122. Ponies, Ebola, and Historical Romance: An Interview with Jennifer McQuiston

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and Happy New Year!  Welcome to episode number 122 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is author Jennifer McQuiston, who also fights Ebola, and I’m not making any of that up.  Recently, TIME magazine named as their Person of the Year the people who went and fought the Ebola virus.  Jennifer McQuiston writes historical romance, but for her day job, she works for the CDC, better known as the Centers for Disease Control, and as part of her job earlier this year went to Sierra Leone to fight Ebola and, as such, is one of the People of the Year, according to TIME magazine.  I don’t think there’s a topic that goes with historical romance as well as the Ebola virus, right?  Of course.  So we’re going to talk about the virus, the CDC, what they do, polio vaccinations, rural Africa, different trips that she’s made to Africa to help with disease control, her training as a veterinarian, and then we’re going to talk about historical romance, what she’s writing, what she’s reading, and what television shows we’re watching.  This is a very well-rounded podcast episode.  I hope you enjoy it.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of The Prince, the brand-new Gabriel’s Inferno novella from New York Times bestselling author Sylvain Reynard, available on January 20^th.

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is, but I’m betting that you can guess, and I’m betting that you know what album it’s from, because, well, it’s the best album title that I’ve had in years to talk about, and I can’t stop talking about it, although I promise next week I will move away from the holiday music, because maybe the holidays will be over?  Is there an official end date?  Like, I don’t actually know if there is one.

Either way, I hope you enjoy this episode.  It’s super-duper long, so if you’re traveling, we’re here with you for, like, the next forty-five, forty-eight minutes.  And now, on with the podcast.

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Sarah:  Before we get started on, like, you know, the CDC and the Ebola and things like that, I really want to start with something very important.  You told your daughters you’d get a pony if you got a book deal.

Jennifer McQuiston:  [Laughs] I did.

Sarah:  This is a, this is a thing that you did.

Jennifer:  [Laughing] This is a thing that I did.

Sarah:  Why did you do that?

Jennifer:  Well, I grew up with horses, so I, I absolutely love – and I’m a vet, so, I mean, I just love horses, but living in Atlanta, you kind of have to sell a kidney in order to have a horse here.  I mean, it’s so expensive to –

Sarah:  Yeah, no kidding!

Jennifer:  So, you know, my daughters were, they’re, they were born horse crazy, they were begging and begging for a horse, and my husband and I were being pretty pragmatic that we just couldn’t afford it.  And I, I almost kind of tricked him into it.  I was like, well, what, what if I got a book deal?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  And he said, well, it would have to be some book deal.  [Laughs] And I think it was literally within a month that I, that it all kind of clicked into place, and, and, you know, it was very tongue in cheek when we did it, but the girls heard it.  They heard it, and the very first thing they said was, we’re getting a pony!  And –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – and so, yeah, we, we got a pony three weeks later, so – [Laughs]

Sarah:  Wow.  And so you’ve had a pony now for a couple years.  Do you get to take care of your own pony, since you’re a veterinarian?

Jennifer:  A, a bit.  You know, we do have a vet, because if we ever need a vet for something big, I need one that knows the horse and stuff, so we, we do use a vet, but, but yeah, I can do some of it on my own.  And, you know, he’s a pony, but he’s as big as a pony can be without being a horse –

Sarah:  Right.

Jennifer:  – and so I, I ride him too.  So, he, he literally is for the whole family.

Sarah:  What’s his name?

Jennifer:  Beauregard.

Sarah:  Okay, that is a serious romance novel hero name right there.

Jennifer:  He came with the name!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, he was meant to be, that is a serious romance hero name.  Like, that, that’s an excellent pony name.

Jennifer:  Yes, yes, and he, he’s a, he’s a hero of a pony, so –

Sarah:  Excellent!  So I am really excited to talk to you because in addition to writing romances, you do some other stuff.

Jennifer:  A little bit, yeah.

Sarah:  You do a few other things.  So what exactly is your job title?  And, ‘cause I saw your picture online at the CDC, you had, like, metals and stuff?  Are you in the military as well?

Jennifer:  I’m in a part of the uniformed service that most people don’t know about.  So, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, they’re are , all part of the uniformed service.  Coast Guard is number five.

Sarah:  Yes.

Jennifer:  The Public Health Service is number six, and then there’s also a uniformed service that works for NOAA.  So I’m one of the uniformed services, and I have a uniform and a, a military-type rank system and retirement system and can be deployed and, and, yeah, it’s, it’s one option for people who do my job at the CDC can, can be part of the Public Health Service.

Sarah:  So what do you do at the CDC?  And what is the CDC for someone who is listening who is not American going, what are you talking about?

Jennifer:  The CDC stands for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it started off sixty years ago as the Communicable Diseases Center, so CDC has kind of shifted and grown over the years as its mission and role have expanded, but those three letters have stayed the same.  And the Centers for Disease Control is the United States’ primary public health agency, so our goal and our mission is to improve the health and lives of Americans from illness and injury and disability.  I spent sixteen years at CDC working as a disease detective, so I’m a veterinarian, and my training kind of made me uniquely poised to, to work on diseases that were transmitted between animals and people, so I, I really, even though I’m a vet, most of my work was on human diseases and, and illness in humans and how to stop it by stopping it at the animal source.  So I did that for sixteen years, and believe it or not, I actually think my writing, the, the side career that I have grown and generated really made me begin to have an interest in how communications plays a role in public health, and I began to pay a lot more attention to what CDC was doing and kind of how, how, when you communicate in writing and in fiction, you have to show, not tell, you have to use the sort of language that makes people want to, to listen and follow, and you have to do the same thing when you’re doing public health messaging, and so in May of this year I moved into public affairs for CDC, and so now I’m using my science and my writing sides together.

