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Jodi McAlister on An Academic Affair | Author Interview
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Romance author and academic Dr Jodi McAlister shares her insights on her latest release, an Academic Affair. Meet academic rivals Sadie and Jonah; when a position comes up that Sadie and Jonah are both perfect for, their ongoing enmity explodes into a red-hot competition. We dive into the world of early career academia, rivals to lovers, and sibling and family dynamics.
Detailed show notes, and other links: linktree.com/novel_feelings
Content notes for this episode: job loss, academic power structures
Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri Land, which is home to both of us in Naarm/Melbourne. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
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Transcript
Introduction to Novel Feelings Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Novel Feelings, where two psychologists take a deep dive into your favourite books. I'm Priscilla. And I'm Elise. Today we have an interview coming up with Jodie McAllister, author of An Academic Affair.
00:00:17
Speaker
We have a lot to talk about, including early career academia, rivals to lovers and sibling and family dynamics. I'm really excited about this interview. I will just say that much. Yes, me too. I think managed not to fangirl too much. So that's good for me. We really love this book. i' Just putting that up front and you know we shared some fun like messages as we were reading it to each other. And I think at one point you messaged me and said, I'm obsessed with an academic affair.
00:00:46
Speaker
I am. Yes. I think I did say this, Jodie, at one point, but it's just one of those books that I just... wanted to just keep on reading until I finished it, real life got in the way. like but and I swear i used to read more like that. Like I was, I would just read books in one go. i would, you just get really, don't know, I'd dive into a book and I would stay there for hours and hours. And now these days my reading is a lot more scattered and I often have to put time aside to read instead of, um yeah, I still enjoy it, but i I don't read the same way I used to.
00:01:18
Speaker
Whereas this book brought back that feeling of just wanting to stay in the book and keep going and keep going keep going. So yeah, that was wonderful. So a little bit about Jodie.
Meet Jodie McAllister: Author and Academic
00:01:29
Speaker
Jodie McAllister is an author of romantic fiction for adults and young adults, as well as being an academic.
00:01:36
Speaker
In her author life, she's the author of several novels, including the Valentine series, Libby Lawrence is good at pretending and the Marry Me Juliet series. In her academic life, she focuses on representations of love and popular culture and fiction.
00:01:52
Speaker
If you want to find out more about Jodie's research, you can check her out on ResearchGate and The Conversation. And here's a little bit about an academic affair. Sadie Shaw and Jonah Fisher have known each other for 15 years and they've disliked each other for every one of them.
00:02:07
Speaker
It started with a minor altercation in an undergrad literature class, but as their academic careers developed, so did the intensity of their arguments. By the time they graduate with their doctorates, they're embroiled in a full-on rivalry.
00:02:19
Speaker
So when a position comes up that Sadie and Jonah are both perfect for, their ongoing enmity explodes into a red-hot competition. As Sadie fights for a job that can secure her future, she begins to realise that Jonah may not be just her nemesis, he may be the key to landing her dream job.
00:02:36
Speaker
But when things get personal, she'll have to keep her eye on the prize. After all, if she's not careful, the friction between them might just spark into something wholly unexpected. An Academic Affair is out now through Simon & Schuster Australia.
00:02:50
Speaker
Please check out our show notes for disclaimers and content notes. And here is our interview with Jodie.
How Was An Academic Affair Received?
00:02:57
Speaker
Welcome to Noble Feelings, Jodie. Delighted to be here. Congratulations on the publication of An Academic Affair.
00:03:04
Speaker
and What has the reception been like so far from romance readers to academics and everyone in between? Yeah, it's been really overwhelming, to be honest. This book has had like a little bit of a buzz about it that, I mean, some of my other books have had a little bit of buzz, but this one has been like, it's felt a little bit special.
00:03:23
Speaker
And romance readers have really embraced Sadie and Jonah, which makes me so happy. And from an academic perspective, some academics have told me the book is like a little bit triggering. And I'm like, I get it.
00:03:35
Speaker
Early career academia is very difficult. If you've been in the trenches, I understand that this book might hit you where you live. But they've also told me that it's like an accurate representation of what that's like, which makes me very happy that I have done my own world's justice. Yeah.
00:03:51
Speaker
Excellent.
Juggling Academia and Writing
00:03:52
Speaker
Of course, in addition to being a writer, you are a full-time academic. So how on earth do you balance your workload with your creative writing? ah Not always well. ah yeah I'll be real.
00:04:04
Speaker
ah So before I got onto this podcast recording, I'm like frantically typing away at the sequel to this book. And when we're done, I will go back to frantically typing away at it. That deadline is very soon, but usually i prioritize writing in the very early mornings.
00:04:20
Speaker
So I think an important thing to do as a writer is to work out like how your brain works. Some people can write very late at night. I'm not one of those people. So I get up very early, i do my writing in the morning, and then I go about the rest of my academic work day.
00:04:35
Speaker
But I am a little bit lucky in that my job title is Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture. So writing is part of my career. So it is, these books contribute towards my research output. So If it bleeds a little bit into work time sometimes, like this is work for me. This is my job.
