283. Making Friends and Finding Bisexual Romance Characters: Recommendations and Advice from Amanda & Sarah

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hey there! Happy Friday, or whatever day it is when you’re listening to this. Welcome to episode 283 – wow, that’s a big number! – of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Amanda, also of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. That is the, probably the largest number of times I’ve said that during an intro. I could be wrong, ‘cause, like I said, there’s 283 episodes! How did that happen?

Amanda and I, we have a lot to talk about in this episode; I really hope you enjoy it. First, we’re going to talk about the recent episode of The Bachelor that we recapped for Smart Bitches when Elyse was on vacation. It was two hours, and I am still trying to figure out this show. We are going to talk about – [laughs] – what we might have learned about the series by watching one episode, and we also decide that we are clearly unquestionable experts, unquestionable experts after watching two hours, right?

If you’re keeping score at home, Orville has just jumped up on the desk and is now going to knock things down while I record, because the minute I start talking into my mic, clearly I’m available for cat petting, so if you hear thumping and random things, that’s just Orville, because he’s here to help with my sound.

Amanda and I are also going to do two other things during this episode: we’re going to answer a request for advice from Katie, who is looking to make new friends in her new home outside Atlanta. So we talk about the process of making new friends, making dates, planning activities, and ways to find the people who love the things that you love. Now if you have advice or suggestions for Katie, please leave a comment at the podcast episode at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast – ooh, look, I said it again – or you can email us as well.

And you know, if you would like advice, you can also email us, because like I just said, Amanda and I are now unquestionable experts on The Bachelor and many other things, because, well, I just said so, so if you’d like advice from us, I can’t promise it will be good advice, but we will do our best. Please feel free to email us. You can email us at [email protected]. You can also find us on Twitter @SmartBitches.

Then for our third part, we have a recommendation request. This week we are recommending books for Lizzie, who had a miserable holiday due to a homophobic and bigoted family member, so heads up for a little bi erasure and bigotry in the letter from Lizzie. Lizzie, however, is a very smart and resilient romance reader, so she has requested recommendations for bi characters or lesbian characters who come out during the course of the story. So we celebrate Lizzie’s coming out, and we do our best to make varied selections of recommendations, but I’m sure that you have ideas, so if you do, email or tweet at us or however you want to get in touch, but if you’ve got ideas for Lizzie, please let us know.

If you need the email address, I will tell you right now, it is [email protected]. You can also email us a voice memo. Just record it, record yourself talking – I promise you will sound fantastic – and then you can just email it to me if you’d like to be part of the podcast vocally or audit-orally – yeah, that makes sense.

This episode is being brought to you by our podcast Patreon community. We have a podcast Patreon. Your support means the world to me. It is patreon.com/SmartBitches. When you make a monthly pledge, you are helping the show grow, you are helping me commission transcripts for episodes that don’t have one, and you are the first place that I go when I need recommendation requests or I would like to ask for help with questions. I have so many cool interviews scheduled in the next few weeks. I am so excited to share them with you, and I often ask the Patreon community for question ideas, so if you’re interested, I hope that you will have a look and make a pledge and join us. I also wanted to take a moment and thank some of the Patreon folks personally. So to Jeremy, Malia, Emilia, and Erin, thank you so much for being with, part of the podcast Patreon community!

Are there other ways you can support the podcast? Of course there are! It’s super easy: if you leave a review wherever you listen, it helps people find us, which is very cool. You can also tell a friend, subscribe, mention it to somebody – whatever you’re doing, thank you for hanging out with me each week. It is so cool.

The music that you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the podcast, as well as a terrible joke in the outro, so you can listen after the interview and be horrified by my terrible, terrible jokes. They’re really bad!

I will also have links to all of the books that we mention – of course there are several – as well as different places to help you find books by type and links to different things that have happened on the site in case you missed them.

And now, if Orville is not too bothered by me, you know, moving all of his catness over – if you ever go on Instagram, my Instagram is @sarah.wendell, like, my personal Instagram? And most of my Instagram is orange, because my cats are orange, and the dogs are brown and white, but they’re literally the same color, so it’s orange cats and brown and white dogs that have the same shade of orange/brown? Either way, my entire Instagram feed is orange, because I take so many pictures of the cats and of the dogs, and lately, if Orville is on his back on my desk with his belly in the air, I take a video of it, so if you need a break and you would like some virtual Orville, you can go to Instagram.com/sarah.wendell or find me on Instagram @sarah.wendell. That’s W-E-N-D-E-L-L, and Orville would very much like it if you admired his massive, massive belly. And it’s not a trap! You can absolutely pet his belly; he’s very fond of it.

But now, without any further delay, let’s do an interview! Let’s do some recommendations! Let’s give advice! Let’s be unquestionable experts! On with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah: Hello, Amanda.

Amanda: Hi, Sarah!

Sarah: How you doing?

Amanda: All right. It’s snowing today, which sucks balls.

Sarah: [Laughs] I would just like you to know that here in the metro DC area, we have less than an inch of snow, but school was cancelled.

Amanda: [Laughs] Aw!

Sarah: And my next-door neighbor, who is from western Mass, and I were outside shoveling, and she was so angry. Like –

Amanda: I can imagine.

Sarah: – this is ridiculous. Why? The roads are clear. There is less than an inch. I can see the grass! Like, I thought she was going to be able to melt the snow with the power of her outrage.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: But school was canceled, so –

Amanda: Ugh.

Sarah: – I might have to be like, y’all, turn down the TV on whatever they’re watching, but as an excellent parent, my children are eating SpaghettiOs and Chef Boyardee and watching television.

Amanda: Hell, yeah! I made my own SpaghettiOs the other day.

Sarah: How did the recipe turn out? Was it good?

