Sarah interviews debut author Anna Bradley, who, prior to becoming an author of historical romance was a curator and librarian for the Chawton House Library. She specialized in acquiring rare books by women writers published between 1600-1830 for Chawton House – which is way cool. We also talk about which is better: old book smell vs new car smell, vetting old books, meeting authors you admire, and whether “to librarian” should be a verb. (Spoiler alert: it should). And of course we talk about her upcoming debut, A Wicked Way to Win an Earl.
❤ Read the transcript ❤
↓ Press Play
This podcast player may not work on Chrome and a different browser is suggested. More ways to listen →
Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
If you like the podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, or find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows!
❤ Thanks to our sponsors:
❤ More ways to sponsor:
Sponsor us through Patreon! (What is Patreon?)
What did you think of today's episode? Got ideas? Suggestions? You can talk to us on the blog entries for the podcast or talk to us on Facebook if that's where you hang out online. You can email us at [email protected] or you can call and leave us a message at our Google voice number: 201-371-3272. Please don't forget to give us a name and where you're calling from so we can work your message into an upcoming podcast.
Thanks for listening!
This Episode's Music
Our music in each episode is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is a song called “Mackerel & Tatties” by Michael McGoldrick from his album, Aurora. You can find the album at Amazon or at iTunes.
Podcast Sponsor
This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of HOT HOLIDAY NIGHTS by New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton.
Tori Baldwin is a successful sports agent who enjoys her work, her clients, and, on the occasional free night, an uncomplicated love life.
While unwinding over Christmas in Hawaii, she chances upon a surfing competition, and all the lean hard men that come with it—especially Alex McConnell, a young surfer at the top of his game, and his sexy business manager, Ben Reynolds. The attraction Tori feels for both men is off the charts and fueling the hottest passion she’s ever felt.
Soon, Alex and Ben will move on to the next big wave and Tori will head home. But as each night passes, Alex and Ben’s feelings for Tori swell. And for the first time ever, Tori’s thinking twice about the men she’ll leave behind—and a kind of love that could change all their lives forever.
Download it October 20th!
Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 162 of the DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is debut author Anna Bradley. We talk about what she did prior to being an author of historical romance, specifically that she was the curator and librarian for the Chawton House Library, and she specialized in acquiring rare books by women writers published between 1600 and 1830 for the library. We talk about what’s better, old book smell or new car smell; vetting old books; meeting authors that you admire; and of course, whether or not to librarian should be a verb, which it totally should. And absolutely, we talk about her upcoming debut, A Wicked Way to Win an Earl.
This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Hot Holiday Nights by New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton. Download it on October 20th.
And if you’re thinking, hmm, I totally dig this podcast, and you would like to sponsor the transcript or the podcast, email me! [email protected]
The music that you are listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and where you can download it.
As always, I will have links in the podcast entry, better known as the show notes, about the books we talk about and also links to the Chawton House Library, should you be wishing to check it out yourself.
And now, on with the podcast!
[music]
Sarah: So let’s start with having you introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do.
Anna Bradley: Well, my name is Anna Bradley, and I’m a debut author. I write –
Sarah: Yay!
Anna: Yay!
Sarah: Congratulations!
Anna: Thank you, thank you! It’s been quite a ride. I write historical romance, Regency, and I have a book coming out November 3rd with Berkley called A Wicked Way to Win an Earl.
Sarah: Excellent! Now, I have a copy of a lot of your biography information.
Anna: Right.
Sarah: If, if to librarian was a verb, you have librarianed in many locations.
Anna: I have, I have librarianed, though I want to, one thing that I feel like I have to clarify is I actually don’t have a Master’s in Library Science, and I know that’s –
Sarah: Right.
Anna: – I don’t want to misrepresent, you know, I’m, I have a Master’s degree in English Lit, and I librarianed for a private library, which is a little different than being, like, a true librarian, you know, in a public, in the public sense, like a university librarian.
Sarah: Of course.
Anna: So yes and no, you know. It was one of those weird jobs it’s kind of hard to define?
Sarah: Yes. But you got to hold really cool books.
Anna: I did, Sarah. It was so, it, it was like, I remember my, my director at the time saying, this job is the only game in town like this, and it, it was so true. It was, it was a very unconventional job. It, it, you know, the biggest part of that job was acquiring rare books, and so, and sort of, you know, making sure they’re, vetting them, it’s called, making sure everything’s appropriate –
Sarah: Right.
Anna: – you know, and making sure they’re restored, there was a big restoration project, but yeah, and at the end of the day it was, you know, I got to handle these gorgeous, gilt-edged, leather-bound books, you know?
Sarah: Oh, that’s horrible.
Anna: It was awful. It was awful, and I, you know –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: – I mean, these are by women writers who, like, you know, these are people who I read and admire, and I think that might have even been the best part of it was that, just the literary part of it.
Sarah: So, tell me about this job, because I know you started working in this particular job in around 1996, right?
Anna: Right, in August of ’96, and it was, it was just kind of the, it was this project called the Chaw-, it’s a Chaw-, it was called the Chawton House Library, and it was started by Sandy Lerner who is the, one of the founders of the Bosack-Kruger Foundation, and she has all these things going on. She’s an animal rights activist, but one of her big things was literature. She was a huge Jane Austen fan, and her point in, in developing the library was she wanted to get to the core of all these writers that came before Jane Austen?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: Because she, her opinion was, and I actually agree with her to a great extent, was that people think, some people think Jane Austen kind of popped out of nowhere, and it’s like –
Sarah: No –
Anna: – she’s part of a long literary tradition, you know, and she wanted to get to the heart of that, and so the point of the library was to collect titles by women writers from 1600 up to, through the Regency, up to 1830. So it was, that was the goal, and the reason they hired me was, I got lucky, actually. I had a Master’s, I have a Master’s degree with a specialty in that era, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time and, you know, it was one of those fortuitous things, right? It was so –
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: Yeah.
Sarah: So you ended up taking a job in the library –
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – in the Chawton House Library –
Anna: Yeah.
Sarah: – and you had to go through and examine and catalog, basically, or create a database –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – of hundreds of rare books by women writers –
Anna: Exactly.
Sarah: – published from, anywhere from 1600 to the 18, like, 50s.
Anna: It’s up through 1830 – right, exactly. 1830 was the cut-off date, but we had some other stuff, you know, but, but the primary collection was 1600 to 1830.
Sarah: What did that look like?
Anna: Oh, my God, it was gorgeous.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: I used to get home, I would look at my bookshelves and be, like, no, this isn’t, no. It’s not. Doesn’t look good anymore. You know, my own books.
Sarah: Yes. [Laughs]
Anna: So I’m like, I need, I need leather-bound, you know? I need gilt titles and –
Sarah: You’ve been spoiled.
Anna: Totally spoiled! Totally spoiled. But they look gorgeous. They, you know, they smell gorgeous. I, it, it’s, you know, never mind that new car smell. That old book smell, it’s –
Sarah: No, way better.
Anna: Way better! Way better, even though –
Sarah: Way, way better.
Anna: – I mean, maybe some people wouldn’t think so ‘cause there is just that faint, faint, faint smell of decay, I guess, you know, I mean –
Sarah: Age.
