227. Smart Bitches Assemble: Looking Back at 2016

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Now is the time when the dog will start barking, because I am about to record the intro for episode number 227 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and this is the lost podcast episode for 2016!  Yay!  This episode features me, Amanda, Carrie, Elyse, and RedHeadedGirl as we look back at 2016.  We heave great sighs, we complain, and we discuss garbage, dumpster, compost, and tire fires as we look back at the entire year.  We also talk about the books that rocked our worlds and which books made us super happy, and we talk about a few bright moments of the past year.  In between, as is what happens when we talk, we discuss all sorts of things, such as cats; angry, vengeful women; more about cats; couple extra pet stories; and then we have some fun stories about Elyse’s office.  We also make tag predictions for next year, including Not Sorry Not Sorry, Earl Had to Die, Done, Burn Everything, Burn It All Down, and More Cowbell.  I hope you’ll let me know which of these tags we should employ first.

I will have links to all of the books, and my gosh, were there a lot of them that we mention in this episode in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.  And you can find the four most recent episodes on our iTunes page, which is itunes.com/DBSA.

This podcast is being brought to you by Elizabeth Hoyt, the New York Times bestselling author of the Maiden Lane series.  Duke of Pleasure, her latest Maiden Lane adventure, features Alf, who is the new Ghost of St. Giles and a female swashbuckling vigilante.  She is paired with Hugh Fitzroy, the Duke of Kyle, who is a stern ex-soldier tasked with bringing down an evil group of aristocrats, but of course he needs her help, right?  Obviously.  And this is a romance that has everything you like:  sword fighting, sexytimes, pants feelings, danger, passion, intrigue, and a heroine who completely and 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 Maiden Lane books in order, but they are so much fun you might as well.  Your credit card might hate Elyse, but you will definitely not.  You can start binge-reading today!

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater, and 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 and our last Smart Bitches Assemble for 2016:

[music]

Sarah:  All right, so, the agenda for this assembly is to look back on 2016.

Amanda:  Do we have to?

RedHeadedGirl:  Can we not?

Sarah:  For, like, ten minutes!

Amanda:  Ugh.

Sarah:  And then make predictions and a wish list for 2017, and then I have a quiz for you guys.  I will even tell you what it’s called.  It’s called –

Carrie:  Okay.

Sarah:  – Wholesome Earls and Sweet, Clean Bears.

Carrie:  Oh!  Okay.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  Oh!

Amanda:  It sounds like a laundry detergent.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Ugh.

Sarah:  This does sound like a fabric softener.  Okay, so –

RHG:  Unfortunately, the face I just made cannot be expressed in words.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So, guys, 2016!

[Brief silence]

Elyse:  Sucked.

Amanda:  [Sighs] It was awful.

[Sighs]

Sarah:  [Laughs] I have a, I have a, I have a, a question to myself is exactly how many ways we’re going to figure out how to say garbage fire.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  Trash fire.

Sarah:  Yep.

Amanda:  Dumpster fire.

RHG:  Compost fire.

Sarah:  That would be so smelly.

RHG:  It really would.  Here we are.

Sarah:  It’s true.

RHG:  Landfill fire.

Sarah:  Landfill fire.

RHG:  That’s just going to kill everybody.

Sarah:  Ooh, tire fire.

Amanda:  Ooh –

RHG:  Hmm.

Elyse:  That’s a good one, yeah.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That’s, that’s pretty, that’s pretty stinky.  I think that really eclipses, it, it sort of collects everything that sucked about this past year.

RHG:  Yep.

Carrie:  I cannot find a single pair of headphones, so hopefully the podcast will not consist entirely of meowing cats.

Sarah:  Well, my cats live in my –

RHG:  I don’t think anybody would have a problem with that.

Sarah:  No, no one’s going to be mad about that.  My, my cat took a shit in the middle of the podcast this year.  That was, like, a highlight, so, really, meowing is quite minor.

Elyse:  Right, we were delighted by that.

Sarah:  I almost took it out!  I was like, oh, I’ve got to take this out, and I’m editing it, and I’m like, this is really funny!

RHG:  You can’t though.  You can’t though.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Nope, nope.

Elyse:  I think the funny part was how you went from, like, oh, what’s happening to, like, immediate shock and horror.

Sarah:  Yep, well –

Elyse:  I don’t think I’ve ever heard your tone of voice like that before.

Sarah:  I’ve never seen a turd fly out of an animal’s butt with that level of velocity before.  Like, it was at least a forty-five mile an hour turd.

RHG:  Oh, poor Orville.

Sarah:  I’ve never actually seen something happen that quickly to a cat before.  He also is seated right behind me and is looking at the sound box like, oh, it’s almost time for me to chew on that.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Well, he’s our sound editor.

Sarah:  He is.

Elyse:  He just wants to do his job, Sarah.

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  Yeah, any minute now you’re going to hear this weird noise.  It’ll be his, his front fangs rubbing on the top of the microphone because, you know, you could just chew on the corner of the laptop, but over here we have your choice of laptop or giant silver phallic mic.  It’s all about being a good cat owner.

RHG:  Yeah!

Sarah:  So, what were your favorite books of this past year?  Were there any that you were like, okay, that saved the year from being a complete garbage/dumpster/tire fire?

RHG:  The Knickerbocker [Club] series by Joanna Shupe.

Sarah:  Is it –

RHG:  I think, like, all of them came out this year, although the last one is coming out real soon now?  The other three came out this year.

Sarah:  Is it just a four-book series, or are there going to be more?

RHG:  I think it’s just a four-book series, which makes me sad.

Sarah:  That is sad.  What did you like about them?

RHG:  In my sort of building rage throughout the entire year, not being able to focus on reading books or writing about books, I started a review for Baron, which I loved!  Baron was great!  And I just never finished it because my focus is completely gone.

Sarah:  Isn’t it strange how –

RHG:  And this is the worst part about this year – no, it’s not the worst part – it’s one of the really terrible side effects of this year, is just not being able to focus on things that used to give me happiness.

Sarah:  Yep.

RHG:  Fuck everything!

Elyse:  I looked back at my Goodreads profile, and I read quite – one, well, I didn’t track everything I wrote or knit, ‘cause I’m bad at that, but I read a lot in 2016, like, a lot more than I did the year before, and I think that’s indicative of Elyse burying her head in books so she doesn’t have to deal with reality.

Sarah:  Your reality –

Elyse:  And it wasn’t –

Sarah:  – is completely shitty, too.

Elyse:  Yeah, I mean – my reality is completely shitty?

Sarah:  Well, you’re in Wisconsin.  That was, that was like an extra couple tires on the tire fire.

Elyse:  Well, yeah.  Yes.  I mean, yeah.  We’re just going to go yeah.  And it was a shitty year in general.

Sarah:  I thought you were supposed to say, oh, ya.  Or is that just Minnesota?

Elyse:  Oh, ya.

Sarah:   Oh, ya.  Yeah!

Elyse:  Oh, ya!

Sarah:  Yeah, yeah, ya!  Oh, shit, ya.

Elyse:  I mean, my mom had, like –

RHG:  Oh, Sarah, just stop.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  My mom had massive surgery in March.  I wound up having surgery in May.  It was just a phenomenally shitty year for everyone, so I think I, I definitely turn to books for comfort, and as we all know, the more stressed out Elyse gets, the creepier the shit she reads –

Sarah:  Oh, dear God!

Elyse:  – so.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  The books that worked really well for me weren’t actually romance novels for the most part.  To the extent that for 2017, we may have to change the site name to, like, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and Also Evisceration.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Entrails.  You came for the romance.  You’re staying for the exsanguination.

Elyse:  Exactly.  So I had a, some of my top books, I had a whole bunch of ‘em.  I had The Woman in Cabin 10, which was so amazingly good.

Sarah:  ‘Cause the conflict of that book –

Elyse:  I had The Girl on the Train.

Sarah:  – was entirely about gaslighting, right?

Elyse:  It was!  It was absolutely about gaslighting, and it was about a woman saying, like, fuck you, no, I’m not crazy, and I’m going to prove this to you.  I had The Girl on the Train, which was an earlier book, but I read it in 2016.  What else did I have?  All the Missing Girls, I had – oh, I read The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin?

RHG:  Mmm!

Elyse:  Ohhh, so good.  There’s so much female rage in that series, you guys.  It’s just, it’s glorious.