00:04:52
Speaker
It's one of the benefits of having the, yeah, two very complementary careers or career movements happening at the same time. Yeah, yeah. I'm very lucky that way. ah Do you ever feel burned out from all the writing?
00:05:06
Speaker
ah Currently, yeah a little bit. ah I've had a couple with some deadlines stacked up really close together. so in addition to An Academic Affair coming out this year, I've got an academic book coming out in January. That's The Bonk Buster, Women's Popular Reading in the Long 1980s, which is co-written with Dr. Amy Burge from the University of Birmingham.
00:05:26
Speaker
Then I've got the sequel to An Academic Affair. And then I've also got another academic book that's due in 2027 that I'm co-writing with ah Dr. Athena Bellis from the University of Melbourne. So yeah all I do is write at the moment. And once these two academic books are locked off, I think I might might go back to the world of the journal article for a little bit and do some more short form academic writing while I'm still trying to write novels at the same time.
00:05:51
Speaker
You already mentioned that an academic affair is set based on a world that you know very well, which is the brutal world of
Origins of An Academic Affair
00:05:58
Speaker
early career academia. I'm not in academia and I'm kind of glad I'm not.
00:06:02
Speaker
but reading um Why did you want to set a story in the setting? And was there anything in particular that made you quite nervous about writing? Yeah.
00:06:13
Speaker
So this book was a bit of an accident in some ways. So my, this is my fourth book with Simon and Shuster and I've had two, two book contracts. So the first two were here for the right reasons. And can I steal you for a second, which are the first two books in the Marry Me Juliet trilogy.
00:06:28
Speaker
Then the next contract was not here to make friends. The third book in that trilogy and whatever I was going to write next. And Not Here to Make Friends was a really tough book. Like that book was very hard to write. It was really difficult to edit. I had to turn a single POV book into a dual POV book, which was like, I never want to do that again. That was gnarly.
00:06:49
Speaker
And I was also under some pretty intense academic pressure at the time. not dissimilar to what happens to Sadie and Jonah in this book. And my editor came to me and was like, ah what have you got for your next book? We should start thinking about that at some point. And I was like, okay, I've got some ideas.
00:07:04
Speaker
Here's four. ah Two of them I'm like, you know, not jazzed about, but I could write. I've been thinking about them for a while. There's two that I'm really keen on Please pick one of those. And she said, What if none of them?
00:07:16
Speaker
What if something else? and Harsh. Yeah. I mean, she was right. But like, ah realistically, I know I could have been like, okay, give me a couple of days. i will have a think and get back to you.
00:07:29
Speaker
But I was working like 18, 20 hour days at this point. I wasn't sleeping. I was so in my own head. And I panicked. And I was like, oh shit, what do I have to do no research about? And I was like, um,
00:07:40
Speaker
academics and she was like great write that but having just that one word as a parameter ah turned out to be really helpful because I was like okay we're writing about academics what about this am I interested in and so I thought about kind of character dynamic and I was like well I know what I'm not interested in and that's anything in the realm of teacher student like there are enough novels out there about English professors fucking their students and I was like no No, thank you.
00:08:08
Speaker
Not for me. I don't want to contribute to that particular literary tradition. and a trope that we really, really dislike as well. And another but ru um similar one, supervisor, supervisee as well.
Why Rivals-to-Lovers?
00:08:21
Speaker
I think if you if you have students, you're like, you're like oh no, yuck. Not for me. No, thank you. And so I was like, okay, well, I'm not interested in exploring power dynamics, so they have to be equal.
00:08:36
Speaker
almost two equal. And I had just written three friends to lovers books. The the three Marry Me Juliet books are all kind of different flavors of friends to lovers, but they're all friends so friends to lovers. And i was like, okay, well, how about Rivals?
00:08:50
Speaker
And I always describe it as rivals to lovers rather than enemies to lovers, because I think in in rivalry and particularly academic rivalry, there's a notion of respect. You can't be rivals with someone if you don't have a certain level of respect for their work, because there's a level of like wanting to be them a little bit.
00:09:06
Speaker
And that was where Sadie and Jonah were born. And I was like, okay, how do I get them out of the rivalry place? I tossed around a couple couple of ideas. I was like, oh, maybe they're at a conference. Like, And then I was like, no, what, what do academics want more than anything else? And I was like, oh, a job.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah. And i yeah, initially I considered doing, making it a fake dating book. I was like, ah, okay. I I've met a couple of people who got jobs by a partner hire. And that's a little notion that's always been in the back of my head somewhere.
00:09:34
Speaker
and I was like, okay, they can pretend to date. And then I looked into how partner hire actually works. And I was like, oh, they would have to sign a stat deck about the nature of their relationship. If they say they're dating, that would be lying.
00:09:45
Speaker
But if they say they're married and they are married, then that's true. And no one can ever go to jail. And I really didn't want the possibility that one day Sadie and Jonah could go to jail for this, hanging over anyone's head. I'll make an interesting sequel.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah. And then I was like, oh, this is interesting. This is really like cooking. This has got some juice now. And that's when I started getting really excited about it. Yeah. And yeah, in terms of getting nervous about it, i was was like, when you depict anything that's that close to your own world, of course, you're going to get nervous about it because you're worried that a bunch of other academics will pick it up and go, that's wrong. That's wrong. That's wrong. You don't know anything. and You're an idiot about your own job.
