686. Ladies in Hating and Yearning with Alexandra Vasti

Sarah Wendell: On September 12th I shared that a listener had contacted me to let me know that an ad for ICE had run before the start of my show and that they were very upset about it, and I was also ripping mad. These ads are called dynamic insertion. They’re added to the file when you download it by the digital host and distributor of the podcast; in my case that is Acast. I do not control the dynamic ads. I have asked many times for certain categories to be blocked. The short answer as to why you might be seeing ads for ICE everywhere is that right-wing grift is abhorrently well-funded. Ad spend for these spots will top twenty billion dollars this year, and those spots come with a higher percentage of revenue for creators than non-political campaigns. Being complacent and letting those ads run means more money for the creator – that’s me – and for the platform, Acast, that serves the ads. In other words, they’re profitable, and Acast wants to run them.

I have asked them repeatedly to block all political ads for years, and maybe this time it will stick, but here is my ask: I would like to turn them all off. If you’ve been thinking of joining the Patreon, now would be a great time. I make about two hundred dollars a month from Acast, and if I can gather enough new Patreon memberships I can turn them all off. That money goes towards paying for hosting and distribution, paying for transcripts from garlicknitter, keeping me going week after week, and it’s like buying me one nice cocktail a month (and if you have cocktail suggestions, I would love to hear them).

And I have an update: As of September 24th, we are almost halfway to the goal of two hundred dollars per month in less than two weeks. If we cross two hundred dollars in new pledges, I will turn off all of the pre- and post-show dynamic ads.

Compliments are in progress for future episodes, but I would like to personally thank Selby, Bull, Amy, Laurie, Liz, Karen, Susan, Cat, Rosalinda, Emily Jane, Jane, M., Stephanie, and Muriel. Thank you for pledges.

I would love to have you join our Patreon community. You get benefits, like the full issue of RT each month. There is a wonderful Discord; there are bonus episodes and extended cuts, and you get the chance to be in our end-of-year holiday wishes episodes! And I’m going to be recording those starting very soon! If you would like to join, patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Thank you eternally to that listener for letting me know what was happening, and thank you for your understanding and your support.

[music]

Sarah: Hello, and welcome to episode number 686 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and Alexandra Vasti is back, because her new historical romance Ladies in Hating is out this week. When she was on the podcast earlier this year, many of you were like, Why can’t I buy that now? Good news: you can buy it now. We are going to talk about good, angsty yearning; when a character is their love interest’s Bitch Eating Crackers; lesbians in history; and erotic Victorian fiction. Side trips include historical publishing houses, how nothing in romance is new, and how a lot of our current erotica, including that book where someone shtups a door, is connected to books with the same sexual pairings in the Victorian era.

I will have links to all of the books and historical details that we talk about. As always, Alexandra has brought so much interesting knowledge, and I will link to as much of it as possible if you would like to learn more.

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

To Rachel M.: The trees are starting to change with the season, and they are showing off to make your days brighter and more colorful, because like them, you too add goodness, tranquility, and beauty to the world. Plus, you have great style.

If you’d like a compliment of your very own, patreon.com/SmartBitches. And if Patreon support is not in the cards, please may I ask you to leave a review wherever you listen. They make a massive difference. Most of all, thank you for listening. I’m really happy you’re here.

Support for this episode comes from HelloFresh. Fall is here, and with it comes cooler nights, and if you are me, yearning for warm and hearty meals. And this is where HelloFresh comes in to help me out: they bring comforting, chef-designed recipes and fresh seasonal ingredients to my door, and this fall they have made the biggest menu refresh yet. It’s bigger, they’ve doubled their menu, and now you can choose from over a hundred options each week, including new seasonal dishes and recipes from around the world. They’re healthier: there are high protein and veggie-packed recipes to choose from, plus options for different dietary needs. I love the new menu options from HelloFresh. I want to eat more vegetarian meals, so ordering some vegetarian and vegan options worked really well. I knew what I was making, I was given instructions how to make it, and now I can make it whenever I need. We tried the vegan sweet potato and black bean tostadas, and they were excellent. I had that problem where I was full and I wanted to taste more because it was so good. The crunchy cheeseburger salad was so easy and so fast; I could not shovel it into my mouth fast enough. I love discovering new recipes to add to our meal plan, and as I’ve mentioned, HelloFresh is a great tool for anyone who is learning to cook. The best way to cook just got better. Go to hellofresh.com/SARAH10FM now and get ten free meals and a free item for life! One per box with active subscription; free meals applied as discount on first box; new subscribers only; varies by plan. That’s hellofresh.com/SARAH10FM to get ten free meals and a free item for life.

Shall we talk to Alexandra Vasti about Ladies in Hating?

Real quick, before I forget, at forty-seven minutes [47:00] there is a brief mention of a historical figure engaged in underage predatory behavior. You want to skip ahead fifteen seconds.

Now, on with the show.

[music]

Alexandra Vasti: Hello! My name is Alexandra Vasti. Thank you so much for having me back. I’m so excited. We had so much fun last time?

Sarah: I know?

Alexandra: It was, yeah. It was really –

Sarah: When I was, when I was developing the questions for this interview, I pretty much just wanted to write, Please tell me all the things.

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: ‘Cause last time we talked about historical erotica; we talked about historical lesbians; we talked about, like, the most offensive thing in Victorian erotic art, the larking, what the hell larking was, which we figured out. I mean, this is –

Alexandra: Yeah!

Sarah: I’m very excited.

Alexandra: Yeah, yeah! So I am a professor, I’m a literature professor, and I also write historical romance. My third historical romance, called Ladies in Hating, is out September 23rd, and also next year I’ll have my first paranormal romance out, so I am an author of historical and paranormal romance as of now – as of next year, I guess.

Sarah: I, I will be asking about all of these things. So let’s start with Ladies in Hating. Welcome back, congratulations. Yay, new book!

Alexandra: Yay!

Sarah: When you were last here, more than a few people wrote to me and said, Okay, but how come I can’t have it now?

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: So now you can have it. And I, I, I just have to say, before I ask you to just tell me everything about this book, no spoilers! I do not spoil books even though I’ve read them? I try to keep my comments to, like, the first like three chapters – anything you can read in the previews – so no spoilers. I really love that it starts with an author being wicked pissed that another author is copying her, and she cannot let it go, and I was like, Well, that’s true to life!

[Laughter]

Alexandra: You know what, yeah.

Sarah: I’ve heard that before!

Alexandra: Yeah. So the, so this is my sapphic rival Gothic novelists. So when I sold my first book they were like, Can you tell us what the next couple books are about? And I was like, I have no idea! [Laughs] So I sort of very hastily came up with some ideas for them, and one of them was sapphic rival Gothic novelists. That was the whole pitch. They were like, Great! We’re sold; you don’t need to tell us anything else about the book! But yeah, so it, so it starts off, it’s, it’s, really kind of a one-sided rivalry, which is that Georgiana, who is kind of a recurring character across the series, is, we know she’s a Gothic novelist, she’s had this sort of successful Gothic novelist career, and she becomes, like – [laughs] – obsessed, fixated on this other novelist, and she be-, she’s, like, in a slightly unhinged way, right?

