Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, April 29, 2016

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 191 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and today I am interviewing a reader.  Some of you who are familiar with the folks who comment a lot might recognize HeatherS.  She’s a long-time reader, bookseller, and student, and she’s working on a degree with a goal of becoming a librarian.  We talk about her education goals, what she’s reading, and what she wishes for in the romance genre, including more Muslim romance and more romance featuring characters who don’t wish to have children.  We also have a very long discussion about religion, as Heather converted as an adult to Islam, and we talk about how that’s affected her worldview.

This podcast is sponsored by J. Kenner’s Dirtiest Secret, published by Bantam Books, available in paperback and eBook.

It was wrong for us to be together; it was even harder to be apart.  Everyone knows Dallas Sykes as a notorious playboy, but to me he’s the one man I desperately crave and the one I can never have.  We’ve tried not letting ourselves give in to desire, and for so long we’ve told ourselves no, but now it’s finally time to say yes.

You can find out their Dirtiest Secret with J. Kenner’s new SIN series, on sale April 19th.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater.  I’ll have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

And if you’re a regular listener of the podcast or a regular reader of the transcripts and you’d like to support the show and want to find out more, you can take a look at our Patreon campaign at Patreon.com/SmartBitches.  That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash SmartBitches.  I don’t want to tell you how many times I have had to practice saying slash SmartBitches.  Like, it’s not easy.  Anyway.  By listener request, I set up a Patreon, and instead of backing a single project like on Kickstarter, you support an ongoing project.  You can contribute by monthly pledges, starting with as little as one dollar a month, and that will help me reach goals like commissioning transcripts for all of the episodes that don’t have one.  There’s about seventy of them.  You can see the rewards, the options, and the different levels at Patreon.com/SmartBitches.  Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to set up one up, and for those of you who have already backed it, you are beyond awesome.  Thank you so much.

I will have links in the podcast entry as to the books we talk to and some of the things Heather mentions, but now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah:  Would you introduce yourself to people?

HeatherS:  Okay.

Sarah:  Tell us who you are and what you do and – how long have you been a romance reader?

Heather:  Well, my name is Heather.  On the, on S, SBTB, I’m really more familiarly known as HeatherS, and I am a student right now and a bookseller.  I’m going for an Information Science degree, and I want to be a librarian, so grad school after this year, and I’ve been reading romances – I guess it depends on how you define romance.

Sarah:  This is true.

Heather:  If, if you, if you define romance as, you know, the books that you see on the shelf when you walk into the romance section of the bookstore, I would say technically, probably seventeen years, but I, there was a really long gap where I didn’t read romances at all.  So I, I had a friend in eighth grade – I was fourteen, which is a common refrain for a lot of people, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen – who, whose mom was more than liberal than mine in what she allowed her daughter to read, and so when I went over to her house, you know, she and I would hang out in her room, and I would raid her bookshelves, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  – I don’t remember, really, any of the titles that I read – of course, the content was just perfectly scandalous – but I loved the historical aspects of it, and I just, I was like, man, you know, these books are really fun!  I mean, various people having these grand adventures and falling in love.

Sarah:  You’ve read romance for a really long time.  Do you remember the first romance that you read?

Heather:  Not the first one.  I think the one that I was reading at my friend’s house at about fourteen that really stuck out to me, though, was Pieces of Sky by Marianne Willman.  Unfortunately –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s a good book.

Heather:  Yeah, and unfortunately, it’s not available digitally yet, but it’s one that, for some reason, that one just stuck into my head, and I want to reread it.  I actually bought a copy for some reread in the future, but I, after that I really kind of left romance.  I, I got hooked on, you know, sci-fi, fantasy, and a whole bunch of other things for several years, and then about 2009, or maybe, yeah, in 2009, early 2010, I was looking online, and I was thinking to myself, oh, you know, I haven’t read romance novels in years, and I don’t know what’s good, and that’s when, you know, one of y’all’s lists about, you know, what books would you give a first-time romance reader popped up, and of course, you know, we had Loretta Chase, Lord of Scoundrels, you had Bet Me, Jennifer Crusie, and, and that just kind of snowballed and got me going on it again, and I’ve been going ever since!

Sarah:  It’s an addictive habit, isn’t it?

Heather:  It is, especially when you work in a bookstore.

Sarah:  So you said earlier you were a books-, bookseller.  Do you currently work in a bookstore, and is it the same one?

Heather:  I, I have worked in three different bookstores in the last several years.  I just transferred to a new one, and it’s a lot of fun, and I really learned a lot at the first bookstore I worked at, because we didn’t have an inventory, and I’d have people come in asking, you know, questions, looking for recommendations, and you know, and this is where SBTB really came in helpful for my romance readers, because romance was consistently one of the bestselling sections in the store, despite it was, the fact that it was small compared to just the general literature section.

Sarah:  You don’t say?!

Heather:  So –

Sarah:  Romance sells well.  Huh!

Heather:  Big shocker, right?

Sarah:  I am just –

Heather:  And –

Sarah:  – I am just appalled.

[Laughter]

Heather:  It’s tragic.  So, I just, I started reading reviews online, and I would go through, and I’d start marking things down, and that’s when I would find a bunch of, you know, really great covers for cover snark that I would send to you, and I just, I had a lot of fun with it, and I enjoyed getting to know all of the books, and ever since, you know, when people want to know about what’s new with romances or, you know, which ones are good to read, or they want to buy one for their mom or a friend and they don’t know which one to get, my coworkers will point at me and say, go talk to her.  Which is pretty nice.

Sarah:  That’s a nice feeling!

Heather:  It is, definitely, and I felt validated in a way –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  – when Entertainment Weekly published an article last year about the romance industry and how much money it makes and how many people write them and, and just the whole process, which we’re all quite familiar with –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – and I just ran around my coworkers, and I was like, see?

Sarah:  See?

Heather:  Told you!  I told you!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Are there particular books that sell really well in your store, that you’re always recommending, that you always keep in stock?

Heather:  You know, it kind of varies.  I have, since histori-, historical romance is, like, a big seller, you know, and, and it can be a variety of different authors, although I do have a lot of people here who are really into, like, Sherryl Woods and, you know, other authors like that who write the, the sweet, small-town contemporaries with a southern twist, because this is the South, and so I do sell a lot of those types of books to my, my ladies, as I call them, although I do have the occasional gentleman.  I have one, one guy, he, he reads all the paranormal romances/urban fantasy.  I mean, he just loves Christine Feehan.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s really interesting!

Heather:  Sherrilyn Kenyon, too.  I think I’ve had, like, three different men of various ages come and tell me that they read, was it Acheron?

Sarah:  Yeah!

