326. Empowerment, Divorce, and Romance: An Interview with Catherine Bybee

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 326 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Catherine Bybee. We are going to talk about her latest book, Chasing Shadows. We’re also talking about her career as a writer, the elements that she combines in her stories, particularly in her latest series, and we also cover several other topics, including writing chosen families and found families of friends, advice that she would give her past self when her past self was just starting out, how reframing some pejorative terms used to describe women can lead to an entire plot for a series, the challenge of starting over after a divorce, the empowerment of making one’s own choices, and writing characters who are in that same position. We also talk about how her prior career as a trauma nurse shaped her writing process and her approach to her writing career. We also discuss the dangerous powers of procrastination, the possibilities of lawful good heroines, and we cover a whole pile of recommendations. Among my favorite things that she says in this interview is, I can’t afford not to read, which yes, I entirely relate to that statement too.

If you would like to get in touch with us about this or any other episode – and I will repeat this at the end, should you wish to – you can email us at [email protected], or you can call and leave us a message at 1-201-371-3272. I got a message from somebody who said they were listening in the car, and they pulled over after I said the number and called and left a message. It was so cool! So if you want to do that or, you know, call while you’re on the treadmill, which would sound really funny. Don’t call and drive if you have to, like, look at your phone to dial; if you can voice dial, that’s great. The number is 1-201-371-3272.

This podcast and the transcript are brought to you by Nicola Rendell’s Do You Feel It Too?, available now from Montlake Romance. From the author of Shimmy Bang Sparkle comes this steamy tale of sexy Southern ghostbusters. For urban-legend hunter and television host Gabe Powers, it’s business – investigate the most notorious haunted places in Savannah. Then he meets his new sound engineer, a dewy Georgia peach who may just turn this gig into (im)pure pleasure. All it takes is one night for them to conjure floor-rattling, wall-banging moans, and they’re not from the ghosts. Blame the rippling abs, the cocky swagger, the granite jawline, the whole muscle-bulging package, but Gabe is bringing out good-girl Lily Jameson’s very dirty side. Damn her code-of-conduct contract – this isn’t just a molten-hot fling. There’s just one kink in the relationship they’ve been avoiding: soon they’ll be going their separate ways. Lily’s home is in Savannah, and Gabe is a globe-trotter at heart. For them to be together, they’ll both have to upend their so-very-different worlds and face their fears in the process. And suddenly things don’t feel so Georgia peachy keen at all. Readers who swoon over alpha males and like their romance sweet, sexy, and laugh-out-loud funny will enjoy Do You Feel It Too?, available now from Montlake Romance.

If you have supported the show at our Patreon, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are keeping the show going! You are helping ensure that every episode gets a transcript, and you’re making every episode accessible to everyone, which is very important to me and to the people who listen and read the show as well, so thank you! If you would like to join the Patreon community, it would be rad – and I will continue to unironically use the word rad as long as I’m talking, ‘cause it’s super embarrassing to my kids. Anyway, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. You can make a monthly pledge starting with one whole dollar, and every dollar is so appreciated. You’ll also be part of the group who helps me develop questions for upcoming interviews and suggests guests for the show as well!

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Are there other ways to support this podcast and all of your other favorite podcasts – and dude, have you seen how many podcasts there are now? It’s like romance; there’s, like, fifty every day; it’s amazing! So if you’re listening, thank you! That is really an honor! You can leave a review however you listen, you can tell a friend, you can subscribe, whatever works, but if I’m hanging out with you in your eardrums while you do all the things, thank you. I am really honored that you picked this show. Thank you for that.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. You know what album this is. I will tell you all about it at the end, but you know that it is that time of year, and I have one, one holiday album that I adore above all the others. Although I will say, I read in EW this week that William Shatner is releasing a holiday album called Shatner Claus, and just thinking about it makes me laugh. [Laughs] Oh, Shatner Claus. Now I have to put that in the show notes. Okay, good going, Sarah.

At the end of the show, I will have information about what’s coming up on Smart Bitches next week, I will have a superbly bad joke, and of course there will be links to all of the things that we discuss in this episode, especially the books; we talk about a lot of books.

But for now, let’s do this thing: on with the podcast and our interview with Catherine Bybee.

[music]

Catherine Bybee: I’m Catherine Bybee. I am a romance novelist with, I just published my twenty-ninth publication on Tuesday.

Sarah: Hey, congratulations!

Catherine: Yeah! I’m hovering somewhere around six and a half million copies sold, which is huge!

Sarah: That’s a lot of copies sold!

Catherine: It is a ton of copies sold. Yeah, it’s a shit-ton, if you don’t mind me using those kinds of words on your podcast.

Sarah: Never ever a problem.

Catherine: Didn’t think so. Yeah, it’s a lot, and, and no one’s more surprised by that number than myself.

[Laughter]

Catherine: I, I keep thinking I’m faking it till I’m making it, but apparently I’m doing something right, so. So I’ve reached, I’ve reached a few different countries. I think I’m in, like, eighteen languages.

Sarah: Oh, that’s fabulous!

Catherine: It is! And yeah, my life looks a whole lot different than it did a decade ago, and I’m, I couldn’t be happier. I could not be happier with my choice in vocation at this point in time, so.

Sarah: Congratulations!

Catherine: Thank you! I appreciate it.

Sarah: If you could go back to yourself when you started, which, what advice would you give her?

Catherine: Ooh! More confidence; I think I probably would have – and I think I started out pretty confident, but more confidence in my storytelling. I, I think I got worked up on semantics of things when I was first starting because I, it’s, it’s pretty heavily documented that I can’t spell my way out of a paper bag.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Catherine: Terrible to actually admit, but I, I have to admit it freely, because you’re going to figure it out if you text me or if you – ‘cause I don’t have people, you know, editing my posts on Facebook, and people be like, ha-ha! She’s right, she can’t! And I’m like, yeah, no, I can’t. But, you know, I realized a couple of years in, I guess, and I, after I hit that first million copies sold, I realized that you, you need to be a really good storyteller. Storytellers are the, the part that is the talent?

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: And not to say that, that there’s not a talent behind grammar and all the things that go with that, but if you don’t have good storytelling, all the grammar in the world isn’t going to sell one book. It’s something that can be learned, and I think that, because I, I, I just didn’t have that confidence, because it wasn’t something that I was good at in, in school, that it just, I just felt like I was, you know, wasn’t, I was always just really faking it till I’m making it – like, just faking like crazy, and – but I would have given myself the pat on the back and said, you know what, you, you’re a damn good storyteller. Just, just do what you do, and the rest’ll fall into place, and I would have figured that out a little earlier in my career.

Sarah: That’s very cool!

Catherine: Thanks!

[Laughter]

Sarah: This is, this is the worst question to ask an author, and I loathe asking this, because it’s, like, the hardest question to answer when you wrote the thing, but –

Catherine: [Laughs]

Sarah: – can you tell me about your new book, Chasing Shadows? And please feel free to use as many words as you want. Do not feel, like, confined to an elevator pitch if you do not wish to be confined by an elevator –

Catherine: Elevator pitch! Okay, well, I would first answer the question with, it’s a really great book and you should read it. [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, there you go! Thanks very much for being a guest; it’s been great having you. [Laughs]

Catherine: Yeah, exactly, right? Exactly. Yeah, I get asked these things a lot, and instead of regurgitating the blurb, I think I like to get to the meat of the, of the actual story and the, and the heroine and her journey, so I look at Avery – that’s my, my heroine in this book – and this is her journey to discovering the warrior inside of her after she’s been victimized, and it’s about empowerment, which I try to put into a lot of my books. Empowerment and self-discovery and letting the demons go that haunt you throughout your book, or throughout this book, and accepting the love of her life inside, which is really hard to do when you don’t trust, so I think that’s it! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, piece of cake!

