412. Magic, Queerness, and Being Welcomed As Yourself, with Sarah Gailey

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello! Thank you for inviting me to hang out in your eardrums. I am Sarah Wendell from Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, and this is episode number 412. Today I am chatting with author Sarah Gailey about their books, including their latest, When We Were Magic, which I liked a lot, and we talk about different types of magic, including the magic of learning a skill, of finding your community, and of discovering over and over who you are.

I want to thank Meaghan Ray for their input and care and questions for this episode.

I will have links to where you can find Sarah Gailey and Meaghan Ray and all of the books that we talk about in this episode in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And if you would like to get in touch with me, you can do that at sbjpodcast@gmail.com!

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I want to extend a very large hello and thank-you to the Patreon community. If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge of any amount, thank you very much. You’re making sure that the show continues and that every episode is accessible to everyone, and you help me out with questions for upcoming guests. If you would like to join the Patreon community, it would be most excellent to have you join us. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one whole dollar a month, and every pledge makes a deeply appreciated difference.

I’m going to end this episode with a terrible joke provided by Tara, who reviews for Smart Bitches. I will have links in the show notes, as I mentioned, and I will have links to all the books that we talk about. I really enjoy this interview, particularly the part where Sarah talks about asking the very difficult question, who are you when you’re all by yourself? It’s very hard!

So let’s do this episode with one hundred percent more Sarah! On with the podcast with Sarah Gailey.

[music]

Sarah Gailey: Yeah, my name is Sarah Gailey. I am an author of YA and adult science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I write way too much all the time, and it’s the thing that I love most in the world, and hopefully it’ll be the thing that puts me in the grave one day.

1. Wendell: Aw! I know that feeling; I love writing about that much as well.
2. Gailey: [Laughs]
3. Wendell: Different writings, but I love, I love the whole thing. So congratulations on your latest book, When We Were Magic, which has a gorgeous cover, by the way. Oh, I love the cover.
4. Gailey: I am so bananas about that cover, and I, the, the color of it, which –
5. Wendell: Yes!
6. Gailey: – since this is an audio program, I’m sorry, listeners, this is going to be, like, profoundly unhelpful to you, but it’s this vibrant, vibrant orange that my editor sent me an image of, like, what the cover was going to look like via email, and then she said, don’t make a decision until you get the envelope I’m overnighting to you, and it was an envelope with a swatch of that orange, and it just doesn’t come through quite true in a digital image, but in person you, you look at it and your monkey brain goes, eat it!
7. Wendell: Mm-hmm!
8. Gailey: Like, I just want to put it in my mouth. I know that it would taste like fruit? I just know it; I know it!
9. Wendell: It has visual flavor. You’re totally right; it has visual flavor. And I love the illustrations of the characters.
10. Gailey: Oh, thank you! I, I was just about to say, I got really fortunate. You know, authors don’t get a ton of say into their cover design usually? You can kind of push on some stuff and ask for some stuff, but usually it’s up to people who are much smarter than authors about –
11. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
12. Gailey: – packaging and sales and, you know, positioning in the marketplace. Art directors and publishers are, are, are brave and fastidious warriors for us. But I did get really fortunate to get to have some input on the, the images of the girls on the cover, because I wrote this book with representation in mind, and it was really important to me that a reader looking at this book wouldn’t look at the, the image of a person on the cover and think, oh, I see, so the only representation that, for instance, an Afghani person gets is going to be very light-skinned, and that, you know, this book is about that. I wanted people to be able to see themselves as much as, as much as that’s possible, and I was really just blown away by how well the artist pulled that off.
13. Wendell: I was going to say, the artist did an incredible job of not only capturing the different styles of the characters as you get to know them in the book – and I promise there’s, I, I try very hard not to spoil a book when I talk about it with the author, though that can be a challenge. The image captures the style of the girls, but also their posture and their body language conveys so much about their personality? Like, that artist got it.
14. Gailey: Absolutely. When we, when we started talking about how the girls would look on the cover, the thing that I kind of landed on and that I think the author captured perfectly was this feeling that I wanted the reader to have like you’ve come around a corner and there’s a group of youths staring, standing there, and they’re –
15. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
16. Gailey: – not at all interested in you, and it makes you feel a little nervous.
17. Wendell: Yep. It reminded me, like, of an updated, much more visually interesting version of The Craft movie poster?
18. Gailey: Yes, absolutely! That was, I think that was a big influence, and gosh, it just – ah! Ah!
19. Wendell: It worked.
20. Gailey: I love that part. I love it.
21. Wendell: So one of the things I loved about When We Were Magic was that each character has an individualized and very personal form of magic, and I loved how each of their characters were informed by and then influenced by their, their respective magic abilities, especially Alexis, ‘cause she can talk to dogs? And I –
22. Gailey: [Laughs]
23. Wendell: – love the idea that you could just hear what your dogs are thinking. And I don’t imagine my dogs are thinking profoundly deep thoughts, but it would be really nice for them to be like, yeah, my hips hurt. Oh, that dog is scary. Hey, it’s really nice out. Like, it would be nice to hear what my dogs are thinking! How did you identify and develop the different magics for the different characters?
24. Gailey: You know, I’ve, I’ve thought about this a lot, because of course it’s been several years since I, since I put this all together, and part of, when I answer a question like this, part of me is rewriting history to make myself sound smarter than I am, right. So –
25. Wendell: That’s your prerogative! You’re the writer! That’s how it works! [Laughs]
26. Gailey: – bear that in mind: if you go back in time and you meet the, me as I’m outlining this and you ask me then how I’m developing these magic systems, the answer will probably involve a lot less thought and care. In representing these girls’ different magical abilities, you know, I, I definitely, at least in part, wanted to do the fun thing of you get a lot of variety, but also, a big theme in this book is that very different people become very close friends. You know, we, we –
27. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
28. Gailey: – we adults creating media have this tendency to imagine high school as a place where people separate themselves into groups where everyone is the same, right. Like, you’ve got, like, the cheerleaders who all dress the same and think the same things and look the same; and you’ve got the jocks who all think the same thing; and you’ve got the nerds who all, like, act and look the same and have the same interests; but actually –
29. Wendell: Yes, like, Homogeny High School!
30. Gailey: Yes! Yeah, exactly. Looking at you, Tina Fey. But, you know, in my experience of high school at least, very different people would become very close friends and support each other and support each others’ differences. And that was an important thing that I wanted to, to highlight in this book. So when I was thinking about the magical skills these girls had, I thought about the skills that, that actual teenagers have, you know, because teenagers are amazing. They, they have, like, they’re just smart and angry and skilled and talented in ways that blow me out of the water. And –
31. Wendell: Yes!
32. Gailey: – the talents that they develop and nurture seem like magic. The things that they’re interested in, that, that come out of them seem natural and, and instinctive. Right, you see a kid who’s a great artist, and you’re like, holy hell, how did, how did you manage to become such a great artist? And it seems natural, but actually it’s because that’s the thing that that particular kid is nurturing, that’s the thing they’re passionate about and interested in and paying attention to.
33. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
34. Gailey: So with these girls’ magic, I wanted to bring some of that to the idea of a natural ability like having magic powers. You know, these girls each have a different ability, but their abilities are really varied, and they don’t understand them very well, and the things that they’re passionate about are really closely connected to the things they have the ability to influence. The question there is, are they passionate about these things because these things come naturally to them? Right, like, is, is Roya particularly good at mending things and healing things because it comes naturally to her so she pursues it? Or is she particularly good at it because it’s important to her so she thinks about it and spends a lot of time and energy on it and so it feels more natural to her? This has all been a very, I think, meandering way of trying to say that I was in their magic powers trying to explore the way that passion and natural ability intersect.
35. Wendell: And it, and it’s interesting, because when you gravitate towards something because it resonates with you, you, you nurture it, like you said. It al-, it can also become hard to put down if you decide you don’t want to do that anymore. It can be hard to do that because it’s almost like an autopilot.
36. Gailey: Yes, exactly! And, you know, we also, we commodify skill so much and we commodify passion so much, and there’s only so much time in the day, so why wouldn’t you pursue something that comes naturally to you –
37. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
38. Gailey: – instead of forcing yourself to do something that’s hard and that you might not be as good at, and so you can’t get as much out of it. You can’t harvest as much from it –
39. Wendell: Yeah.
40. Gailey: – as you can if you’re naturally good at something. I, I have a good friend who’s a very talented musician and for a long time thought, well, this is what I have to do with my life because it’s, it’s what I’ve got; it’s what I’m good at. And, you know, I, I just think that’s so, it’s heartbreaking, but it’s also such a, such a dominant way of thinking about talent.
41. Wendell: Yes. The commodification of talent is, is, is something I think a lot about. It is exhausting, and it, and it can really sap the magic out of enjoying the thing that you like.
42. Gailey: Yes! And it, it saps the magic out of learning! You know, I –
43. Wendell: Oh yeah.
44. Gailey: – I know so many people, myself included, who, if they’re not good at something right away, they’re like, well, screw this.
45. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
46. Gailey: You know, I’m not going to, I’m not going to spend my time being frustrated! I’m like this with languages. My, my household roasts me constantly for the time I said, they said, you know, do you want to try to learn a language? And I said, no, I’m no good at it; I’ve never tried it.

