Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, January 8, 2016

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 175 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are Elyse, Amanda, Carrie, and RedHeadedGirl.  This is so Not Safe For Work you might want headphones and a soundproof booth, and maybe you want to be under some blankets, because we’re going to talk about sex in space and sex in hammocks and pets who eat weird things, possibly also puking.  Then we’re going to actually talk about books and discuss what we’re looking forward to that’s coming out in 2016.

This podcast is sponsored by Renee Ahdieh, author of The Wrath & the Dawn, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, available in print and eBook.  Each dawn brings death, but can love change the story?  This intoxicating retelling of A Thousand and One Nights will leave you begging for book two, The Rose & the Dagger, coming Summer 2016.

The podcast transcript is sponsored by Kensington, publishers of Kill Without Mercy by Alexandra Ivy, the first book in the brand-new ARES Security series about a group of five brave military special-ops veterans.  If you’re in the mood for heart-pounding action and confident alpha males with deadly skills coupled with nail-biting life-and-death situations that will have you on your edge of your seat, then this group of covert specialists is at your service.  On sale now wherever books are sold.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater, and I’ll have information at the end of the podcast, and as always, all of the books that we mention will be on the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com.

And now, grab your headphones, ‘cause this is Not Safe For Work:  time for the podcast.

[music]

Elyse:  There’s also a scene in –

Sarah:  Layers.

Elyse:  – the Eloisa James book where they have sex in a hammock, or come very close to having sex in a hammock, and it wasn’t ‘til after I finished it that I realized –

Sarah:  I’m sorry, hammock or ham hock?

Carrie:  Oh, yeah, I heard that too!  Hammock?

Elyse:  Hammock.  I call it ham hock; is that not how you pronounce it?

RedHeadedGirl:  No!  It’s not hammock!

Amanda:  Ham hock!

Elyse:  Yeah, I think ham hock, yeah.

RHG:  Very different thing.

Elyse:  In a hammock.

Sarah:  They’re only about that big.  They’re only about that big!  How do you have sex in a –

Carrie:  Hammock, yeah, anything at all?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  How do you have – here’s my thing:  how do you have sex in a hammock?  Like, how –

RHG:  Oh, also an excellent question!

Elyse:  You know, I, she made me think of it, and –

Sarah:  Boingy, boingy, boingy, fling!

Elyse:  Right, and, right, like, there’s not – I can’t imagine it works well, right?  I would think, like, and then you flip over.  Like, the, the dog jumps up –

Amanda:  What position was it, missionary, or would like –

Elyse:  Yeah, it was, it was mostly –

Sarah:  Amanda needs a diagram.

Amanda:  I feel like missionary would work the best.

Elyse:  It was missionary, and if I’m remembering right, it was mostly finger banging, which could work.

Amanda:  I’m going to do some field tests –

RHG:  Yeah.

Amanda:  – and I’m going to get back to you.

Elyse:  Amanda’s going to do a science.

RHG:  Amanda’s on it, yeah.

Amanda:  I’m taking notes.

[Laughter]

RHG:  I, I suppose I could see spooning working too.

Sarah:  Or if she’s on top and her legs go over the sides of the hammock, depending on what the hammock’s made of, she wouldn’t get too much rope burn, if it was, like, a –

Elyse:  I’m just –

Sarah:  – nylon hammock.

Elyse:  – I’m just –

RHG:  OW!

Elyse:  – like, the, the netting one where you’re, like –

RHG:  That would still be –

Elyse:  – knees and arms going through the holes, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs] Somebody’s got a braided, macramé print –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – on their ass.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  Sex in a hammock.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I’m getting a –

Mr. Sarah:  My back hurts thinking about it.

Sarah:  – and my back hurts thinking about it is the verdict from my house.  [Laughs]

Amanda:  Right!

Elyse:  You’re not going to get proper lumbar support.

Sarah:  No.

RHG:  [Laughs] That’s why Amanda needs to do the field test; she’s young.

Amanda:  I’d better, yeah.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  Spry and limber.  

Elyse:  I, I –

Sarah:  This is, this is, this is going to be the update on Amanda’s Tinder profile.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Curious about hammocks and ham hocks!

Amanda:  Try it and see how it goes.

Elyse:  Right, right.

Carrie:  I think that if Amanda purchases a hammock and tells us how it goes, then that would be, like, a billable expense.

Sarah:  Oh, hell, yeah!

Elyse:  Yeah, that’s a tax write-off.

RHG: Definitely a tax write-off.

Sarah:  There’s no question.

Carrie:  And then –

Elyse:  And then –

Sarah:  Tot-, that, that’s research.

Elyse:  – when you see your accountant or tax preparer or whatever, you have to be like, so, no, I had to fuck in the hammock for real.  Like, this is my job.

Amanda:  Yeah, no.  I took notes –

Elyse:  Just listen to the podcast.

Amanda:   – and everything.

Sarah:  And then you can bill an hourly rate!

Elyse:  Right.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  You know what, like –

RHG:  I don’t know if you can get a full hour out of that.

Sarah:  It’s true.  You’re going to get a rope burn –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – or something’s going to chafe.  It’s not going to work.

Carrie:  No, I, I –

Elyse:  We can do –

Carrie:  – well, if you count, you might, if you count spooning and you manage not to fall out, you might, that might add action enough.

Amanda:  I’m just, like, pic-, picturing myself in, like, Rollerblading gear, so, like, in knee pads –

[Laughter]

Amanda:  – but yeah.

RHG:  It’s a very strange kink, but we’re not kink-shaming here.

Carrie:  Hell, no shaming!

Amanda:  Helmet on.

Elyse:  Screw Covers & Cocktails.  Amanda’s new column is, like, have you seen the –

[Laughter]

Someone:  How Does It Work?

Elyse:  Have you seen the, the Will It Blend commercials where they put crazy shit in, like, the Ninja blender?

Someone:  Right, yeah.

Elyse:  Yeah, hers is going to be, like, Can They Fuck, and we’ll, like, submit the weirdest romance novel sex scenes, and, like, Amanda has to prove or disprove whether this happens.

