130. Action Adventure Romance: Elyse and Sarah Interview HelenKay Dimon

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 130 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Elyse from Smart Bitches and author HelenKay Dimon.  We talk about action movies, action-adventure romance, spies, why there should be more spies in romance, what you should do when you really want to blow stuff up, and fearlessness.

The audio gets a little bit muddy around 22 and 26 minutes.  I apologize.  We were going to throw HelenKay down a well, and she was about halfway down, we decided to think better of that and then try it again, so the, the quality gets a little bad before we fish her back out of the well, so I apologize for the quality of the audio, and also to HelenKay, apparently, for throwing her down a well.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Bear Attraction, the new sizzling-hot novella in the Shifters Unbound series from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley.  It’s on sale now wherever fine eBooks are sold.

The music in this podcast is always provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and where you can buy it.

And one more piece of housekeeping news:  the original name of this podcast, which if you’ve been listening for a while you know, was Dear Bitches, Smart Authors, which was a pastiche of Smart Bitches and Dear Author, because Jane and I often co-host.  And then iTunes said, we don’t like that it has the word Bitches in the title, which I rolled my eyes a lot and I figured, well, I’m under the gun, they’re threatening to take down the podcast, we’ll just make initials:  DBSA.  So, we’ve been the DBSA podcast, which is totally cool, and no one has said a word, but I noticed the following:  there is an organization called DBSA, which I did not realize.  It is the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, and they are a four-star Charity Navigator rated organization to provide hope, help, support, and education to improve the lives of people who are living with mood disorders.  I had no idea that we were sharing our name with this organization, or that our names were the same, but I thought, hey, maybe you would like to know about this.  So, DBSA can be found online atwww.dbsalliance.org, and they have chapters all over the United States, and if you have depression or a mood disorder and you need help, that organization or many others can help you out a lot, so don’t be afraid to get help.

And now, on with the podcast.

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Sarah:  So, Elyse is a big fan of romantic suspense and romantic adventure –

HelenKay Dimon:  Really?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and she asked specifically – no pressure, Elyse – if we could interview you, because she just wanted to squee everywhere.

Elyse:  I did.

HelenKay:  Oh, my goodness!  I love you, Elyse!  Thank you!

Elyse:  Well – oh, you’re welcome!  So this is my test of a really good author:  I am a terrible flyer, absolutely awful, and I was flying to New Jersey, and I was reading the first book in the Bad Boys Undercover, Playing Dirty, and I was like, oh, look at that, we’re landing!  What happened?  I didn’t have a single panic attack in the middle of this entire awful flight!  So that, to me, like, if, if I could read a book that completely gets me to forget the fact that I’m terrified, then that’s a, that’s a sign of a good book for me.  And it was like you wrote that book entirely of Elyse catnip, like you called me and was, and were like, what can I put in here that you would just perk up and get all excited about?

HelenKay:  You can tell from that book that I have the mentality of, like, a twelve-year-old boy.  You know, my favorite things are, like, kind of action movies.  I love things exploding, I like guys, like, bonding, you know.  It’s – [laughs] – totally.

Elyse:  Yes.  But see, I’m a huge action movie fan too, and I think I like my romantic suspense that you’re kind of in that fantasy world where you know bad things aren’t really going to happen.  The bad guys have thugs that are kind of interchangeable, and they’re not important.  It’s the guy in the red shirt, right, as opposed to the romantic suspense that’s a little darker and grittier, and we, we get more into serial killers, and there’s a guy stalking me and he’s in the basement and –

Sarah:  Someone’s going to get raped.  Twice.

Elyse:  Yeah.  Yeah, I’m not – you know, I’m okay with rape as, like, a backstory, but I, I’m not crazy about reading it in the middle of my fiction, because I’m reading romance novels largely just to kind of escape, and so I don’t really want to be depressed and saddened?

HelenKay:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Does that make sense?

HelenKay:  I, you know, I think part of – and, and trust me, you know, I like a good serial killer tale as much as the rest of them, but it’s –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  – and I, you know, I have the, I have the book on, on my laptop where, you know, the girl’s in the shower, and she comes out of the shower, and everybody in her house is dead.  I have that book.  I, you know, I haven’t tried to sell it, but I have that book.  But, you know, I think what happens is, like, you think of books you glom onto, like, I love Julie Garwood’s historicals, right?  So, I can go, and I can read six of them in a row, you know, and I come out with a certain feeling.  It is hard to read six serial killer books in a row or six books where the heroine has been physically attacked.  I mean, you know, you don’t come out with a good, feel-good romance feeling.  Like, you, you feel kind of like humanity sucks.  [Laughs] I love those books too; it’s just harder for me to read, like, six in a row, whereas –

Elyse:  Right.

HelenKay:  – action books, I mean, you’re right, you take that step back, and what you’re, what you’re doing is you’re just thinking of, like, kind of big, heroic, the woman that he, the, the heroine is going to be fine, the hero, even if I stab him, throw him off a bridge, or whatever, is going to be fine.  It’s kind of that Jason Bourne –

Elyse:  Yes.

HelenKay:  – 24 – you know, it’s that kind of thing where everybody is going to be fine, and the one kind of promise I make with this series – like, I made to myself – is that no heroine in this series is going to, at any time, be in the position where you think she’s about to be sexually attacked.  I, I just think – it’s, I, again, I don’t have any problem, I, like, I think some authors do it unbelievably well –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  – but I just didn’t want that in this series.  I just didn’t.

Sarah:  I think sometimes that one of the things that’s going on in romance is that the terms that we have for the genres within romance, the subgenres within romance, are too big.

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So if I say contemporary romance, I could be talking about Debbie Macomber, and you could be talking about, oh, I don’t know, Maya Banks –

HelenKay:  Right.

Sarah:  – and those are not the same thing!

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And then if you say Maya Banks, there’s two different flavors of Maya Banks, so you could be talking about romantic suspense with guns, or you could be talking, like, you know, three-ways and possibly six-ways.  There’s, there’s a difference, but those are both contemporary romances.  I think in a related problem for many readers, myself included, romantic suspense is too big of a term, because romantic suspense houses you and Cherry Adair, who, who are writing adventure action romance, and then it houses books like J. D. Robb and the Nora Roberts suspense, which are almost always somewhat grittier – especially the J. D. Robbs; there’s a bunch of serial killers.  I always, I always wonder, like, how do you, how do you do that thing where you re-read them all in a row?  Like, how –

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  My brain would be like, no, really, you need to never read another thing again.

HelenKay:  [Laughs] Right.

Sarah:  And then you also have, in romantic suspense, the very violent psychological thriller romantic suspenses, and you have the sort of police drama romantic suspenses, and they’re all slightly different, and there’s no good term to describe what you do, so I think saying that you write action adventure romance, it makes a lot more sense to me –

HelenKay:  Yes.

