Bookcast Episode 142: Book Updates, a Monk Rewatch, Noir Pages

We have a shorter episode this week. 

I catch you up on my reading challenge (92 of 150 books, 8 ahead of schedule), I dig deep into my Monk rewatch on Philo, talk honestly about new release sales for Standard of Care and Petty Season, and I chat about Noir Pages.

Recently read:

Crushed — L.M. Bennett

No One Knows You're Here — Rachel Howzell Hall

The Revelation of Dionne Daphne — Mara Brock Akil

We Could Have Been — Aubrey Pynn

Playing by the Rules — Reese Ryan

Currently reading:

With Her Baby on Her Back — Suzette D. Harrison

I also talk about my Awesome August fanfic story, I Want You Back, starting August 1st, and my Labor Day short currently in progress.

For the full rundown, including my complete Monk breakdown, all the book and event details, and every link mentioned, head to booksbydlwhite.com/bookcast/142.

Transcript

DL White [00:00:14]:
Okay. Hi. Hello. Hi, friends, book pals, book people, imaginary book people in my phone. Hi, welcome back to The Book Cast. This is episode 142, and The Book Cast is a little semi-weekly author podcast where I talk about reading and writing Black fiction and real life as a self-published author of such. I am D.L. White.

DL White [00:00:45]:
I am your host. I'm an Atlanta-based author, writer, reader, storyteller. And if you like this podcast or the very idea of this podcast, the best way to support it is to buy the books. booksbydlwhite.com/shop has all of the ebook and audio editions of my books. You can find print editions editions of my book at bookshop.org, and right now I have a little bitty paperback sale going on. Well, it's a paperback order. If you would like to order some books direct from me at cheaper-than-retail prices, please head to my Link in Bio page. It's booksbydlwhite.com/linkinbio.

DL White [00:01:25]:
You'll find the link to that order. It closes on August 5th. I will order the books and have them shipped to me, and then I will ship them to you. Otherwise, you have to get my print books at bookshop.org or order them from your local bookstore. Either one works great because you are both supporting indie bookstores and me, and as we all know, that is my favorite thing. Today is Sunday, July 26th, and today is going to be a bit on the short side. I always say short and then I ramble for 20 minutes because I like to talk about me, but I did not want to skip another week. But I am tired.

DL White [00:02:03]:
It's been a longish week and I am ready to Just chill and enjoy my Sunday afternoon. But first, we have this podcast we need to get out. So let's just jump right on in. No beverage today. I don't actually even have a beverage. I just grabbed my phone and my laptop, and I headed up to the podcast studio, aka the closet in my office. And I said, let me just come in and talk to the people. So let's begin with the book report.

DL White [00:02:31]:
I am at 92 of my goal to read 150 books in 2026. I am 61% toward my goal. goal. I'm 8 books ahead of schedule. I have absolutely no worry at all that I will meet or exceed my goal this year. So we are moving right along. What I have read since the last time I came to you: Crushed, a novelette by L.M. Bennett; No One Knows You're Here by Rachel Howzell Hall, in— I listened to that in audio; The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil, in audio.

DL White [00:03:11]:
We could have been, A Los Océanos Novella by Aubrey Penn. I read that, page read that in ebook. And then I also page read Playing by the Rules, uh, by Reese Ryan. And then I'm currently reading With Her Baby on Her Back by Suzette D. Harrison. I think I'll probably finish that one up tonight. I do so love Suzette's work. I like that she does historical fiction, but it's not, um, it is not— she doesn't include a lot of, uh, like gory traumatic details.

DL White [00:03:41]:
And it's just literally just, you know, telling the story of someone from our history. So looking forward to finishing that one up. On the streaming report, the Black BookTubers Reading Challenge has ended. It was a 30-day challenge of about 70 Black BookTube creators to create videos every day, and there is all manner of type of video. There's some book hauls, there's some reading sprints. There's some topical, you know, topical discussions. There's some book reviews. Any type of bookish content you might be looking for, you should take a dip through that playlist.

DL White [00:04:23]:
Just search for it, Black BookTube Is Reading. And there's about 300 videos on the playlist, so you should be able to find anybody that you're looking for, or it'll give you, you know, a jumping off point to someone else. Find some people to follow. Follow them. Like their content. Like, share, comment, subscribe. Make sure that they know that you're watching and you're listening because that is definitely an encouragement to get people to continue to create. YouTube is a place where we definitely want a presence.

DL White [00:04:55]:
I personally live at YouTube, so I am so happy to see so much Black Book content on my main feed. That challenge has ended, but the creators are still creating on their now regular schedule. Some are once a week, some are twice a week, and some shorts. So really dig in. It's a good thing to be listening to while you're walking or at work or driving. There's a plethora of content there for anything that you might be looking for. So there's that. And then I have been— I was in a serious rut, maybe maybe since 2020 of watching one of 2 cartoon TV shows on my way to sleep.

