370. RWA, The RITAs, and the Future: A Conversation with Dowager RWA President HelenKay Dimon

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Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome to episode number 370 – wow! – of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Dowager RWA President HelenKay Dimon. HelenKay’s term as President ended on the 31st of August, 2019, and we are going to talk about a lot of stuff. We talk about the past year in RWA, about the RITAs and the continued evolution of the contest, and the binary of fix it or burn it all down. We also talk about the changes in the RITA contest and the board’s work on earning back trust fixing many things and rethinking pretty much everything. We also talk about her career as a romantic suspense writer and all of the different flavors that are inside that genre. Plus we attempt to predict the future of romantic fiction, because that’s clearly something we can do on the fly, right? Of course!

Today’s podcast is brought to you by Flashed by Zoey Castile. Inspired by the Magic Mike franchise, vibrant new voice Zoey Castile continues the Happy Endings series of modern, multicultural and millennial-focused, sexy contemporary romances. The third installment, Flashed, is a humorous and relatable novel about figuring out your true path in life and love. Set in Montana, and in a nod to “Beauty and the Beast,” Flashed follows a male stripper and romance cover model coping with an accident which leaves him disfigured. Flashed by Zoey Castile is on sale now wherever books are sold. For more information, head to the show notes or visit zoeycastile.com.

Today’s podcast and the transcript are also brought to you by Blood and Blade, book six in the Goddess with a Blade series by Lauren Dane, out December 31st. Fans of urban fantasy with a romantic storyline like Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books or Eileen Wilks’ World of the Lupi will love this series featuring a kickass heroine with an actual goddess in her belly and the uptight British vampire scion who adores her. In Blood and Blade, Rowan tracks down and confronts the real power behind the kidnappings and murder of paranormals all over the globe, including those she loved and was sworn to protect. Along the way she collects new friends and allies and, being Rowan, creates new enemies as well. Books one through five are all available now wherever books are sold, so you can start the series and then finish when Blood and Blade comes out. Find out more about Rowan and Lauren’s other series at her website, laurendane.com

I have a compliment! It’s my favorite part of the intro.

To Kheya G. – and if I am saying your name wrong, I apologize – five out of five people surveyed agree: your habit of being yourself and your happiness are contagious in the very best way.

And if you would like a compliment of your very own, have a look at our podcast Patreon at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges: one dollar a month. What does the pledge do? Supports the show, keeps me going, keeps the show going, gives you new episodes every single Friday, and makes sure that all those episodes are accessible to everyone. So if you are at all interested, have a peek at patreon.com/SmartBitches. And to our Patreon community, thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting the show. Your support means a lot.

I will have information at the end of the episode about the music you’re listening to, about what is coming up on Smart Bitches this week – my gosh, a lot is going on! I have to choose between two bad jokes this week; I might choose one and save the other one for next week. And of course I will have links to all the books we talk about and links of where to find HelenKay, should you wish to read some of her books, which you should, ‘cause they’re great!

But without any further ado, let’s do this podcast interview. On with my conversation with HelenKay Dimon.

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Sarah: So, Madam President – you know you get called for the rest of your life by the highest title you’ve attained, so you get to be Madam President forever.

HelenKay Dimon: I, I, I like that, so long as I don’t have the responsibilities that go along with Madam President? Then I’m fine.

Sarah: Okay, great! So if you would please introduce yourself, ma’am, and tell the people who will be listening who you are, I’ve got lots of questions for you!

HelenKay: Oh no. [Laughs] I am HelenKay Dimon! And now I’m a little afraid.

Sarah: [Laughs] Now, you are a writer of romantic suspense and immediate past President of Romance Writers of America, right?

HelenKay: I am!

Sarah: Is that your official title, Past President?

HelenKay: You know, Shirley Hailstock told me that there’s some official title, and a couple people have called me Dowager President, so I, I’ve decided that one works.

Sarah: Oh!

HelenKay: Yes. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my! Dowager President!

HelenKay: Well, if I get to be like Maggie Smith, I’m fine.

Sarah: Yeah! I mean, that’s pretty great!

HelenKay: [Laughs]

Sarah: So you’re no longer Romance Writers of America President.

HelenKay: I am not. I stopped on August 31st, not that, not that I counted down the days or anything –

Sarah: Or hours.

HelenKay: – but yes, August 31st.

Sarah: Or minutes. So, honestly, for people who aren’t familiar, how much of a time commitment is that position specifically?

HelenKay: Way more than I thought it was going in? I’m, I’m going to be totally honest about that. I had been a, I’ve been on the board, I was on the board for six years.

Sarah: Yeah!

HelenKay: So the first four years was as Director, then it was as President-Elect, and then it was as President, and the difference between the amount of work when you’re President and a Director is, you know, probably ten-fold.

Sarah: Ohhh!

HelenKay: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of work, but it – and this year was a difficult year. We had, we had a lot of emergencies. We had, we had to buckle down and really go after and look at the RITAs and at our RITA contest, and decide what we were going to do and how, if we could keep it going, and if so, how – how to make it better and fairer. And while you’re doing all the emergency work, of course all the other stuff is still happening, right? Like, you’re working on programming and strategic vision and policy initiatives and all of these things that are happening behind the scenes, so it’s, there was a time between March and June where it was, it was pretty much the equivalent of a full-time job, and it’s a volunteer position. But it, it was six, seven, eight hours a day.

Sarah: Good heavens!

HelenKay: Yeah. It was, it was, it was a lot. I had been told when I went in it would be the equivalent of basically losing one book, and I, I found it was more like the equivalent of losing the ability to write two books.

Sarah: Ouch! So it’s, it is a –

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: – very high level of time and attention and service that is not paid.

HelenKay: Correct. Correct.

Sarah: So what are some of the things that you do as President that take up so much time? Like, is your inbox a place of nightmares?

HelenKay: Yeah. I mean, when, when we –

Sarah: [Laughs]

HelenKay: – under – yes. Let’s just let it go there. When, whenever there’s kind of an emergency issue or something that arises, what tends to happen in RWA is literally something can go along and be fine for a decade, and there’s no problem, and then all of a sudden there’s a problem, and when it explodes you’re like, wait, we didn’t know the Letters to the Editor policy was bad, and then you have to kind of scramble and fix it, and those days you can wake up to a shocking number of emails, and after the kind of RITA finalist lists came out it was, I, I mean, it was hundreds of emails. It, it was, it was just a lot of emails.

Sarah: And that sort of comes with the job.

HelenKay: That’s what –

Sarah: You’re the, the, the person that people reach out to.

