293: The Elements of Surprise: Untwisting the Twist with Vera Tobin, PhD

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, April 6, 2018

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Sarah Wendell: Hi there, and welcome to episode number 293 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Vera Tobin. There is so much meta in this episode, it is really fun. So every now and again on Facebook, which I’m pretty much perpetually mad at at this point, I learn that friends of mine from kindergarten are doing really cool stuff. Today I am talking with Vera Tobin, who is a Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western University, author of the upcoming book the Elements of Surprise, which comes out on April 16th, and my best friend from kindergarten. Her book is all about how the surprises and twists and unexpected revelations that we love to read in fiction actually work on our brains on a cognitive level. In her work, she breaks down the different ways in which we process surprises and twists in the books we read and movies we watch and the structure of those different types of surprises. So as you might imagine, when I saw her on Facebook talking about her upcoming book, I was extremely super-nosy. Harvard University Press was cool enough to send me an ARC – thank you, guys! – even though I am neither a cognitive scientist nor an academic, but it was a really fascinating read, and I’m so pleased I got to read it, and I’m not just saying that because Vera was my best friend in kindergarten. When we recorded this, we probably hadn’t spoken to each other in person or by phone for at least twenty, maybe twenty-five years, but we had a really good time. We talk about a whole range of things, including the importance of surprise, but also cognitive satisfaction in genre fiction; the parallels between literary surprises and orgasms; the categorizing of spoilers, the different types and the different effects; and we also talk about the book The Duke’s Wager by Edith Layton, which features a very twisty romance indeed, and we do spoil it while we’re discussing it, so if you haven’t read it and you want to read it, you might want to skip the part where we start talking about The Duke’s Wager.

Now, every now and again, I hear from different listeners of the podcast, so this message is particularly for Leena. Leena emailed me to say that she listens to our podcasts in big groups, and I wanted to say, hello, Leena, this is – I hope I’m not freaking you out – I am so glad you’re hanging out with us. I hope tonight is very quiet, and I hope this episode helps you get through your long, long night shift.

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[music]

Vera Tobin: Hi, I’m Vera Tobin, and I am an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, and I recently wrote a book called Elements of Surprise that is about storytelling and surprises and excitement and how it, these things capitalize on what we might otherwise think of as weak spots in the way that you think.

Sarah: This is so cool. Now, I have known you since I was four years old.

Vera: Indeed, and since I was four years old too!

Sarah: Right, ‘cause we met in kindergarten.

Vera: Yeah. I might have been five, I guess, at the time.

Sarah: I don’t remember how old. It was a very long time ago.

Vera: Yes.

Sarah: But one of the weird things that I have to concede a sort of grudging good feeling – just one – for Facebook –

Vera: [Laughs] Yeah.

Sarah: – just the one good feeling, it’s only this one, is that every now and again I find out that people who I knew when I was a kid are doing some really cool shit. And you are doing some really cool shit!

Vera: That is how I feel about you too!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Vera: I remember going, whoa! Wait! That Sarah is, is this Sarah?! I was so excited. It was like –

Sarah: That Sarah over there. [Laughs]

Vera: It was like lights going off and, and wonderful things bursting in my mind in the best way, so.

Sarah: Okay, that’s, kind of was, when I saw the cover of your book I was like, oh, oh! Oh! Oh, hello. This is very relevant to all of my interests! So –

Vera: [Laughs] Yay!

Sarah: Your publisher was cool enough to send me a review copy, which I, as a former amateur academic, wrote in most –

Vera: Yay!

Sarah: – I, I underlined the living hell out of this ARC. Like, this, this ARC’s going nowhere, because no one will be able to read it now. It’s full of my writing. So –

Vera: Splendid. I’m a big fan of underlining and scribbling and –

Sarah: I have an erasable pen, and it’s, like, my favorite pen.

Vera: I have to tell you about my feelings about erasable pens, because I –

Sarah: [Laughs] Do you have strong feelings?

Vera: I have strong feeling about erasable pens. So there’s a, there’s a type called FriXion?

Sarah: Yes, that’s my favorite kind!

Vera: Because you can, did you know that they have felt tip pens?

Sarah: What, what? No!

Vera: Yes! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my God!

Vera: They have many, many colors of felt tip pen that use the same amazing, you know, heat-related erasable technology. It is amazing.

Sarah: [Gasps, sings] I’m going to have to find some!

Vera: Oh yeah.

Sarah: That’s amazing. Okay, so this conversation has already made me broke, ‘cause now I’m going to buy pens.

Vera: [Laughs] Right. I feel you.

Sarah: So sometime, sometime between kindergarten and then high school, ‘cause we also went to the same high school –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – and now, you went out and got a Ph.D. in Cognitive – or you got a Ph.D. in English –

Vera: I did!

Sarah: – and now you teach cognitive science. Can you explain what’s –

Vera: Yes.

Sarah: – generally speaking, as a, as a, as an amateur at all of this, generally speaking, I don’t immediately think, you know, I’m going to go do science with my English degree.

Vera: Indeed! Well, so –

Sarah: It’s not a thing!

Vera: The connect-the-dots here is linguistics.

Sarah: Oh, I like those! Those are rad.

Vera: Yeah. So, you know, what happened was, so my undergrad degree was in English, English Literature –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – and I took some time off between undergrad and grad school, and I got really interested –

Sarah: Very smart!

Vera: [Laughs] Yes. Thank you, thank you! I got really interested in linguistics. I was sort of, I had friends who were studying linguistics, and I was like, found myself reading all of their, their homework and stuff, so I got really interested in this, and I thought that these interests connected, because, you know, you may have noticed that literature is made of language.

Sarah: Wait, what?!

Vera: I know! Shocking –

Sarah: No way.

Vera: – but true! So I got very interested in this, and, and doing linguistics, and specifically I was getting really interested in cognitive linguistics, which is this sort of approach to language that has to do with looking at ways that language reflects sort of general tendencies in the way that we think, so not just language-specific aspect of cognition, but more general aspects, and I was really interested in this, and I thought, this seems applicable to all kinds of stuff that I studied when I was studying literature; this is so exciting! And I went out, and the program that I found where I could study these things at the same time was at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Sarah: Which is, like, right up the road from where I live now.

Vera: Yeah! So right, right in your backyard basically, and there’s a Linguistics department at the University of Maryland, but they’re not so into that aspect of linguistics –

Sarah: Hmm.

