650. “I’m Going to Keep Daring” – Romance and History with Joanna Shupe

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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 650 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. That is a big number. I’m Sarah Wendell. My guest today is Joanna Shupe, and for our six hundred and fiftieth episode we have a really, really good one.

On November 11, 2024, in response to angry readers chastising her for writing in her newsletter about her disappointment with the election results, Joanna Shupe posted a TikTok. With her permission, I’m going to share the audio first, before the interview. She says in her comments that she could teach a whole class about the parallels between the Gilded Age and the current cultural and political climate, which, for the sake of brevity, I am calling the Dumpster Age. So I reached out and I said, Hey, I can’t offer a class, but how about a podcast episode? Joanna was kind enough to walk us through some of the parallels between then and now that give her some despair and how infuriating it was to have readers scold and chastise her for expressing her newsletter a perspective that she already thought was pretty obvious, you know, from all of her books about the Gilded Age.

So in a moment I have the audio from her TikTok, and then we’ll get into the interview, but if I can take a moment, this is my six hundred and fiftieth episode. 650. And at the end of the month, on January 31st, Smart Bitches will be twenty years old; it’ll be our twentieth anniversary. Thank you. Thank you for valuing my work on the podcast and online and for valuing our perspective on the site when we all explore romance and everything around it. Thank you from my heart to yours. Thank you so much. Getting emotional, and I hate that. [Laughs] Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of Smart Bitches. I’m honored to reach all of these milestones and to know that you’re hanging out with me, so thank you.

Thank you especially to our Patreon community. If you would like to support the work, that is a great way to do it: patreon.com/SmartBitches. There are bonus episodes, there’s a lovely Discord community, we’re going to be doing our Valentine’s Day card exchange very soon, and if you would like to support the podcast and make sure every episode has a transcript from garlicknitter – hi, garlicknitter! Happy New Year! Thank you! – [Hi! Happy New Year! Proud to be your transcriptionist! – gk] – have a look: patreon.com/SmartBitches. We would love to have you in the community.

All right, so I’m going to start with the audio of Joanna Shupe’s TikTok, and then I will transition with music into the interview. So here is Joanna Shupe’s TikTok.

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Joanna Shupe via TikTok: So I sent out a newsletter last weekend that got quite a shockingly high number of very angry responses. As a Gilded Age historical author, I have spent years researching the mid to late 19th century, and I feel obligated to point out the parallels between what I see happening now versus what was happening then, then, because they’re shockingly similar! And I can get into all the reasons why it’s similar from, you know, the xenophobia, the racism, the rollback of reproductive rights, the concentration of wealth at the top. I’m, I mean, listen, I almost feel like I could give a class on it. But my email was mostly about the, you know, the rollback of reproductive rights. The emails, the angry emails I got in response basically said, How dare you? How dare you force your views onto me?

So first of all, I dare. Let’s just start there. I dare. Second of all, if you’re reading my books, those are my political views. I don’t hide them. That’s writing! Those are my thoughts coming through as character and plot development and conflict. That actually comes from my brain. Those are my thoughts. Those are my views. I’ve written about the Comstock laws; I’ve written about reproductive rights in the 19th century; I’ve written about the Chinese Exclusionary Act; I’ve written about class conflict; I’ve written about the concentration of wealth at the top. I, I really can’t do any more than I have to really tell you without telling you what my political views are, so let me just tell you.

I’m horrified by the administration that has just been put in place. So writing is political, books are political, and you know what, if you’re reading my books and you don’t get that? I’m not sure I want you as a reader! You’re not my audience! If you’re reading historical romance to relive some sort of white nationalist patriarchy fantasy, because that’s what you see in my books? Wow. I am horrified. I, we are not simpatico, sister. I really didn’t realize until I started getting these angry emails how many readers didn’t get it.

So how dare I? I dare. And I’m going to keep daring, because silence is acceptance. I don’t accept what’s happening. I will not be silenced, and if you want to withhold the threat of I will not longer buy your books, Joanna Shupe, fine. Don’t buy them! They’re not for you, okay? So I dare. Yes, I dare, and I’m going to keep daring.

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Joanna via this here podcast: I’m Joanna Shupe. I’m a Gilded Age historical romance author. I also write dark mafia contemporary under the penname Mila Finelli, which in this day, this year of 2025 is wild.

Sarah: So first of all, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. I have a bunch of questions, but I want to start with your viral video about your newsletter, where you drew parallels between the golden, the gil-, the Gilded Age and the current times. I also just need to tell you I shared that internally with the Smart Bitches team; people were so very impressed with this video on my part of the internet, because you really came out swinging in a way that I don’t think authors are often permitted or, or feel that they have the permission to do. Can you tell me about this video and what happened?

Joanna: So after the election –

Sarah: Boooo.

Joanna: – I mean, I needed – boooo, meh.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Joanna: I really needed a couple days to just sit with it. I mean, I think as we all did.

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: And, you know, I’ve been researching the 19th century for a long time, and I’ve been saying – 19th century America, I should say – for a long time, and I have been saying for a number of years, Wow, it’s just crazy how X – right? Right? – how we saw X in the 19th century, and now we’re seeing it again! And those little moments just kept piling up and piling up and piling up, and so after I sort of had processed the election and I just, I sent out a newsletter to my newsletter list, which is not huge, and I called it “Our Wicked Folly,” because Queen Victoria used the term to, to talk about women’s rights as, you know, the, the suffrage movement and the women’s rights movement of the late 19th century as a wicked folly. So clearly not on board. She’s –

Sarah: Girl, you’re, you’re the queen!

Joanna: – the most powerful woman on the planet at that point.

Sarah: You are the queen of a lot of stuff!

Joanna: She’s not on board.

Sarah: No!

Joanna: So I c-, I mean, so I called it “Our Wicked Folly,” I said these are my post-election thoughts, and I just sort of did a perspective of what I see. You know, I’ve been researching the 19th century and, you know, these are some broad strokes, and we’ll all get – I don’t know how we’re going to get through this, you know, but I plan to send weekly newsletters, you know, just with sort of doing a historical deep dive into some of these issues. And I didn’t rail, really, so much against Trump, although I did say, I referred to him as a, you know, wanna-be fascist, authoritarianism, and so he was named, but it really wasn’t so much about him –

Sarah: No.

