347. Becoming My Own Audience: An Interview with Dahlia Adler

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome to episode number 347 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Today I am talking with Dahlia Adler. Dahlia Adler does a lot of things, so we’re going to talk about all of them. We talk about her job history in publishing and how different areas of publishing are very different from one another. We discuss her career as an author and her adventures as a book blogger at BN and her site LGBTQ Reads. The key moment in this podcast is how writing helped her recognize herself and her own sexuality; I think that’s my favorite part of this interview. I have a lot of places that you can find Dahlia online because she’s online a lot, and I will have links to all of them in the show notes.

If you would like to get in touch with me, you can email me at [email protected], or you can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. I really like hearing from you, and I really hope that you’ll tell me what you think of this episode.

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Oh, hey. We have a live show coming up. Can’t forget to tell you. If you are attending Book Lovers Con in New Orleans Thursday, May 16th, 3:30 local time, Hyatt Regency New Orleans in Imperial 5C, we are going to be recording a live show. It is free for attendees of Book Lovers Con, but I’m asking that folks register, just so I know how many chairs to bring and how many wineglasses if I find those little plastic ones? Either way, live shows are a lot of fun, and Amanda and Elyse will be joining me, so if you are attending Book Lovers Con, I hope you will add us to your agenda and come hang out with us, because it’s going to be very silly and a lot of fun.

I will have information at the end of the episode as to who and what you are listening to, what is coming up on Smart Bitches this coming week, and I have two terrible jokes because it’s Passover and there are two Seders, so you get two jokes this week. Yay! And of course I will have links to all of the books that we mention and some of the websites that we talk about during this interview.

I really enjoyed this conversation, so let’s not talk anymore; let’s go listen to it. On with the podcast with Dahlia Adler.

[music]

Dahlia Adler: So I’m Dahlia Adler. I am an author, blogger, and editor. From the author parts, I write Young Adult and New Adult novels –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: – and I’ve also been doing a bunch of short stories in YA lately, as there’s been kind of a rise of anthologies, so that’s been really fun. Blogging, I do not so much on my own blog anymore, but for years that’s sort of, I think, how people came to know me in publishing, was I did a lot of blogging about publishing, and now I’ve switched to more really just blogging about books, and I do that for the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog, a little bit about romance for Frolic, and I started my own blog called LGBTQ Reads, which is for all ages, all kinds of queer written work –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: – and that’s been really fun. I think that mostly sums – oh! By day – [laughs] – I always forget I also have an actual nine-to-five day job! Which is currently, I’m an associate editor of mathematics at a scholarly publishing house. It’s like research-level mathematics.

Sarah: So you talk about YA, NA, blogging, queer literature for all ages, plus math.

Dahlia: Yes!

Sarah: Wow.

Dahlia: [Laughs] Not a lot of intersection between math and the rest of it, but you know –

Sarah: No! [Laughs] And, like, the math part, I would be so intimidated, ‘cause that is not my skill set.

Dahlia: It’s not really mine either, and this is –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: – different from people who are in trade. I mean, this is a really big difference between trade publishing and academic publishing is, I don’t do developmental editing. Work is peer reviewed; that’s true for journals, and it’s true for books, so people think, oh my God, you must be so good at math! And it’s really –

Sarah: No.

Dahlia: – all the other stuff that editors do. I mean, when you have a trade editor working on a book, they’re rarely getting to actually spend a day reading manuscripts. It’s, you know, they’re dealing with things like contracts and payments and interfacing with different departments like publicity, et cetera, so that kind of thing makes up my job, and what fills in the gaps is that acquisitions is a much more active process in academic publishing than it is in trade publishing, and that we go and travel to find authors at conferences and things like that, rather than books being primarily made of submissions that come in, so it’s a different kind of job, but it doesn’t require nearly as much, as much math knowledge as people think it does.

Sarah: So you have to go and hunt down mathematicians.

Dahlia: Yep. I really do. [Laughs]

Sarah: How do you hunt a mathematician? Is there, like, a camouflage involved? Do you use, like, a dart? Like, what is, is there – I mean, I don’t know how much you can talk about this, ‘cause I certainly do not want to put you in a position where you’re –

Dahlia: Oh no, it’s fine! It’s a lot of –

Sarah: – talking too much about the day job, but –

Dahlia: Conferences are a really big part of it. You’re not always necessarily going, but you are looking to see who is going in the subject areas of your interests?

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Dahlia: That’s kind of how it’s divided up; we all have series or particular subject areas that we work on, and then we look at conferences and things like that where people will be presenting, and you see who’s working on topics of interest, who are the biggest names in, you know, really emerging fields, and you kind of send them emails – I would love to talk, et cetera – and, and so it goes.

Sarah: That’s very different from the –

Dahlia: Very.

Sarah: – fiction market, where stuff is sent in.

Dahlia: Yes. Yeah, that was a really big surprise to me. Honestly, I didn’t know that there was going to be that much of that. Some stuff does come in, and you have series editors who work on bringing things in because they’re much more involved in those communities than you are, so sometimes I just get an email: here’s a submission I have for you! But it’s, it’s definitely a very different process.

Sarah: Wow! Now, recently, I have, I have had you on my list of guests that I wanted to talk to, but what really kicked my ass into gear was you tweeted a really fascinating thread about all of the different jobs you’ve had in publishing. Like, your actual nine-to-five job, aside from the blogging and the tweeting and the promoting and the discussing and the writing thing that you do, which we’ll get to as well, like, you’ve held, you’ve held a lot of jobs in publishing! And while they’re all in publishing, like, they are all so different. You were a fashion intern at Maxim?

Dahlia: I was! And it’s funny, because now, to look at that seems so, so random, but at that point in my life, when I was a senior in college, I actually, working in a, a, at a men’s magazine was what I wanted to do with my life. I was a Magazine Journalism major; that was the plan. I originally chose it because I wanted to be a rock journalist, and then I kind of went through different kinds of magazines I wanted to be at. So I loved women’s magazines, but I – [laughs] – truthfully, I gained a lot of weight in college, and women’s magazines kind of stopped being so fun for me to read.

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Dahlia: Like, I really disliked the way that they made me feel about myself. I mean, a lot of them were doing some really good work, but on the whole I, I didn’t – you know, there was, it was a double-edged sword reading them. And men’s magazines, even though it seems like they should kind of have that same effect, especially a magazine like Maxim, which is – if you’ve seen the women in Maxim! – but it just –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dahlia: – it didn’t have that same feel for me, and I was much more able to focus on the genuinely good news articles they had? Or just the fun things that they did? So for me, that was, by the time I was leaving college, what I really thought I wanted to do.

Sarah: Wow!

Dahlia: Maxim was, like, a top choice. I actually had a fantastic interview season that summer, ‘cause I was coming off an internship at Simon & Schuster that I think made me kind of desirable, and I had, like, five offers, and Maxim was the one I really wanted.

Sarah: Wow!

Dahlia: Yep.

Sarah: That’s brilliant!

Dahlia: Yeah. I took that over Harper; I took that over Hyperion; I took that over, I think, Harper’s Bazaar. I really wanted Maxim! [Laughs]

Sarah: What I find so funny is the idea of a fashion intern, ‘cause when I think of the women in Maxim, they’re not wearing a lot of clothes –

Dahlia: Yeah!

Sarah: – so the fashion is somewhat limited.

