160. A Reader Interview with Meka: Reading Romance and the Desecration of Desserts

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 160 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me this week is Meka, who is a reader who had a lot to say.  This is a long episode.  Also?  It’s a little not-safe-for-work in the middle, so when you hear any mention of chocolate pie, if you’re not using head phones you should start using headphones at that moment.  Trust me, you really don’t want coworkers to hear that part.  It’s funny, but it’s not safe for work.  Meka is a long-time romance reader, and we talk about a lot of things.  We talk about how fast she reads, talking to her coworkers about danger boner, technology advances for blind readers, and her introduction to romance.

A few housekeeping notes before we get started:  if you would like to sponsor the podcast in 2016, an episode, the month, the year, two episodes, email me!  [email protected].  I would love to hear from you.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Falling for Danger, the third book in Chanel Cleeton’s sexy contemporary series Capital Confessions, available on sale now wherever your fine eBooks are sold.

The podcast transcript this week is sponsored by Married Sex, a novel by Jesse Kornbluth.  When a husband convinces his wife to join him in a tryst with another woman, there are unintended consequences in this sharply observed, erotic tale about the challenges of modern marriage.  Now available in paperback and eBook formats wherever you buy books.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater.  I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is, and of course the podcast entry will have links to all of the books we discuss.  All.  Of.  Them.  There’re lots.  I’m sorry.  This is an expensive episode.  

I’ll also have links to some of the resources that we discuss in the course of the episode, and if you have questions or ideas, you can email us at [email protected].

And now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah:  All right!  Well, thank you so much for suggesting this, because I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

Meka:  Oh, I’m so excited, and between, between you, like, describing the book covers and me being like, I don’t remember the title but I remember the plot, this is going to be a lot, this is going to be, like –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Meka:  – a great, a great big episode of Help a Bitch Out.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah, people are, people are going to be screaming, like, I know this book!  Like, in the middle of the bus or on their walk or something.  The two of us should probably not attempt to recommend books.  It might not go well.

Meka:  Oh, it’ll be fun.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, let’s start by having you introduce yourself to the lovely people at home.

Meka:  Okay!  My name is Meka, and I live in Washington state, and I looove to read!  I love romance novels!  Yay!

Sarah:  Yay!  Let me start with this:  you are a blind reader, right?

Meka:  Yes.  I have a little bit of vision.  I, I always say I have just enough vision to be dangerous, so –

[Laughter]

Meka:  I have a little bit of vision out of my left eye, so I can see, I, like, if you give me a color, I understand the frame of reference for it –

Sarah:  Right.

Meka:  – and I can see something, like, I can see an object if it’s right up against my face, but probably can’t see those, that flight of stairs if I’m not using a dog or a cane, so.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Of course.  Now, you have a seeing-eye dog, right?

Meka:  I do!  I have a guide dog.  He is, he’s a New York dog.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Aw, yeah.

Meka:  His name is Lester, and he’s currently, I have a dog bed for him and a blanket on it, and he’s currently curled up sleeping on the blanket, working really hard right now.

Sarah:  Clearly, he is doing his job.

Meka:  Yes.  Oh, yes.

Sarah:  All right, so are we going to interview Lester during the podcast?  Does he have anything that he wants to say?

Meka:  [Laughs] I’m sure he does.  He’s probably like, feed me!  Feed me, pet me!  I don’t get any love.  Nobody loves me.

Sarah:  [Laughs] You started reading romance when you were eleven, you told me.

Meka:  Yes.  Oh, you remembered!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Dude!  I want to hear this story, because this sounds amazing.

Meka:  This is the greatest story.  So, so back then – [laughs] – I’m, I’m thirty –

Sarah:  Once upon a time –

Meka:  Yeah, really.  I’m thirty-five now, and so when I was eleven, my primary reading method was Braille, but in our schools we didn’t have the kind of books that I found on tape.  The Library for the Blind, they have, of course they have their books, and they’re all on, on cassette, and they had some books in Braille, and the cassettes are four-sided, they, they have four sides, so the machine, once you got through sides one and two, you turn it back over to side one, and then you would flip a little switch, and you’d have side three, and then you’d flip it over, and it’d be side four!

Sarah:  Whoa!

Meka:  So – [laughs] – yeah, it –

Sarah:  I, I, I, as someone who used to tape songs off the radio and was a very studious mix tape maker, I am so mad that I never had access to that technology.

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I would have had a mix tape that went on for days.

Meka:  So they sent, the library did not realize that I was eleven –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  – or they probably would not have sent me this Johanna Lindsey book, and –

Sarah:  Oh, Lord!

Meka:  – this is, this is probably the most – it, it’s called Once a Princess.

Sarah:  Oh, oh my.

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I know this book!

Meka:  And you know, like, up to that point I’d read, I’d read, like, the abridged version of Jane Eyre, and I’d read Anne of Green Gables.  This blew my mind.  Like –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  – I was like, whoa!  [Laughs] So, and at the time, my mom, my mom and I used to tease each other, so we would call each other, like, she’d, she’d be like, oh, come on, wench!  And I didn’t know what wench meant, okay?

Sarah:  Right.

Meka:  So, so we’d call each other wenches, ‘cause that’s just how we are – [laughs] – and on the, in the recording, the hero calls the heroine a wench, and I was so stunned, because I thought that only my mom and I knew that word.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Like she’d made it up!

Meka:  Yeah, yeah, so we had con-, we had contractors and constructors, construction workers in our house, and I was just like, whoa!  So I kept rewinding it, and I’d turn up the volume just so that she would say wench again, because I was list-, I was so in awe – [laughs] –

Sarah:  Tell me –

Meka:  – and my dad comes in, and he’s like –

Sarah:  – tell me, tell me, tell me, that this was on, like, on, on a cassette player, like, you weren’t wearing headphones.

Meka:  I was not wearing headphones.

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Meka:  [Laughs] In fact, my dad burst into my room and said –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  – what, what are you listening to?  What did she, what did that person say?  And I said, oh, they said they were sitting on a bench!

Sarah:  [Laughs more]

Meka:   I don’t know if I could reread that book now, but I’m telling you that for me, for being an eleven-year-old girl, and there were – it had everything!  It had, you know, it had, like, pirates, and it had re-, you know, like, the her-, the heroine is a princess and she doesn’t know it, and she’s working as a, she’s working as, like, basically, she’s working as a stripper in a, in a club in the eighteen or seventeen hundreds, and this –

Sarah:  As you do.

Meka:  Yep, as you do, and this –

Sarah:  When you are a princess.

Meka:  That’s right!  But you don’t –

Sarah:  Working in the club.

Meka:  But you don’t know that you’re a princess, so, you know.  And the, the hero is, like, from Carpathia, and just so happens to find out that this, like, they just so happen to be in New Orleans, and he notices as she’s, like, as she’s stripping that she’s got some mark on her, I believe, and –

Sarah:  There’s always a magic birthmark.

Meka:  Yes!  A magical birthmark, and then instead of going up to her like a reasonable person and being like, you know, you’re a prince-, you are a princess, and instead of being, like, abused by this tavern owner, you could come hang out with me and my friends and, and take up your birthright.  Oh, no!  He has to go kidnap her –

Sarah:  Of course!

Meka:  – and – [laughs] – and so this is, like, the most bodice ripper-y book that, of bodice rippers.

Sarah:  [Laughs] It is way up there on the scale.

Meka:  It is!  But I thought it was amazing, ‘cause it had everything.  It had – and, and in the descriptions of the, the NLS, the National Library Service for the Blind, in their book descriptions they always have, like, like, little warnings, so a book blurb – it’s a short book blurb, so it’s not like the book blurbs that are on Amazon; it’s really condensed.  Sometimes they just throw a spoiler in, in the little book blurb – [laughs] – but it says, like, strong language.  This one said, strong language, violence, and explicit descriptions of sex, and I was like, oh, I know I’m not supposed to be reading this.  Okay!  I’ll order it.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I am listening to this one first.

Meka:  Absolutely.  And that’s what got me hooked on, that’s what got me hooked on romance, but I didn’t really, I don’t know that I necessarily categorized it as a romance novel, you know, back then.  Back then it was just a kick-ass book!  It had violence, strong language, and explicit descriptions of sex!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Woohoo!

Meka:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Because of course, that’s what you want.

Meka:  Yes!

Sarah:  As, and you didn’t order this; the library sent it to you as a mistake, right?

Meka:  They sent it to me by accident, and I was like, I’m not –

Sarah:  It says princess; let’s give it to that girl.

Meka:  Yeah, exactly, so, okay.  I’m not going to –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  Because I learned to shut up about books at a really early age, because when I was in third grade, there was a book called Amy’s Eyes that I started reading, and all of a sudden it, the, the doll – who happened to be a captain of a pirate ship, if I’m not mistaken – he says, damn, and you know, like, third grade –

Sarah:  [Gasps] No!

Meka:  Yeah!  Second or third grade, I’m like, oh, he said damn!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  You know, and I, I was scandalized!  [Laughs] Like, I’m not allowed to say damn.  My mom told me I couldn’t say damn.  Saying damn in a book!  And I honestly didn’t realize that people cursed in books, and so I went to my teacher and was like, this book!  This guy, he said damn!

Sarah:  [Gasps]

Meka:  He said the D word!  He said the D word!  And then they took the book away from me.

Sarah:  Oh, then you can’t tell anybody about the damn.

Meka:  So – exactly.

Sarah:  And you probably weren’t upset.  You were probably like, this is great!

Meka:  Yeah, like, this is really awesome!  But I just didn’t – I, I’m, my thought process was probably like, that author’s not supposed to curse.  I can’t say damn, you know?

[Laughter]

Meka:  Pirate captains shouldn’t be able to say damn either!  [Laughs] And they took it away, and I didn’t get to finish the book, so –

Sarah:  Oh, no.  Have you, did you ever get to finish Amy’s Eyes?

