[music]

Sarah Wendell: What happens when a bestselling and award-winning author of historical romances decides after a break of a few years to write spicy contemporary? Well, if you are Deeanne Gist, you start over from scratch as Dakota Lacoy. Amanda and I were just talking recently about what had happened to Deeanne Gist, who wrote some of Smart Bitches’ favorites, like Tiffany Girl and Fair Play. Well, it turns out that as Dakota Lacoy she’s been busy setting up a series of hot, contemporary romantic comedies set in Honky Tonk, Texas, a small town with a sordid history and the greatest pun-filled business names. So my guest today is Deeanne Gist and Dakota Lacoy, and we’re going to talk about everything from writing historical inspirationals to figuring out how to introduce her old readers to her new name.

Will there be links in the show notes to everything? Absolutely there will; do not doubt it.

I have a compliment this week.

To Liz G.: If you are not familiar, a ThunderShirt is a compressive garment for pets with anxiety, especially during thunderstorms. You are the human personification of a ThunderShirt. You make the people who you love feel safe, cozy, protected, and warm.

If you’ve supported the show, thank you. If you’d like a compliment, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. The benefits are many: you get the full PDF scan of RT, you get a wonderful Discord with some of the most lovely human beings, and you get to support this show and make sure that every episode has a transcript hand-compiled by garlicknitter. Hey, garlicknitter! [Hey, Sarah! – gk] Thank you so much for supporting the show. If you’re interested, patreon.com/SmartBitches.

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Are you ready to talk to Deeanne Gist and Dakota Lacoy? Let’s do this; on with the podcast.

[music]

Dakota Lacoy: I am Dakota Lacoy, and I have another pen name called Deeanne Gist, but that’s kind of retired at the moment. As Dakota I write fun, romantic, small-town romances featuring Southern men who are, like, entrenched in the cowboy culture of Texas, and even though they wear the hats and the boots and the buckles, they do not ranch. They’ve swapped that out for small-town living. As a matter of fact, I hashtag #NonRanchingCowboys all the time, because I’m kind of determined to invent a new subgenre. I mean, who doesn’t love a cowboy? And though we might all – maybe we don’t want to spend time on a ranch? But we do all love a cowboy. So when readers pick up my books they’ll find themselves immersed in the small town of Honky Tonk, Texas!

Sarah: I will tell you, one of my very favorite things about when Romantic Times or RWA was in Texas was that I could wear cowboy boots as formal wear, and I was so comfortable? I was like, This is really great! I had no idea!

Dakota: Yeah, we call ‘em the dress, our dress boots. Yeah.

Sarah: Dress boots! I have two pair of dress boots, and I love them.

Dakota: Yeah.

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: ‘Cause we have boots for different, different things. Some for riding, some for going out, and some for going to the wedding.

Sarah: Well, I was so excited that you reached out to me, because the day before Amanda and I had been recording our episodes of Romantic Times Rewind, where we take a look back at old issues of Romantic Times magazine, which is a long and strange journey, and we saw a review for Tiffany Girl when it came out, and I was like, Oh look, Tiffany Girl! That was such a great book! And one of us was like, Whatever happened to Deeanne Gist? Like, I don’t know; I hope she’s well. And then you emailed me the next day, which is very eerie, so I feel like one or the other of us should play the lottery.

Dakota: [Laughs]

Sarah: But first, we love spotting your older books, but it really did look, it looked as if you had just sort of left the industry in 2016! So what happened?

Dakota: You know, Sarah, it was never my intention to walk away. I had just won the RITA and, for Tiffany Girl, and was, like, at the pinnacle of my career, but my husband decided to retire early, and with him being home twenty-four/seven, I knew that my schedule would not be my own anymore. And if…

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: – said, you know, Let’s go to Bora Bora, I wanted to say, Okay! [Laughs] You know, and I didn’t want to worry about deadlines or who I, how I was going to make up those writing days, so I told my agent and publisher that I wasn’t going to sign another contract. That instead I would just let them know when I’d finished my next manuscript, and we’d just go from there. But as it turns out, that same year that my husband retired, our daughter got married, so I had to plan and execute a wedding, and my newly widowed mother was moving to independent living, so I needed to sell her house and get her moved, and then we also sold our house so we could build our dream retirement home in upstate South Carolina, and that ended up taking two years. And then I found out that when you move onto a lake in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains you get lots of visitors! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yes, you do. [Laughs]

Dakota: …Sarah! And we loved it! We loved it, and we were having so much fun getting to know our new neighbors and, and having, seeing people we hadn’t seen in a while, and it really wasn’t until 2020 when things finally slowed down, and that’s when I wrote my next historical.

Sarah: I cannot imagine the length of the to-do lists that you were dealing with? Like, that must have been absolutely epic, between wedding, selling a house, selling another house, building a house. That is quite a lot.

Dakota: It was a lot, and it was just such a blessing that, you know, I was not on contract, because I really, I don’t know what I’d have done. It –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: – you know, it, it was really wonderful.