Sarah:  I know one of the things we’re going to talk about it trends, and we started talking about it on Slack, but I, I think that remorseless rage is going to be something we see a lot more of next year, because frankly, I really want to read that, and –

RHG:  Mmm.

Sarah:  – it’s not just, you know, women doing angry or rageful or dastardly or scary or, you know, complicated, angry, vicious, or violent things.  It’s the remorseless part, where they’re like, well, sorry!  Had to be done!  Earl had to die.

RHG:  [Laughs] Right.  Sorry, not even not-sorry that I’m sorry –

Sarah:  Nope!  Sorry, not sorry!

RHG:  – that I’m not.

[Laughter]

RHG:  I’m not sorry that I’m not sorry.

Sarah:  Yep.  So – [laughs] – maybe –

RHG:  That’s where, that’s what I was going for.

Sarah:  – maybe the –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – the internal, the internal tag for this theme next year on the site should be Not Sorry Not Sorry.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I love it.

Sarah:  What about you, Amanda?  Was it fire?  Fire fire?

Amanda:  Yeah!  I feel like that’s the obvious answer.  I really loved A Promise of Fire.  I’m taking the second book home with me to try to avoid socializing as much as possible.  And I really –

Sarah:  Do you want me to see if the, if the author has any drafts of, of book three?  Like, I feel like you need an extra layer.

Amanda:  [Laughs] I’m bringing several books with me, so I will be fine.  My Kindle’s loaded up; I’m ready to go.  But I also loved The Female of the Species, which was that YA title about, like, rape culture, and that was really intense.  I would say that was the most intense book I read this year.

Elyse or RHG:  [Clears throat] Sorry.

Amanda:  And it’s also weird that both of my picks for the best books of this year happened, like, in the, the latter half of 2016.  Like, I feel like I didn’t read that many good things at the start of the year, or I wasn’t reading as much, but I started reading a lot more towards, like, the beginning of fall and onward, which might be indicative of several things going on at the end of this year, so –

RHG:  Mmm.

Sarah:  You don’t say.

Amanda:  [Laughs] So both of my picks really had to do with angry, vengeful ladies.

Sarah:  It seems like there’s a general theme of a lot of heroines in many genres going, you know what?

RHG:  Done.

Sarah:  I am done with this shit.  Yep!  Done.

Amanda:  Yep.

RHG:  Done.

Sarah:  Fuck this shit.  I’m out.

Elyse:  One of the books that I really liked that I read in 2016, and I’m actually saving the sequel for when I really need it, was An Ember in the Ashes, which is a YA series, and it’s kind of a, it’s not dystopian, but it’s set in a fantasy world ruled by kind of a fascist, totalitarian government, and the heroine and, and a gentleman who is supposedly part of this ruling class are going to overthrow the government because fuck all of this shit, and it was just so wonderfully, wonderfully well done.

RHG:  Books to read for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Elyse:  Right, right.

RHG:  None.  None.  

Elyse:  None.

RHG:  Don’t, it’s just, you know – [clears throat]

Elyse:  It’s not, it’s not relevant to current events.

RHG:  Nope.

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  Carrie, what about you?

Carrie:  So, in keeping with the theme, when I looked back and looked at my list, I, there were a ton of really good books that I read this year, and I read a lot this year, but when I looked at things that really made me, like, super excited and happy, it was all about comics, and some of the comics that ended up on my list of things that made me happy in 2016 I might have actually read in 2015 but just kept thinking about.  But there was a lot of, even, like, mainstream comics that were doing gender-swapping and experimenting with gender and representation and a lot of women just burning a lot of shit down.  I had Heathen, which is an independent comic by Natasha – oh, I can’t even read what I wrote down for her last name!  [Alterici]?  I don’t know.  It’s online.  Just Google, like, heathen, comic.  It’s really awesome.  Bitch Planet; Hawkeye, Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye run – that might have actually been from last year, but it was really awesome – Mockingbird by Chelsea Cain; Thor, Goddess of Thunder, that was, like, super amazing, that was by Jason Aaron; The Infinite Loop.  And I also read a bunch of Lovecraft stuff that was experimenting with kind of reclaiming the Lovecraft mythos, but reclaiming it for women and people of color.  One of the –

Elyse:   That’s going to, he’s, he’s rolling in his grave then.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.  No, he’s, he is –

Sarah:  I was just wondering if it was possible that if you could harness –

RHG:  To harness that energy?

Sarah:  Yes!  If you could harness the power –

Carrie:  Oh, my God!

Sarah:  – of Lovecraft spinning in his grave, how many countries could you power?

Carrie:  Right.

Elyse:  Didn’t he hate –

RHG:  You could solve the energy crisis!

Elyse:  Didn’t he hate everyone except white dudes and cats?

Carrie:  Oh, it wasn’t just white dudes, no.

Sarah:  Pretty much.

Carrie:  It, for instance, at one point he had a huge meltdown because he realized that his grandmother was – I’m, I’m sorry, we have to pause in anticipation – she was Welsh.

Sarah:  Oh, shit!

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Oh, my God, not Welsh!  I mean, really, like, he was selective, but a lot of people are playing with his mythos and doing this amazing stuff.  Like, one of the big standouts was Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff and The Ballad of Black Tom – I forgot the name of the author – and there was a lot of feminist stuff that came out, and it was just really, really amazing, and Lovecraft Country was about this black family that publishes these guides for, in the 1950s, for safe travel, so people can travel across the United States, people of color, and they know where they can get gas.

RHG:  The, the Green Books.

Sarah:  Those were a real thing; that was the Green Book.

Carrie:  That was a real thing, right?

Sarah:  Yeah.

Carrie:  So this family does that, but they also get involved with the Lovecraft family, and there’s this, the subversions are just brilliant, and there’s this great part where at one point one of the Lovecraft family people tries to threaten one of the, the, the colored family by saying, you’ll never be safe again, and they just laugh at him!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  They just all started laughing.  They’re like, what – who gives a shit?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Like, we have never been safe in this country.  We’ve never – that, that has no sting for them at that point.  They’re, they’re just like, cheah, like we’ve ever been safe ever.  So –

Elyse:  There’s –

Carrie:  – there’s just a lot of, like, you know, a lot of people taking these common tropes, you know, comic book tropes, superhero tropes, and horror movie tropes, and just trying to, like, flip them around, and a lot of – the, Lovecraft Country, by the way, has multiple narrators, and some of them are men, but it also had some really standout female characters, which was, of course, super awesome.

Elyse:  There’s a book that I read in 2016 called Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard –

Carrie:  Yeah-yeah!

Elyse:  Yeah, and I, it’s, it’s like detective noir fiction where Lovecraftian things are starting to happen, and this one PI kind of starts picking up on it, but Lovecraft’s only living descendant is an African-American woman, and I love it so hard.  Like, she’s the last living Lovecraft, and you know that that would piss him off so badly.

Carrie:  Yeah, and –

RHG:  You can’t see it, but I’m smirking.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  You’re smirking.  Well, and I’m looking for, there was a great anthology that was edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and, and now I, I had written down the title of it, and being, like, the incredibly organized person that I am, now I can’t find it.  I’ll find it by the end of the podcast and tell it to you guys.  But that was a feminist anthology that was really fun, and, yeah, and also, like, the comics, what I liked about the comics was they weren’t super angsty, so they sort of combined the sense of this is fun, this is triumphant, this is exciting, and we’re kicking ass, like, literally and figuratively with this sort of theme of, like, female rage and female empowerment.  That was really a rush.  A lot of those comics, like, it wasn’t just reading them was fun or comforting; it was like a rush.  So, yeah –

Sarah:  That’s the thing I loved most about the Crows series.  One of the – I, I made two massive –

Carrie:  I forgot the Crows, yes!

Sarah:  Crows needs to be a graphic novel, like, in an hour.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh, can you imagine?  Oh!

Elyse:  I would buy – I would paper my bathroom in just the panels.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right?

Sarah:  Big crow wing on the door.

Carrie:  I found that anthology!

Elyse:  I’m seriously –

Carrie:  That anth-, the, the feminist anthology was She Walks in Shadows.

Sarah:  Ah, thank you.

RHG:  Mmm.

Sarah:  How do you spell – what were you going to say?

Carrie:  My problem is, I always want to call it “She Walks in Beauty”, which is a poem, but that’s the wrong title.  It’s She Walks in Shadows, and it’s from Innsmouth Free Press.

Sarah:  Got it.

