Sarah:  Wha-at?

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, you are aware of privilege and things like that?  What’s wrong with – you really don’t spend enough time on the internet.

Jim:  I know.

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  To me –

Sarah:  That’s a, actually, that’s a pretty unique thing to realize.  Like, oh, wait, what am I doing?  Hmm.

Jim:  Yeah, I know, and I want to keep doing it because I can keep doing the work, I can keep, I’ve got enough of a platform online that I can help get this out there, but it, it shouldn’t be just me.

Carrie:  Yes.

Jim:  Both for the privilege reasons and, as I discovered last year, there are areas that I just don’t know enough about to be doing this.  I, I kind of stuck my foot in it with one of the essays that I published that then had to get pulled and didn’t make it into the anthology because I didn’t know.  So, trying to avoid some of those mistakes.  So the answer to is there going to be an Invisible 3 is, I don’t know yet.  Check back with me in a few months.

Sarah:  All right, no problem; we’ll call you back.

Carrie:  Yeah!

Jim:  Okay.

Sarah:  So one of your projects that I loved very much was your deliciously gleeful skewering of, of women’s body positions on covers?

Jim:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Okay –

Jim:  Yes.

Sarah:  – there has never been a more excellent use of an on-board insulin pump in the history of ever.

Jim:  Thank you.

Sarah:  I’m, and the teddy bear deserves his own award.  Unless it’s a girl teddy bear –

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – in which case I apologize to the teddy bear.

Jim:  You know, I think the teddy bear is gender fluid?

Sarah:  Yeah, that’s true.  So it, you know, either way?  Excellent, excellent performance.  And your, your, your, the point you were making was incredibly well taken once you put yourself into these images and manipulated your body, and all of this culminated into what is probably the best parody cover ever.

Jim:  Oh, is that the one with Scalzi and Rothfuss and Stross and Kowal and me?

Sarah:  Yes.

Carrie:  Yeah, that is –

Jim:  Oh, that was fun.

Carrie:  That was truly beautiful, and I got to interview Mary Robinette Kowal about that cover, and she says it was, it was quite strenuous.

Jim:  It was.

Carrie:  Yes.

Jim:  She was, I, in order – I mean, she doesn’t look, just at first glance, like she’s contorted too badly, but she’s basically in this weird sort of half kneeling crouch that, if you stay there for more than a few seconds, everything starts to cramp up.

Sarah:  Yeah, it’s like umpire, only worse.

Jim:  So, yeah, it, if I remember right, we were all kind of taking turns letting Mary lean on us –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  – in between takes.

Sarah:  Well –

Jim:  But – yeah, that was, that was me feeling frustrated about, you know, sexism on book covers and all of that and started to just sit down and write a ranty blog post, as one does, and then decided, no, I have to do this differently.  Let’s see, what, what could I do that’s more fun?  And called my wife over and said, hey, I’m going to take some of my clothes off and do ridiculous poses.  Will you take pictures of me?

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  And Amy’s like, yeah, okay.

Sarah:  Sure!  That can’t be the strangest thing you’ve asked for, so, hey.

Jim:  Uh, no.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  And then it just sort of took off.  Much more than I ever expected to, but it was something!  It is probably the one thing I’m known for more than any of the books I’ve ever done, which is both cool and depressing.

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  But yeah, it was mostly, hey, let’s step back, let’s take a look at this, this thing that we’ve been so immersed in that we don’t see it any more.  Well, if I twist my body into those poses, you’re going to see it.  You, you may not want to, you may not be able to stop seeing it, but you will.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  You know, and then there was some pushback; there was some backlash.  One of the most common arguments was, oh, yeah?  Well, what about romance covers?  Because obviously romance covers are all about sexualizing guys in exactly the same way, which, yeah, no.

Sarah:  No, it’s, it’s a very different use of gaze.

Jim:  It’s –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  And I, so I did a series of posing like a man on book covers, and even when I was –

Sarah:  Had a lot more clothes on.

Jim:  That depends.  I recall somebody challenging me to do a Fabio cover.

Sarah:  Oh, I don’t know who that was.  I couldn’t possibly tell you who that was.

Jim:  No.

Sarah:  No idea, not a, not a, not at all, no, no, no clue on my end.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  I mean, hey, go, go big or go home, right?  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Right.

Jim:  Yeah.  But one of the things, two of the things that you find out by doing those poses is okay, yeah, maybe I’m taking my shirt off a lot on these covers, but I’m not twisting into those painfully ridiculous poses, and as the guy, I’m still in a position of power.

Sarah:  Yep, yep, yep!

Carrie:  Yep.

Jim:  If it’s me and a woman on the cover, I will be the one who’s taller; I’ll be the one holding her.  It’s, it’s not the same thing, and it just gets really frustrating that people are like, oh, well, sexism, it, it affects everybody.  Just look at Conan the Barbarian.  No, Conan gets to be strong.  He gets to be powerful.  Most –

Sarah:  He gets to rip people’s heads off with his bare hands!

