TRASHFUTURE - Nate and Alice’s Book Corner: ‘The Verifiers’ feat. Jane Pek

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

For the holiday week, Nate and Alice speak to author Jane Pek about her debut novel THE VERIFIERS, a detective story involving online dating, the ever-present algorithm, the tech economy, and Alice’s long-standing dream to read about a lesbian private investigator. This was a lot of fun for us to record, and if you enjoy it, please reach out! We’re happy to try and make this an ongoing series. *NOTICE* If you enjoy this episode then you should run, not walk, to pre-order THE VERIFIERS here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671896/the-verifiers-by-jane-pek/ If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture If you’re in the UK and want to help Afghan refugees and internally displaced people, consider donating to Afghanaid: https://www.afghanaid.org.uk/ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Trash Future, as you can probably tell because you're hearing my voice and not Riley's voice. Honestly, Riley, you sound very different. You know, people have told me in the past that they can't tell me and Riley apart. Really? Does this, I mean, I don't expect people to be able to tell the difference between an American and a Canadian accent. You have such a different affect, is the thing.

I know, I know. And people, they've told me that before. They're like, oh, I can't, I can't keep the North American guys apart. And it's like, surely, surely you can, you can just listen a little more closely there. But one of them is sort of like Gormand, and one of them sounds like very depressed all the time. Hey, hey. Oh, so thanks.

Set me off on a really, really good. I didn't mean to completely like destroy your self esteem. I committed it into recording. So we're getting to do an episode about something we really enjoy. And this this week, we are speaking to my friend Jane Peck about her new novel, her first novel, The Verifiers. Jane and I went to graduate school together and I read initial drafts of this book, almost well, more than seven years ago.

And now it's gotten published and super excited for that. So we brought on Jane to talk about about her novel, both because it it meets our tech angle requirements, but also because we decided to do something that's nice that we enjoy as opposed to a nice future. Yeah, exactly. Nice future can possibly exist, you know, for at least those interstitial weeks between Christmas and New Year's. So Jane, how are you doing?

Welcome to the show. I'm great. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to talk about it. And pleasure. Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting too, because, you know, I feel like Nate, you read such a

different version of this years and years ago. And, you know, I guess Alice, you're coming to this fresh having just read this version. So a lot of things changed, I think, between version one and version 1001. Well, I was reading this and I was thinking not only is this very, very current, very topical, but it's also it's such a trash future book. It's so perfect for us. It's like laser targeted. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, because I remember I remember reading

the original drafts and one of the things that struck me was you set the initial novel or the initial draft a little bit further in the future or what felt like further in the future in 2014. And what's strange to me is that, you know, it's to me, it reads a lot more contemporary now, as though it's, you know, the dates are marked 20 XX, but it could be now or it could be a few years in the future. But it feels as though some of the things that seemed hypothetical or maybe, you know, a little bit fantastic in the early drafts now just seem like, oh, yeah,

that's 100 percent plausible. And like the way in which you do like tech guys and like corporate guys, there's a scene in the end where like a couple of characters mention off hand about SoftBank like investing some ridiculous amount and like a very silly stuff. And at this point, I'm like pointing at the screen like Leo DiCaprio. I'm like, yes, that's us, that's us. Yeah, so we have explored, we have really done some niche discovery with regard to all of the different terrible SoftBank, what's the fund called Alice?

Oh, it's the Vision Fund. The Vision Fund, yeah, in, you know, companies like OIO, the company that destroys hotels, just various amazing stories. And so that all rung true to me. And I think, you know, I'm going to let you introduce, talk about the overall summary of the plot here in a second. But that was something Alice, I'm glad you pointed that out because there was a point I was like, these guys, as I was reading, I'm like, these could be tech

guys in 2011 sort of riding the wave of like apps will solve all social problems. They could be tech guys. Now they could be tech guys in 2041. Like that, that mentality will always be there, it seems, regardless of, you know, the tidal wave of contrary evidence. But Jane, when I, when I do sort of an elevator pitch to friends about this book and when I was doing, people asked me when I was a, you know, first year MFA student, what kind of things are people in your program working on?

I would describe your work and I would just say, well, a friend of mine is writing a novel about someone whose job it is to basically be a private investigator to determine whether or not people are telling the truth on their dating profiles. And the reaction I would get would be like, oh, man, that's, wow, that sounds like something that could exist. Sometimes people would say, God, I wish that did exist. I was like, oh, I don't know about that.

So I wanted to, that's my, that's my, you know, quick, quick pitch, but I'm wondering if you'd like for our listeners to sort of, well, explain your, your view on the overall summary and also how you came to this idea. Sure. Um, so I guess, and, you know, Nate, I think that, that's a, that's a great summary of, of the novel. And, you know, I'm glad people reacted positively. Um, I guess I would say this is a book about online dating and compatibility

algorithms and what it means to know someone in our kind of contemporary age when so much of ourselves is filtered through profiles and personas and virtual interactions. Um, I'd say it's also a novel about family, um, because my, my main character is a second generation Chinese American immigrant. And it's about interacting with kind of the expectations of parents and the dynamics with siblings and kind of figuring out how, you know, like how, how to like live and thrive with them and, you know, kind of presenting who, who

you are to the people who you're closest to, in addition to this idea of putting yourself out there in the world, um, given like all, all the, the apps and, and the virtual ways that we have of getting to know each other and presenting ourselves and having different personas. Um, and then it's also about Jane Austen and it's also about cycling in New York, probably how detective novels, I, I love the detective novel references. Oh, thank you. Yeah.

