234: Female Friendships, Shifters, Secrets, and Series: An Interview with Lauren Dane

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 234 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  With me today is Lauren Dane.  This is a pretty indulgent episode of the podcast, because it is a really big treat to take a really nerdy deep dive into a world you enjoyed and talk about that world with the author.  So we talk about female friendships, worldbuilding in fantasy and paranormal romance, and about the ways in which people assume and approach roles of power and authority in literature and in real life, all centered around her Diablo Lake series, which I enjoyed a whole heck of a lot.  There are some mild spoilers for that series, because there is some discussion about specific events in the different books, but I’ve tried to keep the plot spoilers to a minimum.  We talk a lot about the world and the characters and the interconnected groups within it, and my hope is that it might make you a little curious about the series if you haven’t read it yet.  We first heard about the Diablo Lake series in episode number 192, and I will have a link to that show in the show notes so that you can go back to it if you’d like to.

This podcast is brought to you by Kensington.  They would like you to know about Strawberry Wine by Darly Jamison.  Wattpad star and winner of Kensington’s The Write Affair competition, Darly Jamison makes her print debut with a sweet yet sexy story of the magic of first love and the blessing of second chances with her fresh, unique voice in small town contemporary romance.  When Addison Monroe returns to her small home town in Georgia for a visit, she’s happily engaged to a prominent Atlanta doctor and she excels at her job as a physician’s assistant, but the minute she crosses paths with Jake Grady whom she fell in love with that perfect summer when she was eighteen, everything begins to change, and old feelings resurface out of the blue.  Does the magic of first love ever truly go away?  Find out in Darly Jamison’s poignant exploration of the meaning of love and connection through time in Strawberry Wine, available now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

And now I have compliments, which is so much fun.

For Silke:  Your superpowers are so superb, you might not know you have them, but everyone you know appreciates each and every one, especially the one where you make people laugh.

And to Esti:  Today, four people independently wrote sonnets about the way you smile, and they’re all brilliant poems.  And also, so is your smile.

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I will have links to all the books we talk about in this episode, and you can check us out at iTunes.com/DBSA for recent episodes and links to books in the iBooks store.

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

But in the meantime, without any further delay, on with the podcast!

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Sarah:  Well, thank you so much for agreeing to do this.  I am so excited to talk about this series.

Lauren Dane:  Well, thank you for having me!

Sarah:  Oh, dude, okay.  So the only awkward part is where I ask you to introduce yourself, so that’s this part here.

Lauren:  Okay.

Sarah:  Introduce yourself, and say whatever the hell you want.

Lauren:  Okay.  Well, I am Lauren Dane, and I, I write books!  I started writing in, oh, my gosh, you know what?  It’s been, like, twelve years now?  Two thousand –

Sarah:  Isn’t that weird?  When you look back and you’re like, wait, whoa, there’s a double digit?

Lauren:  Right?  I just keep thinking, oh, it was, like, eight years ago.  No, no, it’s, it’s, like, fourteen or thirteen?  Something like that anyway, that I contracted my first book, which was a paranormal romance, way back in 2004, and I’ve been pretty lucky and have been writing ever since, all romance, from paranormal to space opera to rock star contemporaries, set in barbershops, whatever.  If, if it needs a Happily Ever After and it strikes my fancy, I, I like to write it, so.

Sarah:  That’s awesome, and I know there’s a, I know there’s a number of writers who feel that they can really only stick within one genre, that people won’t accept books if you switch genres too hard.  But I, I’ve found that for a lot of readers, we’re, we’re okay.

Lauren:  Yeah.  I’m, I feel like, for me, it’s a, like a palate cleanser.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  Right now I am writing paranormal, which is wonderful.  Given the state of the world right now, it’s so nice to be able to sort of slip into something and talk about these issues, but in a, in a paranormal way, which makes people less defensive, I think, to the core of, of these issues that these characters face.  So I really, I love the variety of it and the ability to tell different kinds of stories in different kinds of ways, you know, and that’s why I do it, but certainly I understand that, you know, that we’re supposed to establish ourselves in one genre and, and make a name, and then we can branch out.  I, that’s, that’s, I guess, the commonly held wisdom.  I just didn’t know about those rules when I started.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oops.  Too late now.  Oh, dear.

Lauren:  Too late now.  I know; it gave me a taste of freedom, and I’m not going back, so.

Sarah:  Well, let’s talk about the series that you’re writing right now.  Are you working on Diablo Lake, the next one?

Lauren:  I am actually writing the next Goddess with a Blade book right now –

Sarah:  Ooooh!

Lauren:  – called Wrath of the Goddess, and so there’s just a lot.  It’s a, you know, it’s a big sort of story arc that’s been going over the last several books, so it’s all very dire, and things are bad, but the, you know, the, the Hunter Corporation is coming together with the magic users and the, you know, the Vampire nation, all of that stuff, so, so that’s what I’m writing.  But when I’m done with this, I will be back to the next book in Diablo Lake, because there’re some secrets that are getting ready to come out.

Sarah:  Dude, they’re peeling back like a very old onion.

Lauren:  [Sighs] You know, I really wanted to have this kind of unravel slowly.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  Because I really want to focus on sort of Scarlett and how everything around her is unraveling, and these people know something is up, but she’s not sharing that, and there are others in town who know little bits and pieces, and so that will all kind of come together and essentially just blow up in everyone’s face in the next book.

Sarah:  So in that series, if anyone who is listening has not read the reviews that I’ve written, there’re two rival werewolf families –

Lauren:  Okay.

Sarah:  – the Dooleys and the Pembrys, and then there’re witches, and they all live in a magical town in Tennessee completely hidden from everyone in the world, protected by the magic that is in the land that they live on, but the vampire politics, both literal politics of the town and the paranormal politics of the shifters, are screwing everything up.

Lauren:  Yes.  Yes, and –

Sarah:  So an old white dude fucked shit up.

