Maren sits down with Melissa L.E. Baker to talk about writing dark romance and fantasy, and they also chat about Renaissance Faire experiences.
Follow Melissa:
- On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/QuillandQuote
Follow Chaste Treasure:
- chastetreasure.com
- On Twitter: @chastetreasure
- On Instagram: @chastetreasure
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- on Instagram: @supermaren
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/maren.montalbano
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Purchase Maren’s debut book, Pandemic Passion: A COVID-19 novella on Kindle.
(orchestra tuning)
Hello and welcome to The Bodice Ripper Project, an exploration of sexuality, feminism, and the journey to self-empowerment through the lens of a vulnerable artist.
I’m Maren Montalbano, opera singer, coach, and writer.
In this episode, you’ll hear me chat with horror author Melissa Baker to talk about writing dark romance and fantasy. We also chat about Renaissance Faire experiences.
So make yourself comfortable, loosen your bodice, and let’s begin!
(intro music plays)
Welcome back. Thank you so much for pressing play as always.
I have, for the last three to four weeks, , been very, very busy recording and performing with The Crossing, which is the choir that I sing with. And one of the takeaways I want to give to you from the past three weeks of my experiences is that the Delta variant of COVID has definitely shifted the way that I think about performing as a singer. And it’s certainly shifting the way that the industry is dealing with hiring singers.
I was hired for a gig that, if this were pre-pandemic, would have been very, very straightforward: show up, rehearse, perform, get paid. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less. And instead, there was so much drama around whether or not people who were involved in the project were vaccinated, what the masking protocols were.
And when I say drama, I’m not trying to minimize anybody’s concerns; it might sound judgemental. That’s not the way that I mean it. But there was just a lot of stuff that went on, including showing up to the first rehearsal, all of the professional singers were masked and all the volunteers were not, and we did not know what the vaccination status of the volunteers were.
I did absolutely know that every single professional there was vaccinated. I had kind of made it my job to find out because I was contracting that gig. But the entity that was hiring me didn’t really want to find out what the vaccination status was. It was very, very don’t ask don’t tell. And, um, what ended up happening was, before the second rehearsal even happened, one of the unmasked, unvaccinated volunteers tested positive for COVID. After singing with us for two hours in an enclosed space, which basically means that every single person who was at that rehearsal was exposed, including me. I had to wait three to five days to take a test. Those are the CDC recommendations.
And it upended the entire, not just the rehearsal process, but the performance as well. Because at that point, then a bunch of professionals had to pull out of the project to protect the project that was going on the following week.
So the shift in my own thinking became, ah, I have to build in time in my schedule in case something like this happens again. I can’t put gigs back to back to back because if somebody does test positive, that means it becomes a domino effect, and not only do you have to wait to see if you yourself have gotten the virus, but if you have gotten it and you are infected, then you’ve got to spend two weeks quarantining, whether or not the symptoms are milder than somebody who would be unvaccinated, for example.
In other words, before the past three weeks, my thinking was, ” I’m vaccinated. I have a level of protection. Even if I get infected, my infection will not be that severe.” Now my thinking is, “I still have to protect myself in a very major way, because if I get infected, there is so much more possibility for me to spread the virus. Especially since the act of singing is a super spreading activity.”
So, what does that mean for me? It just means I now ask very specific questions about COVID protocols, and I have a very hard line in the sand, where if the entity hiring me allows unvaccinated, unmasked people to be in my space, then I am not interested in taking the job. That’s a hard no for me.
Other people might have different levels of comfort with this, but that’s really where I stand. And what I’m realizing is that we’re all just navigating this together, on our own, trying to figure it out. Nobody has the right answer.
And so many people are talking about wanting to get back to normal. They really want this, there’s this desire out there to just like, forget about the pandemic and let’s get over it already. And the truth is there is no normal that we can get back to. The only thing that we can do is move forward.
This is why I created this recording studio that I love so much. It’s why I’ve expanded my career to include coaching as well as performing. The idea here is that I have a portfolio career, that there’s income from all sorts of different sources. And I don’t have to rely specifically on one activity that I might be very, very good at, but that could conceivably be very dangerous to other people.
So does that mean that I’m the musical equivalent of a doomsday prepper? Uh, I don’t think so. Certainly, though, I do talk to musicians all the time who believe that if they don’t commit a hundred percent to the performance aspect of their career, then they’re not going to be successful. And I just want to challenge that.
I want to say maybe, maybe there are other definitions of success. Maybe success can look like having a really good work/life balance. Maybe success can be honing several different kinds of skills at the same time. Maybe success can be financial and maybe success can be emotionally fulfilling work. It looks different to everyone.
So with that in mind, let’s go ahead with the interview.
Maren: I am incredibly excited to bring to the show Melissa L. E. Baker. She is an author of Dare, a collection of short horror fiction and poetry sure to tantalize and terrify. She continues to work in horror and dark romance while giving space to queer characters who fill her stories with their vivacity. You can find Dare on Amazon and Audible now. And you can check out some of her future works on Patreon. I will give the URL at the end. But Melissa, welcome so much to the Bodice Ripper Project.
Melissa: Thank you so much for having me, Maren. I really appreciate being here.
Maren: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Like, I really want to know how you got into writing. You know, you started when you were very young, but yeah, just bring us into that.
