543. Recs, Wishes, and Wins with Martin and Cara

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Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Almost Happy New Year, and thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. This is episode number 543 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books; I’m Sarah Wendell; and today I’m being joined by Martin from Norway. He’s going to talk about his wins and wishes for the year and the books that made his year better and why. Then Cara joins us to share what author got her out of a massive reading slump, so settle in for a nice little holiday visit. I hope this lifts your spirits.

Hello and thank you to the Patreon community. If you would like to join the Patreon community, you get to be part of episodes like this one – yay! And there’s bonus episodes, a wonderful Discord, and lots of fun stuff coming in 2023. If that sounds interesting and you would like to support the show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

This episode is brought to you in part by Colorado Country by Diana Palmer. Heads up for anyone who needs some novellas to get you through the holidays. Colorado Country offers two of Palmer’s novellas that were previously only in anthologies with other writers. In The Snow Man and Mistletoe Cowboy, Palmer evokes the majesty of Colorado and introduces you to some memorable characters. Meadow Dawson is struggling to manage the enormous ranch she just inherited, and she and her dog do not start off on the best footing with the person who is most able to help her, her neighbor, Dal Blake. And Katy, a widowed schoolteacher, is starting over with her young daughter on her grandmother’s ranch when a runaway Palomino brings a reclusive horse wrangler to her doorstep. These two stories are filled with the joys of love during Christmastime, perfect for your vacation reading over the holidays. Colorado Country by Diana Palmer is available wherever books are sold. Find out more at kensingtonbooks.com.

And now we’re going to head right into the episode! We’re going to travel to Norway first. On with the podcast with me and Martin and Cara.

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Martin: Hello. I’m Martin, and I am in another part of the world, in Scandinavia, more precisely Norway, more precisely Oslo, where I’ve grown up and spent my entire life.

Sarah: I know that it is getting close to the middle of December. How many hours –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – of daylight do you have right now? Like three?

Martin: [Sighs] I’m not exactly sure; I think four or five.

Sarah: Wow.

Martin: I think they, I think the sun comes up about nine and goes down about three –

Sarah: Wow.

Martin: – so about six hours, that, that is.

Sarah: Wow.

Martin: But it’s not a lot, and it’s not really enough, because my brain tends to go into hibernation?

Sarah: Yes.

Martin: So even, even though my mood is up so I can’t really call it an affective disorder, I’m still cognitively impaired, both now and around midsummer, which has not enough dark time to –

Sarah: Right.

Martin: – satisfy my brain.

Sarah: So your brain is either go, go, go, go, go or I would really like to sleep.

Martin: Yeah, more or less.

Sarah: [Laughs] I mentioned in the, in the Discord that I, I watch a, a YouTuber who lives in, in Svalbard, in Longyearbyen –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – and they have no daylight –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – and I’m like –

Martin: Yeah, I know.

Sarah: – I don’t, I, I would, I would just sleep all the time. I would do nothing.

Martin: Yeah, we –

Sarah: I would be, I would be an A+ champion napper; that’s all I would be able to do.

Martin: Yeah. We have the midnight, we have midnight sun in the mainland of Norway too. Svalbard is actually part of Norway.

Sarah: Yes! I knew, I, I learned that. I think it’s really cool.

Martin: Yeah. But we have midnight sun in, in mainland, mainland Norway as well. I, or, midnight sun and all time midnight, night darker than, what it’s called, dark time – mørketid we say in Norway; dark time?

Sarah: I think, I think it’s, polar night is what –

Martin: Polar night, yeah.

Sarah: – the YouTuber calls it, so I think it’s, I think that’s the term in England, or in English –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – polar, polar night?

Martin: Yeah. I’ve seen the midnight sun, the other side of the coin. I was, was that far north for a, a couple of times some years ago.

Sarah: So what are your holiday wishes for everyone?