Vera: – and the place where there were faculty members doing this was actually in the English department, so my Ph.D. is in English Linguistics in an English department, so I was able to go on taking literature classes and also to take classes in cognitive science and in linguistics, all while I was doing my Ph.D.

Sarah: Well, that’s just terrible!

Vera: Yeah. [Laughs] It was, it was a pretty swell, swell deal.

Sarah: So what exactly is cognitive science? Is it the science of how our brains learn stuff?

Vera: Well, I mean, that’s certainly part of it. So basically the idea with cognitive science is, it’s a relatively young designation for departments, so, like, basically you and I are about as old as you could get and have it be even conceivable that we would have a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science? Which I don’t, but, but I could –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – because there weren’t Departments of Cognitive Science and programs in cognitive science up until really recently.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: Instead, there were people studying cognitive psychology; cognitive linguistics, you know; cognition and learning, yes; cognition, you know, philosophy of mind; all these questions about –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – how people think that people were studying in a variety of different disciplines and different places and different ways. And so the idea is that programs in cognitive science are trying to, like, bring people studying the same things in different ways together, and there’s also programs in various places that do this too. So the idea is the cognitive bit is that typically this means at least engaging with the aspects of thinking that are really – I feel myself about to say things that sound really fatuous. [Laughs]

[Laughter]

Vera: But, you know, this idea is, like, higher order cognition, the things that, like language and like mathematics and like religion and like art and all of these and, you know, sort of complex problem solving and all the kind of very human-ish aspects of thinking –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – focusing on them and people studying them in a bunch of different disciplinary ways. Ideally, talking to each other is kind of the idea, so that’s how I get to talk about linguistics, literature and linguistics and call it cognitive science, yeah.

Sarah: Okay, that’s a seriously cool field. That’s seriously cool. The idea of studying how our brains acquire knowledge and how our brains respond and learn and react to things is fascinating when you apply it to literature. Now, you have a book. This is the worst question –

Vera: Okay.

Sarah: – to ask anyone who’s ever written about, written a book.

Vera: Okay, great. I can’t wait.

Sarah: Tell me about your book.

Vera: Oh yeah, that is terrible! Okay. [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s a horrible question, but it’s like, dude, you wrote this cool book, and it’s also a course, too, right? You have a course –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – that’s also the Elements of Surprise?

Vera: I do; I do have a course. And, you know, there’s a lot of overlap between the stuff that I talk about in my book and the stuff that we focus on in the course, although they diverge in some ways, so –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – the, the course is really, hey, let’s talk about the cognitive science of surprise in all kinds of different ways, so, you know, it involves things like how surprise plays out in visual processing. Like, oh, a lot of, when you’re looking around a room, you’re not processing everything that you see in the same –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – [laughs] – really at all, let alone at the same level of sort of attention and depth as you may pay to little bits of it. A lot of what your brain is doing is just kind of filling things in based on expectations, right? So you see –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – see things that aren’t there or fail to see things that are there because your expectations are so, are just driving the bus, you know. You can be surprised in all of these little ways just by seeing things –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – that you didn’t expect to be there, on through with the kind of stuff I talk about in my book. So the book really focuses on not just surprises in storytelling, although really that, but especially the kind of surprise that works like this: you’re reading along or you’re watching a film, and you’re formulating some idea of what’s going on. You feel like you have a sense of who these people are or what happened or what have you, and then the surprise tells you not just something new happens, it’s not just this kind of surprise of oh! Now a cat jumped out at you, but –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – you have to revise your idea of what was really going on. You know, so lots of surprises work this way, right. Like, this, a small or large way, a lot of story surprises work this way, but actually, to me, this seems kind of insane that they can do this, that, that a story can lead you to think one thing and then tell you no, it wasn’t that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: And that you say, oh! Amazing! I’m surprised. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right.

Vera: I was wrong! It was actually something else all along, when the only source of information you have about what’s going on is the story, right.

Sarah: Is the story, and the story effectively has misled or deceived you or –

Vera: Yeah!

Sarah: – lied to you, or someone has been –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – you know, occluding the actual truth.

Vera: Right, and if, the fact that there is even any way to do this – let alone that stories do this successfully all the time – any way to do this so that your response is, oh, that’s so cool; I now see that what I thought was going on isn’t, rather than, I see that this is a completely incoherent text that tells me one thing and now tells me something else; like, what is this crap? is amazing to me.

Sarah: Yes. Yes, like, there’s a, a quote in the introduction where someone who’s a mystery reader in an online discussion –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – says, I want to have been fooled or tricked, and I enjoy being fooled or tricked, but I do not enjoy being cheated.

Vera: Yeah! Right.

Sarah: So it’s like surprise without the cheating element!

Vera: Right. And, you know, the fact, and the fact is that when it goes wrong, people do feel cheated. They don’t just –

Sarah: Yes!

Vera: – feel like, oh, well, that didn’t work. Like, ahhh!

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: I hate you!

Sarah: Like one of my least favorite tricks in a mystery is to introduce the culprit in the last three chapters –

Vera: Right!

Sarah: – so I’ve been busy trying to pick apart who it was, and they show up at the end, and I’m like, oh, well –

Vera: Well, you just wasted my time!

Sarah: Yeah, that was not satisfying.

Vera: Yeah. Yeah, like, all great, thanks a lot. Ugh. Yeah. And so I find that really interesting too, like, that people are really kind of invested in this –

Together: – deception –

Vera: Right.

Sarah: – of themselves! [Laughs]

Vera: Right! You know, when it comes off they love it, and when it doesn’t come off, it doesn’t just sort of fall flat. They don’t just go like, ugh, bleah. They go, why did you cheat me? I feel cheated and, like, betrayed –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – and enraged. [Laughs] Not always, but, you know, like, that’s really the risk with these kinds of surprises. Yeah.

Sarah: And twists. So in the book, you look at sort of sleight-of-hand reveals where un-, unreliable people or unreliable characters have been misled or are actively trying to mislead you, the reader, or in-, information is presented as nonessential and is later revealed to be incredibly important, and you’re examining all the different ways in which the trick is employed in writing.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: So did you identify any specific elements of surprise, like if someone comes up to you and says, okay, so what are the elements of surprise that create a twist in a book? What are they?

Vera: Yeah. Well –

Sarah: Like, do you have a list?

