149. An Interview with Gloriamarie, Reader of Romance

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 149 of the DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Gloriamarie. We have a new series on the podcast this year where we talk to different romance readers from different places. Today’s interview is with Gloriamarie, who is a Christian feminist romance fan. She’s been reading since grade school, and she hasn’t stopped. We talk about feminism, Christian scripture in history, which she knows a lot about, and romance reading. On a scale of 1 to bankruptcy, I’d say that this was probably a moderately expensive recommendation list.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of The Taming of the Billionaire, the brand-new Billionaire and Bridesmaids novel from New York Times bestselling author Jessica Clare, on sale July 21st.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is, and you can find all of that information in the podcast entry as well.

I have some information for you from Book Riot. They are hosting a reader convention November 7th and 8th, and you can find out more at Book Riot Live. If you enter discount code TRASHYBOOKS, you’ll get $20 off full registration for new attendees. You can find all the information online at bookriotlive.com, and again, the coupon code is TRASHYBOOKS, all one word.

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

[music]

Gloriamarie Amalfitano: I am Gloriamarie Amalfitano. Gloriamarie is all one word, there is only one capital letter, and that is at the beginning, thank you very much.

Sarah: You’re very welcome, and I have learned that, and I won’t make that mistake again.

Gloriamarie: I do not answer to Glo, Glor, Glory, Gloriosky, Gloriana, Glory Hallelujah, or Sic Gloria Transit Mundi either, just for the record. Nor Gloria in Excelsis Deo. I’ve been called all those things in my life, and I don’t care for it, thank you.

Sarah: Wow.

Gloriamarie: How long have I been reading romance? Well, you know, can you learn to read in the United States and not read romance? I mean, it’s in everything. I mean, it’s in the Bobbsey Twins, for crying out loud.

Sarah: Well, some people seem to think they’ve never read a romance, and I always beg to differ, so I think you and I are in agreement.

Gloriamarie: I, it’s in, I mean, I learned to read Dick and Jane! I mean, Dick and, I mean, see, oh, you know, and there’s Jane saying, oh, Dick, you know, do this, and, you know, with Jane –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: I mean, it, it’s just there! I mean –

Sarah: It’s sort of everywhere.

Gloriamarie: It is! I mean, it, it’s just, you know, in the, the third grade reader when you stop to think about it.

Sarah: It’s true. There’s generally some form of romance in just about everything.

Gloriamarie: I mean, the myth, the great Greek myths! I mean, there’s Zeus, you know, flying around, you know, seducing women, or, you know, Apollo wanting to get it on with Daphne –

Sarah: Yep.

Gloriamarie: – or whoever, you know. I mean, it’s, it, it pervades all of human culture.

Sarah: It’s true. It’s very true.

Gloriamarie: And it’s just, if you’re only going to define romance to be hot times and, you know, sexy des-, you know, descriptions of sex, then you’ve limited yourself, because, I mean, romance is really basically the stuff of life.

Sarah: Yes.

Gloriamarie: I mean, it, how we relate to each other as human beings.

Sarah: Definitely true.

Gloriamarie: You know, it’s, it’s whether we’re kind to total strangers. It’s whether we reach out a helping hand to each other when we need it. It’s just the stuff of life! It’s, I mean, romance is really just about feelings.

Sarah: Absolutely true. So do you remember the first romances that you read?

Gloriamarie: I suppo- –

Sarah: Where you looked at it and said, oh, this is definitely a romance novel?

Gloriamarie: I suppose it would have to have been Jane Eyre.

Sarah: Jane Eyre?

Gloriamarie: Yeah, my mom gave me that for Christmas when I was ten, I think. It was one of her very favorite books, and she was still reading to me at bedtime –

Sarah: Yeah?

Gloriamarie: – and so she read that to me when I was ten, and from that I moved on to, I guess, Jane Austen. I remember I was in sixth grade reading Mansfield Park in free reading period, and Mrs. Pescadera came up to me during free reading period and said, are you sure you understand that?

