707. RT Rewind: June 1997 Ads & Features

[intro]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 707 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, Amanda is here, we’re back in the time machine, and we’re going to June 1997 to talk about the ads and features in Romantic Times magazine. We are going to discuss touring inside authors’ homes and whether we think it’s kind of uncomfortable, never-ending reader hate for the F word, the fans used to blow back cover models’ hair and how big they were, and speaking of, what are the cover model pageant contestants wearing? It’s a whole thing.

We do have a video episode for this one with the images. They will also be in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 707, but if you would like to tune into our YouTube channel, you can watch the whole episode with me and Amanda, and I superimpose a lot of the images we’re talking about.

Special note: I am on vacation next week, so I will be re-airing an episode from the vault. [Laughs] Remember when Disney used to release their VHSs from the vault! It’s never coming back! Ha-ha, welcome to streaming. Either way, I will be re-airing an older episode with a new intro, and I will be back on March 13th with Romantic Times Rewind, where we’re looking at the reviews inside the July 2000 issue. And if you’re thinking, Didn’t you do July 2000? We did! But that one was mislabeled, and it was actually June, and wait till you see the cover for this issue. Whoof! Wow.

I have a compliment this week, and this compliment is for Elle:

Elle, you know how when you take a massive, deep breath and then let it out, and it feels like your whole body relaxes and your bones kind of turn into cooked pasta? That’s how you make the people you love feel with your warmth and your sense of humor: safe, content, and somewhat boneless with relaxation.

If you would like a compliment of your very own or you would like to support the show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. The reason why you don’t hear dynamic ads before and after the episodes of this show is because of our Patreon community, because they are awesome. You can also find out about subscriber benefits like a wonderful Discord with some truly lovely humans who would love to welcome you, and you get the full PDF scan of these issues, which are a treat because, listen, they’re like a hundred and forty pages long? There’s no way we can get to all of this. Although maybe, maybe for, like, a special episode I should just go cover-to-cover and look at every single page live. It’ll take hours. Hours and hours. But either way, the Patreon also helps me procure more issues of RT to enjoy with you! So please consider, if you like the show, patreon.com/SmartBitches.

And if Patreon support isn’t in the cards, please may I ask you to leave a review for the show. It will always make a difference.

So are you ready to go back to June 1997? Hop in the time machine; the snacks are real good this month. On with the podcast. 

[music]

Sarah: When I was doing the Holiday Wishes episode recordings, you know, I sign on with people on Zoom and they, like, Listen, you can stop; you can start a sentence over. I edit everything; this is not live. You know, don’t be, don’t be nervous; you’re just talking to me. So many people said, I love when you and Amanda recap Romantic Times. It is so fun.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: There are people who re-listen to those episodes just because they’re just fun and entertaining and light, and I’m like, Oh my gosh! That’s so great to hear. So people really, really love these episodes. So thank you again for doing this with me.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Okay!

So we’re going to talk about the June 1997 ads and features, and ooh boy! There’s some covers. We are in ’97, so when I tell you the covers are good, I mean that the covers are very good. We mentioned in the last one, the cover says Love, Lust, Laugh: Indigo Books Capture the Spirit of Romance. And so I had to go and look, where is the origin of the phrase Live, Laugh, Love? Does this cover predate the phrase? No, it does not. Allegedly, according to Mental Floss, there are two potential origins. The phrase itself was from a poem by Bessie Anderson Stanley published in 1904 called “Success.” And this is the line:

>> He who has achieved success has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.

And then there’s a bunch of other things. But then it was used in a column in, in the 1853 edition of The Aberdeen Journal:

>> The Irish must have been destined to do something more than live, laugh, love, weep, and die.

If you’re Irish, I’m really sorry; that was kind of a low blow.

And in 1877, Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher told his congregation that:

>> …a family may live, laugh, love, and be happy that eats bread and good water in the morning, water and good bread at noon, and good bread and water at night.

Now listen –

Amanda: It’s all about the carbs. [Laughs]

Sarah: – I’m here for your…bread. Excuse me, Reverend Beecher? Yes, that is correct. I am here for it. That seems to be, like, a lot of people point to that as the source? So it’s kind of difficult to pin it down? It’s still a very profitable cliché, though. If you want things that say Live, Laugh, Love, if you go on Etsy, you’ll be taken care of, is what I’m saying.

Amanda: Just go to a HomeGoods.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, HomeGoods has a lot of Live, Laugh, Love. Is TJ Maxx closing entirely? ‘Cause the home depart- – I think, I think TJ Maxx is closing. It is –

Amanda: Don’t say that! I have gift cards!

Sarah: You better go. TJ Maxx is not closing all of its stores, but it is closing select locations, including a major store in Boston on Newbury Street? And that one’s already closed as of January 3rd, it seems.

Amanda: What? There’s no – TJ Maxx on Newberry Street?

Sarah: The three-story TJ Maxx on Newbury Street in Boston closed on January 3rd.

Amanda: Gosh!

Sarah: But if they’re closing some stores, you might want to go use them gift cards. Hook yourself up.

Amanda: Oh, it’s, like, right on the corner. I haven’t been there in ages.

Sarah: It’s so wild to me how sometimes – and I, I go to Marshall’s for the same experience. Like, if you look at the hair care aisle, there are some, sometimes really expensive products. Like, I got bottles of, like, Living Proof shampoo, like big bottles of their shampoo online. It’s like, you know, twenty, thirty dollars; it was like $7.59? But, like, other times I’m like, Everything is dusty and I feel gross.

Amanda: Yeah. Like, I know some people buy, like, food and candy, and I always, like, give the candy a good once-over to see when’s the expiration date?

Sarah: Yes, or when was it? [Laughs]

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I find a lot of expired stuff in the clearance section. It’s great for candles; it’s great for pillows and tchotchkes. If you need containers to put your leftovers in, they have them; they have all of them. And then every now and again, I’ll find, like, a nice coat or some good workout clothes. That’s cool! My, my kids love to shop for shoes there, ‘cause they’re very, very cheap. And it’s also like a hunt. I wonder if that’s part of the attraction of places like TJ Maxx? Like, you have to go on this journey to find your size and then see if they have any of the shoes that you like in your size. Maybe that’s part of the attraction.

Amanda: There was, like, a big hubbub a few months ago, maybe last year, about TikTok, because HomeGoods and TJ Maxx would get, like, really cute holiday stuff for, like, Valentine’s Day or Halloween, and people would do live shopping on TikTok, where they’re just live-streaming while they’re going through TJ Maxx or HomeGoods. And people are in the chat saying like, Buy this, buy this! So they would just come in and, like, clean house and buy all of the seasonal stuff for the people they are live-streaming to. And people are like, What the hell?

Sarah: Wow!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s – wow! I did not know that! Hm!

So Love, Lust, Laugh comes with two covers that are very small! They’re so small!

Amanda: And the rest is just like this very bright red color.

Sarah: It’s just big red cover with big words on it.

Amanda: Big red.

Sarah: And it’s like, why would you not put the covers bigger? There’s Body Rhythm by Valarie Prince, and if you look on the right, that guy is wearing a Dance Fever costume, I think.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Either that, or he’s got a brocade robe, but it is coming over his shoulders, a deep sharp V – there’s, like, a little hint of nipple – and it appears to be like brocade or paisley.

Amanda: I’m sad ‘cause we’re, we love a good hat.

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: And the other cover, Nowhere to Run by Gay G. Gunn, has a man in a good hat! And we don’t get to see the details.

Sarah: It’s so small!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Why don’t we see the hat detail? It’s so small. It’s not fair. I don’t understand here.

So then we move to page 2, inside cover. It is a full-color cover illustration of the cover, or the stepback for Shadow Walker by Connie Mason. This is, unfortunately, what we used to call Indian romance. Now I would call them Native American or Indigenous – maybe exploitative Indigenous romance?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: These are not, like, really great representations. But could you just read the first little bit of the, of the excerpt? Because it is just eyebrow-raising.

Amanda: Do you mean, do you want me to start with the quote or the excerpt in white? Okay – ooh.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: The, so there’s a quote in yellow, which weird choice –

Sarah: Okay.

Amanda: – that says, “Why did you do that?” And then the next line, “Kiss you?” Cole shrugged. “Because you wanted me to, I suppose. Why else would a man kiss a woman?”

Sarah: Fuck off!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Dear Cole: Eat my shorts. Love, Sarah.

Amanda: Why else would a man kiss a woman?

Sarah: Oh my God!

Amanda: I also love the image in the background by the W of Walker. You can see the artist’s signature.

Sarah: Oh, it’s Pino! That’s a Pino.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I love a good Pino. All right, I am looking for this cover from my favorite eBay vendor, and I’m not seeing it. Because they’re the ones that, it’s, it’s always, it’s the, it’s the lace tablecloth that has the good pictures. But this cover, it is a double gift because it not only has shirtless John DeSalvo in what looks like a loincloth?

Amanda: Yes? If you, if you look at the cover versus the stepback –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – he’s got a lot of, a lot of haunch on display. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes! This is exactly what I’m saying. You can sort of see – it, it’s like a little red drapery, and it is barely doing its job.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: He’s got a bow and arrow and a little feather hanging from –

Amanda: There’s definitely a breeze coming through.

Sarah: Oh yeah, if, if there’s, if there’s a stiff wind, it’s going to be very interesting. He also has what I believe are Teen Mom feathers in his hair?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: He’s got, like, feathers dangling down from, you know, feathers in my hair. Which is the only thing I know about Teen Mom; I have never watched it. The stepback is even better, because he’s face down, still shirtless, got those feathers, and he is on top of this woman. And you, I cannot tell if she’s like, is totally into this or if she’s just like, Ah, bro, bro, your breath. No, nonono. She’s kind of…

Amanda: She’s got some good, good lips.