Meka:  I didn’t.  I’ve never, I’ve never reread it to find out what happens or anything.  After that, I didn’t say anything!  If there was something in a book that – when I got Once a Princess, I wasn’t going to say a damn thing!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No, no, no.

Meka:  Mm-mm.

Sarah:  This is all about princesses and pretty pink dresses and –

Meka:  Exactly!

Sarah:  – nothing going on here!  Nope, nope, nothing to see.  Mm-mm.

Meka:  Exactly.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So you now read, you told me, nine books a week.

Meka:  Yes, I’m reading quite a bit, ‘cause I, I commute to work on the bus, and it, it kind of helps me survive my commute and not yell at anyone.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Uncaffeinated people on the way to work is a special kind of empathy to develop.  And it’s not an easy one, either.

Meka:  And I work, I work swing shift, which is really awesome for me, because I get, like, the afternoon bus crowd, which they’re still, they’re still a hot mess sometimes, and, and the, my job, I’m working a lot with my, with my hands, and so we’re allowed to listen to music through headphones –

Sarah:  Oh, dude!

Meka:  – but instead of music, I’m just reading books, which is awesome!

Sarah:  Okay, that’s amazing.

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Now, we had Sassy Outwater on a couple weeks ago, and she played –

Meka:  I love Sassy!

Sarah:  – Sassy’s the best – and she played a sample of what a book sounds like for her at 500 words per minute.  Now, you told me you weren’t up near 500 hundred, but you’re in the high 300 words per minute, right?

Meka:  I’m, I’m at a, you know, I’m at a more sedate pace of 400 hundred words a minute.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Sedate.  Oh, okay, sure.  So it’s not Alvin and all the Chipmunks, it’s just Alvin.

Meka:  Just maybe two chipmunks.  [Laughs

Sarah:  Okay.  And so, how long does it take you to read a romance novel at 400 words a minute listening?  Is that, like, three or four hours?

Meka:  Yes.

Sarah:  That’s pretty fly.

Meka:  I don’t always go through, I don’t always count the pages, because I just, you know, put my headphones in and I’m good, right?

Sarah:  Right, of course.

Meka:  But let’s, let me think, here.  Okay, so you’re familiar with, like, Ilona Andrews, right?

Sarah:  Of course!

Meka:  Okay, so I read the, the sixth book of the Kate, the Kate Daniels series, and I was reading at, like, three hundred and eighty-something words a minute, and then I just started amping it up a little bit.  So I think that when I was at three eighty-something the – it goes by hours of the book –

Sarah:  Of course.

Meka:  – so it was probably at, like, a, a seven, like, a seven-and-a-half-hour book.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  At 400, I’ve probably taken about half an hour off of that.

Sarah:  Wow.  So in one eight-hour shift, you could get through, presumably, two books.

Meka:  Yes.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s just awesome.

Meka:  [Laughs] I love it.  It is so awesome.  I can pull, I can let you guys hear a, listen to a sample today.

Sarah:  Oh, that would be cool!  Yeah!  Dude, totally!

Meka:  Let me find, let me find something here.  Oops.  I turned my phone’s screen reader off so it wouldn’t keep talking to me, and then I –

Sarah:  Of course.

Meka:  – was touching the screen and wondering why it wasn’t talking to me, so.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Shit, I bricked my phone!  What do I do?

Meka:  Exactly.  After I do this, I’ve just got to tell you, if you have to be, if, if a person has to be blind, now is the best time to be blind in, like, in the history of, of the world.  I mean, in the ability to have a bunch of books on a phone is just, ugh!  It is amazing to me!  I love it!

Sarah:  And you deal almost exclusively in digital books.

Meka:  I do.  There are some books, there are some books that I have great memory of just because I’ve read them in Braille.  Whether –

Sarah:  Right, of course.

Meka:  – necessarily good books or not, it was, you know –

Sarah:  It’s a different experience to read in Braille versus listening.

Meka:  Yes.

Sarah:  But I also know that Braille books are prohibitively expensive to produce, and it’s not easy to make them.

Meka:  They are not.  All right, I love how I’m stressing over, like, what part of the book should I give them?  And I know that probably a lot of people aren’t going to understand it anyway, so I’m just going to play the sample.  [Laughs] All right, here you go, let’s see.  Turn my phone up:

[Meka’s phone reading her book very, very fast.]

Sarah:  Whoa.  I could barely make that out.  Like, I, I could sort, I heard, like, you know, drop cloth, and there was a ladder, and, yeah.

Meka:  So I picked the book out and I just went through, like, there’s a little slider in this Voice Dream Reader app of percentage, and I was honestly just trying to find a good place to start.  I did not, I did not realize that this was a romantic suspense book, and it was actually the scene of this guy dumping the body, so I did not realize that until it started playing.

Sarah:  Hey, hey, what’s a little body between friends, right?

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It’s just a little dead body, no big deal.

Meka:  Exactly!  Exactly.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So what have you been reading lately that you recommend?  You, you mentioned when we were setting this up, you were like, I’m afraid this is going to be expensive, and I was like, that’s okay.

Meka:  So, a lot of my recommendations have been coming from either Twitter or your podcast, because I also listen to the podcast –

Sarah:  Aw, thank you!  That’s so awesome!

Meka:  – when I’m at work.  And there have been times when I have just busted out laughing for no random reason, according to my coworkers, and they’re like, what are you laughing at?  And I can’t tell them.

Sarah:  Oh, nothing!

Meka:  I can’t tell them, because it’s danger boner, you know?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Can’t tell them about danger boner.  It’s, danger boner –

Meka:  Can’t tell them.

Sarah:  – it’s not something that’s easily shared.

Meka:  It isn’t.  I, I love danger boner, by the way.  I, I do.  I’m like, okay, get you some while these people are stalking you through the jungle, you know?  [Laughs] The most recent ones I’ve been reading, one of them that I’m reading right now, because, do you remember that I asked you to give me a challenge, because I hate Regency England and want to push it off a cliff?

Sarah:  Yes!

Meka:  [Laughs] I started reading, last night I started reading the, oh, gosh!  It’s the Zoe Archer one that you recommended.

Sarah:  Oh, the Blades of the Rose?

Meka:  Yes.  You recommended – I can’t remember the name of the title!

Sarah:  Scoundrel is my favorite, so probably –

Meka:  Yes!  That’s the one!  That’s the one.

Sarah:  – I probably recommended Scoundrel, ‘cause that is one of my favorites of that series.

Meka:  I didn’t realize that it was in a series, but I don’t read series necessarily in order anyway, so I was good.

Sarah:  I, I don’t either, so –

Meka:  Oh, finally!  [Laughs] Somebody like me!

Sarah:  Oh, I know.  I always feel very weird.  Like, there was one time where my son had been reading a bunch of digital books in a series, and the next one wasn’t available at the library, and he wanted it in print, and I said, well, I can’t get it, but I can get it here tomorrow, and then I can download the digital book of the one after that right now, so you could skip to book eighteen, and then we’ll get book seventeen.  And he got this, like, horrified, crushed look on his face, like, Mooom!  I can’t read out of order!  Like – it was like I was asking him to do the most heinous, evil thing by reading the book series out of order, and I was like, I’m really the only one who doesn’t care, huh?

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I mean, if it’s important, if the plot develops over several books, that’s totally cool.  The nice thing about this series is that there is an overarching thing that they’re dealing with, but if you start with Scoundrel, it’s not like you’re, you’re completely lost and have no idea who the hell those people are.

Meka:  I am – Sarah, you, like, hit all of my favorite tropes and things by recommending this book, because it’s got, it is so great!

Sarah:  Yes!  Good, good book recommendation is the best feeling ever!

Meka:  It is so great, ‘cause I don’t, I don’t normally like, you know, I have a hard time getting into books where it’s like, we’re going to go to all these, you know, typically with Regency England books, with the ones that I have read, it’s like, oh, you love me!  Or, I hate you!  Oh, you kissed me!  I still hate you!  Let me slap your face!  And I’m like –

Sarah:  Slap, slap, kiss!

Meka:  I’m, ugh, I can’t, I can’t with you, lady, so –

[Laughter]

Meka:  But this is great, and I’m, I’m probably at sixty percent, and I’m starting to get a little worried, and I’m trying not to do that thing that I also do, which is end-read when I start getting really worried about how the plot is going to go.

Sarah:  Hey, no shame in that.  If you’re worried about how it’s going to end up, you absolutely should check the end.

Meka:  I do.

Sarah:  I, I totally support that decision.

Meka:  I, I am a notorious end-reader, and it’s taken a while to find authors that I don’t end-read with, but I’m, I’m not going to end-read this one, because it’s more of a pain in the ass to find my place again – [laughs] – but, but I am loving this book.  It’s really, really good.  I have no idea of how they’re going to solve what’s going on, and it is a hot and steamy read.

Let’s see, the other one that I would recommend, which also came from your podcast, do you remember when you had Tina on the podcast –

Sarah:  Oh, of course!

Meka:  – and she wanted to have babies with The Shattered Court?

Sarah:  Ah, yes.

Meka:  I also would like to have babies with this book, because it is amazing!

Sarah:  [Laughs] What did you like about it?

Meka:  It is – oh, my gosh!  It’s, oh!  What didn’t I like?  It was just, the worldbuilding, the characters, there’s adventure.  You know, you have, like, the, the heroine, who has accidentally bonded to the hero, and now everyone is all, like, getting their panties wound up in a bunch over it, and you’ve got, like, enemies on all sides, and I love this – I don’t know if it’s a trope! – but I love the you-and-me-against-the-world kind of thing, and it –

Sarah:  That is a good trope.

Meka:  Oh!  It is definitely what this book is.  It is amazing.  It also broke my rule of, it really broke my rule about reading, I don’t like to read first books in a series when –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  – the other book isn’t out yet, because I’ve been burned by that?  Where I’ve liked the book, and then the series hasn’t been continued?  And then this book did leave off on a cliffhanger, which I also don’t like, but –

Sarah:  Oh, no.

