S08.37: Road Trips and a Chat With Mary Kay Andrews

Summary

Fated Mates S08.37: Road Trips and a Chat With Mary Kay Andrews

Release Date: June 10, 2026
Hosts: Sarah MacLean & Jennifer Prokop
Guest: Mary Kay Andrews

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, Sarah and Jennifer are joined by bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews for a spirited conversation about road trips—in novels and in life—as well as genre, the politics of authorship, acts of community, and living with honesty online. The episode offers insights into Mary Kay’s writing journey, personal stories of loss and resilience, the transformative power of travel narratives, and recommendations for great road trip books. The hosts and Mary Kay delve into the intersections of storytelling, activism, and romance.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introducing Mary Kay Andrews: Authorship, Origins, and Genre Fluidity

• (00:01–06:55)
  • Mary Kay’s literary upbringing: Grew up with a love of reading, inspired by her mother and schoolteachers.
  • Journalism roots: Studied journalism during Watergate; became a reporter intent on “righting wrongs and fighting injustice.”
  • Transition to fiction: Secretly wrote mysteries while working at newspapers, influenced by pulp fiction like Nancy Drew, Mickey Spillane, Agatha Christie.
  • First contracts: First novel ("Every Crooked Nanny", 1992) was a cozy mystery—reflects on the gendered terminology of “cozy” as a way to separate women from men in publishing.
  • Quote [Cozy Mystery Genre]:
    • “It was probably just another sexist way to separate the boys from the girls. The boys got reviews and big contracts and… the girls could have the leftovers.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 04:57)

The Blurring of Mystery and Romance, and the Challenge of Writing Love

• (06:56–09:04)
  • Genre transitions: Started under her real name, published 10 cozy mysteries, then as “Mary Kay Andrews” wrote books blending mystery, romance, and humor.
  • Discovering romance plots: Editor pushed her to prioritize the romantic storyline, leading to her realization:
    • “Murder is difficult, but romance is really tricky. And I don’t have to tell you ladies that.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 08:47)
  • Validation of genre: Pushback from literary snobs—“are you ever gonna write a real book?”—but she stands firm:
    • “This feels real to me. And the check cleared.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 08:51)

The Personal is Political: Speaking Up Online

• (09:05–12:48, 32:32–37:41)
  • Rejecting caution: Mary Kay ignored advice to avoid politics online, instead letting her subversive streak shine through.
  • Her protagonists challenge traditional happily-ever-afters: They “find out who they are and what they want, not just if they catch a man.”
  • Depiction of race & injustice: Early on, included diverse characters in her mysteries set in Atlanta; notes how whiteness and racism were often ignored in Southern-set books by white writers.
  • Galvanized by grief:
    • Deep personal loss during COVID—her 39-year-old daughter passed due to liver failure.
    • Felt "the rage" over community COVID denial and political inaction.
    • Started speaking out online:
      • “What’s the worst that could happen? It’s already happened... I have no fucks left to give. And so I just started... walking talks.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 19:32)
  • Online activism: Despite pushback, her audience and platform grew. Publisher supports her outspokenness.
    • “It’s a nice way to cull the herd.” (Sarah MacLean, 20:53)
    • “My St. Martin’s [publishing] team is amazing. And they have said, go, go for it. The crazy thing is, my social media platform has exploded.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 21:19)
  • Readers’ reactions:
    • Some whisper agreement in public; it feels like “confessing to sodomizing poodles or something.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 32:32)
    • Her response: “This ain’t politics, lady. This is personal. Politics are not an abstract.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 25:29)

Acts of Kindness & Community

• (27:21–30:31)
  • Community support: Advocates for tangible activism (stocking little free pantries with food instead of just “Bibles”), daily walks and spreading kindness.
  • Connection through everyday acts:
    • Dog-walking stories “the schnauzer lady,” treat pockets, and building kindness one stranger at a time—highlighting community building in divided times.

On Road Trips: New Book, Research, and the Meaning of the Trope

• (38:00–55:13)
  • About her new novel “Road Trip”:
    • Estranged sisters Maeve and Therese reunite in Savannah and, propelled by a legacy (and perhaps a valuable family portrait), embark on a journey to Ireland to explore their roots and heal their rift.
    • Loosely inspired by family stories—her Irish immigrant grandmother, ancestral research, and real-life Irish art heists.
    • “After their mom… dies, her dying wish is that they go to Ireland together to research their family roots, but mostly to heal this long-established rift between the two sisters.” (Mary Kay Andrews, 42:52)
  • Research adventures:
    • Traveled through Ireland with a friend; visits to historic sites, museums, pubs—much included in her novel.
    • Fascination with stories of real-life art theft and Irish emigrants informs the plot.

Crafting Road Trips in Fiction: Structure, Arc, and Recommendations

• (53:53–74:27)
  • What makes a great road trip novel:
    • The journey forces characters into the unfamiliar—stripped of comfort and defenses.
    • Road trips = “forced proximity,” pushing characters to confront conflict and ultimately experience radical change.
    • Editor’s grounding questions: “Who are they? What do they want? What’s keeping them from getting what they want? And how are they changed by the end of the book?” (Mary Kay Andrews, 55:00)
  • Genre connections:
    • Romance, fantasy (portal fantasy), and even family dramas make powerful use of this trope to spur character transformation.
    • Road trips are “the purest, most distilled version” of stories of change.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Writing & Genre:

  • "Murder is difficult, but romance is really tricky." — Mary Kay Andrews [08:47]
  • "Murder is in my DNA… it's the investigative journalism of it all." — Mary Kay Andrews [06:55]
  • "This feels real to me. And the check cleared." — Mary Kay Andrews [08:51]

• On Being Political as a Public Figure:

  • "I have a subversive streak. If you look at the books I admired, those books gave women permission to ask for what they wanted." — Mary Kay Andrews [12:48]
  • "What’s the worst that could happen? It’s already happened… I have no fucks left to give." — Mary Kay Andrews [19:32]
  • "It's a nice way to cull the herd." — Sarah MacLean [20:53]
  • "This ain’t politics, lady. This is personal." — Mary Kay Andrews [25:29]

• On Community and Change:

  • "I want everyone to have fairness. I want everyone to have an equal shot." — Mary Kay Andrews [15:14]
  • "Kindness ruled the day. But a lot of people in that park also say, 'Oh, my god, I saw your What the Actual Fuck... I'm on the same page.'" — Mary Kay Andrews [31:39]

• On Road Trips—Fictional and Real:

  • "If your career is long enough, you land yourself into a road trip story because there’s something really compelling about the story of the journey to… push-pull between journey and destination." — Sarah MacLean [53:55]
  • "The force proximity part of a road trip is such a great way for characters to reveal themselves and to—when one character finds out who they are, then it's a catharsis for the other character." — Mary Kay Andrews [74:27]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------|--------------| | Introducing Mary Kay Andrews / Early Influences | 00:01–06:55 | | Mystery, Romance, and Genre Crossover | 06:55–09:04 | | The Politics of Authorship | 09:05–12:48 | | Social Activism, Personal Loss | 12:48–26:00 | | On Being Outspoken Online | 20:53–21:39 | | Community, Kindness, Acts of Solidarity| 27:21–30:31 | | Writing "Road Trip"—Research, Themes | 38:00–53:53 | | Road Trip as Structure / Recommendations | 53:53–74:27 |

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Books, Authors & Recommendations Mentioned

• Mary Kay Andrews
  • Every Crooked Nanny (1992)
  • Hissy Fit
  • Spring Fever
  • Save the Date
  • New: Road Trip
• Recommended Road Trip Novels
  • The Mostly True Adventures of Tanner & Louise, Colleen Oakley
  • This Tender Land, William Kent Kruger
  • The Road to Tender Hearts, Annie Hartnett
  • Never Mind the Mistletoe, Louisa Darling (historical romance novella)
  • This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, Ilona Andrews (portal fantasy)
• Classic Inspirations
  • Huck Finn, Mark Twain
  • Odyssey, Homer
  • Thelma & Louise (film)

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Thematic Highlights

• Road Trips as Transformation:
  Essential to both narrative and character—road trips act as catalysts for change, reconciliation, self-discovery, and force characters out of stasis.