00:10:21
Speaker
But ah thankfully that hasn't happened so far. That's good.
Plot Catalysts and Misconceptions
00:10:26
Speaker
And, ah you know, I was curious, like as someone who's in this world, I didn't really know much about partner hire before, but I get the impression it's It exists, but it's not super common.
00:10:36
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, it's not super common. What did you learn about it? i mean, I did some digging. um ah A lot of universities don't advertise that this is a thing that they do understandably. But I remember when I did my first ever job interview, academic job interview for a job I did not get. um But my supervisor was like, oh, I know someone at that university. um You should go out to lunch with them.
00:10:57
Speaker
And I did. and I was like, how did you get your job? And they were like, oh. partner hire and I was like what's that and and so it's that it just kind of got stuck in the back of my brain just one of those like in there with like Spice Girls lyrics those little pieces of information that you're like this will ultimately mean nothing to me I'm not going to do anything with this um but I did so I wonder what this says for the future of all the Spice Girls lyrics that in my brain but what What a great catalyst for the start of a romance though, the idea of partner hire, because it makes so much sense. Like it's such a logical ah catalyst to start the story, it all goes.
00:11:35
Speaker
um And of course we know, yeah you've spoken about the rivals to lovers dynamic that's in the book and we know romance is so much more than tropes, but we do of course have to ask about the the dynamic here.
00:11:47
Speaker
yeah um So can you tell us about how you sort of approach the, well, We said and enemies to lovers, but you're right, it is more rivals to lovers. How you approach that trope um with Sadie and Jonah. Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
So it kind of comes back to what I was saying before is that I wanted there to be ah a firm basis of respect between the two because that particularly for Sadie, I think when she realises that Jonah respects her, that is the groundwork for the rest of their relationship.
00:12:17
Speaker
So for quite a lot of their rivalry, like if you read between the lines in the prologue, which is from Jonah's perspective, you can see that Sadie is like, oh God, this fucking guy has no respect for me and I hate him.
00:12:28
Speaker
But there's a real turning point for her when she's like, oh, I might've misinterpreted some things here Maybe some of the things he's done have actually been, you know, he he says things like, oh, i I'm not going to stand up for you because you can hold your own. And he and she's like, oh,
00:12:45
Speaker
because he respects my intellect and he's not going to speak over the top of me. Ah, get it now. And so that was really, really core. And at the end of the day, for me, in a romance, the liking is as important as the love.
00:12:59
Speaker
And it's not to say with enemies to lovers, you can't get to a place where they like each other. But I think that's a little bit of a A stiffer hurdle to to hurdle over. I'm like, what's the verb there? To jump.
00:13:10
Speaker
And with this one, I was like, I want them because they have to be in such forced proximity, enclosed in such a domestic space, in particular the space of a marriage. It was really important that there's a kind of a slow burn liking as well as a slow burn love that develops between the two of them.
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I think Elise is probably more of the enemies to lovers person, while I'm more of the friends to lovers person. So I've wondered, because of that, like I feel like sometimes...
00:13:41
Speaker
how do you go from like wanting to kill each other to like being in love? Like that's sometimes I don't buy that journey so much, but here it feels really believable because of that respect and the fact that they do, yeah, sort of want to be each other, like you said, in terms of careers.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is why friends to lovers is my favorite dynamic and why I wrote three books about it. And the next book I'm writing will also be a take on friends to lovers. Like, Cause that liking is really important to me. That's something I think is very romantic.
Effective Romance Dynamics
00:14:13
Speaker
And in defense of any enemies to lovers, and I won't get on my soap box for too long about this. in my opinion, enemies to lovers is done well when there is a friends to lovers step that happens in between. So when they might dislike each other at the start, there might be some tension there and then There's a turning point and they start to either respect each other or actually realize they have more in common than they thought and then turn to lovers.
00:14:35
Speaker
I can't really get around with like horrible enemies. Like one person is bullying the other and then suddenly they make out and it's fine. um i like I like the step in between. So that's my that's my soapbox. Yeah.
00:14:46
Speaker
No, I completely agree. And like that's when enemies to lovers works for me as well. And there's ah a scholar that I always think about in regards to this called David Shumway who wrote a book called Modern Love. And he argues that there are kind of two discourses of love that we that we have.
00:15:02
Speaker
So there's what he calls romance, but I think it's kind of more sensible to call passion, which is like big, overwhelming feelings. And it's kind of something that happens to you, which I think is what happens in a lot of enemies to lovers books. It's like, oh, no, I'm having all these feelings and they're very inconvenient. Oh, no.
00:15:18
Speaker
o ah But then there's also the discourse of intimacy, which he argues arises in the 20th century in order to be able to tell the story of a marriage, which like very useful for me in this book, which is in some ways are telling the story of a marriage, which is about um the story of people working at a relationship and love being something you do rather than something that just happens to you.