Sarah:  And since in romance, ‘cause you’re also a romance writer, you also – I mean, one of the jobs that a writer has that’s very difficult is that you have to create an empathic response with a total stranger reading your book.  They have to create an emotional connection to the characters, and you have to create an emotion in the reader, which is a terribly difficult and very intimate thing to do.  One of the reasons I think that the genre doesn’t get a lot of understanding of how difficult it is to create empathy, and if you’re talking about a public health crisis, you also have to create that empathy.  You have to give someone a reason to do what it is that you’re telling them that they need to do.

Jennifer:  Absolutely!  It’s actually one of the most central parts of communication during a crisis is, is showing and developing empathy and getting people to believe in the message that you’re telling them and makes them want to, to change their behavior or follow the steps to save lives, so –

Sarah:  Of course –

Jennifer:  Yeah, they’re, they are –

Sarah:  – of course.

Jennifer:  – they are interrelated, definitely.

Sarah:  Have you met any dukes?

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Bummer, dude!  We need to talk to the CDC about this problem.

Jennifer:  [Laughing] There’s no dukes at the CDC.

Sarah:  [Exasperated noise] See?  We need some dukes.  At least a viscount.  At least –

Jennifer:  Or, or a billion-, there’s no bad boy billionaires at the CDC either.  You, you don’t go into this field to be a billionaire.

Sarah:  You, you mean, are you trying to tell me that there are no billionaires in government work?

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I feel like I’ve been lied to.

Jennifer:  I’m so sorry to break it to you.

Sarah:  All these altruistic billionaires, and they’re not even real, in the government world, oh, my God.  So, you’re TI-, one of TIME’s People of the Year.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] Me and 5,000 of my closest friends.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Was that a complete shock?

Jennifer:  It was!  It was.  You know –

Sarah:  Do they sound out 5,000 little ribbons, little plaques?  Do you get, like, a cupcake?  Dinner?

Jennifer:  I don’t know.  I’m trying to decide if I can put this on my resume or not.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Hell, yes!  That goes up top!  TIME Person of the Year.

Jennifer:  Well, I mean, I think the reason it was such a surprise is, you know, nobody is going over there to earn fame or glory.  They’re going over there because it’s a cause they believe in, and then for TIME to actually honor, honor that in the way that they did, I, I, that probably came as a surprise to most of the people involved in the response.

Sarah:  Because here in the United States, and, and I don’t get into politics a lot on, on the podcast, but I think it’s safe to say that largely we are enormously ignorant of Africa.  Where, where it is.  That it’s not one, just one country.

Jennifer:  Right.  I think –

Sarah:  Like, it’s a whole bunch of countries?  I don’t know that that many people in the States truly understand what it’s like in eastern Africa.  I mean, I think, I think a lot of people think of Africa as, like, it is a giant desert, and there’s some zebras.  So you –

Jennifer:  They, and they think the zebras are everywhere –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Jennifer:  – which is a –

Sarah:  It’s like Australians have kangaroos in the yard, right?  I mean, I personally have a bald eagle, but he’s not here right now.  So, you went to Sierra Leone –

Jennifer:  Yes.

Sarah:  – to fight Ebola –

Jennifer:  I did.

Sarah:  – as you do.

Jennifer:  As I do.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like one does.  Holy crap –

Jennifer:  It’s just –

Sarah:  – that’s amazing.  I mean, I know I said that at the time, but seriously, that’s amazing.

Jennifer:  Well, you know, I, it wasn’t my first time working in Africa.  I had actually worked on the polio eradication campaign, which is another huge public health campaign where the last battles are being waged in the Middle East and Africa, and I had actually been really fortunate to spend about three months in very rural parts of West Africa in, in the smallest villages you can imagine.  I mean, it was, it was like Indiana Jones to go in and, like, consult with the chiefs and get permission to hold vaccination clinics and things, and, and I loved Africa.  I loved the experience, and, you know, that was fifteen years ago, and I’d always wanted to go back, and, and Sierra Leone and Ghana, where I had, I had done polio eradication in Ghana, they’re not very far apart in terms of geography or culture, and when I got there, it was like being plunked right back down in the middle of it, and I actually felt, okay, I can do this.  You know, Ebola is scary, certainly, but in terms of the people, I felt like I knew them, and I felt like I, I knew I could help and that, and that I could, I could make a difference and help them make a difference.

Sarah:  So what was part of your job in Sierra Leone?  What were – I mean, I know you’re in the public health office in terms of communication.  Were you setting up education programs there on how to avoid or how to help people get better?  Like, what was your, what was your job?

Jennifer:  In a way, I was doing a lot of that.  So, my official position in Sierra Leone was I was the lead of the health communications team, and that encompassed not only developing the types of messages that, that would help save lives – I mean, basically, the, this fight against Ebola is going to be wo-, won not just by building a lot of hospital beds that can hold Ebola patients, because if that’s all you do, you just keep the hospitals full.  What you need to do is change the behavior that is getting people sick to make them have to be in those Ebola hospitals, and so that’s where the communications piece is so important.  So what my team was doing was, we were working with the local media, we were working with local non-government organizations who had staff out in the communities and villages, and we were trying to develop the right type of campaign to change behavior.  You know, you can, you can preach at them all you want, and you can say, you have to change the way you’re doing your burials, even though they’ve done burials this way for 500 years, but, you know, they’re not going to believe you unless you convince them that it’s their behavior that’s, that’s causing Ebola, and there are a lot of barriers to overcome, and, the least of which is a language barrier.

Sarah:  Of course.

Jennifer:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So, when you left, was the situation on, more under control there, or is it marginally better?  How is the situation there now?

Jennifer:  You know, while I was there, the situation was beginning to worsen.  When, when I originally went to Sierra Leone, Liberia was considered the country in more significant need of emergency aid.

Sarah:  Yes, that’s what I heard mostly.

