377. Finding the Story: A Conversation with Kennedy Ryan

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome to episode number 377 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and with me today is Kennedy Ryan. I recorded this during the release week for The Kingmaker, her latest book, and we go behind the scenes to talk about the development of the cover art for her All the King’s Men duology and the work that that image does to represent the books inside. Kennedy Ryan is also a journalist since she was seventeen, which is so cool, and we talk about how her experience with conducting interviews has influenced her research and her writing process. And of course we talk about her latest books, which are releasing back to back.

This episode is brought to you by The Highlander’s Christmas Bride by Vanessa Kelly. USA Today bestselling author Vanessa Kelly returns with a second installment in her enthralling series about the men of the Kendrick Clan and the women who claim their hearts, within the gorgeous backdrop of the Scottish Highlands. When the unexpected meeting of a wealthy widower and a gently bred ex-nun starts tongues wagging, the unconventional pairing may be just the thing to breathe the holiday spirit back into both their lives and hearts. The Highlander’s Christmas Bride is available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit vanessakellyauthor.com.

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And I have a special heads-up to any book-loving holiday travelers: if you are looking at some travel in the weeks ahead or you just don’t want to interact with humanity – I understand – have you considered really long audiobooks? Audible has the world’s largest selection of audiobooks and audio entertainment, including Audible origins. You can start listening with a thirty-day Audible trial. Choose one audiobook and two Audible originals absolutely free. Visit audible.com/trashybooks or – this is so cool – text TRASHYBOOKS to 500-500. That’s one audiobook and two Audible originals, both of which I am super into. Currently, I am listening to Rainbow Rowell’s Attachments while I walk the dogs each day, and it is delightful. And I’ve talked about other audiobooks that I’m enjoying here too. So if you are curious, you can get a thirty-day Audible trial with one audiobook and two Audible originals for free! Visit audible.com/trashybooks or text TRASHYBOOKS to 500-500. That’s A-U-D-I-B-L-E dot com slash trashybooks or – this is so cool! – text TRASHYBOOKS to 500-500.

I love it when I have a compliment, and I have a compliment this episode!

To Laura S.: Your personal coat of arms probably features champagne bottles, excellent hugs, and the very best books, pretty much every emblem of excellence ever, because you’re that great!

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I will have information at the end of the show about what’s coming up on Smart Bitches, and of course I will have an absolutely dreadful joke, and it’s really, really bad, because it came from one of you, and it is therefore the best one.

But let’s not delay anymore; on with my conversation with Kennedy Ryan, all about finding the story.

[music]

Kennedy Ryan: I am Kennedy Ryan, and I write romance proudly.

Sarah: Yay!

Kennedy: I, I guess that’s what I do! [Laughs] I, I enjoy writing romance that really centers marginalized people: people of color, people – really, all kinds of people who have not had as much of a voice in traditional romance circles. Voices that I call muted, I like to amplify, and so that’s kind of really my focus. That’s what I do!

Sarah: Fabulous! You have a new book –

Kennedy: Yes –

Sarah: – brand-new. It came out this week, right?

Kennedy: Brand-new! Came out this week, yes! The Kingmaker.

Sarah: Congratulations!

Kennedy: Thank you so much.

Sarah: Isn’t it such a lovely feeling to be like, okay, I did it! It’s out. Okay.

Kennedy: [Laughs] I did! I did, but you know, I am such a masochist that I have an-, I, it’s a duet, and so now I have to put the second one out in, like, three weeks.

Sarah: Oh!

Kennedy: Yes. And –

Sarah: No pressure.

Kennedy: No pressure! No pressure at all. So it’s like I’m in the throes of release, but then I’m, it’s like I’m preparing for another release at the same time, but it’s going okay. And people have been, the response to The Kingmaker has been just amazing, and people have been so kind, and so many folks are excited, so it makes me like, oh my gosh, I really hope that I come through with the next book, how I finish the story, so. But it’s going well.

Sarah: Release week is always so much.

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: Everything is so much during that week, and one of the things I have loved is the response to the cover? It is such a –

Kennedy: Yeah.

Sarah: – power pose cover, but it’s also vulnerable and intimate?

Kennedy: Yes, yes.

Sarah: Was it hard to find that image? Because that is, is an outstanding cover image.

Kennedy: Is it, Sarah? Thank you so much! This, Sarah, I, well, I, I don’t know if most people know: I am what’s called a hybrid author. So that means I have books that are traditionally published, and then I also have books that are self-published. I started traditionally published. Like, my first four books are traditional, and then I started doing some indie publishing, and it was really an adjustment, because of course when you’re traditionally publishing you have some input, of course, on covers and things like that, but it, it’s not all on you. And when you’re self-publishing it’s all on you! [Laughs] You know, from the –

Sarah: Nope!

Kennedy: – from the concept to the execution to everything, and I am a cover whore, in the sense that it’s very, very important to me. With my Hoops series, oh – and I know you asked me about The Kingmaker, but I’m just giving people background about how neurotic I am about covers – I started doing original photos. Like, I would, you know, go out and seek –

Sarah: Ooh!

Kennedy: – models? [Laughs] Seek original photos instead of stock photos, and that is something a lot, you know, it’s something that more people are starting to do, but it’s difficult.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: So –

Sarah: It is.

Kennedy: And it takes me, I’m thinking about my, my last book in my Hoops series, Hook Shot, it took me almost six months to find that image. This –

Sarah: Wow!

Kennedy: Yes. [Laughs] To find the right image, yeah, and I literally spend months looking for the right image, and, ‘cause I have something very specific in my head, and then I have a tiny little committee of people I torture for about, you know, three months while we figure out the covers. And this time I decided to do an original photo shoot. So I found photos on Pinterest, on Instagram, you know, all over. I took some photos from Scandal – [laughs] – you know, because the book, part of the book is kind of Scandal-ish? The show Scandal? And I sent them –

Sarah: Yeah?