Sarah: So basically it sounds like your husband accidentally introduced you to how great retirement is, and you were like, Wait, hold on! This is pretty awesome! I, I can do, I have time for whatever I need to focus on.

Dakota: Yeah, and that is, that’s exactly right, but then I had that manuscript, and I am looking back at five years of really wonderful time off, you know. And so I’m like, Well, it’s ready, it’s finished, but I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to submit it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: – because then I’d be on contract, I’d be on deadline, and I got to thinking, Maybe I should publish independently. You know, Sarah, independ-, indie publishing is such a huge part of our industry now, and I didn’t know really how it worked, and I was really kind of naïve about it and presumptuous, thinking I could just throw a book up there. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dakota: But I did know enough that I was going to need to educate myself on how to become an independent publisher?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dakota: So I did not tell my agent or publisher that I had a manuscript. What I did was I wrote seven other books.

Sarah: [Laughs] Sorry. I just wrote seven other books! What are you, Nor-, who, are you Nora Roberts? Are you Nora Roberts in a disguise right now? That’s a lot of books, ma’am!

Dakota: …right? And so I was doing…and, and I found out that contemporary is so much easier than historical, because there’s not all that research.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: So, you know, I, I would spend six months per book on my historical research…

Sarah: Yes, we could tell.

Dakota: Thank you. And so with the contemporaries I just – and of course I’d never written them, and they were just straight-up romance, and I was having so much fun that I just, you know, was going to use them as my guinea pigs, throw up, and, and once I learned the business then maybe I’d go back and, and publish that other historical independently. And so that kind of catches us up now –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dakota: – to 2025.

Sarah: One thing I do know, as I said, is that your historicals had an extraordinary amount of detail in the research, and it wasn’t ever info-dump-y. It wasn’t like, Let me give you a lecture on the World’s Fair of this time and what it looked like. You had so much specificity of place and what was happening and, and, like, what was happening mechanically, and what was happening socially. I can understand why it would take six months per book to make that happen.

Dakota: Yeah, it was a lot, and I think what got me on that, that ended up kind of being my brand, actually, and I think what got me on that track was the fact that my hero and heroine were hygienically clean. They bathed; they had all their teeth. [Laughs] You know, they had…they, they didn’t stitch themselves up in their long johns for the winter.

Sarah: I remember reading a historical set in Scotland, I want to say it was by Maya Banks, and I remember writing in my review, These are the cleanest people I’ve ever met in a historical. They bathe every single chapter. Like, every chapter, somebody’s coming in and out of some water. [Laughs] I’m like, I know that’s not accurate, but wow, did I enjoy that as a motif! These are the cleanest characters in the world!

Dakota: And nobody had lice, you know, none of that, and so I thought, well, if I’m going to fudge in such a really gross, big way, I’m going to make sure I’m super accurate on everything else…

Sarah: Fair.

Dakota: I got led onto that big research path that – thank you for, number one, noticing and for giving it a shout-out. Thank you.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely! We are all big fans of your historicals! Not only because they are, you know, intricate and rich and they, they have great stories and also heroines that are very self-determined and autonomous in a lot of ways, but you had great covers too. Holy cow, even the hats were perfect.

Dakota: I know. So blessed with the covers. Thank you…

Sarah: You’re welcome.

Dakota: – nothing to do with that. Now after being an independent publisher, I realize what a challenge that is, but yeah. No, thank you very much.

Sarah: Now, what can you tell me about making the shift from historical to contemporary comedy? I know it means a little bit less research, because it’s now, and you’re setting ‘em, setting them in a place that you know well, because you’re from Texas. Tell me about making the shift from historical to contemporary. Do you remember while you were writing thinking, Oh, this is really easy and I like this, or is the challenge of creating characters still the same, just without all the research of what people were doing couple hundred years ago?

Dakota: For one thing, I shortened them. I didn’t make them these big, huge sagas like my historicals. And I also, because it wasn’t historical and it wasn’t the genre that I normally did, it was almost like a honeymoon. I mean, because I was starting something totally new, and where I started was with the trope. I still gave them a goal motivation content, you know, conflict; I still did the whole character arc; I still plotted the books. I still did all the things, but I, if somebody wanted a cup of coffee I didn’t have to look up and see how to make coffee in 1849.

[Laughter]

Dakota: You know, you just, like, stick it in the, the cup in the coffee maker and we’re done!

Sarah: My characters were amazed by the ease of modern technology! I pressed a button and I had coffee! I’m sure all your his-, like, if your historical characters and your contemporary characters were all in a room together, the historical ones would be so jealous. They would be so mad! [Laughs]

Dakota: That would be such a fun little project, wouldn’t it? I’ll have to do something –

Sarah: Oh, it would be so fun? It would be like, almost like a, like a reunion of a television show with all the characters, only, you know, your historical characters and your contemporary characters have to be somewhere together. Oh, that would be fun.