Jim:  Yeah!  And yes, he does while wearing furry underwear, but –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  – he’s still being powerful, whereas most of these women on so many of these covers, that’s not powerful.  That’s look at me; I have big boobs and a nice butt.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jim:  Just, nyugh.  So that’s – and, and for curious listeners, that’s all on my website.  There’s a link that’ll take you to all of the photos so you can laugh and/or cry as is your wont.

Sarah:  I will tell you, I have to say I, I was sitting next to my husband one evening, and I’ve recommended a bunch of different books to him when I run into something that’s going to appeal to him, ‘cause our tastes are very, very different, and he was reading a Patrick Rothfuss book and like, oh, I’m really, really loving this series.  I love this series.  Oh, Patrick Rothfuss!  I saw him mostly naked on a blow-up raft.

Jim:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And my husband looks at me like, what?

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And I just, I, I thought he knew, and I said, I saw him mostly naked on a blow-up raft, and he’s like, wh-, where?  [Laughs] ‘Cause I guess he thought that maybe one of your conferences was happening in the next hotel to my conference or something, and there’s Patrick in the pool or – he had no idea, so I showed him the pictures, and I, I think he, like, wheezed and cry-laughed so hard he got a headache.

Jim:  I, that, no – the group cover pose was part of a fundraiser.

Sarah:  Yes.

Jim:  And we, those cover poses managed to raise a little over $15,000.00, which is just awesome and ridiculous and overwhelming.

Sarah:  Way to go!

Jim:  But I love that the authors that I dragged in –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  – for the cover pose just went, they were so into it.  You look at Pat, he’s got his legs folded up and crossed, he’s making kissy face at the camera.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Everybody’s in, like –

Sarah:  He’s half naked on a blow-up raft.

Jim:  Yeah!  And we went in there, and we’re standing in the room, and everybody’s just like, all right, let’s strip down!

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  There, there was momentary awkwardness and then, all right, let’s go for it!

Sarah:  Yes, and, and Mary keeps all of her clothes on, wears a suit, and holds a gun, and you’re all mostly in your Underoos.

Jim:  Yep.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s pretty rad.

Jim:  We were flipping it around.  And if you look at the original cover it was based on –

Sarah:  Yes.

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Yeah, yeah, the original cover’s a piece of work.

Jim:  It is.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So, Carrie, I know you have questions.

Carrie:  Yes.

Sarah:  I also have questions.  Would you like to lob one at Jim?  A question, not, like, an actual three-dimensional object.

Carrie:  I, I, I will lob one.  I will lob one.  So in, so one of the things that I really enjoy about your work is that it’s very, it’s inclusive in an almost very casual way.  Like, of course it’s inclusive, because I think we all live lives where we’re surrounded by lots of different kinds of people, so your books reflect that, and as the series goes on and you’ve added more characters, it’s become even more inclusive, so by the last book you have characters of multiple ethnicities and multiple sexual orientations, and, and when you look at your own work and the work of your Invisible anthology and your romance cover, and your romance comics covers, do you feel like we’re reaching a tipping point in, in our culture in terms of demanding more inclusiveness and more diversity in our, our books and our media?  Do you, do you feel like things are kind of tipping in the right direction?

Jim:  I think we’re moving in the right direction.  I don’t think we’re at a tipping point yet.  If you caught the Oscars, which, that was one of the big conversations on Twitter this week is –

Carrie:  Right.

Jim:  – all of the gold statues to all of the white people, because people of color apparently don’t make movies or star in movies or exist in the world of the Oscars.  There’s, there’s also a lot of pushback.  There’re a lot of people who are, I guess, threatened by the demand for more representation and diversity who are talking about oh, it’s just affirmative action and oh, you’re censoring us, and you’re just being politically correct for your agenda and all of this, frankly, bullshit.  But it’s there.  It’s still pushing back.  I don’t think we’ve gotten to that tipping point yet, but I think we are making progress, and I think it is moving in that direction, and it’s – I’m going to quote Mary again, Mary Kowal, because she phrased it brilliantly on Twitter a while back when she said, it’s not adding diversity for the sake of a quota; it is removing homogeneity for the sake of realism.

Sarah:  Yep.

Carrie:  Mm-hmm.  Yeah.

Jim:  And it’s like, yes, that.  It’s not, you know, it’s not this whole being PC and doing a quota.  It’s, no, some of us are just choosing to walk away from the straight white male quota that y’all seem to be working on.

Carrie:  And a lot of your contributors to Invisible really directly address the question of why, why is this important?  Why is it important to do this?

Jim:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  Why is it important to you that we move in this direction?

