Tamara Lush is an AP reporter, a longtime journalist, a romance author, and a recent recipient of the Amtrak writer’s residency! She traveled for over two weeks from Orlando to San Francisco by way of New York and Chicago, seeing much of the country while writing and meeting a ton of people. We talk about her work as a reporter, her decision to start writing romance, and about the people, places, and experiences she had as part of her writer’s residency. We talk about how journalism prepared her in part for the challenge of writing contemporary erotic romance, and what she’s working on, plus, as always, we find out what books she’s been reading.
A special note! Between March 15 – April 1 2017, Tamara Lush’s book Tell Me a Story will be on sale!
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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
During this episode we also discussed:
- The Amtrak Writer in Residence program
- The New York Post article about Tamara on the first part of her journey
- The continued adventures of “Florida Man.”
And you can find Tamara Lush on her website, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook.
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This Episode's Music
Our music in each episode is provided by Sassy Outwater, who is most excellent.
This podcast features a song called “Bunny for Breakfast,” and it’s by Peatbog Faeries from their CD Dust. You can find them at their website, at Amazon, or at iTunes.
Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 238 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Thank you for joining me today! I have an interview with author Tamara Lush, who was a recent Amtrak writing fellow. She’s also an AP reporter and a long-time journalist and a romance author, but when she was the recipient of the Amtrak writers’ residency, she went from Orlando to San Francisco by way of New York and Chicago on the train, so we talk about that, and we talk about the people she met, the experiences she had. We also talk about her work as a reporter, her decision to start writing romance, and the things that romance and journalism have in common. We talk about how journalism prepared her in part for the challenge of writing contemporary erotic romance, and we talk about what she’s working on, and, as always, we find out what she’s reading.
A special note: if you are listening to this and it is between March 15th and April 1st, 2017, then her book, Tell Me a Story, is on sale, and you can find it online where all of the fine books are sold, plus I’ll have links to it in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast!
I have a compliment to give for this episode too, which is really fun?
For Elena B. – I hope you’re listening: I don’t know if you know this, but there is a part of your smile that excels at making people laugh, and the way that you grin makes people feel so comfortable and welcome.
And if you’re wondering what that is, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. If you are a fan of the show, you can support us with as little as a dollar a month pledges to help me upgrade equipment and commission transcripts for all the episodes that don’t have one yet. If you have had a look or you are already a Patreon, thank you very, very much.
And if you’re looking for more information about the podcast, you can find us at iTunes.com/DBSA, if you are an iTunes, iBooks, and iDevice user. I’m one of those weird people who’s Apple Everything but my phone. I have Apple computers, and then I have an Android, but this is a whole other story. Anyway.
The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the show as to who this is and where you can find this fine, fine, funky music.
And of course I will have information about all of the books we talk about, plus links to the writers’ residency so you can learn more about it if you are interested in maybe applying yourself, and Tamara says that you should.
And now, without any further delay, on with the podcast!
[music]
Tamara Lush: I’m Tamara Lush, and by day I’m a correspondent with the Associated Press, and by night I’m a romance writer.
Sarah: We like both of those things.
Tamara: Thank you.
Sarah: We need more women in the media, and we need more romance, so thank you for everything you do. [Laughs]
Tamara: Thank you. They’re, they’re oddly intertwined and oddly, I would say, they dovetail nicely on, in a strange way, and the skills needed for one help the other.
Sarah: Oh, that’s really interesting! How is that so?
Tamara: Well, you know, I’ve been a journalist for twenty-five years now. I was a newspaper reporter for a long time, and I’ve been an AP reporter for almost nine years in Florida; I cover the west coast of Florida. And I think being a fiction writer helps me be a better journalist because I observe more, observe more senses; that all gets into my, the, the stor-, the stories I write for the AP. Sometimes I write longer feature stories for the AP. I’ve got a pretty big exclusive coming out with another reporter soon, hopefully within the next week, that I think people will be pretty captivated by, and some of those skills translate, but also, I think that when you write and when you write news, you learn to write, you know, the inver-, inverted pyramid. You learn to write in a very formulaic way, and then you learn to break those rules in becoming a better newswriter and a better narrative newswriter, and that’s what I’ve tried to do as, as a fiction writer. You know, I’ve tried to build on the basics. And I’m not, I don’t want to say that romance is formulaic, because we know it’s not, but I do think that there are some basics of the genre that you need to adhere to before you can get to the really amazing stuff, and I’m not at the amazing stuff yet, but I’m trying!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tamara: So I, I think that there’re some really basic things that need to be in a romance, in any good romance and in any good novel, and so journalism helps you see those building blocks in a way that, I think in a unique way.
Sarah: I, I totally agree with you. It’s often challenging to talk to people about the genre from my perspective because romance does have a formula in that it has a structure. There are, there are elements that have to be in each one, and there’s a courtship –
Tamara: Yes.
Sarah: – there’s a happy ending, there is conflict. Those elements are going to be expected by the reader, but when you say that to someone who isn’t fam-, familiar with writing or genre writing or the structure of, or audience expectations, then they’re like, oh, well, if you say it’s formulaic then you’re saying it’s all the same. No! I’m actually saying it has a structure, and I had never thought of it, but of course journalism does too! That makes total sense!
Tamara: There, there’s a lot of us newswriters or former newswriters, there’s a group of us who keep joking that we’re going to start a chapter of RWA called Heroes and Hacks.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Well, you know –
Tamara: But there’s a lot of us. There’s, there’s a lot of – and I also think that there’s, with newswriters, especially what I do, I cover really bad news most of the time. I covered the Pulse shooting last year. I covered the –
Sarah: Oh, God.
Tamara: – Haiti earthquake. I, you know, generally if I’m at your door, I’m one of those people you don’t want to see. And what I cover directly led me to writing romance, because when you cover stories like that, it, it, it, you feel so helpless, and you feel so just devastated. You can’t even cry, and I just wanted to write something that was happy or that ended happily.
Sarah: Yes.
