369. It Never Stops Being Magical: History, Books, and Romance with Olivia Waite

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome to episode number 369 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and with me today is Olivia Waite. We are going to talk about everything. We talk about being romance nerds, lost historical details, the hidden arts of embroidery and sewing, textile porn romance, and about making a home. We squee about TV shows we love, we talk about books we adore, and we talk about what she’s working on now, both in her column at The Seattle Review of Books and in her romance fiction, and we take a right turn into Finnish declensions, because why not, right? Right!

I will have links to where you can find Olivia Waite and most especially her online writing in the show notes, so do not miss the opportunity to read her column; it is fabulous. And you can find the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

This episode is brought to you by The Blacksmith Queen by G. A. Aiken. In a thrilling new feminist fantasy romance series, G. A. Aiken debuts a world in which a heroine is only as good as her grit, resolve, strength, and skill with a hammer. Prophesied to be the queen that saves her land and her people, blacksmith Keeley Smythe and her trusty centaur friend in human form will have to unite for the forthcoming war. Filled with her signature snarky wit and epic plotting, G. A. Aiken’s Scarred Earth Saga is not to be missed. The King is dead; all hail The Blacksmith Queen, and be sure to pledge your allegiance and enter to win an exclusive Blacksmith Queen pin at kensingtonbooks.com/scarredearthsaga, and of course I will link to that in the show notes too. The Blacksmith Queen by G. A. Aiken – a book, by the way, that Amanda loved – is available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit gaaiken.com.

Now, I have a bit of a special second sponsor here: this episode’s transcript is brought to you by FabFitFun, a seasonal subscription box that’s customized to your tastes with full-size premium beauty, fitness, fashion, and lifestyle products. You get over two hundred dollars in product for $49.99 a season, and if you use code TRASHYBOOKS, you get ten bucks off your first box at fabfitfun.com.

Now, here is some behind-the-scenes info: last time I talked about FabFitFun I finished the episode, and then I turned the entry over to Amanda for final formatting, and she messaged me and said, did you know I’m a FabFitFun subscriber? To which I said, uh, no, I did not. So she was cool enough to connect with me for a few minutes to talk about it.

Sarah, now interviewing Amanda: So long have you been a subscriber to FabFitFun?

Amanda: I’ve been a subscriber for a year, so I started last winter about this time.

Sarah: [Laughs] I love it! I had no idea! I’m doing all of this work with them; I had no idea you were a subscriber. That’s so cool! What do you like about it?

Amanda: Yeah! I – so the thing is, if you subscribe for a year at one time, you get the ability to really customize the stuff that you get –

Sarah: Nice.

Amanda: – which I happen to love. [Laughs] So usually you will have four to five items that you can customize three to four options. It really makes you think, like, do I want this box to be more skincare-oriented? Do I want it to be more, like, houseware-oriented? Or, like, health-oriented? So you can really tailor it to what you’re hoping to get, so you can customize certain things, and then there are certain things that every box has that you’ll get that you won’t really know in advance.

Sarah: So what was your favorite product in this fall’s FabFitFun box?

Amanda: There were two. One – [laughs] – I didn’t think I’d love it as much as I did, but I picked, one of the items I picked was a hair towel wrap, and I have very thick hair, and when I wash it, you know, I do that little move with the towel: I wrap it all up, and it’s a precarious situation because I have so much hair. But this, like, wrap has an elastic band. You twist it, and you secure the end of the wrap in the back with, like, a button, so everything stays in place; it’s tidied up. The, like, towel is, like, a very, like, soft fiber towel, and I’ve been using it pretty much every time I’ve washed my hair.

And then I also picked some earrings; they’re like ear crawlers? So –

Sarah: Oh, I loved those! I saw the picture.

Amanda: Yes!

Sarah: I thought they were beautiful.

Amanda: So the post starts at, if you have more than one ear hole, like piercing hole, it starts at the one closest to your face, and then the earrings look like rhinestones on, like, a gold vine, and it goes up your lobe. I think they’re beautiful, so those are the two items that I picked personally out of my options that I got and have really enjoyed.

Sarah: So do you recommend FabFitFun to people if people are asking about subscription boxes? Do you recommend FabFitFun to them?

Amanda: Yes! I think the value is really good, especially with the customizing options. I’ve gotten these, like, gorgeous ceramic, like, west elm bowls before. I’ve gotten a traveling hair straightener. They have some really good items, and some, like, really expensive skincare stuff – [laughs] – that comes in these boxes. So yeah, I would definitely recommend this, and I like how there’s a wide breadth of things. It’s not, like, strictly a makeup box or a clothing box or, or something like that. You get a nice variety of things.

Sarah: Awesome! Thank you, ma’am.

Amanda: You’re welcome!

[music]

Sarah: So Amanda loved hers, and I loved my FabFitFun box, so maybe you’d like to get one for yourself! The FabFitFun box makes a wonderful gift for yourself or for someone you love, and there’s extra membership benefits at fabfitfun.com. So if you use code TRASHYBOOKS at fabfitfun.com, you’ll get ten dollars off your first box; that’s ten dollars off with code TRASHYBOOKS at fabfitfun.com.

Now, my impromptu interview with Amanda has made this intro a little bit long, so I’m going to hurry up through the other things, because I’m sure if you listen to this show you know the normal things I say, but I do have a compliment for Josh M., and I don’t want to miss out on that.

Josh, your thoughtfulness, cleverness, and style are world famous, as is your habit of making people laugh, so don’t stop doing any of those things.

I will have information at the end of the show about what you’re listening to, how to support the show, what’s coming up, and, of course, an absolutely horrific joke that was so bad I made Amanda groan at me in text; it was great. I will also have links to many of the things we talk about in this episode. I really enjoyed this interview, and I hope you do too.

So let’s get to it! On with my interview with Olivia Waite.

[music]

Olivia Waite: Hello there, everyone! I’m Olivia Waite. I’m a romance writer. I also write sci-fi/fantasy and a romance review column in The Seattle Review of Books. I dabble in mostly historical romance, little bit of paranormal, occasionally branch out to contemporary, but kind of all over the map! And I’m, yeah, pretty much, I’m what you’d call a romance nerd? We don’t tend to use that term, but I’m a person who not only reads a lot of romance and writes a lot of romance, but looks up academic essays on romance and gets really into the history of romance. [Laughs]

Sarah: Those are fun! I love academic articles on romance!

Olivia: Right?! We have so many more than we had even a few years ago. It’s very exciting.

Sarah: I remember ages and ages and age ago, there was a one-day conference at Princeton about romance, and I’m going to have to look this up and put this in the show notes, but there was an academic who posted, who did an entire presentation about the version of the Middle East that appeared in Harlequin Presents.

Olivia: Oh my gosh, yes! I’ve seen that; that essay is now in JSTOR. It’s all about sheikh romances.

Sarah: [Whispers] Yes!

Olivia: There’s a rebuttal from somebody who writes sheikh romances. It’s –

Sarah: Yes!

Olivia: – it’s just a stunning, a stunning thing. That’s the, that’s on, Ya-, I, on – I’m going to mispronounce – it’s Yasper I call it in my head?

Sarah: IASPR, yes.

Olivia: Yeah.

Sarah: Or Jasper, maybe?

Olivia: Yeah, that, that introductory I, it’s always a little bit – [laughs] –

Sarah: It’s going to throw you off.

Olivia: There are so many good Jaspers in romance.

Sarah: Right? So what are some of your favorite things to look for in academic examinations of romance?

Olivia: Well, I am really interested in trope overview, so that view of the Middle East through romance is really interesting to me. A website that I follow called Nursing Clio, they’re soliciting pitches right now for historians to read romances set in their areas of expertise and then talk about how the romances reflect the reality or not?

Sarah: I wish I could describe my face right now. Oh my gosh! [Laughs]

Olivia: Well, I was sort of pushing them. I’ve been retweeting, going, come on, guys! Some historian, do this! But they’re looking at people like Alyssa Cole, and I’m sure they’re doing some Regencies or Victorians, but I forget who. But, yeah, I’m just so excited to see what they come with, and it hasn’t come out yet, but they’ve been teasing it for like a month.

Sarah: Oh, that’s so mean! Teasing! Like, don’t you understand we have nerdery we need to do?

