S04.26: Jeannie Lin: Trailblazer
Our Trailblazer episodes continue this week with Jeannie Lin, one of the first authors to write historical romance featuring Asian characters set in Asia. Her debut romance, Butterfly Swords, is set in Tang Dynasty China.
In this episode, we talk about the craft of romance, about preparing for and resisting rejection while finding her own path to publication, about how she honed her storytelling, and about the way cultural archetypes find their way to the page. We also talk about the lightning fast changes in romance over the last twelve years. Thank you to Jeannie Lin for making time for Fated Mates.
This episode is sponsored by The Steam Box (use code FATEDMATES for 10% off) and Chirp Audiobooks.
Next week, we’re talking Sarah’s Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, which will release March 22 in a new trade paperback format. After that, our next read along is Diana Quincy’s Her Night With the Duke, which was on our Best of 2020 year-end list! Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore. You can also get it in audio from our partner, Chirp Books!
Show Notes
This week, we welcome romance author Jeannie Lin, whose newest book in the Lotus Palace Mysteries series, Red Blossom in Snow, comes out next week on March 21, 2022.
Hear us talk about Jeannie Lin's books on our 2020 Best of the Year episode, our Road Trip Interstitial, and our So You Want to Read a Historical episode.
The Tang Dynasty lasted from 618-907, and Empress Wu reigned from 624-705.
RWA's Golden Heart Award was phased out in 2019.
Twitter was launched in 2006 and Goodreads in 2007. Goodreads was acquired by Amazon in 2013. Borders Books closed in 2011.
People mentioned: author Jade Lee, who also writes as Kathy Lyons; author Barbara Ankrum; author Shawntell Madison; author Amanda Berry; author Bria Quinlan; author Eden Bradley of Romance Divas forum; author Kate Pearce; actor Tony Leung; Piatkus editor Anna Boatman; agent Gail Fortune.
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
The Steam Box, a quarterly subscription book box that includes romance novels,
goodies, and toys to help you embrace your sexuality and promote self-love..
Fated Mates listeners get 10% off with code FATEDMATES.
and
Chirp Audiobooks, amazing limited-time deals on select digital audiobooks
and great everyday pricing on everything else—no subscription needed.
Visit Chirp Books to check out all their audiobook deals.
Jeannie Lin 00:00:00 / #: Romance is probably the fastest to change. It's the most reactive, I think, of all the genres. One, because we write so fast. We as a collective, I myself do not write that fast. But, people will speak negatively about writing to market. But, it's not so cut and dry. It's a conversation. Romance as a genre is more of a conversation because it moves so fast and so fluidly and so many people do it. It's hard to put your finger on it, again, that giant nebulous ball.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:32 / #: That was the voice of Jeannie Lin.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:35 / #: Welcome to Faded Mates everyone.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:37 / #: I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:41 / #: And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. Jeannie Lin is an amazing romance author and we were really excited to talk to her as a trailblazer for what we consider... Historical romance often gets really pigeonholed into being 19th century European. And obviously, I don't know when this is airing, we will be talking to some other romance authors who were blazing trails in different ways.
00:01:08 / #: But we were really excited to talk to Jeannie because she opened up the door to historical romance set in Asia, but not during the 19th century. So, her first book, Butterfly Swords, and many of her books were set during Tang Dynasty China, which is around 700, 800 AD. We asked her some questions about why she was interested in that time period. And talk about how once somebody goes down an interesting path, and readers love it, other authors can see a path for themselves. She is really fun, engaging. She has great stories.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:49 / #: Great interview.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:51 / #: It's a great interview and we think that you are going to really enjoy hearing Jeannie's past romance.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:56 / #: One thing that didn't come up in the conversation, and I want to just say before we start is that, as much as we love Butterfly Swords and have talked about it on multiple interstitials, we put Hidden Moon, the most recent in her Lotus Palace series, on the 2020 Best of the Year list from Faded Mates. So we're renowned, devout-
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:15 / #: Jeannie Lin fans.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:16 / #: ... Jeannie Lin fans here at Faded Mates, and we can't wait for you to spend a little time with her. It was a real delight. Jeannie, welcome. We're so excited to have you.
Jeannie Lin 00:02:29 / #: I'm really excited to be here. I've been listening and so this is a geeky girl fan moment for me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:36 / #: Awe.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:37 / #: Well, thank you. It's a geeky girl fan moment for us because I was thinking that, I think the first time we talked about a Jeannie Lin book on Faded Mates was the third or fourth interstitial when we did road trips.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:50 / #: Road trips, yes.
Jeannie Lin 00:02:52 / #: Oh, wow. Wow. I've never heard one where you mentioned me. So I think that's... That's probably lucky.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:58 / #: Maybe that's best. I feel like I can't listen to podcasts where people talk about my books, so... I never-
Jennifer Prokop 00:03:04 / #: Better to just-
Sarah MacLean 00:03:05 / #: No, we said nice things. But you don't have to-
Jennifer Prokop 00:03:08 / #: Exactly.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:09 / #: We almost exclusively say nice things. We don't recommend books that we don't love.
Jeannie Lin 00:03:14 / #: I actually had a funny moment when a person from my real life, a person for my real life was like, "Oh, do you listen to Faded Mates? Because they mentioned you." And I was like, "I do listen, but not... I never... Was that mentioned?"
Sarah MacLean 00:03:29 / #: Well, now we're really going to mention you because you're joining us as one of our trailblazers for the season, and we are so excited to have you.
Jeannie Lin 00:03:36 / #: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:40 / #: One of the reasons that we were really interested in talking to you is because we're always looking for people who are doing things that are new and different. And we've talked to people that have been around in romance for a long time. But in 2010 when you published Butterfly Swords, although there had been a book by Jade Lee that had a Chinese heroine, which was set in Shanghai, but in the 19th century. But we are really interested in talking to you because you are so... I think blew off the doors of historical romance by choosing a different time and place than that regular, what I think a lot of readers have been taught to understand about historical romance, which is, it's white characters, in London, in the 19th century.
Jeannie Lin 00:04:25 / #: People didn't fall in love before 1800. Never.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:29 / #: That's just a little backstory maybe for our audience, but we'd love to hear about your path through romance and in writing those books.
Jeannie Lin 00:04:38 / #: Yeah. And it's really good that you mentioned Jade Lee because I was a fan of that series before I ever thought of ever writing a romance at all. And I actually found Jade Lee because I was on a road trip. And this is paper book. The time of paper books. I was on a road trip and I stopped in some... I visit bookstores when I go on road trips. I stopped in a bookstore and I found her book and I was amazed. I had only read the romances that I had been introduced to by my best friend and her mom. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, there are romances set in China." And most of the books were one Caucasian character and then one Asian character, one Chinese character. And then there was actually one book in the series... Stop Me, I'm going to geek out too much, so I'll-
Sarah MacLean 00:05:31 / #: No. That why you're here.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:32 / #: One of us.
Jeannie Lin 00:05:35 / #: There's one book in the series where it was Chinese, both characters. So it was a Chinese couple. But, it was set in Shanghai, like you said, and I was just amazed and just... I don't know, thrilled to see something different. But on top of that, I also was a big historical romance reader from the 90s era where, I think there were a lot more settings. It was sort of the, "Exotic," settings-
Sarah MacLean 00:06:06 / #: Yes.
Jeannie Lin 00:06:06 / #: ... were more popular then. So it was the idea of, "Oh, historical romances will whisk you away into a different setting, Vikings and Russia." And I know that those are European settings still. But still a little bit more exotic. And I felt that that's where I kind of got my roots of romance reading is in that era of historical romance. And so I always wanted to be whisked away. I wanted to travel somewhere when I read. And that's when I think, I almost feel like in some ways my romances are a throwback, even though people are saying like, "Oh, it's new." Nothing's new. What's old is new again, kind of thing. But that was where I was coming from, as a fan of the historical romance genre and a fan specifically of Jade Lee. And so at one point, I was teaching high school at the time. And teaching high school is probably one of the most emotionally taxing-
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:10 / #: I teach middle school, so I know what you're talking about.
Jeannie Lin 00:07:12 / #: Yeah. So it's like, you're so committed. Your head is always teaching. You're always with your students even when you're not there, even when you're not grading. And there was one point when I was working the summer to prepare for a whole new program, for at risk. I taught in South Central. So it was high risk and low performing schools, urban. And so, on the second day of school, when starting this program, all of a sudden I broke down afterwards and I cried. I was so tired, I was so done. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's day two." Usually I get a couple months in before I cry. And I was like, "I can't do this. This is the beginning of the school year." And my friend was like, "You need to do something for you." I had spent the whole summer teaching and preparing for this small school. And she was like, "You got to do something for you."
00:08:10 / #: And that's when I was like, "Well, I've always wanted to write. I've always wanted to write. And I've always..." You write in your notebook, all throughout my high school years and things like that, I would write little stories that I never intended to show anybody. I showed it to my little sister. And that's about it. And then, so I was like, "Okay, okay, that's the one thing I want to do. Well, I'll try doing that." So I looked for classes on... Because that's me. If you want to learn how to do something, find a class on it. I'm such a student.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:40 / #: Well, that's the teacher thing.
