Women of a Certain Age w/ Deanna Raybourn
/Women of a certain age can do anything - whether it’s being assassins, spinning the threads of fate, or doing witchy things in the woods! From the Fates of Greek mythology to Victorian scientists like Margaret Fountaine, author Deanna Raybourn shows us that older women are capable of doing anything and everything.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of fascism, misogyny, unrealistic beauty standards, ageism, sexual content, racism, and xenophobia.
Guest
Deanna Raybourn is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist and a 6th-generation native Texan. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including the Edgar, the Macavity, and the Agatha. She launched a new Victorian mystery series with the 2015 release of A Curious Beginning, featuring intrepid butterfly-hunter and amateur sleuth, Veronica Speedwell. Deanna’s first contemporary thriller, featuring four female assassins who must band together to take out their nemesis as they prepare for retirement—Killers of a Certain Age—published in September of 2022 and won the 2022 Barry Award for Best Thriller.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
Julia: And I'm Julia.
Amanda: We are so honored to be joined by one of my favorite contemporary writers. It's Deanna Raybourn. Deanna, welcome to the show!
Deanna Raybourn: Thank you so much for having me.
Julia: We were so stoked that you said yes. So can you, for our audience who may not be familiar with you, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Deanna Raybourn: Sure. I am a transplanted Texan. I live in Virginia. I have been writing for- God, I think I've been published for about 16/17 years now. My 20th book is getting ready to come out.
Julia: Congratulations.
Deanna Raybourn: Thank you. I write both Victorian mystery and contemporary thriller. The contemporary thriller side of things is new. I'm only getting ready to launch my second one in that vein, but it's been incredibly successful. I'm excited to do more with that.
Amanda: And that is where I want to start, because I am so interested A.) in promoting people picking up Killers of a Certain Age and Kills Well with Others, the first book in the series, which I highly recommend, and it follows a group of women with a lot of life under their belts, women who are a little bit older than, I think, a typical protagonist, especially in a thriller genre. Can you tell us a bit about what made you so excited to kind of approach this brand new genre in thrillers, this new setting of contemporary? And though we have lots of women in all kinds of age ranges in the Veronica Speedwell novels that I think are fabulous. What made you focus on women older than you by quite a lot?
Deanna Raybourn: You know what? I fell into it accidentally, and they're not older than me by quite a lot. Bless your heart. I'm 56 and they're 60. So it's a very tiny road. No, my publisher actually came to me and said, you know, we were having a a chat around the, I guess, around the boardroom table, and the subject came up, why do we not have more projects about older women doing kick ass things? You know, because you think about it, when you have 60 year old women kind of at the at the center of a story, a lot of times it's, oh, I just got a breast cancer diagnosis. Or, oh, my child is having trauma. Or, oh, my parent is having trauma. Or, oh, I've had a latent life divorce, and now I'm trying to, you know, have an orgasm for the first time ever. You know, it very seldom is it this age of woman going out and, like, really affecting some incredible change and doing something just stupidly badass. And so they asked me if I because apparently my name came up immediately, which I was super flattered that they thought that I could kind of do this idea justice. So they came to me and asked me if I'd be interested, and I thought about it for a hot second, yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. But I'd had a week to think about it at this point. And I said, you know, I I'd like there to be four of them. He said, great, no problem. I said, I'd like for them to be assassins. And they said, Great, we love that. And I said, and I would like for it to be contemporary. And that that was really the moment where, like, everything stopped, like I can there was dead silence on the other line, you know, on the on the phone line, for about 10 seconds before my editor said, Okay, well, we'll trust you with this, because it, you know, publishers love a pigeon hole. If you write something and you read it well, and it is successful. My little comfort zone had been Victorian mystery, and I was good at it, and it was successful. And, you know, publishers don't love to let you launch out of that. It's, it's very much a risky behavior in their industry and and they are notoriously risk averse at times, so the fact that they let me do it was just the most massive vote of confidence. And then I went off and had to figure out how to do it. And that was the Oh, shit, what if I got myself into? Because I had to figure out how to write with a contemporary voice, which I had never done before. And so I had to, I would go off and I'd write a draft, and I'd send it to my my editor, and she would send it back and say, No, it's not working. And I would cry. And then I would go write a Veronica Speedwell book, and then I would come back and, you know, do another draft. And we did that, you know, for ages, probably about two years, I had trouble connecting with what that that voice was supposed to be, what that narrative voice would sound like. Because, you know, I hear Veronica Speedwell in my sleep, like that girl. I've got that down pat. That is not a problem for me. But this was, this was very different. And, you know, I remember right, trying to write that first scene. And I had a and I don't rewrite when I'm writing like, that's not a thing that I do. But I couldn't get the voice, so I had to keep rewriting it until that sort of click. And finally, one day, I screw it. I can't rewrite this again. And, you know, try to write, like, with a capital W. I was like, I'm, I'm just going to tell it. And so I sat down and just told it on the paper and handed it off to my husband, and he said he started laughing, and he said, Babe, this is your Twitter voice. And I went, Oh, nailed it. That's what I should have been doing, because that was back when Twitter was fun and, you know, not full of Nazis and shit. And it was very much this, this kind of much more irreverent, smart ass kind of taking a prisoner's attitude that came through. And it was like, Oh, excellent. And, you know, it helps, because the narrative character, Billy, is from Texas as I am, so if any colloquialisms did sneak in, I was, I was hoping it would kind of go in under the radar.
Amanda: I love that. Did you end up looking into the like, mythos of the assassin? One thing that we're really interested in on the show is not just, you know, mythology that you read in a book about, you know, ancient Greece, Rome, etc. But the stories we tell ourselves as a society, and the figures and sort of like concepts that we allow to take on this, you know, folkloric weight. And I think the assassin is totally one of those.