Sarah: What?!

Gloriamarie: And I said, yeah, I, I, I can understand it. And she said, but that, you’re too young to understand that book.

Sarah: Oh, for heaven’s sake!

Gloriamarie: And I said, what do you mean? And she took it away from me, and she said, what does the word disapprobation mean? And I said, well, may I see the sentence? And so she gave it back to me, and she pointed it out, and I said, well, and I looked at the sentence, and I read it, and I said, well, that means disapproval. And she handed the book back to me and walked away and never said anything to me ever again about what I read, but I, you know, I, the other kids weren’t reading Jane Austen in, in sixth grade, so, but I don’t know what the big deal was, but I don’t know, my mother –

Sarah: What a strange thing to worry about, that you might not understand all of the words that you’re reading.

Gloriamarie: Yeah, I, you know, Sister Padua introduced me to the written word in first grade, and may she rest in peace, God bless her, that was the most wonderful thing anyone ever did for me, because it, you know, it’s been a non-stop love affair, me and the written word, and I got a library card, I was allowed to get a library car when I was nine, so I guess that was, like, third grade, and –

Sarah: Wow.

Gloriamarie: – I was allow-, you know, and I just went through everything. I reme-, I had a traumatic incident in third grade. We had a free reading period, and so I took Peter and Wendy to school, and Sister Stella Maria had a hard time getting my attention, I was so lost in the story –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: – and, oh, it was, it was just so mortifying, ‘cause she took the book away from me and then made me put it on the windowsill, and I was, I was terrified because the windows were open and we were on the third floor, and –

Sarah: Oh, no! [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: It was a library book, and oh, horrors! Horrors, the library book was going to fall out the window and be damaged, and oh, I was just so – and, and I, and she made me stand in the corner, and I was ter-, terribly ashamed because it was the first time I had ever published, punished, I mean, in school. But the whole time I was standing in the corner, I was more worried about the book falling out the window than I was about –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: – being ashamed, standing in the corner in front of my classmates. But, but by the time, I don’t know, I was in seventh or eighth grade, I had read everything in the children’s section, both the fiction and the nonfiction rooms, so mom was letting me check books out, was checking books out for me out of the adult section, and she never censored anything, so I was reading Mary Stewart and Emily Loring. I would just read and read and read.

Sarah: So, of the romances that you read now, what are some of your favorite authors and books? Oh, that is a kitty! Hello, kitty!

Gloriamarie: Yeah, that’s Pip.

Sarah: Cat, cat butt. Hello, cat butt.

Gloriamarie: I know, they, they love to stick their butts. Well, I love Laura Kinsale.

Sarah: What are, what are some your favorites of hers? If someone had never read Laura Kinsale, who would you recommend first?

Gloriamarie: Well, you know, it’s really funny. The very, the first one I read was probably, was Seize the, what was that, Seize the Fire, I think, and it’s a ridiculous little thing where, you know, the most, honestly, the, the, the what’s-his-name, Sheri- –

Sarah: Sheridan.

Gloriamarie: Sheridan and, and Olympia have the most, I mean, they just go tramping all over the world –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: – having the most ridiculous series of, of events happen to them, you know, un-plausible, implausible things, but it’s really a, a, it really grabbed me. I just, I mean, he was so wounded, and she was so sweet and naïve but had such a sense of herself, and, and she was so dedicated to bringing revolution to her country when she had no idea what that meant –

Sarah: Nope.

Gloriamarie: – but she just wanted to bring such good to her people, and that, I, so I had to read everything Laura Kinsale wrote, and then of course, eventually, I got to what had to be the best book Laura Kinsale ever wrote, Flowers from the Storm with, with the Duke of Jervaulx and having had a stroke –

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Gloriamarie: – and no one in his Regency England having any idea what a stroke was –

Sarah: Yep.

Gloriamarie: – or how to treat it, and, and our little Quaker woman there, I’ve forgotten her name.

Sarah: Maddy, Archimedea.

