Driving Societal Change Through Novels with Paulette Stout

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[00:00:13] Paulette Stout writes fast-paced contemporary women's fiction novels, each focusing on a different social issue. Some topics may be ones readers have never even pondered. Others may be more familiar, but with a fresh twist regardless of the theme, Paulette delivers lively, readable pros. It keeps you turning pages.

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[00:00:55] Paulette: Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

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[00:01:05] Paulette: Um, I grew up Manhattan and it's someplace that, you know, a lot of people go. They think of this fast paced business thing, but for me it was all about the local neighborhoods and growing up and going to the fish market and going to the bakery and going to the appliance store and having, you know, waiters yell at you, you know, to be polite to your parents.

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[00:01:46] Shawna: Yeah, and it's actually really walkable and every, because it isn't car centric, it's like different in a sense too.

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[00:02:13] Super, super dark. So it was so funny. It was, I had trouble sleeping when I left New York because it was too quiet, like I was used to the ambient noise and the buzz, and I had to get used to the quiet. Now I really love it. Yes, it's a big, it's a big difference though, huh? It's a huge difference. Yes,

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[00:02:31] Really, really hard?

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[00:02:54] And then my husband comes out of his office down the hall and he looks at me. You didn't have time [00:03:00] to get dressed and I don't know, it just, it just like struck me. I just giggled for like 20 minutes after that cause I completely forgotten that I wasn't dressed, dressed, . I just started working and I totally forgot about the whole clothing situation.

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[00:03:25] Paulette: Yeah, just like walking out in your slippers cuz you. Forget you're not wearing shoes and you know, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.

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[00:03:31] Paulette: Yes.

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[00:03:33] Paulette: My husband just has this amazing sarcastic. We've been together for 32 years and it's just kind of like he gets me and he just like, makes me laugh. So I love, I enjoy that. So that was the one that was this week, so it was a good chuckle.

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[00:03:49] What We Never Say came out in November of 2022 and the audiobook is coming out in early 2023.

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[00:03:56] Shawna: Is that correct? Yes. And your first book, when did it come out?[00:04:00]

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[00:04:03] Shawna: Love Only Better.

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[00:04:20] I was like, oh, this what's everyone's talking about? And then when I finished that journey, I was like, look, I have to write about this. You know, this is crazy. Like I can't be the only one. That has this problem. And the more that I researched the book and learned about how only like 33% of heterosexual women finish in the bedroom and it compared to like 77% of heterosexual men and the same kind of disparities hold regardless of gender identity. So lesbians are lower than gay men and bisexual women are lower than bisexual men. So it's like a biology thing on the whole. [00:05:00] That we just kind of getting the short end of the stick. And I think I have a, I have a theory about just the genre of women's fiction being a little sexless because like, everyone's just like, I'm just like, it's bad.

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[00:05:26] So they just kind of don't bother. They think it's just is bad. Mm-hmm. and they just haven't,

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[00:05:38] Paulette: let's change that. It's a skill. It's a skill that you learn like anything else.

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[00:05:43] Paulette: No one is teaching that skills. Yes, and it's really interesting because when, you know, in at least the United States, when we have, you know, sexual education in schools, it's really taught from a very male centered perspective of how men experience pleasure. It doesn't address how women experience [00:06:00] pleasure, which is very different.

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[00:06:12] Shawna: I'm say sex ed is about pleasure. I don't know where you went to school, but in my small town it was sex ed is about not getting pregnant.

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[00:06:21] Paulette: I'm trying to think back to seventh grade. But the mechanics of sex.

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[00:06:27] Paulette: The mechanics of sex are, you know, it's,

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[00:06:43] Paulette: exactly.

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[00:06:54] Shawna: so definitely something you understand from age. And there was not conversations about

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[00:06:58] Paulette: no conversations, [00:07:00] and I was raised by a single dad. I God love him. We never had the birds and the bees talks.

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[00:07:24] and then in my latest- it's the same universe.

