297. Song of Blood and Stone: An Interview with Leslye Penelope

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 297 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and today I’m talking with Leslye Penelope. Leslye, who is also known as L. Penelope, is going to talk about her twice-new book Song of Blood & Stone. It was released again this week on May 1st, and she will tell you the whole story as to how it was released twice. It’s a very good story with a very happy ending. We also talk about writing fantasy and speculative fiction and horror. She’s part of a Stoker-Award-nominated anthology called Sycorax’s Daughters – I may be saying that wrong. If I’m wrong, you can email me and tell me I said that wrong. This anthology sounds very cool, and it is all horror written by authors of color. She also talks about the subversive and restorative power in speculative fiction written by and about people of color and ways in which her writing blends fantasy, adventure, and romance. Basically, she was always looking for more kissing in the books she read. I can relate to this. We also talk about the various forms of technology she has tried for writing and what she’s using presently. We talk about the development of a special download list of the foundational writers of Black speculative fiction, how you can get your own copy, and the story behind her newest tattoo, which is very cool. And of course we talk about what she’s reading.

And if you are on the treadmill or walking the dogs or in a place where you can’t write down book titles, I always keep track of which books are in the podcast and list them in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. So if you’re looking for one of the books she talks about – and there are several that I’m sure you’ll be very curious about – head over to the show notes; they’re all there.

I have news! I’m very excited. Okay, if you are going to Romantic Times in Reno, Nevada, we will be doing another live taping of the podcast Thursday, May 17th, in Naples 4 at 5:30 p.m. Pacific time. You will be able to hang out with us as we tape a show live in a front of a hopefully very amused and enjoying the silliness audience. Now, you must have a badge to enter, ‘cause it’s only open to conference attendees. It’s not open to the public, and I apologize about that, but if you are attending RT in Reno, join us on Thursday at 5:30. You’ll be hanging out with me, Amanda, Elyse, Robin Bradford, and more guests to be named as we get closer. We’ll be having inappropriate conversations, and I have a really terribly devious idea for team-style trivia, which I’m working on now – ha-ha-ha – so if you’re going to RT, Thursday, Naples 4, 5:30 p.m.; I hope you’ll come and join us for a live taping of the podcast!

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Now, I have some compliments! I love this part.

To Chelsea: You are a living, breathing, walking, and stylish safe space for people and animals because of your kindness and your smile.

And to Ursula: If your personality were a recipe, every ingredient would be the finest of its kind, but available to everyone in local grocery stores, because you are fair and generous.

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Now, I have one more thing I want to talk to you about very quickly. Recently I was walking my dogs, and I usually have Bluetooth headsets in because I have two dogs; that’s two leashes; if I add a headphone cord, it really does not work out well, so I have a pair of Bluetooth headsets. And one ear started cutting out. You know how, like, you move the wire and then the sound pops back in and it’s super annoying; that’s what I was dealing with. That same day, no kidding, when I got home, I had an email from a company called Sudio asking if I wanted to try a pair of their Bluetooth headphones. So they sent me a set of headphones called the Tre. They’re freaking awesome, so I wanted to tell you all about them. The battery life is great; the sound quality is great. I can hear the things that are going on around me, which is important because I walk the dogs outside, and there’s cars, and people are on their phones when they’re driving? Have you noticed this? And I can hear everything around me while also hearing my book. But the thing I really like about it is the earpieces. They come with three different sets of what they call wingtips – which I thought was shoes, but what do I know? They’re the sort of curvy half-spiral that sits inside the curve of your ear. I have really small ears, and I usually find that style very uncomfortable and itchy, but the smallest set of wingtips that come with the Tre were so comfortable, I came home from walking the dogs, I started dinner, I cleaned up the kitchen, I had conversations with people – I could pause it; I could start it again – and I kind of forgot I had headphones in. They didn’t itch; they didn’t bother me; I didn’t get that weird, like, my ear is being stretched feeling. I really, really like these. Now, they offered me a coupon code for you, so here it is. Are you ready? If you would like to get a set of your own at Sudio, you can get 15% off any purchase by using coupon code SBTB. I will have a link in the show notes if you would like to check out all of their options, but again, coupon code SBTB gets you 15% off, and they have free worldwide shipping. So thank you to Sudio for the demo pair and for the coupon code.

And now, without any further delay, let’s do this podcast thing! On with the interview.

[music]

Leslye Penelope: My name is Leslye Penelope. I write as L. Penelope, and I write fantasy and paranormal romance.

Sarah: Welcome!

Leslye: Thank you.

Sarah: So you have a new-ish –

Leslye: [Laughs]

Sarah: – new, new, new kind-of book. You –

Leslye: New to some people, yes.

Sarah: New to some people. I mean, I have said before that any book that someone hasn’t read is a new book, but –

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: – this, this book gets to debut twice.

Leslye: Yeah! It’s really interesting. [Laughs]

Sarah: There’s a really interesting story. Can you please tell me what the story is behind Song of Blood & Stone?

Leslye: Sure. So Song of Blood & Stone, I first self-published it in January of 2015. It was my first novel, and I had, I’d been researching self-publishing for a number of years. I had always done DIY stuff –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – and so I’d made that choice to just go ahead and self-publish it without really submitting it anywhere, ‘cause I wanted to kind of just experience everything, and I, I’m also kind of a control freak –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Leslye: – and so I, I – and I never thought I would actually ever finish a novel. At one point in my life, I just couldn’t conceive of writing an entire novel; it just seemed so crazy. So, but, you know, I, I managed to finish it, and I, and I liked it, and I went through all the process: I hired the editors and spent a long time with, you know, with the, choosing the cover designer and all of that. So I put it out in 2015, and then I, I actually put out two books in that series in, in 2015, and also another, I started another paranormal romance series, and at the beginning of 2016, I got an email from Monique Patterson, who is an editor St. Martin’s Press, and she actually just emailed me through my Contact form on my website, and she said that she had, she had come across Song of Blood & Stone, she had read it, she’s a big fantasy and paranormal fan, and initially she was asking me about new projects, new, you know, whatever I was working on next.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: And so I had heard of Monique a lot. You know, she was, she’s an African-American female editor at a big five publishing house, and there’re not many of them –

Sarah: No.

Leslye: – and so she’d been on my radar, ‘cause other people had told me about, oh, you know, you need to get in contact with Monique, ‘cause you write what she likes, and I’m like, okay, yeah, like, one day that’ll be on my list of things to do. And so when she contacted me I was like, oh my God, wow! And so I initially pitched her another, another series, and she came back at me and she was like, you know, I, I really Song of Blood & Stone, and I think we can find a wider audience for it, especially with fantasy; a lot of fantasy readers are in print. So she asked if I would consider allowing them to publish it, and, you know, I, I thought about it for a while, and I was kind of like – ‘cause it would require taking the book off of the market for a while.

