566. The Blessings of Comfort Reads with KJ Charles

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, June 9, 2023

 

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Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 566 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell. Today my guest is KJ Charles, which is always a great time. Recently KJ tweeted about how absolutely devouring the Blessings series by Beverly Jenkins helped her save her sanity during the 2020 lockdown, so I asked if she’d be interested in talking to me about it, and to my surprise this is actually a pretty popular topic! She recently did a panel about comfort reading that was rebroadcast because it was so good, and I’m really excited to talk with her about what makes a comfort read comfy. And of course, get ready: we have a ton of recommendations, and they will be in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

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To Maria L.: A recent survey of local sparrows has revealed that the top three words they use to describe you are clever, kind, and exceptionally well dressed.

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All right, are you ready to do this episode? This is so much fun! We talk about so many books! So many books! On with my conversation with KJ Charles.

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KJ Charles: So I am basically now a full-time writer of novels, mostly romance, mostly historical, some fantasy. I used to work as an editor in British publishing for, including a stint at Mills & Boon. So I did that for about twenty-odd years, and then I jumped tracks to become a full-time writer.

Sarah: Yay!

KJ: I love in Lond- – yay! – and I live in London. Husband, two kids, an aging cat, and a garden that is indeed full of out-of-control everything, in fact. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah.

KJ: It’s out-of-control time of year.

Sarah: Oh yeah. So I wanted to ask you about comfort reading. To my great despair, I still encounter so many interesting ideas on Twitter because of the people that I follow – if the algorithm chooses to show them to me, of course, but –

KJ: Mm, yes.

Sarah: – one thing I mourn a lot about Twitter is just people randomly talking about what they’re reading and how much they liked it. That was, that’s one of my favorite things about Twitter! And I’m so sad that it’s dying –

KJ: Mm, yeah.

Sarah: – ‘cause that was –

KJ: I know.

Sarah: – that was wonderful! And you tweeted recently about the Blessings series and how you have these –

KJ: Yes!

Sarah: – incredibly visceral memories of the early lockdown that you just mainlined like ten books in 2020.

KJ: Yes. Yeah, no, it, it was…2020; it was, it was over a fortnight in 2020.

Sarah: [Laughs]

KJ: Yeah, ten books. I mean, my Goodreads reviews, you literally go through them and it goes something along the lines of, How am I going to resist reading all these books at once? And the next book is, I, you know, I am going to read all these books at once, and you can’t stop me. And then the next one is, I’m actually going to restrain myself, and then it’s like, Nope, I lied.

Sarah: Nope!

KJ: No, I powered through ‘em, and that is – so they have a lot of the things I desperately needed in the lockdown. So for one thing, it was a ten-book series. I mean, I didn’t know I was going to read all of them, but I read the first one, and basically the premise is there’s this tiny, tiny town –

Sarah: Right.

KJ: – which is actually a town that was, I think, founded by one of her characters in one of her historical romances, and it’s a majority Black town, and it’s basically this woman called Bernadine, she divorces her husband and gets life-changing money out of it – he’s cheated on her; he’s an idiot – and she’s like, suddenly she’s incredibly rich and she’s sort of late forties, and she, I forget what she does, she, she buys a town or, but yeah, becomes a, a, a very important person in this town.

Sarah: Right.

KJ: And then there’s a whole – obviously there’s all the people who come in and all the, each book’s got a romance, but there’s also a very strong theme where there’s a whole bunch of adopted children. I think that’s it: she adopts like four children and brings them to this town, and we’re not worrying about how long it takes to adopt children or anything; you know it’s, it, it, it all happens. And basically, so the entire series is tracking the lives of these people over, you know, ten, twelve years, so in effect it’s a soap opera. You know, we’re all watching the same people, we’re seeing them come in and out, and obviously she handles it immensely well because she’s Beverly Jenkins.

And it’s a soap opera in which we can basically feel convinced that nothing really bad is going to happen. It’s okay. You know, there’s always Bernadine with her money; there’s a doctor who knows what he’s doing; there’s a thing, when things go ridiculously wrong they tend to go, you know, they, they can be fixed. There’s a hilarious, there’s, there’s a plot line for about three or four books about a massive, it’s a giant pig, basically, that just is somebody’s pet, and it just rampages around. You know, there’s, there’s immense amounts to enjoy. There’s, like, the descendants of characters from her other books turn up, so if you’ve read, like, Neil July, Neil July’s grandchild comes – oh! Oh my God, Neil July, he’s one of my favorite characters ever!

So you’ve got this immensely immersing world that just takes a leisurely pace. You can get right into it, and it’s kind, and it’s caring, and – but it’s not, you know, you know, again, it’s Beverly Jenkins, so it’s not cloying.

Sarah: No.

