225. Romance Legacies: An Interview with Two of Edith Layton’s Children, Susie and Adam Felber

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 225 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  With me today are Susie and Adam Felber.  They are the children, two of them, of romance author Edith Layton, who passed away in 2009.  We are going to talk about her path to publication, what it was like seeing their mom meet romance readers at conventions, and which villains and rock stars were the basis for some of her very famous Layton heroes.  We also talk about whether gallstones looks like opals, and we talk about their work to bring their mother’s books into the digital age.  Now, you might recognize some of the voices.  Adam Felber is a regular on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, and so he wouldn’t feel too far away from his other radio home, Susie and I surprise him with a Not My Job style quiz at the end, so I hope you enjoy that.

The podcast this month is being sponsored by Elizabeth Hoyt, the New York Times bestselling author of the Maiden Lane series.  Duke of Pleasure, Hoyt’s latest Maiden Lane adventure, features Alf, who’s the new Ghost of St. Giles and a female swashbuckling vigilante.  It also features Hugh Fitzroy, the Duke of Kyle, a stern ex-soldier tasked with bringing down an evil group of aristocrats with Alf’s help.  This is a romance that has everything:  sword fighting, sexytimes, pants feeling, danger, passion, intrigue, and a heroine that totally kicks ass.  If you are new to the series, you can trust Smart Bitches reviewer Elyse, who says, “You don’t have to read the Maiden Lane books in order, but they are so much fun, you might as well.  Your credit card might hate me, but you won’t.”  You can start binge reading today.

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[music]

Adam Felber:  Hi, I’m Adam Felber, second child of Edith Layton, noted author!

Susie Felber:  [Laughs] And I’m Susie Felber, third child of Edith Layton, noted author!  And there’s another child, first child –

Adam:  Who you don’t want to talk to.

Susie:  No.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All right, fine, I suppose.  I mean, if you ever feel like letting that particular child out of the basement, that’s fine, but, you know, not required.

Adam:  Oh, he dreams of a basement.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So tell me, please, what, what was it like growing up with a famous romance author as a mom?

Adam:  Well, we didn’t.  We, when we were growing up she wasn’t a famous romance author.  In fact, she didn’t sell – her first book, The Duke’s Wager, a Signet Regency, came out when I was in tenth grade and Susie was in sixth grade.

Susie:  Yeah.  So mo-, most of growing up, Mom was writing for newspapers, ever bigger ones, from the local Jericho Tribune on Long Island to, worked her way up to Newsday, then worked her way to some pieces in the New York Times, and she, you know, wrote books but didn’t get one published until –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – the last child was ten years old, and I, the entire family went to the mall and got T-shirts with felt letters –

Adam:  Reading THE DUKE’S WAGER.

Susie:  – reading THE DUKE’S WAGER, and we wore them proudly.

Sarah:  Okay, that’s awesome.

Adam:  She wrote three novels when I was about, between the, when I was between eight and ten years old.  She wrote a, a, a romance, a mystery, and a science fiction – she was always very into genre literature – and she told us that whichever one sold first, that’s what she was going to do, and six short years later –

[Laughter]

Susie:  Yeah.  Wasn’t an overnight success, and I know that story, if anyone knows her story, has been told many times about how she had so many rejections she could have papered a bathroom with them, and first it was amusing, then it was downright depressing, and then our dad, who is also not, no longer with us, he was a doctor, a hematologist, and he didn’t want her to quit, but she quit, and so he started sending out her novels under the dog’s name.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  Our dog was a German Shepherd, so his name was Gustav von Eisenherz –

Sarah:  Oh, my God!  [Laughs]

Adam:  – and he sent out, he sent out many, many books, often back to the publishers who’d already rejected them, but rejected them with some interest, so she just, he just kept sending ‘em out.

Susie:  Yeah, and so our dog got a lot of rejection slips, but also some really, you know, our dog got some really nice, encouraging letters as well.

Adam:  I actually think he was the brains behind the entire operation.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Wow, okay.  [Laughs] I had to mute my microphone; I was laughing too hard.  Sorry about that!

Susie:  Oh, no, we were just worried about you, ‘cause – no, and so –

Adam:  We, we, we’ve put podcasters to sleep before 

Sarah:  No, no, someone’s going to be walking their dog listening to this and walk straight into a tree ‘cause they’re laughing too hard.

Susie:  Aww!  Yeah, and her first book was, it was a different dog, but her first book was dedicated to her dog.

Sarah:  Aw!

Adam:  Yeah, that sounds really nice unless you’re one of her kids.

Susie:  No, but, but it was –

Adam:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – it was, it was – she wanted to dedicate it to our dad, she wanted to dedicate to her husband, and –

Adam:  But he refused.

Susie:  – he refused.  He thought that was too sappy –

Adam:  Maudlin.

Susie:  – and he said, well, you dedicate it –

Adam:  He wasn’t into romance!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Oh, darn!  That’s, that’s, that’s unfortunate.

Susie:  Yeah, for him, romance was when they went on a date, he shared a gallstone he had removed from somebody.

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  He said, I have something to show you, and he –

Adam:  She thought she was being given an opal.  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah, she thought she was going to get a diamond ring, and out of his pocket came a gallstone, and she actually was pretty charmed by it.  Like –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – this, this guy is getting really excited about –

Adam:  A gallstone!

Susie:  – a gallstone in his pocket.

Adam:  Apparently, they do look like opals, though.

Susie:  Really?

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  What?

Adam:  Mom, Mom told me that she thought he was handing her, like, three opals in a handkerchief.

[Laughs]

Susie:  Wow.

Sarah:  That’s serious romance.  Gallstones?  I mean –

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – wow!

Susie:  Yeah, sounds really romantic.  But anyway, she, she took it as just, she had little hearts in her eyes for the fact that he was passionate about this and –

Adam:  About, yeah, about something.

Susie:  – and weird!

Sarah:  And gallstones.

Susie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Maybe they were heart-shaped!

Adam and Susie:  Ah –

Adam:  – I do not think so.

Susie:  Mm, I don’t think so.

[Laughter]

Adam:  I think they were blob-shaped.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So, what are your favorite memories of your mother as a, as a writer, as she became more and more successful, because there are so many romance readers who adore her books and keep them and move them and have them on their shelves forever and will not part with them or lend them to anyone.

Adam:  I just loved going to the conventions when, when, whenever I was in the same town as the conventions, because having known her as somebody who sat at the kitchen table long after we were all supposed to be asleep, chain smoking cigarettes and scribbling, you know, her books onto a yellow legal pad –

Sarah:  Right.

Adam:  – just the idea having, you know, ten years later, having quit smoking and graduated up to a word processor –

Sarah:  Whoa, big time!

Adam:  – just to, to go to those conventions and see her signing books and stuff and surrounded by friends and colleagues, it was just –

Susie:  Yeah.

[Ding!]

Adam:  – completely inspirational.

Susie:  And, and actually meeting, meeting fans was exciting because, yeah, it was a pursuit she did at the kitchen table.  [Ding!]  She finally got an office in the house – sorry about that dinging!  For me, it was also the conventions, and there was no Internet, and the fan letters, you know, if she got fan letters, they would come months later from the publisher.  Usually, they’d been opened, they looked like, you know, they’d been sat on, and, and, and going to the conventions and meeting actual humans who had read her books was a really, really big deal.

Adam:  Yes, it’s a big thrill because, you know, her kind of, her kind of success story is kind of – if we can backtrack a little bit, she was a writer all her life.  She wrote her first book in a little notebook when she was, you know, a school kid, and she took a career detour after winning a playwriting competition in Hunter College.  Soon after that, she got married and took a six-year career detour to have us, and then by, by dint of sheer determination, as I said, stayed up later than she should have or anybody should have to start, you know, plowing ahead with, with writing again from the position of also being a suburban mom.

Susie:  And also having no agent, and also only going through what, I don’t even know if it still exists, but going through the slush pile.

Adam:  Yeah, she came up through the slush pile.

Sarah:  Wow, I didn’t know that!

Adam:  Oh, yeah.

Susie:  Yes, and, but the person –

Adam:  Totally self-made, when you think about it.

Susie:  – the person who picked her out of the slush pile – I’m so bad, because I’m blanking on her name, but she, she –

Adam:  Hillary?

Susie:  – was – no, no, no, wasn’t, Hillary was her first editor, publisher, but the first person who picked her out of the slush pile became a big editor who later was her editor at another house – and now I’m blanking on the name, so apologies if that wonderful editor is listening – but, yeah, that’s a, that’s a super success story, but the conventions were so fun and so over the top.  I was at the Roosevelt Hotel, Kathryn Falk production –

Sarah:  Oh, so it was Romantic Times.

Susie:  The Romantic Times.

Adam:  Those were the first conventions that I attended, were the, were the Romantic Times ones.

Susie:  So over the top, like, win, Win a Date with a Duke!  And Kathryn had dragged out some guy with some minor royalty who was about ninety pounds soaking wet –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – looked a bit like an anorexic vampire –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – and she put him up on a stage and was like, enter to win a date with the duke!  You know, or something.

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Does she still get letters from readers?  Do you still get letters about her books?

Susie:  I do, I do.  I mean, I manage the estate, which sounds –

Adam:  Susie’s the executrix of the estate.

Susie:  Yes, I’m the executrix of the estate, and I am the one responsible for bringing the books back and, and doing all that, and I, I still –

Adam:  I merely collect the millions of dollars.

[Laughter]

Susie:  Yes, I know.  When you say estate, I, I should have two Afghan hounds here –

Adam:  Right.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – and a, a large Sunset Boulevard staircase.  My staircase is slightly smaller.

Adam:  Yeah, whereas from a, from a monetary perspective, it’s, it’s more of a steamer trunk.

Susie:  Yeah.  But I definitely do hear from fans and answer to fans, and yeah, I mean, it’s been wonderful bringing them back as eBooks.  That was always a goal, but, you know, I also opted to have kids, and I also have a, you know, demanding full-time job with French directors texting me, and –

Adam:  I just leave a, live a life of leisure off the profits.

