Today I’m chatting with Trisha Brown and Jess Pryde from BookRiot’s When in Romance podcast. We’re going Full Meta over here: we discuss podcasting on a podcast, including different show formats, choosing topics, and how their show comes together for each episode. We talk about covering news and online conversations in romance, and about recommending books (or not) to a broad audience whose tastes you don’t always know. There’s always something to talk about in romance.
CW/TW – We also discuss the tricky parts of recommending older romances to a broader audience, and how nostalgia influences our memories of books. In that section, we do talk about the prevalence of rape in some classic historicals.
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You can find When in Romance wherever you get your podcasts, and at BookRiot.com.
You can find Trisha Brown on BookRiot, on Instagram @TrishaHayleyBrown, or on Twitter @TrishaHayleyBrwn.
You can find Jess Pryde on BookRiot, on Twitter @JessIsReading, and on her website, JessicaPryde.com.
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This Episode's Music
Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater.
This is “Fishing at Orbost,” by the Peatbog Fairies, from their album Dust.
You can find all things Peatbog at their website, or iTunes.
Podcast Sponsor
This week’s episode is brought to you by Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe.
After her fiancée left her at the altar, romance author and bookstore owner Maddie Hanson swore off men…until an influential blogger going by the name of Silver Fox leaves a scathing review of her latest book and accuses Maddie of not knowing anything about passion. Desperate to prove him wrong, Maddie decides to pursue not one but three handsome men in her store’s book club.
There’s the failed rock musician, the college professor, and her childhood friend whom she blames for single handedly wrecking her wedding. Even Silver Fox is getting in on the action, sending Maddie alarmingly—and intoxicatingly—flirtatious emails. And that’s not all. Her ex wants her back.
Now Maddie is about to discover that like any good story, life has twists and turns, and love can happen when you least expect it—with the person you least expect…
Mary Ann Marlowe puts a modern spin on beloved classics like The Shop Around the Corner and You’ve Got Mail with a sparkling tale of romantic fiction full of flirty fun and rom-com action for fans of Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date and Sally Thone’s The Hating Game.
Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe is on sale wherever books are sold. For more information visit Kensington Books.com.
Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Well hello there, and happy Friday! Welcome to episode number 359 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell. I’m from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are Trisha Brown and Jess Pryde from Book Riot’s When in Romance podcast. We’re going to go full meta over here, so strap in. We are talking about podcasting on a podcast, and we talk about different show formats, choosing topics, and how their show comes together. We also talk about how they decide to cover different topics and what happens when you try to recommend a book to a broad audience whose tastes you don’t always know on an individual level.
Now, in terms of content and trigger warnings, I want to mention that when we talk about older romances in a broader sense, we talk specifically about the prevalence of rape in classic historicals, so if that is a topic that might upset you, you want to skip ahead when we start talking about making recommendations.
Do you have questions or ideas or suggestions? Do you want to suggest a podcaster that I should talk to? You should email me at [email protected], or you can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272, or you could just tell me a really bad joke, because, as you know if you listen to the end of the episode, I like really bad ones – and I have a spectacularly bad one today too. [Laughs]
This podcast episode is brought to you by Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe. After her fiancé left her at the altar, romance author and bookstore owner Maddie Hanson swore off men, until an influential blogger going by the name of Silver Fox leaves a scathing review of her latest book and accuses Maddie of not knowing anything about passion. Desperate to prove him wrong, Maddie decides to pursue not one but three handsome men in her store’s book club. Mary Ann Marlowe puts a modern spin on beloved classics like The Shop Around the Corner and You’ve Got Mail with a sparkling tale of romantic fiction full of flirty fun and rom-com action, perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date and Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game. Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe is on sale wherever books are sold, and for more information you can visit kensingtonbooks.com.
Every episode of this here podcast gets a transcript which is hand-compiled by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter! [My pleasure! – gk] This week’s transcript is being brought to you by the wonderful people in our Patreon community. If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge of any amount, thank you. You are helping me continue the show each week, and you’re making sure that every episode is accessible to everyone, which is very important to me and to the people who read and listen at the same time, or one or the other or, you know, both. Depends on how you feel.
Either way, if you would like to join the Patreon community, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar a month, and when you make a pledge, you are saying that this show and the effort behind it mean something to you, and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful.
I also have a compliment. This complement is for Tess M.:
Tess, you can have a meal with anyone on the planet, and it is going to be a great time. You are flawless as a dining companion, and everyone in the restaurant when you go out kind of wants to sit at your table.
At the end of the episode, I will be telling you about the music that you are listening to, and of course I will have links to all of the books and – lots of books; gosh, there are so many books – and movies and episodes that I talk about in this episode with Trisha and Jess. I will have an absolutely, screamingly terrible joke that I’m really enjoying, and it is, in my world, high bad joke season, because my kids are at camp, and when I send them mail I put bad jokes in there, so you know that I’m sending these jokes to teenage and adolescent boys. They’re going to be truly, truly terrible, so I hope you stick around to the end of the episode to enjoy this one. I have a full set; I’m really excited. It is bad joke season in my house!
But now, let’s get on with the episode with Trisha Brown and Jess Pryde from Book Riot’s When in Romance.
[music]
Jess Pryde: I am Jess Pryde, or Jessica if you really want to call me that; I respond to either one. I am a contributing editor for Book Riot. I write their Kissing Books newsletter, which goes out twice a week – you should subscribe – and also, why I’m here, I am a co-host of the When in Romance podcast with Trisha.
Sarah: Yay!
Trisha Brown: And I am Trisha, and you can call me Patricia, but I probably won’t respond, because nobody calls me that and I won’t know who you’re talking to.
[Laughter]
Trisha: So I’m Trisha Brown; I’m the other host, as Jess mentioned, of When in Romance, Book Riot’s romance podcast, and I – Jess, you’ve been writing for Book Riot for longer than I have, but I’ve, I’ve been doing it for three or four years now.
Jess: Yeah, I, I don’t, I think I’m, I think I’m on year five. Wow! That –
Sarah: Whoa, really?
Jess: Yeah!
Sarah: Isn’t it weird how time just does, does this thing where you look back and go, wait, what?
Trisha: [Laughs] Yeah, it’s very true!
Jess: Time just does this thing where it continues to pass. It’s a thing!
Jess: How dare it! [Laughs]
Sarah: Right? And then it speeds up when you don’t want it to, and it slows down when, when you wish it would just hurry the heck up.
Jess: Yeah, it really does.
Trisha: Very true story.
Sarah: So, so tell people who may not be aware, although I’m not sure why, about your podcast.
Trisha: Yeah, so When in Romance is one of Book Riot’s genre podcasts. There’s a –
Sarah: Woohoo!
Trisha: – mystery and suspense podcast called Read or Dead; there’s SFF Yeah!, which is a science fiction/fantasy podcast. And the thing that I think most of the Book Riot genre podcasts have in common is that, unlike a lot of book podcasts, we don’t generally interview authors, and we don’t always talk specifically about books. We talk a lot about news – well, we do talk about books, but we don’t take, you know, an episode and talk about one specific book. We’ll talk about news topics of interest; you know, like what is it about romance series that does or doesn’t work for us. Our own personal reading styles or preferences are something that we get asked about a lot, so for example, I – and this is Trisha – I reread, and Jess doesn’t. And then we do always –
Sarah: Oh!
Trisha: – throw out a few recs based on a theme. You know, whether it’s older couples or couples who don’t want to have children, a lot of those tend to be inspired by the requests and questions that we get as well. I don’t know what you would add, Jess.
Jess: Yeah, and I think that that mostly covers it. One thing that we do do, as Trisha mentioned at, like, the beginning of that spiel is, we talk a lot about news, and I think one of the things that I really like is being able to take things that are happening on the Twitterverse that a lot of people might not be aware of and sort of be able to pare it down to what might actually be happening instead of, you know, like, gossip and rumors, so that’s, that’s one thing that we really try hard to do on When in Romance, on top of book recs and why I don’t reread and Trisha does.
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Well, and I would say too that, with our – we’re very conversational and unscripted, and to the most part, for the most part, what we say as we are recording on a Thursday evening is pretty much what you get. We do have a wonderful sound editor, Jenn, who tries to fix up the sound quality as much as possible –
Sarah: Yeah.
Trisha: – but unless we trip over something or – and then, you know, correct it – she doesn’t edit for content, so you are getting straight from our mouths what is coming from our brains, for better or worse.
[Laughter]
Jess: And sometimes we’re very sorry.
Trisha: Yep. Yeah.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Trisha: And if you look at the reviews of our show, you can see that some people have some feelings about that. They, not everybody is on board with that particular style, but we like it. Feel like it –
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: – makes it a little more off-the-cuff.
Jess: Yeah.
Sarah: Now, I noticed, one of the questions I wanted to ask you about was that you’re covering news, which is really difficult when you’re doing a weekly show, because what’s news on Twitter changes on the half hour.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: How do you decide what topics you’re going to focus on, and how do you, like you said, pare down to the essentials of pieces of news?