00:15:39
Speaker
and the couple's working, ah like putting the work in to make something like functional. And I'm like, look, and they're both good, obviously. But if I have to pick the between the two, I'm going to pick the intimacy, I think.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah. That's to me. Yeah. So objective if it's just passion and you don't have that intimacy development step in between, then enemies to lovers falls a little bit flat, I think. Yeah. And I do love that both of those exist in this book as well. i love the little like Jonah's footnotes. So fun. I good as this ah especially i love that part where he was writing like relatable content on and the margins of a poetry, a poem, sorry.
Setting and Atmosphere in An Academic Affair
00:16:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:19
Speaker
This book is set in Hobart and features both free life and fictional Hobart sites, including a bookish winery called Sondoku. Did I say that right? Yeah. Sondoku, yeah.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, great. What inspired that setting and the winery in particular? Yeah. So my first academic job, I was on a series of ah kind of contracts like ARC fill in maternity leave. I think I had to fill in eight different timesheets a week at one point, but my first academic job was at the university of Tasmania.
00:16:49
Speaker
So I lived in Hobart for a couple of years, ah never got a permanent job at that university at last, but it's a place that's very special to me. And when I realized that I had to take Sadie and Jonah like geographically far,
00:17:01
Speaker
um particularly because Jonah needed to be with his sister and she I needed her to be far. i was like, well, I've kind of got a limited amount of options here. Like I could take them to Darwin. I could take them to Perth. I could take them to Adelaide or I could take them to Hobart.
00:17:17
Speaker
And I was like, well, Hobart's the one I know. And like, because I lived there, like sort of care about the most, no no shade to the other cities. But Hobart's got a very special place in my heart. And tsundoku, the wine bar.
00:17:29
Speaker
um Did I create the wine bar of my dreams here? Like maybe. So tsundoku is the Japanese word for letting books pile up in your house without, um and you if you intend to read them one day, but you haven't quite got there yet. You've got so many books that you just can't possibly get to them all, which is a concept I've always really enjoyed.
00:17:50
Speaker
And am I doing some setup for future books in the series there? The one of which I might be writing right now? Who could say? um But we have a question about that coming up in the spoiler section as well, but you've already you've already given us a hint, so excellent.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, but I also like Sadie has got such a firm rejection of that kind of dark academia aesthetic that comes along with the Fisher family that I also wanted to give her a place where she's like she can embrace her bookish self, you know, where there are books everywhere and she can just have a nice glass of wine and like chat with Jonah or with Fiona or even with Satoshi who runs the bar and it's all like nice and chill.
00:18:27
Speaker
and Beautiful. I would visit that winery if it was absolutely real and close to me. Sounds delightful, frankly. Also, this is probably the point where I tell you, Jodi, that every time ah you mention a title of a romance novel in the book, I put the book down, pick up my phone and put it into the story graph.
00:18:47
Speaker
So I've got a solid TBR happening. Thank you. Oh, no worries. And I mean, that was something I was quite deliberate about because when I first approached it, I was like, okay, sometimes ah you can make references to other books and people have no idea what they are and then they get a bit lost.
00:19:04
Speaker
And then I was like, no, this is what Sadie works on. This is Sadie's life. um And so this is going to be something that she thinks about all the time, particularly as she moves into this, like she understands the tropes that she is embodying.
00:19:17
Speaker
And so of course she would do that with reference to romance novels. So the one I'm proudest of is when she's like, no, no, married married what a terrible idea fake dating would be. That would never work. And then she looks at her bookshelf and she picks up The Devil in Winter by Lisa Claypass, which is the most iconic marriage of convenience book of all time. And she's like, oh, no, I've had a terrible idea.
00:19:42
Speaker
for me, someone who, you know, as part of my job is like very well versed in romance history, I was guys quite proud of that one. It was fun. Yeah.
Book Recommendations from Jodie
00:19:52
Speaker
Well, um do you have any more book or author recommendations to share with our listeners?
00:19:58
Speaker
Oh, perhaps your top recommendations. Yes. Because there's a lot of them in the book. How many, how much time do you have? um so I should note that if you follow me on Instagram, I do a romance recommendation every Sunday. So there's kind of an endless well of recommendations for me.
00:20:15
Speaker
But I thought I would recommend a Marriage of Convenience book. but maybe not Maybe not Marriage Convenience, but an academics book and a Rivals to Lover's book. Marriage of Convenience is a little bit tough in contemporary, although the one that's done it best lately, I think um for me is My Big Fat Fake Marriage by Charlotte Stein, an author who I think is very underrated.
00:20:34
Speaker
um But an academic book I read and loved recently, and I'm very picky about these as an academic, is Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao. um which also has kind of strong union element like an academic affair does.
00:20:48
Speaker
So it is about a trans woman who's an academic, ah whose roommate who she is kind of just moved in with is um a mechanic who's ah also a woman and who has experience like unionizing various mechanic shops.
