310. Heroine Sociopaths and Emotional Suspense: An Interview with Victoria Helen Stone

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Well, hello there, and welcome to episode number 310 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Victoria Helen Stone. First, my apologies. In this recording, Victoria sounds terrific! I am underwater, predominantly on the right side of your head if you’re wearing earbuds. I am really not sure what I did wrong, but I apologize in advance. But this conversation is interesting because of what she has to say, so you can just, like, skip when I’m talking and then go right back to her talking. Why? You, this interview’s so great.

Victoria Helen Stone, who is also known as Victoria Dahl, has a new book out called Jane Doe, and if you’ve been on the site this week, you know we’ve been talking about it. I read this book in one sitting. It was terrifyingly good. The heroine, Jane, is a self-acknowledged sociopath, and hanging out in her head was quite an experience. She is out to get revenge on someone who did irreparable harm to her friend, and in this interview we talk about shifting from romance to writing revenge thrillers or, as Stone calls them, emotional suspense, which I think is a great term. We also talk about the catharsis of addressing double standards and processing rage through your writing; the enjoyment of burning of shit down; the use of genre terms like women’s fiction, chick lit, psychological thrillers, and book-club fiction; the empowerment of women taking control, including taking control of when they lose control; the freeing experience of writing Jane Doe, who is, as a sociopath, a heroine who has zero self-doubt; and what it’s like to be inside the head of a person who is determined to exact complete and total revenge. Among Victoria’s recommendations, we talk about safe spaces to explore kink in romantic fiction and some of her frustrations with the horror genre, and at the end of the interview, she drops this fascinating idea that I am really seriously thinking about following up with her on. She says that romance and horror are flip sides of the same human drive to survive. How cool is that, right?

Now, I do want to issue a general content warning: on and off through this conversation, we talk about gaslighting, harassment, school shootings, entitlement, the foundations of emotionally abusive relationships, and then we have an in-depth discussion of sociopathy, so if those are topics that would generally make you unhappy, you might want to skip this episode.

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Our transcripts are compiled each week by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter. The podcast transcript this week is being brought to you by Second Time Around by Nancy Herkness. Kyra Dixon, a blue-collar girl from the boondocks, is devoted to her job at a local community center that matches underprivileged kids with rescue dogs. When she runs into Will Chase – Connecticut blue blood, billionaire CEO, and her old college crush – she’s surprised that he asks for a favor from her: to be his date for his uptight family’s dreaded annual garden party. And if his parents don’t approve, all the better. Kyra’s not about to say no. It’ll give her a chance to be oh-so-close to her unrequited love. What begins as a little fling turns so mad hot, so fast, that Kyra finds herself falling all over again for a fantasy that won’t come true. How can it? She doesn’t belong in Will’s world, and she doesn’t want to. But Will does want to belong in hers. All he has to do now is prove it, and Will is prepared to give up whatever is necessary to get what his heart most desires. Second Time Around by Nancy Herkness is the perfect contemporary for readers who love billionaires, hot second-chance romances, and adorable dogs. Second Time Around by Nancy Herkness is published by Montlake Romance and is available now wherever books are sold. Find out more about the author at nancyherkness.com.

Zeb: Woof, woof!

Sarah: Here in my world, the FedEx truck has arrived, and Zeb would like to tell you that he is not okay with this occurrence, and, you know, trucks are huge, so he can see them. So Zeb’s in the background. He says hi! [Laughs]

I do have a compliment! From me, not from Zeb. This compliment is for Erin K.

Erin – Some of your friends call your phone when they know that it’s off just to hear your voice, because it is reassuring, and it makes them feel more confident.

If you would like a compliment of your very own, head over to our podcast Patreon at patreon.com/SmartBitches. The support of the Patreon community helps the show keep on going into the future, and it helps me commission transcripts for current and older episodes. I also have a lot of interviews scheduled in the next few weeks, and I love asking for question ideas, so if you’d like to join the Patreon community, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Stay tuned after the interview. I will have information about the music you are listening to; I will have a preview of what’s coming up on the site this week and a truly terrible joke.

But for now, let’s get on with this interview. On with the podcast.

[music]

Victoria Dahl/Victoria Helen Stone: My name is Victoria. I’m Victoria Dahl when I wrote romance, and I’m Victoria Helen Stone now, writing general fiction.

Sarah: You were one of the earlier super sexy, female confident, contemporary romances that I remember reading.

Victoria: Yeah, I think I was among the, the first group of people writing super hot contemporaries that were also, that weren’t really dark.

Sarah: No, they were happy!

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: And funny. Like, you, you had really great comedy. Like, I still think about that one scene in Talk Me Down is it? Where she, like, turns on his, her, his, his – he’s, they’re in a cop car –

Victoria: Yeah, they’re making out in a cop car?

Sarah: – and she turns on the lights and sirens –

Victoria: Yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: – with her butt or something? I mean, that’s really great comedy! So do you miss writing romance at all?

Victoria: I do! You know, what, what I don’t miss is that right now I’m only writing one book a year.

Sarah: That’s handy.

Victoria: I could easily fit a romance in there also, but it’s been very luxurious to just write one, write and edit one book a year. You know, there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world, and I –

Sarah: Just a little bit!

Victoria: [Laughs] And it’s just all so exhausting.

Sarah: It’s all ex- – and, and –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – I don’t think – it took me a while to realize this, but when you listen or read or absorb all that, it takes a lot of energy out of you –

Victoria: It, yeah.

Sarah: – to process that much.

Victoria: It’s so much emotional energy, and quite a few years ago my husband got H1N1 pneumonia and was in intensive care –

Sarah: Holy cow.

Victoria: – on a ventilator, and I wasn’t doing anything when that was happening. I was just sitting at the hospital with him all day; there was nothing for me to do, but it was, I have never been that exhausted in my life.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: I would go home and just go to bed at, like, eight o’clock at night.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: And that was when it really hit me, how exhausting emotions are, how exhausting stress is –

Sarah: Yes!

Victoria: – and I think we’re all at a low level of that all the time now.