Martin: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that because I know that the holiday, holidays are very different for different people and they can be very hard for some people, and because all the things that are hard in life get even hard-, harder when everyone else is, seems to be happy and together.

Sarah: Yes.

Martin: And they can be very nice for other people and the high point of their, of their season. So I have a holiday wish for both of them, and that is, I hope your holiday season will exceed your expectation, expectations, whatever those expectations are and whatever those holidays are.

Sarah: That’s really lovely, and it, you’re right, it4, it can be really hard to be unhappy –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – or feel sad in a season where everyone is like, no, but you must feel happy now!

Martin: Yeah, that’s one thing, and the other thing is the family thing. Like, I have a, good relations with my family. I know that not everyone has that –

Sarah: Not everyone has that.

Martin: – and that’s also tuned up a lot in family season.

Sarah: Yes, that’s very true.

So what was a, what was a book that made you very happy this year?

Martin: Like everyone else, I have a lot of them.

Sarah: That’s fine! I’ve, I, I have, I’m, I’m ready for more than one book, so bring ‘em.

Martin: Yeah. So the one that’s actually published this year is Nona the Ninth, which I suspect I may not be the only one to mention as a book of the year? It’s the third book in the Gideon the Ninth series.

Sarah: Yep!

Martin: And it’s definitely the happiest of those books. Although the darkness is still there, they have a main character who is so much brightness and sunshine that it gives it, puts a, a whole new perspective on the entire series.

Sarah: That’s brilliant!

Martin: And also fills out the very much needed space from all the, all the darkness and all the childhood neglect and all the, all the happiness and connection that some other possessors of the body Nona is currently possessing have been denied. And have you read it?

Sarah: I have not read it; I’m not sure I’m, I am ready for the whole, like – ‘cause there’s so much sadness and, and, and –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – darkness in the series, I’m not entirely sure? I started –

Martin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sarah: – I started to listen to the first one, and I thought –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – the audiobook narrator was amazing.

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: When you, before you read Nona, did you go back and reread Gideon and Harrow?

Martin: I reread Harrow; I’d read Gideon a couple of times already, but I reread Harrow just before.

Sarah: Yeah?

Martin: And that’s really dark and –

Sarah: It’s very dark, yeah.

Martin: – heavy and sad.

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: And Nona is also, has all the darkness, but still it’s viewed through a very bright and kind and loving lens, which I think that the other characters really need and deserve.

Sarah: Yes, I completely agree. Knowing a little bit about the world in the story, without having read it? I also think it was such an interesting choice for the author to immediately follow the darkness and the heaviness of Harrow with, and here is sunshine in a body!

Martin: Yeah. Even though it’s a body that’s experiencing the end of the world –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – it’s, it’s looming doom.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, mortality is like that. [Laughs]

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: So what was a –

Martin: So –

Sarah: Go ahead, tell me your next books.

Martin: Yeah, next books almost happy without exception – I’m looking for the English word here because English isn’t my first language, though it’s a very close second. It’s You Have a Match by Emma Lord –

Sarah: Ooh!

Martin: – from last year, 2021. This the book she wrote after Tweet Cute?

Sarah: Yeah?

Martin: You Have a Match is a bit of the same: it’s teenagers having their teenage issues crossed with their parents having their adult issues and family secrets blowing up and turning everything around. So the start of the story is that the protagonist has a friend group with one, one guy and one, one other girl, who has grown up together, and she, she’s now begins, she’s now beginning to have feelings for the guy, but due to miscommunication the time when she tried to announce that, that feel-, those feelings, everything went very weird and has been very weird since. Because of their bet or something in this friend group, she submits her genetic, genetic sample to a genetic matching –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: – service.

Sarah: Yep.

Martin: And a few days later get a, gets a message from her previously unknown half-sister.

Sarah: Ohhh! Family drama; family secrets.

Martin: Yes. It made me happy because for one thing it’s a, it’s a very lightly written book, and the secret is heavy, and there’s a lot of pain buried there, but they also get to work through that pain?