And, and so the, I guess there's a kind of fictional, um, a detective series that is set in Imperial China. And, um, I kind of made that, that up partly because as a way to kind of poke fun at the classic detective novels, because it's kind of easy to do that. Um, because they can be so over the top. Like, oh, you know, there's a stain on the floor by the window. And from that, we can deduce that the detective, that the murderer is six foot four and, you know, recently went through a divorce.

Yeah. I love, I love the sort of references to these, these novels, the Inspector Yuan novels, but you mentioned, uh, you mentioned McGray to, uh, and a couple of others whose, whose names escaped me. And it's just, it's so telling. And one of the things that I love is, uh, your, your protagonist, Claudia, she like, um, she, the lessons that she learns from these detective novels are so often wrong.

I, uh, I, there, there is, there is particularly, uh, I enjoyed the way that it kind of plays with expectations in, for example, there is a scene in which, uh, Claudia confronts Iris, um, without giving away too much of the plot. And she basically, it seems as though the logic of detective novels of Inspector Yuan novels is completely confirmed because in the minute that she is setting up to, uh, to record what she thinks she can coax a confession from Iris, uh, Iris just basically kind of launches into a soliloquy in which she sounds at first glance as though she's just overtly confessing.

And then that's not at all what she's doing. And it turns out that the, the theory that Claudia had was completely wrong, but I really enjoyed that because I felt like, okay, the cliched version of this would be, all right, the theory is correct. And she has to confront it and get it out of her by subterfuge or something along those lines, but instead it just, it completely inverts your expectations. And then you realize that, no, actually that hunch was completely incorrect. And so in a way, every time as I was reading this, I was like, I think I

know what's going to happen here. It turned out to be wrong. And I, I appreciated that. And I also appreciated the, um, the way in which, uh, it kind of inspector you on and the lessons from that allow Claudia to kind of, if not poke fun at herself, then sort of like, you know, have this almost self-deprecating comic view of things and talking about how her expectations don't line up with, uh, with how these so so apt for a novel that's in large part about

misdirection and about lying. And so I really, I really appreciated that. And I guess in a way, uh, what I, what I liked the most about this book was that like, you know, quite frankly, it's really funny. It's very, very funny. I laughed out loud so many times reading this, but then talking about the family portions towards the end, when, uh, when Claudia's older brother describes some of the things he went through as like the eldest child, when their family

was suffering financially, stuff that Claudia doesn't remember because she was too young, like I was really touched by that. And I thought, this is, this is, it's not that it's out of place, but rather that like, you realize there's room for both registers in this book, I suppose. Um, the, the, but I mean, Alice, maybe you should go over some of the stuff that made you laugh out loud because I can, I can definitely give you some of mine too. The thing is, it's, you know, it's like dissecting a butterfly.

If I mentioned my favorite line in this, it's, all I'm saying is that when you see Truman Caposi reference, that's my favorite line in the book. Thank you. I had to, you know, shoehorn and Truman for 30 Oscar Wilde too. I, I, uh, there, there was a part of me that, that laughed. I absolutely just lost it where, um, I believe this was where, um, Claudia's friends are trying to set, set her up with Rena and one of them says, well, she, she's such a lesbian though.

She, you know, after, after one date, she just wants to stay in and cook elaborate dinners and watch nature documentaries. And I lost my mind laughing. And I was like, but what's so wrong with that? You just really appreciate lesbian culture. And I, you're an ally. Well, so, so what, so I'm wondering like how, as you were writing this, did you feel pressure to have it be one or not the other or to not be of, you know,

a portrait of a family, um, that's kind of going through things as well as like this very funny, you know, very like kind of event driven narrative. Yeah. So that, that's an interesting question. Um, so I guess I'll, I'll say two things. I think one is that I think a lot of the humor comes from the voice and that by getting the world filtered through Claudia and, um, and it's actually interesting because, and Nate, you may remember that in the earlier versions

of my novel, there was no Claudia. It was a different protagonist altogether with a different family situation. And I think that was actually why I struggled for quite a while with the novel, um, was because I didn't have the right voice. And then I think I actually got so far as to like finish a full draft and I was going to go out to submit to agents. And then I was like, wait, this is just not ready. And I pulled it back and I just kind of rewrote the entire thing.

And this time from, with, from Claudia's perspective, um, and then once I had her as a character, like I kind of just knew who she was. And then I knew what her family would be like. And I always knew that I wanted to explore this very complicated family. Um, because I, I had this idea for like the dynamic of the relationships. And, um, and it's basically that, that Claudia herself was born and brought up in New York by her mother, but her two older siblings were actually kind of farmed out to their grandparents in Taiwan and only came to the US when

they were a little older as children. And I just felt like that set up such an interesting and compelling dynamic between the siblings and also between them and their mother and just a lot of like competition and rivalry, but also just a deep love and understanding of what they all had to go through. And that was definitely something that I knew I wanted to write about. But at the same time, I didn't want it to be, you know, kind of like a heavy, tragic type of story.

So I always knew that I wanted to, to keep it light and funny. And I think, um, it also really helped that there was this murder mystery set up because so many readers are familiar with the structure of a murder mystery and the tropes of a murder mystery. And that kind of makes it easy to play with and for readers to appreciate that. I guess to me, those were the parts that, yeah, the familiar parts were the company that, that Claudia works for, Veracity, some of the names of the characters there, I, it's been a long time that I were called the general themes.

