634. Climbing Mt. Fuji with Courtney Milan

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Sarah Wendell: Hello there! Welcome to episode number 634 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell. My guest today is Courtney Milan! Courtney’s here to talk about her newest book and about climbing Mt. Fuji, as you do. Along the way we’re going to talk about training, the shifting style of historical romances and audiobooks, plus we have some questions from you.

I do want to have your attention for this one moment: there are a few pieces of this conversation that you need to be aware of before you listen. First, we talk a little bit about her dog Pele, who passed away earlier this year. We also mention briefly the topics of anti-fat bias in medicine, weight gain, chafing, trauma, workplace abuse, cancer, and sexual harassment, so please protect your brain. We don’t dwell on these for a long time, but they are mentioned.

Thank you to Tara and Emily for the questions, and thank you for being part of the podcast!

I also want to say a special hello to Agatha, who is the, one of the newest members of our Patreon. There are so many new members; hello, everybody.

If you have supported the show, thank you! You’re keep me going, you’re making sure every episode has a transcript from garlicknitter – howdy, garlicknitter! – [Howdy! – gk] – and you’re making sure that every episode is accessible to everyone. Plus, if you’re a member of the Patreon community, you get cool stuff. You get bonus episodes, you get a really lovely Discord populated with some of the nicest human beings on the planet, and you get the full scan of the RT Magazine every month, and let me tell you, me and my flatbed scanner, we’re doing some work for you because it’s important. If you would like to join the Patreon community, it would be so great to have you. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Support for this episode comes from The Starling Inn, a new novel by Claire Therese. If you like renovation stories and you like ghost stories about past secrets coming to light, you want to read this book. After inheriting a century-old inn from her beloved Uncle Rowan, Millie puts her life on pause, leaves her college campus, and returns to her roots to grapple with the grief of his passing at his home, the old Starling Inn. But after moving in, Millie quickly realizes that she may not be alone in the house. Strange dreams visit her every night, and objects inside start to move around on their own. Determined to sell the inn and return to her life, Millie reconnects with Ethan, her childhood crush, who was helping Rowan with repairs before he died. Ethan too grieves the loss of his friend as they get to work restoring the building and discovering more of its history. Millie works to untangle family secrets that have been haunting the community since the first world war. With each mystery solved and each room renovated, Millie transforms loss and pain into forgiveness and healing, but as she gets closer to selling the inn and gaining freedom, she risks destroying the relationship that she’s built with Ethan. Will selling the inn mean letting go of more than just a property? Emotional, hopeful, and mysterious, this second-chance romance is layered with new beginnings, found family, a haunted house, and a mystery, and, of course, a romantic Happily Ever After. Charlene left a five-star review on Goodreads and said it was the “perfect fall, cozy read.” Klara also gave the book five stars and said, “This book is simply perfection. It is a mixture of drama, romance, mystery, paranormal, family – well, everything. And prepare tissues, because you’re going to need them.” You can find The Starling Inn by Claire Therese inside Kindle Unlimited right now and follow the author on Instagram @claire.therese.writes. There will be links in the show notes too. Thank you to Claire Therese for sponsoring this episode, and thank you for supporting our advertisers.

All right, shall we get started with this podcast? Yes, we should. So many of you were excited when I announced on Patreon that Courtney was going to be a guest, so let’s get to it! On with my conversation with Courtney Milan.

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Courtney Milan: Hi! My name is Courtney Milan. I write historical romance, currently stuff that touches on the Asian diaspora experience. I have bundles of awards that I’m really bad talking about, but I am trying to be better at self, promoting myself. I’ve been a USA Today and New York Times bestseller; I’ve had books that are on the Washington Post, Amazon, and New York Times Best Romances of the Year; one of my books was one of the New York Times Hundred Notable Books for 2020, which is an honor that’s given to, like, almost, like, very few romance novels, ‘cause they don’t like to admit that we exist –

Sarah: Uh, yeah.

Courtney: – and I believe that, at least as of the present, I’m the only self-published author who has ever gotten that honor.

Sarah: I’m pretty sure that’s the case, yeah.

Courtney: So that’s me!

Sarah: Woohoo!

Courtney: I like to – I would add that I am a, kind of a chaos gremlin. This is the ADHD; it helps. And I like screwing shit up and making stuff happen. So that’s me!

Sarah: That’s awesome! I understand completely not being good at self-marketing and self-promotion. I too suck at it a lot, and then I’m like, Oh, wait, I have to remember what I did and then talk about it in the first person?

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Ooh! Feels icky.

Courtney: And it’s like, it’s actually effective! Oh no! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh no! And I’m being perceived? I hate that!

Courtney: Ah, it’s the worst.

Sarah: It’s so annoying.

Courtney: It’s the worst!

Sarah: Being perceived: hate it! That’s why I’m on the internet!

Courtney: Yep.

Sarah: And now the internet –

Courtney: Yep.

Sarah: – is trending toward, like, talking to camera. Do you know what I don’t want to do is talk to camera. I do not –

Courtney: Oh gosh. I know, I’m like –

Sarah: I’m too Gen X to be perc- –

Courtney: – and when people put on makeup every day –

Sarah: Yes!

Courtney: – and then someone’s like, No, they just use a filter, and I was like, Oh!

Sarah: Yeah! Yeah. And the filter is like perfect? And, and then I’m like, But wait, how do you even do that to your face? Is that even possible in three dimensions, or is that only in filter? I –

Courtney: I know. Like, as you can tell, I have, like, freckles. I am –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Courtney: – freckled, very freckled.

Sarah: Oh, roger that.

First of all, congratulations on your latest –

Courtney: Thank you!

Sarah: – Wedgeford book, The Earl Who Isn’t. What can you tell me about this book? I know this is the worst question to ask authors, but oftentimes –

Courtney: Oh no!

Sarah: – the way in which you describe your books is much more evocative and nuanced than the way that I would describe them. Please tell me everything about The Earl Who Isn’t!

Courtney: Okay, so this is a book in which Andrew Uchida, who has been, his entire life, a resident, resident of Wedgeford, which is our local village of Wedgeford inhabitants, which is a mix of what you would normally consider a small village in Kent in the, the 1890s to be, and a large number of Asian immigrants who have ended up in the country, largely due to British policies, but we won’t get into that ‘cause it’s not relevant to the book.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: So Andrew has been there, and he is, like, a, one of those, one of those guys who is, like, really enthusiastic about seeds, farming, that sort of thing. He sort of like gets local knowledge; he gets non-local knowledge, since this is a village that, where people have come from all over the globe; there’s lots of different practices. He tests things out, he has like eighteen thousand separate notebooks, and he currently is trying to grow long beans in Wedgeford, and if you’ve never seen a long bean, they’re long! They’re like, you know, like, they, they call them yardlong beans, but some of them are, like, longer than a yard? They’re, they’re very similar to green beans; they will look like green beans at the earlier stage of production. I’m going off on long beans; I’m not telling you anything about the book; this is terrible!

