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Ella Dawson Samples What a Wallflower Wants by Maya Rodale
Katherine Grant: Welcome to the historical romance sampler podcast. I'm your host, Katherine Grant, and each week I introduce you to another amazing historical romance author. My guest reads a little sample of their work, and then we move into a free ranging interview. If you like these episodes, don't forget to subscribe to the historical romance sampler, wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Now let's get into this week's episode.
I am super excited for a special episode this week with Ella Dawson. Ella is a New York City based sex and culture critic and the author of, but How Are You? Really a Novel about college reunions and millennial angst. She is also the host of the Rebel Ever After podcast about progressive romance novels.
She is proudly bisexual, anxious and aspires to adopt a kitten. But I think perhaps you already have adopted a kitten.
Ella Dawson: I am fostering and I'm considering foster failing. So we shall see. You're really, you're working on the aspiring, you're, you're pretty much close, close to your goal. Yes, yes. I, one of the few goals that feels attainable in my life right now.
Katherine Grant: Well, thank you so much for coming on. This is one of those special episodes where you are going to read us a sample from one of your favorite historical romances. So what are you reading for us today?
Ella Dawson: I am reading a passage from What A Wallflower Wants by Maya Rodale. I have the mass market paperback.
I think I actually found it at a little free library way back when, and I have kept it all these years. So I'm gonna read a passage from it.
Katherine Grant: Awesome. I can't wait to hear it.
Ella Dawson: Yay. And then the only thing that is really necessary to know is that Prudence and Castleton have they have met on the road at an inn and they have been brought there by their own secrets and, and
and paths that they're on, but they have really bonded and Prudence is very shy. She's been through some traumatic experiences in the past, and Castleton has kind of proven himself as someone who she can trust and be comfortable around. So they have, they have kissed once briefly. But there's a lot of tension.
Katherine Grant: Our favorite,
Ella Dawson: yay. Okay. This was a new feeling. Prudence had never felt this before. Light and lovely, and finally understood. She had told Castleton her secret, and he hadn't turned coldly away from her. She had entrusted herself in his care and thus far along miles and miles and miles of empty roads, he hadn't taken advantage of her.
She was nervous about this evening. What would happen next? What did she want? When it was time to retire, the innkeeper regretfully informed them only one room remained. He added that there was a boxing match nearby and all the inns around for miles were full up with spectators. Prudence did not understand the appeal of a boxing match.
Judging by the crowds, she was the only one who felt thusly. Castleton said one room would be fine for him and his wife. "You could have told everyone I was your sister," Prudence remarked as they climbed the stairs up to their room. Not that she wanted him to. Thus far, she liked pretending to be Lady Castleton, but they could have done so.
"Have you seen the way I look at you?" Castleton murmured leaning close to her. "I'd be arrested for indecency if I were caught looking at my sister like that."
Prudence blushed and tripped on a step. She hadn't considered herself desirable or an object of lust, but Castleton was attracted to her as a person, as a woman, it was plain in his gaze.
"That makes me feel nervous about sharing a room with you," Prudence said.
"Don't be nervous, please. I couldn't bear it if I scared you." He looked so earnest. She believed him. She had so much faith in him that she exhaled and was even able to breathe normally. But then she glanced up at him and noticed he was biting back words.
"What is it?" she asked. They crossed over the threshold to their room, a Spartan affair with whitewashed walls, rough hewn wood floors, a bed, a chair, and little else. He sat down the bags and turned to face her.
"I will wait for you, Prudence," he said solemnly, "as long as it takes."
"But-" the protest was a rush of breath over her lips.
It could be forever. She might never be ready. She suddenly remembered the morning she'd spent kneading dough with Annie. She'd worked and worked and exhausted herself, and nothing had changed until it had. But she wasn't a ball of dough. She was a girl who had been hurt, who had the worst luck and who might never be able to accept what Castleton was hinting at.