Jim:  Oh, so many reasons.  One is empathy.  You read stories, you care about the characters.  You, you get to know them, you come to love these characters, you’re happy with them, you cry when the mean author kills them.  If all you’re ever empathizing with are straight white men, that’s, that’s contributing to some serious problems.  Some of the essays in Invisible talked about – I’m thinking of one in particular where the guy had grown up basically not understanding anything about homosexuality, and so throwing out the insults, making the gay jokes, calling people fag or whatever, because he never thought about it.  And then he went and read – and I want to say it was Mercedes Lackey, but I, don’t quote me on that – and he was reading, and it turns out, wait, this character is gay?  But I like this character!  They’re like a person!  Wait, gay people are people?  And it, I mean, it sounds kind of silly, but it was very, very eye-opening for him, you know, at that age.

Sarah:  One thing that I struggle with is what I think of as romance reality and actual reality?

Jim:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So there’s actual reality where I see many different people of many different cultures every day and interact with them in many different ways, digitally and in person, and when I try to explain to my children that there are deeply seated laws and customs and habits and social designs in place for decades and decades that make it easier for white males than anyone else, and they look at me like, wait, seriously?  Like, right now?  Are you for real?  Like, that’s dumb!  That’s really stupid, Mom!  And then they argue with me, and I’m like, I know it’s stupid!  I’m not saying it’s not!  I’m just saying it’s there!

Jim:  Like, you’re not defending these things.

Sarah:  No, I’m just explaining to you that that happens, and they’re like, dafuq?  What?

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Mom, can I say a bad word?  That’s really stupid, God damn it!  I’m like, yeah!  You’re damn right!  You know, there’s the, there’s the reality, and then there’s the romance reality where in the world of romance, if all of the romances written of every time period and every subgenre are assembled into a virtual reality, it is overwhelmingly white and straight and Christian, and the distance between romance reality and actual reality is sometimes very, very close, and sometimes it’s far apart.  And sometimes the fact that it’s far apart –

Jim:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – is hilarious, like no one has morning breath ever!  Ever, ever, ever.

Jim:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No one ever eats a bad clam or has an off sort of hamburger day?  No one has a bad burrito in romance land.  That does not happen.

Jim:  Okay.  Are, are these metaphors, or – ?

Sarah:  No, these are literal things.  [Laughs]

Jim:  Okay.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I mean, there’s, there’s no morning breath, you can kiss somebody right out of, right after you wake up.  You know, it’s just, it’s just, there’re these silly things that happen, and you’re like, well, that’s not reality, that’s fantasy, isn’t that funny –

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and then you look at the difference between the way humans are portrayed in the collective whole versus reality, and you think, this distance is not okay.

Jim:  No.

Carrie:  Well, and another way to think of it is, with historicals, some people will say, well, it’s not realistic to do historicals with people of color because their chance of having a Happy Ever After would be so slim, and I’m like, well, you know, I read Regency history, and I read Regency romance, and I love me some Regency and Victorian romance, I just eat it up with a spoon, but it is as fantasy as anything in the fantasy genre.

Jim:  Yeah.

Carrie:  If I can accept that the Babies Ever After happy epilogue isn’t going to end in a high probability of death, if I’m going to accept that everyone has all their teeth, I’m going to accept –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  – if I’m not going to worry about the fact that that luxurious bath that our heroine took was the product of hours and hours of hard labor by underpaid servants whose lives were hell, then I can probably accept a Happy Ever After ending for a person of color.

Sarah:  What?!

Jim:  Yeah.

Carrie:  We’re already dealing –

Sarah:  That’s crazy talk!

Carrie:  – with a fantasy version of reality.  It’s not a bad thing to have a fantasy version of reality, but you can’t use that as an excuse to exclude large groups of people from your fantasy.

Jim:  And you can’t, you know, you can’t live in a culture where we’ve spent decades and centuries erasing people of color from history and then turn around and say, oh, but it’s not historically accurate because we erased all those people.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  I mean, there’s, one of the Tumblrs that I follow is, it’s just nothing but paintings and portraits of people of color from –

Sarah:  Oh, Medieval People of Color!

Jim:  Yes, thank you!  I was blanking on it.

Carrie:  I love that one.

Jim:  And it’s just, every time somebody’s talking about historical accuracy!  Go, look, read the Tumblr, educate yourself, and you can come back and apologize when you’re done.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Good luck on that.

Jim:  ‘Cause –

Sarah:  Don’t hold your breath.

Jim:  Yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  Just don’t, don’t hold your breath.

Jim:  No.  But the, this whole idea that – oh, there’s another one, and I’m once again blanking on it, but it was a GIF set – see, I do spend too much time on the internet – of a couple of characters, and they were talking about, oh, we’re setting this play or this show in medieval times, so I’m sorry, you can’t be in it, and this is said to the, the black character and he just looks at them and is like, what, are you saying black people haven’t been invented yet?