Meka:  [Laughs] And I don’t know when the book is coming out, but I need it to be, like, tomorrow, because this, it was amazing!  I love it!

Sarah:  Oh, that’s awesome!  I’m so – did you read that because of the podcast?

Meka:  I did!  I did!

Sarah:  Oh, dude.  That’s so great!

Meka:  Then another one I read was the Deadly Strain that Sassy, that Sassy recommended from the podcast by Julie Rowe?

Sarah:  Yeah?

Meka:  And I read that one, and it was – I’m, I’m a big romantic suspense person.  I love romantic suspense, and in, in all of its forms, and when you, when I, I remember that when you said, say that a lot of your favorite, like, historical authors now turned to romantic suspense, I would probably read a romantic suspense book by one of those authors than I would a historical, so I just think that it’s really hilarious that we’re on – [laughs] – that we’re on, like, the opposite ends of the spectrum.  Like, Julie Garwood, I, I know that you love her historical books.  I love her romantic suspense!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Have you read her historicals?

Meka:  I have not.  I actually have, I think I have Saving Grace on my, on my phone to read.

Sarah:  But you haven’t read more than, many of them, and you stick mostly to the romantic suspense?

Meka:  Yeah, it just depends.  It, it honestly just depends, because I probably won’t read a historical without, without other recommendation or, like, there has to be something in the blurb that sticks out, so if it says, like, it’s an emotional read, you know –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  – and there’s, like, assassins and adventure.  I’m probably going to read that.  I think that the last historicals, favorite historical trilogy that I read is by Maire Claremont, and it starts with the, The Dark Lady?

Sarah:  Oh, yeah!

Meka:  And that was because, like, for me, it didn’t have, it didn’t have the, I don’t mind the balls and the glamour, but there’d better be, like, some assassins and some, you know –

[Laughter]

Meka:  – some other stuff involved.  But it had, there was a, a mystery, and this woman who had been through really horrible things and this, and this hero who was just amazing and wonderful and, and kind and wanted, and wanted to help, and, and it’s a trilogy, and it really surprised that I, that I read it.  So it has to be more than, than that.  I also, I did surprise myself, because I, I read the Bridgerton, the first book in the Bridgerton series?

Sarah:  Oh, The Duke and I?

Meka:  Yes!  And I was surprised at how much I enjoyed that.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s another Reg-, ‘cause you had asked me, like, I want to read a Regency that I’m going to like.

Meka:  Yes!

Sarah:  Oh, that’s cool!  What did you like about it?

Meka:  It was hilarious!  I’m, like, reading this at work and dying.  I’m like, laughing –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  – and I love the big, I love the big families, and the –

Sarah:  Yeah.  One of the nicest things about that, that book and a lot of the ones that have come since then is that, you know, it used to be very common for the hero or the heroine or both to be completely isolated from their family, because their family was the most evil of evil people ever, and so seeing a large and mostly functional but genuinely loving family is so enjoyable through that series.

Meka:  I, I haven’t read the re-, the other books in the series yet, but I though, okay, I don’t want to push, I have to stop saying that I want to push Regency England off a cliff if I’m reading Julia Quinn, you know, because I’m reading her book, and it’s really great, so now I have to take Regency England, put it back on the cliff that I pushed it off of, and – [laughs] – I might have to re-, rethink my stance a little bit and –

Sarah:  Aww, you’re going to go back to historical and save it from the ocean where you pushed it in?

Meka:  I am.  And I, I, I like, I love romantic suspense, I love, I love urban, I love urban fantasy, but I have to get recommendations, because it really, I don’t like love triangles, and if the love triangle –

Sarah:  Oh, me too.  Yuck.

Meka:  – if it’s not resolved by, like, the second or third book –

Sarah:  Nope.

Meka:  – then I’m not, I’m not in it.  So – [laughs]

Sarah:  Don’t care.  I’m done.  Uh-uh.

Meka:  Yep, pretty much.  I like, I just, I, I like, most of the books that I read, stuff that I’m going to like, I love the fated mates trope, I do.

Sarah:  Oooh!

Meka:  I love the stars and rainbows.  I love, like, Christine Feehan is one of my favorite authors, and so, I love fated mates.

Sarah:  You should go back.  You should go back and read old Jude Deveraux –

Meka:  Okay.

Sarah:  – contemporaries, partic-, or her Westerns, because she is a sort of a twist or one of the original sources of the fated mate pairing outside of paranormal, because she has two families, the Taggerts and the Montgomerys, and they are both families populated with an extraordinary number of identical twins, and the family legend is that you marry the person who can tell the twins apart.  So if there’s one person thinks that the whole family is bonkers because they keep insisting that these two guys are identical, and clearly they look nothing like each other, then whichever one of the twins is into her, that’s the woman she, he should marry.

Meka:  Yes!  Oh, man, I will be all over that.  I love fated mates.  I do.

Sarah:  And it happens over and over and over, and if you , if you mainline them, you get a little tired of it, but, I mean, I have to warn you, her writing has some significant amounts of crack in it for me.  Like, I –

Meka:  Yes!

Sarah:  – I wrote a, I wrote a column for NPR Books about Julie Garwood, Jude Deveraux, and Judith McNaught, which I call the, the holy trinity of J, and –

Meka:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and I kept picking up different Deveraux books from my keeper shelf to write about them, and I, it took me, like, three hours, because I kept starting to read them, and I’d be like, no, no, put this down.  Go back to work.  Put the book down and go back to the computer.  ‘Cause they’re so addictive.  Like, you start reading them, and you just can’t, like, do anything.  It’s horrible.

Meka:  Yes!  Oh, gosh, I’ve been binging on series, ‘cause, you know, I’ve got eight hours at work, so – [laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah, exactly.

Meka:  – what else, what else am I going to do besides work?  So – [laughs]

Sarah:  And listen to books, which is –

Meka:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – so awesome.  I don’t –

Meka:  It is.

Sarah:  – I don’t know if I could do that.  I mean, I, I can listen to books, but I zone out to the degree that I don’t, I, like, if I were – I’m afraid to listen to books on tape in the car or audiobooks in the car unless I know absolutely where I’m going, because I will miss my exit and end up in, like, Georgia when I was trying to go to Ohio.

Meka:  [Laughs] You know what?  You know what, Sarah?  I read on my commute, and the other day I missed my stop.  Like –

Sarah:  See?  I’m so glad I’m not alone.

Meka:  [Laughs] You’re not.  I was in the book, and all of a sudden I, I realized that none of these stops that they’re calling out is anything I’ve ever been to before, and –

Sarah:  I have either gotten on the wrong bus, or now I am far away.

Meka:  And by the time I realized it, I was six stops down, so I was really into this book!  [Laughs] If you don’t mind, I want to kind of – can I tell, can I tell you, like, the, I, I call it my evolution of book reading.

Sarah:  Oh, please, I would love to hear about it!

Meka:  You know, you have, like, the books on tape, and I was going through, I also, I was mainstreamed, so I went to a public school, but in high school I went to a school for the blind, and the same library that didn’t realize that they sent the eleven-year-old girl the Once a Princess book, and still didn’t realize that I was probably too young, according, ‘cause they, if it’s explicit descriptions of sex, then like, by law, they’re not allowed to send you, if you’re under eighteen, unless you have a guardian or parent’s permission, they’re not allowed to send you stuff.

Sarah:  Which is, like, super annoying.

Meka:  Yeah.  And I never really had the, you know, a lot of times on, sometimes on your podcast and when I’m reading people’s stories about how they found romance, it’s typically, you know, that I read it, you know, I found my mom’s stack of romance novels in the closet kind of thing.

Sarah:  Yes.

Meka:  So I never, I never really had that experience, so I have no idea what my mom – [laughs] – what she, what she read.  I’m sure that probably, she probably read some romance novels, but you know, I don’t, I’m not really sure.  But it went from tape and, and we had things like, I read the Flowers in the Attic book when I was, like, fifteen.  I read that entire series, and for me, that was, like, the taboo of taboo, right?  And, and the Flowers in the Attic book, the tape was messed up, and so there was this squeaking noise that got progressively worse as the book continued, but I kept reading it because I, there was no other way I was going to be able to read it, and then my teacher gave me the greatest gift.  She gave the greatest gift to her students.  She read the Mercedes Lackey, she read the, the Vanyel books, the magic’s, Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Price, those, those books, she read them to us on tape, and so, and she would let us borrow the recording that she made, and these were, that, that was my introduction to, to fantasy and Mercedes Lackey.

Sarah:  Cool!

Meka:  And then the library ended up sending me a romance novel again in Braille.  They sent me one in Braille, and it was Hidden Fires by Sandra Brown, and I have, like, muscle memory for the sex scenes, because –

Sarah:  [Laughs] You have muscle –

Meka:  I do!  I do!

Sarah:  I think you need to explain that, because I am confused.

Meka:  I just realized how that came out – how that sounded.

Sarah:  Yeah!

Meka:  But – [laughs] but it was, it’s three volumes, and so, if I was going on a trip or somewhere, I had to figure out, okay, what volume of the book am I going to take?  Am I going to take volume one and hope I don’t finish it by the time my vacation is over?  Or do I take volume one and volume two, and if I don’t finish volume one, I’m still going to have volume two, and it’s really bulky.

Sarah:  I have been there.

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And my books aren’t even in Braille, so they’re smaller.

Meka:  Yeah!  So you, you understand!

Sarah:  I completely understand.  I remember very clearly packing for a vacation, having an entire second suitcase full of books, and running out of books.

Meka:  This book is also really bodice ripper-y.

Sarah:  Which one is this, Hidden Fires?

Meka:  Hidden Fires by Sandra Brown, but it’s my favorite romance genre, which is not, it’s not really being, I don’t know if it’s, like, out of vogue now or what, but I fricking love Westerns.  I love Westerns!  I do!  And this is definitely, like, it’s a Western and a ranch and all kinds of stuff, but I can, I can open a Braille copy of that book, and I did this with my best friends, and I showed, I showed her, okay, page, page this and this, this is a sex scene.  This is the first sex scene.  All right skip a few pages.  All right, here’s the second sex scene.  All right, here’s the other sex scene, and she was like, oh, my gosh!  I thought you were just kidding when you said you knew where every sex scene in that book was!