Kennedy: – to a photographer, and I kind of created of vision board, as far as what the feel, the look and the feel for the book and their relationship and the story, and I said, I need you to do a photo shoot based on this, and so, I mean, I gave her specific poses. I was very neurotic, and she did a photo shoot with, you know, we found the couple –

Sarah: Wow!

Kennedy: – and she did a photo shoot based on all of the things that I gave her. We talked about mood and lighting and all kinds of stuff, and from that I got probably a hundred and twenty photos from that photo shoot?

Sarah: Wow.

Kennedy: When I tell you, I’m so neurotic I could only use maybe seven of them? I’m, I wish I was exaggerating.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: It’s true! Like, I’m very, very picky! And so I found about seven photos, and I said, okay, and I wanted to really create a world, you know, like, you see teasers, you see, you know, promotional graphics. I wanted to create kind of a, a canvas for this story using kind of all the same people and the same photos and the same setting. Do you know what I mean? And –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Kennedy: – and so you see these two people kind of everywhere but in different positions, where, you know, sometimes not, in different states of dress, you know. But I found this one cover, I mean this one photo, and originally I was going to use it for book two, and the one that’s on book one, which, that’s a whole other story, what it took to get it exactly the way I wanted for The Rebel King, which is the second story in the duet – is this even interesting? I’m so sorry; I’m probably going, like, so deep-dive microscopic –

Sarah: No!

Kennedy: – on the covers, but I am a little neurotic about it.

Sarah: No, it’s fascinating! Please.

Kennedy: [Laughs] Okay, so I had The Rebel King cover on the first book, and I had the cover that’s now on The Kingmaker, I had that on The Rebel King, and I don’t, I don’t think it’s giving too much away, it’s too much of a spoiler – I think it is a little bit of a surprise once you’re in the book, but it’s not a big deal – but she is the kingmaker. I think a lot of people assume that it’s the man who is the kingmaker, but she is the kingmaker, and I realized that, you know, kind of conventional thought is, oh, you had this great-looking guy on the cover and, you know, whenever you lead with that, and my friends and I started saying, she really needs to be represented on this cover. She is the kingmaker –

Sarah: Right.

Kennedy: – and so at the last minute I was like, we’re flipping it! You know, and my, my cover artist was like, really? I was like, yes, so I need you to put this picture and everything on this photo I need you to put on this one, and – you know, so I wanted there to be kind of this dichotomy, because a lot of times people who are wealthy, who are powerful, who are public figures, they’re all pulled together, and I wanted –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – I called it, what did we call it? Disheveled – I can’t remember, but we had this guiding kind of – my cover designer and I had been hashing it out for months, and I can’t remember what she called it. Disheveled – I can’t remember it; maybe it’ll come to me. But we wanted the intimacy of what those people who are so pulled together in public, these people who are powerful, these people who are wealthy, these people who seem to have, you know, everything, we wanted to go behind the scenes, and the –

Sarah: Right.

Kennedy: – our inspirations were, you know, they’re taking off cufflinks, she’s undressing, you know, there’s a glass of wine on the bedside table. It’s them in repose, you know; it’s –

Sarah: Right.

Kennedy: – what those people look like behind things, and that was really what, what drove that cover and that pose is the vulnerability of – ‘cause they’re still in kind of evening clothes. You know, she has this dress on, and he has – you can’t really see him very much, which is kind of deliberate, ‘cause we wanted more of the focus on her; you can’t even see his face? And my PR person was like, you can’t even see his face! And I was like, that’s the point! You know, the whole thing is about her.

Sarah: Yep.

Kennedy: And it, it, it just fit, you know, I, he has on a suit, she has on an evening dress, so it’s obvious they’ve been somewhere, you know, but it is them relaxing, and that’s kind of the vulnerability and the, the contrast between the formal and kind of when those layers come away, and I wanted to show that physically, obviously, and with, you know, those poses, but I also wanted to talk about that emotionally and how the, who those people trust, and who they are –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – most authentically themselves with, which is each other. So that’s a diatribe on the cover; I’m sorry!

[Laughter]

Sarah: You do not need to apologize. I love how the good news of indie publishing is you’re in charge of everything! And the bad news –

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: – of indie publishing is you’re in charge of everything. So –

Kennedy: Exactly!

Sarah: – it’s all riding on your decision process, but when you have such a –

Kennedy: [Laughs] It is.

Sarah: – such a clear vision and an idea –

Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: – and I, I personally love when one of the motifs of a romance or a romance series is the idea of taking off your armor and being your real self –

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: – with someone, and how –

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: – difficult and scary that is? What, what led you into this story? Do you start with the characters? Do you start with the conflict? Do you start with the cover image? Like, where do you start with your story, and what led you into this one?

Kennedy: I don’t, I don’t usually start with an image of the cover at all. It varies. When I wrote Long Shot, and I want to keep going to that, but it’s, I think it’s a good example of –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – kind of the cultural immediacy of my process? I saw the –

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely.

Kennedy: – I saw the Ray Rice video where he knocked out his then-girlfriend, his then-fiancée, who he later married. He knocked her out in an elevator and dragged her out of the elevator, and I felt so much –

Sarah: I remember.

Kennedy: – I felt so much indignation about that, and I wanted to write a story in the romance world about domestic abuse in the context of professional sports, and I was watching the DAP-, some-, something with the DAPL protests. I think it was when the Keystone and the DAPL and the Dakota Pipeline were signed, so that it was, like, given the green light, they can go, and it literally was like all the protests just kind of went away, and it, you know, it was like, it was over in, like, in the sweep of a pen, something that had been completely, like, a focal point for our nation here in America, it was like the sweep of a pen –

Sarah: Okay, done! Next!

Kennedy: Over.

Sarah: Yeah!

