S02.44: Freewheeling with Kennedy Ryan

We’re so excited to have Kennedy Ryan with us this week — someone who was blooded not once, but twice by old school historicals! Listen to us talk powerful heroines, her brilliant Queen Move, how so much romance is political and why those old romances are still worth reading — problematic and all.

Summer is here, and next week is the final episode of Season Two, with a few others to come while we take a few weeks off. To read romance novels. Obviously. Season Three begins in August!

While we’re apart, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

Oh, and did you know Sarah had a book out last week? Daring & the Duke is officially here! Get it at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from the wonderful independent bookstore, Savoy Bookshop in RI, where she is for the. month of July!

Show Notes

• Welcome Kennedy Ryan! You know what they say about pastors' kids. Just kidding, she was a late bloomer.

• Teacher Jen would like a moment to talk about vocabulary acquisition: Parents can help kids learn new words by modeling, but reading is really the X factor. You can take this vocabulary test to see the rough size of your own vocabulary, but this information about how kids acquire new words is actually pretty simple: read lots of fiction when you're young.

• Believe it or not, there was never a Carole Mortimer book titled Frustration. But perhaps you might be interested in her other single word titles: Untamed, Gypsy (yikes!), or Witchchild.

• Prince had lots of protégées, including Vanity (Rick James's ex-girlfiend! thank you for that info Cheris Hodges!), Sheena Easton, and so many others. Speaking of Sheena Easton, Prince wrote the lyrics for Sugar Walls and it is pretty dirty. Ava DuVernay was slated to direct a documentary on Prince for Netflix, but stepped down over "creative differences." And if you can ever travel again, Jen highly recommends going on the tour of Paisley Park.

• Jen mentioned that Iris Johansen, Fayrene Preston, and Kay Hooper wrote several series about a family called the Delaneys, and Kay Hooper tells the story of how it happened on her website. PS. the original covers for The Delaneys: The Untamed Years are amazing. And in case you're looking for a house to buy, maybe Iris Johansen's place might be to your liking?

• Going back to the archives, Candace Proctor (who also writes as C.S. Harris) and Penelope Williamson are sisters?

• So, in romances, being a wet nurse is just a plot device. But the history of wet nurses is, to no one's surprise, rather grim. Sunset Embrace is the Sandra Brown book with the wet nurse. In Vanessa Riley's newest-- A Duke, The Lady, and a Baby -- the heroine has to sneak in to feed her own son and manages to get herself hired as his wet nurse. In Romeo and Juliet the nurse said that Juliet was "The prettiest babe that e’er I nursed." In a pinch, Enfamil is the way to go.

• Mary Queen of Scots didn't come to a good end. So maybe just read Shadowheart?

• The Tragic Mulatto is a harmful anti-Black trope.

• Meagan McKinney defrauded the government during Katrina and landed in jail, which is why we are never going to read one of her books for Fated Mates.

Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan

The King Maker by Kennedy Ryan

The Rebel King by Kennedy Ryan

Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale

The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen Woodiwiss

Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins

Beach Read by Emily Henry

The Magnificent Rogue by Iris Johansen

This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen

Night in Eden by Candace Proctor

Sunset Embrace by Sandra Brown

Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale

For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

One Night is Never Enough by Anne Mallory

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah MacLean 0:00 / #
Well, we're almost done with the season but we have saved the best for last Jen.

Jennifer Prokop 0:06 / #
If I could break out into song right now and not scare people away. Maybe I would

Kennedy Ryan 0:13 / #
seriously

Sarah MacLean 0:15 / #
That is the dulcet, melodic, I would think probably tone of Kennedy Ryan one of our very favorites. Welcome Kennedy.

Kennedy Ryan 0:24 / #
Oh my gosh, you guys are my very favorites. I'm always pushing your podcast down people's throats.

Sarah MacLean 0:31 / #
That's what we like to hear.

Jennifer Prokop 0:32 / #
Yes it is.

Sarah MacLean 0:32 / #
T o hear about people just violently requiring people to listen to us.

Kennedy Ryan 0:36 / #
All the time. I was just screenshotting the one you guys did about old school romance. The one you did not too long ago, the Judith McNaught episode, I was shoving down every throat I could find last week so, I'm your pusher.

Sarah MacLean 0:51 / #
I like it. We're here for it. Welcome everybody to Fated Mates. We are really, really excited this week. I didn't know this. I feel Kennedy, you and I, we have just sort of unpacked our friendship to a new level. I had no idea you were such a fan of old school romances.

Kennedy Ryan 1:15 / #
Oh my gosh, yeah, I definitely am. A lot of times people will bring up some of the new stuff. And I'm like, Oh, I haven't read that yet. Sierra Simone and I have a joke because she's like, "how have you read all the old stuff? And there's all this great new stuff you haven't gotten to yet". I just keep rereading the old stuff it's so good. I'm that chick.

Jennifer Prokop 1:40 / #
I'm rereading a lot in these pandemic days. I really am.

Kennedy Ryan 1:44 / #
I have books that are annual rereads for me. Books that are built into my reading schedule. I have to reread this book, once a year. Certain books like, "Flowers from the Storm", like they're just certain books I have to read at least once a year.

Sarah MacLean 1:58 / #
Well, you are a mega Kinsale Stan

Kennedy Ryan 2:01 / #
Oh gosh yes. Mega, Mega. I tell people if you cut me I'm gonna bleed some Kinsale. I adore her. Everybody who knows me knows that.

Sarah MacLean 2:14 / #
Did you start with Kinsale? That how you came to her?

Kennedy Ryan 2:17 / #
No

Jennifer Prokop 2:17 / #
Yeah. Tell us your romance journey. I feel like we should ask everybody this.

Sarah MacLean 2:23 / #
Are we just diving in.

Jennifer Prokop 2:24 / #
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 2:26 / #
We are. I mean, we'll come back around. We're just roaming.

Kennedy Ryan 2:29 / #
I'm ready, roaming romance. I am ready for it. So I think of myself as twice blooded. I started reading romance, well, for me, it's really young. I was in eighth grade. And you have to understand my parents are pastors. So they, they were very careful about what I listened to, what I saw on television, what I read was very much curated in our house. When I was in the eighth grade, one of my friends handed me "A Pirate to Love". I think it was "A Pirate to Love". No, it was "The Wolf and the Dove". And it was this old battered copy. Because I'm, I think I'm older than both of you. This was like, gosh, it was like the late 80s. When I was in the eighth grade because I yeah, I'm 47 so

Jennifer Prokop 3:22 / #
I'm almost 47 so we're very close.

Kennedy Ryan 3:25 / #
I still got you Jen. I still got you.

Sarah MacLean 3:28 / #
I'm so young.

Jennifer Prokop 3:30 / #
It's nice not to be the old lady on the podcast. I guess.

Kennedy Ryan 3:33 / #
I will gladly take the honor of old lady. So I was in the eighth grade. And, you know, I mean, romance was pretty, I mean, as we know it as a genre still really developing. Um, and so she gave me this tattered paperback of "The Wolf and the Dove". Of course, that's what it was. And I just consumed it.

Sarah MacLean 3:57 / #
Yeah,

Kennedy Ryan 3:58 / #
Still Sarah and I talk about it, I think because that was my first romance, medieval still holds a really special place in my heart.

Sarah MacLean 4:06 / #
Well, I mean, we've talked about this. All of us have talked about this. And certainly we've talked about it on the pod. But the these early books like blooded twice, I can't wait to hear who the second blooding is. But blooding twice is really interesting because those early books, I really think they install your buttons, your, you know, Primal sex buttons.

Jennifer Prokop 4:26 / #
I was gonna say plot buttons, but ok.

Sarah MacLean 4:32 / #
Both. Both.

Kennedy Ryan 4:34 / #
Yeah. And I mean, at the time, you know, you're I was in the eighth grade and I had no idea well, this book's kind of rapey or I had no concept of that. It was just like, I'm enjoying this, you know, it was just it was very sensory. I enjoyed the pull. You know, I was reading, you know, Wuthering Heights, or whatever. You know, "Beloved", I was reading literary fiction or whatever they were feeding you in school? And something that was completely pleasure. And also for me, because I was young and I was such a late bloomer, like, don't even ask me when I had my first kiss. It was like 11th grade. For me, it was just all fascinating, honestly, and to see a relationship that way. And there was history, you know, I did, I hadn't known much about the Normans. And, you know, these marriages being, you know, arranged by this king, you know, I didn't know a lot of those things. So I was actually learning those things as I was reading.

Sarah MacLean 5:36 / #
You know, that's one thing that we never talked about is the amount of learning that goes on for romance readers, especially when we're young. I mean, I always joke that like, my SAT scores were really great and verbal and really terrible in math. And the reason why they were great and verbal is because of romance novels, because I knew all the words.

Kennedy Ryan 5:55 / #
Absolutely. And my father, he was the Dean of Students. He's in higher education. And he would, when I was growing up, he would assign, this is gonna sound crazy, he would assign me letters of the dictionary. And I would just read the dictionary and he would come home and he would quiz me on "N", you know, and we would go back and forth until we could stump each other on an "N" word. Oh that sounded bad, bad choice of letters. But you know, and he would say, okay, when you're reading every time you come across a word that you don't know, write it down. And then over the next week, make sure you use it in a sentence.

Sarah MacLean 6:31 / #
You know, what I'm going to start using this for the summer with my daughter, this is such a good idea.

Kennedy Ryan 6:36 / #
It's amazing. And so my dad, that's what he would say, every time you're reading, you come across a word you don't know, write it down, look it up. You try to use it within a week so that it can become a part of your vocabulary. So I was doing that before. Then I started reading romance, you know that. You know,

Sarah MacLean 6:56 / #
You had all different words.

Kennedy Ryan 6:57 / #
All different words. Here's the thing you guys. I didn't know at first to keep it from my parents. I'm walking around, you know, I'm walking around. My mom is like, what is that? And she wanted to take it from me. And so I started smuggling romance novels into my house. I had them stuffed under my mattress, I would go to the library, and I would come out with like, my respectable books, and I would pack my back pack full of all of my, this is what I mean by twice blooded, because when I first came into romance, it was Joanna Lindsey, it was Kathleen Woodiwiss, and then I got into category. So it was Charlotte Lamb. It was Carol Mortimer, it was Robyn Donald, all those one name books by Carol Mortimer, like "Frustration". You're like, I have no idea what that means but I've got to read it. So my bag would be stuffed with all of my romance novels, and I would carry into the house all of my respectable ones. And then I would stuff them into the back of my closet and in my mattresses.

Sarah MacLean 8:02 / #
Oh my god, you turn to a life of crime.

Kennedy Ryan 8:04 / #
I actually did. I turned to a life of crime just to get my kicks.

Sarah MacLean 8:09 / #
The pastor's daughter. It's all there.

Jennifer Prokop 8:12 / #
I'm just like, podcast over.

Kennedy Ryan 8:17 / #
It was awful. It was awful. It was a secret life.

Sarah MacLean 8:20 / #
It was amazing. But you know what, so many of us did that. I don't know if I've ever told this story on the podcast. I've certainly told it in interviews, but I when, you know, when I was young, when I was in middle school, the library was across the Middle School parking lot. And you know, I would go there after school and they kept the romance novels literally in the dark. The lights were turned off in the aisles where they kept romances and I was like, well, this is clearly for me. And I like lurked in the darkness reading, you know, furtively any book that had Fabio on the cover and the reality is its like we are trained from, you know, infancy in romance to hide the reading.

Jennifer Prokop 9:06 / #
Yes. Can I tell you I think we've all had that, that experience. And so the thing that, like hurts me is when fellow romance readers talk about their kids wanting to read romance and them not letting them. And I'm just like

Sarah MacLean 9:22 / #
It's hard.

Jennifer Prokop 9:23 / #
But why? Don't you remember what that was like? Why are you doing that? It's really hard for me and I just keep my mouth shut. I leave romances all over my house. And you all know my extreme effin disappointment that my son cannot be bothered to read them. I'm just like, Oh, my God. I'm always like, Don't you want to take these to your friends?

Kennedy Ryan 9:48 / #
He's like, sure, mom.

Sarah MacLean 9:51 / #
Some day, I hope to have Tessa Dare on the podcast, but one of my favorite Tessa stories, she has a teenage daughter, but right when that you know, 12 or 13, that sort of sweet spot of when you find out that sex exists and you're like, "what is this about"? She got a call, I think from a mom at her school, who was like, all the kids are passing around your books, because they're reading and they're reading all the salaciousness. And Tessa's like, well, I don't know what to say about that. Like, I'm not gonna tell you that it's not a good, like, ultimately, wouldn't you like your kids to know that when they have sex, they should be having it in a thoughtful way with people who care about their pleasure and care about them. Right, and it's a tricky thing. I mean, I get it, I get the hesitance. But yeah, I mean, I can remember just sort of skipping over sex scenes for a long time because I just didn't, yeah, get it. So I mean, especially in those early

Jennifer Prokop 10:59 / #
The year of the euphemism.

Sarah MacLean 11:01 / #
What on earth is going on?

Jennifer Prokop 11:04 / #
What's a velvet cave?

Kennedy Ryan 11:10 / #
What is the member?

Sarah MacLean 11:14 / #
Exactly, like you know it's something is going on.

Jennifer Prokop 11:17 / #
Is this a club that can be joined?

Kennedy Ryan 11:19 / #
I'm still stuck on the velvet cave. Its not so warm.

Jennifer Prokop 11:26 / #
You know satellite radio brings a lot of like, when we used to drive you know back before pandemic times, and had to go places, I heard the song by Sheena Easton and I really remember liking as a kid of sugar walls and almost drove off the road at how filthy it is.

Kennedy Ryan 11:50 / #
Oh, yes.

Sarah MacLean 11:51 / #
Oh, well, I mean, can we talk about Prince?

Jennifer Prokop 11:53 / #
I'm gonna say Prince wrote that right?

Kennedy Ryan 11:55 / #
Oh god.

Sarah MacLean 11:56 / #
Well, yeah. Sheena Easton. So here's my here's a fun fact. And surely this is about to become the musical theme of this episode. One of Eric's like very favorite things is to like drop Prince protege names just in conversation. Yeah and I so I know Yeah, Sheena Easton was a prince protege and he probably wrote that song for her.

Kennedy Ryan 12:15 / #
I'm pretty sure.

Jennifer Prokop 12:17 / #
He wrote all of those sex euphemisms songs.

Kennedy Ryan 12:20 / #
Darling Nikki.

Sarah MacLean 12:27 / #
Oh my boy. I mean,

Kennedy Ryan 12:32 / #
I think Vanity was one of his protege. All of them and my husband had all of them on his wall growing up, he actually saw Prince like in the bathtub before Prince, you know, stopped doing his nasty stuff live. We got a whole, he calls a door, he calls it a hymn. He refers to a door as our hymn. The full extended version now.

Jennifer Prokop 13:16 / #
You guys just this morning Charis Hodges on Twitter posted the most amazing tweet it says, "I was today years old when I found out that Prince stole Rick James's woman and turned her into Vanity". Prince a hero in every way.

Kennedy Ryan 13:35 / #
He rest in purple.

Sarah MacLean 13:39 / #
Kennedy, you just became Eric our producers favorite romance novelist. Yeah. Period. Hands down. You're gonna have to come back again and again.

Kennedy Ryan 13:50 / #
No effort.

Sarah MacLean 13:51 / #
You said vanity. Oh was a prince protege. And now that's it. You're his favorite.

Kennedy Ryan 13:56 / #
I will not be dethroned. I will figure out how to stay at that top spot.

Jennifer Prokop 14:01 / #
There's no one else. We've never met someone who knew so much obscure Prince trivia. To all of our listeners out there, when the world gets back to normal if you're ever in Minneapolis, please go visit, his studio is now like a tour you can go on and we went as a family and it was honestly one of the best like touristy things we've ever done. It was awesome.

Kennedy Ryan 14:30 / #
I would just die. And you know his family has given Ava DuVernay who I mean I have to genuflect when I say her name because she's a goddess. But the family has given her access to like his full catalogue, like hundreds of songs he never published. And she's working on something about his life. Ava and Prince together. Shut the house down.

Sarah MacLean 14:53 / #
Well, so euphemisms, sex euphemism.

Kennedy Ryan 14:56 / #
Yeah, Like the velvet cave, which sounds very woman.

Sarah MacLean 15:00 / #
Similar to Prince, these early sex scenes, that you might not understand exactly what's going on but you definitely know it's dirty.

Kennedy Ryan 15:08 / #
Yes, yes.

Sarah MacLean 15:11 / #
Yeah, okay, so we have Woodiwiss, you are like blooded by the original.

Kennedy Ryan 15:19 / #
Yeah, I mean

Sarah MacLean 15:20 / #
You're like the most powerful vampire.

Kennedy Ryan 15:22 / #
I a m an original. It was, Woodiwiss, you know, if you've ever read "The Wolf and The Dove" like, it does, it has the rapey overtones because, in the beginning, I was about to say I don't want to spoil "The Wolf and The Dove", I mean come on now.

Sarah MacLean 15:45 / #
It's 50 years old I think its ok.

Kennedy Ryan 15:50 / #
You know, when it first starts she does a great job of, redirecting you, misdirecting you for the entire novel, you know, so you think that I hate that I still know these names. You think that Ragnar has raped her? But he hasn't, you know and then so he hasn't raped her, her mother intervened and put some blood on, you know her kirtle.