Dahlia: So it’s not for the women! It’s for the –

Sarah: No, it’s totally for the men, right?

Dahlia: Yeah! So it’s for the men, for their photo shoots and for the pages of their grooming products, and that’s what it is!

Sarah: That sounds like a really fun job!

Dahlia: It was, it was cool! Yeah! It was different. I got to go to some fashion shows, which was fun. Yeah.

Sarah: So you’ve held all of these different jobs both in fashion and editorial and in different parts of publishing –

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: – and one of the things that you said in this tweet thread that I thought was so interesting was that they’re all in publishing; the umbrella is publishing.

Dahlia: Yeah!

Sarah: But they’re all very, very different , and if you get into one and your dream is to be in another, that might not happen!

Dahlia: Yeah. There, you hit a point where it’s very hard to shift.

Sarah: Wow.

Dahlia: So early on in your career I think there’s a little more flexibility moving from department to department –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: – but what happened to me is I was in editorial at Simon & Schuster, that was my first full-time job out of college, and then I had told my husband when he was applying to law school, if you get into Penn but you don’t get into NYU – those were his top two choices – I’ll move to Philadelphia. And that’s what happened, so I moved to Philadelphia, and I kind of took for granted – you know, there isn’t a lot of trade publishing. If you couldn’t get a job at Running Press or Quirk, which neither was hiring at the time, you were not working in trade publishing in Philadelphia, so, but there’s a lot of scientific publishing there, so that’s what I ended up doing, and I thought, okay, but when I go back to New York, I’ll go back into trade publishing, and I couldn’t! I had three and a half years –

Sarah: Because you’d been out too long.

Dahlia: – of publishing under my belt, and they just looked at it as – and I, I hadn’t even been at Simon & Schuster a year before I had to move – so they just looked at it as, I’d been in publishing for four years, so I think they thought I wouldn’t stay at entry, at entry-level salary for long? Like, I wouldn’t be willing to? Someone told me that they asked why, you know, they referred my resume and asked why they didn’t call me, and they said, we can’t afford her. I put down, ‘cause they ask for your salary requirements, a thousand dollars more than I had made at Simon & Schuster –

Sarah: Oh man.

Dahlia: – and –

Sarah: Oh.

Dahlia: – and they said they couldn’t afford me. So, you know, it’s a problem to have four years on your resume but only one of them is trade, and I just, there was no moving them.

Sarah: So what led to your current collection of jobs? Actually, before I get to that, do you have any favorite stories of your job history in different places that, that you love to talk about? Because it’s, working in publishing is very behind-the-scenes, and people think it’s extremely glamorous?

Dahlia: It has its glamorous parts. I mean –

Sarah: It has its moments?

Dahlia: – working at Maxim, going to, to fashion shows was really fun. Simon & Schuster used to have these events, like, for, like, internal book signings? That was really fun? So I went to one with Marlee Matlin, and I went to one with Lance Bass. I was once in an elevator with Fergie, Duchess of York.

Sarah: Ohhh!

Dahlia: I just missed out on Joan Rivers. I mean, there are its glamorous parts. It’s mostly not. I mean, if you ask me for a story to tell, like, the person that comes to mind was my first boss at my very first internship, when I was still in high school, who, like, lied about me behind my back with her office door wide open. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh mercy! Yeah, I’ve met her. Or people like her.

Dahlia: Yeah! So that’s, that’s what I think of when I think of stories, but really, there has been some really fun stuff. And you know, parties during BEA are fun, and I just like meeting people and just going in and getting books. I mean, that feels glamorous still. The free books will never not feel glamorous.

Sarah: No, I completely agree with you there. It never, it is never not exciting to be like, oh my gosh! You sent me a book?!

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: Cool!

Dahlia: Yes!

Sarah: Even though this is, this is not even remotely close to the genre that I write about every day, I am still very excited –

Dahlia: Yes.

Sarah: – that you sent me this book.

Dahlia: Yes.

Sarah: So all of this different experience led you to where you are now, where you’re both working in academic publishing, writing your own fiction, and then talking a lot about different books and elevating both genres and marginalized voices and characters in all of the time that you have, in addition to breathing, sleeping, eating, raising people –

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: – being a spouse; you know, all that other stuff. Piece of cake!

Dahlia: Yeah, no problem.

Sarah: How, how did you begin writing? ‘Cause one of the things you said that I thought was so interesting was that if you’re in, if you’re in academic publishing, there’s more time for you to do other things.

Dahlia: Yeah! I think ultimately it ended up being absolutely the right choice for me, because I, my job is really nine to five, and when I come home I am not working anymore. I get to spend time with my toddler – he’s two – and then I am free if I want to write. [Laughs] I usually end up just writing on Sundays, because I also have a spouse I like to spend time with, but it does definitely give me more options than if I had to go home and read manuscripts, so that, for me, is a really big deal. I started writing, actually, as a little kid. I mean, I was writing Young Adult before I was a young adult –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: – but I was very shy about sharing my work, and I had never, ever thought that I would try to get published, as much as I loved reading books. And then when my husband was in law school, I was like, wow, we really don’t have money. [Laughs] Maybe it is time to suck it up and kind of try! So I did, and it didn’t – you know, the first thing I queried was actually, it was set in college, and nobody was buying that at the time, so it did not work out, but I had a good querying experience. You know, I got asked for a full on my first query, and then, can you send me summaries of the rest of the series? And it didn’t go anywhere, but it was very encouraging that I was at least somebody who would be taken seriously for trying to get published.

And then I worked for Penn, which, if you ever have the opportunity to work for a university, I cannot recommend it more highly. I got to take classes for free, and I ended up taking a Writing for Teens class –

Sarah: Ooh!

Dahlia: – taught by Melissa Jensen, who’s written a few books for Penguin, and it was a really great class, and I started a new book, and I really queried that one, and that didn’t end up getting an agent either, but I feel like the experience of being in that class combined with what I, the responses I got from querying really set me on the right path with my next book, and then the next book was my debut!

Sarah: Wow! Congratulations!

Dahlia: Thank you!

Sarah: I was – I mean, you can’t see me, ‘cause this is audio only, but I was nodding ferociously –

Dahlia: [Laughs]

Sarah: – at the idea of having a job with a start and a stop.

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: Because I’m self-employed, so I have no start and stop –

Dahlia: Right.

Sarah: – but we moved to DC so that my husband could take a job with the federal government, and when he’s not working, he’s not working.

Dahlia: Yeah. It’s a big deal.

Sarah: It’s very different, especially if you’re used to the work culture in New York City, where every available waking moment, you could be working.

Dahlia: Yes. Yeah.

Sarah: And being able to set those limits, or having a job that’s like, yeah, I’m done now; I can use my creative brain for other things, gives you the space to do things. Like, when we moved here, I kept telling my friends back from New Jersey, people here have hobbies?

Dahlia: [Laughs]

Sarah: They do things.

Dahlia: Yeah!

Sarah: Like, they ride bikes and stuff? Like, they ride bikes on purpose with, like, gear and these cool shoes that look like tap shoes with the back tap removed? I mean, people do things other than work here? It’s weird!

