567. Historical Research and Ill Mannered Ladies with Alison Goodman

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 567 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today my guest is Alison Goodman. Her new book, The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies is out this week, and you are definitely going to want to read the book and also listen to the episode, which I’m presuming you’re going to do ‘cause you’re already here! Hi. So we’re going to talk about her book, but also about writing female-forward action scenes, which is one of my new favorite things to find in romances. We also talk about her recently completed doctorate, which was in historical fiction research methodology. So, you know, come for the Regency spinsters; stay for the deep dive into research! This is a very fun conversation, and it’s fitting, ‘cause this is a very fun book.

I want to say a very special thank-you to Yazmine, who is the publicist who made this happen. Yazmine, your pitch was truly diabolical.

Hello and thank you to our Patreon community. Hi, folks! If you are a member of the Patreon, well, thank you! You’re supporting the show, you’re keeping me going, and you’re making sure that every episode has a tasty, tasty transcript hand-compiled by garlicknitter. Hi, garlicknitter! [Hi! Love making tasty transcripts, thanks! – gk]

I have a compliment this week, which makes me so happy!

To Kimberly K: There are currently four different creative projects in progress that were inspired by your kindness and your friendly nature.

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Okay, are you ready for this interview with benevolent, ill-mannered ladies? Let’s do this: on with the podcast.

[music]

Alison Goodman: My name is Alison Goodman. I’m the author of eight books so far. My latest is The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies, which is out 30th of May, but I’m also the author of The Dark Days Club trilogy, which I like to call, ooh, Pride and Prejudice meets Buffy?

Sarah: All right.

Alison: And – [laughs] – yeah, yeah. And also Eon and Eona, which were, were a New York Times bestselling duology, and it’s kind of a cross-genre. So I like to write many genres; I like to mash them. I’m from Australia. I have just finished my doctorate.

Sarah: Oh, hey! Congratulations! Hot diggety!

Alison: Thank you very much! Yeah, I’m Doctor Al now, and – [laughs] – that was in historical fiction research methodology.

Sarah: Oh!

Alison: Yeah, so that’s my kind of specialty. And yeah, I will travel a long way for a good afternoon tea.

Sarah: I believe it! Okay, now I have so many things to ask.

I want to start by asking you about The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies, and I have to tell you that your publicist Yazmine emailed me back in January when the ARCs and the digital galleys became available and said, I am thrilled to share that this spring Alison Goodman makes her Berkley debut with an action-packed, fiercely feminist, historical mystery series with high society spinsters who use invisibility as an old maid to solve mysteries and protect other women in Regency London.

Alison: [Laughs] Yep!

Sarah: To which I replied, Listen. Listen, I have a to-do list. I have things I need to do, Yazmine, and then you send me email like this, and I’m like, Well, I don’t think anything on my to-do list is all that important right now. Holy cow, you really do like to combine genres! I was –

Alison: Yes, I do. I do.

Sarah: I was telling my husband when I was getting dressed this morning about the interview, and he’s like, Oh, tell me about the book! And I was telling him. He goes, Wow, that’s your catnip, huh? Like, yeah. Yes, it is!

Alison: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, it is! [Laughs] So how do you describe this book? I realize I’ve given Yazmine’s pitch, but is that pretty, in your opinion, a pretty accurate description of what’s going on here? I mean, how many genres did you combine?

Alison: Yeah, look, I, I, I think of it as a serious romp. So there’s, there’s kind of feminist themes, but they are intertwined into adventure and mystery and, and, and, you know, and humor as well. So I was trying to kind of write my own catnip –

Sarah: Yeah!

Alison: – [laughs] – in that sense, you know. It was kind of like I wanted to, yeah, I love the Regency era; it’s one of my favorite historical periods. I think of it as like the 1960s of the early 19th century ‘cause it was such an action-packed, yeah, ten years, really, or just short of ten years. And I do like to mash genres and, and it’s got the kind of – what would you call it? – it’s got the adventure that I crave; it’s got that kind of female – and, and actually I’ve been, it’s been called female-forward action scenes, which was kind of like surprising to me, ‘cause I’d never heard that term before, but, you know, it’s where the, the, the female protagonists are driving, driving the entire story.

