482. Big Gay Podcast AMA Part II!

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 482 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. As I have been teasing in recent episodes, this is part two of our crossover episode with the Big Gay Fiction Podcast. Amanda and I connected with Jeff and Will and answered listener questions from our own Patreon communities. The Big Gay Fiction Podcast released part one on Thursday, the 4th of November. In this episode, we are going to talk about the first male/male romances we ever read, and we have book recommendations, food discussions, and some thoughtful conversations about genre and community.

I will have links to part one in the show notes, and all of the books that we talk about will be in the show notes as well, never fear.

Hello and thank you to our Patreon community for making this episode and every episode accessible to everyone.

I have a compliment!

To Rebecca W.: Fourteen dogs just started wagging their tails at the thought of you and how much you make those around you feel so happy.

If you would like a compliment of your very own or would like to support the show at any amount, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

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All right, let’s get started with this extremely fun conversation with me and Amanda and Jeff and Will from the Big Gay Fiction Podcast.

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Sarah: I want to go to Rhonda’s question, ‘cause it kind of fits with what Amanda was talking about? What were your first m/m romance reads?

Amanda: Mm, okay.

Sarah: Do you want to go first, Amanda?

Amanda: Yeah, I remember mine ‘cause I picked it up based on a review on the site from Elyse, and I believe it was Knit Tight by Annabeth Albert from the Portland Heat series, and it sounded, she made it sound so – ‘cause Elyse is a knitter, so anything with knitting in it she’s all about – and it sounded so cozy and adorable, and I believe it’s, like, knitting, and there’s a barista, and there’s a cute, like, book club, and I just remember being totally charmed by it. And then I remember reading a few other books in the series, but I believe Knit Tight was my first that I read.

Jeff Adams: And a good author to start with, too.

Amanda: Yeah. I read, I think, was it Conventionally Yours? That was very cute.

Jeff: That is so good!

Amanda: Yeah, super cute. So I really like –

Jeff: Get the sequel!

Amanda: Oh, there’s a, I didn’t know there was a sequel! Okay.

Jeff: It’s Out of Character.

Sarah: First google of the show is happening now!

Amanda: Yep, sorry! Yeah, I’m adding it to my Goodreads right now.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Don’t mind me!

[Laughter]

Jeff: Yeah, the sequel’s sooo good. Picks up people you –

Amanda: Okay.

Jeff: – you met in the first one, and –

Sarah: I love that!

Jeff: – goes off in some other cool directions. It was – in some ways I like the second even better than the first, which was crazy, ‘cause I loved Conventionally Yours so hard.

Amanda: Adding it right now.

Sarah: Jeff and Will, what about you?

Jeff: I wasn’t keeping good track of my books back in the day –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Jeff: – but I have a couple of areas that I know were among the first, at least? One is called Power Play by J. M. Snyder –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Jeff: – and it’s a, it’s a hockey player and a speed skater.

Sarah: Well, that’s just right up your street, isn’t it?

Jeff: Isn’t it though?

Sarah: Yeah!

Will Knauss: [Laughs]

Jeff: And it’s a New Adult story, and the hockey player has been injured, injured really badly, might not be, you know, might not be playing again. He’s got a hobby as a photographer, and the speed skater needs to have pictures and this stuff, so he’s shooting at the rink, and these two start kind of talking, getting to know each other, and this romance kind of blooms, and the, the hockey player figures out how not to be just down in the dumps all the time because of this injury, so legit, down in the dumps, you know, but they, they find ways to help each other and heal each other and essentially navigate, you know, first relationships and stuff. It’s sooo sweet! It’s really the book that kind of nudged me into writing, and writing about hockey, too, is that book.

And then right around the same time, Z. A. Maxfield’s St. Nacho’s series, and in particular the first book, St. Nacho’s? It’s such – St. Nacho’s is a magical place. It’s a paranormal series at all, but the place itself just has this healing power. It tends to draw people to it, kind of shows up when you need it sort of thing? But this first book about this violinist who’s just on the run from his past, finding this place and then finding the guy who is his, who’s willing to kind of wait for him to work his, his baggage out? Sooo sweet! And really one of those first books that you can kind of trace back to of a, of essentially nice guys doing nice things in the long run. I mean, the one guy had a lot of baggage to get through, but nice guys doing nice things at its core.

Yeah, those two definitely among my first.

Will: I came out in 1991, and I was reading some classic gay fiction around that time. You know, Patricia Nell Warren and Gordon Merrick and, of course, everything Armistead Maupin. And it was really, it took a few more years until I really discovered m/m gay romance? And like Jeff, I wasn’t keeping particularly good track of what I was reading around that time, but I believe one of the very first gay romances, as we know them now, one of the first that I read was called Bareback by Chris Owen?

Sarah: That’s a title.

Will: It’s sort of a –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Will: – a cowboy coming-out story? It was incredibly popular at the time, and I think I saw it recommended to me on Amazon, and I ordered the paperback because at the time I did not have a Kindle or an e-reader, and of course I had a flip phone, so I couldn’t read it on an app. I had to have a paperback, so that was one of the, the first that I remember reading.

