341. The Self Care of Unapologetically Massive Happy Endings: An Interview with Adriana Herrera

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hey there, and welcome to episode number 341 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Today I am chatting with Adriana Herrera about the self-care of unapologetically massive happy endings. Adriana’s new book – debut book, in fact! – American Dreamer is out this week, and we have so many things to talk about – so many! We discuss the Afro-Latinx cultural experience in her life and her work and in her books, and we talk about the unique homesickness that comes when you’re from a Caribbean island and you live in New York City and it’s below freezing. We talk about where she’s lived – she and her husband have done international relief work around the world – and we also discuss embracing and representing various lived experiences in a story. As she puts it, “It’s like seeing something in a museum and then taking the glass away and being able to touch it.” We discuss moving from being in the community as a reader to being a debut author, the layers of meaning in the names of the characters in her books, the occupational hazards of writing food porn, how writing romance began as an exercise in self-care while she’s completing her Master’s degree in Social Work and how she balances writing with her MSW, how she focuses on making the “yes” of consent in a romance real and structurally sound, what it means to level up characters so that they are ready for real and committed relationships, and of course we talk about what she’s working on and what she’s reading.

I want to thank Leigh for some of her questions. When I asked the Patreon community for their ideas, Leigh responded that she was super excited Adriana was coming on the podcast. “She is the loveliest, and I am so excited to read American Dreamer.” Thank you, Leigh!

Now, I also want to make you aware that because Adriana works with domestic violence and domestic violence victims as a social worker, we touch on that topic a few different times throughout the interview, particularly when we discuss writing consent, power dynamics, and her work as a social worker, so I can’t specifically timestamp individual conversations, because it’s something that weaves through that conversation throughout the next hour. If that is a topic that is going to upset you, you might want to skip this one for another episode, and I apologize that I can’t specifically tag individual parts of our conversation.

Now, if you would like to get in touch with me, you can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, or you can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. You can ask questions; you can make a suggestion; you can tell me bad jokes; I love all of these things. And I will have information in the podcast show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast as to where you can find Adriana and her Twitter feed, her website, and her newsletter, plus all of the threads on Dominican cooking, which you should not look at while you are hungry.

This week’s podcast is brought to you by Duchess by Deception by Marie Force. Indulge in the first-ever historical romance by New York Times bestselling author Marie Force, with a tale Publishers Weekly called “a masterpiece with the perfect amount of romance.” With Marie Force’s knack for creating memorable characters, this romantic tale of a duke’s dilemma will appeal to readers of Lisa Kleypas, Eloisa James, and Sabrina Jeffries. Can he make his bride fall in love with him all over again? Find out in Duchess by Deception by Marie Force, on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

This week’s transcript, as always, is compiled by garlicknitter – thank you, garlicknitter! – and it is brought to you by our Patreon community. If you have supported the Patreon with a monthly pledge of any amount, you are helping me make sure that every episode is accessible to everyone, and we very much appreciate that.

If you would like to join the Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar a month, and not only will you be supporting the show, but you’ll be part of the group who helps me develop questions, helps me suggest guests for upcoming interviews, and helps us pick our book for our quarterly book club on the podcast. Again, that’s patreon.com/SmartBitches, and if you join, thank you very much!

I will have information at the end of the show as to the music you’re listening to, I will be telling you what is coming up on Smart Bitches next week, and I will have a terrible joke, and on the show notes, or in the show notes on smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, I will have links to all of the things that we talk about, including all of the books that she mentions and the TV shows; there are many – many, many, many. This is a really fun conversation.

So let’s get to it! Without any further delay, on with the podcast.

[music]

Adriana Herrera: Well, my name is Adriana Herrera. I’m a romance author.

Sarah: Yay!

Adriana: I am originally from the Dominican Republic and have been living outside of the Dominican Republic in various places for the last sixteen years. I write, for now, mostly contemporary romance, and for my day job, I’m a social worker, and I work in the domestic and sexual violence field in New York City.

Sarah: I have so many questions. Do you, do you think, like, on days – like, it’s frigid today – do you think on days like today, you know, I could go back –

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: – to the DR, and it’s warm! [Laughs]

Adriana: Yes. Particularly the month of January and February are the months that I question very deeply –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: – the reasons why I decided to leave my Caribbean island home to be in a place where I feel like my face is burning when I’m outside from the cold.

Sarah: [Laughs] My face hurts; why do I live in a place where my face hurts?

Adriana: This is actually, like, the prime time of the year where even my husband, who is a very white man, is like, why do we live here? So yes. Yes.

Sarah: [Laughs] I imagine the cold and the, the things that go with coldness, like the dryness and the, and the pain of being outside, I imagine that combines to make a very real homesickness.

Adriana: It does, and my whole family lives back there. I actually immigrated on my own when I was twenty-three –

Sarah: Dude!

Adriana: – to go to graduate school. Yes, so –

Sarah: Wow!

Adriana: – I didn’t grow up here. I grew up there, went to school there, and came for, from grad-, for graduate school to New York City. So my mom – my sister was here for seven years getting her own graduate degree, but she just moved back in October, so she enjoys sending me photos of herself at the beach with a beer, like, on a Tuesday afternoon when I’m freezing.

Sarah: Ouch, that’s not fair.

Adriana: I know. She’s a little bit of a jerk, but I’m glad that she’s enjoying her return home.

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, a beach with a beer sounds ideal, and I don’t even like beer.

Adriana: I know, I know. Anything, really, like, even, like, a cold soda.

Sarah: Right?

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: Just the sun, the sun in a way that isn’t also accompanied by the threat of frostbite.

Adriana: Yes, yes. So I do question my decision-making in my life, although I haven’t been in the cold tundra the entire time I’ve been out of the US. I lived in Eastern Africa and Central America for about seven years, so I did have a reprieve from the New York, New York State winters, but I’ve mostly been in New York State in that time.

Sarah: Wow, you’ve lived in a lot of places that – I know when I’ve relocated and lived outside of the US and come back, it really changes my perspectives on American culture. Do you find that true as well?