Sarah:  – than saying that you write romantic suspense, ‘cause I say romantic suspense, and you could be thinking, oh!  Okay, well, someone’s going to, you know, hotwire a boat and go steal a car, and it’s going to be awesome like The Bourne Identity, and somebody else could be like, oh, right!  No.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yeah, for me, I really like more action romantic suspense, so your books, Elle Kennedy, who else?  Vivian Arend did a very cool series about mountain rescue –

HelenKay:  Yes.  Yeah.

Elyse:  – and that’s the kind of stuff I’m looking for.  I think as a reader – and, and I do like those, those thrillers too, but I tend to read more straight thrillers if I want a serial killer, because for me it’s too hard to reconcile that fear with still getting to a satisfying emotional resolution between the hero and heroine.  Like, I need more time to process what just happened, so I have a hard time believing that –

Sarah:  Oh, me too.

Elyse:  – they’re going to get together.

Sarah:  Me too.

Elyse:  And I think –

HelenKay:  And I also, I also have a hard time in those kind of, sometimes with the, you know, the, the heroine has been sexually assaulted, she’s been raped, whatever has happened, and then it’s like, I’m supposed to have them, like, stop, drop, and have sex?  You know, I mean, I just –

Sarah:  In the stairwell while the guys, bad guys are chasing them, don’t forget!

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  It’s danger boner.

Sarah:  Danger boner, in the stairwell, the bad guys are on floor two, and they are on floor nine, but he can get the job done.

HelenKay:  I, I always call that stop, drop, and roll.

[Laughter]

HelenKay:  It, it’s just –

Sarah:  Bow wow wow chicka chicka pop.

[Laughter]

HelenKay:  It’s just like, look, there’s somebody right there with a gun, and I can see them – let’s quick have sex, and it’s just like, What?  Is happening?

Elyse:  I think, you know, there’s a part of me, too, that’s getting really tired of women duct-taped to chairs.

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Oh, gosh.

Elyse:  You know what I mean?  And, and I don’t like stories where the her-, where the heroine has to be in physical danger for the hero to realize he has feelings for her.

Sarah:  Of course.

Elyse:  Because if, if her physical jeopardy is, is the device used for him to make an emotional, make an emotional connection, that, that bothers me.  I feel like we’re talking a lot about what we don’t like and not about how awesome your books are.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Well, it, it’s a really hard thing, I think for readers to approach the romantic suspense genre and know that they’re going to get the kind of book that they’re looking for and avoid the kind of books that they can’t read.

HelenKay:  Sure.

Sarah:  Like, like many readers, there are a lot of things that I cannot allow into my imagination, or I won’t sleep for a week.

HelenKay:  Right.

Sarah:  So it’s, it’s a hard conversation to have.  Do you ever encounter that problem when you’re marketing your books?

HelenKay:  Yeah, in fact I had, with this series, somebody, a, a reader wrote me and said, you need to stop calling it romantic suspense.  You need to call it spy fic, which I had actually never –

Sarah:  What?

HelenKay:  – heard of before.

Elyse:  Spy fy.

HelenKay:  Yeah, spelled like – yeah, and it’s, I was like, okay, I hadn’t really heard of that, but she’s like, you don’t, you’re not writing, for this series, it’s not women in peril.  It’s, it’s, you know, frankly, it’s like the world in peril, but it’s, it’s spy stuff, and people like spy stuff, and I was like, okay.  I’ll – you know, frankly, you can call it a toaster oven if you want, as long as you read it.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  I don’t – you know, I mean, that’s, that’s how this work.  Like, I write it, and people –

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  Then it’s up to you to envision what you think it is.  What I can say is, like, I know Sarah doesn’t like women in peril or children in peril –

Sarah:  That’s true.

HelenKay:  – so I can say to her, you don’t have to worry.  In fact, in the kickoff novella, he’s the one tied to the chair.  She has drugged him –

Sarah:  Sweet!

HelenKay:   Yes, the heroine has drugged him and tied him to a chair, which was so much fun.  She’s an MI6 officer, so it was so much fun to have, like, kind of the tables turned, and one of the things I love about that book is the hero’s CIA, the heroine’s MI6, and he, by the end of the book, really does have the sense of, she’s a lot tougher than I am.  Like, she can –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  – kick my butt!  She really can, and he finds that hot, not scary or threatening, and so that was a lot of fun to write.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  There is somebody right now listening saying, give it to me now!

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So what is the name of that novella?

HelenKay:  Oh –

Sarah:  Please say it so everyone will know and go buy.

HelenKay:  It’s Running Hot.  Running Hot.

Sarah:  Okay.

Elyse:  And the – so –

HelenKay:  It’s basically how, like, in, in the series, there’s a group called the Alliance, which is kind of a, a task force that’s set up from former MI6 people, former CIA people, some retired military, and they’re not bound by any of the rules of any those – which makes it easier for me to do whatever I want to do – but Running Hot is kind of how it gets set up, and it’s basically CIA and MI6 are both on Fiji –

Sarah:  Like you do.

HelenKay:  – ‘cause there’s a dictator, like, a former dictator hiding there, and they get in each other’s way because neither knows the other is there going after this guy, so, yes.

Elyse:  Yes, and I love that novella, and I, I think the best part was, so she knocks him out twice –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and ties him up, and then his partner from the CIA, who’s also undercover with him, shows up and, and just gives him shit for the rest of the book.  Like, ‘cause when they, they do eventually partner up, he’s like, do you, do you need me to hang out with you?  Like, are you okay with her, or do you, do you want my gun?  Are you going to be okay?  You know –

HelenKay:  ‘Cause that is what a guy would do, right?

Elyse:  Oh, absolutely, yes.

HelenKay:  The, the guy – I had somebody write me, and they said, well, he didn’t seem very nice.  I’m not – ‘cause he’s, the friend is the hero then in Playing Dirty, the first single title – and they’re like, well, he doesn’t seem very nice.  I’m like, I have two older brothers, and they could go at it until, like, it was like a death match.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  So the idea that, you know, you walk in and your, your buddy’s tied to a chair, drugged on the floor, and the woman got away, oh, he would, he would go after that all day thinking that’s hysterical.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  And I agree with you.  Like, I love The Bourne Identity, I love the new James Bond reboot with Daniel Craig –

HelenKay:  [Whispers] Yes!

Elyse:  – I, I was really upset when – now I can’t think of the name of the show – Human Target was cancelled –

HelenKay:  [Normal voice] Yes.

Elyse:  – even though it was super cheesy.  I loved that.  You know, I, I think those are the, the stories that I want to read, and I want that action fantasy.  I want Jason Bourne to drive me around Paris in his Mini Cooper, you know.  I don’t – but that’s –

Sarah:  Who doesn’t want to do a chase through the sewers in a Mini Cooper?