Sarah: Yes. Yes, and, and that low-level stress exhaustion –

Victoria: It does, it does, and it’s just, every day you wake up –

Sarah: And it’s, like, another round of crap!

Victoria: Yeah! You don’t know what you’re going to find –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – when you log in to Twitter or turn on the television. There’s, you just – personally, I wake up every day just thinking, well, let’s find out what’s happening.

Sarah: Well, what shit storm is brewing today? What’s the consistency of today’s poop tornado?

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: So you know from writing romance –

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – you took a little break between writing romance and your first book, right?

Victoria: You mean my first general fiction that came out?

Sarah: Yes, your first general –

Victoria: I didn’t really take a break. What happened was, I didn’t get another contract with HQN, so I came up with an idea for a three-book series that took me a while, and my agent was going to go out and – so, you know, there was a couple months of working on that –

Sarah: Of course!

Victoria: – and then I was asked to try my hand at women’s fiction, and I’d never written – well, we’ll talk about the whole women’s fiction thing, but – [laughs]

Sarah: Yes, please! I would love to hear your thoughts.

Victoria: I, I’m – well, first I’ll finish this thought.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

Victoria: So I was asked to try my hand at it, and I really didn’t want to, but I took a couple months to think that through, and then I knew if I was going to write something totally different, I couldn’t, I could not focus on anything else.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: So it, there was quite a, a, a break in between my last romance and, and my first general fiction coming out. My former editor at HQN, Tara Parsons, she first moved to Mira –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – and she asked me if I would try my hand at something that wasn’t romance, and I said no, I wasn’t interested.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: Like, it, it just, it wasn’t in my brain power, so I said no, and then she moved to Amazon, working or at the head of Lake Union, basically.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: And she asked me again if I would consider writing something for her, and I said no, I wasn’t interested, and then a couple years, I think it was a couple years later, we sat down at BEA just to catch up, and she said, look, I really want you to write something for me, and I said no.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Thank you for this really lovely, insistent question, but nah.

Victoria: Yes. And, to be clear, I love working with Tara. I mean –

Sarah: Oh yeah! I mean, it’s hard to say no to somebody who’s like, would you do this for me?

Victoria: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: It’s very hard to say no to that.

Victoria: And she’s wonderful, and we just get each other. So I said, and she said, why won’t you, you know, try writing something that’s not romance? And I said, look, I’m just, I’m not interested in writing a book that doesn’t have sex, doesn’t have female sexuality, that doesn’t have a heroine who is, you know, curses and – I don’t know; that sounds silly, but –

Sarah: No!

Victoria: – I think in my head, you know, women’s fiction was sort of cozy, almost? That’s my bad, but –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – you know, so she said, look, if you want to write a women’s fiction novel that has sex and stuff going on, then you can do that. Let’s try it!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: So I went home, and I brainstormed for a while, and I came up with an idea that wasn’t quite right, and then I came up with another idea that she liked, and so I just went forward with it, and that was Evelyn, After, and that’s the story of a woman who, you know, seems to have the perfect suburban life, and then her husband calls, and he’s been in a car accident, and he wasn’t alone, and sort of, and that starts a spiral for her of questioning, like, you know, what is he doing? What’s going on? She becomes obsessed with the other woman, and then she becomes obsessed with the other woman’s husband. So that was that story, and it was –

Sarah: That’s totally not a romance!

Victoria: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: That is not a romance.

Victoria: No, it wasn’t, and it was so freeing. Like, when I was writing romance, I never felt like – you know, it’s genre; you write within the bounds of the genre. I never felt –

Sarah: Right, yeah. And it was a genre you loved!

Victoria: Yes! A genre I love, and I never felt like I was trapped or constricted by it.

Sarah: Oh no, course not.

Victoria: But then when I started writing this book, it was like all those little, dark thoughts – also, to be clear, it was during this election process, so there was a lot dark thoughts – [laughs] – going on.

Sarah: So basically, you’ve been processing your rage in a very productive fashion.

Victoria: A hundred percent. It was so cathartic.

Sarah: That’s some catharsis right there.

Victoria: It was –

Sarah: Wha-ho!

Victoria: Yeah, just to get all the sexism and everything out on the page and deal with it?

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: In a way – I mean, I address sexism in my romance novels, and I address the double standards of women’s sexuality –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Victoria: – but this was in a much, I mean, much darker, and, you know, you can go violent, you can go torture, anything –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: Emotional torture, I mean; I don’t –

Sarah: Not physical torture.

Victoria: Right. [Laughs]

Sarah: That makes me think of, of Molly from Talk Me Down, who is very, she was an erotica writer.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: She was very sex positive; she was very confident. She had a lot of confidence in her own ability to both write about sexuality and be a sexual being, and I remember she moves to the town that she moves to because she’s lost her, her mojo for writing.

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: She needs her spark back –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – and for her, she was sort of operating inside patriarchal double standards and sexism and hiding her identity and hiding what she does, not because she was ashamed of it –

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: – but because she knew there’d be consequences.

Victoria: Yeah, because she’s aware of what other people think about people who write that.

Sarah: And with Evelyn, she’s like, wait a minute, I’ve decided not to give a flying fuck about what anybody –

Victoria: Right, because she’s been living according to the societal norms –

Sarah: Exactly.

Victoria: – and it didn’t work out for her.

Sarah: No. So why did I bother making myself miserable to hold up all these expectations if this is what I get in the end?

Victoria: Yes, exactly.

Sarah: Burn it down!

Victoria: [Laughs] Exactly!

Sarah: So you’re burning shit down!

Victoria: I’m burning shit down, yes.

Sarah: Women, burning down women’s fiction –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: – with Victoria Helen Stone.

Victoria: And on the women’s fiction front, I’m, I’m glad to see that, I think that that phrase is kind of starting to fall out of favor, which I’m glad.

Sarah: Yes, I had noticed, yes.

Victoria: Because I understand that it makes it easier for people to find the books that they’re looking for –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – but there’s no such genre as men’s fiction.

