235. Listener Email, Questions, and Romance Reader Stories

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 235 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are all of you!  I have an assembly of your excellent email and stories and jokes and questions, because you are all brilliant and clever and interesting people.  And having collected all of your messages for this episode, I have to say thank you for listening, because now that I know how incredibly funny you all are, I’m really honored that you listen to me every week, so thank you!

And if you’re thinking, I would like to send an email or ask questions or both, you can do that!  You can email me at [email protected] or you can call and leave a voicemail at 201-371-3272, which is a US number, so if you’re overseas, be prepared; it may cost a few of your local currency to make that call, but if you call, that would be cool!  I like hearing from you and reading what you say ‘cause you’re all brilliant!

Speaking of brilliant, this podcast is brought to you by Kensington Books, who would like you to know about Justice Ascending.  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti deepens her worldbuilding and raises the bar on the suspense in this conclusion to her high-octane Scorpius Syndrome series with Justice Ascending.  Set on the mean streets of a chillingly believable LA devastated by the introduction of a deadly bacterium, this third book brings readers the stunning finale as our heroes race towards a secret government facility that could be the key to eradicating Scorpius for good.  With non-stop action, sexual tension, and a shocking plot twist you won’t see coming, Justice Ascending by Rebecca Zanetti is romantic suspense cranked up to 11.  Available now wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com.

Now, for fun, fun part!  I love this part of the intro!  I have [sings] compliments!  All right.  And as a complete coincidence, these compliments are both for people named Anne and Anna, both with the last initial H.  So this is fun.

To Anne H.:  A lot of people that you know keep a gratitude journal, and in it they frequently write how you’ve made their lives immeasurably better.

And to Anna H.:  Your determination, inner strength, innate kindness, and incredible style are admired by so many people, I can’t actually count that high.

And if you are wondering what is happening, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.  For monthly pledges of as little as one dollar a month, you help me keep the show being more gooder and more excellenter by upgrading equipment and helping me commission transcripts, and there are rewards at different levels that are a lot of fun, including my heartfelt, completely sincere, and artisan, hand-crafted compliments, which seriously are so much fun.  So if you would like one, have a look, because I really enjoy this!

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 if you are thinking, I would like to find out about all of the books and the music and the things that are being discussed in this episode, excellent!  Head on over to smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast or iTunes.com/DBSA.  You can find the books and links and albums and things that we talk about, plus links to past episodes and all sorts of podcasting fun stuff, so have a look at either of those two locations!

Now, as is all right and proper, when I do a listener voicemail or email episode, I have cat interference, so I’m hoping that at some point they will want to answer questions too.  You never know with them; sometimes they’re quiet, and sometimes they’re yelling at me.  So we’ll see what happens.  With real luck, Orville will not make a giant poop in the middle of this episode.  I hope that never happens again.

And now, without further delay, let’s get started!

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Sarah:  Okay, let’s get started.  Our first email is from Paloma:

Paloma’s email:  Hey Smart Bitches!

I’m a newcomer to your glorious podcast! I just found it last week and have been binging your episodes, thank you so much for doing what you do!!!! I have a couple of questions that I wanted to ask.

So I have been an avid romance reader since I was 12 years old. I’ve devoured every kind of romance I could get my hands on from a young age so my tastes have evolved drastically. I went from my first illicit paranormal romance (Kresley Cole!) to young adult, historical romances, new adult and <3 and of course eroticas. So naturally, 6 years and almost 700 books later, it’s become increasingly hard for me to give a book a chance. Usually I end up putting a book down after the first chapter and if not then usually by 15% of the book. Because of this I end up in book slumps quite frequently. How do you break your book slumps?  Do you do this? I feel so guilty, and fear that it’s ruining my reading life. I don’t know how to cope, do you have any advice?

Because of this problem I haven’t been able to read a Julia Quinn book! I know! I’ve tried on so many occasions but it just won’t work…I feel like a fake historical romance fan because I can’t get into her books…What am I doing wrong in regard to her books?

Also…I’m a hardcore Lisa Kleypas and, most recently, a Tessa Dare fangirl. I love love love Historical Romances and of course Period films/shows. So it’s hard for me to find historical romance books that grab my attention…So many can just blend into each other…I love witty banter, swoon worthy romance, the angsty yearning type of love and just freshness.

Sarah:  Okay, so before I move onto the next part of your question, Paloma, let me talk about reading slumps and recommendations.  It sounds to me like one of the things that’s wrong here is that you’re picking up books that aren’t exactly a good fit for you, so what might help is for you to look at the historical romances that you have loved the most, the ones that just completely rock your world, that you just adored, and maybe some that you reread.  Look at what those books have in common.  I know you mention that you like witty banter, you like swoon-worthy romance with angsty yearning, love, and freshness.  These are all things that you can look for in other books if you can identify a little bit more specifically what you’re looking for.  Banter?  Not a problem, but if you’re looking for big, angsty, emotional magnitude in your writing, then you might want to try something other than Julia Quinn.  Julia Quinn is like romantic comedy romance and is light and sparkling and really fun, but if that’s not what you’re looking for, then that’s not going to make you happy.  And it’s okay if you don’t like Julia Quinn; it is really okay.  You do you!  So here are some recommendations for you that might help:

First, in terms of angst, you probably want to try Lauran Kinsale, because she would like to rip your heart out, mess it up, and hand it back to you with each of her books.  Now if you’ve been reading a lot of historical romances that have been published in the last, say, you know, five to eight years, her style and the pacing of her books might seem a little different because they were published a lot longer in the past than the books that you may have been reading recently.  But for angst, there’s, there is really no better high-grade, intense angst than some Laura Kinsales. If you want to start with something that’s a little bit lighter of hers, Midsummer Moon might be a good one.  Also, if you really want to go right to the painful painful and angst and blow your mind?  Find yourself a copy of Flowers from the Storm.  It’s, it’s an experience, really.  And there are some readers who don’t like it, but it was one of the most intense and emotionally powerful romances I’ve read in a long, long time.

