305. More from RT 2018: There Are Some Books Around Here, and Some Creepy Dolls

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 305 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today are Amanda and Elyse again. It’s time for a little bit more from Romantic Times. We’re chatting about Romantic Times while we’re still there; this was recorded over lunch and wine. Ah, the delays of extensive editing. We have several conversations, and some bits you might have heard as part of our live show as well. We talk about books; we talk about our pets; we talk about more books; we talk about publisher news and random other things. We have a discussion as to why the hitman plot works for Elyse but not for me – I think it has to do with the villain thing that we covered in the last episode – and why Elyse thing male/male spy and adventure stories are popular. I also ask Amanda and Elyse, who are a little younger than I am, about their impressions and understanding of category romance. We talk about Gothic, horror, and suspense, and please keep in mind, I, I ask questions, but I am as full of crap as anyone when it comes to discussing trends, so if I ask a question, that’s not because that question is my opinion; I’m mostly curious what they think. And of course we’re going to talk about what was up with the creepy dolls in Amanda’s mom’s walk-in closet.

This podcast is being brought to you by Whiskey Sharp: Torn by Lauren Dane. Beau Petty has been searching his whole life for a place that fills all the empty spaces, for a way to tame his restlessness, for answers to a secret that he has never stopped trying to solve. What he has not been searching for was a woman to claim all of him, but when Cora Silvera walks back into his life, he’s ready to search out all the ways that he can make her his. Cora has spent her life as the family nurturer, taking care of others, and now she is ready to pass that job on to someone else. It is time to make some changes and live for herself, and that is the moment when her former teenage crush reappears, and the heat of their instant connection is like nothing either of them has experienced before. Beau thinks Cora has had enough drama, and he wants to protect her from the secrets of his past, even if it means holding back the last pieces of himself. But Cora is no pushover, and she means to claim every one of those pieces, because sometimes what you find is not what you were searching for. Whiskey Sharp: Torn by Lauren Dane is on sale now and available wherever books are sold.

Every episode gets a transcript, and this week’s transcript is brought to you by everyone who supports the podcast Patreon. Thank you, guys! I deeply appreciate it! You are all lovely humans. Each episode gets a transcript to make the podcast accessible to everyone, and when there’s not a sponsor, the Patreon group helps me fund those transcripts individually. And thank you to garlicknitter, who transcribes each episode! [You’re welcome! – gk]

I also have compliments, which are really fun parts of my intro – yay!

To Rachel D.: Two of your friends from elementary school have named pets that they love after you, but they are too embarrassed to say so. You are that memorable.

And to Karen R.: The reason there’s always a pause when someone leaves you a voicemail is because your voice is so incredible, people are dumbstruck by how great it is, and they have to remember how to talk.

Now, if you would like a compliment of your own, or if you would like to support this here podcast, please have a look at our podcast Patreon at patreon.com/SmartBitches. The podcast Patreon community helps me in innumerable, immeasurable ways, and every pledge, starting with as little as one dollar a month, makes a deeply appreciated difference.

I also want to thank some of the podcast Patreon folks personally, so to Kelsey, Mai – “May” or “My,” whichever one it is; I’m sorry – Catherine, Johanna, and Andrea, thank you so much for being part of the podcast Patreon!

Are there other ways to support the show? Absolutely! Sing along if you know the words! Leave a review wherever you listen; that makes a massive difference. Tell a friend. Subscribe! Whatever works. But thank you very much for hanging out with me each week as we, you know, talk about romance and a bunch of other stuff.

We have a podcast email address, and it is sbjpodcast@gmail.com, and I just realized that Gmail, as it applied new filters and reinvented itself in the last few weeks, had filed a whole bunch of messages from you guys in the spam, and I just fished them out, and I’m, like, super embarrassed, so if you’ve sent me an email and I didn’t reply? Whoa, am I sorry about that. I had no idea; I missed them entirely, so I’m going to be doing some replying, and if you emailed me and you didn’t hear back from me? Please email me again. I’m super sorry about that. Gmail and I are going to have some words, mostly on my end, and they’re going to be bad words. But you can email me any time at sbjpodcast@gmail.com or Sarah, S-A-R-A-H at smartbitchestrashybooks dot com [Sarah@smartbitchestrashybooks.com]. Damn, Gmail! Super pain in my butt.

Coming up at the end of this episode, I have an email with some audiobook recommendations for you, and as always, I will be telling you what is coming up on the website this coming week; I have a super terrible bad joke – super bad – and just as we do every week, I will have links to all of the books and television shows and movies that we talk about; and I will have links to any news or, you know, pieces of information you might want to check out. The podcast entry is always at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the show also as to who this is and where you can buy it for your very own. And if you would like to suggest music or send me music – I have to have the rights to rebroadcast it on a podcast; you can’t just be like, here’s my favorite song! Because if I could do that, you’d be really horrified by what I listen to – but if you would like to contribute music to the show that you have the rights to do so, please email me. I love discovering new artists and new music, and it’s super cool to hear what cool things you guys listen to as well.

And oops, I almost forgot: at time marker 13:35 to 14:00, there is a spoiler for the Iron Druid series, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, skip ahead thirty seconds at 13:30.

And now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah: So we’re doing a, we’re doing updates on RT on, is it day two?

Elyse: Yeah.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Why does it – well, ‘cause of the Blogger, the Blogger Con messes with my head, because then I think it’s, that’s day one, and then Wednesday’s day two, and –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So my brain is like, the actual conference, though, it’s the actual conference day one, day two.