Elyse:  Exactly.

Sarah:  I’m all over that.

Elyse:  So –

HelenKay:  What is wrong with people?

Sarah:  I know, honestly.

Elyse:  [Laughs] So that’s, that’s the kind of romantic suspense that I’m looking for.

HelenKay:  Me too.  I, I love that kind of, like, fast-paced adrenaline high where it feels like the stakes are high, both emotional and literally physical, like, you know, a toxin can get out and destroy whatever, but, you know, it’s like when you – did you watch the TV show 24?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  It’s like, you know, I, I used to love that show, especially at the very beginning, because, you know, literally, it’s 24 hours, and Jack could be shot in hour one, and by hour three he’s, you know, rappelling off a building.  Like, it’s so, like, that probably isn’t particularly realistic on what the human body can do, but it felt fine, and the stuff Jack did in 24, you know, I think if, if I read that real humans were doing that I would be horrified, but there’s something about in that moment that kind of heroic putting himself in front of everybody type of thing that’s really – I don’t know, I, it’s like an adrenaline high.  I just want to keep watching.

Sarah:  Well, it’s, it’s like adrenaline romance.

HelenKay:  Yeah!  It really is, it really is, it really is.

Sarah:  And it’s, and it’s not about the psychological creep factor, although that adds to the suspense, and it’s not about the, your, your fear of the, of the hero or heroine’s bodily safety.  It’s more like, okay, they’re going to rappel out of a helicopter and jump down and land perfectly on a speedboat.  Excellent!  Next scene!

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Well, and I think, for me, you know, when I’m reading these books, I have less of a fear of a toxin being released into the, whatever, general atmosphere and causing my death than I do of having a crazy person kidnap me –

HelenKay:  Right.

Elyse:  – in the parking lot of the grocery store.

HelenKay:  Right.

Elyse:  So – which maybe I shouldn’t, ‘cause we just had an anthrax scare here –

HelenKay:  Really?

Elyse:  Yeah, we, it was actually in the news recently.  A college student at the university I went to made anthrax in his house and was planning on releasing it in one of the buildings and killing a bunch of people, and the FBI was here, and it was like all kinds of crazy stuff.

Sarah:  Don’t you live in, like, a town of, like, 800 people?

Elyse:  80,000.

Sarah:  Oh, so I was going to say.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, I thought you lived in this teeny-tiny town, and I was like, there’s no way that nobody knew about that.

Elyse:  Well, and interestingly, how the FBI and the police got involved was his, one of his, I believe, chemistry professors alerted them because they said the kid was just asking questions that were worrying to him.  But yeah, I mean, there – and it was, it was crazy, because this happened way on the other side of town, and I turned on my cell phone one day and was logging onto Wi-Fi, and it was like FBI1, and I was like, holy shit!  You know –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I, I couldn’t get on; I didn’t have the password.  I definitely tried, though.

Sarah:  Oh, you know everyone in the neighborhood tried.

Elyse:  [Laughs] Exactly.  So maybe I should be more scared of things like that, but I’m not.  It’s easier for me to dissociate.

HelenKay:  Well, and I think also, you know, if you – part of what I love about writing this kind of action adventure romantic suspense toaster oven – again, whatever you want to call it – is that it’s this group of people kind of all fighting whatever the Bad It is, and there’s something about setting it up in a way where they are bonded, and they are willing to take the risks that I think when I read these books, when I have one that has that kind of Band of Brothers feeling –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  – you feel even more secure that it’s going to be okay –

Sarah:  Right.

HelenKay:  – because it’s, it’s a whole lot of competent people who can shoot better than I can, who can hide better than I can, who can certainly run faster than I can.  So it, that’s going to be okay, so I can settle in and enjoy.  Like, like, Jason Bourne is not going to be killed in the first movie, right?

Sarah:  Nope.

HelenKay:  Like, you can settle in and enjoy that no matter what they do to him –

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  – throw him off a building, whatever, he’s going to be fine.

Sarah:  No body, he’s still alive.

HelenKay:  He’s, he’s still alive, and I actually take a weird, perverse pleasure in injuring heroes.  Like, I think –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  – I think – you know, and that, that started when I was writing for, I also write for Harlequin Intrigue, and one of the first Harlequin Intrigues I wrote, the hero was shot in, like, the second chapter, and I remember thinking to myself, okay, now what am I going to do?  Like, I shot the guy!  Like, now, now I’ve got to get him through 55,000 words in a way that sounds reasonable, but he’s the hero.  He’s got to be big and larger than life, and, and in the novella, in Running Hot, I mean, he, the hero is seriously injured at the, at the end of the book.  In fact, it’s – not to give it away – he’s seriously injured, and after he’s seriously injured, there, there’s a scene with a shoulder, like, a rocket launcher, a shoulder, and I remember my editor, who’s May Chen, who’s amazing, at Avon, she said to me, I don’t know, I just want him to be even tougher.  I’m like, he’s really injured!  May!

[Laughter]

HelenKay: So it ended up working, but it was just funny.  She’s like, I know, I still want him to be Superman!  I don’t know why.  So I just think that’s how we kind of feel.  We want them to be larger than life, and when they’re larger than life, you’re right, I feel safe.

Sarah:  That’s awesome.

Elyse:  Well, and I think there’s something to – you wrote a, an Intrigue – was it Switched? – that was kind of an homage to the Die Hard movies?

HelenKay:  Yeah.  [Laughs] Yes, yes.

Elyse:  And, but there’s something about the Die Hard movies that Bruce Willis just gets more and more beat up as –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – like, by the end of the movie he’s wearing a, a white tank top that’s being held together by, like, one thread and dried blood, right?

Sarah:  And, and his arm is dangling behind him by, like, half a tendon.

Elyse:  And he has, and he has no shoes on –

Sarah:  Of course not!

Elyse:  – inexplicably, there are never shoes on, right –

HelenKay:  Yes.

Elyse:  – and I think that, that was kind of one of the first movies to do that with the action hero, to really show him –

HelenKay:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – beat up, and, and –

HelenKay:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – there’s something appealing about that, too, because he keeps going –

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  Yes.

Elyse:  – right?  It’s, he’s obviously very – but he’s not giving up, and, and so you’re right, it creates this feeling of safety because he’s going to keep coming –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – no matter how injured he is.

HelenKay:  No matter –

Sarah:  And it, and it places the importance on both his physical strength to be able to endure pain but also his mental strength to come up with some other solution that doesn’t require brute strength, ‘cause, you know, his arm just fell off or is hanging by his side, you know –

HelenKay:  Right.

Sarah:  – ‘cause it’s just sort of dangling.

