231. Horse-Mad Little Girls and Historical Romance: An Interview with Theresa Romain

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 231 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is author Theresa Romain.  We are going to talk about her current historical romance series, one which was inspired by The Toll-Gate by Georgette Heyer and the other that was inspired by, well, writing historical romances for all the horse-mad little girls who grew up to be romance readers.  I know there are at least nine or ten of you out there.  We also talk about what she’s reading, her very thorough knowledge of a specific silent film star, and the books that continue to inspire her writing.  Theresa also told me, and, and will mention in the beginning of this episode, that being on the podcast was apparently on her bucket list, so I’m really excited to share this episode with you because it was really fun to record.

I also want to tell you who’s sponsoring this episode, because it’s also pretty cool!  This episode is being sponsored by Kensington Publishing, and they would like you to know about All In by Simona Ahrnstedt.  As the first Swedish romance ever to be translated into and published in English, the bestselling novel All In by Simona Ahrnstedt is a refreshing twist on the billionaire playboy trope, exhibits strong female characters, a lovingly painted version of the idyllic Swedish summer, and an un-put-downable plot that will appeal to every romance reader.  Critically lauded by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Bookpage, Book Riot, In Touch, and best of all by this website, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books – I want y’all to know I do not write these.  This, this is all Kensington, so thank you, Kensington – All  In by Simona Ahrnstedt is now beautifully repackaged in a trade paperback just in time for Valentine’s Day as a perfect gift for a friend or, better yet, for yourself.  Now available wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com.

I love a sponsorship ad that encourages you to buy presents for yourself.  That is just awesome, so thank you, Kensington, for sponsoring this episode!

And while we’re on the subject of being nice, I have two compliments, and if you are wondering what is happening, I will explain in just a moment.

To Adam F.:  This may sound a little strange, but many people you know turn to you for advice and ideas because your brain is among the best brains ever.

And to Jason M.:  You make life more fun, and you make difficult things appear effortless and entertaining.  If you were a meme on the Internet, you would easily be the most popular and the one that caused the most laughter in inappropriate places.

Now if you’re wondering what am I doing, this is weird, we have a podcast Patreon, and if you are a new listener or you haven’t heard me mention this before, I’m going to tell you all about it!  If you got to patreon.com/SmartBitches, you can help support the show, keep the podcast awesomeness as awesome as it can possibly be, and help me support the show’s transcripting, transcriptioning?  Transcribing – that’s probably the right word – for all of the episodes that don’t yet have a transcript.  You can have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches, and I very much appreciate it that you do!

The music in this episode is provided by Sassy Outwater.  I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is, and I will have links to all of the books that we mention, plus links to the different places on the Internet that we talk about, all in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And now, without any further delay and with all of the heartfelt compliments, on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  I’m not sure if I told you this is audio only, ‘cause if I use video sometimes I get crappy audio quality, so if I forgot to tell you and you went and put mascara on, I’m really sorry.

Theresa Romain:  [Laughs] I did not, but I did put on my Reading Rainbow shirt, which seemed appropriate for, you know, talking about books.

Sarah:  You have a Reading Rainbow shirt?  That’s awesome!

Theresa:  I do!  I’ll send you a picture.  I got it – it’s the one thing I’ve ev-, ever bought from one of Twitters’ promoted tweets?  LeVar Burton was doing some kind of a special thing, and you know, you see LeVar Burton in your timeline, and you’re like, I’ll do whatever you say.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, I totally almost knocked him over with my purse and then had to chase him down and apologize, because it’s LeVar Burton!

Theresa:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Like –

Theresa:  And because it’s LeVar Burton, I bet he was totally cool with it and –

Sarah:  Oh, he was super – he’s the most chill person I’ve probably ever met.  I guess reading all of those books and also being on Star Trek just imbues you with a certain amount of chill.

Theresa:  I think that would do it, yeah.

Sarah:  Okay.  So here’s the only awkward part.

Theresa:  Okay.

Sarah:  If you would please introduce yourself and tell the people who will be listening who you are and what you do.

Theresa:  Okay, well, thank you for having me on the podcast, Sarah.  As I mentioned when you emailed me about this, this has been on my bucket list of really cool things to do, so, yay!  I’m really glad to be here!

Sarah:  I’m really honored to be on someone’s bucket list!  Thank you!

Theresa:  [Laughs] I’m Theresa Romain, and I write historical romances, mostly set during the Regency, and I have a Reading Rainbow shirt and a husband and a daughter and no pets, so I’m afraid we’re not going to hear any cute little animal noises during this podcast.

Sarah:  Well, you’ll hear some animal noises, but they’ll all be on my end.

Theresa:  Ooh!

Sarah:  We just, we just had a small amount of digging a hole in the carpet, which happens every time I start recording, and you know, if we’re really lucky the UPS guy will show up, maybe a squirrel will breach the perimeter, you never know, but all the animal noises, I’ve totally got that covered.

Theresa:  All right!

Sarah:  You have a new series going on right now, right?  You have a series in progress.

Theresa:  Yes.  I actually have two series that are in the works right now because I’m writing for two different publishers for –

Sarah:  Well, that’s fun!  It must be a little brain-heavy to manage two timelines and two sets of characters and two worlds in your brain at the same time.

Theresa:  Not to mention two sets of deadlines.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, those too!

