148. RedHeadedGirl Talks Historical Food and Historical Romance

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 148 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is RedHeadedGirl.  We’re going to talk about food!  Specifically, Roman food; historical food; historical re-reads that she likes to revisit; Poldark, the television show she and Carrie have been recapping; and about Grey, the book that she read along with a lot of alcohol.

The music you’re listening to is, as always, provided by Sassy Outwater, and I’ll have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and how you can buy it for your very own!

And this podcast is being brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Chanel Cleeton’s Playing with Trouble, the sexy new romance in the Capital Confessions series, available for download on July 21^st.

And now, without any further delays, on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  So, how was Grey?

RedHeadedGirl:  Oh, God.

Sarah:  I kind of knew that was going to be the answer.  Oh, God.

RHG:  [Laughs] It was, it was, it was so bad.

Sarah:  Did the alcohol help at all?

RHG:  I think, certainly reading the last third – by reading I mean, like, skimming – went a lot faster because I was sober and less distractible.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So, like, you would be reading, and then you would come across words that did not make sense to your brain –

RHG:  Right, and then I’d have to tweet about them.  Or just yell.  Or somebody –

Sarah:  Which, which happens.

RHG:  Right, or, and somebody would say something, and I would get into a discussion, or I’d have to pee ‘cause there, there was a lot of alcohol.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well, yes.  Not nearly enough actual dialogue.  I, I mean, not counting the parts where he’s talking to himself or talking to his own penis?

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  Like, that much dialogue being absent was just, like, it was really boring without other people talking.  Just listening to him is –

RHG:  It’s like –

Sarah:  – just listening to him doesn’t get it done.

RHG:  No, not at all.  And this book was 576 pages long.

Sarah:  Jeeze Louise.

RHG:  576 pages of Christian Grey talking to his dick, thinking about all of the terrible things he wanted to do to her, with and without her consent, and then being like, I’m so pissed that she’s, like, an actual human person with agency and she’s making choices that I don’t like.  God!

Sarah:  [Laughs] Like, do we –

RHG:  I have to beat her for that!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Hey, that’s not what being in a BDSM relationship is like.

Sarah:  That’s one of the things that really bugged the hell out of me, that she, she was never consenting to what he was imagining himself doing to her?

RHG:  Mm-mm.

Sarah:  So it wasn’t BDSM erotica; it was mentally envisioning assault over and over and over again.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  And I’m like, that’s a pretty fundamental, basic element of BDSM scenes and en-, and engaging in that scene.  Both parties are like, I am totally down for this, and she had no idea what was going on in his head.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  That just made me sad, ‘cause there’s no reason for – I mean, look, I am not into BDSM, but even I know that!  And I don’t read that many books about it!

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  There’s really no excuse for getting the fundamental issue of consent that wrong.

RHG:  Right.  And when they finally got into the whole thing about his first scene partner was this older woman friend of his parents when he was fifteen, and Ana’s like, so she’s a child molester, and he’s like, no, it totally wasn’t like that, it wasn’t like that at all, I don’t think the book, and I don’t think that E. L. James realizes the implications of what she put in her own book.

Sarah:  I think you’re right about that, actually, especially because when you, when anyone has tried to engage with her about it, she blocks them, shuts them down, and doesn’t listen.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, no criticism is permitted.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  That, that seriously chaps my ass on a deeply angry level.  Like, that takes me all the way to God Damn It!

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, you’re, no one is exempt from criticism, but especially this.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  But I also think that that attitude bleeds down into the people who read it, where there are people who, if you criticize it, they take it very personally, and I, I don’t quite get that?  I mean, I understand taking, I totally understand taking criticism of a book personally.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  I understand taking criticism of the whole genre personally!

RHG:  Yeah!

Sarah:  I do it all the time, but the level to which people react with such deep anger if you have any criticism of the book is ver-, it’s, it’s like – is it me or is it more severe than, than other reactions?

RHG:  It seems more severe, and I, I don’t know why.

Sarah:  I wonder if the author is part of that, because she refuses to entertain it.

RHG:  I’m pretty sure.

Sarah:  Of course.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Of course!  [Laughs] That is yet another thing that she has – what’s the wo-, word I want to use here?  Not borrowed or appropriated.  Taken from – been influenced by!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Been influenced by Stephenie Meyer, because I remember an interview where somebody from the press asked her, okay, so wait, if, if Edward is, like, totally into Bella and the smell of her blood is incredibly intoxicating, how does he handle when she’s menstruating?  And I believe Meyer’s answer was, ew!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, that was her whole answer!  So she wasn’t too open about that either.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  So maybe that’s just another thing that E. L. James has been inspired by.

RHG:  That’s a very polite way to put it.