KJ: It’s hard-edged kindness, which is the, the, the kind I like. You know, you can see difficult things happen. The adoptive kids have their issues that they’ve got to deal with, and they behave badly and, you know, people mess about, but fundamentally, you know, the arc of the world bends upwards in that world.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: Things are okay. You know that if you’re in the pandemic and if you are in Henry Adams, everyone would have been wearing masks and dropping off food at everyone else’s houses.

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: You know?

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: And that was, that was where I wanted to be.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: So it was, it was a huge comfort, and all, and, and of course it was, they’re, they’re just great stories, and they’re such great stories that I would start reading one and then three hours later I would close the book, and that was three hours of lockdown gone, you know? Which was nice.

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: Because – [laughs] – ‘cause I have enough hours of lockdown, and losing some of them was terrific.

Sarah: Oh, oh yes. And your lockdown was a lot more intense than what we went through here in the States. Like, you were not allowed to go beyond five kilometers from your house, is that right? And you could only go –

KJ: Yeah, yeah; nobody –

Sarah: – to the shop to get food and come back, get prescriptions, come back; that’s it.

KJ: Yeah, they had, they had all kinds of drills, which it now turns out that the people in government weren’t bothering to follow themselves. There was a thing where you were only supposed to go out for exercise once a day and, you know, we’ve got a park at the back of our house, and it was beautiful weather, and I wanted to just have the kids, you know, just stay away from other people and run round, but you couldn’t! There would literally be policemen wandering around telling you to go home kind of thing. I mean, it was ridiculously overdone, because of course now we know that actually fresh air and exercise would have been a far better option; then all you had to do was just not get too close to people, but – anyway, yeah, lockdown was rough, and –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – you know, I live in London. I am, you know, our streets are the route for three buses, so we’re just getting these buses going past, empty bus, empty bus –

Sarah: Oof!

KJ: – empty bus, and that was it. It’s horrible. And hearses and, yeah, no, it, it was minging, it was absolutely minging, and it was minging for everyone. Just, I’m not complaining more than anyone else, but, boy oh boy, did I enjoy having Henry Adams to go to, where people were actually outside and interacting and –

Sarah: Yep.

KJ: – you know, behaving decently and, you know, not having COVID. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes! I remember in the early part of the pandemic, I was reading the Nalini Singh Psy-Changeling series, which was a, which was a good choice because there were a lot of books, but it was not a good choice in terms of, no, I should pace myself. There was no pacing. There was no pacing!

KJ: Yeah. I think –

Sarah: I was just diving in.

KJ: I think if you’re ever allowed to binge it…

Sarah: It’s that!

Together: Yeah.

Sarah: And what drew me into staying in that world is something very similar, because the Psy-Changeling world is about feeling empathy and caring about others and having emotions and learning how to have feelings, because there’s this whole group of people who are at the top of the food chain, except for the, for the shifters, who don’t feel, because it’s dangerous, because their powers could kill other people, so their solution was We will just become feeling-less, empty beings. This does not work out, obviously. But just the idea –

KJ: Obviously! [Laughs]

Sarah: – of being in a world – [laughs] – being in a world where characters are learning to advocate for having empathy for themselves and for others was exactly what I wanted to read, plus, you know, shifters! And large-scale drama! And soap opera! And super-hot attraction! This was, this was exactly where I wanted to be for weeks and weeks.

KJ: And this is why so many people went, went absolutely insane for Murderbot during the pandemic.

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: Have you read Murderbot? Yeah. So saying –

Sarah: I have read it ten times! [Laughs]

KJ: Same! I read it, I read it through twice during the pandemic –

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: – and it’s for exactly the same reason, which is you’ve got this, you know, obviously Murderbot is, yeah, wanting to shut down from all the human emotions, resents having the human emotions, leans into the, the emotions at the right time, develops people who care about its emotions, and it’s just wonderfully done, and, and it worked perfect- – and the other thing that I think really worked about Murderbot and which, sort of, I was thinking about in reference to other books I went for comfort reading on, is that there’s this balance, I think, for really good comfort reads that you need to strike between people being conf-, confident/competent –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

KJ: – and on the other hand, like, hand, people being…shambles.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: So, you know, we want to read about Murderbot, who’s like this totally socially inept, anxious, you know, morose mess, like we all felt, but also the Murderbot can then, you know, jump over somebody’s head and kick somebody else so hard their spine comes out and –

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: – you know, that’s also a really good thing.

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: And you want that, that balance so we can enjoy, we can enjoy watching them, but we can also identify with them.

Sarah: Yes. And I mean, I completely agree: feelings are really annoying!

KJ: Yeah, they’re that exactly. That – and have you, there’s a series, the other, one of the other series I reread twice during the pandemic. It’s a fantasy series called Johannes Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard? I don’t know if you’ve encountered them?

Sarah: No! Tell me everything.