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: Those do not seem to fit! [Laughs]
2. Gailey: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I get, I get roasted for a lot of things, but I think that might be my favorite one. But you have –
3. Wendell: [Laughs]
4. Gailey: That’s how so many of us think: we’re like, oh, I don’t want to try that because I, I’m not going to immediately be good at it. You know, and so why would I waste my time doing something that I’m bad at and having a, a bad outcome, a bad result and feeling bad about myself when instead I could just keep on nurturing this one thing that I’m good at and let it get really big?
5. Wendell: Yep. With When We Were Magic and with Upright Women Wanted, there’s a sort of through line to the story of finding your people and finding the people who will support and care for who you are, the, the most honest representation and presentation of yourself, and especially for the kids in, in When We Were Magic. Is that something you also think about and, and nurture in your own writing?
6. Gailey: Absolutely. Oh my goodness. I mean, this is like, I, I can be kind of one-note about this sometimes, but so much of my writing is influenced by queerness, and so much of my experience with queerness is about community.
7. Wendell: Yeah.
8. Gailey: Is about finding your people, and again, that doesn’t mean people who are just like you, but it means people who will care for you in the place that you are and as the person that you are.
9. Wendell: Yes.
10. Gailey: As a, as a queer teenager, I, I did not suffer in the way that a lot of my peers did, but I also was really limited in my understanding of what friendships could be and how friends should treat you, and it left me vulnerable to a lot of harm, and, and, you know, it leaves a lot of people vulnerable to a lot of harm. And –
11. Wendell: It’s a difficult lesson.
12. Gailey: Oh yeah. I think that the, especially the American capitalist focus on the nuclear family model as the prime relationship center of a person’s life –
13. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
14. Gailey: – exposes so many people to harm and loneliness, because if the nuclear family that you’re from doesn’t support and nurture you, you just think you’re all alone. And people who think that they’re all alone are particularly vulnerable to predation and abuse. So –
15. Wendell: Yes.
16. Gailey: And I think this is part of why – it’s not all of why, but part of why – queer people are – and queer youths especially – are so vulnerable to predation and abuse. And so in my writing, you know, whenever I write for a younger audience, and also when I write for an older audience, but, but especially this great focus when I write for a younger audience, I think, what do I wish this book could have said to me when I was at the place in my life that most of the readers of this book will be? When I’m writing adult work I’m just like, what do I want to say? But when I’m writing –
17. Wendell: [Laughs]
18. Gailey: – for a younger audience I’m like – like, when I wrote comics for Steven Universe I said to myself, okay, this is, this comic is geared to kids, it’s geared for children –
19. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
20. Gailey: What do I wish a comic book like this could have said to me when I was a kid? And, you know, in When We Were Magic and in Upright Women Wanted, I was asking myself, what do I wish the younger, the young queer person that I once was could have learned from a book like this? And the answer is, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to be alone, and there’s a big family waiting for you in the world that will love you for precisely who you are and that will call you on your shit and that will force you to grow, and, you know, you, you don’t have to pursue relationships that you think are necessary because of what you’ve been told about how the world works.
21. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
22. Gailey: When those relationships hurt you, you can say, no, I demand that my family and my partner and my friends are all people who love me in a healthy and supportive and constructive way. And I hope I pulled that off! [Laughs]
23. Wendell: I th-, I think so. I mean, one of my favorite parts of Upright Women Wanted is the, the two characters looking at the, the narrator and saying, well, we have good news and we have bad news.