Heather:  By Sherrilyn Kenyon?

Sarah:  Yep.

Heather:  And it hooked them, and they just read everything that she wrote.

Sarah:  So as a library science student, do you also find yourself defending romance in your courses?

Heather:  Not really –

Sarah:  Yay!

Heather:  – at this point in time –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  – although I can’t, I can’t say what it’s going to be like once I get to the graduate level, but I did put a romance into a Little Free Library that we have that we’re going to eventually put outside the school, and it was only there a day, and somebody came and, like, cleared out half the books.  I guess one of the faculty did, and of course that was one of the ones that got removed.  I think it was a Caroline Linden book.

Sarah:  Oh!

Heather:  It was, it was quite frustrating, but I am determined to make them see the light, so we’ll see what happens.

Sarah:  I have noticed, where I live there are at least six different Little Free Libraries within walking distance, and I will put some books in them, and I know that, from talking to other people who run Little Free Libraries, that mass-market paperbacks don’t get taken as much as trade paperbacks and hardcovers, and the hardcover romances and urban fantasies that I have put in Little Free Libraries, they, they stay for a little while, and then they disappear, and then sometimes they reappear, and I’m like, ooh, I hope more than one person read that one!  I think the, the paperbacks don’t stick around or get cleared out because they don’t move as fast, which is really sad.  I would love to do, like, a big, huge, pink, romance Little Free Library, be like, free paperbacks here, ‘cause if you make that available, I think romance fans would be like, I’m coming.  Just don’t move.  Here I come.

Heather:  Absolutely, and that’s one thing, actually, there, we have a Little Free Library downtown.  I know of three in the entire area, and one of them is right smack in the middle of a pedest-, pedestrian-heavy area of downtown, and it is constantly empty.  It’s about two blocks from the library, and so the Friends of the Library will bring some books over and fill it up, and sometimes they do have romances in there.  They try to get a, a good mix of different things for, you know, kids to adults and every-, everybody in between.

Sarah:  That’s awesome!  So what, what made you want to become a librarian?

Heather:  Ah, well, I mean, I’ve always been a big reader, I’ve always loved books.  I don’t remember a time when I haven’t been reading, honestly, and my grandmother was a, a librarian as well, and it took me a while to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up, and, and so I’m just in the process right now.  It’s a job I think that will work out really well, because, you know, it combines the things that I love.  It’s connecting people with the books, basically, that change their lives, because when I was kid, you know, we didn’t have a lot of money, and when my mom would take us to the library every weekend, and I would always check out to pretty much the maximum number of books that you could get, which was twenty –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  – and, and I would go home from school, and then whenever my mom came home she didn’t have to call me, ‘cause she knew where I was.  I was in my room reading a book.  And, and I want to help make that happen for other people, whether, you know, they’re, they’re ten or they’re a hundred.  It really doesn’t matter.  Just, you know, connect people with books and make them realize that this is not a, this isn’t a chore.  This is actually a really fun, enjoyable thing to do.

Sarah:  That’s fabulous.  Now, you are Muslim, correct?

Heather:  Yes.

Sarah:  Did you, are you like me in converting late?  Did you join late, or were you born Muslim?  ‘Cause I converted to Judaism, and I think I remember talking to you about conversion.

Heather:  Yeah, I actually, I am a convert.  I actually, the end of April is going to be five years for me.

Sarah:  Hey!  Mazel tov!

Heather:  And, and I’m, and I’m thirty-two, so, yeah, definitely kind of a, a latecomer to it, but, I mean, it’s very typical, I find, when I talk to women that, you know, it’s going to be sometime in your twenties, particularly, that, you know, you’re going to be questioning the things.  I mean, some people start in their teens, but most people just don’t have that, I guess, enough self-awareness and, you know, actually have that sort of, like, projected thinking about something outside of, you know, their day, this is what they’re doing, their friends, and their family.  I mean, I know I didn’t really start to think about stuff like that until I was probably hitting my mid-twenties.  And –

Sarah:  I also know that people don’t really get exposed to faiths outside their own typically?

Heather:  Yes.  Yes.

Sarah:  And I was, I was definitely an exception because I grew up in a neighborhood where a lot of my friends in public school were Jewish, and I was, the schools that I went to were part, were partly drawing students from heavily Jewish neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.  I realized much later how rare that is to be exposed to faiths outside your own, even different denominations of Christianity.

Heather:  You really don’t, and it’s interesting because I grew up in north Florida on the, in the panhandle right, you know, along the coast, and it is a very, very, you know, it has very much a, a Protestant Christian tradition, and if you talk to, you know, my dad’s side of the family, they don’t think Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, or Catholics are Christian, because they’re not, well, my dad’s side of the family is Pentecostal, and my mom –

Sarah:  Well, that’s different.

Heather:  Yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  They’re, they’re a special kind of special.  My mom –

Sarah:  That was, that was very Southern, what you just said.  [Laughs]

Heather:  Yeah.  That, and bless their hearts.

Sarah:  Oh, yes, I learned how to deploy that with excellent accuracy.

Heather:  But in my mom’s side of the family, you know, we, we started out Episcopalian –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – and when I was very, very young, we transitioned to the Church of Christ.  I think I was probably about four or five at the time.  It was about the time my parents got divorced.  And of course, my dad had issues with Episcopalians.

Sarah:  Really?!

Heather:  And from, you know – yeah!  He’s like, well, they drink wine on Sundays at the church picnic, and I’m like, and you’re not sitting at home with a beer?  I mean, come on!

Sarah:  Yeah.

Heather:  It, it’s like there’s, there’s a disconnect there, but, you know, I never actually – I think there were one or two girls when I was in high school who were Muslim, and they wore the headscarves, and that’s, you know – and, I mean, it wasn’t something that was on my radar.  Religion in general wasn’t on my radar.  I mean, Christianity was just kind of this thing that I did because it’s what, you know, I was raised in, and it’s just what everyone around me pretty much did.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  But as I, as I got older and I went into the Army and I met more people, and I started thinking to myself, hmm, you know, well, you know, everyone says we’re at war with these Muslims, and, and I don’t know that we’re at war with Muslims, ‘cause, you know, I was never one of those people who would join the Army ‘cause oh, you know, rah-rah, I wanted to kill people.  First, I couldn’t get a decent job without an education, but I couldn’t afford to go to the school, and so it was that circular thing, I couldn’t get a decent job because I couldn’t get an education, but I couldn’t get an education because I didn’t have a job that could pay enough money that I could afford to go.  And –

Sarah:  Yep.

