318. Sharp Academics and Paranormal Romance: An Interview with Kelly Baker, PhD, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, PhD

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Well, hello! You made it to Friday (if it’s Friday when you’re listening to this). Today I am talking with Tressie McMillan Cottom, Ph.D., who is a sociology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Kelly Baker, Ph.D., who studies racist politics, sexism in the academy, white supremacy, and zombies. Both women are writers; both are major fans of the paranormal romance genre. They snuck paranormal romances to read during grad school, they hid their love of romance, and they dealt with being shunned and shamed for loving the genre. Does that sound familiar to you? We have a lot to talk about in this interview, and I really enjoyed our conversation. We talk about how reading fills in the gaps in knowledge about culture and history; how romance and genre fiction broadened their understanding of worlds outside their own; their take on anyone who can or tries to remove the politics from anything, including historical romance; the idea that history can somehow not be political; the ways that romance, specifically paranormal and fantasy romance, interrogates race, society, gender, and colonialism, and the ways in which it does not; the politics of escape fantasy for different romance subgenres; and the politics of who is permitted to get angry in a written world. Plus we take a hilarious, deep, critical dive into Dr. Cottom’s love of Hallmark movies and how they are talked about as “unpolitical” as well. She talks, after some prodding, about how she reads Hallmark films. Here’s a hint: they are alarmingly similar to a very specific romance genre, and it is not contemporary. Get ready to have your mind blown, and also to laugh a lot, too.

This podcast is brought to you by Once a Scoundrel by Mary Jo Putney. From Mary Jo Putney, one of the most acclaimed writers of historical romance, comes another beautifully crafted, deeply emotional, impeccably researched novel with a fun dash of adventure, this time set on the high seas. Spanning from Algiers to England, follow the journey of a disgraced former English navy captain turned privateer as he attempts to rescue Lady Aurora Lawrence, who was kidnapped by pirates. Together they undertake a dangerous mission through troubled waters and encounter another kind of danger as attraction burns hot within the close confines of his ship. But even if they endure the perils of the sea and enemy lands, can their love survive a return to England, where the distance between a disgraced captain and an earl’s daughter is wider than the ocean? Once a Scoundrel by New York Times bestselling and RITA-Award-winning author Mary Jo Putney is on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

Today’s podcast transcript is sponsored by Last Night with the Earl by Kelly Bowen, brought to life by the brilliant narrator Ashford McNab. If you like Tessa Dare and Sarah MacLean, feminism, and heroines that don’t wilt under the slightest bit of pressure, you will enjoy this historical romance. Eli Dawes, the Earl of Rivers, reluctantly returns to England to find his country home in Dover taken over by a finishing school for girls. Severely wounded in the Battle of Waterloo, his hopes of maintaining a low profile are thwarted when he literally bumps into Rose Hayward, an old friend who coincidentally is now the art teacher at the school. Rose, who has faced her own challenges while Eli has been away, is the only person to force him to see certain truths about himself and his place in the world, and unexpectedly, he does the same for her. And let us not forget, there is some serious steamy sex. Last Night with the Earl by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at kellybowen.net, and you can find out about other audiobook romances, or oral romances, at hachetteaudio.com.

Please stay tuned to the end of this podcast, as I have an audiobook sample of this title for you to enjoy. It’ll be after the outro, at the very end, after the terrible joke, and after the part where I laugh at myself because the jokes make me laugh. So at the end of the episode I have a special sample of Last Night with the Earl by Kelly Bowen performed by Ashford McNab.

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But now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Kelly Baker, Ph.D.: So I am Kelly Baker. I am a Religion Ph.D. and writer and primarily essayist, and I work on a whole bunch of things, including white supremacists and racist politics and sexism in the academy and also zombies, and I may – I know, it’s – [laughs] –

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Ph.D.: I was like, when is she going to get to the zombies?

Dr. Baker: I know! Zombies, I’ll just throw it in. And then I also am a huge paranormal romance/urban fantasy reader, so that’s what I do in my spare time.

Sarah: Awesome!

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: All right, I am Tressie McMillan Cottom, and it is all three names, to be obnoxious, and, let’s see, I am a sociology professor in Virginia. I guess I can say, like, Virginia Commonwealth University; I mean, I don’t know if people want to come and see me there or something, but there you go, got it. And I’m also a writer; I identify strongly as a writer and write about all kinds of stuff too. I’m kind of like Kelly, except for the zombies part.

[Laughter]

Dr. Cottom: I do not write about the zombies. Let’s see, but I grew up reading romance, so, like, you know, I’m the Old School classic, I mean, you know, from Beverly Jenkins to modern contemporary, but what got me through graduate school and my transition to academia was absolutely paranormal.

Sarah: I love that so much. This is going to be so much fun.

Dr. Baker: Well, I love it too, because I was thinking, like, these are the books that I would sneak in graduate school, right, ‘cause it was –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – totally not cool –

Dr. Cottom: Exactly.

Dr. Baker: – totally not cool –

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Dr. Baker: – to be caught with a book with a werewolf on the cover, but I was like, I’m reading these, ‘cause I can’t, I can’t even do this, right.

Dr. Cottom: Although I finally bought a Kindle, right, so –

Dr. Baker: Ohhh!

Dr. Cottom: – the only reason why I moved to e-books was exactly that, so people couldn’t see what I was reading. I cannot tell you how often I was actually reading, like, Kresley Cole or Sarah McCarty or something in the library or on campus and around, like, you know, super-smart people who would have shunned me –

Dr. Baker: Oh, exactly.

Dr. Cottom: – if, if I’d had the physical book in my hand. [Laughs]

Dr. Baker: Well, I was thinking about it the other day. Like, I happened to be in some random public place, I think waiting on a meeting, and I was like, you can’t tell that I’m reading Nalini Singh –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm!

Dr. Baker: – but it’s amazing, and I am. Right, like – and I’m going to sip my coffee, and I’m just going to continue –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – to read these books.

Sarah: I have said many times that I haven’t met many romance readers who are actively shamed-feeling and carrying shame for what they read, but they’ve been told so often that they need to be ashamed that they’re, there’s this sort of third level of shame, like, well, I should be ashamed –

Dr. Baker: Yeah!

Sarah: – and I get crap for it, but I actually love this, and I’m having a really good time!

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Sarah: The more, the more that we’re told we ought to be ashamed of what we’re reading, the more, that’s just the worst kind of shame to carry around.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It’s so great!

Dr. Cottom: Yeah. So I say, I have said, like, many, many, many times that a lot of my gaps in sort of, like, world knowledge or certainly knowledge about other cultures comes from reading –

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: – and not reading books that were about, you know, necessarily about the culture. So, for example, almost everything that I can remember knowing as a young person about England and hist-, and history of –

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: – that time came from Regency romance novels. Now, admittedly, may not have been the best historical knowledge, but it was amazing for, like, it, it was, it’s actually perfectly suitable for broad strokes, right?

Dr. Baker: Uh-huh!

Dr. Cottom: Like, I got a sense of what the social hierarchy was, so when later you’re a young adult and you’re reading, you know, the real, “real literature,” I understood, right –

Dr. Baker: Right!

Dr. Cottom: – why a Mary Shelley would have happened, right. I understood why those conversations were, they – which I wouldn’t have understood as a young Black woman in the South, I wouldn’t have had a personal experience with it.

Sarah: Nope.

