Illicit Liaisons: Sports Romance with Sierra Hill

This week, our guest host is Sierra Hill, with whom we discuss the controversial attempt by Ivory Chapters to trademark "Blind Date with a Book," the impact of AI in publishing, sports romance, and more!

Sierra Hill is a RONE Award-winning romance author of Game Changer and the award-winning college sports series Courting Love. She writes steamy new adult and sports romances, including the Vancouver Vikings hockey series, the Puget Sound Pilots, and the Clearview Falls University football series with her co-writing partner, S.E. Rose. She also writes award-winning LGBTQ+ romance under the pen name, K.C. Kassidy.

SIERRA'S LINKS

Website: https://www.sierrahillbooks.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sierrahillbooks
Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/4twzU9o

READING & RECOMMENDED

We All Live Here by JoJo Moyes https://amzn.to/4cDPoma
The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow https://amzn.to/4tqPiUD
Shadow of Betrayal by Eva LeClerc https://evaleclercauthor.substack.com/
Urna Semper on Substack https://urnasemper.substack.com/

TENDER & TEMPTING TALES

Tender and Tempting Tales Substack: Subscribe and get a FREE story! https://tenderandtemptingtales.substack.com/

Tender and Tempting Tales on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tendertemptingtales/

Calls for Submissions: https://tenderandtemptingtales.substack.com/p/write-for-tender-and-tempting-tales

ILLICIT LIAISONS PRODUCED & HOSTED BY

Tara Leederman Substack: https://taleederman.substack.com/

Jenna Harte: https://jennaharte.com/

Outline and Show Notes: T.A. Leederman
Editing: Jenna Harte

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Hello, romance readers. Welcome to Illicit Liaisons with Tender and Tempting Tales, where each week we talk about the good, the bad, and the naughty of romance fiction. I am Jenna Hart. I'm a romance author of the Southern Heat Contemporary Romance series and the Sexy Valentine mystery series, as well as the managing editor of Tender and Tempting Tales, a steamy romance anthology for readers who like quickies.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hi, I'm Tara Lederman, social media manager here at Tender and Tempting Tales, and Laura Maven and main fiction writer for Starship Valkyrie, a science fiction game and story universe. And I write science fiction stories, including romance, and you can find me in our anthologies and on Substack.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

And today we're very excited because our guest host is Sierra Hill. Sierra Hill is a Rone Award-winning author of Game Changer and an award-winning college sports series, Courting Love. She writes steamy new adult and sports romances, including the Vancouver Vikings hockey series, the Puget Sound Pilots, and Clearview Falls University Football Series with her co-writing partner S. E. Rose. She also writes award-winning LBGTQ Plus romance under the pen name Casey Cassidy. Sierra lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of 30 plus years and her rescue dog. In her free time, she enjoys crafting, teaching senior fitness class at the local senior center, and fostering as many dogs as she possibly can. You can find links to Sierra's website and social media as well as any other books and resources we cover on the show in our show notes. But it is Sierrahillbooks.com. If you want to click it and go, and thank you so much for being with us, Sierra.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

So excited. Well, thank you. I'm so glad to be here, Jenna and Tara. And my bio makes me sound really old.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

30 plus years like romance is very nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I must have got married when I was, I don't know, like 10.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

You look amazing. Now, Sierra, normally Tara and I like to talk about bookish news and drama and hot takes that we come across. Luckily, you actually supplied us with one we hadn't heard of, which was a book box subscription service company, I read chapters, which is filing an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register the term blind date with a book. Now, this is used by everybody who does blind date with a book. Yes, it does. And just curious, like, is this even possible? Like, what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Oh gosh. Well, first let me say I am not a trademark expert at all. I'm not a legal expert, but this came to me via a friend on uh Facebook, of course. Where else would I find it? And uh I followed up with a few questions of my own with her, and she said she had filed a complaint, um, or registered a complaint with the USPTO, the US of whatever it is. Park office. That would be it. So apparently, this Ivory Chapters LLC, which is a book subscription service, filed an application to trademark the common phrase that we all hear, blind date with a book. And then immediately face backlash from, of course, the bookish community because it sparked controversy with you know, authors such as such as us, booksellers, indie bookstores, libraries, even, and readers, because we all use this common phrase everywhere these days. You go to a book event, you have a you know, a bunch of blind dates with a book, and it's exciting and fun. And this person wanted to trademark it, trademark that phrase. So I did some research because, again, I'm not an expert on it. And typically, you know, we've we've all seen trademark products and terms that are specific to brands, like you know, I think of toothpaste, and you have the Colgate and the Crest brands, and then you have soda companies, Coca-Cola. Well, those are all trademarked. But the words and terms toothpaste and soda, on the other hand, are not and can't be, you know, trademarked because it's a widely used descriptive term. So the same would hold true for blind date with a book. Um, and so anyhow, uh, there was this attempt to monopolize this widely used descriptive term. And I guess this came about several weeks back, like mid-April. And for those of us who have been around for a while, we remember the hashtag cocky gate. Do you guys remember?

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Oh, the cookies are back there. I was like, no, no, someone tried to trademark, yeah, trademark cocky as your response.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

So what was interesting, and I had to look back on this because it goes way back in the biz, you know what I mean? And this author, uh Felina Hopkins, did manage, I don't know how she did it, but she managed at the time to trademark the word cocky because she indicated that her book titles, her brand, everything was cocky. So the certain fonts.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