Jess: Trisha and I sort of start a conversation early on in the week about things that might be happening. Is, if it’s a, oh man, this blew up; maybe we should talk about it. Or, do we really want to address this again?
Trisha: [Laughs] Mm-hmm.
Sarah: [Laughs] That’s how you know, by the way. That –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – is how you know that you’ve been around for a while. It is this simultaneous delight at the familiar and exhaustion like, oh, wait, this again? Really?
Jess and Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: Yeah.
Sarah: This is happening again. Wow.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So on one hand you’re like, oh, I’m already fluent! On the other hand it’s like, wow. Again?
Trisha: Yeah. On the other hand –
Sarah: Yep.
Trisha: – it’s, wow, should we just rerun our episode on the Ritas from last year? Because –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Trisha: – that’s the thing.
Sarah: ‘Cause the more things change, the more they don’t.
Jess and Trisha: Yeah.
Trisha: Well, and I will say too, I think, so – and we’re actually biweekly, so not even weekly, so sometimes we are –
Sarah: Right! Right, right, right.
Trisha: So we record on a Thursday; the episodes drops on a, the Monday four days later; and we have actually been in the situation more than once where something sort of ridiculous will happen literally the day after we recorded –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – so it’s like two and a half weeks –
Sarah: Oh no!
Trisha: – before the episode actually drops, and I think it can be a little bit tricky. Like Jess said, we do talk through like, do we want to get into this, or do we want to just, like, let this one go? But a lot of the news – and gosh, you know this as well as anybody, Sarah – is ongoing and reflective of larger issues and themes that are going on, right.
Sarah: Yep!
Trisha: So I think the, actually, the Ritas is a fairly good example, because I think the announcement for those came the day after we had recorded – we’d recorded a little early that week –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – and I mean, in a helpful turn of events for us, two and a half weeks later there was still a conversation going on, so we were able to kind of update folks and let them know what was going on. I think too that there’s, in some ways, the delay is really helpful for us, ‘cause we’re not –
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: – going to get caught up in one Twitter thread or a conversation du jour that kind of burns bright for a day and then totally flames out. It does kind of allow us to have just a little bit of distance to reflect on what are people still talking about two weeks later? Like, what actually is registering in that way that is, is sort of important?
Jess: Yeah. That way we get to do sort of a 20/20-style recap instead of daily news kind of thing?
Sarah: Yeah.
Jess: And it, it really helps to be able to just sort of get all of the things in order. Even if we’re pulling Twitter threads, we, we have, like, a whole grouping of things that we can address, maybe from different points of view in all of that, so that –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jess: – that’s really helpful. It sucks that we can’t be like, oh my gosh, this thing just happened! Let’s talk about it! usually. Sometimes it does happen. Thursday, like, something happened on Wednesday night, and we had to record Thursday, and I was like, oh gosh.
[Laughter]
Trish: Yeah, but we’re like, oh, I need an extra half hour to actually read the Twitter about whatever is going on.
Jess: Yeah.
Sarah: It’s still too hot! I can’t touch it! It’s, like, too hot!
Trisha: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
[Laughter]
Sarah: It’s still boiling, guys, really.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: Well, and the thing too that I don’t think either Jess or I mentioned is that we also both have full-time jobs. None of us –
Sarah: Yes!
Trisha: – work for Book Riot full-time, so, you know, I’ll get home from work and sometimes we’re, we’re generally – I’m all over the place this year, but we’re generally in different time zones, and so, you know, Jess is like, I need half an hour to actually read and figure out what happened today so that we can talk about it, is, that’s the other end of the spectrum of the, you know, two and a half weeks difference.
Jess: Yeah. Yeah.
Trisha: I will say too –
Sarah: That’s a big difference.
Trisha: Yeah, and I think one of the things that we have going for us is that that’s kind of the more reflective – I love Jess’s 20/20 style metaphor because I think that’s right, and the thing that we have going for us is that Jess’s newsletter, the Kissing Books newsletter, is twice a week, so that actually does end up picking up – she, you know, can stick a lot of the news, the more day-to-day news in that newsletter –
Sarah and Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – which allows us the flexibility to, to, you know, pause and look for some of the broader themes in a biweekly podcast.
Jess: Yeah, that does come in handy, and it also helps me, like, get my thoughts in order in writing. [Laughs] So –
Sarah: Which is, which is important, yeah.
Trisha: Yeah, mm-hmm.
Jess: – so that when I have to come and talk words –
[Laughter]
Trisha: Yep, mm-hmm.
Jess: – it, it comes out a little more concisely than I want it to.
Trisha: Mm-hmm. And you –
Sarah: And plus, the, the, the time gives you that sort of thirty-five-thousand-foot view of the issue.
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And you asked a little bit about how some of our topics come about, and one of the ways is, oh, that, I will, before I send Jess that email on, like, a Monday or Tuesday before a Thursday recording, I will take a look back at all of the Kissing Books newsletters and figure out what actually happened the last two weeks that maybe feels like it was yesterday or maybe feels like it was three months ago –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Trisha: – but it was actually since the last time we recorded.
Sarah: Yep. That was yesterday; oh my God, really?
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jess: [Laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh, time, once again.
Trisha: Yeah, well, and Romancelandia is always, always hopping. There’s always something going on.
Sarah: There’s always something. Always something.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: What, what are some of the topics that you look at and go, well? Hmm. Oh boy.
Trisha: I mean, I think that again, the Ritas – again – is a great example, because although it’s not fun, and although it does feel a little bit like Jess was talking about earlier, like, again with the, like, inclusion issues and the, I mean, are we ever going to – I mean, The Ripped Bodice report is another one. It seems like we have at least every eight weeks, so every four episodes, we have a conversation about inclusion and diversity in romance, but one of the cool things about the Rita conversation is that it does help educate readers about –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – why some of that problem exists, right. I, you know, I was able to mention a little bit that I had talked to some of my friends who had judged other competitions, and they were blown away by the fact that if you submit, then you also judge.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: And, and so being able to kind of educate people – who wouldn’t be listening to the podcast if they weren’t at least a little bit interested – about the nuances of how some of this stuff happens and why some of these issues arise is actually really interesting, and we, we end up getting a lot of, oh my gosh, I had no idea, which is kind of a cool, a cool thing. I will say too, I, you know, it’s, it’s important and I think really valuable and sticks with us when we get to talk about those kinds of important topics, but it’s also really fun. I was looking back through some of the episodes that we’ve done. It’s also really fun when we get to do just something, like, fun and kind of random? Like, our third episode, the RT awards had come out for last year, which RT is, you know, no longer, and so the awards are no longer, but the awards were just so bonkers. They’re just like –
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: – it was stuff like –
Sarah: Oh.
Trisha: – the best mid-length novel featuring a policeman who is still trying to make detective. Like, there were kind of –
[Laughter]
Trisha: – like, really bananas categories, and so then Jess and I kind of made up our own, like, really bananas award categories to give to random books, which was just –
Sarah: That sounds fun.
Trisha: – like, really fun. Or we did a mid-year episode that we’ll probably have to do again – or have the opportunity to do again in the next month or two – of, like –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – I made up a weird, like, When in Romance mid-year quiz for Jess that we just talked through, and she won because she was the only person. She got the highest score ever on the first ever mid-year When in Romance quiz. You know, so, like, that kind of stuff is just –
Jess: Yay, me!
Trisha: – it’s – exactly! I mean, yeah, it was a really big day. But that kind of stuff is just fun. Like, to have the opportunity to once in a while, like, remind ourselves of the fun and joy that exists in romance –
Sarah: Yeah.
Trisha: – is, is, I think, equally – well, maybe not equally important, but it feels pretty important, you know, even though it’s, it’s cloaked in humor and, like, sort of silliness.
Sarah: Yeah.
Jess: I think it’s equally important, ‘cause, like, we get to do things like our short-lived, maybe-will-be-revived-again book club, ‘cause I don’t get to talk in depth about books very much, and, I mean, if you listen to When in Romance, you know sometimes, like, my book recommendations are just, like, brief squeeing and, you’ve got to read this; it’s so good. Like, so being able to use real words and real descriptions and go in depth about one specific book is really fun, and I get to talk with Trisha about it, and we get to talk with people who comment or tweet or send us emails too. And that was really fun.
Trisha: Yeah, that is really fun. When the – now I can’t think of the book club that’s doing the books that were written by authors of color for, that were nominated for Ritas?
Jess: Romance Sparks Joy!
Trisha: Romance Sparks Joy! Yes.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: When those books are wrapped up, we’ll probably jump back into that. We didn’t want to step on their toes in the meantime.
Sarah: So I, one of my questions is actually, what are some of your favorite episodes and discussions? And Trisha, you mentioned that you’d been going back in your archives and looking. Are there other episodes that you want to talk about specifically or mention as things that you really enjoyed doing?
Trisha: I will say that only – like I said, I, I did love our episode 3, which was our made-up RT awards. We’re maybe do, do something like that again.