Sarah:  Oh, no!

Meka:  I loved, I loved Hidden Fires.  So they sent that to me.  Well then, then, probably like in 2003 was when Bookshare came to be, and, and that –

Sarah:  Bookshare is amazing.

Meka:  It is!  And it opened up a whole new world for me, and we had books, and they were scanned, and there were lots of scannos and errors, but you didn’t complain about it because you were just so grateful to have –

Sarah:  A bigger library!

Meka:  – a bigger library and books, and books to read.  And then, and then the Kindle, the Kindle came out, and it wasn’t until the third version of the Kindle that they added voice support, and it was not very good voice support.  You couldn’t re-, you couldn’t go by word, you couldn’t go by the spelling, you couldn’t check how a word was spelled, you know, you couldn’t do any of those things, but again, it opened up, like, a whole other world of, of books, and then when they finally made the Kindle app accessible and I started finding out about presses that sold books that were, that did not have DRM on it, which –

Sarah:  Isn’t that amazing?

Meka:  It just, it just opened up such a whole new, a whole new world, which is why, like, I get a little irritated when there’s, like, an author/read-, an author/reviewer kerfuffle or something, and then, and then someone’s like, well, don’t read her book, and my kneejerk reaction is, don’t you tell me what not to read!

Sarah:  [Laugh]

Meka:  You don’t understand!  You know?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  You don’t know where I’ve been.

Meka:  Exact-

Sarah:  You don’t know what I’ve seen.

Meka:  Exactly, and so when, and when Amazon, like, I have kind of a reputation in, on Twitter of being a brain-breaker – [laughs] – so, so when, you know, Amazon, when people started publishing, you know, probably books that are never going to be published by NLS ever, like, oh, there’s one, it was Maggie the Milked Maid.

Sarah:  I’m sorry, what?

Meka:  It was Maggie the Milked Maid.

Sarah:  Milked maid, as in –

Meka:  Yes, there’s –

Sarah:  – it, it, it, yeah, okay, I’m, um, yeah.

Meka:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  And, and I read that –

Sarah:  Okay.

Meka:  – and I live tweeted my reading.  It is, it is a terrible book.  It’s terrible.  It’s terribly written.  There’re lots of typos in it.  I don’t know how, like, she needed a spellchecker and an editor or something.  And, and I read it, and I live tweeted it on Twitter, and so now, now the running joke is don’t ask Meka to recommend you a book because – I never recommended Maggie the Milked Maid, but it was there, you know what I mean?  Like, it was a book.

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Meka:  It was there, and so I was going to, I was going to read it just to, just to see, because I never thought that people would write, like, and – SPOILER ALERT:  The heroine doesn’t even get an orgasm –

Sarah:  What?!

Meka:  – after all the crap she has to go through –

Sarah:  No!

Meka:  – so.  Yeah, it was, it was literally, like –

Sarah:  Okay, unacceptable.

Meka:  – it was unacceptable!

Sarah:  Unacceptable.  No.

Meka:  Twelve pages of my life that I’m never going to get back.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, my God.  But yet, you went from a period of time when you had so little available to you that –

Meka:  Yes.

Sarah:  – now, with so much, you want to try to read everything, and you don’t want to hear anyone telling you what you should or shouldn’t be reading or –

Meka:  Yes!  It –

Sarah:  – where you should or shouldn’t be buying books, ‘cause it’s like, you don’t understand what it’s like to not have any.

Meka:  Exactly, and then when the whole, like, dinosaur porn, see, I’ve never read the dinosaur books or anything like that yet, but I –

Sarah:  You should read, you should read Carrie’s Jurassic Jane Eyre lesbian retelling.

Meka:  Ooh!  Okay!

Sarah:  Yeah.

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I’ll send it to you.  It’s –

Meka:  You had to twist my arm for that; you saw that, right?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yes.  That was a really hard job convincing, and now I’m nervous.  No, you’re, you’re, you will like it very much, ‘cause it is very silly and, you know, if you’re going to read dinosaur porn, this is the dinosaur porn to read.

Meka:  I just feel like if it’s not, if it’s, if somebody doesn’t get eaten by a T. rex, then I feel like it’s not very authentic.  [Laughs] You know, like, I do, I do need Jurassic Park.  Like, I was, I was just thinking, really?  Dinosaurs?  How’d that, how’s that work, but I love, I love crack, and I love, like, I love crack writing and crack authors, because that was definitely something that I never, I didn’t have, and so now that there’s such an abundance of it, I love it.  I don’t, I don’t like when people get, you know, like, a little, a little too preachy for my tastes about, about reading crack, because again, I’m like, don’t you tell me what not to read!  You know?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I completely understand!  And I get, I get my back up when someone tells me what I should or shouldn’t read or how I should interact with books.  That’s what ticks me off, like, when you, when you publish a book, your control over that book is over, because the experience that a reader has with it belongs to them, and, you know, they may be factually incorrect, and for, for reasons that they didn’t like it, but it’s their experience.  You don’t get to tell them how to read your book.

Meka:  That brings me to another point of, I never paid attention to publishers.  I’m trying now to pay more attention, because I’m trying to figure out who, who the publishers are that I like, because you, you have publishers, and then you have imprints –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  – and I honestly never paid attention because I just skipped through that part of the book –

Sarah:  Yep.

Meka:  – to get to the beginning, and so I’m finding, like, I’m trying to figure out, okay, Harlequin, I don’t, I don’t know what, what style of Harlequin I like, you know –

Sarah:  Of course!

Meka:  – and so I’m, I’m figuring it out, and it’s, I read a Harlequin Heartwarming book, and I was like, this book, I really like this book.  I, I know that it’s very light on the sex scenes, if any.  I’ve only read two, so I’m not an expert yet, but – [laughs] – and, and that there’s no cursing, but man, this character in this book is making me so mad I want to turn this into whichever Harlequin imprint allows the most, the most cursing in it and tell this character off!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I’m sorry, Miss Heroine, we need to relocate you to a different line so that I may curse you out –

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – because we have a problem.  So please tell me about this book, because when you were like, Sarah, I would love to be a guest on the podcast, and this is what you said, and I quote:  “Everyone deserves to hear about the book that was a five-star read until it got four stars because the hero used chocolate pie as a lube.”

Meka:  [Laughs] I’m surprised you did not run away screaming.

Sarah:  Clearly you do not know me very well, because that is the kind of sentence that will make me perk up and lean in.  Like, I don’t need to lean in professionally.  I don’t need to be told how to, you know, further my own ambition professionally.  I am going to lean in for chocolate pie lube.  This is what I’m here to lean in for, so please tell me –

Meka:  [Laughs] God!

Sarah:  – please, please, please tell me.

Meka:  So this book, this book is a great book, it really is.  It’s called Bad Girl by Night, and it’s by Lacey Alexander, and it’s got a lot of my favorite kind of tropes.  I, I, I like the abused people trope where I get to see them, you know, kind of make peace with their past and, you know, get, and, and solve a lot of things that happened in their past, so I really like that trope a lot.  This, this, the heroine, named Carly, goes, and by day she, I forgot what her job is, but she’s just this small town, you would never think that –

Sarah:  Something.

Meka:  Yeah, small town something.  Well, at night she goes to a different town and has, and propositions men in a bar, like anonymous men in a bar, and has sex with them, and she goes by a different name.  And –

Sarah:  Ohhh-kay.

Meka:  Yeah, and this was, like, this is so my, this is my catnip right here, okay.

Sarah:  Of course.

Meka:  And so the book starts out, she’s in this other town, and she has a threesome with the hero and his, and his friend, and, and there’s, it’s a little bit of BDSM, a little bit, but not a lot, but the best part for me about that scene is that you’ve got, like, this alpha guy who is trying – not an alpha-hole! – but –

Sarah:  Of course.

Meka:  – ‘cause I don’t like alpha-holes.  I want to push them off a cliff too.  [Laughs] But you’ve got, you know, this guy, and they’re trying, he’s, he’s used to being in control, but she wants the control, because this is what makes her feel better is to have control, and this is, like, the one area in her life where she feels like she’s got a lot of control over, and so –

Sarah:  Makes sense to me!

Meka:  – there’s, like, kind of a power struggle in the, in the bedroom, and you get it from the hero’s point of view –

Sarah:  Ohhh?

Meka:  – because he’s trying to, he’s trying to wrest that power struggle from her –

Sarah:  Hmmm!

Meka:  – but she’s not really letting him, and so it’s – ugh! – so good!  Well, then she meets him, because he just took a job in her town as a cop.

Sarah:  Uh-oh.

Meka:  So she’s like, oh, shit.  This guy’s going to tell my secret.  You know, it’s, it’s going to be terrible, and she’s really embarrassed, but they, they get together, and it’s definitely an erotica read, but it’s, there’s so much emotion in this book, and so I’m, like, reading along happily, la la-la la-la, this book is so good it’s making me cry, it’s hitting all my good buttons, you know –

Sarah:  Of course, yeah.

Meka:  – this is amazing, and then we get to, like, the obligatory, the obligatory anal sex scene part, and –

Sarah:  I love how it’s an obligatory anal sex.  Like, there was no doubt that the back door would be used in the course of this adventure.

Meka:  [Laughs] Yep, it was going to happen, and, and, you know, I’m just like, okay, this is, all right, you know, not one of my favorite things to read about in a book, but, you know, this, this author’s really working for me, so –

Sarah:  Okay, yeah.

Meka:  – I’m going to keep going, and you know, they had, they have dinner, and they have dessert, they have chocolate pie, and, okay, the most that I thought he was going to do with the chocolate pie was just maybe lick it off of her or something?  But then he just starts using it as, as lube, and I was like, what the actual fuck right now?  Like, what?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  You couldn’t go to a – you could not – you had a condom.  You couldn’t, you couldn’t possibly have grabbed some lube, too, while you were at the grocery store?  Like, was –

Sarah:  So, chocolate pie was what he went with?

