Eliza Lentzski joins me to chat about her upcoming release, Sour Grapes, the next installment in the Don't Call Me Hero series, Angela Dawe's narration of Winter Jacket, her wife and much more.
Check out her Amazon page to purchase her books we talked about today. Winter Jacket, Don't Calle Me Hero series, The Final Rose and at the end of May, Sour Grapes: Amazon.com: Eliza Lentzski: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
To support this podcast, join my Patreon at Sapphic Book Review is creating Bonus fun with lesfic authors | Patreon. The best authors in lesfic join me for fun would you rather games including this week with Eliza Lentzski.
Eliza Lentzski joins me to chat about her upcoming release, Sour Grapes, the next installment in the Don't Call Me Hero series, Angela Dawe's narration of Winter Jacket, her wife and much more.
Check out her Amazon page to purchase her books we talked about today. Winter Jacket, Don't Calle Me Hero series, The Final Rose and at the end of May, Sour Grapes: Amazon.com: Eliza Lentzski: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
To support this podcast, join my Patreon at Sapphic Book Review is creating Bonus fun with lesfic authors | Patreon. The best authors in lesfic join me for fun would you rather games including this week with Eliza Lentzski.
Hi, I'm Laura green, and this is the Sapphic Book Review podcast, the show where I visit with the best writers in lesfic. I love reading and these books and writers means so much to me. I hope you learned something new each week about your favorite authors. Enjoy the show, and be sure to subscribe. Welcome to the sapphic book review Podcast. I'm Laura green, and I'm so excited to talk to today's guest. She is responsible for two of my favorite all time series, and some of the most fascinating characters in lesfic. Eliza Lentzski. welcome, and thanks for joining me.
Eliza Lentzski:Thanks so much for having me.
Laura:Tell us about your upcoming release Sour Grapes and what we can expect from June and Lucia.
Eliza Lentzski:Well, this, this has been a story that's been kind of bouncing around in my head for the past two years. And I think I mentioned in our last interview that I came across this idea when I was on vacation with my wife, we were celebrating our 15th year of dating. And so you know, we wanted to do a big so we rented an Airbnb out in Napa Valley, which was right on a vineyard. And we were just you know, drinking wine and enjoying the views and walking along the vineyard with all the grape vines. And I just thought this is so romantic. Why have I not written about wine country yet. So I had this idea for a setting I just had to come up with a story to tell to go along with that setting. And then to find some time to actually write that book. So now I finally have a little bit of time to work on it. And over that really the last year I've been chipping away at Sour Grapes. And it features the main character I always write in first person, but the main character June st. Claire, she's just bought a vineyard and she has no idea what she's doing. But it's not a midlife crisis. There's a very specific kind of reason why she why she's bought this thing and why she's kind of following through with it, even though she has no idea what she's doing. And then the eventual love interest, Lucia Santiago. She's the assistant winemaker at this vineyard. And she is kind of like a grape herself. Like she's grown up on this same vineyard all her life, and has a lot of animosity about this woman, she sees this undeserving woman who's just swept in and bought this vineyard out from under her feet. And she's undeserving and they really clash, you know, at the start of the novel. And it's also a love after loss kind of story that the characters are a little bit older than what I usually write because, unfortunately, I'm getting older too. So those are the kinds of stories that I'm feeling more of a connection to them. I don't know a high school coming out story. And yeah, so they're gonna clash at the start. It's a slow burn, I want these characters just to fall in love. And it does mash their mouths against each other right away, but I can't do that. So it's taken, I guess, a lot of willpower on my part to make this just a slow progressional kind of story. Spoiler alert, eventually, they're going to you know, get over those differences, but not without a few obstacles along the way.
Laura:I'm looking forward to it because love and wine are two of my favorite things.
Eliza Lentzski:Sounds perfect.
Laura:Have you started on the next book in the Don't Call Me Hero series? And if there were to become a television series, who would you like to cast as my girlfriend,Julia and Cassidy?