Olivia: Right?! No! You can’t tell us what you’re going to be doing and then expect us to wait. I mean, I guess we do that all the time. But we’re, we’re tired of it! We have no more bandwidth for that!

Sarah: I’m not going to remember! That’s the thing, and, like, unless, unless Present Sarah sets Future Sarah up, Future Sarah will be like, wait, what? What day is it? What do I do? What’s my name? Huh? No? Hmm.

Olivia: Oh yeah. Calendar reminders are the savior of everything these days.

Sarah: Ohhh my God. [Laughs] So let us talk about your book. Congratulations on your latest book.

Olivia: Oh, thank you!

Sarah: It’s so, so exciting to see how many wonderful reviews there were of it –

Olivia: Oh, well –

Sarah: – and apparently there were a lot of people in the world who were waiting for astronomy-loving lady nerds.

Olivia: Yeah! Like, it, it was the easiest pitch I’ve ever made. I was just like, oh, hey, astronomer, embroidery, here’s the title, and, you know, my editor was like, yes! Yes, send me that!

Sarah: Sounds great! Yeah, I’ll take two!

Olivia: Yeah, and it was just, yeah. It was, it was fun to write; apparently, it’s fun to read. I just kind of, I decided I was going to make something as pretty as I wanted. I was going to describe everything I’d always wanted to describe. I was going to have two heroines, which is what I’d been looking for, ‘cause I – basically, I wanted to read this book, so I started asking people for it. I asked reviewers if they knew anything; I asked publishers if they had anything to send me, ‘cause I’d started the column by then, and I was like, hey, publishers, send me all your f/f historicals, and they’re like, crickets, crickets, crickets.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: And I was like, come on, guys!

Sarah: I know all the words to that song. I wrote the novella I wrote because I wanted a –

Olivia: That’s right! Exactly! 

Sarah: – Hanukkah story set at summer camp, and there wasn’t one, so I, I decided I would make one.

Olivia: But now we’re getting more of them, ‘cause people said –

Sarah: I know!

Olivia: – now there’s, now there’s one! Why is there only one? And then….

Sarah: Yes! So do you remember where you began with your book? Like, what was your point of entry into writing this romance? Did you start with the astronomy, or did you start with some of the other elements? I mean, one of the things I like about it is how much, like you said, you described all the things you wanted to describe. You pay so much attention to the little individual things that make up somebody’s day, that make up somebody’s life, that have meaning that no one in a, in a hundred years will know about.

Olivia: Well, and that’s the thing that always kills me about history is the stuff that we don’t know about, the day-to-day, the ephemeral stuff that’s vanished. I remember, it may have been Rose Lerner who asked at one point, like, how did somebody throw something away in, like, 1799? And it’s like, oh my God! There’s a, there’s this whole story of infrastructure there for how to dispose of trash, and it’s also time-period specific.

Sarah: Yeah!

Olivia: And, like, oh my gosh! Even thinking about that feels like it bends your brain, and so this book had really quite a long arc in terms of development. It started, before I was even published, when virgin heroes were kind of a thing people were talking about, and I wanted to do an older woman and a young virgin hero, and he was going to be a classical scholar, and there was this secondary queer couple in that book, and I thought, oh, that’s fun! And I ended up writing other things, and I ended up moving on, but I kind of kept the idea around because it was just, it just felt good in a way? And it wasn’t done yet, and I knew, so I, I just moved on. And then I started reading more f/f romance, and I came out as bisexual, and that was, that’s a whole journey in and of itself, and then when I started looking for more f/f historicals and not finding one, I thought, well, I, I just finished this manuscript, I was sending it out around, and I said, well, what am I going to write next? ‘Cause that’s always the question: what’s the next book? So I, I sat down, and I’m like, well, but what if that old idea was an f/f? What if I changed that young scholar to a woman? Well, she probably couldn’t do Classics; Classics was kind of a male bastion, like, et cetera, et cetera at the time, all the Eton and Cambridge stuff, but there’s plenty of other stuff she could have been studying much more easily, so, like, Mathematics or, ooh! Astronomy, and I’ve always loved astronomy. Like –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Olivia: – big-time, deep, stuck-constellations-on-my-own-childhood-bedroom-ceiling loved, so you had the astronomy, and then you had Catherine, who I wrote because I’d seen every heroine who always was like, ugh, embroidery! How boring and feminine! And I’m like, I actually like embroidery? I like –

Sarah: I love embroidery!

Olivia: Right? It’s satisfying; it’s fun. You can do it really simply; you can do really complex stuff.

Sarah: You’re stabbing something over and over and over.

Olivia: Exactly! Sharp implements and repressed hatred. You start doing research on historical embroidery and you find all of these really terrifying samplers, like, the children made going, yep, I understand that if die, you’ll all be sorry, and you’re like, what?! You’re like twelve! What are you doing?

Sarah: Yep. Oh yeah. I follow so many embroidery activists on Instagram, and it is so much fun.

Olivia: Oh yeah! Yeah, there’s this, there’s this whole, there’s, well, there’s a whole history. There’s a wonderful book called The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker, and it’s all about both embroidery as an expectation of femininity and embroidery as a subversion of feminine expectations.

Sarah: [Whispers] Yes!

Olivia: And it’s just, it’s a massive and deeply important book that I cannot recommend highly enough. It is super interesting.

Sarah: And there’s also the aspect of embroidery where you’re doing something that’s feminine and also necessary, because at that time you weren’t going to have things made of cloth if you didn’t sew them together in the way that you needed them to be, but they didn’t need to be –

Olivia: Yes.

Sarah: – embellished. They didn’t need to be decorated, but then they were, and in ways that are so personal and with so much meaning that has been lost.

Olivia: Exactly! Like, the, the amount of people who could afford to have things custom-made was vanishingly small.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Olivia: And so, and then even then, if you could afford to make things custom-made, like, there was usually some little bit of decoration that you would add or your lady’s maid would add to make it unique and special? And, you know, you would, you would do this as a gift; you would do this as, like, part of, part of a courtship to show that you’d essentially done something with your time? Like, if you were growing up, for instance, there was this idea that, oh, I’m a good marriage prospect because I can make your home actually look welcoming and comfortable and attractive. The, there really is this idea of home-making. Like, you have to make everything in that house. You have to make –

Sarah: Yes!

Olivia: – the pillowcases; you have to make the cushions. Like, we joke about embroidering cushions, but, you know, unless you are among that one percent in the Regency, those cushions, if you don’t make ‘em, you don’t have them. You just don’t! It’s just –

Sarah: Yeah! Absolutely!

Olivia: And we, we lose track of that. We think, oh yeah, we’re going to run down to the Target, but oh my gosh, there’s no Target in the Regency! [Laughs]

Sarah: Nope! And, and the, like, I’m, I’m cross-stitching a pillow that I, I went with a pattern that – how’s this for the 21st century? – with a pattern that I accessed from an English magazine that I can’t get in the United States, but I can access digitally through my public library system.

Olivia: Oh yeah.

Sarah: Like, if I said those words in that order to somebody in the centuries that you’re writing about, they would be like, I’m sorry, what?! [Laughs] That doesn’t even make any sense! But I, like, looking at the process of sewing this, this cushion, I don’t own a sewing machine, and I’m like, well, you know, women did this for hundreds and thousands of years without a sewing machine. Maybe you can do this. It’s really hard, did you know?

Olivia: It’s super hard, yeah.

Sarah: It’s really fucking hard! [Laughs]

Olivia: No, it’s like, wow, I can sew a straight seam. Yeah, that’s an achievement! You have to –

Sarah: Yeah, that’s –

Olivia: – a lot of hours to do that! [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s really hard work! [Laughs] So in addition to astronomy and embroidery –

Olivia: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – what, where did you begin with the characters? How did they – I, I, I hate saying, like, okay, so how did you think of this character? Because I know for me, speaking solely for myself, I needed to have imagined the characters that I was writing about as, almost as if they were fully developed people –

Olivia: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – before I could actually put them in situations. So, like, when writers talk about, well, I hear my characters talking, I’m like, oh yeah, I totally get it; understand totally; but I never presume that, that the same process happens for other writers, so where, where did you create these characters? How did they come in to the, come in to the story?