It was a word mark. It was a word the word cocky, it was cocky in certain fonts. Font. Perfect. Thank you. You can get a word mark. That's okay. I'm okay with that. Trying to get the whole word is was cute.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah. But then she went one step further, and she went and told these other authors that um and filed a lawsuit that they could not, those authors could not use the term, otherwise, she was going to sue them. And maybe she even did sue them. It's again, I I'm fuzzy on it. Um my memory doesn't go back that far. But thankfully, like single titles can't be trademarked. And in in her case, in the cocky gate, um, her lawsuit was lost, and she ultimately surrendered that trademark for the cocky and the font and all that.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah. So um, she understood her own IP and what she was doing, anyways. Like it's a very difficult thing to protect, anyways. I wouldn't want to try to protect cocky in certain fonts. It's just a nightmare. Because you have to you have to protect it to keep it, right? And that means going after millions of ND authors.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Right. And who has that kind of money, you know? Um, but thankfully, in this case, and in back in in the previous case, you know, the the community, once again, they just really showed up. Um, you know, like I I don't know about the authors' guild, I haven't checked on that, but I know that author of trade associations like SIBA, which is the Southern Independent Bookseller Alliance, they filed and lodged their own complaints against the this current trademark claim. So that's awesome. And as a matter of fact, a friend of mine who's also a sports romance author out here in Seattle, about 10 years ago, prior to our professional NHL uh team becoming established here in the market, and they were looking to um, you know, have a uh define a name, create a name for their franchise. Um, my author friend, she went and filed her trademark for her fictional hockey team because she didn't want after this like 10, 12 series, book series with this brand, she didn't want to have to change her logos, change her brand if the you know the new HL NHL team were to use that that name. So she won that case.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, that's correct. That's what she that's what trademark's for.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Perfect. Yep. Yeah. So, anyways, that that's what I know about the situation. This is ongoing right now with the blind date with the book. Uh, and you know, as an indie author, I was just kind of um ruminating on it, and it's like it's just yet another thing that is thrown at us on a daily basis. It's like, you know, the I'm not a tennis player, but you know, when you're practicing tennis and you have that ball, whatever it's called, launcher, I feel like it's just always a barrage of balls that are just thrown at us, and we're, you know, have to duck and you know, re-rechange our position and course, and it's expensive and it's tiring. And um, this is just yet another example of it.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Fortunately, this one is big booksellers will probably file complaints with the PTO over this one. I don't think it'll make it to the acceptance period. If it does, then it gets into the that's something I want to tell people. Like, if it does get accepted and go into the there will be a commentary period for about 30 days, it gets accepted. And there's a tr there's a time in there where people can say this is a product description. This is like a this is a general product. It's like trying to trademark the word, you know, toothpaste, like you said, or trying to trying to try to trademark the word book, you know, like you can't, it's just a product type. You can't do that. But I I doubt that it'll even get to the commentary period. But if it does, people should comment and say that it's been widely used.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Yeah. I would be surprised. It it just seems to me uh if I were this company, I'd withdraw it because uh it does issue uh bad will, right? Uh it's bad form. Now that you know that the reader community is like, no, you can't do this, uh it could hurt them if they continue to press forward. It seems to me. And if we if we believe that they're gonna lose, it's also an expensive way to learn a hard lesson, right? Absolutely. So it just seems to me at this point you you make up your own term and you know, booty licious book surprise. Uh whatever, right? That's good. I'm writing that down. Yeah, I'm taking that one and move on because it just because the reader community we were talking on a call earlier how the reader community can sometimes turn vicious. Well, yeah. I had so seen where they had gone after an author who had a story or something they felt was similar to one of the big ones now. And of course, I still didn't look it up. I still don't remember what it was, but the author they went after wrote their book before this one they're accusing her of copying.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

Um, and so this poor person is having to defend themselves. And it can it can go badly that way when readers get organized, but you know, this company should recognize readers, they will protect authors, they will protect, and it just seems to me uh this would be a tough thing. Because I could just, I mean, I'm the type of person who would be like, fine, you won. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not buying from you, not that I ever have, but you could change your mind, right? And all of a sudden you have bad will because you've done this mean thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah. And I think her her claim, and and and again, I I I I read on threads, oh my goodness. Um, that her claim, the reason why she did it, because she was being questioned, um, was that she figured at some point someone else would do it, and then she would have to, you know, she would have to change her business model. So she was trying to get ahead of the curve, was her logic behind it.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

But her IP lawyer even allow that. Like they must have told her this was a stupid and spurious. My IP lawyer would have thrown a fit if I had done something like that.

unknown 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Well, you you know, you just there's no telling for and who knows, maybe what they're trying to trademark is kind of obscure, right? Because you can't trademark fonts, you can trademark images, you can trademark, yeah. And so just because you have the words in a certain way doesn't mean you own the words, right? And of course, hers were titles for the most part, which we know can't even be copyrighted. Yep. So very, very, very, very strange. Fun times, never a dull moment in the world. Never a dull moment in the romance world. Sometimes I'm surprised how something such a solitary activity such as reading can create so much drama. Drama.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

But it does drama's part of the community. I mean, we know that we talk about drama here on the podcast. That's part of what holds people together, is talking about the crazy big big scope opera world.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

Yeah, and threads is the place for it, right? Like that's where you go if you want drama. Yep. So we also have for uh the AI drama over uh shy girl. And I keep seeing things coming up back and forth about this thing. One of my issues had been uh the author is you know gonna take all this heat, but we know that publishers are using AI. Matter of fact, I just earlier on a call was talking about how they're feeding author manuscripts through some sort of AI to create summaries. They're using it for marketing, they're using all sorts of things, uh, but Hashid isn't getting in trouble for you know, except for the fact, like, how did they not know? Right. I'm just curious what your thoughts are about this whole um, you know, AI is entering AI written material is now entering the the fray.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Big sigh. That's my thought. Big sigh, you know? Um, so I have you know what might be controversial thoughts on it because I I personally I don't want to use it. I don't want to be um, you know, held to that questionable action that, you know, again is being called out by readers who believe that, oh, that that book was written by AI. I mean, it's everywhere we look these days, and I do, I have big feelings about it, but uh, but I guess what was interesting is I recently had dinner with some friends that are not in the the book world. They have, I'll say quote unquote normal jobs, but um, they're not in the literary world. And we got onto the subject of AI use. And one of the individuals is in HR in an international startup, and the other one um is a financial director in the finance sector. So both of them said they loved using AI. And I was a little shocked. I'm like, really? Wow, well, how does it how do you use it? What do you what does it help you with? And they said, you know, it it helps simplify things, it speeds up their work and output, um, especially in like recruiting and training and development and creating presentations. And so I I thought, wow, okay, that's that's definitely a different way to look at it. It definitely can help. And then they joke, they said they have a five-year-old daughter, and they said they joke that every night before when they're putting her to bed, she wants a story, and she tells them what she wants to hear. So they can't just run to the bookshelf and find a book on exactly what they want. They type it into the one of the AI generators, and they pull up a story then that has been generated by I by AI and they read it to her. And this is where, of course, my face shuts down, right? I'm like, really? This is exactly the problem. And I hope that our discussion then spurred them to realize, oh, this is how it is affecting you know creators in the literary world because they're not no longer then going to look for books, they're just typing it in and pulling up information and stories that have already been written and they're just regurgitating and regenerating it in a different, a different light. So my feelings are I think it can be helpful for various uses. However, um, as an indie author with a career spanning over 12 years, I also believe in human generated and authored created works. Um and I've steered clear personally of AO tools. I mean, yes, I use dictation, um, which is AI, and I use um, you know, Word, which has the auto-correct and everything, and that's you know, uh an AI source. But I want to write, I want to continue using my own words to plot, to craft, to write, to edit, to design. I want to use um, you know, human voices for narration. And I know I am going on a tangent now, but I recently had a meeting with some fellow authors, and they they said that we are talking about the voice, I can't remember what Amazon's calling it, the voice narration thing. Whatever it's called. Okay. But they said, you know, that's the only way that they could do narration and to have and to create audiobooks for their books, is they can't afford going they, you know, they can't get uh audiobook publisher to pick them up and they can't afford to pay their own. So they said this is the only way I could do it to help me sell my books and get visibility. So, you know, I don't begrudge anyone who chooses to use the tools. That's that's their thing. That's that's okay. But I um I don't want to take away that human touch and the element that makes our books special. And I know I'm a dinosaur in this industry, but I but I don't want to become the dinosaur that goes extinct, if you know what I mean. Like if I rely on AI for all of my work, um, my creativity, my own personal creativity will dry up and shrivel and will go extinct. And I know I'm catastrophizing all the doom and gloom about what AI is gonna bring, but that's my stance on it. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

It's readers' choice if they're gonna choose that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

