389. RWA One Month Later, Part II: A Conversation with HelenKay Dimon

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Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome back to our four-part series “RWA: One Month Later.” This is episode number 389 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today I am speaking with RWA past president HelenKay Dimon. I interviewed HelenKay in late September 2019 about the end of her term as president, and now we’re looking back on the past month since the RWA decision against Courtney Milan was released. We cover a lot in this episode, and there are a number of questions that we don’t know the answers to. We might not ever know the answers to these questions, but as someone who oversaw prior ethics committees and who served on the Board for six years, including a year as president, HelenKay knows a lot about what was supposed to happen, what might have happened here, and what may have gone wrong.

Now, as I mentioned, this is a four-part series, and this is part two. One episode back will be an episode with the officers of CIMRWA, and then tomorrow I will have an interview with Jessie Edwards, who is the Marketing and PR Manager for RWA, and then on February 3rd you’ll hear from Courtney Milan. You can find all of these episodes however you get your podcasts, or you can find them at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcasts.

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This episode, all of the episodes in this series, and all of the episodes of the podcast are hand transcribed by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter. [You’re welcome! – gk] And this series would not be possible without the Patreon community, especially making sure that each episode is accessible to everyone. If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge, thank you so very much. Your support is so incredibly appreciated. Monthly pledges start at one dollar, so if what we do here in the show makes a difference to you, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. If you would like to join our community, it would be wonderful to have you. And thank you again to our Patreon community. It would not be possible to do this series without you.

And speaking of the series, let’s get started! On with my interview with HelenKay Dimon.

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Sarah: Last night I spoke with C Chilove and Laurel Cremant and, and Diana from CIMRWA.

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: They are, they are, they are tired.

HelenKay: Yeah. They’ve been –

Sarah: Very, they’re –

HelenKay: – pulling a load here.

Sarah: Yeah, they are very tired, and they, like me, are shocked that it has only been a month.

HelenKay: I know! It feels like a year at this point, I, I think, yeah.

Sarah: Now, you and I recorded after you finished being president of Romance Writers of America, and your term ended with August 31st, right?

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: So we recorded in the fall after you’d gotten a small amount of sleep –

HelenKay: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and you were not answering the president’s inbox, and you were feeling pretty good about all of the things that you and previous Boards had accomplished and where the organization was when you left.

HelenKay: Naively, yes, yes.

Sarah: Yeah. How, how you doing now?

HelenKay: Not, not as, not as great right now, I’ve got to, I’ve got to be honest. I, I, you know, and I’ve, I’ve said this to a whole bunch of people: I, I was exhausted on August 31st, there’s no question about that, but I was also really hopeful. I thought, I thought the Board that had been elected was great! Like just, like a, a fantastic mix of people, a fantastic mix of kind of people who had been there, so they had some institutional knowledge about –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – kind of how we got to where we are, and new folks, and, you know, you need the new folks for fresh ideas and excitement and all of those things, and –

Sarah: Yeah!

HelenKay: – I, yeah, I just, I, I – [sighs] – I was, I was really ex- – and I knew some of the stuff that we had started to put into place, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – new programming and new ways to put our members in front of publishing professionals, and all of that was going to start kind in the fall, and I know from experiences, when something happens in RWA that is kind of catastrophic, like the RITA finalists announcement last year, it derails everything. Right –

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: – it can derail everything–

Sarah: Yeah!

HelenKay: – and so when the ethics, you know, report came down and the decision came down, my thought was, it’s going to derail, but they’re going to do what they need to do: they’re going to get out in front of this. They’re going to apologize. They’re going to kind of explain what happened here and how far we got off policy, if we got off policy, and –

Sarah: Can I stop you? You need to –

HelenKay: Sure.

Sarah: – stop saying “we,” ‘cause it’s making my soul hurt.

[Laughter]

Sarah: No, I’m, I’m just, I’m, I’m only half kidding, because I know you feel a sense of responsibility, having been involved for so long –

HelenKay: Well, that’s – you know, I was –

Sarah: – and watching it all go so bad!

HelenKay: Exactly! I was on the Board for six years, and you –

Sarah: Yeah!

HelenKay: – you can’t – you know, something happened this fall with this ethics decision that had its roots in stuff that goes back for years, right? I mean, we knew there were problems with the ethics code, and we knew there were problems with accountability, because we sat all last year and heard, we don’t think you guys have accountability down, and then we had a town hall at the conference, and it was clear, that was our number one thing. I even did, like, a statement to the members saying, we heard you. Our, our –

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: – our accountability is off, and we are going to review all these documents; we’re going to review the system. We’re going to make, make it clear how you file, review what happens once you do, all of those things, and all of that was also supposed to happen this fall, and also gets derailed, right? Because –

Sarah: Well, it’s hard to pivot a cruise ship.

HelenKay: It, you know, it is so, like, it is so hard to pivot that ship, and it’s impossible to pivot it if you’re not being open and transparent. If you don’t – I joked last year, you know, when the RITA finalists were announced, I said, we’re not only going to fall on this sword, we’re going to disembowel ourselves on this sword. This, it stops here. No more –

Sarah: We made this mess. We own it.

HelenKay: Exactly! No more what- – it doesn’t matter that it took thirty-eight years or however many years to, to build it. We had to be the Board that said, enough, and start listening and try to kind of turn things inside out, and that’s a multi-year process, right? Like, that –

Sarah: Yep.

HelenKay: – self-examination, now we’ve, now we’ve heard, we’ve listened, finally, and listening is going to be an ongoing thing, and now that we’ve listened, we can try to figure out where we start fixing the mess, and accountability was the first mess. Couldn’t even get to it because this happened be-, beforehand.

Sarah: Right, and at this point, it’s now the, what, the 24th of January? Is it the twenty- –

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, but the, January is just, it’s like, January feels a little bit like 2019; it’s just not ending.

HelenKay: No, gosh. This month, when you said it was a month, I was like, it’s a month? It feels like it’s been nine months!

Sarah: Yeah! It’s only been a month! It was yesterday that the decision was handed to Courtney, and it was on Twitter! It was, it was one month ago on the 23rd of December, of, of January, which is just bonkers to me.

HelenKay: Well, and I think, I actually have a lot of theories on kind of what happened with this particular case. I also –

Sarah: That was, that was actually my next question. I know that –

HelenKay: Yeah, and I –

Sarah: – I know that there are things that you can’t say, and I know that you are talking to the auditors, and I know that you’re part of all of the inquiry.

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: You’re part of the inquiry because you were the immediate past president, although now it’s like two presidents back.

HelenKay: [Laughs] Yeah, I was going to say! Three presidents ago now.

Sarah: Right! Three presidents ago, once upon a time.

What the hell happened?

HelenKay: I – okay, there, there are –

Sarah: I don’t expect you to have the perfect, correct answer. I know that no one actually knows.

HelenKay: Yeah. I, yeah, and I wasn’t, you know, August 31st, I get cut off from all of this, and at that point, you know, I don’t, I’m guessing? The, the, the complaint hadn’t even come in when I left. I just was told that people were complaining and, and, you know, what the subject was, but I, I think there are a couple pieces. I think there’s a lot of, outside of Courtney’s case, how were these other cases handled? And that I do have an explanation for. It’s not a great explanation, but I do have one. And then there’s kind of my theory on Courtney’s case, and I, I think when it comes to Courtney’s case I – you know, I said this on Twitter – I think people want there to be kind of an easy answer, and what, what I mean by that –

Sarah: Nooo!