00:21:05
Speaker
And she's trying to form a like grad student union at her university. And along the way they fall in love and it's really beautiful dynamic. ah Rivals to Lovers, ah huge favourite of mine. My favourite author of all time probably is Lucy Parker, who's a Kiwi author who does get mentioned in an academic affair because Jonah buys Lucy Parker book for Sadie at the airport.
00:21:25
Speaker
But the book I'm recommending here is Battle Royal, an incredible Rivals to Lovers book that's set on kind of the equivalent of the Great British Bake Off. And the two main characters are both judges.
00:21:37
Speaker
They have bakeries across the street from each other and they're competing to bake a the the royal wedding cake and so then along the way they also fall in love and it's really good that is hitting so many notes and things i like is it like a great british bake-off slash baking reality competition show fan yeah i'm obsessed with lucy parker like all of her books are great you can pick a lucy parker book and it will be good but i love that one actually read that one and it was a five-star read one year
00:22:11
Speaker
Excellent. Yeah. I'm so glad you recommended Codename Charming. I believe it was the sequel because I yeah and actually i forgot that there was going to be a sequel. And when I saw that, I was like, oh my God, I need to go get this right now.
00:22:23
Speaker
yeah Yeah. It's also really good. They're just like Battle Royale, like has my heart forever. yeah It's fantastic. ah Thank you so much, Yodi, for those recommendations. And I believe this is where we move into our spoiler questions.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, so listeners, if you haven't read An Academic Affair, please go pick it up, read it cover to cover, and then come back for the second half of our episode.
00:22:46
Speaker
So in addition to romance and academia, this book is also about siblings and family dynamics. Can you talk a little bit about how Sadie's and Jonah's relationships with their siblings and families shape their characters?
Sibling Dynamics in Characters
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, so this was a decision I made really early on. I really like writing about siblings and sibling relationships. So I have a lot of siblings myself. So they are relationships that are very important to me.
00:23:13
Speaker
And I didn't really get a chance to do it in the Marry Me Juliet series because they're all set on the same season of a reality TV show, which is taking place in this bubble. So there's just not a lot of siblings in there.
00:23:23
Speaker
So I was craving writing about some siblings. And it was an element of Sadie's upbringing that I worked out pretty early on. I was like, okay, she's, essentially alone in the world and all she has is her sister.
00:23:38
Speaker
And I specifically wanted it to be an older sister because I was really worried that given she has my job, I had made her seem too much like me. And I i was like, I didn't want people to read this and be like, Jodie's written a romance novel about herself.
00:23:50
Speaker
All my siblings are younger than me. And so I was like, oh, now no one will think I am Sadie because she is such a younger sibling. When we get to Chess's book, obviously, that's where a lot of a different set of my feelings will come out.
00:24:03
Speaker
And then i also needed a reason, like when I realized I wanted to do this marriage of convenience plotline, i needed a reason for Sadie to put it on the table. I needed ah needed a plausible deniability reason for her.
00:24:16
Speaker
And I was like, okay, what is something about Jonah that is very, that would like just really get her, just like tug at her heartstrings. And then I was like, oh, if he's got a sister that he wants to be able to help and all Sadie has is her sister, then that's going to kind of get me where I need to go.
00:24:32
Speaker
So it started from these very simple like plot mechanic reasons. But then I really, I was like, okay, I've got these two parallel relationships with these sisters. let's Let's develop those. Let's get into those. And so Sadie is, um you know, adores her sister, has been very close to her all her life, but is estranged for her for a big part of this book.
00:24:52
Speaker
Whereas Jonah almost has the inverse journey where he's been not quite estranged, but distant from his sister for a long time. And now he's learning how to be a sibling. And so they can both learn from each other and support each other in that way, which I think is a really nice parallel in the relationship.
00:25:08
Speaker
And then there's also a very utilitarian reason, which I'm like, oh, now I have two more heroines for the next books in the series because I am basically incapable of writing a
Future Series Insights
00:25:18
Speaker
standalone. Everything in my mind is linked in little series. And there' there's even a bridge between Marry Me, Julia and this one if people look close enough. I've got that like Taylor Swift Easter egg disease.
00:25:30
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Okay. So a final question, which I might just move up because we've touched on this topic. So it sounds like there will be more books in the series. So is that the confirmation that we've got a chess book and a Fiona book incoming?
00:25:43
Speaker
So Fiona will be next. Fiona's next. It's Fiona and Satoshi. I'm sure that will surprise no one who has read an academic affair. And then chess and I'm not going to tell you, though you can figure it out if you read between the lines.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. oh feel like I need to go back and figure it out I think I might know who it is but I will I will pause and speculate later excellent okay so book two is it sounds like deadline looming soon how's the writing oh this book has given me a bit of a bit of a run around to be honest and okay like for for a few reasons one is that uh I mean, this is about a woman who has been so badly hurt.
00:26:27
Speaker
Like poor Fiona has had her, you know, her husband leave her for a secret second family. And so the thought of getting into something new is very, very difficult for her. And it's really hard to write about a heroine who's like, oh, I don't know. Oh, I don't know. Oh, I don't know all the time. But if I if i don't give her these moments of retreat, then um then it's not particularly honest to her character.