Tamara: It sounds so cliché, but –
Sarah: Nope.
Tamara: – and I think that that’s why I personally as a reader am not drawn to dark romance? I know people love it, I know people who are really into it, and, and everybody, I think, thought that if I wrote fiction that I would write Southern Gothic or a literary fiction novel that would be very dark, and they were, my per-, my, my friends in my real life were shocked that I would write something that was not that, that is very much not that.
Sarah: It doesn’t surprise me at all. When I, when I meet romance readers, there’s always, there’s always a, a, a weird conversation I have when I meet someone, and invariably somebody asks what you do, and I say, well, I, I run a website about romance novels. I either get an, oh! Or I get – [gasps] – that’s what I read! I read nothing but romance!
Tamara: Right.
Sarah: And often the people who say, I read nothing but romance, work in areas that are very emotionally draining, whether it’s journalism or healthcare, hospice care –
Tamara: Yes.
Sarah: – nurses –
Tamara: Sure.
Sarah: – therapists, people who are dealing with the most difficult things that don’t have happy endings are drawn to the comfort and the space of safety that’s inside romance.
Tamara: Sure, it’s very true, and I, and, and my stories tend to take on, Florida is kind of a, a character in and of itself –
Sarah: Oh, yeah, Florida Man!
Tamara: Yeah, exactly! But Florida and the quirkiness of Florida, but also in, in the series that I wrote, a, a lot of it has to do with also the idea of a fairytale in Orlando and a relationship as a fairytale and moving from the fairytale to the reality.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: And it’s set in Orlando, so. I, I, I try to play with those themes a lot.
Sarah: Well, those are very popular themes, and they also, they also mesh well with the reader expectation that what you’re reading is going to end happily, and happiness is a –
Tamara: Yeah.
Sarah: – happiness is a very desired commodity at present.
Tamara: [Laughs] These days, yes, it is. Yeah.
Sarah: So please tell me about the Amtrak Residency. This is so cool.
Tamara: Well, I never dreamed that I would get it. I applied in January of 2015. So the Amtrak Residency, they pick twenty-four people – and this is the second round – and they pick twenty-four writers to basically ride around the country on a train, and you can pick your own route and as long as you want or as short as you want, and I, I saw this, and I was like, wow, that’s really cool! When I was, you know, when I was nineteen or twenty, I took a train from Boston to San Francisco –
Sarah: Whoa!
Tamara: – and – yeah, yeah, but it was not a sleeper car. It was in, like, the regular car, and it was, it was a little, it was a little weird and a lot smelly –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tamara: – but it was sort of this kind of life-changing experience for me as, you know, a young college student, and it, it was pretty cool. I, I remember some of the sort of weird and wonderful people I met along the way, and so when I saw the Amtrak Residency available I thought, well, I’m going to apply. I had, I had my first book out with Boroughs, and I had just published – I, well, actually, I hadn’t even published – had I published? I, I’m losing track of time. My, my first, yes, my first book was out with Boroughs, and I applied, and I sent them my first chapter of the book, and, you know, they wanted to know social medial links and things like that, and I, and I, I never imagined that I would be chosen as a romance writer, because I didn’t play up my journalism part.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: And I never imagined that I would be chosen as a romance writer. I thought it would be, you know, playwrights and literary fiction and poets and, you know, non-genre fiction, and I was, I was shocked in last July when I found out that, wow, I was chosen, and what, you know, what am I, what – it, it, it kind of validated a, a lot. I hadn’t, I haven’t been writing fiction very long. I’ve been writing fiction since 2014, so I, I’m, I’m really new to this. I’m not new to writing or to journalism, but I’m new to fiction, so it, that was a little, that was a little overwhelming, to be chosen for something like this, to be one of twenty-four people as a very new fiction writer.
Sarah: That’s very cool! Congratulations!
Tamara: Yeah, it was really humbling. And so, and so I decided, because I live in Florida, I decided I wanted to go in the winter, I wanted to see the country in the winter, and so I, I organized a route where I would stop in New York and, so I could go to Digital Book World’s indie book day –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: – where I met Porter Anderson, and that was really wonderful, and then I went to Chicago, where I met my critique partner for the first time in person, Kat Faitour. She and I met during Harlequin’s So You Think You Can Write contest. [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh, cool!
Tamara: For our first manuscripts, we entered that, and we met on Twitter, and so we hit it off, and so we are now basically best friends, and we had never met until January. So I stopped in Chicago to meet her, and we hung out and drank champagne, and then I went to San Francisco, where I had lunch with Stacy Finz, another journalist turned romance writer, and my dad, who lives there, and then went to Los Angeles and met up with some people there, and then went on to New Orleans. So this was a fifteen-day journey around the country on the train.
Sarah: Cool!
Tamara: Yeah! It was really fun.
Sarah: Now I read that they give you a sleeper car and they give you your meals.
Tamara: Yeah.
Sarah: What was your day-to-day experience like on the train?
Tamara: Well, it, in-, initially it was very, I’ll, I’ll say, you know, I boarded the train in Orlando –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: – and the nerve-racking part about that was that the New York Post did a story on me and wrote –
[Laughter]
Tamara: – from Orlando to New York, and they were very nice, you know. They, there were extremely, the reporter and the editor, or the reporter and the photographer were so nice, but as a journalist, being the subject of a large piece like that is really nerve-racking, and especially, you know, the AP was really cool about all of this, and, you know, they’re okay with me doing media, but basically they said, you know, the A-, the AP briefed me before I, you know, went on my trip, and they were like, you can do any media you want. [Laughs] We don’t care if you talk about sex or romance novels or orgasms; just don’t talk politics. And I’m like, okay, I can do that. You know, I, I –
Sarah: Okay!
Tamara: – as a reporter, I don’t talk politics. I don’t have, you know, I don’t have opinions officially. I can’t; that’s, that’s part of my job. So the first question the Post asks was, so in your series, Tell Me a Story, your hero, Caleb, is a, a wealthy billionaire real estate developer.
