208. Smart Bitches Assemble: Demon Woodchucks and Things that Influence Our Reading Tastes

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 208 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Book, and with me today are most of but not all of the Bitches.  Amanda, Elyse, RedHeadedGirl, and I sit down to talk about reading influences.  Unfortunately, Carrie couldn’t join us at the last minute, but we start by talking about a new Tig Notaro show coming to Amazon that Amanda’s excited about, Elyse explains why her office is terrified of a woodchuck, and then we talk about the Olympic media coverage, how much we hate it, toy nostalgia, and the Olympic romances we wish we could read.  Running through that is a discussion of what internal and external factors influence our reading tastes.  And because it’s us, we talk about a whole bunch of other things too.  I will have links in the podcast entry as to all the books we’re talking about, plus the other things we mention like podcast sites for gymnastics fans, that kind of thing.

This podcast is brought to you by Burn Down the Night by M. O’Keefe.  Set in the world of her bestselling Everything I Left Unsaid, Burn Down the Night follows a beautiful con woman who takes a bad-boy biker hostage in an edgy, seductive novel.  You can find it wherever books are sold.

The transcript this week is brought to you by Happily Ever Afterlives, a two-in-one reissue of sexy Regency paranormal novellas by author Olivia Waite, who says they’re witty and Gothic, but not too dark, and they offer you the chance to learn just how Lucifer feels about violin music.  In Damned If You Do, Lord Lambourne’s sexual prowess has unfortunately condemned him to hell for lust, but sharp and sultry Idared, the demoness assigned to punish him, is proving to be his greatest temptation yet.  Unfortunately, his fiancée and her awful violin are on their way to rescue him.  You can find Happily Ever Afterlives wherever eBooks are sold.

I want to take a very brief moment to thank you for leaving reviews and talking about the podcast and talking with me about it.  If you would like to support the show, I have a Patreon for the podcast, and you can find out all of the reward levels and the pledge levels starting at one dollar a month at Patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater.  I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

And now, without any further delay, on with the podcast!  I hope you enjoy our completely meandering discussion.

[music]

Sarah:  Oh, there you are!

Elyse:  Hi!

RedHeadedGirl:  Hey!

Sarah:  Why are you crying over stand-up comedy?  Is that the one where she, like, told everyone she had cancer and, and was comforting everyone in the audience?

Amanda:  No!  So, she’s coming out with an Amazon series in September called One Mississippi, and I’m very excited about it, but I was reading the comments about the show, and someone posted, like, one of her stand-ups that’s kind of like the basis for the, for the show?  And she’s talking about, like, the last time she talked to her mom and then going to the hospital after her mom’s, like, accident where she fell down and, like, hit her head, and she had, like, a brain hemorrhage, and there was, like, zero percent chance she’d recover.  And so she’s talking about, like, the awkward conversation she had post funeral with her step dad, who’s, like, a very, he’s, like, a military guy, and he’s very stoic, and – it’s, like, dry, like, dark humor, but it’s so sad!  So.

Sarah:  Dude.

RHG:  That’s heavy.

Sarah:  That sounds like something I would not be able to watch.

Amanda:  I’m excited to watch it.  It has a lot of, like, actors that I enjoy, so we’ll see.

Sarah:  But you’re going to sit there and cry and eat chocolate now sort of like as a warm-up.

Amanda:  Oh, yeah.  Yeah.  Oh, no, I’m sure, like, this isn’t going to help at all.  I’ll still be just as upset when I watch it.  [Laughs] This is an excuse to just eat chocolate and cry a little bit.

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  You don’t need an excuse to eat chocolate and cry a little bit.  What’s up Elyse?

Amanda:  That’s true.

RHG:  Oh, okay!

Elyse:  We have a woodchuck that lives under, like, the stoop kind of by one of our service doors?  I’m, he may have rabies; I’m not sure.  He charges cars and semis in the parking lot.  Like –

Amanda:  He probably has rabies.  There’s, like, a 99% chance he has rabies.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  I have –

Sarah:  Or someone’s giving him crank.

Elyse:  He is –

Amanda, RHG, Sarah:  Or both!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Our – it, it’s like Caddyshack – our maintenance department has been trying to trap and kill this woodchuck for, like, three years running.  I don’t even know if it’s the same woodchuck, but it’s mean as fuck, and so, like, people run to their cars, and he really, he has this thing about one of my employees’ red Kia, like, little coupes, and it’s probably because it’s, like, approximately his size and he wants to mate with it, I don’t know, but, like –

Sarah:  You never know.

Elyse:  – he charges the vehicle.  It’s, it’s very frightening.

Amanda:  You said you don’t know if it’s the same woodchuck, and I’m just picturing, like, this old, grizzled woodchuck –

[Laughter]

Amanda:  – like, training his, like, you know, next in line –

RHG:  This army of young woodchucks.

Amanda:  – Karate Kid style.  It’s like, you are the chosen one, and, like, you know, anoints him, like a knight.  Go forth and wreak havoc in the parking lot!

Elyse:  He is!  He’s really scary!  What, I’m going to Google the average lifespan of woodchucks now.  Hang on.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Of course.

Elyse:  Oh, six to eight years!  So it could be the same one!

Sarah:  Of course it could be!

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  They’ve been known to survive –

Amanda:  How long has he been there?

Elyse:  – up to fourteen years.

Sarah:  They are the cockroach of the furry woodland mammals.

Elyse:  Oh.  How to get rid of groundhogs.  I should send this to our –

Sarah:  Oh, you call my dogs.

Elyse:  – expert.

Sarah:  They will get rid of it for you.  It’ll be –

Elyse:  I would be –

RHG:  I don’t think so.  Not if this fucker’s attacking people.

Elyse:  I – yeah.

RHG:  Buzz is going to be like, nope!

Elyse:  We have to eliminate attractants.  There are no attractants in our area.  I –

Amanda:  You’ve got to get rid of that red Kia.

Sarah:  Yeah, it’s the Kia.  The Kia’s doing it.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  He was blinded with lust for her red Kia.  That sounds like a cover copy of a book I would have –

RHG:  It does.

Sarah:  – heard of.

Elyse:  It says you can live, you can live trap them, but that’s absolutely not going to, not going to fly.  It’s, it’s a fight to the death at this point.

Sarah:  So, Carrie cannot join us, alas, I am sad to say.  She is stuck at family-ness, so we are going to continue on without Carrie.  [Sniffs] But hopefully she’ll be able to sign in and join us and talk about things, but I’m really glad you guys could come, so yay!  Thank you!

Amanda:  Everyone, pour one out for Carrie right now.

Sarah:  That’s right.  I have a drink.  What are you drinking?

Amanda:  I’m just, just soda.  [Laughs] I need some caffeine today.

RHG:  I have Slumbrew’s Happy Sol beer, which involves –

Amanda:  That’s a pretty can.

RHG:  It’s a pretty can.  You can get it at the Slumbrew beer garden down at Assembly Square, and it has, it’s ale brewed with honey, orange peel, coriander, and blood orange juice –

Amanda:  That sounds real good.

RHG:  – and it’s my favorite.  It’s real good.

Sarah:  That’s, sounds really delicious.

Elyse:  I’m having a rum and Coke.

Amanda:  Good for you!

Elyse:  It’s kind of weak, though.

Sarah:  I’m having an Amaretto Rose, which is a drink that Adam figured out how to make by using the Internet and let’s see what alcohol we actually paid people to move to our new home?

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Which was all of the bottles that weren’t open.

