Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, March 4, 2016

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 183 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are all of the Bitches.  This is the first of a two-part podcast episode series where all of us are together talking over each other, and poor garlicknitter has to try to transcribe this mess.  [gk – I shall do my best!]  We are going to talk about a whole mess of things.  We discuss what we’re reading, from really wonderful historicals to some seriously depressing anthologies.  We talk about felonious street sign theft, the sad absence of gargoyle hardness jokes, what not to do if you stumble into a polar bear’s liver, and the way that mourning and funerary rites have changed over the years, because our conversations wander all over the earth.

This podcast episode is sponsored by Lexxi Callahan, author of the sexy contemporary romance series the Self Made Men…Southern Style.  Set in New Orleans, all three books are available through Kindle Unlimited.  Book three, The Fall of the Red Queen, has just been released.  Red Hot Books says if you like your heroines tough, sexy, and powerful, then Madlyn will own you as easily as she owns Jared.

The podcast transcript this week is sponsored by Jessica Khoury, author of The Forbidden Wish, published by Penguin Young Readers and available in print and eBook.  She is the most powerful Jinni of all.  He is a boy from the streets.  Their love will shake the world in this dazzling retelling of Aladdin like you’ve never imagined.  Available now!

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  I am still enjoying a new album that she told me I should listen to, and she’s totally right.  I will have information about who this is and where you can buy it at the end of the podcast.

But in the meantime, it’s time for me, Carrie, RedHeadedGirl, Amanda, and Elyse to talk a lot about many different things.  And on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  Okay, so we’re here:  yay!

Somebody, probably Carrie:  Whoo!

Sarah:  Amanda, your headboard is super-cute, by the way.

Amanda:  Check out my street sign.

Elyse:  Nice!

[Laughs]

Amanda:  My father and my brother stole it in the middle of the night ‘cause I wanted it for Christmas, and so they took it –

At least a couple of Bitches:  Aww!

Amanda:  – and that –

RedHeadedGirl:  So they took it and you transported it across state lines?

Amanda:  Yes, I did.

Sarah:  I’m pretty sure –

Elyse:  Now it’s a felony.

Sarah:  – that’s a felony, and, and that’s also the most northern Florida thing I’ve ever heard.

Amanda:  [Laughs] And they still haven’t replaced the street sign yet.

Sarah:  Has anyone died on the so-called dangerous curve, or do enough people know it’s there?

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  Enough people know it’s there.  It’s, like, a backwoods-y dirt road, so –

Elyse:  I feel like –

Amanda:  – people who have lived there have lived there forever.

Elyse:  I feel like this is start of, like, a teenage horror film where, like –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  – you’re, Amanda will be haunted for the rest of her days by the deaths of people ‘cause she selfishly wanted a street sign.

Amanda:  Worth it.

Sarah:  Ghostly phantom traffic cops come find her –

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – and try to write tickets, but they can’t reach her through the, through the veil.  

So, just so it’s easier on poor garlicknitter and everyone else who’s listening, can you go around and introduce yourselves, starting with Carrie?  We could go – actually, no, let’s go in alphabetical order.  So, Amanda!

Amanda:  I feel like I went first last time!

Sarah:  Okay, so you go last.

RedHeadedGirl:  Hi, this is RedHeadedGirl.  It’s early enough in the day that I do not have beer this time, so this is a sober podcast for me!

Sarah:  Boring.  Go get a beer.

RHG:  I know.  No!  Also, I don’t have any.

Elyse:  It’s Elyse.  I did pour myself a glass of wine at 10:30 this morning.

Sarah:  Cheers!

Amanda:  Yeah, baby!

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Was it that kind of a workday off where you had work calling you at 10:30?

Elyse:  It was, and I’m also, like, in that weird kind of in-between pain where I’m like, I could take a pain pill or two Aleve and some wine, right?  So, like, how –

Sarah:  Two Aleve and some wine, totally.

Elyse:  Exactly, exactly.

Carrie:  Right, yeah.

Elyse:  I’m self-medicating heavily.

Sarah:  Although I would be willing to put up a, a fundraiser for some cause in the future, and the prize will be all of us either on narcotics or intoxicated or both recording a podcast.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I’ll take my maximum two Percocet; my pup-, pupils’ll be huge.  Elyse’ll have some nice Vicodin or – RedHeadedGirl, you’re going to bust out the laudanum, and then we’ll press record.  It’ll be awesome!

Elyse:  And we’ll just get Carrie, like, hypercaffeinated.

Carrie:  Well, no, I’ve got my Norco!  I’m mean, they’re like laudanum –

Elyse:  There we go!

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Carrie:  The Norco is really not very entertaining, because nothing happens, nothing happens, and then an hour later, all of a sudden I just go thunk!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  So except for that brief moment of, of, you know, hilarity when my head actually hits the keyboard, you’re not going to get, like, the full stoned effect.  Ooh!  Theraflu, Theraflu might do it.

Sarah:  That would be good.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Okay, isn’t Norco the thing you cook in in Wisconsin?

Elyse:  Nesco.

Carrie:  What?

RHG and Sarah:  Nesco.

Sarah:  Oh.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, you can’t swallow that.

Carrie:  Well, no wonder it’s so calm in Wisconsin.  They’re cooking with Norco!  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Exactly.

Sarah:  We, over the weekend, we watched The Martian with the kids, and there’s that section where he crushes Vicodin and dips his potato in it –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and my, my older son was like, wait, that’s a thing people do?  And I’m like, apparently, on Mars.

Carrie:  On Mars!

Sarah:  [Laughs] All right, so what have you guys been reading that you dig and want to talk about?

Elyse:  I’m reading the gargoyle book, which opens me up for so many boner jokes?  So many boner jokes.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Okay, what was with the response for that?  Like, you mentioned, I’m, I, I quoted you on Twitter, and everyone was like, give me the gargoyle book name NOW!

Elyse:  Well, okay, so this is, this is my theory.  You have to be of the right age range to have watched Disney’s Gargoyles?  Do you remember that TV series?