Sarah: No, this is great. I’m, I’m here for this.

Courtney: [Laughs]

Sarah: This, this here –

Courtney: In any event –

Sarah: – is a very particular interest.

Courtney: [Laughs] Yeah. So, Andrew is very much into long beans, and as he is, you know, in his little workshop trying to get, trying, like, test – his long beans have sprouted in their little specific containers that he made for them. He has used the very first Edisonian lights in Wedgeford so that they can get light during the day, and as he’s waiting his childhood best friend walks in, who he hasn’t seen in seven years. He has a massive crush on her that hasn’t really abated. They had sex once because she needed someone to take her virginity so she wouldn’t be forced into marriage. And he sees her and he’s like, Lily’s back! And she says, Andrew, I have to tell you something! And he’s like, Yeah? And she says, Andrew, you’re an earl! And he says, internally, Shit. How did she find out?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: Because the one thing Andrew knows about Lily is that once Lily has a goal in mind, she’s not going to stop at anything to make it happen.

So that is the book! It is a book – I mean, it’s not the entire book, obviously. It’s like, that is the first chapter! It is a book in which Andrew, who very much loves being, like, the local, resident seed guy and the local, resident, like, Hey! Someone came and weeded your plants while you were gone. Wonder who it was?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Now, now someone is like, Do you want to be an earl?

Sarah: No.

Courtney: No! He doesn’t want to be an earl. He doesn’t want –

Sarah: No.

Courtney: – anything to do with an earl. His dad is an asshole; that’s why his mom is not with his dad anymore. So he is trying very desperately not to be an earl, but he’s been keeping the secret for so long that it’s very difficult for him to tell people?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Even when he probably should! So.

Sarah: Right. And then keeping the secret then builds a negative consequence for finally revealing it, like, Why have you been keeping this from me?

Courtney: Correct. [Laughs] And why did you steal the logbook that was proof from me? That was, that’s a different issue. Like –

Sarah: Bro, what the hell?

Courtney: I know, right? These are the questions we ask ourselves.

Sarah: I love how this series, and I’ve also noticed this as a theme in some of the earlier series, like the Sinister series –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – about people who really do not want anything to do with being nobility or having titles. Like –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – really, this sucks. No, thanks; do not want; and to me that seems like a very rational perspective, because hereditary monarchy and hereditary systems of power are human rights violations. But it’s also very interesting how, in, in the worlds that you’ve created, both in Wedgeford and in prior series, you have people who recognize that having the title and owning the title and having ownership of the title means, could mean restoration of justice, could mean helping a relative that they care about, or it could mean placing themselves in great danger, because, again, consolidating power to white people is still a very operative concern at this time. Was that one of the foundational elements for this series consciously, or is this just a, a continuing theme in the Milan universe?

Courtney: Well, I would say the answer is yes to both.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: I don’t think you can write romance about, well – [laughs] – it’s obviously false! I’m going to say something that’s obviously false.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: And then I said you’re going to laugh at me ‘cause it’s so obviously false.

I don’t think you can write romance in which the central thesis is that you get a personal degree of comfort and safety because you’ve attached yourself to someone who has a large amount of wealth and power without thinking about what that wealth and power actually means in that time period.

[Laughs] That’s my totally false statement, because clearly it is possible! Other people have done it in the past! But I don’t think I can.

Sarah: Right.

Courtney: Perhaps a better way of saying, making that same statement. So I think a lot of it has to do with, like, I think when I first started writing romance I wasn’t making that interrogation quite as hard.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And there’s, there’s a lot, I, I’ve thought about this a lot, right. Because it’s not, I don’t think I fundamentally changed in terms of politics or what-have-you, but I think one of the things that was happening was when I first started, when I was reading romance, I wasn’t doing that interrogation as much, and a lot of the reason why I was heavily reading romance right in the era before I started writing it was just like as pure escapism, because it was like the one thing I was allowed to do on my dinner hour with Alex Kozinski, if you don’t know about that. So he was a terrible judge I worked for, and I had no time, and so this was my escape, right. And so you don’t, you don’t, you don’t question your escape that much –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: You don’t think about it that much because it’s the happy place you’re going to, and so when I first started writing, I think I was trying to recreate that happy place?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: But the, just the act of trying to do research to sort of ground yourself in a time and a place?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: You just end up running into things over and over, and you just can’t, like, you have to think about what it is you’re doing and what it is you’re saying.

Sarah: I think that’s also a reflection of how a lot of readers, especially readers of our –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – age and generation – I don’t always agree with, like –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – generational striations of people. I think people move between them, especially right now. We’re all sort of flattened –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – into one generational soup.

Courtney: Yep.

Sarah: But I think when you’re of our age, when we started reading romance –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – historical was it. It was The Thing –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – and it was, like, only –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – later that contemporary and, and fantasy –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – started showing up so strongly.

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: It’s really easy to not question that, because it’s just one after the other after the other, and the minute you scratch beneath the surface you’re like, Oh, hang on: tea and sugar in a historical context has a wealth of meaning –

Courtney: Mm!

Sarah: – that we do not explore.

Courtney: Right. Where did all that silk come from?

Sarah: Yeah, how, how did that get there? And I remember you talking about how upsetting it was for you to read historical law records – I think it might have been for one of the Sinister books – reading the, the log of court cases and –

Courtney: Oh, this was for Unraveled, yeah.

Sarah: Yes – who was brought be- –

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: – was it who’s brought before a judge or who was brought into, and what all that meant, and –

Courtney: And what the result was, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. That was, like –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – very, very difficult! Because you can’t just write about this one layer of society and ignore everything else that’s happening around it.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sarah: And it gets harder and harder and harder, and I think that’s something that historical romance is having to grapple with in, in the industry right now. It’s really not popular.

Courtney: No! I mean, I think the re-, I think there’s a number of reasons for it. One of it is, I think people are fucking sick of England.

Sarah: You don’t say. I think that’s definitely part of it. And also, I – let me back up and apologize and, for saying to a historical author that historical isn’t popular. I meant specifically –

Courtney: No, it’s fine!

Sarah: I meant specifically the white-focused nobility historicals that we were used to seeing for twenty, thirty years. The historicals that are coming out now are actually a lot more nuanced and engaged –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – which I love, love, love, love, love.

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: So I apologize for –

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: – speaking broadly and then –

Courtney: No!

Sarah: – therefore cruelly.

Courtney: I, I don’t think you’re wrong, and I think a big part of it is that if you look at the context in which historical came up, there were, like, some strong elements of white supremacy. Like, one of the things I remember is the – and I didn’t read this, but I remember, I believe it was your review, very well – the time travel book in which the woman goes back to the plantation and teaches the slaves yoga? That was you, right?

Sarah: [Laughs] That was us!