I I have a similar attitude in that, well, first of all, uh your head exploding isn't going to change anything. And people are gonna use it. So, okay, now how do we adapt? And for us to adapt is partly competing with lots of books, but even that is sort of changing, and you did a crowdfunding, right? So, I mean, authors at least now have other abilities to get in front of readers, but it's harder now because there's more people and you're you know, a lot of attention uh is going all over the place. But I also feel like uh I I just don't want to have the energy to um pick up a pitchfork and go after something. Right, I know, and I've seen the vitriol to me is sort of shocking. I mean, if you don't like it, don't use it. If you if you don't like it, don't buy it. There's a lot of people who uh now anything wonky, they'll say AI. Right, even if it was written 12 years ago, right? Like, where did I get that from? Like, I don't know, it's just the new the new sort of excuse, yeah. But I just really feel like I I was I've said before I saw a post where somebody admitted to using AI for something and somebody else said they wished uh pancreatic cancer on them and their children. Oh my lord, oh my word, oh my word. Really? Like, what why? Like that's just worse. I would rather somebody use AI than put a curse on somebody and then the next one have cancer. I don't know. So I'm I'm sort of like, I'm gonna make my choices, you make your choices, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Just stay in your corners, be happy, exactly. Um, what's interesting is I just um uh I'll uh yeah, yeah. I just submitted a book that was part of a anthology, a charity anthology, and the guidelines to submit your book were that no AI could be used. So we all agreed to this. Well, then what happened is one of the authors in the anthology did use AI for I guess apparently editing. I don't know the whole story, but there was a prompt left in the manuscript. Oh my god. Whoa, I know. And so the organizer of the anthology pulled it down, and the author said, you know, apologize for this mistake. Everybody makes mistakes, it's okay. And they re re crafted uh the manuscript, resubmitted, and then they put the anthology back up uh for sale and purchase. But you know, it happens.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

And I'm how is there a prompt left in when you use it for editing? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

I've just decided it's here. There's nothing I can do about it by getting upset. Uh, you know, we do the best we can to deal with it in terms of tender and tempting tales.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

But what about the validity of these AI? Um, sorry, what are they called again? The LMs? That but that catch the let's say, oh, this was written by AI.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Oh, the oh, the you mean the the detectors? Yeah, yes, yes. It's an arms race, right? They are also LLMs, and there are things that they can teach you about what looks like AI writing, but you can't use them to as your detection. I've helped us detect, and so is Jenna. We have to do it with our eyes. The detectors uh can only help us so much, right? They can help us p pinpoint areas of the text that might be generated, maybe. Okay, but that doesn't mean that they are, and there are areas of the text that they can't catch. They don't know that dialogue, especially like historical romance dialogue, they can't figure out that that's generated. Even if you have if you go to one generator, have a generator for you, and then put it into the detector, it won't catch it because it's so programmatic already. Yeah, you have to do it with your eyes. Uh-huh. Um, you have to just kind of know what it looks like.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

There is a detector that that a lot of publishers are using, but they can't use that on their own. You just sort of have to, once you see it, once you start to know it, you it pops out at you when you're reading. Like, yeah, I mean, one the biggest thing that stands out are the really odd metaphors.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 21:48

The rackadoodle they make most of it. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

It sounds beautiful. As you're reading it, you're like, oh, that's lovely. And then you have to think, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

In Shy Girl, there's a part that talks about. About fanged gauze, and your brain just kind of goes, Wait, what? The gauze is fanged? What are you what? Moments like that where it's like editors and teachers, teacher, because you know, this is my space. I'm both I'm an editor and I'm a and I've been a teacher of English. There's a lot of like conversation about what this looks like. The rule of threes, not this, but that. It's not it's not really m-dashes, although spaces around m-dashes are kind of a tell because people don't tend to generate spaces around their m-dashes if they're using Word or Google Docs. Although it it has, there are things like Grammarly will do that. Like there are certain things that will add them. So that's not the only tell. But yeah, it's nonsensical writing is a big one. And a lot of like, if you go going through it, it's the same stuff over and over and over again, you know, like not this, but that, this, that, very jumpy, very, very jumpy.

SPEAKER_03 22:51

Sort of a staccato, but at the same time, you the other side of that is being careful because that could be somebody's style. Yeah, I'm terrified. I get terrified all the time. I feel like I've been really working hard to up my writing game with my own writing, but I start to get nervous, like somebody's gonna accuse me of something here. I better use a dumber word, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Um I always warn people like one of the reasons you might see staccato is not because someone's using AI, but because they're using dic dictation. And I know this from Jenna's writing. Sometimes it gets staccato because the per the the program is putting in periods and pauses when she's not generating them, and so it gets staccato at times. And so when I'm editing, I'm always like, all right, let's let's let's let's fuse these together. But I know it comes from dictation, not from using AI. And this yeah, you just have to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

But that's where editors, that's where strong editors come into play, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yes, yeah, you gotta have that kind of brain.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Sometimes sometimes I like saying, you know, having a phrase and then a and then a word. I mean, sometimes it's sort of my style, my voice. I kind of like it. Use it for oomph or whatever. You're not gonna write it. I'm terrified I'm gonna be accused. And so, you know, again, it's a never-ending battle.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

I'm sure always remember AI is learning from us.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah, it's always learning from us, and if because there's writers who write that way, and it's very popular. There's a lot of young writers who write with a lot of m-dashes. There's a lot of young writers who write not this but that. There's a lot of young writers who write with nonsensical metaphors because they don't think through their symbolic language. And that's what it's like, it's what it's training on. So you have to remember that like it looks like people.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

I bury I buried my head in the sand on this one.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

I'm like, I don't want to be most readers, you'll be fine.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

You know, and I think authors will be okay, right? But if you have uh become a writer in the last couple of years, yeah, you're the they're the ones that are gonna be looked at sideways. And unfortunately, they you know may or may not be using AI, but if they're not, they it's tough.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

I always tell people that the solution is human. Write in a writing group, make sure that you have a paper trail, show that you're writing together with other people, that your writing is you know coming from you, and have multiple drafts of it and make sure that like other people are seeing you write so that they can attest to the fact that you are a writer who writes with hands. Interesting. Like we're in a moment of like a lot of change, and so readers and publishers and everyone is just really they're up in arms, and uh like I would say that they're stimulated easily because of a moment of change. And I it I think it'll settle out. There's a lot of noise. AI generates a lot of noise in a lot of it, marketing everywhere is just noise.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

I hope that it does because I don't I don't want it to degrade what we're doing, you know. This is our livelihood. We love this business, we love the we love to write and tell stories, and I just don't want to see it uh, you know, the the enthusiasm of reading um change because of it. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

But look at how how popular in-person events are. People want to meet authors in person and to do this stuff in person, and they want to read stories. Like that's where the strength is. And I think it'll be okay. Sorry, Jenna, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

I was gonna say there'll always be readers, and nothing is stopping you from writing. The hard part is selling in a crowded marketplace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Finding a reader.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

You're established. People love you, Sierra. Oh gosh, please. They're buying your books.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

One problem is a lot of AI writers are ghosts, right? They don't want to talk about their writing, they don't want to go to events, they don't want to sell in person and talk to people in person. You know, sometimes they even invent their author personas to such a degree that they can't go to events, you know, and and they can't talk about their writing because they don't know what the AI generated for them.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah, but well, I have that problem as a 50 plus woman. It's like, what did I write? I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Well, you wrote last last week. You already wrote the most recent book. You know your characters. Yes, yes.