Anna: – if you have too much of that smell it’s – right, age! That’s probably a better way to put it. Really distinctive, and nothing else smells that way, so it was, it was pretty, pretty amazing, yeah. It was good.
Sarah: So, what did some of them look like? Like, what were some of the books that were just incredibly gorgeous?
Anna: You know, the ones that really got me were the ones with all the colored plates –
Sarah: Oh, God.
Anna: – and those weren’t necessarily novels, you know? The novels usually didn’t have colored plates. Like, they’d have a, a title page, and there might be, like, a, what they call a frontispiece, which is a, like a sketch or something, but –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – even that was rare, and it would be black and white, but some of those books, like the books on typography, the maps, like, the books with the foldout maps in them?
Sarah: Ohhh.
Anna: Or, oh, my God, or the colored plates, and you know, you’d see this, there’d be these really thick pieces of pap-, thick, thick paper with this colored plate on it, and then this little flap that goes over, this transparent paper that went over it to keep the, to protect the plate, and some of them were amazing, you know, and some of ‘em, I don’t know – gosh, I wish I could remember the term for this, but some of them, we only had a couple in our library that did this – they actually had, if you turn the book sideways so you’re looking at the page, you know, like – how do I explain this, but – you’re holding the binding back, in the back of your hand and the, and you’re looking at the side of the book.
Sarah: Right.
Anna: There’re portraits or, or pictures painted on the, on the pages, on the edges of the page –
Sarah: Whoa!
Anna: – yeah. And it, and you could only really see them if you knew they were there and you kind of fanned it out a little bit, and there’d be, like, you know, these gorgeous pictures of ships sailing on the water or these, you know, nature scenes and, I mean, it was just, some of that stuff was incredible. I wish we still did that today.
Sarah: That’s amazing!
Anna: It was, it was.
Sarah: Can you, can you imagine, like, a, a, a library of some of, of, like, really, really nicely bound –
Anna: Oh, my gosh.
Sarah: – classic romances?
Anna: Oh, my gosh, I would die.
Sarah: Ditto. I would love it!
Anna: Yeah!
Sarah: I would love this.
Anna: I would love it too! I would, I would have to, like, roll around in there, you know? Or sleep in there or something, but –
Sarah: So usually when books are that old, you have to keep them in a special room with humidity and wear white gloves and – did you have to do all of that, or are they kind of like, yep! They’re here; they’re fine. Let’s take a look at them.
Anna: We did, we took really good care of them. We didn’t do the white glove thing, but at the time I was, at the time I was working there, the library was still closed. Like, it wasn’t, the Chawton House hadn’t actually opened up at that point –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – so we were acquiring books, but we, it wasn’t really, it wasn’t open to the public at all. You kind of had to know it was there. Like, if people called me and said, can I come see, come see them, I would always, you know, welcome them in, but it wasn’t like we had all these people coming in looking at books, right?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: But they were in a, a locked, secured room, an air-controlled room, and, you know, with plenty of air circulation between them, but not, not so much the white glove thing, though that would have been cool.
Sarah: Yeah!
Anna: Maybe I should have just worn white gloves myself. Then I, you know, and never mind.
Sarah: Make it a style choice.
Anna: Yeah! Totally!
Sarah: So were there any individual titles that you were like, you know, I would love to have this just, you know, in my house?
Anna: Yeah. There were. I mean, I think the ones that really appealed to me were, you know, I used to love to read the Ann Radcliffe titles. She, because she, she never left England, Ann Radcliffe, but she had these incredible descriptions of nature and, you know, places she’d never visited. I’m like, you know, these women had some imagination. It takes some skill to be able to write that way when you’ve actually never seen these places, right?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: She wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, and I would love to have had a couple of those books, and then the other ones were the ones that, like, writers like Sarah Fielding, Henry Fielding’s sister, who we never really heard about. I never heard about her until I worked for the library, and it’s like, there’s this whole underground network of these women writers who people haven’t heard of, you know? Everybody’s heard of Henry Fielding. Very few people have heard of Sarah Fielding. But I think that’s changing.
Sarah: I, I think you’re right.
Anna: Ooh.
Sarah: Did you read some of the books in the collection?
Anna: You know, I did. I was, I was, I did read them. I couldn’t, I couldn’t really, you know, I, you know, it would have been great, you know, take one into the bathtub and read it, but they weren’t, they weren’t down with that at the library, so – [laughs]
Sarah: Yeah, I can imagine.
Anna: But we had this project going, it was called the Novels-On-Line project, and it was, part of the idea was to get digital access to some of the really rare titles?
Sarah: Ooh!
Anna: And so we had this, one of these projects I ran was, we actually typed in the text of all of these books –
Sarah: Whoa!
Anna: – and then put ‘em up on the website, so if you go to Chawton’s website now, they’re actually all still up there, and I don’t know how many titles there were, but at least twenty, twenty-five, you know, and it was – so I read some of those books. I read quite a few of those books, you know, proofread to make sure the typing was accurate and that kind of thing.
Sarah: Right.
Anna: Yeah, so, and some of them are, you know, it’s just like anything, Sarah. Like, some of them are incredible, and some of them aren’t.
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: Right? So. But it, it’s like, so, less has changed, I guess, than maybe people would think, but, but yeah, to have that access was what, what made that job so special.
Sarah: Are there any that you would recommend readers go check out? Like, this one was surprisingly awesome!
Anna: You know, I would, there, there are definitely authors I would say go check out? I wish I could remember a little bit better some of the individual titles, but authors like Ann Radcliffe –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – Jane Porter; again, Sarah Fielding; oh, gosh, there are just so many. Aphra Behn, though I think Aphra Behn, she was a lot earlier than the Regency.
Sarah: Yes, she was a little earlier.
Anna: Yeah, but I, and I think more people know about Aphra Behn now than, than they did when I first started doing that job.
Sarah: Yes, when I was in graduate school, that would have been, like, around 1998, 1999 –
Anna: I –
Sarah: – I did a course on Aphra Behn, Fanny Burney, everybody who predated Austen. Fanny Burney was awesome!
Anna: I love Fanny Burney. I’m glad you mentioned her, ‘cause I, ‘cause she slipped my mind, but people will say, you know, if I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s books, what, who should I read, and she’s always my go-to writer because there’s –
Sarah: Fanny!
Anna: – definitely similarity there, right?
Sarah: Fanny all the way.
Anna: And she’s, yeah, she is one talented, that, she’s a talented writer.
Sarah: I am pretty sure, although I have to check this, that the earliest review that I wrote on Amazon was for a Fanny Burney book.
Anna: No! Are you serious?
Sarah: Yes! I’m pretty sure; I’m going to have to check.
Anna: Coolest think in the world!
Sarah: And I, I loved, like, there were some of the books that I had to read for that course where I was like, I’m so bored.
Anna: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sarah: I’m so bored; you’re still describing the grass.
Anna: [Laughs]
Sarah: It’s killing me here. I understand. I’ve got grass, we’re on the same page, we have made this connection through history, through grass. It’s time to move on.
Anna: New grass.
Sarah: Nope! More about the grass. Oh, my God! And then you have to write a picture about – oh, I’ve got to write a paper now! Oh, my God.
Anna: About the grass, right?
Sarah: Yeah it was, there were some where I was like, I’m seriously so bored right now, but you know –
Anna: Yeah.