Deanna Raybourn: Yeah, and you know, the thing is, you are actually much likelier to encounter an assassin in folklore or legend or mythology that is a woman than you are in history. Because historically, this is not a job too many women have had, or if they have, they've gone really far under the radar. Because if you start researching female assassins, that's about two minutes on Wikipedia, and you're done. It's just, it's not, you know, Charlotte Corday. There you go, there's just not a ton out there about this. The funny thing about mythology for me is, even if I'm not researching something specific, it informs everything that I write. Because literally, the first story I remember reading as a child was Athena and Arachne. I mean, I am, I've got my Athena pendant on like I am hardcore into my mythology, girlies. I always have been. I have I even dug out because I knew I was going to be chatting with y'all.
Julia: Oh, yey! My gosh, that's such a good t-shirt.
Amanda: Alright, Greek myths!
Deanna Raybourn: [7:36], you know, it's like, I have this, I have this on a t shirt.
Amanda:
I would stop someone in the street for wearing that shirt and be like, we should be friends. What's your numbers?
Julia:
I don't know what your deal is, but we should be friends.
Speaker 1
Right? Like, I feel I posted about it on social media a couple of years ago, and I was like, Okay, who of you Gen Xers, like, had your introduction to mythology from the D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, and immediately, like it opened the floodgates of all these other nerds my age, going, "Yes!" I remember. And then I found this, which I got. This is Bernard Evslin, Gods, Demigods, and Demons. So these, these are characters that have, like, always been with me, but it's really funny that those stories never completely go away, and those archetypes kind of inform everything, even today, in how we look, especially when you're talking about the breakdown of gender roles and and what women are supposed to be doing, and what makes you a whore or a villain or a monster, you know, as opposed to the right kind of woman. And I kind of, I didn't even realize myself how present those kind of tropes and stereotypes are until 2018 my husband and I were in Greece, and we're in a we're in a cab, and the driver starts telling me how wonderful he thinks it is that we had the president we had at that time, who's getting ready to be re inaugurated, and I'm just sitting there, not saying a word, and he's going on and and, you know, finally, I said, why exactly? And he said, well, because of the alternative. He said, You couldn't have Hillary Clinton be president. And I said, why exactly? And he said, because she's too much like Hera, Hera. I said, She's, she's too much like Hera, yeah, she's jealous. She's just, you know, she's, she's too strong of a woman. She's too pushy. She's got her on it, you know, she tries to make her own agenda happen. You just, you can't have that. And I went, are you? Are you shitting me right now? Like, really,
Speaker 1
I want to, like, sentence diagram out all of the gender deceptions and language.
Speaker 1
Oh, my God. And I have a soft spot for Hera. I have, like, a massive Hera statue back behind me on this bookshelf over here, because I think she gets a really bad rap. I. I mean, people tend to forget she was, after all, Queen of the gods. You know, she did some she did some cool stuff. I feel like if Zeus hadn't always been pitting her against other women, we might like her better. But just this idea that, you know, for 1000s of years, this idea of this one woman has come down to this cab driver in Athens going no, just no. And I was like, Oh, it it doesn't die. It doesn't go away.
Julia:
We've had these shrill women like stereotypes since ancient mythology, and they still persist to this day, and it drives me absolutely wild. And we retell stories like that on the podcast. And I'm like, and then there's a joke about, you know, how women are terrible when you don't give them what they want.
Deanna Raybourn:
Oh my god, you know, I mean, the word harpy is there for a reason, you know? And I'm sure you guys have covered this in your podcast, where the harpies come from. And it's like, oh Lord, we can't get away from that, can't we?
Julia:
Oh my gosh. But I also I love that in telling a story of killers of a certain age, I flash back to TV shows like Murder She Wrote, and even Golden Girls, where, I guess, in my mind watching those shows and even re watching them now I'm like, yeah, those women, they must have been like, what in their, like, 70s and 80s when they were filming that I'm pretty sure-
Amanda:
Wasn't Bea Arthur, like, like, 51 or something?
Julia:
Yeah, Bea Arthur was like 50
Deanna Raybourn:
Bea Arthur was younger than I am now.
Julia:
And Angela Lansbury, I think, was in her, like, her 40s when she filmed Murder, She Wrote, and she's supposed to be this, like, tiny, little old lady. I'm like, That's me in like, 15 years. That's not That's not old.
Speaker 1
It's fascinating. It's so fascinating to see how aging has changed from, you know, when I was a teenager in the 80s and Golden Girls was like, airing for the first time.
Amanda:
So far off.
Deanna Raybourn:
Yeah, those were old women. And now that I'm the same age, I'm like, wait a minute. Hold up. Hold up. I go to Pilates. You know, my hair is still dark. Calm down. But we do, we have a very different picture of aging now too, because as our life expectancy gets longer, as we have, you know, different different therapies, different nutrition, different, you know, different ways of being we we are able to extend our youth just a little bit. But, yeah, that was fascinating to me. When I sat down and started looking at older women in entertainment, it turns out most of the time, they were not nearly as old as I thought they were. And when I tried to picture, okay, who, what does 60 look like? What are these women going to look like? It was Jamie Lee Curtis. It was Diane Lane, Marisa Tomei, you know, it's women who, when I was a teenager, they were the hot chicks who were in their early 20s, and now they're, they're hitting 60, and you're like, okay, but they still look amazing. They they're, they're not what we think they are. So there's, they're, you know, 60s kind of become this really interesting sort of liminal space where it's, it's not elderly, and yet, if you look at the math of it, it's way past middle age. It's what you make of it really is, is kind of the conclusion that I came to. So I taped a picture of Diane Lane to my computer and just went to town.
