Here is a text transcript of Podcast 105: Another Interview with Kat Mayo. You can listen to the mp3 here, or you can read on!
This podcast transcript was handmade with digital alphabetical badassery by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to another DBSA podcast. This is episode number 104. Wow. This is an interview with Kat Mayo from Book Thingo that I did while I was in Australia recently. We talk about blogging, books being made into films, Australians that I would like her to take back and she refuses, though I tried. America, I am, I’m trying, I promise. I also want to say Hi to Stephanie, who is an Australian librarian that I met at Romance Writers of Australia at the book signing, who is probably listening to this in her car. Stephanie, you are on the wrong side of the road, and you’re on the wrong side of the car, too, so please be careful.
The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. I’ll have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.
And I am happy to tell you that this podcast is sponsored by Signet, publisher of Hillbilly Rockstar, the sexy new Blacktop Cowboys novel from New York Times bestselling author Lorelei James. I’ll have more information at the end of the podcast about that book too.
One more thing: We are taking a week off next week. I hope that this doesn’t leave you bereft and miserable, but we will be back in September.
And now, on with the podcast:
[music]
Sarah: All right, so introduce yourself for the lovely people at home who don’t, maybe don’t remember the podcast we did two years ago.
Kat Mayo: Yes, while you were eating –
Sarah: Can you believe it was two years ago?
Kat: Were you eating crocodile pizza?
Sarah: No, we were looking at crocodile pizza on a menu, but we were eating fries, chips, with sweet chili sauce –
Kat: Oh, that’s right.
Sarah: – which I had never had before, and I was like, what is this amazing thing?
Kat: Have you had it since?
Sarah: Yes! Although the whole thing where you get charged for condiments here bugs the shit out of me.
Kat: Do you?
Sarah: Like, no, you don’t pay for extra ginger and extra wasabi and extra soy sauce or extra chili sauce or little cups of catsup.
Kat: No, but did you get charged here?
Sarah: No, but in, like, other places I’ve gone to get food –
Kat: Ah, okay.
Sarah: – like, all the little condiments are extra, and I’m like, what is this? But yes, I love sweet chili sauce with chips.
Kat: Yay!
Sarah: It’s just now starting to show up in my grocery store. I’m very excited.
Kat: You’re an Ozzie now.
Sarah: [Australian accent] I know. I sure am.
Kat: [Laughs] So, I’m Kat Mayo. I blog for Book Thingo.
Sarah: [Her own accent] Which is, like, the most Australian name for a blog ever.
Kat: [Laughs] Yeah. Uh-oh. You know, it took us maybe five minutes to decide we wanted to do a book blog –
Sarah: Yep.
Kat: – and then half a year to decide on the name. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes. It’s the hardest part.
Kat: It’s the most important and most stressful part of starting a blog, yeah.
Sarah: But Book Thingo? Extremely Australian name.
Kat: Yay. Well, that’s the intent.
Sarah: Yes, of course.
Kat: We had some other candidates, but everyone else vetoed them. [Laughs]
Sarah: So is it still you and all of your crew, or is just you?
Kat: It’s me, and there’s seven of us now.
Sarah: Wow.
Kat: But our problem is a lot of my co-bloggers are doing academic study, so when they’re on exams, they’re on exams at the same time –
Sarah: Of course.
Kat: – and when their papers are due, they’re all due at the same time, and so the strategy of having many bloggers so that we can cover the peaks and troughs of people’s reading, reading moods doesn’t really work.
Sarah: Doesn’t work when they’re all on the same schedule?
Kat: Yeah.
[Laughter]
Kat: Yeah, pretty much.
Sarah: So what are you reading right now that you think is pretty awesome that you wish more American readers knew about? Melina Marchetta, Melina Marchetta, and Melina Marchetta.
Kat: Oh, yeah, but you know, I think American readers know about her already. I think her movie is – so, On the Jellicoe Road is going to be a movie.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: I’ve heard tell that – and I blame you Americans for this – I’m sorry, but the heroine’s going to be American.
Sarah: Yes, you may absolutely blame us for that. Sorry.
Kat: [Laughs] And I’m like, whyyyyy?
Sarah: Because America.
Kat: Well, Melina had a very good explanation for it, to do with, you know, getting a wider distribution, but I’m like, whyyy? But I trust her, and she’s doing the script, so –
Sarah: Yep.
Kat: – I think it’ll still be fabulous, and –
Sarah: Many of her books have been on sale, too. Finnikin of the Rock has been on sale –
Kat: Have they?
Sarah: – for $1.99, and On the Jellicoe Road was on sale for $1.99, so there’s an effort on the part of her publisher in America to drop the price to get people to try her books and engage readerships.
Kat: She is so fabulous, and all her books, except for the first one, which is Looking for Alibrandi, all the others will have a, a satisfying optimistic, romantic happy ending. Looking for Alibrandi is Young Adult, so it’s a little bit –
Sarah: Little bit darker?
Kat: A little bit. Not much.
Sarah: Jellicoe Road is an ugly-cry book, though, right?
Kat: Yes, and The Piper’s Son.
Sarah: Is also –
Kat: I cried from about page 3 up to the end –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: – but oh, my God! If you love, like, I call them dickhead heroes – ?
Sarah: Yes, I understand exactly what you’re saying there.
Kat: So, this – and, and you know, if you love New Adult – so, Tom is, I think, 21. It is, I just loved him so much, no matter how horrible he is to the love interest.
Sarah: He’s an epic great dickhead hero?
Kat: Yes. Very much so.
Sarah: And there’s ugly-cry.
Kat: Yes, sobbing, sobbing.
Sarah: So if you’ve got some shit to work out. If you’ve got some shit you need to work out, you should read that book.
Kat: I was sobbing, and, but the wonderful thing is, it’s so good, I read it, and then I read it again, and I still cried –
Sarah: Wow.
Kat: – pretty much the whole book.
Sarah: That’s a lot of crying.
Kat: Yeah. That, it is a lot of crying. [Laughs]
Sarah: So what else are you reading right now that you are thinking is good?
Kat: So I’m reading Nalini Singh’s Rock Addiction.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: Oh, I hope I got that title right.
Sarah: Well, we’ll figure it out. I’ll post a link to the book.
Kat: So that’s a, a, a departure from her usual, ‘cause it’s New Adult and very steamy. I’ve just finished Melanie Scott’s The Devil in Denim, which is a, it’s football themed, but not players, so it’s, it reads to me like kind of –
Sarah: Wait, my football or your football?
Kat: Your football.
Sarah: My gridiron football.
Kat: Your gridiron football.
Sarah: All right, ‘cause there’s a lot of football.
Kat: Oh, is it football? It could be baseball. Some American sport. [Laughs]
Sarah: That narrows it down! Thanks!