Jeannie Lin 00:08:41 / #: Yeah, yeah. I laugh, because there was a time when I couldn't, I was very nervous speaking. So I went to the library and looked up like, "How to public speak?" Because that's how I do things. So I looked up how to write romance and there was a UCLA extension class taught by Barbara Ankrum.
Jennifer Prokop 00:09:02 / #: Oh, my gosh. How cool.
Jeannie Lin 00:09:03 / #: And I was like, "Okay, okay, this sounds really great. You can take it at night." So I could take it at night after teaching all day. And then I hadn't read her before. So my sister, who was actually in an MFA program. My sister was much more on the path of becoming a professional writer, a bonafide writer way before me. And then she's like, "Well, read one of her books. See if you trust her. See if you can trust her." And I went to the library. I went to the bookstore. I found a couple Barbara Ankrum books, and I was reading them and I was like, "Oh my gosh."
00:09:36 / #: I was crying. I love the books that make you feel that hitch in your chest and you're like... Rings you out. I read romance to actually cry. So good. And she gave me that feeling, I just, all the tension, the emotional tension was so good. So I was like, "Okay, I think this is who I want to learn from." But I was telling my sister, I was like, "I don't think I will ever write emotional tension this well." Because I know I had done these fun little fantasy writings and that was my thing. I didn't feel like my characters were gripping the way Barbara's characters were gripping. And my sister told me something that still sticks with me. She said, "That's not her first draft." So I was like, "Oh."
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:19 / #: That's such a good piece of advice. Oh my gosh.
Jeannie Lin 00:10:23 / #: Just to give you an idea about how-
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:25 / #: Gosh, that's transformational, that moment.
Jeannie Lin 00:10:27 / #: Further advanced my sister was and how a green writer I was, because I was like, "You write something once for fun and you just leave it. You never come back to it."
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:36 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:10:36 / #: It's in your notebook. And I just thought good writers stumbled upon it or were talented or just, they had something that I didn't. But I was like, "Oh, funny that." And so, I took this class. And again, never intending to ever show this book to anyone. I took the class just for fun. Because I was dying-
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:59 / #: Sure. So stressed out at work.
Jeannie Lin 00:11:02 / #: And as I was taking it... Well, right before I took it, my former brother-in-Law, her then fiance, he was also in an MFA program. And he said, "Let me give you some advice." And again, I'm totally green. He's like, "Think about what you want to write, because you're going to go in there and then the first day they're going to say, what do you want to write? And they're going to go around the room and everyone's going to say what they're working on, and then you're not going to have any idea and you're going to freak out. And that's why I ended up writing about nuns for the last two years." And I was like, "Okay."
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:33 / #: That was the first thing that came to his mind first, nuns.
Jeannie Lin 00:11:36 / #: Nuns. Well, he went to Catholic school, so he's like, "Oh, nuns." And then, so I was like, "Okay, okay." And again, I'm hearing this totally green and I think I'm like, "I'll think of some ideas. I'll think of some ideas." And I go to the class and of course, first day, what are you writing? And I was like, "Oh my God, he was right." And so I was like, "Oh, I have this idea. It's a fantasy romance." Because I'd only written fantasy. And it's Western Romance and Eastern Romance. Kind of an east meets west. These warriors, white warriors go to an Asian, Chinese based land and they meet a princess. They get involved in a war. And I'm talking through all this, and I'm sure everyone in that class was like, "This kid. This is the kitchen sink." Oh and there's sword fights.
00:12:27 / #: So I'm saying this. And they didn't laugh at me. They were very welcoming. And I also said in that same class, "Oh, I just started reading Nora Roberts. She's pretty good." Yeah, so I'm sure at that point the class was like, "This kid." But I stuck with it. And from that class, I met some people who wanted to continue after the class. And so we started meeting with Barbara as a mentorship. It was a guided critique. So she was still a teacher, guided mentor to us for the next year. And that was really what started me on the path-
Sarah MacLean 00:13:06 / #: That's amazing.
Jeannie Lin 00:13:06 / #: ... of wanting to get serious with this.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:08 / #: How many other... So you were all writing romance at the same time? You were all romance writers?
Jeannie Lin 00:13:14 / #: Yes, yes. So it was specifically a romance class. Because I knew when I said I wanted to write, "I was like, I want to write romance. That's what I read. That's what I love."
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:21 / #: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:13:23 / #: And so we were all pre-published, I guess, or unpublished and at various levels, me probably being the most green. As in I had just discovered Nora Roberts, even though I had read romance for years. I just-
Sarah MacLean 00:13:36 / #: Sure. Everyone has that author they've just never explored.
Jeannie Lin 00:13:39 / #: My best friend's mom didn't read Nora Roberts. She was Jayne Krentz like Joanna Lindsay, but there was no Nora Roberts. So I go into this room, I'm like, "I've discovered this author."
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:51 / #: Oh my God, that's amazing. I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:13:53 / #: So I want to talk about this group of people. Did you stick... Did you stay with them for many years or was it just the year?
Jeannie Lin 00:14:03 / #: Just a year. And most of them went to my wedding. We were really close.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:08 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:14:08 / #: But I ended up moving a couple years after that. So before I was published, I moved away. But, and one of them has passed away. We kind of went through life things together and we've drifted apart. I still keep in touch definitely with Barbara, though. I still consider her like... I learned everything I needed to know kind of thing. Well, no. That's not true, because I keep on learning. But she really set me on the path.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:37 / #: So, the reason why I asked about them is because I'm really curious always about the way that we build our communities as writers. And so I'm curious, when you moved, as your career has moved, do you have a new community? Do you feel there are people who helped you along the way in really powerful ways? Aside from Barbara, or in addition to Barbara?
Jeannie Lin 00:15:02 / #: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. The first thing I did when I moved to St. Louis was I found the local romance writing group. And I actually knew some people from online on there already, Celia Carson. Right now, my little circle, it's still the same circle I formed right when I moved. It's Celia, Carson and Chantelle Madison, Amanda Berry, Bria Quinlan. So it's like those people have really... There's some people I interact with more online, but there's that close core group and they just get me through. Sometimes they get me through the day.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:39 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:15:40 / #: Sometimes they get me through the book. Sometimes they get me through the whole year of you have newborn children and you have a book that's due and-
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:54 / #: That's rough.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:54 / #: Right, right.
Jeannie Lin 00:15:54 / #: But yeah. That's really... I don't think I could write alone. I've always been... I need a group of people and we keep each other. Even, we all write different things, but we keep each other going. Sometimes it's at the level of critique, but sometimes it's just at the level of emotional support in the sounding board.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:13 / #: It is such a lonely job for a lot of people. I mean, I know some people like it, just to sit alone in their room. But, so community becomes so vital. So was that first book that you're talking about, the book that you started that ultimately became Butterfly Swords?
Jeannie Lin 00:16:29 / #: Yeah. Well, there's the unpublished prequel of which I've never been able to... One day, I'll get it somewhere and just... But yeah, there was a first book. And then I took a long time, took over I think almost two years to finally finish that first book. And it had all those great things I talked about, the sword fights and the princesses. But then at some point I made a decision. I was like, "Okay, I don't have to make it fantasy. I'll make it China. I'll make it Tang Dynasty China." Which is what I was basing my fantasy world on, and I'll just keep on going from there because Joanna Lindsay would... She always had like, "Oh, there's this imaginary European country."
Sarah MacLean 00:17:10 / #: Sure, why not?
Jeannie Lin 00:17:12 / #: So I was like, "Okay, so these guys come from an imaginary European country that made it to China." And I'm just going to go with it. I had no idea.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:20 / #: Listen, I love that. I love it.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:22 / #: I knew nothing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:23 / #: Well, and then-
Sarah MacLean 00:17:24 / #: You did. But you knew so much because you were a romance reader. I think that's the thing, is the conventions are so different for us.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:31 / #: Yeah, I would say the secret to, "Success," the secret to actually getting this to work, was having no clue. And because having no clue, I had no fear.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:42 / #: Yes. Yes.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:43 / #: I just... Let's just do it. Why not?
Sarah MacLean 00:17:46 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:47 / #: And then so that first book, yeah, I cobbled it together. But at the end, there was actually a story there. I was amazed. I was like, "Okay, it's not great, but there's a story." I didn't know it wasn't great either, by the way. I didn't know that.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:58 / #: Awe, well.
Jeannie Lin 00:18:03 / #: And by then I had been reading advice from other places. I had finally joined RWA and Jessica Faus said, "You finished your first book, start querying it, and then start your second book. Why are you just waiting?" So I'm like, "Okay." I was querying that first book, and I just started that second book. And so, that second book is what Butterfly Swords was. And it was just being in that group. As soon as we all started our second books, I was amazed because I couldn't tell that my writing had changed that much, but seeing everybody else's writing, I was like, "Oh my gosh." It's all of a sudden from book one, the end, to starting book two, everyone grew so much. I can feel it, I can hear it, I can see it. And I was hoping the same was true of my book because I couldn't see it in me.
Sarah MacLean 00:18:51 / #: That's interesting.
Jeannie Lin 00:18:51 / #: But yeah, Butterfly Swords was always a book two. And I think if you read it, you'll see there's some characters and things in a backstory that was supposed to already be established.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:00 / #: I have a question just about how you decided to write about the Tang Dynasty. Was that just of personal interest to you? Or, so you were happy to be researching? Or... Because it's such a specific... I mean, any number of dynasties you could have chosen during Chinese history?