Sarah: – you’ve got to read it, ‘cause it was assigned, and when you’re in a graduate seminar –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – with four other people –
Anna: Yeah, there’s no getting, there’s no escape from that.
Sarah: You can’t slack off. You’ve got to demonstrate that you’ve read it.
Anna: Totally. Yep.
Sarah: But Fanny Burney was so much fun.
Anna: She is fun. I, the one that sticks out to me is Evelina, the one that –
Sarah: Yes!
Anna: She was the, this was the one where she had a guardian because she, she didn’t have any parents, so she was an orphan, and this gentleman had been appointed as her guardian. Do you remember that one?
Sarah: Yes, absolutely!
Anna: She’s, like, this very innocent, kind of naïve, sweet young thing, and it was great!
Sarah: Oh, it, and the thing – [laughs] – the think that is so great about her is that she was just as skilled at characters –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – as she was at the plot.
Anna: Yeah, that’s a, that’s so true, and, you know, same thing can be said of Austen. Yeah, I mean, I guess if, if you don’t have the character development, you really don’t – you know, I always, I guess I always think of the character development as the first thing I think about when I write plot. I think about plot too, but I think about character first, and –
Sarah: Yeah, I’m much more of a character-driven reader too.
Anna: Me too, right.
Sarah: I, I will catch myself skimming to the dialogue, and the minute somebody says something that is not the way a person would speak, I’m like, errrrr.
Anna: I’m over this. Right, no.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: Yeah, I totally hear that. I am the same exact way.
Sarah: Would Maria Edgeworth have been in your library as well?
Anna: Ooh, yes, she was, yep! Yep, Maria Edgeworth, yep. I think it’s, I don’t know. You know what, I need to check this, but I think back then they pronounced it Muh-rye-uh. But I have to –
Sarah: Oh, really?
Anna: I’m not sure, though, Sarah, but, yeah, I remember making that mistake, saying Muh-ree-uh and then being corrected by somebody who knew a lot more than me about it.
Sarah: Well, you know what, I’m happy to know that I pronounced it wrong, ‘cause it’s not, not the first time.
Anna: Well, as soon as I, as soon as I tell you that, of course, I’ll find out that’s not true.
Sarah: It’s actually Muh-ree-uh, Muh-ree-uh Eedgeworth is what the problem is here.
[Laughter]
Anna: Yeah, yeah, right!
Sarah: We got the wrong vowel.
Anna: Yeah, we’re both saying it wrong, right?
Sarah: Exactly. Somewhere Maria Edgeworth is like, it’s fine! You’re saying my name! [Laughs]
Anna: Right, I know. She’s in her grave right now saying, hey! Nobody appreciated me at the time, but they do now, right?
Sarah: So how do you vet a rare book? Like, what do you do to be like, yeah, that’s legit, or no, you made that on the mimeograph machine, and I can totally tell.
Anna: [Laughs] Well, you can tell a lot by – I mean, the bindings might be – you, you look at the bindings first, or at least, that’s what I used to do, and you know, you can tell whether the, the leather is contemporary to the period or whether it’s been what they called rebacked or rebound.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: You can usually, after you’ve looked at enough of them, you can see it, because it, it just looks, there’s a certain look to it when it’s older. But from the inside, it has to do with the way they cut the pages and what size the pages are, but have you heard the term signature for binding books? It’s, it’s kind of complicated, but it’s, they cut the pages, and then they gather ‘em into what’s called a signature, and they sew the signatures each in separately into the binding, and to vet, you, you, instead of looking at the page numbers, you, you look at the signatures, and they’re all labeled A, B, C, D, so you count how many pages are in each signature –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – because, you could look at page numbers, but what if the page numbers are wrong? Right? You’d never know if the book was actually missing a page, right?
Sarah: Of course.
Anna: So if you’re buying a rare book, you need to look at, to actually count how many pages are in the signature and look at it really carefully to make sure it’s not actually missing a page. And then the, the other point to vetting is so that other people in other libraries can see what your book looks like. They’ll read what’s, like, this kind of formula for a book that’s been vetted, and they’ll be able to see, you know, oh, well, we have this title too, but our book doesn’t have, you know, a half title, so now we know that piece is missing from our book –
Together: – right.
Anna: So it’s that kind of thing, so it’s, part of it was, the point is to, to sort of help the scholarship along. Not, not necessarily scholarship, but help the rare book aspect of it along, so other people could get access to –
Sarah: Right.
Anna: – what, what other libraries have, right, so.
Sarah: So it’s almost like you make an inventory of the individual pieces of the book.
Anna: Right, and it involves, you know, like, a book would – so, say I ordered, you know, twenty books from Sotheby’s or Christie’s, they’d kind of list it –
Sarah: As you do.
Anna: As you do, as you do.
Sarah: Yes. [Laughs]
Anna: I don’t do that anymore, unfortunately, but I used to! And they come in and you’d, you’d literally go one book at a time and go through every single page and write down the condition of the book and anything that’s wrong with it and, and vet it and explain, you know, write your little formula that says, you know, this is what, what’s the, what the pages are in this book. This is how it looks, so.
Sarah: That’s very cool.
Anna: It was cool. It was one of the coolest parts, and I, you know, the thing about that was, I took, a rare books dealer taught me how to do that, you know? Like, I got there, I had no idea how to do it. I was like, lalala, these look good, you know. I mean, I was, I was literally, like, very, I wasn’t knowledgeable at all about rare books when I took that job. I knew about the literature, but not the books. And, and that was a huge part of it. And so I was lucky, because a lot of people helped me along with that.
Sarah: And those are, those are artifacts of a very specific time and a, and a trade that isn’t practiced as much anymore.
Anna: No. I mean, that’s a really specialized skill. It’s so specialized, Sarah, that, like, after the library moved to the UK, I couldn’t find a job. [Laughs] ‘Cause I was –
Sarah: Dude!
Anna: No, dude, it’s true! I was, I was, here I was, right, I didn’t have a Master’s in Library Science, and, you know, English Lit Masters are a dime a dozen, so that’s nothing special.
Sarah: Oh, yeah, I totally am one! How you doing? [Laughs]
Anna: Right, right! Well, we, we, I think we found our niche, but man, it took me a long time.
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: But, right, but it’s –
Sarah: Blogging also a good niche. Just want to say that.
Anna: Blogging, yeah.
Sarah: Just throw that out there.
Anna: Yeah, you, well, you know. I think you know something, a little bit something about that.
Sarah: A little, just a bit.
Anna: Make an effort. But, and I had all this book knowledge, but unless I was going to become a rare books dealer, which I wasn’t, it was –
Sarah: Yeah.
Anna: – kind of like, huh, what do I do now? Like, there’s no other job like this. What am I going to do? You know, it was, it was a weird phenomenon of, of this job was the best, coolest thing I ever did, one of, one of, and – ‘cause of course I love being a writer too – it was definitely an odd phenomenon of where does it go? Where do I go from here? You know?
Sarah: Yep. Like, I have done everything, and I’m not in the UK, so now what?