RHG:  Right, and when, when she needs filler articles, we just send her Cosmo sex positions.

Elyse and Carrie:  Right.

RHG:  Some of those you can’t do.

Sarah:  And somebody’s going to dig up scenes from, like, old Robin Schone books, where they, like, there’s, like, a swing or some gravity.  We could get the Ly-San-Ter books from Johanna Lindsey, see if we could recreate the –

Carrie:  Oh, I missed that.

RHG:  Oh, no.

Carrie:  I want to know if that’s physically possible

Sarah:  No.

Elyse:  To have sex in zero gravity?

Carrie:  It’s not going to be me.

Amanda:  Well, don’t, like, what if I go to Russia and they have, like, those planes that, like, simulate –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I only think you get, like, thirty seconds of weightlessness.

RHG:  Yeah, you, you only –

Sarah:  That’s going to be a hell of a wham-bam.

RHG:  – fifteen-second chunks, so.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I wonder if we could vol-, I wonder if we could petition to have, to have Amanda sent to the space station.

Elyse:  Where’s Elon Musk?

Carrie:  For science!

Sarah:  Tinder in space!

Amanda:  There’s only going to be, like, four dudes on there.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  And I think you’ve got to swipe right very carefully for that trip.

Elyse:  I feel like you would, like, slowly start to drift apart and be doing, like, swimming motions trying to get back towards each other.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Breast stroke!

RHG:  Nah, I think there’s going to be Velcro involved.

Carrie:  Yeah, people put serious thought into this.  So you know how, like, with the sleeping bags, they’re kind of anchored, right?

Sarah:  Yeah.

Carrie:  So you kind of have to anchor yourselves, so I hear, and then – tragically, I have not tested this out; believe me, if someone sent me into space, I’m going to tell you guys all about it – but you, you know, you’ve got to kind of anchor, and the problem with that is once you get stable enough to actually have the sex, it’s not really zero-grav sex anymore.  Really.  For all intents and purposes, you’re not floating.  You are –

Sarah:  No.  You’re anchored, and you’re using your own momentum and muscle strength.

Carrie:  Right.  I want to be, like –

RHG:  Right, but you’re also part of the fifty-mile high club, or however many miles it is.

Elyse:  I feel –

Carrie:  Oh, yes, it’s still impressive, but –

Elyse:  Like the –

Amanda:  I want to pull a Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator, so, like, if the sex is bad, I just shoot him out the airlock.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  You’re done.

Sarah:  We’re going to get so much email about this episode.  [Laughs]

Amanda:  It’d be like a thumb’s-up, thumb’s-down –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I feel like there’d be a fluid issue, though, right?  Like –

RHG:  Oh, there would definitely be a fluid issue.

Sarah:  [Burbling noises]

Elyse:  Like, right, like, there’d just be little bubbles of…things floating.

RHG:  [Laughs] Condoms.

Elyse:  Right.

Carrie:  Yes.  Yeah.

Someone:  It’d be very –

RHG:  You’d have, you’d have to wrap it up.

Elyse:  Well, yeah, I suppose, just from, like, a cleanliness perspective, but, so here’s another question:  could you get pregnant in zero G?

RHG:  Sure.

Amanda:  Well, I’m not testing that one out, so, that one’s not going to happen.

Carrie:  I just want to know –

RHG:  I would think so.

Carrie:  – if our favorite book for 2016 is going to be the fanfic we all write about having sex in space.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Which Amanda’s International Space Station –

Elyse:  It’s going to be like an anthology of, like, space sex

Carrie:  I think several members of the Avengers are going to be involved in this somehow.

Amanda:  All of them.

Elyse:  Oh, yeah, all of them, obviously.

Carrie:  Oh, yes, every one.

Sarah:  Would Thor be like Superman?

Carrie:  – contemplate this.

Elyse:  I think so.  Like –

Sarah:  Like, would, would Thor, like if he ejaculated, would he send Jane, like, through a wall?

Elyse:  My husband – he’s sitting on the other end of the couch – he just texted me an article:  Neil deGrasse Tyson says sex in space would involve a lot of belts.  So Amanda, you’re set.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  Let’s start a collection.

Sarah:  So one last question:  right now, what book are you most looking forward to reading?

RHG:  Okay, wait a second, wait a second.

Sarah:  What?

Elyse:  – ask that question.

RHG:  You didn’t, you didn’t ask me about my 2015.

Sarah:  I apologize!  I thought I had heard.

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  Please tell me all the things.  Sorry about that.

RHG:  Not all of them.  I’m, I’m going to say that the, the thing that, like, most marked my 2015 was Poldark, both the TV series and the books.

Sarah:  Oh, ah, yeah.

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Carrie:  Excuse me:  I have to go yell at my relatives because the Epic Moment of Dad has come home, and the dog and the kid have to lose their shit completely.  That just, like, happens, so –

RHG:  Okay.  We can’t actually hear them.

Sarah:  We can’t hear them at all.

Carrie:  Oh, great.  Never mind, carry on!

[Laughter]

RHG:  So, yeah, Poldark.  I spent Thanksgiving with a friend of mine, and we had dinner, and then she was like, let’s go watch a thing, and I’m like, I brought Poldark.  I’m just saying.  We’ll just one episode.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s just evil!

RHG:  Yeah, well – [laughs] – we watched one episode, and, and we get to Francis and Elizabeth’s wedding, and she’s like, wait, they’re getting married already?  I thought this was going to be an angst thing for the whole thing, and I’m like, oh, honey –

Sarah:  No.

RHG:  – she’s not his heroine.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No.

RHG:  And we got to the end of the episode, and I’m like, so… and she said, yes, please, play the next one.

Sarah:  Aw.

Carrie:  Aw.

RHG:  And we, we watched the second episode, and I was like, so, do you want me to leave the DVDs?  And she’s like, [small voice] yes, please.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Well played.

RHG:  And she watched the whole thing by the end of the weekend, so a win for me.  I just sort of skim re-read the first two books, and just the, the layer of research and texture that Winston Graham put into that world makes my little nerd, nerd heart – like, he was pandering forty years before I was born, so –

Sarah:  He knew.

