524. Thank You For Listening, and Also For Romance, With Julia Whelan

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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 524 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell. My guest today is award-winning audiobook narrator Julia Whelan! We are going to talk about her new book Thank You for Listening, and we’re going to talk about how romance is awesome, myths about audiobook narration, and self-aware book fiction, plus we have book recommendations because, well, of course we do! And of course I will have all of the links to all of the things in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

I want to say a very special hello! to our Patreon community. We have been discussing all of the nifty new features of Patreon and which ones they would like most, so thank you to everybody who voted in my recent poll, and thanks especially to Jamie, Agnes, Norette, Sandra, Anne, Eliza, and Tara for all of the suggestions. If you would like to join and have some fun, we have plans, we have big plans, so come hang out with us. Monthly pledges begin at one dollar, and you can see all of the tiers and all of the options at patreon.com/SmartBitches. The Patreon community is a group of fabulous human beings, and each pledge helps me (a) keep going and (b) make sure that garlicknitter gets to do transcripts. Hi, garlicknitter! [Hi! – gk] So thank you again for your support.

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All right, let’s get started with this podcast episode: on with my conversation with Julia Whelan!

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Sarah: Are you tired of talking about yourself yet?

Julia Whelan: No worries.

Sarah: Have you, have you – just a little bit?

Julia: Yeah, I’m a little –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: – I’m a little sick of me. Like, I’m always happy to talk about the book. I think it’s the part of, like, the, the press stuff that, you know –

Sarah: Yeah!

Julia: – becomes like, tell us everything about your job and your life, and I’m like, ohhh, no. That’s, that activates like every child actor – [laughs] – baggage, piece of baggage that I have. It’s a fun book to talk about. I have –

Sarah: Oh, for sure!

Julia: – no, no issues with that at all.

Sarah: And I imagine there is some pressure because you are representing your job with the content of your book, although your writing is separate from your job, and so those are sort of overlapping a little bit now!

Julia: You know, I didn’t talk about the book much when I was writing it. Only my really close friends knew that I was, that I was doing this, but once I had kind of, I had a draft and I think I’d gotten an editorial letter, so I think I was, I was in edits, I happened to see a narrator friend of mine, and I was starting to kind of spin out a little bit where I was like, I feel like I’ve got to explain this entire industry to people for the first time, and I’m starting to feel a sense of responsibility to that that is much bigger than, like, the actual scope of this book.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Julia: And she really helped calm me down.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: She was just like, you’re not! Like, it’s not your job. You’re writing a book about this industry and it’s fiction; you’re not required to, like, carry the entire explanation for this job on your shoulders in this one book. And I was just so grate-, it was so nice to hear that from another narrator –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – who wasn’t like, you know, well, what are you doing for the community? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: Are you representing it? So that was, yeah, she, she really talked me off a ledge; it was good.

Sarah: I can just picture her standing with a big fishing rod and just reeling you in. Nonono, you don’t need to –

Julia: Yep! That’s what it felt like!

Sarah: You don’t need to explain the industry.

Julia: That’s – she was like, here, have another margarita –

Sarah: Yeah!

Julia: – calm down.

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: Like, focus on the book; it’ll be fine.

Sarah: Because essentially what you have written is one of my favorite things, which I call competence porn –

Julia: [Laughs]

Sarah: – which is when your characters are super competent at what they do, and it’s a, it’s a pleasure to watch them do their little things expertly, and there is a line in competence porn where it becomes like, and as you know, Bob, the entire history of the audiobook industry began in 1812 –

Julia: Right. [Laughs]

Sarah: – with the invention of the blah-blah-blah. Like, it, it’s really easy to go too far into competence encyclopedia, and it’s hard –

Julia: It is.

Sarah: – to know when to stop!

Julia: Definitely. My, my line for all of that became, does it explain the plot or the characters?

Sarah: Yes.

Julia: I’m not going to shoehorn anything in that does not directly pertain to the story I need to tell, and that was really the dividing line. Because of course there is so much to talk about, and there’s so much to explain, and people have so many questions, but I, I just finally limited it to the scope of the story.

Sarah: Which makes sense!

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: So to back up a minute, congratulations on the release of –

Julia: Thank you!