Kat: Oh, I can’t remember now. I think it’s football. Anyway, it’s to do with, it’s, she’s the daughter of the previous owner –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: – or the previous CEO, and she, she had expected to sort of take over for her dad, but it turns out that the, the team is in trouble financially, and so they needed somebody who had the funds to really sort of –
Sarah: Renovate and upgrade the team.
Kat: – renovate it, yeah.
Sarah: Get better players.
Kat: So the hero is the guy who basically buys in, and then he’s in part, he’s in, is it a partnership? It’s not really a partnership, there are three of them, so you can tell that the other books are going to be the other two.
Sarah: Right.
Kat: So Mel Scott writes under M. J. Scott, and she, sorry, she also writes under M. J. Scott, and she writes urban fantasy and, urban fantasy/romance, so this is, I think, her first contemporary, which is very interesting.
Sarah: What did you think of them? What did you think of the Singh book and The Devil in Denim?
Kat: So the Nalini Singh book is kind of very strange to me, because there are some bits where I, it, it echoes her Psy-Changeling heroes, and I’m like, oh, that’s a familiar phrase! And –
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Kat: – I’m sure that’s in the Psy-Changeling –
Sarah: Or that reminds me of a character –
Kat: Yeah, yeah.
Sarah: – from the Psy-Changeling. That’s the way she’d describe a hero in the Psy-Changeling.
Kat: And the writing style, I think, is, is quite different as well, ‘cause it’s contemporary, but, so if you like her sexy writing, you will have no problems with this book. It is sexy from start to basically, I think –
Sarah: Right.
Kat: – to finish.
Sarah: So there’s a lot of nookie.
Kat: A lot.
Sarah: Any children in peril?
Kat: I don’t think so. I haven’t finished it. I’m, I’m midway through, but I don’t think –
Sarah: Okay.
Kat: They don’t leave the bedroom very often, so –
[Laughter]
Kat: – so no, no.
Sarah: Well, that’s good to know.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: They just hump a lot.
Kat: They do hump a lot. And then there are others coming out, like, Anna Campbell’s got one coming out that I’m desperately trying to get a copy of. It’s the red book.
Sarah: I’m trying to think if I’ve seen the cover, because usually I remember there’s the blue Anna Campbell and the yellow Anna Campbell –
Kat: Yeah. [Laughs]
Sarah: I don’t know if I’ve seen the red Anna Campbell yet.
Kat: It’s coming out – is it When a Duke Dares?
Sarah: Uh-huh.
Kat: Comes out September, I think. See, I don’t know, ‘cause we get different covers to you.
Sarah: Yes. Your covers are very different from ours. It’s very funny.
Kat: Yeah. She’s still with HarperCollins here, but she’s with Grand Central –
Sarah: Central.
Kat: – in the U.S.? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sarah: – in the U.S., which is –
Kat: So I’m looking forward to that one. Christina Brooke has one coming out as well. So these are the Ozzie authors that, that I can’t wait – And then, Leah Ashton won the RITA.
Sarah: Yes, she did!
Kat: Which is fantastic. So I’ve read a few of her, her categories, which I’ve enjoyed as well. No paranormals. It’s a bit sad.
Sarah: I have not read a paranormal in a while.
Kat: Yeah. I’ve noticed –
Sarah: It’s, there not a lot of paranormalness that I’m like, oh, I’ve got to read that.
Kat: Yeah. Well, the only ones I read are the ones I’m already reading.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: So the Nalini Singhs. Well, really, just the Nalini Singh.
Sarah: Do you like Jeaniene Frost?
Kat: I haven’t tried her.
Sarah: She has a new, sort of paranormal, New Adult style series. The heroine is somehow able to foresee the end of the world or foresee alternate realms, and the hero has to stop her, and she’s destined –
Kat: Oh!
Sarah: – to fulfill a specific role, and he is destined to stop her from fulfilling that role, and of course, you know, love and sexy times.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: But the cover is really striking.
Kat: Well, you know, I’ll be reading the ending first. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah. Well, you’re a fairy killer!
Kat: I am. So, yeah. So, that’s basically it. And the only other paranormal I read is Mercy Thompson, which is kind of paranormal/urban fantasy.
Sarah: Yeah. So have you ever wanted to come to U, to the U.S. for a conference?
Kat: Yes!
Sarah: Do you want to come to Romantic Times?
Kat: Oh, my God, so Gabby, who co-blogs at –
Sarah: Yes?
Kat: – at Book Thingo was at RT –
Sarah: I know, I saw her.
Kat: – in New Orleans, and I’m so –
Sarah: Gabby and –
Kat: Rudi –
Sarah: – and Rudi both.
Kat: – of the famous shoes.
Sarah: I know, they were both at my blogger conference.
Kat: So after that, I’m like, had dinner with Rudi and another friend, and I was like, tell me all about RT! She’s like, it is so fantastic.
Sarah: It’s amazing.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: They were so tired, because they just did everything, and at one point, [laughs] at one point Gabby was like, I’m being a bad Australian. I’m not handling my liquor very well right now.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: There’s so much drinking around here. Oh, my God! I’m going to go out now! It was like romance fans from Australia in New Orleans is a really bad combo. But I will tell you, next year Romantic Times is in Dallas, and then the year after that it’s in Las Vegas.
Kat: I’ve heard about Vegas, and I am so tempted to – I have started sowing the seeds for Vegas –
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: – within my family and socializing them into this idea that we might spend a bit of time in Vegas.
Sarah: Do you want to go by yourself or are you going bring a crew with you?
Kat: I think if I go, I would – I don’t know, I would leave them somewhere. [Laughs]
Sarah: You would be, you go, like, you won’t see them. There’s so much to do.
Kat: I have told, I have told the family that you must give me the weekend, because I, I, I can’t be managing two things.
Sarah: Nope.
Kat: ‘Cause even, so even ARRA, I go to ARRA, and I basically say, you can come with me and stay at the hotel, but I cannot be with your during that weekend –
Sarah: Yep.
Kat: – ‘cause I am just invested in this conference, and it is the one, the – I mean, ARRA’s once every two years.
Sarah: Yeah. It’s important.
Kat: But Vegas is very tempting, and I’ve heard Gra-, how Heather Graham’s event is, like, unmissable. [Laughs]
Sarah: Heather Graham’s event at RT is pretty amazing, because there is always a, a show, a performance at her dinner that she does with Helen Rosburg. The first year that I went to RT, there was a hanging –
Kat: Wow.
Sarah: – complete with stunt wire. Like, a guy was swinging, and there was a little tripwire to keep him from –
Kat: Wow!
Sarah: – actually being hung. I mean, who doesn’t want to have dinner with a hanging, right? I mean, come on. The, the thing about RT that is better and better every year is that this is our Comic-Con. This is our Dragon Con. This is the, the romance fan convention, and it gets more fun and more interesting, and it’s, it gets better because RT is also very eager to respond to what their audience wants. They want more blogger events next year. They want more blogger tracks about being a book blogger during the conference. They want more reader events.