Sarah: Oh, God!
Tamara: Did you base him on Donald Trump?
Sarah: [Laughs] No! No, no, no!
Tamara: Basically that, and so, you know, obviously, I couldn’t, what, what, you know, I had to just play it very straight and say, no! Which I, I didn’t, and so that –
Sarah: Oh, my God.
Tamara: – that was very amusing. And, you know, the New York Post, I, I love the Post, I love the Post headlines; you know, from a journalism perspective I totally get what they’re doing.
Sarah: Of course.
Tamara: As a person, as a person on the other end of the interview, it was completely nerve-racking, so the first twenty-four hours on the train were spent with the New York Post, taking pictures and talking to them. It was just – I, I have a new appreciation for people that I interview, and I think that because of that I’m changing, you know – I’m not talking about politicians or people used to the press – it was totally nerve-racking –
Sarah: Yes.
Tamara: – totally, completely nerve-racking. And so then I went to New York, and then things really, once I left New York, things really got under way, and basically I would wake up, and the beds were very tiny. Those, that was probably the only true downside to the trip was that the beds were, in the sleeper car, were, were miniscule and not super comfortable.
Sarah: I can imagine.
Tamara: Yeah, yeah. They, they do have bigger rooms. Well, I, they have bigger rooms with bigger beds, so if I were to do the trip again, I would, I would do that, I would get a bigger bed.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: But then I would have breakfast, and usually you have breakfast with strangers, or you dine with strangers in the, in the cars, kind of like a cruise, so that was pretty cool, listening to people’s stories. I was also doing a piece for the AP where I would find one person a day and tell their story, kind of like Humans of New York, and, and to take their picture, so people told me all sorts of, you know, stories that ranged from very funny to, one guy was on his way to Chicago to propose to his girlfriend, while other people –
Sarah: Awww!
Tamara: – yeah, yeah, a surprise proposal – while other people, you know, told me about how they had just been diagnosed with cancer, you know, days before. It was really, a lot of people, I don’t know what it was about the train, but a lot of people wanted to speak, and I guess because you have the time, too –
Sarah: Yes.
Tamara: – there’s no rushing, and there’s none of the anxiety you get when you fly. It’s all very calm, which was really pleasant.
Sarah: And it’s a liminal space. It’s sort of like a, a place –
Tamara: Yeah.
Sarah: – where you don’t live permanently, so maybe the things that you say to a total stranger on the train are different than what you would say –
Tamara: Yeah!
Sarah: – to someone who you’re going to see again.
Tamara: Right, exactly. It’s very – and, and I think the idea of, of moving forward and moving across the country, and especially being in the observation car where you see these, you know, after Chicago to San Francisco, the, the, the vistas are amazing. You know, you go through mountain ranges. It, it’s, you know, the Rockies and the Sierras, that’s an incredible trip, and to just sort, people just hung out in the observation car, and everybody was very silent and kind of reverent, and people knitted, and at one point there were Mennonites and Amish on the train, and they sang hymns in the observation car. It was very, it, it was just, it was beautiful, and –
Sarah: Wow!
Tamara: Yeah! It was just this sort of magical experience. And obviously, I don’t see snow ever, but to – and then I would go in my car for long, long stretches, my sleeper car, and write. I’m working on my new novel, and so I would just write and work on my novel and think and just stare out the window, and the best part of all is that for large swaths of the country, there’s no Wi-Fi.
Sarah: [Laughs] You cannot be distracted!
Tamara: So, there’s no Wi-Fi, and there’s no phone service, so pretty much from Chicago, with the exception of a couple of stops, like in Salt Lake City, there’s no Wi-Fi, so you’re just there and looking out the window and able to just focus or just have your mind run free or be blank and just observe, which is, we don’t, I think, especially because of my day job, I don’t get enough time to do that enough, you know? And as writers, I think we need sort of that blank space in our mind to think, to, to give us the time and the energy to create. We need to fill that well, so to speak. And we –
Sarah: Oh, absolutely.
Tamara: – because we’re always getting emails and texts and whatever, you know? And I went the week of inauguration, but I, I left the week of in-, the inauguration and, and the week after, and I think that being gone during those, that period was also very productive for me because I, I didn’t, I didn’t immerse myself in politics. I didn’t immerse myself in debate at all. It was just, it was just me and the page and then whoever I happened to meet on the train.
Sarah: And that’s, that’s very – I have a, I have a meditation app, and one of the options is actually the sound of being on a train.
Tamara: Mm. Mm!
Sarah: So did you, did you find that the sound of being on a train was, was helpful to you as a, as a writing sound?
Tamara: Yes, absolutely, yes. During the day I found it to be wonderful and, and definitely meditative. At night, sleeping, that was a whole different story – [laughs] – but, yeah, I, sleeping was, it was a little, it was, I, I don’t want to say it was nerve-racking, but, but knowing that you’re sort of hurtling through this, you know, the landscape at high rates of speed while you’re sleeping, I, something about that was a little odd to me? I eventually slept, you know, probably half way through the trip I started to sleep pretty regularly. But it was, it, and the, and this, the quarters are very, very cramped –
Sarah: Yes.
Tamara: – in, you know, in those tiny cars. There’s big-, like I said, there’re bigger ones. And, you know, there’s all of this – I was thinking about, you know, somebody else asked me about the romance of a train: is it sexy to ride a train? And you think of, you know, Erica Jong, one of my first favorite erotic books, Fear of Flying, you know, and she fantasizes about the zipless fuck, right?
Sarah: Right.
Tamara: And, and being on a train. You think about, is, is, is riding the rails romantic? And my husband was home, so I wasn’t looking to, you know, hook up on the train or anything, but –
Sarah: Right.
Tamara: – you know, the idea, is it romantic? And I, it’s romantic in terms of writing, but I’m, but actual, like, sexytimes romance, I can’t really say that it was, no. Definitely not.
Sarah: No, I, I generally don’t find travel very sexy, even if it’s –
Tamara: No.