RHG:  – good job!

Carrie:  He knew, he knew.

RHG:  Good job.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  Yeah.

RHG:  So, yeah, and one of the ladies that came to the Boston Bitches meet-up last week bought me a Poldark calendar that she found in the UK –

Sarah and Someone:  Ohhh!

RHG:  – and she’s like, she saw it, and it’s like, I have to bring that home for RedHeadedGirl.

Sarah:  That is so nice!

RHG:  I know!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Did you completely lose your mind?  Like, I might, I would cry, ‘cause –

RHG:  I, I didn’t cry, ‘cause I don’t cry in front of people.

Sarah:  Okay, fine.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I’m thumbs-upping, ‘cause that’s a Midwest thing.

RHG:  I was like, that’s the sweetest thing!  Thank you!  Have a cookie.  Have a macaroon.

Sarah:  That is –

Elyse:  Don’t touch me.  Don’t touch, I don’t like touching.  It’s a Midwest thing.  Don’t cry, don’t touch me.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  The Midwest, don’t cry, don’t touch me, eat some cheese in a bowl?

RHG:  Yeah, pretty –

Elyse:  Yeah, we’re, we’re cold –

Amanda:  Or beer.

Elyse:  – we’re cold Nordic people, Sarah.  We all –

[Laughter]

RHG:  When I, when I had my ACL repair, it was my first major surgery, and my parents came out for it, because Mom wasn’t going to let her baby go through her first surgery alone, I don’t know, and as they were right getting ready to wheel me to the OR, the nurse was like, all right, give her a hug and a kiss!  And we all sort of looked at each other awkwardly, and Mom’s like, we’re Swedes from the, from Minnesota; we don’t do that in front of people.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  It’s like a whole other language.

Elyse:  It is.

RHG:  ‘Cause they drove 1100 miles, and that was enough.

Sarah:  That’s pretty, pretty, pretty obvious communication.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Well, I had to tell my younger son, who’s sort of like, here are all my feelings, and he’s very articulate and likes to tell you everything he’s thinking and feeling, I had to explain to him, you know, not everyone uses the same language when they try to tell you that they care about you, so, you know, your brother isn’t going to be like, I love you, and you’re so great!  But he’s going to come in and help you with something, or he’s going to make something for you, and he’s going to very quietly walk in and give it to you and very quietly walk out of the room, and that is him saying, I love you a lot, and –

Carrie:  Aww!

Sarah:  So my, my younger son was like, ohhh!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Ohhh!

Sarah:  So, like, when he helps me in a video game!  Yes, that’s what that means.  Oh, and when he did that thing!  Yes.  Oh, my God, I want to go hug him right now!  And I’m like, I really wouldn’t do that.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’s what this is about.  So my son, my older son is very Midwestern by default.

Elyse:  I understand that people have feelings.  I’m just really bad at knowing what those feelings are or why they’re having them at that particular moment.  So –

Sarah:  [Laughs] Did that go for you too?

RHG:  No, I’m pretty good at figuring out what people’s feelings are?  There are just plenty of times where I don’t care.

[Laughter]

RHG:  And that’s just, that’s just me being terrible.

Sarah:  I don’t know; I think there’s a certain amount of empathy that people are born with at different levels, and it’s a learned thing –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – like, you can learn how to care about other people.

RHG:  Like, there are plenty of times where I’m just like, okay, you’re having all these feelings at me, and I’m, I, I get that, and I just can’t right now.  I can’t deal –

Elyse:  Yeah.

RHG:  – everything projecting on me, and you’re making me upset, and I need to walk away.

Sarah:  I understand that.

Elyse:  I’m just oblivious in general.  I get really fixated on things, and then I don’t necessarily notice, like, chaos is erupting around me necessarily, so, and I’m, I’m not good at picking up on cues?  Like, just tell me if you’re, like, you really, you literally have to tell me what’s on your mind, ‘cause I’m not, I don’t, I don’t understand what’s going on.

Sarah:  Oh, yes!  2016.  Yes.  Let us speak of it.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  All right.  What are you looking forward to reading in 2016?

Carrie:  Oh, in 2016?

Sarah:  Yes, have you, do you have a list for that?

Carrie:  [Laughs] I –

Amanda:  I think, am I the only one who keeps track of what’s coming out, like –

RHG:  Yes!

Carrie:  Well, I, I’m hitting, so, this comic thing pretty hard, so, so Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, technically, the first, the first issue came out, but the second one comes out at the end of December, and I think I’m going to try not to read or review it until I can read two issues, ‘cause I always feel like the first issue’s kind of like the pilot, right?

Sarah:  Yep.

Carrie:  You can’t really judge something based on the pilot, and I’m sort of in the same boat with, Amanda, you cued me onto, what, what was the name, I don’t know, it was like –

Amanda:  Something new. New romance or something?

Carrie:  New romance, right, so I’ve got to check that one out, so I’m super, super excited about that, and I’m super excited about Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.  I’ve set my sights very firmly on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is going to be my new crack, based on the cover of the first issue, which is this adorable African-American, eleven-year-old, science nerd girl hugging a giant Tyrannosaurus rex in, like, New York City.  I don’t see how you can get better than that.

Sarah:  So that was made of your catnip.

Carrie:  If, if the issue thing goes on to consist of nothing but blank pages –

[Laughter]

Carrie:  – I will still love it.  I’ll be like, that’s okay!  Look at that cover, dude!  

Elyse:  I’m really excited for, I think it’s coming out in May, I think.  Elizabeth Hoyt is finally writing Valentine, the Duke of Napier’s [Valentine Napier, Duke of Montgomery] book, and if you’ve read her Maiden Lane series, he’s kind of this really intelligent – he’s not, like, a villain; he’s an antagonist, and he’s got all these machinations behind the scenes –

Sarah:  [Whispers] Yes!

Elyse:  – and she says – yes! – and he’s super sexy, and she was inspired both by two of my favorite fictional antagonists, Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, and also Patrick Jane from The Mentalist.  Just, like, that’s kind of super smart –

RHG:  Pandering!