Eliza Lentzski:You're gonna have to arm wrestle some folks for the right I think the call Julia as your girlfriend. I only I just I only have the brain space to work on one book at a time. But I already have the plot. And this will be the next novel that I work on once I wrap up Sour Grapes at the end of May. So this will be the next book, book six in this series. And I have the cold case, the kind of the mystery around which the plot lines are going to evolve. And I have some challenges for Cassidy and Julia in mind as it relates to Julia's frozen eggs. And then Cassidy is going to be celebrating a birthday in this book. And so I'm sure folks are going to be eager to read about how Julia and she celebrate that milestone. As far as who would who would play these characters. I think a few super fans probably know that don't call me hero actually originated as fanfic for the TV series, Once Upon a Time swung between fanfic. And the original story was called I'm no savior. Yeah, I think was that. And it started with the scene where Julia's cars broken on the side of the road in the middle of a rainstorm and Cassidy is responding to a call and picks her up and brings her back to the mansion. Now obviously, the story has evolved and expanded into five books series and more on the way but even even today when I'm writing those characters, As I still have Regina mills and Emma Swan in my head as I'm writing those, those characters, so, so Julia Desjardin would be Lana Parilla. And then Cassidy is Jennifer Morrison, those are my dream casts
Laura:Those are some good looking people right there. One of the reasons I think the age gap romance works so well in the Winter Jacket series, is because Hunter is so mature for her age. In many ways. She's much more mature than Elle. Was it a conscious decision to make Hunter the more mature of the two?
Eliza Lentzski:Yeah, definitely. And I've spoken, I think even with you about this, but when I first wrote Winter Jacket, I was so nervous about the age gap. And I know it's incredibly popular genre, especially in the lesfic and Sapphic communities and some authors make a living, that's the only kind of genre that they delve in. But back in 2013, when I wrote the first Winter Jacket, I mean, I've been doing this for a decade, like that's kind of, like blows my brain. But I was such a baby, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was just fumbling along, I had this story that I wanted to tell and I hope that some readers would want to read that story. So by making Hunter just really an old soul and kind of mature for her age, in comparison to Elle who is still just figuring out how to be an adult, whatever that means. That was my way to lessen the age gap. And to make it less taboo perhaps or to make the story kind of justify the relationship more than just this torrid student teacher affair, that trope that gets a lot of play.
Laura:It worked very well.
Eliza Lentzski:thank you.
Laura:Which two supporting characters from your books are your favorite?
Eliza Lentzski:Well, I can't not say Troian from Winter Jacket. And she's been around for four books, you know, so that's the the one supporting character with whom I've had the most contact, but even just beyond familiarity, I really enjoy the relationship that she and Elle have, they're kind of able to call each other out, be real with each other without that jeopardizing their relationship. And then the second character is actually and this is not a character who I would want to be friends with, or that I even have a lot of common with or who I even really like, but it's one that I really enjoy readers reactions to and that's Candice from The Final Rose and right now that The Final Rose has been out for a couple of years but it's available on Wattpad this story platform and it actually gets read every single day even as far back as it's been published and last time I checked it had close to like a million reads which I think is amazing. but the very much like you know fanfic people can comment and interact with the story as it goes on. And I love reading just readers journey what as it relates to Candice not even about Nokomis and Leigh, it's all about Candice, everyone is just like on this character. And at first they hate her because of all of these microaggressions and these really racist things that she says at the start, she calls Nokomas things like Pocahontas and Indian princess. And so they're just like this this lady's trash. But then, as the novel progresses, and Candice helps Nokomis navigate the internal game of this reality show, and in the end kind of falls on the sword so that Nokomis can stay on the show and she herself gets booted. People, the readers are really upset that she's gone. And so to see that emotional roller coaster for readers, is really interesting.
Laura:It's kind of fun. Sounds like she needs her own book.
Eliza Lentzski:I don't I don't know about that. I can't stick with someone who's mildly amusing for that long.
Laura:Speaking of the final rose Nikomis appears on a reality dating show. Would you have ever considered doing this before you met your wife?