Sarah: She’s a little unglued about it, yeah.

Alexandra: Right!

Sarah: She’s a little unglued.

Alexandra: Right. And, and, so when they, they meet, sort of the worst possible thing happens, which is that the other author’s like, Well, I don’t even think about you! [Laughs]

Sarah: Ouch.

Alexandra: I know! It, would, that, is that not the most infuriating? Like –

Sarah: Yes.

Alexandra: – it is, I, I’m filled with fury; like, everything about you makes me furious…being like, Really. Who are you again? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, I’m sorry, who? This is a very Bitch Eating Crackers setup?

Alexandra: Yes, it is!

Sarah: Hundred percent a Bitch Eating Crackers setup. Like, I hate that girl; I hate everything she does; I want to kill her; and she’s like, Who are you?

Alexandra: Do you, do your readers know that phrase, Bitch Eating Crackers? Because that is one of my favorite phrases…

Sarah: Oh, I don’t, you know what? They may not know what that is. I suspect many of them do, but if you would explain it, I would be grateful.

Alexandra: I will explain it.

Sarah: Please do!

Alexandra: And I, I once heard Sherry Thomas explain this phrase, which is one of my favorite things that’s ever happened to me. So Bitch Eating Crackers is when you really don’t like someone so much that, to the point that no matter what they do, no matter how innocuous, it pisses you off? So the phrase is like, Oh, look at that bitch over there eating crackers.

[Laughter]

Alexandra: And you’re like, no matter what they’re doing you’re furious? Yeah, so. So this other author is Georgiana’s Bitch Eating Crackers. She is just, she’s convinced this other author is stealing her ideas; she’s like, I don’t know how it’s happening ‘cause I haven’t even told anyone my ideas. You know, she’s like, Is she breaking into my house and looking at my notes? How I, like, really she’s great agitated about it, because they’ve had a bunch of novels that have come out within the same couple of, of weeks or months that are very similar, and she’s like, How is this, how is this happening? This woman is my enemy! And she’s very worried about it, too, because her independence is very important to her, right? So she has developed, so in the first book she’s, she’s young, she’s eighteen years old in the first book in the series, and she has a really bad dad, classic of historical romance. She’s got this bad dad; she –

Sarah: And Gothics.

Alexandra: Yeah, and Gothics! [Laughs] Yes!

Sarah: Lot of bad dads running around Gothics; bad men generally.

Alexandra: Right. Well, you know, the 19th century, too, I think we’ve gotten a strong, strong, you know, pattern for…

Sarah: No. Whole Man Disposal Service, yes, please dispose –

Alexandra: Right.

Sarah: – of the entire man.

Alexandra: [Laughs] Exactly! So, so she, it’s really important to her to start this career, and it’s how she gets financial independence. You know, she’s a lesbian, so she does not want to get married, so she has the opportunity to write these books and make a career and, and have this independence from kind of the life that was patterned out for her? And then her mom comes with her, and her mom loses everything: she loses her friends, she loses her home, so for her, having this career is, is really important, right? It’s not just her life, but it’s also her mom’s life as well, and she feels, she’s, she’s very, very, very protective of it and very threatened by this, you know, rival author! Who is…

Sarah: Who you named, who you named Lady Darling, which is so great.

Alexandra: Oh! [Laughs] Yeah, so her –

Sarah: So great!

Alexandra: – her ri-, her, her rival author is anonymously called Lady Darling. That was my working title for the book, actually, was Lady Darling.

Sarah: Really! Oh, that’s a good working title.

Alexandra: Yeah, it was, it’s kind of fun. But then they, they, they – actually, titling this book was a nightmare. They made me pitch probably like sixty titles. [Laughs]

Sarah: Is that not insane? I have another friend who’s an author, and she’s like, Okay, so I keep suggesting all these titles, and my editor brings them a short list, and then Sales says no. And at some point Sales needs to come up with the titles.

Alexandra: That’s what I said! [Laughs] Like –

Sarah: They need to –

Alexandra: – if you can’t find…

Sarah: If you cannot say yes –

Alexandra: – right.

Sarah: – it’s your job now.

Alexandra: You need to pick one, yeah. But I’m glad they kept pushing me, because I do really like Ladies in Hating, and that was, like, in the last kind of round.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: Boy, at the time I was like – [weird noise, laughs]

Sarah: Ooh.

Alexandra: I, you know…weeping a bit about having to generate another twenty titles.

Sarah: Count, Countess Eating Crackers?

Alexandra: Countess Eating Crackers!

[Laughter]

Alexandra: Like, that, that’s, I always, like, come up with these, like, ideas, like I really wanted to call a book Decorative Lord Season, you know, like it’s decorative gourd season, motherfuckers? I – [laughs] – really –

Sarah: Please –

Alexandra: …Lord Season, and everyone was like, Alex, that’s too weird!

Sarah: No, it’s freaking awesome is what it is! I want Decorative Lord Season! I, I – this is a perfect, like, like Halloween novella. Right?

Alexandra: Right, right.

Sarah: Like, all these, it’s like all these men showing up in ballrooms just standing around, being annoying, and not actually doing anything, where all the women have all of their hopes pinned on this one event because it’s like the last event of the season and they’re just standing around like decorative idiots thinking, I’m going to go shoot things tomorrow, and that’ll be great! Oh yeah. I love this concept. Please, please, please, please, just for me.

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s fine.

Alexandra: I tried! They wouldn’t – maybe I’ll self-publish it.

Sarah: Yeah!

Alexandra: That’s what I’ll do! I do all my, like, things that no one will ever, like I have these novellas that have these like nine-word titles? No one would ever have approved that, but I was like, Ha-ha!

Sarah: Hide.

Alexandra: I’m self-publishing…

Sarah: I, I do love long titles myself. [Laughs]

So tell me about –

Alexandra: Yeah, so the premise –

Sarah: – Lady Darling.

Alexandra: – of the book is she decides to unmask her rival. This is like, this is not a spoiler; this is, this is the back cover copy. So she decides to unmask her rival, which she does. She tracks her down; she sort of finds her in the back alley of Belvoir’s Library, which is the, the, what the series is named for, and when she, you know, puts her hood down, Georgiana realizes that this is not an anonymous rival, it is someone that she knows. In fact, it is her first crush; it is the daughter of the butler on her family’s estate growing up. And she – [laughs] – like, Never mind! You know, she’s like, I don’t need to unmask you, but it’s too late. So they immediately, you know, they, they, they have a lot of tension, they have a lot of rivalry and banter, and then circumstances conspire to just keep shoving them – and circumstances are me! I am the circumstances!