HelenKay: Exactly, and my, you know, my view on that was, and you know, I would say to the board, it’s, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I know it feels really bad, and when you read some of these emails you’re like, ugh! But I have to think, if people take the time to write in because they’re upset that something’s happening in RWA and they want it fixed, that means RWA means something to them, or they want it to mean something, and that’s a positive thing. I mean, that’s not a negative thing. It’s just, it, it ends up being a lot of responsibility on folks who are volunteering their time, and a lot of times they’re kind of, sometimes blindsided by a, or knocked sideways by something that happens unexpectedly, and sometimes it shouldn’t have been unexpected. We should have, we should have been a little more ready for something that was coming. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a learning curve; let’s put it that way.

Sarah: Now, some of the email you get are people, like you said, who are very invested in RWA, who are upset about the, the, the RITA finalists being so perennially white, straight, cisgendered. It would seem to me that there’s the response to, this is really upsetting and I’m invested in this organization, and I want it to be better, but I also know that you have received emails that are really quite awful and racist, hateful, mean, terrible. How do you deal with that?

HelenKay: All of those things. Yes, and it’s, you know, I joke that there’s so much out of our control, you know, basically, in the world and in this business, but the one thing people can control is how much they hate RWA – [laughs] – and –

Sarah: No! Nobody can control that! Don’t be silly!

HelenKay: [Laughs] – and sometimes it’s like, it’s like, I hate it so much, I must write this horrible thing! I, I’m, I’m sometimes amazed in what, at what people write, first of all because it’s either awful or it’s so, like, I think if you had thought maybe thirty minutes, you wouldn’t have written that to me, because that’s, that’s not, that doesn’t show you in a particularly great light. I mean, things you would never let your kids get away with, and then sometimes it’s anger at something that has happened that they feel is unfair; they feel that RWA hasn’t gone out of its way to make people feel safe. All of those, totally understand. Like, we, we’ve tried to figure out how to make all of that better, but you have to wade through a lot of emails, frankly, that look like and sound like, okay, but what about white people? And, okay, can we stop talking about this diversity thing? And, you know, where you’re like –

Sarah: How do you even respond to that?

HelenKay: Well, you know, it’s, it’s – [laughs] – there’s, I, I would respond a lot of times with just –

Sarah: Are you fucking kidding me?

HelenKay: [Laughs] Yes! I was, I was tempted –

Sarah: [Laughs]

HelenKay: – to do that. Tempted.

Sarah: Are you out of your Goddamned mind?! [Laughs]

HelenKay: But, you know, a lot of times it was just like, you know, you would, you’d just want to say to people, do you think fairness – fairness, like making sure that the level, that the playing field is as level as possible, and when I say that I mean not even making it level; making it, like, possible to get on the field, which is all, like, right now we’re capable of doing – and that is somehow horrible to you and threatening to you, and, you know, it, it, you just try to walk people through in kind of a rational, I’m sure you didn’t mean to say X kind of way, and I think the answer is that there is a small – smaller than most people think – a small portion of RWA members who don’t really believe  that everybody deserves a happy ending and don’t really believe that it should be a fair playing ground, playing field, but that is a very small percentage. I think, I think the majority believe it, don’t know how to say it, don’t realize that what they say is kind of undermining, and want, can be educated if we take some time and we work on it, and that’s what we’ve been, we tried to do this year, and it started, frankly, with the board having to say, previous boards have said that this is a problem, but they didn’t do enough. And that’s no knock against previous boards; I was on six of them. Everybody meant well and, and did as much as they thought they could, and the answer was, it wasn’t quite enough. It was –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – the problems were much more systemic.

Sarah: Well, institutional racism is like that: you don’t see it until you see it, and then you can’t unsee it.

HelenKay: Exactly, and, you know, we, I talked to a variety of DEI experts, and they all said the same thing. We –

Sarah: And that’s Diversity, Education, and Inclusion, right?

HelenKay: Equity and Inclusion, yes.

Sarah: Equity and Inclusion, excuse me. I like Education, also a good word, sorry, my bad.

HelenKay: Well, and all of them would tell you, that’s the main point, right?

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: Like, that education is the main point, and they were all really clear. They were all, said, look, you know, inherent bias is, by definition, inherent, which means it’s everywhere.

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: And you’re, you know, you’re fighting against, you know, RWA can’t solve racism; it can’t solve homophobic tendencies; it can’t solve, you know, ableist issues. It can’t solve everything, but what it can do is educate and try to make the members understand where they need, where their holes are in what they, in what they know and what they believe, recognize it, and then try to overcome it in a positive way. Carolyn Jewel is now the President. I have ev- – she’s, she’s amazing and is absolutely dedicated to continuing the work we did this year, which means sometimes taking responsibility for mistakes in the past.

Sarah: Which is something that a number of boards that you were on have done –

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: – from acknowledging that defining romance as between a man and a woman was the wrong way to go.

HelenKay: Ugh!

Sarah: Yeah, that was, that’s the perfect response to that, like, ugh! And then having Suzanne Brockmann receive the Lifetime Achievement Award and being like, here’s your stage; have at it!

HelenKay: Yep.

Sarah: There’s room to fix the past. How do you see the organization fixing the future? I mean, obviously, RWA is singlehandedly going to fix inherent bias in every department.

HelenKay: Absolutely.

Sarah: I mean, clearly, that’s just a piece of cake. But what are some, what are some things that are going to fix the future? Or attempt to fix the future?

HelenKay: I think one of the things is, whenever we’ve looked at DEI in the past, we’ve kind of looked at a program and said, okay, now, how do we make the, like, how do we make sure the DEI concerns are handled? And it was kind of a backwards way to do it? The answer isn’t to try to fit DEI into RWA. The, the answer is that D-, that RWA has a set of values which are right on our website, which are absolutely in agreement with the concept of –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – DEI, Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, so DEI is a value of RWA, which means it should just, it needs to kind of override, be an overriding concern in everything, not something we stick in when we’re thinking about a policy. It’s actually how we shape policy, how we shape programs. All of that should have in it an understanding that DEI is a value of RWA, and that’s how we move forward. I think that’s part of it. There’s, so there’s been a shift in mindset. I think the second thing is, we have hired a DEI expert, Sunny Lee-Goodman, who’s also a huge romance novel fan, and –

Sarah: It’s always good when you meet those people, isn’t it?

HelenKay: Yes! Yes.

Sarah: It’s almost like a shared language?

HelenKay: Yes! And it, it’s lovely because we were able to talk about things, and then she, her, her sister is, was actually a Golden Heart winner last, in the RITAs –

Sarah: Oh cool!