Julia:
Yeah. And, I mean, like, Jamie Lee Curtis is doing action and horror movies still. Marisa Tomei is still in superhero movies like these women are, are so much in our minds, younger than the women of their same age, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
Deanna Raybourn:
Absolutely. And, you know, Marisa Tomei and Diane Lane were two of the people I was thinking of because I remember watching Superman and watching Spiderman, and here are these vital, dynamic, really gorgeous women standing there. And I'm like, why aren't they superheroes? Where's their movie? When do they get to wear capes? And they don't get capes? And I was like, Oh, screw that. We're gonna have some older we're gonna have women that age, like, doing that sort of thing. You know, we're gonna have them leaping around now, my assassins feel it because, like, I can tell you, if I go too hard in the gym the next day, she creaky, and that's just how it is. But you can still do the stuff. You just might have to stretch a little extra beforehand, and maybe, you know, a little Advil after.
Amanda:
They also desire and are desired, which I really appreciate. And my grandma, specifically, who is 85 and has been reading mysteries and romance for the last probably 70 years. She says that she gets so fed up when the you know, when there's like elderly women or old women or seniors on the page that like have nothing to do with rich inner lives like she has and experiences. So anytime there is a book that especially has like desire incorporated, that has the fact that you know these women, maybe they had, you know partners pass away or in different situations, but they have life experience resources, and hopefully several decades in front of them that they want to do something with. It's just, it's so energizing. And we definitely don't have those kinds of stories to look to in mythology for the most part. We have crones, right? We have, you know, different like soothsayers or oracles. That's what comes to mind for me, of like, who's like, older and has agency in mythology, an Oracle, I guess. But often they straddle this line between between hero and villain. It's a, it's a, you know, an other figure, a you know a witchy woman, a truth teller, someone who lives external to the village. Because we really can't conceive of women past child bearing age as the way to sort of render our worth who get to be protagonists. So Deanna, Julia, as the mythology heads in the room. I love it, but I am not the expert. Are there examples and stories that come to mind that you're stoked about that you would point to as, like, that's a kick ass older woman in mythology?
Julia:
You bring up a great point, Amanda. And before I let you go away with it, Deanna, I do want to point out, like, the fact that we do kind of, especially in Greek and Roman mythology, we separate women's lives into the trio, you know, like the three headed goddess, it's the maiden, the mother and the Crone. So the minute we are past child rearing age, we are the Crone.
Amanda:
That's a crone.
Julia:
Undesirable woman who, yes, has like wisdom, but also is often portrayed as this, like, monstrous creature, like this idea of you're no longer beautiful, even though plenty of women past child rearing age are beautiful, and therefore you are like undesirable, and therefore monstrous.
Deanna Raybourn:
The withered husk is what is what you get. You know, you get the pomegranate for when you're full of life and you're ripe, and then when that's done, it's like, Girl, you're shriveled. Now go home. Yeah, you do see that a lot, because with that, when you, when you look at that archetypal trinity of maiden mother and Crone, crone is definitely an afterthought, you know, she's she's like, okay, the best years are behind you now, because you're always going to find more stories about what happens to the maid. Happens to the maiden who's possessing her, who's trying to possess her, who wants to get with her. And then you're going to have some stories about the mother. And then the crone is where it's like, oh, we ran, you know, the barn ran out of steam. We're not talking about her. But the the one older figure that I absolutely adore out of mythology is the Cailleach, the the old woman of winter in Celtic mythology, I just, I think she's so fascinating. And I love the fact that even something as mainstream as all creatures great and small on PBS is making reference to her.
Julia:
Yeah.
Deanna Raybourn:
You know, we got to, we got to see one of the main characters, kind of carve an image of the Cailleach as part of the Christmas fist duties, and it's been in more than one of their Christmas specials. And I love the fact that it's like, oh, okay, so we're finally getting some representation for this incredible character, you know, who exists. And it's kind of what you were talking about, Amanda, where she's on the fringes, you know, she's not really in a village or in society, you know, she she's in the woods, and you catch glimpses of her, but she's incredibly powerful, and she has a raft of stories associated with her. And I think that's, that's, you know, I'd love to see so much more of her, like she needs her own comic book or something. I feel like-
Amanda:
Can you give me her highlights that this is a new to me figure.
Deanna Raybourn:
The Cailleach is just she's relatively new to me too. It kind of in the same way that Demeter stalks the earth during winter, because Persephone is down in the underworld. The Cailleach is is roaming the earth during the fallow time, when the when the ground is hard, when the snows are there, that that's where you find the Cailleach. She's incredibly powerful. There's always an element of fear associated with her. Because, of course, winter time is when more people die. It's when more animals die, it's when you can run out of resources. So you always want to kind of appease her a little bit, and you always want to make sure that that you're not offending her, you know, because there's always that sense, I think, in all mythology, when you're talking about a female figure that is powerful, it's, oh, we better not get on her bad side, because if we're on the shit list, we're going to pay for it, and she's going to take it out on us. Because there's always, always, always, always underlying everything, a fear of female power and female agency.
Amanda:
For male gods, for the Zeus of the world. Of course, it's Oh their judgment. Oh they might be unknowable. Oh, they do what they want. It's so venerable, how powerful they are. And for women, it really is coded in emotion, in a way that, you know, I think your political reference is absolutely apt here. It keeps happening and it stays present.
Deanna Raybourn:
Yeah.
Julia:
If a woman's pissed at something, it's out of spite or scorn, and whenever a man is angry, it's justified.