Amanda and Elyse: Yeah.

Sarah: So you had cool shit happen.

Amanda: Yeah! Well, I went to the Kensington publisher spotlight, and they revealed the cover of Rebecca Zanetti’s new romantic suspense series that they’re publishing, and I’d love to feature this cover on Cover Awe, but it would not translate digitally because of the cover treatment. The cover treatment features a woman, and the woman is in, like, I think, this kind of flat, matte material or paper, and then the background is like this shiny paper, so it, it definitely stands out and, like, catches the light. Yeah, it was really neat. I mean –

Elyse: But what’s the series about?

Amanda: I don’t know.

[Laughter]

Elyse: Just looked at the cover; it’s fine.

Amanda: Yeah.

Elyse: ‘Cause you had me at romantic suspense. Confession: I, it took me a minute to realize that everyone’s bag, or badge holder, says Rebecca Zanetti on it –

Amanda: Yes.

Elyse: – so there was a moment where, like, I thought I was looking at Rebecca Zanetti, but it was just another person. [Laughs]

Amanda: She was sitting in front of me in the Kensington thing. She seemed very nice. But yeah, and I got some books from Kensington, which I’m very excited about. Hot and Badgered and High Risk, which is the next Simona Ahrnstedt’s book?

Elyse: That’s huge.

Amanda: Yeah, it’s a huge ARC. The finished copy also has, like, a very shiny cover treatment too.

Elyse: How many pages is that?

Amanda: Ooh, let’s see. We’re going to peek on in here.

Sarah: That book is really quite large.

Elyse: Yeah.

Amanda: 533.

Elyse: Hoo!

Sarah: That’s a big book.

Amanda: They’re, I feel like the first one was a regular size, the second one was a little thicker, and this might be the biggest one.

Sarah: Is that the second one after All In?

Amanda: This is the third one.

Sarah: That’s the third one.

Amanda: All In; the next one had a purple cover. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was purple and I think had a redhead on it. And so this is the third one, and it’s red and has a man in a suit on it.

Sarah: Well, I can tell you, because I have my lap-, laptop here ‘cause I’m, you know, doing work, ‘cause that’s how I roll. She has Falling –

Elyse: Then All In.

Sarah: – All In.

Elyse: Then High Risk.

Amanda: All In’s the first one.

Sarah: Yeah.

Elyse: No, I think – oh, yeah, you’re right. I’ll just buy ‘em all. Whatever.

Amanda: All In’s blue. Falling is purple.

Elyse: One-click buy.

Amanda: High Risk is red. And then –

Elyse: The Spanish covers are really pretty.

Amanda: I mean, that’s usually the way it goes.

Sarah: Oooh!

Elyse: It’s like the torso of a woman in a really pretty ball gown?

Sarah: Yeah! So there’s –

Elyse: Yeah, the foreign editions are nice.

Sarah: Solo esta noche, Only this Night, Only a Secret, and Only an Adventure. Oh, and they’re gorgeous.

Amanda: And it’s the same series?

Sarah: And it’s, it’s the silhouette of a woman in a dress – of course her head is chopped off – but it’s against a long exposure of a city, so there’s, like, traffic lights going by in the background? Those are really gorgeous! Damn!

Amanda: I also had a really cute moment in the hallway coming up to Sarah’s room.

Sarah: Oh my gosh, my, all – you told me about this, and all of my insides melted.

Amanda: So I was wearing my badge, and this older couple stopped me and wanted to know what the convention was, what was going on, and so I was talking to them about what it is and how it’s authors and readers and industry people, and they told me how great it was that they were seeing stuff for trans people here, because they’re like, we had a grandson who is now our – no, we had a granddaughter who is now our grandson, and it’s, like, it’s a learning process, and we love seeing stuff like this, and it was just so sweet.

Elyse: Oh, that’s amazing!

Amanda: Yeah, and I told them about, like, how there are several LGBT publishers if they’re interested in, you know, getting anything, and they’re asking, like, where can we buy these? Are they in stores? On their own site? So it was really sweet. [Laughs]

Elyse: RT is not great for – like, as many books as I bring home, I buy a shit-ton too.

Amanda: Yeah.

Elyse: I feel like one-click buy should just be on my gravestone when I die. Like, that’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: She One-Click Bought. If they ever do that with yarn, I’m fucked.

Amanda: [Laughs] One-click buy for yarn.

Elyse: One, one-click buy for yarn, and then they just ship it to you.

Sarah: Oh, that would be very bad!

Elyse: Rich sent me a photo of my spot on the couch, which is entirely covered in Dewey hair because he’s lying there looking at Rich like, you’re a failure; where’s the other one?

Amanda: I miss my cat so much.

Elyse: I know!

Sarah: [Laughs] I know mine, both dogs take up my side of the bed when I’m not home, so when I get back, Zeb’s going to be like, oh, you want to sleep here, huh?

Amanda: Once Linus realizes that, like, I’m gone, he won’t sleep in the bed. He’ll go up and sleep with my roommate, ‘cause she’s home. So, like –

Sarah: You are an acceptable replacement human for this time period, but not permanently.

Elyse: I feel like Fisher is too dumb to know I’m gone.

[Laughter]

Elyse: Amanda and I were talking about his personality, and she nailed it that he’s like, he’s so happy and overjoyed by everything, but also really dumb and, like, would not survive without adult supervision at all times.

Amanda: [Laughs] Gee, Mister! What do you got in that van?