Dahlia: Yeah! I found that in Philly too! People were runners, or they were in a band, or whatever, and I was just like, everything I do is books.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: So I desperately tried to find hobbies that were not bookish, but I just – I, I used to cook more, and then my husband got really into cooking in law school, and then he started to doing it, and I’m, I’m lazy, so I was like, all right, you’re cooking, I’m not, and that was it! That was, like, the last of my non-bookish things, and now my whole life is family and books. Which is, you know, not a bad life. [Laughs] It’s not me complaining, but I, you know, I always think if you can have a hobby outside, you should have a hobby outside.

Sarah: Yes, I, I very much agree, and then I have this tendency of, oh, I really like this hobby, and I’ve discovered people who like this hobby too, and I can, like, I could build a community! Sarah, you have to stop doing that.

Dahlia: [Laughs] Yeah.

Sarah: You have some! You’re good! Stop! [Laughs]

Dahlia: Yes! I think your plate is pretty full.

Sarah: My plate is hella full –

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: – but! Having a start and a stop and having time for your own creative projects, even if you don’t turn them into an additional business, is, it, it’s very healthy for your brain, I think.

Dahlia: Yes, definitely. I mean, I’m, I’m really happy with how that worked out, and I like my day job, and I like the space it makes for other things, and I like being able to use my brain for all these different things, and I think I would not have been successful at doing the things I do now and then also being an editor in trade publishing, and especially not in YA publishing. I –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dahlia: – really admire the people who can be agents or editors and also write, but no part of me understands how they do it.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: I mean, I do not get it. [Laughs]

Sarah: So in addition to publishing, you also write, and you total, talked a little bit about the start of your writing career, and I have, I have many questions about what’s coming out for you this year, ‘cause you have so many cool things coming up, but tell me about –

Dahlia: Yes!

Sarah: – some of – so cool! – tell me about some of the books you’ve written, and how did you find your way into the stories that you wrote?

Dahlia: So my first book is called Behind the Scenes, and that’s a YA Hollywood romance, and that was actually, so when I say that it was born out of my querying experiences in part, one of the big things about it, the book I was querying had, the pacing was very off, and my final rejection that really hammered it home for me, which is a funny thing, it was from Victoria Marini, who is the agent on His Hideous Heart, my anthology coming out later this year, so –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: – it’s come full circle!

Sarah: There’s, like, nine total people in publishing, right?

Dahlia: Yeah! [Laughs] Basically.

Sarah: And it’s all, they’re, and they make it look like more people with mirrors, and then once or twice a year someone rings a bell, and they all stand up and switch houses. I’m convinced that’s how it works.

Dahlia: That’s pretty much it, as far as I can tell!

Sarah: Right?! [Laughs]

Dahlia: So she has made a huge difference in my publishing life, in addition to just being a wonderful person, but the way, however it was that she crafted her rejection – and I actually haven’t looked at it in years, ‘cause I can’t – but made it clear to me, like, no, the story actually needs to be reworked. This isn’t a matter of just finding the agent who loves it? Like, she made me feel like the story needed fixing and was fixable, but I needed to sit down with it, not keep sending it out. So once I understood that pacing was really flawed in that story, I wanted to write something where pacing was really good –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: – and that was a, I don’t – and at the time, I was actually very into blogging about TV. I was, I was very into Gawker? I was like a very prolific, overly prolific Gawker commenter.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: So overly prolific, by the way, when they closed, they did a post that listed their top ten commenters or something like that, and I was one of them.

Sarah: No way! [Laughs]

Dahlia: Oh, yeah, baby! I mean, there’s some embarrassing stuff on there, especially from, like, the very early days, but yeah, I was very prolific, and I was, I was very into TV, but in a deeper sense than just watching it; I would follow the Upfront news. I mean, basically, the way that I’m on top of publishing news now, I was into TV news then, but with no professional angle to it. I don’t, I actually don’t know why I was so interested in the behind-the-scenes stuff, but it was the combination of that being an interest and what I was already writing about, and wanting to write a story where pacing was really centered to the craft part? And then there’s one more aspect of the story that was taken from my personal life – just the main character’s father has cancer, and I, you know, that part was pulled, everything about that storyline pretty much was pulled from my own either, like, actual experiences or fears relating to that experience. So it was those three things came together and did that book. And I sold that book in a three-book deal, and Under the Lights –

Sarah: Wow!

Dahlia: – came out of what they – they asked, actually, you know, we want to do, we want one of these books to be a sequel to it, and they asked for it to be centered around Vanessa, who I felt I didn’t really know from the first book. I was going to do it around two of the boys, and I said, okay, I’ll try. And that – [laughs] – ended up being a whole experience with regard to, you know, Vanessa ended up being, she didn’t start as a lesbian character, but I could not figure out why I could not make her romance work, and then I, you know, was just telling me critique partner out of frustration, like, I wish I could just make her a lesbian. And it was like, oh my God. She is! I’m like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: – that’s the problem! That’s why she’s not clicking with this guy! She is! And then I went back and stripped out this whole terrible romance for her, out of the book, and I was like, how far back do I have to go? And I go back, and I’m like, oh my God, the only person she has chemistry with in this entire book is a waitress, and that waitress turned into the love interest. She wasn’t really a waitress – I mean, I turned her into not-really-a-waitress. But so that’s how that book came out, and that was a lesbian romance I never expected to write, which turned into me discovering I was bisexual, which I never expected to discover!

So kind of a process, but also got me very deeply into my interest in blogging about queer books and promoting and supporting and reading, and that was a really big deal! And then my third YA is called Just Visiting, and it’s about best friends who go on college visits, and it’s a lot about changing friendships and col-, how, you know, what college means to different people and what it means for changing relationships as you go forward. [Laughs] I don’t, I don’t want to, like, go into, like, deep details that aren’t interesting to people that are just interesting to me, but so I call it my best-friends-going-on-college-visits story. –

Sarah: Cool!

Dahlia: – so it’s best friends and road trips, but there’s a lot more to it. There’s a lot of things I hadn’t really seen in YA, like talking about, you know, college applications and waivers and testing fees and things when you are coming from a low-income household.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dahlia: Emergency contraception and things like that that I just hadn’t really seen? So there’s a lot of little things in it that, that mean a lot to me, and I really love that book. And then in New Adult, I have a romance trilogy, all set in college, the Radleigh University trilogy, and I feel like I’ve already talked enough about my books, but –

[Laughter]

Dahlia: I’m sorry that was so long. I did not mean to talk that much about them, but the, the New Adult trilogy, each one is helmed by a different girl in this trio of best friends, and the first one is a little tragic at its core, but it’s also a teacher-student romance that I think is really hot. The second one is a second-chance romance between this couple – they were a couple back at sports camp, and then it kind of fell apart, and now they’re finding each other again, and then the third one is another f/f romance, a pansexual lead and a lesbian girl who’s not out yet, and trying to figure out if they can make it work. So that’s that series, much, in much more shorter description than my YA series. [Laughs]

Sarah: I think that if you can speak in the trope or the hook or the conflict of the story, readers are increasingly fluent in the descriptive terminology that we use commonly to describe books, so if you say, I have a second-chance romance between two people who used to be a couple –

Zeb: Bark, bark, bark!

Sarah: – (a) you can hear my dog want to read it, and (b) a reader’s going to be like, oh, that’s my thing! What, where do I – we, we, we speak that language, so I think that sounds fascinating!

I’m absolutely floored and so incredibly happy at this idea that you wrote a lesbian character in Under the Lights and realized your own sexuality in the process.