Sarah:  I’m very polite today.  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yeah.  Honestly, it is, I think, better for Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight property as a whole that Midnight Sun never actually made it past the midway point.

Sarah:  Well, it’s a thing, I, I believe, for stories that are deeply in one person’s point of view –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – to be released from the alternate point of view, and if you’re going to that deep into point of view, it’s kind of fun to do the other side, and I was fascinated by the chapters that were released of Midnight Sun –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – but I also think that it matched what I thought of Edward from the beginning, which was that he was a very old-school style hero –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – he had an incredible amount of self-loathing, was not crazy about himself, and really didn’t like that he liked her at all.  He was warring with the part of him, I think, that wanted to kill her –

RHG:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  – which makes sense, but he wasn’t like, hey, that’s great!  He kind of knew, okay, it’s really not good that I want to kill her.  That’s, I have to work on that, whereas Christian’s like, I want to tie her up and insert peeled ginger in her butthole.  Go me!

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And, and no.  No, dude –

RHG:  Trigger warning, people!  That’s a thing –

Sarah:  Yeah.

RHG:  – he actually wants to do.

Sarah:  Why?  Why would you do that?  Why?  Is that a thing that is done?  Do I want to know that?

RHG:  Somebody on my Twitter stream said that that was, in fact, actually a thing, which just made me sad and other things.

Sarah:  [distressed noises]

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So was there anything that you enjoyed about it at all?  Was there any part of it where you were like, okay?  All right.

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  Not, nothing.

RHG:  The end.  The fact that it was over.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Not the end, the end of, the end of the book just was like, oh, Christ.  But the fact that it was over, that made me happy.

Sarah:  Aren’t there two more?

RHG:  Apparently.

Sarah:  You going to read ‘em?

RHG:  I don’t know.  I don’t know if I can do this to myself again.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  You are not obligated to go through that again.

RHG:  No.  I mean, it was hard enough.  Like, my, my original plan was, it came out on Thursday, and I was like, okay, I’m going to get a bunch of booze –

Sarah:  Woohoo!

RHG:  – and I’m going to sit on my back porch, and I’m going to power through this thing, and I’m just going to marathon it, and I’m going to get it over with, and I only made it, like, 53% of the way before I was out of booze.  I wasn’t, I didn’t drink all of my beer, but I drank enough of my beer, and I had to, I wanted to go to Caroline Linden’s book release party, so I needed to be sober enough to at least stagger to that –

[Laughter]

RHG:  – and I was like, I can’t anymore.  I can’t.  This book is 576 pages long, and it’s just endless repetition, and I need to stop for right now.

Sarah:  I think that Lina, in the comments to my post about the horrible lines accented by businessmen in douche-y poses –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – it’s staggering how many businessmen are posed in douche-y fashion in stock photo archives.  Like, there’s no shortage of businessmen being skeevy –

RHG:  Nope.

Sarah:  – in stock photo land.  It’s really frightening.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  But she said, basically, in the comments, it’s like the hot guy opened his mouth and ruined everything.

RHG:  Exactly!

Sarah:  There’s, I could not find anything redeeming or romantic in his point of view.  It was actually frightening to me.

RHG:  Yeah.  Yeah, it was legitimately scary.

Sarah:  And it was one of those weird things where I was like, is, is no one else seeing how frighteningly abusive this is?  Like, he thinks that she is a physical thing that belongs to him, and – NO!  Just, just, just no!  This is not okay!  But apparently there are a number of people for whom this really worked.

RHG:  Yeah –

Dog:  Bark, bark!

RHG:  – Kayleigh  – hello, doggie! – Kayleigh  and Alina and Cleo and I were talking a little bit on Twitter, and we were all kind of going, what do the fans actually think?  And Kayleigh said that she has seen a number that are disappointed that Christian comes across as so psychotic.

Sarah:  I would be disappointed too!  It’s not romantic.  It, it’s one thing to have a hero that’s obsessed with the heroine.  I’ve read that, and I’ve read that done really well.  I mean, for God’s sake, Edward does that well!

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  He’s a functioning obsessive romance hero.  [Laughs]

RHG:  Right.  I mean, he’s still super-creepy.  Like, a guy who breaks into your house to watch you sleep?

Sarah:  Yeah, that’s totally normal.

RHG:  Like, that’s not okay.  That’s not okay.

Sarah:  Yeah.  It’s not, it’s not a surprise that Heathcliff is their favorite hero, and that’s their favorite book –

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  – Wuthering Heights is their favorite book, but I’ve read the obsessed hero done well, and you know my catnip is, I don’t want to like you, I don’t want to like you, and I can’t stop thinking about your hair, God damn it.  Like, that always works for me!  And –

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  – this was not even obsessive; this was just creepy.