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Yes.  And who thinks he’s better than everyone else, ‘cause he’s got a, he’s got some coins in his pocket, and so it’s just that sort of, you know, this is what happens when you give somebody absolute power:  nobody can handle that.  You know, you need people to tell you the truth, and Dwayne Pembry does not have enough people in his life telling him the truth, and so now he doesn’t know how to hear it.

Sarah:  Yep.  And also –

Lauren:  So –

Sarah:  – with that tension in that series, you’re playing with class, because everyone, like, they, they all look down on the other family and on the, all the other people.  They’re the most powerful, they’re the wealthiest, they’re the best?

Lauren:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So you’re playing with class, and you’re playing with status and wealth and family history in a small Southern town, which goes back, like, you know, eons.

Lauren:  Yep.

Sarah:  So, yeah, you know, piece of cake.

Lauren:  Gender.

Sarah:  Gender.

Lauren:  Gender stuff in there.

Sarah:  Oh, gender, there’s, like, a whole shitload of questions about gender, but anyway!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  You’re dealing with all of these really complicated things, and I’m trying to think of a better word than things, but they’re the type of issues that come up, and they’re so visceral, and they’re so personal that when you’re involved in them, you can’t listen to the other side because it’s such a personally held aspect of yourself.

Lauren:  Right!

Sarah:  And you’re setting it on a pair of werewolf –

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  – clans.

Lauren:  Yes.  And –

Sarah:  So did you sit up and, when you had this idea, and be like, holy shit, yes!  Get me the computer!

Lauren:  I – you know, here’s the thing:  originally, I just wanted to write about, like, blue collar werewolves?  And –

Sarah:  Nothing wrong with that!

Lauren:  – and then I got this, and then I got this idea, like, well, I kind of like this, the sort of Harper Valley PTA-ishness of it?  Like, this, it’s a small town, and you know, you can take all these issues that are these large issues that we all sort of face, no matter if we live in a city or in a small town.  These are things that happen in families, they happen in dynasties, they happen in, in, you know, in neighborhoods, whatever, at your job, and so, yeah, I thought, okay, I, I want to do this funky little town in the middle of nowhere where the politics are all weird –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  – because of who these people are and how they handle that, and originally it was going to be Katie Faith who ran for, for the mayor, and then I, I, as I was writing, I changed that, because I think that Aimee is a better character to carry forward these ideas and, and to be sort of the person who carries this, sort of all these concepts of how do you, how do you live in community with people?  And so it was this fun idea that I got to write about serious things but from this perspective of werewolves, right?  Who’s going to be – you can say, oh, I have this in my family, or I know these people, I know people who do this sort of thing, but you’re never saying, oh, gosh, Lauren Dane is talking about my Uncle Joe.

Sarah:  Right.

Lauren:  Or, or that’s my, you know – so, it, people are not as defensive when they see these issues, so they can, so I feel like they, I could have, I could talk about them without offend-, not offending people, but you know, sometimes, sometimes people see something and they close themselves off to it because it feels too close.

Sarah:  Yes, exactly!  I was just going to say, it’s too intimate and it’s too personal.

Lauren:  Right, so that’s, you know, for me it was like, I, I wanted to write this kooky little town with these funky people in it doing, you know, doing their own thing, and you know, and, and then it just sort of opened itself up to me, and I was just really glad, and then when I sent the idea to my editor, she was like, we have to have this book [claps] right now!  So, you know, it’s just sort of the right idea at the right time.  Right story, right book, right time.

Sarah:  And it seems like it’s really fun to write, because you’re writing it in a very conversational style.  Like, this book is almost the narration of someone who is sitting on a porch like, okay, let me tell you the whole ser-, whole story.  You need an entire bottle of liquor for this story.

Lauren:  [Laughs] Well, you know, the thing is, I, I have, my, my mom’s entire family, they’re all from the South, and so over the last – my, my father passed away in midsummer, or the early part of the summer, and so I spent a lot of the last several months around, you know, my mom’s closer relatives and, and listening to the cadence of that, of the storytelling, and –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  – the way that’s all happening, and it just, it just occurred to me that that’s really what this story is.  This is really just Aimee and Katie Faith and, and other folks in town just saying, hey, sit down and let’s talk about this funky thing that’s going on, and so it’s been, it was really fun, but it’s also, I just have to be, like, very disciplined about making sure that my voice isn’t changing and that I’m not, you know, that my characters aren’t doing insane things that they wouldn’t given that circumstance.  I, I, I do hear sometimes when people think I’m trying to, people think I’m making fun of how Southern people speak, and I’m so not, but I can tell you, I absolutely sat around the kitchen table multiple times and heard almost word for word some of these conversations and in the same kind of colloquial way of speaking –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  – and so it just, for me, it just kind of fit –

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  – who these characters are and who the story is and where this town is and everything, ‘cause it’s like a little secret town, so I kind of wanted them to be like, come here, let me tell you this little secret story about this little secret town.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  And I’m glad it worked, and it doesn’t just go, what the hell?  Does this author not know there’re rules?

Sarah:  [Laughs] Well, I mean, I went to college in South Carolina, so I’m pretty familiar with that cadence?  Especially ‘cause I went to a Southern women’s college –

Lauren:  Ah!

Sarah:  – and they had a very active alumni association, and if they, if an alum gave a scholarship and you were awarded the scholarship, they would bring the alum in from all over the South to have a luncheon, and so I would, you know, this awkward, nerdy Yankee –

Lauren:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – who had not always caught on to the idea of dressing up for things like going to the cafeteria, because why would you do that?

Lauren:  Ah.

Sarah:  And then I would be in this, in this luncheon with women who had two first names?

Lauren:  Of course!

Sarah:  Right?  Annie Laurie, Mary Katherine – like, I, and, and, like, I was fascinated how they would sit down –

Lauren:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – and there would, okay, and everyone has great posture; it’s kind of freaky.  So they all sit down –

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – with incredibly elegant posture, and there’s this superficial conversation of small talk, and then after a while you start reading into the code of what they’re saying and how they’re saying it, and you realize that the conversation has layers?