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: We have good news is, yes, you are not the only one like you. Bad news is, well, we’re not going to be able to fix that thing you think is wrong with you ‘cause there’s nothing wrong with you! Good news and bad news.
2. Gailey: [Laughs]
3. Wendell: I tell myself that all the time about things like being an adult and being in charge and being self-employed: the good news is I’m in charge; the bad news is I’m in charge. Shit! [Laughs]
4. Gailey: Yes. [Laughs] Yes. This is, this is the nightmare. Every time that I have this feeling like I, I don’t understand how I got to be an adult with, like, responsibilities and –
5. Wendell: Oh my gosh.
6. Gailey: – and can actually do things, like, that could hurt people, and I’m like, how the hell did this happen? And I’m like, well, you know what, you’re the one who wanted to set your own bedtime.
7. Wendell: Yep!
8. Gailey: Yeah.
9. Wendell: I am constantly writing my name on a form on a line where it says Responsible Adult, and I, every time I’m like, really? Really? Ah, fine, I’ll be the responsible adult. Ugh.
10. Gailey: Can you cross out the Responsible part?
11. Wendell: I try. Sometimes they’re digital and I can’t edit them. But that’s, that’s the, the way that our school district interacts with parents and guardians: Responsible Adult. I appreciate the neutrality of that statement, but the whole, the, the ponderous weight of being responsible is a lot, you guys. It’s a lot! [Laughs]
12. Gailey: Oof. Oof! [Laughs]
13. Wendell: So you mentioned Steven Universe, and I, I cannot transcribe and I will not replicate the noise that I made when I saw you were writing those, because that show is monumentally important in my house. What was that like, writing for, for Steven Universe?
14. Gailey: Oh my God, it was so wonderful.
15. Wendell: I cannot imagine! Oh my God!
16. Gailey: [Laughs] So I wrote four comics for Steven Universe, plus a short comic that went into a collection about fusions, and I, I mean, it was just from start to finish a fabulous experience. My, my editor at BOOM! Studios, Matt Levine, who is such a shining light, came to me and said, you know, we’ve been having a lot of conversations about you writing comics. Have you ever heard of a show called Steven Universe? And I made a noise that will not try to reproduce, but it was –
17. Wendell: [Laughs]
18. Gailey: – very intense, and then I said, yeah, gee, I’ve heard of that; why do you ask?
19. Wendell: Uh-huh! [Squees, laughs]
20. Gailey: And we, we, I, I put together some pitches based, as I said, on that question of what do I want kids to know? And some –
21. Wendell: Yeah.
22. Gailey: – a couple of the things were fun, like, here’s how you make chicken soup, and a couple of the things were more heavy, like, you need to allow yourself time for rest and recreation. Otherwise you’re going to burn out, even if your heart is in the right place trying to fix things. Or it’s okay, if your friend is depressed and sad, to let them feel their feelings, and you don’t have to try and fix it. You can just be there with them in the feeling.

So we put these pitches together, and I started writing scripts, and while I was writing these Steven Universe comic scripts, which are twenty-one pages, I want to say?

1. Wendell: Mm-hmm?
2. Gailey: Of, of script writing, I was also drafting the first manuscript of The Echo Wife, which is my book that comes out in February of 2021, and The Echo Wife is a really intense book about identity and divorce and, like, womanhood and the way that families shape people, and it’s really dark and twisty and hard, it was hard to write. It was like pulling a drain clog out of my own brain, and so I’d –
3. Wendell: [Laughs]
4. Gailey: – draft that for a while, and then I would put it aside, and I would open up my document of Steven Universe comic scripts and be like, there’s going to be a big pile of pancakes on this page, and here’s everything that’s on the pancakes, and Steven’s really excited about the pancakes, and it was just so healing. It was just –
5. Wendell: [Laughs]
6. Gailey: – it was so nice! I will also say – and I am never ever ever going to say that any form of writing is easy – 
7. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
8. Gailey: – but writing a comic book script is a lot less words than writing a, a novel manuscript? It’s, you know, you’re mostly just writing dialogue and scene descriptions. It’s, when you’re writing for an IP like Steven Universe, you don’t have to describe almost anything, because the artist already knows and has a, a guide sheet for what people and things look like, so I could just say, Amethyst is in the living room of the temple, and the artist is going to know exactly what I mean, and they’re going to know what the temple, the gem temple looks like, and they’re going to know what Amethyst looks like, and they’re going to know what her facial expressions are, and so I really just got to, like, enjoy the heck out of writing it without the parts that are hardest for me, which are, like, describing things. As an author, this is my biggest weakness!
9. Wendell: [Laughs]
10. Gailey: So it’s just, it was restful, it was healing, it was so rewarding, because, oh my goodness, I got to write for Steven Universe. Like, what, what a dream come true.
11. Wendell: And it’s funny that you were writing about rest and, and not burning out, and the process of writing for that series was a form of rest and play and not burning out.
12. Gailey: Oh my gosh, that’s such a lovely observation!
13. Wendell: It’s, it’s really great when you get to enjoy the play elements of something that you love. Having that opportunity is so rare sometimes, and it’s, it’s, it’s like wrapping yourself up in everything you love about the things you do? It’s just the most lovely experience. And it’s really nice to listen to talk, to, to people – it’s really nice to listen to people talking about those experiences, because that positive passion and engagement is really delightful, because writing, like you said, is kind of hard! And it’s, it’s fun when you enjoy it!
14. Gailey: [Laughs] It’s kind of hard! It, I feel like this is part of why the COVID-19 pandemic canceling so many book tours is really heartbreaking for me personally, because, you know, book tours are difficult and they’re draining, but –
15. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
16. Gailey: – they’re also part of the process of releasing a book where you get to just wrap yourself up in everything you love about the book, right? When you, when you go do a book event, you’re not defending your book. The people who are there already like you and your work and are excited about it and interested in it; otherwise, they wouldn’t have put on pants to come and see you. And so you get to –
17. Wendell: Oh, yes! [Laughs]
18. Gailey: – you get to sit up at the front of the room, and maybe you’re nervous and maybe you’re not, but you get to feel smart, you get to make eye contact with people who are prepared to like you, and you get to make them laugh, and you get to say, here’s why my heart is in this book, and here’s why I love it. And it’s so sad that that’s, that’s not an option for so many writers right now who went through the part of writing and releasing a book that is hard and heartbreaking and punishing. I just hope that they’re, that they’re getting, you know, some of that feeling of love and affirmation out of all the virtual events that the book community has so generously put together.
19. Wendell: Yes, the, the part where you get to be present with the people who want to hear what you say is sort of the reward for doing all of the solitary, hard part by yourself.
20. Gailey: Exactly.
21. Wendell: You mentioned The Echo Wife, and I read the description, and it gave me the most incredible case of the jibblies. That is some creepy shit right there. Can you tell me more about this? Is this like a horror, science fiction, domestic suspense, along with scaring the crap out of Me-Sarah mix? Is that what this is? ‘Cause wow, is that a creepy – and that was just the cover copy! Good gravy!