Courtney: Yes. You know, and, like, this isn’t historical, but that is the kind of, the sort of like the, the, the publishing milieu that this stuff is being put in. Like –

Sarah: Yeah!

Courtney: – who the hell thought that was okay? Right? And it’s –

Sarah: Like, a whole bunch of people were like, Sure, sounds great! [Laughs]

Courtney: You know, and of course this doesn’t say anything about individual authors. Like, there was always Bev Jenkins, but Bev Jenkins is not an answer to, like, the entirety of publishing…

Sarah: Much as they would like her to be! [Laughs] Much as they would like her to be, that is not the case.

Courtney: …Yeah, I know. Right? And as little support as she got, and as well as she did with that support –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – you know. And there were, there were certainly individual authors who probably had what we would consider, like, less white supremacist leanings, but some of, but it’s, eh, there’s a problem –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – with it. So I, I think, you know, it’s interesting to see how these things will sort of like sort out!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: I don’t know; we’ll find out. I don’t think it’s a problem with his-, the idea of history in general –

Sarah: No.

Courtney: – I just think that, I just think that the historical romance is going to get recreated, and when historical comes back, because I, these things go in waves. Like, I, I mean, I remember you had your Save the Contemporaries that you did.

Sarah: Remember that? I, I think it’s okay now. I think it’s okay.

Courtney: [Laughs] I think it’s okay!

Sarah: …okay.

Courtney: Like, un-, these, these things come and go, right?

Sarah: Oh yeah! Yeah.

Courtney: And I think when historical comes back, it’s not going to look like –

Sarah: No.

Courtney: – the thing we’re imagining right now.

Sarah: No.

Courtney: And that is kind of one of the things that I think to myself about a lot –

Sarah: Oh yes!

Courtney: – is because I am trying to figure out what I’m writing, something that appeals to me, and at this point, like, I just don’t think that does.

Sarah: No, I, I completely agree. And, like, I keep this, I keep this by my desk because I refer to it so much. For a really long time, this was historical. Like, this was what –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – historical was. This is Sheik by Connie – she’s –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – she’s wearing a belly dancing belt on her forehead. Like, I can’t even – okay, I cannot tell you –

Courtney: [Laughs]

Sarah: – how much I love looking back at old issues of Romantic Times, but historical was it. Historical was the only game. It was the, it was The Thing. And it was also –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – Kathryn Falk’s favorite, so of course it got a lot of coverage.

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: A few commenters on my site have actually suggested that the historical readers have now moved into fantasy, because you have a lot of the same –

Courtney: I think that’s right.

Sarah: – external structures: you have class differences and these incredible social structures that you can’t maneuver through without encountering obstacles based on birth or talent or class or something. There’s a lot of class baked into fantasy. Again, not always –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – not always interrogated in terms of how it’s othering people. I would love to know: one thing I don’t, I can’t do, but I love happening is when readers and the community of romance start to get more specific about what it is we’re talking about when we talk about genre, ‘cause we have –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – romantasy, which is a way of describing fantasies that are romance-forward, but, you know, contemporary romance could be, like I’ve said, it could be Debbie Macomber and Victoria Dahl! Those are different things!

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: Those are very different things.

Courtney: Very different things.

Sarah: The historicals that you write, that Mimi Matthews writes, that Beverly Jenkins writes, that Adriana Herrera writes, these are different historicals. They are historical, they are taking place in history –

Courtney: Hmm.

Sarah: – some of them are even in the Regency, but they are not historical romance in terms of being a largely white supremacist narrative, and I’m very curious to see what the name of it will be when people start talking about how historical is changing. ‘Cause I agree, it comes back. I call it the Bruce Springsteen Rule of Publishing:

>> Everything dies, that is a fact, but maybe everything that dies some days comes back.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I mean, how many genres –

Courtney: Right!

Sarah: – have we seen die and come back? At least three! [Laughs]

Courtney: Yeah. So one of the things that I think about is that I think that a lot of us are writing these transitional romances? And I, it does feel transitional.

Sarah: That’s true!

Courtney: And I think that part of it is that what we’re trying to do – and, I mean, I’m explicitly trying to do this – is we’re trying to sort of like guide people along the path. Like, there’s something else, right? But, like, I don’t write a book that’s called The Duke Who Didn’t because I’m not trying to appeal to a certain segment of historical readers –

Sarah: Yes.

Courtney: – right. And the answer may be dukes suck, dukes all fucking suck –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: – right. This duke is reluctant in many ways, and he’s never going to be able to hold his full power because he’s half Chinese, right, but the answer is, like, it’s still set in that, like, it’s, it’s not the same as what came before, but it is still in conversation with it?

Sarah: Yes.

Courtney: And I think when we get to the place we’re going, you’ll be able to trace the lineage, but you won’t be able to say, like, there’s a direct conversation being had.

Sarah: Yes. Absolutely, I agree with you. And that that transition reflects how much more people now understand about the worlds that they are reading about –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – and the worlds that we are told are fantasy –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and escape and what that means.

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: Like, it’s –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – it’s not exactly, if you look back on it, it’s not great to look at a fantasy world where, you know, everyone is a new community and space, but there’s only one religion. Okay, so, like, what happened to all the other ones? ‘Cause that’s, I need to know what happened, like –

Courtney: Riiight?

Sarah: Like, homogeneity is kind of a not great thing? And when you look at historical and you were reading consistently about a world where literally no one looks like you or has a connection to who you are –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – after a while it’s like, Okay? I’m not here. Why am I here, why am I reading this if I’m never going to be here? So that conversation also involves making romance – which is my favorite thing about how the genre changes – making romance more reflective of everyone who’s reading it and writing it. Like, that’s the thing that –

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: – I think is the most signature foundational change of romance since I started looking at it, like, all the time –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – never stopping, constantly! Is, be, the romance genre has grown to include both the people who are writing it, who aren’t all white and of one particular group, and also the people within it, reflect everyone who’s –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – reading it.

Courtney: Yes, absolutely.

Sarah: That’s always a good thing, right?

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: So speaking of looking, did you commission a cover shoot for these covers? ‘Cause they’re gorgeous. Holy crap.

Courtney: I did. Oh yeah.

Sarah: They’re gorgeous! Can you talk a little bit about that?

Courtney: Yeah! Actually, so the person who shot the covers is Jenn LeBlanc, who does –

Sarah: Oh!

Courtney: – Illustrated Romance –

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: – and I actually got these done, the covers, I think I shot in June of 2021?

Sarah: Whoa!

Courtney: Shortly after the book The Duke Who Didn’t, and I’ve just been sitting on them the whole time.

Sarah: Ooh!

Courtney: So yeah! That’s, that’s the answer.

Sarah: So you have a whole photo shoot to draw from.

Courtney: Correct.

Sarah: Including future covers.