[Laughter]
Trisha: Episode 13, which was our mid-year quiz. I will say, the other one that I really, that really stuck out to me when I was looking back, we are, as I mentioned, not a, a podcast that tends to have authors come on and guest, but we’ve had a few, and the episode with Rebekah Weatherspoon in particular –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – was episode 22 for us – was one that we have, that was not only really interesting and fun to do, because she is wonderful and such a good guest, but her insight was so interesting. So when we do have authors on, they essentially operate as another host, so we’re not –
Sarah: Right.
Trisha: – interviewing them; we’re not really getting too deep into their books or their background. We ask them their opinions on the same news stories or book, you know, topics that we are discussing, and one of the things that we were discussing the week that Rebekah was on was book covers, and we have kind of referenced back to that conversation a couple of other times on the podcast, in part because she’s just really insightful, and her kind of thoughtful commentary as an author is something that we wouldn’t, between the two of us – although Jess and I are great –
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: – have been able to do on our own, so that’s, yeah, that’s anoth-, that’s one of my favorite episodes that we’ve done.
Jess: I, I will throw out that even though the content was nothing out of the ordinary for the two episodes Trisha and I actually got to record together, that was, that, those were highlights for me because we got to sort of snuggle over one microphone, which we don’t get to do!
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: Right. Yeah.
Jess: And both of those were, the most recent one was at Book Lovers Con, and the one before that was at what Book Lovers Con used to be, which was RT, and so, like, we were both sort of basking in the joy of being around romance people and also having to talk about things that were bonkers on the internet, and it was just kind of a, a nice face-to-face. We could sort of look at each other and make faces and that kind of thing. [Laughs]
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That wa-, yeah, that is actually really fun. Jess is right; when we’re recording from one microphone it’s a challenge for our sound editor, but it is more fun for us to be, like, handing notes or, like, looking at a book and being like, was it this one? Were we going to talk about this? Okay, yeah, good. Okay, good. Yeah. That is a lot of fun.
Sarah: Yeah, being in the same space creates a different energy.
Jess: Absolutely.
Sarah: It leads to different conversations, too.
Jess and Trisha: Yeah.
Trisha: Yeah, I mean, it, it also, like, kind of makes for some slightly more fun anec- – I mean, like, so our Book Lovers Con episode from a couple of months ago is the shortest ep- – oh gosh, I guess maybe only a month ago – is the shortest episode we’ve ever done, partly because we had to turn the air conditioning off in the hotel room in New Orleans in May.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Trisha: It was so hot, but we couldn’t have the background noise at the hotel, ‘cause hotel air conditioning is so loud!
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Trisha: So we had to turn it off, and so we both were, like, a little bit shorter on content because we were at the con, but also we were like, okay, it’s, we’re getting so sweaty, we just have to stop now before we end.
[Laughter]
Jess: Yeah. Yeah, it was really hot.
Sarah: And it’s, and it’s, and it’s an interesting sort of dynamic when you get to see someone’s reaction and, and not just hear it?
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: Yes. Mm-hmm.
Sarah: It’s, it’s lovely that way. That’s one of my favorite things.
Trisha: Yeah, and we actually have, for most of our run, we have recorded on Skype over video Skype, and we recently switched to Zencastr, but I think we might be switching back to Skype, so we can –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – as long as the internet connections are, are strong enough, we can keep an eye on what the other one is doing and how they are reacting and, you know, we’ll occasionally reference that too; like, nobody else can see how, my, my massive hand movements of whatever, but Jess can vouch for the fact that I have very strong feelings about this.
[Laughter]
Sarah: I’m talking with all my hands right now! So are you switching back to Skype for the visual?
Trisha: It’s more, I think it’s more of a sound quality thing? Our amazing, the amazing Jenn Northington at Book Riot coordinates all of our podcasts, and so she listens to, I think, all of them and has to –
Sarah: Right.
Trisha: – kind of figure out what and where and how, and so she has offered us the reflection that the sound quality tends to be a little bit better on GarageBand, and so we’ll still use Zencastr for guests, ‘cause it’s so much easier to toss on a, a third person, but –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Right.
Trisha: And actually, some folks use Slack. I, I did a guest podcast with Liberty Hardy on the all, All the Books! a month or so ago, and she uses Slack, so people use different things, but I think we’ll be moving back to Skype and recording on GarageBand, and I think it’s a qual-, a sound quality issue.
Sarah: That’s, that makes sense. I go back and forth about what option is, is going to work the best and the easiest. There’s a lot of post-production considerations.
Trisha: Mm-hmm, and we have, one of our podcasts – I don’t think I’m out of line in saying the, our nonfiction podcast, both of the podcasters on that are not Mac users, so they can’t use GarageBand, so that they have a –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Of course.
Trisha: – slightly different equation there too. Like I said, Jenn Northington, there’s a special place in the afterlife for, for Jenn, because she’s wrangling all of this and, and offering us great guidance, and she’s just so patient. So, yeah, she’s wonderful.
Sarah: Oh, she’s the greatest human. I love her.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: Yeah, she’s wonderful.
Jess: She really is.
Sarah: So what other things have you learned about podcasting and about romance podcasts in particular? What are some things you like about doing your show?
Jess: One thing that I learned very quickly is that you will never remember the title of that book you want to talk about if you –
Sarah: Nope.
Jess: – don’t write it down.
Sarah: Nope.
Jess: So – [laughs]
Sarah: Yes! You can’t see me –
Trisha: It’s like gone.
Sarah: – but I’m nodding emphatically right now.
Trisha: Uh-huh, yeah.
Jess: It’s like, I read this book yesterday? I looked at it a million times, and I didn’t write it down ‘cause I was like, oh yeah, I have to remember that one. What’s it called? Who’s it by? What, what’s the cover look like?
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: No. Not a thing.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I agree, and I will second that I have had more than one situation where I have not been able to remember the names of the main characters, so –
Jess: Same.
Trisha: I just refer to them as, like, one person is a carpenter –
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: – and the other person is an MMA fighter, and the MMA fighter person is this – ‘cause I, I mean, you guys I think are in the same boat: when you read so many books –
Sarah: Yep!
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – for me, the, the name of someone is not the thing that sticks out.
Sarah: Nope.
Trisha: So that’s a –
Sarah: This is why we have Help a Bitch Out, because it’s like –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – I remember this one scene where this guy does this thing –
Jess: Yeah.
Sarah: – with a ferret, and, like, five readers –
Jess: [Laughs]
Sarah: – will be like, yes!
Trisha: Mm-hmm! Yeah.
Sarah: I know exactly what book that is. That was –
Jess: Uh-huh.
Sarah: – His Ferret Love, Volume Two.
Trish: Yes, exactly! Uh-huh.
Jess: I love reading those.
Trisha: Nonono, it wasn’t that one! It was His Ferret Love, Volume Four.
Sarah: Yep!
Trisha: Okay, great.
Sarah: You’re not alone. You’re alone in that, which is part of why I started logging my reading, because somebody’s like, do you recommend this book? And I’d be like, I, it sounds familiar? Maybe I read it? I don’t know! Take a look! See what it says!
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Maybe, but who’s to say? Yeah. I think –
Sarah: Who the hell knows?
Trisha: Yeah. I think for me, the, beyond the sort of technical things that I’ve learned about podcasting, ‘cause I had never podcasted a day in my life before doing this –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – and the humility that comes – ‘cause I do our show notes, so I listen back to the episode – and so the humility that comes not from hearing the sound of your, people are always like, oh, I don’t want to listen to the sound of my own voice. Like, oh, you get over that really quickly when you have to listen to all the dumb stuff you said. Like –
Sarah: Oh yes.
Trisha: – I have no problem listening to my voice now. I’m worried more about the words that that voice was saying?
Jess: Uh-huh.
Trisha: So that’s a challenge. I think the, the biggest thing that for me, especially as we’re getting into having done this for about a year and a half, is how you keep the topics fresh, ‘cause you know, Jess mentioned earlier –
Jess: Uh-huh.
Trisha: – like, are we doing this thing again? And you don’t want to just rehash the same topics or keep recommending the same books –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – over and over again, because I think at this point we have a pretty solid core audience of folks who have heard us do that, so trying to figure out, like, what do we next? What comes next? How does that work? is a challenge that I hadn’t really anticipated.
Jess and Sarah: Yeah.
Jess: And especially when I, like, fall behind in reading, like I’ll, I’ll talk more about this later probably, but, like, I started seven books this week and finally finished one yesterday, and it’s like –
Sarah: Oh, that’s the worst feeling; so frustrating.
Jess: When it’s like, oh, I can’t talk about any new books! What do I do? I guess I’ll go really far back, because that’s the stuff that I haven’t talked about here.
Trisha: But even that can be a little bit of an issue, right? ‘Cause if you’re going back too far –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – like, I have found, one of the things I’ve found, and I don’t know if this is the case for either of you, but there are books that I will read and even books that I will enjoy on some level but that are, that I’m not comfortable recommending.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: So, I think, we actually had a situation, and I, I don’t remember if I ever re-referenced it on the podcast, but we were, we did an episode a while back where we were talking about, like, old, classic romances, and the two that I –
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Trisha: – talked about were Indigo by Beverly Jenkins, which totally holds up! That’s an amazing book!