unknown 26:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

And you can talk about process. Like you if what do you what's an AI writer gonna talk about? You're like, well, I was really hard crafting the prompt. So, Sierra, in conversation recently, you let slip that you plan to coordinate and publish contemporary romance anthology for next St. Patty's Day, uh, with about 12 to 15 authors in it. And you know we love anthology. So I was wondering if you could tell us and our listeners all about it.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Oh, yes. I've I've taken on a uh another project which I told myself I swore to myself I would never do again. But this idea uh for this book, the story, um, took shape last fall when I went to on a trip to Ireland. And I came up with the idea, and it didn't, it doesn't fit into my um sports romance genre that I typically write. And then under my Casey Cassidy pen name, I've already written a book set in Ireland with Irish characters. So the more I thought about it, I realized, well, I could just write a short story and include it in an anthology at some point, but none seemed to pop up. I wasn't getting any invites, so I figured, well, why not do my own thing? So I have created and coordinated anthologies in the past, as well as several collab shared world series, and they went relatively smoothly. So I figured, well, let's go ahead and you know try another one. And so this upcoming anthology will be released on St. Patrick's Day 2027, and each story will center around being lucky in love. And um, so I'm I'm leaving it up to the authors on you know what they want to write, their characters, they can um it can be part of a series that if they want. Um, it just has to have a happy ever after or happily ever or happily ever after or happy for now.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

And invited to submit tar anthologies, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

You are invited. Yes. I'm I'm trying, I try to find the time. I I mean I look at my calendar going, oh my gosh. So, and one of the toughest parts of running an anthology, as you as you know, Jenna, is I've had to I close the interest of application form and I'm only looking for 12 to 15 authors, and there are 54 interested authors. So I'm very excited, and in the next few weeks, I have to narrow that down, and that is the most difficult part. Can I confess something?

SPEAKER_03 29:14

Yes. I feel like maybe I filled out your form. Yes, you did. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

So now, so now it's widely known. And guess what? I I first off, I was honored that you would submit your interest. And then I thought, where is Jenna gonna find the time? I don't know, add this in. You are the busiest woman. I you have to be the busiest author that I know. Like, honest to God. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

There was something about it where I thought, well, that might be fun. Um Irish thing, or yeah, I don't know what it was. But yeah, I feel like I filled out the form. As a matter of fact, I went looking through my email earlier, like, did I hear back? And no, I haven't. I I and then I thought, well, I'm not gonna sing because maybe she didn't pick me up. I don't want to have her today.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

I'm putting pressure on Sierra here.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

And if you don't, if you don't, it will be fine. I get it. 55 No, no, you heard it here, readers.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

If Sierra doesn't pick Jenna, doesn't mean she doesn't like her anymore and there's gonna be all this drama.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Oh no. So it's all good. It's all good. Yeah, but it is it is really hard. And and Jenna, as you know, it's hard to select authors because there's so many variables. You want a wide um range of voices, but you also want people who are reliable, that they're good writers, strong writers, they have a commitment to the craft, and they are going to be accountable to their time and what they have said they're going to do. And by looking at an interest form, unless, you know, unless I know them, like you know, someone like yourself, uh, it's really hard to say, well, is this person? I want to give this person an opportunity. Maybe they only have a couple books out. I want to give them an opportunity to be part of this.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

But on the other hand, yeah, no, we we definitely get it. We I mean we do take submissions in advance, so now we vet them up front, right? So we have that, but we do, you know, we still there's still, particularly if they're a new author, which we totally want to support. There's a lot of extra work poor Tara has to do. Oh, Tara's on the hook.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Oh I do I do the vetting, yeah. I do the vetting because we didn't vet one time and I said never again.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

All right, I've been there, and then I just I just say, all right, well, we're down one author then in the book. I mean, that's just the way it goes. I you know, we had to do that.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

We matter of fact, we pulled one at the end because we did all of a sudden think, you know what? I don't think they wrote this. Oh, yeah. So we did end up pulling one, but um, but yeah, well that's exciting. I love, you know, I went to Scotland a couple years ago, which isn't Ireland, but you know, just that whole area, Scotland, Ireland, it's just so beautiful, and they've got the depending on where you are, they're speaking Gaelic or Gaelic, and yeah, whatever you think it's a contemporary romance anthology, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:15

So people know what to look for.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

It is, yeah. So it won't be romanticy, it won't be fantasy, it won't be, you know, um it'll be a wide range of tropes, of course, but the main consistent uh topic will be lucky, being lucky in love.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Do you have an title yet?

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Do you have a title yet?

unknown 32:36

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Well, if I do, if I do, I'm not gonna share it.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Oh no, I was gonna suggest one, actually. Oh, okay, go ahead. I was I have been I've been lobbying to maybe do some kind of St. Patty's Day zine for us, but I just don't think it's ever gonna work out. I think it would be weird. But the the title I had mine for it was Shamrocks and shenanigans. If you I just like the title, really is what it comes down.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Shamrocks and shenanigans.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Maybe you should do something with Lucky or Lucky in Love or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah, I was I was thinking that. I just what I don't know is if I will require, um, sometimes I like to do this. I I require that they have uh a certain word in their title. So um in a uh previous collab that I I coordinated and ran called the um All American Boy, they had to have the word boy in the title. Oh and so they could they could do whatever the you know, like bad boy or mama's boy or uh, you know, boy on a train, whatever. I don't know. But they had to have that in so that there was that continuity and the similarity that you know that we knew, oh yeah, this was part of this series.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

But yeah, but anyway, we'll see. I love it. I I mean one of the challenges you have, and I don't know, maybe you have an answer to this here, is is in my mind, romance readers are avid, they want lots of stories. What a fun way to have an anthology where you got lots of quickie little reads from all these different authors who have different voice, different style, different stories, different tropes. But what we're sort of discovering is for a lot of people, they haven't really tried them out yet.

unknown 34:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

So, you know, trying to encourage people, this is a fun way to discover new authors, it's a fun way to read when you just have 10 minutes because you're waiting for your kid to, you know, get done with soccer or whatever. Right. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

I often hear from people like, Oh, I've never read sci-fi romance before. And they wouldn't pick up a novel in it because it's just too much of a commitment. But they'll find me in one of the anthologies and be like, oh, that's what sci-fi romance is. And they realize that it's not all technical aliens and that they actually it's okay and then that it's gonna be all right. Like some of it is technical, okay. Uh but yeah, and the same thing with like I read, you know, I wouldn't normally pick up an enemies to lovers contemporary romance story, but I read Jason Wrench's in our our anthology, the first one, Moonlight and Margaritas, and I actually liked it. I actually liked it. It was an enemies to lovers romance. I was like, oh, I do like this. This is this can be okay, you know. So it's a good way of like trying something out without committing 50,000 words of reading, you know. That's true. You know, so that's kind of that's kind of nice.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

A little a little taste, it's like a smorgasborg of authors and yeah, styles and romantic.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

