Episode 40: A Time to Thrill – Conversation with Aime Austin – featuring Debra Holland

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You. [00:00:02] Speaker B: Hi, this is Amy Austin, and welcome to episode 40 of Time to Thrill. I'm sorry. I'm laughing because actually what I'm thinking about is I want to say hi and welcome to The Murders Began. This is your host, Blake Harden Tatum. Because I have been trying to figure out how to best format the podcast episode episodes in the upcoming book The Murders Began, which is out February 8, 2024. And I've been thinking about it for two days, and I had to add intros and outros to her podcast. And so in my head now, it's welcome to the murders began with Blake Harden Tatum. This week, we're going to talk about Tia Wetzel with the new book. So, Blake Harden Tatum, who you were introduced to in without consent, I'm not even sure if she was in an older title, who knows? Is a podcaster. And her podcast is called The Murders Began. And I'm not sure it's because I listened to podcasts for almost ten years or because I have a podcast or. [00:01:11] Speaker C: I don't know what it is, but. [00:01:12] Speaker B: I'm sort of obsessed with the idea of podcast. Although outside of cereal and one other podcast oh, God. About this murder in Minnesota, I have not been a true Tribe podcast fan. I mainly listen to actually, my favorite podcast, I will tell you, is Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. And before that, he had a different podcast with the Honeydew is like maybe three years old. But before that, he had a podcast called The Crab Feast, which ran for seven years, and I never missed a single episode. It came out on Tuesdays. There was a huge joke on the show. And he interviews comedians, mostly comedians, a couple of other random celebrities, but mostly comedians who have sort of tragic life stories. So it's a storytelling podcast. So The Crab Feast, which I was introduced to at the podcast festival UCLA so many years ago, it's a storytelling podcast. And he really focuses on these stories of people's lives, like how they grew up, where they grew up. And I don't know. Let me say this, 95% of them are both hilarious and tragic. So if you like I'm trying to think Ms. Pat was one that was really hilarious and tragic. Some of them are just so amazing. There was one a couple months ago that was amazing. I don't know if this is like, because I kind of share a similar background, but if you have a background that's full of abject insanity, but you're also successful as a creator, I am all ready for your story. That said, I did listen to Serial. The first one, I'm not sure I listened to the second one. And then that one in Minnesota, which I will look up and put in the show notes. But the true crime podcast I find kind of interesting, but really, I don't know how to say this aren't my thing. Maybe because I write about crime or because I had a job as a defense attorney dealing with crime. It's not how I seek out entertainment, although I do read books about crime. It's the true crime. Maybe it's the true nature of it. If it's fiction, then you can do outrageous things and people can have outrageous things happen to them. But when you throw in that truth, it goes from outrageous and entertaining to just tragic and sad and makes me feel horrible about the justice system and missed justice and lack of police expertise in solving crimes. And I go down this road. All that said, my character, Blake Harden Tatum, gets laid off from the plane dealer, which was a huge issue, I'm sure, if you live in this world. Newspapers when I were growing up were king, and now they're not. And the massive rounds of layoffs to even people who are unionized in the last, oh, my God, I don't know, 30 years has been something else. And all those journalists didn't die and go away. So a lot of them started podcasts or started blogs and then ended up working for online publications. But they really had to morph and change with the changing times. So Blakehard and Tatum is sort of in this space where she gets laid off. Not one of the first rounds, but staff gets smaller and smaller and your salary becomes higher and higher, you're much more likely to be laid off. So she gets laid off and she has to figure out what else to do. And as a crime reporter, she is at the beginning of the whole true crime thing. Since the books written in the past, I believe this book takes place in 2009 and 2010, just when podcasts were starting. And it was easy, not easy, I don't say this, but a podcast could really take off because it was a new know, started with Apple and the phones, the iPhones, a new medium for people to take in entertainment. And it was much more democratic in that you could start a podcast and have an audience where without gatekeepers, without TV producers or movie producers or any entertainment people who love to gatekeep. So I really loved that era. I remember driving around, listening to podcasts. Like, I remember buying a car maybe in like, oh, I bought a first car when I moved here in 2001. But I bought another car and we're at the dealership and the guy's like, what's important for you in the car? And I'm like, what's really important for me in the car is I can plug in my phone and I can listen to podcast. The guy looked at me like I was so strange. [00:06:06] Speaker C: But it was really important to me. [00:06:08] Speaker B: And that car and every subsequent car, I've certainly been able to do that. And that early era, like 2010, 1112, I remember driving around. My son was really little and I had to drive from place to place for child entertainment, and I would listen to podcasts, and they're actually great to listen to at night. It sort of takes the place of talk radio, which really dominated my youth. There was a network called TalkNet, and they would have, like, advice, advice people, money people, I don't know, relationship people, sorts of different people who would talk at night and have people on. And it is the way I went to sleep as a child. So as an adult, there's something very familiar and comforting about listening to advice or interviews or true stories. So Blake, Harry, and Tatum sort of walks into this space after being laid off, and she starts this podcast. The murders begin. I'm not sure. I don't believe there were any episodes that were featured in Without Consent. She was there, and her podcast was nascent, but now I'm sort of including them in. So if you've read a book I've just read a book called Dark Corners, and then the previous book I can't think of the name of it, by an author named Megan Golden and maybe a few years ago, and she is a true crime podcaster. And I sort of love it. Like, I really love that element of realism being injected into crime fiction these days. Maybe there are more. If there are more, email me. Let me know. But I'm trying to think. I haven't read a lot of books that include podcasters, and I'm reading all the time, but who knows? So I'm really excited about that, and I've just veered off. Okay, so this episode on this episode, I am speaking with New York Times bestselling author, Deborah Holland. So we talk about this during the podcast. So I will not retread over this, but I met her some years ago, and she was one of the first authors I knew in Southern California to sort of take the reins and run with indie publishing. And she has done amazingly well. But she was really bold, and I remember meeting her, and I was like, I can't believe you're boldly doing this. And I was still musing around with publishers big and small, and she was so, like so I went down to these meetings, and she was so accepting, and she shared all this knowledge, and she really encouraged me in a number of ways to take the reins of my own career. And I'm forever grateful to her for this. And I told her this either on the podcast or off, I'm not sure. But she's one of the people that changed my life. There's so many women that I have met who have offered a hand down with information, knowledge, all these things that emboldened me and gave me the confidence to take the reins of my own career. So Deborah Holland writes clean or I don't know. [00:09:33] Speaker A: Clean. [00:09:33] Speaker B: I don't like the word of that. It implies the opposite is dirty. She writes romance with no sex. Sometimes kissing. We've had these conversations over the years and has done incredibly well in that space. A lot of Western romance. She has a whole series set in Montana, and we talk about that on the podcast and also some paranormal fiction. And she's just a lovely woman who has an amazing I don't know. [00:10:03] Speaker C: Like, writing is her main job now. [00:10:04] Speaker B: An amazing side hustle, which we'll talk about. She has a PhD, and she does counseling, and you'll hear more about that. She keeps her hand in it, and it's just one of the most amazing sort of jobs to have, in addition to writing, dealing with people's, tragedies and helping them through that. And then, on the other hand, writing super hopeful fiction. It's just an amazing combination. And I got to see her cat on video. [00:10:41] Speaker C: I can't share that with you because. [00:10:42] Speaker B: I don't do video podcasts. I got to see her cat, and it was great, great speaking with her, and I hope you'll enjoy this interview. It's amazingly in depth conversation. It's insightful. It's why I started this podcast. I normally have these conversations with these very smart, accomplished women at writing meetings or these writing retreats, and she and I last went to a retreat in Italy in 2019. Oh, I may post a picture if I find one. And it is just great to have these conversations in my life, and I really treasure and value having these people in my life, but it's also spectacular that I get to share these kinds of conversations with you. So without further ado, let's speak with New York Times bestselling author Deborah Holland. [00:11:42] Speaker C: Hi, and welcome to a time to Thrill. It's me, your host, amy Austin. Today I am talking with New York Times bestselling author Deborah Holland. Hi, Deborah. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Hello. [00:11:54] Speaker C: How are you? Good. [00:11:56] Speaker A: You're talking to me and my cat, Lovey. [00:11:59] Speaker C: I know. I just saw your cat. I grew up with cats. We always had more than one, which is a whole different conversation, but pets are the best. Anyway, how are you? So I haven't seen you in almost, wait, four years. Oh, my God. Four years. We were just saying, I just saw you in 2019 in Italy at a writers retreat. [00:12:26] Speaker A: Yes. Which was tremendous fun. [00:12:29] Speaker C: It was. We went to dinner. I think it was the best. Okay, I have so many questions that I've always wanted to ask, but first, I want to give you a sincere thank you. Okay. I don't know if you remember this, but maybe, like, May of 2014 or 2015, it's back, way back. You had been producing audiobooks, and you were encouraging the rest of us to produce audiobooks, and I was like, I don't have any time for this. And so we stood in the parking lot, I don't know how long, and you're like, you really should do this. This is the time. I don't know what I need to say to you, but you really need to do this. And I took it to heart and I went home, more or less and immediately hired a narrator and did my first audiobook. Okay? A, that first experience was actually delightful. The book. I remember putting the book up on Audible and it paid for itself, I swear to God, in the first week. And I remember calling know Beth yarnell. I remember calling Beth and I was like, who are these people buying this book? And how did this thing pay for itself and how did I not know this? And then immediately after that I put I don't know, maybe I've not done all of them, maybe 14 or 15 other books in audiobook. But you were the catalyst and I want to thank you for that. [00:13:52] Speaker A: You're very welcome. I wasn't an early adopter of audiobooks. I started in 2013. And my self published books, I self published them in April of 2011. The first two, anyway. So it wasn't until ACX, Audible Creation Exchange came to me and said, we'll pay for you to do an audiobook. And I'm like, great. And I'm like, oh, now what do I do? And then luckily, I was part of a small group, the group of authors that I founded Club Indie with on Facebook, right? And so Amazon invited us to Seattle and they literally had us meet with all the different departments about because they wanted our feedback about what was working and what was needed for ACX was there. And she was doing a zoom ish kind of presentation and she sort of said, OK, this is what you do. And she took us through all the steps to sign up to do the audiobook. And I was like following along going, oh, I can do that, right? I'm like the technophobe. It's like, oh, it's so overwhelming. And even though I knew I should because it was like the new thing and I'd just been dragging my heels. And then it was like, oh, okay. And then one of my friends who was there also said, Here, use my narrator. And I'm like, okay, I'm all set now. Luckily. So I called him and he was like, yeah. I told him I was like this total newbie knowing nothing. And he's like, okay, don't worry about it. I got this. I'll take you through it. So it was a wonderful experience. And I think it's also one of the huge lessons of all the people who are listening to this, who are writers, is to find a community because I owe where I am to all the people who have helped me along the way. And like you said, you owe this sort of audiobook stuff to me. And I'm very, a very big believer in paying back and helping everybody. Why you were hearing me say do audiobooks. And if you go back a few years, you would have heard me say do ebooks, do self publishing, right? I was really an early adopter. Not as early as I wish I had been, but early enough to go, this is working. And let me tell everybody about this because so many people don't know. People will help you and you help people and it's a really wonderful, wonderful profession in that respect. [00:16:46] Speaker C: It really is. You have no idea because if you had not I don't know how long you were in the parking lot, because I don't know why I was so resistant. But that's a different conversation. I don't know if you hadn't talked to me that day. I remember because I think I had gone away. I got on a plane right after that. But I did hire the narrator and he did it over the summer and I remember listening to it in my apartment in Budapest. I don't know if I would have done it or if I would have waited ten years. I mean, I just can't say. But I'm so grateful that I listened and it wasn't so resistant that I didn't listen. I mean, I only tried one book first and did it and I have zero regrets about it. Like zero regrets. I will say that nobody told me how weird it was going to be to have your book read to you. That was the oddest thing. It felt odly uncomfortable. Like, oh, this is kind of uncomfortable. But other than that, I am eternally grateful for that. And you were one of the early so one of the things so you know that I live in La and you live in Orange County, but one of the reasons that I spent a lot of time at the Orange County at the time, romance Writers Association, was that you were very welcoming to new authors. I don't know if I signed up, identified, published a book, I can't say that. But also the new trends, I think other chapters were a little bit more resistant. Ebooks aren't going to be a thing and don't waste your time and all of that. So I'm a much later adopter to self publishing, but it was lovely to have people say you can do this. I don't want to say any way you want, but you can do this in many ways and be successful in many ways and still be embraced, I think is the word I want. And so for that I will always, always appreciate Orange County. I got in my car and I'm not a driver, I'm from New York City, but I got in my car, drove from La to Orange County like that once a month. And it was so sort of heartwarming to have people embrace whatever the thing was that you were doing. And for me it wasn't that complicated. I mean, I was just writing traditionally like romance back then, but letting go of my not great publisher and having the confidence to self publish, I do owe to all of you down there who were really encouraging because I was sitting there crying going, well, if I let go of my publisher, then who will I be? Like, I couldn't figure that out. But it was sort of helpful to get that. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Well, the reason I won't take of course, I will not take 100% credit, which will sound like it when I'm telling my story, but part of it is just a great group of people. But I was the first self published author, so this is 2011, but I had been a member since 98, so I had gone to almost every meeting, and I had volunteered. I had been a speaker because I'm also a psychotherapist. So I had taught a class on the male point of view and understanding men. So I had done a lot. People knew me, helped a lot of people in many ways, and so people knew me. People respected me, people liked me. So when I come in and it's my, I think, second week or second month of self publishing, and I have the COVID of Wild Montana Sky on my phone, and I'm literally running around and I was so excited because by this time I'd sold 44 books, right? I published on the 20 eigth of April. So, like two and a half weeks later, when it's time for our meeting and I'm running around going, I've sold 44 books, and everyone's sort of nicely sort of patting me on my head and go, oh, that's great. That's a pretty cover. And nobody said a single bad thing to me. And then the next month, I was like, a lot more. And then by June, I made $2,000 for two books. So all of a sudden, I had credibility behind me, right? I could start saying to people, this is do this, and this is what it is. And I was talking to people, and I was blogging about it, which I haven't done for years, but whatever I was learning, I was tallying. And I was even able to say to like, for example, one of the women who had had she'd been a harlequin author for many, many years, and she had had this great contract for five books, and her advance was like 100,000. And everyone's so in awe of that, except she had for book number five, she had the editor from hell, a new editor, and who was just abusive and had just devastated her. And she stopped writing. And so I was saying to her so at one of our parties after our meeting, I went up to her and I said, mindy, this is your chance to do it yourself. This is your chance to start writing again. This is your chance to heal from what this person did to you and to be able to find the joy of writing your own stories your way and picking your own editor and working with your own editor who's going to be supportive and doing your own covers and all of these things. And she started, and now she's very successful as a self published author. But it helped the part of me that's a psychotherapist to go, hey, if you haven't been successful, if you've been hitting walls, here's, doors here's, doors to open, and if you need healing, here's ways to help you heal your wounded heart. [00:22:55] Speaker C: Yeah, and I will say that I remember. So I joined Rwsa in 2006, I think, and it was hard to hear because on one hand, there's this golden ticket that you're trying to grab for, and then you get it. And I will say this. So the second book that was traditionally published, the editor had left, or she had passed me on to somebody new, I don't remember which. Maybe both, I'm not sure. And then the new editor didn't like me, you know what I mean? It's like, here, I got your book, and I don't like it. [00:23:29] Speaker A: And it was hard story, too, but. [00:23:35] Speaker C: I'd already signed the contract, and I was slotted for whatever the date was, you know what I mean? So at that point, you're like. [00:23:43] Speaker A: She. [00:23:44] Speaker C: Was hate editing, and I was hate revising. But even with that experience, making that leap to self publishing was conceptually difficult. Maybe if I'd been younger like that also may have helped. But I had grown up in a traditional publishing era, in a traditional publishing city. My friends from college got jobs in traditional publishing. It was such a huge thing in my head. So I guess I want to ask you this because you were one of the earliest adopters that I know. Not one of the