Olivia: Well, even before this book, all of my most successful characters have been people who have something to do, and so I think I really connect with people who really have something they want to be doing, and they’re prevented, or they, they haven’t done it big enough yet. So I have a past painter heroine; I have a past, a past heroine who’s a demon in Hell, who is, her job is punishment, and she’s just been promoted, so she has to prove that she deserves this new, and, this new responsibility, and her job is to punish this Regency rake who’s been condemned for lust, and, you know, it goes from there.

So for me, the key to this book was also, what are these heroines setting out to do? This isn’t just about, this isn’t just, like, a quiet, gentlemanly courtship – much as I love those books, like, all the classic Regencies and, oh my gosh, everything about Persuasion.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Olivia: Like, I think giving, giving myself, like, the leeway to write about people doing jobs was a huge leap forward. So Lucy, Lucy’s job is astronomer. She’s trying to do the star catalogues, and she’s running the mathematics and this big translation project. And with Catherine, it was more complicated, because this was a job she kind of stumbled into, but she –

Sarah: Right.

Olivia: – had all this time to fill, and she always liked it, and it was a way of connecting with her mom, and it was a way of keeping in contact with her Aunt Kelmarsh, and so – so for me, it started with what, what their kind of occupation was, and then I had to figure out, well, what kind of person would be drawn to this, would, would – what kind of person would this satisfy? And so from that you get Lucy, who’s kind of ambitious and a scrapper and, and kind of, you know, very, like, forward motion, and then Catherine’s kind of quieter and more introspective, and it takes her a long while, but she makes, she goes kind of sideways through things, but she makes good connections once she gets there? So between, like, once I had a rough sense of the two of them, then I kind of started putting them together and seeing what would happen in the dialogue. Like, you know, it’s a little bit of the seeing my characters talking, and it’s another thing of, well, I would say it’s about seeing what sparks arise? ‘Cause you can dream up character arcs and archetypes all day long, but you’re never going to know actually how they behave until you put them together and see if anything – I mean, you’ve got to, you’ve got to bang the rocks together to see sparks come out.

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: That’s, that’s how it works for me. I nev-, like, I can plan for days. I love planning books; I love outlining; I even like synopses, to be honest.

[Laughter]

Olivia: I know. Like, well, I do them first! I do them before I write the book. They’re basically my first draft. I fix a lot of plot problems that way. And then –

Sarah: That’s fascinating.

Olivia: Yeah, no, I actually have taught workshops on this before. I’m using synopses both as a starter and as edit tools, which people don’t do. Like noticing, well, okay, sit down; write down all of the events in your book in order. Notice what mistakes you’ve made. What you, what did you skip over? What did you forget? Maybe those are places that need shoring up, that need to be more dynamic, things like that. So that’s, that’s getting a little off-topic, I think, but –

Sarah: Nah, there’s no such thing as off-topic, but keep going.

Olivia: [Laughs] Yeah, so, so for me, it really was about starting from that kind of anchor point and then putting them together on the page and seeing where they wanted to go, and then –

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: – once I realized where they wanted to go, making it look inevitable that they get there. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes. I do the opposite: I, I write the ending, and then I figure out how they’re going to get there.

Olivia: Yeah, but that’s, that’s part of it! I mean, that’s where the synopsis comes in for me.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes sense! So wh- –

Olivia: And in a romance, you need to know that ending.

Sarah: Oh –

Olivia: That –

Sarah: – yes! [Laughs]

Olivia: – is everything.

Sarah: It, I actually had a very interesting conversation with someone who was asking me about trigger warning and content warnings on the site, which I tend to hide behind spoiler tags because the content and trigger warnings can be, themselves, spoilers of the content, especially if you’re talking about, you know, suspense or books where there’s murder.

Olivia: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It, it’s, it’s, it’s a tricky area, and it constantly evolves, and I know that there’s been articles published recently saying that, you know, trigger warnings aren’t effective, they don’t work for people, and my thought is, that may be true in other places but I don’t believe that it’s true that, that, that trigger warnings are not effective in romance, and because, and it’s all because we already know the ending. So if we already –

Olivia: Yep.

Sarah: – know the ending, we want to know about the space between us and that ending, and –

Olivia: Well, yeah!

Sarah: Exactly.

Olivia: That’s where all the magic happens, yeah.

Sarah: Exactly, so we need to know about the space between us and that ending, because we all know we’re going to go to the same point, but we don’t know how we’re going to get there, and that’s where, because so much of romance readers are, so much of, so many romance readers are looking for solace and, and safety and a, a place where they don’t have to deal with the things that are upsetting them in real life, those warnings of, herein be murder, herein be drug addiction, knowing what’s in that space helps us navigate that space, but we all have to know that we’re going to the same place in the end, because, like, as you said, that, everyone has to get to that ending. That’s why we’re reading the romances.

Olivia: Exactly! And I, I don’t know, I find content notes very valuable. I tend to get – [laughs] – I tend to experience a lot of dread if I don’t have the HEA to depend on?

Sarah: Oh gosh! [Laughs] One of my reviewers, Carrie, said that she loves romance because it does wonders for her, her anxiety to know –

Olivia: Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Sarah: – that what-, whatever she’s reading, she knows how it’s going to end.

Olivia: I think we’ve all read too much historical fiction. There was one from years back, and it was, it was about an illuminator, a manuscript illuminator, and it was so compelling in those opening chapters, and there were people you instantly loved and people you instantly hated, and you could tell from the setup that there were like four good things and four bad things that were going to happen. You could tell these people were going to be a couple, and you could tell this guy was going to try and screw it up. And in that first chapter, all of the good things had already happened and started to go downhill. All of the bad things had yet to happen, and about eight other worse things had taken place. And I’m like, you know what?

Sarah: I’m out.

Olivia: Okay, I can’t do this!

Sarah: Done. Out.

Olivia: I like these people! I’m not going to sit here and pay to watch them suffer!

Sarah: This is why I don’t watch a lot of television, because, as I’ve said many times –

Olivia: Oh God.

Sarah: – I don’t trust television writers to preserve happiness and conflict at the same pace.

Olivia: Yes. No. Prestige television is, is just a minefield of this kind of dread.

Sarah: It’s – [laughs] – it’s prestige for somebody, but it’s not for me!

[Laughter]

Olivia: No, I’ve been watching so many, like, sit-coms and Steven Universe and –

Sarah: Oh, Steven Universe! [Gasps] Movie in September! Movie in September!

Olivia: I know! Oh, I’m so excited! I’ve been rewatching the entire series, now that we know the ending, and it’s magnificent. It’s so wonderful.

Sarah: That is a show that you can rewatch and see it reflect back on itself two years in advance, and it’s just incredible.

Olivia: Oh yeah, like, you know, have you ever thought about the Cookie Cat song?

Sarah: Holy cow!

Olivia: Right?! A refugee from an interstellar war! He left his family behind! And you’re like, what? That’s in episode – what? That’s the little ice cream jingle in episode one, and what? And you’re, oh, it’s just like, you know, little head exploding emoji –

Sarah: What’s, what’s bigger than a lampshade? Like, I know there’s lampshading, but that’s bigger than a lampshade.

Olivia: No, yeah, that’s like circus-tenting.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Circus-tenting! Yes, that is exactly what that is. Have you ever watched – do you have Hulu, or do you have access to Hulu?

Olivia: Yes, we do!

Sarah: Do you, have you ever watched Letterkenny?

Olivia: Oh my gosh, we are so into that right now.

Sarah: I love it so much!

Olivia: It’s so – it’s this wonderful little alternate history. It’s almost Shakespearean, the way they use language?

Sarah: Yes!

Olivia: Oh man, it floors me.

Sarah: And I love that, I realize that the shows that I love the most have, have basic decency foundational rules to the conduct of the characters?

Olivia: Yes. Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It’s like –

Sarah: Exactly! Perfect example.

Olivia: – Letterkenny. Like –

Sarah: And Letterkenny makes those rules textual. Like, when a friend asks for help, you help them. Even if you want to –

Olivia: Yeah.

Sarah: – basically beat the crap out of them ‘cause they’ve made your life hard. These are the rules; we all abide by the rules.

Olivia: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: The rivalries will stay intact, but at the end of the day, we’re going to help each other.

Olivia: Yeah. It’s always us against the citiots. It’s always the hicks versus citiots. Like –

Sarah: Yep!

Olivia: [Laughs]

Sarah: And don’t forget the degens.

Olivia: Oh, the degens. 