Sarah: – Thank You for Listening.

Julia: Thank you.

Sarah: What will readers find in this book, in addition to competence porn and audiobook narrators and hot audio narrator inside jokes?

Julia: Yes. They will find a journey of self-acceptance and –

Sarah: I love one of those!

Julia: I, I do too. That’s what I, I felt that, you know, as I was writing it kind of in the midst of the pandemic, it was really, it became a meditation on how we deal with all the things we can’t change.

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: And that was, that was what animated me while I was writing it, so. And they will find, I hope, some very dynamic side characters; fun, bookish content; and it’s very, it’s very self-aware. It’s a book that knows what it is. I hope it’s just, I hope it’s fun. I really do.

Sarah: Well, in my opinion, two is a trend. I’ve long held that if I notice two things then obviously it’s a trend.

Julia: It’s a trend, yep.

Sarah: It’s a, two is a trend. But there are, there are a number of books now that are very self-aware about being books about book people.

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: There’s every iteration of the library/bookshop/café of this character Firstname Lastname, there’s Book Lovers by Emily Henry, and now there’s this one, which is like the audiobook meta. Was there a point where you were writing this or talking about it and you thought of, like, I could just really just call this Really, Really, Really Meta; that’s the name of this book?

Julia: [Laughs]

Sarah: Super Meta!

Julia: Yeah. No, it’s funny; I, I was actually, I was talking with Emily Henry about this on a, on an interview that we did, and, and, you know, that’s one thing that I learned from My Oxford Year is that the response to people loving the poetry, loving the conversations about literature, and it was such a, like, oh-duh moment of, like, book people like books! [Laughs] And so I wanted to kind of do something staying in that bookish space –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – and it’s also because it’s like, in terms of write what you know, it’s not just writing audiobooks, but it’s also writing in the book space, and Emily was saying the same thing: like, so much of our life is in that world, that’s the world we know, and it’s easier to write about. And I think for me, one of the inspirations was, you know, I was – ugh – I mean, I’ve had this idea percolating for like ten years, but I didn’t actually know what the story was until about 2018, and I just didn’t know how far I could push it? Like, how, I, it was like, is this satire? Where’s the line between when this becomes satire versus a very, like, loving send-up –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – of something? And that summer, Emily sent me Beach Read – I guess it was 2019 – she sent me Beach Read to blurb, and I just was like, oh, you just, you paved the path for me. Like –

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: – if people can understand this, two writers writing in different categories and genres and, and what it says about them and what society thinks it says about them, while still being fun? You did it; that’s what I was hoping to do. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve been following the, the Twitter threads and the coverage of the DOJ versus Penguin Random House court case, but –

Julia: A little bit, a little bit, yeah.

Sarah: – there are a few executives who get on the stand and seem to indicate that books just magically happen! We have no idea! They become bestsellers; it’s just –

Julia: Right.

Sarah: – it’s just, it’s completely random! That’s why we’re Random House!

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, that’s –

Julia: That was my favorite. I know, I know; that was incredible. [Laughs]

Sarah: As someone who is also somewhat inside this industry, it’s infuriating, especially because I know all of the people with the box cutters and the Sharpies and the Excel spreadsheets who are actually doing the thing that is called Magic! But it’s not magic –

Julia: Right.

Sarah: – it’s a person with a box cutter and spreadsheets. And one of the temptations, I think, when you write within your world, one that you love so much, is that you are going to be like, okay, so there’s, it’s kind of magic? But it’s also kind of work. Let’s talk about the work –

Julia: Yeah!

Sarah: – part, and part of what I think this book does is de-, demystify the absolute magic of audiobook narration and gives people a real look at how much work it is.

Julia: That’s great! [Laughs] I’m really, I’m happy about that because, I mean, we started out in an industry, I’ve been doing this, you know, thirteen years, and, like, starting out, and, like, people did not know what it was. We were still packing and shipping CDs, you know, printing and shipping –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Julia: – physical product, you know –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Julia: – and I think there’s, like –

Sarah: Cassette tapes.