Kennedy: You know, and now we are, now, and I don’t even, I don’t think it’s on people’s radars much, and I’m not as well versed in that, but there’s now a huge protest in Hawaii around indigenous issues in Hawaii, around the same thing with land and, you know, so I, I was tuned into the DAPL protest, and I don’t know why, but I just started reading about it, and I started thinking about, again, for me, centering marginalized people is very important in my stories, and I started thinking, when was the last time I read a story where there was a Native American heroine, a powerful Native American heroine at the center of the story in romance? And I’m sure they exist, and one of my friends, Robin Covington, is creating a series like that now, which is so, so exciting! And Robin is Cherokee Nation; she’s, she’s going to do an amazing job! I’m so excited about that series! Then I, I was kind of scraping the barrel for representation for that voice in the romance genre, and I’m not saying it’s not there at all, but I, I didn’t think it was there enough, you know? And I don’t know why I go on these little rabbit trails, but I started digging into it, and I started thinking, what if there – and what I like to do is put characters in these situations where it’s like, this is completely wrong, or you’re completely wrong for each other, and you’re the opposite sides of something, and you end up –

Sarah: Yep!

Kennedy: – encountering each other, and the conflict is there. And so I thought, what if they’re – and I started, what, the protest really moved me as I was watching them. I was very moved by it, and I started thinking, what if one of these protesters falls in love with someone who was connected to the pipeline, and that’s kind of how it started brewing in my head is that the person she would fall in love would not be the person who oversees the pipeline, but the son, the son of the man who owns the company who’s laying the pipeline, and then it’s like, well – and for peop-, I hope I’m not spoiling too much, but I, it’s a meet-cute at a pipeline protest. [Laughs]

Sarah: As you do.

Kennedy: As you do! As, as you do. And so that’s kind of how it started, and for me, espe- – I am not Native American; I’m African-American, a Black woman. I, and there’s a lot of commonality between the issues that we face as a community and that Native Americans face as a community. They’re not a monolith, the same way we are, but I would not assume that I know anything about that experience enough to write it, and so we talked a little bit – I can’t – we talked a little bit about, you know, the fact that my background is journalism, and that’s kind of where I started. I started writing an editorial for my city’s newspaper when I was seventeen years old. [Laughs] You know, I –

Sarah: Wow!

Kennedy: – I’ve always been fascinated by story, and I saw – and this is, again, I’m, I discurse, but I was seventeen, and I saw that they were looking for an editorial writer for the newspaper, and I was like, why not me? I have opinions, and I can write things! And they didn’t even know how old I was, and I submitted, like, the, you know, a writing sample, and they took me on, and then they were like, wait, you’re in high school? You know!

[Laughter]

Kennedy: So that –

Sarah: Nice!

Kennedy: – and that has always been my thing, is the pairing of story and opinion, you know, and I, I don’t want to scare people off –

Sarah: Yep.

Kennedy: – because I think a lot of people assume this is a political book, it’s about politics, and it’s not in that way, it’s not divisive? It’s, it’s not, but the, the setting is, part of it is DC and scandal and, you know, all of that. But I am always the person who, once I have an idea, and if I realize that the person I’m centering has a different experience than I do culturally or – with Long Shot it was, I had never been abused, I’d never been in a situation like that, so I closed the laptop and I went off and started inter-, that’s just my journalism, but I started interviewing survivors, I started interviewing social workers, I started interviewing people who work in shelters, and I did the same thing here. I had this idea, but I knew that it’s ar-, it’s so arrogant to assume that you can speak someone else’s experience that way, and I, I won’t, I am not someone who says, you cannot ever write a story outside of your cultural experience, but I am someone who’s very adamant that if you do that you have to be incredibly responsible, and you have to seek out – I mean, depending on, you know, it depends on how you do it, I guess, but for me, I tend to deep dive –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – into an experience, and it’s not usually incidental. I think the thing with journalism, the thing, that germ of journalism for me, like, that little seed, is that I never assume I already have the story. I, I –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: – I think that I have to find the story, that I have to go get the story, and so I close the laptop, and I kind of start seeking that story, and for me, all I need is kind of the germ of the idea, but then I believe that as I interview people who have lived these experience, that’s when the story starts to develop. All of these things that I’m learning start to really shape the story, literally, and as I start to dig into it, and then we were talking about different things, and she, one of them sent me this picture of this real girl who’s seventeen years old – I think at the time she was sixteen years old – her name is Naelyn Pike, and she was a protester, and she – [laughs] – she – I don’t know if people know this, I didn’t realize this, but the youth, Native American youth are on the front lines of protest –

Sarah: Yes.

Kennedy: – and so she, and many like her, had this movement that they called respect the water, and they would run, like, marathons across the country to raise awareness. They would organize these marathons to raise awareness about these issues, and she was an activist. Like, she is, like, on stages at seventeen years old, at sixteen years old. She’s in the thick of it, and she became really an inspiration for Lennix, my character, and I, I had a picture of her, and I saw the way she was dressed, and I listened to her speeches, and I, I started following her on Instagram. [Laughs] You know, I just really honed in on her and people like her who are, who at such a young age were so vocal and so adamant and so convicted. You know, they had, they just, they were just, they just had so much conviction, and I don’t remember when I was seventeen years old being that. Do you know what I mean?

Sarah: No, I didn’t know anything. I had, I knew nothing.

Kennedy: You know?

Sarah: I knew nothing.

Kennedy: And – nothing! I mean, I don’t, I, I don’t remember everything that occupied my attention, but it wasn’t that, and when I saw her she started kind of reshaping my idea of what you could be when you’re that young and what you could do when you’re that young, and so in the beginning of the book, when he first, the hero first sees the heroine, she’s seventeen years old, and she is at this protest, and she is speaking, and she is powerful. Even at seventeen, it’s very clear that she is that person. You know what I mean?

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: And that’s really what draws him in the initial stages. She’s young, though; she’s seventeen, so it’s – and I don’t want people to think, oh, it’s, you know, underage! ‘Cause it isn’t like that, but that’s their first encounter, and I can’t even remember if I’m ask-, if I’m answering your question anymore. [Laughs]

Sarah: No, you absolutely are; do not worry.

