626. The Bachelor and Romance with Dr. Jodi McAlister

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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 626 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and we have a fun month ahead. This month I wanted to look more closely at the intersection of romance and reality TV, particularly the Bachelor franchise and Real Housewives, and there is only one place to start with that inquiry, with Dr. Jodi McAlister. Jodi McAlister is a scholar of romance and an expert on all things The Bachelor, and she’s also the author of the Australian-set Marry Me, Juliet trilogy, which you may remember from Smart Bitches. It was available digitally in the US as a surprise after a lot of folks, including and especially Amanda, started talking about the books in the series. So Jodi and I are going to talk about all things The Bachelor, about writing a reality show for her series, and why romance readers globally really dig this franchise so very, very much.

I will have links to all of the books that we talk about and Jodi’s coverage in People magazine and other places as she’s been writing about The Bachelor and about her series in the show notes, and you know where that is, right? Smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 626.

I want to say a special hello and thank you to the Patreon this month and a special hello to Margo C., who’s one of the newest members of our community. Welcome! Your support means that we are going to do cool stuff! Basically, yes. You support the show; I do cool stuff; every episode has a transcript from garlicknitter Hey, garlicknitter! [Hey, Sarah! – gk] Wow, is this month going to be fun? And you keep the show going. You’re making every episode accessible, and I am very grateful for that. If you would like to join the Patreon community, if you like the show and you want to support what we’re doing, come on over! Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Patreon members get the full PDF scan – big, chonky PDF – of every issue of RT that we recap, and let me just tell you, these are a treasure of nostalgia and weirdness. Plus you get bonus episodes, and you get a wonderful Discord community that I just cannot say enough nice things about. Hey, guys! If you would like to join, we’d love to have you. Patreon.com/SmartBitches.

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All right, are you ready? Let’s go to Australia, shall we? On with my podcast with Dr. Jodi McAlister!

[music]

Dr. Jodi McAlister: Hello! I am Jodi McAlister. I kind of have two lives: in one half of my life I am an academic. I study romance, I have done for a long time, and I am the vice president of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance.

Sarah: Woohoo!

Dr. McAlister: In my – [laughs] – and in my other life I write romance! And my most recent book, Not Here to Make Friends, just came out in the US a couple weeks ago.

Sarah: Hurray! All right, we have a lot to talk about; I’m so excited; let’s get to it! Okay!

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs]

Sarah: So first of all, congratulations –

Dr. McAlister: Thank you!

Sarah: – on the US release. What a journey you’ve been with this trilogy? It’s been quite a –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – journey that you’ve been on with it? Can you tell me about the series? Just start talking about the series; I want to know everything about it.

Dr. McAlister: I can absolutely tell you about this series.

Sarah: Fabulous! I love this plan; let’s do it.

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs] So Not Here to Make Friends is the third book in a trilogy called Marry Me, Juliet, and Marry Me, Juliet is the name of a reality show, which is, it’s The Bachelor. I couldn’t call it The Bachelor ‘cause I didn’t want to get sued, but it is absolutely The Bachelor. And –

Sarah: Major points for the name, by the way? Because it captures the, so many very specific references. Top choice for the show title. I, I imagine –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, I was –

Sarah: – making up a reality –

Dr. McAlister: – pretty proud.

Sarah: Right? You should be! I imagine making up a reality show for a book is really fun.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah. It’s a lot of fun. So in my academic life I’ve written a ton about The Bachelor, both the Australian and the American version, but I have been, in particular, recapping the Australian version of The Bachelor since 2015, so I have written like a truly humiliating amount of words about The Bachelor in my life? Like, I tried to add it up once and it was very embarrassing. But I’m also kind of deeply engaged in Bachelor culture. And this trilogy was born in 2020, which, as I’m sure we all remember, was just a super-fun year when nothing bad happened. [Laughs] Just really, really chill all the time. I live in Melbourne, which was actually the most locked-down city in the world!

Sarah: It really was.

Dr. McAlister: So, yeah, we had some really, really intense lockdown restrictions. So in our second lockdown in 2020 we couldn’t go more than five kilometers from where we lived; you could only go out for one hour every day and only for, like, a set selection of reasons. Like, it, it was super intense, and I live by myself, and they didn’t introduce a bubble policy for quite a long time into this lockdown, so I, I realized at one point that I hadn’t touched another person for seven months –

Sarah: Oh God!

Dr. McAlister: – and I was like, Oh that, that feels – [laughs] – psychologically unhealthy!

Sarah: That, that’s terrible!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah! But I promise this is actually about my trilogy and not just about kind of, you know –

Sarah: That’s fine!

Dr. McAlister: – how lockdowns is, or lockdowns were. During lockdown two in 2020 there was a season of The Bachelor Australia airing, and it was going to be a season which was COVID impacted. Like, we knew going in that everyone was going to get sent home about halfway through because it was filming in February/March 2020 –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: – and I was actually really excited by that! Like, sometimes creatively, the more restrictions you have, the more creative you have to be, so I was like, Oh, okay! How do you do big sweeping romance when what you have are small living rooms? And the answer was, they just tried to do The Bachelor but on Zoom? And it was just one, truly one of the most depressing things – [laughs] – I’ve ever seen in my entire life!

Sarah: Ooh! No.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. Yeah, added to which, the lead couldn’t really carry the season particularly well? Like, he and his winner are still together, they’re married, they just had a baby, but he was not a particularly kind of charismatic television character.

Sarah: Oooh!

Dr. McAlister: And so I, you know, I was like, Oh! This is terrible! What am I, you know – I have to write so many words about this bad season of The Bachelor –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: – and then I had a ter-, a terrible thought, which was, Oh, what would you do, Jodi?

Sarah: Oh, you –

Dr. McAlister: And –

Sarah: – who know so much about The Bachelor: how would you fix this?

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs] So I, every Friday night, my friends and I would have a little, like, you know, Zoom drinks, and I logged in, and I was like, Oh, friends, I’ve had an awful idea, and I need you to talk me out of it? And they didn’t. And –

Sarah: Well, those are the good kinds of friends!

Dr. McAlister: Yes! Yeah, the second book in this trilogy is dedicated to them for – because they wouldn’t exist without them kind of saying, What do you mean, this is a terrible idea?

Sarah: This is a great idea! Why haven’t, why, why aren’t I reading it right now?

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs] So the three books in the series are all set on the same season of Marry Me, Juliet, this show which is basically The Bachelor. It is a COVID-impacted season, but I don’t want you, I don’t want people to think about these as COVID books. It’s kind of COVID as plot architecture, because what it does is it means that no one is allowed to leave the set –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: – including people who have been eliminated, so everyone who starts the show spends six weeks in lockdown on this set, and production has to kind of work out how to keep the eliminated contestants clear from the regular contestants. It’s a whole big thing.

And, so every book takes place concurrently, so you can read them individually, but I think you do kind of get a better picture if you read them, you know, all of them in, in order in particular. Here for the Right Reasons, which is the first book, is a romance between the Bachelor, who is called the Romeo in this universe, a man named Dylan Jayasinghe Mellor, and Cece, a contestant who gets eliminated on the first night, so obviously –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Dr. McAlister: – can’t leave the set! The second book, Can I Steal You for a Second?, is a romance between two contestants who stay in the game for quite a long time. They’re both frontrunners, Amanda and Dylan Gilchrist. Does she have the same name as the Bachelor? Will that cause any wacky hijinks? Who knows?

Sarah: I mean, it’s, it’s, there’s always a bunch of Dylans, some Kelseys, Taylors, yeah.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. I’m like –

Sarah: There’s always the –

Dr. McAlister: – if there can be four people named Becca, then I figure I can have a male Dylan and a female Dylan, and it’ll be fine. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, for sure, because you know – so I don’t actually watch The Bachelor? I can’t –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – I’m not good at reality television. It’s not my –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah!

Sarah: – it’s not my milieu. I, I, I really struggle with it, but I edit all of Elyse’s recaps of The Bachelor.

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: Her theory is –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – that nobody actually wants to hook up with the Bachelor? They want to get far enough so that the network pays for travel and they get to go somewhere cool, but nobody actually wants to be with this bozo. They just want to hang out in the mansion, paint each others’ nails, be offline for however long, and go get a free travel trip; like, this sounds great!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. And –

Sarah: So I am familiar –

Dr. McAlister: – get that sweet influencer money, obvious.

Sarah: Oh yeah! Get you some tummy tea and an Instagram following.

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs]

Sarah: So I am familiar with the structure of it, even though I’ve never, I’ve never watched it, and I kind of love the idea that you had of now letting the contestants leave?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that idea came about so I could make the first book happen, basically. I was – the, the most boring version of a Bachelor relationship there is is the Bachelor versus the winner, so as soon as I had this idea I was like, Okay, what, what are the messiest things I can do? So Bachelor and the first person he eliminates is obvious. Contest plus contestant was the first one I thought of, obviously; that’s a gimme. And then the third book in this series, Not Here to Make Friends – just out in America! – is a romance between the villain of the season – and we all know villains are always the best characters – and her producer, a man named Murray, who’s also the showrunner, and so his task is to kind of put the season together.