Elyse:  I was going to say that I’m thinking about getting a tattoo, like, from my wrist up to my inner arm of just, like, a black, kind of curling, crow feather?

Carrie and Sarah:  Ooh!

Elyse:  And –

Sarah:  You could even, you could even curve the end into a quill point and have it writing.

Elyse:  Ohhh, I totally could.  The thing is, I try to steer clear of visible tattoos at work, but I’m also like, you know what?  Fuck it.

Sarah:  I think you reached a certain level professionally where you can walk in with a whole lot of fuck-it.

RHG:  Yep.

Carrie:  Right.

Sarah:  ‘Cause if they dislike you over your tattoo, you can give ‘em a whole lot of other reasons to dislike you, like how much it sucks when you’re not there.

Elyse:  Like cowbell?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yes!  I think that needs to be a highlight of 2016.  Would you please tell that story so everyone on the Internet can enjoy it?

Elyse:  Okay.  So I work in, I, I manage a team of twelve people, and a big part of their job is that they are on the phone all day, and this, my work environment can be very, very crazy and very, very noisy.  So people are on the phone, their desk phone is ringing, their cell phone is ringing, they’re, you’re getting instant message alerts on your computer, it gets very, very loud, and I had a woman who is in the office, who has an office door that she can close, complain about the fact that we are noisy, which, yes, we are.  I have twelve people; they talk on the phone all day.  It’s noisy.  And I tried to be, like, all professional and nice about it and suggested that maybe she close her fucking door.  Like, just a thought.  And she copped an attitude with me about the fact that, like, she shouldn’t have to close her door because, I don’t know, my team is doing their job.  So I went on Amazon and ordered twelve cowbells, and now every time we generate revenue that wasn’t previously expected to be on the books, we all ring our cowbells, and when things are slow, we all ring our cowbells and scream, more cowbell.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  So anyway, while it was – so it got even more crazy, and the CEO wanders down, and he’s like, what’s going on down here?  And I could tell, she had this look on her face like, ah, fuck, Elyse is going to get it, and I was like, hey, I, you know, we, we had our best month ever last month, and I really want to keep that energy going, and so, you know, we’re going to, we’re going to create some noise and some energy in this office every time, you know, we, we get a win, and he’s like, this is great!  I love it!  Keep it up!  This place needs some energy!  And he walks away, and I just looked at her, and it was like, your move, bitch.

Sarah:  Well, played, ma’am.  So, the things that I realized about myself this year weren’t so much specific books that blew my mind, although there were a few.  It was that reading is a form of meditation for me, and that also includes walking the dogs and listening to books, and I don’t know, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out – it’s kind of embarrassing that it took me that long? – but I realized that if I have time to read and I’m enjoying what I’m reading – and I’m flipping right now back and forth between nonfiction and historical romance – I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how since the election they’ve been shopping a lot or buying a lot or making a lot of baked goods, eating a lot, and I have been –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – I have been eating nothing and getting rid of everything.  Like, I think the Vietnam Veterans took about eight hundred pounds worth of shit out of my house two weeks ago.  I’m like, let’s purge!  Everything must go!  So I have this opposite reaction.  Like, I want no shit in my house, and I keep going, oh, shit, it’s two o’clock, and I forgot to eat, so my reaction is slightly different, but the, the nonfiction that I’m reading, which is mostly about organization and decluttering and essentials – Essentialism, by the way, is a really interesting book.  It gets a little rah-rah, like, I envision a world where everyone’s doing what they – yeah, yeah, turn the page, okay, dude, whatever.  But the, the getting rid of shit is very cathartic – [laughs] – as is the unpacking of a box and realizing, I haven’t needed this in the past year.  I don’t even know why I moved this.  Bye!  See ya!  Thank you!  It’s very cathartic.  With the –

Elyse:  Will you come do my house?

Sarah:  Oh, dude, get out of the way.  It’ll be awesome!

Elyse:  Just stay away from the yarn, okay, that’s –

Sarah:  I understand!  I know the boundaries!  I might organize it, though.

Elyse:  Sometimes, sometimes I just want to put it all in a pile on the floor and lie in it.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah, and –

Sarah:  Okay, I’m itching just thinking about it!  Like, ugh, no!

Elyse:  Well, it’s not all wool.

Sarah:  All of it’s –

Elyse:  We’ve got cotton in there; it’s fine.

Sarah:  – ugh, all of it’s going to make me itch.

RHG:  Hmm.

Carrie:  As a possible contrast to the, the minimalist is, is soothing philosophy, one of my personal highlights this year involved buying a giant stuffed octopus, so, you know.

Sarah:  That’s a total highlight!  I mean, that’s essentialism:  that is an essential, needed item.

Elyse:  Well, wait, so – Bingley comes to RT with us, so which one is this?  Is this Darcy?

Carrie:  No, this is a new one.  It’s huge!  I showed you a picture!

Elyse:  Right, but what did you name him?

RHG:  This is the one that we had to talk her into buying.

Carrie:  Like, remember?  It’s giant!

Elyse:  Yeah, yeah, but what did you name him?

RHG:  What’s its name?

Carrie:  Oh, wait, what is his name?  Wait, wait, maybe this is –

RHG and Sarah:  Uh-oh.

Carrie:  – yeah, this is Darcy!  I’m sorry, I got mixed up.  So I have Mr. Bingley, ‘cause he looks really sweet and friendly.  I have Colonel Brandon is the small one, because he looks really sad, and I have – and, you know, Colonel Brandon’s kind of mopey; I love him and all, but he has kind of puppy eyes – and then Mr. Darcy looks really, like, big and scary, but he’s actually just a big sweetie-poo.  They all have –

Elyse:  I would just like to point out –

Carrie:  – and I think I’m leaving one out.  Am I leaving out one of my babies?  I don’t know.

Elyse:  – that I have a job where we talk about naming stuffed octopuses after Jane Austen heroes, and it’s completely legit, and I love my life so hard right now.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  And the reason that Otto is named Otto is that Otto is actually Otto from How to Walk Your Octopus [Walking Your Octopus] –

Elyse or RHG:  Yes!

Carrie:  – so I didn’t name Otto for an Austen heroine, ‘cause Otto already has a name, see.

Elyse:  I have Otto wallpaper on my computer at work.

Carrie:  Oh, oh, I know what I forgot!  I forgot Bubbles.  Lynda gave me a little octopus keychain that sits on the outside of, dangles on the outside of my purse.

Sarah:  And that’s Bubbles.

Carrie:  Bubbles, yeah.

Sarah:  Hmm.

Carrie:  Yeah!  Try to keep up; it’s Bubbles.  It has little bub-, little circle spots all over it, so, you know, Bubbles.

Sarah:  All right, that works.

Carrie:  There you go.  So, yeah, so I would say that, you know, like, the minimalist thing is, like, really soothing, or you could just suddenly start –

Sarah:  Collecting octopi.

Carrie:  – giant stuffed cephalopods.  Whatever works for you.

Sarah:  I think cephalopods are part of essentialism.  I mean, there might not be a, a chapter about how the author envisions the world embracing the essentialism of cephalopods, but I think there’s room.

Carrie:  Oh, I should write that book.  Maybe I’ll write that book, but it’ll be a short book.  It’ll be like, just buy a stuffed cephalopod.

RHG:  Just buy a fucking octopus, dude!

Carrie:  You’ll be so happy with an octopus.

RHG: [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah.

Elyse:  I, I think one of my 2016 highlights was us at RT in Vegas and, I mean, like, Chippendales in our hotel, we can go down to the strip –

Carrie:  Oh.

Elyse:  – Carrie and I decided we were really excited to stay in and watch this octopus documentary that was on?  And –

Sarah:  I’ve seen that documentary; it’s really good!

Elyse:  It, yeah!

Carrie:  Yes, and best bender buddy ever!  Yeah, ‘cause I was so sick at RT that every time I left the room, one of you guys would, like, corral me and, like –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – herd me back in like, like sheepdogs, and you’d be like, go lie down!  Go lie down!

Sarah:  Yeah, you didn’t know this, but we all had those little invisible earpieces with the see-through curl behind our ear –

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  – and we’re like, she’s out.

Carrie:  No, I could tell.

Sarah:  She’s out!  Octopus is out!

Carrie:  Yeah, there was, like, a motion detector.

Sarah:  Bubbles recon. This year –

RHG: I never want to go back to Vegas again.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Who – I can’t think of his name – who’s the celebrity, “celebrity” chef that was –

Sarah:  Guy Fieri.

