233. Nerdy Deep Dives and Adaptations for Reading with Learning Disabilities

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 233 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  With me today is a romance fan named Elizabeth.  She is a self-described avid reader, so we all know her, and she also has several learning disabilities.  We start the podcast by talking about podcasts because, you know, that’s not meta or anything.  We talk a little bit about taking deep nerdy dives into things that you love and about meeting Internet friends in real life.  Then Elizabeth talks about her experience with several learning disabilities, including dyslexia and dysgraphia.  We talk about how reading dialogue can be tricky when the characters’ conversations are written in dialect, how different brains read, and what accommodations were made for her in high school.  We also talk about how she has adapted technology for reading and enjoying romances.

There’s also a little bit of quiet commentary from Orville, who shows up in the middle of the podcast because he’s the sound engineer and was not getting enough attention.  I am also a little quiet on this recording, and I’ve done some work to try to correct it, but if it’s hard for you to hear me, I apologize.

This podcast is brought to you by Kensington Publishing, who’d like you to know about maverick cowboy, The Maverick Cowboy by Kate Pearce.  After a turbulent childhood, the Morgan brothers went their separate ways, leaving the family cattle ranch and their cowboy days far behind, but now, one by one, they’re being called back to California.  Have they been summoned to save the land or start a new legacy?  In the second book in the New York Times bestselling author Kate Pearce’s Morgan Ranch series, The Maverick Cowboy, Blue Morgan finds himself ready to come home, but after ten years in the Marines, all Blue wants to do is live peacefully.  Upon his arrival at Morgan Ranch, he discovers he may have a daughter he didn’t know existed.  Juggling reconnecting with his brothers and his new relationship with Maria, Blue doesn’t have room for an unplanned romance, but he can’t seem to shake the sparks between him and horse vet Jenna McDonald.  Morgan Ranch is always full of surprises.  The Maverick Cowboy by Kate Pearce is on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

I have compliments in this episode.  It is always a good episode when I’ve got compliments.  Are you ready for compliments?  I hope so.

To Stacey V:  If someone created an Internet meme about you, it would unquestionably go viral, and the resulting joyous traffic would bring about world peace and free pastries.

And to Cammy:  A conversation with you is like the best vacation – after a few minutes with you, people feel relaxed, inspired, and confident, with zero sunburn.

And if you are wondering what this is about, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.  If you are a fan or supporter of the show, you can contribute monthly as little as a dollar a month to help me commission transcripts, upgrade equipment, and, you know, become more gooder at the whole sound thing.  If you’ve had a look or if you are already a patron, thank you very, very much.  I very much appreciate it!

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater.  I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is, and I will have links to all of the books that we talk about, plus several resources that Elizabeth mentions, in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.  And if you are an iTunes user, we have an iTunes page at iTunes.com/DBSA where you can find most recent episodes, links to the books and some of the music that we have in the shows, and it’s very, very convenient ‘cause it’s all in one place.

And now without any further delay, on with the podcast!

[music]

Elizabeth Schoenthal:  My name is Elizabeth Schoenthal, and I am a, an avid reader and avid listener of the podcast.

Sarah:  Thank you!  Now –

Elizabeth:  Oh, my gosh, I love it so much!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, thank you!  I, I was pretty convinced for, like, the first year or two, like, eight total people were listening?  Maybe nine?  And now I come to find out that there’re, like, people all over the world who’re like, yes, it’s Friday!  Bitches!  Yes!  So –

Elizabeth:  Yeah, absolutely.  I started listening, God, maybe, like, three or four years ago, and, like, when I found it I was like, this is, this is, these are my people!  This is my thing!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  And I, and I went back and, and I’ve listened to every single episode of the podcast.

Sarah:  Oh, that’s expensive!  That’s a lot of books!

Elizabeth:  Yes!  I am a pretty avid podcast listener, and this is my favorite one.

Sarah:  Ohhh!

Elizabeth:  Anyway.

Sarah:  Thank you!  That’s just the biggest compliment, given how many awesome podcasts there are out there.  I’ve found myself listening to so many different shows, and – [laughs] – there’s a point where I’m always like, oh, my gosh, all these other shows are way more professionally edited than mine!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I’m really glad people listen to me, ‘cause wow!  Those are really good!  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  One of the guys that I work with, he listens to podcasts all, all day long while he’s – he’s in one of our, he works on the computer.  I sent him, in December, this list of, well, like, the fifty best podcasts of 2016, and he sent it back to me, and he was like, this was cool!  I found five podcasts I hadn’t listened to before.  Because I just force everyone around me to listen to me when I talk about romance novels?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  I have even actually gotten him to listen to a couple episodes of, you know, this podcast, so –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s rad!

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  I made him listen to the one that you guys did on, like, guys who read romance?

Sarah:  Oh, my God, I had so much fun doing that episode, and the, the two guys who were in-, interviewed, Richard and Matt, they were so excited.  Like, they were so into it.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, and, and John was just like, he was like, oh!  I’d never thought of that, but, like, women don’t, you know, interact with the books in this way, but, but I can see how, like, as a guy, I definitely would, and so we had this whole conversation that was like, ooh!  It’s just the best thing ever!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Isn’t it great?  It’s so great.  And I love how when you listen to podcasts, you can get some podcasts about some seriously specific interests.  It’s like deep diving into your very, very big thing.  I mean, I listen to one that I’ve loved lately called Friendshipping?  Have you listened to this one?

Elizabeth:  No!

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh, it’s like – did you ever watch Parks and Recreation?

Elizabeth:  Yes!

Sarah:  Okay, it would be like if, is Leslie Knope and her best friend, who is played by Rashida Jones, whose name I can remember, never remember.

Elizabeth:  Ann.

Sarah:  Thank you, Ann.  It’s like if Leslie and Ann had a podcast that was just about friendship.  And it’s these two women who work at Cards Against Humanity, so they’re already very funny and very, like, able to laugh at themselves.