Jennifer:  Liberia – yeah – and Liberia is actually the country where, you know, the United States was designated as having the, the primary role in, in providing aid.  In Sierra Leone, it’s the British government, and in Guinea, it’s France, and it, it just has to do with sort of historical ties to colonialism and, and which countries have a foothold, you know, to, to offer the, the better aid, but CDC has a presence in all three countries and works with whichever governments are, are helping to organize the response.  So when, when I went, Liberia was where all the action was happening, and it seemed like we were going to a place where maybe it wasn’t as bad, maybe we could, you know, make a lot of inroads while we were there, but from the time I arrived, it became clear that the situation was beginning to rapidly worsen, particularly in the urban area of Freetown, where I was.  Once Ebola gets into a city, into an urban area, especially an area that has a lot of slums and people living close beside each other, it, it spreads like wildfire.  It’s, it’s much more explosive once it gets into a city, and that was happening right when I got there.

Sarah:  And how is it contagious?  Is it airborne?

Jennifer:  You know, it’s not airborne, and I’m more convinced than ever – there’s a lot of people out there who are, who are convinced it must be, but when you see how people live there –

Sarah:  No.

Jennifer:  – if it was – yeah – if it was airborne or it was spread even by casual contact, by touching a doorknob that somebody had touched or even shaking somebody’s hand, everybody would have it.  It was very clear to me that it was spread through, through close, intimate contact, I mean, meaning taking care of somebody who is sick, cleaning up after them, and in western Africa in particular, the culture of how to handle the dead, how to manage dead bodies, you show respect by washing the body before you bury them, and that is, that is the time at which Ebola transmission is just the most incredibly high risk, and, and most of the people when I was there were still getting sick from attending burials and washing bodies.

Sarah:  And to not honor the dead that way is even more unspeakable.

Jennifer:  It is, and –

Sarah:  It’s, it’s –

Jennifer:  – it’s something that’s very difficult to get people to even think about or talk about –

Sarah:  Oh, no.

Jennifer:  – it’s taboo.

Sarah:  Yes.  And death rituals are –

Jennifer:  But one thing –

Sarah:  – are, are intrinsic to a culture.  I mean, that’s –

Jennifer:  Absolutely.

Sarah:  You can’t just be like, listen, how you do, how you deal with your dead, you need to stop.  Oh, okay.  Nobody does that.  That’s a truly intrinsic part, and a very secretive part of a lot of cultures, too.

Jennifer:  It is, and the secrecy is actually a really important part of, of what is happening in Sierra Leone.  They have what are called secret societies whose, whose main purpose is to deal with burials, helping bodies get to what they believe in terms of an afterlife, and even though you are giving burial messages to save lives and you think it should be obvious from an educated perspective, it, you have to –

Sarah:  Ritual is powerful stuff.

Jennifer:  You have to understand and respect that you need to, to work with them to come up with a solution.  You can’t just come in and tell them how to do it.

Sarah:  Oh, no, of course not, because it’s, that ritual, I mean, not only does that mean that that person is or isn’t going to the afterlife, but that reflects on you and the living.  I mean, the, the way in which cultures deal with their dead is not, is not something, obviously, that’s easily changed at all.

Jennifer:  Well, one of the things I was most proud of doing is, our team worked with the local journalists and media to have very high profile thought-leaders and influencers in the country begin to talk about death, the possibility of death from Ebola while, like, they were still alive, to say, if I am, God forbid, unfortunate enough to die from Ebola, I want my family to honor me by giving me a safe medical burial.  Like, to, to begin to talk about it in advance –

Sarah:  Whoa, yeah.

Jennifer:  – and, and people are starting to talk about it, and they, they took very visible pledges on radio, and they, they’d print it up in the newspaper for people to cut out.  If they weren’t going to talk about it, maybe they could at least write a pledge down and show it to their family, and so I think they’re beginning to, to have a more open dialogue about it, which is the first step toward changing behavior.

Sarah:  So, are, are things better now, or are they still pretty bad?  How, what is the situation in Sierra Leone like now?

Jennifer:  You know, the CDC director, Dr. Frieden, just went on a, a trip to all three countries.  He got back this weekend, and he had a press conference yesterday where he talked about it.  So, the most, the most, probably disturbing thing that he said to me was that while he, he found it very, very inspiring and he saw signs of progress, it was also very sobering, that it was very clear that there is a long way to go yet before we get to a point where this is even close to being controlled, and that it, you, we cannot let up our guard at all.

Sarah:  It’s very sad, I think, that once we had no cases of, of active cases of Ebola in the States, that all the media was like, okay, well, you know, we’re, we’re done now.  We don’t have to talk about it.  What are some things that you have found that people don’t know about Ebola?

Jennifer:  You know, one of the things that I, I think I have only begun to realize is that people think in west Africa, it’s just Ebola, and it’s a death from Ebola, and that’s it.  That, it’s, if they, Ebola is the problem.  But what is really the problem is the lack of medical and public health infrastructure.  Ebola wouldn’t be there if those things were in place, and unfortunately, what Ebola is doing there is decimating what limited infrastructure they had already, so what, I suspect, when this is all over, we’re going to have more people die from complicated pregnancies that didn’t receive medical care, or they’re going to die from malaria that could have been treated.  They’re going to die from cholera – these are cholera-endemic countries.  So they’re, although Ebola is devastating and what is most in people’s minds, I really wish people understood that probably more people are dying from preventable causes that Ebola is preventing them to, to get care.

Sarah:  Because they don’t have, the country does not have enough public health available.

Jennifer:  Well, they’ve, they’ve lost a majority of their doctors and their, their healthcare staff, and what few hospitals are, are open are, are so careful in which patients they will accept, because anybody who might have Ebola could, could kill everybody on the ward.

Sarah:  Kill everybody in the building.

Jennifer:  They – yeah – they, they, and a, a woman coming in who’s pregnant, with bleeding, will, will be turned away, and she will die at home.