Kennedy: Okay.

Sarah: And in, and I think in order, it would seem that in order to be an activist and so well informed and so passionate at that age, you have to have a very strong sense of self, because you have –

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: – have to have already identified the things that are vital to you –

Kennedy: Yeah.

Sarah: – which means that not only are you going to own and represent yourself, but you’re going to fight for the things that –

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: – are threatening your sense of self.

Kennedy: Yes. And I think that, as I start reading not just her, but other accounts from people who are very young, from various tribes all over the country, I think sometimes we don’t recognize how much was, we know, hey, we did Native Americans bad. Like, we know that, we know that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – that this is, we have a kleptocratic history. We just stole, you know, literally just stole things from them, and they were here first. We know all of that, but I think sometimes the legacy of colonialism and imperialism and how, what was lost, I think sometimes is not really unpacked, and when you look at certain tribes, literally there’s no one under the age of thirty that speaks some of those languages. And, do you know what I mean? Because there were –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – there’s a whole generation of people who were not even allowed to speak their own language, you know, and there’s, there’s a ceremony that kind of becomes a centerpiece for this entire story. It’s a rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood that becomes really a theme that’s carried throughout both books, and it’s called the Sunrise Dance, and it was outlawed, like, literally, could, you would be arrested if you practiced it as a Native American person. It was outlawed in the mid-1800s, and literally, Native Americans, if they practiced this rite, which was such a huge – specifically, I mean, there’s a different version of it for various tribes, but my book focuses on the Yavapai-Apache, and, or an Apache, tribes that are centered in the western Arizona area.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: And they are, you would be arrested if you practiced those things, so they would do them underground.

Sarah: Now, I know the book, The Kingmaker addresses environmental endangerment, damages caused by the oil industry, the idea of land protection and land rights. What did you learn about those issues while you were researching? I imagine that your research is a very, very detailed process. What did you learn about, and, and have the things that you learned changed any of your habits or any of your way of looking at the world?

Kennedy: You know, I, I focused really specifically on pipelines and on oil transport?

Sarah: Gosh, there’s hardly any of those in the news at all.

Kennedy: [Laughs] Right. But I was focused a lot on oil transport and how water sources are potentially damaged and contaminated, which is one of the issues, but also about how there are lands that are considered sacred, lands that are supposed to be protected –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – and burial grounds that are basically trampled over. And some of these –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: – are supposed to be considered protected. And I don’t want – [laughs] – I don’t want to get into a lot of the politics of it, but one thing that there was, you know, literally, promises that we have made, I think that was one thing that stood out for me is grounds that were supposed to be protected, promises that the government has made, and agreements that we’ve had between the US government and various tribes broken, basically with impunity and without any real consequence, because we, because we can!

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: And I think that there, there’s such a sacredness about land and the connection to land, and I, that was kind of where I focused, as far as on water contamination and for climate change, because the hero is kind of a green energy mogul? I started –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – looking at just – and I’m no expert – but the warming planet and how he ends up in – [laughs] – I know, doesn’t everyone in romance end up in Antarctica? But he ends up in Antarctica for –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: – he does what’s called wintering over. Wintering over is –

Sarah: Whoa!

Kennedy: Yes. [Laughs] He winters over, and because he is, he has a Ph.D., he has a Ph.D. in Climate Science, as you do –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – and he ends up wintering over in Antarctica, and there’s so much that we learn about the warming planet in the poles and in the, the coldest places on Earth, there’s so much that – I don’t want to get into all of it – but there’s so much that digging into that snow, going all the way down, tells us about what the planet is doing, and so –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: – that’s what he was doing. He wintered over, he was, and he stayed for a long time because there’s different things that we learn in the summer in Antarctica than what we learn in the winter in Antarctica, and so I dug into that, and he talks, I learned about the, about recycling, obviously, but about things like how we can recycle even in fashion? [Laughs] You know, one of the things –

Sarah: Yes!

Kennedy: – he does, he, and I, I specifically reference, like, Stella McCartney and a few other fashion designers ‘cause I thought that was kind of fun, but one, he has all of these businesses that, and all of his business is built around wind, around solar, around green energy and more sustainable sources of energy, and of course, being the son of an oil mogul, he’s very concerned about transitioning our nation into more sustainable forms of energy. And he ends up studying in Amsterdam, because they’re – and the book takes place over the course of about fifteen, twenty years, and so especially at that point Europe was just much more quickly embracing of these other forms of energy, and Amsterdam especially with wind, and so he ends up studying at Amsterdam, and he, down the road, ends up making sports bras out of recycled plastic bottles. [Laughs] You know, but I started learning about that economy, the, basically the, the reciprocity of that economy and how places like China –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – this has been part of what they do for years, and I started looking at –

Sarah: Right.

Kennedy: – other nations, and I was like, what the heck are we doing? [Laughs] You know? I mean, on a, on a very large scale, the way other nations are embracing other forms of energy on a wide scale, in a way that I don’t –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – I don’t really feel like we’re doing.

Sarah: No, and we, we are so determined to pretend like we are the only country that we think, oh, our way is the only way! We can’t possibly be wrong!

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: This is how it is!

Kennedy: Yeah, it’s so funny that you say that. My husband, I had book signing in Europe a few weeks ago, months ago now –

Sarah: I don’t want to sound like a creeper, but I follow your Instagram, and your pictures were amazing.

Kennedy: [Laughs] Were they? It was so –

Sarah: Oh, I had such a good time! I, I love following people’s travel on Instagram, ‘cause I love to travel –

Kennedy: Yes. Either –

Sarah: – I can’t do it all the time. I loved your pictures. I love what a wonderful time you were having.

Kennedy: I was like, I have a book coming out. I need to be locked up in my hotel room working on these books, but I just couldn’t make myself do it! I was with my husband –

Sarah: Nope!

