Romance Publishing Rules Are Shifting

SPEAKER_01 0:04

So the rules of traditional publishing have changed a lot, particularly in the romance space. And so then third, really the most important reason was I had a friend who had I was kind of going back and forth with whether I wanted to try to do this. And I had a friend who was talking about a book that she wrote and her characters were in their 40s. She sold it to a traditional publisher. The fact that her characters were in their 40s was very important. And the traditional publisher said, that's not gonna work. We have to make them younger, that won't sell. And so they did. And there was a part of me that was like, oh my gosh, I'm writing this sex positive representation. That's my passion.

Meet Christina Davis And Her Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Hi, friends. This is Read and Write with Natasha Podcast. My name is Natasha Times, and I'm an author and a joke. I talk about the writing live, 50 books, and hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of DJ Right with Natasha. I have with me today Christina Davis, who writes TV Small Town Content First Romance in the Pacific Northwest Tech, Fity Emotional Journeys, and Guaranteed Happily Ever After. Originally from Nashville, she moved to Seattle with her husband and transitioned from careers in social work and healthcare tech to full-time writing. Christina believes romance can both entertain and empower. All right, Christina, we're gonna talk romance today. Thank you and TV romance. So thank you for joining me today. And I I think for me, Christina, the first question that I'd like to ask you is how is working full-time as an author working for you? And how are you making it work if you're making it work? If you if is, you know, feel free to be transparent. There's a safe uh this is a safe place, you know, no judgment. So how is the full-time gig being a full-time author working for you?

The Hard Truth About Going Full-Time

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Great question. First, thanks for having me. I love to talk about romance and and all things romance, so I appreciate the opportunity. I did transition from full-time in regionally as in social work and talk therapy. Then I worked in healthcare technology for a long time. And then with the pandemic, I got laid off from that job. It was, I was ready to leave that world. And so now I and I found myself here in this space. And my husband said, you know, it it was COVID, it was, it wasn't the time to be looking for a job. So I was like, Well, I need to do something. I can't do nothing. So I need to do something. And and he said, Well, what do you want to do? And I said, Well, I want to write romance novels all day. I want to read romance novels all day. And he said, Well, why don't you write one? And so I did. And that's sort of how I found myself in this space. It was kind of a surprise to be here. It wasn't ever my plan to be a full-time writer. So being here has been a little bit of figure it out as I go kind of thing. I didn't have a grand plan. And I, to be completely honest, this is a very tough, tough space. Romance in particular, the market is flooded. Now with AI, you've got books that aren't even human written out there. So I'm competing with books that aren't even human written. I'm not traditionally published, I'm self-published. And I'm learning, I'm hearing from a lot of my peers and colleagues that are traditionally published that it's you have to have sort of a following and a platform even before you can be traditionally published. And so it's it's just it, it's a difficult, it's it's a difficult space to be in. And I don't make money. I lose money every year. I've lost money every year, which is difficult to someone who was in a space where I grew up learning that I needed to stand on my own two feet, I needed to make my own money. And so being in a space where I'm not making money and I'm relying on my husband to put a roof over my head and that sort of thing, it's it takes a toll. It does take a toll. So it's difficult. I'm not gonna paint a sunny rainbowy picture, but I'm doing this. I have to constantly remind, well, not constantly, but I have to often remind myself that the reason I'm doing this is because this is what I'm passionate about. I'm passionate about real sex representation in the genre, and we can talk about why that is, but it's not super popular right now, or it hasn't been in the past, to have real sex representation in the genre. Romance is about fantasy, and so I'm uniquely in a position where I don't have to make money to do this. And so I'm uniquely in the position where I can write books that are not going to light on fire, you know, they're not gonna be the next best thing that get made into a made-for-TV movie or what have you. So I lean hard into the satisfaction that I get from writing books that I think put out positive messages into the world about sex representation. And that doesn't say that I'm not to I'm not saying that I'm not offering shade to those fan to romance being a fantasy. Romance is a fantasy, and that's great. But I think if we have if in those fantasy spaces we lean into particular aspects that are always the same, we might be sending the message that this is the preferred way to be. So, for example, in a lot of romance novels, big penises, all of the male main characters have giant penises and they don't hurt their female partners. That's unrealistic. That's not true. Women don't, studies show women don't prefer large penises. They can be painful. But if that's a common thread that's running through a lot of the stories that we see, we may be subliminally sending the message that that's what a real man, a real good lover needs to have. So those are the kinds of things that I want to that I want to advocate that we we pull back from. We don't have to stop. There's there's a reason to write a pretty tall, cisgender, straight white woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Those women exist in the world and there's reasons to write stories about them. But if we only wrote romance stories about women that look like that, we could potentially send the message that that is the preferred look for a woman, that that's what's attractive and romantic. So those are the kinds of things I want to promote diversity. I don't want to promote that we have to take something away. I just I want to add more to that. And I find I get a lot of energy from that. And that's how this kind of gig has been working out for me. I'm not making money, I'm fed, my soul is fed by starting having these conversations about romance and ways that we can provide some real sex representation.