Deanna Raybourn:
It's righteous.
Julia:
Yeah, isn't that just the way? Also shout out to the the James Harriet reference there. I was- I loved his books as a kid, so it's nice to hear people talk a little bit more about the the TV show and stuff like that.
Deanna Raybourn:
Oh, it's such a good adaptation.
Julia:
I have to watch it. I haven't done it yet.
Deanna Raybourn:
It's fantastic. They're just now dropping season five. You know that let down you get after the holidays when you're like, oh, it's it's gray and grim, and now I'm sad, and it's so long until Spring. This is the perfect thing to watch.
Julia:
Amazing.
Deanna Raybourn:
Yeah.
Julia:
Oh, I'm so excited. I'm going to have to, going to have to get it on my to watch list, so-
Speaker 1
You know, there were moments though, when I thought about the gray ones from from Greek mythology, when I thought about The Fates, when I thought about, you know, the the idea of there being these, these sisters who, you know, kind of measure out the threat of your life. You know, one of them unspends it. One of them measures it. One of them cuts it.
Amanda:
They sure do.
Deanna Raybourn:
That image kept coming to my head when, when they would execute somebody. The idea of just snip cut that threat of life for you. They very much took the power of the fates, kind of into their own hands. Because they, they do exist as a they're an extra governmental, you know, group. They they're very much taking the law into their own hands. They're operating in an incredibly dark, dark, gray, moral space, because they, you know, the justification is, oh, we only kill people who need killing. But really, who gets to decide that? Although, I mean, we look at the people that kill them, we go, they're not wrong. So the idea that, you know, you've, you've got these, because that's why the the fates, of course, are so feared in Greek mythology, is because they're the ones deciding this. And-
Amanda:
Yeah.
Deanna Raybourn:
And in a weird way, you know, my my assassins are doing exactly the same thing. So, you know, I think when you're a when you're a mythology geek as a kid, I think that stuff, just like I said, I think it just informs everything you do, even when you're not conscious of it. I think it's always there, just kind of like a background song, you know, on repeat.
Julia:
In my mind, the fates are so they don't, they don't care. You know, it doesn't matter what kind of life you're living. It's like when it's your time, it's your time.
Deanna Raybourn:
Oh, they don't.
Julia:
With the assassins. You know, maybe if you were living a better life and you made some better choices, you wouldn't have gotten murdered. I don't know, just a thought.
Deanna Raybourn:
They are. They are not at all dispassionate or uninvested in the kind of life that you've led. It is, it is now they themselves are not the ones who make the decision of who the targets are, but they are very happy to carry out the job when they see the justification and go, Oh, you've been trafficking in humans.
Amanda:
Snip, snip.
Deanna Raybourn:
You're, a fascist dictator on it.
Julia:
Goodbye.
Deanna Raybourn:
You were a guard at a Nazi death camp. We're on this so, yeah, they have no problem with that.
Julia:
I like that though, because I think, well, I like that for obvious other reasons, but I like that from a Greek mythology perspective. Because oftentimes, when we're reading stories about Greek mythology, the gods are so human in a lot of ways, like they are making mistakes and they are doing like, weird choices that, like you'd be like a normal person.
Deanna Raybourn:
They're so petty!
Julia:
Exactly.
Deanna Raybourn:
They're so petty.
Julia:
But the the fates kind of stand separate from that. And so when you-
Deanna Raybourn:
They really do.
Julia:
Yeah.
Deanna Raybourn:
I've always thought there's sort of this, this kind of elegant detachment to the Fates, where they're like, we can't be bought and we can't be bothered, we're just going to do our thing. And even the gods are afraid of them, which I always, I love the idea that there's something out there that the gods can be afraid of
Julia:
Yes, basically, like, all of Greek mythology can kind of be summarized by like, whatever they're doing up there in Olympus nonsense. It's all nonsense. What we're doing down here is real fucking work
Deanna Raybourn:
Exactly.
Amanda:
Now I'm picturing the Fates as, like, the sort of office managers who, like process payroll or like, get, like, grain, move to the right place, and they just, like, they watch the manipulations of, like, the stock market or whatever, and then they're actually a, you know, truck logistics dispatcher like, "Okay, I'm sorry if you want bleach in your Walmart, I have to do that. And, like, leave me alone."
Julia:
Amanda, that's why, in the video game Hades, it's like, literally, just like an office. You know, maybe it is one of those things where it's like, yeah, they just, if they don't do their jobs, everything else falls into chaos. You know?
Amanda:
Hard to tell stories about those people, though, with with what we've got. So I'm glad that your assassins, Deanna, have, uh, have some investment [24:35].
Deanna Raybourn:
Yes, they do.
Julia:
Amanda, I would love if we could take a quick refill before we start talking about the rest of Deanna's incredible work. What do you think?
Amanda:
Hey everybody, it's Amanda, and welcome to the refill now. I am right now recording this actually the day the previous last week's episode came out, because Julie and I are about to head out to Portland, Oregon. So if you joined in the last week as a when you're hearing this, thank you so much. Thank you for becoming a patron, and we'll name you next time, because as paying patrons, you are the backbone of this podcast. You're where we get to pay researcher Sally and editor brand and social media coordinator Talia, and just do this as work. So thank you so very much. And if you would like to join the likes of supporting producer level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Jane, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Scott, Wil and AE (Ah), as well as our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. Hey, you gotta join now at patreon.com/spiritspodcast
Amanda: Let's do it.