Elyse: [Laughs]

Sarah: So wait, Amanda, you went to the Kensington thing, and they had an announcement.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Was it the Kensington spotlight?

Amanda: Yes, it was the Kensington –

Sarah: Where they hit you with chocolates?

Amanda: Yeah, I was –

Sarah: [Laughs] Pelted?

Amanda: I was beaned.

[Laughter]

Amanda: Like, if this – it was like buckshot, but with Hershey Kisses.

Elyse: [Laughs]

Sarah: Ouch!

Amanda: They said it had officially launched in January, but Kensington has a digital sci-fi and fantasy line now –

Sarah: Oooh!

Amanda: – that’s called Rebel Base.

Elyse: Ooh!

Amanda: Yeah.

Elyse: Oh! I like that!

Amanda: Yeah! They said it launched in January. I’m not sure, they didn’t discuss what authors are in it yet, and yeah, I mean, it doesn’t focus on romance. It’s sci-fi/fantasy; some might have romantic elements in it? But it sounded really neat. I want to poke around and see what they’ve got. But yeah! I think that’s pretty, pretty dang cool!

Elyse: So Rich reads a lot of sci-fi/fantasy – well, he listens to it on audio – and since we share an Audible account now, he’s listening to romance novels too; we did a podcast and everything.

Sarah: Yeah?

Elyse: So there’s this Iron Druid series that he loves, and they just finished –

Amanda: [Whispers] I didn’t like that series.

Elyse: – they just finished the last book, and he comes storming into the living room, and he’s like, you’ve ruined me! And I said, what do you mean, I’ve ruined you? He goes, they ended the series, and, like – super spoilers; sorry – they did not wind up together! Yeah, he fucked up, but where’s the groveling? There’s supposed to be groveling! I don’t have my closure! This series is done! I’m never going to get my closure, Elyse! [Laughs] And it was just like, oh my God. I’m so sorry!

Sarah: Oh no, dude! We, we have, we have, we have failed you.

Elyse: I’m sorry.

Sarah: I’m sorry I’m doing work while I do this, but ad changeover day is coming, so I need to –

Elyse: No, we’re good.

Sarah: – load shit up.

Amanda: I’ve got to go do work later –

Elyse: So –

Amanda: – and by work I mean, like, finish reading this book.

Elyse: So –

Sarah: It’s hard when that’s your job, isn’t it, man? It’s so hard.

Elyse: – did you guys see the 3D ads?

Sarah: What? 3D ads? Where?

Amanda: What?

Elyse: Okay, so either the ads are –

Sarah: Okay, so please know, because I wear bifocals, none of this shit works on me –

Elyse: Okay.

Sarah: – so I need you to give me a – ‘cause it’s not going to work on me.

Elyse: So either –

Sarah: I’m just going to get dizzy.

Elyse: – either the ads are actually 3D, or I have something neurological going on that I should be concerned about.

[Laughter]

Elyse: So, first of all, ‘cause we’re in a casino, like, on the ground floor, the doors and windows are all tinted, because they don’t want you to be able to tell what time of day it is outside, so when you walk down the hallway it’s, like, either red or blue, and it’s really weird. So you’re walking down this hallway with marble floors, or faux marble floors or whatever, and, like, the color light reflecting on it, and there’s, basically, like, one wall is a TV screen playing ads –

Amanda: Yeah.

Elyse: – and there’s one for this author, and it’s like – I didn’t catch the author, but it’s a romantic suspense, so it’s got, like, newsprint about a crime or something in the background, and then, like, the face of the character off the cover of the book floating in front of it, so when you’re standing there with, like, the weird red light shining on you and then the 3D ad immediately in front of you, it’s one of those things like where you watch TV on the treadmill, and all of a sudden you’re like, I can’t walk anymore. My brain –

[Laughter]

Elyse: – my brain cannot process what’s about to happen, and you just kind of want to fall down. So the fact that I didn’t just, like, collapse in the hallway, I was very, very, very proud of that.

Sarah: You should be very proud of that!

Amanda: I, on the treadmill, I don’t know what it is, but I cannot run in a straight line on a treadmill. I’m just, like, weaving, and then it’s just like, I don’t know what –

Elyse: You’ve got, like, evasive maneuvers programmed in.

Amanda: Yeah, I – but, like, on a track I’m fine, but there’s just something about the treadmill that make, puts me off balance. I don’t like it.

Elyse: So I saw an ad that got me to buy a book, so that was exciting. She’s not here, but Meredith Wild is starting a series about a hitman –

Amanda: Huh!

Elyse: – which is my catnip.

Sarah: Okay. Why is that? What, what is it about the hitman plot that really does it for you?

Elyse: Because it – okay, so, like, it’s two-, it’s two-fold: first of all, I blame the John Wick movies –

Sarah: Okay!

Elyse: – for quite a bit of it. Also –

Sarah: Sure.

Elyse: – what was the movie with Natalie Portman in it? Was it Léon?

Amanda: The Assassin? No, Léon: The Professional. Léon: The Professional.

Elyse: Yes! Yes. I loved that movie; it tore my heart out of my chest. Little baby Natalie Portman. So, like, it’s kind of the – I think because the, the hitman mythos, like, when you’re reading the books, they only kill bad people? So there’s, like, a set of rules that you’re still following, right, so there’s a structure to it, and also, like, I just think that if I ever actually dated or married a bad person, he’d be like, well, what do you want for your birthday? And I’d be like, so there’s this cat at the shelter who was really horribly abused; can you just take care of those people for me? And he’d be like, sure, baby, and that would be it. Like, I feel like there are people who don’t need to be on this earth, and that’s probably not a great thing.