RHG:  Yes!

Elyse:  Yes.

Carrie:  Yeah!

RHG:  Sarah!

Elyse:  So, Sarah – all right.

Sarah:  I, I have, I’m old.

Elyse:  For a while, Disney –

Sarah:  You, you shut up!

RHG:  Sarah, you are not that much older than me and Elyse.

Sarah:  I’m, like, six years older than you.  I was –

RHG:  And also, the boys will love it.

Elyse:  They will.

Sarah:  Disney’s Gargoyles?

RHG:  Yes!

Elyse:  It was a TV show, and I was, like, of the right age to really appreciate the fact that – it was about a bunch of gargoyles who’d been, like, sleeping in their stone form for a long time, and then I don’t remember what happened.  They woke up in New York City, and they were, like, saving the world from darkness, but they partnered up with a, a woman cop, and there was –

Sarah:  As you do.

Elyse:  – as you do – and there was a, kind of a romantic arc between the lead gargoyle, who was totally a romance hero ‘cause he had a mullet, he had no shirt on –

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  – and he wore a loin cloth –

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  – and I was, like, middle school age, where the whole bestiality thing wouldn’t have entered in, right?  It was just like, oh, they should, they should fall in love Beauty and the Beast style.

RHG:  They should totally do it.

Sarah:  Wait, like, two of the characters from Star Trek:  The Next Generation did voices.

RHG:  Yes!

Elyse:  Yeah!  Yeah.

Sarah:  Was this, like, a subtle Star Trek nerdgasm show?

RHG:  Not that subtle.

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  Well, Ed Asner was on it too, and he was never on Star Trek.  How did I miss this?  1994 to 1996.  I was in college, and I – okay.

RHG:  Doesn’t matter.  Lots of college students watched this show too.  The boys’ll love this.

Sarah:  I did not own a television.

RHG:  Oh, whatever.  The boys will love it.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Why, why would you let that stop you?

Elyse:  So, anyway –

Sarah:  It was a while before I developed my, my, my ways to get around obstacles.  That, not having a TV and a car at the time was a big obstacle.  So you watched a lot of Disney’s Gargoyles.

Elyse:  Well, I did when I was – so, in 1994 I was twelve, right, but, no, I, so I saw this book on NetGalley and I’m reading it, and –

Carrie:  [Laughs]   I’m sorry.

Elyse:  [Laughs] Carrie just got that.

Carrie:  Sorry.  [Laughs] I just did the math.

RHG:  Carrie just did the math.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  No, so it’s a paranormal romance, and it’s the, the fourth book in the series, I guess.  I’m reading them out of order now, but the hero is a gargoyle, but he can shapeshift into, like, a hot dude, so that gets around the whole how do you, you know, like, how – he’s not going to fit in your Kia.  He’s, like, ten feet tall and has wings, right, so how, the logistics, he can just shapeshift into a person.

RHG:  Kia what we’re calling it these days?

Somebody:  Ba-dump-bump.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Ew.

[More laughter]

Sarah:  So does that mean that someone has a Maxima?  Kia –

RHG:  Yes.

[More laughter]

Sarah:  Amanda, we need to edit your Tinder profile.

Amanda:  I haven’t been on Tinder in a while –

Sarah:  That’s true, that’s true.

Amanda:  – so.

Sarah:  You hooked up with a fine sailor, and you’re happy.

Amanda:  I am very happy. 

Sarah:  Yay!

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So you started reading this out of order, Elyse.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  And the whole gargoyle thing is working for you.

Elyse:  I don’t know.  I’m not – so, so what’s working for me, what’s not working.  I haven’t read a paranormal romance in a long time, so in some ways it’s kind of like, oh, this is new and exciting, but it’s very action-oriented, so it moves along at a really fast pace, which I like.  I didn’t like the fact that, so the heroine is Jewish, and she speaks a lot of Yiddish, but it’s like, kind of like when you read those books who have Scottish characters and they just put so much –

Sarah:  Ach, lassie.

Elyse:  – dialect in –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – that it’s, it’s, like, all the time, to the point now where it’s becoming distracting.  Like, I, I get it.  Like, this is her thing.

Sarah:  No.  See, Yiddish is like saffron.  You don’t use, need a lot of it.  You just drop it in.

Elyse:  It’s –

Sarah:  You don’t need, like, every other word.

Elyse:  And that’s kind of, every other word is oy.  Yeah.

RHG:  Well, I know people like that though.

Sarah:  Oy.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  But yeah.  No, he’s a gargoyle who changes into a hot dude and then changes back into a gargoyle.

Sarah:  I, I assume that they have, have they had sex yet?  ‘Cause –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – descriptions of his hardness would probably be pretty intricate?

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  That’s the thing!  There’re no hardness jokes.  No rock hard jokes.  They’re, like, the –

Sarah:  What?!

Elyse:  Right!  There’s, there’s just, it could, there’re so many opportunities for boner jokes.  So many opportunities for boner jokes, and they, they haven’t gone there.

Sarah:  I feel like that’s a, a flaw in the worldbuilding.

Elyse:  I agree!

Sarah:  Like, normal humans would make boner, boner hardness jokes, right?

Elyse:  I would think so!  Also –

Sarah:  I mean –

Elyse:  – I think he has a prehensile tail.  I mean, shouldn’t that enter into the –

Carrie:  Ooh!

Elyse:  – story at some point?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  I think it should.

Sarah:  Yeah?!

Elyse:  Right!

Sarah:  It’s like the seeker that comes out from behind the guy’s balls.

Elyse:  Ohhh, the seeker.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  – multiple issues here.  So, like, one issue is, is the individual reader turned on by prehensile tails, but then the other issue is, if you’re going to advertise that your hero has a prehensile tail, you’re kind of obligated to deliver on that.

Someone:  Yes, yes.

Carrie:  Right?  And then those of us –

Sarah:  Yeah, it’s Chekhov’s prehensile tail.  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – who aren’t into prehensile tails, we know that’s not our book, and if the subset of humanity that is into prehensile tails, they’re very happy.  Like, but you’ve got to deliver if you promise that.