Sarah: Which I think is a sort of a new, a new and emerging trend in fiction? I’ve seen it in contemporaries; I’ve seen it now in historicals. I am entirely all for it.

Alison: Mm, mm, yeah.

Sarah: Because, I mean, let’s be honest, women who are dismissed as too old to be valuable are the ones who actually get things done.

Alison: Absolutely! Well, I wanted to be able to use that, that kind of old maid – and I put those in inverted commas – ‘old maid’ invisibility, that so-called invisibility, that kind of ability to just be dismissed, to be able to, to slide through the, that kind of, the cracks –

Sarah: Yeah!

Alison: – of what everyone else is doing and saying, Well, this is, you know, we’re going to pull other women out of perilous situations, and that’s what Lady Augusta Colebrook and her sister Lady Julia Colebrook do in the novel.

Sarah: One of the things that I really like about this book – and when I do an interview I try very hard not to spoil, so if I give any examples it’s always in the first two chapters – one of the things that I like about this book is that it has a lot of unique characters, but it also has a very unique story structure. There’s like a, it’s almost like three acts? There’s three cases that they take on with an overarching story. What led you to that structure for this book? Was that also character-driven?

Alison: Well, it’s interesting because I, the first two stories were part of my Ph.D. thesis.

Sarah: Oh, wow, really!

Alison: Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to, to challenge myself to write novellas –

Sarah: Right.

Alison: – that were complete, but also linked. And then with the, when I wanted to think, when I was thinking, well, novellas, although they are a fantastic form, they are not quite marketable yet in today’s publishing world. So when I put forward the, the project, it was suggested that I write another novella to make a novel –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – and, and – I mean, it’s a, it’s a great structure; I really enjoyed the structure, but it’s, it’s, it had a lot of headaches associated with it because the overarch- –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – [laughs] – the overarch has to feel like a novel structure, but each novella has to have its own structure within that.

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: So that got kind of like, you know, three separate structures and then an over-structure, which, you know, was, was quite a challenge to handle, but I, I loved it, I loved that challenge. So that’s why it has that structure. Look, I’m not, I’m not going to, you know, obfuscate, either. You know, it falls into three very nice television – [laughs] – structures as well. Hello, out there! But, you know, it’s –

Sarah: Hey.

Alison: Yeah, it’s –

Sarah: Speak it into being! Speak it into existence!

Alison: Yeah, yeah, yeah…

Sarah: It’s ready for adaptation, Hollywood!

Alison: [Laughs] And interestingly, the, the follow-up, I’ve decided to again change it up.

Sarah: Yeah?

Alison: Just to make things more difficult for myself. I’m only doing two larger novellas that, to create the over-, with the overarch as well, so it’s kind of like just trying to challenge myself, but also create that kind of pace.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. And also it’s, it’s a bit of a kind of tip-the-hat at the Conan Doyle –

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: – structures, as well.

Sarah: Yes. Absolutely. And it, and it allows for the immediate peril to be addressed in a way – I’m trying to avoid spoilers – it, it allows for the immediate peril of the situation that they’re dealing with to be addressed in a cohesive way that doesn’t drag out, where you’re not, like, anxious for these people for too long, but then it leaves enough –

Alison: Hm.

Sarah: – undone that you’re like, Okay, but what about that part?

Alison: Absolutely! If you, if you lose the emotional through line, I think you’d lose the book –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – because really we’re on an emotional, we’re on an emotional journey. Yes, there’s fun and games, and there’s lots of, you know, action, and there’s, you know, blunderbusses and all that kind of stuff, but it’s all about the emotional through lines of each of those characters, those main characters. And we have, it’s an ens-, well, it’s ostensibly a Gus historic, but there, it’s almost an ensemble as well, because we have some, some other very important characters as well.