Dakota: Be fun! It would be, but I, I really have loved writing contemporary.

Sarah: I noticed you mentioned they were shorter, so I pulled up the list. The longest one is 311 pages, and most of them are two hundred and under. I just did an interview with Olivia Waite, who writes, also writes historical and then wrote a cozy mystery set in a spaceship, but both of you mentioned how fun it was to write at a shorter length. Did you enjoy writing a shorter-length book? ‘Cause, I mean, as a reader, sometimes my brain cannot handle more than three hundred fifty pages, I’m embarrassed to say.

Dakota: No. You know, I did, and what it did was because it caused me to write really tight. You have to make every single word count. There’s no time for any, you know, extra words. And I had to actually teach myself how to write such a short thing, because, you know, my books were the six, the full six-stage story structure, the, the, you know, whole thing. Well, there’s no room for a six-stage story structure in a short book like that, and so I had to, like, learn how to write the story structure for something that short, and, but man, once I learned it, I went to town.

Sarah: So obviously the biggest question I have is what made you decide to create a new pen name for your books and hide that you were also Deeanne Gist?

Dakota: That is a really complicated question, and it was a complicated decision. My Deeanne Gist historical, historicals were shelved in the sweet and wholesome category, and readers of that category go there because they want a safe place. Now, that could be due to a past trauma, or it could be for religious reasons, or it could simply be because they, that’s just their favorite, you know, genre and story, kind of story. But whatever the reason is, they go there with the expectation that there will be no swearing and no sex. And even as Deeanne Gist, my work was considered edgy, and I was dancing right on the edge of naughty, so it’s really no big transition when I switched to contemporary that I went ahead and just crossed that line from the edge right into the naughty territory. And my characters swear, they sleep around, and though we do fade to black, we don’t fade until I’ve got those characters right at the edge of the mattress. Therefore I couldn’t in good conscience put on the cover Deeanne Gist writing as Dakota Lacoy, not when I knew my Deeanne Gist readers were needing that safe space and Dakota doesn’t provide it, at least not by their definition. And it was tough, because had I done that, I’d have had instant sales overnight. But as Dakota, I’m a debut author, and I’m starting at the very bottom, all the way over, and you talk about a bumbling… [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yes! Especially given the number of books that are indie published like every hour.

Dakota: Yeah, it’s, there’s a lot of noise in there. But that was what drove me. It was really just to protect my readers.

Sarah: I think that’s a perfectly logical reason. I remember when YA was this massive, massive juggernaut, and I remember being at a Romantic Times conference – I can’t remember which one, because all the hotels blend together after a while? – but I remember young people being at the book signing with their moms, and, you know, the authors who were both writing YA and adult stuff often split their pen names and would, like, put a little divider on the table like, These are for the grownups, and this is the YA, and they do not touch? This is a very separate thing. And they were like, We, we have to be responsible for the readers that we are trying to reach? So I completely understand choosing a new name. You had such a successful career as Deeanne Gist, I cannot imagine how stressful and, like, challenging it was to start over!

Dakota: Yeah, and, and it was at first just an experiment because I was just going to learn indie publishing?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: But the fact of the matter is that you can’t just throw books up there on Amazon.

Sarah: No.

Dakota: When you become an independent publisher, you’re a startup. You are starting a publishing company. I now understand why my publisher has a high-rise, because I not only had to write the book, I had to figure out how to format it, not just for print but for eBook; I needed an ISBN; I needed a barcode; I needed to register it with the Library of Congress; I needed to get a book cover and back, and I needed the blurb; I needed the marketing. I needed – [laughs] – so much! And what I ended up finding out, though, was this world that I’ve created for my contemporary romance characters of Honky Tonk, Texas, I love it! I love it, and Sarah, I don’t know that that manuscript that’s sitting on my shelf may have to be published post – what’s that called when it’s published after you die? Post –

Sarah: Posthumously, yeah. Posthumously.

Dakota: [Laughs] You know, I never know how to pronounce that word. But yeah, I mean, because I don’t know that I’ll – I love being Dakota Lacoy, and I love this genre, and so I’m going to camp here for a while.

Sarah: That’s fabulous! So the big question is, Why are you revealing that you are both of these people now?

Dakota: Right, because that – I still want to be protective of my Deeanne Gist readers.

Sarah: Of course! Which makes a lot of sense; it’s a very compassionate perspective, I think.