Kat: ‘Cause you guys run a blogger day?
Sarah: We run the blogger conference the day before.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: That was, that was a, purely out of a Twitter conversation. We were, a bunch of us were saying one afternoon that we don’t have an event that’s just ours to talk about romance blogging, and I was like, we could do one the day before RT starts. So I email RT and I was like, can I have a room to do a blogger conference? Sure! Why not! Okay, sure! So Harlequin sponsored the cocktail party, and Jane and I sponsored the luncheon, and we had a half-day conference about book blogging, and it was so great, because we all got in a room together to talk about what technology tools do we use? How can we better help each other organize what we do? What are the things that we’re struggling with and we want to do better?
Kat: Is that like a round table, or is it a presentation?
Sarah: The first year it was a round table, ‘cause there was 10 of us. This year there was close to 50, but it was very interactive.
Kat: So 10 of you in the first year, because I was thinking that we, we should think about running something similar before ARRA –
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: – but the thing is, the number of book bloggers, let alone romance book bloggers, in Australia is nowhere near the numbers you would get in the U.S. We would maybe –
Sarah: Well, our first year it was just 10 people, but the following year, this year was much larger, in part because people had heard last year’s was good –
Kat: Right.
Sarah: – but also because it was in New Orleans, and more people came.
Kat: [Laughs] Yeah, well –
Sarah: Like, it was a bigger conference ‘cause of New Orleans. Last year it was in Kansas City, which was awesome. Kansas City has great barbecue, and I had a fantastic time, but I’d never been to Kansas City before. New Orleans I’d been to before, and I know that it’s fun. But if you do have a blogger conference, even if you just do a half-day where you have like a, like a buffet lunch and then you sit and you have an hour about what you, who you are and what you read and an hour about the technology that you use, one of the things that’s most useful is that we all bring a tool or a tip or a plug-in that we use that we find really useful, and we all talk about it. Because, you know, there’s really very little reason for you to talk about all the things that you do every day until you realize –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – oh, are you having trouble with scheduling? This is how I schedule my site.
Kat: Yeah. And I’ve heard of, I’ve heard other bloggers, not necessarily book bloggers –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: – who’ve shared how they, you know, manage their schedule, how they manage social media, and those tips are really useful, even though –
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Kat: – we’re not blogging about the same things.
Sarah: It’s the same stuff.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: Absolutely. And if you had an event like that and it was open to bloggers in general with a specialty on books, you would get people who talk about books sometimes, you know.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: Totally doable.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: But I also think that one thing that is happening increasingly is that people who talk online are now more and more often finding time to meet in person. That we’ve gone from just having online friendships to bringing online friendships into real-life interaction, and it’s more and more common to say, oh, hey, we’re doing a thing, you should come –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – and be a person with us, and it’s normal.
Kat: Be a person. [Laughs] You know, the first time we had a blogger meetup, I, I was, I was at work, and I was like, I’ve got to go now, ‘cause I’m meet-, I’m, I’m –
Sarah: Meeting my friends from the Internet
Kat: – I’ve got to go. At, at six o’clock, I’m meeting people from the Internet –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: – and seriously, every no, everyone I worked with turned around and said –
Sarah: What? [Laughs]
Kat: What? And I’m, I had to explain to them that yes, I, I know these people –
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: – they’re mostly women. I think it’s fine, we’re meeting at a public place, but they were really genuinely concerned.
Sarah: They’re worried about me.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: I actually had someone come up to me here at the Australian Romance Writers and say, what do you do when you, you see someone that you know from Twitter? Do you, like, do you introduce yourself? And I’m like, hell, yes, because I talk to people on Twitter all day.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: Like, if I’m in the same room as someone that I speak to every day online, I totally want to introduce myself in person.
Kat: That’s my challenge in conferences is be-, is, is that people that, that I know on Twitter as their Twitter handle –
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Kat: – they, ‘cause they, we meet in real life and I feel bad because –
Sarah: That you don’t recognize them.
Kat: Yeah. I don’t know who they are.
Sarah: Not everyone has their – I don’t have my face on my Twitter handle.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: I very rarely post pictures online.
Kat: Well, not just that. I really suck at facial, face-to-name –
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: – association. Like, suck. So bad.
Sarah: But, and I know at RT the name badges can have your Twitter handle. They could do that here and make sure everyone has their Twitter handle, or there’s a blogger named Lynda who blogs as Fish with Sticks. She made little buttons for people at RT –
Kat: Yeah?
Sarah: – that had your avatar and then your Twitter handle and your name so people would recognize your avatar and go, oh, oh, oh, oh, I talk to you all the time!
Kat: I know you, yeah.
Sarah: And I had conversations like that at RT. You’re so-and-so! Oh, now I know who you are! ‘Cause, you know, if your real name is, like, Ann Smith and I know you as something completely different, I’m not going to recognize that.
Kat: I’m, in all the conferences, you have the added problem of some authors come not in their author name –
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: – in their real names, and you’re like, I, I give up!
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: I don’t know who you are!
Sarah: Too many names. Just tell me a title, that’s really the best I can do. [Laughs]
Kat: Yeah. So you’ve been to Australian and U.S. conferences.
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: Are they very different?
Sarah: Yes. Very different. Well, Australian –
Kat: We’re more fun! [Laughs]
Sarah: There’s a much more open, we’re all going to the bar!
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: Like, we, like, it is almost a part of the conference that when the thing ends, everyone goes to the bar, and the conference continues. There’s a lot less going out in smaller groups.
Kat: Okay.
Sarah: But the group isn’t as large.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: I mean, RT was, you know, couple thousand people. RWA is a couple thousand people. This is a much smaller group, like three or four hundred people, but there’s less going out in smaller groups. Everyone sort of tends to hang together and hang out at the bar, because Australia. The other thing is that the Australian writers know that they’re not part of the biggest market, and one of the things that the fo-, conference focuses on is enlarging your market and reaching into the American market and into the U.K. market, and they’re totally different things. Even the way the books are packaged.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: You get different covers –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – than we do. The things that are super popular here, like rural outback romance? That’s a really hard sell in the States –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – and it doesn’t penetrate, forgive me, very well, because –
[Laughter]
Kat: You’ve been waiting to say that. [Laughs]
Sarah: I’ve been waiting to say that, yes I have. It, it doesn’t reach the American reader very well because, oh, there’s a lot of reasons, but one of the things is that it’s completely unfamiliar. Every aspect of it is unfamiliar, and so it’s – I was actually talking with somebody about this at lunch. How do you market outback romance to American readers? And I actually think that one of the tips would be to start with it’s a small town –
Kat: Small town.
Sarah: – rural romance and don’t even get to the outback Australia part. Lead with the conflict.