Sarah MacLean 16:15 / #
Oh, famous blood. All the blood scenes.

Blood on the kirtle trick was and this wolf God doesn't actually rape her, he instead chained her to the foot of his bed and wants everyone else to think that he's raping her. Because he has his machismo that he has to maintain, but he doesn't actually rape her. And when they come together, member to velvet cave, it's painful and we think it's painful because, hey, she's only had sex one time and Wulfgar is hulking with a huge member, but it's really because she's an actual virgin and she wasn't raped.

And everyone knows sex is never painful after the first time. And the first time you bleed, like a gallon of blood.

Kennedy Ryan 17:03 / #
You have to, even though we dont have to display the sheets anymore. It still gushes from your body.

Jennifer Prokop 17:10 / #
I will say I remember a lot of those old historicals where like people displayed the sheets. I will say there's like, there's like installing your buttons. And then there's like, the anti buttons, whatever you read, and I remember like as a teenager reading those scenes and being like, listen, what the fuck this is not ok.

Kennedy Ryan 17:31 / #
Never okay.

Sarah MacLean 17:34 / #
So yeah, but also there's something. It goes back to we've talked about this, whenever we talk about medievals, right, and then being them sort of having that kind of over the top. Wild bananas storyline. And the reality is, is like something about that is really primal for so many of us. And there's something, but again it sort of strips away all the trappings of gentility and hands you a hero who is just raw patriarchy and has to be just destroyed. And you're what, tell everybody what you're reading right now?

Kennedy Ryan 18:17 / #
Well, I'm usually I'm usually so I have come to a place where my life is just really really hectic and most of the books I consume are through audio. So I'm listening to "Forbidden" by Beverly Jenkins.

Jennifer Prokop 18:31 / #
God one of my favorites.

Kennedy Ryan 18:32 / #
I just finished on audio. I'm just telling people because it's spectacular. It's not even historical. I just finished "Beach Read" on audio, which is fantastic.

Sarah MacLean 18:44 / #
I love that book, I really did. Jen hasn't read it but its so good.

Kennedy Ryan 18:48 / #
It's so good. Jen. The writing like sparkles. Anyway, it sparkles. But I everybody who knows me knows that like historical romance is kind of it's like my favorite. And I have all the Kinsale, all they can sell on audio. Certain books they're so old you can't even get them in audio and I love a lot of those, like "Magnificent Rose".

Sarah MacLean 19:16 / #
Iris Johansen.

Kennedy Ryan 19:17 / #
Iris Johansen and you know what's so funny is I caught I said that I was twice blooded. Like when I was first blooded. I only read romance from the eighth grade until my senior year in high school. So I like five years of romance and a lot of that was category and I didn't know

Sarah MacLean 19:32 / #
Wait, so you stopped reading romance, cold turkey?

Kennedy Ryan 19:37 / #
You know, it's like, I know I went into college and I stopped reading romance and I just I don't know if it was because I was adjusting to so many things and there was so much to read and there was so much to do, but I just lost it. You know, when I started reading other things and doing other things and I just kind of lost romance for a really long time. I didn't pick romance back up until I was close to 40 years old. I had, my son has autism, and I had started a foundation for families who have children with autism. And I was running that foundation. And I was of course, raising a child with special needs. And I was advocating for other families. My whole life, like, it was autism and everything I read, everything I consumed was around special needs and waivers. I was drowning honestly. And I needed something for myself, I needed an escape. I needed something that just was purely pleasure for me. And I just remembered how much I loved romance. And I just picked up, I started going to the library again like just on my own picking up some of the things that I loved before, but I don't even remember, Kinsale I don't even think was in the mix. When I was blooded the first time, when I was first blooded I think Iris Johansen was I don't know if you guys remember she used to write for like Silhouette, some category romance.

Jennifer Prokop 21:01 / #
She wrote for Love Swept. They were so good.

Sarah MacLean 21:05 / #
They were so good.

Kennedy Ryan 21:07 / #
And some of the plots were like whoa, like over the top. I'm trying to think of this one it had like magical realism, I cannot remember the name of it. But she was like a, not a sorceress, but it's just it's some I was like

Jennifer Prokop 21:22 / #
I bet it was, "This Fear Splendor".

Kennedy Ryan 21:24 / #
I bet it was, "This Fear Splendor".

Jennifer Prokop 21:27 / #
And the reason I know that is because that's the one where they have sex on the horse and she's some sort of magical like Jensen expert, an expert I yeah, there was like a whole like kind of series where it was like her and Fayrene Preston and Kay Hooper.

Kennedy Ryan 21:45 / #
Kay Hooper, oh my gosh. When you said Kay Hooper and I remembered.

Jennifer Prokop 21:49 / #
And they would write like the three of them would write these trilogies where they each took one person and they would all come out and they did like the Delaneys which I think is what the but yeah, it was a lot.

Kennedy Ryan 22:04 / #
It was a lot right and so I remember that and so I remembered I liked Iris Johansen and I picked up in this whole reblooding, my second blooding, Kinsale was out and Iris Johansen had written the, "Magnificent Rogue". And that's the one I started rereading. And it is fantastic.

Sarah MacLean 22:27 / #
Also medieval.

Kennedy Ryan 22:29 / #
Again, also a medieval. It's and just to give you for anybody, and also I pride myself on kind of obscure historical romances that went, because it's like my secret pride when people ask for my favorite and I say something like, and some people will know these like "Night in Eden" by Candace Proctor.

Sarah MacLean 22:50 / #
Oh, I don't know that one.

Kennedy Ryan 22:55 / #
You guys, okay.

Sarah MacLean 22:56 / #
I'm reading it right now.

Kennedy Ryan 22:57 / #
Do you know Penelope Williamson?

Sarah MacLean 22:59 / #
Yes. Of course.

Kennedy Ryan 23:01 / #
Okay, so Penelope Williamson.

Sarah MacLean 23:02 / #
Wait, first repeat the other one. Now I got a pen cap in my mouth.

Kennedy Ryan 23:06 / #
I'm gonna start with who have the you know, Penelope Williamson, right. So I read some of hers like she wrote. "Wild Yearning". She wrote, she has a medieval that I love and I can't read the name right off the top, but I will anyway so you know, Penelope Williams, Candace Proctor is her sister.

Sarah MacLean 23:24 / #
What's what?

Kennedy Ryan 23:26 / #
When I found that out my mom was completely blown. And one of my favorite novels is "Night in Eden", and this is written like in '95 '97. And it reminds me and you know, everything in that that period was Regency or Medieval or you know, it was

Sarah MacLean 23:42 / #
It was really, it was the heyday of Medievals the early 90s. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 23:48 / #
So this felt so different because "Night in Eden", is about it's in the 1800s I can't remember where in the 1800s maybe mid

Sarah MacLean 23:59 / #
Who cares, yeah, we did a whole episode where we decided readers don't care.

Kennedy Ryan 24:03 / #
Yeah. But I think if I did Regency era, okay, so, um, she, the heroine kills her husband. She had a baby who died. You guys, this is fantastic because it's not even in England. She starts in England. I think she starts in England. And then she gets shipped to New South Wales as a prisoner like

Jennifer Prokop 24:26 / #
Dang.

Kennedy Ryan 24:27 / #
You don't even understand

Sarah MacLean 24:28 / #
Now, I feel like I do.

Jennifer Prokop 24:29 / #
I feel like, I'm like

Sarah MacLean 24:32 / #
Stick to Australia feels real familiar.

Kennedy Ryan 24:35 / #
So good, you guys. And she becomes an indentured servant. And she her baby. She's pregnant. She has her baby in prison. And then she's on the ship on her way to I don't want to give the whole thing away because a lot of people may have never read this.

Jennifer Prokop 24:48 / #
This is probably the first two chapters, who are we kidding I mean.

Kennedy Ryan 24:50 / #
It's at the beginning. I'm not gonna tell you everything because the plot get bananas. The plot gets bananas. You know, we love bananas, but so she gets on the ship. On her way to New South Wales as an indentured servant. Because she killed her husband. She was it was an accident. But of course but

Sarah MacLean 25:08 / #
But what but he was terrible and deserved it surely.

Kennedy Ryan 25:11 / #
But he was terrible. He was cheating on her. Okay, we'll find that out later, so I dont want to spoil things. Anyway, so her baby dies, her baby dies.

Sarah MacLean 25:21 / #
Candace Proctor just breaking rules.

Kennedy Ryan 25:23 / #
Girl, you just, all the rules this is '97.

Sarah MacLean 25:26 / #
Oh my god, it's not that early. Yeah, like to give everybody a frame of reference the Bridgerton's the following year are gonna be out.

Kennedy Ryan 25:35 / #
Wow, I didn't even make that connection.

Jennifer Prokop 25:37 / #
But I do. I feel like there is and I feel like it's true today too, that they're sort of like always a strain of romance that is doing the most.

Kennedy Ryan 25:48 / #
Yeah, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 25:49 / #
Well, it's real fearlessness.

Kennedy Ryan 25:52 / #
You guys you have no idea. This is so fearless. Because the captain who she's going to go work for, you know, work out her term for, he is of course, gorgeous, but he's just lost his wife. He has a baby. She has to nurse the baby. She nurses his baby you guys. Because shes got her milk.

Jennifer Prokop 26:16 / #
Of course she does.

Sarah MacLean 26:16 / #
It's like that Sandra Brown book. That we talked about. There's a old school Sandra Brown from earlier

Jennifer Prokop 26:22 / #
Where shes the wet nurse. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 26:23 / #
Yes wet nurse. Yes. That is the technical term.

Jennifer Prokop 26:30 / #
It's also in Romeo and Juliet isn't the nurse of her. It's her wet nurse.

Sarah MacLean 26:36 / #
It's rich people hired wet nurses back in the day.

Jennifer Prokop 26:42 / #
I hired a wet nurse to it was called Enfamil, god damn, people were like, isn't formula expensive? I was like, I'm gonna send this motherfucker off to college one day. I can afford a can of formula a week my god.

Kennedy Ryan 27:12 / #
I love it. The modern wet nurse. So yeah anyway I won't tell any more but it is fan freaking tastic.

Sarah MacLean 27:16 / #
well I know what I'm reading at the beach next month.

Kennedy Ryan 27:19 / #
God it is so good it has to build that's the other thing is I love the stories that really build and so "Flowers from the Storm" that's why I love Kinsale so much it and a lot of my friends when, I feel like I'm all over the place because you asked what I'm reading now I'm rereading "Magnificent Rogue".

Sarah MacLean 27:34 / #
Right thats what I was angling for. Got a better there's a better story in here. Candace Proctor.

Kennedy Ryan 27:41 / #
Oh gosh, Candace Proctor just nice a "Night in Eden". And so with "Magnificent Rogue". I don't know why I picked it up because I'm listening. I'm listening to "Forbidden" now of course, and I will read things and then listen to them. So I'm listening to that. It's amazing, but I just you know, picked up "Magnificent Rogue" again. And I was like, this is all about women's power, like completely and just to give people a setting it is Medieval. It's asked me to blitz like, well,

Sarah MacLean 28:12 / #
It's Scotland, isn't it?

Kennedy Ryan 28:13 / #
Yes, it is. He's a Highlander. He is a Scottish Earl. And he has an island, Cray coo. I'm not may not be pronouncing that. But he basically bends the knee to nobody. And Queen Elizabeth captures him. And this is before Mary, Mary Queen of Scots is executed. It's like right before she's executed. And it is the the plot is so what is woven so tightly and there's so much I love misdirection. There's so much misdirection, and then he is amazing. Like, he is incredible. He's tall, he has dark hair, he's gorgeous. He's arrogant, but not in like a douchey way in like impotence, you know, kind of way. She wants him, she's fought, she has captured him. She's been trying to capture him for years, been watching him for years and realizes that he's the perfect candidate to do what she needs me to do, which is to marry this young girl who is a royal bastard. We are led to believe and I'm not going to say that it's not because someone might read this. And it's too brilliant for me to give away. Even though it's 30 years old. Anyone who's somebody who's reading it for the first time, and we are, you know, she's the bastard daughter of Mary. And of course, there's all this tension between Mary and Elizabeth. And then James is on the throne in Scotland, like it's all of this royal intrigue. And then there's this girl who is somebodies royal bastard, who has been kept by this evil priest who has been like beating her and who has been feeding her all kinds of religious nonsense for her whole life. And it reminds me of, 0kay, this is what reminds me of McNaught's "Kingdom of Dreams". Wait did I just say that right? Yes. Okay, um, all she wants is home. All she wants is family. She feels like she's been starved for that. And when she sees his clan, because he does have to marry her, he marries her. And

Sarah MacLean 30:17 / #
Isn't it a marriage of, it's they make a deal is not going to be

Kennedy Ryan 30:21 / #
Its a hand fast. That's what they do. So it's short, it's supposed to be short. And the reason he does that is because he recognizes she's a political pawn. And she is, he is all about his Island. You know, he doesn't bend the knee to anybody else. He is like, I'm self contained over here. People want me for my trade routes. We got our own money. I don't want to be in nobody's, I don't want to fight anybody's war. Like he's possessively protective of his people. And she goes, I want to belong. You know, she sees the way he takes care of his people, the way he, because the thing that Queen Elizabeth uses to get him to marry her is that one of his kinsmen is with him and he's like, you can do whatever you want to do to me. I don't care. But then she says, I will hang him right now if you don't marry her. And he does. You know, he's like, you can kill me but you can't touch. He says, I protect what's mine. Nobody's ever gonna hurt with mine. And mine, mine mine, mine,

Sarah MacLean 31:21 / #
Mine, mine, mine mine mine.

That's my id, you know mine mine mine mine mine. But it's not even just applied to her. It's applied to anyone who's under his protection. She compares him to a falcon who spreads his wings over his whole clan and she goes, I want to be in the shadow. Oh my god.

Put it in my veins.

Kennedy Ryan 31:44 / #
She starts to find her power. And she is some royals daughter and he start, he knows that. But she starts to realize it. And she starts to realize she has power even when like even when they have sex like for the first time and second time around. Whatever, she starts to articulate the power for own pleasure, and he teaches her that he's like, you have power over me, I can't resist you. Do you know what I mean? It's like, and then

Sarah MacLean 32:12 / #
I'm going to go back and reread this book right now.

Kennedy Ryan 32:15 / #
There's another woman who comes and she's smiling and she's innocent. And as soon as the door like with all the guys, and as soon as the door closes, she's like, okay, here's, here's what we're gonna do. You know, its like power, she understands the patriarchy she's working inside of, and how to leverage her gifts and her power to get around them. You know, she's always, they're always looking for workarounds. And I love that about this book. And if she becomes, in the beginning, she's timid. She's weak on the surface, but she has this like steel backbone, and you begin to see her rise like and the power, by the end of the book is so clearly her novel. It's so clearly her story. It's so clearly she is the most powerful piece on the whole board. And he recognizes that too. I don't want to give it away, the 30 year spoiler, but at the end even he's like, what do you want me to do? I will leave my clan, I will do this, I will do whatever, you know, it's just the joy of it. So empowering.

Sarah MacLean 33:16 / #
You know what's interesting, though, is we talk so much about these crazy like, over the top plots. And the reality is is like, they're not they don't they're not just, they don't just happen to be they're overt and they have, they are there so that stories like this can overtly discuss power and how women have it and how women use it and where power comes from and how it can be wielded. Yeah, when especially when it's obscure power.

Jennifer Prokop 33:49 / #
I think it's about persistence to right like what we see is like this evolution of women in the face of like, you have to keep if you want to outsmart the patriarchy It's gonna take persistent hard work that you're going to keep doing in as many ways as you can until you get what you want and get what you need.

Sarah MacLean 34:09 / #
But these power moves, are they I mean, what's interesting is that these older plots, I mean, they don't really happen as much anymore in current day, but we still have heroines who can make Queen moves, don't we Kennedy?

Jennifer Prokop 34:28 / #
Oh Sarah.

Kennedy Ryan 34:28 / #
Seg to the way.

Sarah MacLean 34:30 / #
Rim shot!

Kennedy Ryan 34:37 / #
You're as smooth as ribbons.

Sarah MacLean 34:43 / #
No, but so I mean, I'm gonna just I'm just gonna like fangirl over "Queen Move" for a little bit here because I think so. You know, Jen talks a lot about when people sort of hit their Imperial period as writers and I feel like I have always loved your writing. I've always felt like you "take the finger" like you lean into fear when you're writing. And I think that and I think you're a magnificent writer. But "Queen Move" is like, elevated to a new. I mean the whole series but like, "Queen Move" is like, I feel like you are, you're writing at the top of the game, not your game, the game.

Kennedy Ryan 35:24 / #
My mouth is hanging open.

Sarah MacLean 35:29 / #
It just feels to me but part of what's glorious about "Queen Move", is this magnificent heroine, who is just, she you back her up against the wall emotionally right from the start from like page one. And then you unpack. I mean, there's a lot to love about this book. It's also really epic, in the way, that some of these old romances of I can see the bones of your blooding and in this book, you know and part of that is because I've just spent a year with Jen like really unpacking, what the bones of romance are. And it's clear to me that you're, you've been taught to write romance by all the people who taught me to write romance, too. So of course, I'm like naturally drawn to your books. But there's something just like

Kennedy Ryan 36:17 / #
Same because I just finished Daring. So fan girl over here. But you already know that I was texting you the whole time.