Dahlia: Yeah, I wrote a whole blog post about, it was called “Becoming My Own Audience,” that, it was part of queer romance month, and I think all those posts are now gone, so I don’t actually have it anymore –

Sarah: Aw!

Dahlia: – but the response to it was actually really amazing: a lot of people talking about discovering their sexuality at a later age, which was really wonderful, and so that actually has affected a lot of what I’m writing now, as I’m writing two books at once about that.

Sarah: Yeah! I’ve, I’ve read a lot of accounts of people who didn’t necessarily know how to describe themselves until a word came to them. Like –

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: – for example, I would not have been able to understand five or six years ago what a cishet woman was. I, there was a period of time where I had to Google cis every time, ‘cause I couldn’t remember exactly what –

Dahlia: [Laughs]

Sarah: – how, like, how it meant? And now it’s like, oh, okay, I get it. Aro-, aromantic, asexual, and I see all of these posts from people on different communities online where, because there’s a word to describe the thing, people realize, oh my gosh, that fits me! That’s the word that describes what I am!

Dahlia: Yes.

Sarah: And the, the ability for all of these people to talk to each other, especially over books, which creates a very safe environment for which, in which for you to explore sexuality, which is one of the things I love about romance – creating a language with which you can then identify yourself is so very powerful!

Dahlia: Yes, very much, and I get to see this a lot. So this site I run, LGBTQ Reads, I have a Tumblr account for it where I let people ask for recommendations, and you see how incredibly powerful it is for people to be able to ask for books that, that really specifically help them find themselves, and I’ve learned new words just from people asking, any books with a, you know, say, quoiromantic main character? Like, I will try to figure that out! So there’s a lot of that, and it’s so – I mean, some of the messages I’ve gotten are really incredible. Just, you know, thank you; my life is easier, better, because –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dahlia: – you have shown me that, like, I exist by pointing me toward books that have that. I’m like, I was, you know, I’ll take some credit for it! I work really hard on that, but it’s the authors putting these books out there in the world, where they weren’t prevalent at all less than, you know, five, ten years ago, and they’re really taking chances putting that work out there, and it is making such a huge difference to people.

Sarah: So if anyone who will be listening is wondering what’s quoiromantic is, it is “quoi” as in the French “what?”

Dahlia: Yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: And I just went to a page about it, and now I’m like, I didn’t know that word; I didn’t know that word either; I didn’t know that word either! Wow, language is amazing!

Dahlia: Yeah! And you see words that have only really recently come into, I don’t know about the vernacular, but it’s a common conversation, and even about what you might be able to expect finding in books. I mean, the number of on-page demisexual main characters is something that has shot up wildly in the last –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dahlia: – two years, maybe. So –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dahlia: – for, you, you really now get to be at the forefront of this massive change, which is a really fun place to be, and a really kind of magical place to be.

Sarah: The thing that I love about characters – and also, you know, real human beings – who are fully themselves is that you always learn something from someone who is trying to be fluent in themselves all the time.

Dahlia: Yeah!

Sarah: I have such a clear memory, which is weird for me, of – [laughs] – of wanting to read your book –

Dahlia: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and, like, making a complete fool of myself.

Dahlia: So can I tell you something I never told you?

Sarah: Yeah, sure!

Dahlia: I have a very clear memory of sitting alone in a restaurant, waiting for somebody who was meeting me for lunch, and seeing those tweets and freaking out because I was such a fangirl?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: And people were messaging me like, oh my God, do you see what’s happening? I’m like, I know. I can’t say anything, but I know. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I think I actually still have your tweets saved on my phone, because I was so excited I took pictures.

Sarah: [Laughs more] I am – I mean, ARCs are weird, and ARC, it’s weird –

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: – when you’re a reviewer, because there’s some places where it’s like, I would like to read this book; it is a romance, and they’re like, well, obviously; here you go, and then sometimes I’m like, well, I think this is sort of related to something we talk about, and hey, thank you for considering. Like, I don’t ever want to feel entitled to anything, because every book that you get is like a, it’s like a gift. I made the biggest dork of myself to your publisher.

Dahlia: [Laughs]

Sarah: It was incredible. Like, please, let me read this book! I swear I’m a normal human! Please, please, please! Yeah, it was, it was embarrassing.

Dahlia: Well, so you know, it was not only appreciated; it was literary, literally a career highlight for me. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes! Oh, that’s so cool! That’s so cool!

Dahlia: And I still do it all the time. I get a ton of books, but occasionally I don’t get one, and I, because I take for granted how many I get, I really do not know how to, like, officially submit an ARC request, so I’m just like, hey, I don’t know –

Sarah: How ya doing?

Dahlia: – extras lying around –

[Laughter]

Dahlia: I’m like, I’ve got to be as low pressure as possible, really not sound entitled, and I mean, publicists are lovely! They want people who are specifically interested in a book, ‘cause you can’t target that for each and every book. You can barely target that for any books! I mean, I think publicists are so overworked as it is, so I think they actually really appreciate those requests from people who are passionately interested in the books enough to request, but I think it’s hard to feel that as a blogger.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely. I almost always, if I’m, if I’m emailing someone who, or somebody at a publisher who I don’t have an idea who, who are what publicist, publicity team is going to be reading the request, I’m always like, hey, I’m sure it’s, like, three in the morning, and you’re up in the middle of the night approving that galley request, ‘cause it’s the only time you have, like, a consistent half hour. I hope you have good snacks.

Dahlia: [Laughs]

Sarah: Hope whatever’s on TV is really good. Thank you for looking at all these. Here’s why I’d like to read it. You look fabulous this evening! Thank you very much in advance.

Dahlia: You make me want to be a publicist, just to get one of those emails from you.

Sarah: [Laughs] I get very silly, ‘cause I know from having spoken to publicists that, like, they will approve these things at, like, two, three in the morning, ‘cause that’s when they have time.

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: Super messed up.

Dahlia: Yeah. I know; I think people really do not realize how overworked they are, but they are worked hard.

Sarah: The amount of work that goes into the productions of the books that we read is really quite astonishing.

Dahlia: Yep.

Sarah: So speaking of work –

Dahlia: Yes.

Sarah: You do a lot of work outside your day job, outside of your author work – or in addition to your author work – recommending and elevating books in the New Adult and Young Adult universe, and you pay attention and do a lot of focused discussion on reframing the way LGBTQIA, YA, and marginalized characters are talked about, as well as talking about the books themselves. That’s a lot.

Dahlia: [Laughs] I feel like that gives me a lot, like, way too much credit, but –

Sarah: Nah, dude, that’s totally what you do!

Dahlia: [Laughs] But –

Sarah: And the work of reframing is something that I admire so much, because it’s really hard. It is really difficult to say, okay, I understand that we all see things this way. I am going to ask you to tilt that frame a quarter inch to the right, and now it looks different! See? Now everything you thought before? Wrong!

Dahlia: It’s –

Sarah: Sorry!