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  But that seems to be the assumption.

Sarah:  Yeah, Beverly Jenkins talks about writing history in America, because she writes American historicals featuring people of color, and she says, you know, it’s like there was slavery, and then the Borg came and took us away and brought us back for the civil rights movement.  Like, we, we were on a very long trip, and in the American history story we show back up around the ‘60s to start talking about civil rights, but all that other time in between, we were not there.

Jim:  And once you come back, that’s all you can talk about.

Sarah:  Yes, that’s really all you’re allowed to say.

Jim:  You can’t have lives outside of it.

Carrie:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Jim:  Yeah.  It’s, it’s that, that phase of okay, you can have a gay character, but it’s all about their coming out story and their trauma, and that’s the only story they can have.  Or –

Sarah:  You know what makes me nuts about that?  And this is, this is something that I struggle with?  The, the number of characters that I meet in romances where they come out once and it’s all, all, it’s all okay.  Like, all right, I’m out!  I’ve fallen for this guy, and I’m out, and it’s great!  Onward!  And I’m like, the, the, the people who I know who are gay and lesbian and – they have to come out over and over and over and over –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and it never stops.

Jim:  Uh-huh.

Carrie:  I apologize, ‘cause I forgot her name.  The author of Americanah, she did this amazing TED talk called “The Danger of a Single Story,” and kind of, part, basically her premise was that a lot of the stories that we tell, they’re not bad stories, they’re not invalid stories.  The problem is –

Jim:  Right.

Carrie:  – we start telling one story.  It’s not bad to tell a story about the struggles that African-Americans face or how hard it is to come out.  Those are really important stories, but if that’s your only designated story, this is your role, you get to play the part of the person who’s struggling with coming out, but you can’t do anything else, that’s the problem.

Sarah:  Yes, that would be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Carrie:  Yes, thank you.  Jim, are you a romance reader?  Do you read romance?

Jim:  Generally no?

Sarah:  It’s okay, you can say no.  We’re not going to get mad.

Carrie:  It’s okay, you can say it.  It’s all right.

Jim:  I’ve read a few.  I read a couple in grad school, just trying to learn how to write relationships better?  A friend, Mindy Klasky had written some, and I picked up one of hers and read that.  It’s not something I’ve done a lot of reading, but I’ve read a handful.

Carrie:  Do you have any favorites?

Jim:  I have not read enough to have favorites.  But of, of –

Carrie:  Oh, well, now, now the boxes will be coming to your door.  Everyone will –

Jim:  But of course I should say that Mindy’s was my favorite, because she’s a friend of mine, so, yes, Mindy Klasky was my, my absolute favorite –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  – because Mindy is awesome.  But no, really –

Sarah:  So here is the hardest question that I ask authors always.

Jim:  Uh-oh.

Sarah:  What have you read recently that you really love and would love to tell people about?

Jim:  Over here on my bookshelf here –

Sarah:  It’s, it’s interesting:  I ask this question, people are like, oh, well, let me open up my, let me grab my phone, or let me turn my chair around, but we’re always right near the books.  They’re never, like, oh, I have to go downstairs out to – no, no, no!  They’re within, like, arm’s reach.  You know, in the, in the fantasy author home building code with all the stone tablets, there have to be some bookshelves –

Jim:  Yes.

Sarah:  – built in, or maybe they’re like Minecraft, where you just sort of drop something, and then a whole bookshelf just appears.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Jim:  I hit things –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  and there are books.

Sarah:  And then you make books.

Carrie:  Remember I reviewed that book about home décor, and it was, like, all into the idea that you should pile books on the floor to make a, a, a powerful visual statement.  That was the most liberating thing I ever read.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  I’m like, wow, I thought the statement I was making is that I had run out of bookshelf space and I was too fucking lazy to put my shit away, but it turns out I was a decorating genius!

Jim:  You were ahead of your time.

Carrie:  I, yes!  I’m avant-garde!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Okay.  The book that I grabbed, I have – okay, backstory.  I’ve got a ten-year-old son, and he still gets the Scholastic book order forms?

Sarah:  I have one of those too!

Carrie:  Ohhh!

Sarah:  I have both the ten-year-old son and the surfeit of Scholastic book order forms.

Carrie:  Oh, yes.

Jim:  Have you, do you order books for yourself?

Sarah:  Yes?  [Laughs]

Jim:  Okay.

Carrie:  Don’t we all do that?  I mean –

Jim:  I, yeah, I –

Carrie:  – they’re really, like, super affordable, dude!

Jim:  I, I, I’m looking through these things.  You know, this is the first year that I’ve been responsible for the book order forms –

Sarah:  Oh-ho-ho-ho!

Jim:  – and so I’m looking through, and wait, wait, Ursula Vernon has something?  I’ve got to get that!