Amanda: Yeah, it was really good! It made a lot of food for just one person? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, that, that does –

Amanda: So I froze some of it, and then I saved some of it. It was pretty good! I mean, meatballs and pasta and sauce and cheese: what could go wrong with that?

Sarah: Yeah, pretty much that’s all you need, especially if it’s snowing.

Amanda: Yeah, it was really yummy.

Sarah: So, we watched The Bachelor.

Amanda: We did. [Laughs] It’s a thing I never want to do ever again.

Sarah: Except for when Krystal gets eliminated; like – [laughs] – you want to tune in for that.

Amanda: Yeah, I want to see – I mean, there’s, with a personality like hers, there’s no way that she’s going to, like, take it on the chin. [Laughs] You know what I mean?

Sarah: I had so many thoughts, so many thoughts, and I couldn’t sleep. Like, my anxiety brain did its thing, like, waking me up at three in the morning: you know what we should do right now? We should think about The Bachelor. Like, really, no, brain, we should really not.

Amanda: I spent –

Sarah: No.

Amanda: – forty-five minutes last night thinking about what I would do if I were selected to go on The Bachelor.

Sarah: [Laughs] I don’t want that to happen.

Amanda: [Laughs] It’s like, how would I play this? Would I be, like, the chill, cool girl? Like, would I, I was like, what’s the free food situation? Like –

Sarah: [Laughs] I know there’s a lot of free booze.

Amanda: Yeah, I’m just like, let it –

Sarah: But there’s, like, no, no internet, no television, no phones while they’re in the house?

Amanda: I don’t know if I could do that. [Laughs]

Sarah: So the thing that I realized about The Bachelor is that it is both incredibly wrapped up in a very heteronormative, patriarchal portrayal of courtship, which we kind of knew –

Amanda: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – ‘cause you’ve got all these women locked in a house competing for a guy –

Amanda: Ugh.

Sarah: – which, which –

Amanda: He’s not even that great! Like, he’s – I’m sorry. Like, I wouldn’t compete for a guy like Arie. He’s not my type; he seems kind of a wet blanket. Like, I don’t know. [Laughs]

Sarah: He does not excite me either, but he’s also really, really bad at caretaking –

Amanda: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: – and that’s the part that I noticed when I was awake at three in the morning, because, you know, that’s how my brain is; it’s really great that way. So if I was going to be awake thinking about The Bachelor, I realized that, so you have this very patriarchal, heteronormative courtship where all these women are locked in a house, ostensibly competing for this guy. Now Krystal is, like, the Camp Counselor of Evil, and she’s, like, telling them to make the most of their one-on-one time ‘cause you really have to make an impression, and then every time they’re on a drinking couch, it’s like they’re playing real-life Stardew Valley and counting up their own hearts with this guy. Like, how many hearts did you get? How many do you have? Did you kiss him?

Amanda: And then at the end they’re like, like, they were talking about, are you in line? Like, in line to talk to him? Like –

Sarah: Or to make out with him, ew! I’m telling you, this whole show is actually patterning a disease vector, and the CDC is studying The Bachelor; like, that’s what actually this is about.

Amanda: And the second –

Sarah: Like, there’s a government conspiracy; that’s what this is.

Amanda: The secondhand embarrassment and the things these women have to do –

Sarah: Oh, God!

Amanda: – to, like, compete for this man’s love. Like, I don’t understand what putting these women in these situations, like, reflects. Like, you will never be in these situations in a normal courtship, like, if you met someone at a bar. Like, what is the point of making them train dogs for a show or wrestling with each other in over-the-top costumes? Like, what is the point of this?

Sarah: It’s like there’s a performance inside another performance nestled inside another performance, ‘cause they’re performing for the cameras, they’re performing for him, they’re performing in these little things that they have to do, but at the same time, I totally buy Elyse’s theory that there are a lot of women who are there to make it as long as they can without having to marry this guy?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Because you get, you know, free vacations –

Amanda: That’s not really a prize.

Sarah: Yeah, well, you know, free trips from ABC, free whatever. You have to put up with the stress of being there, but there’s a lot of footage of them all caring for each other. Like, that first shot of the episode that we watched, they were all, like, piled together like puppies on the couch, and –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – I don’t think – all right, I may be very naïve in this statement, but I don’t think you can fake that. Like, you can’t fake being comfortable with some other woman’s legs, like, across your body while you’re in your pajamas, unmade, and having coffee. Like, that, to me, illustrated some degree of actual closeness, and the fact that – what was the girl in the vineyard? Was that Lauren S? Lauren S.

Amanda: Yeah! When she went home, one of the girls was super upset! One of the women –

Sarah: And they didn’t let her say good-bye! Like, there’s no care –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – for the women, for each other, and for their friendships, and every time – I realize there’s, like, the formula of how much they show a person on camera –

Amana: Yeah.

Sarah: – and they showed a lot of Bibiana with her friend, Tia?

Amanda: Yeah, I like Tia. [Laughs]

Sarah: And there’s no, there’s no care for Tia that she’s losing her friend and the person that she bonded with, so, like, who gives a flying shit about Arie? There’s no care for these women; they all have to look after each other while pretending to compete – or actually competing, depending on the person – and then beneath that, there’s this real lack of attentiveness to the, the way in which they care for each other. It’s like, they receive no emotional care, and then they’re expected to charm the hell out of this guy when they get, like, five minutes with him on a kissing couch. This is the most fucked-up experience I’ve ever watched with my eyeballs.

Amanda: And then whenever the women leave, I’ve noticed that they always internalize it as, they’re leaving because there’s something wrong with them and not with Arie. You know what I mean?

Sarah: I was pretty glad that –

Amanda: Like, it’s their fault that they left.

Sarah: Yeah. I didn’t open up; I didn’t let him in. Like, he never asks them questions about themselves, and then they either, either start, like, unloading their relationship history, but only a few of them ask them about him? It’s a very weird dynamic. It’s, it’s like they, they get this one-on-one time, and they have to perform in yet another way, and it’s exhausting to watch, and it just made me so uncomfortable! Oh, my God!