The trick about your email, I think, is that you’re looking for both good dialogue and some angsty yearning type of love.  Other authors who might be able to help you out with that are Meredith Duran and Sherry Thomas, and you might also like Elizabeth Hoyt.  Her Maiden Lane series is an ongoing historical romance with some really brilliant heroines, and she writes great dialogue, but there’s also a lot of angst and exploration of really deep-seated problems that characters have that they need to work out.  It’s not superficial by any means.

One other recommendation that I might – yeah, I’m pretty sure I want to make this recommendation – you might want to seek out some of Carla Kelly’s older Regency romances.  Now, the older Regencies are shorter in word count, they usually do not contain any sex scenes, but hers are set in the Napoleonic Wars, and so the setting is already intense, and then the characters are in intense places, so because there’s so much anguish and despair surrounding them, when they find happiness with each other, it’s incredibly bittersweet, and I find her books really comforting.

Mary Balogh as well has some older Regencies.  A Certain Magic you might really like by Mary Balogh.  There’s actually a sex scene in there which just, you know, blew me away.  I was not expecting that!  I mean really wasn’t expecting that.

Let me go back to your other question about reading slumps:  part of your slump, like I said, might be that you’re reading books that don’t quite match your taste, which is totally normal!  But I also have book slumps, and I, they also make me feel guilty, and as I’ve said on other episodes, they do give me anxiety that maybe I’ve read all the books that I’m going to like and there aren’t any more, which is never true.  You’re not alone in feeling like reading slumps are just awful.  They totally suck, and it’s really frustrating.  The way I solve a reading slump is either to look at a book that I know I like and will never ever disappoint me – and that’s a lot of responsibility to hang on a book, and so I don’t use that method constantly because I don’t want the magic of those particular books to wear off, but for example, Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs or the short story “Alpha & Omega.”  Both are so perfectly done that they make me happy every time I read them.  I have also read, reread Act Like It by Lucy Parker because it is one of my favorite contemporary romances, and it’s like taking a little trip in my brain, because the world of London’s theatre area is so vivid that I feel like I’m just sort of taking a little vacation with my, with my imagination.

The other way in which I break a reading slump is to read nonfiction.  I really love travel memoirs, and I love stories about people who have made massive life changes and tried to live in a completely way or in a completely different area.  I love travel journals, and I really like reading cookbooks, which sounds really boring, but some of them are brilliant.  So if I’m in a reading slump and romance is not working for me or my brain is tired or I’m super stressed and don’t have the ability to read something, especially something that’s emotionally demanding, I will read a memoir or a travel journal, or I’ll find a travel blog that I really like and read their archives.

Otherwise, I will rewatch old movies.  I will rewatch the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice, and I’ll rewatch older episodes of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.  I also really like How to Train Your Dragon; it’s one of my favorite children’s movies, and there’s an animated series that goes with it that’s on Netflix, so I will watch the first movie or the second movie, or I’ll watch the television show, and after a few episodes I generally feel like I can go back to romance, but sometimes you just need a break, and that’s okay.

So don’t beat yourself up too much if you’re in a place where romance isn’t working for you.  You can find something else to read, or you can try a new book or reread something that you’ve loved or watch something.  You’re, you’re not alone, and there’s nothing wrong with you, and I promise you you can find good books, and if you want to email me and ask for recommendations, totally okay.

Now back to the rest of Paloma’s email.  She has a few more questions.  First:

Paloma’s email:  Last question! I want to, in the future, write a romance novel!

Sarah:  [Whispers] Awesome!

Paloma’s email:  And I desperately need a pen name because my name is too gloriously Spanish to stick in the front of romance novel cover…How does one come up with a good pen name?

Sarah:  Okay, first, I’m not going to – obviously – read your entire name on the podcast, but I don’t think you have to if you don’t want to.  That said, I don’t work in marketing and sales, so I might be giving incorrect advice.  As a reader – and I recognize that I’m odd as a reader because I also speak Spanish – your name does not throw me at all.  Paloma is a beautiful name.  I do, however, empathize with having a surname that can be hard for people to pronounce.  My maiden name was a Welsh name, so I struggled with people not pronouncing my name right for a very long time.  If you are looking for a new surname, a new last name, you can pick someone who is very close to you, their middle name.  You can pick something that you really like, something that makes you smile.  Picking a pen name is really hard, but I don’t think you need to change all of your name.  In the end, you want to do what works best for you and what you’re comfortable with.  Picking a name for yourself is very challenging, so I would say keep your first name, and if you’re concerned about pronunciation of your surname then choose something else, but you can make it as Spanish or as not-Spanish as you want.  I’m all for people having names that best represent them.

Now, last question from Paloma:

Paloma’s email:  Bonus questions: what’s your favorite kind of tea? What is your reading routine?

Sarah:  Okay, time for me to confess an unpopular opinion:  I don’t actually like tea.  All of the teas that I’ve tried have been so bitter, and they make my mouth taste weird when I’m done.  There are very few that I really like.  If I am sick, I usually will have Constant Comment, which has some orange flavor to it that I like.  Otherwise, Lady Grey I will drink if I’m also feeling ill, but most of the time I don’t like tea.  I’m actually quite boring; I drink coffee and then water and then maybe I have wine, but that’s really about all I drink.  Super boring, and I’m not a big fan of tea; sorry.  But if you’re listening and you’re like, oh, I know exactly what your problem is; you should try this tea, I am open for all suggestions, ‘cause I would like to enjoy tea, but I don’t.  I also can’t have a lot of caffeine, so unless you guys want podcasts from Cornholio, caffeinated tea would be a bad idea.  Also, I do a much better impression of Butthead than Beavis.  I’m way better at Butthead.