[Laughter]

Alexandra: Conspire to keep shoving them together over and over, until they are forced to, you know, see what’s behind that rivalry.

Sarah: And, you know, say words and use their words to describe what’s happening.

Alexandra: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I find rivalries in romance so interesting. But one of the things that I love about this particular novel – no spoilers – is how much tension there is and how layered that tension is. So they’re already professional rivals. Georgie is very threatened by the loss of her independence, because, I mean, really, that’s it. There’s no other option for her.

Alexandra: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: At the, you know, at the start – it’s in the cover copy – they’re trapped in a, in a haunted manor. So they’re trapped; they can’t get out.

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: They have financial independence at a time when that was not an admirable quality in a woman. They are super into each other, they have history, and they are different classes, which is a lot of tension to balance. What are the issues that you think affected Georgie and Cat, to use the poor girl’s name – [laughs] – Georgie and Lady Darling in the most – what, what affected them most in terms of their attraction? What were the things that were the most in the way?

Alexandra: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s very, it was very fun to write this, because there are a lot of different levels and a lot of things kind of standing between them. For Cat, when she, you know, sees and encounters Georgiana, that class consciousness that you mentioned really comes up and, right, because in her mind Georgiana is the earl’s daughter. She’s like this perfect, you know, privileged, she’s had everything she could possibly ever want and, whereas Cat is coming from, she was the butler’s daughter. She’s experienced poverty, you know. She, her father dies, and she has her little brother that she has to take care of, and they, you know, she works at a pie shop! She doesn’t have, like, she, she, it’s actually very hard to take care of herself and this other person. And so when she sees Georgiana and Georgiana’s like, you know, kind of saying like, You’re stealing my ideas, she’s furious! She’s livid! She’s like, How dare you, you know, come in here and, and threaten me and say that I’m doing this? And also, she has a moment where she’s like, Was I stealing her ideas? You know, she has that kind of, she doubts herself a little bit.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: She has this kind of, like, insecurity about, she has a little bit of impostor syndrome, right? She’s like, How – I’m just, like, kind of a nobody, like, and I have this successful career, and she starts to wonder if maybe she has, you know, for just a…like, Well, did I do something? Have I, you know, whatever? She hasn’t. But, so that makes her even more mad, right, that she’s like, that I doubted myself because this, you know, prissy – [laughs] – you know, aristocrat is coming here and, and saying all of these things. So her, for her, that class consciousness is very present. And one of the things I loved writing is her kind of unlearning that? She has this very strong impression of who Georgiana is from their past together, and Georgiana isn’t that, right? So it, so writing that’s very fun.

There’s a scene that I really loved writing where, so Georgiana has this little dog who is in, he’s in all the books. They, they rescue him out of the, the river, the Serpentine in the first book, and then he kind of is a, is a running character through all the series. And so she has this little dog and this, she’s like a, she loves her dog. She is like a dog mom; she carries, like, a little picture – [laughs] – a miniature of her dog around with her all the time, just to whip it out and talk about her dog. And that is, like, so at odds with everything Cat thinks. You know, Cat thinks like she’s, she’s, like, pretension and obnoxious and terrible, and she doesn’t care about anything other than herself, and then she, she sees, she – so, so Cat encounters the dog first and is like, Oh! Look at this cute little fluffy dog! Ah! And then, and then Georg-, she realizes it’s Georgiana’s dog, and Georgiana’s like, look, petting and snuggling the dog, and she’s like, No! She’s like, I do not accept that that is your dog! You’re a horrible person; you do not love this cute little dog. No, I don’t, I don’t, not, I don’t buy it.

Sarah: I am not tolerating any humanity on your part whatsoever!

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: So that’s, that was really fun to write. Georgiana also, we learn in the first book, she’s very good. She, like, she has, she likes to sort of play a role? And she’s very good especially at kind of like the, playing like the, you know, not very bright, kind of like the bimbo?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: And she’s like, Man whenever I do this, people just, like, tell me everything. [Laughs]

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Alexandra: So that’s very fun for, for Cat to see that, you know, see Georgiana playing that role and, and sort of see her being sneaky and devious and just all these things, and playful and fun, and things that Cat didn’t expect her to have.

Sarah: That was one of my favorite interviewing techniques that I learned. There was a, years and years and years ago, there was a CIA operative who was married to somebody in DC named Valerie Plame, and she was unmasked by a journalist –

Alexandra: Right.

Sarah: – and a lot of people, once this all came out and she was no longer on covert assignments, somebody was like, How did you survive going to, like, DC cocktail parties all the time as a covert agent for this CIA? And I remember this clear as day: she said, There is nothing more intoxicating, especially to a man, if you look at them and say, That is so interesting! Tell me more!

Alexandra: [Laughs] Right.

Sarah: And one, one aspect about this book that I really appreciated was how much, especially Georgiana, she doesn’t call it masking, but she’s masking. She talks about herself as if she’s an actress and she can step into any role and play-act what other people expect of her, because she cannot dare show them who she actually is, which is one of my favorite tensions in romance, the distance between the public persona and the private person and how that starts to erode? Mm, delicious.

There’s also some yearning and pining.

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: I do love pining. It is also a very hot topic lately on, on Threads, where, which is where nuance goes to die. There’s a lot of discussion about, Well, there’s not any more books with yearning. I don’t believe in the characters yearning for each other. And I’m like, Okay, well, yearning is a thing that takes skill. What do you think are the essential elements of a really good yearn? What builds –

Alexandra: Yeah!

Sarah: – that tension?

Alexandra: I don’t, I don’t know how, where – like, I, I feel like I’m always like ten steps behind, like, discourse, and I log on and there’s like a million people talking about this, and I’m like, Where did this come from? Like, how do they – [laughs] – you know…

Sarah: And sometimes you can’t find it. Sometimes you’re like, What are you – okay, I give up. ‘Cause everyone’s using coded language. I’m like, I give up. Obviously you’re mad; I get it. I disagree, but I’m just going to move on. [Laughs]

Alexandra: It seemed to me that this discourse was really sort of circling around, like, sex in romance novels, and that –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: – is/are yearning and se- – like someone maybe said, like maybe this was on TikTok, like, I don’t want their lustful thoughts; I want yearning? And, and I’m like, but – [laughs] – like it really seems to me that there, that this discourse was like there were some, some tension, for some readers, between sex on the page and yearning, and that those were not working for them, in a way?

Sarah: Interesting!

Alexandra: And, and that is just not my experience of yearning, right? Like –

Sarah: No, mine either.

Alexandra: And I was thinking about A Lady Awakened –

Sarah: [Throatily] Oh ho!

Alexandra: One of my favorite books, yes.

Sarah: That’s a good…

Alexandra: – know.

Sarah: Oh ho.

Alexandra: I know. We’re doing this book in my, in my real life book club this month.

Sarah: Oh, that’s a good choice!

Alexandra: …Yeah! I –

Sarah: So much to talk about!