• Using One’s Platform Purposefully:
  Mary Kay champions speaking truths online, tying personal experience to broader political movements, and refusing to let the fear of losing readers silence her moral stance.

• Romance & Justice:
  The discussion underscores romance fiction’s power to challenge patriarchy, amplify underrepresented voices, and demand fairness.

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Closing Notes

Mary Kay Andrews closes the episode by sharing her social media handles (MaryKayAndrews on Instagram and Facebook, more political content on Threads), and touting her tour with Sarah MacLean. The episode concludes with the hosts encouraging listeners to seek life-changing road trips (real or fictional) and to join the Fated Mates community for more bookish discussion.

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For more:

• Find Mary Kay Andrews online at marykayandrews.com
• Listen to Fated Mates every Wednesday
• Join the Fated Mates Patreon & Discord for deeper romance conversations

Transcript

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, it's a Wednesday, so.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Of course it is a Wednesday. We have a very special guest with

[Sarah MacLean]

us for what the fuck Wednesday. Fated Mates Extravaganza, Mary Kay Andrews. We are over the moon to have you with us.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Well, I'm over the moon. Over the. Over the moon to be with you guys.

[Sarah MacLean]

What you don't know, Mary Kay, is that Jen and I have a group chat with some other people and we spend a lot of time talking about how much we want to be you when we grow up.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh, my God, that's true. You are.

[Sarah MacLean]

You are a main character.

[Jennifer Prokup]

An important supporting role is played by Mary Kay in our group. Text.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I want in on. I want in on that text chain. Stop. Stop with the flattery. I'm getting the big hands.

[Sarah MacLean]

Anytime you're ever like, wow, I feel great today, just know that it's because we're talking about you somewh. Okay, for those people who don't know, this is Fated mates, I'm Sarah MacLaine. I read romance novels and I write them.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And I'm Jennifer Prokup, a romance reader and editor. And today we're here with Mary Kay Andrews, who is.

[Sarah MacLean]

You've been writing for so long, you've been. You write all sorts of things, and

[Jennifer Prokup]

I wonder if you could talk a little bit.

[Sarah MacLean]

Let's talk. Let's start with the writing, and then we'll sort of back into all the other ways that you are Also extremely cool.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Well, you know, I think I. I've been a writer my whole life. I was a reader, was reading before first grade, and I had an amazing shout out to all the teachers out there. Major shout out to teachers out there. Teachers who encourage reading and the love of reading and the love of language. My mother was a big reader. I went to journalism school. I was always going to be a newspaper reporter. I was actually in journalism school. I'm so old that I was in journalism school when Watergate happened.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh, wow.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

So I didn't go to journalism school because of it. Watergate sort of, I think, cemented my plan to go out and right wrongs and fight injustice. And so I was a newspaper reporter for 14 years. And then newspapers changed. Did they not ask my opinion about that?

[Jennifer Prokup]

They didn't ask any of our opinions about it.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Did they not? And it's only gotten worse. So I started writing in secret. I wrote a mystery because I'd always been a mystery reader. I mean, I. I grew up on a bizarre elixir of Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew, Mickey Spillane and Agatha Christie.

[Sarah MacLean]

Okay. Yeah.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

My grandfather loved pulp fiction and every Sunday after we went to their house for dinner, he would hand my mother a grocery sack full of, of pulp fiction novels. Ellery Queen, nice. Mickey Spillane. And gosh, who else was in that bag? All the, all the. Oh, Earl, Stanley Garner, Harry Mason.

[Sarah MacLean]

Those, those grocery bags full of books really instilled themselves in a lot of us from our, our ancestors.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I really feel like we should just like bring that back. Right? Like, maybe we should just all like. You know how like there are like guerrilla gardeners where you just like throw a bunch of seeds into like an empty lot so that, that, you know what I mean? Like, my colleague at work, he was like, showed me his like bag of seeds. He like rides around the city and throws them. And I was, maybe we should just bring that back, but with like bags of books.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, well, it's called a little free library.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It is, it is, it's true. But it just doesn't seem as dramatic.

[Sarah MacLean]

Less mysterious, but exactly true. That.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

And you know, my grandfather's tastes were heavily curated towards that Persona. So I did newspapers and I started writing in secret. I wrote a mystery. Didn't sell. I wrote a second mystery and based on just five chapters, I got an agent in a two book contract with

[Sarah MacLean]

HarperCollins and there it began.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, my first book, Every Crooked Nanny, was what we call a cozy mystery. And that came out in 1992, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

[Sarah MacLean]

As my 12 year old likes to say, the 1900s.

[Jennifer Prokup]

So wrong. It's so wrong.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Oh, the cruelty.

[Sarah MacLean]

So I guess so you said it's what we call a cozy mystery. Did we call it cozy mystery then or was it just sort of. Did that genre exist?

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, the genre definitely existed. You know, I think it was probably just another sexist way to separate the women from the boys from the girls. The boys got reviews and big contracts and they could write what they wanted and the girls could have the leftovers. But I will say that I was really heavily influenced by Sue Grafton.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh yeah.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

And, and Marcia Muller and Sarah Paretsky. And so my books were not really as cozy maybe as they should have been. There was murder, there was a little sex. Not, you know, I sort of kept the crime scene tape around the bedroom door, mostly because my father was still alive when I started and I grew up Irish Catholic and I couldn't stand the idea of my father tisking over reading a sex scene that I had written.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah, so you have always, since then, written mystery?

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, well, I've written some rom Coms. I wrote a book which turned out to be my breakthrough novel called Hissy Fit. And that there's a little mystery in there, but it's mostly. It's mostly a straight up rom com. And I wrote Spring Fever is also a rom com and another one, Save the Date. So, you know, I've always had humor and some element of romance in the books, but I guess because I've got, you know, murder in my DNA.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, it's the investigative journalism of it all, probably.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Probably, yeah.

[Jennifer Prokup]

What caused. I mean, so when you think about like that transition from kind of cozy mystery to like, the. More rom com, what was it that you as a writer were excited about when it came to like sort of making that switch, or was it just for fun?

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I think it was just a natural transition for me. I, you know, I started writing under my real name, which is Kathy Hogan Trojak. And So I did 10 mysteries under my real name, and they were cozy's. And then I had an idea for a book that was different. And so I adopted the pen name Mary Kay Andrews. And that first Mary. Mary Kay Andrews book I thought was a straight up mystery, that was Savannah Blues. And I handed it into my longtime editor and she called me up and she said, you're not. I like it, but you're not done. I'm like, well, what do you mean I'm not done? I mean, I told you who the murderer was and there was. I mean, come on, I told you who done it. And she said, yeah, but no one cares. What they really want to know is, does the. Your protagonist end up with this hot chef? I mean, and I said, you know, I.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Real mystery was that one, right?

