Episode 57: Transcript

Episode: 57: Why Science Fiction Needs Romance

Transcription by Keffy

Annalee: [00:00:00] Hey listeners, we’re doing something a little different during this time of quarantine. We’re recording from home, and remotely, so you may hear a little difference in sound quality, so all of you should know about that. All right. Let’s start the show.

[00:00:17] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about science fiction and everything else. I’m Annalee Newitz. I’m a science journalist who writes science fiction.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:27] I’m Charlie Jane Anders. I’m a science fiction writer who thinks kind of a lot about science.

Annalee: [00:00:32] So today, we’re talking about the most important part of science fiction, which is when a story becomes a romance. So we’re going to talk first about what kinds of science fiction and fantasy settings are ideal for love stories, but also a little bit about why are science fiction and romance still viewed as marginal genres even though they’re among the top-selling books and movies? 

[00:00:55] And, best of all, we’re thrilled to have romance and science fiction author, Alyssa Cole joining us to talk about all of this. She is the award-winning author of several series, most recently, The Loyal League, The Reluctant Royals, and Off the Grid. So, welcome, Alyssa.

Alyssa: [00:01:12] Hi! Thanks for having me.

Annalee: [00:01:14] All right, let’s start the [00:02:29] show.

[00:01:16] Intro music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Annalee: [00:01:43] So in the deep history of science fiction as a genre, it was originally called a scientific romance, and this was around the mid-19th century when romantic fiction and literature were kind of all the rage and people like Mary Shelley, who hung out with a bunch of Romantic poets was writing early science fiction. And so in critics’ minds, and in the public’s minds at that time, there was kind of this idea that anything that was science fictional, or what we would call science fictional today, was actually part of this Romantic genre of writing. And it was really only in the mid-20th century that people really stopped calling them scientific romances and started calling them science fiction. 

[00:02:29] And it’s also worth noting, as we talked about in our pulp fiction episode, that a lot of the pulp publishers who were publishing early science fiction, golden-age science fiction, most of their money was coming from romance title. There’d be a heaping portion of romance and sex-related titles in these pulp publishers’ libraries, and then there’d be a little dash of science fiction here and there.

[00:02:55] So, science fiction’s always been, in a sense, kind of piggy-backing on top of romance. But at the same time, romance didn’t really kind of come into science fiction until later. So what do you guys see as being some of the romantic themes that we get in science fiction and fantasy early on? Are there any milestones in the 20th century where you see, okay, here’s the moment when science fiction starts to have romance in it?

Alyssa: [00:03:26] Are we including ‘50s monster movies in sci-fi?

Charlie Jane: [00:03:30] Oh, for sure. Yeah, totally.

Annalee: [00:03:31] Absolutely, all that stuff, yeah.

Alyssa: [00:03:33] Thinking back to that and the monster boyfriend trope as it’s been called lately. I just think about seeing those things playing on the cable channels or, I guess… starting there, but I’m sure before that. But that’s the first thing I can really think of.

Charlie Jane: [00:03:54] Yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot of the main science fiction tropes can be turned towards kind of being scary of threatening, but also can be turned easily towards a kind of romantic focus. Robots, aliens, giant monsters. There’s always an element of romance in the way that they’re handled. Like, King Kong always has that relationship with Fay Wray. Creature from the Black Lagoon always has that relationship with the woman in that movie. Aliens, there’s often some kind of romance with an alien and a human. The first depictions of robots, like in Metropolis, she’s attractive, she’s sexual, she’s kind of… and some of the earliest robot stories have that element of romancing the other. And I feel like the moment we create an other that’s not like us, we immediately want to know what it’s like to fall in love with that being.

Annalee: [00:04:50] Yeah, and it’s interesting that even in the very first science fiction novel, which I think is Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s monster has this overarching motivation, which is that he wants to be loved, and he wants Frankenstein to make him a wife. And that’s certainly not an example—the romance in that novel is not centered, it’s kind of a plot point. But that’s the monster’s main wish, is to have a romance. So I wish there’d been a Mary Shelley sequel for that, where it’s like, and then it’s all about monster romance.