Elyse:  – yeah – super smart, sexy anti-hero, and he keeps popping, he’s popped up in, like, eight books or something now, and it’s like, write his fucking book!  And she is.  I’m really excited for that.

Amanda:  Oh, I bet you want him to pop up.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Hey-oh!

Amanda:  Quality programming.

Elyse:  Yes.  But then, the, the new Captain America movie comes out this summer, where Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans break up, and it’s going to be really hard for me to watch, but I’ll be there.

RHG:  They break up over Bucky.

Elyse:  Over, yeah, I don’t – isn’t it, I, I feel like the whole cast at this point has just acknowledged that everyone who’s not part of the official Marvel machine thinks all of the characters are gay, and they’re just like, yep.  Nope, we’re just going to – yes.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  We’re going to go with it.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  So this is basically like the superhero movie version of the Saturday Night Live skit, “The Ambiguously Gay Duo”?

RHG:  Yes.

Carrie:  Oh, absolutely.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Absolutely.  Like, the trailer, it’s just, like, yeah.

Sarah:  Butt, butt, butt, nothing but butt.

Carrie:  Butt, yeah.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  It’s like Tina Belcher wrote the script.  Nothing but butt.

[Laughter]

RHG:  I, I can tell you what I’m looking forward to play – I, I have no idea what books are coming out next year.  Sorry, Amanda.

Amanda:  It’s fine!

[Laughter]

RHG:  But –

Sarah:  See if I bring you to space.

Amanda:  See if I care!

[Laughter]

RHG:  Yeah, whatever.  You just yell at me every time we have to do that fucking post.

Amanda:  I do, I do yell at that.

RHG:  But my best friend in the whole world sent me eggs, pies, Egg Pies, Moss Cakes, and Pigeons Like Puffins:  Eighteenth-Century British Cookery from Manuscript Sources – it’s this book – and I’m looking forward to playing with it, ‘cause it has, it’s, look at how thick it is.

Sarah:  Oh, my God.

RHG:  This is a big book –

Carrie:  Ooh!

RHG:  – and it has all sorts of recipes, and some of them have been interpreted for modern cooking, and others I’ll just fuck around with.  You know, whatever.  So – oh, look, I just found their recipe for ratafia.

Sarah:  Drinking!

RHG:  So I’m going to have some fun with that, playing around with that, for future cooking posts.

Sarah:  Yay!

RHG:  So – oh, my God, it’s got a table of measures and conversions.  That’s sexy.

Carrie:  Oh, that is neat.  I like how, right now, really –

Sarah:  This is, this is the sound of RedHeadedGirl’s mental boner.

Everyone:  Yeah, yep.

Carrie:  And, and people can’t see this, but we can see RedHeadedGirl reading the book right now, and we can tell –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Carrie:  – like, the podcast is over; that’s it.

Amanda:  Her eyes have glazed over.

Sarah:  She’s got beer and a cookbook.

Carrie:  And, and I’m, like, trying to read, like, over the pages upside-down through the camera, and it’s probably kind of creepy, actually, but –

RHG:  It is.

Carrie:  – it, it looks really good.

RHG:  Yeah.

Carrie:  Yeah, sorry.

Sarah:  Only, only a little.

RHG:  Yeah.

Carrie:  So I’m, like, super ambivalent about one; can I tell you what I’m super ambivalent about?  So –

Sarah:  No, we don’t – yes!  Please!

Carrie:  Okay!  So, in February –

RHG:  Oh, God.

Carrie:  – Jim C. Hines is publishing Revisionary, which is the last book in the Libriomancer series, and I’m really excited, ‘cause I love that series, but he says it’s the last book, and I almost feel this need to just, like, shrine it somewhere.  

RHG:  I will totally admit I haven’t read the last novella in, in Courtney Milan’s Brothers Sinister series ‘cause I don’t want it to end.  I still haven’t read it.

Carrie:  Yeah, I don’t want the Libriomancer series to be done.  I love that series.  I’m that, that’s it.  That’s all I’ve got.

Someone:  For me –

RHG:  I’m kind of ambivalent about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies too.

Carrie:  Yeah, I think we’ll, we will have no idea what that’s like until we’re watching it.

Amanda:  I’m going to tell you what I’m excited about for 2016.

Sarah:  And here is Amanda’s list of sixty-five books organized –

Amanda:  I have two!  No, I, I have two.  Though I did consult my list by author.

Sarah:  Oh, I have my list; it’s right here.

Amanda:  There are two.  One is, Tessa Bailey is starting a new series –

Sarah:  Ooh!

Amanda:  – and –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s right, with Grand Central, right?

Amanda:  Yes!  She is one of the authors that I discovered this year that I loved, and her, this new series, I think it’s called, like, Meet the Clarksons?  It’s a ro-, the entire series is, like, a road-trip romance.  So it’s four siblings taking a road trip across the U.S., and, like, obviously, they each get kind of paired off, which I think is interesting.

Sarah:  So it’s a, it’s a, it’s like a road trip of sex through space without space.

Amanda:  Yes.

Sarah:  Okay.

Amanda:  So clearly I’m all over it.  And then the second one I actually have on my Kindle.  I’m going to read it while I’m on a boat, and it’s the third book in Edie Harris’s Blood Money series, which I will recommend this series to anyone and everyone.  But the hero of this one is, like, the stoic brother that you’ve seen in the other couple books, so he –

Sarah:  Right.

Amanda:  – kind of, like, works behind the scenes.  He’s like a really, I don’t know, serious Army guy who doesn’t talk a lot, and he has to go undercover in, like, South America, and he finds his wife who he thought was dead working in South America.  She was also –

Sarah:  Surprise!

Amanda:  She’s also, like, an agent, so I don’t know if, like, she had to do undercover work or whatever.

Sarah:  Hey, this guy doesn’t watch enough TV.  No body?  Not dead.

Carrie:  No.

Amanda:  So I’m like, I’ve been waiting, I’m looking forward to seeing him lose his fucking shit –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  – in this book when he discovered that his wife is still alive, so.