HelenKay: – so, like, she gets it, she under-, you know, she ha-, she under-, has an understanding of the genre, she has an understanding of writers, a love of the genre, and all of that really helps that when you’re talking to her and you’re talking about creative people, and you’re talking about folks who are in an industry where they don’t feel like they have a lot of control, she’s very kind of, this calming voice of, okay, let’s – you can’t solve everything in a day. This is a stepping process. You are starting the steps.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And I, I think, I think she’s been very positive, and we’ve had her look at some of the things like, you know, the new RITA rules and, and other things in RWA to kind of give an expertise and a, should we be saying this in a different way? Are we –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – are we covering what we need to cover? Etc. I think that’s the second thing. I think a third thing is, if you look at, you know, you can talk a lot about being inclusive and diverse –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – but what needs to happen is, the people in the room need to be inclusive and diverse, right? And I think, I think that has started with the board. If you look at the makeup of the board, it is a much more diverse board than it has been in years past, like last year, when –

Sarah: [Laughs] I joined when the president was a white dude, so –

HelenKay: [Laughs] Yes! Yeah.

Sarah: – it’s all been uphill from there!

HelenKay: And everybody at the table was white, right? And –

Sarah: Yes! Everyone was white. Everybody.

HelenKay: And you know, it makes a difference in the conversation around the table when people can talk about kind of like why words are hurtful or why things might sound like a good idea but really actually are kind of doing the opposite of what they intend to do, and, and that comes from having a, a board that is diverse, and that is not to say that, you know, Farrah Rochon, who’s a fantastic board member, can speak on behalf of all Black authors. She can’t, but she can speak on behalf of kind of her belief system and her concerns, and that is added in, in a way that I think is, is really positive.

And then I think the other things, the other main thing is accountability?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: You know, you can talk all you want, but until you’re willing to do some things that show accountability, you’re, you’re really not helping anything. So we started at the RWA conference by having an open town hall, where the board was there to listen, and to listen to some things that were not particularly nice or, or favorable, but we needed to hear so that we could know that information when going forward and planning, and I think a big thing that came out of that was accountability, you know. People not feeling welcome when they walk in to chapters, so they leave RWA –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and they don’t join, or people not feeling safe on the PAN forum, the published author forum.

Sarah: That’s a, that’s a big one.

HelenKay: That’s a big one, and I think if you, if you, we, we approved and they will be starting soon, we approved a new moderation system. You know, we got a, RWA had a website overhaul, and as part of the website overhaul, one of the things is kind of the typical community moderation, where you can, you know, give a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, this is, this is –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – you know, an upsetting post, whatever. The PAN forum is going, is about to have that ability, and what it will do is it’ll put folks who are exhibiting questionable, bad behavior, whatever you want to call it, into automatic moderation. And the thought being that that, that might help kind of cool the rise in temperatures and offensive speech that can happen on that forum –

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: – before somebody can get in to moderate. So it’s kind of a self, or community moderation. People will be put in moderation; we know people will be put in –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – who shouldn’t be put in; we’ll be able to take them out immediately. All of those things, we can start having some accountability, but I think if you’ve been on the PAN loop in the last year, our PAN Advisor, Donna Alward, did kind of a Herculean task of being on there, answering questions, trying to keep things calm. I asked for the, about halfway through the year I asked for the ability to moderate so that I could take people out. I, I had that ability, along with staff to put people into moderation when I thought that they were acting in a way that was, that was not great. It’s not a great use of the RWA –

Sarah: No.

HelenKay: – President’s time –

Sarah: No.

HelenKay: – not at all, but – and it’s not a great use of Donna’s time, which made it a twenty-four hour job, but we made a commitment to try to take some of the toxicity out of the PAN loop, and I think if you look at it, especially for the last three, four months, it is a little bit different. It, It is a different place. That’s because of a lot of work behind the scenes to make it that way, and I think the community moderation will help. So that’s like a piece, right? Like, you, you make people feel safer. You, you make it a place where people can ask questions and feel like they can ask questions, and you enforce some rules and some accountability, and that’s what we’re trying to do on that forum, in the hope that what it does is it helps builds trust, because that’s really what it’s about, right? Like, the folks in RWA from kind of historically underrepresented groups have been told, either by actions or sometimes verbally, that they’re unwanted, unwelcome, and should remain vis-, invisible. None of those things are okay. And, but I don’t expect anyone to say, oh, okay, HelenKay said it’s better, so I’ll come back and I’ll trust RWA. I, it doesn’t work that way, right? We have to earn the trust back, and the hope was that last year, in taking some responsibility and doing some of the steps we did, that we started to earn some of that trust back. That’s, that was the hope, and I, I hope that’s true, and I hope for people who aren’t ready yet, that they will, they will hang in there, because I do think the upcoming board will continue to make strides, and I’m hoping that we’ve put enough in place that they can now look kind of more strategically and not having to be, not having to do so many kind of emergencies like we did this year.

Sarah: What kinds of things constitute an emergency? Is it like everyone is angry about the same thing at the same time? Or are there things where you’re like, oh crap, we really need to fix that?

HelenKay: It’s a little bit of both. In fact, when it’s, when it’s, it seems like people are angry about something, we try to take a breath and say, all right, how many people? Is this thirty very vocal people? ‘Cause sometimes anger can be loud, but not necessarily a majority view; it’s just loud. So we, we try to assess that piece, but there are some things we have to do an emergen-, on an emergency basis. We had, I had to fill two board member seats by appointment this year. That, those were emergency situations. We had an emergency situation with a Lifetime Achievement Award winner –

Sarah: Oh! I do recall that situation.

HelenKay: – that had to be handled and, and – and then we had the, you know, the, the RITA finalist list came out, and our decision was that we couldn’t sit around and wait and assess. We needed to say we didn’t do enough, and we needed to admit that there was a problem with the judging and not, not bury it under pretty language. We needed to say it –

Sarah: And you needed to own –

HelenKay: – and then we needed –

Sarah: – the cause.

HelenKay: Yeah. Own it, right.

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: You need to own it, and then not just own it but say, okay, now let’s come up with a, a way to fix it. And we basically, while we were doing everything else, like, like trying to transition out of the Golden Heart into a new program, setting up new programming, setting up new policy objectives, all of those things, what the board did is, we broke the RITAs down into, I think it was fourteen parts, and we walked through, part by part, like, judging, the actual scoring, how we pick the judging, how we pick the judges, how many people can be in the contest, how many people, how many books you can enter. All of these were broken down into, like, fourteen pieces, and we walked through one piece at a time and said, what do we need to change? What are the different things we can do? And then, and then we hired Sunny, the DEI expert, at the same time, who was kind of watching over all of this, so it, it was like this week by week breakdown, and we didn’t have, you know, let’s just sit and stew –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – about this for months. We had all of this information coming in from members who were upset. We had a lot of very good kind of suggestions coming in, and we used those as we talked about each piece; like, we would take something from, from emails and all of those things and go through. So it was, it was an emergency that ended up lasting two and a half months. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right. But if it’s going to be fixed, it needs to be addressed.