Catherine: Yeah, no problem, right?

Sarah: Yeah. So tell me about the hero.

Catherine: Liam! Liam is the perfect guy for her at this time, because he’s, he’s not pushy, and she can’t be pushed. When you push, she’s just going to run in the opposite direction. So there’s this guy that sees her and, you know, is instantly attracted, but attracted to more than just, you know, the beautiful blonde on the outside, but some of her tenacity. The minute he meets her, he’s, he’s drawn to, and he’s kind of a, he’s kind of a hero that, that, you know, he’s, he’s taken care of his kid sister and his niece, and he’s got family elements going on, but really ignoring his own personal life, so she helps him through that journey as, as he helps her through, through hers. I think in all love stories, and I think when they happen and they, and they happen sort – I hate to use the word organic, but I will probably use it more in this podcast than I should – I think that that’s how relationships are. I think that you don’t meet Mr. Right if you’re in the wrong time in your life and, in, in real life, and I, I like to make that happen in my books, so, to hopefully make it a believable journey so that everybody can buy into why these two people who might be opposite in some ways connect in others.

Sarah: That’s actually one of my favorite aspects of a lot of second-chance romances.

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: When two people who are, were not ready for each other the first time they met or the second time are in a place where they can appreciate and understand the person that they are and the, and the other person much better.

Catherine: Exactly! Exactly, and it’s, it’s, it’s great to write, because, you know, I mean, I’m, I, I just turned – turned, like it’s a bad thing – I turned fifty this year.

Sarah: Woohoo! Way to go!

Catherine: [Laughs] Yeah!

Sarah: Growing old is such a privilege, isn’t it?

Catherine: Yeah, it certainly is not a right! [Laughs]

Sarah: No!

Catherine: And I think with that, and after I, you know, I was kicking and screaming all the way to that deadline, if you will, and then once I got there and turned over the hood, I’m like, wait a minute! I’m kind of getting to that age where I don’t have to give two shits and tell everybody what I really think. [Laughs]

Sarah: Ohhh, I am forty-three, and the minute I got the four up front, I was like, wow, my give-a-shit card has been renewed at an exponentially lower rate. I have, like, two –

Catherine: Yes!

Sarah: – for the whole damn year? And I think when I get to the five I’m going to be like, I got one, and you are not it.

Catherine: [Laughs] Yeah!

Sarah: And you don’t have to worry about what other people are thinking of what you’re doing, ‘cause it doesn’t matter.

Catherine: No, I don’t have to have her approval. I mean, to a certain extent, I mean, I have to have my readers’ approval to a certain extent. I want to keep my readers happy; I want to deliver what I promise –

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: – and that kind of thing, and I need to keep my publisher happy and, you know, those, those are the things that just keep the balls in the air, but that, that doesn’t mean I can’t write the stories I want to write and, and say the thing, and, and deliver messages in each one of those stories, so.

Sarah: I also think that if you’re going to write a story about the self-actualization of being an ass-kicking, ferocious warrior –

Catherine: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – you do have to sort of unburden yourself with shits that you don’t need to give anymore, because –

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: – you need to put yourself as the first priority.

Catherine: Right. And that’s definitely what Avery does in this book. And, and when I was, when I was writing the book, so it starts off with Avery in a Krav Maga class, and I hired a personal Krav Maga trainer to come to my home while I was writing this book, ‘cause I wanted to – well, I kind of just wanted to beat stuff up, but I learned –

Sarah: Yeah! Understand you!

Catherine: – I learned a lot – yeah! – and I learned a lot about it, and it’s funny, because even to the, to this day, she’s like – ‘cause she knows I’m, I’m kind of going through a hard time right now – and she’s like, would you like me to come down and just like, so you can beat up on me, and I’m like – [sniffles] – maybe? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes? I mean, listen, I cross-stitch so I can stab things over and over again. I mean, I get a pretty picture at the end, but I am here for the stabbing? And I have seen Krav Maga; that is serious business. I mean, you kick –

Catherine: It is!

Sarah: – a lot of ass when you try that out.

Catherine: You do! You get lots of bruises in the process, and I tell you what, like, I had to wear boxing gloves. I didn’t realize how much boxing there was in, in Krav, and so I, she’s like, well, you know, in the real world, if you go to hit somebody, you’re not going to have these gloves on. I said, yeah, and in the real world, I write for a living, and I don’t need a boxer’s fracture. [Laughs] So we’re putting the gloves on.

Sarah: Unless I need to, like, punch my computer, which I don’t advise.

Catherine: [Laughs] No! Eh, the outcome’s usually not good, and you end up –

Sarah: Yeah, it really doesn’t work out in your favor.

Catherine: – spending more – no, not really.

Sarah: Momentary satisfaction is, it’s not worth it.

Catherine: No, I’ve, I’ve watched too much of that. [Laughs] I’ve got two sons; I’ve watched them get angry at mechanics in the past.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s never worth it.

Catherine: No, not ever.

Sarah: So, so this book has family elements, self-discovery, suspense, and ass-kicking.

Catherine: It does.

Sarah: So what did I miss? The romance part; obviously there’s a romance part.

Catherine: Yeah. No, family elements, the family elements are often from friendships and –

Sarah: Oooh.

Catherine: – not your biological family, and I think that’s kind of a key thing in a lot of my books.

Sarah: Found family versus –

Catherine: Found family versus the family you’re born to.

Sarah: I read a completely unsubstantiated item on the internet, which I know is shocking. It was unsubstantiated –

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: – but I read an interpretation of the quote that blood is thicker than water –

Catherine: Yes.

Sarah: – that the actual quote is the blood of your covenant is thicker than the water of the womb? That the commitments you make as an adult, that you commit to as a person are much more important and visceral than the connections that bind you biologically to people.

Catherine: I need to, I need to write that down!

Sarah: I don’t know if that’s true –

Catherine: [Laughs] I love it!

Sarah: I don’t know if that’s true; I cannot find a source. I have found many people on Reddit debating it, which makes me lead, makes me believe that it’s not, like, a famous person said it, but I like it anyway.

Catherine: Well, I, I’ll quote it with the anonymous person, and maybe I’ll be famous enough one day to make it, make it, make it work. [Laughs]

Sarah: I love it. I just love the idea –

Catherine: I do!

Sarah: – that your found family and the people you choose –

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: – are much more vital to your happiness and survival than the people –

Catherine: Yeah –

Sarah: – to whom you are biologically related, ‘cause sometimes they suck.

Catherine: Yeah. Sometimes they do. Sometimes people don’t know them, you know; sometimes people are abandoned. There’s lots of, you know, there’s lots of issues out there that –

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: – thankfully we don’t all have, but you know.

Sarah: So when you’re going into a story, how do you balance all of these different emotional pieces? You have ass-kicking, self-discovery, friendship, found family, romance, more ass-kicking. How do you balance all those elements? ‘Cause those are, some of them are real different.