Theresa:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So tell me about your serieseses.  Serieseseseseses.

Theresa:  Okay!  Well, the, the first one I’ll tell you about is the one with the next book coming out.  That’s called the Royal Rewards, and I got the idea reading Georgette Heyer’s The Toll-Gate, which has the theft of some coins that hadn’t been released into circulation, and so the people couldn’t spend them, but it was just a local affair, and so I thought, what if this thing really blew up?

Sarah:  Ooh.

Theresa:  So I pitched it to my editor as a Regency It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World where fifty thousand gold sovereigns were stolen from the Royal Mint, and everyone in England is looking for them in order to claim a reward, and if you find it, you know, if you find the coins before the day that they’re officially supposed to be released, then you are a hero to the country, and you get a bunch of money.  So that’s the world in which this series takes place, and the second book is called Passion Favors the Bold, and the characters are connected with those from the first book.  It’s the sister of the hero of the first book and the best friend of the hero of the first book, so what we have here is a best friend’s little sister romance.

Sarah:  Oh ho, oh, oh, oh, yes, I’m listening.

Theresa:  Yeah!  I had never written one of those before, and it’s been a really fun dynamic because you get to play with that sort of exasperation that people have with each other when they know each other really well –

Sarah:  Yes.

Theresa:  – but also this – [laughs] – this dawning attraction that they have as they come to see each other in new ways, like, wow!  Look how talented you are at scamming people.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’s always a useful skill, plus you have, you have the attention of, I know you really, really well, so I see through all your bull –

Theresa:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and I know when you’re being ridiculous and when you’re acting, but then when you start to become attracted to somebody, you see them, and you see parts of them that you didn’t know about, so it’s seeing all of us this new stuff in someone you know really, really well, which is in itself a, a, attention!

Theresa:  Yes.  Yes.  I love that in romance.  I mean, romance has got to be the most character-driven genre that there is, and that’s what I love about it –

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Theresa:  – ‘cause it’s like, as the, as the reader and as the writer, you’re getting to know these people as they’re getting to know each other, and so, you know, as I read or as I write I’m like, ooh, what are you going to do next?

Sarah:  [Laughs] So do you know sort of the general plot of the mystery of who stole what with coins, and then the characters develop as you write them?

Theresa:  When I get into a series, I usually know more about the characters than the plot in later books, because in the first book I’m establishing a lot of that, and the characters in later books are often present in the first book?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  In the case of this series, they were off-screen but communicating by letter, and so I knew what the dynamic between the hero and the heroine would be, and I don’t know if I should admit this, if my editor is listening, but basically I wrote the first book, and then I was like, okay, well, these’ll be the characters in the second book, and I’ll figure out later how they fit into the plot of the first one.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  So there are some overlapping events that I had to make sure that I included –

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  – in the second book because I’d written about them in the first book, and so I was sometimes cursing Past Theresa for –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  – making things so complicated for Present Theresa.

Sarah:  Yeah, that, I can imagine that happening when you have interconnected worlds and interconnected characters that are following a specific timeline.

Theresa:  Right, right.  I was literally writing down date, day of the week – you know, I had out my, my 1800s calendar –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  This is, this is so bad.  Like, what year does this take place?  1817.  So I had an 1817 calendar, and you know, you can find these wonderful things online that tell you phases of the moon at that particular date, and so if you need a full moon, all right then, you are going to be here –

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  – on June 21st, whatever.  It’s possible to be really specific, and I needed that for this particular book.

Sarah:  Right, ‘cause if you’re heisting and, and, and doing, you know, skullduggery and derring-do, you need to know how light it’s going to be and what chances there are of them being seen.

Theresa:  Right.  Or in real life, all of these gold sovereigns were released on, I want to say July 1st –

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  – 1817, and so in my imaginary world, they had to be found before then or the whole deal was off, because they could just be spent as regular coins.

Sarah:  Right, and they would have no special value.

Theresa:  Right, right.  They wouldn’t be obvious then as stolen goods, and so the reward would be called off, so that’s a very definite endpoint to the timeline that I had to keep in mind as I was writing.

Sarah:  So do you often align your stories and your historical worlds closely to the reality of the time, or as close as you can get it?

Theresa:  I definitely try not to do anything counter to the real life events.  Sometimes I have to fudge a little bit, like this famous person wouldn’t have been present at such and such a party, but everybody recognizes the name of the Prince Regent, for example, so –

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  – I’ll use it, but as far as historical events, I think it’s actually really helpful to me as a writer to use those as a jumping-off point for plot.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Theresa:  Like, in my most recent novella I published, it was called My Scandalous Duke, and it takes place in 1801, just after Ireland was unified with Great Britain, so for the first time we have a United Kingdom.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  That is part of the plot because some people are reacting to it in very different ways.  Politics is politics, no matter the century.

Sarah:  It is, isn’t it?

Theresa:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And it’s, and it’s interesting because as a historical writer, you’re going to write both history and fantasy in a, in a way.  You’re making stuff up, but you’re holding it very close to a specific set of rules in a specific society, and with, with the plots that you’re working with, specific dates, and then you have to build on top of that.

Theresa:  Yes, yes, exactly.  But first and foremost is, is the characters, and just like in any other kind of romance.  If you don’t want to spend time with these people, then the deal’s off, so I have to find a way to make the characters historically accurate and also delightful –

Sarah:  Yes.