Sarah: Oh, God.  So –

Jennifer:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – if people are curious and they want to help, what can people in the States do to help?

Jennifer:  Well, if they are of the medical professional variety, there, there are many organizations that are actually sending healthcare workers over to, to work over there, and you don’t, it’s not all patient care.  Some of it is in a health communications role like I did.  So I mean, if they’re of the very adventurous, venturous variety and wanted to go over, there are organizations, Partners In Health is one that comes to mind.  The Red Cross.  There, there are many non-government organizations out there that, that might, you know, be open for volunteers.  CDC is actually running a training program to teach healthcare workers how to suit up and use personal protective equipment to work on an Ebola ward, and so there’s a training program that they can take.  If they go to CDC.gov, they could find information on that.  In terms of people who want to help from this side of the world, this hemisphere, there are many non-government organizations and charities that, that take donations and I, I think that some of the ones I’ve already mentioned would be some, but there are many other worthy ones as well.

Sarah:  So any, any organization that is in Liberia or in Sierra Leone or in Ghana –

Jennifer:  Guinea.

Sarah:  I’m sorry, Guinea.

Jennifer:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Dur.  Hi, American.  How you doing?

Jennifer:  The reason I know, the only reason I know that difference is when I, I had worked in Ghana, but Ghana is English speaking, and Guinea is French speaking, and it’s –

Sarah:   Spench freaking.

Jennifer:  – it’s very hard for us to find enough CDC staff to be on the ground in Guinea because we just don’t have that many French speakers.

Sarah:  No, we don’t.  ‘Cause Canada took them all.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That bastard, Canada.  The medical charities that are already in, on the ground in those locations, donations go very far in those places.  Am I correct?

Jennifer:  They, they do.  They, they are.  And, and what I would tell people to do is that when thinking about a philanthropic organization to donate to, you might think about looking at ones that are investing in rebuilding, because there’s a lot of aid money flow-, big aid money flowing in –

Sarah:  Of course.

Jennifer:  I don’t think that’s what’s needed, but what I think – at least not to, to what I think people are thinking of.  They don’t need somebody who’s going to give money to buy gloves, for example, but I think what they may need are people who are working to give survivors job training.  You know, many survivors who survive Ebola have lost their livelihoods, their families, everything.  They, they need a fresh start, and so there, there are probably organizations out there  that are going to start to become much more important in rebuilding those sorts of things and rebuilding the, the medical communities that have lost so many people there, you know, that, that can support people going to medical school.  Things like that; those are the sorts of things that I think will become more important in the near future and will go on for many years.

Sarah:  Was it frustrating for you to see people joking about Ebola?

Jennifer:  It was.  I understand it.  I, I understand that human nature is to react in hysterical fashion sometimes to deflect with, with humor.  I, I tend to deflect with humor –

Sarah:  I do it too!  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  But, and, and instead of getting angry, I think what I tried to do was say, how can I put out information that helps educate without preaching?

Sarah:  Yep.

Jennifer:  So, it was, one of the things that I tried to do was, on Facebook and other things, was just put up little snippets of life, of what it was like to work with the people there, of what it was like to be involved in developing a health communication tool that was going to get into the hands of a villager and maybe save lives.

Sarah:  Right.

Jennifer:  And I think, in the course of doing that I felt, it was able, I was able to, to feel like I could make a difference on both sides of the equation.

Sarah:  Yep.  I totally understand that.  So, aside from the CDC and going to Sierra Leone, do you also practice veterinary medicine?

Jennifer:  No!  [Laughs] I’ve never practiced clinically.  I actually went straight from school – I, I got a veterinary degree and – I know you’re going to roll your eyes at this – I have a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology, and so I took those two things and immediately went into CDC to train to do this sort of work.  They have a program called the epidemic intelligence service, and so if somebody asked me to spay their cat right now –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – I would laugh.  I would be, I would be – my mom calls me up all the time, and she says, listen, the cat isn’t doing well.  I said, you need to call the vet!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  She’s like, I just did!

Jennifer:  You know, I am fortunate in that even though I never practiced clinically, some of the pieces of my job when I was a disease detective did let me chase dogs on Indian reservations and, you know, treat them for ticks and do, do some basic veterinary work.  So, I, I’ve never felt like, like I, I didn’t get that piece of my life in play.

Sarah:  And you have a pony.

Jennifer:  And I have a pony.  And I have two dogs and three cats and various and sundry crustaceans and fish, so I, I definitely, I definitely put it to some use.  And you know, there was this time – you know, when you live in Atlanta, rats in your basement are a possibility, just living in a city, and my husband, at one point when we had rats, said that I had to put my veterinary education to use and trap the rats, because I was the one who knew how to handle animals.  That sucked!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Honey, you’re on rat patrol.

Jennifer:  And, and, and that is what I did.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Nice!  Well, I, I have complete empathy because I have two dogs and two cats – I used to have three, but we had to put one to sleep in October – and I’m sitting next to the fish tank, so like you, I have a food chain –

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – but I am not making any promises of ponies to my children, because no.  No.

Jennifer:  Well, go get them, go put them on.  I will, I will talk, I will do it for you.  I will promise them a pony on your behalf.

Sarah:  Children, this, this nice lady on the Internet would like to promise you a pony.  No, that, that never ends badly.  No!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’ll never be a problem!  So, since we’ve talked about heavy-hitting things like, you know, Ebola, African medical infrastructure, we should talk about romance novels now.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Because those two things, like, I mean, do you ever have a moment where you’re like, wow, those things don’t match up at all!

Jennifer:  Some, yes, yes.  And many times it’s when I’m talking to other people who point out how odd, how oddly those two things stack up against each other.  And I, and then I’m like, yeah, I guess that is kind of weird, but it’s just me, so – [claps]

Sarah:  Hey, it’s your brain.  You do whatever you want with your brain.