Sarah: [Laughs] I was looking at –

Olivia: From upcounty.

Sarah: So I’m a, I live outside DC, and when there’s severe weather, the area really means, like, severe. Like, we have all been like, holy cow, these thunderstorms, my dogs are not in favor, so when it starts to rain I always look at the radar, and yesterday I accidentally zoomed out, and I was looking at Quebec. I’m like, oh! My God! Laval is a real place! Hey, I found where the degens from Laval are from!

[Laughter]

Olivia: Have yo useen the episode with Les Hiques.

Sarah: Oh, Les Hiques.

Back to you: what have reader responses been like for your book, and which, which ones have you really, like, enjoyed?

Olivia: Oh, it’s been absolutely wonderful. My ego is just full to bursting at this point.

[Laughter]

Sarah: That’s a good plan!

Olivia: This is easily my, like, the most reviews I’ve ever gotten, and the best reviews I’ve ever gotten. There’s the two starred reviews in the trade magazines, which were super exciting – I’d forgotten those were options! I’m so used to –

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s a thing?

Olivia: – and I’m like – [gasps] – oh my gosh! Library Journal and Booklist and, and Kirkus! Like, oh, it was just, it was wonderful. I used to, I used to comb through those when I was working in the bookstore going, ooh, this one sounds exciting! And I’m like, I’m one of those excitings now! But the –

Sarah: Isn’t that amazing?

Olivia: – the reader responses have been the ones that have been just, just next level. Like, I, I get, I get really choked up even just thinking about it, ‘cause, I mean, so many people saying, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I wanted. This book made me feel so many things. I stayed up till 4 a.m. reading this. This book kept me from murdering someone in the train station today! And I was like, ha-ha!

Sarah: Job well done.

Olivia: And my favorite one was, somebody, there was a, a woman who tagged me on Twitter, and she mentioned that she was a, an embroiderer who’s married to an astronomer, and she’s like, so this book felt like it was made for me. I was like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: – oh my gosh! It kind of was! And there was, oh, there were just so many wonderful responses, and it’s been, it’s been really gratifying. And even some of the, well, this didn’t really work for me; I think astronomy’s really boring, and I’m like, well, that’s perfect! This book is not for you! Please tell everyone! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, there are so many books that I read where I’m like, yeah, this is not for me, but I know exactly who this is for. [Evil laugh]

Olivia: Exactly. This is somebody else’s catnip. I just need to save this. It’s like, I read a Scarlett Peckham book last year. I believe it was The Duke I Tempted?

Sarah: Yeah, that’s, that’s one of hers.

Olivia: Yeah. And I’m just sitting there going, oh man, I hate these people. Like, really, really hate them.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: I disagree with every decision they make. I love the whole setup, but she’s clearly making the exact opposite decision that I would make in any given scene! And I’m like, this, this writing’s so good, I, I can’t stand it!

[Laughter]

Olivia: But I’m like, this thing is something that somebody needs. This is like, I remember I did a, a review of it for the column, and I said, this is like Wuthering Heights level of dysfunction, and she goes, yes, that’s what I’m going for! And I’m like, nailed it.

Sarah: Oh!

Olivia: This is it.

Sarah: Nice job!

Olivia: So yeah, so when somebody’s looking for really, like, dark, edgy romance that’s not full of jerk heroes, you know, I’m like, oh yeah, right over here. Gorgeous writing. Please read her books so that I don’t have to.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I know who this is for, and I know that it’s not for me, but both of these things are good.

Olivia: Exactly. Yeah, it’s just been, it’s been really wonderful. There was, there was a moment at the RWA literacy signing, and I was sitting there at my desk with a stack of books waving to the readers walking by, and this girl, like, older teens, rainbow jumpsuit walks by, and she stops, and she comes over, and she goes, look, all I know about this one is that it has two girls on the cover. And I’m like, you have come to exactly the right place. Let me write you a list of names, and I wrote down everybody I could think of that had an f/f historical or contemporary for her, and I signed her a book, and she went away to go, and I’m like, some of these people, here are the ones who are here right now –

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: – you can go and get, and she walks away, and I’m like, don’t cry, Olivia! If you cry, you’re going to ruin your makeup, and there’s a lot of people.

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s not good for your mascara if you cry!

Olivia: Yes. [Laughs]

Sarah: I have done that at book signings: had someone come up to me, and then they walk away with like a, like a roadmap. Okay, you want to go talk to this person and then go over to this table here, you’re going to want this book, and I’m like, I’m the most expensive person to know, and I’m very sorry.

Olivia: Reviewers are dangerous!

Sarah: Oh, we’re terrible, aren’t we?

Olivia: Yeah, like, every time Rebekah Weatherspoon @WOCInRomance starts tweeting new releases I’m like, ah, man, no! Book budget just bit it for a while. Just say, wave good-bye in the rearview mirror –

Sarah: Right?

Olivia: – it’s gone.

Sarah: You’re, yep.

Olivia: Yeah.

Sarah: When we do the monthly Hide Your Wallet and we all talk about what we’re really excited about, it’s like, well, I thought I had a manageable list for this month, but no! No. It is now completely in the realm of utter fantasy.

Olivia: Yep.

Sarah: You also write, as a reviewer, which we’re talking about, a column, and your column is awesome. It is so great.

Olivia: Oh, well, thank you! It’s really fun to do! [Laughs]

Sarah: Isn’t it? It is so excellent. I want to ask both about the column that you just posted, but also what you’re working on now and how you develop the, the individual columns as, as you write them.

Olivia: Well, actually, the columns, they tend to be pretty fluid. They tend to come out of either something that sparks as I’m reading those books, ‘cause, you know, like we talked about with the writing before, I, I like starting with a structure and then developing something from there –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Olivia: – so I start with five slots for books, four new ones and one older book, and it can be, they can be really old. I reviewed Mary Burchell’s Under the Stars of Paris, and that’s from like 1955, I think? 19- –

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: Yeah. And that was, that was just delightful, just a little sparkling champagne book. But one of those five slots has to go to a queer romance. One of those five slots has to go to an author of color. They cannot be the same slot. And I start with those two, and usually by looking for those two I fill the other slots up pretty quickly.

[Laughter]

Olivia: I try and plan out for release dates. I try to not be too closely tied to release dates. And usually in the course of reading whatever books I’ve, I’ve got, like, on the list that month, I find something that, that reminds me of something else that I’ve read or that somebody else has been talking about. At some point I’m going to dive a little more into, was it Jennifer Hallock’s idea of the chronotope, which is so interesting, this idea of the Regency romance or the Medieval romance as not necessarily just a reflection of history, but as a specific, a specific shared framework that we’re all using to, to say something about, about us, really.

Sarah: Ohhh! That’s really interesting!

Olivia: Oh yeah, and I may not be explaining it well, but it’s basically like a trope that’s time-based: chronotope.

Sarah: Wow!

Olivia: So there’s all these expectations that readers come with, and you can either subvert them, or you can fulfill the promise, or you can completely screw it up – [laughs] – which is when people get mad.

Sarah: Yeah, pretty much. [Laughs] So what are you working on right now for your column? Are you doing the reading?

Olivia: Yes. I always, I always start with the reading. I do the read-, I’m like, I do the reading and then write the essay later. Usually, because I like it to kind of tie in, I don’t pick them thematically, but sometimes a theme develops?

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: And so I really like keeping one of those spots for an older book as well, ‘cause it’s so easy to miss things in romance, and everybody’s focused on what’s coming out and what are we looking forward to and what we’re all excited about, and that’s wonderful, but reaching back and saying, hey, you know, I actually never got around to reading Lucy Parker’s Act Like It when it was new –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Olivia: – and I know I’m going to love it, and now I have an excuse. And oh my gosh, I loved it! And it also kind of, it gets you out of that kind of market mindset?

Sarah: Yep!

Olivia: ‘Cause it’s really easy to get caught up in what the new trend is and what the hot thing is –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Olivia: – and if I can step back and look at the whole history of the thing, I find it, it keeps you a little more grounded? You feel less like you’re kind of on the promo wheel.

Sarah: Yes, I completely agree. My theory has always been that a book that a reader hasn’t read is a new book, full stop.

Olivia: Right!