Sarah: Dick lit. There’s no dick lit.

Victoria: [Laughs] Exactly!

Sarah: There’s chick lit.

Victoria: [Laughs] And for me it was like, it’s, it’s like a warning to men, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: Like, this is not a book you’re going to be interested in.

Sarah: No, this is about women.

Victoria: Be careful –

Sarah: This is about women’s feels.

Victoria: Exactly. And when Evelyn, After came out, one of the categories Amazon put, you know, they put it under a lot of categories, but one of the categories was psychological thriller –

Sarah: Ooh!

Victoria: – and there were a lot of like, this isn’t a thriller! This is just some woman, you know, whose husband cheated on her. So I’ve taken to calling it emotional suspense, because –

Sarah: That’s a great genre term!

Victoria: Yeah, because it’s –

Sarah: Because it’s, there’s no suspense element to what Evelyn is doing so much, only the suspense is what she’s revealing or, or learning.

Victoria: Right, the suspense is, is like –

Sarah: There’s no overarching, like,  somebody’s trying to kill –

Victoria: – you have no idea what she’s going to do. She’s spiraling.

Sarah: Right. Emotional suspense really captures that!

Victoria: Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, it’s not – for her, her whole life is falling apart. It doesn’t involved guns or people chasing her –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – but it’s real.

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: Like, she has no idea what’s going to happen to her life. There’s, there are some criminal elements to the story. But, and then in all of my books, so the, the next book, Half Past, is also just, it’s not that she’s in danger; it’s that her, her world is in danger of falling apart. In Half Past, she finds out that her mother is not her real mother –

Sarah: Oh boy.

Victoria: – but her father is her father, and they’ve been married the whole time, so she has to find out what –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – what happened in their past. So it’s not that she’s in danger, but, like I said, it’s just that her, her world –

Sarah: Emotional suspense –

Victoria: Yeah, it’s emotional suspense, and to some readers – maybe most of them male; I don’t know – that doesn’t feel dangerous enough.

Sarah: They don’t know anything. Because I’m sure the female readers are like, holy shit.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Because that’s really visceral stuff that you’re dealing with –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – because what you’re actually latching onto is identity.

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: Your place in the world, and women, we’re, we’re taught from a very young age to question ourselves.

Victoria: Yeah. And to make things better.

Sarah: Yes, we put up with these things –

Victoria: Make everything better.

Sarah: – and make everyone else feel good and safe.

Victoria: And when I was writing Evelyn, After, what I wanted people to be feeling when they were reading is, girl, don’t do that, don’t do it!

Sarah: Oh, honey, no. Honey, no! No! Oh, honey. Oh boy.

Victoria: If I’m going down, everybody’s going down. [Laughs]

Sarah: And yet there’s a wonderful – think about how many movies have a burn it all down theme, you know?

Victoria: Yes! Well, and even going all the way back to Thelma & Louise, like –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Victoria: – that’s why that movie was such a huge hit, because it was women saying fuck it.

Sarah: Fuck it!

Victoria: [Laughs] Fuck it all!

Sarah: I do not give a shit. Even, even 9 to 5 –

Victoria: Yes!

Sarah: – with Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.

Victoria: Yes. Oh my –

Sarah: Like, they hog-tie their boss, and they lock him in a room and, like, hook him up to a garage door so he can’t get out, and they take over the company! I adore –

Victoria: I love that movie so much, and it was on cable all the time when we were young. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes! I adore that movie. I love it so much, and every time I, every now and again I hear, like, let’s do a remake! No, you shall not! That is a sacred thing, and you shall not fuck it up.

Victoria: If you want to see again, watch it!

Sarah: It’s on TNT right now.

Victoria: And it was such a great time period. My mom was a business woman in the oil industry at that time –

Sarah: Oh shit.

Victoria: – in the ‘80s? I just –

Sarah: Oh yeah, piece of cake.

Victoria: – I mean, I can’t even imagine. It – so, I mean, that period of time, when women were really out in the workforce –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – wearing the suits with the shoulder pads –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – and just putting up with so much shit! I can’t –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: – I mean, horrible stuff. And that movie was so cathartic. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh –

Victoria: And it becomes so much more, for me, anyway; the older I get –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: – the more important female relationships are to me.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely. The older I get, the fewer fucks I have to give –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: – and the more I value my friendships.

Victoria: Absolutely.

Sarah: ‘Cause they’re, they’re very restorative. They’re the people who say to you before you do the Evelyn, After thing, no, wait.

Victoria: Don’t do it!

Sarah: Don’t do that. Don’t, just, let’s, let’s do something else.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Let’s try this instead.

Victoria: Yep. And the, last my thought on, on women’s fiction as a genre is, I’ve seen it called – frequently these days, and I don’t think it’s just Amazon – they call it book club fiction, which is maybe more indicative of how people use it? It sounds neutral, but, but – and then Amazon calls my books psychological thrillers.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: Like, Girl on the Train is sort of the quintessential –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – where she’s totally unreliable; you don’t even necessarily sympathize with her –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – but you want to see where she’s going to take it.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: There’s a little physical danger in that one, but most of it is just her spiraling.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: So.

Sarah: Yep. If you don’t get happiness, there’s always some form of vindication.

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: And catharsis.

Victoria: Yeah. And I think there’s somewhat of a happy ending just in, she’s not crazy.

Sarah: No!

Victoria: She wasn’t imagining this.

Sarah: This was not me; this was real.

Victoria: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: And, like, how affirming is that as a woman, right?

Sarah: Right? Oh my God, in every aspect of being a woman. No, your pain is real. No, your symptoms are real.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: No, this problem you’re having is real. No, it’s not just you.

Victoria: Yeah. And the –

Sarah: And the fundamental damage of gaslighting.

Victoria: Yes. Just everywhere, everywhere!

Sarah: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Victoria: Yeah. Yeah. I was on Twitter recently, and I have to say, I haven’t been getting as many trolls as, as often lately, and I don’t know if it’s because Twitter’s cracking down on abuse?