Julia: – there’s been a – yes! – I think there’s been a, you know, it’s been really interesting to watch this industry grow to, you know, I don’t think people really understood that there were human beings behind these audiobooks –

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: – like, reading them to you. That’s, publishers, I think, have done a very good job of sort of not wanting to give us – [laughs] – credit for that.

Sarah: You don’t say!

Julia: You don’t say! It’s just random, see; it’s magic. No one could know. Who would know why someone would select an audiobook? I really was hoping to demystify that a little bit for people and also just raise the profile of the narrator in the public consciousness if at all possible, while at the same time hopefully just having fun with this ridiculous job – [laughs] – and making people laugh.

Sarah: So how was the process of writing this book, compared to My Oxford Year? Was this easier; was it harder; was it both; was it just a, a fever dream of cocktails and perfection?

Julia: God, I wish –

Sarah: Yeah?

Julia: – except that in the time period in which I was writing it, it was, I mean, I wrote most of it from the summer of 2020 to the spring of 2021 when, like –

Sarah: Oh, so a bleak and dark and terrible time.

Julia: Yes, yeah.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: Just a few things were going on.

Sarah: Just a few.

Julia: And my day job is, you know, I’m obviously recording audiobooks, but part of that recording is recording journalism and news for a longform journalism audio app, and so I was just totally plugged in to every bit of news that was happening during that time, and then trying to write a rom-com –

Sarah: Oh dear!

Julia: – was challenging, so.

Sarah: Ooh.

Julia: But beyond that, I think we talked about in the last, when we chatted about My Oxford Year, I was working with material that had been created and that I’d had a hand in creating, but there was still a story –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – that I was adhering to. But with this one, yeah, when you’re really just the true master of your own domain and you’ve got to figure out how to tell a story, it was challenging. I mean, luckily I’ve written many bad books before –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: – so, like, I’ve had the process of, of writing a totally original concept before, but this one took a while for me to figure out. Like I said, it was really a question of tone. Like, how far was too far? How meta was too meta?

Sarah: Yeah. Yeahyeahyeah.

Julia: Where does it become satire or, like, sort of mean? I didn’t want that, even though, like, emotionally, that’s kind of where I was at that time. [Laughs]

Sarah: I can understand.

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: And also I, I say this to myself all the time: Good news! You’re in charge! Bad news: you’re in charge. [Laughs]

Julia: Exactly.

Sarah: You have to figure it all out. Yep!

Julia: Yep!

Sarah: Been there before.

Julia: Yeah, and it was a, I mean, I think that that’s why, look, just generally I’m, I’m someone who enjoys the editorial process –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Julia: – much more than the drafting process, and so in certain ways that was, My Oxford Year was, like, okay, what needs to be fixed here? What needs to be expanded? What needs to be changed? Not what needs to be, you know –

Sarah: What’s next?

Julia: – created whole cloth out of everything? And that was, that was the, the difference here, but really gratifying, and like I said, this went through so many different iterations over the course of ten years of, like, what have I thought this story could be, and so many things changed that by the time I actually sat down to write it, it’s like I pretty much knew what I wanted to write. But that’s something that only time can give you –

Sarah: Yes.

Julia: – and, like, again, in this kind of rush of this publishing madness of, like, people really wanting a book a year or something, I’m just like, there’s no way. There’s no way! Not the way my brain works, nope!

Sarah: No. I don’t remember who originally suggested this to me, but there’s like a Crockpot in the back of your brain, and you just chuck things in there, and maybe eight hours, eight days, eight weeks, eight months later, a fully formed idea is just like, hello! I’m your dinner tonight. And it just, your, your brain needs to cogitate on things, and sometimes that takes longer than a year!

Julia: It’s so true, and I think that there’s also something about, I don’t ever know what I’m writing? Like, that’s for marketing people to decide, and that’s for the publisher to decide, but, like, for me, I’ve, I’ve got to just really settle into the story and, you know, when I’m doing that, like this whole time I was writing this book, there’s always, like, the secret project you’re, like, cheating on the book with, right –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – and so you’re throwing all of those ideas into the Crockpot –

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: – in the back of your mind. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: ‘Cause your brain is like, what about, what if we focused on this thing that’s, like, only perfect right now because you haven’t actually touched it, as opposed to this dumpster fire that you’re working on right now. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. I want to ask you about the characters, and no spoilers ‘cause I know the book has just come out and when this releases the book is still new, so no, I try not to spoil anything.