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: And also, I think it was Morning Glory.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: It was a LaVyrle Spencer book, and after –
Sarah: Ooh, that’s a classic!
Trisha: It is, and I was like –
Sarah: Those are some classics.
Trisha: Yeah! Like, these are books, I mean, Morning Glory is an ‘80s book; Indigo is like late ‘80s, maybe early ‘90s?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: And so that was the thing; you know, we were talking about these, like, super old school romances and how great they are, and I had thought of Morning Glory because of a conversation between two people for, with whom, or for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect, who were talking about books on Twitter, and I recommended it, was talking about it; I was like, this is great! And then I started rereading it, ‘cause I was like, oh, now I’ve made myself excited about this book, and I started to reread it, and I was like, ooh! There are some things in here that don’t quite stand the test of time. Like, this is –
Jess: Mmm.
Trisha: I’m not saying nobody should read it, and I’m not saying it isn’t still a classic romance, but the 1980s context is very much there.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s not just shoulder pads and cigarettes; it’s a whole bunch of stuff.
Trisha: Yeah.
Jess: Exactly. Yeah, there’s, like –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Trisha: Yeah, there’s a little bit of, like, weird, like, racial and ethnic appropriation and, like, there’s just kind of some stuff that I would have at least warned folks about, but because I’d read it four or five years before and I just remembered really enjoying it, I, four or five years ago, I wasn’t reading with a lens of what do I owe someone who is listening to a podcast who might deserve a warning about content that is problematic in that way. You know, it’s –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – that kind of stuff is tricky.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: It is, and it’s, it’s also, it also can be difficult to, I think, sometimes, to put a book in context when it was published twenty, thirty years ago?
Jess and Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Like, I have a deep, deep soft spot of nostalgic love for a, an old Catherine Coulter title, Midsummer Magic?
Jess: Mmm.
Sarah: It was the first romance I ever read, and I think that’s part of the reason, it’s a very big part of the reason, but it’s also a hero who is in a position where he’s trying to do the right thing by a lot of people, but he’s still a complete jerkwad about it?
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: And so I went in willing to forgive him for a lot, because context, age –
Trisha: Mm-hmm?
Sarah: – my own, my own maturity, the maturity of my brain at that time was a completely different place, and I can talk about that book at length –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – but there’s also the fact that he has to use cream to ease his way because they are not willing to have sex with him because they are in an arranged marriage, and she pretended like she was ugly because she wanted him to pick someone else, like her sisters, and he’s like, nope! I want the ugly one ‘cause I can park her in the country, and then I can go back into the city and I can totally bone my mistress! This’ll be great!
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: But we got to consummate, so hold still. And I’m like, wow, this is a whole layer cake of things that I would need to contextualize –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and yet I still have this deep nostalgia for this book that I, I carry with a sort of cautious – I wouldn’t say, uh, optimism? Like, I, I don’t think anyone who is a reader beginning romance right now would pick up that book and be like, oh yeah, this is great! They’d be like –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – what the hell is this?!
Trisha: [Laughs]
Jess: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah: But at the same time, I can be like, listen, I have a lot of fuzzy feelings about this book, and I see it in context, and I see it through nostalgia at the same time, and that’s a hard lens to communicate to someone who may not have that same nostalgia, their, that their reading started in a different place.
Trisha: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true, and Jess, you’ve been reading romance for longer than I have, but I feel like you’ve, when we were tabbing that episode, you kind of ran into that too, of trying to find some books that were like, weren’t super rape-y that you had read.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jess: Yeah. Oh my gosh! Looking back –
Trisha: Yeah.
Jess: – at – so, like, I started reading very young, so maybe, like –
Sarah: Oh yes.
Jess: – just didn’t process it as, as a –
Sarah: Yep!
Jess: – you know, twelve-, thirteen-year-old. You know, picking up my mother’s Jude Deveraux books and her Johanna Lindsey books –
Sarah: Oh God!
Jess: – and it’s like –
Sarah: Oh God.
Jess: – now I’m like, wait, I think the hero of that book raped her on their wedding night, and it’s like, did real-, did I read that and just forget?! What?! [Laughs]
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah.
Trisha: Yep.
Sarah: When, when Present Brain reads something that Past Brain read, there’s a part of me that goes, wow! There were a lot of things that I didn’t know.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: Well, you know.
Trisha: Yeah.
Jess: No.
Trisha: Yeah. It’s, yeah, and so, like, I think that has been, for me, one of the big lessons of, just because I like a book and I enjoy it and I would recommend it to a very specific reader –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Trisha: – doesn’t mean that I would recommend it to an entire, thousands of podcast listeners.
Sarah: Yes.
Trisha: Right, like, it’s just, yeah. That’s – and it’s kind of a challenge, ‘cause there are, even some of the books that I like that I would like to rec- – and we knocked up against this a little bit with, it was, gosh, which Kennedy Ryan book was it? The –
Jess: Jump Hook, Hook Shot.
Trisha: The first one. Hook Shot.
Jess: Or Long Shot. Long Shot?
Trisha: Eh. Whichever the first one is – sorry, everybody.
Jess: The first one is Long Shot.
Trisha: Okay, so the first one, Long Shot, we talked about, and – I don’t think we did a book club on it, but we did talk about it – and I really liked it, and I think a lot of folks did. It’s, it’s nominated for Ritas. It’s actually, I think, the one that they’re reading this month in the Romance Sparks Joy book club, and –
Sarah: Yeah.
Trisha: – we really liked it, but it also, we, it, it led to more than one conversation –
Sarah: There’s a lot.
Trisha: – actually, about content warnings –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Trisha: – because that one –
Sarah: There’s a lot of warnings in there.
Trisha: Exactly, yeah, and it’s, it’s a little bit, it’s, it’s so well written, she does such a great job of so many things that you want to recommend it to people, but also – and actually, you know, it came up a little bit ‘cause Andie J. Christopher guested on our, our show once when Jess couldn’t be on –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – a couple months back, and so she was talking about context warnings, content warnings, in the context of that book –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – and it turned out that actually the content warning is really not very detailed, and you wouldn’t necessarily know a lot from it?
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: I don’t know; it, like I said, it just gets tricky, ‘cause that’s an author and a book that I think is great for a lot of people?
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Trisha: But it’s hard to, as you were talking about, Sarah, cloak it with all of that context.
Sarah: Oh yes. That is actually a book where I went to someone who I knew had read it, and I was like, okay, spoil this please, and they were like, here’s what happens, and I was like, yep, nope, can’t read that. Not for Sarahs.
Trisha: Good for you!
Sarah: Not go-, nope, not going to happen; can’t read that. ‘Cause that’s not –
Trisha: Absolutely!
Sarah: – a place that I can go in my reading –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and I think that when you have a podcast, you sort of have to assume a very wide and general, nonspecific audience, ‘cause you don’t know who’s going to be listening?
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: And when you have, have –
Trisha: That’s true.
Sarah: – if you have that connection with someone, even over email or over Twitter, like, I like this book and this book and this author, oh, I know exactly what you’re going to like. Like, if somebody comes to me and says, I like really dark, emotional, angsty romance with a lot of torment and emotional healing that has to happen, I’m like, okay, I know exactly what to recommend. I can’t read any of these, but I know –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – they’re going to work for you!
Jess: [Laughs]
Sarah: With a podcast, you kind of have to be like, okay, entire planet, here are things, and that really does limit what you want to talk about, because you can’t contextualize every single book you’re talking about.
Jess: Yeah. That actually happened, I think we were talking about non-explicit romance too, and I was trying to think of, like, when was the last time I read a non-explicit romance?
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: And I think I’ve read two this year, and it’s just like, it’s about, you know, personal selection. You try to, you try to read as broadly as you can, but there are also things that you don’t pick up because of certain contexts that you know about. There are certain, like, there are certain preferences that we all have as readers, and as people who recommend books to other people we try to broaden that, but we still sort of fall back on our favorites, even if it’s not a favorite author, just sort of a favorite type, which, you know, I, as a podcast host, I’ve been trying to be a broader reader, but then it’s like, oh, I read these same, these new three authors, but they all write the same kind of thing that I talk about that other authors do. So it’s just, it’s really hard to sort of break down how to recommend to such a wide swath of listeners.
Sarah: Especially when you don’t necessarily know who’s listening.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: Mm-hmm. And I think that’s true. I think we definitely have gaps. Like, Jess and I complement each other pretty well in terms of what we read, but there’s a pretty significant amount of overlap in that Venn diagram –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – and there are some things – I would, I think you would back me up in saying, Jess – we’re not great with, like, paranormal or science fiction/fantasy romance all the time.
Jess: Right.
Trisha: There are some, some kind of places that we, I think, both have worked to shore up, but we’re not quite there. You know, we’re still –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – it’s a, it’s a longer process.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah: Well, I mean, as long as I’ve been reading romance, I’m still not fluent in romantic suspense, because I can’t do death and entrails in my romance.