DL White [00:05:44]:
And in trying to break that, I just started watching something else that I have seen several seasons of, and so I could watch it or not. If I fall asleep, it's fine. So I started watching Monk. I watched this on Philo, which is like an add-on— not an add-on, but it's in addition to my Hulu TV subscription. It's like $20 a month, and I use it to pick up the channels that I don't get through Hulu TV, like Lifetime, Bravo, BET. Um, Monk comes on like Great American Television or whatever. Hallmark, because I watch all my Hallmark Mysteries there. So, you know, for $20 a month, I just pick up extra channels there.

DL White [00:06:27]:
So I have been watching Monk at night. I'm currently on season 7 of my rewatch, and they go pretty So, on occasion, I'll go back like a season or two and like watch, you know, more, 'cause some of them I have literally slept through. So, I have to like go back and catch up. It's been so long, really, since the last time I watched Monk. It's been like— I've watched it probably 2 or 3 times by now. It's been so long since I last watched it, probably during the height of the pandemic was the last time I watched it, that some of the cases I have forgotten. I don't remember how they resolved, or I just liked it so much I watched it again. Yeah.

DL White [00:07:08]:
If you are not familiar with this show, it features a detective named Adrian Monk, and he's a bit of a savant. He's one of the few TV detectives where his greatest strength is also his biggest obstacle. He is very OCD. He suffers from a number of disorders and mental illnesses that make him really impossible, almost impossible to— Yeah. be one-on-one with, but it also brings out characteristics in him that make him a great detective. It's a TV procedural that really sticks the landing. It seems to have stood the test of time, at least for me. I watch it usually alongside the original Law Order, Rizzoli Isles, shows like that.

DL White [00:07:55]:
Typically, in the summer when my regular shows like Tracker, Sheriff Country, Elsbeth, et cetera, are on hiatus, I will kick up an episode an old show I haven't seen in a while. There was a time when I would watch the regular, the original Law Order series front to back over and over and over while I was writing. So I have just replaced that now with Monk for the moment. So this is a show that if— I guess if you're not familiar, it stars Tony Shalhoub, who you might know from the show Taxi. He was also in Men in Black. He played the shop owner, and Will Smith shot his head off in it. It came back 'cause he was an alien. It's very easy to reduce Monk to his compulsions, but the way Tony Shalhoub plays him as a grieving man first and a detective second, I think, is a sort of a turn on the trope of a TV detective.

DL White [00:08:57]:
Though I think a lot of TV detectives are very grizzled and a little bit gruff, Monk is the opposite. He is very clean. He has various levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder, He keeps a rigid schedule, and he is just hyper-aware of sort of, you know, what day it is and what is happening and what he should be doing and what he's not doing. The show balances murder, comedy, genuine emotion without making the viewer feel like it's a tearjerker or like an emotions grab. Right. The supporting cast also is very important, particularly the early seasons. During the later seasons, the supporting cast gets a little wacky and more like they are add-ons to Monk's character. The early seasons really show them as an ensemble.

DL White [00:09:56]:
Sharona is his original nurse.   I think she was in the first 2 seasons. Her departure was very abrupt right before season 3. I believe it was a contract dispute. She wanted to be paid more money because, as I feel, she thought she played a bigger part in the success of the show. The show did not agree, and they let her go. And so then they brought in the actress that plays Natalie Teager, who is fine in her own right. I just really like Sharona.

DL White [00:10:25]:
They're not interchangeable, though. They bring out— both bring out different sides of Adrian Monk. Captain StadelmeyeStottlemeyer San Francisco police captain, and Randy Disher plays the lieutenant. They also grow far beyond the stereotypical cops in the series. They all eventually become very good friends and very protective of Monk and bring him in even when people don't feel like they need him on the case. It's very formulaic, as a lot of TV procedurals are. A lot of stuff on TV is formulaic. And when they When writers and producers mess with the formula, viewers get upset.

DL White [00:11:09]:
And so that's why they keep it. The appeal is watching how Monk notices what everyone else is missing and isn't just determining who did it, but how they did it. And it's always sort of in a way that no one else saw. His attention to detail solves crime. The way he solves crime makes everyday life pretty exhausting. Trudy's murder— Trudy was Adrian's wife who was killed in a car bomb meant for him. It gives the series an emotional throughline that keeps it from becoming a really stereotypical, run-of-the-mill, just another police show procedural. Adrian spends most of the 8 seasons of this series missing his wife and trying to figure out figure out who murdered her.

DL White [00:12:04]:
That is basically what he centers his life around, and he solves crime as a way to do something else. There are a lot of criticisms of this show. Some of the portrayals of OCD and mental illness feel pretty dated in 2026. This show, I don't even remember, I would have to look it up. I don't remember When this show came out, like maybe the 2000s, maybe, I don't know. I would have to look it up. But the show wasn't really trying to be a clinical portrait of a man with OCD. It's very consistent.