Sarah: So the assassin part for you is more about a somewhat morally ambiguous dispensing –

Amanda: But he’s killing bad guys.

Sarah: – of justice.

Elyse: Right. Exactly.

Sarah: So there’s a justice element.

Elyse: There’s a justice element.

Amanda: Like a vigilante.

Elyse: Like, in John Wick, they killed his dog. Of course you’re going to fucking kill them!

Sarah: Oh – you’re going to kill every motherfucker in the room. Like, that’s –

Elyse: A hundred percent!

Sarah: – I have no problem with any violence – I mean, I can’t watch it personally –

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: – but, like, you kill his dog?

Elyse: It all makes sense, yeah.

Sarah: Absolutely! You’re going to kill every motherfucker in the room!

Elyse: Yeah!

Sarah: I have no problems. I understand; I am with you; go ahead. So with the, with the hitman romances that you like and the assassin romances that you like, it is about the, the, sort of the vigilante dispensing of appropriate justice.

Elyse: Right. I mean, it’s kind of like –

Sarah: If shitfuckers got away with things, we need to balance the scales.

Elyse: Right. It’s, it’s –

Sarah: Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

Elyse: Ooh, what, what?

Sarah: Like Ruby Rose in Xander Cage –

Elyse: Yes! Yes!

Sarah: – and she’s just shooting the hunters.

Elyse: It’s douchebag season.

Sarah: It’s douchebag hunting season. Okay, I want you to know –

Elyse: I love it!

Sarah: – I, we watched that movie because I knew it would be, like, intricate stunts and doing crazy shit and having all these cool, basically stunt men –

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: – doing things. The minute she was, like, aiming the gun at the lion, my son was like, mom? Mom. What is this? I’m like, nonono, keep watching. So she, and then she’s like, what are you doing? I’m evening the odds. She aims the gun at the hunters who are –

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: – who are close, who are basically, what’s it called when you’re game hunting but –

Amanda: Poaching?

Sarah: Poaching? And then there’s also that form of hunting where they, like, isolate the animal so you can’t miss?

Elyse: Right, ‘cause nothing says –

Sarah: Trophy hunting!

Elyse: Yeah, nothing says I have a giant dick like –

Sarah: Killing an animal in an enclosed pen –

Elyse: Environment, mm-hmm.

Sarah: – because it’s easier for you to – ugh, fuckers! So she’s shooting the hunters who are doing this trophy poaching – [laughs] – and then the whole thing ends, and she doesn’t shoot them lethally. Like, she shoots them in the hand, she shoots them in the leg, and he was just like – [gasps] – that was AWESOME! I’m like –

Elyse: Right?

Sarah: – this is exactly the kind of movie for you. That, that, that’s a very specific thing; like, the Triple X movies and the Fast and the Furious movies, they’re, like, stunt adventure movies.

Elyse: Yeah, and it’s like, yes, people die in the background, like, but they’re all bad people, so we don’t care. We’re just like, we’re just willing to, like, okay. You had to kill some bad people; I understand.

Sarah: So for you, the assassin or hitman plot rests on the idea that he’s dispensing appropriate vigilante justice.

Elyse: Right, and that he’s got a set –

Sarah: ‘Cause all those people –

Amanda: Like a Dexter scenario.

Elyse: Yeah, exactly. Like, there’s an internal logic to what he’s doing, so it’s not just randomly killing people for money.

Sarah: All right, I get it.

Elyse: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Elyse: There’s a couple of actually male/male assassin books that I have on my TBR.

Sarah: Oh, are they the – is, did HelenKay Dimon write male assassins like Mr. and Mr. Smith, or are they agents?

Elyse: She, they were spies.

Sarah: They were spies; that’s different.

Elyse: So there is an, I think, Laura – is it Lauren? I feel bad; I’m a terrible person. I got her to sign a book yesterday, and I think HelenKay actually recommended her? She writes the Whiskey Sharp series, I think it is?

Sarah: Lauren Dane.

Elyse: No, not – it’s like Lauren Rayne. I think.

Sarah: Whiskey Sharp is Lauren Dane.

Elyse: No, then I’m thinking of something else. Layla Reyne, and her series is –

Amanda: Is it the, the Whiskey Malt?

Elyse: Yes, it’s like the first book I think is Single Malt, and then it’s, like, Cask Something.

Amanda: They’ve got, like, whiskey titles.

Elyse: Right. So there’s that. There’s been a lot of male/male, like, spy and assassin-type stuff coming out lately, which makes my heart so happy.

Sarah: I wonder why.

Elyse: I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are a lot of franchises that don’t have strong female leads, and so there’s a lot of fanfiction between male leads in, like, action movies because they’re the most developed? That’s my assumption? It’s Where Death Meets the Devil by L. J. Hayward –

Sarah: Ooh!

Elyse: – and it’s about a spy and an assassin who should be, like, enemies but have to team up to get out of a really bad situation, and so it’s kind of like a temporary alliance? And it’s supposedly very action oriented, which I’m very excited for.

Sarah: Very cool.

Elyse: And then there was another one – these are all out, by the way – and it’s one where the hero finds out his next-door neighbor, or, like, the guy in the apartment across the way, is actually, like, a hitman, but up until –

Sarah: It happens!