Theresa:  – to keep turning the pages.

Sarah:  You also write a series that is, I think, romance for any little girl who was horse-mad who grew up to be a romance reader?

Theresa:  [Laughs] That would be me!

Sarah:  Yes!  [Laughs] And many other people; I know Redheadedgirl’s a huge fan of this series.  What inspired you to write horse romances?  Because you were a horse-mad little girl who grew up to be a romance writer?

Theresa:  Yeah? 

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  In, in hindsight, it seems like it should be that, and it should be so obvious, but it was actually a suggestion from my agent.  We were talking about ideas for a new series, and I think I had talked about horses, and I had this post up on my blog from a long time ago about, just details about horses that might turn up in romance novels, and –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  – somehow she put the pieces together and said, you know, this could be really fun for you, and she –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  – she was right!  Horse racing is not something that I knew anything about, at least in 1800s England.

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  If you’ve read the Black Stallion books, which I’m sure Redheadedgirl has done, and a lot of other horse-mad little girls, then you get a taste of how it was in the middle of the twentieth century in the US, but it was completely different in England, and they still have different traditions, and so I still had to do a lot of research, and one thing that was a really cool help to the research was looking at paintings –

Sarah:  Oh!

Theresa:  – that had been done, because they’ll show you how jockeys sat at the time and what their silks looked like.  They show you what the saddle looked like.  The horses all had docked tails.  The railing of the race course looks like this.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  So using art –

Dog:  Woof.

Theresa:  – from the time was really helpful to give me a visual –

Dog:  Bark!

Theresa:  – sense of what it might have looked like.

Sarah:  One of my dogs highly, has many suggestions about what the dogs –

Theresa:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – of the, of the, of the series should look like.  Hush!  My gosh!  He’s lying –

Theresa:  No.

Sarah:  – he’s lying in a sunbeam after having dug a hole in the carpet, but now he’s barking.  Can you be quiet now?  Thank you.  So when you started writing this, was there, like, a whole part of you that was like, yes!  This is the best thing ever!?

Theresa:  It was like rediscovering that horse-crazy little girl.  I have a –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  – I still have all of my Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry books –

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  – from when I was a kid, and so I got them out of my office closet and was just going through them like, oh!  I loved these so much!  And I have this huge coffee table book called The Noble Horse that some amazing relative gave to me when I was probably eight or nine years old.  It had to be my grandparents, because who else would indulge an eight- or nine-year-old kid with a coffee table book about horses?

Sarah:  Yeah, that’s, that’s totally a grandparents gift.

Theresa:  [Laughs] And so I still have that too, and I could look through it, like, just for reference to what is the term for this particular joint?  You know, the technical stuff that I didn’t necessarily remember as much as [sings] horsies!

Sarah:  [Laughs] All under one, like, large heading:  HORSIES.

Theresa:  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So tell me about that series.  How did you translate the horse-mad coffee-table-book-loving little girl into a romance series?

Theresa:  That series is called Romance of the Turf, and it starts with a novella in which the heroine is a grown-up horse-mad little girl.  The ongoing thread through the series is the Chandler family, which has four grown offspring, so it’s their love stories, and the youngest sibling, Hannah Chandler, is probably the most horse-crazy of all of them.  She’s a wonderful rider.  She knows just a lot about how to treat horses, calm horses.  She knows a lot about the race course, even though of course she can’t be a part of races herself –

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  – because she’s a woman.  Although there, there was a woman jockey during the Regency, and I probably shouldn’t have said that, because now I won’t even be able to remember her name.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  But there was one; it wasn’t a completely closed world.  But mostly.  You know, mostly it –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Theresa:  – it was a man’s thing, and so she did whatever she could to advance her family’s interest in the racing world while still being a proper young lady.

Sarah:  Of course.  So with, when you were writing this series, you have the typical historical tension of men are allowed in these areas, and women are not permitted in these areas.  Was it considered unladylike for her to be super interested in horse racing?  Is that very much an inappropriate boundary, or is that sort of a, there’s not a lot of women around here and we don’t really know what to do with you, so maybe you should leave kind of boundary?

Theresa:  No, I don’t think it would have been historically inaccurate or, or particularly scandalous for a woman to be interested in horse racing.

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  I mean, horse, horses were the cars and the dogs of the time.  Like, they were –

Sarah:  Yes!  [Laughs]

Theresa:  – your car, your pet, your, your companion, and your amusement, and so everybody was around horses all the time, and everybody went to see the races.  You know, that wasn’t just limited to one social class.  You had different areas of the track where you could get a more expensive ticket or where you just crowded in there with the other people who had the cheap seats, so to speak, but it was very much a big social event, like we would think of a, a music festival today.

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  It was like, like Regency Woodstock, but over and over again.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Regency Lilith Fair with horses?  Only mostly men?

Theresa:  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs] No, no, no!  Regency Coachella!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Somebody listening right now is like, I want to read that series.  Has someone written that series?  I would like to read that series.

[Laughter]

Theresa:  I would read that series!

Sarah:  Right?  Seriously.  So are, when is the next book in that series coming out?

Theresa:  The next one will be out this July, and that is the second novel in the series.  It’s called Scandalous Ever After, and it tells the story of the second oldest sibling, who is a twin, a fraternal twin to the oldest one.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  They’re brother and sister, and so they have that delightful butting of heads near the beginning of this book, as the heroine, who’s a widow whose husband left her with fabulous debt in Ireland on their Irish estate, she comes home to Newmarket to try to get some help from her family, and while she’s there she meets her late husband’s best friend, of whom she’s seen zilch –

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  – since the day he died.