Amanda: Yeah. And that, the one poor girl, Annaliese, she was the one who was attacked by a dog as a child and then, like, she was like, why isn’t he kissing me? He’s kissing everyone else! And she makes it a point to be like, I want you to kiss me, and he’s like, we’re not there yet, and I’m like, oh, no! She’s –

Sarah: Was it really that hard to kiss her, you jerkwad? Really, was it that hard? You’ve kissed everyone else. He practically made out with the telescope and the couch.

Amanda: Yeah. And I just felt so bad, and then she went back. She was like, I need some clarification. Which, I mean, good for her, but it was just, oh, it was painful.

Sarah: To me –

Amanda: It was a painful secondhand embarrassment.

Sarah: – on one hand, she got sort of excused from the show on her own terms, not in front of everybody, not in front of the whole room of other women. She left on her own terms by herself and, you know –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – did the walk into the darkness, into the Rose God’s japing, gaping maw on the driveway. She did that on her own and on her own terms, so good, but on the other hand, he did not step up except to make the easiest decision, and I’m like –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – and, and again, another person did not say good-bye, did not get to say good-bye, and I would like to believe that when the cameras aren’t rolling, they have to come back in the house for their stuff. Like, their stuff is all there, except for poor Lauren S. –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – who, like, disappeared like, like she was some sort of suitcase.

Amanda: Well, I wonder if they preemptively, like, pack up all their stuff before the rose ceremony.

Sarah: Oh, my God, that would be so exhausting.

Amanda: I know, to have to, like, pack your stuff up every week.

Sarah: Pack and unpack, pack and unpack. And, I mean, you know how when you go somewhere, even if you’re in a hotel room for a weekend, your stuff just explodes everywhere.

Amanda: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: Imagine being in that gigantic house with all of those couches. Like, how many, how many phone cord chargers are in the cushions of one of those couches? Like, ten, right? Like, you probably dig through them and find, like, iPhones with the long, wide connector, the flat one for your iPod.

Amanda: And I also get that there’s a lot of women still left –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – but he was giving roses to women that didn’t utter a single syllable in the entire episode.

Sarah: That was on camera, no. They’re very selective with their editing.

Amanda: He’s – yeah. I was like, I don’t know who this person is. I think is the first time we’ve seen her –

Sarah: Honest –

Amanda: – is at the rose ceremony.

Sarah: Yep, but she’s getting through. I honestly do not want to watch again because it just, it made me feel so unpleasant, and it gave me anxiety brain, because it was just so much unkindness and so much lack of care. [Laughs] Like, I wanted to go cook for all those ladies and be like, ladies, I’m, this is really horrible. Can I make you some soup? This is terrible! You don’t need this buffoon. You know, get as far as you can on the one-on-ones and then bail. Get at least two vacations.

Amanda: I almost lost my mind when I realized it was two hours.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: I was like, I thought I was only signing up for an hour of this!

Sarah: I thought the same and was devastated. Like, I, I was there for all of the wrong reasons for that one.

Amanda: [Laughs] Well, it was so, it was bad. I, I hope we never have to do this ever again.

Sarah: Well –

Amanda: Please, Elyse, do not make us do this ever again. Please.

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, the thing –

Amanda: I will give you whatever you want to reschedule future vacations. Please.

Sarah: Okay. So I am hoping that she never takes another vacation, but now I feel like every time she’s like, okay, Bachelor’s in, like, she’ll text me on Slack, like, okay, The Bachelor’s in, and I go in and edit, like, I feel like I need to perform an extremely high level of attentive care, like, are you all right? Are you okay? ‘Cause she –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – is totally in the right mindset for this. There are so many fans of this show; like, Bachelor Nation is a very large thing, and there are so many people who clearly can watch this show with the right frame of mind, who don’t get anxiety brain at three in the morning because people didn’t get to say good-bye to each other on camera, and I realize how ridiculous my brain is, but, like, there are people who can watch this and, and who are into it, and, like, they have the right perspective and frame of mind to follow along the whole season, and I know Elyse can do that. I don’t know how. How? I, I want –

Amanda: Yeah, it’s a talent. I don’t know.

Sarah: I can’t cringe anymore! Like, all of my abs have had their own abs, I have cringed so much.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I have, like, a nineteen-pack of abs from all this cringing.

Amanda: Yeah, it was bad.

Sarah: It was terrible.

Amanda: I don’t, I don’t enjoy it. I thought it was like, oh, it wouldn’t be so bad! I’d, I have never seen an episode before in my life, and I was wrong: it can be that bad, and it was worse than what I was expecting.

Sarah: And at the same time, I just want to say, if someone is listening and they are a fan of The Bachelor, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. You like what you like. This is just clearly, this is not for me. I am, I am –

Amanda: Yeah. It’s a User Error on our part.

Sarah: It’s entirely User Error, and I am so happy that for the people who dig it there are so many incarnations of it to enjoy. Okay. So shall we get started with our letters?

Amanda: Yes!

Sarah: So this week we have an advice letter, which is new, and we have a request for recommendations that comes with a bit of a sad story. So –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: – the first email is from Katie from Powder Springs, Georgia, and she writes:

Hello,

First things first: much love to all of you at Smart Bitches. I have the most fun listening to your podcasts.

Thank you!

I love how all of the fans who comment, call, and interact with the site are so supportive of each other and women. I have moved for the second time in my life, and while I am a very friendly person who gets along well with others, I’m not very strong at building and locating a community of support and friendship in a new location. Does anyone in your group have any advice? Where do you go? And how do I go about meeting all the Smart Bitches that are near me?