Heather:  – and so, and so I enlisted, because I was like, dude, I need some money for school, which I’m reaping the benefits of now, eleven years later.  But it was, you know, I, I was not one of those people even post-9/11, which I was a senior in high school, at the start of my senior year when that, all of that happened, and even at that point in time, you know, I did not have this animosity towards Muslims in general.  It’s just like, you know, there were some terrible people who did some terrible things, but that’s on those individual people.  It’s not on, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s completely illogical to me, and it always has been, to blame somebody or an entire group of people for the actions of one person.  That just makes no sense, and I, and that, that kind of ran contrary to the message that I was getting from a lot of people.

Sarah:  You don’t say!  [Laughs]

Heather:  Yeah.  And, and to this day, you know, my dad, I, every time I think we’re starting to get better about it, he’ll do something or say something that makes it blatantly clear that he thinks I am a brainwashed idiot, basically, who got –

Sarah:  Oh, man.

Heather:  – tangled up in this, in, in his words, in this mess, and he’s like, I don’t know how my daughter got tangled up in this mess, and blah blah blah, and I’m like, you know, I’ve tried to talk to you.  You don’t want to listen, and if someone doesn’t want to listen, there’s nothing you can do.  But I mean, as for me, it’s just, like, I found something that resonated, and, you know, his logic for being Christian was it’s what my parents and their parents and their parents were.  I’m like, well, that doesn’t work for me.  It’s like, if you don’t find something in the faith tradition, regardless of whether you were raised in it or not, then, you know, you need to look for something else, and some people, you know, that’s, they choose not to be involved in any sort of faith at all, and that’s cool, and then there are other people who go to other forms of faith, and, you know, and it’s – the most frustrating thing I would say is that, you know, they take it so personally.  Like, it’s a personal affront to my family that I am Muslim, you know.  My family won’t take pictures with me in my headscarf.  You know, they try to ignore the fact that I’m Muslim.  We never talk about it, because if we do talk about it we get into really big arguments, and it just turns into this huge drama debacle, and it wouldn’t if, like, I’m like, you know, I don’t want you guys to be Muslim; I just want you to understand.  I don’t want you believing this bullcrap that, you know, you buy from the media and, I heard so-and-so of so-and-so and so-and-so said, or I saw a video on YouTube from an ex-Muslim.  I’m like, okay, yeah, because that’s really going to convince me.  I mean, no!  No!  And so, that’s been a, a point of contention, I think, in many ways for, for me and my family, but I mean, it’s, it’s something that I chose for myself and that I’m really passionate about, I guess, as you figured out, and, you know, it’s, it’s something I think everyone needs to do, regardless of whether you stay in the faith tradition you were raised in or not.  You know, you, you need to be able to examine those beliefs critically in order to really understand your faith.

Sarah:  I think one of the best pieces of advice that I ever took, like, I actually listened and took, was, don’t believe everything you think.

Heather:  That’s a true story.

Sarah:  You have to question everything that you think.  Why do you think that?

Heather:  And not only that, but you have to go back and re-evaluate it later on.  I mean, you can’t be this static person who, you know, never thinks about what they think or why they think about things the way they do, and you never change.  I mean, beyond being boring, it’s just, like, a waste of life.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  What is the point of that?

Sarah:  Yep.

Heather:  And I know people like that, people in my family who are like that, and it’s like, you know, if you want to go through your life not thinking and not questioning anything, that’s on you, but for me, it’s like I, I question things to the point – and it took me two years before I actually decided to convert once I started reading up on it, and it was a pretty constant level of reading and thinking and researching and talking with other people to understand, you know, their perspectives, ‘cause everyone’s perspective is different.

Sarah:  Yep.

Heather:  And, and it’s just a, you know, it was, it was a long process, and it was something that I had to wrestle with, and I can understand not wanting to engage in that, because it is a very uncomfortable thing to have to do, and, you know, humans, by nature, we want to avoid things that are uncomfortable, that are painful, or that, you know, somehow cause conflict for us, and so I can understand why people wouldn’t want to do it, but the end result is, you know, I, I would say the end result is a pretty good deal.  If, you know, you, I found something that really resonates with me, and I found this faith community here, in South Carolina of all places, that, you know, I’ve met some pretty cool people, and, and we’re just kind of each others’ – especially for me, being single – you know, my friends who are Muslim are, are kind of like a, I want to say a, I don’t know, a source of support –

Sarah:  That makes sense.

Heather:  – when you’re surrounded by so many people who are not Muslim, and, you know, we go through our major holiday, they’re not, they’re not even printed on most calendars, and forget about anyone, you know, act-, knowing that they’re actually a thing.  At least that’s, that’s one thing that the Jewish community has up on, has up on Muslims is most of the time you will find, you know, Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah or whatever –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – on the calendars that you buy at the store, but, you know, I looked at), I have my student planner from the university, and they actually put the start of Ramadan and both of the Eids in the student calendar, but outside of that, it is actually, I, I think I’ve seen one or two out of all of the calendars I’ve ever had that actually –

Sarah:  Wow.

Heather:  – mention our holidays, and it’s significant, and people are like, well, it’s not a big deal, blah blah, and it’s like, well, you know, tell me that when, you know, ‘cause I was actually suggesting to Target one day, I was like, hey, you guys should, you know, you guys do a little end cap every year in, like, the stationery aisle or the seasonal aisle where, you know, you’ll have, like, you know, different things for Hanukkah, you know, like a little end cap when it’s, it has, like, the little menorah, and it’ll have some, like, little cards and some little things you can decorate with.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  And I mean, it’s just a little tiny thing, and I said, you know, why don’t you guys do that for Eid, and, and then all these people were like, well, how, why on earth would you want to do that.  Right now it’s almost Christmas, blah blah, and I’m like, well, first of all, you don’t have a monopoly on holidays, and second of all, you are surrounded by a society whose entire calendar is centered on your holidays and your traditions, but you know, I get a, I, we don’t even have Eid celebrations, and three-quarters of the time I have to go to work because nobody else even knows it’s a holiday –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – and so, you know, it’s just, it’s a little thing, but it’s the little things that make you, you know, actually feel like you’re being recognized as part of a society.  So, I, I don’t know.  It’s just, just one of my things, and I’m really, really hoping one of these days that some – there was a Macy’s, I want to say about three years ago, in southern California, that did a Ramadan display, and it was, like, a huge, huge deal.  I saw a lot of people taking pictures, and they actually had, like, a little party to kind of, like, celebrate the fact that they had done this Ramadan decoration display –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – and lots of people were taking pictures, and they were playing music and they were dancing, and it was just like, you know, people were really excited about that, but, you know, recognizing someone’s major religious days, you know, their holy days, is, is just one of those little, tiny things that you kind of granted when, you know, everything is already designed to recognize the majority, and if you’re part of the majority.

