651. Little Free Libraries and Sports with Savannah Carlisle and Kristi Dosh

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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 651 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and I have two guests today: Savannah Carlisle and Kristi Dosh, but fortunately they are one person. Savannah Carlisle is the author of The Library of Second Chances, and Kristi Dosh is a sports business reporter and nonfiction author. So we’re going to talk about literally all the things. Savannah’s romance centers on a Little Free Library, so of course we’re going to talk about that, but we also talk about sports romance and why she doesn’t want to write one, and then we have tons of recs. You know, standard operating procedure. I will have all of the recommendations in the show notes and at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 651.

However, I want to make sure to tell you – this is important – I have a TRIGGER WARNING and CONTENT WARNING. At nineteen minutes in [19:00], roughly, Kristi talks about the online harassment and sexual harassment that she has dealt with, especially appearing online talking about sports and being a woman – a wonderful combination, as I’m sure you’re aware. So at about nineteen minutes in, you want to skip ahead about two minutes if that would be something you don’t want to listen to. I understand.

I have a compliment this week, and I am so excited. This compliment is for Violet T.

Violet: When your friends see your name pop up on their phone, they are instantly seventy-two percent happier and are ninety-nine percent more likely to smile at the screen, because you are a wonderful presence in the lives of so many people.

If you would like a compliment of your own or you would like to support this here show, it would be lovely to have you in our Patreon: patreon.com/SmartBitches. The Patreon community helps make sure that every episode is accessible, because I have a transcript hand-compiled by garlicknitter – hey, garlicknitter! – [Hello! – gk] We have a wonderful Discord community; we trade recommendations and suggestions for TV, books, crafting; we take pet pictures (there’s lots of pet pictures); and we have bonus episodes as well. But most importantly, you’re supporting the work that we do here, and that is awesome! So if you’d like to join us, patreon.com/SmartBitches!

Are you ready to talk about sports and contemporary romance with Little Free Libraries and small coastal towns and a whole bunch of other stuff? I totally am; I’ve been ready. Let’s do this. On with the podcast.

[music]

Savannah Carlisle/Kristi Dosh: So I really lead a double life as Savannah Carlisle as a romance author, but also as Kristi Dosh, which is my legal name, as a sports business reporter, and that is why I have a penname, because I have written nonfiction books under Kristi Dosh, and when I got ready to write fiction, my agent at the time said, You’ve got to pick another name, because Amazon and the other retailers, the algorithms are not going to understand that you write nonfiction sports and romance, because two very different audiences with only a small amount of overlap. [Laughs]

Sarah: The algorithm cannot handle that we contain multitudes, I’ve noticed.

Savannah/Kristi: Yes, it cannot.

Sarah: It cannot, it cannot wrap its head around the idea – not that it even has a head – that we do more than one thing! We can walk and chew gum at the same time! [Laughs]

Savannah: I know, right? You would think that with, you know, AI and all of the technology that has come forth in recent years that it would do a better job of figuring that out, but unfortunately it just has not.

Sarah: Nope. I want to start with Savannah Carlisle, both of you, hi. Congratulations on The Library of Second Chances, which is a great title. I love how this book – no spoilers, ‘cause I try not to spoil a book while I’m doing a, an interview about it – I love how much Little Free Libraries pay, play a major role in this book. It’s like a little love letter to Little Free Libraries. That is so cute and wonderful. What will readers find in this book? Tell me everything about it.

Savannah: You know, the Little Free Library is an interesting aspect of this book, because normally when I come up with a book idea, I come up with the characters first, and I sort of, like, know what at least one of them, what their problem is and sort of –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – how they’re going to get over it to fall in love, but this did start with the Little Free Library, actually, from going to Little Free Libraries during the pandemic and noticing that people put their own little spin on it. You know, some would put stickers and bookmarks in there. I’ve seen one where the lady, like, made coffee mugs and left them in there with books, and I got to thinking, when I look into books in a Little Free Library, it’s often authors and titles I’ve never heard of, and that, that’s not good or bad! That doesn’t mean they’re not great books; there’s just so many books out there, and I thought, Wouldn’t it be fun if you could leave a little note inside the book and tell somebody, Here’s why I think you would like this, or, you know, If you like this kind of book, you’re going to like this one. And so it kind of started with that idea of leaving notes, and then I thought, Well, wait a second. What if people started leaving books for each other, and that became, like, the basis for them falling in love? And I’m a huge You’ve Got Mail fan –

Sarah: Yes.

Savannah: – and that all sort of, like, came together where I realized it could be like You’ve Got Mail, where they know each other in real life and they don’t like each other, but they are falling in love leaving these books and these little notes for each other, you know, and not using their real names, and then what would happen when one of them found out who the other one was? And so that, that’s kind of the basic premise, and I always tell people, Look, I’ve seen so many threads on, on X and on Threads about You’ve Got Mail and how much people hate You’ve Got Mail, mostly for the storyline of him putting her out of business, but it’s not what happens in my book. He is not trying to put her out of business; that is not why they don’t like each other, so –

Sarah: Yes.

Savannah: – if you hated that about You’ve Got Mail, I promise it’s not there.

Sarah: But it’s, it’s an important distinction because there’s, there’s a, a really predatory deceit element to that story that does not work when you really sit and think about it?

Savannah: Yeah, and I even had to change my book, actually. I wrote this book in 2020, 2021, and I was with my, I have a, I have a literary agent now, but I was with my previous literary agent, and I sent it to her, and we kind of weren’t on the same page about the edits for it, and ultimately we ended up parting ways, and I got a mentor through Kiss Pitch, which is sort of a mentorship program on Facebook and Twitter. Her name’s Jessica Lepe, and she had a book which also came out this year called Flirty Little Secret that also is based on You’ve Got Mail, and she had just gotten her book deal, and she said to me, You’re, you’re going to need to change this, because you have something in there that all the editors hated about mine, and so change it, and then you’ll have an easier time getting a book deal. So I won’t give away what it is, but it did sort of have –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Savannah: – to do with that deceit element –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – and people feeling like one of them was manipulating the other one once they found out who the other one was in real life? And so I actually rewrote the whole second half of the book –

Sarah: Oh wow!