RHG:  Yeah.  This was, oh, I will go get my private detective to go and compile a dossier on her, which includes things like her religious affiliation and stuff like that, and, oh, we’re going to swipe her car and steal it, and not give her the money until she demands it, and find out where she is, when she is flying to Savannah, and when she announces, oh, I’m thinking about going to Savannah to visit my mom for a couple of days, ‘cause I just graduated from college and I haven’t seen her for a while, like, that would be a reasonable thing to do, right?

Sarah:  He lose-, yeah, he loses his mind.

RHG:  He completely loses his shit, and he’s like, I don’t want you to go to Savannah.  I hate the fact that you’re, you’re thinking of going anywhere, you didn’t tell me, and I have a right to know all of these things.  Okay, well, I’m going to have my guy put a watch on your credit card so I know when you buy a plane ticket and then upgrade you everywhere and then –

Sarah:  The, the upgrades do not make up for the abuse cycle.

RHG:  No.  Not –

Sarah:  Upgrades do not make up for abuse.

RHG:  No.  And she does a thing that indicates that she is human with some agency, and he gets mad and tells her, I want to beat the shit out of you, and she’s like, I’m sorry, please don’t be mad.  It’s not, nothing about that is good.  Nothing about that is romantic.  That is, get a fucking restraining order.  I, I don’t know, move to another country.  Of course, he’s, like, already demonstrated, oh, I can track you by your phone, and I can find you anywhere you go, so I – you’re just going to have to kill him.  You’re going to have to take a note out of the Jennifer Lopez movie Enough, beat the shit out of him, and kill him.

Sarah:  Or you could do the Julia Roberts one.

RHG:  Yep.  Which I believe still ends with her killing him.

Sarah:  Yep, sure does!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  She calls the police and says, I’ve just killed an intruder and then kills him.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  ‘Cause he’s like, you can’t do it, and she’s like, oh –

RHG:  Watch me.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – yeah.  I, I have Aidan Quinn now.

RHG:  Hmm.

Sarah:  Like, I really don’t need your ass.  [Laughs] So I’m sorry that you went through that.

RHG:  [Deep breath] Yeah, well, I do take my job seriously, but I –

Sarah:  We are all grateful.

RHG:  I think the next two are, are just going to have to be somebody else.

Sarah:  I’m actually wondering if this one was so upsetting and so not-good for the, for people who are huge into the series that numbers two and three will be not as well received and not as, not as widely available.  We can hope, right?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Oh, well.

RHG:  Well.

Sarah:  At this point, all, all of 50 Shades can pretty much be summed up, well, that was a thing.

RHG:  Yeah.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That happened.

RHG:  That was a thing.

Sarah:  I really hope we don’t get a whole new series of book covers that are just closeups on body parts.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  ‘Cause you know, we had that whole series of closeup on dude accessories, like, here’s a tie and some cufflinks and a key fob and a belt and some shoes and, you know, we’re going to run out of things ‘cause dudes don’t have a lot of accessories.  If we’re going to do closeups on body parts, I’m not here for that.

RHG:  Nope.

Sarah:  Here’s a nipple!  No –

RHG:  Nope.

Sarah:  -no.

RHG:  Nope.  Give me, give me naked heroines’ backs any day of the week.

Sarah:  [Laughs] You mean the ones who don’t actually wear corset stays and supporting undergarments underneath the dress from the 1810s?

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  Them, I totally agree.

RHG:  But I’ll take it.  Whatever.  I’ll take it.

Sarah:  What I really like is that they’re undressing, so theoretically, maybe, perhaps, if they were super-flexible and interrupted, they’d already removed their corset and were just holding the remainder of the dress up over their front, and it was open and they had nothing on in the back.  There is not a single line or crease on their backs to show where the corset was –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and you know they had to leave a crease!

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  I mean, come on, underwear leaves a crease!

RHG:  Oh, oh, yes, I do know!  Yes, I –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  This is something with which you are familiar.

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  So, I want to ask you about your historical cooking column.  Whatcha doing?

RHG:  The, the next one is an Apicius, which is a fifth-century Roman cookbook, and the recipe is the, some translators translate it as cabbage, and others translate it as broccoli, and there’re about two paragraphs in the post where I discuss why that is and what, why the options are, and which direction I might go.  I, I actually picked kind of both, and it’s a sauce that goes on cabbage, or broccoli, take your pick, made out of wine and oil and cumin, and I go through the whole process of, I start with the Latin and then do the translation, or use somebody else’s translation, ‘cause my Latin is not that good, and then go through my, like, my Oxford Companion to Food and Food in Antiquity and see what other researchers and historians have said about when did cabbage come into play and what about Brussels sprouts?  Brussels sprouts didn’t appear until about the 1500s or so, so they’re not Brussels sprouts; they’re definitely not Brussels sprouts.  And –

Sarah:  Does that mean that, like, Brussels sprouts weren’t created as a hybrid vegetable or that people didn’t go, oh, hey, I bet I can eat that?