HelenKay: – is to say, ah-ha! We look at this person, this thing, and that is the reason, and –

Sarah: Right, it was, it was Colonel Mustard in the study –

HelenKay: Exactly!

Sarah: – with the racism. That’s what this was.

HelenKay: Exactly!

Sarah: But no, it’s a, it, when something this catastrophic happens, it’s a multiple layer, it’s like a cascade of small failures –

HelenKay: Exactly, and that –

Sarah: – adding up to a big failure.

HelenKay: Exactly, and I think, I think what happened was exactly that, because I have to say, I was on the Board for six years, four of them with Courtney. The Board didn’t hate Courtney. Right? Like, they didn’t. It was one of the most, I think it was the most divorce, diverse Board ever –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – that made the decision to accept the ethics report against Courtney. It’s not as simple as, oh, the problem is a hatred of Courtney, or, I hate who Courtney is, or anything. I think really what happens is, this comes in. I think Allison and I start talking about the fact that she’s getting these complaints and talking to people, and it is literally August 27th. Okay, I’m leaving August 31st, and we’re in the middle of doing a hundred things in August for the changeover. So this comes in – and none of this excuses it; I’m just trying to say, I think it’s a series of events. So this comes in while leadership is changing. This comes in at the end of an absolutely exhausting year. Like, I can’t even explain to you how exhausting it was. A new Board started literally the next day, on September 1st, and half of them had, they hadn’t been trained; they didn’t know anything, etc. And we had a case where the former, immediate past Chair of the Ethics Committee was the person who was being complained about.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And there is no process in policy for that. There isn’t.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And that’s part of the reason I got so upset that the Board kept saying, we followed policy. I’m like, there is no policy! So I think what happens is it starts to derail, right? Like, instead of saying, okay, but we do have a policy as to members, and she’s the member, and we have a way we have always handled these cases. We just follow that. Right? Like, we just keep going.

I think what happens is it starts, it starts going sideways, right? Like, like before I left, the question was, should there be another ethics committee set up? And I said, and Carolyn Jewel said, absolutely not! No, of course not! We just ask the people on the committee if they can do – they signed conflict of interest forms. Like, if there’s a conflict, explain what we think a conflict would be. You know, conflict out part of the committee; the rest of them are the ones that hear it. I don’t know – that, that discussion of, of course we don’t set up a separate Ethics Committee, happened on August 31st –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – my last day in office. I don’t know what happened between that day and when they set it up October 1st, but something happened.

Sarah: Or several somethings happened.

HelenKay: Several, several somethings happen, and, and on August 31st, Allison Kelley recused herself from hearing this case with regard to Courtney. I worked with Allison for six years. Was incredibly impressed with the way she handled things, kept the balls in the air. I sat on policy calls with her, with –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – Amazon and the Authors Guild where she was the one that they looked to for, you know, for concerns, suggestions, etc. She had incredible gravitas in the industry. People had great respect for her. I had great respect for her. I thought when she recused it was the right decision. She recused –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – as a result of an ongoing dialogue the two of us had where I had concerns about how she was viewing this case. She said, I just can’t see this clearly; I’m going to step down. I had a lot of respect for that! It’s, it takes a lot to be able to say –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – I can’t see this the way I need to see this.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: I hope that –

Marshall: Meow!

HelenKay: – she then did –

Sarah: Hi, Kitty!

HelenKay: [Laughs] I’m sorry!

Sarah: No, don’t apologize! Is that Marshall?

HelenKay: This is Marshall. We adopted this cat that we thought was this completely shy little boy cat.

Sarah: Nope.

HelenKay: It turns out Marshall is a little girl cat, and she meows all the time. Like –

Sarah: Well, I have to get her name for the, for the transcript!

HelenKay: Yes! She’s, she – well you’re going to need her approval, and I don’t know, she’s a little finicky, but she –

Sarah: All right.

HelenKay: – she’s clearly not getting the [static] she needs right in this moment, and –

Sarah: Of course not!

HelenKay: – she’s okay. But I, I mean, I hope, I hope she stayed out, ‘cause she recused herself. My understanding is, at some point Carolyn recused herself. I don’t know why or what for, but Carolyn recused herself, and so if that’s true, now we have a situation where, where they’re starting to go off policy, right?

Sarah: Yep.

HelenKay: The person who’s always handled the cases isn’t in the case.

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: The president has possibly recused herself, and what happens is you just, I think you get further and further away from kind of how we’ve always handled this. It sounds as if – I was not in on this – it sounds as if there were some things that if at any step somebody had said, mm, wait a second, that doesn’t make sense, like setting up the separate Ethics Committee or, you know, there’s a suggestion, because of a, a letter that was sent to a, to a member in response to everything that not all of the evidence the committee used was in the complaint –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – that Courtney had an opportunity to respond to.

Sarah: And the fact that the complaint was filed by people who aren’t members.

HelenKay: Yes! We, we have a complaint filed by people who aren’t members. We may have decision-making based on something that’s not in the complaint, which is completely inappropriate –

Sarah: Yep.

HelenKay: – because Courtney has to have an opportunity to respond to whatever the allegations are against her.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: This whole thing gets sent to the Board, and from what I can ferret out – and I have already talked to the auditor as well – from what I can ferret out, the Board was only allowed to look at the report. The Board didn’t see the complaint and the answer –

Sarah: Oh boy.

HelenKay: – in making the decision, and that is completely not how we had done it for the last I don’t know however many years. We don’t, we don’t make the Board rubberstamp what the Ethics Committee does; the whole point is that the Board is there as the last stop in oversight to say, wait a second, you guys seem to maybe have gone off the rails here a little bit and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – are looking at things that aren’t, you should be looking at, and may- – you know, those kind of things, and, you know, as somebody who had in the past watched over the Ethics Committee, it is easy for a group of people who are sitting there and are tasked with this very difficult thing to kind of go sideways a little, right? Like, not, not meaning evil; just, you’re talking, and then, you know, it’s kind of the, well, I heard – thing happens, right? And you know, as president, my job, and as president-elect, my job was to say, no-no. Nonononono. That’s not what we’re doing here. This is, we’re a trade organization; there’s a complaint to the trade organization based on X, Y, and Z. That’s all you get to look at, and if you can’t, that’s okay. You just need to be honest about that, and then –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – we’ll just switch you out of the committee, because that’s the whole point. That’s the due process piece. The person who has the complaint filed against them has to know everything that’s being complained about and have an opportunity to speak to all of it. Otherwise, this isn’t a fair system.

I think what happens is a whole bunch of things go off track here. When you look at each one individually, it’s probably, well, that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but when you add it all together, plus the fact that folks who otherwise normally would have been watching this, the ED and the President, sound like they were both out of it, now you have a huge problem. Right? Like, it, it’s, it’s –

Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

HelenKay: – it ends up in a catastrophic decision. And the decision itself says, this entire organization needs to look at accountability, etc., which we already knew, so there’s that piece. But for me, it’s the fourteen days after the decision where it feels like statements with misleading information – false information – are being given to the members. There isn’t an open dialogue with the members.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Nobody is standing out there. The pres-, frankly, the president’s job is to stand out there and take the hit, I’m going to be honest with you. Like, it was not enjoyable for me last year with the RITAs to be on the PAN loop and, and trying to answer questions there, and be on Twitter, and trying to answer questions there, and answering the emails and doing all those kind of stuff, but you have to! There has to be a –

Sarah: That’s the job!