[Laughter]

Adam:  I’m rolling hundred-dollar bills into cigarettes.

Susie:  Yeah, yeah.  That’s basically it.  But –

Adam:  Are you muting yourself again?

Sarah:  No, I’m just wondering how often you have to sort of wander onto a stage in Chicago, like, say a few words and then leave and go roll around in your money.

Adam:  That’s what I do!

Sarah:  Yep.

Adam:  I’m doing that Thursday, in fact.  We’re taping a Wait Wait…  I’ll, I’ll, I’ll hop right out of my money bath onto the stage.

Susie:  He’s the Scrooge McDuck of NPR.

[Laughter]

Susie:  No, he really is.  He’s leaving – so, his family went back to LA, and he’s here with me, and cooking!  Adam is here – by the way, Adam is an amazing cook now –

Sarah:  Aww!

Susie:  – which NPR people don’t know, and he’s here cooking meals for me before he goes off to Chicago to record Wait Wait…

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Nice!  So you guys have a really lovely relationship.

Adam:  Yeah!  Yeah, we, we, we always have.  Probably in opposition to our brother, we lean together!  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah, we’ve, we’ve always been super close, but that’s either because he brainwashed me –

Adam:  Probably.

Susie:  – into thinking that, you know, I should be playing video games and Dungeons and Dragons at all moments –

Adam:  Yes!

Sarah:  Of course you should!

Susie:  – or I was, or I was into that.  It’s kind of a Stockholm syndrome thing.

Adam:  Yeah, how would you, how would you know?  You were, you were three.

Susie:  I didn’t know.   He, he got me to the point where, like, I would be panning his shag rug for quarters for the arcade, like –

[Laughter]

Susie:  – I really – and you could, you could move the blue fibers apart and, and sometimes find change that you could use at the mall.  But, yeah, I’m, I’m sort of probably more a product of Adam than, than I know.  I think Adam and Miss Piggy are – that, then there’s my personality.

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  That was two, those are my influences.  Getting back to Mom, I mean, she’s kind of inspired Adam.  We know when he went ahead and wrote a book, even as big N, NPR celeb, it took a while to find a house for you, for your novel.

Adam:  Yeah!  Well, I, I got lucky, though, ‘cause I, when I finished my book I was already a blogger.

Susie:  Right.

Adam:  So –

Sarah:  That can help a little bit I, I, I’ve heard.

Adam:  Oh, it helped a lot, because I was –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Adam:  – I was – [laughs] – I was blogging and living in Brooklyn, and somebody –

Sarah:  Oh, that helps too!

Susie:  [Laughs]

Adam:  Well, a, a reader of my blog turned out to be a, a literary agent who lived down the street, so I printed up my book and walked it down the street to him when he sent me an email.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  He didn’t send me an email; I think he wrote in the comments section of my blog, Hi, Adam, I’m a literary agent who lives down the street.

[Laughter]

Adam:  So, so my, my –

Sarah:  Did you bring him some takeout too?  Like, here’s my book and have a snack?

Adam:  It was insane.  My course to literary greatness, which by the way numbers about thirty less books than my mom, it was, was a much smoother course.  Thanks, thanks to Brooklyn, Scott Mendel, and a blog.

Susie:  And you not being a –

Adam:  Big shout out to Scott Mendel!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  And you not being a housewife on Long Island.

Adam:  At that point, I wasn’t.

Susie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No.  Generally you have a little bit more free time when you’re not.  So, have you read many or any of your mom’s books?  I mean, it would be normal for you to have read them, and I think it would be normal for you to have not read them.

Adam:  I have read, I would say, many, but certainly not all of them.  I think Susie’s probably read more of them than I have.

Susie:  Well, honestly, I’ve read ninety percent of her work and of her as-yet-to-be-published work, but I, when Mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I actually made, I, I decided consciously not to read some of her books, and I still haven’t, so that after she was gone I could open it up and, like, when I needed it and, like, really experience her voice, so –

Sarah:  Aw!

Susie:  – the ones I haven’t read are really, like, you know, saving for a rainy day, and it is raining today, but I –

Adam:  Some of the newer ones.

Susie:  Some of the newer ones, but no, there was, there were, there’s one of the Signets that I’ve never read –

Adam:  Which one?

Susie:  – and I am saving it up.

Adam:  Aw.

Susie:  I never read Lady of Spirit.

Adam:  Lady of Spirit, wasn’t that, like, her fourth one?

Susie:  Lady of Spirit is five?  Four or five.

Adam:  I know exactly who she based the villainess on.

Susie:  No!  No, no, no, you’re thinking of False Angel.

Adam:  Ohhh, you’re right!  False Angel.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Okay, so who was the villain based on?

Susie:  We’re not going to reveal that!

Adam:  I’m not going to reveal any of that.

Susie:  Oh, my God, because it’s only, it’s, it’s someone close to us that no one else would care about, so, and we are not, we are not going there.  But –

Adam:  But here’s an interesting piece of trivia:

Sarah:  Oh! 

Adam:  She, she based many of her first heroes, most of her first heroes, many of the villains, throughout her career, on, on rock stars.

Susie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Really!

Adam:  Yeah, she was – ‘cause Susie and I were addicted to MTV, and after a while she would just ask us, like, who, who should I be looking at, honestly?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Who’s a complete jerk?  That’s what I want to know about.

Susie:  No, no –

Adam:  I don’t know, the, the –

Susie:  She was also a big fan, so, like, he was a huge Rod Stewart fan, early Rod Stewart –

Adam:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  – so there’s one Rod Stewart, and she was a huge David Bowie fan, so –

Adam:  David Bowie was one of her first heroes.

Susie:  – Lord of Dishonor, David Bowie, and –

Sarah:  No way!  Really?

Susie:  Yeah!

Adam:  Tom Petty makes an appearance in one of the early books as a, I believe, a, a villain.

Susie:  Yeah, but, yeah, Lord of Dishonor, he’s got two different color eyes and – and Adam Ant.  Adam Ant is the one dedicated to you, The Abandoned Bride?

Adam:  Red Jack’s Daughter.

Susie:  Oh, Red Jack’s Daughter.  Red Jack’s Daughter is Adam Ant.  And –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  This is amazing!

Susie:  And the heroines, weirdly, were almost never based on famous women.  They were usually, she’d be at a restaurant somewhere and think the waitress was really just gorgeous, and she’d freak out.  You’d be eating, and she’d be like, oh, my God!  Look at her!  Look at – and you’d look at her, and you’d be like, it’s the waitress.  You know, like – ?  I didn’t see any, like, stunning beauty, but Mom, when she was wanting to get pregnant with a book, you know, she would, like –

Adam:  Go to restaurants a lot.

Susie:  No!

[Laughter]

Susie:  Well, yeah, eat out and, and, just, whoever was walking by her could become – you know, The Fire-Flower, both the hero and heroine are based on, we’re waiting for a ferry, maybe to get to Isle of Wight or something, and there was a red-headed guy on a motorcycle with his dark-haired girlfriend on the back, and she basically had an orgasm and was like, that’s it!  That’s my book!  Those two people!  I was like, what are you talking about?

Adam:  That’s one of my favorite books, by the way.  The Fire-Flower is fantastic.

Susie:  She didn’t have the plot.  She didn’t have the time.  She was just like, those are the people I’m going to base the book on, ‘cause he turned around and he gave her a sweet little kiss while she was on the motorcycle waiting for the ferry, just, like, a kiss on the cheek, and it was so, like, meaningful to her that it was like, that’s our hero!  There we go.

Adam:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Wow.

Susie:  Yeah, so if you were walking by her or serving her fries, she was creating books, you might end up in a book –

Adam:  Yeah, I –

Susie:  – or if you were a hot English rock star.

Adam:  I sus-, I suspect that there, that it’s not a coincidence that, that many of the heroes were hot English rock stars and many of the heroines were people who were in a serving profession, because, like, that’s a lot, very often the, the social dynamic in her books or –

Susie:  Ooh!  Good point!  Ooh!

Adam:  – any romance book.

Sarah:  Yes, she does play a lot with class and status.

Adam:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  Yeah, ‘cause the guys, the guys never come from nuttin’, if you know what I’m saying.

Adam:  Yeah, yeah, I’m trying, I’m trying to think –

Susie:  They might have been cheated out of their inheritance, but there, there are no –

Adam:  Yeah, they were born, they were born to nobility.  [Laughs]

Susie:  There were no Edith Layton heroes who were –

Adam:  Born a –

Adam and Susie:  – chimney sweeps.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So, you said for, you said a minute ago that she, she was trying to get pregnant with a book?  Is that how she described it?

Susie:  No, no.

Adam:  No, that’s how Susie describes it.

Susie:  That’s just how I described it at this moment.

Adam:  It kind of, it, it kind of grossed me out a little bit.

Susie:  Yeah, sorry –

Sarah:  But you know, it, it makes sense!

Adam: Like a paper cut.

Sarah:  It totally makes sense from a writing point of view.  You, you want –

Adam:  It made me think of paper cuts.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Stop it.

Adam:  What?

Susie:  No, no, but don’t –

Adam:  What?

Susie:  – attribute that to her.  That was just me in the moment, like –

Sarah:  Oh, okay.

Susie:  Well, there, there’s that time when you’re, you’re, you’re nesting, and so I would say –

Sarah:  Yep.

Susie:  – creation of a book, you’re nesting –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – and she’s pulling a little bit from here and little bit from there, and dragging us on endless trips.  I mean, a big part of being a romance author’s kid – and again, pre-Internet – is, we took so many freaking trips to the UK.  And –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – I’m now –

Adam:  You took more than me, though.

Susie:  Oh –

Adam:  As somebody four years younger, you –

Susie:  Yeah, yeah.

Adam:  – you know, there, there were –

Susie:  But again, Stockholm syndrome, I was so sick of going to England and Scotland and Wales –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – that I –

Adam:  That, that she married an Englishman.