RHG:  Mm, yeah.

Sarah:  So it is Amaretto, seltzer, lime juice, and something with the rose part, maybe grenadine?

Amanda:  That sounds really – Amaretto is the alcohol of choice in my apartment.

Sarah:  Yeah?

Amanda:  We frequently drink Amaretto and ginger ale.  It’s –

RHG:  Oh, nice.  Yeah.

Sarah:  That sounds delicious!

RHG:  That would be good.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Should we do a –

Elyse:  I knew someone who used to drink Amaretto Mountain Dew.

RHG:  Ew.

Sarah:  Uhhhhhhh –

Amanda:  Sure!

Sarah:  – no!

RHG:  No!  No.

Sarah:  I feel like we should do, like, a cocktail book.  Like, we should put together all of Amanda’s recipes and then our recipes for cocktails.  Here’s what to drink while you’re reading.  Cheers!

Amanda:  Yep.

RHG:  We should do that.  Don’t make this be one of those ideas that we’re like, this is a thing we should do!  And then we never do it.  Let’s actually do this one, ‘cause it’s a good idea.

Sarah:  I usually do most of the crazy-ass ideas I have, unless I figure out that they’re, they’re, like, you know, a biohazard.

Amanda:  They’re on the list.  They just might take a while to get to.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Uh-huh.

Amanda:  I feel like.  I feel like Sarah’s to-do list is miles long.

Sarah:  Oh, it’s an ever-evolving, growing thing.  You remember when you were in – well, before Amanda was born, there were these toys –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – where you had, like, the little sea cucumber; it was rubber and you couldn’t hold it because it was basically –

RHG:  Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Amanda or Elyse:  Oh, I used to have one of those!

Sarah:  That’s my to-do list.  It’s a never-ending –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – sea cucumber, basically.  But it’s a good to-do list.

RHG:  I kind of tweeted today about the mad scientist monster lab from the ‘80s where you had little skeletons and you put this putty to build monsters out of?  And then you could dissolve them in a vat?

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  Do you guys remember, it was like an Easy-Bake Oven, and it had, like, metal trays because nothing says, you know, awesome for children than metal that’s going to get really hot, but then you had, like, this stuff in a tube and you would, like, squeeze it into these molds, and it would make, like, a little plastic toy.  Like, it would actually bake in the oven.

RHG:  Yeah. 

Amanda:  The fumes from that, I’m sure, were toxic.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Oh, yeah, the whole thing was, it, it was going to give you cancer.  Like –

Sarah:  It was an elaborate –

RHG:  This was not for the faint of heart.  Like –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, it’s all an elaborate scheme to just be huffing.

RHG:  – it’s got to be a survival of the fittest kind of thing.

Sarah:  Yep.  Do you guys remember Get in Shape Girl?  Do you guys remember?  You don’t –

Amanda:  No, that might have been before me.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  I mean, that, that was when I was really young, so this is, like, definitely before you were born –

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – or when you were, like, neonatal.  So Get in Shape Girl was this set of exercise toys.  There were leg warmers, because obviously.

RHG:  Because it was the ‘80s.

Sarah:  There were, there were some, like, hand weights, and the thing that everybody wanted –

RHG:  The, the wrist bracelets.

Sarah:  – there were wristbands, and the thing that everybody wanted was the rhythmic gymnastics ribbon on a stick.  That was the one that you could never find.  It was re-released in the mid 2000s, apparently, but never went anyway, never went anywhere.  It was an exercise kit designed for young females to have safe and fun exercise at home, except that it was leg warmers, fashion, and a ribbon on a stick, so I don’t know how much fitness you were getting out of that.

Elyse:  That’s not body shaming in any way.

RHG:  Oh, no, definitely not.

Sarah:  Oh, no.  It’s just, you know, ribbon on a stick.  What could possibly go wrong?

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  So I wanted to talk to you guys about what influences your reading tastes, because we talk a lot about, like, I feel like shit; what should I read?  I need comfort reads; what should I read?  But then came the Olympics, and all of a sudden you guys were like, ooh, sports romances would be good, ‘cause I know one of you shared a book about murder in gymnastics?

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  Yes, what is the name of –

RHG:  That just arrived today.

Elyse:  Mine didn’t come yet.  God damn you, living in an actual area of the world where mail is delivered.  I’m looking up the title.

RHG:  For You Will Know Me?

Elyse:  Yes.  Murder in gymnastics.

Sarah:  So you posted You Will Know Me because gymnastics plus –

RHG:  Because gymnastics –

Sarah:  – murder.

RHG:  – and –

Sarah:  Murder!

RHG:  – I mean, it just came out.  I –

Elyse:  Yeah.

RHG:  – heard a review of it on NPR, and I was like, okay, whoever the marketing department is of this publisher is fucking brilliant, ‘cause everybody’s going to be all over this.

Sarah:  Because there, there is a group of people who want to read what they’re watching and spend more time –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – in the world that they’re getting –

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  – hour to two-hour tape-delayed, sexist, pre-packaged, soft lens, bullshit, sexism crap from NBC which passes as the Olympics in prime time.  If you want more of that that’s less shitty –

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – you’re going to go read a book, right?

Elyse:  I, I actually heard one of the commentators –

RHG:  Or, you know, steal the Canadians.

Sarah:  Steal the Canadian feed, also a good option.  BBC.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  One of the NBC commentators made a comment about, it was a male swimmer, I think, and he’s like, and in his downtime he shares childcare duties with his wife, and I’m like, you mean, so he’s a parent.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  He parents his children.  As opposed to what, NBC?  Like, leaving them on a beach at birth like a fucking sea turtle?  Like, how is this, how is that commentary?

RHG:  Right.  And –

Sarah:  I hate it, I hate it so much.  Hate it.

RHG:  I hate it so much, and in addition to the list of things that Sarah said, it’s also a fucking monopoly, so if you’re in the U.S. and you don’t have cable, you can only watch what is on prime time on NBC broadcast.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  You cannot watch the livestreams because they require you to sign in with your cable account, and if you don’t –

Sarah:  Which half the time doesn’t fucking work anyway.  Believe me, ‘cause I tried.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Not that I’m bitter.

RHG:  And if you don’t have cable and you live in a place where you can’t get broadcast signal, then you’re shit out of luck –

Sarah:  Yep.

RHG:  – unless you, you know, go to the GymCastic podcast website and look up their instructions for how to use the CBC or BBC feeds.

Sarah:  Oh, the last Olympics in London, I watched wrestling in German, I watched something in Dutch.  I had no shits to give about not watching NBC ‘cause it was so horrible.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And the, the thing that really –

RHG:  And it gets, it’s progressively getting worse.

Sarah:  – chaps my ass, it, it gets progressively worse, they don’t do anything about it, it’s the same conversation every year.  This is sexist, it’s packaged, it’s not even live.  Do you think we’re stupid?  You actually think we’re stupid.  You’ve actually said on the record you think we’re stupid, so we’re still having this conversation, it still sucks, and then they’re like, but this is what the ratings show.  Okay.  You’re the only ones that have it!

RHG:  Yep.  Right!

Sarah:  Of course you have ratings!  It’s not like we have a choice, unless we, you know, pirate signals from Canada – hi, Canada.  Thank you!

RHG:  And there was, there was a –

Sarah:  And I am going to punch Bob Costas in his non-pink eye.

Somebody:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Make sure you wash your hands very carefully afterwards.

Somebody:  Yeah.  Wear gloves.