Sarah: Yes. Oh my God, I know what…

Amanda: Those are some pouty lips.

Sarah: I know, I know what this looks like!

Amanda: [Laughs] Good.

Sarah: Okay. This looks like, in, in episode 700, we talked a lot about the artistic, sort, the artistic inspiration or the visual inspiration for different older covers, and I think that this cover – I’m going to put it in Slack – I think the cover model is referencing Jane Russell in The Outlaw with the pose and the little off the shoulder –

Amanda: Hmmm!

Sarah: – and the elbow? I think this, this, this model’s pose is referencing Jane Russell in The Outlaw, which was a 1943 film that was so, the, the poster for it was so scandalous that people wouldn’t put the poster up ‘cause she was too, just too sexy. Way too hot for normal people.

Amanda: She’s showing a shoulder!

Sarah: I know! And she’s got perky bazooms. And yeah, that, that cover caused a lot of rioting and unhappiness. I think that’s the reference for this. She’s got like one little thing off her shoulder; it’s like a little eyelet lace. And then she’s got a blue – well, you see around the top of her thigh, where she’s got her lower garment pulled up –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: …elastic around her waist. It makes me wonder, like, was she wearing, like, like loose jogging pants with a hem, like a, an elastic ankle, and she just pulled it all the way up?

Amanda: I don’t know! Like, definitely –

Sarah: …bloomers?

Amanda: …garter, ‘cause, like, why would she have a garter and nothing else?

Sarah: …garter. Like, why, why is, why is she – what, what, what kind of pants were those? Was she wearing bloomers?

Amanda: I don’t know. I like how you can tell when we’re looking at covers ‘cause my face gets like really close to the screen as I’m…

Sarah: Oh yeah, I’m like, what? And –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – we’re both of us, we’re like, What’s happening here? I’m going to see if I can come up with a better image of the stepback. [Hums]

Amanda: Without all the text in front of it?

Sarah: Yeah. Show me the stepback, people. Nope, no one’s showing me the stepback. Well, I’ll see if I can find it on the internet. The problem with this being that these are so old that usually the images aren’t scanned?

Amanda: Could they just be like, yeah, bloomer underpants?

Sarah: They might be bloomers! You know, maybe they’re bloomers. Either way, would you please read the text in white? Because it is –

Amanda: ‘Kay.

Sarah: – just, it’s, it’s quite a story.

Amanda: Okay, so if, to recall from three minutes ago –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – Cole was like, Why else would a man kiss a woman? And then the text:

>> But Dawn knows lots of other reasons, especially if the woman is nothing but a half-breed whose father sells her to the first interested male.

Sarah: Nope.

Amanda: Woof.

Sarah: Woof.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Whoa. This is, and this was, like, this is on the inside cover. I just need everyone to know: this is on the inside –

Amanda: Woof!

Sarah: – cover of this magazine. A lot of money was spent on the placement –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – of this ad, which is some- – it is something!

Amanda: >> Defenseless and exquisitely lovely, Dawn is overjoyed when Cole Webster kills the ruthless outlaw who has been her husband in name only. But now she has a very different sort of man to contend with, a man of unquestioning, or a man of unquestionable virility –

Sarah: Ugh!

Amanda: >> – a man who prizes justice and honors the Native American traditions that have been lost to her. Most intriguing of all, he is obviously a man who knows exactly how to bring a woman to soaring heights of pleasure. And yes –

Sarah: Woohoo!

Amanda: >> – she does want his kiss, and maybe a whole lot more.

Sarah: And was it in his loincloth? [Sings] Oh no!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: [Still singing] That’s not where it was! Was it in his feather? Nope, not there either!

[Laughter]

Sarah: If you want to know – [laughs] – I should not break into song on podcasts, but I, I couldn’t help myself. This is the inside cover. Like, wow, what a time this was for –

Amanda: What a time.

Sarah: What a time!

And on page 6, who’s there? Flavia. Flavia’s here –

Amanda: Ah, just –

Sarah: – with a two-page spread.

Amanda: It’s been a minute since we’ve had –

Sarah: It’s been a minute since we saw –

Amanda: – a Flavia sighting.

Sarah: And I will say, if you have the full issue, take a look at the article on page 6, because there’s a lot of Jesus by Volume here. There’s some actor –

Amanda: [Laughs] The J, the JBV!

Sarah: The JBV! Sean O’Brien is an actor, he’s a Country and Western singer and friend of RT, probably did some modeling and then got some media attention. So now they’re doing an article about him and the media attention that he got because he was in RT. It’s all just a big ouroboros of self-promotion. But he’s on stage performing as Joseph in Fiesta, Texas’ Majesty of Christmas?

Amanda: ‘Kay.

Sarah: There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of hair and mullet – really, really big mullet.

But then on page 7, we really get into some good shit. First, we have the RT pageant contestants cover debut. Joe Brown apparently won and is on a cover, and when I tell you this man has…

Amanda: Look at that mustache.

Sarah: Must-stash! Like, you could hold on to it for balance.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, it’s beefy – [laughs] – is what –

Amanda: It is like, it is solid. It is like one solid – [laughs] – piece.

Sarah: It looks like someone glued a Muppet to his upper lip. Like, it’s so big! And then there’s a black-and-white picture of him doing the cover shoot, and one thing I learned about, learning about these covers, is that the models were in really uncomfortable positions to try to get these, like, bendy, passionate poses? So he’s, like, sitting on the edge of a staircase, like a two-stair case? He’s got fringed buckskin breeches on, his shirt’s open – there is chest hair. This woman is, like, nestled under, between and through his legs, coming, her body is sort of coming up by –

Amanda: Like, arching her back.

Sarah: Yeah, arching her back. She’s got one knee on one step. Like, all of this looks painful. All of this looks like it would leave bruises, but that’s the behind the scenes.

Amanda: And he’s, like, mashing his nose –

Sarah: He’s like…

Amanda: – into her hair.

Sarah: Well, he’s combing her hair with his mustache, because it is so thick. Like, you know how on Instagram or on TikTok, you see those ads for, like, those really luxurious boar-bristle brushes? He’s just got one –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – on his face, and he just –

Amanda: Yeah, his mustache is a boar-bristle – [laughs] – brush.

Sarah: One of those really expensive, like eight-hundred-dollar hair brushes that you see on, like, Instagram that he’s just got right there.

And then! And then, oh my gosh. So in second place for the greatest piece of Flavia is Loveswept’s Got It Covered:

>> Loveswept is having a makeover. In June, they will replace photograph covers with
paintings of couples, and then they will dispense with all of the borders and flowers and go to full bleed paintings.

Which means the image goes all the way to the edge.

>> Janis Reams Hudson’s Spontaneous Combustion is one of the hot new July books blazing Loveswept’s new look.

So they are moving from photographs to paintings. This is like, before we left the paintings; they’re adding them now. Incredible, truly incredible. And this is ‘97, so this is not a lot of digital painting.

Amanda: No.

Sarah: Like, I’m trying to think, in ‘97, was there much digital painting and art software? I don’t think there was. So those are probably real paintings.

But number one: Fabio –

Amanda: Okay, pause for a second –

Sarah: What?

Amanda: – because my memory is tingling, because I feel like we did another issue, maybe another 1997 issue, that mentions some scandal or issue happening at this thing.

Sarah: Ohhh! Maybe the, the, the party!

Amanda: Yeah. I seem to –

Sarah: Oh, that’s right! That’s right! There was a, a letter to the editor about it. Do you think it was – all right.

Amanda: I think it’s another ’97? It’s got to be. You can read it while I’m, I’ll look through –

Sarah: May ‘95, I’m looking at my records of the transcripts.

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: So what have we got here? All right, so I’m looking for all mentions of Fabio.

>> The February Fiabo, Fabio Fan Club fiasco infuriated fans. The big one had to calm down angry club members screaming disapproval at his actions with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. I can’t believe –

Amanda: Yes!

Sarah: >> – he’s Fabio.

Wooow.

Amanda: My mega mind strikes again.

Sarah: Okay, first of all, that’s fucking terrifying.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Second of all, I think the – okay, I just need to go through this all-, alliteration again, ‘cause it’s very satisfying. The February Fabio Fan Club fiasco that infuriated fans is apparently the fact that he did I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter at all in the first place? But I bet this party is related. You’re totally right. Holy crap! Okay, that’s terrifying. So – [clears throat] – the Fabio PR Party, Smooth As Butter. All right, if you are a professional person operating in a business setting, everything that’s going to happen right now is probably going to make you cringe. Do want to read the, the little, the little article and I’ll talk about the captions?

Amanda: Sure.

>> We sent romance author Susan Paul, an aspiring author, and romance fan Betsy Morgan as emissaries of Romantic Times to cover the very –

[Laughs] Emissaries.

>> – to cover the very posh I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter publicity party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. Our roving reporters spent much of their time schmoozing with the guest of honor Fabio –

Sarah: Ew!

Amanda: >> – who, with a blonde on one side and a brunette on the other, didn’t seem to mind a bit. Matthew Smith, senior brand manager for Lipton, also didn’t seem to mind a momentary diversion from business when he graciously agreed to pose in a romantic clinch with Susan for a photo op. Susan and Betsy are working on a screenplay written exclusively with Fabio in mind. So far, Fabio and his manager love the concept, and it is being further developed. We’ll keep you posted as plans progress.