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: I just really like, like the author, and it was also the first book in a very long time that I really devoured and really read, stayed up late reading, finished in under a week, because I’ve had a slow, slow reading year this year for mostly good reasons, because, it’s because I’ve had other new things in my life, which will be my 2022 win, among other things. But it’s been a slow reading year, and I’ve really been missing that, and being able to devour a book like that was a very nice experience.

Sarah: Isn’t it great when you find a book that just grabs you and –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – you’re just so happy to be reading it? I love that feeling.

Martin: Yeah. And that, that author, Emma Lord, is very good at writing characters you just enjoy spending time with.

Sarah: It’s kind of comforting, I think, to explore the really heavy feelings inside romance, because you know –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – that there’s going to be, it’s going to be okay in the end. So no matter how bleak –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – it is in that moment, you know it’s going to be good by the end of the book.

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: So do you have any additional books you want to tell me about?

Martin: Yeah. [Laughs] The third one is – I’ve just finished for a book club I’m in – is Middlegame from 2019 by Seanan McGuire.

Sarah: Ohhh!

Martin: Which is not romance; it’s science fiction/fantasy. That one is a lot heavier but does have something of – the protagonists end up alive and with some hope of happiness at least. Where a group of alchemists create a pair of twins that embody the forces of math and language, which together make up the fabric of the universe. In order to have these kids on the one hand grow up without going insane from existing in human bodies, but on the other hand grow up and be malleable that the alchemists can use them for their, for their sinister purposes, they are both adopted to different families, and they’re both outsiders in their, as they grow up because they have some cognitive super skills and some cognitive super deficiencies, not unlike neurodivergent diagnosis like ADHD and autism, the latter which I have myself, but then they come telepathically in contact with each other. They tend, they’re kind of doubtful if they’re, they are really talking to another person or an imaginary friend –

Sarah: Right.

Martin: – but they do strike up a friendship with this, with each other. But the world, but the world strive to break up that friendship because the alchemists wants them, the alchemists want them to grow up isolated and apart and find their own abilities on their own premises. And there’s also a CONTENT WARNING: I think that somewhere in the middle of the book there’s a fairly vivid-, vividly described suicide attempt.

Sarah: Ooh. Good to know. Thank you for the heads-up.

Martin: Yeah. Because one in the book club mentioned that she would have liked to be prepared for that.

Sarah: Ohhh, that’s a hard feeling to walk into something like that when you’re reading. Yeah.

Martin: Yeah, yeah. That book made me happy because, as I said, I have a diagnosis myself that make, that gives me an even profile where my, the things I’m very good at and the things I’m very weak at are kind of randomly distributed across my personality. Especially in, in their childhood, I saw very much of myself in how they lived and the sense of isolation they went through from being different and not really understanding themselves.

Sarah: Yeah. That’s a good book club pick.

Martin: Fantasy/science fiction book club.

Sarah: Oooh! So did you read this in English, or did you read this in translation in Norwegian?

Martin: In English.

Sarah: Nice!

Martin: There’s an English book club consists, it was started by ex, English-speaking ex-, ex-pats, and we still have some of those in the group.

Sarah: Oh, that’s very cool!

Martin: So all discussion in the group is in English.

Sarah: Wow. That’s, I mean, I know that a lot of people in Norway speak English extremely well.

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s not as, it’s, certainly I don’t know a lot of people in the US who speak Norwegian –

Martin: [Laughs] No.

Sarah: – but I think it’s really cool to have a book club in your second language.

Martin: Yeah. We start learning English at the age of ten here –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – so we still within the sensitive period for language, which is why I’m saying it’s not my first language, but it’s a close second.

Sarah: Yes.

Martin: Also, my father divorced my mother and married someone from South America. Their, their com-, their language between them was English.

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: So I spoke a bit of English at home too, growing up.