Joanna: – as opposed to sort of this knowledge that I have rolling around in my head of, of things that really worry me. And I got back a, for me, surprisingly high number of angry emails. I’ll never read you again; I’m going to tell all my friends not to read your books.

Sarah: Okay!

Joanna: I had one subscriber actually tell me to fuck off.

Sarah: Oh dear God!

Joanna: So, I mean –

Sarah: Because you were expressing historical contexts and you were describing – I mean, you said little moments, and I want to ask you about those, but it seems to me like what you were trying to con-, convey is your own despair at the idea that you could be seeing, through your research, a very probably future, and because you know of what happened in the Gilded Age and how difficult it was socially for, and, and economically for –

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: – a lot of people, you’re seeing a probably future, because those same moments are happening. Somebody told you to fuck off?

Joanna: Yes!

Sarah: Like, you could just unsubscribe!

Joanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, I –

Joanna: Correct. Right.

Sarah: Wow. Okay!

Joanna: There were people who responded and said, I don’t agree with you, but –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: There were, and, you know, there were a lot of responses saying, Thank you –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – you know, and, and I still get those. Every time, I send one out every week, where I look into various, you know, deep dives of comparing the 19th century to today, and I, I always get, you know, thank-yous. But I was very surprised to find such vitriol and opposition in my newsletter list based on sort of some of the issues that I’ve tackled in my books, which, I mean, I, I don’t know how you don’t see it.

Sarah: Right! Like, what –

Joanna: So –

Sarah: – what – this, this seems all logical to me! This is the hear-, the period of time. I have read some of your books; I know what you’re writing about! What, what did they expect?!

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: That’s – wow!

Joanna: And that’s, that’s why it just, it, it – and I sat with it a couple days, and I was going back and forth with my assistant, and I was, like, saying, You just would not even believe some of the responses I’ve gotten! And what, what are these – you’re reading my books, and you’re missing me talk about the Comstock laws, and you’re missing me talking about the Chinese Exclusionary Act, and you’re missing, like – what are you reading it for? Like, if you’re – [laughs] – I mean, what – I don’t understand. So, you know, I was on my way into the day job, and I just sat in my car, and I was like, you know what? I, I’ve just had it! I’ve had it! Like, and I just kept getting emails! Like even, you know, a few weeks after it went out, I just kept getting emails, and so I just really had had enough, and that’s when I made the TikTok video.

Sarah: Did you script that before you wrote it, or did you just sort of have your bullet points in mind and be like, All right, here’s the deal, people?

Joanna: I did not script it!

Sarah: Nice! ‘Cause it was extremely thorough!

Joanna: I sort of wish I had, because I feel like I, you know, I came across silly in parts of it, but –

Sarah: No, not at all, actually. I have, I have so many questions. Okay. So first –

Joanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: You mentioned the little moments that are happening that remind you so much of your historical research, and I’m assuming that’s, like you said, the Comstock laws; the Asian exclusion act; the policies on immigration; the, a threat of mass deportation; the rise in violence against labor movements.

Joanna: Mm, mm-hmm! Yeah!

Sarah: What are some of these moments, and which are the ones that you think have the most impact for you?

Joanna: Yeah, before we move off unions, you know, unions right now have the lowest membership on record.

Sarah: I know!

Joanna: So, you know, you see the Gilded Age, the rise of workers coming together because they realize, Hey, we’ve, we’ve got power if we come together, we mobilize, we stick together as a group, and you’ve seen it dismantled, really, over the last, you know, since the 1970s –

Sarah: Yeah!

Joanna: – really, but, but mostly the 1980s by Ronald Reagan, who’s just a real piece of work.

Sarah: Absolutely roasting in hell slowly.

Joanna: Yeah. I actually wanted to write these down, because there’s so many parallels that I was afraid I was going to forget some. So in the 189-, really the 1880s, 1890s, we see the technological change, which is the rise of industry, the telegraph, the telephone, the railroad. We see the economic concentration of wealth at the top which has only been eclipsed by today. You see the rising inequality between the classes. Political partisanship really becomes a thing in the Gilded Age, where it really hadn’t been much of an issue before? The financial corruption in politics becomes a real problem. There’s the social turmoil, as you mentioned, labor unions and strikes. There’s the rollback of the reproductive rights with Comstock laws. Yellow journalism becomes a thing, sensationalist journalism.

Sarah: We don’t have any of that! [Laughs] What are you talking about?!

Joanna: With Hearst and Pulitzer –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – and control of the narrative through the media –

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: – which is outright, outright lies. Massive immigration waves – the US population actually doubles between 1870 and 1900, and one in seven Americans are immigrants at that point, and I think right now we’re at one in eight Americans…

Sarah: Wow! That is a close parallel. Holy cow.

Joanna: Yeah, it’s a huge, it’s a huge number! We see the populism and racism and xenophobia sort of – I mean, that’s, I think, where history has, class has really done a disservice to Americans, because we’re taught to sort of memorize dates and events and dates and events, and people just go, Oh God, I don’t want to, don’t want to memorize anymore fucking dates! But history doesn’t happen in a vacuum –

Sarah: No.

Joanna: – and so for me, I’m more interested in the soup, like the underlying conditions and, and sort of the, the bigger picture of what’s happening underneath those events that causes events to happen.

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: And really it’s, I mean, I think when we look at the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s and then we look at today, it’s white, elite men trying to hold onto power.

Sarah: Yep.

Joanna: I mean, that’s just, that’s the bottom line.

Sarah: And now we have additional ways of framing that power structure. Now it’s white, het – heterosexual – cisgender, often Christian men who –

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: – are preserving that power.

Joanna: Yes. A hundred percent.

Sarah: Yeah. So we’ve added a couple of adjectives, but the, the consolidation of power is still there.

Joanna: Correct. And, you know, you had, also the Gilded Age, the question of who has the right to be a citizen –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – which we’re seeing again today. You know, voting restrictions. It’s just, it’s –

Sarah: It’s a lot!

Joanna: It’s a lot, and it’s, it’s depressing because then, as we get into the 1900s they, science gets on board with this idea of eugenics, which is really just a fancy world, word for old-timey white nationalism.