Dakota: Yeah, I’m really glad you asked me that, because I’m starting to do events. And so in February I went to a book convention, Coastal Magic, and, in Florida, and it’s a great conference, by the way. Oh my gosh, so good. And I was recognized immediately. I mean, like, immediately, right? And so they’re like, You’re, you’re, you’re – and I put my finger to my lips and, like – you know, but that, Sarah, is a big ask, you know? Because they have friends who are Deeanne Gist readers, and they were so excited, because they were like, You’ve written seven books! And they wanted to read them, and they didn’t have any trouble with the content, and, and so I thought, Okay. I, I’m getting ready in May to go to Book Lovers Convention, and – in Las Vegas – and that one has nine hundred people, and so I’m like, I’m going to be busted, and it’s going to happen in May, and word is going to get out, and so I thought, I need to get the message to my Deeanne Gist readers. Rather than let it trickle out from Book Lovers Convention, I need to let them know ASAP that these books are not what you’re expecting. [Laughs]

Sarah: And you know, that makes sense given your journalism background. You want to be in front of the story. In journalism you have to stay ahead of it; you can’t let yourself be constantly reacting to someone else’s interpretation. I totally get it.

So I have a suggestion for you, or a question. This is more of a question. So I know at conferences you used to do this really cool presentation where you would have all of the historical getup and you’d, like, put on the underwear and then the corset and then the other thing and then the other thing, and you’d get dressed start to finish in historical con- – are you going to do that for Dakota Lacoy? Are we going to have a boot showcase or some, these are my recommended blue jeans? Like, I have, I think costuming can still be part of your brand, if you don’t mind a suggestion.

Dakota: And you know, we, we should, you know, offline, like, brainstorm together, because that would be fun, and we could do it together.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dakota: …be fun? And, at, at a convention, but I, I think that what’s interesting about what you’re saying is that I’m still me.

Sarah: For sure!

Dakota: …My books still have my voice. They still have the, you know, fun, comedic timing. They still dive deep, even though they’re “romantic comedies”? They dive deep. You know, and the further you get in the series, the, the more, deeper and angsty we get. So I think that, I, I think that the readers who don’t mind the swearing –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: – and the…are going to be super, super happy with these books.

Sarah: Yay! Oh, that’s so excellent.

Now, I want to ask you about the series, and I want to ask you about the world, but I also want to ask your perspective as someone who has been in publishing for a long time. I think you and I both started in about 2005.

Dakota: Oh, that is my first book came out!

Sarah: Yep! Smart Bitches was founded in January 2005. We celebrate our twentieth anniversary this year – thank you! – and it has really prompted me to look back on, like, wow, a lot of things have changed! Like, some of the things that I was talking about fifteen years ago, like I was joking the other day about how, wow, remember when eBooks were new and publishers didn’t know when to release them? Should they release them with the hardback, or should they release them with the paperback release, or was it somewhere in between? And you know, you don’t get the eBook; you have to buy the hardback, and if you don’t buy the hardback you might not get the – like, it was this whole thing about when were these things coming out? And I’m like, Wow! Everything gets released all at the same time now!

Dakota: …didn’t even, like, have eBooks, of course, and so we had to get addendums onto our previous contracts in order to have, give them permission for these things called eBooks. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep. So what have you learned about the industry and about your readers over the past twenty years? What are some of the things you look back on and find the most interesting or remarkable?

Dakota: You know, as, now that I’m my own publisher, I’ve learned so much, Sarah.

Sarah: Oh yeah. [Laughs]

Dakota: One of the things I’ve learned is about newsletters. I really let down my Deeanne Gist newsletter subscribers. I had no idea that there, that that is a whole entity in and of – I mean, there are books written on how to write newsletters and how to, you know, what they should have in them and, and – it’s, and then that’s such a big thing too. You think of Swifties, you know, and she’s created this big fandom, and that’s really kind of a, the buzzword that we, we created fandoms, but we didn’t know how, and yet she, she really spearheaded, this is how, how you do it, you know? And, and I think that that is one of the biggest takeaways for me as an author…

Sarah: Absolutely.

Dakota: And now my newsletters, because I want so badly to connect to my readers, I only do videos. I don’t –

Sarah: Oh, that’s interesting!

Dakota: – don’t write my, my newsletters; I video them. And they’re, and I try to keep them, you know, under two minutes, as close to one minute as I can, and I put closed caption on them so that if they’re at work they can, they can still – but to, then, when I sit down each week in front of that camera and get ready to do a newsletter, I picture my reader in my head and I just talk to them as if I was talking to you or somebody in my kitchen drinking coffee, and it, it was just because I, I was so, I felt so bad about my newsletter…that as Dakota Lacoy I wanted to over-deliver. I’m…

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dakota: – make that connection.

Sarah: Especially because it’s such an important line of communication for indie authors. You’re not going through a house; you don’t have a publicist. You are the publicist. One thing I love about newsletters – and I used to, I used to do a whole workshop on this – with your ability to communicate with readers, I set it up like the solar system. So you are the sun, and your top three, in whichever order is best for you, are your newsletter, your personal appearances, and your website, because you control those things. Your newsletter subscribers belong to you; they don’t belong to your publisher. Everything else in social media, they own that. Those are terms of service where your content belongs to them. So it’s great to do that, but that can’t be your primary. You can’t only have a Facebook page, for example. That’s not going to work. So yeah, developing a newsletter became such a crucial aspect of author marketing. It’s very important because – I hate when I can’t cite my sources, but I remember I heard this at Tools of Change in Publishing, which was a tech conference about publishing that used to scare the pants off all the publishers ‘cause of all the tech advancements – that somebody on stage said, It is a privilege to be in someone’s inbox, and you should never abuse that privilege. Make sure what you’re doing has a point and matters and is relevant to them. So I love the idea of you talking to your readers on video. You’re like your own TikTok!