00:26:49
Speaker
and then Satoshi is such a like, lovely boy that it's really hard not to write him as a manic pixie wine boy.
00:26:58
Speaker
Particularly because he's like, I'm just like, oh, he's so nice. And I love that he's so nice, but I need to give him like giving him a little bit more of a spine has been a little bit of a challenge. yeah, We're getting there. We're getting there. So it's maybe not quite as, like, I i have to talk about an academic affair in terms of its tropes all the time. This book, which is going to be called a Study in Sparkling, I think will be a little bit more difficult to talk about um because I guess it's older woman, younger man.
00:27:24
Speaker
It's friends to lovers. And it's kind of second chance, but not second chance with each other. Like, this is the owner's second chance at love with someone who's not her shithead husband. Yeah. um But yeah, it's it's a little bit quieter in some ways than an academic affair, though I hope just as like emotionally resonant.
00:27:42
Speaker
And also a lot of it is about wine. That's another one of the struggles. It can't be just like, here's 30 pages of all Jodie's feelings about wine, which I have a lot of. ah And then sort of with a thin veneer of romance painted over the top.
00:27:55
Speaker
Really, the the central romance is you and wine in this book. yeah Yeah. Well, I mean, I went, I've gone to wine school to go and like ah obtain the language so I can write. Satoshi as a as a sommelier properly that's awesome yeah yeah this is sort of um a tangent I suppose but you mentioned that you've had to talk about the tropes in an academic affair a lot lately and I've I'm noticing this also recently that a romance is often talked about in terms of the trope that's within the book you think that's a book talk related trend or what's what's led to this happening a lot lately
00:28:34
Speaker
I mean, there's been a degree of this happening for
Romance Tropes vs. Story
00:28:36
Speaker
years. i mean, i think it probably arises out of fan fiction culture, to be honest. Like this, and I mean, I think BookTok kind of picked it up and ran with it.
00:28:45
Speaker
And, but yeah, I think like, I lay the blame at the door of AO3. And that sounds really negative. I don't know if it's necessarily bad to talk about a book in terms of its tropes. I mean, they are, I guess, like a micro genre, like they help people find what they want sometimes.
00:29:02
Speaker
I think the danger is if as a writer, you see that ah people are talking about tropes and you start your story from the place of trope, I think you have to start with story. And if you end up at the trope, great.
00:29:17
Speaker
um yeah if you If you just kind of smash them together, that's like a bingo card. Like if I pulled three out of a hat and was like, okay, I want to write um friends to lovers, he falls first, dagger to the throat, then then i I've got these beats and then I have to go and reverse engineer the story. Whereas if I started the story and I'm like, oh, what a nice opportunity for like an only one bed moment, then that feels a little bit more organic and earned and human. Because a trope really only works in when it feels grounded. Like I was aware I was taking a risk with the marriage of convenience here because that's so high concept and so ridiculous.
00:29:55
Speaker
ah But I was like, no, this is literally what they'd have to do. And so like I always get frustrated with books where they're like, oh, um oh no, i have to go to a wedding. I must fake date. And I'm like, you could have just gone to the wedding single, babe. There there were there were other solutions here.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah. I saw an Instagram comment the other day that was like, is it is it a plot or is it just three tropes in a trench coat? And that made think about how like tropes can't really be the backbone of the novel. Plot should ideally be the backbone, but like they can certainly exist and I don't have an issue with plot with tropes existing. yeah.
00:30:31
Speaker
yeah they might not give you the substance you need for a story to come together the way that is meaningful for many readers particularly in romance even more so than plot um character has to be the backbone of the novel this is such a character driven place like a romance novel works when you believe that these two or three or however many protagonists you have in this novel are perfect for each other and that they are perfect for each other in a way that no one else could ever be perfect for each other again that That's the thing you have to sell as a writer.
00:30:58
Speaker
And if I've just been like, okay, here's Ken, here's Barbie. Now we're running through a bingo list full of tropes. Like that's not anything really. So to go back to the book, sorry to take us to have taken us on that tangent. Yeah.
00:31:11
Speaker
um So one of the factors in Sadie's and Jonah's rivalry is class difference.
Class Differences in Relationships
00:31:18
Speaker
ah Jonah is from a wealthy family with a fairly scary professor for a father, while Sadie grew up poor. And as we've talked about, raised essentially by her older sister.
00:31:30
Speaker
Can you talk a bit about how this impacts their relationship? Yeah, yeah. So this was something I figured out pretty early on. ah because I knew where I wanted Jonah to end up, like as a romantic hero. i was like, okay, I need him.
00:31:44
Speaker
By the time he's 32 and we, you know, we kind of get into the the bulk of the book, he's going to be such a like lovely man. But if he is that same like lovely person when he is 18, then you're like, well, Sadie, why did it take you 15 years?
00:32:01
Speaker
What's wrong with you? Then she just looks like stubborn and a little bit silly. and there's that, like there's always a higher bar to clear in terms of likability for heroines. And I was like, okay, I need to give her a really good reason to have not like jumped on the Jonah train a little bit earlier when he has clearly been in love with her since like the day they met.