Dahlia: Look, I think the way that publishing kind of has to work as the volume of what’s expected output-wise from publishers, it, it kind of has to be standardized in order to work, and I see that from my own day job. They continue to standardize as something that’s supposed to sort of help us move things along, but it is so easy for things to fall through the cracks when that happens, because a lot of books require special attention, special treatment, figuring out who the audience is going to be, and you just can’t do that for everything, and I think – you know, I haven’t worked in trade publishing in a long time, but what it at least looks like on the outside is that the strategy pretty much everywhere is, let’s put our attention in the lead titles –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: – and I don’t know what they expect to happen with the midlist titles, honestly, but for me, what’s such a draw to those quieter titles and to the more diverse titles is, if you ask a lot of authors how they got into writing YA, a lot of the answers are Twilight or Harry Potter, but I wasn’t a fantasy reader. I, I, I enjoy it now, but I really wasn’t at the time that those books were big. I wasn’t into fantasy or paranormal or sci-fi, so I got pulled into Young Adult through, like, Courtney Summers and Nina LaCour and these beautiful, but to me wildly underappreciated – changing now, but I mean this was, let’s say, ten years ago – these contemporary authors who just blew my mind open with what Young Adult literature could do and really pulled me into it. So I have such an eye on what the titles people aren’t paying nearly enough attention to, what kind of magic they have, and I just want people to find them so badly. Like, the voices and the experiences they cover, and the number of people who could see themselves who don’t even know that they can, ‘cause they don’t know what’s in these books, you know, to me, that’s tragic about the way that publicity kind of has to work now, so I try to put a little crack in that and be a way that people can find the books that publishing, I guess, doesn’t prioritize as I think they should, so for me, that’s a really big deal, and I want people to be able to find the books that are going to mean the world to them, and however I can help people do that, I want to do that, and I’m so lucky I get to be able to do that and get really incredible feedback about having done that, and that really means a lot to me. It’s, I feel very lucky. [Laughs]

Sarah: What is your process for discovering books? What are your favorite places to talk about them and to look for more?

Dahlia: So I actually try to get started from the very beginning. I read, you know, I get the Publishers Marketplace emails and Publishers Lunch and the Publishers Weekly announcements, and I, from there, take note of what I want to be following from announcement to publication and beyond. I will take pictures of the announcements on my phone so I remember anywhere I can cover them. I put books up on LGBTQ Reads, like, the second I find out their titles. So I am, I am really trying to find books from minute one and just keep following them so I can promote them as more things come up, as they have Goodreads links, as they have title changes. I just want to be there for the whole thing. So those are actually my favorite discovery points right there, and then you can find a lot in, it’s become much more in fashion for at least YA publishing to, less individual cover reveals and more, a publisher will do, like, their whole season at once, and I often find a lot of titles that way?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: And then there are a few bloggers who just are phenomenal for finding a greater variety of titles than most, so Sil is at Book Voyagers, but now she’s been writing for Book Riot and for Frolic?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: It’s just phenomenal, especially at finding romance authors of color, and then Women of Color in Romance by Rebekah We-, which is run by Rebekah Weatherspoon, who’s also one of my favorite romance authors. Obviously, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books!

Sarah: Ah, bless you.

[Laughter]

Dahlia: In YA, there’s Jan at Pop Goes The Reader, and these people really also make the effort to uncover books that are not necessarily what the publisher shoves out there as, like, here are the three titles that are worth your attention this season! So other blogs are definitely really helpful with that, and I do a lot of Goodreads browsing.

Sarah: Is that, like, the thing that’s on your laptop when you’re watching television at the end of the night, like –

Dahlia: Pretty much! I mean.

Sarah: – browsing all the Goodreads.

Dahlia: But it’s, it’s things that are really accessible to other people too. I mean, a Publishers Marketplace subscription does cost money, but everything else is, you know, pretty accessible to other people too, so I, I really love following as much as I can, but it’s, it’s more accessible, I think, than people think to have that information, and then, you know, just stay alert in the community and, and see, you know, both in romance and in YA, what people are putting out there, and get excited about stuff and promote! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! It is very, very difficult I find sometimes, with the, the sheer number of books that are published every hour.

Dahlia: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It is incredible to me how only in a few years, how much more there is to look at.

Dahlia: I mean, when I was at Simon & Schuster was 2007, 2008, and just kind of as I was leaving, they were starting to use e-readers?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: So manuscripts were still coming in combination of in hardcopy, like printed pages, and via email, which I would then have to print out for my boss. So I think then it was a much more manageable number, and once you had digital books –

Sarah: Whoosh!

Dahlia: – sky was, yeah, sky was the limit! So it’s really an intense change, and you asked me about my favorite places to talk about books, and I really love, I mean, I’ve been writing for Barnes & Noble Teen Blog now for more than five years, and I really love –

Sarah: Has it been that long? Five years now?

Dahlia: Yeah. November 2013 was my first post. It’s really been a long time, but they’ve been wonderful, and they’re very into promoting diverse books and midlist titles. They let me do posts – you know, people, I think, hear the name, and they think, so corporate! But they let me do posts that are just, like, best indie books of the next six months. I mean, we’re doing the kinds of things I really don’t see anywhere else, and I get that it looks like a corporate framing, but, like, all your book has to be is on bn.com and I can cover it, and that’s pretty much any book that’s not Amazon only, so for me it’s been really, really freeing. I get to write about so many different kinds of books, and I prefer that to doing book reviews, because I get to discuss more books at once, and I get to target people by what themes, you target readers by what themes they’re interested in or things like that, which to me is a really fun way to go about it. I like re-, you know – this is something I think romance bloggers who really know what they’re doing really know how to do this, and it’s, you know, what you were saying, people know by trope, but it’s not that as much in YA, and it’s something that I think I am able to bring to YA, having some romance background too –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dahlia: – is, is understanding how successful framing things that way can be.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Dahlia: And I think, I think in general people are seeing it more. I mean, I think, and I’ve had this discussion a lot, that romance people are just, like, the brilliance level is kind of off the charts. I mean, especially as business people, it’s wild what romance authors know how to do, for themselves, for their books, for their blogs. I mean, it’s really incredible, and I think every genre has a lot to learn from it, so whatever, you know, and I, I think we’re starting to apply more of that within YA too, which is really fun for me to see. I really love, you know, seeing that overlap and seeing tropes take on more and people take on self-publishing a little more and things that I think, really, you can trace back to romance in its origins.

Sarah: That is, that is definitely the case, I think, for a lot of the ways in which word gets out about books. I always get so amused when I hear especially male bestselling authors talk about how, you know, you don’t have to be on social media, you don’t have to do all these things, and I’m like, listen, dude, if there’s no marketing budget for your book or you’re doing this on your own, yeah, yeah, you do.

Dahlia: You do.

Sarah: You talk directly to readers.

Dahlia: Yeah. I mean, I, I ascribe pretty much everything I have to being on social media. Like, I was published really small, but I have a really loud voice on Twitter, so my books, you know, may sell a few copies a week, but it’s been five years, and they’re still selling a few copies a week, so what would that be without social media? I got my Barnes & Noble job because I was already blogging on my own blog. I, you know, I just, social media is amazing. What it’s given rise to; what it’s given, who it’s given voice to; what books it allows comparable attention to bigger books, even without a marketing budget, is amazing.

Sarah: I mean, fine, you have your own Wikipedia page.

Dahlia: [Laughs] That is because there’s a fabulous blogger named Jen who lives in Germany and is really dedicated to uplifting the voices, particularly of women of color, and they’ve been making Wikipedia pages for any women of color authors that they can, and they messaged me and said, so many of the authors I’m writing pages for are in your anthology His Hideous Heart, so I keep mentioning it, so I’m just going to see if they let me get by with making a page for you too. And it worked! I think Out on Good Behavior was a finalist for two bisexual book awards, and I think that’s what squeaked me in.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s amazing!