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Amanda: Folks, we are sounding the klaxon that we need more urban legends. I've especially enjoyed getting to hear your voices in wonderful voicemails. So if you are feeling brave and want to send us a brief little message, a query, a short legend, a, hey, this creepy thing happened in my hometown, check it out. You can get us at 617-420-2344, or if you're outside the US, you can always email us a voice note to spiritspodcast@gmail.com, whether you write in, send us a voice note, or call that line. We would love to hear from you if you've been waiting. This is your moment, y'all.
Amanda: I also want to tell you about one of the exciting things happening over at Multitude which is that we are learning even more about science and the small things that have a big impact on our world with tiny matters, scientists, Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti take apart complex and contentious topics in science to rebuild your understanding. I know you don't need me to tell you that it is more important than ever that we are scientifically literate and learn about the world around us from people who are experts in their fields, and Sam and Deboki could not be better communicators about everything from deadly diseases to ancient sewers to forensic toxicology, Tiny Matters comes out every Wednesday. So check them out now in your podcast app.
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Amanda: And now back to the show.
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Julia: We are back, and Deanna. We love to ask our guests, what have you been enjoying lately drinkwise? Whether it's cocktails, mocktails, coffee, creations, what have you. What's been your drink of choice lately?
Deanna Raybourn: I was lucky enough to receive some lovely, lovely birthday presents last June that I have been stretching out my one of my dearest friends in the world lives in Nashville, and there's a fantastic tea company there called High Garden, and they have the most delicious teas and and she gave me several different types, a really nice kind of random sample of things she thought I would like. And my favorite one of them, and I'm like, eking it out, because I'm going to have to go order another, like, seven pounds of this stuff, is one called Iron Goddess of Mercy, which I'm right, is that not the most badass name for tea?
Amanda: My palms are sweating. I'm like, give it to me right now.
Deanna Raybourn: It smells almost like coffee, which I loathe, but the flavor of the tea is phenomenal. It's smoky and it is it. I don't know how to describe it, except to say, it's like a chewy tea. It's like it's got so much body, and it's super rich, and it's a little bit smoky. I'm I love Lapsang Souchong, but if that's too smoky, then Iron Goddess of Mercy will absolutely kick you in the balls. But not with, not with smoke like Lapsang does. So I am smitten with this tea, but you've got it like it is bracing. It will open your pores and you will see God.
Amanda: Challenge accepted. I've opened the tab.
Deanna Raybourn: But do not sweeten it. I beg of you. Do not sweeten it. You need the whole, full-bodied Iron Goddess of Mercy experience. And the fun thing is, when you order it from High Garden, especially, it comes in these really cute little they're little balls of tea that almost look like pearls.
Amanda: Ooh!
Deanna Raybourn: But they're dark. They're dark, they're almost black. And so I look almost
Amanda: Like boba. Boba bubbles.
Julia: Oh, interesting.
Deanna Raybourn: It's what they've done with the leaves, and it's just extraordinary. And they're a fantastic Tea Company, and I love supporting local businesses. So so go hit up high garden tea in Nashville.
Julia: Absolutely, absolutely.
Amanda: So Deanna, the first book that brought me to your world, and your writing was A Curious Beginning, the first in the Veronica Speedwell series. And I would love to ask you all about what drew you to the Victorian period, and how much of the like, bloody mysterious, you know, Jack the Ripper, etc. Urban legends of the Victorian period have inspired the world that is now going on 10 books deep.
Deanna Raybourn: Oh, I have always been fascinated with Victoriana. I got my degree many, many, many moons ago. I double majored in English and history, and I went to a university in Texas that had a really small history department. So basically, you just had to take what courses they offered. There was no such thing as like, they didn't do independent study. They were, they were not super concerned with what women were doing, as in, there was not a single course that talked about women. It was all, what are the men doing? Men do war. I'm going to shorthand for you. Men do war. My senior thesis was on, like the armored tactics of General Patton. Yeah, I am. I am not your Armored Cavalry girl, but that's what I had to write about. So when I got out of college, I was really interested in the stories I hadn't been taught, and I had the skills at that point to go looking for them. And so I started exploring different areas where women were doing what I thought was just interesting and unexpected things. And one of these weird little niche areas that I ran across was the Victorian lady explorers as they're as they're usually known. And they, they were doing some of the most fascinating stuff. And when I say Victorian, that's a little bit loose. You can, you can start earlier, like with civil a Mary, Mary Sevilla Mariam. You can go later, and, you know, cover some of the women like Gertrude Bell, who are post Victorian, but kind of this long Victorian era of women out exploring the world. And a lot of times you're talking about British women, American women, other Western European women going into areas that were being colonized. So this is not a subject that comes with no baggage to it, because some of these women were were occasionally doing shitty things. But a lot of them were there because they were genuinely, genuinely and sincerely interested in botany, archeology, lepidoptery, you know, they they were interested in natural history. They were interested in visiting parts of the world and visiting cultures that were not as familiar to Western Europe with the rise of the middle class in Victorian England, you get this whole raft of people who have a ton of money to spend, and they want to go out and kind of mimic the Grand Tours that aristocrats were doing 100 years before, and that all of the Napoleonic Wars had interrupted and kind of put an end to and so they go to places like Egypt and and they see the monuments of the Nile. Well, okay, everybody has gone to Egypt. And so where do you go from there when you've gone to Egypt and you've sailed up the Nile and, and, you know, seeing the pyramids? What do you do after that? Well, maybe you go to South America and you hunt butterflies, or maybe you go to Africa and you explore the coast of West Africa like Mary Kingsley did. You know maybe, maybe you go to Hawaii like Isabella Bird, and you ride donkeys up a mountain, just because you can. And it was a fascinating source of just so many stories. Because the great thing about Victorians, if they did it, they wrote about it, oh my God!