Vera: Well, I don’t, I – hmm. I feel like it’s hard to actually lay it out entirely as a list, but I do kind of try to –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – to chunk them into some, some overlapping categories, right. So broadly speaking, there’s the, how to bury information so that giving it, the information that you can overturn later on –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – ways of presenting it early on so that people don’t notice it too much but that it’s sort of available to find later, so burying crucial information early on, and there’s a bunch of different ways you can do this, and there’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – some nice cognitive science conveniently on what’s called depth of processing, so the –

Sarah: Ooh!

Vera: – the, the fact that people don’t pay equal attention to everything that they’re told – [laughs] – in various kinds of ways, so, you know, you can bury things in, in little asides, and you can underspecify things so that you’re not drawing attention to the particular detail that will be telling later on. So there’s that whole category of, of elements of surprise, of how to bury information early so that it’s, it’s there waiting to be deployed. There’s –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – also sort of finessing the reveal. So you want to give people this feeling, especially in that kind of mystery reveal, that they did have the information that they needed. They just didn’t happen to put it together the right way, right.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: But using, actually, some of the same strategies for sort of sliding information in subtly, like you can do it in a little presupposition instead, and I’ll, I can tell you more about what presuppositions are in a little bit if you want, but, you know, you can slide it in to what somebody’s saying, and if it’s subtle enough, you can actually give people extra information and act as if they had it all along? That kind of seals the deal.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: Yes. One of my, one of my favorite ways that that’s been done is by a writer named Sherry Thomas who has a new series where she’s cast Sherlock Holmes as a woman named Charlotte?

Vera: Oh yeah! I haven’t read these, but I’ve seen them.

Sarah: Oh, you would like them, especially as methods of deception, because at one point – actually, several points in both of the books – there are pieces of information that, to the men of that time, appear to mean something, but when a woman translates it for them according to propriety and boundary and, and class boundary and what a servant should or shouldn’t be doing in the chamber of her male employer, all of that information takes on an entirely different, different meaning –

Vera: Oh lovely.

Sarah: – but it’s only understood through the language and perspective of women who operate in that world. It was so cool. So cool!

Vera: Oh, that stuff is really great, and, and you know, a large part of what I talk about is, basically, you get a lot of people who sort of historically and critically tend to think about plot twists as, like, sort of storytelling gimmicks that are in some way –

Sarah: Yes!

Vera: – separate from the kind of work that stories might do that is about character and that you –

Sarah: Yes, those chapters were my favorite.

Vera: Thank you!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Vera: Yeah, because, see, the thing is that of course you know that they’re not. You know that, for one thing, twists of character are twists of plot, right, and so –

Sarah: Yes!

Vera: – all the exciting things that happen with characterization themselves typically involve having characters do things that are surprising but feel, in retrospect, like they could have been anticipated, even though you didn’t, that they feel of a piece, right. So, so building good characters and good characterization requires building in these twists, but also –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – getting people, engineering even sort of the plottiest plot twists, so many of the strategies that I find and discuss for making those work themselves depend on managing perspectives, so exactly like what you were talking about, where you need to set up characters who have different perspectives that obscure important information or highlight information differently so that you can engineer, sort of, the unfolding realization about the significance of things that you already knew about. You have to do it through characters –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – and you have to do it through aligning people’s sort of attentions and sympathy through those characters and taking advantage of patterns in the way that we do it. So those are the big –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – that, that’s like, sort of the big pieces of what I talk about involve engaging with these two big areas of cognitive science. One is stuff about the curse of knowledge, which has to do with people’s tendency to project – once you know something, or think you know something –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – it’s really hard to suppress that knowledge or that sort of framing, that way of seeing things, that information about things, that interpretation of things, when you’re thinking about what other people know or what would be obvious if you didn’t know it, right.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: That basically, when you know someone’s intentions, they seem more transparent. When you know one interpretation of some puzzling event, it seems like the obvious one, and sort of all of these kinds of things, when you tie them to some character’s limited viewpoint, give you lots of opportunities to do exactly this kind of sort of impression management that you have to do to lead people down a garden path in these stories.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: And then the other one has to do with how bad people are at keeping track of the context in which they encountered some piece of information?

Sarah: Right.

Vera: [Laughs] So this also gives you, as a storyteller, lots of opportunities to, to give your readers some interpretation or some framing or some maybe misleading piece of information or label for something and so on, and then if you get them to sort of take it on board, they’ll often lose track of the context in which they learned it, or, and sort of project it out in various kinds of ways, so you can lead people to make lots of inferences, and you can do this to lead them astray or to seal the deal on your final twist, too. I really want to talk about that in The Duke’s Wager. Could we talk about The Duke’s Wager?

Sarah: Oh, it’s on my list.

Vera: Okay.

Sarah: Bring it, because –

Vera: Okay. I don’t want to jump ahead.

Sarah: – so the reason you read The Duke’s Wager – no please, jump. Please, it’s great. A while ago on Facebook, you asked me to recommend a romance that featured a plot element that hides info from the reader because it’s hidden from a viewpoint character or a romance in which we as the reader are misled because a character is misled, and it’s, and it’s interesting to hear you talk about the cognitive construction of these pieces of deception, because not only does the writer have to orchestrate the deception in the text, but then has to make sure the text orchestrates the deception to the reader.

Vera: Oh, I know.

Sarah: So, like, they have to build it – this is just amazing.

Vera: Well –

Sarah: So you asked me for a romance that basically lies to you –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – and I was like, oh, well, The Duke’s Wager. Tell me how you liked it. This is one of my favorite –

Vera: I loved it! So –

Sarah: Yes! Edith Layton is so great, so tell me! Tell me what you thought.

Vera: Okay, well, so first of all, I wanted, I do want to put a pin in that point of, the other thing about the curse of knowledge, like, so the difficulty –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – in suppressing information that you’ve been given, the, the relevance of that to the writer’s situation is something I really want to come back to –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – because –

Sarah: Sure, sure! Yeah, yeah.

Vera: – it’s fascinating. But, okay, so I loved The Duke’s Wager. So that alone, you know, speaking of Facebook getting you something nice, like – [laughs] – like, oh!

Sarah: Yes!

Vera: That recommendation alone, you know, got a little bit of forgiveness for Facebook for me for now. Not, you know, I mean, destroying democracy is, it’s a big debt. The Duke’s Wager isn’t enough to pay for it, but –

[Laughter]

Vera: – but it was really good.

Sarah: That’s, that’s kind of how I feel about Facebook too. Like, generally speaking, I’m so mad at Facebook, and yet, yet I get to learn about cool shit that cool people are doing, and I probably wouldn’t have learned about it any other way –

Vera: I know.