Catherine: They’re different, but I think the, the ass-kicking, when I think about that, that’s, that’s the physic-, that’s the physical release of things, and I, and when I’m writing, I, so I’m, I’m a pantser. I don’t, I couldn’t plot a book to save my life, and anytime I would try, I’d probably just, it would die a miserable death after three months, and I would probably throw my computer against the wall. So –

Sarah: Which we’ve established is a bad idea.

Catherine: Yeah! So I, I don’t plot, so I, so when I start a book or when I’m in the process of writing, I kind of know where my, my hero or my heroine is and where they need to be at the end of the book?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: And I think that, like, for her, I knew she’d, she had to start off ass-kicking, because she, in the, in the second book in the series, she gets her ass kicked, and what better way to avoid ever letting that happen again is learning how to do that yourself, learning how not to freeze, and in that, in that journey she, you know, why is she there, all of the emotional elements, and then bringing the suspense in to make that ass-kicking worthwhile, and you get to see her kick some ass. You know, I mean, so to me, the balance is, is, is looking at, at the whole picture of where you want to go with the story, but the message you want to live and, and just organically letting things happen. I know you’ll probably ask me later on, but you know, I was a nurse for many years, so I look at things very pragmatically, and then, you know, what do I need at the end of the day? You know, I can fall apart later, and that’s kind of where Avery is. She’s like, I’ve got to take care of this business now –

Sarah: Yep.

Catherine: – and she doesn’t really allow herself to fall apart, like, so and, so for me, writing this story is about letting her finally get to that point where she can fall apart, because she can’t grow as a person until you reach those, those limits sometimes and let go of your past and – I don’t know if that answered your question, but that’s kind of my, I want to say my process, and so I look at the whole picture, but I take it little chunks at a time, ‘cause you can’t deliver that all in one, one –

Sarah: No.

Catherine: – chapter. You just, just – okay, that was a three-chapter book at the end. That’s not good, so. You know, and it has, it has to be slow and organic so people, people buy in, you know? You can, you can make people buy into the most unbelievable things. I mean, look at all the Russia vampires back in the day, right? So we can, we can do that with the emotional journeys of a contemporary romance, which is the joy of writing it.

Sarah: I think you mentioned earlier that you want to, you mentioned that you want to keep your readers happy, you want to keep the, the promise that you made, and I think that one of the things reader, readers, especially in romance, take so seriously is the knowledge that at the end it is all going to be okay –

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: – and if it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: Because you know where you’re going, and you know where the characters are going, you just sort of, it sounds like you just sort of fill in the journey piece by piece, knowing what the destination is.

Catherine: I do, and sometimes, sometimes my, my characters surprise me, and I, I remember the first time I heard an author say that when I was new in this, in this gig, and I thought, what does that mean? But you’ll go through, I mean I’ll go through, and I’ll get to, you know, chapter fifteen or whatever it is, and like, oh shit, she just said that. Why did she say that? Why did that just come out of her mouth? And then I will chase that piece and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – find out what it is. Like, you know, elements of, you know, what she’s afraid of and why she’s afraid of it that I, I throw into the story kind of just on accident, and then I make it work later on to make it work for the story. So I, I, I do, I almost always stop myself whenever I’m writing and I think, you know, who is she right at this moment, and why is she here? Why does she –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – think like this? And so all that stuff happens, you know, before the story, before the pages open. And if I believe that, then I can make her character that person, and as long as I keep my characters in character and I deliver my promise at the end for my reader, I, I think I’m, I think that might be one of the reasons why I’ve sold a few books. [Laughs]

Sarah: Five or six, yeah.

Catherine: Yeah! You know.

Sarah: What do you love about writing contemporary romance? Is it constructing that very careful journey?

Catherine: I, it, there is about constructing the journey, but I think it’s more about being able to deliver – every-, everybody has a story, so, like, people ask all the time, you know, where do you come up with your inspirations and that, that kind of a cliché. It’s a boring question, but the answer’s almost always the same in that I, everybody has a different story, and someone’s like, well, I’m an accountant; that would be really boring. I’m like, I bet I could find really, something really fricking funny or, or great or whatever about being an accountant. You know, stumbling upon the two hundred thousand dollars missing in the bank. I mean, any number of things, right? And then they, they stop and go, oh, okay! And like, all right, so everybody has a story, and everybody has a love story, and so I like to take sometimes ordinary people, although arguably this is not a story, this is, this is not a series about ordinary people. It stemmed off of my first bride ser-, or the Weekday Bride series, which was about a lot of, you know, very rich and wealthy people, but why, why not, why not escape into a lot of money? And then I have other stories that aren’t; they’re more about the blue collar people of our, you know, of, that I grew up with. So it’s just fun to take everybody’s different story and everybody’s different vocation maybe or, and whatever, whatever they’re dealing with and, and making it real. Put it, making life, giving it life on paper. That makes sense.

Sarah: That totally makes sense.

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: Because it’s contemporary, you are dealing with people who are as real as you can possibly make them.

Catherine: Right. And it’s harder to write a contemporary story and make people believe it sometimes than it is to write a paranormal, ‘cause when I first started this, my first nine books basically were either time travel or paranormal. I mean, at the beginning of my writing career, I was just writing whatever came my way. I wrote what I was, a lot of what I was reading, because that was what was in, right, ten years ago. That’s what –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – that’s what it was, and I figured if I just keep writing, I’m going to find my voice, so if I throw, and if I throw enough shit against the wall, someone’s going to publish me.

[Laughter]

Catherine: So, but it was crazy! I mean, you, again, you can tell people, you know, oh, he just traveled through time, and he’s got great abilities, and he can start fire with his mind, and people like, okay, I believe it! You tell somebody that you got a thirty-four-year-old billionaire as a hero, and they’re like, eh, that’s never going to happen. So the believability, you have to, you have to work a little harder, I think, in contemporary romance to make sometimes those characters real and touchable.

Sarah: Yes.

Catherine: Identifiable, so. I like it, though. It’s a great challenge; I love it.

Sarah: It is a big challenge. I think a lot of the challenges for me as a reader of contemporary is that I want the characters to sound like real people?

Catherine: Yes.

Sarah: And dialogue is, is very hard. Having tried to write it, it is hard to write the way people talk out loud on, when you’re writing it down.

Catherine: Actually, I think that’s one thing that I excel in really well is, is dialogue-rich – I, I try to move my story through, forward through dialogue as much as I possibly can. I, I loved the narratives back in the day, Kathleen Woodiwiss, sweeping landscape for five pages, but that’s just not how I write, and for me, it’s, it’s really, I live by myself, so I talk to my cat, you know?

[Laughter]

Catherine: And because I have, I mean, I, my original, my original thought and, of a vocation in this world was to be an actress, so reading lines to myself is, is great, and, and it flushes out all of those bad commas that I know nothing about and – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yep. I find that when I’m reading, I will often skip over the paragraphs of exposition and as you say –

Catherine: Uh-huh.

Sarah: – you know, descript-, describe, descriptions of the, you know, hillside in the wind, because reading dialogue is, like, very privately eavesdropping on people’s conversations, only it’s allowed, ‘cause it’s fiction?

Catherine: Exactly. And I love –

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s my favorite thing!

Catherine: Exactly! I love the eavesdropping! I love, I love that. It’s one of my favorite pastimes. [Laughs]

Sarah: So what are the ways in which you like to build a chosen family and in a series of connect-, interconnected books? How do you like to assemble a found family of people?

