Here is a text transcript of Podcast 112 – An Interview with Amanda from Smart Bitches. You can listen to the mp3 here, or you can read on!
This podcast transcript was hand crafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to another DBSA podcast, which if you’ve been with us for a while, you know that stands for Dear Bitches and Smart Authors, but iTunes doesn’t like that title, so we went with the super memorable and very boring DBSA romance fiction podcast. Hi! I’m glad you’re here!
I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Amanda, who reviews for Smart Bitches and was also our intern, both for Jane and myself, for the DABWAHA and for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for about two years, I think. Was it two years? I have no concept of time. It’s kind of a problem. Anyway, Amanda and I sit down to talk about New Adult, because she is square in the middle of the age demographic for New Adult. We talk about whether or not the genre represents her life experiences, and we talk about a recent webinar that she listened in on because she was curious about the New Adult genre and wanted to learn more about it. We talk about sex in YA and New Adult novels that might pre-date New Adult.
This podcast is brought to you by Berkley, publisher of Reaper’s Stand, the latest bad-boy biker romance in Joanna Wylde’s edgy, sizzling Reapers Motorcycle Club series. You might rec-, recognize that because last week Courtney Milan mentioned that she was reading it, and that she liked it, too.
The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast about who this is and where you can buy it for your very, very own.
And now, without any further delays, on with the podcast!
[music]
Sarah: How you doing?
Amanda: I’m good. Apparently, there’s something going on in my neighborhood. Not yet, but it’s called HONK! Fest, and –
Sarah: What?
Amanda: [Laughs] – and, like, a bunch of, like, folk bands are going to be, like, playing all around the neighborhood.
Sarah: Fabulous!
Amanda: But it’s, like, rainy and gross out, so I don’t know.
Sarah: It’s very gross here. I wouldn’t want to stand outside and listen to a band. I wouldn’t want to play if I were in a band. It’s really nasty.
Amanda: Yeah, it is, but maybe it’ll be cancelled. Who knows.
Sarah: Well, if it’s Boston, you can’t cancel ‘cause bad weather, ‘cause you’ll never have anything.
Amanda: It’s true. I’m –
Sarah: ‘Cause it’s Boston.
Amanda: Yeah, I’m having trouble acclimating to the weather. Before, I lived in Florida, which is, like, sunny and hot all the time. You can just count on it being sunny, count on it being hot. Maybe you’ll get rain for, like, 15 minutes.
Sarah: Right.
Amanda: Boston, it’s, like, wind and rain, and then it’s, like, 80 degrees, and now it’s 50 degrees, and it’s – I can’t. I can’t keep up.
Sarah: [Laughs] You miss the, you miss the nice, balmy, humid consistency of Florida?
Amanda: Oh, I wouldn’t say miss it, I just –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: – I miss the consistency. I don’t miss the actual weather.
Sarah: I always like watching the forecast for the, you know, the whole Eastern side of the U.S. because if, if, if there’s going to be a storm and it’s coming in from the shore, it’s coming in off the ocean and it’s a snowstorm, maybe New York’ll see, you know, a couple of inches, and then it’s, like, Boston is dark purple of doom.
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: Boston, you’re going to get four feet. Sorry!
Amanda: I, I always get antagonist text messages from my parents and my brother.
[Laughter]
Amanda: And my brother, I complained to him last fall; it was, like, November, and I was freezing. He was, oh, that sucks. I actually had to put a shirt on today.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: And I was like, oh, I’m sorry.
Sarah: Yeah, man, it’s going to mess up my tan line. I’m going to have arm tan.
Amanda: I know! I’m like, wow, I wish I had your life.
Sarah: So, will you introduce yourself to people and tell them who you are and –
Amanda: Oh, I guess.
Sarah: – what you do?
Amanda: [Laughs] I do a lot of things. So I am Amanda. I’m a reviewer at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and your former, wonderful intern, the best intern in the world –
Sarah: It’s true; I’m not denying it.
Amanda: [Laughs] I will give myself that title. I’m also a grad student at Emerson College doing their publishing and writing program. I’m the publicity intern at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Boston, and I also write sporadically for Book Riot, so I never sleep, ever, ever. [Laughs] And so that’s it that’s about me, I guess.
Sarah: Cool! So when did you start reading romance?
Amanda: Oh, my gosh –
Sarah: You’re, like, twenty-sss, twenty-
Amanda: Five.
Sarah: -five, right?
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: You’re so young. Jesus Christ.
Amanda: I’m the baby of the Bitchery.
Sarah: You are definitely the Bitchery baby.
Amanda: [Laughs] I would say romance didn’t happen until maybe high school-ish? It’s always been in, in my family. My nana would babysit me, and she had shelves and shelves of National Geographic and the old, like, Fabio-style romance covers.
Sarah: ‘Cause those are totally the same thing.
Amanda: Yeah, shelved right next to each other –
Sarah: Course.
Amanda: – in her little house, and then my mom was huge into paranormal romances, huge. My dad built her, like, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, and it’s the entire length of a wall.
Sarah: Seriously?
Amanda: It is a, it’s a thing of beauty. [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s romantic, right there. Like –
Amanda: It is!
Sarah: That’s, that is significantly romantic as a gesture. If you’re listening and you’re thinking, what could, what could I get my wife or girlfriend? First, I want to know why you’re listening to our podcast, ‘cause that’s awesome. Second, you – a bookshelf.
Amanda: Yeah, just a bookshelf.
Sarah: Go for the bookshelf.
Amanda: And it’s mostly her stuff. Like, no one gets a space on that bookshelf.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: No one.
Sarah: What books, what are her, her paranormal keepers on the, the wall of books?
Amanda: She, she doesn’t read romance anymore, but what she used to have, she had Kelley Armstrong, Christine Feehan, which is now, has been put into a gigantic tub in the shed. It’s just nothing but the Carpathian series in that one tub.
Sarah: The Carpathians are relegated to a tub in the shed!