But I, you know, in a way, I didn't really recall the protagonist's identity as much. And so, you know, reading it now, I can't really imagine it any other way. But I read, I remember, you know, that it was, that it was in fact different and that, um, if I remember correctly, there was very funny and also a little bit, a little bit sad that it's like, well, we, we said it, it was set further in the future in New York. And we realized that the one unrealistic thing about the tech in the plot in the first draft was that the second Avenue subway would be completely finished in

New York City. Like that's just a bridge too far. That is true. That kind of set it 50 years into the future. The tech, the tech questions that you deal with about like how we experience desire and, you know, what we lie about and how those things might be like sort of a two-way street between us and these platforms. I feel like those have like accelerated so fast that like now,

2021 is sort of in the place that you wanted to put 2041. Is that, do you think that's the case? Yeah, it is interesting because I will say that again, in earlier drafts, I kind of had, like Nate said, more of like a science fictiony type of idea of what this world would be like. I think, um, in one of the versions, I also had some kind of Google glass set up that was actually more effective than, than Google glass. Um, but then I think as I started writing it, and especially in revising it

the last couple of years, that was when I think all the Facebook, um, what the Cambridge Analytica scandal came out, all the election stuff came out. And it just became clear that, that a lot of what I was writing about, you know, like you guys said, it's actually happening. And it's kind of going on beneath the surface of the ways that we are interacting with these apps and websites and services and what we are getting out of them and what they are getting out from us. Um, and I just thought, especially with online dating, that it's a really

interesting arena to look at because whereas with other services, you may not want them to have so much information about you with online dating in a way you do, because that's how you can get kind of the best results. Hmm. You know, it's funny, you, you, you summarize basically the, what I was going to ask in the next question in a way, which is talking about the shift in perception of technology and its influence in our lives. Um, I feel like, I don't, I'm not ascribing this to the original

manuscript, but rather to say that in 2014 or particularly say pre-2012 or so in America, it felt like there was this kind of almost utopian view of how these sorts of things were going to solve the problems of our economy and society. You know, the only thing I can really compare it to is the kind of late 90s, early 2000s, you know, first, uh, dot com boom kind of utopianism about the tech sector. And it feels like, as you just said, in the intervening years, so much has changed. And while the, the language, the rhetoric employed in these companies sort of public relations hasn't really changed much.

I feel that the overall perception has become a little bit more, more pessimistic. And I'm, and I'm wondering, you know, do you feel as though this book is kind of rooted in that anxiety or pessimism or skepticism, if you want to use a less harsh word? Because obviously, of course, that's what we deal with all the time on this show, but reading this, like, you know, this, the book didn't seem to me like it was, it was 100%, you know, it wasn't ideological so much as it just sort of deals with the idea of this not necessarily being an unalloyed good. And I guess, I guess I wondered, like, you know, is that, is that a fair summary?

And do you share that perception? Or do you feel like, like, you know, dealing with that perception in some way informs this book? Yeah. And I think skepticism is a good word to use. I think in terms of how this book approaches the question of technology and how we want to use it and what we want to do with it, and how we want to hold the tech companies accountable. Because I will say that I was careful in writing this to not just kind of go out and bash all the tech companies with a very big hammer. Because I do think- That's our job.

That's what I'm saying. It's our job. On a regular episode, because I mean, I do appreciate that, you know, our lives have become entirely mediated by, you know, these types of contemporary technologies. And we do gain a lot of benefits from them. I think in the book, I just wanted to kind of question what the bargain is that we have actually struck with these companies. And whether or not we are actually willing as a society to pay that price and also ask as an individual, you know, what can we do? Because the problem is that you can't just say that, oh, you know, I'm not going to use Google and Amazon and Facebook and everything.

Because that's how information is being provided to us. That's how we are able to get so many things. I mean, you know, even with like COVID and the pandemic for people who are immunocompromised or who couldn't leave the house for whatever reason that like online deliveries was how they were able to survive. And so there is kind of good and there is benefit to the ways that our lives have become structured through technology. But the question, I guess, is what are we giving in exchange? And, you know, is there any room for the individual to kind of make that type of decision as to how they want to live their life without being kind of regulated and shaped by this technology? And that's why also

part of the book kind of talks about the idea of the algorithm, I guess, and how accurate it can be at predicting what we want. And it's a bit of kind of a multi-layered question because to the extent that algorithms start to give us our options, they then kind of shape what we want instead of just predicting it because they narrow our field of options and they kind of nudge us in certain ways. That's also something that's kind of more subtle that we don't think about as we kind of move through our daily lives in terms of using all this technology to help make our lives easier. Well, that's something that I admired a lot in the book, not to spoil too much, but the sort of the threat that technology poses moves very quickly from

something that's sort of comical and ridiculous to something that's much darker. And it reminds me a lot of that shift that people had in the way we started thinking about like predictive algorithms is going from like, you know, you buy a TV on Amazon and Amazon then says, would you like to buy another TV into, you know, now it's the reason why you can't talk to that one uncle at Thanksgiving. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about it too that, you know, even if you wanted to be a sort of Amazon big tech refuse, Nick, it's not even really possible. You know, even if you don't use Amazon.com to purchase things, basically any website you use, chances are extraordinarily good, it's going to be hosted on Amazon web services. And, you know, whether or not you

use Google, like if you have a smart device of any capacity, chances are extremely good that, you know, it is reporting location information that, you know, is being used to feed whether or not, you know, how Google determines both the popularity of things or like, you know, how busy traffic is things along those lines. The only way out of it is to use none of it at all, which isn't really realistic for most people. And even then, we get that explicitly in the text because Claudia doesn't use any of these dacing platforms and therefore is like, oh, my dacer can't be harvested and is just flatly to, oh, no, we just take that anyway. Yeah, we just constantly stealing your data, figuring out where you're going. Yeah, it is very funny that Claudia

gets sort of surprised by the fact that like the sleuthing that she is able to use with the various platforms just turned right around on her without her even really realizing it. And that leads me to the next question I was going to ask you, Jane, which is that it felt like one of the themes of the book was, yeah, tech platforms trying to drive people's behavior. And, you know, in one of the the fictional dating services, Soulmate, you know, initially starts out with just using bot accounts to drive up its user numbers and metrics. But then that then shifts to something a little bit more similar, a lot more sinister, to basically trying to use bots to shape people's behavior and push them towards certain decisions.