Sarah: Yep.

Joanna: And eugenics becomes this movement of survival, “survival of the fittest,” the fittest being –

Sarah: White.

Joanna: – the richest – white –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – right. So, and prominent politicians and prominent authors and prominent scientists of the day all touted it as being a good idea, and it leads to discrimination; it leads to forced sterilization; it leads to selective breeding. I mean, it’s – and then we get into, really, the 1930s, which is the fascism of the rise of Nazi Germany.

Sarah: And the collapse of the economy.

Joanna: It all ties, it all ties in together. I feel like we have to look at those issues to make sure that’s not where we’re headed.

Sarah: Yes. We have, there’s a, there’s an older video that I once saw that was actually about the cosmos, and in it – it’s, it’s all very autotune, but it’s very soothing – and in it, Carl Sagan says, We have traveled this way before, and there is much to be learned. I mean, we literally go in a circle every year; we go in a circle every day. We could, like, so not do that historically? Like, we could totes choose something else. I always say, all the time, when I’m looking at, you know, evidence of anti-Semitism, like, Aren’t you bored? This is boring! You haven’t even updated your, your theories about Jewish people; you’re, you’re still operating on real – like, aren’t you bored? But no!

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: People are not bored! People are –

Joanna: No.

Sarah: – scared and threatened and isolated and vulnerable and angry.

Joanna: Right! And the rise of anti-Semitic incidents is, you know, just continues to increase every year.

Sarah: Yep.

Joanna: Same with the anti-Asian –

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: – incidents, the increase – somebody on Bluesky said that America has, we’ve been taking a test with an open book, and we failed. Deprioritize education?

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: I read a, some kind of crazy statistic that more than half of Americans are at a fifth-grade reading level?

Sarah: I saw that too, and I was –

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – shocked. And there’s a, there’s an –

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – actual dem-, documented problem with the way we’ve been teaching people to read? That the pedagogy and the understanding of how we teach people to read is, is factually incorrect and actually not great? It’s not wonderful? I can understand the feelings of futility and despair, because, like, you can, in fact, see all of these patterns lining up on a –

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: – one-hundred-year cycle.

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: Where do you think – do you have any theories as to where the vitriol comes from? Especially the ones that were directed at you. That’s shocking to me? Maybe I’m just a weirdo, but I don’t expect every author to cater to my political views, and if I read someone who is a, a, of a different view than mine, I can just not read them. I know there are many other books. There’s lots.

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: There’s a lot of books!

Joanna: There’s lots!

Sarah: Like two thousand were published since we started talking fifteen minutes ago!

Joanna: [Laughs] You know, there’s been this debate online about should, are books political? Should books be political? You know, and, and I think some people just want their creators to just shut up and, and put out stuff that they agree with. I mean – but to argue that books are not political – I mean, that’s why I said in my video, like, I’m not, I’m, I’m not an AI robot! Like, I don’t create my books with AI. Like, every word; every sentence; every, you know, plot point; like, that’s me!

Sarah: Yeah. That’s a person.

Joanna: So I’m not – right! That’s a, that’s a real person behind that, as the majority of authors. To think that we’re not making choices, and if I choose not to insert any kind of political backdrop, that’s also a choice, right? That’s also political. But I don’t! I mean, that’s, to me, that’s, I have always tried to choose events to feature from the 19th century that I thought, Wow, I didn’t know about this, and there may be other people who also – I had no idea about the Chinese Exclusionary Act until I started researching it. And it’s basically white men in California freaking out because a wave of Chinese immigrants came in in the 1840s, 1850s and started taking what they perceived as their jobs away. So there’s just so many little things that I –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – had no idea had happened in history, because we’re taught such a, a white, cishet version, male version of history.

Sarah: I once heard Beverly Jenkins giving a talk, and she said that in American history the Black people are present for the, for slavery, and then they leave the planet and they come back for civil rights, but you’re not going to –

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: – hear about them in between those two events. We were not here; we were, maybe we were on Mars, and I have never forgotten that.

Joanna: No.

Sarah: The only when you are a lead character or an antagonist, depending on your point of view, are you present in history; otherwise it’s just the history of white people.

Joanna: Yep.

Sarah: I read a really interesting quote. I was thinking about what you just said about how America’s been taking a test with an open book? Somebody on, also on Bluesky said that America thinks it has plot armor. America thinks that it is so important to the global narrative that they’re, they are the lead character; they have plot armor; they cannot be irrelevant. It’s, they must be relevant, and they must be preserved, and I’m like, We do not have plot armor, y’all – [laughs] – we really don’t!

Joanna: Right! I mean, I think, my brother, after Trump was re-elected said, I will never think we are anything special.

Sarah: Oh, no.

Joanna: Like, our, our country is not anything special.

Sarah: No.

Joanna: I don’t know why we think –

Sarah: That we’re so exceptional.

Joanna: Right, that we’re so exceptional.

Sarah: We’re so good at racism, though! I mean –

Joanna: So good at –

Sarah: We’re so good at racism.

Joanna: And misogyny.

Sarah: And misogyny, yeah, and, and patriarchal kyriarchy with, you know, all the intersections of overlaying power. We’re really good at, like, making sure everyone’s in their slot.

I remain baffled by the idea that, that romance should not be political. I saw this going around on TikTok; I know you addressed it in your video, and it’s something that I think, I think a lot of historical authors are struggling with how to reconcile current understandings and viewpoints with books that may be twenty or thirty years old. I know there are many authors who are going back to edit their books to remove things that no longer work and no longer communicate what they wanted to communicate to the reader and with the current understanding. Like, I know for myself, for example, if I’m reading a Regency or, or a Georgian novel and there’s a duke and he’s, you know, putting sugar in his tea, okay, well, I know where the sugar and the tea came from. That’s not optimal. And I love that –

Joanna: You’re correct.

Sarah: – I love that historical romance is now incorporating not just nobility and titled people but people with wealth. Like, wealth fantasy is a fundamental aspect of romance. I totally get that, because, you know, when you have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of problems.

Joanna: Yes, yeah! And you know, I’ve written a lot of American tycoons who –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – were not great. I mean, you know, Vanderbilt, you know, Carnegie.

Sarah: Oh God, yes.