Courtney: Yes! Although, so I will say this: I mean, so this is officially the end of this Wedgeford cycle –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – and the reason it’s officially, there’s many reasons it’s officially the end. I have, like, multiple books that I had planned –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – that I am going to take, I, I may come back and start a second series called Wedgeford Returns or something like that at some point, but the next book was going to – like, my, my internal name for the next book is Sound of Music But with a Dog?

Sarah: [Laughs] Okay!

Courtney: And I just can’t…

Sarah: On board.

Courtney: – that right now. I’m not in an emotional space where I can write about a dog, so.

Sarah: I completely understand, as the owner of a very elderly dog.

Courtney: So.

Sarah: I understand completely.

Courtney: I can’t. I just can’t do that right now, so.

Sarah: I understand!

Courtney: Okay. Just going to take a little moment to breathe, ‘cause every time I remember it, it still makes me sad.

Sarah: I’m so sorry. Let us move on.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Unless you want to talk about Pele.

Courtney: So. He’s just my best boy. He’s still my best boy. He’s an excellent little dog.

Sarah: He was also a romance dog! He was at a number of conferences. I definitely met him at an RWA in Denver.

Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. He’s, he’s definitely romance, somebody referred to him as Romancelandia’s dog, and –

Sarah: Oh yes!

Courtney: – I love that for him.

Sarah: Oh yes!

Courtney: I love that for him.

Sarah: Also –

Courtney: He’s a great little dog. I miss him a lot.

Sarah: And Defender of Democracy. I’m sure you do.

Courtney: Defender of Democracy. Truly an excellent animal, and he’s very much missed, and –

Sarah: It sucks.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: It just sucks.

Courtney: It just, it sucks.

Sarah: Sucks!

Courtney: It sucks, and I, I, I think that I couldn’t write that book without having a lot of that stuff interfering, so I’m doing stuff that I can write some other way. So.

Sarah: I completely understand! Which actually leads me to my next question. I was inspired to reach out also, one, because I like talking to you and it’s fun, and two, you hiked up Mt. Fuji!

Courtney: I did!

Sarah: As you do! Can you tell us about this? Because I, (a) I’m sure that Pele was part of your training – dog on a mountain walking uphill seems to be a common theme in much of your photography – but also –

Courtney: [Laughs] Yes.

Sarah: – what led you to want to walk up Mt. Fuji? Tell me, tell me everything; this sounds incredible.

Courtney: I actually have wanted to climb Fuji since I was in law school, I think?

Sarah: Oh my!

Courtney: And I had a, I had a friend who, 2L summer, so this is after our second year –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – finish working at the place they were working, you know, ‘cause you do these, you do these little, like, mini internships between your, between years of law school –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – I guess is what you call ‘em. So this, this friend did his mini internship at a law firm. Like, they pay you like a ridiculous amount of money ‘cause they’re trying to, like, suck you into the golden handcuffs lifestyle?

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: And he took his ridiculous amount of money, and he went to Japan, and he climbed Mt. Fuji, and he had these great photos and, like, this great story about it, and I thought, that’s cool! I want to do it at some point. Like, put that on the bucket list, right? So I’ve been holding on to it since then, and then it was like, okay, so I finished law school, and I immediately went and clerked for Kozinski, and for those, I, I mean, like, this is just really insider Courtney baseball, but one of the things that working for a year for a person who has you in the office from like 8:30 a.m. until 12:30 a.m. does is it really fucks up your body, because it’s like all the muscles you have that move? Like, they atrophy.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And you’re sitting the entire time, and, like, also we were super stressed, because we were, like, in this, like, horrifically abusive/harassing relationship with this guy who had an ultimate power over us and liked to use it. So, like, you know, I gained a bunch of weight and I lost a bun-, a bunch of muscle tone, which is a bad combination, and I finished the clerkship, and I was like, It’s cool; I’ll just get back to doing my normal stuff. And I went on, like, this walk; it was like a long walk; it was like six or seven miles, which I would have been able to do no problem before the clerkship, and afterwards, I ended up with the most painful stabbing pains in the side of my calves that I’ve ever had, and it took me – and I am not joking here – probably like seven years to get to the point where I could walk –

Sarah: Ouch!

Courtney: – three or four miles. And I tried very hard to push past that. I saw a doctor at one point, and it was like, Oh, there’s your problem! You gained weight; it’s because you’re fat. And I would like to go back in time and, like – exactly.

Sarah: Fuck that person!

Courtney: That’s, that would – seriously! But, you know, like, I was new to fatphobia, so –

Sarah: Yeah, of course you just take – well, of course it’s because I’m fat! Yes, absolutely! No.

Courtney: You know, and, and, like, plus there’s, like, this enormous amount of shame that you feel, ‘cause, like, You let yourself go! Like, and, like, you internalize all the stuff you’ve heard people saying, and you have, like, no defense mechanisms, ‘cause you’ve never had to deal with it before; at least, that’s the way it was for me. So I had to do, like, sort of like a crash course in sort of like internalize fatphobia and misogyny and a lot of things, and it took me like, it took me like probably six or seven years to get to the point where I was like, Wait a second! I didn’t get fat because I was lazy! I got fat because I was literally working like eighteen-hour days!

Sarah: Yeah!

Courtney: That’s the opposite of lazy! What am I telling myself? What was I supposed to do? Like, between the hours of like 1:30, when I got off work, and like 8:30, when I had to leave to go back to the office? Was I supposed to go for a run? Like, how was that supposed to work?

Sarah: And if you’re not sleeping –

Courtney: When I was supposed to sleep? Right.

Sarah: And if you’re not sleeping, that breaks everything else down!

Courtney: Right. And, and it’s like, and it’s like you have no time to make food, right? Like, what was I, how was that supposed to work out? So, so I had to sort of like go through this thing of sort of like think, think through a bunch of things that I had been considering and all this stuff, and so we had many years in which I tried basically everything to get to the point where I could walk again without pain. And I cannot emphasize how long it took. I think, I made the goal that I – and so the things that were particularly hard for me: hills. Going up hills. Like, going up, like, the mildest hill would be like torture.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Yeah, to make a long story short, you should get PT faster. Like, if you have stabbing pains when you walk, immediately get physical therapy any way that you can. Literally anything is going to be cheaper than not doing that. I highly recommend physical therapy. If you live in a state that allows you to, you can sometimes just call a physical therapist and make an appointment, and it’s cheaper than you think, even if your insurance won’t cover, cover it.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Courtney: So probably, like, the cheapest thing that I have done that has had, like, enormous impact on my life: finding the right physical therapist.

Sarah: I introduced my, my older child, who is eighteen, to physical therapy this past summer. He’s a jazz trombonist –

Courtney: Uh-huh?

Sarah: – and he’s studying music at a music school, and he had wrist pain, which you kind of need when playing the trombone; it is a fundamental element of the movement of the whole instrument.

Courtney: Yeah, mm-hmm?