Sarah: Yes.

Leslye: And, yeah, which was kind of scary, but also this huge opportunity that I never thought would come to me, and it was just such an unusual thing, so I thought it was definitely worth doing, and so I was – yeah, I signed up and, and it, you know, the contracts took forever, but that’s how traditional publishing works. I learned, you know, all about traditional publishing, which I’d had no idea about before. And so I did end up having to take off the, the two books in the series that were on the market at the time, and so, yeah, Song of Blood & Stone gets republished May 1st, 2018.

Sarah: Yay! Congratulations!

Leslye: Thank you.

Sarah: Now, I downloaded a sample of Song of Blood & Stone a, a while ago. I tend to be a little wary of fantasy because I can’t read a lot of violence. My brain tends to, like, process it at three in the morning by waking me up and going, hey, remember that scene you just read where you were like, okay, that’s fine? Let’s think about it in great detail now that it’s nighttime.

Leslye: Oh no.

Sarah: My anxiety brain wakes me up to think about gory things, and it’s like, no, I can’t, I can’t feed that part of my brain, so I’m very wary of some fantasy because, as you know, there can be a lot of violence in fantasy, especially violence towards women and violence –

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: – towards people of color, and my –

Leslye: If there’s people of color at all.

Sarah: If there are any, exactly. [Laughs] So my 3 a.m. brain and I are very, very wary, and so I read the sample, and I was like, oh! Oh, okay. So I went to go get it, and it was gone. And there was a paper copy for, like, two hundred dollars, and I’m like, what happened? Oh my goodness. And I, and I actually had to go dig, like, what, what, where did it go? Why can’t I have it?

Leslye: Right.

Sarah: ‘Cause you know, if you’re a reader –

Leslye: Yeah!

Sarah: – you want it right now, right away! So –

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: – when I got a print ARC from Macmillan, oh my gosh, is this book gorgeous. It is so beautiful. They kept your cover, right?

Leslye: They did, yes! So that was one of the things when I was telling people I’m, I was considering, you know, signing with St. Martin’s and, like, what are they going to do about the cover? And Monique had said, you know, they loved the cover and they wanted to keep it, and I was like, that’s, that’s amazing! They did some tweaks to it; they changed, you know, the colors a little bit –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – but it’s, it’s the same cover, and that cover – I mean, I had gotten a lot of attention for it when it was, you know, when it was self-published, because the cover is gorgeous. It won a cover award. Yeah. I, ‘cause I spent a long time searching for designers.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: I have a background; like, I do a little design, but I knew not enough to actually do my own cover. But enough to spend, like, a year collecting cover designers and trying to figure out, obsessing over who I was going to choose for my first book.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Leslye: And, yeah, so I was, I was amazed that they, they kept it and, and it, it looks great, you know; the new version looks amazing too.

Sarah: And they, they not only kept the, the design and they kept it pretty similar to, to what it looks like –

Leslye: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – but they kept that same image. Like, they didn’t even change the image of the heroine at all, and it’s such a gorgeous photograph.

Leslye: It is! And when the designer, James Egan from Bookfly Design, when I first saw it, I, I didn’t even know what to do, like –

[Laughter]

Leslye: I was just, my jaw dropped. You know, I get the email, and you open it up, and like, oh my God, this is the cover? How did you do that? How did you find her? Because I, you know, I, I look at stock photo a lot, and I know that the state of stock photo for especially African-Americans is not great. There’s not a lot, you know –

Sarah: No.

Leslye: – and especially, you know, for fantasy. I, I really, a lot, you’re going to have to get illustrations a lot of times, and so the fact that he was able to create an image combining other images – like, if I showed you the original stock photo of that woman, you wouldn’t recognize her, because he did a lot of work to make it look like that, but –

Sarah: That’s cool!

Leslye: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: So what are the plans for Song of Blood & Stone? Is it going to be a, a trilogy? Is it a, a – how, how many books in this series now?

Leslye: It’s a four-book series.

Sarah: Woohoo!

Leslye: Yeah. So, and they, yeah, they wanted all four books. I was, I had intended it to be four books, and I was glad that they, they wanted all of them, and then I’m planning some kind of novellas in between also. But the main series is, is four.

Sarah: So this is the worst question to ask an author, but I’m going to do it anyway. Can you tell us about the world of Song of Blood & Stone? Tell us about, a little bit about what the book is about.

Leslye: Sure. The world, to me, is one of the more interesting things, ‘cause I, I’m a lover of fantasy but not always medieval fantasy –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – and so when I was, when the story kind of came to me, it was a different time period, so I always described it as sort of an alternate 1920s type of world. So we’re, you know, you have some technology; there’s, there’s cars and telephones, but it’s, it’s got some of the, I guess, magic and romanticism of a previous time period, and so this actual story is about these, these two countries have been at war on and off for five hundred years, and our heroine, Jasminda, is biracial. She’s a child of both countries and, and basically outcast from both, and she lives in an isolated area near the border, and so one day these soldiers from the, the other country come and invade her cabin, and they have a captive soldier with them, and so it’s about an adventure of freeing this captive soldier and going on an adventure to kind of, to free, to stop the war, to end the war between the countries and, and Macmillan is pitching it as Romeo and Juliet meets Return of the King?

Sarah: Ohhh! That’s a good pitch! [Laughs]

Leslye: Yeah.

Sarah: That’ll work!

Leslye: [Laughs]

Sarah: So she has a, a particular ability, right?

Leslye: Yes. So in the world, there, one people, the Lagrimari people, have magic, and the other people, the Elsirans, do not, and so Jasminda has magic, and the magic is called Earthsong, and it’s a kind of nature-based magic where you feel sort of the life energy of every living thing and can manipulate it, and so it allows her to do things like heal. Earthsingers can grow plants and manipulate the wind and the weather and things like that. So the magic is, is hated and feared in Elsira where she lives, and it’s been used in war against them, and so she’s outcast not only for the way that she looks, for being biracial, but for having magic also.

Sarah: One of the things I find that is fascinating about fantasy as a genre is how much the writer constructs a world from literally scratch.

Leslye: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Like there’s some worlds that are, it’s like, okay, I get it, like you said, a medieval world, no technology, you walk or you’re on a horse, those are your, those are your two methods of travel. Maybe you can fly, but even then, there’s no cell phones. You have to sort of create a world from the ground up.

Leslye: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: What are some of the key elements for you for worldbuilding, as a writer and also as a reader?