Dude, this is, this is hard. This is hard no matter how old you are.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: And, and it’s interesting for us to answer this, because I’ve been married for almost eighteen years, but we just moved two years ago, and so I’m, you know, re-, relocating my family, and I’ve been helping my kids make friends, and I’ve been making friends and connecting with my local community, so that’s something that I’m still doing right now, even though I’m a little bit older, whereas you moved a couple of years ago and are still building a really good community of friends, right?

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: So what’s your advice?

Amanda: So I moved to Boston for grad school, never having visited the city, not knowing anyone in my grad program, but I mean, the beauty of going to school is you kind of meet, like, a good network of friends, and we’re all still good friends. We’re going on this cute little reading retreat, we have monthly dinners, but I’ve also been striking out on my own, which has kind of been really liberating in a way, just doing things by yourself that sound really cool. And my suggestion is, so there’s a, a site called Meetup which is pretty great, and through Meetup you can search by interest or hobby. I’ve discovered a ladies’ gaming night at a game store down the street from my apartment which I’ve gone to, and that’s really fun, and it’s all women, which I like. I wouldn’t say I prefer it, but it kind of makes me more comfortable –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – when meeting new people and doing something I haven’t done before.

Sarah: Were they welcoming to new people when you went?

Amanda: Yeah! So the game that we were playing was called Betrayal at the House on the Hill, I think?

Sarah: Whoa!

Amanda: And I had never played this game before, and they were very patient in explaining things to me and making sure I understood the rules or if I messed something up, so it was a really good experience, and I plan on going again. It’s once, once a month. Meetup also has local book groups. I found that there’s a romance book group in Boston. I haven’t attended yet, but I plan to, and it seems really interesting.

So I highly suggest Meetup for a website to find people who are interested in the same things you are? They also have, like, a, a discussion board in each group, so you can ask questions or introduce yourself before you actually meet people in person, which is helpful, and sometimes they’ll have affiliated, like, Facebook groups.

Another suggestion is check your local bookstores and libraries. A lot of them have events that are free or book groups that are free. I know my local library has a, a drop-in knitting club where you just come and bring your knitting or your crafts and hang out at the library.

Sarah: Yes, and the nice thing about doing things –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – where you have, like, a knitting group or a stitching group is that the repetitive – for me, anyway – the repetitive action of stitching or knitting or whatever it is soothes a lot of my social anxiety, because I have a thing to do, so I can do that thing –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – and talk and listen, and –

Amanda: And they also, they’re very low-key, ‘cause everyone has –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – you know, their main focus on, you know, what they’re doing.

Sarah: Yes. Another good thing to look for if you’re into, into crafting is, like, a beginner’s origami group, because you’re folding paper, and you’re making something, but you’re also sitting with people who are learning to do it at the same time, and it’s, it’s folding paper. Like, if you’re at a beginning level, you can do it. And it gives you something to do with your hands.

Amanda: Yes. And then there are so many different book clubs in my area. I host one at my local bookstore, and it’s, it’s an any-book club, so we don’t pick a monthly book to all read because we have such diverse reading tastes.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: So we get together and we just talk about what we’ve been reading the previous month, what we’ve enjoyed, kind of like our Whatcha Reading posts, but in person? And it’s a lot of fun, but if you check your local bookstores, they usually have a calendar of events, and you can kind of see what happens on a monthly basis. You might have, like, a local mystery book club, that sort of thing. But like I said before, I highly recommend just kind of doing stuff on your own, and you might meet people that way, just, like, going to the movies by yourself, checking out, like, a craft fair by yourself. I know it can be hard moving to a new place and wanting to see and do new things, but you feel better doing them with someone?

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: And it, it takes a while to get out of that. Like, oh, well, is it weird if I go eat by myself or see a movie by myself?

Sarah: Nope!

Amanda: And I actually like it! So maybe do that, and then you might meet someone on the way, but definitely check out local communities. Social media is kind of a, a good thing, in my opinion, for this, because there’s a lot of discussion and talking before you even meet in person –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – so you can kind of get a feel for the general personality of the group.

Sarah: Yes. Now I emailed a friend of mine who I know lives outside of Atlanta, but Atlanta, living outside of the Atlanta – if you see – [laughs] – if you see two people who live outside of Atlanta, they could be, like, three hours apart, because outside of Atlanta is a lot of land. So I asked about options in Atlanta because I didn’t know very many, and this is what my friend had to say:

There is not that much to do where you live, but it’s less than thirty minutes from Marietta and Smyrna, and if you like to go out there are some pretty trendy places that you can go. You’ll probably also find more groups there than in Powder Springs: book clubs, sports league, recreation leagues, that kind of thing. It’s also half an hour from midtown Atlanta. If she wanted, if you wanted to organize a reader meetup, you could have people meet in the city as a central spot.

So that was one person’s advice for that particular area, because I don’t know a lot about Atlanta, except I’ve been there for conferences twice.

The other thing I would suggest is going to look at your local library and seeing what options they have for, for people who, like, what do they, what book clubs do they have, what discussions do they have? My local library has a butt-ton of programming. Like, it’s incredible; every time I go in there there’s another thing, and I’m like, oh, that’s really cool! If you wanted to learn another language, you can join a language club. If you want to talk about books, the library is a really good place where people generally like to do that. So look at your local library if your budget is low or if it’s easier for you to get to the library than to other places.

Amanda: Also, talking to librarians or even, like, booksellers at your local bookstore, they can also tell you –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – that, even if they don’t have programming where they are, they could probably recommend a spot that they’ve heard of that has something similar.

Sarah: Oh, yes. And one thing I’ve noticed, having moved to this area, is, where I live now, is that when I’m very upfront – I just moved here a year or so ago; I don’t know my way around, or I don’t know where that is – people love to tell you about where they live, and especially Southerners, they like to welcome you, so if you’re pretty upfront – I’m, I’m new here; I don’t know anyone – more likely than not, you will get someone who will be at least receptive towards interacting with you, because it’s hard to be new, and I think most people remember what that’s like.

