Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, December 11, 2015

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 171 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me this time is Jennifer McQuiston!  Last year around this very week, we did an interview with Jennifer after she returned from Sierra Leone where she was working to combat Ebola as part of her job with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  This year she went back, so we asked her to come on back to the podcast to tell us about Sierra Leone’s recovery from the Ebola outbreak, plus what’s new with her historical romances and other things that she did while she was in Sierra Leone.  

The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This podcast is brought to you by Berkley Publishing Group, publisher of Mastered, the first in a new series from number one New York Times bestselling author Maya Banks, author of the Breathless trilogy, coming December 29th.

The podcast transcript this month was sponsored by Renee Ahdieh, author of The Wrath & the Dawn, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers and available in print and eBook.  This sumptuous and enthralling retelling of A Thousand and One Nights will transport you to a land of golden sand and forbidden romance.  She came for revenge, but will she stay for love?

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and as always, I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is, but I bet you know.

And if you want links to some of the books that we’re talking about and some of the charities and resources that we discuss when we’re talking about the Ebola outbreak, I’ll have links to that as well in the podcast entry on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

And now, without any delay, on with the podcast!

[music]

Jennifer McQuiston:  My name is Jennifer McQuiston, and I write historical romance, and I am very excited to be here today.

Sarah:  Hello again.

Jennifer:  Hello!

Sarah:  So you and I have decided that nothing goes better together than romance and Ebola.

Jennifer:  Love in the time of Ebola!

Sarah:  Exactly, because, well, you do both quite fluently.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] Well, I, I do both.  I don’t know how fluent I am.

Sarah:  Well, you, last year when I spoke to you, it was around this time, because I think I had the flu, so you were telling us that you had gone to Sierra Leone, and if I’m right, you just went back there.

Jennifer:  I did just go back.  It was almost exactly a year after my first trip, and, and it, you know, it was really incredible to be able to go back a year later when they were on the cusp of being declared Ebola-free and see how much incredible progress had been made.

Sarah:  So I had, I have heard in the American news, which, you know, reports not at all frequently on Africa, ever, a lot of people had reported that Ebola was all taken care of, so you, you, you pretty much helped get rid of it.

Jennifer:  Yeah.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s all you.

Jennifer:  In my most egotistical moments, yes, I helped to rid the world –

Sarah:  No, no, no, this is not ego!  This is not ego!  You were Time’s Person of the Year last year.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] As, I think as I said last time, me and 5,000 of my closest friends.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  Yeah, you know, Ebola, in October or November last year, there was a moment where I had to really step back and say, are they going to be able to do this?  I mean, it was a frightening situation.  Cases were just skyrocketing.  America was coming in to help; so were many other international aid organizations in other countries, but we were having trouble getting our hands around it –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jennifer:  – and I, I had a moment last October where I said, I’m not sure they’re going to be able to get to zero.  But, you know, Ebola is an amazingly difficult disease to get rid of, but it’s not impossible, and they have been able to do it.  So Liberia was declared Ebola-free a few months ago, although I hear that they just had a few cases diagnosed, and they’re going to continue to have these sporadic few cases pop up for different reasons, not the least of which, there’s still Ebola around them.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jennifer:  And then Sierra Leone was declared no, Ebola-free on November 7th, right after I came back, which was an amazing, amazing success.

Sarah:  That, that must feel really good.

Jennifer:  It, it does feel good.  You know, part of me wanted to extend my stay there just so I could be there in-country when they were declared Ebola-free, but, but my family needed me back, and, and you can’t just extend stays for parties.  That doesn’t work.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I don’t know.  I, I should think the party for being Ebola-free is a perfectly acceptable reason to stay for a party.

Jennifer:  Have you seen the video that is circulating online, it’s called “Bye Bye Ebola”?

Sarah:  No!

Jennifer:  Yeah!  So there was a, a really great organization called SMAC, which stands for Social Mobilisation Action Consortium, and they did a video of all the different parts of the country and the response, and they were dancing to this song that, that was called “Bye Bye Ebola.”  I mean, they literally have someone in full PPE in an Ebola treatment center getting down to this music.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  It’s pretty incredible.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s really cool!

Jennifer:  I’ll have to send you the link.  It’s pretty, pretty amazing.

Sarah:  Yes, please!  I will put it in the podcast entry.  So when you went last year, I remember you were telling me that part of your focus was not only treatment and education but also to try to explain to people that despite deep cultural desire to keep doing things the way they do, that people needed to change the way they were doing things, particularly in regards to dead relatives –

Jennifer:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – because it was the custom to keep your relative with you and to clean their body, and that was one of the ways, well, why Ebola was spreading.  So you had to go in from the communications angle, right?

Jennifer:  Right.

Sarah:  And you had to help teach people that this is, this is what’s helping the disease spread, and we need to do something different.  So it seems that part of what you were doing was successful.  Were you able to see the changes that happened when you went back this year?