Savannah: – to change that. So it was a pretty massive edit to undertake, which is why I wrote it in 2020 and 2021 and it did not come out till 2024 –

Sarah: Yes!

Savannah: – because there was some massive editing that happened in between.

Sarah: Yes, and I’m sure that once you look back on it you’re like, Oh, of course I had to make that change.

Savannah: It’s so much better now. I fully admit that, and I give Jessica all the credit for that, because it was her idea.

Sarah: So what is your elevator pitch for this book? How are you pitching it to people?

Savannah: Yeah, I, I tell people it’s like You’ve Got Mail, except they’re talking through a Little Free Library. [Laughs] That’s sort of my one-sentence pitch, but you know, the, the sort of longer log line I have is that Logan is in this small town of Heron Island to save his career. He’s there as a consultant, and Lucy owns the bookstore in town, and all she cares about is preserving this small town that she grew up in, and they’re butting heads at every turn on the development of the town –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – but they’re falling in love via books in the Little Free Library.

Sarah: I love stories that allow characters to showcase a very small part of their real selves while their public selves and the selves that they interact with others using is, is a much more guarded, closed-off, protected?

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: The, the books, the books are the direct route to their true selves, which is such a fun conceit.

Savannah: Yeah, and I love this because they think that they’re opposites, but they’re really not. They have more in common than they think, and I, I don’t think this gives away anything – it’s in my Kirkus review. You know, I didn’t want to write the typical Hallmark he’s a big-city guy and she’s a small-town girl, and he’s coming in to destroy her town. Now, he is coming in to try to work on a waterfront development, but he’s actually a small-town guy too. He –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – is from a small town in Wisconsin, she lives in this small town in Florida, and his sort of beliefs around wanting to do this development are some things he saw go wrong in his home town –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – and he doesn’t want to see those things happen to her small town, and so they really have more in common than they think they do.

Sarah: Yes. And I, I grew up going to a lot of small towns on the Jersey shore, and the thing about shore towns is that they’re very precarious, like, all the time. Their economies are precarious. I mean, I remember after Sandy, learning that a lot of the small beach towns on the coast, coast of New Jersey, their mayors aren’t paid positions. They’re volunteers. They don’t make any money being the mayor, and here comes this national disaster, and suddenly it’s a full-time job you’re not getting paid for.

Savannah: I wrote this because I live in a town like that. I live on Amelia Island in Florida. Our island’s eighteen square miles.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: You know, it’s a vacation destination. I grew up coming on vacation here every summer my whole life and then moved here twelve years ago, and it, for folks who are listening who’ve maybe been to Amelia Island, there is a restaurant that plays a pretty pivotal role in this story called The Waterway Café. It is very much based on Brett’s Waterway Café here on Amelia Island.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Savannah: It’s not all exact – I made the owners very different – but it’s actually a real problem with the restaurant here where it is built out over the water –

Sarah: Yep.

Savannah: – and we have had hurricane damage to the supports under the restaurant, and there has been a multi-year now fight over whether the restaurant needed to fix that or whether the city, which owns the land, needed to fix it and some financial sort of difficulties with that, and actually, that restaurant, the real restaurant here on my island, their lease is up next year, and it will be gone, and that restaurant has been here a huge portion of my life. It was in another location before this location, and I sort of borrowed from that in some of the discussions that have happened in our town about what will happen to our waterfront when that restaurant, which is sort of the central piece of the waterfront in our downtown, what will happen to it after that, and so that plays a big role in the book. So if people have ever been here, like, and it sounds familiar? [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s why.

Savannah: That is borrowed from here.

Sarah: And it’s really tough, too. Like, it’s really tough to preserve the things that have made a place special but also allow for the ways that the world has changed and –

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: – that vacations mean different things, and – especially when you’re dealing with things like food or books. Those are really intimate sense memories, so it’s, it’s really upsetting to think, Wow, I’m never going to smell that food, I’m never going to have this meal in this place that I’ve eaten a hundred times in my life ever again, that’s really a big change on a personal level.

Savannah: I mean, I ate in that restaurant on my twenty-first birthday –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – I’m now forty-two. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep.

Savannah: You know, I remember multiple family vacations with my family going there. Family members who are no longer with us: my grandmother loved eating there, and she’s no longer with us anymore, and you get this nostalgia tied into these places, whether it’s somewhere you vacationed or it’s somewhere that you grew up.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: You know, the, these places hold memories of people that are no longer here –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – and then to see them gone, it’s really hard. You feel like you’re losing people all over again.

Sarah: It really, it, it really does.

I also want to ask you about your writing journey. You, you went from sports journalism to writing romantic fiction, but not sports romance. You’re, you’re, you’re so adamant about that, and I am so curious, but I want to start with your, your career in sports journalism, because that’s –

Savannah/Kristi: Yeah.

Sarah: – extremely cool and also lot of dudes in there. It’s very –

Kristi: [Laughs]

Sarah: – very bro-heavy as a field.

Kristi: It is.

Sarah: How did you get your start in sports writing?

Kristi: Well, so I started in another bro-heavy field: I was a corporate attorney –

Sarah: Oh!

Kristi: – so I worked with mostly men, and then I went into sports reporting, where I worked with mostly men, so this is the first time I’ve ever really gotten to hang out with women!

[Laughter]

Kristi: So I, I’ve become very comfortable being around the guys. I was a corporate attorney for four and a half years, and I blogged on the side about legal issues in sports, ‘cause I am a huge sports fan and grew up watching baseball with my dad and watching college football and wanted to work in law as a lawyer somehow involved in sports –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kristi: – and had some internships where I was able to do that, but ultimately ended up working at a big firm and did not do anything related to sports, so my way to stay connected to sports was this little blog I started, like a free little WordPress blog out on my own, writing about legal issues in sports, and it’s a much longer story than this for probably another podcast, but that eventually led to me getting a job offer from ESPN to become their sports business reporter, which –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Kristi: – was not something I pursued or even, like, really thought was something I could do. Like, it never entered my consciousness that that was a job and that I might be interested in that job, because I’d always been so focused on being a lawyer, and I actually –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kristi: – didn’t hate being a lawyer. I know most people who are do, but – [laughs] – I didn’t, and so the ESPN job offer was a little bit of a surprise, but it’s like, who says no to ESPN if you’re a big sports fan like I was? So that was the end of my legal career and the beginning of my sports journalism.