HelenKay: – a vi- – right! There has to be a visible person who is answering questions, even if the answer is, I don’t know how this went sideways. People respect, I’m not sure, we’re going to look at it, and, that entire process will be transparent so that you can see it as we’re seeing it.

Sarah: And that’s not what happened.

HelenKay: Right! And people respect, we messed up. We didn’t do what we said we, we would do, which is be transparent.

So for me, it’s those fourteen days. Like, the RWA Board, they’re volunteers. The, the Ethics Committee are volunteers. Everybody’s human; everybody can make mistakes. As frustrating as it is, I think the membership understands, as long as you take ownership and you fix it and you try to do something different.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: But for fourteen days, to have what felt like a leadership vacuum: no answers –

Sarah: Ohhh, yeah. That’s a good word for it.

HelenKay: – behind-the-scenes, private calls. It sounded like a little bit of ass-covering and not a whole lot of leadership.

Sarah: Oh, I would say large, whole, five-masted –

HelenKay: [Laughs]

Sarah: – sailing ships full of ass-covering.

HelenKay: And I, and it’s not – I served with these people! It is, it’s not e-, and I, and many of them are very, very angry with me right now. But I don’t, we didn’t do that! You had a blueprint for what happened, because we did it last year, right? Like, this is a different thing, but we, we hand-, we crisis-management figured out how to do it last year. Why was it so different this year?

And it just felt so secretive and, you know, I, I start hearing stuff like, well, you know, there’s a conversation, and the president said it’s okay ‘cause he’s going to be exonerated. Who the hell cares if the president’s exonerated? That’s, that’s not what any of this is for. Right, like, that’s not, that’s not what this is about! This isn’t to show somebody is innocent of something. This is, there was, there was a mistake!

We knew there were accountability issues, and for some reason, instead of being extra careful, it sounds like you were extra not-careful, and then we ended up with this mess, and instead of saying, we ended up with this mess and the Board takes responsibility, and we’re going to do some very hard things, including some of us might have to step down, etc., it was, like, quiet, and then half the Board steps down, and that sends the message of, okay, we’re in big trouble here, because to step off the Board is, you know, not an easy thing, right?

I, I can say I personally wr-, like, I think I wrote my first email to the Board on Christmas Day, and you know, it was like, these are the eight things you have to do, and you cannot wait a week! You have to do it – I know it’s Christmas! – you have to do it tomorrow! Like –

Sarah: My, my thought was, you know, you, you handed this decision down on the 23rd of December for whatever reason. You made this mess.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: This sucks, but you have to deal with it! That’s the job.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: One of the things that, that really, really upsets me about this whole thing is that there has not been an answer why the consequence against Courtney was so egregious. Why the, the, the penalty that was handed was so egregious when that had never been done before and it’s the sort of thing that you do when someone steals money.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: Right? Like, what in the hell? So you have a Board where half of them step down. They’re still not allowed to talk –

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: – because of executive session.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: Executive session means that they can’t talk about what happens or they lose their protection from being on the Board in executive session.

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: Like, there’s all kinds of stuff that go around that. So we’re, we may never know exactly what happened to create the scenario where on the 23rd, Courtney is told she’s banned from leadership for the rest of her natural life, which, oh my dear God, come on, please!

HelenKay: I know. [Laughs]

Sarah: Please! Just, just no. And then it was like a dumpster fire, only instead of trying to fix it, people were like, you know what’s a good idea? More kerosene.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: You know what’ll help? Condescension. That’ll really –

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: – that’ll really help. I sort of watched it and was like, is, is this a demonstration of, like, is this a parody?

HelenKay: Oh, I know.

Sarah: Is this, is this a joke? It, it got so bad that every hour something was changing, and it was getting worse!

HelenKay: It, it was, it, it really was a lesson in how not –

Sarah: To crisis manage?

HelenKay: – to crisis manage, and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

HelenKay: – I got very frustrated because, you know, the Board does have a fiduciary duty, and there are certain things that Board members have to do, and you know, it’s not easy to bring another, a fellow Board member up on a fiduciary duty action, but you do it if you have to do it. And that’s all I can say about that because of executive session, but I was very frustrated that statements are going out that are obviously untrue.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Ob-vi-ous-ly untrue.

Sarah: Yeah, you don’t know what we know about Courtney. Oh, for the love of God!

HelenKay: Yeah, I mean, like, like, what the hell? Like, that’s going out. There’s a, a letter that goes out that’s like, yeah, there’s, there’s more to it. How can there be more to it? There can’t be more to it! It has to be in the complaint, and, and there’s a, a statement that goes out that basically threatens the former Board members who were standing up in concern? And I’m just like, guys, you were – I don’t, I know you don’t realize you’re doing it, but you’re breaching your fiduciary duty every single day that you don’t, you don’t clean this up. And, and I have to say that was a huge frustration to me, because I was on the Board with these people. These are smart, dedicated people; I don’t know why they weren’t doing the thing they had to do. And there was a lot of, well, there’s stuff that we’re doing. Okay, you can’t do it in secret! Like, like, you can’t do it –

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: – in secret! It has to be done out there where people can see it, and if it’s not, it doesn’t feel real. And what happened is exactly what I warned them would happen. I said, if you don’t get ahold of this, everything that has happened in RWA will come up and be fodder. You lose all credibility on every front, because now every decision we’ve ever made is going to be questioned.

I, I will say one thing, because I’ve said this on Twitter, but I think it got buried, and I’m not sure kind of how else to say it, and I don’t know why the Board isn’t saying it, so I’m going to say it: I can tell you why other complaints did not get passed to the Ethics Committee last year. Right, like, that’s a big issue.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Why does the one with, for, against Courtney get through, but the complaints that I filed against things that people said on the PAN forum did not get through? And the answer is a very not-pretty one, but I’m going to tell you the absolute truth: up until when I was president-elect, so, good Lord, when was that? 2018 – I was looking for something in the, in the policy manual and realized that our nondiscrimination section only related to membership. I.e., RWA shall not discriminate in who it allows to be a member based on sex, ethnic background, etc., right? There was no general nondiscrimination pol- – like, just in general, there shall not be discrimination on the forums, on this, on that, in, in workshops, etc. But that was like 2018. Every Board before that missed it. Every single Board before that missed it. We – and we fixed it, and we made it broader, okay? So now fast forward to the year that I’m president. What’s happening is, over time – I, I think the reason nobody noticed the nondiscrimination is, for a very long time, authors of color, LGBTQ+ members, disabled members didn’t file complaints, etc., because, frankly, they didn’t think anything would happen. Like, they were made invisible in a lot of ways in RWA.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And us realizing that they didn’t have a voice and were basically be told, being told to sit in another room and, you know, to be quiet and be happy if we let you, you know, have a book or two or whatever, we didn’t realize that was happening – our fault – until Courtney Milan came on the Board. And she explained to us, you think everything’s great. It’s great for a portion of the membership. It’s not great for all of the membership.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: There are things happening out there where members are being told they’re really not welcome in chapters and events, sitting at the same table at conference, all of those things –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and they quietly, to you, but voice it among each other somewhere else. So I think there was no awareness for a long time. Then there starts to be awareness, which is a very, very recent thing. We realize we have this problem with the nondiscrimination piece; we fix that. Then last year, people become more vocal. Like, enough! If you’re supposed to be listening to me, RWA, and I’m supposed to have a voice, then when this person says this offensive thing to me on PAN loop, I’m going to file a complaint. And that hadn’t really happened before.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: So it looks like these complaints are coming in, and I start getting emails saying, you know, like, a complaint came in, but I haven’t heard anything. You know, what happens? And I’m like, I’ll check. And I’m checking with Allison, and she’s stuck in this position where she’s like, okay, but what, what do I do? What do I do with it? Like, what, like – like –

Sarah: There was no process.