Joanna: You know, all of those guys, you don’t make that amount of money by playing nice. I mean –

Sarah: No.

Joanna: – so I do realize that, you know, a lot of my books have very problematic – and, and perhaps I have sanitized those to some extent, and that’s, I think in one version of the video I recorded for TikTok I even said that. Like, I said, like, that, like, I have glorified this era that, now living in it, I can see perhaps –

Sarah: Not so great.

Joanna: – it doesn’t, doesn’t need glorification!

Sarah: I mean, Carnegie is a great example of that, you know? Built libraries all over the country, which is not anything that would have happened except through a private foundation.

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: Like the whole idea of open access to books and literacy would never happen then, and it would – like, if somebody came up with the idea now, we can’t even do universal basic income and healthcare; we’re not doing libraries. So on one hand you have this guy who builds libraries all over the country and invests in music and invests in the arts, and also caused the down, the Johnstown flood, because he wanted to go fishing with his buddies. Like –

Joanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – this guy has some darkness, and it’s –

Joanna: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – not easy to talk about that. It’s – especially because when you’re talking about characters, the minute you say romance hero both, I think, you as the author and then us as the reader, we’re filling in a whole bunch of attributes there that go with being a romance hero.

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: And it’s, it’s very hard, I think, to reconcile, Okay, but this also, this person might also be deeply morally terrible.

Joanna: Because you don’t want to write them as the villain, obviously, and most of – I think we can now see billionaires would be the millionaire of the, you know, the Gilded Age – are terrible, horrible, awful people!

Sarah: Resource-hoarding monsters, yes.

Joanna: Yes! Right! And they were no different in the 1890s.

Sarah: Yeah!

Joanna: And, you know, I’ve written a, a steel baron. I mean, I – who had, who was located in Pittsburgh! I –

Sarah: Yeah!

Joanna: I mean –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: So, yes, I have contributed somewhat to the, to the problem, but I’ve also tried, while glorify, while, you know, showcasing the wealth and the, you know, kind of making that fun and sexy, I’ve also tried to pick sort of the societal issues that were, that people were dealing with at the time.

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: So that’s how I sleep at night, I guess, but – [laughs]

Sarah: Well, I mean, I, I would assume, and I mean, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I would also assume that if you’re writing dark mafia, historical romance is going to inform that because it is a power structure. It is a hierarchy; it has rules about how you move in that hierarchy. There are very specific roles that you fulfill, especially –

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: – once you are in. This is very historical romance class structure. Like it’s all –

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: – class structure.

Joanna: A hundred percent.

Sarah: So I imagine that, you know, you are very good at taking a morally dubious dude and making him hot as fuck. I mean, I know you are.

Joanna: Well – [laughs] – I, I try.

Sarah: So I know, I know the result of sharing this message was not always, you know, great. It, it does suck to get hate mail; I, I, I know it’s shocking, but I get hate mail. I’ve gotten hate mail for twenty years now.

Joanna: No!

Sarah: Oh goodness! You Bitches Have Gone Too Far! Is literally the name of the file where I put it all. [Laughs]

Joanna: Oh my goodness.

Sarah: Oh yeah! Well, because I’m daring to criticize something that shouldn’t be criticized. I am daring to say, You know what, this, this trope, this trope sucks. Could we maybe not have dubious consent in historicals? You know, I’m talking twenty years ago. Historical –

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – was still, like, the number one thing. But I then, you know, I look back at the romances that were published before I started reading them? And if you look at those in historical context, and this is really, I think, hard; when you talk to the media, they want a little tiny sound bite. Like, they want a quotable, ten to fifteen words at the most. And it’s hard to explain to people, Okay, but when you look at bodice rippers and you look at all these historical romances in the context of when they were published, women were legitimately negotiating how to have hornypants. That they were giving permission to themselves to have arousal is a big deal. Like, that is a massive deal –

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: – and that is why it is visited upon them by a, you know, a big, big guy. Big, musc-, muscular, rape-y guy. Like, that makes sense in context, but that’s not shocking. Like, that’s not interesting. So we’ll just –

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: – call them bodice rippers and ignore the context.

Joanna: Yeah, there’s no nuance.

Sarah: No! No, nuance is boring.

Joanna: No. No nuance.

Sarah: Now, you also mentioned that you could teach a class on the Gilded Age and our current moment, and we’ve gone over all of the things that this would have in common. I, I can only give an episode; I wish I could give a class; like, just set you up with a whole platform. What, what would you put in this class? Like, what would, if you could teach the people who emailed you back and the people who were like, Wait a minute, really, we’ve done this before? What would you want to teach? Like, what would the structure look like?

Joanna: Well, I think it would look – I mean, really it would start in the 1840s, the beginning of the century, and look at sort of the, the beats. You know, what are the steps that get us to, you know, the 1930s?

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: You know, because I, I have always thought, Oh, how? How did the Germans, how did that happen? They were so cruel, they were so horrible, which they were, but, you know, we could never. I mean, there’s just sort of a bravado where you just think history has, has moved on, and –

Sarah: Times were different then, and if I were in those times, I would have been different.

Joanna: Correct, yes –

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: – right. So I think I would look at just where, where it starts, how we get there, because they’re all interconnected. They’re, you know, when you start with the, you know, the Chinese immigration, the –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – Irish immigration, the Italian immigration, and the technological advances, I mean, I would just break it down by decade, by issue, and really just try to connect those dots –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – because I think that’s what we’re not, we’re not good at? If you really go back and start to, to contrast it to when Reagan gets in – I mean, I mean, really the 1960s and the civil rights movement, that caused, that is really sort of the catalyst to these white, Christian men looking at their world and saying, Oh no, we, we just can’t have that.

Sarah: Mm.

Joanna: So how we, how we going to undo that?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Joanna: And that’s sort of how the, the white men after the Civil, after the Civil War –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – that’s exactly what, what happened.

Sarah: That’s exactly what they did!

Joanna: How do we undo that?