Leslye: I really love worldbuilding. It’s one of my favorite parts of writing, and it’s also hard for me to stop. Like, I’ve, I’ve got all these worlds in my head, and I, I’m trying to pare it down just for my sanity. But when I start, I think about, like with this story, I thought about, okay, there’s two countries, I know that there was a war – what’s the war about? Why are they fighting? So I go, I start with kind of geography, economics, things like that in terms of – one, one country’s very isolated; so the country that has magic is completely surrounded by mountains, and so that’s when geography comes into play, and, and affects everything else.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: And I love kind of sketching out maps and thinking about the culture, the languages, and, and then when magic comes into play and the fantasy elements also, like what kind of creatures are in the world? What is the magic like? Developing a magic system is incredibly fun, and it, and it can, it can trip you up in the writing, because there are lots of times when I was like, okay, what did I say the magic can do? What are my limitations? Am I writing something that’s impossible? And a lot of editing is making sure I did, I’m not doing something that I said you couldn’t do, you know? Like, you’ve got to keep a lot of stuff in your head at any given moment.

Sarah: Do you write a story bible for yourself?

Leslye: I do, yes. I have a story bible, and I was, you know, I’ve got notebooks, and I make charts and graphs and things like that, like the, the levels of magic and who has what and what level can do what. Like, I have a lot of, I have an overview of, like, five hundred years of history of all the wars. Like, I try to, I try to cover my bases as much as possible without getting lost in it, you know? Which is very possible.

Sarah: It’s very easy. I imagine a lot of the, the worldbuilding development ends up in the story, but then you have to sort of pare it back, right?

Leslye: I actually write very lean and have to add usually?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Leslye: It’s, it’s the opposite of the problem that most writers have. Like, this, the first version of this book that I handed the very first editor I hired was fifty thousand words, and I was like, here’s my high fantasy novella, and she was like, no, that’s not going to work.

[Laughter]

Sarah: We don’t understand how any of this is happening. [Laughs]

Leslye: Right, exactly. And so I, I come up with lots of things as I need them, and, and then I, usually in the revision process it’s like, okay, I had this little grain of something. I knew, you know, something had to happen, and then I have to, to deepen it in my own mind when – a lot of that doesn’t go into the book, but it’s important that I know it, so if anybody asks or, you know, it’s going to come into play later. And a lot of times you’re, you’re sowing seeds subconsciously for things that you use later.

Sarah: Right, that, that makes sense. You, and oh, oh! Past Me, good job, Past Me.

Leslye: Yeah! Like, my brain was really, like, behind the scenes, I didn’t expect that to happen, but my brain was on point.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now, one of the things I love about reading magical worlds is that magic has to have rules. There are rules and limitations, ‘cause if you don’t have rules and limitations then the person with the most magic wins. What are some of the rules about magic in your world?

Leslye: So Earthsong cannot be used directly to kill, ‘cause it’s essentially the energy of life, and so you’re manipulating life, but in a roundabout way you can, so you can create a fire that kills someone, but you can’t just use the magic to kill someone. That’s one of the rules. People have different strengths. So Jasminda, when we meet her, is a very weak Singer. She doesn’t have a whole lot of power, and, and so she’ll burn out quickly, and then it has, it takes a while to regenerate that sort of magical muscle inside of her. And so a lot of things that she wishes she could do, you know, she’s faced with, you know, an injury that she wishes she could heal quickly, but she can’t, and so, yeah, those are the kind of limitations that I, that I built in, just basically making sure that, you know, there are characters who are overpowered, but they have other, it balances out in different ways.

Sarah: Right, they have a vulnerability or a weakness.

Leslye: Right, exactly.

Sarah: So what about the hero? He is a spy, if I remember correctly. Is that right?

Leslye: Yes, he is a spy. So Jack is our hero, and he, he’s a soldier with the Elsiran army, and he’s gotten information, and he’s actually gone undercover in the Lagrimari army, so he’s – part of this world is that there’s a magical barrier called the Mantle between the two countries, and when the wars happen, generally it’s the Lagrimaris whose magical means are able to create a beach in the Mantle and invade Elsira, but at the point of the story, where the story begins, there are cracks in the Mantle where people who know about the cracks can slip through back and forth, and so Jack goes undercover in the Lagrimari army to get intelligence to bring back, and he’s captured, and so that, when, at the beginning of the story, you see him trying to get, trying to escape and getting recaptured again.

Sarah: Now, there’s a romantic element and a fantasy element and an adventure element. There is a lot, there’s a lot going on. How do you, as a writer, approach balancing the fantasy and the adventure and the romance?

Leslye: I really wanted to write a fantasy romance. I wanted to have –

Sarah: Yes!

Leslye: – you know, have everything that I love in one package.

Sarah: Yay! I love this plan. Do that.

Leslye: [Laughs] Yeah. Like, a lot of fantasies, a lot of fantasies will have some sort of romantic element, but it’s very, you know, subtle, or it’s just, it wasn’t, it’s not always what I’m looking for. Like, I’m like, where – I want more kissing! So –

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s my problem too!

Leslye: I think the balance, you know, it’s always tricky, ‘cause, you know, I think it, at times I had more adventure in there, and I’m like, wait, but I, I, they haven’t been together. There was a point in time when I was like, oh, they’ve been, they haven’t been together for, like, chapters. I need to figure out how to get them back together. So it can be, it can be difficult when you’re, when you have such a strong plot –

Sarah: Right.

Leslye: – you know, and you’ve got these characters, and they each are doing their own thing, but you, you do want to make sure that you don’t lose the romance, even when they’re apart. And throughout the series, as I write it, that, that continues to be a challenge, but I think that at my heart, I want it to be a romance, and I’m really looking for those elements to be stronger, so I try to, try to make sure I beef ‘em up.

Sarah: Good. Yay. I like this plan. [Laughs] What brought you to writing fantasy romance?

Leslye: I, I’ve always really loved just speculative fiction. I’ve been a sci-fi/fantasy fan my whole life, and I think it started – I mean, and I’ve also been writing my whole life –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – and so everything I’ve, I’ve written, from the very first story when I was, like, five years old, was always something magical in it. Growing up, my mom’s favorite show was The Twilight Zone, and so I loved The Twilight Zone. It’s something we watched together, even to this day. Like, there’s always a marathon around, I think, Thanksgiving and then, like, New Year’s there’ll be a Twilight Zone marathon somewhere. And those kind of shows about the weird, like Outer Limits and all of those kind of shows were always my thing growing up, and so, yeah, my stories were always, even as a kid, they were kind of disturbing? Like, my parents were like, do we need to get you into therapy? ‘Cause you’re writing about, like, you know, dead bodies coming back from the dead or, like, babies turning into monsters and just, just strange stuff. I didn’t even recognize it as horror. It, I think it is horror at the, you know, looking back on it, it, it probably is horror, but more so than even fantasy and sci-fi. But, yeah, that kind of weirdness always seeped in, and then as I started reading just more fantasy and more, more science fiction growing up, that’s where the stories always went; there was always something magical, always something, always something a little unusual going on.