Kat: I think it’s a fine tension because the, the very characteristics that appeal to Australian readers about Australian rural romance are the same things that would alienate a reader who was not familiar with Australia in general.
Sarah: We have very little cultural reference of the outback, aside from Outback Steakhouse, which –
Kat: Oh, God.
Sarah: – is allegedly Australian food, and here serves American food, which I think is hilarious –
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin –
Kat: Right.
Sarah: – and Paul Hogan. Like, those – oh, and now we have –
Kat: Hugh Jackman? He’s –
Sarah: Hugh Jackman is not an outback guy.
Kat: Well, yeah, that’s true.
Sarah: He is a superhero, he’s Wolverine.
Kat: He did Australia, that was in the outback.
Sarah: Nobody saw that, that movie was a flop.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: Plus, we have Iggy Azalea, and we would like her to, would like you to take her back.
Kat: Oh! [Laughs]
Sarah: You, no, really, she has the number one and number two song on the chart for, like, months now. Every time I get in the car with my kids, I hear Iggy friggin’ Azalea.
Kat: I have the same problem.
Sarah: And for real, please take her back.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: Please. No, I’m not joking. I’m going to cause a diplomatic incident if you don’t take her back. And the thing is that Iggy Azalea pretty much illustrates the marketing point. She is a very tall, blonde, attractive woman who when she raps sounds like she’s from Brooklyn –
Kat: Right.
Sarah: – or New Jersey or maybe the, the island. Then you hear her do an interview, and you realize that she’s Australian. It’s like the fourth or fifth thing that you notice about her, because she’s does things, other things that are so familiar. Plus, she sounds like Eve and she sounds like Nicki Minaj. Like, she has recreated a sound that is very familiar, and she does not sound Australian when she raps, so it’s all of the familiar hooks. Then, buried behind that is the fact that she’s, like, a six foot –
Kat: She just happens to be Australian.
Sarah: She’s like a six foot tall Australian lady –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – who does not sound Australian. You can have her back, though. Any time.
Kat: So, is, are there any Aust-, rural romances you’ve read that you’ve enjoyed? Or have you, have you read many?
Sarah: I have not read many at all. They can almost, they can, they’re sometimes hard for me to find, because they –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – that’s not what Amazon serves me, and that’s not the pitches that I get. It is more, if I’m being pitched an Australian-set book, it is more likely a category set in a city.
Kat: Okay.
Sarah: So like, billionaires in a city.
Kat: Can I just say, you can tell that, that they’re a real billionaire, or millionaire in Australia, if they have a parking space in a city.
Sarah: Really!
Kat: It is like gold.
Sarah: That’s like New York.
Kat: And I actually read, I read a book – Yeah. I read a book somewhere, and I’m like, I can tell this guy has made it, because he does not have to worry about parking. Don’t, forget about this flash car, forget about the traveling every week.
Sarah: No.
Kat: If you have a car space that you’re not whinging about paying for, it means you’ve got it made in Sydney. [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh, yeah. That’s the measure of wealth.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: A car parking space that you don’t complain about paying for that is always yours and is probably right outside your building.
Kat: Yes.
Sarah: Or in the building.
Kat: I’m like, that is, that doesn’t happen in real life.
Sarah: In, in New York City, Jerry Seinfeld has a building that is, houses all of his cars, so it’s basically a building of parking.
Kat: Oh, God.
Sarah: ‘Cause he collects cars.
Kat: That’s when you know you may be –
Sarah: That’s –
Kat: – a little bit too wealthy. [Laughs]
Sarah: That is a whole level of wealth that I just am amazed by. I think Jay Leno does, too, ‘cause I know Jay Leno collects cars, but he’s out in L.A.; there’s lots of space. In New York, it’s, like, a narrow building filled with cars.
Kat: It’s, do they have car elevators?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: Is that how they get them out?
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yep, there’s a lot of parking garages where you leave the car and they put it in an elevator and they put it somewhere. Sometimes you’ll see them out. Like, your car will be on a shelf up in the air.
[Laughter]
Kat: I’d like that one.
Sarah: I hope there’s not a power outages, ‘cause my car is not coming down. I can’t drive it from up there.
Kat: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: If there’s a power outage, I am fucked. [Laughs]
Kat: I don’t think we – well, we probably have them. I just have never been in any.
Sarah: Well, there’s not a lot of tall things in Sydney, aside from the central business district. Like, you don’t have –
Kat: Well, that’s true.
Sarah: You don’t have, like – if you’re driving out of New York, you’ll run into smaller towns that’ll have five or six, maybe a ten-storey building. Here –
Kat: Okay.
Sarah: – everything is very short outside the CBD. It’s really interesting.
Kat: Have you been to Melbourne?
Sarah: I have.
Kat: It’s even shorter.
Sarah: Oh, it’s all short.
Kat: They have a flat skyline.
Sarah: It’s very short and cold –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – but they have trolleys. Tram cars.
Kat: Trams.
Sarah: Trams.
Kat: Yeah, yeah, trams.
Sarah: But they’re, they are the same cars that I grew up with in Pittsburgh when we had trolley tracks.
Kat: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: One went by, and I had this, like, deep memory of myself as a five-year-old getting on a trolley exactly like that, and I’m like, oh, my God.
Kat: In one way, that’s a beautiful story. In another way, it’s like –
Sarah: It’s really sad.
Kat: – we are still using those same trams.
Sarah: Those same trolleys. But they’re very efficient, and they totally work. The thing is, we have winter, and the trolley tracks were hell in, on the roads in winter.
Kat: It’s that snowy winter.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: Oh, okay.
Sarah: We had snowy winters.
Kat: We don’t have snow here at all.
Sarah: No, you don’t have snow. Actually, somebody showed me a picture of some snow in the Blue Mountains, and it had, like, brought the whole area to a stop, and it was like somebody had spilled some powdered sugar on the deck.
Kat: Oh, it was actually white.
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: It wasn’t just frost.
Sarah: No, it was actually white snow –
Kat: Wow.
Sarah: – but it was sort of like a sneeze.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: Whereas we had snow this year, and I was showing her pictures of my patio –
Kat: Yeah!
Sarah: – and it was like a meter and a half.
Kat: I saw some of those.
Sarah: Yeah, I had a meter and a half of snow.
Kat: It’s like, where’s the house?
Sarah: We, we lose the chairs.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: There was a wagon under there. We didn’t see ‘til spring.
Kat: So those romances where the hero and heroine are snowbound –
Sarah: I love those! Oh, my God.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: I love – that’s one of my favorite tropes, forced proximity, but forced proximity by, by a disaster that isn’t life threatening.
Kat: Right.
Sarah: Like, if it’s a hurricane, that’s bad. If it’s a tornado, that’s bad. If it’s a snowstorm, you just have to wait ‘til it’s done being snow, and then you can plow out.