Sarah: He’s like, My wrist really hurts; I don’t know if I hurt it. And I’m like, Well, you’re going to get physical therapy over the summer. When you’re home we’ll get you physical therapy. And he’s like –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – Is it going to hurt? I’m like, No! It’s actually more likely to be terribly boring. Incredibly effective –

Courtney: [Laughs]

Sarah: – but they’re going to have you do some boring things. And he came home, and he’s like, Mom, they want me to hold a five point, pound, five-pound weight above my head like I’m the Statue of Liberty and just walk around the house. I was like, I told you it was going to be weird, but I promise it’s going to work. And at the end of the summer, when he went back to school, he’s like, It doesn’t hurt; I feel great; I know what to do. You are so right –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – that physical therapy is some of the most inexpensive preventative care you can get for your body.

Courtney: Seriously. So anyway, that’s my pitch for physical therapy. I wish I had gone immediately instead of much, much later.

And so for me it had, it had, climbing Fuji went from something that I was like, Oh, sure. At some point when I’ve got time –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – I’d love to do that, to something that seemed like completely out of reach. Like, there is so much uphill in climbing Mt. Fuji? So, so yeah. So yeah, training for that was, took up a good bit of time.

Sarah: Couple of years, you said.

Courtney: Well yeah, I broke my toe in the middle of it, so that didn’t help.

Sarah: That’s really annoying!

Courtney: So – [laughs] –

Sarah: How, how dare –

Courtney: Super annoying!

Sarah: How dare bones be breakable? It’s so irritating.

Courtney: Yeah, it was super annoying, but I have to say, as a result of that toe break, I found, like, the best physical therapist I’ve ever had, so it kind of did work out for me in the long run? We prepared for Mt. Fuji; because I delayed it a year because of the toe break, I got really, like, what’s the word for, like, when you are thwarted in your aim, so you say, I will only come back more powerful than ever?

Sarah: Yes.

Courtney: [Laughs]

Sarah: Dig, you, you planted your feet –

Courtney: You know, like –

Sarah: – and dug in your heels, yeah.

Courtney: It’s like, it’s like revenge –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – you know? Like, it’s close to revenge, but revenge is sort of like, like, has evil connotations.

Sarah: Spite?

Courtney: This is like, I will get revenge upon reality.

Sarah: I will, I will, I will spite my, I will spite my fragile bones, and I will make this work.

Courtney: [Laughs] Exactly. Exactly. So in the time while I was, like, sitting and convalescing and not able to move and thinking about how I was supposed to climb Mt. Fuji but I wasn’t going to, I let the plan metastasize from just climbing Mt. Fuji to doing ridiculous things?

Sarah: Oh, yes!

Courtney: So originally we were just going to do – so Mt. Fuji, like, big cone. Buses, most people climb Mt. Fuji take a bus, and it takes you up to like the fifth station, which is like, I want to say like about halfway up the big cone.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: So you don’t have to climb, like, the whole Mt. Fuji, and then you just get to the summit at the top.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Right. So that’s what most people do. But then I had this, like, grandiose idea that what I was going to do was actually do the sea-to-summit route, which is really goofy, and actually I do not advise anyone do this.

[Laughter]

Courtney: Actually, so, so that requires you to start at the bay in Fujinomiya, and then walk all the way up to the very top. So there’s more climbing, and there’s a lot more walking in urban areas. I just want to be clear: I did not do that. I started, but the first day, the first day was so hot and so humid –

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah.

Courtney: – that we looked, and we looked at the weather, and it was like, there was a heatstroke alert, and we’re like, Oh –

Sarah: Oh!

Courtney: – that’s why it sucks so much!

Sarah: Yeah, there, yeah, there was! Can confirm. [Laughs]

Courtney: Yeah, so it was a lot. I thought I was going to pass out at some points, and we were just on the easy parts, and I was like, No. Okay, so this is not happening. The other thing that happened was, I had tested everything that I was wearing for chafe, which if you’ve ever done anything that takes any degree of time while walking, you care about chafe, ‘cause chafing sucks.

Sarah: It’s the worst.

Courtney: I did not, I did not realize that humidity would change things, because you sweat, and then your things get wet, and wet clothing has a different coefficient of friction. So I ended up with the most amazing chub rub of my life.

Sarah: Oh, no, no, no, no!

Courtney: It was, it was like, it was like, like, seared steak.

Sarah: Oh no!

Courtney: It was – [laughs] – it was amazing. So we sort of, like, made the call that we didn’t need to increase the chafe, and that I could, I could avoid further chafing by, like, wearing the sort of like base layers that I’d brought, ‘cause it gets cold on top of Fuji?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Like, I couldn’t wear that when it was ninety-five degrees and hot!

Sarah: No!

Courtney: So we just, we just made the choice, after the first day, to take a bus –

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: – to halfway up and do the thing that everyone else did from the normal starting point of the Fujinomiya Trail, and I am happy about that.

Sarah: No shame. So you had the advantage of having lived and worked –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – and, and trained at elevation, but humidity will –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – kick your ass everywhere. It is the –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – worst!

Courtney: Yep. I actually think that my natural advantage sort of started taking over the higher we went up?

Sarah: For sure.

Courtney: Because I’m staying, I mean I live at like around fifty-three hundred feet, I sleep here the entire time, elevation didn’t start bothering me until I, like, I didn’t start noticing it until we got to like nine or ten thousand feet?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And because we live relatively near, like, the actual front range of the Rocky Mountains –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – we can get up to the Continental Divide in like half an hour, forty-five minutes of driving, so we could do training that was at eleven thousand feet –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – with very little difficulty.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And I think that very few of the people on Fuji could do that. So one of the things I discovered, like, when we were near the bottom, I was one of the slower people, and the higher up we got, the better I felt I was at keeping pace with people around me –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – or passing them.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And towards the end there was, like, a group of college students that were all climbing together, and I beat like twenty-five percent of them. I’m like, I’m beating college students; this feels great.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: But that was when we were at, we were at like, we were probably at like, you know, eleven thousand feet at that point?

Sarah: Humidity will knock you out every time. I cannot…

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: …humidity, and –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – it’s, it’s just too hard to breathe. Plus you, you actually can’t physically cool your body when it’s too moist.

Courtney: Yes! That was –

Sarah: Like, you actually –

Courtney: – that was the thing –

Sarah: – can’t do that!

Courtney: – that I found. Like, we would stop in the shade and wait for, like, you know, ten minutes, and in Colorado the shade is great!

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Courtney: Like, you cool off, you’re done!

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Courtney: And we just weren’t getting any cooler, so.

Sarah: Yep. Like, I can feel my pulse in my face. I, why do I still feel my pulse in my face?

Courtney: [Laughs]

Sarah: What the hell? Yeah.

Courtney: Yes!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And it’s like I’m sitting in the shade and I’m still sweating, and it’s like, I, I don’t know if I said this: I, I went through five liters of water that first day.

Sarah: I believe it! I believe it, yeah.

Courtney: It was so much! And I was still, like, wildly dehydrated.