Sarah:  Right.  So he’s kind of a crappy friend.  Or she thinks he is.

Theresa:  So she thinks, but at the same time, she’s really glad to see him because when you had a beloved, familiar face for so long, there’s a part of you that’s going to be like, oh, it’s you!

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  Hooray!  And then you remember that you’re supposed to be mad.

Sarah:  Right.  It’s a, it’s a strange mix of longing for society and longing for connection but also wanting to –

Theresa:  Punch him.

Sarah:  Right, and wanting to punch him hard.

Theresa:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  In sensitive places.

Theresa:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So, have you always wanted to write historical romance?

Theresa:  No!  It was, looking back it, it was not inevitable at all.  You know how some kids write stories just for fun, like, I made a book, mommy!  And the mom has to staple the pages together and all that.

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  My sister made so many of those books, and so, she’s not quite two years older than me –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  – and so, to me she was perfect, and I wanted to do everything she did, so I would get paper, and then I’d stare at it like, I don’t know what to write about, and then I’d usually wind up drawing horses all over it and not having a story at all.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  So it really, it, it surprised me how much I loved writing when I was in history grad school, and I was writing so much nonfiction.  I actually turned my master’s thesis into a nonfiction book, and, and –

Sarah:  Oh, cool!

Theresa:  Yeah!  So my first book was nonfiction.  It’s a biography of a silent film actress.

Sarah:  Ooh, what’s it called?

Theresa:  It’s called Margarita Fischer: A Biography of the Silent Film Star.

Sarah:  That’s really cool!

Theresa:  Oh, thanks!  It was a lot of fun.  That was one of those serendipity situations where I was in the Special Collections department of my university library, and I did an internship there, and of course the thing everybody asks you when you’re a grad student is, what are you doing your thesis on?

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  And my answer was always, I don’t know!  I don’t quite have to figure that out yet, do I?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  But ideally, I’d love to do something with silent film because I’m just fascinated by it, and looking back, I, I enjoyed it as entertainment, but I also enjoyed it as a historical document.  There’s a part of me that could, you know, watch a film made in 1925 and think, look at the street then!  Look at what people were wearing in 1925.  Look what movie directors wanted people to think was fashionable.

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  The, the social aspects of it were so interesting to me, and so it happened that the silent film star Margarita Fischer had deposited her papers with the Special Collections department, and no one had worked with them before.  So –

Sarah:  Oh ho!

Theresa:  I know!  I just, I stepped right into that, and it was wonderful, and when I was done writing that book, I really missed writing, and this is when my husband – if he was here, he would give me the one-eyebrow-up look, like, this person is so type A, because you can’t just come home from work and watch episodes House until bedtime, right?  No, no, no.  You have to be working on some big project.

Sarah:  Right.

Theresa:  So we did actually then have our daughter, which is a pretty big project, but I missed writing, and I didn’t have another nonfiction idea in mind, so I thought, well, historical romance is what I always read for fun.  I wonder if I could write one of those, because I love history.

Sarah:  And details.

Theresa:  I love researching – yeah – and before I was in grad school I got degrees in psychology and English, so it’s like, hello, digging into character and playing with language, these are all things that I love.  That being said, my first attempt at writing a historical romance probably read like an academic nonfiction book.  It’s definitely not the same kind of writing, and I think I’m not alone among writers in feeling like I always could be improving at the kind of writing that I do and that I want to do.

Sarah:  Oh, I totally understand that.  I tried to write a historical romance a very long time ago about steeplechase horse racing.

Theresa:  No kidding!

Sarah:  Yeah!  Well, I, I was actually never –

Theresa:  Do you still have it?

Sarah:  Do I still have it?

Theresa:  Yeah!

Sarah:  Probably somewhere, like, three hard drives ago.  I, I – what I remember was – gosh, this was waaay the hell back when I was thinking I – I joined RWA thinking I was going to be a romance writer, and then found that my nonfiction-writing muscles are much better, and my reviewing muscles are much stronger than my fiction-writing muscles, ‘cause I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but writing fiction’s like really fucking hard?  I don’t know if you’re aware.

Theresa:  It’s completely different from writing nonfiction.

Sarah:  It’s very different.  But I wanted to write a romance.  I was never horse-mad, but I was friends with all the horse-mad people in elementary school, so that kind of rubbed off.

Theresa:  [Laughs] Uh-huh.

Sarah:  I had this one friend who was really good at drawing horses, and I could have watched her draw hooves and ankles and horse ears for, like, days, she was so good at it, and this is not a skill I have.  But I wanted to write one about how steeplechase – if I’m remembering my history correctly, which I’m probably not – was replacing foxhunting, because foxhunting was often pretty messy and cruel when the fox actually got caught?  It was kind of gross?  I imagined this character having some sort of moral objection to foxhunting, because, ew, gross, dead animal parts everywhere, and engaging with steeplechasing which was, at the time – if, again, if I’m remembering correctly – literally racing from one, one steeple to the next visible steeple –

Theresa:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – to see who could get there first.  And it was terrible, and I pr-, if I dug it up I would probably cringe.  Like, it’s not even enjoyable in a bad way; it’s just going to be bad.  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Ohhh.