Dr. Cottom: I wouldn’t have understood why this mattered, why gender or femininity was operating in this way. I got that from romance novels! There’s no shame in how you come to learn about the world, right. I tell my friends all of the time, you don’t know, you don’t even want to begin to guess how I know some of the things that I know. Very inappropriate reading material, that’s how.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Baker: Well, but I think it’s such an interesting point, too, because I grew up in, like, rural Florida, you know, working class.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Like, had a library card, and, like, the reason I became a history nerd was because of, like, what we would now call Young Adult novels, right –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – about, like, the prairie and Western frontier and –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah!

Dr. Baker: – granted that their portrayals of Native peoples were really, really a problem, but it’s one of those where that’s, like, where you kind of, like, realize that the world is more expansive, and it’s always, for me, been through, like, the genre novels, like romance novels, right, where I’m like, oh! This is what it looks like to live in a city –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – right, not in this town where –

Dr. Cottom: Exactly.

Dr. Baker: – you can see cows, right?

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Dr. Baker: So, but it, it is that kind of interesting piece of that, and, and now that I have a kid who is an avid reader, it’s so interesting for me to hear, like, what she learns about the world, right, from books that people would think are not the, like, greats, right?

Dr. Cottom: Right.

Dr. Baker: But we don’t care in our house; we read whatever.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Sarah: I learned so much American history through the Sunfire novels?

Dr. Baker: Ah!

Sarah: I don’t know if you guys were of an age to have encountered those? I’m, I’m forty-three, so these would have been when I was in middle school.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah. I remember them! I remember the covers very vividly, mm-hmm.

Sarah: Each, each one was a woman’s first name.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Okay.

Sarah: Each book took place during a major historical event, often in the United States, but I remember, I read about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire; I read about the foundation of Hollywood; I read about the Johnstown Flood, and I grew up in Pittsburgh? My knowledge of the Johnstown Flood was not very thorough, but when I read that book and then later had, had a whole history unit on it? I was, like, top of the class.

Dr. Cottom: Yes!

Sarah: I’d read this romance novel that took place about a young woman who was a journalist, and then the Johnstown Flood happened.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And when you have history told in the context of a woman’s story and you’re a young woman, that’s incredibly powerful. Now, of course, Sunfire books, Sunfire books were also a layer cake of problems in terms of minorities and marginalized people –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – but I look at how I learned about history, and I’m like, how, how do you – are we still putting down what young women read?

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Really? We’re doing that still?

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: I know. Yeah. No, I tell my friends all that, you know, you know, all of the self-conscious middle-class-dom being, like, an academic is very interesting and weird, and so they’ll be a little obsessed by, oh, my son only reads, you know, comic books, and I go, I don’t care what he reads! I – I, I will tell them flat-out, I was like, I don’t, I do not care; give him anything. If he needs something –

Dr. Baker: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: – with, like, boobs on it, I don’t care! If there – just let people read!

Dr. Baker: Right!

Dr. Cottom: And I’m like, yeah, I’m constantly trying to free my friends from that sort of self-conscious anxiety they have about, like, what their kids are reading.

Dr. Baker: Well, and it’s funny to me because, like, like I said, in our house we just don’t care –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – right, where it’s one of those things where we’re like, books open worlds; like, go for it! And so it’s interesting ‘cause I have a reader who’s more advanced than her age –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – and so people are like, you’re letting her read these things?

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Baker: And I’m like, yeah?!

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: I’m like, my mom let me read Dean Koontz, I think ‘cause she wasn’t paying attention?

Dr. Cottom: Yes. [Laughs]

Dr. Baker: When I was, like, eleven, right?

Dr. Cottom: Same!

Dr. Baker: Like, looking back now, I was like, man, Mom, like, you phoned it in –

Dr. Cottom: Yes!

Dr. Baker: – on reading materials.

Dr. Cottom: Yes. [Laughs]

Dr. Baker: But you know, I’m like, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and these are, like, not eleven-year-old reading material –

Dr. Cottom: Oh yeah.

Dr. Baker: – but I’m kind of like, but these were great storytelling, and –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – and horror’s always been a thing that I’m really interested in and I use in my own writing, but it is that really funny piece where I’m just like, we don’t care! Read comic books; read graphic novels, right?

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Read all of these series that people are like, I’m not sure about. I’m like, because this is what we do, right? And we learn how to filter that information, but it is really funny to see the people that are like, oh, I’m aghast that my nine-year-old is reading this, and I’m like, why do you care?

Dr. Cottom: I’m like, your nine-year-old is reading. Like –

Dr. Baker: Yeah!

Dr. Cottom: – just, hello! Like, stop the sentence there.

Sarah: Exactly! This is great! So this entire conversation that we’re having started because of some dinglehopper on Twitter.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: [Laughs]

Sarah: Unfortunately, because I am an idiot, I did not screencap what the dinglehopper said, and the dinglehopper has since deleted his tweet.

Dr. Cottom: Yes. I remember what they said. I don’t remember who they said it to. Do you remember, Kelly? It’s an author –

Dr. Baker: I do! Yeah, it was to an author.

Dr. Cottom: I mean, it’s one of these things that happens tons, right, so, but the author clearly writes historical romance, I remember that much, and it said something to the effect of, like, I don’t know, you know, get out and vote. Who knows, right? But it was just –

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: – one of these sort of, it was not even a contentious one; it was a generic, you know, you know, November’s coming; are you ready to vote? sort of thing, and the person said, I don’t follow you for your political opinions, and this is why I miss – and why I like histor- – that’s what it was: this is why I like –

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: – historical romance, ‘cause it doesn’t have all this politics in it.

Dr. Baker: [Laughs] Right, yes.

Dr. Cottom: That’s what it was, yes. [Laughs] And we all, I mean, you know, it’s ridiculous. It’s like, you know, first of all, can you define all of your terms, right? So first of all, you’re calling it a historical romance, this is your preferred genre, and – no, maybe the person who said it was the writer. Actually, I, I can’t now remember if it was the writer or the reader who said this, but I  thought, so you were saying the genre is historical romance, and you think history is apolitical.

Dr. Baker: Yeah, right. That’s always a good sign.

Dr. Cottom: Right. So first of all, I know which history romances you’re reading, first of all, and then second, I also know how you’re choosing to read them, right, because as we were just saying, when, once we understood the history that we were getting from all of this “inappropriate content” we were reading as children – because my mom also totally phoned it in – we immediately understood that those things had a context, and context is politics! Context is history; that’s what that means, but it was that, you know, that thing about that there are safe subgenres of romance –

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: – which I find fascinating, where you don’t have to think about things like, you know, race and class and gender, and what’s hilarious is the places that they think are safest are the ones that are most steeped in –

Sarah: Oh God.

Dr. Baker: Right! Right!

Dr. Cottom: -those ideas, the most –

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: Yes.

Sarah: Like, literally, every, every wealthy person at that time, they had some dealing in the sugar trade, which was the most –

Dr. Cottom: Exactly. I was like, the reason why yours, the, the reason why the class structure was so rigid and why your heroine is resisting marriage or the duke or whatever is because of the proximity to the money that was being made from colonialism.

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: Right, that is the entire gender structure at the time. The thing that you think is so swoon-worthy, the dukes, the earls, right – [laughs] – that’s literally all that meant. And –

Dr. Baker: Well, and it’s interesting, too, to me, about the way in which certain genres they, like, assume are not political, right?