And we've seen this, you've alluded to this previously, you know, we've talked about it on Trash Future quite a bit, everything from Netflix and Facebook using really arbitrary and sometimes completely obscured metrics to drive up their viewership numbers, you know, Netflix saying that the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Spencer Confidential was seen by like 85 million people because at least 85 million people, you know, watched at least a couple of seconds of that film on Netflix before skipping to something else. Yeah, red notes, this being insanely popular as sure. Yeah, or, or, or Facebook kind of leading, effectively changing the way that news stories were ranked causing news organizations and media organizations around the world to basically

fire all their journalists and hire video teams. And then you suddenly discover that basically no one was watching Facebook videos, things along those lines. And then there's that. And then there's the much more sinister stuff when you look at things like you mentioned Cambridge Analytica or even just things so far as people being able to use the data that is acquired by tech platforms, you know, to draw connections that can lead them, you know, into really, for example, like, if you want to get people really fired up about a sort of like, Trumpist kind of politics in America, apparently the way you do that is you have to find white dudes over a certain age in certain geographic locations who have liked Ford or Chevy vehicles in their

Facebook profiles, apparently those guys, you just target and add to them and they will absolutely respond to it. And the things along those lines where it starts being used for malign purposes or, or, you know, threatening kind of intimidating purposes. But then also like, like Alice mentioned, Claudia is someone who kind of exists outside of that in a way and is not quite immune to being nudged, but kind of looks on all of this as an outsider. And I guess I'm asking, do you as an author, do you as a person existing in the society, do you think that it's possible for us to avoid being nudged or being shaped by the algorithms? Or at a certain point, like, is every one of us going to, you know, feel as though we've happened upon a decision through our

autonomy and free will, if you will. And then actually, no, it's just been, we've just had it suggested to us. Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess what in a way one could argue that, you know, we, we are always being shaped by kind of factors around us, even before the, I guess, this contemporary tech age, in terms of what information sources we are exposed to, and which we receive, and how truthful we believe them to be. I guess I would say that in this current day and age, I mean, I kind of don't think it's possible, like, to the extent that you are kind of plugged into the internet, and you know what's going on. And I think it's just because there is so much information out there, that basically it has to be filtered, like, you know, by the time it reaches you,

it has already been pre-selected by the organizations that you, as an individual, have decided you trust, and so will listen to or read. So like, for instance, I don't know, for me, it's probably like NPR, BBC, New York Times. And then for someone else, it's, you know, other information sources. But I'm sure that NPR, BBC, and New York Times all have their own kind of slant and perspective on things. British listeners of the show, we're looking at you. So, you know, so then what I take, I take in all this, and I'm like, oh, this is news, this is what is happening in the world, and this is going to affect, you know, how I move through the world. But then that's already, you know, kind of being nudged and shaped, and, you know,

like, not even malignly, but just by virtue of the fact that because there is so much information that is available, it all needs to be filtered to us in order for us to make any sense of it. I'm very curious about Claudia as an outsider, is the other thing that I kind of wanted to ask about, because she's not, she's a detective, but she's not a cop. She's not like a private investigator in any sort of licensed way. And we see her later on, interact with another character who is like, very much on the inside of this sort of corporate world, who is also sort of like, distant from it in that sense, and in some ways more trapped by it. And I'm curious about that as like a sort of like, where you would situate Claudia in the sort of like, spectrum of detectives

where on the one end, you might have sort of like, you know, a Magray or someone else, this sort of hard-bitten detective through to like an easy rolling. So it's like, in that sort of marginalized community, and sort of not by choice, is an outsider. So, so I would actually say that I think of, I think of Claudia as kind of that kind of classic, you know, amateur sleuth, who, and the thing is in writing this book, I wanted to avoid kind of having anything to do with the police, you know, like I did not want it to critical sport. I didn't want it to become like a police procedure. I did not want the NYPD to get involved and, you know, get bogged down and all of those things.

And that is also why I kind of structured the mysterious death at the heart of the novel, the way I did, such that, you know, to the extent that it's viewed as a suicide, and the police decides that it is, then it's kind of closed from their perspective. And then the novel kind of conveniently ends when that investigation reopens, but that is kind of like, you know, a few steps away from Claudia. So I kind of see her as that, you know, kind of like like the golden age of mystery, you know, in the golden age of British mystery, amateur sleuth, the person who kind of pokes around and, you know, is able to like, to like put two and two together.

An enthusiast, maybe. Like that's the thing that strikes me about Claudia is that like she's asking these questions partly because she feels like a sense of personal responsibility, but also partly because that's just like in her character. She can't help herself, but to ask the question. Yes, exactly. Like she's just a really curious person and where there is a mystery and especially when it kind of, you know, like sets off all these like amateur sleuths, like alarm bells in her head, like that's just what she wants to do. She wants to like figure things out and be the one to solve it and know the truth.