Melissa: I remember when I was a kid and I would write stories for my friends, because that was something that I thought would make them happy, or impressed, or something, so I would write scary stories for my friends. This is when I was in sixth grade. So you know, “Ooh, my friend’s in love with a vampire, my friend’s in love with a werewolf,” and it was just very odd stuff. But I just always wanted to keep doing it.
And then even before the pandemic my husband and I were talking about something that we could do just as an extra project in between all of the Ren Faire stuff that we do. And I was like, “Well, I write stuff, and you actually do voiceovers. Why don’t you record what I write and we can make a Patreon out of it?” And that’s kind of where this all came together.
Maren: That’s so amazing. So funnily enough, I also used to write when I was a kid. And I also used to like tell stories about my friends and all that kind of stuff. But usually my stories were all like fairies and princesses, and yours is like vampires and werewolves.
Melissa: There was that book series, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, that collection with the really, really creepy watercolor drawings, and I loved it. I remember going, this is probably creepy, there was a library behind my house that you could get to by walking through a field. So I would walk, and my mom could still see me out the window, so she knew I was safe, but my mom would let me walk over to the library to pick up books. And inevitably I would come back with that, and with, oh there was collections by Cohen something, I don’t know. But they were a bunch of just ghost stories, and I would read ghost stories constantly. So when I started actually writing my own stuff, I was just basically parroting everything that I had already read, but with new people that were my friends.
Maren: Yeah, I think that’s what we all do when we’re kids. That’s how we grow as writers, as creators and everything like that. So you’ve always had this fascination for horror. I find this really fascinating for me because again like, I’m very much into the like fairies and sunshine, unicorns.
Melissa: I remember growing up and, oh gosh, this was probably a bad choice, but my family was at a beach trip in South Carolina and I think we watched Jaws like the first time. Which of course made me terrified of going into the water, but also was like just fascinated by scary movies. And then I started to rent scary movies all the time from Blockbuster. Oh, God bless Blockbuster.
Maren: Oh, Blockbuster, yes. There’s only one left in the world.
Melissa: It has like, I think, the funniest Twitter account ever, or something like that. It’s just, they just make terrible choices and talk about them.
Maren: That’s so great, yeah. So tell me about Dare. Like, what made you decide to go ahead and write a book? Was it pandemic or…
Melissa: That was beforehand. I had always talked about with the Patreon that at the end of the year I would put everything together that I had written, but the goal being like 12 stories. So one per month for the entire year. So I was going to put everything together into a book and then give that to our top tier. So I did that, and then after I had already done it I was like, “Well, I should just publish this somehow. I’m sure I could.” That was a complicated process, and I wish I had an editor, and next time I’m having an editor for sure. But yeah, it was already made. So I was like, “Oh okay, well now that I can’t work anywhere let me see if I can sell my book instead.” So that’s why it’s out now.
Maren: That’s awesome. I did a little bit of that at the beginning of pandemic too. I like created a little tiny bodice ripper novella called Pandemic Passion, and I did exactly the same thing. I was like, “You know what, Amazon like makes it so easy, you know?” Yeah, that’s amazing. So let’s talk about your Patreon. You are currently writing another story, right?
Melissa: Oh yeah, I’m writing a lot. And theoretically I’m still supposed to be delivering 12 stories a year. Now this one, for whatever reason, is huge. So it’s been a little bit daunting to finish. Once you start writing something you think that it’s going to be like, “Oh, this is just going to be one scene.” And then it just keeps going, and going, and going. And now it’s this like 10,000 word piece already that hasn’t completed itself yet, and I feel like there’s going to be more things in this universe. But it started as, “I have to write this for my Patreon,” and it’s gotten of hand.
Maren: What do you do when it gets out of hand like that?
Melissa: There are times where I’m like, “You know what? I can finish this level of the project,” and then I move on to the next thing, but I can always come back to it if I wanted to. Or sometimes I just’ll like, “Well, this is how long this wants to be.” So I’ll just go for it and see how far I can get. And then other times I’m just like, “Nope, not going to write this. I’m done.” I’ll just like leave it like that. This is getting way too complicated, and I have to rewrite everything, and that’s too much, and I’m, “Nope, done.”
Maren: That’s really cool. So the reason I’m asking this is that, you know a lot of people who read the, read this podcast, what am I saying? Listen to this podcast. They are also creatives. And you know, it’s always really cool to talk to other creatives and figure out what their process is. For me, I have a really hard time writing every single day. Like, consistency is hard for me.
Melissa: Absolutely. Well and I’m sure with your schedule, my schedule is ridiculous too. I’m sure with your schedule it’s like, “oh, I have rehearsal at 10:00 AM. So when I set aside 10:00 AM as my writing time, now I can’t do it.”
Maren: Right, so what do you do? Like how do you stay consistent and sort of true to yourself?
Melissa: I don’t know, honestly. I’m still working on it myself. The things that seem to have worked for me are if I go for a run or like take a shower, I’ll get ideas. And it seems to help me like process things linearly so I can focus on, “Oh, I want to do this one project. Well how do I get from A to B in this moment?” And connecting it to music. A lot of my stuff will have like a, “Please listen to this track, or this artist while you’re reading the stories.” So that really helps me lock in, “Okay, when we hit the chorus here, that’s when this is happening. And when we do these things here, that’s when this is happening.” It helps me kind of visualize the whole project.
Maren: Oh, it’s so interesting to hear you talk about this because I read a few of the chapters that you sent me, which were amazing.
Melissa: Well, thank you.
Maren: Yeah, really, really cool. And you know what really occurred to me was that it had a very cinematic feeling to it.