HelenKay: There’s no process! And what I realize is, I go back into the policy manual, and I realize that if you look under the Ethics Committee and under the ethics code, it lays out what the Ethics Committee has jurisdiction over. Discrimination cases was not included. Not included.

Sarah: Oops!

HelenKay: It was not included until July.

Sarah: Oops.

HelenKay: The first case that’s filed after is the one against Courtney.

Sarah: Oh geeze.

HelenKay: So I know that people think it’s, staff is hiding them or whatever. That’s really not what it was. What it was, for a long time, the complaints didn’t come through the ethics process. You know, we have a Diversity Committee. They start hear-, they start hearing some of the stuff. They and Allison talk about kind of, do the people want to file? Do they not want to file, etc.? They’re not filing. And then last year, in the summer, after the RITAs, people start filing, and we have no process.

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: And we knew we still had a problem, because I said to Allison, okay, we’ve now said the Ethics Committee handles discrimination cases. How? Is it pattern and practice of discrimination? Is it saying, I don’t like lesbian romances? Is that enough? Is – like, like, we still didn’t have the pieces we needed –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – for an Ethics Committee to be able to – like, I don’t know how they would have made a decision like that, you know?

Sarah: And it also creates a problem because part of the issue is that RWA is providing the platform –

HelenKay: Yep.

Sarah: – for all these things to be said in the, in the PAN loop. Like, I, as you know –

HelenKay: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – run a comments section. It’s a large part of my job –

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: – and I am in charge of who I’m hosting. Like, I pay a server bill – it’s a big bill – and I’m in charge of deciding what I host on my server when people comment. I’m not a utility.

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: I’m not a public service. I can say, yeah, no. I’m not hosting your bullshit transphobia. Please fuck off into the sun!

HelenKay: [Laughs] Right!

Sarah: And I think that part of the issue here is that, in addressing discrimination, of which there is a lot, I think RWA was also coming into the discomfort of recognizing, recognizing its full culpability in hosting all of that discrimination –

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: – and not doing anything about it. It makes me think of something that I learned about pilots, when there’s an emergency?

HelenKay: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: The first thing you do is aviate, then you navigate, and then you communicate. The first thing you have to do is keep the fucking plane in the air.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: Two, navigate to a place, either air space or a location on the ground, where you’re safe, and then communicate to any passengers what the fuck is happening.

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: Now, if you do, if you change that into advocacy and community and all of the things that – what was the third thing that RWA does? There’s advocacy, there’s community –

HelenKay: Advocacy, education, networking.

Sarah: Education, thank you, and community. The community part is a major problem –

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: – and it needs to be much less important now that advocacy and education have failed so dramatically.

HelenKay: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And that, that’s the part that makes me so angry. [Laughs] Among other things! There’s a lot of things that make me mad, but that’s one of them.

HelenKay: Well, the – I, I mean, and we can talk about the, the advocacy piece is actually the piece that I’m the most furious about at the moment.

Sarah: What is happening with that?

HelenKay: Well –

Sarah: Like, I rem- – what can you, what can you tell me about Dreamspinner? Is there anything you can tell me about Dreamspinner?

HelenKay: I can tell you what, what was happening with Dreamspinner while I was there. So this is handled at the staff level, right? And I think what they do is this balance at the beginning when complaints start coming in of, do we come out really strong and we accidentally force the publisher to go under? Or do we try to see what we can do to – is it salvageable, and what is it we can do to try to help salvageable, salvage it so it doesn’t go under? Etc. And I, I’m trying to think. This must have been July, August. It got to the point where I thought the balance was the wrong balance, that we needed to take a much stronger stance on Dreamspinner, and I asked Carol to send a letter to Dreamspinner asking specific questions having to do with kind of, okay, but you’re getting money every month; tell me the breakdown of where that money is going. You’re, you know, you’re having some party or event; how is that being paid for? All of these things to try to get to, well, there’s money there; why, why aren’t the authors getting paid first? The answers that Carol and Allison got back they thought were unsatisfactory, and at that point we removed Dreamspinner kind of from the approved list, and they were, that means they were not allowed to come to conference and, you know, solicit authors. They weren’t allowed to host events, all of those things. So basically, RWA sends the message that we don’t think this publisher is acting in a way that’s appropriate, etc.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Right.

HelenKay: That was right before I left, and normally, or not normally, but, like, with Samhain and Triskelion, which was years ago, RWA has tried to help the authors. Like, Triskelion, when they go into bankruptcy, RWA offered to buy back the rights and give them to the authors!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: The authors said no, but RWA offered to do that. So I don’t know what’s happening with Dreamspinner right now, but I think the answer is, there might not be much happening anywhere at all right now, right, because we had, we had started, last year, we put a Policy Committee in place, and this is the group that was in charge of informing the Board of issues like Amazon changing the Audible contracts and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – AB5, which is a bill in California that changes kind of how writers can freelance and is going to kind of, I think, make a move across the country and is causing a lot of problems for writers. We were, we set up this group so that the Board would know, and then the, the group would make suggestions to the Board. Do you just notify to the Board? Does RWA take a position on Open Library –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – on all of these things? And we had gotten that up and running last year, and it’s a huge advocacy point – 

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – to make sure – we’re a trade organization – to make sure our writers knew what was happening in the industry, and I’m, I’m, I’m assuming that’s not happening now. I, I stepped down as Chair because I’m like, I’m not going to – [laughs] – I’m not, until you get your act together, I’m not, I’m not going to be part of this! But, like, I don’t know. I, I don’t know where that piece, that’s a huge piece of the advocacy that’s gone. The Dreamspinner, I, you know, the problem you have is when there’s this much internal strife and it’s handled –

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: – this poorly –

Sarah: Yep.

HelenKay: – there’s no ability for RWA to then go out and be like, Amazon, you’re doing the following things wrong; Dreamspinner, you’re doing the following things wrong; because isn’t their response, yeah, get your own house in order, and then you can come back and tell us.

Sarah: Right. Like, we don’t need to listen to you anymore.

HelenKay: Exactly, and –

Sarah: Like, that’s, that’s the biggest loss!

HelenKay: – that’s a huge loss. I cannot impress upon people – I, my view was always that RWA did an incredible job behind the scenes advocacy with Amazon, with working –

Sarah: Facebook!

HelenKay: – working – Facebook! – working with the guild to do things, working directly with publishers. RWA did a terrible job of letting the members know that they were doing all this work behind the scenes.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And the problem now is, how do they do that work behind the scenes?

Sarah: Well, I mean, one of the things I said to Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel was, you know, RWA used to be able to call Amazon, and they had a person –

HelenKay: Yes!

Sarah: – that they would call, and then that person would, like, answer their phone and be like, hello, RWA, what’s up? And, like, you actually had people to talk to instead of just filling out a form, hitting Send, and hoping someone listened. There was a connection there, and that is – if it’s not destroyed, it’s worth about a tenth of what it was.

HelenKay: Well, that’s it, right? Like, it’s, because when we had the strength behind us, it was a force, right?

Sarah: Yep.