Lauren:  Absolutely.  There’s a whole world beneath all of that going on.

Sarah:  Right?  And you’re reflecting that in the town, which I think is so fascinating, because people who are not as familiar with the different parts of the United States I don’t think realize how freaking different different parts of the US are, like, culturally –

Lauren:  Yes!

Sarah:  – deeply different.  Like –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – even just northern and southern Maryland are very different.

Lauren:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So when you have a secret in the South being told in basically what is Southern storytelling vernacular, you’ve got layers.  Lots and lots of layers.  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Yeah.  You know, that’s, that’s kind of what I was going at, because I just, I lo-, like I said, I just love that, I love that about how family stories get told, and I, I was, I also feel like, that now that I’m, now that I’ve reached a certain age, they’re, like my mom and, and my aunt, and so they’re all telling me all this stuff?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  Like, they’re telling me secrets?  They’re, they’re opening up to all this sort of – back when, you know, you, your great-grandpa did – you know, and I’m thinking, holy cow!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Like, I could never put this in a book; nobody would ever believe it.  It’s so, it’s like being werewolves, that’s nothing compared to some of the stuff that, you know, that you find out about your family when, when they decide you’re old enough that they’re going to spill the tea, but, you know, yeah, so, I, I wanted to do that, and I’m glad it worked, ‘cause it, it was a, it just, I don’t want to, I’m not trying to be simple.

Sarah:  No!

Lauren:  At the same time, it is kind of simple?  Because it’s a story about people.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  But, you know, I, I just want to, yeah, I just wanted to make it more like, like neighbor to neighbor, you know, or –

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  – or to feel like, I wanted people who are reading it to feel like they’re part of this community.

Sarah:  Yes!

Lauren:  They’re being told this story, that they’re sort of being let in on the secret, and so, you know, so I’m glad it worked!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I also think – it worked, totally worked on me – I also think that part of the allure of really good worldbuilding in paranormals and in the, in the series of books that really take off, that people constantly talk about, is there is a major element of secrecy.  Something is a secret.  Either it – for example, in the Harry Potter, the wizarding world, the whole thing is a secret from all the muggles –

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and if you’re reading it, you’re a muggle, so you know the secret.  And –

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  – Twilight, same thing.  Even that carried into, you know, Fifty Shades, based on Twilight, but the secret was all of the things that these two people were doing that she wasn’t telling anybody.

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  So there’s, there’s the isolation secrecy, and then there’s the worldbuilding secrecy, where, yep, there’s, you know, werewolves and witches and some cats and, you know, nobody can know about this.

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  That, that secrecy, I think, really grabs readers, because by reading it, we’re in on the secret, and in this series –

Lauren:  Exactly!

Sarah:  – we’re in on the, we’re in on the family secrets of this town, and you have to be part of the town to even know where the town is.

Lauren:  Exactly; it’s an intimacy –

Sarah:  Yes!

Lauren:  – that you’re extending, or that you’re trying to extend, just by mode of storytelling, yeah.  And I, and I, for me, it feels like the best way for me to have done it was in a small town, because small towns are ripe for secrets.

Sarah:  Oh, yes.  And, and you have to – and I, and I struggled with figuring this out when I was both living in a small community and also reading a lot of small town fiction – there’s a lot of crap that you have to put up with because there’s no other option.

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  You can’t just nope the hell out –

Lauren:  Yep.

Sarah:  – and you can’t tell somebody to go piss off.  You can’t do anything –

Lauren:  ‘Cause they’re your kid’s teacher or, or –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Lauren:  – the pastor or your mom’s boss or whatever.  Absolutely, yeah!

Sarah:  And, you know, sometimes those secrets are harmful and horrible, and people are protected by those secrets, and then there’s the, then there’s the part where keeping the secret protects people who didn’t have anything to do with it.

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  So it kind of, like, that secrecy can work both in a toxic way and in a protective way, too.

Lauren:  And sometimes at the same time!

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  Right, it just depends on who is, on who you’re speaking to, you know, and, and that’s kind of the, that’s the next thing I’m going to be exploring.  You know, sort of the nature of secrecy and, and who does it protect and who, and who, then, does it hurt?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  Because rarely can you protect somebody without it hurting somebody else, and so you have to figure out, you have to balance that.  And so, yes.  So it’s coming.

Sarah:  Yay!

Lauren:  Yes. 

Sarah:  Another thing I wanted to ask you about is the idea of power and authority, because one of the things that you really explore in the Diablo Lake series is holding onto power and authority and the ways in which you do that.

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  And one of them is keeping all the secrets –

Lauren:  Sure.

Sarah:  – and having all the dirt on people, and then there’s the authority of being the leader of your pack, which comes with all of this sort of supernatural energy.  It’s, it’s, it’s hard to describe.  I mean, you know what I’m talking about it.  You, you wrote it, but this sort of, the energy of whatever is making them shifters transferring from one to their leader if, with allegiance and respect, and they choose to do that.  They choose –

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  – to give their allegiance to that person, and that makes that person physically powerful, so really –

Lauren:  Exactly, it’s, yeah.

Sarah:  – handy-dandy metaphor, right?  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Yes, absolutely!  And it, and I, I feel like it’s, you know, fealty and allegiance and things like that, it’s, it, you know, that’s a really old concept.

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  It’s way older than the United States, most certainly, but, you know, giving, giving your strength and your, and essentially giving over to somebody else’s authority, and I, and I wanted to examine that in a, in a world like a werewolf, where, where you’re essentially keeping a secret to protect all the wolves.  Like, you’re keeping the secret of the town to protect everyone in the town.  So, but at the same time, what happens is when people give you their fealty and you cooperate in a, in a secret, then you can be manipulated by that.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  And, and, and I also think that there, there, there comes a time where people just sort of, it’s the way it’s always been, and I really like to examine those things between how you pay tribute to the fact that the way things have always been in some ways is important, and it keeps things going, and it’s what’s kept them all safe, and it’s what keeps the magic going back into the land, and it keeps the magic protecting the land and the land protecting the magic and all that other stuff, but at the same time, people can misuse that, and people aren’t worthy of that, but to get over, you know, you just sort of, I, I think, I think this is really common, that you just, you’re just so used to the way things are that you just sort of let it happen, because it takes way more energy to come, to combat that –

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  – and to overcome that, and you, because you have to make people uncomfortable, and you have to rattle them, and people don’t like to be made uncomfortable.  They don’t like to be rattled, right?  They just want to go to work and have their kids and go to baseball on Saturday and whatever.