A wave of sadness enveloped her at the prospect. What a bleak life was ahead of her if she was forever tormented by the memory of Dudley's, violent possession of her body. What if she could take her body back? Her heart started to pound. What if she could reclaim it for her own? It was a question she could not answer, and she couldn't even think about it because what Castleton said next took her breath away and stunned her.
"But I want to touch you," Castleton said. "I want to touch you gently with love."
"Oh," she gasped. Gentle. Love. Castleton. Touch. Even though she was damaged, even though she wasn't pure and innocent, even though she wasn't any of those things, he was still falling in love with her and wanted to touch her. Never, ever, ever had Prudence thought she would find a man like him. If she believed he was out there,
she never would've run off with a man like Cecil, but she had, and he was here. Was she going to let him go? Was she going to be content with fear and shame forever? Castleton might be her chance to try again. Be reborn.
"But I don't wanna hurt you," he continued, "or scare you." His gentle demeanor soothed her.
His relentless kindness made her feel safer than she'd felt in years. His blue eyes were smoldering. There was no denying it. He wanted her, he knew what had happened to her, and he still desired her. Would she ever find another man like him? No. Would she ever have another chance to try to reclaim herself?
Perhaps if she didn't allow fear to hold her back, but why not start now? Why not seize this moment? Prudence thought of excuses, but dismissed them. This was her chance. So mustering all of her courage, she asked, "How do you want to touch me?" She didn't know and she wanted to.
"I would start by pushing aside that strand of hair that's been falling in your eyes all day,"
he said softly, "and I'd let my fingertips graze your cheek as I did."
That was gentle. That was safe.
"Like this?" Prudence asked as she enacted the movement he described. Her hair was soft. How many times had she pushed her hair away from her face? Countless. And how many times had she noticed that the skin of her cheek was soft and sensitive and responsive to a light and gentle touch?
Once. Now. The slight caress of her fingertips against it sent a little shiver down her spine. "Yes," he whispered like that.
"What else?" Castleton closed the door to their room. She was alone with a man behind a closed door. Prudence couldn't believe a few seconds had passed without her bolting, but her curiosity, desire, and determination were beginning to be stronger than her fear.
He took a seat in the upholstered chair on the far side of the room outside the sun was setting, and the warm light filtering through the window made his skin seem warmer. His blue eyes were fixed on her. Tentatively Prudence sat on the bed. Their gazes locked. His face was becoming familiar to her now, the blue eyes and dark lashes, the strong line of his jaw and the dramatic slant of his cheekbones, his firm mouth that often curved into a smile that made her feel warm inside.
In this moment, she felt connected to him even though they were on opposite sides of the room. Strange that.
"Your neck is lovely," he began in a low voice. "I would want to kiss it starting just below your ear lobe." Since she couldn't kiss her own ear lobe,
prudence pressed one fingertip there lightly. She shivered slightly.
"How would you kiss it?"
"Just a little press of my lips. I might taste you too."
Prudence sat very still, imagining the feeling of his lips pressing against this sensitive spot. She felt a spark of something as she imagined his lips parting as he tasted her skin, thus feeling overwhelmed and faintly ridiculous.
She dropped her hand into her lap. Who kissed people on the neck anyway? Apparently Castleton did, and judging by the darkening of his eyes and the heat in his gaze, he liked it. His voice was low as he continued with his seduction from the far side of the room. " Then I'd make my way down with my mouth to where your neck curves into your shoulder."
"I cannot kiss my own neck," she whispered.
"Use your fingers," he urged wickedly. "Use your imagination."
Prudence was faltering, but she could do this if she just concentrated on his voice and her own touch.
"Fine," she agreed.
"Actually fine, or not fine, but don't want talk about it?" Castleton asked with a lift of his brow. The man knew women. She had to give him that.
She also had to give him an honest answer, and after a moment of thinking about it, she said, "Actually fine."