Elyse:  I, I’m, I’m in agreement with Carrie, because if you’re reading a book where the hero is a gargoyle, clearly you’re in for some kinky shit, and when you read it –

Someone:  Right!

Elyse:  – and you’re like, oh, he just turns into a person, you’re like, that’s false advertising right there.

Carrie:  Right, well, we had –

RHG:  Well, it’s like, is it the were-shark that did that?

Sarah:  Yeah, that was all vanilla.

Elyse:  Right.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  If you want some kinky were shit, and there’s –

Carrie:  Well, the cuttlefish story had the same problem.  So, like, on one hand it was like, oh, thank God the tentacles never came out, and then on the other hand it was like, okay, but then why make it a cuttlefish?

RHG:  The tentacles never came out!  [Laughs]

Carrie:  If you’re going to have them be cuttlefish, you’d better have some tentacles, right?  Like, otherwise, why cuttlefish?

Sarah:  It’s, it’s Chekhov’s tentacle prehensile tail gun.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  And Elyse, didn’t you have, like, some  –

Sarah:  Poor Chekhov!  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – with, like, a – [Laughs]

RHG:  This is not what I meant!

Sarah:  If there’s, like, pors, if there’s, like, post mortem sentience in any realm, somewhere Chekhov is just like, stop it!  Stop it now!

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Well, I feel like Lovecraft, who was a notorious homophobe and racist –

Sarah:  Oh –

Elyse:  – and an awful person in general, like, he opened the door for, I don’t know, like, 99% of the tentacle porn that’s going on right now?

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Congratulations, sir.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I always like to imagine, like, you know, when, when a celebrity dies and it’s really sad, I’m always sort of like, okay, well, my personal belief is that everyone’s heaven is personal.  Like –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – what I think is awesome is different from what you think is awesome, but like, there, (a), there’s got to be, like, the best band ever, and then, like, there’s Chekhov and Lovecraft in the corner with the hands over their ears just curled up in a little ball –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – going, no, no, no, no, no, that’s not what I meant!  [Laughs]

Somebody:  I’m okay with that.

RHG:  I, I have this very entertaining image, which somebody posted on Twitter – I did not come up with this on my own – that Scalia is still sitting down with the Founders, and they’re like, no, that’s not –

Carrie:  No.

RHG:  – that’s not what we – what?

Sarah:  No.  No, that’s wrong too.

RHG: What even are you?

[Laughter]

RHG:  Oh, shit!  I lost a bet.

Sarah:  What?

RHG:  Because I made a, I made a bet with a friend that Chuck Tingle would have a Scalia-related book out by last Thursday.

Somebody:  Ohhh.

Elyse:  He didn’t?!

RHG:  I don’t think so.

Sarah:  We need to check on Chuck Tingle.  Is he dead in a bed somewhere with a pillow on his head?

Carrie:  [Laughs] Well, I – Chuck Tingle has a surprising amount of class.  I don’t think he’d go there.

Sarah:  No, I think he would.

Elyse:  You, you reviewed his book about Starbucks cups, like, anally raping somebody –

RHG:  Yeah, Starbucks cups don’t have family though.

Elyse:  – I don’t think he’s got a lot of class.

Carrie:  No, no, ‘cause it was, it was, it was actually, I have to say, it was, like, super consensual.  It was very weird, but I have to say, it was, like, all, like, super happy consensual and –

Sarah:  Cup fucking.

Elyse:  Cup fucking, yeah.

Carrie:  – and, like, super, like, liberal.  It was the weirdest thing to read.  Like, when I’m giving it a grade I’m like, how do you grade this?  I, I don’t, I don’t know.  I think I ended up giving it a B because –

[Laughter]

Carrie:  – I, I, it basically, it delivered exactly what it promised, and it was genuinely funny on purpose.  Like, like –

Sarah:  Well, there you go.

Carrie:  – not, like, badly written funny.  Like, you know, like, I can’t imagine there’s that many people who want to read that book, but, but it, it delivered exactly what it said it would deliver.

RHG:  Oh, bless.  Okay, first off, he released a book yesterday that’s Slammed in the Butt by the Living Leftover Chocolate Chip Cookies from My Kitchen Cabinet –

[Laughter]

RHG:  – and on February 10th he released Leonardo Decaprico Finally Wins His Award and It Pounds Him in the Butt.

Sarah:  Of course it does.  Oh, that – I, I, I.  I haven’t watched the Oscars in a number of years, (1) because I’m old and I value my sleep, and (2) because it’s like, last year was really bad, this year’s even worse, when there were so many movies featuring people of color and directed by people of color and women worth nominating and they don’t do it, and I’m like, okay, you’re really insisting that you’re irrelevant!  I’m okay with letting you be irrelevant, and I’m going to go to bed!

RHG:  Okay, I actually have a post that I’m going to finish this week in which I argue that they are relevant.  That I will –

Sarah:  Well, they’re relevant in some ways, but not to me staying up late.

RHG:  Well, no.

Sarah:  Like, in my personal world, like, if you want to argue that hard that you have no value, then I’m going to go to bed!  So I don’t have to, I’m not going to argue with you that you’re valuable when you’re not!  You go ahead!  I’m going to go to bed now.  So now I’m, like, tempted to stay up really fucking late, ‘cause you know the Best Actor award is given out at, like, 2:30 in the morning eastern time, and –

RHG:  Nah, it’s 11.

Sarah:  – and, like, stay up and see if there’s, like, a little Oscar and then, like, you know, Chuck Tingle’s behind the camera, like, behind the curtain on the stage going, Yes!  Go, go, go!

[Laughter]

RHG:  I, I find myself curiously pulling for Leo this year, and it’s a weird position to be in.

Sarah:  It’s not like he’s a horrible human being with no redeeming value.

RHG:  No.  No, but the, but the poor Leo doesn’t have an Oscar meme has been, like, so very thorough for so long, and now, like, the Best Actor field is so boring.

Sarah:  Yes.