Sarah:  Surprise!

Amanda:  Those are the two things that I, I whittled down my list a little bit, but.

Sarah:  Ohhh.

Amanda:  Your turn, Sarah.

Sarah:  My turn?

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  All right, look, I have an actual list.  Yay!

Amanda:  I’m proud of you!

Sarah:  I know!  I knew you would be.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  All right.  So I have, in January, Beverly Jenkins has a new book coming out?

Amanda:  Is it a new series, or, or is Forbidden or something?

Sarah:  It’s Forbidden –

Amanda:  That’s what it is.

Sarah:  – but she’s been talking about this book – I have this weird thing with Beverly Jenkins where she and I will end up at the same conferences, like two or three in a row, and then later in the year there’ll be, like, two more, so I saw her at RT, and I saw her at RWA, and then last month I saw her in Vancouver, and then the following weekend I saw her in New York, and I was like, I’m just going to go to Target, and Beverly Jenkins is going to be in the dairy aisle, because I just see her everywhere at this point.

Amanda:  You always take creeper photos, too.

Sarah:  Yes, well, she was, she was taking a picture of her books, and I was like, it’s so cute, you’re taking a picture of your own book!  I have to take a picture of you.

Amanda:  So she’s taking a picture of Beverly Jenkins taking a picture of Beverly Jenkins’ own books.

Sarah:  Yes, it was –

RHG:  Inception!

Sarah:  – it was, it was Bevception.

Carrie:  Paparazzi!

Sarah:  That’s right.  But Forbidden, she’s been talking about it all year, and it sounds really cool, because part of the conflict is that the hero is, has been passing as white, and the woman that he falls in love with is not, and so he has to decide whether he’s going to stop passing himself off as white and go after her, and there’s all of this conflict built into it, and I am so excited to read this, because, like, as RedHeadedGirl has pointed out, Beverly does her homework!

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s so great!  And then the other thing I’m, I’m a little curious about this one because I have this sort of fascination right now with books that are marketed as women’s fiction for, specifically for reading groups.  Like, any book that is women’s fiction that has some sort of green, verdant barn, chair, wagon wheel on the cover –

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – and then involves a library or somebody reading something gets marketed towards reading groups, and then I end up hearing about it, which is interesting, but there’s one called The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend which is getting a lot of press, and I’m like, that’s a weird title to get a lot of press, which is why I remembered it, but you might light this, RedHeadedGirl, because it’s about a, a girl who’s from Sweden who’s a pen pal of someone from Iowa, and she goes to Iowa to visit, and she finds out that her pen pal has just died, but she stays in Iowa to run the book shop – as you do – and it ends up being this –

RHG:  I have some immigration questions, but go on.

Sarah:  Look, the book shop needed a Swede.  Just go with it!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Duh.  So I’m, like, I, I was sort of like, oh, okay, this sounds interesting; I’ll add it to my list, and then, you know that thing where all of a sudden every, everything you read, someone’s mentioning this book?  Like, it’s in this newsletter, and then it’s in this person’s post, and I’m like, wait, everyone’s talking about this book that I thought had a weird title in.  Okay, so I’m curious about that.  And then, in March, Caroline Linden has a new book coming out called Six Degrees of Scandal?

RHG:  Oh, yeah, she talked about that.

Sarah:  Does it sound good?  ‘Cause it sounded good to me!

RHG:  Course it sounds good.  I mean, look, I love everything she writes, so.

Sarah:  I like, the thing I like about her writing is that her heroines are smart, you know?

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  And it, it’s not just like oh, I know things and I’m, I’m super bookish and –

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  – I’m a bluestocking.  It’s, they’re actually intelligent about people.  You know what I mean?

Someone:  Yeah.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I like that.

RHG:  Yes.  There, there’s less of the, I’m just the smartest cookie that ever did live and more like, yes, and?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yes, exactly.  That’s totally the difference.  It’s not I’m so smart; it’s, yes, I know.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I am aware.  All right, dudes.  This is awesome!  Yay!

Carrie:  We didn’t hear Elyse’s yet.

Sarah:  Elyse!

Amanda:  She talked about Elizabeth Hoyt!

RHG:  Elyse!  Is she asleep?

Amanda:  What are you talking about?  She talked about Valentine and Maiden Lane.

Elyse:  I’m – maybe.

Carrie:  Oh, you did.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I need it to be December 22nd so I can read again.  I’m so tired, y’all.  But, yeah, I haven’t read anything in, like, months.  It’s awful.  I come home and I, I can, my brain can handle, like, Finding Nemo?  I’m like, oh, fishies, bright color, go to bed now.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  That’s –

RHG:  Hmm.

Elyse:  – that’s where I’m at.

Sarah:  Soon.  Soon you will read.

RHG:  Yes.

Elyse:  [Whispers] This is why I hate Christmas.

Sarah:  I can understand.

Elyse:  Do we have 2016 predictions?  Didn’t you and Jane used to do that?

Sarah:  2016 predictions.  Yeah, we used to do that.

Someone:  Oh, like –

Sarah:  Do you have any?

Elyse:  Well, one thing I’ve been noticing in, like, two whole books, so this is obviously a trend, is I think, like, in Regencies there’s going to be more American heroines.  I think Downton Abbey and some other shows have kind of, I think, broached the American heiress goes to England to find a titled husband, ‘cause I know –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – Karen Ranney’s doing one.  Eloisa James is doing one.  Is it, Laura Lee Guhrke has a whole series on that, so I wonder if we’re going to see more Americans in the Regency kind of.

Sarah:  I think you’re right, because I’ve seen a lot more of that.  It also sets up a, a, a conflict that is pretty unique, and then you can sort of build established tropes on top of it.  My, my, my trend guess is that the very-high-stakes contemporary will continue to build, and then will switch to something else entirely, ‘cause that’s how we roll.  That’s not a very –

Someone:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – that’s not a very edgy prediction.

RHG:  It’s, yeah, no.  That’s, that’s a pretty safe bet.