Kat: As long as you have food in the house –
Sarah: Right –
Kat: – You’re not going to starve.
Sarah: – so you’re stuck in the house, you can’t go out. If you have heat, or you don’t have heat, you build a fire, you stay near the warmth. You know, you’re, if you’re not in any major medical damage or in, in any great danger, you just wait ‘til it’s done. I love snowbound.
Kat: Have you read Kinsale’s – oh, I always get this – Seize the Fire? Is that the one where –
Sarah: No.
Kat: – they have the, Olympia and –
Sarah: Olympia is Seize the Fire. I have not read that one.
Kat: That has –
Sarah: Are they stuck in the snow?
Kat: No, in a deserted island.
Sarah: No, God.
Kat: With a cranky hero.
Sarah: Cranky hero, deserted island.
Kat: Best deserted island.
Sarah: You like deserted islands and cranky heroes.
Kat: I do.
Sarah: Who are your favorite cranky heroes? Like, who are, do you, like, have a folder of cranky heroes?
Kat: No, but I just love them. So, Suzanne Enoch had a series where there were a lot of crank- – I call them the House, M.D. heroes –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: – ‘cause they’re really cranky.
Sarah: They’re, they’re like House.
Kat: And, and also they are injured –
Sarah: So you watch, like –
Kat: – somehow.
Sarah: You must like the Eloisa James where she was openly making a Regency House.
Kat: Which one was that?
Sarah: Oh, hell, if I – You’re asking –
Kat: But I love Eloisa James generally anyway –
Sarah: You’re asking me a title. Don’t ask –
Kat: – so the answer is probably yes.
Sarah: – me a title. Yes. But anyway.
Kat: And then I think, so Kinsale, so that hero – can’t even remember his name – that hero in that Kinsale, I liked.
Sarah: Was it Sheridan? No.
Kat: Sheridan, and then S. T. Maitland, who is the per-, the, the guy from The Prince of Midnight, I loved him as well.
Sarah: Cranky.
Kat: He was also very cranky.
Sarah: Kinsale writes cranky, emo, angsty heroes who cover their –
Kat: We need more Kinsales.
Sarah: They’re cranky.
Kat: Where are the Kinsales? But my favorite is Shadowheart, which I know many readers have a problem with.
Sarah: Is that Allegreto?
Kat: Mm-hmm, yeah.
Sarah: He’s a little cranky.
Kat: He’s a little something-something.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: He’s many things.
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: But I love him.
Sarah: Why is he your favorite? Why?
Kat: So, okay, let me – I think the reason he’s not a favorite for many people is ‘cause he, his story actually starts in the book about Melanthe. Oh, what’s her name? Is that Melanthe? So, the one with the virgin hero. The hero who didn’t have sex for 13 years; he wasn’t a virgin. But he thought his wife had, had joined a convent and was still alive, so he couldn’t sleep with anyone because –
Sarah: He was still married.
Kat: – he believed in monogamy. Yeah. So, so, that wasn’t Allegreto. Allegreto was, like, an assassin.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: But I think if you hadn’t, if you don’t read that book and you read Allegreto’s book, you won’t understand a lot of the subtle things about his character that is in his book, and I just recently listened to the audiobook with Nicholas Boulton.
Sarah: How did you like it? Did you like –
Kat: Well, first of all, Nicholas Boulton, he could read me anything and it would be like –
Sarah: [Laughs] And you would be all right.
Kat: – keep, keep – [laughs] – yeah! But I loved it so – I’m like, this is the most perfect romance book I know. I, and, and, and anyone who says otherwise is completely wrong! [Laughs] And I know people, and it even – okay, it has, it has a rapey scene. It, it really is rape, because the heroine was like, well, I didn’t really want that.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: And that wasn’t particularly nice.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: And then it’s also got a bit of fem-domme, where she kind of –
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: – scratches his penis. It’s, it sounds bad out of context, but when Nicholas Boulton –
[Laughter]
Kat: – tells you the story, you’re like, yeah, more! [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah, scratch him harder, baby. Got it. [Laughs]
Kat: Yeah. But I, I just think it’s just, it’s, it’s a combination of, you know, it’s the dark, angsty, broody hero –
Sarah: Right.
Kat: – which is, you know, very popular with many readers, but, and a lot of readers have a problem with the heroine because they say, oh, she’s too naïve, you know, she knew nothing, and now she’s trying to lead a country, but to me, this, it’s a heroine who, the whole book, she’s basically fighting for agency. The entire book.
Sarah: Right.
Kat: She’s like, you know, in the beginning she has a crush on this guy, and she kind of thinks that they might get married, so she, you know, that’s what she wants to do. She’s let him kind of grope her, even though she knows it’s kind of wrong, but it’s pleasurable. When, when Allegreto gets her, she’s, like, struggles. The whole book –
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: – she’s like, this isn’t good enough for me. I want something more. And even the whole thing of, you know, I want a better country, she’s like she, she’s like the heir –
Sarah: To a throne.
Kat: – heir to a throne, and even though she knows nothing about running the country, she’s like, you know, I’ve read the, the, the writings of my grandfather, and this was his ideal. Why can’t we have this country? And to me, it’s like, you know, this is the way a woman would run this country.
Sarah: Right.
Kat: It would not be, you know, plotting to kill other people. We would be trying to make –
Sarah: Things better.
Kat: – people’s livelihoods. We’ll, we’ll try to improve people’s lives, and I’m like, this is amazing! Why can’t people see how amazing this is? Like –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: And the other thing I love about it is, it’s medieval, and the, the effective religion is so heavy on these characters, and it so true, ‘cause I grew up in a Catholic country. I grew up in the Philippines, and it’s not only Catholic, it’s a superstitious culture, so –
Sarah: Yeah, ‘cause you’re merging other cultures and other –
Kat: Right.
Sarah: – religions into Catholicism –
Kat: Right.
Sarah: – in the Philippines. ‘Cause the Cath-, Catholicism was within the last couple hundred years, right?
Kat: Well, the Spanish colonized us in the I’m-really-bad-at-history time. [Laughs]
Sarah: So, way back in the day.
Kat: Yeah, yeah. But it, yeah, it has these sort of tribal aspects that they’ve kept, and then the, the, the very, actually quite hard-core Catholicism that they practice –
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: – and to me, this whole medieval, you know, the, the – towards the end, the big problem was that Allegreto had been an assassin, and he hadn’t confessed, and he’d been excommunicated by the Pope, and he was literally scared to step in a church. He thinks that every time he steps in a church, he’ll be struck by lightning or like he –
Sarah: Like he will die. Yeah.
Kat: – he will die, or someone – like, there will be bloodshed, because God hates him and does not want him in His house. And so the heroine, and, and so they’re kind of not officially married by the church, so because they had sex, the heroine is kind of in mortal sin, and so he wants her to confess so that she’ll go to heaven. He doesn’t care –
Sarah: But he’s not.