Sarah: – or train. I do like what you described, though. I, I have the same experience. Even when I’m flying, I’m a pretty chill flyer because it’s like, well, I’m not driving. I just got, my job is to sit here quietly and stay out of the flight attendants’ way and then get up when we get there, and the same thing with the train: my job is to just sit here.
Tamara: Right, right. The train was nice ‘cause you could sort of move around –
Sarah: Yeah, yeah.
Tamara: – and you could, you know, you could wander around and, and sit, and sometimes I would go stretch. I was, the, the sleeper cars are upstairs, so I would go down to the bottom area and stretch, and that was nice. So, yeah, it was, it, it, it was just this very calming, thoughtful experience that I don’t think that we have enough as, in our society or as writers. I think that taking – I mean, obviously I was very privileged and very lucky to be able to do it, but if, if you’re a writer and you get a chance to take a train trip, I would do it. And, and especially if you can also go from San Francisco to Los Angeles, because that is just gorgeous. Just stunning, stunning.
Sarah: I would, I would have a, a really hard time getting work done, to be honest, ‘cause I would just stare out the window for, like, hours.
Tamara: Yeah, I, I did, I did, and I, and I worried, like, oh, I’m not going to get all this done! I’m not going to, you know, I had these ideas that I would, you know, get a certain amount done, but I – and I didn’t, quite honestly. I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped, but that’s okay, I think, because I, it, it gave me just this mental break that I really needed.
Sarah: Oh, yes. Yeah, the, those are just as important, and I, I mean, when you’re, when you work in writing, when you’re not doing something, then you could be writing! And –
Tamara: Right.
Sarah: – it’s actually good for my brain to be like, and you could be working right now. Actually, no, I shouldn’t; my brain needs a rest.
Tamara: Right. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and, and getting out, I think also travel gives you, just seeing different things –
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Tamara: – real life. You know, I had no idea – just tiny things – I had no idea that, you know, I live in very suburban, urban Florida where everybody drives. I don’t take public transportation, but seeing some of the grand train stations, for instance, like Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles? Amazing places! These amazing, grand places from a throwback era that –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tamara: – are beautiful! Like, the Denver train station, they restored it, and it’s just gorgeous! And I didn’t know any of those existed, you know. Things that I didn’t, I had no idea. I learned a lot about, like, Amish and Mennonite and German Baptist Brethren and the differences between them, because a lot of the people who, you know, are part, are, are in those religions take trains. So it’s really interesting; it’s just this whole other part of America that I normally don’t see. I normally immerse myself in, you know, crazy Florida, alligators and golf courses and palm trees. [Laughs]
Sarah: And Florida Man, Florida Man –
Tamara: And Florida Man, yeah. Yes.
Sarah: [Coughs] ‘Scuse me. So what were some of the more memorable moments from your trip that you’re, that you still think about, that you know you’re not going to forget about? Was it the hymns with the Amish, or were there other moments with, with different passengers or different pieces of what you saw that you’re going to hold onto?
Tamara: Oh, yeah, there were, there were actually two people, and one was, coming out of New York City, I saw these two men with instruments. One had, like, a banjo carrying case, and the other had a viol-, like, a fiddle carrying case. And they were in sort of a little compartment next to mine, and I started talking to them, and it turned out that the older one, he was in his sixties, he was a retired newspaper editor from Albany, New York. His name is Mike, and he had just been to New York City to see a specialist, and he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is a really, you know, devastating cancer and often not curable, but the doctors had given him the hope that he, he could have surgery. Like, he was just getting the news that day –
Sarah: Oh!
Tamara: – and so he, and he played, he and his band member played a song for me on the train, and then he and I followed each other on Facebook, and I’ve followed him through his surgery. He just got his surgery, and he’s doing really well, and they expect him to do pretty well, actually –
Sarah: Wow.
Tamara: – from this horrible cancer, so that was really magical. And then, on the flip side of that, in Denver, I met a woman on the train platform, and she had just been diagnosed with melanoma –
Sarah:Oh, no.
Tamara: – like, three days before, and she was going to see her three-week-old grandchild, and she said she was waiting to get treatment for a week, they couldn’t get her in for a week, and she said, all I want to do is hold that baby. And it was just, like, we were just in tears on the platform talking. And just the connections that, I, I felt like I, like, I feel kind of, the people I talked to, I feel kind of, I guess I feel kind of protective them. They’re my, you know? It, it, really – and then other, like, the people I talked to especially for the AP project, there was another woman who was nineteen who was from Iowa, and she was going to California for the very first time, and she wanted to go to cosmetology school, to go to Lo-, in Los Angeles, so, you know, she could have her own business, like this true California dream.
Sarah: Wow!
Tamara: And to see sort of the hope and the innocence in her eyes was, you know, something a lot of us don’t see anymore, or I don’t see. I don’t have children, and I don’t, you know, and especially as a journalist, I think I’m pretty cynical about things, so that was really powerful, you know? And just meeting a lot of people. At one point I had dinner with a guy who runs a mixed martial arts studio and two German Baptist Brethren, a couple who was, who were German Baptist Brethren, which are like Amish, and they were wearing the clothes –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: – and they are dairy farmers, so, you know, really, only in America could an erotic romance writer/journalist have dinner with a mixed martial arts guy and, you know, two German Baptist Brethren dairy farmer couple.
Sarah: That sounds like a really interesting dinner.
Tamara: Yeah, it was. It was very, it was almost, like, formal and polite, and it was, it was pretty interesting just finding out about people, you know?
Sarah: Travel is, travel is very intimate. It’s, it makes you very vulnerable, too.
Tamara: It does! It –
Sarah: You’re not control, and you just have to accept that.
Tamara: Right, right, and I think that some of those things are, I, I think I was reminded of a lot of those things and reminded that some of those feelings can be translated into fiction and that I need to try to do a better job of doing those things. And, and, and to just sort of capture the wonder of that and, and capture the vulnerability of that, because I think that the best romances capture vulnerability and sort of translate –
Sarah: Yes.