Jeannie Lin 00:19:17 / #: Well, the Tang Dynasty is one where women... And again, this is relatively speaking. Women had a measure of independence. Women reached high levels of government. There was an empress during a small portion of the Tang. Not an empress, she actually became emperor. She was considered the emperor. Empress Wu. And so, on top of that, just even at the lower levels, women could seek divorce, women could sue for property. There were some basic things there. Overall, women's rights, they were definitely a lower class, but even those little points would give women a little bit more agency. So I was always attracted to that period. If you are a fan of Chinese history, it's one of the periods that's a golden era. So that was another thing that drew me to it. And then, as any historical fan will tell you the clothes were really, really nice.
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:15 / #: That's awesome.
Jeannie Lin 00:20:19 / #: The clothes and the hair and everything were really... The aesthetic, the Tang Dynasty aesthetic is really attractive to. And so all those things. I didn't do a lot of research until I kind of like, "Okay, now I've made a decision. This is not historical, or this is not fantasy romance. This is going to be historical romance." And I started researching a lot, reading everything and joining historical groups and just starting to absorb as much as I could to start to world build.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:53 / #: This episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by the Steam Box. The Steam Box is a romance book subscription service that features books written by authors from marginalized communities and underrepresented groups. Books are paired with items that celebrate self-love and embrace one's individual sexuality.
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:11 / #: Sarah, I could not be more thrilled about this.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:13 / #: Listen, I could get hard behind one of these boxes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:17 / #: I think as a matter of fact, old school romance readers like us remember the joy of getting romance novels in the mail every month, but now they come with vibrators.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:26 / #: Look, that's how you know are evolving in the right direction.
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:31 / #: Absolutely. This is a really cool company. The founder's name is Melissa Gill, and she donates 5% of each box's profits to an organization in the first year of business. The Steam Box donated to Lilith Fund, Families Belonging Together, the National Network to End Domestic Violence and Trans Women of Color Collective.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:50 / #: So you can know that when you subscribe to Steam Box, you're doing well as well as reading well and maybe feeling well. I was lurking on the Steam Box's Instagram feed this morning and the Winter Box, aside from having a bunch of great books in it, also had a face mask and a candle and soaps and a vibrator in the shape of a rosebud so you could get it done beautifully.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:14 / #: Amazing. So you should all check out the Steam Box and support this small business. You can find her website @www.steamylit.com.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:24 / #: That's S-T-A-M-Y-L-I-T.com. As always, you can find more information in show notes about the Steam Box, or if you're using a smart podcasting app, you can click the link, right in the app right now, and for Faded Mates listeners only, using the Code Faded Mates will get you 10% off your subscription. Thanks to the Steam box for sponsoring the episode. Were you querying that first book and then the second book became Butterfly Swords? Or, at what point were you aware of, this is happening? We're publishing this beast?
00:23:02 / #: This is happening. We're publishing this beast.
Jeannie Lin 00:23:04 / #: Well, I set a limit. I set a limit. I said, okay... Because also, all these blogs were saying people make the mistake of querying their first book too long or something like that. So my first book, very quickly, I was like, "Okay, 10 rejections, and it's not going." I could feel it. It's not going anywhere. So I just kept on writing.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:26 / #: You know, I love this. This is very me. You hear those stories about like, people query their books for 40 times and then finally get an editor. I'm like, I would just be done. I would be watching TV.
Jeannie Lin 00:23:37 / #: We'll see, but I set a limit. But I set a limit of 100. I said 100 rejections. And-
Sarah MacLean 00:23:43 / #: Oh.
Jeannie Lin 00:23:44 / #: No, that was for Butterfly Swords. For the first book, I was like 10, and I know, I don't need to hang on. But for the second one, I was like, "Okay, 100 rejections." And I think I might've pulled that number, because you can probably already tell, I'm very much like, I need definitive limits. I need numbers, otherwise I will just, I don't know how much is enough. And so I said 100, and I probably pulled it because an author I liked said something like that. And so I was like, okay, 100. And then I finished the book, and this book finished in two months. Unlike... Well, rough draft-
Sarah MacLean 00:24:17 / #: That's amazing. But still-
Jeannie Lin 00:24:18 / #: Let's say rough draft.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:19 / #: It wrote different? Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:24:20 / #: Yeah, so like two years versus two months, because I knew the answers to all the questions I had before. And plus, I had learned from Barbara that just right forward, instead of getting in your feelings or getting in your head and worrying. And I was like, "Can I just assume all the perfect edits have been made?" And she's like, "Assume all the perfect edits have been made and just write forward," and I had never done that before. And so I was like, okay. If a teacher tells me something, I'm like, okay, I'm going to try.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:49 / #: I love that.
Jeannie Lin 00:24:50 / #: I'm such a good student.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:54 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:24:54 / #: And so I finished it. It took a lot longer than two months to edit it and everything, but when I was querying it, I gave myself 100 and I would track it. And there was a bunch of us, Bria Quinlan was one of those. We were querying our books at the same time. And you're like, "Oh, I got a rejection today. I got a rejection today, and I got a rejection on my birthday." You kind of get to the point where you like the pain. You're like, it hurts, but I kind of felt left out on days when I didn't get a rejection after a while. I'm like, "No, rejections today?" But you kind of get used to it and you're in that grind. And I was laughing when I said a hundred, I didn't realize how close I would get.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:39 / #: What kind of rejections did they look like? Were they thoughtful or just forms?
Jeannie Lin 00:25:44 / #: Form for the most part.
Jennifer Prokop 00:25:44 / #: Forms, yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:25:46 / #: A couple of them were requests that said, "I didn't like it as much," and I would tweak it along the way. And I was still trying to learn and trying to find the secret magic sauce to figure it out. And then at one point, I finally, I entered the Golden Heart.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:00 / #: So let's explain what the Golden Heart is.
Jeannie Lin 00:26:02 / #: Oh, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:04 / #: The Golden Heart, no longer exists, but for a long time, RWA, the Romance Writers of America had an unpublished author contest called The Golden Heart. And you would submit a selection, first 50 or first 100 pages, and it was judged by published authors, and the winners of the Golden Heart were hopefully noticed by agents. That was the idea.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:27 / #: Well, and this was especially important back before people could self-publish on Amazon. So it was really an avenue for, I don't know, that sense of yes, this is someone we... Other romance writers see the potential in these authors.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:44 / #: And now, it was a thing where Joanna Shupe won the Golden Heart, Robin Lovett won the Golden Heart. I mean, there are people who we have talked about on Fated Mates. Jeanie, I didn't know you won the Golden Heart, but-
Jeannie Lin 00:26:58 / #: Yeah. Yeah. So for me, first... It's not the only avenue to publication, but for my book, which was so much of an oddball, people didn't know what to do with it. I entered the Golden Heart. I had been entering a gazillion contests up to then because I wanted feedback. I was kind of a feedback junkie. I need that feedback, otherwise, again, boundaries. I don't know how to look with my own instincts and know what to do. And so I entered the Golden Heart and I finaled in the Golden Heart. And I think that was the start where people started saying, hey, maybe, I'll give it a chance. I started getting requests. More people were taking a look. I definitely noticed there was a line in the sand. As soon as the Golden Heart nominations came out, all of a sudden people started paying attention. It was just this huge boost.
00:27:56 / #: And I think I calculated at some point, but from the Golden Heart nominations to my publication or my first contract, it was a matter of months. So it was that thing of like, you're slogging along for a year, two years, three years. It was three years before... I had started the next book already, The Dragon and the Pearl, and then the Golden Heart nominations came in, and then everyone was requesting, the editors who were judging the Golden Heart were requesting, agents started asking to see things. I got my agent shortly after the Golden Heart nomination, before the Golden Heart ceremony.
00:28:39 / #: And it ended up winning the Golden Heart. I think if it was just nominated, that would've been enough. But it ended up winning. And at that point, the weekend of the win, the weekend of the conference, when the wins were announced that weekend, everybody had rejected me. All the editors, all the houses who had requested were like, "No, just can't." At least they tried. My agent, she told me, she was like, "I'm going to send it to all these houses. I'm going to send it to Avon." Avon says, "They don't even publish what you write because Avon's..." See, I want to say something about this.
00:29:13 / #: Right now with the diversity push, everyone's updated their guidelines. And I say, even if it's lip service, it's important, because before the words said no, Avon was specifically England after a certain period, the Regency period or-
Jennifer Prokop 00:29:34 / #: 19th century.
Jeannie Lin 00:29:34 / #: Yeah, 19th century England or 19th century Europe. I think it was even specifically England for Avon, because everyone wanted Avon. But she was like, "They say they don't want to publish this, but they're going to make an exception someday, and you should be that exception." That was what my agent, Gail Furtune, that was what she was like. She believed it. She believed in me more than I believed in me at that point. But everyone had said no, they just couldn't do it, they couldn't do it.