Dahlia: Yeah. I keep waiting for that page to be taken down. [Laughs] Just like a complete lack of interest, totally non-notable figure, but –

Sarah: Nah, dude, you totally have earned your Wikipedia space. That’s fricking cool.

Dahlia: Thank you!

Sarah: I want to ask you about your books. Do you want to talk about His Hideous Heart or It’s a Whole Spiel? Which one would you like to tell me –

Dahlia: I want to talk about both! [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay! All right, so let’s start, let’s do this chronologically. The first one is It’s a Whole Spiel, right?

Dahlia: It’s actually not! His Hideous Heart –

Sarah: What?

Dahlia: – got moved from a week later to a week earlier, so now –

Sarah: Okay –

Dahlia: – His Hideous Heart is –

Sarah: – we’ll –

Dahlia: – September 10th.

Sarah: Okay. So I am bad at time and knowing what day it is. I actually asked my husband in complete seriousness this morning, it’s 2019, right?

Dahlia: [Laughs]

Sarah: ‘Cause I don’t –

Dahlia: This is actually a recent change. This is not you. As of the cover reveal –

Sarah: Okay!

Dahlia: – it was still the 24th.

Sarah: Okay, good, ‘cause I was like –

Dahlia: This came after the cover reveal.

Sarah: All right, so you have edited His Hideous Heart, and the promotion that you’ve been doing on your Instagram is fantastic. Please tell me all the things about this anthology; it sounds incredible!

Dahlia: Yeah, so this anthology, it’s called His Hideous Heart, and it is retellings of Edgar Allan Poe stories done YA, and I’m obsessed with this lineup. It actually, the idea for it came about, I asked on Twitter, if you could match up any author to retell any story, what would you choose? And this woman named Jacqueline who’s a teacher said, I would love an Edgar Allan Poe anthology with – and she named three authors, and I was like, hmm! I don’t really see all those authors for this necessarily, but I would kill to do this with, like, Stephanie Kuehn and Tiffany Jackson, and Stephanie Kuehn and Tiffany Jackson, who are both incredible thriller authors were like, I would do that! I would do that! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, right? Totally!

Dahlia: And then, you know, I think Tessa Gratton and Hillary Monahan tweeted me like, I would be into this! I would want to do that! And I was like, oh my God! Okay, hold on! [Laughs] So I’m, like, writing down names of all these amazing authors who are into it, and then I was like, I have to stop taking authors just from Twitter, because I have others that I really want to reach out to. Like, I’m a huge Caleb Roehrig fan; I’m a huge Lamar Giles fan; Rin Chupeco. I was like, I just, I’ve got to get to these before I fill it –

Sarah: Right.

Dahlia: And I went frantic emailing, submitted a proposal, and now there is this amazing anthology coming out, and I am so in love with it. It is really almost all my favorite names in thrillers and horror, and they just do this incredible job retelling the stories in – what I love about it is, like, in this, these very different gazes from the original Poe stories, so it’s actually, they’re, the stories are generally very true to the original, without being total retreads, but not one – with no direction from me – not one person wrote a white male main character, even though that’s pretty much all of Poe’s main characters? So –

Sarah: Wow!

Dahlia: – so it came out that the stories all have really different, interesting gazes, and you keep the themes of the original, but see how they’re changed by the main characters being more marginalized ones in society and what a difference it makes, and I just think it came out phenomenal and brilliant in a way I can’t even take credit for; it was just how everybody did theirs. And it’s very cool also because it’s a mashup of different genres: there’s historical and sci-fi – both sci-fi stories are hacking stories, so even though I’m not a big sci-fi person, like, those really work for me.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: And fantasy, and it ended up with six people writing queer female main characters – [laughs] – which was also just a surprise that is delightful, so it’s actually a very queer anthology too. It just came out so great, and I’m so excited about it, and on Instagram I’ve been revealing every week, one story at a time, a quote and who is retelling what and the title of the story, and that’s been really exciting to me as people get excited for story by story, because I think the lineup is really what makes it, and I know it makes it for readers too, and I, I love seeing the response to that. I mean, that was my favorite thing to put together. So I’m, I’m so excited at how excited people are for it, and it’s going to have the original Poe stories in it too, so it’s kind of a perfect classroom book too, if you want to compare/contrast.

Sarah: Oh brilliant!

Dahlia: Yeah. That was my editor Sarah Barley’s idea, and it’s, it’s really brilliant. You know, it’s less to carry around, and it’s less expensive for students if they want to do that, and it’s, a lot of teachers do Poe units, so –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dahlia: – this – I’m so excited about the potential of it being in classrooms and, like, kids who never got to see themselves in this particular author’s body of work kind of getting to see themselves and also reading the original work side by side. It’s just, ah, it’s, it excites me so much.

Sarah: I love that your review on Goodreads includes some things that might be potentially upsetting or triggering for readers and that you lay out all of these, you, you label all of these ideas. Like, there’s ableism; there’s a suicide; there’s homophobia. What do you think will be the experience of readers encountering these stories, the original and the new ones?

Dahlia: You know, I think there’s a lot of readers who don’t necess-, who encounter something like that, and they’re just automatically, it just feels like a slap in the face, and so I really wanted to provide content warnings, in part just for people who need them and so they know what stories they can skip, but I also –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dahlia: – I want people to realize that they are intentionally in there. I mean, they’re in, these things are all in classic literature, and you know, sort of the points of the way that this collection came out is, it’s people who’ve experienced these things sort of turning them on their heads and putting marginalized characters in control. I mean, like, I didn’t list murder, because there’s so many murders – [laughs] – and –

Sarah: Well, I mean, it’s Poe!

Dahlia: – but it’s a lot of characters taking revenge for, you know, or taking action, but just having their own agency against these things, so they’re not, it’s not, like, checked on the page in the way that we kind of talk about hoping things are in contemp-, in, I guess in all genres of literature. You know, we say we want racism checked on the page, we want – but, like, that’s not, that’s not this book, because that was not Poe’s work.

Sarah: Mm-hmmm.

Dahlia: But this is author, you know, this is those characters getting to fight back against those things in their own way, and I hope that it’s, I hope that it’s taken that way and not as authors, you know, carelessly inserting these things and imparting the message that they’re okay. Like, I, I hope it’s obvious it’s not that, but you know, I just always think of, I’ve seen reaction to, there’s this great YA retelling of Macbeth by Robin Talley called As I Descended, and I’ve seen reaction to it be like, oh, this is tragic, this is Bury Your Gays, all the gay kids – I’m like, no, it’s because the whole story’s gay! All the characters are gay, and it’s Macbeth, and that’s why people die! Like, it’s, you know, it’s giving people a voice in classic literature that they never had; it’s not killing off your gays. Like, I, I hope people get that difference, and I know some readers will and some won’t, and that’s, you know, what it is, but I want people to be prepared for what’s in there, but I hope that they read it through the lens that’s intended.

Sarah: And there’s also the, the, the empowerment of the experience of owning horror that happens to you.

Dahlia: Yes! Yes, and there’s a lot of –

Sarah: And then being in control – exactly! – being in control of the portrayal of the horror that you are crafting that happens to you.

Dahlia: Yes. So there’s a tremendous amount of that, and I, I think it’s really done fantastically well, and I really hope readers feel that way too.