Sarah: So we have so many new reviewers, and some of, some of them have asked, well, can I read older books? I’m like, yes, absolutely, please do, because nothing goes out of print anymore. Everything, if it’s digitally available, it’s not out of print, and if it’s not digitally available, we could probably find a print. And, and a book that a reader has not read is new to them. It doesn’t matter when it was published. Now, I know that, you know, publicity teams are like, nooo! Not that! But any book that is going to meet a reader’s need or desire at that moment does, the pub date doesn’t matter.

Olivia: Yeah. Good books are good books forever.

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: Within a given definition of forever, admittedly, but, you know. [Laughs]

Sarah: I have never read Mary Bur-, is it Burchell, Burkell?

Olivia: I, I don’t know!

Sarah: I don’t know either? I’ve –

Olivia: I called her Burchell, but yeah.

Sarah: I have read about her and her sister a million times. What did you think –

Olivia: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – of the book? What were some of the things that you really liked about it?

Olivia: Well, I think it was actually really helpful in terms of Lady’s Guide, because one thing it did really well was describe the fashions, ‘cause it’s about a, a designer’s mannequin? So an early supermodel type in, like, 1930s Paris, walking the runway with very, like, very much like the Age of Dior and –

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: – that kind of pre-World-War-II-type fashion industry, and –

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: – and it was just, the dress descriptions were gorgeous. It had that classic structure where you weren’t sure who was the real hero up until like the last chapter. And of course –

Sarah: Oh, but those are fun.

Olivia: – it’s your grumpy guy who designs for her, right? Like, of course it is. Spoilers, everybody; sorry.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: Well, you know it’s going to be him because he’s a jerk for so much of the book, and, like –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Olivia: – he’s a jerk and he’s so specific, gosh, I don’t want to disappoint him way, and you’re like, yep, that’s our hero! And there’s, you know, the terrible fiancé who dumps her at the start of the book but then wants her back later, which is one of my favorite things as well. Like, getting to dump somebody who has dumped you is one of the fantasies I enjoy about romance.

Sarah: Mmm.

Olivia: It’s never happened in real life.

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: Actually, now that I say that, I realize that’s not true. This is the one time I’ve ever pulled a power move in a relationship. I had a high school boyfriend who, we broke up when we left, like, we were going to separate colleges? So we broke up.

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: And he said, well, Olivia, you know, this isn’t too bad, ‘cause there’s a lot of hot girls in Southern California, and I was –

Sarah: [Gasps]

Olivia: Yeah, that, and I’m like, well, you know, I was feeling really bad about this, but not –

Sarah: Not now!

Olivia: No, and about ten years later, after college, he’s still living in Los Angeles, I end up being selected to be a Jeopardy! contestant –

Sarah: Nice!

Olivia: – and the taping they’re doing is on his birthday, and I want somebody there to watch me in the audience. My dad’s flying down with me, but I want somebody else, somebody else to be there. And so out of the blue, ‘cause we’d kind of sort of occasionally kept in touch – you know, we’d gone to high school together; it was one of those kind of networks, Face- –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Olivia: – everybody was talking on Facebook at the time – and I said, hey, guy, do you want to maybe come and watch me tape an episode Jeopardy! on your birthday?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: And that’s how I ended up making my high school ex watch me win Jeopardy! on his birthday.

Sarah: [Gasps] That’s delicious!

Olivia: It was, it was amazing! It was absolutely fun and amazing, and I highly recommend it. [Laughs] Both the, both the romantic revenge and the Jeopardy! winning. Thumbs up.

Sarah: Ohhh. Well played in many ways.

Olivia: And yeah, we all had, we all had a wonderful time! So, so I think it worked out for everybody! [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow. Nice!

Olivia: But yes, the, the Mary Burchell itself was very heroine-centric and just, every sentence just sang. It was like when, when you hear a really good violin player, and it’s a single note, but there’s so much goodness in that one note that you don’t need it to be more complicated?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Olivia: Yeah. It was, it was just lovely. I need to read more of her stuff, ‘cause it’s just, man, that level of –

Sarah: And –

Olivia: – effortlessness –

Sarah: Yeah!

Olivia: – is impressive as all get out.

Sarah: And it sounds as if she deployed so many of the things that, that still work: the idea of art and glamour and luxuriousness and social status.

Olivia: Oh, absolutely. And all of the work that goes into that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: So if you like governess romances, for instance, you’ll probably like this. And if you’re a fan of Loretta Chase’s Dressmakers series, this is probably right up your alley as well.

Sarah: Yeah. There’s, like, a whole textile porn thread of romances.

Olivia: Yes. Yes, there is. [Laughs] I like it a lot.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: Potentially getting, getting really into that for book three in this series. There’s going to be a silk weaver heroine, and –

Sarah: Oooh!

Olivia: – oh, the deep dives into fabric history and technology and, oh, all the technical names for silk weaves, they’re going to break me, I know they are –

[Laughter]

Olivia: – but they’re so much fun! Yeah, it’s, it never stops being magical. The more you learn and the deeper you go, kind of, the more wonder you find, and –

Sarah: Isn’t it true, isn’t that the truth?

Olivia: Yeah.

Sarah: I, I also love encountering how much I don’t know about something?

Olivia: Oh? Yeah!

Sarah: Like the insecurity of my own knowledge, oh, I don’t know dick about that; please tell me everything!

[Laughter]

Olivia: See, and that’s the great thing about being a writer at parties is you meet somebody –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: – and they’ll tell you their job, and you’re like, oh, I’ve never met somebody who does that! Tell me about that!

Sarah: Tell me all about it.

Olivia: Yeah! And you learn, you learn the best facts that way.

Sarah: Oh, it’s so true.

Olivia: You find little scraps, and then they end up going into a book, and –

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: – or they end up just reminding you that there’s whole worlds of experience that you can’t even imagine until you meet somebody who’s lived there.

Sarah: Oh, it’s so true! And the other thing, and I, and I’m going to ask you about your latest column, is that one thing I love listening to or reading is somebody who is super nerdy into something that I don’t know anything about, because that enthusiasm is so fascinating. So, like, your latest column talked about the letterpress, but you talked about it in scientific language, in geographic language, in philosophic language, and it’s beautiful, beautiful writing.

Olivia: Oh!

Sarah: Like, thank you. That column blew my damn mind. I loved that it was both this sort of zoomed-out, thirty-four-thousand-foot view of how this one idea and this one process has changed, and then a very close-up look at how we haven’t changed, and yet we’re still evolving, and, and of course you have the perspective of being in, in Seattle, which is different from looking at publishing in New York, because you’re looking at it from a different behemoth.

Olivia: Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Sarah: Did you write that column at RWA? Had you been ruminating on that topic? Like, how did this – this column is, is just fucking magical. Like, you did such an incredibly –

Olivia: Oh, thanks!

Sarah: – incredibly evocative job with it. Thank you for writing that.

Olivia: Well, it, I’ve been, I’ve been working in the book industry basically my whole adult life. I started off with my first bookstore job in college, and I stayed in bookstores for ten years, and then I went to grad school for comparative literature, which was both – it was such a, like, structure-free program. It was, you should do some languages, and all your credits should be graduate-level credits –

Sarah: Oy.

Olivia: – go! Like, that’s it; that’s the only requirement. They didn’t care if the languages matched up, so I was doing Greek and Latin and Finnish –

Sarah: As you do.

Olivia: As one does, yeah. Which was actually, you know, those things related to one another quite a lot. They’re very similar structure-wise in some ways, but that’s a whole other nerdy, nerdy kind of thing. You don’t want me to talk about the sixteen different inflectional cases that Finnish has, because –

Sarah: Yeah, I do.

Olivia: Okay, so –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: Yeah. This is one of my favorite terrifying things. So Latin and Greek are difficult because they inflect, which is to say the spelling of a word will change on what it’s doing grammatically, and the short way to explain this to English speakers, it’s, it’s the difference between I and me. Those are the same word, but when it’s the object of a verb or a preposition it becomes me. Well, some languages do that to everything, all the time, and they have various types of regular patterns, so it’s not like you’re learning unique changes for everything. So Latin has four; Greek has five-ish; Finnish has sixteen. You change –

Sarah: That’s a lot.

Olivia: It’s so many. You change the way the word ends based on very, like, based on what it’s doing, and a lot of those in Finnish are locational? So you have an ending for on top of, you have an ending for underneath, you have an ending for inside, you have a different ending for coming out of, and it’s just, and it goes from there, and that’s sixteen straight up, and then when you make it plural it is another sixteen that you have to learn.