KJ: Well, okay, so it’s basically, the first one is called Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, and this guy is literally a necromancer, and he is trying to, obviously, find the cure for death, and he’s absolutely, he is sarcastic, he is rude, he is really murderous; like, he casually kills people. He’s very, very funny. In the first book, he sells, sells his soul to Satan, and he runs this devil carnival where he’s trying to get, steal a hundred other people’s souls for the devil, so he’s very much a bad person, and his brother’s a vampire, and his brother’s a vampire because Cabal basically left him in a vampire’s tomb to get murdered by a vampire – a really bad man. But you completely sympathize with him, and again, he’s got the, the feelings problem. He doesn’t want to have feelings; he just wants to be out there, like, defeating death in a scientific manner –

Sarah: Right?

KJ: – and he doesn’t understand why people are such a nuisance. But then, as a – [coughs] – excuse me – as the series develops, you know, he’s got his brother, and he’s got a sort of heroic sort of female detective, and he’s got his best friend is like this spider demon who is basically like a centaur, but the bottom half is a spider and he’s actually a succubus, and it’s just, it’s such a romp. One of them is just taking the mickey out of Lovecraft, but all of it is, I mean, it’s wonderful, inventive fantasy. But there is this real and genuine emotional grounding whereby you’re really actually hoping and praying for Cabal. You really want him to get his soul back; you want him to be a decent person. You want Horst to fall – the vampire guy – to fall in love; you want all of these, you know, it is actually an incredibly warm and tender book, the one about murdering the soul. [Laughs] So yeah, I love those.

Sarah: And that has that same sort of conflict that you were talking about earlier, where you have things being really, really bleak and difficult and hurting and unfortunate, where at the same time and the same character, there’s tremendous power and things that you cannot possibly conceive of doing so that you –

KJ: Mm.

Sarah: – you, you root for them, but you also empathize with them.

KJ: Yeah, and you, you know, you, you see where he’s, he’s failing catastrophically, and at the same time he’s also really good at doing stuff and –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – yeah, I think that makes for a really delightful and satisfactory balance somehow.

Sarah: Yes. I also appreciate, in the comfort reading that I was, I was diving into, the concept of fallibility and owning –

KJ: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – owning and taking responsibility when you screw up? Like, this happens in the Psy-Changeling series? There are a lot of people who are like, No, realizing we were, we were wrong about this whole protocol of no feelings; that was a terrible idea, and it’s actually harming us now. What do we do? And in Murderbot you have characters like Mensah, who is so smart and so clever and has to say, Yeah, I really screwed up in book one! Sorry ‘bout that!

KJ: Hmm!

Sarah: My bad!

KJ: And then, but also it’s a fact that you can screw up and be, be forgiven –

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: – basically.

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: Yeah, and that there’s actually, there’s redemption; there’s not just, you know, there’s not a bleak world; there’s not just judgment. There is a world where we’re all slightly flawed and, you know, slightly awkward and getting things wrong, but there’s a fundamental kindness and decency underpinning it in enough people that, you know, you, you, you can find a way through.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: It’s hope, basically –

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: – which I think is what you really need in your comfort read.

Sarah: Yes. I have a list of books that I, that I keep for when someone I know has lost a loved one and they’re going through bereavement, and that is also a very specific flavor of comfort read, and, and it is always –

KJ: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – foundation of hope and just the idea that things are going to be okay. They may not be right now, but they will be, and you can sort of see the glimpses of how that’s going to happen as you read through the story.

KJ: I’m, I’m looking at my sort of list of comfort reads; I wrote a few down, and, you know, I would say about fifty percent of them involve an incredibly high body count –

Sarah: [Laughs]

KJ: – and the other fifty percent are these really gentle stories which is just about people sometimes being a little bit awkward with one another –

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: – and it’s like, you know, this seems like quite a strange – like, you know, the Blessings series; I don’t think anyone dies in the entire series to date, not that I can think of. And then another one that I was reading which I absolutely fell in love with – did you ever read the Chalet School or similar school stories?

Sarah: School stories, absolutely, but I haven’t read the Chalet series.

KJ: Well, they, they are basically, they’re these sort of very 19- sort of ‘30s to ‘50s, and it’s all, it’s all British girls’ school stories: Daisy pulls it off and plucky girls in the crofts and all that kind of nonsense.

Sarah: [Laughs]

KJ: But this guy, so this, this science fiction author called Chaz Brenchley, has written two books at the Crater School which is a completely girls, girls all together, proper girls’ school and having a pash on the, the head prefect, all that, only it’s on Mars.

Sarah: Oh! As you do!

KJ: [Laughs] As you do! So there’s, there’s two so far, and I absolutely love them! It felt like everything you enjoyed about reading girls’ school stories as a child. I mean, it’s on Mars, and, you know, just brilliant imagination, and it’s just so satisfying!

Sarah: And, and the thing about a school-set story, like a boarding school, is that you have the forced proximity where you’re going to live with these people; you kind of have to figure out how to get along.