Elyse: Right, but, like, up until now they’ve gotten along really great. It’s just, he happens to be a hitman. I think there’s a cute dog in that one too. And now – but the cover on that one’s really good too, so now I need to find it. It would help if I didn’t have nine thousand fucking Kindle books to scroll through, because clearly I have zero impulse control.

Sarah: So let me ask you a question that I have put very little thought behind, but I’m now pondering.

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: So, so HarperCollins bought Harlequin –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – ‘cause they wanted their international distribution channels, and there’s all of these category romances –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – and a lot of lines are closing.

Elyse: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Do you think there is still a market for category romance?

Amanda: I have never read a category romance.

Elyse: I read –

Amanda: Ever.

Elyse: – a lot of category romance when I first was getting into romance; specifically –

Sarah: They were a gateway for so many people!

Elyse: Specifically Harlequin Presents. Like, that was, I went from reading my mom’s, like, Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney, which have a lot of Presents-like themes: you have, like, tend to have an older hero who’s powerful and maybe a little more mysterious –

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: – international settings, so I went from –

Sarah: Wealth, opulence.

Elyse: Right.

Amanda: I feel like what category does well is that with each line it’s kind of a shorthand for you know what you’re getting into.

Sarah: Yes, that’s very true.

Amanda: Like, they have a, like, a medical romance line, and if that’s your thing, they have an entire –

Elyse: Right.

Amanda: – selection for you, and then, like, Nocturne, I think, is their paranormal romance line. So it’s a good shorthand for, I like these things; here is, you know, hundreds and hundreds of books that have something to do with this one trope or feeling or genre that I enjoy. But, yeah, I don’t know if that’s sustainable?

Elyse: The book I was looking for is Warrior’s Cross by Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux, for the show notes, so.

Sarah: Got it.

Elyse: Yeah, I don’t know. But I feel like, I found so many authors through their category backlist. I mean, I found HelenKay Dimon through category romance, ‘cause she used to write, I think, Silhouette suspense, whatever their suspense line was; I don’t remember.

Sarah: Intrigue.

Elyse: No, Intrigue was Harlequin. Intimate Moments or something.

Sarah: Silhouette Intimate romance?

Elyse: But I mean you, even if you look at, like, the really big-name authors, they all started in category romance.

Amanda: I think J. R. Ward did as Jessica Bird, wrote category romance?

Sarah: Oh! Yeah, she wrote category. But it’s interesting to me, one of the things that the sort of survey and overview that Elizabeth Lane did that I spoke to her about on the podcast was looking at – she was specifically looking at when did GLBT characters start showing up in category, but the thing that she realized and looked at that I was gravitating towards was the fact that there were so many readers, or excuse me, so many writers who moved from category to single title. That was the path. Now you have so many writers who start from fanfic to self-published –

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: – and there isn’t so much a differentiation among self-published writers between category and single title. It’s just, it’s novella, short, whatever; they call it whatever they want. So you have more writers coming into the genre from fanfic. One of the things I think the genre struggles with is its inclusivity of people, and readers who are currently reading YA and reading fanfic and spending all their time on Wattpad are probably more accustomed to seeing a more inclusive representation in the characters that they read.

Elyse: Yep.

Sarah: If they get to romance, and it’s, like, nothing but white, straight people, they’re going to be like, well, fuck this, and they’re going to go elsewhere.

Elyse: I think that –

Sarah: And the lack of diversity and inclusivity in category – specifically, category published by publishers, not category-length books that are self-published, because there’s obviously much more – [musical alert] – it’s time to do the grocery cart! – obviously much more inclusivity within the self-published, ‘cause that’s why they’re self-published – that particular area, the, specifically, the publisher-generated category romances, I don’t know if there’s going to be anything in the future there if the readers who are coming into the genre at this point are expecting to see things that they’re not going to find there.

Amanda: And – so I think this is anecdotal.

Sarah: I love some anecdata! Who said we had to know what we’re talking about? We’ll make shit up!

Amanda: Yeah! I –

Sarah: We’ve got microphones.

Amanda: – I feel as though readers who are my age – I’m twenty-nine, by the way – readers who are my age and younger aren’t reading category romances.

Sarah: No, I don’t –

Elyse: I think that the similarity, like you were pointing out, with self-published and category is you know what you’re getting. Like, a lot of self-published books are, like, her secret boss’s baby. I mean, it’s the same thing: it’s like, this is what you are getting; I’m going to put it right on the title. And you’re right, it’s filling that shorter length need where you don’t want a book that’s five hundred pages; you want a book that’s 175.

Sarah: Right. Exactly.

Elyse: And I kind of feel like at this point, Harlequin’s just going to run out of titles.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Oh, I’m sure they’ve got duplicates.

Elyse: There’s got to be, like, a generator, like some, some massive supercomputer in the basement that’s just generating category romance titles at this point.

Sarah: Okay, that’s very funny. Well, anything else you want to say?

Elyse: Yeah, I want to talk about that author I found yesterday, but I had to look her up. Okay, so –

Sarah: I want to hear all about it, so go for it!

Elyse: So I found this author I’d never heard of at the romantic suspense party, and she writes, they’re really thrillers, more so than romantic suspense. Her name is K. J. Howe, H-O-W-E.

Sarah: We really need a better vocabulary for the different flavors of suspense. It’s like contemporary; it’s too big of a title –

Elyse: Title, yeah.

Sarah: – to fully encompass. Like, you –

Elyse: Like –

Sarah: – you could be talking about romantic suspense with, like, nineteen pages of entrails and violence –

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: – and I could be talking about suspense where, like, there’s some fighting on an airplane and some exotic adventuring like Romancing the Stone. Those are two different things.