[Laughter]

1. Gailey: Okay, so the, The Echo Wife, for the, for listeners who don’t know, is my next adult novel coming out in February of 2021 from Tor, and it is the story of Evelyn Caldwell, a scientist who invented adult duplicative cloning, which means, you know, if I’ve got Sarah Wendell in front of me and then I snap my fingers, I’ll get another Sarah Wendell in a test tube. Big test tube, not a little test tube. Like, a big Sarah-Wendell-size one. And it’s, it’s the story of Evelyn’s divorce, as she is divorcing a man who she discovered was cheating on her with a clone of her who he developed by stealing her technology so that he could have a less-threatening version of her to be married to.
2. Wendell: Duuude.
3. Gailey: [Laughs]
4. Wendell: Dude. Oh, creepy! And yet, I know that guy! [Laughs]
5. Gailey: Yeah, oh yeah. Yep. [Laughs] I came up with the concept for this book – I, I had an idea about writing clones for, for a while, and I set it aside in order to develop a pitch for an epic fantasy novel and then went to Portland to have a meeting with my agent, DongWon Song, who is an absolute staggering genius and luminary and responsible for my whole career. Went to have a meeting with him in Portland, and just before I went to have that meeting, my own marriage reached its breaking point, and so when I got to Portland I said, hey, DongWon, we’re going to have our meeting. Could you also help me find an apartment –
6. Wendell: Oh!
7. Gailey: – so that I can move, because I needed to make a pretty drastic move at the time. And DongWon, bless his soul, helped me find an apartment in the morning, and, you know, we were talking all about what was going on with my, my then-husband, and in the afternoon we went to a bar, and DongWon bought us a pitcher of beer and sat down with me and said, okay, career talk. I have bad news, but don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you alone in it. The epic fantasy thing, we can’t do it. It’s not the right move for your career, it’s not the right direction, so we’re going to sit down today, and we’re going to drink this pitcher of beer and eat this big pile of Tater Tots and come up with the next concept. And I took a sip of beer, and then I said, well, what about a book that’s all about the way that, you know, divorce shapes relationships, and what if it’s a book about a woman whose husband cloned a less-threatening version of her, and she finds out about it? And DongWon looked at me and was like, well, yeah, okay!

[Laughter]

1. Gailey: You know, my, my, the person who I was married to was a really wonderful man for a long time, and the things that, that caused our divorce are not, not the things that caused Evelyn’s divorce –
2. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
3. Gailey: – but our divorce did put me in a really interesting position, because I, I had to leave my community for safety reasons, as my, as my ex-husband got the care that he at the time needed, and I wound up pretty much alone in a strange city, really isolated, and that isolation forced me to reckon with the fact that my whole life I had defined myself based on what other people needed from me. You know, what, what kind of person my, my family of origin wanted me to be; what kind of person my church community needed me to be; what kind of person my husband needed me to be; in order to make everyone else happy, and –
4. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
5. Gailey: – I was really forced in my kind of isolation to reckon with the question of, who am I when I’m all by myself? Who, who is the person who I am when I’m not responding to anyone else’s needs? And it was such a wild question and just made me realize how much, how much other people define us. And that’s what this book is really about; The Echo Wife is so much about who makes us who we are? You know, Evelyn, the, the protagonist, is a brilliant scientist who thinks of herself as, as self-defined, but the book explores how much her family of origin created the person who she is, and her clone, Martine, has had her entire personality programmed into her by a man to make her into the wife that he wants, and she has to figure out over the course of the book who she is outside of that. And it’s, it’s a hard question for any of us to ask ourselves, because we live in –
6. Wendell: Oh yes.
7. Gailey: – community, and we want to care for the people we love, but, you know, ultimately, when we’re all on our own, who are we?
8. Wendell: Which is a big question right now, as people spend more and more time alone or, or isolated with their families and find themselves confronting who they are when they’re not busy. And it, it makes me think –
9. Gailey: Yes. Yeah!
10. Wendell: – of what you said earlier about finding the community of people who accept you and welcome you and want to cheer you on to becoming who you are meant to be? There’s like that sort of, it’s, it’s, it’s the difference between being with a group of people who receive you as you are and welcome you and people who dictate who you are and try to tell you who to be. There’s a, a push-pull there between these two stories that, the books that you’ve written and the, and the book that you’re describing now, about finding the people who will accept you or finding the people who will define you for you.
11. Gailey: Yes, yes! I completely agree. It’s so tempting to become friends with people who will define us, because self-definition sucks; it’s really hard! I did it, I did it for like a whole year –
12. Wendell: It’s so hard.
13. Gailey: – and I hated it! I hated every second of it. I was like, no, why can’t there just be someone who, who tells me?
14. Wendell: Good news! You’re in charge. Bad news: you’re in charge!
15. Gailey: You’re in charge!