Susie:  – and then I end up marrying an Englishman, and I –

Adam:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – and he, and his family is scattered around all these places that are, you know, yeah –

Sarah:  Well, you’re stuck now.  [Laughs]

Susie:  We went to –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  But you did it too, Adam.  I mean –

Adam:  Oh, yeah, I, I – many trips.

Susie:  If history took place somewhere, the rental car went there, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – it was like, whether it was a field of sheep and we were walking across it, and she’d be in raptures about what happened in this field –

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  – filled with sheep poo.

Adam:  It got easier when we got old enough to drink in England.

Susie:  Yes!

Adam:  I remember, I remember one, one night out at –

Susie:  Then those trips were awesome!

Adam:  – in Wales – I was, I was studying in England, and, and then the whole family took a trip there.  Susie was just under a –

Susie:  I was not of age.

Adam:  – more, more or less acceptable drinking age, ‘cause I was, I must have been twenty-one, so Susie was seventeen, or, or twenty and sixteen, and we went out to –

Susie:  I had boobs; they let me drink.

Adam:  Right.  We went out to Cape David, right?  Out in the, the very end of Wales and got so drunk in that hotel’s pub.

Susie:  Yeah.  Yeah, there were a couple nights, and what of it, wasn’t it Penzance?  No.  Wasn’t there, in the south of England, when I hit the spot on the bar?

Adam:  That was Cape David.

Susie:  Oh, that was –

Adam:  Way, that’s what I was thinking of, yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah.

Adam:  That was the same trip that, that we saw some of those, my, like, my favorite castle of all time, Beaumaris.

Susie:  Yeah.  Well, castles was awesome.  She dragged us to every castle, even if there were only two rocks still standing of the castle, we went every – and any walled, Chester, any walled city.  Like –

Adam:  Yeah.  We spent a lot of time with some very confused sheep.

Susie:  But even though she didn’t write books about it, I mean, if there was a druid circle, we were there.

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  And it was really – they liked their circles.

Susie:  They weren’t very romantic, though.

Adam:  It’s not all Stonehenge.  It’s a lot of hay henge, corn henge.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Poo henge.

Susie:  Straw henge.

Adam:  Yeah.

[Laughter]

Susie:  Truly shit and, and GPS hasn’t been invented yet henge that you look for for a few hours.

Adam:  Yeah.  Back, back then I thought that, like, this, this, these were the henges they were making before they got the bright idea to do stone henge, but now I think it was probably in reverse.  They’re, you know, they were like, why are we bothering dragging these rocks?  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah, yeah.  Actually, one of Mom’s heroes was, we were lost – I don’t know if you were on this trip, Adam, but we were lost looking for a druid circle, and we had to ask anyone, we finally saw a human and we pulled over, and there was this complete, this guy with this crazy hair and wind-beaten face and –

Adam:  Oh, yeahhh.

Susie:  – we had to ask him for directions to get to the stone circle, and he didn’t know, and he had, a, a crazy accent, but she was like, oh, my God, he’s gorgeous.  And again, she thought he was gorgeous –

Adam:  Right.  That, that was England talking.  That was, that was the –

Susie:  It was England talking.  Like, she was so in love with England that, like, you know, somebody could spit on you, and she would be like, well, what a charming man!

[Laughter]

Susie:  They don’t spit like that at home!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Did you notice the arc before it hit me?

Adam:  It’s considered a sign of good luck!

Sarah:  So, which of her books are you working on bringing out digitally?  Like, I know The Fire-Flower, I don’t think that’s been re-released, has it?

Adam:  No, no, not yet.

Susie:  It hasn’t been, but it will be.  So, like, all the early Signets are out or in process of getting out.  The, the small, traditional Regencies.  The next three to come that I just signed on the dotted line with are actually – I mean, some people think we’d go to the Super Regencies next, but we’re doing three that I think are fantastic but are little known:  Bound by Love, A True Lady, and The Wedding.

Sarah:  Ooh!

Adam:  Ah, The Wedding.

Susie:  Three Harper, I think they’re Harper titles, and –

Adam:  Wasn’t The Wedding part of a larger run of books?

Susie:  No.  I think The Wedding’s standalone.  But those are the three:  Bound – do you know those, Sarah?

Sarah:  I do know A True Lady.  I do not know Bound by Love.  I do know A True Lady and The Wedding.

Susie:  Yeah, so A True Lady was her sassy pirate heroine, and –

Adam:  Oh, that was a good one.

Susie:  – and Bound by Love and The Wedding, and I, I’m really a fan of The Wedding, even though there’s one character in it who’s a little over the top, but those are the next three, and then I think I’m going to move to the Super Regencies, which are super great and people love, and they’ve been missing in action forever:  Love in Disguise –

Adam:  Love in Disguise was the first of them.

Susie:  The, the first.

Adam:  That was a big moment for my mom, like, going from the two-hundred, you know, two-hundred-plus-page paperback Signet Regencies to the Super Regencies!  Bigger, better, splashier, you know, more room to explore stuff, and the, and the first one was, was that one.

Susie:  Yeah, and –

Sarah:  It’s, it’s sad that you can’t do the original covers, because some of those covers are just completely bonkers.

Adam:  They really are.

Susie:  Yeah and well, those are those Pinos, so the –

Sarah:  Yep.

Susie:  – the Love in Disguise were the Pinos.  I mean, again, the question of, you know, you appreciate the covers, I appreciate the covers.  In, in some ways I could probably do the original The Duke’s Wager cover, because the, the painting, I have the painting; it was given to her by Allan Kass.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s so cool!

Susie:  Yeah.

Adam:  Oh, yeah, we’re looking at a painting of, of The Fire-Flower right now.

Susie:  We’re looking – so the  –

Sarah:  Oh, that cover is crazysauce!

Adam:  Love that one!

Susie:  But that one, of all of her books, is the only one that was done by a truly famous artist, Bob Maguire, and Adam is supposed to take that back to LA but has yet to take it with him, but –

Sarah:  That guy has a red mullet!

Susie:  [Laughs]

Adam:  It’s a red mullet, but –

Susie:  It’s not a mullet!

Adam:  – but, you know, London –

Susie:  It’s kind of feathered.

Adam:  – London is burning in the background, spoiler –

Sarah:  Right!

Adam:  – and that’s, it’s just a, it’s fantastic-

Susie:  It’s, it’s, it’s a rare redhead Fabio.  So it’s Bob Maguire –

Adam:  – and Fabio.  It is Fabio.

Susie:  It is actually Fabio, and –

Sarah:  No way!

Adam:  Oh, yeah.  In a red mullet.  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah, so when I bring back The Fire-Flower, I might be using the original whatever –

Adam:  I hope so.

Susie:  – but, you know, you, you just really want to respect the rights and –

Sarah:  Yep.

Susie:  Though in their case it’s not just the rights but the estate.  Like, I would, even if I, it is in my right to use it for free, I would want to pay for it, and I, you know, I have a very good friend who’s an illustrator who still does painted covers for Kensington, and I love that –

Sarah:  Wow!  That’s a lost art.

Adam:  Oh, yeah.

Susie:  It is a lost art, but he’s still doing it, and –

Adam:  He’s fantastic.  His name is Steven Gardner.  He’s a fantastic artist.

Susie:  Yeah, so I want to commission Steven to do some of the upcoming, so that we have real illustrated covers, even if they’re not the original illustrations.

Adam:  And, and Steven knew Mom, knew her quite well and really liked her.

Susie:  Oh, he was at our Thanksgiving all the time.  Yeah.

Adam:  And yet another Englishman.  [Laughs]

Susie:  And another Englishman, so she –

Sarah:  Can’t get away.

Adam:  No.

Susie:  – she was bound to love him.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  And then, then I’ll probably go to the American series, The Gilded Cage, The Silvery Moon –

Adam:  I love The Gilded Cage.  That’s, that’s a good book.  That, that’s the first book of the two, right?

Susie:  Well, well, here’s the thing:  The Gilded Cage is a really entertaining book, but that’s the one dedicated to me, and that’s the only one that I don’t love, because she dedicated to me, and she was thinking of me when she was writing it, so I know it’s Victorian, I know she had to be with the time period, but she made that heroine so annoyingly chaste, because she based the heroine on me –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  all on me –

Adam:  She doesn’t want, she’s not going to make a character based on you into some kind of slut!

Susie:  I know, but I was a daughter who was picking up romances, bags of them, starting when I was twelve years old at the RT conventions, and I kept the good ones under my bed –

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  – and –

Sarah:  Oh, no kidding!

Susie:  – you know, “good” –

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Susie:  – and, yeah, and so that heroine, I was like, Mom, seriously, I’ve read, you know, I’ve read it all.

Adam:  She, she, she liked, she liked embedding object lessons for us in her books.

Susie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Oh, no!

Adam:  If they’re vaguely based on us, they’re, they, they, they were, that character would learn the lesson to live the way she thought we should live.

Susie:  I know.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  That was a hard part of being her son.

Sarah:  No!

Susie:  I know.  It wasn’t getting through with her Jewish nagging all the time – no, really –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  – so in the, in The Gilded Cage, the lesson is, don’t do it!

[Laughter]

Susie:  Don’t, don’t have sex is the lesson to the heroine.

Sarah:  That’s not a lesson –

Adam:  She wrote an unpublished fantasy novel once, which I don’t think she ever really thought stood a chance of getting published, but was just, it was just clearly about me and a warning.

Susie:  It was a good book.

Adam:  It was a good book!  But it was like, it was, it was about this young magician who was basically about to be held back in town by this, this evil, provincial woman who wanted to ensnare him into marriage!

[Laughter]

Susie:  Anyway, you did have a lot of evil, provincial women trying to ensnare you.

Adam:  Yeah, they failed, though, didn’t they?