Meka:  That’s what he went with, and I’m like, are you fucking kidding me right now?  Like, the pie doesn’t even get a safe word in this!  The, nobody asked the pie where it wanted to go!  Like –

Sarah:  So in case anyone here who is listening is an erotic romance author with a need to open a bakery or your character, Safe Word Pie is a good bakery name.  [Laughs]

Meka:  Please!  Like, I mean, nobody asked the pie where it wanted to go.  Like, nobody, the pie did not get a, did not get a choice in this, and then I’m thinking, okay, you got chocolate pie, you got crust.  This is not comfortable, and you’re going to stick that in there and then you’re going to stick you up there?  Like, are you, are you kidding me right now?  I’m like, ugh!  And I marked that thing down a whole star, because I just, I was so stunned.  I could not even.  Like, you couldn’t possibly – God forbid that you go to Rite-Aid and get some frigging lube, okay?  I mean –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Do you remember, do you remember the anal sex scene in the Blaze that I reviewed, it was a Tori Carrington book?  And it was the first time, to my knowledge and to other reviewers’ knowledge, that anal was in a Harlequin Blaze, and the hero is so overcome with lust that he’s all, he, like, he has the girl on a piano, ‘cause of course he’s playing piano in a melancholy fashion in the dark –

Meka:  Of course.

Sarah:  – ‘cause that’s what emo alpha heroes do in their penthouse condos.

Meka:  I would read that book, by the way.  I love emo, I love emo characters.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  This guy was a whiny brute.

Meka:  Oh.

Sarah:  Like, it was really frustrating for me –

Meka:  Ugh.

Sarah:  – but the thing is, he’s like, all right, she, he doesn’t have a condom, so he’s not going to go, you know, the standard route, because, you know, he doesn’t want her to get pregnant –

Meka:  [Sighs]

Sarah:  – so he decides that it’s back door time, but he doesn’t go and, ‘cause he can’t get the condom in his giant condo which has got to be, like, you know, maybe a couple hundred feet away is the bedroom?  Can’t go get a condom.  He can’t even go into the kitchen and get some olive oil, a little chicken broth, nothing.  He just flips her over, and off he goes.  And, like, there’s no lube.  So I’m like, okay, so, wait, wait, wait.  You, you are so inconsiderate that you can’t use lube.  You, you don’t really get her permission, although she’s, of course, there’re like stars and cresting and waves of stuff, but I’m like, you, you, you, you won’t, you won’t go the standard, the, the standard valley is unacceptable without a condom because – why am I afraid of saying vaginal?  Like, we just talked about anal.  Why am I being coy here?

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Let me just start this over, ‘cause really –

Meka:  It’s all good!

Sarah:  – fuck it!  This is already really not safe for work, unless you’re wearing headphones.

Meka:  Nope!

Sarah:  Everyone should wear headphones!

Meka:  [Laughs] Everyone!

Sarah:  Wear your headphones!  So he won’t go at it vaginally, because she might get pregnant, but without a condom in her butt is okay.  Like, I can’t even unpack how much is wrong with that.  I need, like, an eighteen-wheeler and a team of movers –

Meka:  Right.

Sarah:  – to help me unpack and un-bubble-wrap everything that is wrong with that particular scenario.  But the fact that he doesn’t use lube –

Meka:  Wow.

Sarah:  – really just absolutely appalled me, and now here is a guy who’s like, chocolate pie!

Meka:  Like, I mean, you couldn’t possibly just, just –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  God forbid that we prepare like a Boy Scout beforehand and go get some damn lube from the – like, are you kidding me right now?

Sarah:  Who are you that you don’t have any kitchen oil?  Like, vegetable oil?  Olive oil?

Meka:  Right!  You know, there’s no canola oil in there?  Like, come on!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  Chocolate pie!  I –

Sarah:  Get some Crisco, for the love of God, man!  [Laughs]

Meka:  Please!  And, and it wasn’t even a scene, in my opinion, that was necessary to the book, and I’m like –

Sarah:  Oh, it had to be anal, man!  There’s got to be butt!

Meka:  And I’m like, who edited this –

Sarah:  Anal is the new oral.  [Laughs]

Meka:  – that they were just like, okay!  Chocolate pie!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  That, all right, sure!  We’ll just pass that right on through.  The rest of it I loved.  I, I do think that it is very much, it is a worthy read, and it’s one of my favorite books, but if you read it and you don’t like the, the crack aspect of the, of the anal pie, which – [laughs] – made another pun!  Then, then just, you know, you can just skip that whole scene and pretend that it doesn’t exist, but I’m just telling you that it does, and it broke me in fundamental ways.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah.  I can understand why.

Meka:  Ugh.  Like, ugh.  Also?  I need, I need for someone to write the book where somebody, like, does some anal on the heroine without using any lube, and she punches him in the fucking face.

Sarah:  Yes!

Meka:  Like, I need that.  I need that realism –

Sarah:  Yes, that needs to happen.

Meka:  – that needs to happen, because uh-uh.  [Laughs] Like, just no!  Why?!  Why?  Come on!  If you, if you cannot, if you can’t even be bothered to see to the heroine’s pleasure and safety, then fuck you and the horse that you rode in on.  You don’t deserve to be a romance hero.

Sarah:  Yes!  How the hero handles anal reveals a great deal about him.  Especially –

Meka:  It really does.

Sarah:  – especially if he’s willing to desecrate a perfectly acceptable dessert.

Meka:  Right?  Oh, God.  My friend, so, do you know @bardsong on, Shannon @bardsong on Twitter?

Sarah:  I do.

Meka:  So, she –

Sarah:  I mean, I haven’t met her personally, but I talk to her on Twitter.

Meka:  I love her to, I love her to pieces, I do.  And, and I read, I find horrible things in books, and then I call on her on the phone and I read them to her.

[Laughter]

Meka:  And –

Sarah:  You’re a good person.

Meka:  I do!  She might not think that all the time, but, but I do.  And so, but she told me, my favorite dessert is, is cheesecake, and she told me of a book that she read where the chef, there’s a chef in a restaurant, and he’s like, you know, I want the heroine to notice me, so I’ll just put my piece of pubic hair in her cheesecake, and I was like, what?!  Are you kidding me?!

Sarah:  No!

Meka:  First of all, you’ve broken, like ten million safety and health regulations right there.

Sarah:  No.

Meka:  Yes, yes!  Secondly, this is cheesecake!  You never –

Sarah:  You don’t hurt cheesecake.

Meka:  You don’t hurt the cheesecake, and I will, I will break up with an author for what they do to food.  I will!  I will!  And I, I will not read this person’s book because they, they desecrated cheesecake, and, like, why would you do that?  There, you could be, God forbid that you be a real romance hero and feed the heroine the cheesecake from a spoon.  That’s romantic!

Sarah:  Dude.

Meka:  I’m just telling you that we, had I written that book, there would have been a lot of people going to jail.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No, that, that is a significant crime against dessert.

Meka:  It is!  It is, and I just, ugh!  Like, why?  Why do that?  Stop it!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  Please, authors, please don’t desecrate the food, please?

Sarah:  Please don’t hurt desserts.  Desserts are important.

Meka:  Please don’t hurt dessert.  And, and please – I love interrupted sex scenes, but I don’t like interrupted dinner scenes?  So, like, I read Carolyn Jewel?  I love her!  I love that she writes this great fantasy series with demons and stuff, and –

Sarah:  Ooh, which ones do you like?

Meka:  Okay, so now I don’t remember the names of the book!

Sarah:  That’s all right; that’s what Google’s for.

Meka:  All right!  [Laughs]

Sarah: So the demon series by Carolyn Jewel.

Meka:  Yes!  And she throws a lot of tropes, she puts them out on their, she just tosses them on their head, which gets me a little worried when I read, like, reviewers that write – I, I do, I review for The Book Pushers.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  I don’t know if I mentioned that to you.  It’s been a while, ‘cause I, I was in a huge reading slump.

Sarah:  You mean, like, My Wicked Enemy and the My Immortals series or the Crimson series?

Meka:  Yes!

Together:  The My Immortals series.

Sarah:  All right!

Meka:  Yes!  And, and so there’re, like, all these scenes of, she, she puts their tropes on their heads, and I get a little nervous, because when review-, reviewers write that an author puts, you know, tropes that are kind of tried and true, they dump it on their heads, I’m, like, oh, boy.  [Laughs] You know, I get a little concerned, but this, but she does it in such a great way.  But she has this thing that happens where they just got done shopping at the grocery store, and they have bags and bags of groceries, and they go up to their apartment, and there’s a demon, there’s, like, a bad demon waiting on them, and I’m like, oh, man!  Damn it!  They interrupted dinner!  So not only should you kill him because he’s a bad demon, like a super bad guy, you should also kill him because he murdered, ‘cause he, like, interrupted dinner.

Sarah:  Oh, absolutely!

Meka:  And all of these groceries that are gone to waste, or, or like when the hero, or you know, like, one of the characters, they make dinner and you’ve got dinner on the table and they’re just about to eat, and then, like, either demons or sexytimes interrupts it, and I’m like, but what happened to the bacon?  [Laughs] There was bacon!  What happened to it?

Sarah:  I, well, at least the bacon wasn’t used inappropriately.

Meka:  Thank, right?  She’s never used it as lube, thank, in her books, thank goodness, so –

[Laughter]

Meka:  So, oh, my gosh, but I’m like, where’s dinner?  But I love, I love that series.  It’s really fun.

Sarah:  Don’t neglect the food, y’all!

Meka:  Please don’t neglect the food.  Let them eat their dinner!  Let – please!

Sarah:  We all need to eat.

Meka:  They do.  Got to keep their strength up for all those pages of sex they’re going to have later, so – [laughs] – let them, let them eat cake!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All right.  So tell me something here.