Alexandra: Well, it’s one of my favorite books ever. But this book, like, they are having sex right away. Like –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Alexandra: – within, I mean, I don’t really know how many pages, but it’s got to be like within fifty pages. Like, they are having sex right away, and yet! This is, it’s all yearning! It is so much yearning, because yearning, it doesn’t, doesn’t have anything to do with sex! Yearning is wanting something that you can’t have, that you think you can’t have, that you don’t know how to ask for, that you’re afraid if you do ask for it, you won’t get it, right? So he, so, you know, it starts off, and he is like, he, so they’re having sex right – so if, if anyone has not read A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, you should just immediately read it right now –

Sarah: It’s fine; you can hit Pause and come back later. It’s really that important.

Alexandra: Hit Pause…yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the premise is that she is a widow and her husband’s bad cousin is going to inherit this estate, and she does not want that to happen, ‘cause he’s very bad and he abuses servants, and he’s a bad guy. So they have like a month window where if she turns up pregnant, she gets to keep the estate, ‘cause it’ll be, technically be the heir still, right. So she’s like, Okay, I have this hot, himbo neighbor who just moved in next door. He, you know, is a rake; I’m sure he’ll have sex with me. She’s like, I’m going to pay this man to have sex with me every day for a month, and hopefully I’ll get pregnant and be able to keep this estate, right. So – [laughs] – that’s the plan. And this is the premise, this is the premise of the book, so she proposes this notion to him, and he’s like, Sure! Sounds good, right?

Sarah: This sounds excellent. I thought the country was going to be boring, but apparently not.

Alexandra: Who knew? His name is Theophilus Mirkwood, also, just to –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: – add a little – everyone, I just love Cecilia Grant’s brain, ‘cause she’s like, I’m going to name the, this hot himbo rake man Theophilus Mirkwood she, she says to herself. [Laughs]

Sarah: How do you even say that during sex? That’s so many syllables.

Alexandra: I’m assuming they made love…last names.

Sarah: Yeah. But, like, that’s still, it’s a lot of syllables for sexytimes.

Alexandra: So, so, they’re having sex right away, but they are both wanting things, right? So at the beginning of the book he wants to show Martha a good time.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: That is his goal. And she is, like, not. She does not want to have a good time in the bedroom, because that will – you know, she’s like, I’m not here for pleasure.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: She’s like, I’m not here for that. I’m, I have a job to do. I’m a good upstanding woman, and all I want to do is save my estate, right, so she refuses that. And she wants him to be a good man! And he’s like – [laughs] – Sounds like a lot of work! Like, I don’t want to be a good man necessarily. But then, oh my God! Over the course of the book, what they want, and what they’re yearning for desperately changes! Right, so she starts wanting him. She wants him to be around. She want-, he’s so nice, and he’s so kind to her, and he’s so joyful, and she wants that. But she doesn’t know how to ask for it! She doesn’t know how to ask – she’s like, We have this, this deal that you’re going to fuck me every day, and how do I ask for – I just want to spend time with you, and I just, I just want you to be nice to me, right?

Sarah: Yep.

Alexandra: And he, he still wants her to have a good time – [laughs] – I guess. He still wants her to have an orgasm, but it’s not because of sex; it’s because that means that she likes him –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: – that she respects him, right.

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: And he wants her to like him so much –

Sarah: Yep.

Alexandra: – but again, that’s not something you can ask for! You can’t be like, Please like me, right? Like, he has to earn it! Oh my God! So even when they’re having sex, they’re yearning and yearning desperately –

Sarah: Yep.

Alexandra: – in this book. Huh! It’s like go- – you know, a book that, like, gives you chest pain?

Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh gosh. Chest tingles. And the thing about that particular book, and also, generally speaking, marriages of convenience, is that you’ve got the intimacy from the get-go. Like, y’all are boning every day. You are, you are committing acts of physical congress on the daily. You don’t know each other, so there’s no actual intimacy underpinning the intimacy of their action, whether that be marriage or, you know, having sex every day. I love that, because it forces the people who are already within a structure of intimacy to build actual intimacy. Which adds to the yearning. I usually describe it as, my favorite version of yearning is a character who desperately wants the other character to see them, their authentic self, and they’re afraid or unable to let them see themself, see, see, see themselves, and also to know that they want to know the other character, who they really are behind all of the social façade, and they cannot. And it’s like, that frustration and that tension, oh, it’s my favorite. Ah.

Alexandra: Yeah, yeah! And…

Sarah: Love a piney fresh hero. Whoo!

Alexandra: I love, I love pining and yearning, and there’s so many fun ways to do it, like friends to lovers –

Sarah: Ah.

Alexandra: – I think is maybe like a slightly different take on what you’re saying, because friends to – like, they do already know each other. They know each other really well, but then you have this yearning of, like, I want us to be different –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: – and how do I ask for that? How do I – you know, I mean, it’s, it’s a big risk to try to change that dynamic!

Sarah: Yep!

Alexandra: So friends to lovers, I don’t think friends to lovers gets enough –

Sarah: One of my favorites. That’s the book I wrote! My, my Hanukkah romance is friends to lovers. They’ve known each other since they were kids, and they kissed once, and then they, you know, circumstances forced them apart and they’re like, Okay, can this work? I don’t know? We’ve only ever really been together here at camp and there’s a whole other world; can we be together there? I don’t know. It, oh, my favorite internal conflict. Favorite! Mm! Love it!

Alexandra: Love it.

Sarah: Yep. Now, you’re also writing a Gothic, and you’ve got two Gothic novelists, and you’ve got some real Gothic elements in this book, and I, I will take this out, but Agatha Andrews, who hosts the She Wore Black podcast is actually writing a manuscript about the history of Gothic romance and asked me to, like, help her with the proposal, like give an endorsement. I was like, Just, just publish, Agatha; that’s all I need to tell you people. Buy this book, for God’s sake!

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: I want to read it, and I can’t read it, so you have to publish it so I can read it. Get on with it. But anyway, she knows a lot about Gothics, and we talk about it all the time, and I know that in Gothics you’re traditionally exploring women’s limitations and the domestic entrapment of patriarchal society. Meanwhile, you are completely subverting all of those heteronormative elements – you know, ‘cause you got lesbians – and that reveals a whole new set of tensions. So, you know, instead of a woman running away from a house and possibly a, a husband or a father or both, Ladies in Hating, they’re trapped in a house, trying not to fall for each other –

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: – trying to maintain their independence, but they are also very isolated by that independence, and I’m sure this was something that you thought about deliberately, knowing that you’re a scholar of, of history and also of literature. What was your perspective on Gothics when you were writing this book? What were you trying to accomplish with this story? And if you didn’t think about it at all and I just made all that up, that’s fine too.

Alexandra: No, no, no! It’s such a good question. I, I loved doing research for this book. Ah! I could just, like, talk forever, but, so a couple of things that I was thinking about: one of them was the real history of the Gothic as a place for women, real historical women, for financial independence –

Sarah: Yep.