Susie:  They failed terribly.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah.  But, but, not most, you know, I wouldn’t say that most of her characters were based on real people she knew, but she peppered them in there.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  That’s all; she just peppered them.  Most of them were, you know, just, like, people she didn’t know.  But, yeah, yeah, so, the Americans series, I really like it.  Like, and she would put in little things for us, like the dog in The Gilded Cage.  She was like, what do you want – it was bespoke novel creation at that point.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  She would – what, what would you like to see in this book that I shall dedicate to you?  And I was like, well, I’ve always wanted a dog who could, you know, shoot it and it would fall over.  You know, like, do the finger bang trick?

Sarah:  And it would fall down.

Susie:  Yeah, that would fall down, and she did that for me, ‘cause that was my dream to have a dog that did that, and –

Adam:  Heh-heh, finger bang.

Susie:  – and I would say – finger bang.  Okay.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s a different novel.  That’s not going to happen in The Gilded Cage if she’s not supposed to do it.

Susie:  I did?

Adam:  You just did.

Susie:  I said finger bang first?

Adam:  You just said finger bang.

Susie:  Not Sarah?

Adam:  No.

Sarah:  No, no, it was you.

Susie:  Oh, man!

Adam:  No, that, that was you.

Susie:  Oh, man.

Adam:  Let the record reflect –

[Laughter]

Susie:  Got to own that.

Adam:  Uh-huh.

Susie:  Anyway, my, my dog currently does do that trick, I taught a dog that trick, but she put that in the book for me!  And –

Adam:  By the way, let’s clarify, this is the trick where you make your hand into a gun and mime shoot them, not –

Susie:  Not actually shoot your dog.

Adam:  And had nothing to do with actual finger – no.

Susie:  Finger banging.

Adam:  Yes.

Sarah:  Okay.

Susie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  ‘Cause that would be a very different book.

Adam:  And that’s not something you should train your dog to do.

Sarah:  No.  No.

Adam:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Nor should you request that from your mother in her fiction.

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  Oh, man.

Adam:  Yeah, sorry, Susie.

Susie:  I dug myself in.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So, Susie, you said a little bit ago that you were, you’re saving her books so that you can visit with your mom.  Is reading her books like hearing her voice?

Susie:  Oh, absolutely.

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  Like, one hundred, one hundred and ten percent.

Adam:  In a slightly affected accent.

Sarah:  [Laughs] But she was pre- –

Adam:  But she read us her writing so much that we know exactly what that sounds like, too.  Her reading voice, you know, it’s, it’s just ingrained in us.

Susie:  Yeah, and also she used to read, she used to read our dad the chapters and –

Adam:  Oh, my God, that was –

Susie:  – every night.

Adam:  – I did want to tell that story, yes.

Susie:  No, no, it’s a great story!  You tell the story.

Adam:  Well, no, she just, like, for the first ten years, easily, of her writing career, she would read at the end of the day everything she’d read to our dad, which was –

Susie:  Everything she’d written, yeah.

Adam:  Everything she’d written.  And it was, which was, you know, a quick and fun thing for him back when she was writing opinion pieces for newspapers but as she became more prolific and, and wrote faster and faster – and don’t forget, he was a hardworking hematologist –

Susie:  He was a hematologist out the door at 6 a.m.

Adam:  – a workaholic, so, like, he’d be, he, I, I remember so clearly, like, you know, going down to visit my parents at, like, 10 p.m., and he’d be sitting at the table listening to her reading everything that she’d written that day, and then, you know, punctuated by spats wherein she would accuse him of falling asleep, and he would maintain that he was just resting his eyes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah.  That, that was, like, a common fight that he –

Adam:  Every night!

Susie:  – that he would fall asleep.  However, you know, it was kind of a beautiful thing.

Adam:  It was!

Susie:  It would, she would be furious at him and not talk to him for a day or two, for falling asleep on her –

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Susie:  – and then she’d come back two days later when she had settled and go, you know, I realize why he fell asleep.

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  Because this section needed more, and I reworked it, and blah blah blah.

Adam:  [Laughs] Okay, now he, he fell asleep ‘cause he’d dealt with, like, nineteen sickle cell anemia patients that day.

Susie:  Right.

Adam:  And two hemophiliacs

Susie:  But for whatever reason, she would decide that there was an actual – and, you know, maybe there was – and, and, and also conversely, once in a blue moon she could make him tear up and cry.

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  My dad was not a crier –

Sarah:  Oh, wow.

Susie:  – with his gallstones in his pocket, and it, it, she would come out triumphant like she had just, you know –

Adam:  Got him!

Susie:  – gotten a lion, and she’s like, got him!  And he, if he teared up, then that meant, like –

Adam:  Success.

Susie:  – this was fucking awesome.

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  If I can make the doctor cry, it’s a win.

Adam:  And it doesn’t matter how, how random his falling asleep was, because, you know, now that I’m a writer, anything that can make you scrap what you’re writing and rewrite it is a good thing.

Sarah:  Yep.  This is true!  So –

Susie:  Adam, Adam just gives his wife Ambien –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – while he’s reading to her.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  Right, that’s it.

Susie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So you’ve talked a lot about the different books that she’s written.  Do you guys have favorites?

Adam:  As in The Fire-Flower?  I love –

Sarah:  Is your favorite?

Adam:  It’s probably my favorite.

Sarah:  Why?

Adam:  I love The Gilded Cage.  The American one, I –

Susie:  Wait, she said why?

Adam:  Oh, why?

Sarah:  Yeah!

Adam:  You know, maybe because I, at that point had read many of her Regencies, and this was a different period.

Susie:  I know, we liked being in 1666.

Adam:  Yes.

Susie:  And that was a particularly good research trip.

Adam:  It was a really good research trip, and it was, she was so far out of her comfort zone, and, and it, London is so far out of her comfort zone, it’s just this phoenix-like transform-, transformative kind of novel.  She’s just, she’s just kind of – she’s as lost as London is in writing it, and she, the way she finds her way through the – it’s just beautiful.  It’s, it’s a, it’s a beautiful story.

Sarah:  Wow!  So, how, have you, I mean, do you reread her books at all?  Do you go back to them, or do, do you sort of move the –

Adam:  I will, I need to reread The Fire-Flower, but I only read it the once back in, God, thirty years ago.

Susie:  Yeah, so, I’ve reread them, and now I’m rereading them as we republish.  You know, obviously I’m the one copy-, you know, copyediting them, and so I, I am rereading them all the time, and – although not Lady of Spirit.  So Lady of Spirit came out –

Adam:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  – and literally, it was like someone else copy- – like, I don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t want my first experience with this book I haven’t read to be, like, looking for fricking typos.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  I love The Gilded Cage as well.  That’s, and that’s one that I have reread the beginning of several times.  That’s the one that opens with Gilbert and Sullivan, right?

Susie:  That’s The Gild-, yeah.

Adam:  Yeah, I love that.  And, and she, ‘cause she used to ecstat-, she told me that story ecstatically, like, nine times.

Susie:  And there’s a lot of funny bits in The Gilded Cage, so maybe –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – that’s why you like it.

Adam:  It’s very funny.  It’s, it’s, it’s, yeah.  It’s American.  Again, I guess her first trip to any place or time are, are the books that, that appeal to me.

Susie:  And I, and my favorites, actually, are the short stories, and those will be coming out in eBook format –

Adam:  The Christmas ones?

Susie:  – and that’s what people want.  Like, her Christmas short stories, also A Love for All Seasons, which pairs together four stories in one book.

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  When they were asking for, like, themed collection of short stories, I love her short stories because they’re just light, and her humor is on display, and she’s able to get to the, like –

Adam:  Get to the point.

Susie:  – meat of the matter quickly?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Adam:  Her editors used to always make fun of her that, like, every one of her books –

Susie:  Started with weather.

Adam:  – start, starts with, like, fifteen pages of weather, and they, they would just be like, Edith, can we take it down to maybe a page and a half of weather?

[Laughter]

Adam:  Maybe meet a human being?  That, that’s how she would, like, set the stage for herself.

Susie:  And, and her writing style changed, obviously, with her editors and with people’s tastes –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  – and she was always being told to sex it up.  I mean, you know, Mom was not a prude at all, but, like, she came from the Regency model, you know, and even in the Regencies they were, Super Regencies, they were like, can you please sex it up?  And, you know, so, like, Mom was trying to be valid with the time period and getting editors like, no, no, not enough sex.  So as time went on, you know, you can see that kind of push and pull.  If she was told, you know, she was writing a modern book she had no problem, like, sexing it up, but it was very hard for her to, like, keep, keep it real to what, what she thought it should be?

Sarah:  Mm-mm.

Susie:  And also, she did get shorter.  You know, she got, her friendship with Joan Wolf was a big influence on her, because she helped Joan come up with a lot of her plots, and they read each other’s books, and you know –

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  – Joan is a very spare writer, and –

Adam:  Which gave my dad a break, by the way.

Susie:  Yeah.

[Laughter]

Susie:  But Joan, you know, my mom would never choose to be Joan’s style, but she, as she read her books more she was like, hey, I like how this woman gets to the point, you know?

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  So she really influenced her there, I would say.  So when you read her books, I don’t know, like, you’re going to get a lot of different Edith Layton styles, and I think some people who are really keyed into the traditional Regencies are going to be disappointed by the later stuff, and the people who get the, the C novels, like, people are crazy about –

Adam:  The Cad, The Choice.

Susie:  – The Cad, The Choice, like, they’re crazy about that, but if they hook into that and then they go to something else, you know, I, I, I don’t know.  I mean, you have talk to them.

Adam:  Usually, usually with fans that, whichever period of her that they, you come to first is the one that they fall in love with.

Sarah:  Like Doctor Who?

Susie:  Yes!

Adam:  Like Doctor Who.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Totally.

Adam:  You never forget your first Doctor.

Sarah:  Exactly, and you never forget your first Layton.

Susie:  Yeah.

Adam:  Probably not, yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Is your favorite The Duke’s Wager?  ‘Cause it’s so different or – ?  What’s your favorite, Sarah?

Sarah:  As it –

Susie:  Your favorite read?