Amanda: Yep, tub in the shed.
Sarah: Ouch. Well, if, if you needed a statement as to the trends in romance subgenres, there’s one right there.
Amanda: [Laughs] No! She has –
Sarah: Oh, paranormal.
Amanda: – Laurell K. Hamilton, the Anita Blake and the Merry Gentry series.
Sarah: Whoa! Did she stop with Anita Blake, or has she kept going?
Amanda: She stopped. No, she stopped.
Sarah: Do you know where, do you know where she stopped? Hardcover? Paperback?
Amanda: Paperbacks –
Sarah: Yeah.
Amanda: – probably. And that’s, that’s actually how I started. She was like, they’re so great; you have to read them. I remember picking up the first book. I’m like, this is boring, and then, you know, it was like, well, I, I’ll give it another try because my mom just loves the crap out of Laurell K. Hamilton.
Sarah: Your, your, your, your mom, your mom gave you Anita Blake.
Amanda: Yep. Yep.
Sarah: That’s some hardcore sexytimes to –
Amanda: Yeah. [Laughs] I actually liked the Merry Gentry series a little better than Anita Blake.
Sarah: There’s a lot more sex in there! The whole point of the story is she’s got to have as much sex as possible.
Amanda: [Laughs] I know, and then I, like, stopped, probably the fifth book, and I’m like, oh, okay, this is, this is just, like, the same thing over –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: – and over and over –
Sarah: Yeah.
Amanda: – and over again. I get the gist, and I don’t care anymore.
Sarah: There’s a certain part, point of Hamilton exhaustion, and I’m always curious where readers hit it. It’s either when the books got too expensive or the plot went nowhere or a character that they loved was turned into someone who was just deplorably awful and gross, or they just got tired of the nonstop bonking.
Amanda: I, I think I, I was about five books in each, in either series before I, I stopped.
Sarah: Yep. I completely understand that.
Amanda: But I kind of, I will admit that I love books where, something with a whole love triangle thing –
Sarah: Yeah.
Amanda: – like, I get – and usually, like, the losing dude gets the next book. Like, that’s his story, the second book in the series. But I just love it when a lady and her, you know, suitors can sit down like adults and be like, you know what? We’re all into each other. We’re all attractive. Let’s just have a good time and have, like, a little sex commune for a while.
Sarah: There’s a whole subgenre of that too!
Amanda: I love it! I think it’s great, so – but it, I don’t know, there’s got to be some, like, advancement in, in what’s going on. Either have it as, like, a standalone novel or just do something with it and not have, like, 300 pages of sex with maybe, like, a page or two of plot in between somewhere. Yeah, no. Couldn’t do it.
Sarah: So you want erotic content, tension, and a plot.
Amanda: I know I’m asking a lot –
Sarah: Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk.
Amanda: – I know it’s so much. [Laughs]
Sarah: We need to work on your expectations.
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: We, we really need to work on that.
Amanda: I know, it’s a little high. I need to maybe lower the bar a little bit.
Sarah: So when you moved from Florida to Boston because the weather is so great there –
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: – what books did you brink with you?
Amanda: Okay, I could only take the books I had not read.
Sarah: Oooh, whoooa. Good, good call. Some people bring the ones that they have to re-read and they have to have with them.
Amanda: I have a few of those that I brought with me, and most of them aren’t romances. Like, I have my The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is, like, falling apart, and I brought that. And what else did I bring? I brought a copy of Feed by Mira Grant, which I love. That’s the Newsflesh series –
Sarah: Yeah.
Amanda: I love it. So good. And there’s, like, a brother-sister dynamic in Feed, and as someone with a brother, like, it, it gets me, gets me right in the feels.
Sarah: [Laughs] Isn’t it, isn’t it great when there’s, like, realistic sibling relationships between sisters and brothers? Or just –
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: – or just, just, like, I like, you know, there’s, it’s very common to have a whole bunch of brothers and they’re all going to be heroes. That’s, that I’ve seen. I’ve seen that a lot, and there’s the sisters who all match up and have complicated relationships, and they usually, you know, drink wine together. But the brother-sister relationship I love.
Amanda: I feel, and sometimes I feel like it’s tough to do, because sometimes writers will just make the brother kind of like an antagonist –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: – in a way, and he’s, like, the gatekeeper to the woman’s relationship, and –
Sarah: Yes. That’s the biggest flaw I have with the whole tension of, well, this is my, I’m attracted to my brother’s best friend. I get it in a setting where they’re younger, like New Adult or YA, I get that –
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: – but when they’re all adults?
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: Who cares?
Amanda: It’s like mind, mind your own business. [Laughs]
Sarah: Like, dude, I don’t get that as a tension when they’re all old enough to be, like, grownups and not being carded anymore.
Amanda: Yeah. No, and I, I mean, I love my brother, but I would never ask his advice on relationships.
Sarah: Does he ever ask you for advice?
Amanda: No, my brother’s very private about, like, his relationship. I usually hear that he has a girlfriend, like, secondhand knowledge. Like, oh, did you hear your brother has a girlfriend now? Like, nope! Didn’t.
Sarah: Nope! Had no idea.
Amanda: See, didn’t know about that, and then – so, I’m going to embarrass my brother, but he’s not going to listen to this podcast, so –
Sarah: I’ll email it to him. Hey, you don’t know me, but you need to listen to this.
Amanda: [Laughs] He was taking – he has a girlfriend now, and he was, like, going to take her out for, like, a one-month anniversary to this really nice sushi place, and my mom found out, and she told me, and she tells me, Amanda, I can only tell you this, and Zachary – who’s my brother – told me that if I tell you he’s going out on a date for his one-month anniversary, you are not allowed to post anything on Facebook.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: I was like, oh, okay. [Laughs]
Sarah: Fine.
Amanda: I guess, fine. [Laughs]
Sarah: I won’t embarrass him. That’s fine.
