282. Sleuthing, Victorian Women, and Dick Jokes: A Conversation with Deanna Raybourn

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and Happy Friday, and welcome to episode 282 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. We are a podcast all about romance fiction and the women who read and write it, and today we’re talking about mysteries. ‘Cause that works, right? Totally! Today I’m chatting with Deanna Raybourn. A Treacherous Curse, the third book in her Veronica Speedwell series, is out now, so we talk about the book, the series, and more. We also start with dick jokes, because obviously, and we also talk about writing mysteries, research, dealing with grief in characters, and the perils of sleuthing. We also discuss similarities and differences between mysteries and romances and the spaces that are created by women-centered stories in both genres. Now, Deanna’s on tour right now for this book, so I will link to her tour schedule in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast so you can go and see if she’s near you.

If you have ideas or suggestions or you want to ask me a question, you should totally email me at [email protected]. I also do regular recommendation request entries, which I call RecReq podcasts, with Amanda, and if you want to record a voice memo and request some recommendations from us, you should totally do that. You’re going to sound awesome! I have all this magical audio stuff over here; you should totally send me a voice memo. You can send it to [email protected].

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The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the show as to who this is, and of course, yes, I will have a terrible joke at the end, because, well, I really enjoy telling terrible jokes; it’s horrible of me.

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So are you ready for an interview? Let’s do this thing! On with the podcast:

[music]

Deanna Raybourn: Hi! I’m Deanna Raybourn. I write the Veronica Speedwell Victorian mysteries.

Sarah: Yay! Welcome! Thank you so much for doing this!

Deanna: Oh, my pleasure! I’m so happy to get to talk to you again. I don’t think we’ve talked since the last time you interviewed me, and that’s way too long!

Sarah: Yes, I think you’re right, ‘cause we haven’t ended up at the same conferences or anything.

Deanna: No, we haven’t, and I hate that.

Sarah: Yeah, it sucks.

Deanna: It does.

Sarah: So one of the challenges for me with, with preparing for this interview is that I have a lot of questions about the book, but the book will have just come out when this airs, and so I don’t want to spoil too much.

Deanna: No, we have to be cryptic.

Sarah: Very, very cryptic, but here’s the thing that I want to ask about first.

Deanna: Okay.

Sarah: There is a literal box of dicks in the first chapter.

Deanna: Yes!

Sarah: Thank you for the box of dicks.

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, I started reading, and it’s, and, and for the people who will be listening, listen, it is not a spoiler, because it’s, like, page one and two. There’s a literal box of dicks, and it’s just –

Deanna: Yes!

Sarah: – thank you so much for the box of dicks!

Deanna: You are so welcome for that.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: And actually, the, the box of dicks is a holdover from book two!

Sarah: It is!

Deanna: Because it kind of finished with a box of dicks and, you know, it only seemed appropriate. And the, and the thing that I loved the most, I, I like to start my books off where readers kind of look at the first page and go, okay, I can’t put this down.

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: Because I just think as a reader, that’s what I enjoy, and –

Sarah: Of course!

Deanna: – the most fun for me is to write what I want to read, so I always try and hook people. It’s one of the things that I work on the hardest, and this I really didn’t work on. I went straight in and went, yeah, box of dicks. That’s where we’re starting.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: Started off with that, and the great thing is, I had just gotten the proofs for this manuscript and looked them all over, sent everything back to my publisher, said yes, this is how I want it to be; let’s go into production, and the book was getting ready to be printed, and I got an email from a reader talking about how crass and horrible the box of dicks at the end of book two was, and all I could think was, girl, you best not preorder book three.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, that’s not going to work for her.

Deanna: And I’m like, you know what, I’m, I’m sorry, I feel like you know what you’re getting into now at this point.

Sarah: Right, and it’s, it’s, it’s not going to, it’s, it’s not going to get any more, or any less dick-ular.

Deanna: No, and here’s the thing: these are Victorian dicks, so it’s not like it’s overly salacious or it’s particularly graphic. I mean, there are a lot of euphemisms for the box of dicks. I mean –

Sarah: Oh.

Deanna: – for starters, I never use the word dick!

Sarah: No!

Deanna: I mean –

Sarah: There’s phallus and – and then, and what I love about this particular scene – and again, not a spoiler, ‘cause it’s page one and two – what I love is that she’s just, like, Veronica’s just going to pick up one phallus, pick up another phallus, shake off the packing material. I have this, I have this vision of, I know they’re not Styrofoam peanuts because it’s Victorian, but just, you know, shaking the packing material off this gigantic phallus – [laughs]

Deanna: Oh, yeah!

Sarah: – and then there’s, and then there’s Stoker; he’s like, I don’t know where to put my eyes, and I don’t want to talk about this. Please don’t make me say these words. Like, he’s completely crushed with embarrassment, and she’s just waving dicks around. [Laughs]

Deanna: Yeah, and see this is, this is what I love about their relationship and what I think is so much fun is, Stoker is, is, in a lot of ways he’s kind of this ultimate dude. You know, he’s such a guy’s guy.

Sarah: Oh, he’s so very dude-ular.

Deanna: And yet, when it comes to matters sexual, he blushes like a nun. I mean, he, he’s just so uptight sometimes about things like that, which I think is really hilarious. And that’s why I made him that way, because I think it’s funny to have a guy who, who seems to have it all going on in some respects, but then he’s, he’s really kind of maidenly when it comes to being forthright about sexual matters, because, you know, he’s, he’s got that English, aristocratic, oh-dear-me kind of thing going on, so he’s a lot of fun to write. I like that little dichotomy in his character.

Sarah: And it’s, and it’s an interesting contrast, because she is a character who is extremely intelligent, but one of the ways in which her intelligence has shaped her is that she’s very liberated and aware of her position in the world. She’s aware of what’s expected of her, and she’s aware that she doesn’t want to do any of those things, so she’s going to find a way around them –

Deanna: Right.

Sarah: – that isn’t too painful or isn’t going to hurt her or compromise her ability to do what she wants.

Deanna: No, I think the bottom line for Veronica is she figured out really early on that being a lady would be unutterably dull, so she decided not to be one. You know, she –

Sarah: Right, exactly.