Jennifer:  Absolutely.  You know, I mean, I think part of the difficulty was early on in October.  We were, we were spreading the right messages, and we were, we were saying the right things, but we weren’t really delivering them in a way that people understood or believed or trusted, and so there had to be this factor of building trust among the people we were going to help until they were ready to accept that message and, and accept the personal responsibility of the behavior change, and that is exactly what changed the course of Ebola in the country.  It was the country and the people deciding that they weren’t going to have this anymore and that they needed to change, and it’s been pretty incredible to see.  And then what, what, what entities like the CDC and the British government and Red Cross and, and Doctors Without Borders, what they do, then, is bring in the resources to support that behavior change and care for new patients in a safe way while, while families are trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Sarah:  So when you went back this year, what were some of the things that you had to do?

Jennifer:  So, so going back this year, we knew that there had not been any Ebola cases reported in the country for a few weeks –

Sarah:  Yay!

Jennifer:  – and that they were, they were in this big countdown to zero, and they’d already been a, in a countdown once and then had it all go awry when there was an unexpected case pop up, and so they were really on eggshells working very, very hard, and so while I was there, my job was to, to communicate and encourage them not to become complacent?  So, you know, you’ve got to stick the landing.  You’ve got to, like –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – you’ve got to keep doing it until you get to zero, and then once you’re at zero, you can’t get complacent either because, you know, there’s still Ebola circulating in Guinea, which is just, you know, a few, few miles away from the border, and so keeping them aware and, and thinking about it and testing patients, even, even after they’re at zero, was really what was important.  And then also, my job was to get them thinking about how to make a communication plan for the future.  No matter what the emergency, if there’s a cholera outbreak, if there’s another Ebola outbreak, how they would be able to go in and communicate more quickly at the start of an emergency so that it never gets out of control again.

Sarah:  That is, that, that’s a lot.

Jennifer:  It is a lot!  And I don’t think I, I don’t think they’re there yet, but they’re getting there.

Sarah:  It must have been really gratifying, though, to see that there was much more healthy than unhealthy.

Jennifer:  You know, it really was, and I’ve, I’ve told this story a few times, but I knew they were going to be okay, I knew that they had turned a corner – when I, when I got off the plane last year, there was this eerie silence in the city.  There was this just sort of, people were not smiling, they were not greeting you, they were distrustful, they – you never knew if Ebola was around the corner, and, and the interactions of people were reflected that, and there were, there were laws in place against public gatherings and things, but this time when I got off the plane, I went right to the immigration desk, and the men started flirting with me –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – and I said, okay, if the men are back to flirting with random foreigners getting off the airplane, they’re going to be all right.

Sarah:  Then things are fine!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I remember also you telling me that specifically where you were, the medical community, the individuals who actual prac-, actually practice medical care, had been almost entirely wiped out, because doctors and nurses and people in hospitals last year were among the first people to get diagnosed with Ebola because they were treating patients.

Jennifer:  They were.  It, it has devastated their, their medical system there, but not only in terms of lives lost, which they’re going to have difficulty rebuilding in an area where there’s, you know, not a lot of educational opportunities, but also in the sense, then, that those hospitals had to be shut down, so even when there were doctors and nurses left, they didn’t have a functioning place to go to, because it was too dangerous to continue to provide care in an Ebola epidemic setting, and so I, I really think that when the analysis is all done and they begin to calculate the losses, you know, there’ve been over – I have to go back and look at the statistics – over 25,000 cases, thousands and thousands of fatalities.  They’re going to find out probably that they have lost as many people to what might have been preventable, treatable diseases, but people were not able to, to reach healthcare.  So malaria deaths, deaths due to complications during pregnancy when there was no possibility of a C-section, I think when they added those all up, it’s truly going to be staggering.

Sarah:  So what happens to replace the medical care?  Is that where Doctors Without Borders comes in?  I mean, what happens to help re-establish the medical infrastructure?

Jennifer:  So there are a lot of international organizations still working in the country, but it’s, it’s supporting the Ministry of Health and the, the local infrastructure that has to sustain this healthcare system long-term, so it’s building them up and giving them the tools that they need to create the right systems to go on.

Sarah:  So that’s an, an entirely different organization.  That’s not something that the CDC does.

Jennifer:  Well, the CDC is establishing an office in-country in Sierra Leone that will work with the Ministry of Health on, on health issues into the future, but it’s a small office, so we’re there in a support function, probably doing some studies with them but also there to react quickly if they have a, a, another outbreak of some kind.  But the key is really self-sustained response, and so making sure that the government of Sierra Leone has the tools and the resources it needs to, to do it.

Sarah:  That’s a big job.

Jennifer:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So how long were you in Sierra Leone this time?

Jennifer:  About a month.  So, about a month at a time.

Sarah:  I know last year it was, it was very tense, and it was very exhausting.  This year, I know you were there, you know, for work, but did you get to do anything that wasn’t work?

