Tara 0:04
Hey, everyone, I’m Tara Scott. And with me is Kris Bryant. Welcome to Queerly Recommended. This is our first episode and we are so excited to introduce ourselves and just give you all an idea of what you can expect
Kris 0:17
Tara, I know who you are. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the concept behind this podcast?
Tara 0:24
Yeah, absolutely. I’m Tara, if you know who I am, it’s probably from a couple of different places. So, the first is that I am a professional book reviewer. I mostly focus on books that are written by and about queer women and you can catch me reviewing at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Lambda Literary and also The Lesbian Review. The other place you might have heard from me is that I had a podcast for, I think, for four and a half years, it was called Les Do Books. And that was where I interviewed authors, and other reviewers, just to talk about our love of lesfic and often either an author’s journey or the books that they love.
So, for the concept behind Queerly Recommended, you know, we were thinking about it, and there’s a thing that’s been going on lately, for the last year or so—
Kris 1:13
Mm hmm
Tara 1:13
And that’s that people are bored, because they have—
Kris 1:17
Very bored.
Tara 1:18
—nowhere to go. And—
Kris 1:20
Nothing to do.
Tara 1:20
Right?! So what are people doing? They are binge eating a shit ton of media. You’ve probably finished recently, a really good book, maybe great movie. Maybe you, like, binge an awesome queer TV show. And you’re probably looking for more, you’re hungry, and you just want something that’s gonna be really good, whether it’s your evening, going into the weekend, and we are here for you. Because Queerly Recommended is a show about the media that we love and the stories that are sustaining us. And so every other week, we’re going to give you the scoop on the latest book, or TV show or movie, or manga, or whatever that’s been giving us life. And we hope that you’re going to be as excited to join us as we are to join you.
So, with that as a concept, Kris, can you share a little bit about yourself and how we actually got here?
Kris 2:13
Hi, I’m Kris Bryant. I am author of lesbian contemporary romance books for Bold Strokes Books, and I love queer books. I love queer movies, queer TV shows. And a while ago, I can’t remember, maybe it was last year? It was last year, you and I talked about— I had mentioned “Hey, maybe we should do a podcast” to kind of branch out past just books and do other things. And so, after spending most of the year horizontal on my couch binge watching all the TV shows I could possibly binge watch—thank you Netflix, Amazon Prime—I just thought, you know, this would be kind of a good idea to do all the watching ourselves or reading ourselves and just do some recommendations based on what we’ve seen or read.
Tara 3:04
Mm hmm.
Kris 3:05
So Tara, you read a lot of books for a lot of different platforms, like you mentioned. What attracts you to something queer? Do you, like, actively search for it? Or do you already know, when somebody is going to come out with a book that you want to read? Do you just know that in the back of your mind? Or how do you find your information?
Tara 3:22
I’m pretty lucky because I am associated with reviewing sites. I often have people coming to me or coming to those sites asking for things to review. And I find that what I’ve been reading has been changing over the last year or so. I think, you know, the 2020 effect was very real for me. After reading almost exclusively romances featuring women who love other women, or I mean, some people call them lesbian romances, but I— I like— it doesn’t matter to me if there are bisexual women in them are pansexual women, obviously, like, as a bisexual women— Women? Women! As a bisexual woman, I also like seeing myself in these stories too. So I kind of, I’ve embraced the WLW or f/f acronyms. As much as I know, people don’t like having another acronym in their lives.
And so, I read almost exclusively romance for seven or eight years. And then, I think, I think 2020 hit all of us in a whole lot of ways, as the trash fire year from hell with a literal pandemic and murder hornets. You know, all the things. So I found myself less satisfied with romance and there were some romances I still enjoyed very, very much. But I actually found myself gravitating much more towards speculative fiction. So, fantasy, sci fi, sometimes YA, including YA fantasy and sci fi. And the thing that I noticed is that I still wanted those books that I was reading to have queer characters in them because I still like seeing that aspect of myself there. But maybe in a world that is entirely different from our own. Like, I just wanted to get out of our world so much. And so I was really on the lookout in a way that almost I wasn’t before for those books, because I was often stepping outside of my typical, only reading what was coming out from say, Bella Books and Bold Strokes Bbooks and Ylva Publishing and Bywater Books and some of the indie authors. I had to know, like, where are these books coming from? And so I joined Netgalley. I was like, “Oh, yes, hello.” And I found some amazing books on there. And I’m going to do a jerk thing. And I’m not going to name any of them, because in our next episode, we are going to come in with a couple of our favorites from 2020 to kick the new year off, right.
Kris 6:16
Agreed.
Tara 6:17
So, that’s it for our first episode. Thank you so much for joining us. We cannot wait to be back with our first real episode with our first set of recommendations for all of you. If you’ve enjoyed this show, please like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And goodbye for now.
Kris 6:38
Bye.
Okay, Tara, I know who you are. But can you share a little bit about— fuck.
Tara 7:00
Start again!
Kris 7:02
All right. So Tara, I know who you are. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and this whole concept of behind the cop— fuck! Fuck! Fuckity fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!