Amanda: That was the rule, so I didn’t. I didn’t post anything on Facebook, but I did send him some antagonizing texts about it.
Sarah: Neener neener neener.
Amanda: [Laughs] Yeah.
Sarah: So we were going to talk about New Adult.
Amanda: Yes, we were.
Sarah: Which is interesting, because you are technically in that demographic.
Amanda: I’m technically a new adult.
Sarah: You are technically in that demographic. If your life were a story, it would be New Adult.
Amanda: My story would be boring as hell, like.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: No one would read a New Adult book about –
Sarah: And then she sat at her computer.
Amanda: Yep, that’s pretty much it.
Sarah: Then she went outside and said, oh, my God, what the hell is with this weather?
Amanda: And she avoided eye contact with strangers on the T. Like, it’s just –
Sarah: [Laughs] Although you were totally on the T with RedHeadedGirl and you, and you didn’t –
Amanda: I was!
Sarah: [Laughs] I love this!
Amanda: It was so strange. Like, it was a packed train, and she was standing next to me, and I was like, I think this is RedHeadedGirl. I think this is her. But I didn’t want to, like, turn to her, ‘cause that’s really got to be weird.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: Just, like, gets off the train and, like, disappears, and I sent her an email. It was like, were on you the T stop at, at this stop at this time? She was like, yeah, I was! I was like, I was standing right next to you –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: – in, like, a blue cardigan. She’s like, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even notice you, ‘cause the train was full of, like, Tufts undergrads, so she just had, like, blinders on, and – she actually lives, like, a mile and a half or, like, a couple miles away from me. [Laughs]
Sarah: Okay, that’s hilarious.
Amanda: I know; how strange is that?
Sarah: You’re going to end up going to the same grocery store, unless you have all your groceries delivered.
Amanda: I don’t. I actually like the grocery store experience. I just go by myself.
Sarah: I don’t blame you, ‘cause then you can get two jars of Nutella, and who’s going to look at you funny?
Amanda: Well, everyone. They’re like, why does she need that much Nutella? [Laughs]
Sarah: No, they’re looking at you thinking, God damn it, I hope there’s Nutella left on the shelf. If she took it all, I’m going to kill her. Where’s she going? I’m going to find her, mug her for her Nutella. I don’t want to hurt you, just give me the chocolate, no one gets hurt.
Amanda: There’s my New Adult book, right there.
Sarah: Yes, robbed for her Nutella!
Amanda: Robbed – romantic suspense, New Adult.
Sarah: So you went, you went to or listened to or sat in a chair and attended a webinar on New Adult.
Amanda: Yeah, I went on my, I brought my laptop into work, and I, like, sat in the break room on my lunch break and [laughs] listened to this webcast on New Adult romance, so that’s what I do.
Sarah: Why?
Amanda: Why? I was – ‘cause – it just kind of exploded the whole New Adult phenomenon.
Sarah: Is it weird to see it explode when it’s technically your demographic?
Amanda: I feel like, yes, maybe, because I’d never realized that there was possibly a gap in the romance world where these stories weren’t happening, or maybe they were categorized as something else, because I sure as hell don’t remember reading a romance about a girl going to college that wasn’t possibly YA?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: So it just – I started seeing, like, the New Adult category bracket on Amazon, and it just exploded overnight, in my opinion. And I just think it’s really interesting.
Sarah: Do you read, do you read any New Adult?
Amanda: I’m starting to read more. I tend to get really frustrated with New Adult because my –
Sarah: Why?
Amanda: Most of the time they’re set in college, and my – I don’t know – my, like college experience wasn’t the all-American college experience that you think of. So I don’t know. And then we, we’ve talked about this via email, all of the, the ladies, about how most of the time in New Adult, there’s some kind of sexual assault backstory?
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Growl, growl, growl.
Amanda: Yeah. And, you know, it kind of gets tiring reading about that as a backstory. Why can’t everyone have a positive start to their college experience?
Sarah: ‘Cause then the New Adult novel would be about someone getting robbed for their Nutella, I guess?
Amanda: Well, you win some, you lose some, I guess.
Sarah: I suppose. My, I, I say, I think I’ve said this before in email, and I’m not sure, I think I’ve said this on the podcast before, but my, my biggest frustration with sexual assault as, in, in the backstory of most heroines, especially in New Adult, is that on one hand, I think that it’s treated as a sort of shorthand to establish emotional depth and a painful history and something that the heroine will have to work on internally. On the other hand, all too often, the hero’s Mighty Wang is the biggest cure that she needs.
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: And it’s more rare that it’s like, yeah, um, no, that’s not going to work. Moreover, it’s so common that that way of dealing with it is also becoming more common –
Amanda: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and what really burns my ass the most –
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: – is that in statistical analysis, most sexual assaults do not go reported, so the actual number of women who have been sexually assaulted in some point in their history may actually be equal to or larger than the number of New Adult heroines who’ve been sexually assaulted.
Amanda: This is very true.
Sarah: That might actually be a numerical accuracy! Which is something we need to talk about, but the way that it’s handed, handled as a, as a character shortcut, as a way of establishing emotional depth in a handful of words and lines, you just say, she was raped. Oh! Now I understand. We have this common experience. It’s like, no! Every experience is different! And damn it! And so on one hand, you have this opportunity to accurately, accurately resent, represent a problem that is real for so many women, but on the other hand, it’s like, no, it’s not shorthand and it’s not all the same, and that way of dealing with it is a disservice. So on one hand, there’s this great opportunity, and on the other hand, it’s like, okay, but it’s not a shorthand, and not everyone deals with it by having tons and tons of sex or having never sex again because that one guy ruined everything. Like, it is not a cliché, and when it’s dealt with as a cliché, that pisses me off. You know what I mean?
Amanda: Yeah, and I don’t think it’s necessarily something that happens in just New Adult, but maybe, I think, we’re all more conscious of it, given the whole, what is it, like, colleges across the country and how they’re not handling sexual assault cases properly and –
Sarah: Yeah, they’re brushing them under the rug for –
Amanda: – maybe we’ll all – Yeah.