Sarah MacLean 36:24 / #
This is my turn. This is, it's my podcast, so I get to talk. So this so there's this epicness about the whole story, especially because you also are telling the story of multiple generations. Yeah. But, um, this I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the evolution of this particular heroine and like, and just tell everybody a little bit about where you came, how you came to her?

Kennedy Ryan 36:50 / #
You know, so the heroines name is Kimba. And for anyone who read "All the King's Men" duet, she is the best friend in The first two books of you know, the duet, "The Kingmaker", and "The Rebel King". And Linux is the heroine in that and just to give context, it's kind of like scandalous in the sense that they're like gladiators. You know, they're like white hat girls. So they start their own political consulting firm specifically to install people in power, who they believe will advance the causes of marginalized people. And so our heroine in those the duet is Native American, she's Yabba pi Apache. And Kimbo of course, is black. And so they are like all about the brown girls all about the black girls all about queer people, like they're all about marginalized groups and making sure that we're putting people in power who are going to advance those causes. And so I won't talk about everything that happens in the duet because that is bananas. That is a lot.

Sarah MacLean 37:54 / #
But like magnificently bananas. I'm here for all these. This is my Like I'm here from contemporary 2020 romance to take these risks, because I think we're still having these conversations. The patriarchy still exists. It's still, it's still coming for marginalized groups and women and, and it feels like these big stories deserve to be told now more than ever. So in some ways, they just have to be twisted a little bit.

Kennedy Ryan 38:26 / #
Yeah I think so and I think one thing that was interesting for me was when you talk about you know, how you're blooded, obviously the book that blooded me once and then twice and my twice blooding. My second blooding, that's when I discovered Kinsale, who is I mean, to me, like Kinsale is like the highest bar you can reach, you know, 'Flowers From the Storm", I adore. I found and I know, I just slipped back in historical mode. I'm sorry. I'll get there.

Sarah MacLean 38:57 / #
Come back around. It's fine.

Kennedy Ryan 38:58 / #
"Flowers From the Storm". When I read it, I just kind of sat there like, I can't even process what just happened, you know, because and I think when you talk about who are the writers who inspire you, I'm not even saying that I'm anywhere close or whatever be to Kinsale, but she is like the little angel on my shoulder when I'm writing because she does not pander to readers. She doesn't say, "Oh, they may not know this word", or she doesn't say,"Oh, this might be too hard". Or she doesn't say "wow, they're gonna have to get through this first". She is fearless. And she's like, either you're with me or you're not? Yes, the Duke is gonna have a stroke. And no, he's not going to speak right for the rest of the book. And yes she's a Quaker and she's gonna say "thee and thou" for the whole book deal with it. You know, it's like she is just and the intricacy of the way she writes in the way she developed plots, it affects me. And that kind of just for an example, when you read "Shadow Heart", which again Medieval, you know she has a medieval, not even a duology because they're standalone, but it's "For My Lady's Heart". Yeah, they're companions for my lady's heart and then years later she writes shadow heart and the hero is the best antihero he has an actual assassin.

Jennifer Prokop 40:20 / #
I love assassins I do.

Kennedy Ryan 40:24 / #
I love assassins. Okay, this is the level of assassin this dude is he's tried there and I think street market and he and again it's Medieval and he needs her to shut up and she's screaming and screaming and to me she doesn't get it. He does that like pressure point face and neck. And she faints. She fainted. And He is ruthless. I know it sounds like an asshole but he's amazing.

Sarah MacLean 40:57 / #
I like that. I know he sounds like an asshole.

Kennedy Ryan 40:59 / #
But this is the thing. She becomes again the same as like with the "Magnificent Rogue", she is the heir to something that he and another guy have been fighting for. She's the rightful heir to it. Like she is the princess. And they've been fighting because the throne has been vacant and she takes the throne. But at the beginning she's just like this simple farm girl you know who is kind of stumbling along and doesn't even know her own power. But there are elements Now think about how long ago, this was elements of BDSM strong elements of BDSM in a Mideval.

Sarah MacLean 41:35 / #
Kinsale is real kinky.

Kennedy Ryan 41:37 / #
She is oh my gosh, when I tell you, and this is the brilliance of Kinsale.

Sarah MacLean 41:43 / #
Jen is like "what is happening"

Jennifer Prokop 41:45 / #
I'm enjoying it all.

Kennedy Ryan 41:48 / #
Okay, so it's a Medieval we're going to I'm going to get back to Queen so sorry. It was a Medieval, we're going right we're moving right along and the whole time I'm in love with him like I'm in love with him because he's magnificent and he is fearless, and he's ruthless, but also protective and obviously really into her. And she discovers that she has these dominant kind of tendencies and he who was like so powerful, so alpha has these, you know tendencies where he wants to be dominated in an instance you know, in sexual situations and so they start to play with that. And I'm the whole time I love dual POV and it's it's just her POV, her POV and the whole time like, gosh, I would love to know what he's thinking. Chapter 17 she has him, he's much taller than she is. He's standing against the wall she is she gets on a step so that she can mount him. And all of a sudden, like chapter 17 or something, it switches to his point of view. We have not heard his point of view for 17 chapter.

Sarah MacLean 42:51 / #
Magnificent. That is a baller move.

Kennedy Ryan 42:56 / #
Baller move like drop the mic.

Jennifer Prokop 42:59 / #
This is where I've got to tell you as a reader, I don't like it. I'll tell you why. Cuz now I'm like, listen, you've been keeping this man from me.

Kennedy Ryan 43:13 / #
But you get him for the rest of the book Jen, the rest of the book. It works so hard. Like, because its around chapter 17 somewhere around there. And then he's there for the rest of the book, it switches points of view for the rest of the book. And it is just anyway, it's magnificent. So that kind of just intricacy, of plot, just saying readers, just come with me, you know, I'm not looking over our shoulder like, Are you still with me? Are you still with me? I'm like, okay, either you're coming or you're not like, Yeah, and I really hope that you do. And I'm going to try to make it as easy for you as possible. But I'm not going to compromise on the story that I want to tell. And I see that, that in Kinsale like that is, it's some, it's just magnificent in her.

Sarah MacLean 43:59 / #
I think this is the thing right Jen, Jen and I were talking this morning about a different book. And we were, we were just having conversation about whether or not she's reading a book that I've already read and and whether or not it worked for her and, and I, here's my problem is as a writer, I really like it when someone takes that risk. Like, no one's ever done this thing before. Maybe it won't work, but I'm going to do it and we'll see. Yeah, right. And I think that that, that confidence, and I do think it is con, I think it's learned. I think sometimes you see that in a debut and it's naive. It's not the right word like Yeah, right. It's just that you've never you don't know what you don't know. And so you just sort of, you're just writing into the wind, and you end up writing some sort of book that really sort of pushes the boundaries of the genre in an really interesting way. But often when we see that in a debut, the following books can't keep up with that. Yeah, so but when somebody like Kinsale pulls this behavior or you, Kennedy, then what you're seeing is confidence in skill, in like the writers confidence in their own skill, but also a sort of very clear belief that readers will follow.

Jennifer Prokop 45:16 / #
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I joked or whatever but like, right, I think it all it things work if the craft is there and one of the things I actually like really struggle with and I can't imagine you two as authors do not either, is the sort of narrative that like writing romance is just like, it's always the same. And you know, it's just this like, silly thing when you know, women are well used to be that women do, you know, that it's just a silly genre. And I think that when people take big risks with craft, their craft as authors, right? I want, I want the world to appreciate. I don't really actually maybe care what the world thinks I want romance readers, at least to appreciate that there's work that goes into this right. Like reader that readers are seeing, you know, again, that Imperial period thing like, right, like we are seeing authors that are making really explicit choices and so given what you just described about this book it actually totally makes sense to me like she unlocks him somehow and now he's on the page.

Sarah MacLean 46:16 / #
And what a great use of sex to in that moment. Anyway, stop right there I'm cutting Jen.

Jennifer Prokop 46:21 / #
No, no, but I think like that's the part I, the thing about like, the bananas books kind of narrative is, we as insiders to the genre, like see what it's doing, but I sometimes feel like outsiders to the genre use it as like a weapon a snicker. That's, you know, I don't really care but I went inside I just want us to appreciate like, craft choices are our craft choices, and it's not accidental people are making decisions and I do like that, despite my earlier.

Sarah MacLean 46:57 / #
I mean, this is one of those things Jen to where it's so I mean, I'm sure I know I know you well enough now that I know that you are very you are really enjoying this conversation with Kennedy. And I think that part of it is the joy of like talking to somebody who knows the history. You know, we're about to, next week, we have an episode recorded with Steve Ammondon and it talks about somebody who just knows every knows the history of the genre and is able to really unpack why. You know, it's like that scene in "The Devil Wears Prada" where. What's her name? Help me, Help me know the other one. Marianda, what's her name? Sarah, the actress though. Meryl Streep or Meryl Streep says to Anne Hathaway like you're wearing yes, that blue sweater.

movie dialogue 47:51 / #
Oscar de la Renta did a collection of civilian gowns and then I think it was the salary or wasn't it who showed civilian military jackets. I think we need a jacket here.

Sarah MacLean 47:59 / #
Yeah. On the cover of Vogue, yes. Like, like meta, like, yeah, you think this is foolish. But it's not. Because it's all, I can show you how it's built. And I think when you talk to somebody who knows the bones of the genre, you can really unpack these questions of why are, why is switching the POV during a sex scene for the first time, to a man? Yeah, power move for the heroine and for the writer. And, and why like we've never seen we don't see that usually in books.

Kennedy Ryan 48:43 / #
And I, I think that kind of intention. Now it feels very intentional. And she can pull it off like she has the craft back it up.

Sarah MacLean 48:52 / #
And there aren't many who can pull that kind of shift. Oh, 17 chapters and then you get a new POV.

Kennedy Ryan 49:00 / #
Absolutly and he stays with, he stays with you for the rest of the novel, you know, switching back and forth, but

Sarah MacLean 49:06 / #
I mean, it's real bold itself. You know who else has done that? Um, Kennedy, have you ever read Anne Mallory?

Kennedy Ryan 49:13 / #
Yes. I can't remember which of hers.

Sarah MacLean 49:15 / #
You read the one I'm sure you read the one that I told you read, probably which is the one with the chest scene, huh? Have you read that one, where she sells herself to basically like, he wins her in a in a bet from her father. And then they play chess for 70 pages. But there's another Anne Mallory and I'll find it I don't remember the title but I will find it and put it in shownotes that does a similar thing. I mean, clearly as an homage to this Kinsale but does a similar thing where for the first like third of the book, you don't get the hero. And then you get the hero. And it's really I remember reading that and just being like, wow, this is a bold move like but Anne writes like she doesn't write romance anymore. Unfortunately. She's another writer who every book was different. Like every book took a different risk.

Jennifer Prokop 50:06 / #
A generation of romance isn't like the same as a generation of people. Right? And so, you know, we're not talking like 25 years, and these are all in the same group. I mean, I think a romance generation is maybe like, 10 years, maybe. Or, you know, and and so it's like, "50 Shades" since "50 Shades" seems like a generation, right? Since like, "Bet Me" and like between "Bet Me" and "50 Shades" was another one. And I think that the thing too, is like when we think about how, like narrative choices have changed over time, right, like that was, it would be very hard to imagine someone doing that today. And not, you know, like, when I first joked about not liking it, it's because I was thinking about 2020 Jen, right, not thinking like, Hey, that was three generations of romance ago. And yeah, and the books just read differently.

Sarah MacLean 50:57 / #
I mean, that probably shattered some readers. Imagine I mean, I bet what's interesting too is I bet readers were really frustrated by the idea. When was that book? Do you? Do you know, Kennedy?

Kennedy Ryan 51:08 / #
No. Are you talking about are you

Sarah MacLean 51:10 / #
The Kinsale?

Chapter 17, Kinsale.

It's "Shadow Heart".

Let me see, maybe 10 years between the companion novel, and like the first one, it's like maybe 10 years between them because I want this one won. This one won, The Rita, which was let me see

It's first published in 2004. In 2004, we've never seen we really rarely saw single POV romance novels. Until, you know, no, 2010.

Jennifer Prokop 51:46 / #
No, that's not true. It was just always the heroine, like all of early romance was heroin only.

Kennedy Ryan 51:55 / #
Well, I don't know because "The Wolf and The Dove", is double point of view. It is omniscient. But it's well, it's double point of view.

Sarah MacLean 52:03 / #
You know those heroes are hard to crack. Cuz that's the problem, right?

Kennedy Ryan 52:07 / #
Yeah. Well, and I think when you talk about the hero we talk about and this I think goes back to you asking me about "Queen Move". And what imprints us like of course those first novels because I was blooded with like "The Wolf and The Dove" and "Agetting out Pirates Love" now "Pirates Love" is racy. But I mean, it's like that alpha male, you know, that it imprints on you and it kind of changes over the years but I find myself still enjoying that dominance but now as a grown woman, now as a, you know, fully understanding feminist, that, that, that primalness, that archetype still appeals to me, but it's it has to be filtered through my philosophy, my personal worldview, my personal belief system now. So I find myself grappling as a reader and as a writer with that line where I feel like you've crossed into male toxicity, or you, you know, I find myself you know, examining that line a lot in my work. And when I wrote, I had to be super super, super careful when I wrote "The All the King's Men" duet, the duology because the heroine is Native American and the hero is white. And there is such a harmful history where in romance, that relationship that power dynamic has been appropriated, has been harmful, has been stereotypica, has been demeaning, has stripped native women of dignity has stripped uh, you know, indigenous people of their, you know, the culture. So even when I was the research that went into that was, it was the hardest research I've ever done. It was a it was a lot. I literally was consulting a medicine man for parts of that book to make sure that I got it right and course had indigenous sensitivity and responsive readers from that tribe and from other tribes. So it was a whole thing. But then I had this alpha male, and it was like, how am I going to have this alpha male with this Native American heroine and not perpetuate that? And it was such a delicate balance, you know, it was starting the relationship had to evolve over the two books, even their sexual, she first of all, she had to be an alpha female, you know, she, it had for me to feel like I was striking the right balance. She was an alpha female. So she was very assertive. She was very powerful. There was no dominating her, you know, he I didn't ever do you know what I'm saying?

Sarah MacLean 54:43 / #
Yes, of course,

Kennedy Ryan 54:44 / #
But even you know, how you might say something like is a savage kiss or something like that, that that word couldn't be in the whole book. You know, it's like, oh, no, you can't do that. Okay, you know, so you there's like this even tighter filter, and I found myself really having to restructure, what the alpha male looked like in that in that context, and then when I wrote it is very different cuz he is very dominant. And also I think that he becomes more sexually aggressive as the book goes on because we start to trust him as an individual. Do you know what I'm saying? Not as a caricature, but I think he can be more in the beginning. He's sexually aggressive, but not in the way he is, by the end of the book, by the end of the second book, because readers know him as a person, they get to know him as a person and to trust him with her, and see that she can trust herself with him without him perpetuating what we've seen before.

Jennifer Prokop 55:43 / #
Can I ask you a question? Because this, and this is really to both of you, which is I feel like there's a big conversation that I mean, really, in the past couple years that romance has been having about, like, sort of like the cinnamon roll versus the alpha and Kennedy like, what you're sort of seemed to be explicitly saying is if I'm interested an alpha hero and I'm writing male/female romance then what I need to create to balance that out as an alpha heroine.

Kennedy Ryan 56:07 / #
Um, I'm sure that it can be done. I'm sure that someone could do it without doing that, I think for the particular novel that I was writing, and the particular history that came with that ethnic mix in a relationship, I made that choice. But I mean, when I got to "Queen Move", I made a different choice, you know, where he is more, more of a cinnamon roll hero. And she is very, very powerful. And he is powerful. He's very, you know, very sexual in the bedroom, very sexually aggressive, and she's aggressive and she knows what she wants. She's in charge of her, her sexuality and her power and they have a conversation about their number. And he's like eight because he's been in a committed relationship for a long time and she's like, I have no idea what my number is. He is very secure. She needs that she probably makes more money than he does. Her job is higher profile. She's very, very powerful. And he is an educator, you know, he starts a school for underprivileged kids, a private school. So he's like, your zip code should not dictate your education. And he starts his private school that's, you know, funded. So he's an educator, and she is electing presidents. And he is completely secure, in the fact, that she makes more money than he does. He's completely secure, in the fact, that she's, you know, on CNN, commentating and he's not, and he's exactly what she needs. So, I don't know.

Sarah MacLean 57:43 / #
An arguably what the world needs in 2020. I mean, he's a model, right? Which is interesting because he sort of is a model, in the way, that a lot of these heroes have always been models like you establish the the hero who walks through fire for the heroine, the alpha here who walks through fire for heroin, and is sort of broken down and rebuilt for her in an image of like parody and partnership. That is, that is the hero that needed to be modeled for many, many years. And now we need a different kind of hero to model.

Kennedy Ryan 58:21 / #
in some cases, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 58:23 / #
But Ezra also, like Ezra isn't a cinnamon roll to the in the sense of like, there's not he's not just all soft all the time.