Sarah: And that was particularly a time when media was looking at bloggers like, Oh, hold on; people already know how to do this. As a blogger, I understand –

Kristi: Yeah.

Sarah: – this story very well.

Kristi: Well, it’s funny, because when I told my husband I was coming on this podcast, he was in sports journalism as well; I actually ended up meeting him because he was the producer of a sports radio show that I pitched myself for as a sports business reporter, which is probably like, it could be a whole novel in itself, but –

Sarah: Little bit, yeah.

Kristi: – I was telling him about your site, and I was like, They’re OG bloggers like I am.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yes! The site is almost twenty years old. I am very O and G, a hundred percent.

Kristi: I started blogging in 2004, so yeah –

Sarah: Yep! Year before I did!

Kristi: – I’m right at twenty years.

Sarah: Yep! I was a personal blogger before that. I taught myself HTML when I graduated college, and I started coding and writing and I didn’t want to stop, and I knew how to code my own stuff, so I didn’t. Now I’m here.

Kristi: You know what’s great though? Is journalism programs are really embracing it, I feel like, finally. My husband was a Journalism major, I was not, but we’ve talked about it because I teach now in the journalism program at University of Florida, and, you know, I teach a college sports reporting class, and part of that class I teach just starting your own blog or starting your own podcast or, you know, having sort of short little mini shows on your social media, and he, you know, reflects, he was in college in the ‘90s, and he’s like, Our professors would have never embraced this. It was, you had to go work at a TV station; you had to –

Sarah: Yep.

Kristi: – go work at a newspaper. Like, those were the prestigious jobs, and these sort of things wouldn’t have been valued, and now they are, which is really nice.

Sarah: Yes! And, and the skills that you pick up blogging and doing all of the social media are extremely in demand, especially if you can do –

Kristi: Yep.

Sarah: – all of them with some, you know, some ability.

Kristi/Savannah: Well, and I, I won’t go off on too big of a tangent, but I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. You know, this was my debut novel that came out this year, and I’m trying to build up a penname from scratch –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – that didn’t exist until a few years ago, but because of that blogging experience I’ve had for the past twenty years, you know, I, I built my own site, but then I started blogging about other authors and about other books two or three years before my book came out, and I do about twenty thousand page views a month now –

Sarah: Nice!

Savannah: – which I don’t think is something many debuts would do –

Sarah: No.

Savannah: – but it’s be-, it’s, it’s not for my writing. It’s for other people, but I, I do write a lot about other people in my genre or sort of adjacent genres and then, you know, I have a popup for my newsletter, and I give away the first chapter of my book, and so I sort of, like, get them in because they want my checklist for Elin Hilderbrand books. Like, then hopefully they’ll also take the chance on reading my chapter and buying my book, so being a blogger has really benefited me so far as a romance author too.

Sarah: Oh, for sure. And I’ve always thought that blogging is a very specific muscle?

Savannah: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It is a very specific muscle to write quickly, to write clearly, to write something that you can scan down the page and get it. That, it’s a muscle! It is a muscle to do, and also, as I have learned myself, never underestimate the degree to which authors will google their own names. Like, never.

Savannah: [Laughs] That’s true. I have a Google alert set for mine. You know, some of it is you want to make sure, like, there’s nothing bad out there about you, but it’s also exciting when somebody writes something good.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure!

So you mentioned that you’d never write a sports romance, and yet you are extremely fluent in sports. What are your reasons for being like, You know what? Not, not so much for me.

Savannah/Kristi: Yeah, and I still, like, have moments where I’m like, Am I making the right decision? [Laughs] Because I do know so much, and you know, I, I have picked up a few sport romances that I put back down because it was hard for me to read because some of the sports references weren’t correct. I think that that’s the exception, not the rule. Most of the ones I’ve picked up, they do a wonderful job portraying the sport, and a lot of them are huge sports fans themselves.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah/Kristi: So there’s part of me that wants to write one, ‘cause I know I can at least get the sport right, but I struggle with the idea that it might impact me negatively on the sports business reporting side of my life. You know, it, it is a male-dominated industry. Fans are particularly tough on female commentators. In fact, I make my journalism class watch a video where two female sports business reporters read through mean tweets that were written about them?

Sarah: Oh God!

Kristi: And they’re not just mean. I mean, they are vicious, and I’ve been –

Sarah: Oh, it’s awful!

Kristi: – the recipient! Right, and I want my female students to understand. This is a very rewarding field; I love what I do; but, like, this also comes with it; and you’ve got to develop thick skin and be able to get these sorts of tweets and emails and whatever, and I remember, I had just started dating my husband and I was getting ready to start at ESPN – I had, hadn’t even started there yet, so I, I was just still a blogger at that point –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kristi: – and I was doing a little bit of TV where I was going on and commentating, and I said something about a school that its fanbase did not care for –

Sarah: Oh God.

Kristi: – and I ended up on a message board, and I had a Google alert I think for my name back then too, so I get this Google alert and I go look at the message board, and it’s five pages of people taking shots at me based on a screenshot that was taken from a video I did on a TV show, and of course it was a very unflattering screenshot, as they always are –

Sarah: Always.

Kristi: – and they were all talking about whether or not they would sleep with me, and –

Sarah: Ugh!

Kristi: – whether they’d have to put a brown paper bag over my head to want to sleep with me –

Sarah: Ugh!

Kristi: – and one of them said I had ugly knees, and I was like, Pretty knee look like, you know. One of them said I had horse teeth. Like, it was just page after page after page of this, and I remember going to my now-husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, like, crying, and he was on sports talk radio where he dealt with a lot of this even as a man. You know, when fan bases get mad at you, it really doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, and he was like, You’ve made it! They’re talking about you! So I was like –

Sarah: No, thank you!

Kristi: – That’s not how I took it at all!