RHG:   Guy –

Elyse:  Right.  We were afraid –

Sarah:  Guy Fieri is my shepherd.  I shall not want.

Elyse:  We were afraid to leave you alone.

Sarah:  He leadeth us to Flavortown!  How can you forget they leadeth us to Flavortown?

Elyse:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yea, though I walk through the valley of diarrhea, I shall fear no burritos.  Come on!

Carrie:  I just read the New, that the New York Times, I think it’s the New York Times, I’m sorry if it’s not –

Sarah:  Yes.

Carrie:   – food critic review of, of his restaurant in New York?

Sarah:  It was savage –

RHG:  It’s a thing of beauty.

Sarah:  – and it was written entirely in the second person, and I didn’t even notice it after a while.

Carrie:  Yeah, it’s all questions.  It’s just like, I, I’ve been to your restaurant, and I have questions.  Did you realize that your amazing crunchy pretzels are neither amazing nor crunchy?

RHG:  Barely pretzels.

Carrie:  Were you, have you eaten at this restaurant?  Like, it’s –

Sarah:  When he starts going off on the donkey sauce, I had to sit down.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I can’t remember if it was a Guy Fieri restaurant a Trump restaurant that a reviewer just wrote a review of, where he ordered a White Russian, and they just gave him a glass of milk and a vodka.

[Laughter]

RHG:  [Sighs]

Sarah:  Maybe Guy Fieri will save us in 2017.

Elyse:  He’ll – [laughs] –

Carrie:  I think he was-

Elyse:  – his bleached-blond hair flaming with vengeance.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  I, Sarah, I, I think he was the first horseman of the apocalypse.

Sarah:  He is the first horse-, and we, we, we ignored all of the signs, and now we’re here.

Carrie:  We ignored the signs, yeah.

RHG:  Mm.

Elyse:  Shit!  So, speaking of 2016 highlights, I went to see Rogue One last night.

Sarah:  And?

RHG:  Great!

Elyse:  Fucking-A, yeah!  I mean, like, it’s not perfect.  I notice that there is still a surprising lack of women and people of color in the background.  Like, the background is very white and male, which, it was surprising.

RHG:  Very, very male and –

Elyse:  Yeah.

RHG:  – very, very lack of women of color.

Sarah:  Yup.

RHG:  We’re still fucking this up, but I really do feel like –

Elyse:  But it was –

RHG:  – we’re –

Carrie:  It’s a huge –

RHG:  – slowly moving in better directions?

Sarah:  Was that optimism?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  That was –

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  Did you hear that, you guys?  That was optimism!

Elyse:  And, Sarah, I think that Rogue One does fall into the female rage category –

RHG:  Oh, yes.

Sarah:  Ohhh –

Elyse:  – a little, like, hugely.

Carrie:  Absolutely.

RHG:  Hugely.

Elyse:  Yeah.  I mean, at one point you’ve got, like, one, one woman who’s like, welp, going to take the Empire down.  Just, I have to –

RHG:  Let’s go fuck some shit up.

Elyse:  Let’s go fuck some shit up.

Sarah:  Earl Had To Die, Not Sorry Not Sorry?

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  Exactly.  So we were sitting in the movie theater last night, and we had, we went to one of those theaters where you have, like the reserved lounge seating?

RHG:  Those are the best.

Elyse:  Right?

Sarah:  Hell, yeah.

Elyse:  So it’s sold out, so it’s like Rich and I all snuggled up being gross, and then these two dudebros come and sit next to me, and they will not shut the fuck up –

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and the trailers are finally –

Sarah:  Tell me you brought a cowbell.  You brought a cowbell, didn’t you?  [Laughs]

Elyse:  So the trailers are, like, for Power Rangers and Valerian –

RHG:  Which I’m stupidly excited for, for no good reason whatsoever.  I can’t explain it, but now, I was, at first I was like, I don’t, I don’t want that, I don’t want that at all, and now I’m like, yes, I want that.

Sarah:  The Power Rangers movie?

RHG:  Yes!  I can’t wait.

Sarah:  Oh, hell, yeah!

Elyse:  So anyway, it’s all these sci-fi movies that are coming out, and this, this fucking dudebro is like, ugh, are they turning all of science fiction into movies now?  And I was like, let me tell you about some feminist science fiction that ain’t being turned into movies, and Rich is like, nope, nope, we’re switching seats.  Let’s, scooch over here.  Move, you move over.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  And I’m like, I’m like, I ain’t afraid of him!  He’s like, no, I’m not, not worried about you.  Not worried about you at all.  You go –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – you go sit over here, honey.  So –

Sarah:  Sorry, dude.  Rich did a public service.

RHG:  Yeah, you can’t record a podcast from prison.

Elyse:  You probably can.

Carrie:  You probably –

Elyse:  I mean, like, the audio would be shitty, but you could do it.

Carrie:  If it’s, if it’s minimum security prison you probably can, but of course, if she actually killed the dude, then, you know.

RHG:  She would not be in minimum security.

Carrie:  No, no, clearly.

RHG:  She’d still be in lockup.  She would not –

Carrie:  Yeah.

RHG:  – they would not let her use her phone call for this.

Carrie:  I, I do not like to watch scary movies, but for some reason, like, this year, I watched, like, multiple scary movies, and there was some really high quality celebration of female rage in scary movies, and I, I’ve discovered that I really like, the only time I like scary movies is when there’s, you know, the, the girl, the girl, she’s, like, the final girl or whatever, right, and she goes through a lot of the movie kind of in this sort of pant-wetting state of terror, right?  She may be very active, she might be a great fighter, but she’s going from a place of, like, extreme fear, and then at some point in the movie, something switches in her head, and now she’s pissed, and all her other actions are now motivated by just absolute rage.  She just cannot believe she’s in this position, and she’s going to just burn this shit down, and there was some, there was some good quality female rage.  Amanda and I were not in accord about 10 Cloverfield Lane, but I thought that 10 Cloverfield Lane as a, as a, like, analogy of surviving abuse mentally and all the techniques that the, the protagonist used to survive her situation was really, really good, and I really liked it that, like, she didn’t switch over from fear to rage until the ver-, towards the very end of the movie, and when she does it’s like, ooh!  It was, like, really exciting.

Sarah:  One of my older son’s friends, “friends,” he came home all pissed off this week because one of his friends allegedly spoiled the movie for him.  He went to a birthday party yesterday where they all saw the movie.  We got a recliner theater less than a, a mile from our home, and we really like that we live here now – [laughs] – and we got a really nice recliner theater –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – with a liquor license and everything.

[Chorus of agreement]

Sarah:  And I love that the bar is called MacGuffins.  Every time I see that, it makes me happy.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  So his friend spoils the movie, and he comes home from school and he’s like, I’m so mad.  This kid spoiled the whole ending.  He told me, you know, here’s, here’s what he told me, and I was like, oh, that really stinks!  So then I start reading reviews, and I read the ending, because I spoil everything.  If I’m going to pay fourteen dollars for it and I’m worried that my kids might get upset and I’m going to have to take care of them afterward, I will spoil that shit.  It’s my version of prescreening.  So I realize that what his friend told him was wrong, and so I’m like, okay, dude, I’m not going to spoil it for you, ‘cause I’m not a complete ass, but what your friend told you is not what happens.  He’s like, oh, okay, good.  Oh, I was really worried.  And I’m like, okay.  I think you should prepare yourself, though.  He’s like, Mom, the next one’s called A New Hope.  There’s going to be no hope in this one.

RHG:  Smart kid.  That’s very smart.

Sarah:  And I was like, oh.  Can I just tell you the conversation that I had with him that I’m completely kvelling about, even though it has nothing to do with romance?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  I was listening to Switched on Pop while I was cooking dinner yesterday, and they had a whole episode about “White Christmas”, and as you probably know, all of the mainstay Christmas songs were written by Jews.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  And so there’s this whole breakdown of “White Christmas”, why it is so popular, why it’s the most popular of all of them, why it gets covered so much, what are the elements of it that make it so, work so well?  And he’s listening to it while he’s, you know, getting a snack, and I’m like, this is a really cool podcast; you might like this one.  ‘Cause he’s, he’s playing trombone and very into music now, and he was like, yeah, but that’s a Christmas song.  And I’m like, yeah, but you know what, dude?  All of the Christmas songs were written by Jews, and he looks at me really quietly, and he’s like, Mom, is that irony?  I was like –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – yes!  Yes, it is irony!  Yes!  Like, you know that – Carrie, have you ever had those parenting moments where you’re just like, fuck, I did it right!  I did it right!