Sort of a sort of contemporary Brother Cad file, but a very, very different background. It's weird. I was never a huge fan of mystery novels, but the ones that I have read and enjoyed, I've really enjoyed and I'm always taken aback when they're done well as to prevent you from figuring it out too quickly. And I appreciated the fact that we did read Detective Fiction at the Brooklyn College MFA program that like it wasn't just, you know, Iowa Writers Workshop stuff that although that was pretty heavily represented, we did actually read Raymond Chandler and things along those lines because there is an absolute art form to it. And something that I appreciated about this was it would be very easy to have the perspective of the author sort of mediated

through the narrator to the point where, you know, things are one note or they're immediately, you know, on their face obvious. And I did not feel like that was the case. I felt like there was a lot of subtlety and sort of questioning of the certainties or like the point being made even for example. And let me just say that before I talk about this particular detail about the relationship between Claudia's older sister Coralyn and her at one point boyfriend Lionel, I do appreciate the subtle digs at New York writing culture. Those really, really warmed my heart. I was like, yes, yes, get them. But one of the things that I thought was very interesting about that plot device or that subplot was that, you know, Coralyn and Lionel connected

and actually had a relationship that for a while seemed as though it was working, but they met by accident. She thought she was going on a date with someone with a different dating profile. And when they met, like they had some chemistry at first, but then the relationship doesn't work out. And so that kind of forces me to ask the question. Similarly, I don't know because I'm not as good of a reader as I would like to be, but I did kind of get the impression at the end of the story that Claudia and Claudia might try to make a go and see if things with Beck's work out with her. Like is that the possibility of a relationship? And I don't know if that was the intent there, but that was sort of my impression. And the thought crossed my mind, well, those two

seem incredibly ill matched, but who knows? And the thought crossed my mind that like on one hand, the relationship with Coralyn and Lionel would suggest that ultimately the algorithms are right. Like they weren't compatible. And even if they thought they might be compatible, they weren't. But then that reading, perhaps I don't know if I'm correct in it of potentially there being something between Claudia and Beck's would seem to imply that, well, maybe that doesn't really matter. And so I guess the question I have to you is, do you think that ultimately the algorithms are correct? That like they know us better than we know ourselves and that this sort of thing does sort of determine success or failure? And if we are wrong, if they do, is it like a fight worth

losing? Yeah, I know. And that is actually kind of a question that I personally do find very interesting, which is what would it mean for romantic love if it could be predicted by an algorithm? It almost feels like part of why love is so meaningful is because it's hard. It's like you have to go out there and find people and get to know them and figure out who they are and who you are in relation to them. And sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But even when it doesn't work out, you know, you learn something and hopefully you had something special and meaningful. And then you like continue this process and also hopefully you eventually find someone who you feel like you want to spend the rest of your life with.

And so in a way, if it was that easy, like you just kind of put in your data, and then the computer spits out like this is your 100% match, it almost feels like we would lose something there. But at the same time, I did want to raise that possibility that, you know, maybe these algorithms do have some idea of what they're talking about. And if that is the case, then what role should they have in our romantic lives? And I will say that, I mean, you know, like, and I feel like just being, being someone who was brought up on genre and who loves genre, I always think of books in series because I love trilogies. And so, you know, like, if I do end up writing a sequel,

there are further ideas that I do want to explore with respect to that question of, you know, what role these algorithms should play in terms of how we find love, even if, or maybe especially if it turns out that they are accurate. It's very funny to me because I think about, when you talk about percentage matches, that brings to mind, okay, Cupid, which I think may have fallen off a bit, but was at one point quite, quite popular. And I was on and used, you know, about a decade ago. And it's funny to me because I met someone on okay, Cupid, and we had a relationship for two years. And I think the circumstances of our various careers made it impossible for it to work forever.

But we were actually quite well matched. And I was sort of like, wow, I guess, okay, Cupid really knows its stuff. But then out of curiosity at one point, this is before she and I started dating, I entered in to see as I was planning on moving back to New York when I was, you know, in the Army and Station in Korea. And I put in information to look down and see, like, hmm, I wonder what dating prospects will be like when I move to New York. And I matched at 87% with someone that I had a relationship with in the past. And like, she was on okay, Cupid, I wasn't aware of this. And like, it did not work out and we were not very well matched together. But it said 87%. And I was like, yeah, because we like the same things. We have a lot of,

you know, cultural interests in common. But like, we basically can't be in the same room without being at each other's throats. It's just not, it doesn't work. But to the algorithm, it's like, oh, well, you guys like the same bands, you have similar backgrounds, like surely you guys are perfectly matched. And then I think about my wife Cynthia, like, based on her interests, I imagine we probably would have, would have matched in like the single digits on okay, Cupid. But something, something about our sort of ability to get along with one another and talk to one other and always be entertained, you know, hearing the other one speak, it overcame all of that. So in a way, like, like...

Yeah, that's a question, isn't it? Is it good for you to have a relationship where you're not matching in some ways? Like, Cynthia and I don't like a lot of the same, we really don't like the same music. We don't necessarily like the same books. We like a lot of the same movies, but there's pretty huge variants there. But like, I did find it very funny that it sort of implied it's like, you know, according to the matching, it's like, well, all these things are enough. So you guys can talk about the same things while you hate each other or... Yeah, it has this like flattening, like homogenizing effect, right? Like, you could end up sort of

watching the set, like you watch four movies until you're old enough to start dating, you plug those four movies in and then somebody else who watch the same four movies is just your soulmate, right? You're never challenged to like experience anything else. It's the same thing where I've liked enough pictures of certain room design aesthetics on Instagram that now it just knows. It's like, you like, you like skirting boards and crown molding and herringbone floors and like Persian rugs on things. So it's just, we're now going to send you nothing but that in hundreds of different accounts from the same aesthetic. It's sort of like that, but for romantic partners. And that's kind of frightening. So in a way, like this book,