His mouth turned up slightly. Her heart beat hard, but she wanted to do this, whatever this was.
Katherine Grant: What a lovely scene.
Ella Dawson: I love Maya Rodale so much.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. I mean there was so much about that, that stood out to me. What drew you to this, to reading this story and this scene in particular?
Ella Dawson: Sure. So
I, for a long time, I did not consider myself a romance reader. I had kind of absorbed the snobby idea that romances were retrograde and violent and just I didn't know what I was talking about, and this was one of those books that I found at exactly the right time because it upended so many of the assumptions that I had made.
And this is a book that is so focused on consent and exploring pleasure in an empowering and safe way, and also like very directly deals with a survivor's experience of trauma and learning how to trust again and experience pleasure again. And so it just, it was a really important book for me in terms of
learning to love romance and understand what it was capable of. And also it's just so good. Like it does all of those things, but it doesn't feel didactic. It's so sexy and sweet. And the beginning of the book is just these two strangers, stranger in this end during a rainstorm that won't end. And so we get several days of them being cozy and hanging out and like slowly building that trust.
And then of course it becomes much more wild and crazy when they finally leave and have to rejoin the world. But to me, this is one of those books that's so special and I reread it yesterday and I was like, I think this is the scene. Because it just, it exemplifies that so well.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, I mean, what was so interesting about this scene to me is in many ways the actions that he's describing are what you would expect to see at the beginning of a seduction scene.
But it's so unique because he's not doing them. She's doing it to herself. And so she's empowered, but it's still this incredibly intimate expression between the two of them.
Ella Dawson: Absolutely. And it's really sexy and it like, it escalates to a very sexy place, but at no point did they touch and it just, it, it felt so unique and thoughtful to me.
It's, yeah, it's really good.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, I haven't read it, but now I really want to, and I love that the whole plot, it sounds like, there are so many markers that are like, okay, I'm clearly in probably Regency or Victorian England.
Ella Dawson: Yes, Regency.
Katherine Grant: I know, know what like, you know, the genre is that I'm in. But for it to start at a rainstorm and then to have this like extended road trip, it also is finding ways to be a little bit different inside of the genre expectations.
Ella Dawson: Yeah, it's definitely in that regency world. As, as things kind of pull back, we see that there are Dukes involved and there's a lot in here about aristocracy and classism, and something that I find really interesting about the book is the way that the author manages to make it feel incredibly modern.
Like I read this, it came out a few years before the Me Too movement took center stage, but I read it in that context. And so for me, I was like, oh my God, this feels so timely. But it also feels very period appropriate in the way that everything is handled and the language that the characters have to describe both positive sexuality and experiences that are, are traumatic and violent.
And so it's, to me, it's like it feels, it is quintessential historical fiction while also really connecting to readers like me when I was a 25-year-old little snob.
Katherine Grant: And so you said, you know, you weren't reading romance and this was one of your gateways into romance. And now you're a contemporary romance author.
So how much of your romance journey was reading historical? At what point did you discover contemporary? Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Ella Dawson: Yeah. I honestly, at my heart, I'm a historical fiction reader, like I prefer to read historical romance. It is what I find most escapist and exciting. I love, I love, just like a turn my brain off Regency, I have to find a husband, but I also love how writers are able to use historical to explore political topics, to explore injustice and all these bigger structures. So it's just everything I could possibly want, I have found in historical romance. And so for the first few years I was only reading historical first Regency and then branching out into gilded Age and Victorian, and then all different types of time periods with Beverly Jenkins. And I started to read Contemporary and it almost felt like a separate genre because I was reading all these mass market paperback historicals from the library, and then friends would give me the trade paperback contemporaries at the moment, like The Hating Game.
And then eventually Emily Henry, and it was kind of wild to me to be like, oh, this is, I've been over here in this small little neighborhood, but romance is gigantic. And I slowly started to venture out and honestly, I, the main reason I wrote in contemporary was I had always written contemporary fiction, not realizing it was romance.