Sarah:  But, you know, I think that, I think that you’re right.  I always think about improving my own writing, and I’m always trying to think of what’s the next thing that I can do that is both interesting and engaging and helps connect romance readers to each other, ‘cause that’s, like, my job; that’s how I see my job.  It –

Theresa:  Yeah!

Sarah:  It, you’re never fully satisfied with what you can write, and it’s, it is both really great and really frustrating.  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Yes.  Yes.  And so, as I go through each book, well, you know, you’ve written a book, and so you know there are all these different stages, like, you get it back from the editor with revisions, and then –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  – you have copyedits –

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  – and if, if it’s coming out in print, then you have page proofs as well –

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  – and at each stage I read through, and I’m like, correct, correct –

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  – clumsy, clumsy, and I curse Past Theresa again for letting –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  – fatal stupidities get through into the text.  They probably bother me more than anyone else, at least I hope so – [laughs] – but then once the book is through the page proof stage, I can never read it again, because I don’t have the chance to change it anymore?

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  And so I just don’t even want to know.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, there’re a couple errors in, in the books that I’ve published where I’m like, I, I just want to fix this one thing.  Like – [laughs] – I joke about going to somebody’s house like, hi!  Listen, you don’t know me.  I, I know you brought, bought my book.  Can I have, like, two minutes with it?  I just have a pen; I want to correct something real quick.  I’ll be out of your hair in thirty seconds.

Theresa:  You are so funny!  And you know, I have, I have your books, your two nonfiction ones.

Sarah:  Oh, thank you!

Theresa:  Well, I first met you in person at RWA in 2014, and I had brought Beyond Heaving Bosoms so you could sign it for me.

Sarah:  Yes, I do remember.

Theresa:  And I gave you, like, seventy-five hugs.  Apologies.  It was like –

Sarah:  You don’t have to apologize!  It’s totally fine!  [Laughs]

Theresa:  I, it was just so great to meet you!

Sarah:  Well, thank you!  I, I still have that desire to correct errors, though.  [Laughs] It’s not going away!

Theresa:  I, I get it.  I get it.  And, and being on the other side, I can say that reading the books, I never notice it, so.

Sarah:  Yep.  Oh, yeah, you’re only going to notice your own errors.  If so-, if, if, if someone notices an error that I hadn’t noticed, I’m like, oh, well, clearly that error was meant to be, ‘cause my brain missed it entirely, but the ones I know about and can’t correct, those’ll make you nuts.

Theresa:  Yep.  Yep.

Sarah:  So, what was the first thing that you wrote that was fiction after writing nonfiction, and are you going to, are you going to write historical romance about silent film stars?

Theresa:  Uh –

Sarah:  Please?  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Like, I will never say never, because I’d love to.  It’s not what I’m under contract for right now, but I’m seeing more and more historical fiction set during the Teens and the Jazz Age, and I love it.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, me too.

Theresa:  That was a time of such quick social change.  I think you can have some fascinating characters.  You can have more diversity of characters than we usually see in Regency England.  Not that we couldn’t see them in Regency England, but, like, I’m reading right now Alyssa Cole’s novella in the Daughters of a Nation anthology?  And it –

Sarah:  Oh, that novella’s so good!

Theresa:  Ahhh!  I, I started it late last night, which was foolish, because I should know that if you start reading something by Alyssa Cole, you are going to be making a, a Bad Book Decision?  Is that the book club?  The Bad – I, I am now a member, again, of the Bad Decisions Book Club.

Sarah:  Bad Decisions Book Club; I’m in that club too.

Theresa:  Yeah.  But it’s set in Harlem in 1917, and the heroine owns a jazz club, and the hero shows up as her dishwasher.  He’s an immigrant from India who has just, you know, worked his way around the world doing one thing or another in pursuit of social justice, and so even at this point in the novella when they’re kind of hating each other ‘cause they don’t trust each other, you can see that they have the same desire to change their world, really.  You know, no big deal, change the world.  But I love seeing that, because I haven’t read a story like that before, and of course if Alyssa Cole’s writing it, it’s going to be beautiful, and the characters are going to seem real, and you want to spend more and more time with them, and you wish it wasn’t a novella.

Sarah:  Yep, been there, been there.  So, what have – where’s my questions?  Where’d my questions go?  Oh, okay.

Theresa:  Ask me what was the, what happened to that first historical romance?

Sarah:  Yes, and please write silent film stars.

Theresa:  [Laughs] I would love to, and I hope that it will be able to happen someday, because I have some ideas that I think would be really fun to write, and research.  You know, the research is so fun, because you get to look at all of these wonderful historical documents, some of which were the pop culture of the time, so watching silent movies as research, who wouldn’t love that?

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, totally.  And –

Theresa:  Actually, I can tell you who wouldn’t love that:  my husband wouldn’t love that.

[Laughter]

Theresa:  It’s not his thing.

Sarah:  Not his thing?  Has he read –

Theresa:  But –

Sarah:  – has he read any of your books?

Theresa:  Yes!  He is one of my first readers always –

Sarah:  Aw!