Alyssa: [00:05:29] That would have been amazing.

Annalee: [00:05:30] That would have been great. And I feel like, Alyssa, you’re right that now there is this whole monster boyfriend massive sequel to Frankenstein, where the monster gets to date a bunch of cool people. So… 

[00:05:48] There’s also, I think, in science fiction, a long history of criticizing romance, too. There’s a famous story by James Tiptree called “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” which is kind of a really early virtual reality type story, where there is a young woman who is not conventionally attractive. This was written in the ‘60s, so, you know, they had lots of ideas about what made you conventionally attractive. And she can project her brain using this VR technology into the body of this super sexy supermodel type clone creature. And so she lives out all her romantic fantasies in this kind of flesh doll and then has to come back to reality sometimes. It’s very much portrayed as something that’s sick and wrong and terrible and that this is kind of a horrible thing that’s been done to her and to society because she has this really mediated romance.

[00:06:49] So there’s sort of those two strands of yearning for love, yearning for the other, and then also kind of criticizing the idea of romance as being this artificial thing that’s been distorted by technology, or distorted by science somehow.

Alyssa: [00:07:03] I find that idea interesting, that science is something, or advancement is something that causes a lack of connection or disconnection.

Charlie Jane: [00:07:14] Right.

Alyssa: [00:07:14] Because my favorite romance, sci-fi romance to read and to write kind of incorporates technology and the way we use it. The way I use it even just in my general present-day life is for connection with my friends, with my family. I feel like that’s how most people use it, but then it gets kind of distorted into this, well, if you weren’t so busy on your phone, you would have real connections, when so many people’s real connections are in their phones. So sometimes it’s just kind of like a willful misunderstanding of what technology is used for or how it’s used, and how that can be used as a vehicle to deepen relationships instead of create rifts in relationships.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:04] Yeah, so it’s like a fantasy of what if technology was actually good for us, kind of.

Alyssa: [00:08:10] Yes.

Annalee: [00:08:12] And I mean, it can be. Lots of people do use technology to maintain connections, so it’s not totally a fantasy. Alyssa, I was wondering if you could give us a definition of romance. It could be your own definition, or kind of just a standard definition. Because we’ve been talking a lot about how science fiction incorporates romance, but how does, from the point of view of romance writer, how do you even define it?

Alyssa: [00:08:40] The basic definition that most romance writers go by is that a romance can be about anything. It can be about literally anything, but it must have two main… achieve two main things. The story has to be driven by the relationship between two or more humans or with sci-fi, people, or aliens, or whatever, and whoever is in your science fiction romance. And basically the main rule is that there has to be a happily ever-after. And this is where things kind of get muddied within the genre waters of what a romance is. Because happily ever-after does not mean that everyone is happy and rich and has no problems. It simply means that—it’s a satisfactory ending for the reader. So in a romance that would be, the couple is together. The protagonists are together and you’re reasonably sure that they’re going to be happy together and move forward in life and that without having too hard of a time.

[00:09:58] It’s not like, they have bags of gold and are set for life. It’s basically like, okay, these people who love each other are together. They can be in the worst situation in the world, they could be in a dystopia, they can be in… a terrible, everything around them can be terrible, but basically they have each other and there’s a hope for their future.

[00:10:23] So that’s basically the main thing that differentiates a romance. Because there are several books that are romantic and then you’re reading it and you get to the last page and then one of the main characters dies, which is, you know, very touching, but that’s not a romance. And that’s when people start getting really angry.

[00:10:44] Because it’s basically a promise that you’re going to close the book and feel good about these people that you’ve gone on this journey with. And I don’t really think it’s so different from the general science fiction promise of, if you’re following a rag-tag group living on a space station, you don’t want the ending to be that a comet crashes into the space station.

Charlie Jane: [00:11:09] Right.

Alyssa: [00:11:09] That wouldn’t be a satisfactory ending for people who have grown attached to and love these characters. So it’s basically just giving the reader a satisfactory ending but with love because that was the main drive of the particular book.

