663. RT Rewind: July 2000 Ads & Features

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Once upon a time in romance, we had stepbacks, not sprayed edges; we had debates about whether online had a hyphen; and we had readers who were very excited to be introduced to People.com and EW.com. This week on Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, episode number 663, we are taking a look at the July 2000 ads and features from Romantic Times magazine. We get to peek into Lady Barrow Book Lover Tours, because the prices for these packages will make you and me very envious for eternity. This is a really fun episode, and I urge you to not miss the visual aids, because there’s a whole five-page spread about Steve Sandalis covers with some incredible, incredible pictures. I will give you one hint: there is a fur diaper involved. Well, it looks like a diaper anyway.

You can find the link for the visual aids in the show notes or at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 663!

I have a compliment this week.

To Emily K.: Currently in every top ten most popular song chart in every country, there is a song that is about you and how wonderful you are.

If you’ve supported the show, thank you. If you’d like to do so, you keep us going, make sure every episode has a transcript hand-compiled by garlicknitter – hi, garlicknitter! – [Hello, Sarah and dear readers! – gk] – have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Your support means a lot, keeps the show going, makes sure every episode is accessible, and you get to hang out in one of the most lovely Discord communities I’ve ever met. So have a look: patreon.com/SmartBitches. We would be delighted to have you.

Are you ready to travel back to July 2000? Let’s do this. On with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah: All right, let’s talk about the ads and features from July 2000 and start with this cover.

Amanda: It’s just the cover of the book! Which makes –

Sarah: But the problem is – [laughs] – it’s not a good cover of the book!

Amanda: No! It’s such a bad cover for this book. It looks so depressing.

Sarah: It’s very pencil sketch. It’s very grayscale. You can’t really tell what this girl is doing. She’s got a cloak with some Celtic pattern around the neck, and she’s got her arms up in front of her chest like she’s, I don’t know, making some sort of supplication, and her hair is blowing? But it’s not telling me anything. Like, I, like I’ve said, I think the use of the cover of RT magazine is better, better for highlighting the cover of the book. If you’re going to spend all the money to get the cover, no matter who’s paying, reinforce the image of the book; I don’t need to know what the author looks like. That said, Romantic Times does funkish – funkish – Romantic Times does function a lot of the time like a yearbook/gossip magazine? Yeah, this is a big yearbook issue; this is a lot of selfies and, and headshots in this one? Not, not selfies; this is too early for selfies; just headshots.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Lot of glamour shots going on. Yes, it’s better to put the book cover? But this is not a great book cover, which is kind of a bummer.

Amanda: And there’s a, there’s a swan. There’s a swan in the background.

Sarah: Oh yeah! Just barely off to the side there.

Amanda: I will, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is a section where nine pages are missing.

Sarah: What?!

Amanda: And it’s right, it’s right at the Juliet Marillier article.

Sarah: Fucking hell. Why didn’t you tell me?

Amanda: ‘Cause I read the article and I was like, Oh, it stops! Maybe it’s continued in the back, the back end. And it does, but it says continued from page 13, and you don’t have, I think page 13 to 21 or 12 to 21 are missing.

Sarah: Fucking hell! Oh my God! I did not even notice! Well, let me just grab this pile of paper here. Oh fuck, I am so sorry I did not notice that. I was watching these go through the feeder one at a time. What’d you say, 13 through –

Amanda: 21.

Sarah: Wow. They’re not in the magazine, either. Yeah. They’re not in here. The, the magazine itself goes through 13 to, to 21, so first of all, Suck it, Trebek; it’s not my error.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Secondly –

Amanda: What happened?

Sarah: – I don’t see a page 14. Hang on; I’m going to do one more flip-through here because this is actually going, I’m, I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and be like, Where did they go?

All right, so yeah, here’s page 12, Daughter of the Forest, and then we jump right to the – I was wondering why there was this page full of highwayman, like –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – books out of nowhere? Like, oh, okay, we’re doing a themed list of highwaymen. Why? I don’t know. Is this a printing error in the magazine? I do not have any of these pages. They’re just not here.

Amanda: …the plot thickens, huh?

Sarah: Wow! I’m going to have to go to Bowling Green and see what the rest of the issue looks like! It’s like Bedknobs and Broomsticks, where they have to go to Portobello Road and find the end of the book, except the end of the book is not actually the end of the book, it’s the other half of a book that says go find this other book! So yeah, that’s messed up! All of the mysteries of the universe are in those pages, and we don’t have them, so we’re going to have to meet in Portobello Road. Maybe, maybe Kathryn Falk will take us on a trip there!

Amanda: [Laughs] Kathryn!

Sarah: Kathryn, we need to go on a trip to Portobello Road to find the missing issues of the July 2- – [laughs] – the missing pages of July 2000! Wow. Okay!

Well, now that we have an unsolved mystery, page 2 is an ad – it’s a color ad, which is great – for one of two publishers who had the greatest covers of this era, and this is Leisure, part of Dorchester, which sank to the bottom of the sea.

If I remember correctly, this is what happened with Dorchester: they stopped paying their bills, they stopped paying author royalties, but all of those books were still listed for sale in retailers. I don’t know if I’ve told you this before. So all the books were still for sale on retailers, and authors were like, You’re not paying me royalties; take down my books. Why are you not taking down my books? And they were getting more and more angry, and RWA was, like, writing very formal letters and shame, shame, shame. Well, the reason why those books were not taken down was not because Dorchester did not ask. It was the companies who had those books, because they also had not been paid, and they were taking their share of the debt from the sales of the books that they had. It was the only way that they were going to get any money, because they probably saw the writing on the wall that Dorchester was going to file for bankruptcy, in which case they’d get none money! Or they would be in line with a bunch of other creditors to try to be made whole, and you think about all the authors who had to be made whole, that was a messy situation, so they allegedly kept all those books up in their retail portals because that was the only way they could get money against what they were owed from Dorchester.