Sarah:  Yeah!

Carrie:  Yes!

Jim:  I mean, Cherie Priest, I will get – but I got Ursula Vernon’s book Harriet the Invincible, and it’s, I mean, it is for younger readers.  It is a hamster who is basically given the Sleeping Beauty curse that, you know, by her twelfth day she will be pricked by a cursed hamster wheel and fall into sleep, and Harriet looks at this and says, wait, so there’s no way out of this curse.  Nope!  I am absolutely going to get pricked by, on this hamster wheel, and that’s going to put me under this cursed sleep.  Yep!  Great!  I’m invincible!  And she has all these adventures, and Ursula is not only a good writer, she’s also a very talented artist, so it’s got all of her pictures and little dialogue bubbles, and it’s just, it is so much fun, so I would recommend that one for fun and for princess retellings and for cute hamster drawings.  And then the one that I’m reading right now comes out in March of this year.  It’s called On the Edge of Gone by – and I’m, I just realized I’ve never pronounced this person’s name out loud; I’m probably going to screw it up; I apologize – Corinne Duyvis – D-U-Y-V-I-S.  And this –

Sarah:  I think that’s right.

Jim:  I hope so.  If not, it, it is my bad.  I need to go listen to the sound file.

Lucy:  Bark bark!  Bark bark!

Sarah:  The, oh, the dog’s got it.  Dog’s got it.  Dog knows.

Jim:  The dog has to get in on this.

Sarah:  Thank you, dog!

Carrie:  I’m working!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  But, yeah, I’m, I’m about –

Carrie:  You don’t understand!  There are people, there are people in my neighborhood, and sometimes they go outside!

Sarah:  Oh, God!

Carrie:  And if they go outside, then that means that we are clearly under attack.  And –

Sarah:  [Laughs] Other mammals walking about is not to be borne.

Jim:  How dare they go outside?

Carrie:  And Lucy has to guard us, and of course what’s particularly humorous about this is if they dare to come in the house, she rolls over and jumps on them and, and licks them furiously, so I –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jim:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – I guess that’s it.  She’s going to drive them away because of her dog spit?  I, I don’t know.  I’m sorry, guys, that will probably happen again.  So, carry on.

Sarah:  So On the Edge of Gone – ooh, this comes out March 8th.

Jim:  It’s – yes.  It is sort of, not quite dystopic, but it’s science fictional.  A comet has hit the Earth, the Earth is about to be uninhabitable, as all of the after-effects, all of the atmosphere getting messed up, and they’ve got generation ships that will be leaving Earth and trying to survive elsewhere, but these ships can only take a tiny fraction of the population, and the protagonist, Denise, she and her family did not get onto one of the generation ships, but she stumbles onto one.  And Denise is also autistic, her mother is a drug addict, and it’s Denise’s struggle to, how can I earn a spot on this ship, how can I survive, can I save my family with me?  It’s, it’s dark, but it’s –

Sarah:  I was going to say, that sounds like a very cuddly story.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  It is not the warm and fuzzies.  I’m going to have to go reread Hamster Princess when I’m done.

Sarah and Carrie:  [Laughter]

Jim:  But I, I like this story.  I like the angle that Corinne takes with the, okay, the generation ships, you’re obviously being very selective – well, here’s this autistic teenager.  How do you react to her?  How does she find a place?  What do we do?  And Denise is awesome.  I love her voice.  I love her determination and the things that she’s, that she’s working through and doing to survive.  And I’m only two-thirds of the way through, but so far it is very engaging; I have not put it down yet.

Sarah:  That’s a very large plot that’s going to focus on the question of what is normative?

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That would, that would, I would have a hard time putting that down, and yet I would probably also have nightmares?  I’m, I am currently trying to –

Jim:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  – finish a book that has legitimately given me nightmares three nights in a row, and I had to take a break from reading it.  Like, I thought, okay, well, if I don’t read it right before bed then I won’t get nightmares.  No, I read it in the middle of the afternoon with the sun up.  Went to bed; had nightmares.  Like, there are some, there are some stories that just sort of sink into your brain and just sort of live there –

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – for a while.

Jim:  They, they get that sort of –

Sarah:  Like, hey!  Remember that book that scared the shit out of you?  Ha-ha!  Guess what, it’s back!

Jim:  – that, that visceral hold on you.

Sarah:  Yes!

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So that sounds like a seriously deep-brain-engaging book.

Jim:  Well, I wanted to give a range, you know.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jim:  Hamster princess – end of the world.

Sarah:  Oh, it’s, you know, same thing.

Jim:  Yeah.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah!

Sarah:  Very similar.  So, Carrie, you have any last questions for Sir Jim?