Adriana: Yeah, and it’s interesting. I talk about this a lot with my, with my partner. He also did it, like, we did international relief work together for about seven years, and he was doing it before we met too, and it was interesting; when we lived both in Eth-, we lived in Ethiopia for five years, and we lived in Honduras for two years, and for me, those places are more like home, because I grew up in the developing world. Like, I grew up in the DR, so to me, coming back here always feels different, but not in that way of, like, I’m readjusting my expectations to, like, the – I think the more jarring effect for me is being back in, like, the Western part of the world, because that’s not what I grew up in, so it’s like a bit of a weird thing for me.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s like a cultural second language.

Adriana: Yes. But it is, it is interesting, and it does put, put a lot into perspective. Like, I always tell people that coming here feels really disconnected, because you don’t have, even, even if I, we didn’t have family in Ethiopia, but people are different there. There’s just a lot more closeness with –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – the people that live around you, even if you don’t know them. Like, your neighbors, you know them, they’re in your house, your kids are in their house –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – and here things are a lot more individual, and that is really different. And there’s a warmth there –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – that kind of like doesn’t exist, which is why I wanted to write about Afro-Latinx culture in romance. I think that was something that I was missing seeing.

Sarah: It’s a completely different community expectation –

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: – too.

Adriana: Yeah. It is very different.

Sarah: So, this is the worst question to ask. I always do this, and I’m like, I’m really sorry to ask you about this, but can you tell me about your book?

Adriana: So I can definitely tell you about my book American Dreamer, and I think the first thing I like to talk about with this book is, beyond the story of the characters and everything, is that I really wanted to write a story that centered the Afro-Latinx immigrant experience. Culture, food, and all of that, of course, and family, which is so important to us, but I really, really wanted to tell a story with, like, a thriving queer community of color. Like, a book where there were queer people, there were people who were living that experience, but where that group was predominantly people of color, because –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – when I read romance – and I have been a romance reader for a long time, I’ve been reading LGBT romance for a long time – you always, you know, you will have a character that’s a person of color, but they’re, like, kind of like the other part of the group, and so I wanted – because that’s what I grew up around, all my friends growing up at home, back home when we’re teens, like in the ‘90s, like, trying to figure ourselves out, like, you know, there, we’re bi, gay, questioning, and we were figuring out life in a place where it really wasn’t safe to be out, but we were kind of like a, our little own thriving unit, and when I moved here, I, some of those same friends were also here too, but we also found kind of like that core group of friends who are all, like, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and I really wanted to show that in a story.

Sarah: It’s a wonderful way to highlight a cultural found family –

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: – that when you have such a, a very visceral and intimate and important element of your life in common with someone else, it gives you a bridge to connect with them much faster, I would think.

Adriana: Yeah, and, and I think exploring also in romance, which I think it’s something that’s happening more and more, and I’m really happy to see, but the intersections of identity, like, with, like, an authentic textured sense to it, because I am someone that identifies as bi, but I’m also Dominican, and I’m a woman, and I’m an immigrant, and those things are just as important?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: And, and I think when you’re coming into a story with that lived experience, I feel like it’s almost like seeing something in a museum, and then taking the glass away and being able to touch it.

Sarah: Yes!

Adriana: Like, you can, you can, you can see something, and it’s beautiful when it’s a story that’s being told from someone that is trying to do a good job of representing that experience, and then there’s another layer to it when it’s actually someone that’s doing that from a lived experience. Like, you can – like, there’s texture to it that just can’t be there otherwise.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: If that makes –

Sarah: One of the things I love most about romance as a genre is that it gives individual readers the opportunity to see their emotional lives reflected in the stories that they read –

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: – and whenever there are – [sighs] – especially ‘cause it’s almost February, so we should get ready for a few of them – media pieces about romance and, oh yes, what is that, and why does it do that? The fundamental message of being told, you deserve and should expect love the way that you are, is deeply revolutionary, and the idea of being able to represent the intricacies and the immediacy of everyone’s experience emotionally and culturally is terribly important!

Adriana: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I, I wish that when writers from outside of the genre came to look at it, they understood that what actually is being said in a romance is that you, exactly as you are, with all of your combined experiences, are as deserving of love and happiness as anyone else; don’t settle.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, it’s a powerful, powerful thing that you do. I imagine that’s really both inspiring and maybe even a little intimidating! I know it is for me when I’ve tried.

Adriana: It is. It’s intimidating, especially coming from the place of, I, I want to write a story that, you know, makes people feel seen in a way that I haven’t felt seen by the stories that I’ve read and loved, like, in general, right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: And also trying to do that, that experience justice and knowing that you can’t really –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Adriana: – universally put a story out there that’s going to resonate, that’s going to click, that’s going to connect with everyone, but at the same time, wanting to have something that some people that can’t otherwise do it see reflections on, of themselves, of their, like, very, like, particular selves on the page. It’s like, it’s tricky and intimidating, but I feel like it’s really worth it to try.

Sarah: It is. I, I agree with you. I remember when I was writing my novella, I was like, well, I’m just, I’m just not going to be able to represent every single young Jewish person’s experience at a summer camp; like, there’s no way.

Adriana: Right.

Sarah: I can’t do it. But the expectation that if you’re writing something that’s going to be housed under a marginalized title, that you embody as much of it as possible is really, was so intimidating to me. Like, oh my gosh.

Adriana: Yeah. It is. It isn’t – and also, like, the, the subject matter, ‘cause I think for, for me in particular it was important to try and portray a little bit of the lived experience of what it is to be an Afro-Latinx immigrant right now. Like, in the world right now.

Sarah: Yes, very much.

Adriana: And I was compelled to write, very much so, because I, I was starting to feel really, it was almost unbearable to listen to the narrative around immigrants a, a couple years ago, and it’s, and it’s gotten worse.

Sarah: Yeah, I was going to say, it hasn’t improved, either!

Adriana: Right. So I wanted to show that in a way that felt genuine and that also –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – was realistic, so with Nesto specifically, who’s the main character or the hero in, one of the heroes in American Dreamer, he’s Dominican, he’s lived in the Dominic-, here in the US since he moved from the Dominican, but was, since he was a child, in New York City, which has its own challenges, but, you know, he’s, he’s got a dream. He’s, he’s a hustler; he, he wants to make this food truck a success; so he moves to Ithaca –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – where he has better chances of doing so and then starts running up against, like, very mild but also very real obstacles around the fact that there are people that don’t want him there. Like, how do you do that without beating people over the head with it almost, but, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – reflecting that this is part of, like, the lived experiences, those are obstacles that people come against when they’re trying to, like, pursue their American dream. So it’s, it’s, it’s almost like the nuances of it: you don’t want to be so preachy, but you also want to be honest and genuine.