RHG:  They weren’t developed as a vegetable.  They were, they were created as a, kind of a hybrid, and Brussels sprouts as we know them didn’t become a thing that people ate until about the 14- or 1500s.

Sarah:  So you’re basically putting a wine and oil sauce on cabbage and broccoli.

RHG:  Cabbage or broccoli.  I –

Sarah:  I’m, I’m okay with this!

RHG:  Yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  I like this plan!

RHG:  Yeah.  The fun thing about Apicius is he usually just gives you a list of ingredients.  He doesn’t give you any verbs of what you’re supposed to do with these things?

Sarah:  [Laughs] So you could be like, I’ll just dance with this one.

RHG:  [Laughs] Right!

Sarah:  This one I will store for many months.

RHG:  [Laughs] So I tried just, like, making a, almost like a vinaigrette dressing, and I had kale, which is kind of closest to early cabbage, ‘cause cabbage heads as we know them are pretty modern.  I had broccolini, which is just more tasty than broccoli, and they’re cute.

Sarah:  So you mean that, like, ancient Vikings weren’t running around with iceberg lettuce and potatoes?

RHG:  Nope, they were not.

Sarah:  Oh!  Poor them!

RHG:  I know; they missed so much.

Sarah:  They did.  No wonder they had to go pillage and find new vegetables.

RHG:  Right.  So, you just sort of play around and go, okay, here’s a vinaigrette.  I tried sautéing it in the wine and oil just to see what would happen.  It wasn’t that tasty, so I don’t think that’s right.  Everybody sort of has their different ideas of what verb should I throw in.  What, what proportions should I use?  I don’t know.  You just sort of play around with it until it tastes good, and as you get more practice, you kind of get an idea of what the Roman palate was and how much cumin-to-wine ratio you get.  Like, you just, you don’t need a lot.  Just enough to sort of enhance things.

Sarah:  So what was the palate like?  Was it sort of, like, lots of wine?

RHG:  Lots of wine, lots of honey.  You get kind of a lot of sweet-savory combinations going on?  There’s lovage, which tastes kind of like celery but, like,more celery as an herb, and you throw that into things, and a lot of fish sauce, which pretty much went into almost everything, and it doesn’t taste fishy.  It just sort of enhances all the flavors, and you really get a sense of umami from it.

Sarah:  Oh!

RHG:  So there’re a lot, there’s one cookbook that I’ve worked from where an Italian woman named Giacosa would translate and then interpret the recipes and do her version, and there are a number where she’s like, I omitted the garum from this sweet recipe because it seemed weird and gross, so I didn’t do it, but I would throw in the garum just to see what would happen, and it would be amazing, and, like – so when you’re starting to play around with recipes, never omit an ingredient just because, ugh!  That seems weird.  Maybe it is weird!  It’s probably still going to be good.

Sarah:  So have you ever been working on one of these things and reached a point where you were just like, okay, no, that’s just going to be gross?

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Or do you sort of like, all right, let’s do it?

RHG:  Yeah, I was helping a friend with a, a feast that she was planning a couple years ago, and she sent me a recipe to kind of play around with that was onions in ale broth, and I got ale, and I got onions, and I, the other ingredients, and I cooked it according to the instructions, took one, one bite, and spit it out.  It was like, no, no, everything about that is terrible, and emailed her back and said, you can’t use this recipe.  You can’t serve this to people you like.  You shouldn’t serve this to people you don’t like; it’s that bad.  So –

Sarah:  That sounds really unpleasant.

RHG:  Yeah.  But, you know, it happens.  Sometimes the, the weird stuff turns out to be really good, and sometimes it turns out to be really, like, bleah.  Why?  Why?  I mean, I think I must have done something wrong, but I don’t know what it is, or that was meant for people who are sick or something.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.

Sarah:  I’m always fascinated by the sick remedies for different people in different countries.  Like, what you eat or drink when you’re ill –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – varies widely.

RHG:  Yeah.  Not everybody eats chicken soup.  I don’t understand.

Sarah:  I don’t understand that either, though there’re logical reasons for it.

Look, dog, we’re going to talk about chicken soup.  He’s actually lying on the floor asleep and barking.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You are not helping, Zeb.  I’m helping.  Podcast guest:  dog.

So what future things are you planning to do with the cooking column?

RHG:  I am going to figure out exactly what this ratafia nonsense is that shows up in Regency.

Sarah:  Is it rat-a-FEE-ya or ruh-TAFF-ee-ya?  I’ve been saying it –

RHG:  That’s an excellent question!  I don’t know.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well, we’ll figure out how to say it and make it!

RHG:  We’ll figure it out, and make it, exactly.  I am going to do medieval gingerbread for around Christmas.