00:32:22
Speaker
And I was like, okay, he's got to have some bad habits. He's got to have learned some like some bad things. And I was like, where do young men in academia learn bad habits? or Other male academics, especially if they're their dads, like,
00:32:36
Speaker
there's some of young Jonah is just a combination of so like so many like pretty toxic academic bros I met in my life so the way I thought about him was that he's inherently a good person but he's learned some really bad habits like um mansplaining ah turning everything into an argument like he's a bit of a well actually boy at the beginning and he's like oh I'm really enjoying arguing with Sadie I love hearing what she has to say and she's like this man will not leave me alone. Like, why is he so invested in telling me that I'm wrong?
00:33:06
Speaker
And I needed, if they're going to misinterpret each other, there needs to be a really good reason for it. So that's why I gave Jonah that. And I think the journey of him working through his privilege, um like him seeing the signs of him doing, doing the work on that um is ultimately more of a signal of him being a good person than if he just like, you know, didn't have to work at all.
00:33:27
Speaker
And yeah, With Sadie, I needed to give her sort of to make her quite a defensive character in some ways. And I needed to give her a reason for her defensiveness and the fact that like, you know, she's been,
00:33:40
Speaker
like had a terrible dad, her mother died, she's been abandoned by pretty much everyone. She doesn't trust easily. She, like she says in the book, I'm all fists, I'm all teeth. And it's because she's had to be that way. She's had to fight and fight and fight and fight in a way that Jonah never really had.
00:33:55
Speaker
And for her, that is an incredibly frustrating thing about him. And I needed to give her a real frustration with him because it does take them 15 years and it need they need those 15 years to be ready for each other. 15 years worth of character development that happens before the before the book starts.
00:34:14
Speaker
Which was a real writing challenge. yeah I was like, oh, God, how do I do 15 years of backstory? And normally I would, um I always advise my students, start the story where the story starts.
00:34:24
Speaker
Don't include all this backstory. And then my prologue is literally... mostly backstory. um So I wouldn't advise anyone ah copying that particular technique. I think I got away with it this time, but it's probably not a good creative writing habit to get into.
00:34:42
Speaker
kind like flashing forward through many, you know, here's all the context that you need before coming into the story. But it works. Like it works in this story. And I don't know enough about the technicalities of writing to explain why, but you had me hooked from page one. So well done.
00:34:56
Speaker
I think it's the structure. i stole a fan fiction structure there, which is five times two characters didn't do something and one time they did. So it's five times they broke their ceasefire and one time they didn't is the prologue.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yeah. It's a good hook. I just realized I didn't bring my copy of the book up here because I actually put post-it note next to a paragraph that made me laugh out loud, which is when Sadie and Jonah came to dinner at the Fisher's house. And you had this paragraph that said, Professor Christopher Fisher looks like he was about to say, to quote Pride and Prejudice. like Are the shades of Pebbly to be thus polluted? Yeah, and I read that because I could just see yeah that face. Yeah.
00:35:38
Speaker
Perfection. mean, there's quite a lot of like sneaky pride and prejudice in there. I didn't go in intending this to be like a major intertext. And then I was like, oh interesting. It's in there quite a lot.
00:35:49
Speaker
yeah And interestingly, Jonah often positions himself as Lizzie and Sadie as Darcy. I don't know what that says, but that's how it kind of shook out. And I do love that. Like they, their family each has something the other doesn't as well, because Jonah has all the privileges and the complete family.
00:36:08
Speaker
but none of the love that Sadie and Chess have that comes together. the Yeah. Yeah. And so they're both jealous of each other in their own ways. Like Sadie would love some of those advantages and Jonah looks at Sadie and Chess and is like, fuck, I wish me and my sister were like that.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice to have that unconditional love as well? Yeah.
Unique Third Act Challenges
00:36:31
Speaker
I think we're towards the final question of our question set as well, which is really about the third act of the book. So I guess we've talked about this on the podcast before, but I personally really have, I know I'm talking to a very you know popular romance academic here, so maybe I should be a bit careful in my phrasing, but i get I personally get frustrated with romance novels when the third act is like a miscommunication or something that I feel is easily preventable and just feels like a plot convenience.
00:37:01
Speaker
But I guess one of the things that I know I really enjoyed, and I think you did too, Priscilla, was that the third act threat is university funding cuts, which is quite unique in the genre and certainly realistic for those of us that are working in universities rather than ah a big misunderstanding or a traditional breakup that might occur in a book. So can you tell us a little bit about how you approach this and what your thought process was?
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So there is a reason that there is often a third act breakup in a romance book. So if I do respect that, it's just a personal thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, totally. I get to it. I get it. So if I may refer to popular romance scholar, Pamela Regis, she calls this the point of ritual death, the point where it seems like the two protagonists can never be together. This is like the dark night of the soul.
00:37:44
Speaker
But the this is a slow burn book in many ways. And if I were to get finally, finally, finally get Sadie and Jonah together only to like rip them apart immediately, I felt like that would be a little bit of a betrayal.