So we have escalating views of this season of television as we go through, so in book one, from Cece’s perspective, she’s been eliminated, so she sees one little slice of production. In book two, Amanda and Dylan are both contestants in the game, so we see kind of The Bachelor from a contestant’s perspective. And then in book three, we’re, we’re in the showrunner’s mind, so we see how the sausage gets made.

Sarah: So –

Dr. McAlister: So they’re prismatic! They fit together like a puzzle box.

Sarah: There’s, there’s not really a good word to describe a series of books or a set of books that are all looking at the same period of time from different angles. Like, some people call them Rashomon style stories, which is not quite –

Dr. McAlister: Mm!

Sarah: – exactly what this is? I do like the idea of prism, prismatic view –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, that’s –

Sarah: – of the same situation? I like that term a lot; that’s very cool.

Dr. McAlister: That’s what I’ve, that’s what I’ve settled on. And –

Sarah: I think that’s a good one.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. And then I, it was really hard to ensure that they are not repetitive. Obviously the, we have the same events and the same milestones in a lot of them, but I think, because we’re seeing such different angles on production –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: – you can read the, you can read them in a row and the, the pleasure of figuring out what was going on in that little bit kind of escalates rather than being like, Ugh, again?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: Come on!

Sarah: And also, seeing dramatic situations with increasing amounts of information?

Dr. McAlister: Mm, yeah.

Sarah: Is going to increase, that’s going to increase character motivation and depth as well.

What did your, what did your timeline look like? Was it on a wall? Was it on a computer? Was it on the wall and the computer? Like, how were you keeping the plotlines and the events of all three stories straight logistically?

Dr. McAlister: So I’ve got some, some spreadsheets. Some very –

Sarah: Oh, I, I – yes, of course.

Dr. McAlister: So the place I started, actually – I’m not normally a particularly, like, plot-y writer, in that I don’t sit down and plot my books in great detail –

Sarah: Right.

Dr. McAlister: – before I go into them. Other-, you know, otherwise I kind of lose interest in them – [laughs] – when I’m in the process of writing them. But I realized to make these work, obviously I would have to have some kind of plot control. So what I did was plot the show, and if there is one thing I understand, it is –

Sarah: It is The Bachelor.

Dr. McAlister: – how a season of The Bachelor fits together. So I was like, Okay, there are twelve episodes of this show. What’s going to happen in each episode, according to kind of a Bachelor structure? What are the milestones? And then I looked at where my characters would be in that kind of Bachelor framework, and from there I could weave the plotlines together. So I’m like, Okay, if, around episode four is a specific milestone for these characters here, so maybe some characters from, from some other books will kind of overhear this, and we see a lot of events from different perspectives. Some events we hear about in some books, but we see in others.

Sarah: In others, yeah.

Dr. McAlister: So, yeah. I maintain that if this season of reality television was ever made, it would be a banger. It would be – [laughs] – so good!

Sarah: I do not doubt it at all. What, were there any scenes or things that you wanted to have happen in Marry Me, Juliet that didn’t make it into the books?

Dr. McAlister: There was a lot of, particularly in Not Here to Make Friends, a lot of manipulation that kind of hit the cutting room floor. Like, I am so fascinated by the world of reality TV production and the idea of narrative generation, and the reason I study The Bachelor so much is that it’s almost the perfect intersection between love stories and real life, because you’ve technically got real people on these shows, but anyone who’s ever watched an episode of UnREAL knows that this is highly manipulated, highly edited, kind of story is made in post production and, you know, during production through – [laughs] – psychological warfare! And I’m, I’m so fascinated by that tension between what love is versus what we think love should look like?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: And so there is a ton of Murray and Lily in Not Here to Make Friends manipulating people to get the story beats that they want that just couldn’t fit into the book. Otherwise it would have been like five hundred thousand words long? But, I mean, I could, I could write so much more about reality television, honestly. Like, I would, I would love to do a kind of Bachelorette version of this one day, ‘cause I think there are whole different kind of architectures going on –

Sarah: Very –

Dr. McAlister: – in that show?

Sarah: – very different architectures.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, it’s, it’s even weird for me that in The Bachelorette, she is the person choosing, but he has to ask her to marry him. She doesn’t ask him.

Dr. McAlister: Mm, and actually, in the very first season of The Bachelorette in the US, at the beginning it really seemed like they, they were teasing that the Bachelorette would propose? So it was a woman named Trista, who is now kind of a –

Sarah: Yes, I remember Trista.

Dr. McAlister: – Bachelor figure. Near the beginning of it she was like, Oh, you know, people think it’s so weird that a woman would propose, but I think it’s empowering! And clearly there was some kind of negative audience reaction to that, because at the end it was Ryan down on one knee –

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. McAlister: – not Trista at all, so there was clearly some kind of pushback to that. But, you know, maybe if I ever do return to this, the Bachelorette in my universe is called Wherefore Art Thou Romeo, so maybe it will be different!

Sarah: Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. And then you can write the behind-the-scenes compendium, like the UnREAL version of Marry Me, Juliet and, and Wherefore Art Thou Romeo? Like, you could write the, the compendium of your fake show? Like, I love this; this’d be great. So I have –

Dr. McAlister: Ugh, yeah, oh my God, don’t tempt me! I would love to do that! [Laughs]

Sarah: I want to make sure I mention this: there is a podcast called Fixing Famous People, and it is hosted by two guys, Chris DeRosa and Dominick Pupa. Dominick Pupa and Chris DeRosa are both reality show producers, and so every now and again you get mad behind-the-scenes gossip about the production of reality shows. They have incredible theories about – what’s the one where they’re all in pods and they can’t –

Dr. McAlister: Love Is Blind?

Sarah: Love Is Blind. They have a ton of theories about Love Is Blind, but Dominick was, started out in, like, low-level production and then ended up as the producer of The Bachelorette.

Dr. McAlister: Mm, amazing!

Sarah: He was her producer. So everywhere she went, he went. He’s like, It was great. It was, it was like being the Bachelorette: I flew first class, I got a nice hotel room, I did everything the Bachelorette did except have to choose from all these guys and make noise on TV; I was never on camera. But they talk about what it’s like to build the narrative while it’s happening, and –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – Chris is currently producing, I want to say it’s Real Housewives of New Jersey or New York, one of the two, and he, you can now hear his voice because they’re starting to drop the, the, the wall? Where you’re starting to hear, especially in the teasers, the producers asking questions. Well, what’s in your heart? How do you feel about this? This is what she said; what do you think? Like, there, you actually hear them on, like, they’re actually including it in the show now, the producers and –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – the work that they do. And I have to –

Dr. McAlister: I think this is a post UnREAL phenomenon, honestly. I think –

Sarah: Really!

Dr. McAlister: – once UnREAL happens – like, the same trend is happening in Australian reality television. Like, in the last season of The Bachelor here, which was actually the Bachelors – there were three of them – there were numerous instances where you could see the, the producer’s name written on the clapperboard.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: Like, they’re, they’re really, I think people have become fascinated with production, particularly post UnREAL, and so there is an appetite to kind of see how the sausage gets made, and this is something Murray in Not Here to Make Friends has some complicated feelings about, because he doesn’t particularly want to be on camera, but if it means it’ll be best for the story, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: – he’ll do it.

Sarah: And Murray has goals, right? Like, he wants to make –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – this season more inclusive; he wants to make this season a set of very specific things. He does have an awareness of the overwhelmingly white and –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – cisgendered nar-, nature of, of The Bachelor in all of its franchises in the US and, and in Australia. It can be –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – a very white show. And it’s interesting that Murray’s like, No, I’m going to do this differently, and yet he’s going to be in this bubble, and he’s still going to be working within the, within the structure that he’s been working in all of this time. It’s like, it reminds me of the proscenium of a stage, which has multiple frames. Like, which frame are you looking at? Because it’s still the stage.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I like, I was really worried about people, about how people were going to receive Murray and Lily, honestly, because these are not particularly good people?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. McAlister: And they have –

Sarah: Reality show TV producer manipulating narrative – what do you mean?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, they’re, you know, they’re, I think Murray says at some point that his mor-, his moral compass is fundamentally broken, but the, the line I had to kind of tread with them both is that they are not nice to people on a kind of individual level? Like, obviously they’re both kind of master, masters of psychological manipulation, but they’re overall not bad, and their kind of o-, their overarching goals in terms of story are quite pure and quite good –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. McAlister: – and they do want to create this kind of more inclusive narrative, kind of based around this idea that the stories we tell about love tell us who we think deserves love, and so –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: – if we only ever see stories involving white people or straight people or, like, insert your axis-of-privilege here, then that really tells us something about who we think deserves love, and so Murray in particular is very conscious of the power of reality TV to change the way that people think.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. McAlister: And so, while he is prepared to do some horrible things to people on the individual level, it’s in the service of this kind of broader goal, so –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. McAlister: – they’re not nice, but they’re not bad was the sort of, the line I had to tread, but because –

Sarah: Which is tough!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah! And, like, that makes them not particularly likeable –

Sarah: No.