Eliza Lentzski:No. Absolutely not. I I'm terribly shy. I'm you know, I'm okay in interviews like this, you kind of one on one or public speaking. But I would never be able to put myself out there like that on a TV show. And I'm far more comfortable with my anonymity, which is one of the reasons why I use an avatar instead of my actual face on all my social media. I enjoy pretty brainless and cringe worthy to TV. I'm not like this highbrow person who's only watching I don't know Don Abbey. Yeah, exactly are like these documentaries about climate change. I watch a fair amount of brainless TV but one of the reasons why I wrote The Final Rose is to turn this genre on its head that TV dating shows especially something like the Bachelor is so formulaic, and it's so scripted, and there's there's rules to the game kind of unwritten rules. And I wanted to flip this genre on its head, while at the same time highlighting to spirit sexuality as well as indigenous cultures. So I wanted to take kind of a brainless thing, and then add a little bit of, I don't know, contemporary commentary in it as well.
Laura:Nice, which is not what you get on those actual brainless days. If you and your wife were going to take a road trip with one of your couples, which one would you choose and why?
Eliza Lentzski:So I thought a lot about this one. I've written a lot of couples over the years, but I think it would be Abby and Charlotte from Bittersweet Homecoming. And I've spoken in the past about how Bittersweet Homecoming is kind of a love letter to my hometown. But it's also a love letter to the people from my hometown. And even though I have a lot in common a lot in common with Elle from Winter Jacket. I think Abby, Abigail is one of the characters I've written that is closest to me, personality wise. So I think maybe our personalities would get along during a road trip, maybe I don't know, maybe they're too much alike, and we would hate each other. But I think that her partner, Charlotte is a very easygoing very laid back just kind of go with the flow. And that's that's kind of how I am on a vacation. I don't like that I'm super type A in my real life. Vacation, I like to let that go and just let the wind blow us where we're going to be and not have too much of a of an itinerary and I feel like Charlotte would be able to to go with that flow.
Laura:Yeah, I think if you went with Julia it things wouldn't be peaceful.
Eliza Lentzski:I imagine some kind of laminated itinerary, and we're gonna wake up at this time and spend this amount of time at this location. And if anything strayed from that, she would like to hear it.
Laura:Yeah, that's how I used to be I had an itinerary, print everything out what we're gonna do when, and everyone just seemed really pissed off about that.
Eliza Lentzski:imagine that right?
Laura:So I'm just like, whatever, it's fine. What's your favorite line from one of your books? One that made you think I'm a good writer?
Eliza Lentzski:That's so hard, you know, because we're from the Midwest. And we try to be like, super humble and not that showy. But I have to say, I do high five myself a lot. write something down. That was really clever, or especially if I'm working through like a really difficult scene, and I and I figure it out. But in realit I vacillate between thinking, I'm a really clever writer, to thinking that everything I write is absolute trash. And I will go through this highs and lows through the course of writing a single book. And I think a lot of writers are probably like that. They love their book, and they love their writing, or another moment to look back at it and say, This is the worst thing I've ever written. Or at least that's been my experience. But I think one, when I'm able to appreciate my writing is when I hear other people reading it. So in an audio book, and I've been listening to Angela Dawes, narration of Winter Jacket to and from work these past few days, and she'll read something and I just get struck by it be like, I wrote that, you know, and I think about in book three, where Hunter, I mean, I hope I'm not spoiling this. I hope people have read these books, Hunter's broken up with Elle and Elle is at the ocean. And she's just heartbroken. And there's a line about how she just she can't cry. And it doesn't really matter because what's one more salty tear to the ocean. And I just think yeah, I did it. I did that.
Laura:Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. Angela Dawes reading your words. Not bad either.
Eliza Lentzski:Yeah, I lucked out with that one because, you know, I self publish with the narration as well. So very carefully curated, because I'm type A and I like all this control, curated who I wanted narrators to be for specific books. And the first time I heard her read a book might have been one of Jae's books. I just I heard Elle in my head, and I just knew that I could trust her to do a really good Hunter. And the first time when I was reviewing the audio, she did a sample for me and I heard Hunter's voice for the very first time I gasped. I mean, it was just even more perfect than I could have imagined. So I'm like over the moon with how well those turned out.
Laura:You're a historian by day, how do you decide on that profession? And did you get all A's in high school in history?
Eliza Lentzski:Well, I definitely got all A's in high school. I was the valedictorian of my class, and not to brag, I got all A's in college, and I got all A's in grad schoo.
Laura:You can brag.