00:37:59
Speaker
And i started I started thinking about a beautiful historical novel by Courtney Milan called The Duke Who Didn't. And the hero in this book has this big anxiety the whole time. So I'm going to try and do this without spoilers.
00:38:12
Speaker
But... spoilers but There's this thing that he's like, oh God, oh God. Once the heroine, his name is Chloe. Once she finds out about this, then it's all over. It's all over. And then when she eventually does, she's like, oh yeah, I already know.
00:38:26
Speaker
We all know. Didn't you know that we already know? And it's this this moment where you're like, oh, I remember reading it being like, oh, what what a weight off my shoulders. And like in terms of structure, it should be like, oh, what a cop out.
00:38:39
Speaker
But it it's not. It's this this moment of relief. And so I wanted to give Sadie and Jonah this this threat, this thing that would tear them apart because they have been all all their lives competing for a job. And so I was like, okay, they have to go head to head again one last time.
00:38:57
Speaker
And for Jonah to go, no, i won't do it. You mean more to me That is really, really a much more potent declaration than them going, oh, well, I guess we have to do it.
00:39:10
Speaker
could ever be, I think. And so then they're like, okay, what do we do next? How do we fight this? And that ah for me was ultimately more romantic.
00:39:21
Speaker
It was. They kind of had their struggles earlier and then worked through them. So it's a a little bit of a little bit of a different structure, but I i had a nice time playing with it. Yeah, and I did love that they did have that big sort of romantic confession and got together and then you could see that love in action by Jonah saying, no, I'm not going to fight you on this and that's really quite, that's very lovely. Yeah, particularly because Sadie has such a hard time, particularly after Chess departs.
00:39:50
Speaker
She's like, oh, no one loves me. I'm unlovable. And then he not just tells her he loves her, but he really shows her. and so... that's I think that for her is the thing that really makes her believe it.
00:40:04
Speaker
yeah But we still don't really lose any dramatic tension that you get with a, um you know, we we need there to be a challenge in the fight, you know, at the end of the book, we can't just have everything be okay for the rest the novel, right? Like that would not follow our traditional um storytelling structure.
00:40:20
Speaker
But yeah it's a real It's a realistic threat as well because we know you know in so many universities worldwide like funding cuts are huge and they're scary and they're impacting a lot of people as well. So it's not you know ah random thing to be dropped on them. It's something that makes sense in the context of who these characters are and the setting that they're in as well. Yeah. and I mean, apart from the marriage of convenience, everything that happens to Sadie and Jonah in this book has either happened to me or someone I know.
00:40:48
Speaker
and I think every academic has been to one of these, like, guess what? We're firing a lot of people, meetings, and yeah. And also two characters do get back together at the end of the book. It's just Sadie and Chess rather than Sadie and Jonah.
00:41:01
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. I also love that. think, again, this is probably a good point to say. This is probably one of the few books this year that has made me like, I just wanted to keep reading. didn't, know I had to go, have to go to work, but I just want to be on the couch reading this. So thank you so much for writing it. was such a wonderful experience reading it.
00:41:23
Speaker
Oh, that's so nice. Thank you. And i'll I'll quickly share my experience of reading it. So I read this book while I was traveling overseas for a conference, an academic conference, ironic enough.
00:41:35
Speaker
um But yeah, so I first started reading this ah like in the middle of a long haul flight when I was at Dubai International Airport, very tired and exhausted. just... and I've got an hour to pass before my flight departs. I'm just going to open this. i don't know I'm going to be able to concentrate at because I haven't slept for a very long period of time.
00:41:53
Speaker
Immediately got into it and I was not expecting it. So I held my attention despite being hugely exhausted. And then when jet lagged in the middle of the night after arriving in um Vienna,
00:42:04
Speaker
i woke up at maybe 2am and I just could not sleep because my body clock was all messed up. And I picked up the book and I thought, okay, I'll just read for a little while then I'll probably get tired and I'll fall asleep. And it kept me so awake that I ended up like reading for at least two hours in the middle of the night. i just wanted to keep going.
00:42:22
Speaker
no, it's a huge compliment because normally I would not be picking up a book in that time of the expectation that I'm going to want to keep reading. so ah Well done. time Thank you very much.
00:42:34
Speaker
All right. So I think that wraps us up for today. um In any case, Jodie, a huge thank you. We both love the book and we loved having you on the podcast. So thanks so much for your time. Absolutely. My pleasure.
00:42:46
Speaker
And that wraps up our interview. A huge thank you again to Jodie for coming on the pod. As usual, our detailed show notes are available on novelfeelings.com, including Jodie's social media handles and her book recommendations. Thank course, don't forget to check out an academic affair as well as Jodie's back catalogue.
00:43:05
Speaker
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00:43:19
Speaker
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00:43:31
Speaker
Thank you for listening today. See you next time. Thanks everyone. Bye. Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri land, which is home to both of us in Naam, Melbourne.
00:43:41
Speaker
We also acknowledge the role of storytelling in First Nations communities. Always was. Always will be. Aboriginal land.