Jennifer:  I know, my brain is – yeah, and, and it’s not like I have divided brain.  They’re, they’re very, they just really are interlaced.  [Laughs] So –

Sarah:  So, you have a new book coming out.

Jennifer:  I do.  I have a, a novella coming out the end of January, and I have the first book in my new series coming out the end of February.  So the novella is just a fun little, it’s just a fun little story that wraps up some of the loose character ends that were left over from my first series.  So, my first book was What Happens in Scotland.  You’ll remember that; that one got the D review on your, on Smart Bitches and Trashy Books, yeah, right.

Sarah:  Yes, ‘cause Elsie gets shit done.

Jennifer:  She does, she does!  But, but it’s, it – you know, that was a really polarizing book.  People either loved it or they hated it, but it generated a lot of talk, and so I had a lot of, a lot of readers say, you know what, William, the character William really needs his own story.  He was older brother of the, the hero in that book.  And then I had a lot of readers write in from Summer Is for Lovers who loved the sister of the, the heroine in that book, and both of them are kind of feisty with their own ways of doing things, and I thought, what would happen if I paired those, those two up?  And so, they get their own little quick romance, and it’s called Her Highland Fling, and the, the main character is Penelope, and she is, you know, really one of the first female reporters at the time.  She’s just beginning to, to kind of find her way in a very male-dominated world.  It’s set in the 1840s, and she comes to Scotland to report on the, the, the Highland Games that they’re organizing.  So Highland Games have been around for a very long time, and in the 1840s many of the, the clans were beginning to resurrect them for tourism purposes, and so they, they have invited her to come up and cover the games, and William is in charge of the games, and when they meet, sparks fly in, in odd ways, and he is very tongue-tied around her, and she thinks he’s a bumbling idiot and may be the bigger story, so that’s –

Sarah:  Ohhh.

Jennifer:  – kind of the setup for Her Highland Fling.

Sarah:  Is there any caber tossing in a literal or a euphemistic sense?

Jennifer:  Yes and yes.

Sarah:  Yes!  Excellent!  I am pleased.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] Awesome!

Sarah: [Laughs] I can think of no reason why women throughout many, many historical generations would, would be interested in watching a bunch of guys in kilts throw things.  I mean –

Jennifer:  Well, yeah.

Sarah:  – who’d, who, who, who’s, who doesn’t think that’s a good idea?

Jennifer:  Men have always tried to figure out who has the bigger stick –

Sarah:  Yeah!

Jennifer:  – and they just, the caber toss is, like, the absolute manifestation of that, so.  Now, the, the first book in my new series is called Diary of an Accidental Wallflower.  That comes out the end of February –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jennifer:  – and the setup for this book is basically a, a society girl, a perfect, she seems to be a perfect society girl.  She’s got her sights set on a future duke.  This is the first future duke I’ve ever written.  I, I’m usually not a, a duke-ish sort of writer.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  But she thinks, she thinks she, she thinks she has figured out where her life is going, and she has a group of friends that has a very mean-girls feel to it, and she always feels a little bit like, ooh, I have to watch my guard around them.  And she, she twists her ankle on the eve of a ball where she thinks her future duke is going to ask her to marry him, and she is kind of relegated to the wallflower line because she can’t dance, and she watches her best friend make a play for this duke, and she’s devastated and mad, and it turns out that a, a doctor is in the crowd, and he offers to help her.  And, and she, she feels like her whole world is kind of being turned upside down, and he, he shows her that she’s got the wrong idea about life, and when she finally heals, she realizes she’s fallen for her doctor instead of her duke, so.  I do write doctors better than dukes, so I think that’s why I went that direction.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I was going to say, Her Doctor, Not Her Duke, is a great title.  There’s a lot that could be done there.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] Contemporary or historical!

Sarah:  Yes, you could go either way.  So, is the, the Accidental Wallflower is a new series.  How many books are in the new series?

Jennifer:  It’ll be a three-book series.

Sarah:  Those are always easily managed and much appreciated by readers.

Jennifer:  Yes, they –

Sarah:  ‘Cause we know when they end.  We like to know when things end.  That’s why we read romance.  Like, I know, I know authors get very frustrated, like, well, if you buy all, if you don’t buy the books in the series until the series is over, the series might not have an end.  But I’m like, yes, but we’re romance readers:  we like to know the end is there.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like to know it’s coming.  Like, we like to know where the end is.  Like, I mean, I do.

Jennifer:  The end is near!

Sarah:  The end is always near for romance readers, ‘cause we know exactly what we expect in it.

Jennifer:  That’s right.

Sarah:  So the first one is the wallflower and her doctor, not duke.  What about the next one?  Do you know about that one yet?

Jennifer:  Well, I’m a little late writing the next one because of Ebola, but –

Sarah:  See, you have, like, the world’s best excuse to be late for – I’m sorry I’m late, I was fighting Ebola.  Did I mention I’m TIME’s Person of the Year?

Jennifer:  I think I can only pull that off for a few more months, though, with –

Sarah:  Nonono, you can milk that for, like, a year.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] It features a, the sister of the hero, the heroine in the first book.  Her name is Lucy.  I know, I know that so far.  I’m only about, I’m only about seventy-five pages into it, so I can’t really commit to myself to what’s going to happen.  I’m very much a pantser.  I don’t, I don’t write with a good outline in mind.  What, the joy I get out of writing is I have no idea what this character’s going to do next, and then I have to – that’s a lot of back-work to make the whole plot flow together, but, so I honestly don’t know what Lucy’s going to do.  She could wake up tomorrow and decide she’s going to change her name.

Sarah:   Well, all right then.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It’s fun to be you.

Jennifer:  Yep.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, have, have you always wanted to write historical romance?  Is this something that’s been sort of percolating in the back of your brain for a while?