Elizabeth:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And they, it’s Trin and Jenn, and, and this is Friendshipping!  And they answer questions about friendship.  Like, what do I do if my friend moves away and we lose touch, and she’s moving back, and I really want to get in touch with her, but she’s not answering any of my texts, and she’s not responding to my email, and I don’t understand, and they have a whole, like, series of episodes about friendship problems, making new friends, managing friend problems.  What do you do if someone that you’re really good friends with evolves and becomes a total misogynist?  Like, is it your job to try to correct what they think, or do you just sort of be like, nope!  Bye, you’re an asshole?  And so there’s so much empathy –

Elizabeth:  Yeah!

Sarah:  – and there’s so much, so much kindness in all of their advice.  Seriously, it, it is –

Elizabeth:  Oh, good.

Sarah:  – it is the best show to listen to when you’re in a shitty mood, because it’s like, yes, people can suck.  Here is, is compassionate and empathetic and kind advice to deal with both sides.  Oh, it’s so good; you’ll love it.

Elizabeth:  I, you can’t see my face right now, but it’s full of joy.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Awesome.

Elizabeth:  Do you listen to the Nerdette podcast?

Sarah:  No, but I think I need to.

Elizabeth:  Oh, my God, it’s so good!  It is, it’s put out by Chicago public radio?  And it’s –

Sarah:  What is it with them?  They have all the good shows!

Elizabeth:  I love it so much.  It’s these, these, Tricia Bobeda and Greta Hoffman [Johnsen].

Sarah:  Mm-hmm?

Elizabeth:  Greta?  Anyway.  Yeah, Tricia and Greta.  Their thing is that everyone is nerdy about something, so let’s find what you’re nerdy about and celebrate it.  So they interview, like, movie makers and authors and politicians and just all of these different women and celebrate, like, what they love, and it’s so good, and it’s, it is kind in spirit.  I just appreciate it so much.  And then they did a spinoff series where they started watching, ‘cause they like watching Game of Thrones?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm?

Elizabeth:  And the spinoff series is Nerdette Watches [Recaps] Game of Thrones with Peter Sagal –

Sarah:  Oh –

Elizabeth:  – that guy from Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

Sarah:  Oh, God.  That’s amazing.

Elizabeth:  It is so great, ‘cause they do these, like, recap episodes, and, like, they totally tease Peter, and they have, like, the patriarchy jingles.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  Oh, I kid you not, it’s so fun.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Okay, I have to add this to my, to my podcast app.  Have you listened to Switched on Pop?

Elizabeth:  I have!  I enjoy that one!

Sarah:  I enjoy it a lot too.  I love when they break down a particular song into the minute details, but my absolute favorite is when they go deep, deep nerd dive into classical music and how classical music often used the same techniques that pop music does now, and so they’ll connect, like –

Elizabeth:  Yes.

Sarah:  – they’ll connect Justin Timberlake to Haydn, and I’m like, I’m here for this!  Oh, my gosh, I had no idea how much I wanted this until I started listening right now, and now I am joyful!

Elizabeth:  Yes.  No, I love it.  John, my, my friend from work that I mentioned before, he actually found a podcast that I haven’t yet listened to, but I feel like I should, that is a, it’s a deep dive into the music of Hamilton?

Sarah:  Ohhh –

Elizabeth:  Like, breaking down, like Switched on Pop, like, but breaking down, like, the rhyme structure and, like, getting very deep into the comp-, like, compositional aspects of –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s so fun.

Elizabeth:  Yeah!  I, I don’t know the name of it!  I, I will have to find that.  I’ll message it to you.

Sarah:  That’s fine; I’ll add it to the show notes.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, that’ll be great, but yeah, so I was like, this is a thing?  And I, I know people that need this podcast.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’s the other thing I love about the Internet.  It’s, you know, I am personally, I’m not going to go back to school and, you know, get a degree in music theory.  As much as I’m interested in music theory and, and how music connects, that’s not a thing that I’m going to, you know, be able to do, but if I want to deep dive learn about something?  I can do that with podcasts and websites and whole –

Elizabeth:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – online options that let me educate my nerdy heart to my, to my absolute content, and it’s so great!  I love it!

Elizabeth:  Yeah, it totally is.  I have gotten into listening to, like, the politics podcasts, so, like, NPR Politics, FiveThirtyEight politics, The Run-Up, and just feeling like I need to stay informed on things?  [Laughs] So it’s like I have my nerdy things and then I have my politics things –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  – but then that’s kind of another, that’s just another form of nerdery, I guess, and –

Sarah:  It is.  My husband likes to joke that politics is his favorite sport.

Elizabeth:  Yes!

Sarah:  It’s like, it’s really cool when you can take a deep dive into just neverending amounts of information and figure things out?  I also think for me, though, for my brain, if I take a deep dive into something that I know I’m never going to reach the bottom of, like politics?

Elizabeth:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I have to take it in limited steps; otherwise, I will just exhaust myself.  But now I want to –

Elizabeth:  Yes.

Sarah:  – start asking people, okay, what’s the weirdest thing you decided you needed to learn about on the Internet?

Elizabeth:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, that would be a really weird question.

Elizabeth:  And my best friend that I was visiting in Texas last month, or last week, she and I texted each other back and forth, like, every single day.  I was telling her on Friday, like, oh, I’m really depressed today, and she was like, okay, like, here’s all the kittens, you know, kitten videos –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  – puppy videos – [laughs] –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  – sloths, hedgehogs, let’s go.  Like, everything cute and adorable is coming your way!  And I was like, yeah.

Sarah:  I hear you have a need for otters.  I’m here for you!

Elizabeth:  Oh, my God, I love otters so much!

Sarah:  Oh, they’re my favorite.  I love them; they are my favorite.  They’re vicious little fuckers, but I, like, love looking at pictures of them?  I think it’s so cool, though, that you can have friendships with people that almost exclusively exist in your phone, but those are the people to whom you are very emotionally close, even though you don’t see them very often.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  Well, she and I met three years ago at a blogger con-, like a, it was a weekend at this blogger’s house, and she invited, like, she actually rented a different house, and then, like, twenty people from the Internet came to her house for a weekend.

Sarah:  That is seriously so cool.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, and so, it was just like, come, come to where I live.  We will hang out in our pajamas.  We will go shopping for makeup, and we will play games, and we will chat, and the Internet will be in our face for, you know, two and a half days.