KJ: Yes, exactly. It’s very much about that, about, as, as all girls’ school stories are, yeah, about people, you know, connecting and clicking into place or not, but finding a way.

There’s another author I love called D. E. Stevenson who was very big in sort of especially the ‘40s and ‘50s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, who’s been republished recently, who writes just these insanely comforting stories that are always set – actually, she’s done a couple in girls’ schools, although with the heroine is a teacher, but otherwise they tend to be set in small villages, and it’s a small English village, and, yeah, it is full of awkward people and eccentrics, but you do have to get on, and nothing terrible ever happens.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

KJ: And you read it with a sense of something terrible could happen! But it doesn’t.

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: And you get, there’s, they feel like such a safe place. There’s, she wrote one called Miss Buncle’s Book, where this sort of homely heroine with her lousy clothes writes a book, a roman à clef, basically, about, about her village, and it gets published. And of course it’s basically an extremely sort of quite savage parody of all of her villagers, and then the book comes to the village, and they’re all like, Who wrote this book? Who wrote this book? And it’s the kind of thing that, you know, could, you could start a murder mystery with that –

Sarah: Oh!

KJ: – obviously. But, in fact, you know, her book just, you know, people see themselves and the way they’re written, and things change, and people behave in a certain way and there’s even, funnily, there’s basically a lesbian love story that happens because she’s written this book, although it’s completely subtextual. Well, it’s actually not that subtextual, but it’s a tiny bit subtextual. But basically, yeah, this, you know, this couple actually go away and, on holiday to be very happy together, just because the book sort of validated their relationship kind of thing, and it’s, yeah, it, it’s just sort of cozy, and it makes you feel better about the world, and it’s safe.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: I’ve read a lot of D. E. Stevenson – [laughs] – during lockdown.

Sarah: I have read a lot of early Jill Mansell books as well, which do a similar thing. They’re all contemporary, and I, and my – it’s very strange; I used to be like, Nothing but contemporary; love it so much; and now I’m really having a hard time reading contemporary? I think because I have so many difficult feelings about the humans who are my contemporaries right now? I think that might be my –

KJ: Yeah, uh-huh. That’s the reason I write historical.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly! I think that’s, that’s part of it. And the thing I liked about the early Mansell books, and also what I like a little bit about the Blessings series as well, is that it is a small town and a community that is contemporary but also timeless. There’s nothing that ties it –

KJ: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – to a very specific period? Except in that there’s no, there’s no COVID. Like, there’s no COVID there as of right now. I mean, I don’t know what Ms. Bev has planned, but it’s a, it’s a, it’s –

KJ: [Laughs]

Sarah: – it’s happening now, but not, like, right-right now. There’s a sort of a –

KJ: Yeah.

Sarah: – timeless quality like if you wandered outside of town everything would be mist. There’s nothing around it; it’s just this town.

KJ: Yeah. And, and you’re just shielded. You, you don’t have to look at the newspapers –

Sarah: No.

KJ: – and be like, Oh my God, the arsehole; what’s he done now?

Sarah: Yep.

KJ: And you can apply that to whichever leader you – [laughs] – catching. But, yeah.

Sarah: Why can’t I kick his spine out of his body? It’s not fair!

KJ: Yeah, it’s not fair, is it?

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s not fair!

I know you just did a panel about comfort reading.

KJ: Yes.

Sarah: And I’ve spoken to Martha Wells, I’ve done interviews with Martha Wells, and my inner thirteen-year-old was not cool. There’s a sizable portion of my body going, Ghhhh! Gh-gh-gh-gh! Is that a similar experience for you, getting to talk to her about comfort reading to her, about her books?

KJ: Ah, look, it was Martha Wells and T. Kingfisher –

Sarah: Oh, mercy!

KJ: – who is – yes – and Malka Older, who is just, you know, she’s a terrific writer. She’s written like three or four really, really good science fiction novels, and she’s got one coming out soon, which has a very long title that my brain isn’t up to. But, yeah, no, the three of them, being on a panel with the three of them was absolutely tremendous. It was one of the best – I’ve done it twice, because the first time we did it for, I think it was the Library of Congress, so it was sort of private?

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: …their staff. It was not like a big, wasn’t going down in history or something. But it was a staffer thing, and we enjoyed it so much we did it again, and I was, I was, yeah, I was just…Martha Wells and T. Kingfisher! But, yeah. But it, it was really, really interesting, because we realized that all four of us actually have slight, have, have a very similar approach to what makes a comforting read, which is this combination of kindness and violence.

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: And in fact Malka and I have a concept that we developed over a Twitter conversation which, again, I’m going to really miss Twitter for this kind of thing.

Sarah: So true.

KJ: But we have a, a, we want to add to the acronyms for romance: as well as HEA and HFN, there should be HFY, which is Happy and Fuck You… You know when you finish a romance and not only are the bad guys, or the good guys like happy and in love, but the bad guys have got their comeuppance.