[Laughter]

RHG:  It’s so boring.

Sarah:  Yes.

RHG:  And he risked liver disease by eating bear liver.  Vitamin A poisoning, according to my mom.  Anyway.

Sarah:  Vitamin A poisoning?

RHG:  Yeah, well, it’s –

Sarah:  Ugh.

RHG:  If you eat polar bear liver?  It’s not a thing you should do, because you can get vitamin A poisoning from that.  Pro tip, Bitchery!  Don’t eat polar bear liver.

Sarah:  Thank you.  If I stumble into a dead polar bear, I will not immediately feast on its liver.

RHG:  Right.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  [Sings] The more you know!  Star.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All right, Red-, RedHeadedGirl, what are you reading?

RHG:  I am currently in the middle of Magnate.  Magnate.

Sarah:  Magnate by Joanna Shupe.

RHG:  By Joanna Shupe, which is about the Knickerbocker Club – sorry, I know I got it wrong in the lightning review of Tycoon.

Elyse:  Knickerboxer Club is funnier though.

RHG:  It is funnier, and it rolls off the tongue and off the fingers better, so –

Elyse:  ‘Cause now I’m picturing them, like, a bunch of hot guys boxing, like in a pugilist club, while wearing women’s knickers.

Sarah:  As you do.

RHG:  Sure.

Carrie:  Interesting.  Okay.

RHG:  [Laughs] As – yes.  Anyway.

Sarah:  Are they wearing, like, garter belts too, or is it just the knickers?

Elyse:  Like bloomers.

Sarah:  Oh, well, yes, that would work.

Carrie:  Yeah, bloomers would work.

RHG:  Okay.

Sarah:  Certainly a lot good at movement there.

RHG:  Yeah.

Carrie:  Yeah.

RHG:  And I’m enjoying it very much.  I like that it’s not – [laughs] – it’s not Regency.  I love the, I say this, like, every fucking time, but I love the Regency, but I also love leaving the Regency and discussing the various ways in which history has worked beyond just that very narrow twenty years or so that we sort of hang out in a lot.  So it’s fun.  The heroine is actually trying to start her own trading interest on the New York Stock Exchange –

Sarah:  Oh, really?

RHG:  – and she needs to, she needs to, the hero to sort of front the whole thing, because oh, my God, women and money and your poor, tired little brains’ll just break!  You can’t do that!  And she’s like, I’m better at this than you are.  That’s where we are at the moment.  He has agreed, and now everyone’s like, why are you hanging out with this dude?  He’s new money, and you’re, like, not!  And she’s like, um, ‘cause?

Sarah:  The new money thing always cracks me up, ‘cause I know it was a real thing –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and I know that it was a genuine, like, a genuine problem, but then there’s a certain point where I’m just like, when you have no money, isn’t any money, like, better than holding onto this, oh, you just earned that in the last generation, and my title and absence of fortune have been around for hundreds of years.  Like, any money is better than no money.  Do you people have no sense?

Elyse:  I’ll take new money.

Sarah:  I’ll take any – is it, I don’t care if it’s crispy or if it doesn’t get in the vending machine; I’ll take it!

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  So whenever there’s a conversation about new money and old money, I always remember the Kate Beaton Great Gatsby comic.  It was like, you could never be like us, Gatsby.  We’re old money.  Someone asks, well, how old?  So old, old as balls.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All right, Amanda, what are you reading?

Amanda:  I’m, have such a horrible reading problem right now.  [Laughs] I can’t decide on what to read, but I’ve been whipping between two books.  One is Jane Steele, which I’m doing for Covers & Cocktails in March.  So it’s kind of like a re-envisioning of Jane Eyre, but the heroine is essentially a serial killer who murders all these horrible men.

Sarah:  As you do.

Amanda:  So, right up my alley.

RHG:  Down for this.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  And the other one, so, my roommate, we, I live in a very publishing-centric apartment.  Both of my roommates work for publishing houses, and one of them works for Candlewick, which does amazing children’s books and YA books.

Sarah:  I love Candlewick books.

Carrie:  Love Candlewick!

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I love them.

Amanda:  She is the marketing associate, I think.

Dog:  Woof woof woof woof woof!

Sarah:  So, does the dog!

Carrie:  The mail is here.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Is he, is the mail bringing you a book?  Honestly, I went to the Candlewick booth at BEA, and I squeed at them like –

Somebody:  They’re great!

Sarah:  – a giant idiot.  [Laughs]

Amanda:  So –

Sarah:  And they were like, okay, why are you here?  Go away now.

Amanda:  – my roommate frequently creeps on my Goodreads, so when she sees that I’ve added a book, if it’s a Candlewick book she’ll ask if I want it?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh?

Amanda:  And, so she brought home A Tyranny of Petticoats for me, which is an anthology, I would say YA-centric, about kind of these badass ladies.  It’s fiction, so they’re all made up, but it’s a bunch of YA writers.  It’s, so far I’m about two or three stories into it.  It’s super depressing.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You’d think the tyranny of petticoats would result in some victory.

Amanda:  I’m sure there is some, like, awesome, I mean, so far the girls I’ve read about have been amazing.  Just, so far their stories haven’t been very happy.  The first one is about a young black girl who, she and her father escaped slavery to become pirates or, like, work on a pirate ship, and she poses as a boy, and the only way, so, the pirate ship goes to kind of attack this ship that they think is full of treasure, but it turns out to be a warship, and the only way to get it is if someone can swim and kind of, you know, drill holes into the hull of the boat, and she’s the only one that can swim.  And so she goes and she does it, and – spoiler alert! – when she comes back to the pirate ship to get back on, the captain won’t let her back on the ship, and so she drowns.

RHG:  What?!

Sarah:  I, I have questions.

[Laughter and exclamations]

RHG:  What the fuck just happened?!

Sarah:  I have questions?  I have many questions.

Somebody:  Yeah.

Amanda:  And then the second book is about, like, an Inuit girl and –

Carrie:  Wait, wait, wait!  Waitwaitwaitwait!  Waitwaitwaitwait!  I think we still have, I think that you just glossed over our questions there.