Sarah:  Wow!  What blog set this up?  That’s so cool!  What blog set that up?

Elizabeth:  The lady that set it up, and I’m, I think she’s, she’s doing it this year – Kim and I aren’t going, but – Temerity Jane is her, like, Internet handle.

Sarah:  That is seriously cool.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, and I went to that – so I went to RT last year, just by myself showed up because –

Sarah:  Yep, I remember!

Elizabeth:  You guys, yep, yeah, ‘cause you guys were like, no, it’s totally cool!  Just show up, you know, and so I had done the same thing with, with this weekend because my husband had followed her on some World of Warcraft blogs, and she was, she was part of this community, and she basically got tired of, like, gamer dudes being assholes to her?  And so –

Sarah:  Oh, you don’t say.

Elizabeth:  I know, it’s –

Sarah:  The devil you say!

Elizabeth:  And so she was like, you know, I’m going to take my toys and go do my own thing, and then she –

Sarah:  Good for her.

Elizabeth:  Yeah!  Oh, absolutely!  And she, you know, developed this whole new community around that, and my husband just, like, followed her, was like, this is an intelligent woman who’s really good and talented at what she is doing; I’m going to pay attention to her stuff.  And so when she had the weekend, he was like, I want you to go make friends with these people, ‘cause you will like these people, and so you should go do it.

Sarah:  Aw!

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] My, my husband is the best, and –

Sarah:  Yes.

Elizabeth:  – so I went out there, and I was wearing a, a Star Trek shirt that said “Trek yourself before you wreck yourself”?

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  And Kim was like, who are you?  We need to be friends now.

Sarah:  Aw!

Elizabeth:  So that was, that was kind of how she and I made friends, and then, like, we see each other a couple times a year.  My husband works for Comic-Con here in San Diego.

Sarah:  No way.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.

Sarah:  You’re, like –

Elizabeth:  Yeah!

Sarah:  You’re, like, married to one of the kings of the nerds.

Elizabeth:  I, I really, really am?  [Laughs]

Sarah:  He has, he has got mad nerd power!

Elizabeth:  He, he does, and he plays the Game of Thrones card game, and he is the reigning North American champion –

Sarah:  Holy shit!

Elizabeth:  – for that game.

Sarah:  Holy shit!

Elizabeth:  Yes.

Sarah:  Whoa!

Elizabeth:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That’s seriously impressive!

Elizabeth:  Yeah, we, we, we get deep into the nerd.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s hardcore nerdery right there.  That’s really awesome.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Okay, so let’s get hardcore nerdery about you –

Elizabeth:  Okay.

Sarah:  – because that’s not uncomfortable.  We’re –

Elizabeth:  Sorry.

Sarah:  No!  Don’t apologize!  This is all awesome.  We’re just going to get hardcore nerdery about you, because that doesn’t feel awkward or weird or anything.

Elizabeth:  I, I made, like, notes.  I am prepared.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You’re the best.  You’re the best one.  You’re just so awesome.  So you emailed me because –

Elizabeth:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – you wanted to talk about how you have adapted reading when you have learning disabilities.

Elizabeth:  Yes.

Sarah:  So tell me about your learning disabilities.

Elizabeth:  Okay.  So I have kind of a cluster of learning disabilities which are dyscalcu-, well, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia.  I don’t know how many of your peop-, how many of your other listeners have kind of bumped into these.  Dyslexia is probably the most common one that people have heard of.

Sarah:  Right.

Elizabeth:  I was actually doing some research this week because, while I did a lot of advocacy stuff when I was in high school and then still in college, I, it’s, I graduated college, like, eleven years ago, so it’s like, okay, I’ve got to, you know, buff up and make sure I’m not, like, giving people false information.  It was actually really interesting when I was reading through the stuff on dyslexia that it was saying that it is a genetically linked neurobiological –

Sarah:  Really!

Elizabeth:  Yes!

Sarah:  I did not know that.

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] Well, I, when I read that, I was like, oh, of course it is, because I have it, my half-brother has it, my half-sister has it, my nephew has it – yeah, yeah.  I completely –

Sarah:  So this was not a surprise, and yet it was a bit of a surprise.

Elizabeth:  Yes, yes.  I was like, this makes total sense.  But, so, dyslexia is – well, I have a very technical definition here, but it’s, it’s basically in, difficulties when reading words, letters flipping, writing words backwards –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – reading them backwards.  I was talking to my nephew.  I was asking him, like, okay, how do you experience dyslexia?  Because it’s not, not everyone experiences it the same way.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm?

Elizabeth:  And he was like, well, sometimes letters will, like, flip, and, and spin on me, like a B will turn into a D, and a D will turn into a B –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – and I was like, okay, so do they, do you, like, blink and the letter fixes itself?  Or do you watch it spin?  And he’s like, yes.  I was like, no, that was an either/or question –

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  – so which one is it?  And he’s like, no, it’ll do both.  It just depends.

Sarah:   Wow.

Elizabeth:  I was like, oh.

Sarah:  So it’s almost like the signal between your eyes and your brain, like, the signal gets crossed back and forth.

Elizabeth:  Yep, and it’s, be-, being neurobiological, it’s literally, the structure of the brain is –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – different from the structure of someone else’s brain.

Sarah:  So you have dyslexia and dysgraphia, which is diff-, difficulty with writing, and –

Elizabeth:  Yeah, so that one, and, and dyscalculia, which is, it’s a difficulty learning, comprehending arithmetic, but it’s also, both, both dysgraphia and dyscalculia, well, all three of them, have to do with, like, difficulties orienting yourself or letters or characters in, in, like, space.  Like, so, we will have difficulty differentiating left from right.  We’ll get lost a lot.  You know, flipping numbers, flipping numbers in a long sequence of numbers.  You know, it might say 1427, and you might write, you know, 1724.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  Which, if you’re doing arithmetic, that’s a really bad thing to do.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah, that, that creates a few problems.