Sarah:  I think my favorite is The Duke’s Wager, but partially that’s because I really like being tricked by a book?  Like, I’ve read so much romance, so much, that for a book to surprise me is really rare, and I get so excited.  Like, there is a, a book by Loretta Chase, one of her older Regencies, that’s called The Devil’s Delilah, and the plot completely surprised me, and I loved it –

Susie:  Awesome.

Sarah:  – and the, and The Duke’s Wager did the same thing.  I, I was so surprised and delighted, and I think that was one of your mom’s greatest gifts was that she had really good plot skills.

Adam:  That’s, that’s interesting, ‘cause this is lost, this is a story, it will be incomplete, ‘cause it’s lost in the sands of time for me, but I remember that one of the reasons The Duke’s Wager – The Duke’s Wager came pretty close to selling three or four years before it sold, and the woman who wanted to –

Susie:  No, it would have sold.  She was just like –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – change the –

Adam:  Change the ending.  The wrong character wins.  The wrong guy wins.

Sarah:  No.

Adam:  Yes, and my Mom –

Sarah:  No!

Adam:  – no, I’m not going to change it!  But no!  But, but then a couple years later, she did change it!  But that editor was gone!

[Laughter]

Adam:  So, so it would have been even more surprising had it been the original way, although –

Susie:  No.

Adam:  No?

Susie:  No, I don’t think that’s the story.  The story is, the woman said, change it; she was like, no –

Adam:  Okay.

Susie:  – and then she re-, her friend persuaded her, like, you know, just – oh, and then she sold it, no, then she sold it the way it is now, and then the publisher went bankrupt, and they weren’t taking anymore books, and then her friend said, okay, send it again.  They’re back in business.

Adam:  Oh, okay, right.

Susie:  Like, it was a long road, but –

Adam:  It was a kind, it, it was, it was a convoluted story to get to that story.

Susie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Ho.

Susie:  But she didn’t change from what she wanted it to be.  Like, what it is now is what she wanted it to be.

Adam:  I like how we’re all avoiding spoilers for a forty-year-old book.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  You know, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult because, you know, for me, one of the things that I find so interesting about publishing is that there’s a lot of emphasis on what’s new, what’s the new book?  ‘Cause every Tuesday, there’re more romances every single week, and with self-publishing, like, every day, but for me, a book that I haven’t read is a new book, so –

Adam:  Right.

Sarah:  – if I haven’t read one of your mom’s books, then that’s a new book for me, even if it was published, you know, in the ‘80s or in the early ‘90s, so I really try not to spoil –

Adam:  Well, it’s historical and … I said, it’s historical, so it will never be outdated.

Sarah:  Exactly!  I mean –

Adam:  It was born outdated.

Sarah:  And it’s, historical is, I think there’s a, a bunch of readers, myself included, who always enjoy them, so if I haven’t read it, it’s new, and I don’t want to spoil it if someone else hasn’t read it, especially because, because you’re in the process of rereleasing her backlist digitally, that’s, like, a whole new bunch of readers that get to discover her books who otherwise would have had to go hunt them down in, in used bookstores.

Adam:  Yeah, that’s awesome.

Susie:  Exactly.  I mean, that’s, that’s really, you know, the reason I’m doing it.  It’s so exciting to bring the books back.  I mean, look, I’ve had some older fans say, I have her books, they’re treasured, but my eyes are such that I can’t read them anymore –

Sarah:  Yep.

Susie:  – in form, I need them in eBooks, and then they’re so delighted when they come out, and then I have the really young fans who are like, what?  Like, who is this person?  And, and it’s all, when they hook into it, it’s so great, because we have this idea that a book is forever, but, you know, the paper books are, are, are not, and it, and it’s great to bring them back, and I’m going to be doing audiobooks where there’s been a delay on that, only because I’m a big audiobook snob and I want the right voiceover, and I’m not willing – you know, anybody can –

Sarah:  Wait, you guys aren’t doing the audio?

Susie:  No, no, I’m going to, but I haven’t brought out – oh, what, us narrate?

Sarah:  Yes!

Susie:  Well –

Adam:  Wow.

Susie:  – we have an idea of a, of a, keeping it all in the family –

Adam:  Yes.

Susie:  – having, having Jeanne Simpson, who is an actress who you might have seen on Mad Men and Parks and Recreation, who happens to be married to Adam here – her narrating.  But even though we’re both performers, we’ve, we’ve both been paid to perform.  I don’t think you want to hear Adam and me narrating –

Adam:  Yeah, my –

Susie:  – a historical romance.

Adam:  – if, if I, if I read one of her books, it would be like an episode of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

Susie:  Hey, wait, let me grab one.  You start here.

Adam:  No, I’d be terrible at it.  Don’t get a, don’t get a book out!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  You demonstrate how you would narrate.  Here, open to page.

Adam:  All right.  From False Angel:

But he had not been successful at his chosen avocation because he was oblivious to the world around him, so much as he might have tried to deny the nagging thoughts which nibbled at the edges of his attention with the sharp rodent teeth –

Susie:  Okay, so you –

Adam:  – that unpleasant recollections always employed.

Susie:  – you see what I’m talking about.

Adam:  Wow, that is a sentence.

Susie:  It’s a sentence.  It’s a mouthful, and we need, we need a pro, and so that would be Jeanne, and that would be professional voiceover people, but –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  – I’ve done enough VO to understand that, like, I am not good enough to do that.  But I appreciate you thinking we might be.

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I don’t know.  I think that you should do little snippets of dialogue between characters – [laughs] – and just release them.

Adam:  Oh, oh, maybe.

Susie:  [Laughs]

Adam:  Maybe.  That would be fun.

Sarah:  That would be hilarious!

Susie:  Just pepper it in.

Adam:  I, I just don’t consider my voice, or really Susie’s voice, appropriate to a historical novel, whereas, whereas Jeanne, my wife, you know, she’s been in plenty of, of period dramas.

Susie:  She’s a Harvard-trained actress!

Adam:  Harvard-trained actress!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  And we would do that voice for the books –

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  – and that would be wrong.

Adam:  Right, it would be terrible.

Susie:  But those’ll come back, and so I’m trying to bring everything back.  It’s just a, you know –

Sarah:  Well, when, when things were released in print twenty, thirty years ago, it’s a process to bring them into contemporary technology.  I mean, you, you told me, you have to cut the spines off and scan ‘em all in, right?

Susie:  Yeah, you have to ruin a book, so you, you have to kill a book and scan it and, you know, everybody, it’s, and copyedit it.  I mean, the, the, God, the technology’s so much better, but you can’t trust the scanning.

Adam:  Yeah, yeah, OCR is still not completely, completely there.  You will have typos.

Susie:  Yeah, and I –

Sarah:  OCR scanning is the reason that I was once, out of two times, a question on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

Susie:  What?!

Adam:  Really?

Sarah:  I, yeah, this is in my bio.  I was a question on Wait Wait… twice!  Like, this just gives me joy.  It was, oh, gosh, a couple of years ago, I realized that in OCR scanning, arms, especially in a, in a serif font, becomes anus, so he wrapped her anus around him; he, she threw her anus around his shoulders –

Adam:  Wow!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  And so I started tweeting about it, ‘cause it was hilarious, and somebody –

Adam:  It is!

Sarah:  – somebody at NPR picked it up, and it was a, one of the questions posed to the panel, and – [laughs]

Adam:  I can’t, I can’t imagine Peter Sagal ever turning that down while writing a show.  That, it’s a perfect – [laughs]

Sarah:  There was, it was, there was so much use of the word anus in that episode, it was majestic.

Adam:  I was not on that one.

Sarah:  No, you were not; it’s very sad.  But yes, OCR errors are incredible.

Susie:  They’re incredible, and your eye can just glide over them –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – but that’s why it’s so – it’s Untreed Reads bringing the books out.  I mean, there’s no reason, if I didn’t work and I didn’t have kids, there’s no reason why I couldn’t be doing this myself, but I –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  – I tried.  I mean, first there was the trauma of Mom –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – going, and having another baby, and then I was like, I will do this!  I will do this myself!

Adam:  Right.

Sarah:  It’s so much work.

Susie:  And I had to deal with her house and all of her business, and I was still like, I will release these myself!  I don’t need any help!  And –

Adam:  Susie Felber Publications presents –

[Laughter]

Adam:  – the Layton Archives!

Susie:  Well, that’s what I thought it would be, but –

Adam:  Not so much.

Susie:  – not so much.  Couldn’t do it.  And if I ever become, you know, have nothing else to do and –

Adam:  Indolent.

Susie:  – my, my kids get abducted, I might do it, but –

Sarah:  It’s a staggering amount of work.

Susie:  – Untreed, Untreed Reads is great, because they go and they get her books in libraries.  You know, I mean, that, to me, is a really big deal, selling the books to libraries.  Is there much money in that?  No, not at all!  But it is fantastic that libraries all over the country now have Edith Layton –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – in their e-catalog.

Sarah:  Given that so many major publishers are very resistant to digital lending, it’s, it’s even more, it’s even more beneficial for her and her legacy that she’s there, because there are so many authors who can’t get into libraries digitally ‘cause their publishers won’t allow it.

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  Exactly, and I’m super in favor of that.  Like, anything I can do to keep the books in the world?  I mean, I, I, I’ve been doing giveaways, though, Sarah.  [Laughs] I tried doing Amazon giveaways of her last release, and like, I’m, I’m giving away books free, and I, I’ve given away other books.  Like, people do not go for books as much as they go for LED toilet lights.  It was an experiment I did.

Adam:  Right.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  In the Amazon ecosystem, yes, you want LED toilet lights.

Susie:  LED toilet lights, people want more than they want to read books, which is just a sad statement.

Sarah:  I don’t want to be gross, though, but –

Adam:  Sad recommendation.

Sarah:  – given where much reading happens, maybe you want to pair some of her books with an LED toilet light.

Adam:  –  lights

Susie:  Ooh!

Sarah:  Read in the dark at night on the toilet!

Susie:  That’s it.  I’ve just, I’ve just TMed that idea.

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  That is brilliant.