Kennedy Ryan 58:33 / #
No, no definitely not. No, um, he's introverted. He is very self contained. One thing that was very important for me, some people would call him a cinnamon roll hero like in reviews or in conversations, but he is Black and Jewish. So he's a man of color. And one thing that I think we don't see enough with men of color, whether that's, you know, black men, Latin x men Whatever it is, we don't see them so often, as fathers, as nurturers and he is a single dad. And I really wanted to unpack because he's very strong. He's quiet and strong. He's in direct contrast to Maxim, from the first from the duet who was like a mogul, you know, sustainable energy. And he becomes, you know, a place just as huge, charismatic, like bigger than life figure. And of course, we fall in love with him. But then there's this other guy who is so content with his life. You know what I'm saying? He's so on mission, his mission and he's not comparing himself or his life or his choices or his mission to anyone else's, and he has his own strength. So I want him to be as big and readers hearts as that, you know, living in Atlanta, running his school, doling out his son's vitamins every morning and making sure he doesn't drink Cokeyou know. Investing in his son, and seeing his son as his mission, raising a good human as his mission. I want that hero to be as big in readers hearts as this other guy who is this huge mogul of sustainable energy and ends up being president. You know, I want both. I want us I want readers to see the value of both and how both are fitted to these women. You know how they complement these women and they're exactly what this woman needs. And that's also the choice. We as women have to decide what we need, you know, the essence of feminism, your choice. And she chooses Ezra, you know, well, they they're fated. Fated mates. You know they're the same day their soul mate.

Sarah MacLean 1:00:41 / #
Clear Fated Mates to, I mean the one of my it's so early in the book I can sort of, I mean, it's chapter one.

Kennedy Ryan 1:00:49 / #
You can read it on Amazon.

Sarah MacLean 1:00:51 / #
But when I yeah, you can read it on Amazon. One of my favorites, I guess it's not chapter one. Oh, yeah, I know it is. I don't know. It's early. You can read it on Amazon. So the but it's but it's the moment where she sees him. I mean, this is the magnificent thing, right? Like she sees him at her. She's at her father's funeral. The book begins with her at her father's funeral. Yeah, the prologue, in comes this man who is the boy she loved as a child. I mean, there it is, right? My pure ID, right? But it's the boy that she loved as a child and he has his child is there and so is this child's mother, who you are led to believe, is this man's perfect, beautiful wife. And it is so heartbreaking for to watch this heroine who is buttoned up like at her father's funeral like, cannot refuse this reveal kind of really any emotion. And here she is kind of whacked in the head by this boy she hasn't seen in years, who was her first love right? And then whacked in her head in the head again by the fact that he has This beautiful wife who's with him. And, and then, and this beautiful child and this like perfect and her family, as you're reading this, her family is also just in shambles, I mean, destroyed by the loss of this father figure. And so like the compare the, I mean, it's just the moment. I mean, you read that that scene and it's just so perfectly balanced. And it's I mean, it's just amazing. And then of course, you know, they're not like the wife is not really a wife. And so like it sort of unravels the way a romance novel should.

Kennedy Ryan 1:02:39 / #
Yeah, well, and you know, I think one thing that people someone interviewed me last week and they were like, you don't usually have weddings in your books. I you know, because my weddings are hard. They are hard, but I think a lot of and I will often do weddings and bonus epilogues as opposed to the actual like cannon of the novel itself, and I, I like writing books where the wedding is not the point, you know, so often it feels like

Jennifer Prokop 1:03:07 / #
Yeah, the wedding is never the point, right.

Kennedy Ryan 1:03:09 / #
You know, like getting to the altar, you know, is the point and I, I wrote a series called the grip series. And in the third book, it's a trilogy with the same couple across three novels. And you're like, What is she going to do in that third book, you know, because they get together at the end of the second book, and they get married pretty early in the third book. So I like writing books where the point can't just be that they're happily ever you know, that they get together. There's all these other things and the series that I'm working on now, all the couples are married, you know, it's like, so the point can't just be to marry each other. You know, and I think for me, it's so much more about the journey, and what that looks like, than just them kind of getting together.

Sarah MacLean 1:03:55 / #
Don't you feel that partially that marriage the marriage book becomes more approachable for you as a reader as you age. Yeah, I can remember that when I was a kid marriage of convenience was just my least favorite trope. I just didn't care about how hard it was to be married. Or a second chance, right? With a married couple, who cares, right? But now I feel like there are certain writers who just do it so beautifully. And it's such a complex way of telling a love story.

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:27 / #
But I also feel like isn't that the greatest thing about romance is that like, there's so much there that as you age and grow and change in your life, in your relationships, like there's romances for you, this isn't a genre you have to lose. Because you're your life is different, right? It's and it's as Kennedy proved, it's a genre people can come back to and that's the part it's there's so much diversity and richness in the genre. And just like the types of stories that you can find yourself attracted to is.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:57 / #
Yeah, Kennedy can I Ask a craft question?

Kennedy Ryan 1:05:03 / #
Of course, I don't know if I'm a craft woman.But yes go for it.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:06 / #
I want to talk about that I want to go back to Queen mu because so I talked earlier about how there's this epic kind of generational story that's going on in this book. And I don't want to spoil anything about it. But you make a really interesting choice. And, and I thought, as I was reading it, you know, I knew "Daring and the Duke" was coming. And I have just done this sort of generation not generational, but like, long, long time love story, right? Like childhood love. I know, I know, I sort of feel like we should do this as an Instagram Live too, and just talk about this for an hour. But so well, I'm in if you are so anyway, but the question that I have specifically is, so you make a choice, and it's about 25% of the Is it about a quarter of the book, like, you mean, we're children. We're in the past we're in we're in the childhood. It's a lot time. And I mean, it's not I don't say that. I mean, I loved every page of it. But it's interesting because I mean, I, that I really struggled as a writer with making the choice of like, how much am I going to give them of the childhood versus the adult romance and I wonder if you had that struggle to or how you sort of came, but I also feel like your story being kind of multigenerational required that much energy. I don't know if this is a real question, but I feel like I want to talk about the choice the craft choice of giving readers the past for so long.

Kennedy Ryan 1:06:42 / #
Yes, it is about 20% of the book. Oh, you're probably right, roughly about 20. I think it's about six chapters. Yeah. And I think that what helped probably for me as I was writing it, is that it's so weird, you know, because you can do these time jumps and you get completely confuse readers, and I wanted to be clear about what I was doing because the part that you were just describing, which was, you know, at her father's funeral, and this boy that she, you know, was our first kiss her first, arguably her first love shows up 20 years later, they're seeing each other first time. That's the prologue. And it literally says, two years before the present, and you're like what the heck is that.

Sarah MacLean 1:07:26 / #
Well, but I love that.

Kennedy Ryan 1:07:28 / #
It was like this. Okay, Rita, you're in the present. This happened two years ago. So the prologue says two years before the present, and we see them as adults. And we know that there is a certain intimacy between them not there's obviously some kind of pull. That's there. And I think I had I put that there for those readers who don't want to have trouble with the childhood. You know

Sarah MacLean 1:07:56 / #
Yeah, I mean, I think it had to be there. Yeah,

Kennedy Ryan 1:07:59 / #
Like here's the promise.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:00 / #
yeah, yeah, eventually it's these two.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:03 / #
Yes, it's these two. And the reason I felt like I had to go back and then I think it goes the next the first chapters like 1983. And it's in his mother's point of view. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:14 / #
It's really cool.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:17 / #
It's not even in one of their points of view. It's in his view

Sarah MacLean 1:08:21 / #
Babies, their babies. their literal babies.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:23 / #
Infants in a bathtub. And, you know, she's orienting us, and it's 1983. And it's Georgia. And she's a Jewish woman who has married a black man in 1983, living in Atlanta, because her husband is on scholarship, you know, at Emory for law school. And she has left her her, her community of faith back in New York, very tight knit community that wasn't sure how they felt about her marrying someone, not even someone who was black, but someone who wasn't Jewish. And so she has had she's had tension with her family, but That's repaired. And she's navigating this whole new she feels she says she basically feels alone in the state, you know, in the whole state, when she goes out with her son people, you know, ask is that your son, you know, these are things that are real experiences. And I was fortunate enough to find people who are actually black and Jewish people who have actually negotiated the duality of those identities. And I definitely did not want to write a tragic mulatto story. You know, I didn't want to do that. And I did not go there. But just showing some of the real difficulty that a family living in that context would be navigating. But just as context, and we get and it begins the friendship because there's a couple of things. One of them is found family, their families live next door to each other and they become their families become close. And that was one of the things I really wanted to build in those childhood chapters. There was this foundation for that what becomes their relationship I want people to see from the beginning, the closeness that is kind of the foundation for everything. So we don't just go like it kind of skips fast, like, Yes, they're babies in chapter one, but we get to chapter two, they're 10 years old, you know, in the chapter three, they're 12 and then chapter four and five and six, they're like, 13 they're in the eighth grade. So it accelerates it starts when they're babies within an accelerates but all of these kind of key moments of childhood and adolescence or think she stutters, you know, when he's there for her and then she has her you know, I'll just say that she has he rcycle, you know, all every girl has had that thing of, oh my god, you know, you ruin a pair of pants and you know, and I was like, and people see it and he's protective of her and wrapping his coat around her waist. And you know, it's like all of a sudden they have their you know, their you know, dance right before they're going to high school and, you know, she's with this, you know, this not great guy who wants to be her first kiss. And she's you know, it's just all this stuff you know the all of the adolescent angst before you're in high school, all of that stuff and they're there for each other.

Sarah MacLean 1:11:10 / #
Well, thats what makes when Ezra leaves. Yeah, when Ezra's parents divorce and his mother takes her, takes him back to New York to her family,

Kennedy Ryan 1:11:21 / #
They don't divorce but or they don't divorce but something happens between the two families that explodes the friendship between those two families and they end up moving away

Sarah MacLean 1:11:30 / #
Ezra's family ends up leaving Georgia and going back to New York and it make the rift between the the end of that sort of intense childhood friendships so emotional and so amazing. And I think it's just such an interesting choice because I have done I've done a few of these childhood or young love to older, more seasoned love stories, and I think I always struggle with time. You know how much time to spend where and I just thought it was such a very important and like really cool choice to just lean into the past. I was brought I was reminded of Lisa Kleypas and "Again the Magic".

Kennedy Ryan 1:12:20 / #
I don't even talk about, "Again the Magic".

Sarah MacLean 1:12:27 / #
Where these two are just so intensely in so like for each other, and it's so clear that they're just that their Fated Mates. And then it breaks. And it it's, it breaks the reader's heart to I mean, it's just, it's really, I mean, you know, I love this book, and I just,

Kennedy Ryan 1:12:48 / #
I love books that do that. Have you not like obscure historical romance. So, you know, who nobody ever talks about, and I think it's because she has some tax troubles and not

Sarah MacLean 1:12:58 / #
Are you gonna say Megan McKinney?

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:07 / #
How did you know that?

Sarah MacLean 1:13:09 / #
Meghan McKinney is a real problematic person.

Is she? But I just knew that she kind of disappeared.

Boy she blooded me too. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:19 / #
She has a book called I think "When Angels Fall" and it's that it's the same thing where he works in her parents stables and their nobility and he is a stable man but he's somebody bastard. Yeah always somebodies bastard. And he ends up becoming like the Earl and then her family is destitute. And it's this whole intense, revenge. He thinks it's revenge. But of course, he's just obsessed with her.

Sarah MacLean 1:13:47 / #
Revenge is the best and worst motivation.

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:51 / #
Yes. So have you so have you read we the ground, "The Ground She Walks Upon", I think that's what it is by Mehgan Mckinny?

Sarah MacLean 1:14:00 / #
I mean i'm sure i that is not one I've read everything Meghan McKinney has written. But I mean we should say you can look this up on Wikipedia it's not a secret but she she lived in New Orleans and after Katrina she perpetuated a very large tax scheme of fraud and she went to prison, so I mean if Wikipedia is to believed that is what happened to Mehgan Mckinney.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:29 / #
Well, I think there's some documented evidence.

Sarah MacLean 1:14:31 / #
There's some there citations.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:35 / #
Hey, I before we wrap up, though, I actually have a

Sarah MacLean 1:14:38 / #
Jen's like, ladies.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:41 / #
Like, let me save you from yourself. No, loving the Mehgan McKinney. Um, here's my question. Kennedy, your love for historical romance is so intense. Have you ever thought about writing one?

Kennedy Ryan 1:14:59 / #
Oh, gosh. so intimidated. I mean, I'm so I'm really intimidated by, I mean, my books are research heavy, but they're not like that type of research and I have thought about it. I honestly have. But I just get so scared. I get so intimidated by it. I don't know why.

Jennifer Prokop 1:15:21 / #
Well, it sounds like you do a lot of people research. Everything I've ever heard about you is how much you like talking to people. And I guess yeah, I can't, you know, dig out somebody from 1820 or whatever.

Kennedy Ryan 1:15:34 / #
Well, I mean, I have usually like, especially with a lot of it is and I think it's maybe my journalism background and all the interviews I always had to do, but it's something I lean into is people who have actually lived things that mirror you know what my characters are doing. So a lot of interviews, lots of conversations, but also lots of reading. I read, read lots of memoirs.

Gosh, for all the king's men. I was literally reading anthropological textbooks. I mean, it was just, it was really intense, but I wanted to get it right. So I think I have, I think I have the tools that I could, if I can just get over. First of all, it had to be something that compelled me, because I don't really write unless I feel compelled. And I know that sounds artsy fartsy. But I have to feel compelled by whatever that thing is at the core. And it's usually something that is happening. For me a lot of times something that's happening in the real world that I want to shine light on in the context of an epic love story. So those are the things that kind of get my wheels turning. But if I could find something like that, that is in a different era, it probably would be I don't know when it would be it might be in the 20s or it might be you know, it might be something like that probably is because I have I love a marriage of art and activism and a lot of what I write, and I would

Sarah MacLean 1:17:03 / #
Well Jazz Age New York, man.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:06 / #
Harlem Renaissance I mean, there's so many Yeah, totally.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:09 / #
Thats what I keep thinking about so I feel if I did venture into it'll probably be around there. There's a you know, because that's also you know, the explosion of literature and culture and just all the things that you know, that were amazing about that period. So

Sarah MacLean 1:17:29 / #
Well, I'll read whatever you write forever. So, Kennedy, thank you so much. Well, you come on again. This was so fun.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:39 / #
Oh my gosh. This was so fun.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:42 / #
It was amazing.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:42 / #
Thank you guys for having me. I'm such a fan and I was so nervous coming on you guys.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:49 / #
Well it was so fun.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:51 / #
I was like, they're so smart. I'm not even gonna know anything.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:54 / #
No, you were great. You knew all about Prince's many proteges, I was going to say backup singers and I was like that's not the word.

Kennedy Ryan 1:18:05 / #
If no one else wants to be Eric, is it Eric?

Sarah MacLean 1:18:09 / #
That's it you're his new favorite.

Thank you so much, everyone. This is our second to last episode of the season. Jen, tell everyone what they won next week. So I guess I talked about it already.

Jennifer Prokop 1:18:25 / #
Steve Ammidown from the Bowling Green Pop Culture Library is going to be here and we are going to go back and revisit. I'm actually super excited about this. We each read some of the books that were originally acquired by Vivian Stevens. And so we will be talking about some of those early historicals I'm sorry, early contemporaries in that essentially, in in, in series that she like founded and put into place and what those books were doing so we think it's gonna be a really cool episode, and we're gonna all enjoy.

Sarah MacLean 1:18:56 / #
For those of you who've been sort of, you know, curious, whenever we talked about Vietnam, there's a lot of discussion of Vietnam and next week, so, um, you know, get ready for that. And then we're taking some weeks off, but there will be new episodes or at least new content every week. While we are off, but we are back the first week of August with season three. And we are we have a plan. A plan now we have a plan but this is Fated Mates. You can find transcripts for many of our episodes, all the music that's in all the episodes merch and other cool stuff at Fated Mates.net I have a book out came out last week. You can listen you can find "Daring in the Duke" in bookstores, wherever books are sold and listen to last week's episode once you've read "Daring in the Duke" and there's lots of spoilers in there. But most importantly, Kennedy Ryan was with us this week. Her recent book is "Queen Move". It is really truly magnificent. One of the best reads of my You're so far, surely it will be one of the best reads of my year period. Kennedy, where can people find you?

Kennedy Ryan 1:20:07 / #
I'm on Instagram a lot at Kennedy Ryan one and I'm on Twitter and I have a website, you know, all the places, even if you just go to my Instagram and click the link, it takes you all to all the places.

Sarah MacLean 1:20:23 / #
So find Kennedy in all those places and read her books and have a great, have a great couple of weeks.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:35 / #
Hi, my name is Danielle. I am in California and I am a community college teacher. I teach us history. And the book book that blooded me was Jennifer Wilde "Loves Tendered Fury", which now I know is written by a man, that I stole it off my mother was bookcase and read it and then she was like oh, maybe this isn't a good thing for you to read because as you know its a little rapey and then I plowed through like Barbara Cartland and my grandmother's Harlequin series. And eventually I went to graduate school and my grad school friend introduced me to Loretta Chase. And so I'm a big fan of "Lord of Scoundrels". I love your podcast. I love romance novels. They're getting me through the Coronavirus and Trump's presidency. And please don't stop your podcast because I love it. Thanks bye.

S02.42: Unusual Historicals: Freewheeling with Joanna Shupe

This week it's one of our very faves, Joanna Shupe is back! Joanna has a new book out June 30th -- The Devil of Downtown -- which is basically perfection, so we're talking about why Gilded Age romance is the best, and why everyone should be reading unusual historicals (historicals set outside the Regency in England). Get ready, your TBR will groan after this one!

Oh, and did you know Sarah also has a book out June 30th? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!