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: We definitely operate in a climate where there’s sort of a yes/no binary, sort of a cancel or keep going –

HelenKay: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and the answer to some really impossible problems is, okay, just burn it all down and start over. Like, that is, that is the answer sometimes to –

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: – what do we do? We’ll just burn it down and start over. And I admit, setting shit on fire sounds really cathartic.

HelenKay: [Laughs] It does.

Sarah: It sounds great. Like, I have a couple of favorite dumpster fire GIFs that I just watch ‘cause it’s real cathartic! But – and, and I will admit, after the, the last round of RITA finalists, I had drafted a, you know what? Fuck it. It’s, this is, this is, this is hurtful. This hurts.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s enough. But that’s, it just needs, we just need to stop this, ‘cause I’ve been a member for quite a while and have been judging for the last few, see, two or three years? I have a terrible concept of time, and I constantly forget how I’m not supposed to say out loud that I’m a RITA judge, but I’m a RITA judge! Ha-ha!

HelenKay: [Laughs]

Sarah: After the last round I was like, yeah, okay, that, fuck it. Burn it. That’s just, that’s, it’s time to stop. And you did not, and neither did the board, and I was wrong about my, my initial reaction of, oh, fuck it, what the hell? But I can imagine, it is really frustrating to think this, this is so hard to fix, this is so hard to address, because part of the problem is the, as you said, baked-in, institutional, and –

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: – implicit bias of people who are frequently insisting that they don’t have a bias.

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: What can individual members do, and what more needs to be done to fix the RITA problem?

HelenKay: Well, I, and, and let me, let me be honest: the, we had a, the very first of those fourteen components before we kind of walked through the RITA, the very first question was, is the RITA the right answer? Is the, is this a burn-it-down time? Should it, should there be no contest? Should it be a judge panel nomination contest?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Should it be a much smaller contest? Like, how do we, how do we do this? So we had that conversation, and it was, it was an interesting conversation too, because, you know, you know, the D, Sunny, the DEI, DEI expert said, why would you burn down a contest that two thousand people want to enter? Like –

Sarah: Good question!

HelenKay: Like, you don’t, you don’t burn it down; you fix it! You try to fix it, and you’re very honest about the fact that you are trying and you can’t make a promise, so that’s what we tried to do. We said this, this upcoming year is the test year –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – under a new system –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and we think it’s important – it clearly matters to members, because if – not only does it matter to members by look at all the people that enter it, but also look at the fact that people are fighting to have it fixed?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Like, like, that says something about, about wanting to have it fixed, and this year we had fixed the final round judging.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Right? We changed policy so that every final round panel, like for each category, had to be diverse –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and each panel had to have at least one person from outside of RWA, like a, and by that I mean like a librarian, a bookseller, that, that kind of thing. And look at the difference.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Right? Look at the difference. So I, I’m hopeful what, what members can do when it comes to the RITAs are, first of all, you’re about to see the judge signup go up. You fill out a questionnaire. It’s not an intrusive questionnaire. Some of it is just, like, making people understand that you can get books with LGBT characters and interracial romance, and, and if those are a problem for you, then maybe you shouldn’t be a judge.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: So there are questions aimed at that, and then there’s demographic information, which we’re collecting just because we want to be able to know who our judges are. Are they published authors? Are they romance reviewers? ‘Cause we have opened the door to all, to romance reviewers, to librarians, to booksellers, so that we know what our judging panels look like so that we can tell entrants what our, you know, a percentage is this, a percentage is that. So one way to help is, is to sign up. If, if you believe, if you understand, you think you have a concept of what inherent bias is and that you have a handle on it and you think you’d be a good judge and you love romance, sign up, and then once you sign up you’re going to go through judge training, and half of it is how to recognize – more than half – how to recognize inherent bias and how to kind of make up for that in your judging so that you’re honest about, like, what you’re really judging. And the other piece of the judging will be kind of how to use the scoring system, because that’s been gamed for many years, and it’s –

Sarah: Yes.

HelenKay: – time to get control of that!

Sarah: I was going to say, I know that there’s a, a, a good bit of, I guess it would be like oral history or –

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: – like, folklore of here’s how you tank a book without making it obvious that you’re tanking a book?

HelenKay: Yes. Exactly.

Sarah: And, which, which blew my mind.

HelenKay: Oh, it, well, you know, and it’s interesting: so people have been, what you end up with is people who have been judging a long time have in their mind, if I give something a seven and a half, it’s never going to final – which is true – it’s never going to final, but yet it’s not so low that it’ll automatically be re-judged, because right, we have discrepancy judges judging –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – if, if the scores are too far apart, based on an algorithm that I do not know. And, so people figured out this was – and I, and I’m sure some did it, like, intentionally: I want to tank a book. I’m sure they did. I think a lot of people did it just like, I think the book’s meh, but I don’t want to give it a five; that seems mean. A seven and a half at least seems –

Sarah: Oh yeah, I’ve met the people who think that judging is mean. I hear from them. That’s my inbox.

HelenKay: [Laughs] People call you mean? I’ve never heard that!

Sarah: Oh! Oh, not at all! Not ever! No, that’s not at all something I hear. What? Nooo!

HelenKay: That is news to me!

Sarah: I know! I am sure you get email about me being mean, or you, the board has in the past. Anyway –

[Laughter]

HelenKay: I, I got email about everybody. I was in charge of everybody anywhere in the romance genre, so I probably did.

Sarah: Awesome!

HelenKay: But –

[Laughter]

Sarah: With the education of judges, which I haven’t seen yet, and I’m looking forward to, how long is that going to take judges? Is the, is, is part of the – this is actually an unfair question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Is part of the gatekeeping making it a little bit more difficult to become a judge and not letting people cruise through on autopilot?

HelenKay: Yeah, well, you know, we, we kind of even had a worse situation, right? Like, we had, if you entered the RITAs, you had to judge. Part of it was, it’s like this complex thing, right? You, you have, if two thousand books are entered, that means – every book gets five judges – ten thousand books have to be judged, which means –

Sarah: Yeah, it’s a lot of, it’s a lot of books.

