Dear Bitches, Smart Authors, September 22, 2011

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Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me is Jane Litte from Dear Author. This week we are talking about romangst. Romangst is angsty romance with dark and emotional themes and whether or not we can consider the characters redeemed and functioning adults by the time the story is over. We talk about a lot of books in this podcast, and we hope you’ll enjoy it.

I also hope you’re enjoying this week’s music, which is called “Sweet as a Nut” by The Shadow Orchestra. I am totally enjoying it, and I hope you are too.

And now, on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah: Let’s talk about romangst first.

Jane Litte: All right. So we’re, we’re just say-, making up new terms for Romancelandia –

Sarah: Yes.

Jane: – willy-nilly.

Sarah: Because, you know, we can do that. I have an English degree. It comes with very few powers, you know. You, you have a JD; you can do a lot of things. I have an in-, I have an English degree, and I can ask you if you want fries with that, but I can also make up words, so I have created “romangst.” Which, which goes nicely with Dear Author’s “mistorical.”

Jane: Right, and for the people who ask, you know, what right we have to make up those words, I point you to Sarah’s English degree.

Sarah: That’s right! I have the power of a red pen.

Jane: All right, so you picked a, well, you actually picked two books for your –

Sarah: Yes!

Jane: – your romance book club. It’s not the Sizzling Summer Book Club.

Sarah: No, it’s just Sizzling, ‘cause summer’s over. I, and, and, it was only supposed to be for summer last year, but so many people wanted it to continue that I just continued the Sizzling Book Club without the Summer part. So we do one book a month all year round, but this month I originally selected An Unwilling Bride by Jo Beverley, which was recently re-released by Kensington, and this book is really controversial because, I believe it was Jo Beverley who called it putting the alpha male on trial in the course of the book. The, the hero is, can, has some behavior problems, basically, and a lot of readers reacted very strongly to this book, so I wanted to discuss it, but then I found out that Kensington did not release it digitally, only in paper, and I want to make sure that if I, if I pick a book that it’s released digitally and in paper as much as possible, so I had to switch. I’m going to do chats for both, but I switched to another romangsty title called Mistress by Marriage by Maggie Robinson.

And, and romangst is the term I use for a, a story where there are some really big emotional issues on one or both sides that have to be dealt with and overcome during the course of the novel. And I really like heavily emotional romangst, but I can’t read a lot of it in a row or else I get really depressed. [Laughs] Like, if I read an Anna Campbell, I need to read something light afterward. If I read an early Laura Kinsale, I need to read something light afterward. If I try to read those one after the other I’ll need to just go hide under a blanket for a week until I put myself back together.

Jane: Well, the Jo Beverley book was the subject of a huge debate on the internet back when the All About Romance boards were not archived.

Sarah: Ah, so we can’t go back and look at it?

Jane: No, but I remember di-, distinctly, because it raised a, a lot of emotions and, and the debate largely centered around the fact that the hero – I think his name is Lucas –

Sarah: Yes.

Jane: – strikes the heroine.

Sarah: Yes, he hits her.

Jane: And –

Sarah: I hope that’s not a spoiler, ‘cause you probably read about that online.

Jane: [Laughs] Spoiler – you’ll have to insert, like, some blooper spoiler alert. In, in any event, the question was whether he was truly remorseful and had changed from that, or the, the issue of redemption as it relates to these angst-driven heroes is an interesting concept, and the reason for that is – and it goes kind of back to what we’ve talked about before in that the readers have to be emotionally ready, or they have to be consenting to the acceptance of the redemption. So for some readers, they could not over-, they could not – well, maybe they just didn’t believe that he was fully redeemed, and, and so I can see that that’s going to be the subject of a great chat, because it, it does have really polarizing opinions. These romangsty books have very polarizing opinions; I mean, if you look at Anna Campbell’s books, her books generate a lot of emotion on both sides, like and dislike.