Sarah: – ‘cause it’s not like I would have encountered it, but either way, tell me what you thought of it.

Vera: Okay. Well, so I really, really loved it, and it was great because I didn’t, I didn’t read anything about it before I read it. What I read about it was you said, well, try this one. Like, okay, I’ll download it on my Kindle!

Sarah: Yeah.

Vera: Can do! So it was really a pleasure, and so I feel a little bad about the fact that we’re going to talk about it and maybe some – so I, I want to be a little cagey in how we talk about it, because what if some of your listeners haven’t read it yet? I would hate – [laughs] – to ruin it for them. But –

Sarah: Well, you know, it’s funny; one of the things I want to ask you about it is the spoilers –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – ‘cause you have an intro, paragraph in the introduction where you’re like, listen, I’m going to spoil a whole bunch of stuff to talk about the surprise. You can’t talk about the twist without spoiling it –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – so –

Vera: I’m sorry!

Sarah: – I totally understand not wanting to spoil it, but I can also put in the article, in the show notes and in the intro, we’re going to spoil this book –

Vera: Okay.

Sarah: – so if you haven’t read it, read it and come back. So go ahead and talk about all the details –

Vera: Okay.

Sarah: – because the construction, how Edith Layton creates this character is, like, one of my favorite things in Regency romance.

Vera: It’s really wonderful, and it’s, like, a lot of things we can talk about, so. The one that really caught my attention – I mean, so I enjoyed the whole thing, and it was just a delight from start to finish, and the, you know, the characters are really compelling. I loved sort of the back and forth with your growing sympathies towards – so obviously Regina is a really engaging, compelling protagonist, which is great, because –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – at first, you know, it’s not, it’s not clear whether she’s going to just – she’s so good, you know. She’s so good –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – and innocent and, like, oh, this is terrible, right. You know, who likes – [laughs] – but no! Because she’s very fleshed out, and her reactions to when she gets things wrong, immediately, right. So the book opens with her profound misunderstanding of what she’s doing, going out for a night on the town on the wrong night, and this immediately is very sympathetic, right.

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: But the thing that really gets me is, so this is a book – I’m going to talk really about the ending, actually, because this is a book where if the, sort of the final revelations about – you know she’s going to have to make a choice. You know that the men that she is presented with have both behaved appallingly –

Sarah: Yep.

Vera: – in varying degrees, but if it’s going to work, you have to come around to feeling good about her choice, right, even though there are a lot of good reasons why you wouldn’t, because, I mean, really, if somebody summarized this book for you and just told you – in fact, I, I did this to my husband. I was like, oh, so here’s the deal – [laughs].

Sarah: You know, my, do a summary of the book.

Vera: Oh gosh, I don’t know if I can accurately –

Sarah: It’s not easy.

Vera: – so let’s see if we can do this. How did I do it? I think I said, well, you see, what happens is that there’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Vera: – a duke who, of, the duke of the title, and he loves to pursue women who are not in any position to say no to him, and so he does this in various ways, and for her, he, he decides ultimately to make it impossible for her to go back to her family by making it look as if she had been making out with him consensually in their hallway, and he’s this well-known terrible womanizer, so that she has no hope of going back to her family, and then he kidnaps her, and then, but ultimately, it works out to be okay.

[Laughter]

Sarah: And he’s the hero!

Vera: You know, in the end, he’s really the best choice for her. [Laughs] He was, like, Really?

Sarah: Absolutely!

Vera: Great! That sounds really on board, and also super feminist! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! Absolutely. This book sounds great.

Vera: Yeah, sounds very great, and I could see how you would be on board with that. Right, so, when you take out all the middle –

Sarah: Yeah.

Vera: – [laughs] it’s pretty bad, but so, you know, she chooses him, and, you know, this is absolutely a plotline where you know there’s going to be a choice, and if you’re going to feel satisfied, you’re going to have to feel good about her choice. And I know that –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: I, I know that not everybody is persuaded to have that reaction, right. I think this is a book that does not succeed for everyone. You know, there’s just too much character debt for –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – Torquay to pay off, and he can’t do it, but a lot of people have the reaction that I did, which is, like, yeah! I do feel good about this!

Sarah: Yeah, clearly he’s the best choice. She can’t go with that guy; he’s terrible!

Vera: Right, but I mean – [laughs] – but he offers her the choice of no choice. Right, like, just go on your way. This is obviously important –

Sarah: Yep.

Vera: – for allowing you to feel good about her choice –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – but – and I’m sure that there are people who read it and are like, yeah, no, you should have picked option C, take the money and go away and start a school –

Sarah: Yep.

Vera: – but that’s not where the book lands, and I felt good about it, and part of feeling good about it is feeling good about, like, the credibility of her decision? So you have to believe not only, you have to believe that he would make a good partner, but you also have to believe –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – that she would believe that he would make a good partner, that he means what he says and so on, right.

Sarah: Yes, and that he’s not going to park her somewhere and do this to some other women for the rest of his life.

Vera: Right. So you have to believe that that’s correct, and you also have to believe that she isn’t being insane in making that choice.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: Right, that she’s in a position to make that choice, and some of the evidence that we have that this is the right choice comes from things he says and does to her and for her and in front of her, right. Like, so especially, it’s really crucial that he offers her this option of settling down with no one, right.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: But a lot of it doesn’t. A lot of what we see about him comes either from interactions he has with other people when she’s far away. You know, with –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – with his child and his former nanny and other people and from our access to his intentions. Right, so we have access to his, some internal monologues on his part and his puzzling, so we know the details of the motivations behind his actions in a way that nobody else has direct access to.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: So it’s privileged information that she just doesn’t have access to, but it still gets the job done, is my point.

Sarah: Right. Right.

Vera: So this is some stuff that really taps into these same tendencies that people have that, you know, when we study them, like in, in a, in a lab situation, cognitive science, the way they show up is as mistakes that people make.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: Like, oh, you forgot – [laughs] – that, that this other person doesn’t have access to that information.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: But for a novel, this serves, it’s very useful to let you do this kind of characterization very efficiently, so –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – even though it doesn’t trouble us – I mean, it didn’t trouble me, anyway; I shouldn’t say, speak for every reader – but this fact that she doesn’t have access to all the information that we have that really confirms the correctness of her decision –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – it doesn’t bother us too much, because we’re happy to sort of interleave what we know about the sincerity of his intentions and the conclusions she makes, and since they line up, you know, all those gaps are very efficiently filled in, because they align with our natural tendencies anyway of –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – sort of projecting information from one perspective to another when we’re thinking about these things.