The other thing that I think that also works is that I have a lot of friends that are very far away. So I have friends from where I went to college in South Carolina, and I see them once every few years, and I have friends that are overseas, and we make dates on Skype for breakfast or lunch, and we’ll have a meal together at our computers and talk about whatever’s going on. With one friend, we talk about, you know, business goals and what we’re doing professionally, and with another who lives where I used to live in New Jersey, we talk about all the volunteering that we do or the things that she’s working on, but I get to have literal time looking at them, and we’re having a meal, and if the time difference doesn’t work out, then I’m having breakfast and maybe they’re having lunch or tea, but if there are friends that are far away, making dates to stay in touch with them and scheduling the next time before you get off the computer helps you have a regular thing to look forward to on your computer or on your calendar: oh, I’m going to talk to so-and-so today. That’ll make it a little bit, it’ll make the day a little better. There’s, it’s not the same as being in the same space as someone; that is different on a whole bunch of levels, but if you have friends that are far away, you can keep in touch with them much, much easier now than it used to be.

Amanda, when you’re making dates with your friends –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: – what are, what, what are some advice that you have, what are some pieces of advice that you have for making dates with people who are local to you? Like, say you make a couple friends. What are some pieces of, of advice that you would have for making and keeping dates with friends?

Amanda: So you suggested making, like, the next date while you’re talking to them or, like, at the end, and I highly recommend that.

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: So we, as I mentioned before, we have a monthly dinner that we always do. It started last February for Galentine’s Day, and we have just kept up with it once a month every month. We pick a restaurant. Some of us make it, some of us can’t make it, and that’s okay. We don’t want anyone to feel pressured to make every single one.

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: But at the end of the dinner, every single time, we all whip out our phones –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – and look at our calendar and pick the next date. We try to keep the same weekday every month, so whether it’s – it was a Wednesday; now it’s moved to Thursdays, and we always do it right after everyone gets off work. So that’s really helpful is, like, making plans together when you’re there, ‘cause if you’re like, oh, well, I’ll just, I’ll text you later this week and we’ll coordinate something, that gives you, like, an excuse, you know, not to follow through, and I, I sometimes feel anxiety making plans?

Sarah: Yep!

Amanda: I know that sounds weird – even with, like, friends or whatever, ‘cause sometimes I just feel like I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to be sociable, but making those concrete plans while you’re there in front of everyone, coordinating together, kind of gives you less of a chance to back out. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep. I call it the dentist method. If you go to the dentist, they have you make your next six month appointment while you’re there –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: – ‘cause in six months your calendar is pretty damn clear –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: – and the only problem for me is if I’m setting up a fall appointment and it’s the spring. I may not know what after-school stuff my kids are going to have in the fall and a new school year, but I’m reasonably sure that Tuesday or Thursday or whatever day is going to be clear, and I’ve already got it on the calendar six months in advance. So I, I call that the dentist method: always make the next appointment before you leave that one. That way it’s on your schedule, and you’re not going to find a million and one ways to procrastinate making something happen.

Amanda: I also find that coordinating with friends gives you an excuse to try something that you’ve always wanted to try? I mean, all of our meetings are food related – [laughs] – for the most part, but a lot of us, when we coordinate the next restaurant or what have you, we’re like, oh, I’ve, I’ve been wanting to check this out; does that sound good to everyone else? So it’s a good way to try something new with a group, and it can kind of make it seem less scary when you’re trying something new with a group?

We all have different interests, so, you know, I might, my friend Christina loves to cook. She works at a cookbook publisher, so we often get together on our own for, like, food and, and brunch, and then I have another, my roommate Stephanie loves books and go, loves going to book events, so she and I might, like, pair off and go to, like, a book event. So it’s also okay if you have a larger group of friends to find things you have in common on an individual basis –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – and also do that. Like, one thing you might not like, someone else might like, you know what I’m saying? So, I don’t know, it’s a trial-and-error process, but it gets easier the more you do it.

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: Just, but taking that first step to get out there, especially in a new area, is definitely frightening.

Sarah: Oh, it really is. One thing that I think also would help – and this is my last piece of advice – is Katie mentioned in her letter that she wants to go about meeting all the Smart Bitches that are near her, so she already knows she likes romance. There’s a lot you can do there. There’s a lot of ways to find other romance readers: from your library; from your bookstore; on, on social media; even through, maybe, your local RWA chapter. It’s not a social organization, it’s a business organization, but those are people who are into romance, and reaching out to them to ask for what, what they may know of for readers might help you out. I know a lot of chapters also have reader events. A lot of RWA chapters have reader activities or a luncheon or something; they have things for readers to come and meet with authors, so that’s a good start. But the other thing that I would advise is to write down the things that you love to do, the things that are so much fun that you would actually put on shoes and pants and leave the house to do them.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: And that’s, that’s important to know. Like, there’s, I think women especially are told there’s a lot of things that we should be interested in, and, for example, I do not enjoy shopping. I do not enjoy it.

Amanda: I hate it.