Dr. McAlister: – in many ways. Like, they have qualms, either of them, about manipulating people, but – and I know likeability can be a little bit fraught in romance –

Sarah: I was just going to say –

Dr. McAlister: – and so…

Sarah: – we are not, we, we as a readership are often very, very particular, especially about heroines. They have a very narrow set of, like, rules that they have to follow, and we don’t like, we don’t like morally gray – in, in a contemporary romance, lack of morality can, can really sink a character. Like, people are like, Oh, I just don’t like her.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. Well, this book I kind of frame it sometimes as morally gray/grumpy and amoral sunshine. Like – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. McAlister: They both have very, like, interesting moral compasses, but instead of likeable, I wanted to make them both fascinating. So –

Sarah: Which is –

Dr. McAlister: – even –

Sarah: – what is a good villain on TV.

Dr. McAlister: Indeed! Absolutely!

Sarah: Like, you actually want to watch somebody who has a strategy, or at least seems like they have a strategy, as opposed to someone who’s just there to make an emotional mess and watch the fallout with no purpose to it.

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: Like, those people are exhausting.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: Someone who’s got that sort of manipulative – it, it is a very specific type of person also, who can look at another person in a, in a competitive atmosphere and be like, Okay, I know, I know what your insecurities are, and I know how to use your insecurities to maneuver you to doing what I want without you knowing it.

Dr. McAlister: Mm. Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Like, that’s a very specific personality type, and it’s kind of frightening?

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs] Yeah, and they both have it in this book.

Sarah: Yeah! They’re – ooh, damn!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. So I was really conscious about writing Lily as a villain for that reason as well. Like, I think there are a few kinds of reality villains: there are ones that are, like, completely victimized by their edit and things are taken out of context. There are some that are just genuinely quite scary people? Like, it, it comes off the camera. Particularly, you see that with men, I think, on The Bachelorette. It’s like –

Sarah: Oh, yeah. There is –

Dr. McAlister: – Oh nooo! But the best villains are the ones who know they’re villains and are doing it on purpose, because they’re there to make the narrative go.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. McAlister: They’re there to cause chaos and cause drama and cause conflict, which of course, what is a narrative without conflict? What’s a romance novel without, or a romance narrative without an obstacle to overcome?

Sarah: For sure!

Dr. McAlister: And so Lily is incredibly conscious that she is performing that role in this season; she just might not be – [laughs] – doing it in the way Murray might want.

Sarah: [Laughs] And it must be very strange as a, as a person to be like, I am playing this role that is me, that is based on some parts of my personality, but is not a hundred percent me. Like, I’m not like this in the, in the, in the dairy section at the grocery store.

Dr. McAlister: Mm. Yeah, she’s not pushing people into the fridge like she pushes people into the pool, you know?

Sarah: God, I hope not.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah…

Sarah: So, what was the journey like bringing this book to the US market? I mean, please feel free to rant about all the times you were told this was too Australian, which I think is such a strange thing. And how is the US market different from the Australian market in your experience?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, well, for one, it’s, scale is the biggest one. Like –

Sarah: Oh, there’s a lot of us! I don’t know if you’ve noticed.

Dr. McAlister: I, I, I have noticed!

Sarah: Yeah! There’s a lot of us.

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs] Believe it or not! I mean, I think probably the best example I can give you of scale is in Australia, when your book comes out, they will send you fifteen author copies, and I’m like, Fifteen is a good number! I can keep a few for myself; I can give a few out; you know. It’s manageable. When a, a box of fifty books turned up at my doorstep from my US publisher I was like, What am I supposed to do with all these books?!

Sarah: Okay –

Dr. McAlister: What are they for? Oh no!

Sarah: All right, so I know how much books are in Australia. What you do is you make money! Is what you do! Those books are like –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – eighty bucks a pop!

[Laughter]

Dr. McAlister: I mean, they’re not quite eighty, but, like, yeah, books are expensive in Australia. It’s to do with book tax; it’s very boring. But yeah, so the journey of bringing this book to the US market actually kind of started a little bit because of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books!

Sarah: We’re very honored to have had a small part in this journey. We’re all very excited about this.

Dr. McAlister: Oh!

Sarah: Like, every time something happened we were all like –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, look, it was, it made a huge difference. Like, I’m not just saying that; it genuinely moved the needle for me. So I have been trying to sell into the US for a long time. So these are not my first books; I wrote a series of YA – I guess we would call them romantasy now, though the, the term did not exist at that time. [Laughs] So I wrote a YA romantasy trilogy kind of late 2010s; 2017 through 2019 they were published here. Tried to publish them into the US with no success; got too Australian, too Australian, too Australian back every time, and I was like, I don’t know what that means, actually? I don’t think they are that, you know, partic-, I don’t, I don’t think they are that particularly foreign, but, like, as an Australian, maybe I’m not in a great position to know that. Who knows? And then I’ve got another little standalone, which, kind of same thing, came back. So when I wrote Here for the Right Reasons, which is the first book in this trilogy, I was thinking in particular of another Australian author, Sally Thorne.

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. McAlister: And I think a lot of people might not actually know that she is Australian, because she has done such a good job at scraping the serial numbers off? Like when The Hating Game came out, it was obvious to me immediately that that book is set in Sydney. Like, instantly. I’m like, Oh, yeah. The building that they’re in, that is the Penguin Random House building in north Sydney; I have been there a bunch of times. When they go paintballing I’m like, Oh, they have gone out to, like, Penrith. This, it was so clear to me that that book was Sydney, and then a bunch of other people like, Oh no, it’s London! Oh no, it’s New York! I was like, What are you, what are you talking about? Where did you –

Sarah: No!

Dr. McAlister: – get this idea? And I realized, she never actually says where it’s set.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. McAlister: And so I was like, Hmm, to crack into the American market, perhaps I too can do this and try and scrape the serial numbers off. So in this series, particularly Here for the Right Reasons, I never ever say where it is set, but apparently I’m much worse at this maneuver – [laughs] – than Sally Thorne is! Because still the feedback came back like, Nah, too Australian, and I was like, Maybe this is to do with the kind of version of The Bachelor I have represented in my show, ‘cause there are some differences between, between kind of American and Australian Bachelor, and essentially I kind of just, like, gave up, and so I think they get steadily more Australian as they go on. You can particularly tell through the character of Murray, who uses the word Mate in a precision passive-aggressive way that only an Australian man can do.

Sarah: Oh yeah, it’s –

Dr. McAlister: Mate –

Sarah: – it’s, it’s as nuanced and specific as Bless your heart in the South.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah. Like, you, you can call someone your mate, and can genuinely mean that they’re your best friend, but it can also be the worst insult you have ever heard – [laughs] – in your entire life.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: So –

Sarah: There’s a lot of nuance in, in the words, things like Dude. Dude.

Dr. McAlister: Yep.

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. And, like, yeah, if someone calls you Mate in a certain tone of voice you’re like, aw. Oh no. [Laughs] Oh dear!

Sarah: Oh –

Dr. McAlister: Oh, I’m in for it now!

Sarah: I better not leave this bar in the next five minutes; this person’s going to whoop my ass.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. And because it’s a trilogy I was like, Well, if I didn’t sell the first one or the second one in, then, like, what’s going to happen with the third one? Like, probably not? But then there was a little post on a little website called Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, which was, which was very nice, and it actually allowed my agent and me to talk to my Australian publisher about making the series digitally available in the US, which apparently you can just do with a press of a button. I didn’t know that until we were like, Oh! We can just do that? Okay! [Laughs] Like –

Sarah: I can’t believe that it’s that simple. Like, we’re just going to turn on the eBook and the audiobook –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – for the US market. Doot! We have switched the radio button – like, whoever did that? More power to you!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah! I was like, If I had known this was an option, maybe I would have agitated for this a little bit earlier. And then there was another lovely post on Smart Bitches about the fact that you could get my books in the US?

Sarah: Yep!

Dr. McAlister: And then a couple of weeks into January I got an email from my wonderful Australian publicist Gabby where the, the title was EXCITING NEWS in all caps, and it was to tell me that Olivia Waite was going to write about it in the New York Times, and the, that New York Times review combined with the kind of nice press I’d been getting on Smart Bitches contributed to some conversation, and maybe, suddenly, the book wasn’t too Australian after all! And –

Sarah: Well, you know, it helps to have digital sales figures to demonstrate interest.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. It absolutely does! And so I’m published by Simon & Schuster in Australia, who are connected, of course, to –

Together: – Simon & Schuster in the US.