Elizabeth:  Just a couple here or there.  [Laughs] Yeah, so reading, dyslexia is difficulties with information getting input into the brain.  Dysgraphia is difficulties getting it, information back out of the brain, so writing it down, typing it out, things like that, and then dyscalculia is kind of that with numbers, so.

Sarah:  But if you’re an avid reader, you mention that you have made a lot of personal adaptations to make reading more accessible to you.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  So –

Sarah:  I am so curious.  What, what did you figure out how to do, and – how did this happen, and what did you do?

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  So, my mom got her master’s degree in Special Education when I was around nine.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  So my half-brother and my half-sister are sixteen and eighteen years older than I am, and so she had known that they had dyslexia, but they didn’t really have interventions for it when, when my brother and sister were kids, and so then when I got into school and started having the same issues, wasn’t reading, wasn’t, you know, was really struggling with it, not just for me but, you know, she had an interest in, but she, she became a reading teacher and got her master’s degree in it, and so she knew what to do with me that, you know, an early intervention would be the best, and the best thing to do with someone who’s dyslexic is to teach them phonics, because phonics is a method of teaching people language by correlating sounds with letters, so when I read, and I don’t know if everyone does this, ‘cause someone, one of the pieces that I read for this, it was saying, like, dyslexics, when they read, they read out loud in their head –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s fascinating!  I am not dyslexic, although I think I have some manner of dyscalculia because I can’t, like, I can’t hold numbers in my head?  I remember phone numbers by the song or the pattern?  If I have to remember a phone number, if it’s not in my phone automatically.  And I can’t do math in my head; the numbers won’t stay there.  It’s like the, it’s like, it’s like trying to write on a tablet made of sand, so the minute I try to remember one number and then move onto the next number, the first one disappears?  I cannot do math in my head, and navigating streets in cities where the numbers are the streets?  That’s just terrible.  I – New York was a pain in my ass.  [Laughs] But I also –

Elizabeth:  YES.

Sarah:  Right?  Right?  I also read aloud in my head when I’m reading, and I’m not dyslexic, but I do that exact thing.  It’s, and it’s interesting ‘cause I’ve talked to people who don’t do that?  And they’re like, I don’t even understand how that works.  I’m like, well, how do you not read aloud in your head?

Elizabeth:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Brains are weird.

Elizabeth:  And see that’s – yeah, it’s, brains are weird, you know, and it’s, the, one of the things that just kept popping up over and over and over and something that I have, like, harped on is that, you know, dyslexia, any of these, you know, kinds of learning disabilities, they appear in people of, you know, normal to above-average intelligence.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  It’s not that we’re stupid.  It’s not that we’re lazy.  It’s not that, you know, we’re dumb.  It’s just our brain functions differently.

Sarah:  And when you’re young and you can’t learn to read, then the problem is that you’re not reading, the problem isn’t why can’t you read.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  So –

Sarah:  And that, that’s, that’s always effective.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, and, and –

Sarah:  Ugh.

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] And –

Sarah:  Except not.  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  It was really, really discouraging when I was young because, you know, even in, like, second grade, third grade, you know, getting books assigned for reading, and my mom would just have to, like, nail me down –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  – to, to force me to read, and when – I remember one summer when she was trying to teach me phonics, I, we were traveling, and we were staying in our motor home, and she got up from the table and the workbook that we were working on to, I don’t know, go fix coffee or something like that, I literally jumped up from the table, ran out the door, got on my bicycle, and just, like, rode –

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  – as far, as far away as I could get.

Sarah:  You left dust trails.  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  Yeah, I was just like, I’m not going back!  You can’t make me!

Sarah:  Look, I can’t nope any harder.  I’m noping.  The most nope has ever been noped is happening right now, bye!

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  Yes.  We worked on that, and then when I was in the fourth grade, she started buying me, like, Archie comic books and Betty and Veronica comic books and Garfield comic books and Calvin and Hobbes, and I could read, but the pictures would help.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  And so I went from, I went from that into reading Nancy Drews, and I read Nancy Drews, like, obsessively until I, like, broke the bible for writing those books.  Like, I figured out who the villain was?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  Every single time because of when they introduced them in the story?

Sarah:  It’s always the same beat, right?

Elizabeth:  It is, it is.

Sarah:  Isn’t that weird?

Elizabeth:  And then I started reading, like, Michael Crichton and Mary Higgins Clark, and once I was able to figure out the most common, like, constructs of language from learning phonics –

Sarah:  It got easier to read, because English has a lot of words, but we use the same, like, small percentage of all those words most frequently.

Elizabeth:  Yes, frequently, although one of the things that I was reading, it was saying that dyslexia exists in every culture and every language around the world, but that –

Sarah:  This does not surprise.

Elizabeth:  – no! – but that it’s easier for people who speak, like, more, like, the Romance languages, you know, so Italian, French, Spanish, it’s easier in those languages than in, say, like, Chinese or Japanese, because the more dependent the language is on your understanding a character, the harder it is to overcome the dyslexia.

Sarah:  Right!

Elizabeth:  Like, the symbol, the symbol stands for something.

Sarah:  So, one of the things you mentioned when you emailed me was the tools that you use for writing and reading.  How did you adapt digital books especially to, to your reading style, and what, what works best for you?  I have friends whose children are dyslexic, and I introduced them to a font that’s designed for dyslexics where –

Elizabeth:  The Open Dyslexic?

Sarah:  Yes!

Elizabeth:  Yes.

Sarah:  Where the bottom of all the letters is thicker, so it’s almost like it visually weighs them down and they don’t move?

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  Yes.

Sarah:  And once I showed them how to increase the margins so there’s no blank space and increase the size of the words so there’re fewer words on the screen, they were like, oh, I can read this!  This is not moving!  The words aren’t going anywhere!  I can read this!  And I was like, yes!  And then I introduced them to all the free shit in the library, and their parent, their parents were like, well, this is both good and bad, because now they’re not doing their homework.

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  Yes.  So, that, that is actually what I, exactly what I do.  Kindle has Open Dyslexic as a font that you can select –

Sarah:  Yes.

Elizabeth:  – in, in their books, so I do that, and then I also find, for me, I set the background to the black background with the white text.

Sarah:  Oh, me too!  It’s so much easier to read!