HelenKay: But when you don’t feel like you’ve got anybody behind you, then why does Amazon care? And I have to say, it’s, it’s not just that Amazon had a person; we did. We had a person – Carol was an ongoing contact with that person – but we also, along with Authors Guild, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, NINC, and a couple other groups, we, we had private discussions with people at Amazon –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – where we could say, here is the problem. Like, let, let’s talk about the fact that you have a category called African-American Romance, and the top one hundred people in it are really scammers. Let’s talk about that, and why you don’t care. Let’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: That has to fix. That is, that is an ongoing conversation that took a long time to get their ear and start having a conversation with them, and private conversations, like, they would sit down with us and give us an hour where we could talk about that and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and, you know, the pirates and piracy and all of these things. Where’s that now? Right? Like, like, that’s a, that is the, people think of, I think sometimes members are like, oh, RWA is the RITAs and the PAN loop. And I have to say –

Sarah: No!

HelenKay: – especially when I was President-Elect and President, that was the least interesting part of my, of the, of anything that RWA was doing.

Sarah: In an industry and in an environment where the people with the most money have the most power –

HelenKay: Yep.

Sarah: – and you’re a trade organization that is not in existence to compete or make money or be a retailer, that you can band together with other writers organizations and advocate collectively with someone who literally doesn’t have to listen –

HelenKay: Yes.

Sarah: – is a massive loss. Now, you mentioned that you’re like, I’m not, I’m not doing this anymore; I’m not giving you any more of my information, or of my, of my energy; that you have really just been like, RWA? I am so fucking done.

HelenKay: Where here, here’s the thing: so I, I was supposed to do two things. I was, I was Chair of the Policy Committee, to keep giving that information to members, and I had volunteered to review all of the governing docs with a group of people and go through and say, this is where our ethics code falls down; this is where our chapter code of conduct doesn’t make sense. You know, a lot of these documents have been piecemealed together to try to – but they’re really documents that were, like the ethics code, written a long time ago, and a lot of things have changed, so then everything –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – needs to be updated and fixed. And when I wrote and said, you’ve got to get on top of this immediately, and nothing happened, and I didn’t get a response, and I wrote a second time, and they still didn’t do anything, and I didn’t get a response, my third one was, you know what? I don’t – if you’re not going to save RWA, I’m not, I’m not, like, like, I can’t fix this. Like, I, like, I’m willing to help fix; a whole lot of people are willing to help fix. You’ve got an entire chapter that is stepping up and is doing everything they can on a recall posit-, petition because they do want to fix RWA. Not because they want to destroy it; they want to fix it! But if you’re not, you guys aren’t willing to, like, talk to us, respond to anything, I don’t, I don’t know what, what I’m doing out here. I did step down from those things.

Sarah: So you got no response from the Board –

HelenKay: Never.

Sarah: – no response from staff, no response from anyone.

HelenKay: No. And then what I did was –

Sarah: After how many years?!

HelenKay: Six years. Six years, and I, you know, I, the one response I got was kind of a, I was insulted that you said the stuff you said on Twitter, and I was like, really? I think, of all the people standing right now, the person who gets to be insulted is me. Like – [laughs] – like, are you kidding me? Everything that we did last year, what I did to my career to, to try to put RWA in the right thing, and you can’t respond to me? Are you kidding me?

Sarah: And you’re not allowed to be angry and express that out loud on Twitter. We’ve established what happens when you do that.

HelenKay: Well, and – yes, exactly. We, we, we’ve told you what we will do to you. I’m like, kick me out of RWA! Go ahead! But I, I wasn’t ready –

Sarah: [Laughs] You know, are you still a member? Are you still a member?

HelenKay: I am! I am. I’m an honorary member, so I –

Sarah: I’m a – oh! Lucky you.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: I’m a member through the 31st of December of this year. I’m a ninety-nine-dollar pain in the ass now.

HelenKay: Well, and that’s, I, I think that’s the right answer, right? Like, ‘cause it’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

HelenKay: – it’s like, I’m like, look, there’s, you owe a whole lot to, to, to what used to be ten thousand members and now is probably closer to eight, but you, you owe a whole lot to these members, and you aren’t doing anything, and then to turn around and say, I’m not allowed to get on Twitter and be concerned?

Sarah: And angry?

HelenKay: You, like, excuse me? Yeah, I do! Every member does! You’re lucky eight thousand members aren’t there doing that, that it’s more like a couple hundred. So I was very, I’m not going to lie, I was very frustrated, but I also know what RWA can do when it’s doing, when it’s moving forward, when the ship is turning the right way, and so I worked behind the scenes with Leslie Kelly and Dee Davis, the two presidents before me –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and a whole group of former Board members who care and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – who know, because our position was, we wrote to the Board three times? At, at least twice; I think three times – and our position was, nobody knows more than we do how crappy this feels. We know exactly how it feels to be in the firing line and to be blamed. We know how it feels to feel like you’re not doing enough, and you’re, you’re upset and you don’t know which way to turn. We get it! We get it! We’ve all done it! Let us help you and –

Sarah: Please stop fucking up! [Laughs]

HelenKay: – and – no, yeah! Like, like, just stop the bl- – I think I said on Twitter I don’t know how many times, stop the bleeding! They couldn’t seem to stop the bleeding, and –

Sarah: Nobody was driving that flying umbrella, basically.

HelenKay: Nobody. Or, or the person at one point who’s flying it was somebody who thought the better way to fly it was to not respond to members and to quietly pick a few people he thought would listen to him –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and have private conversations with them. That’s the exact wrong thing to do. It’s the exact wrong thing, because it just accidentally shores up the whole secrecy piece, right? Like, even if he wasn’t being secretive, it looks secretive, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – and that’s a huge, that’s a huge problem. And I’ve, I’ve probably – to the point where my husband was like, are you RWA President again? – I probably answered I don’t know how many emails from people, and phone calls from people saying, you know, can we do this, can we do this, can we do this? My position has been, we have to be really careful. I know people want a special election, and they want this and they want that, and I’m like, okay, but we’re in this position because policy wasn’t followed, so then to come up with a solution that is not in policy anywhere, not in our governing docs, what, like, is that the right answer? I don’t think that’s the right answer. Like, I think you have to do this as close as you can to, to what’s allowed.

Sarah: But the, the current situation, where there’s like five Board members?

HelenKay: Yeah, I think.

Sarah: And a temporary executive director and then a former executive director who’s still there, all of that seems like it’s not only in violation of the organization structural agreement, but it’s also possibly in violation of nonprofit law in the state of Texas. They don’t have a president!

HelenKay: That, that’s a huge problem, and, and this is –

Sarah: Like, am I wrong that that’s, there’s, I mean, I know there’s state laws governing operation of nonprofits, and I’m not fluent in the Texas laws by any stretch, but you have to have a president! Like, that’s how that works!

HelenKay: I, I actually think under Texas law you have to have a president and a secretary, and we have neither.

Sarah: Yeah!

HelenKay: I, but here’s the, this, this is, this is the piece of their own making, right? Because –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – what happened is, they waited too long.

Sarah: Yep.

HelenKay: If, if they had done this and they had gone to, there’s a limited pool of people who are qualified to be president.

Sarah: I know!

HelenKay: And there’s a reason that those limitations are on, and I actually think they’re the right limita-, probably the right limitations. You, you want, as a president, somebody who has been on the Board and understands how the Board works, because it’s a totally different beast from even a chapter Board; it’s a totally different thing. You want them to have recent romance publishing experience so that they are absolutely connected to what is happening right now in the industry. You want them to have a certain number of years in RWA, showing a commitment to RWA, and a certain number of books printed, showing some experience level. 