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: And that doesn’t always happen –

Sarah: No.

KJ: – but that really, for me, that’s one of my favorite things, a Happy and Fuck You ending when it’s, you know, they are happy, but they’re happy because they are sad, and they ought to be sad!

Sarah: And you should feel bad! Yes!

KJ: You should feel bad, exactly, and it’s that, and, and there, there is an element of that that I, I really like, that you can actually lean into. You know what, I’m going to punish the hell out of you, and you deserve it. [Laughs]

Sarah: Fuck you! [Laughs]

KJ: Exactly, exactly! And it’s, so, but that was, that was a something that I think we all sort of inclined towards. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes. And that’s one, something that Beverly Jenkins does really well in all of her books, especially in the historicals? There will be dastardly, dastardly –

KJ: Yes!

Sarah: – terrible people, and sometimes they die because they were dumb. She will kill characters off with their own ignorance, and it is so satisfying. Like, I don’t need the protagonists to deliver vengeance; this idiot did it to themselves. Like, they, they died of their ignorance. Oh, chef’s kiss!

KJ: I mean, there’s a couple of times where she kills people – I mean, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’m sort of vaguely known for having pretty high body counts for romance…

Sarah: Yes, there are a lot of dead bodies; there’s a lot.

KJ: So there’s, there are a lot of dead bodies, but, you know, I, I always feel it’s slightly unfair…Oh, look at KJ Charles, she’s had a character eaten by eels, and I’m like, Well, Beverly Jenkins had one eaten by a crocodile!

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: [Laughs] Or what about the guy that she set on fire and then drowned –

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: – simultaneously?

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: I mean, you know! No, she’s terrific; she’s absolutely wonderful. The book where, it’s Rebel, isn’t it, where somebody, the bad guy gets eaten by a crocodile. I’ve never – I mean, you know, he’s a white supremacist, and he gets eaten by crocodiles! What is not to like?

Sarah: I think that is an outstanding solution to white supremacy, and I know that, you know –

KJ: Yes!

Sarah: – there are some populations of crocodiles and alligators that are endangered and could probably use a good meal.

KJ: Well, I mean, this is an obvious solution then, isn’t it? You know, win-win, basically.

Sarah: Right? It’s brilliant! Let’s do it! I love this. I’m sure the crocodiles are all in favor.

KJ: Yeah, this is the absolute HFY ending, the way, you know, the good end happily, and the bad end unhappily, and that is what fiction is…

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: …the world says.

Sarah: Yes. Deeply satisfying endings to unsavory characters.

KJ: Yes. But you, you’ve got to have that, I think, for the comfort; you’ve got to have that sense that, you know – it, it, it’s a sense of, again, the arc bending towards justice.

Sarah: Right, and the rebalancing of that, of those scales.

KJ: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Even in the first Murderbot book, the bad guys die because they put their rescue beacon too close to their habitat. Like, they were dumb; they knew it should have been kilometers away, and it wasn’t, and so they, they, they were hoisted by their own space petard.

KJ: [Laughs] Yes, exactly.

Sarah: It’s so satisfying.

KJ: Oh yeah, it’s, it is satisfying, isn’t it?

Sarah: Yes. It’s, you’re in a comforting world where bad things could happen but they don’t, and characters look after each other, and the foundation is always going to be based on kindness, but there’s also a reality of violence, and then everything is restored and balanced at the end: it’s just so good!

KJ: And then when you’ve got several books of that, which I think is the other thing, the main, with comfort reads, you kind of want there to be an immense amount of it –

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: – to sort of delve into. So I really like Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett’s Astreiant series? They’re a fantasy, but there’s a male/male relationship at the heart of it. So the two, the investigator and the kind of swordsman who invest a crime, investigate a crime in the first book become lovers, and then they’re a couple throughout the next books. And there’s this wonderfully developed world, really immersive, matriarchy, really interestingly done, and, you know, you just, you get these murders and you get a smidge of romance – not loads, but a smidge – and you get interesting crime and a sense of justice and a sense of things, you know, a, a sense of people who want things to work out right and will work towards that.

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: And that’s the kind of Terry Pratchett thing with Vimes: the, the character who might be flawed themselves, but who is absolutely going to work to making the world a better place?

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: Which I, yeah, which is immensely enjoyable…

Sarah: Yes. That’s very inspiring.

Have you read Martha Wells’ Raksura series?

KJ: I’ve read the first one. I’ve read the first one; I haven’t caught up with the rest.

Sarah: Somebody on Amazon’s review described it as matriarchal, polyamorous, flying lizard people.

KJ: Basically, yeah.