Sarah: This is – [laughs] – this is not an achievement I do, I wanted! No, thank you!

Kristi: And, you know, I mean, that kind of stuff, frankly, has continued throughout my career. Now –

Sarah: Ugh!

Kristi: – I went to ESPN in 2011, so, I mean, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I feel like, you know, there is less of it now, and I think I get taken seriously by the people in the industry? No one in the industry has ever treated me poorly; I’ve never been treated badly in a locker room or during an interview or –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kristi: – anything else. It’s always fans; it’s never the people who work in sports.

Sarah: Right.

Kristi: But I feel like if I started writing romance novels, especially if I’m writing novels about athletes and then they knew about it, like, it’d be a little awkward then to interview an athlete. Like, if they knew I’d written a book where I’m talking about all these hot hockey players, and now I’m trying to interview a hockey player, it just, to me, feels like it would be a little harder to get taken seriously. And maybe I’m wrong about that, but I just haven’t gotten to a stage where I’m willing to test it yet, because it took me a long time to build up my credibility in that space and to stop getting some of that hate, and I just don’t want to go back to it.

Sarah: I completely understand it, and it’s a terrible penalty for being, presenting yourself on the internet, especially, as a female. It’s the worst. Being a woman on the internet sucks sometimes.

Kristi/Savannah: Yeah, I mean, writing romance at all was a little tough. Like, I did put it out there on my Kristi Dosh, like, sports accounts because I have a huge following there compared to what I have for Savannah Carlisle, so, like, I wanted to get my book in front of people, and most people have been wonderful. I spoke at a sports conference this summer and men brought the book to me at the conference to sign for their wives.

Sarah: Nice!

Kristi/Savannah: They bought it, they knew I was going to be there, and they asked me to sign it for their wife. So people have been pretty supportive, but I have still gotten some of those tweets and some of those emails kind of taking shots at me just because I’m writing romance that’s not even related to sports, so –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kristi/Savannah: – I’m just not willing to test it yet. But I’m all for beta-reading other people’s books and, and helping them fix the sports stuff if they don’t feel con-, confident about it, because I do love sports, and I love that sports romance is becoming such a big genre.

Sarah: It is a huge genre, and it’s interesting because there’s very specific sports that get written about. And they’re all –

Kristi/Savannah: Totally.

Sarah: – very different in what they’re focusing on. One thing I, I personally struggle with as a reader is the degree to which a lot of sports romance is very thinly veiled Real People Fiction, where you’re taking a person –

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: – who actually exists, and you’re making a character out of them, and maybe you’re, maybe you’re changing the name and the name of the team and obviously not stepping on trademarks, but the connection to a real person is still very visible? That makes me deeply uncomfortable because that’s a person? You can’t –

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: – it’s not cool to objectify a person, especially not at their place of work. Like, they’re just trying –

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: – to get their job done, and it’s already hard. It’s kind of difficult, especially if we’re talking about, like, you know, hockey? Ouch. Hard. Painful.

Savannah: [Laughs]

Sarah: Bruising. You don’t want to objectify other people at their place of work or just, you know, celebrity comes –

Echo: Celebrity comes –

Sarah: – with –

Echo: – with –

Sarah: – I don’t want to say expectations, but very, very nebulous boundaries, and even now, celebrities are trying to negotiate: Listen, I’m working and I’m not working? Don’t talk to me when I’m not working. I don’t want to talk to people. And it’s also always okay for men to say that, and it’s never okay for women to say that. Makes me nuts.

Savannah: Exactly.

Sarah: Makes me so nuts.

Savannah: Well, and just think about these poor hockey guys. Now, I saw some hockey teams that have sort of taken advantage of this rise in hockey sports romances, and they’ve done some really cool TikToks and stuff, you know, kind of playing into it, but also I think about, like, if you were a single hockey player and you’re, like, out there and you are legit, like, trying to date, like, the expectations –

Sarah: Oh dear God.

Savannah: – that some of these women might have for who you are and how you act and what you look like with your shirt off and, you know, I don’t – I think that it might be tough for them out there.

Sarah: Yeah!

Savannah/Kristi: They have a lot of options, but, like, then you’re, you know, they probably already wonder, Is somebody dating me for me, or are they dating me because I’m semi-famous or I make a lot of money or whatever? And now you add on top of this, like, how wildly popular – you know, hockey’s the one that comes to mind for me. It, it has just become so wildly popular for sports romance that I’d be interested, that it actually might be a good story for me to write as a sports journalist is talk to some of these hockey players I know and see, has this affected their dating lives? That could be a fun story. [Laughs]

Sarah: Especially because a lot of the hockey romance is queer!

Savannah: Yeah, right! And that’s still not – you know, I hesitate to say this, but I think from being around athletes, like, it’s still not – not that it’s not accepted? It’s not talked about.

Sarah: No.

Savannah: Like, I, I think that there, it probably has become a far more accepting environment than it used to be in the locker room, and it’s become more normalized –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – but I think it’s still something that doesn’t get talked about very much.

Sarah: Well, I mean, even the, the struggles of getting the NHL to recognize Pride and to welcome alternate decorations on equipment for Pride or for indigenous people. Like, okay, you can be in the real world, or you can be in this fake world that you’re in, but you’re, that, that can’t continue, because there are queer people who like sports. Come on, get with it. Like, gay marriage cannot be such a commonplace thing, and then you have professional sports organizations going like, Oh no! Queer cooties! Can’t have. Come on, now!

Savannah: Well, and just the, the sort of stereotypes around, like, who, who an athlete is –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – and, like, their – I was thinking today, ‘cause I knew we were going to talk about this, about, like, why are women so drawn to sports romance and –

Sarah: I would love to hear your answer. Tell me, tell me all your thoughts, because I think about this constantly: why do women gravitate towards sport romances? What is your take on that as a sports reporter?

