322. Breaking Up with Damaging Conventions in Romance: A Conversation with Kate Cuthbert

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Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 322 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Kate Cuthbert. Until very recently, Kate was the managing editor of Escape Publishing, part of Harlequin Australia. This interview was recorded while she still worked in that position, but she recently accepted a new position as the program manager at Writers Victoria, the Victoria, Australia state-wide professional organization for writers. Congratulations, Kate! Kate recently gave a keynote speech at Romance Writers of Australia which received a lot of attention after it was posted online. She addressed the tropes that are damaging, toxic, and regressive and explained that maybe it’s time we broke up with them. I read her speech online, but because speeches are meant to be heard, I asked her if she’d both talk about the development of her speech and read it again for you all. I think that it is very thought-provoking and affectionate while being critical and attentive to what the genre says to readers. She also talks about dubious consent, making deliberate choices about writing, and what our defaults in trope, character type, and cliché really mean or actually say beneath that familiarity. We also talk about hot fox characters, because reasons, and of course she recommends a book that has been passed around the office to everyone who’s had a rough day, so stay tuned for that.

I am very curious what you think of this episode, and if you want to respond, please do! You can email me at [email protected], or you can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. That’s 1-201-371-3272. Please do not forget to tell us your name and maybe where you’re calling from, if you wish, so that we can add you to a future episode.

This week’s podcast and podcast transcript are brought to you by Promise Me You by Marina Adair, available now from Montlake Romance. Mackenzie Hart has made a career out of writing about eternal love, so when she finds her perfect match in Hunter Kane, she decides to put it all on the line. Irresistibly charming and drenched in alpha-male swagger, Hunter isn’t just the catch of the town—he’s Mackenzie’s best friend. Only someone beats her to the altar. After a fresh start and three years to recover, the last thing Mackenzie expects is for her old life to come knocking. Recently divorced, musician Hunter Kane wants to reconnect with the woman he left behind. Admitting his biggest mistake comes first. What comes next is up to Mackenzie. He hopes she’ll give him a second chance. He may have been the one to break her heart, but he knows he can also be the one to mend it. As a tenuous friendship turns into something more, Hunter’s life on the road beckons once again. Will love be enough to keep them together, or will their wildly different worlds be too much for them to overcome? Readers who fell in love with Jackson and Ally in the recent remake of A Star Is Born will swoon over this emotionally satisfying second-chance romance. Promise Me You is available now from Montlake Romance.

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I have information at the end of the show. I will tell you about the music that you are listening to. I will tell you two terrible jokes! Not one, but two, ‘cause I totally let you down last week – my bad! And I will tell you what is coming up on Smart Bitches next week, which is lots of cool things. And as always, I will have links to the books that we discuss, and some of the movies as well, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

But for now, let’s get started with this interview. On with the podcast, and welcome, Kate Cuthbert!

[music]

Kate Cuthbert: I’m Kate Cuthbert. I am the managing editor of Escape Publishing here in Australia, which is Harlequin Australia’s digital-first, so the counterpoint to Carina Press over there in the US.

Sarah: Very cool. Are you also Dr. Cuthbert?

Kate: Not yet. I’m halfway to being Dr. Cuthbert?

Sarah: So you’re D’?

Kate: Yeah, yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: You’re D’ Cuthbert? D-apostrophe Cuthbert? [Laughs] What are you getting your Ph.D. in?

Kate: It’s in Literature.

Sarah: Wha-at?

Kate: I’m looking at rural settings, the use of rural settings in Australian popular fiction. So Australia, for the last decade or so, has been really inwardly focused in terms of the books that are selling really well, which is historically super-unusual. It used to be that you couldn’t buy books set in Australia because the conventional wisdom was that nobody wanted to read them, but that’s really changed in sort of the last little while, particularly in popular fiction where, like, books set on the land – [laughs] – do you remember when I was at RT in New Orleans, and I was speaking to your blogger, like, you had a –

Sarah: Yeah, the blogger pre-con, yeah.

Kate: Yeah, yeah, blogger pre-con, and I hadn’t slept in about forty-eight hours, because there was that massive storm in Dallas, and we ended up driving from Dallas to New Orleans to get to the conference on time, and I kept saying –

Sarah: I do remember.

Kate: [Laughs] And I kept saying, books in the bush, books set in the bush –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: – forgetting, of course, that, you know, it’s quite normal to say books set in the bush if you’re in Australia –

[Laughter]

Kate: – and all of your bloggers were looking at me, and I, you know, my poor, over-fried brain was like, I don’t understand what’s happening right now; why is everybody staring at me? It was because I was like, bush, bush, bush, bush, bush, bush, bush!

[Laughter]

Sarah: We do have those, but we usually call them erotic romance!

Kate: [Laughs] Anyway, so there’s all these books set in the bush, but –

[Laughter]

Sarah: So how many of them are in the map of Tassie?

Kate: [Laughs] Well –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: Yeah, so particularly in romance and in crime fiction, but also it’s bled a lot into fantasy and YA as well, so I’m looking at how the books are using the rural settings to really ground and isolate the stories, so, yeah.

Sarah: That’s very cool!

Kate: Oh my God, it’s so much fun! Everybody complains about Ph.D.s, and I can understand why, there’s so much work, but I just, I’m getting so much pleasure out of it and using different parts of my brain, and I get to just really read for –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: – like, read in a different way that I haven’t been able to read for a while, so I just, it, it feels like self-care doing this.

Sarah: I’ve, I think you’re probably the only person I’ve ever spoken to who talks about writing their dissertation as an act of self-care –

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: – but that’s freaking awesome!

Kate: That’s what it feels like! I know it’s odd, but you know, so much of my life is reading manuscripts, and you know, nobody really talks about sort of the, the, the mental load for editors in terms of reading slush piles, because you’re constantly looking for the things that are wrong with things?

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: You know, and you’re saying no so often, so you’re, you –

Sarah: Which is a bummer.

Kate: Well, it is, and there’s this emotional weight knowing that somebody’s waiting for you to get back to them, and you’re going to –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: – you know, at least give them a little bit of emotional pain for a little while, while they, you know, regroup and figure out what they’re going to do next, so to just be able to read, looking for, you know, interesting things or, you know, things that support or, or don’t support your argument, it’s, yeah, it does feel like self-care.