I mean, it was fun. It was entertaining. It was, I laughed out loud so many times. I mean, I read it sort of in bounds because once I started reading, I didn't want to put it down. But it also kind of addressed that question. And I guess I'm wondering, you know, when you look at this stuff, I can only imagine that over the course of writing it, you know, both in school and then subsequently having a pitching it, editing it, that people have probably spoken to you about their experiences with online dating. Because I mean, it's, as you say in the book, and it's true, it is very, very popular for people to meet, you know, partners. So like, I'm just wondering, as you kind of moved through that world of getting this together and, you know,

to publication, like, have you revised or have you reconsidered your thoughts on sort of what the overall impact of this is? Yeah. So I think, I think, you know, like you, my online dating experience was, was with OK Cupid like several years ago. But I mean, I, and the thing is my, my personal online dating story is actually a happy one in that I did luck out and, you know, I met, I met like my life partner on OK Cupid. And she was the first person I met on OK Cupid. And I was the first person she met on OK Cupid. So, you know, you could say that, that we got really lucky or we were lazy and we had low expectations. Or the algorithms did a perfect job. Exactly. I should be like a spokesperson for OK Cupid. But I, and I think, and I did do some

research into kind of online dating apps and services and how they have evolved over the last, I guess, decade, decade and a half. And it is interesting that I think originally when we started out with like eHarmony and Match and OK Cupid, it was very like, give us a lot of data about yourselves. Like what do you like? What are your political, religious affiliations? Are you like a person who prefers to go out or stay in? What's your favorite travel destinations? And I feel like those did kind of gear towards more like what you were talking about in terms of interest and pairing up people who had similar tastes. And I think I touch on that in the book as well in terms of kind of how, you know, how people's tastes and preferences can be aligned or

can be, can be shaped. But then, you know, after that came along like Grindr and Tinder and the whole like swipe culture. And then it was almost like kind of like a 180 shift where it moved from like kind of formulating full profiles and telling us a lot about who you are and what you're looking for and what you want to like pictures and three words or like your favorite pizza or like, you know, like what's a quote that summarizes you. And then nobody's reading the essays on my Grindr process. Exactly, exactly. They're just looking at all your amazing pictures. And so I feel like there it kind of shifted to and I think Vanity Fair actually had an article where the title was Tinder's the world's biggest scariest bar. And so it kind of became more like

that. Like it became a way to hook up with people but giving you access to far more people than you would if you just walked into a bar on a Friday night. And I think now we're starting to see a bit of a shift back from that. As people are like, well, I would like to get to know these people more than, you know, just looking at their possibly filtered pictures or just seeing, you know, three random words that they threw up there. And so there's now like apps that kind of try to get a bit more information, try to put a bit more effort into matching people. But the algorithms themselves have also changed, I think, because they used to go by things like interest and getting as much data about you as a person. And then over time, they have actually shifted to this idea of they

look at people you like, and from there, they kind of try to match you with the next person. And similarly, they look at the people you like, and they see whether or not the people that you like like you back. And so they basically try to match you like, with someone who they feel would like you back as well, that you would like based on your previous. That's a rough measurement. That's a cruel measurement. They're like, I was gonna say is losers zero or one. Yeah, and they do actually say, I think it is actually based on, I believe it, there's a there's actually kind of a mathematical type formula called the marriage problem or something like that. And the idea is basically that you should not be trying to bet way out of

your league. Yeah, it's basically I love it when my dating app practices expectation. So end up with number five on your ranking list or something like that. But then the thing is, the online dating world in my novel is a bit different because I was actually interested in exploring what happened if we did go down that path where it was very data driven, and the apps were focused on collecting data about you, and they wanted to predict who you would like based on who you were, and not simply based on your prior kind of successes and failures in terms of like, like whether or not the like who you like, and whether or not those people like you back, which is more of a, I guess, not personalized measurement. It's just

based on on reactions. And so that was what I wanted to go into in my novel, which is what if they are able to use these algorithms to find us the perfect people and not just, you know, the people who are willing to date us. Looking back on what you're describing, it is a perceptible shift, isn't it, that it kind of went from matchmaking to speed dating? And that I see what you mean in the sense that, you know, it just, okay, Cupid and things along those lines were really like, let's get a personality survey and let's have, you know, sort of, I've heard of these stories that back in the olden days, you know, especially for people who were executives or people in business, there were services that were just sort of like this,

you know, say in the 80s and 90s, where you would fill out a like a survey and mail it to them, and then they'd, you know, match you up with someone eligible or something like that. And that was the model that some of this was built on. And then like you said, now, well, far more is just sort of like data point, data point, data point, just sort of feeding, you know, react to this left, right, you know, do you like this, do you not like this? I mean, I can even recall, okay, Cupid kind of turning into that when it started having kind of like, you know, sort of roulette wheel of profiles, gamification, really. And the grim notice that I would get periodically when I was stationed in South Korea, like you have reviewed all profiles in your search

criteria is like, wait a little while, you lonely idiot. Is opening my loot boxes. Yeah. So, man, that it is such a, it is such a wild thing to consider how much that we'll talk about online dating, but what that means has changed over the course of our adult lifetimes, you know, as the stuff's become more ubiquitous. But you know, there was also some questions, Alice, I know you wanted to ask some questions specifically and talk about some of the other aspects of this book specifically. As ever, on any podcast I'm on, I want to talk about being a lesbian, right? Because that's one of the things that like appeals to me most about Claudia as a character is she reminds me very

much of like a throwaway joke I did on Twitter about how I wanted to read like a sort of a Sam Spade style character, but like an extremely stupid lesbian just like sees like a flash of like femme fatale leg and then immediately gets cached over the back of the head. And like, I'm doing, I'm doing Claudia a disservice there, but she, you know, that is part of this novel too. And I'm, I'm, I'm like, I'm curious where the character of Bex came from in particular and like what that sort of like, I just, I just want to like fangirl for a bit. I want to talk about Bex because I love her. Oh, that's great. She can be prickly. So I will say Bex had actually always been in the novel throughout. I think Kamla and Bex were