Deanna: The, the dividing line in Victorian England as to whether or not you were a lady was essentially, did you work? And because she doesn’t have a private income, she goes out and earns her living, and so I think she feels very liberated then to kind of do exactly as she pleases, and that’s not something –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Deanna: – I invented for her. There, there’s a whole subset of Victorian women who decided being members of the gentry or being members of the aristocracy or being ladylike was just not for them, and so they kind of repudiated that and did their own thing, because it was far more liberating in most respects to be in control of your own money, because until the mid-1880s, married women couldn’t own their own property; they couldn’t – they, they weren’t in control of their own money, but a woman alone could have a lot more freedom in that respect, and so I think for Veronica, she has just designed her entire life around very pragmatically making herself happy. She lives to suit herself, and she’s not overly fussed about whether or not anybody else likes it.

Sarah: And she’s a, she’s also aware that her ability to own, to own her own money and earn her own money gives her an exceptional amount of freedom that she can enjoy, especially if she’s outside of England.

Deanna: Oh, absolutely! And, and the Victorian explorer who inspired her was a, a butterfly hunter by the name of Margaret Fountaine who took a, a modest inheritance and decided to travel the world hunting butterflies and ended up hunting men as well. She would have love affairs when she was outside of England, and she did it in a way where, you know, she would go back home and sing in the church choir, and nobody really knew what Margaret got up to when she was off in Syria, and so she, she kind of had this weird little double life in a way where she was very much her own mistress when she was on the road, and, you know, you can say that, really, of any of the Victorian female explorers. They, they led very, very different lives when they were outside the confines of, you know, pouring tea for the vicar and, you know, tatting something for the poor. The, it, it was an extremely different thing to go out and face the world on your own terms.

Sarah: It’s also really interesting to think about the contrast with right now where there are very few places that are behind the scenes, because everyone’s carrying a camera. There isn’t –

Deanna: Right.

Sarah: – as many places where you can truly disappear and no one will know where, what you’re getting up to if you’re around other people, whereas in the Victorian times and in other historical periods there’s this wonderful tension between what histor-, what historians have recorded as having happened and then what actually happened when historians and other people who are writing things down weren’t looking.

Deanna: Yeah, and that is, that is, of course, the, the big challenge when you study history is what you learn about –

Sarah: Yes.

Deanna: – in history class – and I say this as a person –

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: – with a history degree – has always been filtered and shaped by someone else’s narrative. It is –

Sarah: Yes, usually white, usually Christian, usually a dude. [Laughs]

Deanna: Yeah, exactly. It’s, history is written by the victors, and usually the victor’s exactly what you said: they’re dudes; they’re white; they’re Christian; they’re heteronormative; they’re cis-gender; all the rest of it. These are, these are the dudes who are shaping the narratives that we read, so when I got my history degree, how many women do you think I read about in college? [Laughs] You know, how many –

Sarah: Oh –

Deanna: – who were not Christian? How many people who were not European? I took one course that was not European history and that was not specifically about the awesome and super cool things white men did, and, and it was, it, it shapes you into thinking that white men were history. No, white men were just writing history. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that went on behind the scenes where people of color – I mean, people of color have been in Britain since Roman times, but is that something that you really see a lot popping up? I mean, you, you don’t –

Sarah: No, of course not!

Deanna: – be-, because that’s not the way the narrative was written, but if you look at the art through the ages, you can see them. If you look in the, in the narratives of people’s memoirs, if you look in, in records, court records, you can see that these people were there; they were living colorful lives, they were doing things, but they’re not things that the people in power necessarily felt like they needed to discuss or needed to be celebrated or needed to be talked about, and so that’s why – you know, my family’s hugely into genealogy, and so one of the things that’s been the most fun is finding out how many horse thieves and cattle rustlers and whatnot we have in the family tree, but there’s one line that is royal. It goes back to Edward I, and then, you know, beyond that, and the, the, the great thing about this is not that that section of the family is royal; it’s that we knew what the women were doing! You know –

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: – we have centuries of records there where we knew what these women were doing only because they were royal. That made them worthy –

Sarah: And they didn’t disappear, because they were royal.

Deanna: No, but the funny thing is, just a few centuries before Edward I, all of a sudden the women’s names are, are not recorded with, with great accuracy. Their birthdates are lost; their, their birthplaces are lost; we don’t necessarily know where they’re buried, because they were very much not necessary to the narrative, so you get these little glimpses of where they were and what they were doing. Meanwhile, women who weren’t royal, what do we know about them? It, it, you have to go digging so much harder to find those stories.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Deanna: And so that’s, that’s one of the things that I think is really exciting now is that, historically, we’re going back and we’re looking for these stories, and so much of it’s been lost, but God bless the people who are in there digging around and finding this stuff and excavating it before it’s too late.

Sarah: Yeah, I know that I’m des-, I am descended from one of the generals who almost completely screwed up the Revolutionary War before Washington stepped in, so –

Deanna: Nice!

Sarah: – yeah, I’m really proud.

[Laughter]

Sarah: One thing I was, I was really curious about this book when I read the summary was that they’re dealing with Egyptology –

Deanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – which is a very fraught subject then and now, because that, many of the things that are considered to be artifacts that are living in England don’t actually belong to the English, and Veronica’s very upfront with saying to men, this isn’t our history; this isn’t ours; this doesn’t belong to us. Again, this is early on; I’m not spoiling anything. And that’s one of the first times I’ve seen a character who’s involved with history and science saying, yeah, but this isn’t our history! Was that a, was that something you discovered in your research as well?

Deanna: Oh, it’s, it’s absolutely factual. There were always people questioning whether or not the British had a right to these things. It’s not anachronistic for Veronica to be raising these questions, and, and in some respects, Stoker raises even more than she does about the fact that, you know, hey, imperialism: not so grand!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: Because the whole idea of, of going in and kind of strip mining another country’s culture didn’t start with the British, and in particular in Egypt it didn’t start with the British. It, it, it actually began in Egypt under Napoleon, because in his campaign on the Nile he kind of got obsessed with the idea of, of, of this country, and so he dispatched almost two hundred scholars and scientists to go through and study the cultural treasures of Egypt, and they hauled a metric crapton of them back to Europe, and so that kind of ignited this, this fever of Egyptological collecting amongst the Europeans, and, and as the century went on, as the 19th century wore on, you have a number of breakthroughs. You have the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics thanks to the French being able to crack the Rosetta Stone and figure out exactly what these symbols mean now, so all of a sudden all these inscriptions that everybody thought were super arcane and mysterious, now they can read them, and they know exactly what they’re saying.