Sarah: They’re busy?

Victoria: There’s so many people to troll now that, you know, it’s, it gets spread out?

Sarah: Well, you know, they’re, on the whole, they’re not very good at organizing their time?

Victoria: [Laughs] But this guy, oh, I was complaining about these, these stories about incels and, like, should we consider sex redistribution? Oh, I don’t know. You don’t start this conversation; it’s not a conversation you have to have, which is –

Sarah: Sex distribution.

Victoria: Yeah. Like, do, what, what do you mean by that? Let’s, let’s – you know, they just gloss over it like it’s meaningless to talk about redistributing sex.

Sarah: Yeah, two words: Handmaid, followed by Tale.

[Laughter]

Victoria: Exactly!

Sarah: Oh dear God!

Victoria: So I was complain-, you know, I, I, I was cursing about it, and some guy just pops into the conversation and is like, you know, basically saying why don’t you learn to have a little sympathy for people? And then he says something like, not all women are bitches, but some are, apparently.

Sarah: Ooh, well, darn!

Victoria: And then, like –

Sarah: Got you there!

Victoria: – two tweets later, he’s admonishing me that we need to be more civil and understanding online, and it didn’t even occur to me until the next day, I’m like, wait, that guy just straight up called me a bitch –

Sarah: And then says –

Victoria: – and then came in with the gaslighting like, we just need to be nicer to each other.

Sarah: We need to be more civil. How is it that the cognitive dissonance does not rupture your eardrums? How is that not a thing?

Victoria: Yeah, so it’s just constant, like, you’re crazy –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – and you need to calm down.

Sarah: Yeah. I’m going to do something to make you angry and then tell you to calm down. This is a fun game.

Victoria: [Laughs] But yeah, so, yeah, so that might be the, the appeal of some of these unreliable narrator books is that, yes, it’s real; you’re not crazy.

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: Like, you feel like you’re losing your mind because there’s bad stuff going on.

Sarah: And you’re being told that it’s, that you’re, you’re, you’re, you are the cause and the solution to your problem.

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: It’s all you and no one else has –

Victoria: Yeah. So make everything better –

Sarah: Right, for everyone else, and put your feelings aside, ‘cause they’re not really important anyway.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: Why would you worry about that?

Victoria: [Laughs] And certainly this whole MeToo movement is fighting against that whole –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – no, it was a joke; you’re wrong –

Sarah: Nope.

Victoria: – or calm down, he didn’t mean it that way, or it’s flattering that he likes you.

Sarah: That’s just how he is; you should just ignore it.

Victoria: And, and especially the flattering thing. Like, ignore all of your instincts; this isn’t dangerous; this isn’t threatening. It’s nice!

Sarah: No.

Victoria: It’s fun that he likes you.

Sarah: Nooo. We have those instincts for a reason.

Victoria: Yes, exactly.

Sarah: Those are very important instincts.

Victoria: Well, and it’s so hard to explain to anybody, and especially to men, or, and, how just the wrong look –

Sarah: Especially the white, straight guys, yeah.

Victoria: – when somebody’s saying something –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – and everything in your body goes no, no.

Sarah: No! It’s –

Victoria: No, you can’t describe what it is.

Sarah: No!

Victoria: No, it’s just a feeling you get, and this plays into that whole, the whole school shooter thing, which unfortunately we’re talking again on another day where it happened –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – in San-, at Santa Fe High School, and –

Sarah: Texas, right?

Victoria: In Texas, yeah – and the response that, like, well, you should just be nicer to people like that when they’re in school. You should, you know, talk to them. Maybe he, he was mad because, you know, girls wouldn’t pay attention to him. It’s, it kind of plays into the incel thing, right?

Sarah: Oh, abs-, they’re all related –

Victoria: And telling people, if somebody seems dangerous, maybe you should be his friend. Like –

Sarah: Like, no! Maybe he shouldn’t have access to a firearm! How ‘bout that idea?

So your latest book, please tell me all about that. Super or very much a romance, right?

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: No. Nonononono. You told me, like –

Victoria: It’s –

Sarah: – you should read the first chapter, so I read the first chapter, and I was like, holy shit!

Victoria: It’s actually more romantic than my last two books!

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: But, yeah, as, the Amazon PR came up with the line, say goodbye to the unreliable narrator. So this book is very different from the first two. Jane is a sociopath, and she inserts herself into a man’s life in order to destroy it. He doesn’t know who she is.

Sarah: So there’s emotional manipulation, and the suspense is why she’s doing it?

Victoria: Why she’s doing it, and, and ultimately, how she’s going to get revenge on him, because she’s not sure. She wants to get to know him first – [laughs] – before she decides.

Sarah: So the hook is why is she doing this, and how is she going to –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: But you’re in her head.

Victoria: Yeah, it’s my only first person point of view book that I’ve ever written, and it was shockingly easy to slip into Jane’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: – mind.

Sarah: I was just going to ask, what is it like to set yourself inside the head of a sociopath and start narrating?

Victoria: It was the easiest book I’ve ever written, which is a little bit scary, but there’s no extraneous observations. There’s no self-doubt; there’s no second guessing.

Sarah: Nope.

Victoria: She’s just observing and making decisions, so it was just so straightforward to write and just a beautiful experience!

[Laughter]

Victoria: Well, because as women, we’ve been raised to constantly doubt ourselves, and she doesn’t have that, so it was very freeing to write her. She tries to figure out how people are feeling and thinking in order to manipulate them.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: That’s her currency, right. Like, that’s – so she, sociopaths can learn empathy, but it has to be learned, and they have to concentrate on it.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: You know, how, how would this person be feeling right now, you know? It’s not a natural thing for them at all.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: So yeah, so she, she can learn about people’s emotions in order to use them –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – but it, it’s not natural to her. She really is struggling with that in this book, because she is experiencing grief and loss, and she just doesn’t know what to do with it, and she doesn’t, like she’s, doesn’t know how other people live like this –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – with feeling things. So trying to process strong emotions, which she doesn’t normally have, is part of her, her challenge in the book.