If you're not sure if you're gonna like romantic, maybe do 7,000 words of it, you know, just read it and be like, oh, actually, that was fine.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Yeah, and the fact that it's usually around a theme or something helps say, well, I do like stories around the Irish luck or something, right? I do like or I do like stories, summer beach stories, or I do whatever it is. You know, they can have the something that they feel they know they're gonna like, uh, and yet still a variety in terms of the story itself and the author.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Exactly. Yeah. I did uh I had um I coordinated an anthology in December of 2021. God, that seemed so long ago. Um and it was called it was called Scoring Over the Holidays, and it was specific to sports romance, but it didn't uh it didn't need to be a particular sport. So there was hockey, there was baseball, there was football, there was everything, and it was a lot of fun. And that was that that anthology went really, really well. And um, I look back at it now going, oh yeah, I can I can do this again.

unknown 36:16

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 36:17

So let's try it again. Well, you also have uh you write hockey, I think, which is very big now. Let's see, the third book in your Vancouver Vikings hockey series is coming out in October. Yeah, yes, ma'am. Yeah, so maybe tell us about you know, because hockey romance is big now, so you can tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Yes, I don't know where it really I I don't know who did it. Maybe it was uh Helena Hunting or uh Megan Quinn. Did she write hockey? I don't know, or yeah, anyway, but hockey is big. And fun fact, I just attended my first PWHL game at Climate Pledge Arena last night. The uh I know the Seattle Torrent, our women's team won against the Minnesota Frost. It was a lot of fun, and I really love seeing women's professional sports getting so much love. Um so now I'm a big fan there. I'm also a big Seattle Kraken fan, and I've attended many games over the past uh six years. I've been able to attend practices. I meet up with my editor who actually lives here in Seattle. We meet up for practices, and we um, you know, she helps me kind of plot out my my books and talk about the characters and everything. Oh my god, that's amazing. I know, isn't it fun? That's great. Um, and she and she's a huge hockey fan, like huge, huge hockey. And her daughter plays hockey, and it's great. Anyway, so with that, uh, I wanted to include the sport of hockey in my sports romance portfolio. Um, because I have written um I had to look at my backlist Bible, but to date I've written 26 sports romances. And I know, and it they include college and professional basketball, they include college and professional hockey, college football, snowboarding, golf, and baseball. So wide, wide variety of sports and and different athletes. But um, the thing about my books is that they can all be read standalone, but are interconnected series that also have character crossover from the other sports series. So I wrap my characters into um the other series. So even if it was college basketball, that wraps into my professional basketball. And my professional basketball, um, there's characters that wrap into my Viking, my Vancouver Vikings hockey. So um it's a lot of fun for me, but I have to go back and you know reread what I've written about the previous characters, make sure I'm still on track. Um, and then my stories all involve real life like situations and um relatable characters. Like I've written about you know tragedy and loss, um uh sexual assault, depression, anxiety, suicide, ideation, dysfunctional families, um accidental pregnancies, and a plethora of other topics. But I want my books, and they all are happily ever after, but I want my characters to be relatable to readers. And the feedback that I get in the reviews is that they are. Um so with that, um, I'm currently writing the fourth book and the final book in the Vancouver Vikings hockey series off the post. And um, so this series has ties with my Puget Sound Pilots basketball series. Um, by the way, Jenna, great job on pronouncing Puget because so many people do not know how to pronounce that word. Really?

SPEAKER_00 39:44

What else do they say? Pug it Puget?

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Pug it Puget, Pug it, pug it, yeah. Anyways, Puget, Puget Sound, and that and that's local, Puget Sound is a Seattle sound. Anyways, that uh in that series, the um there was the the female owner, uh Kara Spurlock, and she was the co-owner of both hockey and basketball franchises. So again, different series, but I weaved her into the first book in uh book one of the Vikings, so it's just offside, and then um, and then yeah, they they will show up throughout the the course. So getting back to your question about my off-the-post book, um, it features the grumpy, sullen, grief-stricken German-speaking Vikings goalie, Soren the Wolf, Wolfenspiel. Right? I love it. So he says this big, you know, uh, or well, as big as they are, goalie. And so he's shown up in the previous three books. One is my recent novella, which was in the um this the charity anthology, and that one's called Off the Bench. Um so anyway, Soren usually returns home to his uh home in Austria each summer to be to spend time with his dead brother's family, and so he feels a lot of responsibility for him for them, and he misses his older brother terribly, who died from a tragic accident. So there's a lot of trauma in the wolf's backstory. Um but this summer he doesn't go back, and because he promised his teammate Tanner, um, who's also shown up in the several books prior, that he would participate in his charity calendar shoot. You know where this is going. Yeah. And the charity golf tournament to raise money for his charity called Lamp the Light for Kids. So that's where in comes um the female main character Allie St. Francis. She's the new communications and events manager for this charity. Uh, and then of course, sparks fly the moment they meet. There's this chemistry, and she's the sunshine, he's grumpy, but he's still, you know. So of course, things are flying, except, oh, there's a few obstacles. Uh, one is that Allie uh is uh Soren, the wolf's uh teammate's off-limit sister, and Allie believes that Soren is married. So there's there's some you know miscommunication, there's some confusion that starts it off, and then it's a really slow burn grumpy sunshine teammate's little sister trauma comfort story. And that all comes out October 8th.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Soren is one of my favorite Scandinavian first names, actually.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

And I have the perfect cover for it. This yeah, this like Sandy Blonde dude with uh, you know, oh yeah, he's yummy.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

I mean I've been thinking about sports romance a lot lately because we we end up talking about heated rivalry a lot, and we end up talking because a lot of our authors are either in their hockey era or they have just written a lot of like sports romance and we're thinking about doing a sports romance zine and anthology next year. And I'm just wondering if you could talk to us and to our readers about what you think. And it's okay if you don't have this on top of mind and you don't want to answer it, but if you what you think the the like the tropes of like a sports romance, specific particularly a hockey romance are.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Okay, so the the question is what I think about the tropes are, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

Like what do you think what are the things you run into a lot?

SPEAKER_01 43:16

Um, well, a lot of well, found family for one, because you know, uh team the athletes all are within these teams and and groups of of individuals and uh mostly you know men, obviously. Um so there's just these strong connections with their teammates, so it's a lot of fun. I love to have a lot of team banter in my books, and so that there's that, because there can be some humor and lighthearted, you know, like pranks, a lot of pranks. Um yeah. Um so even though I deal with you know some serious heavy topics, I always it the the books are um are are still light and fun hearted, uh light hearted and fun, and yeah. Um and then the I see a lot of and I I just wrote one. Um I don't write a lot, but um a single mother and secret babies. Secret babies are big. Yeah because I know I know some people cringe at Secret Baby, and I did too. I really did. But this book, this second book in the series, off the stick, it just required that trope, and it worked out. So, but I I struggled. It took me a year to finish that book because it wasn't uh normally a trope that I wrote. Um of course the teammate's little sister, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always the off limits. Don't touch my sister, right? Alpha men. Um what else?