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Deanna: You’ve got Nelson winning the battle in the Nile, so you’ve, you’ve got this whole fad for all things Egyptian amongst the British because that was where they stuck it to the French, and even Wedgwood got in on, on this fad. You know, people started decorating their houses with Egyptological motifs. Wedgwood produced a tea set that had little crocodiles all over it in order to kind of take advantage of that, and it just carried on as the century went on, and with the advent of steam travel, instead of people taking a grand tour of Europe they started going further afield, and you would see expeditions going, pleasure trips going to Egypt to kind of sail up the Nile and, and, and take it in, because suddenly it was much more accessible. Physically, culturally, in every possible way, they could get into this country that fascinated them, and everybody wanted to bring a piece of it home. And at the time, the, the Egyptians were not really in a position to protect themselves and to protect their culture, and so there were, there were a lot of things that, that slipped out of the country, and, and some things were actually given as gifts, and so now there’s a whole debate about, well, did they have the right to give it as a gift? It’s a thing that crops up every so often about the Elgin Marbles, and I think it’s going on now about the head of Nefertiti, you know, so in countries like Egypt and Greece where they have these wonderful, amazing, ancient cultures that the Europeans came in and, and carted off as souvenirs, now those countries want a lot of those things back, and there’s a lot of back and forth about, well, if you were going to take care of it then we’d have left it there, but you obviously were going to trash it, so we had to look after it. And it, it’s this really paternalistic, kind of ugly attitude about we saw it, and we could take better care of it, so we just took it home. But like I said, in other cases, some things were given as gifts, so it, it, it doesn’t always come down to specifically black and white, but there’s a lot of, of gray area and nuance as to each particular item. When was it taken? How was it taken? Who had the authority to give it? Should they have given it? Should it go back? And, and so there’s a lot of back and forth about this right now, and some treasures are being repatriated to the countries where they came from, but it was a discussion that was happening, you know, a century ago, a century and a half ago, where people were asking, should we really be doing this? So it’s, it’s not that Veronica was necessarily original; she was just in a very small minority of people who were asking that question, because most folks were like, heck, yeah! Let’s bring home an obelisk or a, or bring home a mummy, because it was a fad for a while to unroll mummies after –

Sarah: Oh, dear God! [Laughs]

Deanna: Yeah! I mean, it was a, it was a thing! You would send, if you were wealthy, you would just invite your friends over ‘cause you’d bought a mummy, and you’d have a private unrolling party. And that’s what they called them: they were unrolling parties. And if you were an entrepreneur you might buy a mummy and charge the public; you know, let the poor folks come in and take a look while you unrolled a mummy and, you know, made some, you know, made a few coppers off of them, which is really, really gross! And then it’s –

Sarah: On a number of levels. Whoo!

Deanna: So many levels! So many levels! You know, but, but you’re also talking, too, about the fact that they looked at what was happening in Egypt and said, oh, well, you know, there, there’s, there’s a, a railway line in Egypt that is reputed to have used mummies as fuel in the engines because the bitumen, which was, which was basically pitch, burned really well. So, you know, they, they felt perfectly justified in doing this; never mind the fact that, you know, there were probably a whole lot of Egyptians who would have preferred to hang on to their culture. They were, they were quite content just to, to take it and run with it and, and, worse, to make entertainment out of it. You know, the idea of, of despoiling grave goods and, and actual corpses, at what point do you go from ghoulish grave robbing to, well, this is just some, you know, mighty fine entertainment; I’ll, I’ll pay you a twopence for that?

Sarah: And it’s, it’s still a question that we deal with now, so it’s, it’s fascinating for me to read a book set in the Victorian era and find these, these issues so very clearly and exactly reflected, and it’s not sort of obfuscated or confused by any translation; it’s the same issue, and it’s, it’s so interesting. Especially because with, as a character, Veronica knows she doesn’t fit, and she doesn’t care, and so she’s not afraid to, to challenge other things that don’t fit either.

Deanna: Absolutely, and, and honestly, it’s one of the most enjoyable and liberating things about writing her is she’s a woman who basically does not have a give-, a give-a-shitter, as we say in the South. She just cannot be fussed to bother about what other people think. And –

Sarah: She is fresh out of fucks!

Deanna: Absolutely! Not one left in the field.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: She – the field is barren – she, she is absolutely determined to live life according to her own lights and judge for herself whether something is right or wrong, regardless of what society makes of it, and, and she has kind of this laser-like focus on what is hypocritical in society, and should she be bothered with observing this particular nicety or that one if there’s no real foundation to it? Are we just going through the motions, or is this actually a really moral thing to be doing? And she’s far more concerned with morality in terms of character and justice than she is just kind of putting on the, the, the Sunday wrappings and, and presenting herself as, as a lady of virtue –

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: – with all that entails for a Victorian woman. She would rather live as a, as a person of character, and her morality for her is, am I honest with myself? Am I honest with people who matter to me? Am I, am I fighting for justice, you know? Because she doesn’t really, she could not care less about the law.

Sarah: No.

Deanna: That doesn’t matter to her at all. What she cares about is, is what is right according to her lights.

Sarah: And also her freedom. One of the things that I think is so interesting, and I’m trying to figure out a way to describe this without giving away a major spoiler for the first two books –

Deanna: Spoilers! No spoilers!

Sarah: No spoilers! I promise, no spoilers!

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: – is that there are limitations on her freedom –

Deanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – one of them being the fact that she is a female in a society that has a very specific role for female, for females and females of her class, but also, she has a sort of looming nemesis that she cannot deal with or contact but has to be aware of and get around anyway. So –

Deanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – she has to negotiate both the embracing of her own freedom and the awareness of what limitations there are that could come up in the future, and it means that she has to be very smart about pretty much everything she does in this book, and in the previous two books as well.

Deanna: Yeah, she, she is very much walking a tightrope –

Sarah: Yes!

Deanna: – between – because if it had been left to Veronica, she would have been extremely happy to be anonymous, apart from, you know, maybe the, the, the auspices of the Royal Society – you know, other butterfly hunters – where she really likes to, to shine. As far as the, the people who might be in a position to curtail what she does and put limitations on her, she has to walk this, this very fine line between attracting their attention and, and being completely off their radar, because she does not want her life to be decided for her. That, I think, is, is, is probably her greatest terror, is, is having decisions made for her, having a life shaped for her by people who don’t share her values and who don’t share her view of what she should be doing with her life, and so it, it’s, it’s always a push me/pull you of, you know, can I do what I want, even though it’s outrageous, even though it’s not the norm, without offending people so far, or pushing them so far, that they have to intervene and clip my wings? And so that’s, that’s, I think, what’s always going on in her head when she makes decisions.