earliest adopters on Earth, but what made you take the leap into self publishing when many of the rest of us were standing around conferences hoping that harlequin or source books or whatever was going to give us the ticket? [00:24:36] Speaker A: Well, it's going to go back to what I said earlier about writer friends and to give a little backstory. Wild Montaskai, which was my first book, won the golden heart. The RWA Romance Writers america golden heart in 2001. And from that I had an agent who shopped it around to all the traditional publishers, and feedback was like, good book doesn't fit the market, because it was historical, it was Western, and both of those genres in that time were not popular, and it was sweet as opposed to meaning it wasn't sexy. So like Little House on the Prairie and I would debate with editors when I went to conferences and things like that, and I would say, I think there's still plenty of Western prairie readers out there. I think there's plenty of people who want the not sexy books, some because they don't like sexy books at all and others because they don't care. They just like a good romance. It doesn't matter how much sex or how little sex you have in it. And they say, yeah, that's true. That may be true, but how do we find these people and Amazon with their keywords and categories and things like that? They made that another. So my agent then got sick and sort of gave up. And I also had a fantasy series which had been a finalist in the Golden Heart Conference. That was in 2003. So that group of authors, we became very close and we decided to start our own easing. So every month we would publish a magazine, e form magazine on writing and things like that. And we called ourselves the Wet Noodle Posse, meaning like, we want to whip each other with a wet noodle, to sort of stay focused and write. And it was a very positive kind of connotation. So we stayed together and became very good friends and are friends to this day and at some point in 2000 so I kept then a new agent another round for both the fantasy and the historical and same thing. Both didn't fit the market. Fantasy. Too much romance for fantasy and too much fantasy to be a paranormal romance, right? So then in 2010 and I really wish I had listened the first time, one of my group, one of my Wet Noodle Posse members, Dell Jacobs, emailed us the group and said that she was self publishing. And I didn't pay any attention to it. So this was like the summer of 2010. And then a few months later I actually got my first book contract. It was for a nonfiction book called The Essential Guide to Grief and Grieving. While I was writing it, it was my book from hell because the publisher was the complete Idiots guides publisher. The Essential Guides were for much more sensitive topics that you could not put idiots in the title for. And so they had their very own standard of writing. They would want a sample chapter and then they would want a very detailed outline of the whole book. And so I decided to pick my hardest chapter, which was The Death of a Child. And I usually work with adults, so I had to go out seeking parents who'd lost their and interview parents who'd lost their children. And it was a very emotionally difficult one to write because every single parent cried, didn't matter how long ago the child had died. And so I wrote my chapter and I wrote my outline. I set it off and then my editor sends it back. So anyway, it was this long process of jumping through their hoops. And at one point they had said to me and that chapter then when it was done with my editor, he sent it to the committee and the committee sent it back and said, it's got the wrong tone. We want a lighter tone. And I'm like, I had a meltdown. I cried to my boyfriend at the time going, how can I? It's the death of a child. How can I have a lighter tone. And I went online to one of my writing groups and complained. And again, this is where having writer friends helps one of them. Who? Lex Valentine. I don't know if you know her from our chapter works at a Moratorium cemetery. And she wrote me back, and she said, they want you to give people hope. And I'm like, that I can do totally save my book. So I'm in the middle of a book from hell, and then Dow writes our group again and says, I'm making $3,000 a month on my self published books. And I was like, if you hear me pounding the table, I'm like, I want to make $3,000 books. And as soon as I'm done with this book from hell, I am going to self publish Wild Montana Sky and Starry Montana Sky. And in the meantime, my other groups, because we all had at least several books that we'd been writing for years, they also got excited about that, and they immediately started self publishing. And so I was, like, six weeks behind them. And I worked with Dell. She created my covers. And I had been thinking of covers and dreaming of my cover for many years, so I knew what I wanted, and she created it for me inadvertently. We didn't know it at the time, but we were branding me and my covers. [00:30:29] Speaker C: That's true. [00:30:33] Speaker A: So me being a technophobe person, I'm like, I think if I hadn't been in that group of people, I probably wouldn't have done it even if I had known, because it would have been too intimidated. But they were just like, going, Deborah, do this, step one, step two, do this, do this, do this. So I just followed in their footsteps. They had made the mistakes already so they could tell me, don't do this, don't do that, or do this. And I put the book up. And within a year, the book no one wanted, wild Montana Sky, was a USA Today bestselling book. And part of it was I hit two underserved niches in the market, which were the sweet Western prairie that New York wasn't publishing. And so readers really were craving them, and they found my books, and off they went. And then in the summer, I published. The fantasies, surprisingly enough, to me anyway, at the time, was they didn't do as well. They've more than paid for themselves. They've earned more money than I probably would have if I had had a traditional publisher. They just haven't done as well. [00:31:44] Speaker C: All right, so asking this question, which I think I've always wondered, not keeping me up at night wondered, but wondered why did you end up writing about Montana and the Prairie? I know you've traveled there, but I don't know if that's subsequent to writing the books or before. [00:32:02] Speaker A: A little of both. How it came about was this was 1998. I was at a New Year's dance party at. A cowboy dance place in Orange County, which is no longer there. So I met a young cowboy and we hit it off and had a lot of, you know, young cowboys in Orange County, California are pretty rare. [00:32:31] Speaker C: Yes, but okay, sorry. [00:32:33] Speaker A: So he had been working for the races, and so we started going out and had a lot of fun, but he had nothing in common. And so I started thinking about if we lived 100 years ago in the west, who he is and who I am just might work. So that's how the story came to me. Sort of had this vision of this man and woman in period dress riding horses along a creek. And I started writing the book, and my cowboy, my young cowboy moved on. And when the racing season ended, he had to sort of follow the racetrack off when he went. We lost touch me through Facebook, like many, many years later, I'm like, Mike. [00:33:15] Speaker C: You have no clue. [00:33:17] Speaker A: You've changed my life. [00:33:20] Speaker C: Oh, my, that's okay. I have no story like that. So when you were young, did you read either westerns, which were popular when I was much younger, my grandmother had a lot of know well in New York. You could buy them back then at newsstands for your train ride. Let me just say that. So she had a lot of them, like laying around the house. But did you read westerns or historicals when you were younger? [00:33:46] Speaker A: I read know some westerns, like Zane Gray and things like that. So I read everything. I outread library, the town library, the school library. I read books were way too old for me to read. So, you know, I did love little House in the Prairie. I love the little house and prairie books. I loved the little house and prairie series, television series. And so that is sort of the flavor of my books, where the town is sort of like its own character and that over time, the different people in the town have gotten their own stories. Thanks. [00:34:34] Speaker C: This is so interesting because I loved so when I was a kid, I read all the Ingles Wilder books when. [00:34:44] Speaker B: I was a kid. [00:34:44] Speaker C: I used to do dishes. We had a dishwasher, and then we didn't I don't know, though, there was an interim where there was no dishwasher, and so I had to do the dishes as one of my chores. But I would talk to Laura Ingallswelder in my head because she was such a fully formed person who had all these thoughts and feelings more so maybe it's one of the first series I'd read that developed as opposed to series that like Sweet Valley High where there's really no character development. But there's so many books that I read, but I've never wanted to write historical. I mean, I've never wanted to write anything like that. Did it feel like I'm going to ask you this because this is one of the reasons I wouldn't do it. Did it feel like a lot to tackle a historical period? Because, I mean, I went to school and all that, but I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of the 18 hundreds. I really just don't. [00:35:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yes or no? I mean, I had started the writing part that had interested me growing up. My grandmother. She was German. She had been from a wealthy family in Germany and had been a very wild child when she was a kid. And when she wasn't in boarding school, she was running wild over their estate and getting in all kinds of trouble. So I was going to write about my grandma. I was going to write her stories, and I was collecting her stories, and I was like, okay, when I'm done with school, I will write about my grandma. Well, except I was in school forever. I have a master's degree. I went to USC, so it was expensive. So I'd not be able to take a full load because I'd have to