Meka:  What’s that?

Sarah:  What books are you telling people about the most lately?  What books have you been recommending to other people?

Meka:  Well, I feel like I’m always about five years behind the times when it comes to books.

Sarah:  No, I really, I promise you’re not –

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – because everything is new to someone.

Meka:  ‘Cause by the time, like, a trope or something, you know, maybe in ten years I’ll start reading billionaire books, right, so –

[Laughter]

Meka:  By the time it’s all, like, out of vogue, then I’m like, oh, my God!  That book!  That was really, really popular in 2015 that everyone loved, but now I’m just jumping on the bandwagon.  I have been binge-reading series, so let’s see, ‘cause there was, there are so many, there’s so many – this is going to be an expensive podcast.  [Laughs] If someone asks me about favorite romantic suspense books, for example –

Sarah:  Right.

Meka:  – I always refer them to Don’t Tell by Karen Rose.

Sarah:  She is some, she writes some scary shit.

Meka:  She, I, I used to binge-read her a lot, and then the town that I lived in, there was a concern of, of there being a serial killer in my town, and the murders were happening, like, near where I lived –

Sarah:  Oh, my God!

Meka:  – and I was like, oh, hell no!  I can’t, all of a sudden, I, I, I was not able to read romantic suspense for a good four or five years, but –

Sarah:  Whatever happened with that?

Meka:  They never solved the murders.

Sarah:  Freaky!

Meka:  They never solved it, so it was really –

Sarah:  Well, clearly nobody had danger boner and a made a –

Meka:  Clearly.

Sarah:  – clearly obvious mistake.

Meka:  Right?!  So, so I read, I love Don’t Tell.  It’s got, you know, the, the heroine is dealing with a domestic violence situation, and her husband is a cop, and so she has to escape from him, and she does, she escapes from him, and she changes, like, her whole life and her identity, and, and the book is, it’s just, it’s really fast-paced, and it, she gets you from page one.  So Don’t Tell is one of my favorites.  I would, I also hesitantly recommend The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner.  I like that book a lot.  The body count is really high, and toward the end, she does something that is so unnecessary that I now refer to it as pulling a Lisa Gardner, so please – [laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, boy.

Meka:  So, but, but it was, it was still good, and the end was good, but she did something, and I just, I haven’t been able to really read anything else by her, ‘cause ugh!  But if, anyone who has read The Perfect Husband will know exactly what I’m talking about, but I can’t, I don’t want to spoil it for people, but it’s just one of those things where I was like, why did you do that?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  And it made me cry.  Like, I ugly-cried in the book, so.  I finally jumped onto the Kate, the Kate Daniels bandwagon?

Sarah:  Yes, you mentioned, and it is a popular and good bandwagon to be on.  You have lots of company.

Meka:  I am reading, I stopped after book six, ‘cause they broke my heart a little bit, and – [laughs] – so book seven is out and book eight I, I know came out, and so I’m waiting to, I’m waiting for, I think I’m going to read those when book nine comes out, because I, I don’t want to be, like, at the end, you know what I mean?

Sarah:  Yep.

Meka:  Like, I don’t want it to be over.  Archangel, the archangel series by Nalini Singh.

Sarah:  Oh, gosh.

Meka:  Oh, my gosh.  I, I read those probably in about two weeks at work.  [Laughs] And they, it’s lush and dark and awesome and incredible, and I have to tell you, it probably does not sound like a big deal, but when Archangel’s Enigma came out on, last week, and, and it felt so good to be able to read books when they came out.  Like –

Sarah:  You mean, you, like, you get to read the new book –

Meka:  I get to read –

Sarah:  – along with everyone else.

Meka:  On the day that it comes out, and that, that’s not ever going to get old for me.

Sarah:  You know what’s funny.  I know, I know a few people for whom that is still a big thrill.  Like, I have the money to buy a book in hardcover if I really want it.  I can get the book on release day.  Or, technology being what it is, I can stay up ‘til midnight and get the book on my Kindle at 12:01 a.m. because –

Meka:  Yes!

Sarah:  – it’s going to download automatically!  Like, that, that is a thrill that I think a lot of people do not take for granted, which is really cool.

Meka:  It was just amazing, and when I was a teenager –

Sarah:  You don’t have to wait now!

Meka:  I don’t!  And that’s when the, so, that’s, when the Harry Potter series came out, National, National Braille Press, you were talking about, we were talking about how expensive it is to produce Braille?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  The National Braille Press did what I think is pretty, is pretty legendary.  It was a game changer for us as, as blind readers.  They had the books available on the date of publication, and they sold it for the, they promised not to sell it over the price that you would get for the standard print book.

Sarah:  That’s amazing.  That is amazing, ‘cause Braille books –

Meka:  It is.

Sarah:  – are super costly.

Meka:  It is, and, and for them to do that, it was just such a, it was such a gift, and so now, and then when the Kindle came out, I was able to just talk to, talk to people and, you know, about the book as they’re reading, as we’re reading it together, and there was no, there was no, like, six degrees of separation, you know, and there was no having to wait, you know, maybe two years, three years, for it to come out on, on tape.  It was just, okay, here’s this book, and it’s out on the same day, and, and I can talk about it on Twitter, and I can talk about it to my friends, and that’s just, that is such a gift.  Technology has made that such a gift that I really, really treasure.  I love it!

Sarah:  It really is awesome, isn’t it?

Meka:  It is, oh!  It is so great!  It’s so great!  And now, like, the book deals that come out?  I get stuff now just to have it, you know?  And, ‘cause I think there’s part of me that’s kind of scared that it’s all going to, like, go away, and I know that it’s not, but there’s part of me – and, and even with the access that we have, we still don’t have, like, complete, complete access yet.  Like, I would love to be a part of, of Scribd, and I don’t know that it’s that accessible yet.  I know they went to court over it.  I know that the judge ruled in their, in the person’s favor that Scribd was not accessible and that it needed to be, but I, and I’m interested in kind of trying it out, but I’m like, I have to pay real money for this.  [Laughs] You know what I mean?  Like, I’ve got to pay money, and I don’t want to pay money if I’m not sure that it’s going to work.

Sarah:  I completely understand that, totally.  Also, you have such technology that’s natively accessible to you now.

Meka:  Yes!  The iPhone, like, ugh!  Apple changed the game, and now I’ve got all these books on my phone, and my Voice Dream Reader app, I think I have, like, 270 books in the app.

Sarah:  Isn’t it nice?  Like, your purse isn’t any heavier –

Meka:  Mm-mm.

Sarah:  – but you have 300 books in there.

Meka:  I have all these books, and then I have, like, a, a device that’s not a mainstream device that also reads books.  I think I’m starting to just collect devices that I can, you know, that I can read books on, just so that I have it there, so, okay, if my phone goes out, I can switch to this.  Oh, the other thing I was going to tell you of books that I recommend?  So, for you, Sarah, if you have never read the Elder Races series in audio –

Sarah:  Ohhh!

Meka:  – the narrator is extremely talented and is just – ugh! – it’s great!  It’s so great, I don’t, I can’t even read it with my, like, little robot man voice on it, because the narration is so good, and I am so used to how, how she reads it that I’m not – [laughs] – I don’t want to change it up, but the Elder Races theories by, series by Thea Harrison is so awesome!  And with audio, she does all the voices and – ugh! – it’s great!

Sarah:  I have been thinking about reading that, and I haven’t had a chance to get into it, but I have a lot of travel coming up, so I think you’re right.  I think I have to try that in audio, ‘cause if you recommend –

Meka:  Oh, you’ve got to.

Sarah:  – the audio narration, I will use the audio narration.

Meka:  I do.  I, I do, and it’s just, oh, they’re just great books in general.  I love, I love it.

Sarah:  That’s awesome.

Meka:  I love it.

Sarah:  Thank you.

Meka:  What are your favorite, what are your favorite tropes?

Sarah:  My favorite tropes.  I have a serious thing for forced proximity between nerds and people who have to learn how to talk to someone when they’re terrified or unable to do it.  So I like socially awkward nerds.  My favorite trope of all is, I don’t want to like you, I don’t want to like you, I can’t stop thinking about your hair, damn it.  That’s –

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – that’s my crack, right there.

Meka:  Yes!

Sarah:  And if they’re stuck in a snowstorm, even better.  ‘Cause the thing about the snowstorm – unless you’re from Boston, in which case you’re like, shut up, Sarah, it’s so not the case – you know, no one’s dying.  There’s no hurricane, it’s not a tornado, the danger is slow-moving and annoying, but if you have power and heat and you have, you know, blankets and you don’t have to go, and you don’t have to be anywhere, you know, it’s forced proximity through a not super-duper life, life-threatening natural disaster, or national, natural event.

Meka:  Ooh!

Sarah:  So I like snowstorms a, a good deal –

Meka:  Me too.

Sarah:  – but trying to resist the attraction to someone for personal, not, not stupid reasons, and the thing is, all too often the, I shouldn’t like you, I don’t want to like you, I really don’t want to like you trope is, well, this person is my sibling’s best friend.  And that never works for me, because all too often, the, well, this person is my, my sibling’s best friend, or my best friend’s sibling, either way.  The problem is, you’re basically relying on a rule that doesn’t necessarily exist.

Meka:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, you can insist that that’s a thing, but, like, among actual adults that I’ve spoken to in my own colloquial gathering of anecdata, like, I like my friend, and I like my sister, and as long as they didn’t involve me in their drama, it would be fine.

Meka:  Yes.

Sarah:  Like, especially when –

Meka:  Yep.

Sarah:  – the forbidden person is a girl, because then it’s just sexism, and that just pisses me off.

Meka:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And I can totally get, you two are both very volatile people, and if you get together and it, it’s a mess and it ends horribly, that’s going to suck for me, but again, you are all grownups.  Put on your big people pants and, you know, grow, grow up and adult up.  It’s time to make this work if that’s what you’re really interested in, so insisting that we can’t do this because this is my sister’s best friend or this is my sibling’s best friend or this is my best friend’s sibling, I don’t buy it, especially when it’s just insisted upon.  I need an actual conflict –

Meka:  Yes.