Annalee: [00:11:25] Yeah, I was thinking a lot about the movie Her, because I was like, you know, that’s actually one of the best science fiction romances I can think of. I know there’s many critiques of that film, but I really liked it. But it ends with them not being together.

Alyssa: [00:11:40] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:11:41] So that would be a romantic film, but it’s not a romance.

Alyssa: [00:11:44] Yeah, I actually didn’t watch it because I had heard that it didn’t have a happy ending, and I was like, uh. I can’t get my heart invested in this only for it to be broken.

Annalee: [00:11:58] It’s… in a weird way, it’s like. I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s like, it’s a happy ending for the, I mean, spoiler alert. It’s a happy for the AI character because she has a lot of hope. And [inaudible] and all the other AIs have a lot of hope. And this was a starter romance for her, or this was like 10,000, or I forget how many people she winds up having a romance with, but it’s like—

Charlie Jane: [00:12:18] Spoilers.

Alyssa: [00:12:20] Eugh!

Annalee: [00:12:20] Sorry.

Alyssa: [00:12:22] Okay, maybe I will watch it.

Annalee: [00:12:24] You should check it out. It ends up being—

Charlie Jane: [00:12:25] It’s a fun movie. 

Annalee: [00:12:27] It ends up being about what AI—like, what would an AI experience as romance, and if you have this, like—

Alyssa: [00:12:33] Okay, this is exactly something I would love to watch. 

Annalee: [00:12:38] Yeah, so. But it’s true. It doesn’t fit that—at the end, you’re not like, oh, they’re going to get back together. It’s like, no. That’s like, just not possible, so.

[00:12:48] Given that definition of romance, what do you think are some of the best science fiction scenarios for centering that kind of story? We talked about monster boyfriend, which is awesome. Are there any other, for example, there’s the star-crossed lovers in the midst of an intergalactic battle type thing, or is there really just like any scenario?

Alyssa: [00:13:11] I think there are so many. My favorite is kind of fish out of water, or opposites attract, which is a great one if you’re using a human and someone from another species or a non-human protagonist.

[00:13:29] I don’t know, I feel like there are so many fun things you can do with science fiction romance. I’ll talk about it a little bit more later. But taking even romantic comedy tropes. You can take more serious ones, like space princess on the run, like in Polaris Rising, by Jessie Mihalik. There’s just… I feel like there’s so much fun to be had with it, and there are so many great ways to apply it.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:57] So, I mean, I personally am a huge sucker for human in love with a robot or an AI, which is something that we’ve talked about a little bit already. And for me, the kind of seminal human in love with a robot/AI story is The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee, which is this kind of famous novel from, I think, the ‘70s, about this woman who falls in love with an android. And he’s like… it’s all about how he’s the most considerate lover, and he’s really devoted to her and he cares about her. And it’s this fantasy of having a man who basically is just always going to be there for you and kind of take care of you, and I feel like that’s kind of… there have been a million stories of people in love with AIs and robots, but I feel like that’s the kind of classic for me.

[00:14:43] And also, romance with a ghost, I feel like there’s something really cool about ghost romance. Truly Madly Deeply, that movie by Anthony Minghella. It doesn’t have a happy ending, spoiler alert, I mean it has a bittersweet ending, but it’s a really beautiful romance with a ghost. And there’s obviously the movie Ghost. There’s a bunch of other ones. But the idea of someone coming back after death to be with you is a really sweet notion, I feel like.

Annalee: [00:15:11] And then there’s like, movies like Starman which kind of combine the alien and the ghost, so it’s like, best of both.

Charlie Jane: [00:15:17] Right. 

Annalee: [00:15:18] But I got to say, yeah, things end badly when you have affairs with ghosts unless you also become a ghost. So that would make The Shining kind of a romance.

Alyssa: [00:15:29] There’s a really, I feel like that’s ultimate romance writer challenge. How do you get the satisfactory ending when one of the characters is a ghost?

[00:15:42] Now I’m trying to figure out how I would do that. If you see me having a ghost romance…

Annalee: [00:15:46] You know what? The movie Beetlejuice actually gives you kind of an answer to that question because it’s a happily ever after ending. It’s kind of a comedy of remarriage because they kind of have to re-fall in love again as ghosts, the two adults, and then…

Alyssa: [00:16:04] That is true.