Sarah: That’s lovely!

Kate: Hmm.

Sarah: So you recently gave a speech, and it got a good, excellent amount of at-, of attention.

Kate: It did!

Sarah: Congratulations! Tell me about this speech. You were a keynote, which is really intimidating.

Kate: I was! It was my first keynote speech! I was –

Sarah: What? Seriously? This is your first?

Kate: Yeah, I’d never done that before, so I was really, really nervous about it. I do a lot of public speaking and a lot of teaching and workshopping and that sort of thing, but I’d never, I mean, I’d never done a keynote speech before, so I was really, really nervous for a really long time while I was writing it, and I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to do, and it was something that I’d spoken to the RWA Australia committee about. Sometimes the committee will, will approach some of the editors to ask what we’re seeing as a way of looking at what they should put into workshops for the conference.

Sarah: Oh, that’s very smart!

Kate: It is! It’s incredibly smart. Anyway, I was talking about how something that was coming through my slush pile an awful lot, particularly post Fifty Shades of Grey, was the sort of throwback to dubious consent or – it’s almost that, it’s almost a throwback to, like, the guardian/ward dynamic in terms of, like, the, the –

Sarah: Wow!

Kate: – super stern and distant, like, almost more experienced man and the young ingénue, and him knowing more about her body than she does, and, and you know, that’s a dynamic that I think can be really interesting, but it was something that was coming through an awful lot, and it felt a lot of times that the manuscripts I was reading, people were doing that because they didn’t know how to do something else, almost? So I wanted to, you know, so I thought about talking about sex positivity and, and how to write sex-positive heroines in romance, and anyway, they asked me if I would put something together in term, in a keynote, as opposed to, like, a panel or a workshop, so that’s how it all came about. And then I spent, you know, I said yes and then spent the next six months stressing about how I was actually going to do this. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, you know, no pressure. Sure, it’s just a, just a, you know. You know, no big deal.

Kate: But it was, I mean, as, as far as keynotes go, it was, I’m really glad it was at the RWA. It felt like a, like a really safe space, and it was a community that I’d been involved with for so long, so it felt, it felt right to, to give my first keynote there.

Sarah: Well, they certainly asked the right person. What was –

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: What was your goal with this speech? I mean, I know a long time ago I listened to someone who had, before, before they transitioned into working in publishing, talk about how they had been in seminary, and one of the focuses of their coursework was, of course, giving a sermon, and the goal was always to reach for the point that you want people to be thinking about as they exit the room. What do you want people to be thinking about as they walk out the door?

Kate: Hmm.

Sarah: Typically it’s called your takeaway, but that always makes me think of, like, a curry or some noodles.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: Something I’m going to eat. [Laughs] So what was your sort of goal? What did you want to accomplish with, with your keynote?

Kate: As I’ve been sort of growing and developing as an editor, one of the things that I, I keep thinking about is making deliberate choices when you’re writing. I think that there’s a lot of woo-woo, I guess, around writing. You know, authors talk about their muses and, you know, how everything has to be right to write down, and you know, there’s even some authors who famously just, you know, think that their characters are talking through them, as opposed to them creating? And I think that, you know, when you’re in the flow that it can really feel like that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Kate: – but I think when it comes back to whether you do it when you’re writing or whether you do it when you’re editing, depending on what kind of writer you are, being aware of the choices that you’re making and making them deliberately, and as long as it’s your choice and you, you know, you know why you’re making that choice, then I think that you can move forward with it; there’s space for everything. But making that choice deliberately, and I wanted to talk about making, particularly in romance, when we’re talking about sex and, you know, female bodies and female sexuality and, and how women own their sexuality or don’t own their sexuality, I wanted to be, writers to go away thinking about how to make the choices that they’re making in their manuscripts, but making them deliberately.

Sarah: Yes.

Kate: So being aware of what they were doing so that when they were asked about it, that they wouldn’t be, oh, you know, I just did it that way. It would be, well, I made this choice because, you know, this is the character arc. This is what I was thinking would, you know. And I think that if you make something, if you make a deliberate choice, then it’s going to show through the writing, but it’s also going to mean that when you go back to that manuscript, or when a reader comes into that manuscript, it’s going to make more sense?

Sarah: And that the choices that you make have meaning. The way that you portray sex and the way that you portray a, a, a human body has a meaning and has an impact.

Kate: It does. I suppose the other takeaway was also that we don’t know who’s reading our books at any given moment and what they’re taking away from that, and it’s funny because I said to you before we started recording that the speech had gotten a lot more attention than I expected –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kate: – and it’s had, you know, it’s had, it’s real, it’s, gratifyingly, it’s had its really fair share of people who are, who are excited by it and liked the ideas in it, but it’s also had some pushback from people who think that I’m policing fantasies, I guess? Or suggesting that women don’t know the difference between fantasy and reality and that, you know, it’s morality essentially dressed up as feminism, and I can understand why, I can understand why people might think that. Certainly, I am suggesting that some of the fantasies that we see done over and over again in romance are problematic, and I think when writers sit back and think about the choices that they’re making, and if they do choose to portray something that is increasingly becoming inappropriate in our real world, then they also have to be aware that there will be consequences to that and the fact that the media that we consume is not divorced from our real lives, and you can have a fantasy, absolutely, but if you see that fantasy confirmed over and over and over again in the media that you consume, then you know, you don’t always have the opportunity to sort of sit back and say, well, actually, at this point in time I’m not comfortable, or, this is not appropriate. I think that we have to be, I think we have to be critical of the media that we consumed.

Sarah: And we also have to acknowledge that the stories that we tell normalize narratives.

Kate: Yes! Absolutely! Absolutely!