RHG:  There was a, a po-, a link just posted today of a sportscaster, I think it was on WGN, who was like, we would love to show you, like, what happened today at the Olympics, but NBC says that we can only show you two minutes, non-consecutive, and we can’t show you another two minutes until three hours have passed, so our daytime show can’t show you anything ‘cause we’ve already used up our two minutes, and it needs to have the logo, not just the rings but the whole NBC logo with the tags permission blah-blah-blah, so I’m going to tell you what happened at an unnamed international sporting event that is run by the most corrupt organization this planet has ever seen – save perhaps FIFA; jury is still out – and I will tell you what happened over this video of me as a twelve-year-old wrestling provided by my parents.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That is –

RHG:  And he did!

Sarah:  That is 2000% Chicago no-fucks-given.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  That’s glorious.

RHG:  It was amazing.

Elyse:  Once Ryan Seacrest was involved –

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  -it’s, it’s like a, I don’t even know –

Sarah:  It’s Solid Gold is what it is.

Elyse:  – E! News fucking thing.  I don’t know.

Sarah:  It’s Solid Gold.  Any minute now there’s going to be dancers in nylon, and they’re going to just, like, twirl across the stage.  All right, so anyway, now that we’ve ranted about the Olympics –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – ‘cause that was totally on topic, did the Olympics influence what you want to read?

Elyse:  But – yes, because I am holding out hardcore for my summer Cutting Edge where a water polo player gets some rare injury and has to achieve his Olympic dream through synchronized swimming, and I want some kind of training montage where he, like, hot glues a plastic flower to his stupid water polo hat.

Sarah:  So you want a romance where a water polo player injures himself, has to become a synchronized swimmer, and it’s like The Cutting Edge –

Elyse:  In order to get a gold –

Sarah:  – with, with a melted ice rink, basically.

RHG:  And less toe pick.

Elyse:  How is that not amazing?  Like, I’m just throwing that out to all of the authors out there.  I just gave you that; you can have it.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I expect it in, like, a year.  I mean, just, just the, the Speedo potential.

Sarah:  Or the lack of Speedo potential, ‘cause I saw the Speedos on the divers, and Steele Johnson and Goodfellow were very, very small-Speedo-wearing men.

Elyse:  Yeah, I think I saw that.

Amanda:  I’m sure that water is very cold, so –

RHG:  That’s why they have hot tubs.

Amanda:  …Speedos work.

Sarah: Why was the water in the hot tub yellow?  Do I want to know?

Elyse:  You don’t want to know, no.

Sarah:  It looked like a giant –

RHG:  I –

Sarah:  – frothy Mountain Dew, and I was like, don’t get in there, don’t get in there, don’t get in there!

RHG:  I, I don’t know.

Elyse:  Oh, that’s a Staph infection.

Sarah:  So watching the Olympics makes you want to read books set in the world that you’re, you’re watching on television.  Does that happen at any other time?

Amanda: Well, like, I love sports romances?  [Lowers voice] I don’t give a shit about the Olympics.  [Normal voice] I don’t care!  Like, I’ve never cared.  It’s never been a thing that I watch.  I actually feel like I’m more inconvenienced by the Olympics than I enjoy it.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  ‘Cause everything –

Sarah:  Thank God they’re not in Boston.

Amanda:  And everything is, on TV that I watch is essentially on a two-week break, so I can’t watch my stories.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Amanda wants her stories!  She’s not getting them!

Amanda:  And then NFL pre-season starts this week, and I looked, and there’s going to be, like, zero coverage of that on TV, ‘cause all the sports channels are talking about the Olympics.  And I don’t know, like, I don’t feel any ounce of patriotism for the U.S.A. athletes.  I don’t, I just can’t get into it, and I don’t know why.  I’ve never been into it, so the Olympics don’t affect my reading in the slightest.  It makes me more frustrated that I can’t watch what I want to on television.  But –

Sarah:  Are there other events that influence your reading, though?  Like, does change of seasons make you read different things?  Do you want to read holiday romances at holiday times?

Amanda:  The only thing, like, seasonally when we’re talking about, like, seasons or, like, you know, big events?  I will actively avoid holiday romances.

Elyse:  I, I am in the same boat with holiday romance, but in my defense, I hate the holidays because I’ve worked in transportation for twelve years, and nothing will suck the joy out of the holidays like working ‘til two in the morning so Walmart can get their fucking Dora Explorer sheets on time for Black Friday.  Anyone who’s worked in transportation or retail hates Christmas for the rest of their life.  Like, it’s –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – it’s, it’s going to happen.  It’s miserable –

RHG:  That’s not entirely true.

Elyse:  I think you have to, like, not if, not like I worked at Target in high school or something.  Like, if you’re a seasoned veteran of either of those industries, you’ve just become very cynical.

RHG:  Uh-huh.  Yes.

Elyse:  And you’re not – how, how?  How do you still like Christmas?

RHG:  ‘Cause it’s food!

Elyse:  Well, the food is good.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yeah.

Amanda:  The holidays are always, like, a trying time in my family.

RHG:  I know, holidays are a trying time.  You, you know that I’ve had panic attacks about going home because my family is just nutters, but –

Sarah:  At the same time, though –

Amanda:  It’s like reading –

RHG:  At the same time, I, I still enjoy them.

Amanda:  Well, like, I, I just can’t get, like, reading about, like, a cozy holiday romance in the snow, just, or, like, a couple stranded in a cabin somewhere.  I’m like, mm, no.  Like, where’s my mom crying because there’s no Waffle House within the next twenty miles that she can eat breakfast at?  Because she has to have Waffle House or else the entire day is ruined.  Like –

RHG:  And she’s the one who picked the destination.  Never mind, I’m sorry, I’m using logic.  [Laughs]

Amanda:  Yeah.  Oh, I’m aware.  I am aware, but, like, the holidays are a monster of my mother’s making, and so there’s so much pressure for the holidays to be perfect?

Sarah:  Hate that.

Amanda:  And they never are?  To read about, like, a perfect romance set in, like, a holiday just –

Sarah:  And people –

Amanda:  – makes me very cynical and bitter.

Sarah:  – people ask me all the time when I talk about how I converted to Judaism, like, don’t you miss Christmas?  Nooo.  Nope.  Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, don’t miss it at all, sorry, no, no.  But you seem to be, Amanda, a reader who isn’t influenced by what’s going on around you.  You’re not really influenced by external factors in your reading tastes.

Amanda:  I would say my influences are more internal?

Sarah:  Yep.

Amanda:  So I’ve noticed that when I have, like, a depressive episode I’ll turn to nonfiction over romance?  I read a lot of memoirs and biographies when I feel depressed?  My rationalization is I kind of want to connect to a real person, I guess, as opposed to a character that’s made up from the author, despite whatever real influences the character may have had.  Reading slumps, I will go to anthologies, novellas, ‘cause they’re easier to keep my brain focused.  And then just, like, the last three books I read were, like, paranormal and fantasy romance, so now, like, I’m switching to something else to kind of prevent genre burnout.

Sarah:  Yep.

Amanda:  So.

Elyse:  I find – well, you’ve commented on this, Sarah.  Like, the more stressed out I am, the creepier the shit that I read.

Sarah:  Oh, my God.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, at some point you’re going to, you’re going to –

RHG:  All of the not-for-Sarah books.

Sarah:  Oh, my God.  She’s going to, like, start talking about some book where, like, a circle of witchcraft-practicing marmosets have come together to resurrect, like, a dead woodchuck with rabies, and I’m going to be like, okay, Rich, you need to get her to the ER.