Elizabeth:  Yeah, yeah.  So I just do whatever I can to make it kind.  [Laughs] So that’s primarily how I do that, and then also, like, I mentioned, if there’s, like, a foreign language or even some books that I’ve read that were, like, written in English, but – there’s one I read last year.  Anyway, the author, like, wrote in a thick, like, British dialect?

Sarah:  Yes, dialectical dialogue, like when you read a Scottish romance and the hero’s always like “dinna” and all these other words that are –

Elizabeth:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – transcribing –

Elizabeth:  “Dinna fash, Sassenach.”  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yes, don’t, don’t, dinna fash yourself, and yada, yada, yada.  All the sort of transcription of, of Scottish terms, yeah.  It’s, writing in dialect can be very tricky.  So that, is that hard for you?

Elizabeth:  It, it can be, because if I can’t figure out how to say the word, I pretty much am not going to be able to, like, read it, so, like –

Sarah:  Because you’re reading aloud in your head.  That makes sense.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  Yeah.  So, like, with The Trouble with Mistletoe?  The hero in that book, I think his name is Keane?  K-E-A-N-E?  The entire time I was reading that book, I’m like, keen, can, cane-ee?  Like, couldn’t do it, and my –

Sarah:  Ke-, Keanu?  It’s Keanu, yeah.

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  And so –

Sarah:  Or maybe it’s Keano.  I don’t know!

Elizabeth:  Like, the book was great!  I loved it!  Couldn’t figure out the hero’s name the entire time!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  There needs to be, like, a phonic guide to, to names of contemporary heroes.

Elizabeth:  Yes.

Sarah:  This is how you say this name.

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] And I, I, I tend to read more historicals because I’ve, like, figured out, like, okay, I’m never going to know how to say out loud marquis when I read it, but I just know that that word is mar-key and not mar-quess, or maybe it’s mar-

Sarah:  Well, it is actually mar-quess in England, but it’s a French word, so it’s mar-key in French, but the actual English say mar-quess, which I think is so wrong.  Sorry, England, but that’s way wrong.  So, yeah, I think –

Elizabeth:  See, and that just confuses me.

Sarah:  And I think you’re right.  I think it would be mar-key.  But no, mar-quess.

Elizabeth:  Mar-quess, okay.

Sarah:  Right?  No.  Uh-uh.  That’s not, it can’t be the right, but that’s what I’ve been told!

Elizabeth:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I think you’re wrong!

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  See, and that’s just going to be a word I’m always going to struggle with, but I feel like the most part, like, if, once you have, and, and this gets into the other part of it, that, why I tend to prefer romance to other genres is that once you have figured out the world that this takes place in, you don’t have to keep figuring it out.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  Have to keep relearning those words and those settings.  You, you know –

Sarah:  You already know what they’re like.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  Like, this is four hundredth ro-, you know, historical romance novel you’ve read.  Aren’t you tired of it?  Nope, not really.

Sarah:  No.  Nope, historical is a world that is consistently built for many, many years.  As Kathe Robin from RT likes to joke, we’ve been reading about the Regency, like, nine times as long as it actually existed, but that’s okay!  We’re going to stay there.

Elizabeth:  Yep, yep, I’m totally happy with it.  Yeah, I, I do struggle with the, the contemporary heroes, but as, as long as they, you know, follow the rules of phonics, I can figure it out.  When I was at RT, I was actually talking to Sonali Dev at the, at the book, the book signing, ‘cause she was asking me, like, how did you read the book?  And I said, well, I’m, I listened to it, and she was like, oh!  Why – you know, she was, she was pretty interested in, in why I did that, and I was like, I’m not going to know how to pronounce or say those words, you know –

Sarah:  Because the phonics are different.

Elizabeth:  Yeah!  And –

Sarah:  Even the construction of the syllables is different between languages.

Elizabeth:  Yep.  And, so it allows me to enjoy that story –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – and, and that book has an amazing narrator, too.  I just, like, I think I listened to the entire book in, like, one weekend.  It was just great because then, you know, my – anything that cuts down interference between my expressing myself and, you know, taking something in or putting something out, anything that cuts down the interference, I’m all about that.

Sarah:  So eBooks and computers must make things a lot easier for you than when you were younger and those things weren’t as easily accessible.

Elizabeth:  Yes.  And I actually, my mom kept me, like, from being officially diagnosed until I got into high school?  ‘Cause she was like, okay, I’m just going to work with you really, really hard at home.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  Because I’m a teacher and I know how to do this.  So – [laughs] – she just, you know, would work with me at home on all of my assignments and, you know, reading things to me and all of that, but by the time I got to high school it was beyond the point where she could compensate for what was going on at school at home, and so I got tested in high school and got put into RSP and got my accommodations.

Sarah:  RSP?  Is that, like, the designation for special accommodation?

Elizabeth:  RSP is a Resource Specialist Program.

Sarah:  Ah.

Elizabeth:  So it’s for people with mild to moderate learning disabilities, and so my, my RSP teacher, Rosemary, she, I’m still in touch with her.  Like, she’s – [laughs] – she was an, she is an amazing, amazing teacher and woman and compassionate, and so anyway, we would, you know, she would sit down on our IEP meetings, and my mom was there, she was there, the school counselor, the school psychologist, you know, all of the people that are part of that group that build, that build an IEP, which is an Individualized Education Program?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  So that is, like, the rules for what a person with learning disabilities has, what their accommodations are going to be.

Sarah:  Right.

Elizabeth:  So for me, I actually, in high school, my junior year, was in Honors English and my senior year was in AP English, and so when I would have to write essays in class, as high school teachers are wont to do, I would just –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:   I would just take that writing prompt up to the RSP room and would type out my essay and then print it out and take it back to the teacher.  And then I would have, like, exams read out loud to me, and then I would verbally answer back the correct answer?

Sarah:  Oh, that’s cool.