Sarah: Yep!

Dr. McAlister: And so Not Here to Make Friends is with Atria, who is a Simon & Schuster imprint. And yeah! So they’ve brought Not Here to Make Friends to the US in print now, and if it does well then maybe we can get Here for the Right Reasons and Can I Steal You for a Second? in print too, but if nothing else, they are digitally available.

Sarah: I love it so much! Congratulations!

Dr. McAlister: It was, it, after so many years of trying, it happened very fast, and I was, I was like, This feels easy –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. McAlister: – but I know it’s not easy, because it’s been so hard for so long, and I don’t know what this is going to mean in the kind of longer story of my career. Like, I could be one-and-done in the US market, or this could mean that, you know, there’s more for me in the US market. And that could also have implications for other Australian authors as well; like, there is a reading of the situation where I’m like a little bit of a test case. Like, we, we have a little boom in romantic comedy in Australia at the moment. If Not Here to Make Friends goes well, maybe some other authors here could get picked up as well, which is something I would really love for them, because there are some great books out there by Australian authors!

Sarah: You mean they’re not all murder mysteries set out in, in the bush?

Dr. McAlister: I believe we do have a lot of those, obviously.

Sarah: Oh, I know you do. I, I remember! It’s a thing!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Y’all go out in the bush –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – and kill people! It’s like being in a small –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, Outback…

Sarah: Yeah, Outback noir, it’s like living in a small, damp town in England? You’re just, somebody’s going to die!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, probably the most successful, internationally successful example of this is The Dry by Jane Harper, which was made into a movie with Eric Bana.

But Outback noir is huge, but we do have our fair share of romantic comedy as well, so kind of 2022 onwards, I think we saw a real uptick in it. Like, there was some before, obviously. It does have a little bit of a different flavor, I think, often, and some of the things we see in the US? Like, I think Australian rom-com feels a little bit more chick-lit-y sometimes? It’s often more heroine-centered, and sometimes it takes you a minute to work out who the love interest is.

But there’s some great, great, great books out there. Like, just to mention a few, here are three of my favorites from last year:

The Love Contract by Steph Vizard is a fake-dating book set in Melbourne, which has the, genuinely the best, most legitimate excuse for fake dating I’ve ever heard of, and it’s the most delightfully Melbourne book as well, because I live in Melbourne, and I was like, Oh! Their first date is at South Melbourne Market? Like, it was recognizable to a way, to me in a way that, you know, I love a lot of American romantic comedy, but it, it’s got a different flavour. So I love that book.

Love Match by Clare Fletcher is a sapphic sports rom-com set in a small town about a women’s rugby team, and it came out just as the, Matildas, the Australian women’s soccer team, made the semifinals of the World Cup? And so I think it was, like, really good timing for everyone with Tillys fever to kind of move on to this, like, sapphic, small-town, rugby book; it’s a gorgeous book.

And then Bound to Happen by Jonathon Shannon I think was done a little bit of a disservice by its marketing, ‘cause it was marketed as an anti-rom-com, and that is normally a phrase that would make me run for the hills. But its premise is essentially Boy Doesn’t Meet Girl, and it’s a series of missed meet-cutes between these two characters, Tom and Sophie, but they have a, a long correspondence through email, and it is wonderfully romantic and just a, a gorgeous book.

So we’re doing good stuff in Australia, and I would love for more of it to get picked up internationally.

Sarah: I, by the way, love epistolary stories. They are among my favorite, and based on my very, very quick searching, it does appear that all of these are available to me. And in fact –

Dr. McAlister: That’s amazing!

Sarah: – they’re on Hoopla. They’re not in any of my local libraries, which is not surprising, but they are available on Hoopla, they are on Kindle, they are on Audible, and they might also be available at other digital retailers; I haven’t checked exclusivity yet. But yeah, those are available here. Yay! I was –

Dr. McAlister: That’s great, yeah!

Sarah: Usually we are on the beneficial end of geographic restrictions, and I always, like, I get really mad, but then I also feel like, Oh, I’m part of the club when there’s something I want to listen to –

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and it’s not available in the US. Like, there’s a whole bunch of audiobooks of some mysteries that were originally published in the UK and in Canada, and the audiobook is not available to me, and I’m really –

Dr. McAlister: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – peevish about it? But then I’m like, Wow. I have access to so much that so many other people don’t, so now I’m in the, I’m in the geo-restriction-hating club, which I, like –

Dr. McAlister: Oh.

Sarah: – live in permanently anyway.

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs] I mean, one of my favorite things is that my audiobook, all three of my audiobooks for this year are now available in the US, and I love in particular the Not Here to Make Friends audiobook, because it’s, Matty Morris is the most Australian man you’ve ever heard in your life, playing Murray, and then Aileen Huynh as Lily is just perfect. Like, all my audiobooks are great, but that one has such a special place in my heart.

Sarah: That’s so lovely!

I have been meant – I can tell you behind the scenes that Amanda and I have been talking about this trilogy for a while. So we were talking about your trilogy, and we’re like, Oh man, I wish it was available in the States; this is so great. And Amanda buys books for the UK or international editions all the time, ‘cause sometimes the covers and the, the, the type treatment, it’s just, she likes it better. She likes the aesthetics of that book; she’ll order it from overseas, and she’s like, Well, screw it! People can order this overseas. I’m like, You know what? Yeah, they can! They want to read it –

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and we know there’s reality show people. Like, we know there’s a big ol’ audience for The Bachelor and that Bachelor, people who follow The Bachelor will, are, are very well versed in VPNs so that they can watch The Bachelor from another country?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: Like –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – all these people are like, Oh, VPNs are so hard. Nonono, just ask a Bachelor fan. They’ll tell you. It’s fine.

Dr. McAlister: Oh yeah.

Sarah: Very easy.

Dr. McAlister: Oh yeah.

Sarah: So we know there’s an audience, but it’s, it was actually really, really kind of fun to have people be like – [gasps] – Oh my God! I’m so excited about this book! I – and then, and then to see it available in the States? I was so, so excited, and I cannot believe to this day that it was as simple as, like, We’re just going to tick this radio button, and suddenly – how many million of us are there? Like two hundred, three hundred million Americans? We all have access. Mwah-ha-ha.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, it was – like, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think that was probably the biggest day of my author career? And it was as simple as, like –

Sarah: Tick!

Dr. McAlister: – pressing, pressing a button!

Sarah: So not fair!

Dr. McAlister: …like, after all these years of being like, Oh, how do I publish in the US? They don’t want to; I’m too Australian!

Sarah: You see, we slide this little radio button over to the right, and suddenly your book is available all over the darn place.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, it’s the kind of thing that could have happened by accident if someone clicked the wrong checkbox, you know.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dr. McAlister: It’s like, is, is it really that easy? And, I mean, I am not the first author to have heard too Australian. There are tons of us that have got this feedback. Like, there is a reason that one of the areas in which Australian authors are disproportionately successful is fantasy? Because it is usually set in another world, and, and you can’t tell! [Laughs] But – ugh – I really hope this can be the start of something, like, for me and for all my peers here in Australia.

Sarah: Now, I recognize that I am an, an outlier in this case because I’ve been to Australia a couple of times now. I’ve, I’ve been to the Romance Writers of Australia meeting where you all talked about how everyone keeps getting told, being told that shit’s too Australian –

Dr. McAlister: [Laughs]

Sarah: – which I’m like, That’s just bonkers. And I realize I’m an outlier in that perspective, but I, I really wonder if the breakdown is more on this publishing and executive in the sales side than actually in the readership, because I don’t think I have heard – and I talk to a lot of readers – I don’t think I’ve ever heard a raider, reader say, Oh, I didn’t like this book; it was too Australian. Like, what I usually hear –

Dr. McAlister: No.

Sarah: – is, Oh my God, I love the Rosalind James series; I feel like I’m in New Zealand, and I’ve never been there. Oh my – and I, I love being in a different place, and how many Australian-set Harlequin Mills & Boons are there? Like, tons of them!

Dr. McAlister: Oh yeah, tons! Tons! Yeah.

Sarah: I’ve never heard that –

Dr. McAlister: And I mean –

Sarah: – from a reader! Where, is this just an, is this just, like, a sales thing? Like, what is it? It’s weird!

Dr. McAlister: I do think it is a kind of perception in the mind of a publisher thing –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: – which, you know, maybe it will eventually change. Like, you know, publishing is always in a state of change. Change is sometimes slow, but I suppose the one kind of reader version of it I have heard, not from traditionally published colleagues but from, like, self-published, independently published people –

Sarah: Hmm.

Dr. McAlister: – is US readers reporting books for misspellings if they’re written in Commonwealth English.