Gloriamarie: Maddy, yes. You know, there he is, brilliant in mathematics –

Sarah: Yep.

Gloriamarie: – and her father, so completely nonjudgmental and blind –

Sarah: Yep.

Gloriamarie: – and brilliant in mathematics. I mean, and that fascinated me too, because I’m so completely math-impaired –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: – and how anybody can do all that, and Jervaulx is so, you know, terrified and lost! His mind is completely intact. He knows something horrible has happened to him, and yet he has such a sense of dignity through, through it all, once, once Maddy begins to realize that there’s a man in there.

Sarah: Yep. And that she can reach him and not, no one else can.

Gloriamarie: I mean, nobody does the wounded hero better than Laura Kinsale, and I –

Sarah: Oh, no.

Gloriamarie: – and I think that is probably my most favorite kind of romance hero is, is the wounded hero, but not, sort of, not these military wounded hero, because I’m, I don’t like the military.

Sarah: But you like the emotionally distant, guarded hero who is trying to hold himself back from having to deal with the heroine at all.

Gloriamarie: No, not – no. Because that guy’s kind of a jerk.

Sarah: [Laughs] Now, you’ve said a few times when we’ve corresponded –

Gloriamarie: Yes.

Sarah: – and when you’ve left comments on the site that you are a furious feminist and that you find romance reading to be very feminist and female-positive.

Gloriamarie: Yes.

Sarah: And there are a lot of people who think that romance is not very feminist, and I’m curious why you find it so.

Gloriamarie: [Laughs] I, yeah, I got into a lot of trouble over the 50 Shades books with Christian sites on, on Facebook because I kind of defended Anastasia Steele’s right to choose her relationship with Christian Grey, and the feminists were just all over me saying, oh, my gosh, no! That’s, she couldn’t possibly choose that. And I’m saying, well, first of all, you know, if you would read the books –

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: – any, you would notice that any of the, you know, the BDSM stuff kind of disappears pretty darn quickly. It really is not a factor in the book, and I’m, they may have a point that the BDSM lifestyle may not be consistent with feminism and may be at its core abusive of women. I, I don’t know, because I, I don’t really read that kind of literature, ‘cause I just find that, that crosses a line for me. I –

Sarah: I don’t think that it is anti-feminist to participate in BDSM, mostly because if you’re doing it in a way where everyone is informed about what it is that they’re doing, it begins and ends with the person who is the submissive, male or female, giving consent. Nothing happens until they say, okay, these are my limits, and I agree, and now we can begin, and, and they can also end it if something goes wrong or when they reach the end of their scene. It’s still a willing choice, and my problem with 50 Shades and the portrayal of BDSM is how unsafe it was for, for Ana that all of the information about what it was that he was allegedly going to do was coming from him and only him, and he wouldn’t let her get information elsewhere, and I found that really bothersome, but I don’t think BDSM is inherently unfeminist.

Gloriamarie: Well –

Sarah: I can see why people would get upset with your talking about 50 Shades on Christian Facebook groups, though. There’s a lot to say there! Oh, yeah, lot, lots to say there, yeah!

Gloriamarie: Well, they, their, their point, their point was that, the point they were making was that these were BDSM books, and BDSM is inherently abusive to women, and the point I was trying to make to them was that these are not BDSM books, and, because the BDSM disappears in those books. I mean, it is really not about BDSM, and they could not get past the fact that Christian is, you know, a Dom, and they know that much about him, and they wouldn’t just, they wouldn’t even read the book. So, you know, it, it was – I’m trying to think of an analogy, because it was, it was just really quite frustrating, because it was, to me it was like people – you know, all my life, you know, because I’m a Christian, I’ve had people tell me that, people like to tell me they’re not Christians because someone who has never read the Bible has told them what’s in the Bible, and that person was told what’s in the Bible by someone else who’s never read the Bible, and usually, you know, they’re told erroneous stuff, and so I would say to these people who’d never read 50 Shades of Grey, you know, haven’t you ever been told by someone who’s never read the Bible about something that’s in the Bible but it’s not there? You know. Like, people want to believe that cleanliness is next to godliness comes from the Bible, you know, or what’s that great line from Hamlet? To thine own self be true. That’s not from the Bible either. You know, there’s all kinds of lines from Shakespeare that people think are in the Bible and get attributed to the Bible. And I, you know, and I said, it’s the same thing, you know. If you’re going to read, if you’re going to attribute something to 50 Shades, you ought to at least read it. But they, you know, anyway, so they would kick me off their Facebook groups. Bid deal.