[Sarah MacLean]

She.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I said, I don't know. And she said, well, you need to go find out. And I didn't think I knew how to write a romance plot, you know, because I was used to killing people. Murdery stuff. And so what I discovered is that murder, murder is difficult, but romance is really tricky. And I don't have to tell you ladies that.

[Jennifer Prokup]

No, you don't tell the world.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, I always used to love it when people say, gosh, I really like your books. Are you ever gonna write a real book? You know what it felt. This feels real to me. And the check cleared. So.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Exactly.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I'm good.

[Sarah MacLean]

You can't see the, like, tears and the blood.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

So as the career, as your career progresses. So you are. You're writing. I mean, you're incredibly prolific. You've written in both the 1900s and the current century. And then I want to get into the sort of public face of Mary Kay Andrews. Because when I started writing romance or writing in general, I was sort of told, I was cautioned by many people that if I were political online, I would be alienating readers and I would ruin my career. And I mean, this wasn't from my publisher. This was from other authors who had been around the block and many, many of whom are kind of of that sort of. They were men and of a generation that I really admired and took to heart everything that they told me.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

But you seem to not agree with that. And we love that here at Faded Mates.

[Jennifer Prokup]

This week's episode of Fated Mates is brought to you by Edward Underhill, author of the House of Now and Then.

[Sarah MacLean]

I'm really into all these romances that are coming up that are like speculative or have a little bit of magical realism, and this one is perfect for Summer. Harlow, our hero, is a trans man who can use a break. His academic future is over, his relationship with his long term boyfriend Jackson is over. And just when he thinks he has hit just bottom, he receives news that a suspiciously cheap summer rental on Cape Cod is available to him. Which, if you know anything about Cape Cod in the summer, means it. It is definitely suspicious he gets there. It is this gorgeous, beautiful, picturesque seaside cottage. And Harlow is alarmed though, when he gets inside to discover that it is not an empty cottage. Inside he finds a discouraging former professor in the living room, his father making coffee in the kitchen, a handsome young repairman fixing things in the bedroom. That sounds promising. And worst of all, J is in the bathroom. None of these people will leave. No one who comes into the house can see them and none of them will leave him alone. So the house isn't just the only is the isn't the only thing that Harlow's dealing with for the summer? As the whole town fills with tourists, there are a lot of secrets that come to pass that come out during both inside and outside of the house. And that mysterious repairman from the bedroom, he starts turning up everywhere. The question is, can Harlow let the past go long enough to listen and plan for the future?

[Jennifer Prokup]

Ooh, exciting. So if you are interested in this small town slow burn, magical realism, romance, just in time for pride, this is the book for you. It is available in print, ebook and audio and if your podcast app supports it, you can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to buy the book. Thanks to Edward Underhill for sponsoring this week's episod talk A little bit about

[Sarah MacLean]

how Mary Kay becomes the hundreds of thousands of followers on the Internet. Keeping up with you, being inspired by you to live in this world that we have today.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Well, I think part of it is that maybe it's the former journalist in me, but I think I have a subversive streak. And I think if you look at the kinds of books that I admired, and even in, you know, in. In the rom coms I was reading when I was sort of. Sort of segueing from straight mystery to. To some hybrid, I was reading Jenny Crusi, Jennifer Cruzy, we love her. And I was. And I was reading Susan Isaacs. And there is there. Those books gave women permission to ask for what they wanted. And I didn't realize that at the time that that was why. I mean, they were funny and they were frank and. And I like that. And I think I tried to bring that out and in my own writing and just decided that my fictional protagonists, their happiness is not. Is not prescribed by do they catch a Man. Their happiness is discovered when they find out who they are and what they want and how to get what they want along the way. And so, you know, I was. I went on writing like that. And when I was writing the mysteries, I wrote a mystery series, the Callahan Gary mystery series, set in Atlanta. And, you know, Atlanta is a multiracial city, so I had black. I had black people in my books and black cops and black bad guys and black good guys, and. And I wondered when I was being published why more books set in the south never addressed any kind of racism at all. Not the books by white writers.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Right.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

By women writers. Yeah. Now that has changed so dramatically in the past, I don't know, 20, 25 years, so. And also I was interested and. And always have been interested in. In injustice. A friend I met at a writing workshop when I. When I was first getting published, we took a writer's workshop with Sue Grafton, actually, who was amazing. And we were talking, and she said something about, God, what is with you and fairness? And I said, I want fairness. I want everyone to have fairness. I want everyone to have an equal shot. And she just thought. She just said, interesting. And so I guess during the first Trump administration, I was horrified by what was going on and almost. I don't know if I was paralyzed by it, but I was deeply, deeply upset about it. And, you know, when Hillary ran, I thought, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna phone bank. Yeah, I'm gonna door knock. I'm going to donate to candidates, and I'll Never forget the morning.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah, it was a terrible morning.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I went to a, I went to a victory party in, in Decatur, which is the nearest town of any size to where I live with my daughter. And we were watching the election returns and I can remember that moment. And we just went home and I still have, I still have the T shirt hanging in my closet that said Madam President. Yeah. And I'm never going to get rid of it. Never. And then, you know, Kamala, same thing. I did not, I did not door knock for Kamala. But I did do other things and I contributed and I contributed to, to women candidates and progressive candidates. And then my life changed during COVID you may know, we lost my 39 year old daughter Katie to liver failure. Covid induced liver failure. She was 39. And she was left with her two kids. Were, they're 16 and 14 now, so they were 12 and 10 when their mom died. And all during that Covid, she got Covid and her doctor couldn't see her because everything, you couldn't get in to see a doctor. And she, everyone else, you know, after a few weeks or days, whatever, everybody else was getting better, but she was getting worse. And, but she couldn't get in to see her doctor. And finally I said, katie, I, I don't care if you see that doctor, you've got to see a doctor. So she called her doctor and the doctor said, okay, we'll go have blood work done. And the next day her doctor called her and said, go to the er, you're in urine liver failure.

[Jennifer Prokup]

So

[Mary Kay Andrews]

she was a candidate for a liver transplant, but she got covet again and didn't make it. And so I think that galvanized me. And I know, you know, the thing about people say, what's the worst that could happen? It's already happened. It's already happened. I buried my child. I had to tell my grandchildren, your mom isn't coming home. She's not coming home. And during that whole process, I can remember being in a supermarket here in Atlanta and seeing one of my neighbors that had the big Trump sign out front and she's walking around the grocery store without a mask on. And the rage within me, I can still feel the burn. And so I just thought, you know what? I have to, I have to speak out and I have to, I have to make myself vulnerable. Because me keeping my sorrow and my grief and my rage inside helps no one. Helps no one. And I think that sort of pushed me down the road. And then when he got elected again, I just said, what's the worst that can happen? That's already happened. And literally I have no fucks left to give. And so I just started, I was calling them walking talks. I would just walk and say what I thought about what was going on in this country. And I knew other writers who were saying, you know, don't do that. And I was getting pushed back from my social media. I'm never buying another of your books and I'm unfollowing you and I'm telling all my friends and, and then I thought, I don't care.

[Sarah MacLean]

It's a nice way to call the herd.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I, I, I'll never forget. I've had a couple, a couple people say, I'm, I'm telling your publisher. Do they understand who they're publishing? And I'm like, they love it.

[Sarah MacLean]

They, they're aware of me.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

My, my, the, my St. Martin's team is amazing. And they have said, go, Go for it. Yeah. And the crazy thing is, it's. My social media platform has exploded, of

[Sarah MacLean]

course, and I'm sure and readers have found you because of it.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

That's what, that's what they tell me. And it's the weirdest feeling. I'll be out.