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: Are the numbers wro-, we can, we can all debate what the numbers should be, three years versus five years, all of those kind of things, but tho-, I think there’s a reason for each of those pieces, and there’s a limited peo-, pool of people who are qualified. I know if RWA had done what it should have done, which is get out in front of this, do appropriate crisis management in those first two weeks, there would have been people – I know because I talked to them – who reluctantly would have stepped up and been –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – the interim president.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: But what happens is it goes on! And it keeps going on, and now you’re asking somebody to step up, who already doesn’t want to step up, and you’re asking them to step up, and one of their first acts might be that they have to tell the entire Board to step down because they’ve all breached their fiduciary duty. That’s a pretty crappy first job, right? And –

Sarah: And the Board isn’t going to be like, yes, let me bring someone in who will then tell me to go.

HelenKay: Exactly! Right? So you have to bring in this specific person. This person has to be a specific person. This person has to be the person that says – like, everybody that I talked to that was qualified, I said, look – they said, what do you think the job is? I said, this is exactly what I think the job is for the next eight months: you are the orchestra conductor. You –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – do not put new policy in place, do not make huge decisions. You keep the, you keep the orchestra playing. You flip the organization inside out. You make sure everything is transparent. You have to fill the Board. You get a whole bunch of people who want to be on the Board to sign somewhere, and then make that list public, and you pick from that list. And when people ask you why you pick, you be ready to say why you picked that person, these, this group of people. And that group of people stays in until August when there’s a new election, and that group of people is, they are the triage people. That’s all –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – their job is for eight months is to put, try to put as much back in place as they can, not make any sweeping changes –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – be completely transparent, be giving statements to the, to the membership every couple of weeks saying, here’s where we are, here’s where we’re going next, and be will-, and go on the PAN loop and wherever else you have to go and stop the nonsense that starts with, this is really about the Golden Heart! Stop all that nonsense, because that, all that does is derail.

Sarah: Just, just close the fucking forums. Just shut ‘em down.

HelenKay: It just –

Sarah: Just shut ‘em down.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: They don’t need to be there. Fuck the forums. Just get rid of PAN loops.

HelenKay: Oh my God, I can’t even tell you how hard I tried. And –

[Laughter]

HelenKay: I, I can’t, I, I won’t, I won’t lie, and I tried, and I tried the first steps, and there was a huge outcry, and we backed off of it, and that –

Sarah: Too fucking bad!

HelenKay: – that is one thing that in hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have backed off of, of it. We said we’d reassess, and, you know, the, the only person other than staff that had the ability to moderate a, a comment on the PAN loop last year was me! And I, I didn’t –

Sarah: Right, because that’s a thing you had time to do.

HelenKay: And I didn’t even get that until, oh gosh, May or June? 

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: But I’m like, you’ve got to give it to me, and then what I would do is I’d put somebody in moderation, and then they would just scream at me in my emails, and I would say –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – every time you do that I’m guaranteeing I’m not putting you back on the – [laughs] – on the loops, because you’re not in control of yourself yet!

Sarah: This brings me to my other problem with RWA, which I’ve written about, which I know you’ve, which I know you’ve read. There’s a sizable portion of the membership that is racist –

HelenKay: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – bigoted, resistant to change, and is not letting go of that position, and part of the problem is that RWA, especially in the PAN forums and in chapters and in different gatherings, has made it safe for those people to, to behave in ways that are absolutely abhorrent.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: And I don’t know – like, I look at RWA right now as a, as a member, and I’m like, I don’t want to give this organization any more of my energy, because it is a fucking disaster and I’m very angry about it.

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: And I agree that there’s an advocacy element that is a substantial loss if it goes away. It is staggering to me how fast the status of the organization was destroyed –

HelenKay: Yep.

Sarah: – after that many years of building industry, industry clout, basically. And as you and I both know, it’s super easy to convince a publisher not to spend money by going to a conference? It’s going to be really hard to be like, yes, come back and spend thirty, forty, fifty grand.

HelenKay: Exactly.

Sarah: They, I mean, that’s not, that, that budget is now going to be free to publish lots and lots of books by white women about Mexican migrant families. That’s, that money’s going to go to a great place, I’m certain.

HelenKay: [Laughs]

Sarah: And bar-, don’t forget about the barbed wire centerpieces; that’s very important too.

HelenKay: And nail polish.

Sarah: Oh, please, absolutely! The manicures are key; got to have that Instagram element.

HelenKay: [Laughs]

Sarah: But, but RWA houses a lot of racists.

HelenKay: Yep.

Sarah: It houses a lot of bigots and hasn’t gotten rid of them.

HelenKay: No. I, I think there are two things. I think – and, and both right now are lost. I think one thing is last year all of the talk about DEI and the open house and hiring the DEI consultant, etc., made those folks very uncomfortable, and they would write and say things that I can’t believe they would say in person, but they would write and say things, and the position that I took, and the position that I asked the Board to take, and we all agreed, was, instead of saying RWA is welcoming to everybody, we have to start saying, there are some people for whom RWA will not be comfortable, and if you believe that not everybody deserves love and a happy ending, and if you believe that by virtue of the color of your skin you automatically probably don’t write books that are as good as the other books, you know, that kind of thing? What –

Sarah: Time to go!

HelenKay: – what we have to do is be okay with saying, this organization is not going to be comfortable for you, and you need to find another organization, instead of, in the past, the organization kind of expanding and quieting that person down and letting them be a part of it. We have to be comfortable with saying, we are not for everyone, and if you don’t believe in happy endings for everyone, then you’re the one that has to leave, not us? And that is a very, that’s a – saying that is so simple. It leads to this huge upheaval, right? Where last year there was, there was a Take RWA Back group, right? Like, I heard from them.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: We want to take it back, and I, I would say, where, where are you taking it back to? Even though I know the answer to that question, where do you think you’re taking it back to? And that is the very uncomfortable – you have to make it uncomfortable for folks who have a different worldview when it comes to who gets a, when it gets, a worldview that is different from the val-, stated values of RWA, which are right on our website.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: We have those values. If you can’t meet those values, you need to leave, and that is a difficult process, and it’s a lot of screaming, and it takes time, but you’ve got to keep at it. The whole point is, we had just started that. They had to keep at it this year, and now there’s nothing. Right? So that’s one way it falls down. The second way it falls down is, again, we didn’t have the right accountability and the right policy and measures for dealing with that in our governing documents. We recognized that; we said it; we promised we would fix it. I mean, I promised that at the AGM. I told –

Sarah: That was, that was, you were chair of that committee!

HelenKay: I, yes! I’m, I’m going to chair that committee when I’m not president. The staff is already kind of looking at all the chapter stuff. We’re going to do all this. I’m going to sit down with the lawyer. All of that’s going to happen. Now that’s gone too, right? So both –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – pieces, the pressure on people who are like, this is uncomfortable to me – okay, you can find it uncomfortable, and if you want to be educated and you’re willing to listen, then there’s a place for you. If you find it uncomfortable and you fight back and you continue to say awful things, there’s not a place for you. That – if you don’t have a board and you don’t have leadership pressing that point, you lose that point, which means the worst thing is you don’t start back where we were last year; you go way back further than that, right? Because –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

HelenKay: – those folks now feel comfortable again, ‘cause there’s –

Sarah: Yep, they feel very comfortable.

HelenKay: – there’s no anything that’s going to happen to them. Right? Like –

Sarah: Yep!