Amanda: Not until, I think Live Journal in the late 2000s did people document their lives like Victorian explorers.
Deanna Raybourn: They, you know, we're talking about the early stages of photography. So if they weren't with their little sketchbooks, which the vast majority of them were, a lot of them also had they were experimenting with photography. They were recording what went on. They would come home and they would give lectures. They would send letters back. They would have these sort of entertainment evenings where they would do magic lantern shows, or they would just read from their journals. And they would have their friends and relatives save the letters that they had sent, and they would sit there and read those out loud to people who hadn't heard them. And so when you were going around the world, and you were having these adventures. You were bringing that stuff home, too. And so it kind of broadened everybody's experiences of what the world was like. And you know, with the advances in travel, suddenly we're not on sailing ships, we're on steam ships. We can get there a little faster. A lot of these women were traveling either very slightly escorted or not at all. They were going without ladies maids. They were going on their own. And then you have people like Nellie Bly who are like, I'm gonna go around the world with a carpet bag and a jar of cold cream.
Julia: And in less days than Jules Verne said.
Deanna Raybourn: Right? And the thing a lot of people don't even realize about Nellie Bly is she's not the only one who was doing it. She was in an exact race with another woman doing precisely the same thing, and so that inspired a whole new generation of female travelers. And seeing the world through their eyes was absolutely fascinating, and part of it, that I thought was really intriguing, is how they used travel to throw off the limitations of what they were expected to do at home.Because if you're a woman at home and you're unmarried, and the vast majority of these female travelers were unmarried. There were some who would, you know, go on an archeological dig with a husband or go on a gag missionary trip with a husband. But the majority of them were traveling independently. They were on their own, and a lot of times it's because they were trying to get away from being the caregiver. Oh, you're the you're the spinster sister, or you're the maiden daughter or whatever. Oh, you're free childcare. You're free elder care, you're free, Oh, we have a sibling with special needs care, and it's fascinating to see how many of them had what we would recognize as psychosomatic symptoms or depression, and it disappears the second they set foot on a train, on a sailing ship, on a on a on a donkey up a mountain in Hawaii. It's gone like they're doing incredible feats of physical stamina, because they're free. They're absolutely free. They're answerable to nobody. And the most fascinating one that I found was a woman by the name of Margaret fountain, and she was the lepidopterist, and she kept diaries. She traveled the world hunting butterflies, and part of the reason she did it is because it was incredibly lucrative. You could make a superb living netting butterflies. Because when there's this huge vogue for travel around the world, the middle classes are trying to establish these fantastic natural history collections, you know, from museums to collections in their own homes, because it's what wealthy people have been doing for a long time. So it's a way of showing that you've got taste, you've got culture. You know, how to how to seek out beautiful things and to display them, and you've got the money to do it. So you could go out with just your butterfly net, very little overhead, and a cheap ticket to, you know, the Azores, and you could go net some butterflies and send them back and make a fortune. And that's what Margaret fountain did for she butterfly hunted on six continents over decades. She finally dropped dead on the island of Santo Domingo when she was in her 70s. Butterfly net in hand. Apparently there's a little there's a plaque on a rock next to where she died.
Amanda: Oh, my God.
Deanna Raybourn: Drops dead. So she leaves her own personal collection of butterflies to a university in the north of England, along with her diaries. And as was customary, she said, Please don't open my diaries for 70 years so that you know all the people I was talking shit about will be dead because girlfriend spilled the tea in her diaries, right? It's like a-
Julia: Such a good reason.
Deanna Raybourn: No drama.
Amanda: You can unearth my Twitter, DMS, in about checks watch, 50 years. That's about the right that's about the right time.
Deanna Raybourn: I nuked mine. So they, they hung her butterflies on the wall, and they, you know, forgot about her journals for seven decades. And finally, somebody dug her journals out and started to read them. And it turns out that this entire time, Margaret was not just hunting butterflies. Margaret was after the D oh all around the world. Margaret was sleeping around, all around the world.
Amanda: Margaret got laid on six continents, baby. How many people could say that?
Julia: Go, Margaret. Go
Deanna Raybourn: Margaret got it done. Margaret had premarital relationships. Margaret had interracial relationships. We do not think of Victorian women sleeping with men of a different race, outside the bonds of marriage. Margaret did how many other women did and didn't write about it.
Amanda: A 100% or in the sort of like pathologizing, criminalized way of you know, pursuing men of color as a predator. But a lot of these women had desire and probably had extremely hot sex with big, extremely hot men.
Deanna Raybourn: Exactly. And you know, Margaret was indiscriminate in in her attentions to men. Sometimes they were white, sometimes they were not, um, and the great thing, the thing that absolutely blew my mind is, when you are reading her journals, it. So, matter of fact, when she talks about these experiences, because she would say, you know, oh, I was in an Alpine meadow chasing a beautiful specimen of [40:09], and suddenly Hans hands were in my and you're like, Hans hands were where now? And the way she talks about the flirtations that she, I mean, she was horrible to some of these men. Because she would really lead them on into thinking like it's gonna happen, and then, you know, like, there was one case of this poor man on a train where she spends the entire night, like, kind of in the dining car, you know, making suggestive remarks and just kind of really pouring it on, and even, you know, letting him have a few little samples of the wares here. And then she goes and locks her her cabin door. And she's like, no, I never had any intention of letting you do that. And he's like, Okay, that was not clear. And I'm like, okay, Margaret, you could have been a little bit more, you know, open about your intentions here, instead.
Julia: A little bit of a tease, Margaret.
Amanda: Individually, a little bummed, systemically, rock on Margaret.