HelenKay: That’s a lot of books! You need, like, fourteen hundred judges to handle that, and the thought was, for a very long time – and I’m not sure why – only PAN members are qualified to judge, which of course, in retrospect, is ridiculous, but that was the rule, right? So that’s a very finite group of people, so the way to get enough judges was to force anybody who entered to judge. So then you had a whole lot of people who didn’t want to judge in the first place, sometimes had no aptitude for it – you know, some of, some of them are new RWA members; they don’t really, maybe they don’t know a whole lot; I don’t know – but we ended up with folks who were kind of captive judges. That’s already a problem, right? We think with having people sign up, first of all, you already should be in a better place, because people are, actively have to sign up, knowing that they’re going to have to fill out a questionnaire and go through judge training. That means you have to want to be a judge.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Right? Like, I want to be a judge! I want this contest to succeed, so I’m going to sign up, and hopefully I’m picked! [Laughs] And, but I know that I’m going to have to fill out a questionnaire – again, it’s not a very intrusive questionnaire, but it’s a questionnaire – and I know –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – I’m going to have to sit for, you know – I’m not sure what the judge training is; happily, that falls on Car-, we were working that out when the board switched, but it, you know, it’ll, it’ll be at least an hour where you sit and listen, listen to inherent bias information. So it, it, it is harder. You have to want to be a judge. You have to make, take proactive steps to be a judge –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and you have to be willing to be, to listen in the training and hopefully learn something before you judge. I think automatically that starts out with a better judging pool, right? Like, when people aren’t captive, that’s automatically going to be better, and then the fact that they’re willing to go through a couple of steps because it’s important to them, that’s a positive thing. And I think for a long time, because it was so restrictive on who could judge, I am hoping that there’s a group of people out there, librarians, booksellers, romance reviewers, who for a long time have said, you know, guys, I could probably do a better job, and I’m hoping they will now step up and do the job. It’s all a test, right? Because you can’t, we can’t prom-, we’ve tried to be honest about that, we can’t promise anything, so what we’re doing is, before we burn it down, we’re trying to throw everything we can at fixing it, and we’ve been told by the experts, education and training is the only way to fix this. You, you can’t make people not be racist; you can’t, you can’t make people be better if they don’t want to be better; but you can train those who want to be trained and want to do better, so that’s what we’re trying to do, and I’m, I’m really, really hopeful it’ll make a difference. I think, I think the RITAs are important. I think they showcase a lot of authors who are, wouldn’t otherwise get the showcasing and the highlighting, and I know there are people I’ve started reading because I, I judged them in the contest, so I think, I think it can be a positive thing if we can get it turning the way it needs to turn.

Sarah: I hope so.

HelenKay: Me too.

Sarah: So can I ask you about, do you want to talk about some of the more egregious messages that you’ve received in your tenure? Is there a way to address people who are just so far out of line they’re not even on the planet anymore? Or do you want to just sort of let that go?

HelenKay: Well, you know, I do think this is one of those things that members don’t know about, right? Like, there, there are accountability measures in place, but a lot of them are confidential in nature, and they have to be, because our lawyer told us they had to be, right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Like, the lawyer said, whenever you do anything Code of Ethics, etc., what you need to do is give people due process. It’s confidential until there’s a finding, and everybody has to have a right to be heard, a right to respond. That’s why we don’t use anonymous complaints, etc.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And so there is a, there’s process that has, that, that has to be followed, but what happens sometimes, what would happen for me is, I would put somebody in moderation on a PAN, on the PAN forum, and then all of their seething anger would come through me.

Sarah: Egads!

HelenKay: Right? They’d email me, ‘cause they couldn’t, because I didn’t let them put it on the PAN forum, and then either one of two things would happen: they would say, you know what, this organization no longer represents me, and you won’t let me say the hateful things I want to say. How dare you? I’m leaving.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And the answer is, okay. Like, I’m not going to beg you to stay. Okay. Or every once in a while they would say, okay, I didn’t real-, okay. In hindsight, whatever, and I’d keep ‘em in moderation, but they were no longer problematic. So what happens sometimes is the problematic players, all of a sudden you don’t see them anymore?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: There’s a reason for that. There is stuff happening behind the scenes. We just can’t do huge announcements, because that’s not the way the system is allowed to work?

Sarah: Right, right.

HelenKay: And if, if you think that’s a bad thing, then I would suggest, go look at the lawsuit that the 13 Reasons Why author filed against his organization because they kicked him out on an anonymous complaint and duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, and now it’s, now it’s a mess, and we’ve, we’ve always been careful –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – extra careful about that, so, but yeah. I mean, I do get, I, there, there’s, there’s a lot of hate spewing, and there’s a lot of things that I think, I have to hope that people in hindsight looked back at and said, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s terrible, and I have to control my behavior. But I, I don’t know. I don’t know if they – [laughs] – I don’t know if they do or not. Maybe that’s just me being naively hopeful.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So, you’re done being President.

HelenKay: I am.

Sarah: Your writing time is back!

HelenKay: In theory, yes, yes!

Sarah: Whatcha working on?

HelenKay: [Laughs] In theory I’m like, yay! But you know, and I, I, I had a – this is, you know, no one’s fault but how my brain works. I mean, I had a significantly difficult time this year writing, and I mean, like, you know, I have a book that comes out the end of December, The Secret She Keeps, through Avon, that my poor editor, I went to an Avon KissCon in April, and by that point the book was like three weeks late, and I saw her and I burst into tears, ‘cause I was like –

Sarah: Oh no!

HelenKay: – the, the, the book is awful! I can’t, I can’t, and I can’t seem to fi- – like, I, I, my brain isn’t working. I can’t get it – and she, you know, to her credit, May Chen, who’s fabulous, said, okay. We’re just going to take a breath. I’m going to go home. I’m going to tell you the latest day you can turn this in before, like, we have a mess at Avon, and it’s going to be fine. You’re going to, I’m going to take all the pressure off. I want you to not be thinking about it. Like, this was right after the finalists were announced –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and my book was due. And that, I mean, that was huge, because I honestly could not, from March to about the middle of June, I had nothing. Like, like, normally dialogue runs in my head, ideas come up, I write them down. I had z-, I had nothing.

Sarah: Well, that makes sense, given how much mental energy you were expending elsewhere. Your brain only has so much!

HelenKay: It, it does, and it’s like, you know, I, I was done, and so when it clicked back on – thank goodness it did – it clicked back on, and I actually rewrote the entire book. And now I’m, now I’m happy with it and very happy, but it, it, it is interesting. So finally I am at the point where I have things kind of moving in my head again, and, and –

Sarah: Percolating?