Jennifer:  I did!  You know, last year, you were working eighteen- to twenty-hour days, and you never, you never set foot outside of a work scope.  Like, you were constantly working; even when you were eating dinner, you were having a work meeting and, and trying to have a really important conversation.  This time, I actually got decent sleep, and I had decent food, and I, I went to the chimpanzee sanctuary, which had reopened, which was a really incredible thing.  It’s one of, one of the main tourist attractions in Sierra Leone is a, is a, is a chimpanzee sanctuary.  They’ve rescued chimps from the pet trade, and now they give them a close-to-wild home.  I went to this beautiful beach, and I got to lay out on the most incredibly – actually, this beach has squeaking sand.  It has –

Sarah:  Squeaky sand?

Jennifer:  It has squeaky sand!  It’s one of the only beaches in the world, and it has a very specific shape to the sand that, it’s a round sili-, silicon, and then when you step on it, it squeaks, and it’s, it’s known as the singing sand.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s cool!

Jennifer:  Yeah!  And I never would have gotten to see that if I hadn’t gone back the second time when, when tourist things were starting to reopen.

Sarah:  So now you’ve gone back, and things are better.  Do you think you’ll go back a third time?

Jennifer:  You know, it’s possible.  I –

Sarah:  Well, this isn’t just your second trip.  You’ve been before this, you told me last year.

Jennifer:  Well, I’ve been to Africa before.  I’ve worked in West Africa, but this was my first, first excursion to Sierra Leone.  I do think that there’s a possibility of a trip in the future where I go to help, maybe, them do a workshop to develop their future communications plan.  Sierra Leone is absolutely beautiful.  I would not hesitate to take my family there on vacation, once they get their, once they get their feet on the ground and things, things rolling.

Sarah:  Well, I, I know from having traveled a lot of different places that, even in New York after 9/11, when the tourists start coming back, that is a, a real sign of, of real economic health.

Jennifer:  Yes.

Sarah:  Like, okay, tourists are coming back.  We’re going to be okay.

Jennifer:  Well, you know, the, the interesting thing was, because Sierra Leone had just recently come out of a brutal civil war, they were –

Sarah:  Yes.

Jennifer:  – they were just starting to get their tourism industry off the ground, and, I mean, they’re beautiful!  It looks like you’re in the Virgin Islands when you’re there, honestly.  And I really think that if they can, you know, put this behind them and, and get this infrastructure in place that they’ve got a really good future ahead of them.

Sarah:  So what is their, what, what, what kind of attitude did you receive, or what kind of reception did you get as an American?  Was it different this time versus last time, or were they sort of like, oh, you’re back!  How you been?

Jennifer:  They were, yeah, they were, many of the ones I’d worked with were like, why did you leave?

[Laughter]

Jennifer:  So, I mean, they, they’ve been there, and they’ve stayed the course, you know.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jennifer:  They’ve been there working so hard, and so I think they’re glad when they see familiar faces come back, but they’re also a little belligerent, like, you shouldn’t have left in the first place!

[Laughter]

Jennifer:  It, it’s, it’s been pretty amazing, you know.  They’re very welcoming of Americans for the most part, but, you know, it is sobering.  You know, Mali, which is just a few countries away, just had that attack, and, you know –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jennifer:  – the Radisson Blu is the hotel that, I stayed in a Radisson Blu when I was in Sierra Leone, and, and I just, I just read a news article today, I had not realized, but a CDC staffer was in that hotel in Mali and made it out alive.

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh.

Jennifer:  Yeah.  But I mean, this is, this is not work without danger, and so it’s a bit of a sobering time to think about international work like this.

Sarah:  Especially when you’re going to travel so far professionally –

Jennifer:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and you’re dealing with not only disease but a lot of rampant terror outbreaks.  This is very much work with a great deal of danger.

Jennifer:  Yes, it is.  You know, we were, we all kind of rolled our eyes a little bit, but CDC puts us through some pretty good preparatory paces when we get ready to go overseas, and I’ve learned how to identify explosive devices of –

Sarah:  Whoa!

Jennifer:  You know, the state department has all these courses that you have to take, but they’re real!  I mean, you need to know!  You need to know what to do in situations like that.

Sarah:  So can you tell us how do you identify an explosive device?

Jennifer:  No, I decided going through that course I was just going to run the other way.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Okay.  I think that’s a very sound –

Jennifer:  Yes.

Sarah:  I think that’s probably a sound strategy.

Jennifer:  Probably a sound strategy.  [Laughs] I’m not always this husky, either.  The, the readers are going to think I have a really sexy voice.  I don’t.  I have to say –

Sarah:  No, no, you totally do.  This is what you sound like all the time.  You’re going to read your own audiobooks; it’s going to be awesome.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So before we transition to romance, because we have to start with Ebola and end with the happier part, what are, what are some of the things that you’re currently working on, now that you’re back in the States?  Are you telling all of us to wash our hands to not get the flu?

Jennifer:  Well, that’s always good advice, isn’t it?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  You know, it’s interesting, I’ve been, for the last year and a half I’ve been working in the CDC’s division of public affairs.  I’ve been a, my official title has been Science Adviser for Public Affairs, and that, that was sort of a career change for me after I had worked as a disease detective for many years, but I got a new job offer while I was in Sierra Leone, so coming back I, I start a new position on December 1st.  So I’m going to be the Deputy Division Director of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, which is basically the division that deals with all the bad, bad bugs, like Ebola and smallpox and monkeypox and all of that.