Alexandra: – and also for kind of creative exploration, right? So a lot of Gothic writers were women. Very, very popular! Like, they had a whole career and made lots of money, and so, you know, when I was thinking, What could these women do that would enable them to have this lovely, like, you know, sapphic Happily Ever After that I wanted them to have, well, they could either already be rich, which is, like, a classic of historical romance – we already have money! We don’t need to do anything! – or this could be, like, they have to make money! They have to earn money that they can live on so they don’t have to marry and so that they can kind of escape this, like, you know, the, the sort of het norm of the period of how they would have money.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: And, so the Gothic was, writing Gothic novels was a real way you could do that! You could be a female writer, writing popular genre novels, and you could make lots of money. There, so one sort of famous press is called Minerva Press?

Sarah: Yes!

Alexandra: And I love the story of Minerva Press: so the guy who started Minerva Press, his name was William Lane, and he had a circulating library; a super, super popular circulating library that had tons of members; and about ten years after he started it he thought, You know what would be a really good idea? If I just published all the books. [Laughs] He’s like – so instead of having to go, like, get these books from the publisher, like, said, What if I just published all the books and then sold them and, you know, rented them out of my library? So he, so he used his existing platform, kind of like, it’s like Bindery or something with, like, the, you know, the – [laughs] – let’s turn influencers into, into publishers! That’s basically what he did, and he started Minerva Press, and it was mostly female writers, and he made them lots of money! And he made some of them household names.

So that’s, there’s the financial independence, but the Gothic was also a space for women to do a lot of creative exploration in a way that was really celebrated and recognized, and, and, you know, at the time, like, arts for women, there were only certain avenues of arts that were really acceptable, right? Like, so women couldn’t really be, like, oil painters. You kind of could, but it wasn’t really the thing, you weren’t really supposed to do. But the Gothic was surprisingly open to women writers, and, and it’s pretty weird – [laughs] – like, it’s pretty, it’s very, like, a lot of weird things happen! So I think it was really a place where you could really exercise your creativity. I mean, women are inventing science fiction through the Gothic novel in this period, right?

So everybody knows about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, which is in, often considered the first sci-fi novel, but she was not the only one! Like, there were a number of women writing and in-, literally inventing and conceptualizing, like, the sci-fi genre.

So there was a woman named Jane Loudon who wrote a book called The Mummy! – with an exclamation mark? [Laughs] Which is my favorite: The Mummy! (exclamation mark), and it came out about ten years after Frankenstein, and it is such an interesting book. So it’s set in the 22nd century, and whit, like, it, she really tries to think like, What will society be like? So she had, like, all, women wear trousers! She was like, We will do away with that! She, like, invents the internet in it; she has, like, robot doctors do, do surgeries. I mean, it’s really, it’s really interesting!

Sarah: Wow.

Alexandra: It was super successful, and my favorite thing about the story is that her, the man who would become her husband – so when she published it she was a young, single woman, and the man who would become her husband was a reviewer, and he reviewed this book, and he, like, fell in love with her – [laughs] – and he tracked her down and was like, I’m in love with you; is that okay? And they got married!

Sarah: Sure.

Alexandra: And lived happily ever after! At which point –

Sarah: I hope she didn’t read her reviews, though. Can’t read your reviews.

Alexandra: If a man tracked me down and was like, I read your book and I’m in love with you, then I would be like, This is a red flag? But it worked, it worked for the Loudons; they were very happy together.

Sarah: Good for them!

Now you mentioned, just now, and also when we last spoke, that you were reading tons of Gothic novels and pulling quotes for them, from them. What were some of the favorite pieces of research that you read for this book?

Alexandra: Oh my God, so many. Okay, well, so, first of all, like, I know – [laughs] – what I write, and what I write is like cozy, comedic, rompy books, right, which is not necessarily what the Gothic is. Like, I was like, I know this is going to be like a cozy, funny Gothic. So I wanted to, like – so I was really inspired by Northanger Abbey, right. So Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen’s sort of satire of the Gothic, and she, like, packs it full of, like, Gothic tropes, but in a very playful way, so that was what I wanted to do. So I put, like, lots of Gothic stuff, like, you know, there’s this haunted mansion; there’s, like, ghostly elements; there’s –

Sarah: Crappy men.

Alexandra: – you know…writings; there’s a, there’s a secret inher-, the secret baby! [Laughs] You know, and an inher-, an inheritance and all. I mean, just all this, like, classic Gothic stuff. I was like, I’m going to pack it all full in here. So I was very inspired by Northanger Abbey to kind of try to write in it, like, to use these Gothic tropes, but to do it in sort of a playful way, and this was a, this was very common as well, this, like, the, the satire of the Gothic was, like – [laughs] – also very popular? There’s one – ah, what? – it’s called – also with an exclamation mark – it’s called More Ghosts! [Laughs] I just love that so much of, of Gothic satire: More Ghosts! So…

Sarah: I love it!

Alexandra: And I also, like, I put a lot of, like, little references to, like, Gothic novels in there. So in the house that they’re trapped in, there’s, like, this passageway of, or a network of tunnels?

Sarah: Yes.

Alexandra: And that’s from The Castle of Otranto, which is sort of like the first big Gothic novel by Horace Walpole – who was queer, by the way.

Sarah: Right.

Alexandra: I read Glenarvon by –

Sarah: Ooh!

Alexandra: – Lady Caroline Lamb, which is just the most wild – [laughs] – bananas experience. Highly recommend. I put some, I think there’s one or two quotes from Glenarvon made it into the final – so Glenarvon is by Caroline Lamb, who was famously, like, Byron, the lover of Byron? They had a relationship that soured, and so she wrote Glenarvon basically about Byron, and it’s like this, like, takedown of this, like, thinly veiled Byron figure, and it’s like, got this, like, you know, sweet, young wife who’s, like, seduced by this, you know, sexy, bad Irishman. I mean, it’s like this very thinly veiled Byron, to the point where, like, the phrase kiss and tell was, like, available to them, and so Byron called it, instead of a kiss-and-tell book, he called it a fuck-and-publish?

Sarah: Oh!

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: ‘Kay! Yeah!

Alexandra: So it was, it was super, super successful. It is wild, wild book. Everyone dies of grief. Like, just bad things keep happening, and everyone dies of grief, and at the end the Byron figure, like, like, he’s like a monster comes, is like, You’re cursed for the terrible things you’ve done! And he throws himself into the sea for, out of regret for his bad behavior. I mean, it was very much like what you want to do about your ex, like, write a book where they throw themselves into the sea, you know?

Sarah: I mean, why not, right?

Alexandra: And then I also, you know, read a lot of queer books! A lot of, like, explicitly queer books, and referenced those a lot in the book as well.