Trisha: [Laughs]
Sarah: Not a thing! Entrails? Nope. Can’t do it.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: But I also love that there are what I think of as cozy mystery romances?
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So there’s like a light mystery, there’s no entrails, there’s no massive amount of blood, there’s no sexual crimes –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – but there’s, there’s some things going wrong that need to be investigated. I love that! That, that sounds great!
Trisha: Yeah.
Sarah: But the language of necessarily recommending book hasn’t caught up to it, because those would still be placed in romantic suspense or cozy mystery with romantic elements, which isn’t always terms that people use.
Jess and Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Makes it hard.
Trisha: Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah: So when did you guys start reading romance? What were your first romances that you read?
Trisha: I will let Jess go first because she’s been reading longer.
Jess: [Laughs]
Sarah: And please – this is not like a, this is not like a, like a, like a credibility check or anything like that. I love hearing the origin stories of romance readers, because everyone comes into the genre from a different perspective, and it’s so interesting.
Jess: It’s really interesting. [Laughs]
Trisha: Oh yeah, I didn’t mean it like that. Didn’t mean like a credibility check; I just am super type A, and so I prefer, like, chronological storytelling.
[Laughter]
Trisha: So chronologically –
Sarah: I started reading romance –
Trisha: – in terms of time.
Sarah: – long, long ago…
Trisha: Yeah. Jess gets to start.
Sarah: Back in the 1900s – yeah.
Trisha: Exactly, yeah! [Laughs]
Jess: Mm-hmm. Back in the 1900s, Jess started reading – no, it, it was technically in the 1900s, because I, I was –
Sarah: My kids say that to me just to piss me off.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Was that back in the 1900s, Mom? Yes, yes it was.
Jess: Yes it was! There was a 19 at the beginning of the year.
Sarah: That’s right, that’s right!
Trisha: Boom. [Laughs]
Jess: Like I said, I was picking up my mom’s romances, so I probably read romance before I had sex ed, which –
Sarah: That is so true!
Jess: [Laughs] – which is really interesting to think about. And I was picking up her Jude Deveraux books, her Johanna Lindsey books, that sort of historical romance. It’s funny; my first two Jude Deveraux books were both, like, soul mate types? Which is like –
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Jess: – you, you meet somebody, and they’re your soul mate, and then something happens and they have to go back to the past, or, or they never existed, and you meet the person who is actually, has their soul in the present, and it’s like, I would never pick up that book right now, but some kind of way, that was my entry point into romance.
[Laughter]
Trisha: Yep. Uh-huh.
Sarah: Yep.
Jess: And so, and that, you know, I took a break to read, like, Anne Rice and Amelia Peabody mysteries in high school and that kind of thing –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jess: – and also a whole lot of Pride and Prejudice fanfiction, and then I, I really sort of dove back into romance in probably my early twenties – when was that? Like a decade ago – because I wasn’t in school anymore and I could read what I wanted, so I just, and I think I had just gotten my first e-reading device and started just sort of picking things up and seeing if I enjoyed them, and I did, so I jumped back in, reading Beverly Jenkins and, you know, a lot of people I didn’t know I didn’t know existed when I was a kid.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jess: So it was nice to expand my universe. [Laughs]
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: Yes.
Trisha: I think, I will say, I very much appreciate that you explained what you meant by soul mate romance, Jess, ‘cause for the casual listener, I would have assumed that was something very different.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: Like, oh, this person met their soul mate. That’s nice. No! This person met the reincarnation of someone whose soul they fell in love with many years ago.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: I think that’s helpful. I also, I will also say I did not start reading romance until long after I had taken sex ed, so take that for what it’s worth. But I started –
Sarah: [Laughs] That can lead to some very strange reactions!
Trisha: Mm-hmm, yeah. So I, the folks who listen to the When in Romance podcast will know this, but I, for some reason, at six or seven years ago now, decided that I would start going to the gym every single day. Like, literally every day. And so I was doing that, and I was, you know, as it turns out – I don’t know if you all know this – the gym is super boring. Like, it is –
Sarah: Oh, my God!
Trisha: – so boring.
Jess: Yes.
Trisha: Yeah. It’s the worst. So –
Sarah: It’s boring, it’s humid, and there’s people!
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: Exactly! And so I was reading, like, magazines to pass the time, and they were all from, like, I don’t know, what season was The Bachelor on in like seven years ago? Whatever. All these people like I’d never heard of –
Jess: Eighty-five.
Trisha: – were in these magazines. Yes, exactly! And – I’m assuming that that’s true – and I –
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: And magazines are also super expensive! They’re like six or seven dollars a magazine, it would last me twenty minutes, and I would still have twenty more minutes to go on the elliptical machine, so – all of that sounds irrelevant, but I’m, I’m getting to the actual point, I promise.
Sarah: Oh no, I’m with you.
Trisha: I was, I was reading on a Nook at the time, so one day when I ran out of magazine money I went on to see what cheap books I could potentially read, and a lot of the books on sale were romance, and so I downloaded a few with the thought of being like, oh, if nothing else it’ll give me, like, a fun story to tell my friends, because I was one of those jerks that is super judgmental about romance, and then I started to read them, and not only were these books way more interesting than learning about season eighty-five of The Bachelor, it was, they were, like, feminist and female-focused in a way that I had not found in any other entertainment avenue. Like –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – more so than movies, more so than television, more so than the other fiction I was reading, and I, I think I said this to Jess before: I remember thinking, like, somebody’s been holding out on me! Like –
[Laughter]
Trisha: Who?
Sarah: Who was it? Who didn’t tell me? Who, who am I mad at?
Trisha: Well into adulthood, I was in I think my late twenties, somewhere around thirty, and I was like, how is it possible that there is – ‘cause I am absolutely feminist, and I was like, how is there this whole subsection of culture and literature and entertainment that exists for people like me that people like me are trained to be super judgmental of and ridicule in a lot of ways?
Sarah: [Laughs evilly]
Trisha: Anyway, I eventually de-, I eventually learned that I could actually read romance from my couch, so I stopped going to the gym every day.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: But you know, the, the takeaway of that, of that gym time ended up making me a romance reader, so still worth it. Still worth it.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Totally worth it! With the idea that romance is going to center the woman, it has meant that I look, I try other genres and I’m like, oh yeah. I forgot. I forgot that we’re not the center of all the other genres. This is terrible.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Going back now! [Laughs]
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Have you tried to read elsewhere, Trisha, and been like, yeah, no? No, no.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: I, a little bit, yeah. Like, people will –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Trisha: Because, so one of the great things for Jess and me that, that we should make sure that we mention is that it’s wonderful to be on a podcast that is part of a larger family –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Yes?
Trisha: – so the fact that we get to podcast with Book Riot and we’re not, like, out in the wilds by ourselves makes a huge difference, and it makes things so much easier, but the larger Book Riot community reads super broadly, and people will be talking about –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – this, like, amazing literary fiction title or this amazing, like, sci-fi thing or, you know, whatever, and I’ll pick up some of these literary fiction books, and I’m like, I don’t know; I’m sure this is fine.
[Laughter]
Trisha: Like, I’ll get, you know, twenty pages in and I’m like, there hasn’t been any witty banter at all.
Sarah: Yep!
Trisha: Nobody has fantasized about the other person naked. I don’t, I’m not sure what the, what is the draw here? Like, what are we really doing?
Sarah: Exactly.
Jess: Why are we here?
Sarah: Yep.
Trisha: Mm-hmm, exactly.
Sarah: This woman is an object! That’s boring!
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: Yeah. Seriously, yeah.
Sarah: Like, I, I recently listened to My Year of Rest and Relaxation by –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – Ottessa Moshfegh – I think I said that right.
Trisha: Oh yeah! Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So that’s a first-person nameless narrator who is easily the most fucked-up person, but it was entirely her narrative, because basically she decides she wants to sleep for a year, and that’s going to restart her life, and it’s like, she finds the worst doctor, she gets this massive collection of drugs to try to make her sleep, she inherited money so she doesn’t have to work, and there’s this enormous amount of privilege and wealth and ableism that’s built into this narrative, and she’s terrible! And she kind of acknowledges how much she’s terrible, and I’m like, yep, but she’s still the center. I am here for it; let’s go.
Jess: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. [Laughs]
Trisha: Yep.
Sarah: And if it had been some dude whining I’d have been like, nope, nope, nope. I would have noped out on page three.
Jess: Yep.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess and Trisha: Yeah.
Trisha: And yeah, we could do a whole other podcast another time about, like, just the ways that, what it says about us as a culture and a society that people like me are so conditioned to be so – I mean, so many of my friends I have tried to introduce to romance, and they’re like, eh. Not really feeling it. I don’t know about this. It’s not really for me. Having never read any of it. I actually –
Sarah: Yep.
Trisha: – a friend of mine is – I’m in Boise, Idaho, right now, and a friend of mine is visiting me this weekend, and she read, I gave her before I left DC a book called The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang, and she read it –
Sarah: Oh, very excellent choice!