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: So, like, I read urban fantasy ‘cause it has sexy werewolves, right.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: That’s the line of thinking, and it’s not really thinking about, like, gender, class, or race, and I’m like, are you not reading the same books that I’m reading? ‘Cause they’re doing kind of interesting work here to think about categories of the human and to think about how gender works and –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – to think about categories like race in often strangely essentialist kind of ways, but –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – but I’m like, there’s a lot of work that these books are doing –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – that you think it’s just, like, steamy vampire sex, I guess?

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Dr. Baker: But it’s like, no, no, no! Like, they’re doing sort of neat work here.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Are you not paying attention, or –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – have you just sort of decided that this is somehow apolitical, like you said, right? Like, it’s not politics when we have different –

Dr. Cottom: I think this – so I have this other addiction that I, you know, it’s not a secret; I just, you know, I don’t have it on a T shirt is all I’m saying. But I also have a, a Hallmark movie problem – yeah, no, I’m in deep; I’m in deep – and, in that I’ve seen them all, and I’m thinking about a ranking system. Like, I’m in –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Baker: Wow!

Dr. Cottom: – deep. And so I think about people who say that kind of thing very, very similar to the way I think about Hallmark movies, right. So I think the reason why Hallmark has become one of the most popular, you know, financially successful cable networks is precisely because people think of it – many people, anyway – think of it as, like, the safe space in television, right. It’s the –

Dr. Baker: Okay.

Dr. Cottom: – the place to retreat where none of that stuff exists, just like none of it apparently exists in historical romance for tons of readers?

Dr. Baker: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Cottom: I, of course, read Hallmark movies completely differently, and see them as something very different than I think the majority audience does.

Sarah: So –

Dr. Baker: So what do you read them for? [Laughs] I’m sorry, Sarah! No, but now I’m like, I’m, I’m caught here. I’m, I’m –

Sarah: Somebody delivers lectures for her job, and I’m not naming names.

Dr. Baker: [Laughs]

Dr. Cottom: I was done with the lecture, though! I was done! That was it!

Sarah: Please talk about this, ‘cause I’m like, my, my, my elbows are on my desk, and my chin –

Dr. Baker: I know! I’m like, I’m going to take notes now and figure out how I need to watch the Hallmark movies?

Sarah: Are you Dr. McMillan Cottom or Dr. Cottom?

Dr. Cottom: Dr. Cottom is fine, yeah. In print, I do the whole name, but, like, nobody can walk around saying that whole mouthful; it’s ridiculous. Yeah.

Sarah: Can people call you Dr. TMC?

Dr. Cottom: No, you know, most of my students go with, they say Dr. Tressie, but it very quickly transitions to, like, some version of Dr. Cottom, Dr. Tressie, Tressie –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Cottom: – as we become more familiar, yeah.

Sarah: Well, should you undertake a, a career change in the music industry, Dr. TMC is an excellent stage name.

Dr. Cottom: I have actually been told that, and here’s, here’s our main problem: I have absolutely no musical ability. But that has never –

Sarah: Aw!

Dr. Cottom: – stopped anyone else, and so it is still a possibility.

Dr. Baker: You can make it work. You can make it work. I have faith in you that you, you can make this career change.

Dr. Cottom: All you need is gumption, right? Isn’t that it? All you need is gumption and abs is what I’ve been told, so.

Dr. Baker: Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. But I don’t want to work for the abs.

Dr. Cottom: Exactly!

Dr. Baker: Right, like, here’s always what I think is, like, oh man, like, do I actually want to have to spend three hours in a gym a day? And I’m like, that sounds terrible! Like, what, why would you do this to yourself?

Dr. Cottom: Yes! Gumption is cheap. Abs are expensive. I have no desire to put in that kind of investment either, so I think that’s why Dr. TMC is going to be a struggle, but we’ll see, we’ll see.

Sarah: So how are you reading Hallmark movies when you’re watching them?

Dr. Cottom: Ohhh, yeah, no, I’m reading them absolutely as this sort of, like, radical form of identity politics.

Dr. Baker: Oooh!

Sarah: [Laughs] You say that, not those sweater politics, but it’s a whole other pol- –

Dr. Cottom: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah! Which, depending on the sweater, is an identity. Let’s be real; when you see somebody in one of those things, you kind of know what you’re working with. The Christmas sweater –

Dr. Baker: Mm-hmm?

Dr. Cottom: – you know.

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: So yeah. Yeah, now, I think the, so like the fascination with Christmas, I think Christmas, of course, is just a stand-in for religion, but they don’t want to, like –

Dr. Baker: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Cottom: – you know, annoy anybody by being religiously specific and choosing a sort of denomination or anything, so you just use Christmas as a stand-in. Santa Claus is the stand-in for Jesus, and then, once you take all of that away, it is just a Regency romance novel in a contemporary setting –

Dr. Baker: Uh-huh.

Dr. Cottom: – right?

Sarah: Oh my stars.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, it’s dealing with all the same stuff, right? Think of how often the woman – so one of the things I love to do, this is what I mean by, like, I read it, I do sort of a punk reading of it, is I’m like, okay, what’s this woman’s job? And then I do, like, the actual, like, how much she would need to afford the apartment they put her in.

Dr. Baker: Exactly.

Dr. Cottom: Like, I do that whole thing, right? And, but I also keep a list of, like, the jobs, and so the women, the acceptable jobs for the woman, for a woman in a Hallmark movie, for her to be an empathetic character, are things like cupcake shop owner, right?

Dr. Baker: Oh my gosh.

Dr. Cottom: Bookstore owner.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Cottom: My favorite one lately is blogger, which –

[Laughter]

Dr. Baker: Oh yes, because we make so much money –

Dr. Cottom: So much money!

Dr. Baker: – from writing on the internet! [Laughs]

Dr. Cottom: Blogging, right? Well, they’ve got these jobs; well, of course, the jobs are the kind that will never compete for the guy in the small town who she inevitably –

Dr. Baker: Oh sure.

Dr. Cottom: – has to fall in love with. And it has to be a job that’s going to be flexible, because inevitably she’s got to leave it to be with him.

Dr. Baker: Oh, exactly.

Dr. Cottom: Right.

Dr. Baker: ‘Cause it’s full-time work.

Dr. Cottom: That’s right.

Dr. Baker: Right, yeah.

Dr. Cottom: That’s why blogging is great; she can do it in the kitchen, and –

Dr. Baker: Oh no. No.

Dr. Cottom: I know, sorry. And so, you know, so it’s fascinating. Now, if she’s not going to be empathetic, they do have women who are, like, marketing executives and, you know, et cetera, but she’s not sympathetic, right. She’s the one –

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: – who’s going to have to get amnesia to rediscover her true self really wants to sell Christmas trees.

Dr. Baker: Oh man!

Sarah: Once the change of worldview has happened to those characters, they wear a lot of floaty, chiffon, hippy fabrics.

Dr. Cottom: Yes, they do.

Dr. Baker: Yeah, they do, don’t they?

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Their hair is down; it’s no longer in, like, the power bun, right?

Dr. Cottom: That’s right. That’s, when it’s down, she’s been transformed. And I love the – so, increasingly, this is their take on modernity, though, right, so they’re like, okay, some things have clearly happened, though. Women are getting paychecks, right, so we’ve got to make some adjustments, and their adjustments are things like, they let her have fancy shoes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Baker: Ohhh!