Sarah: I am so embarrassed for everyone involved that I’m turning red now –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – almost what, thirty years later?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. I, I am so embarrassed for everyone involved that I’m actually turning red in my face for a party that was thirty years ago. Okay, so first we have a picture –

Amanda: An I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter party.

Sarah: An, a butter party at the Beverly Wilshire! Very posh, apparently. Now if it was actually posh, you know Kathryn would have gone herself. So –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – there’s a picture of Fabio in a leather jacket and, of course, no shirt, with Susan Paul and Betsy Morgan. And Susan Paul’s, like, pushing her face, like, right up against his; like, they’re very close. And then below that in an oval is a picture of, I assume, Matthew Smith, the senior –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – brand manager for Lipton. And he is, his mouth is probably like two inches from hers, and he is dipping her backwards, and she’s gazing up at him, and it is so revolting. Like, this is –

Amanda: I’m getting secondhand embarrassment.

Sarah: Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed about this party thirty years ago. Like, it’s sort of, it’s reminding me of the thing lately on red carpets where someone will be interviewing a whole bunch of actors from a show, and, like, they did this with the cast of The Bear, where they’re like, Hey, here’s a picture of this actor, the lead actor in his underwear for this ad campaign. Like, Hey, we’ve seen a lot of your care, your, your coworker. And they looked at him and were like, This is a work event? Like, we’re working. That’s our colleague. What are you doing? Right?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: And then there was a question, Connor Storrie was getting like a really gross interview with, I think it was Teyana Taylor. Did you see this?

Amanda: No!

Sarah: Oh, it was so embarrassing. So he’s being interviewed on some red carpet. I’m pretty sure it was Teyana Taylor, and if I’m wrong I will correct myself. But the reporter who was doing the, you know, red carpet interview was like, So, you know, you’ve seen a lot of this guy. What do you think when you watch the show and you’re seeing, you know, all of that? And you can see Connor Storrie’s face kind of just fall?

Amanda: Ohhh!

Sarah: And her face – if this woman gave me that look, I would consider all of my life choices, and I would go hide underground. It was the look of complete abject disappointment in this reporter and all of his ancestors. Like, it was a look that would shrivel your soul. She just looked at him like, What is wrong with you? And then she said, I don’t think about that. I think about his acting, and I think about the choices that he made and how much talent he has. And Connor Storrie’s face, he’s just grinning like She stuck up for me! It was so incredible to watch this woman defend this new actor from being objectified at a, the-, these are work events, by a reporter.

It was, this is what’s, it’s reminding me of that, because it’s like this is, he’s the senior brand manager for Lipton. What is he doing dipping a romance author for a photo? Like, that’s just, if you did that now, how fast would HR be involved?

Amanda: Well, we’ve talked about this before, about the period of time of RT and the conferences where it felt very much, the objectification of men, of, like, Oh well, it’s now, now it’s our turn to be the objectifiers? Do you know what I mean? Where –

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Amanda: – Oh, they do it to us; now we get to do it to you?

Sarah: There’s still a lot of people who think that’s what feminism means.

And I would like to correct myself: I did have a moment to Google. It was not Teyana Taylor. It was Janelle James. Clearly, alliteration is the sticking point of my brain. It’s pretty great. I’ll put a clip in the show notes.

But like, yes, this is still very much a thing where it’s like, Oh, we get to be the sexual predators now. I’m like, no, that’s gross! This is a person. Can you imagine just, you know, you’re going to a work event for Fabio’s party, and it’s already weird ‘cause it’s Fabio, and then this is all happening?

Amanda: And it’s for butter? [Laughs

Sarah: It’s, it’s for margarine! Ohhh boy.

Amanda: I’m sorry, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

Sarah: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. I can’t believe I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

So on page 8 are the letters to the editor, and they’re great! They’re really great.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, they’re really, really great. So first of all, do you remember in a previous issue where people were asking about Ann Maxwell’s dancer books and whether or not there would be a fourth book? Fire Dancer –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – Dancer’s Luck, and Dance– – someone else is asking in this, in this one. Someone else is like, Is she, are we going to write another one? And they had to get an answer and say, No, she has no plans for another dancing book. Like, do you think that Ann Maxwell is like, Stop asking me. Oh my God.

Amanda: Please!

Sarah: Please, just stop. But –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – the one that I wanted to draw our attention to is the left-hand column. Mary Jo Putney from Baltimore, Maryland – hey, neighbor – has a lot to say about historical accuracy, and clearly – you can just hear how frustrated and pissed off she is? She’s mad, she’s big mad about this issue. What historical inaccuracy could she possibly be this angry about? Okay. [Clears throat]

>> Joan Hammond’s review of The Guardian by Joan Wolfe, May ‘97 stated, “Though Regency aficionados may find fault with the idea of Stephen marrying his brother’s widow, since this was against the law, it is this reviewer’s understanding that the law was not always followed.”

And Mary Jo Putney is here to tell all of you you’re wrong. You are wrong, and you ought to be ashamed of how wrong you are.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: >> I can understand how Ms. Hammond was led to believe this, since marrying a deceased souse’s, deceased spouse’s sibling happens all the time in, in English historicals, probably because many American authors never questioned such a marriage.

Okay!

>> It’s also true that there probably hasn’t been a law passed since the Code of Hammurabi that everyone obeyed. The fact is that such a marriage was thoroughly illegal, meaning that the couple would be unable to obtain a marriage license. It also implied incest, making it subject to in-, intense social disapproval.

And she gives an example of a painter who married Edith Waugh, a younger sister of his first wife Fanny, and both families rejected them and they had to go live abroad. They never escaped the social consequences of their union.

>> The Deceased Wife’s Sister Marriage Act –

That’s its name, the Deceased Wife’s Sister Marriage Act.

>> – was not passed until 1907.

I’m really disappointed in whoever named that act; you could have done a lot better?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So Mary Jo Putney continues that such a marriage would have dire consequences to their social life and their status. They might go abroad, but their families could challenge the marriage and ask a court to declare the children of such a union illegitimate.

>> In other words, flouting the law on such an issue was not only a serious matter, but impossible to do without leaving England. I strongly suggest that writers considering a romance involving a deceased spouse’s sibling transform the sibling into a cousin.

I really wonder what Mary Jo Putney thinks of all the dark romance, twin-cest and sibling fucking, and all the wild shit we got going on right now, because whoo!

Amanda: She’s probably not reading it. [Laughs]

Sarah: Probably not. She was so mad about this! Amanda, she’s so mad! This is a really long letter about marrying your dead spouse’s sibling. And yet, how many times have you read that? Like –

Amanda: Oh, quite a few.

Sarah: Quite a few! Like, look, I joke all the time about going to Romance Novel Law School where I’m going to start writing wills that require people to, like, get married and have children in order to inherit whatever, which is, like, really not a thing. I, I feel like you’ve just got to ride with it. We’re going to be marrying our dead spouse’s siblings! [Laughs]

Amanda: But I’ve also seen, it’s like, Oh, it’s your spouse, or it’s your sibling’s spouse, like your brother’s widow. I’ve seen those –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – but, like, I don’t think that counts. Does it? ‘Cause you’re not –

Sarah: And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of, like, Oh, I’m supposed to marry this woman and she died, so we’ll just make the contract her sister.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, is that o- – so that has to be okay because you weren’t married yet, but if you were married and then you married your sister-in-law, that, that implied inc- – oooh, goodness! So Mary Jo is really, really peeved about this, and I don’t think people listened. It’s very sad.

Amanda: [Laughs] No!

Sarah: People did not listen.

Amanda: No!

Sarah: So our cover story is about Indigo and Genesis Press! There are many ways of describing the fact that these books featured Black people, including things like ethnic characters, which makes my stomach hurt. And there’s a whole article about the founding of this whole industry and the authors who were part of it. You can see on page 10, or excuse me, page 11, there’s a picture of the team, and all the way to the right is Wil Colom, who is the publisher.

So I, I reached out to Steve Ammidown, because he knows everything, and I was like, What, what am I missing here? I’m really having a hard time coming up with information about this, because all of the terms that I’m googling have been superseded by other things, including Genesis the band.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So Steve, being awesome, sent me some links. So the imprint name was actually Indigo Sensuous Love Stories (‘cause also when I tried to go google Indigo, of course I got the Beverly Jenkins book). And that was their attempt at branding romance titles, according to Steve.

Genesis Press went bankrupt multiple times and was sued in 2004 by multiple authors for unpaid royalties. They turned around and sued those authors for defamation in 20-, in 2006, which is truly wild. Genesis also published the 1999 version of Kathryn Falk’s How to Write a Romance for the New Market, which includes, according to Steve, Kathryn writing in a very cringe description of Genesis Press’s handsome publisher, who’s pictured in this issue.

There are multiple PW articles about the 2004 and 2006 lawsuits, and there’s also an Unsuitable article. Unsuitable is out of Duke University. It was their whole romance discussion conversation series; it was great. But there is an article about 1980 to 2000 Black publishers, and the title is “Black Romance Publishers: Representation vs. Exploitation.” So I will link to that, and I did get an internet archive link about the PW articles. I managed to get around the paywall to look at these older articles? I don’t understand, I don’t understand why publications would put stuff behind a paywall that is so old that it’s being used by researchers? Although I guess researchers have so many database accesses that they have ways around the paywall. I’m mad though, ‘cause I don’t have access to that.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So the article focuses on the terrific year that Genesis Press is having. Sixteen titles will hit bookstores this year, a one hundred percent jump from last year. Okay! [Laughs]

Amanda: Wow.

Sarah: And you’ll never guess: Will Colom is a – [dramatic pause] – attorney. So many attorneys in romance. Probably explains why they countersued.