Sarah: Oh, that’s so annoying! Yeah. Look –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – y’all got extra Us; it’s okay. We’re used –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, we use a lot of Ss instead of zeds – sorry, Zs – and, you know?

Sarah: It’s fine.

[Laughter]

Dr. McAlister: But yeah, I, I do not think it is actually that big a problem. Like, I think my books are perfectly – [laughs] – comprehensible if you’re not Australian, so.

Sarah: Oh yeah! I do remember Sarah Morgan joking about how all of her characters are just, in all of her books, because the difference between sidewalk and pavement, and she can really only pick one if she’s writing for both markets, she’s like, All my characters are just walking around in the street. They’re all just in the middle of the street; it’s fine; it’s fine.

Dr. McAlister: Something I’m quite conscious of in my new book, which is coming out here in February, and maybe the US will take it too; who knows? It’s set in the world of academia, a world that I happen to know –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: – quite a lot of things about –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: – but working through the edits on this has been quite interesting, because some of the language we use around academia is quite different in Australia to what we’re doing in the US? And I’ve kind of given up on this whole scraping the serial numbers thing off, so this series is explicitly set in Australia and in Tasmania, and trying to find words that are, that, that will be comprehensible to an international market while not defaulting to US language, because I want to preserve the language here, like, for, for instance, what would you would call an adjunct professor in the US, we don’t use that term here. We would call them a casual academic or a sessional scholar or something like that. Trying to find a kind of middle ground, a kind of street instead of sidewalk or pavement has been an, an interesting little writing challenge.

Sarah: Wow! That is a big difference!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, like, this is one of the reasons why I was like, I can’t continue to scrape the serial numbers off, because there’s no, like, neutral version of – [laughs] –

Sarah: No.

Dr. McAlister: – scholarly language I can really use here! I’ve got to pick, and this book is set in Tasmania, so I guess we’re using Australian language now. Yeah.

Sarah: So what, what is the name of this book?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, so it’s out in February here; hopefully it will be out in the US too. It is called An Academic Affair.

Sarah: Ooh!

Dr. McAlister: It, it is an academic rivals-to-lovers marriage-of-convenience book!

Sarah: Love it!

Dr. McAlister: The vibes I’m kind of going for are Anne and Gilbert from, like, Anne of Green Gables –

Sarah: Anne of Green Gables, yep.

Dr. McAlister: – as kind of academic rivals? And –

Sarah: Mm-hmm? Yep, yep. Speaking to my soul.

Dr. McAlister: – yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, mm-hmm? Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: I’m, I’m pretty proud of it. Like –

Sarah: Yeah, that’s awesome!

Dr. McAlister: – Not Here to Make Friends in particular was a slog to write and a slog to edit, and so with this book I was kind of wary? I was like, Ugh, God, Not Here to Make Friends ruined me for about six months. Is this book going to ruin me too? And it didn’t –

Sarah: Yay!

Dr. McAlister: – which was really… [Laughs]

Sarah: So I have some Bachelor questions from Shana.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: Shana was, Shana wrote the original review of the, of the trilogy and, and of the third book, and she is out with the dreaded coronavirus, so she’s not here, so I have her questions. First –

Dr. McAlister: Okay.

Sarah: – is there anything that you’d love to see happen on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette that didn’t make it into your series that you wanted to see?

Dr. McAlister: I mean, there’s always more things I want to see. One area where I, I really would have liked to have been able to explore a little bit more, but I couldn’t, just in terms of, it would mean there’d be too many named characters on the page?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: Is, is with the crew. So when you’ve got, you know, fifteen contestants and a Bachelor and a bunch of producers, if I was to introduce a whole bunch of crew characters as well, that’s just too many people; that’s too confusing. But I would have loved to explore some of the, like, what’s going on with the camera people? What’s going on with the soundies? What’s going on in catering? Like, really getting into the kind of behind-the-scenes that maybe isn’t quite as high-powered as what Murray is doing as the, the showrunner. I think that would be a ton of fun, and there are a lot of, like, little scandals in Bachelor history about crew members and contestants kind of hooking up, which makes sense. You’re sequestered on a set, and psychologically that is to make the contestants fall in love with the Bachelor, because he’s the only option, but, you know, there’s a camera guy right there; there’s a soundy just there. They’ve got real strong arms from holding those things up!

Sarah: I was going to say, They got good biceps, those guys, some of them; they got real nice arms!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, so I would love to kind of get into that. To have, you know, had the chance to get into that a little bit more. And I would really love to kind of, you know, flip over and do some Bachelorette stuff, because, like I said before, I think there is some really, some different dynamics going on there, and those of you that have read Not Here to Make Friends will recognize that I’ve left myself a little possibility to do that –

Sarah: Woohoo!

Dr. McAlister: – at the end of this book. I’ve…

Sarah: It’s part of every franchise, right? At the end, well, which one of these people is going to be the next Bachelorette or Bachelor? Yeah, it’s part of, it’s part of the continuity of the series. It’s got like, what, twenty-seven seasons now?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah, twenty-eight in the US? So, yeah, I have, I have left myself a little window to jump over to The Bachelorette should I –

Sarah: Yay!

Dr. McAlister: – should my publisher ever want me to do that, and –

Sarah: Let us speak it into being.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. And so the, the dynamic with that one is, hmm, should I give it away? No. You have to read the book –

Sarah: Okay, that’s –

Dr. McAlister: – to find that one out.

Sarah: You don’t have to give it away.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. But one of the joys of writing Not Here to Make Friends in particular is because a lot of it takes place in flashback. Like, it’s a dual timeline book, so we see this season of Marry Me, Juliet, but also a bunch of other seasons that Murray and Lily have worked on before. I got to explore some really, really wild things that have happened on The Bachelor, and one is an example that I drew from Romanian Bachelor but wrote into the narrative here, is a season where all the women essentially unionized – [laughs] – and voted out the Bachelor? They all –

Sarah: This guy sucks! Get us a new one? Oh. My.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah!

Sarah: Gosh!

Dr. McAlister: They all refused his rose, and so they were like, I guess the Bachelor is eliminated and we need a new one? So there’s a little instance of that where Murray and Lily make that happen on a season in the past in Not Here to Make Friends, which I am quite proud of that they, they engineer this kind of like quite feminist moment of television! That was a ton of fun to write. So I could have gone into, like, I think I’ve made it clear that Lily also has a past reality TV production? I’m giving this away, but going back and kind of thinking about all the seasons of, of television that Murray and Lily have produced before, I, I could have written a million more of these flashback scenes, ‘cause they’ve been manipulating people together for a long time.

Sarah: It’s also fascinating to me, in terms of The Bachelor, the, the number of people who I just, who I know in different contexts who turn out to be deeply fluent in The Bachelor. And like I said, it’s not, it’s not a thing that I can watch. Here, here’s the biggest problem I have: it takes for-Goddamn-ever. It is two and a half hours, and what they’re actually working with is about twenty-two minutes of footage, but they’re going to show, slow-drip it, and then they’re going to talk about the two minutes they just showed you. Then they’re going to show you another two minutes. Now, I have things to do; I have things I need to do with my life. I just cannot invest this much time in inefficient dripping – oh, it drives me nuts. It’s like, And now in the next two and a half hours of The Bachelor, I’m like, What kind of time do you think I have in my life here? When, when Amanda and I get stuck recapping them, we’re like, It’s going on and they’re still in the same room wearing the same clothes! Yeah, that drives me –

Dr. McAlister: I mean, the rea-, the reason it is done like that in the US is to encourage group watching. You’re supposed to be drunk watching that –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Dr. McAlister: – which is why they, they repeat things so many times.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: The structure of it in Australia has…different, where we will have two episodes a week, both between an hour and an hour and a half. The Australian Bachelor has just been canceled a few weeks ago, and it’s ‘cause the last two seasons were so dire –

Sarah: Ahhh!

Dr. McAlister: – and they dropped them both in non-ratings periods, and they dropped an hour episode Sunday through Wednesday every week, so the whole season was over in about three weeks? And –

Sarah: That’s, that’s not going to build momentum, though. That’s, that’s –

Dr. McAlister: No! It was –

Sarah: – that’s the other reason why you slow-drip it is to build momentum.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, and I mean, I think the reason that they even made these seasons was to fulfill, like, we have quotas here for television so we don’t just have all American programming.

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. McAlister: We’ve got Australian content quotas. I think they made it to fulfill their Australian content quota, ‘cause reality TV is cheaper to produce than scripted drama, but it did not do very well, and so it is being rested? But what that means is the license is up for grabs, and so other networks can come in and grab it now, and if they do, I would very much like them to hire me to consult for them, because I can fix them!

Sarah: Oh –

Dr. McAlister: Lord, I can fix them!