Annalee: [00:16:04] And at the end, it’s like this super happy, they’re all happy in the house and they have this gothy daughter who’s a human but because she’s a goth she can kind of enjoy her new ghosty parents. And I don’t know, that would be one way to do it. Is have both people be ghosts and find a happy house to live in.

Alyssa: [00:16:27] I think that’s one of the better endings you can find with that.

Annalee: [00:16:31] Yeah, exactly. Oh, actually, “San Junipero,” the Black Mirror episode, that’s—

Alyssa: [00:16:37] I love that episode!

Annalee: [00:16:37] Yeah, that actually is kind of another one where it’s like combining falling in love with a ghost with a VR afterlife kind of idea.

Alyssa: [00:16:47] Yeah, that’s a perfect mashup.

Charlie Jane: [00:16:49] Another thing I love in science fiction is kind of that dynamic that I feel like comes from the Thin Man movies where it’s like, a husband and wife team who are having an adventure together and they’re teaming up and being friends and they love each other and support each other in the middle of these adventures. And I feel like I love it when I see that, where there’s a couple who are just a team. And they’re best friends but they’re also married.

[00:17:17] For example, the Stainless Steel Rat books, the main character, Slippery Jim diGriz ends up falling in love with… he’s kind of a con artist / trickster figure who usually ends up saving the universe. And he ends up teaming up with another con artist who’s kind of an assassin / con artist named Angelina, and they just have adventures together, and eventually they have kids and the kids join them on their adventures. It’s just a really nice thing because it’s just a happy marriage.

Alyssa: [00:17:47] You know, this actually reminds me of the In Death series by J.D. Robb, who is Nora Roberts, and I thought it was just straight-up police procedural, but apparently it is sci-fi romance with a married couple in mid-century—

Charlie Jane: [00:18:06] Ooh.

Annalee: [00:18:06] Love it.

Alyssa: [00:18:06] —mid 21st century New York. Yeah, and I haven’t started it yet because it is 40-something books, and I’m like, okay, I’m really going to have to like, get some fortitude going before I dive into this. But for me that, and this is one of those interesting things where it’s like, I didn’t know this book was sci-fi, I didn’t know this book was romance. It’s both. And, but yeah, I think it has that same thing of following a married couple over the years with their adventures and solving crime and…

Annalee: [00:18:43] Yeah, I think that we can’t have this discussion without also mentioning Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga because that starts with two novels, which I think are now sold as one book, called Cordelia’s Honor, where the hero of that cycle of stories, of the Vorkosigan saga, Miles Vorkosigan, has not been born yet. And so, it’s about the romance between his mother and father who are definitely opposites attract. One is from a planet of liberal feminists and one is from the patriarchy planet.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:18] Wow.

Annalee: [00:19:18] And they have to learn to bridge their differences and they’re both super clever spies and kind of operatives and they help prevent this political disaster together and fall in love and it’s definitely got that dynamic of, they fall in love and ultimately become a married couple in the midst of this adventure where they learn to respect each other. And then their child Miles becomes the hero of the series, and then finally, at the very end of the series, as the series is coming to an end, we kind of return to Cordelia, Miles’ mom, and we see what’s happening to her and her later life. And she’s having another great romance, and so… yeah. That’s in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen and you can guess who the people are in this romance. There’s the gentleman and the queen and it’s pretty hot. It’s great.

[00:20:18] So let’s take a break and when we come back, we’re going to talk all about Alyssa Cole’s amazing novels.

[00:20:24] Segment change music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.

Annalee: [00:20:37] So, Alyssa, I wanted to start by talking about Off the Grid because they feel really prescient now that everyone is stuck at home with their families and it’s like…

Alyssa: [00:20:48] Honestly, I mean, it is very strange seeing things from various novels coming into play in reality right now. Like there’s some things that are fun when that happens, like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but um. Other things that are not fun like self-quarantine and a pandemic and all of these things that come along with possible apocalypses.