the two characters who, who I always had a very clear like idea of like visually and just their personalities and how they interacted and how they interacted with the world. And that was always clear. I will say that again, in earlier versions of the novel, that isn't really that you know, like kind of developing will they, won't they kind of idea that yeah, that in this novel, but I did want Claudia to acknowledge that she thought that her boss was hot because I feel like that is how you are like in real life, right? You're like, oh my gosh, my boss is really hot, but she's also like, you know, exactly. And I think as I was kind of, you know, moving along, like I felt like that was kind of how people were reacting. They were like, oh my god, I really

want them to hook up. And I think part of it was that is that they are so different. But I think, I think it's also, it also actually plays with a classic rom-com trope, which is that idea of, you know, these two characters, and you think they can't stand each other. And then, you know, like as you, as you move through. Bex is a lot like Mr. Darcy in that respect. Oh my gosh. And you are actually the second person to have said that. To have like kind of called out the, the certain pride and prejudice dynamic in the sense that you see Bex through Claudia's perspective. And so Claudia interprets the way that Bex behaves in

a certain way. Whether or not that, that is in fact, you know, like how Bex is thinking, you know, is at least close off to us as the reader, given that this is all from Claudia's perspective. You can just sort of see her in the corner of some regency ballroom wearing like a cravat being, you know, seeming about eight feet tall. It just fits, it fits very well. Yeah. But, but I will say that kind of that whole dynamic between them was also really fun to write. And, and again, if there is a sequel, I am also looking forward to exploring. And I mean, that's, that's another thing that I got from this is that it like, you could tell that you were having fun writing it when I, when you were reading it.

Yeah. I mean, it was, there were parts that, you know, made me want to hit my head against the wall, especially in terms of figuring out the plot, like just, like just kind of like, because I felt like the, what, what anchors every murder mystery is the fact that the murder is something that is both clever and also logical. Like I really, I mean, not really like, I appreciate the mysteries that are technically correct, but that are just so implausible that you would be like, there is no way that someone would actually set up this way of killing someone. Yeah. They like shuffle the like poison praying mantis down the wire into the bedroom kind of thing. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I think I read one where like someone had to trip

the wire for like a zither, which would then set off an arrow that would like pierce through the screen and hit this person, you know, and I was like, it all makes sense, like technically, but you know, it's, and so I wanted something that hopefully is able to encompass both, which is that it is actually a way that you could, you know, with some suspension of belief, imagine someone killing someone, but at the same time, it is clever enough. And it is something that you kind of need to put together clues in order to resolve it. And that, that actually, you know, turned out, turned out to be, I want to say to turn out to be like one of the hardest parts of the novel, but the parts that I really enjoyed were just the dynamics between the characters. I really

like writing the family scenes and the ways that kind of they're all interacting and squabbling and getting annoyed with each other. And I also really enjoyed writing the scenes among like Comla and Bex and Claudia and then Squirrel when he comes in. You're mentioning Claudia's family sort of leads me to my next lesbian question, which is it's not too much of a spoiler. I hope to say that towards the end of the novel, Claudia comes out as a lesbian to her mom. In a way, she comes out and in a way, that's the thing that interests me, right? It's a very sort of particular conversation. And I'm curious whether it was like, whether that flowed naturally or whether it was difficult to resist a more kind of like, if you like Westernized coming out.

Yeah. And so the thing is, I actually, I think again, in an earlier version of the novel, I think she never even went there. And I think kind of I decided to write that scene because it did feel like you want like one wanted a bit more of a conclusion to that aspect of the story. Um, it actually felt quite natural to me because it felt like the way that, that I guess, you know, someone in an in an Asian family would kind of talk about the topic, which is to say to talk around it. And especially because Claudia isn't close to her mother. And so I didn't really see them having a big like, I'm gay and you know, the mother being like, that's okay. It's very unspoken. Yeah. Yeah. And so I wanted to write something where

both characters get what the other is saying without it actually being said. I really appreciated that because it felt like in Claudia's case, there were two big secrets that were sort of impeding closeness with her family. And one was that she had quit the job that her brother had set her up with in order to work at veracity, but she didn't want to tell him because, you know, for one, he had, you know, done her a personal favor. And for another, like he, it seemed as though there was this, this, this constant back and forth between the two of them that he felt that she was capable of more than what he perceived she was doing. And then also the fact that her mom didn't know that she was gay. And so what I appreciated about it was that it did feel as though

there was, you know, this distinction between the way that she would reveal a secret to her brother who, you know, grew up at least in similar circumstances to her versus her mom who isn't necessarily going to understand it in the same way. And I liked the fact that at the end she was sort of unburdened. Like I appreciated that. And it felt like her as I, the will they won't, they stuff with Bex, like Bex sends her a text and it says, if you, if you fuck this up, basically, I'm going to kill you, but she auto-corrects to I'm going to kiss you. And she then basically, it sounds, my read of it, she basically was like feeling unburdened from having kind of gotten through some of this stuff in her life. She just basically says, well, I responded the way I was,