And then I had a bunch of like demons in my life that I wanted to like put into a character. And so it made sense for me to write contemporary for the story I wanted to tell, but. I would like to write historical. I'm like kind of noodling on an idea right now, but it's, it's very intimidating to me to write historical and I, I have so much respect for the authors who do it, and I'm just like, I don't know.
We'll see. Contemporary feels safer because it's, it's a world I know so well because I'm alive right now.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, I get that. But you know what, just give it a try.
You'll love it.
Ella Dawson: It's, it's really fun. And also, like I, I listened to a few episodes of your podcast yesterday while I was getting ready. And at one point I think you asked an author like, when does something even become historical? Like, how far in the past does it need to be?
And my book takes place in 2018 with flashbacks to 2013 and I've gotten a lot of Gen Z readers being like, this feels like historical fiction. And I'm like, first of all, you're making me feel very old and I'm not.
Katherine Grant: That hurts.
Ella Dawson: I'm pretty, yeah, I know. I was like, oh my God is MGMT now a historical romance reference?
But it got me thinking about like, when do we feel removed from the current moment in fiction and like when does... I don't think it's historical fiction to write about the decade before this one, but to a reader who was learning the multiplication tables at that time. Yeah, it was a very humbling moment.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, it is interesting. I think you know, I've had that conversation a couple of times now and. Then when I think about it in terms of TV shows, like Stranger Things is such a period piece. Yeah. In the 1980s. And that was before I was born, but not that much before I was born. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, I think, I think we need more terms to describe period fiction and historical and we need to be flexible.
Ella Dawson: Yeah, I set out to write a very millennial coded 2010s book, and I, I don't think I realized, yeah, the, the genre, genre definition and like genre distinction has been like the bane of my existence over the last few years. It's been interesting to see like when the concepts we have fail us.
Katherine Grant: Okay. So you said something interesting to me, which is you were reading historicals in mass market paperback.
Mm-hmm. And then you were getting contemporary as trade and that, how much of that contributed to how it felt different to you?
Ella Dawson: It felt massively different and I hadn't really thought it through, which makes me laugh now in retrospect because my focus in undergrad was on feminist pop culture criticism and the way that, like, even something as simple as the binding of a book influences how much like credibility we give it.
And so in retrospect, I'm like, oh, that's really cute that I thought mass market paperbacks were somehow lesser than, or like a separate genre from trade when in reality so much of that is just publishers deciding how to place things, what can be more profitable, and so I really did see them as like separate, very distinct, separate things, but.
This is a hot take, but I also feel safe among my people here. I think often historical romances are a lot tighter written than some of the contemporaries that are being released right now, especially in the rom-com bubble that is kind of just bursting. And I'm really heartbroken as well that the mass market paperback is starting to go away because it's such, it's so much more affordable and it's been this safe haven for historical that's not.
It like historical in the trade. Paperback is just a harder sell, I think. So I am, I'm worried, but I love a mass market. I love, I love the size, I love tucking them into my purse. I have a whole spice rack that I just filled with historical romances because like this is the right size for it. So,
Katherine Grant: and it's spicy.
Ella Dawson: Yeah. And it is spicy. And to me it's such a sensory memory thing of like picking up the historicals at the little free library at my public beach when I was a teenager and being like, Ooh, well there, of course it's in this, oh, this is a beautiful step back. Like, I think it's a really. Beautiful.
Part of the historical romance genre is the mass market paperback. So I think it used, I used to frame it as like, oh, these books are cheap and discardable, and they sell them at the supermarket. And now I'm like, these books are sold at the supermarket. Like, yay, I can go to CVS and get my prescription and then grab one Like that rules.
So perspective is everything.
Katherine Grant: It's
interesting because I... for some reason thought your answer would be, oh yeah, and I didn't like the trade paperbacks because they're not convenient. I love a, I self-publish, so I don't have access to get mass market paperback size, but Ingram does allow me to get ground wood paper.