HelenKay: – the governing documents aren’t fixed. There’s not leadership stepping in on a loop. I think, I don’t think it’s happening, ‘cause I’m not on the loop, but I get the impression it’s not happening where they say, this isn’t okay; I’m putting you in moderation; you’re done.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And there’s no ongoing belief system in RWA where DEI is a value, not just a catchphrase we use when it’s convenient. We’re back to a catchphrase we use when it’s convenient because it’s not being pressed forward. And I, the most recent statement that the Board gave I thought was the most hopeful statement, where they talked about hiring somebody, but you know, I have to say, if I were an author of color or a disabled member or an LGBTQ member, I would be saying, okay, but HelenKay said this last year.

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: We are now a year out.

Sarah: We’re hiring another consultant? Consultants are not going to help you with this at this point.

HelenKay: No, and, well, and the consultants will tell, I spoke to so many consultants before we hired Sunny, and every one of them said the same thing: okay, RWA is not in charge of getting rid of rac- – like, you can’t cure racism! All you can do is provide the education, provide the listening forums, and make it difficult for people with those values to be in your organization. That’s, that’s what you can do. You can’t –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – you can’t cure it. You can’t, you can’t ever make it perfect. You can just be open, transparent, listening, and pushing every time to make it better.

Sarah: And you can specifically state, this is not okay?

HelenKay: Exactly.

Sarah: And here are the consequences for this behavior.

HelenKay: Right.

Sarah: And it can’t be, it can’t be inconsistent. It has to be consistent and clear and, and – I mean, I fuck that up. You know, there are times when –

HelenKay: We all do!

Sarah: – I’m too permissive with someone who I should have moderated and I should have limited long before I did. You know, like, I have this part where like, okay? Okay. Benefit of the doubt; maybe this person – no, nonono, nope, nope. I was wrong! That person knew exactly what they were saying, and they needed to be told, this isn’t welcome. Please fuck off into the sun. It’s hard when that person has paid you dues.

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: That, that also gets complicated. So you’re no longer going to serve on this committee. There are people who are eligible to be president who are like, fuck no! RWA seems to be sort of just spinning in the water doing nothing?

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, there’s, there’s no communications coming out. I, the, the, the lack of, the lack of crisis conv-, conversation, communication, the lack of –

HelenKay: Yeah.

Sarah: – crisis communication is staggering to me.

HelenKay: Staggering.

Sarah: How, how, how do you fuck up that grandly? It takes work to fuck up that hard.

HelenKay: It, it really does.

Sarah: So is, is RWA just, is, is RWA just, just, just done? Like, like, do we have to wait till August to see what happens? ‘Cause I’m not impressed with the, with what remains of this Board. Everything they do seems terrible.

HelenKay: Well, the answer can’t be – I mean, I, I, I know they’re shell-shocked. I mean, I, I know what it feels like to have the thing that you didn’t see coming, or that you should have seen coming, come at you, and, but those first two weeks were critical. They failed in absolutely every way possible. Every single way possible, they failed. And –

Sarah: Right!

HelenKay: – getting the trust back after that is a huge thing, and we had only last year, we hadn’t even earned trust back. All we were asking for is, give us a chance to show you we can do better? And people did, and this happened. Right? And I, I, I think the piece that keeps – there are a couple piece, pieces for me. One is, everybody makes mistakes, right? This, this, this is a, this is a volunteer Board. It is really hard; it sucks up a lot of your time and energy, all of those things –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

HelenKay: – all of –

Sarah: We talked about this! How many books being on the Board has cost you.

HelenKay: Absolutely. All of those things are true, but you can’t, you, you’ve got to, you’ve got to come out and say when you made a mistake, or if you don’t know what to do next. Whatever it is, you have to, you have to be willing to say it.

So we had fourteen crisis days that they completely messed up. I mean, there’s no, I don’t know anybody who could look at that and say they did a good job. They did a terrible job, which sent the entire organization spinning. Now we’ve had another two weeks, and it feels like the answer in these two weeks is, we’re just going to bump along until August. I think if that’s what they end up doing, RWA’s finished. RWA’s finished.

Sarah: That’s, that’s eight months!

HelenKay: That’s, it’s just too much. The folks who are on the Board have barely been on the Board. The fact that they continue to not be able to get out in front of this and at least say, this, we are triaging. Like, we, they keep saying, now they’ve said, we have a triage plan. Oh, okay, we’re a month out. Triage has to start soon. And it still hasn’t started, and I don’t know who’s going to do this. I, I just don’t.

Sarah: There’s no – [laughs] – if there’s any blood left in the organization, it’s not enough to sustain life at this point.

HelenKay: No. And, and I think, you know, what I said to, I have talked to the auditor, and what I said to the auditor is, for me – and, and she knows that I think it’s a series of things – and I said, for me, the question that RWA has to ask itself, and I think it has to ask it in public, is, if we had a system that we always used and we had a policy on how we went forward and handled these things and it wasn’t followed this time, we need to answer, why was it different for Courtney? That, I think, requires some really hard questions that they have to answer. Was it different for Courtney because Courtney’s a loud voice? Was it different for Courtney because of who she is, what her background is? What is it? And those are hard questions to ask, because I think some of those answers won’t be very pretty. Why was it different? I mean, the auditor asked me specifically, like, are you and Courtney good friends? And I said, look, I put her, I asked her to be Ethics Chair. She didn’t really want to, and I asked her to be Ethics Chair, and I did that because I served with her for four years, and what I saw was that she had an, she was incredibly good at thinking through pro-, problems; she’s very smart; she was really fair on every ethics thing I had ever seen her work on on the Board –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – like, on how she came to a decision and what information she needed; and she was always very impressive in her ability as a Board member. If she had a position but she heard something that made her change her position, she had an ability to do that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: And I have to tell you, her ability to do that was much greater than my ability to do that, right? ‘Cause as a lawyer, you kind of entrench and argue, and she had an ability to hear differing points and say, okay, now let’s – all right, now that we know that, let’s think of it this way.

Sarah: Let’s reconsider.

HelenKay: All of that being true, Courtney, because she is on Twitter bringing out things that should be done better, weren’t done right, etc. – so you know that! But that’s, that’s not a, I never thought of that as a negative; I thought of that as a positive thing in that she thought of things I didn’t think of. She thought in ways I didn’t think, and I always believed if I emailed her and said, you said X on this day. What did you mean? I thought this was okay – whatever – that, that we could have a conversation, because she was coming at it from an advocacy for RWA and the people in it and for members who didn’t have a voice for a long time. And yeah, people might not have liked the way she did it, and people might have thought she was too loud or that she spoke up when it wasn’t her turn to speak. Whatever. Whatever! Somebody was out there speaking for our members, and that might not make the job, president’s job easy, but it’s an important thing.

So if the Ethics Committee viewed it differently, or if anybody looking at this who had a vote saw it differently and that weighed into their decision, I think that needs to be honestly assessed and told to the membership.

Sarah: And it’s not like there’s not going to be a paper trail. This was not all done verbally.

HelenKay: Well, that’s it. I mean, I, you know, I –

Sarah: You’re going to be able to trace what happened if someone reveals, like, if, if someone gives access to the documents.

HelenKay: And, and I, I, I think they have? I mean, I handed over my documents, and you can see where I say, I’m concerned about this; and thank you, Allison, for recusing; and this should not have been escalated the way it was; and of course you can’t set out a separate, a second Ethics Committee; and all of that’s there, as well as my letter to Courtney asking her to step down from the Ethics Committee. You know, it, it all gets handed over, the good stuff, the stuff that’s, that doesn’t look good for you and does, right? You hand it all over, and then you explain why you made the decisions you did, and I think at the end of the day, a lot of those decisions, when coupled together, end up in this bad place.