Carrie:  Oh, yeah!

Sarah:  This one, I nailed it!  I nailed the landing on that one.  I am so proud!  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Woo-hoo!

Sarah:  Yeah, so he knows what irony is, because Jews wrote all the Christmas songs, and I’m super, stupid proud.

Elyse:  Okay.

RHG:  Yay!

Sarah:  Yeah, I know.

RHG:  Good job.

Sarah:  I know!

RHG:  All right.  So, should we move onto predictions, or did, Amanda, did you talk about 2016?

Amanda:  Yes.

RHG:  Okay, sorry.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yes, it is time for 2017 –

RHG:  Sorry, I’m just checking.

Sarah:  All right, predictions for next year, specifically as pertains to romance, but you know, I’m pretty flexible.  You can talk about whatever the hell you want.  Amanda, you want to go first?

Amanda:  Sure!  This is, I guess, like, more of a, a personal prediction that I would like to see.  I don’t really know if there are current trends that are pointing to this?  But I would really like to see, like, a, a resurgence of paranormal romance, but –

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Amanda:  – do, do some new things with it.  Like, I’m, I’m past, you know, the vampires and, and stuff like that, and I just bought Moonshadow by Thea Harrison.  It came out Tuesday, the thirteenth of December, whenever this airs, for anyone who’s curious.  And so that has, like, fairies and, like, the heroine is, like, a, a witch consultant for the LAPD –

RHG:  Love it.

Amanda:  – so, so I’m very excited to start reading it.  It’s going to be my plane reading, I think.  So I want to see kind of new spins on paranormal romance, or just paranormal romance characters in a modern world that makes sense?

Sarah:  Oh, I totally agree.

Amanda:  So that’s what I would like to see; that’s what I’m hoping for.  That’s what I’m keeping my eyes out for for next year.

Sarah:  I think that that ties together three things that I really want as well.  I want more stories set on groups of women who are genuine and actual functional friends, like, not just heroine bait, but I actually want groups of women who are the center of the, of the series or the groups of stories.  I would love them to be women of some degree of power and also Earl Had To Die rage without remorse, Not Sorry Not Sorry, so if you have these groups of women who have paranormal or supernatural powers, I am all over it.  This is why I was like, ooh, witches!  Witches is good!  Now I want all of the powers.

RHG:  I think that in addition to the flat-out rage, I think we’re going to see a lot of light, fluffy, pure, like, look, here is a lovely, happy world.  Nothing of consequence happens.  You can ignore things for, like, an hour and a half.  Here you go.

Sarah:  So, like a, like a safe, protected worldbuilding.

RHG:  Yes, yes.  Very, minimal angst, just here you go.  This is a cupcake of a book.

Sarah:  I have a series for you.

Carrie:  Yes?

Sarah:  There’s a, a mystery series that I started listening to, but the narrator didn’t work for me, and I haven’t picked up the book, but the, it’s a, it’s a cozy mystery series set on a magic bookshop.  It has a literal, actual, alive tree growing through it, and the books magically find the people who need them.  Like, they just sort of fly around and bop you in, in the leg, and then the books also predict your future to a certain degree.

RHG:  Huh.

Sarah:  It seems very cozy.  I mean, there’s a tree growing in the middle of the store.  Already –

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  – I’m like, okay, I’m just going to suspend my reality way over here.  Okay.  Hanging that on a high shelf.  What else do you want, RedHeadedGirl?

RHG:  Oh, I want –

Sarah:  Other than more Knickerbockers.

RHG:  I want more Knickerbockers.  I mean, I, I always want more historicals in different settings than just Regency.  We had a Boston meet-up last night, and one of the topics – yesterday afternoon – and one of the topics that came up was, why is Regency such a thing?  And I went into the, well, you start with Jane Austen, and you go from Jane Austen to Georgette Heyer, and then you get into the world is already built for you, so nobody has to spend time worldbuilding –

Sarah:  Yep.

RHG:  – so, like, I get why Regency is a thing.  I would also like other things to also be a thing.  I’m good with that.

Sarah:  I heard an interesting theory from an author named Adele Walsh about that, about why Regency is so popular, and –

RHG:  Mm-hmm?

Sarah:  – in the Regency, and, though this is true in other eras, it was particularly true in the Regency, courtship had to take place in public –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and that was part of the fascination, where you have this tension where people want to be alone, but they’re not allowed to be alone, and then people are contriving to get people alone without being caught doing so.

RHG:  Yeah.

Carrie:  Another thing about Regency, I think, is that in Regency, the mores for a single young woman were really, really tight, but for everybody else they were super loose compared to, like, the Victorian, and I think that has something to do also with why, when people were looking for, like, other historical periods to write about, we had this little flurry of, like, 1920s romances?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Yep, same thing.

Carrie:  And, you know, you get kind of that swing, you know, between, you know, things are locked down, and then things are really loose, and then things are locked down, and then things are really loose, but they’re not so loose that you don’t have, you know, you have to –

RHG:  There’s no tension.

Sarah:  Right.

Carrie:  – people, right.  There’re still sanctions.  You have that tension, but you have more, you know, freedom to – it’s a lot easier to have furtive sex if you’re wearing loose clothes that don’t involve underwear than if you’re wearing fourteen layers of, of corset and petticoat and bustle and whatever, you know?

RHG:  Well, it requires you to get [sings] creative.

Carrie:  [Sings] Creative!

RHG:  I’m just saying.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

RHG:  Yeah.

Carrie:  I think there’s a lot of room for injury with getting creative with a hoopskirt, though.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  See, I wouldn’t have been hooking up with anybody.  I would’ve had, like, snacks and a couple of books stored in there.  Like, when I was in graduate school, I knew which professors would attend graduation in their gowns and have paperbacks and books just hung in their sleeves so that they’d have something to read.

RHG:  Yeah, that was the great thing about my Master’s robe was it had the hanging pocket?

Sarah:  Right?

RHG:  And I, I had a – [laughs] – at the time, I had a Palm Pilot.

Sarah:  Oh-ho-ho, you could, you could put a whole encyclopedia in that pocket.  Hoo!

RHG:  Yep.

Carrie:  Well, I, I am not a champion of the Confederacy, but I must tip my hat, however grudgingly, to the women in the Confederacy who used to smuggle weapons in their hoopskirts.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  And they just walked demurely through town with, like, guns and swords tied to their hoops under their skirts.

Sarah:  Many, many a woman has walked and thought, please, God, don’t let me sneeze, please, God, don’t let me sneeze.  These women did it for a whole other set of reasons.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Carrie and I are like, yeah, we know that story.

Carrie:  Yeah, we do. 

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Stupid child birthing.  Anyway.

RHG:  Anyway, so, more, more historical.  I would like to see happy diverse romances written by diverse authors.

Sarah:  The devil you say!

RHG:  I know.  I know I’m asking for a lot, but I want to see that.  And I think that we’ll be seeing certainly more diverse stuff, but it will be more independently published.

Sarah:  I also think in 2017 that the RWA is going to continue to do some rad-ass shit, and it is so impressive what they’ve accomplished already.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, they, the, the RWA held Pocket responsible for the comments that they made in 2015 about how they don’t publish diverse romance, that’s Atria’s job, except Atria doesn’t publish romance?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  It’s been impressive what they have advocated for and openly made some massive shifts in how the organization is perceived, but I also know we have a lot of authors who listen, and I, I have to, I have to say, I’m so impressed and amazed at what they’ve accomplished in a couple of years.

Carrie:  Sarah, I have to tell you why I just snorted and laughed really loudly right in the middle of you saying something incredibly intellectual.

Sarah:  [Snorts]

Carrie:  My –

Sarah:  I’m not an intellectual.

Carrie:  – sweet old cat and kitten who was, like, so easy became like a teenager kitten now, and while we’re talking, the kitten has jumped up on the desk and decided to systembolic – bleah! – systematically demolish my bulletin board, which I really don’t appreciate, and then she, in the proc- – sorry, he – in the process of trying to demolish my bulletin board started to fall down behind the desk –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – and now my other cat, Magic, is, is, is beating her up, and I should probably intervene, but I’m like, no, really, go ahead.

Elyse:  That’s what you get, yeah.