Sarah: So what influenced you while you were, while you were writing? I mean, how long did it take you to write this speech? Did you sort of have to percolate it and then –

Kate: Yeah. I always tell my thesis adviser that writing is the last thing that I do, which sounds a bit silly, but I think about things for an awful long time, and then when I normally sit down to write them, then it’s almost always already fully formed in my head, and then when I’m writing it’s just the product of months and months of thinking? I, I knew kind of what I wanted to, to, where I wanted to get to with the speech. I had a really hard time finding my way into it, like, figuring out where to start, and it was actually, I have a writer friend named Jodi McAlister, who is, incidentally, a full doctor, so we can call her Dr. McAlister. She writes YA fantasy, and she said, oh, you’re talking about breaking up, and that was, that was the moment when I clicked, and I thought, oh yes, this is exactly what we’re doing; we’re talking about breaking up. We have to break up with these conventions, and then after that it, it flowed out pretty easily. The first dra-, the first draft is almost entirely what I, what my speech ended up being. There’s a little bit of treats here and there, but yeah, what I wrote with that first draft is pretty much the speech that I gave.

Sarah: Nice job!

Kate: Mm. But I mean, I was thinking about – oh, sorry – I was thinking about it for five months beforehand, so. [Laughs]

Sarah: So what have been some of the reactions that were gratifying?

Kate: Well, everybody stood up at the end! [Laughs]

Sarah: That –

Kate: After I finished delivering it, and I have to admit, I had no idea what to do in that moment.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kate: Yeah, it was, the podium was up on a dais, and I was, you know, I gave the speech, I said thank you, and then I just sort of, like, made my way off the dais, and every-, you know, I was halfway across, and everybody was standing up, and I was like, what do I do? [Laughs] What, what –

Sarah: What do I do right now?

Kate: Yeah, what do I do right now? Sort of, like, gave an awkward wave and, like, came down off the stairs. So that was, that was unexpected. That was, that was a moment, actually. That was a really special moment.

I talk about Melanie Milburne, who is a prolific and excellent Mills & Boon writer, in my speech as well, and I think having – ‘cause I told her that I was going to talk about her books and what she’d said to me before, before I actually gave the speech, so she was aware that I was going to be talking about her, but I was a bit worried about, you know, how she was going to take the speech? Making sure, and so, when, when she found me after and said that, that it was beautifully done and that she really proud to be part of it, that, I think that was the most special reaction for me? I was really pleased that she, that she found it gratifying as well.

Sarah: That’s very cool. So one of the things I wanted to ask you to do was to read your speech.

Kate: Yeah!

Sarah: Because we talked about this when we were emailing: speeches aren’t necessarily meant to be read.

Kate: Mm.

Sarah: Part of writing a speech is knowing the rhythm of what it’s going to sound like when you say it, and since obviously we could not all attend the Romance Writers of Australia – though it is an awesome conference, it is a bit far. I mean, you and I are, what, fourteen hours apart? It’s like –

Kate: Yeah, I think so.

Sarah: – 9:30 in the morning for you, right?

Kate: Yep.

Sarah: You’re already into, like, Thursday. I’m still chilling in Wednesday.

Kate: Thursday’s going to be a beautiful day, by the way.

Sarah: I’m really glad to hear it. This is how I know that the world is not ending: ‘cause it already started in Australia, so we’re fine. You’ve got Thursday covered; I’ll just, I’ll just catch it on the tail end.

Kate: Yes! [Laughs]

Sarah: New Years, New Years Day is when I’m deeply reminded of how behind the rest of the world the United States in many, many ways, and not just in time, but –

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: – yes. We will discuss my Despairica another time. So – [laughs] – you are going to read your speech!

Kate: Yes! I think that would be –

Sarah: Thank you for doing that.

Kate: It’s my absolute pleasure.

Thank you to the RWA for inviting me to address the conference, and congratulations on a job well done.

The title of this keynote is Consenting Adults. The topic evolved out of a discussion I had with the conference organisers about romance novels and the representation of sexuality after Fifty Shades of Grey, and in an emerging #MeToo world. This is clearly not a topic that can be covered adequately in thirty minutes, nor is it a topic that comes with well-defined answers.

What I’d like to do today, as someone who cares deeply about this genre, its writers, its readers, and its place in the literary landscape, is begin a conversation. Ask some questions. Provoke some thought.  We are at a crossroads, and every one of us will have to make our own decisions.

The ones I present today are mine.

I’d like to begin this morning’s discussion with a recounting of one of the bravest acts I’ve ever seen. I had the privilege earlier this year to attend the Australian Romance Reader Awards where Melanie Milburne was the invited guest speaker. At the table beforehand, she told me that she wasn’t sure how her speech would be received, that she was nervous because what she had to say was controversial. And then she got up, and she said that after a stellar career and nearly eighty titles to her name, not only were there some books that she wished she could go back and rewrite, but that there were some of which she was actively ashamed. Ashamed.

Melanie’s growth as an author and as a person meant that books that she had written earlier in her career were now deeply uncomfortable to her. Situations, characters, scenes transgressed into areas that made her profoundly uneasy, and given the option, she would have them taken out of circulation.

I was taken aback and so impressed in this age of backlist gold and constant self-promotion that an author would not only admit that some of her books made her uncomfortable, but that she would do so publicly and unreservedly. It was courageous, and it was truth-telling.

It also opens up some uncomfortable questions for all of us, as readers, writers, publishers, and advocates for the romance genre. Because Melanie is not alone, and there are aspects of our history and our traditions that we need to talk about.

Romance has always existed in the margins of the literary world. Not economically, of course, but within the broader literary landscape, romance is kind of the equivalent to Wakanda, the mythical land out of the Marvel movie Black Panther. Those outside only see a desolate village, starved of real culture and devoid of literary merit. But once you cross into the borders, find the book that takes you from outside to inside, you find a vibrant, thriving community, supportive, organised, and running on a mythical, powerful element that the rest of the world does not even know exists.

In Wakanda, of course, the element is Vibranium that can be used to make previously unheard of weaponry. The romance genre element is almost exactly the opposite.

Romance harnesses hope.

It’s what the Happy Ever After ending means. It’s the kernel of motivation in every one of our stories. That no matter where we are now or what is happening, that things can get better. That things will get better.

That out there are friendships and family and relationships and connection and love, and we might have to work for it, harder than we’ve ever worked before, go deeper and be more vulnerable, strike out on adventures with no guarantee of success, risk everything we have and everything we are to get to that ending.

But that ending exists, different from where we are now, from who we are now.

Hope has been inbuilt to romance stories from the very beginning, and it’s tied so strongly to what has made this genre so subversive for so long – that hope is tied to the idea that women’s lives can be better.