Sarah: And because we as the reader – so the other thing that I wanted to bring up also is –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – the idea that the reaction to studying twists and surprises in books is that they’re “the cheapest sort of entertainment” –

Vera: Oh!

Sarah: – you can imagine that resonated a little with me, ‘cause we hear a lot about that in romance. Like, you hear –

Vera: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – the, the classic denigrations of the genre is, oh, it’s all the same; you already know the ending; that’s just porn for women.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: It is very hard to surprise me, because I go into a romance knowing the structure, knowing how it’s going to end. I know the end is that the hero and the heroine are going to be happy. Like, I know that that’s where I’m going, but I’m still engaged, and I’m still involved, and I’m still surprised, which is part of why I found your book so interesting, because it sort of took apart in pieces how that happens. Even though I know the ending, even though I know that the hero and the heroine are going to get together, with The Duke’s Wager I sometimes was not sure –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – exactly who the hero was.

Vera: I know.

Sarah: And that’s a really hard trick to pull off on a romance reader, because heroes get up to some dastardly things.

Vera: Right, of course. I mean, right, you have heel-, and heel-face turns, you know, they’re everywhere.

Sarah: Yeah.

Vera: You’re, you’re ready for them, but The Duke’s Wager manages to, to balance things out in a very cunning way, sort of keeping you in doubt about how the template of the genre is going to line up with the characters that you have.

Sarah: Yes, and it’s going to satisfy my expectations as a reader, that I will read about a courtship that will end in a satisfying way –

Vera: Yes.

Sarah: – and that I as the reader will agree that these two people should be together, and that I believe and I have been convinced of their suitability for each other.

Vera: Yeah. And that, and, sort of, of their – how do I put this, right – their suitability and also their own buy-in into that suitability, right.

Sarah: Yes, yes. They’re acting with agency in their own lives. They’re not being orchestrated into a specific place.

Vera: Right. Right, ‘cause if you, I mean, so this is a place where that template can be less satisfying, right, is if you’re like, well, yes, I agree, you know, Jane should wind up with Jack, and that’s how should it be, but I don’t really – but it just feels like –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – they were – [laughs] – sort of –

Sarah: They were pushed there.

Vera: – into that position with each other, that’s less gratifying, right, than if –

Sarah: I have –

Vera: – you see it happen.

Sarah: – I have definitely, definitely read romances where I’m like, well, I can tell that the heroine wants this person. I think they’re terrible, but that’s she wants –

Vera: Right.

Sarah: – so that’s why the book is going to end this way, but I personally have not been convinced that these people are ideal for each other.

Vera: Right.

Sarah: This is one reason why I love it when people say things like, oh yeah, romances; I bet they’re really easy to write! Oh –

Vera: Oh my God.

Sarah: – absolutely, super easy. Go ahead; give it a try. Let me know. It’s real hard to write that.

Vera: Yeah! Well, that’s the thing, right, and, and one of the things that really interests me in general is this sort of interplay between the satisfactions of plots that, plots and character plots that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Vera: – have these pleasing mechanics to them that involve, you know, sort of a turn and an overturn and pieces being laid out that, like, sort of, you’d see that the pieces that were arrayed early on fall into this pleasing, satisfying shape later and so on, that those elements, which really are elements of surprise, are still satisfying, and we crave them, even if we’re not that invested in their being surprising in the sense of, oh gee, I never saw it coming!

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: But it’s still, that machinery is very gratifying.

Sarah: It’s like people who watch Law & Order over and over again.

Vera: [Laughs] Right.

Sarah: You brought up television crime dramas.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: The beats are almost identical episode to episode.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: And yet that, that, having that expectation met is very satisfying, and that is another form of sort of cognitive examination of why this storytelling works on you, even though you know when every single turn is coming.

Vera: Yeah, and I think it’s really because it gives you this sort of opportunity – so part of what the logic of the surprise plot, even if it doesn’t actively surprise you because you know too much about genre conventions or, or even the specific conventions of, say, Law & Order where you’re like

Sarah: Dun-dun.

Vera: – oh, it’s the second guest star is going –

Sarah: Dun-dun.

Vera: [Laughs] Right, you know from watching the opening credits who’s going to be –

Sarah: Dun-dun.

Vera: – the doer. Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: When you were younger, when you were –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – when you were younger, did you ever read the Sunfire romances? They were the ones that had –

Vera: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – like, Roxanne or –

Vera: Yes.

Sarah: – or Jennie.

Vera: Or Amanda or – yeah!

Sarah: Yeah, so –

Vera: I tried writing one of those in – [laughs] – in, like, seventh grade, and I’ll tell you –

Sarah: Yeah.

Vera: – it didn’t come out that well.

Sarah: No, no.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: Me too. One of the things that I learned, ‘cause for a lot of readers our age, those were a gateway into the romance genre –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – and one of the things that I learned early on is that the cover art gives away the ending.

Vera: Yes!

Sarah: Every single one –

Vera: It totally does.

Sarah: Right! Every single one’s a love triangle, and whoever she’s with on the cover, that guy ain’t the one she ends up with, so match the cover and you’re going to know which one’s the hero, and that gave me an out, because if I knew, oh, that guy’s a total jerk; I don’t want her to end up with him! I would stop that one and go find another one! [Laughs]

Vera: Right, you’re like, ooh, let me, let me, like – [laughs] – I can scout out whether this is going to be annoying for me.

Sarah: Crack the code.

Vera: But you still want it to unfold, right; so you know these things ahead of time, but you still want it to, like, do it right, you know –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – to have the turns. And so here’s part of what I think is going on with that. You know, this is, now here we’re in the zone of rank speculation, but –

Sarah: I love rank speculation!

Vera: Thank you! [Laughs] Me too.

Sarah: I’m a professional blogger; I speculate all the time! Bring it!

Vera: Yay! So, you know, the machinery of the surprise plot, the, like, logic and investment of the surprise plot, what it does is it sort of arrays for you this kind of performance of the experience that you can sometimes have in real life of feeling like you have a fresh ins-, an actual insight experience, right, where you’re struggling through some puzzle or problem, and suddenly, you know, you have this sort of shift in your understanding of what’s going on, and the pieces fall into place, and what you were struggling through, you have this feeling of sudden fresh realization of a new way of looking at it, and it gives you this, you know, really satisfying ah-ha feeling, right.