[Sarah MacLean]

We were together and you were recognized in Decatur.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah. At a restaurant. It happens. I'm always startled when it happens. Yesterday I was, I was leaving an estate sale. Oops.

[Sarah MacLean]

Too. Because my other favorite of your posts,

[Mary Kay Andrews]

a woman stops me and she goes, you're her. And I'm like, I don't know which one. Oh, no, the TikTok lady. I'm like, I mean, I have, I have somebody that helps put me on TikTok because I don't know how to tick tock. I can, I, I can Instagram and Facebook all day. But she goes, oh, I, yes, you're on Instagram. I love you. And I love, I love what you say about politics and I love your books and I love, you know, what you, you know, I love what you find at estate sales. Then get this. I'm at this gigantic warehouse sale Thursday. This really ritzy clothing brand they have once a year. I mean, there were a thousand people in this warehouse and there were. The line for dressing rooms was too long. So me and some other ladies went behind a wall of clothes racks and we're stripping down to our skivvies.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Honey.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Sure.

[Sarah MacLean]

You got in, my son.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Listen, you, I'm in my sports bra, I'm in my, my stretched out ballet panties, and I'm trying on stuff. And a couple Ladies, like, oh, my God. Mary Kay. Andrew, I love. I love your Instagram. And I'm like. And of course, I'm like, hey, does this dress. Is this dress too Little House on the Prairie, right? I was trying on a green dress and I'm like, is this giving scrubs vibe? And they're like, yeah, kind of. So the. I love the Sisterhood of Women going, yeah, don't buy that.

[Sarah MacLean]

But also, I love your books.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Fine.

[Jennifer Prokup]

No, I think the thing that for me feels really powerful is about, like, your videos and just is. I mean, clearly, like, you know, I mean, I'm not an author, but like our podcast, we've like decided, like, we don't care if you know, what we say all the time is like, this podcast is free. Like, you don't have to listen to it if you don't want to hear about what we think about how the world works and like, our part in trying to make it better. But I think there's so many people who I just, you know, like, I was definitely raised. It was like, you know, like, we don't talk about that or like even sort of more pernicious to me is this sort of thing now, which is like, I'm expected. It feels right to sort of just believe that this is like, just like a normal. Like a normal difference of opinion, right when, like, look. And I can't pretend. I just, I can't. You know, if you want to bring it up with me, like, be prepared for like just full barrel rage. Because this, it is so awful. And I think it's very bracing and freeing for me to sort of realize, like, what we want is to find other people who, like, feel the same outrage and express it and, you know, and realize like the. Keep politics out of it or, you know, this doesn't really matter. This is, you know, like, these decisions that people make to vote a certain way don't actually. I don't want to hear that they actually have an impact on you or your life or the lives of children all over the world or the lives of people who are sick or, you know, of all of us. Right. And I think that's the part that I. That I love is it's just like a real model for like. No, that is what keeps things the same. Yeah, right.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

You know, on my most recent, with the actual fuck Wednesday, some woman was. I come here for. To escape, for the enjoyment of books. This is not what I came here for. Politics. And I said, this ain't politics, lady. This is personal. Yes, politics are Not. Politics are not an abstract. Politics are not an abstract. When you see there's a little, a little free pantry not far from my house. And my husband and I try to make a habit of, of putting in canned goods and hygiene items and stu like that. Oh, gosh, last year I was there loading it up, and this old guy in a pickup pulls over and he's. He's. I. I don't know if I had on a T shirt that told him, I don't know. He goes off, he said, what are you putting in there? I'm. So I got some canned goods and some deodorant and some, you know, cereal. He said, I'm putting Bibles in there. Oh, putting. I'm putting in Bibles because hungry people need Jesus.

[Jennifer Prokup]

You need Jesus, sir?

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I said, okay.

[Sarah MacLean]

And he's heard of him, though, I think.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I don't think they need the book. They.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

He said, I bet, I bet you don't do that. And I said, don't start with me, mister.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh, my God.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

God, I'm just like you. You could do what you want. But I think Jesus said to feed hungry people. So that's what I'm gonna do. And, and that's, you know, so that's what I do. I. I put canned goods and little free pantries. And

[Sarah MacLean]

this week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Christina Forest, author of the Summer Girlfriend.

[Jennifer Prokup]

So along with having the best cover, this book also sounds like it has the best summer plot. So Noelle Lewis doesn't have time for long walks on the beach, brunch with the girls, or summer vacations because she has to save every possible dollar in order to be able to afford to go back to college. So she's recently been laid off from her bookselling gig. And that means, like, the only job she really has left now is serving as stand in Bridesma, which is, I bet, full of great stories. So that's not quite enough, though she's still not gonna really have enough to go back in the fall. And so then a perfect but unconventional opportunity arises with Jeremiah Smith ii. Now, Jeremiah once was just like a really, like, kind of wild, fun loving rich kid. But ever since his grandfather's death, Jeremiah's really been trying to clean up his act. But his family has really been pressing him to come for the summer to their, like, summer house in Hart Beach, New Jersey. But this is like, lots of painful memories for him are there? And so in order. So he's like, okay, I'm just gonna tell them I have plans with my girlfriend. But of course the family wants him to bring said girlfriend and girlfriend does not exist. So after a chance meeting, Jeremiah hires Noelle to be a stand in girlfriend for the weekend. She could use the money. This'll get her over the hump and get her back to. It'll be quick and easy. But as it turns out, Jeremiah's family is so lovely. Jeremiah is hot, handsome and they are having a great time. And soon their weekend agreement turns into an entire summer. But what's gonna happen once everything you know is sort of revealed summer comes to an end. Is it sink or swim for these two lovers?

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, if you would like to find out if it is sink or swim for these two lovers, then you can read this contemporary black romance with us. Slow Burn and A He Falls first and Hard Hero right now in print, ebook or audiobook. If your podcasting app supports it. You can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to buy the book. Thanks to Christina Forrest for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Right after the election last year, I woke up so depressed and I was like, what am I going to do to keep my morale up? Sure. And I have been on this health kick, whatever you want to call it, for two years. I started taking Zepbound two years ago and a lot of it has been walking. I walk at least four miles a day every single day. And so I walk in a park near my house and I thought, what can I do? All right, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to smile to strangers and if they have a dog, I'm going to ask them if I can pet their dog and what their dog's name is. And so now I'm the crazy dog lady. I have pockets of treats.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I said, I bet you have treat pockets.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I have pockets of treats. I know the dog's names, they know me, some of the owners, including the schnauzer lady. Now, the schnauzer lady has short cropped gray hair and looks remarkably like her miniature schnauzer. And for a straight year, she would pass me walking in the park and glare at me and the dog. She'd have to yank the dog away from me. Like the dog was like, I would like to bite you, but you know, I'm still making the walking my laps around the park. And a couple weeks ago she said the dog came over to me and I said, can I give her a treat? She goes, oh yeah. And. And she told me her name. And she said and told me the dog's Name is Liebchen, which I find hilarious. Huh. And now we're friends. The schnauzer lady and I are friends because kindness ruled the day. But a lot of people in that park also say, oh, my God, I saw your what the actual. I'm on the same page. I'm not.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Great. Good.

[Sarah MacLean]

I think that that's part of the

[Jennifer Prokup]

joy of what the actual fuck.