Sarah: So with this book, the specific issue that is being in-, investigated in the beginning is a, is a very weird, very chilling disappearance, but it’s also, she’s trying to protect Stoker’s reputation, which is fascinating, because, you know –

Deanna: Yes.

Sarah: – she doesn’t really give too much of a crap about her own, as long as it doesn’t get in her way, but she is –

Deanna: Right.

Sarah: – fiercely protective of this man’s reputation, because he went through such terrible –

Deanna: Right.

Sarah: – scandal in his past before the, before the story began. So what are Veronica and Stoker’s sort of goals with this story? And again, I’m trying so hard not to keep, not –

Deanna: You’re doing so well, Sarah! Like, I have no idea what this book is about right now.

Sarah: [Laughs] Excellent!

Deanna: You’re doing so well!

Sarah: I have a whole list of things: don’t say these words and don’t mention this. Like, I did so much prep, just so I wouldn’t spoil this book!

Deanna: You are a queen. You are just a queen. I, I think what it comes down to is, you are always much more fiercely protective of the people you love when you think they’re vulnerable than you are of yourself.

Sarah: So very true. Very true.

Deanna: And so, for Veronica, who has lived her life very independently, this is the first time, I think, that she is faced with the idea of fighting on behalf of someone else, and she is not one to back down from a fight, and so she is far more determined to see justice done and to fight for Stoker than she would be for herself or than Stoker is on his own behalf.

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Deanna: She is the one who is absolutely all fired up to get in there and, and to tilt at those windmills on his behalf. And, and I, I, I like that element of – because I think by book three we’ve gotten far enough into their adventures together that, that they have come far enough in their relationship as, as working partners and colleagues and friends with something simmering underneath that it’s time to test that bond a little bit –

Sarah: Yep.

Deanna: – and I, I think that the first time it’s really put under pressure, you see that her reaction is to say, well, I don’t really care if you think this is a fight worth taking on, and you might be willing to go fetal and take your lumps, but I’ll be damned if I stand by and let that happen.

Sarah: Right. No, no one is going to mess with you –

Deanna: And so –

Sarah: – except me. [Laughs]

Deanna: Exactly! Exactly! You know, and, and in that respect, it’s, it’s, that element of the relationship is almost sibling-like –

Sarah: Oh, it’s wonderful! [Laughs]

Deanna: – you know, where she’s willing, you know, she will take on the rest of the world rather than let anybody else get a piece of him –

Sarah: Yep.

Deanna: – but she’ll tear a strip off anytime she wants. I mean, that’s, that, because that’s their dynamic; they, they can be slightly horrible to each other, but always in a way of, there’s, there are very specific boundaries that they don’t cross when it comes to, to dealing with each other, and I, I very much see them as two against the world –

Sarah: Absolutely.

Deanna: – whatever that means. And, and when I picture them in my mind, don’t picture them sitting side by side or standing shoulder to shoulder; I picture them back to back, weapons drawn, fighting the rest of the world, and no one –

Sarah: Or facing each other with their weapons drawn. [Laughs]

Deanna: You know, that happens too. But I, I don’t think that they would be – I mean, I, I just think that they are more ferocious in their defense of each other, and they will take on anybody if it means protecting the other one.

Sarah: Yes. Now I want to ask you a little bit about writing mystery. One thing that fascinates me about writing mysteries and also writing romance is that they are related but yet very different. So with a romance –

Deanna: Uh-huh?

Sarah: – and I realize that you don’t necessarily write romance, that you’ve always been a mystery writer with strong romantic elements –

Deanna: Right, yeah.

Sarah: – which are my favorite types of romantic elements –

Deanna: Strong romantic elements. Sure.

Sarah: – love strong romantic elements – when you’re writing a romance, you and the reader know what’s going to happen at the end, and the challenge is to sort of surprise the reader with the evolution of how you get there. With a mystery, there’s very, there’s a lot of similarities, and one of the things I want to ask you about with, with this particular series, and also with your, with your first series, is that you’re in a really tough position as the writer, because you have to have the advantage over two smart characters in this series –

Deanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and you can’t leave them too far behind, and you can’t leave the reader too far behind, but no one except you knows the ending. So as opposed to everyone knows this is going to end happily and we’ll be surprised how we get there, we know that something’s going to get solved, but we don’t know how, we don’t know what’s going to happen to solve it, and so you have to be in this strange position of having the advantage over people who are very, very smart. Do you, do you know the answer when you start, or does the plot change as you’re writing it, and are you ever outsmarted by your characters?

Deanna: It’s so hard, Sarah. It’s so hard.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: So –

Sarah: – ‘cause they’re so talented! I’m like, how do you write ahead of these people? They’re so smart! Like, they come to conclusions, and I’m like, damn!

Deanna: Okay –

Sarah: I never would have thought of that!

Deanna: – I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Sarah: Yay!

Deanna: I’ve never actually written a romance. I write mysteries, because all of my books –

Sarah: Right, of course.

Deanna: – are structured as a mystery, because if you lift the romantic element out, you have a mystery, you have a puzzle that has a beginning –

Sarah: Yes.

Deanna: – it has clues, it has deduction, it has a resolution. If you lift the puzzle out, you’ve got, like, twenty pages with some flirting and maybe one hot look. You know, I mean, you do not have a satisfying romance in my books that has a proper conclusion and, you know, all your, your emotional elements tied up. I, I don’t have that! I’m lacking that! So what I –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: If I approach it as a mystery, I know, I know point A, and I know point Z, and I know along the way I have to hit G, N, and R, and I don’t know the rest. The rest of it I figure out as I go along.

Sarah: That’s really interesting.

Deanna: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: So do, do your characters surprise you then, when they’re like, oh, I figured this out, and you’re like, well, crap, I hadn’t figured that out yet? [Laughs]

Deanna: No, nonono. I, I’m the boss. I, they, they are in my service. I – [laughs] – they don’t get to think for themselves. No, the only time – here’s the funny thing – the only time they, they never surprise me with, with elements of the mystery, because the thing is, a mystery is actually really straightforward when it comes to plotting, because you know, okay, at the beginning I have to set up the puzzle, and these are the things they’re going to have to go and find out, and they can’t find out this cool fact unless they talk to this person, and we can’t talk to this person until we’ve met this other character, and so it, it kind of –

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: – it’s just a very easy, linear progression for me. It all makes sense; it’s all logical. And I’m not saying this is the way everybody writes a mystery. It’s the way I write a mystery, and it’s what makes sense to me, in that it’s linear, and it’s all tidy and logical, and point A leads to point B, yada yada. Where they surprise me –

Sarah: And you know –

Deanna: No.