Sarah: We, we’re doing it now! We had, we had #MeToo. First we had, we had a Black man as president, and there are a lot of people who really don’t seem to be over that. We had a Black man as president; we had #MeToo; we had the 2020 summer of Black Lives Matter; we had corporations actually participating in statements about, you know, recognizing the own, their own racial inequality – that did not last. I was giving a career day presentation to a bunch of high schoolers, and I was like, Listen this, it, it could be really tempting to make your life on the internet your job! Don’t, don’t do it, y’all. Trust me; do not.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: I speak from experience: it is hard. But the teacher was talking about how there’s just basically this pendulum, and we just swing faster now. It used to take a couple of decades, maybe, you know, maybe a nice big block of time and then we’d start to shift back. Now we’re just, we’re just moving really fast. Back and forth, back and forth!

Joanna: Interesting. I like that. And I, I would agree that Obama, that presidency, that caused a lot of very powerful, very rich white people to lose their minds.

Sarah: Oh, and they’re still, they’re, they’re still unhinged.

Joanna: And they’re – right! And they’re still losing their minds! I mean, my, I had a friend who had in-laws that – this was way back – in-laws that had grown up in North Carolina, and these people were probably in their sixties, and this was maybe, I don’t know, thirty years ago –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – but they would not buy a car, a Lincoln. Would not buy a Lincoln because of the name Lincoln. So that is, I mean, I mean – [speechless] – right? Like, it’s, it’s so deep-seated and so pervasive, and that, I, I think that’s really –

Sarah: That is very…

Joanna: Those are really, those are really the two big, I think, catalysts for what comes after.

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: So.

Sarah: I agree. And it’s interesting, because if you look back at the Gilded Age, you know, you had news, like, breathless newspaper coverage – I’m sure you’ve seen it – of, like, the parties thrown by one Vanderbilt or another and the, the jewels that they were wearing, and we still do that! It’s a TV show now; it’s called Real Housewives; we’ve got one in like nineteen different cities; it’s a whole franchise. We still do this Glittery wealth is pretty to look at! It’s fun. Like, you see it on celebrities on the red carpet, and their, like, their necklaces are, like, massive things, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, Okay, with that jewelry, nice, gorgeous, lovely, sparkly, very pretty, love it. The, the price of it? You could feed like so many people?

Joanna: Yes. Right.

Sarah: You could do so much with it, and it’s like, it’s nice that it’s this thing, but also, do we want to have these things when there are this many people food insecure? Who live in food deserts?

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: Who have to get their groceries at Dollar General? Like, is that what we want to do? I don’t know if – I love pretty dresses very much, but it, it’s very uncomfortable.

Joanna: Right, it’s the whole Instagram –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Joanna: – culture of –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Joanna: – you know, got to have that perfect –

Sarah: Aesthetic.

Joanna: – image.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Joanna: Correct. Well, you know, Mark Twain is the one that coined the phrase the Gilded Age, and it doesn’t refer to it being this wonderful –

Sarah: Nooo!

Joanna: – glamorous –

Sarah: No.

Joanna: – golden era of America. It, what it means is it is, it’s just a layer of gold gilding on a pile of crap –

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: – that if you scratch off that layer of gold, it’s rotten underneath.

Sarah: Still going to turn your ears green.

Joanna: [Laughs]

Sarah: If you’re me, anyway.

Joanna: And I think that’s what we’re, where we are today. I mean –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – you know, the wealth inequality and the, how people are struggling, and yet it’s being framed as something that it’s totally not.

Sarah: No.

Joanna: Being blamed on, on a very small, you know, group of people, so.

Sarah: It’s very fascinating to look at the redefinition of the Gilded Age, because people don’t interpret it as cheap gold plating on stuff that’s going to turn your ears green. They look at it as gilded as in, like, perfect, as gold, as wealthy, as beautiful, and I, I remember thinking when I was watching some of the episodes of The Gilded Age television show, This is rich people wearing hats about their problems, according to the Fug Girls, which is the perfect description. They have problems about soup and they wear hats about it.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: And I’ve, I – who was it? I don’t remember who it was that called it The Real Housewives of like 1892?

Joanna: Yes! Yeah.

Sarah: But that’s basically what it is, and there’s, there’s not a lot in there about everything else that was going on!

Joanna: Correct. Correct.

Sarah: That must be very frustrating. Do people ask you if you watch it all the time? Did you watch The Gilded Age? And, like, yes! And my blood pressure was high!

[Laughter]

Joanna: So I have a Facebook group, and we do a live, I do a live tweet of every epi- – not, not tweet – a live viewing party of every episode where I’m, like, commenting on, like, you know, Yes, there really were sheep in Central Park! You know, that’s a cool, like, little – you know, and so I’m commenting on the whole thing. I wish there was more kissing in that show. Let’s just get that out of the way right now.

Sarah: We had naked man ass in Bridgerton; y’all are letting us down! The bar is high. I mean, I was just –

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: – doing an interview with somebody who’s been watching the Rivals –

Joanna: Mm!

Sarah: – adaptation? They, they – [laughs] – she said, Well, there’s, you have to warn your listeners; there’s tits and bits and bumps.

Joanna: Oh!

Sarah: Yes!

Joanna: Now, now I’m interested!

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Joanna: [Laughs] What is this show?

Sarah: Rivals, based on –

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: – the bonkbusters by Jilly Cooper that were popular in, like, the era of, like, Jackie Collins and all of those novels –

Joanna: Mm!

Sarah: – and Barbara Taylor Bradford? They’re rich people being wealthy in rural England with class problems and hot men and a lot of, a lot of sex. Probably some cocaine. According to Verity, who was telling me about it, the sexual politics of the time, like, it was the ‘80s in England? The sexual politics are a, a rich text, as the academics like to say. There are some scenes of, like, groping where right now that would be like full-on assault.

Joanna: Hmm.

Sarah: It’s delicious and dishy and fun and ridiculous because it’s rich people having dumb problems and looking good.

Joanna: Right, which is basically The Gi-, The, The Gilded Age series on HBO. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! We, we, we’ve got one for every time period now.

Joanna: I mean, I would be curious – I don’t know if season three has been filmed yet. I’m sure it’s done and written and – I’m, I’ll be, I’m curious to see how it’ll be received in the sort of current atmosphere that we’re in? They’re not really doing a deep dive into – you get a very sort of glossed-over upper Fifth Avenue/Newport view of, of that era.

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: I love actually seeing it on screen; that was, that’s very cool. You know, just the, the sets and, like, the, the reproduction of, of the city. It makes it very vivid for me, which I love.