Sarah: And exhausting.

Victoria: And contrary to what people think, when my, one of my editors read it, she didn’t think that Jane was actually a sociopath, because she does have feelings, and sociopaths have feelings.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: They don’t have guilt, they don’t have remorse, they don’t have empathy, but obviously they get angry. That’s, that’s an emotion, much to the surprise of men, but –

Sarah: Yeah, what? Oh!

Victoria: [Laughs] Women are emotional; men are just angry.

Sarah: Right, of course.

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: Right, yeah, wow!

Victoria: Anger is an emotion! [Laughs]

Sarah: Right! It’s a safe emotion.

Victoria: Right, and they’re, a lot of men are raised that if you feel fear or sadness or vulnerability, anger is the way –

Sarah: Yeah. Anger is the only option.

Victoria: – that you process that. Yeah, yeah. So, so, but sociopaths do have feelings, and in fact – this is the example I always give – Jeffrey Dahmer said that the reason that he killed and kept those peop-, those bodies, those people is because he was lonely. He didn’t have any friends. Sociopaths know that they’re not like other people –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – and they feel very lonely and isolated, because – a, a lot of people are born that way, or they’re sort of, sociopaths can be created in childhood, but it’s not a choice that they’ve made, and they, it’s not necessarily who they want to be, but they can’t get to where they want to be. And a lot of sociopaths get married very frequently. Like, they have the emotion of falling for somebody, right –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – and it’s exciting, and it’s sexual, and you’re feeling emotions, but then they go away very quickly when it gets back to regular life, you know.

Sarah: It’s infatuation.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s not a durable –

Victoria: Yeah, it’s the excitement and the infatuation, and then that wears off!

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: And then it’s like, oh, I’m not in love with this person anymore, which probably they were never in love with that person, and then they get divorced, and then they maybe get married again.

Sarah: Start again.

Victoria: Yeah. What happened is, I think we’ve all sort of have friends, had friends who’ve been involved in emotionally abusive relationships –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – and so I, I was coming from that place of thinking about that, and it’s the little evils in life that never get, there’s never any justice? You know, if you have a friend who’s in an emotionally abusive relationship, it’s not a, a situation where somebody’s going to go jail or you can call the police.

Sarah: No.

Victoria: Right. That was the place that I started from. I was sort of just thinking about, like, what, what if you could, what if you had those emotions about your friend and you didn’t have guilt and remorse.

Sarah: Ooh.

Victoria: So that was sort of my starting point, and I had read The Psychopath Test a few years ago, which is a book about, people used to distinguish between psychopath and sociopath; now there’s really no difference. The, they just call somebody a psychopath if they’re sociopathic and they’ve committed a crime, basically, or gotten violent.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: So there are lots of people who are sociopathic and living totally normal lives, and a lot of them are extremely successful. They’re extremely successful business people –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Victoria: – CEOs, surgeons –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Victoria: – because they can make decisions without worrying about what repercussion it’s going to have on other people. So The Psychopath Test was about all the people that are sociopaths that you, you wouldn’t realize. They’re married, they, very successful. They’re killing it, right?

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: I think we all know some people who are sociopaths. So I’ve always been interested in that idea, because I, I vividly remember one of my first big jobs at a corporation, there was a woman in the office who everybody loved. She was sort of a grandmotherly type, and she gave me the fucking creeps, like, right off the bat.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: There was no warmth in those little grandmotherly smiles to me –

Sarah: Oh no.

Victoria: – and so people were always, like, she would sort of undercut people and backstab them, and, and it was like they couldn’t even see it because of the way she portrayed herself?

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: And I just, she creeped me out from the moment I met her.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: I don’t think it was that long after that I read something, and I thought, that’s, that’s what she is! And they’re very charming, because they know, they watch people to learn how to work them, and also, but they also like being very close to people because they get emotion from them, which is something that they don’t have good access to on their own. Yeah, so sociopaths love to be around people; they love, like, nightclubs, that kind of setting –

Sarah: High energy –

Victoria – parties, yeah, because they can, you know, feel emotions when they’re in those kind of situations. They often love attention because it’s interacting with people –

Sarah: Yeah, of course.

Victoria: – which is maybe not something they’re good at at a more subtle level.

Sarah: No.

Victoria: It’s just a revenge fantasy. I mean, it’s, it’s wanting to get revenge on those people that we all interact with who are terrible people –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Sarah: And they never pay for –

Victoria: Yeah. Yeah. Never pay.

Sarah: They just go on.

Victoria: Yep. Because, well, some of them are probably sociopaths, but also they’re narcissistic or they’re –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – they’re, you know, they’re just, they’re sort of pathological in their own subtle ways, and you can see what they’re doing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Sarah: And you can’t get someone to see it unless –

Victoria: No.

Sarah: – they experience it. No one believes it.

Victoria: Well, because an emotionally abusive relationship is really the classic, like, you put a frog in boiling water and it’ll hop out. If you put it in cold water and just starting turning up –

Sarah: And turn it up slowly.

Victoria: – because it starts off so subtle, it starts off with just negging.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: Right? Like, you should get a different haircut.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: I upgraded to first class once a few years ago with one of those, you know, like, you can upgrade for fifty dollars.

Sarah: Well, hell yeah, I’m upgrading for fifty bucks!

Victoria: [Laughs] Hell yes! And I was sitting next to this sales guy, like, classic, kind of good-looking sales guy, and he was coming on to me, and he was coming on to the flight attendant and everybody, and he said to me – it was when I had bangs – and he said, you should grow out your hair, and at the time I was just like, that’s a really weird thing to say to some-, why would you say you should grow out your hair to somebody you don’t even know? And I think it was, like, the next day, I was like, oh my God, he was negging me!

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: Which is a way of saying, you, you know, I’m kind of interested in you, but you could do something to make yourself more pleasing to me.

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: But your response is supposed to be, oh, he might like me –

Sarah: Right, I’m supposed to change for him.

Victoria: – if only I could be a little bit better, right.