Sarah: When her first book came out – and now I have to Google it, because I don’t remember titles and I’m a big old idiot – Claiming the Courtesan – I read, and I nearly fell off my chair because it was so dark and emotional, and I, I wasn’t expecting it, because I had sort of become used to, I don’t want to say light as a derogatory term, but very upbeat and happy romances from Avon, and here came this dark, emotional, really wrenching story, and the question from the book was whether or not the hero properly grovels for the heroine’s forgiveness, because there’s a scene that really, really turned readers, and it’s interesting because there’s twenty-eight five-star reviews, eight four-stars, six two-stars, and nine one-star reviews, and people really, really had a problem with the behavior of the hero, because the, the heroine was his mistress, and he kidnaps her and drags her up to his country estate and holds her hostage because he, he loves her and he cannot accept that she has broken up with him. And I mean he, he behaves in a completely crazysauce manner, and there’s one scene where some readers considered it rape, and I personally felt as a reader that he had not adequately achieved my forgiveness for what he did. I did not believe that he could function as a, as a, as a normal human, and I had a lot of problems with that, but at the same time, I still remember thinking, holy crap, that book just gutted me, and, and Anna Campbell sort of specializes in, in angst-ridden heroes, which a lot of readers really enjoy.

The, the other book that I recommended to you that was really romangsty was Seven Nights to Forever by Evangeline Collins, and I really waffled about whether or not to recommend this to you, because I know you like the angsty hero, ‘cause I know you really like Harlequin Presents, but this book was different because the hero was the abused spouse, and they both had a lot of emotional scars to overcome to achieve their happy ending, and I, if I remember correctly, you liked it.

Jane: I did like it, and this is a case where I, I felt the romangst was not driven by the hero being an asshole – [laughs] – which is often the case, but rather the hero being the abused character.

Sarah: Yes.

Jane: And it’s interesting because I think when you hear the hero abu-, being abused, you automatically think that he’s not very, he must be emasculated in some way, because no man can really allow himself to be abused, but in this case he wasn’t necessarily abused physically, but he was of a lower class, although much wealthier than the woman he married, and he married her in order for him to elevate his family’s position in society so his wi-, his sister could marry better.

Sarah: Right, and the, if I remember correctly, his wife’s family needed the money, and he was in trade and had pots of it.

Jane: Right. And he made this sacrifice, and she spent every moment possible deriding him, deriding his manhood, his prowess in bed; just, you know, insulting him at every turn, so, so much so that he could, he could barely go home during the – you know, he couldn’t spend time with her because it was so emotionally and mentally debilitating, and she flaunted her affairs and, which was even worse. You know, he couldn’t satisfy her in bed; she, like, was revolted by him –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – and she was having all of these affairs, and it just wore on him, but I didn’t feel that he was emasculated in any fashion.

Sarah: No, I felt like he was psychologically abused so strategically – like, this, his wife was so focused on completely decimating his confidence – that the one area in which he had achievement in his work became his, his sort of solace, that he would spend all his time at work. And the other condition that the wife set upon him was that he was not allowed to have affairs, while she was, and that if he ever did try to go elsewhere, she would withdraw her sponsorship of his sister and, and make sure that she was socially ruined, because it would be no skin off her nose if her sister-in-law was unacceptable, because she was the daughter, I believe, of a viscount, so she had automatic standing. And at that time, bringing divorce proceedings was a massive, massive, public humiliation, particularly for the hero in this case, because he would have to make it clear that his wife had been cheating on him, and of course she would make it public that he couldn’t satisfy her, so he, he was in a situation where there was no way for him to win.

Jane: Plus I think it was made clear in that book that the hero wanted his sacrifice to be worth it. I mean, he had gone through years of this mental abuse –

Sarah: Right.

Jane: – and if he didn’t see it through so that his sister could be launched in, into society in a successful manner and marry well so that she didn’t have to have the relationship that he had, so that she could have had a good relationship, a loving relationship, then it wouldn’t have made his suffering worthwhile, so he felt like he couldn’t divorce for that reason as well.