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[00:07:27] Paulette: but in the characters in the first book. But it's a completely different story and I'm calling it a book one, because I'm gonna have a different type of books. I'm gonna have some books that are like single character POVs and it's just like them by themselves.

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[00:07:56] Shawna: So they're all of the same universe and connected in that [00:08:00] way, but Right.

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[00:08:02] Paulette: is. So people who have read the second book, you know, love it. And they didn't necessarily miss anything, not reading the first book.

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[00:08:09] Paulette: And if people, wanted to go back and read that one first and then read through, and that's fine. You can do it either way, but you don't have to go back and be the first one either way.

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[00:08:23] Paulette: Right. And the next one I'm working on that's like a different character from this universe, so.

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[00:08:31] Paulette: No, this will be book two for Bold Journeys series, and it'll be around the character Barbara who is, um, the main character, Rebecca's best friend, and she's like a really awesome character that people loved.

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[00:09:04] Shawna: race and other things to light.

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[00:09:20] Paulette: I think it's really important cause I've seen it maybe done as well.

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[00:09:47] So in, in my latest one,, it's a male survivor of, you know, unwanted sexual coercion. So what's the reality around that and how can we expose that in a way that makes people view it and they maybe have never thought about [00:10:00] it before? Mm-hmm. , I've read some stories where, you know, authors have really passionate opinions.

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[00:10:24] Shawna: author, you're not experiencing something through

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[00:10:27] It breaks. It breaks the third wall. And now I'm, as a reader, I'm like, that's the author talking there. That's not Jane, the person who I was just walking on the beach with. Now it's like author kind of breaking through. And I feel like anything that takes the reader out of the story is not necessarily helpful.

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[00:10:54] Paulette: Yes.

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[00:10:58] Paulette: So, you know, so if you're writing a prejudice, [00:11:00] so the consequences of prejudice, so the consequence, so the, so how hurtful it is to the people who are experiencing it. And so how unfair to their lives and their careers. How ugly it is when it happens for the people that are, propelling it.

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[00:11:26] Shawna: Cause people honestly don't know the stories. I know, just even on my, I have another podcast called The, Grit Show, and one of my guests, um, is not gonna air until January, but just her talking about an experience that she had and really hearing from her right, her experience is, So much more powerful than having somebody say like, don't do this.

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[00:11:54] Paulette: Hundred percent this. A hundred percent. Yeah. That, so that's, that's my, that's my advice.

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[00:12:05] Paulette: I think that there's no one right way to do this writing thing.

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[00:12:09] Paulette: you know, everybody has to have their own path and everyone writes in a different way. Everyone works at a different speed. There are different topics.

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[00:12:17] Paulette: and, inspirations that we each have and universes and planets and, you know, time periods and, I like. Floral pros. I like really short, tight pros. I like lots of sex. I have no, and then, whether you plot or whether you are a discovery writer, you know, there's no one right way.

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[00:13:03] Mm-hmm. , you know, take little bits of what you learn and compile your own user manual for how you wanna approach a writing.

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[00:13:12] Paulette: Exactly. Exact opposite.

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[00:13:19] Paulette: Um, the best place is on my website, paulette stout.com. I'm pretty active on Instagram @PauletteStoutauthor, which is also my Facebook handle, and you can reach me on Twitter at stout content.

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[00:13:42] Paulette: What book or story inspired me the most? I'm sorry I don't have a good answer to this. I do love, it's very sexy. It's, um, Fanny by Erica Jong, and it's like this period, crazy romp of like [00:14:00] pirates and all kinds of strangey time period written in Old Englishy type, you know. Pros, but I just, there was just a, this freedom and abandon to the way she wrote, uh, that was just like, she just, she kind of went there and didn't care and there's that bravery behind all of that that I find very appealing.

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[00:14:27] Paulette: quick couple minutes. Thank you. Go out and buy my books, .

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[00:14:32] Thank you.

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