Anna: Right. I’m not in the UK, and I, and I could have gone to the UK, and I, and I didn’t because, you know, for, for a variety of reasons, and sometimes I still think about that and go, I wonder what would have, would have happened if I had, but I should say, too, that, like, you can, now people can go visit that library. It’s in this historically significant building in Hampshire, England, and the building itself where the library is housed is, used to belong to Edward Austen Knight, who was Jane Austen’s brother.
Sarah: Cool!
Anna: So there’s this, there’s this whole historical connection to it. It really is the coolest project. Like, I’ve got to give Sandy Lerner credit. I mean, man, she thinks big, you know. I mean, this is a huge –
Sarah: Hey, go big or go home!
Anna: Right! Go big or go –
Sarah: When you’re talking about books, just go all the way.
Anna: Right! And she has so many diverse interests, but yeah, if you go to this house now, I mean, it’s just incredible.
Sarah: Have you been? Have you gotten to visit?
Anna: Oh, yeah! I’ve been a, I’ve been – I haven’t been since – I used to go quite a, quite a lot when the, when I was still working for the library. Haven’t been back since, since it opened as, you know, the Centre for the Study of Early English Women’s Writing, which is kind of a thorn in my side, you know, but it turns out it’s harder to get to England from Oregon with kids and dogs and husbands than I –
Sarah: Dude.
Anna: – it would be, you know?
Sarah: It’s so true.
Anna: I know.
Sarah: I’m in Jersey; it’s hard to get to England with kids and dogs and husbands.
Anna: I know. It’s hard to really get out the door with kids and dogs and husbands. [Laughs]
Sarah: Lord, yes! It’s like, my God, I have, like, what, what, why, why do I have an entire, like, nursery full of stuff to –
Anna: Oh, my God. I know. I know. And I’m like, what do you, what do you people do, and, likes, why is it taking you a hundred, you know, minutes to get out – that drives me crazy.
Sarah: You’ve been tying your shoe for a half hour. [Laughs]
Anna: Exactly! Exactly! [Laughs]
Sarah: And it’s funny, I’ve now, we’ve traveled internationally with our kids, so we’ve gotten it down when we’re traveling together, we all have one bag, we, we, you know, figure out where to do laundry so we can travel light and move quickly, because if you want –
Anna: That’s good.
Sarah: – if you have little people with you, you don’t want to have one of your hands constantly occupied by a suitcase. You want to have your hands free.
Anna: Yeah, so true. Right.
Sarah: And when we were traveling this year, I met somebody who was like, yeah, I had a baby two years ago, and you know, we haven’t been traveling, and I’m like, they’re still a pretty good amount of portable at that age. Like, you could put ‘em in a backpack and go.
Anna: Oh, my God, stroller.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: Just a stroller, oh! Yeah, those, I’m so glad.
Sarah: When you’re –
Anna: I’m over that.
Sarah: When you’re trying to, like, move everybody? Oy.
Anna: Oh, I know. It’s, yeah, it’s, it’s tough. I, you know, my kids are eight and ten now, so they’re, they’re –
Sarah: So are mine.
Anna: Oh, are they really?
Sarah: Yeah.
Anna: So we remember, like, how the stroller, the stroller days and the baby-wipe days and the diaper days, and those are over for me, but I mean, it’s just, it turns into something else.
Sarah: I remember them.
Anna: I remember ‘em too! And I, it turns into a different kind of thing?
Sarah: Totally.
Anna: Yeah. It turns into, like, taxi service. Man, people try to warn you about that when you don’t have kids.
Sarah: Nope.
Anna: Man, that’s true, isn’t it?
Sarah: It’s so true.
Anna: All you do is drive.
Sarah: And have you noticed, like, strollers have become space age.
Anna: They’re way better than they were when we had to lug ‘em around –
Together: – right?
Sarah: I’m like, wow! I mean, I don’t want another child, but –
Anna: They can be folded and put in your pocketbook now, you know? Like, they’re space –
Sarah: Seriously, they’re like those little pocket umbrellas! Press a button, ka-whoomp-a! There’s a stroller!
Anna: I know, it’s true! Like, stand back, I’m opening the stroller. Everybody –
Sarah: Ka-poom! Yes! So much has changed.
Anna: It has, it has.
Sarah: So I would really like to know –
Anna: Mm-hmm?
Sarah: – this is the worst question to ask an author, so I apologize in advance.
Anna: Oh, no.
Sarah: Tell us about your book.
Anna: Oh, okay.
Sarah: And you don’t have to give, like, the elevator pitch? So just –
Anna: Okay. Good, ‘cause I’m really bad at that.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, me too.
[Laughter]
Anna: I’m not, like, I have a hard time shortening it up to the elevator pitch, but I’ll try to be, I’ll try to be succinct here. Well, it’s, it’s a book about, we have the hero and the heroine, and, and there’s a, there’s a connection between them, not a good one, a scandalous connection between them, though they’ve never met, that has to do with their past, with her mother and his father. And she’s gone off to, the, the her-, the heroine, her name’s Delia Somerset, she’s gone off to – through a series of, of events that happened before the books starts – she’s gone off to a house party at this, at this gentleman, Lord Carlisle’s house, and the, the brother is interested in her, and he, the, the hero is like, I don’t think so, and so it’s, this, this kind of game starts up between them where he’s trying to get her out of there and expose her as a scandalous, you know, having a scandalous past, and meanwhile, she, not to be, you know, sort of shuffled off back to Surrey, where she’s from, she decides, you know what, somebody needs to teach this guy a lesson, and it’s going to be me. And so this, this sort of game ensues between them, and it’s, it’s all very cat and mouse and chess-like. I guess that’s like a, a really bad description of what it is, but that’s the –
Sarah: So there’s a house party –
Anna: House party, yeah.
Sarah: – which is always good for some excellent forced proximity.
Anna: I love the house party. I know! The house party, I love the house party. I love house party books. That’s one of my, you were talking about, you talk about your catnip.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: That one’s my, I have a little bit of the house-party catnip thing going on. Yeah.
Sarah: I love house parties, and especially because it, they’re often very removed from society –
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – so they are their own society. They don’t go anywhere.
Anna: Right. Right! And I mean, this is, the social element to any kind of historical, Regency, like, there has to be that piece there, and in this book and prob-, I would, I guess for all my books that I’ve written, they’re, the social, the society is really, like, almost another character in the book.
Sarah: Yes. Well, the, part of the attraction, I think, especially for Regency and Georgian and also Victorian is the conflict inherent –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – in the social rules. Like –
Anna: Right!
Sarah: – y’all are not supposed to be together, except that we’re trying to get you together, but you can’t actually be together or –
Anna: Right!
Sarah: – be in the same room alone together, except that that’s what we want to happen, except that it shouldn’t happen.
Anna: It shouldn’t happen, but of course it’s going to happen, but somebody’s going to, you know, get some fallout from that, usually the heroine, of course –
Sarah: Always.
Anna: – but, yeah, no, it’s, it’s almost like this built-in pressure. It’s, it does, it’s a, it’s a nice little tension thing that you can use as a writer, you know to –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – to kind of help along with both characterization and plot, ‘cause it’s like, well, are these readers, are these characters going to care about this? Are they going to care about it at first, this whole social element, or, and then, by the end of the book they’re not going to care anymore? You know, it’s, it becomes sort of an interesting – it’s a good vehicle, I guess I’d say.