Jeff: Oh yeah, Chris Owen, Bareback, 911? Those were in some of my first too.

Will: They’re really good.

Jeff: I have to tell you, when I met Chris at a, at a GRL, I was, like, doing one of my first events of that GRL, and then I looked up from what I was signing, and as I look up  I see her badge? I about freaked out, ‘cause here is Chris Owen standing at my table, oh my God. [Laughs]

Sarah: I’ve had that experience.

Jeff: Yeah.

Sarah: Even just meeting somebody like, oh my God, you’ve given my brain so many hours of entertainment and I love your books and I’m not cool right now. Coolness has taken a great departure. No.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Jeff: Please excuse this fanboy moment. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, my inner, my inner thirteen-year-old is now driving. Sorry. She’s in charge.

I think the, if not one of the first, if not the first, then one of the first that I read was, that I remember is Strawberries for Dessert by Marie Sexton?

Will: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: That book came out in 2010. It’s a food book! There’s like a theme or something.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: The thing about the, the, the two main characters is that they have an absolutely dreadful first date, like absolutely horrible. The, the, the sort of, I guess they’re both – I mean, it’s really mostly from Jonathan’s perspective; a lot of the stuff that’s worked through in the book is his? And he goes on a blind date with this guy named Cole, and he just, he won’t put his phone down, he’s constantly checking in with work, he – and Cole’s like, listen, when you’re ready to actually be on a date and pay attention, let me know, and he just leaves! Like, he, it’s a really bad first date? And they’re very different, extremely different, so they have a lot of stuff to work out, but the thing that really stuck with me – and this is a bit of a SPOILER – is towards the end of the book, Cole makes dinner for Jonathan and his father, and Jonathan’s mother had passed away, and Cole makes some of her food, some of her recipes, and neither Jonathan nor his dad were very good cooks, and so Cole has brought his mom and this man’s widow back to him through dinner and completely changes the tenor of the gathering, ‘cause it’s a little tense, and Jonathan’s father is not entirely on board with his son being gay, and here is a dude who is his date in the house, what the hell? And the, the, Cole brings his late wife’s food to the table, and he gets to eat these things that he hasn’t had in forever, and that scene has stuck with me since I read the book more than ten years ago. That’s one of my favorite scenes from a book.

Jeff: That is amazing, and that, that’s one of the great things about food in romances –

Sarah: Yes, it’s so true.

Jeff: – is there’s such an opportunity – forget what the food is necessarily, but it brings people together whether you’re cooking it together or you’re having a special meal like that –

Sarah: Yep.

Jeff: – or sharing a food that’s important to you for some reason?

Sarah: Yep.

Jeff: So many good things happen when people have food in romance books.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yep, ‘cause food is very intimate! You know, if you think about it –

Amanda: It is a love language too.

Sarah: It’s a love language; it’s a way that you nourish and fuel your body that allows you to continue to exist. Like, it’s a way to care for yourself and other people, and the sense memories and the emotional memories that are tied to the serving and eating of food is, is a lot of, of, of opportunity to mine that for that sort of emotional intimacy we were talking about earlier.

Amanda: And, like, the universal – like, Sarah has this theory, which I’m fully on board with, that every culture has a dish that is essentially a, a fried container, a fried object with a filling.

Sarah: Yeah. You take a food, you put the food in another food, and then you cook the food, and that is the universal expression of human love in just about every culture that has a food.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yep, whether it’s pierogis or dim sum –

Amanda: Empanadas.

Sarah: – empanadas or kolaches or, I mean, whatever! You st –

Jeff: Wrap anything in a fried dough and it’s good.

Sarah: Right? Take a food –

Amanda: Cook it.

Sarah: – put it in a dough, cook it, and that is, I mean, it is the universal expression of human love in all cultures, and I stand by that.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Jeff: I, I’m right there with you.

Sarah: Awesome!

Jeff: Yeah, we got good questions from your patrons as well, and –

Sarah: My patrons, my patrons just, they just, they just brought.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Jeff: And since we’re doing recommendations –

Sarah: Yes.

Jeff: You have Sol, who’s looking for m/m fantasy romance and contemporary romance. They say, I love red, white, Red, White & Royal Blue and Boyfriend Material, but they, but feel they are too mainstream.

Okay, they are mainstream, yes, but they’re fabulous! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes. They are good books; that is true.

Jeff: Yeah, I, I adored both of those books, and I adored Casey McQuiston’s recent book –

Sarah: One Last Stop?

Jeff: Yes, One Last Stop. That was such –

Amanda: I got to interview her –

Jeff: – so tremendous.

Amanda: – and she was a delight, and she ended our interview with, hey, do you want to see my dog Pepper? And she, like, brings her dog Pepper into, like, the Zoom call, and I was like, of course I want to see your dog Pepper!

Sarah: What kind of a question is that? All interviews should end with, can I see your dog?

Amanda: Yeah.

Jeff: Right?

Amanda: It was so great. But I loved One Last Stop. I thought it was fantastic. I love –

Jeff: Yeah, so innovative, and really kind of rode that line of contemporary and fantasy!