Carrie:  Do you have a favorite love story in science fiction/fantasy?  There are so many good romances outside the genre of romance.  There are so many good love stories, and I wondered if you have a favorite, because you do have a lot of relationship stuff in your work.

Jim:  In The Legend of Korra at the very end, the character of Korra walks off hand in hand with the character of Asami, and Korra was, it was a followup series to Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was brilliant, and I loved it, and it’s, like, one of, in my opinion, one of the best TV series ever.  The Legend of Korra was rockier.  It was not always as well-written; it had some problems.  They did boring love triangle stuff for a while, but at the end, you know, you’ve got this guy, you know, Mako, who had been dating Korra at one point, and then he was dating Asami for a while, and it’s just all messy and ugly, and over the course of the fourth season they very carefully and relatively subtly started bringing Korra and Asami together, and it worked.

Sarah:  I don’t think Tumblr found it subtle, because I remember those GIF sets thinking – [gasp!] – this is amazing!

Jim:  It –

Sarah:  It was very subtle if you didn’t look for it –

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and then, like – you know what?  I, I amend what I said – it was subtle if you didn’t see it, and then once you saw it, you saw it.

Jim:  Yes.

Carrie and Sarah:  Yeah.

Jim:  If you, if you weren’t looking for it – and I think, you know, the writers have talked about, there was only so much we could do on Nickelodeon –

Sarah:  Yes!

Jim:  – but they’ve also come out and just very explicitly said, yes, they are starting a romantic relationship, they are getting together, that is what that walking off hand in hand means at the end, and –

Sarah:  Korrasami is canon!

Jim:  Yes!

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  And I think both for the relationship, because those two characters were awesome, and they deserve each other, and also the reaction.  You know, then going online the next day and seeing so much joy and excitement and happiness on Tumblr and on Twitter and everywhere, and to circle it back, you know, talking about why representation matters, this is another reason, is people finally going to see themselves having that happy ending –

Carrie:  Mm-hmm.

Jim:  – when all of the other stories say no, you can’t have this.

Sarah:  Right.

Jim:  But yeah.  I, I love those characters, I love that relationship, and I think that, that romance was wonderful, and I think they should do another season that is just Korra and Asami running off and being awesome together.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yes!

Sarah:  There are a number of reviews with Car-, from Carrie where she’s like, listen, these two side characters, I could watch a four-hour movie of those two road-tripping around anyplace.

Jim:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, there needs to be a Korrasami road trip.

Carrie:  I think it’s pretty common for side characters to steal a story, although, you know, Korra’s not a side character, but, but, you know, for, just to want to just sort of want to just, like, hang out with people for a while.

Jim:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  And, and not even needing a lot of plot.  Let’s just have, like, you know, like, four episodes where they, like, do each other’s hair or I, you know –

Jim:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – just to hang out with them.

Jim:  I think sometimes you can get a little bit more out there with the secondary characters, and it can make them more interesting.  Where – let me see if I can put this into words that will actually make sense.  They can be a little more extreme without you having to maintain that and develop it and think it through quite as much as you would if it was a central protagonist.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jim:  Does that make sense?

Sarah:  Yep, there’s –

Carrie:  Yep.  Yeah.

Jim:  Oh, good.

Sarah:  There’s, there’s less expectation and therefore boundary placed around side characters.

Jim:  Yes.

Sarah:  Like, there’s a, there’s a wonderful Jennifer Crusie novel that takes place in a hotel, and I know that it has a dog on the cover, and she had to write the dog into the story because the dog was – ah, Trust Me On This.  The, there’s a new cover with a dog in a suitcase, and she’s like, there’s no dog in the story!  You’ve got to give me back the manuscript so I can add in the dog, ‘cause you put the dog on the cover of the re-release.  So in Trust Me On This, there is a background romance, a secondary romance, between two characters, I believe it’s the parent of one of the main characters and then another person who’s also in the hotel, and it’s a much older couple –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and it’s wonderful.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Oh, I remember more about that romance, which took place in little segments outside of the chapters about the main protagonists.  It was wonderful because it was, it was just very sweet and very free.  They could be –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – sexual adults and get, and, and, you know, have a fling.  Like, we don’t have small children in this hotel room.  We can go hook up!  It’s great!  Like, you don’t see that –

Jim:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – you don’t see – you know, because old people are supposed to be sexless.

Jim:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  And it was wonderful, and it was so romantic, because there was this, just general freedom for them to do what they wanted to do.

Carrie:  Well, and also it was, it was fresh.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  You know, we, I mean, I adore any romance Jennifer Crusie ever writes, but we’ve seen a certain kind of romance a gazillion times.  I never get tired of that romance, but it’s super exciting when something else is presented, whether it’s a romance that’s, that’s, you know, different in orientation than a straight romance or whether it’s an older couple or, you know, any variation that’s some-, because otherwise you kind of get trapped in this thing where it’s like, you know, you, you deserve to have romance, and you have a chance to have romance if you’re a male/female couple and you’re both young, you’re both white, and you’re both thin.  And, and –

Sarah:  Oh, thinness is very important.