What Real Sex Representation Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 7:06

So when you mean real sex representation, can you give me an example of a scene without, you know, if you don't want to get granular, that's fine, but like the generic kind of pointers of what is a real sex representation versus a fantasy? Is it like you know, some you know, younger kids or young adults get addicted on porn and all they see is like hitting and slapping, and they think that's the real sex or whatever. But yeah, so I want to hear how do you do that in in your novel.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Sure. And what you're talking about is is a real phenomenon. There people are sex education in in this country is kind of failing us, and people are looking at all kinds of resources. Oftentimes, people are particularly boys, are watching porn and thinking that that's how sex is supposed to work. Porn is entertainment, it is not instruction, but the porn industry is aware that people are doing this because they're starting to put educational information on their sites. So they'll have on a on some ethical porn sites, you'll have entertain a tab for entertainment and a tab for sex education where they have real information, a sex blog about what's real. So I think that's an interesting phenomenon that porn sites are putting real sex effort information and education on their sites. So some examples of what I'm talking about when I talk about real sex representation. For example, you know, just kind of sticking with the big penis theme. I have, I do have a character that has a large penis, but it isn't magical. They he has to do a lot of prep work for her, they have to use lube, they can't have sex right after, again, a penetrative sex right after, because she's had she's been stretched and she's had she's sore. And so they have to find other things to do to be intimate that don't include penetration. So sending that information that this is this is kind of how it works when you have a big penis. It's not that it and he doesn't, you know, just pound into her without warming her up and you know, those kinds of things. Also, a big thing that I'm trying to sort of fight against is the idea that men are supposed to know everything without ever being taught. They're just supposed to know where the clitoris is, they're just supposed to know how to stimulate her. Women are all different. We like different things. The assumption that all women like like to be pounded or, you know, like to have be made love to in the same way is just not true. And so I try to have a lot of communication between my male MCs and female MCs, MCs, a lot of conversation about what she likes. He doesn't come into the situation assuming that he knows. Or if he does, I do have a male MC who comes in thinking he does know everything. And she's a little more complicated. My female MC, a main character in that story, that's my that's my first in series called Your Two Lips. And she's uh she's had severe endometriosis and has had a hysterectomy and is kind of on this journey to reclaim her sexual pleasure because endometriosis causes painful sex. So a lot of women who have it, six million women in America have it, and and we don't talk about it, and it causes painful sex and often can cause those women to not have pleasurable sex. So she's sort of trying to understand her body and what feels good. And he comes in thinking he knows everything, but what he's doing is not working for her. And so he has to go do a little research and he has to sort of humble himself and realize that it's okay to not know. There's tons of information out there. Let me go do a little research. Normalizing toys in the bedroom and how those can be used. I think there's in some situations there may be men who are intimidated by the idea of a woman needing to use a vibrator with a man. If the man's in the room, I should be able to simulate. And I've even heard you know, people say, oh, that you can get addicted to a vibrator. And and I'm not completely sure I believe that. And one argument that I heard so I read somewhere in a book was that would we accuse a carpenter of being addicted to an electric drill? If he always chose to use an electric drill instead of a screwdriver, would we say he's addicted to using an electric drill? He's just using the tool that does the job best, right? And we would never criticize that situation. So why are we criticizing this? So trying to normalize some of those things, that's what I mean by real sex-positive representation. Sex is messy, it doesn't always work right. Penetration is not the only way to have sex, orgasm is not the only way to end an intimate session. So some of those kinds of things I'm trying to normalize in the scripts that that I that my characters, my romantic characters follow.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

This is this is fascinating. And like what gave you the idea to focus on like the real life, you know, intimate situation? Where where did this idea come