Sarah: I completely agree. What are some of your favorite things about Delia, your heroine?
Anna: I like that she’s, you know, I love a really powerful heroine.
Sarah: Ditto.
Anna: Yeah, and I mean, like, with historical, they’re not powerful in the sense that they would be, say, like, they’re not vampire-slaying, you know, thigh-high-boot-wearing, you know, whip-holding, they’re not, they’re not powerful in that way, but you, so you have to find a way to make them powerful that’s believable within the timeframe, right?
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: And she’s very, she’s impetuous, outspoken, very willful. Not necessarily a good thing, but it can be both a good thing and a bad thing, I guess? And she has her flaws, too, but she’s so, I would say she’s flawed – all my characters are flawed. They usually have a deep character arc, or at least that’s what I’m going for. They’re very flawed at the start, and then they sort of change as the book goes along, but she is, she just isn’t going to, she just isn’t going to let him push her around, even though he’s got the power, right? He’s the earl; he’s the wealthy one. She, she’s kind of this upstart; she’s this nobody –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – from Surrey, and with the added problem of having this scandalous past, right?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: But none of it, none of it ends up, none of it squashes her. None of it crushes her, right? She just keeps figuring out a way. You know, there’s this, I guess there’s this personal dignity there. That would be my favorite thing about her. She won’t let him, despite the disparity in their power, she won’t let him crush her.
Sarah: It’s always fascinating to me when there is a heroine who – and this happens in contemporary times, as well – where society generally is, says, you should feel this way about this part of your personality, or you should feel this way –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – about your past, and the heroine’s like, yeah –
Anna: To women, yeah, yeah.
Sarah: – yeah, no, actually I don’t. No.
Anna: Yeah, no, I don’t feel that way. Right. I’m like, I’m defy, I defy the rule. I guess, yeah, she defies the rule, right?
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: Especially, which is especially a powerful thing when you’re, you know, dealing with historical, right?
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: ‘Cause the role is so narrow for women. They, you know, they didn’t have a lot of options, so it’s like, how do you, how do you crawl out of that little trap, you know? And she finds a way. She doesn’t know she’s finding a way, but she does find a way.
Sarah: So, can you say what the scandal of her past is?
Anna: Oh, yes, I’ll say that, Sarah. So, her, his father – she was sort of, her mother was the belle of her season. She was the, the diamond of the first water, the one everybody wanted to marry, and his father was engaged to her, and she jilted him publicly at this sort of masquerade ball. She, she runs out on him to marry this, this captain in Her Majesty’s service who’s a nobody, who’s a total nobody. So she humiliates the family, and it, and it leads to other problems for that family, so by the time we get to Delia and Alec’s generation, there’s all this past mess that’s occurred from this, from, there’s fallout from it.
Sarah: Right, and in that particular society, the actions of the parents –
Anna: Mm-hmm, yes.
Sarah: – are often delivered in consequence onto the kids.
Anna: Totally. I mean, you see that with the illegitimate kids, right? We, how many heroes have we seen that are illegitimate, or heroines too.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: And, and you see them struggling in this society. It’s sort of that same process where she’s, she’s kind of, she’s struggling to overcome this thing, but he’s also struggling to overcome his own issues, because his father, the father was a, was a total bastard. Can I say that? Can I say bastard? I don’t know if I –
Sarah: Dude! We –
Anna: I don’t know if I should say that.
Sarah: We have no FCC regulations here –
Anna: Yay!
Sarah: – so say whatever you like.
Anna: Well, and I shouldn’t say bastard, ‘cause he wasn’t in the ill-, he wasn’t illegitimate, but he was –
Sarah: He was just a total turdbucket.
Anna: He is – right – a horrible, horrible man, and he did, you know, there’s all this fallout because now Alec has just become the earl because the father’s died three years before. Now he’s kind of, how do I be the earl without becoming just like my father was, right? And, and so, he’s, he’s having internal trouble with his family too, because he’s not the man, he’s not the same person he used to be. And a lot of my books are like that. Like, I went to a lecture at RWA this past time, the one in, in New York –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – about the core story, and I was, it, I learned a lot in it, ‘cause it, I realized I do have a core story. I’d never called it that before and knew that’s what it was, but my characters tend to all be kind of searching for this identity or pretending to be something they’re not or trying to struggle to, to become this certain person who isn’t the person they really are –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – and that kind of, that’s basically what’s going on with Alec. He’s the, the hero.
Sarah: And they’re, and the characters have to reconcile –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – the persona that comes with expectations versus the person that they actually are.
Anna: And the person they actually are may be somebody who would be, you know, scorned by society, and they have to learn to deal with that, right.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: So, yeah. Yeah.
Sarah: Does the whole book take place at the house party?
Anna: They, they leave at the very end, but most of the book takes place at the house party, yeah.
Sarah: Oh, boy.
Anna: At the very end, they go back to London, but that’s, like, in the last couple of chapters.
Sarah: So this is a series, right?
Anna: It is. It’s the first in a, in a four-book series. I’m writing the book –
Sarah: Who’s next?
Anna: Next! You mean the, the next book?
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: It’s called A Season of Ruin, and it’s coming out in June of 2016 from Berkley, and it is the hero, the hero’s brother and the heroine’s sister.
Sarah: Oh, so Lily.
Anna: Lily, oh, yeah, yes. Lily and Robyn, and the thing that makes, that starts off interesting with that is that Robyn actually had this kind of attraction, interest in Lily’s sister, right? Delia –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Anna: – before she marries his brother, so there’s that thing to get over with, ‘cause you know, nobody wants to, to – hey, you know, do you really like my sister better than me? Nobody wants that, so.
Sarah: No, nobody wants to be second choice.
Anna: Nobody wants to be second choice. And then, that one takes place in London, so.
Sarah: Ooh, fun.
Anna: Yeah! It was a fun one to write. Of course I was panicking the whole time I was writing it, ‘cause it was my second book, and I’m thinking, oh, my gosh, it’s not, what if it’s not as good? What if it’s not as good? I was such a basket case writing that book, but then it act-, I actually love the way it turned out. I was really happy with it in the end. Lots of suffering and pain to get there, but I was happy with it.
Sarah: It’s kind of scary to write a second book, because you’re like, I know I did it the first time –
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – but I don’t quite remember how I did that.
Anna: I know!
Sarah: What if that was a fluke?
Anna: Right! Maybe I only have one, you know? Maybe there’s only one, and I don’t have a second one, but – [claps]
Sarah: Nope. You got two and two more.
Anna: I got two! I got, I actually have written the third one as well, and I’m writing the fourth one, which is giving me, causing me fits at the moment, but it’ll, it’ll eventually, you know, be done, I hope.
Sarah: If all of the writers who I follow on Twitter are, are telling the truth, and I presume that they are, that’s all part of the process.
Anna: Oh, my gosh, it is. It’s painful, right?
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: I teach writing, too, and I have students say, well, it’s not, you know, it’s not coming together. I mean, I can’t figure it out, and, and I’ll say, you know, that’s exactly what’s supposed to be happening.
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: It’s painful, right? You’ve got to go through this whole, it’s all a big muddle in your head before you can get to the, to the endpoint, right?
Sarah: Yes, and very few people can produce an enormous amount of words logically in the correct story order with characters who do it all right the first time. Like, I haven’t met that person. I assume they exist.