Dr. Cottom: And they can be very particular that, yes, she may move to the Christmas farm, but she’s not going to give up her high heels.

Dr. Baker: Oh man!

Sarah: Your red bottoms! They’re bloody shoes!

Dr. Cottom: That’s right! They’re these blood shoes in Christmas Town, U.S.A.!

Dr. Baker: [Laughs] I, you know, this is funny to me because I think part of the reason I like the paranormal romance/urban fantasy is that, like, usually these are women who are, like, mercenaries?

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dr. Baker: Right, like, so, so they’re not blogging, and they’re not cupcake shop owners –

Dr. Cottom: No.

Dr. Baker: – I can’t even get it out. But, you know, they’re, like, I’m a mercenary, and now I’ve got to deal with vampires, right, or –

Dr. Cottom: Exactly!

Dr. Baker: – I’m some fancy kind of police offer, right –

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Dr. Baker: – in this new world where we have these different monsters that we have to deal with –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – and some part of me is like, yeah, I kind of could get behind being a mercenary. Right, like, it’s a different fantasy for me –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah!

Dr. Baker: – where I’m like, yeah, mm-hmm, I already wear motorcycle boots. You know, like, I already have the, like, aesthetic down?

Dr. Cottom: This is a new day; it’s a new day!

Dr. Baker: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: If you’ve got the motorcycle boots, then you’re a mercenary.

Dr. Baker: I know! I should just, I should just lean into it.

Dr. Cottom: I do, I think you should.

Dr. Baker: [Laughs] My kids are already giving me grief over this, where they’re just like, really, you’re going to wear that? And I’m like, uh-huh, I am. I’m a grown-up. Right, like, I get to make these choices.

Dr. Cottom: I think it’s kind of funny to have, it must be weird, though, to be a kid with a cool mom.

Dr. Baker: Oh God. You know, my daughter acts like it’s the worst thing in the world.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Right, like, because – and, and it’s one of the things, too, where I’m like, I’m not trying to be cool, and she’s like, yeah, I know, but my friends are like, your mom has tattoos –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – and she has piercings –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – and, like, she has a Ph.D., right, ‘cause that’s the other kind of weird.

Dr. Cottom: Uh-huh.

Dr. Baker: It’s like, you know, your mom is not a stay-at-home mom –

Dr. Cottom: Right.

Dr. Baker: – and so I think every once in a while she’s just like –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – can’t you just look like suburbia? You know, like –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – couldn’t you, just for a day, put on the cardigan and –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, ‘cause how is she, how is she going to rebel against you?

Dr. Baker: I don’t know. I think, I’m afraid that she’s going to, like, put on the cardigan –

Dr. Cottom: Uh-huh.

Dr. Baker: – and decide that she’s a WASP? Right, like, that’s kind of what I’m afraid is going to happen?

Dr. Cottom: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – the plot of Family Ties: she’s going to be Alex P. Keaton.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, that’s right, Family Ties!

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Oh no! I hope not! Yeah, but it is a really funny, like, the, the kind of tension there, where she’s trying to figure out, like, oh.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: This is what my mom looks like. Whoa, right? And it is interesting –

Dr. Cottom: I think it’s one thing for you to have sort of like the begrudging admiration of your mom, which we kind of all have through our preteen years.

Dr. Baker: Uh-huh.

Dr. Cottom: We don’t admit to it, but we got a little, right? It’s why we steal their stuff; it’s why the, you know.

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: But it’s something when your friends like your mom.

Dr. Baker: Yeah. I admit –

Dr. Cottom: It must be this, that one, that’s the thing.

Dr. Baker: Where it’s like, nooo!

Dr. Cottom: Yeah!

Dr. Baker: Right, huh?

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: So if I became a mercenary, she would be like, it would be over.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Right, it would be the end. Like, she would just be on my floor and, like, woe is me.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Like, you know, someone from the Victorian romances, actually.

Sarah: Yeah! Exactly like that.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: We also had a Twitter conversation about the origin stories of vampires and fantasy, and then you were both like, oh my gosh, we need to talk about what to read in the fantasy romance genre –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Sarah: – then we…podcast, and then y’all read so very many books.

Drs. Cottom and Baker: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So could you tell me what you love about fantasy romance, and are you reading them in a, in a critical way, the way, Dr. Cottom, you’re looking at Hallmark movies? I mean, are you reading them and interrogating them while you read them? Like, that’s my default setting, so I don’t know how to do that any other way? But –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Sarah: – tell me about your fantasy romance reading and what you love.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm. So I think my first, which, I mean, this is, gosh, this is many years ago, and totally by accident. So this is a thing you do, Lou. So you know how you just stumble on books beside books at the store?

Dr. Baker: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: And so I think it, if, if I remember correctly, my first introduction to fantasy, like, romance was mostly through fantasy erotica, and it was like the shifter, shifting thing, right, and it was because there was a book next to –

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: – another book in the bookstore. And it was absolutely, oh gosh, what is her name? The, the pride people and, there was a secret organization trying to get them to work for their side, which, granted, this is not narrowing it down, I know. Okay –

Dr. Baker: I know; I was like, that’s, like, thirty books.

Dr. Cottom: That’s, oh, Lora Leigh, Lora Leigh, there you go.

Sarah: Oh yes. Oh, oh, yes, go ahead; I’m with you.

Dr. Cottom: Thank you. So that was the very first, and I thought, oh! Okay. One, I remember initially reading the opening and thinking, what the heck? This is so strange.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Cottom: What I ended up liking was the worldbuilding, right, so what I think I got into so that, you know, where so many of the assumptions of the world had sort of changed, but in a way that still felt really familiar. Now, of course, you know, many years later – ‘cause that was, like, before grad school and before life, you know, life and all that – many years later, I think it’s pretty clear to me that one of the reasons why this sort of, that sort of worldbuilding appeals to me is because I do think when you build a world, you do have to grapple with ways, like, how are you going to deal with the fact that people are different from each other? Right.

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: So basically, the shifter novels are really about race, I think, in a way that the vampire novels often are. They are, like, X-Man, like the X-Men are, right? It’s a stand-in for things like race and ethnicity and religious differences, et cetera, but when you do historical novels, it’s really easy to rely on history who’s already done all of that whitewashing for you? When you build a world from scratch, though, you have to be deliberate about, oh, there have to be different kinds of people. What am I going to make that difference? Is it going to be how they look, or is it going to be different magical powers, right? Is it going to be a different race of people, and if so, what comes with that? I think that people, I, I suspect that people who write those kind of worldbuilding novels are just probably those types of thinkers, and because that’s the kind of thinker I am, I’m super attracted to it, ‘cause I want to see, what choices did you make about, like, how does money work in this world? I love the ones that get into that. Like, you know, some of ‘em are, you know, super rich, or money has stopped meaning anything, and instead they trade credits or something like that. Like, but it’s a real practical thing you have to deal with – [laughs] – and it’s like –

Dr. Baker and Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Cottom: – yeah, how are people going to build their spaceships, right? Like, and when you get into that kind of worldbuilding, I’m just, I think it’s super fascinating, because then I think the characters are, you know, we know something about the characters in a different kind of way than we do when they’re, like, setting, set, have a historic setting.

Dr. Baker: You know, that’s really fascinating, because I was thinking about, so Nalini Singh is my favorite?

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm?