Sarah: That’s very cool. Do you have any queer Gothic recommendations off the top of your head? ‘Cause I know someone’s going to ask me.

Alexandra: Yeah! Well, so, it’s, it’s, there’s a lot – [laughs] – there’s so much…

Sarah: So much!

Alexandra: So I talked, one of the things that I’ve talked about before that really surprised me – so in the first book of the series it’s about a woman who starts an erotic circulating library for ladies, right. So the point is that she wants, she’s, she’s disappointed by the lack of sex education in their society; she wants to make sex education more accessible to women, so she starts this library and has this kind of secret catalog that, of, of sexy books! So, and I wanted to fill the library with as many real books as possible, right. Like, I was like, These need to be real 18th- and 19th-century books so they could really have read! So I started doing research, and I was shocked by how popular lesbian erotica was. I mean, like, super, super popular! Like, I would say the majority of erotica in the period was either explicitly lesbian or at least included scenes between two women.

Sarah: My goodness!

Alexandra: Yeah! [Laughs] …You know, just different trends, different things get trendy at different times. Like, in the Victorian period, a little bit later, like, like fem-dom was super, super trendy in erotic, in Victorian erotica. So, you know, so…

Sarah: Makes sense.

Alexandra: For – [laughs] –

Sarah: The more you, the more you limit people into very specific gender roles, the more their kinks are going to be about subverting entirely those same roles.

Alexandra: So there’s also a lot of stepmother erotica in the Victorian period…

Sarah: No kidding!

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: Interesting! I would just love, I would just love, love, love to take one of these Gothic writers and bring them forward into the future, and I’d be like, Not only do we have lesbian people having romances and sex in books everywhere, there is a whole other genre of erotica about stepsiblings. We’re also, like, fucking aliens at this point. Like, just look –

Alexandra: Yeah, aliens! I think –

Sarah: – look at what you did, and just have them just be like, Nope! I’m going back! Nope, nope, nope! [Laughs]

Alexandra: Well, you know, with some things they would be like, Oh yeah, we have that. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Alexandra: – sentient object romances? There was a whole trend of sentient object erotica in the period, so they’d be like, Oh yeah, we already know that; you didn’t invent that. But the aliens, I know, I’ve never, I’ve never encountered an alien romance erotica.

Sarah: If it’s not alien, then something that, like, you know, is otherworldly. Maybe they have sex with ghosts; I don’t know.

Alexandra: Angels.

Sarah: Angels, ghosts, yeah, that kind of thing.

Alexandra: Nothing new under the sun. You know, it’s like in, what’s the, the Kleypas with, Devil in Spring?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: Where, where Gabriel’s like, I have these dark desires, and Sebastian is like, Do you think your generation invented that stuff? No. [Laughs] Go sit down, son.

Sarah: No. That’s how it, and that’s how it is in romance, too. Like, there’s so many people who are like, This is so new! And I’m like, No, it’s not.

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: Rrromantasy has been here. We just didn’t call it that because we didn’t have tagging yet. It’s the tagging –

Alexandra: Right.

Sarah: – that’s new, and the trope tags; that’s new. We’ve, we’ve had these things; it’s fine.

Alexandra: I mean, I think people are often surprised by, like, the fact that, like, lesbians in the Regency period, like, people knew what that was! It wasn’t like, Oh, we didn’t talk about it. Like, people knew lesbians; they talked to other lesbians; they – there was a, a female sculptor named Anne Seymour Damer who was so well known as, as a lesbian that when people would, if someone thought someone might be, also be a lesbian they’d be like, Oh, are you visiting Mrs. Damer? Like – [laughs] – her name was, like, synonymous with, with, you know, sapphic sex. I love it so much. Are you visiting Mrs. Damer?

People knew! People talked about it; people discussed it; it was, you know, there would be, like, stories. There’s, there’s, one of the things that I reference in the book is this print from 1820 in the news-, in, in a, like, you could buy it in shops! It was a, a print of two women sitting on a park bench kissing, and their husbands are, like, behind them in the bushes like, being like, Oh, what do we do? Because it wasn’t considered adultery, so there was nothing that they could do to stop their wives from having an affair with each other! [Laughs] And was a, and that was a thing you could buy in the shops! Like, this wasn’t some, like, thing that you whispered about.

So people definitely, you know, were, would absolutely have, have been familiar with, you know, lesbian sex or lesbian romances. People, they, there were many people who were, who they would have known, like, oh, like, Mrs. Damer. You know, whatever it is. This wasn’t some, like, secret, hidden thing. It would have been available to them.

Sarah: Which is fascinating, ‘cause I remember in the last interview you talked about the court case where someone was trying to divorce their wife for, on grounds of adultery, and the judge was just like, But what do they do? I don’t understand.

Alexandra: I love that story. Because, also, on, like, was this, was this judge, like, was this meant for titillation? Was this judge like, Tell me what they do? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah?

Alexandra: I don’t know! I don’t know.

Sarah: Or was he actually thinking in terms of, So the violation of the contract is that someone else could impregnate your wife, and that’s the, that’s the contractual issue here, that you can’t be sure that your children are yours if someone else has been –

Alexandra: Exactly.

Sarah: – dipping their pen in your inkwell. But if it’s two women, this is not a problem, so why is this a problem for you, you bonehead?

Alexandra: [Laughs] Right! Right, exactly!

Sarah: Either this was a really forward-thinking legal analyst or a guy who was like, Tell me about the titties.

Alexandra: Hey, I don’t know! I don’t know. If only, if only we knew.

There’s a really lovely poem called “Don Leon,” which was, it was written in the period that, that, in the Regency, but it wasn’t published until later, but it was circulated, and it’s a defense of same-sex romance, and it is, it’s, it’s really lovely. I put a, there’s a quote from it that I snuck into the book, even though technically it wouldn’t have been published yet, but it was written, so I was like, Eh, you’re fine. They, they got a copy from a friend; it’s fine. And it was, it was attributed to Byron, but it wasn’t actually by Byron; that he was just very famous and they were like, Let’s slap Byron’s name on there. But that –

Sarah: Marketing!

Alexandra: – it’s – yeah! But it’s just a really lovely poem, where they’re like, Why are people so bothered by this? They’re like, There is, there, you know, this is a way – it’s very much like a Love Is Love poem from 1834. It’s, it’s really lovely.

Sarah: They had an ARC! They had an advanced copy. Ye Olde Nette Galley gave them a copy of –

Alexandra: [Laughs] You know, the least historically accurate thing about this book is how few lesbians there are in it –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alexandra: – because in reality, you know, that would be like your social circle! You’d be like, Yeah, these are all my friends, right. I was, I was, I was forced by the fact that the first two books in the series are m/f, and then, and then I was like, All right, so their, a lot of their friends are straight, disappointingly so. But really, there were a lot of, of social circles that would have been very queer, so one of the things I tried to do in the book that was really important to me: I did not want this to be a story about coming out or shame or, you know, internalized homophobia. That was not the story that I wanted to write here. So –

Sarah: It’s hard to make that light and rom-com-y and campy and fun. That’s real hard.