HelenKay:  And it’s, it’s, it’s very human, right?

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  It’s, instead of having the – like, I grew up watching action movies.  It was, like, a bonding thing with my dad.  I watched sci-fi with my mom, and I watched, I watched action with my dad, and I still remember, I was young, and we were watching, like, an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where his daughter is kidnapped, and, and his daughter is Alyssa Milano, and he goes in to rescue her, and he’s, he’s in this, I don’t know, it’s like this compound, and he’s one man with a gun, and there are like 300 people shooting at him, and I just remember my dad would be like, exactly how much ammunition do you think is in that weapon?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  Because it was so, it was so, like, come on, that – I mean, like, it was ridiculous, and there’s, one of the Die Hards, and Bruce Willis is actually in a truck being chased down by a fighter jet.

Elyse:  Yes.

HelenKay:  It’s the, it’s like, okay, I think you may have jumped a shark here.  There, you still have to, even when they’re these larger than life, huge, international whatever is happening, there is a, you have to keep it within a realm of reality that people don’t say, there’s a fighter jet attacking a truck.

Elyse:  Yeah, we actually just watched Mocking Jay last night –

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and there’s a scene where she shoots down –

HelenKay:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – basically a fighter jet with an arrow.  Right.  It’s an exploding arrow, but she still shoots down a fighter jet with an arrow.

HelenKay:  [Laughs] I know, I know.  That scene in the – and then, like, she sings soon after that, yes.  Then –

Elyse:  Yes.  And my husband kept turning to me going, does this happen in the book?  Did this happen in the book?

HelenKay:  [Laughs] I do – you know, you spend a lot of time looking up stuff like, how can I really make this thing explode?  How can – [laughs] – how – what does it look like when you blow up a helicopter?  You know, all of those things to try to not have that Hollywood-esque craziness that can come with –

Elyse:  So are you concerned that someone from the government is monitoring your Google search history?

HelenKay:  [Laughs] We joke about that, but every once in a while I’m like, hmm, is it a joke?  You know, my husband actually is an attorney for the Navy, so a lot of times I will look at him and be like, can X happen?  And, you know, he’ll tell me yes or no, or we have friends who are in the military, and I can, I can ask, ask some of that, but yeah, it’s, if you saw my, you know, like, for, for Running Hot, I’m, like, looking at diagrams of the Fiji Islands trying to figure out where would be the best place to hide, like, all of the weap-, Stinger missiles, and for Playing Dirty, I was, you know, I looked up the toxins – literally, what could I do to sarin to make it even scarier?  I mean, really, that’s, you know, a search string – and of course, whatever scary search string you type into Google, it’s already there, which means somebody else has already looked up that scary thing, which is a little frightening, but that’s okay.

Elyse:  So, one of the things that I really loved about Playing Dirty, about this whole series in general, is I love the undercover story.  I love undercover stories because I think I, I love that fantasy of, you know, like, the, The Bourne Identity, where you’re just hanging out in Europe trying to get stuff done, and this kind of beat up, handsome guy is like, hey, I’ll give you a thousand dollars if I can borrow your car, and it turns into this big romantic adventure, and that’s kind of what Playing Dirty was, because the heroine is not part of this world, right.

HelenKay:  Right.

Elyse:  And she’s falling in love with this guy and is picking up on the fact that something’s, he’s not being honest about something, but she doesn’t think that, oh, he’s not being honest about the fact that he’s, like, a former CIA operative now working for this anti-terrorist group, right.  I think she’s like, he’s probably got a crazy wife in the attic.

HelenKay:  [Laughs] Right.

Elyse:  And, and that’s just, that’s such a fun, such a fun fantasy.  I think it’s one a lot of readers have.

HelenKay:  Right.  Part of what was fun was I wanted the, you know, I wanted Shay to be – that’s the heroine’s name – I wanted her to be very girl-next-door, and she literally is girl next door; she lives across the hall from him.  And I wanted her to be, she isn’t somebody who would pick up a Stinger missile and know how to shoot it, right?  Like, she, she’s, she’s – I wanted that feeling of, you know, she’s, she’s a, she’s basically an apartment manage.  She’s, like, a normal, everyday, living in the city, getting the business done, and a hottie moves in.  And so, being able to kind of play Ford when he’s home, fixing her plumbing – that’s not a euphemism; he actually does fix her plumbing –

[Laughter]

HelenKay:  – and he does the euphemistic part, but – being able to play with that and also being able to – you know, he was supposed to be undercover, and he was supposed to be watching her.  He wasn’t supposed to be making contact, and he was attracted to her, so he actually moved in too, too quickly.  And that was just a lot of fun because, you know, part of it is the balance of whenever you have a hero who is basically, frankly, lying to the heroine –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  – you know, it’s a little risky, because you run the risk of people being like, I don’t like this guy.  Like, she’s nice!  What are you doing?  You know, so – but Ford always felt funny about it, and that was kind of the, what I tried to show was that it wasn’t easy for him to fool her.  He had spent his entire life tricking people, and that’s part of what he needed to do, like, be someone other than he was, but when it came to her, it was difficult from the beginning ‘cause he felt something for her, so –

Sarah:  And with a suspense hero or a, an action hero, the reason he’s lying is fundamentally good.

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Sarah:  You know, it’s not like he’s lying or he’s hiding something because he’s selfish.

HelenKay:  Right.

Sarah:  Like, I don’t want you to find out that the only reason I’m talking to you is ‘cause there was a bet, or there’s, there’s no reason he’s trying to hide something so that her opinion of him won’t change.  He has to lie, he doesn’t like lying, but the fundamental reason that he’s lying is something that’s, on the whole, morally good.

HelenKay:  Right.

Sarah:  And –

HelenKay:  And it still a –

Sarah:  That’s a hard balance.

HelenKay:  It, it’s really hard, and, and readers have – again, once it’s out in the world, people are going to say whatever they want, and some readers like it, and some – and I do – but some readers don’t.  They don’t, like, you know, there, there are people who say, he should have told her right away who he was.  I’m like, it’s not realistic.  I mean, he’s, he, like, thinks her cousin is a really bad kid, you know.  It’s, it’s a – so it’s a, it’s a hard balance of kind of when he goes ahead and admits to who he is, when you do that in the book, and how you kind of keep readers interested, keep everything going.

Elyse:  And I thought the, the cousin was an interesting –

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – choice too, because, you know, a lot of times, the, the villains in these books get sort of typecast as being, you know, very politically savvy or part of some sort of, you know, ISIS-type group, and he’s really just like an angry, emotionally dysfunctional –

HelenKay:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – kid who’s too smart for his own good, and I think that that actually rings true.  Like, when I was talking about that anthrax story here, I mean, that was basically you, that was exactly who this person was that did this.  It was, you know, a, a, a screwed-up kid who was too smart and had too much time on his hands, and that, to me, felt very real, you know, as opposed to having this, this bad guy who is maybe sort of typecast as the, you know, the political terrorist.