work, know my parents paid for my bachelor's, but then it was up to me for the rest. So it took me forever. And then I had to do the state license, and by then I had to like after that I had to collapse and go, oh, I'm not going to do anything for a year. It took me for a while to go, oh, okay, I'm ready to write. But by that time, Grandma's really old, doesn't remember a lot of the details I would have needed to actually write a story of her life. So I just took her my favorite of her stories, like the Gypsy story, and I wrote short stories about all of them. And that's how I got into writing and that's how I got into writing fiction, because school was all about writing nonfiction. So that started me learning to write. That started and somehow I was at the La Times Festival of Books, and I met somebody who told me about RWA. I thought, oh, that sounded interesting, and so I joined, and then I found some RWA. Somebody told me about Llewella Nelson, who became my writing teacher, editor. She's been my editor all these years, edited all my again, it was you can sort of see this progression is meeting people, meeting other writers who give me advice, point me in directions, and that's where I'm going. And then after that, that's when I got the idea for the Montesque, and I started that direction. [00:37:56] Speaker C: Okay, I have another question because I'm thinking about this now because the story you're telling is not dissimilar to many other writers I know, but of course all the writers not all the writers, but like, let's say 95% of the writers I know I met through RWA. Do you think that if it hadn't been RWA specifically that you may have written something other than romance? [00:38:20] Speaker A: I might have because I liked science fiction and fantasy a lot too. And so that's why I was also writing as I was writing Wild and Starry, I was also writing Sober of Dreams, which is the first of my fantasy series, and Reaper of Dreams. And so I had the two books in each and I also had started a contemporary so maybe the science fiction fantasy organization was never very open, especially in those days, was not really open to new writers, didn't have all the resources and help and support that RWA did. This is true. And it was also a lot of old guys judgmental know. So I don't know that I would have actually succeeded if I had gone a different direction than romance. [00:39:11] Speaker C: That's so true. Oh, my God. You're really making me think about this, because I don't know if you did this, but initially when I decided I don't know, really decided that I was going to write as opposed to I've been writing my whole life, but you know what I mean? Decided I was going to do more than a few freelance articles here and there, which is the kind of thing I did when I finally decided I was really going to sit down and do it. I joined a number of different writing groups. I remember them both on the east coast and here. And it never gelled for me. And I think that's when I was working on my first legal thriller, which know it's a whole story took forever. Agent, publisher, nobody wanted it, whatever the same story. But I put it aside and wrote two romances like a lot of writers. And I'm sure you've had this experience. I read everything all the time. I enjoyed romance a lot but I read a lot of them because there were a lot of them. Like when you went to the library there were ten romances and one of the buzzy book at the moment. So I read a lot of women's fiction as a kid. I'd read the one women's fiction and then I'd be like, well I got more tight days in my life so I'd read Ten Romances. So they had a great influence on me and I really did love them as a kid. [00:40:34] Speaker A: I still like them. [00:40:35] Speaker C: But I think that joining the romance community after making an effort to join other more generic like let's say it's literary or crime or whatever, communities were not as warm, welcoming, helpful and didn't have that huge cache of knowledge because I don't know if I would have been successful in getting an agent. The agent didn't get published, I had to run around with the agent similar to you that never worked out. But whether getting an agent or eventually like self submitting as far as romance you could do getting published, I would have done without that helping hand. Like if there had been an organization, I don't know of crime writers that was similar I wonder if I would ever have written romance or would it just been the thing I read? But you're really making me think of that, because so many people I know, so many writers started in romance. Some continue, but people do I don't want to say branch out. It's not a different thing. But people often move to whether it's women's fiction or some other thing, like. [00:41:42] Speaker A: A subgenre, like romantic sense, right? [00:41:44] Speaker C: Yes. It becomes much a lot of people I know have niche down, whether that's a good marketing branding strategy or just because that's where their interest took them. It's in a different conversation. But I do wonder if all of us would have written so much romance if the community hadn't been there. And I do wish and people ask me this all the time writers that I meet who don't write romance are looking for a community similar to the romance community, but in different genres, and nobody's been able to find it, create it. And it's interesting and sad. I don't know why that is, but it doesn't seem to exist in other genres in that same way. [00:42:27] Speaker A: I think because RWA is mostly female and that as women, we tend to be more collaborative. And men okay, we're talking about remember, we're talking about psychotherapy right now. Psychotherapists. And the male and female brain is different in some respects. The men and their worldview tends to be much more hierarchical. You've got the top and trying to get to the top and squish the people below you down. And that's very general when I say that. So don't specifically but women tend to be much more collaborative. And so the idea of what is said in RWA, I don't know if it's actually written down slogan, but it was said so many times. It's like one hand reaching up one head and reaching back. You have somebody who's above you who's helping you, and someone who's below who you who's you're helping. And it was a very strongly worded message of this is how we do it. Others help us, and we help others. [00:43:33] Speaker C: Right. [00:43:34] Speaker A: And I don't know that most groups have that philosophy. They're like, okay, it's like every person from the south, and that doesn't mean you don't get advice and learning and help from other groups, too. It was very much made a priority in RWA. [00:43:55] Speaker C: I do think that's true. I mean, that is my experience. I don't have a particularly negative I mean, people do, but I don't have a particularly negative experience in the romance community. When I joined, people were super helpful. Super helpful. You should submit to this publisher or you should talk to this person, or whatever, and that played out or similar to you with the audiobooks. It was good advice. I took the advice. I passed on the advice to other people who are like, well, how did you do that? I'm like, this is exactly how you do it you call X, you do y you log in here. Whatever it is, I always tell to people, I'm not hiding or bogarting the information. You want it, I'll tell you. And it's great, but I wonder if it influenced what we wrote. Okay, that's a thought I'm going to. [00:44:45] Speaker A: Have for another time probably, too, because romance publishers were much more able to buy books. Harlequin was buying lots of books. It's like if you're wanting to break in and have a platform to then springboard to something else, romance was actually the better place to be. [00:45:06] Speaker C: That's true. I mean, if they're publishing hundreds of books a month, I don't know what date is now, but they were then they had the capacity to accept you and mold or shape you, depending on how you feel about all of that. But it was a place to get published and get that experience. Initially, I've had good and editors bad at it. Whatever. That's a whole different conversation. But I don't have any regrets about that because it really helped me have confidence to move forward and think, well, if I can write these books and publish them, then I can do other things. I can write other genres, other books, publish other way. It gave me the confidence to sort of move forward. [00:45:47] Speaker A: And I think, too, with the self publishing is like, a lot of times, our readers will follow us. Not always, depending if you jump really big jumps with genre, but if you sort of do subgenres or like, if you put romance in your thrillers. [00:46:04] Speaker C: A. [00:46:04] Speaker A: Lot of your readers might follow you. So it's easier now to sort of keep some of your readership. [00:46:12] Speaker C: That's true, that's true. And also the Eternal Shell. [00:46:16] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:46:20] Speaker C: Okay, so I have this other question. You're only one of two writers I know who also are psychotherapists. Let me ask you this. I'll go back. What made you want to be a therapist? This because it's one of the things you know how there's jobs you consider and there's jobs you never consider? It's one of those jobs I never considered. It's like, you want to be an astronaut? I'm like, no, you want to be a psychotherapist? I'm like, there's never I mean, there's a ton of other jobs I'm like, oh, maybe I could do that. This is not one I ever considered. So how did you develop an interest in humor? [00:47:01] Speaker A: This goes back to my grandma again. I would spend a lot of time with her, and she had a subscription to Ladies Home Journal, and they had this very long running column called Can This Marriage Be Saved? And it would have the wife's point of view of the problems. It would have the husband's point of view of the problem, and then it would have the counselor's part of how he or she was able to help them work through things and bring them together and help them have a better marriage. And I was fascinated by that. And I knew, like, around 13 that I wanted to do that. When I grew up the