Sarah:  – that stands in the way of giving people the frustration of, I really, really don’t want to like you, and I do.  Damn it, now what do I do?

Meka:  Yeah.  I have to –

Sarah:  Those are some of my favorites.

Meka:  Ooh, I like that.  I like that a lot.  I, I, I like, I like the best friend, I like the sib-, like, this is my best friend’s sibling, but, but in contemporary times, if it’s like, oh, you’re dating my sister?  Let me punch you in the face.  Like – [laughs] – you know, that, that’s when it doesn’t work for me.  I’m not going to, I’m not going to argue over it.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.  I totally understand that.

Meka:  Like, you guys can’t be, like, y’all can’t be adults?  [Laughs] And I like snowstorms.  I, I like snowstorms, I like us against the world, and I, I, I think probably tropes I, I have, I have more trouble with are, like, the ones where they start out as enemies, because I need them to resolve the enemy part of it fairly early in the book?

Sarah:  And not just with their private parts.

Meka:  Right.  Yeah, I need them to solve the, like – and I, I, I’m learning about myself that if y’all can’t figure your shit out by, before, like, seventy-five to eighty percent in the book and it’s drawn out, like, I need to see a good amount of page time with them being in love and being okay with being in love with each other?

Sarah:  Yep.

Meka:  Or else it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work for me, and so, I recently read a book where, where we’re, like, ninety-five percent in, and they’re still pulling shit on each other –

Sarah:  No.

Meka:  – and I was just like –

Sarah:  No.

Meka:  – are you kidding me right now?  I want to see, I want to see you guys snuggle and be okay with snuggling.  Like, you know, I want you guys to, I want to see you guys being happy.  I want to root for your, for your romance.

Sarah:  Yes, and then the, the, the closeness can’t move so quickly that you’re like, um, you know you just pulled some shit on that person, like, yesterday, right?  Like, this whole cuddling –

Meka:  Yes!

Sarah:  – you know, like, you trust that person enough to fall, fall asleep next to them?  Buuut you just, like, did something evil to them last week?  Really?  No.

Meka:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  No, you can’t, you can’t develop the turnabout too quickly.

Meka:  Mm-mm.  The thing, my pet peeve, or – I was going to say something, and it flew out of my head!  It was like, shoom!  [Laughs] It’s gone.  I, I, I’m finding, like, that I’m becoming probably a little more picky about, about that, about that sort of thing.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Meka:  Unless Westerns, like, Westerns typically have more of an adventure aspect of it that it’s okay?

Sarah:  Oh, they have to.  It’s kind of just, it’s kind of expected.

Meka:  And because of your podcast –

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Sorry in advance.

Meka:  Because of this pod – no, no!  You should not be at all!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  Because of your podcast, I, I started reading Beverly Jenkins, and I’ve, I’ve, am in the middle of reading Topaz, and then I remembered that I hadn’t read the book that you suggested to me, so I’ve stopped reading Topaz to read the Zoe Archer book, but after I’m done with that, I’ll switch back to it.  ‘Cause I’m learning, I’m learning so much that, that I don’t, that I don’t know about, about history and, and it’s, it’s amazing to me, like, and, and I – so here’s the part where I probably say something really volatile, so I don’t know –

Sarah:  Oh, great, say it at the end, and then I’ll end, and it’ll be like, people will be like, what?

Meka:  [Laughs] But, so I’ll say that I’m really enjoying Beverly Jenkins a lot.  I think –

Sarah:  [Gasps] Isn’t she wonderful?

Meka:  She, like, it’s just, wow!  And, so, I don’t know, a lot of people probably don’t know this about me, but maybe you do, that I am, I am, I am African-American, and –

Sarah:  I knew that because you have a picture on your Skype ID, and you’re a black lady –

Meka:  Oh, yeah!  I, I keep forgetting that Skype shows pictures.

Sarah:  – unless you stole – right – unless you stole a picture of another black lady and a, and a blind dog, or a guide dog –

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – I just assumed it was you?  But yes.

Meka:  I try to keep a collection of them, you know.  Black ladies and guide dogs.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I hope all the stock art sites have their alt tags described accurately, ‘cause otherwise you’re going to end up with, like, some strange pictures.

Meka:  [Laughs] Right?  So I understand, okay, so #weneeddiversebooks, that’s the hashtag I see a lot.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Meka:  We need di-, we need diverse books.  I do not dispute that.  [Laughs] We, we do need diverse books.  So often, though, diversity ends with race, and if, and if that’s, then, if that’s the case, then I feel like people are being really shortsighted about that, and –

Sarah:  Oh, I don’t have anything to say about this at all.  No.

Meka:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I have no comments here.  [Laughs]

Meka:  And if you, if you say that only race is important but disability isn’t, you know, then I just instantly, like, your point no longer matters to me.  [Laughs] You know, well, that’s just how I feel, and –

Sarah:  It’s a perfectly valid point, and you are entirely right!  I hope you weren’t expecting me to argue with you.

Meka:  Oh, no!  No, not with this part.

Sarah:  I mean, I could put up a really weak argument, ‘cause I’ve heard all the weak arguments, but, yeah, you’re absolutely right, and I completely agree.

Meka:  So, I, I have two questions, and I want to know what, what your thoughts are.  Firstly, firstly, I would like to go to one of the romance reading conventions –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  – or even, or even to a book signing –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  – okay, or something, something along those lines, but I, to be frankly honest with you, and autographed print book is not going to mean anything to me.  Like, I won’t be able to go through –

Sarah:  Nope.

Meka:  – read the –

Sarah:  Nope.

Meka:  – autographs.

Sarah:  Does nothing for you.

Meka:  But I, I’ve been trying to come up with something else that I could do.  I wish I had, like, a good friend that lived, that lives in my area who loves print books but maybe is shy about going to those kinds of things.  I could (FLAG _____ 1:09:05) here!

Sarah:  You could give them, right.

Meka:  Yeah, you know, I could give it to them.  But I, I want something that’s more tangible.  I’d thought about, like, maybe getting, like, a poster board or something and attaching it to the dog’s harness and, like, you know – [laughs] – and maybe having authors sign those, because then that way it’s something I can put on my wall, and when people come to my house, like, okay, this is from this con, this is from that convention, this is from this book signing.  Like, is that something? – I mean, is that, like, some-, something, could I ask an author to sign something else that’s not, that’s not –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Meka:  Or could I do, like a voice sample?  That would mean a lot to me.  Like, just a couple of –

Sarah:  A voice sample, I was just going to say, I think if you walked around with a digital recorder and asked for a voice signature, you know, hi, this is so-and-so, and thanks for reading my book.  You know, you would have audio samples of a bunch of different authors.  I think that would be really cool.  But you could have them sign a tote bag, you can have them sign a poster.  Some readers, instead of collecting books, like readers who come to Romantic Times from overseas, they make a book in advance with pages, and then they have authors sign the different pages where they featured their books?  Like, they have one printed up online at, like, Shutterfly or something.  People also have authors sign their eReader cases, so, like, the inside cover of an eReader they’ll sign with, like, a gold or blue or, you know, silver Sharpie.  The problem is, those are all visual artifacts, and that doesn’t help you at all.  I think if you wanted to do digital signatures of voice, like, hi, so-and-so, this is, you know, author so-and-so.  I hope you enjoy my book; thanks for reading.  That would be really meaningful for you.  I don’t know what you would do with those, with those voice files, but I think for you, that would be the most meaningful.  I don’t know how exactly to go about setting that up.  I’d have to think about it.  But the short answer is, if you want to go to a reader conference, you absolutely should, and you absolutely can get people to sign things other than books.

Meka:  Okay.  ‘Cause I always get a little ner-, like, there’ve been book signings and things, Patricia Briggs was in Seattle, and I really wanted to go, but I kind of talked myself out of it, because it was like, okay, I’ve got to figure out where, where this place actually is, and is there a line.  Like, are people going to be friendly?  Are they going to be helpful?  You know, you know what I mean?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  So, so, it’s just like, yeah, I don’t, I don’t really know anyone that I could just take with me, but I think that the next time there’s an author in my area that I want, I want to go see, then I think I’m just going to, I think I’m just going to go and do it.  But those are those, those little extra things that I think about, you know, like, okay, where, were are they going to be located?  If it’s a, if it’s, like, in an exhibit hall area, like, okay, which author are you?  Okay, which author are you?  Which author are your?  You know what I mean?

Sarah:  You can also – yes, but you can also get, you can have, get, make – first of all, conferences are super friendly.  You can make a friend and, who will help you, or you can ask in the, when you reg-, when you register, ask if a volunteer would be willing to walk with you through the signing, and I’m sure that they would assign a volunteer to help you out.

Meka:  Okay!  (FLAG _____ 1:12:19) so awesome.

Sarah:  Yeah, so don’t be afraid.  There’re a lot of ways to make that work.  This year’s Romantic Times is in Vegas, so I, I, I think that if you want to sign up for that one, it’s going to be a big conference, so there’ll be a lot of people, but that also means that there will be a lot of people who are volunteering.

Meka:  That, oh, that is true.  Okay.

Sarah:  What’s your other question?

Meka:  I want to be more involve with, with my library –

Sarah:  Okay.

Meka:  – but I’m not quite sure of, I’m not quite sure of how.  Like, I want to, I, I really wish I could just find, like, a, a book club that just, that read, like, romances or other books that have happy endings –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  – that I would like to read.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Meka:  I walked into the Barnes and Noble recently, and they were just like, I said, do you guys have book clubs?  Oh, no, not really.  And, okay, ‘cause, like, I know that they used to.  Do you know where I could go to find book clubs?  No, not really.  Do you, do you want to help me right now?  You know, like, do you, you sound so bored.  Like – [laughs]

Sarah:  Yep, I know that problem.