Sarah: That’s very cool. Do you, do you have favorite stories from when you were younger that you still reread?

Leslye: I go back and look through, especially more, more to the poetry that I wrote, ‘cause I, I did a lot of, you know, terrible poetry, ‘cause I was a teenager.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Leslye: But I really loved it! You know, I wouldn’t put it on anyone else. And some of the stories I don’t have anymore, but I do have a, a few of them. But, yeah, I don’t really go back to the stories too much.

Sarah: Now, you have a list on your website, a download of speculative fiction, the, sort of the foundation of, of, of speculative fiction written by authors of color. Can you tell me about this and how it came to be? It’s really cool, and it’s also gorgeous. Whoever designed it – was that you? You did a great job.

Leslye: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I designed that.

Sarah: It’s gorgeous!

Leslye: It came about – there was an event that I went to in, in Baltimore, and it was held by, I think it was an event cosponsored by the Black Science Fiction Society, which is basically an online group, and the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, and it was by this guy named Phenderson Clark, who is a professor – I’m not sure where – and it was all on sort of historical Black speculative fiction and the idea that Black people have been writing spec fic since the mid 1800s, and I had no idea about most of these. Like, I’d heard of one or two, but I had no idea, and even one of the novels on the list is, you know, considered one of the first novels written by a Black woman ever, speculative fiction or not. And so I was just like, people need to know about this, you know, ‘cause as a, as a Black fantasy writer, people are kind of asking, you get the question a lot, who are other people, you know, who are other fantasy and sci-fi writers who are Black or writers of color, and, and I have another author friend, Murphy, who gives out a list at events of, like, okay, here’s, here’s more; there’s, there’s more than just me. And so that was in my head, and I was like, well, what can I give people that I think would be really interesting that they might not know about? And so I decided to put together this list based on this talk that I went to, and, you know, one of the first stories on the list is from 1859, I think, and it’s basically the, you know, the late 1800s through the early 1900s, people like W. E. B. Du Bois and other, you know, who I didn’t even know wrote fiction at the time when I discovered this, and I was like, oh wow, they were writing, they were imagining a way out of their circumstances. They were imagining utopias and what would it look like in a hundred years, you know, after slavery is over, and things like that. And so I just thought that it would be really cool to put some of these works together on a single page, and, and a lot of them, since they’re so old, they’re in the public domain, so you can read them for free. And it was just, it blew my mind, and I figured if it blew my mind, it, it might blow someone else’s mind, so I’ll just share it.

Sarah: Yeah, you’re never alone in something that makes you go, whoa! ‘Cause someone else is going to be just as impressed. If someone wants to get your list, how do they do it?

Leslye: All they have to do is go to my website and sign up for my mailing list, and they will get it immediately! It’s the first freebie that I give people.

Sarah: That’s lovely! What has the response been to this?

Leslye: I mean, people, kind of the same response as you, like – or as me – like, they didn’t know that this stuff existed, and they’re really interested, so I am glad to be able to, to hand it out and to, you know, bring some, shine some light onto these early authors.

Sarah: Do you have favorites on that list that you recommend most frequently?

Leslye: [Laughs] I think the short story by W. E. B. Du Bois, it’s called “The Comet,” is, it’s probably my favorite. It, because a lot of the things on the list are kind of heartbreaking at the same time as they’re hopeful, you know. There’s this, there’s this mix that you see, because at the time that they’re writing it, they, they’re trying to imagine something better, but I think they can’t quite even do it, you know? So even the imaginings are kind of sorrowful. So that story kind of hit me the most. It’s about what would happen if – it’s sort of like I Am Legend, like something, an apocalyptic event happens, and at the end there’s just this white woman and this Black man left and, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of heartbreaking.

Sarah: ‘Cause so much of this is available in the, in the public domain, once you have the list it’s relatively easy to find these works digitally now.

Leslye: Yes. And that’s great. A lot of them are on Project Guttenberg, and, and I’m glad that that exists, ‘cause you can maintain this. You can, you can keep it around and, and share it.

Sarah: One of the things that you said, both on your website – there isn’t a lot of fantasy with people of color in it at all, and it seems to be changing little by little, or am I just, or is that an inaccurate assessment on my part?

Leslye: There’s not a lot. There’s, you know, there is, it exists, but I think it is definitely changing. I’m seeing, even to the point of just looking at book covers and looking for people of color on book covers of fantasy and sci-fi, I remember it being so rare that whenever I would see one, I would just buy it, you know, like, growing up. And, and now you’re seeing a lot more, even, especially in YA, but in adult also, and, you know, the We Need Diverse Books movement, I think, has, has pushed the needle on the traditional side. I mean, part of the reason why I self-published in the first place was because I didn’t even consider that a publisher would want my fantasy book with brown people in it, you know, ‘cause I didn’t see it that much. I mean, I was always, I was finding the people I could and reading them like, you know, obviously, Octavia Butler and Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin – there’s people who you, if you read, you know, people of color who write sci-fi and fantasy, there’s the names that you hear a lot, and for a long time it seemed like that core group –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – was it, but now there is definitely much more, and I’m seeing it all over, and I think because I’m tuned in to the author community and to the publishing community a lot more, but it definitely is increasing.

Sarah: Yes. I don’t remember where I read this, and I’m, like, annoyed that I can’t remember the source, but I remember somebody talking about whether it’s women or women of color or writers of color or whatever is the, the less represented group, you get one token and then a group of three, so if you got one token writer, okay, we’ve got our one token writer; everyone can name this writer as the writer of color of fantasy. And then, if you can name three, you’re, you think you’re off the hook. Like, oh, I can name three; I’m good!

Leslye: Oh.

Sarah: So there’s, like, this, this series of hurdles, and I am, I am going to drive myself nuts trying to remember who outlined this. So there’s the one token, and then you name three, and that’s plenty. It’s sort of like the, the concept of, when you ask a bunch of guys whether a room was fifty percent and fifty percent men, they’ll be like, oh yeah, it was half women. There was, like, no, three out of ten women, but it looks like half, ‘cause there were so, there were so many in there!

Leslye: Right. Yeah. And I, I think that, I, I heard this when I went to VONA, which is a, a workshop for authors of color, writing workshop, and I don’t remember exactly what her, her nationality was, I think she was Lebanese, but they, she was like, she had, her agent had submitted a book to a publisher, and they’re like, oh, we already have a Lebanese author; we, we don’t need any more. You know, or whatever it was, and it, it was kind of like they thought they had done enough, so that definitely, I think, was something that authors of color have experienced –

Sarah: Yes.

Leslye: – in the industry, and, and now I think it’s changing. They’re saying, oh, we can have two! We can have more than three, you know, Black female, I mean, of any kind. I mean, you know, just more than three of this thing, of this kind of author or this kind of story, because, obviously, the stories are all going to be different. We’re all coming from different perspectives, so it’s not like if you get more than one of us you’re just getting the same thing rehashed! And they didn’t seem to mind rehashing the same thing with other authors anyway, so.