Sarah:  Holy crap, dude!  Congratulations!

Jennifer:  I know!  You know, the irony is my romance career has not hurt my scientific career at all.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Really!

Jennifer:   No!  Isn’t that weird?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No, that’s, that’s awesome!  So, what, people are like, romance author Jennifer McQuiston’s going to tell you about monkeypox?

Jennifer:  Pretty much!  You know, I think when they Google me now for CDC, the, the romance stuff comes up first, so a lot of times I’ll meet scientists and they’ll be like, I Googled you –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – and I’ll be like, great!  You’re not my target audience!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Oh, gosh.  So are you going to start working diseases into some of your romances, or is that just like, wow, so not a happy ending?

Jennifer:  [Laughs] It can be a happy ending.  You know, when I first started out trying to write, I tried to, to work some infectious disease pieces into – and, and those just, they, they, they didn’t work as well as, as my other plot devices, so –

Sarah:  I can’t imagine why.  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  Yeah.  I don’t rule out ever in the future writing, you know, sort of a, a medical thriller, more contemporary sort of, of piece, but I’m too close to it right now, so I think I’ll wait.

Sarah:  So in your new position, what are you going to be doing?

Jennifer:  I don’t know yet.  [Laughs] December 1st will tell me what I’m going to do.

Sarah:  Not having the flu, that’s what I’ll be doing.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] You know, it’s, it’s so, it, it’s a, it’s a director, like, a deputy director position, so I think I’ll be supervising a lot of people, and I think I will be dipping my hands into whatever is needed in the division.  It’s not nearly as glamorous as, you know, getting on a plane and going to fight Ebola.  [Laughs] And you know, that is the one thing I promised my husband I would never do when we came to the CDC.  I, I promised him, I said, I will not go to do Ebola!  And then I totally did it.

Sarah:  Twice.

Jennifer:  Sorry, honey!

Sarah:  Sorry, darling.  There, it, it had to be done.

Jennifer:  You know, everybody – it was all hands on deck.  There was really, if you had the ability, like, how could you not, is really –

Sarah:  No.

Jennifer:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I totally understand that.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, are there any diseases that you’re working on currently in the states that we should be aware of?  Like, we’ve talked a lot about health and, and, and the medical infrastructure in Sierra Leone, but what’s, what’s going on in the U.S. that you think people should know about?

Jennifer:  You know, one of the big stories in the U.S. right now is anti-microbial resistance, and so, as we’re coming into cold and flu season, it’s really worth thinking about, because doctors who give out antibiotics indiscriminately for people who come in with viral infections are in some ways contributing to the rise in antibiotic resistance and making it harder to treat infections in the future, and so trusting that doctors know what they’re doing and listening and not, not asking them for that – I want an antibiotic right now!  Myself, I, I’m not feeling that great, but I’m holding off, and I’m letting this virus run its course.  I think that’s really important, and I, I think a lot of people don’t think about the fact that having a good stewardship of the antibiotics that we have ensures our kids can use those for generations to come, but using them wastefully now is going to actually make things much tougher in the future.

Sarah:  I know that when my kids are sick and I, I am the mom who takes them to the pediatrician for a strep test and is like, let it be positive, let it be positive, ‘cause then I get the pink stuff –

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – and in two days they feel great, and then they feel, go back to school!  The pink stuff is the best, because a little pink bottle of amoxicillin can do all kinds of miraculous things with a small person who has a fever!  But if it’s not –

Jennifer:  If it’s strep.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  If it’s strep, but if the test isn’t positive – we’re also going to get a cat on the podcast.  He’s going to, he’s going to appear and start yelling – if, if the, if the strep test is not positive, and I don’t get the pink stuff – [laughs] – the, the nurses in the doctor’s office are like, I’m really sorry, Mrs. Wendell, no pink stuff for you, and I’m just like, great!  Fever and virus for everyone!  But you’re right, you can’t, you can’t prescribe stuff for viral infections; it doesn’t actually do anything.

Jennifer:  Nope.  But you know, there’s nothing wrong with praying for strep.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  And, and I’m the only one who’s like, it’s positive!  Let’s go to the pharmacy!  Huzzah!  I do not want the pink stuff to become less effective.  I’m a big fan!

[Laughter]

Jennifer:  A big fan of pink stuff.

Sarah:  I love amoxicillin in the pink shaky bottle.  If there’s anyone who’s listening who’s a pharmacist, they’re like, yeah, I got, like, nine cases of that.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So you’re looking at antimicrobial resistance.  What about hand sanitizer?  Is that another area where you think we’re overdoing it in terms of making it easier for germs and, germs to become resistant?