Elyse:  Then you guys have to do, like, an intervention.  Yeah.

Sarah:  We need to show up on your porch and make sure you’re okay.  Like, the creepier the shit you read –

RHG:  Okay, but, see, if that book existed, how creepy and fucked up could it possibly be?  It’s woodchucks.

Elyse:  You haven’t met this woodchuck.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  No, I’ve met other woodchucks, but –

Elyse:  Uh –

RHG:  I’m just saying, that book sounds adorable.

Elyse:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  We need to get, we need to get her –

Elyse:  Oh, she wants the, she wants the satanic –

Sarah:  – a red Kia to park in your lot.  Yeah.

Elyse:  Yeah.  No, the more stressed I am, the more I like to read about murder, apparently.  That’s probably something I should talk to with a professional, regardless.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  No, it makes sense, because thrillers, mysteries, and murders and things like that, that’s all a massive problem either being solved, a mystery being solved, or an up-ended tragic situation is resolved, so if everything around you is stress, you’re going to read about the most drastic stress that gets in some way resolved and, and fixed or solved or punished.  Like, somebody did something shitty, they’re going to get caught in this world, as opposed to in the real world when you’re stressed because people are shitty and nothing happens to them.

Elyse:  Right, and, you know, there are a lot of really awesome psychological thrillers coming out now that do have female characters who are like, ah, I just killed the fucker.

Sarah:  They’re, they –

Elyse:  And got away with it.

Sarah:  – and they all have Girl in the title, which is starting to piss me off.

Elyse:  They do.  You know, I, there was some commentary on that in a review that I wrote, and I kind of think a lot of it’s just trading on Gone Girl, right, ‘cause you’re –

Sarah:  Oh, yay.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – like on the Fifty Shades of Grey, but I also think that –

Sarah:  Fifty Shades of Girl.

Elyse:  Fifty Shades of Girl.  I also think –

RHG:  Fifty Shades of Touching.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Girl is more innocent, so it makes the whole thing sound more spooky or nefarious, but I just read a book called The Lost Girls, and I’m really mad about it, and it was marketed as a spooky, creepy, psychological thriller, and it was not that, so the cover copy lied to me, and it took my money.

Sarah:  Oh, that makes me mad.

RHG:  Hmm.

Elyse:  Yeah.  It totally played up the spookiness, and it really wasn’t spooky, and it was just literary fiction that was depressing.

Sarah:  What about you, RedHeadedGirl?  Are you influenced by the things going on around you in your reading tastes?

RHG:  Not really?  I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t think so.  I think that any changes that, any changes in trends tend to be more internal, like Amanda.  Like this gymnastics murder mystery thing, I would read that anytime because I’m not a four-year fan, thank you.  I am a bona fide gym nerd.  I’ve known who Simone Biles is for the past four years.  Thank you.  Anyway.

Sarah:  So you’re, like, a gymnastics hipster, basically.

RHG:  Yeah!

Sarah:  Okay, just –

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Have you watched The Bronze?

RHG:  No, not yet.

Elyse:  Oh, my God.

RHG:  And I’m very –

Elyse:  The sex scene in that movie is hilarious.

RHG:  Yeah.  Yeah.  No, that’s on the list, but I have a very busy schedule for the next week and a half watching other people sweat.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So you’re super into it, but you’re not necessarily going to, going to go seek that same experience in your reading material.

RHG:  Not necessarily.  The only real sports romances that I like are figure skating and polo.

Sarah:  [Laughs] See, I find it really interesting –

RHG:  So –

Sarah:  – because I am usually, when I read, trying to disconnect from the real world?  I want my reading world and my real world to be pretty far apart most of the time?  I don’t want my reading to reflect exactly what’s happening, unless I can find something that really captures something very, very specific and unique about a thing that I happen to love, like, for example, snowboarding.  I will read snowboarding romances –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – any time, ‘cause snowboarding is the shit.  And I would be more than happy to read romances that are set in the things that I love, but I don’t necessarily gravitate towards them at one, more at one point than another, but I get so many requests for book recommendations that are centered around different external influences, like seasonal changes.  Like, you know, there’re the holiday romances, and then there’s fall; we’re going to get a whole bunch of cozy things, lots of cozy covers coming, you know, coming now for fall.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And then I get email requests for recommendations based on people’s vacations.  I’m going to this place; do you know of any romances set there?  It’s almost like a, like fiction research.

RHG:  Yeah.  Yeah, and, like, that definitely, I am planning a trip that does involve Cornwall because of the Poldark books.

Sarah:  In that case it’s the book plans the trip.

RHG:  Book –

Sarah:  The book came first.

RHG:  Yeah, it – yeah.  I don’t know.  I, I feel like I’m not a useful person to answer your question.

Sarah:  That’s okay!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I’m just, I’m fascinated because I think that there are people who are, who choose their next book based on external things that are influencing what they want to learn about or read about, and then there’re people who don’t have any connection to the outside world when they’re reading and want to read things based on, like, separating from the outside world.  Like, when you were talking, Amanda, about how when you’re having a very depressive episode you read biographies and, and autobiographies almost like for, in a lot of ways depression is a, is a break of reality because it’s, it’s painful and it’s present, but it’s not actual reality, it’s a fucked-up reality, and it’s a way to reconnect to a different reality.

Amanda:  Yeah, it’s very, like, isolating.

Sarah:  Yes.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Amanda:  But one thing I think is interesting about the Olympics and I hope will have a positive effect on romances is, like, the Olympics is a huge thing and lots of people get into it, and it also highlights sports that we don’t really watch competitively?

RHG:  Yeah.

Amanda:  So –

Sarah:  I would, I would watch the shit out of primetime archery.  I watched some of that today.  I would watch primetime archery –

Amanda:  What I would like to see is some, like –

Sarah:  – all the time.

Amanda:  – unconventional sports romances apart from your typical, like, hockey, baseball, football.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Amanda:  ‘Cause basketball doesn’t get any love as a national sport.

RHG:  Yeah.

Amanda:  It’s such a shame!  I love watching basketball.  If anyone has any good basketball romance recs, send them my way.  But –

Sarah:  And I have several.  I will send them.

RHG:  Hmm.  Definitely seen a lot of authors talking about plot bunnies that the Olympics are inspiring in them, so, I mean, maybe we’ll see some.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Like the guy who walks around –

Elyse:  I think there’s –

Sarah:  – with six thousand condoms because the Olympic Village is basically a giant sex-athon?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, that could be an amazing –

Elyse:  If I –

Sarah:  – erotic romance series.  Just one particular hotel during the Olympics, there’s a lot of action going on.

Elyse:  Man, if I had the –

RHG:  Where the swimmers live.

Elyse:  – ass of an Olympic gymnast, I’d be having sex with everybody too.  I’d feel like it was –

Amanda:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – my patriotic duty to –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  – that ass around.

Sarah:  Have you ever seen the article that was – God, I want to say it was two summer Olympics ago.  This one athlete, his events were over, but no one was moving into the, to the place where he had been staying, and so he stayed there, and word got around that there was this empty home, and he basically had a giant duffel bag full of condoms, and people came into the house to hook up?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, the entire, the entire team from another country just walked in and were like, let’s bang!  It was, it was the giant Olympic sex house.