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, no! I’m sorry. What are some romances that you might consider extremely feminist?

Gloriamarie: Jane Eyre!

Sarah: How so?

Gloriamarie: Well, I –

Sarah: I mean, I agree with you, but I’m curious, how do you think?

Gloriamarie: Well, you know, let’s look at, I mean, first of all, Jane has an incredible sense of self. Who she is, what she will and will not do, you know. No matter how much she loves Rochester, she’s not going to live with him as his mistress –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – though he wants – you know, once she finds out about poor mad Bertha Mason, she’s, and, and Rochester then wants her to live with him as his mistress, she refuses to do it and runs away, you know. St. John wants her to go to, marry him and go off to India, even though, you know, that would kill her. She, and then she says she’ll go to India with him, but she, and work with him as a missionary, but she refuses to marry him because she doesn’t love him. You know, she only loves Rochester. And all through the book, I mean, no matter what happens to her, she will not compromise her values. You know, she will not do anything that will change her or be untrue to herself, and you know, I really think that women so often will sell themselves short for reasons, you know, whatever reasons, and instead of just saying, this is who I am, this is what I want, this is what I will or will not do, and you never Jane, you know, doing that. She, she just makes up her mind, this is who I am. I mean, horrible childhood, that dreadful school, I mean, Lowood is horrible, and, and somehow, you know, she just has this deep sense of self, of true Chri-, deep Christian faith, and she is faithful to all of that. I think that’s just wonderful. And then you see that in, well, in Laura Kinsale’s books. I have some other ones here. Where are my notes here?

Sarah: Ooh, notes, excellent! I think it’s interesting that you see feminism and being Christian as two things that go well together. I often see them pushed on opposite sides in different arguments, which I find very strange.

Gloriamarie: I, I find that very strange too, because although – now, this is funny because in my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, one of the things I am, I hate to see is anachronisms in historical fiction, and yet here I’m going to use one.

Sarah: [Laughs] No, go ahead. It’s your interview; you can do whatever you want.

Gloriamarie: Feminism is a thread throughout all of Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures. We have prophets, women prophets in Genesis. We have, we have, Deborah was a judge in Israel in the book of Judges. Miriam, the sister of Moses, was a prophet in Ex-, in Exodus. Hannah was, in Samuel, was a prophetess. We have that wonderful woman in Proverbs 31 cited throughout all of history, you know, as, as, as exactly what a, a woman is supposed to be. I mean, it’s the businesswoman, for crying out loud; she’s an entrepreneur. And then you get into the New Testament. Jesus has women as his disciples. They’re completely coequal with any guy disciple, and Paul is completely a feminist. You’ve got Dorcas and Tabitha in Acts running churches, Priscilla in Rome running a church, Junia in Romans is, is an apostle among the apostles. Mary Magdalene is an apostle to the apostles because she is the one who, to whom Jesus appears for the first time after His resurrection and brings the message to the apostles of the, of the resurrection. In Galatians, Paul writes that, that there is now neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave or free, all are equal in Christ Jesus. He, he talks about how when women stand up to prophesy in church, they must do so with their head covered. Now, granted, he also talks in Timothy about how women have to be silent in church, but tell me how does a woman be silent in church while standing up to prophesy? I mean, you, those are two mutually exclusive things. And, and yet, what you hear people talking about most of all in Paul is that women have to be silent in church, so you’re taking one verse about women being silent in church and making that be the, the rule about women and overlooking all of the other verses in Paul about, where he’s talking about women having these incredible roles of leadership in churches, so – and also in the early Christian literature, you can read about the leadership roles women had in church. Now as the Christian church became more and more involved, the Greeks, as once Rome, when once Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel and the, and the Christian church spread through, into Asia Minor and got more and more involved with the Greeks, and the Christian church had that unfortunate introduction to Greek philosophy and Greek dualism where, you know, spirit good, flesh is bad, and women, of course, had a very secondary role in Greek culture, then you see the influence of, of Greek philosophy upon the Christian church, and then women’s role in, in the church began to erode. And you can see that too in, I mean, Mary Magdalene all of a sudden becomes, you know, a prostitute when she never was, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, becomes elevated to such an extent that she’s not even a human being anymore. So anyway, that’s kind of how I view sort of feminism and Christianity.