Sarah: That is the next thing I wanted to, to ask you about, ‘cause you’ve been doing a lot of writing about The Bachelor –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – inspired by the series, including a piece in People magazine; holy crap, that’s –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – amazing! Congratulations!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, that one is all down to my US publicist Camilla, who made that happen, and it was, when she was like, Do you want to write for People? I had a, like, out-of-body experience…

Sarah: Did you put your head between your knees? Like, peop-, People?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: People! People? People?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, I mean –

Sarah: Yeah, People. Oh, okay.

Dr. McAlister: When you are an academic, that is not an outlet that – [laughs] – you ever think will come knocking at your door!

Sarah: Put that bad boy on the CV! Like, People magazine, guys!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah!

Sarah: Check it out!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. I wonder if I can make a case for that for research impact to my university. We’ll see what People magazine means to the institution.

Sarah: They bloody well better accept it! It’s awesome! [Laughs] Says I.

Dr. McAlister: It means a lot to me, if nothing else.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly! So you’ve been writing about The Bachelor, you’ve got a lot of experience in understanding the, the, the, sort of the public side and then the architecture behind the, the show.

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: Like, you have this deep, deep knowledge of The Bachelor. Why do you think romance readers love The Bachelor so much? I’m really curious about the overlap between romance fans and Bachelor fans, and in the People magazine you called it a cultural artifact about how we view relationships. And I’ve heard other people talk about it –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – there’s a, a bonus Patreon episode for the podcast Maintenance Phase –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – where Aubrey talks – Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes are the hosts, and Aubrey Gordon talks about how much she loves The Bachelor and just tells Michael all of the things she loves, and one of the things she said that stuck with me was, In a lot of ways this is deep- – she’s queer, and she’s like, So this is me, a queer lady, looking at the most deeply heteronormative situational setups, like, ever.

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: This is the most heterosexual nonsense that there could ever be, and yet you will see people reject judgmental suitors. You’ll, you’ll see women telling off men for judging them for having sexual experience or judging them for having, like, smoked a joint or something, and you’ll see people in real time negotiating –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – basically what are toxic relationships and then calling them that. And so you’re –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – bringing that into someone’s living room and saying, Actually, no, this is not romance; this is unacceptable, and we’re going to talk about it that way. Within this very, very heteronormative setup.

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: But that doesn’t decode for me why romance readers love it so much, and I’m really curious about your theory there.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. Oh, I think there are a few things going on, and they’re, they’re all connected, believe it or not.

Sarah: The devil you say!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. So I, the reason I am so interested in The Bachelor, as opposed to something like a Love Is Blind or a Married at First Sight or a Love Island or something like that, is that nearly every other reality dating show has a very explicit gimmick. So Love Is Blind, for instance, the gimmick is that you can’t see each other, and you have to get engaged before you ever lay eyes on the other person. So there is this, like, very clear intervention in kind of the, the romantic relationship. Like, Married at First Sight is another perfect example; it’s in the name. You get married at first sight.

The Bachelor obviously is taking place in this kind of heightened, artificial world, but the way it is set up is to mirror the re-, the milestones we would think of in a relationship. Like, the, the literary studies term we would use for it is, is this, is master plot. So if we think about what we expect a relationship in the real world to look like, you meet, you like each other, you go on a few dates, you kiss, maybe you have sex if you’re in the US version; we don’t do that in the Australian version ‘cause it’s weirdly prudish. You –

Sarah: Wait, you don’t have the fantasy suites?

Dr. McAlister: We do not have the fantasy suites, and I’ve never been able to work out why! [Laughs]

Sarah: I love that you don’t, because they’re just so, like, you, they’ve got to scroll that advice slip to go to Bone Town, and I’m like, This is hilarious! [Laughs]

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. We also, like, if someone starts waving an engagement ring around at the end of Australian Bachelor, that is suspicious. You do not want to see an engagement ring. Like, no! That, that, that would be weird if you were to propose to, to someone here, like, which maybe accounts for the fact – [laughs] – we have a much higher success rate, ‘cause there’s less pressure put on the relationship.

Sarah: So wait, they’re not expected to get engaged to be married; they’re just expected to be together.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. So there have been a few proposals, and one of the seasons they dropped last year, they, they gave the three Bachelors engagements rings. One of them proposed, and, but it was very clear that, that this meant there was something wrong with this man. This, this is not a good man. Another one of them proposed, and the woman was like, Get up. I told you not to propose to me! I will be in a relationship with you, but put that ring away!

Sarah: Ah!

Dr. McAlister: And then the other Bachelor did not propose, and his, his winner actually was a much labored kind of storyline, was in an open relationship, so she had a boy-, another boyfriend on the outside, and it was like polyamory on The Bachelor, which is in itself kind of a form of polyamory. It was, it should have been so much more interesting than it was.

Sarah: I can’t close my mouth! This is amazing! See, this is what happens when your healthcare is tied to your job and securing an advantageous marriage to someone with a job and healthcare is a fundamental part of American anxiety? And so –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – if you, if you, if, if you look at this as, Well, everyone, you have healthcare. You have healthcare just by showing up and being an Australian citizen. You have –

Dr. McAlister: Yes, you do. Yeah.

Sarah: – socialized medicine. And so there is a little bit less anxiety of partnership that, that bleeds into everything else –

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: – this is my theory. But anyway.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. That, that –

Sarah: Plus fantasy suites are weird.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah – absolutely makes sense, but anyway, kind of going back to –

Sarah: Tell me more!

Dr. McAlister: – the, the structure of The Bachelor mirrors what we expect a relationship to look like –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: – from meeting through to commitment at the end. Whatever, you know, whether there’s an engagement ring involved or not. What it does is just suck the time out of it.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: So there’s another kind of concept in narrative theory about the difference between clock time and human time or narrative time? Clock time is minutes, seconds, hours; kind of those things. Human time, narrative time, we measure by events, by things that happen, which is why, you know, like, as, as a side note, like, COVID lockdowns felt so weird, because nothing was ever happening, and a lot of people, including me, lost their sense of time completely. I was using – [laughs] – The Bachelor to measure where I was in a week. But what The Bachelor as a show does is it runs through all the milestones of narrative time – there are so many events – but just sucks the clock time out of them, so it really is an experiment in time in many ways.

But I think the reason it appeals to romance readers in particular so much is that this is also a story of courtship –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: – and a lot of romance is the story of courtship. Not all romance. Like, certainly there are romances about people getting together and then figuring out how to be together, like, I mean, fake dating, marriage of convenience; these are classic examples. But overall, the, the endpoint of the romance is, is commitment. Like, the romance doesn’t end until two people are like, Okay, we’re together in a romantic sense for the foreseeable future. That’s what the happy ending is: obstacles overcome. And The Bachelor mirrors that process much, much more directly than a Married at First Sight or a Love Island or a Love Is Blind or a, you know, name your other reality dating show here. So it is kind of the most normative of relat-, of kind of the dating shows because it has fewer gimmicks. What it does is mimic what we expect to see both in real life romance, but also in the narrative of courtship, which I think speaks to that appeal a little bit more. And it means that it kind of, that, that’s endlessly fascinating. That gimmick never runs out of juice. Like, there will be more dramatic seasons, there will be less dramatic seasons, there will be the most dramatic season ever! Which is every season in the US, apparently. But we will probably never get tired of seeing people kind of find their way to commitment! Like, that is the story of the romance novel; that is the story of The Bachelor. And so much of a good season of The Bachelor hinges on whether or not you can really invest in that love story.

Sarah: And that’s quite a job for the producers, to create different characters, for lack of a better term, or contestants –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – individuals that you can invest in, and you can see the sort of thing that, like, always blows my mind is when they show the cast picture, and I’m like, All of these people look the same? They have very similar aesthetics.

Dr. McAlister: Mm, yeah.

Sarah: The, the aesthetics –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, Instagram face.

Sarah: Yes! Instagram face, impossibly shiny hair, the most blingy gowns you have – and you know those gowns are probably, like, forty or fifty pounds each?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Those are some, those are some killer gram-heavy gowns; those weigh a lot. Sequins weigh down. They’re, they’re very –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: And you’re wearing like a full…and Spanx for days and, and special bra. You don’t even wear bras! You just have that special tape where you tape your boobs up onto your shoulders, and off you go?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: Which is not a thing I can do? I’m –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: Not a thing.

Dr. McAlister: And it, it’s kind of impressive that they do it with their luggage restrictions they have.

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. McAlister: Like, the US is really intense about this in particular: it’s two suitcases.

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. McAlister: And the US contestants have to dress themselves a lot more than the Australian ones do. Like, there’re a lot more kind of fashion design partnerships here, but those poor women in the US, I feel so bad for them all the time, like the way they must have to – like, the intelligence that must go into just designing their outfits within the space they have available. Like, I, my hat goes off to them; I salute them.