HelenKay: – last night I was all excited because I was like, I came up with a romantic suspense idea for a series, and I was like, you know, kind of undercover, all the stuff I love, and it just popped into my head, and I got to sit down for an hour and a half and, like, write out notes, and it –

Sarah: Yay!

HelenKay: – it’s just nice it’s back. [Laughs]

Sarah: What did you do to take care of yourself?

HelenKay: Probably not enough, to be honest.

Sarah: [Laughs]

HelenKay: Well, because, you know, I felt like, I felt like I had to watch – I’m not a Facebook person, so I, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on Facebook, but I did spend a lot of time on Twitter, and, and people were pretty vocal in their anger about RWA and certain things on Twitter, so I saw – [laughs] – I saw a lot of it. And so, you know, I, I was just try- – it might be, Sarah, that if you ask some people, they would tell you I have a wee bit of a controlling problem. A wee bit!

Sarah: No, really?

HelenKay: [Laughs]

Sarah: No!

HelenKay: So I, you know, I was trying to put out fires be-, before they became disasters, especially in May and June, because March and April had been so hard, and I was trying to take some of the pressure off the full board. You know, everybody’s –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – everybody’s a volunteer, and some of them, in addition to volunteering and writing full time, they also have another full-time job, so I was trying to do as much that I could do to take a little bit of the burden off them.

Sarah: And you were picking up things that didn’t have your name on them?

HelenKay: Well, yeah, but I mean –

Sarah: [Laughs] Understandably so! Absolutely understandably so! But –

HelenKay: That’s not, I mean, that, that is, nobody should be impressed by that. That is my –

[Laughter]

HelenKay: – that is my inability to say no, and I –

Sarah: No is hard.

HelenKay: Carolyn was, was great as President-Elect, and I, she would often be like, you know, I can handle that too, and it, it, you know, it was just like, you felt like, I felt like, I just, I just have to, like, focus and keep everybody focused and just keep everybody moving forward, and it was, yeah, it was, it was, it was a little weird. So I could have done everything differently – [laughs] – and probably should have –

Sarah: Mmm.

HelenKay: – for my own mental health, but what I thought I needed to do at that moment was actually over-control, so I don’t know if that’ll turn out to be the right answer or not.

Sarah: I understand! It’s really hard to, to say, yeah, I don’t want that job. I don’t, that’s not something I can do, especially when, especially when you know, okay, I know how to do this. I know how this could work.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: I, I know how to do this. Just ‘cause I know how to do something doesn’t mean I have to be the one to do it. That’s really hard to realize.

HelenKay: It really is, right? Like, that, I mean, that’s a growth – you know, I, you hear all the time people say, like, this is the year of Yes, and I jokingly said to my husband –

Sarah: No!

HelenKay: – I’m like, no, this is my year of No. It needs to be the year of HelenKay has to come before all of this other stuff. It needs to be the year of No for a little while.

Sarah: Want to hear one of my favorite things that I read at the end of last year?

HelenKay: Yes!

Sarah: So I did a lot of reading on trains ‘cause we were in Japan and their trains are fabulous and quiet, and I got a lot of reading done, and I read a book about time management and productivity, because those are my favorite things. But one of the things that I read was the concept of a jubilee year for your calendar where you just say no to everything and, and only add back in the things you want to do.

HelenKay: [Whispers] Oh my God, that sounds awesome!

Sarah: Doesn’t it sound amazing? It’s like, no, I have declared amnesty. I have declared it a jubilee year for my calendar. I am only adding in the things that I want to do.

HelenKay: Love that!

Sarah: Isn’t it amazing?

So you’ve been writing romantic suspense for a long time.

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: How has that genre changed over time? What are some things that you’ve noticed that are different?

HelenKay: That is such a good question! You know, because I, I’ve watched, and the kind of suspense I’ve written has switched back and forth, right? Like it, it went from undercover to a very kind of mysterious, suspense-y, you know, from thriller to suspense-y to mystery.

Sarah: And it all gets housed under suspense.

HelenKay: It, it does, and it’s, and it’s interesting because it’s very different readerships. Like, like –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

HelenKay: – like the romantic mystery folks and the folks who like the undercover thriller, high adrenaline thing are not always my same readers. Like, sometimes they’re like, could you go back and do this instead? And I, and I get that. I, romantic suspense, years ago, like, was huge. Everybody was writing it, and it got super dark, and I think – my view; this isn’t, this is not a, like, oh, this is what all the professionals say – I think it got a little too dark?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And the world got dark, and people said, well, I can read one of these books like every couple of months, but I don’t want to just read really super dark, look what awful thing’s happening to the heroine over and over again, and romantic suspense took a huge nosedive around that time. And I, I do think the reason is people, there was enough bad stuff happening; they didn’t need super bad stuff happening in their books either.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Then what happened, I, I sold a, I remember I sold a, a series to Avon on Bad Boys Undercover, so, you know, it’s an undercover operation, and nobody was buying romantic suspense at that time, but I, I sold it at auction. I think we had –

Sarah: Oh!

HelenKay: – five different people, five different publishers wanted it, four different publishers wanted it, but my sense was, it’s not because it was that brilliant, but they were ready again, and it felt more save-the-world-ish? Which people had a more positive feeling about, rather than serial killers tracking down, you know, individual heroines. So I’m, I think it’s, I think it’s constantly shifting, what people kind of want to read? It’s, it’s a hard – I know a lot of people come into the genre, and a lot of people say stuff like, oh, it’s easier because you just blow stuff up. I actually think romantic suspense is really, really hard to write. I also write contemporary romance, and I think romantic suspense is hard to write because it’s very hard to hit the mix of suspense and romance in a believable way. Like, would these people really stop right now and have sex? Really? Would they? Come on.

Sarah: Danger boner!

HelenKay: Yeah! You know, it’s –

Sarah: Danger makes you horny, baby, yeah!

HelenKay: Exactly, right? Like, I, I always, I always joke about this is like stop, drop, and roll. I mean, it’s like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

HelenKay: Right? Like, the serial killer, you know the serial killer is right there, so let’s just pop into this cave and we’ll have sex. I’m like, like, no! That is not – [laughs] – that, like, that’s –

Sarah: That’s a no.

HelenKay: This is not a believable setup. So I think it’s hard to write. I, I love writing it. I love the adrenaline of it. I love writing, I’ve written some heroines who are like, you know, the girl next door types, I’ve written some who are MI6 officers –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and I just love the idea of people, when put into this kind of larger-than-life scenario, who rise to the occasion?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And I love an idea that, along with the happy ending, the bad guys lose. Like, the bad guys –

Sarah: Yeah!