Eliza Lentzski:I would never say I'm like a natural brain. It really takes a lot of work for me. Nothing really comes easy. So it's that's the product of just, I don't know, work ethic and wanting to do my best but I've always loved history and I get them My love of history actually came from my grandma, My grandma used to babysit for my sister and myself when my parents were working, and we were done with school. And I remember sitting at her kitchen counter, and she would be making bread or making dinner for that night. And she told me about life growing up when she was my age, and she came of age during the Great Depression. So she had a lot of really just hard stories. And she grew up in a very isolated rural part of Northern Michigan, and didn't have electricity or running water until she was married and already had two kids. And it's just yeah, so I think that's probably why I love history. And I love just telling stories. When I was in eighth grade, I wanted to be a documentary maker, that was kind of my dream job. But then I suppose there's still time to do that. But after that, I spent my summers in college as a costume interpreter, that historic Fort, and I would get married twice a day at one o'clock, and at four o'clock, and we would interpret what life was like in that particular time period. And that's really what cemented my love of public history. So history outside of the classroom. And that really, I guess, just cemented the idea that I wanted to work with the public that I wanted to teach history outside of the classroom that I wanted to use this big brain of mine. For something like that,
Laura:it's fascinating. You met your wife, when you both found out you were dating the same woman. And 17 years later, you're still together. Besides a shared loathing of that horrible woman what drew you to your wife? And what does she do to make you laugh?
Eliza Lentzski:This is going to make me sound like a total sap. But that's okay. I was hooked after our first date. In fact, immediately after our first date ended, I called up one of my friends. And I told her, I just met my future girlfriend. And I think if it same sex marriage had been legal in Wisconsin at the time. And that was even on my radar, I might have even gone so far as to say I met my future wife that it was a really good first date. We went to a foreign film. It was a French film called a Very Long Engagement. And even though I had been looking forward to seeing this film, for a while, I couldn't watch the movie, I just kept looking at her out of the corner of my eye. And then after the film was done, we went across the street to a bar. It was kind of like this German dive bar in Milwaukee. And it was a weekend night. So it was pretty busy. And but we managed to find a table for two. And then we just talked the entire night. And it was like one of those those cheesy movie montages where everything around you just melts away. And the only thing that exists is the two of you. And if you ask her, she says the exact same thing that it just felt like this, we were in the super crowded bar, but we might as well have been the only people in the room. And we still have those great conversations. Even today, Friday nights or date nights she'll make she's a fantastic cook. I'm really good at eating. And we'll sit at the dining room table and we just we just talk we'll sip wine and listen to jazz because we're adults, I guess, but. And we just talk. No technology, no phones, no distractions, just the two of us. She makes me laugh every single day. She's a total goof. I am a robot. I am an academic. And she's an artist. I'm type A I'm very serious and very organized. And she's always had this uncanny ability to make me laugh at myself and make me take myself less seriously. And she sings little songs to our cats that will just the little jingles will just get stuck in your head. So she's just she's just really silly. And we have a lot of fun goofing around. I'm a very anxious person, I worry about everything. And she knows exactly what needs to happen for me to just turn that off. And I think more than anybody else I've ever met, she's the one person that I can really let my guard down around that I can just not worry. Just make a mess and be okay.
Laura:I'm like, what, it's a closet door. I mean, nothing's gonna get out of it. Why do you care? I just bothers me so much. And I was like, Okay, well, when you come down every morning and you have a glass of water and you put it on the sink, you don't pour it out. That drives me crazy.
Eliza Lentzski:Well, that's that's how you know you've been together forever, where you start off like, I just want to be smooshed on top of you. And then now marriage is like stop breathing on me. You know, like you have those moments where you're just like, I not you anymore. No,
Laura:go away. Back off. We've been together almost 12 years and I annoy her a lot more than she annoys me.
Eliza Lentzski:I hope that we're kind of a My wife and I are kind of on equal footing with that. I would like to imagine that we annoy each other equal amounts.
Laura:That's good. You seem to be quite the sports fan who are your favorite teams and athletes?