Jennifer:  Not necessarily.  I haven’t seen a lot in the literature about that in particular.  I’m not a big fan of hand sanitizer.  I’m a much bigger fan of soap, good old-fashioned soap and water, honestly.  I did use a lot of hand sanitizer in Sierra Leone, because you don’t have access to –

Together:  – soap and water –

Jennifer:  – all the time.  But hand sanitizer dries my hands out, and I feel like –

Sarah:  Oh, me too.

Jennifer:  Yeah.  I feel like it actually makes me more vulnerable to, to germs.  Like, getting in –

Sarah:  ‘Cause your skin cracks.

Jennifer:  Exactly.

Sarah:  I have that same problem.

Jennifer:  You know, some of the other stuff CDC is working on right now, I’m trying to think, it doesn’t, I’m not hearing rumbles that it’s a particularly bad flu season, although it’s a little early to tell yet.  Well, there was the big E. coli outbreak that’s, that’s now multistate that started in the Northwest in, in the Chipotle restaurant.  It’s probably a supplier-driven thing.  I don’t think they’ve found the, the culprit yet, the, whatever the food item was.

Sarah:  Ugh!  But that’s something that the CDC does.

Jennifer:  Mm-hmm!  CDC and –

Sarah:  Yeah?

Jennifer:  Yep.  So one of the things CDC helps do is when that happens and you don’t know what the food item is, you can go in and interview people and compare healthy people to sick people and, and really do a good statistical analysis and figure out what the, what it is, but they haven’t been successful, so at this point it probably suggests it’s a very common ingredient that goes into a lot of things, which is making it very difficult to drill down.

Sarah:  Ugh, the poor Chipotle, ‘cause that’s just the –

Jennifer:  I know.

Sarah:  – last thing you want to have happen to a restaurant when everyone else is shopping, you know?

Jennifer:  I know.  They’re my, one of my favorite places to eat!  I also think that so far they’ve reacted in a pretty responsible manner, and that’s my personal opinion, not the CDC opinion talking, but I think, you know, if you’ve read the news at the time, they closed down their, their facilities that were linked really, really quickly.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jennifer:  Not, not all restaurants do that, so may-, maybe –

Sarah:  Nooo.

Jennifer:  – America will show them some love.

Sarah:  I hope so.  I remember a couple of different outbreaks of E. coli when I was in South Carolina that were linked to Food Lion grocery stores and that part of the problem – this was, you know, twenty-odd years ago – part of the problem was that they refused to say there was a problem.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] That’s never a good thing.

Sarah:  Which, which doesn’t help.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So let’s switch now to romance, because that’s much more fun to talk about –

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – although microbial problems are always interesting.  You have a new book coming out!

Jennifer:  I do, tomorrow, in fact!

Sarah:  Yay!

Jennifer:  I think, I think this podcast will go on after it’s come out, so –

Sarah:  Yes!

Jennifer:  – November 24th.

Sarah:  Yes, so tell us about your new book, which is the worst question to ask a writer; I apologize in advance.

Jennifer:  No, you know, and as an author, I should be prepared for that question, and yet I’m so not.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I did an interview with an author named Rebekah Weatherspoon, and we were talking about how hard it is to describe your book because you just wrote it.  It’s, like, 90,000 words.  You could give ‘em 90,000 words of explanation.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] That’s true!  Actually, I think mine’s 104,000, or 101,000.

Sarah:  Whoa!

Jennifer:  I deliver, man!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You do deliver!  You’re not messing around!

Jennifer:  I don’t mess around.  So this particular book is called The Spinster’s Guide to Scandalous Behavior.  It’s number two in my new series.  It’s called the Seduction Diaries series, and it features, the, the heroine’s name is Lucy Westmore, and she, if readers read the first book, they already know she’s this kind of wild child, doesn’t really like authority, she’s all the time jumping on these amazing esoteric causes.  I, she, you know, she tried to become a vegetarian in the first book because she was convinced that, you know, the animals were treated poorly, and she tries to rescue the horses from the omnibuses, and – but she doesn’t always research her causes before she jumps into them.  Well, in her new book, she’s every bit as invested in good causes.  You know, she’s writing letters to Parliament, trying to change the conditions for prisoners in Newgate, and all of that kind of stuff.  So she really is this kind of quirky, unusual character for the mid-Victorian era.

Sarah:  And there were a lot of women like that.

Jennifer:  There actually were.  You know, you, you’ve got your typical women who were kind of, you know, a little prudish and, you know, very – but, but there were a lot of outliers.  I mean, the, the, the suffragette movement started in the Victorian era, and it, I mean it’s worth knowing that these, these are our ancestors paving the way, and the quirkier the better.

Sarah:  Yes.