As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

Oh, and did you know Sarah also has a book out June 30th? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!

As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

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Show Notes

• This is Joanna's second time on Fated Mates. The first was to discuss the enemies to lovers trope in Prisoner of My Desire and Kiss of a Demon King.

• Speaking of IAD: ever seen the IAD spreadsheet of Wonder, created be Sarah Hawley from the Wicked Wallflowers Podcast? Oh, and if you haven't read it, why not do it this summer? There's a group read going on right now on a subgroup of Sarah's Facebook Book Club!

• All about Homage, allusion, and allegory in case it's been a while since you were in an English class.

• Modern Library! Where are our romances?

• Sarah has a bunch of online events this summer.

• Many of the old American historicals support an ahistorical white settler, Manifest Destiny, story of Westward Expansion. Savage Thunder was a particularly problematic one, and Jen only read it for the "sex on a horse" scene. Maybe watch some Deadwood instead?

• Which came first? Eurocentrism or the Anglophiles?

• Gone With the Wind is just Lost Cause propaganda. Don't at us. Speaking of wars: The Napoleonic Wars took place during the Regency, but no one ever really talks about them in Regency romances.

• Romance's Regency blueprint was created by Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer.

• Nipple piercing has been around for a long time. Look for it in Joanna's next book.

• Joanna's fascination with The Gilded Age started with Edith Wharton. The time period is the setting for the Uptown Girls series, but the Gilded Age also has lots of uncomfortable parallels to today. If you're looking for more information about The Gilded Age, you should know that Jack Mulligan was based on real life mobster Paul Kelly. Joanna also recommends the following books: Low Life, The Gangs of New York, and Incredible New York. If you want to hear Joanna talk about The Gilded Age, join her Facebook Group on July 9th, 2020 for a virtual tour!

• If you haven't ever been to Ellis Island, it's excellent. It's a dynamic museum with tons of interesting facts about European immigration to New York. Speaking of history, if you're interested in learning about The Great Migration, the setting of A Champion's Heart, you should read The Warmth of Other Suns.

• Food is everyone's love language until the jello molds and casseroles start to arrive.

• You actually can read lots of books about the 60s.

• What do you mean you haven't seen The Hudsucker Proxy?

The Rogue of Fifth Avenue

The Prince of Broadway

The Devil of Downtown

Kiss of a Demon King

Prisoner of My Desire

Savage Thunder

The Lady Hellion

A Scot in the Dark

The French Lieutenant's Woman

Lions and Lace

American Pharoah

My Fair Concubine

Appetites and Vices

Mr. Impossible

The Black Hawk

The Spymaster's Lady

Under the Sugar Sun

An Extraordinary Union

Let Us Dream

Let Us Dream

A Champion's Heart

The King's Man

Free Fall

A Midnight Feast

Three to Love

S02.41: Audiobooks with Voice Actor Justine Eyre

This one’s for you, audio readers! We’re thrilled to have a freewheeling episode this week featuring the fantastically talented Justine Eyre, who has narrated Sarah’s last seven books! Sarah & Justine had never talked until this conversation, when we were able to ask all the questions we’ve always had about how audiobooks work, and what makes them so great. And stay tuned until the end of the episode, when you can hear the first two chapters of the audiobook of Daring & the Duke, available wherever audiobooks are sold, June 30th!

We might not be doing read alongs until August, but that doesn’t mean your TBR won’t still be groaning under the weight of our recommendations — we’ve got a bunch of rec episodes lined up for summer…

Oh, and did you know Sarah has a book out in two weeks? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!

As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

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Wicked and the Wallflower

Brazen and the Beast

Daring and the Duke

Show Notes

• Welcome Justine Eyre! Justine has narrated all of Sarah's books since Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover.

• Join Sarah's Old School Romance Book Club (OSRBC) on Facebook.

• Is Jane Eyre really "our favorite Jane"? Jane Austen would like a word.

• Justine talked a lot about how audiobooks are made, but here's another great explainer about the role of narrators and audiobook production.

• We recorded this before J. K. Rowling's latest terrible TERF rant, so take Jen's praise of Jim Dale's narrationwith a grain of salt.

• Justine mentioned Scott Brick as a mentor, and his site has a guide for those interested in becoming narrators.

S02.39: Childhood Friends to Adult Lovers

One of readers’ very favorite tropes this week…sometimes it’s friends-to-lovers and sometimes it’s friends-to-enemies-to-lovers and sometimes it’s friends-to-attempted-murder-to-lovers….we’re talking childhood friends to adult lovers and we will get to the bottom of it! Get ready for way too much music from The Saint. But first things first….Black Lives Matter.

Next week, we’re officially OFFICIALLY reading Judith McNaught’s A Kingdom of Dreams! Get ready for Sarah’s favorite historical of all time. It’s HAPPENING. Find A Kingdom of Dreams at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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Show Notes

• Looking to donate? Here's why supporting community bail funds is so important. The Minnesota Freedom Fund has raised millions of dollars for protestors who have been arrested, and here is an exhaustive list of other collectives and organizaions spearheaded by Black activists.

• Sarah donated to The Brooklyn Bail Fund and Jen to the Chicago Community Bail Fund. Find one in your city or state through the National Bail Fund Network.

• Bookshop.Org has a special link if you want to shop and support Black-owned Indie bookstores.

• Register to vote. And make sure you're still registered. You can also donate to Stacy Abrams's nonprofit, Fair Fight, which is dedicated to ensure voting access for all Americans..

• Jen's friend Susan is putting together a service to help parents keep kids busy this summer, it's called My Camp Box.

• Maybe you'd like to find some more unrequited love romances? And, by the way, Requited is an actual word.

• Jacob imprinting on a baby in the Twilight series was...a thing. But in the MG (middle grade) graphic novel Fake Blood, a bookish boy has a crush on the coolest girl in school, and she just happens to be a vampire slayer.

• Friend of the Pod @Bandherbooks led a read along of Again the Magic a few weeks ago.

• Sarah loves The Saint, a Val Kilmer classic. The author of that NYTimes profile, Taffy Brodesser-Akner also wrote a LitFic novel Jen loved called Fleishman is in Trouble.

• Next time you need details about the exact details of what's happening in a movie, TV show, video game, or book for your kids, check out Common Sense Media.

• Mulan II is a romance. Don't @ Sarah; Alvin and the Chimpunks is a not a romance. Don't @ Jen

• Preorder Daring and the Duke from WORD in Brooklyn and score a special edition yellow Fated Matessticker.

• Next up, A Kingdom of Dreams.

Scoring Off the Field by Naima Simone

Waking up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath

A Rogue by Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean

Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas

Fake Blood by Whitney Gardner

The Highwayman by Kerrigan Byrne

A Dark and Stormy Knight

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Aker

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught

S02.37: Partner in Danger romance

It’s one of our favorite tropes this week — get your pens out, because we’re talking about about a thousand books that tackle Partner in Danger! You know what we’re talking about: “Oh no! This person I sometimes bone is in danger! WAIT! I am feeling feelings!!!” It’s great. We’re going to talk about why. Sarah would like to apologize in advance, because it was really hot in her house when we recorded, and it scrambled her brain.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, it’s erotica week! We’re reading a book that Sarah loves, Nikki Sloane’s Three Little Mistakes, which we’ve talked about before on the podcast, but we want to deep dive on. Get Three Little Mistakes from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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Show Notes

• As of last week, going outside looks like a pretty safe thing to do.

• In fact, there is less central A/C in New York City. So watch out for the window units.

• Zoom fatigue is real.

• You know, there is quite a large assortment of "Dorothy in the Sheets, Blanche in the Sheets" merch on Etsy. In case you need to talk a call from your editor.

• We all struggle with the illusion of control.

• The trope of the damsel in distress has been around for a long, long time. So let's not fridge more women, mm'kay.

• Friend of the pod Adriana Herrera has some words of wisdom about writing trauma in romance. And also Jen and Adriana did a Facebook Live chat on the topic. (link & audio forthcoming).

• Pour one out for planes. And cars. And alcohol from mysterious European lands.

• In case you missed Blood Blow Jobs: please refer to Fated Mates Season One, Lothaire and Rune.

• Jen looked it up a map. In Reborn Yesterday, the heroine is dropped onto the Belt Parkway, not the Long Island Expressway. Still seems bad.

• Edward saved Bella from a careening van in the school parking lot. And from a bunch of drunk guys.

• The Most Dangerous Game is a pretty great short story, classically used to teach person v. person conflict.

• Morality Chain is a great trope. Look for an upcoming interstitial on this topic soon!

• In Pretty Woman, she rescues him right back.

• Preorder signed copies of Daring and the Duke from WORD bookstore in Brooklyn and you'll get swag from Sarah and this special yellow Fated Mates sticker.

Books referenced this week

Perfect by Judith McNaught

It Happened One Autumn by Lisa Kleypas

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe

The Devil of Downtown by Joanna Shupe

Lothaire by Kresley Cole

A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane

Reborn Yesterday by Tessa Bailey

Hunter by Emmy Chandler

Hold by Claire Kent

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Everything I Left Unsaid by M. O'Keefe

The Truth About Him by M. O'Keefe

Burn Down the Night by M. O'Keefe

Wait for It by M. O' Keefe

Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

The Rogue Not Taken by Sarah MacLean

American Queen by Sierra Simone

Hellfire Riders: Jack and Lily by Kati Wilde

The Secret she Keeps by Helenkay Dimon

The Paperbag Princess

No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean

Protecting the Heiress by Nana Malone

The Master by Kresley Cole

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S02.35: Freewheeling with Sophie Jordan: The "Taking the Finger" Explainer

Sophie Jordan is back again! She’s got a new book out, The Virgin and the Rogue, and she’s back with us to freewheel about old school romances, aphrodisiac plotlines and just what do we mean when we say “taking the finger?” It’s a delightful hour. You won’t regret it.

We love having you with us! Subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading a book that blooded Jen, Jenny Crusie’s Bet Me! Which you can get bundled with Welcome to Temptation (get this one — it’s $2. cheaper than getting Bet Me alone!) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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Show Notes

• Welcome Sophie Jordan, who was last on the pod talking about The Master. Come on five times and you get a Pink Ladies jacket.

• How are the Introverts faring during the pandemic?

• Chewy.com will deliver your cat litter and also massive bags of cat food.

• Annika Martin's Dark Mafia Prince inspired Sophie and Sarah to coin the phrase "taking the finger," which Jen has co-opted with glee. Not sure what counts as worthy of "taking the finger"? The Simone Scale TM is here for you.

• Jen's "control rods" metaphor is because she's a big old nuclear nerd.

• Aphrodesiac books we know of: The Virgin and the Rogue; Robin's Lovett's Planet of Desire series takes place on a planet where the atmosphere is an aphrodesiac; in A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha Harrison, the grandmother whips up a "come to me" potion; Johanna Lindsey's Secret Fire sounds bonkers; Wild Card is one by Lora Leigh that Joanna Shupe recommends. Does the shortbread in How the Dukes Stole Christmas count? What else have you got?

• Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune taught Jen everything she needed to know about the backbone of good criticism, everything else she's making up as she goes along.

• We talked about bodily autonomy in season one.

• Sarah talked about watching the trailer for this very terrifying 60s movie The Lady in a Cage.

• Order Sophie's signed books from Katy Budget Books and Sarah's from WORD in Brooklyn -- including pre-orders for Daring and the Duke.

• Oh, you want to read Sophie's story about a stablemaster and a maid? No horses were harmed, so it's fine.

The Virgin and the Rogue by Sophie Jordan

Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath

Dark Mafia Prince by Annika Martin

Wicked Mafia Prince by Annika Martin

Savage Mafia Prince by Annika Martin

Dreams of a Dark Warrior by Kresley Cole

Secret Fire by Johanna Lindsey

Toxic Desire by Robin Lovett

The Duke Buys a Bride by Sophie Jordan

A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha Harrison

The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe

The Red by Tiffany Reisz

The Rose by Tiffany Reisz

Aftershock by Jill Sorenson

Judgment Road by Christine Feehan

The Duke Effect by Sophie Jordan

S02.33: Enemies to Lovers with Tasha Harrison

Tasha Harrison is joining us this week to talk about an old reliable trope — enemies to lovers! This is one of those that we return to again and again — and of course, since it’s a Pandemic, we have to ask…if you’re into enemies to lovers and you haven’t read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, what are you waiting for? Season 1 is here for you! Otherwise, we’re freewheeling with Tasha on everything from the best Chris to the real inspiration for The Wire, so strap in. It’s a ride!

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Sandra Brown! Jen and Sarah will be reading Texas! Chase, but it’s dealers’ choice! Pick your favorite old Sandra Brown or ask us for a rec on Twitter or Instagram! Maybe you want That Rana Look? Or Slow Heat in Heaven? Or French Silk? You can find them wherever books are sold (but the Texas! series isn’t in ebook format yet, sadly) — and don’t forget your favorite indie!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha Harrison

The Bad in Each Other by Tasha Harrison

The Opposite of You by Rachel Higginson

Grumpy Jake by Melissa Blue

Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren

The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa

Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

Everything's Better with Lisa by Lucy Eden

Chaser by Kylie Scott

The Thing about Love by Julie James

Show Notes

• The internet is so slow.

• Remember that time when Michelle from Destiny's Child felland then got right back up?

• The Fraggle Rock Trash Heap.

• Jen wrote about Enemies to Lovers for Kirkus.

• Apparently, it's called a Proprietary Eponyms when a brand name becomes a verb or common noun.

• The question of whether or not fiction should be "timeless" is one that authors deal with in different ways.

• Robert Redford was a snack. Kevin Costner was named The Sexiest Man Alive, but Jen thinks the only time he was truly sexy was in Bull Durham.

• Can there ever be a definitive ranking of the Chrises? Jen likes Pine, Sarah likes "the Australian one," and Tasha isn't interested in any of them. Sarah has Chris Evans blindness, but Tasha points out that he's got a little of the wild one in him. Check him checking out this reporter's boots.

• We just had Christina Lauren on our show! Beautiful Bastard is better than Fifty Shades in a lot of ways, especially for that elevator scene. Either way, it's a good illustration of the myriad problems with a workplace romance.

• Speaking of Lucy Eden, she and Jen had THE STRANGEST thing happen at the 2019 RWA conference.

• Babies are complicated in romance and complicated in real life. Maybe what we're really going to see is a boom in "marriage in trouble" romance. Kids are complicated, too, especially if you buy the wrong poop bags.

• Tasha's dad inspired the character of Norman Wilson on The Wire! The Baltimore paper The Afro-American can be read online. The real life Baltimore Mayor he worked for was Martin O'Malley.

• These Italian Mayors want you to stay inside. If only all the American governors and mayors were the same. Cardi-B is worried about Coronavirus-- so stay home and stay safe!

S02.31: Forced Proximity romances with Christina Lauren

This week, we’ve got two tremendous guests and we’re coming to you from four different time zones! Coronavirus silver lining — time has literally no meaning any longer. We’re talking to the brilliant duo Christina Lauren about their new book, The Honey Don’t List, and forced proximity romances — which are a crowd favorite…or at least were a crowd favorite until we were all forced into forced proximity! 

Next week, we’re reading Victoria Dahl’s  Taking the Heat. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!)

We hope you’re staying safe! 

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The Honey Don't List by Christina Lauren

Beautiful Stranger by Christina Lauren

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Roomies by Christina Lauren

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

Billionaire's Bargain by Naima Simone

Black Tie Billionaire by Naima Simone

Blame it on the Billionaire by Naima Simone

Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Haven by Rafe Weatherspoon

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

Lord Dashwood Missed Out by Tessa Dare

Whiteout by Adriana Anders

Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole

The Final Six

The Martian by Andy Weir

Show Notes

• Welcome Christina Lauren! Check out their new release, a forced proximity romance called The Honey Don't List. Perhpas, like Sarah, you need to understand the "honey do" list.

• If you're worried about zombies running, there's an app for that.

• Christina and Lauren said their cover reminds them of Lizzo's big inflatable butt at the 2019 AMAs.

• Jen wrote a Kirkus column about why "only one bed" is one of the most delightful subsets of the "forced proximity" trope.

• Amanda Diehl reviews for BookPage and also for Smart Bitches Trashy Books. Here is her inteview with Christina Lauren.

• Sarah mentioned the great New York City Blackout of 2003, but it turns out a field in Ohio caused the problem.

• "He is poison to everyone but her" is of course a reference back to Sarah's favorite IAD book, Sweet Ruin.

• All about wheelwrights.

• Wondering what it's really like for scientists on Antarctica is no place you'd want to be trapped, and certainly no place for a danger bang.

• Outbreak and Contagion are the top movies on Netflix right now.

• You can order The Honey Don't List with signed bookplates from Books a Million, not sure directly how to order from the one in Hunstville, AL, but try calling the store. Check out the audiobook of the Honey Don't List, starring Patti Murin and Jon Root.

• While you're whiling away the hours in self-isolation, don't forget to check out our Spotify playlist, which includes the full versions of every song we've ever used on Fated Mates -- or head over and watch all the music videos of all those songs on our site!

S02.29: Health Care Workers in Romance Novels

We are very pro health care workers these days — we love all of you…doctors, nurses, EMTs, home health aides…if you know how to work a stethoscope, we’re into you. This week, we’re taking about some of our favorite medical romances. Listen for Jen getting thoughtful, and Sarah getting wildly inappropriate. We’re all just doing our best.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine, and we cannot WAIT. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon (free in Kindle Unlimited!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!).