00:30:03 / #: So I was feeling kind of low, but on the drive, I got out of the airplane and I got a call, and Harlequin was interested. Mills and Boon specifically, Harlequin Mills and Boon was interested. And that's what we went with, because everyone else had said no. I never thought, I just really never thought, and she never thought either, they actually picked it up from the Golden Heart contest. She didn't submit to Harlequin because we didn't think that this was going to fit a category romance at all, length, it was a little long, length or subject matter.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:38 / #: I mean, it is interesting because when you bring up Harlequin. Harlequin, for all that, we talk about the categories being so rigid and having such rigid rules, often it is in the historicals, it's the place where these more unusual or unique historicals have-
Jeannie Lin 00:30:54 / #: And I didn't know that until. I didn't know that until I started working with Mills and Boon. And Harlequin has such a machine that I think they could afford to publish two Regency romances, one Scottish, and one Chinese romance that month, and the cycle of every month. So they actually had the ability to take a risk, and they did. And kind of interesting is I didn't realize that then the editor who did acquire me, I was her first book, so she might've also been young and green and new and... Anna Boatman-
Sarah MacLean 00:31:28 / #: Hungry?
Jeannie Lin 00:31:29 / #: Yeah, hungry. And maybe she also maybe-
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:34 / #: Also didn't know the rules, right?
Jeannie Lin 00:31:36 / #: Maybe it needed a bunch of people who were just like, you know what?
Sarah MacLean 00:31:39 / #: Let's do it.
Jeannie Lin 00:31:40 / #: I don't know any better, let's just go for it.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:42 / #: It's one of the things that we talk about, and we've heard it over and over and over again on Faded Mates, is that there is so much luck in it. It's hard work, and it's having a good book, and it's keeping at it and not giving up, but it's also falling into the lap of the right person, which is tough to wrap your head around, I think, when you have the other stuff.
Jeannie Lin 00:32:12 / #: And like I said, I think Gail being attracted to that book... She was an editor with Berkeley, and she actually loved Chinese history, who knew, kind of thing-
Sarah MacLean 00:32:26 / #: The right person, yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:32:30 / #: Yeah, it just kind of hit the right people along the way to make. And looking back, you're like, yeah, it could have missed at any point, but it just got lucky and happened to hit the right buttons with the right people.
Sarah MacLean 00:32:44 / #: So is there something about Butterfly Swords, that book that you can pull through all of your... Because now of course, you write beyond romance, you write in other genres. You've been around for a decade, which feels like 50 years in romance. Are you able to pinpoint the thing about a Jeannie Lin book, what is a Jeannie Lin book? What does it bring to the reader?
Jeannie Lin 00:33:14 / #: I'd like to hear from readers about this, but I have a feeling in my head what pulls through and there's.. I'm pausing for a bit because there's sort of this kind of double-edged sword. I think I really get deep into the character's head. I know that's not something readers are like, "I read this book because it's deep in the character's head." That's not why readers read a book. They can feel it and sense it, but that's not what they're saying. So I know that there are trademarks that readers recognize, but for me, I really dig into the why's, probably the same way I dig into my own head, very self-reflective of the characters, why they do things and such. It kind of, I like to think, goes into unexpected ways with the characters. So I think that's one of the things that, the characters will take unexpected twists.
00:34:16 / #: And I think that the reason why I say it's a double-edged sword is I think there are some recognized ways, beloved heroes, my heroes are not the standard hero because I think the standard alpha hero has some cultural issues in Eastern or Chinese romance. And actually, I've read papers about this, where at one point the scholars who are physically leaner, not the big burly bearded characters, they were considered more romantic figures, and it was because of just the physical threat of these big burly characters, invaders, conquerors, things like that. So it was like, oh, these big warriors were kind of identified with the conquering forces, and these scholars were considered the native forces of Han culture.
00:35:09 / #: Okay, so what makes a Jeannie Lin book is probably way more research than ever gets on the page, I guess, for me. For me, a lot of this in-depth research that I try to weave in, but I think what makes a Jeannie Lin book for readers is the settings and then the very kind of slow burn emotional-
Sarah MacLean 00:35:30 / #: Oh, absolutely.
Jeannie Lin 00:35:30 / #: Emotional build up.
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:31 / #: That makes sense.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:33 / #: I think I've said, no one writes kissing like you do-
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:36 / #: Oh, they're so good.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:39 / #: Where you are just really like, it's like, oh, it's so lush, and you just really feel the way that the characters are experiencing this. It's so tactile, but it's so emotional. And so yeah, the idea that we're so deep in their heads, that feels so exactly right to me.
Jeannie Lin 00:35:59 / #: And I mean, my inspiration was epic, Chinese dramas, C-dramas. And if you look, if you've seen Shang-Chi, which is not an... It lends a lot from that.
Sarah MacLean 00:36:11 / #: It's epic.
Jeannie Lin 00:36:11 / #: Shang-Chi, Tony Leung in there, and people talk about his eyes and he just has that look. He is my... I've actually based heroes off of his characters, that look, when you're in a Chinese drama, those extreme closeups and those little nuances and those looks and the slight touches are such a big deal, because in that genre, you can't just outright physical affection and things like that, especially in historical, it's something that there's these boundaries. And that's why I like historical romances, because there's these boundaries. You have to show attraction in interesting ways. Everybody loves the Pride and Prejudice, the hand, right? The when he's-
Sarah MacLean 00:36:56 / #: Oh, yeah, right.
Jeannie Lin 00:36:58 / #: He lets go over a hand and you see the closeup of him, the touch is still there in his fingers, even though her hand is no longer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:07 / #: The best.
Jeannie Lin 00:37:09 / #: A lot of that in Chinese drama, and I try to recreate that in my books, and I try to recreate the look, that lush look of Chinese dramas and that sort of emotional tension of like, I want to, but I can't.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:22 / #: Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, the eyes. Okay. Can I ask a question, because I'm also a teacher, did writing change your teaching?
Sarah MacLean 00:37:37 / #: That's a good question.
Jeannie Lin 00:37:39 / #: I think it's all one cycle of teaching and learning for me, and that includes in my professional life, regardless of whether I was teaching or whether I was developing program... I seem to, through my life, switch between teaching and then programming and then going back to teaching. And right now, I'm in both. I'm actually teaching computer programming. It's always a cycle of learning and such. And I think that I fell into that with writing too. It's just a constant cycle of learning. And then I present writing craft workshops and such, at the same time I'm taking classes and learning. So I think that's how it fed in is it really, the introspection.
00:38:28 / #: I think as a writer, you become even more introspective and reflective of how your books are coming out, what you're putting into your books. And it is also an act of... I think teaching, teaching is also a very introspective art. And you beat yourself up the same way and you find your ways to lift up in the same way. And so, I specifically started writing because I needed some sort of net, I needed something to save me from myself when I was just getting so absorbed in the teaching that I was hurting myself. And of course, no use to any of my colleagues or my students if I was in that state. So in that way, that's why I wanted to say it was the whole cycle of introspection and everything, I think, that affected the teaching. I don't know if it... And I think in a zen sort of way, that has to affect the way you actually present or the way you actually treat people. And I can't separate it out, but I would say, okay, the short answer is yes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:36 / #: I did a lot of research about something called pedagogical content knowledge, which is basically content knowledge is... I mean, everybody knows how to divide, do long division, right? Pedagogy is how you teach it. But what people don't understand about teaching is everything you do becomes filtered through your teaching brain and everything I see all day, I'm like, could I use this in the classroom, could I use this in the classroom? And so when you were talking earlier about everything became about the classroom, it seems that it's so permeable. I don't think people understand that that cycle of teaching and learning that you're describing is so real. Even if it's romance novels, it doesn't matter what you're doing in the classroom, it still becomes a big part of how do I learn, how do I teach?
Jeannie Lin 00:40:23 / #: And I actually feel that the act of teaching basically, after teaching high school, after teaching high school in Watts, I felt like I feared nothing. I felt like if you want to reject me, that's not the worst thing.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:37 / #: I was going to say, an agent-
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:37 / #: I could do anything.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:37 / #: Rejection is nothing.
Jeannie Lin 00:40:37 / #: That's just like-
Sarah MacLean 00:40:42 / #: Facing 25 16 year olds.
Jeannie Lin 00:40:43 / #: Barely a flesh wound. I felt like I had no fear.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:51 / #: This episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Chirp, the best audio discounts.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:57 / #: If you are an audiobook listener, and I know a lot of you are, and I am, I really cannot recommend Chirp enough. They have amazing feature deals on audiobooks, sometimes up to 95% off of list price. So for example, right now, you can check out The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley, a romance we recommended back in season one for only $2.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:22 / #: And Jenny McQuiston's What Happened in Scotland, if you were intrigued by it last week on the Waking Up Married episode, you can get it now at Chirp for 2.99.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:32 / #: And the best part about it is that you do not need a subscription, you can just buy a book when you like the price. To get your first Chirp audiobook, head to Chirp.fatedmates.net where you'll find all of the romance books on Chirp right there, ready to get into your ear holes. You can also visit our site for any deals we see that are books that we have talked about on previous episodes or that Sarah and I have really loved.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:03 / #: So again, if you're using a smart podcast app, you can click the link right now on your app and that'll take you directly to Chirp.fatedmates.net so you can get started listening. And other than that, you can find this information and information on all of our sponsors in show notes. Thanks to Chirp for sponsoring the show.