Deanna Raybourn: Exactly, exactly like it's problematic in its execution, but on the whole, I approve.
Amanda: I approve this message.
Deanna Raybourn: Get it. Girl or not.
Amanda: That's feminism, baby.
Deanna Raybourn: Yeah, exactly. So this is, this is who Margaret was. And it's very, really funny. Thing is, she would get these crushes on people, and you could see when she was using men to kind of feed her, her ego and her vanity, when she wasn't getting her her romance fulfilled by the actual object of her affections. And it made her just the most fascinating and complex. And, you know, just so full of drama, so full of drama. She is absolutely the girl in your friend group that you guys would have had a separate WhatsApp chat going about going.
Julia: Oh yeah, leave the shit she just got up to this time.
Deanna Raybourn: Because she is, she is just a drama llama completely. And I loved that for her. And so I was reading these books while I was still writing my first because two of her her journals, actually, were published, and they're long since out of print, but I got my hands on them. And so I was reading those as I was still writing the lady Julia gray series, which was my first Victorian mystery series. And I remember thinking, God, if I ever get the chance to write another Victorian series, this is my girl. She's, she's going to be the inspiration for this character. And so a few years later, I was, you know, my previous publisher had declined to continue the the Julia Gray series, and I had moved publishers, and I was, I was trying to come up with a project that I could use to move publishers. And I thought of Margaret Fountain, and I went, alright, let's go. And so, you know, in her honor, Veronica Speedwell is a lepidopterist who likes to get her a little something, something. But her rule is never in England, her rule is only when she's traveling, because if she doesn't, that was actually Margaret Fountain's rule.
Julia: We do it somewhere else. The English can't talk.
Deanna Raybourn: Exactly. It was solely a matter of like, maintaining that very proper facade of, I'm a respectable woman, I wouldn't do that, and making sure people can't gossip about you, because what you get, you know, it's very much a what happens in Cairo stays in Cairo's situation. And so that was, that was how she lived her life. And I thought that that rule makes sense. We understand why that's there. So that's Veronica's rule as well. And then that's really the only resemblance that they have. Is, is what they do for a living and what they do for fun.
Amanda: I'm really picturing her like on a steamship, watching England recede behind her, checking, you know, the the atlas of being like international waters. Let's go.
Deanna Raybourn: To the cabin. Checking out the crew, checking out the passengers, going, you, you? It's fine.
Julia: incredible. Oh, my goodness, that's I'm just blown away by that whole story that was incredible. Like, I'm like, my I'm like, still processing. I'm like, Whoa.
Amanda: Any other mythological or folkloric influences that you were excited to draw from, either in making the mysteries that Veronica solves, or just kind of building out her world as a whole, just for me as a fan, there are, you know, Royals in disguise. There is a, you know, a somewhat secret intelligence committee they're smuggling there. I mean, there's all kinds of incredible stuff that happened all the time and that I think of when I think of the noisy, briny, dirty depths of like, Victorian London.
Deanna Raybourn: Oh yeah, I mean, Victorian London. It's just it. It's layer upon layer upon layer. You know, you've, you've got Victoria at the top, you know, sunken perpetual morning for Albert. And then you have, right below that, you've got the Prince of Wales, and this sort of very glittering opulent, scandalous court, that is a secondary court that he and his princess maintain. And you know, the Princess of Wales is very much above the fray, but all of you know the Prince of Wales's friends and associates are kind of basically engaged in mate swapping, because we're all out to have a good time. I did. I think I wrote in one of the books about his famous sex chair. Below that, you've got the middle classes who are like, you know, oh, we're not even going to say the word leg in public, because. And then below that, you've got a group of people who are who are working hard for a living, who are blue collar workers who are trying to make ends meet, and more than 50% of those brides are pregnant on their wedding day, so they're not living by you know. So it's fascinating to me to look at the juxtaposition of, when you change your social rank, how that changes the morality and the expectations, and then, you know, of course, the huge story dominating so much of this in the late 1880s in 1888 and a little bit beyond, was Jack the Ripper, because of the fact that, you know, he stopped in November of of that year. But nobody really knew that at the time, like you have to just wait and see Is he going to be done. And then there's the Thames torso murders. And, you know, there, there were a couple of really gory there was a gory case in particular, of a body being found on a train, which I kind of incorporated a little bit of that idea into a grave robbery.
Amanda: I love a train panic and move fast. What are they going to do to her body?
Deanna Raybourn: Oh, my God. And that was, that was another thing I found fascinating, was the technology panic of the Victorian era, how people just lost their damn minds over escalators. It's like the stairs are moving. What? Women will have hysteria quick their uteruses will just run around. And you know how people would step on a tram and, like, pass out because it was just moving too fast. They can't they can't, they can't cope with it. But, you know, when you think about it, they had to process more technological change than any other generation in history, with a possible exception of mine. I mean, because when at the early part of that long 19th century, nothing moved faster than a horse's gallop, you know, nothing moved faster than a sailing ship in full rig, and your illumination, if you want artificial illumination, is candlelight. By the end of the the the 19th century, you've got motor cars and electricity. Now they're not widespread, but they've been invented. Some people are using them, and in the meantime, you've had to transition through gaslight and steam power, and every one of those changes just brought incredible upheaval and people trying to make sense of it all. And when you've got the movement between the classes, you get all the all of these tensions. And you know, I was, I was really fascinated, and I even wrote about it in one of the books, and I can't remember which one, because you write it and you forget it, but it might have been a murderous relation where there Veronica and Stoker, who are the two lead characters in the series, are walking through Trafalgar Square, and there is an encampment of homeless people, unhoused people, in Trafalgar Square, which sounds like something that's very, very 21st century, except it was actually happening, and looking back at their stories and seeing how much is exactly the same. But you can also pull it all the way back, because how many, how many Greek myths do we know about? Oh, a stranger came to town and bad shit happened. So we have to fear the stranger. We have to fear the person who comes and doesn't seem to have means or maybe has a curse hanging over them, because why else are they traveling around? You know, we're nervous about the traveler. Why?