Elizabeth:  And I – yeah!  I took Spanish in, I took three years of Spanish in high school, ‘cause – and I’m actually really good with, like, accents when I speak in, in foreign languages, ‘cause I did Italian when I was in college, so I’m really good at hearing the differences in accents and how to pronounce things.  It’s just writing is a mess, but whatever.  But, like, when I would take my Spanish tests, my Spanish teacher would set aside a time where we could sit down, and then she would verbally, like, if it was a, you know, spelling in Spanish, she would say the word to me, and then I would spell it back to her.  For math, with the dyscalculia, I was given a, like, very basic computational calculator –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – and when I got into, like, logarithms and trigonometry and stuff like that, I was allowed to have a three-by-five card where, with, with the formula written on it, and so then I could use, like, okay, I see the formula, and I know that this is the computation that needs to happen, and I can take my exams that way.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.  It must have been very frustrating for you, you know, before you figured out how to make reading functional for you.  It must have been so frustrating to want to read things and then not be able to.

Elizabeth:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Especially once you discover the genre that you like.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  And I, I got into reading romance when I was in high school.  Some of the first, like, romances that I read, one of them was called The Pearl Stallion by Rae Muir?  Have you ever heard of that one?

Sarah:  No!

Elizabeth:  It’s, I think it’s out of print, but I ordered it off Amazon and got, like, a, replaced my paperback copy, ‘cause my paperback had gotten away.  But it’s like this girl who’s in Jamaica, I think?  And she wants to go back to England, because she’s, like, a debutante, and so she decides that what she’s going to do is, she’s going to stow away on this ship, and she’s going to go back to England, except she doesn’t realize that the ship she has stowed away on is actually, like, a merchant vessel that’s going to be traveling around the world?  And so –

Sarah:  Oops.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  So she ends up on the ship, and of course she falls in love with the captain –

Sarah:  Of course!

Elizabeth:  – but it’s so fascinating, ‘cause he, like, the descriptions of, like, the different ports and how, like, he takes something that’s, you know, relatively crappy and not worth a lot, but then he’ll trade it, and so, like, he goes to Hawaii and he trades with the people there, and he goes to Japan, and he goes to China, and he goes, like, I think, to Australia or something like that.  But anyway, he, like, travels all around, and each time that he goes into a port, he trades up his cargo, and then by the time he, like, goes back to Jamaica he’s got, like, Chinese silks and pottery and –

Sarah:  Right.

Elizabeth:  – kind of stuff, but, like, it was just like, this is a whole new world!  This is amazing!

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  And then I think –

Sarah:  There’s other books like this?  Oh, my gosh!

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] Give them to me now!  And then I, the other one that I distinctly remember reading in high school was Reckless Conduct by Susan Napier?  And that was actually one that I did a HaBO to find the name, and –

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  This book is so full of crazysauce!

Sarah:  Aren’t those the best?

Elizabeth:  And it’s like, ugh!  It’s so great.  It’s like, it’s one of those set in Sydney, and it’s like, this woman is a, a secretary, and she’s in love with the boss, but, like, she would never do anything, and then she, like, wakes up after, I think it was, like, a New Year’s Eve party, and she’s got this hangover, and she’s like, I don’t know what happened.  Then it turned out that while she was drunk she’d hooked up with the boss and, like, she’s having all these, like, flashbacks with, like, why, why am I picturing him without his shirt on right now?  And –

Sarah:  [Laughs] How do I know what his chest hair looks like?  That’s not adorable.

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] Yes, yes, and then, like, the description, ‘cause it was written, I think it was written in, like, ’95, and so it’s got, like, her description of her dress was, like, this gold dress with the huge shoulder pads?

Sarah:  Yes, and, like, really puffy sleeves and, you know, the taffeta rustles, and you’re like, oh, yeah, Gunne Sax dress.  I wanted one of those!

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  Ohhh, it’s so great.  But, yeah, and I, and I think just, like – anyway, getting back to, like, the accommodations, getting frustrated, but it was harder.  I wasn’t, it was like, I would read, I read some romance in high school, but it wasn’t really until college and then graduate school where I really started reading, and then when I got, when I started reading eBooks, it just, it all went downhill from there.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  ‘Cause I’m at, like, 845 books right now?  I think?

Sarah:  Nice!

Elizabeth:  Having, having read.

Sarah:  Did you ever think when you were, when you were booking it the hell out of the trailer, like, Mom, I’m so out of here, did you ever think that you would be this much of a reader?

Elizabeth:  No.  Not even a little bit.  [Laughs] And that’s, that’s the one thing, because my daughter is, she’s seven, and she sees me reading all the time, and she isn’t dyslexic, she doesn’t have any of the learning disabilities, which, thank God for my husband’s genes.  I’m just, you know, genetics.  But she, she is an avid reader.  We started reading her Harry Potter when she was in first grade because I couldn’t control myself.

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  But, you know, and, and she, she was reading Prisoner of Azkaban to herself this year, and I was like, this is not like, this is fast-ly getting into the territory of not age-appropriate, and I need to find things that are more age-appropriate to her, and so I went back and, like, re-listened to the episodes that you did on, like, books for kids –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – and, like, am constantly, like, quizzing my friends and quizzing her teacher:  okay, what’s, what’s a good age-appropriate book, because I literally, I have no knowledge of the books that a first-grader or a second-grader or a third-grader would read, because I didn’t read at that time.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  And so, you know, here she is, the, this, you know, bright, verbal, cheerful child going, I want to read, Mommy!  And I’m going, I want you to read!  What should you read?

Sarah:  [Laughs] This is where the Internet can help you a lot.

Elizabeth:  Yes.  And it, it has, and then it – my mother-in-law is a retired children’s librarian.

Sarah:  Oh!  You have an in-house source.

Elizabeth:  Yes, and so I definitely, like, go to her.  I’m like, okay, so, what should she be reading?  But then she has, like, her own, like, thoughts and preferences.  She was like, you don’t want her to read Junie B. Jones, because Junie B. Jones is a smart aleck, and I’m like –

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  – and then my other, my other friend’s like, no grandmother’s supposed to like Junie B. Jones.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Okay, that’s hilarious.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So, one of the other things you were going to tell me about is the books that you’ve read in romance that had dyslexic characters in them.

Elizabeth:  Yes.

Sarah:  And that you’ve struggled to find a really good, accurate, or at least affirming portrayal of a dyslexic in romance.