Annalee: [00:21:18] Yeah. Well, in Off the Grid, it’s not actually, there’s not… it’s not exactly like what’s happening now, but they are—

Alyssa: [00:21:25] No, it’s not. If you want to read it, it’s safe to read it. There is no pandemic in Off the Grid.

Annalee: [00:21:32] Yes. And it just gets better and better and it’s… it’s another kind of scary pandemic, which is, what if we didn’t have electricity anymore and how would we survive. And I was wondering, what made you look to the sort of post-apocalyptic story for your romance? You didn’t go with monster boyfriend, you were like, no. Let’s have a post-apocalypse. What was your thinking about that?

Alyssa: [00:21:56] I will say that Gabriel, the hero in the first book, is very annoying, not quite monster levels, but he is pretty annoying. The reason I went with that is that I’d actually started writing it. I think it was a bit after or around the time of when there was supposed to be the Mayan apocalypse, if you remember. That seems really quaint.

Annalee: [00:22:21] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:22:21] 2012.

Alyssa: [00:22:23] Prepping was in the news and kind of, are you getting ready for the apocalypse and I don’t know, something just kind of really appealed to me. Not about the apocalypse but about the idea of what would happen. I didn’t really want to write about zombies, not that there’s anything wrong with zombies. But I just kind of got this idea of, what would happen if you kind of were stuck in the middle of this situation away from your family with your friend and how would romance and relationships kind of bloom in this kind of world? And this family and friend group.

[00:23:07] So yeah, I kind of just started with being inundated with news about the apocalypse that might happen and kind of just jumping off from there.

Annalee: [00:23:17] Also, I feel like this is… there’s a theme in a bunch of your novels where there’s major characters who are either scientists or they’re grad students or they’re studying to be scientists and it’s sort of the same thing in Off the Grid. Is there something just inherently romantic about people who are interested in science?

Alyssa: [00:23:37] Well, I would say yes. So until very recently, I was an editor at a scientific journal, but basically I was immersed in science all the time. I’ve always been interested in science, even though I ended up in that job as a complete… it was completely by chance. But even as a kid, I was always reading those Almanacs and books with 100 Amazing Science Facts and things like that. So it’s always been something that’s been pretty interesting to me. And kind of just, I don’t know. There’s something really amazing about scientific discovery or just interest in these things. So I kind of just enjoy writing characters who are into those things because then I get to research them. That’s always a fun part for me.

Charlie Jane: [00:24:30] One thing that I really loved about An Extraordinary Union, which is one of your books that I read, is how the main character Elle is so competent. She’s really good at her job and part of how she and Malcolm fall in love is that he really respects her competence and ends up deferring to her expertise as a spy during the Civil War. Do you think that it’s important for us to fall in love with competent characters and do you think that’s part of what makes a good romantic lead?

Alyssa: [00:24:57] I think so. Actually, so in romance, they call it competency porn, which is basically—

Charlie Jane: [00:25:04] Yeah! I use that phrase, too.

Annalee: [00:25:08] Yeah, it’s popular in science fiction as well. I think competence porn… the movie The Martian is like the ultimate competence porn.

Alyssa: [00:25:16] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:25:15] Yes. That’s like, triple-X competence porn.

Alyssa: [00:25:18] Yeah. I mean, I think that’s important in romance, for many romance readers because it’s kind of linked to trust and the ability for the characters to trust each other and to really… admiration is great, too. But also, trust and trust in your partner’s skills and their competency is something that can be really effective at showing a growing romance, or why people, or part of the why these characters are attracted to each other.

Annalee: [00:25:54] So, when you’re thinking about pairing up two people or two individuals in a story, how do you decide what makes them click? What’s the thought process there?

Alyssa: [00:26:09] Sometimes the characters, their clicky parts come to me very quickly as I’m planning them, or the two characters and how they would interact, even if I don’t know everything about them. I know the basic reasons why they belong together. But, sometimes it’s a bit more difficult and as I’m planning out the characters and basically the characters for the story that I’m writing, I kind of try to think about what they need from each other, what they need from the world, what they are missing in themselves, and also what they don’t need. And kind of all of the ways… each relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect, but kind of just, what is it specifically about these characters that would make me and the reader believe that they will have a happily ever after or have a relatively good relationship after the end of this book. Or care about them after the end of this book.