As for my reading routine, I don’t actually have a reading routine.  I read pretty much consistently.  [Laughs] I deleted all the games from my phone except one, which of course is tied to How to Train Your Dragon – I was not kidding that I really like that movie – so I have one game on my phone, and at any other time I’m either doing a Duolingo lesson or I’m reading.  If I’m sitting around, I’m probably reading.  I typically read before bed, the danger there being that if I’m really into my book I will ignore all of my warnings from my calendar that I should go to sleep and just keep reading because, well, Bad Decisions Book Club is real, and I’m totally in it!  I also have a progress sort of tracker in my notebook where I track that I’ve done certain things every day, like I’ve worked out or I’ve taken a long walk with the dogs, that I’ve done my language lesson, and that I’ve read or created something every day, so I really want to color in that square that I did some reading, I will make sure that I read.  Plus, both of my children have reading assigned times, and so for all of us to sit and read together for however long they have to read each day means that I’m guaranteed to have at least thirty minutes of time where it’s just reading, nothing else.  As for routine, I don’t really have one, unfortunately.  I pretty much read whenever I can or whenever I’m not supposed to?  Like when I’m supposed to sleeping.  [Laughs]

But thank you for your email, Paloma, and good luck with writing a romance and also with reading!  I hope that these recommendations have been helpful.

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Sarah:  Okay.  In preparation for this episode, I asked the folks on Patreon who have supported the podcast if they had any questions that they want me to answer.  And, well, to absolutely not my surprise, they have questions, so here’s one:

Christine wants to know if I have any good stories about converting someone who is skeptical about the romance genre or even hostile to it into a happy romance reader, or maybe just a more open-minded person.

Yes.  Yes, I do!  I love this!  Okay, so, years and years and years ago, back in 2009 when our first book came out, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, a producer at NPR who worked on weekends All Things Considered said, we need to have the Smart Bitches on weekend All Things Considered.  Now, I did not think that we were exactly NPR adjacent, but, you know, I, I wasn’t going to say no.  It was our first book, right?  So I and Candy, who was the cofounder of the site and coauthor of the book, went on weekend All Things Considered, and I remember it was during Passover, so I was up in Connecticut with my in-laws, who lived there at the time, and I had to, like, leave in the middle of the day and go to a college campus and hook into their college radio station, so I’m in this tiny, tiny booth.  It was very hot, and I was super freaked out, and I was sitting in a room all by myself talking to, like, six people.

So the interview happens, and is often the case with media, you will be booked or speak with a producer, someone behind the scenes, and then when you get on the air, whether it’s television or radio or whatever, the person you’re talking to is not the same as the person who booked you, so sometimes the person who booked you is like, yeah, whatever, I was told to do this, and sometimes the person who is interviewing you is like, this is the stupidest segment, and I’m not taking this seriously, and this is ridiculous.  And so that’s happened; I’ve talked to a very friendly producer behind the scenes, and then I go to talk to the host, and the host is like, why am I even talking to you?  This was not one of those cases.  The weekend All Things Considered person was very, very nice, but – [laughs] – her producer, who had booked us originally, noticed that she kept talking about those books.  Why do you read those books?  What is it that women are looking for in those books?  Sort of distancing herself a little bit about it.  She was not disrespectful – I mean, you can still find this episode on the air – she was not disrespectful or anything, but you could clear, this was not her genre.  So we finished the interview, and the producer comes on, and she’s like, all right, you have to read one now, because you kept saying those books, and now you need to read one.  I’m going to make you read one, and I was like, ohhh, crap.  So we each recommended a different romance, and I don’t remember who recommended what, but about a month and a half later, I got an email from that host, who said, hi, I’m so-and-so.  I was interviewing you for weekend All Things Considered, and I didn’t think I would like them, and I loved it.  I loved this book.  It was like the literary equivalent of the perfect chocolate doughnut.  I didn’t think it was going to be good for me, but it was exactly what I needed, and I’m hoping you can recommend more.  Heh-heh-heh.  Well, yes, of course I can!  So the book was Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie, which has been the conversion book for many, many readers, I believe.  But that is the time that I took someone who was skeptical about the genre and got them to read a book with some help of a coworker of theirs, and they ended up being a pretty happy romance reader.  Maybe not a die-hard fan, but changed their minds about the genre.  But, you know, Bet Me is definitely a book that can do that.

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Sarah:  Okay.  This next email is from Anna, who wants to tell us about her awesome change of life, and also – which actually makes it sound like she’s going through menopause.  Sorry about that!  Awesome things that changed in her life; how about that? – and to answer our original question, how she became a romance reader.  I love this, I love this question.  All of y’all are so interesting.  So here goes:

Anna’s email:  Hi Sarah!

I am sitting here, supposed to be cleaning my house, getting caught up on your podcast. I’ve been meaning to email you about how I started reading romance novels, but I also wanted to give you a little life update. At the end of 2015, I emailed you for #LifeAdvice, and asked about the publishing and book selling industry, and asked how necessary getting an MLIS would be to achieve my goals. I was miserable in my career plan to be an academic, and wanted to do something, anything, else. You gave me great advice to weigh my options.

In 2016, I finished my masters in Modern European History and my certificate in Public History. I applied, on a whim, to the MLIS program at the University of Washington, was offered a job in Boston, WAS FREAKIN ACCEPTED AT WASHINGTON, and moved to Seattle. I met Bruce Springsteen in Seattle, and my boyfriend proposed to me when we met Bruce Springsteen (I said yes, duh). I got a job in a library at UW, I met my favorite author in Seattle and got a signed copy of her book. Finally, I also got a paid internship at Boeing for this summer. My fiancé and I are still working on getting our own podcast off the ground too. I’m not saying that Sarah changed my life, but there is a noticeable difference between now and when I first emailed you.