Kat: – you know. Well, he knows he can’t go to heaven. So finally, he, he, he gets his excommunication reversed, but he’s like, but the Pope was completely mad when he did it. He was, like, crazy; he was doing all these crazy things. I don’t think he was speaking for God, so I don’t think I’m really back in the church, I think I’m still excommunicated. And the heroine’s like, I am not going to confession until you go to confession, ‘cause I would rather be in hell with you than in heaven. And I’m like –
Together: Oh, my God! [Laughter]
Kat: So that whole thing to me, I don’t know how it plays to readers who are not Catholic or who aren’t in that sort of tradition of Catholicism, but I’m like, this is –
Sarah: But when you’ve grown up in that rigid culture –
Kat: – so true, and it is so powerful to me.
Sarah: Aww.
Kat: So, it is the best book.
Sarah: It is the best book?
Kat: Have you read it?
Sarah: I have not.
Kat: Oh –
Sarah: I think I haven't.
Kat: Well, I’m glad you haven’t, and you didn’t hate it –
Sarah: No.
Kat: – because then I’d be, I’d have talked about it for 20 minutes. [Laughs]
Sarah: I love, no, I love listening to people talk about books that they love that I didn’t like, because it’s not like I’m the final word. If I didn’t like something it was because of me, but listening to someone talk about a book that they loved, even if I didn’t like it, is always fascinating to me.
Kat: Well, Flowers from the Storm is the one Kinsale that I really don’t understand. And I read it on audiobook, and Nicholas Boulton is magic, because I was like, now I understand this guy. I see now what he’s doing. I still don’t like him. I still think he –
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: – he’s a major dickhead.
Sarah: He, he starts off so far down in the negative that it’s, takes a lot to believe that he has redeemed. There’s one scene in that book, though, that I just adore because it just, it was so, so much kindness. The hero was sitting with some guys and they were plotting, and they were talking about trying to keep Maddy safe, and you know, his speech is very limited, and all of the men start echoing his speech patterns, so they all start talking like him to communicate with him that they understand what he’s saying, and they use his language. And they’re all men who are far, far below his station, but he needs their help, and the, the kindness that they show to each other in the way that they talk has stuck with me. Like, that scene sticks in my mind so much, because it was one of the “Oh!” moments.
Kat: It’s the subtle things –
Sarah: Yes!
Kat: – that get, you know, and it –
Sarah: So powerful.
Kat: I think, you know, did, did, did Kinsale, did this just come out of her? Did this come in the first draft, in the fourth? Like, I’m so interested in how she layers her stories, ‘cause there’s so much to it. And Tessa Dare wrote a, a, a hero that was, I think, going bl-, almost blind, and the, the sort of climax of that book was also that he had to pass a sanity, a sanity, sort of inquiry.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: And I love, and I was like, if I compare that to the Kinsale, they’re very different things, but they’re also very similar things –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: – and it, this is one of those, you can tell the, the same story in two completely di-, different ways –
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Kat: – and they, they, they, they will be enjoyed –
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Kat: – in different ways.
Sarah: There’s some authors who will talk about how they wrote a book because they wanted to do their version of a book that they had loved. So, if the, if the trope of a, of a historical that they adored when they were younger was, you know, the tragic, misunderstood heroine and the, the guy who comes and sees her for who she is, they’re going to write their version of that trope, and it’s going to be the same basic character problem in a completely new way.
Kat: I love that.
Sarah: I love that too.
Kat: Well, that’s how romance flourishes, right?
Sarah: Yes, because we are reinventing these characters that we love, and the tropes that we love, and the tension that we love, and it’s all – the, the romances that I love best are the ones with a lot of internal conflict, so that’s what I love to listen to.
Kat: So, people like – I’m so bad at names – starts with a C. Cecilia Grant?
Sarah: Oh, yes.
Kat: The quiet stories.
Sarah: Oh, quiet stories.
Kat: But I love those too.
Sarah: Quiet stories are the best. I actually read a book on the plane over, and I have to write a review. It’s called Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.
Kat: Oh, I haven’t read her.
Sarah: Well, she wrote Fangirl, which, like, made my heart explode, I loved it so much, which is about a young woman who goes to college with her twin and is completely emotionally unprepared for college, and at the very last minute, her twin says, I’m not rooming with you, I need to be on my own, and so she’s alone without her support and with a stranger and in a college, and she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she is a very famous fanfiction writer, and she has been creating a, a fanfiction about a very similar to Harry Potter world –
Kat: Right.
Sarah: – but it’s a slash fic, and so her negotiating the fan world and the real world is part of the story.
Kat: Oh, okay.
Sarah: It’s so good. Then there’s Eleanor & Park, which won the Printz award, which is –
Kat: That’s the one that I was thinking of reading, ‘cause it has an Asian hero.
Sarah: Yes, it does.
Kat: But I’ve also read some problems with it, the way that this hero is portrayed, and I’m like, I don’t know whether that’s the best one to start with.
Sarah: But I don’t know if that book ends happily.
Kat: Oh, okay.
Sarah: With Attachments, I, I read it on the plane. It was so good I was trying to fight the sleeping medicine that I had taken so I could keep reading it.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: In Attachments, the, there’s two women who work at a newspaper, and it’s set in 1999, and they had just gotten the Internet, and they were told, you’re not allowed to use it for personal purposes, but they email each other. And there’s a guy named Lincoln on the night shift who’s been hired to manage security.
Kat: Oh.
Sarah: Basically, his job is to make sure that people aren’t using the Internet for nefarious things. It, it is a perfect capture of the time when all of a sudden, like, the Internet is in our workplaces and we don’t actually have to do our work –
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and there’s a line in there about how all this, the bosses hated it, because all of a sudden it was impossible to tell when someone was diligently doing their work –
Kat: Mmm.
Sarah: – or taking a what-kind-of-dog-are-you quiz.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: Like, you could not tell anymore. And so Lincoln is reading their email late at night and, because they’re using terms are flagged, it ends up in a particular piece of software.
Kat: Okay.
Sarah: With anyone else who ends up in that software, he’s supposed to send them a warning, but he doesn’t send them a warning because he really likes them, and he likes their friendship, and he likes to get to know them quietly. He’s very shy, he works the night shift, he’s big into Dungeons and Dragons, he has a very specific routine in his life, and he had a horrible breakup that he’s not gotten over because of the way that his, his ex-girlfriend had treated him, and he has to grow and change, but he’s falling in love with one of the women as he watches their correspondence. And they don’t, they don’t know he’s doing it. It’s so quiet. Part –
Kat: But non-creepy.
Sarah: No.
Kat: ‘Cause that has the potential to be very problematic.
Sarah: It has the potential to be very creepy, and he’s aware of it.
Kat: Okay.