[00:27:16] So I kind of try to think about what traits, and it’s not something that I always think about deeply, and I think sometimes at the end of the day defaults to variations of order muppet and chaos muppet. Which is something—

Annalee: [00:27:36] Wait, so one of them has to be order muppet and one of them has to be chaos muppet?

Alyssa: [00:27:40] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:27:40] Or like…

Alyssa: [00:27:41] Yes. Or all of the different ways that that can vary. And I just recently started thinking of it in this way. Or another way of thinking of it is which character rolls the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube and which character rolls it from the middle of the tube? And how does that fit into their personality? And is it the character you would expect to do that given their other behaviors? 

[00:28:09] The way I’ve been thinking of it now, over the past couple months is which character would carefully preserve the quarantine snacks and which would eat them all immediately the first two days after you went quarantine shopping?

Charlie Jane: [00:28:26] Nooooo!

Annalee: [00:28:29] I wanted to go back to something that you were saying earlier about when you were thinking about pairing people up and you were thinking about what people need from the world. And I was wondering, is one of the ingredients of a good romance that I fall in love with someone who kind of represents something that I want that’s bigger than just the romance? That’s something that I want out of the world or some goal that I have?

Alyssa: [00:28:55] I don’t think they necessarily have to represent that. The characters who would support them in getting that goal or maybe a better way, would support them and be there for them and make their life better even if they don’t achieve their goal in the world, or even if the rest of the world is terrible. So kind of in that sense.

[00:29:21] And there are different forms of characters who would be working toward a goal together. A longer-term goal or a shorter term goal, but also one character might be very driven toward a goal and the other character might be like, okay, I have my own things going on, but I will also help you with your goal. So I guess just kind of how they come together in their own little romance world but also to either make the world better or to deal with the world when it’s not that great.

Charlie Jane: [00:29:57] So I wanted to hear more about The AI Next Door. We were talking about this earlier before we started recording. Can you tell us about The AI Next Door and how it came to be and how you got Mindy Kaling to be in it?

Alyssa: [00:30:08] Okay. So it actually got… the name got changed from The AI Next Door to The AI Who Loved Me. I also still call—

Charlie Jane: [00:30:18] Oh, right, sorry.

Alyssa: [00:30:20] No, no, no, that’s fine, because I also, still, myself, also always call it The AI Next Door because it’s a play on the guy next door. But is an Audible Original. It will be out in ebook and print this summer. So, yeah, an editor from Audible asked me if I had anything to pitch and I had been working on something. So I kind of took this rom-com idea and dystopian suspense and smooshed them together and then that became The AI Who Loved Me.

[00:30:58] And then, yeah, so as I was writing it, I had no idea. I was just trying to get it done and thought it was cool, and then at some point they were like, oh, we’re going to do celebrity casting, and I was like, what? Okay. So yeah, first they got… there was a kind of snarky artificial intelligence. It’s set at an apartment complex, and the apartment complex is artificial intelligence. Penny is played by Mindy Kaling. And so, like, when I got that email, I literally just like screamed in the house. And then for the lead, Trinity, they cast Regina Hall and the robot male lead is Theodore Chen. So it was… yeah, it just turned out to be really cool and totally unexpected, but it worked out really great. I got to write sound effects in, because I kind of wanted it to be a bit like a radio play.

Annalee: [00:32:02] Awesome, I can’t wait to listen to that. I wanted to go back to, you mentioned Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. So you, of course, predicted our current quarantine in Off the Grid, but then, in The Reluctant Royals, you predicted this amazing interracial romance between a royal and a celebrity.

Alyssa: [00:32:24] You know the funny thing about that is that people will be like, oh, so this book is based on Harry and Meghan, and I’m like, no, not really. Kind of. Meghan was not really around…

Annalee: [00:32:33] No, they based it on this book.

Alyssa: [00:32:37] But then I’m like, then it just seems weird to be like, arguing with people about it, so I’m like, yeah.