Tamara: – two things, I think are a goal of mine.
Sarah: Yes, because people are characters, but characters are also people.
Tamara: Right.
Sarah: And vulnerability and, and connecting to some sense of emotional empathy, I, for me as a reader is part of what makes a book really effective.
Tamara: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: What were you working on while you were on the train, and, and have you, are you still working on it, or did you finish it?
Tamara: I am still working on it. I’ve been working on this book for the last year and a half off and on. I’ve published other things. I, I published two books with Boroughs and got the rights back to those, so actually those are, those have been, those are being put out now, actually, republished, and then I published an indie series. I’m working on a book called Constant Craving, and it’s about a newspaper publisher in Florida, and she is trying to save her dy-, dying family newspaper, and she has to call a private equity investment fund to bail her out, as newspapers do, only the private equity investment fund is owned, turns out it’s owned by, and recently purchased by, her ex-boyfriend, whose heart she broke in college, a wealthy Cuban-American financier from Miami. And so it’s kind of an allegory of the newspaper industry in a way. I, I had a draft of it, and my agent couldn’t sell it, and I’m reworking it, and I’m going to indie publish it in the fall. I’m trying to get it finished so we can get out ARCs to a lot of people and, and do it right from an indie – I, I, I try to, I try to do as much as I possibly can as an indie author to replicate the traditional path. I have a content editor, and I have a copy editor and proofreader and, you know, I, my cover designer’s amazing. Hang Le is my cover designer for everything, and she does incredible work. And I’m just, I’m, I’m trying to make it the best book it can be. I actually really love indie publishing. It gives me a, a sense of creativity and control that I don’t have in my day job.
Sarah: I can understand that.
Tamara: Because obviously romance is not my, it, it, you know, it’s not my full-time job –
Sarah: Right.
Tamara: – and it won’t, it won’t be, most likely. I don’t have any delusions about that. But it is, you know, a, a passionate creative project for me, and having that control, I, I’ve actually really enjoyed my series, the Story series. I really enjoyed the control I had over that as an indie author.
Sarah: When, when you can manage your, the process and the pu-, and the production of a book in a way that’s very hands-on and that you can personalize it, it is very thrilling, isn’t it?
Tamara: It, it, it is very thrilling, and especially to somebody who, you know, I, I’ve been a, a journalist for a long time now, and so obviously, journalism should not be something that you should handle from start to finish. That’s not – [laughs] – you need to have collaborators, and that’s, you know, that’s a good thing in journalism. But I have also had, you know, every, every step of the way of my career, you know, I’m very, I’m very attuned to what editors tell me, and I’m very – the idea, it was almost terrifying at first to have the ability to do what I wanted, and it, it, it’s very intoxicating, but to the point where I’m also, I’m also very wary. Like, I, like, I don’t understand indie – I’m not trying to slam anybody, but I don’t understand people who don’t hire a copyeditor, for instance, and I’m a –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tamara: You know, like, I’m a pretty, I’m a pretty clean writer, you know, grammar-wise, punctuation-wise, spelling-wise, but I need a copyeditor!
Sarah: Yep.
Tamara: You know, and I can’t imagine how somebody wouldn’t think that, or would just let, like, their aunt read their – I just, I don’t get it. I don’t get it.
Sarah: Well, having gone to school briefly with people who were in journalism programs where one typo or mistake means that you fail that entire assignment –
Tamara: Right!
Sarah: – creates a different perspective on the, the power of the typo.
Tamara: Oh, yeah! Yeah! I mean, I will, even now, I, I just published in KU just a tiny short story, a tiny, tiny, just, just like a little benefit for my KU readers, and I had one typo in it, and I went back and reformatted the whole thing. Like, I didn’t catch it, and, and the copyeditor didn’t catch it, and I just, I went and – and I don’t know if anybody else would have caught it, but I did. Like, I just, I can’t, I can’t imagine not using a copyeditor. It, it makes me sort of break out in a sweat a little bit.
Sarah: [Laughs] I completely understand! I, I have to edit myself. You know, I’m a blogger, so I’m –
Tamara: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – writing on the Internet, and I edit – I am much better at catching the errors of someone else’s writing than of my own.
Tamara: Sure! Always.
Sarah: I don’t see my own errors! My writing is perfect when I’m reading it, ‘cause my brain knows what I meant to say.
Tamara: Right, exactly! Exactly! That happens! That happens, and I personally am also, I know, some indies don’t do this, but I personally also like having a content editor who’s separate from the copyeditor –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tamara: – not, not just using beta readers, so – that’s my own preference, though. Again, I probably rely, I’m prob-, I’m probably a little more conservative on that point.
Sarah: So when you were on the train, when you were on the train with, with Amtrak, did the crew know you were the resident writer?
Tamara: Yeah, some of them did, absolutely. Absolutely, they did.
Sarah: And did you talk to them too?
Tamara: A little bit. I was told by Amtrak not to interview them. Like, they were the one, they were the one group that I couldn’t interview, especially for the AP project, so I tried not to pry too, too much. I didn’t want them to think – ‘cause they also knew I was an AP reporter – I didn’t want them to think they would end up in a story, because they wouldn’t.
Sarah: Right!
Tamara: So, I was pretty mindful of that. But a little bit, I talked to them a little bit. Mostly they left me alone. They would see me, and, you know, they would ask me if I wanted water, and I, they would kind of, or they wanted my, I wanted my bed, you know –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: – made up, but they were pretty hands-off. They were, it was pretty cool.
Sarah: Did you have any favorite crew members that you would see every day?
Tamara: I wasn’t ever on the train for that long of a stretch. Like, you know, the, the longest stretch would be two nights, so, you know, New York –
Sarah: That’s not long at all.
Tamara: No, no. I, if I had taken, you know, the train from New York to San Francisco, that, in one shot, that would have been a different story, but I, because I stopped and gone on at, you know, stopped for a few days and then got back on a train, it would be a different crew, so I didn’t ever get to know the crew, as it was. Although the New York Post did make a point of telling everybody I was an erotica writer and then showed some of the steamy – or erotic romance; they said erotica, but I’m not an erotica writer.