Julia: Okay.

Sarah: But your heroine, Sewanee, is very resistant initially to most aspects of romance, both literal and literary, and she’s like –

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: – this whole thing is a crock and I’m not interested. Was that element of her character really fun to write? ‘Cause it seemed like you were drawing on a lot of inspiration, and I was like, oh, I’ve heard that, I’ve heard that, I recognize that person; ooh, yes! I understand all of this!

Julia: Yes, it was.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: It was super, it was super fun, and it was mainly because my editor on this book, who also was the editor on My Oxford Year, is a, predominantly was a romance editor. I say was because she’s now moved on from publishing; more power to her. But I was like, I need you, I need you to do this book with me because I want to make sure that, like, we both bring our collective love for this genre to a book about a woman who doesn’t love it, and I really want us to, like, be constantly checking in with each other: does this make sense? Is this consistent? And I, at one point she just said, you know, look, it’s also her job.

Sarah: Yeah!

Julia: She did it. Like, how, we all, we don’t love our job all the time, and I think that that’s very true. Like, when I would burn out on romance it was because I was recording it –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – just constantly and was like, I can’t take it anymore. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: So –

Sarah: I have found, for me, I switch back and forth between mystery and romance, and I was trying to figure out why does my brain want mystery more than it wants romance, ‘cause romance obviously is the mainstay of my reading? And I realized it was my brain wanting more of a puzzle. I need to not know who did the thing.

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: I, I know how, I know they’re going to end up together, and a lot of the time that’s a very safe place for me to put my anxiety, but I also know that I get tired of that knowledge and need to know more of a, of a mystery. Like, I don’t, I don’t want to know that they’re not going to be together; I don’t want to read a romance and then have them, one of them die. That’s not what I’m looking for –

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: – but I like the question of the mystery when I read a mystery novel: oh, I don’t know who did the thing. I’m going to find out who did the thing, and if I’m reading the clues I might pick it up, but it’s more of a puzzle for my brain, and I think –

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: – for me, I, I totally get that!

Julia: Yeah, and I think part of it too is, like, for her character, it’s not the love story; it’s the guarantee of a Happily Ever After, which she has seen the other side of and just doesn’t feel that that’s realistic –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – and I think that part of what I’ve always found is this, the, the way that romance is treated in popular culture of, like, oh, these women who think this is, you know, this real; they can’t separate fantasy from reality; and it’s like, talk to romance readers.

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: Like, we all get that.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Julia: That is not what the debate is about. [Laughs]

Sarah: Funny enough, when I play a lot of Mario Kart I don’t think I’m a dinosaur driving a go-kart –

Julia: I know!

Sarah: – on the street.

Julia: It’s just, it’s fascinating to me that, like, that’s the – so I didn’t want that to be the –

Sarah: No.

Julia: – the conflict with her. You know, she, she gets it. It’s just this, don’t tell me that the world works this way, because it doesn’t work this way.

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: That, so I did, I have a, yes, I had a lot of fun with that. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, it, it shows your, your awareness of the romance community as a whole and the way that conferences work and the way that gath-, it was, yeah, I was like, oh yeah, mm-hmm? This person understands! [Laughs]

Julia: Yes, yes!

Sarah: There is also a really lovely, lovely friendship between Sewanee and Adaku. Is it Ah-DOCK-oo or Ah-duh-KOO?

Julia: Yeah, Ah-DOCK-oo, yeah.

Sarah: Thank you. And it’s complicated, and it’s difficult, and it’s also really, really familiar, because really good friendships are like that, where you say one thing and you’re also acknowledging that beneath the surface you have some feelings you don’t want to talk about. How did that relationship develop in the process of writing the book? ‘Cause it seems to me from my perspective that that was an absolutely foundational element for you in writing it.

Julia: It was, it was. So, so, so many of the choices that I made in this book of the, the secondary characters were starting from tropes that you often see in this space of, you know, the ailing beloved grandmother; the difficult father; in Adaku’s case, the, you know, sassy Black friend, and I was like, I want to give her a com-, and identity that reflects the friendships that I actually have with people who are also in my industry –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – right. But she is also propping up something that is, has been dragging on them for seven years –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – and, like, that work and that labor has gone completely unrecognized by the main character.