00:42:25 / #: I'm really interested in this. When you talk about writing, coming to writing, you talk about it so personally that... I mean, and obviously it's personal for all of us, but in your case, you really were using writing as a safe space. And I think there's something there that you were writing romance for yourself in this safe space, a genre that is coded for joy and happiness and comfort at the end of it. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how... So that's the personal piece, but do you ever think about your writing? And maybe not, but do you think about your writing ever in terms of what you're intending to do for the reader? Some of the people we've talked to have said, "Oh, I never think about the reader when I'm writing." What's the relationship with readers in your mind when you're writing?
Jeannie Lin 00:43:16 / #: I definitely think about the reader. It's a conversation, of which I only hear one half of it, but I definitely think. And not any specific readers, of course, but yeah, there is someone I'm talking to. My sister and I discuss writing all the time as well, the ideal reader kind of thing. I am talking to sort of my ideal reader and they talk back and they've shaped me.
Sarah MacLean 00:43:44 / #: And who is that? What does that reader look like?
Jeannie Lin 00:43:47 / #: It's I guess a nebulous concept. And I will say this, I don't do it anymore just because of time and now I have enough reviews that I can't have read every one anymore, but I read every single review or I used to.
Sarah MacLean 00:43:59 / #: That's very brave.
Jeannie Lin 00:44:01 / #: Well, again, like I said, I was teaching chemistry in a low performing district and I was being told to F off by students that I loved. I've been told to off by people that I love today. There's nothing that agent can tell me, there's nothing that reader can tell me that's going to hurt worse.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:23 / #: Thickest of skins.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:25 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:44:25 / #: Plus a little bit of a stereotype, but I had an Asian tiger mom, so I mean... you can't hurt me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:30 / #: You needed to know what everybody was saying, that's fine.
Jeannie Lin 00:44:35 / #: Yeah, you can't touch me. I mean, come on. You just don't like my book.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:41 / #: So did you hear though personally from readers that they were moved by your books? I mean, I assume... Or was it mostly just through the filter of blogs or Goodreads or whatever?
Jeannie Lin 00:44:54 / #: Yes. I hear personally too. I hear personally too, and I really like how some of the reviews in my books are very, very geeky academic, which is what I like. I like that. And so I hear those too. I read it and it becomes all put into this ball of... The ideal reader is this nebulous ball of all of the collections I've put together of what people have said, reacted, my own reactions too. There's the reader, there's the reader half of your brain that read your book and there's the writer half of your brain that wrote your book, and all of that is kind of a nebulous concept. And I can't exactly identify it, but I do kind write something and be like, "Oh, this is pushing the boundaries." My ideal reader has not seen this before or has seen this before, or how this is the next step in where I want to take them and myself and things like that.
Sarah MacLean 00:45:52 / #: I love that-
Jeannie Lin 00:45:52 / #: It is a conversation.
Sarah MacLean 00:45:54 / #: I love that idea. One of the things I like the most when I'm writing is that moment where you think to yourself like, oh, I'm doing something new. This is something that I can feel it stretching-
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:03 / #: ... doing something new. This is something that I can feel it stretching in my brain, and I know readers will also be curious about where I'm going. So it's always nice to hear that other writers are also thinking about it that way. How do you-
Jeannie Lin 00:46:16 / #: And you don't know if we're right. Sometimes you like-
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:18 / #: Fuss with the ideal reader, how do you challenge them.
Jeannie Lin 00:46:24 / #: It keeps you from just talking to yourself and being too self-indulgent, but at the same time, it's a guess because then you'll release the book and then you'll get feedback. You're like, "I was wrong about that one."
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:36 / #: Yeah. That was a misstep.
Jeannie Lin 00:46:39 / #: That didn't work well.
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:41 / #: Yeah. It's so interesting, and I think especially in genre fiction, because the boundaries seem so... I'm really curious about how romance changes over time because, of course, I have my very strong opinions about how things should be right now. And then you go back 10 years or 20 years and think, "Oh no, things are always changing, but we're just where we are now." So is this something where when you look back on, you've talked a little bit about how publishing maybe has at least stated that they're more open to different kinds of stories, but as a romance reader and writer, do you think that romance has changed or can you speculate about where you think we're going?
Jeannie Lin 00:47:25 / #: Oh, romance is probably the fastest to change. It's the most reactive, I think, of all the genres. One, because we write so fast. We as a collective, I myself do not write that fast.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:37 / #: Same.
Jeannie Lin 00:47:38 / #: We write so fast, so we have the ability. People will speak negatively about writing to market, but it's not so cut and dry. It's a conversation. Like romance as a genre is more of a conversation because it moves so fast and so fluidly and so many people do it's hard to put your finger on it because again, that giant nebulous ball of all the different people who write... There are people who are writing throwbacks when you complain and they're like, "Oh, romance is in the eighties. People don't write like that anymore."
00:48:11 / #: No, there are people still writing that and there are people still reading that. And people still writing it well and reading it well and things like that. But okay, so try to focus myself in, how has it changed? I'm going to try to narrow the conversation. When Butterfly Sword was published, it felt so different to a lot of people and so much so that people who were writing things that were not at all close to Butterfly Sword gravitated toward it because they just said, "This just looks different."
00:48:50 / #: There was a ball of different, all the different books are not alike, but still, there seemed to be this line of like, "Oh, this is what's accepted and your book is different. And so people were like, "Now you've opened the door to different books." I'm like, "How?" It's like this one little small example. There's not this... But it really was othered, I guess, for better or for worse, it was this idea of accepted and othered and I was other.
00:49:20 / #: I think that there are still books that are othered, but I think it's opened so much more, and definitely self-publishing Indie Publishing has a big part to do in that and writing directly to the readers and not going through the filters as much and just the why, opening the fire hose, like, "Oh, you have this fire hose now" before romance was already varied. That's why I always felt, I'm like, "If any place is going to accept me, it's going to be romance."
00:49:47 / #: I always thought that starting in because... And the criticisms about romance being narrow or exclusive, they are not incorrect either. Both things can be true, that romance in 2010, I felt was going to be accepting and inclusive in some ways, and the community was definitely accepting because I felt folded in by the community. And not all authors of color have felt that way, so I don't want to discount their experiences either.
00:50:18 / #: But I felt welcomed in many ways, my book eventually, even though it was like, "Oh, you are our little diversity poster girl." But it was still accepted in some ways, but it was still othered. I think now a lot more variety. Sometimes it's like people say that you wrote the book that you wanted to read kind of thing it's like, "Yeah, but now there are books that I do want to read that people are writing," and so I want to read those, romances with characters of color for sure. Still not a lot, right? The diversity report that the roboticist comes out with shows you at least what's being published traditionally.
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:00 / #: Especially here in his historical.
Jeannie Lin 00:51:02 / #: Yeah, tiny, tiny. But still, when it was one, or two, or three people writing historical churches of color. And now there's 20, that's a huge increase. It's still not a lot, but it's a huge increase. So definitely a lot more variety and I think a lot more discussion. I think there were times before when we'd have a discussion and people would be like, "Oh, you shouldn't criticize," or things like that. You would kind of hear this because it was a fragile space where we were getting criticized by so many other genres.
00:51:35 / #: You're like, "Let's not infight." And now it's like, "Yes, some infighting is actually healthy," the gag rules are off and things like that. Then a lot less limitations. Oh, my gosh, in 2010, people were saying things like... A lot of things, baseball romances wouldn't sell. Not to minimize the fact that characters of color, that's a much different issue. People saying characters of color wouldn't sell than baseball wouldn't sell, but still, there were a lot more limits in those ways too, because shelf space was limited and things like that. But anyways, that's a rambling answer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:13 / #: No. I think it's interesting because one of the things I think I've come to believe is that... Okay, I'm going to explain my romance is a volcano metaphor, because I think what it is under the surface, a big actual volcano that looks like Mount St. Helen's or whatever, and then a path opens up, a lava flow, and then everyone's like, "Oh, look, here's the path for us." The people who can blaze those trails, literally, that's why you're here, but it's showing readers and other writers both that there was some kind of way forward.
00:52:53 / #: And yeah, sure, there's still one big mass moving down the mountain that's like Regencies or whatever, but that there's lots... And that readers, I think one of the things I appreciate is I think so many readers are like, "I love this author, and now I will write anything she writes." And so there's a real commitment, I think, in romance readers to our favorite authors too. I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:53:17 / #: We've talked about this on the podcast too, but 2010 is a really interesting year for me. Jen and I have spent a lot of time over fate mates talking about, "Oh, where are the marker years for the genre?" And it's all kind of... Who knows? We're basically making it up as we go. But 2010 is really interesting to me because I started writing romance in 2010 too. And I always say in some ways, there was a door slamming shut behind because my first contract didn't have eBooks in it, which feels ancient.
00:53:55 / #: But I think that that time period, I mean, what Butterfly Swords did in 2010 was open a path in the volcano to combine all of our stories in a way that really felt like traditional publishing was massively shifting. It had to be shifting to keep up. 2010 really marks an end in a lot of ways in my mind, to what had been happening in traditional publishing romance before, because it was right as Indie Publishing was starting. We were just on the cusp of what was about to become this massive world, and somehow those of us who were new in 2010 were all feeling that seismic shift and you were doing it in a really important way.