Sarah: How have you experienced being a debut author?

Adriana: It’s been really good so far, actually. I, I tried to come into the romance genre as a writer. I had been in ro-, like, I had been a blogger for a long time of mainly LGBTQ romance, and then I, I ha-, I got busier with my own work and kind of that lapsed, and then I, I tried to think of how I came in as an author, and I wanted to do writing that I felt was purposeful almost, like deliberate.

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: And so I think that helped me kind of like understand what my position was coming in, but I’ve been happily surprised, because I’ve been really happy to hear early readers’ response to Jude and Nesto’s story. Like, like, what, what – as we were saying before, it can be really daunting to come in with a lived, a story with a lived experience that’s not the norm and that’s presenting conflicts and struggles that are not like what you normally see, so it was a little intimidating, but it’s been good, and it’s been nice and really heartening to see that a lot of the reviewers that have, that I’ve heard the reactions especially connect to Nesto’s, like, love of his roots, his culture, that that particular piece of the story has felt special, and it’s been good for them to read, so that’s been really great!

Sarah: What is the, what is the central romance of American Dreamer?

Adriana: So the central romance is Nes-, is Nesto Vasquez, who’s an entrepreneur. He has an Afro-Caribbean food truck, and he comes –

Sarah: What’s it called? What’s it called?

Adriana: Ounje; it’s called Ounje.

Sarah: Oh, nice! I love food truck names.

Adriana: So ounje is actually the Yoruba word, which is a West African language that was spoken by a lot of the men and women who were brought as slaves from West Africa, and ounje in Yoruba means nourishment. So that’s why I wanted to use the word, because in, in the Caribbean, even though we’re very different countries, you know, a lot, other than Dominican Republic and Haiti, which are on the same island, we’re all separated, you know, by the ocean. But –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: And we had different colonizers. We speak different languages, but we have the connection of our African ancestors, and our foods are very similar. Names are different, preparations vary, certain ingredients vary, but there’s a very strong thread through Afro-Caribbean food, so I really wanted to use a word that, like, fit for all of the islands, and –

Sarah: That’s so cool.

Adriana: – so that’s why Ounje is the name that I chose for Nesto’s truck. So Nesto’s three best friends, who also will get books, Camilo, Juan Pablo, and Patrice, are Cuban, Jamaican, Haitian, and Puerto Rican, so I want – and, and Ounje’s food is from all those places – so I wanted a name that really had a space for each of those nationalities and, and identities.

Sarah: Was it harder to name the truck than it was to name the characters?

Adriana: No.

Sarah: Good. [Laughs]

Adriana: I, I had names of, all of the names of the characters are, have been some kind of freedom fighter or work, or, or been involved in the liberation movement.

Sarah: Oh, that’s so cool!

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: There’s so many layers to your naming!

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: You should totally do a workshop on how to name stuff.

Adriana: Yes, I think, I think a lot about doing a workshop on how to write diaspora, ‘cause I think there’s a lot to it, and I –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: So I’m going to shut the hell up.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I’m a terrible host today. So Nesto has the food truck, and he moves to Ithaca.

Adriana: He moves to Ithaca, where his mother lives. So his mother ha-, moved years earlier to go and connect with family that were already there. So mom, or Mami, suggested that he come to Ithaca because there’s a thriving food scene there, and he would have a much better chance of being, like, a big fish in a small pond, as opposed to New York City where there’s tons of competition. So he moves up there, he’s giving himself six months, and if he can’t make it work he’s just going to give up on the truck and just go back to his previous employment. So he’s got a lot of stakes going up, and of course, as soon as he gets there, he meets Jude Fuller, who is a librarian in Ithaca, who is also very invested in, in developing his own project, and Jude has some background that’s painful, and he’s still kind of trying to, like, get his – he’s, he’s worked on himself a lot, but he’s still very reluctant to being in a relationship. But as things go, they can’t help it, and they fall in love.

Sarah: It must be fun and, and so welcoming to create this imaginary world where you can go hang out with these characters and then introduce them to readers.

Adriana: Yeah! It, it was fun, and that, and I wanted to really show the immigrant work ethic, the, like, the hustle and the resilience –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – and just the level to which we just go after what we want, and it’s, it’s something that I wanted to reflect, but in way that was fun, that was positive. I didn’t want to do, like, a toil story. Like, I talked, I have a group of friends, of other romance authors, mostly are women of color, and we have a chat group, and we talk about this all the time, that there is a lot of conflict to our lives, but I don’t necessarily want to show, like, a toil and struggle story? I want to show –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – like, just the life.

Sarah: That makes total sense! It counters the predominant narrative that there is only struggle, that there’s only unhappiness.

Adriana: Right, right.

Sarah: Like, the foundation of romance would say otherwise? So you’ve totally picked the right genre. [Laughs]

Adriana: Yes, right? I, I feel like I’m in the right place.

Sarah: Now, I know that your book and your series contain a truly amazing amount of food porn.

Adriana: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Like, so much food porn, which is great, ‘cause I love it, but it’s also a danger when you’re reading and you’re like, okay, I need to go eat that right now!

Adriana: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Is it hard to write? Is it, like, an occupational hazard to write all of this incredible food?

Adriana: I loved it, actually, because I, I –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: – I love food? My, my blog, which is no longer, was called The Tipsy Bibliophile, and my –

Sarah: That’s a great name!

Adriana: It was a great – and I really enjoyed it, because what I would do was I would read the book, and then I would do a recipe that was either inspired on the book or that was in the book, and I would pair it with a bottle of wine.

Sarah: All of those words are wonderful words.

Adriana: I know. It was a really fun blog. So I am just a person that loves food, and I love thinking about books and food. So to me, it felt really organic that my debut novel would be something that was going to be very amazing food heavy.

Sarah: Just a little, yeah.

Adriana: And also, I really wanted to celebrate Caribbean food in general, and, and in a way that was a little bit more in depth, because I, I’m almost tired of hearing about tostones, not that we don’t love tostones, ‘cause we do, but it’s like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – almost everything you see of a person that’s Puerto Rican or Dominican in a book is like, oh, tostones, platanos. We love our platano, but there’s so much more.

Sarah: Oh right.