Sarah: – and you know sort of where you’re going, but not the very end.

Deanna: Oh, I know the very end, always. I just don’t necessarily –

Sarah: Ah.

Deanna: – know what points were, all the points we’re going to hit along the way. I know, I know the highlights. I know, I know the –

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: – major points, but I don’t know the little things that get filled in. Those I discover along the way, and, and the way that they will surprise me is if I’m writing a scene that is emotional, and it just feels right to take it a different direction than what I planned. That will happen. So it’s never the mystery element that’s going to surprise me; it’s, it’s always going to be the interpersonal element that surprises me.

Sarah: So the character development.

Deanna: Yeah, exactly! And, and that, I think, is, is just my subconscious working overtime saying, hey, wouldn’t this be cool? And so it just kind of –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: – you know, creeps out when I’m writing then, and, and I’ll just, the scene will suddenly take a turn, and I’m thinking, oh, yeah, this is some good stuff, and I just go with it to see. Most of the time it’ll work. Every once in a while I just write it because I need to write it and it will come out later when I, I realize that it doesn’t quite fit the, the way I wanted it to, but most of the time it works. Most of the time it, it stays in, and that’s always fun.

Sarah: I like to think, sometimes when I’m working on something particularly creative, that there’s a Crockpot in the back of my brain, and I need to leave it alone, and then every now and again something brilliant comes out of there, but it’s always a surprise.

Deanna: Although we may need to update that, because I think it needs to be, like, an Instant Pot now.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, but that’s too fast.

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: I need, like, a good six to nine hours worth of contemplation. Like, it’s just really got a very, do, do a, do a very long, slow simmer before my brain’s like, oh, hold up! I have a good idea! Well, thank you! Where were you nine hours ago when I was actually stressing about this? So hard question –

Deanna: Sure!

Sarah: – for you, actually: aside from a box of dicks –

Deanna: Sure.

Sarah: – what do you think are the key components to a really good mystery?

Deanna: Well, you ask any ten mystery fans that question, they’ll give you ten different answers, so there is no –

Sarah: Oh, of course, they’re like romance fans; we’re very, very closely related.

Deanna: Absolutely, absolutely. For myself, personally, I like a good puzzle. I like the, the, the kind of golden age mystery where you don’t necessarily know how this thing could have been done. You know, I, I, my favorite comfort reading is the, the mysteries that were written in the 1930s that were, you know, the, the locked room or the, the snowbound country house where, oh, there are no footprints in the snow, you know. Clearly no outsider came in and poisoned grandma; who did it? So I, I, I love those little quirky puzzles where you, you don’t necessarily know how it went because it’s, to me that’s just a larger version of a brain teaser. But I think, I think it has to have really solid characterization, because otherwise, why do you care? You’re not invested that someone died, you know, because that, that’s the thing too is, is there’s always this really fine line when you’re writing a mystery, because most of the time you’re talking about a murder. It could be a jewel theft, it could be an art theft, but, but the bulk of the time when we’re talking about mysteries, we’re talking about a murder, and that is a really real and awful and heartbreaking thing to have happen. So how do you deal with those consequences? You know, that was, one of the things when I wrote my, my very first book, Silent in the Grave, my sleuth was the widow of the murder victim, and I got about thirty pages into the book and I went, holy crap! I can’t write this with her sleuthing around a week and a half after this guy has died! That just doesn’t seem realistic. You know, I need distance there, and so I, I went back and I rewrote the opening to where she finds her first clue when she’s cleaning out his desk a year after he dies, because you needed that buffer in order not to be saying, wow, she’s a grieving widow; what’s going on here? This, this, this doesn’t, you know, we, we need to go through our Kübler-Ross states of grief, and we haven’t hit them yet, and I, I, I think that that’s one of those things that as mystery writers we, we have to be keenly aware of, is we’re talking about really horrible crimes that are affecting people and, and how do you deal with that in a way that doesn’t bring down the whole tone of the book, because ultimately it is entertainment, but at the same time you’re not just dismissing it so lightly and acting like it doesn’t matter. You know, you, you have to show the effects of these things too, and that can, that can be a really tricky space to play with.

Sarah: It can be, and it’s, you have to leave room for, as you said, the emotional effects of what happens. One of the things that happened for me serendipitously is I read the, A Treacherous Curse right after I read Death Below Stairs by Jennifer Ashley, which also just came out. I don’t know if you’ve read it. It’s about a, it’s about a cook in a household who is the, sort of the lead sleuth and ends up, her assistant is killed very violently, and she’s devastated by this.

Deanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, she’s terribly, terribly upset, but because she’s the cook, she’s got to get up and make meals –

Deanna: Right. Right.

Sarah: – anyway. Like, she has to keep going, and so there’s this sort of, I have to keep going, while also processing these incredibly large, normal, human emotions.

Deanna: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I haven’t read that, but it’s on, it’s on my TBR list, so I, I’m, I love the fact that you’re saying that, that she dealt with that when she wrote it, because I think it is one of those things that, there, there are some aspects of, of mystery that will just gloss over it and act like it’s not that big of a deal, but I, I think that that, I actually found that really, really great. I don’t know if you’ve watched Stranger Things, but we binge-watched season two of Stranger Things over Christmas, and I was so impressed, because there are all these massive, horrible things that happen, not just to one child or a town but to an entire community in season one, and then in season two they actually dealt with it! There, there was, there was full-out –

Sarah: Yes!

Deanna: – there were, you know, there, people were suffering still. Other people, you could tell, were just trying to get on with their lives, but, but the, underneath the surface of everybody pretending everything is still okay, you had people who were falling apart, and that felt so real to me and, and just such a, a, a wonderful component to bring in, because it doesn’t get dealt with a lot. And so my way around it is, a lot of times I have situations where you’re not dealing with the people who are grieving the most, or you’re talking about a victim who –

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: – you know, quite frankly had it coming. [Whispers] No, I’m kidding. [Normal voice] But they, but they weren’t terribly likeable, so maybe some people are not really all that sad that they’re dead. There, there are ways around it, but I, I do think it’s very important to, to deal with that and to acknowledge it and to say, ooh, there’s, there’s, there’s stuff here, and it’s, and it’s painful, and it’s grim, and we’ve got to at least acknowledge somehow that it’s happening and that this is going to change people’s lives and that there are stakes here, because it’s, it’s, it feels too dismissive not to do it.