Amanda:  I hope some pressure washed that house inside and out when it was done.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I don’t know, you’ve got a whole bunch of young people who are in the best shape of their lives congregating in a giant euphoria?  I mean, I think that makes for some seriously awesome erotic romance possibilities.  I’m surprised –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – it hasn’t been happening.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Not only that, but think about, like, the pommel horse possibilities, right?  Like, you could bring in all the, the equipment –

[Laughter and exclamations]

Sarah:  Lord of the rings!

[More laughter]

Elyse:  You guys seriously have to watch the sex scene from The Bronze where –

RHG:  It’s on the list –

Elyse:  Just, just that.  Like, YouTube it.  It’s hilarious.  It’s these two gym-, Olympic gymnasts, and they’re having sex, and it is like this, I, they must have gotten, like, a fucking Cirque du Soleil body double.  They’re, like, in all these crazy positions, and then they’ll, like, land and do the Y, you know, thing –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – that the gymnasts do when they stick a landing.  I mean, it’s insane.  It’s hilarious.

Amanda:  I’m just picturing a scene in, where, like, there’s a, a meet the next day and they can’t find the pommel horse.  Like, it’s just gone missing.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  And the, and then…

RHG:  And, like, half the teams’ll go thank fucking God.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I would love to see romances of some of the lesser televised sports, like archery, judo?  Fencing.  Fencing romance would be completely awesome.  I’m surprised it doesn’t create more of a, I guess the word would be long tail?  Like, here is this unique thing that happened, and here are the books that come out of it?

Amanda:  Yeah!  I mean that’d be interesting to, to see.  Unfortunate, I wonder, like, if sales of sports romances have gone up since the Olympics have started, even though a lot of sports in sports romances aren’t played in the Olympics.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  Right, and then, you know, when the Olympics are over everyone will have fatigue, and it’ll be on to fall and NFL and –

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – the end of the baseball season and –

RHG:  And pumpkin spice love.

Elyse:  Bleh.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Pumpkin spice romance.

Elyse:  I hate pumpkin spice.

Sarah:  Pumpkin spice romance.

Elyse:  Disgusting.

Sarah:  You know, you –

Amanda:  I guarantee, there’s got to be, like, a title with pumpkin spice in it.  Like –

Sarah:  There has to be!  And if there’s not, how has no one stumbled upon this massive money maker?  Pumpkin spice romance.  Pumpkin spice love.

Amanda:  I’ve read books that have characters who are Olympians or Olympic hopefuls.  Like, I’ve read probably three or four romances that have characters – and most of the time they’re females, actually, who were former Olympic athletes or who were, like, Olympic hopefuls, so that was neat, but –

RHG:  Hmm.

Sarah:  Plus, the, the, the sad truth is that, I think, that if you are an Olympic athlete and you are actually competing in the Olympics, you don’t have a whole lot of time for much else, hence the explosion of sexing that happens in the Olympic Village.  [Laughs] Like, I’m done!  Let’s bang!

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Or energy, I would think.

RHG:  Like,people, their, their game’s already over.  Their events were last weekend, the first weekend, and they’re like, no, I’m just going to hang around until, you know, closing ceremonies because I don’t know if I’m going to get this chance again.  And look at all of these hot people, a whole bunch of whom I will never see again.  I should fuck some of them.

Sarah:  Some?!

Elyse:  There’s got to be a secret baby –

Amanda:  All, all of them.

Elyse:  – Olympics romance.

Sarah:  See, Amanda, you need to get into sports and become an Olympic athlete.

Amanda:  I am the least athletically inclined person I have ever met in my entire life.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Wait, you mean there’s not an Olympic category for, like, smartassery?  ‘Cause I would totally key on that.

Amanda:  No, I wish.  My brother got all the good athletic genes.

RHG:  No.  Sport, sport climbing is going to be in the, the Tokyo games in four –

Sarah:  Sport climbing?  Like climbing a wall?

RHG:  Climbing.  Yeah.

Sarah:  Or an actual rock face of a mountain?

RHG:  I’m not sure.  I didn’t actually –

Amanda:  I have the upper body strength of a goldfish –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  – so that is not going to happen.

Sarah:  I only like sports that are me being by myself because I’m an introvert, so I like, I like paddleboarding, and I like snow-, snowboarding, and I cannot do Olympic snowboarding.  I would break most of me if I tried a half-pipe.

Amanda:  Maybe there could be, like –

Sarah:  If you want somebody to mosey down in, like, the forty- to fifty-year-old age bracket, you want somebody to mosey down while listening to excellent music, I would totally gold in that.

Amanda:  I would love to do, like, a –

RHG:  What about racewalking?

Sarah:  Racewalking?  No.

Amanda:  Racewalking!  [Laughs]

RHG:  Racewalking is a thing!

Elyse:  That just looks painful.  It looks like shin splints the whole time.

Amanda:  No.  No.

Sarah:  I have big boobs.  I would knock out my own eye.  All that racewalking, [pummeling sound effects], and then after that I’m laid out on the ground –

RHG:  That’s –

Sarah:  – knocked out by my own tit.

RHG:  Sarah, Sarah –

Sarah:  Yeah?

RHG:  – Sarah.

Sarah:  What?

RHG:  That’s why you wear, like, three sports bras.

Sarah:  I do that and it still happens.

Amanda:  You’ve got to triple-bag it.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I run; I wear two.  It’s still like someone’s doing CPR on me while I’m upright, except for the good sports bra.

RHG:  Well, you’re not wearing the right sports bras.

Sarah:  I got a good one, but I still won’t, I still wouldn’t racewalk.  Not on TV.

RHG:  What, like you’re going to be on TV.

Sarah:  If you’re talking about me getting into the Olympics –

Elyse:  If she’s in the Olympics she would.

Sarah:  – I will make sure that I’m on TV for some offensive reason or another.  Like, come on, if you get into the Olympics, I feel like you have to be, like, all right, NBC’s only going to cover me if I’m a rampant assbag or if I do something completely ridiculous.  I mean, you can come up with something completely – hey!  Plot bunny:  athlete of very little televised sport becomes a complete assbag to get on television.  Duh-duh-duhhh!  Or it could be an, it could be a, a, like, an athlete who is a girl, ‘cause then they really wouldn’t know how to talk about her.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  No, especially if she swims faster than the boys, ‘cause that hurts their little baby man feelings.

RHG:  Their, their little feelings, yeah.

Amanda:  You would probably be on TV, Sarah, ‘cause they’d be talking about how brave you are for racewalking with such a, a large –

RHG:  Such a large rack.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Nonononono, it’s ‘cause I’m old.  It’s ‘cause I’m old – if I, I’m, I’m over forty.  If I was in the Olympics, I would be, oh, my God!  Look at her advanced age!  Extraordinary!

Elyse:  No, then they’ve, they’ve got to cut away and do the package about how you took two years off to have a kid because that’s the most significant event in your life, not the fact that you’re a fucking Olympic athlete who’s medaled multiple times.  It’s the fact that you had a baby, like most other human beings at some point in their life.

Amanda:  How does she do it, you guys?

RHG:  Hmm.

Amanda:  How do you do it?  I hope there’s one, like, female Olympian who is banging everyone and is, like, keeping track.  Like, her goal is to have sex with everyone from each competing country –

[Laughter]

Amanda:  – and she just checks them off.  And then, depending on how well the sex is, she’ll put, like, a little score on her sheet.

Elyse:  But who – and then, then there’s, like, a podium, there’s a medal ceremony –

Amanda:  Yeah!

Elyse:  – but none of the dudes know about it.  It’s a surprise!