Kennedy: – and I think I – my husband and I, our son is severely autistic, and sometimes – and this is common to a lot of families who have children with autism, especially those who are more severe – you don’t get a lot of time alone, you know, and it can literally be –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – months and months and months, and for us, sometimes it’s been years, and you know, we’re like, wow, we haven’t been anywhere without him in a really long time, and we both have birthdays in September, and so his is at the beginning, and it was his fiftieth birthday, and mine is at the end, and there was a signing in London, and there was a signing in Rome. They were a week apart, and we said, you know, we’re just going to go! We’re just going to do it! And we spent a solid two weeks. We did London, and I had the signing, which was amazing, and then we had a signing on that next Saturday in Rome, so in the week in between we went to Paris, and it was amazing! I had never been to Paris, and it was incredible? But one, to get to your point, we’re, I think it was Wednesday, can’t remember if it was Wednesday or Tuesday, but we’re seeing all these kids! And we’re like, why are all these kids out in the middle of the day? And they said, oh, yeah, you know, they don’t go to school on this day. I was like, in the middle of the week, they’re not going to school? They were like, no, because they need to spend, they need to have time away. Like, culturally they’re thinking, they need to have time, you know, where they’re not at school, and we feel like if they’re there for, you know, all five days it does this, this, this, and older kids go for a half day, but younger kids just stay out all day on Wednesday, and they go to the playground. I was like, I can’t even imagine this in America! I can’t even wrap my head around that being a thing that we would think, kids should not go to school all five days. We have kids who go to school –

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Kennedy: – on Saturday – [laughs] – you know. But yeah.

Sarah: Like, the excused absence policy at my older son’s high school, like, I’m trying to figure out how to approach it, because it’s like, if you’re not visiting a college or sick or –

Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: – having some sort of excused absence, then you will be penalized ten percent for the homework that you miss when you come back, and I’m like, you know what, I get one childhood with my children.

Kennedy: Yep.

Sarah: They don’t get to do this again, and if that means that we’re going to travel when there’s an opportunity –

Kennedy: Yeah.

Sarah: – they’re going to learn from being out in the world!

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: Like, I don’t want to have to battle this dumb policy; this is stupid!

Kennedy: [Laughs] Exactly. And I, you know, for me as a working mom, I originally, I immediately think, well, what do you do with those kids? Like, they’re out of school; what do you do? And they’re like, well, they either have nannies, or some of them build into their work that they are off that day too. I’m like, how is that even possible?! You know, it’s, I, I just, I’m so American in my mindset, to get to your point, that we are really not exposed to kind of, some of the things that mean things to other cultures. Things that are, are more meaningful in some ways than to us and the way we kind of do our lives, and I think a big part of that is we’re, we’re such capitalists, obviously, and it’s all driving us toward achieving, and you achieve because you need to make money, and you know, it’s, it, it goes through every- – 

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – it goes through everything. Not that I’m saying we shouldn’t be capitalists, it’s not that, but I just think that sometimes we don’t focus on other things, and we become really, really driven by our ambitions. Which is great! I mean, ambition is one of the huge themes in The Kingmaker; I don’t have a problem with ambition.

Sarah: But it’s not the only thing.

Kennedy: Exactly. It’s not the only thing, so, anyway.

Sarah: So I know that you’ve mentioned, as you’ve been talking about building your stories, that you do a lot of interviews and –

Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – that you do a lot of writing, a lot of, a lot of op-ed writing and opinion writing, and, and you’ve also done a lot of nonprofit work, and you’ve done a lot of interviews. So this is a completely –

Kennedy: Yeah.

Sarah: – self-serving, very meta question, but I’m curious what you, what you find are the essentials for creating a, an effective and helpful interview, for you as a writer?

Kennedy: For me it’s, it’s the balance of – for me, this is just for me –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – it’s the balance of not going in so completely ignorant that you waste a lot of their time with things that you could already know? And going in with a blank enough slate that you don’t have a ton of preconceived notions about what they’ll say. For me, that’s the balance, is I want to go in able to say, so, I was reading duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, and I saw this issue, and I, you know, I saw this, and then getting them to comment on it, getting them to interrogate that, getting them to share their perspective.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: So for me, that’s the balance, is I don’t want to waste your time by starting at ground zero, ‘cause there are certain things where they’re rolling their eyes – you could have Googled that, good grief. You know, it’s like, this is basic, because it’s not, I, I don’t go into an interview thinking I already know the story. I always go in thinking I’ve got to get the story –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – but at the same time, there are some things that are available to anybody, you know, and I, I go with those and say, these are facts, these are things that are already out there, but as you start to discuss facts –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – it leads to the, to struggles; it leads to issues; it leads to all kinds of things. I can find, for example, I can find the facts that show me that something alarming, like about eighty percent of Native American women have some kind of violent contact over the course of their lives, many of them by the time they’re seventeen years old, like the statistics are alarming, I can know – and I hope I didn’t misquote that, ‘cause I’m saying it off the top of my head, but it’s, it’s very, very high. Something like three-fifths? Very high. I can go into the conversation having that statistic kind of there, giving them that statistic, and then when they start commenting on it, it unpacks all of these other things, you know, because it starts to unpack what is under that statistic.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: It starts to unpack the pain that is under that statistic and the weird laws, the weird kind of sometimes inefficient relationship between tribal governments and our local and state governments that leads to some of those things. Do you know what I mean?

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: It’s like I can go in with the statistics, I can go in with the fact, and then they start unpacking the struggle, the pain, or whatever is connected to those facts, and that leads to stories, and that leads to their perspective, and that leads to other things, and so for me that’s kind of the balance, for one, and then going in with completely open ears and making sure that they’re prepared that I’m going to follow up. [Laughs] ‘Cause I’m a big follow-upper. I will have an interview, well, I’ll talk to someone for two hours, and we did; I would have two-hour conversations with some of the people I interviewed, and I’m literally texting them thirty minutes later: I’ve got one more thing. And I tell them right up front, I am, as I, you know, process all the things that you’ve told me, other things are going to come back, and I always have follow-up conversations.