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: The lines of jealousy of professional success, all of those things were things that I was seeing around me with a lot of fellow white actors not recognizing just how unbelievably hard it is to be an actress of color –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – in Hollywood. And so, like, all of the success is incredible, but, like, what did it take to get there, and what did it cost?

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: How much they just take, they would take on all of our insecurities – [laughs] – with their own and, and make it somehow work, and that was just something I wanted to reflect.

Sarah: One of the things that you do in this book obviously is sort of reveal what’s going on in the booth behind the curtain – I assume that’s, I have curtains; you have a booth –

Julia: [Laughs]

Sarah: So what are some of the biggest misconceptions about audiobook narration that you are still facing, that you still encounter as you do press for this book? ‘Cause I know people still think it’s like you walk in, you say the book, and you’re done. Which is not how it is. [Laughs]

Julia: Yeah. Right, I think, I think that’s probably the biggest thing is, like, I still get the question multiple times a day, do you read the book before you record?

Sarah: It seems like a good idea to do so, don’t you think? [Laughs]

Julia: It, it does, it does, but I, you know, I think there’s been some narrators, some narrators don’t, and again, this is all about contextualizing for people that some narrators who have been pretty public saying, like, I don’t like to read the book, I like to – ahead of time – I like to just go in and read it. Like, they are, honestly, usually have support of being, going into a studio with a director who has read the book. They have help in that, and again, that’s just, it’s not judging their process at all, but it just is contextualizing for people that, like, someone in that studio has read the book. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: So for me, who spend, who does most of, ninety-five percent of my work alone, reading to myself without anyone else listening in, that prep work is absolutely essential. Because I don’t want to get to page four hundred and find out that a character that I’ve been voicing all along had an accent I didn’t know they had.

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: Again, it’s just like going into the kind of financial aspects of the industry, but this assumption that if you’re doing the really big books, you know, you’re doing really well, but that’s not the way our industry is structured. We don’t get royalties, so it doesn’t actually essentially matter if I’m doing the huge, A-list, New York Times bestseller books or, or not; it’s still my time in the booth; that’s what it is.

Sarah: And I think that people don’t often realize how many hours go into the single hour of a book.

Julia: Right. For every finished hour – which is how audiobooks are measured – for every finished hour, it’s usually two hours in, in the booth, if you’re very efficient, and then it’s another, for me, like two hours of prep and research, so it’s about a four-to-one ratio –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Julia: – and that’s if I’m, like, very efficient and the book is not overly difficult.

Sarah: Yeah. And there’s, like, not nineteen characters and lots of names to google.

Julia: Yes. So I was doing a Nora Roberts book at one point, and I’d done like five or six hers, and that is such, she is such a legend and such an institution that, you know, for the lot of other authors I’ve got, you know, I have their number and I text them a question when it comes up, but with Nora it’s like I read the book, I compile a list of questions, I send them off to the audio producer, who sends them off to the editor, who sends them off to the agent, who sends it off to Nora, and then like two weeks later it all filters back to me – [laughs] –

Sarah: [Hums] Doot-de-doot-de-doot-de-doot-de-doot-de-doot-de-doo! Yep!

Julia: – and her, her response will just be something like, I don’t remember this character.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: Because –

Sarah: Who?

Julia: – it’s Nora fuckin’ Roberts and she’s seven books –

Sarah: She’s already written nine books since then!

Julia: Right! [Laughs]

Sarah: She wrote a book while she was answering that email. You’re –

Julia: Exactly! So I’m –

Sarah: You’re asking too much!

Julia: So I’m like, okay, I’ll, you know what, I’ll take –

Sarah: Just wing it!

Julia: I’ll, I’ll just, I’ll wing it. I, I got this one. It’s that kind of stuff: tracking people down and, you know, giving everybody an opportunity to speak or forever hold your peace –

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: – ‘cause I’m going in the booth and I’m recording it.