Sarah: He’s really conflicted about the fact that he shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t go up and try to figure out what, what desk is hers. He shouldn’t try to meet her, but he just, he thinks that she is so incredible, and he admires her, and he admires her friend, and – oh, God. It’s so good, but it’s so quiet and sweet, and by the time it gets to the end I was just like, [gasps] oh, tingles!
Kat: [Laughs] ‘Cause –
Sarah: So I love the quiet books like that.
Kat: The excruciatingly beautiful books, right?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: And especially because it’s half of their, half of it is their emailing each other, so half of it is epistolary –
Kat: Oh.
Sarah: – and then the other parts, from Lincoln’s point of view, are just third person, so you have this wonderful intimacy of their letters to each other, and I happen to love epistolary novels and novels based on email. I love that. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a very direct, first-person intimacy that I find much more natural than a first-person point of view –
Kat: Right.
Sarah: – which doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers some people.
Kat: And it allows different, different POVs as well.
Sarah: Yes. Yes. And it allows you to see people talking to each other in a way that’s not dialogue.
Kat: I must say, though, I’m very critical if I read email dialogue and I’m like, [tsk] that’s not how people talk in email, seriously.
Sarah: There is one Meg Cabot book, and I think it’s The Boy Next Door, where they are emailing each other through most of the book, and there’s a moment, like a dramatic climax that somebody’s, and she’s in the stairwell with her laptop sending an email, and she says something like, the door upstairs just opened! I have to go! And I’m like, nobody types that! They stand up and run!
Kat: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s right!
Sarah: And then later they finish it. They don’t actually stand there and type out the action and then run! So that one moment was exactly what you were saying. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, that’s not real. But I understand, you had to fit it within the construction of the story.
Kat: But you know, if you just cut it off with like a –
Sarah: Yeah. Guh!
Kat: In the middle something, you’re like –
Sarah: Oh, shit.
Kat: – what the hell happened there?
Sarah: Yes. So I do have one other question.
Kat: Yep.
Sarah: You listen to the podcast in the car –
Kat: I do.
Sarah: – with your kids.
Kat: I do.
Sarah: And your kids listen to the podcast as well.
Kat: They love the podcast.
Sarah: So, they’re going to listen to you on the podcast in your car with you.
Kat: They think it’s amazing!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: And they’re going to get very cranky, ‘cause I’m going to have to – I say a few bad words, so the, either, either I’m going to turn it down, and they’ll get cranky with me for censoring it, or they’ll hear it and they’ll go –
Together: Mummy –
Kat: – you said a bad word.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: A bad word.
Sarah: So, what do they like about the podcast? Aside from I’m like, hey, what’s up, to Kat’s kids in the car?
Kat: Honestly, I think they love it when you laugh.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: They just think it’s the most hilarious thing, honestly they do.
Sarah: [Still laughing] Now I’m going to be, now I’m going to be self conscious.
[Laughter]
Sarah: I’m laughing, and –
Kat: I talked to you about it.
Sarah: – of course, now, I can’t stop.
Kat: Now they’ll be laughing into that state as well.
Sarah: [Still laughing] I actually have tears coming out of my eyes right now. Oh, dear.
Kat: And they’re like, Mummy, why do they talk to each other? Why – How can we – So there are many questions. Now I’m like, I’ve been delegated to help them podcast.
Sarah: Ohhh!
Kat: I’m like, that’s great!
Sarah: I want to listen to their podcast.
Kat: So we’ve recorded a few things, and they’re so, they’re really bossy.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Kat: They’re really bossy. They’re like, we have to talk about a website, so you need to set up a website. What about email? How do we email people? Have you emailed Miss Sarah to tell her all the books that we love? Can we record something? Because she said we could record something instead of email. I’m like, oh, this is like going to be two days of my life I have to edit these things, though. But we have begun, but as you know, I think we recorded, I recorded something that, a chat of ours, like –
Sarah: Two years.
Kat: – GenreCon, which was –
Together: – two years ago.
Kat: I have not edited that –
Sarah: Oh, kids.
Kat: – and there is actually one –
Sarah: Kids, you’re in trouble.
Kat: – recording even before that. I think it was a Julia Quinn one, and I think that was the year before, or early in that year. I’m like, oh, I’ve got to edit that. So.
Sarah: So, what are the questions that they have about podcasting?
Kat: Ah, they just want to know how do you do it? Where do you put it? How do, how, how come I can hear it on my phone?
Sarah: Oh. Well, that’s really easy.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: I record a Skype conversation with Jane and we meet on, we meet on Skype, and I press record. And then I edit it so that we don’t sound, like, completely dumb, and then when I save it as an MP3, MP3s are so small they can go anywhere. But I will tell you something cool I learned. MP3s exist because of Star Trek.
Kat: Oh!
Sarah: Is that not cool? Okay. So I was listening to a book on tape about the invention of things, and one of the guys who created the programming to develop MP3s was watching Star Trek, and there was a – The Next Generation – and there was a scene where Data is listening to a symphony, and he has all of his music with him, and he’s sitting and listening to a symphony, and it’s in perfect audio quality. But at that time, to compress an audio file, it was a huge file. I mean, you remember you’d get, like, a CD, and there’d be, like, 10 songs on it and it’d take up the whole song –
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: – like, the whole CD was 10 songs. Now you put 10 songs on a CD and it’s like, that’s it? I got room.
Kat: You can put it in a USB thing.
Sarah: I know, right? So the guy who was watching it was like, I wonder if there’s a way to compress music without losing the quality down to a very small file size. So he invented the MP3, in part because he was inspired by the idea of traveling through space with all of the music that had ever been recorded in history.
Kat: Wow!
Sarah: And there’s a really great book by Bill Bryson called At Home, where he goes through his home and talks about how the, each room of your home has evolved through time and different purposes, and so, you know, there, there used to not be a second floor to homes because you couldn’t heat them.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: One of the things he talks about is how, even a few hundred years ago, if you heard a piece of music it was because someone came to your town and performed it. There was no way to record music. It was a very transient idea. So if you heard a piece of music, you would be lucky in your life to ever hear it again or even hear more than two. And so most music that you heard was at church, and if you heard a piece of classical music it was probably one of 10 songs that the local musicians new. You didn’t hear a symphony, you didn’t buy a song, and the fact that you can buy any sound that you want, whether it’s a podcast or a piece of music, you can have whatever sound you want with you any time. It is so cool!
Kat: Kind of feel emotional after that! [Laughs]
Sarah: I know! Isn’t that amazing?
Kat: I’m like, try and imagine a life where you could only hear music once in a while –
Sarah: Yeah!
Kat: – and you could never hear it again –
Sarah: Yes.
Kat: – possibly, because nobody else –
Sarah: Because they all left town to go to the next town.