Orville:  Meow.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  Yeah.  I, I think I’ve only read one contemporary romance that I can think of that had a dyslexic hero, and I think he was like, he would work on motorcycles, you know, ‘cause he was better with his hands, and he didn’t want to have to think about, like, writing words and stuff like that, and there were some descriptions of him in, like, elementary school, you know, and just, like, it almost made me cry because I was like, he could have had intervention, and he would have been fine!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Like, he, this should have been better for him?

Elizabeth:  Yes, yes.  Like, and, and it’s not fair.  Like, it’s not fair!  He could have, he could have been so successful if he’d just had the right teachers and, like, the, the teacher shouldn’t have been like that!  Like – [laughs] – I got really upset about the teacher.

Sarah:  [Laughs] But, you know, I don’t blame you!

Elizabeth:  Yeah, ‘cause I –

Sarah:  I totally don’t blame you.

Elizabeth:  Yeah!  I mean, I had such amazing, incredible advocates going through school, you know, and, and I just was like, no, he could have had that!  But then, like, there was one historical romance that I was reading, and, like, the description was like, oh, the letters would flip and dance and spin before him on the page, and then they would just disappear or melt into each, the lines would melt into each other, and I remember being, like, furious and going to my mom and being like, that’s not dyslexia!  What is this author doing?  She is so wrong!  Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah!  And then – [laughs] – my mom was like, that’s not how you experience it, but that is how some people experience it.  And I was like, oh.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yeah.

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] But I, I think, I think, to me, if that’s, if being dyslexic is the only thing about the character, you know, he’s perfect, except for the fact that he can’t read, that’s –

Sarah:  That’s the thing that he’s constantly talking about as a character?

Elizabeth:  Yes.  Yeah.

Sarah:  That gets on your nerves.

Elizabeth:  Mm-hmm.  Little bit.  Little bit.  [Laughs] ‘Cause I’m like, okay, but I have this, and it’s like Asma Khalid on the Politics podcast, when she was talking about being a Muslim-American, and she was like, I am more than just being Muslim.  Like, you know, I’m from, you know, I’ve played, I think, tennis or soccer, but she, like, talks about all, you know, I have all these other things that I define myself as, and I look at that and I say, yeah!  I’m dyslexic, but I also have all these other ways I define myself which, to me, are more important, and so when you get a character in a book that’s like, I have this disability, and that’s the only thing about them?  I get really frustrated.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I completely understand that.  I mean, it’s a, it’s going to change the way you interact with things, but it’s not the only thing you think about.

Elizabeth:  Totally.  And, and, like, my, my nephew that I was talking about earlier, he, he said, yeah, you know, the words do this when I read, but I’m still an avid reader.  I’ve read the entire Harry Potter series five times, and he was like, and I’ve read Percy Jackson a bunch, and, you know, he happens to prefer, like the fantasy genre.  I get, I, I love Harry Potter, but Harry Potter exists in, like, a plane of its own in my mind.  But –

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  – you know, but, yeah, we struggle, we’re slow readers.  That’s not, I’m going to overcome it because the enjoyment I get out of reading is greater than the frustration that I experience when I read.

Sarah:  Right.  And once you figure out the system that works for your particular disability and the way it manifests itself, once you figure that out, you’ve got, you, you have the ability to read as much as you possibly want.

Elizabeth:  Yep.  Yep.  And I mean, I still, I, being my, being nice to my dyslexia means that I get to, you know, I typically read about seventy to seventy-five books a year, so –

Sarah:  Okay, I think that’s the nicest thing to say, being kind to my dyslexia, being nice to my dyslexia?  That’s a really good way to put that.  That, that’s like it’s a part of yourself that you have to take care of.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.

Sarah:  That’s really lovely!

Elizabeth:  Yeah, well, I, I, I think that there are a lot of things in this world, I will say there are a lot of things about myself that it has taken years for me to figure out.  I just need to be kind –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – to myself.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  I need to be kind to my body, because, you know, it is the only body I’ve got.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  I need to be kind to my brain –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  – because it’s the only brain I’ve got.  And just accept that these are things that I’m not going to change or am not going to change without a lot of effort, and to me, there are more important things, you know, than, you know, being, I don’t know, whatever. 

Sarah:  Ascribing to some external definition of perfect that you’re never going to hit.

Elizabeth:  Absolutely.  So just say, you know what?  I, I am this height; I am this weight; I, my brain functions in this fashion.  Let’s make things as easy on us as we possibly can.  Let’s accept it, and if other people can’t accept it, then they can go screw themselves, and – [laughs] – and let’s just exist in the world!

Sarah:  Yep.

Elizabeth:  So.

Sarah:  The, the, when I finally got my brain around the idea that the, the best way to approach my own health is to accept that there are a lot of images of what fitness looks like, and there is no way on this planet that my body will ever look like that.  It’s just not going to happen unless I somehow put my brain in a whole other body.  The, the one that I am currently using, the one that my brain inhabits, is never going to look like what I am told fitness looks like.  That said, I work out five to six times a week.  I run, I lift, I have muscles, I’m strong, I can pick things up, and I’m like, but those don’t measure.  I’m weighing myself or measuring myself against some definition that can’t even exist in the same planet as me?  That’s just silly.  And realizing that, like you said, this is the only one I’m going to get!  That is really important.

So the question I always ask everyone – if you listen to the podcast, you probably know – are what books are you really, really enjoying and want to tell people about?

Elizabeth:  Let’s see, well, I’m currently making my way through A Duke of Her Own.

Sarah:  Ooooh!

Elizabeth:  So, I’ve, I’ve been reading all, all of the Desperate Duchesses series, and so I’m finally to this book, and actually, I’m Facebook friends with Elyse, and she was like, that’s my favorite book in the series!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  And I was like – [gasps] – I’m so excited!

Sarah:  She loves Eloisa James.  Like, her ultimate comfort, like, okay, it’s time for me to go to, like, DEFCON 5 comfort needs, is Eloisa James all the way.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.  I did make a list of, like, my favorite, like, books that I can just pick up any time – [laughs] –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – any time and read, but I, I always – so, last week when I was in, in Texas, my friend took me to the used bookstore in her town?