[Laughter]

1. Gailey: But ultimately, I mean, doing that had work made it so that I was able to accept care and love from people who see me as I am and made it so that I was able to care for myself when I was dealing with people who didn’t want to love and support the person who I am. I mean, there are people who I’ve had conflict with because I was being a B-hole, right? That’s, like, totally normal and fine, but there’s also people in the world who just, who just don’t like the person who I am, and for a long time that scared the bejesus out of me and made me want to change who I was in order to get more people to be my friends, and that, that’s part of that letting other people define you. And now that I know the person who I am, I’m able to protect my space more and say, you know, if you need me to change in order for you to dispense love, then we’re just not going to work.
2. Wendell: And it fits with the, with the characters of When We Were Magic, that when they try to, try to change who they are or try to bend their magic or bend their characters to conform to something else, things go wildly out of tune. It’s like –
3. Gailey: Yes!
4. Wendell: – messing with your own tuning fork. If you can resonate on your own frequency and recognize the, the tone at which you resonate and you own that – you know, if you’re an F sharp, you’re an F sharp; that’s great!
5. Gailey: [Laughs]
6. Wendell: If you try to change the tone at which you resonate, you’re just going to harm yourself, even if you’re trying to conform to what someone else wants. And that, that affects the characters in When We Were Magic, and it, and it – seriously, I want to read this book, and I’m convinced it’s going to scare the crap out of me, and I’m going to do it anyway, so thank you!
7. Gailey: [Laughs] Well, I hope it doesn’t; I hope you love it.
8. Wendell: Oh, I love the idea of exploring the dynamic of partners where one becomes threatened and prefers a less-threatening version of the other.
9. Gailey: It’s such a common dynamic, and it –
10. Wendell: It really is!
11. Gailey: Once you learn to recognize it, it’s really heartbreaking to see how common it is?
12. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
13. Gailey: I think a lot of this is coming up during pandemic as partners are being forced into close proximity to each other for more time than they’d ever planned to be?
14. Wendell: Yep.
15. Gailey: You’re getting to see a lot of how one person’s expectation of their status in relation to their partner affects their behavior, and, you know, I, I personally think that if you are in a relationship with someone and the idea of them having more success than you makes you upset, you’ve got maybe some self-examination to do.
16. Wendell: Yes, and that the foundational relationships of your life, the ones that you choose, it, your life is so much more enjoyable and fun when you are with the people who want you to be who you are and cheer you on when you are who you are.
17. Gailey: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I think we have a model of competition inside of relationships that can be so damaging, and when you –
18. Wendell: Yes!
19. Gailey: – view a relationship as a collaboration it’s, I mean, it’s just better! It’s just better for everyone. Do it that way! I’m just saying, do it that way.

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: So I have a couple of questions from a listener who has a podcast of their own. Meaghan Ray is the host, or co-host, of the podcast Let’s Talk Gender, and they asked me to find out if you would be willing to talk about your experience as a nonbinary author, especially navigating publication and, and promotion. Meaghan Ray wanted me to ask about the, the coming out process in, in the publishing and author professional realm and how that went, and “how you navigate coming out to and pronoun usage of people you meet professionally.” Would you be willing to talk about that?
2. Gailey: Absolutely!
3. Wendell: Thank you for being so open! I appreciate it.
4. Gailey: Oh my gosh, it’s my pleasure. I have a platform and a profile, and why do I have it if not to use it?

In terms of coming out, I will say that I am terrible at it. I hate it, because coming out is –

1. Wendell: [Laughs]
2. Gailey: – it’s, it’s such a continuous process, right? With, people think you come out of the closet one time, and then everybody knows, and I think that a lot of people –
3. Wendell: Nope.
4. Gailey: – when they first come out do it and then radically alter their, their presentation and their mannerisms and behavior to try and broadcast that they’re out, so that maybe they won’t have to do it again and again and again, but none of it matters, because there are people in this world who, who will look at two women wearing wedding dresses kissing each other and say, wow, sisters.

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: It’s so true!
2. Gailey: You just have to do it again and again, and I hate it, so I tend to not do it at all. When I came out as nonbinary, I just changed my pronouns in my Twitter profile – [laughs] – and I remember a few days later getting this text message from my sister being like, uh, hey – what?

[Laughter]

1. Gailey: And I was like, oh yeah, oops! So I’m terrible at it. Part of, part of the way that I kind of continue coming out is that I talk a lot about representation, and I’ll say things like, as a nonbinary person, I think this thing! To try and just, just remind people, and also because, you know, the same way that – and this only applies to me; I don’t apply this to anybody else, my expectations of anybody else, but my expectations of myself –
2. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
3. Gailey: – are that, the same way that if I have a profile and a platform and I’m not using them to try and make the world a better place, why, why, why bother? And also, if I’m going to be out and telling people who I am and I’m not using those moments to try and make the world a better place, then why am I going to do that? And again, I want to reiterate: these are my expectations for me, not for anybody else. No queer person owes anybody anything.
4. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
5. Gailey: But I, I feel that’s important for myself. So that’s kind of my coming out process, and it also serves a really useful function of preventing people from being shitty to me about, about queerness? I have actually not experienced nearly as much homophobia and transphobia within the publishing community as I think I would if I didn’t constantly use my platform and my, my openness about my queerness to say, also, you shouldn’t discriminate against people, and here are all the ways that you shouldn’t do that.
6. Wendell: Right.
7. Gailey: I think that it, it serves to ward off some of that problem, because people know that I won’t, I won’t take it lying down. Which is not to say that people who don’t speak about these things deserve that harm. I just think that people who like to test boundaries? I’m pretty vocal about not being someone they should try that with, and so I think that they don’t necessarily see me as quite as vulnerable as other people –
8. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
9. Gailey: – who they could target. All that aside, in terms of promoting and publishing a book and navigating the world of, navigating that particular world as a nonbinary person, it’s pretty up and down. My publishers, my editors, my publicist, my agent, everyone in the production side of the book, everyone involved at every, every step of the way has been incredibly supportive, respectful. Everyone has made efforts to, to get it right, you know; when people feel like they’re getting it wrong, they, they own up to that and apologize to it, even if I’m not particularly, even if I hadn’t noticed, right. People make a lot of effort in the SFF publishing world to get it right, and I think that’s really beautiful. I’ve, I, a thing that happens a lot is I go by Sarah, and I also go by my last name, Gailey, with my friends, and sometimes I’ll be a lazybones at the end of an email and just sign with my last name, and I want to say about a dozen different people in publishing have contacted me very carefully and tentatively to say, I’m so sorry if I’ve been getting your name wrong when I call you Sarah. I’ll, if you prefer Gailey, I’m happy to call you that; just let me know what you prefer, because I don’t, I don’t want to be using the wrong name for you. And I have to just respond and say, no, it’s just that I’m a dirtbag. 