Elyse: I think she writes what I would probably describe, it’s, it’s a recurring character, so it’s like thrillers with fucking and a romantic arc that kind of goes through the –

Sarah: Thrillers with fucking.

Elyse: Thriller with fucking. This is why I should be in marketing. The thrillers with fucking genre –

Sarah: I can’t believe Walmart and Target haven’t just snapped you right up.

Elyse: Right? [Laughs]

Sarah: Imagine that on a bookshelf title.

Elyse: Thrillers with fucking.

Sarah: Thrillers with Fucking.

Elyse: I work in transportation; we’ve got to be real fucking specific here, okay? Yeah, so anyway, back to K. J. Howe. It’s a series of books about a woman who is a kidnapping and ransom specialist, so, like, you know, you hear about businessmen and stuff getting kidnapped in foreign countries and being held for ransom. She’s, like, the person who comes in and manages that process to bring them back, and her dark past is that her brother, as a child, was kidnapped and never found again. So this is like –

Sarah: Aw.

Elyse: – all of my catnip. In fact, I got back to the room, and I had to call my mom and tell her about this book, ‘cause, like, that’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – that’s her catnip as well, and she’s like, you better let me read that when you’re done!

Sarah: I’m kind of bummed that I don’t have a recording of that conversation. Like – [Wisconsin-ish accent] – ma, ma! I found this book; I’ve got to tell you about it. Oh, tell me all the things!

Elyse: Well, she’s from Chicago, so she doesn’t do the O.

Sarah: Oh, she’s got, she’s got the Chicago –

Elyse: She’s got the hard A kind of sound.

Sarah: Yeah.

Elyse: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s very close to the, the Pittsburgh accent that I grew up with –

Elyse: Yeah.

Sarah: – sounds like that.

Elyse: Yeah, that’s exactly what it sounds like. Yeah. Next time I’ll just bring, bring that there.

Sarah: Just bring your mom.

Elyse: [Laughs] We’ll just record at Rhinebeck somehow.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’d be amazing!

Elyse: Oh God. So yeah, no, I’m really excited for that. Thrillers with fucking.

Sarah: Because you have thrillers with fucking, you have psychological horror.

Elyse: [Whispers] Yes!

Sarah: ‘Cause I think that a lot of the un-, I think that a lot of that unreliable narrator, female-centered, creep-tastic, much trafficking in revenge stories that we’re seeing, that’s a crossover, I think, between suspense and horror. Like, there’s a horror element to those books.

Elyse: And there’s, like, a, a throwback to Gothics too, because Gothics –

Sarah: Totally.

Elyse: – you never knew – like, you definitely wanted to bone the hero, but he also –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – he also might be very bad. There’s this, I have to find it –

Amanda: Speaking of Gothics, while you’re looking –

Elyse or Sarah: [Whispers] Yes.

Amanda: – Kensington mentioned that they’re looking to acquire some Gothic romances.

Sarah: Oooh.

Elyse: Sarah, I have to quit my job.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: I can do this.

Sarah: You want to acquire them, or do you want to write them?

Elyse: I feel like I could, I could write all the Gothics! No, I really couldn’t.

Sarah: [Wisconsin-ish accent] You should totes write the Gothics, eh?

Elyse: I can’t write creatively to save my life.

Sarah: Oh, I think Elyse can write a Gothic, eh? What do you think?

Elyse: Set in the plains of Wisconsin.

Amanda: I don’t know. I –

Sarah: [Wisconsin-ish accent continues] Oh, well, we saw that girl in the field, and we knew she was dead, so we went and got Granddad with the tractor.

Amanda: I don’t know who, if Elyse –

Elyse: Okay –

Amanda: – would be able to keep, like, the setting. Like, I feel like Elyse would just get frustrated and, like, type something in there that’s like, what? This doesn’t fit at all! And Elyse is like, well, just fuck this stupid thing! And just writes really out of character.

Elyse: So the comment about the body in the field, I watched a Dateline recently about a woman who went missing and was found dead in Green Bay, Wisconsin, not far from where I work, and actually in the last scene in the bar I did a Christmas party in recently. I was like, aw, sweet. So anyway, people from Green Bay and the upper Midwest, we’re like, we’re basically Canadian is what it amounts to. We just are.

Sarah: You’re basically like Canadian Lite.

Elyse: Ca-, we’re Canadian Lite, right. And so –

Sarah: You’re Diet Canadian.

Elyse: So –

Sarah: It’s like Diet Coke, only Canadian.

Elyse: So the blonde –

Amanda: Canadian Zero.

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs]

Elyse: The blonde Dateline lady is trying to get the cops to talk about this case like in a really dramatic way. You know how they always do the thing where, like –

Sarah: [Dramatically] And what did you say?

Elyse: No, they’re, they always lead the ques-, it’s al-, they always repeat the fucking question. They’re always like, and then you found the body, and you realized this case was more dangerous than you thought, and he’s like, and then we found the body, and we realized – like, they always repeat what the newscaster says. Anyway, the dudes from Wisconsin, from the GBPD were just like, she’s ask- –

Sarah: GBPD.

Elyse: – she’s asking ‘em questions; she’s like, so is that when you thought maybe the boyfriend did it? And they’re like, well, you know, we’ve got to get, we’ve got to get sufficient evidence to make an arrest on that. Like, it was super Fargo-y –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – and you could tell she was getting more and more pissed off, and every time they do these Datelines, like, it’s either a dog walker or a jogger that finds the body?