Sarah: Holy cow.

Olivia: Yeah, it’s kind of, I took three years of this language and I can barely order coffee now. It’s just, it’s – like, my conversational Latin is better than my conversational Finnish. [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow!

Olivia: Which was very helpful in Rome a few years back.

[Laughter]

Olivia: But it was, yeah. In the meantime, between taking the languages, I was studying the history of type and printing and taking courses in bibliography, which is to say the kind of thing where you look through the manuscript and find all the printing errors and describe the size and – bibliography is a way of essentially, it’s like a full-body exam for an individual book is kind of how I think of it.

Sarah: Oh!

Olivia: So it describes all the little irregularities, and there’s a flaw, there’s a blot on page fifty-two where somebody smashed a fly in this book in 1573. You know, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: – that kind of thing, and you got this sense of the breadth of history, and I’d been working in so much of the bookstore end of things, and this was right around the time when Amazon was starting to really become this towering colossus. I was watching all the bookstores I knew kind of struggle to stay alive and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: – to stay afloat, and many didn’t? I’m watching them start to come back now, as we realize that having a physical bookstore still provides something Amazon can’t quite do, and just the sense of it all, and then I started writing and seeing it from kind of the other end of the chain, so, you know, ‘cause I was used to distri-, think questions of distribution and cover art and shelf space and such like that, and now I’m doing, how do you actually produce this book? which is wildly different.

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: That is just a completely whole other kind of skill. And then as I’m, like, as I’m kind of going along, I’m learning more about all the stuff in the middle as well, and it’s just, I don’t know, I feel very lucky to have gotten, to have, like, a really detailed macro look at all of this.

Sarah: And you located all of that in the letterpress.

Olivia: Well yeah! I mean –

Sarah: Makes sense!

Olivia: Yeah, and I did not – [laughs] – I’ve been studying them lately for, for book two in this series. There’s a, a printer engraver heroine, and I get to go on about handbills and pamphlets and –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Olivia: – seditious tracts and things like that, which is very fun. And it’s all, it’s all so tactile when you actually get to do it, and we used to, we, you know, we think of books as this magical experience. We think of them as escapes, we think of them as, as almost talismans? They feel special to us.

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: And, and they are, but you go to an actual, like, letterpress printer and you watch it be produced, and you’re like, this is literally manual labor. This is –

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: – very concrete and very hands-on, and it’s grubby, and it’s, it’s about as down-to-earth as you can get, and still something magical happens when it goes right. There was a letterpress printer here in Seattle who let me stop by and kind of help out for an hour, and she ran me through how everything worked, and it was, man, it was some of the most fun I’ve had, and I’m like, ooh, now I know how these things smell! That’s useful!

Sarah: [Laughs] And you know what the sound is and the rhythm of it and how it smells, and it’s a full sensory experience now!

Olivia: It is! And she talked about, oh, and this is the part where once you start running a long print run, because it’s all, it’s all muscle memory, so you can actually just chat, it usually takes two people to run, and you end up having these long, in-depth conversations ‘cause there’s nothing else to do while you’re running the press.

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: And I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s amazing!

Sarah: Yep!

Olivia: And, and it is, it is magical. I never get, I never get tired of how magical every point of the process is. There’s always some new veil that’s being pulled aside. And I’m just, I’m so happy we all get to do this!

Sarah: Yeah, right? You do a lot of work online reframing narratives and discussions about romance and the communities around it. You do it in your column, you do it on Twitter, and it’s a lot of work to, to reframe things. Like, convincing or at least attempting to convince someone to see things in a different frame is very, very hard, and you address racism, anti-Blackness, homophobia, sexism, people just generally being giant idiots.

Olivia: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: What have you learned doing all of the, the structural work of, of addressing how stories are presented and seen? And what resources are the things that you return to while you’re doing all of that work?

Olivia: Well, I think the most important thing for me, as soon as I started reaching out and trying to do this and trying to make, to make things better overall –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Olivia: – you know, by, by diversifying my own reading, by thinking about audiences other than the default white one we’ve been led to expect, I think the thing that surprised me most is how rewarding it is, and how fun? There are so many books! If you just read –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: – if you just, so –

Sarah: It’s so true!

Olivia: – so, like, if you, the default white you’re encouraged to settle for, the default white, straight, able-bodied –

Sarah: Cisgendered.

Olivia: – cisgender, if you start looking into, you know, even if you just confine it to the Regency, which you’d think would be very, very simple, oh no. No, you start –

Sarah: No.

Olivia: – you start looking into Church of England and dissenters and, you know, Muslim and Hindi populations, and then the Jewish population in England at this time, which, again, we’ve mentioned Rose Lerner, and she’s done so much research on this, and it’s all just astonishing stuff. There’s so much happening there, and you’re like, why don’t we talk about this?

Sarah: Yep. Where, where did it go?

Olivia: – they’re like, you know, itinerant preachers are setting up camp on the outside of a village, and then the vicar will, like, run them out on a rail, and you’re like, what?!

Sarah: Yeah, wait, what?

Olivia: That’s amazing! Why don’t we do this? And no, we just, we have a quiet little vicar, and he’s, his job is to make everybody feel comfortable. No! No, no! No, eight different fighting churches and Catholic emancipation and oh, man. But, yeah, so I think I’m getting off topic. For me, it’s, it’s been so much fun. There are so many authors I’ve discovered just from, like, trying to pick something different.

Sarah: Right.

Olivia: And I can’t imagine my life without those books now. Jeannie Lin, Alyssa Cole, Beverly Jenkins? Oh my gosh, Forbidden is just, like, one of the most stunning romances. We talked about Mary Burchell’s stuff being effortless? Beverly Jenkins’ Forbidden is just this perfect, precise, glorious scalpel of a romance. And it’s just, I don’t know how she just – of course it looks so natural! It looks, it looks like, of course these people are going to make these decisions, and they have this very complex backstory, and it just all feels like, well, of course they have a complex backstory; they’re humans! They’re just –

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: And, and it’s so hard to make characters on the page feel like complete humans.

Sarah: And you trust them, and you trust the story instantly.

Olivia: Exactly. Exactly, and there’s just, there’s so many things like that. There’s trans romances out there, and I can’t believe I get to read all of these. I can’t believe how much more there is to discover, and there’s, and there’s voices that we aren’t hearing enough of, and I want to read those, ‘cause those are going to be great!

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: And so that, for me, is always what I keep coming back to. People talk about, well, you know, it is very strenuous, and, and it is! But also, we, we should talk more about how it’s just fucking fun!

[Laughter]

Sarah: It really is. More books is never a bad idea.

Olivia: No! People are like, well, I, you know, I think I should be reading more POC; can you recommend? And I’m like, just, here, Alyssa Cole, Jeannie Lin, go! Just, you’re going to love it! You, you have so much fun ahead of you! You don’t even know! And it –

Sarah: And it’s, and at this point, it’s no more than one extra step, if it’s an extra step at all.

Olivia: Exactly. Exactly.

Sarah: It’s not like you have to look that hard.

Olivia: No! If you’re not finding them, you, really, you have not spent any time looking. And it’s one thing to not know all the names, and it’s one thing, you know – one of the things that I’m always working on is, I’m always trying to find out who else is out there that I don’t know about?

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: I try a lot of first-time authors; I try a lot of new names to me, just to make sure that there’s not something else around the corner that’s just as awesome in a very different way! One of my favorite reads from this year was Ayesha at Last, and it’s a Toronto Muslim retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and it was just glorious. It was so thoughtful! It was easily one of the best Pride and Prejudice retellings I’ve ever seen. And if you just think, oh, well, that’s, that’s not aimed at me, well, nei-, you know, Shakespeare wasn’t writing for me either, but I still read him. Like, he definitely wasn’t writing for me.

Sarah: Oh, heck no.

Olivia: And Tolstoy would hate that I read his stuff.

Sarah: [Laughs] And if you think about how many times Shakespearean plays have been picked up and set in different eras –

Olivia: Yes.

Sarah: – you can do that with the es-, the, the essential narratives of romance.

Olivia: Exactly! If, if it’s flexible enough, if it’s strong enough, it will, you know, still work in the new, in the new milieu. That’s a fancy word.