Sarah:  I hear it, I hear the giant dump truck of money; it’s heading north towards your house.

Susie:  [Laughs]

Adam:  Yeah, yeah.  Back it up!

Sarah:  Yeah, beep, beep!  Whoosh!  [Laughs]

Adam:  Pool of cash.  Beep-beep-beep-beep!

Susie:  So anyway –

Sarah:  It’s a process.

Adam:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  It’s a big process, and, you know, the marketing is something that I kind of dedicate a few hours a month to.  I, it’s kind of like I’m, the audience is built in.  If I had more time, you know, we don’t make big profits, but I take a little bit of the money we make, and I, you know, my brothers trust me to just, you know, okay, well, we’ll do this Facebook promotion or this giveaway or whatever, but –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  – I, if I was the author, I would be doing more, but, as I said, it’s more to get the books out there in the world than –

Adam:  Than make us millions.

Susie:  – than make us millions, yeah.  So.

Sarah:  It must feel like a, like a significant responsibility, though, to, to be the, to be the responsible parties for your mom’s literary legacy.

[Laughter]

Susie:  Honestly, the checks are not big, but we split everything straight in thirds between the siblings.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Susie:  Any money that, that Edith Layton makes is split in thirds after taxes.

Adam:  And any remainder is, is stored in a vault at Layton Manor.

[Laughter]

Adam:  Which we are all vying for!

Susie:  And, and so, like, at Thanksgiving it was, like, really nice.  I was able to, we gave a big toast to Mom –

Sarah:  Aw!

Susie:  – and I was able to give each of us – and I have to write a check to myself – each of us a little check that, like, you know, pays for the dinner and our wine and, and say thank you, Mom, you know?

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  Because it, it’s a beautiful thing.  Like, it’s such a great thing bringing her books back, but it’s, like, completely win.  Even if we made ten dollars, we’d be celebrating, like –

Adam:  That’s, that’s ten dollars’ worth of readers, you know.

Susie:  Yeah, it’s ten dollars’ worth of readers, and it’s money that came in in such a good way.  Like, it’s so good.  It’s all win.

Sarah:  And it’s funny because there’s so much shame surrounding writing romance and reading romance.  Readers get a lot of shame; writers get ridiculous comments.  It’s really lovely to hear how proud you are of your mom.

Adam:  Oh, yeah.  I, I, it just –

Susie:  Yeah, and, but if I see a bad review on Amazon, like, literally, my, my hackles go up; my, my, my face gets hot; and I want to kill.  Because I –

Sarah:  [Laughs] You’re not alone in that reaction.

Susie:  – misunderstood the book, you know, and, yeah, anyway.  Sorry, you go ahead, Adam.

Adam:  No, I don’t know what I was going to say.

Susie:  About proud.  About proud.

Adam:  Oh, yeah!  I mean, you know, it was, as, as a teenage boy?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Yes?

Adam:  You know, I guess there was, there was – I could have been ashamed, or I could have just gone kind of, you know, balls-out proud, and I, I, I chose the latter.

Susie:  Well, I spent a little bit of time both proud and ashamed.

Adam:  I didn’t literally take my balls out.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  So I was proud with my mother, I was proud at the conventions, I was proud, but you have to understand, I’m eleven years old, twelve years old, and my mother cruised every bookstore in the romance section, and at the time, it’s the eighties, the covers were totally embarrassing –

Sarah:  Yep!

Susie:  – and she’d be like, come!  Look at my book!  And I’d be over in the sci-fi section being like, I can see fine from here!

[Laughter]

Susie:  I was so embarrassed by the covers, like, even if I had the books under my bed, like, I had a struggle with that.  The struggle went away quickly, and then I became balls-out proud –

Adam:  Yeah.

Susie:  – but –

Adam:  Well, it was easier for me, because I, you know, I was, you know, as a teenage boy, I was so not part of that world that I didn’t mind being associated with it.

Sarah:  Right.

Susie:  Yeah, well, I had a, my librarian in elementary school said, oh, your mom writes dirty books.  He said that to me when I was ten years old –

Adam:  Wow.

Susie:  – and when your librarian snickers and says, your mom writes dirty books, I just, yeah, my face got hot.  He said it in front of the whole class, like –

Sarah:  That guys a tool.

Adam:  That would have made me mad.

Susie:  He was a, was a tool.  He got fired for getting the kids who went on a ski trip stoned, but –

Adam:  Wow.

Susie:  – anyway, that was years later.

Adam:  Oh, I remember that guy!  I remember that guy!  He was my driver’s ed teacher, too.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Yeah, he was your driver’s ed teacher, he was the elementary school librarian –

Adam:  He, he never got me high.

Susie:  No?

Adam:  No.  I guess as driver’s ed, driver’s ed teacher he probably shouldn’t have.

Susie:  You never went skiing!

Adam:  No, no, no, I never went skiing.

Susie:  If you had gone skiing he would have gotten you high.

Adam:  All right.

Sarah:  And if he insulted your mom, you would have punched him in the nose.

Susie:  Yeah.

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  I mean, I don’t know the story of when you got into romance.  Like, when did you go, oh, this doesn’t suck?

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Susie:  Or did, or was it always, you, you always felt that way?

Sarah:  Oh, no, no, no, no, no.  I had trouble learning to read, partially, I think, because I have terrible eyesight and partially because what I was being given to read completely sucked.  But I had trouble learning to read, I kept moving backwards in reading groups, and I got it into my head that I was dumb, even though I’m not, and so in high school, when you have all of the, the burden of adolescence and puberty convincing you that you are really the worst thing ever, plus thinking I was stupid, I was in the library, and the class valedictorian was reading this really, really, really thick paperback, and I thought, well, of course she is, you know.  She’s class valedictorian; she’s super smart.  But I worked up my one nerve to ask her what she was reading.  So this was the early ‘90s –

Susie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and this is what I received in response:  Oh, my God, it’s a romance novel, I cannot believe you haven’t read these, these are amazing, oh, my God, what is wrong with you?  You have to read them, they’re, come over here, I have labeled all of them.  And she drags me over to the little spinny rack.

Susie:  Wow!

Sarah:  She had read all of them.  She had dog-eared all the rape scenes so you could skip ‘em, ‘cause this was the early ‘90s.

Susie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  She’s like, if it’s dog-eared at the top, skip it.  If it’s dog-eared at the bottom, it’s good.  So she –

[Laughter]

Adam:  Wow!

Sarah:  – she had tagged the sex scenes based on whether they were consensual, and this is, like, a, you know, sixteen-year-old.

Susie:  Oh, my God!

Sarah:  It was really, like, I look back and I’m, like, wow!

Adam:  What is she doing now?

Susie:  Yeah, what is she doing now?

Adam:  That’s fantastic!

Susie:  What is –

Sarah:  She’s, like – [laughs] – I think she’s a doctor or a surgeon, ‘cause, you know, she really was, really is smart.  So she –

Susie:  Wow!

Adam:  And surgeon would be very appropriate, ‘cause she is obviously –

Sarah:  Precise.

Adam:  – taking out the bad bits and leaving the good bits.

Sarah:  Right?  Totally!  So –

Susie:  Oh, my God.

Sarah:  – she, she had, like, tagged all the bad scenes and was like, this one is a woman dressed as a pirate, and this one she’s in, like, she’s in space!  And this one she runs away!  And she –

Adam:  Fantastic.

Sarah:  – had a book that she was reading, so – this is, this is the great shame of my story – she went to the bathroom, and I picked up the book she was reading, and I started reading it, and I instantly was like, this is the greatest thing I have ever put in my brain, and I checked it out and ran out of the library before she got out of the toilet.

Adam:  Wowww.

Susie:  Ohhh!

Sarah:  I stole her book.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Totally stole it from her.

Susie:  That’s okay; she turned you onto it.  If you, if you –

Adam:  Yeah, that might have turned her toward science!

Sarah:  It’s true.  I mean, maybe she was so mad she thought of ways to precisely injure me with a scalpel?  Possibly.

[Laughter]

Susie:  Oh, my God, that’s great.  I love to think that my surgeon is a ro- –

Sarah:  Secretly.

Susie:  – possibly a romance fan, and –

Sarah:  Well, I, I have found that whenever I have a doctor appointment – I get a lot of review copies and finished copies – whenever I have a doctor’s appointment, most of the people who work in the administrative area are women, and I walk in with a bag full of romance, and they’re all like – [gasps] – you’re here!  What have you brought?  What did you bring?  What have you brought?

Adam:  Fantastic!

Sarah:  Oh, it’s great!

Susie:  Aww!

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.  And if I’ve ever had a doctor fit me in ‘cause my kids are sick, I bring, I bring the whole office staff, like, twenty or thirty romances, and then I come back and they’re like – [gasps] – you’re back!  What did you break?  The person who brings the books is the best person.

Susie:  Oh, oh, oh!

Adam:  Oh, that’s awesome!

Sarah:  Oh, yeah!  It’s wonderful!  Plus, I know they’re going to happy homes, you know?  Like, these books –

Adam:  Right.

Sarah:  – are going to get devoured.

Susie:  Oh, my God, that is so great.

Sarah:  So –

Susie:  Yeah, I had one related to doctors, little bit sad story, but also beautiful.  Like, after Mom died, her last book that came out she dedicated to her doctor at Sloan-Kettering and the staff there, but as you know, like a baby, it takes nine months for a traditional book to come out –

Sarah:  Yep.

Susie:  – so I went back to Sloan-Kettering, and I, I didn’t tell the doctor that it was dedicated.  I just walked into Sloan-Kettering, asked to see her, and she came out, and I handed her the book, and she opened to the dedication and teared up, and she was just, like, overwhelmed.  Like –

Sarah:  Ohhh!

Susie:  – overwhelmed, because she was very fond of Mom –

Adam:  She was very, very fond of her.

Susie:  – and she was such a sweet, sweet, hopeful woman, and, you know, I hope and assume she read it, but just that gesture was so meaningful –

Adam:  It was huge, yeah.

Susie:  – to her.