Amanda:  Okay, yeah.

Carrie:  So, did we miss part of the plot?  Why won’t the captain let her back on the ship?

Amanda:  So they discover she’s a girl, (1).   And then (2), the reason why she agrees to go and undertake, you know, this master plan is because she barters with the captain, saying if I do this, you have to give me, you know, like, sixty or eighty percent of the shares of whatever we get from this boat, which means, which she’s going to give to her father so her father can retire and no longer have to work on this ship.  So she goes and she does it, and obviously the pirate doesn’t want to, the pirate captain doesn’t want to give up a bulk of his victory shares to this boy that is obviously now a girl, so he just lets her drown in the ocean instead of bringing her on the ship.  And, like, the father can’t throw her a rope because he’s being restrained by the other pirate crew.  It’s very sad.

Elyse:  That’s a horrible book.

Amanda:  Any more questions?

RHG:  Terrible!

Amanda:  It’s so sad!  It’s so sad!  And –

Carrie:  It doesn’t even make pirate sense, because most pirate ships have, like, a, a system for dividing up the spoils that did, in fact, allow for some haggling so that if you, anything that you got went into the general pool, but if you were the pirate that specifically got it, you got a bigger share, so –

Amanda:  Well, they –

Carrie:  – it would not be particularly bizarre for somebody to say, well, if I’m going to swim over and drill the holes, I get the biggest share.

Amanda:  Well, if she did this, or if she didn’t do this, they would all die, because it was a warship, and they probably would have sunk the pirate ship, and everyone would have died anyway?

Carrie:  Right, so, like, the idea that that would, like, you know, like, like, piss off the pirate captain is, like, not necessarily, like –

RHG:  That’s not a thing.

Carrie:  That’s not really a thing!

Elyse:  I like that we just established it doesn’t make pirate sense.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right?  Like –

Carrie:  Yes, there was, like –

RHG:  It doesn’t!

Carrie:  Well –

Elyse:  There’s regular sense –

Carrie:  Well, no.

Elyse:  – and then there’s pirate sense.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Pirates had rules!

RHG:  Black flags.

Sarah:  Pirates had, like, rules and ways of – that’s why they were so successful –

Carrie:  Yes!

RHG:  That’s the only way –

Sarah:  – ‘cause they had rules.  Parlez, parsnip, parsley!

Amanda:  Clearly this pirate captain –

Elyse:  He was a douche.

Amanda:  – was not a fan of pirate rules.  Like, he’s a grade A dick.

Carrie:  Are they trying to present it as a fantasy –

Sarah:  Keep to the code, motherfucker!

Carrie:  – or as, like, historical fiction?  ‘Cause that’s, like, really the difference.  If it’s fantasy, like, romance fantasy about pirates, right?  Then, like, all bets are off.

Amanda:  There hasn’t been any, like, fantasy stuff, but, like, I’m looking at the Goodreads genres, and some people, like, shelved it as steampunk, so I don’t know.  I’m only two or three stories in.  The second one is about, like, an Inuit girl.  Like, people come over to, like, colonize and trade with them, and they murder her family, and now she’s running away with a dogsled, so it’s –

Sarah:  Dude, you need to put this anthology down.

Amanda:  I’m enjoying it!  Like, I’m enjoying it, but –

RHG:  What?!

Amanda:  – it’s not what I thought it would be so far.  I’m sure there are –

Sarah:  There needs to be rainbow-farting unicorns in the next book.  Holy shit!

[Laughter]

Amanda:  But I like it.  I mean, I feel, I feel like an anthology is what I need at the moment, ‘cause I can’t concentrate on anything else.

Somebody:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Carrie?  What’s up?

Carrie:  Okay, so –

Sarah:  Whatcha reading?

Carrie:  – I just finished last night ‘Til Death Do Us Part, it was very nommy, and now I just started Investigating Lois Lane by Tim Hanley, which fits well with Amanda’s anthology in the sense that it’s, like, really depressing and frustrating.  It’s, it’s nonfiction examination of how Lois Lane has been portrayed in comics –

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Carrie:  – which is, frequently is, you know, not very well.  So any-, so I can tell I’m going to have to pace myself with that one, but Tim Hanley is a really, really good writer who really knows his stuff, and I, I’m, like, this big drooling fan.  He did a book about Wonder Woman that I reviewed for the site; it was really good.  So it’s really well-written, but it is really frustrating.  But ‘Til Death Do Us Part  –

Sarah:  How did you like it?  You’ve never read Amanda Quick before, have you?

Carrie:  I think I read one when I first started reading romance ‘cause she was a big name, but I can’t remember anything about it, and I remem-, I think I thought it was, like, okay.  But this one is, like, like, you know, I’m serious.  Like, like, it has a whole plotline about tear catchers, Victorian tear catchers, so I’m like, oh, yeah, I just, like, give it to me now.

Elyse:  What the, what the fuck is that?

Carrie:  So okay, so, it’s set in the Victorian era, okay, and Calista Langley operates – I’ll just read the back – an exclusive introduction agency in Victorian London catering to respectable ladies and gentleman who finds themselves alone in the world.  And she finds herself being stalked by this creepy person who keeps leaving Victorian mourning artifacts in her house or delivering them to her anonymously with her initials on them, so it’s super, super eerie, and she’s in this big mansion, and that’s super eerie.  However!  She teams up with this guy who writes detective novels, and he helps her solve the mystery, and it’s not perfect –

RHG:  Is his name Arthur?

Carrie:  What?

RHG:  Is his name Arthur?  [Laughs] Conan Doyle?