Sarah: And also, one of the things that I struggle with with some portrayals of murders and deaths in, in books is that it’s sort of like a thing that happens and then no one talks about it again? Like, I’ve, I’ve lived in places where there has been a crime maybe thirty years ago, and people still mention it.

Deanna: Oh, God, yes!

Sarah: Like, it’s still part of –

Deanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – the current history, so if it just happened last week, it’s not something that’s going to disappear; it’s going to continue to sort of resonate and cause ripples within the different characters. They’re going to change because of that element. It’s, it’s also interesting to me when I look closely at, at, at mystery as a genre and romance as a genre that you’re still dealing with fundamental human experience. You’re dealing with love and death –

Deanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – sometimes at the same time, depending on the book, and those are, those are terribly visceral experiences that everyone processes in very different ways, yet they still have that same sort of root experience that changes everything about a character.

Deanna: Well, absolutely, and I mean, these are stories that we’ve been telling for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. These are themes we’ve been exploring. You can trace mystery back –

Sarah: Yes.

Deanna: – to medieval morality plays. You can take, you can trace romance –

Sarah: Of course.

Deanna: – back to fairy tales – the nicer ones; not necessarily the Grimm stuff – but, you know, there’s, there’s always this idea: I, I, I’m a firm believer that genre readers are genre readers because there is something about that genre that appeals to their fundamental viewpoint of the world. I believe romance readers are romance readers because they believe fundamentally that people deserve happy endings. And I believe –

Sarah: Yep. That, that works for me.

[Laughter]

Deanna: And I believe that ro-, or that mystery readers are mystery readers because they believe fundamentally in justice and that the, the, the people who do wrong should get their comeuppance and, and, and that justice should be served, whatever that looks like. And so I, I think that these things are so fundamental, because, I mean, they’re the bedrock of, of the society that we form. You know, they, these are some of the most basic things that people decide when they come together and make a community. What constitutes marriage? What, what is that going to look like? How do we feel about people who keel, who, who kill other people? Does our society kill them back? Do we rehabilitate them? What do we do with this? And so those, those are questions that, as human beings, we struggled with for millennia, and so there’s something hugely universal about exploring those things, and I think we like to do it in books because it’s a safe space to do it.

Sarah: Yes, absolutely, and the spaces in which we do it, such as books like your series, like Sherry Thomas’s Charlotte Holmes and, and in the romances that are heroine-centered, is that we’re doing it in a space where women are in charge of themselves? And so we see this mirror of women being responsible and in charge of their own lives and facing the consequences for taking charge.

Deanna: Uh-huh. Exactly.

Sarah: There are consequences; there are a lot of consequences. Some of them are great! Some of them are horrible. [Laughs]

Deanna: Well, you know, and that was, that was the, the, the whole question that Victorian women faced in particular when they were heading out to, to do what they wanted they to do. These were not stupid women; they knew there were consequences, and it was a matter of weighing those consequences up and deciding, can you go on with life the way you know it? Can you live in that box, or do you have to have something bigger, no matter what it costs you? And there were plenty of women who said, yeah, I’ll take the big life, thanks, and that’s what they went for, even though they knew it might mean poverty or it might mean banishment from polite society, or it might mean having to live abroad or, you know, any number of, of kind of social and, and economic and political ramifications for them. They were willing to take that. They were willing to pay for what they wanted.

Sarah: And they were willing to defend that autonomy for other people as well, even when it puts them in an increasingly vulnerable position.

Deanna: Well, absolutely, and I, I, I think that’s one of the things that I, I like the most about Veronica is the fact that, that she is adamant about fighting for what she wants for herself, but she is, she is absolutely and completely willing to step up on someone else’s behalf and, and –

Sarah: Yes.

Deanna: – to do whatever needs to be done so that she feels like she can sleep at night, that, that she has done the most that she can with whatever gifts or talents or opportunities she has. She’s going to do it.

Sarah: Yes. There, there is a scene that I really liked, and it’s far enough into, like, the third chapter that I won’t give away too many details –

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: – but she meets a young woman who is fifteen, who is awkward and angry and –

Deanna: Right.

Sarah: – isn’t listened to, whereas she, and, and Veronica had, you know, relatively positive feelings about her father, but, but seeing the way that this father talks to his fifteen-year-old daughter who is awkward and hurting and angry and brilliant and, you know, stifled, she develops this instant deep dislike for this man, because he doesn’t treat his daughter correctly –

Deanna: Right.

Sarah: – and I was like, I have been there.

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: I have so been there. I know that feeling so well, and it’s like you wish you could just be like, all right, dude, we’re going to take a little timeout here, and I am going to explain to you how not to be an ass.

Deanna: Well, exactly!

Sarah: ‘Cause you’re being an ass –

Deanna: Because I, I mean –

Sarah: – and you need to stop. [Laughs]

Deanna: – I, I judge people – because here’s the thing: people will always put on their, their best face when they’re meeting you on equal footing, but their real character –

Sarah: Yes.

Deanna: – is revealed by how they treat people who are lower in the pecking order than they are, whether it is –

Sarah: Yes.

Deanna: – you know, the, the server in the restaurant who is trying to, to give you the best service they possibly can and is dependent upon you for a tip to make a living wage or whether it’s your child –

Sarah: Yes.

Deanna: – or, you know, whatever it is, if it’s, if it’s someone or something who does not have the ability to bite back, how do you treat them? Are, are, are you going to abuse that –

Sarah: Yep.

Deanna: – or are you going to be even kinder and even gentler and, you know, that, to me, it says everything in the world about Stoker’s character that he is much nicer to people in that position than he is people who are his equals or his social superiors, whereas –

Sarah: Absolutely.

Deanna: – you know, with this, this character that, that we’re talking about, this father character, yeah, you, you, you take him at face value, but then you see how completely clueless he is when it comes to his own teenage daughter, and all you can think is, oh, dear God, this child needs to get out of this house. Because it –

Sarah: Right.

Deanna: But here’s the thing: by Victorian standards, he was a really good dad.

Sarah: Yep.