Dakota: I am! Exactly right, and what I think that readers don’t realize is that, is that we don’t control those social media platforms, and they can shut down your account. They can change the algorithms; they can make it where anything you post won’t reach them unless you pay, which, I mean, that’s basically how it is unless the author pays.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: So we would pay to reach them, even though they follow – it’s, and so the only way, if you want to keep in touch with an author, the only way to truly make sure you do is to sign up for their newsletter –

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: – because then they, then you’ll be in their loop…

Sarah: Absolutely.

Dakota: – newsletter and, and those other entities either disappear, or they go bankrupt, or they shut that person down. I mean, I literally, I can’t even tell you how many people I know whose Facebook accounts were just shut down!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: …everything.

Sarah: Yep. Their, we are not their business; we are their product. But I love that you not only have developed a newsletter and a video, I love the Dakota Lacoy website? I love it so much. I looked at the website with, like, my hand, my hands under my chin like I was watching a good TV show. The graphics are incredible – we have a graphic in common, though, by the way? I love your, the, the woman in blue at the very bottom who’s reading? We have another version of that stock photo to, on our design, ‘cause we have a similar aesthetic of the, like the retro style? I love the illustrations; I love the pages; I love the characters. Your website is incredible. Can you tell me who did this and what artist this – can you just shout out all the people involved? Because it’s gloriously good.

Dakota: Thank you. The truth of the matter is I did it. It was part of being the publisher.

Sarah: Heck yeah!

Dakota: I designed the entire site on a website called Showit, where it’s kind of a click-and-drag. So I got it all designed; then I hired coders, the, it was progressive something – it’s at the very bottom of the page, progressive networks or something [Progressive Solutions]. And I hired them, and I said, I want you to turn this into a Shopify website, because I knew I wanted a store, because I know –

Sarah: Of course.

Dakota: …want to sell direct. I want to sell merchandise, want to sell books, want to sell audio, all that. And so I basically said, This is what I want it to look like when you’re done. [Laughs] And they go, Sure! And then a year later – it took them a year –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dakota: – to…the way I wanted it, but, but yeah. So that’s the story on the website. So I put just as much research and just as much thought into that as my books, because for me, just what you said about, you know, the, your website, your public appearances, and your newsletters. If they are stellar, the subliminal message is so are her books. And if they’re not, the subliminal message is neither are her books.

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: So my brand, as Deeanne and as Dakota, is, when people hear Dakota Lacoy, they think crème de la crème. I want them to know Dakota’s going to deliver, and, and I do it on whether, no matter what I do. If it’s, like, the one thing I ask myself before I send anything out is, Is this the crème de la crème? And, you know, not everyone’s going to agree – [laughs] – obviously, but I did put a lot of, of time and, and a very handsome amount of funds.

Sarah: It shows, ‘cause wow, is it, is it gorgeous. And you’re even a little, a little coy about your About page, you know. I’m, I’m an author you might have heard of, but I’m not telling you who! And wow, if you dangle that carrot in front of readers, we, we, we like to try to figure it out. Has anyone, outside of seeing readers at, was it Coastal Magic that you were at? Has anyone figured it out?

Dakota: Someone did figure it out! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Dakota: Yeah! And…from my voice…

Sarah: Fair.

Dakota: From my Deeanne Gist and the Dakota books, she recognized the voice.

And, and I did want to give a shout-out to the illustrator. I ended up, I knew that I wanted a kind of a pin-up girl feel for, and vintage. That’s kind of all coming back, and I, I wanted to, you know, hop on that, on that wagon, and so, you know, but this was back in, you know, 2022 that I was doing all this, and so I must have just, you know, been on the same wavelength as everybody else, because now it’s starting, you’re really starting to see it, the vintage feel, more.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dakota: But I ended up going through an illustration agency in the UK and, and getting an illustrator, because, again, I want it to be the crème de la crème, so I’m not, I don’t want to use stock photo for my avatar. You know, then somebody else could use it.

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: So every single bit of artwork on there is original except, I think, for two: one of the ones that you mentioned and the gal in the bathtub. But everything else is, is original.

Sarah: And it’s exquisite, too.

Now, I want to ask you about Honky Tonk, Texas, ‘cause not only do I love the website, but on your website there’s a little map of the town. You have a little town square map. I know that this is so common in Texas to have a big square, the courthouse in the middle, and a little town around the outside, and I saw this. I’m like, Oh, that really is a Texas town! That looks like Denton!