Sarah:  Romance especially is very meaningful to the readers who enjoy it, because it’s all about emotions and intimacy.  It’s a really powerful connection, so I totally bet she read it.  Most people I know who work in health, if they’re women, they do read a little romance.

Susie:  Wow.

Sarah:  ‘Cause it’s hopeful!

Adam:  Good to know!

Sarah:  All right.  Susie, shall we attack your brother?

Susie:  Oh, yeah, let’s do it!

Adam:  What?

Sarah:  All right.  Did you get the email I sent you?

Susie:  Yes.  I got the email –

Sarah:  But can you look at it, or if you look at it, will he see it?

Susie:  No, I can look at it; I can turn the screen and look at it so he doesn’t see it.

Adam:  What’s going on?  Oh!

Sarah:  We’re doing something evil.  Okay.  So, you know how on that show you’re on they read you some news stories, and you have to guess the fake one?

Adam:  Sure!

Sarah:  Okay, so we have three synopses of romance novels, and you have to guess the one that’s not your mom’s.

Adam:  Oh, the one that’s not my mom’s!

Sarah:  Yes!

Adam:  Oh, you, you, okay.  Okay!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Are you ready?

Adam:  I’m ready.  I can do this!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  All right, Susie, do you want to read the first one?

Susie:  Yes!  I can read the first one!

Sarah:  Go for it.

Adam:  All right.

Susie:  Here we go:

“Once upon a time at the opera, there were two titled lords with pants feelings, whose pant-proclivities prior to the start of this novel should have reduced all of their appendages to nubbins shorter than a pencil at the end of the school year.  But this is historical romance, and they were all coated with magical STD Teflon.  Anyway, you can bet their bruised manhoods would not be hung up as monuments any longer, because they’ve both spotted a lovely, innocent, clueless lass.  One decides to trick her into mistaking his intentions as honorable, while the other refuses to torque his words into deceit.  Will one of them sit on a fence with the heroine?  Will one of them presume that he’s won long before he learns he’s lost?  Will either of them figure out that the heroine is smarter than both of them put together and multiplied by ten thousand?  Alas, the one thing we do know is that she’ll choose one of them, because Ms. Layton didn’t write polyamorous romances.”

Sarah:  Yay!  Oh, you’re so good, you should totally read the eBooks.

Adam:  That was good, good!

Sarah:  All right.  Okay, I’ll do the second, and then we’ll go back to you, Susie, okay?

Susie:  Okay.

Sarah:  Okay.  [Clears throat]

“The titled lord and head of a family of many, many siblings and cousins and sequels has had a terrible afternoon.  He never expected to find himself in a duel without his breeches properly mended.  He never expected to endure a lecture from a governess about proper gardening, nor a trip to Gunther’s with his sister and nieces for a dessert that made him embarrassingly ill within moments.  He did not anticipate having to shop for an entire afternoon before heading to tea with his family.  Most of all, he did not expect to find himself caught in a compromising position during teatime, nor married the following week to a woman who specializes in antiquities and can knock him unconscious with one kick to the knee.  Fortunately for him, his lady has many secrets, and she’s trying to protect him from some of them – while he is trying to keep even more nefarious secrets from his past where they belong.”

Adam:  Wow!  I’m in!

Susie:  Okay.  That was number two.  Are you ready?

Sarah:  All right.

Adam:  Yes.

Susie:  For your third synopsis.

Adam:  I am ready!  [Laughs]

Susie:  es!Y

Adam:  This is so weird.

[Laughter]

Susie:  

“There have been many romances featuring pirate captains who were secretly well-born wealthy lords who preferred the stench of sunburnt man to the perfume collision that was Almack’s (and really, who wouldn’t?).  And there have been many more featuring surprise betrothals or secret engagements.  But no hero would be excited to learn that the foundations of his fortunes were built on robbery, nor that he’d been promised from birth to marry a pirate’s granddaughter.  But after overcoming the, ‘Surprise!  You’re a pirate!’ news, he finds out his betrothed is far too much for a man who would prefer to be proper, not piratical.”

Is that how you pronounce it?  Piratical.

Adam:  Probably.

Susie:  “Whether they work –

Adam:  It’s also polyamorous, by the way, on the, in the first one.

Susie:  Okay, thanks, thanks, shut up.

[Laughter]

Susie:  “Whether they work out their differences or not, alas, neither of them ever dreamed that they’d spend time making out while kneeling on jagged rocks while the tide came in.”

So, Sarah, do you want to sum up his three choices?

Sarah:  Okay, dude.  We have two titled lords with pants feelings at the opera and a heroine who’s smarter than both of them.  We have – [laughs] – a hero who’s had a terrible day ends up in a compromising position and married to someone with more secrets than him.  And we have a poor lord who finds out he’s a pirate, he has to marry a pirate’s granddaughter, and he’s going to be very uncomfortable very soon.  Can you guess which book is not your mom’s?

Adam:  Yes!  But I may not guess correctly.

[Laughter]

Susie:  Wait, wait, Sarah, what’s the prize on this?  Do we get your voice on his, on his answering machine?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  Wait, why would she get my voice as my prize?

Susie:  [Laughs]

Adam:  What the hell are you talking about?

Susie:  No, you get her voice –

Adam:  Okay, yeah!  Okay.

Sarah:  You don’t need my voice on your voicemail.

Adam:  Sarah, I’ll take your voice, your voice on my voicemail.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  This is tough.  Let me, let me run by our choices.  The pants thing is so artfully written by, by you, like, the, the, the synopsis of the pants thing, that it’s hard for me to see my way through to what plot we’re actually talking about, although if it is my mom’s, it sounds like one of Edith Layton’s Signet Regencies.  The, the, the second one with the, with the put-upon lord having a terrible day, now that sounds like my mom’s sense of humor for sure, especially with the exceptionally clever heroine.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, all her heroines were brilliant.

Adam:  They’ll both have, have that, but she’s, like, clearly got, got it over him.  I’d be, I’d, I’d be hard-pressed to say which book that is, but the, the third one, the pirate one just sounds straight-up familiar, so I, even though I’m not sure, I’m going to not choose that one.  I’m going to go with the pants as the one that is not my mom’s.

Sarah:  The pants feelings?

Adam:  Yeah, the pants feelings.

Sarah:  Alas, that is The Duke’s Wager.

Adam:  Of course it is!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  The emphasis on pants was just so extreme, and I don’t remember The Duke’s Wager being primarily about tightening pants.

[Laughter]

Adam:  Now, now, yes, okay, now I see, yes, yes, yes, The Duke’s Wager.  Again, I feel like you’re more fixated on pants than my mom was.

Susie:  No!

Adam:  Okay!  [Laughs]

Susie:  That was, I will, yeah.

Adam:  Okay, what’s the-

Sarah:  No, a lot of Regencies spent a lot of time describing some tight breeches.  And calves; there’s a lot of calf descriptions!

Adam:  There’s a lot of calves; that’s true.

Susie:  They did love them, or they stuffed it with sawdust, right?

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  Didn’t they stuff their breeches with sawdust to fill out –

Sarah:  Didn’t that itch?

Adam:  I just remember being told that by Mom.  It made me uncomfortable.

Susie:  Mom, Mom told us that.

Adam:  Yeah.  Made me uncomfortable.

Sarah:  No, it’s, I’ve totally read that, and I’m like, I walk through, like, mulch in a garden and I get it in my shoes, and it’s like day is over, I’ve got to go change.  I, how do you walk around with sawdust in your socks?

Adam:  They were tough then; they were tougher.  All right, so what’s the second one?

Sarah:  The second one?  Would you, of the remaining two, do you have a guess which one?

Adam:  No, nonononono.  We, we don’t do that on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! to avoid complete humiliation of our guests.  I suggest that you do the same for me.

Susie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Fine.  Okay –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I suppose it’s okay.  Number two, the titled lord with the bad day, I made that up.  Part of it –

Adam:  That was good!

Sarah:  Thank you!  Part of it was based on, I think, The Cad.  I read a bunch of different descriptions of her books and took a tiny little bit from one or two of them, but yeah, I made that up.

Adam:  Oh.

Sarah:  The whole bad day and getting sick and tearing his pants, I made all that up.

Adam:  Nice!  I, I was picturing on that one Lord Summerville.

Sarah:  You know, I could see that.

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And the third one –

Adam: Yeah.

Sarah:  – the third one is actually my favorite Edith Layton cover in the history of the universe.  There is no cover that will ever be better than this cover, and I had it on my bed stand for years because it just made me so happy.  [Laughs] That is For the Love of a Pirate.

Adam:  Oh!  That was For the Love of a Pirate!  I didn’t read that one.

Sarah:  Not only does this super-proper lord discover that he’s connected to piracy and robbery, and his fortune is very based on ill-gotten gains, and he’s been betrothed from birth to a pirate’s granddaughter, and of course said pirate goes and kidnaps him, and he’s about to get married to somebody who’s very proper, and surprise, you’re a pirate, and you’ve got to marry this girl.  The cover is – [laughs] – he doesn’t have his shirt on, he’s wearing black trousers –

Susie:  Oh, my God, the cover, she was so embarrassed by that.  Like, it’s so good you can get joy from it, but again, at that point she was so horrified by it, but she had been burned by so many covers that she didn’t love that, it was sort of after Pino, like –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Susie:  – she was like, I, I give up.  Just sell, sell the books, give me contracts –

Adam:  I’ve got to say, I would have gotten that one wrong as well because if forced to guess, I would have gone for the, I would have gone for that one being a fake because of the, the conclusion that involved making out on the rocks.

Sarah:  No, that’s the cover.

Adam:  Yeah, well, that’s the cover, but, you know, my mom was very, very, she would often say that, like, all these people making out in extraordinarily uncomfortable places –

[Laughter]

Adam:  – made no sense to her whatsoever, so she usually tried to have her love scenes take place where they wouldn’t be just completely uncomfortable.

Sarah:  There was no sheep poo to be found.