I was, Sarah, let me just tell you, I was terrified of this book. Absolutely terrified to write this book! So much could go wrong – [laughs] – but you know, and I’ve seen things go wrong when people write beyond kind of their own cultural experience. I’ve seen it, and I’ve seen some egregious hurt even recently with certain books, and I did not ever even want a hint of that associated with anything that I did. At the same time, the story was so vivid to me –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – and I, I was terrified to write it, and I think I probably overcompensated, but I was like, okay, I, I’ve interviewed ten women; maybe a few more. [Laughs] You know, and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: – and they all give, they all give me this homework. You know, I literally was, like, reading anthropological books on the rites of passages for, you know, teenage women in Native American culture. Thick, like, books, and I was like, what is this? [Laughs] You know, I, I’m writing a romance novel, and I’m surrounded by, you know, text books, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – I was determined not to get it wrong, you know, and I was –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: – determined not – I wanted to tell that story fully, and I wanted her, I didn’t want her culture to be incidental. You know, I didn’t –

Sarah: Right.

Kennedy: – want it to be like, oh, she happens to be Native American, I say that somewhere in the beginning, and then we forget it for the rest of the book. That’s fine; like, somebody, people can do that. I don’t judge the way people approach things like that, but for me, I wanted her to be a woman who was fully connected to her community, like for the first part of her life she grows up on a reservation, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: – I’ve wanted that. She goes through that rite of passage, the Sunrise Dance. She, do you know what I’m saying? She, she –

Sarah: Yes.

Kennedy: – those, those things, all of these traditions are woven into her life throughout the book, and I didn’t want to not include those things, and including them –

Sarah: Right.

Kennedy: – meant learning about them and meant finding out what really happens, you know, in this experience.

Sarah: I like to ask this question because writing is such a solitary and often difficult endeavor?

Kennedy: Yeah.

Sarah: What do you do to look after and care for yourself, especially your creative self?

Kennedy: Not enough.

[Laughter]

Kennedy: That’s serious: not enough! You know, I, music is a huge thing for me? I create my playlist before I write. I usually have a playlist of like seventy songs before I even write one word. Music is in my background: singing, songwriting, those are things that were really a big part of my life when I was younger.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: I have a playlist that I listen to when I’m completely, like, spazzing out, which is more, like, inspirational. I do meditate, I mean, and pray; for me, my faith is a big part of how I energize.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: Spending time with my family, especially my husband who – I’m kind of an intense person. You probably can’t tell that.

[Laughter]

Kennedy: I call myself type A- – [laughs] – so –

Sarah: Oh, that’s funny. [Laughs]

Kennedy: I am type A-. You know, I’m very happy and, you know, but I, there’s a side of me that’s so very driven, and I mean, when I look at my parents, I look at my father, and I see those same – he’s an amazing man. You know, he is, he’s the president of a university, and he’s been in, when I was growing up – and this might be too much information, but that’s what I do – when I was growing up he was always in school. He was always, he works in high-, he was working in higher education administration when I was growing up. He was, he and my mom got married while he was in college, so I was born, he was in college, and then he got two master’s degrees, and then he got his Ph.D., and he was also the dean of a college at that time, so he would get up at five o’clock in the morning, he would go run, and then he would go off. And this is at a time when you couldn’t do, you, there was not online, you know, school; it wasn’t like that. He, when he got off from work he literally, physically had to go to work on his master’s or his Ph.D. at night at a place.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kennedy: And so he would leave really early in the morning, and I wouldn’t see him until ten o’clock at night, and he was just –

Sarah: Oof!

Kennedy: – you know, do you know what I’m saying? He was just – I, and I thought that’s how you do it. [Laughs] You know, because he was a hero to me, so I thought that’s how you do it. You go hard. You, you know, do whatever it takes to accomplish your goals. I mean when I married my husband, my husband is not like that. He is much more laid back; he probably focuses on relationships a lot more, he does focus on relationships a lot more than I do. He knows our neighbors; I’m basically a hermit with a laptop all my life, and he is the one who forces me, you need to go walk. You know, go get outside.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kennedy: That’s one thing that I do, and I’m not good about it when I’m under deadline, but when I’m not I walk every day, and it’s so, nature does something for me. Being outside and walking for an hour, and for me, that’s when I get my best lines.

[Laughter]

Kennedy: You know, I’m out – I’m serious. I have to, and I voice it, you know, and I’ll, I’ll, I’m just, and it’s nothing about the book; I’m not thinking about the book or anything like that. I’m just out, I’m enjoying nature, and it starts to unlock something inside of me creatively? And before I know it, you know, kind of one-liners or, you know, descriptions come into my head, and I just kind of grab my phone, and I’ll say them out loud. It’s so funny, because we were out walking in London, and I was with – oh my gosh – I was with Sierra Simone, who I worship and who is my goddess. I was with Sierra Simone and Nana Malone – no, it was at RWA! It was at RWA, and we were just out taking a walk in New York, and I felt, even just being – New York is a city that really energizes me. Every time I go to New York I want to write a book, and we were out walking, and just the, there was, like, a breeze, and there was no bad smell, and – [laughs] – it was just amazing, and it was the three of us, and all of a sudden I started getting all these phrases, and I’m grabbing my phone and I’m saying, and Nana goes, what was that? And I was like, oh, that’s going to be in The Kingmaker. [Laughs] You know?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: And she goes, what?! I know. I’m like, I know; it’s my thing. Something about being outside and feeling breeze on my face, being exposed to sunshine, cool air, like, I don’t know, something about that unlocks something inside of me, so I do it pretty consistently.