Jeannie Lin 00:54:49 / #: That's actually an excellent point because at that point, e-publishers, plenty of them who have now digital publishers who have now kind of gone by the wayside, but that was also their upswing. My prequel novella, the Taming of Mei Lin, which was attached to Butterfly Swords that came out an ebook. And that was when people were playing with shorter length historical fiction and ebooks. A bunch of readers were like, "I've never read an ebook before. But I want to read your book, how do I get it?" I remember on my blog posting instructions on how do you buy an ebook. How do you read the Taming of Mai Lin, here are your options. I remember doing that. Thank you for that reminder.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:39 / #: Doesn't it make you feel ancient? You're welcome.
Jeannie Lin 00:55:43 / #: Twitter was coming out. At 2010 was when people were just starting to try to figure out Twitter, and there weren't too many entities on there, and it wasn't as cluttered. And I think what happened with Butterfly Swords is because Butterfly Swords was coming out and Twitter was there. It got swept up in a lot of just good reads. Oh my gosh, you're bringing back all these memories. Good Reads came out at that time.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:11 / #: And Goodreads wasn't owned by Amazon. It was just its own little community-
Jeannie Lin 00:56:15 / #: It's like, "Oh, this site of books is starting up. It's called Good Reads." Because I remember at the time, because Butterflies Swords was coming out at that time because people were talking about it, it got swept up into a lot of these early proto algorithm-type things. I got some sort of feature in Good Reads that I didn't even know about, and I know Harlequin didn't buy because no one knew about this stuff right then, right?
Sarah MacLean 00:56:40 / #: No one was paying money to websites for that. Why would you just throw your money away?
Jeannie Lin 00:56:44 / #: And so people were like, "How did you get that in Good Reads?" And I was like, "I don't have the faintest idea."
Sarah MacLean 00:56:51 / #: That was also the age of, there were two romance blogs and that was it. And if you got reviewed by either of them, you could sell books. It just was a totally different world.
Jeannie Lin 00:57:02 / #: A different world, different world, but on the cusp of change, and we could feel it within the year, borders would go away within the next year. Yeah, you're right. If you were publishing at the time, you were standing on the edge of the fault, the
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:21 / #: Precipice, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:24 / #: And you felt like, "What is happening?" And the people-
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:26 / #: It was a volcano, everybody.
Jeannie Lin 00:57:28 / #: Yeah, volcano. Sorry, volcano.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:30 / #: The people who were publishing before us for many years were like, "What is even happening? This is totally new and I'm not going to survive." And the people who were coming in right after were saying, "Oh, all of that stuff is old news." And it's really, it was a fascinating time. But you're right, you've just named a bunch of things I had forgotten about.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:52 / #: One of the questions, and you've already mentioned quite a few of this, but one of the questions we also are just really curious about is you've already mentioned some folks, but are there other lesser known people, names people wouldn't know, editors, designers, publishers, other authors that you think have left a mark on the genre that you don't think are celebrated as often?
Jeannie Lin 00:58:19 / #: This is tough because everyone I name is way more well-known than me, I think. The first person who comes to mind is Eden Bradley, I'm sure has a couple of pet names, but Eden Bradley. And she writes Erotic Romance. And she was writing Erotic romance when that was making was coming up. And she also was one of the co-moderators or co-foundational members, not founders of a group called Romance Divas.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:57 / #: Oh, sure.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:58 / #: See, I don't know this.
Jeannie Lin 00:59:00 / #: And they're still around, but they've gone through ebbs and flows as well. But that's where I found my first online writing community was right when Romance Divas-
Jennifer Prokop 00:59:08 / #: It was a blog, right?
Jeannie Lin 00:59:10 / #: No, it was a forum. It was a forum. They had a blog, but it was a forum where we would go and ask for advice, and there was a lot of ebook, e-publishing at a time when e-publishing was considered the lower tier, everyone's trying to get a publishing a traditional contract. And so they were really there leading through the changes where a lot of discussion was happening.
00:59:34 / #: And so it's a private forum, but you can join. It wasn't so restrictive, but Eden was there, but I think as an author also. For me, she really exemplified someone who was writing her own thing, trying to move with the changes. I actually got my call when I was in Eden's room at RWA when I got the call because she was leading us through a yoga session. But I think she-
Sarah MacLean 01:00:01 / #: We should explain what that means. What does it mean to get the call, Jeannie?
Jeannie Lin 01:00:03 / #: Oh, the call. Okay. So the call is when we had been in discussions and different people were rejecting, but the call is when you finally get the call from an editor or an acquisitions person, I guess, an editor at a publishing house saying, "We would like to publish your book."
01:00:22 / #: So it was the moment. And they called from England. They called from the UK to say that we want to publish Butterfly Swords. And I was waiting. I had a feeling we had already said it's going to happen, but this was when they actually called and said, "Welcome to Harlequin Mills and Boon. And so many things are going to happen today and all this, and you'll get a contract later." But it was when I spoke to, it was Linda, Linda [inaudible 01:00:53 / #] at the time, and just welcoming me to the publishing world. But I was waiting. I was in a room at RWA doing yoga with Eden. And some other people.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:06 / #: Everybody knows where they were. No one ever forgets where they were then when they-
Jeannie Lin 01:01:09 / #: Exactly, exactly. And they marched me downstairs to get my first-time sail ribbon. It was a moment. It was a moment. But that's what I was saying, it was always been about a community for me. And so Eden kind of exemplifies. She was a person who is a fabulous author. I love her books. It's like her books unfold like a dream. Her voice is so amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:30 / #: Do you have a recommendation for our listeners to start with Eden?
Jeannie Lin 01:01:34 / #: I think it was called The Dark Garden. It was her first book, and when I read it, I was not an erotic romance reader at that time, and I just swept away with it. And I would read... She has one of those voices where I would read the phone book kind of thing if she wrote it. But on top of that, the community building that she does, and then she's just so caring. And then on top of that, so Erotic Romance has gone up and down, so she has weathered a lot of different storms.
01:02:08 / #: All of a sudden with 50 Shades, she kind of shot up again because her book was one of these early books in Erotic Romance, but she just shows me how to handle things with grace. And so she's really been an influence on top of being a fabulous author.
01:02:24 / #: And I remember I was at one of her signings before I was published, and it was a publisher signing, and she was interacting with readers, and she just was recommending other books. She wasn't talking about her books. She was like, "Oh, over there, have you read her books? They're fabulous." And she was just so giving and gracious. And I was like, "I want to be Eden when I grow up."
01:02:48 / #: So I think she's done a lot for other authors and done a lot for Erotic of Romance, done a lot for e-publishing that I think it's just not recognized because it's just naturally kind of... And done a lot for, I think, body positivity, sex positivity. There's a lot, so much in her... Now I feel embarrassed because now Eden's like, "Oh, you never told me these things."
Sarah MacLean 01:03:15 / #: You've done it the best possible way.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:16 / #: It is the best possible way. I think it is hard. I think we're so used to quietly just knowing the people that influenced us. But I love hearing... When we've asked people this question. It has always been, I think, just so really rewarding to hear about there's so many close ties and so many ways in which we really can admire the authors who have done this work before us.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:41 / #: And one of the things that we keep coming back to this season is that largely, the names of these people are not spoken because we don't get as much public coverage as lots of other genres.
Jeannie Lin 01:03:56 / #: And then along the same lines, I think Kate Pierce has been a similar force for me. And like I said, these authors are way bigger, way more well-known than I am. But more should be said about them.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:12 / #: My question at this point is, let's go back to your books because we've talked so much about Butterfly Sword, but let's talk about the larger Jeannie Lin collection. Can you talk a little bit about the shifts that you made over your career, the choices to move? You really ride the genre lines very fluidly, so can you talk about that a little?
Jeannie Lin 01:04:43 / #: Butterfly Swords, I feel was very tropey. I think that's one of the reasons it was picked up. There was something very familiar about it and different, but the same is what everyone always said was the selling point. But after Butterfly Swords and I started working with Mills and Boone, I think I really leaned into the Chinese culture and history side a lot more.
01:05:05 / #: And so my book started veering, even from the second book that I published, the Dragon and the Pearl, and then the third, my Fair Concubine, they start going into much more of a shift into Chinese cultural romances. And then I think the biggest change was at the time when my editor, I think I've said her name before, Anna Boatman, she was so supportive.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:34 / #: She's my editor at too.
Jeannie Lin 01:05:36 / #: Oh, is she? Awesome. Awesome.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:40 / #: We'll take this out as whatever. Now we can just say she's the best.
Jeannie Lin 01:05:43 / #: Okay. She taught me how to write in a way. She taught me how to write with an editor. Because we grew up together.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:53 / #: I don't think I ever realized that you were edited by... Maybe we won't take this out, but I don't think I ever realized that you were edited by England instead of the United States.
Jeannie Lin 01:06:05 / #: It's actually great working with them because their five-page revision letters are so polite.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:14 / #: Oh, that's funny.
Jeannie Lin 01:06:17 / #: So Anna Boatman, when she also, as your editor moves up... This is one of the things people don't realize, as your editor moves up through the ranks in the publishing house, that could affect you. And so when she moved into single title, she was like, "I know who would write great single title books, Jeanie Linn." And that was offered to me without... We did not submit for that. That was just given to me. It fell in my lap. And so-
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:45 / #: Is that the Gunpowder Chronicles then?