Sarah: I don’t like taking my clothes on and off a hundred times. I don’t like trying on clothes. I don’t like shopping. I don’t like having to make choices from thousands and thousands of options. I don’t like crowds; I don’t like loudness. I don’t like the mall; I don’t like finding a parking place. I mean, I’m just really not a person who likes to shop, but for some of my friends and parts of my family, that’s a major social activity, so I have to sort of say, okay, I’ll do one. We’re going to one store. I will go to a department store, and we will go do that together, and then my, I will expire long before they do, but knowing that I don’t like shopping made me think, okay, what do I like to do, and what would I like to do with the people who I like spending time with? Or if I was going to make new friends, what is a thing that I would be really excited to do? I made a lot of friends when I learned how to stand-up paddleboard, I’ve made a lot of friends snowboarding, so once I’ve identified a thing that I really like to do that I have a lot of enthusiasm for? I can find places to go do that and make friends with people who are also enthusiastic about it. Whatever it is that makes you put on shoes and real pants is a thing that you’re going to have some passion for, and if you meet people who have the same putting-on-shoes-and-putting-on-real-clothes-to-go-outside passion for that activity, you already have a good thing in common. So look, look most of all at what you love to do, and then you can find places to go do that thing.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: All right. Now I’m going to read this letter in full – our next letter is from Lizzie – and before I read it, I want to warn everyone that there is some bi erasure in this story. There is some bigoted family, and, well, basically, Lizzie had a really shitty holiday, so here’s the letter:

Hi, Sarah and Amanda

I really want to thank you guys for doing the book recommendation podcast episodes.

You are very welcome.

I have a request for you: female/female romances or f/f romances, especially if they have a coming out scene. This year has been a year of epiphanies for me, and the biggest is that I’m bisexual. I’m honestly not sure why I never realized this before, but I can only chalk it up to growing up as part of an extremely Catholic family as a child. Every day in school (I did nine years of Catholic school before escaping to public school during my sophomore year of high school), I had it drummed into my head that homosexuality was an even bigger sin than committing murder. I distinctly remember being told by my classmates that I could not listen to Elton John’s music because he was gay. Irony of ironies, the boy who made this pronouncement is now married to another man. I hadn’t even heard of the term before, and it had to be explained to me. I wonder how much Elton’s bisexuality would have freaked them out if they’d known.

I’d planned on coming out over Christmas, but one of my aunts greeted me by telling me that a very distant cousin “turned gay” because her profile picture on Facebook has another woman in it. Not even giving me the chance to touch that assumption, she proclaimed that bisexuality wasn’t a thing, so the cousin must have turned gay. I have no idea why this was the assumption she made; I imagine most people would have assumed this person was her BFF and not her secret lesbian lover. I wanted to yell out, “Occam’s Razor!” but didn’t want to have to explain that too.

[Laughs]

For years, I avoided LGBT romances featuring two women, so I only have read two novellas, one in a ‘90s-themed anthology, BDOC, Big Dyke on Campus [The Belle vs. the BDOC], which didn’t have an actual plot, so was DNFed. The other was Alyssa Cole’s novella in Hamilton’s Battalion. I was a bit meh on it because I felt like it should have been a lot longer. I have read a few male/male romances, and the ones that I really enjoyed involved men who weren’t supposed to be together. My favorite by far is Wheels Up by Annabeth Albert, which was about two Navy SEALs, one of whom was sort of the other’s boss. It was so good and might possibly be my favorite book of 2017.

My only guidelines I have for this are LGBT with two women, a coming out scene. I would also love something historical, but contemporary is also fine. Nerdy women would be a plus. Thank you so much.

Happy New Year

p.s.: If you use my name, please call me Lizzie, as I hate that name, and if this somehow gets to my family members, they would never think it is me. The aunt I mentioned before has no idea what a podcast is, so I’m not worried she’ll recognize herself in that anecdote. Finding out someone isn’t what you think they are through a podcast episode would probably suck. Thanks.

Okay, before we get to the recommendations, we would like to give you the response that you should have had: it is awesome that you are bisexual, and you are awesome exactly the way you are, and I am so very proud that you have recognized that about yourself. That is a big effing deal. Way to go! And I’m sorry your family sucked ass. Amanda, you have anything to add that?

Amanda: I think I wrote in the thing, hi, there, fellow bisexual!

[Laughter]

Sarah: You have written to the right podcast. Welcome!

Amanda: So, obviously I want to echo what Sarah said. Most recently, I too became aware of my own bisexuality, because for years I was putting a lot of pressure on myself whether I was a, a “good bisexual.” Like, is it okay if I prefer one, like, gender over the other? What if I’m romantically attracted to men but sexually attracted to women? What are the percentages? Like –

[Laughter]

Amanda: – I need a pie chart!

[More laughter]

Amanda: But I’ve learned there’s really no bad way to be a bisexual. If you identify as a bisexual, that’s kind of all you need. So welcome to the club! I also want to say that I haven’t really, like, come out to my parents, mainly because I have a strange relationship with my family, and to be honest, I don’t think it’s any of their fucking business. But –

Sarah: Sometimes that’s an entirely good call to make.

Amanda: Yeah! I mean, my boyfriend knows; he’s like, okay. That’s all he said when I told him, and then my brother, I dropped that bombshell on him while we were drinking at a bar, and he was like, well, that’s good to know. Thanks, Sis! And then we continued drinking.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: So I would say that you don’t have to tell anyone; you don’t have to tell everyone. You can be selective on who you choose to include in your bisexuality, and I would recommend that you kind of open up to people that would give you positive responses, positive feedback. There’s no shame in choosing not to tell certain people if they’re going to be toxic about it, so don’t beat yourself up about it.

Sarah: It’s not your fault that your aunt is an asshole, and in one way, it actually saved you from having to deal with her if you’d said things and she was who she apparently is. In other words, it’s better to know where the snakes in the grass are so you can avoid them.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: But it totally, totally sucks that that’s how you spent your holiday, and I’m really, really sorry that they’re such assholes. That’s, that stinks. We’re really excited that you’re bisexual, actually, aren’t we?

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: We’re totally, like, I’m trying to find some applause sound effects right now so that we can be like, yay!

Amanda: [Laughs] Just play the train. Just play the train noise again.

Sarah: Okay, so, so pretend –

[Laughter]

Sarah: So, what, pretend – I think I took it out ‘cause it was too long!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Pretend that this is cheering: [stadium organ CHARGE fanfare] You’re a bisexual!

Amanda: Play ball!