Sarah: Yes. Now –

Alison: And I call, I call, I call Gus – Lady Augusta is Gus; sorry –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: So yeah. Mm.

Sarah: Now, you, along with Gus and Julia, are tackling ageism in the Regency era, which is something that is, alas, still with us.

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: How did ageism function in that time, beyond the spinster level?

Alison: Yeah, look, you know, it’s, it was a, it’s a lot more overt.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: I mean, we have it very much in our society as well –

Sarah: Oh, just a bit.

Alison: – but it was, yeah, it was really, you know, women had a specific role, and this, we’re talking about middling, what you’d call the middling to upper classes. You know, lower class women were working; they were scratching, scraping out a living, you know –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alison: – but the middling to upper class Regency woman was expected to marry, she’s expected to produce children, and then she was expected to slide off into the background to become a grandmother, a dowager, and to step aside for the, for the younger generation. And any other options were very limited: it was, you became a governess; you became a burden on your family. [Laughs]

Sarah: You became a lady’s companion.

Alison: Or a lady’s companion, a paid companion, and those were really the, the only options, really, for someone who was ‘respectable’ – I put, again, that in inverted commas, because the idea of women working was anathema.

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: And it, it, it really limited, obviously it limited a woman’s ability to, to create a livelihood for herself.

Sarah: Yes. And for her to work would be a violation of class.

Alison: Yeah, it would be a violation of class, and, and if anything, if anything, you know, England at that time – and I won’t, I won’t go on to the next bit of that, but in England at the time was, is a, is a class, it was an island of class, you know; it was –

Sarah: I think it still is!

Alison: Yeah, yeah, I was going to say that.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I think, I think it’s still alive and well!

Alison: It’s very much there, you know, and, and they’ll end, be very important ‘cause I think that both Australian and American societies are very much, we take social mobility for granted.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: There was no social mobility, you know. You were given your place in society by God, and that’s where you stayed –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – in the early 19th century. That was the belief.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: And to actually be, move beyond that was to go against God, so you can see that the end, yeah, you can see that there were many, many constrictions on people moving beyond where they were.

Sarah: Yeah. And that’s a, that’s something that affects Gus in the story: she is also harboring a, a, a crisis of faith because she doesn’t necessarily believe in a benevolent, caring god anymore, even though that, that religious element to their class is very present and requires, you know, go to church, be seen, be social. The church element of, of class in society is very much present in her life, and she feels very ill-fitting there too, which is really heartbreaking to read.

Alison: Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s interesting because when I’m, when I look for the threads of, of character – because writing a, an early-19th-century woman, the mindset probably is so far from our own now because of just the way society has, has developed and history affects us, and even just the way that we are nourished, really, because we are, we, we live longer, we have other expectations in, in the world, so trying to get into that, that early-19th-century mindset, I, I follow threads, because I want my characters to be accessible to my modern reader –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alison: – but still have that authenticity.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alison: So when I was thinking about Gus’s apostasy I thought, Well, is that reasonable? Is that feasible for me to write that character? Because I wanted her to be an outsider to a certain degree, because the outsider has a, has a more objective look, if you like, of, of her, of her own society.

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: And what I found, of course, was that atheism was on the rise then, and in fact Shelley, the poet, was expelled from university in 1811 for writing about atheism.

Sarah: Yikes!

Alison: Yes! So those are the kind of threads that I look for so that I can get those kind of modern, modern ideas and modern thoughts and modern values into, into my characters who are, are based in the early 19th century.

Sarah: Oh, that’s really interesting!

Lara, who reviews for me – to add yet another continent, Lara is in South Africa, so we’re going to try to involve people from every continent in this, in this podcast –

Alison: [Laughs]

Sarah: Lara read this and has reviewed it and absolutely adored it. She adored this book. It, it just absolutely lifted her, her whole month, and she wanted me to ask about Gus and Julia’s brother, because he is sort of cast as their foil. He’s the voice of society around them telling them, you know, everything you’re doing is inappropriate and wrong, and you should stop. Why would you, why did you choose a family member for this role and not someone outside the family?

