451. More Earl Had to Die: Victoria Helen Stone’s The Last One Home

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. If royalties and copyright weren’t a pressing concern, which they always are, I would be playing Earl Had to Die [“Goodbye Earl”] in the background, but I’m not because that would infringe on somebody’s copyright, and that’s not cool! But we do have a discussion of more Earl Had to Die. Victoria Helen Stone has a new book out. The Last One Home is a dual timeline domestic thriller in the genre, as you know, that I call Earl Had to Die. In this conversation, we discuss her moving from writing romance as Victoria Dahl to writing domestic suspense and thrillers. We talk about growing up in poverty and the power of nostalgia, and then Victoria figures out a key reason why Earl Had to Die books about revenge are so very satisfying. Now, there are some spoilers for Jane Doe and Problem Child in our discussion, so be warned.

I will have links to where you can find all of the books that we discuss, including The Last One Home, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, or look for a link inside the podcatcher app that you are using to listen to this episode, if indeed you are using one.

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We have so many books to talk about. I will end the episode with a bad joke and probably some links to music videos in the show notes because we’ve got to talk about the origin of Earl Had to Die, and that involves, you know, talking about music. But let’s get started with this podcast. On with my conversation with Victoria Helen Stone.

[music]

Victoria Helen Stone: My name is Victoria Helen Stone for now. I used to be known as Victoria Dahl. I write domestic suspense or psychological suspense, whatever you want to call it. As Victoria Dahl, I used to write romances a long, long time. That’s who I am!

Sarah: Yay!

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Recently, we did a thread and some folks were recommending some of your early contemporaries as, holy shit, these are so funny. And I was like, yes, they are! Do you still get email about your, about your romances?

Victoria: I do! I kind of feel guilty when I get them because –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: – a lot of times people are asking about when there’s going to be a new book.

Sarah: I’m sorry; I’m killing people now.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Or torturing them. [Laughs]

Victoria: And the worst part is I had a hist-, my last historical series was supposed to be a three-book series, and then my contract didn’t get renewed so it was done after two books?

Sarah: Ah.

Victoria: And so people write asking about the third book, when is it coming out? And I’m like, I don’t even remember what it was going to be about, frankly. [Laughs]

Sarah: I don’t even remember who those people were; can you tell me?

[Laughter]

Sarah: So you have a new suspense, new book.

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: Please tell me all about it. Just start at chapter one, just start reading; it’s fine. Tell me all about it. ‘Cause you write some creepy, creepy shit!

Victoria: Thank you very much! It’s called The Last One Home, and this one is a bit different from, because it’s two alternating points of view –

Sarah: Ooh!

Victoria: – which I haven’t done in suspense before. So the first point of view is Donna, and her point of view takes place in 1985, and the second point of view is her daughter Lauren, which takes place in present day. They’re both thirty-five years old at this point in their lives. But, so Donna is sort of a badass ex-punk – she’s thirty-five now, so not so much, not so much on the punk scene – who lives in LA. She’s a free-spirited artist, never wants to settle down, and her boyfriend is a guy who lives in Sacramento who’s going through a long-drawn-out divorce, and Donna finds out that she’s pregnant. And it really hits her – she’s been pregnant before; she’s had an abortion before. She never wanted kids, but it really hits her, probably ‘cause she’s thirty-five and she’s thinking, like, this is it if I ever want to do this. So she decides to give it a shot. She tells her boyfriend. He seems excited about it, but she sort of packs up everything and moves to Sacramento to surprise him.

Sarah: Uh-oh.

Victoria: Like, if you really want to make this work, then let’s do this.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: That’s the beginning of Donna’s point of view. Lauren’s point of view is that she’s a thirty-five-year-old woman who is estranged from her mom, has a very tough relationship with her mom, because her mom testified in court against her father and sent him to prison for murder before Lauren was even born.

Sarah: Oh dear!

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: That does put a, put a, put a bit of a problem in the relationship, yeah?

Victoria: Worse yet, when she was ten years old, a, a killer came forward and said he was the one that committed that murder, and her dad was released from prison –

Sarah: Oh!

Victoria: – and exonerated. So –

Sarah: Yikes!

Victoria: – you get Donna’s point of view of moving to Sacramento and starting this new relationship with a boyfriend, and Lauren’s point of view, which is living with this chaos that came from their relationship. So yeah! That’s basically it, and Lauren moves home and starts to look into what really happened.

Sarah: That’s never a good idea.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Unless you’re in a book, and then it’s a terrific idea, but not for you.

Victoria: That’s right. I will say that she doesn’t really want to. I mean, she doesn’t want to delve into it, but little things pop up. It’s kind of an exploration of that whole, I swear I used to be cool before I had kids? Like – [laughs] – Donna, like, was this kickass artist living independently in LA –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – but of course her daughter has only known her as a woman struggling to take care of her child on her own, living in poverty.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: So yeah, it was sort of this cry of, like, I swear I used to be cool. You have no idea. [Laughs]

Sarah: You have no idea what my life was like before you, when I was a whole person.

Victoria: Yeah, exactly! ‘Cause I was a whole person! My kids are grown now, but I live in Utah, and they’ve been raised in, I’ve been a stay-at-home mom writing books –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – in the suburbs, and that’s what they know about me. And I grew up very poor in cities. You know, my mom, my dad left before I was born, and it was, it was a lot of struggle, but they have no idea, and it doesn’t matter what I tell them.

Sarah: No. That was not their experience of you.

Victoria: No, exactly. So yeah, this was kind of a fun way to write a kickass heroine in 1985. [Laughs]

Sarah: And it’s funny because I remember 1985.

Victoria: Yeah! Yeah.

Sarah: I have very clear memories of 1985, but that was a long-ass time ago!

Victoria: It was. It’s – 

Sarah: That’s where I’m like, oh, oh my gosh! Wow, I’m old! Whoa!

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: What the hell happened?

Victoria: I know! Sometimes we talk about something that happened in 2005 or something, and I’m like, that was just a few years ago!

Sarah: That was like last week, right?

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Time is super screwed up now! I mean, forget it.

Victoria: This was a funny thing when I – I, I wrote the whole book, and then I got some notes back from a copyeditor, and I had the heroine going to Blockbuster? And Blockbuster wasn’t around in 1985.