Sarah: Yeah, and you really cannot train for hiking up a mountain in heatstroke humidity. Like, that’s just, that’s just not –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – that’s not preparable.

Courtney: Just to be clear, we were not on a mountain yet.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Like, when you start – we, we were at sea level. I think we gained like four hundred feet that day? Of altitude?

Sarah: Doesn’t matter.

Courtney: It was, it was flat. Flat.

Sarah: [Laughs] Flat and humid! Ew!

Courtney: Flat and humid: it was terrible. So.

Sarah: What were you thinking about while, while you hiked?

Courtney: I was thinking, I don’t know, I was just thinking about the hike.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: So I have to say, like, if anyone ever wants opinions on, like, various Fuji trails –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – I have them, because I went up one trail and down a different one, so I got to see two trails, and I highly, high – I think Fujinomiya is one of the more interesting trails. Like, the, it, it changes a lot? There’s, like, parts that are step-ups with, like, you know, they’ve, they’ve used sort of like wood to build, like, actual steps. There’s parts that are like little voltanic, volcanic rock and gravel. There’s parts that are, where it’s like there’s been a big lava flow, and so you have to, like, you’re, you’re really climbing up like a really steep sort of like, like the, the actual volca-, lava rock formation?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Which is really cool. Very interesting trail. Going down the Yoshida Trail, like, honestly sucked. Like, there, it was just like switchback, switchback, switchback, constant grade.

Sarah: Knees!

Courtney: Like, volcanic rock, slippy, blah, boring.

Sarah: My, my knees say, No, thank you. ‘Preciate it, but no. Not going to do that.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Slippy volcanic –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – switchbacks, no thanks. Mm-mm.

Courtney: I don’t know; it was a beautiful hike, and a lot of what I was thinking about was just, like, you know, because there’s, you have these sections that have, like, you’re, you’re literally climbing sort of volcanic rock, you’re, you’re looking for footholds? It’s a very active thing?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Like, you don’t have a lot of space in the brain to be, like, contemplating other things.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: So you’re, you’re thinking about where, where, where you’re going to put your pole –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – right. Like, wow, I don’t think I can make that step up. What can I use as an intermediate point?

Sarah: Right.

Courtney: That kind of thing.

Sarah: Yeah. And you’re –

Courtney: So.

Sarah: – processing each step as you take it. Which is not how you walk –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – normally. Normally you don’t think about –

Courtney: Right.

Sarah: – where you’re putting your feet.

Courtney: Right. And because, like, once you get high enough altitude that at least my strategy is just to hike for a while, catch my breath, hike for a while, catch my breath.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And so you start playing these games – or I start playing these games with myself. It’s like, Okay, so I’m going to make it to that outcropping right there, and then I’m going to take a break. And then you make it to that outcropping, right? So you’re, you’re constantly, or at least I’m constantly breaking it up into little things? So a lot of my concentration was going on with that. The only thing I was thinking about, like, in the back of my head, and I know this because once we got to our little mountain hut for the night, I found my head totally full of this? Was I was thinking about this book that I’m planning on writing.

Sarah: Oh!

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: So there’s a lot of action in what I call the Crockpot in the back of your brain?

Courtney: Exactly. Exactly.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: So I was thinking about that.

Sarah: Can you tell me about the summit? ‘Cause you, you did the summit at dawn.

Courtney: So we stayed – and this is actually fairly common for people flying, climbing Fuji – we stayed in a little mountain hut –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – that was very near the summit. It, it’s Station 9.5 on the Fujinomiya Trail, so it’s like six hundred feet in elevation below the summit? So, you know, a tiny percentage of what, maybe like ten percent of what we’d done the day before. So we got up at about 2:30, packed our stuff, got going, and were on the road at 3:00. And so you step out; it’s dark; it’s so dark. It had been sort of like rainy and cloudy when we went in the night before, but the clouds had all cleared out, and so imagine you’re looking out, and you see before you, like, so, above you, stars. You could see the stars.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And then below you, you can see, like, the place where we’d come from, Fujinomiya, it’s all lit up with the city lights. And then on the trail below you, you see all the people who are climbing the mountain with you, headlamps, the headlamps –

Sarah: Headlamps.

Courtney: – just like this, this, this train of little, like, bobbing stuff. And so you just start climbing, and you become one of the headlamps, right.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And, like, we were climbing next to this group of tourists from Hong Kong, who were climbing together?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And so they had a guide with them who they’d hired who was helping them, like, point out, Here’s the good foothold here; here’s this; here’s that; here’s that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And that was kind of cool to watch. But there was also this group of college students who had been climbing with us – I mentioned them earlier – and there was a point where we were probably, I think, like a hundred feet from the top of the summit at best, and you could see the sky start to turn orange, and so the guy with the college students turns around, and he’s like, he’s like, you know, trying to, like, get everyone’s spirits up, and he’s like, We can do it! The sun is coming up, but we’re not that far! Everyone just, let’s do our best, and the faster we get there, the more of us that can make it. ‘Cause, you know, it is a trail. Like, it’s, it’s a limited trail, and there’s a lot of people on this trail. Like, I think something like six thousand people climb Fuji every day?

Sarah: Good God!

Courtney: It’s like –

Sarah: That many!

Courtney: – like, and there’s –

Sarah: Wow!

Courtney: – and there’s, there’s four trails; there’s four trails. I think like four thou-, around four thousand-ish climb on the Yochida Trail, which we were not on? And I think our trail probably only had like a thousand to fifteen hundred, but it’s a lot of people –

Sarah: That’s still a lot of people.

Courtney: – who are all trying to get to the summit.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Usually sort of like around dawn.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And we were never truly, like, conga line? There was always room to move?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: But it was, it was, you know, like, literally, if you, if I reached out in like three different directions, I could grab three people –

Sarah: Right.

Courtney: – you know, at any time. So you were, you were very close to other people.

So it was a very interesting experience, you know. Like, I was just really focused on getting to the top before the sunrise, and I was thinking in my head like, Oh wow, it’s already getting, it’s already, I, I can already see, like, it’s turning orange, and I thought sunrise was much later, and then I remembered when I got to the top, Oh yeah, ‘cause it takes time for the sun to rise and this horizon starts turning before it, and we’re very high up, so we’re going to see the horizon turn before then.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Courtney: So then we ended up spending like half an hour before the sun rose like freezing on the top of the mountain –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: – which was great.

[Laughter]

Courtney: But it was, it was actually very emotional for me to get to the top and to realize that this thing that I had been thinking about and training for and that I thought was totally impossible at some point, I’d actually done it.

Sarah: You did the thing!

Courtney: So. I did the thing; it was pretty exciting.

Sarah: Congratulations!

Courtney: Thank you!

Sarah: That’s fricking cool! Thank you for sharing this with me! I really appreciate it. This is so cool!