Jeannie Lin 01:06:47 / #: No, this was Lotus Palace series.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:49 / #: Oh, the Lotus Palace series. Okay.
Jeannie Lin 01:06:51 / #: Yeah. It's like I always had in my mind, "Yes, I would like to write single title," because I was already writing longer length. And that's what I always thought. My agent was like, "I always thought we would be single-title authors. Again, for the listening audience, the category is similar to... Categories, they usually fit certain guidelines. They're usually shorter. They were releasing every month, things like that.
01:07:13 / #: Single-titles stay on the shelf a little longer. They're usually longer in length. And so when that happened, and it was the opportunity to write a deeper story, more in-depth, not that I thought my stories were super shallow or anything, but just to go a little deeper into the things I wanted to do and hit on topics that I hadn't before. In the Lotus Palace series, there's the sex trade, there's gambling, addiction, which is actually something that's prevalent in my family and in Vietnamese culture. And things like that.
01:07:50 / #: And so it gave me an opportunity to play around a little bit more with the single titles. The first big shift I felt was writing the Lotus Palace series. The Gunpowder Chronicles was also at the same time, another shift is someone... Steampunk is one of those things where everyone was hoping it would be big, thought it would be big, the fans really like it. But it's one of those things that I think doesn't work if it's popular. Unfortunately, geek culture likes fringe culture as well. And it is really popular, but not popular-
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:31 / #: They're in the same way.
Jeannie Lin 01:08:32 / #: Yeah, in a mainstream way. But at some point, I really liked the geekiness of steampunk and cosplay. And someone suggested, "Why don't you write steampunk?" And I was like, "No, I don't think that way." But the more I researched it was like, "Hey, it's not that far of a leap." And it kind of plays into the science geekiness, history geekiness that I have. I was like, "Let's do it." And again, I knew no better. I didn't know any better. And so that was at the same time I was...
01:09:02 / #: At the same time I was branching out to The Lotus Palace. I also started branching out into Steampunk Fantasy. And I think each of them, they don't feel too far away from where I started, but they're just different ways to explore aspects of psychology and culture and history in different ways.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:23 / #: So which of your books do you hear about the most from readers?
Jeannie Lin 01:09:27 / #: I'd probably say... It's a hard call. It's good that it's a hard call, that it's not a definite answer.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:35 / #: Some people, I mean, this question is really fascinating to me because some people, instantly, there's the book that they hear about.
Jeannie Lin 01:09:43 / #: I think, well, Butterfly Swords still, which is amazing to me. I mean, it's amazing. It's a book that was literally on the shelves for a month in bookstores at a time when eBooks were not huge and things like that. And it's never had a book bub, it's never really had a breakthrough other than it being Butterfly Swords, and people didn't write books like that then. Or no, no, they were. Correction. They were writing books like that. Traditional publishers weren't publishing romances like that then. So Butterfly Swords for sure. But My Fair Concubine, surprisingly, is a sleeper that gets mentioned a lot. When people say the books that they reread, it's My Fair Concubine, and then The Lotus Palace gets mentioned as well. So I would say those three are the ones I hear from readers most often, or I see mentions. Yes, I Google stock myself occasionally. But we all do.
Sarah MacLean 01:10:41 / #: Excited that you have thick skin. You like the war, the battle.
Jeannie Lin 01:10:47 / #: I like the pain. It feels like love to me. Yeah. I always say that. I'm like, Asians don't call it tough love, we just call it love. That's what love is.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:00 / #: Perfect. Is there a book of yours that you are most proud of or that we sort of frame it as that you hope would outlive you?
Jeannie Lin 01:11:13 / #: At this point I would still have to say Butterfly Swords. And the reason why is this, it's taken a long journey I think for me to kind of come back to the acceptance of Butterfly Swords. A long time. Every time someone said, oh, I'm reading Butterfly Swords, and it was like five years after it was written, it was seven years after it was written, I would cringe. I'm like, oh, it's so bad. Don't start with that one. But I wouldn't say anything. Oh, great, I'm glad, please enjoy.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:45 / #: Please enjoy.
Jeannie Lin 01:11:48 / #: I'll just be over here in the corner.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:49 / #: Well, and also there's also that feeling of, I've done a lot more than that.
Jeannie Lin 01:11:53 / #: Yes, I'm a better writer now.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:56 / #: What? Did I peak with number one?
Jeannie Lin 01:11:58 / #: I've learned so much. But I bite my tongue. And I realized readers don't know that. Every book they come to, it's the first. And of course it's 10 years ago, 10 years in historical romance is like-
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:10 / #: A thousand years.
Jeannie Lin 01:12:11 / #: So much changes. So much changes.
01:12:14 / #: Yeah. But still, I've come back to, there's still things that people are finding that they like about it. So that's been reassuring. But also, it was a time... I was in a place then, but Jennifer Lynn Barnes has a talk about writing for your id.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:32 / #: Great. We talked about it. Sarah loves it.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:34 / #: I love it.
Jeannie Lin 01:12:37 / #: I think it was the most inspirational thing for me to read craft wise and emotional, likewise, because it made me accept, I'm like, there are things that people love and this is why. And the things that I hate about it, I don't really hate. I just feel like I'm better than that now. But I don't have to be. It made me feel okay about the things I loved that I put into the kitchen sink of a romance that I wrote.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:03 / #: Jen always talks about first books. The reason why first books resonate so well with readers, especially when you're like you are where you grew up reading romance, is you pack them full of all the things, all the buttons that were installed in you.
Jeannie Lin 01:13:21 / #: But I think there's a raw... I haven't reread it in a long time. In fact, this is how crazy I am. There is a word echo on the first page of Butterfly Swords, and I swear for the last 10 years, I'm like, if I ever get that book back, that is the first thing I'm fixing. That's how Psycho I am about that.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:40 / #: Can I tell you something, Jeannie? You could ask them to change it in the ebook right now, and they would.
Jeannie Lin 01:13:48 / #: No, that would open up a can of worms.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:48 / #: Just letting you know.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:50 / #: Don't read the whole book. Just have to fix that one.
Jeannie Lin 01:13:55 / #: That would open up a whole, oh my gosh. That would just, no, no.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:00 / #: Take it back.
Jeannie Lin 01:14:01 / #: My first words. My first words, when Butterfly Swords arrived... Here's why I say Butterfly Swords. There's so much emotion, as you can hear, when I'm talking about it now. And I think some of that raw motion is in the pages. And so I would say that's the book, I would say.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:16 / #: It's your baby. It's your first baby.
Jeannie Lin 01:14:18 / #: And I want people in 20 years to complain about how tropey and stereotypical it is, and how derivative. I want people to say those things because it's a 20-year-old book. Complain about it. See how outdated it is.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:38 / #: Yes. Right. Well, and we've talked about that sometimes when we go back and read an older historical, I was like, oh, this is where this originated. So if people were saying that about a Butterfly Swords, it would mean that-
Jeannie Lin 01:14:53 / #: But you're a critical reader. People might just pick it up and be like, who is this old, you know, writing these stereotype?
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:00 / #: Listen, if people are still reading your book 20 years after it comes out, that's a win no matter what they're saying. Right?
Jeannie Lin 01:15:07 / #: Yeah. Put me on Blast. And there's nothing I haven't blasted about myself about that book, but the very first time I held that book in my hands, I saw that UPS truck. I was waiting for it. The UPS truck was across the street, and I'm like, it's across the street. And I'm saying this on Twitter, because there was this new thing called Twitter then. Readers and also-
Sarah MacLean 01:15:28 / #: 12 people watching.
Jeannie Lin 01:15:29 / #: Yeah. But my 12 followers were like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, is it the books? Is it the books? And so the books come to the door and I open it up and I pick it up. And my husband can attest to this. The first thing I say is, I have a book. Now I can't fix it anymore because I had it in paper. There was no more, I couldn't fix this. So yeah, I can't open it up and ask Harlequin to fix that because that would ruin me. I'd do nothing else.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:56 / #: So we've talked about how fast changing romance is, and one of the things that's been really interesting as we've done these interviews, to me, is I find myself more and more grateful for eBooks because your book that was on the shelf for one month is still available to be on all of our shelves, right?
Jeannie Lin 01:16:15 / #: Yes, yes. Love that.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:17 / #: Yeah, we're lucky.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:18 / #: And I have a couple dusty copies in my basement for my children.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:22 / #: You can put them on eBay maybe if you ever. Jeannie, thank you so much for being with us today. It was amazing to hear your story.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:33 / #: We love that. A really fabulous conversation. Thank you.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:35 / #: Oh, this is really fun. This is great. Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:38 / #: Now, while you were talking about Steampunk, I was like, I wonder if Jeannie would come back and do an interstitial on Steampunk with us, because-
Jeannie Lin 01:16:45 / #: I'll put it on the list.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:46 / #: If you're a steampunk reader, Jeannie, and you'd like to join us to talk about that, that would be really fun.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:51 / #: Yeah, anytime.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:54 / #: Jeannie, tell everybody where they can find you.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:57 / #: I'm here and there on Twitter at just Jeannie Lynn, J-E-A-N-N-I-E L-I-N. And then my website is jeannielin.com. Like I said, I'm in and out. I don't have any policy for social media. I kind of just do it as I feel. So you may get me a lot or a little. It's social media.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:23 / #: That's how it works.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:24 / #: And tell us about what's recent or what's coming.