Sarah: Yep. So I read your profile in The New Yorker, which called you the Adele of audiobooks, which first makes me want to know if you’re going to have a residency where you perform audiobooks –

Julia: I wish! That would be great.

Sarah: – like, you perform on stage: and now I’ll be narrating The Wall Street Journal.

Julia: Why not?

Sarah: Right? You mentioned that the pay scale is really, really low, given the popularity of audiobooks, and you mentioned a few minutes ago that –

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: – you don’t get royalties; it’s paid per finished hour, and so a four-to-one ratio means that for one hour of payment you’ve already done four hours of work.

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: Has there been any change or development in that area? Is there any, like, positive news, or is this still part of the, the magical randomness of publishing?

Julia: Yeah, I mean, this is part of what’s, this is part of what’s happening, and this is, you know, what I, I was talking to the journalist about this. This is what, you know, she really latched onto, which is a fair point, which is audiobooks are so unbelievably popular right now –

Sarah: Extremely.

Julia: – and we’re still working on this, this old model. What is very irritating, as a, just to be blunt, but as a, as a person who has been a SAG-AFTRA member since I was nine and has been doing on-camera my entire life and still getting residuals for, you know, work that I did when I was much younger, it’s very disconcerting to be an actor in a field where you don’t get that, and especially in a field – publishing – that already has a royalty structure. It is a royalty-based industry, so on both sides of it it feels unfair to be in publishing and not receiving that and to be an actor not receiving that. Like, I think a lot of stuff is just up in the air. There are narrators now who have, like, massive TikTok following. You know, work – there’s like, the industry had to allow room for celebrities; it didn’t really have that before, and now that it does I think it’s going to have to figure out what it’s doing, while at the same time we have the introduction of AI and I don’t know how much work is actually going to be left for human narrators anyway, so, like, we don’t know. It’s all up in the air. And in reality, like, the costs of audio production for how much it makes, this is an industry that has grown, it grows like twenty percent every year.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Julia: It’s, part of, the only part of publishing that’s actually doing well, so we are not expensive –

Sarah: Nope.

Julia: – for how much this product makes. Okay, I’ll step off my soapbox now.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I was going to say, are you going to run for audiobook narrator union president?

Julia: [Laughs] No. No, we actually started a, some narrators, we’ve, did, did the work and put together an organization now called the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association, and I serve on the board of that, and just trying to create a place that is, because the union is great, and, you know, we, we definitely need the union for the contract side of things, and then the Audio Publishers Association, who, like, host the Audies, and, like, that’s all, they’re wonderful too, but they ultimately represent the producers and the publishers. So, like, for us it was, it was a place that we wanted to create to kind of be able to talk about some of these issues, to help people learn how to do this.

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: You know, if we’re going to have a shot of surviving what’s coming, we really need to be cohesive.

Sarah: I mean, it seems to me that audiobook narration is definitely an example of invisible labor? Like you said, it’s four hours to one if you’re doing real, real well.

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: Otherwise it could be six. I mean, when I’ve, when I’ve started to try to narrate audiobooks, my first, my first recording, my first chapter took me like three hours!

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: And then finished editing, it was like sixteen minutes.

Julia: Right, right! That’s what it is.

Sarah: Hard! It’s hard work!

Julia: Mm-hmm! It is!

Sarah: So what are you working on now? Can you talk about what you’re working on now?

Julia: Okay, so the next book, I don’t, I’m not sure yet, because I’m playing around with a couple of ideas. I actually kind of wanted to see the reception to this book and, you know, that helps me kind of decide where I’m going to aim next.

In the meantime, I have been actually exploring the book that they are recording in the book. The –

Sarah: I love this!

Julia: Yeah, yeah, the – ‘cause I, I’ve had a very chaotic, very, very hectic first part of this year, and so the only thing I could focus on is, I was like, hey, I had to figure out the story, I had to figure out the characters –

Sarah: The work is kind of part done!

Julia: – it’s a romance novel. Like, I can, I can, let me just do a very bad draft of this and see how it turns out, and so I’ve been working on it, and I actually kind of like it, but that said, I make zero promises about what form it takes or how it lives; it might just be audio-only. I don’t know; I don’t know. But I’m considering it kind of book 2.5. [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, I mean, you’ve already basically done a lot of the, the prep work.