Sarah:  Yep.  So I know that you were in the military, ‘cause you’ve talked about that a little bit, and I know that there’re some books that you, you have warned other veterans away from because of the detail and the verisimilitude of what’s being described.

Heather:  I decided after graduating from community college, I said, okay, I don’t have any more money, and I can’t get a decent job here, and I want some training and stability, and I want to get out of my home town.  And so I enlisted, and it definitely got me out of my home town.

Sarah:  Yeah, you ended up not in the States at all, right?

Heather:  Yeah, yeah, I, I spent some time in Afghanistan, which was, which was interesting.  I’m going to leave it at that.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s a very Southern way of putting it.  It was something.

Heather:  Yeah.  I don’t – it, it encompasses a lot of things.  You know, there’s, there’s good things, there’s bad things, there are things that, you know, words fail me on to describe or – it’s, you know, a lot of things are just something that you would have to experience in order to really wrap your head around it, and even if you have experience, you can’t really necessarily wrap your head around what just happened.  So, yeah, it was definitely a, a valuable experience for me.  I’m, I would say the Army and I were not the best of friends, but it was really a love-hate relationship, but, you know, I, I did get a lot out of it.  I got some of my, my best friends out of it to this day.  It’s been eleven years since I enlisted now, so I, I would say I, I got out of it, you know, pretty well, and I’m going to school right now, and unlike a lot of my peers, I’m not going to have to deal with massive, massive student debt.  So I can buy more books!

Sarah:  [Laughs] So this is all, this is all an elaborate campaign strategy to go to school, not incur a monstrous amount of debt, and have extra money for buying romance.

Heather:  Yeah, pretty much.

Sarah:  You are very, very smart.  Have people told you that?  You’re very smart!

Heather:  Well, you know, I am a creature of simple needs.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  All I need are books and lots of them, and the running joke at work is  that, you know, I’ll walk up to my boss and say, hey, I need a raise, and he’ll look at me and be like, why?  And I was like, ‘cause I need to buy more books, and he’ll just shake his head at me and walk away.  I’m like, do you understand what I make versus what I need to buy?  There is a big gap between those two, and it’s not in favor of the books.

Sarah:  [Laughs] And, and as any romance reader can tell you, the appetite for books always outpaces the budget.

Heather:  Always.  Always, always.  But you know, I just, I kind of have to make some peace with that for the time being, and we have a great library system here, so that really helps.

Sarah:  So is there a particular field you want to go into in library science?  Is there a particular job that you’re hoping to get, or are you just sort of open to anything in, in working in libraries?

Heather:  Well, I, I think that it’s really important to be open to doing anything.  It definitely, you know, widens the opportunities that you have that are available if you don’t lock yourself into I want to do this thing and only this thing?  But I am such a book nerd that if I got to, you know, work in a, a rare books library, I was just like, no, that’s it.  Pack up, I’m done, that’s, I’m, I am so happy right now, you can leave me here for the rest of my life.  We’re going to be good.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  And I, it’s just, you know, rare books libraries are just amazing, and you don’t even get to see but a very tiny fraction of what they actually have, so, you know, being able to be behind the scenes and actually see more of that would be really, really exciting.

Sarah:  I also think that people don’t realize how many different jobs there are inside libraries.

Heather:  Right, and, and they don’t even realize that, you know, there’s more to being a librarian than just, oh, you know, check in and shelve the books.  Like, no, actually, there’s a whole lot more to it.  There’s a reason you’re required to have a master’s degree for most library positions that I’ve found in my research, so.  It’s, it’s pretty impressive, but people, you know, they tend to underestimate libraries as well and think, oh, it’s just this place with books, and, and, well, the Richland Main Library is one of those that shows people, well, actually, no, you know, that there’s a lot more to it.  We’re here for the patrons, the people in our communities, and, you know, and to be flexible to meet those needs, whatever, whatever they are, because every area has its different needs, and, and from what people want, and so, you know, you have maker spaces, and you just have all these really cool things that they’re doing, trying to bridge both the economic gap between people who have access both financially and just, you know, possessing the technology as far as computers, you know, with coding and things like that, to, you know, teaching people job skills.  You know, how to write a resume, how to do an interview, doing your taxes.  You can get tax forms at the library.  And so there’s so much more to what libraries have to offer than a lot of people even realize.  Which is actually really cool, because there is a new startup here in the local area by a student from my university –

Sarah:  Oh!

Heather:  – and he is actually, with a fellow student, creating a program that will, when you’re shopping on Amazon, allow you to see that book or the CD or the movie if it’s in the circulation collection at your local library.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s brilliant, ‘cause usually if I want to look for that, I have to go find WorldCat and then search independently, and then I have to figure out if it’s even in my library or if I can borrow it.  That’s a brilliant idea to put that in one simple app or location.

Heather:  It is, and they’ve only just been started on it for about a year and a half, and they’re in the beta stage right now for it, so they’re, they’ve got a couple of test things going on right now, and hopefully it will spread and, you know, as it, it goes, moves into actual wide-open operational subscription, it will spread across libraries as a great way to get people who would not normally go into the library to actually get into the library.

Sarah:  That’s seriously brilliant!  I mean, I imagine somebody listening right now is like, I want, I want, I want, I want that right now!  Right this second!  Right now, right now!

Heather:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So the other thing I wanted to ask you about is books you’re reading and books you wish for, because one of the things I love about your, your comments on the site is that you have definitive opinions about what you like, and you want to find stuff like it, and you make great recommendations.  Like, I have a sample of a book up on my queue for reading next that you recommended, and it was a Muslim YA romance.

Heather:  Oh, was that The Girl Who Wore Red Trainers or something like that?  She Wore Red Trainers?

Sarah:  No, no, it was a different one.  If you hang on, I can find it.  But you have really good recommendations, and I am, I am super curious about what books you’re really enjoying and also what books you, like, what kinds of books you want to read that you haven’t read yet.

Heather:  Okay.  Wow, we could talk about this all day.

Sarah:  Yay!

Heather:  So what I am reading right now, I just finished one called Beyond the Sea by Keira Andrews.  I hoped I pronounced that right.  This is a reader problem where you read it, and you never heard, hear it spoken, and so you don’t know how to pronounce it, and you really hope that you don’t mispronounce it and offend somebody?

Sarah:  Welcome to my world.

Heather:  [Laughs] And so I just finished that one, Beyond the Sea.  I saw the cover, and I was like, ooh, that cover is gorgeous, and, and I clicked it, and I read it, and I was just at a point where I thought I am so tired, I need a vacation, my allergies are killing me, I just, I, I was beside myself.  And so I read this book, and I’m like, this is just like, you know, it’s a little bit out there, and the ending was a little bit too, you know, all of a sudden, slapdash for me, but the whole process of them being on the island was just like yes!  This is awesome!  Where life is just basically, it’s not about writing papers for tests.  It’s, you know, hey, let me go find a coconut so I can live.  And so that was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it.