Sarah: Oh my gosh! [Laughs]

Victoria: Back, back then, you would go to, like, 7-Eleven or the gas station or some little mom-and-pop –

Sarah: Video store.

Victoria: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: And sometimes you would rent a VHS player ‘cause you didn’t –

Together: – have one!

Sarah: Oh God!

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: And, and the, and the cool place, like, the coolest place was the, the people who worked at the video store.

Victoria: Yes!

Sarah: Like, those were the coolest kids. Like, if you were the teenager –

Victoria: Right? Totally!

Sarah: – who had the video store job, oh, you had so much power. And so much porn!

Victoria: Yes! Totally into movies – yeah, porn, if you, if you had one of those stores that had the back, the little back room –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – behind the curtain?

Sarah: Yeah, the beaded curtain, right, yep.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: That was, that was, like, serious coolness!

Victoria: Yeah. And I was just – so I had to fix that part, but I was remembering the, the, the tension of going on a Friday to try to find a movie you wanted to see –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – ‘cause all the movies would be gone by –

Sarah: Yep. Absolutely.

Victoria: – Friday night?

Sarah: Totally gone.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: And Blockbuster was awful, because it was like nine dollars, but you only had the movie for like twenty-four hours, and you had to bring it back –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – or you’d pay a late fee, whereas the –

Victoria: The late fees, ugh!

Sarah: Were brutal! But then the little, like, mom-and-pop video stores, like, you had the video for like four or five days, and if you went on a Friday –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – forget it; there was nothing left.

Victoria: Nothing at all. Nothing. [Laughs]

Sarah: But, like, having the little box and putting the, the tape in was like a big deal, right? Oh my gosh!

Victoria: I just so remember picking up the boxes at Blockbuster. They were all lined up, and you would turn them around and read the description and –

Sarah: Like book shopping!

Victoria: Exactly! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my gosh! So what were some of the other things you visited with, with 1985?

Victoria: You know, just really tapping into my youth. I, I graduated from high school in 1990. Are we the same age?

Sarah: No, I’m a little younger than you. I graduated in ’93, so I’m forty-five.

Victoria: Okay, okay. So yeah, it was just, you know, I was fifteen –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: No, wait. No, that’s not right. I was about thirteen. But yeah, so it was just, like, some of the fashions. I have her go into pick out some clothes ‘cause she needs some looser clothes. She’s starting to gain weight –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – and she’s picking out, you know, ripped sweatshirts and putting them back, deciding maybe she can’t pull that off anymore. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! Oh my gosh. And pegging your jeans?

Victoria: Yes, exactly.

Sarah: Many kinds of acid wash – although at least then, you know, if you needed to hide a, a thicker abdomen, all the jeans were pleated, right?

Victoria: Yeah, exactly!

Sarah: Pleated, with that braided leather belt that you tucked in straight up and down on the side? Like, that’ll hide a lot.

Victoria: [Laughs] Yeah. It was, I mean –

Sarah: I’m really scared that I remember all that. [Laughs]

Victoria: Do you remember, did you ever do the whole, like, lying down on the bed to zip up your jeans when you were –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Absolutely. Yep.

Victoria: I can’t even imagine. They didn’t have any stretch back then –

Sarah: Nooo!

Victoria: – either, kids. They didn’t –

Sarah: No, and if they came out of the laundry –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – the, the, the fabric does not move.

Victoria: No, no.

Sarah: Jeans fabric was brutal right out of the laundry.

Victoria: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah. So that was, that was fun. I also, I went to Sacramento to do research and –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – it’s a beautiful city! I love it. I don’t think it gets a lot of love from Californians. It was just gorgeous. I have to say, when I wrote Jane Doe, I had her, I wrote her from rural Oklahoma, very far from anything, and then when, when I wrote Problem Child, the sequel, she goes back to her home, and I was like, I have picked the wrong location.

[Laughter]

Victoria: Because, you know, it’s a beautiful place, but I was staying in this place that’s basically an oil, like, fracking, natural gas area. It was, I checked into my motel; I was literally the only woman I saw the whole time I was there. It was –

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: – it was scary.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: My little rental car was in the parking, and it was just surrounded by giant trucks.

Sarah: Gigantic trucks, yep!

Victoria: And it felt very vulnerable because people would look at me when I walked through the lobby and stuff.

Sarah: Yeah, like, what are you doing here?

Victoria: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Where’s the, where’s the dude who’s with you?

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: And why is there no dude with you?

Victoria: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: But I mean, this is all part and parcel of your genre, because you do write a lot of shitty dudes.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah!

Sarah: How many shitty dudes are in this book? Is it a spoiler to ask how many shitty dudes we’re dealing with here?

Victoria: There’s just one shitty dude, and the fun thing about it was, it’s Donna boyfriend in her point of view, and it’s Lauren’s father in her point of view.

Sarah: Oh dear.

Victoria: He’s a, he’s a narcissist –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – and Lauren and Donna have both grown up in dysfunctional ways, but they have opposite reactions to it? Donna is a, she is avoid, no, avoidant attachment –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – which means she’s kind of a fighter?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: She wants to challenge you, challenge your feelings for her, so there’s a lot of drama and fighting going on and pushing away? Lauren, on the other hand, has anxious attachment, which means she’s a pleaser; she wants to create peace –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – she wants to appease. So they’re both interacting with this one narcissistic man, and they don’t really know how to relate to each other.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: But so, yeah, there’s one guy, and he’s at the center of, of the story in both point of views.

Sarah: Wow. And narcissists, they want you to feed their need for attention, and so they would –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – they would pit those two people against each other.

Victoria: Exactly! [Laughs]

Sarah: Because then they’re, if, if they’re paying attention to each other, they’re not paying attention to him! That’s not –

Victoria: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: – a tolerable situation.

Victoria: And I really had a lot of fun with it because Lauren, so her dad comes back in her life when she’s ten years old –

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: – and she’s been living this life of struggle with her mom trying to support her, working nights –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – shitty little apartments. And I met my dad when I was twelve, I think?

Sarah: Oh wow.

Victoria: And he wanted to meet me at the mall because he was coming through town. So I was very excited, thinking, oh, we’re going to go shopping! Like, you know –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – he’s going to – but he just took me to lunch and told me he was proud of me, and even as a twelve-year-old I was thinking, like –

Sarah: Of what exactly?