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: She read it on the plane here, and then she had all of these questions about romance and, like, what maybe she would read next and blah-blah-blah –
Sarah: [Laughs evilly]
Trisha: – but this is one of my friends who for seven or eight, six, however long I’ve been reading romance, I’ve been trying to sort of convert over to the genre unsuccessfully until she had a five-hour plane ride –
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: – and a copy of The Kiss Quotient.
Sarah: That’s right!
Jess: Nice. Nice.
Sarah: And, and isn’t it just devastating to think that we are inculcated to believe that us at the center of a narrative makes it substandard and to be avoided?
Trisha: Absolutely.
Jess: Oh yeah.
Sarah: It’s just so bad. But when I tell people –
Jess: Yeah.
Sarah: – what do you do? I run a website about romance novels, there’s always this what, what? Huh?
Trisha: Oh!
Sarah: What? Oh. ‘Kay.
Trisha: Oh.
Sarah: It’s really fun at synagogue, because rabbis really don’t know what to do with that answer.
[Laughter]
Sarah: But it, eventually, because, like you said, when you’re part of a bookish community, you learn about all these other books? I’m still, like, semi-fluent. I can recommend mysteries; I can do pretty well with thrillers; I understand how much female-centered narratives are impacting other fiction genres now? Ha-ha, told you guys! Told you it was great!
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: That leads me to be able to have a better conversation with a lot more readers, but there is still this reaction; like, dudes don’t even consider it. The women who I know are like, yeah, no, I don’t think that – like, you don’t understand! It’s about us! It centers us!
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: We are great, and then –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – then, when I get to make recommendations to my friends who are genderfluid and genderqueer and I have books to recommend that are good, that are happy, that are, like, delightful? It’s like the best feeling!
Trisha: Oh yeah.
Sarah: Yes!
Jess: Yes. Oh.
Trisha: So true. Yeah. That’s, yeah, and I, I actually bought a handful of those for a friend of mine – another friend – but, but my going-away gift when I left DC, at least for a while, was, was books, and –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – I was buying, I was trying to find some queer romance. Part of the issue, though, is that a lot of it is not in hardcopy, and one of my friends –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: No.
Trisha: – only reads in hardcopy, but don’t worry, I still managed. We figured it out.
Sarah: Yep.
Jess: It’s good. It’s good.
Sarah: My, my favorite thing is that one of my sons, who’s eleven, has a friend who is gender-exploring I think is how he puts it, and every time I see this child I try to check in: what are your pronouns? Because they change, and I want to be respectful, and I sit there and I’m like, okay, you’re eleven. In a couple years I am going to give you the biggest box of books you have ever seen –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and it’s going to be a few – so hurry up and grow older, ‘cause I am waiting!
[Laughter]
Sarah: You don’t understand what is coming your way! [Laughs]
Trisha: It’s weird, like, that feeling of, like, power and, like, joy that comes from –
Sarah: Yes!
Trisha: – being able to recommend books to people.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: It is the best feeling! I, I can’t even fully describe it. Like, when you recommend a book to someone that is perfect for them, and they’re just like – [gasps] – how did you know? It is the greatest feeling!
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: It is so lovely!
Trisha: Yeah.
Jess: It is so great. So great.
Sarah: Isn’t it? So when you’re reading a book and you get that sort of feeling, do you ever feel that for the podcast audience? Like, are there books where you’re like, okay, we have to talk about this; this is just amazing; I can’t wait to talk about this to ALL of the humans? Do you ever get that feeling when you’re reading something, that you want to earmark it for your show?
Jess: I totally do, although I also, I also, you know, it’s one, it’s sort of like the, the last thing that happens, because I am one of those people who has to talk about a book immediately or I’ll forget everything about it. So recently –
[Laughter]
Jess: – so recently I’ve been just, like, telling Instagram when I finish a book, and –
Sarah: [Laughs] Hey, folks!
Jess: [Laughs] – and it’s just like, so I get to Instagram, and then it’s like the next thing is Kissing Books, and then it’s When in Romance, and I’m like, well, maybe I finally actually figured out words to say about this book, now that we’ve gotten to the place where I have to talk.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
[Laughter]
Sarah: I have to put the words in the right order now! Darn.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: Ugh, the worst. I think for me, I tend to more flag things that I think are, make a book unique so that we can recommend it, ‘cause we so rarely disrecommend a book. In general, this is a great book! It’s a book that is great because people are looking for a specific kind of recommendation, right.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: Like I said, you know, what, one that I know I flagged recently was That Kind of Guy by Talia Hibbert, because she has a –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – demisexual hero, which I don’t know that I’ve ever – I will be honest with you: I wasn’t super familiar with the term demisexual until I read that book, but there, you know, that makes that book unique. Or a heroine I mentioned before, we get requests for, like, characters who don’t want to have children, because so many books end up with an epilogue or a Happy Ever After where then they’re pregnant, or they’re adopting, or they’re whatever. So I tend to, the notes that I usually take about a book are not – are certainly, you know, what makes it good: I like the characters or I like the humor, whatever – but a lot of it is, how will this fit into what somebody specific is looking for?
Jess and Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: Which is a different kind of a way to read, but for me it hasn’t diminished my enjoyment at all.
Jess: Yeah. I end – actually, the, I, I will say that I, I read that way but in reverse? I look at what I have and think of books that I can read that are going to be, fall under that similar theme, or I read one book and I go, okay, I can talk about more books like this; let’s see if I have any? And that’s sort of how I work forward, especially with, with the newsletter, but also if Trisha or I have, have mentioned a type of book, like, I think maybe we should be talking about aro/ace and gray sexualities soon, Trisha! [Laughs]
Trisha: Yeah. Yeah. Is that, is that like a show note for Thursday, Jess?
Jess: I, I think maybe.
[Laughter]
Trisha: We’re getting, we’re knocking up, up on the time where Jess and I will start corresponding over email about our next episode, so, so thanks, Sarah, for providing the platform for us to begin that conversation. Appreciate it!
Sarah: Any time! Not a problem! ‘Cause you’re never going to run out of things to talk about with romance.
Trisha: No.
Jess: Mm-mm.
Sarah: I recently had a, a, an email from a listener who told me that they figured out that they were demisexual because of romance? Because they weren’t –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – comfortable with the sex scenes in a book unless the emotional work and foundation had already been in place before the sex scene. So –
Jess: Mmm.
Sarah: – [laughs] – way back in the day, there used to be the Zebra paperbacks, and they had a postcard in the middle of the book where you could tear the postcard out and subscribe to the Zebra paperbacks. These were, these were the ones that were almost always fuchsia and teal, and, like, the water was exploding in some suggestive way on the cover, but you used to be able –
Trisha: Sure.
Sarah: – to find a sex scene right around the postcard. It was always dead center –
Trisha: Huh.
Sarah: – of the book.
Trisha: Oh, that’s real funny.
Sarah: Five to ten pages either side of the postcard. But this reader preferred when they were in the latter three-quarters. Like, you had to work –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – to get to the sex scene. And they said, you know, I realized I would read books where they have sex in the beginning, and then that’s the cause of the problem, and it made them supremely uncomfortable and really dislike the book, and the first thought was, well, I guess I’m a prude, but no, it turns out there’s a word for this, and I’m like, I love that romance and the plot structure of romance helps you illuminate your sexuality, and then you learn there’s a whole, like, word for it.
Jess and Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: it’s amazing, and the portrayal, the, the varying portrayals of sexuality in romance are slowly growing as well, so you’re not ever going to run out of things to talk about. It’s pretty nifty.
Jess: Yeah, it really is.
Trisha: Yeah! It’s, yeah, that’s super cool. So is there – you would know this, you guys both would know this better than I do – there’s the rumor of, like, the sex by sixty rule? Like, that by sixty percent of the way through the book, the couple has to have had sex? I actually checked on my Kindle, and it usually does happen that way. [Laughs]
Sarah: That wouldn’t surprise me, but I didn’t know that was considered a rule!
Trisha: Oh, I feel like I heard that on panels at, like, RT a couple – people would kind of joke about it. I mean, I don’t think anybody uses it as a hard and fast rule?
Jess: Yeah.
Sarah: Right.
Trisha: Usually –
Sarah: Boom-tish.
Trisha: – I write, I will watch, I will check and see when the first sex scene happens; like, I’ll check down at my percentage. Usually I’m at fifty-seven, fifty-eight, you know.
Sarah: Yep!
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Ten pages either side of the postcard in the middle!
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: Yep.
Sarah: Yep. That, that, you know, it doesn’t surprise me. Unless it’s in the, unless it’s in the cover copy, you know, they were caught in a compromising position and now they’re married or, you know, they –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: Yeah.
[Laughter]
Sarah: When the banging, when the, when the banging happens early, it’s usually flagged –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – in the cover copy somehow.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: Oh, that’s true!
Sarah: Yep.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: Huh!
Sarah: Yep. So what would you love to do with your show in the future if, you know, time zones, money, Wi-Fi connections were no issue at all? Are there any things you wish you could do with your show?
Jess: I have no imagination, so I mean –
[Laughter]
Sarah: That’s not true! What are you talking about?