Amanda: On this ad, too, there’s a little heart bubble –

Sarah: Mm-hmm! Oh yeah.

Amanda: – where you can call their toll-free number to order books over the phone.

Sarah: Oh my God. Are you going to call the number?

Amanda: No!

Sarah: [Snorts]

Amanda: I’m a millennial; I don’t call anybody.

Sarah: [Laughs] Fair enough.

Well, I have some covers to show you, because I saw these and I always thought, Well, I need to see the whole cover. So here is Night Raven by Elaine Barbieri, and it’s not a very good scan of the cover – the art is better – but what’s funny is in the ad we get the horse, and the horse is the one that’s looking directly at the reader? Like, there’s a blonde woman in a white, sleeveless top that’s very, like, Forever 21, Hot Topic –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – kind of top? And behind her is a shirtless – obviously – a shirtless man with long hair and some kind of blue and white necklace, possibly, possibly an indigenous – yes:

>> Night Raven sees a vision of the future that torments him, but captured in battle, he’s attracted to the white woman who doctors his wounds.

Hate when that happens! So in the ad, the horse is looking at you. On the book cover it’s just the ear and the mane of the horse. They cut his head off! [Laughs]

Amanda: I would rather have the horse!

Sarah: I know, right?

And then we’ve got Highland Lovesong by Penelope Neri [Near-y] or Neri [Nair-y], but I think it’s Neri [Near-y]. This is John DeSalvo, and that is a mull-, mullet. It is a mullet supersized, extra-large, with a side of fries. It’s, it’s like halfway down his back, and he’s wearing a kilt, and again, they’re about to go to Bone Town on some rocks!

Amanda: You can also tell in the ad –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – that they reached the end of the image and then they just reflected…

Sarah: Mirrored it; yes, they mirrored it right in the middle of the mountain pass. Yep! Oh well!

So those are covers – like, this era had great covers, but especially Leisure, Dorchester, and then later Love Spell? Like, outstanding covers. I was grabbing them left and right, and they’re all in terrible condition, so I’m excited to have them.

On page 4, there is – and later on in the magazine, but this like the June Top Picks where they talk about all the top books? One of them is The Unsung Hero by Suzanne Brockman, also known as the first review that I ever wrote on Smart Bitches, published January 31, 2005. And I reread the review! It’s actually not bad. I was pretty, I was like, You know what? I would edit, I would edit this favorably; I think I did a good job. But that was the start of her series that became massive, massive series.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So on page 7, we have a lot to talk about. This is one of those pages where we could do a whole episode just on the page. I am going to talk about the watch. There’s a watch.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay, I just need you to know that every time I do one of these episodes I say, Don’t forget to look at the visual aids. I am so very serious that you need to look at the visual aids for this, this episode and the show notes, because I will put links to this watch. There is a Swatch – Swatch watch; remember when those were the shit? Used to get those little tiny rubber, like, screen protector things, and you’d twist them together and – yeah, Swatches were serious business in the ‘90s, and in 1997 Swatch released the Tormented Souls watch, which is covered with romance novel cover art. I am not joking. The face has a couple about to kiss. The lower arm with the, with the holes in it has this woman, like, bent back over one arm, and then the top has two people, I think they’re embracing either under a palm tree or some stuff? So I went, and I looked up this watch, and you can get it for between forty and seventy dollars used or sometimes new. It is incredible in color. Like, this picture is black and white; in color it is astonishingly cool. I even sent it to Steve Ammidown –

Amanda: It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. [Laughs]

Sarah: Look at this cute thing! It’s got all this cool art on it, and it, it’s great condition. It would, it, it is the perfect, like, romance fan watch if you want a Swatch. I sent this to Steve Ammidown, and I was like, I’m sure you know about this, and he’s like, Holy shit, I did not! [Laughs] So Steve Ammidown will be wearing one of these very soon. Look at this! It’s so cute! At the time that it was, like, it was released in 1997, so this is 2000; it’s three years later. I think RT just, like, discovered the watch and was like, Whaat? We must feature! Altivo Creative Timepieces in Los Angeles has the watch for forty dollars, but they say go to eBay and look. Now, it’s not forty dollars on eBay, but it’s not that much if you want the historical romance Swatch.

Amanda: On the, the same giveaway page I notice that there’s a grand prize. So this, this came out in 2005, and one of the grand prizes is a shiny new 2000 yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

Sarah: Can you believe that? That’s a whole-ass car!

Amanda: I know! There’s something about the early 2000s and the Volkswagen, the, the new and improved, redone Volkswagen Bug.

Sarah: You have to read the copy for this, because no one would do this now. Like, just think about –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – a publisher doing this right now.

Amanda: So the, the title is “eharlequin.com Reader Catches the Love Bug.”

Sarah: Oh my God.

Amanda: >> Recently, Harlequin’s newly designed website, eharlequin.com, ran a contest to promote their Harlequin Duets line of books and called for contestants to submit a two hundred words or less short story with a romantic comedy theme indicative of the Duets format, featuring a new Volkswagen Beetle.

So not only do you have to write two hundred words or less, a rom-com theme, but you have to include a Volkswagen Beetle?

Sarah: Yep!

Amanda: >> The grand prize, a shiny new yellow 2000 Volkswagen Beetle. Harlequin received over fifteen hundred entries –

Sarah: Wow!

Amanda: >> – and the lucky winner is Kate, a self-employed resident of St. Catharines, Ontario. The winning story, titled “The Wedding Bug,” was selected based on its originality, wit, and charm. Kate is a long-time reader, romance reader with an asp-, and aspiring writer who happened to discover the contest while surfing through the Harlequin site. In addition to winning the sleek new version of the popular 1970s car, Kate’s story was published in the back of the August Harlequin Duets editions.

Sarah: A whole-ass car.

Amanda: A whole-ass car.