Theresa:  – because he can give me the man perspective.  Like, I have a critique partner who is also a writer, and so she, when she reads my chapters she tells me, well, I’m not following this, or this story element is working for me, and I, I get how the characters are progressing toward the black moment, etc., etc., and then when my husband reads it, he can be like, a man would never say that.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  I’m, I’m not sure where this plot point is going – ‘cause he doesn’t read other romance, really, but he has read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, so he has a good feel for how genre fiction should keep you engrossed and keep pulling you along –

Sarah:  Yes.

Theresa:  – and so if I lose him as a reader, then I know there’s something I need to change.

Sarah:  Right, and there’re plot differences that you need to figure out, or – because the, a lot of the time the beats are very similar.

Theresa:  Yes.

Sarah:  That things change and develop at a similar rhythm in most genre fiction, and, and even if, you know, fantasy or sci-fi isn’t my thing, if I read one I expect the turns at specific points.

Theresa:  Right, right.  You’re expecting some kind of a, an emotional or literal journey, and –

Sarah:  Exactly.

Theresa:  Characters change, and then everything falls apart near the end, and then they figure it out.

Sarah:  Exactly, exactly, yes.  That, it, it, it, there’s a lot of overlap, which, which is why I always get frustrated when, when a, a reader or, or a writer of another genre trashes one of the other areas of genre fiction.  I’m like, you, you, you’re just, why, why would you hate on your cousin like that?  Like, what, come on.  Stop.

Theresa:  What a good way to put it!  Yeah!

Sarah:  Like, why, why are you dissing your family?  Don’t you know that’s a bad idea?  It’s kind of a bad idea.  I mean –

Theresa:  Come on, mystery, where would you be without the dead bodies and the detective?

Sarah:  Right?  Legit.

Theresa:  Come on, horror, where would you be without the blood?  Yeah.  Yeah, we are all cousins.

Sarah:  We are very, we, we are definitely cousins.  So, what are the books that you most admire as a writer?  Which are the books that you’re, that you sort of look at and go, oh, I wish I could write something like that; that’s incredible?

Theresa:  Oh, my goodness.  I remember the first time that happened to me.  Well, the first time that happened to me as a reader, just totally falling in love with a book, with a romance, was Romancing Mr. Bridgerton by Julia Quinn.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s a lovely book.

Theresa:  It’s so lovely, and I didn’t know where it fit into the Bridgerton series, so that’s the book where you find out who Lady Whistledown is.

Sarah:  Well, that was starting with a spoiler, eh?  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Surprise!  But –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  – just, I, I had read some romances just idly before?  But that was the one that hooked me, because I saw how real the characters could seem and, and just how real life their problems could be.  You know, who hasn’t felt like they don’t fit in, or who hasn’t felt like they can’t live up to an older relative’s expectations?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.  Totally.

Theresa:  So it was just, is just so relatable, so then it was, I was gone.  Like, historical romance, be my BFF.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  And then another author who did that to me was Courtney Milan.  I met her on the Eloisa James/Julia Quinn bulletin board that they had in the late oughts.

Sarah:  That was a long time ago!

Theresa:  Whatever years ago.

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh.

Theresa:  Yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  That was a long time ago!

Theresa:  They closed it in 2010, and I, I want to say Courtney’s first book came out in October of ’09, and it was a novella in a collection with Mary Balogh and Nicola Cornick?

Sarah:  Yes, I remember the cover.  It was a woman standing in a dress holding a wreath behind her back.

Theresa:  Yeah!

Sarah:  Yeah, I remember the cover very clearly, no idea why, but I have seen that same stock image used, like, six different times with five different color dresses, so I remember it really well?  Anyway.  Sarah’s random brain details aside, go on!

Theresa:  It’s a good for holiday historical romance.

Sarah:  Totally.

Theresa:  That was another one that just, it really went beyond what I was expecting?  You know, I ex-, I expected to enjoy the story.  I did not expect to have my ass emotionally kicked all over the world.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Oh, that was, that was articulate.  But you know, it, it was lower class characters, or I should say working class.  Like, these are people who are just getting by, they’re working hard, and their world seems so real, but the problems that they had to overcome were really different from, I’m a duke who can’t figure out where to put all my gold kind of problem.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I’m a duke; I can’t figure out where to put all my gold!  There’s a lot of those running around!

Theresa:  [Laughs] Yeah.

Sarah:  Poor dukes.

Theresa:  I know!  Duke problems, man!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  It’s tough!  Tough to be a duke.

Sarah:  It is, it’s so difficult.  Poor things.  So those are the books that you look at and you’re like, okay, this is incredible.  If I could write like this, it would be amazing.

Theresa:  Yes.  And then another one that got me like that was – and I shouldn’t say it like, pretty much everything Courtney Milan has written since, I just want to roll around in it.  You know –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  – and –

Sarah:  I know that exact feeling!  I’m reading a book right now, last night I was like, could I maybe be excused from parenting, cleaning, bathing, and eating for a little while, ‘cause I just want to roll around in this book.  [Laughs]

Theresa:  What is it?  Can you say?

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, totally!  It’s a, I have a, I have a legit ARC and everything.  It’s coming out in February, so it’s not even that far away.  So I really loved Lucy Parker’s –

Theresa:  Act Like It!

Sarah:  – Act Like It?  So –

Theresa:  And you have her second book?

Sarah:  I do!

Theresa:  Ohhh!

Sarah:  It’s called Pretty Face.

Theresa:  I have it on pre-order, and I want it so much.