Courtney: It was a really neat experience, and there’s something about being, like, on the top of the mountain with, like, six thousand other people?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And just feeling sort of like, everyone sort of like waiting for the sunrise?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: It’s really cool.

Sarah: I have some questions from members of my Patreon, when I told them that I was interviewing you –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – and many people were like, Ooh, I’m excited! So I have some questions from different people –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – if that is okay.

Courtney: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: So Tara C. wanted to know, You’ve written historical and contemporary. Are there other genres that you want to write? Is there going to be a Courtney Milan rrromantasy? I like to say it with a trilled R; it makes it more fun.

Courtney: Oh! Well, that is an easy answer; the answer is Yes.

Sarah: Woohoo!

Courtney: Because I actually am editing this little goofy novella about a sock gremlin right now…

Sarah: I love everything about this! Oh my gosh!

Courtney: So if you’re, if you’re wondering what a sock gremlin is, a sock gremlin is, she’s a creature made of chaos, and she fuels herself by making things go to chaos, and she could do that in the bad ways, in which her people used to do, like destroying humans and, like, you know, wiping out entire cities, but that’s bad and tends to lead to the purge, which is why there’s not very many of them anymore. So her current adaptation is to wander into laundromats and find socks inside the dryers and turn them into lint, which helps fuel chaos and keeps the chaos at bay and otherwise, whatever. So yes, I’m, I, I have a first draft of it; I am working on editing it. I don’t know when it’ll be out; it might be soon; it might be late. We’ll see.

Sarah: That’s so cool! Are –

Courtney: The answer is Yes, I am writing something there. I just started writing this thing. I’ve had it in my head for a long time. It’s super goofy. Yeah.

Sarah: Are there other –

Courtney: Yes.

Sarah: – other genres that you want to explore? You going to, like, write a thriller, maybe a –

Courtney: I’m never going to write a thriller. I can safely say that because I am like – if you have read my books, you will notice that, like, the most you get by way of violence is like maybe someone throws a punch?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: One. Like, maximally one, too. I just want to be clear.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: It’s like one punch. Or, like, or, like, you know, there’s a, there’s a, an instance that involves throwing acid at someone in one of my last books, but I had to make a real point of pointing out in, earlier in the book that it wouldn’t be enough, it would just be enough to sting and not enough to cause harm –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – ‘cause I’m a total wuss.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: Total wuss. Like I just, I, I can’t handle violence or talk, talk about – I just can’t do that.

Sarah: Nope, I get it, me neither.

Courtney: So never going to see me write a thriller. The thin-, the book that I’ve been thinking about is historical fiction. It is straight historical fiction; it’s not a romance.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: It would not be – I could make it a romance, but I don’t think that would be true to the thing that I’m working on –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – or wise or ethical. So yes. I mean, like, the, the chances – okay, look: just, to put it a different way, I have ADHD, and my ability to do things the same way consistently over time is like zero. So assume change, and you’re more likely to be right than assuming continuance forever.

Sarah: Yes. Now, Emily –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – Emily N. says, Theresa book? Which is fine if it’s not. It’s okay, no big deal, you do you, but Theresa book? And it sounds like that’s not on the docket at this time.

Courtney: It’s not not on the do- – let me, let me put it this way: I am going to finish the Worth series. I actually have a substantial amount written of the next book in the Worth series. It is emotionally very taxing for me to do that. Because it’s so deeply steeped in colonialism, it is actually very emotionally taxing for me to do that, and so I, I can do it step by, like, it’s a bite-by-bite process?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And it takes longer.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure.

Courtney: It’s, it’s happening. It’s happening at a – slowly, unfortunately. And I think that giving myself permission to take a break from it is probably the best thing that I could do for making it happen.

Sarah: Are there going to be audio versions of the second or third Wedgeford Trials? I know audio production is a very difficult thing sometimes.

Courtney: Yes, so, there’s a couple things going on with audio. One of the things going on is that my longtime assistant who oversaw it moved on to do other things. And I’m very happy for her and very sad for me.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And I have no executive function. As you may have noticed from my inability to write a book between 2021 and 2023, I have no executive function. And so (a) I have to find a new assistant, and that has taken some time. And (b) then I have to get the person to offload some of the stuff that I’m currently doing very badly right now onto them. And then I can start thinking about audio.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: So that’s thing number one. Thing number two: I don’t know how much people talk about this, but the degree to which Amazon should be sued as a monopoly on audiobooks cannot be overstated.

Sarah: Oh my God.

Courtney: So, like –

Sarah: Yes.

Courtney: So, like, one of the things is this: like, when they were trying to get a monopoly, which is back when I first started doing things, they had an actual reasonable royalty structure where you could get up to like ninety percent royalties on the audiobooks. They no longer do. Right now it’s twenty percent if you don’t give them exclusivity, or twenty-five percent if you don’t give them exclusivity, up to forty percent if you don’t. Now, tell me, why is it forty percent royalty when we can get seventy percent on our books, where there is competition, when audiobooks are so much more expensive for us to produce? It’s ridiculous. My, one of the reasons my executive function has not been directed towards this is because they’re just not as lucrative as they used to be. Basically, we’ll see.

I, at this point, there’s a couple of things that we’re waiting for. One is, Brandon Sanderson claimed that he talked with Audible and that they’re going to have better royalty rates before the end of 2024. We haven’t seen them yet, but we will see. If that happens, thank you, Brandon Sanderson, for thinking of the little guy. But also, I, I have pretty much come to the conclusion that I feel like I need to find some way – [sighs] – to start building, like, a place where I can actually sell things on my own?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Because I don’t trust any of these fuckers at this point –

Sarah: No.

Courtney: – excuse my language.

Sarah: Nope!

Courtney: And –

Sarah: Curse all you want, by the way.

Courtney: – I’m a little bit worried about that. I’m a little bit worried about that. It’s like, you see things like Barnes & Noble saying, Oh, we’re not going to do certain kinds of romance anymore, and I’m like, Are you fucking kidding me?

Sarah: We did this!

Courtney: Right?

Sarah: We already tried this! You already tried this! It didn’t go well!

Courtney: I know!

Sarah: What, what, do you have the memory of a goldfish? I remember this last time! [Laughs] I feel so old!

Courtney: Well, I –

Sarah: We tried this!

Courtney: – I mean, I’m, I’m pretty sure that like the entire executive suite has changed over like eighteen times since then –

Sarah: Oh, of course.

Courtney: – so, no, they probably don’t remember.

Sarah: No! But I remember!

Courtney: But it is very annoying –

Sarah: Extremely annoying!

Courtney: – right.

Sarah: Again with this? This is what you’re doing? Yeah, mm-hmm.

Courtney: So, so it’s like I’m looking at it. I’m like, Ah, Iii just love having my career depend on other people who may at any time not only fumble the ball, but actively take the ball and shove it into a well and say, Oh no! Where’s the ball? I lost it! So –

Sarah: It’s, circumstances beyond our control –

Courtney: – this is in –

Sarah: – resulted in the ball being in the well.