Sarah:  Well, I mean, we kind of go through cycles.  Like, we have paranormal, and then paranormal goes away, and then we have, you know, small-town contemporary, and now we’re going for people who are heads of, you know, massive international crime syndicates.  So what’s going to be the next thing?  Maybe historicals will become huge.

Amanda:  I feel like darker romances are coming in, because we had Asking for It and Madame X and, like, Miss Conduct is coming into play, and then I got a book that I asked for from Berkley called Bully?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Amanda:  And it was, like, published online before, and I think it’s in paperback now, but this is, like, the hero is a horrible, horrible bully to the heroine.  Like, there’s no bones about it, so it’s really –

Sarah:  So it’s, like, pushing the edges of what can be redeemed?

Amanda:  I think so.  So I feel like those darker romances are going to –

Sarah:  Dark redemption.

Amanda:  – continue.  Yeah.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Amanda:  That’s my guess.

RHG:  I, well, I have a, I have a prediction for 2016 that I know is definitely going to come true:  that Amanda and I are going to go to Sweden, and things are going to go insane.

Amanda:  That’s right.

[Cheering]

RHG:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  I’m going to marry so many pastries.

RHG:  It’s true.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Well, I mean, it is very dangerous when, when Amanda finds the cheap airfare, and you’re like, let’s do this!

RHG:  Let’s do this!  And I’m like, no, I should be responsible adult!  And twenty minutes later, I kind of want to, and twenty minutes after that, okay, I did some math.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  Just, like, if the, my plane ticket and splitting the Airbnb is less than what I pay in rent a month.

Sarah:  Nice.

Amanda:  Yeah.  So –

Elyse:  Is there, like, a red-light district in Sweden?

RHG:  No.

Amanda:  I don’t know.

Elyse:  Amanda’s thinking about it now.  She’s like, is there?

Amanda:  I never considered that!

Sarah:  There will be!

[Laughter]

Amanda:  For the week that I’m there!

Sarah:  Do they have Tinder in Sweden?  I want to know about this.

Amanda:  Yeah, they do.  Yeah!

RHG:  Definitely.

Sarah:  Awesome!

Amanda:  It’s international!

Sarah:  Bow-wow-wow-chicka-chicka-

Carrie:  Well, I think you need to spread some good will.  Be an ambassador for the –

Amanda:  Oh, I’ll spread something, Carrie.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  Oh, bad.  I love it.

Carrie:  Well, I don’t know if I have a prediction or it’s just, like, a fervent wish, but I do feel like, in historicals, there’s starting to be more people of color and more people who do not identify as heterosexual, even if they’re only, like, a side character.  

Someone:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  There’s still not very many where they’re the main character, but you’re, there’s more stories where, you know, somebody’s brother is gay, or –

Sarah:  Right.

Carrie:  – you know, they, they –

Sarah:  And so the –

Carrie:  – know somebody who recently is visiting from India or whatever, you know, and I’m, I’m hoping that that will ramp up.  That’s my, my wishful prediction.

Sarah:  So that the, the depiction of history is becoming more accurate in terms of –

Carrie:  More accurate, yeah.

Sarah:  – the fact that history wasn’t just a whole bunch of white people in brocade.

RHG:  Yep.

Carrie:  Yeah.  And there’re aspects of history that I’m willing to let go of, okay?  I’m willing to say, you know what?  Somebody is getting married, and the epilogue says she’s pregnant, and I don’t have to worry that on the next page she dies of an infection –

Sarah:  Nope.

Carrie:  – because no one washed their hands.  You know, that’s okay.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  I can, I can let that go.

RHG:  Yeah.

Carrie:  But I would really like to see more diverse historical romances, and I feel like we’re sort of torturously inching our way there.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Well, Elyse and I had a very long conversation about various bodily functions for a podcast –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and she and I talked at length about how nobody in romance has to get up to pee after sex to avoid a UTI, even though back then a UTI would kill you.

Elyse:  Yeah, you would, you would die, and I, but I get why they don’t, because you have the chamber pot.  Like, you don’t want to bang Mr. Darcy and be like, oh, hey, hold on while I squat in the corner, right?

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Like, you can’t even run the tap to hide the pee sound.

Sarah:  Nope.

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  Yep, there’s no –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – there’s no post-coital urination in historicals.

Elyse:  No, and nobody gets syphilis.

Carrie:  Like, is that, like, a thing in contemporaries?

Sarah:  No.

Someone:  No.

Sarah:  People never have morning breath, UTIs –

Amanda:  There are no bodily functions.

Sarah:  No, that’s –

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  – that’s why Toni Blake’s Whisper Falls, where the heroine has Crohn’s disease –

Someone:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – still blows my mind, because, I mean, she’s not very descriptive, but everyone kind of knows what Crohn’s disease is, and this, the heroine has a very severe case of it and has had to move home so her parents can take care of her, and –

Someone:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – when she has a flareup, the hero is like, oh, my gosh, you’re really sick.  Okay, how can I help?  And I’m like, this is the most unsexy illness, and I am 200% here for this.  Because you never hear about, like, you know, everyone dies glamorously.

RHG:  Right.

Elyse:  They die of Mysterious Victorian Fainting Disease.

RHG:  Yep.

Carrie:  Yeah.  Right.

RHG:  You quietly and politely cough yourself to death.

Someone:  Right.

Sarah:  After singing.  Don’t forget the singing.

RHG:  Yep.  Politely.

Elyse:  And, and –

Sarah:  Yes.

Elyse:  – no one ever, like, sleeps with a guy and then it accidentally starts their period.  Right?  Like, that never happens.

Amanda:  Well, in Sweet Filthy Boy, the hero and heroine are on a plane to go to France, and she’s wearing, like, white jeans, and she gets her period.

Sarah:  Oh, God.

RHG:  Oh no.

Amanda:  And she’s, like, freaking the fuck out, and this, like, French hero is like – she’s in the bathroom very upset.  She’s, like, cramping, she’s bleeding, and he’s, like, trying to get the stewardesses to give him, like, a tampon or a pad for her or something.  And I think it’s the first time I read a romance that had a period in it.  Like, menstruation.