Sarah:  It’s so good, so far.  It, it deals with a lot of the same sort of familiar things as Act Like It, where you have two people who have an impression of one another and then discover the reality, but the tension between the hero and heroine is really intense.  The heroine is sort of, imagine Marilyn Monroe, but in the twenty-first century, and extremely talented, cast in a sort of, a soap opera evening prime-time program where she’s a floozy who sleeps with everyone’s husband and is the, or sort of the sexual antagonist of the show, and so everyone assumes that she is exactly the same.  Her father is a famous person; her stepmother is a famous person; she’s the daughter of the woman that her father had an affair with while he was married to the woman he’s still married with, so she has this family that isn’t really very supportive?  She’s actually very smart and very talented, but she’s been sort of typecast by this role she’s playing on this, on this program, and the hero is a theatre director and owner of a, of a famous theatre that he’s inherited and is trying to both restore and put a new play on at the same time.  He’s older than she is.  He takes a chance on hiring her for a play that is all about three queens, so it’s three women leading the play.

Theresa:  Ok.

Sarah:  And so she works for him; he’s older than she is; she is already accused of being the type of person who sleeps around, even though she’s not –

Theresa:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and her mother is a famous, pretty famous entertainer who uses her sexual relationships to get ahead professionally, and a lot of people do, so she’s caught herself in the exact same situation she swore she would never get into?  And is at the same time incredibly drawn to this person, and it’s like, okay, you know how there’s romantic tension that’s based on an instantaneous sort of recognition?

Theresa:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, I recognize this person as someone who is perfect for me?  And there’re all these reasons why they should not and cannot interact together, and yet they have a really hard time – and it’s not like they want to tear each others’ clothes off.  They just want to be close together.  Like, it’s not even super, super sexual tension.  It’s just they’re really drawn to each other in a powerful way, and there’re all of these obstacles in front of them, and there’s also really good grovel!  Such good grovel!  Oh, my God!  Oh, it’s so good!

 

Theresa: I love a good grovel.

Sarah:  Just such good tension and romance, and I haven’t finished it yet, so if it holds up to the end I’m going to be a really happy person.  Plus it’s, it’s that world where you’re in the London theatre community, so you’re –

Theresa:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – you’re in that world while you read the book.  When they start working in the actual theatre it’s going to be awesome!  I’m super excited.  So, so Courtney Milan writes the books that you want to roll around in.

Theresa:  Yes.  And Sherry Thomas.  When I read Not Quite a Husband, it just gutted me, and I made my husband read that one because it’s sort of like an adventure novel.

Sarah:  It is!

Theresa:  It just happens to have all this really sexy stuff in it, so, you know, what man is going to argue with that?

Sarah:  Right?

Theresa:  And he loved it!  He loved it!

Sarah:  So here’s the question, the one you were dreading!  Here it comes!

Theresa:  Okay.

Sarah:  What are you reading that you recommend?

Theresa:  [Laughs] All right, I’m so glad I wrote stuff down!  Well, I already mentioned that I’m reading Daughters of a Nation.  Alyssa Cole’s novella is the last one, but I started with it because I love her.  But I’m going to read all of the other ones because I just, I want to.  I think it’s, it’s such a cool idea for an anthology.  Something else that I just finished reading is a nonfiction book called Grit –

Sarah:  Ooh!

Theresa:  – by Angela Duckworth, and it’s about, she’s calling the combination of having passion and persistence grit.  Like, you’re going to stick with it, even if it’s difficult, because it really is meaningful to you, and so it’s a book about just how we see that in real life, how you can develop it if you choose to from the inside out, or how you can use people around you, people who are, you know, really skilled or really dedicated to a certain cause, use the gritty resources around you to help you develop it in yourself more.  And I, I think I was mostly interested in it as a parent because my daughter just did her school spelling bee.  She won her classroom spelling bee, and so then she was going to be in the school spelling bee, and she really wanted to do well, so she had this list of hundreds of words –

Sarah:  Oh!

Theresa:  – she wanted to study, except she didn’t sometimes want to study, and so we would say, well, how important is it to you to do well in the spelling bee?

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  I really want to do well!  Okay.  Well, the person who wins the spelling bee is going to be the person who studied the most, because nobody knows all these words without studying.  And so that was one example where I think she really did show some grit, because she, she studied and studied, and she wound up coming in third in her school.

Sarah:  That’s fantastic!  Way to go!

Theresa:  Yeah!  I mean, she’s just a third-grader, and she was up against these big fifth-graders, so she did well because she had studied hard, and so I probably drove that point home with no subtlety at all.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Like, look what you did with all your hard work!  Because she’s, she’s a really imaginative kid.  I, I won’t say flaky, but, you know, kind of like, squirrel!  Idea!

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  So it’ll be fun, and so just how I can help her stick with things more –

Sarah:  Yes.

Theresa:  – and play.  Probably, I noticed that in her because I, I have that quality too, where I can be easily distracted – [laughs] – so I made a lot of notes in that book.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Not in the book.  I took a lot of notes.  It’s a library book; I didn’t write in the library book.  I just, I took a lot of notes.