Shame Culture Menopause And Research

SPEAKER_00 11:50

from?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

You know, I've I've thought about this a lot. So in I don't have a great answer for the I I have with my master's degree in clinical psychology, I looking back on this, writing romantic fiction is the perfect marriage of all the things that I've loved in my life. One, the I understanding people's wounds and how those wounds impact them in their lives, the choices they make, even in the spaces unrelated to where they have maybe have received their wound. I love romance. I loved reading it. I love Happily Ever Afters, I love that. And I love helping people. I want to help people. I would like to leave the world in a better place than when I got here, if that's ever possible, at least maybe in my tiny little window or corner of it. So I think I I've always read a lot about sexual health. I grew up in a sexual shame culture. The southeastern United States is where I was raised, and that's a sexual shame culture. And so I struggled with sex and all the things. And I I had to educate myself. And I've just always been interested and read a lot about sex. When I went through menopause, that was I was unprepared for the for the trauma that I was going to experience during that time. And I lost a lot of my sex drive. And it was through research and finding out how normal that is and that there is help for that. And I and doing that with my husband together, we did that research. And together, you know, we he felt very rejected and you know, it was kind of like saying, Look, it's it's not you, my body is not working the way that it used to work, and I don't know what's happening. And so doing that research, that was very impactful for me. And that was that was in the late like 2018, 2019, that time frame. So I was really in this space of doing a lot of research and reading about sexual health. And so then when I started writing romance, I kind of thought back in some of the romances that I was reading about how like everything always works perfectly. She she always comes, he always knows what to do. And there was a part of me that was like, what are we like? I was looking for a book that was a little different. And then also in romance in in 2020, there was a huge shift in representation where we wanted all genders, all orientations, all races and ethnicities, diverse female body types. And as we leaned super hard as a genre into this diversity, it all sort of clicked with me that, well, we're not, we don't write diverse sex. We all we write very similar, this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then then she comes, then he comes, and they're done. And it was like, this is not how it works every time. And why aren't we writing more diversity in in actually what's happening in the bedroom? And so I think that's really where the inspiration came from. Sort of a, it's not, it wasn't a clean aha moment. It was kind of a series of aha's. And and that's how I I really discovered this is something that's super important to me, and I want to do this. And so that's what I'm doing.

Why Self-Publishing Protects The Vision

SPEAKER_00 15:04

So why did you choose to be self-published, not traditionally published?

SPEAKER_01 15:09

A couple of reasons. It takes a long time to get traditionally published. And one and second, I had heard that you again you sort of have to have a following. And I was like, I have no idea how to get a following. So that the rules of traditional publishing have changed a lot, particularly in the romance space. And so then, third, really the most important reason was I had a friend who had I was kind of going back and forth with whether I wanted to try to do this. And I had a friend who was talking about a book that she wrote and her characters were in their 40s. She sold it to a traditional publisher. The fact that her characters were in their 40s was very important. And the traditional publisher said, that's not gonna work. We have to make them younger, that won't sell. And so they did. And there was a part of me that was like, oh my gosh, I'm writing this sex positive representation. That's my passion. I'm gonna sell this to a traditional publisher, and they're gonna say, no, this is not how sex works in romance novels, and they're gonna gut the thing that I was, you know. And so I just said, I can't, I'm not gonna do it. I I decided to self-publish because I really wanted to make sure that I was writing the books I wanted to write, not just the books that would make a lot of money from a traditional publishing perspective.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

So,

Newsletters Giveaways And Book Fairs

SPEAKER_00 16:24

how are you promoting the books and growing a following? Or how how is that going on?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yeah, uh slow, slow and steady, you know, but I I do a couple of things. I have a newsletter, I do I participate in a lot of free giveaways. I do some I do some paid promotions with what when I do book releases, and I'm just slowly building that newsletter mailing list. And I talk a lot about sex representation. I'm I'm part of a romance writing group, and so they often have events and I try to participate in those. I try to speak on a lot of panels. I do speak on a lot of panels and I do go on a lot of podcasts. I do guest blog posts talking about sex positive representation and romance. So just getting the word out there that this is what I do also helps some people to say, oh, this is interesting. Maybe I'll read one of her books. But I think the biggest thing is some of those industry has some very popular free giveaways, you know, a romance book blast. And then book fairs. I actually sell more paperbacks than ebooks, which is unusual. A lot of people they sell ebooks more, but I actually sell more paperbacks. And I think a lot of that is I sell a lot of books at book fairs because I'm talking to people about what I do, and I think that is I think it's interesting to people. They're sort of like, oh, this is a little, something a little different. Let me let me pick up this book and give it a try.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Okay.