[Sarah MacLean]

And other. Whenever. Anybody who you don't immediately expect to be political is, like, publicly political. And there is a sense of not only relief. Right. This sort of knowledge, like, okay, we're on the same team. We're sharing our frustrations, but there is also a sense of, oh, well, since she's able to speak about it publicly, I can also try speaking about it publicly. And you are really in a place. You're in Georgia, and it's. I mean, I'm sure you meet every day, you come across people who disagree with you and people who stay silent because they're afraid of that disagreement.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah. I can't tell you how often women come up to me, almost whisper. And they're women in their 50s and older usually, and they sort of whisper, I love your books, and I really, really love what you say on Instagram. Like, it's like they're confessing to, I don't know, sodomizing poodles or something. I don't know. But they.

[Jennifer Prokup]

They.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

It's like they think it's a scandal that they. That they agree with me. And so.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

And I always say, well, thank you. I'm so glad to find, as Anne of Green Gables would say, a kindred spirit.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. I mean, it is interesting always to me, too, when people come, you know, arrive in your comments and say, well, I'm not reading your books anymore. I always sort of think, well, they never read my books to begin with, because if they had, and in your case, too, if they'd. Even. If they'd ever read a Mary Kay Andrews book, they would know.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

My daughter used to say, mom, those people don't read your books. They shoplift them.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, I mean, it's such a. I mean, it is a joy to come across your posts, you know, not because it's a big bummer that the posts have to exist, but there is always a sense of, like, hope that somebody else is also. Is also feeling the feelings and raging. And, you know, we are so grateful to you for your voice.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Well, you know, I. My husband and I are such old fogies. We watch Jeopardy. Every night. And recently, Ken Jennings, who you may know Is the host posted something political, amazing. And I'm like, this is a smart guy. I believe he is or was a Mormon. I could be wrong about that. And then they had recently had a guy, a champion. His name was Jamie, Jamie Ding, who is. I think he's Chinese. That's a Chinese name. And he posted something about immigration. He used his voice to say, so speak out. And I thought, yes, yes, this, this is what the Jeopardy. Generation, people my age, our generation who are home, for them to hear, you know, someone I'm sure they admire say, we think this is wrong. Maybe that's the start of people examining their own belief system and, and saying to themselves, huh, maybe, maybe I don't agree with that. Maybe it's okay for me to think that putting children in cages is wrong. Yeah.

[Jennifer Prokup]

There's so much to be. There's so many other things. Right. I mean, that's the part too, like the, the exhaustion of the. The daily outrages. Right. The way that, like, society. And listen, I'm not a person who would say, like, this isn't who we are. We've been this way for a long time. But to see it sort of unraveling, to see the fact that, like, you know, I think a lot about, like, you know, girls now have less rights than we did, than I did growing up. Right. And to see the way that this is happening feels like sort of. It's, you know, it just feels so demoralizing and sad and it's so easy to feel frozen or just like nothing can be done. And seeing other people do things right and speak out and say things feels like a lifeline. Like someone saying, like, you're not alone in there. And if we work, you know, that all change that has ever happened in the world was done by people who felt the way we did and still thought, like, I have to try and do something to make it better and right. Like building community and being a part of your community is really like the, the, the first way that it happens.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah. I think using. Using your platform. What kind of a hypocrite would I be if I wrote the books I write and kept it to myself for fear of not selling a lousy book? People are like, well, why do you have to say that? Because I believe it. And I won't be a hypocrite. I won't. I am not going to pander to people just to sell a book. You know, it's like, I got my money.

[Sarah MacLean]

I mean, I think there really also is the piece of. It matters more I mean, it really ultimately does like you. And, you know, any one of us can. Can walk away from our public platform and, you know, find something else to do, you know, if our.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah. And, you know, I think part of being a successful white woman of my time and place, it's my responsibility.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yes.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

It's my responsibility to look around me and to see what difference. What a difference I can make. Otherwise, what's the point of any of it? Yeah.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah. Well,

[Sarah MacLean]

let's get into how you put it into the books, because right now, I mean, so Jen and I. So this episode is about road trips because you have a new book out, Road Trip. And I think there's something really special about road trips in the sense that they teach us about other people and about the world and about ourselves. And about ourselves, but they give us a lens on a different kind of world. And I wonder if you could talk. First let's talk about the new book, and then let's talk about what a road trip means.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah. So the. The new book is the. It's the story of two estranged sisters. They've grown up in Savannah, Georgia, a place that I've known and loved for many years. My husband and I moved there as newlyweds, and I worked for the newspaper there. And for the first time in my life, when I moved to Savannah, I was an outsider, and people let me know I was an outsider, which is a great thing to experience if you're a. If you're a writer.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Because people let you know that you don't know this, and then you're. You have your nose pressed up against the glass, and lots of times you see things that other people can't see. So the book starts in Savannah with these two estranged sister. Maeve is the younger sister, the responsible sister. She teaches English at a university. She is a. She's never married. And she's been her mom's caregiver for her mom's last illness. And her older sister, Therese is the prodigal daughter. She's an itinerant, not very successful actress and their mother. And they've been estranged for some time. Maeve resents Therese being able to go off and live her life and do her thing. And Therese rightfully resents Maeve being the martyr, Saint Maeve, rubbing it in her face that I'm the one that stayed home. I'm the one that took care of mom. I'm the one that makes sure, you know, she took her meds. And after her mom, their mom, her name is Mary Helen. And she's loosely modeled on my mother, who was Helen Sue. And Mary Helen is a fabulist. And that's a nice way to say she lies. And my mother loved to make up a story. Just loved. And you would. If we were kids, we're like, oh, you were in the Miss America pageant? Yes, I was not in the Miss America pageant.

[Sarah MacLean]

And did she keep them going, like,

[Jennifer Prokup]

for her whole life?

[Sarah MacLean]

Like, was she in the Miss America pageant forever? Or was it.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

No, no, no. For that moment, as soon as we were old enough, we were like, mom, no, you weren't. You were. You rode on a float in the Festival of States parade. Cool. You were not the same. And also, there is no such thing as a rocket pack that will fly my children with rockets. Which she told my children one year when they were very small. I'm going to get you a rocket pack for Christmas, and then you can fly. Anyway, Mary Helen was kind of a fabulous. And. And there's a portrait then, and it's a very working class Irish Catholic family. And there's this portrait over their living room mantle of this very grand, elegant lady. And their mother has always said, this is your ancestor. And she is a member of Anglo Irish aristocracy, Lady Geraldine. And it's by a very famous artist, and it's. It's priceless. And of course, the two sisters, once they get older, they're like, sure, mom, right. Mary Helen dies, and Therese is on her way home for the funeral, and she picks up a newspaper, the New York Times, with an article about a portrait that just sold at auction for $1.2 million. And it's their portrait. It's Lady Geraldine. And so when she gets to Savannah on the Greyhound bus, she tells her sister, hey, look at this. And her sister says, well, yeah, we have the copy, obviously. But this starts them down a rabbit hole of trying to find out if their portrait actually is real. And then they find out that their mother has left them a rusty coffee can full of cash. And her dying wish is that they go to Ireland together to research their family roots, but mostly to heal this long established rift between the two sisters.

[Sarah MacLean]

So they set off on this journey. And you write a pretty classic road trip through Ireland.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yes.

[Sarah MacLean]

And can you talk a little bit? Let's talk first about. Did you do this road trip yourself? Have you like. Did you.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Did you walk the walk?

[Sarah MacLean]

Walk the path?