Savannah/Kristi: Well, so I’m not going to lie, but before I met my husband, I always said I wanted to marry a professional athlete or a pilot. Those were, like, my two categories. Now, my reasoning for it was I loved sports, so it would be cool to, to marry someone who that was their life as well, which is what I ended up doing, ‘cause I married someone in sports radio, but I also was really independent? I didn’t get married until I was in my early thirties –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kristi: – and so I was like, professional athletes and pilots, they’re gone all the time. Like, I’d, I’d get some space, ‘cause they’re not going to be here on top of me.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kristi: So my reasons were maybe a little bit different. But, you know, I do think, I always gravitated towards dating athletes. I think some of that is, they are, they tend to be disciplined in the sense that they, you know, are mastering their sport, but they’re also usually juggling, you know, sch-, we’re talking about high school and college, they’re juggling school as well. Like, they, there’s a certain level of sort of discipline, but also passion for something –

Sarah: Yes.

Kristi: – and, like, willingness to put in the work for something, and, you know, I think some of that mirrors what you want in a relationship as well. Now, they’re not all good at relationships. In fact, athletes are, like, notoriously bad at relationships, because they are traveling around, and they have all these women throwing themselves – [laughs] –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kristi: – at them, but, you know, a lot of sports – not every sport! – but a lot of sports, especially the ones we see in romance books, are sports where you’ve got to be in pretty good shape to be an athlete, so you’re probably, you  know, above average-looking, I would say, in most of these sports, and I think that’s why you see some of them come up over and over. I was thinking this morning, there’s not that many ro-, sports romance books about golfers, like male golfers? And not that they’re not good-looking, but, like, they don’t have the same body a hockey player has, or even most baseball players or football players who aren’t, like, giant offensive linemen. You know, I’ve started thinking about, like, the sports you don’t see books in, and it’s like, Yeah, well, like, they don’t have that physique that is the sort of, like, standard for a good-looking male, so I think a lot of that comes into play.

And then just, you know, sports have the passion and rivalry and the competitiveness, and there’s so many underdog stories. Like, there’s all these compelling narratives, and I think sports romance books are fun because you know you’re going to get an internal story but also an external. There’s going to be some sort of story about either rehabbing from an injury or trying to make a team or trying to win a championship. There’s going to be this, like, external journey happening, in addition to the internal journey where these folks are falling in love with each other, ‘cause you’ve got that external journey happening.

Sarah: Yeah. I also think that it has to do with the fact that there are rules. Sports have rules and seasons and calendars, and so you already have a lot of external boundaries and tensions built into the industry, in addition to hypertrophied masculinity, incredible physique, and physical power? Like, these people are very strong.

The other thing that’s interesting about sports romances is how many people who aren’t necessarily into sports in real life love sports romances, and I think that’s probably due to a lot of the things you talked about. There’s a lot of hallmarks of romance that have, you know, gone, going back to the ‘70s that are present in sports romance. There’s rules; there’s structure; there’s boundaries; there’s conflict and tension; there’s a schedule; there are stakes: the game, the season, the, the, you know, the career-ending injury; the, the social media kerfuffle. Like, all of that? Provides a lot of external tension, plus interiority of This job is hard and emotional, and you can really only do it for a limited time. This is, you already have the compression of your ability to do this job is limited, ‘cause you can’t do this forever. It’s very taxing. I think a lot of those factors influence the interest in sports romances from people who aren’t necessarily into sports in their real lives. Do you think that’s the case as well?

Kristi: Yeah, I’m always fascinated by – I’m in all these, like, book groups and whatever on Facebook, and people’ll be talking about sports romances, and I always, like, read through the comments, ‘cause I’m just fascinated by, like, why this genre is blowing up, and so many of the women, I would say when I read a thread, I would venture to say the majority of them do not actually like watching sports in real life, which I find fascinating, because I did actually read more, like, I remember reading YA sports romances when I was in high school and college. There weren’t a ton of them, but I remember, like, gobbling up when I saw one, because I was a big sports fan, and because I did like dating people – [laughs] – who were athletes, and so I’m fascinated by women who don’t want to watch the sport in real life but want to read about it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kristi: And I think a lot of it is professional athletes, they’re chasing a dream that so many of them have as small children. You know, they’re playing Little League, and they want to grow up to be a major league baseball player, and I, I’ve always sort of had that fascination with athletes too. Like, it’s why we all love the Olympics: you love seeing someone achieve a lifelong dream, and I think a lot of people had a dream for what they wanted to do professionally or how they wanted their life to turn out when they were a kid, and it isn’t where they are right now, and hopefully they’re on the path to it, but they’re not there yet? And I think that there is something really satisfying about watching someone else live their dream, so I’ve always kind of felt like that’s maybe – you know, I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve always sort of felt like that’s why, a, one reason why these are so popular, and it’s why, I think it’s part of why I love sports, like the real games, and love watching them, because these are people that are getting to live a dream that so few people are ever going to get to live.

Sarah: Yes. And, and there’s also this sort of, know, one, one of the major themes of romance – romance really got started with historicals. A lot of historicals, a lot of, set in England, a lot of royalty or nobility or positions you were born into, and there is an element of that in sports romance, because you have to have a very specific kind of talent to be a professional in that field. Like, I remember, I went to college, my freshman year was 1993, and I saw Derek Jeter playing in the minors on my way down to college. I grew up in Pittsburgh, so I am very fluent in sports.

Kristi: [Laughs]

Sarah: Not, not that we’re always good – in fact –

Kristi: But, but it’s pain-, it’s a little painful there, maybe. [Laughs]

Sarah: I actually got my husband a shirt that has a picture of the old Pirates logo, that it says, Actually, there is crying in baseball. Because they are so –

Kristi: I love that.

Sarah: – they are so bad! It is so – like, at this point I’m like, I just accept that they’re terrible, and that is how it is. But I remember when I drove from Pittsburgh down to South Carolina for college and we stopped to see Derek Jeter play in the minors, and even in the minors all of the other players were just staring at this young person who was my age, who was, like, so preternaturally good. There’s this idea that you’ve been gifted this talent, this –

Kristi: Right.

Sarah: There is something very unique about you that is inherent to you, which is another theme of romance, that your singular existence as a person matches this other person, and that you are –

Kristi: Yeah.

Sarah: – you are valuable as you are, and that’s, that plays into this whole idea that these are people who are incredibly talented at a very specific thing that not everyone can do. So there’s this –

Kristi: Yeah.