Romance Drama Social Media And Outrage

SPEAKER_00 17:49

I want to ask a bit about the genre of romance. And there's lately, I think the past couple of years, there's been a lot of drama happening with with the Romans and the Romance like Writers Association. And this this person gets cancelled in this case, this person gets cancers, this person is like fired this person. There's a lot of drama. And why is that? Is it and where does now the the industry stand with all this drama that's happening around the the romance genre?

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Oh, that's a really good question. I'm gonna have to think a minute on that one. I why there's so much drama, I think. I think there's a variety of reasons, but I think one is because the romance genre is the point of the romance genre is to get people to feel fiction in general. The purpose of fiction in general is to get people to feel something, right? Therapists and and and psychology professionals tell us that reading fiction can help us grow our ability to be empathetic for other people. So and romance is all about emotion, even more so. So they're emotions are high. So people are emotionally connected to a particular writer or particular story, or they feel ownership in a lot of ways of the genre and or or particular books. So I think there's just a lot of energy and passion already. And so people are passionate. I I think one of the problems, or maybe one of the reasons that there's a lot of drama is social media is an easy place to say all kinds of things that you wouldn't say to someone's face. And some people say things, and then then that's rewarded by the algorithm. I was reading something just this morning that said, like, social media rewards people that are outraged. And so if you put your outrage on social media, the algorithm will promote it. And so it appears as if all of this outrage is what's going on, but that's just what's getting the attention. So I think there's a bit of that. I'm not sure that there's as much drama in the romance industry as we might think about, because people just quietly writing the books of their heart and loving their readers and their readers loving them back doesn't get clicks on social media. So I think there's a lot of that still happening. But also I think romance is a reflection of what's happening in culture in a lot of ways. For example, romanticy and fantasy romance and paranormal and all that stuff is really hot right now and has been much, much more hot like in recent years. And I don't think it's just because of Twilight. It's it's it's stayed long past anybody, even you know, maybe remembering Twilight in some ways. I think some of that, the popularity of that is if I create a world that I can make the rules about what's right or wrong in that world, then I don't have to worry about breaking them. Because because of so much backlash, because of so much commentary around people saying that this book was racist or this book was genderist or this this book was bad for these reasons. And I'm not saying that those that's not true. I don't know if it's true or not. I'm not saying it isn't, but there's a lot of a lot of backlash about that. So it can feel like not a safe space to write a book sometimes, especially what I write semi-contemporary, which is humans in kind of the world we live in now, right? That's a scary space to write in sometimes because people could say that I'm doing something that's not appropriate, and then say lots of bad things on social media, and then everybody thinks I'm a bad person. But if I'm writing a world that that is different from this one and I've set it apart, that's a safer space to write the stories I might want that I want to write. And so that might be why that might be one of the impacts that sort of this all this energy around outrage in romance, that might be one of the consequences of that is that people are starting to create a space where they can write what they want to write, and it might not be as controversial or outrage driving. So at that, I the there's a lot of a lot of energy around romance right now. And I again I think for a variety of reasons. And one is Another one is that cultural mirror that romance sort of holds up. And the idea that romance is predominantly written by women for women, and so it's not important, which has sort of been the vibe, the feeling in culture for a long, long time, right? Well, women are getting more vocal about how that we're just not comfortable with that assumption anymore. And romance is no longer that. One of my favorite writers is Kennedy Ryan. She's a black woman. And I read her prior to 2020 and the murder of George Floyd, but I did I read one of her series after that. The series that I read after that was the Grip series. And she, that story is about a white woman and a black man in a relationship. And it's a lovely story, but what I most appreciated about it was the insight into some of the realities of an interracial relationship. I married a white man. I don't know what it's like to be in an interracial relationship. So learning about that in the time of the murder of George Floyd and all of the cultural goings on around racism was really impactful. That book was really impactful. There was a scene where the main character, the male main character, his name is Grip. I cannot remember what the main, the female's character, main character is. But Grip is driving his girlfriend's car, a Land Rover. She's white, he's black, he's driving. They get pulled over. And the conversation, he's like the police officer is walking up to the window, and Grip is, his hands are on the wheel, and he said, Don't, don't talk. Don't say anything, don't talk to them, just be quiet and make eye, you know, look at them, answer their questions, but don't offer anything extra. And she's like, Why? What are you talking about? What's the problem? And the police officer comes up and then and the scene is written from her perspective. And the police officer comes up and is talking to Grip and in a very negative way, aggressive way. And she is flabbergasted and she has this internal conversation. She's like, This is not what happens when I get pulled over. And and Grip actually had some trauma around getting pulled over when he was younger. And so his emotional reaction, his emotions are high. And anyway, the scene progresses, but that was such a visceral experience for me. I was like, oh, like, oh, this is not that I was ignorant to the realities. I had I had seen the news. I knew what was happening. I know that not all police people who pull over people of color are inappropriate. I know that's not that's not the truth. That's not what's happening, but some are. And that was it, I don't know, that was just such an impactful moment for me. So romance is no longer just this, you know, people get together and they then they have sex and then they live happily ever after in the sunset. And maybe there's some problems over here, but they all get resolved magically and easily. There's also romances that are written in real world that deal with real world problems. And that also was spoke to me and inspired me. I'd say that Kennedy Ryan's work is one of the, she's one of the writers that I've been most inspired by because I could, I saw what she did in her romance novels, the things that she said, and it was important. She the series I read before the murder of George Floyd was called The Hoop series. And the first book in that series, the heroine, is a domestic violence survivor. She's still in a domestic violence situation relationship for the first half of that book. And it is brutal what she goes through. And I saw an interview or I read an interview with Kennedy Ryan about that book, and she said that she interviewed domestic violence survivors. And while no one person experienced everything that her character did, everything that her character experienced was really experienced by someone else in real life. You know, and so that was also a moment where I was like, wow, because there's some pretty horrible things that happened to that female main character at the hand of the man that she was married to, a man that she stood up and said she was gonna love, who said he was gonna love her back. And he did these horrible things. And and it it happened to people in in the real world. And that, you know, I was just wow. So those kinds of messages, just knowing the impact that romance can have and as a reflection of the culture, I think is another reason why it's powerful.