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I did do the road trip, and it was tax deductible, which is so awesome. I had been only to Dublin. And I should preface this by saying my Father's parents were right off the boat from Ireland. My grandmother, we don't know a whole lot about my grandfather's journey, but my grandmother, at the age of 20, she'd been orphaned and raised by her grandfather, who was a farmer in Armagh in Western Ireland. And she came over on a ship called the Cedric. It sailed out of Cob at that point, I think Cobe was then called Queenstown on the west coast of Ireland. And the Cedric was a White Star Line ship. And the White Star Line, some people may. May know that that's the Titanic. And the Titanic's actual. Its last port of call was at. Was at Cobe. And that's deeply ironic thing is that when I toured the museum, there's a museum of the Irish immigrant in Co, and there's a big Titanic exhibit. And you learn that ironically there were people who got on the ship in Cob. Now a few got off, but more got on and of course to die. So, yeah, I. And I'd always wondered about my grandmother. She didn't like to talk about the. She. I would always. I was fascinated. She lived in. On the south side of Chicago where my father was raised, and she never wanted to talk about it. She said those were hard times. I knew that she came over with a sister and she came over with nothing. Her. Her fare had been paid for by a family that she eventually went to work, work with four. She was a maid. She was kitchen maid because nice families wouldn't have Irish girls at the front of the house. And so her story always. I was always fascinated with what could her story have been. And my cousins had done some ancestry.com stuff. So we knew about the ship and I'd seen the. The ship's manifest with her name on it. And I sort of started with that. I started her point of departure and her. Her arrival in Ellis island. And then I just made it up. But I did, you know, the research was fun. I'd been to the Tenement Museum on the Lower east side of New York, and it's fascinating.

[Sarah MacLean]

That is one of our best museums, I think, think if anybody's interested in this kind of story, if you come to New York, don't miss the Tenement Museum.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

So my friend and I, who, Who has driven in Europe, that was key. My friend Susan Kelleher said, yes, I will go and I will drive, and I'm like, done. And so we sort of mapped out this trip and we wanted Una Guinness. Her estate was left to her son, who was sort of the bad seed. And he ended up running, I think a big drinker and he ran through I think all the family money and started auctioning off art and antiques from the estate. And so the name of the estate, her estate was called Lugala L U G G H A L A and it's not open to the public. So we went to several other places including this estate called Rossborough House. And at Rossborough House my friend and I were touring the mansion. We were staying in a little inn on the property and I think the house is owned by the, the National Trust. And we walked into a portrait gallery and the tour guide said, you know, these, these, these, you know, very wealthy Anglo Irish family and of course some of the most valuable paintings were moved. The owner of the estate donated them to the National Gallery after the robbery. And I went, what? Hello?

[Sarah MacLean]

And Mary Kay Andrews came online.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Y hello? Robbery? Yes, there. It's the most incredible story there. The true story is that in the 1970s there was this woman from a very well to do British family and she was a rebel. She wanted to go to university and study chemistry. But her father of course said nice, nice women don't do that. No, you can't do that. And so she cut a deal with him. She said to him, I'll go to university. Oh. He wanted her to make her debut and she didn't want to. And he said, well if you make your, you make your debut you can go to the university and go to Oxford and study chemistry. She did. And while she was at Oxford she got radicalized. She fell in with an IRA cell. Amazing hat and I a lover.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Good for her.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

And they ended up in Dublin and they cook up this plot, this is during the troubles with all the IRA bombings and stuff. And they cook up a plot to rob a an estate well known for its very famous art collection. And they're going to ransom the art to pay to get their buddies out of their buddies had bombed a post office in Belfast, sure as one does. And we'll give you the art back

[Sarah MacLean]

if you let our guys out.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

That was the plan. It was sort of a gang that couldn't shoot straight.

[Sarah MacLean]

Story in real life, that's an even trade.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, I mean in real life. In real life they got caught just a few days later. The I, they found the art stashed in a house that the gang had rented up in the mountains near Wicklow. And all the art in real life was discovered. And the heiress, her name was Rose, I can't remember last name. She went to prison, had her lover's baby in prison.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh, scandal.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

But, you know, that's. As you know, Sarah, yourself, once you. Once you get down doing that research, the most amazing stuff you didn't plan on happens.

[Sarah MacLean]

You can't come up. You can't even imagine something that hasn't happened in real life. I mean, it was.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

It was such a gift.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah, perfect. And then.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, and so we did that. We went to Cork. My friend Susan said we have to find a bar, a pub, and listen to traditional Irish music, which was fabulous. You know, there's tiny little pub still had the Christmas lights on and everybody squeezed in there, and the Irish music is playing and people are singing and. And that ended up being a scene in the novel. So, yeah, as the Ephron sister's mother famously said, it's all material.

[Sarah MacLean]

This week's episode of Fate of Mates is sponsored by Little, Brown and Company, publishers of Emily Adrian's Seduction Theory.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Okay, so everybody, this is a book of Litvik, but I really interested in it, and I have it in hardback because it is a book to me that's like, kind of romance adjacent, like, through the Looking Glass of what? How, like, sort of Litvik handles, like, what I consider to be, like, romance topics. So in this case, Simone and Ethan are both professors at Edwards University, but Simone is, like, the star. She is a campus sex icon. She's a renowned scholar, right? And her husband, Ethan is less glamorous and ostensibly devoted to her until essentially everyone finds out that Ethan has slept with the department's administrative assistant, Abigail, and, like, essentially, their faith in their relationship is really rattled. So Ethan is away for the summer. While Simone has some secrets of her own, she grows very close to her advisee, a graduate student named Roberta Robbie Green. And in Robbie, Simone finds a new running partner, a confidant and a disciple. Or so she believes. But behind Simone' back, Robbie has been fictionalizing her mentor's marriage in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis. So basically, she was so determined to tell her version of the story that she painted this sort of portrait of Simone, Ethan, Abigail, and even herself that may or may not be the truth.

[Sarah MacLean]

Amazing. Well, this book is perfect for anyone who loves an unreliable narrator or a

[Jennifer Prokup]

book within a book.

[Sarah MacLean]

And if you'd like to learn more, you can check it out in print, ebook, audiobook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. If your podcasting app supports it, you can click on the chapter title right now to get Seduction Theory. Thanks so much to Little Brown Books, and no, thanks so much to Little Brown and Company and Emily Adrian for sponsoring this week's episode. So let's talk about the actual structure of a road trip.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Like what?

[Sarah MacLean]

I mean, I've written a few of them. I feel like road trips are a real. At some point, every writer, if your career is long enough, you land yourself into a road trip story because there's something really compelling about the story of the journey to. It really does end up being a kind of push pull between journey and destination. But. But I want. So can you talk about just sort of structurally, as a writer, what you are looking to do with a road trip?

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Well, I didn't know what I was looking to do.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

To be honest with you, Sarah, I hadn't written one before. I don't think I was looking to find a way to explore the sisters character arc.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Right. And I think this. I don't wanna interrupt you, but I think like, we've talked about road trip as like a trope, but like, it is about character, right? Like.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Like, yes.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Who am I? You have to figure out. You're going to figure out who you are on this journey. Otherwise, what's the point? Because you could have just stayed at home. Right?

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, you are.

[Sarah MacLean]

You're a stranger in town. Always.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah. My. My editor always says, you know, here's what she asks of every story. Who are they? What do they want? What's keeping them from getting what they want? And how are they changed by the end of the book?