Sarah:  Oh, I do that.  I know exactly what you mean.  I have two children, one in middle school, one in elementary school, and they’re both taking musical instruments, but the older you get, the more often you have musical instruments, so my older son has band five days a week.  So he has band and then practice every day, and he’s just, it’s just sort of a thing that he does every day, but because he practices for fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes every day, he’s developing muscle memory, so he remembers what his body has to do to make the certain notes in the right order, and he’s motivated by sounding good, and then he starts playing stuff by ear because he’s figured out, you know, these two notes are also in the Star Wars theme!  Let me figure out the rest of it.

Theresa:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  So he’s really good at it, but my younger son has music once a week and is supposed to practice every day.  He’s most inspired by competing with his brother, not by the fact that by – [laughs] – when you practice every day your teacher is impressed with your progress, but I’ve had to point out to both of them, if you want to sound better on the instrument, you have to put a little bit of effort in every day.  You can’t just show up one day and then learn all of the things you need to know about this instrument.  That’s not how playing an instrument works.  You don’t just show up, figure it all out, and you’re done.  You have to do a little bit every day, and that, that really does require determination and passion about something.

Theresa:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And persistence.

Theresa:  Yeah.  I’m, I’m guessing they like playing the instruments, because if you just plain old don’t enjoy it, then –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, you’re not going to want to do it.

Theresa:  Right, right.  You’re not going to have that grittiness.

Sarah:  So, anyway, back to you, Rambling Sarah.  Books that you’re reading.  Any others that you want to mention?

Theresa:  One that I read a little, a little while back, but I do want to mention it, because I loved it, was So For Real by Rebekah Weatherspoon, and I, I found her writing through DABWAHA.

Sarah:  Yep.

Theresa:  ‘Cause her, the first novella in that novella trilogy was a novella finalist –

Sarah:  Yes.

Theresa:  – and the cover is so beautiful, it’s got candy on it, and I have –

Sarah:  Yeah, who doesn’t want to pick that up, right?  It’s a big-ass lollipop!  [Laughs]

Theresa:  Right!  And the second one has what looks like a sundae made of cotton candy.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Theresa:  It just, I, I want it!  But the characters are so, they’re so funny, and they’re so good to each other.  Like, these are people who really want an adult relationship, and whenever something comes up, they figure it out, and it’s just delightful to read.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Theresa:  I love, I loved reading about those people, and of course it’s, it’s very sexy too.  So you see them figuring stuff out, and then they have all this hot sex, and it’s like, wow!  Look at you guys!  What a cool relationship.

Sarah:  [Laughs] And it’s a, it’s a, it’s an honesty and a frankness, too.

Theresa:  Yes.  Yes.

Sarah:  They’re, they’re very up-front about a lot of things that I think in, in other narratives are often coded or not discussed frankly, and I liked it because that’s often how I talk with people about things that generally people don’t discuss.  This is, I think this actually happens a lot with romance writers and readers.  Because we’re constantly reading about emotions and intimacy and sexuality, we just talk about those things, whereas, like, I’ll be talking to other people, and I’ll think, oh, I have to watch what I say; these aren’t romance people.

Theresa:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Can’t talk about throbbing and heaving and things like that here.  Not even as a joke.

Theresa:  [Laughs] Whereas to us, there’s, there’s no such thing as Not Safe For Work.

Sarah:  Right?  Everything’s Not Safe For Work, so everything is Safe For Work.  [Laughs]

Theresa:  There you go.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I want to thank Theresa Romain for hanging out with me, and I hope you enjoyed our conversation.

I also want to thank Kensington, because they have something they would like me to tell you, and I’m going to tell you right now!  As the first Swedish romance ever to be translated into and published in English, the bestselling novel All In by Simona Ahrnstedt is a refreshing twist on the billionaire playboy trope, exhibits strong female characters, a lovingly painted vision of the idyllic Swedish summer, and un-put-downable plot that will appeal to every romance reader.  Critically lauded by – are you ready? – Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Bookpage, Book Riot, In Touch, and best of all, by this website, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books – thank you, Kensington! – All In by Simona Ahrnstedt is now  beautifully repackaged in trade paperback just in time for Valentine’s Day as a perfect gift for a friend, or better yet, for yourself!  Now available wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com.

Now, if you head on over to the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, you will not only see this book and the pretty new cover, but you’ll also see links to all the books we talked about in this episode, and if you are an iTune, or an iTunie, i-, iTunes user?  I think there needs to be a good name for that.  If you are an iUser – not that you use the letter I, but that you actually use the Apple store – we have an iTunes page.  iTunes.com/DBSA.  We’ve got old episodes, new episodes, all the books we link to or talk about, and a pretty cool individual archive that shows you links to everything in the iUniverse, should you be an iUser.  iBooks/Tunes user.  There’s a name for that, right?  I, it’s, like, right on the edge of my brain.  Anyway, iTunes.com/DBSA.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater.  This is “Room 215” by Peatbog Faeries from their album Dust.  You can find all things Peatbog at their website, at Amazon, and on iTunes!

I also want to make sure to mention again our Patreon campaign:  patreon.com/SmartBitches.  For pledges of as little as a dollar or three dollars a month, you can help make an enormous difference supporting the show, and there are different rewards for different pledges that are kind of fun, too!  So please, check it out.  patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Next week I will have a long interview that is super fun with guests that we’ve featured before, and future episodes will be me, probably a lot of other people talking about romance, ‘cause that’s what we do here!  It’s fun!

But on behalf of me, all of the animals, Theresa Romain, and all of us here, we wish you the very best reading.  Have a great weekend.

[racy music]