Melissa: Yeah.
Maren: I could see everything. I was like, “This could be a SyFy show.” It was really very clear. And I could hear music. You know, there was a lot of that. And that’s really cool. Like, I feel like there are writers who go in the very heady direction where it’s like, you just know everything that’s going on in that one character’s head, but you don’t know what’s happening in the room. And with this there’s a lot of both of that, and it’s very helpful.
Melissa: The hardest thing for me was this specific story centers around a character named El, who’s non-binary, and then there’s also another character that they meet later on named Cassandra, I think that’s Cassandra. And I wanted to write it from both of their perspectives. And I was like, “No, no, no, no, no. We’ll get to Cassandra. Let’s put Cassandra on the back burner. She’ll be her own story eventually.” But we have to focus on this one character’s perspective because they’re absorbing so much of what’s going on. The environment when they walk in, the dancer when they see them perform. All of this stuff is just so overwhelming, it’s just gotta be focused with one person. Like the hardest thing for me to do was to just eliminate a bunch of stuff from someone else’s perspective so that you can stay focused on what’s going on with this one person.
Maren: Well you did a really good job because I feel like I was seeing things through El’s eyes, you know? It’s also really great, you know, not knowing this world and having El be the person who’s like also not really familiar with the world. It’s a great way to sort of introduce the reader to what’s going on and how things work and all of that kind of stuff.
Melissa: Thank you.
Maren: Yeah. So in this story there is some erotica, but it’s not really like you know, “He put his member into her,” you know? Like, tell me a little bit about that. Like what are you comfortable writing and how do you like to talk about and read and write about sex?
Melissa: Funny enough, I’ve been getting way more into a lot of like fan fiction. So I read a lot of Archive of our Own. There’s fanfiction.net, which was kind of the beginning of where fan fiction is as far as I’m aware. That’s just you know, “oh okay, my favorite TV show, I wanted this romance to go a different way,” or, “we never got to see the romance on screen. Let me make it as graphic as possible.” So I started reading that.
And then went into Archive of our Own cause that’s a lot more queer centric. So they have a lot more gay relationships of, you know, two men on screen from Law and Order that you never would have guessed would hook up and then suddenly they start hooking up, and it’s great. So I started reading a lot of that stuff. And there it’s a lot of different authors, so I kind of I pick and choose what I’m like, “Oh, this is really cool. I liked the way they described this.” And then, “Ooh, that’s really crass. That’s not as fun.”
Oh also, hang on, it’s been sitting here the whole time. I definitely have Nora Roberts with me. I love the way she describes sex scenes because it’s not just like, you know, here’s the anatomical things that happen, but also like explosions, and flowers, and all this crazy imagery. And I’m like that’s what I want people to read. It should be a feeling, not just a, “Ooh, I’m turned on,” but like a, “ahh,” so much.
Maren: Exactly, love Nora Roberts. She’s like my I would say top three romance writers. She’s in that top three, so yeah. You were about to say something else?
Melissa: My mom used to read Johanna Lindsey. I tried to get into that. But like some of the historical stuff is just ridiculous. And the covers are always like, it’s some Highlander with half a shirt, and this like girl just sort of flying over him like, “Oh God, uh it’s so awful.” Yeah.
Maren: It’s ridiculous. I love it.
Melissa: I liked some of it. Is It historically accurate whatsoever?
Maren: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Johanna Lindsey tends to do some research, so that’s good. But like, you know in general, Johanna Lindsey does a lot of like Scotland, Highland kind of thing. And I think the things that she really focuses on is the way that households were run in those times, which actually it’s pretty accurate. But there’s just like definitely a lot more sex happening in those books than probably was happening at that time. But, you know, everybody has sex. So there you go.
Melissa: Yeah I mean, that’s the one thing I’ve always liked about Nora Roberts is that, well I just pulled up the book from the In The Garden series. I don’t like gardening, but it made gardening fascinating. I was like, “Look at all these incredible aspects of gardening,” and how that you like put a part of a rose into a different rose bush and make a hybrid, and I was like, “This is so cool.” I’ve never done any gardening since reading the series either. I’m very terrible at it. But just way she can make places that I’ve never been to very realistic, and jobs that I will never have be very, very specific of everything that you have to do in that job, even opening a bar.
There was this one character that I really, really loved. It was based in New Orleans, and this character owned a bar. And she had just of the minutia of counting the till and going into her office, and checking all of those receipts. It was like, “Why is this interesting? It shouldn’t be. This person owns a bar. This is like a boring job.” But it was fascinating to read. And I was like, “Okay, I will always read her stuff just to find out new things.”
Maren: Yeah. That’s definitely the mark of a good writer, for sure. So tell me who your favorite authors are.
Melissa: Oh, okay. So I mentioned Alvin Schwartz, not that he’s necessarily an author. He’s like a collector of different stories or an interpreter, I suppose. And then Nora Roberts, I love Nora Roberts. Neil Gaiman has always been a big inspiration. I think when I was just out of college a boyfriend of mine gave me, didn’t give me, let me read his collection, of the Sandman series. And after that I just devoured everything that he’s ever made. He’s such an incredible short story writer.
Maren: Yeah.
Melissa: Great with novels too but like, I get bored reading novels sometimes. So just having those collections of short stories it was like, this is what I want to do. I want to do this specific thing. It’s so good.