Sarah: Yes. This third season question is an interesting one, because it makes me think of Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Which kind of realized, Oh, we can’t really tell funny stories about cops anymore.

Joanna: Yeah, they had to address –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – Black Lives Matters and, and Blue Live Matters and yeah.

Sarah: And that was kind of the end of the show, because one character decided they couldn’t be a cop anymore, and the lead character ultimately – SPOILER ALERT – decided that he was going to leave the force, and his, his wife is now like a captain, so you have, like, this really weird tension that wasn’t fully reconciled because nobody could look at that show and be like, Oh, cops are funny! Like, no we can’t do that –

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – we can’t do that right now because we know what’s, what’s actually happening.

So I have a question from one of my Patreon people, and Cari wanted to ask, wanted me to ask you why you chose the Gilded Age in New York for your books. There’s a lot of Regency, there’s a lot of Victorian, there’s a lot of Georgian; what drew you to the Gilded Age? I’m sure you’ve had this question before, but I, I have not heard your answer.

Joanna: So my great-great-grandparents came through Ellis Island.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: So – from Italy. We have the records; their name was changed when they came through, as most immigrants –

Sarah: Same with my husband’s family. Yep.

Joanna: There you go. Most names were changed. I have always loved New York, and I’ve always liked that time in history where it felt like we welcomed – you know – [laughs] – I watched a lot of Schoolhouse Rock!, and I swallowed, I swallowed what they taught me, which a lot of it was not correct, but –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – it, it’s a snappy tune, so –

Sarah: It is.

Joanna: – [laughs] – we can sort of forgive some of it. You know, that idea that you can, it is a melting pot, that you can come here and anybody can succeed, and we wel-, you know, just that whole, I really romanticized that, I think, growing up. I loved Edith Wharton? I did not read Jane Austen till I was in my thirties, so I sort of don’t have the Austen background that a lot of historical romance authors have? Mine’s more Edith Wharton. I think that’s where it starts? Then when you start looking at, you start discovering all the, the layers to that era, it’s so transformative for everything that comes after?

Sarah: Yes!

Joanna: It’s like, it’s like the foundation of what we know as America today.

Sarah: Yep!

Joanna: You know, it’s the, the transportation, the communication, the, you know, the newspapers, the – I, I mean, just everything that sort of we recognize as our country comes to formation there in those centuries after the, those decades after the Civil War. So it just, it’s fascinating to me.

Sarah: It is!

Joanna: I mean, I just, I don’t know why, but it just is.

Sarah: It is very layered.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, and there’s always stuff I’m unearthing. I mean, you know, there’s always some little nugget of, of history that I didn’t know about, and that –

Sarah: Yep!

Joanna: – I’m researching. I just think it’s fascinating.

Sarah: It is fascinating! And you’ve already got a filter of who was able to write history, who was able to have their history published, who was able to write it down and make sure that people saw it? Like, there’s a lot of history that’s missing because –

Joanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – what we have is sided with the victors and told by a select group of writers, so we’re already filtered in our history.

Joanna: Right.

Sarah: What I, one of the things I love is going through digital archives of newspapers that have been scanned and made digital? Even just going back to, like, when I was little, it’s really interesting to just see the difference in how people talked about things only forty years ago, let alone –

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – a hundred and something.

Joanna: Yeah. And I love the ads.

Sarah: Oh God!

Joanna: [Laughs] Yeah, the ads are, ads are so great.

One of my most favorite things that I did for research is I looked at, I actually read the trial transcripts of trials from like the 1890s which have been digitized from the John Jay criminal college –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – has digitized those. And so you really, you know, you’re reading people’s actual words, which is wild!

Sarah: Oh, it’s super wild.

Joanna: You know, if anybody thinks they didn’t use the word fuck a lot in the 19th century, let me tell you, those trial transcripts –

Sarah: Said it in court. If there are listeners who want to learn more about all of the things that you’re talking about, what resources do you recommend that you go back to or that you find are really valuable?

Joanna: One of the resources that I feel like has saved my sanity in this, in what’s happening is Heather Cox Richardson, who is an American historian that puts out a daily email newsletter called “Letters from an American,” and I feel like I want to be best friends with her? I don’t know if she’s taking applications, but I’m –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Joanna: – I’m applying because I, I just love her? And her attitude when everybody, you know, she’s been interviewed multiple times since Trump took office, and they’ve asked her, How does this all resolve itself? And she will just say, I’m a historian; I look backward. I can’t see the future. I can only tell you, you know, what I’ve seen in the past.

Sarah: And that patterns tend to repeat?

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Joanna: Yes, they do. I don’t know that I’ve, I’ve necessarily used, as far as, like, facts, but just as my wellbeing and, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – reassurance and, like, learning, I learn a lot from her. You know, I have a lot of books that I, I go back to often. I have a, a history book called Black AF History by Michael Harriot.

Sarah: I love Michael Harriot’s writing –

Joanna: I, I love him.

Sarah: – so much.

Joanna: I don’t know if he’s on Bluesky yet, but he was one of my very favorite people on Twitter, historians on Twitter.

Sarah: He is indeed on Bluesky.

Joanna: He is?

Sarah: He is on Bluesky –

Joanna: Okay.

Sarah: – @michaelharriot.bsky.social.

Joanna: Excellent. If you want to learn about the history you’ve never been taught, he is a great resource. You know, I have lots of books that sort of focus on not the glitz and glamour of the Gilded Age, like Low Life by Lucy Sante. There’s a book called Gotham; Edwin G. Burrows wrote that. The Gangs of New York is a great book. If you want to learn about Comstock, The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age, and that’s Amy Sohn. So those are just, like, some books that I, you know, recently have pulled little nuggets from and, and constantly go back to.

Sarah: Do you have time for me to ask one little extra ancillary question?

Joanna: Sure.

Sarah: Okay, so I always ask my guests what books they’re reading because, you know, romance authors especially tend to be reading cool books. But I wanted to ask you, if you’d be willing to talk about it, about the sort of changes happening inside historical romance right now, that it seems to be evolving. I subscribe to the Bruce Springsteen Theory of Publishing: Everything dies, and that is a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back. Everything comes back. Like, it might have a different name, but it’s going to come back. So I look at historical and how different it is, and you have writers like you and Harper St. George, you have writers like Liana de la Rosa, and you have all of these books that are technically historical romance, but they’re not necessarily what you think of when you say historical romance. What, what is your perception of how historical romance is, is, is changing right now?