Sarah:  I like this plan.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  I love ginger.

RHG:  It’s totally not what you think.

Dog:  Bark!  Woof woof woof, woof woof woof!

Sarah:  We have a, we have –

RHG:  Woof woof woof woof!

Sarah:  We have established a protest here to the idea of gingerbread.

RHG:  [Laughs] Tough.  Tough, dog.  Tough.

Dog:  Bark!

Sarah:  Seriously!  Dude, there’s nobody even – you hear – we have porch cats.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  We have two strays that live under our porch, and so of course we feed them and give them a bowl of water, ‘cause we’re not total monsters –

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  – but whenever they come up on the porch, our existing, our one remaining cat says, oh, this is stupid, and he just goes upstairs, and the dogs are like, I smell cat, I hear cat, cat not here, cat!  I hear cat, I smell cat, but I can’t see the cat!  All right, bark.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  So, ruh-TAFF-ee-ya or rat-a-FEE-ya –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  -and then gingerbread.

RHG:  And gingerbread.

Sarah:  I like this.  Have you researched a recipe for historical purposes and then started making it regularly to, just regularly to eat yourself?

RHG:  I have a, a stuffed date, a Roman stuffed date recipe that – I don’t actually like dates, but I love making this, ‘cause it’s fun, and I like to bring it to par-, to parties – where you take a date, and you take the pit out, and you put an almond instead, inside where the pit was, or you can also use ground pepper and put that in, which is like stuffing tiny little grenades, it’s adorable, and then you fry them in honey and serve them, and people think it’s awesome because, I mean, dates and honey, and –

Sarah:  Nothing is wrong with that.

RHG:  Right.  And then the almond is like, there’s a pit in there, but it’s edible, and that, that tends to work really well at parties.

Sarah:  That sounds delicious.

RHG:  It, it is if you like dates.

Sarah:  I love dates.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I buy a big box of them at Costco, and it’s a struggle to make them last a week because I love them, and they’re like small, little grenades full of sugar –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – so it’s not like I should eat them endlessly, but yet I do –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – because they are so good.

RHG:  Well, they’re, they’re, you know, they’re a fruit.  They’re, like, healthy.

Sarah:  My favorite thing to bring to parties is not historical, but it does involve bacon.  You take a sweet potato and you slice it lengthwise into quarters, and then you take those quarters and you slice them into fourths, so you have sort of long sections, pieces of sweet potato.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Cut a package of bacon in half and roll a half piece of bacon around each piece of sweet potato and stab it with a toothpick, and then bake it.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  You’re going to bake it, I don’t know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re not in the States, I have no idea what this is, but I would say about 375 for twenty to thirty minutes, and you just keep testing them to make sure that the sweet potato gets nice and soft –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and then when you’re done, wha-, when they’re cooling just a little bit, you put a little bit of cayenne pepper in a little bit of warm maple syrup, so it’s like a pepper syrup –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – pepper-maple-syrup sauce, and you drizzle that on top of the bacon-wrapped sweet potatoes.  It’s evil.

RHG:  That sounds delicious.

Sarah:  I don’t think that’s historical, though.

RHG:  Probably not.

Sarah:  Well, I made it, I made it last year!  That’s totally historical!

RHG:  Oh, yeah.  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Sarah:  Then it counts!

RHG:  History is still happening.

Sarah:  Exactly.  It just happened when we started the podcast.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  All of this now is historical.  Yay!

RHG:  Yay!

Sarah:  So what are you reading?

RHG:  I am reading Caroline Linden’s Love in the Time of Scandal, which is excellent aftercare for this Grey bullshit.

Sarah:  [Laughs] We all need aftercare.

RHG:  Right, and she’s like, oh, my God, the pressure, and I’m like, oh, honey – [laughs] – this is, like, the lowest stakes thing you could imagine.  Are you better than E. L. James?  Yes.  Are your characters likable?  Yes.  Does your plot make sense and not horrify me?  Yes.

Sarah:  That’s pretty much all you need.

RHG:  That’s all I need.  I just finished my first J. R. Ward.

Sarah:  Which one, The Bourbon Kings?

RHG:  The Bourbon Kings.

Sarah:  How did you like it?

RHG:  It was interesting.  I mean, it’s not really my thing, and I –

Sarah:  [Laughs] It was interesting.  There were some words.

RHG:  Right.  It was interesting; it’s not really my thing.  I am really interested – I know Amanda’s planning on reviewing it – I really am interested in what she has to say, given that she really loves J. R. Ward –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  – and I just feel like the plot could have been cut in half if people would just fucking talk to each other.

Sarah:  Well, but the Big Misunderstanding makes everything so great.