Sarah: Of course.

Elyse: But no, it was two teenage boys who were clearing rocks out of Poppa’s field, which is a thousand percent a thing you do on the weekends in Wisconsin, and then you go drink his hard liquor. And they’re interviewing the kids, and they’re like, did you ever imagine you’d find a human body? And they’re like, well, no, but, you know, I mean, sometimes these things happen. You know, like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – no one is playing into their need for drama. Anyway.

Sarah: Oh my God, that’s amazing.

Elyse: So there’s an author that I’m very excited to read called Laura Purcell, who writes in the horror genre, but she’s a woman, and there aren’t a lot of women in the horror genre? And she has this book called The Silent Companions. Get this –

Amanda: Where can I get one of those?

Elyse: A silent companion?

[Laughter]

Elyse: That’s what, that’s what Linus is.

Amanda: No. He is very vocal.

Elyse: When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband’s crumbling country estate The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she’s expecting. When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury, but with her husband dead just a few weeks after their marriage, her new servants resentful, and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her husband’s awkward cousin for company, or so she thinks. Inside her new home is a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure, a silent companion, that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself.

Sarah: Whaat?

Elyse: The residents of The Bridge are terrified of the figure, but Elsie tries to shrug this off as simple superstition – that is, until she notices the figure’s eyes following her.

Amanda: This reminds me of my mom’s walk-in closet.

[Laughter]

Amanda: And I’ll tell you why.

Sarah: Okay.

Amanda: My –

Sarah: I was not expecting that.

Elyse: No.

Amanda: My aunt used to be a flight attendant on a now-defunct airline, and when she would travel internationally, she would get my mom dolls from all the different countries she went to. She went to Ireland and got this very creepy leprechaun doll, leprechaun doll. It was probably two and a half feet tall, had a very bulbous nose –

Sarah: Ohhh.

Amanda: – bright blue eyes –

Sarah: Ohhh.

Elyse: Nooo.

Amanda: – and, like, gray-haired eyelashes and very rosy cheeks.

Sarah: Nooo!

Amanda: And it wasn’t in a box. It was on its stand, and it would sit on the top shelf of my mother’s walk-in closet facing the door.

Elyse: Jesus Christ!

Amanda: My brother and I were terrified –

Elyse: Well, yeah!

Amanda: – of this leprechaun doll in my mom’s walk-in closet. Like, it was –

Sarah: Ohhh, freaky.

Amanda: – frightening. And I think she knew that we were frightened of it, ‘cause we told her, and she’s like, I’m not going to move it!

Sarah: She knew you were frightened of it.

Amanda: We wound up telling her, and she didn’t bother to hide it. She just left it there. She’s like, okay, well –

Elyse: Dolls, dolls are creepy though. Like, I don’t – there’s something about, like, dolls that freaks me out a little bit.

Sarah: So that brings us to the end of our podcasts from RT and the end of RT, actually, ‘cause that was the last one.

If you have ideas or questions or feedback, or you want to tell me that I’m so wrong about everything, this would not be the first time. You can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, and as I said in the intro, if you emailed me and I haven’t written back, I just found a whole bunch of email that I should have received in the spam and something other tab of Gmail, and I’m fixing it this week, so if you emailed me and you didn’t hear back, feel free to email me again, and I’m really sorry about that.

Speaking of email, I have a message for you guys from Meagan – I hope it’s Meg-enn, maybe it’s Mee-genn; if I’m saying it wrong, I apologize – and she sent me an email with some audiobook recommendations, and I know you guys love audiobooks, so I wanted to share this with you.

Dear Sarah,

“I’m a long-time fan of the site and podcast, and a newcomer to audiobooks. I had to start listening to books when I was on an award committee for the ALA or I’d never have been able to get through all my reading! (Incidentally, if you’re not familiar with the ALA awards The Reading List and The Listen List, they might be of interest to you… Lots of genre fiction, and they come with read-alikes or listen-alikes!)”

Sarah: Librarians need to just stop being so awesome.

“Anyway, when I was catching up on the podcast I was interested to hear that you love a single narrator and are a sucker for accents. Have I got the book for you! Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley is technically the second book in The Rook series, but I read it first and didn’t have any trouble following it. The reason I’m suggesting Stiletto instead of book one, The Rook, is that Stiletto is narrated by the amazing Moira Quirk. (How great is that name?) She replaced the narrator of book one, and while I read The Rook rather than listen to it, I’ve heard that the first narrator wasn’t nearly as good. Moira Quirk, meanwhile, has an incredible sense of comedic timing, and the woman knows her way around an accent. Stiletto was the first audiobook I ever listened to where I really understood the appeal of an audiobook.

“She’s also the narrator for most, if not all, of Gail Carriger’s books. I’ve already read them, but based on how much I love Moira Quirk I’m considering going back to listen to them on audio. Maybe once I’ve finished catching up on podcasts. :)”

Sarah: Well, that’s cool! Thank you very much for those recommendations. One of the things that summer brings for me, and I’m guessing also for you, is a lot of time in the car, so audiobooks are definitely on my list of things that I want to stock up on.