Those are some things, but I, one of my friends gave me a massage a year ago, like a gift certificate for a massage a year ago, and she’s like, have you used that yet? No, I’m going to get around to it, so.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: I’m getting better. My husband cracks the whip; you know, he tries – he takes better care of me than I do.

Sarah: But it’s good to have people in your life who look after you, who remind you –

Kennedy: Yes.

Sarah: – that you’re worth caring for.

Kennedy: Yes, absolutely.

Sarah: So what books are you reading that you would like to tell people about?

Kennedy: Oh gosh. I, I am not reading very much. When I’m writing, I don’t really read a lot?

Sarah: I understand!

Kennedy: And in my, yeah, and my time is kind of all over the place, but what I discovered this year that has changed my life, Sarah, is audiobooks.

Sarah: Oh, I love them!

Kennedy: I love them! ‘Cause I can never read; it’s like I never find time to read. When I’m writing I don’t read a lot. It’s like I don’t – because there’s something, I’m just very careful. Like, I’m writing, especially contemporary romance, I don’t read what I write while I’m writing, because I, I don’t know what it is, but I’m just like, I don’t want to influence, I don’t want to be influenced by any other voice, honestly, when I’m writing contemporary romance, so I read a lot of historical. You know, I’ll read something that’s different, or I’ll read paranormal or, you know, I’ll read something that’s not what I’m writing.

But with audiobooks, I always thought, gosh my mind just drifts, and I completely, you know, a whole chapter’s gone by and I’ve started thinking about my grocery list. I always thought that, and then I got desperate, because I missed reading so much and I didn’t have time.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kennedy: And I started listen-, I listened to a Kristen Ashley audiobook, and Kristen Ashley writes very long books, and I was so engaged the whole time, and I said, well, let me give it another try, ‘cause maybe that was a fluke, and I found that I, I did have the capacity for it, and my hu-, my son goes to, you know, a school that’s like thirty minutes away from our house, and so on that commute I started listening to audiobooks. He really doesn’t engage with me very much on those commutes; he kind of wants to be left alone, so if he is not engaging with me and, you know, I’m leaving him alone, I’ll put my audiobook on – it just depends – while I take him, and then on the way home I have another thirty minutes, so I’ll get another thirty minutes. I have thirty minutes when I’m going to drive to pick him up, so it’s like, I’m getting about an hour or so of an audiobook in every day, and that’s how I started reading again, and one that I –

Well, I have read one book. I read one book! I physically read on my Kindle American Love Story by Adriana Herrera, and I loved it. She, I feel like we write from a very similar place. I hope she doesn’t mind me saying that. The things that drive her, that seem to compel her, that seem important to her are also things that are very important to me, and when I read her I feel a real resonance. I feel a real kindred-ness when I read her work, and I read that recently and loved it, from her Dreamers series?

And audiobooks, gosh, I have more of those. Emergency Contact, which, I don’t always listen to romance, it just depends, but Emergency Contact by Mary H. K. Choi – I think it’s Choi – was amazing. Like, I could not put it down! It was so, so good, and it’s two college students, and he’s not, the hero, I love, love, love the hero Sam, and he – this is how, I was talking with L. J. Shen. She, she and I are kind of like book buddies, and we like the same things, and we both kind of read a little outside of what most of our friends are reading, if that makes sense. The things that people are usually, like, talking about: oh my gosh, this book, the stepbrother book or the whatever book, I haven’t read, you know? But when I’m talking about, oh my gosh, this book, Emergency Contact, they’re like, what? But Leigh and I kind of read along the same lines, and she was like, you are going to love this book, Emergency Contact! And so the hero is, like, very, very skinny. His body is described as concave, and you know, like, he’s not what we think about, oh my gosh, this is like your romance hero. I fell for him so hard. Sarah, this is how hard I fell for the hero in Emergency Contact: my husband’s name is Sam, and I didn’t even think about – no, literally, my husband’s name is Sam, and I didn’t think about my husband one time listening to the audiobook.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: It took me to the end of the audio – I was like, my husband’s name is Sam!

[Laughter]

Kennedy: That’s true; that’s real life. I told Leigh; she was like, oh my God, that’s bad! I was like, I know. He was so amazing, and so was she, and the writing, the insight, the insight was so sharp and brilliant. So, you know, if you like something that’s not quite like, you know, it’s not a story that you’re going to read anywhere else. He’s a college dropout who is a documentarian. He wants to make documentaries, and she’s a freshman in college, and she has a very complicated relationship with her mother, and she is Korean, and it deals with issues of race from a perspective that I don’t hear discussed as much, because when I, when I’m reading about race a lot in fiction and in romance, it’s usually about, you know, African-American people, it’s about Hispanic people or, you know, Latinx, and it’s all these things, and I’m not hearing as much the Asian perspective of, you know, whatever that is, and she really brought that out a lot in the book in a very brilliant way. And so now I have her other book, which is – that’s Emergency Contact; this one is Permanent Record. So I’ve gone on, but I haven’t listened to it in a few days because I’ve been working a lot.

So those are a couple, and then Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. I –

Sarah: That is such exquisite narration, isn’t it? Isn’t it incredible?

Kennedy: Oh my gosh! It is incredible! My husband and I have had a couple of road trips, and we’d been, we listened to it together, and it was, it’s amazing. I, I love Trevor Noah anyway? I’ve loved him since even before he took over The Daily Show, when he was just a stand-up comedian, and his, his perspective is so amazing, and then to hear his perspective completely kind of submerged in his origin, his com-, you know, his community and his country of origin was fascinating. Yeah, I just, that, that, that whole, that whole book was so incredible.

So those are kind of the three, I guess that’s three, three and a half if you crown, if you count Permanent Record, that have been real resonant for me lately.

Sarah: Brilliant! Now, I have one more question, which I didn’t email you in advance, and I have a recommendation for you.