HelenKay: – always lose in my books, and that doesn’t happen in real life, so for me to get to be god in my world and make it happen in my books, I kind of love.

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: [Laughs] There’s a huge rise in, in just not even romantic suspense but in suspense. You know, you think of Gillian Flynn and –

Sarah: Yeah!

HelenKay: – Gone Girl, this, and, and you know, Vic-, Victoria Dahl – that’s not what she writes under; I think it’s Victoria Helen Stone’s –

Sarah: Helen Stone, yeah.

HelenKay: – right – Jane Doe, where I, I love the rise of these heroines who are flawed and imperfect and –

Sarah: Yes!

HelenKay: – and done. Right? They’re just done!

Sarah: Yes.

HelenKay: [Laughs] I, I love that!

Sarah: I think the thing that, that I love about the books like that is that it’s not just an unreliable narrator who you’re not sure if you trust? It’s the fact that you, it’s so easy for me as a reader to identify with not being sure if the reality that I am experiencing is actual reality, or if it is being tinged by the fact –

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: – that I’m so fucking done right now.

HelenKay: Yes! Right? Like, it’s, it’s, the idea of being able to read, and it’s not just revenge, but it’s, it’s this kind of taking control of their anger –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and not, like, hiding it, not pretending it’s not there. They, they unleash, and there’s something very cathartic about that.

Sarah: Oh yeah. And they’re like, I am taking over, I am taking charge, and I have had enough.

HelenKay: I’ve had enough! I love that, love those books.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, me too.

So what do you see as the future for romance? ‘Cause, you know, you have all of this power to make it happen.

HelenKay: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, let me, I should, I should have said that at the beginning: I no longer have any power, and I do not speak on behalf of RWA.

I think – you know, it’s interesting. Years ago, before I got on the board, there was a, a big move to kind of, what I would call, make the umbrella smaller, right? Like, it’s, when they took out the romantic elements piece of the, of the RITAs, you know, that category, etc., I, I think the future is actually a bigger umbrella. I think –

Sarah: Oh, thank you! That was my favorite category!

HelenKay: I, I, I do! I, I think what romance needs to do is, you know, a lot of, there’s a lot out there, right? Discoverability is really, really tough in romance, and there are all kinds of problems with, you know, kind of the scamming folks in KU and all that kind of stuff, but I think romance needs to, needs to expand, and part of, like, what we’re seeing right now is a huge surge in contemporaries and these books we call rom-coms, a lot of them which I don’t think actually are rom-coms –

Sarah: Mm, yes.

HelenKay: – and, and I, I think we just need to branch out a little bit more. I think, I think, I think there are women’s fiction/romance hybrids that absolutely fall under the romance umbrella. I think some of those suspense with a, you know, a strong romance at its center should be part of our umbrella. I, I think, I think we need to go bigger, not think smaller, and I, I’m not saying it’s okay to kill off the hero on page 359 – that, I don’t think that’s genre romance at all – but I do think, I think there are a whole bunch of people writing stuff that is, we’ve maybe thought of as on the fringe of the romance genre that we need to welcome in, because the reality is that – and this is the hard reality – that traditional romance print publishers, it seems as if they’re buying fewer books for print. There are fewer of them in the game; there are some who published print romance in the past, and now you say to yourself, wait, who are their romance authors now? And the answer is, they don’t really have any?

Sarah: Yeah! I’ve noticed that!

HelenKay: Yeah, right? And, and there is a push by, on some authors to write outside of romance. Have you tried, have you tried suspense? Have you tried women’s fiction? All of, all of those things, so there is, it feels like there’s kind of some shrinkage in traditional, especially traditional print romance, and then we have self publishing, which has worked great for a whole lot of people and then has not worked so great for a lot of people because there’s a discoverability issue. So I think in, if, if we think of it on a bigger, romance on a bigger scale and a little outside of the boundaries that we’ve, that we’ve set, I, I think that’s, I think that’ll be good for romance. Otherwise, I have concerns about the romance genre, because there just aren’t that many bookstores anymore, right?

Sarah: No, there’s –

HelenKay: Like the, like the –

Sarah: – there’s not!

HelenKay: There are limits, and I, I, I think we need to, to, to be a little more responsive to those limits. I’m lucky; we still have, we still have a few Barnes and Noble, but I’m very lucky we have a, like, I live in San Diego, and we have Mysterious Galaxy, which is a great genre bookstore, and, and they, they have expanded their romance offerings. They’ve always been good with sci-fi/fantasy and mystery. And there’s also, in La Jolla, a, an independent bookstore called Warwick’s, which for the longest time did not really have genre fiction, certainly didn’t have romance, and you know, earlier this month they had a huge romance display in their window, and I just thought to myself, okay! This is good! We’re moving in the right direction!

I do think independent bookstores are making huge strides in trying to be more welcoming to romance and understanding that romance readers are, I think, the best readers, because they, they buy, and they love to read, and they’ll read outside of their genre, and they’ll read inside their genre. So I’m, I, I think all of that is really positive, and I think that’s also a reason why we need to open the umbrella a little bit, because some of these books work great in independent bookstores and maybe aren’t considered, but that’s not what we’ve always, you know, put in the confines of romance. But I, I think it would be good for us to expand a bit.

Sarah: Yeah, I concur.

All right, what are you reading that you want to tell people about?

HelenKay: Okay, there’s – [laughs] – I just read Lies by Kylie Scott –

Sarah: Oh?

HelenKay: – which is great. It’s like, you know, undercover, there’s a couple; he’s an undercover agent; she doesn’t know; she finds him boring; and then of course she’s, their house blows up and, and she’s kidnapped and boom! I thought, I thought it was great, and it’s the first Kylie Scott book I had, I had ever read, and I really liked it.

I love any, I, I’ve always been a fan of the Desire imprint at Harlequin, and if people aren’t reading Reese Ryan, they need to go out and read Reese Ryan. First of all, she’s got incredible covers on her Desires, but her books are great.

Sarah: Oh, they’re such gorgeous covers.

HelenKay: So beautiful. They did such a good job, and I, I, I like her writing. I, and I just think, I think she’s getting better and better, and I think she just announced a single-title deal, so I’m pretty excited to see where that goes.

There, there are two books I’m super excited about coming out, so I’m going to get, try to get you super excited. One is, Adriana Anders has a book called White Out, and it’s one of those, like, a storm is coming, and the killer is on the loose books, which I could read those all day, so I’m very excited about that, and I think she’s an amazing author. And Andie Christopher has this book coming out called Not, Not the Girl You Marry –

Sarah: Yes.