Sarah:  I always wondered, like, okay, you don’t always know your cycle, so say you have an irregular cycle, and sometimes you stain the sheets, right?  So if everyone is so fixated on virginity, how come you don’t, like, roll up and save that sheet so you can, like –

Someone:  For later.

Sarah:  – right!  So you could, like, go to Bone Town with whoever you want, and then on your wedding night be like –

Amanda:  Just do an old bait-and-switch.

Sarah:  – surprise!

Carrie:  Surprise!

Sarah:  Yeah, just lay that –

RHG:  I am totally going to steal that idea.

Sarah:  Yes!  Okay, go ahead!

Carrie:  Yes!

Sarah:  I am, I am totally here for this.  Like, seriously, just, just roll it up and save it and then be like, oh, my gosh –

Carrie:  Yeah!

Sarah:  – look, I just bled fucking everywhere.  Your, your wang is huge!

Elyse:  You did a great job.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Your wang is huge.  You have plowed my lady garden very well.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  So, so, like, probably not for the podcast, ‘cause I don’t want to get too personal.  Am I the only one, like, if I’m anywhere kind of in that range of when it’s going to happen, like, if you have sex, it’s like, up!  Here we go!  It started.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Like, it, it’s, it’s like, I, I don’t know what the hell that, that is.

Amanda:  Are you on birth control at all?

Elyse:  Yeah, yeah.  Well, I have crazy periods to begin with, so, like –

Amanda:  Oh, yeah, I’m on, like, the pill, and it, that’s never happened, but I know exactly, like, I, usually it starts for me like a Sunday morning or afternoon, and I’ll get laid late Saturday night and be fine.

Elyse:  I think it’s like, the, the, banging the side of the catsup bottle?

[Laughter]

Elyse:  And that’s how you know a dude loves you, when that doesn’t completely freak him out.

Sarah:  So, so instead of your uterus being like, like a clamshell, and you would like it to be like the Heinz squeezy bottle, like, pbbbt, it’s actually just the glass bottle –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – and you have to pound it?

Elyse:  Right, right, yeah.  I mean, yes.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yeah.  It’s, it’s, it’s sexy.

Sarah:  It’s very sexy.

Elyse:  It is completely sexy.  I, I knew – we had a dog that, my mom had a dog that, she had a drawer – this, there’s a story, relax – she had a drawer that the dog –

Sarah:  [Laughs] I was like, wait, we went from sex to your dog.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I wasn’t sure how we got there.

Elyse:  It was in, it was in the bathroom, and the tampons and pads were always in this drawer, and the dog knew how to, like, wiggle it open, and if he really liked you, he’d bring you a – obviously unused – tampon or maxi pad from his treasure drawer, right?  Like, hello, person I have never met, here is a super absorbency tampon, right?

[Laughter]

Elyse:  And I think that’s when I knew Richard was a keeper, ‘cause the first time he met my mom, the dog, like, showed up with a bunch of tampons, just about like, hi, Richard, here are tampons!  And he was completely chill about the whole thing, like – I have a handful of feminine hygiene products and I’m at your mother’s house.  This is very uncomfortable.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Aw!

Sarah:  I think, I think I’ve known many people, myself included, who have had a dog who loved panties?

Carrie:  Oh, God, yes.

Elyse:  Oh, yes.

Carrie:  Oh, my God.

Sarah:  And then they chew the crotch out of the panties –

Amanda:  Oh, my God.

Sarah:  – so it’s like –

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – not only is my underwear in front of people I don’t know, but I have to go buy more, ‘cause it’s ripped now.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.  No, our current dog, before I got the hang of keeping everything where the dog could not get it, which turned out to be harder than you would think, because –

Sarah:  Oh, no, very hard.

Carrie:  – you can’t just put it in the hamper.  It’s a little dog, but she jumps.  She will leap into an open hamper, retrieve your, your underwear, and flee with it, right.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  I had to buy closing laundry hampers.  Right now –

Someone:  [Whistles]

Carrie:  – I’m sitting at my desk and next to me is –

[Laughter]

Carrie:  – a laundry hamper, because I have to keep it up off the floor.  I mean, just buying the cheapest possible, cotton, disgusting granny panties at Target, we must have gone through, between me and Glen and Linda, like, hundreds of dollars worth of underwear the first couple months we had that stupid dog.  I mean, that beloved dog who I love so much.

Sarah:  [Chewing sound effects]

RHG:  That doesn’t preclude them from being dumb.

Carrie:  That cutie pie!  No, she’s dumb as a bag of rocks when it comes to underwear.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  We had a Great Dane –

Carrie:  Well, I mean, really she’s not, that’s the problem.  She’s not.  She’s so clever with the –

Sarah:  But underwear makes you stupid.

Amanda:  We had a –

Elyse:  I’m sure Glen has, like, a whole evolutionary explanation for –

Sarah:  Panties?

Elyse:  – why she does that.  Yeah, for dogs eating panties.

Amanda:  We had a –

Carrie:  Well, like, you know, she was bonding to us, and she liked our smell, so in order of preference, she liked Linda’s, mine, and then Glen’s, and in fact, for a long time, she had no interest in Glen’s, because we rescued her, and we didn’t know what happened to her before we got her, but we think she might have had some issues with men, and she took a really long time to warm up to Glen, and then when she accepted Glen as one of her people, that’s when she went after the underwear.

Elyse:  Then she ate his underwear.

Carrie:  They want the smell, and the smell is strongest in the crotch in the underwear.  She’ll also chew the bottom out of pants, so Linda goes through a lot of pajamas.  If you leave your pants lying around, she’ll chew those.

Elyse:  My best friend’s cat has, like, a, they’re rescue cats, and they were separated from mommy too young, so she has, like, pica or something where you eat foreign objects?

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  Like, she likes to suckle on blankets and clothing, and the vet has repeatedly warned them, know, she’s going to get a bowel obstruction, and you’re going to pay a thousand dollars in surgery.  I shit you not, she ate a hole in my niece’s nightgown while my niece was sleeping wearing the nightgown.  She, like, climbed into bed next to her –

Carrie:  Oh, yes.