At the beginning,  our hopes were tied to finding the right husband – a husband who would not only take care of his wife, but that would also care for his wife, making sure that her emotional needs are met as well as her physical. Hope that he would see her as a whole person and not just a possession or a brood mare.

But romance didn’t stop there. Instead it hoped new hopes for women: personhood, careers, ambition, self-acceptance, self-love, sex, great sex, mind-blowing sex, sexual autonomy, bodily autonomy, lively and nourishing friendships, passionate and enduring love affairs, but mostly romance hoped for women’s lives to be well-lived.

Along the way, romance also hoped other hopes – it hoped that emotional would no longer mean weak, that fear would no longer turn to anger, that feminine would no longer be an insult. It hoped that men would be able to cry and dance and feel joy and unshakeable love and express those things out loud. It hoped that everyone would be able to find a Happy Ever After with whomever they loved. It hoped that faith would be a cornerstone to life but not a barrier to humanity. Romance hoped a lot of hopes for many different people, but mostly it hoped for a world better than the one that currently exists.

In our own little bubble, we read and wrote and published and edited and shared our stories and hoped.

But literature tells us truths about isolated bubbles – that keeping the world out also means keeping ourselves in. When Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings begs Frodo to just forget about the quest and go home to the Shire, he misunderstands that we are all of us connected, and that the fate of one must necessarily become the fate of all.

So here we are. In 2018, what does romance look like? What hopes are we hoping for ourselves and for our future, for our daughters and sons and their children?

Romance has always been a genre that elevates the feminine. It tells the stories of women and those things that matter to women – community, family, friendship, love. Connection to the world. Connection to each other. Connection to ourselves and our own goals. The balance between the personal and aspirational. Between self-care and giving of ourselves. The importance of our emotional landscapes and how they fit in – or don’t – to the physical landscapes around us. How to navigate this world.

Importantly, it tells the stories of women who win – who take on the big corporation, the dastardly criminal, or even their own self-doubt and emerge triumphant in the end.

In 2018, as a woman, it’s harder to win. The world is both bigger and smaller, and the strides that we have taken forward seem to be but a façade for a deeper, more insidious malevolence, one that exists in shadows and nuance but can’t be targeted for defeat. One that hides behind humour and innuendo and the demand for hard proof and the scepticism of critics. One that requires a constant, exhausting vigilance.

Suddenly, the stories of triumphant women matter, more than ever. If we were in a romance novel right now, we’d be in the opening chapters, facing an obstacle that seems insurmountable, too strong, too ingrained, too powerful to ever defeat.

And there’s shame.

Because this enemy is not new. In fact, many of the behaviours that are now being called out – sexual innuendo, workplace advances, kisses stolen because the kisser couldn’t resist – feel in many ways like an old friend. They exist in the bubble. They show up in our stories. They provided a way to hope back when we weren’t sure how to do so, and they readily tap into that shared emotional history over and over again in a way that feels familiar and friendly and safe.

So when the outside world comes along and points at our frenemy and tells us that it’s wrong, it’s so easy to ignore. After all, romance is used to hearing that we’re wrong. Especially from outside voices. And we’re really good at disregarding that criticism, because we’ve been doing it for so long.

It’s so easy to curl back into our bubble. To turn our backs on the outside world. To soothe the enemy and stroke its head. They just don’t understand, we say. There are genre conventions. Our readers understand. We’re just writing fiction. Readers can tell the difference between what is real and what is fantasy…

I want to say something here that a friend of mine said to me, and it changed the way I think about the romance genre and our responsibility to the greater world.

The media, she said, the media and the art that we consume are the most powerful influencers on our lives and our actions.

If that art is romance novels, then we have the potential – and the obligation – to affect women around the world.

I’m not the first person to talk about romance in the #MeToo era. There are several articles, thought-pieces, Twitter threads, and blogs that look at the romance genre through the lens of sexual harassment, coercion, and consent.

But I keep coming back to this idea of potential and obligation. Because I think this is why romance has been so important to so many women for so long. Because it shows the potential within all of us, and it honours its obligations.

Now, obligations are slippery, and in a genre as big as ours, they’re hard to pin down. We all of us contain multitudes, and the romance readership contains multitudes of multitudes. It’s an impossible task to be everything to everyone. And, as one cogent argument goes, we’re not the only genre. Just as every institution and community is complicit, so too is every literary field. So why is romance being held accountable in a way that other genres are not? Why must we answer to this ingrained malice in a way that no one else is expected to?

Because it’s our obligation. We’ve operated under the radar for years. Our subversion has been subversive in many ways because no one bothered to look. And many of us – most of us – have agitated against that, actively sought a reputation reboot and recognition. But that recognition is a double-edged sword. If we want to call ourselves a feminist genre, if we want to hold ourselves up as an example of women being centred, of representing the female gaze, of creating women heroes who not only survive but thrive, then we have to lead. We can’t deflect, and we can’t dissemble. We need to look to the future and create the books that women need to read now.

We’ve been shown our potential. To rise to it is our obligation.

And this is where it gets tricky, because as a community, we have to do the one thing that romance has never taught us how.

Break up.

But this can’t be a fire and fury break up, all emotions and pain and passion. There is no Big Misunderstanding. This is not the safe breakup, where we know that everything will be okay. There will be no touching reconciliation. There is no Happy Ever After.

No, this is a breakup that we as a community need to go into with clear eyes and calm minds, a sense of peace and a sense of mourning. It’s okay to grieve the loss here. It’s healthy. After all, in a relationship as long as the one that romance has shared with these familiar, uncompromising behaviours, there were good times. There were strong times and happy times and sexy times. Our decision to move forward now, to recognise the toxic underpinnings that exist behind the aggression, doesn’t erase the good aspects of the past. It just recognises that this relationship has run its course, and that we as a genre have grown beyond it.

Be strong, because no break up is easy, and this one is especially hard. There is still seduction in stolen kisses.  An intense romantic onslaught can still provoke excitement.

We have been conditioned to respond to coercion.

The pursuit. The games. The inclination to play hard to get, to not voice desires for fear of being seen as forward or unladylike. The value judgements wrapped up in our response to our own bodies and our own desires.