Carrie:  You know, that’s, that’s what you get.  And the space between my desk and the wall is about two inches, and I’m pretty surprised that much cat butt fit down there, but I’m like, I’m, I’m not moving furniture to get you out.  You will die, and I will laugh and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – of course, the cat knows that I’m bluffing and doesn’t care.  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s, it, it can’t be a podcast without cat shenanigans.

Carrie:  Cat shenanigans.

Sarah:  Lot of shenanigans.

Carrie:  I think that we should have a betting pool on whether I adopt another pet in 2017, and –

Sarah:  I’m not taking that bet!

Elyse:  No.

Carrie:  – I’m going to fervently hope that the answer is hell, no, but I think we all know that the odds are not in my favor.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I know that we are geographically very far apart, but I hope that you can feel my skepticism right now.

Carrie:  Yes, in waves.

Sarah:  Yeah.  [Laughs] Yes.

Carrie:  And, and I, I can feel RedHeadedGirl’s also.  I’m not sure about Amanda and Elyse.  They’re, they’re, they seem kind of reticent about this.

Elyse:  Yeah, I’m definitely on the you’re-getting-another-animal bandwagon.

Carrie:  Where?  How, where would I put it?

RHG:  It doesn’t matter.

Elyse:  I don’t know!

Sarah:  You just found out that –

RHG:  That’s not our problem!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I mean, you just found out that cats fit in the two, two inches behind your desk and the wall.

RHG:  Yeah, exactly.

Sarah:  I mean, you’ve got plenty of space then; you’re good.  I mean, I used to have four cats and two dogs.  The only problem is, there’s a lot of poop to clean up.

Carrie:  Yeah, well, also, the cat –

Sarah:  And then there’s –

Together:  – hair.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, the hair.

Carrie:  I’ve, I’ve started vacuuming more times a week, and it’s, it’s pretty terrifying.  And that’s not counting the cats that I, like, you know, smuggle to safety now that I’m a cat smuggler.

Elyse:  You’re like the Underground Railroad –

RHG:  Okay, Carrie, Carrie, Carrie –

Carrie:  Ha. 

RHG:  Carrie.  Carrie.

Carrie:  Yes.

RHG:  Carrie.

Carrie:  WHAT?

RHG:  You don’t admit these things on air in public!

Carrie:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Carrie.  Have I told you nothing?

Sarah:  So tell me again about how much gravel I need to bury a body?

RHG:  No, you don’t need just gravel; you need broken glass and lye, too.

Sarah:  That’s too much trouble.

Carrie:  Right.

RHG:  I swear to God, you guys never listen to me.

Sarah:  We do!  We just assume that if there’re problems you’ll be like, all right, I’m coming.  Just, just stand there for five minutes.

Carrie:  Yeah, exactly. 

RHG:  I mean, I will, but it would be nice if you could get started before I get there.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Well, okay.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Whatever you – I’ll, I’ll work on the broken glass.  We drink a lot of wine.  [Laughs]

Carrie:  All right.  I’m sorry about that digression, but, like, all my belongings were, like, falling on the floor, including two-thirds of an actual kitten, and also she keeps chewing on my laptop, and I’m getting kind of pissed about it.

Elyse:  It’s fine.

Sarah:  I’m kind of sad there’s no auditory evidence of this.  Usually I hear, like, you know, thunk!  [Assorted falling sound effects]

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I, for some reason I’ve been, like, sneezing, and my eyes have been itching a lot, and I don’t know if I’m getting a cold, but I was all paranoid.  Like, what if I’m suddenly allergic to Dewey?  So I had to do a science earlier today where basically I just rubbed my face in his belly –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and the look he gave me –

Sarah:  What the fuck are you doing?

Elyse:  The look, I mean, it was just, it was like, I am, I’m a hairsbreadth away from killing you, Mother, and I want you to know that I’m holding back.

Sarah:  [Laughs] You are alive through my grace.

Carrie:  Oh, I have that.  I, I wake up, and they’re, like, on my face.  And, and Linden, Linden did the, the test to see what she was allergic to – my daughter – and she tested allergic to cats, and she somehow talked me into getting a new kitten, like, a week after she tested positive as allergic to cats.

Sarah:  Oh, she’s related to you, isn’t she?

Carrie:  I know!  It’s like, call CPS on me now, people.  Like, that’s the kind of parent that I am.  And she’s like, I don’t care.  It’s a price she’s willing to pay, and I’m like, okay, well, it’s not a fatal allergy, so if you’re okay with red, itchy eyes, I guess so am I.

Elyse:  Aren’t most people allergic to cats, though?  I thought that was, like, an incredibly common – ?

Carrie:  It’s probably pretty common, but the other thing about having them, you know, I mean, when a cat actually sleeps on your face –

Sarah:  That’ll bring up your immunity.

Carrie:  – you don’t have to be technically allergic to, you know –

Elyse:  We’ll make you allergic.

Carrie:  – all the dust and – okay, now I’m going to be gross – like, just, yeah.  I love you, babies!  They’re looking at me like, what?  What?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  So I’m really excited for this book coming out in February of 2017 called Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones.  I think –

Amanda:  Ooh!

Elyse:  – one of you –

Amanda:  That’s going to be my February cocktail book!

Elyse:  Yes, ‘cause it’s like a romance-y, YA-based, it sounds like it’s based very heavily on Labyrinth?

Amanda:  Mm-hmm!

RHG:  Hmm.

Elyse:  But then I remembered that David Bowie died, and fuck you, 2016!

RHG:  That was the beginning of it.

Elyse:  Fuck you.

Sarah:  Was he first, or was –

RHG:  He was first.

Sarah:  Wasn’t –

RHG:  He was first; Alan Rickman was a week later.

Sarah:  Yeah, you, you’ve got to start to worry when people of that caliber start checking out.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  That’s just not good.  Elyse, you mentioned, when we were talking about this on Slack –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – that you were looking forward to the potential decline of the billionaire hero in romance.

Elyse:  So, I mean, I think, you and I have talked about this, that the billionaire hero exists kind of beyond the actual billionaire hero.  There’re dukes and tycoons and sheikhs and –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, there’s a lot of coded wealth status in every subgenre.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Right.

RHG:  Which, I mean, that makes sense because then –

Sarah:  Hey.

RHG:  – if you don’t have to worry about money –

Sarah:  Then you can worry about other things.

RHG:  You can worry, you can spend your time worrying about your sexytimes.

Elyse:  Right.

RHG:  And your pants feelings.

Elyse:  But I think that the billionaire hero is going to kind of go away.  I mean, I think it was starting to die down just because it was leaving the zeitgeist a little bit.  It’s been a while since 50 Shades of Grey, I think, helped push that over the edge.  But yeah, I think that the whole – I’m just, you know, going to be honest – the whole, I can grab them by their pussy, and they’ll let me ‘cause I’m rich, that really, that, that’s going to change kind of how we feel about the billionaire Dom hero, right?  It’s kind of hard to suspend your disbelief when you’re like, oh, yeah, that comment was made.  Mm.

Somebody:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Did it change your feelings about the billionaire?

Elyse:  I wasn’t crazy about the billionaire to begin with, so I don’t think so?  I mean, I still read books about dominant hero, heroes, but I’m definitely less interested in that than I was probably two years ago.

Sarah:  It has never really been my thing, partially because I, I, I worked for a, an actual billionaire, and so it sort of, it, he was a perfectly nice human being, I have no problems with him at all, but the reality is something that I’m so well versed in that I can’t get on board with the fantasy version, because, Elyse, it would be like you reading a romance set in the world of transportation.  Like, no, no –

Elyse:  No, no such thing.

Sarah:  – no.

Elyse:  There’s no such thing.

Sarah:  That’s not –

RHG:  Yeah, there, there’s no romance in transportation.  What are you talking about?

Elyse:  Of course there’s no –

Sarah:  There should be!  There should be –

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  – romance in transportation.

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  Yes.

Elyse:  Nope.

Sarah:  Oh, come on!

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  Didn’t somebody have to call Cheese Man?

RHG:  No one did call Cheese Man, apparently.

Elyse:  No, nobody called Cheese Man.  I don’t –

RHG:  I can’t believe you never actually found a, the answer to that mystery, because, like, it seems very important to know if somebody called Cheese Man or not.

Elyse:  Podcast listeners – yeah, the Cheese Man thing was, I was on the phone, and someone shouted on the other end of the line, y’all called Cheese Man?  And it’s like, I don’t even ask anymore.  I have a book to recommend to Amanda.