HelenKay:  Well, and isn’t it scarier to think, like, you know, you think of, you think of bad guys, they have an agenda, they have political motivations, they have whatever they have, but the idea that the really smart kid next door who always, you know, like, you didn’t really look at, you didn’t pay that much attention to, whatever, that that kid is behind the scenes doing something that could be so awful, and he’s really smart but does not think at all through what the ramifications of what he’s doing are.  You know, he, he’s – which just felt real to me, that somebody, you know, we all know people who are, like, way ahead intelligence-wise of where they are maturity-wise, and we sometimes forget that those things don’t match up, and he’s somebody who it does not match up.

Elyse:  Right.  So I have a serious question for you now.

HelenKay:  Okay.

Elyse:  Why is it that romance, romantic suspense heroes only have one-syllable names?

HelenKay:  [Laughs] Well, wait a minute, the, the, in the next one, Falling Hard, his name is Weston – okay, he goes by West, okay, that’s –

Elyse:  West, yeah.

HelenKay:  Third book is Josiah, which, can I just say, that’s one of those names that I thought was cool until I had to type it a hundred thou-?

Elyse:  Type it – [laughs]

HelenKay:  And maybe that’s, maybe that’s the answer to that question, that you end up writing the hero’s name so many times, that you just want it –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  – to be quick and short and – I don’t know.  That’s funny.  I, what I did find last year is, like, even worse than the one-syllable name is I had a thing for guys with names starting with W.  Like, in Running Hot, the hero’s name is Ward.  In Falling Hard, his name is West.  I wrote another book where there was a guy named Wade.

Sarah:   [Laughs]

HelenKay:  Clearly I need to just retire the Ws for a while and, I don’t know, move on to something.  Geeze!

Sarah:  So, what names are completely on your wish list that you cannot use?  Do you have a list of, oh, I wish that would work, but it won’t?

HelenKay:  [Laughs] Do you know, I have – I think, I think we all do this – like, we have family members with names –

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  – and you’re like, that is, that is so far off the table, never going to happen.  You know, I, I have two brothers, Alan and Scott –

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  – and I, I like, you know, I real-, my dad’s name was Scott, too, and, you know, I have a nephew named Brian, so whenever I go to put it down, I’m like, no, nope, never, never going to happen.  My husband’s name is James, which is I think is a, kind of a great – and he goes by James – I think that’s kind of like a great, solid name.  I, I can’t, I can’t use that.  And I have to stay away from Jack, because if you let me, I would name every hero Jack, and I have no intelligent explanation for why that would be, so I just –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  –  have a preference to it.  I, I don’t, I don’t know.  I guess I just think that’s an über-alpha adventure name or something.  I don’t know.

Elyse:  I think that we, we could put together a quiz of guess which subgenre of romance this is based on the hero’s first name only, ‘cause, ‘cause, like, Ford, he’s going to be romantic suspense, and then, like, Blakesly, that’s definitely New Adult, right.  I mean, we could, we could put together a whole quiz.  I, I’m coming up with, like, an RT event here, you guys.

HelenKay:  It’s true, I like it.  I like it, and it’s – you know, not to sound like a complete geek, I keep an Excel sheet that, first of all, is names I’ve used before, because I would use the same names in every single book, really.  You’d be like, are these people related?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  And I keep a separate, which is names I like that I hear, names that I like and I write them down, ‘cause I’m like, oh, that’ll be good kind of for the future, so when it’s time for me to write a book and I’m thinking about it, I go to that list, and I’m like, is this guy a Ford?  Is he a, you know, is he Dan?  Who is he?  And then I go from there.

Elyse:  Ugh.

HelenKay:  I know, geek.

Sarah:  So, what are you reading that you really enjoyed?

HelenKay:  Right now I’m reading RITA books.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, it’s judging time.

HelenKay:  It is judging time, so it is, it is, it is interesting.  I do a lot of, when I’m writing, I end up doing a lot of re-reading.  I am that person who has read books fifty, sixty, seventy times.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  Because if I’ve read it before, it does not interfere in any way with what I’m writing.  It’s a complete release for me.  Like, when I write romantic suspense, I don’t read romantic suspense, like, while I’m writing book.  But there are, there are romantic suspense authors I, I love.  I really enjoy Elle Kennedy.  I love pretty much a huge number of thriller writers.  I recently read Lena Diaz – I think hers is called Exit Strategy – that I just really enjoyed.  I thought they were well written, just kind of fun to read.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:   You know how this is, like, you know, you read, you read whatever your genre is, and it’s like, you feel like you’re reading the same five people over and over again?

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  Like, does that ever happen to you?  And you’re like, what am I doing?  Like, when I started reading romance, I would read, you know, new people, and I would just kind of keep, and now I’m kind of more focused in, like, the same ten people I read over and over and over again.  So I, I have been trying lately to kind of branch out, try new people, but there are people that, you know, I always love.  I love, right, you know, good friends with Jill Shalvis.  I, I read all of her books.  I like Lauren Dane.  I think, I think their books are sexy.  All of those.

Sarah:  I usually find that when I’m re-reading books that I love, it’s ‘cause my brain is very stressed –

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and it needs comfort and familiarity.  Like, if I’m doing something that’s requiring a lot of creative energy, I’m going to go read Devil’s Bride, which I’ve read, oh, eighty or ninety times, maybe.  I mean, my copy, like, you pick it up, pages start drifting out.

HelenKay:  Yes.  Yes.

Sarah:  I mean, that’s what happens when my brain is stressed, so it could be, you know, RITA reading is hard, and writing and book promotion is hard, so, heck, yeah, read all the things you love.

Elyse:  You know, for me as a reader, you develop sort of relationships with these authors that you really love, and I try to, to read different authors for the sake of reviewing on the, the website, so I’m not just reviewing the same authors over and over again, but you know, I, I do the same thing.  I know if I’m going to this author, like Eloisa James, I, we have a good relationship, and I’m going to more than likely like what she writes, and it’s just, it’s a safe bet.

HelenKay:  Right.

Elyse:  And yeah, it’s, it’s easy to do, whereas when you, when you go to a brand-new author, sometimes you wind up with mermaid strippers.

HelenKay:  Well, and we all love a good mermaid stripper story.

Sarah:  We love mermaid strippers!

HelenKay:  [Laughs] We all like that.  But it, it is true, and I think it’s a, I think you’re right about the relationship part.  There are kind of those authors that you, you can depend on.

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  Like, you, you know, even if this might not be your favorite book, there is, that author voice resonates with you –

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  – and –

Sarah:  Sometimes it just clicks.