Sarah: And your, your timing, given the recent increase in fascination with horror and thrillers across all media right now, I mean, your timing could not be more ideal.

Dahlia: Yeah. [Laughs] I’m not going to pretend I’m sorry about that. That –

Sarah: Nope! Right.

Dahlia: – worked out really, really nicely. I’m so glad thrillers have become huge.

Sarah: So you’re also in an anthology coming out, which I love the title –

Dahlia: [Laughs] It’s great!

Sarah: – so much! It’s a Whole Spiel – especially ‘cause it’s per- – Chag Sameach, by the way.

Dahlia: Chag Sameach!

Sarah: It’s a Whole Spiel: tell me all the things.

Dahlia: So It’s a Whole Spiel is this really great, all Jewish authors, all Jewish stories anthology edited by Katherine Locke and Laura Silverman, and I get to have a story in it, which I feel very lucky for, but it’s a really, such a range of Jewish experiences, and also how much Judaism plays a role in each story really varies from story to story, and I think that that’s going to be really fantastic for it being an anthology that works for a whole bunch of different readers. I think people are really going to love that. So for me, I’m Modern Orthodox, so so’s my girl, and, you know, I got to find another story that was like that, that felt exactly like high school to me, and then there’s other stories where I’m like, that’s not my experience of it at all, but it is definitely so many other people’s, and that’s, it’s really amazing to have them all lumped together. It feels very communal in that way, in such a great way.

Sarah: I love the cover, I love the collection of authors, and I just love how everyone who has talked about it who’s in it is so excited about it.

Dahlia: Yeah! It’s a really unusual experience to get to do. I mean, I wrote my first Jewish fiction for The Radical Element anthology, edited by Jessica Spotswood, and it was an amazing experience. I wrote a, a story set in Savannah in 1838 with an Orthodox Jewish girl who’s thirsting for an education that they didn’t give to girls at the time, and it was a really great experience, but it’s, you know, that’s still writing historical, for me, and a ton of research, and in this book, I just got to write myself and the language –

Sarah: Yep.

Dahlia: – that I use and the experiences I had. I mean, this is the most self-insert story anybody could ever write, and I really hope other people see themselves in it, or I really hope they don’t; I don’t know. [Laughs] It’s a, it’s a very in-my-head story of just the Jewish-driven social anxiety I had at college orientation, based on moving from a more insular world to one in which I was really kind of encountering non-Jews for the first time. I don’t mean that literally, but in my social circle I hadn’t really, ‘cause I’d gone to Jewish schools and Jewish summer camp, and this was, you know, to me, entering the real world for the first time is what it felt like, and I thought it would be really exciting, and then I actually felt wholly unprepared for it, and that’s really what my story is about and kind of the shift from one to the other, and what you retain and what you have to let go, and how that’s not so easy. I also absolutely love the cover, and I love that they just, like, took a little piece of each of our stories and put them on the cover and really captured them in the characters? And a very cool thing if you haven’t seen the inside of the book is that those characters are actually the headers for our stories on the pages.

Sarah: Oh, how adorable!

Dahlia: It’s amazing! It’s fantastic. It’s really, I mean, there’s so much care in that book, and there’s so much love, and you can feel people unburdening themselves on the pages. It’s, I think it was a really special experience for a lot of authors to get to write what we thought nobody would ever be interested in.

Sarah: So what is your story called in that, in that book?

Dahlia: [Laughs] “Two Truths and an Oy.”

Sarah: [Laughs] Love it!

Dahlia: They, they play Two Truths and a Lie in the book, and it’s a game I’ve always been kind of like uncomfortable with and felt bad at, and for her, in the story, it’s, you know, they play, and she realizes all her answers are, like, Jewish-centric, because she’s used to playing this in a community at shabbatons, you know, like, Sabbath gatherings, or summer camp. You know, they’re icebreakers there –

Sarah: Yep!

Dahlia: – and she is not talking to her usual audience –

Sarah: Yep!

Dahlia: – and so it’s a big trip-up moment for her.

Sarah: So you’re working on a project that is set in Iceland, and you are reading all about the food. Now, I love this because I did a little bit of research about the Jewish community of Iceland, because I wanted the character in my novella to have been out of the country and coming back. Please tell me what you are learning about, and what have you discovered about Iceland and cuisine? Tell me all the things.

Dahlia: So for me, researching cuisine is always kind of a next-level, seventeen-thousand-tabs-open-on-my-computer experience because I keep kosher, and I always have, so whether I’m writ-, I’m writing two books, you know, I’m writing that book and I’m writing one set, partly set in North Carolina and writing about seafood boils, and I have to do just as much research for both, because I’ve never had shellfish, and I’ve never had reindeer. So, but I bought a cookbook in Iceland, and I am just, you know, oh my God! The elk and the reindeer and the things that they do with dried fish! It’s very cool, and I have to think a lot about how adventurous I want to imagine my characters to be, what they would eat and what they would drink, and I haven’t written this part yet because I’ve kind of shifted over to prioritizing a different manuscript, but you can do like a restaurant crawl? What I have, the book set in Iceland, they’re at a bachelorette party, and I was like, oh my God, this is a thing. I need to set this aside and pay it a lot more attention, but they are definitely going on a restaurant crawl one night, and I want them to eat –

Sarah: Oh cool!

Dahlia: – everything! Just everything! [Laughs] It’s a really amazing-sounding experience, but it’s excellent.

Sarah: Oh, that’s so cool!

Dahlia: I mean, we brought all our own food. Like, we just did not count on being able to eat anything. They did have cereal and fruit and vegetables that we could get in the supermarket – it was a really nice supermarket –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Dahlia: – but everything else, like, you know, if you keep kosher you’re just like, I, I, if I can’t read the ingredients, I don’t know what’s in it, I’m just not going to, not going to touch that. But I mean, things like reindeer, elk, you know, would have to be butchered in a certain way to make it kosher, so there was no –

Sarah: I was going to say, the, the animal itself is, is, is good to go –

Dahlia: Yeah.

Sarah: – according to the laws, but you’ve got to kill it the right way.

Dahlia: Right. How it’s butchered makes a difference, so I couldn’t try any of these things, so I just, what I love about reading cookbooks is you get to see all the things that go into it and really how it would be prepared, and even what –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dahlia: – you know, what size pieces these things would be, and, and it’s, it’s, I don’t know if it’s a kind of food I would have eaten if I could have, but I like to think I would have been adventurous enough to try.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: It’s very cool. It’s very meat and fish, which is very me. I’m not a big dairy person. I, I have to admit, I didn’t love the Icelandic yogurt. I bought the brand that they have here that, that is kosher.

Sarah: Now, I didn’t add this to the list of questions I sent to you because I discovered this later. I did not realize that one of your origin points for writing and interacting online was Sweet Valley High.

Dahlia: Oh yes. Yeah! My sister is six years older, my brother is nine years older, so a lot of the media that I’m really into is just stuff that was already in the house.

Sarah: Yep.

Dahlia: So, you know, the music I listened to was a little before my time because it’s what they were watching on MTV, and the books are, my sister had Sweet Valley Highs lying around, and I was a very early reader, so I read –

Sarah: Yep.