Jennifer:  So, so Lucy is kind of, a little bit on the shelf.  She’s waited a long time to have a season and come out because her sister Clare in the first book had a bit of a scandal, and they wanted to wait for it to die down, but she doesn’t want to get married, and she really does not like the insti-, the thought of the institution of marriage or anything like that, and so she receives this mysterious package from her aunt, but her aunt has been dead for two weeks, and she is, like, shocked to receive the package, and when she opens it, it’s a key to her aunt’s house in Cornwall and a bunch of diaries that when she starts reading she realizes she’s really a kindred spirit with her aunt, and her aunt was this scandalous spinster that the, had been alienated from the family.  So she thinks she wants to go live in this house and be independent, but little does she know that her father has already tried to sell the house out from under her because he doesn’t want anything to do with it.  His sister was weird, and he struggled with, with dealing with her his whole life, and so he’s trying to, he thinks he’s helping his daughter.  But the, the man he’s trying to sell it to is Lord Thomas Branston, who is Cornwall hiding away for reasons of his own, and, and when Lucy tries to take back her house, all hell breaks loose, and so that is really what the story is about.  It’s two, two people from very different walks of life and, and different opinions on things, but when they come together, there’re a lot of sparks and attraction.  And, and Thomas wants the house for, for reasons he’s not willing to reveal.  He, he thinks that if it falls into the hands of, like, this brainless girl from London that a lot of harm could be done to the town and to the, to the land, so he, he’s hiding things from her, and she senses it, and she, she wants to get to the bottom of it.

Sarah:  I am loving this trend of historical romances about heroes and heroines who are fighting over property.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, I am all, it’s, like, property historical romance, and I am 100% here for this.

Jennifer:  Is it like Property Wars?

Sarah:  Yeah, exactly.  Petticoat Property Wars.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Or Pelisse –

Jennifer:  Well, you know, I, I think it happened.  Prop-, I mean, property was a very rare thing for a woman to have at that time –

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Jennifer:  – and somebody as independent as Lucy would want to hang onto it.  And it was not legal for her father to sell it out from under her.  She was of age –

Sarah:  Right.

Jennifer:  – but I think, I think fathers and men tended to do that more, more than, than not, more often than not.

Sarah:  What were some of the things, like, why would Lucy want land so badly?  What are some of the things that come with land for her that make it very valuable?

Jennifer:  You know, I did not come across anything in my research that suggested women in England at the time had voting rights to be landowners –

Sarah:  No, unfortunately.

Jennifer:  Unfortunately.  But you know, I think land, and in particular a house, gave a measure of independence that a woman could live alone, whereas if you did not have property and you did not have land, even if you were of age, you were stuck living as a relative off of somebody else’s purse, and to somebody as independent as Lucy, that was really an unpalatable idea.  But one of the interesting pieces to this is this is not really a livable cottage.  It is falling down –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – and it’s infested with rats, and she gets there, and she realizes very quickly that this, you know, sort of paradise she’s built up in her mind is anything but.  But, at the same time, Lucy, Lucy would be looking at this as an investment, so even if it’s not livable, she could sell the land –

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Jennifer:  – and then have some money that might make her be able to live independently somewhere else, and so she truly sees this as a financial gift that is being snatched out of her hands.

Sarah:  And she does not want it to go anywhere.

Jennifer:  She doesn’t want it to go anywhere.  And she’s stubborn, so the, the more he offers, the more she dig it, digs in.

Sarah:  Now, you got, for this, for this book, a really beautiful cover.

Jennifer:  I did!  [Laughs] I’ve really been fortunate.  I, I feel like I’ve had beautiful covers for all my books.  The Avon art department is absolutely in-, they’ve been incredible for, for both of my series, and I’m, I’m really grateful.  But it’s a very striking yellow, so it, it kind of pops out at you.

Sarah:  There, there aren’t a lot of yellows, but it’s also really interesting because, you know, one of the, one of the ways that covers have changed is it, you know, used to be an oil painting, like, the book cover was painted, and then the painting was delivered to the publisher, and then, now it’s been photography that’s, that’s manipulated to look like a painting, but this looks very, very real.  This, this image looks very realistic; even the tree trunk looks realistic.  It’s this really beautiful sort of nature setting and this woman leaning up against a tree with a book.

Jennifer:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  It’s very, very striking.  Is there, is that – ‘cause I confess, I have not read it yet ‘cause my copy’s not here.

Jennifer:  [Gasps!]

Sarah:  I apologize!  I am a terrible host!

Jennifer:  [Laughs] But you know what?  It isn’t even out yet, so you’re cool!

Sarah:  Okay, good, ‘cause I will tell you this, I will tell you there was an argument among my reviewers as to who got to read and review your book.  There was a bit of a scuffle about it.

Jennifer:  Aw!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I believe the words, bitch, hands off, were used.  It’s mine.

Jennifer:  Aw!

Sarah:  So is this a scene from the book?  Does she have a, does she have a journal that she’s carrying around?  Like, the, the book on the cover is what grabbed my attention.