Amanda:  Ooh!

Elyse:  So, it comes out early January of 2017.  I just finished reading Sarina Bowen’s Hard Hitter, and it’s a hockey romance.  I –

Amanda:  I read it.  Isn’t it great?

Elyse:  Oh, my fucking God.

Amanda:  I read it for BookPage, and it’s one of, it’s, right now, it’s probably in the standing for one of my favorite romances of 2017.

Elyse:  So, so let me just bullet point for the Bitchery why this book is so good.  So –

Amanda:  You’re going to want to buy it.

Elyse:  You’re going to want to buy it.  Hockey professional, whatever, NHL, team captain hero.  The heroine is the massage therapist/yoga instructor for the team.  Her ex, she just got out of a bad relationship.  Her ex was, like, very emotionally and psychologically abusive, and then one day he finally snapped and became physically abusive, and that’s when she drew the line, although she realizes, like, hey, this guy was using me for eight fucking years.  And she breaks up with him, and he’s not handling it well, so he’s stalking her, and at first I thought, fuck, this book is going to be about, I’ve got an abusive ex who’s stalking me, so then I fall in love with this big, tough hockey guy and he beats the shit out of my ex, and it’s going to be a toxic masculinity fixes toxic masculinity.  No.  Big, tough hockey hero’s like, let me help you with the proper legal and correct channels to solve this problem, not by finding your ex and breaking his legs, which, while satisfying, would not be a, like, viable solution.  And then the heroine’s whole reason for not wanting to be in a relationship with this guy is, I just got out of a really shitty, toxic relationship, and I think I need time to figure some shit out.  And that’s such, like, a valid reason to not be with somebody, you know?

Amanda:  And it’s a, it’s a great slow burn romance, too, I think, and then, also, the hero doesn’t like to be touched at all.  I think, like, he grew up in, like, a foster situation that wasn’t very good, so he doesn’t like to be touched, but he’s a veteran hockey player, so he’s a little older than his teammates.  He’s in his, I think, early thirties, but, like, the sport is taking a toll on his body, so he needs to go see the massage therapist, and, like, the scenes where she’s trying to, like, massage out his muscles, and he’s just tense and not really having it – oh, my God, it’s such a good book.  It’s good.

Elyse:  And the thing I really, there were two things that I really loved:  one is that he completely respects her boundaries.  Like, there’s no, when she’s like, I really don’t want a relationship with you beyond this, he’s like, well, that sucks ‘cause I really like you, but okay, I will respect that.  And then the other thing is:  there’re female friendships in this book!  Like, women who hang out with each other and love each other and take good care of each other, because that is a thing in the real world.  It was so good.

Amanda:  It was good.  Yeah.

Elyse:  And I know nothing about sports-ing, and I loved it.

Amanda:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Carrie?

Carrie:  Yeah, I got nothing.  I was like, what are my predictions?  And I’m like, I, yeah, um.  I mean, everybody’s predictions sound good.  I think we’ll probably have a lot of, we’ll have these really, you know, super dark books and books where women are kicking ass and full of rage, and we’ll have, like, the super comforting books, but I’ve got to say, like, this year has been so bizarre that I’m like, I can never predict anything ever again.

RHG:  Hmm.

Carrie:  I –

Elyse:  It’s, it’s going to be all rage and shifter.

Carrie:  I have no idea.  I have no idea what’s going to happen this year with, like, anything, so, yeah.  I, sorry that I cop out, but I’m like – [laughs] – I don’t know!  You know, I mean, I know what I would love.  What I would love is to have, you know, more and more matter-of-factly diverse books and more diverse people in publishing and all these great things, and I would love for it just not to be something that has to be explained over and over and over again, but, you know, the fact that I want that, particularly the latter, I think we’re, you know, a long way away from the point where we can just be matter-of-fact about it.

Elyse:  I think –

Carrie:  To just be like, okay, so, like, all the main characters in Rogue One are people of color, except for one, and she’s a white woman, and then not have to spend an entire year trying to, like, explain to people why that doesn’t, you know, why that’s not awful.  I just, I – but, you know, I think that’s not going to go away anytime soon.

Elyse:  I think one thing that I’ve noticed, at least for books coming out in early 2017, is that a lot of authors who write romantic suspense, at least the, the books themselves, like, the cover art, is very reflective of the more psychological thriller, where it’s not the cop with no shirt on for confusing reasons holding a gun.  It’s a lot more of, like, The Girl on the Train type cover, and I think we’re going to start seeing romantic suspense kind of trickle into that psychological thriller genre, and I also think that the romantic suspense is going to get a lot darker.  There’s been a, you know, big resurgence in people liking true crime, I think due to a lot of true crime podcasts, so I think we’re going to see more true crime books, and I think that romantic suspense is going to get even more gritty than it is right now.

Sarah:  Do you think we’ll start seeing romantic suspense that’s, like, based on a true unsolved case?

Elyse:  I think so.  I think we’re going to go, we’re, what I’m seeing is less of the hero as the protector where the heroine has a stalker or a serial killer, some other crazy shit, and he’s the FBI agent, police officer, Walker, Texas Ranger dude who protects her, and more where the heroine is actually active in solving some kind of investigation, so there’s definitely more of a mystery element to it and less of a damsel-in-distress element to it.

Sarah:  So, Miss Fisher.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  I would totally read more romances that are like Miss Fisher.  Although I would like Miss Fisher to have some more romance, although I understand that’s not her character, and I accept that about her.

Elyse:  That’s what fanfiction is for.

RHG:  No, just let her, let her fuck everybody she wants.

Sarah:  Exactly.

RHG:  Everybody.  Everybody!

Carrie:  I may be oversharing, but I do want an entire episode of Miss Fisher that’s nothing but her and Jack having sex

Elyse:  I don’t think that’s oversharing; I think that’s –

Amanda:  That’s not oversharing!

Carrie:  That’s my dream.  I’m pretty sure everybody feels that way.  That would just be the entire –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Carrie:  Maybe it should be a two-hour special.

Sarah:  I would like extended footage of Nathan Page demonstrating how he does repressed desire with just his cheekbones and that muscle that runs from your temple to your jaw.

Elyse:  I feel like they give him, like, Cialis or something and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – he just has to have a boner all day.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Yeah, and I love the juxtaposition of, of, of Phryne and then Dot, who is an extremely traditional path to romance character, and (a) they both accept and support each other without a problem, which is awesome, but you have the very traditional route to courtship and marriage with Dot, and then you have Phryne, who’s like, hmm, I like him and him and him.  So, good for me!  I love that.

All right, who haven’t we heard from in terms of predictions?

RHG:  I think we heard from everybody.

Sarah:  Nice!  Okay.

RHG:  Orville, Orville!  What do you think?

Sarah:  Orville thinks that if I unplug the heated cat bed, he will leave.  That’s what he thinks.  He likes to –

RHG:  I think that’s a pretty reasonable prediction.

Amanda:  He can’t come to my house.

Elyse:  I’m taking off the, I’m taking off in January.  We were going to go on a cruise, but after the election I decided to postpone that, ‘cause I didn’t know if the world was going to end?  And I don’t know if we have –

Sarah:  If you’re going to, if the world’s going to end, though, on a cruise ship is not a place for, is not a bad place for it to go.

Elyse:  Well, true.

RHG:  Exactly!  Besides, if you postpone it and then world ends, then you’ll be like, I didn’t get to go on a cruise.

Elyse:  Let me rephrase that:  so, transportation feels dips in the economy before most other people do, and right now things are at – this was before the election too – things are pretty stagnant, which makes me think we’re about to head into another recession, or at least a little one –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – so I’m kind of like, eh, maybe I just put that money in the bank.  But I’m still taking the time off, and I’m not going to get out of bed, and I’m just going to read for seven days, and I’m totally going to binge-read all of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad mysteries.  I’ve already read some of them, but I’m going to read all of them and never sleep again.

Sarah:  Nice!  If I even read, like, five pages of the books you read, I would never sleep again, so you’re going to – whoo!

Elyse:  Well, that’s why, that’s why I’m in your life, because when –

Sarah:  It’s true.

Elyse:  – when it’s Tuesday editing time, I get messages from Sarah on Slack that say, okay, what happened at the end?

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  Did she kill him?  Where was the kid?  Who was the murderer?