Also reading Sense and Sensibility right now, trying to finish that up for my local book club, because we actually have a Jane Austen book, book club here in, in the Columbia area, and we’re working on Pride and Prejudice right now, but I’ve read that five times, and so I know that I can take my time before going back to that one.  And that actually got me started on A Truth Universally Acknowledged:  33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen.  That one’s going a bit slow.  It’s, it, it’s very odd.  It’s more, it reads more like academic writing than actual enjoyable, read-, you know, let me read this book –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – because I want to chill type of writing.  So I’m, I’m kind of slogging through that one a little bit, which is depressing, but I’m going to get through it.  And then, also on Jane Austen, I found one at the bookstore where I work; it’s called The Companion of His Future Life by Jack Caldwell, and it’s basically a what, a Pride and Prejudice what-if where, what would have happened if Mary Bennet had married Mr. Collins instead of Charlotte Lucas?  And so I, I often thought that Mary and Mr. Collins would actually make a pretty good couple.  You know, she’s –

Sarah:  Okay.

Heather:  – he, she’s not as obnoxious as he is, and she’s a little bit more sensible, so maybe she could have influenced him, taught him positively, but, you know.  We’ll see how that one goes.  I’m enjoying it right now; it’s different.  And, like I said, I’m, I’m reading a lot.  I, I tend to have a bunch of books going at once, because, depending on my mood, I’ll want to read something different.

And so for nonfiction I have Red:  A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey going right now, and that one is really cool.  I need to get back to it, though, ‘cause I’ve, I started reading it a while back and then put it down and got distracted by other things, other books, and, and I haven’t gone back –

Sarah:  So –

Heather:  – to it since then.

Sarah:  – you, you will buffet your books.  You’ll read several things at the same time.

Heather:  Pretty much.  You know, I used to read just one at a time, but I just find that, you know, at this point, with school and everything, I just, mentally I get so tired that sometimes I just don’t want to deal with nonfiction at all.  Or, you know, I only want one particular type of fiction –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – or someone told me, hey, you really need to read this book right now because it’s awesome!  And I’m like, okay, cool.  And so I’ll pick it up and I’ll start reading that, and so my list of books that I have been reading, I think the, A Truth Universally Acknowledged, I think that one actually, on my Goodreads, has been in my currently reading since, like, June of last year.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  For exactly this reason, but then, on top of that, Dreamspinner Press – love them! – came out with the Dreamspun Desires category line, which is something that I had been wanting for quite a while.  I said, I want to walk into Books-A-Million or Barnes and Noble or, you know, whatever store, and right next to the Harlequins, I want to see, you know, m/m category romances!  I want to see that.  I want it to be a thing.  I’m like, I want it to, you know, I just, I want that.  I want it in all the places.  So, they finally came out with this, let’s see first subscription was back in January.  I signed up back in, I think, in November when I first heard about it.  I was like, oh, yes, this is the one subscription that I have to anything –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – and I get two books a month, and the eBook is free –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – if you order the paperbacks, and I’m a sucker for paperbacks, so that’s what I have.  And they’re up to eight books right now.  Unfortunately, with school, I got backlogged, and so I have five of them that I still need to read, but I read the first three, and my favorite of those was The Stolen Suitor by Eli Easton, and that one was really, really good.  I mean, the cover, eh.  You know, I was, I was kind of lukewarm towards the cover design, but once I started reading the book I said, yes, this book is so good, so good, so good.  And I was just, and then I got towards the end, and it kind of slowed down a little bit, and it had a kid in it, which is one of my things that generally, as a general rule, I will not read books that have plot moppets.  I hate them.  So much.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Not a fan, huh?

Heather:  No.  So much.  But I, I got through the rest of that one, and I’m like, you know, without that, this would have been, like, the most perfect book in the world, as far as I’m concerned.  So I, I’m really, really digging the Dreamspun Desires category line.  I look forward to that every month.  So that’s, at the moment, that’s everything that I have on the plate as currently reading or have just finished.

Sarah:  Now the book that I – I found the book that you were talking about.  The book that you mentioned that you really recommended was Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged?

Heather:  Yes, by Ayisha Malik, and the thing about that one, it’s actually not a Young Adult romance.  This is a –

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh!

Heather:  – this is, Sofia –

Sarah:  I looked at, at the cover, and I thought it was YA!

Heather:  And you know, that’s funny, because it’s actually, the cover design, I find, is so typical of particularly women’s fiction that’s published in the UK.  This was published by a digital-first imprint called twenty7 –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – and they published the book last year, but the actual paper book only came out in January.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  And, and the, and it just has this cover design, and I know it does look very much like an American Young Adult, but, you know, you read it, and Sofia is, you know, she’s thirty years old.  She’s still living at home with her parents, because that’s how you roll when you’re, you know, a British Pakistani Muslim woman who’s not married yet.  And, oh, and my friend Amber was the one who recommended it.  She fell through, like, the rabbit hole of clicking on links for book recommendations, and she found this book somewhere, and she, she texted me and she said, you have to read this book.  And I said, okay, I will, and so I, I read the sample, and I was like, I need to read this book right now, so I went ahead and bought it.  I think I took two days to read it, and I was just kind of shaking my head as I was going on, like, this is my life!  This is, this, you know, I, I could be Sofia, because, in many respects, because, you know, she’s thirty, she’s not married.  All of her friends are getting married or having kids, and everyone’s expecting her to get married and have kinds, and you know, she’s very focused on her career and not really sure where she’s going in the future, but – one thing I really liked about the character is that she’s not cast as this perfectly pious paragon of Muslim virtue, which is, you know, when you’re writing about Muslim women, particularly ones who are observant, who are, you know, religious, who wear headscarves and things like that, you generally get one of two extremes.  You either get this absolutely miserable, oppressed, you know, victim of patriarchal society on one end, and then you get the, you know, the absolute perfect Muslimah on the other end, and both of them are frustrating.  One tends to come from non-Muslim authors, and the other tends to come from Muslim authors who are, I guess, trying to compensate for what the non-Muslim authors are generally doing.

Sarah:  Hmm.