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The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster

Passionate Rivals by Radclyffe

The Virgin and the Rogue

Jeremiah by Jayce Ellis

When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James

All Chained Up by Sophie Jordan

Acute Reactions by Ruby Lang

Hard Knocks by Ruby Lang

Tempest by Beverly Jenkins

Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire

Pleasure Unbound by Larissa Ione

Lover Unbound by JR Ward

Medicine Man by Saffron Kent

Wrong by Jana Aston

The Doctor by Nikki Sloan

Show Notes

• As we all shelter in place, romance twitter has been very entertaining. Julia Kelly posted a thread where she posed her pets as romance novel covers, and everyone had fun with it. Sarah also loved this one about a dog who howls along with the Law and Order theme song.

• We forgot to tell you last week when we talked about Devil's Bride that Stephanie Laurens has a new book out, The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster. We also have added information about how to pronounce Honoria and details about peach silk.

• Now is the time to get the BookBub daily romance email. Here's Sarah's Bookbub page.

• The nurse and doctor books were the backbone of early Mills and Boon romances, and the forerunner of the modern Harlequin Medical Romance; whereas Americans often find big, soapy hospital dramas on TV.

• Budleigh Salterton looks like a very nice place to hang out unless you are a bored American 12 year old.

• The roots of American and British romance are different, as proven by this absolutely WRONG LitHub romance essay. (They're wrong about romance a lot.)

• Sarah has talked about Radclyffe and the origin of Bold Strokes Books, but many of her romances are about doctors or set in hospitals.

• Jen doesn't really care too much about job details. Sorry not sorry.

• No one likes a Bloodletter. We want our historical doctors to be foreward thinking. Or as Eloisa James does in When Beauty Tamed the Beast, use a modern TV character like House as model for a hero.

• In Tempest, Jen spoke out inequities in acess to medical care for black patients, and that's still true today.

• If you're looking to see some "don't fuck your doctor" romances that definitely fall somewhere on the Simone Scale. Wrong by Jana Aston and Medicine Man by Saffron Kent.

• Jurgen Klopp wants you to put your hands away, and this amazing thread by comedian Laura Lexx and support all the Liverpool fans out there (especially Jen's brother).

• Jen's cool TikTok project is up and running, she's interviewing YA authors and hoping to get kids to read while they are sheltering in place.

• You can order buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordandene.

• Next time, we'll be reading Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

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S02.27: Sickbed Scenes in Romance with Kate Clayborn

Sarah has the flu! She wants you to know it’s absolutely terrible and you should all get your flu shots even though she got one and still got the flu but vaccines are good for you. Also, we all want you washing your hands and air high-fiving your friends because it’s wild out there. But you are IN FOR A TREAT this week — as our fave Kate Clayborn is pinch hitting for Sarah, and we’re talking romance sickbed scenes this week! If we have to be hyper focused on sickness, shouldn’t there be yearning and vigiling and a veiled death threat against a doctor (don’t threaten doctors)?

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.

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Show Notes

• Welcome Kate Clayborn! She joined Jen this week since Sarah was down and out with the flu.

• Kate loves a sick bed scene. When we talk about acute vs chronic illness, the sick bed scene is acute rather than chronic. And, as Jen points out, these are almost always about physical rather than mental illness.

• Some of Jen's favorite sickbed scenes are in Indigo by Beverly Jenkins and Managed by Kristen Callihan -- but we've talked about those books already! Same thing with The Master by Kresley Cole.

• Kate is a lot more interested in work of all kinds than Jen. It's okay. We're still friends. We even made a hashtag, #Claykop, so we can find all our discussions.

• We recorded this on Sunday March 8th, so who knows what the coronavirus situation will be by the time you listen to this.

• Andie Christopher was the first to bring the I'm Baby meme to our attention when she joined us for the cinnamon roll episode.

• Jen and Kate both suffer from insomnia. Sarah sleeps like a rock.

• Jen was procrastinating about her report cards--but they're all done now, it's fine.

• The bedside vigil is kissing cousin to Jen's cold storage fetish, and the way Kate loves it when a hero suffers.

• Endomitriosis is no joke.

• The man flu phenomenon.

• Wash your hands! Don't touch your face!

• We'll be back next week with Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens.

Indigo by Beverly Jenkins

The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

The Master by Kresley Cole

House Rules by Ruby Lang

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

S02.26: Women's Friendship in Romance

We’re talking about women’s friendship in romance this week — how it works, why it’s important, and why we want all our romance heroines to have a squad.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.

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Show Notes

• We know we shouldn't make the gallows humor jokes about coronavirus, but we did. We hope there won't be a pandemic, but if there is, get your TBRs ready. Jen's excited it won't have anything to do with RITA books.

• Have you preordered Daring and the Duke yet?

• Daddy is kind of sexy, but Mike Pence really does call his wife mother, and that's never gonna be sexy.

• We love Henry Cavill in season 1 of The Witcher. Just watch this video of them kissing. Jen stopped watching when they broke up in episode 7, and Netflix really wants her to finish.

• The idea for this week's episode came from listener Mary Ann Harlan who wondered, "Do you have an episode on how female friendships in romance disrupt the patriarchy? Or even just how female friendships work in a good way in romance?" I mean, probably just listen to season 1 where we talked about the witches and valkyries.

• Jen wrote about women's friendship in romance for Galentine's Day. So if you're looking for more recommendations, check it out.

• Some of the early proto-women friendships in historicals are Lisa Kleypas's Wallflowersand Penelope in the Bridgerton series.

• Adult friendships are important even if you don't have a best friend.

• Deficit modeling is a kind of thinking that assumes people can't move forward due to deficits or shortcomings. It's a phrase used in education that blames students and their families for lack of school readiness; for women, it's used when discussing the way they assert themselves.

• It would be really weird if your ex started dating Lady Gaga.

• It can be hard to be friends when the other person has more money than you.

• In abusive relationships, the abuser often separates and isolates the victim from their friends and family in order to control them.

• The Outsiders by SE Hinton is a really beloved book. One day, Jen's going to write a think piece about how it's all about American identity.

• Every woman loves the song "I Will Survive." We don't make the rules.

• Linda would definitely have your back, so follow her on Twitter if you're not already.

• Looking for new buttons from Kelly? Jen loves Danger Bang! while Sarah is Living Every Week like it's Rune Week. The full set of t-shirts and totes is available now from Jordandene.

• Wash your hands! Stop touching your face!

• Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens is next week.

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

Dear Enemy by Kristen Callihan

Reborn Yesterday by Tessa Bailey

Romancing Mr. Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

Beginner's Luck by Kate Clayborn

Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn

Best of Luck by Kate Clayborn

A Scot in the Dark

A Princess in Theory

A Duke by Default

Roller Girl by Vanessa North

The Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

The Unleashing by Shelley Laurenston

The Undoing by Shelley Laurenston

The Unyielding by Shelley Laurenston

Falling Into Forever by Phyllis Bourne

A Mistletoe Affair by Farrah Rochon

Eve of Passion by AC Arthur

Burn Down the Night by M. O'Keefe

Wait for It by M. O'Keefe

Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone

Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens

S02.24: Quick and Dirty Romance

It’s February and it’s winter and it’s grey and dark and we’re all just looking for some books that are quick, dirty and delicious. Or, at least, Sarah & Jen are. If you are, too, this is the week for you!

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!

Next week, we’re reading the Queen of Dirty Talk! Sarah and Jen both love Tessa Bailey — so we’ll be talking about our two favorites of her books, Asking for Trouble (Sarah’s) and Protecting What’s His (Jen’s). Find them at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.

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Show Notes

• Sarah had boozy brunch with the RITA Writer’s Room—Nisha Sharma, LaQuette, Adriana Herrera, Andie Christopher, Alexis Daria, and Joanna Shupe (Sierra Simone & Tracey Livesay weren't there). You should maybe check out this awesome video of them in all their slow motion glory.

• Jen didn’t know what ASMR is either.

• Valentine’s Day is Go Week for Sarah. Jen wrote about Galentine’s Day for Kirkus. But one thing we can all agree on: Anna Karenina isn’t a fucking romance. Getting hit by a train does not qualify!

• The 2 for 1 rule: in a male/female romance, she comes twice for every time he comes.

• If you’re in Chicago, you can see Fated Mates Live at Spring Fling, and at KissCon, it’ll be a podcast ménage special with us, the Wicked Wallflowers, and Heaving Bosoms podcast.

• What will Craven Day 2021 bring? Stay tuned.

• Sarah’s friend Rachel Hawkins told Sarah to read A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane, which is a pen name for Meljean Brook, author of The Iron Duke. Is there danger banging? Yes. Is there vengeance banging? Also yes.

• Jen read and loved White Out by Adriana Anders, which is a romantic suspense novel that takes place in Antarctica. It’s cold, but they still manage to danger bang.

• Speaking of Danger Banging, Jen’s favorite is in the first of the Kinky Bank Robbers series by Annika Martin. It's honestly more like heat-stroke banging.

• Jen and Sarah don’t think a quick and dirty read has to be InstaLust, but it does have to get right to the inciting incident.

• Sarah recommends London Hale (a pen name for authors Ellis Lee and Brighton Walsh) as a reliable quick and dirty read. Start with The DILF (if you're ok with taboo) or Talk Dirty To Me (if you'd prefer something a bit further left on the Simone Scale).

• Adopt don’t shop when it comes to real pet stores.

• Breastfeed if you can and if you want to, but if you can’t that’s fine, too. Even if you live in Fucking Berkeley. Or the Berkeley of Brooklyn.

• Some other of our favorite quick and dirty reads that are mostly in space: Grace Goodwin’s Interstellar Brides and Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians. But if you’re reading the Ice Planet Barbarians,please listen to our friend Dani’s Ice Planet Pod. It’s great.

• More space romances: Laurann Donner’s New Species series, or Cavas, the one that appeared recently on the USA Today Bestseller list (not the New York Times, Jen misspoke) is one from the Vorge Series. Cynthia Sax has a whole cyborg series. Jen also really liked The Grabbed series by Lolita Lopez.

• What we're trying to say is that these books are the romance equivalent of The Fast and the Furious series--which is the pinnacle of Jen's favorite movie genre, "Handsome men blow things up."

• Finally, check out Brill Harper’s alphamallow series. But Jen’s favorite was Altogether, which is very, very hot. Yum. This Mr. Plow is not quite as hot; unless your name is Marge, of course.

• Buy buttons and stickers from Kelly and t-shirts and totes from Jordandene.

A Heart of Blood and Ashes

Whiteout by Adriana Anders

Loving the Secret Billionaire by Adriana Anders

The Hostage Bargain by Annika Martin

The DILF by London Hale

Fury by Laurann Dohner

Mastered by her Mates by Grace Goodwin

Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon

Releasing Rage by Cynthia Sax

Grabbed by Vicious by Lolita Lopez

All at Once by Brill Harper

Blue Collar Bad Boys by Brill Harper

S02.22: Sarah's on Deadline AMA

We promised we’d get to the rest of our Holiday AMA questions eventually, and Sarah’s on deadline, so this seemed like the perfect week to do it! Join us for a freewheeling hour during which Sarah cannot remember Tessa Thompson’s name, we talk about how much we’d like to meet Sandra Brown, and how romance really does have something for everyone, including an entire series about romance during power outages.

Also, we forgot to mention that Tuesday was Derek Craven Day! Lots of fun was had by all goofballs who joined us on the Internet to celebrate, and Lisa Kleypas herself even got involved! If you haven’t read Dreaming of You, you can get it for $2.99 right now in ebook! Also, do not miss this incredible Craven Day thread on Twitter from Steve Ammindown and the Browne Pop Culture Library. And if you want Derek Craven t-shirts? Those exist now!

Next week, the book is in and we’re back in business! Lorraine Heath’s Waking Up With the Duke is our next read—a book that blooded Sarah. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.

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Show Notes

Question 1: Weird but true: the more specific the request, the more likely we are to come up with a recommendation. So if you just need "enemies to lovers" and you've already read Her Best Worst Mistake, or "friends to lovers" and you've already read Scoring Off the Field, then you just need to google it.

Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

Scoring Off the Field by Naima Simone

Toxic Desire by Robin Lovett

Question 2: Who are we fancasting? These beautiful people: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Henry Cavill, Tessa Thompson, and Tom Hardy. Also, listening to Henry Cavill and Tom Hardy grunt is one of our favorite things.

Question 3: Who do we want to have lunch or tea with? Kresley Cole, obviously! Sarah said Joanna Lindsey. Jen says Julie Garwood. We'd both love to meet Sandra Brown. Jen still can't believe the people she's met, and hopes she was cool like Yolanda.

Question 4: Do we have recommendation for lesbian and f/f romance? Is it more difficult to find? Check out Bold Strokes Books. strands of f/f, and others have different roots. We will keep looking for some history of f/f romance and link to them if we find one. But in the meantime, YA author, critic, and expert Malinda Lo wrote about "The Invisible Lesbian" in YA, and it's right on point and worth your time. But we do have lots of great f/f romances that we love in the photo array below.

Mangos and Mistletoe by Adriana Herrera

Hookin Up by MJ Williamz

Eyes Like Those by Melissa Brayden

Fire on the Ice by Tamsen Parker

My Lady's Lover by Nicola Davidson

Bound with Love by Megan Mulry

Once Ghosted Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole

Hamilton's Battalion

Being Hospitable by Meka James

All About Us by Radclyffe

Roller Girl by Vanessa North

Hold Me by Courtney Milan

Question 5: What about steampunk? Is that ever coming back? We don't know! But all we can do is recommend these ones we do know. Sorry!

Question 6: What is like Harry Potter for grown-ups? Burn For Me by Illona Andrews (Jen also liked the Kate Daniels series). That's it. That's the answer.

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Firelight by Kristen Callihan

Gunpowder Alchemy by Jeanne Lin

A Clockwork Heart by Heidi Cullinan

Strangely Beautiful

Question 7: Books with power outages? Read this Naima Simone series called Blackout Billionares.

Question 8: How to get started with reviewing and NetGalley? You should look at lists that big reviewing clearinghouses make--Kirkus (Jen writes that one!), Booklist, and PW. Just trying to look at some of these lists will give you a sense of what books will be coming out. The Book Queen is keeping a list of 2020 new releaes. But Estelle from Forever Romance wrote a great piece about how to get started with NetGalley.

The Billionaire's Bargain by Naima Simone

Black Tie Billionaires by Naima Simone

Blame it on the Billionaire by Naima Simone

Question 9: Looking for hardcore enemies to lovers with kids in the mix. Jen recommends Wait For It by Molly O'Keefe. Lord of Scoundrels is great for this, too!

Quesiton 10: Books that made us literally laugh out loud. Jen recommends I Think I Might Love You by Christina C Jones. Sarah recommends It Takes Two by Jenny Holiday. Christina has a huge backlist, and Jenny's newest book, Mermaid Inn, came out last week.

Question 11: Looking for books with a heist plot and polyamory. Jen thinks Katrina Jackson has cornered the market on this request and we have all been blessed by it.

Wait for It by M. O'Keefe

Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase

I Think I Might Love You by Christina C Jones

It Takes Two by Jenny Holiday

Grand Theft NYE by Katrina Jackson

Pink Slip by Katrina Jackson

Quesiton 12: A question if there are any romances with a Muslim hero and heroine with on-page sex. Jen couldn't think of any, but asked author Farah Heron. Farah also couldn't think of one, but we do recommend her book The Chai Factor.

Quesiton 13: Jackie from Elyria Ohio (where Jen went to high school!) is looking for historical with a murder and a twist. We recommend Kelly Bowen and Sarah's book No Good Duke Goes Unpunished.

Quesiton 14: Sarah is looking for books with virgin heroes--but hot!

The Chai Factor by Farah Heron

Duke of my Heart by Kelly Bowen

No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean

Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole

Joy to the Earl by Nicola Davidson

Loving the Secret Billionaire by Adriana Anders

The Game Plan by Kristen Callihan

Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

Question 15: A book with a grovel so unconvincing that the character has to do it again. Oh, we have suggestions but also you should check out Jen's treatise on groveling.

The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe

Lady Luck by Kristen Ashley

Where You Least Expect by Kaye Blue

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas

Nobody's Baby but Mine

Quesiton 16: What are some museums we love? Sarah talked about these in England: The Museum of London, The Foundling Museum, The Soane's Museum, and The British Library. She also loves the Museum of Sex in New York, and the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. Jen doesn't research, but in Chicago, she recommends The Art Institute and the National Museum of Mexican Art. If you're ever in Cleveland, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is so cool, and in Houston, check out the most meditative place Jen has ever been, The Rothko Chapel. (when this aired in Feb 2020, the chapel was temporarily closed for renovations! Please check the website).

S02.21: Old School Category Romance

This one is a RIDE, you guys! We wanted to do something really fun this week—something that would lighten the mood for us and for you. So, strap in, because we’re talking about our favorite Old School Category romances today! We’ve got something for everyone — wolves and dragons and marine biologists and single moms and more wolves!

A word of caution this week — we didn’t reread these books before we recorded, and they’re all published in the 80s and 90s, so tread lightly if you decide to read them…and let us know just how wrong we got the plots! (Just kidding, we’re for sure rereading all of them now).

Next week was supposed to be the deep dive of Lorraine Heath, but Sarah has a book due, so we’re putting it on hold—but stay tuned, because we’ve definitely got something coming! Waking Up With the Duke will definitely be the next read, though: Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.