Amanda:  [Laughs] She, like, invites them all in secret.

Elyse:  Right.

Amanda:  She’s like, I’m sure you’re wondering why I invited you here today.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I need you all to strip.

Elyse:  We’re having a ceremony.

Sarah:  We’re going to, we’re going to hang the medals, but you have to be prepared.  [Laughs]

Amanda:  You have to be aroused so I can hang the medals.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  There, see, the book practically wrote itself.

Sarah:  No kidding!

RHG:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Someone do the work.  I don’t want to do that. Or it could be, like, a duo team.  It could be like a, like a, the synchronized divers?  One is Steele, the other is Johnson.

[Laughter]

Elyse:   So it would be, like, a, a, a ménage Olympic book.

Amanda:  Yep!  Just throw a fourth person in there.  Why not?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Pole vaulting.  It has a whole new meaning now!  [Laughs]

Amanda:  Can she stick the dismount?  That’s what I want to know.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Got to stick the landing.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Man, the dismount’s always the worst.  There’s, there’s just, there’s no –

Amanda:  There’s no dignified way to dismount.

Elyse:  No.

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  But you have to with, great, withdraw with the same speed and grace with which you remove yourself from the body of a woman you just made love to.  It’s, like, the basics of pole vaulting and, and uneven bars and –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – and, and horse-, and horseback riding –

Elyse:  Sarah!

Sarah:  – and judo and wrestling and that thing you do with the, with the wind sail in the water over the dead bodies?  Yeah, like all of that!

Elyse:  Because I, I always take it to the gross level:  I just realized that racewalking looks exactly like the awkward fast duck walk you do to the bathroom after sex when you have to pee and you don’t want things falling out of you.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Trust Elyse.

Amanda:  No, like, there –

RHG:  To bring it back to the bodily fluids part.

Elyse:  Yeah!  You all know what I’m talking about!

Amanda:  That’s exactly, like, every – I just did that last night.  Like –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Amanda:  You get a towel.  You just make sure the towel is tucked just in case.

Sarah:  What are you, Bamm-Bamm from The Flintstones?

[Laughter]

Amanda:  I peek my head out of my room to make sure no one’s door is open and the hallway is free, and then I scamper to the bathroom.

Sarah:  [Laughs] If there’s an Olympic sport involving scampering after sex, we’ve got this in the bag.

Amanda:  Yep, yep.  You’ve got to pee every time.  Just, you don’t want a UTI.

Sarah:  No.  You have to do PCU.

Elyse:  No.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  PCU, post-coital urination is crucial.  El-, Elyse and I had a whole conversation about this, how you never see anybody do it in the, in historicals.  Like, ‘scuse me, I’ve got to use the chamber pot, ‘cause otherwise a UTI will kill you!

Elyse:  Right.  And they, they did not have antibiotics.  You’re fucked, right?  If you get a UTI.

Sarah:  Oh, no, your kidneys are both going down.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Did you know that Cindy Crawford sent me into a kidney infection?

[silence]

Amanda:  What?

Elyse:  Okay?

Sarah:  [Laughs] I had a UTI –

RHG:  Uh-huh?

Sarah:  – and I was so embarrassed to tell anybody, ‘cause I was young and dumb, and you know how there’s a certain amount of pain that you just sort of, like, oh, okay, whatever, it hurts.  Like, things hurt at different times, so you don’t worry about, worry about it too much?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So I had a UTI, and I didn’t say anything, ‘cause I was embarrassed, and then I got together with a bunch of friends to watch the Cindy Crawford movie, and that was the moment, like, the minute she walked on screen, that was the moment when I was instantly, with no warning, doubled over in pain.  I went to the, went to the health center the next morning, and, and they, and, and I was crying ‘cause I was in horrible pain.  I couldn’t, I couldn’t lie down, ‘cause it hurts.  Like, your, your back actually hurts –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – ‘cause your kidney’s really pissed off, and all I could do was talk about peeing and Cindy Crawford ‘cause I was half out of my mind with fever and pain.  It’s all Cindy Crawford’s fault.  I got biiiig pills.

Amanda:  Does your, does your body still have, like, PTSD whenever you see Cindy Crawford?

Sarah:  Only just that movie, which I try not to watch.

Amanda:  What movie is it?

RHG:  Which movie was it?

Sarah:  She was only –

RHG:  Was it the one she did with the Baldwin?

Sarah:  She was, it was in, like, some, like, adventure movie.

RHG:  The one she did with the Baldwin?

Sarah:  Was there a Baldwin?  I don’t remember the Baldwin.  I just remember –

RHG:  There was a Baldwin.  It wasn’t Alec.  It was –

Sarah:  – Fair Game.  It was Fair Game.  It gets two stars on IMDB.  There was a Baldwin.  Yes, this was –

RHG:  I was working in a movie theater when that movie came out.  That’s how –

Elyse:  Oh, it’s a lesser Baldwin.

RHG:  – I remember the posters.  It’s –

Sarah:  Were your, were your kidneys okay?

RHG:  My kidneys are fine.  She’s wearing a white tank top in the poster, right?

Sarah:  Yes, she is!

RHG:  Ha-ha!  Never getting that neuron back ever!  It’s, it’s locked –

Sarah:  No, nonono!  It’s, it’s locked up on Cindy Crawford’s tank top.

RHG:  Tank top.  And, and a Baldwin.  It was a lesser Baldwin.

Elyse:  Yeah, it wasn’t – well, they’re all, they’re all lesser Baldwins.

Amanda:  It’s all pretty shitty.

Sarah:  It only grossed $11.5 million with a budget of fifty million dollars.

Amanda:  That’s unfortunate.

RHG:  And she never made another movie again.

Sarah:  I think she’s okay.

RHG:  She’s fine.

Sarah:  It was nominated for three Razzie awards:  Worst Actress, Worst New Star, and Worst Screen Couple, but it lost all three of those categories to Showgirls.

Amanda:  Aww!

Sarah:  Oh, Showgirls.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  That’s a whole other level of bad.

RHG:  That movie came into our movie theater.  Those of us who were under eighteen had to get permission from our parents to work in the theater while the movie was still showing.

Sarah:  Oh, my God, really?

RHG:  Really.

Sarah:  And it wasn’t that, like – okay.

RHG:  It was NC-17.  It was NC-17; we were also given gloves when we had to go clean up the theater.

Sarah:  Oh no!  No, no, no!  That’s foul!

Elyse:  Ohhh!

Sarah:  That’s foul with three syllables.

RHG:  Yeah.  Fortunately, it was only in the theater for, like, two weeks.

Sarah:  Thank God!  Ew!

RHG:  [Laughs] This has been Early Job Stories with RedHeadedGirl.

Amanda:  Lots of fluids in this episode.

RHG:  It’s a – Elyse is here!

Elyse:  Bizarre.

Sarah:  Yeah, that’s how it is.

Elyse:  I’m sorry!

RHG:  No, you’re not!

Elyse:  I’m very open about these things.

RHG:  We know.

Sarah:  All right.  So, what are you guys reading?  Tell me all the books.

Amanda:  Ugh.

RHG:  I just finished Enter Title Here, which is a YA – it’s super meta – about a –

Sarah:  I never would have guessed from the title!

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I can just see the committee that came up with that name.

RHG:  Be a little bit less judgmental, maybe.

Sarah:  No?

RHG:  But it’s about an Indian-American girl who is –

Sarah:  Hang on, I’m looking, hang on, I’m looking for your room to talk.  I think it’s next door.  Hang on.  It’s, yeah, it’s down the hall.  Okay, go ahead!