Julia: Yeah, no, that. That's such a good point. And so many stories too, of the travelers secretly, like Zeus in disguise or Hera in disguise, and stuff like that.
Deanna Raybourn: Right?
Julia: And not giving them due deference and violating hospitality law also gets you into trouble. So it's like, we're afraid of this person, but also we have to treat them with respect. Is kind of this like duality that Greek mythology plays a lot with?
Deanna Raybourn: Yeah, and it's it actually plays completely into immigration today and immigration in Victorian times. It's like, oh, we have these people coming, and let's treat them with respect, because they're going to do the jobs we need them to do, and they're the right kind of people, and we're not scared of them. Oh, no, these people are coming. I'm scared of them. I'm threatened by them. Let's, let's close the door. That's not okay. And and we are still talking about these questions today, and that's absolutely fascinating. When you think, okay, it's been 6000 years we're still doing this. It's been 8000 years we're still doing this, because some things just never change. And there's, there's always that sort of, you know, fear of of the unknown, and how do you how do you entertain angels, unawares?
Julia: And I'm sure, in some ways, that. The transition from writing Victorian novels to modern day stuff a little bit easier for you, hopefully.
Deanna Raybourn: Absolutely because nothing ever really changes. We're still grappling with exactly the same questions we were grappling with back when we were forging our swords out of bronze and telling stories around the campfire. It's exactly the same sort of thing. I always find it really interesting when you can trace a through line of a story. Like, I grew up in South Texas, in Bexar County, where we have a creek called woman Hollering Creek, and which is just like the most like redneck Texas thing you could possibly think of woman Hollering Creek.
Amanda: It took a second for that to sink in, I'm obsessed with this place now.
Deanna Raybourn: Absolutely, you should be. It's called woman Hollering Creek, because the idea, the story goes that it's named for a woman who is weeping because she drowned her children in the creek because her husband was unfaithful. Well, that comes directly from the Mexican stories of La Llorona. That comes from Spain, and that comes from Medea. Now, are they directly linked all the way back? I don't have any idea. But the the notion of, I'm going to take the ultimate revenge I can on you, and then I'm going to cry some about it, and everybody else gets to listen to it and be assaulted by the violence of my emotion, like that storyline has come directly down from Medea murdering Jason's children, and then we've got a place called woman Hollering Creek in Bexar County, Texas. But it's the same idea. And I think, I think that's just fascinating, that as human beings, we have these little, you know, these little seeds of stories and seeing where they get planted, where they take root, how they fruit, how they flower, and how they get corrupted. Do they stay true? Do they turn like I find that endlessly fascinating, and we could probably talk for about seven more years
Amanda: As do we which is why our podcast is eight years deep and 420, some episodes, and we're still going.
Deanna Raybourn: I know, I looked at how many episodes there were, and I was like, I cannot say a single original thing that they will not have heard of.
Julia: You absolutely can. So many original thoughts this episode.
Amanda: You've in fact that's given us, I think, a new subtitle for the podcast, which is, it's been 8000 years. We're still doing this, which, you know, Julia, that's a contender. I like it.
Julia: That is, it's something we say on the show very often, which is, humans have always been humans. So you have been telling the same stories since we have told stories, you know, and it's, it's kind of wild.
Deanna Raybourn: And it's so universal. And in a way, it just kind of makes you want to bang your head against a rock. But in another way, it's really consoling to think, look, we don't have to necessarily figure this out, because people have been trying for 10 centuries, 40 centuries, and we haven't done it yet. Like maybe that burden isn't ours. Maybe that's just the meaning of what it is to be human is to ask the question and to try to answer it.
Amanda: And a core tenant of Judaism, to me is [53:01], like you, you have to continue the work, and you have to start it, but you don't have to finish it, and that's something that we you know, I try to take forward as well. Deanna, we can talk to you clearly for another several hours, if not years. We will include links to your website and all of the books that folks can find and buy from their indie local bookstore, via bookshop.org anything else that you want to plug or make sure our listeners know about if they love you, your perspective and your world.
Deanna Raybourn: I want to come back because we didn't even talk about my vampire book.
Julia: Yeah. Oh, we gotta do that next.
Amanda: It's gonna it's gonna happen. We'll have you back.
Deanna Raybourn: No, I've got the the ninth Veronica book is coming out in paperback that is A Grave Robbery. It's got a little nod to Frankenstein in there, and it actually does deal with some urban myths. And then the sequel to Killers of a Certain Age, Kills Well With Others. And I will be on tour, hopefully in your listeners backyards for them to come and see.
Amanda: Safe to say, I think anyone who's listening, who goes to one of your events, will meet new friends there. It sounds like we're all gonna like each other.
Deanna Raybourn: Oh, absolutely. We all nerd out over exactly the same stuff. And I love that. I adore my readers for that very reason, because we have, we were all the nerds in school, geeking out over the same things, and that creates community, whether you know whether you meet them when you're seven years old, or whether you meet them when you're 70, that is, those are your people.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Amanda: You are one of ours. Thank you so much again. Deanna and listeners, remember next time you are deciding whether to capture a butterfly or capture the D.
Julia: Stay creepy.
Amanda: Stay cool.
Julia: Later, satyrs!
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