RHG:  Yeah.  I mean, it’s not even a Big Misunderstanding, it’s just people going, you know what?  I’m not going to tell anybody exactly what’s going on so they can help me with my problems.  I’m just going to suffer in silence.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Only it’s not silent.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No.  No, it’s, it’s very rarely silent.

RHG:  I just reached into my box from RT and pulled out Kerrelyn Sparks’ Less Than a Gentleman.

Sarah:  Oh?

RHG:  And the cover copy:  “Between searching for the missing Munro sisters and South Carolina being all but lost to the British, Captain Matthias Thomas has more important things to worry about than finding a bride.”  Come on, dude, you’re a romance hero –

Sarah:  Come on!

RHG:  – There’s nothing more important.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It’s a truth universally acknowledged, dude, haven’t you heard that?

RHG:  Right!  “But his mother has other ideas.”  Of course she does.  “When Matthias finds a beautiful woman in his bed – “

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  “- who claims to be his betrothed, he is suspicious of her identity … and determined to discover the truth.”

Sarah:  She’s in his bed!  What, what, what other things do you need to know?

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  Like, is, should she be there or should she not be there?  Those are really the things you’ve got to work on.

RHG:  Yeah.  [Laughs] “Caroline Munro had few options.  The British burned down her home, and now, traveling with her very pregnant sister, Caroline is pretending to be someone she’s not so they can have a safe place to rest.  But she didn’t count on a matchmaking matron or her rogue of a son … and certainly never dreamed she would fall in love with a spy.”  How awesome does that sound?

Sarah:  Uh, yeah, I can see why you’re there for that.

RHG:  Oh, yeah.  So I still have my giant box of stuff from RT that I’m working through.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I think you’ll be working through that for a very long time.

RHG:  Oh, yeah.  Yeah, I might get through it by next RT, but probably not.

Sarah:  No, y-, you, I, I, no, you won’t, I’m sorry.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  But the good news is, you will never run out of things to read.

RHG:  That is true.

Sarah:  Because the, the tide of new books gets bigger and bigger every month.

RHG:  Yeah.  Yeah.  Of course, then, then I fall into a, I don’t know what I want to read, and I wander around in circles before grabbing something I’ve read 500 times off the shelf.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I, I really like re-reading things, especially when I still get that feeling that I had the last time I read or re-read a book.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, it still has that power, and it’s rare for a book to sustain that for me, because otherwise I remember too much, and, and it doesn’t, it doesn’t resonate in the same way.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Is that true for you as well?

RHG:  Sometimes.

Sarah:  So which books do you most often re-read?

RHG:  Sarah MacLean’s Nine Rules to Break…  I re-, I’ve re-read that several times.  The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan and Season for Scandal by Theresa Romain.  My big three.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Those are good historicals, though.

RHG:  Yeah.  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  And there’s, there’s a lot going on in them.  Like, they’re so, there’s a lot of plot going on in those books.  And because there’s so much plot, every time you re-read it, you’ll find more plot.

RHG:  Exactly.

Sarah:  Which is always lovely.

RHG:  Nice to have my, my people who I know are going to be good, and even when they’ve done better, they’re, it’s still going to be great.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  You know what I mean?  Like, Unclaimed by Courtney Milan, I didn’t like that as much as I liked the other Turner Brothers books?  It was the Turner Brothers series, right?  Yeah, it was.

Sarah:  Yes.

RHG:  I didn’t like that one as much, but it was still a good book, but I haven’t re-read it.  Like, I’ve, I’ve re-read Unveiled a couple of times.  Her novella that’s, that’s wrapped up in that series, Unlocked?  I actually don’t re-read that one because it, it upsets me so much.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Because the hero was such an, an ungodly dick to the heroine in the first part?

RHG:  Right, and everybody else is so mean to her –

Sarah:  Yes, and then he comes back –

RHG:  – and it just, like –

Sarah:  – and she’s completely ostracized and miserable?  Like, yeah, I remember those feels.  Those are recent feels.

RHG:  Yeah.  Right.  [Laughs] Yeah, like, I, I remember high school, and I don’t want to, and that, that puts me back in high school, and I just, I don’t want to do that.  Which, I mean, that’s amazing that Courtney can do that, but like, I, I don’t need to re-read that.  It just makes me sad.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s going to give me bad feels.

RHG:  Yeah.  As opposed to the oh, my God, would you two idiots just stop being miserable apart and be happy together, ‘cause I know you can sad feels.

Sarah:  Yeah, those are different feels.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Those feels are always, al-, almost always resolved in a satisfactory way by the end of the book.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  I think my favorite re-reads are really much older books.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, I could re-read the Wallflower quartet by Lisa Kleypas anytime.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And if I only want to read The Devil in Winter, I make myself start over with the first one, because by the time you get to The Devil in Winter, the hero has been such a complete horror show for the first two books that his redemption is even more satisfying.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  But, you know.  I, I, I was talking with somebody about this recently that the grovel is the, one of the most important pieces of redeeming a hero, and yet it’s often not quite enough.