Sarah: That’s so true, especially in romance, where there are tropes that are so frequently repeated.

Leslye: Right, yeah. I mean, fantasy has its tropes also, but I mean, everyone’s bringing their own little spin to it, you know. Like, even in, in romance, even in contemporary romance, you know, you’re going to get a thousand billionaires, but everyone’s a little bit different, hopefully.

Sarah: Yes. So what is your catnip in fantasy and in romance? What are your favorite tropes?

Leslye: My favorite tropes, well, definitely in romance, I love fake fiancé?

Sarah: Oh, that’s a good one!

Leslye: Yeah, that is probably my favorite. I also love enemies-to-lovers.

Sarah: That one’s so fun.

Leslye: And then I was recently in a big mail-order bride kick. I can – [laughs] –

Sarah: Ooh!

Leslye: It’s hard to find ones that I really love, but I do love that trope.

Sarah: You know Beverly Jenkins’ newest is a mail-order bride.

Leslye: I didn’t know that was it. Oh!

Sarah: Oh yes, the third one. I think it just came out. Here is, here is how my brain works: I can describe the, the cover to you, but I don’t remember the words on the cover, which is how you identify a book? But, yeah, she’s got a blue dress on, and there’s a sunset – it’s called Tempest.

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: It’s the third of a trilogy; you don’t have to really read the first two, though they’re great, but in this one, the heroine is a mail-order bride, and the hero has sort of misrepresented the situation that she will arrive to find herself in, because of course he will never love again. Never.

Leslye: Right.

Sarah: You know that works out exactly –

Leslye: [Laughs]

Sarah: – how the hero plans. [Laughs]

Leslye: Those are the best! Yes!

Sarah: I will never love again. Surprise! [Laughs] But, yeah, it’s wonderful.

Leslye: And then, I guess, fantasy tropes, the classic one is always the, kind of the hero’s journey, where you start out kind of an unassuming person, and you rise to greatness. That seems to be the core of fantasy stories, and it doesn’t get old, like, for me. You know, when it’s done well, it’s just, to see that character arc, that’s the ultimate character arc, and I always love that.

Sarah: I love heroes and heroines who have to choose to do much larger things, greater than themselves, because they recognize that they’re in the position to do it. It’s not like, oh, everyone assumes this person is the hero. There’s this sort of resigned resiliency?

Leslye: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Okay. Fine. All right. I can do it. Fine, okay, I’ll go save the world. Gosh, this is annoying. The –

Leslye: [Laughs]

Sarah: – the slightly curmudgeonly people who save the world are among my favorites. [Laughs]

Leslye: Yeah. The idea of the sacrifice, like –

Sarah: Yes.

Leslye: – someone you wouldn’t expect to make a huge sacrifice grows to the point where that’s the only thing that they can do.

Sarah: Yep. Like –

Leslye: That’s really satisfying.

Sarah: – I could be at home with my cat and no shoes on right now, but no.

Leslye: [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m saving the world. Fine, okay, I’ll do it. [Laughs] Now, I also want to ask you about your story in – I’m going to say this wrong; is it Suh-core-ax or Sigh-core-ex? [Sycorax]

Leslye: I say Sicker-ax; it might be Sigh-cur-ax. I honestly am not sure how you say that. [Laughs]

Sarah: It may not be a known pronunciation, so we’re both right.

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: Sycorax’s Daughters: you’re, you’re in an anthology, and it was nominated for a Stoker Award. Way to go!

Leslye: Yeah, that was amazing. It was, it’s an anthology of African-American women horror writers? So it’s short stories and poetry in the horror genre, and the short story that I have in there is called “The Mankana-Kil,” which I know no one ever will be able to pronounce, but that’s how you say it. [Laughs] And it’s, it’s just something that I had in my head, this monster. I don’t do a lot of, like, creatures and monsters in my, in my fiction usually –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – but this one is. It’s a monster story about this little girl who gets the chance to become a monster’s apprentice, and –

Sarah: Cool!

Leslye: Yeah. And so, yeah, the, the whole anthology was, was nominated, and it’s, it’s fabulous. There’s a lot of fabulous authors in there, and, and just great stories and poems.

Sarah: So how did that come to be?

Leslye: It was, the editors – I was contacted by one of the editors, Kinitra Brooks, about, you know, submitting to the anthology, and there’s also a companion nonfiction work that studies on a similar topic, on African-Americans in horror, and so she, the, the editors are just gathering these authors who, you know, I don’t have anything published in horror, but I think in the speculative fiction world to, to put this together, and, and they found a publisher, so it was very early when I was contacted. They were, they hadn’t, they didn’t have a publisher; they were just trying to, you know, put this into the world, and so they found a small press to put it out, and we did some events when it launched, and so I was able to meet some of the other women involved in it. And there’ve been other Black horror anthologies, but I don’t know that there have been any with just women authors.

Sarah: That’s incredible.

Leslye: It was, it was a, it was a great idea, and there was something that’s very niche and, and unusual, but when you look at especially the, the history of it, like even the reading list I give out, I think that, I don’t know if there’s much that’s horror particularly, but there’s, there’s horrifying things, you know, the –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – the history, sort of, of slavery is –

Sarah: Kind of horrifying.

Leslye: – can be kind of horror – yeah, exactly.

Sarah: The whole thing is actually horror.

Leslye: Yeah. Like, yeah, the history is horror, so –

Sarah: Yeah. [Laughs]

Leslye: – it, it makes sense. [Laughs]

Sarah: And then if you add fantasy to that, it –

Leslye: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – it, it’s, it’s a very, it’s a very volatile combination.

Leslye: Yeah, yeah, and that, that whole, just the idea that, the whole speculative fiction idea as it relates, I think, to, to Black people is just really interesting, that imagining something different, bringing, you know, like, in my, in Song of Blood & Stone, I have, like you said, it was kind of complicated, ‘cause there’s, there’s a racial aspect that is not at the forefront, but they are people of different races who also have other differences, and, and I don’t believe that they’re fighting about race, but because it is another world, like, it doesn’t have the baggage of our world, but whenever you have that kind of two groups that are, that hate each other for reasons that are essentially superficial, it comes back around, you know. I think that it’s all, it’s all connected.

Sarah: It is, and, and it’s, it’s a way of almost addressing and to some extent combating the reduced amount of American history as pertains to slavery and that is taught.

Leslye: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It’s, it’s being diluted and erased in a lot of ways. Within fantasy and science fiction –

Leslye: Yeah.

Sarah: – you can, you can combat that.