Sarah: – this, this idea of being singled out, of being special that also threads through a lot of romance, regardless of genre, whether you’re the Chosen One in a fantasy or you’re inheriting a big old pile of land and some money in a historical or if you’re in a contemporary and you’re the greatest, you know, offensive lineman anyone’s ever seen. That, that thread also focuses a lot of very familiar romance tropes as well.

Kristi/Savannah: That’s so – I wasn’t necessarily going to talk about this, like, I, I have not announced it publicly yet, but I think I can say this much about it. I am working on a book right now that I’m about halfway through writing, and it’s not a sports romance, but the main character is a retired former major league baseball player, so that’s, like –

Sarah: Oh!

Savannah: – as close as I’m willing to let myself get –

Sarah: Oooh!

Savannah: – but he always hated the game. His dad pushed him to play, and I, I grew up playing softball, and I grew up with people like this where their parents sort of forced them into the sport, and it was the parent trying to live their dream that they never saw realized, and the kid really didn’t love the sport, but often those were some of the most, like, physically gifted kids on the team –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – and it would be like they got all these physical gifts I didn’t get. They don’t even love this! And I love it, but I don’t have the same physical gifts that they had. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – I stopped playing softball once I got to college ‘cause I wasn’t good enough to play at the Division I level, and so with this character I’m sort of exploring this idea that he did it. He made it to the major leagues; it was his dad’s dream and not his –

Sarah: Oh gosh!

Savannah: – and he’s not that upset that it’s over with, but he has started coaching young boys, and it is helping him redefine his relationship with the sport and helping him find joy in it where he never had it before by working with these young boys. That’s as close as I can let myself get to a sports romance, and I’m actually really enjoying writing it, and I feel like it’s a storyline I can get away with that is not going to be problematic on the other side of my life. [Laughs]

Sarah: I know that you mentioned that one of the reasons why you didn’t want to write sports romance is because you work with these people as people all the time, and –

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: – and you don’t want to take a chance that your character is going to interfere with your professional life. I totally get that.

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you also think that you just know too much?

Savannah: [Laughs] Yeah, you know, I mean, part of this is there is a baseball player I know who, the, the story isn’t exactly like the one I’m  using in the book, but –

Sarah: Mm.

Savannah: – he has a little of this; he got burned out. He did make it to the majors, and I’ve always been perplexed by the way he talks about it, because I grew up playing softball; you know, baseball is sort of the closest male sport to that; and if I had been a little boy, I think I would have wanted to be a major league baseball player; and it’s what, it’s what has bonded my father and me is this love of baseball that I’ve had my whole life; and I thought, like, How could you make it to the majors and not just think that’s the greatest thing ever? But this guy doesn’t feel that way. He sort of, it was a lot of grinding and a lot of back and forth between the minors and the majors –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Savannah: – and his relationship with baseball is very negative, and I find that so fascinating. So I gave the character in my book some, a completely different backstory and sort of reason for hating it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – but this guy did give me sort of that idea of exploring a character who made it big but, but didn’t love it and didn’t feel fulfilled by doing that, so. And I, I have not told him I’m writing this –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Savannah: …feel guilty and, like, I’m going to need to tell him, but I did use a totally different backstory. [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m sure that he is not the only person who is there because a lot of other people investing in them, and that they didn’t want to let them down. And, I mean, if, if you have to go into a sport that you don’t love, I feel, I feel that baseball would be the least taxing on your body? No one’s tackling you?

Savannah: Baseball have longer careers –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – right. Yeah, and you know, they have a decently long off-season. You know, some sports the off-season’s a lot shorter than others.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah/Kristi: And they do get longer careers, and so I think you, like – putting on my sports business reporter hat – like, there are fewer of them you hear about going broke later in life, because their career spans are so much longer than, say, an NFL player. I think the average career span of an NFL player is four years?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kristi: And I think for a baseball player it’s more like eight years –

Sarah: Yep.

Kristi: – if I remember correctly? So, and, and many of them go ten-plus years, and so there’s a, a huge difference in your ability to financially succeed in baseball.

Sarah: And there’s also so many opportunities to coach. You can, like, I’ve seen players who are on the Pirates when I was, you know, when they were good, once upon a time.

Kristi: [Laughs]

Sarah: I’ve gone to minor league games and been like, Wait a minute, the, the hitting coach is that guy from the Pirates? That’s so cool!

Kristi: I know, I know somebody who is making a career as a bullpen catcher. So he’s not on the roster – I don’t think he ever played a day in the majors. He was a minor league ball player and sort of wanted to be one, but never made it there. Like, he is making a really good living being a bullpen catcher. He’s just the guy who goes out there and catches the pitcher who’s warming up before he goes in, and that’s a full-time job, and you get to travel around, and you get to be around the sport that you love, and I think he’s very happy doing that.

Sarah: And I’m sure as an experienced player, that’s a useful perspective to have. Because it’s not new for you!

Kristi: Yeah.

Sarah: You’ve seen it. You’ve seen all the balls coming at your face. You know what this is like.

Kristi: Yeah. [Laughs] You can, you can become a broadcaster like my guy in the book I’m writing. He’s a sports talk radio host, which I sort of got because I’m married to somebody who was in sports talk radio, so –

Sarah: Yeah!

Kristi: – I know that field really well. So there’s all these broadcasting opportunities in addition to all the coaching opportunities, and you have some of that in every sport, but baseball seems to have a lot of it.

Sarah: I love asking for recommendations. What are some sport romances that you recommend or that you have liked? ‘Cause I’m sure you’ve read a few.

Kristi: Yeah…

Sarah: I know you don’t want to write it, but I’m guessing you’ve read some.

Kristi: My very favorite one is The Perfect Catch, which was made from a Hallmark movie. I, I believe the movie existed first, and then Cassidy Carter wrote the book based on the movie, and I had seen the movie and I liked it, and baseball is my first love. I mostly, as a professional, write about college sports and college football in particular, but my favorite sport as a fan is baseball, so I gravitate towards it, and there are not enough baseball books, I will say that. I mean, hockey’s great and all, but there are not enough baseball books and way too many hockey books for right now for my tastes.