Heather:  And the thing I like about Sofia is that, you know, she, she wears a headscarf, just like I do.  She prays five times a day regularly; she doesn’t miss a single one throughout the entire book, I don’t think.  She talks about how important her faith is to her and how she, she did choose it, how sometimes she’s actually going against what her parents want by, you know, wearing a headscarf and by praying five times a day, and, you know, she sometimes has to deal with ignorance and bigotry, and, like me, she tends to come up with the best response after the fact.  And, but also, I mean, she, you know, she sometimes lets slip a, a cuss word.  You know, she smokes, she kind of gets a little bit flirty sometimes, and you know, she’s just this really realistic, honest character who could be, who could be me or any of my friends.  You know, she’s not perfect, but that doesn’t mean that she gives up trying and, you know, that her faith doesn’t, you know, say, oh, well, you know, you’re not perfect, so you can’t try to be Muslim now.  She, she doesn’t go for that.  And I really, really like that, you know, she doesn’t fall into that trap of thinking that she must be perfect or why even bother trying.

Sarah:  That’s fascinating.  I, I think that there’s a lot to explore in different faiths when the, when the children are choosing to be more observant or differently observant than the parents?

Heather:  It really is, and especially when, you know, you are in a minority religion on top of that –

Sarah:  Yep.

Heather:  – where the wider society doesn’t recognize that, that your religion actually has holidays and things that are important to you and that, you know, sometimes things aren’t quite as flexible or optional.  Like, okay, well, can you just pray later?  Well, no, actually, you know, it’s actually time right now.  Or, you know, on Friday, oh, I need to go to Friday prayer.  Well, why can’t you go over the weekend?  Well, that’s the whole point of Friday prayer.  [Laughs] You know, it just, it, it comes with a, a unique balancing act, because I think that there is a little bit more pushback for people who are part of religions that are minorities in the U.S. and the UK, in balancing, you know, the demands of living in a society that is not structured around, you know, their religious timetable.

Sarah:  And it’s, it’s, it’s something that I notice very much because of the way that different religions keep time?

Heather:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, holidays are lunar.  For example, Jewish days start at sundown.  I know for, for Ramadan, it moves around?

Heather:  Yeah, it moves back –

Sarah:  Like, it’s in the winter, it’s in the summer – I always, I always feel very, I feel a lot of empathy when it’s in the summer.  Like, that’s a really long number of hours of daylight to not eat.  [Laughs]

Heather:  Yeah, and it, it moves back about ten hou-, about ten days every year –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Heather:  – and so, you know, I think I was trying to figure it out one time, and I figured for it to make an entire circle around the –

Sarah:  The calendar?

Heather:  – around the calendar, it would take something like twenty-five or thirty years.  So I converted just in time, right at the tail end of summer, which means for the first several years of being Muslim, all of my Ramadans will be in the middle of summer.  That’s going to be fun.

Sarah:  Yes, but as you get older, it’ll get easier and easier.  [Laughs]

Heather:  Yeah.  Well, I, I hope so.

Sarah:  I often joke because the, the Jewish holidays are, the Jewish calendar is a little bit shorter than the Gregorian calendar that we use.  There are leap months that show up every so often.

Heather:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  There’s a whole extra month that just shows up randomly, and the Jewish, especially the ones in the fall, the Jewish holidays are either early or late, but they are never on time.  Like, no one ever describes them as, yep, this is exactly when they should be.  They’re either early this year or late this year.

Heather:  Yes.  That’s an interesting thing about following a, a lunar calendar versus the solar calendar.

Sarah:  Yep, it’s –

Heather:  But, you know, we, we seem, we seem to make it work.  I mean, they’ve been doing it for a few thousand years at this point, so, you know.

Sarah:  Yeah, it, it, it clearly is working out, ‘cause it’s not like it’s a new thing.

Heather:  [Laughs] But you know, talking about books, you know, actually, I found on Dreamspinner Press’s website a book that combined, really, two things that I really want to see more of.  Actually, I have a list of, like, four things I want to see more of, but for two of them, it combines, you know, m/m romance with a Muslim main character.  One of the guys in this book, you know, he’s a single dad.  He’s also a Muslim, and he’s an observant Muslim.  You know, he’s, it even says in the blurb, you know, that he’s found the mosque that accepts him for who he is –

Sarah:  Ohhh.

Heather:  – and I thought that was fantastic, and since it was on sale for just a dollar, I was like, oh, yes, this is coming home with me, so we’re going to see how that goes.

Sarah:  When you –

Heather:  It’s called Where Wishes Go.

Sarah:  What’s it called?

Heather:  It’s called Where Wishes Go by S. A. McAuley.

Sarah:  Where Wishes Go.  I, I love thinking, like, oh, I just have to buy that right now.  Like, somewhere, somewhere the server just flinched, ‘cause you bought that a little too fast.

Heather:  Yeah.  I, I, there are days when I’m just like, oh, this one and this one and this one and this one and, oh, yes, I need to read this one too.  I’m, I don’t know when I’ll get around to reading them, but at least they’re there, so that when the time does come, they will be available.

Sarah:  It’s very true.  So what do you wish you saw more of in romance?  If you had a wish list of books you would want to read, what are you wishing for that you don’t have yet?

Heather:  Well, of course, you know, we’ve already talked about Muslim romances where, you know, there are Muslim main characters were actually practicing, not disillusioned or, you know, “secularized” Muslims who have distanced themselves and relate to the religion only culturally.  I definitely want to see more Muslims, ‘cause, you know, if anybody is all about marriage, it is Muslims.  I’m thirty-two; I am not married.  The second question I get from anyone at any mosque that I go to outside of the one that I regularly attend is, oh, are you married?  Because I, everyone, they, they want to pair off everyone!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  And at, it’s really, it’s, it’s a big, big deal, and everyone says, oh, you know, got to get married, got to get married, especially when you’re my age, because they’re like, oh, what’s wrong with you?  We need to get you married before something terrible happens.  Like, you do realize me being single is not going to end the world, right?  But apparently they don’t get that yet.  But we-, we’re working on that.  [Laughs] So, Muslim are, romance is a big thing.  I also want to see a lot more GLBTQ romances, including intersex and asexual characters, especially obvious ones, because a lot of time, especially if you’re shopping in a bookstore, you have to know the publishers or the authors, because they’ll be shelved, if they’re even available in the story in, you know, in the general literature section, and there’s nothing on the cover or necessarily even really in the description that tells you this is a GLBTQ romance, and so, you know, you really have to go through and do your work and, and research and write down lists of all these different people and books that you want to read to even know what to look for, and I, that’s frustrating for me.  It’s like, why can’t I just walk up and just see, you know, this picture and, like, oh, well, this is obviously, you know, a romance because it’s got, you know, two guys or two gals or, you know, you know, someone who is obviously not a [inaudible] or a heterosexual couple on the cover in an embrace or, you know, in a situation that is obviously romantic.  So I definitely want to see more of that.  It makes it easier for anyone who might want to read them to find them, and they’re basically, I don’t know, it’s like a magnet.  If it’s on the shelf, I tend to find it, and, which is pretty exciting for me, but I know that not everybody, you know, gets that.  I’ve, I’ve been, you know, reading enough authors and reading enough blogs and things at this point that I look at the spine of a book, I’m like, oh, yes, that is a GLBTQ publisher!  Yes, come here.  Get in my basket; you’re coming home with me.  And so I’m definitely a huge, huge fan, I love m/m romance.  I actually started reading fanfiction when I was fifteen, and – Star Trek fanfiction, which I’m just like, that’s my thing.