Alison: I did this because there’s, there’s a – it’s a really good question, so thank you, Lara. That, I mean, and thank you very much for, for, for, yeah, liking my book so much; it’s lovely. [Laughs] But I did that because they are obliged to listen to him by the precepts of that society. He is the head of their family –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alison: – because he is male; he is the heir to their father’s estate –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – and so, and he’s also, familial bonds were very important.

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: Connections, family connections were extremely important. So I felt that, you know, he, he has to be someone, what, what was needed was someone who they had to listen to, even though they didn’t want to listen to, and even though, I mean, Gus had some very strong views about her brother? [Laughs]

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Just a few!

Alison: Yep. Even if, even if they do have those views, they are obliged to receive him…

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: So that was part of it, but also just to see the inequity in that family –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – that was set down by law –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – and, and also the dynamics of, of, of a woman in a, in a family who was more suited to, to the role that her brother has, has taken –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – and how that affects her as, in her, in her character.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Alison: What…that does to her. So, you know, and enough, you know, I’ve, I’ve always had a lot of fun with Duffy. That’s their, their brother, Duffy. He, he’s a, he’s a fun character to write, and he is representative, I think, of all the pomposity.

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: [Laughs]

Sarah: Takes himself extremely seriously.

Alison: Oh yes, he’s, he is certain!

Sarah: Now, I want to ask you more, if you don’t mind, about your, about your Ph.D., and you said you, your Ph.D. is in the methodology of research for historical fiction? Is that right?

Alison: Yeah! Yeah, I, I zeroed in on a particular kind of historical fiction research, which is, I call it kines-, kinesthetic research, but people can also call it immersion and things like that? And, or walking the ground, that’s another way of –

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: – talking about it. So it’s, it’s about going to the, the contemporary site –

Sarah: Right.

Alison: – of your historical setting and literally walking around! And trying to absorb the sensory information and the spatial information and also the emotional and political senses of, of a space, because every space that we go into has these layers in them.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Alison: And, you know, just in walking down the street, there are, are ways of, of walking, you know, that would have been different in those days. A woman would never have been on the outside of a footpath.

Sarah: Right.

Alison: A man would always walk to protect her from the splashes from the horses and the carriages and –

Sarah: Right.

Alison: – things like that. There were spaces that women were not allowed to go, you know, and that was things like St. James’s, there’s a St. James’s Street I think it’s called, or – but that’s where all the men’s clubs were –

Sarah: Right.

Alison: – at that time. And to be seen going into that area was to be wanton.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: Brazen.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: I did my research –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – or most of it, and then COVID hit.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alison: And suddenly, the assumption that I’d made for my Ph.D. was that one can always travel; one can always travel internationally or domestically. Shut down, it was just no!

Sarah: Nope!

Alison: This is, this is a privilege! This is a huge privilege.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alison: And so I had, I needed to work that into my thesis about how, how this – I mean, the research itself is privilege because, you know, there’s a certain amount of ableism in there. You know, there’s a lot of financial outlay. There’s also a confidence outlay as well, in the sense that, you know, if you, if you are starting out as a writer, you may not feel confident enough to go up to people and ask for information and things like that, so there’s a whole lot of areas that I needed to address that, that COVID brought home to me.

Sarah: Wow.

Alison: Yeah! And, and I was able to also interview a number of historical fiction authors about – ‘cause they, the people who use this methodology, why they use it when that, when there’s a plethora of internet resources the people can just use, like Google Maps and things like that!

Sarah: Right.

Alison: So yeah, there’s this kind of, it’s also a respect aspect –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – to the methodology, an honoring of the past and of the people of the past?