There’s also features about some of the titles, including Body Rhythm by Valarie Prince; Everlastin’ Love and Nowhere to Run by Gay G. Gunn, who’s on the cover; and Robin Hampton Allen, who wrote Breeze and Hidden Memories. Among the Genesis Press authors that later sued are Kayla Perrin, who still writes, and I was on a panel with her and she’s brilliant.

So I will link to all of these, all of these things, but it’s really interesting to see 1997, they’re doing great, they have started a romance imprint, it’s called Indigo, and then, you know, five, six years later, they’re all suing each other for non-payment of royalties. Wow, we’ve heard that before.

Amanda: Yeah. The tale as old as time.

Sarah: Tale as old as time in romance, unfortunately.

And then on page 12 and 13 of the PDF – did I get this wrong? I bet I did. Yes, I’m sorry; I your pardon. Page 14 and 15 of the magazine, we have another one of those articles where they show off an author’s house. I called this the peak star-fucking era of RT.

Amanda: This would not fly now. This is crazy work.

Sarah: This is like – [sighs] – this is – I’m going to be really unkind – this is like low-rent Architectural Digest tours on YouTube, because it’s under the banner Lifestyle. So it’s sort of selling the idea that romance authors are wealthy and have beautiful houses, and in some cases, like when we looked at J. R. Ward’s house, that was very true! But this is Jo-Ann Power. She’s in Texas Hill company. She’s writing, talking about being a writer, and they moved to a big house in Texas, and there’s big pictures of it, but what made me the most uncomfortable is the middle picture on PDF page 15:

>> The master bedroom, located on the house’s main level, leads to a garden patio where Jo-Ann enjoys both the sunrise and the sunset.

Okay so first of all how? Those are opposite directions. I’m assuming it faces south. Number two –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – do you really want a picture of your bed in a magazine?

Amanda: No!

Sarah: Here’s where she and her husband sleep together. Like, why? Why is this necessary? I don’t understand!

Amanda: And her dining room looks a little boring. There’s, like, barely anything in that dining room.

Sarah: That’s the dining room that you would see posted on, like, interior decorating subreddits on, on Reddit and be like, What’s wrong with this…

Amanda: Male living space. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right, it – What’s wrong with this room? It has no color or personality. That’s what’s wrong with it. Like, there’s one thing on the wall. There’s, like – it’s very bare.

Amanda: And the chairs, ‘cause normally if you have a dining room table, they’re usually rectangular, so you’ve got one chair each on the shorter ends and maybe one to two chairs on the longer ends. This one has two chairs each on the short ends with no chairs on the long ends.

Sarah: Oh my God, I can’t believe I missed that. You’re so – like, I’m, like, really zoomed in right now. You’re so right!

Amanda: I’m ho-, like, I’m sure they maybe moved chairs around to stage the photo, but, like –

Sarah: Now it just looks –

Together: – weird!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: It looks very weird. I cannot imagine being an author and having a magazine come and take pictures of my home and describe it for readers. Like, I – [laughs] – I, okay, I look at this and I understand why there are so many people who struggle with not creating a parasocial relationship with the authors that they love, because this is trying to encourage that. Like, imagine your favorite author in her home! Look, you can see her bed! Like, oh my God! Bleah!

Amanda: And also, so I’m looking at some of the text, and right next to the dining room photo, the author talks about how she’s going to learn to speak Spanish? And it’s like, Spanish should come easy for a writer who already knows Chinese and German! And I’m like, maybe, ‘cause it’s a romance language? But, like, Chinese –

Sarah: Neither of –

Amanda: – has its own alphabet. And, like, it’s not –

Sarah: German is not a romance language.

Amanda: So maybe it’s because Chinese and German are more difficult to learn? Maybe Spanish is easier? But I’m like, Those are –

Sarah: Unrelated.

Amanda: – three very different languages. [Laughs]

Sarah: Those are unrelated. What is happening? I am really glad that we don’t do this anymore? I find it very uncomfortable when I encounter it in the magazine. And yet, do I read it closely because it is so horrifying? Yes. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. She talks about her automatic coffee pot, talks about what she does first thing in the morning. It’s, it’s very –

Amanda: She talks about her twenty-three-foot ceilings, and she’s like, How am going to change these light bulbs? I’m like –

Sarah: You need to get a pole, I can tell you. [Laughs]

Amanda: – I don’t know ma’am.

Sarah: Whoof! I don’t – like, I kind of am fascinated by this, but also it makes me very uncomfortable. I’m conflicted. I’m very conflicted about this –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – article from thirty years ago. Yeah.

Okay, page 18. I said, Amanda, what the fuck is this?

Amanda: And I asked, Are you talking about the paperback-sized hardcovers? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes! What the fuck are, what is this? What. Is. This?

Amanda: I was like, Those things must be fucking bricks. Like –

Sarah: The whole article is, Ballantine launches paperback-sized hardcovers. [Dramatic pause] What? Okay, so I want to just read some paragraphs, and we’re going to talk about how familiar this sounds. So these are the idea of an editor named Carolyn Nichols. She launched Second Chance at Love at Jove and Loveswept at Bantam from a crazy notion that Americans might want to read American romance was the in-, when the industry was still dominated by the British. Later, she got the madcap idea that authors like Sandra Brown and Nora Roberts might hold their own outside of category romance! The devil –

Amanda: Ohhh!

Sarah: – you say. So she has decided that their new venture is to introduce paperback-sized hardcover books, certain to cause shockwaves from rival publishers to readers’ private collections. Even then they’re talking about how readers don’t like it when your books don’t all match in a series.

Amanda: No.

Sarah: So she says:

>> Personally, as a reader, I’ve always had problems, especially with trade-size paperbacks. The larger hardcovers or trade paperbacks are too big to stash in a pocket book or hold easily, but they last longer than paperbacks.

And we are still talking about that, now that the mass market is dead!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: >> The solution, she reasoned, was to marry the best of both. With a ten-dollar price tag, the book should give paperbacks, some priced at $6.99, a run for their money. Not only will they use long-lasting acid-free paper, but Ballantine will also support their new phenom with national advertising and promotion. The first three books are historicals, although that’s not a criterion.

They will only publish three small hardcovers in 1997, one of them being Mary Jo Putney’s One Perfect Rose. That’s going to be the launch hardcover, followed by Someone Like You by Elaine Coffman and The Savage Heart by Diana Palmer.

When, when did this end? Did this die…

Amanda: …curious how long it lasted.

Sarah: Right? Like this had to die quickly. People in the industry who are quoted describe it very vaguely as intriguing.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: The romance book buyer for Walden Books said:

>> It’s an exciting program. It’s nice to see something original come along. They’re going to be shelved initially with hardcovers with prime space up front. They’ll be cross-marketed and get a longer shelf life. After being up front with the hardcovers, the books will move to the paperback romance section and remain there for an undetermined amount of time.

Now as a bookseller, when you had things moved to the paperback shelf, how long did you keep a mass market paperback around?

Amanda: So we would do checks of books every three to six months? And yeah, if a book hadn’t sold in I think like three-ish months, it’d be pulled for return.

Sarah: I remember you telling me that one of the things you used to do to sort of haze the new employees was start stripping the covers off the paperbacks and, like, make them watch?

Amanda: It’s just a vibe check. I’ve got to check the vibe.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: If I am taking a box cutter to a book, what is your response? And I feel like that vibe check has served me well.

Sarah: There is – ooh, there’s a couple! There are small hardcovers of One Perfect Rose by Mary Jo Putney. They are on eBay, and they are between four and six dollars.

Amanda: Hmm, so even cheaper!

Sarah: Even cheaper than the original. I think it’s interesting as a strategy, because they specifically mentioned keeping them on the shelves longer, like a hardcover, as opposed to –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – a paperback?

>> One potential problem could be returns. For paperbacks, retailers rip off and return the cover, whereas the entire book must be returned for a hardcover. The cost of shipping and storage are much higher.

Steven Zacharius at Kensington says it’s very clever; we’re watching very closely.

>> If paperback-sized hardcovers appeal to consumers, the gauntlet will be tossed to other publishers. The question is, will the regular-sized hardcover romances hit the endangered species list? Whatever the outcome, Carolyn Nichols has invigorated not only Ballantine, but the entire romance industry. What will she do next?

Amanda: Well, the, this reminded me –

Sarah: I don’t know that this is so much of a revolution, but okay.

Amanda: This reminded me of – and I have the copy downstairs, but not up here – the release of Servant of Earth by Sarah Hawley? It was a hardcover release, but I think the format was smaller than a typical hardcover? It didn’t have a jacket. I found an eBay listing. I’m just, ugh, whatever. But yeah, I remember it being smaller than a normal hardcover.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: And when I saw this article, I immediately thought of that book.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: And it was, like, fine! It was interesting that it was, like, that size and didn’t have, like, a floppy jacket that I had to worry about, but yeah!

Sarah: Floppy jacket.

Amanda: A floppy jacket!

Sarah: [Laughs] I’m kind of curious about what these felt like and looked like, because I, (a) I can see people getting very mad that their books don’t match, but also this clearly didn’t go anywhere!

Amanda: No.

Sarah: I don’t remember seeing these ever, at all. And I was –

Amanda: Well, they’re trying to solve a problem that isn’t really a problem.

Sarah: You know what? You’re so right about that. They are trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

Oh! I’m looking at this eBay link. Ohhh! You know, that kind of reminds me of like a school binding! I wonder if what she was doing was, like, just using the school binding size.

Amanda: I don’t know!

Sarah: Interesting!