Sarah:  Yep, and change is inherently uncomfortable.

Lauren:  Exactly, and, and so I really wanted to examine that, at this time, the town where, you know, you’ve got change happening in one pack, which you saw in the first book, where you have Jace taking over with Katie Faith, so you have a witch now as a Patron –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  – and, and the new guy, you know, as the Patron with this, with this history of his dad and you’re, you’re not quite sure what, but, you know, people have judged him his whole life for it.  And then you have Mac coming back after he’s been sort of sent away, and, you know, you’re talking about wolves who are, they need one another.  They need that comfort, they need all of, you know, magic and, and complementary magic and all that, so he was sort of essentially sent away to harden him, because he has to come back and dismantle all this, you know, all the structure of this pack that he has to then take apart so that he can lead it more effectively, and so, you know, you, you have like a son having to confront his dad.  You have the pack having to confront their Patron for not doing the right thing.  You’ve got the, you’ve got different, you’ve got the witches angry, so, so I just, all those levels of authority clashing with other kinds of things, making people more and more and more uncomfortable to the pack, to the point that they’re finally willing to do that, but I really also like the idea of what makes a leader a leader?

Sarah:  Yes!  That was fascinating for me, because you set up a tremendous amount of conflict in the story.

Lauren:  Yes!  Because, you know, she’s, she’s a woman, she’s a witch, she is young, she – you know, all of these things about her that make her an amazing and effective leader are the things that freak out the powers that be already, and, and it was like every time they tried to use something to weaken her, it didn’t work, because they don’t understand her.  Her biggest strength is, is compassion –

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  – and her biggest strength is community and understanding.  You know, sometimes you have to make difficult choices, and sometimes you have to make choices that are going to end up not being as good for some people as they are for other people, but choices need to be made for the good of everybody, and people have to trust you to make that judgment.  People have to trust you to weigh those things, and so I, for me, that was the big crux is, you know, her way, which is a more sort of community-based, what’s good for all of us, let’s all talk about it, versus authoritarian-based, which is I’ve been doing this a really long time, I know how to do it better than you do, so you just need to let me do what I need to do –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  – and, you know, and so, you know, she has her own stumbling moments, definitely –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  – because that’s not always going to work.  Sometimes you just have to make a decision.  So, you know, I just, I really wanted to open up this, the idea that it’s really trust from the people in the town, and it’s, she’s thinking of them as a community, and she’s not like, I’m a witch who’s running for mayor.  She, she is Aimee, Aimee Benton who is running for mayor.  Because she lives in that town –

Sarah:  Right.

Lauren:  – so for her, her list of things that led her to that choice are totally different than what led somebody like Dwayne, so you have an age thing, you have a gender thing, you have an essentially race thing because he’s a werewolf.  He, talk about authoritarian.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  They have a very authoritarian – so, for him, he’s unable to pull that away and to be like, okay, well, I’m a, I’m the Patron, but I’m the mayor, and so I have different responsibilities?  For her, she’s able to see that, and I, you know, and I just kind of felt like it’s because her eyes were open and her heart was open, and she was willing to view the situation differently than Dwayne, who just saw it in one way and shut off his brain.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  So –

Sarah:  They also contrast in the way in which they position themselves in the conflict.  So for Aimee, her needs are important, but her ego is the least important thing going into fixing whatever’s wrong with the town, because if the magic starting to deplete, then everyone’s in danger.  And –

Lauren:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – it’s not just the witches that are in danger.  Everyone is in danger, and her ego and what people think of her are actually dead last in her list of concerns.  Her, her, her reputation is helping, is going to help her run for mayor, but what people think of her is not something she worries about.  She, she has very little ego in this fight, whereas on the other side it is all ego and insecurity and the inability to accept anything other than authoritarian leadership that they have.

Lauren:  Yes.  And I, and I think for her, I wanted to, you know, I really wanted to make sure that, when I wrote her, that, that she is strong because of that.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  She’s not weak because of that, she is –

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  – strong because of that, because this is not, this is not her, this is not a, a gold star for her, it’s not a blue ribbon for her, she’s not doing this to, you know, to get more power and to feel superior.  That’s, that’s just not how she approaches it.  That’s not in her mindset.  Not that she doesn’t –

Sarah:  No.

Lauren:  I mean, certainly she’s proud of herself, and she knows she’s making the right choices as much as she can, but, yeah, she’s not, she’s not coming at this like, you know, look at how – she’s not measuring her, her penis, essentially, like –

Sarah:  No.

Lauren:  – like Dwayne is.

Sarah:  No, and –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – she’s, it, it’s also incredibly strong to be able to look at a situation and be like, this is going to be really hard, and I can do it, but I don’t know if I want to.  One of my favorite scenes is where she sits and thinks about, do I want to do this job?  ‘Cause this job is hard –

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and it would take, it would take over everything, and other people had to point out, no!  Just because the current mayor does that job that way and everything goes through him is not the way it’s always been done.  There’s a history that predates him.  Now he’s the only –

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – history you might know, but –

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  – there’re other ways to do this.  And I think it’s, I mean, personally speaking – you can tell I really liked Aimee a lot – personally speaking, I find it –

Zeb:  Bark!  Bark!

Sarah:  – and so does my dog!  Awesome!  He agree – I love when in the middle of the podcast Zeb’s like, I agree from downstairs!  Also, there’s a squirrel.