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Amanda: Yeah! I know, like, it was such a departure from the debut, but I thought it was fantastic.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. And speaking of departures, I have to talk about this. It’s not an m/m, and, and Sarah, you had Ryka Aoki on your show for –

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Jeff: – Light from Uncommon Stars. What an unexpected book!

Sarah: Oh my gosh, that book!

Jeff: I mean, I’ve never had – and I said this in my review – it’s like –

Sarah: I listened to that review!

Jeff: – I’ve never seen –

Sarah: It was good!

Jeff: – such a thing of, we have a starship captain running a doughnut shop –

Sarah: Yep.

Jeff: – and somebody collecting souls –

Sarah: Yep.

Jeff: – and yet it’s presented in a way like it’s just another day in SoCal. [Laughs] Like –

Sarah: Yeah!

Jeff: – oh yeah, that just happens here; this is not sci-fi at all!

Sarah: That’s just how it is in Southern California: aliens running the doughnut shop, demons collecting souls for violin prodigies. I mean, that’s just another day.

Jeff: Yeah. Oh, I just loved it. But yeah. That’s not, that’s not m/m, but it is a good fantasy romance for sure.

Sarah: It’s super queer.

Jeff: Yeah, super queer.

Sarah: Hecking queer. And it’s also, one of the things that I love about Light from Uncommon Stars is that it is very much about found family, but also deliberately seeking out the people who resonate with you, and –

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – by the time all of the characters are in each other’s orbit, so to speak, I was like, I just want to listen to you guys just talk to each other. Go do things. Go, go.

Jeff: I –

Sarah: Go do things.

Jeff: – I was happy to have that story continue on –

Sarah: Yeah.

Jeff: – and just let me hear what’s happening.

Sarah: And I remember during my interview with, with Ryka, she was talking about, all of the scenes in the doughnut shop are like a comedy, right? Like they, when you’re in the doughnut shop in the book it’s like a sit-com break? Like, we’ve got really heavy, heavy, painful stuff, but it’s doughnut time! And –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – she did that on purpose. She, she’s like, yeah, I did that on purpose. That’s like The Brady Bunch; that’s the comedic moment. Those are my favorite scenes. Basically, stick any story in a doughnut shop and I am, I am there; let’s do it.

Jeff: [Laughs] It’s all about food; comes back to food.

Anyway, actual recommendations. Who wants to go first?

Sarah: I have some. All right, here’s my list. M/m fantasy and contemporary. Okay, first of all –

Amanda: Let’s see, I’m, I, I also have a list, so I might have to cross some off.

Sarah: All right, I won’t read my whole list.

Amanda: No, read your whole list. Go for it. Commit.

Sarah: Okay. TJ Klune, especially The House in the Cerulean Sea. That is both cozy and fantasy and contemporary and adorable and is just a perfect confection of a book.

In terms of contemporary, I really liked the Queers of La Vista series by Kris Ripper? It was like if you had a sort of low, low-key soap opera collection of characters, each one getting their own story. I really like that series. Jeff, you’re smiling at me; did I, did I pick –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – did I steal one of yours? [Laughs]

Jeff: No, you did not steal one of mine.

Sarah: Oh, okay. I also think, in terms of fantasy, this is a, this is a somewhat difficult recommendation, because in – this is one of those books where in order to truly appreciate the, the story, there are other books in the series that add to it? Like, you can start with this one when it comes out, but you get so much more if you read the, the series that leads up to it: Nalini Singh’s Archangel’s Light comes out in I think end of October, and that story is queer angels who can destroy you, and also has been building up for many, many books.

Amanda: Lots of pining.

Sarah: So much –

Amanda: So much pining.

Sarah: So – I mean, Nalini does a couple of things really well. One is worldbuilding, two is leaving breadcrumb trails for a character pairing for like thirty-five fricking books, and then you go back to book one and you’re like, oh my – it was here too? What is with you?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: How do you do that? And I’ve asked her and she’s like, I’m not telling you! What? No!

Amanda: It’s a secret!

Sarah: Duh! And she’s done that before with the, with Heart of Obsidian. She had led up to who is this character searching for? What is the deal with them? Why are they so obsessed with this one character, and who is this missing character that this person is searching for? And then they’re together and it’s like, oh my God, pining! Oh, it’s so good. So she’s done that again with Archangel’s Light. [Laughs] If you really want the full, like, chest feels impact you should read the previous books in the series? But yeah, definitely recommend.

Did I steal all of yours, Amanda?

Amanda: You took none of mine. [Laughs] Mine lean, lean heavily more towards the fantasy romance part of the recommendation?

Sarah: Oh, for sure, for sure.

Amanda: Yeah. So historical fantasy romance: K. J. Charles, obviously.

Sarah: On my list! I skipped it on purpose!

Amanda: Okay. So K. J. has, it was like The Magpie Lord? Is that the one I’m thinking of?

Jeff: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: There’s also the Allie Therin series; the first one is Spellbound? Kind of like a magic, Gilded Age New York; a little like Indiana Jones, like, magical artifacts, that sort of thing. It’s the same couple, I believe, throughout the books.