Leslye: Yeah, you can show those, those allegories, I think. I mean, I, I did hear that some places they’ve taken slavery out of history books completely –

Sarah: Yes!

Leslye: – and it’s, it’s just horrifying! It’s like, what’s, what’s going on? I mean, I do think that a lot of Black families, you know, my parents kind of made pain, took pains to educate us outside of school?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: To make sure that we – ‘cause I, you can’t rely necessarily always on someone else to, to teach your kids their history, but, I mean, a lot of parents don’t have time for that, and so the fact that it is being removed and these kids don’t understand the, the history is, is really scary, and so if you can teach them about tolerance and a, and overcoming hatred in other means, in fiction, (a) it’s more palatable, because it’s not so visceral and connected to you personally and your country, and it doesn’t feel preachy, and (b) it’s also entertaining, because you’re, you’re learning the lessons – not really lessons, but you’re, you know, they say that, that reading fiction creates empathy, and so you’re, you’re creating empathy with your words and your art, and that, in a way that I think that is more affecting than if you were just trying to preach and lecture at people.

Sarah: You have the opportunity to, especially if you’re writing romance and fantasy, you have the opportunity to counter some really terrible history with happiness!

Leslye: Yes. Yeah! And, and I think that having, you know, something with a Black person on the cover of the book, and they get a happy ending, you know, that’s just amazing. It’s just – ‘cause there’s a lot of Black literature, you know, people like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, who are the greats, but you’re not really getting happy endings in a lot of their books – [laughs] – as wonderful as they are, and sometimes you just, you just need a happy ending. Like, I, that’s why we love romance, you know, ‘cause you know what you’re going to get, and, and that’s why I’m writing fantasy romance, ‘cause in fantasy, you can go either way! But I, I do want, at the end of the day, for, you know, them to get together, them to win this battle, even if they didn’t win the war, things like that. You want to leave, leave them uplifted a little bit.

Sarah: Yes. [Laughs] And that is itself revolutionary and subversive.

Leslye: Yeah, yeah! It definitely is, you know, because, I think that people read – I know I read to get away from things, so, yeah, I’ll read something kind of literary and important to make my mind feel smart, but then I’m going to mostly read for emotion and because I want to feel a certain way.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: I’m going to be taken to a place where I know that I’m going to end feeling a certain way and then I can go back to my daily life and fight the battles.

Sarah: Yes, I was reading a book this week that I realized, this says it has romantic elements, but they’re the wrong kind of romantic elements. None of this is going to end happily, and I was like, okay, brain, are you ready for this? No? Okay, let’s switch to something else. You, you’re choosing to find that, that lift and that solace at the end.

Leslye: Mm-hmm, exactly.

Sarah: Now, as far as, as far as your writing, what are you working on right now?

Leslye: Right now I have started a new series –

Sarah: Woohoo!

Leslye: – that – yeah! It’s, it’s a YA urban fantasy, and so it’s something that’s been in my mind for a couple of years, and so in between edits of the Earthsinger Chronicles, the series for St. Martin’s, I’m, I’m starting something new, and I’m really excited about it, ‘cause I do like to go back and forth between, between books –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – in terms of different series, and just to keep my mind fresh so I can take a, take a break from one world, go to a different world for a while, and then go back.

Sarah: Can you tell us anything about the new series, or is it too soon?

Leslye: It’s super early, but it, I will say that it is, it is a different take on shifters.

Sarah: Ohhh?

Leslye: Yeah, and it’s a, it’s a portal fantasy and different take on shifters. There’s a lot going on in this one too, but I’m really excited about it.

Sarah: I love shifters. It’s my, if, if there’s any element of paranormal romance that it’s like, okay, yeah, I’m still there for that, it’s shifters. [Laughs]

Leslye: Yeah. Shifters, I mean, shifters is one of the, I think, Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changelings are one of the very first paranormal romances I ever read, so, I, I do have a, a soft spot in my heart for shifters.

Sarah: Oh yeah. And I also think, to a certain extent, shifting, especially to animals that are deadly is a way of grappling with internal rage. You have an animal that you can turn into and destroy things, and so it’s about, I think it’s about negotiating a lot of rage, and right now, there’s a lot of rage. I have plenty.

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: Shifting would actually be a really nice way to alleviate some of that rage?

Leslye: [Laughs] That’s an interesting way to think –

Sarah: I mean, if you’ve got a lot of impotent rage, right, you’re going to turn into, like, a lion and be like, okay! Now I’m going to eat everyone.

Leslye: Yeah, because the nature, you know, of, of the animal is just so pure. It’s not –

Sarah: Yes!

Leslye: They’re not even doing it out of rage, you know. Like, we, we have that idea, but they’re just being themselves. They’re doing it out of instinct and, and survival and life, and, and so, yeah, kind of shedding our emotional baggage and going just back to the purity of, like, who are you as a, as a human, as an animal? I think that’s interesting.

Sarah: It is, it is really interesting. It’s my favorite part of paranormal romance. Now, I have a, a, a strange question. I was doing my research, and I follow you on Instagram, and you have this nifty thing called a Freewrite. Can you tell me about this? This thing looks really cool. How do you like it?

Leslye: So the Freewrite is, it’s – [laughs] – it’s basically a, a keyboard. It’s an update on the AlphaSmart, which I also have, and so these are kind of just freestanding keyboards with tiny little screens, and the idea is that they allow you to write without editing, because a lot of people get stuck, you know, editing everything that they write, and they never move forward. So I found that if I can get a first draft out without editing anything, it’s, that works for me as my process. So I’d been using the AlphaSmart, and the, and they don’t make the AlphaSmarts anymore. They were sort of, I don’t know when they stopped, but I know my mom, who was a teacher, she used them. She taught special ed, so for her, her kids, they – and they’re basically indestructible keyboards, and they’re, they’re, they’re old school. They are, you know, you put double A batteries in them, no internet or anything, and the Freewrite is the modern version of it, so they’re Wi-Fi, they’re backing up your words to the cloud, but you can only see three or four lines at a time, and they have a special keyboard. I don’t know what it’s called, but there’s some kind of special keyboard technology. So I love gadgets, and I bought one, because I have, I have this little fear in the back of my mind that my AlphaSmart is somehow going to die and, like, lose all my words. It never happened, but you actually have to manually connect a cable to get your words into your computer, and, which is super old school, yeah.

Sarah: I have two AlphaSmarts, one that I bought, like, ages and ages ago, and then when I heard they were being discontinued I found somebody selling a lot of them from an elementary school that had closed, and they were like, they’re numbered in marker. Do you have a number? Do you have a lucky number? I’ve got a lot of these; which number do you want? [Laughs] So I have one with this big old number written on the back. They are super useful and let you do exactly one thing.