DL White [00:12:44]:
Some episodes treat it as debilitating. Some episodes treat it as like a little quirky thing that he can turn on and off when he needs to. A lot of the comedy comes from his— Yeah. mental illness, his disabilities, the state of his mind. It was handled with more empathy than a lot of shows of that era, but there are some moments that feel very uncomfortable in 2026. Another thing that's very uncomfortable is how Monk always refuses to pay his assistants and how he is always cheating them out of money and shortchanging them. And both Sharona, Mm-hmm. and Natalie are single mothers.

DL White [00:13:26]:
So, having a character not respect them, not treat them as whole, not treat them as a partner, not pay them regularly, really, in 2026, makes him kind of trash. Half the episodes only happen because Monk ignores obvious danger, or he walks into situations that no experienced detective would walk into. He is supposed to be this brilliant detective, and yet there are things he does that no detective would do. That brilliance is sometimes undercut, basically, to create a comedic moment or just to keep that plot moving. The supportive cast, of course, over the life of the show, became caricatures. Randy Disher especially got on my nerves. He becomes progressively dumber over the seasons. Like, early Randy is just like, Like a good cop who's just naive.

DL White [00:14:28]:
Later in the series, Randy is very much a cartoon. It just makes me wonder how that actor felt about portraying that character because there— I just sometimes I just— I'm watching and I think, how did Randy become a lieutenant? I don't understand how he is a lieutenant. And then, of course, Sharona's exit, which was and mostly happened offscreen. Natalie became a really great character in her own right, but the transition was rough going from Sharona to Natalie. Women are written very thinly. Stottlemeyer's wife, Randy's love interests, even Trudy a lot. We dug a lot into Trudy, but she was kind of one-dimensional. She was the woman that Adrian missed.

DL White [00:15:17]:
Natalie and Sharona, we didn't see a whole lot of their personal lives except for their children. Natalie, we dug into some because because she does begin to date over the— through the series. Her husband died. And so— but a lot of the female guest characters exist primarily as victims, suspects, love interests, not really, you know, smart, nuanced characters that could carry the case. The mystery formula is, of course, repetitive. It's a police procedural. If you mess with the— if you mess with the formula, the viewers get weird. So, that's very repetitive.

DL White [00:15:52]:
Monk, notices one tiny thing no one else sees, and then everyone dismisses him, and then 20 minutes later, everybody discovers he's right. It works. But after 8 seasons, you know the rhythm. And some jokes really haven't aged well. The show is about 20 years old, if that. Anyway, I'm enjoying my rewatch, as I always do. There's 8 seasons of the show, and then I think they did 2 specials. There's one— And then there's a movie that they did that was quite different.

DL White [00:16:29]:
But I'm probably gonna just, you know, watch the seasons all the way through a couple times, and then I'm gonna rewatch the movie. I know I watched that during the pandemic 'cause I feel like they shot that during the pandemic. And that was actually really nice just to see everybody come back. So, writing and publishing, a little update on that. I still, of course, have my 2 new releases out. Standard of Care: A Medical Romance came out at the end of May. And then, Petty Season came out over 4th of July. Both are considered new releases.

DL White [00:17:00]:
They both came out in the last 6 months. We're just going to call them new until we can't call them new anymore. Sales since last May are okay, including in-person sales. They're a little over $2,000, which is not too bad considering I normally clear about $100 a month. I'm not even joking. My sales are Very low unless I do something in person or I have something special going on. Thank God for these in-person things I've been going to. I do have a couple more coming up.

DL White [00:17:33]:
I will be at Petersburg Book Fest in September, Atlanta Book Fest in October, and then I am confirming for a couple of other events in 2027. So somewhere in there, I do plan to do a couple more pop-ups just to, A, keep these books out of my house, and B, just like be out there and see people. Yeah. sell books in person. It's nice to be able to sell a couple hundred dollars worth of books and not have to get on a plane, not have to ship books back and forth. So super nice. I'm also working on a little Labor Day short. It is coming along.

DL White [00:18:10]:
I'm at chapter 4. I'm gonna start chapter 4 probably tomorrow-ish. I am planning for about 6 chapters, so it's gonna be another shorty, be, um, 5 or 6 chapters, the prologue and 5 chapters, I think. So we'll see, um, how it goes. My goal is to release it around Labor Day. It may come after Labor Day, but like, who really reads a holiday romance on the holiday, you know? So, um, I'm just gonna probably spend August writing that. Speaking of August, we are set for our awesome August challenge over at the Fanfiction Archive. This is a challenge that we run every year, um, mainly to celebrate the birthday of one JC Chasez.