Sarah: Oh, God.
Tamara: [Laughs] So they showed some of the crew my steamier parts, but –
Sarah: Oh, God!
Tamara: Yeah, but really, like – yeah, you should read the article, too – [laughs]
Sarah: I have a link to it, and –
Tamara: Yeah.
Sarah: – I, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to read it beforehand, because I didn’t want it to, you know, to, to shade my questions, but being familiar with the Post, I’m both cringing and not surprised.
Tamara: Yeah, no. You know what, I felt like they, overall I felt like they did a pretty respectful job. Like, it was, it, it exceeded my expectations, and, and the reporter was wonderful, so, you know, the headline writer, you know –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tamara: – I, I get it. I totally get it. But, and it was fun seeing, you know, I, some of my friends were like, I can’t believe they said this! Or, you know, I, I kind of take it. I, I don’t get too worked up about that sort of –
Sarah: It’s the Post! It’s –
Tamara: Right, I don’t –
Sarah: – it’s the Post. They are, they are doing what they do!
Tamara: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I have a different perspective than maybe some romance writers, too, you know, in terms of reviews, in terms of what people say on blogs, or – you know, I’ve gotten, I’ve had really nasty things in my inbox about my journalism. No one has, has approached that in the romance community yet, so if somebody wants to, you know, do a little tongue-in-cheek for the Post or if somebody says my book sucks, like, I just, I don’t, it, it just, it doesn’t have the weight for me that I think that – if I hadn’t ever written before or hadn’t ever had feedback, I could see where it would be very devastating, but I kind of just, it makes no difference to me after what I’ve seen and read in journalism, so.
Sarah: What kind of hate mail do you get? Is it targeted at you, or is it about what you’ve written? ‘Cause I’ve never, I mean, I’m not surprised?
Tamara: Yeah, I, I have had any –
Sarah: But wow.
Tamara: Well, I haven’t gotten any recently. I mean, there’re certainly times where I’ve written things, generally political things usually, that people, you know, will call me a lot of names. They’ll think, they’ll have a perception that my politics are a certain way –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: – even though they may be totally wrong, and there are times when people, you know, people on both sides will accuse me of being the other si-, you’re conservative, you’re liberal, like, on, on the same story, which is when I know I’ve done my job as a journalist. It was a lot worse, I would get a lot more hate mail when I worked for newspapers. I worked for the St. Petersburg Times for a long time in Florida, and then I also worked for The Village Voice Weekly, the Miami New Times, and I think that the Miami New Times, because it was so sort of freewheeling, and, and that definitely I had more of a writerly voice, and I was writing, you know, crazier stories. You know, like, somebody once in the comments called me fat. Stuff like that, you know, like stupid, annoying stuff.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, I know that commenter. I know lots of people like that commenter.
Tamara: It’s very – yeah, right. Right, right. I don’t get as much of that with AP, and I, and I’ve been really fortunate to not have a ton of issues on Twitter. I, when I initially published, I was worried about publishing romance under my real name and thought about using a pen name, but I decided not to because I didn’t want people to find out – you know, I don’t have kids, and I don’t, I, I have a family that’s embarrass-proof, and they don’t care, so – about what I write – and I, I was worried that some people might find out that I’m an AP writer and writing under a different name and that I was trying to hide something, and so, to be totally transparent, I just am using my real name, which is a great name for romance anyway. It’s my given name, and I just –
Sarah: That is a really good name for a pen name. I mean –
Tamara: [Laughs] I know.
Sarah: – sometimes you just luck out!
Tamara: Right, exactly. So, and I didn’t want to have to do two social media accounts. I already have sort of an established social media presence, and honestly, I’ve got, with the exception of one story I did last year about Donald Trump when somebody tweeted, you know, oh, what do you know? You’re a romance writer – I had written about Donald Trump’s businesses – and then I wrote a story, I broke the story about the Ringling Circus. Right before I went on the train I broke, you know, the big story about the circus closing?
Sarah: That was you?
Tamara: Yeah, that was my story.
Sarah: Way to go!
Tamara: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that, I had really good sources with the circus, so – they’re based here in Florida. Yes.
Sarah: [Laughs] I have, I am so keyed into the circus; you guys have no idea.
Tamara: [Laughs] I’m really keyed into the circus! But, yeah, so that was my story, and somebody who is sort of a, a pro-animal-rights person said, you know, you need to stick to writing romance and not –
Sarah: Oh, come on!
Tamara: – not try to – so I get that occasionally, but honestly, not as much as I thought, and pretty much everybody sort of knows that I write steamy romance. I mean, I say I write erotic romance, but I’m pretty sure that it’s more steamy. I mean, what used to be erotica is now really contemp-, erotic romance is now contemporary, I think, so.
Sarah: Yeah, the, the, the concept of what, what constitutes erotic romance is shifting, and I think a lot of readers use the words with different meanings. You know, sometimes what someone’s after is super hot contemporary, and sometimes people are after a story where the sexual interaction between the characters is the major element of the plot that they have to work out, and those are –
Tamara: Right.
Sarah: – slightly different!
Tamara: Right, exactly. Realistically, I write super hot contemporary. It’s only the people who don’t read romance who think it’s erotica, but it’s not erotica. So, yeah, and, but really, everybody knows, you know. My sources know, everybody on Twitter knows, ev-, everybody knows, and everybody’s, you know. I asked the AP, do you want me to write under a pen name? They’re like, nah, do whatever you want.
Sarah: Nice!
Tamara: So, yeah. So everybody’s been really, in every corner of my life has been, you know, I’ve gotten no blowback, which I, I expected it to be, like, this thing, and it, and it wasn’t a thing. It turned out to be not a thing at all, so I, it, it’s been wonderful.
Sarah: That’s excellent!