Sarah:  That makes me so happy!  And also, you met Bruce Springsteen!  That’s so cool!  Oh, my gosh, that’s so cool!  And congratulations on your engagement!  Okay, back to your email:

Anna’s email:  Finally, I should answer the actual question. When I was around 13, I used to steal my mother’s Harlequin books. She buys huge stacks from Walmart every now and then, and I used to take the old ones, hoping she wouldn’t notice (yes, I also dog eared the naughty parts). I realized that this was the genre for me when, on a whim, I picked up The Winter Lodge by Susan Wiggs. My mom was SUPER NOT INTO IT. [SW: That’s in all caps, SUPER NOT INTO IT.] She thought it was boring, but I found the story of family and food in this idealistic New England small town to be completely enchanting. I’ve read everything Susan Wiggs has written ever since. I still reread The Winter Lodge when I am super anxious and need something to calm me down. Now, I don’t have a particular genre that I love. I dabble in everything.

Thank you for everything you do with the podcast and the website! I’ll always be a fan!

Bestest,

Anna

Sarah:  Okay, that’s so lovely.  I think it is hilarious how many people are either introduced by a relative by them giving them a romance novel or by stealing from a relative to get your romance novel, but I think that is so excellent, and thank you for emailing me!

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Sarah:  Okay, now we have another question from Patreon.  This one is from Leigh:

Leigh’s question:  Have you ever shared the story of how you met your husband? I always love hearing how people met their spouses. As someone who is still single, it gives me hope over how it could happen at any time in the most unexpected of ways.

Sarah:  Yes, I have not shared the story of how my husband and I met, but I’m always happy to encourage people to believe that yes, there is absolutely a chance that it could happen for you!  I love hearing how people met their spouses and their partners too.  I, I think we have that in common.

I met my husband in high school, which is super nauseating, and I apologize in advance for the fact that this’ll probably make you feel a little queasy.  But I was nineteen, and I studied abroad – no, I was not nineteen.  We got together when I was nineteen; we met when I was seventeen.  Also, I’m bad at math.  But I was a, a student exchange to Spain when I was fifteen, so I came back pretty fluent in Spanish, so after being really, really, really bored in Spanish class, I decided for senior year I would take Latin, because I figured, well, if I learn Latin, then I can learn all the other Romance languages pretty easily.  I did not know that (a) learning Spanish would make it easy on its own for me to learn French or Italian, and also that the Latin teacher was terrible.  So about two weeks in I was like, this is horrible, I hate this, I don’t want to do this for a year, and I transferred to Spanish V, figuring that would be a really easy A because I already spoke Spanish, and there was already a friend of mine who also spoke Spanish in the class, so I thought we could just sit in the back.  I was a senior. I was not interested in working all that hard, so – [laughs] – we’ll just sit in the back of the room and have a good time!  That was where I met my husband.  He decided in high school that he was going to get straight As all four years, and he did.  It was pretty cool, except that we were so not cooperative in Spanish class that we were all given unsatisfactory grades in citizenship.  You got a behavior grade in our high school, and my then-crush-now-husband went to the teacher and begged him to change it because if he had an unsatisfactory citizenship grade, his grade point average would suffer.  I’m not exactly sure how much, but he was all worked up about it, and so he got it changed and I did not, so my satisfaction, or my unsatisfactory, remains on my transcript, and his is not.  Not that I’m bitter, not at all.  Nope.

Now I really liked him, I thought he was really cute, and I had a really good time sitting next to him in Spanish class, but we did not get together in senior year of high school.  I had a boyfriend later on, and then he had a girlfriend later on, and he tells me now that he remembers thinking very clearly that I would be a really terrible girlfriend but a really great wife.  Now I’m not sure what would cause a seventeen-year-old to have this thought.  He says it’s because he sort of knew that, on some level, if we got together it would be serious, and he knew that at seventeen he wasn’t ready for something serious?  After freshman year of college we ended up at the same summer camp.  He got me a job at the, at the summer sleep-away camp that he worked at, and by the end of that summer we were a couple, and we’ve been together ever since!  He went to college in Chicago, I went to college in South Carolina, and our phone bills were hideous because my college did not get the Internet or email until junior or senior year?  It was very sad and very expensive time for me, but we ended up moving in together when he went to law school and I went to grad school.  We got married when we were twenty-five, and now we’re both forty-one, and we’re still married!

So that’s how we met, and yeah, super gross.  I always find it really funny when people talk about how they can never read YA because they just can’t believe that you would meet someone and that would be it.  Now, I totally understand that point of view, but understandably I also do not have that problem.  I can easily believe that you meet someone and you’re like, all right, hold all calls, we have a winner.  I also think that it helps a lot to be ready to change when you’re with someone, whether it’s a, a partner or a spouse.  You are not always going to be the same person, and since we met when we were pretty young, we’re pretty accommodating of changes with each other.  We expect each other to change and grow, and sometimes that’s difficult, and sometimes it’s understandable and easy.  But I will, I will be honest:  I’m really proud of my, my relationship; we work really hard on our relationship.  And I also think that reading romance helps that a lot.

So thank you for asking that question.  I hope I didn’t make all of you feel really queasy.

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Sarah:  Okay, time for another email!  This one is from Katie:

Katie’s email:  Sarah, 

I recently started listening to the podcast, and found the 200th episode where everyone shares their first romance books to be fantastic.

Sarah:  Ooh!  I’m glad you liked it!

Katie’s email:  I wasn’t planning on contacting you until the *grapes* came up in conversation, which is a HUGE part of my romance reader past.