Sarah: Right, I’m supposed to change for him!

Victoria: Yes!

Sarah: And of course he’s probably the type that has people who are very willing to change for his attention.

Victoria: Yes. Exactly.

Sarah: ‘Cause you learn that very quickly.

Victoria: Yes. And so I, in emotionally abusive relationships, it starts off with just that kind of simple, you should change your hair, or have you ever thought about wearing contacts? Or –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – you know, when my friends come over, could you not do this or that? And then it just, once you start indicating that you’re willing to make little changes, and because a lot of us are people pleasers, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: And oh, it doesn’t matter; I’ll just –

Sarah: It’s fine; no big deal.

Victoria: Yeah. I’ll just do it his way, and of course it happens with men and women –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – but women, I think, are much more primed to want to make somebody happy, and it starts off with little things that are meaningless to you, so what does it matter?

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: And then all of a sudden, it’s like, you look like a slut in that dress. Why are you wearing that? Are you trying to get attention from other men?

Sarah: You’ve got to change.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: Or –

Victoria: It’s all about control, yeah. Because I think people who are emotionally abusive and people who are controlling like that, it’s all just fear-based for them.

Sarah: Oh, of course.

Victoria: They just want to make themselves feel better, so they have to make sure you’re not steady, you’re uncertain all the time. There’s nothing you can do about those situations until the person who’s in them finally –

Sarah: Sees them. Sees it for themselves.

Victoria: – sees it. And unfortunately, it normally has to get really bad.

Sarah: Oh, very bad.

Victoria: Yeah. And then there’s the, all the false starts too.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah. There’s a likelihood that they’ll go back –

Victoria: Yep.

Sarah: – because there’s a lot of comfort in autopilot, even if it’s an autopilot that you know is hurting you. There’s a lot of comfort in being able to know what’s going to happen next, as opposed to starting everything over and enduring censure and going on your own –

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: – and, and –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: That’s just such an uphill process all the way around.

Victoria: Right. Yep.

Sarah: So Jane decides she’s going to get revenge on this person. What are some of the things that she does?

Victoria: She presents herself, she gets a job at his company, and she presents herself as a harmless, sort of helpless woman. Just the way she dresses; she, you know, redoes her hairstyle, her makeup, everything, even to the point where she’s taking, like, cheap, microwave, low-calorie meals into the break room with her so he knows that (a) she’s financially vulnerable and (b) she feels like she weighs too much. She’s signaling vulnerabilities in every way that she can, even to the point where she wears little pastel-colored, flowery dresses that she hates and always has just one too many buttons undone, just to sort of signal that she is looking to make herself attractive to men in the office.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: He takes the bait.

Sarah: So this is through Amazon’s –

Victoria: Amazon’s Lake Union publishing arm.

Sarah: – Lake Union.

Victoria: Yeah. So it’s coming out, it’s, actually, it’s coming out in Kindle, obviously, and also in hardcover, my very first hardcover!

Sarah: Congratulations! Your very first hardcover!

Victoria: Yes!

Sarah: That’s really exciting!

Victoria: It is very exciting, thank you. [Laughs]

Sarah: My gosh.

Victoria: And I didn’t, nobody told me. I was just, you know, obsessively checking the page every day to see when the cover was going to be uploaded, and it listed a hardcover price, and I was like –

Sarah: What?!

Victoria: – what the hell?!

[Laughter]

Victoria: Thank you; I love the cover so much.

Sarah: The cover is really interesting.

Victoria: And that model – they’d sent me an idea for a cover with that model, and it, it, I didn’t like the cover for Jane Doe, but I was like, she’s perfect!

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: ‘Cause she’s just dead-eyed staring into the camera, sort of a challenging –

Sarah: Fearless.

Victoria: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: ‘Cause women are supposed to look down out of the way; we’re not –

Victoria: So, and she’s not coy or anything.

Sarah: No, no, no.

Victoria: [Laughs] Yes, thank you, I love the cover so much. And then –

Sarah: Sounds like you really enjoyed writing it.

Victoria: I loved it! Can you see my face?

Sarah: Yes! You’re like glowing –

Victoria: I’m alive!

Sarah: I love this character! I love this book! This story is awesome!

Victoria: Well, it just, it, I mean everybody who’s read it, first of all, the men who have read it have been like, you’re scary.

Sarah: [Laughs] Which is exactly the reaction that you want!

Victoria: Yes! I’m like, I am scary.

Sarah: When you’re writing a female sociopath, that’s kind of how you want it to go!

Victoria: [Laughs] I’m like, did you think I didn’t know this about men? Like –

Sarah: Yes, you should be very scared, ‘cause we are all aware of –

Victoria: I, when I was first writing it, I liked to describe it as a combination of Fatal Attraction and Dexter.

Sarah: Oh shit! Oh, that is some seriously powerful hook right there.

Victoria: [Laughs] I’ve never had a hook before! Like –

Sarah: That’s a –

Victoria: – I’ve never been good at that.

Sarah: That’s a hook. Ouch!

Victoria: But yeah, I just think it’s, it’s a, it’s just what if, if you could, if you could really do what you wanted to do, what would you do with that person who has hurt someone you love? And that’s, I think that’s why people have a good reaction to it. It’s just because I wish, I wish I could be like this. It, just in that moment –

Sarah: Yes. When you –

Victoria: – and, and Jane has something to lose, but she just doesn’t feel like she’s going to lose it, because she’s smarter than everybody else –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – and accord-, you know, in her own mind, she thinks, you know, she has it under control. So, yeah, I did have a great time writing this book! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yay! So what are you working on?

Victoria: Right now, I’m working on something I haven’t come up with a title for, and it’s about a woman who is married and has a daughter and is having an affair, you know, that she wants absolutely to keep secret, and then her husband does something heroic that thrusts them into the spotlight, which is exactly where she does not want to be. And then, you know, everything starts falling apart from there. [Laughs]

Sarah: Of course. There is a lot of tension between the image that women are supposed to project into the world and the reality of our lives?