Catherine: Usually it starts with something that they have in common. So, like, in this series – and this series was, like I said, born from the, you know, the series that kind of started my career with the Weekday Brides – and I, I was going through, four years ago I filed for divorce, so I, I, when I was going through this process I’m like, there’s these, you know, divorced women, which has got, there’s not a lot of, there wasn’t a ton of divorced women in, as primary heroines in romance. I shouldn’t say that; there are, but there’s not as many.

Sarah: Yeah, there are, but there weren’t as many. No, I completely agree.

Catherine: There weren’t as many. Right, so, and here I am, you know, going through a divorce, and you know, I’m not going to talk about necessarily the, the trials and tribulations of divorce, because that’s really not where these women came from, but my, my publisher, Montlake, was, was asking for more Bride books, more Bride, you know, days of the week, and I, I, you know, I’m like, I can’t pull the eighth day of the week out of my ass; it’s just not –

Sarah: Yeah, there are only seven!

Catherine: There’s only seven! And oh, how about holiday brides? And we kind of vacillated that for a while, and then I came up with, hey, divorced brides, and so I started with the divorce, the attorney that, that had set up all these women in their marriages, and then I, I knew of one of the characters who kind of just popped up on the page in the seventh book of the other series, and so I kind of had a little background of hers, and then I just, I threw in a couple of more and then gave them a reason to be in the same page on the same day, and, and then developed them having their “First Wives Club” to give them a similar problem, and each one of them goes at it differently. But how do they go about it? How, what does their journey look like? So, and that’s, this series, that’s how I did it. I have other series where I’ve, I’ve just drawn from my own personal world and my friends and our threads of, of friendship and how that works.

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: And it can be this, they could have the same starting point is because they’re in the same town. They grew up as friends in high school or whatever, could be anything.

Sarah: Right.

Catherine: You know, and how different their stories are, and I love it!

Sarah: Like you said earlier, you can also encounter friends based on where you are in your life, that you meet the right people at the right time for where you are –

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: – and who you are.

Catherine: Exactly! Exactly, and, and that’s, especially having, you know, gone through a divorce, I mean, I was, I was with my ex-husband for twenty-seven years of my life, and you –

Sarah: That’s a long time.

Catherine: It is, and when you, when you pull yourself out of that situation and you look around yourself and you see, you know, all of your friends are either married or couples or whatever, and now you’re finding yourself, okay, so where are my single friends? Because, you know, I really don’t, I don’t want these guys setting me up with the guy that, you know, I know has divorced so-and-so because of such-and-such, you know, I –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – I don’t want any of that, so you do find your different friendship pools, and you find new things that bring you together.

Sarah: I also noticed that with, with your First Wives series –

Catherine: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – you’re also sort of recasting the idea of being a first wife into something empowering for some of –

Catherine: Yes.

Sarah: – your characters. The term is usually pretty condescending.

Catherine: Yes.

Sarah: But you’ve turned it into something empowering and are, especially with Avery, she made very deliberate choices in her life –

Catherine: Right. Yeah.

Sarah: – with complete confidence in what she had decided to do.

Catherine: Right. She made a choice of it, right.

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: And, and I think that, I think, I think that that’s a sad, a sad state of affairs is that we, you know, if, if, oh, your second time around and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – [sighs] – that’s too bad –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – and blah blah blah. You know what, it takes a lot of balls to walk away from a marriage when you’re unhappy. It takes a lot.

Sarah: It really does.

Catherine: And I think that that’s probably one of the most empowering moments in anyone’s life, man or woman, is to walk away from something that is, is, you, it’s just not, it’s, you’re not happy. It’s just not going to get happy. There’s nothing, there, you know, for whatever reason, and I have, I have witnessed some of my friends walk away from dysfunctional marriages of, you know, lies and deceit and, and, and adultery and, and just crazy things and that they put up with for so long –

Sarah: Yep.

Catherine: – and the minute they walk away, it’s like, good for you. You have one fricking life to live, babe.

Sarah: Yep.

Catherine: Don’t let anybody steal your thunder and think that they, they just need to own it. Oh, I put a ring on it, so therefore I can treat you like shit.

Sarah: Nope.

Catherine: Mm, nope, mm-mm!

Sarah: Nope.

Catherine: Not in this day and age, buddy. I can do it on my own and be much happier, thank you. So –

Sarah: I, I went through a phase as I grew up where all, all my friends were getting married. I was in a, I was in, like, four weddings in one year.

Catherine: [Laughs] Yowzer.

Sarah: That was, that was an expensive year. And then, you know, all my friends are having kids!

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: And then I went through a period of my life where my friends were starting to get divorced –

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: – because, you know, after ten, fifteen years, you change, and sometimes you change into different people, and that’s normal. Like, that’s okay.

Catherine: It is. Uh-huh.

Sarah: And when I talk to my friends who have divorced people who were abusive or who –

Catherine: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – they had grown up and their spouses had not, and they were ready –

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: – to move onto another stage of their lives, they, one of the things that they, they, they told me is that, that the biggest challenge is that you are starting every element of every autopilot you have over again.

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: Everything that comes as, as autopilot that you did every morning automatically, you are blowing all of that to smithereens –

Catherine: All out of the water.

Sarah: – and it is exhausting.

Catherine: It is. It is not an easy task.

Sarah: Nope.

Catherine: That’s why when someone says that, tells me that they’re divorced and I congratulate them and, and I often tell people I’m happily divorced so that they can get over that part, but it is exhausting? But it’s worth it. [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, you only have the one life, right? There’s all of these tattoos I see on the internet about how you only live once.

Catherine: The tattoos must be right!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: So it’s written down on skin, for God’s sake!

Sarah: They were on the internet and on people’s skin.

Catherine: They were!

Sarah: They’re super right now.

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Catherine: But it is exhausting, and I just think that we need to take away the stigmatism of it, you know. We – remember, I grew up with historical romance, and we, back in the day, that’s kind of really all you had, and the stigma! Like, wow!

Sarah: Ohhh!

Catherine: Boy, we, we kind of still fall into that a little bit, don’t we? And here we are, how many –

Sarah: Oh, just a bit!

Catherine: Just a tiny bit! And it’s time to, it’s time to blow that concept out of the water. It’s just time to make that stuff, shit go away. It’s time to go. [Laughs] And if I can help that one book at a time –

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: – I will!

Sarah: So you mentioned in a recent interview in EW about not having had a picturesque childhood, which –

Catherine: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: – and I certainly am not going to ask for particulars, but you did go on to say that you are using your writing as an outlet for some of the more painful pieces of your history, changing things that were sad or hurtful into comedy and reassurance for others. How is, how long has that been a part of your writing process, and is that something that you’ve sort of learned as a storyteller?

Catherine: I think as, in the beginning, maybe I didn’t do quite as much of that, but now that I kind of feel like I’ve, I’ve, you know, got my seat in the saddle and I’ve, I’ve got my pace and I can tell the things that I want to tell or, or, or deliver the message I want to deliver, I can make it more cathartic, and I can actually dig a little deeper into my own emotions and, and thoughts. Has it always been a part of my storytelling process? Yes, but getting more so. Is it hard? Sometimes. I’ve had some of my friends finish a book and go, and call me up, and we’re like, wow, was this just, was this painful, or was this cathartic? ‘Cause I know your history.

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: And I’m like, a little bit of both!

Sarah: Little bit of both.