Maren: If you ever get a Masterclass subscription I highly recommend the Neil Gaiman Masterclass, because he’s pretty amazing.
Melissa: It gets advertised to me constantly and I’m like, “Okay I know that I write stuff, but hang on guys. Give me a minute.” I got to see him once at Temple. It was the weirdest thing. So it was when his kid, his daughter, was in school at Penn and he came over to Temple to speak. And that was right when Fragile Things, I think his book Fragile Things, had come out. And he read “How to Speak to Girls at Parties,” I think is the book or the story where it’s aliens. They go to a party and there’s all these aliens in it, and they don’t know what’s going on. Yeah, so I got to hear him read that out loud, and it was just wild.
You know it’s at Temple, so they have like a big cathedral space, and they were using that as like his talking space. And it was just awesome. He’s speaking in a church, and it was like ” Yes, I can follow this for the rest of my life. This is great.” It was awesome.
Maren: So in addition being an author you are a singer, and you’re also a founder of Chaste Treasure, which is a Renaissance Faire singing group. You talked about Ren Faire before. This is how we know each other. You know, I’ve talked to my audience about Ren Faire before, but yeah, we are both Ren Faire, um, Ren Rats, I guess.
Melissa: I feel we’re professionals. We’re not like just obsessed with being part of this environment so we have to get our kicks any way we can. It’s not the same kind of thing.
Maren: Yeah. Yeah. You know, yes. We actually make money doing it, so there’s that. Tell me about Chaste Treasure though.
Melissa: Oh gosh. So in 2011 I was working at the New Jersey Renaissance Faire with TJ Miller, and John Williams and a couple of other mutual friends of ours. And TJ specifically came up to me and said, “I really want to have a women’s singing group.” No sorry, 2011. was when I started there. 2013 was when he asked me about this, cause at that point I had taken over being the music director. So he’s like, “I want a women’s singing group.” And I was like, “Okay, like what?” And he was like, “I mean, kind of like The Sirens, but can you make it family friendly?” And I was like, “Okay, sure.”
So we did a bunch of different songs. I came up with some arrangements, nothing very concrete. There were four of us that year, and then the next year they had us come back again, and there were five of us. And then at that point Doc Amor, who was the cast director at Pittsburgh, at the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival, who is also my dentist, came and talked to us and said, “Hey, another bawdy act left the fair circuit. We need someone to fill in that slot. Would you be interested?” And I was like, “Yeah, absolutely.” And it kind of set the tone for everything.
That year I also got hired for one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever done. I worked with the Roundtable Joust Company. I was their Master of the List. So I got to ride on this enormous horse with feet the size of dinner plates and just announce things at the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo.
So I wasn’t available to do the gig but I knew that Aileen was, so Aileen took a team out there. It worked really, really great. We added a whole bunch more songs to our repertoire and then we were just like, “Okay, so this is going to be the thing.” So we’ll send teams to different places. And it was always intended as being, I could probably do this in multiple locations at once if I had to, because I was already somewhere else when my team went out. So it was like okay, I will manage and I will sing when I can. But I want this to be able to be it’s just groups of professional musicians that can get together and do this and make it sound good.
And it’s gone really well since then. I think we have 19 members, probably like 17 that are officially active. We’ve had a couple of people come in and out every once in a while. And that’s the thing is all of these people are professional musicians of one stripe or another, so if they’re like, “Hey, I’m going to start auditioning for Broadway.” Cool. Okay, go off and do your thing. I have other people. Or I’ll audition for other people. Or if someone’s like, “Hey, I’m like going to start a family, and I’m going to come off the road for awhile.” Okay, that’s fine too.
I never wanted to be stuck in a position where I couldn’t keep doing the show because people couldn’t be available for stuff. It’s a unique perspective. Cause a lot of other groups are like, “I have these three people and only these three people, and this is how we do the show.” But it’s worked well for us.
Maren: I think this is a really good perspective to have and I really thank you for sharing it. Because well, first of all there’s this huge myth about art being something that is not synonymous with business, right? So that like, you’re not going to make money doing it. It’s just for like, the love of it and all that kind of stuff, and I totally reject that. And I think that when you start thinking creatively and you’re like, “Okay look, I have an asset.”
It’s basically you have a product that you are selling to other faires, and it may not be necessarily the same people, but it’s the same music. It’s the same sort of character types, you know? And that’s the thing, the unifying thing, that brings you all together. That’s the product that you are creating. And then it’s just a business.
Melissa: Yeah. I keep saying it’s like ice cream flavors. So like all of the different personalities are ice cream flavors, and you are buying a banana split. So you will always get three kinds of ice cream. I cannot always guarantee that all of those three ice creams taste super great together. Because sometimes we’ll have people that like their personalities don’t mesh, or they have challenges within one another, they’re expecting a specific thing. So it doesn’t always work well together. We do our best to rehearse in advance so that people understand the characters, their own personalities, that kind of thing. But inevitably, you bought the ice cream, the ice cream is going to show up, and the ice cream will be as professional as ice cream can be. And the ice cream will be a really awesome ice cream.
So you will always get a nice sweet treat, but we might change up what the ice cream is next year. So instead of getting rocky road, then maybe you’ll get a scoop of vanilla, or you’ll get sprinkles, or birthday cake, whatever. But there’s always going to be a banana split with three scoops of ice cream, and you will always like the banana split when it shows up on the stage. It’s a weird way to put it but, yeah.
Maren: And you know, you have your specific arrangements of various different music. Do you have like a sort of general kind of script that you run?