SPEAKER_00 44:39

I mean, yeah, I think Rivals to Lovers seems to be big, of course.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Rivals to Lovers, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:45

Enemies to lovers.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Yeah, yeah. I you know, I don't write a lot of that. I don't know why. Um, I don't I I guess I I don't write angsty. I I I just don't. I just I can't. I don't have a lot of angst.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

But it's more common in LGBTQ if you have like two guys on a team. Yeah, or like maybe friends. For sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Yeah, yeah. Secret hidden romances, you know, that's that's always big. But um, but I and I too, I think with sports romance, I don't know. So I've written basketball, right? Basketball romance is not big. Yet hockey is. Oh gosh, no. I have I have struggled to to sell my college basketball romance, even though I love it, you know, I love the sport, uh, but it's just not big.

SPEAKER_03 45:37

And but hockey is, and you say that because I think you know, football and hockey tend to have bigger, go fier men. Yes, yeah. My guess would be that would be it versus uh basketball because I also think soccer, when people talk about I was like, soccer and basketball is similar, these guys are running for 45 minutes straight. They have endurance, man. They have endurance like nobody else, but they tend to be not you know bulky, but they don't look like have you ever seen Christian or Ronaldo? Is that his name? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My husband watches a lot of soccer, so I see these guys and they are fit like beyond believing. And I just think they would make great love interests. I think so true.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

I think all athletes, yeah, exactly for that reason.

SPEAKER_03 46:28

And I think basketball's the same way, they're running back and forth the whole time compared to other sports where you know, football, they run, they stop, they set, there's a commercial, they're you know, whatever. The same, you know, hockey, they're going pretty good most of the time. But they also tend to, in my mind, tend to be maybe it's because of all the pads and everything.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

And you know what the other thing is, yeah, and football and hockey, they are covered with gear head to toe. So you don't even like get to see what they look like, right? I mean, appearance is a big thing, right? It's a big deal. And with with basketball and soccer, you see them, they're you know, fall on right there. And I don't know if it's maybe the intrigue of uh you know the mysterious uh you know appearance underneath that draws the read. I don't know. Because they're context sports, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:17

The other thing that I don't see a lot in hockey romance is the number of teeth that go missing. Oh mine has a missing tooth.

SPEAKER_02 47:25

Mine has a missing tooth.

SPEAKER_03 47:28

Which I I can't, you know, someone with a missing tooth, that just changes things, right? There's just something about it that just is like that's not right, right? And then hockey has a lot of missing teeth. And so I'm always laughing when I'm reading these and I'm like, but they have all the teeth, you know.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

So one of our local players for the Kraken, his name is well, I can't I think of his name, Alexiak, Jamie Olexiak. And he did a commercial for Alaska, I think it was Alaska Airlines, or maybe it was a local credit card company, I don't know. But and his the whole time he has his missing tooth out. So he has this, you know, spot in his tooth, and he just grins super big, and it's the funniest commercial. He's funny, but yeah, but anyway, there you go. Yeah, missing teeth are important. So read, read the first, you can read the first a few chat uh first pages of my book um uh off the stick, and that whole scene is a locker scene, and they're talking about hockey butts and missing teeth. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

It's a good chapter name, hockey butts and missing teeth.

SPEAKER_02 48:35

Okay, that's funny.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

I love it. Okay, let me go to my real question. Um also uh you you would heard that you were hoping to pitch a new domestic thriller that you've been thinking about for a good decade and a half. Uh, and we love us some thrillers around here, so we were hoping you could tell us a bit about it.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Yeah, yeah. So the story has been floating around in my head for like 15 years or more, since well before I even started writing. And it's yet to be titled, but it's a gripping emotional family drama, murder suspense, and a sweeping domestic thriller that delves into kind of the sins of the parents and the truth that is slowly uncovered through the lies that are told over the course of 30 years. So it centers on the Crow family, uh, who are owners of a small winery. I haven't yet figured out where I'm going to place this, you know, where the setting is, but they're small winery, family-owned for generations, who find their unity tested when a decades-old betrayal resurfaces. And as their ailing patriarch gives uh is given months to live, and his wife of 50 plus years is troubled with dementia, hidden truths threaten to fracture both their cherished legacy and their bonds with one another. That's my pitch.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

I was gonna say that sounds like a pitch.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

It is, it is, it is. So uh really, so the story is told in both past and present, first person POV, uh, through all of the characters, but mainly the 20-year-old granddaughter Haven, and her through her conversations with Marianne, who is in a memory care center. Uh so she is going to be starting to uh let loose some of these, you know, these lies and betrayals and hidden hidden realizations. And Haven is gonna start investigating and find out what really happened in this family. And I'm so excited because I just started, literally just started building the story timeline and their character descriptions this week. Um and and I I wrote a few paragraphs of the prologue, which is from the dead victim's point of view. Oh wow. I know, I know so I've never it's gonna be a huge challenge for me because I've never I've all my 50 books are romance, you know? And so this is, I mean, it's still there's a there's a romantic element in it, yeah. Um, but it's it's a domestic thriller. It's all about this family and a murder, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Is it going to be part of the Sierra verse? Are you giving there any of your characters gonna pop up at all?

SPEAKER_01 51:01

No, this one is uh and that's a really good question about how I'm going to pitch it. Like, is it gonna be written under my Sierra Hill or is it going am I gonna put it under my my real name? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Yeah, on a new a new pen name.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

A new pen name? Oh my gosh, so many uh two pen names are hard enough. But yeah, but I I hope my my hope is that my um so in the next couple months I can have enough of of the story ready to go and the pit um and the summary, and then I can have my agent pitch it to uh a trad publisher. So maybe, maybe someday.

SPEAKER_03 51:40

I love it. Yeah, nothing like a good thriller. Okay, so let's talk about heated rivalry, hockey. We're back to hockey again.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

And help ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 51:53

And just have you seen it and what are your thoughts about it?

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Oh, yes, yes, yes, I have seen it. Um, and I'm really proud of Rachel Reed and what she's done for the indie author community. I mean, you know, and gay and the gay romance community. I mean, she's given so much exposure to our books. But here's my funny story about the show. So it came out last November, Thanksgiving weekend, and I was down in Phoenix uh visiting my family, so staying at my uh my 88-year-old aunt's house, and um it was after dinner, and everybody else was gone except my all the females of my family, and my 23-year-old niece and I wanted to watch it, and it's a like an open kitchen living room situation, so turn it on. I log into my streaming app on my aunt's TV, and we begin watching it, and all my other family members are sitting in the kitchen playing cards, and 10 minutes in, I don't even know if it was 10 minutes or not, and it you we all know it gets hot and steamy, and I hadn't expected that at all. And we put the TV out fairly loud, so all of a sudden it's dead quiet, and I turn around in my chair, and behind me in the kitchen is everyone is silent, they've stopped playing cards and their eyes are glued onto the TV. And oh my god, it was the funniest thing because my 88-year-old aunt and her twin sister, my aunt, or my mom and my aunt, they were just saucer-eyed, just like, what? So, yeah, needless to say, the rest of the weekend I watched the remainder of the available shows on my laptop with my headphones on.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

Oh no, you didn't all watch it all together?

SPEAKER_01 53:33

No, no, they were too flustered. Oh, that's so funny. I was like, What are you watching?