Jeannie Lin 01:17:31 / #: Oh, well, I am working on a book right now. And like every book, you hope it's going to be than the last one, but it's not. I'm working on the sequel or the next book in The Lotus Palace series right now, and it's the follow-up to the Hidden Moon, which came out last year. I actually started an MFA program. And so I'm working on a historical that's set in Vietnam. And that's a scary one for me just because first of all, whole new historical era and one that's not as well-documented because it's actually ancient. It's AD, 40 AD.
Jennifer Prokop 01:18:09 / #: Oh, wow.
Jeannie Lin 01:18:12 / #: And it's the story of the Chung Sisters who were the revolutionary Sisters of Vietnam who fought for independence against Han China, and they actually won. So they're sort of like the Vietnamese version of William Wallace. They actually won back their independence for a glorious three years. But it was the first time that Vietnam defeated China for independence, and it was two sisters who did it. So those are my two current projects. The sisters one's going to take a while because it's a whole new historical era. And then hopefully the next Lotus Palace book will be finishing up within the year.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:53 / #: But you can catch up with The Lotus Palace series while you're waiting for that, and you can buy those wherever you buy your books. So Jeannie, thank you so much for coming to Fated Mates and-
Jeannie Lin 01:19:06 / #: Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.
Sarah MacLean 01:19:13 / #: What a cool person. I don't think I've ever met her in real life, and now I just want to be her friend forever.
Jennifer Prokop 01:19:19 / #: Obviously. I would have been really lucky. I have had her on at least one, maybe two panels. In our Zoom world, it's so much easier to just reach out to someone and be like, hey, do you want to do this thing? And yeah, she's great.
Sarah MacLean 01:19:39 / #: I loved a lot about that conversation. One of the things I like the most is how, we don't really talk about this very much, even though it is the origin story for so many writers, is this idea that you come to romance for the joy of it, for yourself, to come to writing it. And when she said she had come up reading her best friend's mom's historicals, it made sense to me. I mean, you can really see the bones of that in her books.
01:20:08 / #: But the real joy of that for me was her saying I was having a rough time and writing romance saved me, saved my sanity in some ways.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:19 / #: I also thought it was really interesting, I think she's the first person we've talked to so far that has talked about taking a class, that there's-
Sarah MacLean 01:20:30 / #: Learning the craft.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:31 / #: Right. Learning the craft. And that I think that there's so many different paths to writing romance that we're hearing about, from fan fiction to... And so to have someone say, I kind of went a more traditional route, and that's what worked for me. Because it might inspire people who... I think a lot of people probably recognize themselves in that I like feedback and I like a teacher, and I like this idea of someone else has done it, I don't have to learn it myself. So I was really fascinated to hear just like, yeah, this UCLA extension course.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:07 / #: Amazing. I wish I had had a course like that. I had a very different kind of course that didn't inspire me the way that she did. I really had a false start with one. So that sounds like a good one. I liked when she talked about romance being so fast to change. And when we really dug into the last decade or so of romance, she really had a fascinating perspective that we haven't had before, so far. I mean, we're not done recording trailblazer interviews, but it was really interesting to hear from somebody who has a perspective that's a shorter, a mid-range lens, it feels like, in some ways.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:54 / #: You and I have talked before about 2010. I don't think I'd put together Jeannie Lynn with 2010. And yet, looking back, I think we are going to keep coming across those years that just seemed to be like 1995, right?
01:22:13 / #: The years where-
Sarah MacLean 01:22:14 / #: Yeah, just transformational years.
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:16 / #: Right. And so I was really fascinated to have somebody remind us of just how big that change was to eBooks, but also that social media, the blogs, the way that all played into it as well, shifting-
Sarah MacLean 01:22:34 / #: Now, it feels like that has all existed for as long as we've all been alive. But those of us who started writing right on that cusp, it is really huge, the amount of change that has happened. And as she was talking, I actually had some other thoughts of people who we need to make sure we put on our trailblazer list because there are just, every time we have one of these conversations, I think, oh, we need to make sure we get that person. So we're going to be doing trailblazers interviews until we're 95, and then someone can come in for us.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:09 / #: We've recorded it all already though. One of the things that I was thinking about a lot too though is, and you talked about this sort of luck, but how much hard work is involved. I think I would like to say there are very few... Writing seems... To say to yourself, I'm going to go ahead and sign up for 100 rejections.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:35 / #: Unbelievable by way.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:37 / #: That that's the number I can bear.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:39 / #: Yeah, no, no, I would've tolerated like six and then I'm out.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:45 / #: And I think that that's part of the thing too, is not just to say... I mean, I want to be really explicit. All writers go through rejections, but I think it's also really clear that she was fighting a real uphill battle. She was bringing something to market that people thought they didn't want, that they explicitly would say, we don't want or we're not going to publish.
01:24:05 / #: And so the way that the kind of the racism embedded into the genre, into publishing itself, works against authors, certainly, but also readers who then, when her book did come to market... To have a category romance have a decade long impact. I want to talk about that because it is-
Sarah MacLean 01:24:31 / #: I hadn't realized, and I said this with her, but I hadn't realized so much about Jeannie's career really did travel a unique path. I mean, she mentioned the category romance being, it shouldn't be, it defies the rules of category, but it defies the rules of American category. And then she was picked up by British category. Her editor is British, not American. I mean, these are the paths that so many of the trailblazers... I mean, we talked to Radcliffe, her episode is out. So many of these trailblazing people tell stories about finding a path through the woods that is uncommon. Which I guess is the point of trailblazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:25:27 / #: Exactly. I was like, I believe, Sarah-
Sarah MacLean 01:25:28 / #: Wait a second.
Jennifer Prokop 01:25:28 / #: You hit upon our thesis. Look what we've done.
Sarah MacLean 01:25:32 / #: And you know what? That's not to say that there aren't people doing interesting work who are traveling down paths that have been created for them. But I think the thing that is so interesting too, is to hear how all those little things that align bring us the books that we now have.
Jennifer Prokop 01:25:50 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:25:50 / #: And it is 80% hard work and a great book, and 20% just the right person picking it up at the right time.
Jennifer Prokop 01:26:02 / #: And also, it is really interesting. I don't think readers, maybe our listeners, the golden heart in recent years has felt a little bit like a, I don't understand why this thing exists. Every writer could publish themselves. And so to talk and hear a Golden Heart winner talk about the power of that contest, I thought was also really interesting.
Sarah MacLean 01:26:30 / #: I agree. And I think that especially, RWA is so tricky, and we've talked about it before, and I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on RWA because, why? But I think that there was so much discussion when they ended the Golden Heart, because it really did feel like for many of us, the Golden Heart was a support system, a network, and those Golden Heart winners are all a part... One of the things we didn't talk about with Jeannie is, they all had their online private groups and they had their community of finalists who supported each other. I mean, Joanna Chuppe talks so much about the value of those people together and those writers who are all sort of traveling the same path together. And when RWA did away with it, and there was argument that they did away with it because it wasn't making enough money, it was too much work for the people submitting to it because of independent publishing, fewer and fewer people were submitting to it.
01:27:41 / #: And that's all real. But there also is a value to unpublished authors being celebrated for their work. Yesterday I was at a play date with my daughter and I met a mom I had never met before, and we got to talking and she said, "Oh, you're a writer?" And I said, yes. I said, what do you do? She said, "Oh, I'm a stay-at-home mom, but I'm trying to be a writer. I've been writing for". She said she'd been writing the same thing for five years. She's like, "But I try to write every day or every couple of days". And I said, well, then you're a writer.
01:28:19 / #: There is a value to supportive communities around unpublished authors, and there's a value to us naming writing as something valuable, as a valuable product, even if you don't get paid for it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:28:36 / #: I really love that. And that's, as we do these interviews, we're going to come up with more and more of these little pockets of romance history that we'll try to unpack and explain.
Sarah MacLean 01:28:48 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 01:28:48 / #: Well, and the thing that's amazing is the more we do it, the more I realize just how many pockets there are. I mean, we all have our romance reading experience, but it's also finding these other ones.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:00 / #: Yeah. So as you're listening, if there are ever, to that end, if there are ever things that we blow past and we don't talk about that you think are interesting, shoot us a message on Twitter or Instagram or send us an email and let us know and we'll do what we can to explain them. Jen, that was fun.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:18 / #: I enjoyed that one.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:20 / #: I enjoy all of them now.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:21 / #: Me too.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:22 / #: It's amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:22 / #: It's the best. These are the best conversations.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:24 / #: They are.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:26 / #: Okay.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:27 / #: Thanks everyone for joining us. You can find us at Fated Mates Pod on Instagram, at Fated Mates on Twitter, at fatedmates.net to find all of these and some merch and stickers and information and everything you could possibly need about us, more than you could ever want, probably.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:50 / #: We're generating a lot of content, that's what Sarah's trying to say. But we really love you all. We hope you are all reading great books this week, and thanks for listening.