Jess: I really –
Trisha: Well, I’ll tell you what: I’ll, I’ll start, Jess, and maybe it will spark, ‘cause I know for sure you have imagination, and I was thinking about this a little bit. I will say my thoughts are not super interesting or imaginative, but I, I do wish we could have, like I said, the, the conversation that we had with Rebekah was so interesting, I –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – it’s not necessarily that I want us to shift over to become a podcast that, you know, has authors regularly, but if we could kind of like beam someone in for like one segment about one thing. You know, I, ‘cause we are so reader-focused, and Jess and I are both readers, so we don’t want to swing too far the other way, and there are also so many great podcasts – yours being the prime example, Sarah – of people who are talking with authors and interviewing them, but there is, once in a while we’ll have a topic where I think it would be super interesting just to be able to, like, for fifteen minutes talk with some person and get their insight and kind of move on.
I also think it would be really interesting – and we may get to this point eventually, but – to do, like, Book Riot genre crossover episodes?
Sarah: Oh, that would be so nifty! Where, like –
Trisha: Yeah! Like –
Sarah: – you make each other read a book in your genres and then discuss?
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Oh my gosh, that’d be amazing!
Trisha: Yeah. So Sharifah and Jenn did a, an episode of SFF Yeah! where they did sci-fi/paranormal romance, and Sharifah had never read it, so Jenn offered her some pretty specific examples, and they read, like, Nalini Singh and maybe Holley Trent? It wasn’t, no, it wasn’t – it was Shelly Laurenston.
Jess: Mmm.
Trisha: You know, like, so they recommended these books, and that was really fun, because there is so much overlap in the genres, and, you know, who knows? We may end up doing that some day.
But the other thing that I don’t even know exactly how we would do it or how we would figure it out, but I feel like there’s this sort of strange space of a type of book called, that some people refer to as women’s fiction, which is a ti-, a term that I hate so much that I actually wrote a piece for Book Riot called “’Women’s Fiction’ is Not a Thing.”
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: But that sort of kind of contemporary romance that often is about and geared toward women, and if there was a way for us to kind of, I don’t know, like, loop that in – and we’ve done it a little bit, you know. We talked about the, the new Tif Marcelo book, hap, The Key to Happily Ever After, which is great. We’ve discussed some of those kinds of books, but I feel like that’s a contingent of book that people don’t put into literary fiction –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – so it doesn’t get discussed that way, but it doesn’t fit exactly into a genre. And I don’t know; I just, there are so many – Beverly Jenkins writes some of that, you know, content, and I don’t know. I think I wish that there was a way for us to kind of highlight some of the work being done in that realm –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – but because it’s not romance it can be a little tricky. So I don’t know. Maybe, who knows, some day. But yeah, those are some of the things that I sometimes think about when I’m thinking about what we’re doing and, and what maybe we could do next.
Jess: Yeah, see, those are all great ideas, and why I often give Trisha the lead when we’re recording our podcast, because she has these great ideas, and it’s like, yeah, I never really thought of that!
[Laughter]
Trisha: No, it’s just ‘cause you’re so tired from doing the newsletter. [Laughs] Jess is like, Jess is all tapped out twice a week trying to put all of that together.
Jess: Yeah. Yeah, I guess –
Sarah: I hear you.
Jess: – I can, I can reach brain-dead status by Thursday. But I try to actually be present. [Laughs]
Trisha: No, you do an amazing – I don’t know how you do it!
Jess: I don’t know either. The, the genre crossovers are kind of cool, and, like, I like the idea of having, like, the overarching theme of a specific podcast episode. We’ve, we haven’t really done that before. It’s like, today we’re doing the paranormal episode, because Trisha and I know nothing about it! You know, like that kind of thing.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: So –
Trisha: Yeah.
Jess: – you know, it would be good to sort of explore other ways we can frame the podcast but still manage to get all of the stuff we talk about on a regular basis in. It’s really hard, because, like, we sort of set, set up this, this framework that people are used to. How to get out of the box while still holding onto it.
Sarah: Yeah.
Jess: Yeah.
Sarah: I can understand that. So what are you reading that you want to tell people about? Any book you want. Have fun.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: Any book.
Jess: Any book.
Trisha: Man. I, I will do like half time on two different books, ‘cause the books are very different, but also the authors are at, at very different places? So the first is a book I finished a few weeks ago called Rebel by Beverly Jenkins –
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – which is –
Sarah: Oooh!
Trisha: – a wonderful book about a, a woman who comes south in Reconstruction era, so just post the Civil War; so she comes from New York down to New Orleans. She’s a teacher, and while her fiancé is away she’s going to go down to New Orleans and do some teaching. And then, you know, she meets – again, I’m terrible at names – she meets a man who turns out to be a hero –
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: – and he is wonderful, and all of the plans kind of fall away, but part of the reason that I, I wanted to mention it is that I think we are in such an amazing place of so many wonderful new debut authors, and so many romance writers are doing such interesting things that it would be easy for somebody like Beverly Jenkins, who is essentially, I mean, she’s largely responsible for a lot of the direction that romance has taken in the last couple of decades. Like, she’s just done such good work, and I think people could, because she’s not the new and trendy thing, books like Rebel could get left behind, but I, it’s so good. She’s just such an amazing writer, and she does so much history and research that I, I think it’s worth checking out, even if, you know, it’s, it may not end up being the, the flashiest, shiniest book that you, you come across. It’s so, so good. And it’s a great place to start if you haven’t read her books, so that’s one.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: And my other half of time recommendation is a book that I just started this morning called Trashed by Mia Hopkins.
Jess: Mmm.
Trisha: So I am currently reading it, and I, I, you know, I’m four, five chapters in, so I can’t say much about it, but I will say that there’s, it’s, it’s a really interesting juxtaposition to Beverly Jenkins, because Mia is a, this is her second book, and she was sort of, she got a little bit screwed – I’ll just say it – ‘cause her publishing, her publisher shut down six months ago or so, and so they had published her first book Thirsty, which we did for a When in Romance book club book, and her, she has, now, she’s now self-publishing Trashed, which is the next book in the series, and I love the way that she writes, and I love the way that she writes about sort of things that you don’t see a lot in romance. Her, her heroes in her first two books are both convicted felons who have served time.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: They’re both trying to navigate the system without a driver’s license, because you don’t have a driver’s license anymore, and trying to find a new job and, you know, all of these things that romance heroes often have things kind of work out for them in a way, and these guys just have to work so hard and fight so hard and –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Trisha: – Mia’s just such a great author that she’s in a very different place in her career than Beverly Jenkins is, but I think she is, I, I hope that she continues to, to write and publish, because she just has such a unique and interesting voice, and so far, five chapters in, Trashed by Mia Hopkins, big thumbs-up from me.
Sarah: [Laughs] Excellent!
Jess: Sounds good, sounds good. I’ve, I’ve been sort of holding on to Trashed as kind of like, I will read this before it comes out, but not too far before it comes out. [Laughs]
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: It’s hard when you want to –
Trisha: Yeah, I think it comes out in July.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s hard when you want to talk about a book and it’s like you can’t, ‘cause there’s no one to talk about it with.
Jess: Yeah. [Laughs]
Trisha: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. But we’ll get those preorder numbers up for, for Trashed. But yeah, I do, that’s, that’s a good point, Jess. I do think it comes out in July, so be ready, everybody!
Jess: Yes, be ready! I am reading, I’m, I’m in the middle of two books right now. One I started this morning, actually, and one that I’ve been reading in smaller bits. The one that I started this morning is Under His Protection by LaQuette. It’s the first book I’ve read of hers, although she’s got a lot in a lot of different places, and I remember I bought it a long time ago, and I remember pimping it out, telling people to read and then just, like, not being in the mood for that kind of book because the hero – it’s a male/male romance, and the heroes are a police officer and the district attorney that he’s protecting from a group that’s trying to kill him, so it was like, I’m not, I’m not in the mood for cops right now. I probably picked it up when it was a time where nobody was in the mood for cops. But I was just, I was scrolling through my endless, endless Kindle app this morning and was like, you know what, I think I’m going to pick that up, and I am really enjoying it so far. Both of the main characters are compelling, and neither of them is like that kind of man that you just don’t, you, you can’t with right now? You know, they’re both, like, good people.
Sarah: Yeah.
Jess: They, they both have egos, but they’re not, like, assholes about it, and – [laughs] – and, you know, this, it’s romantic suspense with the whole somebody’s-trying-to-kill-him thing, but it’s, it’s sort of like what you were talking about Sarah: there aren’t dead bodies and, and that kind of thing, so it’s, it’s –
Sarah: Yeah, no intestines, no entrails. Yeah.