RHG:   Mm-hmm.  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, we put so much pressure on the idea of forgiveness that, like, nonononono, we need to –

RHG:  You need to prove that you’re worthy of it, and you need to understand exactly what you did that was so bad.

Sarah:  And it’s not, I’m sorry that you were upset.

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  I’m sorry that, I’m sorry if you were upset is not the actual apology.  But to the genre’s credit, I haven’t seen that many heroes actually deploy that one.  Is there anything else that you want to talk about or bring up?

RHG:  Everybody watch Poldark.  Oh, my God.

Sarah:  Is it, is it all of your catnip?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, it, it’s entirely made up of things that you’re going to like?

RHG:  Oh, yeah.  Yeah, scenery porn, costume porn.  I mean, I’ll be honest, I’m not, I’m not a huge fan of Regency costume.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  It’s not quite as pretty and as fussy as I like?  So the, the 1780s is, that’s, that’s where I’m at, and that’s just, like, oh, my God.  Oh, my God.  And Aidan Turner just kind of wandering around being scruffy, and he’s so pretty.  He’s so pretty, Sarah.  He’s so pretty.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  He’s so pretty.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, my God!  Hot dwarves!  [Laughs]

RHG:  Hot dwarves!  No!  Disturbingly hot dwarf –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – and his brother, hot dwarf you’d settle for if other hot dwarf were to turn you down.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So what is, what are things that you recommend?  Like, if someone’s curious, okay, should I watch this show?  Who is the show for?

RHG:  The show is for costume drama nerds who, when the BBC says, we’re doing a costume drama, they’re like, okay, season pass, right now.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  It’s for people who are interested in history that does not involve London at all, and it’s all Cornwall.  There’re mine labor politics involved, and cross-class differences on a couple of different levels.  One of the things that I really like is that Ross Poldark is not, like, the perfect hero who never does anything wrong, ‘cause he, he has a lot of growing up to do, and he has a lot of shit he needs to sort out, and some of it is situational, and some of it is, you’re a kid who suddenly is thrown into a, your adult life before you thought you had to, so you didn’t, you weren’t quite prepared for it, so, ho, my God!  How do I adult?  And –

Sarah:  How do I adult is a really good conflict.

RHG:  Yeah!  Yeah, and how do I put up with all of these assholes in my life who want something from, who want me to fail?  So, how do I adult, and how do I stick it to the man?

Sarah:  [Laughs] How do I adult, how do I stick it to the man, and how do I fix all this crap that went wrong while I was gone?

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  I’m always fascinated by the, I’ve come home and things are terrible, what the hell just happened –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – plot, because a lot of times, the reason that person away, was away usually has nothing to do with their own preferences.

RHG:  Yeah, in Ross’s case, he enlisted in the army to get away from being punished for getting involved in a barroom brawl.

Sarah:  Well, you know, it happens.

RHG:  Yep, and then everyone thought he was dead for a while, which, you know, that wasn’t his fault either.  I mean, I, I guess he could have written, but whatever.

Sarah:  Well, unless someone tells you, hey, everyone thinks you’re dead, I don’t think most people think, you know, I’ll bet everyone at home thinks that I’m deceased.

RHG:  Right.  Right.  Unless you’ve decided to fake your death for some reason.

Sarah:  Which, in which case you’re not going to write, because you don’t want anyone to know.

RHG:  Exactly!  I mean, he did not try to fake his death.  He was pretty upset to find out that everyone thought he was dead.  Like, you know, I would be too, and as I learned during grad school and law school, great papers are what happens when you realize that faking your death is just too much work.

Sarah:  [Laughs] It really is.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And it’s really inconvenient.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Just, just deal with whatever it is.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  Unless, of course, you are a heroine in a movie –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – about a spouse who is brutally abused, in which case faking your own death and then setting up circumstances where you can protect yourself?  All good.

RHG:  Yes.  That definitely works.  Anastasia?  Listen to us.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Ana, Ana, get out.

RHG:  [Laughs] Ana, honey.

Sarah:  This is not healthy, girlfriend, get out.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  And it’s horrible, because at this point I feel like I have seen enough friends and acquaintances in bad relationships where I read that, and I’m like, this is very familiar, and not in a good way.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  So if you’re watching Poldark, and you got screeners, which is super-cool because –

RHG:  I know!

Sarah:  – PBS Masterpiece is so awesome.

RHG:  I know!  I know!  I’m just so giddy over it.  Like, I felt, I feel like we’ve leveled up in some way.

Sarah:  I mean, getting books to review, awesome –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – but when you guys got screeners, I thought you were each going to explode.