---

Show Notes

• If you're looking for a real cool summer sleepaway camp, check out Camp Kupugani. They'll pick your kid up at O'Hare!

• You can order girl scout cookies online now. Good luck to all of us.

• If you're in Chicago, I guess you could go to Navy Pier; But if you're in Peru, you should definitely go to Machu Picchu.

• That American Dirt story is real wild. This review by Myriam Gurba is amazing, and Vox has you covered with an entire explainer. Remezcla has better recommendations for books about the border.

• If you want to know what makes something a category romance, Love in Panels has a very good explainer. Also, if you're interested in Harlequin covers now, Jen interviewed Tony Horvath for Kirkus. He's the creative director in charge of all of Harlequin series romance. You can also check out Kelly Faircloth's Instagram, where she posts pictures of her favorite old school romance covers.

• Buying old category romances is easy. Check out ThriftBooks for the best prices and best shipping (Amazon charges for individual items from sellers), but also Better World Books. And if you're lucky enough, local thrift stores and used book stores. For more recent remaindered books, try Book Outlet.

• We mentioned so many category series today. Check out this blog by Steve Imes with all the category series names and dates, and FictionDB for listings of books by series.

• Sandra Brown wrote as Erin St. Claire and also Rachel Ryan. She was an 80s powerhouse who still writes romantic suspense. The book Sarah mentioned was Honor Bound, but Jen was thinking of a similar book called Hawk O'Toole's Hostage. Ope.

• Jen reread and reviewed several of her first category romances for the Book Queen. The one about Pink Satin compares the book to the Harvey Weinstein case. It's honestly shocking how little has changed for women in the workplace.

• White Satin was an early Iris Johansen about figure skating, but that author is also for being the book that inspired the "Who Did it Better on a Horse" post. And at the end of the episode, Sarah mentions that she had a house for sale if you're on the market, BECAUSE IT'S REALLY A MANSION.

• Brad Pitt is old and still working because of the patriarchy.

• Deep Tracks is the name of an XM radio station that plays B sides and less popular songs, which is very on brand for the books in this episode.

• Maybe you'd like to read those goodreads reviews for The Lady and the Dragon. And here is the obituary for the author, Regan Forest.

• Jen loved Barbara Boswell. She was a fan of the Brady/Ramsey series where a bunch of sisters married a bunch of brothers. And then this one that is Brady Bunch fanfic. Eight is enough, I swear! Was this all Roe v. Wade blowback?

• You actually can still get Harlequin subscriptions, but the best current Romance subscription is definitely the Bawdy Bookworms box.

• In Demon Lover, the heroine thinks the hero is a coyote, but he's really an undercover DEA agent. Jen asked the Smart Bitches to help her find it in 2018, when it was available as an eBook, but it isn't anymore! All you need to know is that these 80s covers celebrated the Tom Selleck mustache in a big way.

• Warrior was last in the McKenzie-Blackthorn series by Elizabeth Lowell. Light a candle for Utah, who never got his book. Ao3 needs to get on it! #JusticeForUtah

• Virginity is a construct! Also, here's where the hymen is in case you need to know.

• Sarah's on deadline, so who knows what's going to happen next week. Buy some stickers, buttons, or t-shirts to tide yourself over while we figure it out.

• Please check out the photo array below for books we referenced. You may remember that we recorded an entire episode on category romances with Andie Christopher, but Jen screwed up the recording. By then, we moved on with Andie to cinnamon rolls. But Andie recommended Driven by Fate by Tessa Bailey, and Jen talked about Every Road to You by Phyllis Bourne. Sarah proably talked about Hot Touch, but Jen can't really remember...we'll just think of that episode as the one that got away.

Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn

Black Lyon by Jude Deveraux

Perfect by Judith McNaught

Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown

Pink Satin by Jeanne Grant

Love's Encore by Sandra Brown

White Satin by Iris Johansen

Hawk O'Toole's Hostage

Listen for the Drummer by Joan Elliott Pickart

The Lady and the Dragon by Regan Forest

Playing Hard to Get by Barbara Boswell

Darling Obstacles by Barbara Boswell

Hot Touch by Deborah Smith

Demon Lover by Kathleen Creighton

Outlaw by Elizabeth Lowell

Granite Man by Elizabeth Lowell

Warrior by Elizabeth Lowell

Fever by Elizabeth Lowell

A Woman without Lies by Elizabeth Lowell

Chain Lightning by Elizabeth Lowell

Secret Heir Seduction

Black Tie Billionaire

Hostile Pursuit by Juno Rushdan

Driven by Fate by Tessa Bailey

Every Road to You by Phyllis Bourne

Sex, Straight Up by Kathleen O'Reilly

Royally Claimed by Marie Donovan

Lovers in the Afternoon by Carole Mortimer

This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen

S02.19: So You Want to Read a Historical

We’re launching a Special Romance Report here at Fated Mates — a series of interstitials introducing readers to the subgenres of Romance (there are seven!) — we’re talking about why they exist, what they’re trying to do, what to expect from them, what might have readers hesitating, and where to start! This week, we’re starting with Sarah’s favorite subgenre — Historicals! We’re talking about why they’re sexy, progressive, feminist, and very not boring.

Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!

Next week, we’re talking Kristen Callihan’s Managed, which you may recognize as “SCOTTIE,” which is how Jen refers to it because she loves him so much. We think you’ll love it, too, and if you have time, read the next in the series, Fall, which is one of Sarah’s top 10 romances ever. Read Managed at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.

---

Show Notes

• RWA imploded and it's such a long, complicated story, but this article from Vox and this timeline by Claire Ryan are what will catch you up.

• Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start: there are seven romance subgenres: historical, contemporary, romantic suspense, paranormal, inspirational, erotic romance, and YA.

• When it comes to the grandmother of historicals, don't forget that Jane Austen was writing contemporaries.

• Johanna Lindsey died in October, and her family announced it publicly in December. The New York Times obituary was trash, so read the Washington Post or Entertainment Weekly one instead. Check out the Twitter hastag #MyFirstJohanna for people's stories about their first book by Lindsey (including Sarah's), and maybe listen to our episode on Gentle Rogue.

• Support Farrah Rochon for an organ in her sister's memory. And come this summer, buy her upcoming book The Boyfriend Project.

• In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah wrote about what his mother said about her second husband wanting to put her in a cage: For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”

• Mary Wollstonecraft is all the evidence you need that feminists have been around for a long time.

• Jen recommends In the Dream House by Carmen Marie Machado, which is about domestic abuse in a queer relationship. The quote from Jose Estaban Munoz is, "When the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper representing a straight present."

• When talking about The Doctor's Discretion by EE Ottoman, Sarah is very excited about a book called The Butchering Art by medical historian Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, whose sometimes very gross Instagram is amazing. Doctor James Berry was trans man who lived and worked in London in the mid 1800s.

• If you haven't listened to our episode about Beverly Jenkins's Indigo what are you waiting for?

• Avon Red was a short-lived series, but then again, so was The Red Shoe Diaries. Sarah recommends On These Silken Sheets by Sabrina Darby from that series.

• Whores of Yore is a great blog, and definitely proves Jen's assertion that as soon as someone invented cameras, someone else wanted to get naked in front of it. Dr. Kate Lister, who founded the site, has a book called A Curious History of Sex coming out Feb 2020.

• Next time you are in New York, visit The Museum of Sex. Sarah recommends Hallie Rubenhold's The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris' List (which out of print, but available in audio, and is the book Harlots is based on). Hallie Rubenhold's The Five is not out of print, and also excellent--it is very not a romance, and about the victims of the Ripper killings.

• KJ Charles is so ridiculously good. Sarah's favorites are Wanted a Gentleman and Think of England and Jen loves Band Sinister. Nicola Davidson's Surrey Sexual Freedom Society series is fantastic. Alyssa Cole's An Extraordinary Union is amazing. Monica McCarty wrote a historical series that imagines Highlanders as being kind of like Navy SEALs. Sarah talked about one of the books in the series, The Arrow on the Scotland interstitial. Honestly, we talked about so many authors, so just click on any one of the images in the photo gallery below for some of our favorites by those authors.

• But stickers and buttons from Kelly, tees and bags from Jordandene, take our reading challenge, and answer our survey.

romances we mentioned

The Arrow

Band Sinister

Bewildered Bride

Black Lyon

Dare to Love a Duke

devil's submission

Doctor's Discretion

The Duke Who Ravished Me

An Extraordinary Union

Gentle Rogue

Heart and Hand

In Bed with the Devil

Indigo

the Jade Temptress

Lawrence Browne Affair

the mayor's mission

My Fair Duchess

My Lady's Lover

On These Silken Sheets

simply sexual

Think of England

The Virgin and the Rogue

Watned, a Gentleman

When a Scot Ties the Knot

nonfiction we mentioned

Born a Crime

The Butchering Art

The Covent Garden Ladies

A Curious History of Sex

In the Dream House

The Five

S02.17: Pegging Romance

It’s the start of a new year, Romance is on fire, and we all need a palate cleanser, so we’re doing it right, with the bonus episode that was an item in the Romance for RAICES auction, hosted by Love in Panels. The bidding didn’t go quite the way we expected but we are honestly thrilled, because we were a tiny part of raising $23,000 for refugee services and immigrant families on the border. Please donate early and often to RAICES and The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.

Please welcome friend of the pod, Sierra Simone, for our very special Pegging Episode (And thank you to the Pegging Collective for your generous donation, and for being wonderful listeners)!

Auspicious beginning, right? Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!

We’re back next week (WE PROMISE!) with Born in Ice, by none other than the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Read Born in Ice at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.

Tied Score

Learn My Lesson

Rogue Desire

Cards of Love: The Moon

Show Notes

• Jen misquoted a famous scene in Chinatown; it's actually "my sister and my daughter." Yikes.

• Pretty sure if you're fancasting us into this clip from Grease about the Pink Ladies, Sierra is Rizzo.

• We've talked a lot about Sierra's books on the podcast, but it was on the Small Town Romance interstitial that Sarah joked all of Sierra's books take place in Menage County, Kansas. [14]: https://twitter.com/JenReadsRomance/status/1212092587114467329 The Romance for RAICES auction was the brainchild of Suzanne from Love in Panels and raised TWENTY THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS! You should definitely support her blog and patreon if you can. The crisis on the border is ongoing and getting worse. Please continue to support romance's teams at RAICES and The Young Center.

• We were going to rickroll you by talking about Peggy Sue Got Married and pirate romances, but we're nice that way and didn't. FWIW, Jen still thinks the plot of Peggy Sue Got Married is haunting.

• Sierra is also, of course, the founder, owner, and operator of [The Simone Scale][14], which does not include teabagging even, but has been, because she loves us, updated to include pegging. The image is on our website in show notes.

• We did a lot of research for this episode!

• Everyone wants the right pegging playlist, and of course there's one on Spotify. What a world! Besides Ariana Grande's Dangerous Woman, we offer up for your consideration Back It Up, Boys by Peaches and Behind the Wheel by Depeche Mode.

• Here are some Sierra Simone recommended [toys ][24]and [harnesses][25]. She says of the toys, "The small is VERY gently sized and some men may feel more comfortable with a toy is that isn’t a hyper-realistic reproduction of a cock." [24]: https://www.tantusinc.com/collections/dildos/products/silk-small [25]: https://www.myspare.com/product/joque

• Elia Winters is a Fated Mates favorite, and we want to thank her for her help thinking through the implicatons for gender essentialism and cisnormativity in this discussion. Buy her books! Her latest Three For All has pegging.

• Sierra mentioned "that law about gas expanding to fill a space" -- well, I phoned Jonathan, a friend who teaches chemistry, and he says that's called entropy or Boyles Law of Kinetic Molecular Theory. Learn more about it here from Professor Dave, a Jonathan-approved chemistry youtube instructor.

• Samhain and Ellora's Cave (which was especially messy) were two earlier and now shuttered publishers of erotic romance.

• Jen Porter wrote a great twitter thread about erotic romance and character development.

• That's What She Said.

• Sarah mentioned "the RITA entry window" and goddamn if that's not a bitter pill to swallow right now. She's sorry.

• A little about what it means to be allosexual.

• Check out Roan Parrish's short story A Good Old Fashioned Chanukah Pegging, starring Ginger and Christopher from Small Change.

• Everyone knows you need a flared base on your butt plugs, or at least anyone who follows Jenny Nordbak knows.

• Romance as sex ed is complicated, but Scarlteen is on the job, and Teen Vogue would never steer you wrong.

• The Pegging Song that Adriana sent us from Twitter is amazing, and we want to thank @shutupaida for being so gracious about letting us play it during the podcast. Also, be sure to watch Big Mouth on Netflix, because she's writing for it now!

• I guess Katee Robert isn't the only one staging elaborate scenes with her Barbie dolls.

• The Rogue Anthologies are pretty great and there are quite a few of them.

• Jen had to do a major "retcon" on this hero in the Tamsen Parker book in order to read it. It's fine, really.

• Special thanks to our special guest Sierra Simone! You can find her on Instagram or Facebook. Read her New Camelot series, the first is American Queen! She also joined us on our MacRieve episode, and we talked about Priest, a book that blooded Sarah.

• You can buy a Pegging the Patriarchy button and other Romancelandia buttons at stickers at Jen's shop run by her best friend Kelly, and Sarah's t-shirts and swag from Jordandene.

• Next week, we'll be talking about Born in Ice by Nora Roberts! We mean it!

• Much thanks to all the members of the Pegging Cabal for their amazing, generous donation, and for asking us to do this episode: E is reading, Jennifer, Stephanie Blackhart, Amanda, Kini, Melinda, Tempest Bonds, Michelle Boule, JS Lenore, Eve Pendle, and Isabel. Give them a follow, or maybe this related account, Is There Pegging? But whatever you do, don't make everyone think that something is wrong with Colin Firth. We hope you enjoyed the episode!

• Check out the transcript.

TRANSCRIPT

Jen Prokop 0:39
I don't even have words right now but we do have a very special guest

she's been cursed by podcast fairies though.

Sarah MacLean 0:50
It may be like it may be at some sort of flu podcast

flu podcast. Oh, there you go

Sierra Simone 0:56
just as pegging itself takes multiple tries to get Alright, so to the pagan podcast

Jen Prokop 1:05
Well, there you go. I guess y'all know what we're talking about tonight.

Sarah MacLean 1:09
Everyone Sierra Simone is with us today. Hello

Sierra Simone 1:12
everyone you know

Jen Prokop 1:14
Sarah and I are not messing around and sometimes you just need to bring in an expert so on this faded mates Welcome everyone we have a very a very special episode. It's kind of like a Lifetime movie. If you remember those when you were a kid only like way more instructive?

Because

Unknown Speaker 1:32
we got help and support I said, see nothing like those Lifetime movie.

Sarah MacLean 1:40
Like, my sister is my mom.

Jen Prokop 1:50
But okay, sure.

Sarah MacLean 1:54
Okay, so we should talk about so yes. Welcome, everybody to faded mate. I'm Sarah McClain.

Jen Prokop 2:01
I'm generally romance

are we going in

Sarah MacLean 2:07
you and then if we have to introduce our

Unknown Speaker 2:08
guest, I mean, right.

Sarah MacLean 2:11
And then we are here today with Sarah Simone who everyone remembers from our McRib episode. Sarah, have you only been here for one episode?

Jen Prokop 2:19
No.

Sierra Simone 2:21
I think it's just been one. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm present.

Jen Prokop 2:26
We have to do everyone several.

We've recorded with her four times, but she's gonna only be on twice

Sierra Simone 2:36
but you only get to hear okay, but

Sarah MacLean 2:38
here's the deal. So this is well and we also we have a third one even we have a third lined up already. We already know you're coming back. Yo, it's like, Saturday Night Live where people get t shirts. People get gifts when they hit milestones like maybe when you hit five will send you like a

amazing

Sierra Simone 2:58
amazing

Sarah MacLean 3:06
Kansas.

Sierra Simone 3:08
It really is. I mean, I'm the mayor of Minaj. County, Kansas.

I don't know, but I'm the mayor of it.

Well, thank you for having me on. I'm really excited to be here. We're so happy to have you and

Sarah MacLean 3:25
so let's give a little background on where how this started. We so Suzanne over at Levin panels, who is fabulous, and was looking around in 2019 at the world and going like what the fuck is happening is that none of us could could really stop saying that, and I was paralyzed, but, but Suzanne decided that she was gonna put her good work into mobilizing romance to into a auction to benefit nonprofit organizations on the southern border of the United States working with displaced families, children who have been displaced or taken from their parents and other people who

Jen Prokop 4:15
are really going through it

Sarah MacLean 4:17
down there. And romance really delivered in a huge way. The auction was massive, I think bigger than Suzanne could have imagined. Oh, I think it raised like 15 or 20 grand It was a lot. Yeah, you guys did awesome. So thank you to everyone who donated time money. product to that. We Jen and I were really really excited to be able to donate an episode of fate of mates, by which we meant like you pick the topic.

Like, we'd like you to talk about the bridgeton series

episode on princesses.

Jen Prokop 5:04
Women with really nice shoes.

Sarah MacLean 5:09
You Joker's a group of you got together and you raise a shit ton of money. Thank you so, so much. And you called yourself the pegging cabal. We have your name, we're going to name you at the end of this episode with pride. And you won the auction and you asked us to do an episode on pegging. And after sort of a couple of non starter ideas like what if we do a whole episode of characters named Margaret or

Sierra Simone 5:42
totally forgot we're

Jen Prokop 5:43
gonna do that. I was like, we're gonna rickroll them.