Carrie:  No.  No.  His name is Trent, thank you very much, and, but, yeah, like, that would have been very meta, but it’s not that meta.  But it is pretty meta, because he’s writing a series of detective novels, and he’s just introduced a female character who assists him on, who assists his main character on the main character’s mysteries, cases, and every, and so there’s this running joke throughout the novel that every time they meet somebody, you know, he has to introduce himself, and he says he’s the author of the series of books, right?  And then people say, oh, I love your books, but – and all the men he encounters say, but I don’t like that new Wilhelmina person.  Maybe you should make her the villainess.  Maybe you should kill her off.  You shouldn’t spend too much time developing a romance, because that’s just, like, I don’t know, it’s just too distracting.  It slows down the murder.  And every time he meets a woman, the woman goes, oh!  I’m so glad you introduced Wilhelmina!  She’s, like, just such a great character!  So just, like, this running thread throughout.  So it’s very, it definitely, like, speaks to my soul.  As a mystery it’s kind of messy.  I don’t think it’s really well-constructed, and I felt like it was a little bit anticlimactic in that I thought Calista would take more of a proactive lead, and instead Trent takes more of a proactive lead, but –

Elyse:  But what’s a tear catcher?

Carrie:  – it definitely has many aspects I like.  What?

Elyse:  What’s a tear catcher?

RHG:  That was the original question.

Elyse:  Yeah.  I’m confused.

Carrie:  A tear catcher is a Victorian thing, and actually, apparently they had tear catchers, like, for thousands and thousands of years in different cultures, but a tear catcher is, when someone dies, it’s like a little glass tube or, or little glass jar.  You let your tears fall into it, and then you put a stopper on it, and the stopper is specially designed so that the tears evaporate very slowly.  When the tears have evaporated, your time of mourning can end.

Elyse:  That’s awful.

Carrie:  And then you carry it around or you wear it.  Well, that was a big, like, the fetish of death was a big Victorian thing, like –

Elyse:  Yeah, I mean, didn’t they used to –

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  – like, make jewelry out of dead people’s hair and all kinds of creepy shit?

Carrie:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Like, lots of fetishization, not sexual fetishization, but fetishization of the, the, the dead body and, and body photography, and all these different ways that people came up with to find meaning and structure, because people died, like, right and left, so, you know, loss was an everyday part of existence, and so that’s one of the ways they found to cope with it.  They just came up with this huge variety of rituals, elaborate rituals around it.

RHG:  Also, Victoria made over-the-top mourning sexy and cool.

Carrie:  What?

RHG:  Victoria made over-the-top, ridiculous mourning sexy and cool.

Carrie:  Yes, she made it very trendy.  So, yeah, and the, and if you, if you Google Victorian tear catchers online, I mean, they’re very beautiful.  They’re, they’re, you know, they’re these elaborate filigreed containers that are really lovely, but, you know, like, morbid and sad.  So of course this, it’s just, like, it’s just the most gothic shit imaginable, you know, and you know how I am about gothic shit.

RHG:  Hmm.

Carrie:  I eat that up.

Sarah:  Ugh.

Elyse:  We can’t hear – oh, there you are.

Sarah:  I’m here.

Elyse:  I was going to say.

Sarah:  Ugh.

Elyse:  Okay.

Carrie:  Did I fade out?

Sarah:  No, no, no, that was me.

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  I was on mute, and I was talking.

Somebody:  Oh.

Sarah:  I grew up around the corner from Clayton, which was the family home of the Frick family who were, you know, super wealthy and stuff?

Carrie:  Mm-hmm?

Sarah:  And when I was really little, Henry Clay Frick’s daughters, daughter Helen still lived there, and people used to be dared to go there on Halloween for trick or treating –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – ‘cause –

RHG:  ‘Cause kids.

Sarah:  – ‘cause, yeah, it’s how we roll.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  But when Clayton, when she died, the house was given over to the Pittsburgh thing of historical old buildings that shouldn’t have weird things happen to them, and they restored it.  Now it’s a museum, and you can tour it, and you’d see this sort of house as it was when she lived there and then while her parents lived there, but he, Henry Clay Frick and his wife had four kids, and two of them died very young.  One died as an infant, and then he had a six-year-old who died because, I think she ate something metal.  Like, she ate, like, a pin or an earring or something.

Carrie:  Ohh!

Sarah:  So you go in the house, and everything is pictures of Martha.  Ev-, there’s, there’s, it’s, he, she was on his checks.  Like, he would write a check –

Elyse:  Oh, my God!

Sarah:  – and his daughter’s picture is on the check.

Elyse:  Ooh.

Sarah:  Like, everywhere –

RHG:  Dude.

Sarah:  – and so the other children grew up in this, like, giant shrine to the six-year-old daughter, so when you go and tour it, you’re like, whoa.  So it was more than just, like, hair and, and, and then the, you can find, like, death photographs online of –

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – when you see, like, one person is super still, and the other are blurry, it’s ‘cause the still one’s dead – [laughs] – and the other two are, like, humans, and you had stand there for half an hour for the –

Carrie:  Yeah, and it would be, like, posed death photography, so there was –

Sarah:  Yep.

Carrie:  – there was coffin photography, where the person would be laid out, and you’d photograph their face, and the idea behind that was, the idea was that when people died, they would look, theoretically, very peaceful in death, so the idea was their suffering has ended, and they’ve left this earthly plain.  So you wanted to remember their unsuffering face, and that was supposed to provide a comfort to you.  And then the other kind of photography that’s, like, super bizarre that you can, like, Google like crazy, is they would pose the body and create a family portrait or a formal portrait as though the body was alive.

Sarah:  Right.

Carrie:  And that would –

Somebody:  And they’re trying –

Carrie:  – like, keep that person with you.  It was like you, you wanted to keep this person with you, and the idea that you would be reunited, that your separation was just temporary, so you want to keep them in your mind, ‘cause you’re going to catch up to them later.

Elyse:  I, I just had to look at the title, but there’s a series of books of historical mysteries set in the Victorian era.  The first book is Lady of Ashes by Christine Trent, and the heroine is a, well, her husband is, like, a, a funeral director, and she’s his assistant, but in reality she’s really, really good at her job, and he’s just a, kind of a twat waffle, and so –

Sarah:  Hate that!