Then you have Best Laid Plaids by Ella Stainton, set in 1920s Scotland. There’s a disgraced doctor who believes ghosts are real and has since, you know, been made a laughing stock, and then a veteran who can see ghosts but doesn’t want to admit to it kind of shows up on the doctor’s doorstep to disprove him for his, like, thesis on delusions. So very angsty.

Another one that I’m going to recommend, but it doesn’t fit your requirements, but it’s just so good, is The Companion by E. E. Ottoman. If – it’s so tender and just all, all three char- – it’s a poly romance. Historic New York – I think ‘40s New York? All three characters are trans. Kind of like, they’re isolated a little bit; they’re all in, like, upstate New York. Just so sweet; I highly recommend that one.

Sarah: Tender is the perfect word for that book.

Amanda: Yeah.

Jeff: Yes.

Amanda: And then outright fantasy, I would recommend Witchmark by C. L. Polk, a kind of alternate version of Edwardian England – there’s magic. All three books in this series are queer, but I believe the first book is the only male/male pairing in the trilogy.

I would also recommend Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh, which is a beautiful novella. Grumpy forest god meets like charming, scholarly inn owner. It’s a duology, but they’re novellas, so, you know.

And then there’s another one I’d recommend with a caveat, and there’s, like, it’s kind of sad, and it’s more fantasy than romance, but it’s, I think it’s beautiful: The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson, another novella from Tor. Tor does some great queer sci-fi/fantasy novellas. Some of them have stronger romantic arcs than others, but that one is just kind of beautiful; a little, like, bittersweet and, and tragic. It reminds me of Circe, The Song of Achilles a little bit, but more fantasy.

So those are my recommendations. Yeah.

Sarah: K. J. Charles’s audiobooks, a whole bunch of them have just been added to Audible Plus too, so if you’re an Audible subscriber you have access to those –

Jeff: Ooh!

Sarah: – and they’re wonderful in audio; incredibly good narrators.

Jeff: I love her Will Darling adventures series –

Amanda: Mm!

Jeff: – of, like, mystery, adventure kind of stories; just love ‘em to death. Good historicals, too.

What’s on your list?

Will: For me, I do not partake of fantasy particularly often – meaning never.

[Laughter]

Will: I am more of a contemporary and historical guy. For contemporary recommendations, I would like to mention the Walker Boys series by Ari McKay. Jeff and I covered this particular trilogy over the summer during our book club episodes. These books were originally published a couple of years ago, and these authors got kind of screwed over by their publisher, and they released them recently, so I’ve been kind of trying to get the word out because I just think these books are so damn good.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Will: The first book is about two heroes who are doing a televised cooking competition. There’s food!

Jeff: Food, food!

Amanda: Food!

Will: The second book is about a chef who is helping revitalize a failing resort, and the third book is a cruise ship romance. It’s utterly delightful, and all three of them lean really heavily on some classic tropes, which I just love to pieces. So the Walker Boys series by Ari McKay: recommend checking those out.

And also something that I will never not recommend to people are the Fairyland Romances series by Jaxon Knight. I don’t, I think it’s a pity that more people do not know about these. They’re so charming and so lovely. It’s basically a series of workplace romances; it’s just that the workplace happens to be a theme park.

Sarah: As you do.

Will: They’re, they’re utterly adorable. I loved every single one that I’ve read, and what makes these special is not only how good they are, is that they’re sweet romances, which means that there is very low heat, but they are jam-packed with romance. So I highly recommend the Fairyland Romances series; they’re really, really good.

Jeff: Those are so good! We did not cross-check each other’s lists –

Will: [Laughs]

Jeff: – before we started, so I was excited to hear what he had!

I do read a little bit of fantasy, obviously, with Uncommon Stars showing up there. Hundred percent agree on Cerulean Sea from TJ Klune, and I’ll actually add another TJ Klune to that, which is his most recent book, Under the Whispering Door, which is not a sequel to Cerulean but is connected in that he has what he calls his Kindness trilogy, and Whispering Door is book number two. This book is going to sound like, why would I read that? because it deals with grief. At the beginning, Wallace dies. He is a horrible man, an attorney who’s driven by work. He’s taken away to this tea shop that serves as, like, the way, the, like, the way station before you pass onto whatever’s next. But it’s really amazing at how he looks back on his life and thinks about the person he was and the, and he, he starts to see the person who he could have been and can still be. Super sweet romance with the man who is the tea shop owner but is also, like, the ferryman who will guide him on. It’s just the most beautiful book. I mean, I really – people who listen to our show know that I’ll sing TJ’s praises at any opportunity, ‘cause he’s such a master storyteller, and this one just moves him to the next level, I think, so. And especially if you like shows like The Good Place and how it looked at the afterlife, especially once you’re out of that first season when you know what was going on in the first season and the things they did in two, three, and four to not spoil it for anybody. That is, reminds me a lot of what he does here. Just blew me away, where I was – major book hangover after that.