Dr. Baker: Hands-down favorite, and I love her Psy-Changeling series because there are three races, right. There are humans; there are Psy, who have these – I’m really generalizing, but these kind of psychic powers and this psychic network they’re collected to; and then there’re all the, like, shifter populations, right, the Changelings, and one of the things she does such a great job of is, like, the reason that one shifter group has money is because they’ve discovered they’re really good at construction, right? And you know, like, the reason, you know, that the Psy group has money is because they have this one person that has this ability of foresight and can see, like, the stock markets, right?

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: And so it’s like, that’s kind of interesting way, and they’re all ultra-rich, right –

Dr. Cottom: Right.

Dr. Baker: – like, all of them, of course, and I don’t know how an economy works that way, but, like, whatever. And, and it’s interesting to me to see the way she tries to, like, create difference and understand difference –

Dr. Cottom: Uh-huh.

Dr. Baker: – and, you know, this kind of interesting thing she does where everybody can hook up with everyone.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Right, so it’s very clearly not a, like, stay in your own lane about dating or romance or sex, right. Like, it’s like we’re going to understand this differently, and I kind of wonder how that goes over with readers that are paying attention, right?

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Baker: Where I’m like, ooh, this is really fascinating, right? Like, this Wolf is now dating this Psy. Okay, cool! Like, what does that tell us, right? And so I’m kind of curious about other readers and how they handle that, but it is the, like, really practical stuff that she does very well, right?

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Like, do they go to college?

Sarah: Right!

Dr. Baker: You know, what does college look like?

Sarah: Yes, yes, yeah!

Dr. Baker: Like, you know?

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: What do their offices look like, you know?

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Do they go to work every day? Some of them don’t, right? There’s too much sex. But, like, you know, others have, like, to go to a day job or something like this –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – and, and it’s that mundane stuff that I think really, like, sells it for me.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, me too.

Sarah: And it also, it, it’s also a part about dismantling the default wealth fantasy that takes place in a lot of romance.

Dr. Cottom: Oh God, yes.

Dr. Baker: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: There is absolutely a, a default of, well, let’s take care of that first major pesky worry and make sure that everyone we’re talking about, or at least all the powerful people, have lots of money.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So when you have characters that have to somehow earn a living, that –

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Sarah: – wealth isn’t the default setting, you get a much richer world, but you also get more, more political layers to, to decipher.

Dr. Cottom: That’s why I hate the billionaire boys sort of genre, right. I think, of my least favorite, that’s a top three. [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m, I’m not a fan of those either, but I understand the shorthand that they’re trying to depict, but it is not a shorthand that I understand in the way that it’s trying to be written, if that makes sense.

Dr. Cottom: Exactly. The, the wanting to free – I mean, listen, the fantasy of being freed from, that’s really, ultimately what magic is about too, right. The, the ability to have some superpower – and in this instance it’s just that money is the superpower –

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: – that will free you from the constraints of reality is absolutely a type of escapist fantasy that is part of, you know, our culture, and we all consume it in different kinds of ways. I just think it’s about what kind of escapism you can give yourself over to. And depending on who you are, so for me, escaping into a world that is – and the billionaire boys things are also always predominantly very, very white.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Cottom: So escaping into a white wealthy world for me is not escape, right. That feels potentially violent. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop; I’m waiting for the, the, the trick or the trap, right. It’s just that, for me, escaping into that would not be an escape. It primes all of my safety concerns.

Dr. Baker: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Cottom: And so my imagination can’t let loose in those, right.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, and also, I’ve read a couple, and I find ‘em fascinating. They probably had more references in them to, you know, the, the trope that I think of as being deeply entwined in Regency romance novels, but, like, they’re fascinated with describing just how white the people in them are.

Dr. Baker: Yes, yes!

Dr. Cottom: You’re always hearing euphemisms for, like, pale, pale milk, and I’m like, what the heck is this? Is it, like, two loaves of bread getting it on? Like, I –

[Laughter]

Dr. Cottom: Right, but, they’re, like, obsessed! It’s almost like with the wealth part out of the way, they don’t know what else to use to build the character?

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: And so they –

Dr. Baker: Ultra whiteness.

Dr. Cottom: – default to, like, this weird obsession with – [laughs] – how white everybody – and I just can’t do them.

Sarah: Mm-mm.

Dr. Baker: Well, and it’s funny to me, ‘cause I just picked up a, it’s a Lara Adrian book –

Dr. Cottom: Oh.

Dr. Baker: – and it’s the first in her Midnight Breed – ‘cause I had to do my research for the podcast, right?

Dr. Cottom: Of course, of course!

Dr. Baker: Like, my due diligence.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: And what’s interesting to me about that is that I didn’t notice when I read these a few years ago, is the obsession with the whiteness of the women that are paired with the vampires, right?

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: So, like, creamy peach skin, right, or creamy golden-tinted skin. They really try a lot of different color combinations, so I’m not actually sure –

Dr. Cottom: [Laughs]

Dr. Baker: – like, what this whiteness looks like, right? Like, it’s hard for me –

Dr. Cottom: Like –

Dr. Baker: – like I’m holding up paint swatches. Like, gold or peach; like, I don’t –

Dr. Cottom: – butter? I don’t understand!

Dr. Baker: [Laughs] Like, I don’t understand what’s happening, but it is, like, it’s a piece of it, right? So, like, every sex scene is like, let’s remark for a moment, right, on, like, her delicate whiteness, right, and –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – and all of this sort of thing, and I’m just like, oh, like, flip, flip, you know, like, what? But it is, it’s that kind of, the wild way in which that whiteness –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – they have to, like, step it up, right? Like, it can’t just be –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah! Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – sort of neutral. It has to be, like, in your face in some sort of way, and – but I was just like, man, I’m really tired of them describing this woman. Right, like, I’m just tired.

Dr. Cottom: [Laughs]

Sarah: One of my favorite things about some of the urban fantasy series that I really enjoy is when you have a mercenary heroine –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – who is not white.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Oh yeah!

Sarah: – with a family that’s very inclusive of many different cultures –

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Sarah: – so you have basically, like, a triple threat of, of destruction of established expectations of women. So she’s not white, and she’s getting paid to be violent.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Right.

Sarah: Here, entirely here for it; sign me up. I will join this – if this was a multilevel marketing, if there was, like, an Amway –

Dr. Cottom: Yes, yes, I’m buying the starter kit, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Yep.

Sarah: – I’m in, no question.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm. No, I do too, so I love that. I like a, I love any female character where they allow her to be angry, first of all.

Dr. Baker: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, I want that. That’s why I like the Shelly Laurenston ones so much, like the –

Sarah: I love that so much!

Dr. Cottom: Yeah. They let her, they let the women rage out and, in fact, embrace it as a characteristic, right, of the Crows. For example, the Crows are just an instance, but –

Sarah: And the Honey Badgers, did you read the Honey Badgers?

Dr. Cottom: [Laughs] Yes, I did read the Honey Badgers! Okay, I’ve told you, it took me a while; early Shelly was too much for me –

Sarah: Oh, it’s very high camp. It’s –

Dr. Cottom: – but later we definitely work, and I feel like the honey badgers is, was a bridge between the early stuff that I couldn’t get into and the Crows stuff that I like, where I think she has found maybe her middle sweet spot.

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, a good craft, but also being a bit ridiculous.

Sarah: I heard her speak this summer at a conference, and she never does any events –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and I was really not cool. Like, I, I –

[Laughter]

Sarah: She’s amazing. But the thing I love about her books is that for women, rage is always an asset.