[Laughter]

Elyse:  What?  What just happened?

Sarah:  [Laughs] I was looking for room to talk; I think it’s down the hall.  I’m – [still laughing] – I’m hilarious.

Amanda:  Was that a dad joke?

Sarah:  Yes!

Elyse:  That is so a dad joke.

Amanda:  Sarah told a dad joke?

Sarah:  Never mind!  I am so amused.  Okay, go ahead.  I’ll get a tissue.  [Sniffs] Go ahead!  [Laughs]

Amanda or Elyse:  Oh, my God.

RHG:  [Laughs] Are you okay?  All right.  I’m going to start the description over.

Amanda:  For the listeners, Sarah is not okay.  She is bright red –

RHG:  [Laughs] I know!

Amanda:  – she has a tissue up to her face; we are all very concerned.

Elyse:  And meanwhile the, the other three of us are staring at her like, what the fuck just happened?  Really, we’re all very confused.

Amanda: It was something.

RHG:  No idea what just happened.

Sarah:  Okay.  Go ahead!

RHG:  Anyway.  It’s about an Indian-American girl who is desperate to get into Stanford, and all sorts of crazy shit happens.  She decides that what she needs to get her application to have the final hook is she needs a literary agent.  She starts writing this novel, and so the book is sort of like, here is the ugly version of the novel, and then I’m going to pretty it up before I send it, but she never does, and it kind of dances over the line of meta and twee and, like, meta and brilliant?  And I’m still kind of working out how I feel about it, but I couldn’t fucking put it down, so.

Sarah:  How come?

RHG:  ‘Cause I just wanted to know exactly where this was going to go!  Was she actually going to kill somebody, like her therapist suggested?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like her therapist suggested she murder somebody for her college essay?  Wow.

RHG:  No, for her book.  Like –

Sarah:  Oh.

RHG:  – you should murder somebody in the book, and she’s like, so you want me – are you suggesting I murder somebody for real?  And he’s like, no, the book!  I thought we were talking about the book, and she’s like, sort of?  It’s very meta.  And twisty.

Sarah:  That sounds very meta.

RHG:  Yeah.  And I think I liked it.  I, I definitely appreciate the effort that went into it.  Now I’m going to jump into You Will Know Me, since it appeared on my doorstep and not Elyse’s.

Elyse:  No, it says mine’s, I don’t know, somewhere in transit, but it could really be anywhere. 

RHG:  Mm-hmm.  I thought you worked in transit.  Don’t you know what that means?

Elyse:  Yeah, well, I do know what it means, but I will have you know that those Amazon shipments are going LTL, and I predominantly manage full truckloads, so.

RHG:  Uh-huh, whatever.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Bite my ass.

Sarah:  LTL?  What is LTL?

Elyse:  Less than truckload?  It’s when you fill up a whole big fifty-three-foot dry van with a bunch of stuff that’s going to different locations, and then you take it to a central location, like a hub or a depot, and a bunch of dudes in forklifts offload it and put it in other trucks and split up the shipment, and then it gets shipped out to its final destination.

Sarah:  Ohhh!

Amanda:  So what Elyse is saying is she only handles full loads.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yes.  I’m a full-load kind of girl.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  My package has left the seller facility and is currently in Lexington, Kentucky, as of 2:02 a.m.

Amanda:  So is a, the package a full load or a less than full load.

Elyse:  It’s, I’m sure it’s less than truckload.  It’s going to go to some UPS facility and be sorted out.

Amanda:  That doesn’t sound very sexy.

Elyse:  It’s, it’s not.  Nothing about shipping is sexy.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Absolutely nothing.  Like, it is, it is negative sexy.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  If, if it –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Like, whatever –

Amanda:  Instead of a woman disrobing, the woman’s, like, putting on more parkas.

Sarah:  Good to know!  So, so what you’re saying is we’re not going to set a romance there.

Amanda:  No.

Elyse:  There would be – no!  It’s, it’s awful.  It’s all – it’s, it’s awful.

Sarah:  Okay!

Elyse:  I don’t know why – [laughs] – and I love it.

Sarah:  Okay.

Amanda:  I know!

Sarah:  So what are you reading?  Are you reading lots of dead people?  One dead person?  Five dead people?  How many dead people are in the things you’re reading right now, Elyse?

Elyse:  Well, I just finished a book that was really disappointing that I thought was going to be like a thriller and wasn’t.  I don’t know what I’m going to read next, honestly.  I’m kind of, I just finished a book last night, and now I’m trying to decide what I want to do.  I want to read The Protector by, I think it’s Jodi Malpas, because it’s got a cover that looks – it’s about a bodyguard, and it’s got a cover that’s clearly a callback to the movie The Bodyguard?  And that was basically every sleepover of my childhood was you watched either Dirty Dancing or The Bodyguard.  What else?  I have The Hating Game, which Sarah really liked that I have to read.  She’s nodding.

Sarah:  I liked it a lot. 

RHG:  Mostly, yeah, listeners, she’s nodding with a big smile.

Elyse:  She is.

RHG:  Excuse me.

Sarah:  I really did like The Hating Game.  It’s also very hard to put down, and it’s one of those books where it’s first person, present tense, but I stopped noticing it because it’s not – there are some experiences I’ve had with first person, present tense, where the writing is so, it’s almost like it’s trying really hard to, to, to be the thoughts of somebody who doesn’t really think like that?  Like, words that no one would ever use in the context of their own brain?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Do you know what I mean?  Like, it’s just –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – it’s, it’s, it’s too overwritten, and it’s too many words that people don’t actually use within the context of their own private thoughts.  So this was a very fast read, and it was very immediate, ‘cause I liked the first person, present tense, to the point where I stopped noticing it.  It’s very hard to put down, though, once you get started, because you want to know what’s happening, you want to know the subtext of everything, and it’s got, like I said in the review, it’s got that sort of Pride and Prejudice code?  Like, everything has a double meaning, and if, you get to the end and you’re like, oh, that’s what that meant, but then it also has a really massive dose of, I don’t want to like you, I don’t want to like you, and I can’t stop thinking about your hair, God damn it!  Oh, I scared the cat.  Sorry, cat!  [Laughs]

Elyse:  This is my fort of books over here.

Sarah:  Nice!

Amanda:  Wow. 

Elyse:  So I have a lot.  I’m looking at what’s over there that I’ve bought recently.  Things that have been recommended to me.  Dark Matter?  Have you guys heard about this?

Amanda:  Yeah.

Elyse:  It’s vaguely science fiction-y.  It’s about a guy who wakes up, and it’s like he’s made different, he’s, like, in an alternate reality where he’s made different choices in his life?

Sarah:  Ooh.

RHG:  Hmm!

Elyse:  And he’s trying to get back to where he was before, and he doesn’t know, like, is this is a dream, is this really an alternate reality?

Sarah:  I’ve had dreams like that; they were not enjoyable.

Elyse:  Yeah.

RHG:  ‘Cause they’re exhausting.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Right?

Elyse:  I have My Best Friend’s Exorcism?

Amanda:  By Grady Hendrix, yeah.

Elyse:  Yeah.  It’s like an ’80, it’s a memoir of growing up in the ‘80s and having a friend who’s possessed by a demon.

RHG:  Oh, sure.

Sarah:  As you do.

Amanda:  He wrote Horrorstör, so he does a lot of, like, cool, like, dark humor stuff.