So The Perfect Catch was one of my, I, I was a big fan of, and then I’m a big fan of books that have sports characters but aren’t necessarily sports romances. Like, I was thinking about it this morning, and I had the opportunity to read an advance copy before – it is out now, but Wendy Wax wrote a book called The Break-Up Book Club, and there’s a sports agent character in that book who I love fiercely, because there are not a lot of female sports agents out there, so that’s another, like, sports romance category I’d like to see more of is women in sports as athletes, and I know there are some of those, but either as the athletes or as sports reporters and agents and these other people around the sports, so I loved this sports agent character that was in The Break-Up Book Club and some of the things that she goes through with her client.

And I want to say also that, oh, there was another book that I read recently, and I’m trying to remember if it was The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand or if it was another one where there was a friend group and one of the women was a female sports agent, and I was like, Yes! I want more female sports agents! [Laughs]

Sarah: I have one for you, actually.

Kristi: Okay!

Sarah: There is an older book by Beverly Jenkins, who’s a legend in romance, both historical and contemporary.

Kristi: Yeah.

Sarah: She has a book called Deadly Sexy, and she, the, the heroine is a very tough sports agent –

Kristi: Okay!

Sarah: – and she breaks down on the side of the road, and a very sexy trucker pulls over to help her, and they start a very interesting romance, yeah!

Kristi: I will add that. I have not read that one. Fantastic!

Sarah: And it’s, it takes place in the world of LA football, which is kind of hilarious.

[Laughter]

Kristi: I, I love to, the, the fake teams that people make up and the names they come up with, and it’s so much fun. Which is another reason there should be more baseball, because nobody has better team names than minor league baseball does.

Sarah: Oh! It’s so true! It’s so true. My, my family went nuts for the, the temporary Jersey Diners logos? Did you see those?

Kristi: Yeah. I did.

Sarah: I got a shirt for my husband that says COFFEE. BACON. BASEBALL.

Kristi: Oh, I love that! [Laughs] My favorite’s the Montgomery Biscuits, and maybe that’s ‘cause I’m from the South; I grew up in Atlanta. I love the Montgomery Biscuits; the Trash Pandas are a fun one too, and they do some really fun promos, but I live just outside of Jacksonville, Florida, and they changed from the Jacksonville Suns to the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, and I just think about Bubba Gump Shrimp Company every time I see the logo, and it just does not do it for me.

Sarah: Minor league teams are really, really fun.

Kristi: They have the best branding people. [Laughs]

Sarah: Honestly!

So I also like to ask, what books do you want to recommend that you’ve been reading? Doesn’t have to be sports romance. I just want to make sure that you have a chance to shout out any books that you’ve really liked.

Kristi: So I recently finished The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava, and it is so incredible. It is the first Native American rom-com published by a big publisher.

Sarah: Yep.

Kristi: My husband actually, a whole – this is whole ‘nother long story – he switched from sports reporting and being a sports radio host to, he is an art writer now –

Sarah: Ooh!

Kristi: – and his focus is Native American art, and so I’ve become very immersed in sort of the, the Native American world through that, and so when I saw Danica had this book coming out I was very excited to read it, and it is laugh-out-loud funny, which not all rom-coms are, but it was legit laugh-out-loud funny and touched on some really difficult subjects around Native American life and identity, but in a way that was easy to sort of access, easy to digest and still understand sort of the, the power of the themes she was putting there. But a rom-com, so ultimately it was a funny and uplifting read, but you felt like also you learned something and you got this window into the world of these Native American people, not only the two main characters, but some of the secondary characters as well. So cannot say enough good things about The Truth According to Ember.

And then I also am in the middle right now of A Storybook Wedding by K. J. Micciche, which is another rom-com. She has quickly become maybe my favorite rom-com writer. She’s only two books in, and she’s already my favorite. She had one called A Book Proposal a little over a year ago, I think, and then now A Storybook Wedding, and hers are laugh-out-loud funny, and if you’re an audiobook person, I think she might have the two best – she has male/female audiobook narrators – she might have the two best in the business. They are so good and so compelling on audio, so I highly rec-, recommend those two.

Sarah: Brilliant! I also love, I, I love the overlap of, like, literary, literary things and, like, real-life things like A Storybook Wedding, A Book Proposal; that’s very cute.

Kristi: Yep. Both of her books have writers which, I think, because I’m a writer, and even before I was, I always wanted to be one, so I love when there is a character who is an author, and she’s got that in both of hers.

Sarah: So your second book, do you, do you know when it’s coming out?

Kristi/Savannah: I do! It’s coming out May of 2025, May, I believe it’s either 20th or 21st; I’m not looking at a calendar, but whatever that Tuesday is.

Sarah: Woohoo!

Savannah: And I, it’s actually the first book I ever wrote! So it’s funny because my debut novel was actually my second book I wrote. So they ended up getting flipped, and for anybody who’s a writer out there, my one coming out in May, we went out on submission to publishers with that in 2020, right before the pandemic started, and it ultimately died on submission. It was a really tough time to be on submission, and there were some legit problems, I think, with the book. So I’ve spent all these years since then revising it and ended up getting it picked up by the same publisher who published my debut, and I’m so excited about it, because this was a book I spent a decade thinking about and trying to figure out how the pieces fit together, and anybody who’s a country music fan, it is based, it, it was inspired by Miranda Lambert’s song “The House That Built Me”? I have loved that song since it came out, which I think was like a full decade ago, and I always wondered, in the song it’s this woman who’s coming back to her childhood home, and she’s talking about how far she’s sort of gotten off the path of –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – of where she wanted her life to be and who she wanted to be, and I just, every time I heard the song I would ask myself, like, What happened to her? Like, who is she? What was she doing? Why does she think she’s so off-course? And sort of like we were talking about before, this nostalgia we have in places and the way it reminds us of other people, or even maybe who we were the last time we were in that place, and so I sort of borrowed from Taylor Swift’s career and I decided that it was a, someone who got discovered as a singer as a teenager and made it really big as a country music star, and then her label pushed her into pop, but unlike Taylor Swift, for this character it went really badly, and her career is sort of in shambles, and she is coming back to her family home in this small town, and it’s reminding her of who she was at the beginning of her career and sort of who she wanted to be, and she’s trying to figure out how does she get back there, and in the meantime, her high school sweetheart, who she hasn’t spoken to in a decade, has purchased the home she grew up in and has sort of his own plans for it. And they, they, they have a lot to figure out, both with the house and with each other. [Laughs]

Sarah: And that ties both, that ties back to both your book The Library of Second Chances and what we were talking earlier about, older places in smaller towns being imbued –

Savannah: Yeah.