[Laughter]

Sarah: We are very excited that you have come out as a bisexual, and there are many, many, many people, and the good news is there are books too.

Amanda: Yes!

Sarah: All right, we’ve got recommendations.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Would you like to go first, or would you like me to go?

Amanda: I will go, ‘cause I think my list is shorter than yours.

Sarah: Okay!

Amanda: So –

Sarah: Don’t compare yourself to me, though! There’s no such thing as a good or bad list!

Amanda: [Laughs] So this one’s tougher for me, because I, I gravitate more towards contemporary instead of historical. I know we, we have a, a guest reviewer called Tara; her name’s Tara Scott, and I think she has a tag on the site –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – so we can link to her reviews below. She reviews lesbian romances. Some of them are between two lesbians; some of them have a bisexual heroine. So you might want to poke around there and see. I know we had a review of a book, I think it was Far from Home by Lorelei Brown, and it was nominated for a RITA last year, and one of the women is bisexual, and the other woman needs to stay in the US, so there is, like, a, a marriage of convenience story.

There was a book that I saw going around on Twitter; I haven’t read this one, but it seems really interesting, because it deals with older characters. One of the main characters is a widow, and she has adult children, and she really doesn’t acknowledge her bisexuality or, or have her first relationship with a woman until she’s in her fifties. So I kind of like that setup; I might wind up reading it.

[Applause sound effect]

Amanda: What is that? You found applause, Sarah? [Laughs] So I might wind up reading it because I like the fact that discovering yourself doesn’t really have an age limit.

Carrie has reviewed the Sidekick Squad books. It has superheroes and lots of LGBT rep, but the romance isn’t a central focus of the books, so –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – that may or may not fit for you, depending on how much romance you want. It has a larger cast of characters. I also mentioned Labyrinth Lost, which Sarah read, and –

Sarah: Yes!

Amanda: – she also agrees with the recommendation of Labyrinth Lost. It’s a YA, bisexual, witch heroine, so, and it’s, it’s a really fun book if you want something that’s not as doom-and-gloom as sometimes happens in LGBT romance, I find. I had another one, but I can’t remember it, ‘cause I didn’t put it in the duck. But oh, well.

[Laughter]

Amanda: Oh, well!

Sarah: There’s, there is time because, well –

Amanda: Oh, I remembered! I remembered! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, wow! I am very impressed!

Amanda: I don’t have a specific title, but Megan Mulry, if I’m remembering it correctly, her last name, she does historical romances that have a lot of LGBT, bisexuality in them, if I’m remembering. And I believe –

Sarah: Yes!

Amanda: – one does have a, a, a lesbian pairing; I just can’t remember which one. I can recall the cover, but that’s about it.

Sarah: Yes. The one that you’re thinking of is called Bound with Love, and I also think Bound with Passion and The Wallflowers might also be lesbian historical, but we can link to those.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: All right. So, hang on. [Applause sound effect] Yay!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: [More applause sound effect] Oh, I like that one better. Here, have, like, a forty-five-minute party! I love it! Okay. So, so we’re, we’re cheering you on, Lizzie; it’s great! Okay. So. Here are all of my recommendations:

First, I am going to link in the podcast show notes to Riptide Publishing, ‘cause one thing they do very, very well is tag their books by very specific terms so you can look at coming-out stories specifically about bisexuals, and I will try to link to that page, but once you get to their site you can drill down – heh-heh! – very specifically into whatever trope it is that you’re looking for, especially for major, sort of landmark experiences. Barnes and Noble had an entire list of lesbian and gay fiction for teens, especially in-the-closet and coming-out teen fiction. I think currently a lot of the titles that deal with coming out that are, that are being released now are in the YA market more than in, like, in romance, but, like, like Amanda says, there’s no limit to discovering who you are and how your life is, or that you’ve changed or grown in some way. There’s, I also have a link to a book list on Goodreads of lesbian books with happy endings. You want to make sure there’s happy endings; that’s very important.

Now, here we go: I have got books. So first, this recommendation comes from Dahlia Adler, who also wrote a really lovely lesbian YA romance called, I think it’s Behind the Lights or Beyond the Lights; there are some lights, and the characters are in some way –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – around them in a way – Under the Lights! I was not even close! Wow. Good job, brain. So Under the Lights is a, is an adorable YA and has a lesbian storyline. Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley: Dahlia Adler recommended this – [laughs] – and she said, “…if you’ve ever wished that queer girls had a book like Judy Blume’s Forever… to cover the ins, the outs, and the safety, get ready to get your wish with this honest and lovely interracial YA romance.” So that’s a good recommendation.

I also want to make sure you know about Rebekah Weatherspoon. Treasure is specifically about a young woman who realizes that she’s gay. I think one of the other characters realizes that she’s what, “a baby gay” –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and Better Off Red by Rebekah Weatherspoon is a lesbian vampire sorority. I mean, those three words just really belong together, right?

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Right, obviously. The Gravity Between Us by Kristen Zimmer is a friends-to-lovers story. There’s also a lot of exploration of bisexuality in other genres. For example, in the Kit Rocha series, in the Beyond series, there’s a lot of bisexual heroines in just about all of them, and there’s a lot of multi-partner group sex and orgies, but the heroines have interactions with both women and men. The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer is a, is a lesbian retelling of Persephone, and it’s really, really, pretty spiffy. Elyse reviewed a lesbian book called The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember, and I don’t believe it’s so much of a coming-out story as a two-people-from-very-different-cultures-meeting story. I believe one of them’s a mermaid, and one of them’s a Viking? Knit One, Girl Two by Shira Glassman has a bisexual character, and I also want to mention Roller Girl by Vanessa North. This is not a coming-out story, but the heroine is trans, and she has, one of the things I loved about this book is that she has this really interesting relationship with her body, because she was, she’s a former professional athlete, and so she’s always been hyperaware of her own physicality, and going through gender transition only seemed to heighten that in a lot of ways, so the ways in which she interacts with the world are really lovely and positive, and she falls for her plumber –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – who’s a girl. I mean, what could possibly be wrong with that, right? There’s also Twice in a Lifetime by Jodie Griffin. That is –

Amanda: I just recommended that one! [Laughs]

Sarah: – not – that is not out yet! That’s on my list too. That’s not coming, that, that is not out yet.