Victoria: Yeah, yeah, and trying to keep it all under control.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: So, yeah, it’s, it was, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. I’m almost done, actually. I’ve been working on it here.

Sarah: All right, so last question I always ask: do you have any books that you want to recommend?

Victoria: Okay, I’m terrible at this, and I meant to look at my Kindle before I came up here, because I, now that I read, I read exclusively on e-book now –

Sarah: Yeah, ditto.

Victoria: – and, like, I’m not seeing the cover; I’m not seeing the title.

Sarah: This has hurt me too; this has hurt me too.

Victoria: Yeah, like, when you pick up a paperback, every time you’re seeing the title and the cover and the author –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – so I was going to look at my Kindle before I came up here, but as far as romance goes, Alisha Rai’s new series, Hate to Want You I think was the first one.

Sarah: Hate to Want You, Wrong to Need You, yeah.

Victoria: So good. Oh my God, she’s an amazing author. And then I read a kinky book that was so kinky I’m almost embarrassed to recommend it.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: It’s called Act Your Age?

Sarah: Ohhh?

Victoria: And it’s, it’s like a Dom, it’s like a younger woman/older man kink?

Sarah: Oh –

Victoria: It’s a Daddy kink, actually.

Sarah: Dom Daddy/darling daughter or Dom Daddy – yeah.

Victoria: Yeah. But there’s no – I don’t know.

Sarah: It’s not pedophilia kink, but it’s, it’s –

Victoria: No, and they’re, and this is the reason I loved it: they were both very specific that this is not about an actual under-, desire to be with an underage girl or for her to be, you know, for her herself to feel like she wants to be underage. They really dig into the vulnerabilities of, like, what these issues are –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – and how scary it is to explore them.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: And it, the, the thing that I loved about – again, it’s Act Your Age, and I can’t remember the author; I apologize.

Sarah: It’s all right; I can look it up and put it in the show notes.

Victoria: Okay – is that at the beginning, the, the, the heroine comes across as being this kind of annoying, like she dresses in little pink dresses and is very perfect and bakes cupcakes and stuff, but she later explores, you know, why she presents herself that way. It’s a front to protect herself, basically.

Sarah: Oh wow, so there’s a lot of angst there.

Victoria: Yeah, and it’s super kinky. I mean, if this kink is not for you, don’t –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – don’t read it.

Sarah: Don’t go there.

Victoria: But it was so well done and so well explored and really, you know, very angsty until the very end, so I was just like, oh my God!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: Should I even tell people about this book?

Sarah: Have you read Asking for It by Lilah Pace?

Victoria: No, I haven’t! I was just, I was confused, ‘cause I read Act, Act Like It? I don’t know.

Sarah: Act Like It, that’s a very different book.

Victoria: Yeah, different! [Laughs]

Sarah: Act Like It by Lucy Parker –

Victoria: I was like, that one wasn’t kinky, was it? [Laughs]

Sarah: That was not kinky. That was, that’s one of my favorite contemporary romances.

Victoria: My favorite in that vein is Willing Victim by Cara McKenna.

Sarah: Cara McKenna, yep.

Victoria: Another one where it’s exploring it safely and –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – totally consensually –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – and that’s such a key. I mean, that’s why I was able to enjoy Act Your Age is because it’s so carefully laid out.

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: This is what we’re doing, and this –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – and, and it’s not about this –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – it’s not about this other thing. I love, I’ve always love-, horror has always been my second love –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – in genre, but as I’ve gotten older, I, it’s very hard for me to find books that are (a) written by women, horror novels, or (b) are not just a big sausage fest out in the woods.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yep!

Victoria: Or I just, more and more I’m having trouble getting a good point of view in horror novels? I think that the slasher movie kind of pics that have become so popular, like the torture –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: What’s the one with the, with the guy who, like – Saw. The Saw movies.

Sarah: Yes. Thank you, yes.

Victoria: Those have be-, I, I feel like there has been a lot of horror novels that have gone in that direction?

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: And, like, if I don’t care, for me – I had this discussion with Daniel Kraus once – romance and horror are the flip side of the same human drive to survive.

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: Romance, it’s about that primal need to mate, right?

Sarah: Connect, yeah.

Victoria: And horror is just about literally surviving.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: And I think they’re both just the most basic human emotions.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, you’re totally right about that! Yeah!

Victoria: Yeah, and in horror, if I don’t get a good deep point of view, I don’t care what’s going to happen to them! It’s like –

Sarah: Right, there are no stakes.

Victoria: Yeah. It’s like if you read some really, some of the really bad erotica where it’s just –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: – it’s just, like, the pizza guy shows up, right? Like, I don’t, I’m not invested in these two people fucking. Like, I –

Sarah: And then he came to clean her pool.

Victoria: [Laughs] I don’t care! There’s no emotional repercussion to the sex. There’s no growth from the sex, and I feel that way about horror, too. Like, if I don’t care about these people, I’m not scared for them!

Sarah: No, you don’t have any fear for them.

Victoria: Yeah! So for me, I’ve really been trying to find more horror novels by women, so I was going to recommend that last. Come Closer by Sara Gran.

Sarah: Ooh!

Victoria: It’s the story of, told from the point of view of a woman who thinks she might be becoming possessed.

Sarah: Oh my.

Victoria: But maybe she’s just going crazy?

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: And she’s just an, you know, average, everyday, married woman with a job, and she’s just going through her life and thinking, what’s happening here? I don’t remember doing that.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: But everybody’s telling me I did it. So that, Come Closer by Sara Gran is, like, a great female-centered horror.

Sarah: Do you think you write horror? Think to an extent you’re writing horror? ‘Cause it sounds to me like you are, but I have a theory about what the –

Victoria: No. Jane Doe might – I mean –

Sarah: I don’t know; sounds like a –

Victoria: – depending on who reads it!

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: It could be a –

Sarah: But you don’t think there’s a… maybe you’re cousins to horror.

Victoria: Yeah, I’m not, you know, it’s an – I don’t know what, what makes something horror and not, and what makes something suspense. That’s a really good question.