Carrie:  Yes, which is another thing –

Jim:  Oh, yes.

Carrie:  – that Jennifer Crusie really likes to subvert.

Sarah:  Yes.

Carrie:  Which is another reason that I adore her, but – and a reason that I adore Lena in the Libriomancer series, but –

Jim:  Yes, that was –

Carrie and Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Jim, I remember you talking about the cover for her book when she was going to be on the cover and you were like, please, please understand that she cannot be super, super teeny tiny and thin wearing, like, super small shorts, because not only am I against that, that’s not who she is.

Jim:  We – yeah.  That was Codex Born; that was the second book.  And, I mean, the first thing was, look, you cannot contort her into one of those ridiculous poses because I just got done doing this whole thing on the internet, and the whole internet will laugh at us and come down on our heads if we then do a contorted butt-and-boobs shot.

Sarah:  And you don’t want that.

Jim:  But – nooo.

Carrie:  No.

Jim:  But then it was, now, Lena is also dark-skinned, and she is heavy.  So the photographer, because the covers for these books were done by actual photo shoot and then Photoshopping in the rest of it, but at the core, he had to bring in actual models, and on Codex Born, he, he brought in a number of Indian models, sent us samples from their portfolios, and the one on the cover of Codex is the largest one that we had available, and she is not big.  She’s not frail, which is good –

Carrie:  Mm-hmm.

Jim:  – but it’s not Lena.

Sarah:  She’s very muscular, but she’s not thin.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Or she’s not, she’s, she’s not, she is muscular.  She’s not thin, she’s very muscular –

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – but I also wouldn’t describe her as heavy either.

Jim:  No, no.

Carrie:  Yeah.  She’s not skinny.

Jim:  But I think the fact that that was all he could find.

Sarah:  That was difficult.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That was hard, yeah.

Jim:  Yeah.  He did, we got a different model for Revisionary, which, she’s a little bit closer?

Carrie:  Mm-hmm.

Jim:  Still not there yet, but, yeah, it – attitudes towards weight and anybody who dares to not be skinny are just really messed up.

Sarah:  It really is.

Jim:  One of the things I wanted Lena to be is unapologetically sexy and sexual and, yes, fat.

Sarah:  Yay!

Jim:  Because these things can all go together.

Sarah:  What?!  What?!

Jim:  I know, right?

Sarah:  You stop that crazy talk right now!  You, that’s just, no.  You can’t do that.

Carrie:  Well –

Sarah:  And pretty soon you’re going to be arguing that everyone of every size, color, nationality, background, language, and religion deserves happiness, and then what will happen?

Jim:  Oh, that’s just political correctness run amok.

Sarah:  I know, I know.  I, I represent the worst excesses of political correctness and, and, and liberal thinking.

Jim:  Ah, yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Wanting people to be happy.  What’s up with that?

Sarah:  God, just, how dare you with wanting happiness?  Which is one, you know, that’s honestly one of the things that I like – I don’t read a lot of science fiction, and I don’t read a lot of fantasy.  I know that my, romance is my jam, and I own that very happily, but when I look at the fantasy that I have enjoyed and the science fiction that I’ve really liked, there is an emphasis on restoring order and happiness in a lot of the best, a lot of the best worlds that are created.  Genre, a lot of the time, whether it’s mystery or fantasy or science fiction or romance, focus on restoring order and fairness or happiness, and happiness usually goes along with those other two.

Jim:  Generally, yeah.  I, I, I’m a little hesitant on the order piece.  Just, I’ve seen too many of the science fiction/fantasy ones that, no, we’re going to show an excess of order and rules and turn it into more of a dystopian thing?

Sarah:  Yes, that’s true; you make a good point.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Not how I was thinking of order, but you’re totally right.

Jim:  But – yeah.  But, you know, restoring balance, restoring justice –

Sarah:  Thank you, yes.

Jim:  – and fairness and yes, absolutely.

Sarah:  You should be a writer!  You’re really good with words!

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Thank you!  I will try that!

Sarah:  [Laughs] Do you look back at the number of books that you’ve published and go, holy shit!  How did that happen?

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Occasionally.

Sarah:  Yeah.  [Laughs] You have written a number of books, dude.  Way to go!

Jim:  Revisionary will be number twelve.

Sarah:  Yay!  Congratulations!

Jim:  Thank you!

Sarah:  Every time you finis, finish one, it’s totally worth celebrating.

Jim:  I try to celebrate.  We, we went out to dinner when we did the mystery grade novel.  It’s like, Daddy finished a book!  He can actually interact with the family again!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Let’s go out and eat Chinese food!

Sarah:  Yay!