Elyse:  – and just, like, ate a hole in it.

Sarah:  Wow.

Carrie:  Oh, I had a cat like that who ate not one, two beading needles, and we kept saying, look, why the shiny?  Okay, but what made her enjoy that experience so much that then she ate a second one?

Sarah:  That’s messed up.

Carrie:  It was way messed up.

Sarah:  That’s seriously messed up.

Carrie:  It was also super, super expensive.

Sarah:  Oh, God.  Oh-h-h-h.

Carrie:  But poor kitty.  She was a really messed up kitty, but really, two!  That’s, that’s what really got us.

Sarah:  That’s quite a lot.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  Yeah.

RHG:  My mom had a cat who would bring socks out from the hamper and leave them in the middle of the living room, and for a long time, she would yell at my father for leaving his dirty socks in the living room, and he’s like, I don’t, wait –

[Laughter]

RHG:  – I didn’t, I didn’t, until she saw Zonker go pull a –

Sarah:  I’m sorry, whoa, whoa, whoa, Zonker?

RHG:  Our cat’s name was Zonker.

Sarah:  That’s a great name for a cat.

RHG:  Yeah, I’ll, I’ll send you guys a picture of me and Zonker on the couch when Zonker was longer than me.

Sarah:  Aww!

RHG:  I know.  He was a great cat.  Anyway, she saw Zonker go to the hamper, pull out dirty socks, and leave them in the middle of the living room floor, and that was clearly his way of saying, look, lady, dump this guy.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I’ve brought you his socks; what else do you need?

RHG:  Yeah.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  It’s time for him to go.

RHG:  Time for him to go, and sure enough, he went, Zonker stayed, so.

Sarah:  Aw.

Carrie:  Aww.

Sarah:  Well, you, you probably got the better end of that deal.

RHG:  Definitely.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All right, dudes, anything else you want to mention?  Whoa.

Amanda:  No.

Sarah:  No?  All right, cool.

RHG:  No.  Go read books, people.

Sarah:  Well, one of the things that we’re going to try to do in the, 2016 is to set up semi-regularly, like maybe once a quarter or once every six months, video chats that we’ll record and live-stream and then also save on YouTube –

Someone:  Yayyy!

Sarah:  – so we’ll have, like, live book club discussions and live, like, Bitches online, and then we’ll save the videos.  It’s going to be awesome!  So we can tell lots of inappropriate panty stories!

Elyse:  Absolutely.

RHG:  Yay!

Amanda:  Oh, yes!

Elyse:  Oh, I forgot to tell you, I feel like I made it because on Twitter someone, like, tweeted at me about a book they’re reading that was really sad, and someone replied, like, whoa, you need to have @ElyseIndeed recommend you a book, ‘cause it won’t be a tear-jerker, and I’m like, yes!

Sarah:  Hoo, nice!

Elyse:  Yes!  I am now known as the smut peddler.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’s a really good job to have.

Elyse:  Right?!

Sarah:  Because, I mean, there’re a lot of people out there reading smut that’s terrible.  You need good smut.

Elyse:  Like, Grey?  Can we –

RHG:  Ugh.

Elyse:  Who’s, who’s taking the second one for the team?

RHG:  Nope.  Nope.

Sarah:  There’s going to be a second one?

RHG:  Of course –

Someone:  The second –

RHG:  Do you think that she is going to let that cash cow wander by?

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  It’s end, at the end of the year before it’s done, though.

RHG:  No, she’s going to flog that cash cow to death.

Elyse:  Yeah, ‘cause it takes, like, two years to copy and paste some shit you wrote in your previous book and change the pronoun.  Yeah.

RHG:  Yes.

Elyse:  And talk about ginger up people’s asses.

RHG:  Yes.

Amanda:  Which we talked about on the podcast Sarah and I did.

Sarah:  Yes, we did.  Figgy pudding!  It’s called figging, so we decided that when people –

Elyse:  Really.

Sarah:  – come and ask you to bring them figgy pudding, it’s a whole other thing they’re asking for.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Fig-, is, is it specific to ginger up the ass or just stuffing fruit –

Sarah:  No, figging is, figging is the name for peeling a root of –

Amanda:  You peel it.

Sarah:  – you peel a root of ginger.

Amanda:  It’s supposed to, like, sting really badly.

Elyse:  I would think so.

Elyse:  I mean, I can’t imagine it’s comfortable.

RHG:  I think comfort is not really the point.

Amanda:  Yes.

Sarah:  No.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week.  I hope that was more than enough Not Safe For Work to get you through a new week in the new year.  We will be back next week with discussions about romance novels, ‘cause that’s what we do here.  Any books that we mention during the podcast are always linked to at smartbitchestrashybooks.com.  You can find them there, or you can tweet me @SmartBitches.  You can find Elyse on Twitter @ElyseIndeed.  You can find Amanda @_ImAnAdult.  Carrie is @geekgirlinlove, and RedHeadedGirl is @RedHeadedGirl.  Pretty easy, right?

This podcast 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.  Each dawn brings death, but can love change the story?  This intoxicating retelling of A Thousand and One Nights will leave you begging for book two, The Rose & the Dagger, coming Summer 2016.

The podcast transcript is sponsored by Kensington, publishers of Kill Without Mercy by Alexandra Ivy, the first book in the brand-new ARES Security series about a group of five brave military special-ops veterans.  If you’re in the mood for heart-pounding action and confident alpha males with deadly skills coupled with nail-biting life-and-death situations that will have you on the edge of your seat, then this group of covert specialists is at your service, on sale now wherever books are sold.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the Peatbog Faeries from their album What Men Deserve to Lose, and this track is called “Nyup.”  You can find it on iTunes or Amazon or wherever you like to buy your fine music.

Future podcasts will include me, many other people, talking about romance novels, ‘cause that’s how we do things here, but on behalf of everyone in Smart Bitches, have a great weekend, ‘cause we wish you the very best of reading and lots and lots of reading time.  See you next week.

[driving music]