Sarah: – the sake of athletics.
Amanda: Yeah, maybe we’re all on alert, and it, it’s just more in-your-face now. Who knows? They had six New Adult authors during the webcast.
Sarah: During the webinar?
Amanda: Yeah, during the, the webinar. Nichole Chase who does the Royal series, which I think Elyse reviewed the first book.
Sarah: If I remember, Elyse said it was like, it was a like a YA that had some sex in it.
Amanda: Yeah, and that’s actually funny you brought that up, because one of the authors, J. Lynn, she also writes –
Sarah: She’s Jennifer L. Armentrout.
Amanda: Yeah! So she writes Adult and New Adult, but she mentioned that New Adult is not just sexed-up YA, which I –
Sarah: I agree with her there.
Amanda: Yeah. Cora Carmack, who does the Losing It series, which I really, really like.
Sarah: Really? Awesome!
Amanda: I liked it, yeah. And then she has a new one, which is, like, a, like, a sports New Adult one? I haven’t read the first book, All Lined Up, but the second book she talked about sounds hilarious, where the heroine is kind of like a social justice activist sort of thing –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: – and the hero is a football player, and they meet in, like, jail overnight? Like, she gets arrested for a demonstration or something, and so they meet in, like, the, like, the hangover cell or whatever.
Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, no.
Amanda: I thought it was hilarious, so I’m looking forward to picking that up and reading it sometimes. They had Jay Crownover, and all of her covers are just, like, sexy, tattooed men.
Sarah: Yep.
Amanda: And I, actually, after listening to that, I picked up the first book, which is Rule, R-U-L-E –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: – I’m excited. And then Sophie Jordan, who also, I believe, writes historicals?
Sarah: Yes.
Amanda: The webinar was also for – it’s up, like, taped for anyone to listen to –
Sarah: Oh, cool.
Amanda: – so you could pass that link along. But –
Sarah: Send me the link.
Amanda: Yeah! So there were six of them, and they just talked about themselves and what they thought about the, the New Adult genre, and J. Lynn, I think, summed it up really well. Like, it doesn’t have to be about college, though that, I think, is the most common setting.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: It’s typically characters between, like, 18 and 25, so I barely nudge in there as new adult.
Sarah: You’re like me in, you’re like me in Generation X. I am the tail, tail, tail end of Gen-, Generation X. Anytime there’s, like, a BuzzFeed list, I’m like, yeah, 90% of that doesn’t apply to me, but I’m in that area.
Amanda: [Laughs] And she said that New Adult is mainly about dealing with firsts without, like, the safety net of, of your parents and that security. So I thought that was a really good way to put it. So, like, your first life after high school, maybe, like, your first real relationship, your first apartment on your own –
Sarah: Yep.
Amanda: I thought it was great. So – and in historical romances, we probably get heroines that fall in that 18 to 25 year old range because –
Sarah: Their lives are totally different.
Amanda: Yeah, and, you know, if you’re 25 and unmarried, you’re a spinster and might as well just set up shop in a rickety house somewhere and –
Sarah: Get yourself some cats and call it a day.
Amanda: Yep! So I thought it was – I don’t know – I thought it was neat that we have, like, this little, I don’t want to say bubble, ‘cause I feel like it’s a negative connotation, but this little world that seemed untouched by romance before?
Sarah: I think it was touched by romance. It just wasn’t labeled accurately.
Amanda: I haven’t – maybe you could help me, like, like, novels that, romance novels that pre-date the New Adult moniker.
Sarah: Novels that are New Adult that pre-date New Adult?
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: All right, well, Twilight.
Amanda: Would you count Twilight as New Adult?
Sarah: Yes. She’s in high school, but it’s all firsts. She’s away from her mom, her dad is minimal supervision, it’s her first, first days in school, first real experience, first –
Amanda: And she, she gets into that age range, like, 18-ish.
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Twilight. 50 Shades of Grey totally counts as New Adult.
Amanda: Yep. Well, see, that’s a weird cross genre.
Sarah: It’s totally a weird cross genre, but I see it as having a lot of those hallmarks. See, here’s, this is my theory, my theory on New Adult: So, you remember chick lit?
Amanda: Yes, I do.
Sarah: So did you read any of it?
Amanda: A little bit.
Sarah: Okay, so all of chick lit was first person stories about young women, and remember this is a completely different economic time period, so it was lot more affluent. There was a lot more luxury mentioning. There was a lot more high-end shopping. There was a lot of shopping. It was a very giddy, affluent establishment of autonomy for first-person perspective heroines. And there was sex, and there was, you know, your first job and your first massive fuckup and your first relationship and your first apartment. All of those things that happen in New Adult, a lot of them happen in chick lit. But, but in chick lit, the romance was much more secondary. New Adult is that same set of themes located in a terrible economy where there’s not as bright a future for the people in the same ages, ‘cause we all have debt, and there’s – I mean, I can’t say “we” ‘cause I am so far out of that demographic –
[Laughter]
Sarah: – it’s not even funny! But the, the protagonists have debt, there are not a lot of jobs, they are probably struggling in more than one area of their lives autonomously. All of their firsts are much, much harder and much more painful, so those, those same themes that existed in chick lit also exist in New Adult, so my theory is that genres don’t completely die, they break, and then they reform in other ways. And, and if you can see the parents of a particular genre, then what you’re seeing is an evolving trend. So for me, New Adult is the remnants of chick lit and the aging and emotional development of you, of young, Young Adult, of YA, with additional sexual tension. I’m not saying it’s YA plus sex, but the absence of sexuality in YA is something that YA has a problem with, because there’s some people in YA who are like, no, we cannot have sex ‘cause it sends the wrong message! And I’m like, those people are having sex. Don’t delude yourself.