Sarah: Wow. So do you have another book? Or would you like to tell me your win for 2022? What’s next?

Martin: Yeah, my win from, for 2022 is some stuff I’ve already alluded to with the books, because although I have been improving socially over the years, it has really exploded in 2022.

Sarah: That is great!

Martin: Yeah! It is very great. I’m, I wasn’t sure, and still not sure when I thought about talking of it, if, if I’d be able to talk about it without tearing up, because it’s so, it’s so new to me and it means so much to me. From meeting people, meeting up with people maybe one or two times a month, I’m now regularly have meetups one or two times a week.

Sarah: That’s so cool!

Martin: From having a handful of friends, three or four people I met regularly, which means a few times a year, each of them, and I, which I’ve known for ten or more years, I now have start, three or four new people I’ve started, I’ve got to know over either this year or the past few couple of years.

Sarah: It is really hard to make friends –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – as an adult.

Martin: Yeah. People say that, but I’ve had a hard time, time making friends in most all stages –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – of life, really. I did have friends in child, in earlier school and high school. I did have people I hung out with in high school. I was very socially, I made myself very socially visible?

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Martin: I was kind of a walking absurdist performance project.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Martin: Which made me the center of a lot of social attention, but not necessarily in a very, in a way where I could be very vulnerable –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: – or relaxed.

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: I did start up a science fiction club there that is still around for more than twenty-five years later, which I’m – in high school – which I’m kind of proud of.

Sarah: That is really cool! That is really cool!

Martin: And they’re now, their, their members now consist about half the population of the high school.

Sarah: Wow!

Martin: So.

Sarah: What a cool legacy! Nice job!

Martin: Yeah. So I haven’t exactly been anonymously hiding away for my earlier life, but to have, to be engaged, engaged with people, and also engaging with communities, including your, our Dis-community?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Martin: The Patreon community and the book club. I also found a writers’ community on, on Discord with a coup-, with a few others of the Norwegian SF/fantasy writers or aspiring writers. I belong mostly to the latter category, though I have published a role-playing game some time ago.

Sarah: That’s amazing! Congratulations!

Martin: Thanks.

Sarah: That’s a big win!

Martin: Yeah, it’s a very big win. As my skill set is somewhat lopsided, that means that some of the skills that goes, go into establishing and maintaining relationships –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – are not my strong suits.

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: But it also means that I have some skills that I can work to be really good at. I’ve also learned in therapy and now in, through introspection, I’ve learned a lot about both understanding my own boundaries, understanding my own signals, understanding other people’s boundaries, encouraging and making room for people to be open and care about their boundaries –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – which makes many of the scary things about initiating contact with either will be slammed being in an unpredictable situation or will I be bothering someone else when I know that I have the ability to communicate about limitations and boundaries and encourage others to –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – those things aren’t really scary anymore.

Sarah: Wow. That’s really good advice, too! That’s really thoughtful advice.

Martin: [Laughs] Yeah. I’ve spent the last ten years of my life thinking mostly about this, so.

Sarah: Wow. So you’re, you’re like expert level now.

Martin: In a way. It’s kind of, you know, when you are, when I’m born with less innate ability, but have the ability to learn?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: That has also made me a lot more conscious about those things.

Sarah: Makes total sense. Thank you so much for doing this. It’s been a real pleasure –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – to talk to you!

Martin: Yeah. I’ve been listening to and a fan of the podcast for quite a lot of years now. It’s been my entry into romance space, because I knew nothing about it. I just know that this is something, this is something that sounds interesting, and it’s, so – I, I am interested in other genres. I’ve noticed the similarities between different genres when it comes to the communities, when it comes to genre expectations, when it comes to –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – trope awareness and stuff like that?

Sarah: Yep.

Martin: So I started listening; I found, found your podcast and started listening to it I think in 2016 or ’17 or something?

Sarah: Wow, that is a long time!