In 8th grade, I had a friend whose family was either really religious or just had moral issues with television, so the entire family was big on reading as they didn’t own a tv. We had very similar taste in books and would trade back and forth (at the time I read mostly Sf/fantasy). Hilariously, her mother gave her the Nora Roberts Gallaghers [of Ardmore] series, which she read and then passed on to me. While there isn’t super explicit sexytimes in those books, the fact that her family was anti-tv but she was allowed to read these books at 12 is now just mind-blowing to adult me.

Thus started about a year-long affair with me and romance. The thing that made me stop? GRAPES.

Sarah:  Okay, I want to warn all of you:  the next paragraph is a little oogy, so – also a little explicit, so if you’ve got lung, young people – lung people – if you have lung people or young people, you might want to put your earbuds, and if you’re little squeamish or maybe you’re eating, you might want skip these next few seconds.  Okay?  All right, here we go:

Katie’s email:  My mother was a big reader of Harlequin Intrigues, and still to this day gets them delivered monthly to the house, so there was no shortage of romance novels around. Occasionally she would be given other titles from family members, and the book that broke my romance addiction must have been one of those. The thing I recall strikingly was a sex scene wherein the hero has a plate of fruit and was putting them in her and then eating them out. Which, I was kind of iffy on but continued reading. And then the grapes happened.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oh, God.  Told you.  Hope all the lung people are out of the room now.  [Clears throat] Anyway.

Katie’s email: Young me was so horrified, because what if one got stuck?! Also, this is super not good for a healthy bacterial environment!

Recent investigation leads me to believe that the book was Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas, because I vividly recall the cover with a red dress and a calla lily. I could be wrong, but I can’t bring myself to read it to find out. Basically as soon as I finished that book I discovered Urban Fantasy through the Dresden Files series and read that genre exclusively for years.

In my early 20s I was given a bag of books by a friend, the entirety of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series. I read all of them in about a week and haven’t looked back. Soon after I was pointed towards this site, which has been such a great source for finding good books, and I am endlessly thankful.

Thanks for being awesome,

Katie

PS- My mother’s Harlequin Intrigues? I was able to find a copy of the Infamous Pregnesia title in the back stock she has in her basement. I likely will never read it but keep it for grins.

Sarah:  Okay.  You, you should probably read Pregnesia because it’s just incredible.  It’s Pregnesia!  I mean, the title alone is great, but the book itself is also really kind of fun.

And yeah, I can understand being alarmed by grapes; that would be alarming.  But I’ve read Suddenly You, and I cannot remember anything about grapes.  So maybe my memory is bad, which is likely, but that might not be it.  However, I bet someone will listen to this episode and email me and be like, nope, nope, it was this book.  Yep, that was it.  I remember it too.  But grapes – yeah.  Grapes not, no.  Grapes not, should not, no.  Okay.  No grapes.  We all clear on that?

[music]

Sarah:  This next message is a voice memo from Samantha, but unfortunately her voice recording software cut off in the middle, so she followed up with an email address.  So you’re going to start with hearing Samantha, and then you’ll hear from me.

Sam:  Hi, Sarah.  My name is Sam, and I’m a huge fan of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  I know that this is way late from the very first time you’ve asked people to talk about the books that converted them to romance readers, but I hope this still finds you well.

So, I think like many of the romance readers, I first came across romance books from my mom.  I was about thirteen and going to start high school, and simultaneously we were moving houses.  So someone found this huge box of old Mills & Boon paperbacks, and I brought it to my mom, and she was like, oh, those are fun books!  You should read them!  You like reading, right?  And in hindsight, that was probably our very first sex talk of some degree, I guess.  And I just remembered these books having these super-buff, super-tan men; oversaturated colors; amazing locations, and I was like, this is so funny.  This is so great.  I need to read this.  And pretty sure I finished everything in that box within a span of two weeks.  But then all the sex scenes didn’t happen; it just cut, faded to black, or the tent flap closed, and that was it.  So I was just like, okay, this, I could get racier stuff on TV.

So I never really thought about romance again until maybe 2013 or 2014 when I was done with university and working, and I was so swamped with research that I needed to read something that didn’t have to do with business.  So I asked my friend Elyse – different from your Elyse – if she could recommend me a book, and she’s such a voracious reader, and it was her who asked me, would you be willing to try romance books?  And to be honest, I didn’t really have high expectations because of my previous experience with romance books and also because, you know, how people tend to view romance, and I was caught up in that, but I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll give it a try.  And it was her who gave me Tessa Dare’s A Week to Be Wicked, and honestly, that book changed my life.  It made me love reading again for pleasure and converted me into a romance reader.  I remember being awake, like, half past two in the morning, still reading that book and going, holy shit.  Romance books have come so far from the ones I read.  Like, there is legitimate sex in this.  Stuff isn’t fading to black.  Like, I know that shit’s going down downtown over there, and I’m here for this!  Like, there’s romance, I cried, I laughed, and instead of being a responsible adult and putting it down and going back to work, I totally scrapped that idea.  Went back to my friend Elyse and asked her, okay, where can I get more books like this, because this is pretty damn awesome?  So she was one who gave me the Bridgerton series, the Wallflowers series, the rest of the Spindle Cove series, and she was like, oh, by the way, do you know about this thing called Goodreads?  You just have to put in all the books that you like, and it’ll just keep giving you recommendations for similar books.  So about two, three years later I’m looking now at my collection of books on my desk, and it’s amazing how much one person can accumulate in that time.

Sarah:  And that is where Sam’s voicemail cut off, which is a real shame, because I was really enjoying that story.  Thank you so much for, for contact me.  I have the rest of Sam’s message, and I was going to share it with you because, well, that’s why we’re here, right?