I read an article once that said you should never trust first responses, because your first response is how you’ve been trained to respond – by your family, your teachers, the media, society. Your first response is your conditioned response. But the second response, the one that follows immediately afterwards, is your thinking response.

We have been conditioned to respond to coercion.

It’s time to start relying on our thinking response.

Mostly, we have to accept that our relationships with these behaviours were healthy for a time. They were good for us. They allowed to us to begin the hoping for women’s sexual authority and gratification. They allowed us to put into novels the first descriptions of women’s sexual desire and satisfaction in such a way that she didn’t have to die at the end for having enjoyed an orgasm.

I think Melanie Milburne is incredibly brave, but I’m afraid I also think that she is mistaken. There is no shame in the books that we wrote before we knew better. And part of this break up needs to include compassion for ourselves for the things of which we weren’t yet aware. We must forgive ourselves for not knowing what we didn’t know until we learned it.

But we do know better now. And with that comes the obligation to do better.

This relationship that we’ve had with coercion is no longer good for us. That doesn’t mean that there were never good times. It doesn’t mean that this relationship was always wrong. But it’s become toxic. It’s become dangerous. It’s become hazardous to that kernel element that is so crucial to romance. Clinging to this relationship is circumventing our ability to hope for better lives for women. Art is life. Romance novels make lives better – I know many of you have received letters to that effect.  It’s a privilege to write for women. But it is also an obligation.

It’s time to honour that obligation so we can live up to our potential.

But it’s easy for me to stand here and spout metaphors and Lord of the Rings references. Writing is hard. Romantic tension is hard. Writing good sex is really hard. These tropes that I’ve spoken about work as a shorthand, and they make writing just a bit easier.

Kate, I can hear you all thinking at me. Kate. Inspiration is all very well and good, but practical writing advice is so much better. Help an author out, would you?

The original discussion about this speech was a panel pitch to provide information on the sex positivity movement and how writers can write sex-positive sex scenes. Much of my discussion here has been informed by sex positivity, and how it can be applied to fictional worlds.

There are two key principles to the movement: first, active, informed consent in all aspects of sexuality, and second, that anything that happens between consenting adults is natural.

I particularly like how principle the first flows into principle the second: if you have active, informed consent, then anything consenting adults do afterwards is natural.  Critics of sex positivity – indeed, critics of including sex positivity in fictional universes – claim that it is restrictive and inhibits spontaneity, but I think the freedom is dizzying. As long as all parties are consenting, anything is natural.

And yes, it means consent for everything. Recognising the heroine’s bodily autonomy, her right to decide what happens to it at any and every point is crucial to these discussions. We need to divorce the idea of sexy from the idea of surprise.

It also means empowering your heroines to know their bodies, what they want, and how to ask for it. She can’t mumble or say no when she really means yes. She can want to be pursued – there’s a lot of scope in ‘I’m not yet convinced, but you’re welcome to try’ – but she cannot, must not be prey.

We can no longer think of consent in terms of no means no, but rather only yes means yes. A nod, a smile, a spoken word. Even if your heroine doesn’t want to want it, she still has to be present in the moment.

It means empowering your heroine’s choices – write that contraception scene. The crinkle of a condom package should become cliché. Or an all clear from the clinic. I don’t particularly care. But this is the genre where it should become so ingrained that women engage only in safe sex – protecting themselves and protecting their partners – that it becomes invisible to readers. Empower your heroines to demand safety, and empower your heroes to deliver it without being asked.

Write options. Secret babies are a treasured part of our genre, but unwanted pregnancies have serious financial, emotional, and professional repercussions for women without a support system around them. Use this plot point, by all means, but don’t romanticise it. You don’t know who’s reading, and we are so lucky to live in a country with pro-choice legislation, even if it’s not easily accessible to everyone, and with social support programs, even if they don’t adequately cover the cost of living for single parents.

Your belief system will absolutely play a part in what your heroine decides or how you choose to address unwanted pregnancies. But address the realities – if your heroine is going to have her Happy Ever After, how will she keep her head afloat until such a time as the hero comes into the picture?

Love your secret babies, but be deliberate in your choices.

I’ve developed a reputation as someone who doesn’t like alpha heroes, and I will cop to that to some degree. I do appreciate the quieter heroes, the ones that use humour instead of commands, patience instead of exasperation.

But there is room for every kind of hero, from alpha through to omega.

For me, the difference between alpha and beta has always been aggression. Like all emotions, aggression is neither positive nor negative, but can become either in the way that it is expressed. Everyone in this room is aggressive. You’re being aggressive just sitting here. Aggressively pursuing your goals, whether it’s a first sale or a new genre or expanding your network. How the aggression manifests itself is the difference between an alpha hero and an alpha hole.

The issue for me is that romance has entered into a phase of hypermasculinity. Not like the 90s, when we saw a massive uptick in military heroes and warriors, where paranormality meant that the heroes didn’t have to follow the rules of society, but a throwback to the very earliest genre romances of wards and guardians, where the heroes were cold and distant, unfathomable to their naïve heroines. In the billionaire era, we saw this same hero emerge – cold and ruthless, distant and disconnected. A hero that demanded. A hero that commanded. A hero that believed everything had a price and was wealthy enough to feel entitled to it.

We also saw a battle of trends, each one trying to out-alpha the next, dancing on the edge of – and sometimes leaping right over – the lines of respect and consent. The word ‘edgy’ has come to mean toxic, and it’s infiltrated the genre.

But aggressive doesn’t have to mean violent or hostile or destructive. It can mean progressive, advancing, expanding. It doesn’t have to mean controlling; it can mean incisive, deliberate, and sharp. A hero can be reserved without being unkind, aloof without being callous, dominant without being dominating, assertive without being overbearing.

You are writers, and this is your craft. Craft the hero that meets his potential.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to recognise that our genre favourites might have a long history, but that history is tied to exclusivity. Those edgy areas that you love might be keeping others from engaging in the genre, creating barriers where we should be open.

Progress isn’t made without sacrifice. Privilege isn’t shared if the privileged don’t make space beside ourselves.

It won’t be an easy transition – none of it. But the alternative is to continue normalising coercion and domination and disrespect and powerlessness in our romantic relationships.