Joanna: I don’t think I’m speaking hyperbolic when I say that, you know, trad historical is circling the drain.

Sarah: It is most definitely in a coma. I don’t know if it has a DNR; I think it does not. I think it will come back; it’ll just be a little different. [Laughs]

Joanna: That’s correct!

Sarah: Yes.

Joanna: I do, I, you know, Diana Quincy and I talk about this all the time, and we say, like, you know, We came in, and every- – you know, it was when sort of it was at the height –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – and then we came in, and then it plummeted, and everybody said, No, no, no, it’s not, you know, there’s nothing wrong with historical romance. It’s, it’s coming back, it’s coming back, and it just never has, and so we always joke that when we stop writing it, that’s when –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Joanna: – when she and I stop writing it, that’s when it, it really will come back.

Sarah: Somebody said the same thing to Elizabeth Hoyt at her first conference: Oh, why are you writing historical? It’s dead.

Joanna: Hmm.

Sarah: Like, she had a thirteen-book series. You sit down! [Laughs]

Joanna: My very first series was Regency –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – and when I, when the Gilded Age, my first Gilded Age series came out, which was 2016 –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – I had a reader come up to me at a conference and say, When are you going to go back to Regency? ‘Cause I don’t want to read anything set in America. And I was like, Oh. Well – [laughs] – I don’t know what to tell you then. So there are, I mean, there just are people that will not read American historical, period.

Sarah: I always want to ask these people, like, I understand that you clearly have a matched set of luggage about this issue. Would you like to unpack some of that?

Joanna: [Laughs] Right. Right.

Sarah: Would, would you like to just unpack a little bit of that statement? Any, any part of it? Like, no. Okay.

Joanna: And yeah, I –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Joanna: – I could probably guess as to what the reasons for that maybe are, but I don’t know. I mean, whether people just feel like we’re too immersed in it here and they’ve been studying American history since kindergarten and they don’t want to hear it anymore, and they romanticize, like, the Princess Di, Princess, you know, like King Charles, like all, you know, all that –

Sarah: Yep.

Joanna: – I just don’t know. I do think that historicals will come back.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: I think that it’ll probably be something in indie, unique.

Sarah: Yep.

Joanna: Somebody’s going to do something in indie that is just going to be mindblowing –

Sarah: Yes!

Joanna: – and we’re all going to go, Oh my God! Why didn’t we all think of that?

Sarah: Yep. I mean, that is where, that is where historical is really killing it. Like, I read a novella this week about, it was technically the, like a father’s best friend and his old-, and that, and the father’s oldest daughter? Which was actually at the time a perfectly acceptable age range? Like, they were both adults –

Joanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and everything, and she was in her twenties! She was, like, practically ancient.

Joanna: Spinster. [Laughs]

Sarah: She was just decrepit! Decrepit and covered with cobwebs, socially. And I was, and she’s, she was a woman of size, and there’s fat phobia in the world, and I was like, Oh, this, this is kind of fun! I’m enjoying this! It, it’s really, it’s really in the indie space, where you’re going to see –

Joanna: Mm!

Sarah: – something that goes, Oh! You’re totally right about that. Someone’s going to do something that makes everyone go, Oh, historicals! Why haven’t I been reading them? It’s like romantasy.

Joanna: Right. I mean, I think that, you know, if you look at the, sort of the branches of romance, you know, it’s going to be somebody in the indie space just pushing out growing a new branch, and we’re all going to go, Oh my God! That’s –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – amazing!

Sarah: For sure. I hope it’s this year.

Joanna: [Laughs] As do I.

Sarah: I hope it’s like next week, man. [Laughs]

Joanna: As do I! I mean, as do I! Like, I, I love historicals.

Sarah: Me too!

Joanna: I don’t want them to go away? You know, I know there’s a whole debate about the covers and we’re seeing the clinch go away, and we’re, like, the illustrated, is that, the cartoon? Like, what, you know, I don’t know really what the answer is? I do know that my book coming out in August, we did not do a clinch, purposely did not do a clinch? We did an object cover.

Sarah: Is it a mass market or trade?

Joanna: It is trade –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – through HarperCollins Avon. We’re just trying to do something different –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – and I wrote it in first person –

Sarah: Ooh! That’s –

Joanna: – and just –

Sarah: – very different!

Joanna: – like, I, I just, I just feel like we can’t keep doing – I, I myself – cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

Sarah: Nope.

Joanna: Like, I, I’m willing –

Sarah: Are you saying you learn from history? Is that what you’re saying here? [Laughs]

Joanna: I, I, I might have! I mean – [laughs] – maybe!

So again, like, I, I try to look at the big picture. Like, and if it means that this book doesn’t sell and it flops and I have to pivot, like, I’ll pivot. Like you said, I mean, indie’s really doing some wonderful things, and if you read a lot of indies now, they are written in first person, and –

Sarah: Yeah, I’ve noticed that.

Joanna: – they’re, they do not – right! – and they do not have clinch covers. So I just, I don’t know what the future is. I know that there are a lot of historical authors, you know, sort of scratching their heads and, and, and it, I, you know, I feel like we are finally seeing historicals from other points of view? You know, with authors of color, and we’re seeing so much – you know, I’m about to read Adriana Herrera’s A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke, which is coming out this spring, and those books are so important, and I feel like for historical romance to finally let these people in and then collapse?

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: Is cruel! So I’m fighting for it to stick around.

Sarah: That particular book is really interesting from a marketing perspective, because the first two covers are so different from the redesign of the third, which is then being applied backwards to the second and the first?

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s fascinating, ‘cause they were all single woman photograph on the cover, and gorgeous, by the way. And now they’re –

Joanna: Yes!

Sarah: – now they’re illustrated cartoons, and the couples are in a little cameo at the top, and it’s fascinating to me to see that change.

Joanna: Yeah! Yeah.