But the page after that was like the, the Book Lover Tours that you get to go on with, like, Kathryn and a bunch of other readers?

Sarah: Book Lover Tours! She really was, like, setting up a travel company!

Amanda: Yeah. And what’s interesting – so they have prices. So –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – January 11th to the 22nd, so Shop Till You Drop 2001: ten days of winter sales and fashion shows in Florence, Venice, and Rome. You get to go to leather factories and designer outlets. The land and air costs – so you get airfare from New York to Rome, hotels with breakfast, tour bus, Italian translator, fashion lecture, fashion lectures, wine and olive oil tastings, and evening writing critique groups. The land and air cost for this: two thousand dollars!

Sarah: Holy crap.

Amanda: …thousand dollars. Crazy.

Sarah: So fricking cheap. Look at the note underneath that one:

>> Start your Valentino Armani Gucci scrapbook now and do Christmas shopping in January. Suede and leather jackets and purses, five to fifty dollars.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: If Kathryn’s going on all these she’s going to be in Italy in January, she’s going to be in Italy in March, and then June and July she’s going to be in Cambridge and Suffolk. She was really just setting up a travel company in this issue, wasn’t she?

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Now, if we go to the Letters to the Editor on page 10, apparently in the last issue they, they featured Half.com about a way to find books.

>> Thank you so much for your running the article about Half.com in your April issue. I have kept all my books, secretly hoping to open my own used bookstore one day, and now I have. In two and a half weeks that I’ve listed my books, I’ve sold more than a hundred to people all over the country.

So people are selling their old books and are signing up as sellers to get rid of their back issues. So she’s getting people into, like, reselling too. The, the, so powerful! So powerful.

Amanda: Well, if you go to Half.com, guess where it goes to now.

Sarah: Oh no. Who bought Half.com? eBay! Yep.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep, eBay bought Half.com. That checks out. Sure does! Holy cow. That’s amazing.

>> We’re also excited about all the dot-coms and e-publishers who are creating a new high-tech future for the romance industry, so we’ve invited some of these pioneers to come to the convention.

[Laughs] Okay, so now it’s 2025 and literally every book I wrote is in that learned language model? Candy messaged me; she’s like, Did you see that Beyond Heaving Bosoms is in here? And I’m like, Yes. Can you imagine the language that that learned language model learned from our book?

Amanda: Hey.

Sarah: There’s a whole, there’s a whole chapter in there about fuck the tanuki. What’s that going to be about? Anyway.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow. Yep, well, the world of dot-coms and e-publishers creating a new high-tech future for the romance industry did not work out the way that you might have envisioned, but it did happen! You’re not wrong.

So I don’t understand where these pages went, but what did you think of the one page of the article about Juliet Marillier? [Laughs]

Amanda: I hated it.

Sarah: Really! I mean, granted, it’s not the whole thing, but tell me why you did not like it.

Amanda: So, it clearly pits women against each other? So when you imagine a brave heroine who undergoes tremendous ordeals for a greater good with little regard for her own welfare, what kind of person comes to mind? And they’re talking about, like, Oh, when you think about that, you think of, like, Ripley from the Alien movies, and then they, like, talk about Sorcha, the heroine, a little bit, and they’re like, essentially like, Oh, Ripley could never! And you thought killing aliens was tough. I was like, These are two different women, first of all.

Sarah: That’s –

Amanda: They’re both strong in their own ways.

Sarah: That is a really shallow comparison.

Amanda: But also, the whole little regard for her own welfare? I think the strength of Sorcha as a character isn’t because she has little regard for her own welfare, but she weighs her welfare against the task that she has set out to do to save her brothers, and one ranks higher. It’s not that she is, like, reckless; it’s that her wellbeing does not compare to saving the lives of her family members, and that, I think, is a stronger message than what they’re portraying.

Sarah: Yeah, they’re basically contrasting “a sheltered young girl barely in her teens” with “someone like Ripley, a muscular, independent woman capable of standing up to any man or tentacled beast.” Okay, first of all, those are two different genres.

Amanda: It is very, like, black and white?

Sarah: It’s very Not Like Other Girls.

Amanda: Yeah. Strength comes in many forms. So I hated it. Like, I’m glad they’re recognizing that, like, Sorcha is a source of strength and is a brave heroine, despite, like, the stereotype of what bravery might look like?

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: But there’s, there’s room for being brave in a spectrum, and also, the characterization of little regard for her own welfare, I think, is really undermining of the sacrifices Sorcha makes as a character for her, her brothers.

Sarah: Little regard for her own welfare makes it sound like she doesn’t have agency in the choice that she’s making, and she does have agency in the choice that she’s making.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: So we move on to page 17: On-line Romance, which is spelled On dash line Romance. This is a –

Amanda: That was a heavy debate, too, of, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – is online one word, or is online hyphenated? Like email.

Sarah: Yeah. Here’s, here’s the opening, opening paragraph to give you a sense of how very long ago this was:

>> This month’s great books include a mix of both historicals and contemporaries, beginning with The Duke and I by Julia Quinn, January 2000. The hero has a dark secret from his past that has made him vow to never marry. Even knowing this, the heroine finds him too seductive to resist. The antics of her brothers and mother will have you laughing out loud.

And then there’s a Christina Dodd, Justine Davis, Barbara Freethy. What’s weird is that she’s just writing about books, but she’s not indicating that these are being discussed anywhere. She’s just like, Here are the books. The online part seems to come when she recommends entertainmentweekly.com, people.com, redbookmagazine.com, and countryliving.com. [Laughs] I don’t understand! What is this for? Why are we here? What are we even doing? I mean, she’s not wrong: people.com was the shit, and EW was pretty great back in the day, especially because they used to have, both of them had bulletin boards before they really understood what, the, the degree to which they would have to moderate said communities?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: But they had message boards everywhere, and whoo! Those were a hot mess. This was written by Cathie Linz, and her website was comet.net/writer/linz. Can you imagine saying that to somebody? Like, when I ask somebody at the end of the, of an episode, Where can people find you if you wish to be found? Well, I’m at my blah-blah-blah website, blah-blah-blah.com! Can you imagine the, an author saying, Well, I’m at http://comet.net/writer/linz, L-I-N-Z?