Sarah: Right.

Vera: And, but in real life, you know, you can’t really get these to order. [Laughs] You can’t –

Sarah: No.

Vera: – you can’t demand them. I mean, to a certain extent, right, that’s why people like doing puzzles and stuff, right, because of this –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – designed version of this experience, but having it enacted for you in these nice, satisfying ways, even if it’s not actually a surprise to you when the ah-ha happens, if it’s been –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – orchestrated correctly, it can be very gratifying, I think, anyway. It feels right; it gives you this nice – it, it is tied up with satisfaction in this way, and so this is why, you know, I, there’s this other puzzle, which is why, why do people have a real fondness for genres that dependably involve surprises, right. So like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – formulaic mysteries, foxfire romances where you’re like, the, it, you know how it’s going to unfold, why should people want to do that again and again instead of wanting to do something that doesn’t act like it’s surprising you. Like, this seems like there’s this kind of funny, oxymoronic aspect of this. You know, why, if you, if you’re like Fran Lebowitz –

Sarah: I have this on my list of questions; I want to ask you about this interview. Just tell, just go into this interview, ‘cause it’s freaking amazing!

Vera: Yeah, well, I mean, she’s incredible, right. So this is, this, it’s part of a New York Times Sunday magazine about, you know, what’s on her bedside table and what she’s reading and, you know, whatever, and so she says that she loves mysteries, right, but that she doesn’t have the foggiest, she doesn’t care, she will reread them. She doesn’t remember who did it; she doesn’t care about who did it. She doesn’t try to figure out who did it. She just, that is totally not part of what she cares about, she says, right? And I believe her, but then –

Sarah: Yeah!

Vera: – if that’s the case, so the mystery there, if you will, is then why do you want a mystery novel? Why do you want a detective story if you don’t care about the detective part?

Sarah: Right!

Vera: And, you know, I can relate to this. I mean, I can really relate to it. She says, you know, I’ve read all the Nero Wolfe books, and he wrote, and he really did, he wrote, like, seventy of them, and she says, what, like, he wrote a lot of them, but not enough for Fran! And I feel just the same way.

[Laughter]

Vera: I actually went on a Nero Wolfe reading marathon, like, when I was in the middle of writing this book and read all of them.

Sarah: That must have been quite a hazard! Like, I’m writing a book about the plot twists –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – of books and movies, and I’m going to spoil the hell out of them. I should read all of them –

Vera: Yeah, right.

Sarah: – and watch them all twice.

Vera: No, I know. It was really an issue, for sure. I took a lot of baths, because – [laughs] – I read a lot in the bath, so –

Sarah: Good plan!

Vera: – really reading Rex Stout after Rex Stout in the bath. But the thing about them is, whether or not you’re trying to guess them or whether or not you’re trying to, you know, sort of second-guess them or anything, they move through those paces of setting up pieces and putting them together, and that gives you this really pleasing structure of, you know, of, like, cognitive satisfaction around which all the other stuff can flow. So, you know, you can say, I read these –

Sarah: Yes!

Vera: – the reason I read the Nero Wolfes is not for the mystery; it’s for the interactions between Nero and Archie, of course, because those are much more interesting, but –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – those lovely interactions between Nero and Archie have this very gratifying structure to flow into, and you leave on this note of satisfaction. And there’s something about that that’s just incredibly compelling –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – whether or not it actually shocks you or not. So I think surprises are more about satisfaction in a way –

Sarah: He’s different.

Vera: – than they are about surprise, often.

Sarah: I completely agree. One of the things that she, that you quoted in the book is that mysteries are tidy and they end, which is true of so little else, and that’s something I constantly think about –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – with romance. It ends happily. It values happiness and autonomy and, and also your orgasm, and very few else –

Vera: Right!

Sarah: – any, anything else, very, very few things in this world value happiness, endings, and your orgasm all at the same time! Like, very few things!

Vera: In fact, it is, like, fundamentally about satisfaction. Like, it will be –

Sarah: Right!

Vera: – satisfied.

Sarah: It’s very true.

Vera: Yep. [Laughs] Yeah, so, I mean, in a way, you know, I never actually quite say this in the book, where I say, you know, actually, the sort of fundamental element of what purports to be surprise – I mean, in many of these cases, you really are surprised – but really it’s about satisfaction. It’s not just about how surprise is satisfying, but it’s actually about how the structure of surprise gives you satisfaction, whether or not you’re actually surprised, if it works right.

Sarah: Right, and if you are pleased by the surprise because the surprise worked, the surprise worked without cheating you or –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – treating you like you’re dumb –

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: – then it’s very satisfying to be entertained by something that is openly trying to trick you.

Vera: Right! I mean, right, I mean, because – and you know, I was about to say, you know, generations of psychoanalytic theorists have already done this, but, like, you can sure map that, speaking of orgasms, right, onto –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – you know, a little foreplay is appreciated often to get you there. You want to be teased.

Sarah: Uh, yeah!

Vera: You want to be teased, and you want to be, you know, brought to various false conclusions, potentially, before you get to the final conclusion, because that makes the final conclusion more satisfying –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Vera: – than if you just go directly there. So yeah.

Sarah: Right! And mystery twists and turns are, you know, a form of foreplay.

Vera: They are! Absolutely.

Sarah: Reader, readerly foreplay.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: So you mentioned that you are compiling a list –

Vera: Yes.

Sarah: – of every work that you spoil in this book, and there’s a lot!

Vera: Yeah. So, you know, I went through, so I have a draft of it, but I have to, I have, I haven’t posted it to my website yet, because I feel like I have to double-check it, and I realized along the way that not every work that I mention in the book has any spoil-, spoilers at all, so it doesn’t just do to, like, go through my index and pull out everything that’s cited that’s a, you know, creative work that’s a film or a short story or a play or a novel –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – because some of those actually aren’t spoiled; I’m happy to say that it involves no spoiler at all – [laughs] – but a lot of them are, and I felt that I should warn people so that they know what they’re being spoiled about and the degree to which they’re being spoiled. So I have in front of me my draft of this, and I see that I have – I, I think I’m pretty comfortable with these categories of spoilers – so there’s some works where the spoiler is that you learn that something surprising happens in it, right. Very low level spoiler, but this is still something that can affect the way you approach a story. And of course –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – this list does the same thing, right, so this is a problem with spoiler warnings, right, is if you have a warning that there’s something to be spoiled, there’s already potentially a little bit of surprise spoiling.