Kennedy: Oh yes! My pen is ready! [Laughs]

Sarah: All right, in your, in your head shot, which is great, you are wearing the most fabulous lip color –

Kennedy: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and, and I have to ask if you remember what you were wearing, ‘cause it looks so great. And in exchange I wanted to tell you about a beauty company that I follow on Instagram and have ordered from called Cheekbone Beauty? It was founded by a Canadian indigenous woman, and every color is named after a Canadian and American indigenous activist.

Kennedy: Oh my gosh! It’s called Cheekbone Beauty?

Sarah: And the colors – Cheekbone Beauty, yes, and the colors –

Kennedy: Oh gosh, I’m, I’m writing that down: Cheekbone Beauty.

Sarah: Yes, and the colors are gorgeous, and they’re very rich –

Kennedy: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – and they have this wonderful sort of saturation, but the color of your head shot, the lipstick is so great! Do you know what, what color that was? 

Kennedy: You know what, I don’t, because she did it! You know, the, the makeup artist, they have all of their own makeup, and she did it, so I am not sure what color it is.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: But it’s very similar to what I wear on a – you know, I, I’m not, I’m not a girl-girl, I mean in the sense that I’m not that girl who’s like, makeup and, you know, whatever that thought is?

Sarah: No, me neither!

Kennedy: Oh my gosh.

Sarah: No, me neither at all.

Kennedy: I mean, malls give me hives. I mean, I’m just like –

Sarah: Yes.

Kennedy: And you know, it’s not everybody is the same, obviously, but I feel like, my mother came to, we had moved into a new house, and she came here for Christmas. My mother is a shoe aficionado. Like, she and my sister collect shoes, and I’m just such – [laughs] – I’m a mystery to them, and so she came to my house, and my husband has a shoe addiction too, but it’s for tennis shoes, so he, you know, literally, every week some, you know, some Nike box is showing up at my door. So she walks into his closet, and he has shelves of shoes, and they’re sorted by color and I, you know, he has vintage tennis shoes and all of this, and his closet is just, like, this whole thing, and she walks into my closet, and there’s, there –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kennedy: – no, I, I wish I was exaggerating – there’s a pair of flip-flops; there’s one pair of, like, rain boots; my walking shoes; and then a whole shelf of books. [Laughs] And my mom goes, she’s like, where, where – and there’s maybe, like, one other pair of, like, slip-ons, and she goes where are, where are all your shoes? And I was like, these are my shoes. She goes, no, there’s like six pairs of shoes here. Like, where are your shoes? And I was like, this, these are my shoes! She goes, oh my gosh, I failed you! How could this be your shoe closet? You have books in your shoe closet! I was like, I’m a writer.

[Laughter]

Kennedy: So –

Sarah: That’s why –

Kennedy: – yeah. I’m, I’m not –

Sarah: – those are valuable.

Kennedy: – I, I barely wear lipstick at all, so that head shot, oh my gosh, I was like, wait, that one! We need that one, ‘cause it makes me look like I’ve got it all together! [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s a gorgeous head shot, and that color is perfect for you!

Kennedy: Thank you! She put it, she did it. She – the color that I wear on a consistent basis, when I tell people it’s called Black Cherry, and it’s, it’s Revlon, and one of my friends is like, you get drugstore lipstick?! I was like, yeah, I, I do.

Sarah: Heck, yes!

Kennedy: I, I do. ‘Cause she’s like a real makeup person. She was like, you can’t get your lipstick from the drugstore. I was like, I totally do, and the world does not stop turning when I put on my Revlon lipstick. [Laughs]

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Kennedy Ryan for hanging out with me to talk during a very busy release week. If you would like to find out more information about her books or take a look at them, you know I will have links in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

This episode is brought to you by The Highlander’s Christmas Bride by Vanessa Kelly. USA Today bestselling author Vanessa Kelly returns with a second installment in her enthralling series about the men of the Kendrick Clan and the women who claim their hearts, within the gorgeous backdrop of the Scottish Highlands. When the unexpected meeting of a wealthy widower and a gently bred ex-nun starts tongues wagging, their unconventional pairing might be just the thing to breathe the holiday spirit back into both their lives and hearts. The Highlander’s Christmas Bride is available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit vanessakellyauthor.com.

The episode and the transcript this week 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.com. They are a wonderful gift. The winter box is so cozy. I love the things that I got to pick out for this quarter, and if you are thinking you need to start gift shopping, this might make a wonderful treat for you or for lots of people in your family. Remember, if you use code TRASHYBOOKS you get ten dollars off your first box at fabfitfun.com. That’s ten dollars off with TRASHYBOOKS at fabfitfun.com.

Thank you again to our Patreon community, who keep the show going and who make sure that every episode is accessible to everyone so that I have a transcript. If you would like to join the Patreon community: patreon.com/SmartBitches. It is deeply appreciated. All of your support is absolutely wonderful.

The music you are listening to is from Purple Planet. This track is called “Dreamcatcher.”

And if you would like to know what is coming up on Smart Bitches I have a preview! We have new reviews of new books, because holy cow, are there new releases at the end of this year! We have a Squee from the Keeper Shelf from reviewer Catherine Heloise who loves a book that’s something of a problematic fave and has kept a copy of this book on her shelf for decades. We also have a new Holiday Gift Guide, a new edition of Help a Bitch Out – two of them, actually – Books on Sale every day. I hope you’ll come hang out with us.

I will have links to all of the things that we talked about, and of course all of the books that we mentioned.

And as always, I will end with an absolutely terrible joke, because you deserve the best of bad humor. This joke comes from Lynn. Lynn, this is amazing. Thank you. [Clears throat] Are you ready? This is so, so bad; I love it so much. Lynn, this is outstanding.

What happens if you eat a book of synonyms?

Give up? What happens when you eat a book of synonyms?

Well, to start with, you’ll get thesaurus throat.

Thesaurus throat! [Laughs] Thesaurus throat! I love it so much! Thank you, Lynn, for this absolutely terrible, delightful joke!

On behalf of everyone here, I wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[mellow music]