Jim:  No, it, it is cool to look back.  It is a little scary sometimes.  I, a few days back I was going through the, the writing directories, pulling up some of the stories I, I tried to write in, like, ’96 or ’97.  Oh, God, I was so bad!

Carrie:  [Laughs] Well, and, and your, your annotated Rise of the Spider Goddess is truly a gift to humanity.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jim:  Thank you.

Carrie:  Yes.  So, so for those who are aware of this, this is what, your, your very first novel, right?  Is that, is that –

Jim:  Yeah, I wrote that in ’95.

Carrie:  Yes, and, and you, you released it with annotations as sort of a, an exercise, and, and I, I felt like I learned a lot from it, in terms – I mean, it was hilarious, but, but – because you’re very funny – but, but also, like, I, I felt like it wasn’t just entertaining.  Like, I learned a lot about why good writing is good and bad writing is bad.  Like, like, you sometimes, sometimes something just feels off and you’re like, well, it’s hard to quantify why I don’t like this, and there were a lot of things where it helped me go, oh, that’s it.  You were talking about, at one point in Rise of the Spider Goddess, they’re walking down a trail, and you were, you were saying that your entire world extends about one foot, you know, on either side of the trail that they’re, they’re walking on, and you contrast that to, to works where they, you know, they build this whole world that you might not see, but you kind of know that it’s there, which is certainly –

Jim:  You, you get the details, yeah.

Carrie:  – apparent in your other work, your, you know, your more developed work.  It was just a really brilliant observation, I thought, so yes, I, I –

Jim:  Thank you!

Carrie:  – highly recommend Rise of the Spider Goddess to people.

Jim:  Yeah, that, that was meant to do two things:  it was meant to (a) maybe help people understand writing a little better by sort of look at all these mistakes I made, and (b) make people laugh.  So if it did both of those then I, I am a very happy author.

Carrie:  Well, it’s also very encouraging, ‘cause I think we have sort of a myth in our society that artistic people are born with genius, and they –

Jim:  Oh, yes.

Carrie:  – they sit down, and, man, they spit out, their very first book is brilliant.

Sarah:  They hardly had to work at all, it just [snaps fingers] poured out of them in a matter of hours.

Carrie:  Poured out of them!  And so, you know, your, I, I feel like in, in, in releasing that and discussing the process of it and how far you’ve come, you know, I feel like that was, it was very encouraging.  And, and, and also very, you know, maybe to some people discouraging, but in a way they would need to hear, I think, that this is a process, and the first –

Jim:  Yeah.

Carrie:  – you do is probably not going to be super genius, but you craft it.  You work at it, you work at it, you work at it, and you get better over time, and that’s a good thing!

Jim:  And also, I mean, look, I sat down, I started out writing this crap.  Twenty years later I’ve got twelve books out that are actually, you know, people tell me, pretty good.  If I can go from Spider Goddess to where I’m at now, that’s got to be hopeful.  That’s, that’s got to be a good sign for somebody.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I think so.  Anything that can sort of make the idea of creation, of creating something accessible, like, everybody can create, everyone can do this, you can do this –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – just keep working.

Jim:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It doesn’t show up perfect the first time; you know what I mean?

Carrie:  Yeah.

Jim:  It’s not going to show up perfect after twenty years, either, but –

Sarah:  Nope.

Jim:  – do it and have fun and get better, and if you love it, keep doing it.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  Thank you to Jim and to Carrie for taking the time to hang out with me.  Future podcasts will include me talking about romance, because that’s what we do here.  I have an interview with Sassy Outwater coming up, and I have other interviews scheduled, but if you have suggestions or ideas or you have a question or if you would like me to pursue an interview with somebody you’d like to learn more about, please email me at [email protected].

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater.  This is new stuff.  This is Treacherous Orchestra, and I’m pretty sure that’s one of the best band names that I’ve heard in a while.  So, Treacherous Orchestra:  this is from their album Grind, and this track is called “The Sly One.”  You can find it on Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you like to buy your music.

We do not have a sponsor for this episode, so this episode was sponsored by me and by Carrie’s dog Lucy, who you heard during the podcast, and by my dogs, who like to leave the room when I record, as opposed to my late cat Grace, who would hear my voice and come and talk on the podcast.  If you would like to sponsor it, and if you want to sponsor it and then, like, send me a clip of your dog barking, that’s totally fine!  You can email me at [email protected].  Podcast sponsorships and transcript sponsorships are available for the month of February 2015 – no!  2016!  You know I’m writing the wrong date on my checks still, right?  When I do write a check, yeah.  So it’s 2016 now – unless you work in publishing; then it’s already, like, 2019 – and youFL can email me at [email protected].

But in the meantime, on behalf of Jim and Carrie and me and all of the dogs, including Lucy, Buzz, and Zeb, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend!

[jumping music]