Annalee: [00:32:41] Romance writers don’t get enough credit for predicting the future. It’s always sci-fi writers and it’s like, no. 

Alyssa: [00:32:49] Yeah, I was making that, like, I’m just really going to write only books with purely good things in them for the next year or so because I was like, The Loyal League came out and suddenly Confederates were like, hey, we’re back. The good thing, Meghan Markle and Harry were a great thing that came out, but it was like, yeah. I definitely am going to be very explicit in all future books that only good things can happen in the world.

Annalee: [00:33:16] We all appreciate it. All right. I’m curious about whether, when you’re writing interracial couples, which you’ve done in a bunch of books, if there’s issues that you think about there that don’t come up as much when it’s a couple who are of the same race.

Alyssa: [00:33:33] I feel like they don’t, at this point, have to think about it that much, but I feel like, I think about what I don’t like when I read other books. Especially because my heroines are generally going to be black women. I feel like sometimes I’ll pick up a book that has an interracial couple or a black woman protagonist, she’s like. I don’t know, weird about being black? Like it’s a burden. My main thing that I try to think about is that there are things that these characters will have to take into consideration, especially if it’s historical. Like, when I was writing An Extraordinary Union, which was set during the Civil War, I really did not want it to be in any way possible to confuse this book with, you know, “I fell in love with the slave master’s son.” I needed it to be… their roles to be very clear and for it to be very clear that each character was sure of themselves in certain aspects so that it would not become a problem later down the line.

[00:34:37] I just try to make sure the characters, not that they have to be perfect and know everything about themselves, but obviously, neither should discover that they are racist or bigoted in anyway. But also, I feel like sometimes books will add in things about race without examining them fully. Like, for example, if a book is going to have a character that is biracial and feels conflicted because of that, I feel like the writer really needs to make it clear that it’s not great. Because I’m trying to find a nice way to say this, but sometimes people, when writing interracial relationships, primarily if one of the characters is white and the other character isn’t, the character who is not white will be kind of presented as trying to get closer to whiteness through the relationship. I don’t think some people realize that they’re writing this. I don’t think they would do it if they realized they were doing it. 

[00:35:50] Sometimes it’s this thing, like, a character who is upset about how brown their skin is. Or I’ve read ones where it’s like a black character who sees her white friend has straight hair and she wishes she had straight hair. And I’m like, she can just get a weave or a wig if she wants straight hair. So these kinds of things where, I don’t like created angst. There are plenty of real things to be angsty about, so I just try to focus on realistic issues in ways that I hope do not also perpetuate ideas that could be hurtful to people.

[00:36:28] I think it’s fine, of course, to talk about things that can be hurtful or hurtful thoughts that people can have, but I also, if I’m going to bring those up, I need to make it crystal clear in the book that it’s not okay, or that the person might need help with this, or explore it in some way. And also, I don’t think it needs to be the driving force behind every book. In many ways, it can just be written as a straightforward romance, but you do have to keep in mind, it becomes a conversation about relative power in the world around them and making sure that they’re aware of that. And that you have to do that in any romance. It doesn’t have to be deeply discussed on the page, but presenting it in a way that the reader, at least on some level, understands that the characters know their relative power level to one another.

Annalee: [00:37:19] Yeah, I mean, I think in The Reluctant Royals stories, oftentimes that’s something that people are dealing with in terms of class, too. Because one person is royalty or one person is really rich and there’s… so even if there’s no racial difference, there’s still this negotiation of how are we going to deal with it when we realize that the guy we thought was just a regular dude is actually a prince or, you know. You just seemed like kind of a grungy guy, but.

Alyssa: [00:37:51] Yeah, and I think so much of relationships in a romance novel comes down to that exploration of power differentials and how they affect a relationship and ignoring them won’t help anything. So, kind of addressing them and getting on the same page about them or figuring out how to handle them.

Annalee: [00:38:14] So what are you working on right now? What are we going to get next other than, of course, The AI Who Loved Me?