Victoria: – you get to be proud of me? Like – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: But there’s that fantasy that, you know, he’s going to sweep into your life with money and –

Sarah: And make it better, yeah!

Victoria: Right!

Sarah: ‘Cause that’s the age when you become really aware of your circumstances, and you’re like, oh, wait a minute.

Victoria: Exactly. All the friends who have nicer clothes, and their dads are around, and they have new cars and –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: So, but when Lauren’s dad comes into her life, that’s who he is. He gets a great apartment, he has a nice job, and he showers her with gifts. He’s, you know – so that fantasy comes true for her.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: But it, he’s a narcissist, so –

Sarah: There’s a price for all of that.

Victoria: Exactly, exactly, and everything’s great between them as long as he’s the center of her universe.

Sarah: Right, and, and on, on a subliminal level, especially if, if a person is, is a pleaser, they’re going to very quickly figure out what they can and can’t get away with in terms of pushback.

Victoria: Yes, exactly.

Sarah: And what they’re willing to do.

Victoria: Yeah. And for him, the narcissist at the center of this, you know, he gets that from Lauren, his daughter, that hero worship –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – but from Donna, as his girlfriend at the time, he got the attention of there being a fraught sort of relationship, her always confronting him. It’s still attention –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – you know.

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: So –

Sarah: Doesn’t matter what kind of attention, as long as there’s attention.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah. So that was really fun to research and look into how those two dynamics would play out.

Sarah: Oof, narcissists.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Terrible characters – in real life.

Victoria: They’re great, great for books, though.

Sarah: Great for books!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now, I have been talking for a while about my sort of naming of the genre of domestic suspense featuring shitty-ass men who get what’s coming to them as Earl Had to Die. I thought about calling it “Two Black Cadillacs,” which is a Carrie Underwood song about two women who kill this man who was married to one of them, and the, and the –

Victoria: I don’t know that one!

Sarah: Oh, okay, so Carrie, it’s a Carrie Underwood song, and it is about two women, one of whom – and they’re meeting at the grave, at the funeral of this guy. One of them was married to him, and the other, she was his mistress –

Victoria: Oooh!

Sarah: – and you learn that they conspired to kill him because –

Victoria: [Gasps]

Sarah: – he had been lying to both of them.

Victoria: Mm.

Sarah: And so they, they got together, and the two black Cadillacs are each of their respective cars in the funeral procession.

Victoria: That’s amazing!

Sarah: It’s fucking delicious. It’s part of my workout playlist.

Victoria: I love, I love story songs too. [Laughs]

Sarah: Exactly, it’s totally a story song. But then, you know, there’s also Earl Had to Die, which is –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: – two women deciding, all right, we’ve got to get rid of this shitty-ass man. So Jane Doe, for me, was one of the earliest examples of an Earl Had to Die book. And even though – SPOILER – there’s not actually death, there is complete decimation of his, you know, reputation, and it’s very satisfying.

Victoria: [Laughs] And she, and there could be death. It’s her choice, really.

Sarah: I mean, yeah! I mean, and, and, and the thing I love about Jane is that it’s like, yeah, I could kill him, but it would be such a bother. Such a pain in the ass, really, and I just don’t want to deal with that. That’s annoying, so I’ll just destroy his life instead! It’s, and there’s no morality about it; it’s how much of a pain in the ass is this going to be?

Victoria: Exactly. How’s it going to affect me?

Sarah: Right? And I actually have a friend who’s going through a really, really awful divorce. I think you go through phases in your life where everyone around you has children, and everyone around you is getting married, and everyone around you is starting to go through divorces, and then there’s the friends who have the incredibly shitty divorces.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: And Earl Had to Die is a very satisfying genre to recommend to women who are dealing with their own Earls?

Victoria: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Very satisfying.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: So this is a super, super soft question; like, this is a real easy one, but I’m dying to hear what you think: there are so many Earl Had to Die books now; there’s Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane; there’s – do you know about They Never Learn?

Victoria: I have heard that title.

Sarah: That one is a professor who is slowly eradicating shitty men on her college campus where she works.

Victoria: Yes –

Sarah: Mwah!

Victoria: – I think I heard you talk about – did you talk about it with Rose Lerner?

Sarah: I talked about it with Rose Lerner, yes.

Victoria: Yeah, mm-hmm.

Sarah: There’s, obviously most of your backlist is –

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: – shitty men getting what is coming to them. What do you think are the factors that contribute to this being a popular new form of domestic suspense right now? And my feeling is that it’s all tied up in consequences, but I would love to hear your, your perspective.

Victoria: Yeah, I think, I have been thinking for a while now that there’s something about, as, as many, you know, terrible things that come with social media, I think there’s been a great connection –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – for women and other groups, of any group that’s just been sort of isolated from each other –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – of getting together and going, oh wow! I didn’t realize this was a universal theme. Like – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah. And then there’s a, a language developed for it.

Victoria: Exactly!

Together: Yeah.

Victoria: And I started Jane Doe in 2017. It was before the Me, this iteration of the #MeToo movement started –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – ‘cause I remember I had just finished the book when #MeToo started in earnest –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – and I said to my best friend, Jennifer Echols, what if by the time Jane Doe comes out women aren’t this angry? And she was like –

Sarah: No!

Victoria: – that’s not going to happen! [Laughs]

Sarah: That is not going to happen!

[Laughter]

Sarah: We are just –

Victoria: Like, for a brief moment I thought maybe we’re, we’re –

Sarah: We’re going to –

Victoria: – changing things and getting – [laughs] –

Sarah: We’re going to experience the rage catharsis, and we’re going to make things better! Nope, I’m sorry; the result was more rage –

Victoria: [Still laughing]

Sarah: – less catharsis. Sorry.

Victoria: But I do think it’s, it, it has to do with being online. I think –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – a lot of it happened for me dealing with trolls. Like, no, you’re not going to gaslight me; you’re not going to talk to me this way.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: I’m not putting up with this bullshit. Because you see it happening to every woman around you.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely!

Victoria: And then I remembered the whole thing about when birth control was covered by Obamacare? Oh my God, I’ve just rarely been so angry in my life, the reaction to that. Like, it’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – it’s our responsibility.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: Like, how do you think babies are made? [Laughs]

Sarah: From across the room by accident? No!