Writing Routine Balance And Headspace

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Okay. So you wrote a lot of books. I mean, looking at your websites, how many books did you write? Just curious.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

I've written nine. I have a six book series and then I have three standalones.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Okay. Yes. And that's starting from like in what, in six years, let's say, or five years? Six years. Okay. Yes. Yes. So we're talking about what, two books a year, roughly. I mean, you're you're a prolific writer. I mean, well, six years to write. Yeah. And so what is your routine like and what's your day-to-day like as a full-time author? Um I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Initially, when I was just writing, I was writing two or three books a year. Like I I wrote my six book series in three years, but most of those, I wrote three of those books in a year and then two, and then one. So as I focused more on the other aspects of the writing job, which is having a newsletter and going to book fairs and promoting myself and and trying to find legitimate marketing opportunities that were not scammers, that started to take up more time. And then writing got slower. My ability to crank out a book got slower. My latest release, Hawaii for two, was released in July. And I just started writing the next, the next book, that just started the first book in a new series. I so usually it will take me about six months to write a book, but I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to write this one because I'm busy doing other things, doing talks. And like I said, I write guest blog posts. I'm now that I've I've gotten to the space where I'm able to get the message out more, it I'm not able to devote as much time to writing as I want to. But normally I would write on Mondays and Thursdays, and I sort of clear those days. Well, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and I sort of clear those days and just try to immerse myself in the story and the characters and write and write and write. And then I leave Tuesdays and Fridays to be more flexible kinds of days. But that hasn't, I haven't been able yet to get back to that pattern of working. I'm still working on balance, balancing the things that I need to do and then setting aside that special time to write because I do need to sort of get in the headspace of the characters. I can't, some writers can just sit down. I was reading one author, she writes in the when she's she's got like a desk thing that she can put in her car. And so she writes in the in the 15 or 20 minutes that she's waiting in line for her kid to pick up her kids at school. And I just remember thinking I would never be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Like I would never be able to do that. I can't. So I I I used to do that, yeah. I I used to do that because like that was the only thing I had. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

It's it's amazing, it's impressive. I I need to sort of immerse myself in that space and be like thinking and feeling what the characters are thinking and feeling in order to write to figure out what's gonna happen next. I do plot out my stories before I write them, but not to not to such a degree that I I I I can just jump in and in and out of the story and be effective. And maybe that's a skill I need to work on, that ability to jump in and out of the story effectively, but I'm not there yet.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Any tools you use, like writing tools like Scrivener, what what kind of tools do you use?

