LiteraryHype Podcast

85. SARAH MACLEAN: Switching genres, swoony forearms, terrible billionaires, & Fated Mates | These Summer Storms

• Stephanie the LiteraryHypewoman / Sarah MacLean • Season 2 • Episode 23

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00;00;03;04 - 00;00;22;04
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype. I am Stefani, your literary hype woman. And today's author conversation is very special to me because a it's one I've been trying to get for a while, but things have gotten in the way every time it's almost happened. So it's very fun to mark one off of my vision board for the year for my authors that I'd like to have on the show.

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Speaker 1
But also, like, I've done a panel with this author before and she's absolutely hilarious and to get to talk to her before she recorded a live podcast herself, even more special, I Met author is Sarah McLain. Her new book is called These Summer Storms, and this is her contemporary debut. She's been an icon of historical romance for so long, and now she's finally testing out the contemporary waters in a really fun way.

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Speaker 1
I'm calling this book We Were Lawyers for adults, so if you like that kind of vibe, you're going to want to check this out. So without any further ado, here's my conversation with Sarah McLain.

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Speaker 2
Please welcome to Literary Heights.

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Speaker 3
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

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Speaker 2
So back in the day, it's been only two years. We did a pair, one New York comic and the other about a test.

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Speaker 3
The Bailey panel was tested, just creamed me.

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Speaker 2
But you also did really well I mean, I still talk about you're the first one you did with and the mic job. Oh, enemies.

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Speaker 3
Hello. Yeah, I mean, that's that's why Enemy Slivers works so well.

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Speaker 2
Exactly. So with the thought of Battle of the Troops in mind, is there a trick that you have not written yet that you want to and one that you will never write?

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Speaker 3
I will never write friends. Two Lovers. So that's an easy one. Get that out of the way. I would really like to write Amnesia because I think it is really fun and it gives you a chance to, like, dial the whole story up to 11.

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Speaker 2
It's a very controversial term. It is.

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Speaker 3
And I'm now I'm getting there, not 20 books in. I have to keep people interested.

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Speaker 2
And controversy seems to work too well. It's just really funny that she's picking me because this book it's your new release these thunderstorms it has we were liar's fires just without the amnesia.

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Speaker 3
Yes but also all of my books have We Were Liars lives so.

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Speaker 2
Especially with the like, private island.

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Speaker 3
Oh yeah.

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Speaker 2
And with these rich family fighting. Yeah. So it's the perfect time for this book to come out now that everybody's talking about liars.

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Speaker 3
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
So for anybody who hasn't already seen this book out and about, what's it about?

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Speaker 3
It's about a dysfunctional family.

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Speaker 2
Who the.

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Speaker 3
The the patriarch of which is a billionaire who dies in a freak, kind of real billionaire accident kind of way. And his children are sent home to or come along to the family's private compound on a private island in New England. And the protagonist, the book Alice is our guide. She is the estranged daughter of this family and she doesn't want to go home.

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Speaker 3
She's been estranged from she hadn't spoken to her family in five years. We don't know why. And we meet her on the train and she really doesn't want to go home. So instead of going home, she goes to a motel with a very handsome man who's also on the train for like one night before the chaos and then gets to her island compound, discovers that her billionaire father has left an inheritance game for the children to see who will win the billions.

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Speaker 3
And Epps, the one night stand was with the guy who is managing the game.

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Speaker 2
Shout out to the forearms of this guy because like two or three books in a row that I've read have mentioned before, what is it about four arms that's so swooning?

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Speaker 3
I feel like forearms are a good measure of a man's ability to get shit done to fix a thing, lift a thing you know, hold the thing. They're a measure of strength, and we want our heroes to be strong.

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Speaker 2
We love it, love it so much. But on the flip side of that is the games.

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Speaker 3
Yes.

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Speaker 2
And the tasks that these siblings all have to perform in order to get their share of the inheritance.

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Speaker 3
Yes. Are hilarious.

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Speaker 2
A little bit about how you came up with the ideas of what each sibling would have to do. And were you cackling the whole time?

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Speaker 3
I mean, for Sam? Yes, I was cackling the whole time. So there are four siblings Greta is the oldest and she is perfect in every way. She has had a long time, years and years long affair with her father's chauffeur. Embodiment is his bodyguard, Sam, who is the boy king, the only boy and expects to inherit everything and is a blowhard and arrogant and kind of not and well, very obnoxious and kind of terrible.

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Speaker 3
Married to a kind of terrible woman with children who, if we're not careful, will become kind of terrible themselves. And then there's Alice, who we know who's been estranged for five years and is back for the first time. And then Emily, who is the baby of the family, and she's just a baby. She's just delightful and sweet and has a crystal shop on the island or on the mainland and so it was very easy for me to think through the tasks of some of them.