[Jennifer Prokup]

That's.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

That's character arc and character and plot hopefully are braided together, you hope, in a seamless way. You never really know.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Well, and I'm really interested. I think, like, as I think about road trips, not just a sort of trope, like getting people on the road and enforced proximity. Like, it was often how it functions in a romance. I was thinking a lot about this question of like, identity as well. And so, like, one of the things we'll do is like, sort of transition to talking about, like, other books that maybe have some of these qualities. And there's a new book out by Ilona Andrews called this Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. And it's a portal fantasy, which means that essentially someone is picked up from Earth or whatever and then dropped off somewhere else. Right. And Maggie is our main character. And what happens is she has. When she was 16, she. She like a boyfriend broke up with her and she was just wallowing in her feelings and her mom was like, you need to get out of your head and into someone else's and gives her this fantasy. And these, it's two books of what was supposed to be a three book series and the third book was never written. And in the intervening 10 years, Maggie has read these books 100 million times. She knows them backwards and forwards. She knows everything about the them. And three nights ago Maggie woke up in the world of the books. She has no idea why or how. She does not know if she is dead back on earth and like something tragic happened to her and that, you know, cuz she like. And it's very meta, right? Like one of the things that's really interesting is she sort of able to name and be aware of like this is how a portal fantasy works. And like this must be what's happening to me. But also like how the hell did I get here, right? And the thing that's so here. So the other thing that's happening in the book and it's really fun, it's a fun read because I do love a book where someone's like I'm figuring out who I can be, right? Like everything about my situation and my surroundings and my setting has changed. You know, Maggie is like delivering groceries and sort of lives in her own little apartment and has. Has a quiet unexciting life. And in the first scene of. And what. But what she does have in the new world, right? Like she has no skill, she has not fight. She doesn't know what swords are, right? Like she's got nothing. But she does have encyclopedia. Encyclopedia, how do you say that word?

[Sarah MacLean]

Encyclopedic.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yes, there you go. Knowledge of the world itself. Because she's read these books a million times, right? And so she is like, I know what all of these things are. I magically can speak this language. And she, you know, she's buck naked, she has no money, she's starving. And she sees like a sign on a billboard that makes her realize she's in the first chapter of the first book. And she knows that a bad guy is going to be like crossing this bridge at a certain time with a bag full of money. And it's very. You know what it reminded me of is it reminded me of Groundhog Day where he like robbed. The brink struck. So she sets herself up to essentially kill this guy. He's a bad character, it's not gonna matter. And steal his money so that she can at least get something to eat and find some clothes. And what happens instead is this guy kills her and she wakes up and she realizes that for whatever reason in this fantasy world she cannot die. So she is.

[Sarah MacLean]

Does she Wake up at the beginning again? Or does she wake up where she dies? Like a video game?

[Jennifer Prokup]

Well, so she, like, threw herself over the brid with, like, the bag of money and he's like, slit her throat. It is incredibly, really honestly great. And she wakes up and is kind of like, I should be dead, but I'm not. And she doesn't have time to think about it, right? And so instead she's like, where can I go? And so she's like, trying to figure it out. And she ends up going to this essentially, like, I forget what it's called, like the palace of Flowers or something. And it's like a brothel, but also like sort of a protected area. Like, if you can get in there, no one will attack it. No one will. You know what I mean? It's like sort of Switzerland. Yes, I was going to say like in those John Wick movies, that hotel. But the same.

[Sarah MacLean]

That's also Switzerland.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Also Switzerland. And there she sort of makes a really radical decision to use her knowledge of future events in the book to save, like, essentially give someone a warning about what's gonna happen. And then she realizes, like, I might have changed the books and therefore changed my knowledge of what's gonna happen. It's really extraordinary. It's really fun. And I think, though, the thing I kept thinking is this is a character who is gonna start out the book in one way, right? Like, really not knowing what she's capable of. Certainly not killing a man to steal from him. Right? But. And then try to survive in a place where she has all this knowledge, but, like, none of her. But no actual on the boots, like, you know, boots on the ground, like, abilities. And it is just like a. And I found myself thinking, like a lot of fantasy, a lot of, like, romantasy is by its very nature road trippy. Because the world is a character, right? You have to get the people out into the world. See these little weird creatures. And, you know, in this case, there's like these flying birds with like two sets of wings and all this stuff. You have to put them out into the world. And then it's like, what are you capable of? Right? What are you capable of when you are. I mean, in this case, in Maggie's case, you're totally alone. You have extraordinary knowledge, but you have no allies, no money, no friends, no abilities. How are you going to survive? And it's.

[Sarah MacLean]

But.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And it's just like a. It's a really fun book. And like the meta commentary about, you know, how many times have I casually Wished to be in, live in someone's book or story many times. And this lady has wished the whole. The same thing. And now she's like, listen, I was crazy. This is terrible. This is a terrible place to live. And it's just really. It's just really fun, though. But I did find myself thinking, right, like so much of the. You see the world through her eyes, even though she knows it, she has to experience it just to live it. And that's what's going to change her.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I think when you reduce a character to. When you start out with a character who's been reduced to nothing, almost, yeah, that's the fun of a road trip. You put people in a situation, you put them in a vehicle together and put him on the road in Ireland, driving on the wrong side of the road and with, you know, no real sense of direction or where you're going or why. And then you throw in these long, simmering pissiness, tension.

[Jennifer Prokup]

This is.

[Sarah MacLean]

I mean, this is the cornerstone of the romance road trip. The kind of two people trapped in a small space in a place they don't know, where there is no one to help them and there's no break from each other. And I also. And so when I was thinking about your book, Mary Kay, and just thinking, well, how would I tie this to what book could I recommend? On this episode, I immediately came to Louisa Darling's new novella, which is called Nevermind the Mistletoe. It's a Christmas novella, but it came out last month in April. So we love Christmas in July. So everybody go get it and enjoy your holiday. But it actually gave me a little bit of. I was thinking about road trips as a way for characters to reconcile like, or not even reconcile necessarily, but to want to come to understand each other. And the premise of this book is these two are married. They were married 13 years earlier. And the book begins with a kind of an announcement that everyone in all of London knew that these two hate each other. They're still married. They have a child, one child who was born basically after they were estranged from each other almost immediately after their wedding. They live on opposite sides of one of those big London squares in completely separate worlds. Sometimes they're invited to the same dinners and they are like, hostesses know to, like, seat them at different ends of the. Ends of the room. Like they just cannot even interact with each other. But every year on Christmas Eve, they travel to have Christmas together at the country estate with their son. Like, it is their son's Christmas wish every year that they Spend one day together, and they hate it. And usually they travel in different carriages, and usually they, like, don't speak. And it's just like, the thing. They're tortured for 48 hours, and then they get to live the rest of their lives. And this year, and it's like a. They're in constant competition, like, who will get there first. Like, everything is contentious between them. And this year, of course, one of the carriages breaks down. The other one has to pick, you know, the heroine's carriage, or I think it's the hero's carriage breaks down and the heroine has to pick her. The heroine has to pick him up. And then they're stuck in the same carriage. And then, of course, a confluence of, like, chaos ensues, right? There's a storm. The road is washed out. There's, you know, the carriage is stolen. You know, they meet. They have to ride in a mail coach with a bunch of weirdos through London, right? And it's really. And then, like, you know, they get stuck in all of these kind of difficult positions where they have no choice but to be the truest version of them. Like, they are stripped. All the exterior trappings are pulled away. But one of the things that I really love about this book and that I think is really a hallmark of, you know, I love a road trip. And part of the reason why I love a road trip is because when you take characters and you throw them into together, throw them into a world that they don't understand, where they are not comfortable, suddenly you are starting to. It really is about the journey rather than the destination. Or as Jen said to me right before we started this podcast, you know, it's the difference between travel and vacation, right? Like, one way you are embedding yourself into these. You have no choice but to better understand the world that you are in in order to survive. It feels like the right way to do a road trip rather than, like, and now we're gonna stop and look at the York Cathedral.