Leslye: Right. Yeah, and you can take them, like, on an airplane and, you know, you don’t have to worry about powering down or just, you know, stick it in your backpack and, and if you don’t want to take a whole laptop, they’re great, and they’ve helped my writing so much. And the AlphaSmart, I actually, the Freewrite, I tried it. I don’t like the keyboard; I don’t like the way it feels? And there’s other quirks about it. Like, it doesn’t have any arrows.

Sarah: Eh?

Leslye: They have this, this philosophy like, they don’t want to, to go back at all, so they force you not to, whereas at least with the AlphaSmart, you can go up and you can look at what you’ve done if you want to. It’s, it’s kind of annoying –

Sarah: Yeah.

Leslye: – ‘cause it’s only four lines of, of the screen, but, yeah, the Freewrite had some quirks to it that – so I keep saying I want to go, want to try it again, because I, one of my, one of the videos on my YouTube channel, which is not very much there, but the one that has the most views is my review of the Freewrite, and I’ve gotten, I got so many hits on that, and people have asked me, oh, do an update, because in my review I’m like, eh, I’m going to keep using the AlphaSmart. You know, this is really cool, and I like the gadgets, but I’m not really feeling it. But they have released some new software, new firmware for it, so I was going to try it again and see if I can get back into it. But honestly, the, the AlphaSmart has, is doing what I need to do. It’s never lost any of my words yet – knock on wood! – so I’m pretty happy with it still.

[Laughter]

Sarah: And you could sort of find AlphaSmarts on eBay sometimes, right?

Leslye: You can! Yeah, they’re still there a lot. Like, my mom got one, and that’s my backup one for if this one ever, something happens to it. But they’re still there, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, I just looked on eBay; they’re, like, twenty bucks. Which is a different option then, because the Freewrite’s like four hundred dollars.

Leslye: It’s super expensive, yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: So of course you want to give it another try and try to, you know, make it work.

Leslye: Yeah, to get my money’s worth out of it. And part of it is, I could probably get used to the keyboard. It just, it’s very clacky, which is by design. Like, it’s kind of very, you know, you have to hit it a little harder –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Leslye: – and I don’t know if that’s better ergonomically or something, but for me it was just loud and distracting, and I like the softer touch keyboards, so it’s all personal preference. There’s a lot of people who love their Freewrites and swear by them.

Sarah: That’s really cool though! It’s sort of interesting that there’s technology to keep you from doing things other than writing. Like, they took all of the features of a computer and were like, nope, keyboard and words and four lines: that’s all you get.

Leslye: Yeah, there’s no internet, there’s no Facebook, so, you know, you don’t have any excuses. If, if you really, if you have a problem with being distracted, then a device like this is perfect, ‘cause it won’t allow you to distract yourself, unless you just, you know, stare out the window or something.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now, if you don’t mind, I also wanted to ask you about your newest tattoo, which is super cool. I’ve been, like you said in one of your, one of your posts – I, this sounds super creepy, but I was like, like, I do research for a podcast, and I look at different parts of your website, and I love how you were like, if I’m getting a new tattoo, I think about it, and I work on it for, like, a year.

Leslye: Yeah. Definitely.

Sarah: Which seems good, ‘cause, you know, you’re writing on yourself.

Leslye: Yeah, it’s permanent! Like, it’s hard to take these off, so.

Sarah: Yeah! Yeah, you want to think about it. You have a new tattoo that is gorgeous. Can you, can you tell me about it?

Leslye: Sure! It is, so it’s the, it’s on my collarbone, and it’s the words “So be it – See to it,” and that comes from Octavia Butler, who is the mother of Black science fiction, I guess. Huge influence on many of us who write sci-fi and fantasy. So after she passed away, she left her – I guess before she passed away – she left her, a bunch of her notebooks and her things to this library in California, and an article came out a couple of years ago, I think, where it was an image from one of her notebooks, and it was basically a, a written-down vision board. She was just visualizing what she wanted from her career, and it was something like, you know, I’m going to be on the New York Times bestseller list; I’m going to have millions of people reading my work and being touched by it. It was just all these things, these affirmations that she was, that she was writing down for her career, and, and these things that she actually manifested eventually, and every, every few lines she write “So be it – See to it,” and that was sort of like an invocation, I thought, and just evidence of the power of her, like her manifesting power to create her future, which is something that I believe in, and so I was just really inspired by those words, “So be it – See to it,” and I’m like, I should get that; that should be my next tattoo! And so I, I, I sat with it for at least a year – it was more than a year, actually – and, and just thought about it, and I was like, yes, that is what I’m going to get. And, so yeah, I, I found a tattoo shop near here, ‘cause I’d gotten my other ones at other places, and I, I got it done, and it was, it was, it’s really thin script, so it was the shortest tattoo, it only took about twenty minutes, but I love it, and it’s, you know, that constant reminder. It was kind of like, you know, you’re, you can make these things happen. You can, if you believe and if you affirm what you want to have happen in your life, that’s something that you can – and it’s not just, you can’t just say it. Like, you have to see to it, you know? You have to know that it’s going to happen and then take the steps to make it happen, and if that’s something – that was obviously something that she was able to do, and I just thought that was amazing. It’s actually kind of hard to read; the script is not super easy to read, so people always have to ask me, which I don’t mind, like, and, and kind of explain it ‘cause my other tattoos are kind of – [laughs] – well, one of them is, is a little obscure also, for some people, and they always have to ask me what it is. I have a quote from The Matrix on my arm, and no-, if you know it, you know it, and if you don’t, you don’t, and me explaining it to you doesn’t make a difference either, but I, I guess I could have gotten it done backwards so I could see it, but I just, I wanted it regular, I think.

Sarah: That’s very cool. So how many tattoos do you have? Are they all literary?

Leslye: They’re not. Only two are literary – well, one is literary, one is a movie quote, and then the other two are symbols. My very first one – so I have four total. I wanted to always make sure they were really meaningful for different, you know, different points in my life or different things that were really important to me, so, yeah, I, every, hmm, every decade or so, I get a new tattoo so far. That might change in the future.

Sarah: [Laughs] So I have one last question that I always ask, and that is, do you have any books that you’re reading or that you’d like to recommend that you think other people should know about?

Leslye: Yeah, there are – I’m reading two books right now that so far are pretty good. One is sci-fi; it’s called The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden, and it takes place in a futuristic South Africa, and it’s just really interesting. Like, it’s just, yeah, there’s a lot of, a lot of things happening in there, and I don’t, I don’t read a lot of hard sci-fi, but that, the cover of that one was also really cool. It’s this robot and this little girl, so that really drew me in. And the other one is a, a YA fantasy called Belvedor and the Four Corners by Ashleigh Bello, and it’s this cool fantasy worlds that – so I’m usually reading more than one thing at a time.