Courtney: So this has been on my mind, and so, like, now, at this point, it feels like in order to get to audio I have to, like, climb over like eighteen separate steps –

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: – and my executive function sucks! Medication is helping, and I finally started taking it, but my health insurance also sucks, and so that’s a separate tale of woe: the, the fun tale of insurance.

Sarah: So question that I always ask: what books are you reading that you would like to tell people about? Are there are any books that you want to tell people about right now?

Courtney: Okay, so I am currently reading a book by Shawntelle Madison, and it’s called The Fallen Fruit. So if you have read her before, she’s had some urban fantasy out before, but this is a his-, just straight historical fiction with sort of like a sprinkling of magic.

Sarah: Oooh!

Courtney: And so the premise is a family called the Bridge family, and they have a curse, which is that one person out of every generation gets, they fall back in time.

Sarah: Ooh!

Courtney: They get sent back, like, some amount of time, and the kicker is that this family is Black. So if you can imagine –

Sarah: Ugh!

Courtney: – they have a set of rules like, Always have freedom papers on you –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: – that declare you a free person. And so this is like the travel-back-in-time story that feels like the, the actual answer to the horrible book we were talking about earlier who, involving the person who gets the slaves to do yoga. Or whatever it is that, calisthenics, whatever it is she has them do in that. And it’s so rich and so – like, it’s one of those things where it’s like you read the first sentence and you’re like, Oh, this one’s going to be good. You know that feeling? Like, you just instantly, it, like, it feels like you’re entering a complete world as soon as you enter it.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: It’s just so good. It’s, it’s atmospheric. It’s, contains both dread and hope. There’s the feeling that every generation has when they’re trying to figure out who’s going to fall?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Like, where your, your life is kind of stuck because you’re like, Well, I could, I can’t marry someone and have kids and then disappear on them?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Like, what’s, how’s that going to work? So there’s –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – there’s, there’s like all these things that get wrapped in, up into it – I don’t know; it’s, it’s, it’s a really phenomenal book. I highly recommend it. That’s what I’m reading right now.

Sarah: The cover is gorgeous.

Courtney: Isn’t it great?

Sarah: Oh, it’s beautiful. Are there any other books that you want to mention?

Courtney: This is a book I actually read a while back. So it’s called Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan?

Sarah: Yeess!

Courtney: And it, this book is –

Sarah: So good!

Courtney: – incredibly funny, but also incredibly sad in some ways?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: So the premise is that the heroine is dying of cancer. I generally don’t love books where people, they, they do the dying of cancer thing? But I feel like this one is particularly well done in terms of both the emotions and the medical descriptions, because Sarah Rees Brennan went through cancer earlier, had a –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – horrific bout with it. And you can kind of feel it in this book.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And while she’s lying on her death bed, this woman comes in and is like, Here’s the deal: I’m going to send you back into this world that you’ve read the story of, and if you can make it out with this one secret prize, then – and bring it to me – then you will live!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And you’ll get to rejoin your family, and that will be it. She is put into this book series, and she’s a huge fan of this book but has never read the first one for reasons we’re not going to get into.

Sarah: Yep.

Courtney: She’s a huge fan of this book series, and she shows up, and she’s the villain, and it’s un-, she’s about to die, right. And so she has to figure out how she’s not going to die and how she’s going to survive. So she quickly changes everything that she knows about, about, about the book; discovers there’s tons of other people who have also been given the same offer and now exist in the book as characters that she has read about. It’s really, really, really funny and also just, like, got that little hook.

Sarah: Yes. Like, you, you, I started the book, and I went, Oh! Whoa. And also –

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: – this book just, just goes. Like, you think a book starting with someone who is in a hospital bed with cancer is going to be a very slow – nope! This book –

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – this book is, has two speeds, and they are both fast.

Courtney: Yes, correct.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Courtney: Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really good book. I read it a while back, and I’ve been waiting to tell people about it? Highly recommend it. Super worth reading.

Sarah: It’s one of those read-, reading experiences where you’re reading it, and then you sort of look up and go, Oh! I’m not act-, I’m, I’m not actually in the book right now. I have to remember where I am and what I am doing and what I was doing when I start- –

Courtney: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Everything else will stop, because this book will just zroop! –

Courtney: Yep.

Sarah: – you’re gone. Bye! Which is great, because that’s what happens to the – [laughs] – person in the book, too!

Courtney: Right. I think it’s another one of those books where, like, from the first line, you read it and you’re like, Oh!

Sarah: Oh!

Courtney: Right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: You instantly just feel yourself disappearing into this other world.

Sarah: Yep!

Courtney: Right, and there’s some books where you can read and you’re just very aware that you’re reading a book and it’s like turning the pages and, like, your mind, you’re not there?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And there’s some things where you open it up and it’s like word one.

Sarah: Yep. Yep.

Courtney: I am there! I am watching it happen. I am feeling it happen. I am not aware of the passage of time!

Sarah: Yeah!

Courtney: Around me. I finish, and I look up and I’m like, I have to pee so badly! How did that happen?

Sarah: I have a sunburn because of this book, ‘cause I forgot about time and also being white.

Courtney: Yes!

Sarah: God damn it!

[Laughter]

Courtney: That’s it, yeah. And, and this is one of those, like, time disappears, stops moving –

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: – books.

Sarah: Yep.

Where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Courtney: You know, mostly at this point, I am posting on Bluesky and not Twitter so much because of the –

Sarah: That, yes.

Courtney: – Elon-Musk-ness of –

Sarah: Yes.

Courtney: But I have a tea newsletter that comes out every week. Pretty regularly, which is almost shocking for a person with ADHD. I really have to have to hand it to myself for general capacity at doing a thing.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: So that is probably the best place to find me?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Courtney: Those two? I still push updates to Twitter and Facebook, but I’m not actually on those places much, so.

Sarah: Can’t say as I blame you.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Fear not: I will have links to Courtney’s newsletter; the particular newsletter where she talked about Mt. Fuji, ‘cause the pictures are great; the review where someone went back in time to teach yoga – true story – and the books that we talked about as well. They will be in the show notes, and you know where that is, right? Smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode number 634.

As always, I end with a terrible joke, and this week is no exception. This joke is terrible, and I love it so much, which is why I’m going to share it with you!

What do you call a person who’s finished digging?

Give up? (I’m, like, bouncing in my chair, I’m so excited.)

What do you call a person who’s finished digging?

Doug.

[Laughs] So I bet some of you guessed and were like, No, no, don’t say it. Nooo! I love that joke so much. [Clears throat] Now back to serious podcaster voice – not really.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week, where we will start recapping the October 1988 issue of Romantic Times Rewind. Were you born at this time? One of us, co-hosting this episode, was not! So yes, please join us for that. Until then, have a great weekend; we’ll see you back here next week.

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

[end of music]