We are all of us in the business of imagination, and we’ve all of us chosen the genre of hope. I hope that you have a wonderful weekend this weekend. I hope that you come away inspired and engaged. And mostly, I hope that you understand the power that you hold in your hands, the potential each of you holds, to influence the world and make it better. To continue our long tradition of hoping for better lives for our heroines, and the heroines around the world who read these stories and learn to hope for themselves.

Thank you.

Sarah: Well done!

Kate: Thank you.

Sarah: And thank you for reading it again. I really appreciate it.

Kate: No, it was my pleasure to read it again.

Sarah: So now that you’ve read it and delivered it and talked to people about it, is there anything about it that you would add to or change?

Kate: I imagine, like, this is, this is a piece that’s written right now. You know, this is where I am now, and I imagine if I come back to it six months or twelve months, then, you know, my thinking will have refined a little bit. It might have, might go in different direction. It might, I don’t know, it might be more or less strident, but I think it’s a pretty good indication of what I think about romance and what I think needs to happen right at this moment in September of 2018.

Sarah: Right. So you mentioned earlier that some people had some strong responses and said that you were trying to censor anything.

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: Or trying to, to restrict what people are writing, or you’re trying to govern or, or –

Kate: Police.

Sarah: – specific – police, thank you; that’s the word I was looking for.

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: I was going to say legislate, but that’s not what you were doing.

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: You were trying to police fantasies of people, and that people know the difference between fantasy and reality. Have you thought about that in terms of a response?

Kate: Look, I have thought about it a lot, and I think that – did you ever read the book Asking for It by Lilah de Pace? Is it Lilah de Pace? [Lilah Pace]

Sarah: That is not a book that I could read, but I am very familiar with it.

Kate: Yeah. I think that there are – there is room for fantasy, absolutely, and I think that having, you know, there’s – I think that there’s absolutely room for fantasy. I think that the difference that comes in when you’re reading romance novels versus reading something that is meant to be pure fantasy is that romance novels, particularly contemporary romance novels, are supposed to be depicting, you know, contemporary reality as it is now, and granted it’s an incredibly optimistic reality, but the coercive behavior that I talk about isn’t coming through in the heroine’s fantasy. You know, it’s coming through in, in her reality, and I think that it’s, it’s so tied up in everything that we’ve been taught and everything that we’ve heard for years and years and years from, you know, the school yard – oh, he only picks on you because he likes you – through to, you know, well, he just couldn’t help himself, and I think that that’s pushing back a lot of responsibility on the women to take care of themselves and the men to not be able to control their behavior, and while there is something that is sexy about being desired so dramatically that, you know, you make somebody lose control, the reality of that situation isn’t sexy? It’s scary.

Sarah: Yeah. I often have that same sort of feeling of, I have strong feelings about this particular issue or this particular trope, but I don’t want to tell someone else that they are wrong for enjoying it.

Kate: No, and I mean that’s the thing: like, it’s, it’s – [laughs] – but when you see it sort of as, like, an ongoing trend, an ongoing trope, that becomes less about what somebody enjoys and more about a pattern of behavior, and I think that’s, that’s sort of where I draw the line.

Sarah: I think that, as I read more about how readers are affected by the, the books that they read –

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: – how one line in a book can be devastating to a reader, how one particular type of hero can be immensely upsetting, or the messages about a heroine can be deeply upsetting or, or even triggering for someone, the more I think that it is more than okay and it is necessary to do the work of interrogating what is it that you like, and why do you like it? There’s – and I’m not saying, why do you like that? like there’s something wrong with you. That is not how I’m saying that at all! I am saying to do the work of interrogating why do you like this thing? Why is this the thing that works for you?

Kate: Yeah, I absolutely agree, and I think that you can enjoy something with one part of your brain while also recognizing that you’re enjoying something problematic with the other part of your brain?

Sarah: Oh yes, I do it frequently when I read older romances.

Kate: [Laughs] Exactly. Or watch superhero movies.

Sarah: Or reread something that I, and I look back at Past Sarah, and I’m like, Past Sarah, how did you miss this? My goodness!

Kate: [Laughs] I had that exact experience with Wuthering Heights?

Sarah: Oh, oh yeah. Whoo!

Kate: – Wuthering Heights at fifteen, I thought that it was the most romantic thing I’ve ever read, and I was just desperate for somebody to love me like Heath-, Heathcliff loved Cathy, and then I read it again –

Sarah: Oh my God, that sounds so exhausting! [Laughs]

Kate: Well, I was fifteen! I had a lot of emotions then.

Sarah: Exactly! That’s why it worked!

Kate: I had the energy for the emotions at that time. And then I, we did it in, at school, we did it in my fourth year of university, and I read it again, and I thought, what was I thinking? This is terrible! He’s horrible! He kills the dog! That is not okay!

Sarah: Past Kate, Past Kate! [Laughs]

Kate: I think about that a lot, actually, because, you know, that was just the difference of what, five, four or five years.

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: You know, how, how differently I thought from, from, you know, from just five years ago. So it makes sense that things are going to keep progressing. Like, you’re, we’re always growing; we’re constantly growing. We can still enjoy something and recognize that it’s not healthy for us.

Sarah: And we’re, and we’re learning how to see the world better and how to, basically, how to do better. But I love looking at the origin of, oh, I really like this trope; why do I like this trope? I really like this conflict; why do I like this conflict? But I also think that it’s necessary to examine what, what do those tropes say? When you tell this type of story over and over again, are you casting a certain type of person as disposable? Are you, are you casting or showing someone as, as less than a person? Once you, once you see it, you can’t –

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: – unsee it; you know what I mean?

Kate: It goes into, like, are you rewarding certain kinds of behavior? Are you punishing other kinds of behavior? You know, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: – the actions that people do, how are they, like, what are the consequences of those actions? And are they –

Sarah: Right.

Kate: – less for certain characters or more for other characters, and yeah, I understand –

Sarah: Are there even consequences? [Laughs]

Kate: Yeah. I’m saying, it’s funny because I can trace my love of super-self-confident men in both fiction and real life right back to Disney’s Robin Hood. Yeah.

Sarah: Oh hell, yeah! Hot fox, the original –

Kate: Right?