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: [Laughs]

Sarah: If you would like a, another Pride and Prejudice sort of retelling, have you read Rebel Hard by Nalini Singh?

Olivia: I have not. I need to get to Nalini Singh. My –

Sarah: I will see you in three years; it’s been nice talking to you.

Olivia: [Laughs]

Sarah: She has a lot of books to read; you’ve got a lot of books to read.

Olivia: Yeah, no. Nalini Singh and Ilona Andrews are my next kind of things to start doing, and I’m like, I will just not, not see anybody for, like, six months. I will just –

Sarah: So Rebel Hard is a contemporary, it’s set in New Zealand, and it is the perfect marriage of every Bollywood reference ever and Pride and Prejudice at the same time.

Olivia: Oh, that sounds ideal!

Sarah: It was so fun.

Olivia: [Laughs]

Sarah: It was our book club selection, and so for the podcast we record an episode where we talk about the book, and Aarya, who’s one of the new reviewers, was like, let me tell you about all 16,842 Bollywood references that I noticed, and I’m sure there were three times as many that I didn’t, so then I did an interview with Nalini. I was like, was this on purpose? And she’s like, no, but I love that movie, so I probably just stick it in there!

[Laughter]

Olivia: Oh, that’s amazing!

Sarah: It’s so, it’s so good. It’s like Bollywood and Pride and Prejudice had a perfect, perfect narrative baby.

Olivia: Oh, that’s incredible. I need to, I need to, like, start watching Bollywood again. There was a, I had a rough couple years for a while there. It was during the whole Ellora’s Cave thing, and –

Sarah: Oh, that was, that was, that was a lot.

Olivia: Yeah. And we were having multiple, like, family deaths and health crises at the same time, and my husband’s business was failing, and –

Sarah: Oh gosh!

Olivia: It was, it was an absolute perfect storm of a nightmare time, and – [laughs] – one of the, there were two things that got me out of it, and that was the fall that Hamilton debuted, and so I just started listening to Hamilton, and I watched Bollywood movies. I watched, specifically, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. I watched that movie every day for two weeks to teach myself how to feel feelings again. That’s –

Sarah: Oh wow.

Olivia: It was the only thing that made me actually able to feel something. And –

Sarah: Wow!

Olivia: – I’m still so grateful for it. I’d loved it before then, but now it’s kind of like, you know, bone-deep kind of love? And so, yeah, so, definitely that’s one of my sweet spots where romance is concerned, is, is anything Bollywood-influenced. I love the structures; I love the way they play with a lot of familiar story structures but then kind of, they expand them, or they collapse them in different ways; they pacing’s a little different? And I love it.

Sarah: And they just, they don’t just, like, lean into a trope? They just, like, do, do a full ball pit deep dive.

Olivia: Yeah, yeah. It’s no holds barred, and it’s fantastic.

Sarah: Oh yeah. So what are you working on now?

Olivia: Right now I’m finishing up book two in the Feminine Pursuits series, which doesn’t have a title yet, but it involves a printer engraver heroine that you’ve met in book one, and –

Sarah: Ohhh?

Olivia: – a lady beekeeper from a small town just outside of London, and so it’s this very, it’s a friends-to-lovers romance, so they, they meet, they become friends, they start doing bee stuff together, and then slowly this romance dev- – it is a very slow burn. It’s the first time I’m trying a slow burn. You know, I started in erotic romance, and now I’m doing, like, do they really need to kiss before the fifty-percent mark?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: And I’m like, nah, we’re going to make them suffer!

[Laughter]

Olivia: Pining for days! It’s been, it’s been so much, and it’s set during the trial of Queen Caroline. So this was 1820, when George, King George, everybody’s favorite – this would be the Fourth – King George IV, whose father just died, he wasn’t crowned yet, but he and his wife were separated. She was living in Italy, and when she learned that George III had died and she was technically queen now, she comes back and is like, you are going to start treating me as queen, and he’s like, the hell I will!

Sarah: Oh.

Olivia: And he brings a bill before Parliament, a bill of pains and penalties to divorce her for adultery. He’s been sending spies to Italy; he thinks he’s got like fourteen green bags of evidence, and basically puts her on trial in front of Parliament and the entire country so that he can divorce her, and because he’s king, if she committed adultery, technically it’s treason.

Sarah: Oh sweet Jesus.

Olivia: And it’s a mess, and the entire country was fascinated. This is four years after Waterloo, and you had people actually throwing stones at the Duke of Wellington because of all of this. That’s how worked up everybody was.

Sarah: Great day in the morning!

Olivia: Yeah. It’s very intense. Like, people literally stoned the houses of the rich in London, and I’m like, again, why don’t they talk about this? Like, people are jailing booksellers, and people are throwing rocks, and there’s uprisings and repression, and you’re not allowed to write bad things about the king, and they will fine you! Like, booksellers and printers had to take out bonds for good behavior. They had to put money aside so if they printed something seditious the government could seize that money.

Sarah: Whoa!

Olivia: We don’t, we don’t really talk about that, like, at all in Regency romance, you know, unless you’re reading Cat Sebastian’s radical printer heroine, which I think was Duke in, A Duke in Disguise?

Sarah: Yes, I think it was that one.

Olivia: Yeah. Yeah! That, that kind of thing, where the redcoats show up to your bookshop and toss the place.

Sarah: So you need a title for this book, going on –

Olivia: I do need a title, yes.

Sarah: – at that time.

Olivia: Any suggestions will be considered.

Sarah: I am not permitted to title things?

Olivia: [Laughs]

Sarah: Unless you like titles that take up the whole cover of the book.

Olivia: See, and I do, and they’re not letting me do that either.

Sarah: See, I disagree. I think long, long titles are excellent.

So are there any books that you want to tell readers about, beyond the titles you’ve already mentioned? I love that this episode is going to have the biggest book list. What, are there any books that you want to tell readers about that you have been really enjoying?

Olivia: Oh yes. Well, there’s, this is one of the contemporaries that I’ve read and loved most lately, and that is Reverb by Anna Zabo, and a, a lot of these are going to come from my column, ‘cause I do a ton of reading for the column, and most of it goes in. If, if something’s not going to be worth talking about for me, I usually stop reading it before I’m finished.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Olivia: So it’s the third in a series of rock star romances, and they describe music better than just about any other romance series I’ve ever seen. It actually feels like, like you know what this must sound like, or you can imagine what it must sound like, or you don’t care what it sounds like, because the writing makes it sound awesome.

Sarah: [Whispers] Wow!

Olivia: And they’re queer, and they’re kinky, but they’re kinky in this very playful kind of way that I really enjoy? This is not, like, angsty Doms in sex dungeons. This is an older, like, buttoned-up – well, no, he’s not very buttoned-up. He’s an older, punkish gentleman who is able to play with Dom/sub dynamics and to dominate somebody using only a slice of lemon meringue pie.

Sarah: Bro!

Olivia: And – yeah. Yeah, he sets up this whole, like, kinky sub dynamic using just a slice of pie and a fork. Like, just sitting in a café! And I’m like, this is amazing! This is the hottest thing, and nobody’s even unbuttoned anything yet.

Sarah: [Laughs] I love books like that.

Olivia: And it’s so gorgeous. That’s, that’s book two in the series. Book three is the bassist, this tall, kickass heroine, and a trans hero who is, like, just so sweet and thoughtful and charming and, and he’s the bodyguard, and it’s just magnificent. It’s absolutely wonderful, start to finish, and I –

Sarah: [Whispers] Wow!

Olivia: – just loved it. And I think more people need to read it, ‘cause it’s so good! [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow!

Olivia: Yeah, it’s, it just floors me every time. So there’s that one.

I definitely feel like we didn’t talk enough about An Unconditional Freedom by Alyssa Cole, which was super difficult to read in some places. It is an intense, painful romance, and it’s also one of the most incredible things I’ve read. It is one of the single bravest romances I have ever read. And there’s, there’s a scene where they build to this library scene. It’s, this is the third in her historical series, the Civil War romances, who – the series title is escaping me right now.

Sarah: The Loyal League series, right?

Olivia: Loyal League, thank you, yes! But this is Daniel’s story, and I should have written down the heroine’s name. I forget hero and heroine’s – I forget my own hero and heroine’s names.

Sarah: I don’t remember titles, I just remember the images, and I’m the, I’m the one that librarians dread talking to; booksellers too.