Adriana: And so, and, like, Haitian food, you almost, I mean, I don’t know –

Sarah: Oh dear God.

Adriana: – if I’ve ever read about Haitian food really in a romance, and Haitian food, I mean, don’t tell any Dominicans I said this, but it might be my favorite of all Caribbean food.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: It’s delicious and spicy, and it’s so, so good, and so I wanted to kind of give it some love too. I just wanted more, like an expanded experience of what Caribbean food is in this story.

Sarah: Was there anything in this, any particular dish or item in the, in the story that, as you wrote it, that you, like, ate repeatedly, just because, well, it’s research?

Adriana: Okay, tostones I made a few times, and then –

[Laughter]

Adriana: – I actually made griot, which is one of the ingredients for one of the Haitian, for the Haitian burrito, which is a traditional Haitian dish, and it’s basically pork belly that’s marinated for, like, a day and then braised for hours and then deep fried.

Sarah: There is nothing wrong with any of the sequences of that recipe. Holy smoke! [Laughs]

Adriana: It is so, so good, and I hadn’t eaten any, eaten it in years. My, one of my aunts was married to a Haitian man for a long time, and he was probably, like, the most influential male figure in my life – still is – and he was an amazing cook – or he is still an amazing cook – and he would make it occasionally, but it was, like, a family holiday.

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: So I hadn’t eaten it in a long time, and there’s not a lot of Haitian food here in New York City, which is crazy. But yeah, that I made, and I was like, oh, why don’t I make this more? ‘Cause this is basically heaven.

Sarah: [Laughs] Are you going to do any recipes or showcase any particular techniques when, when the book comes out?

Adriana: I’ve been doing –

Sarah: Just give away some food?

Adriana: Yes, I’ve been doing it on and off. I’ve been doing Twitter threads of, of food I make that’s Caribbean food. So, like, on Sunday I made Dominican red beans, which is –

Sarah: Yes.

Adrianna: So I, I, I tweeted about that and did, like, a little thread, so I’ll try to do that with at least one recipe for each of the islands. I actually had recipe cards made, and I did a couple of giveaways. I’ll do more with, like, five of the recipes from the book if people want to make them.

Sarah: Oh, I, yeah. I think that’s brilliant. The, the way in which –

Adriana: I’ll send you some.

Sarah: Oh, please? Pretty please.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: I will, I will send you recipes if you would like. I, I cook all the time.

Adriana: Yes, I’ll do that.

Sarah: So if you need some, like, matzo ball soup, challah? I’ve got a great challah recipe; you stick it in the fridge, and then the next day you’re like, my whole house is edible! I can eat the air, it smells so good! So yeah.

Adriana: Oh, I will, I will take you up on that. My daughter loves making bread, and she actually makes some pretty decent challah for New Year’s.

Sarah: Oh, heck yes!

Adriana: So she, she’s, like, ten years old, and she’s, like, a budding baker, and bread-making is her favorite thing.

Sarah: My eleven-year-old son loves baking, and it’s the same thing. Like, he’ll make a, he made a batch of deep, dark, dark, rich chocolate cupcakes, and I was like, I am amazed. How did you do this? [Laughs] This is incredible!

Adriana: I know. I, I always tell my partner, he, I’m like, I feel, like, really good about some of the parenting decisions we’ve made.

Sarah: Right?!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Isn’t that the best feeling?

Adriana: Yes!

Sarah: Like, turning you loose in a kitchen with an oven was, worked out for everybody.

Adriana: For all of us.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: So when you were researching food trucks – I mentioned that the names and the culture of food trucks is something that I find very fascinating – what were some of the things you learned about while researching the, the business and the entrepreneurship of the, of the series?

Adriana: So I did some, I did some research around, like, the business piece of it, which was –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: – also interesting, just to see how many of them fail, how many of them succeed, how expensive it is to kind of like get them going, but I also wanted to learn, like, the mechanics of how it is to, like, be in there and cook and be with other people in such a small space. So YouTube, of course –

Sarah: Bless.

Adriana: – ‘cause YouTube is a blessing. They had so many videos of people who were food truck owners, kind of showing how they were able to do their work in there in such, like, tight quarters.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: So that was something that I tried to research a lot, ‘cause I have a couple of scenes in the book where they’re inside. And then I just sort of try to look around to see experiences of people who had Caribbean food trucks –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – and how the business was in the cities that they were in.

Sarah: What were some of the things that surprised you?

Adriana: You know, what was, what was surpri-, not surprising, ‘cause, like, everybody, it’s like, now that we have Food Network, we know so much about the restaurant business, but –

Sarah: That’s true; we’re all experts at this point.

Adriana: – how hard it is to make them successful was a big piece of it, and also –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – kind of like the mechanics of how you get investors and things like that, but mostly just, like, learning about how to operate in the, in the space was interesting, just, like, the mechanics of it and how they have to do all the cooking outside in a commercial kitchen and kind of like have everything mostly made by the time they get in the truck was interesting too –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – which was something that I hadn’t thought about, so I’m like, of course they can’t make it all in the food truck! They have to have a kitchen!

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: Which makes for a very strange schedule when your –

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: – when your workday corresponds to feeding people in their workday, but your workday has to start in an entirely different set of hours –

Adriana: Right.

Sarah: – to get everything ready!

Adriana: Right, so I tried to port-, portray that a little bit on the, in the book, of how Nesto had to, like, get organized and have his kitchen space and all of that.

Sarah: It’s, entrepreneurship also requires such a, such an interesting blend of characteristics. It requires absolute belief and determination, and then an ability to organize yourself, an ability to set your own deadlines, and an ability to motivate yourself, because you’re trying to make yourself a success.

Adriana: Yeah. Yeah, it’s like a one-man show.

Sarah: Yep!

Adriana: Or one-woman show.

Sarah: Yep, pretty much. [Laughs]

Adriana: Yeah. One-person show. [Laughs]

Sarah: I asked my Patreon community about questions. I like to tell them who the upcoming guests are, and usually I get, oh my gosh, I’m so excited! So I have two questions for you from Leigh.

Adriana: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: Leigh asked me to say,

I am super excited Adriana is coming on the podcast. She is the loveliest, and I am so excited to read American Dreamer. I would love to hear how she balances writing with her work, along with getting a Masters.