So on PDF page 21, Only in My Dreams. My comment here is hair. Hair.

Amanda: Yeah, even, even the author photo. Hair.

Sarah: Hair. Hair.

Amanda: A crisp-, crispy bang and a hair.

Sarah: There are crispy bangs – looks very glamour shot – but off to the right, I put an eBay link for you to click on to see this in color from my favorite eBay vendor, live4art, or live, the number 4, art. Every book is, is photographed on the same lace tablecloth. But I want you to click the image and zoom in and look at his chest. It’s not even the hair that is –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: He is –

Amanda: [Sighs]

Sarah: He’s very drippy.

Amanda: Yeah, I was like, Is that sweat?

Sarah: Or glycerin? Maybe some, like –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: wax? I don’t – he’s very drippy, and his hair is going. Like, the fan must be in her cleavage to blow his hair back that much. Whereas hers is just lightly going behind her. I really think she has got a fan tucked in her bosoms, and it is aimed right – look at the, look at the volume and the lift on his hair.

Amanda: I have to find this, but there’s a content creator who I can’t even describe. It’s like she’s wearing ‘80s, like an ‘80s-style outfit –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – and she’s got, like, a drink and, like, a cigarette, and she’s just dancing, and the fan is blowing her hair, like, up? And that’s what the dude reminds me of. I need to find her, because her videos, there’s, like, nothing happening but her dancing, smoking, and drinking –

Sarah: With her hair.

Amanda: – with a fan blowing in her face. And it’s so good. I need to find her.

Sarah: The fan is just such a very – the fan-blown hair is very ‘80s and ‘90s – excuse me – isn’t it? Very ‘80s and ‘90s.

Amanda: I thought I found her! Oh my god, this is going to bug me!

Sarah: You’re going to call me at 10:30, and it’s fine.

Amanda: [Sighs] Yeah.

Sarah: ‘Cause you know, we talk on the phone so much as being, you know, being phone people.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: And then on PDF page 25, this picture sent me down a rabbit hole. This is our favorite section: On-Line (O-N-line) Romance with Cathy Linz, where there’s all of these really long URLs and we’re constantly retyping the HTTP, and her, her email address is like XGEV at prodigy.com. Her innovative website is comet.net/writers/linz? This was before you could get your own domain name; that’s, that’s the era we’re in here.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Then there’s Romance on the Net: Pooling Regency Resources. As for the Regency, which we’ve been writing about for longer than it exists, as Kathe Robin used to say, we have a bunch of addresses worth visiting. None of these existed; I tried.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: …Georgette Heyer Listserv, Regency Homepage, the Unauthorized Barbara Cartland Homepage – ah! – British Women’s Fiction, and Reader’s Corner, but it’s the bottom right pa-, bottom right corner of page 25 that I really need to talk about. First of all, her shoes. I want them. I want them.

Amanda: They remind me of like the Fluevog shoes.

Sarah: They do look like Fluevogs; that’s probably why I like them. If you go to the Goodreads link that I put in the document – I will include this link in the show notes – it goes to a Goodreads listing for a book called The Genius of Jane Austen – LibraryThing, you’re in the way – Her Love of Theater and Why She Works in Hollywood by Paula Byrne. And this is a color version of this photograph. In the magazine, it’s reprinted with what looks like, is that a web browser? Like, it looks like it’s Netscape!

Amanda: It looks like it, yeah.

Sarah: It looks like Netscape. There’s, like – or maybe it’s AOL, ‘cause there’s just little buttons that say What’s New? What’s Cool? Net Search, People.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So I think this might be A-, early AOL. And the original URL was pathfinder.com/ew.

>> In addition to scholarly tidbits on Jane Austen, the Jane Austen information page offers fun links like the photo above that was featured in Entertainment Weekly.

I cannot find a version of this photo from Entertainment Weekly, but I can find it on the cover of this book. It is a woman dressed as Jane Austen with the bonnet, the Regency gown, and the shoes that I covet. She’s holding a script. She’s on a big honkin’ cell phone by a pool. She has an early laptop next to her, and it’s like Jane Austen in Hollywood in an image. It’s genius. Who took this photo? I need it.

Amanda: I love it in color.

Sarah: Isn’t it great?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s such a fantastic photo. I want those shoes. I want them real fucking bad. And I don’t even wear heels anymore. I just, I love everything about this image, and I love the fact that there is a picture of what I’m pretty sure is the AOL web browser in the magazine. I cannot wait to share this with people. Look at this photo though! How great is it? It’s so great!

Amanda: Yeah, it looks really good.

Sarah: On page 27, PDF page 27, would you read the letter from Katrina Zayed of – or Zayed – from Wheeling, Illinois? You’ll never guess what she’s complaining about, y’all. You’ll never guess. Never. Never, never, never.

Amanda: >> And the debate on the profane F word continues…

Sarah: Oh no! Not that!

Amanda: >> Dear RT, I find it sad that authors use profanity in their books. It’s terrible that we live in a world that uses the F word as if it’s an acceptable part of our everyday vocabulary.

Sarah: [Squeaks]

Amanda: >> That is not acceptable to me. I enjoy books in which the author describes the lovemaking, but the F word is not necessary or appropriate, especially where love is involved. I believe if the F word is used, you might as well shelve that book with the porno books.

Sarah: Not the porno books!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Wait, what is she reading? [Laughs]

Amanda: >> Authors like Joanna Lindsay, Julie Garwood, Catherine Coulter, and Arnette Lamb are class writers because they write romantic, funny, and very sexy stories without using language that offends. I would appreciate it if the publishers of the F-word books put out a warning telling readers that vulgar language is being used. That’s one reason I’m afraid to try new authors. Thank you, RT, for letting readers share their thoughts on profanity. Katrina Zayed, Wheeling, Illinois.

Sarah: I love this. This is hilarious.

Amanda: Hey, Katrina! Shut the fuck up!

Sarah: [Laughs] Dear Katrina, I want to introduce you to this website that we run. It’s called Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. You’ll love it.

Amanda: Drink every time she says the F word.

Sarah: Oh my God. You know what’s so funny? I know a lot of authors. They still get letters like this. Why do you have to use profanity in your books? And it’s like, do you not hear humans talking everywhere? Like, what is the – it’s, it’s fascinating to me why this one word just sends people over the edge.

Amanda: You will pry the F word from my cold, dead hands.

Sarah: [Snorts] How do you say the alphabet in New Jersey?

Amanda: [Laughs] Oh no.

Sarah: Fuckin’ A!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Fucking B. Fucking C! Fucking D! Oh yeah, like this is, wow. Okay, so as someone who does not mind the F word, I am so sorry that Katrina’s reading choices are going to be very, very limited, even in 1997. Wow, okay!

Amanda: The F word! It reminds me of, was it Mary Kay Andrews? Her social media when people get onto her about using profanity? [Laughs]

Sarah: Ohhh, I love her so much. I, I want to invite her on the show. I, I did send an email; I haven’t heard back yet. And I love her because she is like, she, she’s like the exact same demographic as these people, and she’s like, Well, please fuck off. [Laughs]

Amanda: I just, like, I know I’m a different demographic probably than most people who get offended by the F word –

Sarah: Hmm.

Amanda: – but I don’t understand what is so pearl-clutch-y about it. Like, what is it for them that really grinds their gears and makes them, like, close a book and say no, thank you?

Sarah: And shelve it with the –

Amanda: With the porno books!

Sarah: Porno –

Amanda: As if – I’ve never been in a bookstore where it’s like, All right –

Sarah: Porno books.

Amanda: – porno books are here.

Sarah: [Laughs] Also, she then lists Johanna Lindsey, Julie Garwood, Catherine Coulter, and Arnette Lamb, and I have read three of four of those authors considerably, and there’s a lot of sex in those books, which would also possibly call, call them porno, depending on who’s reading them. You could call those authors porno-book writers because of the amount of sex in them. But for our, for Katrina, it’s the F word that makes it porno.

Amanda: It’s the F word.

Sarah: It’s very interesting to me that this is the pinnacle of unacceptable. And also I – [sighs] – okay, I’m going to sound like an asshole, which is fine ‘cause I don’t care, but the – you really think that you, you person, you are entitled to tell authors what words to not use. You want publishers to put a warning that there’s vulgar language. Now, I understand putting that, putting that warning before a television show because you don’t know who’s in the room with you, right? Viewer discretion is advised. So please don’t start the show Archer with, you know, your seven-year-old in the room unless, or your five-year-old, unless you want them to know some great new words. Like, I understand that, because you can’t know who’s in the room. The book is just one person. Why, why would you mandate that publishers give you a trigger warning for the F word? When we’re talking about books in the ‘90s, where we’ve got, like, you know, main characters who are “half-breeds”! Like, the, the, the value of what is un-, uncool here is very, very low. This just blows my mind. This is, this is some hubris and chutzpah is what this is.

Amanda: Okay, I have found –

Sarah: Fucking…

Amanda: I have found the woman who just dances in retro clothes with a fan on her? I found her.

Sarah: I thought you were about to say, I found this woman, I found…

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my God!

Amanda: I found her. So if we go back to the man with the hair –

Sarah: Yes!

Amanda: – and his, like, bang hair is like straight up, it reminds me – I’m sending it to you in Slack DMs – it reminds me of this woman. And this is all of, this is all of her content, and I love it so much, and it brings me so much joy.

Sarah: Okay. So you have sent me a link to a Reel. This is – oh my God!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my God. Okay. I – ohhh my stars. Okay. Thank you for bringing this into my life. I’m, I’m, I’m – if I was unwell, I am well now! This woman has –

Amanda: It’s, her whole entire account is just stuff like this.