same age and the same sort of with my grandma, it's like, okay, there's these two things, writing and being a counselor. So I had both of those. To be a counselor, you have to do school, right? Writing, you don't have to do school. So that's why I did that one first. [00:47:59] Speaker C: Wait, so what did you major in? An undergrad? [00:48:02] Speaker A: Psychology. Oh, you did? [00:48:04] Speaker C: Okay. [00:48:04] Speaker A: Psychology. Then the master's degrees in marriage and family counseling, and then the PhD is in counseling psychology. [00:48:11] Speaker C: Okay. Do you know Grace Calloway? Because that's the other person. [00:48:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:15] Speaker C: Okay. And the two of you are the only two. I mean, there's a lot of lawyers and a lot of other people, other professions, but the two of you are unique in that. She quit. I don't know if you know this. Like, years ago at this point, years ago, she was down to one day a week, and then she ultimately quit. But you kept going because I remember you used to come up to the Valley, I want to say once a week. I don't know, I feel like it was Friday. But maybe that's just my memory to do. What made you keep your hand in the counseling? [00:48:50] Speaker A: Well, so I was actually West La. Where my office was, and I was working, like, two or three days a week there, and I also was doing some coaching. And so a major studio had sent one of their difficult lawyers to me. He was in trouble for different reasons, and so they wanted me to coach him so that he could start getting to work on time and things like that. So he was actually doing better. We were going and he also had a psychiatrist, and then he did something really stupid at work and got fired, and his psychiatrist was out of town. And so all of a sudden, he goes off the deep end and starts I'm on the phone with him for hours. It's like, no, you're not going to commit suicide. [00:49:39] Speaker C: All this. [00:49:40] Speaker A: And it was, like, burning out. And at the same time, I'm mad because I'm like, okay, you've just messed up. And then he goes, I'm going to sue them, which you did. I'm like, all right, you've just ruined my relationship with this studio, this big, huge studio, which you had. I'm like, I'm never going to get science from them again, which I didn't. And I was like, for the first time ever in my career, a longtime career as a counselor, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. At the same time, this is when my books were taking off, okay? And suddenly I had the luxury of being able to choose because I wasn't limited by finances to doing what I had known before. So I cut back considerably to like one day a week. And luckily when he was like my client, when his lawyer said, you need to stop seeing her because you know she's going to feed the studio anything you say to him. And I said to him, like, no, I'm not. I can't. It's confidential. I wouldn't do that. But if your lawyer says you can't see me, you have to listen to your lawyer. I got rid of them, thank God. So then I'm just mostly doing the writing. And at that point I'm doing a corporate crisis and grief counseling as well. Just not as much as I have been doing lately. And so I started having sort of this existential question in my mind because I know my purpose for being on this planet is to be a healer and to help people heal on an emotional, mental way and make their lives better. And I'm like, okay, am I living my purpose by writing romance novels? And then I got an email from a reader who said, your books helped me deal with the death of my only son. And I wrote her back, and I went, do you mean my grief book? She said no, I mean your novels. They led me to your grief book because in your bio it talks about that, but it was your novels that have kept me going. And it was like this sign from God that said, whatever you do, you will be you and this healing part of you will come out. And I relaxed. Okay. And soon after two, with not doing as much counseling, my love for it came back. So I didn't stay burned out. And so I've been doing both or all three. I've kept a small I don't try to do anything to try to get new clients. People will refer to me from time to time. But I've kept a small psychotherapy population. I've kept doing the corporate cris and grief counseling, which I accelerated, doing a lot of that during COVID because there are people dying and so many people just having mental health crises. So I haven't been writing as much the last three years, and I've been doing a lot more counsel. [00:53:08] Speaker C: So I'll ask you this because I always wondered this why crisis and grief? Because those are so acute. It's like being in an emergency room position when people have an acute need, I think it can be overwhelming. But what is it that made you continue to do that practice? [00:53:33] Speaker A: Because I make a difference and I am really good at what I do. It helps to have done it for so many years that over the years I've really learned what works and what doesn't work. And so I visibly see people change in front of me. That doesn't mean they're any less grief stricken. They're just much more centered. They're much more knowledgeable. They're much more able to connect what has happened to whatever wounds that they have in the past or whatever situations they have going on in the present. And so I can see the shift in people from when I talk to them now. It's exhausting work. [00:54:16] Speaker C: Yeah, it seems hard. I had a friend who was in it who quit emergency room emergency medicine to do cardiology. I'm not lying. Just like a left turn because it was so overwhelming. I'll say that. [00:54:30] Speaker A: Well, first of all, I don't do it every day. It can be like, for example, this week and last week. So I had a company that had an industrial accident where an employee was killed. So I was there Thursday, Friday, and then there was Labor Day weekend, and then so I was there Tuesday and then Wednesday, and it was an hour commute and I had to be there at six in the morning oh my God. For that shift that everything happened. But the first day that I was there, I talked the manager of the company into doing a management group. And the way that I do that is by saying, hey, there's ways to manage people who are grieving and traumatized. So they think that they're going to come to my group and learn about how to help their employees, but it's also about them. And so he's like, okay, I'm fine, I don't need it. But if you say it's going to help us help our people, then of course we'll get all the managers and supervisors in. And so by the end of the group, he was like my number one fan. He was like, this was so helpful, I learned so much. And then he starts asking me questions about his wife, because you talked about communicating in this way and what do I do if I say that to her? And so he's asking more questions. He starts sending everybody in. And so the guys especially would come in, like sort of their arms are crossed in front of them. Not necessarily physically, but that's the I don't do this, but you wanted me to come. And then by the end of me talking to them, they'd go, oh, this was so helpful, I'm really gallant came. I didn't think it would help, but it had helped, and off they go. So watching that sort of turnaround and watching people who would never go, talk to a counselor, talk to a counselor and go, oh, this is helpful. Oh, I've learned things not just about grief, but about myself, or I've learned some things I can now generalize beyond this incident, and I could use it in other places as well. [00:56:29] Speaker C: That's such an interesting way to meet people who would otherwise not seek out mental. Okay, that's amazing because you get to touch people who might not get up one day and go, you know what? I need some therapy. Yeah. [00:56:41] Speaker A: And I tend to be most counselors just sort of do the surface level grief kind of stuff, I tend to go deeper. And it's one of my abilities to be able to tune into people and sort of really know what they need. I'm able to go something like they're talking to my go, okay, so you're sensitive, right? And I like from one sensitive person to another, other. This is one of the reasons you're having this kind of thing. And so then we start talking about sensitivity and how it plays out in their life and how it can be a strength and it can be a weakness. And these are the ways to be a strength, and these are the ways it gets in our way. And how can we then use it in a different way than they've been using it and not see it as weak and bad, but it's actually a strength if they do it this way. So off we go. And so I've given them this gift that they can now use for the rest of their lives in their hour or so that they spent with me. [00:57:39] Speaker C: Okay, I really like that. I don't like what would have to lead you to the crisis counseling, but I like what you can give people who otherwise might not come in. That's fascinating. I really like that. So one thing you just said that snagged was you were saying that sometimes grief can open triggers and old wounds. I've been in therapy, I'm still in therapy, and I know that wounds and other things can affect how you react, respond, live, make choices in your life, but I never thought about grief triggering that. But is that a thing that can sort of I never thought about grief sort of opening old wounds. I actually never wow, okay, I'm going to have to think about it. Is that a thing? Because I only think about triggers opening old wounds or people pouring salt into that one area that you're just like. [00:58:36] Speaker A: Could you I mean, grief is a trigger. That event is a trigger. And a lot of times people have losses in the past that can come up for them, or they can put themselves in the position of the family. Maybe they're a parent and they've got a troubled child and they have fears that this child is going to do something crazy one of these days. And then here they have a suicide at work, and now it's having to confront their worst fears as a parent. And so we have a chance to talk about some parenting skill things. But also there's so many fallacies about grief. And one of them, and I would throw these