Martin: I’ve been happy to have the conversation with you, to be able to contribute to the podcast.

Sarah: Thank you. Tusen takk! Did I say that right?

Martin: Very, yeah! Very good. Bare hyggelig.

Sarah: Ah! [Laughs]

Martin: Which means it’s, it’s may – literally it’s translated, bare means, means just or only, and hyggelig means nice or pleasurable or cozy. So bare hyggelig means it’s been nothing but a pleasure.

Sarah: Oh, I love this! Thank you!

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: And thank you so much for being part of the end-of-the-year podcasts. I, I’m –

Martin: Yeah!

Sarah: – so excited to have you be part of the, part of these episodes.

Martin: Yeah, it’s such a, it’s a very nice concept to have the listeners –

Sarah: Yes.

Martin: – speak to each other.

Sarah: And everybody has books they want to talk to about, talk to me about –

Martin: Yeah!

Sarah: – which is, like, the best. It’s just the best thing.

Martin: Yeah! Yeah!

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Cara: All right. My name is Cara. I am a cataloguing librarian for a small public library in North Carolina. I am basically your knitting cat lady librarian stereotype, except I also do aerial silks and circus things for funsies.

Sarah: Ooh! Very cool! How long have you been into aerial silks? That’s so cool!

Cara: Four and a half years-ish? It was definitely a kind of, oh, I’m finishing up grad school and I have time for hobbies, maybe. Can I haz hobbies? And I had a friend who was performing in her student showcase – most of us have a gateway friend who dragged us to a showcase, and here we are four and a half years later!

Sarah: That’s so awesome. It looks like a lot of fun, and yes, hell yes, hobbies.

Cara: Yes, absolutely.

Sarah: So what are your holiday wishes for everyone?

Cara: Okay, so this is an oddly specific wish, but my wish for all of us is that we all have living spaces and work spaces that work for us and our brains. One of the adventures of this year has been trying to let go of kind of the shitty internalized why-can’t-you-just-whatever-whatever-whatever that, like, especially those of us who are some flavor of neurodivergent probably have internalized a lot of, and so just trying to rework what I have control over in my bookshelves, my craft storage, my work room at the library where I work, to set myself up to be less stressed in those spaces? And so I hope that we all can make spaces that work for us and whatever our brains need and that we can all tell, you know, why-can’t-you-just to go fuck itself!

Sarah: Yes. I completely agree. Being in a space that works with your brain and coming up with just man-, ways of managing your work that work with your brain and don’t add to your anxiety is so important!

Cara: Yes, it’s, it’s a work in progress, but it’s getting better.

Sarah: That’s wonderful! And I, I know exactly what you mean about why-can’t-you-just. Like –

Cara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – well, everyone can do this; why can’t you do this? All right, well, you know what, numbers? Never going to be my thing. Just not –

Cara: Yeah.

Sarah: – going to be my thing?

Cara: Yeah!

Sarah: That’s okay?

Cara: Yep.

Sarah: And accepting how you can use your space to be yourself is, is grade A, top, excellent holiday wish. I love that!

Cara: Yes.

Sarah: So what book or books rocked your brain this year? And it can be more than one, ‘cause pretty much everyone has brought more than one, so if you couldn’t narrow it down, that’s fine. I know as a librarian that’s an occupational hazard.

Cara: It’s true, and I’ve heard plenty of other listeners who have called in. I’m like, great, we’ve already taken care of, no one, no one expects us to actually have one. So I have a book and then an author that I’m going to squeal about a little bit. I’ll start with the author: I’m a little late to the bus, but I discovered K. J. Charles this year.

Sarah: Oh! What an awesome discovery!

Cara: Yes! And K. J. Charles has dragged me out of so many reading slumps. This year I was looking at my stats earlier today, and by a mile and a half, my most-read author of the year –

Sarah: That’s so great!