Sarah: Okay, I love her. Okay, this is so early ‘80s. She is wearing a blue, shiny taffeta dress with a waist bow with a bow and a peplum. It’s got like a wide scoop neck and puff sleeves. Her hair is blowing in every direction. She’s got a fake cigarette in her mouth, and it is so ‘80s. I love it. Oh my God, where does she shop? Where, where is she getting these clothes? What, what thrift? There’s something behind her on a clothes rack that looks like it’s cheetah. [Gasp] Oh my God, y’all. Y’all are going to be so blessed with these show notes. Can I just tell you?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: All right, let me just put this with, where’s the hair? All right, there we go. Y’all are going to be blessed with these show notes. This is, this is just replete with joy here. Oh my God. Look –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: I’m just watching it over and over again. Like Nyan Cat, I can’t stop watching this woman’s hair.

Amanda: There are so many different variations with so many different outfits. Like, this is –

Sarah: How –

Amanda: – a majority of her content.

Sarah: Honest to God, how tangled is her hair when she’s done? Like I, I have short hair.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: If I drive with the window open, my hair is a disaster!

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Okay. You wanted to look at page, page 47 of the PDF.

Amanda: Yeah, there’s an ad at the bottom of page 47 for erotic romances by Lizbeth Dusseau – I’m assuming, because it’s hard to read ‘cause it’s like a, a cursive font.

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: The Great Lines Of Novels For Women By A Woman. And then in bullets, it says Erotic Romances Between Passionate Couples. Hot Al- –

Sarah: They better not use the F word.

Amanda: [Laughs] No F word!

Sarah: No F word!

Amanda: Hot, Hot Alternatives With Outrageous Sexual Variations. What is a hot –

Sarah: I’m sorry?

Amanda: – alter- –

Sarah: Wait, which part is more curious? Hot alternatives or outrageous sexual variations?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Which part? Which, which one?

Amanda: But what is the, what is it a hot alternative to?

Sarah: Well, the erotic romance?

Amanda: Are there plant milks? Alternative –

[Laughter]

Sarah: Alternative nut milk, apparently!

Amanda: A Spanking Fiction With Fiery Over-The-Knee Encounters.

Sarah: Oh no, it’s more of the spanking fiction! We always get an ad for spank books!

Amanda: Yes, and then it says Fascinating Characters, Exciting Plots, And Explicit Sexual Interludes. Over Thirty-Five Full-Length Novels That You Can Order In The Convenience Of Your Home.

Sarah: Oh, girl.

Amanda: Oh, is the, is the URL still good?

Sarah: All right –

Amanda: Pink, Pink Flamingo?

Sarah: – Lizbeth Dusseau is still an author. She has written books like A Master for a Desperate Submissive, Bohemian Dancing, Into the Dark Wilds, and Innocence Defiled. Oh my God, and Innocence is written in Scriptina, so you know it’s good. Oh, Poor Little Rich Slut?

Amanda: Oh!

Sarah: Submissively –

Amanda: Okay!

Sarah: – Addicted to You. Okay, so A, there’s definitely going to be the F word, so Katrina should stay very far away from these books.

Amanda: It’s not, not for Katrinas. [Laughs]

Sarah: God, what if Katrina is a listener of this show? Oh my God. Oh boy. Sorry, Katrina. Okay. I just –

Amanda: I mean, given her hatred –

Sarah: You can’t listen to this show.

Amanda: – of the F word, I don’t think she’s a fan of the site! [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you, that penny just dropped. There’s no way she’s listening to this. Fuckin’ A, fuckin’ B!

Hot Alternatives With Outrageous Sexual Variations. What?

Amanda: Crazy! What does that mean?

Sarah: What, what does that mean? How do we find out? Can we order them? Oh my –

Amanda: I checked the URL; it does not work. Pink Flamingo is not –

Sarah: You can get her books. I wonder if any of them are labeled This is a Hot Alternative With Outrageous Sexual Variation… I’m sad that we don’t know more.

Page 52, we have Happily Ever After by Stella Cameron, which is all about Stella Cameron’s life; like, it’s a profile of her? But I just need to just read the first paragraph. That’s all I really need to share with everyone.

>> Like all of Stella Cameron’s novels, Dear Stranger promises to be a frothy romp.

And I don’t want the word frothy near me, thank you. That word gives me moist rejection.

>> Set in the 1848 English enclave of Come Piddle, near the town of –

Amanda: No. [Laughs]

Sarah: >> – Piddle on the Hill and Piddle on, in the Hole, the novel tells of a young woman who forms the Junior Altar Society of St. Cedric’s.

Every word in that sentence is more incredible than the last one.

Amanda: Hate it.

Sarah: Piddle in the Hole: Piddle in the Hole is a – [pauses] – pale ale. It’s a pale ale by the Wyre Piddle Brewery in Worcestershire, England, or Worcester, depending on where you are. It’s a name based on a pun on the traditional rhyme listing the local villages, Wyre Piddle, North Piddle, Piddle in the Hole near the Piddle Brook. This beer is noted for its malty, hoppy, fruity profile; no, thank you. There are two villages in England, one called Piddle in the Hole and Piddle on the Hill, and there are no search results for either of these places. So maybe they’re made up? All of you who live near strange, strange places in English enclaves, do you live near Piddle, the hill or the hole variety?

Amanda: According to Google, it says a mid-16th-century word, probably a meaning from a blend of piss and puddle.

Sarah: Ahhh, that doesn’t help! Oh God.

Amanda: ‘Cause I was like, Oh, maybe piddle means something different than what I understand it to mean.

Sarah: No.

Amanda: Not exactly.

Sarah: Okay. So looking ahead to page 66 and 67, I actually put a picture of part of page 67 on Instagram, and I was contacted by one Steve Ammidown, the ghostly third host of this episode.

Amanda: [Laughs] What, I feel like you need to have Steve do an RT Rewind –

Sarah: I really think –

Amanda: – at some point.

Sarah: – I think I do. Steve needs to – I think he wants to, so let’s totally do that. Steve, if you’re listening, we, we’re, we’re coming for you.

PDF page 67. Would you read the headline and then the first sentence, please. And the author.

Amanda: So, spoiler: I’ve seen this movie.

Sarah: [Gasps]

Amanda: Yeah, I’ve seen this movie. We can talk about it after – [laughs] – after we finish the buildup. So the article is A New Film on the Oldest Art: Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, which is the name of the film. And then there’s a big heading that says Kama Sutra. And the first sentence:

>> Acclaimed independent filmmaker, Mira Nair?

[Nah-year]?

Sarah: [Nah-year]. Mm-hmm.

Amanda: >> – Nair, who made Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala, has returned to her roots in her latest motion picture.

Which is Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love.

Sarah: Mira Nair, who, Steve alerted me to this in the comments, is Zohran Mamdani’s mother. That is Zohran Mamdani’s mother. I swear to God, history bends in a circle around this magazine.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Sitting here looking at something from 1997, and now this woman’s son is the mayor of New York. I swear history just circles this magazine in weird fucking ways. But yes, that is Zohran Mam-, Mamdani’s mom. Bless. It’s incredible.

This article is by Kathryn Falk, so the language in it is not always great, but it looks like she sat down with Ms. Nair. Looks like she sat down with the filmmaker to talk about this movie. Please tell me everything about this movie.

Amanda: So, I saw this movie when I was way too young.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: And I was like a nosy ten-year-old –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – and I watched this movie, and I still think about this movie to this day, because – and I’m going to spoil some parts for you; like, this movie is old enough that you’ve had time.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: So it is, like, pretty dramatic? There’s, like, suicide attempts and stuff like that –

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: – but there, the main character has, like, a lover, like a secret lover, and she’s, like, married off – I’m trying to remember correctly – and the lover is exposed and is put to death?

Sarah: Oh!

Amanda: And the way he’s put to death is an elephant steps on his head.

Sarah: [Gasps] Wow!

Amanda: And I think about it all the time, because, like –

Sarah: Oh-ho-ho-ho.

Amanda: – that image just, like, sticks with you, of, you know – it’s not, like, super graphic, but, like, you, you get the idea. But I just remember that particular scene. But it is, like, very graphic sexually too? I mean, it’s a movie about the Kama Sutra. But, but yeah, I saw this movie at, super young; probably should not have watched it. Yeah, and it’s pretty graphic, pretty sad. Yeah.

Sarah: Oh boy. That’s a lot!

Amanda: Yeah, you can read, just read the Wikipedia plot summary? It is pretty in-depth and –

Sarah: Whoo!

Amanda: – yeah, you get the idea.

Sarah: Oh damn! Like no – ooh! – okay! Yikes. Definitely something you want to show, share with the children.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Family movie night.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Whoa. I mean, damn!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: How wild is it that that’s, that Mira Nair is Mamdani’s mom and is in RT in ‘97, which we’re looking at right now, right after he took office? What –

Amanda: Crazy business.

Sarah: Time is a flat circle. Okay.

So on page 77 of the PDF, we have some covers in black and white, and I wanted to show them to you because they are amazing. So if you go over to our document, first we have Nancy Richards-Akers, who I spoke about in the last episode, may she rest. This is Wild Irish Skies, and of course I found a lace tablecloth listing on eBay, thank you, thank you. Just look at all this hair. Look at, look at this cover. And there’s a horse.

Amanda: Horses. Ugh.

Sarah: Look at this horse. There’s a horse. He’s got a center –

Amanda: The horse is like, I’m just passing through, guys.