Amanda: An earful to hear now.

Sarah: Every now and again I will hear an ad for something where somebody says H-T-T-P, and I’m like, What are, what are you doing? [Laughs] No! We don’t need that!

On page 18, okay, this is so incredible. Did you see this picture?

Amanda: No!

Sarah: All right.

>> Salute from Italy and the Lady Barrow Tour. The first tour to Tuscany, Venice, and Rome took place March 17th to 27th, 2000.

So that means right now twenty-five years ago this was happening. Lower right corner, there’s a little picture.

>> We met the mayor of Reggello, Massimo Sottani, in the town’s elegant deputy chamber.

And left to right we have Martha Hix, James Rosburg, Migliorini Foscaro, and Sharon Spiak, who is a past guest of this podcast. She’s a cover painter.

>> We presented the mayor for, with wines from our home cities.

So imagine it’s 2000, you’re the deputy mayor of an Italian town. You probably have good wine, like, coming out of your tap, but they are bringing wines from their home cities. So, like – [laughs] – here’s a bottle of wine from Omaha! Here’s a bottle of wine –

Amanda: I want to know where they’re from.

Sarah: What did this guy do?

Amanda: Martha Hix is from Dallas?

Sarah: Okay – [laughs] – what did they do with the wine? I want to know, did they all laugh? Did they try it and yell?

Amanda: [Muffled] …even use it in his cooking.

Sarah: Oh my God, it’s so funny. [Laughs] I, I mean, it’s actually a really nice thing? But also, this speaks to how long ago this was, because ostensibly that means they brought wine with them to Italy.

Amanda: Yeah, in their carry-ons or in their –

Sarah: In their suitcases! It’s incredible. So you’re, you’re the mayor of an Italian town, got good wine all over the place, and here come these Americans –

Amanda: [Muffled]

Sarah: Here’s my Missouri wine. Wow. This is not to say there’s anything wrong with Texas or Nebraska or Missouri, except politically there are some problems. I’m just saying that that’s not a place where you think, Oh yeah, wine! Hundred percent, that’s where I’m going.

Amanda: Or it’s like, you know, a place that’s known for certain food, right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: You know, bring your box of, your bag of frozen tortellinis to Italy?

Sarah: Ooh yeah.

Amanda: Here you go.

Sarah: All of the pictures on this first page are people drinking.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Everyone is – it, it’s like, Come on our booze cruise. Somebody did a picture where they’re holding up the Tower of Pisa, because that’s what you have to do. And there’s pictures of people playing an, an accordion and somebody holding like a lute or something. And then there’s a picture of Michel-, Michelangelo’s David; it’s a replica that’s in Florence, and I’m like, You know they put this in here so they could put a penis, penis in the magazine. There’s a hog in the magazine, and that’s how they did it.

Amanda: [Muffled]

Sarah: And if you look at the group in the top right? That’s a lot of people to travel with.

Amanda: Yeah. What, I think, like, earlier it said like forty-seven people joined on their last trip that they went on.

Sarah: So when we talk about how, you know, RT was a core group of people? The conference had its core group that had always gone and would always go? That’s these people. Like, I recognize some of them. All the way to the right is a woman sort of laughing? She’s sitting down, and there’s a man leaning over her? That’s Mary Stella. I recognize her. She was at every RT, and she’s a, she’s a very fun talk, fun person to talk to in the bar, but I literally saw her at every RT. I think a lot of these people were like the RT regulars, and they were part of, you know, Kathryn’s doing a thing; I’m doing it too. Let’s go. See, this whole thing is like four pages of, like, trip report? No, five! Five pages of trip report!

Amanda: [Muffled]

Sarah: This is, this is wild.

So you wanted to look at page 22.

Amanda: Yeah. It says D. E. White Builds a Cover Model Enterprise.

Sarah: With one guy? Just the one?

Amanda: Just the one, and guess who it is, everyone! It’s Extreme Troy.

Sarah: No! [Gasps]

Amanda: She, she is the one we can thank for Extreme Troy.

Sarah: And she wrote Jettison, the book that he’s on.

Amanda: Yeah! And it says:

>> After a successful shoot, White Enterprises bolstered its support for Troy with his own website and calendar entitled “Extreme Troy,” twelve glossies featuring this disciplined body builder in his favorite extreme sports.

Sarah: Wow. I’m really sad that I couldn’t find this calendar now. Like, I’m super bummed that I did not find a copy of Extreme Troy.

Amanda: They talk about how they had this giant photo shoot for Troy’s calendar, and they shot the different months –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – in ten days.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: And the last – [laughs] – sorry, I’m just reading it.

>> So the author turned entrepreneur found her new role of photographer’s assistant pleasantly surprising. Each of the twelve shoots presented a new set of challenges. There was off-road racing, wall climbing, rollerblading, and a Jeep with a surfboard. “I’ve never blocked traffic on a highway by driving an SUV with a photographer hanging out the window. It was a new experience.” As was her role in all the other calendar scenes. “While Troy was rollerblading, I was a human bumper guard standing in front of iron poles. During the wall-climbing, I held ladders so the photographer wouldn’t fall over.” On the tenth day, the shoot wrapped up right on schedule. After working on the calendar and spending ten days with Troy, Donnamarie recalls, “I did light up a cigarette.”

Sarah: Oh, ew!

Amanda: [Muffled] …a new venture.

>> Computer guru D. E. White can only smile and say, Too wild for words.

Sarah: Oh, that’s gross. You don’t need to sexually harass him. Also, her name appears to be Donnamaie, M-A-I-E? I thought that was a typo –

Amanda: Oh!