Dr. Cottom: Ah!

Sarah: And even, even in, in paranormal and urban fantasy romances, who has permission and, and social acceptance to get angry?

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Dr. Baker: Oh yeah, and this is why I like the stories about female shifters, because they get to be so angry!

Dr. Cottom: Right. Because it’s the animal in them, right.

Dr. Baker: Yeah, oh –

Dr. Cottom: It’s not the woman in them; it’s the animal in them. Right.

Dr. Baker: Yeah. And so, yeah, and it, I mean, it is one of those things where I’m like, oh man, I would like to flip that table! Right?

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Dr. Baker: Like, like this, or I would like to grab this guy and throw him up against the wall for saying something to me. Like, the, I mean, there’s a way in which I’m like, yes! Like, I am down for this –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – right, and this ability to say that actually that’s their strength, right, like, the reason that they’ve gotten higher in the pack – I hate that kind of analogy that they do there, but whatever –

Dr. Cottom: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Dr. Baker: – you know, is because they’re amazing, and they’re not going to back down, and it’s like, ohhh!

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Like, where was this fiction when I was a lot younger? Right, like, so –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: My hormonal thirteen-year-old self would have been a much happier person if I’d had depictions of women’s rage in my world.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah, I think the, what I would have loved was the, the women embracing competition.

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Baker: Yeah!

Dr. Cottom: I’m, I, let me just admit this here: I am competitive and apparently was born that way, and there are not a whole lot of, especially if you were not an athletic girl, and I –

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: – spoiler alert for everybody here: I was not, but you –

Dr. Baker: You’ll be shocked to find out that I was also not an athlete.

Dr. Cottom: [Laughs] I know! The girl who was reading all of the secret age-inappropriate books–

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

Dr. Cottom: – somehow was not on the basketball team. I know, shocking!

[Laughter]

Dr. Cottom: And so you know, but you have that com- – and there was no space, really, where girls are allowed to compete?

Dr. Baker: Yes.

Dr. Cottom: Without it being considered catty or – so the, so at least in some of the worldbuilding where especially, you know, you have these huge, fantastical, almost global, galactic conflicts going on? Being competitive is not only acceptable, it’s necessary, and it’s a good thing. They want the competitive woman because, you know, there’s a war going on between the beings, and you want the woman who is going to fight and kick somebody’s butt, right, and, and her embracing that competitive and it being a, a desirable trait, which I admit is, like, the fantasy for me, that, you know, the, the miracle idea that for some-, there is a heterosexual male somewhere in the world for whom that is considered a desirable trait in a female heterosexual partner –

Dr. Baker: Right, right.

Dr. Cottom: – is my version of the wealthy billionaires boys’ club. It’s –

[Laughter]

Dr. Baker: In your next career, you’re going to have to write these books.

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Cottom: If I thought that I could be good at them – I also say that I’m going to write the subversive Hallmark movie, by the way, one of these days.

Dr. Baker: Ah! I used to have students do, like, the – ‘cause I taught an apocalypses class, and so I would, I would, like, send them to, like, urban fantasy and romance a lot of times, right –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – where I was like, just see what happens when the world ends in these kinds of things, right, and like, how, how gender and race and, and class work, right, in these scenarios, and it was always so interesting because my students who were men would be like, I can’t believe you’re making me read this drivel, right?

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: Like, I’m not going to gain anything from it, and I was like, okay, sure, all right. You know, you still have to read it. Whatever.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: And then they would come back and they would be like, wow, they do really interesting stuff with race. And I was always like, huh!

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Cottom: Uh-huh.

Dr. Baker: Shocking! Shocking that, you know, we can do this. But that kind of ability to interrogate those sources, right, and see how they work and function is such an important thing, and the ability to say, this is what real news looks like, or this is what fake news looks like, I mean –

Dr. Cottom: Right.

Dr. Baker: – that’s a skill, right, that, that we need.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah. So I love – first of all, I think I would steal all of this, by the way, seriously, so I do have fantasies of one day teaching, like, you know, seriously, The Sociology Of, ‘cause you can really put anything after that?

Dr. Baker: Uh-huh.

Dr. Cottom: You know, there is no media object, there’s nothing that has not been produced by our economic and social and cultural system, and so, like, how do you turn your lens onto these things, et cetera. But I also think it is really interesting for how it does what you just described, which is it breaks down people’s, some students’ assumptions about, like, what’s legitimate knowledge? Like, the idea –

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: – that you would learn something from somebody different from you is fascinating, right, ‘cause isn’t that what the whole thing was supposed to be about? That, yes, you can actually learn things from people that you may not value, and – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: – and here, and here is this example: women write this thing, and you actually thought it was cool. Surprise, right?

Dr. Baker: Shock!

Dr. Cottom: I know, yeah.

Sarah: You read a whole book from the point of view of the female gaze, where the female character’s pleasure is the most paramount established reason for them to be hooking up? I’m really sorry that you had that experience.

Dr. Cottom: Right? And you didn’t die. Look what –

Dr. Baker: And you didn’t die!

[Laughter]

Dr. Cottom: Look at that! So, yeah, it’s amazing.

Sarah: So for you both as academics and readers, what do the fantasy romance genre and the, and the urban fantasy genre present that might be not something you find in subgenres of romance? What is, why is that your catnip, in other words?

Dr. Cottom: Ooh.

Dr. Baker: Yeah, it was like, huh, lots of things.

Sarah: I also have a buttload of recommendations for you both? Like, I’ve just been writing down titles here; it’s really bad.

Drs. Baker and Cottom: Oh –

Dr. Cottom: –  No! Then this is totally, probably, then my best paid talk thus far this semester. Thank you.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Cottom: You’re paying me in books. You know that’s how I ended up on your website and why I think that you, why I think the website is so important and serves such an important role. I’ve, I’ve actually talked about you guys in my newsletter a couple weeks ago, I think – or was it last week, or something – but about what happens when you can have, you know, unlimited content, right.

Dr. Baker: Mm-hmm?

Dr. Cottom: It is that what Smart Bitches did is it gave me back the community around romance writing, which had become so disaggregated, ‘cause we can now get it from our Kindles, we don’t really have to interact with other romance readers unless we choose to, but that that was so much a part of the system of finding your catnip –

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Cottom: – and that is so important, because no mainstream, like, you know – so what we do for mainstream “acceptable” fiction, right, is that there are tons of ways for you to find your group of people who will bring to you new content, right?

Dr. Baker: Right.

Dr. Cottom: So I’m going to read The New York Times Book Review to see what smart people are reading this week who I’m going to need to, you know, talk to somewhere at work, and then I’m going to go over here and read, I want something a little bit more radical, so I’m going to read this magazine, right. There really was not sort of that mass available, community-building function to help you filter through, and then when, you know, when there are a million e-books being published every week, what were you supposed to do?

Dr. Baker: Yeah, like, how can you get through them? Right, I mean it’s just the –

Dr. Cottom: Exactly.

Dr. Baker: – kind of impossible force of, there are just all of these, right, and –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – and then Amazon’s like, you should try this one, and I’m like –

Dr. Cottom: Right.

Dr. Baker: – I keep telling you know, right, and –

Dr. Cottom: I mean, talk about the deal we made with that devil, right. But, yeah, so finding my catnip has been about, I think, like, finding people who were reading stuff who, and, like, liking the person, like, right, and coming to like the person, and so now I just kind of read what they’re reading, and that works out really well for me! Yeah, I don’t know. I think, why is it my catnip? Yeah, it is certainly my default. Like, I will, I’ve got more, you know, automatic buy people on my list from that subgenre than any other –

Dr. Baker: Oh, me too.