Jennifer:  You know, I, I don’t think so.  I always read them.  Like, they were always my absolute favorite genre to steal from my mom’s room and hide under the bed and read.  Like, I, that was what I did.  And when I grew up, grew up and, and was in graduate school, it was the book I always took with me whenever I got a spare moment, and I would hide the cover so everybody would think I was still, you know, studying my anatomy.  And then when – I went through a period where I didn’t read much at all, when I had small kids and I was so busy with, with work at the CDC, and then suddenly, my, my five-year-old went off to kindergarten.  Like, and I was like –

Sarah:   Isn’t it amazing?

Jennifer:  Holy crap!  I have so much free time!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  And I really don’t have much free time, but it seemed like I had a lot of free time, and I had a choice.  I could either, I could either start to read again, which I did – I, I was starting to read – but I was like, I wonder, I wonder if I could get the same feeling by trying to write, and that’s, that’s when I, I got bitten by the bug is sort of when I discovered books again after that long hiatus.

Sarah:  And then you get to read them, and live in the world that you are reading, and then write them, and live in the world that you’re writing –

Jennifer:  Kind of.

Sarah:  – which is totally fun.

Jennifer:  Totally fun, and you, you know, the high I get from creating the world and the characters is so different than, than just – I do get a high out of reading really good characters, but it’s a very different thing to create your own, and I, I was just bitten by that bug, and I was absolutely hooked.  But you know, in, in hindsight, in high school and, and elementary school and all of that, I was always better at English than I was science.  I have, I’m not really sure why I – I guess I was either going to be English or science, and I ended up veering off towards science as a career choice for college, but, but English was always something I loved, and it was reading, the reading and the writing.  I think I won my Young Authors contest in middle school, actually, looking back.

Sarah:  Nice.

Jennifer:  But I never thought I was going to be a writer.  It was always just for fun.

Sarah:  So, what are you reading right now that you’ve been really enjoying?  Are there any books you want to talk about that you’ve really liked?

Jennifer:  I have not done much reading since Ebola started.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Please excuse Jennifer; she’s been fighting Ebola.

Jennifer:  Yes, she’s been fighting Ebola.  You know, I have a very wide and flex- –

Sarah:  It was a long-ass flight!  What were you doing?  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  I was reading, I was reading Ebola!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Ooh –

Jennifer:  Let me tell you, I can do it this way.  I, I can tell you what is on my Nook app –

Sarah:  Ooh!

Jennifer:  – for what I have been reading.

Sarah:  So, do you get, do you get copies of Avon books from other Avon authors?  Like, do they, do they hook you up with free things to read?

Jennifer:  No!  How do I get a piece of that?

Sarah:  Oh, they need – oh, dude, seriously.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] No, I don’t.

Sarah:  They need to do, like a, like an author book exchange.

Jennifer:  Okay.  So, one of my favorite books that I read this year was The Rosie Project.

Sarah:  I like that one a lot.

Jennifer:  That was a very good book.  I read an awesome historical fiction novel called Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen, which is fantastic.

Sarah:  Oh, I got a copy of that.  That was –

Jennifer:  It’s really good.

Sarah:  – a historical fiction about Edgar Allan Poe’s wife, or –

Jennifer:  Actually, it’s not about his – it’s about his lover, and, and Mrs. Poe is a secondary charact-, a very prominent secondary character in the book.

Sarah:  Ohhh.

Jennifer:  I’m reading Sarah MacLean’s Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover right now.

Sarah:  Nice.  You and everyone at NPR.

Jennifer:  Everybody.  [Laughs] I know, that was hysterical.  I, I finished Joanna Bourne’s Rogue Spy.

Sarah:  Oh, did you like it?

Jennifer:  I did like it!

Sarah:  She’s an amazing writer.  It’s like she’s, she’s one of those writers where I think she’s working in centimeter increments.  Like, each word is very careful and deliberate, and each, each scene is created by centimeters.  It’s not like, you know, here is a giant spoon of backstory.  It’s like, no, piece, piece, piece, piece, piece, piece.

Jennifer:  There’s not a word in any of her books that wasn’t very carefully put there and –

Sarah:  Yes.

Jennifer:  – and meant, and means something.  No, I would agree.

Sarah:  And then I feel bad for being like, I must read faster.  No, you should not read faster.  Do not, do not give into that temptation.  Slow down.

Jennifer:  Also on here is a, is Cara McKenna, Her Best Laid Plans –

Sarah:  Ohhh.

Jennifer:  – when you, when you want something a little spicier.  I, I enjoyed that.  I, I believe my husband also enjoyed – I’ve got him hooked on her.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Really?  That’s so awesome!

Jennifer:  I do.  I actually sat beside her at RWA, signing –

Sarah:  McQuiston, McKenna –

Jennifer:  and I got a –

Sarah:  – that makes sense.

Jennifer:  – and I – yeah – and I got a picture of us and sent it to my husband.  He’s like, oh, my God!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  What else?  Oh!  Tessa Dare’s Any Duchess Will Do.  I think I was a little late reading that one, so –

Sarah:  It’s still wonderful.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I have, I, I don’t let myself read books very far in advance, because if I read a book and I get really excited about it, I have a terrible memory, and I’m not going to remember to, to, like, talk about it when the book comes out, but if I talk about it –

Jennifer:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – when, before the book is out, everyone on my website is like, I hate you, I can’t buy this, shut up, ‘cause you’re so excited, and I can’t go buy it.  And, really, one of the major goals, I think, of a lot of book bloggers is to, to, to feel as if we are not alone in our poor impulse control when it comes to book buying, so I want to be able to say, this book is amazing, and have people go, oh, my God, I just bought it.  So I haven’t been allowing myself to read the new Tessa Dare because it comes out next week.  Now I am allowed to read it.  Like, I have a chart where I tell myself, not until here, not until here, not until here.  So I know that there are a lot of publishers and writers and publicists, especially.  I know right now Pam Jaffee, if she’s listening is, like, gnashing her teeth, because advanced word is so important –

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – but if I give out advanced word about a book and people can’t buy it, they’re like, seriously, dude, you suck.  You suck nine different ways that I can’t go get this thing that you’re so excited about.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] I think that is understandable, because part of your job as a blogger is to connect with the readers, and  –

Sarah:  Yes.