Jennifer:  I know.  You know, it is cool, because I think, I think there’s going to be a, a continuing theme of a book on all my covers – there was on the first one, too – but it’s because it’s the, the journals and the diaries.  In, in my first book it was the diary of the heroine, but in the second book, the diaries actually belonged to Lucy’s aunt, so you’re learning about this character who you know is dead from the very beginning –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jennifer:  – but her life is unfolding in the, in these, in, and it’s a series of them.  So the, the, the story behind the cover is it’s beautiful, I mean, it’s gorgeous, but when I saw it, I literally went – [chokes] –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – be-, because Lucy is in Cornwall, and there are no trees on the coast of Cornwall, and, and I said, oh, my God!  How am I going to fix that?!  Like, I, I wasn’t quite done writing the book yet, and so I have, they were coming back to London, and so I have this pretty amazing scene in an outdoor garden in London now, where they’re up against a tree!  [Laughs] So –

Sarah:  With a tree!  Got to have a tree.

Jennifer:  Yep, and she’s wearing a yellow dress!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well played!

Jennifer:  Yeah!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  But I was literally like, oh, my God, I have to invent a tree!  [Laughs] Because it’s a pretty cool tree!

Sarah:  It’s, it’s, you’re not the only person who’s done that.  I mean, at least you didn’t have to add, like, a dog.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s been done.  A couple of people have had to do that.

Jennifer:  I would add a dog anytime.

[Laughter]

Jennifer:  Dogs are pretty cool.

Sarah:  So this is book two.  Is this a trilogy, or are there going to be more than three?

Jennifer:  It’s a trilogy.  So, book number three is called The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel, and I’m in the middle of writing it right now, and it involves Geoffrey Westmore, who is the roguish younger brother that is introduced in both of these books, and, and he meets kind of a mousy woman who knocks him on his butt.  He, he doesn’t expect her to be as strong as she is, and they are tracking down a plot to kill Queen Victoria.

Sarah:  As you do.

Jennifer:  As apparently happened a lot.  She was apparently tried to be murdered six to, six or seven different times during her reign –

Sarah:  Oh, my goodness!

Jennifer:  – so.  [Laughs] Yeah.  Not very far-fetched, actually.

Sarah:  Wow.  So in the research that you’ve been doing for this series, what are some things that you’ve really enjoyed learning about?

Jennifer:  So for the, the book I’m writing now, which is The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel, I got to research bomb-making in, in Victorian times, and they, there was this –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – there was this thing called the Orsini bomb which looked like a, like a, like a World War II submarine missile.  It was really – and you threw it, and it knocked against things and then exploded.  It was really kind of cool.  [Laughs] So that was interesting.

Sarah:  Does the state department know about your search history?

Jennifer:  You know, yeah.

[Laughter]

Jennifer:  I will probably, I will probably come to the attention of someone, I’m sure.

Sarah:  [Laughs] ‘Cause you took all these courses about how to identify a bomb –

Jennifer:  Yes.

Sarah:  – now you’re doing historical bombs!

Jennifer:  So in The Spinster’s Guide to Scandalous Behavior, I got to research the Cornish coast, and it, it was really cool to realize it’s this incredibly unique piece of, of geology there.  It, it’s, the, I did it all along the, it’s called the Lizard Coast –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jennifer:  – and there are these rocks that are there called lizardite rocks, and some species of plants that grow nowhere else in the world are there –

Sarah:  Wow!

Jennifer:  – so it’s, it’s like this naturalist’s dream there, and, and, and it was really cool to be able to incorporate some of that into the book.

Sarah:  That is cool.

Jennifer:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  That is very cool.

Jennifer:  I love my jobs.

Sarah:  Your, your, your jobs are pretty cool.

Jennifer:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I mean, infectious diseases and romance novels is a, qui-, quite a powerful combination.

Jennifer:  Well, I like to research.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’s a good thing.  Research at this point is probably, like, second nature.

Jennifer:  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So my hardest question that I always ask in an interview:  what are you reading that you’ve been enjoying lately?

Jennifer:  So I have a few books on my e-reader right now, but the one I’m actually loving is Lisa Kleypas’s Cold-Hearted Rake?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  I am about three-quarters of the way through it, and I was stuck on a sex scene.  I’ve been stuck on a sex scene for, like, two weeks, ‘cause you know, when you’re sick, you don’t really feel like plowing through that sex scene, and I was about to –

Sarah:  You mean writing it.

Jennifer:  – and writing, yes.  Not a real sex scene.  Although my husband would say I’ve been stuck on that too, probably.

Sarah:  Oh, God!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I just had this picture of you trying to read the Lisa Kleypas book, and you just can’t turn the page.  I’m stuck!  I can’t go forward!

Jennifer:  No, my own, writing my, my own book sex scene –

Sarah:  Of course.

Jennifer:  – is what I was stuck on.  So I, I’ve started reading this book, and, and suddenly I woke up this morning and I’m like, I’m going to hit that sex scene!

[Laughter]

Jennifer:  Because she, she writes, you know, her writing is so, so cool and so spicy, and I, I literally woke up inspired to do a good job on my own.

Sarah:  [Laughs] My, my experience with Lisa Kleypas is that she writes some of the best sex scenes I’ve ever read in romance.

Jennifer:  I think she does too.

Sarah:  They’re really good..

Jennifer:  And it literally was like, what?!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’s awesome!  So are there any other books that you recommend for people or that you’ve, that you’ve liked?  Even research, people love to hear about research.