Dr. Cottom: – and I think it’s because it does tend to be – I’m going to hate saying this, but I think it’s okay, considering who I’m speaking to? It’s just so smart.

Dr. Baker: Yeah! Yeah, it really is! I mean, this is like, I was thinking about, as I was rereading Nalini Singh, which Sarah forced me to do – that part of why I like her books is that they’re just so engaging on so many levels and that I think about them, right, so that I actually finish them, and I’m still thinking about the world she’s created and what that says about our contemporary moment, right, and that I can pick up another of hers and read this and think about it even more, and, and just to see, too, the way in which in a lot of the paranormal romance, that there is a focus on something like consent, right? That, like, consent is a big deal!

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: That there is a focus on female pleasure, and it’s a huge part of the narrative.

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: And I also like it too because a lot of times the heroines are women that have survived, like, terrible shit, right?

Dr. Cottom: Yes.

Dr. Baker: And then have created lives and, like, the trauma is a part of them, but it’s not debilitating in a certain way, and it, for me, like, that’s super appealing as a reader, right, as a woman who’s also been through some shit, right, to say, like, oh, look! Right? Now she’s kicking doors in, right, and throwing guys up against the wall, but, like, we also know this, like, fully fledged character in a way that I think people might not expect from that genre.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: But they’re really three-dimensional and really compelling, and you kind of want to – or at least I do – I want to hang out with them more, right, which is why I have the automatic buy set up too, where I’m like, yes, Amazon, tell me –

Dr. Cottom: Yep.

Dr. Baker: – that this new book is out, and then I’m going to have to find something to do with my children, right?

[Laughter]

Dr. Baker: While I try to read it as soon as it comes out. Yeah.

Sarah: – why there’s Xbox.

Dr. Cottom: That’s right! That’s why we, isn’t that why they came up with technology? Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Exactly, right? Or I’m like, go find a Kindle, children, right? Like, just do this for me. Yeah.

[Laughter]

Dr. Cottom: Now, I’m like Kelly: I love women who have been through things. That, I mean, that may be above all – like, if I have, like, a meta-genre, it’s that. I was always looking for stories about women who had gone through something.

Sarah: One of the things I love about the Crows series from Shelly Laurenston and the Honey Badger series is that by reading about these women who have seen some shit, you come out asking yourself, okay, how does this apply to me? Like, I finished the Crows, and I thought, okay, who are my sister Crows? Who are the people who are –

Dr. Cottom: Right! Who are my sister Crows?

Sarah: – have my back and would be like, yes, we should totally kill that guy! Let’s go do –

Dr. Baker: Yes! [Laughs] Let’s make that happen!

Dr. Cottom: I love how much they embrace killing somebody –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Cottom: My friends and I have a group chat that disqualifies all of us from public office, and in it we, like, one of our standby sayings to each other, who do we need to kill? Not, like, what happened? Not, right, like, we don’t need the backstory; like, you can tell us later what happened. What we just need to know right now is, who are we killing?

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Cottom: And I, yeah, I love this, right, that there’s this default assumption and that, yes, actually, some people, as the Crows make clear, do! That is the only solution here. Once you found out what it was –

Sarah: Yep!

Dr. Cottom: – you absolutely could have trusted your sister Crow the whole time. You absolutely were going to come to the same conclusion she had come to, right. That, that’s the beautiful thing. [Laughs] Somebody else in the world would hear the same thing, the circumstances that you experienced, and would draw the same conclusion as you.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Dr. Cottom: How much less lonely the world is when you think of it that way.

Sarah: So there’s a, a series called the Chicagoland Vampires by –

Dr. Baker: Oh, I love it! Sorry, go ahead.

Sarah: The first book took me a while to get into, because there’s a lot of, like, world setup and info dumpage and, like, there’s, there’s a lot going on in the first book where, where the first few chapters, you kind of have to wait for her to leave France and go back to the States, and then it’s good. But basically, it’s as if you take all of the established world of an urban fantasy vampire/shifter world in Chicago, hyper locate it in an accurate Chicago, but then the heroine is a millennial, so she has a completely different way of seeing the world than her parents and her parents’ colleagues, who basically set up that world. Like, all of the systems that exist for the vampires and the shifters and everybody to coexist, they set that up. She has to navigate that system and figure out –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – who she is, while also dealing with, you know, bad, nefarious problems and killing –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and battle and stuff like that. And it is so interesting in the first book to watch her figure out how she’s going to be the, the only born vampire child, so she’s already very well known, but she’s going to find her friends, and she’s going to find her family, and she’s going to figure out how to live her life, and it was, like, the most interesting blend of major themes in a, in an urban fantasy that I had read in a really long time, and it’s very, very casually inclusive, so all of the future characters that are introduced are of different cultures and different backgrounds, and there’s some humans, and there’s some shifters, and it’s so interesting.

Dr. Cottom: Hmm! I’ve already saved it.

Dr. Baker: I’m writing this down, and I will –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – go to the Amazon, probably immediately after. People are always like, are you a fan of these genres, right, that you’re studying? And I’m like, you know, sometimes I am, so I really like apocalyptic narratives. I’m not the biggest fan of zombies; it’s just, I think they work as a good case study, but I do read a lot of this, like, apocalyptic fiction, especially genre fiction. Literary fiction is Just depressing as hell.

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: Like, it’s just not worth it. But, you know, romance, where you’re like, oh, at least there’s some optimism here –

Dr. Cottom: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Baker: – [laughs] – usually in how this works out.

Dr. Cottom: And I love Alyssa Cole’s treatment of it, so I actually ended up finding, or believing – this was before sort of like I was following her as an author, and you should know that I believe that Alyssa Cole should have all of the money that ABC is left over with now that Shonda Rhimes has gone to Netflix. I think that they should put it in a box and they should send it to Alyssa, and they should let her run with all of this worldbuilding that she has done. So just going to put that out there, because I know this is a very powerful podcast, and so let’s just get that going.

[Laughter]

Dr. Cottom: And so I remember reading the Off the Grid series and thinking, oh, she’s clearly a scientist, right? Then I read the historical and thought, oh –

Sarah: Yep!

Dr. Cottom: – she’s clearly a historian. Then – [laughs] – I mean, so the way she gets into – I do believe she does have a science background, by the way, but the way she treats this sort of matter-of-fact-ly is just, it’s just close enough to reality, and I do tend to like these, right, where, you know, it diverges just slightly enough, right. So what brings about the apocalypse is one, again, something that could clearly happen, but it pulls at the fabric of what you believe: oh, yeah, what, what do we do, right, when you turn on the faucet and nothing comes out anymore? Like, what, what’s, you know, where do you go and what do you, what happens there, and she builds a really nice family unit in those books that I think is really interesting too, and she treats the romance very matter-of-fact-ly, which I like.

Sarah: Yes, that’s definitely true. Okay, do you guys have any books that you want to recommend that you love that you want to tell people about?