Cara: – is K. J. Charles. Every – it has been a weird reading year; it has been a very reading-slump-y year. I look at my reading stats, and it’s a rollercoaster of yep, we’re doing great; we’re reading books! Nope; something just happened, ‘kay; we’re not going to read for a month. Great, okay, we’re reading books! And there’s a cliff. And almost every time – the Will Darling series pulled me out of three different reading slumps. The, I started the Spectred Isle series; I finished the Magpie Lord last night. K. J. Charles has just been dragging my butt out of reading slump after reading slump, and I’m very grateful to the couple of different library coworkers who have shoved her at me at different times and like, I think you would like this. So yes. In general, if you have not yet discovered K. J. Charles, it is never too late.

Sarah: Do you have a recommendation of where, where best to start with her books?

Cara: I did start with the Will Darling series, and I feel like that was a good introduction. I would be careful about – the only thing that I would maybe be wary of starting with, the Magpie Lord was darker than many of the others. There is, in all of them, various quantities of darker content, whether that’s violence and murder and blood and people being horrible, and there’s always some of that. These are not light and fluffy by any stretch. The Magpie Lord was darker and harder – I, I was surprised that it started where it did with a very much on-the-page suicide attempt. That was a darker one. I would be wary if you’re going in if that’s your first one.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Cara: I loved starting with the Will Darling series. It was a three-book series; it, at least when I read it, was on Hoopla, so if your library has Hoopla –

Sarah: It is still in Hoopla, yep!

Cara: A good intro to kind of the, for me, at least, of the kind of flavor of, we’re doing action and adventure and some crime elements and also lots of boning, and also, whether it’s a single book or a multi-book series, we’re going to be following some characters as their relationship grows and develops over multiple books and not necessarily a one-and-done.

Sarah: K. J. Charles’s worldbuilding is also really –

Cara: Really fascinating.

Sarah: – really good.

Cara: Yes.

Sarah: And if you, if you add magic to a specific time period, it’s going to affect so many things, and you can tell how much thought has gone into that influence.

Cara: Yes! And as you work, and in the books that are series, too, each one, you get to see a little bit more of the world or a little bit different aspect of the world and how the magic works –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Cara: – in that. It has –

Sarah: Absolutely.

Cara: It has dragged me out of my reading slumps over and over and over and over.

Sarah: That’s fantastic! And it’s good to know who you, who your sort of in-case-of-emergency-break-glass authors are.

Cara: Yes. Find the next one.

Kind of related, while we’re on the topic of books with really interesting magic systems kind of integrated, the other book that rocked my world, and it has won a bajillion and a half awards in the last year or so: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark. It is, it came out in 2021. It takes place in a 1912 steampunk version of Cairo where forty years prior a mystic named al-Jahiz opened the veil between the magical world and the mortal world and then disappeared, and so there’s this really rich, interesting historical fantasy world where humans and djinn and other magical beings are all living together and interacting in just this very richly realized world that’s also addressing things, you know, addressing topics of gender and class and race in really interesting ways. And so it is primarily a mystery: we open with a very dramatic murder of a brotherhood of rich Englishmen – many of whom kind of did have it coming, but, you know – by someone who claims to be this mystic returned, whom no one has seen in forty years. And so our main character Fatma is an investigator for the ministry – I’m going to beef the name of the organization, but it’s the ministry that investigates magic, crimes that involve magic. When there are untoward things going on involving magic, this is the, the ministry that investigates them, and so she is called in to investigate this mystery of who is this person who is stirring up all of this unrest claiming to be al-Jahiz returned, you know, to condemn the ills of modern society, etc., etc.? We have this, this mystery unfolding in this very richly realized world; we also have a Sapphic romance subplot with a character who has shown up in this world at other times. We have a little bit of a, you know, grumble, grumble, grumble, I work alone and I’ve just been assigned a partner and I’m having feelings about it.

Sarah: Ugh!