Julia: Yeah! Yeah.

Sarah: You’ve done it to get out of those four hours!

Julia: Yes, exactly! Now it’s just getting in the booth!

Sarah: Yeah!

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, you’ve just got to sit down and say all the words! No big deal!

Julia: Yeah. No big deal.

Sarah: That part’s easy! Yeah!

Julia: It’s fine.

Sarah: It’s my, it’s my favorite thing people say about romance is, oh, you know, maybe one weekend I’ll sit down and write one.

Julia: Here’s what kills me about that –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: – and I mean this because it is, again, it’s just, the thing that romance does not get enough credit for is exactly what you were saying earlier, which is we all know how it’s going to end.

Sarah: Yep!

Julia: Do you know how hard it is to make something interesting to a reader when you already, when they already know how it’s going to end?

Sarah: Yup.

Julia: That is, that is skill!

Sarah: That is big skill, absolutely.

Julia: I mean, that is huge, and that’s why I just don’t think, like, obviously the genre doesn’t get enough credit, the writers don’t get enough credit, but, like, to do that, to create that sense of suspense in a reader who essentially knows what’s going to happen? God tier.

Sarah: Yeah, right? It’s no, when, when you are surprised by the end of a romance it’s like, wow, mad skill!

Julia: Yes!

Sarah: That’s my favorite tension, actually, especially when it comes to massively complex worlds or even extremely simplistic versions of modern day life: when I cannot figure out how they’re going to resolve this conflict.

Julia: Yeah!

Sarah: Right, like, if I can’t figure out, okay, well, you are trying to destroy the place and you are trying to protect the place, and you both have, like, zero sum games on your sides, how are you going to resolve this? ‘Cause destruct- –

Julia: Yes!

Sarah: – there’s no partial destruction here. That’s, that’s amazing.

Julia: It is! It is. I, like, that’s – and that is true; that’s the, the, you know, we’ve talked about this before but, like, the English major/lit nerd part of me just is like, on a craft level, just –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Julia: – they blow me away! It’s so great.

Sarah: I, I love reading a book when I finish it and then I go back and read it again. I’m like, all right, now I need to see the scaffolding; how did this work on me?

Julia: Yep.

Sarah: What was the, what worked on me? ‘Cause there’s some books, no matter how many times I reread them, they still work on me.

Julia: You can’t see the trick.

Sarah: Nope! I cannot see –

Julia: Yep.

Sarah: – the scaffolding; I cannot see any of it. I’m just like, yep! You hit me right in the heart a-gain. This is the twelfth time; thank you very much.

[Laughter]

Julia: Right, no, it’s like watching a magic trick, like close-up magic, and you’re just like, I didn’t see again! I knew, I knew I was going to see the ace of spades again, and it, I just don’t know where it came from!

Sarah: How did you do it?

Julia: [Laughs]

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

Julia: You know, this has not been a great period for reading, I’m going to be honest.

Sarah: No, traveling for a book tour is –

Julia: No, and also I’ve got books that I’m prepping to record. But I will, so I have, I am going on vacation soon; it’ll be my first vacation in a good number of years, and I’m very much looking forward to it, and I am taking with me the books that I have not gotten around to yet, which is For Butter or Worse –

Sarah: Oooh!

Julia: – by Erin La Rosa, and, and I have an ARC of Carrie Soto Is Back, and I’ve got Elissa Sussman’s Funny You Should Ask, which I have not gotten to yet either. I can’t wait; you don’t understand. Like, I am, I have, I’m having, like, visualization exercises.

Sarah: So good! You’re going to love it.

Julia: I’m so excited.

Sarah: And I have, I have a book that might work for you, because it’s, like, undoing a lot of things? There is a book coming out that is by Julie Murphy, who wrote Dumplin’, and Sierra Simone.

Julia: Oh, I read that! We have the same publisher. I saw our publicist talking about that book, and I was like, oh, I’m going to need to see that, please, because –

Sarah: A Merry Little Meet Cute?

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: Have you already read it?

Julia: I did. I burned through that one, yes. Yeah.

Sarah: [Squees] Oh my God!