Sarah:  Oh, that was the one that Carrie reviewed that was like the IKEA catalog from hell.

Amanda:  Yeah, haunted IKEA.

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Amanda:  I have two books that I’m reading and then two books on deck that I’m very excited about.

RHG:  No one does.

Amanda:  The paper book that I’m reading is Sustained by Emma Chase.  The hero is, like, an asshole defense attorney, and the heroine, her brother and sister died, leaving her, her, like, six nieces and nephews?

RHG:  Oh, Jesus.

Amanda:  And it’s hilarious.  Like, this weird modern fairy tale where, like, he doesn’t want to be a Prince Charming, but he can’t help himself?  And it’s told through his point of view, and he’s, like, Googling how to change diapers, and he’s, like, trying to help this woman out, and he’s, like, what have I gotten myself into.  So it’s really funny so far.  And then I’m reading a book called Lingus, L-I-N-G-U-S.

Elyse:  Oh, my!

Amanda:  Yeah.  Well, the author was highly recommended to me by our lovely Australian bloggers at RT.  But, and she writes a lot of sports romances, but why I chose not to go with one of her sports romances I have no idea.  But, like, it’s –

Sarah:  You went with the one called Lingus.  I think I can tell why.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Amanda:  Well, it’s set, it opens at, like, an adult film convention, and the hero is a porn star.

RHG:  Oh!  This is, you were telling us about this one.

Amanda:  Yeah!  And I was interested, and I thought it was going to be pretty sex positive, but the heroine does, like, a lot of slut shaming –

Sarah:  Ugh.

Amanda:  – and it, it’s a real big bummer.  Like, you know, they’re friends, and they hang out on the couch, and she’s like, I wonder how many, like, women he’s had on this couch.  Like, who the fuck cares?  You’re in your, both in your late twenties.  Like, just chill out.  Like, I, she just comes across as very insecure, and it’s bothering me.  But I, I’ll probably try her again.

And then I heard about this book called Wilder by an author I’d never read before.  Her name is Rebecca Yarros, and the hero is an X Games medalist, so he’s competed in the X Games – yep, Sarah’s eyebrow went up.

Sarah:  Which X?  Winter X or Summer X?

Amanda:  I’m looking; let’s see.  It just said five-time X Games medalist.  I’m trying to figure out what sport he’s doing.  The heroine is, like, his chemistry, like, tutor, but he, he’s twenty-two, so I don’t know if he’s, like, tutoring him for college or what, so –

Elyse:  He’s just really into chemistry.

Amanda:  Maybe he really likes chemicals and mixing things in a lab.  So I’m excited about it.  It seems really interesting.

Sarah:  I’m reading, re-reading Nice Dragons Finish Last, which is an awesome –

Amanda:  Are you going to read the next book coming out?

Sarah:  I have them, I have all three.  If I can sustain my, my, my interest – usually I get burnt out in a world or on a series, but the pace of this is so quickly moving along through the plot and then through the characters, and I’ve already read the first one, so I kind of know the style already – I’m hoping I can get through all three, which is rare for me.  But Julius, the hero, is such a, a beta hero.  He’s imprisoned in his human form by his mother, who’s the head of an enormous clan of dragons because he’s too nice and he doesn’t do anything mean, and so he’s not dragon enough, and so he gets locked in his human form, and he has less than a month to prove that he can kill and, and murder and, and scheme and connive and be a good dragon, or she’ll, she’ll eat him.  And so he’s trying to not get eaten, but he can’t do anything, ‘cause he’s locked in his human form.  What’s cool is –

Elyse:  I can’t –

Sarah:  – the worldbuilding.  You, you will think this is pretty cool, Elyse.  So, it’s set in a period of time after 2024 when an asteroid hit Canada and woke up all the magic on earth, and one of the things that happened was that the goddess Algonquin rose from the Great Lakes, got super fucking pissed off at how the humans had fucked up everything around the lakes, and basically drowned every city on the coast and wiped ‘em all out in one big wave, and since the U.S. government was trying to figure out what to do with all this magic, Algonquin was like Detroit is mine, and you can’t have it, and so the government was like, okay, fine, you can have Detroit.  Go ahead; it’s great.  Go ahead, take, keep it.  It’s fine.  She has built a city on type of the remains of Detroit, so there is a rich magic-filled world, and then beneath a literal concrete slab are the remains of old Detroit and people who are living underneath it trying to survive.

Elyse:  Well, I’d be fucked, but I feel like demon woodchuck would somehow become, like, a –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  – an overlord in this new magical society.  Like, he would inherit Wisconsin.

Sarah:  Oh, no question.

Elyse: It is his domain.

Amanda:  He would rule the underground people.

Elyse:  He would, and he’d have, like, all these other foxy woodchucks as, like, his harem of woodchuck-ness.  I don’t know.

Amanda:  But only the red Kia could be his consort.

[Laughs]

RHG:  Oh yes.

Sarah:  It’s, that’s where he bangs.  That’s like the Olympic Village of banging for rabid woodchucks.

Elyse:  Oh, God.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  Isn’t it great that we don’t, we don’t write books by committee?

RHG:  Yes.

Elyse:  I –

RHG:  Or it’s possibly – there is some parallel universe in which these books have come into existence?

Sarah:  Yes, and they’re bestsellers.

RHG:  They’re definitely bestsellers.

Sarah:  They’re, they’re, like, Tinglers times a thousand.

RHG:  I have also been listening to – usually while at work with headphones – My Dad Wrote a Porno –

Sarah:  Oh, I love them.

RHG:  – and the, the occasional just sort of trail off of pain in Jamie’s voice when he’s like, oh, but my dad wrote this.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  And you know, what’s funny is, you know, part of the time I’m listening to the first season, and I’m like, okay, I’ve read so much worse than this that was legit published and worked on by multiple human beings.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  You know?  Like, on one hand, this is horrifying; on the other hand, oh, I’ve totally read worse.  No question.

RHG:  Yeah.  Definitely, yes.

Sarah:  I mean, in the, in the, in the great heyday of paranormal erotic romance, Belinda did not have much to blink at in comparison.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Bless her heart.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  I hope you enjoyed our rather meandering conversation about books and a lot of other things.  If you have feedback or ideas or you want to say something about this episode, please email us at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, or you can call our Google Voice number at 1-201-371-3272.

This podcast was brought to you by M. O’Keefe’s Burn Down the Night.  Perfect for fans of Everything I Left Unsaid, this dark, emotional, and dangerously sexy world follows a con woman and a bad-boy biker as their battle for control turns explosive.  You can find this wherever books are sold.

Our podcast transcript this week is brought to you by Happily Ever Afterlives, a two-in-one reissue of sexy Regency paranormal novellas by author Olivia Waite.  In Damned If You Do, Lord Lambourne’s sexual prowess has unfortunately condemned him to hell for lust, but sharp and sultry Idared, the demoness assigned to punish him, is proving to be his greatest temptation yet.  Unfortunately, Lambourne’s mortal fiancée and her awful violin are on their way to rescue him.  You can find this and the companion novella, Hell and Hellion, wherever eBooks are sold.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her @SassyOutwater.  This is “Celtic Frock” by a UK duo called Deviations Project.  You can find their album Ivory Bow at Amazon or iTunes or wherever you like to buy your fine music.

Thank you again for listening, for being part of the podcast entry, for subscribing and downloading and emailing me and tweeting at me about how much you enjoy each episode.  I really appreciate that.

And on behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[energetic music]