Victoria: Oh, and then the whole, now that I’ve had daughters I understand.

Sarah: Oh my God, that makes me rage!

Victoria: Like, just literally saying, I don’t think you’re a person.

Sarah: Until I define your personhood as relative to me. Speaking of narcissism!

Victoria: [Laughs] Exactly!

Sarah: Jesus!

Victoria: So I think there’s been a lot of, I don’t know, but what do you think about where it comes from?

Sarah: I think you are totally right that it is the connection of people who can say, oh my God, I’m not the only one, and the experiences when you, especially with things like #MeToo and things like institutional racism or anti-Semitism or –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – or anti-Asian sentiment. It, it fits this very repeated pattern. Like, it’s, it’s almost like it’s being mimeographed or copied. Like, it’s –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – it’s the same pattern; it’s the same thing; it’s the same attack and the same assault over and over and over again in different situations –

Victoria: Yeah!

Sarah: – and it’s so hard to stop it, even though you think, gosh, it’s, it’s such similarity; we should be able to, like, decode and undo this. No! It just keeps happening.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: And I think that also part of it is the idea that the really, really shitty men, we know who they are, we know what they’ve done, and really, nothing happens to them.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, motherfucker didn’t even get successfully impeached twice. Like –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – and so you see these real- – that was one of the things that I, that I struggled with, with the early parts of the Trump administration was, there really is no consequence if you are –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – white enough and straight enough and cisgendered enough and, and have enough superficial money –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – to get away with things. And so seeing individual people like, okay, nothing’s going to happen. Earl walks through the restraining order again. Okay. I will handle this –

Victoria: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Sarah: – and I will handle it better, and I will handle it in such a way that you will never catch me. I will get away with it. [Big, relieved sigh]

Victoria: Yeah. And I think we’re just told over and over again that it’s not fair for there to be consequences?

Sarah: Yes! This poor, this poor man! What about his –

Victoria: Oh God.

Sarah: – what about his, you know, his, his swimming career?

Victoria: Yeah. E- –

Sarah: Fffuck that!

Victoria: Even the hint of a question of a, a coincidence is –

Sarah: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – is too much. It’s too much. Just, let’s all calm down. And obviously, like you said, that’s true across all, you know, racism and, and sexism and, and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – homophobia and all of it.

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: It’s always the same reaction!

Sarah: We can’t –

Victoria: Calm down –

Sarah: No, nonono, we can’t, we can’t, we can’t invoke consequences; it will ruin that person’s life! Well, person already ruined somebody else’s!

Victoria: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: My, my feeling is that – and this is a very rough sort of social theory – that there, if you imagine a staircase, straight, white, cisgendered guys are at the top –

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and different groups fill in below. You can always yell down the staircase, you can throw things down the staircase, you can push people down the staircase, but you’re not allowed to yell up, you’re not allowed to develop consequences, and if you climb up, you’d better start pushing the people below you even harder, or you’ll get pushed back down.

Victoria: Yeah. I’ve been so enraged by this backlash against “cancel culture,” which –

Sarah: Oh my God, yes! It’s –

Victoria: – I love people online saying it’s consequence culture is what it is.

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: But –

Sarah: Ain’t nothing being canceled!

Victoria: – this idea that –

Sarah: These fuckers get book deals. Nothing’s canceled!

Victoria: Right! And, like, oh, you could lose your job just because your boss did, doesn’t like what you say? Yes!

Sarah: Yes!

Victoria: Welcome to how everybody else lives –

Sarah: Yes!

Victoria: – in this right-to-work, you know –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – society.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Victoria: Is it just occurring to you that you could lose your job too? How, how dare you even be surprised by that? [Laughs]

Sarah: One of the things that’s so satisfying, I think, about revenge and the catharsis of vengeance against the shitty people is that often they are, they are cre-, they, they are made victims by the same things that they do to other people.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: And, like, for example, with Jane – I feel like it’s safe for me to talk about Jane Doe ‘cause it’s been out long enough it’s sort of like, okay, it’s, it’s, it’s a movie that’s been on the airplane; we can talk about what happens in the end.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s been out long enough. But if you haven’t read it, you should still read it. The thing with Jane is that she very carefully identifies all of his weaknesses, because he uses those as predatory tactics against –

Victoria: Yes!

Sarah: – women, and then she uses them against him, and she’s like, this guy just doesn’t even see it coming! Because women –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – are so far beneath him, he would never –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – see this coming, and then at the, it’s true that, it turns out he’s inherited that ability.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: He’s inherited that perspective.

Victoria: From his beloved father –

Sarah Yes!

Victoria: – yeah. That was – obviously, the pace of what happens is accelerated in Jane Doe –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – but she goes through those steps with him, of him identifying –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – her weaknesses –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – from the moment he sees her –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – eating a low-calorie, cheap, microwave dinner –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – in the lunchroom.

Sarah: She makes herself the perfect prey.

Victoria: Right. He looks at her; he says, she doesn’t have any money; she’s wanting to lose weight; she’s eating Lean Cuisine or whatever it is –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – and, and he begins to use that against her; and that’s exactly what Jane does with him.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure! And it’s very satisfying to see someone experience consequences in ways that are, like, it’s possible! It’s available! You don’t have to be –

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – superpowered or super rich or super connected; you just have to own your own power and not be afraid to use it.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah. There’s, at one point – I think it’s in Jane Doe; it might be in Problem Child – where she thinks, I don’t know why everybody doesn’t record conversations –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Victoria: – like, in the office –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – because, you know, she’s thinking, you might, you might need this –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – as proof.

Sarah: Yeah! Oh yeah.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: So –

Victoria: Granted, in some states that’s not legal, FYI –

Sarah: Yeah, I know. I –

Victoria: – but in some states it is legal!

Sarah: I live in a dual consent state, so it’s not legal. So when you’re writing a story that’s going to have revenge and rebalancing of power and reframing, what do you think are the, the essentials? Because you’re, in terms of plot and character, you’re making a character who has the audience or the reader identifying with them sympathetically, but they also have to follow along with that character doing some shitty things –

Victoria: Right, right.

Sarah: – and you have to engage their, their sympathy. And it’s interesting for me, looking at domestic suspense, and especially some of your books, which are very deep point of view from, from female characters. Romance readers have often very much struggled with, with identifying with heroines who are very different from them, and there’s all kinds of leeway given to the heroes, but the heroines, for a very long time, had to be a very specific way: not too much of this, not too much of that.