Sarah: And I was like, Oh! Yeah, that, that, that fits! I mean, essentially –

KJ: [Laughs]

Sarah: – it’s essentially a Lost Princess story? But it, there’s a, they’re, they’re trying to not die and trying to preserve their community, and, and it did a similar thing – although it’s very violent; like, extremely violent, but also casually poly in a way that I was like, Oh, that’s nice! You’re sleeping together now! I love it! [Laughs]

KJ: Yeah! That, that, that, it’s, she’s got such a gift for making those comforts in the most unexpected places.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

KJ: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it is remarkable. But that’s T. Kingfisher as well. I don’t know why her books can be so comforting when they’ve got such spectacular levels of violence, and also not just violence: horror.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: Like real, genuine horror, and yet they’re so comforting.

Sarah: Yep! I did not know that cozy horror was a thing, but it’s a thing!

KJ: No, well, it is a thing! …it’s remarkable!

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: And it’s, well, I mean, it’s welcome to me because I’m a bit of a wimp with horror.

Sarah: Yeah, me too, me too.

KJ: You know, I, I don’t like the full-on – I like a certain level. I’ll tell you a book that I read right at the beginning of the pandemic: it’s called The Plague Stones, and it is literally about this English village which was afflicted by the Black Death and the stones around it, and there’s basically the spirit of evil from the Black Death is coming back to attack the village. Literally a book about the plague that I…

Sarah: Ugh!

KJ: …beginning of the pandemic.

Sarah: Okay –

KJ: You know, I know, and it’s terrifying and awful, and I don’t know why, but it was one of the most, one of the more – it was like it wasn’t – okay, but it’s fine; it’s COVID, but it’s not the Black Death.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: I don’t know, but I found something enormously comforting about that book, even though it’s in no way a comforting book, and everything is terrible, and it’s about the plague! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep!

KJ: It, it, it grounded me! I guess that was it! I guess, I guess it just felt really – no, I’ll tell you what it was: it was, it’s, it’s all happened before, and it will all happen again.

Sarah: Yes. That is so true. So true.

KJ: That’s what it was.

Sarah: Yeah, we’ve been here before.

KJ: I’ve only just realized that.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: People have lived through it, and –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – and will survive, and yeah. So I think, I think that was actually perhaps why it was, you know, a book that I, I felt very glad to have read, even while I, it was mildly traumatizing. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. I, during the pandemic, was reading, and I did an interview with Anna Lee Huber, who writes a historical mystery series that starts with The Anatomist’s Wife – it’s the Lady Darby series? – and later on in the series –

KJ: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – it’s during the cholera epidemic, and they don’t know what’s causing it –

KJ: Ooh.

Sarah: – and everyone is staying inside because they can tell that you get cholera when you leave the house, and of course the people who have to leave the house are the people who are not, you know, titled and can stay in their homes, who, they can send someone else out, and I remember reading this going, Oh, this is, this is very, very real; like, this is very visceral, but it was, you know, several hundred years ago, and it, and like you said, it’s very comforting to think, Okay, well, eventually they figured out that cholera was coming from one well that was adjacent to, I think it was a cemetery. They traced, they figured it out and fixed it and stopped it.

KJ: The, the, the John Snow, yeah, it was the Broad Street pump; it was contaminated because it was near a cesspit? It wasn’t even –

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: – anything as big as a cemetery; it was just near the, a cesspit –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – that had broken and was leaking, so it contaminated the water of that particular well.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: And, okay, here’s a really fascinating thing – sorry, complete side-thing, but I absolutely love this – so obviously John Snow was basically the first epidemiologist, because what he was trying to do was pinpoint and trace the outbreaks of cholera back to this particular pump, and one of the things that went against it was there was an outbreak in Hampstead, which is way away; it’s, yeah, miles and miles from Broad Street, which is right in the center of town; Hampstead’s up on the hill, long way. And, yeah, he was like, How can there be this, this outbreak of cholera? You know, this, this family’s got it; surely my theory must be wrong. Goes up there, interviews them, discovers the mother of the family used to live in Broad Street and believed that the water of that pump was particularly good and had sent her son down to get water from that particular pump, and he brought back a bottle of water that they all drank, and they all got cholera, and that was basically, that was it. That was the thing that John Snow used, and he nailed it to the wall. Isn’t that amazing?

Sarah: He’s the father of contact tracing!

KJ: Well, basically, yeah! I mean, he…

Sarah: Wow!

KJ: …you should see – there’s a wonderful book called The Ghost Map that goes into detail about who did it, but you, you know, there is still a pub right next to where the Broad Street pump used to be; it’s called the John Snow Pub after him. But astonishing piece of work, basically.

Sarah: That’s amazing!

KJ: But yeah, so that’s, that, that was one of those things, that that bottle of water that went up to Hampstead, and, and otherwise, people who did less work would have gone, Oh, well, there’s an outbreak in Hampstead too, so my theory must be wrong.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: And he, he went and found it.

Sarah: That’s amazing.