HelenKay:  And it just clicks, and that’s, you know, that is why, I’m not a big historical reader, but literally, Julie Garwood’s The Prize has fallen apart –

Sarah:  Oh, I love that book.

HelenKay:  I love that – I mean, pages came out, I found them in the house, you know, I mean it was – but it –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  – it was just so, it is so comforting to me.  I know exactly what that story is, and, and I love how –

Sarah:  And it still works!

HelenKay:  Oh, it, it works!

Sarah:  Like, that’s amazing, how many, how many times you read a book like that, and it still works.  Like, wow! –

HelenKay:  Tell me about it.

Sarah:   – That’s amazing.  How does that happen?

HelenKay:  And I love that hero.  There’s something about that hero who – the hero in my second single title in this is, is West, who is –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  – who is in Playing Dirty.  He’s kind of the, a little bit of the sidekick of the hero, and he’s that, he’s a retired Marine.  He’s big, he’s quiet, he’s the guy you send in to get the job done.  He never complains, he gets injured, and he’s like, I’m fine, keep going.  You know, he’s that guy, and there’s something about that guy when they fall so hard that is really compelling, and one of the things that was fun is West is a guy who, you know, like, if you can say something in two syllables, why do you need five sentences?  He’s that guy.  And the heroine is, we need to talk this over, I want to keep talking, and he’s like, oh, my God, do you ever stop talking?

[Laughter]

HelenKay:  It’s just, there’s just something really kind of fun about that, that interplay, and I think of Julie Garwood’s The Prize, and you’ve got this, you know, kind of big guy, scarred guy.  Like, Amanda Quick has one too, where he’s, like, the hero is referred to as the Beast of Blackthorne Hall or something like that.  You know, these kind of big – there’s just something really compelling about that to me.  It works.  Along with marriage of convenience, best friend’s babysitter, baby sister, all works for me.

Sarah:  Oh, best friend’s sibling?

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  It is off-limits?  That is, that is a very particular catnip that totally works.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I don’t know why, but oh, it work so well.

HelenKay:  It always works, and I don’t know why.  I have two older brothers, so it should kind of squick me out, but it totally works for me.

Sarah:  Well, it’s a, it’s a sort of a, a boundary.  I’ve said in the podcast before that there aren’t a lot of boundaries keeping people in contemporary times apart from having sex.  Like, there’s very few reasons why you can’t just go have sex if you want to.  Feel free!

HelenKay:  Right.

Sarah:  So setting up a boundary like that is, that is understood, and my problem is, I love the idea of it, but the, but I’m very picky about how that idea is deployed.

HelenKay:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, if it’s, well, we can’t hook up because you’re my, my best friend’s little sister, and he’d kick my ass.  But your, shouldn’t your best friend know that you’re a good person?

HelenKay:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, wouldn’t he want your, his sister to be with somebody who he already knows and likes?  Like, there has to be another element for it to work for me.

HelenKay:  Absolutely.

Sarah:  It can’t just be, well, because reasons, and everyone knows those reasons.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Nuh-uh!

Elyse:  Maisey Yates wrote a novella, and now I’ve got to find it.  And it was just really well done, where the heroine fell in love, the heroine and the, the, with her brother’s best friend –

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – but part of the reason that they didn’t hook up was, one, it was just about sex initially –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and so they didn’t want her brother to know, and you know, why would you involve him in that, because then, if, if it doesn’t work out –

Sarah:  It’s not serious –

Elyse:  Right –

Sarah:  – It’s just a fling.

Elyse:  And the other thing that was wonderful was they hated each other initially, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and, like, he was the guy that growing up, like, she, he just drove her nuts, and so it was, it was a, the, the brother’s best friend, but also the, I hate you I can’t stand you I can’t stop thinking about your hair, right.

Sarah:  Damn it.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  And –

Sarah:  That’s my favorite trope!

Elyse:  And it was just, it was the best, most fun novella.  Let me see, I think it’s Unbuttoned.  And she is, that’s the other thing.  She is, like – yes, it’sUnbuttoned by Maisey Yates.  Her family is really dysfunctional, and as a result she – or her parents were – as a result, she’s very, like, proper, has her shit together –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  She, they, they live in a small town, but she has, she’s like, I don’t know if she’s the city manager or something like that, and so she’s very buttoned up and very proper, and he’s absolutely the opposite.  He’s this cowboy who’s, you know, never taken anything seriously, and so she wants to, like, choke him to death because he’s not taking things seriously, and they have to work together on a project, and so it was, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

HelenKay:  That’s awesome.  I like Maisey.  I like her books.

Elyse:  I do too.

HelenKay:  Yeah.

Elyse:  I like her Twitter, ‘cause she’s hilarious.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  She is hilarious, and when you meet the, have you met the live version?  The live version is just like –

Elyse:  I have not.

HelenKay:  Yes.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, what are you working on now, ma’am?  Pimp, pimp at will!  Pimpage!  Pimpage begins now!  Pimp it all!

HelenKay:  [Laughs] Let’s, let us go forth and pimp!

Sarah:  Let us pimp and pimp hard!

HelenKay:  [Laughs] I am, I’m, I actually have, like, a perfect storm where I am actually re-reading one more time before I turn in three different books.  How ‘bout that?

Sarah:  God!

HelenKay:  I know, how ‘bout – pimpage!  One is the third book in this series, called Facing Fire, where it’s, like, this overall bad guy who starts in Playing Dirty.  By the time you get to Facing Fire, he comes right at the group.  Like, goes after them, goes after the people they care about, and it, you know, literally starts with a bang and explosion, and the hero is Josiah, who’s, like, this –

Sarah:  Josiah.

HelenKay:  Josiah, who’s like this –

Sarah:  Love it!

HelenKay:  – British, you know, well connected, comes from a lot of money kind of guy, and he’s just, he’s just kind of turned his back on all of that.  He, he likes to protect and shoot and all that kind of thing.  So that is great fun.  I’m about to turn that one in, and that’ll be the, that’ll be the last of the, the trio in the Bad Boys Undercover.  I write a, a series for Berkley Heat, which basically are naughty books –

Sarah:  Which has great covers.

HelenKay:  Great covers.

Sarah:  Great covers on those books.