Sarah: Right, and it, he, when the book starts out, he is just in such a horrible place that you feel such pity for him, but he’s not emasculated. You don’t – he, he is, he is one of those heroes that has been abused in such a coldly pathological fashion that you don’t feel that he’s been emasculated, and I think it’s a rare thing to find a hero that is in a position of some disadvantage, yet you still have respect for them as a character.

Jane: Totally. The, one of the books that I had talked to you about, and I know that you hadn’t read it, haven’t read them yet, but it’s the Jennifer Ashley series. The latest one, The Many Sins of Lord Cameron, also features an abused husband.

Sarah: Yes.

Jane: And he’s actually physically abused. She was just crazy, and, like, when he would fall asleep, she would burn him, and sometimes she would actually give him drugs. Like, I, I don’t – how is it pronounced? Laudanum?

Sarah: I think it’s laudanum, yeah.

Jane: She would put laudanum in his whiskey or Scotch or whatever, and then when he would fall into a drugged sleep, she would just do really horrible things to him, because she was crazy. She was just insane, and she enjoyed torturing him. She enjoyed seeing this huge, brawny man brought low before her, and he is just completely – he begins to hate women, obviously, and interestingly enough, so what, he doesn’t, he doesn’t like them, and he doesn’t trust them, and he perpetuates this sickness, this relationship sickness, because after she dies he then seeks out all these feckless, faithless women so as to kind of justify his dislike for them. And he actually falls in love with a woman who obviously is not at all like his former wife or the women that he’s been having these affairs with, but a woman that he tried to seduce and refused to do so because she didn’t feel like it would, that, that the man who married her, an older man who had married her, didn’t deserve to be cuckolded by her and Lord Cameron, and he felt some reluctant admiration for her, but he also wanted to see how genuine her attachment was. But they don’t see each other then again until her husband has passed, and he sees this as an opportunity to have an affair with her, but as they fall in love what happens is that, he believes that, you know, he’s unlovable –

Sarah: Right.

Jane: – and it drives, that, that drives him to live a very phrenetic life with her. They go abroad, and they do all of these extreme activities and, when he would just really like to go home to his stud farm, and she would like to go home too, and then what, you know, the, she’s a lady-in-waiting, and Queen Victoria calls her back, and he’s afraid that she’ll never come back to him. So, again, I never felt like he was emasculated because of having suffered the abuse.

Neither the hero in Seven Nights to Forever nor the hero in The Many Sins of Lord Cameron are asshole heroes; the angst is brought about by something else. In the Jo Beverley book and in Maggie Robinson’s book, the other book you’ve chosen for the Sizzling Book Club, I feel like the angst is brought in by the asshole hero, and in Maggie Robinson’s book, and I haven’t finished it, and the reason I haven’t finished it is I’m really struggling with the hero’s character. I mean, he’s pretty mean, and he’s done things to the heroine that I’m find-, I’m just struggling with. I’m finding them to be beyond the pale, and I know that you say that it, it turns around, but I have to admit I’m struggling.

Sarah: You think? How far did you get?

Jane: I got to chapter three.

Sarah: Oh! I, I can sense that I, that I’m – I think that the chat for the Mistress by Marriage book will be interesting, because I can see that some people really, really liked it, online, just judging by the reactions, and some people who really could not connect or even like the characters, and so I think that’s indicative of the delicacy of creating romangst, if that makes sense. It’s a very tricky prospect to create characters who are in some way damaged and have to get better, because there’s always the, the chance that when you start reading about them, or when the reader starts reading about them, they’re going to dislike them and not care if they get better because they start out in such a place of being an asshole. I, I think that when I started Mistress by Marriage I had a lot of sympathy for the heroine, but by the, by the point where I am now, which is almost to the end, I have a lot more sympathy for the hero, and I want to hit the heroine with a brick. But – [laughs] – I also see where he is making efforts to become a better person, and she has not woken up yet to the fact that she also needs to change, and that’s the other delicate turning point, I think, for, for, for romangst: if you have characters that need to improve in some way, who need to become better people, delaying the point at which they realize that they need to kick their own asses and become better people makes it frustrating for the reader, because everyone else has recognized it except them. Which I suppose is human, but also very frustrating to read about.