[Laughter]

Jeff: Back on the contemporary side of things, one of my very favorite things this year has been the Nerds vs Jocks trilogy from Tara Lain and Eli Easton. New, New Adult, so this, these books take place with people who are college seniors. The first three books are a really tight trilogy. You’ve got these two frat houses, two competing frat houses across the street from each other. Finally there’s one prank that goes way wrong and almost burns down one of the houses, and the dean’s like, I have had enough. You two either need to, you two houses need to get along or I’m going to disband you. And what he mandates is that two of the nerds have to go play flag football with the jocks towards their big championship flag football event, and two of the jocks have to go to the nerd house and participate in Quiz Bowl.

Sarah: Oh snap.

Jeff: [Laughs] Which, I mean, this all sounds super cute, but Tara and Eli have managed to make this series so heartfelt and so – at its core it’s about not just assuming that you know who the other person is. You can’t just apply nerd stereotypes and clichés and jock stereotypes and clichés. These are all fully fleshed out people who’ve got troubles, people who have baggage, people who are dealing with issues with family, and the way that each romance in these books comes together, ‘cause at each turn you’ve got the nerd and the jock coming together, figuring out how to work together, but then finding out, wow, this guy is everything and will be my forever guy.

The first book, which is called Schooling the Jock, I cried in this book. [Laughs] And I mean, I’m a crier anyway, but some of the things that were in there with what was going on with various families and stuff was just like, oh! And how these, these guys related to each other and their families is just all so super sweet and plays into that, again, nice guys doing nice things!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: So good!

And the last one I’ll mention – we share a title here, Amanda, with Best Laid Plans.

[Laughter]

Jeff: Although mine’s by Roan Parrish. It’s part of her –

Amanda: Mine is Best Laid Plaids, because it’s in Scotland.

Jeff: Oh, plaids! Mine’s plans.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Jeff: That’s an important designation –

Amanda: Yes!

Jeff: – plaids versus plans. Best Laid Plans by Roan Parrish: it’s the second in her Garnet Run series, which is just this really nice, small-town-set romance. Garnet Run’s this fictitious town in Wyoming. This particular book has this young man who has, is leaving Seattle because he’s inherited a house from a grandfather he didn’t know, and he’s like, thank God, I’ll move here. I’ll have a place to live so I’m not couch-surfing. He shows up to, like, a house that probably HGTV wouldn’t even touch to, to, like, try to flip. [Laughs] But he’s like, I have this. I’ve got to live here, and I’ve got to make this work. So it’s a little hilarious, him trying to deal with this house on his own, but he keeps running into the hardware store owner, who is like, can I help you? Can I help you? What are you trying to do? Can I help you?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Jeff: Finally, he takes the help, and these two manage to put aside baggage and put aside – for Rye it’s about, like, being able to trust somebody and knows that he can have a home, and then for Charlie, who always looks out for everybody else, how to, like, let himself have a little something. And in Roan’s hands, these stories, the way she brings people together is so good. She’s just released the third book in the series, which is an important book, a historic book, The Lights on Knockbridge Lane, which is a Christmas romance, which is super sweet, and oh my God, so good. But it’s historic in the fact that it’s the first time an m/m romance has been in a Harlequin series line –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: That’s right, yes!

Jeff: – because it’s part, it’s part of Special Edition. So it jumped from being a Carina series over to Harlequin –

Sarah: Yep.

Jeff: – which is super good, so everybody needs to go pick up that book, ‘cause first of all, it’s good. It’s actually our, our November book club selection.

Sarah: Oooh!

Jeff: But so good! Mm!

Amanda: I also remember one more male/male fantasy romance: Prince of Air and Darkness by M. A. Grant. It’s kind of New Adult. One of the main characters, Phineas, is, like, the only human at this magical university, and people are like, what the hell is he doing here? And his roommate is a Fae prince named Roark –

Sarah: As you do.

Amanda: As you do! And it becomes revealed, like, why Phin, this human, is at this magical university, and he becomes like a pawn, essentially, in the war between, like, the, the Seelie and Unseelie Fae courts, and the only person who can kind of help him navigate this sort of like political power struggle, is his roommate, the prince. So there’s this kind of begrudging partnership and kind of like Enemies to Lovers, and then they become, like, friends and – I’d also recommend that series. It’s more like New Adult. But if you like kind of like a magical university, forced proximity setting –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – that’s also an option.

Sarah: Anne asked, is male/male romance mostly read by women? Does the gender identity of the author change this? And, for Jeff and Will, are you more likely to laugh or roll your eyes at the sex scenes in male/male romances than to find them hot?

Which I think is a hilarious question –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and it never occurred to me to ask, and I am completely excited about this.

And then Ruth, coming in with the question: I’ve been wondering if straight women writing male/male romance is a form of appropriation.

So, you know, no big deal. No, low stakes.

Jeff: [Laughs]

Sarah: Super, super low impact questions. I don’t have any active statistics on who reads male/male romance, and I don’t think, I mean, I don’t know if it’s –

Amanda: It’s anecdotal; I feel like it’s anecdotal –

Sarah: Yeah. But I’m –

Amanda: – what we see.

Sarah: – I don’t ha-, I don’t know of any statistics that formally track that, so anything that I’m conceiving of is mostly going to be anecdata based on my own observations, right?