Catherine: A little bit of both. Absolutely, how could it not be? I think it’s important to add a human element that – and I have a lot that I can, I can draw on – sadly. I also think there’s a lot of people that can, that can relate to it, which is horrible, but it’s just, it’s the reality of it. But I, I used this term in one of my books, and I say it whenever I give a keynote speech, that there’s a statute of limitations in which you can blame your parents for your effed up life, and it’s time to put on your big girl panties and get on with it. And that’s my philosophy in a lot of things, and so while I may have that journey, that emotional journey in a book, there’s always going to be my end result of whatever it is that I’m writing. It is time to let go and move on. But it is, I think it makes things more, richer when you’re reading it. I think, I think there might be two or three lines in a book that might stun a reader silent to a certain extent, and then they’ll go back and reread it and go, wow, that’s really what she meant.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: And if there’s, if, if they can connect with that, those are the readers that, that reach out to me personally and send me an email or stop me at a conference, and, you know, I’ve had a lot of people come to after they’ve read something and went, really related to this, totally understand, not everybody gets it, and it’s just nice to hear, you know, these people aren’t, that they’re not perfect, they don’t all come from perfection in the world, and, and, but they also don’t, they don’t let their past define who they are today.

Sarah: One of the things I believe that is misunderstood from outside of the romance genre, from people looking –

Catherine: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – in on it without any experience, is that the idea that Happy Ever After is neat and tidy and easy.

Catherine: No!

Sarah: And that the Happy Ever After is actually really messy and emotionally wrenching and difficult.

Catherine: It is! It’s hard to, it’s hard to let somebody in when you’ve been hurt. It’s hard to –

Sarah: Yes!

Catherine: And, and that’s in real life! So why would, why would we, why would we sugarcoat it in a book and help – that would be a really boring book, wouldn’t it? I mean, I’ve read that book. I probably wrote that book in the beginning stages, but I, I don’t, I think that it does need to be, it does need to be messy! And there always has to, you know, and I, I love revisiting my characters. I, that’s one of the things I give my readers is that when you get to, you know, book five in a series, you’re going to see sprinklings of people from, from the first pages, ‘cause I like to see their Happily Ever After, and it isn’t always pretty. You know, they might be going through a tough time or, you know, something of that nature, and it’s, it’s important to, to see that, I think, a little bit so that they, they can, they can identify with it and go, okay, all right. Doesn’t mean they’re going through a bumpy ride and I’m going to make my, my characters divorced in book seven that got married in book one – [laughs] – but they have a journey too, and it doesn’t end just because their book is done.

Sarah: No.

Catherine: Especially when I’m writing books about interconnected characters who are, have friendships with these people, so, so I give them that. It is messy. It’s really messy. [Laughs]

Sarah: It is very messy, and it’s hard. Happiness is hard work.

Catherine: It is! I mean, yeah!

Sarah: And it, it seems to me that when you have characters who are going through genuine emotional experiences that part of the, I think, essential connection between characters is, is that they’re telling the truth to one another, even the ugly, difficult, emotional truth.

Catherine: Right, yeah, and I think that’s one of the reasons why my books resonate so well is ‘cause most of my friend, most of my books have really strong personal female friendships –

Sarah: Right.

Catherine: – and the reality is, is that when women get together, we talk smack. [Laughs]

Sarah: Ohhh, yes.

Catherine: We talk more smack than guys do – [laughs] – and I, I love that about my characters. I love, you know, the insecurities of that smack and then the, you know, just the details of it, and, and I love bringing that in, and it, and it encourage, I think it encourages people to, to be more honest and open with their friends, and you’d be surprised what you come back with, so – I love it, though. It’s one of my best parts of my writing process is making those interpersonal relationships with the girls.

Sarah: Just seeing women talking to each other in romances is some of my favorite parts of a book.

Catherine: I agree.

Sarah: Just having, having characters who are friends talk to one another.

Catherine: Right!

Sarah: Because you don’t usually get to eavesdrop on a conversation that is going to have several years of emotional intimacy behind it. You don’t get to eavesdrop on that unless –

Catherine: Right!

Sarah: – you’re reading fiction.

Catherine: Right, and I, you know, I firmly believe that your girlfriends have enough fodder to blackmail you.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Catherine: They should! [Laughs]

Sarah: But they’re also the people who you call if you perhaps, maybe, want to hide a body, because they know how.

Catherine: Right! You know.

Sarah: I did an interview with an author who is writing about witchcraft and historical –

Catherine: Uh-huh.

Sarah: – portrayals of witchcraft, and we were talking about how just about all accusations of witchcraft rest on a woman being in control of herself in some way.

Catherine: Wow!

Sarah: It’s all about striking down autonomy and self-control in women and putting women under control.

Catherine: Yeah, doesn’t that sound like a thing that we are all too well aware of. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, and we’re, and we’re, and it is terrifying to see a bunch of wom-, bunch of women together supporting each other.

Catherine: Yeah! Yeah, that’s, I – too bad! [Laughs]

Sarah: I know! It’s very scary; too darn bad.

Catherine: Yeah, right. We’re going to continue doing it, and we’re going to get better at it and better at it and better at it, and there we go.

Sarah: It sounds, though, because I know that you’re a former trauma nurse –

Catherine: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – that you have spent a lot of time in situations where you’re forced to very quickly work on, on an essential level with other people and for other people, because –

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: – you know, if you’re a trauma nurse, you’re going to have to very quickly identify what the problem is, what actually matters and what are, like, the top three things you need to do to keep whoever’s in front of you alive.

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: That’s a lot of pain and a lot of upheaval and a lot of instant pragmatic attitude, like, and as you said earlier that, you know, you’re going to process it, you’re going to cry later.

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: That’s later; now is for, you know, ass-kicking and lifesaving.

Catherine: Right.

Sarah: How do you translate that in, into your writing? I imagine that that is the type of life experience that affects everything that you do and how you see everything around you.

Catherine: I will say that it’s been – in my writing, I mean, I, I, I put, I, I’ve written nurses, I’ve written doctors, and I, and I make them that person.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I have to tell you, Sarah Morgan, who writes contemporary, is also a former nurse, and she started writing Harlequin Mills & Boon medicals because she wanted the doctors to have to listen to the nurses in her stories. [Laughs]

Catherine: Right? Exactly! And I can tell you so many times where I’m like, oh, you’re not going to listen to me? Oh, that’s too bad. So I’m going to call your sorry ass at two o’clock in the morning and ask you for an order for something that I really don’t need, because that’s my job. Now are you going to listen to me at eight o’clock in the morning when you – yes, yes, I will, Catherine, yes, I will.

Sarah: Yes, you will.

[Laughter]

Catherine: I can’t tell you how many times I did that. [Laughs] That was before I was working in the ER, where there’s a lot more autonomy. But you, I am pragmatic. I’m prag- – and I think I actually take that approach not so much with my writing as sometimes my characters have to be that way, and when I write suspense elements I will, depending on the character, if they have that kind of background? Not necessarily nursing or whatever, but they, there’s, there’s lots of different professions that throw that background and – firefighters and first responders of any kind, obviously, med-, medical alerts and emergencies and that kind of thing. So yeah, those characters act that way, but I think on a personal level for my career I think like that, you know, and I think that’s one of the reasons why I personally, you know, made choices, you know, twenty books ago to join in the world of self-publishing and, and take control of things, because pragmatically, I looked at the wall and went, that’s not a great option, that’s not a great option. You know what? I’m want to do this, so this is how I’m going to do it. So I’ve approached my career that way, and I approach conversations with people who know a hell of a lot more about this industry than I do, I always try to remind myself that I have something that they don’t, one, some, one way or another, so I think – and that comes down to being able to pinpoint where the problem is, which is a byproduct of being a nurse. Also, my kids would tell you that, that my life as a trauma nurse and having very little patience – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: – for bullshit.