Lauren:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  But speaking for me personally, I’m pretty comfortable with change, and I’m very comfortable with asking, okay, well, what if we didn’t do it this way?  What if we did it that way?

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  And that’s freaking terrifying to some people, and I’m fully aware of this.

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It was, one of my favorite parts of the whole story was when Aimee’s like, I don’t want to do that job; that job’s crazy!  What are you, kidding me?  And –

Lauren:  Right!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – and her, and her family and her friends are like, actually, we could do it a different way –

Lauren:  Yes!

Sarah:  – where it’s not completely awful!  Like, ohhh, you mean like we could work together and do th- – whoooaaa!

Lauren:  Exactly!  And it, but I lo-, but for me, I thought, listen, she, she’s going to think, okay, well, I have this other job, right?  I mean, for me, I wrote her as a social worker not because she’s a heroine in my book and I had to give her a job but because that’s really part of who she is, and so –

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  – it, it just made sense to me that she would be like, I, I have another, I have a job.  I don’t know if I can do this other thing as well as I can.  I thought it was really important for her community to say, you know, you don’t have to do this alone.

Sarah:  No.  That’s not how this actually is supposed to work.

Lauren:  Yes.  Exactly.  Part of it, part of the problem is that it’s, nobody’s trying these new ways, and you’re not getting new voices in, and so I, I just felt like, for her, she’s real-, you know, the community stuff is important to her and to her family and, you know, and the other witches and things, so I just thought, yeah, that’s how it had to be, so I, I’m glad it made sense, because I just thought, of course she’s going to think that.

Sarah:  Right?  Because women are always asked on, to take on additional emotional labor –

Lauren:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – without allowing for the consideration of how much that actually costs in terms of time and energy.

Lauren:  Exactly!  And because –

Sarah:  And, you know, she’s already a rural social worker.  Her, her commute is probably hours and hours every time she goes out on visits.

Lauren:  Yes.  Yes.  And, you know, you’re dealing with people who have less resources, and so she’s constantly having to make those choices, constantly having to think about that.  Okay, where am I going?  How much can I do?  Can I take this to this person?  How do I make sure that this, this older wolf gets help when he’s too proud to take it?  How do I – ?  So she’s used to thinking in terms that would make her a good leader, but she doesn’t necessarily think of it like, that –

Sarah:  Nope.

Lauren:  – and I thought that her family needed to check her on that, because she doesn’t have her own ego like, like Dwayne does, like, that you brought up, so I thought it was really important for her parents and for Katie Faith and for her people that she looked up to to say, you can totally do this, and we’re going to help you do this.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  So, you know, I thought that was just, it made sense for who she is as a character.

Sarah:  And, and, seriously, he’s, he’s like the human personification of manspreading.

Lauren:  Right?

Sarah:  He’s just like the human representation of every guy who’s ever sat with his legs spread on the subway and not thought about whether or not the seats adjacent to him might occupy someone who needs to sit down.  Like, he’s the human representation of manspread.

Lauren:  Yep.  And he, all while telling you how much he respects women or whatever, he’s, you know, being that way.  He, he really is kind of everybody’s Uncle Pete, you know –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Lauren:  – in that sense.

Sarah:  The one where you can play Horrible Family Visit Bingo with?  Like, oh, yep, racist, you said something racist!  Check.

Lauren:  Yeah, exactly, like –

Sarah:  Oh, oh, oh, yep, hidden comment about women being weaker.  Hang on, let me get my pencil.  Check!  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Yep.  I mean, hey!  Drink!  Okay, you know, yes.  Oh!

Sarah:  That’s why there’s alcohol.  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Exactly.  Exactly.  That’s why, that’s why you only go if there’s, if it’s a big enough house that you can kind of avoid them the whole time you’re there.  Otherwise, it ends in tears.

Sarah:  So did you write this during the election cycle, or did – ?  ‘Cause there were a lot of very close parallels to the election that just gave me chills.

Lauren:  Well, I, most of it I, I had gotten before that, but when I came back to do the, you know, the revision on all that, this was all happening, and then I thought, oh, my gosh, everyone’s going to hate politics.  Nobody’s going to want to read this book that’s – [laughs] – because, because there’s so much politics in it and, and where we are in our culture right now, nobody’s going to want to know, but, yeah, I mean, I think that there’s, and every time I would finish it or send it back in, something else would happen, and I’d think, oh, my God, I just wrote about that, and I was wondering if Angie would let me get away with it, because it, maybe it doesn’t even seem realistic, and, you know, all you have to do is look at what’s going on and – [laughs]

Sarah:  Yep.  I was wondering if –

Lauren:  And it’s –

Sarah:  – maybe you were psychic.  Maybe you have some lottery numbers you would like to share with the class.

Lauren:  God!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Lauren:  If only!  You know, if on-, you know, if, if I was then, you know, eight, you know, you would see that my version of what happened was much better, so.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons why I found it so comforting, and –

Lauren:  Goodness.

Sarah:  Ohhh.  And, and that, and the diplomacy and consideration of other people’s needs above your own is what helps make her a stronger candidate, and also that she’s very, very good at taking exactly zero of his shit.

Lauren:  Yes.  And I, and what I liked about, about writing her is that she, is that she’s, she’s a sol-, she solidly, you know, believes in herself to a certain extent, but I think that she learned new things about herself each and every time she was challenged by something.

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  And I liked that too.  Like, you know, because none of us are one hundred percent sure about anything we do, and I, I really wanted to, sometimes you just have to muddle through anyway, and, and I wanted her to do that, to, to have the courage to fail so that she could continue to learn and move forward.  You know –

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  – and I, and I don’t think she would have been able to do that, you know, without the support of, of her family and her community, ‘cause I think that was a really important part of it for her.

Sarah:  Another thing I wanted to ask you about with this world in particular was the portrayal of female friendships.

Lauren:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  That was the, another, another aspect that I found so incredibly comforting, that you have a coven, like a literal coven of witches, but in a lot of ways, as women age we sort of form our own covens.  One podcast that I’m really liking called Friendshipping calls it your pit crew?