Will: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: My feeling on appropriation is generally, to be clear, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer. And to be clear, I don’t ever want to be in the position of saying who can and can’t write something. That is not my job, and I don’t want that job. But reconciling my own feelings as a reader is something that sometimes takes a little work.

Now I’m going to shut up, ‘cause I want to hear what you have to say.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Will: I think for Jeff and myself, I can sum it up as, we want all writers to be able to tell all the stories and write all of the books. That’s what we want, that’s what we enjoy, and that’s sort of what we celebrate on our podcast. Jeff and I – [laughs] – have been fans of the genre. We’ve been reading and talking about and advocating for this particular subgenre for over a decade now.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Will: So we’ve seen it all.

Jeff: [Laughs]

Will: We’ve been there, we’ve done that, and this question about women writing gay romance comes up every so often. I think there are people who ask of a variation of this question, and they are genuinely interested; they have concern about underrepresented communities and that’s why they’re asking that question.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Will: And I think that’s an important question to ask. Who has the right to tell whose story? And when we don’t ask that question often enough, you get situations like American Dirt –

Sarah: Oh Lord.

Will: – where people on one hand celebrate this book, and it’s amazing! And it’s transformational! But there’s another group of people saying, wait, hold up! This white author has told a story about a marginalized community, and they’re engaging in harmful stereotypes while doing so. So while I do believe in my heart of hearts that all authors should be able to tell whatever story they want, that doesn’t mean that they are free of critique when they screw something up.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Will: So –

Sarah: I feel that way about a lot of historical Holocaust fiction.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Like, I would –

Will: Exactly.

Sarah: – really like to stop redeeming Nazis? Stop now. But –

Will: [Laughs]

Sarah: – I’m not in charge, and I don’t want to be in charge.

Jeff: Right, right, yeah. The, the thing I would add to what he said is, I don’t want to see somebody, frankly, who’s outside of any marginalized community trying to write about the struggle that that community faces, because they don’t live it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: – or relying on stereotypes on how somebody in the LGBTQ community might be acting or rely on clichés.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: You can tell the story of two men in love, two women in love, two trans people in love, two people in love without having to bring any of that in, and just focusing on two people coming together, finding their harmony, and doing that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: And so I think if you start to move into some of those other areas where you don’t have the lived experience, you need to rely on people who have, on sensitivity readers, or accept the critique that you may get for doing it, you know, “wrong.”

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I love that readers are asking themselves these questions? I mean, Amanda and I field probably, what would you say, ten email messages a month easily of, I am looking to diversify what I read, and it’s harder for me to go past this list of authors that I see all the time; I want to keep going. Because the fact is, this is a very white, cis-gendered, heteronormative industry, and that’s where the money is –

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – full stop. Like, mainstream publishers are just now publishing queer stuff? Just now, there’s a queer Harlequin? It is, it is both a, a landmark, and it is an astonishing landmark. Like, just now?

Jeff: Yeah. [Laughs]

I’ll give you a couple of books for the show notes; well, couple things for the show notes.

Sarah: Yes, please!

Jeff: So there’s a book written a while ago now, but I think it, its content is still good, called Why Straight Women Love Gay Romance.

Amanda: Think I’ve heard that mentioned before –

Jeff: Because it is the predominant readership –

Amanda: – I can’t remember where.

Jeff: – you were right about that. And this book was written by Geoffrey Knight. Still available on Amazon.

There’s also a documenTARy – a documenTARy? Where did that pronunciation –

[Laughter]

Sarah: That was awesome!

Will: It’s a documenTARy! Thank you!

Amanda: You’re reaching your word quota! [Laughs]

Jeff: There’s a documentary called What Women Want: Gay Romance, and it was actually shot at GayRomLit 2019 by Charlie David, who is a gay documentarian who lives up in Canada. Does a lot of work around, you know, queer subjects, and so really looked at that point of view through the people who were attending the conference that year, authors and readers. And that documentary, it other, it’s on Amazon Prime and a few other places, but Prime’s the best place to find it. And so, you know, people from, from those two sources can get a little bit more detail and insight, so it’s not just coming from us –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: – in that case, ‘cause we’re, we’re only two people.

[Laughs] I, I’ll answer the other piece of Anne’s question about –

Sarah: Yes, please!

Jeff: – sex scenes?

Sarah: Yes, please.

Jeff: Because I know you were waiting on that.

Sarah: You know I was! I’m not even going to lie. Yes! [Laughs]

Jeff: I –

Sarah: I wasn’t going to let you not answer, either.

Jeff: I can’t remember the last time I read a sex scene and was like, mm, I don’t know that that was quite right, or –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Jeff: – oh, that’s laughably wrong or something. What I will say about sex scenes is if you’re giving me a sex scene that doesn’t drive the plot forward really well, I’m probably skipping it to get back to the story. If you’re just throwing it in there, I’m probably like, I don’t see emotional happenings here; yeah, it’s nice sex. Page, page, page, page.

Sarah: Back to the plot.

Jeff: Back to the action.

Sarah: And now, back to the plot.