Eliza Lentzski:Yeah, I love sports. And that's always I think something that surprises people in my PhD history life, or they see me and they I don't know, all buttoned up, and my doctorate and all of that, and I will talk about sports, ad nauseam. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which even though it's Michigan and has more in common culturally with Wisconsin, it's actually attached to Wisconsin and not to the lower peninsula. So all of my favorite teams are actually Wisconsin teams. So Green Bay Packers are my number one team. After that is I'm actually an owner of the Green Bay Packers. I love the Milwaukee Brewers, and then closely after that, the Milwaukee Bucks. I'm not a big individual sports fan, though, you know, like I can love the Green Bay Packers and think that Aaron Rodgers is a total tool. You know, my allegiance is to the team and not to an individual player. But my one favorite player athlete personality is Charles Woodson, who played college football for the University of Michigan. Yeah. And he won the Heisman Award, which, you know, goes to the top football player. And then he played for Green Bay for a number of years. And in fact, our cat Charlie is named after Charles Woodson,
Laura:Oh wow. Yeah, just getting stuff.. Who knew that?
Eliza Lentzski:Right? Not, not a lot of people do now you do now, and everyone listening to this podcast?
Laura:What are three places you would most like to travel to?
Eliza Lentzski:You know, I've been thinking a lot more about this, now that things are starting to open up a little bit more and are kind of world gets a little bit bigger. Again, I would love to go back to Paris. That was probably my favorite trip that my wife and I ever took. We spent two weeks there a few years ago, in the summer. And it was just the most magical vacation where we had picnics under the Eiffel Tower, and we had sandwiches on the sun and we drank Rose all day, every day. And the World Cup The Men's World Cup happened to be going on during that time. And that was the year that France actually won. So it was just like a really exciting time to be in the city. And most afternoons we would find a bar, and we would watch the games with other locals. And of course, you know me as a history person, that's a great city for history. domestically. My next bucket list is probably New Orleans, which I've actually never been to just kind of surprising because I'm a huge Francophone. So I love all anything having to do with France with history, and I love food. And that's a great food city. But not Mardi Gras, not Bourbon Street. I'm not. I think I'm a little too old for that kind of debauchery. But I want to eat all of the beignets. And I want to go on some kind of haunted by you tour or something you don't like some kind of haunted thing where a ghost might attach itself to me and come back to New England with I think that would be great. And then last is just some kind of just a beach. You know, just kind of isolated island maybe with a private beach. I'm not sure where this beach is maybe Curacao, which is the setting for sunset and coconuts. I've never been to Curacao, but I did a lot of research for the book. But I'm not really picky. I think just as long as I have some sand underneath my feet and I don't know a large body of water to gaze at in my journal to write in. I'm pretty happy.
Laura:We have a river if you want to come to Missouri.
Eliza Lentzski:It's a pretty big one. Right?
Laura:Right. It's pretty big. It's not very scenic and really dirty.
Eliza Lentzski:Right. I've got the ocean out here. So that's not too bad, the Atlantic Ocean.
Laura:well, it's a little better than a river. Do you have any hidden talents that would surprise us?
Eliza Lentzski:I don't know if they're surprising. And maybe they're not even talents. But I'm really good at spatial awareness. So if there's leftover food in a saucepan, I can pick out the perfect size Tupperware. Not too big, not too small that it'll fit it perfectly. I actually get pretty excited, pretty proud about it. My wife is the person who cooks and I clean up. So I don't know, I'll take mashed potatoes and put in a Tupperware container. And then I'll show her like, I'll get really excited and say, Look how good I did you know, like it was like, spot on right to the top. No waste. Perfect. So that's one. Number two. I'm very good at guessing movie endings. Not like a romance. You know, where it's very formulaic. And you know exactly Oh, they're going to fall in love, but then three quarters of the way they're going to have a fight, but then eventually they get back together. Right? So
Laura:So not the Hallmark Channel movies.
Eliza Lentzski:Correct, I'm not talking about Hallmark, but like a thriller, you know, something that has some kind of twist or unexpected ending. I'm pretty good within the first few minutes of knowing what's going to happen of predicting that and I used to just blurt it out out instead annoyed my wife, obviously, like you're ruining everything. So now I've gotten good, very mindful of just saying, Oh, I think I know how this ends. And then it's up to her if she wants me to spoil the ending for her or wait until the very end,
Laura:those are good talent thinks that whole bowl thing that's very impressive, because I always get the wrong size bowl.
Eliza Lentzski:Yeah, I think it's a pretty valuable life skill.
Laura:It totally is.
Eliza Lentzski:Forget about parallel parking, it's all about Tupperware.