Deanna: Yeah, I mean, he, he, he was genial enough when he spoke to her, even though everybody else is looking at the way he teases her and saying, oh, God, you’re such an ass. He thinks they’re all having a jolly laugh together. I mean, he would, would be absolutely shocked to think that that was viewed as aggressive or not particularly kind, and so he thinks he’s a great dad, because his, his daughter has a roof over her head; she has nice clothes; she has all the books she wants; you know, she has the material things, so by Victorian standards, he’s an A-okay dad, and, you know, I mean, we’ve all known people who had parents like that, who figured –

Sarah: Yep.

Deanna: – hey, as long as I’ve got the material taken care of, you know, the rest of it will take care of itself. And that’s blatantly not true, but in this case, yeah, it absolutely changes Veronica’s perception of who this guy is.

Sarah: And – [laughs] – and it, it introduces her, I think, to a version of herself that she often feels like she is this person who is speaking, speaking a completely different language than the people in the room and yet can’t tell them off for, for being horrible to her. It reminded me a lot of the scene with the, in the first book, with the vicar and his wife, where the wife is trying to condemn her –

Deanna: Uh-huh, yes, right.

Sarah: – and Veronica’s like, that’s not going to stick! Sorry.

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: Sorry! Too bad.

Deanna: Yeah, you know, I, I think Veronica does see a lot of herself in this girl, and, you know, the –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Deanna: – the, the girl, that girl’s character I, I feel like at fifteen is kind of at a crossroads. Is she going to be – because I feel like she’s at the place where she’s either going to be beaten down by convention and her father and his world and his expectations, or she’s going to kind of just have to grab her destiny with both hands and go off the rails and do her own thing –

Sarah: Yep.

Deanna: – and, and, you know, the, the, I think that’s true of a lot of young Victorian women, that, that there was probably a moment where they could say, hmm, am I going to become a vegetarian suffragette, or do I marry the curate?

Sarah: And have a comfortable, boring life where I never tell this guy how much of an idiot he really is.

Deanna: Right, exactly. Exactly!

Sarah: You’re going to end up, you’re going to end up like Charlotte in Pride and Prejudice.

Deanna: Yeah, possibly with a very quiet, discreet drinking problem. I, I don’t –

[Laughter]

Deanna: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: So I know this is a terrible question to ask someone whose book is about to come out, but what are you working on right now?

Deanna: Okay, so I just turned in book four in the series.

Sarah: Oh, that must be very difficult! You’re about to go on book tour and do all of these events and be like, wait, which book is it that I’m talking about?

Deanna: Oh, yeah, I’m completely lost.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: I was like, really? Did we?

Sarah: No! [Laughs]

Deanna: No, so I, I, I’m getting ready to promote this book, which is book three. I have just written –

Sarah: Yep.

Deanna: – book four, and I’m very loosely contemplating book five. We are so early in the process with book four that my agent is just now finishing reading it today, and my, my editor is just getting ready to finish and give me her editorial notes, so we’re still early in the process of, of book four. I haven’t written a revision to it yet, so we still have a little way to go with that, but because of the way I wanted to end book four, that’s going to lead us into a conversation editorially about book five and what’s going to happen there, so I’m, I’m thinking a couple books ahead, and yes –

Sarah: Oy.

Deanna: – it’s incredibly confusing and frankly makes me think I’m not that bright, because people ask me questions –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: – and I’m like, I, did I write that? I don’t – but the great thing is, you’re asking me really kind of vague, cryptic questions, and I can just basically tell you anything.

Sarah: Yep. I’m trying really hard not to spoil the book; real hard; real, real hard.

Deanna: You’re doing so well. You’re doing so well.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Well, it’s, it’s a bit of a challenge when you, when you sort of, when I try to construct an interview, because I want to, I want to talk with you about the book –

Deanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – but I don’t want to talk about what the book’s about –

Deanna: Of course.

Sarah: – but I want to talk about what happens in a book in a way that someone who’s listening is like, I need to hit pause and get off the treadmill and find me a copy of this right now! Because, you know, that’s –

Deanna: Exactly!

Sarah: I want people to be curious about you and about the books and about the series because it’s cool to talk about these women who are showing up in, in historical mysteries –

Deanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – who have zero fucks. I am all about women with zero fucks.

Deanna: I know you are.

Sarah: Like, my favorite new kind –

Deanna: – because you are one!

Sarah: Ah, it’s true, it’s true. Every year –

Deanna: And I say that with love. [Laughs]

Sarah: Every year my give-a-fuck card is renewed – I think I have, like, one for this entire year. Maybe I already –

Deanna: Girl, you have already lost it. I know.

Sarah: I know.

Deanna: Like, it’s January. [Laughs]

Sarah: I know. I’ve got a long way to go, and I’ve got to preserve it. So fresh out. But at the same time, I think it’s, I think it’s really interesting to talk to writers who are in the middle of a series, because your, your, your brain sort of has the large view, the sort of thirty-six-thousand-foot view, and –

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and that’s, like, I have a very hard time holding onto that when I’m reading it or when I’m writing it, so it’s, it’s interesting to talk to, to, to talk to you, because it’s, there are, there are themes that are so interesting, and it’s, it’s also, also difficult to discuss those themes without the particulars. [Laughs] It’s a real challenge.

Deanna: It is, it is, it’s such a challenge. I’ll tell you what: like, ten years after we’re done with this series, have me on again and we’ll just discuss all the spoilers!

Sarah: Yes, all the spoilers!

Deanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Spoilers, all of them.

Deanna: We’ll do it. We will wreck the book.

Sarah: Yep. Oh, I love it.

Deanna: Yeah!

Sarah: Have you thought about doing companion pieces for, for Veronica with butterflies? Like, Veronica’s Very Sarcastic Guide to Butterflies?

Deanna: Oh, that’s excellent! Well, we, we have done a digital gift pack for people who preordered, and one of the pieces in it is Veronica’s tips for packing, and so it’s, and it, I thought I was going to try and do it like actual serious, this is what – and it just went off the rails within thirty seconds. It was like, nope!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: Nope! Veronica’s – it is so straight-up Veronica. It is, it is her at her sarcastic best talking about, you know, why you would need to take this particular item and, and, you know, the fact that it’s really useful for this, but you can also stab an importunate creeper with it when you’re traveling on your own and that kind – it’s, I, I had a great time writing it, so, you know, I, I, that would be, that would be a lot of fun! I mean, I, I should give that some thought, Sarah.

Sarah: Happy to help!

[Laughter]

Deanna: So if I write it –

Sarah: So you are about to go –

Deanna: If I write it, it will be dedicated to you, I promise.