Victoria: Yes, absolutely.

Sarah: [Laughs] Lisa Kleypas once did an interview, and she talked about how they had to be like, like, like Goldilocks: not too hot, not too strong –

Victoria: [Laughs] It’s true!

Sarah: – not too weak, not too hard, not too soft. They had to be this very perfect, very limited thing, and with domestic suspense –

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – it’s like, all right, I am too loud, I’m eating too much pasta, and I’m going to commit too much revenge.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s a completely different way of interacting with the, with the reader. What do you think are some of the things that make that identification possible in domestic suspense, or Earl Had to Die books, as I think of them?

Victoria: Well, I think maybe it’s a little bit less of a personal – I think in, in romance, you have to have flaws, and you have to have bad things happening, but every single thing that happens has to be redeemable or can be resolved into a happy ending.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeahyeahyeah.

Victoria: So there’s only so far you can take it, especially for heroines –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – and as you said, that’s, there’s a lot more that is forgivable for heroes traditionally.

Sarah: Oh, heroes can get away with all kinds of stuff that heroines are not usually allowed to do. I think it’s changing, but for a while –

Victoria: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: – heroines didn’t have a lot of leeway!

Victoria: You have to be able to imagine that these people are going to be, live happily ever after –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – and that you want them to –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – work out.

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: And in domestic suspense, there doesn’t, it doesn’t need to be a happy ending?

Sarah: No.

Victoria: You don’t have to envision them in a healthy relationship at the end. Sometimes there is, but probably not.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: So there’s a little bit more give, especially, I mean, I still get the whole she’s not sympathetic thing. The funny thing is, Jane has been the most, the best received of all my heroines!

Sarah: And she is the least interested in being sympathetic.

Victoria: She’s – if you don’t know, she’s a sociopath. Like, straight-up sociopath.

Sarah: Owns it, too. Like, let me tell you –

Victoria: And owns it!

Sarah: – what sociopaths are! Because I am one.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Welcome to my head!

Victoria: Just purely uses people. She has a, a – well, I won’t, I won’t spoil it, but she has a lovely love interest in Jane Doe. And while I was writing it I had so much fun, and I just kept thinking, is anybody else going to like this? Like – [laughs] –

Sarah: You said that when we did an interview before it came out. You were like, I didn’t think anyone was going to like her!

Victoria: But I think because she’s so upfront about it, and here’s – I didn’t like the show Girls. Did you –

Sarah: Nope!

Victoria: – did you ever watch that?

Sarah: No. Did not like. Do not like. No.

Victoria: I loved the show Nurse Jackie.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: Have you ever seen it?

Sarah: I have, yeah.

Victoria: And I think the key for me was Nurse Jackie thinks she’s a horrible person –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – and she’s actually a better person than she thinks she is.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: Which I think is true for Jane Doe also.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: Girls, on the other hand, they didn’t think they were horrible people, but they were –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: – horrible people

Sarah: It’s like Seinfeld. Seinfeld, too.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: They were, they were all horrible people who thought they were better than everyone.

Victoria: So I think that maybe that had, had, I had that –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – going for me in Jane Doe, that she is nicer than she actually even wants to be?

Sarah: Yes. But the, also, one of the things with Jane is that her narration is an act of kindness, because she does a lot of work reframing things. Like –

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: – dick is plentiful. I can east pasta bread and have five glasses of wine and still get laid anytime I want. Eat your pasta, ladies.

Victoria: I do not need to lose twenty pounds –

Sarah: No!

Victoria: – to get some strange dick.

Sarah: No!

Victoria: Like, that’s not – [laughs]

Sarah: Like, go eat your pasta and enjoy your dick! Or whatever you prefer to enjoy; it’s fine!

Victoria: Exactly, exactly!

Sarah: But still, you just eat the pasta. It’s fine.

Victoria: [Laughs] But I do think, I framed it that way, and this is maybe an easy out, but I think if you’re going to write a revenge story –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – it’s much easier to pull it off if it’s actually an avenge story? She’s avenging her best friend.

Sarah: Yes, she’s not –

Victoria: Her only friend.

Sarah: She’s not doing this because he hurt her directly.

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: She, he hurt someone she cared about, and that hurt her.

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: And I think, I, I haven’t seen it, but Promising Young Woman –

Sarah: Yes!

Victoria: – I think that’s what it’s called?

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: I think that’s the basis for that too –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – it’s about her friend. So I think you can do, I think you can take it farther –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – if it’s on behalf of somebody else who was seriously damaged or injured.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: I do think you can just do a straight-up revenge story too, but I do, I think it has to be, it certainly can’t just be he cheated on me, or she cheated on me.

Sarah: No. It has to be next-level dastardy.

Victoria: It, it does, it does.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: Because cheating is just something that happens and you have to learn to deal with it.

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: But if he cheated on you and you found out that he was, you know, had stolen somebody’s identity and wasn’t even a real person and caused you to lose your job and your business license and, you know –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – and, you know, your dad had a heart attack and died in the middle of all of it, then, you know, that, now you’re getting towards something that you can probably get away with writing.

Sarah: Right, like, that’s a character who tossed a match out of the car and burned down five acres. It’s okay –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: – to go after that person for toss- –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: – for tossing the match out of the car that ruined your whole life.

Victoria: Exactly, exactly.

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: So I don’t know; what, how, what do you think makes that story work? The –

Sarah: I think one of –

Victoria: – Earl Needs to Die?

Sarah: Earl, Earl, Earl Had to Die.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: I think that in terms of character, you’re right. The idea of vengeance and not just revenge is important –

Victoria: Mm.

Sarah: – and that you’re avenging something that happened to someone else? One of the reasons why – and I don’t usually read creepy or violent things – one of the reasons why They Never Learn worked for me was that in a lot of ways, the person who was enacting revenge was enacting revenge for things that these people had done to others and that –

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – she found out, and she had the power and the level of sociopathy to go and take care of it without any guilt.

Victoria: I think the key to a revenge story is that it’s competence porn.

Sarah: [Gasps] Yes! It’s totally competence porn! You’re –

Victoria: It’s watching somebody just –

Sarah: – totally right!

Victoria: – play out this fantasy –

Sarah: You’re entirely right.