[Laughter]

1. Gailey: And other places, it’s, it’s tricky, right. There’s a large contingent of people in the publishing community and outside of it who feel like nonbinary people aren’t real; people who use they/them pronouns aren’t real. I’ve had, I had one reviewer say that it was unrealistic for me to have a nonbinary love interest in my book because no nonbinary person could ever experience romantic love or sexual attraction from another person?
2. Wendell: What?!
3. Gailey: I get, I get misgendered all the, all the darn time, which I’m not too mad about because my first name is Sarah, which is traditionally a feminine-coded name and, you know –

[Crosstalk]

1. Wendell: Oh yes! [Laughs]
2. Gailey: Like, yeah! Well, lots of people just see the name Sarah and make an assumption, and that’s, you know, I’m not mad at that. Getting misgendered at events is a little more difficult, and I anticipate that when The Echo Wife comes out I will need to deal with quite a bit more of that, because it is such a book about feminine identity? That book is very much about womanhood, which is a large part of my life experience, and I anticipate that as that book gets discussed, a lot of people will be asking me about womanhood and about what I think about being a woman and what it’s like to be a woman and how much am I a woman and, you know – I think I’ll just need to deal with it, but I try as hard as I can in as many cases as possible to assume that no one’s trying to hurt me.
3. Wendell: Yeah.
4. Gailey: For the most part; in most of my life; in, in most of the people who I give my time to, everyone’s trying their best, and they’re not always going to get it right, and that’s okay, as long as they’re not getting it wrong to hurt me, which –
5. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
6. Gailey: – they almost never are. That’s most of my experience with publishing. You know, if I’m doing a book event and the bookseller who’s announcing me uses she/her pronouns, I’m not going to get mad about it. I’m just going to go, well, they’re trying their best, and they made a mistake, and that’s okay.
7. Wendell: It’s a lot of work, it would seem, to not only set up the boundaries for yourself and communicate them in a way that makes it clear to those who like to push boundaries – well, I’m not going to screw with “them” – that’s a lot of labor. That’s a lot of work, and the, the, the element of having to constantly come out builds into those boundaries I would think, yeah?
8. Gailey: Oh, absolutely! Absolutely!
9. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
10. Gailey: Listen, peop-, being queer is really had work just on every level. It’s so much more effort. Actually, this last week has been very, particularly exhausting for me, and I’m also, you know, looking down the barrel of having a book come out next year that I’m really excited about and want to put a lot of effort into promoting –
11. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
12. Gailey: – and supporting in the world, and there’s this little piece of my brain that keeps going, what if you just went back in the closet, just for a little while? Just for a little bit, so you don’t have to explain stuff to people. Which obviously I’m not going to do, because first of all, I think, I, I don’t think it would, I don’t think anyone would buy it, and second of all because I owe my queer readers and fans more, more than that. But you’re right; it’s freaking hard! It’s, it’s hard –
13. Wendell: Yeah!
14. Gailey: It’s hard to have to say who I am all the time.
15. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
16. Gailey: It’s hard to have people assume that that’s not who I am. It’s hard, it’s hard to have people feel bad about themselves when they screw it up? I think that, for me, is the most difficult part – I was going to say the most difficult part, aside from fearing for my personal safety, but, you know, honestly, I think it’s harder than, it’s harder than that. Knowing that there’s some people in this world who would prefer I didn’t exist is something that I’m used to and –
17. Wendell: Yep.
18. Gailey: – much more comfortable with than the knowledge that there are really good people who are trying their best who, who beat up on themselves and think poorly of themselves when they don’t get it right. You know, if somebody, if somebody misgenders me while we’re talking or if they think they’ve used the wrong name or if they think they’ve said something wrong, peop-, the people who I give my time and attention to are often the kinds of people who will then give me a very heartfelt, sincere apology because they think they’ve wronged me, and I just want to say to all of them, like, no, no! Like, just don’t worry so much! It’s okay; you’re doing your best; you’re trying your hardest.
19. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
20. Gailey: And I think that’s, that’s the most difficult part for me of navigating the world as a queer person. It’s not the, the people who hate me and would hurt me for it, but the people who love me and would hurt themselves because they think maybe they’re loving me wrong.
21. Wendell: So it’s not the queer part; it’s the empathy part.
22. Gailey: Ugh! The, the empathy problem is such a big one in my life! [Laughs]
23. Wendell: Yes, I have that problem. I have that – yeah. It’s a lot.

Together: Yeah.

1. Wendell: And I have to say, I have been extremely attentive and worried about misgendering you, because I am also a Sarah, but I’m she/her Sarah, and if I see Sarah I think it’s me! ‘Cause that’s my name!

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: And I’ve been like, this has been, this whole week, like, getting ready for the interview and thinking about how – ‘cause I’ve been very nervous about doing this interview. I’m so excited to talk to you, my inner thirteen-year-old is completely losing her cool right now. But I’ve been so, so worried about doing that because we share the same first name and have very different pronouns, but I also recognize that because your, your platform and your ways of interacting with the world in public, especially on social media, are so grounded on empathy, I can take my self-recriminations down a notch. [Laughs]
2. Gailey: Oh, I’m glad! I’m really glad. That tells me that I’m, I’m being the person who I want to be in the world, which is really, that’s good news.
3. Wendell: Well, I mean, you are, you are having a hell of a social media week, and in the middle of all of the processing and receiving of really painful information that you’ve been doing, you took the time to be like, okay, let’s all talk about how to ground ourselves and be aware of the world and, and calm down and move your shoulders down away from your ears, which is something I tell myself to do like ten times a day? You, even in the middle of receiving so much pain, you were like, all right, let me, let me, are y’all, are y’all okay? Okay, let’s all be okay for a minute together. The base of your, of your whole communicative ethos is, is so much empathy. I, I get it; I have the same problem. Or asset, or both!