Dakota: Yeah. And I tell you, I’m, I am just loved Honky Tonk, you know, creating it. I’m, the first thing when I was, I knew that I wanted a fictional town, because in my historicals I had to use only my, you know, like if it was based in San Francisco or Chicago or Seattle or New York or whatever it was, I had to get it right –

Sarah: Yes.

Dakota: – you know? And I did. I mean, I would even download Sanborn maps of that time so that when they’re walking down the street I knew if there was a furniture store there or a tin shop or, you know, what was the name of the street? I mean I, like, it was accurate! [Laughs] So, so with these contemporaries, I wanted a fictional town so that I didn’t have to do all that! I could, I could decide what was on, what was on those streets. And so I, so my husband and I, ‘cause he’s retired now, we got in the car and we visited all these small Texas towns, and I took pictures, and we stayed and we absorbed the culture, and then I got home and I said, Well, I’m going to take a little of this and a little of that and create a little of my own so that Honky Tonk would be authentic, but it would also be unique.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: And the other thing that I learned as a historical author is that every town today has their, they reflect their roots, whether it’s San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Dallas. Their history reflects what they are today.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Dakota: And everybody knows that they all have different personalities, but now that I’ve done all that research I’m like, Uh? [Laughs] You know…I do it. Well, so I wanted to give Honky Tonk a history, just like I give my characters a history, and so what I, I invented a little history. It’s like it was a Las Vegas strip, except instead of being a strip of casinos it was a strip of honky-tonks, and the Chisholm Trail cowboys would flock there to drink and gamble and carouse and dance, and they, basically, if you were from Honky Tonk you were birthed with a gun in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other, and –

Sarah: Sounds great.

Dakota: – was reflected in today’s Honky Tonk in the names of their businesses in the town square. Like, on the website, on that banner, you see them drinking coffee outside of Pump & Grind Coffee Shop.

Sarah: [Snorts]

Dakota: You know, they, they’re getting their hair cut next door at Get the Hair Outta Here. They’re mailing their packages at Don’t Give a Ship. They’re buying their flowers from I’m So Thorny. And it, and because of these naughty names, Honky Tonk has become a tourist town, and that’s their main source of income, because people come to the town to take selfies in front of the pet groomer called Doggy Style or the, or Frock Off, which is a museum of undergarments. And so that’s kind of how Honky Tonk came about, and it is the one character that is the same in all, all the books in all the series. So this series is the Bradford Brothers of Honky Tonk, Texas.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dakota: The next series is the Single Ladies of Honky Tonk, Texas.

Sarah: I love the store names so much. You must have had such a good time.

Dakota: It is, I have. I have and, you know, and I’ve even, like, my nephew, he named the gym. It’s called HIIT It & Quit It, but it’s H-I-I-T? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep!

Dakota: …That’s crazy!

Sarah: I, I confess to a, a love of Deep in the Heart of Scrapbooking? Not only because it’s such a cute reference, but also I remember with my friends when they first started having children, how absolutely hardcore people went for scrapbooking. Like, of course you have a full building full of scrapbooking; I would expect nothing less!

Dakota: Right, and I’m a crafter, and I one day wanted to open a scrapbooking store and that was the name of it? And I had even gone so far as to buy the website, and – [laughs] – I know! I’m super serious about it. And then, of course, my career went a completely different direction, but I was so excited to be able to name that. That’s the only one that isn’t, you know, punny in, in the other sense, you know, but –

Sarah: Junk &, Junk & Disorderly Antiques. Yep.

Dakota: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: I also love Knobs & Knockers Hardware? This is really just, it’s, it’s a whole character, like you said! It’s so cute!

Dakota: Yeah, it was so much fun. And nobody in Honky Tonk takes it too seriously. You know, it’s, you know, they’re just used to it.

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: And that, you know, it was just fun how that all evolved from, you know, starting in the car with my husband going from Texas town to Texas town.

Sarah: Do you remember some of the towns you went to? Were there any favorites?

Dakota: Granbury – Granbury; I don’t know how to say it correctly; they would probably correct me – right outside of Dallas was the one that I used as the biggest inspiration. The other ones I used, like I said, a little of this, a little of that, but their layout of their downtown is very similar to Honky Tonk’s, and – but I didn’t use their lake. That’s the only thing I didn’t use. I wish I had it now, though, but, but it’s too late. [Laughs]

Sarah: I mean, there might just suddenly be a lake for whatever reason you want. It’s your town!

Dakota: Manmade lake! Maybe that’ll be the next big project! [Laughs]

Sarah: So tell me about the series that you’ve set there, the one that you’ve got going, and the new one.

Dakota: The Bradford Brothers, it’s basically one brother and, and they’re all, like I said, they, their dad owns a ranch, but they have swapped out ranching for small-town living, and the, it’s basically, I just, you’re just going through one troop, one trope to the next. You know, the best friend’s little sister to the pro-, you know, forced proximity to the enemies to lovers to – you know, just, I’m hitting them all.