words out the window if I could, with people is be strong. And so I give this lecture to everybody all the time because we tell people who are grieving to be strong. And what I say to people is crying having feelings doesn't make you weak, it makes you sad. And that you can be a strong person and in your strength, you can be vulnerable. And sometimes it takes a very strong person to be vulnerable to other people and to share their emotions. So just reframing for people how they label themselves and other people, and that it's okay to not have to be so strict with yourself about how you should be or shouldn't be and what you should and shouldn't feel. Or like, people will say, Well, I didn't really know him, but I'm so upset, and they're like, Something's wrong with me because I didn't know this person who died, but I'm having these emotions. I'm like saying, of course, a human being who you worked with, even if you didn't know him very well, has died. And in this case, this last week was in this tragic way. I would be more worried about you if you weren't upset. [01:00:34] Speaker C: Okay, wow. [01:00:35] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:36] Speaker C: You're making me rethink grief because what I think about grief and I've not had too many occasions to have grief. So people seem my family live forever, but I've always thought about grief as a thing that's perhaps everlasting and that you learn to live with, along with living with all your other crap, which is true. [01:01:03] Speaker A: That is true. [01:01:05] Speaker C: But there is that whole I don't know, sometimes I wonder if this is an American thing. There's this whole stoicism around grief like, suck it up, be strong, whatever the phrasing is. And it always feels like grief has a time limit, and it's like, well, you should be over that by now. It's been two months, two years, two days, two minutes, whatever it is, it always feels like there needs to be some end date. And the only thing I've read about grief is that there is no end date, but it may not be as acute. I mean, like, my grandmother died when I was caught 40, you know what I mean? She'd been around my whole life, and the grief is not as acute. And I still sometimes get sad, but it's not and you miss her. [01:01:50] Speaker A: You still miss her. [01:01:51] Speaker C: I do. Because there's nobody okay, she was born in 1920, so clearly she can't live forever, but there's nobody to have those conversations with about that time in history, which I've had tons with her, that kind of thing goes away. And the person who had that sort of institutional knowledge, she was the oldest, and her family is gone. And so I do miss that, and it's not as acute, but I've never felt well, I don't think I talk about grief with other people, but I don't think I've felt bad about grieving. But I know people do feel bad about grieving, and I'm not sure why. [01:02:26] Speaker A: Because we have this belief that grief has to look a certain way, and people are uncomfortable with other people's grief because it's one of the only things in life that we really can't fix or help with in any way. We are. Powerless to bring back the person who's died. And we have, therefore, so few words of comfort. And the words we do have are not helpful. We grope for whatever we've heard. That's the cliche that we're supposed to say at these times, like, be strong, as if being strong and going through life without emotions is the way to handle it, or to say, you have to move on or you have to get over it. And people are well intentioned when they say those things. However, those things are not helpful. They're actually just the opposite. And so what I have to tell people is to say, it's not about what you say. It's about how you present yourself. It's about actually listening. It's about not trying to move them on from their emotions, but being there with them in emotions and making it safe for them to go. I know this is like the 50th day that I'm coming to you and crying about my husband dying. And you're like it's. Okay. If it's 100 days, you can still come and cry to me. It's okay. And I'm just going to listen and be there. I'm not going to try to fix you or shut you up or tell you he or she's in a better place, which, by the way, you can only say to somebody if they're older and they've had a long, drawn out dying, like from cancer, you can really genuinely feel that he or she's in a better place. But somebody who's younger or somebody who's died suddenly, that's not helpful because you're like, so he or she's in heaven having a party with Jesus, but I'm down here with the pain. I don't want them in heaven in the better place for another 50 years. And it's not that I don't want them in heaven or not comforted a little bit by that, but it's too soon for them to be here, and I'm here with my pain. And so saying he or she's in a better place is usually not very helpful. [01:04:49] Speaker C: But you're saying this, and you're making me realize that people are judgmental about grief because they either think at least in my experience, they either think that you have grieved too long or you have grieved too briefly. And especially this is around like, I know parents whose spouse has died and who has whether they have remarried or got into a relationship, and people have a lot of feelings about that. But it's very interesting that people I guess people must have their own perception of what grief should look like. And when people don't meet that standard, there's some incongruity there that doesn't that rubs people the wrong way. [01:05:24] Speaker A: Right, exactly. And that it's really important not to judge and that if somebody has found comfort in the new relationship and maybe it is rushed, but they're going to find that out on their own. And so if it brings them comfort, why not be supportive. If you've got some specific red flags about the person, then that's a different conversation. Right. And I think, too, that idea that grief should have a certain time, and often for, like, losing a spouse, for example, often it's the seven, eight month point to a year that we actually go deeper into grief because some of the numbness has worn off. Even though you've known that, even though you've been sad, even though you've been crying, even though you've been doing all the grieving, it becomes more real later on, and it can become more acute. And at the same time, people then are starting to give you messages of you need to be moving on. And so it's very crazy making. Yes, I tell people all the time, second year is often harder than the first. And for more, like I say, spouses and stuff, kids, it's going to be just like ten years before you sort of start to actually 510 years to sort of start to come to some kind of acceptance of how your life is. That doesn't mean you stop grieving. You don't it's that idea of it's going to take as long as it takes. And instead of judging you or trying to hurry you on your grief so I feel better, right. I let you be there. And if I truly feel like you're stuck and it's like, okay, it's been four years, and you're still crying every day for your husband, then it's like, okay, you need to go see a grief counselor. [01:07:15] Speaker C: This is so interesting. So I'll ask you this because I will ask you, do you write about grief in your books, or would you consider, okay, romances are all over the place, so I'm not going to box it? Or do you consider that not a hopeful enough message? [01:07:32] Speaker A: I guess for no, I do, and it's totally one of my themes, and that especially because my books are set in the 1880s and 1890s, and the world was a very different place for all of human history. People died. You lost children. You had lots of children because there was no birth control, right? And you would at least by the 18, 1880s, 1890s, you would lose one or two of them. Early on in history, you lose half, or a plague could come along, and you could lose all of them. Or women died in childbirth, and a man could get a cut on his arm, and it gets infected, and he dies. So people died. You lived with all these multiple losses, and that was just how life was. There was no such saying of, oh, parents shouldn't outlive their children. That's a modern saying. So in my books, I usually have, and sometimes it's backstory, and sometimes it happens in the book, but there's a loss that the hero or heroine are both are having to sort of move through and process, and a lot of times it's finding love after loss. And so that's a theme for me. [01:08:56] Speaker C: What other kinds of themes do you write about? So I'll say this. Several years ago, someone asked me, what common themes do you think your books have, or what are your books saying now? At the time they asked me, I was like, they're each individual and they have nothing in common. This is not true. I now know what my books are saying and I got it, but I did not have that self awareness around that, let's say, five years ago or seven years ago or something like that, other than, let's say, grief, loss or healing, what other themes do you think you have in your book and why? [01:09:37] Speaker A: I think the other theme I have often is now, it's not an overt theme, it's very subtle. It's often part of just sort of the plot or the person's progression, but the relationship with God. And so it could be fantasy gods in my fantasies. And it's not like my books aren't inspirational under that category, but they do go to church, they do occasionally pray, they do have that relationship on some level with God. [01:10:08] Speaker C: And. [01:10:10] Speaker A: One of my books is more inspirational because the hero is a minister, but it's that idea of having a relationship with a higher power or higher source that is sustaining and important. And what can happen if you don't have that or lose that is also a theme. [01:10:34] Speaker C: Okay, that's interesting. So why do you think you've turned to that as a theme? Because my themes are so different, but I now know after some reflection that they sort of come from my beliefs as a child about humanity and people and behavior. So I get that. Now, I didn't get it earlier, but what do you think has possessed you to sort of have that as a theme or as an endurance? [01:11:04] Speaker