Sarah:  Well, you must start, you must start with the purest, finest crack, you know?

Heather:  Really?  Yeah, exactly.

Sarah:  You must, yes, you must start with the most pure form of slash fiction –

Heather:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – if you’re going to start reading m/m fanfic, right?

Heather:  Yes.  There’s really, I mean, you can’t go anywhere else.  You know, my, my friends and I joke, it’s like, yeah, you know, we go to see Star Trek, and I’m just like, space husbands; they are so married.  So married, so adorable, I love them.  And my friends will just laugh at me, and I’m like, you don’t understand!  I, this is, this is my OTP, this is what I am all about.  And, and I, and I’ve been reading it ever since, concurrently with discovering that there are actually, you know, published books that you pay for, that you buy in a bookstore or check out from a library that actually have the same relationships, except they’re not dealing with the established canon of who these characters are –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  – and the world that they live in, which is both liberating, I think, and, you know, and at the same time, a little bit more daunting because you have to create something from scratch.  So I am, I’m always looking for more romances, whether they’re lesbian romances or m/m romances.  Bisexual romances particularly, because bi people tend to get lumped in with the person that they, you know, the type of relationship that they’re in.  You know, it’s like, oh, well, you’re a bi person?  But you’re dating a woman!  If you’re a woman, you know, obviously, you’re a lesbian.  It’s like, well, actually, no, bisexual.  Or, you know, guys, well, if you’re a guy dating a guy, obviously you’re gay.  Well, no, actually, still bisexual.  This is just the relationship I happen to be in.  There, there’s a difference.  We need to understand this.  And –

Sarah:  It’s very strange that the, the relationship that you’re in currently is the one that determines your sexuality, as opposed to your sexuality over the course of your life determining your sexuality.

Heather:  That, well, you know, it’s just, it’s a little too much for a lot of people, I guess, to just wrap their heads around the fact that, no, you don’t have to pick, you know, one or the other.  You can like one; you can like both; you can like the spectrum, because –

Sarah:  And you can like the spectrum and be –

Heather:   – people are so, so diverse, and you know, not, not everyone identifies as, you know, either male or female or strictly bisexual, gay, or lesbian, and so I think that’s something that we need to have more available so that people can realize, hey, this is, this is actually who I am.  They can – I know a lot of people don’t like labels, but in a way they give us a, a, something to start identifying ourselves with other people with, and you know, to find that our stories exist, and I think that’s really, really important.  And other than that – oh, speaking of – let’s see – yes, child-free romances.  Romances where characters, especially the female characters, you know, outright say, I do not want children, and they choose not to have children.  It’s not that they can’t, it’s not, you know, that, or that, you know, well, maybe one day in the future I’ll change my mind.  It’s legitimately, I do not want children.  And this is one thing that frustrates the heck out of me, well, because you really can’t find them, but also because, you know, you have Baby Proof by Emily Giffin.  That book gives me rage.  Like, I throw it against the wall.

Sarah:  Ohhh, yes.

Heather:  Fury, because it’s, you know, you’re reading it, it starts out quite well, but then as you’re reading it, she is the one making all the compromises.  She is the terrible person who won’t give her husband a baby, because he changed his mind after they’d already established their relationship when they were dating that, oh, hey, I don’t want kids.  Oh!  I don’t want kids either!  And then later on, oh, they decide to get married.  Okay, we’re going to continue our lives on this way.  He changed his mind; suddenly she’s a terrible person.  And she ends up being the one to have to make all the compromises, and I just, it, oh, it infuriated me so much.  By the time I got to the end of that book I was just like, I hate this book so much, and I actually won’t read anything else that author has written because I am just, I feel like I was so burned by this book that really could have been a positive portrayal, not as, you know, of a child-free woman who was not horrible and selfish but, you know, she had different goals in her life.  She had different, you know, things that she wants, and it doesn’t make her a bad or selfish person to say, you know, this is what I want, not that.

Sarah:  And it’s –

Heather:  And so I, I –

Sarah:  And it’s normal.

Heather:  It is, and a lot of people, I mean, you know, the more I talk to people, there are a lot of people, even some people I know who are parents, they say, if I had to go back and do it again, I wouldn’t have kids.  And, you know, and it’s where we need to have characters who reflect this reality that there are people who do not want children and that it’s okay.  You’re not obligated to reproduce if that’s not what you want to do.  I mean, there are enough people in the world who do have kids that we really don’t need to worry about running out of people.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  And, and I wish somebody had told me that when I was younger.  It took me several years to figure it out, and, because I, I mean, everyone that I knew was, you know, having kids.  They had kids, they were, you know, if they were my age they were getting married and they were having children, or they were having children and they were getting married.  Whatever the case may be, you know, and it was just one of those things where there was nobody like me who said, no, I don’t like kids, I don’t want kids, and I’m not a terrible, horrible, baby-eating person.  I just don’t want children, and that’s okay.  So I, I think having that narrative in romance particularly, because in so many romances, you know, they’ll end with an epilogue where it talks about how the couple has X number of children; usually it’s something ridiculous like, you know, a boy and then a girl and then two sets of twins or something like that.  As if, you know, by having all of these children, it proves how much they love each other.  And I, like, it frustrates me because I’m just like, no!  No, this is not – having children is not how you prove you love someone!  You know, loving someone is how you prove that you love someone, and, you know, you shouldn’t have to have a whole passel of kids to validate your love, such as it is, by the end of the book, and so I, I would love to see, you know, more characters who have a happily ever after without children, and they are not frustrated or childless, which is a word I hear a lot, and it drives me nuts.  You know, they are people who’ve chosen not to have children.  They are happy; they are a family of two or a family of people with pets, and, you know, they – and, and they’re not missing anything from their lives.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Heather:  This is, this is their life, and this is the way they want it to be, and they’re, and then they’re happy with it that way.