Julia: Because here’s the thing: I was like, I can’t, I could not – again, because I just, I, Sierra Simone’s one of my favorites, and I just was like, I – and so is Julie Murphy, but in totally different ways? And I –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – just was like, I need to see what this unified voice is?

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: Like, this is, I’m not able to understand this in the abstract.

Sarah: Nooo.

Julia: [Laughs] No, it’s incredible. I sent it to, I had them send it, rather, to a friend who is a Hallmark actor –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: – and I was, and I was just like, I was like, you’re going to love this?

Sarah: Speaking of meta, my friend –

Julia: Yes. I was like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Julia: – you’re going to love this; this is the intersection of a lot of your interests. [Laughs] And I was like –

Sarah: That’s exactly it, right?

Julia: – you are going to love this. Yeah.

Sarah: That is exactly it. It is the intersection for everyone who loves subversion and Hallmark movies and wants to see less of the incredible homogenized world of Hallmark movies –

Julia: Yes.

Sarah: – but also wants to acknowledge how homogenous they are. Like, it’s, mwah, perfect.

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: I love it!

Julia: It was, it was incredible, so yes, I did, I did manage to get that in. And then I, I have been, I just finished prepping Allison Winn Scotch’s The Rewind?

Sarah: Ooh!

Julia: Which is super fun, really, like, nostalgia-fueled second-chance thing –

Sarah: Yep.

Julia: – and great. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Sarah: Well, where can people find you if you don’t wish to be found in your booth?

Julia: [Laughs] I am, I think across all platforms, @justjuliawhelan, and I’m mostly active on Instagram and then Twitter, and then I, not really Facebook at all, but I’m experimenting with TikTok, although I just don’t think I ultimately will have the patience –

Sarah: [Laughs] I understand completely.

Julia: – for it, like, yeah.

Sarah: I, I have a very good friend who is very, very good at it, and I’m like, you are amazing; this is so cool. This is not a thing for me.

Julia: It’s a creat-, it’s a level of creative output and, like, being involved enough to be, like, in-joke on the, on the app, where, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: – you can then think of ways to riff on something –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Julia: – that I’m like, this is, that, all of that generative impulse for me goes toward the writing.

Sarah: Yeah.

Julia: Like, I can’t, I don’t have an extra creative pool here.

Sarah: No, I can’t, I can’t bifurcate that either. I, I, I did a recent three-, three-episode series about BookTok specifically, and I realized in the course of that conversation that BookTok is essentially where book nerds and theater nerds reveal both of their sides of themselves.

Julia: Ohhh, yep.

Sarah: It’s like TikTok is the ultimate theater kid form of social media.

Julia: Yesss, that’s good.

Sarah: It’s like theater kids and phones is what it is, and I’m like, wow, as a former theater kid I get it, but I, that, I have put that energy somewhere else. I can’t put it back here.

Julia: Yeah. No, and I mean, I get it. It’s one of those things where, like, look, I, I love, I mean, seeing people be that passionate about things and –

Sarah: It’s so great!

Julia: – that creative. It is, it is truly astonishing, it really is. It’s just I, I can’t.

Sarah: Nope. I can’t either. But I –

Julia: Yeah.

Sarah: – so admire it. I’m never going to shit on TikTok. I think TikTok’s kind of amazing.

Julia: No, it’s unbelievable.

Sarah: It’s so cool.

Julia: It really is, yeah.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you for listening! I know it’s the title of her book, but thank you! Thank you for hanging out with me. I am honored to be part of your day.

Thank you to Julia Whelan and to Julie Paulauski for helping set up this interview, and thank you, garlicknitter, for the fabulous transcript.

I will have links to all of the books that Julia mentioned in the show notes, and I will have links to some of the press coverage as well.

But before I go, as usual, I have a terrible joke. Are you ready? This is a joke specifically for all of the science nerds. This is for you:

Why did no one laugh when the king farted in front of his entire court?

Why did no one laugh when the king farted in front of his entire court?

Because noble gases do not cause reactions.

[Laughs] I can hear you groaning! Thank you to /hotsprings1234 on Reddit for this joke. It’s delightful and I love it! Noble gases!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading, and we’ll 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.

[Laughs] Noble gases!

[mellow music]