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Jess: Yeah, yeah. So, so far, and it’s, it’s, like, got really good kind of family dynamics happening in the spot that I stopped reading, and I’m really in love with Elijah’s family, so I hope to experience a little more of that, probably later today. [Laughs]
And the book that I’ve been reading in pieces is Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune by Roselle Lim, and it’s a beautiful book. I am really looking forward to getting really deep into the meat of it, but it starts out really heavy. Natalie’s mother dies, and she has to go back and sort of deal with her grief with being away from a community, with having not spoken to her mother in years, and then –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jess: – like, all of that happening, and trying to figure out what to do with her life, and then there’s supposed to be a love interest coming along, like, and I haven’t gotten to that part yet, so – [laughs] it’s, it’s kind of like, I’m really enjoying Roselle Lim’s writing, and I’m loving the feeling of the, like the, the way that she grasps Chinatown in San Francisco and this feeling of being a neighbor and being part of a community, but then also that really deep heart, heart-weary kind of grief that she’s dealing with, so I’m reading it in, like, ten-, fifteen-page segments, ‘cause that’s about all I can do.
Sarah: Yeah. On one hand it’s like a sign –
Jess: I mean –
Sarah: – of something really powerful in the writing, and on the other hand it’s like, ooh, got to pace myself.
Jess: Yeah.
Trisha: [Laughs] I mean, I selfishly ask, is there anything you’re reading, Sarah, that you’re excited about?
Sarah: Ooh! Well, you know all the book titles just flew out of my head –
Trisha: Oh sure.
Sarah: – so I can’t tell you. All right, so let’s see –
Trisha: That happens.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: You could pull up the Help a Bitch Out segment.
Jess: Yeah.
Sarah: So the one with the cover that’s blue, and then there’s a dress – that one.
Trisha: Oh perfect. Excellent.
Sarah: Okay –
Trisha: Done.
Sarah: – got you. All right, so one of my favorite new historical mystery series with a pretty well-developing romance that continues is the Kat Holloway series by Jennifer Ashley. Jennifer Ashley wrote The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie?
Trisha: Ohhh, yeah!
Sarah: And then this is, I think the, the most recent one just came out last week. It’s called Death in Kew Gardens, but there’s three books and a novella. The novella is called A Soupcon of Poison, so if you want to get a taste of the series, what it’s like, Kat Holloway is a Victorian cook, which is a weird position below stairs, because it comes with a lot of authority and power, but you’re still a member of the servant class. So she is extremely highly sought after because she was trained by a really, really well-known chef in London in the Victorian era, and people just keep getting killed, it’s super annoying, and she’s really good at figuring out what happened, but she has very limited spheres in which she can operate, because she still has to make food for everyone above stairs plus all of the servants, and she’s training people, and she’s got people that she has to manage and train and – you know, she has management problems and then management problems, ‘cause she has to deal with these rich people who have hired her who want ridiculous things like, I’ve decided to throw a dinner party for three, thirty people tonight, and she’s got four hours, and she’s like –
Jess and Trisha: Hmm.
Sarah: – I have literally nothing in the house, so you are all terrible. On top of that –
Trisha: Sure.
Sarah: – there’s murder. And it’s so good, because there’s this wonderful blend of a romance that’s ongoing between her and this character, and you’re really not sure if he’s, like, entirely trustworthy; there’s food porn; and then there’s competence porn, because Kat is so –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – competent, and it just, I love it. It’s like this warm, fuzzy, I am in the hands of a writer who knows what she’s doing, but I’m also watching and learning about a character who, even though she doesn’t always know what to do, tries to make the best choice possible to care for everyone around her, so there’s this sort of warm, fuzzy comfort read that comes with it, even with the murder! And there’s a fair amount of murder. But it’s not too much; there’s not a lot of entrails, basically. My entrail threshold has not been hit. So I love that book, so if you’re looking for a romantic historical mystery series to try, that one is up there with Veronica Speedwell and Charlotte Holmes from Sherry Thomas. Like, I love those three –
Trisha: Yeah.
Sarah: – so much! And then there’s Her Other Secret by HelenKay Dimon, which –
Trisha: Oh, I have that!
Sarah: Okay. Suh-moking hot cover, and I am not a cover person.
Trisha: Yeah.
Sarah: Generally –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – waxed man chest does exactly zero for me. I have never been in the audience for the guys who have incredible muscle definition in a period of time when that wasn’t really possible, plus waxing and, and, and, like, this sort of –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – skin gleam that I know comes – I just, I’ve never been a waxed, shiny man chest cover person. It’s – I understand what that’s communicating – this is a romance – but that’s not necessarily alluring to me as a reader. But this cover –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – has man chest, but also he’s got really, really, like, he’s got glasses. I won’t lie: it works. I am not ashamed to say that it’s the addition of the glasses that’s, that’s working for me. He’s wearing jeans, he has no shirt, he’s really hot, and he’s got glasses. It’s the glasses; apparently, this was the secret.
[Laughter]
Sarah: I didn’t know!
Trisha: Now we know.
Sarah: Now you know! It’s, if you just stick some glasses on some waxed man chest, I’m all good. But HelenKay Dimon writes what I think of as adventure suspense? So there’s, there’s romantic suspense with murder and intrigue, and then there’s suspense that has a fair amount of agency on both characters, and that’s what she writes: both characters have a lot of things to do in her books, and her heroines –
Trisha: Uh-huh.
Sarah: – are always smart and smartasses, which I really like.
Jess: [Laughs]
Sarah: So you might like that one as well. So those are, that’s what I can recommend right now. I’m about to start Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes.
Trisha: Ah, same!
Sarah: But I read a very early draft of that book, so I’m, like, curious to see how much I remember of having read it, so I can’t review it because I read an early draft, but I’m so looking forward –
Trisha: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – to rereading it.
Jess: [Laughs]
Trisha: Yeah, I’ve already heard great things. I’m excited about that one.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I want to thank Trisha and Jess for hanging out with me and answering all my questions. And I want to thank you for listening because you’re completely awesome! Have I told you that? You’re so great. Thank you for listening to the show.
You can find me at [email protected]. You can leave me a message or tell me a joke at 201-371-3272, but more importantly, you can find the When in Romance podcast wherever you get your podcasts or on bookriot.com, and of course I will link to it in the show notes. You can find Trisha Brown on Book Riot, on Instagram @trishahaleybrown, or on Twitter at Trisha Haley B-R-W-N [@TrishaHaleyBrwn], and you can find Jess Pryde on Book Riot, on Twitter @jessisreading, and on her website, Jessica Pryde, P-R-Y-D-E, dot com [jessicapryde.com].
This week’s episode was brought to you by Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe. After her fiancé left her at the altar, romance author and bookstore owner Maddie Hanson swore off men, until an influential blogger going by the name of Silver Fox leaves a scathing review of her latest book and accuses Maddie of not knowing anything about passion. Desperate to prove him wrong, Maddie decides to pursue not one but three handsome men in her store’s book club. Mary Ann Marlowe puts a modern spin on beloved classics like The Shop Around the Corner and You’ve Got Mail with a sparkling tale of romantic fiction full of flirty fun and rom-com action, perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date and Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game. Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe is on sale wherever books are sold. Find out more at kensingtonbooks.com.
The podcast transcript this week is brought to you by the wonderful people in the Patreon community. Thank you, y’all! If you would like to join the community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Your support means a tremendous amount to me and helps keep the show going, making sure that every episode is accessible to everyone. And thank you, garlicknitter, for transcribing all of the words that are coming out of my mouth right now.
The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is called “Fishing at Orbost,” and it is by the Peatbog Faeries from their album Dust. You can find all the things Peatbog at their website, peatbogfaeries.com, or you can find this album on iTunes if you wish to buy it and have it for your very own.
I will have links to the episodes that we talked about, to the When in Romance podcast and the other podcasts that they mentioned, as well as all of the books we mentioned in this episode – and wow, were there a lot – in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.
But before we go, I have a bad joke. I love it. It’s bad joke season. I’m really excited. Are you ready for this terrible joke? It’s super bad. I’m really excited.
What are the best vegetables to sleep under?
What are the best vegetables to sleep under?
Canopies.
[Laughs] So stupid! I could hear my kids groaning if I emailed them this joke, which I did earlier today. [Laughs evilly] That is from Probablyathrowaway15 on Reddit. Thank you, wonderful person, for posting this terrible joke! Can of peas!
We will be back next week with more podcast and more things romance at smartbitchestrashybooks.com, but in the meantime, on behalf of all of us, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week!
[pleasant music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Am I the only one having problems downloading from iTunes? TGIF!
I fangirl flailed and squealed at this marriage of two of my favorite podcasts! Great discussion y’all I really enjoyed listening to it. Hopefully there will be more soon!
I always try to be aware of any CW or TW when I’m recommending any book not just romance because I like the warnings myself. Which isn’t to say that I won’t read it but at least I can read it prepared.
Oh god, Catherine Coulter. Definitely remember fisking (before fisking was a word) one of her novels during some down time in art class in high school. Even in 1998 (and when I was 16 and really had no real point of comparison) they were DREADFUL. So much “I know you want this, baby,” and he kept calling her a “big girl” in a seriously unflattering way. So gross.
I recently reread Morning Glory and was surprised by a few scenes whose content I’d forgotten. I’d still recommend it but perhaps with a caution.
Thanks for another enjoyable interview and for the transcript.