Sarah: Oh, thank you! I would be honored.

Deanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: I, I also know that you’re about to go on sort of a book tour all over the place, and you’re doing events with Lauren Willig and with Tasha Alexander, and you have several of them.

Deanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: What, what is it about book tour and doing panels like that and discussing things with readers that is the most fun? What are you looking forward to?

Deanna: Oh, it is. It’s ridiculously fun! We have the best time, and these are authors I’ve done panels with before, so this is, this is kind of like, you know, school reunion for us, because we always meet in a bar ahead of time at our hotel and have a cocktail –

Sarah: Very smart.

Deanna: – and when I say a cocktail, I mean three, and then we, we go over to, to our, our venue, and it’s wonderful, because, you know, we always joke about the fact that the Venn diagram of our readers should be a circle –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: – because we, we write historical; we, we, we write strong women. You know, we, we have a fairly similar sense of humor, so we, we just really enjoy hanging out together and, and being able to kind of bounce things off of each other, and we never know exactly how an event is going to go. So I was really delighted when they sent me the information for my book tour and I realized I had events with the two of them. I have an event in, in Nashville at Parnassus where I’m in conversation with Ariel Lawhon, who is apparently going to ask me questions, but she won’t tell me ahead of time what they are, and the message I got from her just said, be afraid, Raybourn; be very afraid. So I –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: You know, this book tour, man, I, I, I make you no promises. I have no idea what’s going to happen on this book tour, but I, I, I will say it’s going to be fun, and, and I am so looking forward to it, because it’s a, it’s an opportunity – you know, when you write, you’re, you’re, you’re in your study, and you’re, you’re, it’s you and a screen and a cursor, and it’s just, it’s very, it’s very intense, and it’s very solitary, and getting out of that and being able to talk to actual human beings is, is a treat and a half, and readers always surprise me. They always ask the most interesting questions, and, and they always want to know things that I haven’t necessarily thought about. There, there are things that maybe were tucked away in my subconscious that I, I never kind of brought forward and examined, and readers make you do that, which is, I think, a lot of fun, so I enjoy that aspect of, you know, never knowing if you’re going to actually pass out in front of a whole group of strangers. I think it’s fun! But that’s just me.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Deanna: That’s just me, Sarah! That’s just me.

Sarah: I do have one question for you from Amanda, who is my assistant and also super curious. She wants to know if there’s anything that you learned while writing the Lady Julia series that you’ve implemented in the Veronica Speedwell series.

Deanna: That is an excellent question, Amanda.

Sarah: She does write good questions, doesn’t she?

Deanna: [Laughs] You know, I, I, I think that Julia, because I write heroines, my series heroines are written first person, and they kind of, of necessity, tap into something within me that, that I share with them, and with Julia it was, it was very much about kind of just starting to think about how to exercise independence and, and, and how to, to, to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone, and I have taken that and kind of just run a mile with it with Veronica.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Deanna: She feels so much further along that particular path of doing what she wants to do, being an independent woman, being her own person, and not really caring about what other people think about that that, you know, it, it feels like, oh, if you want, do you want, do you want a lepidoptering metaphor? Because I have one.

Sarah: Bring it on!

Deanna: [Laughs] Julia would have been the larval stage of that, and, and –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Deanna: – and Veronica is the imago. She’s the perfectly realized, wings fully out, take me as I am, this is me, I’m finished. You know, this is, this is who I’m going to be; it doesn’t get better than this. ‘Cause I feel like she’s, she’s so much more developed in that regard, and, you know, which is, which is, I, I think, a reflection of, of just me personally being in a very different place writing Veronica than I was when I wrote Julia.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I want to thank Deanna Raybourn for taking time to chat with me about her book. She is on tour, and I will have links to her tour page on her website in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

Piece of advice: if you’re ever going to create a website and you’re going to keep it going for, you know, almost, wow, almost thirteen years now – dun-dun-duh! – might want to choose a smaller URL, maybe? I don’t know; it’s certainly memorable. But either way, smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast! I can say it really fast. I can type it really fast too.

Today’s episode’s transcript is being brought to you by Sarah Yen. She is a long-time listener who read the transcripts while nursing her children and now listens to the podcast each week, since her lovely children are old enough, mostly, to feed themselves. She would also like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and advises us all to take some time out for self-care, so I hope whatever you are doing today or this weekend or whenever you’re listening to this, you are taking time for yourself to do exactly what makes you happy. Thank you to Sarah Yen for sponsoring this week’s transcript. I really appreciate that.

We have a Patreon: patreon.com/SmartBitches. Every pledge is a massive help to me in keeping the show going and also commissioning transcripts for older episodes. And speaking of older episodes, I just looked up the age of the podcast; it’s almost ten years old. Dude! That’s amazing! That, I, I had no idea it had been ten years, but nope, the first episode was December of 20-, 2008. Wow! Anyway. So if you would like to have a look at the Patreon, patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is the new Peatbog Faeries album. They are celebrating twenty-five years together, and the live album is called Live @ 25. This is “Dun Beag (Live),” and it actually starts with a gentleman yelling in a fantastic Scottish accent, “Give it up for the Peatbog Faeries!” and there’s lots of applause, but I couldn’t start the podcast with that audio, so, sorry. You should definitely check out the album and listen to the whole thing; it’s really great.

And as always, I have terrible jokes. This week I have two terrible jokes, because I’m terrible! Are you ready? First terrible joke; this is from Elyse. I’m delighted by this one.

Why are Christmas trees so terrible at knitting?

Give up? Why? Why are Christmas trees terrible at knitting?

‘Cause they keep dropping their needles!

[Laughs] I have been walking my dogs, and a lot of my neighbors had long-lasting Christmas trees this year, and the dogs are like, this is amazing; there’re trees all over the ground! So to all my neighbors who are throwing away their Christmas trees and putting them out for recycling now, this, that joke is for you.

Second joke! I love this joke. I’m so excited! Okay. Can you tell how much I enjoy this? Oh, it’s just my favorite part.

When does a joke become a dad joke?

When the punch line becomes apparent.

Ah! [Laughs] That is from iheartmetal13 on Reddit.

So on behalf of Deanna Raybourn and everyone here, I wish you the very best of reading. Next week, Amanda and I are taking questions and giving advice, ‘cause, you know, who else should you take advice from, right? Obviously! So I hope to see you back here next week. Have a lovely weekend and remember, as Sarah Yen suggested, take some time to do the things that make you feel happy and good.

[fun music]