I wanted to respond and we'll see what happens from there. And the last question mark, wanky face. And I appreciated that because I felt as though we've, I think we talked about this in school, but like that, that showing growth, showing development in a character is really challenging. And it felt like all of the experiences that Claudia has over the book of putting herself in danger or uncomfortable situations, like, you know, her having to get dressed up for a gala in a way that she would never do on her own, you know, having her sort of drawing on her sister's talents to get, to get, you know, to seem natural in that world or, you know, breaking into an apartment and almost getting

caught jumping off a fire escape, confronting a finance dude in Central Park and him basically losing his mind at her, like stuff along those lines, like over the course of this, she's gone from being, I'm not going to say passive, but sort of more like willing to just sort of absorb these frustrations to, to being more assertive. And, and I felt like there was an extent to which, to use another MFA term, it kind of felt earned in a way because we've witnessed that development, we've seen that happen. And I imagine I don't, I want your feedback on this, but I feel like considering you've worked on this for forever, and it's gone through a lot of rewrites, and like you said, the, the, the protagonist's character completely changed. I hope that like you felt

like you had, you know, you had accomplished it by the end, because quite frankly, reading this, like I, I was along for the ride and I really, I don't know, just really, at the end, like I felt like satisfaction at seeing her kind of make that progress, if that makes sense. Yeah. And, you know, that, that's great that, that, that was kind of how you felt reading, reading the book. I mean, I definitely agree with you that it is tricky to have what feels like an organic and realistic development of a character, because I feel like so much of that is actually quite subtle. And if it's not subtle, then it just feels, you know, just very unrealistic. So yeah, I mean, I will say that, that I think as, as kind of Claudia progresses through the novel, I do feel like she does

grow in certain ways. I think she does mature. And I think she does also become more cognizant of, you know, actually who the people in her family are, in the sense that I think she starts out the novel with certain notions of who Charles is and who Caroline is. And I think especially Caroline in terms of her views of, of her sister and, and that was actually why I wanted to write in the scene where Caroline kind of enables veracity to get into that gala and then like enables Claudia to pass as someone who belongs in that world. And that is actually because of like just her skill and her knowledge in that, that sphere that Claudia has probably never really valued or thought much about before. There's a beautiful sort of like femme moment

at the end where Claudia is like seeing herself made up to like pass into this gala just tells her sister, you're awesome. And she just goes, yeah, no. Caroline definitely knows how awesome she is. Yeah, I, you know, coming up on, on about an hour of us recording, I feel like there's one burning question that I want to ask. And I think Alice, you mentioned to me, you also wanted to ask this, which is that so much of this book has been informed by both exemplars of and tropes of detective fiction, both in terms of trying to, to do it well and also sort of poke fun at examples of it being done badly. So I've got to ask what, what detective fiction books do you like? That's a great question. I love answering that. So I'll say that, you know, I grew up as a kid.

I was reading the classics like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot. And then, as I grew a bit older, I did read Meg Ray. And most recently, I've actually gotten into Josephine Tay. I will say that I'm probably more of a, I like the, the more classic, especially British type mysteries. I'm not so into the private eye type of mystery, although I appreciate kind of that very stylistically, you know, evocative. And they have that certain voice that, that is, that is enjoyable to read. But I will say probably at the end of the day, my heart might be with Hercule Poirot. Yeah, it's funny when you mentioned that because I was thinking when you were talking about some of the complexity and the difficulty of the murder being both like novel and also

plausible, that I thought about like Dennis Lehane books, which it's more about sort of like the grittiness and the unsettledness and just like how, how venal and depraved the world is in these sort of hardboiled cops and PIs trying to solve it. Or I was thinking about like, yeah, if someone's a fan of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, you know, they, there are some, some, some modern books, even in the sort of police procedural style thing that would probably fit them, but they're probably not going to want to read, you know, Paul Oster's City of Glass or something like that, which is a detective novel, but it's completely insane. Like there's so much complexity and, and, and varying it's within that world. And so I guess I would say this

feels like it is in the vein of that sort of classic murder mystery style novel, but also, you know, you sort of ruthlessly contemporary and, and relevant to what we talk about. And can I just say, I absolutely loved this book. I don't, I don't, I read, if I read Detective Fiction or things along those lines, it's normally just from the recommendation of friends when someone says the book's really great. But like, if, if any of this conversation has interested you, the listener, like, please, there will be a link in the show notes, go out and get this book. Like I absolutely cannot recommend it highly enough. And huge endorsement from me as well. The first, the first read through, I did that in a day. Oh, wow. Literally, I was like, oh, this is,

this is like my entire schedule for today is I'm going to sit down, I'm going to read this cover for the cover now. I mean, I have to admit also, when I was like, I DM'd Alice, and I was like, hey, Alice, do you want to read my friend's novel? It's a, it's a, it's a detective story about a lesbian private detective. Flipping off the lens cap on the laser designator. Also, it involves the tech industry and online dating. Just, just like steam pouring out of her ears. Yeah. So genuinely, Jane, thank you so much for letting us read this and, and allowing us to, to talk about it today. And I just wanted to say, if there's any other stuff you'd like people to be aware of, you know, social media profiles, things along those lines, here is your opportunity to

plug those. Well, you know, thank you both so much for reading the book and for having me on the show and for, you know, talking about it. This has been great. This has been really fun. The novel is coming out on the 22nd of February available for pre-order now. So, you know, if anyone is interested, that, that would be great. But yeah, thanks. This, this was really fun. You're very welcome. And once again, for all of our trash teacher listeners, we will return, we will return with normal scheduling next week, I believe. Riley, Riley and Milo are out with COVID right now. So that may be delayed by yet another week, but we will eventually get back to it. We'll just do Nate and Alice's book corner for a while.

Exactly. We're just going to, we'll find a way to pass the time. But as always, if you want more content from us, if you want at least one bonus episode a week, you can sign up to our Patreon. There's a link for that in the show notes as well. And otherwise, we will speak to you very soon.