Dahlia: – my first Sweet Valley High at, like, five, understood nothing. I mean –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dahlia: – the cover of I think number three, Playing with Fire, the tagline is “Can Jessica play Bruce Patman’s game and win?” And I asked my sister, what game are they playing? And she goes, Monopoly. I was like, oh, did she win? And my sister said, no, and I was like, I cannot believe you just spoiled this very exciting plot point of Jessica losing Monopoly to Bruce Patman.

[Laughter]

Dahlia: So I was, like, just because you can read something doesn’t mean you should read something.

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Dahlia: But, but yeah, I mean, those were a huge gateway, because I, I – don’t get me – I loved growing up Orthodox Jewish; this is not a, like, I felt so restricted, but it is restrictive in its ways, and I just, these girls could do all these things I, and were doing all these things I wasn’t doing, you know, from eating cheeseburgers to wearing bikinis and whatever, and I realized writing was a way to kind of be like them and get to do the things that they got to do, and so I got into writing, and I wrote complete rip-offs of Sweet Valley High meets Baby-Sitters Club, and that’s how I initially got into it, and it wasn’t until, and then in high school I think I started writing more original things that were definitely still inspired, still set in California, even though I didn’t go there till, I went once when I was fourteen. [Laughs] But still, I felt like I really knew Southern California.

Sarah: This, this fantastical version of, of, of Southern California.

Dahlia: Yes. Where Sweet Valley is two hours from LA, but nobody mentions San Diego. Like –

Sarah: No! Why would you do that?

Dahlia: No.

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

Dahlia: Oh! My favorite question, even though I’m always paranoid I’m going to forget five hundred titles, as is everyone who’s asked this question.

Sarah: Yep.

Dahlia: I am reading – so as I mentioned, as you mentioned, I have a Poe anthology coming out later this year, but it happens to be a big year for Poe in YA, because Cat Winters, who’s like this phenomenal historical YA fiction author, has a fictionalization of Edgar Allan Poe’s teen years out April 16th called The Raven’s Tale, and I’m reading that now, and it’s so cool. I mean, it is so well researched, and it kind of alternates between Poe and his muse, Lenore, and it’s really, it’s just, like, off the wall and brilliant and great and written like a Poe story? It’s really cool. So if you’re excited for His Hideous Heart, I tell everyone, like, while you’re waiting for it, read The Raven’s Tale.

I’m not reading as much adult romance as I want to, but the last one I read was Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole, which, I mean – [laughs] – she’s, she, nobody needs me to tell them how excellent she is if they’re reading romance regularly. But that was really fun because I’m always on the lookout for more f/f romance that I love, and that was definitely high up there for me. That and Casting Lacey by Elle Spencer, which I read last year, are two, two new favorites.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this interview. I want to thank Dahlia Adler for hanging out with me and for answering my silly email asking if she would come and talk to me about all of the things. If you would like to find her online, she is in many, many places. You can find her on her website at dahliaadler.com. You can find her on Twitter at Miss Dahl – D-A-H-L – E Lama [@MissDahlELama], and I will have links to her websites, including her archive at Barnes & Noble’s Teen Blog, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And of course you can get in touch with us at [email protected], or you can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. Call, leave a message, tell me a bad joke; you know how much those make me happy. [Laughs]

This week’s podcast is brought to you by Radish. You can discover a world where storytelling is reimagined with Radish, an app with thousands of romance stories from bestselling authors like Lisa Renee Jones, Kelley Armstrong, Julie Kenner, and Sylvia Day in bite-size chapters, perfect to read on your morning commute, lunch break, or before bed. Enjoy epic romances full of everything from billionaire bosses and tattooed bad boys to sexy vampires and paranormal shifters. You can join live chat rooms and interact with authors and fellow readers who love the same stories you do. And you can explore a fresh collection of original stories written by some of daytime TV’s top Emmy-winning writers, bingeable and fast-paced stories that you won’t find anywhere else. You can to dive into Gita’s outrageous dating life as she joins a shifter-only dating app. Or maybe you’re more interested in romantic fantasies like Heart of Dragons, where a woman is ripped away from her dashing fiancé to be sacrificed to the dragons that live beneath the earth, only to find herself falling in love with a powerful dragon prince. Radish has it all. You can download the app in the Google Play store or the Apple store for free today and begin your adventure on Radish.

This week’s transcript is brought to you by the Patreon community. If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge, you are helping make show – make show, make show, you’re helping make show; yep, mm-hmm – you’re helping make the show more accessible to everyone, and you’re sending a message that what we do is worth some support, so thank you for that!

You can have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. If you would like to join our community, it would be most nifty if you did. We are about to pick our second quarter book club selection. Do you select your pick, or do you pick your selection? Either way, we’re going to identify what book we’re reading second quarter, and the Patreon community is the one that makes suggestions, so I am very curious to see what is in the suggestion box this quarter. Patreon.com/SmartBitches is where you can find all of the info.

If you would like to see us record a podcast live, I promise it’s very silly and very enjoyable. Elyse, Amanda, and I will be recording a live show Thursday, May 16th at Book Lovers Con in New Orleans in Imperial 5C. Every time I say that, I picture, like, Imperial soldiers, and I hear the march, which of course I can’t play, but still, you can join me in my weird brain for a moment. The live taping is free for attendees of Book Lovers Con, but we are asking folks to register, just so we know how many chairs to have, and you can find a link to register in the show notes. I hope that we will see you there.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is Caravan Palace, and this track is called “Cotton Heads.” I really like this one; this is one of my favorites. I’ve used it a couple of times. You can find this track on their two-album set, Panic and Caravan Palace, and you can find that two-album set on iTunes or Amazon or wherever you buy your funky music, and you can find Caravan Palace at caravanpalace.com.

Coming up on Smart Bitches this week, we have a special Covers & Cocktails celebrating In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston and sponsored by Kensington Books. This weekend – woohoo! – it is time for Word on the Street, where we talk about books we’ve heard good things about and tell you all about them. We also have a really powerful guest post from Cleo, who shares her square for the monument quilt, which will be on display in DC at the end of May. We also have reviews of new books, daily posts with Books on Sale, and Help a Bitch Out, so I hope you will stop by and hang out with us.

I will have links to all of the books that Dahlia mentioned, plus links to the different locations online that we referenced, and a link to quoiromantic, which was a new word for me, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And now it is time for a terrible joke. Tonight is the first night of Passover if you are listening to this on the 19th of April. Chag Sameach to everyone who is celebrating, so of course I have Passover dad jokes. Are you ready? It’s really bad. Okay.

What kind of cheese do you eat on Passover?

What kind of cheese do you eat on Passover?

Matzo-rella.

[Laughs] Matzo-rella!

Now, I also have a second joke that is a little bit of a deeper cut, so to all my fellow Passover-celebrating friends here:

Why do we use a Haggadah at Passover?

So we can Seder right words!

[Laughs] Matzo-rella! Seder right words! I sent a whole bunch of these to my husband, and he was like, oh my God, stop; these are terrible. It was so great. So those are the two winners; I hope that you enjoyed them. Chag Sameach, Happy Passover, enjoy all the matzo.

I will be back next week with another episode, and this is the episode that I recorded at East City Books with Sally Thorne, Mia Sosa, and Tracey Livesay. I am really looking forward to it, and I hope you will be here next week, but until then, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and, there’s something else I was going to say here? Like, the cat just jumped up on the table, and now I’m just looking at the cat. Wilbur would like me to tell you, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you here next week.

[good dancing music]