Sarah: I am not – the horse is like, I’m not interested. Stop. But, like, he’s got his shirt off. Where’d his shirt go? Why is he just leaning up against a tree with his shirt off? But the –

Amanda: Did he even have a shirt to begin with?

Sarah: I mean, maybe he just never owned one. But then –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – the second eBay link is for The Mackenzies: Cleve. We’re writing about Cleve by Ana Leigh, and again, I have an eBay listing. Would you just look at these two? This is so much smarm. First of all –

Amanda: Yeah, I going to say they look very smarmy! [Laughs]

Sarah: – he is just a mullet and a smirk. That is all this is. And it’s a woman in a dance hall showgirl outfit sitting on a bar – she’s got really cute purple shoes that lace up – and there’s liquor bottles by the mile behind them. And he is just shirtless, shiny, and with a mullet and a smirk, and it’s, ugh. This guy’s gross.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: But then, when you go to page 84, we hit ze jackpot of covers. If we start with the top one, we have Heart’s Magic by Flora Speer, and which, again, with the hair and the fan. Look at this! The fans blowing the hair in this episode, in this issue, are incredible.

Amanda: Are they, like, in a bubble?

Sarah: I think they’re in like a, a, like a snow globe. I think they’re in a snow globe.

Amanda: A crystal ball?

Sarah: Or a crystal ball, because it’s like, you know, future weird night. Although this book –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – is set in 1122!

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: >> Mirielle senses that one of them is hiding some- –

Okay. Then we have romance, Man’s Best Friend. Now, not only is the – I think that may not be John DeSalvo – his hair is green. But look at the dog.

Amanda: That dog.

Sarah: That dog – you should have just put the dog on the cover. That’s all we need.

Amanda: It’s, like, coming out of the, the ribbon.

Sarah: Would you read the paragraph for romance, Man’s Best Friend?

Amanda: Okay. Oh my God, I almost picked this one for the reviews, but I’m like –

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: – There’s just too much going on.

Sarah: You’ve got to read this, this promo.

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: They’re trying to sell the book with this paragraph.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: The following paragraph is meant to make you want to buy this book.

Amanda: Okay.

>> He loves it when she touches him, and when he feels her hands play over his silky body, his tongue lolls and he knows Jenny Caruthers will have him on his back in no time. But Fido senses his mistress is wrapped up in old loves gone astray, and it is up to him, her furry friend, to weave the warp and woof of fate into the fabric of paradise.

Sarah: I’m sorry, weave the warp and woof of fate.

Amanda: I don’t know what the hell that means.

Sarah: Did you want to buy this book, now that you’ve read about this paragraph?

Amanda: NO!

Sarah: No, I don’t either! It’s kind of a lot.

Amanda: No, I think it’s, like, told from the POV of a dog, or there’s, like –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Amanda: – a dog POV?

Sarah: Absolutely, but if the book is –

Amanda: No.

Sarah: – is like the dog is watching the sex scenes and describing them, I’m out.

Amanda: No.

Sarah: And I just want to show you the last one in the, the eBay links. Saranne Dawson’s, or Sara Anne. I think it’s, it’s S-A-R-A-N-N-E, so I guess it’s Sarah Anne or Saranne. From the Mist. Would you look at this woman?

Amanda: She looks – [pauses] – not well.

Sarah: I don’t think her neck is attached to her body! I think her spine is broken.

Amanda: [Laughs] She looks not well.

Sarah: Like, I think that that ability to bend your head back that far is a sign of spinal problems or possibly a connective tissue disorder. Like –

Amanda: I would agree.

Sarah: Wow. What is going – like, he looks concerned, and he should be, ‘cause her head is going to fall off her shoulders!

Page 108, in the lower left corner of the page. All my, my, my comment was –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – I’m sorry, what?! [Laughs]

Amanda: And then I was like, Sarah, that’s a butt! [Laughs]

Sarah: There’s a naked ass cheek, and his back –

Amanda: That’s a butt! [Laughs]

Sarah: – and a loincloth! There’s a naked ass cheek and a loincloth.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So this is something, I don’t even know what this is for! Stratos, Heavenly Bodies, eight by ten signed photographs. I guess they’re selling the photographs. We have A Walk on the Beach and the unfortunately named Jungle Fever, and that guy’s naked! But there’s –

Amanda: Yeah, so I guess if you send a check or money order for $9.95 plus $3.95 shipping and handling, handling, and you can add a dollar for each additional photo –

Sarah: I searched for these; I searched every possible search term. My history is very corrupt. First of all, if you look at the picture with the butt, it looks like he’s been sliced in half and part of his body is missing, because his arm –

Amanda: He looks like he’s also clenching that butt.

Sarah: He’s, his, his butt is too tall, and his abdomen is too short. Like, it looks like he was, this is… Like, it’s –

Amanda: Butt’s too tall! [Laughs]

Sarah: Butt too tall, abdomen too short. That’s the subtitle for this one!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: He, it, it looks wrong. I will obviously put a copy of this, and I’ll try to blow it up. (Heh-heh)

Amanda: Well, it reminds me of Cake’s I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket. I want a –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – butt – [laughs] – too tall!

Sarah: I want a butt too tall and an abdomen too short. Like, it looks like half his body is missing because of the way his arm and his butt are pos- – it looks like he is missing some body parts. But yes, that is a whole naked man ass in this magazine.

Amanda: That’s a butt! But is it $9.95 for both photos? Or do you have to choose one and then you can add one on for a dollar?

Sarah: Wait, I think it’s $9.95, but then a dollar for each additional photocopy of the same photo. So you would have to pay twenty dollars to get both rather than one dollar –

Amanda: That’s a racket.

Sarah: Yes.

On page 115, I’m curious what you thought of this article.

Amanda: [Deep breath] This is a weird one. First off, I will always give a shout out to publicists. I feel like it’s a thankless job, and they work very hard, sometimes with very little money to do the things that – [laughs] – the authors want them to do. But this article is about how to make, like, a promotional tour on a shoestring budget, and they mentioned, like, going on a road trip –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – and sort of like, when they stop at places, like even a gas station, leaving little swag items or –

Sarah: Can you imagine?

Amanda: I – [laughs] – or, like, going into a bookstore and leaving them –

Sarah: My favorite –

Amanda: – promo.

Sarah: My favorite tip is:

>> Keep your eyes peeled for bookstores, especially in rural areas. Even if you don’t need to use the bathroom, stop at all that look promising. We took rural routes instead of main highways in order to do this.

So whenever they had to pee, they went and found a bookstore to pee in. Like, not on the floor. They would find bookstores and use their facilities, and then introduce themselves and hand out promo. And I’m like, This is kind of incredible, but also a little scary.

Amanda: And somewhat, there’s another part that they say:

>> Rule of thumb, you must never ever forget everyone from gas station attendants to motel clerks are potential readers, and don’t automatically discount them just because they happen to be male. That guy might have a girlfriend or wife who is a romance reader. Hell, he may even be that reader himself. Whatever the case, we found that men to be, we found the men to be thrilled by our offerings of bookmarks and ex-, excerpts.

But, like, I feel, one, if you’re going into a bookstore, you’ve got to tell them, because I feel so bad as someone who has worked in a bookstore when authors just show up and are like, Hey, I’m so-and-so author. I’d love to, like, leave some bookstores for my release or sign some stock.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: And then you’re like, We have none. Like, we don’t have any of your books here for you to sign.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a very awful conversation to have to have. Oh, yikes.

Amanda: And, like, promo is great, but, like, leaving a bookmark or some extra thing in a bookstore that is not actively stocking your book doesn’t necessarily help, ‘cause even if someone picks up that bookmark and they might be interested in it, they want to see it. They want to hold the book in their hands and look at it and read the jacket copy. The odds of them seeing a bookmark and then wanting to special order the book right then and there are pretty –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – slim.

Sarah: Yeah, very slim. And the other thing about this article is that, like, you know what? I really appreciate the sort of shoestring, hey, we’re going to do this on our own and we’re going to take a road trip. But the, the end, it says:

>> When all is said and done, was the tour worth it? Yes. Never underestimate the power of a personal touch. You can bet the bookstores we visited will remember us and give our books special attention? We got some wonderful additions to our mailing list, and we picked up a new reader or two among the legions of waitresses, gas station attendants, and Walmart clerks we met.

There’s no quantifiable, like, figure here –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – that, like, our sales went up X; we sold X, X number of this book versus a lesser number of our prior book. Like, this clearly made a difference. There’s none of that? It’s just like, Hey, we took a road trip. I, I just, this was very confusing to me.

Amanda: And even if you have like, say, five thousand sales, right? You don’t know if that’s what you would have gotten either way?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: And there’s no way to be like –

Sarah: No.

Amanda: – Oh, at least a hundred of those came from us talking to these people or –

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: – doing this road trip. There is no way to know which sale was made by this activity –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – or if it was going to be made regardless.

Sarah: And I just want to be clear: like, I understand that authors need to do a lot of work to get their books out into the world, and I also understand, especially right now in 2026, thinking that the personal touch is going to make a difference. I still think about this author who took out an ad on one of those placemats in a diner in New York that I was at where, you know, there’s, like, always an ad for, like the funeral home and the mechanic and, you know…craft shop. There was an article, Want to read a book? And it was, like, a QR code, and you could get this woman’s book! And – while you were eating – and I, it totally worked on me; I thought it was brilliant. I posted about it, and people were like, Oh my God, I saw that ad like five years ago. How long has she been running that ad? And I’m like, If it’s working, it’s still going to run!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: And that is really ingenious marketing. I think it’s really clever, especially now because people have a much wider and common understanding of what romance is? Like, we’re not, like, hiding it. People understand what romance is, even if they don’t read it, as opposed to this period of time. I just, I think it’s really interesting to write this article, and I think it’s really cool the effort that they made, but there’s no quantifiable indication that this actually made a difference, except that they, you know, took a trip together. What a strange article, but okay! Whatever works.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: On page 124, what are you buying?