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Elizabeth:  And – [laughs] – so I spent, like, two hours in there, and it was, I, I –

Sarah:  That’s a good friend.  Like, that’s the best kind of friend.

Elizabeth:  Dude, it was great!  We, like –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  – we went to the candy store, we went to the game shop, we went to the –

Sarah:  Oh, that’s, like, A+ adulting right there.

Elizabeth:  Yeah!  [Laughs] It was like, I’m going to go to Texas; what am I going to do?  I’m just going to go to all the little stores in your town, and then we’re going to watch TV, and it’ll be great.  But, yeah, I threw, like, eight books at her.  Nine.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elizabeth:  I threw nine books.  I was like, no, but you’ve got to read this one and this one!  Okay, that’s the second book in the series, but you can read that one independently, and, and I will order you the first one offline because blah-blah-blah, and – [laughs] – I definitely, she was like, I’m, this is going to take me, like, a year to read this, and I was, no, it’ll be fine; you’ll be fine.  But I, then I picked up, like, eight books for myself, too.  So I’ve got the Susan Elizabeth Phillips, the one where it’s, like, the girl’s chest with, like, a little whistle in the middle of it?

Sarah:  Yes.

Elizabeth:  I can’t think of the name of that one, but I’ve got that one.  That’s probably going to be one of the next ones I read, and then also Lady Claire Is All That.  I want to read that one so, so badly, but I, I haven’t been able to, like, I was like, but I’m reading Eloisa right now!  Like, I want to read this book, but I’m – [laughs] – otherwise engaged at the moment.

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  Oh, there’re so many books I love.  So many books I love!  I’m trying to think what else.  The Kraken King by Meljean Brooks is one of my, like, hands-down favorite, favorite stories that I think I, I accident-, like, inadvertently squeed too much all over Meljean at RT last year?

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  Because I was telling her how, with The Kraken King, I read it when she released it as a serial, and then I was like, no, but I need to have it as, like, one solid book, so then I bought it as one book digitally, and then when I decided I was going to RT, I went up to The Ripped Bodice and I bought a paperback copy of it to bring with me, but then I forgot it at home, so then I bought another copy of it at RT.  She was like, are you sure you want to buy this?  And I was like, of course I want to buy it, because you’re going to sign this one!

[Laughter]

Elizabeth:  That’s the whole point, and I love this book, and I will definitely give away the other copy.  Like, don’t even worry about it!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So is there anything else that you want to make sure that you mention or, or, you know, anything you’d like people to know about dyslexia?

Elizabeth:  When it comes to dyslexia, my general plea is that if, if you know someone that’s dyslexic or you have been diagnosed yourself or you have a child that’s diagnosed, it is not this great big terrible end-of-the-world type of thing.  There are resources –

Sarah:  Wait, you mean, so it’s, it’s not enough to fill, like, a 325-page book with, with agony about how you’ve been, you, you’re dyslexic?

Elizabeth:  [Laughs] No!

Sarah:  Oh, my goodness, the devil you say!  Anyway, go ahead!  It’s not the worst thing that’ll ever happen to you ever.

Elizabeth:  It’s, it’s not, and I think that it has, it has taught me persistence and made me a kinder, more compassionate person?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  It, it can be, you know, it can be a good thing, so be patient and have hope.

Sarah:  I think that’s lovely.  And be kind to your dyslexia; be kind to yourself.

Elizabeth:  Be kind to your dyslexia, and be kind to yourself.  And be, if, if you’re working with a child that has a learning disability, be patient with them –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth:  – ‘cause it will take them more time, but it’s okay.  They’ll get there.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elizabeth:  And even if they don’t, there’re other things about them that are fantastic.

Sarah:  Right.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I want to thank Elizabeth for contacting me and sharing all the information about dealing with learning disabilities and wanting to read and read all the things.  Like I said in the intro, I will have links to all the books that she mentioned, but also some resources for people who may need some more information.  And yes, I will link to all of the podcasts that we talked about as well, should you be needing to expand the number of shows you listen to.

This podcast is brought to you by Kensington Books.  They need you to know about The Maverick Cowboy by Kate Pearce, and you know what, you probably do need to know about this book, ‘cause it sounds really cool.  Ready?  Okay, here we go:  After a turbulent childhood, the Morgan brothers went their separate ways, leaving the family cattle ranch and their cowboy days far behind, but now, one by one, they’re being called back to California.  Have they been summoned to save the land or to start a new legacy?  In the second book in the New York Times bestselling author Kate Pearce’s Morgan Ranch series, The Maverick Cowboy, Blue Morgan finds himself ready to come home.  After ten years in the Marines, all he wants to do is live peacefully, but upon his arrival at Morgan Ranch, he discovers he may have a daughter he didn’t know existed.  Juggling reconnecting with his brothers and his new relationship with Maria, Blue doesn’t have room for an unplanned romance, but he can’t seem to shake the sparks between him and horse veterinarian Jenna McDonald.  Morgan Ranch is always full of surprises, and you can find The Maverick Cowboy by Kate Pearce on sale now wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com.

The music you’re listening is provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on, on Twitter @SassyOutwater, or you can find her @SassyOutwater on Twitter.  This is a song called – a track, maybe?  It’s probably a track – called “Spiegel and Nongo” by Peatbog Faeries from their album Dust, and you can find them on their website, on iTunes, and on amazon.com.  I will have links to all of those places in the podcast entry.

I will also have links to all of the books that we discussed, both at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast and iTunes.com/DBSA, where we have all of our most recent episodes.

If you would like to support the show or you’d like to help me shape the coming year of episodes, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.  For as little as a dollar a month you can help keep the show being as marginally professional as it is now, and you’ll be able to help me commission transcripts for episodes that don’t have one yet.  If you’ve had a look and already become a patron, thank you.  You are entirely made of awesome!

Future podcasts will include me with other people talking about romance novels, ‘cause that’s what we do here.  But on the meantime, in the meantime, on behalf of Elizabeth and Orville and Wilbur, all of the animals that make noise in my office, and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have an excellent weekend.

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