Melissa: We have like an intro and an outro, and that’s pretty much it. Everything else in the middle is like, okay, read the audience. Which is why I have like specific people that are kind of like show captains. So Aileen specifically has done it for the longest and she’s really, really good at reading an audience. Like, “Ooh, a person came in with a kilt, maybe we can do a song about Scottish people,” or, ” Why is there a kid in the front of the audience? Well I guess we can do one of our pop tune covers,” that kind of stuff.
It’s funny. We started out not having the most specific arrangements because I was like, “There’re going to be some things that some people can do better than others.” Like Ella Nora, she’s our German lady, Lady Elsa, and she’s been doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff this year for everything that we’ve done during the pandemic. She has a very low alto voice. Even I can’t match it. So I’m like, “Look, here’s the basic idea of what you want to do, but if you want to throw extra stuff in there, feel free.”
But because things have started to get more and more intricate and I’m starting to hire better and better musicians as things have gone on, the arrangements have gotten more and more specific, and now we have like guide vocals for almost everything. And I’m like okay, now it’s getting like real particular. And I don’t mean for that to happen, but that’s just been the general evolution.
Maren: That’s great. I mean it also keeps you unique, you know?
Melissa: Yeah, yeah. We are definitely doing things that no one else does, which is real fun. Two years ago at Pittsburgh- in 2018 it rained constantly, so that was real awful. So in 2019 we were like okay, what can we do if it starts to rain? And I was like, “Guys, can we do ‘It’s Raining Men?’” They’re like, really? It’s not even a parody. It’s just, straight up, “It’s Raining Men.” And the audience goes ballistic to hear that song. Because you start to hear it and you’re like, “Oh, that’s fun. Oh, that’s cute. Oh, I think I recognize it.” And then when you realize it’s actually just “It’s Raining Men,” it is wild to see the audiences react to it. And we’ve gotten better and better with that particular arrangement as we’ve gone on, and that’s been really fun to sort of witness and be a part of.
Maren: That’s awesome. Let’s see, what else should we talk about?
Melissa: I do have a brief story. I remember the first time I, not necessarily this Bodice Ripper Project, but the first time I ever heard one of your stories, I think was late night at a beach trip, the annual PA beach trip. And we were all just sitting around drinking on a balcony and you were like, “Oh, I’m going to tell this dirty romance story,” and I was like, “This is fun. Ooh. I need to hang out with this person more often.”
Maren: Yeah.
Melissa: Something, I don’t know, it was either like a red dress or red curtains or something like that. There was the color red, was like very vivid in that. That’s all I remember from it specifically.
Maren: I think that this was, this must have been either 2013 or 2014, and I think it was the one that I wrote specifically for Hannah, because she was bugging me about it.
Melissa: You did say that. You were involved in an opera or something, and someone kept asking you to write something and you were like, “Okay, well I might as well do it.”
Maren: Yeah, exactly. Well that’s awesome. I’m so glad that you remember that. This is why I write. It’s for other people, you know, and I think that’s why you write too. I mean it’s also for yourself, right? But there’s just a certain enjoyment of just being able to read stuff, and read it aloud to an audience, and all that good stuff.
So actually, I do want to ask about Tom and reading stuff for Audible and reading your things for Patreon.
Melissa: Yeah. So he’s been doing Audible stuff I think like four years now.
Maren: I should clarify for the audience, Tom is your husband.
Melissa: Yes. Tom Zadoyko is my husband. You can search him on Audible. He’s got a bunch of projects up there, including ours. We had been dating for a couple of years and he, I don’t know if he lost a contract or he was just like in between contracts, and just trying to figure out like, oh man there’s this gap, especially in the summer for Ren Faires. So somewhere between like June to August there’s usually like a two month gap of, “What the heck are we going to do?” Especially if you’re on the east coast, because it’s just too hot. You can’t have people outside constantly when it’s just that hot all the time.
So he’s like, “Well what can I do?” And I was like, “Well you’ve got this awesome speaking voice, and everyone tells you you’ve got this awesome speaking voice. Why don’t you try to figure out auditioning for stuff?” So he actually got a professional teacher to teach him a bunch of stuff about programs, and how to use them, and what kind of microphones, and how to actually approach recording stuff. And then the next year he started actually getting into it and recording things. And he’s been doing it for a couple of years now. And then when we decided to do the Patreon I was like, “Look, I’ll write my stuff, and then just record it.”
And I don’t give him too much direction. There are some things where I’m like, very specific about what I want. One of them that you might find amusing is there’s a story called Ghost Story that I wrote, which is about this girl who’s about to get married, which I wrote around the time I was getting married, and she is haunted by a ghost. And she’s one of those, “I can see dead people,” kind of things. But for her it’s mostly annoying and frustrating that these people keep showing up and asking her to help them with dumb stuff while she’s in the process of doing important things.
And he was like, “Okay, so I’m playing a female character,” and he’s got a very deep, masculine voice. And he’s like, “Okay, who do you want this to sound like? What does this sound like in your head?” And I was like, “You know, it actually sounds like Michelle Kepner. If you could make Michelle Kepner do this entire series, this would be awesome.” And he got it perfect. Just sarcasm, and frustration, and sass. And I was like, “Yes. That’s Michelle Kepner. That’s what I want.” For those of you who don’t know she’s one of the Washer Well Wenches, and she’s as a human being super, super awesome, has been involved in the PA fair for years and, yeah.