Lauren:  Mm-hmm, yes!

Sarah:  When you, when you need to get off the track because something is wrong, who is going to run and help you?  Who are –

Lauren:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – who is your pit crew?  And who is, who is in your coven that’s going to support you and be like, no, hell, yes, you can!  Go on!

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  And finding that as you age, because I think in a lot of ways after women achieve the sort of public expected milestones, we’re expected to disappear.  Like, you’re –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – you get lots of attention when you graduate, when you get married, when you have a baby, when you get a big job, whatever, and then once your children are grown or in high school, you’re, you know, it takes a little bit less time in a lot of cases to raise them because they can feed themselves, and God, you hope they can bathe themselves, although, you know –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – it’s debatable sometimes?

Lauren:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  But women are expected in middle, middle age and later, I think, we’re expected to disappear.  There isn’t –

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  – a public role for us, and yet, those are the women who get shit done.

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  And you have women who gather some really powerful friendships and communities around, around each other because you have time to do the things that you’re passionate about, whether that’s volunteering or cross-stitching or, you know, kicking ass and taking names –

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  – while cross-stitching.

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  I, it makes me think of all of those profiles of wow, look at Hillary Clinton’s friends!  She has really good friends!  I’m like, well, of course she has friends!  She’s not going to survive her life without friends, come on!

Lauren:  Exactly, yes.

Sarah:  So when you look at the world of this book you have all of these women sort of really closely connected together by magic and by friendship, and then at the heart of it is Aimee and Katie Faith.

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Was that a deliberate choice, or did that sort of evolve out of the world?

Lauren:  I absolutely, it was a deliberate choice because when I, when I first started putting Moonstruck together, it was, it was about Katie Faith coming of age in this other way, and, and I wanted her to have somebody who would honestly reflect back, okay, this is a good thing, this is a bad thing, but I’m ride or die, no matter what, and I, I feel like women have so, we are, we are so – you are absolutely correct, I am, I just turned forty-nine last week, so I can, I can –

Sarah:  Oh, happy birthday!

Lauren:  Thank you!  I can, I can tell you that yes, we are expected to go away.  We are, we are, once you’re not fertile anymore, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re unattractive, or you’re an old woman, or whatever.  You’re un- –

Sarah:  You have no purpose, and you’re not sexy.

Lauren:  Exactly, because you’re just, you’re, you know, it’s all youth and, and fecundity and all of those things, and certainly those are important things, but, you know.  I think women frequently are their own best support system because when we share emotion with one another, when we share stories with one another, we are supportive, we are, we are making better future generations of women, and I think that having, having positive relationships between women in, in my stories, in my books, it’s always important to me, because I think that in so many situations we’ve got women in books who are constantly jealous of one another, fighting with one another, and, and, you know, and it’s this weird sort of fighting over men or fighting, you know, and I just, I, I wanted to make a different choice.  I wanted to talk about how, ways in which women are nurturing with one another and strengthen one another, and, you know, the sharing of oral history and those things, and the sharing of magic and spells, because you have, you have the older witches, who are definitely mentoring the younger witches, and there, and there’s definitely a sense of not just teaching one another but sharing experience and power as a way to make them all stronger, and I, I just real-, I personally find that in-, incredibly important.  And, you know, I, every bad thing that’s ever happened to me in my life, it’s been, you know, my family or my friends who have helped me through these really difficult things and have given me great advice and wonderful support and kicks in the butt when I need it and things like that, so, it, it really was important for me that Katie Faith and Aimee are the, were the center of this, of the first two books especially, because you’ve got all this stuff in the outside that would have, would have essentially broken a friendship apart, you know, which when Aimee took, you know, she’s essentially coming up to, to be the Patron, you know, of, of one pack, and her best friend’s the Patron of another pack, and these two packs have all this bad energy between them, but at the same time, nothing’s ever going to tear apart Katie Faith and Aimee.  And I just really wanted to make that point that, you know, we can give our fealty to one another as friends and as sisters and, and things like that, and, you know, and it makes us stronger and better, so I wanted that friendship and that community to be the heart of, of this town and, and of that story, of both stories.  I –

Sarah:  I also love that the packs have to figure out a way to get along because the two Patrons are connected to women who are best friends.

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like –

Lauren:  Yeah, they do.

Sarah:  – well, you know, we could continue this dumbass family history that neither of us actually know why we have this problem?  Or we could do it differently!

Lauren:  Exactly!

Sarah:  And that’ll scare the shit out of everybody!

Lauren:  And, but I wanted them both to be, like, they’re both obviously alpha males, but I also wanted them to realize the importance of – I mean, because Katie Faith and Aimee, they’re pack.  They’re their own pack –

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  – in a sense.  They are their own family, they are, they are, the two of them, their relationship is a character in, in the series, and it’s, and, and I definitely wanted that to be like, no, there’s no, they’re not going to let any of this other petty stuff get in the way of what they have been, and, and I, I think it makes them both stronger, and I also think it makes both Jace and Mac stronger that they also see that, you know, and recognize, you know, happy, what is it, happy wife, happy life.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  You know, just, you know, stick with what you know, stick what you love, and, and, you know, don’t get rid of things that make you stronger, so.

Sarah:  And they also, they have to come to terms with the power of that relationship, that they’re very familiar with werewolf bonds –

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  – and the magical connection between werewolf packs, but, and inside their own packs, but they also have to come to terms with the fact that their relationship, that Aimee, Aimee and Katie Faith’s relationship also has a lot of power.

Lauren:  Absolutely.

Sarah:  And they have to accept it and also, you know, get out of the way.

Lauren:  Yeah, and I, and I li-, and I feel like both of, like, neither, neither woman would be with somebody who wasn’t able to accept that.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  I just, it just seems to me that they, neither of those guys would have been heroes if they hadn’t realized that that thing is, it, it, you know, your, your partner can love somebody else with that kind of totality and depth, and it doesn’t mean that your relationship with them is less or that your, or that their relationship with the pack or anything else is less.  It’s just this other aspect of their partner which, you know, I just, I, I felt like it was really important to keep their bond there and to keep them as a tight unit.