HelenKay: – and I don’t even know anything about the book, but I find Andie so unbelievably delightful on Twitter – like, she’s just funny – that I think the book has to be good, because she’s so charming. [Laughs] I’m just, I’m just hoping that oozed into the book somehow, so I’m very excited about those two.

Sarah: Very cool! Is there anything else that you would like to add?

HelenKay: I would just say this: I, you know, I served on the board of RWA for six years because it mattered to me. Right? Like, the –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: It’s the trade organization for our pro-, for our profession. I think sometimes people have unrealistic expectations about what it can do? It’s a trade organization, which means it’s just like Realtors of America, right? It’s –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: It can’t solve racism; it can’t, it can’t make everything better; it can’t get you published; it can’t make everybody happy. But it can advocate for your interests, and it can be as fair and open and welcoming and, as possible, and I think the latter, it’s absolutely trying to do and is committed to doing, and the former, the advocacy, is something that people don’t fully, maybe, appreciate how much behind-the-scenes work RWA does with Facebook, with Amazon, with Authors Coalition, banding together with other authors groups to try to work on piracy, book stuffing, etc. All of those things that RWA isn’t particularly great, hasn’t been particularly great at tooting its own horn about –

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: – are things that matter, and that’s why the organization matters, and, and when you have a problem with a book’s, you know, with a publisher, they can step in; they can help. So I’m, I hope that people will give it a chance, understand that the contest actually isn’t all of what RWA does. In fact, as President, even with what a big year it was with the RITAs and how much work we had to do, it wasn’t even half of what I did. That’s how much –

Sarah: Wow.

HelenKay: – other stuff is going on behind the scenes, and they can’t talk about everything as it’s happening, ‘cause sometimes, you know, you can’t talk about the sausage until it’s sausage? But I, I do think they’re getting a little bit better about communicating with members, and we, we tried to do that, and I hope that will continue, and I, and I hope people will stick with it. I think, I think it matters, and I think, I think the RITAs can be, I think the RITAs are pretty great, as we saw this year, and I think that they can be extraordinary if we, if we all kind of support and do our part.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of the episode. I want to thank HelenKay for hanging out and answering all of my annoying questions. If you want to find her, you can find her on her website, helenkaydimon.com, and on Twitter @helenkaydimon.

And if you want to ask me questions, or if you want to make suggestions for guests, or you want to ask for recommendations, you can do all of those things; I love hearing from you. The email address for the podcast is [email protected], or you can call and leave a message at 1-201-371-3272.

I do want to tell you that Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is now on the Radio.com mobile app, but if there are places where you listen to podcasts and we’re not there, let me know! ‘Cause I’ll go bug ‘em and ask that we be added. There’s so many places to list a podcast now, holy smokes. But wherever or however you are listening, thank you for listening! I very much appreciate it!

This episode is brought to you by Flashed by Zoey Castile. Inspired by the Magic Mike franchise, vibrant new voice Zoey Castile continues the Happy Endings series of modern, multicultural and millennial-focused, sexy contemporary romances. The third installment, Flashed, is a humorous and relatable novel about figuring out your true path in life and love. Set in Montana, Flashed follows a male stripper and romance cover model coping with an accident which leaves him disfigured. Flashed by Zoey Castile is on sale now wherever books are sold. Find out more at zoeycastile.com.

Today’s podcast and transcript are brought to you by Blood and Blade, book six in the Goddess with a Blade series by Lauren Dane, out December 31st; get ready. Fans of urban fantasy with romantic storylines like Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series or Eileen Wilks’ World of the Lupi will love this series featuring a kickass heroine with an actual goddess in her belly and the uptight British vampire scion who adores her. In Blood and Blade, Rowan tracks down and confronts the real power behind the kidnappings and murders of paranormals all over the globe, including those she loved and was sworn to protect. Along the way she collects new friends and allies and, being Rowan, creates new enemies as well. Books one through five are all available now wherever books are sold. You can find out more about Rowan and about Lauren Dane’s other series at her website, laurendane.com.

Hello, Patreon community. You are uncommonly fabulous. Thank you very much for supporting the show. And if you would like to support the show, if what we do here has value to you, a dollar a month makes a deeply appreciated difference. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches, and thank you in advance!

The music you are listening to, as always, is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is Sketch. This is “Shed Life” from their album by the same name, and you can find it on Amazon or iTunes or wherever you get your funky music.

What is coming up on Smart Bitches this week? Many awesome things. First, it is time for Whatcha Reading? where we ask you what you’re reading, and then tell us what you’re reading, and then – wait, did I get that right? I actually have to go back and listen to what I just said; hang on just a second. Yeah, I totally got that wrong. I’ll try it again. So I’m going to ask you what you’re reading, and then we’re going to tell you what we’re reading, and then we’re all going to talk about books, and we’re probably going to buy some; at least, I always do. I don’t know if that’s true for you, but it’s one of the most expensive features for me, and I do this every month. Whatcha Reading? is on Saturday, so come hang out with us.

We also have so many great new books. Like, great day in the morning, there are so many books releasing in the first week of October. We have great reviews, plus Hide Your Wallet, where we talk about all the other books coming out in October that we’re excited about. We have Books on Sale; we have Help a Bitch Out. I hope you will come and hang out with us, especially because, if you missed it, there, you didn’t miss anything, actually, ‘cause it’s a new permanent feature of the site!

We have a Book Finder. The Book Finder allows you to search by archetype, theme, and genre, and it presents you with a gorgeous quilt of covers. You can sort, and you can reload, and you can look at only the ones that have reviews, or you can look at everything in our database. We are so excited about this feature. I’ve been working on this with the behind-the-scenes team for literal months. I am so excited that it’s launched, and I hope you’ll let me know what you think of it! Smartbitches.com – excuse me, no, that’s not actually the – I can’t even remember the URL of my website. Are you listening to me right now? My goodness. Smartbitchestrashybooks.com/bookfinder.

I will have links to all of the books we talked about, plus the bookstores that HelenKay mentioned, and now I end with a bad joke, the joke not being that I can’t remember my own URL, although that is pretty funny.

Are you ready? Here we go. [Clears throat]

What do you call someone who eats corn on the cob one kernel at a time?

What do you call someone who eats corn on the cob one kernel at a time?

A uni-corn!

[Laughs] It’s so dumb. I love it! I love stupid jokes! If you want to tell me a stupid joke, you know that I want to hear it, right, ‘cause I adore stupid jokes? I like them so very, very much.

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

[amazing music]