Sarah: Right, you’ve already given something key away, that –

Vera: Right. That there’s some –

Sarah: – you’re, you’re giving away the fact that there is something to give away.

Vera: Right. Which, you know, I mean, oh well. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right.

Vera: Yeah. Okay. Then there’s also some works in which minor plot points are revealed, to a greater or lesser degree of specificity, so, like, vaguely revealed, recounted in some detail; and there’s, you know, larger plot points that may be described vaguely or in some detail; and then there’s the category of the big surprise is revealed carelessly, with no concern for your feelings, as if nothing mattered at all. [Laughs] Which is a, it’s a real –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Vera: – category in this book, because I’m, you know –

Sarah: Yeah.

Vera: – I have this, this habit of saying, like, you know, big surprises like X, Y, and Z, like, for example –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – in this work, and I, in the course of a sentence, I just demolish the surprise and then move on blithely –

Sarah: Like –

Vera: – as if – [laughs] – you know, not caring for the wreckage behind me. Right, flames, cars burning behind me, and I’m just moving blithely along.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, you know, like, he’s been dead the whole time, but you knew that.

Vera: Yeah, right. As you knew. Like, oh, come on! Yeah. There’s a lot of works that are in that category, I’m, I’m sorry to say. [Laughs] So I feel I should warn people. And in fact, I got a secondhand report, a colleague of mine who had the galleys in hand –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – asked if he could lend them to his graduate student, because his graduate student was working on some related project, and, like, oh, and it would be useful for him to see this now instead of waiting for it to come out. I said, sure, sure. So – [laughs] – then –

Sarah: Uh-oh.

Vera: – my colleague reported back to me, so my student is finding it very useful, but he was distraught because he was planning to go see Murder on the Orient Express, the film –

Sarah: Oh no!

Vera: – oh – and that’s one where, yes, that is in the category that I have listed here as the big surprise is revealed carelessly as if nothing mattered anymore, nothing at all.

[Laughter]

Vera: And that’s what I did.

Sarah: Oh well!

Vera: Oh well. So, and then my colleague said, well, you know, but she warns you. ‘Cause, as you mentioned, right, Sarah, there’s this, there’s this sort of disclaimer in the introduction –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – about spoilers.

Sarah: Yeah, you warn everybody, look, I’mma spoil the hell out of everything; proceed at your own risk.

Vera: Yeah. And he said, well, she warned you, and he said, oh, I know, but she also did say, you know, that part of how these things work is by getting you to forget some of the details that you read early on, and I forgot –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Vera: – the warning. [Laughs] So ohhh. I said, well, tell him, you know, it’s often worth, it’s often more enjoyable to see, to enjoy the machinery of the surprise if you know the twist.

Sarah: Yes, that’s very true.

Vera: [Laughs] Consolation prize, I guess. Sorry!

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, at least you know that your, your, your cognitive theory checks out!

Vera: [Laughs] Yeah, right, exactly! I’ll –

Sarah: Story checks out!

[Laughter]

Vera: A little field experiment there, unintentionally.

Sarah: Yeah.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: No, you, you were, you were right. All along, you were very right about all of it.

Vera: [Laughs] Yes. Gratifying, really. Indeed. Yeah.

Sarah: So the question that I ask every person in an interview that I do is if they have any books that they’ve read that they want to recommend.

Vera: Oh!

Sarah: And I realize you’ve probably read a whole lot of stuff.

Vera: [Laughs] I have read a whole lot of stuff.

Sarah: It’s part of having the P and the H and the D. You’ve got to read a lot of stuff.

Vera: Well, yeah, and also, as you, as I was just saying, you know, I spent a lot of time in the bath reading novels while I was writing –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – this book, because –

Sarah: Of course!

Vera: – you know, that, that’s how that, that’s how that is. Well, let me tell you, the thing that actually I have read since I finished writing this book that is really incredible, it is not a romance in any way –

Sarah: That’s okay; I’m here for it anyway.

Vera: – but is Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. Have you ever read anything by him?

Sarah: Oh! I have not.

Vera: Okay. So he’s actually John le Carré’s son –

Sarah: Oh, that’s an interesting pedigree and lineage. Yeah, okay.

Vera: Yeah! Yeah, yeah, so but his stuff is mostly, in one way or another, sort of science fictional, and this book is also a murder mystery. So the setup –

Sarah: Oooh!

Vera: – and it’s about surveillance, so it’s about how we hate Facebook? Only a lot. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh! I am listening.

Vera: Yeah! So the, the setup is, it’s, you know, a, a rela-, a near-ish future in England where it’s a largely benevolent, extremely surveillance state, and with, you know, AI monitoring of various kinds of things –

Sarah: Right.

Vera: – so it’s this gentle but clearly dystopian setup, and our protagonist is a detective who is investigating a case where a woman died during what should have been really routine interrogation, but that involves reading her thoughts, because that’s where we are in this terrible future.

Sarah: What you can do with this AI, right.

Vera: Yeah, and, and it opens out from there in really wonderful ways. It has met-, it’s sort of this multiplying set of narratives, so it has elements of kind of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, where you get these, you know, you get taken on a, on a narrative trajectory with a new character –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Vera: – and just as you’re getting to the most exciting part, it stops, and you move to something else, and so on, but it has wonderful twists and turns, and it’s also beautifully written, and –

Sarah: Ooh!

Vera: – cool, really engaging characters. So recommended.

Sarah: Oooh!

Vera: But it’s, it’s an investment. It’s, like, seven hundred pages or something, so it’s, it’s long and, and intricate, but strongly recommended.

Sarah: Cool! Thank you!

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: And you recommend The Duke’s Wager.

Vera: I strongly recommend The Duke’s Wager, and I recommend, I recommend the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout!

Sarah: Oh, obviously!

Vera: Yes. I recommend reading all of them – [laughs] – if that’s the kind of thing you want to do, all in a row!

Sarah: Yeah, especially if you’re writing a book, and then you can say, no, this is work.

Vera: Yeah, exactly. Definitely.

Sarah: [Laughs] This is very important work! I’m doing important work here.

Vera: Important work in the bath.

Sarah: In the bath, yeah. I, it, it’s fine. This is normal. This is how this works.

Vera: Exactly! This is – yes! This is required.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Vera: Well, I mean, that was, really, I felt great with The Duke’s Wager. I was like, ha-ha! This is, like, my assigned reading.