Sarah:  Yes, absolutely.  And also that their relationship predates their relationships with their respective –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – wolfie partners –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and one thing that has often frustrated me in romance that I think is slowly beginning to change is what I look at as the isolation of the heroine?

Lauren:  Mm.

Sarah:  The heroine doesn’t often, in a lot of romances that I have read, and there are a few that I have read, they, the heroine doesn’t often have a lot of close friends who aren’t –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – in some way diminished or held back because either they’re the future heroine of another book or that, that, you know, there’s, that, that woman is not supposed to compete for the attention of the, of the heroine; they’re not supposed to be in the way.

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  There are often women who are competition, but –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – there aren’t often communities of women inside romance that maintain that community on an equal level to the romantic relationship.

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And I love that.  One of the things I loved about the Lisa Kleypas Wallflowers series was that –

Lauren:  Oh, yes!

Sarah:  – they were each others’ ride and die friends.

Lauren:  Exactly.

Sarah:  And it was just wonderful that they were going to help each other through awkward and, and awful social situations.

Lauren:  And that they were all different and –

Sarah:  Yes!

Lauren:  – and that each one of them, none of them were expected to change any of those – like, they, they loved one another, they love one another based on who they are, flaws and all –

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  – which I really, really love.  There’s no, you have to be this or that to be worthy of, of my friendship, but, but that we are, we have these things because, because we love one another, and I just, I think that’s so important, and I think that in, especially in romance, this, you know, we’re women!

Sarah:  Yes.

Lauren:  And we understand the importance of that, and, and so, yeah, I, I absolutely, I think, I think Kleypas actually does a very good job.

Sarah:  It was the same thing that I loved about Spindle Cove; those were all women looking out for each other.

Lauren:  Oh, yes.

Sarah:  You know, it – and it’s, it’s almost like, I’ve said many times, especially in February when mainstream media asks questions about romance books –

Lauren:  About romance, yes.

Sarah:  – and here’s a picture of Fabio.

Lauren:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I’ve said a lot of times that what people who are outside the community don’t realize is that these books are often our literary inheritance.  You know –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – women teach other women around them to, to knit or to cross-stitch or to cook.  We pass along the things that we do that are part of our, our expected responsibilities.  We teach one another how to take care.

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  But romance is our literary inheritance.  So many romance readers learn about romance from another woman in their family.  Either they gave them a book or they snuck the book out of that person’s room, but they got that book from somebody –

Lauren:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and it’s almost always –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – a woman or it’s –

Lauren:  Found a box in the attic of, of –

Sarah:  Right?

Lauren:  – Nana’s secret stash of romances.

Sarah:  Forbidden grocery bag.  [Laughs] Yes!  Well, there was this secret brown paper bag and Grandma told me I wasn’t allowed to go in there –

Lauren:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – then one day I did, and the world opened up!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  But this is, much like you were saying, the witches who teach each other their spells and how to basically live life as a witch, we are passing each other the genre, that we are introducing –

Lauren:  Yes.

Sarah:  – the genre to new people, and this is a, very much a sisterhood of readers and writers and also –

Lauren:  Absolutely.

Sarah:  – I also think characters, ‘cause I think for a lot of us the characters are just as important.

Lauren:  Absolutely, yeah.  I agree.

Sarah:  And I, I just, I want to see more of that community reflected in the books, you know?

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  Like women with friends.

Lauren:  Well, you know, I, I honestly, to me, how, I don’t know how to write it any other way because to me there’s no better way to unders-, for the reader to understand a character than through the perspective of the people who love them?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  Not just the hero but through their friends, through their family, through, through these people who, who are, you know, who love them.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  And so for me, I just, I just can’t imagine, you know, getting through all the junk in your life on your own like that.  And, you know, I’ve written a couple of very estra-, characters who are a little estranged –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Lauren:  – from themselves and from other people.  That’s always the hardest for me to write because I, my, my natural tendency is to create community and have – [laughs] – to create this community of friends or of family or, or intentional family, essentially, to help that, those characters ride out whatever I’m going to throw at them in story.

Sarah:  Yep.

Lauren:  So it just seems to make sense to me, but, you know.

Sarah:  So is there anything you want to tease people with about Diablo Lake?  Is it, is it a three-book series?  Is it going to be three total?

Lauren:  Right now I’m looking at three, but I have to, I have to finish sketching this out, because I don’t, I don’t want to make this like a kitchen sink book, you know?

Sarah:  Right.

Lauren:  So I want to make, I, I need to, you know, the, the secret is going to come out, and it’ll be a big deal.  You know, and, and I, but I don’t want to drag out this other stuff, so this particular story arc will end after three books, but, but the town and the people in it, there’ll always be other stories, so I want to get into some of the cats, and I want do some other stuff, but for, for now, this particular storyline will end after three.

Sarah:  Cool, cool.

Lauren:  But I will be back.  But I will be back.

Sarah:  Awesome.

Lauren:  Yes!  So.  Because it’s a fun town to write about!

Sarah:  Oh, it’s very fun.  I, I noticed that in my review there were commenters asking if there would be a Werewolves of Diablo Lake calendar.

Lauren:  [Laughs] I wish, man!  If I knew dudes who were that hot, I, I would probably say, hey!  Pretend that you’re a blue-collar werewolf, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs] Go stand next to that tree!

Lauren:  Take off your shirt.  Let’s go!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Maybe, maybe I can convince Carina to, you know, that that’d be a really fun – [laughs] – marketing –

Sarah:  Yeah, I think that would be a good idea.  You know that Harlequin’s got piles of stock images that they – ‘cause they shoot their own.

Lauren:  Right.

Sarah:  I’m sure they’ve got a big old database.

Lauren:  That’s right!

Sarah:  This didn’t work for a book cover, but we could put that on a calendar!