[Laughter]

Catherine: I have none, you know. I remember hearing Nora Roberts’ speech, talking about how, you know, if there’s blood or fire you can come get me, and at some point you need to know how to work a fire extinguisher and do a field dressing, and so, and, and that’s certainly the way I approached my own time when I needed to write and needed to be left alone, but it’s kind of how I approach a lot of things in life. It’s like I don’t, my barometer for bullshit is really small, so I guess in my career path I use it a lot. I let it filter into my, in my work; of course I do. I got, that’s too, that’s too rich of a pool of information, right, too rich of a pool of –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Catherine: – people and problems and things that go on. Yeah, so, I definitely – [laughs] – pinpoint the problem and find out a solution for it.

Sarah: And it would seem to translate to some of your characters, that they’re going to reach a point where they themselves are faced with the hard essentials that they have to decide about themselves –

Catherine: Yeah!

Sarah: – to keep going.

Catherine: Absolutely, absolutely. I, I did a lot of that in my Most Likely To series, which arguably, arguably is a little more women’s-fiction-y than just straight contemporary romance, and I, I did a lot of that with that, but that was also based upon me and my, my girlfriends, so yeah, it was really easy to do that, to let them pinpoint where the problems were and how to fix them.

Sarah: Yes, and, and, you know, asking yourself, okay, this is a problem. Do I, how do I fix it and if I want to, what am I going to have to give up to make it happen?

Catherine: And there’s usually going to be some kind of sacrifice. Nothing comes without –

Sarah: Always.

Catherine: Nothing, nothing comes free.

Sarah: I don’t know, man. Happy endings, they’re such a pain in the ass!

Catherine: I know! You’ve got to work so damn hard for them! [Laughs]

Sarah: Work, right? So, pragmatically speaking, what is the more difficult or challenging part of writing for you? What is the thing that you are like, oh boy, I’ve got to do this part?

Catherine: Well, once again, I’ll quote my oldest son: would you stop procrastinating and just get that shit done?

[Laughter]

Sarah: I don’t remember who said this, but someone on Twitter once called it combing your yak hair?

Catherine: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, this yak hair looks fricking fabulous!

Catherine: I know!

Sarah: No, you are just combing the yak hair.

Catherine: Just combing the yak hair. Man, my house is so clean, ‘cause I’m on deadline. I got nothing done! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep. Shit! But dang it, those pillows have that perfect little karate chop –

Catherine: They do!

Sarah: – crease in the top all across the back of the couch!

Catherine: They do!

Sarah: Looks great!

Catherine: Yeah. Unfortunately, that procrastination has kicked my ass a lot the last few years. I, because I – so since the divorce, I have written, I have actually, I’ve been, I’ve been looking at it, I think I’ve written nine books –

Sarah: Ooh!

Catherine: – nine or ten books in the last three years, and shortly after – well, not shortly after – during the year of my divorce was obviously incredibly hard, so had to, you know, compartmentalize that, but I was pro-, you know, and I procrastinated, got the book done, figured it out, got the book done, and then right after, I don’t know if you were in RWA nationals in San Diego?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: Just a couple years ago –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – and I literally got home and two weeks later almost lost my house to the Sand Fire, which is, is, you know, was terrible and devastating and, and I was very open with my readers online about it and, at the same time, open with my publisher, and again, that procrastination just pushed the book out and pushed the book – I mean, I literally was in this, the ending stages of writing Making It Right, and it was, I mean, the book stopped at, okay, and then a fire blew through River Bend and everybody died, The End, you know. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh –

Catherine: Which was not, was no one, that was not the Happily Ever After that they wanted. But it sat like that, because I waited to the last minute to finish this book, and then the fire happened and I couldn’t finish it right away. And you fast forward eight months after that, and then the floods came, and the flooding took over my life for another six months.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: And I was just in the process of finishing a book that I was supposed to turn in mid-month in October, and on October 5th my father had a stroke this year –

Sarah: Oh!

Catherine: – so my, my nursing –

Sarah: I’m sorry!

Catherine: Yeah. It, you know, but it’s, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and he’s a strong man, and he’s, I, I get a lot of my tenacity from him, but again, I procrastinated and so, sure enough, the book’s not done, and so now I’m, you know, it weighs on me. I, I, I definitely want to keep books going and I, it is my, it is my job, and it’s not a job that you can just, just get up in the morning and go do. It just isn’t, it’s not, and, and – but I will say that, you know, obviously, outside of my father, because that’s a whole different entity, you know, the rest of the stuff, it’s, it’s traumatic, and it, and it, it takes a lot of your soul away sometimes? So that when you get back to writing, sometimes things make it richer, and I hate to say that, ‘cause I don’t want bad things to happen to make things richer, but it does. It just makes it, it’s like sometimes those things happen, and you, you start to hone in on, okay, you, now the story needs to be told a little differently because the writer is different.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: But that procrastinating kind of bites you in the butt, so what is my biggest challenge is, is getting my ass in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard sometimes.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I understand!

Catherine: Yeah. So, so there’s that. But the rest of it is just a matter of doing those two, if I can get those two things done and get my head into the game –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Catherine: – it’s, it’s all over but the crying. I’m going to write so many books you won’t have time to read ‘em all. [Laughs]

Sarah: I find that a perfectly acceptable goal. Good plan!

Catherine: Ah, seriously, I like it!

Sarah: So what are you working on now? Finishing the book that you’re, were working on before your father’s stroke?

Catherine: Right, and two yet-to-be-titled, it’s kind of the unexpected fifth book in this first bride series. So the, the first bride series was always meant to be four books. Four, four women, yada-yada-yada, but then this character showed up on the page in book one, her name is Sasha, and she makes Avery’s ass-kicking look like candy and child’s play, so she just was a strong character that, that kind of has woven in and out of the stories and in and out of the books, and as, as I was writing each story, I, I learned a little bit more about this character, and so when I finished writing Shannon’s story, which is the, what the, the expected book, I was like, okay, I, I have to write, I have to find out what else makes this, what makes this other woman tick, and so she’s my honorary fifth First Wives, even though she’s never been married before. [Laughs] So I’m not sure how I’m going to make that angle work, but I will!

Sarah: Well, it’s, it’s always interesting when you, when I, when I do an interview and I hear writers talk about how a character showed up, and you’re like, ooh!

Catherine: Yeah!

Sarah: Ooh, that was a gift! Hello!

Catherine: Yeah! Right! Who are you?

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: How – and at first I wasn’t even sure if I was going to make her a bad guy, you know? And I still, you know, I, I want to say, I still don’t know if she’s going to be a completely wonderful good guy; we’ll see! [Laughs] I haven’t finished writing the book!

Sarah: Maybe she’s unlawful good.

Catherine: She’s unlawful good! I’m okay with that!

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: Sometimes it’s important to hack into the mainframe and –

Sarah: Yeah!

Catherine: – change your grade. It’s okay! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, things, things happen! There are circumstances.