KJ: Yeah.

Sarah: And it’s, and it’s hopeful, right? Like, we will figure this out; we will have a vaccine; we will figure out how to control this eventually. Please, please, let us figure out how to control this bastard virus! [Laughs]

KJ: Yeah, well –

Sarah: I’m really not a fan.

KJ: No, indeed. It, it, it is particularly minging.

Sarah: Yeah. [Laughs]

KJ: Not, not, not a fan at all.

Sarah: So what are you working on right now?

KJ: Ooh! Well, I have, I’m, I’m actually having all kinds of interesting things going on at the moment, because having self-published for about five years, I’ve got this flurry of publisher interest.

Sarah: Yaaay!

KJ: So – yay! So I’ve just got The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen out with Sourcebooks, and then there’s a second one in the series coming out in September, but also Orion, who are part of Hachette –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

KJ: – UK publisher, Orion have taken my self-published book The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting, and they wanted a second book, so I have written then a duke book –

Sarah: Ooh!

KJ: – which I haven’t done before; I haven’t done a duke before, and I kind of felt that I’m a historical romance novelist, and not having done a duke is starting to feel a bit weird, so then I tried to do a duke –

Sarah: Wow.

KJ: – and then it turned out there’s a reason I haven’t done it before! [Laughs] It’s actually proved to be quite challenging to go, What possible problems can this man have?

Sarah: I mean, it’s kind of shocking that you haven’t written a duke, because there are literally 8.9 billion dukes in romance.

KJ: Well, this, this is a thing – so I’m very happy for people to roll around in dukes as much as they like, but –

Sarah: [Laughs]

KJ: – from my perspective – I, I, as it were – but from my perspective, you know, I think the interesting thing about a duke is not that he’s got a sideline as a spy or whatever; it’s actually that we’re talking about the person who’s literally one step down from the king –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – and there are literally about twenty-five of them, and they are all immensely rich and immensely powerful and immensely burdened with responsibility, and actually, this is a really terrible position to be in if you want to go off and, you know, be a spy or –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – be a smuggler or be all of the other things that dukes are –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – and also marry the governess.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: I mean, it’s actually a terrible idea. You know, you – and, and dukes did! You know, the Misses Gunning who took the sort of Regency world by storm, and one married two dukes, apparently, although one of them only got promoted later, but even so. But, you know, you could marry a commoner, but it wasn’t, you know, there, there’s a whole lot of, like, social pressures and things that you have to do, and, and, you know, have got this immense amount of power.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: So yeah, I, I kind of felt the need to lean in on that a bit, and actually I, I’m, I sort of springboard-ed off one of my favorite Georgette Heyer books, because I, I just started thinking, What if you were a duke and you just didn’t look like a duke, like you’re actually rather short and didn’t look like much, and actually nobody ever noticed you in a room. I mean, unfortunately you’re bearing the weight of all of this massive expectation and power and title, and, but personally you’re just actually, you’re really nobody very much at all.

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: And yeah, what does that do? So yeah, so I went with that.

Sarah: That’s very cool.

KJ: It was good fun. And then the other thing that’s happening which is exciting is that I have actually – ooh, I’m not sure I ought to be saying this yet. Okay, I’ll tell you without specifics, but I’ve actually sold a historical mystery, rather than a fantasy.

Sarah: Yay!

KJ: Yes! So more, more on that when it comes, but I’m really pleased about that, ‘cause it’s quite nice to sort of branch out a bit?

Sarah: Yes! And I love, I love, love, love all of the queer historical mysteries that are coming out. Like they’re –

KJ: Mm.

Sarah: – all of the familiar hallmarks of, you know, Agatha Christie and the, the very specific small community romances, but soo-oo-per queer, like extremely queer! I love that so much.

KJ: It’s so – publishers are just actually, really seem to be opening up to a great deal more – oh! – variety than they used to. I mean, I, I think romance publishers are, if anything, quite a way behind –

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: – science fiction and crime, but fan-, science fiction and fantasy in particular, I mean, the, the list is, you know, so queer, diverse in so many interesting ways –

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: – and it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s a real massive improvement, and there’s such exciting authors coming up. But –

Sarah: It’s so true.

KJ: – it’s a wonderful world to be in. And I think romance, romance have had a good start but we seem to be slide, a, a little bit backsliding it feels to me at the moment in the, in the publishers?

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: Not in, you know, in, in self-published romance, you know, you’ve got this endless – actually, no, I’ll tell you who I actually am very impressed by: I’ve been looking at, I’ve been having a category romance binge, and Harlequin Mills & Boon are doing far better than I, they used to and than I expected. You know, they did, there’s an m/m Special Edition, Harlequin Special Edition –

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: – that came out.

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: Yeah! Sera Taino, The Best Man’s something [The Best Man’s Problem]. Great book, really enjoyed it, and they’ve got a, an f/f Harlequin Desire coming out with two Indian women –

Sarah: I –

KJ: – as leads.