Sarah: Yeah, welcome to my life.

Vera: Yeah.

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s the best part of my job!

Vera: That’s so good!

Sarah: It really is! I’m, I’m fortunate every time I sit down and think, wow, reading is kind of my job? That’s freaking rad! [Laughs]

Vera: It’s amazing. Oh, and I did read, I read, also on your recommendation, I read Eleanor & Park.

Sarah: Oh, what did you think?

Vera: I liked it very much. And it reminded me –

Sarah: Oh, it’s –

Vera: – also that I really like this middle-reader book called When You Reach Me –

Sarah: Ooh!

Vera: – by Rebecca [Steed] or [Sted]; I don’t actually know how it’s pronounced. S-T-E-A-D. Which is a mystery and, oh, and it really is a romance. It’s very –

Sarah: Aw!

Vera: It has a poignant, lovely romance in it, and it’s set in, like, I think, 1979 and is very strongly invested in A Wrinkle in Time. A Wrinkle in Time is a very important element in the book, and –

Sarah: Ohhh.

Vera: – also, $20,000 Pyramid.

Sarah: No way!

Vera: [Laughs] Yes! The game show, $20,000 Pyramid.

Sarah: [Laughs] Surprise! That’s a bit random!

Vera: Right, so the ways in which, I mean, I realize it’s, it’s not exactly the same period, but the ways in which Eleanor & Park is a period piece and also about –

Sarah: Yeah.

Vera: – issues of class and stuff –

Sarah: Yes.

Vera: – reminded me of that too, so that’s another recommendation that I would definitely –

Sarah: Oh cool.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed this interview. I again want to thank Vera Tobin for hanging out with me and for posting on Facebook about her new book. And I also want to thank Harvard University Press for sending me a review copy, because that was really cool. Like I said, not an academic, but I found this book to be tremendously interesting, so if you are a scholar of literature, or you work with scholars of literature, or you maybe order the books for them, you might really like this book. It’s called the Elements of Surprise, and it is on sale April 16th, 2018.

This week’s episode is brought to you by What Are You Afraid Of? by Alexandra Ivy. This book sounds like so much Elyse bait, I can’t even. It also sounds like things that I should not read, but I’m super curious about. Serial abductions, copycat murders. When a bestselling true-crime author begins to receive threatening photographs and trophies of murders committed by a killer obsessed with her writing and her research, she enlists the help of the one man with the resources to help her discover the killer’s identity before it’s too late. What Are You Afraid Of? by New York Times bestselling author Alexandra Ivy is a chilling and pulse-pounding work of romantic suspense that will have you questioning your own fears. What Are You Afraid Of? is on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com. And thank you to Kensington for sponsoring this month’s episodes!

This week’s transcript is compiled by garlicknitter – thank you, garlicknitter [You’re welcome! – gk] – and is being brought to you by Whiskey Sharp: Jagged by Lauren Dane. Vicktor Orlov took one look at the wary gaze and slow-to-trust personality of the deliciously sexy and fascinating Rachel Dolan and knew he wanted more than just a casual friendship. But as a natural protector, he knew bossiness and overprotective maneuvering would push her away rather than draw her close. He’ll use every tool in his easygoing, laid-back arsenal to convince her to take a chance on them. When Vic finally drops all pretenses of “just friends” and focuses all his careful affection and irresistible seduction on her, Rachel knows she’s falling hard for the laid-back pretty boy she’s discovered has a relentlessly steel spine when it comes to her, and she cannot resist. You can find Whiskey Sharp: Jagged on sale now wherever books are sold.

We have many ways for you to support the show, speaking of, by listening to it, by listening to me right now talking. That’s pretty rad; thank you. Every week I see that the audience for the show gets a little bigger, and this is amazing to me. I love doing the podcast, and I love doing the weekly production, and your enthusiasm and support makes it even more fun. If you would like a way to personally support the show, you can have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. If you make a monthly pledge, you’re helping me continue the show, you’re helping me commission transcripts in our archives, and you keep the show going, so thank you so much for having a look.

I want to thank some of our Patreon folks personally, so to Rachel, to Selby, to Esti, Claudia, Love Ann, and Rhode, thank you so much for being part of the Patreon.

You can also leave a review wherever you listen. That definitely makes a difference. Or you could tell a friend or subscribe or just yell out the window that they should listen to this show. Thank you for hanging out with me each week, regardless of how you show your support. I’m honored to be in your eardrums.

If you would like more podcasts that focus on romance fiction, have a look at RomancePodcasts.com. It will pull up a list of podcasts which I am continually adding to, should you wish to add more romance podcasts to your subscriptions.

This is the Peatbog Faeries. I knew you knew that. Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. Thank you, Sassy! This is “Strictly Sambuca.” This is from their album Live @ 25, which I love, and you can find it at Amazon and at iTunes, and you can find the Peatbog Faeries on their website peatbogfaeries.com.

You can also find links to the album, all of the books that we talked about, plus links about Vera and her research in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And speaking of! I knew you knew there’s a website that goes with the podcast, right? Well, here’s what’s coming up this week! Yay! We have our Smart Bitches Movie Matinee announcement. This is when we wall, we all watch a movie – on our own time, ‘cause y’all are all over the world – and then at the end of the month we host a chat and we talk about it. We’re going to announce our month’s selection. I hope you can watch it and join us. It looks to be a lot of fun. We also have Cover Snark, which is great. We have two editions of Stuff You Should Be Watching, because we love to recommend TV shows as well as books. We have some reviews and a Rec League where we build recommendation lists based on what readers are looking for.

Now, each week I end with a terrible joke, and this joke comes from Jean M., who says that she loves our jokes at the end of the podcast – thank you – and that she shamelessly stole this joke from the AARP bulletin, which gives me so much joy. So thank you to the AARP bulletin and to Jean for this terrible joke. Are you guys ready? Okay.

Why did Marx write in all lower case?

Why did Marx write in all lower case? ‘Cause he hated capitalism!

[Laughs] I just imagine the person editing the AARP newsletter bulletin like, [laughing] this is so good. You’re right, dude! Or girl! Or whomever, whatever gender you ascribe to! Yes, it’s a totally terrible joke; I love it so much. Yay! [Laughs] Ah, okay. Anyway.

I’ll now be a professional podcaster or something, or something akin to that, maybe within the, you know, tri-state area. On behalf of Vera and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next week. Have a great weekend!

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