Meka:  So I want to figure out a way, like, to connect with readers in – ‘cause I, you know, I’m not, I am not ashamed of reading romance.  Like, I used to be!

Sarah:  I understand.

Meka:  I used to be, but I, but now, I’m just like – [laughs] fuck it!  I’m, I’m glad I have a book to read.  So, like, how can I make that happen?  Like, do libraries have book clubs?  And, you know, I want to do more for my local library.  I don’t live very far from it, but, you know, I don’t know what I can do.  Cataloging’s going to kind of be out, you know?  So – [laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah, exactly.  Well, I think if you walk into a, a library and you say, I want to volunteer to help you, they are going to jump on that.  Because they absolutely need help.

Meka:  Okay.

Sarah:  But I don’t know whether or not patrons are able to run book clubs at libraries.  If you say to your library, I want to start a book club for romance readers, they will let you know what the options are.

Meka:  Okay.

Sarah:  Worst case scenario, if there is a, a place where you know you would like to meet, you could just start the club and go there and see who shows up, and if no one shows up, keep trying.

Meka:  Okay.

Sarah:  And if you do set one up and you let me know, I can put it on the website and be like, hey, romance readers, go hang out here on this day.  I know that we’re doing a lot more, we’re doing a lot more romance reader get-togethers, but we, to my knowledge, we are, no one, no one who works for me is in Washington state, but if you wanted to start one and you wanted to do, like, do the setup and the logistics and everything and you sent me the information, I’d absolutely put it on the site for people.

Meka:  Okay!

Sarah:  Just don’t hold it at your house, ‘cause I can’t put your home address on the website.  That would be bad.

Meka:  Oh, no, no!  [Laughs] No, it would be somewhere in, it would be somewhere in public.  I was part of, I was part of a book club in the town that I lived in, and it was all, it was all of, of blind people, and it was awesome because we could download books from the Library for the Blind.

Sarah:  Of course.

Meka:  You know, instead of waiting to get your books, you could just download them, and, and we would all read stuff, and so I was, like, the token romance reader that was there?  But nobody complained after they read the book that I chose for them, so.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yep.

Meka:  So, you know, I, I want to do something like that, like that again, but make it more of, like, a mainstream?  I am not interested in being a part of a literary book club, because I –

Sarah:  No, they’re boring.

Meka:  They’re just boring.  I don’t – [sigh] – I want to, I don’t, I don’t want to talk about, like, why this happened and what that means and – I already did my time.  I read The Great Gatsby and hated it.  [Laughs] I’m done!

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Meka:  Like, okay, so now, I want to read about danger boner.  You know?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Who doesn’t want to read about danger boner?  I mean, really.

Meka:  Exactly!  And fated mates and, like, let’s have some fun romance discussion, and I, I just want to be a part of a reading that work that I know is going to be, is going to be (a) not bitchy because I read romances and (b) not, you know, like, they’re going to be okay with me being a blind person.

Sarah:  Yep.  And blindness tends to freak people out.  They react weirdly to it sometimes.

Meka:  It – oh, man.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  Authors!  Authors, please, please, please be careful about the blind references that you use in your books.

Sarah:  Oh, no.

Meka:  They, they ran into each other like two blind, like two blind people.

Sarah:  What?!

Meka:  You know, like, just stuff like that, or he fumbled through the darkness like a blind man.  First of all –

Sarah:  Oh, no.

Meka:  – we’re used to being blind, so we don’t fucking fumble, so I’m like – [laughs] Secondly, I want somebody to write, you know, she ran, she ran her fingers over, over the sculpted, angle, angels, angles and planes of his body like a good Braille book.  I never see that blindness reference in there, you know?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  His nipples spelled this word.

Meka:  [Laughs] His nipples were the letter C.  The letter C was prominent –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  The letter C was prominent on her chest.  You know?  I’m like –

Sarah:  Ohhh, she was a C cup, and her nipples said so.

Meka:  [Laughs] Yes!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  Yes, there’s a, there, they make shirts that, they’re, they are in Braille and print, and so the Braille is used with, they make the Braille with puff paint?

Sarah:  Of course.

Meka:  And so there’re shirts that say, like, if you can read this, then you’re too close.

[Laughter]

Meka:  So, I love, I love stuff like that.  I, I’m a little scared when I see a blind character in a book.

Sarah:  Yeah?

Meka:  ‘Cause – I’m about to spoil The Langoliers for you.  [Laughs] Have you ever read that, by Stephen King?

Sarah:  The who?

Meka:  The Langoliers?

Sarah:  No, I have not, so spoil away.

Meka:  Okay.  The Langoliers taught me that if you’re blind, you’re going to die.

Sarah:  Oh, no!

Meka:  So, killed the blind girl in the, in the book, and she was a kid!  That was a –

Sarah:  No, well, I’m automatically out.  There’s, that’s not happening for me.  Nope.

Meka:  Hmm-mm.  Nope!  And, and so Stephen King taught me that blind people didn’t really have a whole lot of value in, in his books.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Okay, no.

Meka:  Romance has taught me that they’re all going to, they’re going to see at the end, and I – oh, hi, Lester!

[jingling]

Sarah:  Hey, Lester!  What’s up, buddy?

[more jingling]

Meka:  Okay, he’s just going to jingle-jangle all the way home here.

[Laughter]

Meka:  Lester!  [jingling stops] Thank you!  But, for example, like, Shiloh Walker has the, if you, If You Hear Her, like, those, those trilogy, that trilogy, and the character is a blind chef, and I really want to read it, but I’m really, really scared, because I, I love Shiloh Walker’s books, and I know I am petty enough to be like, if you didn’t write this blind character correctly, I might not read anything else you write!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You’re, so you’re afraid to read blind characters from authors that you like –

Meka:  I am afraid to read, ‘cause I say, I say I want diversity in books, but I’m afraid to read of a, of a, about blind characters, because I know that I’m going to read it, I’m, I’m going to judge, I’m going to be looking for the, for the errors, because I’m so used to them, and –

Sarah:  And you’re so used to finding them.

Meka:  Yeah, I’m so used to finding them, and I’m worried that, like, I’m worried I’m not going to like it and that it’s going to be done wrong and, and so often it’s, you know, like, they don’t ever – going blind, it is a terrible thing.  Going, it is a terrible thing to go blind, but it’s also not the end, it’s not the end of, of your life, and when people, when authors write that it is, it just pisses me off, because I’m just like, oh, my gosh, they can do this!  They could be doing this!  They could be doing – nobody asked me!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Meka:  Nobody came and talked to me about this.  I could’ve given you some answers, because you can still write an emotional book without, without, like, kicking your reader in the face – [laughs] – over, over, like, a character concept, and when they, and when the conflict is resolved by, by the hero or the heroine regaining their sight, I feel like they have missed such a fundamental part of writing, of writing a good book, and then, and then I just feel cheated and upset and just, like, okay, so the hero or the heroine wasn’t good enough because they were blind, so we had to make them be able to see again so that they would be worthy of the love of the other person.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Meka:  And, and there’s so much, like, you know, you have to deal with stereotypes and people’s judgments and stuff all the time, and I don’t want to deal with that in my, in my books.  I just don’t!  Like, that should be the last place for, like –

Sarah:  I completely understand.

Meka:  – ugh! – where I should not have to, you know, read about that, and so I’ve, I’m, I’m told that the Shiloh Walker book is really, that it’s really, really, really good, but I, I do admit that I’m really hesitant, because I, I’m just really nervous, and I want it to be, I want it to be good, and I want her, I don’t want her to be kickass because she’s blind?  I want her to be, she’s, she, she’s kickass and, she’s blind and she is a kickass, and it’s all a part of, of who she is.

Sarah:  You want it to be good because not having it good is so extra-painful.

Meka:  Yes!  And ugh!  Like, I just want to throw something when, when I read, when I read this.  I’m like, oh!  You know, oh, he went blind.  Let’s just knock him on the head again, and then he can see.

Sarah:  Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Meka:  Why can’t that happen at the beginning of the book?  Like, just – [laughs]

Sarah:  Pesky little blot, pesky little blood clot, like The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne has a heroine who is blind because she’s near an explosion, and I think a blood clot is, is – it’s a historical, so the theory is that there’s a blood clot pressing on her optic nerve, and of course later it, you know, it resolves itself, but her ability to manage her world as a blind person is incredibly good, and from what I understand, blind readers kind of dug it, so you might be okay reading that one.

Meka:  Okay!  All right, I, I’m willing, I’m willing to try it.

Sarah:  Right.

Meka:  I am definitely willing to try it.  I, ‘cause, as you know, I love books!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I know!

Meka:  I love books!

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I hope you enjoyed that.  It was a very long episode, but I had so much talking to Meka, and I want to thank her for taking the time to talk to me.

If you have questions or suggestions or you have ideas about how we could organize a book signing experience for readers who are visually impaired, or you just want to make a recommendation, ‘cause Meka likes to read, you can email us at [email protected].

The podcast this week was sponsored by InterMix, publisher of Falling for Danger, the third book in Chanel Cleeton’s sexy contemporary romance series, Capital Confessions, on sale everywhere your fine eBooks are sold.

The podcast transcript this week was sponsored by Married Sex, a novel by Jesse Kornbluth.  When a husband convinces his wife to join him in a tryst with another woman, there are unintended consequences in this sharply observed, erotic tale about the challenges of modern marriage.  Now available in paperback and eBook formats wherever you buy your books.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the Peatbog Faeries.  This is from their new album Blackhouse, and this track is called “The Real North.”  You can find the album at Amazon or iTunes or wherever you like to buy your music.

As I mentioned in the intro, I will have links to all of the resources that we discussed in this episode, as well as links to all the books we discussed, and there were many.  

But if you would like to sponsor the podcast, you have an idea, you want to sponsor an episode, you want to sponsor a month, the year, a couple episodes, let me know.  [email protected].  I would love to hear from you.

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

[gliding music]