Catherine: There are! There’s a reason I needed to steal the bread. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right?

Catherine: Those birds were hungry too!

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I always ask this question: what are you reading, if anything, that you would like to tell people about? Or what have you read that you’d like to tell people about?

Catherine: Oh, that’s so tough!

Sarah: It is a very hard question. I apologize.

Catherine: It’s a hard question because, well, okay, it’s a hard question ‘cause I think one of the last books I read, I wasn’t too terribly happy with, and I’m never going to really go on, on record and say all of that, but I do, I will say that there’s some TBRs, how ‘bout that, because I did –

Sarah: Bring it!

Catherine: Okay, so on my to-be-read list, it’s Christmastime, right? So Jill Shalvis always delivers, and I think Hot Winter Nights is sitting on the stand; I want to read that one. I have, I just, so I, I just got voted onto the board of RWA?

Sarah: Congratulations!

Catherine: Thank you! I came home from the meeting in New York on Monday, and I realized that the majority of the people on the board, I have not read their work, those that are published, and so I’m kind of making it my goal to read something that everybody on the board has written, ‘cause I think it’ll help me get some insight onto some of the personalities that are there. And there’s, like, a, the, the big thing is, like, we’re all, we’re talking a lot about the diversity summit and the different things that are going on and our ways to try and just en-, enhance our genre and, you know, bring it to the forefront to other people, different writing styles and so forth, so I think that’s kind of a goal, and that maybe isn’t answering the question the way you wanted. I would love to say I just read this fabulous book and you all should read it, but my brain’s just not focused on that right now! [Laughs]

Sarah: No, it’s understandable! Caring for a person when they’ve had a major health incident, that takes up, like, ninety percent of your brain energy.

Catherine: Yeah, I would go with even ninety-eight percent. You know, I could, I can tell you all about strokes right about now, all the medications and things you need to watch out for and all the care. I know lots of great occupational therapy tips! [Laughs]

Sarah: These are all important!

Catherine: They are! They are! What about you? What have you read lately that you just love? I could use a great recommendation.

Sarah: Okay. Well, see if you like Christmas and you like Jill Shalvis, you might also like Sarah Morgan’s, I think it’s The Christmas Sisters?

Catherine: Okay?

Sarah: It is a found family sort of, I think there’s three sisters, and it’s set in Scotland, and their, their mother figure is, like, focused on them all being home for the perfect Christmas, ‘cause you know that always goes exactly according to plan. That always works out how you want.

Catherine: [Laughs] I love that.

Sarah: So you might really like The Christmas Sisters. I am, I just finished Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch, which is part of the Peter Grant mystery series, and there’s a point earlier in the book where the narrator Peter Grant basically says to the reader, listen, if you’re just tuning in now, this is a bad idea.

[Laughter]

Sarah: You need to go back and read the other books, which is not only true, and I was really grateful, ‘cause I was like, yeah, I’m really lost, and I have read all the books!

Catherine: [Laughs] I love it!

Sarah: I was very impressed.

Catherine: That’s awesome!

Sarah: Do you like fantasy?

Catherine: I love fantasy. I, I miss – [sighs] – I miss the fact that all of our, you know, there’s, there’s not just like tons and tons and tons of fantasy and paranormal and stuff out there. There’s, our pool is so small right now, I think, anymore.

Sarah: I have a recommendation for you if you’d like.

Catherine: I’m listening! Go!

Sarah: Okay, so there’s an author by the name of Rachel Aaron, A-A-R-O-N. She –

Catherine: Okay.

Sarah: – has a new book that came out last week called Minimum Wage Magic, and it’s set in a world that she already constructed in a prior series that was all about a family of dragons. That, the first book of that one is Nice Dragons Finish Last, but you don’t have to have have, you don’t have to have read that series in order to read this one, but they’re set in the same world.

Catherine: Okay!

Sarah: The basic premise is that magic returned to North America, and the spirit of the Great Lakes, Algonquin, rose up out of the water and was hella pissed because we had polluted the hell out of everything, and she wiped out all of these cities on the lakeshore, and she’d saved most of her wrath for Detroit. So she wiped out Detroit, and then she took it over, and it became the Detroit Free Zone, where everything is legal and the American and Canadian governments are like, listen, you can have that. We’re not going to bother with you, ‘cause you’re a lake goddess and we got other problems.

Catherine: [Laughs]

Sarah: So she runs, she rules the DFZ, but she’s a lake goddess! She doesn’t give a crap about petty human business; that’s silly!

Catherine: Right!

Sarah: So in Minimum Wage Magic, the heroine is a cleaner. When apartments are repossessed by the Detroit Free Zone, they are auctioned off to cleaners who then go in and clean them, often finding magical artifacts and things that they can then sell.

Catherine: Ooh!

Sarah: So she is a cleaner, but of course she’s much more than she appears, and you get to discover parts about her. The thing I like about Aaron’s writing is that her worldbuilding is great. It has rules, and it has function, and it has limitations, but the things that people do within it to get by are fascinating.

Catherine: Awesome! That sounds like a great escape.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Catherine: You know, when I get so busy that I can’t read, and it sounds like, and I hear this a lot from authors. They get really busy, and it’s like, oh, like, I can’t read, and then at some point you’re just kind of sitting and you’re rocking, and you’re like, what’s wrong? Oh, I know what’s wrong! I haven’t read a book for a while.

Sarah: Yep!

Catherine: You know? It’s like, oh yeah! It’s, it’s, it’s you’re instant reset. And you forget sometimes –

Sarah: Yep!

Catherine: – that the button is right there, and you think –

Sarah: Yep.

Catherine: – oh, I don’t have time to read. I’m like, no, you really don’t have time not to read, and I’m kind of right, I’m at that point right now?

Sarah: Yep.

Catherine: Understandably, so I got, I got other demons to chase of my own, but –

Sarah: Yeah!

Catherine: – but it’s important to have those, those go-to books and somebody that you can depend on for a dynamite recommendation –

Sarah: Yes.

Catherine: – and you’re definitely that lady. [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, one of, one of my standard questions, aside from what have you read that you like, so I can do books that are similar, is how much, how much brainwork do you want to do? I mean, do you want to construct a whole thing in your imagination, or do you want to have something presented to you mostly formed –

Catherine: Yeah.

Sarah: – and you can just sort of wander around in that world without doing a lot of brainwork, because there’s different kinds of fiction in terms of the amount that your imagination has to undertake.

Catherine: Oh my God, and, and in writing those books, I one hundred percent agree. I mean, my –

Sarah: Yeah!

Catherine: – my early stuff, my time travel stuff is, those worlds are huge, and there are rules, and there are things, and it’s, it, going back into it, it’s like, oh, wow! How did I think that shit up?

Sarah: Right?

Catherine: You know, I’m like, and now if I’m, you know, writing more, I’m going to say bubblegum – it’s not bubblegum, but it, you know, sometimes you want popcorn. Sometimes you just want it, like you said, just open the pages and fall into it and not think about all the woes  in the world and, and come escape on the other side, a happier person for have-, for having read it, but –

Sarah: There’s absolutely benefit to brain candy or, you know, brain doughnuts.

Catherine: Yeah!

Sarah: Brain, brain éclairs.