HelenKay:  Great covers.  The first two have female covers, which is a little different for erotic romance, and they’re, you know, clothed.  And it’s, the actual, the last two books have, have men on the, men-only covers, but the, I’m finishing up the third one, the third single title in that series.  It has a suspense-y feel; they’re not thrillers or anything.  It has a suspense-y feel only because these people are basically burned CIA agents, and –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  It’s kind of the, what happens after Bourne, after Jason Bourne, like, now how does he go live his life?  That’s what this series is about, and it’s called Mine, and I’m finishing that one, and the one I’m about to turn in in about two seconds is, I wrote two books for Carina, which are former retired Marine Special Ops from Camp Pendleton who are opening a gun range in San Diego, and this is, the second one is called Line of Fire.  The first is Chain of Command, but Line of Fire is a best friend’s baby sister story, and these people, they’re just, they’re a mess, and it’s been, it’s been fun to write.  It’s probably one of the more angsty, like she has loved him forever, he’s back from deployment, he’s home, and he is just, his wife left him, he’s sleeping around, he’s, he’s a mess, and he cannot get it together, and she is like, I’m done loving you.  So that was a fun book to write.

Sarah:  Whoa.  That’s only a little.  You know.

HelenKay:  That’s a lot, I told you.  Well, what happens is, they were all, you know, they’re, they’re, like, all due, they’re all done, and I do the thing where I, you kind of set it aside for a couple days so that you –

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  – can do a final read, so it just so happens I’m going to read one after the other.

Sarah:  And doing the RITA judging.

HelenKay:  And doing the RITA judging.  Which is fine, which is good.  It’s, you know, I like, I like the RITA judging, ‘cause I always find books and people that I didn’t know about, and a couple years ago I actually, the books were so good, I think I had eight books, five of my books were finalists.  That’s how good my pile was.

Sarah:  Whoa.

HelenKay:  Yeah.  It was amazing.

Sarah:  That’s cool.

Helen:  That’s a good – like, every book I read, I got to the point where I’m like, is there something wrong?  Like, I love everything I’m reading!  What is happening?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  They were that – but then they all finaled, and I was like, okay, they were that good.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s excellent.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And you’re on the board at RWA.

HelenKay:  I am, I am.  I’m on the national board.

Sarah:  So you, so you have a whole other set of responsibilities in addition to, like, you know, writing books.

HelenKay:  Yeah, it takes a little bit of time; I’m not going to lie.

[Laughter]

HelenKay:  But it, you know, but it’s good.  I, in all seriousness, I, I was a divorce attorney, right?  Like, that’s what I did.  I did contested custody cases.  Try to imagine that’s your everyday life –

Sarah:  Guh.

HelenKay:  – and I had never read a romance, and I’m thirty years old, and somebody hands me three romances.  I fell in love with the genre.  I am a person who can honestly say reading romance changed my life.  Like, I was never going to be a writer.  I was never going to – I didn’t even read romance.  I wasn’t going to write romance.  It totally changed the direction of my life and what I do for a living, and, you know, you’ve got to give something back when somebody, something gives you that much.

Elyse:  I cannot tell you how excited I am for this what happens after the Jason Bourne book.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I’m going back to that because I, my little ears perked up and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since you talked about it.  So you should turn that in quickly.

Sarah: [Laughs]

HelenKay:  The first, the first one – there are two – the first one is Chain of Command, and that actually comes out March 9^th, so very soon, like, two weeks, and, and he is just a good guy heroine, hero, and, you know, they, they have a lot of stuff that keeps them apart, but the, it was just, he’s not PTSD, he’s not, I mean, I, those stories are great, but I didn’t want that story.  I wanted a guy who, literally what he’s trying to do is he just wants a home.  Like, he just, he’s, he’s lived out of a, a bag.  He’s, you know, he wants a home, he wants the people he cares about around him, and certain things need to have, happen, and the heroine’s incidentally in his way.  But he’s like a dirty-talking, likes sex, good guy Marine, and that’s Chain of Command, and then Line of Fire is his sister and his best friend, and that one is, I believe, the end of June.

Elyse:  I read an interview or an article once about the, the most, not the one with Jeremy Renner, the most recent Bourne movie with, with Matt Damon, and he was supposed to be very strung out and exhausted in that movie, and coincidentally, his wife had just had their first baby –

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and so he would show up on the set, like, completely exhausted ‘cause they had an infant and he wasn’t sleeping at all at night, and the director’s like, that is, do not put any makeup on him.

HelenKay:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  It is perfect.

HelenKay:  There are a lot of kind of military post-deployment books out there, and, and some of them are really great.  There’s a lot of PTSD.  I just, I wanted, you know, these, these guys aren’t – things have happened to them, and they are absolutely impacting them, but they’re trying to, like, how do I put this life back together?  And I live in San Diego, which is a huge military town, and I have great respect for these guys coming home, so it, it was just, it was just fun, and frankly, the entire idea for the series came out of, there was a, you know, where do ideas come from?  There was a LivingSocial deal for, like, six hours at a gun range.  We’ll let you, we’ll let you shoot four different types of weapons, and I got fellow author Melissa Cutler, and we went, and we had a great day, and these guys were retired Pendleton, and I thought, well, wouldn’t this be an interesting story?  What happens when the guys come home and they’re trying to put their lives back together?

Elyse:  So what’d you do for work today?  Oh, I went and shot four different types of guns.

HelenKay:  [Laughs] I know, I know, I know.  It was so much fun.  It was so much – but you know, every day is like that.  Like, the, the second single title following Hard is set in Skardu, Pakistan, so my husband will come home, and he’ll be like, what did you do today?  I’m like, well, I spent three hours trying to figure out what Skardu, Pakistan, looks like, and, and, you know, I mean, it’s –

Sarah:  And thanks to Google maps, there’s a lot of places you can take a tour of.

HelenKay:  Well – [laughs] – there are, but you, you know what, you come up with these ideas.  You know, like, that book came out of this idea, I was reading a non-fiction book on Himalayan mountain climbing, which is hysteri-

Sarah:  Like you do.

HelenKay:  Like you do.

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  Which is hysterical, because I’m afraid of a stepladder –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  – but I, I read Himalayan climbing books all the time, and it had this reference to Fearless Five, and it’s like this helicopter group that can go up, like, 20,000 feet and rescue people off K2, the second highest mountain in the world, and I was like, how cool is that?  My heroine could work at a, at a clinic and, you know, etc.  And then of course you start looking, and you realize that Fearless Five is Pakistani Army Squadron 5, and your whole story changes, but it’s, you know, ideas come from everywhere, and once you start, you start looking, but yeah, I’m sure the computer searches with toxin gas and Skardu, Pakistan, could get me in a little trouble if I, if they put those together.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  Oy.

Elyse:  Well, and I think, you know, with romantic suspense, you’re not going to take a vacation and write it off as research, right?  Because you’re never, you’re never going to go to these places that – I hope! – that you’re writing about.