I really have a heart for single women. It’s been a long time, Sarah, since I’ve been single. When I was writing historicals it wasn’t a really big deal, because, you know, you could, I could kind of figure out what it was like to be single back then. But today things are a lot, lot different, and so I have read a ton of biographies on single women. Memoirs written by single women for single women –

Sarah: Ooh!

Dakota: – and I have learned so much about what it’s like to be single right now, and so I have fashioned these books with those single women in mind, and in book seven, it, you know, that’s the one that kind of sets up the Single Ladies of Honky Tonk, Texas, and it’s, it’s basically My Rowdy Texan is book seven – and you can read them in any order; they’re all standalones – but it’s basically a jewelry store owner who’s like a bad boy, and his, his friend with benefits moves to town and inherits Deep in the Heart of Scrapbooking right next door. He, his store’s called The Family Jewels. And so – [laughs]

Sarah: ‘Course it is! Course it is. What, what more do you want than a single, hot, cowboy, small-town guy who’s a business owner with bling? I mean, there’s nothing better than that!

Dakota: And so she is the founder of the Single Ladies Society of Honky Tonk, Texas, and so they eat, they meet once a month; they kind of talk about what it’s like to navigate those waters. And so the next series will be one member from the Single Ladies Society per book. But this, this Bradford Brothers is one brother, and all the brothers make appearances. They come in and out of the stories, and they – throughout the whole series. It’s not like, you know, just one. They’re, they’re integral in all of the stories.

Sarah: Yeah. They’re all up in each others’ business.

Dakota: They are! [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s what makes it fun! The other thing I love about romances set in a fully developed small town is that small-town gossip is extremely good. So you’re going to get to see, like, all the different gossip from all the different – that’s, that’s my favorite part.

Dakota: Well, and in book one that was a major role, because he’s an audiobook narrator by day –

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: – but he’s a romance writer by night, and being this six-foot, scrumptious, you know, cowboy, he doesn’t want anyone to know, because if his brothers found out he, it’s like life as he, he knows it’ll be over.

Sarah: Yep.

Dakota: So. And not only that, the whole town would go to town with finding out that he, you know, writes and, and narrates romances. So that’s, that’s kind of that story, so of course he, he gets busted by the heroine.

Sarah: I think one of the biggest trends right now for the whole Let Us Escape Reality reason is books that are in some way not here, not now. So romantasy, very much not here, not now. Whole other world, whole other set of beings! And in contemporary, if you have a strong place, well, you’re visiting! You’re visiting a place! You’re going to go back and visit the place!

Dakota: Yeah. As a matter of fact, one of my reviews was, I want to go to Honky Tonk and, and meet a Bradford boy. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right?! That’s one of my favorite things about Boonsboro, Maryland, which is mostly owned by Nora Roberts: her bookstore, her pizza parlor, the inn, and it’s like, oh, okay, this could actually be in one of her Silhouette novels, no question!

Dakota: Yeah, I actually went there…

Sarah: Oh, did you like it?

Dakota: I loved it!

Sarah: So I would just love to know: what is your next book? When is it coming out? What is the thing that people can look for right now?

Dakota: Well, right now I have the Bradford Brothers of Honky Tonk, Texas, which is a seven-book series.

Sarah: Yes.

Dakota: And you can read it in any order, but it’s super fun to read it in order, just simply because then, you know, you just kind of follow the progression of those brothers.

But the next series – normally what I do with my series is I write it so it’s completely finished before I release it, because sometimes something happens in book six, and you need to set that up in book two. And so, because I’m the way I am and I want that continuity and I want everything to flow like it should, I just wait until the whole series is written before I release it. Well, this next one has eight books, and I’ve written six of the eight – they’re short – and then I decided I wanted to make them full-length. [Laughs] So now I’m all the way back in book one, and I’m having to take that one book, you know, story structure and expand it into the six-stage story structure, and so it’s going to be a little while before I release that book, but – and I’m also thinking of going back and letting a traditional publisher release it, because I’m, for somebody who wanted to kind of sit back and take it easy – [laughs]

Sarah: That’s a lot.

Dakota: Forty to sixty hours a week!

Sarah: Oh yeah! The idea of the comprehensiveness of your series in the world and the town and the website and everything, I’m kind of in awe? Like, that’s really impressive. I hope you can, like, recognize how truly impressive this is.

Dakota: Thank you, thank you, and you know, but the, so these indie girls that have, you know, fifty books, I’m just like – [laughs] – oh my God!

Sarah: Wow. Yeah.

Dakota: I, I haven’t, you know, I haven’t talked to anybody yet in, in New York, but I’m, I’m very strongly considering it, but I think, you know, first I need to go back and maybe – they, they don’t want short books.

Sarah: No.

Dakota: They’re going to want – and so that is also part of my motivation for going back, so it may be a while before the Single Ladies of Honky Tonk, Texas, hits the, hits the shelves, but in the meanwhile those Bradford Brothers will keep you warm and happy at night. [Laughs]

Sarah: And you’ve got events coming up where you can talk about them so lots more people can discover them.