Sarah: – with so much significance and memory, and for your characters in The Library of Second Chances the places where they work and live are imbued with so many memories it’s hard to separate those from, it’s hard to separate the memory from the place.

Savannah: Exactly, and that, this book I went and walked around our downtown, and I – we have all these beautiful Victorian homes in downtown Fernandina Beach, and I picked one out, and I deci-, like, that’s the house. Like, that’s the house she grew up in, and I’ve got all these pictures of the house, and I actually found out who owned it, and they are going to let me come inside, and I’m hoping that when the book comes out I can take a bunch of pictures on the front porch and, like, help use this house as a backdrop, because I would walk by it, and I would think about, Okay, you’ve come back to this house. You haven’t really been back in town in a decade. Unfortunately, her parents have passed away in an accident –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – and she’s come back because she thinks she can sort of get back to herself and get back to this place where she was happy –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – but the house has a lot of bad memories because her parents have passed, and now her high school sweetheart, who she also has both good and bad memories with, has his own plans for the house, and so –

Sarah: Yeah.

Savannah: – I love second-chance romance, and I, that’s why the first book I wrote I knew was going to be second-chance romance and just really loved exploring that.

Sarah: Second chance is also a way to really build on how your character has changed but remains fundamentally the same? Much like a place, it has changed, but the fund-, the foundation is still the same.

Savannah: Yeah. And that could be a whole ‘nother, like, podcast about why people like second chance, because I had a boyfriend all through high school, largely the same boyfriend the whole time, and I still, like, know him and am in touch with him, and I could not imagine us being back together or being married. We are such different people now, so, you know, I find it funny that I enjoy reading second-chance romance –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Savannah: – and I enjoyed writing it, but I don’t need to live it in my real life. [Laughs]

Sarah: I understand completely! Well, I think that it says a lot about, much like sending notes through a little three, little, Little Free Library, knowing somebody from when they’re young means knowing a very important part of them, ‘cause you, you have memories of them that not all, not all of the people in their lives will have of them. And the number of people that remember you when you’re little grows smaller every year.

Savannah: That reminds me of another country song I love that’s called “23,” and he talks about how, he, he’s talking about this woman that he’s no longer with, but he says, You’ll never be twenty-three with anybody else but me.

Sarah: Yep!

Savannah: And I love that idea that, like, there are those people in your life who, they got that version of you, and no one else is ever going to have that version of you.

Sarah: Yeah. And you, you have, you were with that person at a time when you can’t go back to that time.

Savannah: Right.

Sarah: Yeah.

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

Savannah: Yes, I do wish to be found! [Laughs] I am at savannahcarlisle.com, and then I’m on pretty much every social media channel to varying degrees of, of consistency @savvycarlisle, with two Vs, because Savannah Carlisle was apparently too long for one of them, and I wanted them all to match, so it’s savannahcarlisle.com but @savvycarlisle on all the socials.

Sarah: And do you want to plug your other identity?

Savannah/Kristi: Yes, my other identity, Kristi Dosh, is kristidosh.com, and that, on all my socials I’m @sportsbizmiss, M-I-S-S at the end.

Sarah: Fabulous! Thank you so much for doing this interview; I really appreciate it. It’s been really lovely to talk to you.

Savannah/Kristi: Yes! Thank you for having me! This was the number one podcast at the top of my list. It was you and Hallmarkies, and I got Hallmarkies right away because my publisher had a relationship with them, and I did all my own publicity because I didn’t get an advance and I can – I’m a journalist; I know what pitches look like –

Sarah: Yep.

Savannah/Kristi: – so I did all my own publicity, and we had pitched to you, and then I was like, I’m going to send one more ‘cause I want this so bad I’m willing to, like, follow up and pitch one more time, so thank you. This, this was something I really wanted to do.

Sarah: Your pitch was outstanding, and I’m honored to have been at the top of your list. Thank you.

Savannah/Kristi: You do such a great job, and I, like I said, I was telling my husband, like, you’re, you’re an OG blogger like I am, so – [laughs] – I have a great appreciation for that.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you so much to Savannah and Kristi for connecting with me, and I will have links to all of the books, fear not, in the show notes and at smartbitchestrashybooks.com.

I will also link to all of the absolutely incredibly fabulous minor league teams that we talked about. I know that you who are listening right now, you want a Jersey Diners hat and a Rocket City Trash Pandas T-shirt. Seriously, and Montgomery Biscuits. Like, seriously, minor league teams are amazing. I will link to all the things; do not worry.

Oops! I almost forgot: I have one more thing to tell you. Returning in February on the 7th, Romantic Times Rewind. Buckle up, y’all; I just scanned this issue. It is their two-hundredth issue to celebrate, you know, alongside us. I think the man-titty is extra shiny. I think that’s what happened here, but it is truly, it’s truly incredible. I cannot wait to share it with you, so get ready! We’re coming back in February with Romantic Times Rewind.

And I always end with a bad joke. This joke comes from Bull. Hey, Bull!

What wine do you serve to a horse?

Give up? What wine do you serve to a horse?

Chardo-neigh!

[Laughs] Chardonnay! You know, I, I keep all of my show notes documents in a Google Drive, and every now and again I think, Have I told that joke? Have I used that joke? And then I get to search my Google Drive for words like chardo-neigh, N-E-I-G-H. It’s, it’s a strange and wonderful thing, but I love it a lot.

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.

And in the words of one of my favorite old podcasts, Friendshipping, thank you for listening; you are welcome for talking.

[end of music]