Sarah:  I just need to know how it ends.  If there’s a shocking twist, I don’t need to pay fifteen dollars to see it in the theater or spend hours knowing I’m not going to sleep.  I just want to know what happened.

Carrie:  I have some kind of inability to differentiate belief between fiction and nonfiction in a way and, not, like, a full-on inability.  I understand the difference, but there’s definitely part of my brain that totally does not understand the difference, so when Elyse brings up these books or, like, if I see a trailer for a scary movie, I have – I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to read it, but I have to know, like, is everybody okay, right, and then if they’re not okay, then I have to, like, kind of rewrite the movie in my head until it is okay, and then I’m all right.

Sarah:  My brain is like your brain.

Elyse:  I feel like all of the murder I read about better prepares me for any, like, future interaction I might have with a serial killer.

Sarah:  Oh, dear God.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Like, I’m armed with knowledge.  Like, according – there’s this really fascinating series right now on A&E called The Killing Season, which is about – Sarah probably knows about this –

Amanda:  It’s so good!

Elyse:  – the Long Island serial killer.  Oh, my God, is it good.

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Amanda: YES.

Carrie:  I can’t watch that!  Oh, my Goooood!

Elyse:  Anyway, so what they told, they – and I don’t know if the statistic is even remotely true, but they talked a lot about –

Amanda:  I believe it.

Elyse:  – the fact that human trafficking happens a lot at truck stops, which is absolutely true, and that they think that there are, like, on average, two hundred and fifty trucker/serial killers active in the United States at all times, so now at work, every time one of the guys comes in – or ladies; we have female truck drivers – I look at ‘em, and I’m like, you kill people?  You’ve got to tell me.  Be honest.  Statistically, one of you fuckers is a serial killer.  Which one?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Right, yeah.

Sarah:  That’s reassuring.

RHG:  Don’t ask that!  Oh, my God, Elyse!  I feel like you don’t have a lot of self-preservation instincts.

Elyse:  I feel like just being aggressive on the forefront puts them off their game.

RHG:  Mm.

Sarah:  She’s got a cowbell.  No one’s fucking with Elyse with that cowbell.  She will fuck you up.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Elyse:  And then –

RHG:  You know how many ways you can kill a person with a cowbell?

Elyse:  I think –

RHG:  I can think of eight right now.

Elyse:  We are not –

Sarah:  You, you just told us not to talk about his while we’re recording, and now you’re asking these questions?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  These aren’t high quality cowbells, though.

RHG:  One…. Okay, so maybe seven.

Elyse:  Right, like, I feel like the metal would bend.

RHG:  You’re not paying attention.

Elyse:  And I also have been listening to My Favorite Murder a lot, which I know Amanda listens to too, and –

Amanda:   I’m going to the show; I got tickets.

Elyse:  [Gasps] Their, their motto is Fuck Politeness; not like we should all be mean to each other but like when you have that instinct where –

Amanda:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – something’s wrong here.  Maybe I, you know, this guy’s at my door.  I don’t really want to answer the door, but I don’t want to be – it’s like, no.  Fuck Politeness; you can apologize later.  Go with your gut.

Carrie:  Yeah.  Well, I think, like, for me, when I do watch a scary movie, that’s why I like that moment where a, a, a character switches from a place of fear to a place of anger, because for me, that’s something, with a lot of things that are not necessarily lethal, just, like, people taking advantage of me, that’s so difficult for me to switch over from I’m going to be nice to no, really, I’m, I’m drawing a line here, and, and it’s like practice.  It’s not practice in the specific sense; I don’t really think that, like the people in The Descent, I’m going to be chased through a cave by creepy monsters, which is partly because I’ll never go in a cave, but, you know, I mean, we all are kind of groomed to be nice –

Elyse:  Yes.

Carrie:  – and I think there’s a, you know, being kind is great, but being nice is not always great.

Sarah:  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m –

Elyse:  Twenties –

RHG:  Good is different than nice.

Elyse:  Yep.

Sarah:  Nice, I believe, is, is based in toxicity.

Elyse:  It is.

Sarah:  Because nice, nice isn’t –

Elyse:  It absolutely is.

Sarah:  – nice isn’t, nice isn’t about your behavior; it’s about the expectation of your behavior.  It’s actually a, a toxic limiting, so, yeah, fuck nice.

RHG:  Yeah.  Remember, remember what Into the Woods said:  Nice is different than good.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  The counterfactual is that good is different than nice.

Elyse:  Guess what else I discovered in 2016.

Carrie:  What?

Elyse:  I, I fucking love Kraken dark spiced rum.

RHG:  [Laughs] That’s some good shit.

Elyse:  Oh, my God, yeah.  I, I drank a lot of it while –

Carrie:  You’ll bring the empty bottle to RT, right?  ‘Cause I don’t want to drink it, but oh, my God, the bottle is so pretty, I have to have it.

Elyse:  Yeah, for sure!  I was drinking a lot of it while I was taking podcast notes in prep for today, and like, I’m reading my notes now, and they get increasingly less sensible –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – but my favorite is, I just have an asterisk next to 2016, the year Elyse read a lot of scary shit.  No more fucks to give.  Drops mic.  Like, that’s the notes that I take.

Sarah:  That’s it, that’s it!  Fuck this shit –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – I’m out.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this episode, and if you are thinking, hold up, you said something about sweet, clean bears and a quiz!  Oh, yes.  Oh, yes, I did, and the quiz is pretty epic, so if you return to hang out with us on January the 6th, I will have part two of Smart Bitches Assemble as we look ahead, ask for things that we want – because hey, our wish list is anyone’s wish list, right?  It’s just as likely to happen as whatever you’d like to read next – and then there’s a quiz, and it’s banana-pants.  I hope you like it.  So I hope you come back on the 6th.

I want to thank Amanda and Elyse and RedHeadedGirl and Carrie for hanging out with me, but also for making the site so much fun for everybody.  It wouldn’t be as awesome as it is without them.

And I also want to thank this month’s sponsor, Elizabeth Hoyt, who sponsored all of the podcasts in December.  Thank you!  I’m going to tell you all about this series, ‘cause if you haven’t been listening to the intro and outro, you should listen to this right now, because you want to read this book.  ‘Kay?  All right.  Pay attention, because this podcast, for this month, was sponsored by Elizabeth Hoyt, the New York Times bestselling author of the Maiden Lane series.  Her new book, Duke of Pleasure, features a character named Alf, the new Ghost of St. Giles, who’s a female swashbuckling vigilante.  Also, I had to practice saying that, like, five times before I got it right.  Hugh Fitzroy, the Duke of Kyle, is a stern ex-soldier tasked with bringing down an evil group of aristocrats, and he needs Alf’s help.  This is a book, a romance, that has everything you like:  sword fighting, sexytimes, pants feelings, danger, passion, intrigue, and a heroine who totally kicks ass.  You can trust Smart Bitches Elyse, Smart Bitches reviewer Elyse if you are new to the series, because she will tell you the following things:  you don’t have to read the books in order, but you’re going to want to because they’re that much fun, so if you haven’t read them, you might as well.  Your credit card will totally hate her, but you will not.  Start binge-reading today!  Right now, in fact.  Right this minute.  As soon as you’re done?  Binge-reading!  It’s an awesome thing to do.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is Adeste Fiddles.  This particular song is “Ding Dong Merrily On High,” performed by Deviations Project.  Now, if you’re curious, “Ding Dong Merrily On High” is a traditional holiday carol, but originally it was a dance tune from the 1500s.  When the lyrics were added in the 1920s, that’s when the song became a Christmas carol.  The lyrics were written by George Ratcliffe Woodward, who wrote several books full of carols, including the one this song first appeared in, which was called The Cambridge Carol-Book:  Being Fifty-two Songs for Christmas, Easter, and Other Seasons.  Cam-bridge, Came-bridge, probably said that wrong.  Either way, this version is on Adeste Fiddles, my favorite holiday album, and you can find it on iTunes or Amazon or wherever your fine holiday music is sold.

You can find us in many places, including our podcast Patreon.  If you would like to support the show and keep it going full throttle into the new year, head over to patreon.com/SmartBitches.  For a pledge of as little as a dollar a month you can help me upgrade equipment and commission transcripts and do other rad things.  And if you are one of the most excellent patrons who support the show already, thank you, thank you, thank you.  You are collectively most excellent!

And in the meantime, on behalf of everyone here, including all of our collective pets, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a wonderful holiday weekend and a Happy New Year.  We will see you in 2017.

[merry music]