Victoria: It works.

Sarah: Ding, check! Hundred percent! Thank you very much! Thank you; drive through. That, that, that’s been a great podcast, ‘preciate it. Yep, competence porn.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Revenge competence porn. You are entirely –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – right. It is watching –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – someone competently create vengeance!

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: Totally right!

Victoria: And, and it’s in situations that we see happening. We see it –

Sarah: Yes!

Victoria: – every day.

Sarah: And we, and we see it happening over and over and over with no consequences –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – over and over and over. Everyone should just move on.

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: It wasn’t that bad. We should all just move on and heal; let the healing begin. I’ll get –

Victoria: Oh God. [Laughs]

Sarah: – you some healing. It involves a big knife.

The other thing about writing thrillers and domestic suspense is that there’s often a twist. There’s something that you don’t see coming that happens. That’s the part that blows my mind as a romance reader, ‘cause there’s not, there’s, there can be twists in romance, but it’s not something that’s expected.

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So when you’re writing a thriller, you’re writing for an audience that is expecting there to be a twist, and you have to surprise them with what they’re expecting!

Victoria: Yeah, and it can’t be the twist they’re expecting –

Sarah: No, it has to be something completely different.

Victoria: – but there has to be hints along the way.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: So in my opinion, there’s always going to be people going, I figured it out, like –

Sarah: Yeah, of course!

Victoria: – you know. I don’t try to figure it out when I’m reading. I don’t want to figure it out, I just want to enjoy the story, but I think some people were really like, you know, nailed this one; I got it. [Laughs]

Sarah: But murder mystery readers especially, ‘cause they want to be like, I figured out who did it; I bet I’m right.

Victoria: Yes, yeah, exactly.

Sarah: But I get a high, like, when I’m, when I’m right, like, oh! Good job, brain! You figured it out! Well done!

Victoria: [Laughs] But for me, I just start with characterization. That was the way I wrote romances too. I start with a character –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – maybe two characters, and then start to get into that whole, like, what’s the worst thing that could happen to them?

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: What’s the worst thing you could spring on them? And that’s, that’s where it starts for me. And then, from there, characterization is where the, the twists and the surprises come from.

Sarah: So do you think of them as you’re writing, or do you sort of have the, okay, so what if this happens? and you work your way backwards to making that happen?

Victoria: I normally start from a place of knowing exactly what happened, yeah, and then figuring out how that would be covered up or misinterpreted –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – and then work backwards from there, yeah.

Sarah: Because one of the things that works in your favor with domestic suspense and thrillers is that, with that deep point of view, you have – one of the things I love about Jane Doe, for example, is she is the most reliable narrator. She’s really not interested in lying about anything. Lying takes effort; she’s just going to tell you what’s up.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Mwah. But with, with the deep point of view and unreliable narrator, you have to question, is this person’s version of reality the actual reality, or is this a perception –

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: – of reality? Which makes a, a twist sort of easier to build.

Victoria: Right, right. Well, and in The Last One Home, my, my book that’s just coming out, that was the great fun of writing it for me is, there is this big thing that happened, and the two points of view have completely different ideas about what lead to it, what happened, how it played out –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – what the motivation was, all of it. So that was the big twisty part in this book.

Sarah: Reconciling these two versions of reality –

Victoria: Yeah!

Sarah: – yeah.

Victoria: Because it’s the truth for both of them.

Sarah: Right, absolutely! They both think they are presenting accurate reality.

Victoria: Right, right, but of course you can’t, you know, one person can only see one side of it. There, it’s a whole three-D, you know, incident that happened.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: So that was, that was a lot of fun –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Victoria: – figuring out what their actual truths were for both of them.

Sarah: So for you as a romance writer and now a, a thriller/suspense writer, it’s still very much for you an experience based in character. That the –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – that the, the commonality between all of those genres is that the character is the developed part first.

Victoria: Yeah. And that’s what I love reading, too. As a matter of fact, I, I love reading horror. I keep expanding what I’m working on, and I can’t read what I’m working on –

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yep!

Victoria: – so I keep, you know, reaching out for different things, but horror is the thing I lean on the most, because I, I can’t, I can’t write horror. So I read that for pleasure, and I’ve, I’ve been really in search of deep point of view horror. A lot of horror is, like, gore, slash, and, you know, burn kind of stuff, and I just want to, I want to be in that character, because that’s what makes it scary!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: To be deep into this person and care about them.

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: Care about what happens to them. There are some big name, newer horror authors that I just, I don’t care, like, if this person is killed, so I’m not scared.

Sarah: No.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: No, and, and with the deep point of view of a character where you, you know their motivations, even if you don’t necessarily trust their perspective, you come to care about what’s happening because their, you’re in their head.

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: First person lowers that boundary and makes it easier, I think, to empathize with the character who’s telling you their story so that it becomes almost your story in the brain.

Victoria: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. There’s a lot of people who hate first person, and maybe that’s why! Maybe it’s –

Sarah: Yeah! Yeah, it may be!

Victoria: – either they can’t reconcile that personality with themselves –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – or they don’t like that feeling –

Sarah: Of, of –

Victoria: – of being drawn that far in.

Sarah: Yes, that narrative vulnerability of – and I’m so empathetic I’ll just, I can empathize with anybody, you know?

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Like, I just – tell me all of your feelings. You’re going to tell me anyway; I have what I call bartender pheromones. People just tell me all of their business –

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and I’m like, okay! Sounds great! It’s, it’s a vulnerability to be that open to a narration.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah. I think so.

Sarah: Is it hard to write it sometimes? When you’re writing in first person, does it start to get to you, or are these still separate people?

Victoria: Jane Doe and Problem Child are the only ones I’ve written in first person, and it was the easiest thing I’ve ever written.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: It just flowed out of me –

Sarah: Yes.

Victoria: – but I think it’s because Jane doesn’t have an internal conflict. She’s not –

Sarah: She doesn’t have an inner critic at all, no.

Victoria: Doesn’t have an inner critic, and there’s no – I had to go back, because I’m from the Midwest, and I say I’m sorry constantly –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: – for no reason.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: Bump into a cart, say I’m –

Together: – sorry, yeah.

Victoria: [Laughs] And –

Sarah: I’m sorry; can I bring you a casserole? Yeah.