Adriana: It’s hard! But –

Sarah: Yeah! [Laughs]

Adriana: – but romance has always been a space of self-care for me in my work, so this experience, I’ve been toying with it. Like, now that I’m kind of in it, ‘cause I start-, I decided to write seriously when I started the Master’s, which was two and a half years ago. I thought, I’m not going to be working full-time, so this is a good moment to explore this, which I’ve been toying with –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – for a long time. And I decided that I was going to do it as something that was self-care, something fun, something creative, a different set of brain muscles, so I’ve tried –

Sarah: Yes.

Adriana: – to keep it in a space of my life where it’s something fun and exciting and creative and helping me build a community that I didn’t have before. And I have a very supportive partner who is amazing and is my number one fan, and also my work is also, I, it also kind of motivates me to tell these stories, because I have so much wealth of amazing people that I work with every day that it inspires me to write, so it’s, it’s, it’s working out so far in terms of keeping things compartmentalized but harmoniously connected.

Sarah: That is a balancing act.

Adriana: Yes, it is. But it’s, it’s, it’s okay. It feels a little bit hard sometimes –

Sarah: Yep, yep.

Adriana: – so I do it with – I’m in my last semester of school, and I’m just so over it, I just want to be done.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: I’m so –

Sarah: Yeah, my sister-in-law has her MSW, and I remember that semester; she was like, I am over this! When does it stop?!

Adriana: It is, and with the MSW, you have to essentially work, you know, six hundred hours for free, and it’s a full social work job, and this year –

Sarah: Yep.

Adriana: – last year I did domestic violence, because that’s the field that I’ve been in and what I want to go back to. This year I decided I was going to do something less stressful, and I’m working with refugee unaccompanied minors, and – in New York City – which has been incredibly gratifying, and they’re amazing children, and I love working with them? A little stressful.

Sarah: Just a bit.

Adriana: Yes, it is –

Sarah: Just a little.

Adriana: – it is a stressful time to work with, with refugee children, with refugee families. It’s just the stress of that. They’re very stressed. We’re all very stressed.

Sarah: Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: And then you work and spend, spend time and energy and the, sort of the, the output of your professional creativity in something that is deeply precarious and scary, and then you take that and move into the space of romance where you’re creating happy endings for all of the negativity that you negotiate with professionally.

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: That is a lot!

Adriana: It is a lot, and I also feel like it’s – I feel like I talk about this all the time – I see my clients, you know, fighting like hell for –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – what they believe is their, is what they deserve to have, which is safety and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – sense of self and, like, regaining themselves after, like, losing themselves in these, like, horrible, traumatic experiences, and so I feel like I want to honor some of that, and I don’t usually, I would never bring in, really, my clients’ experiences into my stories, but I –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: – but the resilience and the strength and that, like, unrelenting feeling like, I want better. I want to feel better than this; I want to be in a better place; I want – and I deserve it. Like, it’s hard for them to get there sometimes, but I see it again and again and again.

Sarah: And I imagine not only reading but also writ-, writing romance, as you said, it’s probably part of your self-care.

Adriana: Yeah, it is. Like, unapologetic happy endings, like, that’s kind of like my little tag line.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: On a, like, I want people to have not just, like, a happy ending, like a huge one. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – just big and unapologetic. Like, I get all of this happiness.

Sarah: Yes. I will absolutely back you up: happiness is revolutionary.

Adriana: It is! It is. It is; it’s really sad I think sometimes, when you think about the literary world and how –

Sarah: Oh my God.

Adriana: – condescending it is, because the idea that, like, none of us would, would not want love. Like, we, none of us would want to live without love –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: – and then the stories that celebrate it just continually get condescended to and, like, dismissed. It’s really sad for our world.

Sarah: It’s baffling, isn’t it?

Adriana: It’s really sad for – it just says so much in our world about what we value.

Sarah: Leigh also asked – and you sort of answered this already, but if there’s more you’d like to say I, I would love to hear it – she also wanted to know how your social work background informs the way that you write a relationship.

Adriana: That’s a really great question. I really – well, domestic violence specifically, and sexual violence, is a lot about power and control, right? And, like, power dynamics –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – and, and values and beliefs around who, who’s, who’s valued and who’s important and who’s got the power in the relationship, so I think about those dynamics a lot. I was actually thinking about this the other day in terms of consent, ‘cause I committed to write a piece about consent and how I write it in my stories, and affirmative consent is very important. It needs to happen in the story, but there needs to be, like, a back – like, there needs to be a setup and a foundation of where the power dynamics make that affirmative consent viable. So that’s, I think, something that I think a lot about in my work, because I think all the time about control and power dynamics and realigning people’s sense of their self, once they’ve had their agency taken away, and then I have to, I have to inform myself of a lot of that when I’m trying to set up characters in an intimate relationship, because there’s a lot of work you have to do under the yes to make the yes real –

Sarah: That’s such a –

Adriana: – if that makes sense.

Sarah: Oh, that’s such an interesting way to put that, that there’s work going on under the yes before it happens.

Adriana: Right! Because if you, like, if you don’t have control and agency in a situation and they tell you, do you want this, and you say yes, even if you’re saying it in the most, like, excited way possible, if underlining the power dynamic isn’t aligned –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: -then that yes doesn’t really have that much substance. So I, I think a lot about those mechanics when I’m writing. Like, the second book in the Dreamers series, which I’m copyediting right now and will be out in May. It’s about Camilo, who’s Nesto’s friend, and –

Sarah: Uh-huh?

Adriana: – the other hero is a Dominican billionaire. He is white-passing, so he’s, his father’s American, so he looks white, so there’s, like, that whole dynamic, but Camilo’s a social worker, and this billionaire is donating a ton of money to the agency –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: – that Camilo works, works for.

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: So right there, there’s a power imbalance that I really needed to work at to make it viable, because if Camilo is involved with this man and this man has so much leverage over the relationship, then that’s problematic, so I had to really air that out from the get-go, so that it –

Sarah: Right!

Adriana: – felt okay, and actually, air, like, it’s aired out, like, it’s talked about very early on in the re-, in the, in the book when the relationship is still not romantic, although that – well, if you read it you’ll know. But that’s the sort of thing that I think about when I think about consent, and that is very much, because my work is what it is, that I really need to think about, does power and control make sense here?

Sarah: Mm-hmm. And how is, how is consent being communicated in ways that aren’t just dialogue?