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: And when we did a podcast with John Jacobson, he was saying, you know, it’s, it’s really helpful for me as a young gay male to see healthy sexual relationships for people my age, because I am interested in having sex. I am a young male! This – and I am a young person who has a sex drive. This, this is an accurate representation of what is actually happening. And I understand the issues with having sex in YA, but that frustration gets bigger and bigger because people are having sex in the YA demographic age range, so you have YA and all of the internal emotional angst and the inner conflict and all of that really awful, disgusting stuff that happens, puberty and post puberty, when you not only figure out who you are but have to deal with all of the painful crap of figuring out who you are? Plus all of the firsts and the autonomy of what’s left of chick lit merging with sexual tension in a bad economy, and presto! You have New Adult. That’s my recipe.
Amanda: That was beautiful.
Sarah: Thank you!
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: I am as full of shit as anybody, so it’s possible that I’m wrong, but that is my theory.
Amanda: Well, the whole sex in YA thing, and I think this goes with reading in general –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: We, we definitely read to, you know, escape and enjoy and entertain, but I think we also read – any genre, it doesn’t have to be romance, doesn’t have to be YA, doesn’t have to be nonfiction –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: – but we read to find experiences that mirror our own.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely! We want to see characters in some way that represent our own experiences, which is why I get frustrated at the lack of accurate sexual representation in many, many aspects of the romance genre, and I get angry about the absence of minorities and the absence of cultural issues, and, and the, and the absence of those people on the covers, for God’s sake. When you read any New Adult that you’ve enjoyed, have you, do you think it accurately represents your experience?
Amanda: I don’t – ooh, it’s tough. That’s a tough one. So far, I don’t think I read any New Adult that, I don’t know, captures my new adult experience in real life. There are universal themes, I think. You know, I recognize, and I –
Sarah: And there’s, it’s, it’s a really powerful thing, I think, to read a book and go, holy shit, that’s me.
Amanda: Yeah! Like –
Sarah: That’s what’s –
Amanda: – a heroine could be struggling with depression in a New Adult book, but her experience probably might not touch on my experience with depression as a Freshman –
Sarah: Right.
Amanda: – in college.
Sarah: Right.
Amanda: So I haven’t found one that I’m like, oh, my God, this speaks to me –
Sarah: Right.
Amanda: – levels.
Sarah: Right.
Amanda: But you know, there are cases where like, okay, I know this situation. I know what this is like. I know. I get it. I’m still, I’m, like, straddling the fence with New Adult. I have read some really awful, awful, awful New Adult.
Sarah: You don’t say.
Amanda: Yeah, I know. Oh, my God. I don’t want to, like, name names, but –
Sarah: You can if you wish to, but you don’t have to.
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s one of the things that I find fascinating about the New Adult genre and YA, YA as well, that there is a –
Amanda: There’s just such a glut of stuff.
Sarah: Yes. There, there, and there’s also a theme of emotional intensity that I think carries forward into New Adult that I think some readers really crave, and they don’t get it from contemporary romance. I also think that one of the problems that we have as a readership is that the terms that we use that come from publishing are too broad. So if I say contemporary romance and I say, I really love contemporary romance, and you go, oh, my God! Me too! I could be talking about, you know, Jill Shalvis and any number of really sexy contemporary, like Jaci Burton, and you could be talking about –
Amanda: Yep.
Sarah: – Debbie Macomber and Susan Mallery, and those are both contemporary romance, but you have to add more words to describe the differences.
Amanda: I agree.
Sarah: So what readers do, I think, is we develop terminology to effectively label what it is that we want so we can find more of it. One thing New Adult delivers is that emotional intensity of, of an incredible amount of internal development and internal conflict. The inner emotions of the characters are so very important to the strength of the story, and I think one of the things that readers crave in that particular genre is that intensity. Plus, Jane pointed out in an earlier podcast that what hurts a genre is everyone glutting it. Like, everyone reading as much of they, as much as they can, as fast as they can, and with New Adult, that exhaustion is going to play out sooner because the way in which we can overdose on books now happens so much faster –
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: – ‘cause we can get them anytime, anywhere. We don’t have to wait for the store to be open. Whereas if you think about the strength of the genres that were strong before eBooks became so prevalent, I mean, how long was paranormal, like, the biggest genre?
Amanda: It was on top for a while. Oh, my God.
Sarah: If we had had eBooks, if we had been able to satisfy our desire for more of those books, if we had had self publishing, where people could directly deliver to us very quickly what it was that we wanted, would paranormal romance have been popular as long as it was? I don’t know. I don’t think so, though.
Amanda: I also thought it was interesting that paranormal romance, or certain authors in paranormal romance, are published in, like, hardcover –
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Amanda: – which is something you might not see of, like, you know, Jaci Burton necessarily.
Sarah: No, it’s, it’s weird what, what goes into hardcover. I think that one of the things that attracts hardcover, though, is the mystery, thriller element?
Amanda: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: The stronger that is, the more likely, I think, but I could be – like I said, I’m as full of shit as anybody.
Amanda: I think, like, The King by J. R. Ward was on, I saw it on, like, the New York Times hardcover list –
Sarah: Yeah.
Amanda: – for, like, two weeks.
Sarah: That, that book was, that, that book was huge.
Amanda: It was huge. Huge. Though I jumped off the Black Dagger Brotherhood, whole J. R. Ward thing a long time ago.
Sarah: Well, the thing about The King was that it, it returned to the characters from the first book. If you’re going to grab people, like, that was a way to say to people who had left the series, hey, remember those first two? We’re going back to them. Guuuh?
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah! Yeah, you are. Like the, the Bitten series, when you revisit Elena and Clay, the people who are fans of Elena and Clay are going to be like, what? Yes? Put, give it to me now. Right now.
Amanda: See, I’m, I feel like I’m the minority. I like it when a series has, like, a, a world and we, like, focus on little couples in, in the world.
Sarah: In a common world?
Amanda: Yeah –
Sarah: Yes.