Jane: That is a really delicate balance, because I remember in the second book of Jennifer Ashley’s series, Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage, the hero is an, a former alcoholic, and you don’t see any of the recovery?

Sarah: Ah.

Jane: And so it’s hard, it was hard to main-, for me to maintain sympathy for him, and I also thought that it placed her character in a difficult position because we never saw him treating her badly, because he was on, he’d already recovered, and so you can’t have the recovery too early, because I think that that ruins the romangst, but you can’t have it too late either. I think about, like, the Jo, Mary Jo Putney books, the contemporary books. She had a guy who was repeatedly raped when he was a child, and she had a former wife abuser who was getting back with the wife he abused –

Sarah: Oh boy.

Jane: – and I, and I felt in both of those cases that, like the, Caroline in Mistress by Marriage, that the recovery began too late, and even, especially for the pedophile book, and I can’t remember the name of it – I think it was called The Spiral Path – The Spiral Path then, the hero recovers too late from his pedo-, his suff-, his childhood abuse, and he does it by writing in a journal for, like, a couple days. And –

Sarah: That’s it?! A couple days.

Jane: That’s it. The, the whole idea behind these reformation, redemption, romangst stories is convincing the reader of the success of the, that turnaround.

Sarah: Yes.

Jane: And it sounds like, for you, Robinson’s leaving the turnaround for Caroline too late for you to buy into it.

Sarah: At this point, I really want more from Caroline. I mean, she’s going to have to have a massive wake-up-and-smell-the-roses to, to, to sell me on the fact that she recognizes her own weaknesses and she recognizes her own contributions to the problem. What’s interesting is that there seem to be a few more historical romances that look at relationships that are already established. It’s not the courtship; it’s the repair of a marriage. And I –

Jane: Right.

Sarah: – and I, I find that fascinating because – I hate to pimp myself, but I’m going to; forgive me – one of the points that I make in the book I have coming out in October, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels, is that one of the reasons I believe that romance readers are so often in happy relationships is because courtship is not an ending process; it doesn’t end when you get married. You continually court your spouse, and you continually make sure that the people who you care about know that you care about them. So when you see two characters repairing a relationship, they are effectively embarking on another courtship to bring each other closer by the end, but that also means that both characters have to recognize the problems that they’ve con-, contributed to the relationship as much as they recognize the positive that they’ve contributed to the relationship, and it can’t, it rarely is only one person’s fault. I mean, there are cases where someone’s an utter asswipe, and that’s not the hero or the heroine. Most of the time when you start with two people in trouble who get back together, that reconciliation comes from both characters recognizing their patterns of behavior and changing them, and in Robinson’s book, I think that the hero has recognized much more early on in the, in the process his own contributions to his own unhappiness in his situation with his wife, whereas I think the wife is sort of stuck on poor me, poor me, poor me. Now, granted, he did a really crappy thing to her by sticking her on a street filled with courtesans and thereby ruining her socially, but I want her to recognize her own foibles, and I want her to recognize her own contribution to her un-, her own unhappiness.

Jane: But could her behavior, I, I mean, ever justify what he did? ‘Cause I felt like what he did was really awful. And it’s –

Sarah: It was really awful.

Jane: ‘Cause he could have, he could have, you know, banished her to the countryside. He, he could have, they could have lived separate lives like so many other people purportedly did during that time period, but he really punished her and humiliated her –

Sarah: He did.

Jane: – in the eyes of all of her peers, and he separated her from her family and her supposed friends to the point that she had to create an entirely new life, and he comes once a year, and they have sex, and I just felt like he was inflicting emotional torture on her repeatedly.