Sarah: – but it’s like that –

Amanda: I thought it was Donnamarie! My brain just filled an R.

Sarah: Yeah! I mean, obviously, but it’s written that way a couple of times. That’s actually, yeah, Donnamaie, M-A-I-E, and her website is donnamaie.com. Like I said, she knows what’s up. She, she’s got it.

Amanda: Yeah. She’s, she’s the woman who brought us Extreme Troy, so you can thank her.

Sarah: Donnamaie White is the webmaster of the Fabio International Fan Club. She has been on the PEOPLE in the ‘90s podcast about the man, the li-, the myth, the legend of Fabio.

Amanda: She, it mentions that in the article. Like, the company has built Fabio’s international website.

Sarah: Having to say that you lit up a cigarette after working with someone is really gross? Like, that’s just making me very uncomfortable. I don’t like that.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: You don’t –

Amanda: I mean, there could be the interpretation that it was so frustrating, like, she needed to go outside and smoke because she was so annoyed, but we know that’s not the implication here. [Laughs]

Sarah: No, the – one of the aspects of RT that I dislike the most is the objectification of men? Like, the whole, like, the Man-Gent and the cover models, and you’re supposed to be sexually aroused by the cover and the art and the models. Like, that does not work for me, and I just find it really uncomfortable and awful. This does, yeah, this does not work for me.

So what else did you want to look at? You wanted to look at, what, page 30?

Amanda: Yeah. So, as I mentioned in the reviews episode when you asked is there anything you wanted to read and I said no, but there was an ad, there was an article that got me. And there’s a pull quote. So the article doesn’t have a title? No, no title for this article, but it is a profile of a new book by Julie Beard called My Fair Lord, and the pull quote is:

>> My Fair Lord is a reverse My Fair Lady/Pygmalion story.

Now, I love a My Fair Lady/Pygmalion story. My favorite rom-com is She’s All That, which is a My Fair Lady/Pygmalion – [laughs]

Sarah: I love that movie, and I love that to make her hot you take off her glasses?

Amanda: Just take off her glasses.

Sarah: Like Rachael Leigh Cook walking around isn’t just hot, just all the time.

Amanda: I love that movie so much. God bless Matthew Lillard for just being a weirdo in every movie he’s in. I love Usher. I love the weird little dance routine that somehow every high schooler knows. I love that none of these people look like high schoolers? They all look like they’re in their mid to late twenties?

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: I love that movie so much. So I am a sucker for this trope, and I have never seen a reverse My Fair Lady story, and so I’m, I’m really intrigued. I looked this up; it didn’t have the greatest reviews, but also I feel like books that have been published, I don’t know, this long ago on Goodreads don’t have a ton of reviews?

Sarah: No, this is beyond their, this is beyond the scope of their, their work field.

Amanda: Yeah, and they’re usually rated pretty low. So I’m actually really curious about this one, and I made a note of like, Maybe even a Rec League, because that’s one of the benefits of working for this website is you can selfishly co-opt a feature for yourself –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – for your own reading needs.

Sarah: What, you, you don’t think that Help a Bitch Out is my brain one thousand percent of the time? That’s why it exists, because that’s my whole brain! Like, you didn’t know that? That’s why, that’s why!

I, I would just like to, to note two things: one, the headline at the top of this ad is A Delightful and Charming Georgian Romance from the Author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Your Romance Published.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Love it! And there is no shade: I learned to podcast by reading Podcasting for Dummies from the library. That’s how I learned how to do it.

Amanda: So –

Sarah: I have a question, though.

Amanda: – reverse Pygmalion Rec League coming, coming to you soon.

Sarah: So is the reverse Pygmalion, reverse My Fair Lady is when she dresses him up?

Amanda: Yes, she – what is the word I’m looking for? – tries to play him off as he is nobility, he’s whatever, when he’s just, you know –

Sarah: Some rando.

Amanda: – not – yeah.

Sarah: Weren’t there a bunch of reverse My Fair Lady movies in the late ‘90s and early 2000s where some girl would, like, dress a guy up to become the hot guy? Was there one with Robert Downey, Jr.?

Amanda: It sounds familiar to me.

Sarah: Right? Like –

Amanda: My brain is drawing a blank.

Sarah: I’m pretty sure that there were, like, a bunch of these where it was like, you know, the nerdy guy is dressed up by the hot girls, right? Like, I know I’ve seen movies like this, but I’m sure they’re deeply problematic. Wait, I am certain that they are terrible and sexist and not good and you should not go visit them? But if you want to, like, if you read this book and you like it, I want to hear all about it, ‘cause it looks really cute!

Amanda: Yeah, and for some reason, as much as I love this trope, I never thought, Oh, what if we switched the roles, where, like, she’s playing him off as royalty or nobility or whatever. I want more now!

Sarah: I’m so annoyed that I can’t – Can’t Buy Me Love! Thank you, Sarah’s Brain!

Amanda: It’s Patrick Dempsey!

Sarah: All right, first of all, I am forgiven for confusing Patrick Dempsey with Robert Downey, Jr. They are of the same sort of grizzled, wrinkly hot guy. Can’t Buy Me Love is a male makeover story.

Amanda: Oh, this looks cute!

Sarah: So on page 49, there is an article about Regency England comes to life? One – here’s the opening line:

>> One hundred and sixty-five: that’s the average number of balls, parties, dinners, and breakfasts a young woman who’d come to town for her first season out in 19th-century London could expect to attend in a three-month period.

Amanda: What? One sixty-five divided by –

Sarah: Holy shit, she’s doing math.

Amanda: [Muffled] That’s thirty…fifty-five a month!

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: And it’s fifty-five, then divided by…It’s almost two functions a day!