Victoria: [Laughs] I had to go through and take out any softened language like, I think he wants to do this, whatever.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: She’s not thinking it; she knows. She knows she knows.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: So once I got into the rhythm of that, it was very quick, because things are happening and she’s reacting –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – and thinking things, and there’s no going back, there’s no self-doubt, there’s no questioning of whether you did the right thing, and so that went very quickly. I haven’t ever written first person from a person who’s not a sociopath? [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, you know, there’s, there’s always opportunities in the future.

Victoria: So we’ll see, but I did find just dialogue and stuff flowed very quickly –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – writing first person.

Sarah: Was there one character in The Last One Home that was easier to write than the other?

Victoria: Donna was definitely easier to write for me.

Sarah: [Laughs] I used to be cool, trust me!

Victoria: I used to be so cool! But, you know, I grew up – Donna ran away from home at fifteen or sixteen – I can’t remember now – and, and that was not my circumstance, but I grew up, you know, with, like I said, my dad left before I was born. We were on welfare and, you know, free lunches at school and walking through some questionable neighborhoods, that kind of thing. So that kind of feeling about the ‘80s was very easy to write.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: Lauren is a much nicer and, like I said, she’s a people pleaser, and I am very Midwestern in that way, but I say, I have no problem saying no too, to, you know –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Victoria: – anything. It’s – so, so –

Sarah: My noes have gotten so much stronger too.

Victoria: [Laughs] So it was a little harder for me. Also the whole, she has this dad that she loves and she’s very close to, so that was just a little more alien to me to write, but Donna was no problem at all. She’s just, you know, smoking and drinking and cracking jokes and, yeah, it was fun.

Sarah: You re-, you recently tweeted, and I actually saved a picture of the tweet ‘cause it was so great, about how, as you have aged, you have come into your own gaze.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: And that the, the great threat to, to, to other people who wish to have power over you is that you own your own gaze and that you only have to serve your own perspective now. The older you get –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – the more you own yourself. And it made me really think about the gaze of romance versus the gaze of, of thrillers and domestic suspense and how part of being the active protagonist in a story of, of revenge or vengeance is to own that your perspective may not be right from someone else’s point of view, but it’s perfectly right from yours!

Victoria: That’s right, yeah! Especially in the, in the revenge side of things.

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: It’s taking a stand –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – right?

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: And saying this is not okay, and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. And yeah, I feel like, I’m, I’m forty-eight now; I can’t wait to turn fifty. That’s amazing! I don’t think about what other people want from me anymore, and that is threatening, and I thought a lot about how female power for centuries has been portrayed as ancient women.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: As witches –

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: – right?

Sarah: Crones.

Victoria: Yeah! ‘Cause they don’t give a shit anymore. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: They live on the outskirts of town, and they have their stuff that they need.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: And you don’t get to tell them what to do.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: And they’re – yeah, that’s power!

Sarah: Yep! I, I don’t –

Victoria: And it’s scary.

Sarah: – I don’t remember if I was talking with you about this at one point or – I think you might have been there, possibly, but also that the backbone of a lot of volunteer organizations and social networks is women who have raised their children and have time with which to volunteer to do things.

Victoria: Yeah!

Sarah: So the –

Victoria: Look at all the voting registration –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Victoria: – getting younger people organized.

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: And that’s all unpaid labor, of course.

Sarah: Absolutely. Hence volunteer. Mm-hmm? Oh yeah.

Victoria: [Laughs] Yeah. I think it’s just, you get to a point where you realize, first of all, your kids aren’t young anymore.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: You’re not literally tied to your home. Yeah, you’ve got some freedom from that; you’re free from trying to make yourself into what men want because they’re going to tell you they don’t want you anymore anyway, right? You’re fifty.

Sarah: Who cares? Yep!

Victoria: [Laughs] And I know – this is another thing that I think social media has helped with: in the past, I think women of a certain age were relegated to matron –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – and told that that was nearly a worthless status.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: You’re just a helper now.

Sarah: Yep. Get off to the side; you’re not on stage. You’re behind the scenes –

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: – you’re behind the curtain. Yep.

Victoria: And I think –

Sarah: Go hold this clipboard.

Victoria: – this modern era is about going, what the hell?

Together: No!

Sarah: Mm-mm.

Victoria: [Laughs] That doesn’t matter to me!

Sarah: Nope!

Victoria: You know, that – so yeah, I think it’s been wonderful.

Sarah: Yeah. And you see footage like Maxine Waters refusing to yield to somebody who wants to talk over her –

Victoria: Yes!

Sarah: – and you’re like, whoa!

Victoria: [Laughs] Yes!

Sarah: Whoo! Damn!

Victoria: Yes! And –

Sarah: And staying within the rules!

Victoria: Reclaiming my time?

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: That feels like exact-, that is an exact capture of what it feels like to get older to me.

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: Reclaiming my time.

Sarah: Yeah. Nope, mm-mm. You don’t get it.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: And one of the things that I found to be really sort of scarily liberating about the Quarantimes is, well, who am I when I’m not in front of every-, anybody?

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: When the only people who see me are my husband and my kids and my dogs and my cat –

Victoria: Right.

Sarah: – when I don’t have to go in front of other parents, I don’t have to go to any PTA things, I don’t have to go pick up somebody from lessons, who am I when no one’s looking?

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: And –

Victoria: I haven’t shaved my legs in a year!

Sarah: Oh!

Victoria: [Laughs] I’m like, you better not get close enough to me if I’m out hiking to even see that I haven’t shaved my legs like –

Sarah: It’s like insulation at this point!

Victoria: It is!

Sarah: It’s an extra layer; I’m not taking that off!

Victoria: [Laughs] I was going hiking this summer, and I remember, I was on a trail, and the breeze picked up, and I thought, holy shit!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: Hair is another sensory feature, with, yes, there’s danger near! Something is near you, brushing up close to you.

Sarah: Yeah! Wait, all this hair has a purpose!

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Amazing! I’m never getting rid of it! We’re still, for the most part, not being seen very much.

Victoria: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And who are you when no one’s looking at you?

Victoria: Yeah!

Sarah: I’m a lot happier.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: Not giving a shit. I haven’t worn real pants in like forever.

Victoria: Yeah, uh-huh.

Sarah: I have so many more pairs of sweatpants and leggings now? Mm!