Sarah: Oh, that is a good question!

Victoria: I don’t know!

Sarah: In movies, it’s much more clearly defined.

Victoria: But, like, for, for example, like –

Sarah: And then it’s marketing.

Victoria: – what was the movie where Julia Roberts was being abused by her husband?

Sarah: Sleeping with the Enemy.

Victoria: Sleeping with the Enemy. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – I, I think that’s suspense, but it’s certainly horror!

Sarah: Yeah! I also think that you can connect Gothics to horror and to romance.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah, absolutely!

Sarah: So maybe what you’re writing is like the great-great-great-grandchild of Gothics.

Victoria: Maybe. Yeah, and especially maybe –

Sarah: And that’s not a really good Amazon category. Great-great-great-Gothic-grandchild!

Victoria: No, it just make, makes people angry, too –

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs]

Victoria: – whatever category you put it in. But def-, I think this, my second book, Half Past, has a very Gothic feel to it, because –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – she sort of goes to a dark and spooky location, which is Big Sur, but, you know, it’s –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – if you’ve ever been there, it’s very shadowy and –

Sarah: Creepy.

Victoria: Yeah! I mean, if you’re out in the woods in Big Sur it’s beautiful, but you’re out in the woods!

Sarah: You can die real easy.

Victoria: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: I think I had dinner or lunch in a tree in Big Sur. The restaurant was up in a tree.

Victoria: I know what you’re talking about!

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: But so I think that one definitely has a Gothic kind of a feel to it –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – just because she’s in a strange place, and it’s, you know, dark and dreary all the time and –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: Yeah, and she meets a handsome stranger.

Sarah: Oh dude! Dude, totally! Totally Gothic horror! Not that other horror.

Victoria: [Laughs] Yeah. So next time, let’s explore the difference –

Sarah: Yes!

Victoria: – between horror and suspense!

Sarah: Yes. That is a thing.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Victoria Dahl and Victoria Helen Stone, both of them, for sitting for this interview. We recorded this at RT, and I am so glad that not only did I get to talk to her about the book, but then I also got to read and review the book, so if you are curious, I very much recommend Jane Doe. Elyse and I both loved it and had such an interesting experience reading it. You can find Victoria Helen Stone and Victoria Dahl at their websites, and I will have links to both in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

This episode is brought to you by Highland Devil by Hannah Howell. New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Hannah Howell delivers a daring new entry into her epic medieval Murray Clan family saga, featuring strong, protective Scottish warriors and feisty leading ladies with Highland Devil. Well known for her pioneering spirit in the Scottish historical romance genre, with a distinctive voice and prose style, Hannah Howell is a fan favorite and a leading voice in the genre, so get swept up in the lush landscape, the thick brogue accents, and the fierce love of the indomitable Murray clan. You don’t want to miss the adventure in Highland Devil, available now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

Our transcript this week is being brought to you by Second Time Around by Nancy Herkness. Kyra Dixon, a blue-collar girl from the boondocks, is devoted to her job at a local community center that matches underprivileged kids with rescue dogs. When she runs into Will Chase – Connecticut blue blood, billionaire CEO, and her old college crush – she’s surprised that he asks a favor from her: to be his date for his uptight family’s dreaded annual garden party. And if his parents don’t approve, all the better. Kyra’s not about to say no. It’ll give her a chance to be oh-so-close to her unrequited love. But what begins as a little fling turns so mad hot, so fast, that Kyra finds herself falling all over again for a fantasy that won’t come true. How can it? She doesn’t belong in Will’s world, and she doesn’t want to. But Will does want to belong in hers. All he has to do now is prove it, and Will is prepared to give up whatever is necessary to get what his heart most desires. Second Time Around by Nancy Herkness is the perfect contemporary for readers who love billionaires, hot second-chance romances, and adorable dogs. Second Time Around by Nancy Herkness is published by Montlake Romance and is available now wherever books are sold. Find out more about the author at nancyherkness.com.

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The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is Caravan Palace. This is one of my favorites of theirs. It’s called “Dragons”! I like dragons a lot; I don’t know if you knew, but yes, this is called “Dragons.” You can find this track on their two-album set, which includes Caravan Palace and Panic, and you can find that on iTunes and Amazon or, if you want, anywhere else you like to buy your funky music.

I will have links to all of the books and movies and TV shows that we mentioned during this episode, should you be curious, and of course I’ll have links if you would like to learn more about Victoria Helen Stone or Victoria Dahl.

Coming up on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books this week – I’m assuming that you knew that there was a website that went with the podcast. If you didn’t know, there totally is, and you should come hang out with us, ‘cause it’s super fun, and I’m not biased in the least. This weekend we have fun with Bigstock, which we found contains an endless supply of entertaining plot ideas. We have a squee review and a very special Monday Rec League: we are looking for pairings of Hufflepuffs and Slytherins. I know someone’s brain just exploded with in-, with incredible ideas, so I hope you’ll come tell us what books you recommend that pair a Hufflepuff with a Slytherin. We’ll also have a recap of the Bachelorette finale, some Help a Bitch Out posts, and a bunch of reviews. If you are looking for books to read or books on sale, I hope you’ll come hang out with us at smartbitchestrashybooks.com.

I always end with a terrible joke, and I know that many of you listen just to hear the terrible joke. This is a particularly terrible joke. I’ve already texted this to people because it makes me so happy! [Clears throat] You ready? Okay. Here we go. Aha. Mm.

Did you hear about the guy who burned his Hawaiian pizza?

You didn’t? You didn’t hear about this guy? Yeah. This guy totally burned his Hawaiian pizza.

He should have cooked it at aloha temperature.

[Laughs] It’s so bad! Oh, it’s like the best kind, the best kind of joke, makes you roll your eyes and groan at the same time! I love it so much! All right. [Clears throat] Back to being a professional podcaster. [Laughs]

On behalf of Victoria Helen Stone and myself and of course Zeb, who is really mad about the FedEx truck being parked on the street, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend. We’ll see you here next week.

[bouncy music]