Amanda: – and, like, when a series kind of lingers on a couple for too long, I feel my attention kind of stray. It’s like, I believe Nalini’s, what is it, the angel book, the Guild huntress? Is, am I making sense?
Sarah: The, the, yeah, the Guild Hunter.
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: Whatever it is. The angel, the archangel series.
Amanda: Yeah, like, the first couple books focus on Raphael and Elena? Is that her name? It’s been so long.
Sarah: I think, yeah.
Amanda: And I’m like, well, when did – I want to know about the other people. Like, I’m, I’m curious about the other people. Okay, we –
Sarah: Got it!
Amanda: – we get what you’re, what you two are about. I, I like the moving around.
Sarah: I like that too. I like when you get into a world and you can visit lots of characters, but the problem is when the world gets so big you enter in a world where there’s no stakes because nothing’s going to happen to any of those people.
Amanda: Yeah, like –
Sarah: Like the Bridgertons? The Bridgertons is the safest Regency universe in the world. Nothing bad is going to happen to any of those people, ‘cause they’re all hero and heroines from previous books.
Amanda: Well, the one caveat to that is Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series. I will eat that up with a spoon.
Sarah: But see, there is still a larger issue playing out in those books because –
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: – all of them have been building towards a, a catastrophic event.
Amanda: Yes.
Sarah: And it hasn’t happened yet.
Amanda: No. It’s getting there. It’s getting pretty close. Clock’s winding down. There’s got to be at least three more books in the series. I’m trying to rack my brain with how many people are left unpaired.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: And I think there’s at least three more?
Sarah: Yep.
Amanda: Nix’s book has got to happen. I think that it’s got to be the big final one, maybe.
Sarah: Do you think that that’ll be the one happens during the great catastrophic event?
Amanda: Nix or, or, I think it’s, like, Kristoff and Furie’s or Furie’s book? She’s trapped under the ocean, by the way, for anyone who –
Sarah: Oh, dear.
Amanda: – who is new to the series. She’s trapped, forced to, like, drown and then come back to life over and over and over again. So if you think your Mondays are bad –
Sarah: That’s a series that you’re going to keep reading.
Amanda: Yes.
Sarah: And you don’t get tired of it.
Amanda: No, I don’t. I love all of them. I obviously have my favorites. I think we’re up to, what, book 13, 14 now? And I would say that’s the longest series I’ve stayed with.
Sarah: Wow.
Amanda: Yeah.
Sarah: I think there’s the – [laughs] – you know what the series I stayed with longest was? Sweet Valley High.
Amanda: No!
[Laughter]
Sarah: I think I read the, I think I read those things into the 30s or the 40s or some shit. And, and you know, they, they just, they just kept on going. I, those were my gateway. I read those one after another after another. Ahhh, love them so much.
Amanda: Speaking of Sweet – we actually, my friends and I were talking about The Baby-Sitters Club –
Sarah: Oh, I love those books too, and they were, they were way below where I was age-wise, but I loved the stories.
Amanda: I didn’t know that there was a spin-off series that I read, but I didn’t know it was a spin-off series?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Amanda: But it was Dawn’s series, like, her, California, and she’s, like, a teenager. It was, like, the California Diaries. I read those as a child, and they included –
Sarah: No way!
Amanda: – some, like, really serious stuff, like eating disorders and drugs and, like, runaway teenagers and – that was my, like, series I stayed with, I think, in terms of, like, weird romance YA, serious issues type. I remember my grandmother would not buy them for me, ‘cause they were inappropriate.
Sarah: Really!
Amanda: Yeah, well, I have three sets of grandparents, ‘cause I come from a divorced family, and one set is deeply religious. She would take me to a bookstore, but she was like, you can’t buy that, and I’m not buying that for you. [Laughs]
Sarah: Whoa!
Amanda: She had, like, a list of, I don’t know if I’m, if I should buy this for you. So I had to pick more wholesome reads when she’d take me to bookstores.
Sarah: Whoa.
Amanda: No California Diaries for me.
Sarah: Wow.
Amanda: And then I have a mother who’s like, here, read Anita Blake.
Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, you had a wide, you, you had a – yeah. That, wow.
Amanda: It was before, like, the weird threesomes started, though, in Anita Blake. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah. Well, there was – I, I, I’m going to have to look this up, ‘cause I cannot remember the specific person who said this in the comments, but at some point, she became a gleaming orifice.
Amanda: [Laughs] Oh, gross.
Sarah: And that’s really all she is.
Amanda: Orifice is one of those words that makes me really uncomfortable. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah, it’s – yeah.
Amanda: Well, like, her magic was built around sex and just doing it and –
Sarah: Yes! It was all sex and doing it.
Amanda: All sex magic.
Sarah: Totally.
Amanda: That’s it. That’s all she’s got.
Sarah: I got mad when a character I liked became a character who I was expected to hate, and there was no real reason for that character’s motivations and behaviors to have changed. Like, there was no reason for that to happen. Why did that have to happen? I liked that character! All right, I’m done now. I’m very touchy, and I get very pissy about things, and I fully own this about myself. Like, I had to stop reading the Harry Potter series because I didn’t entirely trust where J. K. Rowling was going with the story, and I wanted to know what happened before I kept reading.
Amanda: That’s fair.
Sarah: And I, if I don’t trust that the, the characters or the story or the writer or the writers know what they’re doing, I, I can’t commit, because I get upset when there’s, like I said, characters who just become horrible for no rational reason. This is why I struggle with watching TV, ‘cause I don’t trust TV writers to actually want to tell a story that has, like, a beginning and then a middle and then an end, because the point of television in the States is not necessarily to have an end. The point is to get renewed, and then renewed, and then get into syndication and then get into more syndication, and so you don’t actually have a story with an end. You have episodes in a repeated world where nothing changes much.
Amanda: I’m looking at you, Lost.
Sarah: You don’t say!
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: You don’t say. So, I, I struggle with picking up new television shows. Like, there is this new show, have you heard about this? On Monday? Jane the Virgin?