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Um I use I do use Scrivener,

Favorite Tools And Current Reads

SPEAKER_01 30:49

that's my primary writing tool. I it can do a lot more things than I use it for. But what I love about Scribner the most is plotting, the plotting on the side. I can kind of put the beats in that I want to follow, the plot points that I want to follow, and it really helps me stay on track. I don't kind of go off on tangents. I could not write just freeform in Word. I think that would be really difficult for me to sort of wrap my head around the whole story. But so I do use Scribner and I also use Pro Writing Aid. I use some, some of the, I don't fully use Pro Writing Aid, but there are some, their grammar, I just like their grammar checker more than Grammarly or even Microsoft Editor. I just like those better. My editor uses Grammarly, and so there's a part of me that's like, I feel good about using a different editing software because I'm gonna send it to my editor and she'll use she'll use Grammarly and she'll catch the things that I didn't catch. So but those are basically those are the two main tools I use.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Good. So what are you reading these days? What books are you reading?

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Well, I of course went back and I'm rereading the Heated Rivalry series because I watched the show and so now I I want to read this story again. I before that, I was reading a lot of books. I was reading the books by Alexis Hall, who is a gay man writing male, male, writing gay romance. And he was, I just love the way he I kind of discovered him over the summer. I'd had one of his books like on my Kindle forever. And I thought, oh, I was in the hammock one afternoon and I'm like, I'm looking for a new book to read. Oh, here's one I haven't read it yet. And I just fell in love with the way that he writes and his voice. And so I I through the fall, I was reading a lot of Alexis Hall. So I read a lot of romance, a lot of romance, but when I'm not reading romance, I I read a lot of nonfiction again about sexual health. And I'm reading a book now by Kenneth Play called Beyond Satisfied, which is a nonfiction book about sexual health. He is not a doctor, he is not a ex, you know, he's not, he doesn't have a bunch of letters after his name that make him an expert. He is, he kind of describes himself as a dude with an average size penis who felt bad about it and started to was on a journey to figure out how to be good at sex even with an average size penis, you know. And and his book is actually, I really recommend it. It's two-thirds of the way through, and I just think it's I think it's great. He's got it, he's had it reviewed by a lot of professionals, so he's got a lot of social cap social capital in the beginning, you know. Yes, this book is great. And he cites his sources very well, and he just puts it's a very approachable book about how to satisfy a woman and what his experience about being a man is his experience of being a man and trying to be good at sex in a world that tells him he's just supposed to know, and he's magically supposed to have this body. He's uh, you know, he does when he first started on his journey, he didn't have he's a personal trainer, but you know, he went is not tall and he has an average size penis, and he's there's not anything he can do about that. But culture tells us that in order to be a really good sexy man, you have to be tall and you have to have a big penis, and you have, you know, so he's living in that culture and trying to figure out what the truth is. And it's just that's why I think that's a great book. And I'm also reading a book called The Mask of Masculinity by Lewis Towes, I think, who is a former pro football player who really had sort of a crisis of dealing with being a man and all of the things that masculinity tells and patriarchy tells men about how they're supposed to be in the world. And it I love, I love men. I love reading about that experience because that in that helps me write better male characters, more deeper, vibrant male characters if I sort of understand what are some of the wounds and the struggles that men are having when they show up to an intimate relationship.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Wow. Uh so this this has been fascinating, Christina. So how can how can people reach you, buy your books? What's

Where To Buy Books And Connect

SPEAKER_00 34:51

the best place to reach you?

SPEAKER_01 34:53

The best place to reach me is through my website, which is Christinabraver.com, and that's Christina with a ch. And I have links there to where you can go to buy my books. My books are available on all the platforms, ebook platforms, and then paperback at Barnes and Noble and on Amazon. That's the best place to reach me. I am on social media, but I'm not a prolific poster on social media. If I don't have something to say, I'm probably not gonna post something. Um, so the best way to get to know me is through my website. And there is a contact me page. You can email me and connect if you want to talk more. But my website, I have a I have a blog on my website. I also have a resources tab where I post a list of my favorite sexual health resources. And so I encourage people, if they're curious, about what are some resources I could read to learn more about sexual health, check out any of the books that I list on my resources tab. You won't be sorry.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Great. So, Christina, thank you so much for joining me today. You know, we I'm sure everyone learned a lot, and hopefully they can check out your books as well. And for anyone who is listening or watching, thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Ride with Natasha and until we meet again. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for tuning in to Read and Ride with Natasha. On your host, Natasha Tiger. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to read the podcast.