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Speaker 3
I knew, for example, like Sam is such a blowhard, him not being able to speak would be a really big a lot of fun. I knew Alice's task would be that she had to stay, and I knew that Greta's task would be something to do with her relationship with Tony her father's her father's body man. But Emily was actually a real challenge for me because I wanted Emily, who plays a very important role in this book.

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Speaker 3
It's not the book is not only a romance, it is really the story of a big family. And it's a story of love in many forms. And whether or not we can find love for some people. And Emily plays a really big role. And so for a long time, I didn't know what her task would be. And then it became really clear to me.

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Speaker 2
Ultimately with Sam and his not being able to talk and his work around this text to speak. Yeah, and he will be Catholic.

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Speaker 3
W Well, first of all, who among us is not accidentally texted w.

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Speaker 2
It's so funny or ducking.

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Speaker 3
Or what's what the duck.

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Speaker 2
What's your favorite autocorrect failure that you've done? I mean.

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Speaker 3
That is a real classic for me. The other fun part about that is their father is a billionaire and he's a billionaire because basically he invented a microchip a microprocessor that made it possible for him to invent the iPhone. Essentially, it's not the iPhone. It's called the storm. And so the fact that autocorrect doesn't work for the storms is pretty great.

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Speaker 2
It is so great. The little details throughout this just made me so giddy.

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Speaker 3
Thank you. I do love it.

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Speaker 2
So, so much.

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Speaker 3
Thank you.

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Speaker 2
But what was the initial spark like? You've been iconic in the historical romance space for so long. And then to flip it up and do a contemporary like what was it about this story that was like, I need to write this now?

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Speaker 3
So it was the pandemic. And I was in Rhode Island for the summer. A friend of mine had a really lovely little cottage on the beach, and she offered it to my family. And so we were there for the summer. And, you know, some people got really into Cerrado bread during the pandemic. And I got really into these little islands, and I'm from Rhode Island, so I spent a lot of time that summer looking at these islands and thinking like, who would live on these islands?

00;07;31;20 - 00;08;05;25
Speaker 3
You know what? What would it be like to be potting essentially? I mean, we were all so isolated that summer and I ended up writing a book that was really about a family isolating and having to reckon with the questions that they have. The the vacuum that a father leaves. And that apparently is when they die, the way that we restructure the power in our family, when things like that happen, and then, of course, like watching terrible rich people be terrible to each other is is really is really fun.

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Speaker 3
And so for me, that was what it was that summer, that pandemic summer, I think we were all isolated. We were all thinking about grief. And this book came really clearly to me. And then it just took several years, right? Because of historical, because I have a right to sort of assume.

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Speaker 2
OK, so you just mentioned the family structures and the complex relationships. So what kind of research did you put into these sibling hierarchy and how they would interact with each other?

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Speaker 3
I think if you have a sibling, I come from a family of three. I know what it's like to be isolated. I think the one thing about this book is if you have a sibling or if you know if you have siblings or if you've ever been around siblings, which everybody has, you will recognize the storms, even though they are extraordinarily wealthy and they live a very different kind of life than we do.

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Speaker 3
So I would say, well, I'm rich.

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Speaker 2
You know, I.

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Speaker 3
Do a lot of research into wealth. I do a lot of research into, you know, these billionaire these men, these billionaire fathers. You know, I read Small Fry, which is the biography of Steve Jobs, a starter. I watched, you know, the Richard Branson documentary. His kids are part of that. I read about shoes I read a bunch of stuff about Gates and others.

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Speaker 3
I read reviews. Steve Jobs and these men have a real difficult t relinquishing control because they they choose a world, right? They built the world. They are robber barons. And so what does it mean to be the child of somebody who you know, I think I think at one point Alice thinks to yourself, like, the first line of I have a jury is my father.

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Speaker 3
I'll never be anything more than my last name. And that was really interesting to me. And I think what's interesting about siblings in that scenario is you might hate each other, but you are the only people who know what it is you. And this is true of everybody, your siblings, even if you were fortunate in your fire.

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Speaker 2
As an oldest of four with three girls and one boy, you felt very real. Oh, I'm so glad I could be like we didn't have money, but we nit picking at each other. It was so real.

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Speaker 3
But isn't that part of it too? Like, you don't need money. It's still the same. It's the.

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Speaker 2
Same. Yeah. It's a great equalizer. Your family is still going to torture you no matter how much money. Yeah, the.

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Speaker 3
Buttons get installed.

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Speaker 2
But also you have Julio as your narrator. So what was it like finding out that she was going to be narrating throughout the whole book?

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Speaker 3
Well, Julia Will was my dream. NARRATOR Like when the book first sold to Random House and they brought me in to do a meeting, they said, What's your dream? And I was like, My dream essentially will inherit it. Like, that was she was my vision. My she was the entirety of my vision for this book. And then when they finally told me that she was very nervous and and I actually the first five audiobooks that I've listened to, I've never listened to, not even before of mine because it's weird.