Sarah: That makes a lot of sense.

Gloriamarie: Thank you .

Sarah: [Laughs] I take it this is something you study a great deal.

Gloriamarie: Well, you know, I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, and, I mean, I’m Episcopalian, so I’m absolutely delighted to be, you know, part of a, a, a denomination that, I mean, back in 1974, I mean, we just took the bull by the horns and ordained seven women in Philadelphia, and in Boston, we consecrated the first bishop, woman bishop, Barbara Harris, and we then consecrated the first gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and, you know, we’ve consecrated a few more gay and lesbian bishops since then, and, and I just think, you know, we have signs all, plastered all over the United States that say the Episcopal church welcomes you, and when we say you, we mean every form of you that there is.

Sarah: So, you mentioned that you have a few things that you love in romance and a few things that really make you grind your teeth. Do you want to share some of those?

Gloriamarie: [Laughs] Oh, I have a nice list.

Sarah: Oh, a list, fabulous!

Gloriamarie: One of my biggest beefs is when – I don’t know if this is done by the author or the publisher, and I’d like to blame the publishing company – take a novel and, instead of publishing it as a novel, they divide it up into three novellas and sell it as a series and, you know, get three times as much money for it and, of course, end each novella on a cliffhanger. May –

Sarah: So, taking a novel and making it into a serial.

Gloriamarie: Yeah, when, for no good reason. And from that, also this new-fangled thing of series for no good reason except series. You know, like, I was, we, we’re writing back and forth, some of this, you know, you pub-, you publish the, the bestseller list, and one of them was Under His Kilt, and I made a comment –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – about that, about how I didn’t understand how that book could be on the bestseller list, because first of all, there was no kilt ever in the story, and I objected to a book being called Under His Kilt when there’s no kilt to get under, and all it was –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: – was the series of sex, you know, sex scenes, and while they were, you know, moderately entertaining, that’s all it really was, was sex with no plot. All of a sudden, you know, these two are hooking up for, you know, life when why? Like, I’m reading, I’m reading a great one right now by –

Sarah: Ooh, ooh, ooh! Which one?

Gloriamarie: – V. R. Christensen called Of Moths and Butterflies, and it’s taking place in Victorian England.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: Here’s this woman. She was born in India, she was orphaned at age nine, and she’s sent from India to England, as they did when the kid was orphaned. She’s supposed to live with her aunt, but for some reason, her uncle fetches her. He raises her. Don’t ever understand why the aunt didn’t do it, because it’s Victorian England, and of course it would be far more appropriate for the aunt to raise the chi-, the, the girl child than –

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: – than the uncle. It’s a, anyway, it’s a, it’s a wonderfully complex plot.

Sarah: It sounds it.

Gloriamarie: But there’s this – I mean, the story is being developed, and I can’t wait to, you know, I was up way too late last night turning the pages on my Kindle, wondering how is this going to develop? What is going to happen next? Oh, other pet peeves.

Sarah: Yes.

Gloriamarie: Publishing the first draft. I can’t stand it when they publish their first draft.

Sarah: How do you mean? Just –

Gloriamarie: Yes, too many errors –

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: – and also when the story is clearly not thought through.