HelenKay:  But, but, you know, I have to admit, I, the first scene in Playing Dirty, you know these guys are, like, in Hampstead Heath, which is just outside of London?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  I actually had written the beginning of Playing Dirty, and then my husband and I went on a fifteen-year anniversary trip to London and Paris, and we went out to Hampstead Heath, and we’re looking across this beautiful area with these lovely buildings, and I turn to my husband, and I was like, I could totally blow this place up –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  – is the first thing I saw.  He’s like, you’re not right.  You’re just not right.  But that’s exactly where – see, so we can even make good vacation spots –

Elyse:  Meanwhile, your husband’s like, why are you exploding all our happy vacation –

HelenKay:  I know, I know!  I’m looking at vacation pictures; he’s like, that’s nice.  I’m like, no, no, I’m trying to figure out which building I would blow up.  Yeah.  Used to it now.  He’s, he’s okay.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So I have one more question.

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm?

Sarah:  Of all of the skills, the special skills that you’ve given your characters, which one would you most like to have?  The, the marksmanship, the ability to disappear, the ability to just knock people out with your pinky nail?  I mean, is there a skill that you wish you had that applied to you?

HelenKay:  I would say it’s kind of bigger thing:  it’s this fearlessness idea?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

HelenKay:  Right, like, especially the guys in this series, they don’t think twice of putting themselves in a position of peril.

Sarah:  Yep.

HelenKay:  And I am the person who, if, you know, if the walking dead ever happens, I’ll be hiding in my closet.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

HelenKay:  I mean, I’m not, I could, I could pretend to you that I will be the person coming out killing zombies and saving the world.  I will be crying in a ball in my closet.  I just know I will.  So this kind of sense of, of, you know, we all are, like, if people we love are in trouble, we could stand up and do everything –

Sarah:  Right.

HelenKay:  – and I think that’s true, but these guys who can stand up and do it for the greater good?  Yeah, I’d, I’d, I’d cry.  I’d cry.  So that fearlessness, I wish I had that no matter what I can conquer this.  I told you , I can’t even conquer a stepladder, so I, I’m not sure how I would, how I would do that.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s awesome.

HelenKay:  [Laughs] I know, HelenKay versus the stepladder.  Stepladder 1, HelenKay 0.

Sarah:  Elyse, do you have any other questions?

Elyse:  No!  Thank you for, for letting us talk to you.  This was really fun.

HelenKay:  Thank you so much, and, and I’m so happy you like the series.  I – thank you so much.  That makes, that makes me day; it really does.

Elyse:  Well, thank you for making my flight to New Jersey less horrific than it was.  So on the way back, obviously – you can put this in the podcast if you want; you don’t have to – I, I was on one of those little commuter jets where it’s two seats on one side, two seats on the other side –

HelenKay:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and I’m sitting next to – he, he was a complete Jersey dude, Sarah.  Like, super tan, super, like, I pick things up, I put them down.  He looked like he’d be on Jersey Shore, right.  But he was really nice, and he was going to a job interview in Chicago, and we’re flying, and our flight is late, so the pilot was just booking it to get there.  We’re not going to avoid any weather or whatever; we’re just going to fly straight through it.  And we’re doing the turbulence drops where you do, like, the big ones?  You know what I mean?

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  And I am freaking out, and I’m, like, doing Hail Marys in my head, and we drop, and I just lean over, and without even thinking about it, I grab his thigh, and I squeeze it, right.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  And I feel like, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!  He’s like, no, it’s okay.  I’m like, no, I’m really sorry, I just – I’m like, I sexually assaulted you!  I apologize!  Right.  This poor man.  The whole flight.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Yes.  You needed some HelenKay, and you did not have.

HelenKay:  That was – [laughs].

[Laughter]

HelenKay:  I could send you Falling Hard; that way you’re ready for your next flight.

Elyse:  There we go.

Sarah:  I think she would probably appreciate that more than you could possibly know.

Elyse:  Yes.  And the person sitting next to me may or may not appreciate it.

HelenKay:  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I bet.

HelenKay:  Hard to tell.  Hard to tell.

Elyse:  He was very nice about it, all things considered.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  But –

Sarah:  And you’re going to hear, oh, I was on this flight, and this lady just grabbed my leg!  Oh, my God, I got bruises!  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I’m not going to lie; it was, like, close to the junk area, right.  It was –

[Laughter]

HelenKay:  Well, if you’re going to go, go big, right?

Sarah:  That’s right!

Elyse:  This is like, every time I fly, some sort of disaster happens.  I was flying home from work one time, and I’m sitting in this, this restaurant, and there was this really young soldier.  I don’t know if he was flying out, flying home, whatever.  He’s in his fatigues, and all I could think about was, like, I just came from this meeting, basically, where a bunch of dudes who make too much money talked about, like, blowing each other for, you know, five hours.  Now this kid’s coming home from Afghanistan or whatever –

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  – and he’s like, eighteen, so I bought his dinner.  You know, I flagged the waitress over, and I thought it was just like a thank you for your service thing, and when he realized, he looked at me like, holy shit, is she trying to pick me – who is this lady?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right, he thought we were going to go get it on in the bathroom.  I was like, no, no, no!

Sarah:  [Porn music sounds]

Elyse:  No.  No, I am – no!

HelenKay:  [More porn music sounds]

Elyse:  You don’t have to be afraid; it’s okay.

HelenKay:  Okay, that’s a great story, actually.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  But that – have, have you just had a plot bunny poke its head up from under the bed and go, hey now!

HelenKay:  I, I have!  I’m like, okay, if there’s a third book in the what happens after their home, how good would that be?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  Thank you very much to HelenKay and to Elyse for hanging out with us.  If you would like information about all of the books we mentioned, and there were plenty, they will be in the podcast entry for this particular episode at www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com and at Dear Author, so fear not, and don’t write and drive.  You know not to try to write down book titles while you’re driving, right?  Of course you do.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Bear Attraction, the new sizzling-hot novella in the Shifters Unbound series from the New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley.  You can download it wherever eBooks are sold.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  This is from Caravan Palace.  This track is called “Bambous.”  You can find Caravan Palace music on Amazon, you can find them on Facebook, and you can find them iTunes.

Next week, I have a conversation with Elyse, who is currently taking a quiet, home-based staycation ‘cause she’s switching jobs, and we have a long conversation about comfort reading and reading that you want when you’re very stressed and very, very tired.

If you have questions or suggestions or you want to ask us something or you want us to pass a message along to another person or, you know, you want to email us about this great sudden inheritance that we’ve suddenly come into where we have to marry a guy named Chet and live in a mansion – ‘cause that happens all the time, right? – you can email us at [email protected].  You can find me on Twitter @SmartBitches.  You can find Jane on Twitter @DearAuthor.  You can find Elyse on Twitter @ElyseIndeed – that’s E-L-Y-S-E-I-N-D-E-E-D – and you can find HelenKay Dimon @helenkaydimon.

Thank you again very much for listening, and on behalf of Jane, Elyse, HelenKay, and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[awesomely awesome music]