One audiobook that I purchased recently was inspired by a television show that my husband and I have been watching, so this is a bit of a weird recommendation for everyone, but I’m going to share it anyway. I was a little hesitant to share this on the site, because I don’t think that I’m technically watching legal copies of this show; in fact, I’m pretty sure that I’m not, but I’m also pretty sure this show was never released the US, and it is so beautiful and so gorgeously well done and so peaceful and welcoming, and I love it so much that I’m going to tell you about it, but I don’t believe that there is a way to watch it in the United States outside of watching it on YouTube. The show is called Great Canal Journeys. It’s an older television show, I don’t think there have been new ones made in a couple of years, and it is a, it’s, I want to say it’s a reality show. It’s part documentary, part edited, but it’s actual journeys. The stars are Timothy West and Prunella Scales, who are British actors, and they’ve been married for over fifty years, and their favorite thing to do is go on canal journeys. Prunella Scales has dementia when the show is recording, and I think now has advanced Alzheimer’s, but it’s all about their taking their little canal boat up and down different canals, first in England, then they go to Scotland and Wales. They go to Sweden; they go all over the place. And the show is, it’s got that same sort of warm and welcoming, peaceful sort of tone to it that the Great British Bake Off early seasons did. They get annoyed with each other; he gets upset that she can’t remember things sometimes. They do their own voiceover in the editing, and they talk about the footage as they’re, as they’re airing it, but it’s also beautifully edited, so you get this sort of story of them and their now-adult children and their marriage, and you get to see these two older people traveling all over the world, which I find really inspiring. So I’ve been watching that with my husband on YouTube like a terrible, terrible person, because I don’t think that there’s any legal way for me to get it. However, Timothy West wrote a book called Our Great Canal Journeys: A Lifetime of Memories on Britain’s Most Beautiful Waterways, and he narrates it, and he’s got a great voice. He does a lot of voiceover work; I think he did a lot of Anthony Trollopes – I wonder if my grandmother ever listened to them – but the Great Canal Journeys book is overlapping some of the television episodes, but we’ve been listening to it in the car, and it is just lovely, so if you would like a travel recommendation, that would be my recommendation for you.

And that brings me to the end of this episode. If you would like to get in touch with me, please do! Especially if you wrote to me and didn’t hear back; I feel really bad about that. Our email address is sbjpodcast@gmail.com, and you can also tweet at me @SmartBitches.

This episode was brought to you by Whiskey Sharp: Torn by Lauren Dane. Beau Petty has been searching his whole life. He has been searching for a place to fill the empty spaces in him, a way to tame his restlessness, and answers to a secret that he has never stopped trying to solve. He was not searching for a woman to claim all of him, but then Cora Silvera walks back into his life, and he is ready to search out all the ways that he can make her his. Cora has spent her entire life as the family nurturer, taking care of others, and she is ready to pass that job on to someone else. It’s in the moment that she makes that decision that her former teenage crush reappears, and the draw of their connection is like nothing either of them has experienced. He craves being around her. She accepts him, dark corners and all. Beau thinks Cora has had enough drama in her life, and he wants to protect her from the secrets of his past, even if that means holding back the last pieces of himself. But Cora is no pushover, and she means to claim every piece of him, because sometimes what you find is not what you were searching for. Whiskey Sharp: Torn by Lauren Dane is on sale now wherever books are sold.

This week’s transcript is being brought to you by everyone who supports the podcast Patreon. Thank you, folks! You are terrific. The support of the Patreon community means that I have transcripts for each episode, I can transcribe episodes in the archive, and I can maintain equipment for live shows. I also collaborate with the Patreon community to develop questions, so if you’d like to take a look, patreon.com/SmartBitches.

I also want to thank some of the Patreon folks personally, so to Debbie, Jane, Anna, Lil, Eva, and Ann, thank you so very much for being part of our Patreon community.

Are there other ways to support the show? Yes! Sing along or, you know, compose a rhyme in iambic pentameter. You can leave a review however you listen; you can tell a friend; you can subscribe; whatever works. But if you’re hanging out with me and making this show part of the podcasts that you listen to, thank you! I am really honored.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. She’s on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries Live @ 25. This track is called “Spiders,” and you can find this album at Amazon, at iTunes, and wherever you buy your funky tunes. You can also learn more about Peatbog Faeries at peatbogfaeries.com, and their whole back catalog is pretty awesome.

Now I get to tell you what’s coming up on the website! You know there’s a website, right? Yep! True story! There’s a website; it was there first. Coming up this weekend, we have a guest review from Tara Scott, who reviews a lot of new lesbian romances for us. We also have a Hide Your Wallet, which is where we talk about all the new July books that we want to buy, and then we go buy more books because everyone else is talking about the books that they want to buy, and much like Whatcha Reading? it’s kind of expensive. We’re also all about having less than zero impulse control here, so everyone who likes to find out what’s on sale and what’s coming out this month, come hang out with us. We also have a lovely guest review of The Kiss Quotient from a reader whose writing will probably make you cry, and we have, of course, a Bachelorette recap, reviews of new romances in several genres, and Cover Awe. I hope you will stop by and hang out with us.

I will have links to all of the books and television shows and things that we discussed in this episode and links to some of the things we talked about, including Rebel Base from Kensington.

But as always, I end with a terrible joke. This one’s pretty bad, and I’m pretty pleased with this one because – [laughs] – my kids went to camp, and before they left, they wanted to watch The Princess Bride, so this is the perfect joke for me. This one comes from Beth P. Thank you, Beth P.

What do you call a chronic fear of giants?

What do you call a chronic fear of giants?

Fee-fi-phobia!

[Laughs] Anybody want a peanut? Ah, that was so great! Thank you, Beth P.!

So on behalf of Amanda and Elyse and everyone here and all of the cats on my desk, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you here next week.

[leggy music]