Sarah: So, plot errors and grammar errors and errors in sentences, those are things that cue you to the fact that this book is not as polished as you would like it to be.

Gloriamarie: Well, yes, and also just, just, when the plot is loose –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – is not well-developed. And then another thing that annoys me are boxed sets.

Sarah: Boxed sets annoy you! How come?

Gloriamarie: Box sets, you know, of, like, the first book in a series by a bunch of different authors –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – because, I don’t know, that just drives me nuts, ‘cause I don’t mind a box set by one author of the same series –

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: – if it’s a good series.

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: Like, you know, give me a box set of Outlander, that’s terrific, you know, but –

Sarah: That’d be, that would be a very big box set. But you don’t, you don’t like a box set of a bunch of different authors and books?

Gloriamarie: No.

Sarah: How come?

Gloriamarie: [Laughs] It’s untidy.

[Laughter]

Gloriamarie: My, my very first job was a book page in the Princeton Public Library in Princeton, New Jersey, where I grew up, you know, and I, and I fi-, I, I put the, the fiction books on the shelves alphabetically by author.

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: I have my books on my Kindle in collections by author –

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: – and I can’t take a boxed set and put it in a collection by author if there’s a bunch of different authors in a boxed set, so that’s –

Sarah: I understand.

Gloriamarie: That’s why that annoys me.

Sarah: How do you find books to read? How do you figure out what you want to read next?

Gloriamarie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Do you have a huge TBR? Do you have a never-ending supply of Kindle books that you’re working through at this point?

Gloriamarie: I’m a very poor person, and I was given a Kindle, which was a big delight to me, and then I discovered, you know, there’s all these ways, you know, you can get free or 99-cent Kindle books, and at first I kind of went hog-wild loading up my Kindle –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Gloriamarie: – with all these free or 99-cent books, and then I discovered – I think this is how you and I actually, very, our very first moment of contact was when I discovered just how disgusted I was so often with these free, or these 99-cent books, because so many of them were just awful, you know, and it, it was kind of like they were being put out there just, you know, just to get read, and then I had somehow come across your blog and the Smart Bitches and your whole group of people, and discovering that when I, if I bought the books that you guys talked about that were on sale that you had previously reviewed, I was getting a better quality book.

Sarah: Yep! That happens a lot.

Gloriamarie: So then, I kind of stopped buying those books –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – and only bought the books that are reviewed, that were for sale, that you guys talk about for sale on your blog that you have previously reviewed.

Sarah: Right, which isn’t all of the ones on sale. We can’t read all of them, but most of them –

Gloriamarie: Yeah.

Sarah: – if we know it’s good, we’ll make it clear that we’ve reviewed it or put a link to the review.

Gloriamarie: Right, and, or, if I am at all tempted by one, I still get those other lists, and if I’m, ‘cause sometimes, a lot of times some of the classics of science fiction, which I adore, are on there, like –

Sarah: Ooh.

Gloriamarie: – lately, a lot of Arthur C. Clarke ha-, has been for sale on, I think, BookGorilla.com. Or cookbooks. I love cookbooks.

Sarah: Oh, I love digital cookbooks, too. It’s a problem.

Gloriamarie: Yeah, you know, and, and I love cookbooks, especially that, that, like, tell stories about the recipes and so on.

Sarah: Oh, I love those too.

Gloriamarie: And, so I still get all those lists, and if I’m at all tempted by one of those books, then I, I’ll go to Goodreads and I’ll look for two- or three-star reviews and, and look for those, and, ‘cause I, I stay away from five-star reviews because those readers have no sense of discrimination whatsoever.

Sarah: Well, it, it, there’s, there’s you, there’s a couple different kinds of five-star reviews, I think.

Gloriamarie: Well, yes.

Sarah: You know –

Gloriamarie: My five-star reviews are completely worth reading!

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, so are mine!

Gloriamarie: Because I hardly ever give them!

Sarah: Yeah, it’s a, a vowel is a rare thing from me too.