Amanda: Sounds familiar, but –
Sarah: So it was originally a Mexican telenovela called Juana la Virgen, and the thing about telenovelas is that they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Like, I clearly should be watching television in other countries, because they do miniseries, and it’s like beginning, middle, end, done. You want to watch it again? Let’s do that. Like, I should totally be watching every other country’s television, just not ours. Jane the Virgin is about a 23-year-old virgin who accidentally gets artificially inseminated.
Amanda: Oh, that’s – I saw something on that. Yes.
Sarah: So, according to EW, her mom thinks it’s immaculate conception, and the, and then the sperm that she received is from a guy that she kissed one time, and he’s a cancer survivor. He’s married to somebody who is cheating on, with one of her husband’s friends, and the friend is being investigated by Jane’s boyfriend, who’s a detective. So there’s all this drama –
Amanda: Oh, my God.
Sarah: – and I so want to watch this, I cannot even tell you. My husband’s like, you’re excited about a TV show. Are you okay?
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: Are you sure? I’m like, yeah! We, we must record this. Clear the Pokémon from the DVR. Kids, the kids’ll suffer.
Amanda: [Laughs] They won’t be able to tell if they missed an episode.
Sarah: Yeah, they won’t be able to tell. What books are you reading that you most recommend right now?
Amanda: Oh, my gosh, that’s so tough.
Sarah: I know, it’s a horrible question. I’m so mean when I ask it.
Amanda: It’s a horrible question. I’m reading, like, a million different things.
Sarah: Oh, you, you buffet your books?
Amanda: Oh, yeah. I read, like, three to four books at a time. [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh, see that’s a sign that I am not into anything, if I start buffeting all my books.
Amanda: There’s some where, like, I’ll just straight read that –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: – but normally I have, like, I don’t know, different things going. Well, one book that I finished a couple, like, I think in September, but I’m telling everyone that it’s amazing. Like, everyone I talk to. It’s not romance necessarily. It’s called The Bees by Laline Paull, and it was recommended by Margaret Atwood, and I will read anything she tells me. It is about bees, like, straight-up, legitimate bees, but it’s, like, science fiction, and it’s, like, a Cinderella story, and it’s amazing. It’s great, it’s amazing, and I loved it, and I, I bought in hardcover with my own money, and I’m recommending it.
In terms of romances, I did, I’ve been in a sports kick, so I’m catching up on the Jaci Burton series, the Play-by-Play series. I think I’ve read books one through three, and I’m not sure how many are in the series, but I’m definitely going through those. And then I picked up Knowing the Score by Kat Latham? Lathe-am? I’m sorry if she listens, completely butchered her name. But it’s about an American girl and a rugby player, so, who doesn’t love a guy with an accent? It does something interesting in the beginning. I wouldn’t say it’s a spoiler, because you read it in the first five pages.
Sarah: If it’s in the first five pages it’s totally fair game.
Amanda: Yeah!
Sarah: So go ahead.
Amanda: So, yeah, he’s, like, a rugby player and, you know, like, sports guys have a great life, and they do things that they shouldn’t and they party it up, so he, like, winds up having sex with these two girls, I’m assuming. It’s not graphic, it’s just mentioned –
Sarah: Right.
Amanda: – but he didn’t, like, ID the girls, so, like, one was, like, three months shy of her 18th birthday.
Sarah: Ouch.
Amanda: Yep. So I thought it was –
Sarah: Ruh-roh.
Amanda: – I thought that was really interesting. People make those stupid mistakes, and not just men –
Sarah: Plus you have the fact that athletes are, like, the new billionaires. You know, they’re the ones with status and money and a great deal of social power. Vivian Arend says that billionaires are the new vampires, and rock stars are the new werewolves, and I think that athletes are the new billionaires. Or athletes are the –
Amanda: I cannot get on the rock stars train. I cannot.
Sarah: I’m, I struggle with it to. I’m, I’m not all there.
Amanda: I can’t do it. I don’t know why.
Sarah: I like it if the rock star turns out to be a hideously normal person.
Amanda: [Laughs] I haven’t read any books like that. I did read, recently, speaking of lovely poly relationships and rock stars, I did pick up Laid Bare by Lauren Dane. I think it was on sale a couple weeks ago?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: – and I’ve been wanting to read it, and we don’t have it at the library in Boston, which, for shame, Boston Public Library.
Sarah: Isn’t, aren’t, as a student, do you get access to other libraries?
Amanda: I don’t know. I mean, the, the BPL library is huge, and beautiful.
Sarah: Right, but they don’t have that book?
Amanda: No, they didn’t have it, and also, I think it was Shayla Black’s, like, Decadent series? I –
Sarah: Ohhh!
Amanda: I read the first one, and I’m dying to read the second one, but they –
Sarah: You, you know about our review of that book, right?
Amanda: No!
Sarah: Whoa! Wait a minute! You don’t know about the Decadent review?
Amanda: No!
Sarah: Oh, my God, I am the worst person ever for never having made this – okay, this is easily one of the most famous reviews on the site. This was written by Candy; it was written in 2008, and it is one of the most, if not the most, popular and well-known entry on – I, oh, my God, I feel horrible that you don’t know about this, because –
Amanda: I’m locating it right now.
Sarah: – it’s amazing. It’s, it’s just incredible, and –
Amanda: I mean, I didn’t like Decadent. I’ll be, I didn’t like it.
Sarah: Well, neither did she. [Laughs]
Amanda: I see that, with the big D-. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes.
Amanda: But the second book sounded interesting. But the BPL doesn’t have the second book; they have the third.
Sarah: Of course they do, yeah.
Amanda: But Laid Bare, the heroine is a former rock star –
Sarah: Yes.
Amanda: – and then there’s, like, a nice little polyamorous triangle thing going on where everyone’s just into everyone, and it’s lovely and healthy.