[Jennifer Prokup]

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[Sarah MacLean]

Well, let me tell you something. I think I've talked about this before. I'm getting old, you all, and I gummed up my knee, and now I'm like, Going to PT for it. And there's literally nothing wrong with it except it's like, you know, Now I'm just 40 something and it's shitty.

[Jennifer Prokup]

So you can sleep wrong and tweak your knee at our age.

[Sarah MacLean]

But then, like, if I push too far or like I take one, I take a walk that's too long or whatever. It really feels yucky. And last night I was in bed and I was. And Eric turned to me and he was like, why are you so fidgety? And I was like, my knee is weird. And he was like, you want a Lumigummy? And I was like, I kind of do. And so listen, I sat up, I put some THC cream on my knee. Oh, there you go. Which was not a Lumigumi. That's a separate. That's a separate product. And then I took a Lumigumi and I was asleep within, I don't know, I mean, seconds.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It felt like, yeah, sure.

[Sarah MacLean]

And then I woke up this morning

[Jennifer Prokup]

and I was like, I feel great.

[Sarah MacLean]

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[Jennifer Prokup]

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[Mary Kay Andrews]

My son was a very reluctant reader. And I remember when he was in high school, I think he was a sophomore in high school, and they were reading Huck Finn, and I'm like, why are you reading Huck Finn in high school? I read that in, like, eighth grade. He goes, mom, it's so awesome. I'm like, okay, what do you love about Huck Finn? He's like, are you kidding me? They're on a raft in the Mississippi. They're stealing shit. There's no grownups.

[Sarah MacLean]

The dream.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

And I'm like, all right. That is.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yes.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

That's a. That's a road trip novel. One of my favorites recently in the past four or five years was William Kent Kruger's this Tender Land, which is a deliberate, sort of inspired by the Odyssey and P S. I was supposed to read the Odyssey in high school and I didn't, so.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Well, it is a pretty epic ocean trip.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah. Well, this is a Mississippi river trip by two brothers and a Native American boy. They are in. It takes place during a depression. These kids are all dumped in a horrible, they called them Indian schools where they are abused and mistreated and they finally flee and there's a little girl with them. They steal a raft and raft down the Mississippi and it's this great road trip where they discover who they are and what they want. And then my friend Colleen Oakley, who's a wonderful writer who also lives here in Atlanta, year before last she wrote one called the Mostly True Adventures of Tanner and Louise. And that one is about a 18 year old or 19 year old college dropout and she's living in her parents basement. She's playing video games 18 hours a day. She's got nothing going on on and her parents, she. In desperation she takes a job looking after this 84 year old old lady who is very, very feisty and opinionated and doesn't think much of Tanner. But one night Louise wakes her up with a suitcase and says let's go get in the car. She's like, car? What? She's got a, she's like got like a Corvette. A vintage Corvette.

[Sarah MacLean]

That's my favorite. When an old character is like flips the drop cloth off of like classic car and then they're on their road.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

It's like off to the. Yeah, Back to the future. And it turns out that Louise has some deeply terrifying secrets, including the fact that she was once an internationally pursued jewel thief.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh, perfect. I love Louise. I love you, Tanner.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Tanner and Louisa. Mostly True Adventures of Tanner and Louise. And then I'm listening right now to the Road to Tender Horrors by Annie Hartnett which is about a 67 year old guy named PJ who takes off on a road trip and he's got this, this cast of characters including a cat named a, a A therapy cat named Pancake in the car. And this is just new.

[Sarah MacLean]

This, this came out last year but it's just now in paper, I want to say, I think it's just now in paperback. And it's got that great cover.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yes. Yeah, it does. And it's. I've just started listening to it and I'm just really enjoying it. I actually gave up my true crime podcast to listen to the Road to Tender Hearts. So you know that, you know it's good. I know I shelved Dateline for, For the Road to Tender Hearts.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I mean, I think the thing that I find really interesting is, I mean obviously the one in the middle sounded like Thelma and Louise to me is like. I think I remember that movie feeling when it came out and I was a teenager, I felt really, like it was the first time I saw or really, truly understood that, like, at the end of a road trip, whatever it is, right, in a story, the people have to be different. And I think the thing for me about Thelma and Louise, about that ending was that they knew that their lives would be the same, but they were different. And therefore the only possibility was this really radical ending. And I do think that that, to me is the promise of a great road trip is whatever it is that these characters, wherever they are at the beginning, there is no choice but to have them be somewhere different at the end. Whether or not this is a road trip they chose or one that was forced upon them, whether or not it was accidental or on purpose, that at the end of it, there will be dramatic changes that have happened in their lives. And I think that's why for me, I think sometimes what I'm really looking for is sort of radical change. I'm really interested in fiction and the idea of how do people start out one place and end up someplace different? And I think the road trip is in some ways like the purest, most distilled version of that story. Right. No matter whether it's like sort of a fantastic mystery or set in the past, whether it's an actual road or on the ocean, whether the flag to Ireland and drive on the other side of the road. Right. Like they're going to be different at the end of it. And I think that that's the best part.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Yeah, I think the. And the force, proximity part of a road trip is such a great way for. For characters to reveal themselves and to. When one character finds out who they are, then it's a catharsis for the other character.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, Mary Kay Andrews, we are so happy to have you with us finally, after all of those months that you've been in our text messages without knowing. We are thrilled to be able to talk to you about Road Trip, your new book, which is on shelves right now, and about your life and about your journey and your. What the actual fuck Wednesday content which people can find. Tell everybody where the. They can find you online if they don't already know.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

I'm on Instagram, Mary Kay Andrews and on Facebook, Mary Kay Andrews. And I. I get a little even more political on threads. That's where you find the unfiltered me taking pot shots at Cash Patel.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh, that dumb drunk. And.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

And of course I have. My website is, you know, marykandrews.com and they can find out where I'll be on tour. And Sarah I don't know if we'll be have if our we're going to have a road trip together.

[Sarah MacLean]

We are. We are heading out to Huntington, New York on June 12, Friday, June 12 at 7:00pm you can come and join us at the where at Next Chapter Books and on Long island. And we'll be talking about road trip, we'll be talking about politics. I'm sure we'll be, you know, bitching

[Jennifer Prokup]

about the world these summer storms.

[Mary Kay Andrews]

Your last summer book, which just knocked me out, I wrote Sarah a mash note when I finished reading it.

[Sarah MacLean]

It was really delightful. I have it, you know, pinned on my office cork board. So thank you so much. Mary Mary Kay I am Sarah McLean. I'm here with Jennifer Prokop and Mary Kay Andrews. We are Faded Mates. You can listen to us every single Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to find us online, you can do that at Beta Mates Pod on Threads and Instagram, or at Faded Mates on Blue Sky. If you want to talk more about road trips, about Mary Kay Andrews and how amazing she is or anything else, you can also join our [e-mail] patreon which gets us access to our discord where a few thousand other romance readers are talking about romance 24 7. Other than that, we are so grateful to have you always. We hope you get to have a really wonderful life altering road trip this summer. And thanks again Mary Kay for joining us.