SPEAKER_03 53:40

Yeah, you mother didn't watch all of it. Yeah, my 80-year-old mother watched it.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

But she reads a lot of romance too. No, she doesn't. She doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 53:53

She reads she likes mystery, particularly British mystery. She watched a little bit, but she watched that. She watched uh Red, White, and Royal Blue, she watched Bridgerton, she watched it, but she won't read it. Like when we my my books, she'll read up to the spicy bit. Okay. Off she goes, skips it. That's a blessing. But she won't watch those. It's it's a very bizarre thing.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

My mom and aunt got the first anthology I was in, and they were like, took a picture of them having it together, and I was like, please don't read that.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

Oh, I just met well, we went to the game last night. It was we were in a suite. Um, my husband is in banking, and it was one of his clients. And so one of the wives came up to me. She's like, Oh, what do you do for a living? I'm like, Oh, I write romance books. And it's, you know, it's it's widely known. My husband always tells his clients, you know, that I'm a romance author. And but I always have to preface by saying, they are very steamy. Be prepared. Because this, you know, woman was so excited about reading my books. I'm like, just be prepared. They're steamy. Yeah.

unknown 54:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

All right. At this point in the show, we like to say what we are reading and what we recommend for people. Start with our our our guest host. Sierra, what are you reading?

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Well, I am 65% into the audiobook of We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes. I think that's how you pronounce her name. Um the was it me before you? I absolutely love her writing style and the emotional content that she delivers with such humor, um, as well as you know, peppering in with family drama that she weaves in her books. Absolutely love them. So that's my recommendation.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Excellent. Jenna?

SPEAKER_03 55:33

I'm still listening and reading at the same time of the other Bennett sister getting ready to the show comes to America. And uh, you know, really, I I enjoy it. I it's it's I think it's gonna be a good, a good show. I I have been hearing good things about it. But the book is Is the author of the other Bennett? Janice Janice Hadlow. I don't know. I mean, you do get the essence. I really feel like I'm there. The writing isn't as difficult as going and reading Jane Austen, but it's definitely there. You hear it. There is sort of that distant point of view a lot of times uh that you would get in an Austin novel, you know, sort of everybody knows what everybody's thinking. Well, they don't know what everybody's thinking, but we're told what everybody's thinking. Um I find, you know, because Austin, we talked about this being related to romance, romance, whatever. And of course, I'm like, it's technically not, none of them technically are, but you know, Mr. Darcy, whatever. But I'm like, I must be halfway through this book now, and we still have not met. The men who will be the love interest, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

Would you say that this book is not romance?

SPEAKER_03 56:48

So definitely not, because it you know, in pride and in all the other ones, the the couple is on page together early, right? But here we haven't. This is just Mary's story and her experience going through Pride and Prejudice. I am now past that. We are past Pride and Prejudice, uh, and her trying to figure out her life and all that kind of stuff. So I I mean I am enjoying it. It does some of the wit that Austin has isn't there, but there are some moments that I do give a little giggle.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

So I have to admit, as a romance author, I have never read a Jane Austen book. Never. Nope. Nope. I know. I I know it's like, oh I'm not horrified, I'm just sad.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

It's I think that they're really enjoyable.

SPEAKER_03 57:33

A lot of people have it, and it is it can be a challenge to read. They are very challenging, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

I gave my sister Emma and she was like, What is this, Tara? Yeah, it is it's more talent than realize it's an English major. It is very difficult to read. I remember my first one actually being like, oh wow, this is very different. I mean, I was 19 at the time, but I do remember it being difficult to get that. But once you get it, once you get used to it, it it becomes very easy. It but there is a there's a learning curve, basically, or like a reading curve. You just sort of have to get into her in into her flow, the way that she writes. And it's an older flow, it's not the way that we write nowadays.

SPEAKER_03 58:10

Yeah. She's she has a wit about her that you can miss if you are reading too quickly. Yeah. You sort of have to take your time. I mean, just the first line in and of itself says everything in prejudice, right? About it's a truth universally acknowledged. You know, basically a guy with money must want a wife, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:31

Like a lot of times in Austin that you you understand better if you understand the era better. So that's I I think it's difficult. Like speaking of like the other Bennett sister, it's difficult to be witty about an era you don't live in, right? It's just hard to deliver those witticisms and harder for readers to to connect with them because of the context being missing.

SPEAKER_03 58:51

I do want to share something. I watched a documentary on Jane Austen that was on Brit Box. And I really enjoyed it. It was three episodes. I learned stuff about her I did not know. Like she had a cousin whose husband was guillotined.

unknown 59:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

And this cousin ended up marrying her brother. And they're the ones that helped anyway. Cousin, brother, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

Yeah, in the correspondence, they told a lot about France during the 1790s.

SPEAKER_03 59:16

I did that back then. But here's this is a hot take. Could be a peef. I don't know. Tara, you will get it. In each time they're talking about the books, which was really interesting. I even learned more about her writing the books. But when they got to persuade each book, they show clips from some adaptation. Okay. You know where this is going. Oh no. So they get to persuasion, my all-time favorite book of hers, Second Chance romance. Um uh Whitworth's love letter in there. Just you know, you pierce my oh anyway.

SPEAKER_00 59:51

The OG second chance.

SPEAKER_03 59:52

Yeah, it's just fabulous, fabulous. Anyways, they show, you know, I'm going with this, they show that Netflix Dakota Johnson version of persuasion, and my head about exploded. Oh I mean from the handbook of Wazy. Like, are you kidding me? I just I yelled it at the team. My husband's like, are you all right over there? I was so mad. And the reason I'm mad about it is because somebody could see this and think, Oh, I'll go watch that. And they are not watching Persuasion, right? Like it, the story is there, but she is not Anne, right? Like Anne doesn't drink wine out of the bottle and get lit. Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:36

Um so I wouldn't they could have used the 2008 BBC Persuasion, which is easily accessed and good.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:45

You know the grade of license is my favorite is the 1996.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

That's my favorite, but that but the at least the 2008 one is competent. Like if you're looking for something easy that's like digitized and like looks good, that one is there for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:01

Now the clips they used were fine, but I just thought somebody's gonna see it, they're gonna watch it, they're gonna see it, and it's that's not it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:08

So that's why they're probably just using the easiest one to grab. If if if I'm speaking from everyone, who knows?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:15

Anyway, what if your what are your recommendations?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:18

Oh, I must do a shout-out this week for the things that I have been looking forward to most on my my email. I read a lot of romance on Substack, it turns out. And I've been reading Shadow Betrayal. That's Ava Cl Ava Leclerc, and I have been reading uh Erna Semper's A Case of the Engagement Party, which is an invella, but it's very feeling very novel-like to me. I mean that's been great. That's a Dardonic Fenneck mystery. Not really a love story so much, but it does have her love interest there, and that's love like.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:42

I don't even know what you just said. Dardonic what?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:46