DL White [00:18:55]:
A couple of my friends got to meet him this weekend. No, I'm not jealous at all. No, I'm not angry. Um, so, uh, my story is done. It turned out great. I think I really like it. Um, I'm excited to start posting it, um, August 1st. It's only 5 chapters, so I'm probably gonna post like 1 chapter a week and then, um, post the last, the last 2 chapters the last week.

DL White [00:19:21]:
I like to draw it out to give people a chance to read, catch up, want more, and wait for the new chapter, as opposed to dumping it all in week 1, um, and then nobody reads the thing. So learn my lessons, learn my lessons. It's titled I Want You Back because that song is stuck in my head thanks to a viral dance meme over on TikTok. Who would have thought that that song would be popular again? Um, I mean, I guess if you've been watching It's Gonna Be May the last few years, you could have, but like It's wild. So I took the idea to use lyrics from the song as my chapter titles. So that's what I did for 5 chapters. So the story follows Katherine Quinn. She is an original character, not anyone that anyone in the band knows, like in real life.

DL White [00:20:16]:
She has spent a decade building her events company into a premier event production powerhouse, but her professional composure is shattered when the huge get for her latest high-stakes charity gala is revealed to be the man who once held her heart, JC Chasez. 25 years ago, she was the junior publicist for RCA Music Group. Their history is a complicated tapestry of late-night phone calls and unfinished business that ultimately unraveled under the weight of the music industry and JC's habit of disappearing without a goodbye. Reunited at the Novo in Los Angeles. The chemistry between them is off the charts and arguably more dangerous than ever. As they navigate high-pressure rehearsals, JC reveals a secret he's carried for decades. His unreleased concept album was written in part about her. But Catherine is no longer a starstruck assistant, and JC has to prove he is no longer the young man who prioritized his career over their connection in the high-glitz world of celebrity galas.

DL White [00:21:22]:
They have to decide if they're finally ready to simply choose each other. I'm kind of excited about how this came out because their past is told throughout each chapter, so it's almost, almost dual timeline. Um, but, uh, anyway, I start posting that August 1st, and so I'm excited for people to read it. I'm also working on a couple of ideas for the fall. Um, one is perhaps a serial that I might post over at Noir Pages, and O-I-R It's a new site for Black-authored romance and fantasy. A number of my books are already available there in ebook and audio. YAR Pages works like KU or Everand or Kobo Plus, or like your library, except you don't have to pay for your library. Members pay one low fee, and you can read or listen to books that are enrolled, and authors get paid.

DL White [00:22:22]:
So I'm actually getting close to the $25 threshold for my first payout. My first payout. So that's very exciting coming from a person that couldn't pay someone to read my books in Kindle Unlimited. So I pulled them and I went wide. This is a great way to have my books in a subscription program where I actually make money. I don't remember— I don't think that I have ever made money off of Kobo Plus, and I make very, very little at Everand. Making $25 off of Noir Pages, um, in the first month that I've been on the site is a big damn deal. So I'm really excited.

DL White [00:22:58]:
I like it a It definitely needs more Black authors to join so that we have more books available, particularly audiobooks. So if you're interested, you should head over to noirpages.com and take a look. I believe you get 7 free days on the site, and I do have a referral code if you would be interested in joining. I think you get 10% off of your first month. It's, you know, it's— the price is, I think, comparable, comparable or lower than KU. It's about maybe even with Kobo Plus. It's definitely lower than Everand. So you should definitely dig into it, offer your support, discover some new authors.

DL White [00:23:42]:
That, my friends, is the end of my spiel for the day. I told you it was going to be short and sweet. I want to thank you Thank you for coming in today to sit with me, to listen to me ramble about reading and writing and books and TV, etc., and so on. If you enjoyed this episode, please do share it, rate it, leave a comment wherever you're listening— Apple, Spotify, Substack, YouTube. Much, much appreciate it. Full show notes, transcripts, and links will be at booksbydlwhite.com/bookcast/142 and on my Substack at authordlwhite.substack.com. Don't forget to subscribe. Thank you.

DL White [00:24:15]:
Forget you can support this podcast by shopping the books at booksbydlwhite.com/shop. You can buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com/booksbydlwhite. You can share the, share the podcast or join the newsletter. Or looking for anything important that you need, you will find it on my link in bio page. It's booksbydlwhite.com/linkinbio. A huge, huge thanks to My monthly supporters who support whether I am putting out episodes every week or not. I truly thank you and I adore you. You do good work and you keep this mic on.

DL White [00:24:56]:
The BookCast is written, produced, and edited by me, D.L. White. Any sound effects are provided by Pixabay. I do not know if I'll be here next week. I will try, but if not, it'll be the week after. Until then, put something good into your face. Enjoy it. We'll talk soon.

DL White [00:25:12]:
Bye-bye.