Olivia: [Laughs] I remember the cover was blue – yes.

Sarah: That, I’m, I’m that person. I apologize in advance.

Olivia: No, yeah, I, we all do it; we all have to.

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: Especially in romance where, again, there’s just so much, but the Alyssa Cole, An Unconditional Freedom, Daniel was born free and then sold into slavery and had to escape, and then the heroine is mixed-race. I believe she’s, yeah, she’s Caribbean, Black and Hispanic –

Sarah: Yeah.

Olivia: And she comes from a much more privileged background.

Sarah: Yes.

Olivia: Like, her father was a wealthy plantation owner. Her mother had married him, and she was told, well, she’s not like the other slaves. She’s not like, you know, they’re, they’re an entirely different, so she has to unlearn all of this stuff –

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: – and she’s actually come to infiltrate the Loyal League and betray them, and tell you this in, like, you know, the blurb, so this is not a spoiler. You know that she’s supposed to betray this entire league that you’ve spent two books getting close to.

Sarah: And she’s the heroine, you know; piece of cake.

Olivia: She’s the heroine, and you’re like, this book has to do so much work to make this happen. This, and they, step by step by step, little bits at a time, and it all builds to this scene in a library, and look, I have very high expectations for Alyssa Cole books at this point. I always love them, I know I’m going to love them, and yet every time one comes out I’m like, oh my gosh, I love it even more than I thought! So –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: – they get to this library scene, and I get there, and I literally dropped the book and started cheering in an empty apartment because I could not believe what had just happened.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Olivia: It is easily the best plot twist I have seen, maybe ten years? Something like that? I just could not believe it, and nobody’s talking about it! And I just don’t know why. I am so puzzled; why are we not talking about this book all the time? [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, I mean, if you talk about the, the plot twist then you spoil it, so you can’t really talk about it! [Laughs]

Olivia: Right, but I’m not even seeing enough people saying, oh my God, this book, everybody needs to read it, and I’m like, what? People need to read this!

Sarah: [Laughs] Very true.

Olivia: This is catharsis! This is a book that will burn everything to the ground because it needs to be burned to the ground, and I’m like, thank you! I didn’t know you could do that kind of thing in a romance and still have it feel good. It’s, it’s just, it’s, yeah, it’s, I’m using the, I’m using superlatives a lot today. I get very excited. [Laughs] But it’s just such a, it’s like a bonfire. This book just –

Sarah: It consumes a lot.

Olivia: – feels, it feels like – it does. It does, but it feels like it gives you back so much more –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Olivia: – than it takes up. And that’s the magic of it. That is, that is the achievement of it, is it gives you back everything it’s taken and then some.

Sarah: Yep.

Olivia: It is brave, and it is generous, and I know it was super hard for her to write, and it’s – oh! I’m just so glad she did!

One more, and this is an f/f. This is another book that I feel doesn’t get enough love, and it’s called Daughter of the Sun by Effie Calvin. It’s the second in a trilogy. It’s, stands alone very well. It’s a road-trip romance in a fantasy setting between a female paladin and a trickster goddess who’s been trapped in a mortal body, and the paladin doesn’t know she’s there, and they fall in love while they’re on the road to stop evil.

Sarah: This sounds great!

Olivia: It’s super good. It is incredibly good, and it is just, it’s so much fun, and watching this goddess try and figure out what it’s like to be mortal and to, like, get the hang of this whole thing is so delightful. [Laughs] It was some of the most fun I’ve had with a fantasy romance in a long time.

Sarah: Oh, that’s awesome!

Olivia: Yep. That one’s from NineStar Press. Or wait – yes, NineStar Press, Effie Calvin, Daughter of the Sun.

Sarah: Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. Is there anything else you want to add?

Olivia: I just want to mention that the column comes out the first Thursday of every month, if you want to check that out. I’m always adding new romance recs. I’m always taking pitches; I do not get as many pitches as you’d think.

Sarah: Really!

Olivia: So yeah, like, I can still answer them all myself. I review quite a few things from pitches, actually.

Sarah: So how would a person who is interested in pitching you do so?

Olivia: Oh! Send me an email: olivia.waite.books@gmail.com.

Sarah: Okay!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I want to thank Olivia Waite for hanging out with me. If you would like to find her on the internet, and I’m certain that you do, you can find her at her website, oliviawaite.com, and on Twitter @O_Waite, as in O! Waite! I will also have links in the show notes to the Seattle Review of Books “Kissing Books” column that she writes, and the academic articles and other resources she mentioned in this interview.

And if you would like to talk to me, I would be delighted if you did! You can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com. You can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. You can ask for recommendations or tell me a terrible joke – you know how much I love them.

And guess what? Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is now on radio.com’s mobile app, so if you use radio.com apps, we’re there! You can listen to us. It is fabulous.

This podcast is brought to you by The Blacksmith Queen by G. A. Aiken. In a thrilling new feminist fantasy romance series, G. A. Aiken debuts a world in which a heroine is only as good as her grit, resolve, strength, and skill with a hammer. Prophesied to be the queen that saves her land and her people, blacksmith Keeley Smythe and her trusty centaur friend in human form will have to unite for the forthcoming war. Filled with her signature snarky wit and epic plotting, G. A. Aiken’s Scarred Earth Saga is not to be missed. The King is dead; all hail The Blacksmith Queen, and be sure to pledge your allegiance and enter to win an exclusive Blacksmith Queen pin at kensingtonbooks.com/scarredearthsaga. The Blacksmith Queen by G. A. Aiken is available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit gaaiken.com.

Now, if you’ve been following the show or the site or both, you know that Amanda not only squeed about this book on a podcast but also reviewed it and loved it, and I will have links to her review, the book, and your opportunity to enter a pin in the show notes.

This episode and the transcript are brought to you by FabFitFun, a seasonal subscription box that’s customized to your tastes with full-size premium beauty, fitness, fashion, and lifestyle products. You get over two hundred dollars in product for $49.99 per season, and if you use code TRASHYBOOKS, you get ten dollars off your first box at FabFitFun. They do sell out fast, so sign up soon if you’re curious.

Now the last time I talked about FabFitFun, I did not realize that Amanda was a subscriber, and she was cool enough to do an impromptu interview with me in the, in the intro, so if you haven’t listened, you can back up and listen. She has a lot of cool things to say. She loves the customization, she likes how she can choose whether a box is more about skincare or housewares or health and fitness, and she loved the after-spa hair towel wrap and the BaubleBar Farah ear crawler jewelry. Amanda loved her FabFitFun box, I really loved mine, so maybe you’d like to get one for yourself! You are worth treating! If you use code TRASHYBOOKS, you get ten dollars off your first box at fabfitfun.com, and you get to access all the extra membership benefits there too. That’s ten dollars off with code TRASHYBOOKS at fabfitfun.com.

If you are a supporter of the show and our Patreon, thank you for being part of the community that makes sure the show is accessible and keeps on going every week! If you would like to join our Patreon community, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one entire dollar, and your show means the world to me, so thank you for being part of our Patreon community.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is Sketch, this song is called “Fire Them Up,” and it is from their album Shed Life. You can find it on Amazon and at iTunes and wherever you buy your funky music.

Coming up on smartbitchestrashybooks.com this week, this weekend we have Hide Your Wallet, Part Two, where we highlight books we’ve learned about recently. We have reviews and a new post from Poppy featuring literary illustrations that include her adorable cats. But the biggest news I have is that we have a new feature we’re debuting on the site, and I cannot wait to share it with you. This is a massive tease. Please don’t forget to stop by. I cannot wait to share with you the new feature on the site!

I will have links to everything that Olivia and I talked about, as well as all the books she mentioned, so head over to the show notes if you’re looking for any of the links, especially links to her column; you definitely don’t want to miss it.

And as always, I close with a terrible joke. Are you ready? It’s so bad. Okay, here we go. [Clears throat]

Why aren’t there more romances featuring tennis players?

Give up? Why aren’t there more romances featuring tennis players?

Because Love means nothing to them.

[Laughs] It’s so bad! That joke was inspired by /you got wooshed, and I told it to Amanda, and she totally thought I was seriously asking, and then when I typed in the punch line she was like, ohhh. LOL. [Laughs more] Love means nothing to them.

On behalf of Olivia Waite and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll see you back here next week.

[blazing music]