Tamara: Yeah, yeah. I have really supportive – you know, I also think it’s because I live in Florida, people are slightly crazy in Florida, so it’s okay that I –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tamara: – seem eccentric, and also there’s a real strong tradition of journalists being genre fiction writers here. You know, Edna Buchanan, Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, Ace Atkins – mostly they’re in, you know, the thriller/mystery genre, but still, a lot of reporters write genre fiction here; it’s not uncommon. So I think that that has a lot to do with why my colleagues and the people I know are just like, oh, yeah, makes sense, you know, genre fiction.
Sarah: That’s very cool, though!
Tamara: And it’s a fun life and a fun, it’s fun having the two things together. A little hectic sometimes. You know, as, as I put out more books, and as things kind of get rolling, it’s a little hectic.
Sarah: So what made you want to try to write a romance?
Tamara: I, you know, I read romance since I was in high school, and I like the genre, and I wanted to, I wanted to write something that made people feel good, you know, as opposed –
Sarah: Right.
Tamara: I mean, if I, if I, and to make me feel good too. You know, I, I, because I, I really did think about writing, you know, like, a Southern Gothic. I love Southern Gothic, and I love literary fiction, but I, I, I think it would have just been – and I, I may try that at some point, but I think it would have just been emotionally too difficult for me, given what I do during the day.
Sarah: Well, you do need to sort of cleanse your mental palate.
Tamara: Yes, exactly, and that’s what this is. That’s what this is, and it’s just, it’s very addictive writing about two people and a relationship and solving their problems and making them –
Sarah: Isn’t it?
Tamara: It is.
Sarah: It’s addictive reading it too! [Laughs]
Tamara: Yes!
Sarah: People underestimate that part.
Tamara: [Laughs] It is! It is. And I think that, you know, my indie series, I think it kind of veers a little bit into women’s fiction. It’s really about marriage, it’s really a meditation on marriage, but it definitely is a romance because it has a happy ending, but there’re some twists and turns. I, I created my series as a serial novel, actually, like a newspaper serial. It’s available in its, in its entirety now, but I created it as a five-episode serial.
Sarah: That’s cool!
Tamara: Yeah, it’s, it was really fun, because I, every, every episode had an arc, and it was really fun to write each arc and, and each, and each chunk. I really enjoyed it. I know that readers don’t necessarily like serials. I just had somebody unsubscribe from my newsletter and said, if you even, you know, I, I don’t read cliffhangers, I don’t read serials, and so I’m not even going to find out what you write –
Sarah: Ouch!
Tamara: – but I’m just going to unsubscribe from your newsletter. I’m like, well, okay –
Sarah: Okay.
Tamara: – and people, I, I’ve noticed a lot of people have said, you know, this is just a money grab for authors with serials, and I get that, I get that some authors do that, but I think that readers need to remember that the serial has a long literary history, especially in newspapers –
Sarah: Oh, yes, it really does.
Tamara: – and, and when – right. And, and I get that, you know, some books are just chopped up in installments and, and don’t have, each thing doesn’t have an arc, and I intentionally made it so that the first episode of my serial ends happily. You can stop there. You don’t need to read on. There’s no cliffhanger in the first. It has a Happy For Now ending. And even the second one, if you go on to read the second, you can stop there, if you want. There’s a cliffhanger in the third, and there’s a cliffhanger in the fourth, but everything has an arc in terms of the her-, it, it’s all told in first person from the heroine’s perspective, and she has an arc in each story. She has realizations in each story. A –
Sarah: Wow, that –
Tamara: You know, I think people – I, I want to do a blog post or a newsletter about this – you know, Tom Wolfe, he wrote The Bonfire of the Vanities as a serial for Rolling Stone. He wrote each installment almost on a weekly or biweekly basis. So I think when readers say, oh, you’re just, you know, out for money grab, I’m really not, ‘cause at one point each serial was ninety-nine cents, so I wasn’t, you know, getting rich. [Laughs] And they’re all available in their entirety now, but I think that readers need to recognize that sometimes serials – like, Beth Kery does it wonderfully. She’s a –
Sarah: She’s very talented at serials.
Tamara: She is. Right, she’s very talented, and I think that if, if the author loves serials and knows how to do them, I think it can be very satisfying for the reader, and don’t just assume that, oh, because it has a cliffhanger they can’t – you know, it, it, they’re, the author’s making a, a literary choice. It’s not just a money grab on all occasions, so I, I kind of bristle at that.
Sarah: And we haven’t, I mean as consumers and as readers, we haven’t seen serialized anything until very recently in books and then also in podcasts and in other forms of, of media. It’s sort of a, a resurgence of something that, before that, we didn’t see a lot of.
Tamara: Right. At, at one time, I mean, we, you know, I think at one time, years and decades ago, it was a big deal when people got, when more people read newspapers –
Sarah: Right.
Tamara: – and when more people listened to the radio, and – but, you know, now we can get a, an entirety of a Netflix season and binge-watch it in, in, you know, in a weekend –
Sarah: Yep.
Tamara: – or in a night, and, and I do think, I think, you know, there is something to be said, obviously, everybody wants to read the un-put-down-able novel, but in a way, the serial that I wrote, I wanted people to pause in between the episodes and think about them. I wanted people to soak it in and anticipate the next one and, and think about what had just occurred and what could possibly happen to these characters.
Sarah: And that’s also a balance. You know, it’s, you also have to balance what’s happening now versus what’s going to happen in the next one, what’s the overarching story versus what’s happening in this immediate story. That’s a lot of balance.
Tamara: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, you know, it was, for, it was an ambitious project for me, but I, I was really happy with – because a lot of it had to do with, you know, two characters meeting in Orlando that, the story is, is that the heroine owns a bookstore and she writes erotica –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tamara: – and she, and she has a literary event called Story Brothel, and basically it’s where writers – and this really happens in my city; there’s an actual thing called Story Brothel where writers read aloud their stories for money. People pay them money to read their stories. So this handsome man comes to her and offers to pay her to read her story in a private cabana in a bar in Orlando, and she does, and so it’s the story about how they, like, their, the initial part is about how they fall, you know, how they fall for each other sexually and then how they fall in love, and it’s sort of like this fairytale. It’s very much of an, an arc, and, and so the overall, at one point her father says to her, whoever you marry, you wake up the next day with someone else. And it’s sort of this meditation on marriage, because that’s what happens when you’re married.