Jennifer:  – not pissing them off might be an important part of that!

Sarah:  Yeah, you know, not making people mad that they can’t get this book I’m so excited about.  And I know Elyse, who reviews for me, is a huge fan of yours.

Jennifer:  Ah, she – believe it or not, I loved her review, even the bad review, I loved it.  I thought it was the funniest thing.  [Laughs] So I’m a fan of hers too.

Sarah:  Oh, I will tell her that, because it’s – you know, when you’re just starting out writing reviews, writing a negative review and explaining why you didn’t like a book is really difficult.  But your first book actually did something really, really good.  You don’t, you don’t want to write a book that makes people go, meh, those were some words.  You know.

Jennifer:  Yeah, you don’t want a meh first book.

Sarah:  Well, that was a book.  So if you have people going, oh, my God, that was amazing, and you have people going, no, that was not so good, then people are going to roll up and be like, oh, well, where do I fall in this?  What, what’s my opinion?  And you get more readers, because they want to know where they fall on the, the line of, you know, yea or nay.  Meh is hard to articulate, and it’s not very inspiring, so you did exactly what you needed to do.  Good job!

Jennifer:  Yay!  No meh for me.

Sarah:  No meh for you, and then you wrote bathing huts, which was really cool.

Jennifer:  I did, I did.  I, I, I would like one of those in my back yard, I think.  I, they, they’re very cool just to think about, kind of.  Their purpose was to hide women but give them a chance to be free.  Like, but the, their just, just, their kind of, also kind of disgusting to think about, that all those women in their –

Sarah:  Just sit in a box.

Jennifer:  Sit in a box, yeah, with the, being ready to be smashed to bits by the waves, yeah.  It’s just very odd.  Humans are weird.

Sarah:  Humans are really weird.  It’s – humans are very, very strange.  But yet, I have a love for – I have a whole category, actually, on the site – historical, but not in a ballroom.  I love historicals that are way outside the ballroom, that go else- – so, you wrote in Brighton and you’ve written up in Gretna Green, so you’ve written way out of the ballroom.

Jennifer:  I did!  I wrote way – so, Diary of an Accidental Wallflower is my first book that involves a ballroom.  And then I immediately take her out.

Sarah:  Good pla-, also a good plan.  Because one of the things that I’ve been listening to Courtney Milan talk about a lot is how a lot of good writing in every genre relies on good worldbuilding, and when you’re writing historicals, it’s very easy to rely on the predetermined knowledge of the reader.  If they’re a historical reader, they know what a ballroom looks like, what a ball gown looks like, what all these different parts are, and what parts they play, so when you take a historical character and you place her in a setting that is completely unfamiliar to the reader, the job of worldbuilding falls on you, which makes it challenging.  But then, like you said, when you get to create a world in your head, it’s very rewarding, and it’s very fun.

Jennifer:  To me that’s the fun piece of it.  If, if – the worldbuilding is part of the rush I think I, I get out of it –

Sarah:  Yes.

Jennifer:  – and in most places I am trying to build and craft a world I have not personally visited.  I’ve been to Scotland, but the town I created for What Happens in Scotland was made up in my head.  It was an amalgamation of many different places, so, yeah.  That – I don’t know.  It, it appeals to the creative side of a writer, I would say.  Well, let me ask you a question:  with, with all the work you do on, on the blog and with writing now, how much TV are you writing, are you watching?

Sarah:  Television?

Jennifer:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Not a lot, but I have a couple programs that I’m seriously into.  Why?

Jennifer:  See that – no, no, to me that, that was my turning point was, when we gave up TV as a family is when I feel like my head started to get more involved in creative thinking.

Sarah:  Oh!

Jennifer:  Rather than investing in somebody else’s world, I, I suddenly was, like, investing it in my own, and so –

Sarah:  Oh, totally.

Jennifer:  – I just, I’m very curious when I ask other writers, you know, if, if TV is a positive influence on creativity for them or – for me, it was a drain, but I, I think everybody’s different.

Sarah:  It’s, it’s a little, it’s a little of both.  It depends on what it is.  Like, I hardly watch any television because I don’t actually trust television writers to, to know where the ending is.  They don’t actually want an end.  They want syndication.  They want 500 episodes.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  They need eight more conflicts, and they want to get renewed, and so I don’t trust them to actually wrap up a story in a logical way or not to invent conflict that betrays the characters, that, that has them do things that are out of character just in service for another four episodes of whatever, and I’m very, very hesitant to get involved in new shows, but this year there are three shows that I love for completely separate reasons.  Jane the Virgin on the CW will blow your mind with how good it is in the way it portrays women.

Jennifer:  Okay.

Sarah:  It is –

Jennifer:  Jane the Virgin.

Sarah:  Jane the Virgin, it’s on the CW.  It is an American adaptation of a Mexican telenovela called Juana la Virgen.  It is about a young woman who is going through college, and she works at a hotel.  She is the daughter of a teen mother and, and has been raised by her mother and her super-religious grandmother, but she has been, she has been very clear that she’s going to remain a virgin.  She goes to get a routine Pap smear, and she ends up getting accidentally artificially inseminated.

Jennifer:  [Distressed and/or surprised gasp]

Sarah:  Yeah, you know –

Jennifer:  I’ve heard of this.  I have heard of this show.