Sarah: He really was, and he didn’t, he didn’t have any real reason to step out of his comfort zone, so the situation, the status quo where, when the book starts is, is acceptable to him, and I find that kind of amazing. How is that acceptable? How is that acceptable? That’s not acceptable; that’s terrible! Dickwad! What’s interesting is that she didn’t really like society, and she didn’t really like how difficult it was for her to fit into his world, and I wonder – ‘cause I haven’t quite finished it yet – I wonder if their reconciliation will mean leaving, his leaving society. And that’s something I often struggle with where, like, but with books like Anna Campbell’s, where one character is a courtesan, and I also struggled with this with Seven Nights to Forever: even though there wasn’t the internet and social media back then, if you were a courtesan, you weren’t suddenly going to be made acceptable. It wasn’t as if you would, you know, get sprinkled with magic social pixie dust and be accepted into society and be admitted into places where people knew you were a courtesan but were okay with it. But more importantly, your kids would be tainted with that social problem as well, and how is that a happy ending for, for, for those two, knowing that their children are not acceptable marriage candidates because one of their parents was a ho?

Jane: There’s a real interesting – have you ever read His Lordship’s Mistress by Joan Wolf?

Sarah: Yes. You, you bought it for me! You bought it for me as a gift, or no, you told Adam to buy it for me; you told my husband to buy it for me, and oh, I loved it.

Jane: Well, I thought one of the points that Wolf used well in that story was showing how he was going to integrate her, his, his mistress, into his life by taking her to the house of a socially prominent but outside the rigid structure of the ton to see if she would be accepted.

Sarah: Yes.

Jane: He, he, and, and that action, actually, is what prompts his mother and his sister to send a friend of theirs to warn the heroine off.

Sarah: Yes. That he’s going to try to make her fringe-acceptable.

Jane: Right! So he recognized that there were areas that would never be open to him again, but that there was society with which he could mingle and she could mingle and still have a rich life, and so whether that was true, whether that’s a mistorical – I doubt it, because Wolf seems to have a pretty good grasp on the time period – but even if that’s a mistorical representation, I felt that, like, Wolf did a really good job of showing the plausibility of these two people being together, even if she was a courtesan.

Sarah: Yes. That was one thing I had a lot of respect for: he recognized that there would be future problems if he didn’t employ some strategy to give them a society in which to be happy.

Jane: Right.

Sarah: And it’s interesting because when you see the hero and heroine in most romances, particularly historical romances, there’s always a period of isolation where they get to be alone, which is something they’re not supposed to be able to do, and, and in a, in a relationship where the hero and the heroine are of different social statuses and different social groups, they have to figure out a way to end that isolation so that they have a society in which to be together where, where both parties are accepted, and many romances where the hero and heroine are of different classes don’t acknowledge the difficulties in reintegrating into a society. One of the things I still think about from an older romance was the first of the Wallflower quartet by, by Lisa Kleypas. The hero was very wealthy, but he was in trade, and Annabelle, who was poor, her family had no money, but she was of a very distinguished family, and she marries a guy who’s a commoner, Simon Hunt, but has absolute pockets of money because he is in industry and railroad and barely accepted by society, mostly because he has lots and lots of money and the aristocrats by then didn’t have too much. So they get married, and she worries about their status and, and her, the heroine’s sense of her husband being working class is really troublesome to her. The scene I remember is when they go away from England and they go to other countries, and she sees how her husband is treated in society there, where he is treated with respect and deference, not only because he’s wealthy, but because he achieved that wealth himself. He, he has made himself successful, and outside of their limited circle in England, he is treated with an exceptional amount of respect and admiration, and she feels kind of like an assmonkey for not having that same level of respect for the person that she married, that she supposedly loves. I loved that because it showed how, how society is important but also can be, you can sneak around it in some ways, and I think that in – and that’s how Kleypas did it; she took them out of the country to other societies where they would be welcome. I don’t honestly know – I, I haven’t finished it – I don’t honestly know how Mistress by Marriage is going to finish, but I’m sort of curious to see how the, how the future balances out, because it’s important. Even if you don’t have any real knowledge of historical accuracy, and I admit that I don’t, I know that there’s going to be problems. I mean, there’s problems now with different, people of different cultures marrying each other. It’s, it’s, it’s a universal theme; you want to see that part worked out too.