Anna: Oh, my God. I wonder –
Sarah: They make perfect baked goods, probably. Their houses are spotless, their cats never puke on the rug. I mean, I don’t, I don’t know this person; I’m just presuming they exist.
Anna: No, that’s awesome. No, I don’t know them, and it’s certainly not me, that’s for sure. In fact, I think the cat might have puked on the rug even now, so it’s –
Sarah: Perfect!
Anna: – yeah, I definitely, definitely not me, but I, I’m sure there are people like that.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: But I don’t, I hate it when, like, you know, I, I like it when writers are honest in their social media where they talk about, you know, this is really hard. Like, it doesn’t just flow out of me and it’s all perfect. It’s actually a huge amount of work, and it’s complicated, and you tear your hair out, and that’s the truth of it, right?
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: And, you know, people who are, who are aspiring writers and struggling writers should know the truth, which is that you are going to tear your hair out; it’s just the way it is, and it, you’re not doing anything wrong if that’s what’s happening with you, you know.
Sarah: No, that’s totally normal.
Anna: Yeah, totally normal.
Sarah: So, the third book, can you tell us a little bit about it?
Anna: I can, yeah! The third book deals with Alec and Robyn’s sister Elinor, or Elli, and that’s a blackmail marriage plot. It’s kind of off, I know.
Sarah: Oooh.
Anna: I know, I had so much fun writing that, and the hero is, is an Auslander. He’s an outsider. He’s not in either of the two books. He kind of pops up out of nowhere, and he has his, his very, very, you know, understandable reasons for wanting Elinor to marry him, and she has, she’s a, a very, sort of a bluestocking character in the sense that she’s extremely clever, and she doesn’t want to marry. Why should she marry, right? She’s kind of like Emma from, from Austen. She’s, she’s wealthy enough, she has freedom, she doesn’t want to give up her freedom to marry somebody. Certainly not somebody who’s trying to force her into it. And so therein, therein lies the conflict, and they, they go back and forth, you know, trying to figure out how that, you know, trying to – everybody wants what they want, and they don’t want the same thing, so.
Sarah: That sounds fun.
Anna: Ooh, thank you. I like the blackmail one. I like the blackmail trope; it’s a good one.
Sarah: Blackmail plots.
Anna: Blackmail plot, yeah.
Sarah: Those, those are fun because they give the villain an action and a reason.
Anna: Right.
Sarah: Like you already have to know why the bad guy or girl is the bad person –
Anna: Right, why are they doing it?
Sarah: – because their action is integral to the plot. It’s not like they’re evil just ‘cause.
Anna: No. No, definitely not evil just ‘cause, and I, and I don’t, I don’t let, yeah, I’m really, I try to be really careful about, there has to be a reason for everything. I mean, who, I don’t know who it was, I read a lot of craft books, so I can’t think of who this was, but it’s, you know, that, the, the old writing advice: if there’s not a reason for it, it shouldn’t be in the book, right. So I think –
Sarah: Right.
Anna: – he has his, and his reasons are justified to a great extent. Not to her, right? But he has his reasons, and we don’t, I mean, we don’t like him at first, because he’s doing a bad thing. I mean, blackmail’s a bad thing, but as the book goes on, we realize he is doing a bad thing, but he has, but for the right reason. He’s making a mistake.
Sarah: Right.
Anna: But he’s, but he’s doing it for a, a, for the right reason. And he’s not a bad person, but he’s making a mistake, and it’s a mistake that’s going to come back to haunt him if he actually ends up making it, right? So it’s, it’s his, his sort of goodness or his moral, his ability to like himself hangs on whether he’s going to end up doing this thing.
Sarah: Right, and it’s almost more admirable to have someone who is making a bad choice –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – for a legitimate reason.
Anna: Right! Right.
Sarah: That’s, I mean, you can relate to that.
Anna: Yeah, totally! I mean, I hope, I hope you, I hope the reader relates to him. But yeah, I mean, it’s a struggle, right? That, that’s, that’s, in essence, what all the characters are, what I’m trying to make sure all the characters in my books do. They’re always in the middle of some kind of struggle, and it’s not just with the other character but with themselves. And, and that’s what his thing is, and actually the, the heroine, Elli, is also struggling against herself, because she has to ask herself, how far will I go to get out of marrying this guy? What, who am I? What kind of person am I? Am I, am I willing to do, you know, XYZ to get my way when I know it’s going to hurt other people, right?
Sarah: Right.
Anna: So it’s, so she has her own struggle with her identity as well.
Sarah: And action is always more interesting to me than inertia.
Anna: Right.
Sarah: Like, I’m going to do this, even though I’m really pretty sure that this is not the best thing to do, it’s the best option –
Anna: This is a bad thing!
Sarah: – right. This is the best option I’ve got. It’s better than –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do. Like –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – make a choice.
Anna: No, you’ve got to make a choice, and it’s, it’s so much more fun when they make the wrong choice, right?
Sarah: Yes!
Anna: When they’re making the wrong choice, I mean, you can –
Sarah: ‘Cause that make a mess!
Anna: Yeah, it makes a mess! I mean, what was it, who was it said, I think it was Nabokov, get ‘em up a tree and throw rocks at ‘em? Like, be mean to your characters!
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: And that’s exactly, like, torture them, right? And even though sometimes as a writer you’re like, oh, boy, I’m, I am really sort of hanging them by the neck right now, the, that’s, that’s where the interesting part is, right? When they’re, they’re tortured! Not just by the other character, but by themselves, you know, like –
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: – yeah. But that’s what I strive for, you know, in the books. That’s what I really want to happen, and it’s the thing I’m always kind of keeping my eye on, you know?
Sarah: Yes. It, it’s like the, the Billy Wilder three-act story. Put your character in a tree.
Anna: Right.
Sarah: Set fire to the tree. Get your characters out of the tree.
Anna: Get ‘em back down.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: But don’t get ‘em back down ‘til the very end –
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: – because once they’re down –
Sarah: You’ve –
Anna: – the tension is gone, right? So –
Sarah: Yes. And that’s, that’s one of the things I struggle, I struggle with because, when the tension is gone, whatever tension has been resolved, like, I have to push myself to keep reading if the tension ends too early.
Anna: Oh, my God, Sarah, me too. That’s exactly how I feel, and I’m so hyperaware of that, as, you know, I think, you know, if you’re a reader, I mean, I read romance too and have for years, and, you know, you kind of get a really strong sense of what you really, what bothers you and what you really like, and, and that’s one of the, I don’t like the too-early resolution, because then I’m kind of like, well, what am I, you know, what are these last fifty pages for?
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: So I, I was joking around with my sister. I said, you know, once everybody’s climaxed, get out of there, right? Like, if, once we’re done, ever-, get out.
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: You know, we’re done. Yeah, so, no, not a lot of pages happen after it’s been resolved.
Sarah: Because the tension’s gone.
Anna: Tension’s gone, right!
Sarah: There’s not, there’s only so much afterglow that you can create.
Anna: So true. So true.
Sarah: So what are some of the romances that you read and love and recommend?
Anna: Oh, my God. Oh, my God, there’re so many. Who do I –
Sarah: That’s okay.