[Laughter]

1. Gailey: I have to say, when you said just now, move your shoulders down –
2. Wendell: [Laughs]
3. Gailey: – realized that mine were up around my eyebrows, and I was like, all right, get out of here, guys. [Laughs]
4. Wendell: Mooove the shoulders down. Now, when you, when you talk about your, your platform and you have this platform and you have it for a reason – again, I know all the words to that song – what are some of the ways in which you, you try to use that power for, wisely and kindly and thoughtfully, which is me throwing your words back to you from a post that you wrote for Fireside?
5. Gailey: Oh my goodness.
6. Wendell: Because participating in publishing at all, like you said, is, is, is a powerful thing, because you’re showing up and you’re establishing boundaries, and you are openly engaging with the ways in which you see the world differently and the world sees you differently, and you’re owning all of that. What are some of the ways in which you use those powers wisely and kindly and thoughtfully, in addition to telling me to take my shoulders down from my ears? [Laughs]
7. Gailey: Oh my God, you said it, and I just did it again!

[Laughter]

1. Gailey: You know, I – this has been, the, the thing, the thing that I’m about to say about this is not something I’ve always prefaced. I’ve not always done a good job of this. I had kind of a moment of reckoning with myself several years ago when I screwed up really bad on social media. I, I was a pretty new writer, and I had just gotten a big bump in my, my Twitter followers; I was at, like, I went from having five hundred Twitter followers to five thousand Twitter followers in like a day –
2. Wendell: Woof!
3. Gailey: – because of a viral thread, and maybe a month or two months after that I got some feedback from a, a sensitivity reader for my manuscript that said the manuscript is bad, and you are doing a bad job, and you’re doing bad things, and that sensitivity reader was a hundred percent right, which I can see with the clarity of hindsight, but it was my first time receiving that kind of feedback, and I, I didn’t take it well, and I complained about it in public, which is, like, the most graceless, awful thing to do and, and demeans the work of someone who’s put themself at risk in order to help you not show your ass in your book, right?
4. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
5. Gailey: I did a terrible job because I was used to my Twitter platform consisting of like 475 bots plus a few of my close friends, and it didn’t occur to me that this was in public. It didn’t occur to me that I had a profile that I could impact people, and thankfully, one of those close friends contacted me and was like, what are you doing? And sat me down and said, like, you have a profile now; people are watching you. What are you going to do with that? And I went, oh my God, what, what am I going to do with this? And first of all what I did was, you know, apologize, probably not enough –
6. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
7. Gailey: – and try to take account of the harm I’d done, and also learn to not think the way that I was thinking about that kind of feedback, which is so vital and, and crucial to doing good work in the world. But I also said to myself, okay, if, if there’s a lot of eyes on me – and as I learned in the years to follow, if there’s a possibility that at any point anything I say could go viral – you know, I’ve, I’ve had a lot of viral tweets at this point, and some of them are ones that I would not have picked to have hundreds, thousands of eyes on them – if that could happen at any time, again, who am I going to be? Who, what impact am I going to have? If I’m going to assume that anything I say could touch the brains and possibly the hearts of thousands and thousands of people, what’s the impact I want to actually have? And that’s how I try to go about managing this profile is with humility, but not a, a false understanding of the impact that’s possible. The, I think the Fireside essay that you mentioned is one that I wrote about this very question. It’s called “Impostor/Abuser,” and it’s about how having a sense that you’re unimportant can lead people to cause harm, because, you know, if, if I walk into a room at a publishing event and I’m telling myself, I’m nobody and nobody cares about me, then maybe I think that it’s okay to ask somebody on a date, because why wouldn’t they feel like they could say no? Or maybe I feel like it’s okay to make a, a certain kind of joke, because why would anybody think they had to laugh at my jokes? Or maybe I think it’s okay to say to someone, oh, let me buy you a drink and bring back alcohol without asking, because why wouldn’t they think that they can tell me they’re not comfortable drinking alcohol around me?
8. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
9. Gailey: But if I walk into that room with a sense that I’m, I’m somebody to somebody, no matter how little I might think of myself as, there’s somebody out there who thinks that I’m big. On social media, no matter how little I might think I am, there’s somebody out there who sees the blue check next to my name and thinks, oh, this person’s important; their opinion matters. Which, hilariously, Eddie Redmayne did a, a video once answering, or replying to tweets about the movie Jupiter Ascending, and they found some tweets that I had done about Jupiter Ascending, and when Eddie Redmayne was responding to that tweet in the video he said, oh, she’s got a blue check by her name; that means she’s dead important. I’ve not forgotten it.
10. Wendell: [Laughs] Look Eddie – have you added that to your bio? “Eddie Redmayne thinks I’m dead important.”
11. Gailey: Somebody added it to my Wikipedia for a hot minute, but what it said, the way they added it was, Sarah Gailey’s a dead important American author, and there wasn’t punctuation, so it was like I was –
12. Wendell: [Laughs]
13. Gailey: – a dead, important American author!