Dr. Cottom: Well, you killed my big one. I love Alyssa. A new favorite author is actually not doing so much urban fantasy, but you want to talk about kickass heroines who have scars, actually quite literally? Adriana Anders has a series about women who have experienced some sort of visible scarring, right, a trauma, and she does it, I think, in this really wonderful feminist sort of way, and I was at a cookout last year and mentioned the books, and the person sitting next to me is apparently her friend, so she’s also writing from up the road in Virginia, so I also think that’s super important to know. Again, I love all of Alyssa Cole’s stuff, and my favorite series thus far is just, you know, waiting incessantly for the, the next book to come out.

Dr. Baker: Now I’m going to have to pick these up. Like, I, you had me kind of at Honey Badger?

Sarah: Yeah! [Laughs]

Dr. Bakers: Right, like, I’m going to be honest, where I was like, this sounds like something I would read and just enjoy, right? This is perfect. So, so I read a lot of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. My reigning favorite, though, I think, is Seanan McGuire? She has the October Daye series, she writes as Mira Grant and writes really interesting zombie apocalypse stories, but what I like about her is that she does inclusion in a way that makes you realize that this is the way the world works and that we have to pay attention to it as such, right, so that it’s just one of those things where she’s great, where she has characters who have a variety of mental and physical disabilities, right, and that’s just part of the way this happens, that she’s really good at cultural and ethnic differences and that she just doesn’t play around about it, right? That she’s one of the first writers who I realized who just handled trans characters in this kind of loving way where it’s just like, this is it! Right, like, we don’t argue about diversity here in my space, right. Like, this is the way the world is, and it makes me think of Shonda Rhimes’ sort of commentary about diversity, right, where the term, like, bothers her because it’s like, no, this is the world. Like, we shouldn’t just, like, claim this in certain ways and not in others. So I really like her books.

I’ve mentioned Nalini Singh a number of times. Those are books that I go back to and reread when I’m having, like, a hard time, where I’m like, yeah, I’m just going to dwell in this world with sexy leopard shifters – [laughs] – and strange psychics. Like, it’s a lot of fun.

And then who else? I’m trying to think of who else I’ve been reading lately and, to prepare for this. Lara Adrian’s –

Dr. Cottom: Yeah.

Dr. Baker: – Midnight Breed books are intriguing to me, but I’m not entirely happy with the gender dynamics of them, so it’s like a, like a middle of the road recommendation from me, where I’m like, you’re going to be angry if you have a feminist sensibility or are a feminist –

Dr. Cottom: I’m happy to hear you say that –

Dr. Baker: – these books.

Dr. Cottom: – because I have read, you know, it’s, she’s been doing a ton of stuff in paranormal, and so I’ve certainly read them –

Dr. Baker: Uh-huh.

Dr. Cottom: – but I think, I don’…to, not to reread her, and I think that’s why –

Dr. Baker: Yeah.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Dr. McMillan Cottom and Dr. Baker for hanging out with me and talking about romance, because that was a tremendously fun conversation. I think the part that I enjoyed most – I actually wrote this down in my notes while I was editing – was what Dr. Cottom said, that when you build a world from scratch, you have to be deliberate about how there’s going to be different kinds of people, and you can’t rely on the whitewashed history that’s in place already.

If you would like to find more cool things that they say – there are so many, okay – you can find Dr. Cottom online @TressieMcPHD on Twitter and at her site tressiemc.com. You can find Dr. Baker @Kelly_j_Baker and on her website kellyjbaker.com. I will have links to both of those options in the website show notes, along with links to the things that we talked about and all of the books we mentioned. There were many, so I hope you weren’t trying to write those down while you were on the treadmill or walking the dog or whatever you’re doing while you listen to this podcast.

This episode was brought to you by Once a Scoundrel by Mary Jo Putney. From Mary Jo Putney, one of the most acclaimed writers of historical romance, comes another beautifully crafted, deeply emotional, and impeccably researched novel with a fun dash of adventure, this time set on the high seas. Follow the journey of a disgraced former English navy captain turned privateer as he attempts to rescue Lady Aurora Lawrence, who was kidnapped by pirates. Together they undertake a dangerous mission through troubled waters and encounter another kind of danger as attraction burns hot within the close confines of his ship. But even if they endure the perils of the sea and enemy lands, can their love survive a return to England, where the distance between a disgraced captain and an earl’s daughter is wider than the ocean? Once a Scoundrel by New York Times bestselling and RITA-Award-winning author Mary Jo Putney is on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

Today’s podcast transcript is sponsored by Last Night with the Earl by Kelly Bowen, and brought to life by the brilliant narrator Ashford McNab. If you like Tessa Dare and Sarah MacLean, feminism, and heroines who don’t wilt under the slightest bit of pressure, you’ll enjoy this historical romance. Eli Dawes, the Earl of Rivers, reluctantly returns to England to find his country home in Dover taken over by a finishing school for girls. Severely wounded in the Battle of Waterloo, his hopes of maintaining a low profile are thwarted when he literally bumps into Rose Hayward, an old friend who coincidentally is now the art teacher at the school. Rose, who has faced her own challenges while Eli has been away, is the only person to force him to see certain truths about himself and his place in the world, and unexpectedly, he does the same for her. And let us not forget, there is some seriously steamy sex. Last Night with the Earl by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. Find out more at kellybowen.net, and other oral romances – get it? – at hachetteaudio.com.

Stay tuned to the end of the podcast, when I have an audiobook sample of this title performed by Ashford McNab, who’s a brilliant narrator. You should listen to this; it’s quite lovely.

If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge of any amount, thank you very, very, very much. If you’d like to join the Patreon community, it would be most excellent if you had a look. Visit patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar a month, and every pledge helps keep the show going, helps me commission transcripts for episodes in the archives, and the Patreon community helps me plan interviews and suggests questions for upcoming guests as well.

Are there other ways to support the show? Absolutely! Leave a review wherever or however you listen, tell a friend, subscribe, whatever works, but thank you so very much for hanging out with me each week. There are many, many podcasts, and I am very grateful that you have chosen this one, so thank you.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is “Passport Panic” by the Peatbog Faeries. You can find them online at peatbogfaeries.com. You can find this album on Amazon and iTunes, and I will have links to all of the options in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

Coming up next week on Smart Bitches – there’s a website to go with the podcast; I just said the URL. I bet you know that it is there. This week we have a new Covers & Cocktails today, Friday, which means a delicious drink recipe from Amanda, this time for Lora Leigh’s Cross Breed, sponsored by Penguin Random House. Thank you, Penguin Random House! We also have reviews for new and much anticipated books – there are so many books coming out this week, holy smoke – plus Hide Your Wallet, which will be extra double large because, as I said, so many books out this week. We have Cover Awe, Help a Bitch Out, and of course Books on Sale every day, so I hope you will come and hang out with us.

I will have links to everything we talked about and all of the books that we mentioned, but now it is time for the bad joke – and don’t forget to tune in at the end for the audiobook sample. This week’s bad joke is super bad, and I love it so much.

What does a clock do when it’s hungry?

What does a clock do when it’s hungry?

It goes back four seconds.

[Laughs] When it’s hard to Fall Back, I’m going to think of this joke, and I will be super amused! Thank you to scruffyaf for this lovely joke. It goes back four seconds! [Laughs more] Any joke about time is great, because I have a very, very poor concept of time.

But on behalf of Dr. Baker, Dr. Cottom, and myself, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and don’t forget there’s an audiobook sample in just a few minutes. See you next time, and thank you for listening.

[calming music]

[sample of Last Night with the Earl by Kelly Bowen, narrated by Ashford McNab]