Anna: You know who I’m reading right now? Who I –
Sarah: Tell me!
Anna: – is Meredith Duran. I loved Fool Me Twice. After –
Sarah: Oh, she’s so talented!
Anna: Oh, my God, I loved, I thought that book was excellent. I just loved it, I loved the character development. She’s a terrific writer, and so now I’m on this Meredith Duran binge, and it’s keeping me up at night.
Sarah: That’s not a bad thing.
Anna: It’s not a bad thing except I won’t go to sleep, and then I get up, I’m like, oh, my God –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: – I need to write, like, 2,000 words today, and I, like, instead I fall asleep on the couch, and I’m, like, drooling on myself, you know? I’m very unproductive, but – so I’m really into her right now. Other readers I really, I love, I love Eloisa James. I love Kresley Cole; she doesn’t write hist-, she has a couple historicals, but mostly she writes paranormal now.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: Love her. Julie Anne Long has always been a favorite of mine. I love the Pennyroyal Green series.
Sarah: Me too.
Anna: God, there’s so many. Who else have I been reading? Liz Carlyle. Who else? Gosh, it’s – Tessa Dare. Just, I have so many influences. Madeline Hunter, who I got to meet at – I’ve met a couple of these people at RWA, and of course I’m like, oh, I’m such a dork, but it’s, it’s a big, it’s such a, it really is an honor to get to meet ‘em, you know. I’ve been reading their books and admiring their writing, and, you know, suddenly they’re standing there, and you’re like, uh, uh, uh, I have nothing cool to say.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: You know, I’m a dork. I don’t have anything to say. [Laughs]
Sarah: That happens to me pretty often, and I also know that –
Anna: Really?!
Sarah: – it happens to them, too, so I try to take comfort in the fact –
Anna: Well, okay.
Sarah: – I, I will, I’ve, I, I once was asked to speak at a seminar that was going on at Yale –
Anna: Oh!
Sarah: – which is the closest I’m ever going to get to getting into Yale –
Anna: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and Lauren Willig and Cara Elliott were teaching a course –
Anna: Ooh!
Sarah: – and they had invited up a panel of me and her editor, Carrie Feron, couple of authors, and I meet this nice woman and her husband, and we’re waiting by the door where we were told to go in –
Anna: Right.
Sarah: – and we’re chatting and, you know, the, the, the actual visual of, of Yale is completely unique. Like, it’s so very gothic and so self-contained –
Anna: Ooh.
Sarah: – that you walk in and you’re like, I’m in another world right now.
Anna: Oh, that’s so neat.
Sarah: So I’m standing there, we’re talking about the building, and Lauren Willig goes, walks up and says, oh, I see you met Loretta Chase!
Anna: Oh, my God! Oh, my God, Loretta Chase, of course! I read her –
Sarah: And so I’m standing there and I make the most unattractive noise ever.
Anna: [Laughs]
Sarah: Like, I’m gasping. My, my brain has completely short-circuited, and, and Loretta looks at me, and she goes, are, are you okay? And I’m like –
Anna: You’re fanning yourself?
Sarah: – ki-, ki-, kind of? Kind of okay. Yeah, um. And I seriously, like, I could not contain myself. It was so embarrassing. [Laughs]
Anna: Like, do you know that, I love that story. I think, do, you know, I think we all have one of those, too.
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Anna: Loretta Chase is fantastic. I love her too. I have a funny one about Nalini Singh. So this is, I, last year, my first RWA was, was San Antonio, and I pull, we got in, I got in on a flight, I was at the airport and outside waiting, and this very nice lady says to me, I’m going to, you know, we’re both going, we figure out we’re both going to the same place. Do we want to share a cab? So we get in the cab together, and it, and, you know, I ask her name. Nalini Singh. I give her my name. I’m such a newbie, I don’t even know who she is. Like, I just am, I just don’t know who she is. And we’re talking away, and it’s, it’s all very, she’s the most charming person, and –
Sarah: She is very nice.
Anna: Oh, such a lovely lady, and, you know, she’s kind of giving me some advice, and we’re talking about word counts, and she’s saying, oh, I think it would be really hard to write historical, and I’m like, but I think it’s really hard to write paranormal, and blah blah blah. Of course I find out afterwards who Nalini Singh is.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: I’m like, oh, my God, I just took a cab with Nalini Singh. At least I wasn’t a complete dork, ‘cause I didn’t even know who I was talking to. Well, I went up to her this RWA, and I reminded her of that, thinking she’s never going to remember, but she did remember, and we were kind of laughing about it.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: She, and she has the same editor at Berkley I do. I’m like, oh, my God, it was fate. It was that weird. You know?
Sarah: Oh, that’s funny.
Anna: ‘Cause that was before I even had an editor. I had an agent at that point, but not a book deal, and so I was like, you know, how weird that I would meet her, then later would be signed by the same editor at Berkley that does, does her books.
Sarah: Well then, like, it was clearly meant to be!
Anna: It was –
Sarah: You guys are going to be, like, best friends!
Anna: I don’t know! She’s got, yeah, maybe! She’s, she’s a, such a nice lady. I loved her speech at, in New York. I thought, I think she’s great, so.
Sarah: She’s one of the people who is genuinely nice, and –
Anna: Yes.
Sarah: – you can tell. Like, there’s a certain warmth.
Anna: You can tell. Yeah.
Sarah: But there’re a lot of writers like that. I mean, I remember at RT in Kansas City, there was a chat with Julie Garwood and Jude Deveraux and, like, everyone in the room was barely keeping it together.
Anna: Oh, right.
Sarah: Like, I stood up to ask a question, and my mouth went dry, and I was like, I’m barely holding myself together. My, my inner thirteen-year-old is losing her mind –
Anna: [Laughs] Yeah.
Sarah: – and yet, both of them are the most charming, welcoming, just, you can talk to them, and you’re actually speaking to a real person?
Anna: Yeah, yeah!
Sarah: And it’s, it’s a completely different kind of celebrity culture.
Anna: It is. You’re so right. That’s a good way to put it.
Sarah: There’s sort of, especially at, at conferences like RWA and RT, there’s not a lot of separation?
Anna: No!
Sarah: Like, you’re going to sit at the bar, and you’re going to turn around, and there’s, you know, there’s Nora Roberts, or there’s Eloisa James –
Anna: I know, it’s –
Sarah: – or there’s Julia Quinn, and it’s just, and it’s, there’s, it’s a completely different kind of interaction.
Anna: It really is, and it’s like, you know, the more I read about sort of different – I think, you know, romance writers stand out in that way.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: They are nice. They are very encouraging to other writers, newer writers. There’s none of that kind of backbiting or snarky you hear – I mean, I won’t say, now of course every community has some of that, but in general, very little of that in the romance community, and I love it. It’s very pro-, pro-women, pro-writer, you know, like everybody’s kind of helping each other, and that’s a, that’s a really nice thing.
Sarah: I also think that part of the, part of the, the power of it is that when you’re in a community that has been denigrated by the outside –
Anna: Totally.
Sarah: – so long, you know you’re going to take care of each other.
Anna: Right.
Sarah: Because you can’t, you can’t really expect anyone else outside the community to do what needs to be done, so you’re going to do it yourself.