Sarah: Yeah, this is no time for mix-and-match linen separates. Like, this is – and, and the thing that, that blew my mind – I didn’t realize this – I think it was Rachel Lindsay who talked about this: there might be a stipend in, towards the end of the show, but the people who are coming on the show, they are footing the bill for their wardrobe, and sometimes that wardrobe and the hair and everything is off the chain expensive!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah! Yeah. Like, particularly for the leads. Like, the, you can see it with the women in particular, the, the forced makeover that the network will make kind of people going from contestant to lead go through is wild-, must be wildly expensive. Like –

Sarah: Oh!

Dr. McAlister: – bonkers!

Sarah: So you think that for the most part the overlap with romance and the overlap with The Bachelor is that this is a courtship narrative, and you’ve basically compressed the timeline, streamlined the, the, you know all the beats. If you watch one season of The Bachelor you kind of know all of the, the beats, that the –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – trips get more, and there’s always a bathtub or some kind of – a hot tub on a cliff. Elyse’s big thing is the budget for the hot tub on the cliff. Who, what PA has to, like, lug the hot water up to the hot tub on, in the middle of nowhere on a hill. Like, who, whose job is that? But the –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, and if you watch enough seasons you start to recognize the props? Like –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. McAlister: – the, the hot tub on the cliff is always the same hot tub. There’s a copper bath they use in Australia that has always been known as the chocolate bath because the first time it was ever used they made this poor Bachelor and this poor contestant – who did go on to end up winning, so good for them – but they filled it with melted chocolate, and they had to bathe in it, and –

Sarah: Ohhh! Oh my gosh!

Dr. McAlister: – everyone –

Sarah: I can’t even describe –

Dr. McAlister: That happened – yeah.

Sarah: – how that feels in my body right – oh no!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. That happened in 2016, and it’s still probably one of the most remembered moments, just because it was so disgusting.

Sarah: Oh, don’t they –

Dr. McAlister: But whenever the copper bath kind of got wheeled out again it’s like, Ah! It’s Richie and Alex’s chocolate bath!

Sarah: Okay, but that’s going to look really gross on TV!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, it looked disgusting.

Sarah: It’s shiny and liquid and brown, y’all!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, it looked horrible! Which is, you know, why, why it – [laughs] – stuck in people’s minds!

Sarah: You know that, you know that production team was like, Yeah, oops! [Laughs]

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think – I don’t know if this says something about the Australian imagination, but the most iconic moments are either kind of the gross ones or the, the ones where someone tells off the Bachelor or, you know, there’s, like, I can’t, like, I can think of a couple of others.

So there was a contestant in season two who was, she was, she loved fine dining and fine wine. She was kind of, positioned herself as quite elegant. The show was trying to make her a villain, but the audience was obsessed with her. Her name was Laurina, and to humble her, they made the Bachelor take her, instead of on, like, a yacht or some fancy date, they made him take her out to get a pie. Like a meat pie, like we would have in Australia, not a –

Sarah: I’m a fan, and I miss them very much.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, and afterwards she complained like, Oh, everyone else gets super yachts, and I get a dirty street pie, and the phrase dirty street pie has become iconic in the kind of Australian lexicon. And then –

Sarah: Dirty street pie!

Dr. McAlister: – in perhaps the most, you could never do this on the US Bachelor? In fact, I don’t know if this is a word I can say on this podcast, but there was a season in 2019, a Bachelor named Matt Agnew, and one of the women, because he was kissing a lot of the other women, called him a dog, how do I – C U Next Tuesday. And he –

Sarah: Oh, you can say it! Go ahead. It’s fine.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, she called him a dog cunt, and –

Sarah: Dog cunt. Oh my! Yes.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, which, which means, like, if you dog someone in Australia, you are, you’re cheating on them, basically.

Sarah: Oh, so that’s, he, he’s basically a, a cheating, cheating asshole. Got it, okay.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. Like he was, yeah, he was dogging her by kissing all these other women, basically. And he knew someone had called him a dog cunt, but he didn’t know who it was – [laughs] – so he had to essentially become a detective for an episode to work out who had called him a dog cunt? And the dog cunt incident is also, like, just one of the most iconic moments in Australian Bachelor history.

Sarah: I mean, I mean, you also wrote in one of the more iconic moments, where two contestants fell in love with each other and were like, Actually, we’re out.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah! Yeah, well, that, that happened on The Bachelor Vietnam, where they kind of onscreen were like, Oh yeah, we love each other; we’re out. We had an instance in Australia in 2016 –

Sarah: Yeah, that’s –

Dr. McAlister: – the same season as the chocolate bath, where two of the contestants kind of met and fell in love later, but then we also had 2021, our last season of The Bachelorette, actually, was the first ever season anywhere in the world with a bisexual lead –

Sarah: Ooh!

Dr. McAlister: – Brooke Blurton, who’s also the first ever Indigenous lead here; she’s a Noongar-Yamatji woman. And so one of her contestants, who ended up being the runner-up, had actually been a contestant with her on their season of The Bachelor, and so they had this, like, long history, and, like, their kind of kiss on the first night of Brooke’s season is genuinely one of the most romantic things I’ve –

Sarah: Aw!

Dr. McAlister: – ever seen, and I’m still quite sad in my heart that Brooke did not pick Jamie-Lee in the end! Like, they had a really lovely little love story. But that was a great season of The Bachelorette, where there were men and women kind of competing for Brooke.

Sarah: Okay, first of all, I love that, and I’m kind of amazed that it’s taken that long to have an Indigenous Australian lead.

Dr. McAlister: I mean, Australia’s pretty racist – [laughs] – so.

Sarah: I mean, I am aware.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: But it’s also, what I find so interesting is the degree to which there is a language for discussing and naming the Indigenous people of Australia? Like, we are just now sort of starting to get into land acknowledgments? I’m doing a, a virtual conference, and the hosts have asked me for the land acknowledgements of where I am –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – which actually I have two because of where the site was founded, and then I moved to Maryland, so I have two, two, two land acknowledgments there, but we have a land acknowledgment page on our site. I used to have a writer who lived in Australia – she passed away a couple years ago – but she’s like, You have to understand that in Australia, not having a land acknowledgment, not doing a land acknowledgment –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – carries meaning, because doing so –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – has become the default. And I, every conference I’ve gone to in Australia has led with a land acknowledgment, and the first time it happened I was like, What? What, wait, I’m sorry, wait, pause? What? What was that? I, I missed that. What? I’d, I had never experienced that at all, and now it’s becoming more common, so on one hand you have this incredibly baked-in racism, you know, ‘cause it’s really hot and the sun shines a lot and we destroyed the ozone for a bit there, sorry; you have this great, large amount of baked-in racism, but also this language for acknowledging the names of the people that, that are the original –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – people of that land. Like, you can actually name them, whereas here it’s sort of like, I, I know, because I looked it up, but most people do not, so it, it’s a weird tension.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. I mean, it’s something we do at the beginning of every season of The Bachelor now is that the host Osher will come out, and he’ll acknowledge the country that they filmed on and the traditional owners, so it’s very, very ubiquitous here, but I suppose the flip side is that it’s become so ubiquitous that people don’t think about it anymore. Like –

Sarah: Oh, that’s –

Dr. McAlister: – it’s –

Sarah: – that’s interesting.

Dr. McAlister: – supposed to be something where you, you know, stop and consider and you do think about, you know, that you are living on stolen land.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: But, I mean, at the end of, in the last episode of Brooke’s season of The Bachelorette that I was talking about before, she had a friend come along to kind of talk to her two contestants, and they were like, Do you know, like, who, who Brooke’s people are? Do you know which country she’s from? And they’re both like, No? And she was like, Do you know what country you’re on right now? And they were like –

Sarah: No, and do you understand –

Dr. McAlister: – No?

Sarah: – why that’s important?

Dr. McAlister: Yeah. So, and I mean, if you’re going to date an Indigenous woman, like –

Sarah: Oh –

Dr. McAlister: – clearly that is something that you should, you should know. So it was a fascinating moment of reality television.

Sarah: Wow. And see, I can see why that is something that’s going to keep you tuning in for twenty-five years.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s been canceled here, so will it? [Laughs] Like –

Sarah: I, I don’t believe you can ever truly cancel The Bachelor, much like you can’t truly cancel celebrities. I really don’t think it ever is going to be –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – fully out; it will come back.

Dr. McAlister: And I mean, that is the point of difference for The Bachelor as a franchise. Like, if we kind of look at the US version again, it started in 2002. If we look at every other kind of reality dating show that started around that time, things like For Love or Money or Joe Millionaire, the formats kind of, because there was a big twist in all of them? They ran through the promise of their format in two seasons, and they couldn’t replicate it.