Susie:  One of her covers, like, they’re getting undressed, and it’s in a snow storm, and it –

Adam:  Oh, she was so mad about that one.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  I think it’s A Bride for His Convenience?  We have the painted cover of that one too.

Adam:  Yes.  I think that one –

Susie:  It can go home with Adam if he wants –

Adam:  With, with The Fire-Flower.

Susie:  – but it’s a beautiful cover, until you see that, like, he’s half-dressed, he’s taking off her clothes, and for some reason there’s a big snow storm – we’re in England, remember; we’re probably in the south of England –

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  – and they’re making out.  You know, they’re about to have sex in a snow storm, and there’s just no –

Adam:  So tell me, in that, in that book, the one that I haven’t read, the pirate one, do they actually end up making out on the rocks, or are you just taking that from the cover?

Sarah:  I am taking that from the cover.  To my knowledge, there is no –

Adam:  Ahhh!

Susie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – there is –

Susie:  Ohhh! 

Sarah:  – there is no, there’re no rocks, but if you ever look at this cover, I mean, it is majestic.  They, he’s literally kneeling on jagged rocks, she’s half on his lap –

Adam:  Yeah, that would never happen in –

Sarah:  – the wind is going in, like, three different directions, and behind them is this massive ocean wave, because they are about to get drowned.

Adam:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  It’s incredible!

Adam:  That would never happen in one of Mom’s books.  [Laughs]

Susie:  No, it’s true.  You, you threw him off with that, because, yeah, he was thinking, Why would they make out on the rocks?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  When did they do that?

Adam:  I, I could just almost hear, hear Mom’s voice on that, on that subject.

[Laughter]

Adam:  Jagged, pointy rocks and ocean waves?  She’d be like, that’s no place for sex.

Susie:  Straight up –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  You must have had the best dinner table conversations.

Susie:  Yeah, but, I mean, it, it’s just gone back and forth, but, like, the C series books?  There’s no – you know, women got embarrassed.  They didn’t want to pick up a book that had man-boobs, and they didn’t, they just didn’t want to do it, and so you got all those covers that look like wallpaper for a while?

Adam:  Yes, yep.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.  Landscapes and flowers and pearls.

Adam:  Couple of them have, like, a little keyhole so that you’d open it up and see a more conventional cover.

Susie:  Yes, of course!  Called stepback, Adam, in the biz.

Adam:  All right.

Susie:  The stepback covers.  You’ve got a little –

Sarah:  They’re expensive, too.

Susie:  – little keyhole, and then you could open up for the full –

Adam:  Feel like some of the C series had those.

Susie:  No.  They were embossed.

Adam:  No?  Okay.

Susie:  They weren’t stepbacks.  She wanted stepback, ‘cause that was classy.

Adam:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, ‘cause you could make the front look completely benign, and then inside there’s all kinds of stuff going on in there!

Adam:  Right.

Susie:  Yeah!

Adam:  I remember one picture for the book.

Susie:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Awesome.

Adam:  Well, that was a fun game.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Thank you very much!  I –

Adam:  I really enjoyed doing that.

Sarah:  Yay!  Anytime you want me to send in romance novel descriptions to, to stump your panelists on, on the, you know, when you’re waiting around between recordings, let me know.

Adam:  You know what, that would be, they’re always looking for games to play.  That, that’s a game that we play, what is it, it’s the sec-, it’s the second segment of the show.

Sarah:  Right.

Adam:  But we also do, for the Not My Job stuff, if, for shorter descriptions, we, that’s, that’s a multiple choice thing as well, which would be pretty fun to quiz somebody about.

Susie:  Yeah.  And one thing Adam can do is, if you’re listening to NPR, if, if you know his circle of friends and, like, how Mom might have picked waitresses to be her heroines, you can sometimes spot the fake story because the people in the story seem to have names that are very similar to the names of people he knows.

[Laughter]

Adam:  Oh –

Susie:  You might be hearing, like, Sarah Wendell found –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Adam:  Oh, totally.  Sarah Wendell’s going to pop up.

Susie:  – a garbage truck pulled up to her house and –

Adam:  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done a fake story where the name wasn’t somebody I knew.

Susie:  Oh, really?

Adam:  Yeah.  It’s my way of giving shout-outs to people.

Susie:  Aww!  Aww!

Adam:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Well, I do romance quizzes all the time on the podcast, especially for guests that I know a lot, read a lot of romances.  I did, I was on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour and quizzed everyone in the room with romance things that were very difficult.  It’s super fun.

Adam:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Like, for example:  which of the following books is not real?  (a) Passion and Ponies, a contemporary romance about a young man who loves My Little Pony:  Friendship Is Magic and a woman who may unwillingly inherit her family’s cupcake and sex toy business; (b) Darkly Danish Passion, a paranormal about a creature of the night who spends his days designing lamps and end chairs in Denmark and the light-obsessed interior decorator who must hunt him down; or (c) The Big, Not-So-Small, Curvy Girls Dating Agency, a contemporary romance about a big, not-so-small, curvy girls dating agency.  One of those is fake.

Susie:  I’m going to guess –

Adam:  Well, they’re all plausible, but –

Susie:  I’m guessing this one is.  Before you say it out loud, is that one you – ?

Adam:  That would have been my second choice, but I think you’re probably right.

Susie:  Oh, that would’ve been your second choice!

Adam:  Well, you know, the brony –

Susie:  Okay, so what’s your –

Adam:  – the brony scene is so big that I, that I imagine that maybe there is one, but my choice might have been that one is fake.

Susie:  Okay, so my choice, that one is fake is (b), and Adam’s choice, that one is fake is (a).  Maybe I just want (a) to be true.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Susie:  Which one is fake?

Sarah:  (b) is fake.

Adam:  Nice, Susie!

Susie:  Woooo!

Sarah:  (a) is called Passion and Ponies by Tara Sivec.

Adam:  Oh, yeah, again.

Susie:  It’s just the name is too good:  Passion and Ponies.  It’s just too good.

Sarah:  How do you not read that, right?

Adam:  I can, I can think of a way.  [Laughs]

Susie:  I’m, I’m, I’m going to start reading it right now.

Adam:  I have just thought of a way not to read that.

Sarah:  I mean, for a little while there was a series that has since been taken down out of Kindle Unlimited, which gives me great sadness, about a vegetarian biker gang who gave up the drug trade for high-grade tofu market.

Adam:  Yeah, I can’t imagine why that would disappear from the face of the earth forever.

Susie:  Well –

Sarah:  If there was ever – it, it was, it was like a super-sexy romance.  It’s called Captivated (The Dragons), which says nothing in the title about, like, tofu and vegetarian bikers, but, like, I would have read that series happily for the rest of my life, and it’s not there anymore!

Adam:  Well, yeah, because of its audience of one.

Sarah:  Exactly!  [Laughs]  Although I bet if you spun that into, like, a story about an actual book, people who are, who listen to NPR would be like, I want to buy that, like, right now!  Why can’t I buy it?  Where is it?  Gimme it!

[Laughter]

Adam:  Yeah, maybe!

Sarah:  High-grade tofu!  Come on!  [Laughs]

Adam:  I like, I like the concept of high-grade, ‘cause that’s a, you know, not, not an extraordinarily flavorful substance to eat.

Sarah:  No, no.  You’d need highly refined tofu.  [Laughs] Well, thank you guys so much for doing this.  This has been so much fun.

Susie:  Oh, my gosh.

Adam:  Oh, we had, we had a blast.  Thank you so much for having us on.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  I want to thank Adam and Susie Felber for hanging out with me and talking about their mother, which clearly was no hardship.  I will have links in the podcast entry to all of the books we mentioned and a link to all of her books available for sale, both digitally and in paper.  You can find so many Edith Layton titles in the original Signet Regency packaging, which involves a lot of really interesting color choices in the cover art.  You can find those in used bookstores all over the place, and her books are wonderful and worth discovering.

The podcast this month is being sponsored by Elizabeth Hoyt, the New York Times bestselling author of the Maiden Lane series.  Duke of Pleasure, the latest Maiden Lane adventure, features Alf, who is the new Ghost of St. Giles and a female swashbuckling vigilante, with Hugh Fitzroy, the Duke of Kyle, who’s a stern ex-soldier tasked with bringing down an evil group of aristocrats with Alf’s help.  This is a romance that has everything you need:  sword fighting, sexytimes, pants feelings, danger, passion, intrigue, and a heroine who totally kicks ass!  If you’re new to the series, you can trust Smart Bitches reviewer Elyse, who says, you don’t have to read the whole series in order, but they are so much fun, you might as well.  Your credit card might hate me, but you won’t.  You can start binge reading today.

Our music every week is provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is Deviations Project from their holiday album Adeste Fiddles, which is easily my favorite collection of holiday music, right up there with the song about Mr. Hankey.  You can find this album at Amazon or iTunes.  This track is called “Lieutenant Kiji,” and it was originally composed by Prokofiev.

If you would like to find out more about how you can support the podcast or learn more about how you can help be part of the group that’s telling me all the things I should do next year, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.  The Patreon supporters are helping me develop the ideas for next year’s schedule, and I love hearing from them and also from you.  You can support the show for as little as a dollar a month.  You’ll be helping me reach some important goals like commissioning transcripts and upgrading equipment, but you’ll also be part of helping keeping the podcast – helping keeping, help keep, helping to keep, helping – man, my outro grammar is bad!  Let’s try that again!  You will be helping to keep the podcast more awesomer.  Told you my grammar was good.

And if you’d like to email me personally and tell me all the things, that is cool too!  You can email me at [email protected], or you can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272.  I have an episode full of awesome listener email coming up, and I am really looking forward to it, ‘cause y’all say interesting things.

Most of all, thank you for being here with me each week to talk about romance.  I love hearing from you, and I love hearing about the books that made you into romance readers and the things you want to hear me find out more about.  I am really honored that you choose to spend time each week with me, and thank you for that!

On behalf of Susie and Adam and myself and everyone here, we wish you the very best reading.  Have a great weekend!

[sprightly music]