Maren: Yeah. And the Washer Well Wenches and Chaste Treasure are very similar in their business model because they also send different groups of women out to various different faires. They’ve got like, I think it’s two or three different shows, but it’s like the same thing. I also very much like that business model. I think that’s really cool.
Melissa: Yeah. It’s like a theater company. So you’re like, okay, I’m going to cast this. My show I’m not casting anything specific. I’m like, “I need three ladies. You need to be femme people who wear big dresses, or represent specific cultures.” However you want to do it. Cause we have the one girl, Sultana Lyla, Jasmine. She’s more like silk road, has a lot more African influences, which is awesome because she is African-American. So other than that I’m like, “Okay, you gotta be pretty women in big dresses or royal garb. And you gotta sing dirty songs and be comfortable with that. And you just got to have a big personality, and be loud, and sound good.”
I don’t have many requirements for the show, but it’s nice to like be able to cast it. So like, okay, I’m feeling Fiddler on the Roof, I need these specific characters. It’s just, okay I need to fit three people in here that are going to work, that are professional musicians, and it works out really well.
Maren: I’m really curious about when TJ said, “I want you to do something that’s similar to The Sirens, but more family friendly.” For those of you who don’t know, The Sirens are a group at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire that are a bawdy group. That’s just women singing bawdy songs. That’s essentially it. And to make it more family friendly, have you moved away from that? Do you have family friendly stuff? I mean I’ve seen your show so like, I do know that there’s a lot of bawdy stuff in there.
Melissa: Oh yeah. At this point it’s kind of a mix, not intentionally. We’ve stopped going, for like family friendly shows. I have a database of 200 different festivals that are all over the country. And usually I’ll get through the whole thing once a year of just applying to every single festival on that list. Or making sure that they still exist, cause there’s plenty of them that go under. Or adding new festivals because there’s new ones that start constantly. But we got to a point where I was like, I’m going to take anything off that’s like stuff that doesn’t work for us.
So that could be like specifically family friendly. There are a lot of them that are like, “We only want Renaissance tunes,” and that’s not something that we do either, so I get rid of those. So mostly what we’re doing now is applying with festivals with the idea of we are a bawdy show. Can we do kid friendly stuff? Yeah, absolutely. Especially, we have so many like cover songs at this point, which has been really fun to do, like “It’s Raining Men.” Kris Coia, who’s an amazing performer and writer, she rewrote “I Need A Hero.”
Maren: Yeah.
Melissa: Or “Holding Out for a Hero,” whatever it is. So now it’s “Holding Out for a Himbo,” which is so much fun. By the time we kick into the chorus people are like, “Oh my God, this is so good.” So yeah, we have a bunch of cover tunes that totally work for almost every audience, and then we have stuff that’s a lot more sassy, saucy, fun stuff.
Maren: And what did you do during the pandemic? Like how did you stay relevant and around.
Melissa: I think around April when things finally started to shut down Aileen, and Ella Nora, and I were kind of talking and we were like, “Look, we should come up with something to do,” and I was like, “Okay I have this idea. We should do Ladies Unlaced. So we’ll do like kind of an interview sort of show, but maybe not really.”
And they were like, “Well we should do songs too.” And I was like, “Well we can’t do songs. We can’t be in the same room.” And Ella was like, “Well if you have a guide vocal that you can record to, I have an editing program. I can edit those videos together so that they sync up.” And I was like, “Wait, you can do that? Okay.” So that kind of started the Ladies Unlaced series. The first of us was, I think it was me, Ella Nora, and Aileen all together doing one video. And I think we had like three or four songs that we did. We were like, let’s do the hardest ones and see how complicated we can make this and it’ll still work, and it ended up going really well.
So we took it one step further and we were like okay, not only are we ladies unlaced. Like I’m not just hanging out in a t-shirt and stuff. But I was like, “Let’s just pretend that it looks like we’re naked.” And they were like, “Really?” I was like, “It’s up to you. If you’re not comfortable with this, that’s fine.” And they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no.” So we’re all just filmed from like the chest on up. But most of the time like when we’re in separate places, we all look like we’re undressed. And I was like, this is still within keeping things like, “Oh, look at my shoulders. You can see, my shoulders. Ha ha.”
And then it’s just been like random question and answers, sometimes it’s truth or dare. We always end up doing a couple of videos or songs together. Other than that it’s just kind of free form of like, “Audience, ask us questions,” or we’ll do it on a theme of like, okay it’s Halloween so we’re gonna do Halloween themed stuff. So, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” Or, “What do you eat at the movies when you go out to the movies?” That kind of stuff. So yeah.
Maren: And you answer in character? Everything’s in character?
Melissa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am still very much a British lady from the, I don’t know, the 1500s. It’s still you know, through the magic of the internet we’re doing this show. So I still pretend to at least be British, but I’m still answering those questions kind of as Melissa. Like it’s not just Morgan’s favorite movie is Scream. It’s like no, no, no, this also one of my favorite movies.
Maren: Yeah, got it, got it. That’s great. Well I’m glad, and I assume that your audience really appreciated having that sort of continuity.
Melissa: Yeah, and it was kind of wild. A lot of people didn’t realize when we go to different festivals that there were so many of us. So like, people from Oklahoma were looking for content. And we did the show and then we were like, okay, we’re going to highlight the ladies who normally do Oklahoma. So they would watch, and then we got a couple of new subscribers. And then we got messages back the next two weeks later when we did new people like, “I had no idea that there were more of you.” I was like, “Oh yeah. There’s like, tons of us.”