Gloriamarie: I have to mention two books, no –

Sarah: Please do!

Gloriamarie: – three, three books that I have given four- and five-star reviews, and one of them is a brand-new author. Her name is Lindsey Forrest. Her very first book –

Sarah: Oh, I found it! Lindsey Forrest, All Who Are Lost. It’s a trilogy; did you read all three?

Gloriamarie: I have read the first two. The second one is All That Lies Broken. The third one is not yet published. This is a trilogy, not a series –

Sarah: Right. It has an end, which you like.

Gloriamarie: Yes. This is definitely a, a long, long story.

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: Brilliantly written. I don’t want, I really, I don’t want to get into spoilers, because I, I don’t want to ruin it for anybody, but usually I can’t stand books about sisters, because they’re just like, they cloy or they are witches at each others’ throats. I’ll tell you, I have read novels by authors who have been writing a lot longer than Lindsey Forrest –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – who are nowhere near accomplished a storyteller as Lindsey Forrest is in her very first novel, All Who Are Lost.

Sarah: You really liked this book.

Gloriamarie: Oh, it’s won-, it’s marvelous, and All That Lies Broken, which is volume two in the trilogy, honestly, I was, I was up till three in the morning –

Sarah: Wow.

Gloriamarie: – after three in the morning, reading and reading that book, and then I got, I turned to the last page, and it was the last page, and I screeched, and Pip and Colby just leaped off my lap, terrified, because I was like, oh, my God, it’s the last page! And I was so caught up in it, and now I have to wait for the next volume.

Sarah: Oh, that’s hard.

Gloriamarie: Yes, they’re marvelous. And then I have to mention Patricia Burroughs, This Crumbling Pageant.

Sarah: Oh, I’ve heard a lot about this one.

Gloriamarie: Oh, it’s a marvelous, marvelous – it’s set in the Regency period, kind of a Regency romance, paranormal, parallel universe thing.

Sarah: Whoa. Does it, does it have a, does it have a happy ending?

Gloriamarie: Well, it too is a trilogy.

Sarah: Ah, there’s more!

Gloriamarie: There is more!

Sarah: So it’s a magical England during the Regency.

Gloriamarie: Yes.

Sarah: Ohhh, that sounds tempting.

Gloriamarie: It’s wonderful! I have to also admit that Pooks, which is Patricia Burroughs’ nickname –

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: – is a personal friend of mine. I’ve known her for, like, ten years. She’s, has written a bunch of other romance novels. She’s got one about a female gunslinger, it’s really great, but This Crumbling Pageant is, oh, it’s the best thing she’s ever written. Oh, you have to read that, yes.

Sarah: Okay.

Gloriamarie: And –

Sarah: And what’s the third that you really rec?

Gloriamarie: Anne Brooke.

Sarah: Anne Brooke?

Gloriamarie: A-N-N-E –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – B-R-O-O-K-E.

Sarah: Hmm!

Gloriamarie: She is a British author with a very small publishing company called Amber Quill.

Sarah: Oh, I know Amber Quill. Which book of hers do you recommend?

Gloriamarie: Well, the very first one I read was called The Prayer Seeker. That’s –

Sarah: That’s from two years ago.

Gloriamarie: And the second one I read is called A Dangerous Man. The Prayer Seeker I found completely compelling. It’s about a man who, a fifty-year-old man who quits his job because he wants time to rediscover his prayer life, and he’s in the Church of England, and he, he really spends a great deal of time trying to reconnect to his prayer life, and he only finally does that by reconnecting with the truth about himself, which is that he’s gay, and it’s a very powerful book. And then there’s a book, then the second book I read from her, called A Dangerous Man, is about, he’s an artist.

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: He only works in black and white and pencil, and the dream of his life is to have an exhibit of his, of his drawings.

Sarah: Right.