Sarah: – the original version.

Kate: Like, that cocky, funny – I was like, oh man. I was, like, a four-year-old, and I was like, yeah! I found my type!

Sarah: Yeah! And you know what else he is? He is ruthless and wily, but extremely emotionally fluent. He knows exactly how he feels about Maid Marian, and he is fully aware of it, and he doesn’t know how to make himself good enough for her or figure out how for them to be together –

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: – but he is entirely fluent in his own feelings, and that is fricking sexy?!

Kate: Right?

Sarah: Oh my God! Ooh! I’m fanning myself right now.

Kate: [Laughs] Someone needs to, like, write me that romance novel.

Sarah: Oh man, that was, that was – ah, man. I’m, even when I saw Zootopia, I was like, did anyone, like – ? Clearly, clearly, they used the Disney Robin Hood fox as a prototype –

Kate: Yes, they did.

Sarah: – for all of that wily charm, ‘cause come on now!

Kate: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s like, I recognize you! You’re just wearing modern clothing, but I’ve met you before, sir. How are ya? How you been? Things are good? I’m glad. Okay! I will now look forward to another generation of young women falling deeply, deeply in lust and happy reading for wily, emotionally fluent, clever, suave, charming, semi-bad boys.

Kate: The bad boy with a heart of gold.

Sarah: Yep. That’s fine. Yeah, I’m fine with that. It’s cool. No worries. ‘Tsall good. One thing I think that is important to acknowledge, or at least mention, is that several, several, several years ago, Robin Harders wrote on Dear Author about how one of the things that happens when a reader picks up a romance is that, in a lot of ways, the reader is consenting for the characters, sometimes the heroine –

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: – but the reader is applying consent to the situation. And I think that where some of the, the tension and the, the hurt of, how dare you criticize my fantasy? What, are you saying something’s wrong with me? is that just because one reader can and actively consents to that situation doesn’t mean that another reader’s inability to do so is a failure on their part. That the application of consent is also, itself, a privilege.

Kate: Yeah! Absolutely, one hundred percent, and I think that the – I’m going to go back, I’m going to repeat myself again and go back to this idea of deliberate choices, and I think authors, like, really understanding their characters and developing their characters, can make almost any situation consensual? And I think it goes back to that idea of what is happening in one book versus what is happening across a genre? You know, like, the one story –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: – versus a pattern of behavior?

Sarah: Oh yeah. Tropes and one story are two totally different conversations.

Kate: Yeah, exactly. And I don’t want to criticize one book. There’s not one book that I was thinking about when I was writing this speech. I know that I name-checked Fifty Shades of Grey, but I wasn’t even really – I was using that more as a moment than a movement. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. ‘Cause Lord knows it had a lot of influence.

Kate: Yeah, it did. But, you know, I wasn’t thinking about just one book when I was writing this speech. I was, you know, thinking about hundreds of books. You know, they, the, you know, what, seven hundred books I’ve read in the last six years and the manuscripts –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kate: – you know, just the things that, the patterns of behavior I was seeing, as opposed to, you know, oh, there’s this one book that does this, and thus it must be vilified in all ways, and –

Sarah: No, that’s not at all what the story is.

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: Plus, I mean, all you have to say is “punishing kisses.” I know what that means.

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: I know what that’s shorthand for, but I can also unpack that and say, yeah, no. No. I’m not, I’m not on board with that anymore.

Kate: Well, I mean, we, we all consented to it during the, like, the paranormal stuff, particularly around the shifter romances with the idea that, you know, he recognizes her as his mate, and thus anything he does is okay, because she’s his mate –

Sarah: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Kate: – and, you know, it’s just his job to take care of her in any way that he can, he, he deems right. You know, completely leaving aside what she wants in, in the moment, and I mean, that was a, that’s still a thing in shifter romance in a lot of ways, and you know, that was incredibly popular. And I think, I mean, there’s – the thing about fantasies, and particularly about women’s fantasies, is, like, there’s just so much to unpack. I, I can’t remember the name of it now, and I really need –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kate: – to go back and find it, but I read this article about – it might have been even a Twitter thread about BDSM in, in romance novels being not at all about sex and being entirely about women now who are expected to play eight hundred roles in their day-to-day life and play every one of them to perfection, having somebody in their life just say, you know what? Not your problem anymore. I’m going to take complete control over this area of your life; do it really, really well, so you’re one hundred percent satisfied; and you are never going to have to worry about anything. And, you know, and in this, in BDSM, well, in the idea of a Dominant/submissive role, the idea is that, you know, he takes over her sexuality and then manages it for her, but, you know, can you imagine?

Sarah: That can’t happen unless she agrees.

Kate: Yeah, well, there’s that, but also, like, the idea of just someone coming in and being like, you know what? This whole aspect of yourself? Not your problem anymore! And I think, I’m like –

Sarah: Yeah, I’ll take care of it.

Kate: – I can get it, I can get behind a fantasy where somebody comes in and takes care of something for me –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kate: – so I don’t have to do it anymore? You know, and so –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kate: – I thought, I thought that was such an interesting reading of BDSM and why so many people who don’t subscribe to that lifestyle really like reading about it. Yeah!

Sarah: Love reading about it, yeah.

Kate: And I thought, well, that’s such an interesting take, and because –

Sarah: I can see that.

Kate: – like, there’s just so much going on that I don’t think we’re ever really going to be able to say, you know, well, we, women like this because we actually do want punishing kisses. ‘Cause, you know, that really hurts. They really hurt! You’ve got teeth in there!

Sarah: Yeah, I’m not a fan.

Kate: They’re hard!

Sarah: Right? Like, there’s a whole bunch of hard surfaces that are not the good kind of hard surfaces.

Kate: Yeah, definitely.

Sarah: It makes me think of Roxane Gay’s essay about, you know, how can she really enjoy rap music when so much of it –

Kate: Yeah.

Sarah: – is violent misogyny, and basically, the answer is, we grew up soaking in misogyny and patriarchy, and it influences the things that we love even as we recognize their flaws. You just, it’s sort of like – [laughs] – patriarchy, it’s like Palmolive: you’re soaking in it. You can’t get away!

[Laughter]

Sarah: We’re all soaking in it.