And it’s also really nice for what it was worth. We allowed people to tip us, which was super great. Although I’m super far behind, it is really nice to be able to PayPal somebody a bunch. Of money in the middle of a pandemic and be like, “You earned this. You hung out for an hour on a random show and you did like a bunch of recordings in your house.” However much money I can throw at you because these people tipped us, like, you earned this. I’m so glad I was able to even give $50 to people. Like, you made money this week, good for you.
Maren: That is so inspiring. I’m really, really, really glad that you guys did that. Like really. I mean it’s like, everybody kind of figured it out over the course of the year, and some people turned completely away from performing. And that’s okay too, like honestly perfectly fine. But it’s really cool to see that there were and still are people who are like, “You know what, let’s just use the medium that we have, that we can, and work with it and be flexible.”
Melissa: I don’t know if we’ll keep doing this after 2022, we’ll see. But we do have a Ladies Unlaced coming up this Friday of the ladies that are in Washington with me. We’re just like, okay, we’re going to keep combining random trios together to do all these shows that are cropping up finally, thank goodness. So we might as well keep going with it. Although I will be wearing a shirt. That’s a guarantee.
Maren: So you’re in Washington state right now?
Melissa: Yes, currently.
Maren: And you’re actually doing a show, live show, at the Renaissance Faire, right?
Melissa: Yeah, So this is the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire. I think it’s fair. And it goes for three weeks in Washington in August. They also are associated with an Oregon Renaissance Faire, and then there’s a Northwest Pirate Faire as well. But neither of those were able to open because they just didn’t have the budget for it. So they’re putting all their eggs into this very lovely basket in Bonney Lake, Washington. And it’s been awesome. I think kind of across the board every festival that I’ve been to is having the best year.
Maren: Great.
Melissa: Which has been awesome.
Maren: How are the patrons? Like, are people being respectful? Like, what’s the masking like?
Melissa: We’ve been wearing our masks whenever we come off stage just because we didn’t know anyone that was out there. This festival does not require masks right now, and I don’t know what the vaccination rate is in Washington State. But we’ve just been like, with the Delta variant we’re just going to be abundance of caution. Let’s wear masks, even outdoors whenever we’re walking around. I’ve seen kind of like a mix. It’s like 50%, so there will be people that are walking around with masks during the festival day, even outdoors. Even when I go into a grocery store there are people that are walking around with masks but there are plenty of people who aren’t either. So we’re doing our best to keep ourselves safe. I’m concerned with us. I don’t care about anybody else right now.
Maren: Yeah, I think that that is what I’ve noticed a lot of people doing at this point. It’s like, if you can’t control other people, then you can control yourself. Like, you can control your own behavior and that’s basically it. And I’ve been doing the same thing. You know, whatever keeps me safe and makes me feel like I can move about the world without being in constant state of anxiety.
Melissa: Yeah, yeah. Although I did have, when I got the vaccine I had theoretically one of the rarer reactions to it. I felt like I was on NyQuil. Like, I was loopy out of my mind. It was the weirdest thing in the world. So I did, I think it was Pfizer. And I had had coronavirus way back in May of 2020. I’m very grateful that everything got shut down, because if I would have been in regular operating procedure I would have been at the New Jersey Renaissance Faire. It was Memorial Day weekend I came down with it, and it was awful. So I was expecting to just have kind of a relapse of that, and I did not. It just felt like I was loopy on NyQuil for like a day and a half. And it was the strangest thing.
I remember I watched Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro, which has Tom Hiddleston in it. And mostly I was just like, I just need to watch Tom Hiddleston. That’s my comfort food. But I’m walking around with a British accent yelling at my cats, “I can’t believe that Jessica Chastain can’t do a great British accent. She’s hanging out with Tom Hiddleston.” So I’m just running around my house for like three hours yelling about Jessica Chastain. And I apologize to Jessica Chastain and if she listens to this podcast. I’m sure you did a really excellent job and did your research. But when I was loopy out of my mind I was just angry. But apparently, yeah, there’s like three in every thousand have a little bit more of a like, “I’m on drugs,” kind of reaction instead of just like being painful.
Maren: Yeah, well I’m glad you’re vaccinated. And you know, that’s all I hope for everybody.
Melissa: Totally worth it. Totally worth it.
Maren: Yeah. Okay so last question, this is the question I ask everybody. When I talk about bodice rippers, I use the bodice as a metaphor for something that’s restricting us and holding us back, that we want to rip off so we can let our true selves out. So what is your metaphorical bodice right now that you’re ripping off?
Melissa: The more I’ve started to write, specifically in 2020 and 2021, the more I’ve tried to be inclusive of characters that don’t necessarily represent me, just to make it more normal. Like I have characters that are non-binary, and I have characters that are Black and I have characters that are other stripes of queer, or that have polyamorous relationships. And that’s the thing that I’m kind of realizing I want to normalize, while not being entirely part of those cultures. I like researching those cultures and I like finding more out about what is it like to be polyamorous and have multiple relationships? What is it like to be Black in America, and how do you deal with that?
I wrote this awesome story, and I was so thankful to have people who spoke to me about their experiences, called “Inca Mummy Girl.” And the idea is that this Hispanic girl, I think she was from Honduras or something, she has the ability to touch a piece of history and then learn about it. So she can be in that moment of history. She can like pick up an arrowhead and see the moment it got shot into the ground. So she gets the opportunity to touch this mummified girl, which they keep finding in the Andes in Peru, and like see from her perspective the last moments of her life.