Victoria: I was just telling my best friend that my, my laundry cycle’s totally based on my four good pairs of jogger pants.

Sarah: Hell yes!

Victoria: Like, there’s the two that are just perfect –

Sarah: Oh, the, they’re the best ones.

Victoria: [Laughs]

Sarah: They have a deep-enough –

Victoria: Then there’s one that –

Sarah: – phone pocket and they’re comfy and – oh yeah, I’m with you.

Victoria: Exactly. They’re loose, but they stay up.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: They’re not, you know –

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: And then there’s a third pair that’s a little bit tighter –

Sarah: They’re okay.

Victoria: – you know.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: That’s fine. And then when I get to the fourth pair, it’s time –

Sarah: Time to do the laundry.

Victoria: – to start this thing. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep, time to do the laundry!

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s the other thing: I have to stop myself from getting rid of all the clothes I’m not wearing ‘cause I haven’t worn them in a year. Like, you will have to –

Victoria: Yeah.

Sarah: – go out into the world again someday!

Victoria: I have looked at several things and gone, I’m not, that’s not worth it; I’m never wearing this again.

Sarah: No, there’s no point.

Victoria: I’m not going back to that! [Laughs]

Sarah: Nope! I have a lot of shoes that I’m seriously looking at again, going, hmm!

Victoria: Yes.

Sarah: What are you reading that you want to tell people about?

Victoria: I made a list –

Sarah: I love that!

Victoria: – because my brain is not okay.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Victoria: Right now I’m reading, on the topic of revenge stories, I’m listening to Hench. Do you know that book?

Sarah: I love that book. I did an interview with the author, and it was amazing! Oh my God, I squeed at them so hard. So hard!

Victoria: I’m, I think I may be only twenty-five, thirty percent into it. I’m not quite sure, because I’m listening to it, and, and I didn’t look at the number. But so I’m –

Sarah: It’s such a good rage story!

Victoria: It’s just fun and so out of my wheelhouse. Because, for people who don’t know, it’s about, there are villains and superheroes –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – and everybody needs support staff –

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: – for their industry.

Sarah: Yep.

Victoria: So the book opens with her working for a temp agency that provides temporary workers for evildoers –

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: – ‘cause obviously they would use a temp agency –

Sarah: Of course!

Victoria: – no question.

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: And then an incident happens, and she’s injured, and she decides to get revenge on the superhero class, basically.

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: That I –

Sarah: Because they keep getting away with harming people and no one –

Victoria: Right!

Sarah: – holds them accountable! I hope you will contact me when you finish it and tell me what you think. I would, I am dying –

Victoria: Okay!

Sarah: – to know what you think.

Victoria: I’m also listening to The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole.

Sarah: So good!

Victoria: So those are both sort of light, you know. And alt-, alternate universes, basically, I guess.

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: I just finished Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri. Have you ever read that?

Sarah: I haven’t!

Victoria: Oh, it’s really good.

Sarah: [Squees]

Victoria: It’s really good. That’s a fantasy; there’s a great romantic element. It’s a lot of high-stakes drama, but it’s also kind of a feel-good –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: – story. I just started Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke, who writes sort of thriller/horror?

Sarah: Right.

Victoria: But I’m literally like two percent into that –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – so I can’t really even tell you what it’s about. And I just finished Yellow Bird. I was doing a lot of nonfiction research, and Yellow Bird is a True Crime story, but it’s also a story about a woman named Lissa Yellow Bird, who is a member of the Arikara Nation, she starts looking into this disappearance on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where there is the North Dakota oil boom happening? So it’s a lot of white people, a lot of outsiders and industry coming in and corruption.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Victoria: But it’s just a great story. She is a woman who is a former drug addict and had gone to jail for dealing drugs, and then when she gets out she’s clean, but she sort of needs a, a mission or something to become –

Sarah: Yeah.

Victoria: – focused on, and she starts looking into some – it’s a true story.

Sarah: Right. Ooh.

Victoria: So yeah, I just finished that one.

Sarah: Awesome!

Victoria: And then I’ve got a big To Be Read pile of romances I want to read, like Rose Lerner’s The Wife in the Attic?

Sarah: Yep!

Victoria: It’s not a romance, I know, but – Acting Up by Adele Buck, and then Alisha Rai and Eva Leigh both have new romances out –

Sarah: Yeah!

Victoria: – so those are on my To Be Read list.

Sarah: You have a nice list!

And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Victoria Helen Stone and Victoria Dahl for hanging out with us, and thank you for listening! I hope that you are curious about The Last One Home or Jane Doe or Problem Child or any of her other books. You will find links to them in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And if you are a connoisseur of Earl Had to Die revenge stories, I’m curious what you think are the reasons why they’re so satisfying. Mm! You can email me at [email protected], or you can call 201-371-3272 and leave me a voicemail and tell me, or just leave me a bad joke. You know I love those.

I will have links to where you can find Victoria Helen Stone on Twitter and on her website as well.

I want to thank those of you who have taken the time to leave a review. I realize that that is quite a commitment. It is hard to convince people to leave reviews, and I say that as a professional reviewer. I know that this is the case, so if you have done so, thank you so much! I want to thank Jenifer for writing, “Fighting the Patriarchy and Finding Your People.” Oh, I’m so flattered! “SBTB is my first and favorite podcast. If you like romance novels or anything remotely related to them (knitting, love, erotic intelligence, pet shenanigans),” – oh yes – “you will ADORE this podcast which is smart, funny, and thoughtful. But be warned that it is SOOOOOOO expensive to join the Hot Pink Palace.” Yes, it’s true; we are very expensive people to know. Thank you, Jenifer, for leaving a review. When you leave a review in the podcatcher app of your choice, it makes it easier for people to find us, and it helps the show grow, so thank you!

Now, as always, I will end with a bad joke, and this one’s really bad. I hope you will enjoy it by groaning as loudly as everyone in my house did. [Clears throat] Serious podcaster voice. Are you ready?

What do you call Batman after he trips on some stairs?

What do you call Batman after he trips on some stairs?

Bruised Wayne.

[Laughs] Bruised Wayne! Also known as the entire lighting system of the Snyder cut. Seriously, I tried to watch it! I couldn’t see anything! Argh! Bruised Wayne. [Laughs more] Ah! Thank you to /verberd for that joke; totally made my day.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

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

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