Jennifer:  Ohhh, research books!  Do I have any research books lying around?  No, I have nothing.

Sarah:  Ha.

Jennifer:  [Laughs] No, I’m just kidding!

Sarah:  No research, none whatsoever.

Jennifer:  I, I have, I have research books that I could – oh, yeah!  I, look at this one.  Hang on.  So this is a classic.  So, the, the heroine in the book I’m writing right now is a, she loves to read.  She loves to read books, so I got this copy of Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell –

Sarah:  Ooh!

Jennifer:  – who, who wrote in the, in the era in which I am basing the story, and oh, my God, it’s dry reading.  I’m having trouble getting through it, but it’s really neat to go through it and kind of see, you know, what, what the heroine was worried about in this book and how that translates into, to my character’s own fears for, for what might happen in her life.  So I’m doing a little bit of that kind of research.

Sarah:  Well, that’s cool!

Jennifer:  Yeah!  But I, some of the, my favorite books that I’ve read recently, Sara Gruen, who wrote Water for Elephants.  I just read that book, by the way.  It’s incredible!  I had not, I can’t believe I, I had not seen the movie either.  So I, I got her new book called At the Water’s Edge, which is based in World War II Scotland, and it’s pretty amazing.

Sarah:  Wow!

Jennifer:  Yep.  And then, let’s see, what else am I recommending?  I’m actually going to my local indie bookstore on Saturday for their Small Business Saturday, and I’m recommending a bunch of books, so I – oh, The Nightingale!  [Whispers] I read that one; that was really awesome.

Sarah:  That –

Jennifer:  You can tell I like historic fiction too.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s Kristin Hannah, right?

Jennifer:  It’s Kristin Hannah, and it’s, I don’t know, World War II is exploding right now.

Sarah:  It really is.

Jennifer:  So it’s, it’s a story of two sisters and kind of their pathway through the war.

Sarah:  I, I am, I am okay with World War II becoming more popular, because I get the sense from a lot of political candidate statements that they’re kind of forgetting about history?  So I’m –

Jennifer:  They kind of are!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah, I’m kind of okay with re-exploring how shitful things got during World War II.

Jennifer:  Yep.

Sarah:  But it, you are the second person who I’ve heard go on about The Nightingale and how amazing it is, and how it’s really hard to put down once you start to read it.

Jennifer:  It is really hard to put down once you start to read it.  I’ve, and then I guess All the Light We Cannot See is, is anoth-, I mean, that, I think that probably started me off on this World War II kick is, is when I read that one.  I was just incredibly moved by it.

Sarah:  Very cool.

Jennifer:  Yep.

Sarah:  I love asking writers for recommendations, because there’s, it’s, it’s really interesting to see how one person’s sort of interest in one book leads to another, leads to another, and leads to another.  It’s interesting ‘cause everyone follows a different path to find books that they like.

Jennifer:  Yes.  My, my path is to go on Barnes and Noble or Amazon and buy everything I can find –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jennifer:  – and then apologize for it later.

—–

Sarah:  And that is all for this episode of the podcast.  Thank you to Jennifer McQuiston for taking the time to talk to me about Ebola and romance novels.  This should be an annual thing, right?  Except for the Ebola part.  That part can go away, and we’ll just talk with Jennifer about romance novels every year.  I like this plan.

I need to inform you of several things.  First, the opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This podcast was brought to you by Berkley Publishing Group, publisher of Mastered, the first in a new series from number one New York Times bestseller Maya Banks, author of the Breathless trilogy, coming December 29th.

The podcast transcript this month was sponsored by Renee Ahdieh, author of The Wrath & the Dawn, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers and available in print and eBook.  This sumptuous and enthralling retelling of A Thousand and One Nights will transport you to a land of golden sand and forbidden romance.  She came for revenge, but will she stay for love?

During the intro, our music is always provided by Sassy Outwater, and the introduction music was Deviations Project from their album Adeste Fiddles.  That was “Favorite Things,” originally composed by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical The Sound of Music.  

So usually during the outro, which is what this part is called, there’s music playing behind me or underneath my voice – it’s called a bed – and usually it’s classical or something without lyrics, ‘cause it’s hard to talk over words.  But you’ll notice I have no bed.  There’s no bed for me!  But there’s a reason!  It’s a really good reason:  during the podcast, Jennifer McQuiston mentioned “Bye Bye Ebola,” which is a terrific video that I will link to in the podcast entry, and in the show notes, but if you happen to be on the treadmill or cleaning your house or cooking something or walking your dogs, you can’t just stop everything and go to a, go to YouTube, right?  That’s not going to work.  So I thought I would share it with you here.  Thank you to the Social Mobilisation Action Consortium, also known as SMAC.  This is Block Jones featuring Freetown Uncut.  This song is called “Bye Bye Ebola,” and wherever you are, I think that you should prepare yourself to dance, because it’s going to be very hard not to.  Congratulations, Sierra Leone, on being declared Ebola-free, and on behalf of Jennifer McQuiston and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[victorious music]