Sarah: Yeah, Lauren Dane does a lot of triads.
Amanda: Yeah, no, it’s –
Sarah: Which, wait, let me just restate that. [Laughs] Somewhere Lauren –
Amanda: Does a lot of triads.
Sarah: [Laughs more] Somewhere Lauren’s like, well, wait a – well, what – yeah. Lauren Dane’s her, her characters, she writes a lot of triad relationships. Also, Lorelei James in her Rough Riders series.
Amanda: Oh, my God, I love that series. [Laughs]
Sarah: The triad in that series I thought was so well done. So well done. Because one of the characters had to be like, I am usually not attracted to women. This is weird.
Amanda: Yeah! But I really like how both Lauren Dane and Lorelei James kind of touch on that sexuality is, is fluid.
Sarah: Yep.
Amanda: It’s not, like – for some people it could be, you know, black and white. Some people are like that –
Sarah: Yeah.
Amanda: – but I think for most people, sexuality is a fluid thing. You have, like, the, the Kinsey scale and where you fall on it. But yeah, I, I liked Laid Bare in that aspect. I mean, I had some problems with parts of the book, but the, the sexual relationships and the relationships between the three individuals in the book I thought were great. So more of that, please.
Sarah: A triad where the triad itself isn’t the only tension that sustains the story –
Amanda: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – that is quite good. I mean, there is plenty of stuff to work out with three people. There’s already plenty of internal tension that’s built into that kind of a setup, but it, it’s also good when it’s not the only thing that is a problem.
Amanda: And the, the triad in Laid Bare, like, wasn’t the focus of the story –
Sarah: Right. Right.
Amanda: – which I liked. It was kind of like a means of coping with things and dealing with things, and that presented, like, another set of challenges. Like, how am I going to tell my parents that I’m in this unorthodox, unconventional relationship –
Sarah: Right.
Amanda: – but there’s a bigger issue going on, like, the heroine’s, like, PTSD and stuff like that, so.
Sarah: Right. And also, if the whole idea that you are struggling with what other people are going to think of what you do is a major piece of conflict, that’s too fragile, I think.
Amanda: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Unless there’s a real reason why other people’s condemnation is going to have a serious effect on your life, most of the time you just have to break your give-a-shit. Like, you either have to choose between your happiness or making other people who aren’t part of your life happy. And ultimately what you want is a character to be self-actualized enough to choose their own happiness and to be like, you know what? You don’t like it, tough shit.
Amanda: Well, in the words of Wilson Phillips, you’ve got to break free from the chains.
Sarah: Yes, exactly –
Amanda: [Laughs]
Sarah: – because if you’re going to have a, a massive theology driving your life, Wilson Phillips is the best place to start, no question.
Amanda: Of course. [Laughs]
Sarah: But when I have a character who’s like, I can’t do this, what will everyone say about me? I’m like, that, no. I’m done. Like, I, I need – ahhh –okay. I can see that in YA, I totally buy it, because you, you are not in control of your own life, and I see it in New Adult, when you’re trying to figure out who you are, but when you’re talking about a character who’s, isn’t in a place where other people’s opinions are going to actually control their life, if the whole thing is, what are people going to say? Oh, honey. Stop giving a shit. That’s the first thing.
Amanda: Especially when it comes to a sexual relationship, when it’s no one else’s business.
Sarah: One I, one thing I like about the idea that sexuality is fluid is that there’s so many more representations of sexuality now in, in the romance genre.
Amanda: Yes.
Sarah: It’s not just gay and heterosexual. There’s multiple partners, there’s polyamory, there’s an increasing number of books featuring women, and that’s awesome. There’s transamory. It that a thing? Did I just -? That’s not the right word. There are trans people having romances. It’s not transamory.
Amanda: It was, I think –
Sarah: That sounds like, it sounds like a forum dedicated to Pontiac cars. This is the Trans Amory! Come talk about your car! So that is not the right term; I apologize. Yikes! But, yeah.
Amanda: Carrie just reviewed, was it Static by L. A. Witt, where the person’s gender changes?
Sarah: Yes.
Amanda: And she loved it. And I thought that – I’m, I’m really tempted to read it, ‘cause it just sounds really, really interesting.
Sarah: Totally. There’s the, there’s a science fiction series where the characters shift genders. There’s L. H. Cosway’s Painted Faces, but yeah, there’s a lot of, there’s, there’s more representation of diverse sexualities, which is awesome!
Amanda: It’s been on my, like, to-read list forever. I’ve been dying to read it.
Sarah: You should totally read it! What’s, what’s holding you back?
Amanda: All the other books.
[Laughter]
Sarah: You mean all the other books that you have in front of you that you want to read?
Amanda: Yeah!
Sarah: Ah, welcome to life. This is, this is the best problem to have.
Amanda: It is. I mean, there are worse problems to have besides what book do I have to read? They’re all so good.
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Future podcasts will feature me and Jane, probably together, talking about romance, but I’m assuming you knew that.
The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is called “Percolator,” and this track is from their album, Pedal Horse. You can find the album at iTunes and on Amazon, and I will have links to both locations, should you wish to own it. It’s very mellow. I like mellow.
This podcast is brought to you by Berkley, publisher of Reaper’s Stand, the latest bad-boy biker romance in Joanna Wylde’s edgy, sizzling Reapers Motorcycle Club series. I will have information in the podcast entry about that book, plus all of the books that Amanda mentioned, I will link to those too. I know there’s a few people who are like, but, but stop talking so quickly! I need to write them down. You don’t have to! Just come to the website; there’ll be an entry. All of the books are linked. It’s fabulous! You just go shopping. It’s great!
If you would like to offer suggestions or you have ideas, or you think you would be a really good podcast interview, dude, totally email us: sbjpodcast@gmail.com or 1-201-371-DBSA. You should tell us your ideas, and if you think you’d be a great interview, we would really like to hear about it.
In the meantime, Amanda and Jane and I all wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.
[mellow music]