Laura:right, Nobody needs to parallel park, that's crazy, you can always find a place
Eliza Lentzski:For sure.
Laura:What is the cause that means a lot to you?
Eliza Lentzski:There's so many. So so many, I kind of burn brightly for anything having to do with diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. But I'm particularly passionate about women's reproductive health and making sure that Roe v Wade and Casey versus Planned Parenthood don't get overturned. Most recently, I've been really invested in researching about this unfortunate, very unsavory slew of legislation that would deny trans youth access from playing in sports. And as we've already established, I'm a huge sports fan, I played a lot of sports growing up, I played sports in college, I tried to be sporting even today, and that when when you don't feel like you fit anyplace else, sports is a place where you can feel that sense of belonging. And I find it just this political posturing, and this turfy kind of, we're going to save women's sports by not allowing trans women to participate. And it's, it's so disheartening, and it's and it's so harmful, particularly when we're talking about trans youth who this isn't about athletic scholarships, or about winning championships, it's about just finding a place where you belong and where you're comfortable in your own skin. That's something that I've spent on my radar a lot lately. It's really exhausting, you know, all of this stuff, exhausting, draining, to read about just a lot of the ugliness that happens in the world, all the things happening. And it can be really easy to feel just helpless in the face of all of these systemic and massive structural challenges. And admittedly, I'm pretty lucky, I don't know what your part of Missouri is like. But I feel pretty likely to be in a pretty progressive state like Massachusetts, and particularly to be in Boston, because it's a privilege to feel secure that certain things I might take for granted, Boston's not going to stand for those things being taken away. And I think it's also a privilege to be able to write love stories, to kind of shut myself away from all the ugliness in the world and to write these love stories, the the work that I do in my day to day as a historian, that is an in particularly I work on revealing the hidden histories of people whose stories have been hidden, or whose histories that have been falsified. I tried to shed light on some of the country's mistakes in the hopes that we could really meet our potential as a country, but so that I find really gratifying and really satisfying. But the work that I do writing these love stories, I think that that's really important. That's really essential, because honestly, we could all do with a lot more love a lot more happy endings, even if only momentary to have that escapism to escape to that world where there's infinite possibilities and where these happy endings are possible.
Laura:Yeah, because we haven't had a lot of happiness lately.
Eliza Lentzski:Yeah,
Laura:Eliza, this has been wonderful. Thanks so much for chatting with me. I really appreciate it and I wish you nothing but the best.
Eliza Lentzski:Thanks so much for having me and thank you for all the work that you do to support our lesfic and sapphic community.
Laura:Thank you. Thanks for listening. And thanks again to Eliza Lentzski for joining me. You can purchase Eliza's books on Amazon, and be on the lookout for Sour Grapes available at the end of May. If you enjoy this podcast, you can buy me a coffee and buy me a coffee.com/sapphiclaura or join my patreon page at patreon.com/sapphicbookreviewpod. For as little as $5 a month you can hear your favorite authors play hilarious games. Would you rather? Here's a sample of this week's with Eliza Lentzski. Thanks for listening and until next time, happy read. Would you rather have dinner with Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Maya Angelou?
Eliza Lentzski:You're really pulling out the heavy hitters here. You know what , I love Maya Angelou is writing but RBG is one of a kind. I think I would have so many more questions for her and I would want to know so much about her experiences, versus Maya Angelou. I feel like I've read so much that she's written some of the questions I might have had would be answered by the texts that I've already read. So RBG what an icon.
Laura:Would you rather go on a brewery tour with Julia and Cassidy or Hunter and Elle?
Eliza Lentzski:Well, I'm glad that you chose a brewery tour because I'm all about that. Oh, you know what I think I Go with Cassidy and Julia. Just because I think it would be pretty entertaining to see Julia just wrinkle her nose at all of the unwashed cretins you know and like Cassidy just trying to convince her to let her guard down and just have fun. You know, I think L and Hunter would be easy and neutral. I think that just seeing Julia do anything is in my brain. pretty entertaining.
Laura:Yeah, it would be a lot more entertaining because you don't know what's going to happen. For sure. Maybe Cassidy was spilled the beer on Julia. That's true.
Eliza Lentzski:That's true right right down her chest.