Sarah: Yep, people change and grow, even though you’re married to them.
Tamara: People change and grow. Exactly. So it’s about change in a relationship and how you handle that. And so that’s why I wanted people to kind of soak it in, you know?
Sarah: Mm-hmm, because those changes don’t happen all at once; they happen over time.
Tamara: Exactly.
Sarah: So I always ask this of every people I interview: what are you reading that you want to tell people about?
Tamara: I’m reading a few different things. Usually I read, like, a romance read and a nonfiction read. So on my Kindle right now, I just downloaded Four Past Midnight by Stephen King.
Sarah: Ooh!
Tamara: I’m not a horror reader, but the photographer I work with at the AP recommended it, and I read one of the stories, “The Langoliers,” which was creepy and page-turning and, and I, and it was, it was excellent. It was really excellent.
I just finished reading a literary fiction called God’s Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher. I went to high school in Vermont, so this was from my region. He, he was a, he’s a famous writer who just recently passed away, Howard Frank Mosher, and it was very, a, a beautiful story, just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
And then in terms of romance, I am also reading another short story – I’m reading a lot of short stories this month; I don’t know why. The Covalent Bonds anthology, have you heard about this?
Sarah: No!
Tamara: It’s, it’s an anthology about geek love. It’s done by World Weaver Press. A couple of my friends are in it, and it’s super fun. It’s all about geeks. It, it’s about, like, geeky heroes and heroines, scientists –
Sarah: Very cool!
Tamara: A, a friend of mine, G. G. Andrew, wrote a story about two English professors and one, and, and a very sexy sentence diagramming scene, which is, it was wonderful. It’s a really cool anthology. It just came out. Trysh Thompson edited it, and it, it, it’s, it’s pretty wonderful, it’s pretty wonderful.
Also reading – oh, you know what I read that was really good recently, and I just finished. It’s by – I don’t, I can’t pronounce her name – Avril Tremayne, Now You’re Mine?
Sarah: Ah!
Tamara: She’s an Australian writer. I think she wrote Har-, some Harlequin Presents too, but she, she wrote this book called Now You’re Mine, and it’s actually about a girl, a woman, a young woman in Boston who, she, she’s a reporter, and she goes to the Middle East to do a story, a business story, and she meets a wealthy Middle Eastern man, and so, you know, there’s a lot of potential pitfalls there. It’s almost like the sheikh trope, but it’s done so well, and it’s so wonderful, and it’s actually really funny, and I liked that one a lot.
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this week’s episode. I want to thank Tamara for hanging out with me, and if you are interested in finding out more about the Amtrak Residency, I will have links to that particular page, plus all of the books that we mentioned, in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.
The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries from their album Dust. This track is called “Bunny for Breakfast,” which is a bit of a creepy title if you think about it, but, I mean, I have had rabbit, and rabbit is delicious, so perhaps it’s really well-roasted rabbit, although why do you have that breakfast? I don’t know. I have now overthought this entire title, so if you would like to go overthink it and listen to it at the same time, you can go to iTunes or Amazon, and I have links to both places, so you can purchase all the Peatbog Faeries for your very own!
If you would like more information about how to support the show, here are some pieces of information. Get ready! First, patreon.com/SmartBitches. I talk about it every episode, so I’m wondering if you already know what I’m about to say? You probably do. But you can make a monthly pledge to support the podcast starting at one whole dollar, and there are rewards at different levels, including genuine, heartfelt, handcrafted, artisan-made, locally sourced compliments that come from my brain that I mean entirely. Like, they are awesome fun to come up with, and it’s the most interesting thing to do every week. Ooh, ooh! Compliments! So if you would like to receive one, go have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.
And if that is not your game, that is not your thing, your bag, as it were? That’s totally fine! If you like the podcast and you tell someone about it, I am deeply thankful. So, much appreciation, and thank you very much!
Next week we will have more discussions about romance and the women who read and write it, because that’s what we do here. And since you’re listening to the outro – I actually don’t know if people, like, hang out and listen to the whole extra? I mean, sometimes I listen to the end of a podcast, and sometimes I don’t, so if you’re still listening, you’re totally awesome. I’m going to tell you what’s coming up next. We have an interview about Alaska with Cathy Pegau and Carrie. I have an interview with Alyssa Cole. I have an interview with Jennifer Lohmann about hosting your own romance book club, and I have an interview with Faith Salie from CBS Sunday Morning and Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! all about romance. So that’s what I have in the pipeline, I guess? In the can? I think they’re in the can but not edited yet? I, I am not hip to all the lingo. It’s kind of embarrassing. Like, I listen to other podcasts and they start using these words like show notes, and I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s what that’s called! Heh!
So as always, thank you for joining me here on Seat of Your Pants Airline! I am a frequent flyer, I hope you are too, and on behalf of Tamara and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and thank you for listening.
[mellow music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
it TOTALLY throws me when the same guy shows up on different covers. That first guy is also Hawke by Sawyer Bennett.
I remember reading ‘Four past midnight’ as a teenager (I was really into Stephen King back then), and then watching the cheesy film adaptation of The Langoliers. I no longer have the stomach for Stephen King books.
The story about the two passengers with cancer made me cry just a little bit.
Thank you for another enjoyable interview. And thanks, Garlic Knitter, for the transcript.
Great interview! Loved hearing about Tamara’s experience on the train… what a great opportunity!
I was just listening to this episode and as Tamara Lush described the people she met, I was like hey, that sounds familiar. So I googled it, and I read an article about her and her journey in a German news magazine a few weeks ago. This is the article http://www.spiegel.de/reise/aktuell/a-1133314.html and even if you don’t understand German, there are a some pictures of the people she met at the train.