Elyse:  – right – and she’s, it’s, it’s a really interesting book because it does kind of talk about, you, you get the mystery portion set in the Victorian era and the historical mystery and the woman protagonist, but it also does weave kind of how our rituals and our perception of death have changed, so when the book opens, like, they’re just starting to embalm people, or offer that as a service, and most people are really, really, that, the idea of embalming a dead loved one is very upsetting to them, and so they, they don’t want to do that, and even just the idea that people usually died in their homes and that the body stayed in the home, and the funeral director, mortician came and did their thing, and the body stayed in the bedroom or wherever, and then people came in and, and had a, had a viewing, but, no, it’s a really interesting series.

Sarah:  You know, there’s a person I follow on Twitter.  I think her last name is Doughty, but she’s @TheGoodDeath, and she’s a, a mortician –

Carrie:  Ohhh!

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and she does a lot of videos about mortuary science, and one of the things that she’s trying to bring back is the idea that if you die at home, your body can stay there.  You don’t have to go to a funeral home.  There doesn’t have to be this sort of –

Elyse:  Yep.

Sarah:  – transitionary place.  Like, you can have your, your remains be at home for, you know, a certain amount of time before you’re buried.  You do not have to remove the body; nothing bad’s going to happen.  If, if you call one of these morticians, they’ll, you know, make things safe for everybody.  And I, I was like, okay, this is really cool.  I should really only look at this during the day?  Should not look at that at night?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  ‘Cause then she does videos, and I’m like, oh, this is really cool!  And, like, the science part of my brain is, like, oh, this is great, and then I go to bed, and it’s like, whoa!  Shit!  Why’d I read that?  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Well, the, The Bronte Cabinet that I reviewed had a really fascinating chapter about Victorian mourning customs, and one of the things it said that I thought was, was really horrible and al-, but also really interesting – ‘cause I kind of do the same thing, where there’s, like, the human tragedy part of my brain, and there’s, like, the dweeby part of my brain that’s, like, just sort of nerding over it – was that a lot of the Victorian adoration of the dead body had to do with the fact that you were often left with an intact dead body that once you, you could kind of clean it up, and it looked sort of okay, right?  So two things sort of ended that fad, and one of them was germ theory, ‘cause it started to make people dying look less like an act of God and more like somebody fucked up –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – so it took a lot of the sentiment out of death?  And then the other thing that really was, you know, no pun intended, but the nail in the coffin was World War I –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  – and that was it for the fetishization of the body, because there was no body.  Or if there was a body –

Sarah:  It didn’t look very good.

RHG:  It was really fucked up.

Carrie:  – it didn’t look pretty.  You were picking it up with a spoon.  And so that was sort of the, the end of the line with that whole, you know, custom thing.

RHG:  Yeah, which it goes kind of back to the mechanization of death, which is what World War I kind of brought us.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  We’re still really good at it too.

RHG:  Good job, world.

Sarah:  Yeah, we’re really good at that now, too.  Ugh.

Carrie:  So between the pirate death and the, the Victorian tear catcher –

Sarah:  Y’all are reading some sad-ass shit!

Carrie:  But I do have to say, like, this was, this was, like, it was, it was dark enough to feel really gothic, but it wasn’t so graphic and terrifying that I didn’t want to read it, ‘cause I’m very, I’m very fragile.  I, I don’t like things that are too scary.  Generally speaking, this was not too scary.  No children in peril, so that was good.

Elyse:  I have much girdier loins than Carrie?  I think I have –

Sarah:  You have –

Carrie:  You have what?

Sarah:  – I’m sorry, you have what kind of loins?

Carrie:  I have –

Elyse:  They’re girdier.  I have girdier loins than Carrie does.

Sarah:  Girdier?  I thought –

RHG:  That’s not – it’s not –

Elyse:  [Laughs]

RHG:  It’s not.

Sarah:  Do loins have levels of gird?

RHG:  No.

Carrie:  Yeah, no, I don’t think so.

Elyse:  [Simultaneously with Carrie] I think so.

RHG:  No.

Elyse:  No, ‘cause I don’t have to gird my loins.  They’re just girded.  Like, going right, right into the mystery.

RHG:  Look, I posted, in the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies reviews, instructions on how to properly gird your loins –

Carrie:  Yeah, that’s true.

RHG:  – and what that actually means, so pffbt.

Carrie:  It’s, it’s a clothing issue.  Like, do you go to sleep in your gird?  You know?

RHG:  No, you don’t.  You need your, let nether regions to air out.

Elyse:  Right, you’ve got to air out the Mrs. out when you sleep; that’s just basic hygiene.

Carrie:  Yeah, I don’t know what – if your loins –

Elyse:  Sarah’s just, Sarah has just busted up.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:   – are permanently girded, I’m worried about your health.  If, if you’re –

Somebody:  So –

Carrie:  – girded.

Elyse:  Anyway, so I really like mysteries and darker shit, and I just finished The Widow, and it was so good, but I also kind of don’t want to talk about it because it was so good, and I want people to go into the book totally cold?  But it was so good, you guys.  [Whispers] So good!

Somebody:  Is it the one –

Sarah:  So is this the kind of thing that once you’re, like, two chapters in you’ve already read too much to tell anyone else?

Elyse:  Kind of, ‘cause it’s, it’s a book composed entirely of, I think there’re five narrators, two primary, but I think, like, a total of five.  No one is reliable, and so it’s one of those psychological mysteries that I really love because you don’t see the crime happen like you do in a lot of mysteries where it opens up with the crime, so you kind of know what already went down, and then it’s catching the bad guy or figuring out who the bad guy is?

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  This one, like, you don’t, you don’t know what happened, you can’t trust anybody who’s telling the story, and you keep – I think I changed my mind about what really happened probably four or five times through the course of the book.

Sarah:  Whoa.

Elyse:  But the end was still very satisfying, so it was really good.