And I was so grateful to talk to someone who is actually part of that culture. Not necessarily Peru and Inca and whatnot. But that has native culture in her background, that has Hispanic culture in her background, and she taught me so much. And I was super, super grateful for all of that. And I just want to normalize it. Like okay, this is a Hispanic person who has these powers, and like they just happen to be Hispanic. It doesn’t need to be all about that.
Or this non-binary character owns a house where it eats the corpses of people. They’re just dragging a corpse up the stairs and, because they work for the mob. I was just like okay, this is a whole thing now. And I just wanted to, the more I do this, the more I’m like, “Let me just make these people normal,” because people don’t see them as normal.
Maren: Right, right. That’s great.
Melissa: That’s what I’m trying to rip off as much as possible.
Maren: I know what you mean. Yeah, I love that, that’s amazing. Okay, so how can people find you?
Melissa: Oh, gosh. If you want to find anything about Chaste Treasure, it is chaste, C-H-A-S-T-E, Chaste Treasure, then treasure like a treasure chest. You can find that on any kind of social media. We’re on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. We have a website www.chastetreasure.com. You can find merchandise on that. We have a t-shirt site, all that kind of stuff. So check out those, if you want to learn more about Chaste Treasure and where we’re going to be. If you want to learn more about me then you can find me on patreon.com/quillandquote. Quill, like the thing that has a feather sticking out of it that you write with, and then quote like something that you would put in quotes in a newspaper.
Maren: I’ll have all that written out in the show notes as well, so you just click on that and find you. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about your stuff. This has been really fun. And I wish you all the best for all of your creative endeavors. You have so much potential. I can just see it, and it’s just amazing.
Melissa: Thank you. Well and thank you for having me on obviously, Maren. But also for, I was even watching last night, some of your tidbits of like, “Here’s how I update all of my bios,” and, “Here’s how I do,” all this other stuff. Just being able to have that content accessible is so helpful as an artist to be able to be like, “Oh that’s how you do it. Somebody already knows. I just have to watch them do it.”
Maren: That’s so great to hear, you know, cause sometimes I do this and I’m like, “I don’t know, whatever.”
Melissa: It’s awesome to be able to watch. And even when we were talking on the phone the other day and just getting some of that advice. And even now, I’m like kicking myself like, should have put together that Facebook page.
Maren: Oh, you know what? Don’t worry about the shoulds. This is what I tell everybody. Like, it’s so easy to get in your head about that kind of stuff. Do what you can when you can. And that will just make things a lot easier so you’re not feeling like you’re putting so much pressure on top of yourself. And just like you’re writing, honestly. Like I always try to put way too much pressure on myself for writing every single day. And you’re like, “I’m going to write when I can,” and I love that.
Melissa: I mean like, we drove across the country and I was like, okay there’s no way I’m going to be able to write every single day while I’m doing this. But like, if I come up with some ideas I can put them in my phone and just sort of save them for later. Or write them down in a little journal or a notebook of like, “Oh you know what I should write about? I should have this character come into this story,” or, “I should do more with this thing.” I do my best to catch up and get around to it eventually, but I’m still doing stuff. That’s the best I can do.
Maren: Yeah, and that’s so valuable for people to hear, honestly, because I think sometimes there’s this like romantic view of somebody, you know, sitting down in the morning and like typing out the great American novel. And that’s just not how that works. So, yeah. But thank you so much, Melissa. This been wonderful, and have a wonderful day.
Melissa: Yeah, you too. Thanks so much.
And I will leave it there.
In the interview, Melissa had talked a little bit about her husband, Tom Zadoyko, and how he narrates her stories as a part of their Patreon. So I thought it might be nice to bring him into the mix as well. Tom and I have known each other for a very, very long time.
Uh, he and my husband have known each other even longer. And it is so inspiring to watch him and Melissa both expand their talents. So here’s Tom narrating a story Melissa wrote for her Patreon:
And the Shadow
by Melissa Leigh
[full text can be found at https://patreon.com/QuillandQuote]
Join me next episode, in which I interview composer and coach Jennifer Rosenfeld.
I try to be a voice for musicians and creatives getting to be more than just one thing. In many ways I’m taking the opposite journey that a lot of my clients take, where they’ve been great artists and they’re adding on new dimensions to their careers, and I’ve not really been a professional creator but like have always wanted, and now I’m sort of crossing that divide. That’s sort of what I try to embody in my life and want to see more of for creators, is to just not be held back by the bodice or put in a box of what we are allowed to be.
That interview with Jennifer will be my final episode for season three. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I’m going to do a season four. Maybe. But if it happens, I’m probably going to take a longer hiatus than I did before.
Because I think it’s really important for me to work on building my coaching practice, on doing the session work that I, since I have this beautiful recording studio, I really want to take advantage of that.
But I do love hearing from you guys. So if there was something that particularly struck you about this or any episode, please reach out to me on Instagram. I’m @supermaren.
The Bodice Ripper Project is a production of Compassionate Creative, and was conceived and written by me, Maren Montalbano. It was edited by me and Andrew Carlson. The theme music was also written by yours truly. If you liked what you heard, I invite you to give this podcast a five star rating, wherever you can rate and review podcasts, and I’ll see you next time.