A: I think it comes from my own relationship with God or the universe, however you want to conceptualize it, which is a very much underpinning of my life and a sort of sense of sustenance and support to me. And so it's just sort of something that's there. I tend to go through stages of I haven't been going to church the last few years because I've been too tired to get up in the morning to go to my favorite service. They held the service at five in the afternoon. I would go, but that doesn't mean that doesn't affect my relationship and it's just sort of given and one I too often take for granted. But I tend to stay very aware of gratitude and spiritual gratitude and blessings, which is also, by the way, very good for your brain, because gratitude helps light up our brain in very positive ways and pulls us out of anxiety and fear and stress. So it's a good place to be living from, in general sense, which is also part of why I like writing my books, because there's so many things that we just take for granted in our lives. And I like to pick not every book, but in many books I'll pick something that I draw out more to just illustrate the differences. Like in one book it's doing laundry and what it's like to haul in water and to have these heavy clothes and to have to scrub on the scrub board and to wring them all out and to then go hang them up. You read that and go, oh my God, they got from my I'm so grateful for my washing machine and my dryer and then I have a storm come and all the clothes are on the line. So it's that kind of let's be grateful. Let's read these historicals and feel grateful for all the things we take for granted. [01:13:12] Speaker C: I say this as the air conditioning comes on. There are many things I really appreciate. So I have this other question I've thought of from time to time, because you're one of the few people I know who write sweet how can I say this? How are you not influenced to write less sweet romances? Because I don't know if this is your experience, but my perception of the romance genre over time is that it's gotten sexier and sexier and that sexier books sell. I don't know, because my level of heat is the same. I can't speak as to what and I don't know all the statistics. I don't work in Amazon. But how have you not I don't want to say gone down that path, but what made you not change the way you write, given that the way the genre has shifted? [01:14:07] Speaker A: Well, actually, I'm not one of those people who reads romance for the sex scenes. And if we're up to me, I would like to severely limit them in other people's books because a lot of times I just skip over them sometimes if I feel because a lot of times I just feel gratuitous. But sometimes the kind of ones I like are really woven into the plot and into the characters and into their emotional and mental journey. And when an author can convey that and add that through the sex scenes, I really like that. The rest of the time I'm like, yeah, I know about sex. Let's move on to the plot. Let's get back to the interesting stuff in my world. And then sometimes, too, it's like, oh my God, the scene is going on and on and on and on and on. Can we please get the rest of the book is so fascinating. Can we get back to the interesting things? We don't need twelve pages of a sex scene. But this particular author that I'm thinking of, very big author, her books are very successful and if I were to have this conversation with me, she would say, well, my readers like that, but I'm one of your readers and I don't like that. And I would really like to be curious about what would happen if you would write a book that's still your book and still your style and chop your sex down to four pages. Would that really affect your readership? Would they drop off if you wrote a series and that was it? Would you maybe increase your readership? What would happen? Unfortunately, we can't really have those kind of scientific experiments. There's so much work to write a book, and you do jeopardize your readership. If you write something enough that's different enough that I really like that scientific experiment of what happens when you try and could it maybe be not what you're afraid of? Could it maybe have the opposite reaction to it? But yeah, I could just assume do a lot less or read a lot less. Plus, sexies are hard to write. A couple of times I've had to it's like when I was writing my contemporary that was supposed to be more sexy. I literally would start keeping a word of a list of sex words, because I'd be reading other books and I go, oh, that's a word, or that's like a phrase. And I would write it down because I'm like we have to find creative ways to talk about the same things that are happening and how do I make it fresh. [01:16:45] Speaker C: That's interesting. I have a book called The Book of Filth on my writing shelf that I Used to use for that, but I actually don't write it's fascinating because I actually like sex and books, but It's the Way you're talking about know, I've had this conversation I think Beth did A class on this years ago that how Can I say this? What we all know is that if the sex is well integrated into the plot and you learn something about them or they learn something about themselves, then that's the gold standard. And this is a question. I don't know. I'm not the right reader. As my son always says, you're not your reader. And I get that because I'll read anything, I read widely. I have a lot of different tastes. And the experiment you do I do wonder. I don't know what other readers are reading for. I know what I'm looking for in a book, but I have discovered that other people are looking for something different in a book. And maybe we can both get it out of the same book. Maybe we can't, but it's too hard to know. And it's interesting because I thought I've never written a romance without sex, so I don't know if I could do that. I'd really have to think about that deeply. But my legal thrillers actually don't have sex. And it's fine writing it, but I feel like if I wrote a romance without sex, my book would be four pages. And it's not that I don't have like well, no, I don't know. I'd have to really think about the spice level. I know how I write sex. I don't think it's a lot. Maybe. I don't know. I'd have to really think about it. But to me, I don't know. I have to think about whether I've read let me say this. I'm babbling. I have read some really great romances that are just sexual tension. And I'm like, this is even some recently, actually, you know, Robin Bielman does a really good job with that. And I'm just like, this is amazing. I wish more books could ratchet up this tension, because what I'm looking for is the tension. But in a lot of books, I feel like you have to pay off because the tension is not enough. So you have to have some kind of payoff to see the relationship development and evolution. [01:19:12] Speaker A: And I like it when it comes later in the book, too. It's like, okay, it's not halfway through or a third of the way through. We have our obligatory sex scene. But it's like, let's see what the relationship is. And I think that's, again, that goes back to my counselor self, too, which is I tell women all the time, don't jump into having sex with somebody. And that the sort of the hookup culture or the quickly having sex when you're trying to date somebody. The problem with that for women is that we have this bonding chemical called oxytocin, which gets ruined. And so I say to people, don't bond. You don't want to bond to somebody until you know what their character is like. So wait. Get to know this guy more. Get to see if he has feelings for you and you have feelings for him because you do bond and that you give away little pieces or big pieces. It depends of your heart. And don't do that to yourself. Just wait. It bothers me when there's really quick to have sex, when it's not motivated again. I can see it again. If it's like a second chance, they're coming back. And they used to be high school arts or something, right? For the same too. The reason of that really dominant alpha male I wish women wouldn't write that. And yes, on some level, it's the female fantasy of the protective male who loves you, who won't hurt you. But a lot of times, these guys are so controlling that I'm like, this is a bad standard. This isn't love. And that you can take it in a romance because you can make the guy protective and loving and supportive, and he would never hurt you. But in real life, guys who are that controlling, that's abusive, and it can get worse. And so I think it's a very bad precedent. We're teaching women some really bad messages. [01:21:20] Speaker C: Oh, my God. So I have a question because okay, so I agree with you, but I feel like my older self agrees with you. My 20 year old self would be like, have all the sex in the world, you know what I'm saying? But now, okay, so I have the gift of hindsight, you know how that is, and looking back and seeing how that is. But I do wonder. Okay, so I lived through the Bruising Punishing Kisses books, but I do sometimes read, especially when New Adult was very popular, say, I don't know, 5710 years. [01:21:51] Speaker A: Ago, I don't know. [01:21:52] Speaker C: And I was like, so he's given her a computer and he's taken her phone, but only she can only use his phone. I'm thinking, oh, my God, you can't do that. That is completely unacceptable behavior, you know what I mean? Or whatever those alpha male controlling behaviors are. Like, that's not on, right? [01:22:13] Speaker A: And if that was real life, I'd be saying to her, Run. [01:22:16] Speaker C: I know, run. What do we need? [01:22:18] Speaker A: Do you need a safe house? [01:22:19] Speaker C: What can we do? Right? [01:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:24] Speaker C: And this is something actually I've not parsed this out in my head, so some books I just don't read. I don't know. Okay, since our understanding of relationships and has evolved and there's a lot more literature and information, god knows, is YouTube available now about what constitutes healthy versus unhealthy relationships, I do wonder what people make of books that don't portray them as healthy. Is it a fantasy or you're sort of reading like, I