Alexandra: [Laughs] Also that! Yeah, that too! But even then, that was just, that just wasn’t the story that I wanted to be telling in this book. So one of the things that was really important to me to put in this book was to have a lot of, like, queer elders. Right, so we see that both Cat and Georgiana know older queer couples, and some of them have had, like, long, happy partnerships, and some of them have had, you know, one, maybe one member has died or they’ve broken up. Like, that’s just life, right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: They have a, they have seen a variety of queer people of previous generations, and so that’s a really big part of, you know, them both feeling safe and feeling comfortable with who they are, with their attraction. So just having those, like, multiple generations was really important to me, and also talking about, like, the books that they might have read that would have had sapphic scenes or defenses of same-sex love. It was really important for me to, to sort of write that whole, that whole history –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra: – for, for both of them. And, so anyway, I was going to say, so Horace Walpole, who was like, who wrote The Castle of Otranto, which is like the first big Gothic novel, there’s a lot of, like, debate over his, his sexuality. He never married; like, his best friend was gay; they traveled around together a lot, so, you know, very, like – and they were roommates…

Sarah: [Exaggeratedly innocent, just-asking-questions tone] And they were roommates?

Alexandra: [Laughs] But so when he dies, oh, Anne Seymour Damer, who I mentioned earlier, he, she had a long-term partner named Mary Berry, and so he gave – I know – [laughs] –

Sarah: So is Mary Berry from the BBC and from the baking show, is she actually an immortal lesbian?

Alexandra: [Laughs] One can only hope.

Sarah: Wow. Okay! I’m on board. Yep.

Alexandra: So when he dies, Horace Walpole gives Mary Berry and Anne Seymour Daker, or Damer, houses next to each other in his will? I know! [Laughs] So…

Sarah: Wooow!

Alexandra: – like this. You know, so that they could continue to live happily together, right next door.

Sarah: This reminds me of, we spoke before about the ladies of Llangollen who, like, they had a royal income.

Alexandra: They did! A royal pension!

Sarah: Yeah!

Alexandra: They did. Yeah…

Sarah: Listen, the king is super into the fact that you ladies are going to town on each other, so here’s some money about it. Like, that’s just really –

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: – very forward-thinking for a monarch, you know?

Alexandra: Well, you know, I think it was Charlotte. I think –

Sarah: Sure.

Alexandra: – Charlotte was pretty into their story, and she was like, You want to give them a royal pension, right? And I think George was like, Absolutely!

Sarah: Sure, absolutely!

You’ve talked a lot about your research, and I love asking – ‘cause I know you do very deep research – what are some things that you’re still thinking about that you learned for this book, or what, what do you wish could have been included, but was not?

Alexandra: I had so much fun doing the research…

Sarah: I can tell! Like, you’re so excited to talk about all of it –

Alexandra: I know.

Sarah: – I can tell you’re really into it.

Alexandra: So one of the things that I had a lot of fun researching was this house? So originally, so they, so they get trapped in, in this mansion called Renwick House, and it was really fun to be like, What is this house going to look like? What’s going to be in it? You know, what’s this, this haunted mansion going to be like? And so at first I was going to base it on Strawberry Hill, which is this, Horace Walpole, who wrote The Castle of Otranto, very into the Gothic, and he was like, You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to build a fake Gothic castle! [Laughs] So originally I was going to base it on Strawberry Hill. Then I discovered a place called Fonthill Abbey, and Fonthill Abbey became my basis for Renwick House instead of Strawberry Hill.

So Fonthill Abbey, man, I just fell in love with every little scrap of everything I could find about Fonthill Abbey. So Fonthill Abbey was built by this guy named William Thomas Beckford, and Beckford was the richest commoner in, in Britain at the time, not for any good – everything was bad. Everything, all his money came from horrible places – [laughs] – who don’t want to look into Beckford. Or we, we should; it’s actually very important to know these things, but it’s not, it’s not an inspiring story. So he is, he’s very rich through all sorts of terrible means, and he’s, he was queer. He, he was, he was so problematic, Beckford. He, like, got publicly outed because he was like twenty-, I think he was like twenty-four, and he was, like, found having, like, like, kinky sex with a sixteen-year-old boy? [Laughs]

Sarah: Brooo!

Alexandra: I know. Beckford was just a disaster. So he was, like, temporarily sent off to the Continent, ‘cause this was, like, very shocking, but then he came running back, and he buys this, this place, and he’s like, I’m going to build – he’s, he’s very rich, and he’s extremely tacky, like the tackiest man alive is William Thomas Beckford, and he’s like, I’m going to build the biggest house anyone has ever seen. And so he hires this architect named James Wyatt, and James Wyatt was a very famous architect, and he was, he was super lazy. He never showed up, he didn’t do anything, and Beckford’s like, You know what? That’s not a problem. I’m just going to direct the building of this house, and it’s going to be fine!

Sarah: Sure! Absolutely.

Alexandra: And –

Sarah: Sounds great.

Alexandra: – keeps building this house taller and taller, and it keeps falling down, and he, he’s like, he loves it! He was like, so when it, when it falls down and he’s not there, he’s, like, very disappointed that he missed this, like, grand collapse of, they called it Beckford’s Folly. There is one, like, story where he, he was like, I will have this built for Christmas dinner! And it, he, they built it and they eat Christmas dinner, and then, like, literally the next day, like, the roof collapsed? [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh boy.

Alexandra: Doesn’t matter, ‘cause I had Christmas dinner!

Sarah: Hey, I, I did what I was going to do! So ha-ha!

Alexandra: He, he had, so he, he is the tackiest thing. Everything was gilt and silver and marble. His, I mean, this man, just his sarcophagus? He was like, I will personally design my own sarcophagus for when I die. It’s pink? It’s like a shiny, polished pink? So he was, like, just super into building this wild house that was full of everything he – he loved to spend money, also. He was very rich, but he wanted to spend it, so he bought just tons of art and jewels and books and, and, and everything, and he makes this, like, incredibly elaborate, also falling-down house!

I was just so charmed by, by this story, by everything about – [laughs] – Beckford and his pink sarcophagus, and then I read, there’s a, a queer historian that I really like named Rictor Norton, and – so the, the house has fallen down. I mean, it fell down like immediately after, so you can’t, like, visit it or anything; obviously no photographs or anything like that; but he went to kind of visit the ruins of it, and he wrote this, like, beautiful essay about visiting the ruins of Beckford’s Folly, of Fonthill Abbey, and I just found it so fun and interesting and inspiring, so yeah. So that is, I just had so much fun designing Renwick House, and I hope that that’s apparent – [laughs] – when you read it, ‘cause I was really having a good time.

Sarah: There is, there is something very specific about really, really rich people being like, I’m going to build whatever I want, and it’s going to be bonkers. And sure enough, yes, it’s bonkers.