Dakota: And I would love to meet the readers, my favorite thing.

Sarah: It is really fun, isn’t it?

Dakota: Yes, it is.

Sarah: I still have people come up to me and be like, Oh, hey, I have a copy of your book; would you mind signing it? Mind?! I want to hug you! I don’t even know you and I wish to be your best friend! I will write my name on whatever you want! Like, it’s so thrilling. So thrilling!

Dakota: And that thrill never goes away.

Sarah: Never! Never gets old. So, like, if anyone is listening thinking, Should I reach out to one of my favorite authors and let them know how much I like their – yes, please do it. Trust me. Trust me; do it. It will arrive on the day they need it most, I promise.

Dakota: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep.

So I always ask this question: what books are you reading right now that you want to tell people about?

Dakota: You know, my, one of my one-click authors that I just, you know, don’t even read the blurb, I just buy it, is Sandra Brown, and she just released Blood Moon a couple weeks ago, and so I am reading that, and I’m trying to savor it, so I’m not letting myself, you know, like, binge-read it, which is what I normally do? Yeah. [Laughs] So I am really enjoying that. I love her. She normally releases in August, but I don’t know if she decided to release because we just had a blood moon? And so she was kind of doing it in, you know, in synch with that, but it’s, that’s what I’m reading now, and of course just thoroughly enjoying it. She’s such a talent.

Sarah: She was one of the first truly off-the-wall romances I ever read, ‘cause I was just discovering romance, and I somehow, I think it was a library store? Or library sale? Got one of those big old hardcovers; it was like four books by the same author? And one of them was Mirror Image; have you read this book?

Dakota: Oh, oh yeah!

Sarah: Okay. This is the one where this woman is in a plane crash, and she’s sitting next to someone who resembles her, but they ended up switching seats, ‘cause the other woman was obnoxious and just took her seat and was like, Deal. Then there’s a plane crash, and she ends up with mistaken identity, getting the other woman’s face? So she’s in the hospital with this other woman’s face going, What is going on? And all these people kept coming to talk to her and saying weird things, and she’s like, Okay, well, I’m a journalist; now I have to figure out what’s going on. I was probably a shade too young to be reading this? I remember being like eyes wide, jaw open, like, What is happening right now? Sandra Brown is so good at making that kind of like, All right, so she’s got somebody else’s face. Absolutely she does! I believe it a hundred percent! No question!

Dakota: Yeah, she’s, she’s really good at characterization, really good at plotting, really good at twists. You know, and she’s done the, you know, the Harlequin; she’s done the historical; and then she went to romantic suspense; and now she’s just straight-up suspense. But I just, I’ve followed her from the very beginning.

Sarah: So where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Dakota: My website is dakotalacoy.com, and then I’m also on Instagram is the one right now that I’m going to the most, but I confess that I just don’t post as often as I should, and I don’t do as often as I should. The very best thing would be to sign up for my newsletter.

Sarah: Absolutely. I will make sure to link to that.

Dakota: When you do that, you can reply to the newsletter, and then I will get that, because I didn’t even put a Contact Me button on my website, and that is because I have dyslexia, and as Deeanne Gist I got so much mail that I, that it would take me hours and hours to go through it because I’m such a slow reader, and then I wanted to respond to every single person, and I just, I was like, If I’m my own publisher I, I can’t, can’t do that.

Sarah: No.

Dakota: So I…another way. So if you get my newsletter and you want to talk to me, just reply back and you’ll get me. Other than that, you know, you can comment on the social media. But Instagram’s where I am the most: @dakotalacoyauthor.

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this and for reaching out to share this incredible story with me. I’m really, really excited, and I’m so thrilled that I had no idea where Deeanne Gist had gone, and here you are!

Dakota: And here I am, and thank you, Sarah. It’s been so fun to reconnect. I feel like I’ve kind of come home, so that it was a, it was, it was a safe place to, to kind of tell what, what I needed to, to tell, so thank you for, for giving me the opportunity.

Sarah: Well, thank you! I am honored to be a safe place for you to tell everybody all your business.

Dakota: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s a nice thing about having a podcast.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Dakota for reaching out to me about this whole reveal. I’m honored to be a part of it, and I hope your readers from your Deeanne Gist years and your Dakota Lacoy years are very excited to have more books to read. Woohoo!

I will have links to all of the books; do not worry. They are in the show notes, and you can find them at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 662.

Every week I end with a bad joke; this week is no exception. This one is terrific. I’m so excited.

Did you hear about the guy who goes on for hours about how his watch can magically produce pennies out of nothing?

And I had a really hard time believing him at first, but by the end of his rant, it made cents.

[Laughs] Cents! So bad! Thank you for tuning in to hear a terrible joke.

I wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll see you back here next week.

And in the words of my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping, thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking.

[end of music]