Cara: And a detective dynamic with Fatma; she wears just impeccable suits. So, you know, come for the mystery; stay for, you know, the description of Fatma’s suits and the fashion. But just a heck of a mystery and just a really fascinating world to swim around in and think through. And the author has just really done a tremendous job thinking through, what might this world look like if different magical beings and humans and all of the race and class and gender dynamics of the time were all swirling around together, and what might that world look like? A great read. Lots of fun.

Sarah: So there seems to be a magical theme to your recommendations.

Cara: Yes. I got going, I got talking about K. J. Charles and then said, you know what? Hmm. There seems to be a pattern. Yeah, really interestingly realized –

Sarah: Yeah.

Cara: – magical worlds and people swimming around in them.

Sarah: Absolutely! I mean, for me, it’s been historical mysteries.

Cara: Right.

Sarah: Right, you know, which is restoration of justice and order in a setting that isn’t right now. And –

Cara: Hmm!

Sarah: – magical historicals sort of fall into that as well. A lot of the magical historicals that have, even with the ones that have heavy, heavy romance plots, they’re also, also often about restoration of justice.

So what was a win for you in 2022?

Cara: My win for 2022 is that I started hand balancing training –

Sarah: Oooh!

Cara: – a couple of months ago. I’ve done circus-y stuff for a few years. I got to try flying trapeze this year when I was up in DC, but I have had just a very intense fear of handstand things for a long time. Some of that is not entirely irrational: the floor’s a long way down. You know, there’s a little bit of, well, that one time I tried it and things went poorly, and I – you know. But I’ve had a very strong fear of that, but I’m, I’m trying to do hard things, so I started hand balancing training a couple months ago, have done a couple of private lessons with a coach at my studio who’s doing a really great job striking a balance of, I want to nudge you to challenge your fears, and also, if you tell me that that thing is a hard no, that’s a hard no; I’m not going to force you. Striking a really good balance, but I kicked up into a handstand with a spotter, but she’s there to catch my legs.

Sarah: Right.

Cara: But I – [indistinct] – to a spotter for the first time a couple weeks ago, and that was a really big win.

Sarah: That’s so cool! Congratulations!

Cara: I am, I am trying to do hard things. [Laughs]

Sarah: I think that’s fantastic! And also scary; I agree with you; the floor is a long way down and gravity is a –

Cara: Yes!

Sarah: It’s –

Cara: Gravity doesn’t care about your head! Like –

Sarah: No! Gravity, gravity doesn’t care! I think that’s very, very cool! Doing scary things! That’s awesome!

Cara: So that’s another, you know, little bit of another holiday wish: may we all maybe try a scary thing.

Sarah: Try a scary thing.

Cara: That feels, that feels within reach.

Sarah: Ooh, I like that.

Cara: Yeah.

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this!

Cara: You’re so welcome! This is super fun.

Sarah: Thank you! I, I, I love doing these, and I love how much people enjoy listening to them, so thank you for adding to the, the lovely audio hug of episodes this, this season. Thank you.

Cara: I love that. I love – it is an audio hug; that’s a great way to put it.

Sarah: It is, and the people who listen to this show are some of the nicest humans, so it’s really a pleasure to meet everybody, so thank you so much!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode and the last episode of 2022! Holy cow! Thank you for being part of the podcast. It is an honor to keep you company. Thank you to Cara and to Martin for joining me from far, far away or not too far away. And thank you most of all for listening. It really is a pleasure to make this show.

I always end with a bad joke; this week is no different, and Martin is the one who sent us this joke. He is very active with the very finest bad jokes in the Discord; it’s delightful. All right, you ready?

What branch of the military is best suited for an octopus?

Give up? What branch of the military is best suited for an octopus?

The arm-y!

[Laughs] Thank you, Martin! Oh, I love these bad jokes so much!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you a wonderful weekend and a very happy and safe new year. We will be back in 2023 with more mayhem, but until then, thank you for being part of the podcast.

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

[end of pretty festive music]