Jane: This’ll be an interesting chat for you.

Sarah: Yes, both of them.

Jane: I think that’s a smart pick.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Thank you! I love it when people are like, I have a lot to say, because you and I rarely agree on books.

Jane: Rarely.

Sarah: You were talking about Katrakis’s Last Mistress by Caitlin Crews and how the hero focused on his own healing?

Jane: Well, that, to me, is one of, a great example of a romangsty character who’s not yet fully recovered at the end of the book. The, the, the plot is that this guy is bringing down the entire family of a man who had wronged him and who had led his half-sister to commit suicide.

Sarah: Oy!

Jane: And he enters the book with every intention of using everyone in any unscrupulous manner to achieve his goal, and he doesn’t care who’s the victims, whether they’re innocent; they’re damned by the fact that they share the last name.

Sarah: Right.

Jane: So Tristanne Barbery is the heroine. She’s the sister of the man that Nikos Katrakis hates, and she offers herself to him as his mistress at the demand of her brother, because if she doesn’t, then he will not fund her mother’s medical treatments. So –

Sarah: Ohhh boy!

Jane: – this is a man who brought him-, you know, he’s self-made, brought himself up from the slums, and so you know that he’s determined and can accomplish anything. At the end of the book, and this is actually in the Amazon reviews, the, the, the lower reviews dislike the fact that he never says “I love you” to her, and he doesn’t.

Sarah: Ooh!

Jane: He, not even at the end.

Sarah: Oy.

Jane: Because he admits to her at the very end of the book that he doesn’t know what love is, that everyone that he was supposed to love him, his half-sister, his father, his mother, had treated him worse than they would treat an enemy, and so how would he know what love is?

Sarah: Of course.

Jane: But what he does know is that being without her is too painful and that he has to have her in his life and that he will dedicate his entire future in learning how to love her better than anybody has ever loved her before and that, you know, perhaps better than any man has ever loved anyone before. And so rather than making millions or destroying innocent young women, his new goal is to make her happy and loved. So even though I, even though he never expresses those feelings, and even though he’s never, that he’s not fully healed at the end of the story, I felt like there was still a hope and belief that their Happy Ever After was genuine.

Sarah: Because he was going to apply that same dedication that he used for his business towards their relationship, and when you see a – [laughs] – when you see an alpha male who is all about the business focus on the relationship, you know that she’s going to be treated pretty well.

Jane: Right. So they’re – obviously, to some of the readers who’ve read this book, they didn’t, they weren’t convinced at the end that there was redemption, but I don’t think that you have to say “I love you” in order to be redeemed and to fully believe in, in a, in the romance. That was actually the subject of a lot of debate with Jane Feather’s Almost a Bride?

Sarah: Really!

Jane: The hero – yeah – the hero never says “I love you” to the heroine, and he’s pretty cold. He’s kind of a cold fish. But it, for some of these people, I think that saying those words aren’t meaningful. Anybody can say “I love you.” I, I remember reading a book where they were saying “I love you,” like, in the second chapter, and those words, while powerful, those are just words, and I felt like in the Katrakis’s Last Mistress, or I guess it’s Katrakis’s Sweet Bride in the US –

Sarah: [Laughs] Don’t you love it when they change the title, ‘cause you –

Jane: Yes.

Sarah: – don’t know what you’re looking for? All right.

Jane: Yeah, like, what is the difference between Katrakis’s Sweet Mistress and Katrakis’s Last Mis-, or [Katrakis’s] Sweet Prize and Katrakis’s Last Mistress?