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: Well, that’s news!
2. Gailey: Yes. Much exaggerated. Anyway, the point of all this is –
3. Wendell: [Laughs]
4. Gailey: – in order to be – gosh, what was it, what were the words of mine that you remembered and I didn’t, response –
5. Wendell: Wisely, wisely, kindly, and thoughtfully?
6. Gailey: Wisely, kindly, and thoughtfully. In order to do that, I just, I treat everything like I’m saying it into a megaphone. I treat everything like it’s going to be on the front page of the paper. And I’m not, I’m not misrepresenting myself; all of this is coming from a place of very sincere effort, and, you know, I, I don’t say things that I don’t think and feel.
7. Wendell: Mm-hmm.
8. Gailey: Things that I don’t think and feel to be true. But I don’t, I don’t bring the private mess out as often as I probably would if I had, you know, a hundred followers on Twitter, right? I don’t, I don’t go on to Twitter and say, this person who everybody’s talking about, I freaking hate them, and I think they’re a jerk. Because the weight that that carries might not be warranted. So instead I’ll say, I’ve had my issues with this person; I still think they’re a human being who deserves care, because that’s true too, and it’s the true thing that should have weight behind it.
9. Wendell: So to change direction just a little bit – but I do, I do appreciate all of the, the wise and kind, thoughtful attention that we can bring to this, this very important question that I am about to ask –
10. Gailey: Oh boy.
11. Wendell: This is a two-hundred-percent Sarah episode. There’s a lot of Sarah involved here, and I need to know what you think the plurality of Sarah is. I have an idea, but I’d really love to hear if you have any ideas of what to call a plurality of Sarahs, ‘cause there’s a lot of us running around? Deeply, deeply important, earth-shattering question: what do we call a plurality of Sarahs?
12. Gailey: First of all, you’re right; there are so many of us!
13. Wendell: Ho my gosh!
14. Gailey: – too many. I think that we call a plurality of Sarahs a seraphim.
15. Wendell: Ooh, that’s a good one!
16. Gailey: ‘Cause we’re very threatening.
17. Wendell: We are! A self-actualized Sarah is a terrifying thing.
18. Gailey: Absolutely! We’re – well, and I’ve never met a Sarah, present company possibly excluded, but definitely including myself in this – who isn’t just, just a little bit unhinged.
19. Wendell: Oh yeah! No, I’m with you. Mm-hmm!
20. Gailey: Yeah. What –
21. Wendell: Oh yeah.
22. Gailey: – do you think? What do you think we call a plurality of Sarahs?
23. Wendell: Well, the name Sarah, Hebrew, in Hebrew it means princess, but princess is rather gendered, and I was thinking a royalty of Sarahs.
24. Gailey: Oooh! Oh, I like that!
25. Wendell: Yeah. Because then it encompasses the, the inestimable essence of Sarah being a term of royalty, but it doesn’t have any gender in it!
26. Gailey: Wow! Yeah, I really love that. Okay, I’m on board.
27. Wendell: A royalty or a, or a, a seraphic royalty of, of, of Sarahs.
28. Gailey: Perfect.
29. Wendell: Yeah. This is a real- – so I will let all of the Sarahs I know know about this.
30. Gailey: Yeah, tell the council.
31. Wendell: Yeah, all of us.

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: ‘Cause, you know, there’s a, there’s a bunch of us running around.
2. Gailey: This is also part of why I, I don’t discourage people from calling me Gailey. Actually, on the, the screen where I can see our recording, I signed in just with my last name because it’s also just easier for people to keep track if they can just call me Gailey.
3. Wendell: So I always ask this question: what books are you reading that you would like to tell people about?
4. Gailey: Oh my gosh. So lately I have been really just drowning myself in literary fiction? Usually I’m a science fiction/fantasy reader, but the last month or so of my life has been particularly grueling on a lot of levels, and I, I picked up a lit fic book and just realized how healing it was for my brain. I, I really just wanted to read about families and interpersonal interactions instead of, you know, turning on kind of the, the science fiction and fantasy part of my brain.

So I’ve been reading a ton of literary fiction lately. I read two really incredible books by Brit Bennett called The Vanishing Half and The Mothers? The Vanishing Half is an, a, a book about two twin girls who grew up in a town that was founded to be populated only by very light-skinned Black people, and they run away from home, and one lives her life as a white woman, and the other one marries a man who has very dark skin and has a daughter, and it’s about their lives, and it’s, it’s really beautiful; it’s just a beautifully, beautifully rendered, beautifully written book. And The Mothers is about a church community and a girl in that church community who gets pregnant and sort of the ripples that that casts throughout their, their lives.

I also recently read Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, which is absolutely stunning. It’s a, a book that opens when a Black babysitter takes a white toddler to a grocery store to keep her occupied for a few minutes and gets accused of kidnapping the daughter. And it’s very much about, it’s very much about race and about the way that different, different forms of racism manifest in the world, and it’s also about this babysitter’s relationship with this child, who is a, a huge weirdo, and I have such a, a soft spot for child weirdos, and just the way that this babysitter wants to nurture that weirdness in this girl before the world can crush it out of her.

And I will, I will give one last recommendation, which is Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson?

1. Wendell: Ooh!
2. Gailey: Which is also a book about kid weirdos, but a very different one. It’s about a woman who gets contacted by her high school best friend and asked to come and take care of her children for a little while, and it just so happens that the children spontaneously burst into flame whenever they’re upset.
3. Wendell: As you do.
4. Gailey: And it’s just, it’s really incredible, and again, you know, it’s, it’s about weird children and people who want to nurture them in their weirdness instead of trying to squish them into a, a more palatable shape. And it’s also about family and ambition and stunted growth in people, and, I mean, it just, all four of those books were ones that I sat down with as I was trying to manage these various crises that have been coming up in my life, and I said, I’m not getting out of this chair and I’m not getting out of this book until something makes me.
5. Wendell: Nice! That’s a very good self-, self-defense mechanism, too.
6. Gailey: Yeah, it really, it’s served me well. I, I was like, outside of this chair is the stress zone –
7. Wendell: Yep!
8. Gailey: – and I’m not going there right now. [Laughs]
9. Wendell: I am here in this book. Not leaving! Staying here.
10. Gailey: Yeah.

[Laughter]

1. Wendell: Awesome!

[music]

1. Wendell: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Sarah Gailey for hanging out with me, and thank you to Meaghan Ray again for the input and care and questions for this episode. I will have links to Sarah Gailey’s website and their Twitter and Instagram in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast!

Thank you again to our Patreon community for being entirely made of fabulous. I have been sharing news about upcoming interviews that I’m really excited about and asking for their help with questions and ideas and suggestions, so if you would like to have some input and support the show, patreon.com/SmartBitches. Thank you in advance for your consideration, and hello again to the lovely Patreon community!

As always, I end every episode with an absolutely horrendous joke. This one comes from Tara, who picked it up from Lucy Bexley’s Twitter feed. It’s terrible, and I love it so much.

Did you hear about the farmer whose fruit stand fell on him?

Yeah, fruit stand, farmer, farmer, fruit stand fell on him.

Yeah, he was berried.

[Laughs] He was berried! So silly. Thank you, Tara! Thank you, Lucy, and thank you to everyone who emails me bad jokes. It is easily the best part of my day when I get a bad joke in my email. If you want to send me one, you can send it to sbjpodcast@gmail.com or Sarah, S-A-R-A-H, at smartbitchestrashybooks dot com [Sarah@smartbitchestrashybooks.com]

We will be back next week with more silliness and bad jokes, but until then, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, stay safe, and make sure that you have excellent books to keep you company.

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

[energizing music]