Adriana: Correct, correct. Correct, because, I mean, I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve sat in a room where a survivor’s giving their testimony, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – that yes was there, but that situation was not consensual, because –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: – of the power dynamics that were going on, and so that’s the piece that I think about a lot. And then also just, you know, giving people viable happy endings, we cover that a little bit in the domestic violence piece Jen and I did for you –

Sarah: Yes.

Adriana: – and, and the piece of, even in the courting process, the, the things that are okay and not okay to do and the behaviors that, in the long run, can’t turn out to be equitable.

Sarah: Yeah. I understand that part. From, something that has troubled me from a, for a long time is the – [huffs] – there is a frequent portrayal of alpha male behavior that to me reads as deep insecurity.

Adriana: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It, it doesn’t read like confidence; it doesn’t seem like someone who is self-assured and interested in someone as an equal; it reads to me as deeply insecure and presumptuous, if not predatory –

Adriana: Right.

Sarah: – and for a while, the way in which I encountered alpha males, especially in some very specific contemporary tropes, read to me as someone who’s absolutely not equipped for a partnership.

Adriana: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: To listen to you talking about the underpinnings of achieving consent and the behavior and the power structure that has to be in place – [laughs] – it, it makes me want to just play what you’ve just said to anyone who’s like, oh yeah, romance! I’ll just write one on a weekend; it’ll be fine. It’ll be easy.

Adriana: Right!

Sarah: Oh no, it is not! It is really not! [Laughs]

Adriana: It’s not, and I think that’s the piece where, especially with the alpha male, like, I, I mean, we all enjoy a good alpha male. I, I would like to say that it’s something – like, no, I li-, I like a lot of them. I think it’s the piece of you creating the character that has the ability to move from emotional disarray or emotionally not developed enough to show up in a relationship how they should, and the whole –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – other one is a person that believes that they have a right to treat their partner as something they can control and their property. Like, those two things are very different.

Sarah: Very, very different, yes. And when I encounter the second one, I’m like, yeah, no, I can’t buy this.

Adriana: Right! One thing is, beliefs, attitudes, values, and, like, entitlement and privilege that they think is theirs and not their partners –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Adriana: – and another one is someone that just needs to evolve.

Sarah: [Laughs] Level up!

Adriana: Yeah! You just need to level up; you just need to, you need to show up like you mean it and be the partner that you should be. And then another one is a person that is operating from a complete different value system than the one that I have.

Sarah: One of my favorite things about the portrayal of the romance in the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine is that when the show starts, Jake is not emotionally in a place to handle any kind of adult relationship –

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: – and he needs to go through five seasons of leveling up as a person –

Adriana: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – before he’s even remotely ready to engage as an adult, as a functional grownup, in a partnership with another person.

Adriana: Yes. He’s, he’s a good example of someone that needs some serious leveling up, but –

Sarah: Yep.

Adriana: – at the core, he’s a good person, and he also – and not just a good person, ‘cause we can be a good person and be terrible partners, but also someone that sees that other person in very key important ways the same as him.

Sarah: Yes! Very true! Especially given the number of power dynamics that that show explores.

Adriana: [Whispers] It’s such a good show!

Sarah: Oh my God, I know! [Laughs] I did a massive rewatch of it over the summer when my kids were at camp, and I was, I was so happy!

Adriana: That is a fun – and, and the thing with that particular cast, right, like, and I think that’s what’s so important to know what kind of community you’re building into your world, because –

Sarah: Yes!

Adriana: – he gets affirming and incredibly good modeling from really strong people at every turn.

Sarah: Who also fearlessly call him when he screws up.

Adriana: Yes! Exactly. You need to show up here and do better.

Sarah: Yep.

Adriana: In a loving way. And also that show up for him in a loving way, and that’s, like, how you build a viable, like, emotional arc for a character, because he had all the tools –

Sarah: Yep.

Adriana: – to, like, live up and step up when he needed to, even though he messed up along the way hilariously so many times.

Sarah: Oh yeah. But at the same time, the, the foundational message of that show and that community and also in, in the romances that we read is that you can level up and still maintain the integrity of who you are. The core values that make you the person that you are and the experiences that you’ve had are still part of you as a person, but you can also level up. You don’t have to completely change your entire personality and your entire way of life –

Adriana: Right.

Sarah: – to level up.

Adriana: Yeah. The show Schitt’s Creek also does a really good job with that.

Sarah: Really!

Adriana: Oh my gosh, it is so good! I wish there was more diversity in it, but it is, like, the emotional arcs of the characters, especially now that they’re moving into, like, romantic relationships, is phenomenal, and it’s exactly that.

Sarah: Oh!

Adriana: They’re still the same people, super funny, but they’ve changed in, like, really fundamental ways.

Sarah: Yes! Oh, that’s – [laughs] –

Adriana: I recommend it.

Sarah: You get a recom- –

Adriana: So good.

Sarah: [Laughs] I was just going to say, when you get a recommendation for a television show or a multi-series program where characters develop in arcs over multiple, multiple series and you get that recommendation from a romance writer or reader, it has so much more weight with me, because most of the time – and I’ve talked about this a lot – I don’t trust TV writers to know where they’re going.

Adriana: Yes. And I don’t watch TV generally. I, I think –

Sarah: No, I don’t either.

Adriana: – I think Brooklyn Nine-Nine and  Schitt’s Creek are the only shows maybe in the last five or six years that I’ve actually watched every episode, because I usually, like, just give up on them after, like, three or four.

Sarah: It’s a bunch of, like, nonfiction documentaries that I love –

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: – and Bob’s Burgers. I will watch every episode of Bob’s Burgers.

Adriana: Yes, I like, I like, like, crime. Like, I like Endeavour, which is, like, a British mystery. Like, that sort of thing, like, I’ll watch, but Schitt’s Creek’s amazing. I bawled at the grand gesture in the fourth season.

Sarah: Really!

Adriana: We wept. I wept.

Sarah: Oh!

Adriana: It’s very, very good.

Sarah: Okay.

Adriana: You will like it.

Sarah: I have it on my list now. I am so screwed. There goes all my free time! Thank you!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now I have another question related to – actually, let me ask you about a terminology: my, my default terminology was always domestic violence, but you more, more commonly use, is it IPV?