Sorry. Erna Semper, one of our authors, she has this long series of short stories, novellas, and novels about uh this investigator named Dardana Fenneck. And ah, she's amazing. I just she's like an escaped clone and she's just fantastic. I you know, it's it's uh in a like a sci-fi world that feels kind of like fantasy at times and a bit like like a like an alternative history at times, and of course it's it's science fiction as well, because it's in the future and it's on another planet. It's just wonderful. But she's the main character of this novella called Casey Engagement Party, and Erna has been releasing uh like a chapter of that every week. And also, because I'm a bad influence, also uh Lion in the Garden, which is the new novel that Erna has been working on, which is a sci-fi love story about Rados the Lambda, who is this gigantic blue cloned man, and I have a a t-shirt that that I was sent, the only t-shirt in existence with Rados on it, so I can wear it at Strat and advertise for Rados, my my favorite large blue man.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:50

He almost looks like something that should be an Ice Planet Barbarian because he doesn't have horns or anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

Oh, I'll sort of like the whole head is the blue man group.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

No, no, big big, luscious, muscly blue man. And and if if Lion in the Garden doesn't become as big as as Ice Planet Barbarians, there is no justice in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:13

I would say that it's a good thing. So you said you're reading it on Substack? Yes, on Substack, yeah. So uh do do the authors when they're they're posting things, do they get do they get uh paid for that?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

It depends on the author. So Parish earned a semper uh releases all of the chapters for free to subscribers, um except the spicy chapters, which you have to be uh you have to be a paid subscriber to get the spicy chapters, which is brilliant, by the way. I think that's amazing. And then Ava Leclerc uh publishes under a different model, which is that you can it's only to subscribers after the fourth chapter, but you get the chapters early if you're a paid subscriber, and then you get them a week later if you are a non-paid subscriber. So there's like all these locked chapters if you're paid. Okay that you look at salivatingly, hoping like that they will do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

Do they then when they finish with the book then do they publish it?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:03

So what yeah, what Parish does is pull all the chapters down and then edits and then publishes the full book. So I actually have Crucible was published this way, but I wasn't on uh Ernest Semper's substack at the time. So all of those were pulled down, edited aggressively, and then with the the spicy bit and then put up on Amazon KDP. So I have the paperback of that for example.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:23

Yeah, which is a really good model because it you know, Parrish talks about keeping him accountable and making sure that he was, you know, developing everything, knowing that there were readers out there wanting these chapters. So it's a really good accountability tool, it's a really kind of beta reading tool because you get comments from people and stuff like that. Okay. And be building a readership and then being able to other things you're working on and you know, building up that way. It's interesting. It's an interesting way of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

I don't think I could do that. The pressure would be too too too strong, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:50

Uh yeah, it depends on the kind of writer you are, I think. Like I use Substack differently. I use it more to like I I take part in writing challenges and prompts and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

Put up bits of writing, and then I'm like, also I'm like, hey, by the way, I'm in this anthology, or I have this serializing novel over here that you can go read, but I have that on a different site, not on Substack, because I don't, you know, I don't have as much control over Substack as I have over the other thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:11

Um there's definitely a pressure if you have said I'm gonna publish four chapters a week or whatever. Yeah, right. The pressure to do it, and if you get behind like poor Ava.

unknown 1:05:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:23

Um but uh under the model of people who pay get it early, you definitely have to meet that. Now, if you have no paid people and you miss it, okay, as long as it's there for the other subscribers, right? Right, Substack has a thing where you can release it. Um you can tell it, take take away the paywall a week, and you give it a date when the paywall goes away. Uh, an app like Ring Stories, which a lot is like Patreon for authors, um I have to uh go in. So It's like this is for tier one people, but then when it if it ever goes out to just subscribers, I have to go in and say add here's for followers as well or whatever. So that one's a little bit different. I'm wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

How is Ream doing? You get in discoverability on Ream?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

Not yet. Not yet. You know. But I haven't done everything I can do yet there. So, you know, I mean, some of it's just setting up your systems, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:26

In terms of writing and marketing and all this kind of stuff. Systems are very helpful, but getting them set up can take forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:33

Do you remember use any of these services? Wattpad, Ream, Dream, any of those things for anything?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:38

I did Wattpad. I did I use Wattpad way back in the day. And uh and then decided that wasn't for me because I'm not a chapter. I'm I it just I don't know. I I just felt uncomfortable about it. I'm like, I have to have everything edited and ready. You know, I don't want people reading my work before it's edited. And then I did, I think I heard about Ream from Jenna. Um Jenna, you always know all the tools. All the tools. Um and I think I got on there and then I'm like, well, I don't have time. It's always like, I don't, I'll do this later. I'll read about this later. I'll you know. Procrastinate and because I I can only focus on like what I'm finding is one thing at a time. So either I'm writing my hockey book or I'm plotting out, you know, my thriller. I can't do them simultaneously or concurrently, whatever. But yeah, so I I really don't use um except Kickstarter. I did Kickstarter, but that took me a full six months, and I couldn't do anything else.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:36

So you did it right.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:39

We've had a lot of drama we talked about on Kickstarter to take the money and and run one one author made like$95,000. Okay, now how can you two years later still hadn't delivered? Yeah, can't remember their name. Oh yeah, my mind is going. Yeah, a lot of book on that.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:05

Services, a lot of flyby night services out there. It's good, it's getting scammy out there. Actually, I was interested in Dream, the Dream App, because it's a romance app. And I had my sister investigate it. My my poor, poor sister. She put it on her phone and just wanted to tell me what the experience was like for readers and how much, how well you can discover new new writers and stuff like that. The worst thing about it, and I wrote about this in a in a completely Buckwild article actually from my my blog, was that it was pushing spicy bits to her notifications on her her lock screen. So it's like like you know, like an mid-scene on her lock screen. Stuff about, you know, like like, oh, my daddy's best friend, you know, he owns me now. And think of like, oh my god, there's a oh wow. I was like, imagine that on your lock screen, just sort of like hurt me again.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:55

Yeah, your 10-year-old's like, what's this?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:58

Yeah, she has a five-year-old too. This is but I mean you could you could read it at the time, but it was it was insane. So we did discover that dream was not the end for us.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:07

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Well, Sierra, I want to thank you so much for spending all this time with us and sharing your books and sharing hot takes with us. Nuts. Hope you had a good time. I did have a good time. I it's just talking to friends. I like that. Yeah, that's enjoyable. And it's nice, you know. A lot of times in what we do, we don't find a lot of people. Sometimes we can talk about all the stuff we want to talk about, right? Especially in romance. So thank you so much for being with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:38

Thank you for the invite. And I hope to I hope to hear more of your podcasts in the future. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:47

We are Tender Tempting Tales on Instagram. You should go check us out. We've always got articles going up every week up on Substack about romance, written by me, Jenna, guest authors. Um, and we have news about our anthologies and zines. If you're a romance author, we have a zine call right now. We will have an anthology call in May for Starlet and Spellbound. If you are a romance author, that's a an otherworldly story of 10,000 words or less. It's got to have some kind of otherworldly element to it. It doesn't have to be paranormal, doesn't have to be romanticy, but just kind of you know time travel, you know, nanites, whatever sounds otherworldly to you. But those are gonna be opening up from May 1st to May 31st. Uh our dine call for Fantastical Foes ends probably the week that this podcast goes up. So it's gonna end on April 30th. So get those puppies in. Uh and as always, Jenna.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:31

All right, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here. And until next time, peace, love, and happily ever after.