Alexandra: Yes. My, my next book, I, I really like houses? I think that’s, like, just an interest of mine? Because…

Sarah: Awesome, ‘cause my next question is What are you working on now? So tell me everything. [Laughs]

Alexandra: Yeah. My, my dissertation was also about houses? I think it’s just, like, a real interest of mine. So my, my next book is coming out next summer. It’s called Scandal of the Summer, and in it the heroine is sort of a, she’s a classicist, but her real interest is interior decorating and interior design. And I, so I had a lot of fun researching interior design, and there was a guy named Thomas Hope who wrote the first book of interior design, and Thomas Hope was another person who was just like, I’m rich, and I’m going to do whatever I want. So my favorite Thomas Hope story is that he fell in love with this, like, sexy Greek sailor who – like, much younger Greek sailor man? And he was like, I’m going to launch my hot boyfriend on, in the Ton, and all of his family was like, You can’t! You can’t do that! And he’s like, I will, and everyone will love Aide – [laughs] – ‘cause he’s so hot and sexy! And it was a complete disaster, and Thomas Hope did not care. He was like, Well, whatever. We’ll just, we’ll go back to Greece and live happily there together.

Sarah: Another thing that is very common: very wealthy, queer men trying to launch their partners and husbands into whatever, you know, industry they are in, and it does not go well.

Alexandra: [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow. So Scandal in the, Scandal of the Summer is coming out in June 2026.

Alexandra: June 2026, and the premise of this one is that our heroine is kind of a mess. She’s very blunt; she’s always sort of wrecking things a bit, and so she accidentally offends a very important person, and so she’s like, You know what? I’m tired of this. I’m tired of being in Society, I’m tired of kind of constantly blundering in this way, so she decides she’s going to escape Society. So she forges a letter saying that she is the lady-in-waiting to a princess, and she decides to go live at the princess’s holiday home, which is in Cornwall. And she’s like, This is going to be fine; the princess never visits. I’m going to live there. I have this letter; it’s fine! So she gets there, to this abandoned country house, and it’s, there’s, it’s full of people who claim that they are the staff, but in fact are actually a band of smugglers who are – [laughs] – kind of, kind of squatting in this holiday house. So she’s, she’s saying she’s a lady-in-waiting and she’s not, and they’re saying they’re, you know, like, the butler and – they’re not! It’s, it’s a romp. It is, it is, it’s, it’s the most fun book I think I’ve ever written.

Sarah: Wow. Okay, awesome.

Now, you also mentioned paranormal mystery.

Alexandra: Yes! So I do have also – well, we haven’t, like, officially set a pub date, so tentatively this will also be out next year: it is a paranormal romance mystery, and it is about a, the world’s first human-vampire dating app, which is called Stokr –

Sarah: Of –

Alexandra: – S-T-O-K-R. [Laughs]

Sarah: – course it is.

Alexandra: Which pairs humans and vampires that they can safely feed, so it’s like, otherwise you might die, but if you get this safe pairing – sort of like blood typing – it’s fine. Then the app stops working, and people start dying. And so it is about the, sort of the, the corporate vampire who runs the app, and then the soft-, the human software developer who says, my, There’s nothing wrong with my app; someone is sabotaging the app. And they have to work together to figure out who and why – and fall in love.

Sarah: That’s fascinating! And also sounds very fun.

Alexandra: [Laughs] Thanks! Thank you. It’s called Swipe Bite –

Sarah: Swipe Bite…

Alexandra: – [laughs] – and tentatively it’ll be out in fall of 2026, so…

Sarah: Yaaay! Congratulations!

Alexandra: Thank you!

Sarah: So I always ask: what books are you reading that you want to tell people about?

Alexandra: I, I’ve read a lot of good books this year. Adriana Herrera and Liana De La Rosa both had the, the final book in their trilogy, in their historical trilogies, both out this year, and I have read them both, and they are both absolutely wonderful, so definitely recommend those if you’re a historical reader.

A book that I’ve read recently that I think is really going to stick with me is The Everlasting by Alix Harrow?

Sarah: Oh!

Alexandra: Which is also out this fall, and it is about a, it’s a sort of a second world fantasy. There’s this, the, the legend, the lore of this entire country is sort of based on the legend of this female knight who dies in service of the country. In the future of the country, a, a historian is told, You have to go back in time and make sure that this myth plays out properly, or else it’s going to, like, the country’s going to fall apart. So he does, and then we find out that he does that one time, and that is not the end of their story. It’s a time travel, kind of a time-loopy book; it’s a love story; it’s, it’s devastatingly sad, but also happy; and it’s very sexy. It’s really going to stick with me.

Sarah: And it’s just living in your brain.

Alexandra: It’s living in my brain, right.

Sarah: Pretty much.

Alexandra: Yep.

Sarah: Where can people find you, if you wish to be found?

Alexandra: You can find me, well, I have a website, which is alexandravasti.com. I’m also on Instagram @alexandravasti or on TikTok at the same. Yeah! And I’ve got a, I’ve got a newsletter which you can sign up for, ‘cause I have a couple books coming out!

Sarah: You sure do. I will make a note of the newsletter. Thank you so much for doing this.

Alexandra: Thank you so much!

Sarah: I really appreciate it. It’s so, it’s so interesting just to hear someone who’s really into the research and the historical foundation of the genre really engage with it and talk about it. Like, I always learn something talking with you, so thank you; that is really cool.

Alexandra: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me back.

Sarah: Oh, anytime! And, you know, listen: when the next book comes out, please email me, ‘cause I’m going to want to ask nosy questions about that too!

Alexandra: [Laughs] Great!

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I would like you to know that while the subtitle for this episode is Lady Darling: Bitch Eating Crackers, my other choices for subtitle were More Ghosts! and  Decorative Lord Season, which I am never going to get over as a potential title; please, please, please let Alexandra use this for a book title. [Laughs] Decorative Lord Season. Perfection!

Do not forget, you can find your copy of Ladies in Hating wherever you like to acquire books, and if it’s not available in your library, you can request that they order a copy for you and everyone else who might like to read it.

I just wanted to let you know that while I was doing research for this episode I was on StoryGraph, and purely_romantic on StoryGraph called Ladies in Hating “queer joy with the perfect Gothic mystery to top it off.” I know that that is many of your catnip, and I hope you enjoy it.

As always, I end with a terrible joke. This joke is from tadashi4 on Reddit, and it’s really bad! That’s my favorite kind of joke.

Did you hear about the person who was kicked out of a local park for organizing the squirrels by height?

Yeah, the person who got kicked out of the local park for organizing the squirrels by height?

Turns out people get really mad when you start critter-sizing.

[Laughs] My favorite part is just imagining when the groan will happen. Critter-sizing!

On behalf of everyone – [laughs] – sorry. Critter-sizing. On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a terrific 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]