Sarah: – saw the cover –

KJ: Sophia Singh Sasson. I know! Oh my God! And Sophia Singh Sasson, I’ve read a couple of hers, and I think they’re really good, but yeah! The, in category romance, yeah, like I say, I used to work at Mills & Boon; I’ve got to tell you, the idea that they’re doing, you know, we barely had a character of color the whole time –

Sarah: Yeah.

KJ: – that I was working there, and granted it was twenty years ago, but it’s only twenty years ago, and, and they just seem to be absolute- – and Therese Beharrie writes for Harlequin Mills & Boon, and she is, talking a comfort read, so she is one of my absolute favorites. Her books are so warm and so intelligent and so forgiving –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

KJ: – again. Her books are absolutely brilliant for forgiveness.

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: You know, people are really flawed and they’ve really screwed up, and they just, you know, reach out to one another, so I love her stuff. And, you know, again, Harlequin Mills & Boon have done – you know, now she’s writing single title, but Harlequin Mills & Boon, you know, they’ve put her out there.

Sarah: I love that her books are set in South Africa.

KJ: Yeah. Yeah…

Sarah: ‘Cause I’ve never been to South Africa, but I get to sort of mentally travel.

KJ: There are some staggeringly beautiful locations, yeah, and though it’s, it’s a very strong sense of place.

Sarah: Yes.

KJ: Ones I also really liked for that is the RomanceClass books which are all set in the Philippines. You get to…

Sarah: Yes!

KJ: …sense of place, really satisfying.

Sarah: Yes, and they’re so much fun to follow, all of the RomanceClass authors, on social media, especially Instagram, because then I’m seeing the things that they talk about that I’m not familiar with. Like, what is it like –

KJ: Mm.

Sarah: – when you go out for this meal? I’m like, ooh, ooh! Okay! Yeah! Mm-hmm! I’m, now I’m hungry, but yes, please, more? [Laughs]

KJ: We very briefly had, we’ve got, it’s, it’s called an oriental food court, which it probably shouldn’t be, but that’s what it’s called, near where we live, which is basically, you know, it’s a huge hall and you’ve got like about twenty different stalls –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

KJ: – and with, yeah, Korean food and Cantonese food and Vietnamese food and whatever, just loads of them, and this Filipino one opened, and I was straight in there because I was just like, No, I know this! I’ve read RomanceClass; I can do this!

Sarah: Yep, okay!

KJ: And it, enragingly, the next time we went it had closed again. I thought, Damn, I only got one meal! It was very nice, though.

Sarah: Nooo! Oh, that’s awful.

KJ: I know, but I only got one. I’m so hacked off. But I did choose it based on the fact that I had read about it and I was like, No, I’m never not having that one, and it was delicious.

Sarah: That’s awesome!

[Laughter]

Sarah: So where on the internet can people find you, if you wish to be found?

KJ: Well, you can find me at Twitter while Twitter still exists in a meaningful form, just @kj_charles. I am on, I have a group on Facebook. I loathe Facebook, but the group is just so nice I can’t bear to try and move it. There’s, it’s, that’s the place where I do things like, you know, put out free stories and little snippets and epilogues and things like that. We have regular treats; we have competitions –

Oh! One of the marvelous things doing The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting with Orion is the editor basically said, We want to put bonus material in, so I said, What do you have in mind? And she said, Well, why don’t you ask your chat group? So I have literally gone to the chat group and said, Okay, tell me what you want in the way of bonus material, and the publisher is open for it. Like, they would literally agree to put an extra chapter in if we felt that or do an epilogue? Haven’t specified the characters. They’ve literally thrown it wide open and say, What do your fans want?…

Sarah: That’s brilliant! That’s so great!

KJ: Isn’t that fantastic?!

Sarah: That’s amazing!

KJ: Isn’t that amazing?! It’s amazing! That is exactly, I mean, that’s such basically good publishing!

Sarah: Yeah!

KJ: They’re literally listening to the readers, and it’s so much fun, so I’ve been reading, there’s this immense thread in there, and I’ve been reading through it and, like, brewing ideas about what I’m going to write.

And then the other place people can find me, other than that, is at kjcharleswriter.com, and that’s where I blog, and I blog a lot about writing and editing and books I have read, so if people are interested in that side of things, come and read?

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I told you we had recs. We had a lot of recs, right? I have links to all of the books and the YouTube videos and everything else we mentioned in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

As always, I end each episode with a terrible joke, and this week is no exception. This joke comes from Bull. Thank you, Bull!

How do you compete in nonviolent boxing?

Give up? How do you compete in nonviolent boxing?

With pacifists.

[Laughs] I love a silly, clever joke. Thank you, Bull!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend; we’ll see you back here next week!

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[end of music]