That's a new thing since I started. And so it's like the kind of like pulpy paper that you get in a, in a mass market paperback. And I choose that actively because it makes the book a little bit lighter. Yeah. And it just, I prefer that when I'm flipping pages.
Ella Dawson: Yeah, it is like even something as simple as page feel changes your relationship to a book and like the trade paperbacks, they're bigger, they're harder to fit in my purse. The pages feel a little plasticy sometimes and some of the artwork is gorgeous,
but I love an illustrated step back, old fashioned type of historical like. I'm not one of those people who gets super wrapped up in aesthetics 'cause I can't take a photo to save my life. But like, just in terms of holding the book, I'm like, yes, I want a mass market paper back. Thank you.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. All right.
Well and another question I have is, and you kind of touched on this earlier, but your podcast Rebel Ever After is specifically looking at Progressive romance. And I was curious. Do you have a sense, does romance lend itself to progressive stories more than other genres in commercial fiction? Or you've just read so much romance, it's your passion place that that's where you decided to focus?
Ella Dawson: I think it's a little bit of both. My partner is a big horror fan and writer, and so I've learned a lot in the last few years about how horror can also be very political and horror and romance are kind of twin genres in a way of, there's a, a crisis or a challenge, and it often reflects some type of like social or cultural anxiety.
And in horror, the ending is often darker and less resolved. Whereas in a romance, you have that soft space to land of the happily ever after. And that's what allows you to feel all those feelings of anxiety and confusion because you know it'll be okay. So I do think romance is a unique genre, but it's not the only genre. I could have in a different universe done a horror ever after podcast.
I don't know. But I think like, because romance is so focused on what does it mean to be a successful adult? What does it mean to build a life that is satisfying and complete? So much of those ideas are wrapped up in what it, we as a society decide success looks like or adulthood looks like, or family looks like.
And so I think that romance is a very rife political ground to talk about that and to visualize what that looks like. And so for me, when I started the podcast, I was kind of grappling with the question of like, well, how do you write a happily ever after that isn't a proposal or kids or buying a house together? What can a happily ever after look like that includes more people? And
that overlaps so much with what's going on politically right now in terms of who has access to marriage, who has access to citizenship, who has access to financial security and buying a house. And so for me, I don't think romance is automatically progressive. I think that there's a whole gamut of romance novels out there and what the happily ever after can look like, and particularly what type of heroes and heroines we're writing and what type of relationship dynamics we're including on the page.
But I, I think that it's a really wonderful place to change people's minds and expand our ideas of what does it look like to be happy and loved, and who deserves to be happy and loved. So for me, I like to write about depressed, possibly autistic millennials who are broke and still deserve love. And the authors who I've spoken to in some way or another challenge what we expect, what we expect happily ever after to be, maybe it's polyamorous, maybe it's, I don't want children and either do you, and we're gonna start a business like.
It's really exciting to me. It gets me, it makes me feel hopeful at a time when that's kind of hard.
Katherine Grant: Absolutely. I, I've listened to several episodes of your podcast. I love it. I love the conversations you have and I think it's an important topic for us to keep in mind as we are writing and for readers to keep in mind as they encounter stories that might be different from the romances that they've read before.
Ella Dawson: Yeah. And I like, my intention isn't to shame folks who are reading or enjoy things that may not be like politically correct. Like I've read some weird stuff and there are some things that work for me and I don't know why. But I try to think of my podcast as an opportunity to like elevate books that may not get the marketing support or the TikTok algorithm boost that other books get.
Whether that's because the authors are people of color or queer or trans, or the book is just doing something super weird. And I have a really special place in my heart for historicals because I think historicals show that there have always been people living differently and fighting for a, a broader spectrum of living your life and playing with gender and playing with class and all of those things.