Amanda: No.

Sarah: I didn’t think that was out yet. Yeah. I knew you’d, you’d mentioned it. That one I had on my list because there’s other things that the characters deal with. They’re, they’re dealing with other stuff, so it’s not just constant ruminating on how scary it is to come out. Like, they have other things to deal with, which I think is a bit more realistic in general, generally speaking. ‘Cause you do, you do other things than just come out, right?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I mean, you can’t just do that all day? I mean, you probably –

Amanda: No, I’m sorry, I think about how bisexual I am every minute of every day, and I don’t have time for anything else. [Laughs]

Sarah: Fine. I guess that’s, I, I guess I’m wrong then. Okay! But back to our original point: yay! Excellent! Go you! Wait, hold on – Yaaay! [Applause sound effect]

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: We applaud your bisexuality!

Amanda: I, I wish I had a kazoo to blow.

Sarah: We welcome you!

Amanda: Whoa.

Sarah: [Laughs] You know, my younger son got my older son an electric kazoo. It is a kazoo that you attach to an amp, and I do not wish this on anyone.

Amanda: Why? That sounds horrible! [Laughs]

Sarah: It is horrible, and yet we have an amp, ‘cause he plays electric guitar, and he wanted an electric kazoo, and his little brother was like, I am so on this, and –

Amanda: All right, Sarah: two hours of The Bachelor or two hours of electric kazoo? [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, God! Oh! Oh! God! I want two hours of The Bachelorette, the Bachelor contestants playing the electric kazoo –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – instead of going on dates with that guy. That’s what I want.

Amanda: That’s fair.

Sarah: Electric kazoo, Bachelor contestants, that would be brilliant. I would be there for that. Also, it would mean that Krystal doesn’t talk. ‘Cause she just makes, she’s, she is an amalgamation of many people I know who just exist to make sure other people feel bad about themselves. It’s a way to prop themselves up. So Lizzie, I’m sorry that you had a shitty holiday experience, but I hope these books give you a lot to work with, and as we find more bisexual characters, we tag them on the site, and I’ll include a link to that tag as well so that you have access to all of the things that we find that are coming out. I imagine that there will be – heh, coming out – I imagine there’ll be a lot more bisexual characters in the future –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: – because well, there aren’t enough, so we’ll, we’ll have to make sure that there are.

[music]

Sarah: And that bring us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Amanda for hanging out with me, giving good advice and excellent recommendations, and thanks also to Katie and to Lizzie for writing to us. I hope we were a little helpful, and if there’s more that you need, please email us, because we would love to hear from you, especially if you have an update on anything that’s going on with you.

And if you have ideas or questions or requests or you’d like to ask us for advice because, did I mention that we are unquestionable experts? In something, not sure what, but we’re, we’re experts in at least, you know, two hours of The Bachelor. If you’d like to ask us for advice or you’d like to request some recommendations of romances to read, you can email us at [email protected]. You can also record a voice memo and email it to us. I have a few that I’m going to feature in an upcoming episode, and it’s going to be awesome, so please do not be afraid; you will sound excellent, and, as always, we love to hear from you.

This episode is brought to you by the podcast Patreon community, because they are lovely and tremendous. If you would like to join the community, you can come find us at patreon.com/SmartBitches. That is the first place I go for recommendation requests, for suggestions, for ideas, and when you make a monthly pledge, you’re not only joining that community, but you’re helping the show, and you’re helping me commission transcripts for episodes that do not have one. I have a number of cool interviews that I’m really excited about, and I can’t wait to share them, and the podcast Patreon community is where I go for question ideas, so if you’ve got nosy questions you’d like to ask people, this might be a good community for you. I also want to thank some of the Patreon folks personally, so to Jamie, Holly, Elizabeth, and Tina, thank you so much for being part of the Patreon.

Are there other ways to support the show? Of course there are! Always! You can leave a review wherever or however you listen. You can tell a friend; you can subscribe; you can hang out with us each week. Whatever it is that you’re doing, the fact that you’re here listening means so much, so thank you for being here.

The music you are listening to is provided, as always, by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries’ new album, Live @ 25, because they have been together for twenty-five years, and that’s pretty incredible. Now Sassy says I can include songs from the album, which is really fun! Although I’m trying to pick tracks that don’t have a lot of crowd noise, because that seemed to be kind of jarring, so if the live tracks are starting to, like, give you a headache, let me know. This is “Folk Police.” You can find this album at Amazon, at iTunes, and you can find the Peatbog Faeries at their website, peatbogfaeries.com.

As always, I will have links to everything that we talked about. I will also have links to my Instagram; Amanda’s Instagram; Amanda on Twitter; Smart Bitches on Twitter, which is @SmartBitches; and I will have links to the things we talked about, plus all of the books that we mentioned will also be in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast!

And as always, I end with a terrible joke. Are you ready for a terrible joke? This is, like, my new favorite thing: terrible jokes. You ready? I know you’ve been waiting for this.

What do you call a gigantic pile of kittens?

Give up? What do you call a gigantic pile of kittens?

A meow-ntain!

[Laughs] Both Orville and Wilbur are on my desk, and they are very deeply unimpressed with this joke, but I have to thank Google Assistant for that one. I did not know that Google could tell me bad jokes, but Google knows a lot of bad jokes.

So on behalf of Amanda and all of the felines on my desk, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and we will see you back here next week!

[racy music]