Lauren:  Yeah, see?  Ooh, maybe I need to, I, I think I need to, you know, have a little plan to approach Angela James about this.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Send ‘em very, very chill but curious email.

Lauren:  Yes.  Yes!  Well, you know, yeah.  I’ll have to corner her.  Be like, by the way –

Sarah:  Yes!  We had this idea.

Lauren:  The people are demanding it, Angie!  The people are demanding it!

Sarah:  Yes!  [Laughs] You’ve got to give the people what they want.

[Laughter]

Lauren:  Exactly!

Sarah:  And what they want is hot, shirtless werewolves!  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Right?!  Hot, shirtless werewolves.  Who doesn’t want hot, shirtless werewolves, I’d like to know?

Sarah:  Right?  Probably the shifter cats, but you know, you could add them in.

Lauren:  We could do them too.

Sarah:  Yeah, it’s fine.  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Do them later.  You know.

Sarah:  So the question I always ask at the end of every episode is what are you reading that you want to tell people about?  And I don’t know if you’re reading anything, ‘cause I know you’re writing, and some people very, very much compartmentalize those activities.  Are there any books that you want to make sure to tell people about?

Lauren:  Yeah, I do, actually, try not to read when I’m – or try not to read in the genre when I’m writing it, so I was actually working on a contemporary thing, and I just finished – oh, my gosh, now I’m not going to remember the title.  

Sarah:  [Laughs] Welcome to my brain.

Lauren:  Well, it’s Chelsea Mueller; she runs Vampire Book Club?  She sent me a, she sent me an ARC of her upcoming book.  It’s called Borrowed Souls.

Sarah:  Ooh, that’s a good title!

Lauren:  You know, and it’s, it’s actually a very creative new sort of urban fantasy world.  It’s this, the heroine has, there are these, essentially it’s a, like a future where people rent souls so that they can do bad stuff and the smut of whatever they do doesn’t get on their soul?  It gets on the soul they’re renting?

Sarah:  Dude!

Lauren:  Yeah!  It’s really good, and so that heroine is, it, gets into trouble and has to do some bad stuff to help her brother out, so she ends up dealing with this soul stealer, soul charmer, soul renter guy, and then he, you know, he hooks her up with somebody else, you know, one of his enforcers, so she has to go, and there’s a seedy underbelly into this world, and it’s really, really creative and wonderful, and it’s, it’s coming out in May, but I, I absolutely loved it, so I hope, I hope people will give it a chance, because it’s, like I said, it’s, there’s nothing else like that, like it out there right now, so I’m super excited for her.

Sarah:  Very cool!

Lauren:  And I just love it.  It’s one of the best things about being a writer, when people send you their books early.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Lauren:  Woohoo!  I’m a whore for that stuff, man.  I will just be like, so, you know, you want to send me that early, I’d be all totally okay with that.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  You mean you just hit The End, like, an hour ago?  That’s fine!  Send it over!

Lauren:  Send it over!  Send it on over!  I’ll give it a look!  So, yeah, huh?

[Laughter]

Lauren:  It’s awesome perks of the job.

Sarah:  It is a nice perk, isn’t it?

Lauren:  It is.

Sarah:  The downside is I don’t know when things actually are coming out because I’ve already read them, and I’m like –

Lauren:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – can I talk about this yet?  No?  Okay, I’m being quiet.

Lauren:  Yeah.  Is it okay for me to talk about this yet?  Can I tell people about it?

Sarah:  Nope, not talking about it yet?  Okay, that’s fine.

Lauren:  [Laughs] I can’t lord it over people that I got the chance to look at it early?  Dang!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Lauren:  I’m just that petty.

Sarah:  Well, you know, with books sometimes it’s really exciting, and you want to tell all the people you know about it!

Lauren:  It is!  And, and when it’s, like, debut books like that and they’re awesome, I’m just, I just get even more excited.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I want to thank Lauren Dane for hanging out with me and tolerating my extremely nosy questions about the world that she created.

I will have links to all of the books that we discussed, including the first two Diablo Lake books on the website at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and you can find all of our recent episodes at iTunes.com/DBSA.  We have lots of places.

This episode was brought to you by Kensington Publishing.  Wattpad star and winner of Kensington’s The Write Affair competition Darly Jamison makes her print debut with a sweet yet sexy story of the magic of first love and the blessing of second chances with her fresh, unique voice and small town contemporary romance.  When Addison Monroe returns to her small home town in Georgia for a visit, she’s happily engaged to a prominent Atlanta doctor and excels at her job as a physician’s assistant, but the minute she crosses paths with Jake Grady whom she fell in love with that perfect summer when she was eighteen, everything begins to change, and old feeling resurface out of the blue.  Does the magic of first love truly go away?  Find out in Darly Jamison’s poignant exploration of the meaning of love and connection through time in Strawberry Wine, available now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

If you would like to email me with suggestions or ideas or you want to ask me a question, you can email me at [email protected], or if you’re feeling like that’s a little hard to remember, try sarah – with an H, S-A-R-A-H – at smartbitchestrashybooks.com [[email protected]].  Both of those email addresses reach me, and I love hearing from you ‘cause you’re awesome.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is “The Naughty Step” by Peatbog Faeries from their album Dust, and I will tell you that for a really long time I didn’t realize that the naughty step was the step you had to go sit on when you were in trouble?  Like, I thought it was some kind of dance.  But, hey.  This is not the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever admitted on this podcast, so I’m not going to worry about it.

If you would like to support the show or if you would like to receive one of my handcrafted, completely heartfelt, artisan-made, locally sourced compliments, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.  For as little as one dollar a month you can help me commission transcripts for past episodes, upgrade equipment, and make the show more awesomer.

And you know, I think that’s all I’ve got for the outro.  As, as usual, this is another excellent, professional job as I do the outro, and Orville is actually trying to climb onto the sound, sound box right now, so I’m juggling cat and recording at the same time, and since I know you love it when the cats interfere, I’ll just leave all this in here!

So on behalf of Orville and Wilbur and Lauren Dane and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[naughty music]