Gloriamarie: He is a gay man, and he has a, a relationship. I think the guy’s a stockbroker, very wonderful man, but the thing is, the artist is a completely repellent human being, but I could not put the book down. And she has also written a trilogy that’s sort of a cross between science fiction and fantasy. It’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: – kind of hard to –

Sarah: This is the same author?

Gloriamarie: Yes. She does not write just merely one genre.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: She also has written a couple of really great children’s books.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Gloriamarie: Well, one is called The Origami Nun, about –

Sarah: Oh?

Gloriamarie: – a little paper nun that this little girl carries around in her pocket.

Sarah: Ah. She also wrote a book called Dear God, It’s All Gone Horribly Wrong –

Gloriamarie: Yep!

Sarah: – Prayers for Stressed Christians.

Gloriamarie: Yes.

Sarah: Okay, that’s lovely.

Gloriamarie: Yeah. It’s thirty pr-, it’s thirty prayers. Yeah, she’s an incredibly diverse author.

Sarah: Yeah, I should say!

Gloriamarie: And she, and she’s got a lot of male/male romance. Well, you know, I also really love quirky.

Sarah: Really!

Gloriamarie: Yeah. ‘Course, I love paranormals. What’s her name, Laurenston. And some –

Sarah: Oh, Shelly Laurenston.

Gloriamarie: Yeah, she’s got some fun ones about shapeshifters in New York. Like, there’s –

Sarah: Yep.

Gloriamarie: – one about a lion shapeshifter guy who does the Macarena in the streets of a suburban Long Island city. I –

Sarah: Yep!

Gloriamarie: I mean, I, wouldn’t, wouldn’t you just love to see a lion doing the Macarena in Long Island somewhere? [Laughs]

Sarah: She writes such fun, over-the-top books. I love them.

Gloriamarie: Yeah, yeah. I love that. And Judith Arnold wrote one called Changes about a jukebox, and in fact, I think there’s a series about that jukebox which, if I could just find it more cheaply I’d love to, I’d love to read more about them. I mean, just imagine a jukebox determining who’s going to be the love of your life. That’s –

Sarah: Yep.

Gloriamarie: – that’s so much fun. And, and I like the quirkier paranormal. I mean, yeah, the fun, you know, the wolf shifter who finds, you know, his one true mate. I mean, that’s kind of fun. There, I just read one about, I mean, get this, the, the SWAT team in Dallas are all wolf shapeshifters. I mean, who knew?

Sarah: Well, of course they are!

Gloriamarie: And Dallas of all places!

[music]

Sarah: And that is all for this week’s episode. I want to thank Gloriamarie for taking the time to hang out with me and talk about books. I hope you enjoyed that interview. It was a bit outside what we usually talk about, but I was pretty fascinated by how much she knew about women in Christian scriptural history, ‘cause I did not know any of that.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of The Taming of the Billionaire, a brand-new Billionaire and Bridesmaids novel from the New York Times bestselling author Jessica Clare. You can download that book on July 21st.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries, and this is their brand-new album Blackhouse. This track is called “The Chatham Lasses.” I know a bunch of you have purchased this album, and I’m really curious how you like it. You can find the album online at Amazon or iTunes if you’re curious, and we’ll have links in the podcast entry, of course.

And if you would like to tell me how you like it, or you would like to suggest a person you know to be interviewed, or you have an idea, or you want to have feedback, or you want to talk about something that’s really on your mind or about a book that really made you happy, we want to hear about all of that. Our email address is sbjpodcast@gmail.com. You can email us any time.

We will be back next week with more people talking about romance novels, ‘cause that’s what we do here, but in the meantime, on behalf of my dog Zeb, who is barking at air – I assume your dogs also might bark at air. Thank you. Apparently, no pets on the podcast is a thing that is not permitted to happen.

On behalf of me and Zeb and Gloriamarie and Jane, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and perhaps there’s a little Easter egg at the end of the music at the end of this episode. Maybe.

[music]

Gloriamarie: I just, you know, computer, to computer is an arcane gnosis the secret of which has not been vouchsafed unto me.

Sarah: [Laughs]

[last music]