Alyssa: [00:38:19] The next book I have coming out in September, which I’m not working on, it’s finished, is a thriller called When No One is Watching. And it is a gentrification thriller about a woman who moves back to her Brooklyn neighborhood and everything is changing and she decides to, as a way of regaining control, she decides to start a historical tour, historical walking tour and ends up getting help from one of her new neighbors and they maybe are stumbling onto some things from the past that are not quite the past.

Charlie Jane: [00:39:02] Wow.

Alyssa: [00:39:02] What I’m finishing up now is the first book in the Reluctant Royals spin-off, which is The Runaway Royals. The first book is How to Catch a Queen. Some of the people from The Reluctant Royals, some of the characters will pop up. The heroine was actually at the end of A Prince on Paper. So basically, it’s an arranged marriage… there’s a lot of stuff going on. But it’s like arranged marriage or marriage of convenience and of course they end up falling in love in the end, and you know, spoiler.

Annalee: [00:39:33] You’ve already told us there has to be a hopeful ending, which is like, we know it’s going to be happy. Or sort of happy. Hopeful.

Alyssa: [00:39:40] Yeah. And I guess after that in the second book is going to be lesbian Anastasia retelling for the second book.

Charlie Jane: [00:39:48] Ooh.

Annalee: [00:39:48] Okay, there for it.

Alyssa: [00:39:49] A modern-day Anastasia.

Charlie Jane: [00:39:51] I am here for that.

Alyssa: [00:39:53] So those are the next couple things I’m working on.

Annalee: [00:39:56] Awesome.

Charlie Jane: [00:39:56] Nice.

Annalee: [00:39:57] Is there any place that you would like to see romance writing go in the future? What would you like to just see more of in the romance genre?

Alyssa: [00:40:07] I think I would definitely like to see more sci-fi romance, but I would like to see it get a little more traditional publishing support. Or move a bit more into the mainstream. Definitely more queer romance being published by—

Charlie Jane: [00:40:23] Hell yeah.

Alyssa: [00:40:23] —traditional publishers. There is an audience for it, we want to read it. And, frankly it’s ridiculous at this point. I shouldn’t have to be asking for it, readers shouldn’t have to be asking for it. It should be there. I think romance publishing is moving toward that, but they need to do a better job and move a bit more quickly. Obviously right now nothing is really moving quickly since we’re all quarantined, but after the quarantine, hopefully. Because right now, I mean, the predominant queer romance is M/M and I just would like to see more varied experiences, and that’s not slamming M/M at all, but just kind of have publishers publish all kinds of queer romance and romance from people from marginalized backgrounds. That’s what I would like to see more of. 

[00:41:16] And also not make it a thing, just publish it.

Annalee: [00:41:20] Yeah, exactly. Not like, here’s our special interracial space story.

Alyssa: [00:41:24] Exactly. Just publish it.

Annalee: [00:41:27] Yeah, it’s just a space story.

Alyssa: [00:41:29] Exactly.

Annalee: [00:41:31] Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking all this time to—

Charlie Jane: [00:41:33] Thank you!

Annalee: [00:41:34] —chat with us.

Alyssa: [00:41:36] Thank you, it was so great.

Annalee: [00:41:37] Alyssa, where can people find you online?

Alyssa: [00:41:39] You can find me on Twitter, usually, at @AlyssaColeLit or on Instagram if you want to see pictures of chickens and dogs, at the same handle, AlyssaColeLit. Or at AlyssaCole.com.

Charlie Jane: [00:41:53] Yay, thank you so much. 

Annalee: [00:41:55] You’ve been listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. You can find us everywhere on the internet. You can download us whereever you download your favorite podcasts. Please do leave a review on Apple podcasts because it helps people find us. You can also find us on Twitter @OOACpod. And we have a Patreon where you get lots of audio extras and articles and excerpts from our writing, and that’s at Patreon.com/OurOpinionsAreCorrect. You can find show notes at OurOpinionsAreCorrect.com.

[00:42:28] And thank you so much to our amazing producer, Veronica Simonetti, with Women’s Audio Mission. And thanks to Chris Palmer for the music. And you’ll hear us in two weeks. Bye!

Charlie Jane: [00:42:38] Bye!

[00:42:41] Outro music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.