Kate: And I think we all find the things that we enjoy, you know, within the sphere that we can find them. There’s not a perfect –

Sarah: Yep.

Kate: – book out there that’s been written completely free of the society that it was written in; it’s not the way that it works.

Sarah: And there’s so much of value in the sexuality of romance –

Kate: Hmm!

Sarah: – that it is just as important to interrogate and examine closely the elements of it that, well, need to be broken up with!

Kate: Yeah, one hundred percent!

Sarah: It’s a really good analogy, by the way.

Kate: Thanks, Dr. Jodi. That was, that was her contribution.

Sarah: Before we go, are there any books that you want to recommend to the readers who will be listening?

Kate: Can I be super geeky – [laughs] – and recommend one that we published?

Sarah: Yeah! Sure! Please! I recommend my own sometimes! Feel no fear!

Kate: [Laughs] There is an author that we published; her first book came out last December. Her name is Elise Clarke, and we’re publishing her second book this December. She writes Regency historicals? Her first book is called My Lady Governess, and I read this book, and it made my life better, and then my, one of the editors I work most closely with at Harlequin was having a bad day, and I sent that book on, and then our mutual friend Adele Walsh was stuck in Bali during one of the volcano eruptions, and I sent the book, and it made her day better. This book has, like, gone through the entire Harlequin office, the entire HarperCollins office, like, all of our friend group. Every time anybody has a bad day, we send it on to them, because it is just delightful. And I think, feel like we’ve had a lot of really heavy conversations today, so I want to just recommend something that was purely delightful. It was just wonderful.

Sarah: My Lady Governess.

Kate: My Lady Governess by Elise Clarke.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I want to thank Kate for connecting with me over many different time zones. I swear, time zone calculation is the thing I am really, really bad at. If you have ideas or thoughts or questions, or you want to respond to this episode, I’m really curious what you think of Kate’s speech. You can email me at [email protected], or you can call and leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. Please don’t forget to tell us your name – and it doesn’t have to be your actual name. Like, you can use your screen handle; I don’t care. You know, just tell us who you are, a little bit. You know, hi, I’m a person; here’s my message. That’s fine! But we would really like to know what you think, and we’d love to have voicemail to add to a future episode.

This week’s podcast and the transcript are brought to you by Promise Me You by Marina Adair, available now from Montlake Romance, a heartening romance of friendship, second chances, and the healing power of love. Mackenzie Hart has made a career out of writing about eternal love, so when she finds her perfect match in Hunter Kane, she decides to put it all on the line. Irresistibly charming and drenched in alpha-male swagger, Hunter isn’t just the catch of the town—he’s Mackenzie’s best friend. Only someone beats her to the altar. And after a fresh start and three years to recover, the last thing Mackenzie expects is for her old life to come knocking. Recently divorced, musician Hunter Kane wants to reconnect with the woman he left behind. Admitting his biggest mistake comes first. What comes next is up to Mackenzie. He hopes she’ll give him a second chance. He may have been the one to break her heart, but he knows he can also be the one to mend it. As a tenuous friendship turns into something more, Hunter’s life on the road beckons once again. Will love be enough to keep them together, or will their wildly different worlds be too much for them to overcome? Readers who fell in love with Jackson and Ally in the recent remake of A Star Is Born will swoon over this emotionally satisfying second-chance romance. Promise Me You is available now from Montlake Romance.

If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge to our Patreon of any amount, thank you very, very much. You are helping me ensure that every episode has a transcript, and you keep the show going. If you would like to join the Patreon community, it would be wonderful to have you. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges begin at one dollar a month, and you will be part of the group that helps me develop questions for upcoming interviews and suggests guests for the show as well.

Are there other ways to support the show? Absolutely! Leave a review wherever you listen, however you listen; tell a friend; subscribe; yell out the window; recommend an episode; whatever works. Thank you for hanging out with me each week.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries. This is from their album Blackhouse, and this track is called “Angus and Joyce Mackay.” You can find the album on Amazon or at iTunes or wherever you like to buy your funky, funky music.

I will have links to the books and the movies that we discussed in this episode on Smart Bitches in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and while you’re there, let me tell you what’s coming up on the site this week! Tomorrow – Saturday, if you’re listening on Friday – we have our monthly thread-a-palooza, Whatcha Reading? We tell you what we’re reading, you tell us what you’re reading, and then we all buy more books. You’ve been through this before. There’s a reason why it’s one of the most popular threads on the site. I love hearing about what everyone is reading; it is so interesting. Coming up next week as well, we have reviews, the first of our Gift Guides for the holiday season – yay! – and a Rec League of holiday romance audiobooks. Plus, we have Hide Your Wallet, ‘cause it’s the start of the month; we have Books on Sale; and, as always, Help a Bitch Out on Tuesdays. I hope you will come and hang out with us.

And now – [desk drum roll] – sad drum roll – two jokes! Two, because I, I forgot last time to make a joke! And I had it! I had it in the script and everything, and I was so distracted by Orville rolling around and trying to crawl into the sound box that I completely blanked on saying the joke out loud, so this week we have two. Ready? You ready? Okay, here we go. First:

Where do you weigh a pie?

Give up? Where do you weigh a pie?

Somewhere over the rainbow.

Somewhere over the rainbow, weigh a pie! Right?

[Laughs] That was the one I meant to do last week, and it still charms the hell out of me! [Laughs more] I do not know exactly how to pronounce the username of the person who posted that joke, but I will put the name in the show notes. [It’s from porichoygupto.] Where do you weigh a pie? Somewhere over the rainbow! Weigh a pie. [Laughs again]

All right now, joke number two! Okay. [Still laughing] Okay. I have to stop laughing at my own terrible jokes now.

How do you fix a broken pumpkin?

How do you fix a broken pumpkin?

With a pumpkin patch!

[Laughs] This is perfect, because this week I’m going to be carving pumpkins. That joke is from Ididshave on Reddit. Thank you for that terrible joke, and all of those terrible jokes. They are so bad! I love them so much!

Okay, so I hope that I have made up for skipping the joke last week. This week you get two! Two jokes!

And on behalf of Kate Cuthbert and Orville, who is still on the desk, and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you here next week.

[wandering music]