Sarah: But it’s –

Joanna: I mean –

Sarah: – it’s reduced that woman to a tiny little illustration at the top, and I’m like, That’s a really interesting message; I don’t know if you’re aware of the message that you’re sending, but that is a message.

Joanna: Yeah! I mean, it’s, you know, when you let Target and Walmart and, you know, all of these big –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – box stores dictate –

Sarah: What…

Joanna: – what the covers look like, that’s, you know, and I mean, I love, I love both versions. I’m not saying either one is better or worse, but I –

Sarah: But very different. And they’re doing different things.

Joanna: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: Correct.

Sarah: I remember Jenny Crusie telling this story ages ago: Harlequin was rereleasing some of her older series, and she was getting like a reprint of an older book, and I think it was a Barnes & Noble rep said, Well, if you put a dog on the cover, I’ll buy like three thousand more. And she was like, Okay, but there’s not a dog in the book? And Harlequin was like, We’re putting a dog on the cover, ‘cause he said he was going to buy more! So she wrote a dog into the first chapter of the book that then went out. The rest of it was as it was before.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: And I’m like, Does no one else think that’s just absolutely bananas? [Laughs]

Joanna: It’s bonkers.

Sarah: It’s so bonkers!

Joanna: I mean, because I write in two genres now –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – and because the, the dark romance stuff is indie –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – I can see a lot of behind-the-scenes of, you know, things that maybe I wouldn’t have considered before, and I have, the first series, I have two different sets of covers –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: – and one is a couple set, and the other is just a, like a special edition, I call them flower covers, ‘cause it’s like a single flower –

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: – and the flower covers outsell the couple covers like three to one.

Sarah: Oh, that’s so interesting.

Joanna: So –

Sarah: Well, I mean, books are –

Joanna: – I know…

Sarah: – books are accessories now. If you have a print book, that is an accessory as much as it is –

Joanna: Yes!

Sarah: – a venue for storytelling. It is, it is part of your aesthetic as a reader –

Joanna: Right!

Sarah: – and I, I have this whole theory about the separation of reading and collecting and how –

Joanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – with the emphasis on visual social media like TikTok for the time being and Instagram if, and YouTube, Reels, and all the others, your, your, your visual aesthetic is so much a major part of your brand that the books that you’re choosing have to match it.

Joanna: Right, and can I tell you the number of times that somebody has held up one of my physical mass market paperbacks on TikTok that I have seen? I mean, maybe I could count ‘em on one hand?

Sarah: Mm-hmm…

Joanna: I mean, they just, no one’s holding a, a mass market –

Sarah: No.

Joanna: – with a clinch cover. I mean, I just, I have – maybe it’s there and I don’t see it?

Sarah: No.

Joanna: I mean, granted, I’m not on TikTok twenty-four hours a day; maybe it’s there and I don’t see it?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: But I know I’m not being tagged in it.

Sarah: I’ve also heard of authors who are doing indie to do one cover for the eBook and the other co-, another cover –

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: – for the print. And then that is two different aesthetic audiences, and I was like – [huffs] – ‘cause I still remember when it was a big deal that the eBook was released at the same time as the print, because it used to be that the eBook would be delayed, ‘cause you don’t want to cannibalize your hardcover sales. 

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh, the funny –

Joanna: Oh, oh, the days!

Sarah: Oh, what a funny time that was!

[Laughter]

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: So I always do ask this: what books are you reading that you want to tell people about? Are there any romances, in addition to the Herrera book, that you want to tell people about?

Joanna: Yeah, I’ve been reading a bunch of Alexandra Vasti, ‘cause she and I are doing an event at The Ripped Bodice in January, and so I just finished the Margo Halifax novella [In Which Margo Halifax Earns Her Shocking Reputation], which is delightful.

Sarah: It’s so charming. You’re going to have a –

Joanna: And –

Sarah: – great time at that event, by the way? I’ve interviewed her, I’ve been on her podcast, and she’s been on mine, and y’all are going to have a good time.

Joanna: Oh good! Good, I’ve never met her in person, but I actually, I, I blurbed Earl Crush, and when I wrote the publicist back I said, This book was so good it made me mad.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Joanna: Like, her writing is so good I was actually angry.

Sarah: Yep.

Joanna: So, so I’m looking forward to that, and like I said, I’ve got Adriana’s on my TBR, so that’s, that’s sort of where, what I’ve been reading lately.

Sarah: They’re very, very cool!

Thank you so much for doing this interview. I apologize for going over an hour, but this has been so much fun –

Joanna: Perfectly fine.

Sarah: – and I really appreciate all of your insight. And, you know, good on you for, for releasing that video in the first place. I, I, I will never understand the idea that romance isn’t political. Y’all, it has sex in it. It’s got boobies in it! The boobies are political! You don’t think boobs are political? Come on, now! Where you been? [Laughs]

Joanna: Right. And –

Sarah: It’s got boobies and sex and emotions? And come on, don’t be ridiculous.

Joanna: You and me both. You and me both! Totally confused, but –

Sarah: Don’t understand.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode and my six hundred and fiftieth. Thank you for listening, whether this is your first episode or you’ve been with me the whole time.

I, of course, forgot – oops – to ask Joanna where you can find her, so I’m going to tell you: you can find her at joannashupe.com, and if you want to sign up for that newsletter, and I’m probably thinking you might, it is joannashupe.com/newsletter. And everywhere on social media, especially Instagram, and for the time being TikTok, she is @joannashupe.

I will have links in the show notes, but most importantly I will tell you about her latest book that is out right now. Her latest is The Duke Gets Even, the final book in The Fifth Avenue Rebels series, and it has a 4.1-star review average on StoryGraph. It’s available wherever you get your nifty books, and she released a novella in late 2024 called The Scandal of Rose, which you can also find wherever you get your books.

Links will be in the show notes, along with all the other books that we mentioned as well, never fear.

I end each episode with a terrible joke, and I would never leave you hanging, especially not on this momentous occasion. This joke is from Tess in our Discord.

What happens if you get catsup in your eyes?

Give up? What happens when you get catsup in your eyes?

You have Heinz sight.

[Laughs] That’s delightful; I’m telling many people.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Thank you for celebrating six hundred and fifty episodes with me. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.

And in the words of Friendshipping, thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking.

[end of music]