Sarah:  I have a question about that, ‘cause you read a lot more of these books than I do?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  So there’s the whole Gone Girl thing, where, oh, my God, this woman wrote this book about this woman, and she’s horrible!  And then we have The Girl on the Train, and now we have The Widow, so we have this ambivalent lead female character in, in mystery thrillers written by women about women, which, you know, this is all very similar, familiar territory to those of us who hang out in romance land, and yet it seems like there is this recurring, exclamatory, general popular culture, oh, my gosh, this is so amazing and new!  And I keep thinking, no, this is not amazing and new.  These books are getting a lot of attention right now, but I kind of remember this same motif in books before Gone Girl.

Elyse:  Well, I think with Gone Girl and with The Widow, and I haven’t finished The Girl on the Train yet, so I really can’t speak to it – Mary Kubica wrote Pretty Baby and –

Sarah:  Yeah, I was thinking about –

Elyse:  – The Good Girl – I, so, kind of spoilers for The Widow, if you really want to go in cold, kind of spoiler-y – well, what they’re doing is they’re really subverting the trope of the female victim.  So, the, like, in the respect of The Widow, the question that keeps getting raised is, her husband is suspected of this crime, or her late husband, and they keep pushing it on the, you know, the, the police and the media, how could you have stayed with this person if you thought he might have been guilty?  How, how can you have lived with this person and not known what he really was?  And the author really takes that and turns it on its head and ends it with a big Fuck You to everyone who criticized her for staying with the guy that may or may not have been a, a child murderer, and, you know, I think Gone Girl kind of did that too, where it took this whole idea that the cheating husband is always guilty and played that to the, you know, the, the heroine used that idea that the, the wife is always the victim or, you know, the sort of pretty, middle-class, Caucasian, blonde victim that’s going to be on Nancy Grace, and used that to her advantage to create a whole new life for herself, so I think what it’s really doing is it’s taking the fact that the mystery and thriller genre has really been built on the, the idea that women are victims more often than men in the series and flipping it on its head a little bit, and that’s why it’s so appealing.

Sarah:  And it’s subverting that –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – victimization of women.  But it’s also revealing a much greater malevolence in these characters?  Because when you subvert the role that everyone expects you to hold, whether that’s the docile wife or the, the woman who’s tolerant of her husband’s affair, when you subvert that, you’re revealing a great deal of self-determination and knowledge of how you’re perceived, and a willingness to hide it and a willingness to do some really dastardly things to get your way within, staying beneath that cover.  So it’s, it’s not just, like, the image that’s thrust upon that person?  It’s the fact that they’re aware of it, and then they’re going to do really, really dastardly shit and get away with it.  So there’s this sort of malevolence of the female character that’s also in these, in these stories, and that’s the other part that I keep seeing.  People are, oh, my goodness!  These are so amazing!  And I keep thinking, I’ve seen these before!  This isn’t new!

Elyse:  Well, it’s not new, but I think it’s really, it’s highlighting the fact that women are much more complicated than they’re often given credit for –

Sarah:  Whaaat?

Elyse:  – in these stories.  Right?  Like –

Sarah:  No!

Elyse:  – you know, like, in The Widow, you know, everyone looks at her and thinks she’s just this kind of docile housewife who’s been sort of emotionally manipulated her whole life, and the story is really, really more complicated than that, because she’s an actual human being who has a complicated life.

Sarah:  Oh, don’t be silly.  Everyone knows women can only be one thing at a time.

Elyse:  Right.  And the, the other thing that they’re doing, too, is they are really bringing the media into the mystery, which is, I think, a new trend, so both in Gone Girl and The Widow, the media plays a huge role, and the media’s perception of the crime, and how the media can even impact the investigation and sort of public outcry, and that’s huge.  And there’re two fe-, prominent, three prominent female characters in The Widow.  There’s the widow, there’s a reporter who’s trying to get a story out of her, and then there’s the mother of the girl who went missing, and at points in the story, they’re all very heavily criticized because of the things that they’ve done.  You know, the widow for staying with her husband; the mother, she wasn’t a good enough mother, she wasn’t paying attention while, you know, she let her daughter play outside unsupervised, that’s why she kidnapped; the reporter’s kind of portrayed as being, you know, like, a bloodthirsty, soulless person.  And it’s very critical of just taking that snap judgment of people and saying, well, this is all that they are, and it shows that it’s, it’s infinitely more complex than that.

Sarah:  See, I’m glad you can read these things, ‘cause I cannot?

Somebody:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I’m fascinated by them, but this is not shit that I can allow to enter into my brain.  It is not, no, no.

[music]

Sarah:  I can hear you saying, wait, wait, no, no, there must be more!  There is, next week!  I quiz all of the bitches evilly with evil questions about romance novels, and it’s totally evil, so you should totally tune in next Friday, because, well, that’s when it’s going to be released, right?  Totally.

This podcast was brought to you by Lexxi Callahan, author of the sexy contemporary romance series the Self Made Men…Southern Style.  Set in New Orleans, all three books are available through Kindle Unlimited.  Book three, The Fall of the Red Queen, has just been released.  Red Hot Books says is you like your heroines tough, sexy, and powerful, then Madlyn will own you as easily as she owns Jared.

The podcast transcripts are compiled by garlicknitter, who has her hands full with these two episodes – I’m sorry, garlicknitter.  [gk – No worries; I had fun!]  This podcast transcript is sponsored by Jessica Khoury, author of The Forbidden Wish, published by Penguin Young Readers and available in print and eBook.  She is the most powerful Jinni of all.  He is a boy from the streets.  Their love will shake the world in this dazzling retelling of Aladdin like you’ve never imagined.  Available now!

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is a band called Sketch, and this is from their album Shed Life.  This track is called “Bulgarian Shed.”  There’re a lot of sheds on this album of different types, but all of them are good.  You can find it on Amazon or iTunes or wherever you buy your music!

I will have links to all of the books that we discussed, including all the super awesome strange ones we mentioned, as well as links to some of the things that we mentioned such as tear catchers, @TheGoodDeath, and Kate Beaton’s awesome Great Gatsby comic.  You can find all of that at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

But in the meantime, on behalf of Amanda, Elyse, RedHeadedGirl, Carrie, and myself and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week.

[jumping, hopping music]