Sam’s email:  Anyway, a year ago, Tessa visited Manila and did a book signing/Q&A. Coincidentally, this is the event that Mina Esguerra moderated and mentioned in her podcast with you. Being so far from the US and knowing how much she and her books had an impact on my life, it was a dream come true. She is incredibly nice, as all of you who met her have said before, and she even had these giveaway bags for everyone. I’ve tweeted her before that (appearing calm and collected on the internet, but totally losing my goddamn mind in real life), and she graciously offered to save one bag for me since I’d be rushing from two cities away. Inside were all these fun goodies, and no lie, I held on to those pieces of Lindt chocolates ’til the hunger became too much and they were sacrificed for the greater good/my stomach.

Your blog has helped me learn so much about the romance industry and community, which has been nothing but amazing to me, whether in real life or online. What the hell was I doing before this? Whacking trolls in Reddit and languishing in toxic fandoms, probably. Even all the way out here in the Philippines, the romance community is supportive–which blew me away since I hadn’t known what to expect coming in and thought that the sense of community only existed where you and the other Smart Bitches live.

My favourite story is about waiting in line to get my books signed by Tessa Dare (it all comes back to her, honestly) and meeting all these women who read the same books I did. I choked up while whipping out my Goodreads app, realising that these are my people, my Bitches. One lady who talked with me for maybe 10 minutes even got in touch afterwards and sent over more than a dozen books she thought I’d like based on my TBR lists. Free books? Just because? Pretty sure those tear stains are never coming off the covers.

In short: romance readers are the best, thank you for everything you do, and I hope to keep hearing from the Smart Bitches and learning more with every podcast. Hope you and yours have an amazing 2017.

Warm wishes,

Sam

Sarah:  She also has a p.s.:

Sam’s email:  P.S. I was thinking about your podcast on female rage, and wondered if Smart Bitches has heard of Sweet/Vicious. That show gives me all the feelings, and though triggering, I appreciate how it approaches rape and campus rape culture in the U.S. (which according to American friends is accurate). That may require a separate email altogether, but yes, that definitely deals with female rage and taking justice into their own hands.

Sarah:  Okay, I love this story.  It gives me so many warm fuzzies, and I love, love, love hearing about romance readers and romance communities in different parts of the world.  I hadn’t realized until I interviewed Mina Esguerra – and I’ll link to that podcast in the podcast entry – how vitally alive and, and, and really, really active the romance community is in the Philippines.  I, I kind of want to visit now because it sounds so cool?  But thank you Sam so much for sending me a voice file and then following up with an email.  I, I really appreciate it, and I hope that you are reading an excellent book right now.

[music]

Sarah:  This next message is from Natalie, because we’re going to continue exploring international romance readers.  Natalie is writing originally from Singapore, now based in Melbourne, Australia, and wanted to let us know about the first book that made her a romance reader.

Natalie’s email:  The Christmas episode (ep 226) finally got me to sit down and write this letter after hearing the story from the listener who said she was always a romance lover finding the romance in every story. I am exactly the same! Also, probably because I am a dyed in the wool fairytale lover and love fairytales to this day, and love the really dark, creepy but also romantic ones the best. Horror and romance are my favorite genres; there is no middle ground and no better roles for women than in these two genres, in my opinion! Female rage and female bliss!

Anyway, this leads me to my first romance book that made me a romance reader. My parents took me to the library every week as a child and I know that I borrowed many of the Nora Roberts’ Once Upon a… books. I definitely read her Once Upon a Star, Once Upon a Midnight and Once Upon a Castle books over the course of a few weeks. I was probably 8 or 9. I wasn’t fully understanding all these complex adult emotions, but I loved it anyway. The romance novel that did change me came about when I was 10 and my mom gave me Memoirs of a Geisha to read (as her way of teaching me about sex and the birds and the bees). While much of it was about the geisha Sayuri’s coming of age and adulthood as a geisha, it was also a lot about her slow journey to her HEA with The Chairman, who she loved since she was a child (creepy in retrospect but it was so romantic to me at that point of time).  Also, my mother gave me Jane Eyre, Little Women and Pride & Prejudice to read because she thought it was important I read books by women about women (my early feminism roots!)

I drifted away from the ‘pure romance’ genre in terms of reading for a number of years because of the terrible stereotypes and shame thrown at the genre (although I pretty much watched every period romance there ever was).  It came back in full force on January 8th, 2015, when my twitter friend Sam recommended me Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas, and along with her and a bunch of other international friends, we started a Twitter/Goodreads book club, and we have people from The Philippines, Canada, Venezuela, Spain, the UK and the USA, and many of us have romance reading related Twitter handles.

Obviously, I devoured the entire Wallflowers series in days, and Devil in Winter is such a favorite. I maintain that the Wallflowers series is still my all-time favorite romance series, although my favorite Lisa Kleypas books are Where Dreams Begin and Marrying Winterborne. I screamed when the excerpt of Devil in Spring was posted, and I screamed more when SBTB did an interview with her about Marrying Winterborne and the Devil in Spring announcement. Yes, she is definitely a favorite.

Plunging fully into the romance genre as a young woman, discovering Smart Bitches and our mini book club have been so important to me. Not only did it help me to rediscover my love for reading that I always had as a child, it helped me to find so many other like-minded women (my people, my tribe) who value female empowerment, independence, pleasure, happiness, friendship and strength in their stories. Romance has helped me to learn about so many different types of people, relationships and lifestyles, and most importantly they are all linked in the spirit of love, romantic or otherwise. The podcast also helped to knock down so many stereotypes I had and many people probably have about the genre with its insightful interviews with authors and researchers.

Sarah:  Well, thank you!