Sarah:  I know so very well what you mean.  I read a similar book where the heroine was like, I don’t want to have kids, I don’t want to have kids, and then in the last chapter she’s like, I’m pregnant, and this is awesome!  And I’m like, what?  Where did that come from?  Just, just because the expectation is lowered onto you that you should have children and want to have children doesn’t mean that you have to.  I mean, if you don’t want children, please don’t have them.  That makes for very unhappy living situations for everyone.  I have so much empathy for people who are, don’t want to, and they’re told, well, you should want to.  You should.  You should have to want to.  You’re wrong if you don’t want children, and that’s just horrible.

Heather:  And you know, the crazy thing to me about it is that, you know, we never ask people why they want to have children.  We ask them why they don’t.

Sarah:  Yep.

Heather:  And I, and I’m like, wait a second, if you don’t have kids, you know, for many years, potentially, you have the option to change your mind and go ahead and have biological ones if you want or, you know, adopt if that’s your bag, and, and this, it’s, so we never question, you know, people who have children as oh, okay, well, you’re having kids?  Are you sure about that?  Is that what you want to do?

Sarah:  Yep.

Heather:  You know, we just assume that it’s the next step in the adulthood maturation process, and I’m like, you know, I can be an adult and mature and take care of my stuff without going and getting married and buying a house and having children.  That should not have to be part of the progression of being a mature adult, but unfortunately, I find in a lot of conversations that these are the things that people equate with adulthood, and if you leave one or more of them out, then, you know, you’re basically, they look at you askance and are like, what is wrong with you?  You know, you’re immature.  You just, you just want to, you know, be a kid and do what you want, and I’m like, well, isn’t that what everybody wants to do in life?  You know, they’ve, you have kids because you want to have kids, you know.  You don’t have kids ‘cause you don’t want to have kids.  That doesn’t make you a horrible, selfish person.

Sarah:  It’s true.  Life gets a lot better when you break your give-a-shit when other people’s choices –

Heather:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – don’t invalidate your own and when you stop giving a crap what other people do in their homes and with their bodies and in their privac-, private lives.  Like, life gets a lot better when you just really stop giving a shit about most things that you’re told that you should care deeply about?  Life gets way better.  [Laughs]

Heather:  Well, that, and you know, and when people stop taking your personal choices as an attack on their personal choices.  It’s like –

Sarah:  Yes!

Heather:  – no, it’s like, it’s like, no, wait a second.  I said I don’t want to have children.  I didn’t say that, you know, that you’re an awful, terrible person, you know, for wanting to have kids or having kids or whatever the case may be.  And, you know, it’s like, my personal life choices, whether it comes to, you know, my marital state or lack thereof, my having kids state or lack thereof, or my religion, it’s like, it has everything to do with me and absolutely nothing to do with you.

Sarah:  Yep!  And it, it doesn’t have to have anything to do with you.  I think one of the, one of the points of The Four Agreements, which was a really popular book for a while, was that other people’s actions usually have very little to do with you and very much to do with them.

Heather:  Yeah, well, you know, it’s one of those things where, you know, you, you exist in the world, and you are the focus of your entire life, and therefore you think that everyone around you must be focused on you.  It’s like – and actually The Four Agreements is still a really popular book.  I sell quite a few copies of that.

Sarah:  No kidding!

Heather:  No, no, it’s – some of them are just consistently popular, and that would be one of them.  That one and The Secret.

Sarah:  The popularity of The Secret and how omnipresent it was, how everyone knew about this book, that was fascinating to me.  It was one of the things that I tried to point out a couple times when people were like, oh, my God!  Fifty Shades is everywhere!  Like, every now and again, there’s a book that’s everywhere.  Sometimes it’s fiction, sometimes it’s nonfiction, but it happens.  There’s a book that’s everywhere, and that book stays popular for a really long time.

Heather:  Yeah, and I, I notice that because, I mean, we can sell some things, you know, years after the fact and still have a hard time keeping it on the shelf, and interestingly, Quiet by Susan Cain is one of the ones that I can rarely find on the shelf at work because, one, once we get a copy in it sells.

Sarah:  Is there a book –

Heather:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – that you love that you wish more people knew about?

Heather:  Ohhh.  Oh, that’s such a loaded question.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I know, it’s a hard one.

Heather:  You know, I tend to, to push books on people.  It’s part of my job, they pay me to do it, so I can, you know, make it legit under that, but – I’m actually standing here looking at my bookshelves right now trying to decide which one of these I would, like, force into everyone’s hands if I could.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Heather:  I guess I would want more people to read The Persian Boy by Mary Renault.  I love that book.  I think, you know, whenever I talk to someone about it, and especially if they’re fans of historical fiction, I tell them, this book is so beautiful.  I’m like, it is meticulously researched, so it’s as realistic as you can, she can possibly have ever made it, but then it is so, so beautifully written.  I mean, every single word, it just, like, immerses you in this universe where, you know, you’re watching this Persian eunuch fall for the greatest conqueror in the history of the world.  I mean, it’s a love story, and there’s no way around that.  It is absolutely a love story, and, and it’s just amazing, and I wish people would read it more, both to understand that, you know, well, historical fiction is not boring, and love stories are not boring –

Sarah:  Nope!

Heather:  – and also that, you know, that you can be one person to the public but, you know, in private with someone who loves you, you can be somebody else.

Sarah:  It’s true!

Heather:  And that’s the way that love should be.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I want to thank Heather for hanging out with me and talking with me.  I really enjoyed our conversation.  I hope you did too!

If you have suggestions or questions or ideas you want to share with me, please email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com.

This podcast was brought to you by J. Kenner’s Dirtiest Secret, published by Bantam Books, available in paperback and eBook.

Everyone knows Dallas Sykes is a notorious playboy.  To me, he’s the one man I desperately crave and the one I can never have.  We’ve tried not letting ourselves give in to desire, and for so long we’ve said, but now it’s time to say yes.

Find out their Dirtiest Secret with J. Kenner’s new SIN series, on sale April 19th.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is Sketch.  This is from their album Shed Life, which is pretty awesome, and this track is called “The Earthship.”  You can find it on iTunes or Amazon or wherever you buy your fine music.

If you’re a regular listener or reader of transcripts, I invite you to take a look at our Patreon campaign at Patreon.com/SmartBitches.  Trying to make sure we have transcripts for every episode and to upgrade some equipment so I can do better on-site interviews that don’t sound like I’ve tossed someone down a well and then jumped down after ‘em.  If you’d like to have a look, there are rewards and options at Patreon.com/SmartBitches, and pledges each month start at $1.  Every single pledge helps.  For those of you who have already supported the podcast, thank you, thank you, thank you.  You are entirely great!

Future podcasts will include me talking to authors about romance novels and readers about romance novels and other reviewers about romance novels, ‘cause that’s what we do here!

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

[dreamy music]