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: So yeah, so it, it was a, I, I, I mean I know that a lot of people, you know, are, are often kind of, have a horrific time during a Ph.D.? I had a ball!

[Laughter]

Alison: …my Ph.D. Yeah, and yeah, it was, it was, yeah, even though I was in lockdown – Melbourne, where I live, had one of the longest lockdowns –

Sarah: Oh! It was long and it was intense! I have friends in Melbourne, and it was –

Alison: Yeah, it was very intense.

Sarah: It was –

Alison: Yeah.

Sarah: It was no joke!

Alison: Yeah, it was intense. But you know, here I, there I was, paddling around happily in my, in my Regency novel and my research. [Laughs] So, you know, I was, I, yeah, that, that time was, although intense in many different ways, it was also an intense creative period for me as well, so.

Sarah: And a wonderful escape, too!

Alison: Yeah, it was; yeah, yeah, and, and I, I managed to get most of my research done, and what I didn’t, I was able to use as a, a counterpoint. What happens when you can’t get to the place that you wanted to walk the ground? How does that affect your writing? So yeah, it was, it was great!

Sarah: So how did you manage that? I mean, I know with, with Google Maps you can, like, land yourself in a, in a virtual area and walk down a street? But –

Alison: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: But you’re also writing about things that don’t exist anymore! Like there are, correct me if I’m wrong, but there are no – thinking of an early example in the book – Vauxhall Gardens doesn’t have any remnants of itself, does it? Is there anything left of it?

Alison: Interestingly, there is a park where some of Vauxhall Gardens was. So Vauxhall Gardens was a great pleasure garden.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: It was quite large, and where Vauxhall Gardens now sits, I believe MI5’s there – [laughs] – the building. I hear that kind of stuff. You know, why not?

Sarah: Story checks out. Why not?

Alison: Yeah, yeah, why not, why not?

Sarah: It was a lot of things going on under cover of darkness; it fits! [Laughs]

Alison: Yeah, yeah. Yeah! They, they just slid in there, yeah! [Laughs] Yeah, the, the most non-secret headquarters in the world, you know.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: But the, the Vauxhall Gardens area does have a park, but they’ve also rebuilt the orchestra tower.

Sarah: Oh! I didn’t know that! That’s cool!

Alison: Yeah. Yeah, yeah!  So you sort of get a feel for the kind of, you know, that’s what you go, that’s what walking the ground or kinesthetic research is about. It’s about casting your mind and, through your character. So that’s the main thing is you are casting through a, a character so that is like an embodied character in that space.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: So I, I would walk that, that area thinking, How would Gus walk in this area? Yeah, and she’s considerably taller than I am. What does that mean? She’s, she can’t go here, but she can go there. What would she be thinking? Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: So those are the things…running through your mind, and it’s quite a, a quite intense experience, but yeah, very useful. Hm.

Sarah: That’s fascinating! So what did you do to do your research with COVID and not being able to travel? What were some methods you used?

Alison: Yeah, look, you know, it’s, it, it goes back to books.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: Books, books, books. Looking at, at pictures, maybe finding someone who’s there on the ground who can do things for you. I, I did feel that I was, I had to work a lot harder to get the descriptions –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – for those areas that I hadn’t been to as much. I’d, I’d been to most of the areas, but I’d only been there prior to the idea for the book; therefore, I hadn’t been embodied in the character when I was there –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alison: – so I had to rely on my sensory experiences, not what I would have been imagining through a mindset. So yeah, it, it, it felt like there was a lot more to do around that. Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. It’s a lot more work to build that sort of deep grounding in that –

Alison: Yes.

Sarah: – particular reality.

Alison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sarah: So what are you working on right now?

Alison: I am working on the second?

Sarah: Yaaay!

Alison: [Laughs] Second Ill-Mannered Ladies book, and that’s coming along very nicely, thank you very much!

Sarah: Yay!

Alison: The title is kind of slightly in limbo at the moment, but the, definitely the, the series is the Ill-Mannered Ladies series.