Natalie’s email:  I just graduated from uni and for my graduate project, I wrote and illustrated a book of my favorite Chinese folk/fairytales, and I remember when my advisor asked me to have a theme in the beginning stages, I knew it was always going to be about love and romance. A lot of the ancient Chinese folktales tend to have very bittersweet endings for their lovers, but they are so powerful and have literally been passed down for centuries and always have the message that love transcends mortality and time. You can see pictures from the book here http://wednesdaydreams.com/tales-of-love-magic

Sarah:  And I will have the link in the podcast entry.  You should see these; they’re gorgeous.

Natalie’s email:  I am so sorry this email is so long, but I just wanted to let you and the team know how much romance reading has impacted my life and how much joy and pleasure romance reading and the SBTB community have brought me. Thank you for all the good work you do.

Love,

Natalie

Sarah:  Okay, so I’m beaming, and also blushing, and y’all, seriously, this page of her stories from ancient China and the illustrations inside of it is, it’s just gorgeous.  There’s sort of a, a black and white kind of papercut design to the illustrations with figures in silhouette underneath trees, and there are lanterns and flowers and just all of these shapes that resemble water on one page and then on the next page resemble vines.  It’s really, really beautiful, so if you have a chance to check out this link, I will definitely have it in the podcast entry, or if you’re thinking, no, Sarah, I want to look at it now, I will tell you what it is.  It is wednesdaydreams.com, like Wednesday is the day of the week.  wednesdaydreams.com/tales-of-love-magic.  I will link to this in the podcast entry; I really hope you check it out.

And Natalie, thank you so much for sharing how you became a romance reader.  One of my favorite things about romance reading community online and at Smart Bitches is how global it is, that every day I talk to people instantly, across time zones, where it might take me hours to actually go to where they are.  We can all talk to each other all the time.  It’s so amazing.  So thank you very much for being part of our community.

[music]

Sarah:  Okay.  [Clears throat] My voice is starting to get a little tired, but I have time and vocal cords enough for two more questions from the Patreon feed, so here we go.  First, Esti wants to know what is my absolute favorite romance novel.  I’m talking the one you can reread multiple times and never get bored.  The ones that always bring you comfort.

Well, okay.  Like, that’s not, you know, a hard question or anything.  Sure!  Just one.  Ha-ha!  No.  I’m, I’m going to name five – [laughs] – ‘cause I can’t name just one.

As I mentioned earlier, I never fail to be sort of swept up and absorbed into Cry Wolf and Alpha & Omega by Patricia Briggs.  Even the sort of paranormal investigation part is never as compelling to me as the beginning of the relationship between Anna and Charles, plus the, the com-, the combination of the novella and the, the book is really good for palate cleansing.

On the rest of my list, because ha-ha, one absolute favorite one?  Not happening.  As I mentioned, Act Like It, because I love books where smart people are being smart.

I also love a YA novel by Stephanie Perkins called Anna and the French Kiss.  It’s about a young woman who gets sent to a French boarding school by her father, and she has to learn how to basically survive in Paris in a place she doesn’t want to be and manage friendships and her crush on this guy, but there’s also the part where she learns to appreciate Paris and learns to appreciate France, and I love books where characters travel, especially if they travel to countries where they have to find their own way.  I love that.

I also love rereading the first book of a series that’s not finished yet called Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron.  When I want to re-, want to read about sweet beta heroes who are also dragons, I want, I read this book.  There’s a moment in the, in the story where the lead character realizes that he has made a friend, a real human person friend, and he’s never had one before because that’s not how dragon society operates, and it’s just so adorable.  So I love reading that when I need something sweet and also where the stakes just continue to grow.

And then finally, I have been rereading and re-listening to The Unyielding and The Unleashing, the first two books in Shelly Laurenston’s Call of Crow series.  Book three is coming out in March, and I am, in fact, beside myself.  There are two of me here now because I am so excited! about this book.  Because when I’m really freaking angry and feel helpless and full of rage, which is often lately, reading this series makes me feel so much better and makes me feel more comforted by the idea that, even though I don’t have superpowers and I can’t kick ass without any, you know consequences, I do have women in my life who are my friends and who have my back the way that the women in this series do, so I love reading that series incredibly much when, especially when I’m pissed.

And one last question; this one is from Leanne.  She wrote:

Leanne’s question:  You recently had a discussion of deep dives into nerdiness on the podcast. What things BESIDES romance are you interested in, on a “deep dives” level? I’m thinking top 3-5 to make choosing easier. 🙂 I love hearing about other people’s inner nerds!

Sarah:  Oh, my goodness, me too, and thank you for letting me have three to five, because just one was not happening!  [Laughs] Nope, not happening.  Okay, so things that I deep nerdy dive into:

Cooking, especially new recipes with a handful of ingredients and big flavors.  So, all of my favorite recipes are things that I make with five or six different ingredients but have an enormous amount of flavor, and I love chasing after a specific flavor or profile.  Like lately I’ve been obsessed with the way that sage changes the flavor of chicken soup.  I, a nerdy deep dive of my brain is going to be a very strange journey, so I apologize in advance.  I love cooking, and I love reading cookbooks.

I also really love cross-stitching, which is something I’m kind of a beginner at?  I haven’t done a lot of it, but I’m sort of upping my game by buying fabrics that have a much smaller number of holes.  The, the number of stitches per inch is much, much small-, much higher, so the stitches are smaller, and I also like figuring out custom patterns, which I’ll come back to in a minute.

I am a deep nerdy dive person into travel.  Not just like where would I like to go, but how far can I go on the least amount of money with the least amount of luggage?  I can read minimalist travel blogs for, for days.  Just days and days.  Packing lists?  Oh, my gosh, people who are digital nomads, who travel the earth – I think that’s the official name, or what they call themselves – people who are location independent and travel around the world and work and live in different locations and have one bag?  Then they post a packing list, and I am just obsessive about it.  I love to travel light, and I love to travel, and I love to go as far as I possibly can on the least amount of money while still being comfortable, so reading about people who travel more than I do makes me very nerdy-happy.