Catherine: Right, right! When someone’s like, well, what’s, what is a beach read? I’m like, a beach read is a beach read where you can, you can put the book down, you can jump in the ocean, you can come back out, and you, you can be cool and wait for the water to drip off of you and then go and do it again! You can keep putting the book down, to a certain extent, putting the book down –

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: – and doing that.

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Catherine: Or you end up with a really bad sunburn. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, which I’ve done.

Catherine: Oh yeah!

Sarah: I have, I’ve done that.

Catherine: [Laughs] Oh yeah, me too!

Sarah: Oh yeah, I have been there.

Catherine: The imprint of the book on your chest and your, yeah, those tans –

Sarah: Yeah.

Catherine: – looks a little funky.

Sarah: Straight lines across the top of your thighs, ‘cause you were hunched over your book. [Laughs]

Catherine: I have that from my laptop, ‘cause I recently moved to San Diego, so I’ve got sunshine. I’m sorry for the rest of the world that doesn’t have it right now. I have sunshine, you know, three hundred and sixty days a year, so, yeah, I put my laptop on my lap.

Sarah: Laptop tan lines.

Catherine: Lap-, and it’s, it is a, it is an occupational hazard, I have to tell you.

Sarah: Yep, I bet!

Catherine: It is!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of the interview. Thank you so much to Catherine Bybee for hanging out with me. If you would like to find her on the internet, you can find her at catherinebybee.com. That’s Catherine with a C, B-Y-B-E-E. She’s on Twitter @catherinebybee, and her Facebook page is AuthorCatherineBybee. I will have links to all of these, of course, in the show notes, along with the books that we mentioned and other books that we recommended. I know this was a bit of an expensive episode at the end. Sorry about that!

If you would like to get in touch with me, that’s cool! You can email me at [email protected]. You can call me at 201-371-3272 and leave a message. Don’t forget to tell us your name, whatever name you want. You can use a screen name, you can make something up; I don’t care. But we want to use your messages in a future episode, ‘cause that’s awesome. I love hearing from you after you’ve listened to an episode, so thank you for all of your messages.

This week’s podcast and transcript are brought to you by Nicola Rendell’s Do You Feel It Too?, available now from Montlake Romance. From the author of Shimmy Bang Sparkle comes this steamy tale of sexy Southern ghostbusters. For urban-legend hunter and television host Gabe Powers, it’s business – investigate the most notorious haunted places in Savannah. Then he meets his new sound engineer, a dewy Georgia peach who may just turn this gig into (im)pure pleasure. All it takes is one night for them to conjure floor-rattling, wall-banging moans…but they’re not from the ghosts. Blame the rippling abs, the cocky swagger, the granite jawline, the whole muscle-bulging package, but Gabe is bringing out good-girl Lily Jameson’s dirty side. Damn her code-of-conduct contract – this isn’t just a molten-hot fling. There’s just one kink in the relationship they’ve been avoiding: soon they’ll be going their separate ways. Lily’s home is in Savannah, and Gabe is a globe-trotter at heart. For them to be together, they’ll both have to upend their so-very-different worlds and face their fears in the process. And suddenly things don’t feel so Georgia peachy keen at all. Readers who swoon over alpha males and like their romance sweet, sexy, and laugh-out-loud funny will enjoy Do You Feel It Too?, available now from Montlake Romance.

If you have supported the podcast Patreon, thank you very, very much. You can have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Every pledge helps immensely to keep the show going, to make sure that every episode has a transcript, and of course, if you would like to support this show or any other show that you like – and there’s lots of them – you can leave a review, you can tell a friend, you can subscribe, but thank you very, very much for hanging out with me each week and for making me part of your listening, whenever you listen. I always presume that everyone’s listening on Friday, but I know that’s not actually the case, so whenever you’re listening, thank you for that!

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is Adeste Fiddles from Deviations Project. I do this every year; you all know it’s coming. This is “Coventry Carol.” You can find this album on Amazon or iTunes or wherever you buy your funky music.

Next week, coming up on Smart Bitches: well, it’s a website, so we have stuff going on every day, multiple times a day! It’s pretty impressive! Here’s what coming up on the site next week: we have a giveaway! Yay! It is time for another grab bag book giveaway. Why is that hard for me to say? Grab bag book. Maybe it’s the, the A and then the O? I don’t know. Either way, grab bag book. It’s actually not even a bag; it’s a box. We gather up all of the finished copies that we received that we can’t read – sometimes we get multiple copies – we box them up, and we send them to random winners. They’re big boxes, too. It’s a big haul. There’s a mix of hardcover, paperback, trade, all different genres, mostly romance, and we have a couple of boxes to give away, so come to the site next week, smartbitchestrashybooks.com. You can enter to win. I have three boxes as of right now, and there will probably be a fourth, and that’s just me. And they’re priority large, priority large.

Would you like a timesaving tip, like a complete extra in addition to all the site content? All right, I have gone off script, this could end terribly, but one thing you can do if you are in a position to have to send things from your home – and that is very true with the holidays – you can go to usps.com if you’re in the United States and order priority mail postage supplies in sets of ten or twenty to be delivered for free to your house. So couple of times a year I have a calendar reminder, because I do a lot of shipping, to reorder priority flat-rate boxes in a variety of sizes, plus envelopes and little tiny small boxes, which I think are supposed to hold a VHS, but they’re perfect for a trade paperback? Either way, I have a stack of them in my closet, I have packing tape, and I can print and purchase postage from the USPS website as well, so I have everything I need to send a package already in my house, and I don’t actually have to go to the post office; I can also schedule a pickup? Plus, I live on a dead-end street and I hear the postman, ‘cause have you heard the postal vehicles, like the little tiny buggy ones? They’re so loud! I think they get, like, twelve miles to the gallon, and they’re running on a lawnmower motor? Anyway, I always hear them, so I can always just walk out the package. I don’t have to put on shoes! And sometimes not even a bra! Sorry, neighbors. So if you want to have an easier time shipping stuff, you can order your supplies for free, you can print your postage from your printer, and then you can order a pickup, and you don’t have to put on shoes or real pants! It is my favorite kind of advice. Do you have to wear shoes? No? That’s a win! So anyway, I’ll be sending out boxes full of books, and now you know the behind-the-scenes details.

We also have Cover Snark, reviews of books that we really liked, Help a Bitch Out, a new Gift Guide on charitable giving options, and, of course, a podcast and Books on Sale every day. Plus, plus, plus we have Outlander recaps and other random silliness that shows up, so I hope you will come to smartbitchestrashybooks.com and hang out with us because, well, that’s also where we talk about romance all the time!

And now it is time for the terrible joke, the part that I enjoy the most at the end of the episode. And you know I test drive these on my family? I haven’t test driven this one. I should have, but this is perfect. If you are celebrating Thanksgiving this week, this is a joke that’s especially for you:

What do you call a pie that you don’t know the flavor of?

Give up? You don’t know? What do you call a pie that you don’t know the flavor of?

A sur-pies.

[Laughs] I love seasonally appropriate dumb jokes! Sur-pies! This is from user /Crashtags on Reddit. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If – [laughs more] – I actually have to make piecrust today, now that I think about it, so I will be making all of the sur-pies! Sur-pies! [Still laughing] Oh wow, like, the look that the cat is giving me.

Happy Thanksgiving to you if you are in the US or you are celebrating this weekend. I am always thankful for your being here so that the show goes on. Thank you so much for listening! On behalf of Catherine Bybee and all of the mammals currently in my office, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you back here next week!

[stately music]