So. I, yeah. I nerded out listening to some episodes of your show yesterday. I was like, yes, there were people, there were women joining the army in order to live as their true selves and find class mobility and all these things. Like it's just so much fun to me. It gets my nerd brain going.
Katherine Grant: I'm so glad.
'cause I feel that way too.
So. All right, well I think that's a good time to transition, to love it or leave it.
[Musical Interlude]
Katherine Grant: So do you love it or leave it? Protagonists meet in the first 10% of the story.
Ella Dawson: Love it. I get antsy. I wanna know who they are. I wanna know their spark. I just hit the desk. I'm sorry.
Katherine Grant: All right.
Love it or leave it? Dual point of view narration.
Ella Dawson: Love reading it. Struggle to write it personally, but love it.
Katherine Grant: All right, love it or leave it? Third person, past tense.
Ella Dawson: Love it. Prefer it.
Katherine Grant: Love it or leave it? Third act breakup or dark moment.
Ella Dawson: I love it. I love that it makes me angry. It takes me on a journey.
Katherine Grant: All right. Love it or leave it? Always end with an epilogue.
Ella Dawson: Leave it. I like an epilogue, but sometimes I'm like, I get it. I get it. They're happy. Their kids are cute. I get it.
Katherine Grant: All right. Love it or leave it? Always share research or always read the author's note.
Ella Dawson: Love it. I love the author's note. I love the historical notes. I think that it's so interesting to see like if there are real people who inspired characters or real legislation that they were fighting for.
To me it's just like my nerd brain is like, yes, tell me all of the research you did.
Katherine Grant: And are there other romance rules I didn't ask about that you like to break or you like to see other authors break?
Ella Dawson: I think the, the big one is the epilogue for me is like, what do we need to show in the epilogue? My personal gripe is the epilogue giving birth scene 'cause I'm like, this had nothing to do with what the story was about. I like an epilogue when it ties into the themes of the book and it shows that these characters are good.
But I get very frustrated when an epilogue feels like, and here's the domestic bliss. Then I'm like, I, I, I can assume.
Katherine Grant: That makes sense since your whole podcast is investigating. What is the happily ever after that, you'd like to see us break that more.
Ella Dawson: Yeah, and I, I've had a lot of readers say that they wish they had had an epilogue for my book. And in some ways I wish I had done more to show like where these characters would go. But structurally for my book, it takes place during the four days of the college reunion. And I never wanted to, on the page leave that setting.
So I was like, well, I gotta sacrifice that, but. I, yeah, I'm a big fan of the Happily for now too, and I like the idea that readers are able to think, well, would these characters stay together? And like, that's your business. It's not mine.
Katherine Grant: Yes. Right. 'cause it's all what we bring to it. I've read Epilogues convincing me that they are still together, and I'm like, I don't think
they're together.
Ella Dawson: Exactly. Exactly. And that's okay. Like, I don't mind when my readers are like, bro, these are toxic people. I'm like, well that's, that hurts my feelings. But it's, it belongs to you now. Yes.
Katherine Grant: Well, speaking of your book, But How Are You Really? It's a fantastic contemporary romance with a lovable golden retriever hero whose name is Reese.
Am I right? Reese. Reese, yeah. Yes. That's just like, I was like, I'll eat you up Reese's Pieces and, and you are also the host of Rebel Ever After podcast. Where can our listeners find you on the internet?
Ella Dawson: Yes, I am on every social media platform as brosandprose because I used to write a lot of prose about bros.
I have since reformed my dating choices. You can also go to rebel ever after pod.com and you could go to ella dawson.com, although my website is kind of out of date, but you can find my books there or yeah, my books there and various thoughts.
Katherine Grant: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ella, for coming on.
I've really appreciated this.
Ella Dawson: Yeah, it was such a pleasure. Thank you so much.
That's it for this week! Don't forget to subscribe to the Historical Romance Sampler wherever you listen, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Until next week, happy reading!