Jeff: Yeah, now, back to the plot. [Laughs]

Sarah: Because the number of heterosexual scenes that I have read that are completely banana-crackers is uncountable at this time. Sex in a pond, sex on horseback, algae in places you don’t want it to go. I mean, we, we have had many conversations about historical romances where, like, do you remember that one book where they had sex on a horse? And we’re like, which one of ninety?

[Laughter]

Amanda: That one, or, like, a carriage scene, and it’s always like, no, a carr-, I think the most requested HaBOs have, like, a carriage sex scene, maybe –

Sarah: Pearls! What’s with the pearls?

Amanda: And pearls!

Sarah: Pearls!

Amanda: We’ve had like four?

Jeff: [Laughs]

Amanda: Like, he gives her a, a pearl necklace, and then the necklace is used for other activities.

Sarah: An actual pearl necklace, a necklace that is made of oysters, not the other thing, to be clear here. Sorry.

Will: Oh my.

Amanda: But then there’s always a sexual component with the said pearl necklace.

Sarah: Oh! Well, obvs. There must be fifty of them.

Amanda: And it transcends genres.

Sarah: Oh.

Amanda: I feel like we’ve had a historical, we’ve had –

Sarah: Fantasy.

Amanda: – like, a romantic suspense.

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: It’s a very common scene. [Laughs]

Will: I – for me, as a cisgendered white man, I don’t necessarily – since we’re talking about lived experiences, I probably don’t approach gay romance in the same way as someone who identifies as female or –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Will: – identifies as straight. So we’re probably coming at it from slightly different directions from the experience standpoint –

Sarah: Yeah.

Will: – but I think as readers we’re all approaching it in the exact same way: we want a lovely, emotionally engaging story.

Sarah: Yeah.

Will: And that’s, of course, universal, no matter what book we’re talking about.

Jeff: Yeah. And I think, you know, for me, one of the things I like seeing, especially in my early days of reading gay romance, was seeing somebody who got their Happily Ever After. I mean, especially as I was, you know, getting on the trajectory towards my own Happily Ever After with this one over here!

Will: Mm!

Jeff: It’s important to see yourself in books, especially in whatever marginalized community that you might belong to.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: And I, as, you know, one single gay man out in the world, am happy, whoever wants to tell those stories that I could see myself in, whether they’re written by a man or a woman or, or, you know, whoever, as long as they, you know, bring those people together in a Happily Ever After that I can look at and go, I understand how that came together.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. So basically, we don’t know the answer. But I don’t think any –

Amanda: There is no answer!

Sarah: There is no answer. I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s possible for us to, to, like, identify and codify and come up with, like, a, a specific, like, if this then that, yes –

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – if this then that, no. Like, we don’t have that kind of power. But I absolutely, like I said, I love that more readers than just me, you know, starting my website seventeen years ago, are asking, why did this work? Why do I like this? What can I find that’s like this? What, what am I reading, and why am I reading it? Where – it, it’s like we’re, now we’re all aware of the supply chain, ‘cause it’s screwing everything up? We’re all aware of a lot of the supply chain of how we ended up thinking the way we do and how we might want to undo that thinking, and part of that is questioning, wait, why is this the thing I am most often presented to read, and how come I like this better? What is, what is this doing for me that that doesn’t, and what does that mean, and why do, why is that my thing? Those are all really powerful questions to ask, so I’m – I’m sure that that’s not the answer, but I don’t know the answer. [Laughs]

Jeff: Well, I think that’s the thing: I don’t think anybody has The Answer.

Sarah: No. There’s people that think they do, but I don’t like having them on podcasts.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Unless we’re talking about math, in which case I’m aware that there is usually one answer, and that’s why I’m not good at it.

We have hit just about every question, except one more, which is all about y’all. You have had, you’re about to celebrate your sixth birthday as a podcast. What are the things that you love most about podcasting? And please tell me about this thing that you are planning, ‘cause I want to hear about it.

Jeff: I love, week in and week out, figuring out the podcast with Will. The moments where we just sit down, whether it’s sitting over a meal or hanging out in one of our offices. Who do we want to have on the show? What books are we going to do for book club? What are we getting ready to do for our bonus episodes for our Patreon community? Whatever that is, it’s so enjoyable to be in the creative thing after six years with him, and figuring out what this show is, week in and week out. It’s just been a delight.

Sarah: So workflow is your love language.

[Laughter]

Jeff: Sometimes yes! That’s part of it!

Sarah: [Laughs] Will is cracking up! I’m totally identified here.

Jeff: And it’s also been fun just to navigate the slight changes over the years. You know, what do we want to do? How do we want to make it different and fresh for us?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: How do we make it sustainable for us? You know, we were talking, all of us were talking as we came, as we proc-, you know, got ready to push the Record button that, you know, Sarah, you’ve been in this for ten years and have only taken one week off – [laughs] – in all that time.

Sarah: Yeah, I’ve got to work on that. [Laughs]

Jeff: We’ve been in there for six. We haven’t had any, a week off. We try to structure times where we stack things up so they can kind of autopilot for a minute and then, you know, go from there. And you just look for better, better, easier, more efficient ways to create the content at the high quality that you, you want to create it in.