Kat: Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah: And if you heard music, it was the music that was you’ve already always heard, because those are the musicians who lived with you, or they, you know, if you live in a village or you go to church, you just hear the hymns, and the hymnals weren’t that big. So you, you know, I can hear any piece of music that I want at any time.
Kat: On demand.
Sarah: Whenever I want. Like, it’s so amazing!
Kat: And sometimes it’s Iggy. Izzy? Iggy what?
Sarah: Iggy. Iggy You-Can-Have-Her-Back.
Kat: [Laughs]
Sarah: I mean that. It’s okay. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll, I will even put her into business class.
Kat: I don’t know if we want her back.
Sarah: No, you can have her back. She’s all yours. Really. We, we’re keeping Hugh Jackman, but you can have Iggy Azalea.
Kat: [Laughs] No, you can’t keep Hugh, Hugh Jackman.
Sarah: Yes, were keeping Hugh Jackman.
Kat: We had him – You can’t keep Keith Urban, either. [Laughs] We’re taking him back.
Sarah: You can, you can have Keith Urban, because he goes with Nicole Kidman and they should be happy.
Kat: Yes.
Sarah: But, no, we’re keeping Hugh Jackman, giving you back Iggy Azalea.
Kat: You can’t keep Hugh Jackman.
Sarah: Oh, and the Hemsworths, we’re keeping them. The Helmsworths. They’re, they’re ours now. But he’s Thor, for God’s sake. Actually, he belongs to Scandinavia.
Kat: No! Isn’t Thor going to be a woman now?
Sarah: Yes, Thor is going to be a woman in the, I think in the –
Kat: The next one?
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: So Natalie Portman won’t be the next one.
Sarah: No. No.
Kat: I have to admit, I fell asleep in the second –
Sarah: I heard it was not as good, but you know, I have young boys – they’re six and eight – and so I have a feeling that a long marathon of all of the Marvel movies in order is in my future –
Kat: Hmmm.
Sarah: – starting with Captain American and the Incredible Hulk, because they build on each other up to the Avengers, and then after the Avengers the superhero individuals continue, and so my kids have seen some of them. I think we’re going to have to start in the beginning and start watching all of them.
Kat: It, I find it’s a bit of a challenge, because the, you know, those movies, I think, are geared towards people who’ve been reading the comics for a very long time, so they’re actually geared towards people our age, and my kids want to watch them –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Kat: – because they’re superheroes –
Sarah: But they don’t quite get the storylines.
Kat: Well, some of those movies just are not appropriate –
Sarah: No.
Kat: – for them at their age, and I’m like –
Sarah: They’re very violent.
Kat: – I’m sorry, you can’t. So they’ve seen The Amazing Spiderman –
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: – so I have to vet them, and I’m like, I’m not sure if you can see the second one. I have to watch it first.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: So some movies they’ve seen the first –
Sarah: And not the second one.
Kat: Yeah, so I think it was, I think the one with Hugh Jackman. What is it?
Sarah: The Wolverine.
Kat: The, no, the, the fra-, the other one. [Laughs] The one where he’s with a team.
Sarah: The one where he’s with a team?
Kat: With Jean-Luc Picard! [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh, X-Men!
Kat: X-Men! Oh, my God!
Sarah: He’s still Wolverine in the X-Men –
Kat: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sarah: – He’s just with the X-Men.
Kat: So he, they could watch, I think they could watch the first, but they couldn’t watch the second or the third.
Sarah: ‘Cause it was too violent?
Kat: It was, we felt it was too violent, and the, the way people were killed was very –
Sarah: Graphic.
Kat: – personal and graphic.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kat: So we’re like, it’s really, you know, my, my poor son, he – he’ll be embarrassed if I talk about this, but he, and he accidentally watched Dr. Who once, and I thought Dr. Who, how bad can it be?
Sarah: Oh, my God, that shit is scary.
Kat: And he had nightmares about the Daleks for about a week.
Sarah: Oh, no!
Kat: He’s like, Mummy, I can’t sleep because of Dr. Who, and I’m like, I’m sorry! I didn’t know!
Sarah: No, dude! He is not alone in that. When I first watched, even the first episode with, with, with the mannequins that come to life, I was, like, so creeped out.
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: That shit is – pardon me – scary!
Kat: ‘Cause I hadn’t watched it, so I thought it was –
Sarah: Oh –
Kat: – just kind of like an action show –
Sarah: Sci-fi adventure?
Kat: Yeah.
Sarah: No, that – talk to people about the angels in “Blink.”
Kat: Oh, I’ve heard about the angels. Everyone says, what, wait ‘til you see the angels. I’m like, I don’t know what they are, and I’m not going to watch it.
Sarah: No, you don’t want to. But the, the, the don’t blink? Oh, my gosh. It, it’ll scare the sh-, poodle out of you.
Kat: The chicken out of you.
Sarah: The chicken – That’s – Yeah, pretty much.
Kat: Different chicken. [Laughs]
Sarah: Different chicken.
[music]
Sarah: And that’s all for this week’s podcast. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kat. Hello to Kat’s kids! I know you’re listening. Your mom is really nice, and you shouldn’t scold her for saying bad words, ‘cause sometimes grownups say bad words. It’s just a thing that happens, and it’ll happen when you’re older too. Don’t worry.
This podcast was brought to you by Signet Eclipse, publisher of Hillbilly Rockstar, the new Blacktop Cowboys novel from New York times bestselling author Lorelei James. I will have information in the podcast entry about where you can buy this book and links to all of the other books and audiobooks we discussed during this episode. I think that might be the thing that takes the longest at this point, because, you know, I don’t want you to miss out on buying a book you heard about that you want to read, right? That’s kind of the whole point.
The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. This is Sassy Outwater. This is Sassy on the harp. I don’t know if she composed this or she made up or she’s just doing things randomly or if this is a piece of music she already knows, but this is called Rumba, and actually, the file is called “Rumba for SB,” so I’m going to assume it’s the Smart Bitches Rumba, and that’s Sassy Outwater performing. I don’t have her permission to make the file available for download, but I’ll ask her, and if I can, then I’ll put it up, because it’s kind of cool, right? It’s totally awesome.
If you have questions or ideas or things you want to suggest or you want to ask Kat or Kat’s kids a question, you can email us at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, or you can leave us a message at our Google voice number, 1-201-371-DBSA. Don’t forget to give us your name and where you’re calling from so we can include your message in an upcoming podcast.
Like I said in the beginning, next week we’re taking the week off, because travel, and travel, and also some travel. But! We’ll be back, and we have more young reader recommendations, so if you would like to continue to recommend books for your young readers, I and my almost-nine and almost-seven-year-old will all be very grateful. I will be broke, but we will all be reading awesome things because you have all the best ideas. So we’ll be continuing with young readers, and if you have suggestions of things you’d like us to talk about, let us know.
In the meantime, on behalf of Kat and Kat’s kids and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. See you in two weeks.
[harp music!]