Amanda: Okay, I’m going, I’m going, I’m going – 124. What am I buying?

Sarah: There’s three things for sale here. There’s the Anne Rice signature mug, the Anne Rice signature T-shirt – which you can still get on her website, by the way – or the library tapestry luggage set. It comes with a tote bag for thirty-five dollars, a hanger safe for twenty – I don’t know what that is – a cosmetic travel case for twenty, or a makeup case for thirteen, and a duffel bag for forty-five. Plus there’s a pocket tote, a book cover, and a shoe bag. This is a whole set of luggage done in a library tapestry print.

Amanda: I’m buying the mug. I am an absolute slut for a mug. I have too many mugs.

Sarah: …for a mug. Okay!

Amanda: I, I love eating soup out of a mug; I love eating ice cream out of a mug. A mug is a multi-purpose item for me in my home, and I have –

Sarah: So –

Amanda: – too many mugs.

Sarah: So you’re going with the Anne Rice mug. I’m pretty sure you can get that. I want to know what the hell a hanger safe is. It looks like it is a fabric cover on a hanger that allows you to hang a garment on the hanger and then stuff things in the thing that’s wrapped around the hanger as well…

Amanda: Yeah, it says:

>> The hanger safe holds the shape of your jacket and has camouflaged pockets for money, passport, and other important items.

Sarah: I would forget about them if I put them in a hanger safe…

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: …I just put them in the closet in a hanger, like, I’m never going to remember that that’s where they are, and then in five…

Amanda: You’ll never see that again.

Sarah: – after I’ve paid a lot of money to replace and expedite my replacement passport, I’m going to find it and be pissed at myself. Like, that’s what’s going to happen here.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Now, we’re at page – I just want to set the scene – we’re at page 124 of 132, and the rest of the magazine, a lot of it is, like, the classifieds and, you know, the orphans of articles that were written earlier in the magazine, and I was like, yeah, there’s probably not much more. And then I come to page 125.

Oh dear God. It’s the 1996 Romantic Times convention video, which is two VHSs, two, two, two. Video one intain, contain, includes entire coverage of the costume competition, plus highlights from the Old South Ball and Book Fair, which, wow, I wish I could find that. The pictures show a lot of really expensive large gowns with a lot of petticoats underneath. Like, a lot of these women’s skirts are a total bell shape. There’s a lot of fabric going on.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: And then below that – wow. Okay. How would, how would you, how would you describe this? Video two is the entire coverage of the cover model pageant, which I call the mangeant. How, how would, how would you describe this?

Amanda: There’s just a bunch of shirtless men –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – in, are those draw-, are they jeans or drawstring pants? I think they’re jeans.

Sarah: I think they’re jeans.

Amanda: They look very baggy, though.

Sarah: They’re pleated.

Amanda: So –

Sarah: It’s the ‘90s –

Amanda: – in –

Sarah: – those are pleated jeans.

Amanda: Yeah. They’re all shirtless, let me reiterate. And –

Sarah: Lot of nip-, nipples everywhere.

Amanda: – they’ve got, like, Mardi Gras masquerade masks. Some are wearing them, some have them on their head, some have them around their neck. And then there are two smaller photos. One is one of the shirtless models crawling on the floor. And then the other one is one of the models has a shirt this time, holding a woman like a clinch cover situation, and she has on a very shiny, shiny dress.

Sarah: Amanda?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I didn’t realize that those were Mardi Gras masks, and I thought they were wearing Native American headdresses. I thought this was a picture of at least a dozen shirtless, shiny men in pleated jeans wearing Native American headdresses, and I was like, What the fuck am I looking at? And nope, you are right, those are…

Amanda: Those are Mardi Gras masks.

Sarah: Okay, I’ll give them some credit. I don’t love the Old South Ball, but at least they weren’t walking around wearing a headdress. Oh my gosh! [Laughs]

Amanda: I mean, I can understand why you’d think that, because we had, have had several Native American romances and hair feathers in this issue.

Sarah: Yes, yes, we have. Oh my God.

So as I mentioned, the rest is the classifieds, the orphans of prior articles, and then the back cover is the small hardcover of One Perfect Rose. They were really, were, they really were putting a lot of money in this campaign.

Amanda: They’re not making good use of the space on that cover.

Sarah: No. No, the book –

Amanda: There’s a lot of white space.

Sarah: Yeah. Like, this is a really poor use of money in terms of the land, of the real estate of the ad? Has the convenience of a paperback with the elegance and durability of a hardcover? Okay, all of the parts of the hardcover are removing the conveniences of the hard-, of the paperback. All of the things that made the paperback convenient are undone by the fact that it’s a hardcover, but okay!

Amanda: Yeah, they’re, they’re solving a problem where there is none.

Sarah: There is no problem.

What did you think of this issue?

Amanda: [Big sigh]

Sarah: Oh, big sigh!

Amanda: I think – I’m digesting. I think some really fun things, like the, the Mamdani tie, crazy.

Sarah: Yeah. Unexpected.

Amanda: Absolutely nuts. Thank you, Steve, for that little nugget.

Sarah: Steve, the…third host of this episode, I swear.

Amanda: Yeah. I don’t think it was in, I think we talked about this in the covers?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: You know, talking about the Greenland shark. That was great. I do feel like these older issues, especially the black and white, more newsprint ones?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: Tend to be a little bit more fun because they have a lot of the older covers –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – and then you get to experience the fun of googling these covers and seeing what they actually look like in color, and they’re always –

Sarah: Yes, ‘cause the majority…

Amanda: – so much better.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: Yeah! So I think that’s the most fun part of these older issues is, like, the reveal of the covers when you actually look them up and you see how colorful and absolutely bonkers they were.

The books were fine.

Sarah: Hmm.

Amanda: Eh.

Sarah: There’s not a lot of –

Amanda: They were fine.

Sarah: – titles from ‘97 where I’m like, Yes, I want to reread that, except Amanda Quick. I could reread an Amanda Quick anytime, anyplace. I might read, reread one now.

Amanda: Yeah. I’m excited for my used paperback to come in.

Sarah: It is interesting because it’s, this era of Romantic Times is very much a sort of historical record of romance more than a nostalgia that I long for. I don’t – like, there are some parts of, like, for example, romance Twitter in the mid 2000s and, and before Twitter became terrible. I miss that so much. I learned so much by talking to other authors and writers, and the early days of romance Twitter were truly incredible. I miss them. I miss the period of time when author, when all the publishers had blogs. But that was like, you know, like you said, that’s the part where I remember, I have memories of this time.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: When I look at the ‘90s, I kind of remember some of these books? Like, I remember Penelope Neri: she was always advertised in the middle card stock section of a Zebra, where the middle of the book, there was either a sex scene on either side of that postcard insert in the middle, and that was, like, to sign up for the, you know, get, get the books sent to you directly? There were always ads for Penelope Neri books in those card stock center pieces.

But none of these books, with the exception of Amanda Quick, are books where I’m like, Oh, I yearn to read that again, ‘cause I don’t.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: But I do like the F word? I like it a lot!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, I find it serves a lot of purposes? So I mean, I hope that Katrina, wherever she is, I hope she found lots of books that she loves that were exactly the right language for her. I’m never going to understand telling authors what language to use. I mean, oof. And I just, I, I – is really the presence of a word in a book really going to send you over the edge? Really?

Amanda: Maybe. Who knows?

Sarah: Maybe? I don’t know. But this is a very particular historical period of romance where I learn something about romance every time I look at the ‘90s issues, but it’s not like I’m like, Oh, and I want to read that right away. You know what I mean?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. It’s like, okay, this is the past and it can stay in the past, but I’m really glad to visit and see what it was like. And I’m really, really glad they weren’t wearing Native American headdresses. Thank you.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you for that. Like, I –

Amanda: Like, I think if –

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: – if the image was in color, we wouldn’t have this problem.

Sarah: It would have been much more obvious. But there’s a lot of feathers sticking up off of their heads. It’s an understandable –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: I, I will put the photo in the show notes, never worry.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, thank you so much for joining me on this journey back to when you were eight years old.

Amanda: When I was eight, yeah!

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you, as always, to Amanda for hanging out with me.

As I mentioned in the intro, there is a video version of this episode with the visuals superimposed over us – wow, my video editing skills are so tops! I mean, they’re not, but I’m working on it. If you’d like to see all these images while we talk about them and also watch the number of times we make faces – like, I am very meme-able, I have discovered. I edit looking at myself now, and wow! I make a lot of faces. And Amanda does too. We roll our eyes a lot; it’s very fun. You can find us on YouTube @SmartPodcastTrashyBooks.

As I mentioned, I will be on vacation next week, and I will be re-airing an older episode from the vault, and I’ll be back March 13th with Romantic Times Rewind July 2000 book reviews.

Now, we all know the book reviews are going to be between three and four and a half stars, maybe a four and a half Top Pick Gold, but here at the end of the episode, there are only five-star bad jokes, and I’ve got one for you.

What’s faster than an escalator?

Give up? What’s faster than an escalator?

An esca-sooner!

[Laughs] You’re welcome! Esca-sooner. That’s from watcher2001 on Reddit. Thank you!

On behalf of everyone here, including Kate, who is snoring – I’m surprised the mic isn’t picking it up, because she is just sawing a log over there – 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]