Sarah: That’s fantastic! Ooh, exciting!

Now, I always ask this question: what books are you reading right now that you would like to tell people about?

Alison: Oh, do you know what’s happening in Australia at the moment is we’re getting a great run of very, very good Australian crime novels written by women.

Sarah: Oooh!

Alison: Yes. Yeah, so, and there’s, I think you may, you may have come, or heard about Jane Harper –

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: – who wrote The Dry? My own friend who just, who won the Allen and Unwin Unpublished Manuscript with her, her novel is The Unbelieved by Vikki Petraitis. A more kind of lighter-toned one, but with a fascinating structure is The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill.

Sarah: Yes.

Alison: So yeah, so fabulous reading there. I’m also, I sometimes, when I’m deep in my writing, I don’t go outside what I’ve read before. Yeah, I, I, I read books that I know are a great, well written, that I can enjoy again, so I’m a rereader.

Sarah: Oh yeah, me too.

Alison: Yeah, yeah, so I’m, I’m reading the Thursday Murder Club series again because they are so much fun! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes!

Alison: Yeah. And I’m writing, I suppose you’d call it, well, mine, mine’s not very cozy because there’s a lot of quite hard, gritty things in it –

Sarah: Right.

Alison: – but it’s got a cozy feel in the sense that it’s humorous and there’s a lot of adventure and, and things like that, so that’s what I think of the Thursday Murder Club is like the epitome of cozy, cozy crime.

What else am I reading? Always research. Research, research, research.

Sarah: I love listening to books that I’ve read and enjoyed. It is a form of rereading, because I hear things differently than when I read them, and I’ll, I’ll notice different aspects of the story when I hear it versus when I read it? So I, I have done, done a lot of rereading and re-listening this year too.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. What’s one of your, what’s your favorite one that’s been popping up?

Sarah: I have been currently, I’m currently re-listening to the Veronica Speedwell series by Deanna Raybourn, which –

Alison: Oh!

Sarah: – is Victorian mystery with a long romance through all of the books. A, she’s also a lepidopterist? She’s, she travels the world and collects butterflies. She’s like, like Gussie: very independent and functions outside of normal structure, but in the Victorian era, where they were super uptight about that kind of thing!

Alison: Yeah, ‘cause it –

Sarah: It’s very, very good.

So where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Alison: I would like to be found.

Sarah: Okay, yes.

Alison: [Laughs] And you can find me on Instagram, which is @alisongoodmanauthor.

Sarah: Yeah?

Alison: And that’s Alison with one L. And I’m also on Facebook: AlisonGoodmanAuthorPage. I sometimes visit Twitter, but not often.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s burning itself to the ground very slowly, so.

Alison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Everyone’s going elsewhere.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. So, but occasionally I, I – but mainly Instagram. But also I have a website where I put events and things like that. So that’s at alisongoodman.com.au.

Sarah: Fabulous! Thank you so much for doing this interview. I’ve really, really enjoyed speaking with you, and congratulations again! It’s, it’s not –

Alison: Thank you, thank you!

Sarah: It’s not the average writer who takes their Ph.D. thesis and then turns it into a whole book series. That’s pretty awesome!

Alison: [Laughs] Yeah, it was, it was great fun, and, and yeah, as this interview has been, so thank you very much; it’s been great.

Sarah: Oh! It, it’s been a pleasure.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I will have links to all of the books and all of the things; never fear! They will be in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

I always end with a terrible joke, and this week is no exception. This joke comes from Varian in the podcast Discord. Did you know that if you join the Patreon we have one of the most lovely welcoming and beautiful Discords? I mean, I’m biased, but it’s wonderful. It’s another reason to join the Patreon. But Varian, Varian provided this joke, and this joke is outstanding!

What is the best time of day?

Give up? What’s the best time of day?

6:30, hands down!

[Laughs] Thank you, Varian! Yes, yes, I did torture my family with that joke.

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

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

[awesome music]