Sarah:  It is amazing.  And so she’s pregnant and a virgin, and she has a fiancé who’s a cop.  The, the father of the child ends up being the boss of the hotel where she works at, who is someone that she once knew and kissed when she was, like, fifteen years old, so there’s all these interconnected things, but the greatest thing about it is that the writers do not allow the women to be just one thing.  Like, her mom is pretty promiscuous.  Her mom likes to have sex, but her mom doesn’t see that as a flaw, and even though her grandmother sort of shames her mother about her behavior sometimes, they also know that the mother, Xiomara, has made a lot of decisions to take care of Jane and to protect Jane, and part of, sometimes her behavior was part of that.  And so no one is just one thing in this show.  The, the female characters are – even my husband, who’s like, I don’t like the concept, I don’t care, I don’t like the, the soap-opera-ness; this is so well written I can’t stop watching.  It’s so good.  It’s like the, it’s, it’s amazing.

The other thing that will blow your mind is Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

Jennifer:  I have not heard of this one.

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh.

Jennifer:  What is it – when is it on –

Sarah:  This is on Netflix, season one and season two.

Jennifer:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  Season three’s about to start.  This is an Australian mystery series.  It is set in Melbourne in the ‘20s.

Jennifer:  Oh, wow.

Sarah:  The cost-, the costumes will make you just want to die.

Jennifer:  Okay, it’s called Mrs. Fisher’s – ?

Sarah:  Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

Jennifer:  – Murder Mysteries, okay.

Sarah:  And it is based on a book called, it’s based on the Phryne Fisher mysteries by Greenwood.  I think it’s Leslie Greenwood.  They are all set in Melbourne in the ‘20s, but the television show has this wonderful slow burn sexual tension, or sexual attraction, which is the best kind.  Phryne Fisher is an, a, a total hedonist.  She grew up really poor, and then from some fluke, her parents, her father inherited a title and all of this money, so she is very, very well off.  I think maybe the gross national product of Australia went into the costume budget for this show?

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It is that good.  Like, it is, it is incredible, and the, the, the characters are so, so good, and it’s historical in a setting that we’re just getting a little bit of in the romance world.  Like, we’re just starting to get towards the ‘20s –

Jennifer:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and so it, it fits.  It fits really well, because there’s those same sexual tensions that the – you know, there’s that sexual tension of I shouldn’t be doing this thing, I shouldn’t be sexually curious, I shouldn’t be sexual-, sexually explorative, and then there’s this huge hedonistic side to the ‘20s that comes up against that.

Jennifer:  Oh, absolutely.

Sarah:  So good.  And then the other thing that’s really good is – Juana la Virgen – oh, The Librarians on TNT.

Jennifer:  You know, I watched the trailer for that this morning, just to see if I could – if I, if I have this much time, is that something –

Sarah:  Is that something you want to watch?

Jennifer:   – I’m going to invest my time in.  So.  It’s got Noah Wyle in it, right?

Sarah:  Off and on.  He’s a recurring character.  He’s back in next week’s episode.  We’ve been recapping and reviewing them.  It, it’s not the best written, some of the special effects are terrible, but it’s so fun and goofy and cute, and there’s adventures and magic, and what could possibly be wrong with that, right?

Jennifer:  I mean, to me, that’s kind of what, if I’m, if I’m going to invest in, in it, that’s what I’m going for.

Sarah:  Exactly.  So that’s really, that and cooking shows are all I watch, and I have watched more TV in the past week on the sofa than I have in, like, the last six months.

Jennifer:  Well, that’s understandable.  You were sick.

Sarah:  Exactly.

Jennifer:  So, my, my family has – well, there are two TV shows that, that I have watched over the last year, two total.  So, one is Outlander, which I think anybody who, who loves historicals that – so, we had gotten rid of cable.  My husband got it back just so I could have Starz to watch Outlander –

Sarah:  Awww.

Jennifer:  – so that was his gift to me.  And then my family has a Wednesday night date every night at eight o’clock to watch Survivor, which we have watched since its inception, and which I swear I am going on one day.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, that would be amazing.

Jennifer:  I would love to.  I’ve, I’ve tried, I applied, actually, but CDC, I can’t get, you need a really big chunk of time off, and in the Public Health Service, they don’t let you take leave without pay, so it has to wait ‘til I retire.  [Laughs] But I want to go on!

Sarah:  You should totally go on.  Have you read Jessica Clare’s contemporary romance series that’s based on Survivor?

Jennifer:  No.  But I –

Sarah:  Oh, it’s the, it’s the Games series by Jessica Clare, C-L-A-R-E.  She self published them.  I think the first one might be free right now, but there’s one that’s based on, like, a Survivor clone.

Jennifer:  Okay!  I will check it out!

Sarah:  Like, if you like contemporary, you would like that, because it’s all reality TV shows, especially Survivor.

Jennifer:  I like everything!  All right, I will check her out.

Sarah:  Yay!

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  I want to thank Jennifer McQuiston for fighting Ebola and doing an interview with me so we could talk about Ebola and historical romance and TV shows.  Because those things all go together perfectly, right?  Of course they do.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of The Prince, the brand-new Gabriel’s Inferno novella from New York Times bestselling author Sylvain Reynard, available for download on January 20^th.

The music that you are listening was provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is Adeste Fiddles.  I promise I will move on to some other more awesomer music, but it’s almost the very tail end of the holiday season.  I mean, when do Christmas trees come down?  I mean, they went up in September; do they sort of hang out until January 10^th or something?  Either way, I’m sure you recognize this melody.  This is “Favourite Things,” originally composed by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the 1959 musical The Sound of Music, performed by the Deviations Project.

And do you have ideas for your, our next podcast?  Do you have a TV show you think you should be watching?  Books to recommend?  Ideas?  Suggestions?  Feedback?  Questions?  All of these things, you can email us at [email protected].  In fact, it’s awesome when you email us, so I hope that you do.

But in the meantime, on behalf of Jennifer McQuiston, Jane, and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[last of the holiday music]