RHG:  Oh, yeah, definitely.  I bounced around for a week going, we’re getting screeners for Poldark!  And everybody went, for what?  Why?  Like, ‘cause we’re awesome!  That’s why.

Sarah:  [Laughs] You watch all the good TV.  I cannot watch any of these things, ‘cause it would scar me and I’d never sleep again.

RHG:  [Laughs] I have a, a pretty high tolerance for, for gore and emotional angst.  Horror, like, weirdly, horror, like, slasher movies I don’t do, because I can’t sleep after I see them –

Sarah:  Yeah.

RHG:  – and I don’t enjoy them.  So, like, if I’m in a movie theater and a preview for, like, Saw or The Gallows was, is apparently the next big summer horror movie –

Sarah:  Yes.

RHG:  – or anything like that comes up?  Or the Halloween haunted doll or whatever movies.

Sarah:  [creeped out noise]

RHG:  Yeah, like, I, I have to cover my eyes, ‘cause I’m just like, I can’t, I can’t even think about this.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  So that’s, that’s where my hard limit is.

Sarah:  But can you read about it?  If you’re not watching it on TV, can you read about it?  Or is that worse?  For me, that’s worse, ‘cause my imagination is like, dude, I’m so much better than, better than the television at this.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  I’m going to scare the crap out of you now!

RHG:  Well, I, I don’t read Stephen King for that reason.

Sarah:  Yep.  ‘Cause your imagination, super good at scaring the hell out of you.

RHG:  Yeah.  Yeah, like, I was able to sort of tolerate Supernatural for a little while, but the show just sort of kept going on and on and on, and I didn’t want to invest anymore time in it.

Sarah:  Don’t all the women die on Supernatural?

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Like, that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been able to get into it, because (a) I can watch it on Tumblr with all of the .gif sets –

RHG:  Yeah, exactly.

Sarah:  – and (2) all of the female characters that I like end up evil or dead.

RHG:  Or both.

Sarah:  Or both.

RHG:  Yep.  And they tend to kill off any characters of color who show up.  They’re super into queer baiting and going, look, they’re totally into each other!  Hahaha, no homo.  It’s gross.  So –

Sarah:  You get very frustrated with that.

RHG:  Yeah.  Yeah.  Like, just own it.  Just do it, or don’t, or whatever, just pick a side.  Oh, Mira Grant’s Feed trilogy kept me up for three days.

Sarah:  Oh, I can see that.

RHG:  The zombie one?  Yeah.

Sarah:  I can see that.

RHG:  Like, they’re really, really good, which is why I kept reading them, but I didn’t sleep for three nights.

Sarah:  [creeped out noise]

RHG:  I told her that, and she’s like, ha-ha, my work here is done.  I’m like, yeah, but I got nothing done that week.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  ‘Cause I was freaking out at night.

RHG:  Yep.  Yep, and now I live on the first floor, so –

Sarah:  Oh, no.

RHG:  – it’s just zombie bait.

Sarah:  Nope, nope, nope.

RHG:  Nope!

Sarah:  And I always find that when I’m about to fall asleep and then my brain decides it’s time to scare me –

RHG:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  – anything that in my rational waking hours I could argue myself out of, never works.

RHG:  Nope.

Sarah:  I can’t – it’s all real.  It’s in the room with me.  I’m in such danger all the time.  Just because I’m thinking about it, it is a beacon call to whatever I’m thinking about, it’s actually going to come in the room with me, and I can’t rationalize and talk myself out of it –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – when I’m in a dark room about to go to sleep.  It just doesn’t work.

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  It’s like there’s a rational boundary in my brain that is gone.

RHG:  Yep.  [Laughs] Rational, rationality is gone after 1 a.m.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  Thank you to RedHeadedGirl for joining me.  I hope you enjoyed our rather rambly conversation.  I totally want to eat dates with almonds in them.  Anyone else?  No?  Just me?  Good!  More dates for me!  Yay!

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Chanel Cleeton’s Playing with Trouble, the sexy new romance in the Capital Confessions series.  Download it July 21^st!

The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the Peatbog Faeries from their new album.  This is called “Tom in the Front,” and I will have links in the podcast entry as to where you can find this particular song and the whole album, because they’re pretty awesome.

I will also have links to all the books that we discussed in this episode; there were many.  This is probably a pretty expensive episode, so I apologize in advance.

If you have ideas, suggestions, or questions you’d like to ask, you can always email us at sbjpodcast@gmail.com.  We love your email.

And if you’re thinking, I really want to talk to these people on Twitter, you can follow RedHeadedGirl @RedHeadedGirl, you can follow me @SmartBitches, and you can follow Jane @DearAuthor.

And until next time, on behalf of RedHeadedGirl, Jane, and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[winding music]