Sarah: Wait, sweet prize or sweet bride?

Jane: Sweet prize.

Sarah: Wow, sweet prize is even worse! It’s just an object; at least a mistress is a person!

Jane: [Laughs]

Sarah: The hell is that?!

Jane: Well, you know, they changed her, another Crews title from The Shameful, The Shameless Playboy to The Disgraceful Playboy [The Disgraced Playboy]

Sarah: What?!

Jane: Yeah, I don’t get it either.

Sarah: Weeeird!

Jane: It’s like they’re trying to trick you into buying more than one book! [Laughs]

Sarah: Nice. Thanks for that.

Jane: I don’t actually believe that, but –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Jane: – I don’t like it when you change your titles from Mills & Boon to Harlequin and vice versa. Get some continuity!

Sarah: I, I actually wish that I would, I was more easy, more able to tell the difference between the Modern Heat and those titles when they’re folded into Harlequin Presents, because the titles are almost always changed and I can’t recognize them, but I love the Modern Heat line, and I have to go look them up and look up the author’s name and then look it up. I can only presume, because I know Harlequin does so much market research, I can only presume that there is a remarkable difference between the audiences in the UK and the audiences in the US. That’s my only explanation, that, that we are, some, some of us who are, read romance think very differently about British and US titles. I personally couldn’t give a crap, ‘cause I don’t remember the title anyway, so what’s the point?! Doesn’t matter! I’m not going to remember it! I’ll remember the cover, though, perfectly. Like, I could describe to you Maya Banks’s romance novel where, the, the, the Silhouette Desire where the heroine is a virgin and she pursues the hero because it’s her last chance to try to get him. Do you know which one I’m talking about?

Jane: I do know which one you’re talking about, but I wouldn’t be able to pick out that cover.

Sarah: Oh, I could, I remember telling, I had a – this was, this was in 2009, because I did a book event promoting Beyond Heaving Bosoms, and Sydney came to the event and introduced herself and was going to go book shopping, which, you know, who wouldn’t want to go book shopping? And I told her, okay, I can’t remember the name, but it’s by Maya Banks, and it’s out right now, and it’s yellow, and she’s got a red dress on, and they are on a beach, and she has a, a red flower in her hair, and the, the Desire bar is on the right-hand side, and she’s like, oh my God, I found it! It’s The Tycoon’s Rebel Bride. Do I remember that? No. Do I remember the cover? Perfectly. I could sketch it for you if you wanted, and I read this book three years ago. It’s a wonderful book.

Jane: I can’t, I can’t remember titles or covers for those category books. I can only remember the plot.

Sarah: Yes! And hence the more popular, ever-growing feature Help a Bitch Out where people remember the plot but not the book title! I’m terrible at remembering titles. I’m glad to know I’m not alone in that.

[music]

Sarah: And that’s another edition of the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast. Thank you for downloading it.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, you can reach us at sbjpodcast@gmail.com. That’s S for Sarah, B for Bitches, J for Jane, podcast at gmail dot com. We do read all of our reader mail, and a future podcast will feature our responses to some of the reader mail we’ve received. Actually, it’s not reader mail so much as it is listener mail, but, you know, same thing.

We are also listed at a podcast directory called PodcastPickle, which I can’t help but giggle at, so if you wanted to leave us feedback or ratings there as well, you can do so. Just search for Dear Bitches, Smart Authors at podcastpickle.com. Who do you think named that? Seriously, who sat down and said, you know, when I think podcasting, I think pickles. I mean, I don’t have anything against pickles, but that’s a really awesomely strange name for a podcast directory; hence we’re there.

And as usual, our friend Sassy Outwater has hooked us up with original music. This is called “Sweet as a Nut,” and it’s by The Shadow Orchestra. You can find them online at shadoworchestra.com, and you can find Sassy Outwater at twitter.com/SassyOutwater.

Thank you for joining us for this week’s podcast, and as usual, we wish you the very best of reading.

[sweet, nutty music]