Adriana: Yes. Specifically for romantic relationships, yes, I use intimate partner violence. I also use domestic violence, because in my work, I don’t just work with the intimate partners but with the children, if there are children in the home. There’s also –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: – elder abuse, like, between, like, parent and child, and that all kind of falls under the domestic violence –

Sarah: Domestic –

Adriana: – umbrella.

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: But most of my work is specifically about intimate partner violence. It’s a type of domestic violence that’s, it’s, it’s very – ‘cause then there’s also, like, the sexual violence piece to it, and it’s just diff-, it’s just a different dynamic than, like, the more –

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: – general family violence.

Sarah: Right, okay. So I want to make sure I’m using the, the right terminology to talk to you about your work. When you did the Q & A for, for the site –

Adriana: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – and thank you again for that.

Adriana: Yes.

Sarah: It is still one of our most linked-to and read pieces of content. It’s really an incredible – it’s just an overview of what it is that you do and why it matters in romance. And it mentioned that you notice a lot of parallels between the work of advocates on behalf of domestic violence and intimate partner violence victims and also the work of readers and romance authors in romance as a genre as well.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: And I hadn’t ever thought about that parallel, but it makes a, an enormous deal of sense. What are some of the connections that you’ve noticed?

Adriana: So three things mainly: one, the one that it seems obvious is that it was sort of like a space, a community that was in its origins built up by women for women. I mean, it’s shifted, of course –

Sarah: Yes.

Adriana: – and there’s all kinds of persons that read romance, but in its inception it was something that was built by and for women. The other one is, of course, the, the connection to feminist thought and values: empowerment of women, affirmation that women’s desires and needs are important and valuable, so that piece of it also is very connected to just the world of domestic violence advocacy work, ‘cause it al-, it was also started by women. They were initially issues and ideas that were considered women’s issues and ideas, so it was –

Sarah: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Adriana: – very much connected to that type of thing. And then the third one is the belief that everyone deserves a happy ending. That we all deserve, no matter what we’ve come with or walk with, that we all deserve to be happy! That we deserve to have, like, a happy ending, whatever that happy ending is. So that’s the third one.

I mean, there are other similarities that are, I would say, probably not as whimsical – [laughs] – as – I think representation is a big conversation that’s happening right now in the domestic violence world. For years now, it’s been a notable issue that the leadership in agencies working domestic violence is predominantly white, white women. The frontline staff and the clients are not, which is part of why I’m in grad school again, because I was in a – I, I, I could only reach a certain degree of, of management before –

Sarah: Yep.

Adriana: – I had, like, hit a ceiling.

Sarah: Yep.

Adriana: And so that’s a conversation that’s happening right now very vigorously in the domestic violence space. The importance –

Sarah: Yeah.

Adriana: – of having people in leadership positions that can speak to and understand the lived experiences of the clients, who are by and large women of color, women of lower socioeconomic status. There’s of course, like, domestic violence cuts across all, all identities, but in my experience, and especially when you’re working in urban areas like big cities, it’s very much an issue that there’s a, our clientele by, by and large is women of color, and so that piece of it, of having that be the client and then having a leadership that can’t truly connect to that in, in real ways is problematic. I think that’s also very resonant in a different type of way to the conversation that’s happening right now in romance.

Sarah: So when did you first begin reading romance, and what led you to saying, all right – I know you, you said earlier, when you started grad school you were like, I’m also going to try writing. I’m going to do this now. It’s, you know, butt-in-chair, hand-on-keyboard time. What, what led you into the genre? When did you first begin reading it, and what was your real impetus to being like, all right, I’m going to do this now? I got this. This is, this is it.

Adriana: This is it. I’ve been reading romance since I was a teenager. I would –

Sarah: Yep.

Adriana: – probably say, my mom used to get me these, like, Spanish translations of this book series about a princess named Sisi – I don’t know if those were Spanish trans-, from English to Spanish or German to Spanish; it might have been Austrian. But it was like a whole series of this princess that had this, like, unrequited love with this prince, and I was like maybe nine or ten, and I was, like, obsessed with those, and then Babysitters Club. I went to an American school in Dominican Republic, so we got a lot of, a lot of our classes were in English, so we got a lot of books in English, so that was a part of it.

But growing up, I had some family here in the States, in New York and in San Diego, in California, and my, my cousins were a lot older than I was. I had female cousins that were, like, in their twenties and thirties when I was in my early teens, and I would read their romance novels. I have one cousin who was a nurse, and she worked the night shift, and she, to fall asleep in the morning, she would read romance novels, and she would have stacks of Harlequin Presents books next to her bed, so I would just read ‘em.

My struggle was that I didn’t live here. I lived in Dominican Republic, so I would have to secure my bag, as you would say, of romance novels in the summer, and they would have to last me pretty much all year. So I would use all the money that I got from my parents to spend on clothes on books, and then my m-, when I told my mom that I had written this book and that it was getting published – and my mom doesn’t speak English, so this conversation happened in Spanish – I was like, Mom, I, I wrote a book; it’s getting published, and she was like, finally! All those books you, you smuggled into the country had to pay off.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: She was like, my mother calls me a diminutive of my name, so she was like, ai, mija, you remember I used to give you a hundred dollars for the summer, and you’d come back with a hundred books in that suitcase, not a single T-shirt. And I was like, yep, Mom, that was the plan all along.

Sarah: Yep. Finally, it paid off. [Laughs]

Adriana: Finally, it paid, all that book-reading paid off.

Sarah: And you know, I have carried a lot of books in a suitcase; that is a heavy proposition.

Adriana: Oh my goodness, the Kindle changed my life, Sarah. I cannot tell you –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: – how it changed my life. We were living in Ethiopia when the Kindle first, the Kindle version came out, and I was doing, still, still doing the same thing of literally having one suitcase that I would bring home and fill with books so that I could have –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Adriana: – and when the Kindle came out, was, this, this literally, it changed my life!

Sarah: You had the wedge one?

Adriana: Yes. That was like the equivalent of that big cell phone that people used to have with the big antenna?

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs]

Adriana: That, that was the first one I had. I’ve had like five of them at this point, but it was life-changing for me.