And then some other stuff that I’ve read recently that I really recommend: The City of Brass, which is epic fantasy. It’s by S. A. Chakraborty, and it’s about djinn, basically. Like, she’s just done all of this – I follow her on Twitter, and she does a lot of research into kind of ancient Islam and, and the culture there, and so a really, really fabulous fantasy about the djinn.

And then I know a fantasy romance that I loved. It’s one of those books that I wish I had written? It’s, it’s called Namesake by Kate Stradling, and it’s, it’s a portal fantasy. So she goes into this new world, and – I don’t even want to say anything about it to spoil it, because it’s – there’s some books that you kind of either wish you’d written or that kind of make you want to stop writing ‘cause they’re so good, and you’re like, ah! And that is definitely one of them.

Sarah: Are there any other books that you want to mention?

Leslye: I think, thinking about influences and, like, why I write what I write, I think one of the biggest influences that I read a lot as a kid was a book by Gloria Naylor called Mama Day, and I don’t know if you would call it fantasy; I mean, it’s about, like, folk magic, I guess you would call it? In, in, like, South Carolina, and so there’s these – you know, Gloria Naylor wrote The Women of Brewster Place, and she wrote a lot of things that didn’t really have magic in them, but they kind of did? And that’s always really interesting to me too, and I, that was something that I read a lot growing up, and, and even before I discovered some of the other fantasy and sci-fi authors, so, just a shout-out to that book.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I think, I think so many writers have one book that resonated with them for so long that it, it influences so much of what they do. It’s so interesting when you hear different people talk about what book that was.

Leslye: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it’s, it’s not really representative of what I write, but something about it took hold and, and, you know, inside of you, it just changes and comes out in very different ways.

Sarah: That’s really cool. So your new, new book becomes new again –

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: – on May 1st.

Leslye: Yes.

Sarah: Congratulations!

Leslye: Thank you! Yeah, it’s, it’s really exciting to have it come out again! Newer, new and improved! ‘Cause I did a lot of, a lot of revision to it, before – so this version, you know, people who have read the first version are like, oh, should I read it again? I’m like, yeah, ‘cause it’s, it’s different. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, that’s – if I could go back and rewrite some of the books that I’ve written, I would, a large portion of them would change. So I, I think it’s super cool that you had that opportunity.

Leslye: Yeah, and I, I recognized that at the time; it’s like I get the chance to go back and change all the stuff I wish I had changed!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Leslye: Now there might be new stuff I wish I could change too, but, like, that’s, it doesn’t happen, so I was, I was super grateful. I mean, it’s, it’s sort of, it’s also like, okay, I don’t want to make it worse. I want to make sure that I’m changing it in a positive direction, but, yeah, it’s definitely an opportunity that a lot of authors wish they could have.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to end of this week’s interview. I want to thank Leslye Penelope for hanging out with me and answering all of my nosy questions. You can find her online at lpenelope.com, or you can find her YouTube channel at lpenelope.com/youtube, and on most social media, she’s @leslyepenelope, L-E-S-L-Y-E-Penelope.

This episode was brought to you by Maid for Love by Marie Force. If you are longing for a summer read and looking for the perfect beach novel, you should take a visit to the idyllic Gansett Island with Marie Force’s bestselling novel Maid for Love, now available in mass market paperback for the first time. Join the 3.5 million readers who have followed the lives and loves of the McCarthy family on their slice of island heaven. This time, prodigal son Mac McCarthy returns home and unexpectedly falls for hardworking single mom Maddie in the most unusual way. Don’t miss the vacation of a lifetime. Maid for Love by Marie Force is on sale now wherever print books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

I also want to tell you that I have a coupon for 15% off Sudio Bluetooth headphones if you use coupon code SBTB. You will get 15% off a purchase and free worldwide shipping, which is always a good thing, and I have a link in the show notes. Sudio sent me a pair of the Tre model in white, which I really, really like. Not only are they so comfortable that I kind of forgot that I was wearing them, but when I walk around outside with my dogs, I can hear ambient noise, and the battery life is really kind of impressive. I was going for at least four and a half hours, five hours, when I listened to them for the first time. The copy from Sudio says that their typical battery lifetime is nine-plus hours. I cannot walk my dogs for nine hours, but I can definitely listen to an audiobook for nine hours. So again, with discount code SBTB, I have a link in the show notes to take you to Sudio, 15% off with SBTB, and they always offer free worldwide shipping. Thank you, Sudio! This is pretty rad!

We have a podcast Patreon. If you would like to have a look, it is patreon.com/SmartBitches. The Patreon helps me keep the show going, and your support means a tremendous amount. Every time I get an email that has a new pledge in it, I’m seriously so excited, and I have this sort of weird, excited, humbled feeling that I haven’t quite named yet.

I also want to thank some of the Patreon folks personally, so to Rosa, Christine, Cailey, Liz, and Lisa, thank you for being part of the Patreon community. I really appreciate it!

Now, let’s see, what else do I got? Music! We have music; are you hearing the music? I dig this music a lot. This is Caravan Palace. This track is called “Star Scat.” You can find this album, which is a two-album set, Caravan Palace and Panic, at Amazon and on iTunes, and I have links to both, and you can find Caravan Palace at their website, caravanpalace.com. As always, our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. Thank you, Sassy! You can find Sassy on Twitter @SassyOutwater.

And now it is time for the dog to bark at the recycling truck and for me to tell you a terrible joke. If you were listening last week, you know that I was accidently subscribed to a church newsletter, and in a recent edition they had jokes, and it completely made my day. Now, I don’t want to name the church because that seems uncool, but I’m not supposed to be on this newsletter subscription. I’m not a member of this church; I live nowhere near it. However, the jokes are great, and it’s kind of cool to see this little community doing its thing. It’s very strange, I understand this, but either way, here’s the joke. You guys ready? Okay. So thank you to the anonymous church newsletter that mistakenly added me to their, to their list. It’s one of the few times where I’ve been okay with this happening. [Clears throat.]

Why is everyone so tired on April 1st?

Why? Why is everyone so tired on April 1st?

Because they’ve just completed a long thirty-one-day March!

[Laughs] It’s so bad! I actually have in parentheses in my script: booo! I’m booing myself! That’s amusing. [Laughs] Thirty-one-day March! I will be honest with you; March was so awful this year, it was a really long thirty-one-day March, and April has been pretty bloody cold, and so is May, so maybe we’re just going to skip spring and head right into humidity. Bleah.

Now, as always, I will have links in the show notes to the books that we talked about, but Leslye also talked about a lot of different writing technologies, including AlphaSmarts and Freewrites, and I will have links to those things in the show notes as well.

And that brings me to the end here! So, may you enjoy a very easy thirty-one-day May, which is not as fun as a thirty-one-day March, or as funny. [Laughs] On behalf of everyone here, I wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and I will see you here next week.

[fabulous music]