Anna: Totally! Yeah, Sarah, that’s so true. And it kind of – yeah, yeah. It’s, I, you know, it’s funny. I’ve only just started experiencing some of that denigration, because, you know, the book, I was, when I wrote the book I did it totally in secret. My husband didn’t even know I was writing the book. He was like, why are you always on your computer? I’m like, oh, I’m just doing stuff, you know.
Sarah: Just working.
Anna: Yeah, just working, and then when it actually started happening, and, and I started telling people, of course my dear friends were nothing but supportive, they were excited, but some people are very, you know, oh, it’s romance. As if, as if that means I didn’t actually write a book.
Sarah: Yes.
Anna: Do you know what I mean? Or as if somehow that’s, I don’t, like I’m not really a writer.
Sarah: Right.
Anna: And I think, well, why don’t, you know, let’s, you go sit down and you see if you can do it, right? It’s so –
Sarah: I’ll write one of those this weekend. Oh, really!
Anna: Yeah.
Sarah: Good luck with that.
Anna: Yeah, I’ll write it this weekend. Right, so, it’s been interesting. I really, yeah, I really have a problem with that and – but, I mean I’m sure every writer has had, every romance writer has experienced that on some level, I’m sure.
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: It’s kind of a surprise when you first experience it.
Sarah: And it’s a hard choice whether or not to, to just be like, yeah, I write romance, and sort of just sort of steel yourself and be ready for it?
Anna: Totally.
Sarah: Or to be like, yeah, I, it’s fiction.
Anna: Right, I –
Sarah: It’s fiction, it’s –
Anna: Yeah, and I just –
Sarah: I wrote a novel that’s fictional.
Anna: Right.
Sarah: A fictional novel, that’s what I wrote.
Anna: I’m just like, I write, I write romance, I write historical romance, and then I just wait to see, you know, like –
Sarah: Yep. You’re just sort of like, okay –
Anna: – what happens. Totally.
Sarah: Like, I –
Anna: You’ve got to own it! [Laughs]
Sarah: I, I have a, a cousin of that reaction, because I, my full-time job is running a blog about romance novels, and that’s like a double-whammy of wait, you what?
Anna: Oh, I love –
Sarah: That’s a real job?
Anna: Oh, my God.
Sarah: Like, yes! Isn’t that amazing?
Anna: It, it is when it’s Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, yeah!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: Yeah, totally. Yeah, no, I know. And then there’s, oh, my God, Sarah, the other thing that is – and I’m still trying to figure this, I’m still struggling with this, is the sex part of it, right? ‘Cause my book is pretty hot. Like, it definitely has some explicit scenes, and I’m like, good Lord, the mothers at my kids’ school are going to read this –
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: – and they’re going to be like, she’s a –
Sarah: [porn movie music sounds]
Anna: Yeah! They’re going to – I don’t know what they’re going to do! And then, and then my mother, who, my, like, almost-eighty-year-old mother says to me, the bridge ladies can’t wait to read your book, and I’m going, oh, my God, not the bridge ladies.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: Not the eighty-year-old bridge ladies!
Sarah: You know they read lots of it just like your book.
Anna: They do. But it’s, it’s this weird, like, kind of exposure, and I’m like, Mom, you know, the book has, you know, and she’s like, ah, whatever, they know. Like – [laughs] – okay, what-, I, you know, there’s no point in worrying about it, but, man, that’s been a weird, it’s a weird feeling.
Sarah: It’s a very weird feeling, especially because you never know what reaction you’re going to get to the sexual content –
Anna: You never know.
Sarah: – or even just the sexual discussions, and I have to remember, like, when I’m talking to people, the language that I use to discuss sexuality online –
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – you know, I can’t talk about things like that with real people.
Anna: [Laughs]
Sarah: Like, I’d scare the hell out of them!
Anna: You can’t be as frank, right? It’s –
Sarah: Yeah, so, seriously, there’s, like, very little use of might wang in my real life conversations?
Anna: Which is a crime, you know, really, when you think about it. There should be more use of that.
Sarah: There’s need to be might wang and the magic hoo-ha.
Anna: Right, and the magic hoo-ha! [Laughs] That’s one of my favorite ones.
Sarah: Yeah, I’m a big fan of the magic hoo-ha.
Anna: The magic hoo-ha is, yeah, yeah.
Sarah: So do you have any book recommendations for people of things that, of a book that you wish people, more, more people knew about? Anything you want to suggest?
Anna: Well, like I said, Meredith Duran, but I think pretty much everybody’s aware of that one at this point, which I –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Anna: You know, gosh, I’m trying to think. Of course I will think of a hundred of them as soon as I get off with you.
Sarah: Of course!
Anna: I just – who is, like, sort of – I guess – this is terrible, because most of the writers I’m reading right now are pretty well known. And I should be doing more –
Sarah: That’s not a terrible thing; that’s a good thing.
Anna: It’s a good thing. I should be doing more – oh, you know, you know who I read, actually, recently that I really enjoyed was Jessica Peterson.
Sarah: Really!
Anna: Yeah, she has a book, it’s the Hope Diamond trilogy. She’s got a trilogy. She’s with Berkley as well, and the first one is called The Millionaire Rogue, and I read that, and I, I think she’s very talented. She, she does, you know how you’re kind of drawn, sometimes, to people who do the thing really well that you don’t do as well?
Sarah: Yep.
Anna: I, I feel like that with her. She’s really good at description, and her books are very rich in detail, and I, I won’t say that I don’t, I’m not trying to say I don’t do that well, but it’s harder for me to do that. And she seems to just have such a natural, the book had such a natural ability to, to sort of capture you with some of that description and these really, really nice details. And she, I, I mean, I’m not sure how new she is, but she’s, I think the whole trilogy’s out. I think you can get all three of the books now, but I’m not –
Sarah: You really liked that one.
Anna: I did like it, yeah. I did like it. What else have I been reading? Terrible; I can’t think of anybody else.
Sarah: It’s okay. It’s a horrible question. The minute you think, you’re going to be like –
Anna: No, it’s not! It’s not.
Sarah: – what? Oh, crap.
Anna: Like, I seriously will think of twenty of ‘em as soon as we get off the phone, but –
Sarah: Of course!
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. If you’re looking for some of the books we talked about, and I’m sure that you are, I will have links to all of them in the show notes, also known as the podcast entry, at SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com.
I want to thank Anna Bradley for taking the time to talk to us, and if you have questions for me or for her, you can email the podcast at [email protected].
This podcast, speaking of the word podcast, which I said, like, eight times, so I’m going to say it so more – yay! – this podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Hot Holiday Nights by New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton. Download it on October 20th.
The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter always @SassyOutwater. This is Michael McGoldrick. This is “Mackerel and Tatties” from his album Aurora. You can find it on Amazon or iTunes.
And if you would like to sponsor the podcast or the transcript, you can email me at [email protected].
In the meantime, on behalf of Anna and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend!
[lovely music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
That sounds like my kind of book and series. I will definitely be reading. Great podcast!
I also loved the stroller talk. I have a three year old and a two month old and our stroller is one of those space-age, smooth-riding tanks. I love it a lot.
Great podcast! I loved reading about Bradley’s job with the Chawton House Library-so cool!
Her book sounds really good, excited to read it.
What an enjoyable interview. Thanks for posting the transcript!