Sarah: Yep! And these are people all sleeping in till like noon, one o’clock and then staying out till the wee hours of the morning. That is one hundred and sixty-five functions for which the unmarried, young lady in question needed an escort, because no unmarried woman of character would dare appear without a chaperone. So this is the story setting up A Little Scandal, and do you recognize who this is?

Amanda: Didn’t immediately recognize it, because I’m used to seeing her with short hair –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – not long hair.

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: But I saw the last name, and in my comment I’m like, Meg? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep! That’s Meg Cabot writing under Patricia Cabot with long, long hair and a turtleneck sweater in front of, like, some stone fireplace. It’s actually a nice picture; it looks like a, like a candid. But there’s a whole page about it, and I’m like, Oh wait, that’s Meg Cabot! ‘Tis Meg.

All right, let’s get into the fun part. Page 52, Steve Sandalis Exposed.

Amanda: [Muffled]

Sarah: Yes! He is, he is chest –

Amanda: I am agog!

Sarah: He is chest-stimulating butt-nekkid into, right into her sternum is where his naked man parts would be. That’s a Pino, by the way.

Amanda: Do you think during that photo shoot he had a sock on?

Sarah: I hope so. Steve’s fan club was started by Irma Sue, Tammy, Roberta, and Sharon, and the Steve Sandalis Circle of Friends. They put together an entire list of more than three hundred and fifty of his over six hundred covers. And then it’s just a list of books that have this guy on the cover! And then there’s samples at the bottom.

Amanda: How much do you think he was paid per cover? What do you think his rate was?

Sarah: I don’t know! Couldn’t have been –

Amanda: Like, obviously he probably charged more, the more popular and well-known he became –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – but –

Sarah: Yes, I think so. Okay. So. Let’s start with, so at the bottom of this list, which is like one, two, three, four pages of, of just listing, like here’s the name of the author and the title that this guy was on the cover of, he was on the cover of a lot of Cassie Edwards, lot of Danielle Harmon, lot of Heather Graham; that’s the era we’re talking about here. At the bottom are miniatures of the covers, and if you look at the bottom of page 54 of the PDF, he’s just nekkid again! And if you go to the –

Amanda: …just be naked.

Sarah: If you –

Amanda: There’s two more naked covers!

Sarah: I know, and there’s his butt next, in the one next to it. So this is what I did to figure this out: I screen-capped just that image, I opened it in Chrome, and I used Google Lens to reverse image search this, so I found, if you click that link, there is a link to a big version of the naked cover, and he is completely nude, but also the water is not dead center, and the water goes low enough that I think he’s actually a Ken doll? There’s nothing there. There’s no fold; there’s no – what’s that one, that one muscle that curves into your groin on really built men? I think it’s the Adonis belt?

Amanda: Yeah –

Sarah: Yeah, there’s –

Amanda: – yeah.

Sarah: – there’s no Adonis belt. It’s just smooth. Smooth as a shiny baby dolphin. Then, if you go to the other link that I put, the eBay look, eBay link, that’s the cover of White Lily by Linda Ladd. It’s just a picture of a Lily. Him nekkid in the hot lava – it’s also orange, this water, so apparently they’re on fire? They’re just bathing in the hot lava water butt-nekkid is the stepback. This is peak we’re naked –

Amanda: The stepback: that’s one thing that I miss. It’s like a little surprise.

Sarah: Butt-naked on the stepback is this era. It is incredible. And –

Amanda: Less sprayed edges, more stepbacks, please.

Sarah: And then the second one that I linked, the eBay, the second eBay link is for Heather Graham’s Lord of the Wolves. The cover is just some, like, filigree and some kind of gemstone-encrusted wolf figurine with some font action that kind of looks like penises and testicles. Then look at the stepback! He’s got – [laughs] –

Amanda: This lady looks so… [muffled]

Sarah: He’s like, it, it’s almost, because she’s in a little circle, it’s like he’s thinking about her and that’s his thought bubble? But he is wearing this giant wad of fur over his crotch. Like an absolute chinchilla has taken up residence over his groin. I could look at Steve Sandalis stepbacks for hours. These are all incredible.

So this was peak stepback, and like you said, I really, really miss it a lot. Like a lot, a lot.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: But imagine like we did that on the site. We’re going to print a list of books that had this one person on the cover. What is the point? We want to collect these books? Okay, so at one part of the magazine we have a list of books that have this model on the cover, so ostensibly I’m assuming you can collect them? Maybe you’re a fan of Steve Sandalis? Yet at the beginning we have letters of people saying, Thank you for introducing me to Half.com so I can get rid of some of these books in my house! [Laughs] Love it!

Moving on to page 68 and 69. This is a little bit of romance history. This is about Monica Jackson. Monica Jackson passed away in May of 2012. First of all, on page 68, look at that cover! It is –

Amanda: It gives me like Picasso.

Sarah: It’s a Picasso cover! It’s, it’s like, it’s like he’s a cube! It’s very, it’s, it’s cubist all –

Amanda: [Muffled]

Sarah: Yes! It’s – what a weird cover trend, right? Was this like we don’t know what to do with covers with Black people on them, so we’ll make them angular and weirdly curved? Like, what is this?

Amanda: I guess so.

Sarah: So if you look at Monica Jackson’s article, when we first started the website, Monica Jackson was one of the most outspoken people that we encountered, and she was one of the earliest writers that I remember from my, you know, the inception of me being on the internet talking about romance. She was one of the earliest who was talking about the systemic and endemic racism in romance and was fearless about saying, What you just said is racist. This book is racist. This cover art is racist. And just basically applying racist to things accurately at a time when, you know, people get in their feelings about being called racist now? In 2000, like, amplify that by forty. Peop-, like, people were not ready to be confronted with that word at all. And she was like, No, I’m, I’m telling you this sucks, and would talk at length about all of the problems inside romance. And this is one of the things that she wrote on All About Romance, which is no longer available. I found a clip of it on a, on a BlogSpot; that’s how long this was.