That’s one piece. The other piece is, why was it so easy to do something different for Courtney? That’s the second, third, second piece, and the third piece, which for me in some ways is the biggest piece? Why, once you knew there was a problem, did you handle it this way?

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

HelenKay: Because you, you either –

Sarah: You made a shitty decision. You –

HelenKay: Yeah!

Sarah: – backed down from the shitty decision. You won’t talk about how this happened. And you refuse to deal with the fallout of both parts.

HelenKay: Exactly. Well, and, you know, the, the auditor said to me, do you think it was the right decision to rescind? I’m like – [laughs] – I’m like, I, can you show me a policy where the Board’s allowed to just unilaterally rescind its own decision? I mean, that’s, right? Like, it’s just one more time where I’m like, wait, what? What – like, you know, you, if you send out statements saying, policy was followed, okay, then why did you rescind the decision? If you really believe that policy was followed and everybody did everything right, then the decision against Courtney should stand! And you should, you should be able to defend that. But you can’t!

So, like, you’re talking out of nine different sides of your face here, like, like, it’s like not all of these things can be true, and you have to sit back and say, what, what piece? Like, where, all the places this went wrong, and what biases did people bring to the table? What were those biases? Was Courtney too loud? Was Courtney, like, it’s, life would be easier if there wasn’t a person out there, you know, pointing out the things that RWA does wrong? Of course it would be easier! That doesn’t mean it would be better. It just means it’d be easier. But your job isn’t easy, right?

So I feel terrible for her, because this is a huge, I can’t even comprehend the emotional, like, how much she’s given and how much she’s had to talk about this and live with it and frustrating it is for her, but the fact that it was her kind of allows RWA to review it, talk about it, take ownership of it, apologize for it, and fix it.

Sarah: None of that happened.

HelenKay: All of that should have happened in the first fourteen days. And the fact that it didn’t is the thing that makes me the angriest, because, because of that, our advocacy efforts, our education efforts, our networking efforts are all gone right now. All gone.

Sarah: Yep.

HelenKay: And it could take down chapters, including great chapters like CIMRWA and other chapters who are out there working for members.

Sarah: Yeah. And, and doing a lot of work on behalf of an organization that isn’t working for them at all.

HelenKay: Isn’t working for them!

Sarah: So you’re still doing a lot, even though you’re not part of any committees or doing any work on behalf of RWA. You’re still dealing with this.

HelenKay: Yeah. I have tried behind the scenes, when people have asked for kind of my thoughts on what the bylaws say; on what policy says; on ways to, who to communicate with; what to say; etc.; I have, I have, I’ve tried to help behind the scenes with that. Because RWA matters to me, and I think the piece that the Board right now is missing is that, the fact that people are so angry, the fact that people on Christmas Day were willing to talk about this –

Sarah: Organize, yeah.

HelenKay: – the fact that CIMRWA was able to put together a recall petition during a time when people were trying to spend nice time with their families and friends –

Sarah: They did it twice, too.

HelenKay: Did it twice, right? You don’t do that unless you give a shit, right?

Sarah: Mm.

HelenKay: Like, they want RWA to be robust, fair, open, listening, transparent, networking, doing all of those things. They want it! The just want it to be for everyone, not just for a few Nice White Ladies, right? And –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – that’s not that much to ask, but you don’t fight for something if you don’t care. And if you have –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – this many people who care and you have RWA, whose budget, like, up until right now has been rock-solid –

Sarah: Mm-hmm. You’re talking about a, a, a base of operations of, like, three or four million dollars.

HelenKay: Yes! Yes. You don’t get the benefit of the doubt if you, if you’re not leading. Right? Like, if you just stay quiet and don’t do anything, then everything comes into doubt, and that is a tragedy. That’s a tragedy be- –

Sarah: It really is.

HelenKay: – because then I don’t know how RWA functions. I really don’t.

Sarah: It does-, it didn’t have to end this way –

HelenKay: No.

Sarah: – and it looks like it’s going to end this way.

HelenKay: No, it did not have to end this way, and it shouldn’t have ended this way, and the fact that it could end, that it took such a short period of time and so few people to bring down something that had been for decades doing at least a portion of its job exceptionally well. I think, I think we’ve had a serious problem with not giving all of our members the same attention and, etc., and that’s something –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – that we do have to take ownership of and fix, but the idea that it took so little time to bring it to its knees is just shocking to me. At this very moment, it feels like it’s serving the people who are not fighting for it, right? It’s not serving CIMRWA, and they’re fighting for it. It’s not serving the people on the PAN loop who are saying, enough with this kind of garbage talk! Like, enough! It’s not serving them.

Sarah: Nope.

HelenKay: And they’re fighting for it. So it’s what I said before: we’ve kind of retreated, and those folks that we told, we’re okay if it’s not comfortable for you here anymore, I think right now it is comfortable for them. And I think –

Sarah: They’re very comfortable!

HelenKay: – I think it’s only comfortable for them. It’s not comfortable for – I’ve been a member probably for seventeen years? I mean, a long time!

Sarah: Yeah.

HelenKay: You know, I served on my chapter level as, as a, as an officer. I served six years on the Board. I’m not a joiner! I did it because I cared! And then I stayed – I had no intention of being President of RWA – I stayed because I thought we had made progress and that I could help push it forward. To then see where we are now compared to –

Sarah: Very disheartening.

HelenKay: It’s very disheartening, and it’s disheartening for me. I cannot imagine how it feels, I cannot comprehend how it feels for our members of color, our LGBTQ members, our disabled members. I just, we’re, we’re not giving anything to them, and yet they’re pushing! That’s amazing to me! Like, the door is slammed in their face repeatedly, and they’re like, we’re going to try to open it one more time.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: They have to be exhausted. And people are like, oh, you can go to the Authors Guild. You can! I’ve dealt a lot with the Authors Guild. It’s not the same thing! It’s not the same thing.

Sarah: No, they don’t have the fluency in the issues that romance deals with.

HelenKay: No, it’s, it’s, yes, and, and sometimes they are looking out for a broader writer perspective that does not match with where RWA or where our members are on a, on a certain –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – issue. It’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s a nice extra? It actually –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

HelenKay: – is not an organization that is out there advocating for romance, which is what RWA was, and –

Sarah: Right.

HelenKay: – I hate the fact that I just used the past tense, but that’s how it feels.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you to HelenKay Dimon for her time and for her efforts to both explain and, as she put it, stop the bleeding.

Now, she didn’t mention it, but I’m going to. Her latest books are Her Other Secret and The Secret She Keeps, both of which are on sale now, and of course I will have links to them in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

Please check your podcast feed tomorrow, February 2nd, for part three of this special four-episode series on “RWA: One Month Later.” I will be talking with Jessie Edwards, Marketing and PR Manager for RWA. Then, on February 3rd, you’ll hear from Courtney Milan.

Would you like to get in touch with me? If you have things to say, have ideas, feedback, I would love to hear from you! The email address here is sbjpodcast@gmail.com.

A very special thank-you to garlicknitter for transcribing all of these episodes and to our podcast Patreon community, whose support will make transcripts of the series possible, and who make sure that every episode is accessible to everyone.

And thank you for listening. I wish you a wonderful weekend, and I will see you back here tomorrow!

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

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