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Speaker 3
And she's so perfect. I mean, the audiobook is tremendous. If you're an audio reader.

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Speaker 2
It's so good. I started reading Eyeballs and then got the audio and I was like, switching gears. Yes.

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Speaker 3
Yes.

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Speaker 2
Yes. True. But this is also a near switch for you. So did switching from historical to contemporary change your process at all?

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Speaker 3
It was more challenging for sure to write contemporary because, you know, this is my 20th book. 1820 have been historical. You know, I wrote I wrote a I wrote a contemporary novella during the pandemic that same summer. And but other than that, you know, book wise, this is my first contemporary and yeah, it's a different muscle. You know, it's like if you only ever to like day, then doing our day is completely new.

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Speaker 3
And for me, contemporary is really challenging because it's sort of it requires a level of believability. I think that historical can wave away like I can tell you stories that in history and put some Vaseline on the lens and weave away some of the historical truth and you'll come on the journey with me because you accept bigger emotions, bigger feelings from historical than you do from contemporary, right?

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Speaker 3
Bigger stories, bigger plots, bigger, you know, challenges like more conflict but contemporary requires threading that needle so that you believe these people could live alongside you and you could be riding the train next door to ours. And so that was a real challenge for me.

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Speaker 2
What have you learned about writing and like adjusting your process through your podcast? Talking about writing?

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Speaker 3
Oh, my gosh, it's I learn from the podcast every week. I'm very lucky, first of all, that Jen is with me every week. She's so smart. She's such a brilliant reader. She's so astute about text you know, the first season of the podcast was a complete read. A lot of Press is Calls Immortals After Dark Series, which happened recently, is the projected release right now.

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Speaker 3
And it's just like the mother of romance, you see. And it is. I'm so happy people are finding it again. And learning from you. Reading and analyzing some of the what I believe are the best books of the genre have really has really made me trust my instincts more, has made me take better risks to bigger risks, take bigger swings.

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Speaker 3
I think my books are better for the podcast.

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Speaker 2
You also teach writing classes. I do. So what made you want to teach?

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Speaker 3
I feel like I would have been a teacher, you know, like if I weren't a writer. I do teach writing. I, I teach a romance novel, a writing romance class, a sort of intro class. And then I teach a master class in conflict every year. Because I think it's important. I think there's so many people who are trying to write romance now, so many readers who have decided that they want to try writing.

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Speaker 3
And I think that's amazing. That's how so many of the biggest. Right, that's how I started, right? I was a reader, and then I started writing, writing but when I started, there were classes and there were, you know, you could take a class with somebody who'd been writing for a decade, and then that's, you know, again during the pandemic that sort of quieted down the places where we might have taken classes disappeared.

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Speaker 3
And so it just feels important that we continue to talk about craft because romance is an important piece of literature, and we deserve to treat it with respect. And we deserve to think of it as something that requires study and craft.

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Speaker 2
And before we go, we got to talk about Duchess, this book. Yeah. It's still on your website. Is it still happening? What's the.

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Speaker 3
I'm reading it right now. It should be out next year, summer and fall of next year. And it is, I hope, exactly what everybody wants. The bells are back. It's a little bit of road trip, a little bit force proximity, a little bit kidnaping. There's all sorts of stuff going on.

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Speaker 2
So so this question you always ask because this is literary hype. What books are you hyped about?

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Speaker 3
Oh, well, I'm here tonight with Kate Freeborn, which she has a new book coming out next year, and it's I've already read it. Magnificent. I really, really love too many ideas. On Park Avenue. If you're a decent response fan, if you read it and you love it, should read Park Avenue next. It's also a dysfunctional family wildly wealthy billionaires.

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Speaker 3
But it it's set against the computing industry in New York City. And it's so it's like it drips with money I am really excited about Francesca, Sarah Teller's Full Moon, which is out next week. Next month, which is a little bit magical. Realism. The heroine is gifted on the worst day of her life, is gifted a perfume that makes her irresistible.

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Speaker 3
And she has to reckon with that, which is really fun. That's a very, very.

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Speaker 2
Thanks so much for.

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Speaker 4
Hanging out with you. It's so fun to be here.

00;16;52;11 - 00;17;09;09
Speaker 1
Thanks again to Sarah for hanging out with me while she was in Saint Louis to record a live episode of Faded Mates podcast which was absolutely hilarious. And you should definitely check out her podcast if you have not done so already. But get your hands on this book, these summer storms. It is so good you're going to want to read this.

00;17;09;25 - 00;17;22;16
Speaker 1
The links to do so are down in the description for you, as well as Where to Find Sarah on social media. If you enjoy this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Literary Hype podcast. Give us some stars and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.