>> It’s exciting when a writer gets the call from an editor. In many ways, the call is only the beginning of an angsty rollercoaster for any novelist. But if you’re Black –

Excuse me!

>> – if you’re a Black, you have a special ride reserved just for you. Writing romance while Black means you get a subgenre of your very own, no matter what the content of your novel. Your special niche is already measured and the boundaries are set for your readership. Your marketing will likely be different than the white author in your chapter, even where your books are shelved in the same, in some bookstores. If you decide to attend book signings and other events with your white colleagues, the difference of your reception and audience will be thrown into stark relief. And because, since you’re Black, you’re a romance writer that the majority of romance readers will never read. Your readership is defined and limited to only Black romance readers by a variety of circumstances outside your control, so your opportunities are far smaller than any white romance writer from the moment you are published, regardless of your talent and determination.

Now, I don’t know when she wrote this because it’s a link to All About Romance, and it was one of their – they used to number their URLs, so this URL is just a number; it doesn’t have a date attached to it? But that is what, that’s the type of thing that she was saying openly in like, you know, the late ‘90s and 2000s. This is Monica writing about being Black in romance and about how romance is marketed if the writer is Black and how different it is, and this is 2005, which was around the time we were actually starting to talk about these things and to, like, call them out in the open and be like, Look at, this is how it is! Before, before you had the internet, all of this was very pocketed, and you would only see each other and talk about it, you know, either in local chapters or at a conference. There wasn’t this, like, sort of place where we all gathered and were like, Well, that shit’s fucked! That, that’s terrible! Let’s not do that! But she was the author of a book called Midnight Blue, which was later made into a television movie by BET!

Amanda: Ohhh!

Sarah: And she wrote nine novels, eight novellas, short stories, and is a national bestselling author. But yeah. That, I saw her picture and I was like, Oh wow, Monica Jackson! That’s a name from the way, way back.

On page 81 there’s an article about Janet Evanovich. Basically, people were, like, asking her for spoilers and she’s like, I’m not giving you any spoilers. But I just want to tell you, I used to live in Jersey City, New Jersey, and I would get, I’d take the path into the Jersey City Station, and sometimes if it was late Adam would come and pick me up and then drive me home so I wasn’t walking home late at night. I was sitting there waiting for him and reading a book and laughing my ass off because I was reading an early Stephanie Plum. I was laughing my ass off and a police officer came up to me and said, Are you okay? And I said, Yeah, I’m having a great time! I’m reading this book. He’s like, ‘Cause you’re laughing! I’m like, Yeah, it’s really funny. It’s about a bounty hunter in Trenton. And he’s like, I’m sorry, hang on, my brother’s a bounty hunter in Trenton. And I’m like, No, no, this is a girl bounty hunter! And he’s like, Wait, hold up, this is a woman bounty hunter in Trenton. What’s this book called? My brother needs to read it. So I give this guy, like, you know, It’s Janet Evanovich; here’s the first one; here’s the deal. There’s like a love – like, you’re, you’re going to dig it; it’s very funny. So a couple months later I see that same cop and he goes, Oh hey! Bounty hunter girl! That book was really good! So there’s a whole bunch of cops in Jersey City and bounty hunters in Trenton that are reading Stephanie Plum because I was laughing my ass off in the middle of Journal Square. You’re welcome! [Laughs]

Amanda: That’s kind of cute.

Sarah: It’s very cute! He was a really young guy, too. I was like, Why, why, do you think I’m on drugs? Like, why are you talking to me? I –

Amanda: [Laughs] I never see a woman happy, so this is new to me.

Sarah: I don’t understand what she’s doing! Why is she laughing? Woman laughing, but not at salad! I don’t understand!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: There is a page for Love Spell. There’s a full ad for Love Spell, and I’m just, I’m just going to share some covers with you because I went and found them in color and they’re incredible.

Amanda: I need to see The Wild Swans in color, please?

Sarah: All right, so –

Amanda: I’m making a request: The Wild Swans.

Sarah: Yeah. So here we have The Black Rose. That guy looks like Ricky Martin. Also, did you notice that The Wild Swans is by Kate – [laughs] – Katie Holmes?

Amanda: Yes. I did.

Is he giving me, is this, like, the Bachelor, but when you lose your planet explodes?

Sarah: That’s the Rose God from Elyse’s recaps! Oh, I have to show her, I have to show everybody this. I found the Rose God; here he is! Holding a black rose and everything.

Amanda: Lounging in space with his gray satin sheets.

Sarah: He’s in space with satin sheets. Is that what the future holds? That doesn’t sound too bad.

Amanda: Yeah, that doesn’t sound…

Sarah: That sounds pretty great, actually. I’d take a really good nap.

So here is The Wild Swans, a fairytale romance. It is very Photoshop collage style. Like, ex- –

Amanda: Oh my God. This is worse than I thought it would be. Just these colors hurt my…

Sarah: Isn’t it –

Amanda: Then there’s this little tiny fairy lady that reminds me of – oh my God – Anne, Anne Geddes?

Sarah: Yes! The –

Amanda: The…does the baby photos?

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs] All the little tiny babies in stuff!

Amanda: My grandmother, my Christian grandmother had so many Anne Geddes coffee table books in her home.

Sarah: Do you remember it was that one, and then A Day in the Life of – a country or a place. Those were everywhere along with the Anne Geddes books.

Amanda: [Muffled]

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: It sounds really cool.

Sarah: No way!

Amanda: [Muffled] …every, every…interplanetary marriage of convenience between a nobleman and an aristocratic spy.

Sarah: Oh, hang on! I would read that. You should totally read that!

Amanda: I know…

Sarah: That sounds really good!

Amanda: I’m finding cool books, but I, it makes me nervous that they’re rated so poorly on Goodreads –

Sarah: You –

Amanda: – but also, like, how much stock am I putting in Goodreads here?