Okay, I guess the second part of the question was, how did I decide to start writing? I decided to start, I remember the moment when I said, I’m just going to do this, and it was, there was an intersectional feminism panel at The Strand Book Store, which happened maybe two summers ago, or maybe three –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Adriana: – and I had been writing this novel. I had been writing American Dreamer, and I had it kind of like in a secret file that I kind of like peeked into, and then this intersectional feminism panel happened, and all the authors that were on the panel were white women, some of whom I love and love their books – Sarah MacLean was one of them, and she’s wonderful, and I love her and her books – but it was really jarring to me that in a conversation about feminism, you know, and romance –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Adriana: – there were no women of color, or people of color of any gender. And so I thought, in that moment I was like, I need to finish this fucking book, because I’m done! I was like, I’m going to write it, and I’m hoping it, like, I want my book in the romance space, because I have things to say! And so that’s what, that was my moment.

Sarah: It is very, very difficult to, to pivot to the I’m-going-to-do-this-now point.

Adriana: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s very scary!

Adriana: Yeah. I mean, I think, I guess something that, like, compels you or, like, really kind of sets a fire under you, and I think that was the moment for me. I’m like, I’m, I just need to do this, ‘cause I feel like there needs to be an opening for this kind of story.

Sarah: So what are you working on right now? You mentioned earlier that your, your, your heroine of the, is it the next book? Is also a social worker in your same field?

Adriana: Yes. So that book is written, and I’m in the final stages of editing it, and it’s coming out in May. It’s called American Fairytale, and that’s the second book. Actually, I, I finished the third book, and I’m writing, I’m plotting the fourth one right now, but I am actually working on something with my agent. It was a book that I finished last year, and it’s a contemporary romance set in Ethiopia. It’s a gay romance, and it’s –

Sarah: Oh wow!

Adriana: – a Dominican-American relief worker who goes to Ethiopia for the first time after having lived there as a child and begins a relationship with one of the Ethiopian US embassy workers in his team. So I’m working on that with my agent with the hope that we can get it out there soon. I mean, it, it’s, it’s not, it’s not angsty, it’s not super angsty. It’s kind of angsty, because being in a same-sex relationship is illegal in Ethiopia.

Sarah: Right.

Adriana: So there’s, there’s complications about that, but mostly, I love Ethiopia. We lived there for a long time. The first year we got married, we lived there, and then we came back when my daughter was three months old, so my daughter’s first three years were in Ethiopia. We have a very special connection to that country, and I really wanted to write a story that portrayed the beauty of Ethiopia and what a special place and what a rich history it has, because I, I, people have this sense of Ethiopia that, you know, it’s accurate in some ways. Like, there’s a lot of poverty and a lot of hunger, but there’s also this other whole world and history and incredible culture that I don’t think gets talked about enough, so I wanted to, like, kind of like do this little, like, love letter to Ethiopia, which I consider, like, my second home.

Sarah: What books are you reading that you want to tell people about?

Adriana: Mmm, I’m always reading like ten things at a time?

Sarah: Yeah, I have that problem.

Adriana: So that’s hard, ‘cause I’m always, like, reading something on my Kindle, listening to something on the commute, and I also have a book. So right now I’m reading Zoey Castile’s second book in her Happy Endings series, which is super fun. I just started the latest K. J. Charles book last night, and as always, she’s, like, amazing. And I’m listening to the last few chapters of Michelle Obama’s memoir. Her life could be the most amazing romance novel ever, including the most ha-, amazing happy ending. So I’m ri-, those are the things I’m reading right now. I mean, honestly, if, if I’m being frank, it’s lived up to expectations, because my expectations were out of this world, and it’s lived up to it completely.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Adriana for hanging out with me and talking about all of the things. If you would like to find her debut book American Dreamer, it is available everywhere e-books are sold, and I will have links to it in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. You can find her on her website at adrianaherreraromance, and I will have links to her Twitter handle and a specific thread on Dominican cooking if you wish to look at some visual food porn, because why wouldn’t you? That sounds awesome.

If you would like to get in touch with me, you can find me on Smart Bitches or @SmartBitches on Twitter or @SmartBitches on Instagram, which is run by Amanda. She does Rec It Wednesday, so if you need a book recommendation and it’s a Wednesday, head over there; she’ll help you out. And if you want to email me about the podcast or you have ideas or questions or a bad joke, you can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, or you can leave a voicemail at 1-201-371-3272. I love hearing from you, so thank you in advance.

This week’s podcast is brought to you by Duchess by Deception by Marie Force. Indulge in the first-ever historical romance by New York Times bestselling author Marie Force, with a tale Publishers Weekly called “a masterpiece with the perfect amount of romance.” With Marie Force’s knack for creating memorable characters, this romantic tale of a duke’s dilemma will appeal to readers of Lisa Kleypas, Eloisa James, and Sabrina Jeffries. Can he make his bride fall in love with him all over again? Find out in Duchess by Deception by Marie Force, on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com.

If you have supported the show Patreon with a monthly pledge of any amount, thank you! You are helping me transcribe this and every episode, and you help keep the show going. If you would like to join the Patreon community and support the show, it would be awesome if you did! Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges begin at one dollar a month, and you will be part of the group who helps me decide questions, upcoming guests, suggestions are also a thing, and you help us pick the book for our quarterly book club. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches, and thank you very much in advance for having a look!

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries. This is “Tom in the Front.” You can find this album, Blackhouse, at Amazon or iTunes or wherever you buy your funky music.

Coming up on Smart Bitches, we have reviews of new books, and we have a new discussion question this weekend about your favorite tropes that might be a really hard question to answer. We also have another edition of cover snark, a new edition of Unlocking Library Coolness, and a brand-new Covers & Cocktails, sponsored by 1001 Dark Nights. This is going to be a big collection of cocktail options, too, so come on by. It is awesome when you hang out with us, and of course we will have Books on Sale every day and Help a Bitch Out on Tuesday, because I know that’s part of what you like!

As usual, I will have links to all of the things we talked about and all of the books that we mentioned during this episode in the show notes, so should you wish to go shopping and you shop through the site, you are helping support the Hot Pink Palace, so thank you for that.

And I always end with a bad joke. Are you ready? This is pretty terrible.

What do you call shoes that are made from bananas?

What do you call shoes that are made from bananas?

You call them slippers!

[Laughs] Slippers! That is from flopscratch on Reddit. Such a dumb joke! I love it so much! It’s so dumb! And I’m also wearing slippers, so now I’m very happy.

On behalf of Adriana Herrera and all of the animals and people that are hanging out with me now, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you here next week.

[good music]