Sarah: Yeah. But at the end of the day –

Jeff: But I love having, you know –

Sarah: – you’re still talking about the things you love with the person you love, which is super great.

Jeff: Yeah. ‘Cause he’s also involved in the, in helping to figure out the systems and stuff. I mean, even when it comes to the more technical stuff that I do, he’s, comes up with this, are you sure this is the best way? I know you’re doing a lot of time here. Could you maybe do it this way or another way or whatever? So even in the areas where he’s not, you know, the one doing it, he still tries to help keep my sanity in check. [Laughs]

Will: So yeah, I think aside from the creativity that comes from creating content every week, I also just like being able to talk about the books and the stories that we both love. I think there’s a lot to be said for that. Not that there haven’t been, like, rough patches when it comes to the show, especially, frankly, in the last two years. Sometimes you just look at what’s going on in the world and it’s like, what is the point?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Will: Why, why, what difference does my stupid little show make? And whenever I, you know, personally sort of tussle with those questions, I always come back to the reason that I’m doing this. It’s because, you know, small pleasures are still worthwhile, and I think it’s still worth doing –

Jeff: Yeah.

Will: – even after all this time.

Jeff: Yeah.

Will: And there’s no endpoint, really.

Jeff: We got a super sweet letter this past week from somebody who had just celebrated their first year of listening to the show, which had brought them to their own journey of embracing their bisexuality and finding these books and finding community. It’s like, well, that’s the perfect reason to be doing the show: to be somebody’s beacon of light. Even if it’s just one person, to be that for them, it’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: You can’t ask for more than that.

Sarah: If you had had a podcast like yours when you were growing up, would your lives have been a little different?

Will: I – representation matters so much.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Will: When I was growing up, there – technically there was, but I sure as hell didn’t know how to search it out –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Will: – in my small, little, backwoods California town that I grew up in.

Sarah: Yeah.

Will: So the availability of queer content and queer critique of that content, kind of like what we’re doing –

Sarah: Yeah.

Will: – it is valuable, and it is important, and it does have meaning.

Jeff: Yeah, I don’t even know what it would have been like to have had a show like this. I mean, I’m four and a half years older than he is, and I grew up, like, my middle school, high school, college years were all in Alabama, and I was distinctly not out then, even to myself, really. So, you know, what would a, a little light like this poking in been then? I can’t even imagine. You know, ‘cause if I think about the queer content that existed at all, you know, maybe it was watching some Madonna videos –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: – [laughs] – you know, back in the day.

Sarah: Yeah.

Jeff: And that’s about it, because otherwise, you know, it was still in the very much Kill Your Gays kind of phase, and, you know, the height of the AIDS epidemic –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: – was, you know, you know, I graduated high school in ’86, graduated college in ’91, so you’re right there in that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Jeff: You know, one of the things that struck me the most in the last year, watching the, the, the finale season of Pose, is that one of the characters from season one, Damon, I figured out when I was rewatching, getting ready for the finale, that I was the same age as him at that, in those same years –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: – and, you know, profoundly different experiences, what we were both going through. I had no idea that that was even happening in New York at the time, and I was of an age where I could have known about that. But I can’t imagine what a podcast peeking in at that point could have done.

Will: So in, in the spirit of keeping things fresh after six years, we wanted to quickly mention that we are trying something brand new: for the very first time, we are going to be holding an event!

Sarah: Yes!

Will: We’re calling it Big Gay Fiction Fest, and essentially it is an online conference, and we’re going to be talking to authors about their Christmas books! The event’s going to be happening the first weekend in No-, in December, and we’re really looking forward to it. Like I, like Sarah just mentioned, you know, planning is a bit of our love language, so we’re –

[Laughter]

Will: – we’re in, we’re in deep at the moment and really enjoying coming up with different guests and different kind of panels and different discussions and, you know, what books? So many, as, well, I mean you, I don’t need to tell you, Christmas books are everything. So yeah! It’s a lot of fun, and we’re looking forward to engaging with our audience in this new way.

Jeff: So yeah, we’re really excited about the Fest. We’ll make sure you’ve got a link for signups that you can throw into your show notes.

Sarah: Oh please! I will, we – Amanda does our links posts – we will link the hecking out of it. Oh yeah.

Jeff: [Laughs]

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. We talked about a lot of books in this one, but never fear, I will have links to all of the books that we mentioned, and I will absolutely have links to yesterday’s episode, where we started this conversation, and to the Big Gay Fiction Fest.

And a special congratulations to Jeff and Will on their sixth anniversary as podcasters. Way to go, y’all!

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Coming up next week, I’ll be recapping Laurie’s Song by Suzanne Rand, and listen to the tag line for this: “Is she being used, or is she being loved?” This is going to be a little bit in the intense side! Whoo, angst! So join me next week for Laurie’s Song. It is a lot of fun.

As always, I end with a terrible joke. This week’s terrible joke comes from Reddit because it’s a wonderful bad math joke and I love it!

Why was four unable to ask out five?

Why was four unable to ask out five?

Because four is two squared.

[Laughs] Too scared! I like this one because when I told it to my younger child I received a very long and disgusted groan, which is the real bar of how good a bad joke is, right?

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

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

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