Sarah: Like, why would you even worry about what, what Goodreads thinks? Because, like, if you look at the top books for Goodreads I’m like, Wow, I am not a Goodreads reader. None of this for me!

So you wanted to look at page 103 for an ad.

Amanda: So it’s page magazine 103, PDF one-oh…

Sarah: PDF 105. Oh yeaahh. It’s Monkey Christ!

Amanda: It’s Inca is coming, August 2000.

Sarah: Who’s Inca?

Amanda: He’s Inca, I’m assuming. No, wait, sorry. His name is Roan Storm Walker!

Sarah: Oh, okay!

Amanda: And he is who Inca falls in love with.

Sarah: Okay, but who’s Inca, and why are they coming?

Amanda: He’s got, his face is very fae with the cheekbones and the pointy chin.

Sarah: Oh my God, you’re so right; he is. Holy cow.

Amanda: This is an ad… [muffled] I’ve heard of maybe half?

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: Of the page. It is an illustration, not a photo, and it is a shirtless military man holding a gun.

Sarah: Of course it is.

Amanda: Yeah. But his face looks like he’s had a lot of work done.

Sarah: Either that, or this is a really bad oil painting? Did you look up the book? Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of the Warrior by Lindsay McKenna.

Amanda: But that, Lindsay McKenna is a name that I recognize.

Sarah: Oh, for sure!

Amanda: It’s listed as paranormal romance?

Sarah: This does not look like paranormal romance!

Amanda: [Muffled]

Sarah: Well, the problem is there’s a new cover, and it’s a photograph cover.

Amanda: Well, the old cover, ‘cause if you go to Goodreads and you look at other editions, you can see the previous covers. The cover is just a jungle, and in back you can see people making out.

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: Yeah, there’s a teeny-tiny couple kissing in the back of a jungle. I can’t find out if there’s a stepback or not. Anyway, this ad –

Sarah: Is creepy.

Amanda: – is bad! It’s a bad ad compared to, like, what the cover is. I expected the cover to be, honestly, disastrous –

Sarah: Mm.

Amanda: – looking at that ad.

Sarah: What, where did this, where did this art come from? Like I, like we were talking about with the cover, do you want to enforce the image of the book? If you want to enfor-, reinforce the image of the book, whatever this is is not the book. Who is this guy?

Amanda: I don’t like looking at his face.

Sarah: So let’s move on. Page 114 is sort of like a, the main agenda of the conference, which again is all about Italy because she’s promoting the, the, the tours. You know, Florentine breakfast, Carnevale. Here’s the first party, the opening night party? This sounds so fun?

>> Thursday, November 9th, Romance Carnevale, hospitality suites and award ceremonies from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Carnevale begins with author promotions, strolling English minstrels, a bagpiper, Celtic harpists, author tête-a-tête, pageant parade, box lunch raffle –

What, like there’s only one lunch and you get to, like, get it?

Amanda: Who gets the lunch?

Sarah: >> – a soaps booth –

I don’t know what that means.

>> – publisher goodie bags, surprise giveaways, past life regression sessions, silent auction, precious gems, cover model reunion, Tarot cards and psychic readings, book drawings, author door prizes, and swing lessons.

That’s a long day. That’s a really long day. But:

>> You are invited to wear your favorite medieval, Restoration, Regency, Scottish costume to celebrate the British Isles and the musical entertain-ment, or come casual.

[Laughs] Past life regressions, psychic reading, Tarot cards, strolling English minstrels! This, can you imagine, I imagine having an edible and going to that party all day.

Amanda: Oh my God. I don’t know if that would be the best thing or if you would be so frightened.

Sarah: It would be very alarming. Also, if you’re curious, Heather Graham’s second vampire ball, Dead Man’s Waltz, music and dancing, dress code is spooky.

And finally, they are talking about publishing luminaries. They have people from Half.com, Mighty Words, DiskUs Publishing, and other – Hard Shell Word Factory; I remember that name – little digital industries are coming to the conference, but they’ve decided to celebrate publishing luminaries, including Alicia Condon; Walter Zacharius, Sr.; and Kate Duffy.

Kate Duffy I was not expecting to see in the picture of her. She died several years ago, and she was one of the first people who met me and was, like, telling me that Smart Bitches was going to be something. Like, it was going to be impactful in the romance genre, she could tell. And she was sort of like a legend at the time, so I was, like, scared shitless that that was a bad thing? It was really wild to see her in this magazine, but if you’re going to celebrate publishing luminaries in 2000, okay, that makes sense!

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: So that was July 2000. What did you think?

Amanda: This one was good; I liked this one! Some of the reviews were eh.

Sarah: Meh.

Amanda: I think this was one where, like, the ads and features definitely got me more than the reviews.

Sarah: Yeah. The, the reviews are interesting to be like, Oh, that was published then? But the ads and features, especially because we are in peak stepback era, the, the visual aids for this particular episode will be beefy.

Amanda: [Laughs]

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you so much to Amanda for hanging out with me. As I mentioned in the intro, all of these images will be in the visual aids, and you can find a link in the show notes or at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

More importantly, next month we have a special treat! Amanda is taking a month off, and my co-host for Romantic Times Rewind is one of the authors who is on the cover of the magazine that we will be discussing. It is going to be a lot of fun; do not miss it. I’m very excited.

I will have all of the links to the movies and the books that we discussed in the show notes; do not fear.

And as always, I end with a terrible joke. This is terrible; it’s dreadful; that’s why I’m sharing it with you. Brace yourself: this one’s really bad, and you’re going to want to tell all the people. Are you ready?

Did you hear about the person who named their toilet Jim instead of John?

Well, it’s a lot more impressive to say you’re going to the Jim every morning.

[Laughs] I can hear you groaning! That joke is from Final-Ad-33 on Reddit, and I am deeply grateful.

On behalf of all of the snoring cats that are sitting near my microphone, 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 my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping, thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking.

[end of music]