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. McAlister: As we move into the 2010s we start to have more reality shows that run for multiple seasons – so, like, Married at First Sight, Love Island are good examples – but nothing has ever had the longevity of The Bachelor. It has endured. It’s – I hate the word timeless, but it’s got a, a replicability that a lot of other franchises don’t have –

Sarah: Well –

Dr. McAlister: – and so while it may be off in Australia at the moment; someone is going to pick up that license. It’ll come back in a couple of years, and it’ll be like The Bachelor, no more drama! More romance! Like, the, the last few seasons really kind of – Married at First Sight is the big reality show here, and it’s less about romance and more about people throwing wineglasses at each other? [Laughs] So The Bachelor kind of leaned into the, the drama rather than the romance for the last few seasons? This seems to me to be the inevitable course correction when someone reboots it is that they will do a back-to-basics –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: – romance approach.

Sarah: Hire Jodi.

Dr. McAlister: Whether that will work or not –

Sarah: Hire Jodi!

Dr. McAlister: – we’ll see.

Sarah: Hire Jodi!

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, please. I can, I can help them so much. I will help them navigate the fact that in Australia we are very scared of emotions. We don’t like them; we are not a sincere country. Emotions are for girls and yuck? Ew! But we have a secret appetite for romance, and all of them, and I can help you, people who want to pick up The Bachelor. [Laughs] Since, please call me!

Sarah: Well, I don’t think it’s so much that The Bachelor is timeless? I think it goes back to what you were saying earlier about clock time and human narrative time?

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: The Bachelor is wholly human narrative time.

Dr. McAlister: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it, it is ex-, it is experimentation in time!

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: You know? Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. McAlister: Which, that sounds like the most boring way to describe The Bachelor, as an experiment with time, but, like, it genuinely, that is what it is.

Sarah: No, it’s, it’s, it’s a compressed timeline of courtship with a whole bunch of tropes fold in, folded in. Forced proximity, time limit, you know, there is an end; this will end. You’ve got to get your business done before the end –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – yeah.

Dr. McAlister: And obviously there is an immense amount of psychological manipulation that goes along with that –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Dr. McAlister: – like the fact that the contestants are sequestered and theoretically the lead is the only option for them. All distractions are taken away, so, like, this is the only thing they can think about. And then things like what we would call the high places date normally, where they take them skydiving or abseiling or something; anything designed to generate adrenaline. There is a bunch of science between, you know, behind this; causes a phenomenon called misattribution of arousal, where you mistake the feelings of fear for the feelings of love! So they are doing a lot of things to get these people there, but at its, at its heart, it is an experiment with time.

Sarah: So I always ask this question: are there any books you’re reading right now that you want to tell people about?

Dr. McAlister: I think I just ran through my, like, long list of Australian ones before, but a promise I have made to myself this year is that at least a third of my romance reading is going to be by Australian or authors from Aotearoa New Zealand, and so I’ve been out there looking for Kiwi authors in particular, ‘cause I’ve been reading a lot of Australian stuff ‘cause sometimes the Kiwi stuff is harder to find.

And my all-time favorite romance author, if I have to pick one, is Lucy Parker, who is, of course, a Kiwi, and I have just reread, actually, her very first book that she published under a different name. She published as Elle Pierson –

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. McAlister: – and it’s called Artistic License, and it’s New-Zealand-set, and like, what a worthy addition to the canon of Lucy Parker. Like, it is such a, a beautiful book. And I love her British books so much, but I would love to read more Kiwi books from her.

And I’ve been doing the same reading Nal-, Nalini Singh, obviously better known for her kind of paranormal, urban fantasy work, but she’s got this little series of contemporaries that are set in, in New Zealand that I love so much.

So if anyone out there has any, like, good recs for Kiwi-written, Kiwi-set romances, I would love to hear them. I am in the market for them at present.

Sarah: All right, I am desperately looking for a book that was part of my book club ages and ages and ages ago; I had a book club. Do you remember All Romance eBooks?

Dr. McAlister: Yes, I do remember All Romance eBooks.

Sarah: Yeah, they were, they sponsored my book club; that’s how long ago we’re talking about here. But there is an author, she wrote a, a category. I want to say San-, Sandra Hyatt? Oh my God, brain, did you just do it? Did you just do it, brain? Brain! I’m so proud of you! Good job, brain! Ah!

Dr. McAlister: I love that for you!

Sarah: Yeah, I love that! You don’t understand how rare that is. I got that on tape; I’m going to play that for my whole family. All right, so Sandra Hyatt wrote a book in 2011 called Lessons in Seduction, and she was a Kiwi. She passed away I think about a year later. This book was so frigging adorable and charming, and I’m pretty sure it is set also in New Zealand, in Aotearoa. You also might like Karina Bliss, who is also –

Dr. McAlister: Oh, I –

Sarah: – a Ki- –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – a Kiwi.

Dr. McAlister: I’ve read about a ton of Karina Bliss, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. But Sandra Hyatt, and the one that I liked from 2011 was Lessons in Seduction.

Dr. McAlister: Lessons in Seduction.

I’ve also recently discovered, we all know monster romance is popping off at the moment, and there’s a really –

Sarah: Little bit!

Dr. McAlister: – a really interesting one out of New Zealand. I can’t remember what it’s called, but the author is Allegra Hall, so, who is a Maori author writing a Maori character in a kind of monster romance setting. It’s a werewolf romance, and, like, I don’t read a ton of monster romance, but I read that one, and I thought it was great fun, and it was really, like, the, the way, the kind of Aotearoa setting kind of played into it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. McAlister: – and the, the kind of, like, a lot of the characters being Maori and the way that kind of, like, worked. It was, it was great; I loved it.

Sarah: There’s also the Rosalind James series that I mentioned, which is all rugbies?

Dr. McAlister: Mm.

Sarah: They’re, they’re…

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: But it’s a lot of, like, I’m dating this rugby player, but I’m American, so I have no idea what it means that this guy’s a member of the All Blacks. Like, it’s –

Dr. McAlister: Yeah.

Sarah: – meaningless, and this guy’s like, Oh my gosh, she likes me for me! She has no idea what I do! This is so great!

Dr. McAlister: My God, yeah, put some respect on the All Blacks name is what I say to those heroines! Like –

[Laughter]

Sarah: Where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Dr. McAlister: I’m on all the social media platforms. Instagram, I am on, and TikTok as @jodimcalister, J-O-D-I M-C-A-L-I-S-T-E-R. I am on Bluesky; I think it’s just J-O-D-I-M-C-A dot whatever you put after a Bluesky name. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right.

Dr. McAlister: If, if there is a social media platform, you can probably find me on it somewhere.

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this and for getting up so early to do this. I really, really appreciate it.

Dr. McAlister: Oh, my pleasure! What a, what a dream to be on the, the podcast of a website which is, like, in large part responsible for me – [laughs] – having a US career. So.

Sarah: Well, we are so happy for you? Like, I can’t even tell you. We are so excited for you.

Dr. McAlister: Oh! That’s so nice! Thank you.

Sarah: And I, and I hope this is the beginning of many, many more big, big things, including an international book tour, because I’m selfish.

Dr. McAlister: Oh, I mean, I would love that?

Sarah: Right?

Dr. McAlister: If someone wants to fly me out, I’ll come!

Sarah: Right? Right?

Dr. McAlister: You know?

[music]

And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed this conversation, and I have a couple questions for you! Number one: do you like reading books set in other countries? Have you ever, as a reader, thought a book was too Australian or too, you know, insert-country-here? I’ve never had that experience, but again, I’m not the only person in the world, and I’d love to hear your opinion.

But I’d also like to know: are you a fan of The Bachelor or of Real Housewives? I would really like to hear about your perspective on these shows.

As I mentioned in the intro, in the coming weeks we are going to have a good time. This month we are recapping Romantic Times October 1999 with a very special guest: Fashionably Evil, who comments at Smart Bitches, will join us recapping Romantic Times. And I will have a conversation with Shana, who’s one of our staff reviewers, about the allure of the Real Housewives franchise for romance fans. And then, drumroll – okay, it’s just my desk, but – [drumroll] – I am going to talk to an actual-factual Real Housewives producer and ask them all the questions! I’m so excited!

So if you would like to tell me about your relationship to The Bachelor or Real Housewives or another reality TV show that really hits you well as a romance reader, I want to hear about it. You can email me; you can come to the comments on Smart Bitches; you can join the Patreon and hang out in the Discord; we talk about current episodes all the time. And if you have questions you’d like me to ask the Real Housewives producer, also definitely let me know.

I’m so excited! I’m so excited! It’s going to be so exciting. I’m, I’m seriously beside myself. This August is going to be so much fun. Thank you for coming on this journey with me. It’s always a journey on these shows, right? On this journey.

As always, I end with a terrible joke, and this joke comes from Bransler. Hey, Bransler! Are you ready?

Why are people with fish tanks happier?

Give up? Why are people who have fish tanks happier?

They have a lot of indoor fins.

Endorphins! [Laughs] Endorphins! Thank you, Bransler! That made my week. 

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week!

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[end of music]