And also, I love the world of How to Train Your Dragon.  I can tell you all kinds of things about it.  I love that world.  Even though I recommend – recommend – rec-, recognize – I can already tell my brain is, like, why are you talking so much?  You’re an introvert.  Anyway.  I recognize some of the more troublesome and, dare I say, problematic elements – although I have to tell you, you know, just you and me, just, just the two of us here: the word problematic makes me nuts, because I don’t know what the problem is, and I’m too literal of a person to be like, okay, what’s the problem?  It’s problematic.  Does it smell, or is it racist?  Does it leak when it rains, or is it super misogynist?  Like, what specifically is the problem?  So there are a number of class and language issues in How to Train Your Dragon that actually author Rose Lerner cued me into, that the adults are all comedic buffoons who have Scottish accents, and the, and the young characters, who are the lead characters, all have a mix of American and Canadian accents and no Scottish accents, and I didn’t read into the class elements and the cultural joking and sort of typecasting elements until she wrote about it, and I was like, holy shit!  That, that is not cool!  But I love the world of How to Train Your Dragon.  I love, I love the Guile Hero.  If you look that up on TV Tropes, they pretty much say, so Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon is pretty much the standard bearer for the Guile Hero.  He’s the hero who is not the biggest, not the strongest, but can talk his or her way into and out of situations?  I really like that type of hero.  Like I said, smart people doing smart things is making me happy, always makes me happy.

So, as far as cross-stitch – I said I would come back to this – I play a game on my phone.  Like I said, I only have one game on my phone.  It’s called [Dragons:] Rise of Berk, which, ‘cause it’s How to Train Your Dragon.  I was not lying when I said I really like this world.  So – [laughs] – there is a background banner of Toothless the dragon, and I liked it so much that I took a screencap of it on my phone, sent it to my computer, blew it up to a much larger size, contacted an artist to make it into a graphics file, and then sent that graphic file to a patternmaker and then cross-stitched the banner from the video game.  It took me about two years.  It is now hanging on my wall; if you would like, I will post a picture of it.  But I decided that when I was going to cross-stitch my first big project, it would be something that I designed, so I cross-stitched Toothless on a dragon banner from a video game.  I’m not sure that I could be more nerdy than that.  [Laughs] I really don’t think I can top that.  But thank you for asking the question.  Seriously, you guys, my face is so red right now, I can’t even tell you.

And that brings me to the end of this episode.  I want to thank you for hanging out with me and sending me cool questions and sending me cool inquiries.  I really appreciate that, you know, you hang out with me each week; it’s really cool.

If you would like to send me a question or tell me about the book that made you into a romance reader or tell me about the things that you nerdy deep dive into or the absolute favorite, no question, really I can only name one favorite romance novel of yours, you can email me any time you like at [email protected] or at sarah, S-A-R-A-H, at smartbitchestrashybooks.com [[email protected]] or, or, or you can leave a voicemail at our Google voice number, which is 1-201-371-3272.  I think you’re all awesome, and I love to hear from you!

This podcast was brought to you by my vocal cords, which are really wondering what I was thinking right now, but more importantly by Kensington Publishing.  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti deepens her worldbuilding and raises the bar on suspense with the conclusion of her high-octane Scorpius Syndrome serious.  So, I, wow.  Did you hear that?  I don’t even know what word I just said.  Should I leave this in?  I should leave this in, because if you’re listening, that, I, you know what, garlicknitter is probably rewinding, going, what did you just say?  So let’s try that again from the top.

[Clears throat] Kensington, I apologize that apparently Ss are a challenge for me right now.  [Deep breath] Here we go:

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti deepens her worldbuilding and raises the bar on the suspense with the conclusion of her high-octane Scorpius Syndrome series, Justice Ascending.  (Yes, I did it!)  Set on the mean streets of a chillingly believable LA devastated by the introduction of a deadly bacterium, this third book brings readers the stunning finale as our heroes race toward the secret government facility that could be the key to eradicating Scorpius for good.  With non-stop action, sexual tension, and a shocking plot twist you will not see coming, Justice Ascending by Rebecca Zanetti is romantic suspense cranked all the way up to 11, available now wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com.

All of the books that we mentioned in this episode, or that I mentioned in this episode, will be in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast and at iTunes.com/DBSA.  I will also have links to the different locations online that we mention, including the very, very vintage weekend All Things Considered episode and Natalie’s illustrated book of Chinese folk talks, which I highly recommend that you take a look at, ‘cause it’s gorgeous.

I also want to tell you about our podcast Patreon campaign.  If you are a fan or supporter of the show, thank you for listening.  If you would like to make a monthly pledge starting with a dollar to help me reach goals like commissioning transcripts and upgrading equipment and trying to be more gooder and more awesomer, I would very much appreciate that.  patreon.com/SmartBitches.  There are various reward levels, including the fine, handcrafted, artisan-made, and locally sourced compliments that I do in the beginning of each episode.  If you’ve had a look, if you’ve sponsored the show, if you’ve left a review, if you tune in every week, if you’re just walking around being awesome, thank you for that!

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater, who regularly walks around being awesome.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the Peatbog Faeries, ‘cause I love them so much.  This is their album Blackhouse; this track is called “The Chatham Lasses.”  You can find it at Amazon, on iTunes, wherever you buy your fine, fine music.

Future podcasts will include me and other people talking about romance.  I know you’re shocked.  I have podcasts interviews scheduled all over my calendar.  It’s kind of awesome.  I have so many that I’m looking forward to share with you, and I hope that you will tune in.

In the meantime, on behalf of everyone who’s written to me and all of us here, including Orville, who is really ready to climb in the sound box, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[smooth music]