read books for drama, drama that I would never have in my own life. Well, you cheated and you did this and you did that, and I'm, like, fascinated, but I can never live that way. So I don't know if people are reading it. I read from a voyeuristic point of view. I know people, not everybody does, but I just want to know what other people are doing. But I don't want to live I'm not that interested in it personally, right? So I read from a voyeuristic point of view so I can put it down and go, those people are nuts. And then you shove the book and you go, live your life. But I don't know if other people are reading, looking for examples of love or things like that. And I do wonder how it affects them, but I would like to think that the other influences of their life, family, whatever that is, society, have more influence than the controlling guy in a book. But I honestly don't know. And I feel like with all the things we talk about with influences, I don't know the extent to which those things give people an impression of how things, quote, unquote, should be. [01:24:04] Speaker A: Well, I think that especially if they haven't grown up with different kinds of fathers who are much more nurturing and that it's very much presented, this is what love is. And in a book, it's safe because the guy is going to have some boundaries and is going to be loving you and isn't going to be trying to limit you from living your life and living to your full potential, right? He might not want you to do something particularly dangerous or whatever, but generally he's going to be there to enhance your life and to encourage you to fly, even as he's being protective and stuff like that and controlling. But in real life, that is rare. In real life, the guy is insecure and he does his controlling. And when you first date it, it might be a few things like, oh, don't dress like that because I don't want my friends to if we go out, I don't want other men looking at it. So that looks sort of sexy. He loves me. He doesn't want other guys. But that's only the start, right? He's going to start narrowing your circle. He's going to have friends that he disapproves of, and he's going to have you stop seeing those ones or family that he disapproves of. And little by little, he narrows his control and he starts to put you down and criticize you and make you smaller because that's how he can control you. And that's what reality is. And so it's very easy to sort of go into it going, oh, he's giving me all this attention, and he's giving me all this love and gifts and protectiveness, and it's very easy to go, wait a minute. In books it goes one way. In real life, it tends to go the other. [01:26:01] Speaker C: Yes, that's true. They're completely incongruent. They're completely incongruent. Okay, I'm really going to think about this because when you read the psychological thrillers, the ones that have been popular in the last few years, they narrow the control. Then the woman's stuck in the house, and she's trying to get out of the house. I've read too many of those and I'm like, I don't know how your world narrowed so much that you can't even leave your own house or you're in the basement or you're in the woods or whatever, but that's psychological thrillers. [01:26:26] Speaker A: And they might have jobs, but I was talking to one when I was there for a grief counseling kind of thing. I was talking to one of the women, and she was saying, I have to leave now because my husband knows when I get off work, he knows exactly how long it takes for me to get home, and he expects me home on the dot pretty much at that time. So if I keep talking to you, I'm going to be late and I'm going to be in trouble, and then I'm going, Here, read this book. [01:26:58] Speaker C: Let me slip you this pamphlet. Yeah, no, it's interesting because I think as an adult, and now I realize this, there are a lot more people in controlling relationships than I think what I would have thought existed as a child and reading Romance, where men were more controlling generally, and now as an adult, so much hindsight. As an adult, I'm like, God. No, I do wonder about the influence of books because and I'm an only child, so I did not have siblings to run around and play with. So I did read a lot as entertainment. I don't want to say they weren't my friends, like books weren't my friends. I had friends, but it was something I could do when there was nobody else to talk to. But books did have an influence to some extent, because it was the only way I could learn how people behaved in a broader sense beyond the people you know, in your light. Well, you've talked to more people than I do in this way. Do you think that people that fiction at least has an influence on people and their beliefs about human behavior? [01:28:06] Speaker A: I think it can. It also depends on what kind of fiction that you're reading. And I think that one of the things I see in articles or interviews all the time, especially with people of color or other kind of maybe it's about religion or maybe it's like if you're Jewish or something. It's like I finally see myself in this show or this book, and I finally see people like me and that there is something about that that is so precious and important to them. Yes, I think, too, that just the opposite, being excluded from stories of whatever medium and to go, okay, I now feel part of this story, or a lot of people maybe can project and go, okay, I can understand where this character is coming from, even if their outsides don't match my outsides, but their insides match. [01:29:03] Speaker C: Right. [01:29:04] Speaker A: I think that there's a tremendous comfort, too, in seeing yourself in some way or seeing characters overcome things. That gives you hope that you can overcome things, too. And I think romance reminds us to love what's possible and remembering the time when we were falling in love with whoever our partner is. So I think there's way more pro. I read romance every day, even if it or if it's maybe not every day because someday I'm reading fantasies or science fiction or whatever, but all the time, several times a week, let's say. But I think that paying attention to what you're reading to and why is important. That's interesting. [01:29:58] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, that's interesting because I don't know how people choose books. And so if I knew, I would run the world. So that's interesting. People choose them for all sorts of reasons. What are you reading right now? [01:30:20] Speaker A: What am I reading right now? Let's see. Got to remember I'm reading one that is sort of a fantasy, medieval kind of fantasy kind of book. I'm going to pull up my Kindle right now. I've got several books going. Okay. [01:30:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. We all do. It's the nature of the beast. [01:30:44] Speaker A: Last night I read a Supernatural Suspense and read that one. And I've also been reading the series. The Blackpool series by Carla Nager. So that's thrillers. Yeah, kind of thing. And then I have a Regency going. [01:31:05] Speaker C: I think I think I'm on a different path. No, I'm reading, actually, a book now. I'm thinking about. It called Dark Corners. I was listening to it this morning. I now have a thing. I love the library for this. I get the audio and the Kindle at the same time, and so then I listen to it while I'm cooking or biking or whatever. That's what I was doing yesterday. Or then I read at night. [01:31:26] Speaker A: Read, read. [01:31:27] Speaker C: I mean, read a book. But I'm reading now. Just a murder mystery. But I'm fascinated by the idea that she's a podcaster. And I like the idea of true crime podcasts, but I don't listen to them generally because true crime is not my thing. But I do like reading fiction books about true crime broadcasters. That's like the thing I'm into currently. It's a little niche thing. I'm like, oh, and a new one came out and I was like, going to read this. But it's always interesting. I want to thank you so much for doing this interview today. It's fascinating. I'm actually going to think way more about grief. You actually made me think about grief in a different way, and you did remind me about how helpful romance writers have been, you yourself and others. And I think it's the most wonderful thing about that community, or this community, or that community, as it were. But I do want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and my listeners today about writing and life. [01:32:36] Speaker A: It's my pleasure. You and I could talk all day. [01:32:40] Speaker C: I know we've closed down a restaurant. [01:32:45] Speaker A: Or two. [01:32:48] Speaker C: But thank you so much. And as always, for my listeners, if you have the chance, I will include all of Deborah Holland's stuff in the show notes, but do take the time to read her. She sold millions of books, those people, and they're well loved. Anyway. Deborah Holland. Thank you so much. [01:33:13] Speaker A: You're welcome. You take care. Bye. [01:33:20] Speaker B: This has been a time to thrill. [01:33:22] Speaker C: With me, your host, Amy Austin. [01:33:24] Speaker B: If you enjoyed today's episode, I hope. [01:33:27] Speaker C: You'Ll share, rate, and review on Apple. [01:33:29] Speaker B: Podcasts or wherever you listen. It will help others to find and enjoy my conversations with brilliant women creators. Also, please hit the subscribe button on your podcast app. In addition to hosting this podcast, I am also the author of the Nicole Long series of legal thrillers. The first three books in the Nicole Long series are now live. You can download Outcry Witness, Major Crimes. [01:33:53] Speaker C: And without consent to your e reader right now. [01:33:56] Speaker B: The fourth book in the new series, The Murders Began, is available for pre. [01:34:01] Speaker C: Order wherever you get your books. [01:34:03] Speaker B: I am also the author of the. [01:34:04] Speaker C: Casey Kutz series of legal thrillers. These titles are available wherever books are. [01:34:09] Speaker B: Sold, your local library, and also an audiobook. You can also find this podcast on Facebook at a time to. Thrill. Thanks for listening and I'll be back with you soon with more great conversations.