Sarah MacLean 5:49
Pirate romance.

We decided to really get serious get down to business, so to speak, and we called in the dirtiest person we know

Sierra Simone 6:00
The owner, thank you operator

Sarah MacLean 6:01
and developer of the Simone scale tm.

Simone, like pegging on the small scale is like, slightly to the north of Darcy looking at.

Jen Prokop 6:17
Like, making a cup of tea with two tea bags. That's about how sexy it is in your world. Like, we're gonna need help.

Sierra Simone 6:25
I mean, also actual teabagging is on, but like,

Jen Prokop 6:31
but yes, like, we're

Sierra Simone 6:32
talking like real, real mild stuff for pegging. So I was like, yeah, hell yes, I'm here. Yeah. What

Unknown Speaker 6:38
do you mean you need an expert? What's wrong,

Jen Prokop 6:42
guys? Important point, Sarah tweet. I think I've done more research episodes I ever had for like, my advice.

Sarah MacLean 6:52
was like, I'm getting it together.

Sierra Simone 6:55
That wasn't real good week. Like I feel like our text thread that week was probably like top 10 texts. threads of all time. Okay.

Yeah, we found that playlist, the music playlist, which we will

Sarah MacLean 7:09
course link in show notes and also the peaches song is is is going to play over the course of this episode because

Jen Prokop 7:33
Is this the woman the woman on Twitter who has the pegging? Like new jingle you guys we found some amazing things we're gonna

Sarah MacLean 7:42
get to her she's amazing cuz she's given us permission to play the whole thing. But no, there's there's a peachy song that is like, frankly like meaning.

It also includes meatloaf I would do anything for love.

Jen Prokop 8:02
But I won't do that.

Sarah MacLean 8:15
There is like a three part dissertation on on the internet about Ariana Grande a having

Sierra Simone 8:23
to pegging Dangerous Woman don't know how

Unknown Speaker 8:29
to spend the money.

Unknown Speaker 8:33
completely focused.

Sierra Simone 8:36
It is the classic, dangerous woman.

Jen Prokop 8:41
I think my favorite song on that playlist though, is

Sarah MacLean 8:53
that Eric pops in and production. There's gonna be a lot of great music in this episode. We'll put it all in show notes.

Jen Prokop 9:00
I think also a lot of show notes are going to be like Jen was unable to Google that good luck.

Sarah MacLean 9:07
Jen does show notes at work.

Jen Prokop 9:10
We suggest the search terms x y&z been able to execute that search and keep my job.

See the gray zone is now radioactive.

Sierra Simone 9:27
Well the great thing about Sarah Nice job is that like, if we didn't do this research on our computers, really we'd be letting our job down. So solemn duty Yeah, to investigate every corner of pegging.

Yeah, that's what she said.

Sarah MacLean 9:45
There's no corners in pegging.

Sierra Simone 9:49
I've learned that. That's rule number

one. Corner.

Jen Prokop 9:56
No corners. It's real soft. Round. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 10:05
All right.

Jen Prokop 10:06
Okay, so real serious now, Sarah, I think we'd like Sierra to maybe define pegging for us for

Sarah MacLean 10:13
those of you who don't know, welcome to fate of me. Welcome to this episode.

Okay, good welcome. If this is your first faded mates episode, welcome to the deep end of the pool.

If you combine a series someones newsletter, Twitter account, Facebook, or

Unknown Speaker 10:45
Welcome

Jen Prokop 10:48
Welcome to the kiddie pool.

Unknown Speaker 10:52
perspective, time is a flat circle

Unknown Speaker 10:59
All right.

Jen Prokop 11:00
Sierra, tell us about what pegging is, that's your job. That's why we brought you do all the heavy lifting.

Sierra Simone 11:07
So, um, so this is something that when we were kind of formulating how we were going to talk about pegging in the episode, you know, we did do a little bit of discussion. So sort of the traditional definition of pegging has been penetrative sex, where the penetrating object is actually a toy like a strap on, and the toy is usually worn. And the receptive partner is a man and the active partner, the penetrating partner is a woman and that is, I would say the majority of the pegging you come across in romance, which is a woman wearing a strap on penetrating a man easily. But while we were talking, I think, Jen Was it you who talked to Ilia winters a little bit, I bow Yeah, kind of making sure that there is some inclusivity The definition and that, you know, acknowledging that there can be some biological essentialism and the way that we sort of talk about what pegging is and isn't, and making sure that you know, it's kind of for everyone.

Jen Prokop 12:14
I just want to say like, huge shout out to Elio, who like, was really gracious about taking our questions because we want it I mean, obviously, we're having a lot of fun with this episode, but we don't want to be offensive either. And, you know, it's like kind of this always this question now about gender essential ism. You know, obviously, there are women who do have penises, right? If she's using her own anatomy, is it? Is it pegging? Or is it just like fucking and really, one of the things that Ellie and I ended up talking about was the idea that like people, if, if, if people kind of self identify that the activity they're doing is pegging like than it is, and it's not really like are you know, people get to decide how to like, a sheet put it like deviate from sis normativity in whatever way they Want to. So although I think in the episode work in a really kind of stick to that standard definition, we do want to just sort of, like throw out there that like that. That's not the only way that like pegging works. It's sort of maybe a most common one at this point. But, you know, we fully anticipate that, like, these things are going to just like everything. You know, there's not like really, highly defined borders around it. Like this is an activity that like all people can enjoy in whatever way they want to about that. Yeah,

Sierra Simone 13:28
yes. I love that. And I think that I think that pegging and I hope this is the case that in romance pegging is going to start to expand as it's sort of drifted into the popular consciousness, the way we see it represented and romance will start to expand and kind of breathe into the corners of the room. You know, I kind of think of that, like, what's that science law about how gas will always fill the volume of the container and nice and I feel like I do. like this and romance and inclusivity they do do that. Like once people start bringing awareness of it into the conversation, then you do start to see these stories and narratives pop up that really expand and play with, like, what are the limits of what this can do. And I hope that's the case for pegging. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 14:18
I think this is really an interesting question, because I think, I think that when we talk about pegging, we're talking about really flipping the script on what sex has traditionally like, is traditionally in like old school, you know, sis hat. romances were like, the penetrative experience is the masculine experience. And I think that that that the idea of normalization of pegging and this these kind of questions about like, how do we rewrite the script on sex so that there is more parity and experiences kind of more We're balanced across or maybe not even balanced, but it's about pleasure. It's about your own desire and your consent within a relationship. And to Missy to write the idea that you're sharing something that maybe is like a stretch for you or like a writer or something you're kind of interested or curious about together and that is also a way that people's relationships develop. And yes is a gift from erotica and from erotic romance. I mean, this has I think, part of the reason why pegging has become more a part of romance and truthfully, when we got this sort of call for this being the fate of mates episode that people wanted, we part of the reason why we felt like we needed an expert to come in and talk was because we wanted somebody who was really deeply connected to erotic romance, who writes erotic romance who understands

the world

of writing for erotic romance readers and who, unlike and somebody who is in in that world right now because it isn't it's a new This is a whole new world opening up from erotic romance I think so much about that really the conversation that we've had with adrionna we had with audrianna Herrera when she was here about like, romance is constantly now it feels like romance of 2019 2020 is pushing the walls down and sort of again like gas right expanding? Yes, you further space.

Sierra Simone 16:34
Well, and I think that that's such an astute observation that because it to me, and I'm not nearly the romance historian that you guys are but when I encountered a lot of sort of older pegging, like I would say around like 2004 to 2007 ish in like Sam handbooks and a Laura's cave books.

Jen Prokop 16:52
Um, it definitely happened

Sierra Simone 16:55
within a very specific BDSM sphere. There was a Definitely like a very certain paradigm that could allow for a man to be penetrated by a woman. And now I think that's completely not the case. And one of the reasons why is that I think it's such a valuable tool or method to explore what power and gender mean inside of a relationship, that it actually connects to a lot of conversations that we're having in 2019. And, you know, in the last few years, and so this idea that like it can move out from just being purely like a symbol of, I mean, almost dominance, like femme Dom culture, to being something that even like limitedly kinky people or not kinky people at all can experience and it can be used on the page as a as a seen as a chessboard for navigating some other bigger, deeper theme.

Jen Prokop 17:56
One of the things I think might be really interesting before we'd like to Talk about specific, like examples is one of the things I like. And I know Sarah, you and I've been like noodling around when we like sort of tried this. The first time is, when people talk about erotic romance, they often talk about, like how sex has to be a really integral part of the plot. Hmm. And one of the things and I and I think that's true, right, like they're the relationship gets, like sort of shown through like, the sexual evolution of their emotional relationship is like really shown through the evolution of their sexual relationship. Right, right. I think one of the other things that I'm I'm really moving towards is the idea that I'm really good. erotic romance, though is also about character development. Yeah. And so you get people really exploring who they are, as they explore, like, their sexual identity, whether and that happens, like with a partner or partners, right, yeah. And I think that that's something that It's really funny because for like a long time, I've kind of really struggled with that first definition of erotic romance like it felt right, but somehow not entirely right. And when I think about it instead is someone really saying, like, I want to explore something new with you. I am learning something new about myself through what we're doing together. I find that to be a really like, electrifying and exciting way of thinking about erotic romance. And I think it's also when I think about the best erotic romance, it's the ones that do that. And I think that that's why like pegging could then be like a really interesting kind of model for this because often it is like, it's not where a book starts, right. It's something that's going to happen later. And, and I think so I just think that's like a really interesting way of thinking about it that like, I don't know, it really makes sense to me. It's like something I feel like I really enjoy and I think Maybe I'll look it up Jennifer Porter on Twitter was maybe one of the people who first like got me thinking in this way and I will definitely try and dig up that thread because I, I really, it was like one of those things where I read it and I was like that I love that idea a lot.

Sarah MacLean 20:15
Well, and I think that that's such an important piece of the puzzle for erotic romance. Like I my biggest one of my biggest frustrations with the way we talk about romance novels in the world is that for so long, I mean, when I started writing Romance A decade ago, which feels like an eternity ago, and like I started reading romance before ebooks existed, like that's, that's kind of the frame of reference that we're talking about here. Right. So like, the most erotic romance at the time that was readily available that you could go to your local library and pick up was someone like Laura Lee right, who was writing a very specific kind of again, like sis heteronormative erotic romance that was not including these kind of these kind of kinks that now no longer feel as kinky, right? But so an interestingly and her and her heroes were completely impenetrable. That's what she said in both

Sierra Simone 21:25
episode we one done

Sarah MacLean 21:30
right, I'm never gonna be able to call a hero.

Jen Prokop 21:36
They all need to just understand that they're all penetrable. It's a better world that way.

Sarah MacLean 21:43
But my point being that

for a long time written my, when I started, there was this sort of sense that we didn't talk about the sex parts of the book like we as writers, as an industry. Kind of glossed over that for I think lots of reasons. But certainly the one of the damage, one of the most damaging parts of that silence about the sex parts was that we never really nailed down a solid definition of what it means to be erotic romance like Yeah, and I think we talked about this a little bit during the mcgroove episode where like, I there's still a question I still see people right now there's the Rita not the Rita entry. window is open, and people are like, well, if I had five sex scenes in my book, is that a contemporary is that erotic and it's like, well,

Jen Prokop 22:43
that's not the that shouldn't be. The crazy number is not that the number is not what's defined,

Sarah MacLean 22:50
but I think we're not look, romance is having a lot of very important conversations right now that need to be had but this is one that also needs to be had in service of This part of the genre, right? Because we should be able to talk about what the value of the erotic romance is. And I think you're right that it is about character. Evolution is through action in this particular way.

Sierra Simone 23:15
I love that idea of evolution through action. Like I think that's such an incredible, just sort of pithy tagline for it. And I want to acknowledge that, you know, we're the sphere in which we're talking about erotic romance is largely geared towards and representing Allah sexuals. And so just with that caveat, I do think that for Allah sexual people, meaning people who are just non Ace, or you know, naturally sexual beings, that sexual identity actually ties into some really super elemental parts of our identities that I think are hard to access and other ways. So like it can be profoundly vulnerable making it can be profoundly therapeutic. Or profoundly traumatizing or, you know, breaking you open to have powerful transformative sex. And so if you have an erotic romance where the It doesn't matter how many sex scenes you have, necessarily, but the sex scene itself is doing work by using sex as a as a gateway into this identity arc that the characters undergoing, I think that that is what makes a compelling erotic romance. And then I think the, a lot of that journey usually is coupled with sort of, I was raised or just sort of the overall culture created these ideas about sexuality inside of me. And so like some of that identity is usually kind of coming into your own and letting go of the harmful paradigms that society has given you. And I think with pegging in particular, that can have a lot to do with like, what is masculinity? Like? What is the matter masculine role in sex. And and I think we can acknowledge probably that there are there are some strains of homophobia right within talking about pegging and how men might feel about it.

Jen Prokop 25:15
If I could just like shout out like literally today, Rome parish dropped a little book in main bite, called a good old affection Hanukkah pegging. And it is a if you read small change, it's ginger and Christopher so these are like characters you kind of already know. But one of the things I really liked about this little and I mean, it's pretty short. I read it in a couple minutes is it starts off with Christopher talking to his friend, because he is like curious it his friend is gay and he's curious about like, Ginger has like wants to try pegging. Christopher is like I think I want to try it but he talks to his friend hearse Question is sort of like, does it hurt? Like, does it hurt to have something up your ass? Right? And the friend is kinda like Jude is like blinking, right? And, and he's like, and they and he's really interesting because he's, he'd like, go, it's I thought it was really great. Like, he's like, I need to go to a friend first who's experienced this to like, talk about, like, my questions and my fears. And you know, it's like, really funny because, like, one of the things he says is like, like, What's the situation? And I was like, You know what, I think that makes it I loved it. Like, I felt like, oh, like, that really is getting out. Like what I think a lot of people would have like, questions about the mechanics of it, and I just thought it anyway, it's like a terrific story. And it's really short and we'll link to it in show notes. But you know, that that whole idea of like him, you know, and and you can tell Jude his friend is like, you know, it doesn't make you gay and he's like, I I'm not trying to say that, like, I really am like, Is it going to hurt like, what do I do to prepare? How do I get ready?

Unknown Speaker 27:00
Right. You know,

Sarah MacLean 27:02
I think that's a really it brings up a whole separate batch of questions about romance in general and how well or not well, it prepares readers for sex. Yeah, right. I mean, I, I think, because I think a lot about the fact like, I think about anal and I think about how I had no idea like romance did not prepare me in any way to like, understand how anal works. Right, right. Oh, yeah. Right. So like, I think so i think that that kind of conversation in romance is really fresh and interesting and should happen more on the page. And, again, it's the place where erotic romance can be doing some really interesting and I think important work. Yeah, you know, the last time we this is the second time we've recorded this episode, because we had a little bit of a problem the first time and that day, I had just been to have an extra While I was sitting there, I was not discussing this episode with the X ray tech surprisingly. But the X ray tech while I was there was saying, Oh, we've had a really interesting day today because you know, your story is definitely the most boring story and somebody else would come in was younger a young man and he had a tube of mascara.

Sierra Simone 28:28
Oh no loss Oh, no,

Unknown Speaker 28:30
no, no

Unknown Speaker 28:31
No learn base everybody know that. Here's the thing, right? Like,

Sarah MacLean 28:36
that's a thing where like, okay, there's this is there's a lot going on, like his, the X ray text response was his mom was real pissed.

And

I can't imagine like I was like, well, it's probably worse for him. And truthfully, like this entire experience is going to be a terrible experience between him and his mom if they can't figure out a way to talk about it. But the reality is like who's was having how are we having these conversations? Like is it romances job to teach us? Like? There's some interesting questions here, right? Like, you know, it is not romance this job to teach us. But like, we don't want porn teaching us. So where do we learn? So I guess in this I mean, this is sort of a much bigger kind of academic and like parenting and you know, a traditional question, but

these

I'm really happy to hear about that conversation in Ron's book because

Jen Prokop 29:32
Yeah, right, exactly. Because I do think it's tricky. Like, I agree with you that this is not exactly it's not romances job to teach. But at the same time, I think it probably behooves at least most writers to know that many people are learning about sex through romance. Yeah. And like, that's like a real tricky thing. I will say I will put a link in show notes to a website that I just think is actually terrific. for teaching about sex, it's called Scarlett teen. And it is literally called, like sex ed for the real world. And it's really aimed at teenagers and like emerging adults, right, like young people, but I, I, I think anybody would benefit like, everything's really straightforward. It's pretty non judgmental. I think it does a pretty good job about addressing like, gender identity. It's not like gender essential, you know what I mean? It's not just like, this is what women are. And I so I do think that like, but I tell a lot of people about Scarlett teen and they're like, I've never heard of that before. And I don't know if I'm just lucky because I work in a school and I know the folks who teach sex ed, but there are resources out there that I think you know, if you're too embarrassed to talk to your kids about sex, like I will say, I know that it's like really hard, but I do think it's like a really important part of our job as parents sprite because

Otherwise you're in the ER

Unknown Speaker 31:03
Yeah.

Sierra Simone 31:04
Lost your $13 tube of mascara.

Jen Prokop 31:10
I mean, who knows how much of the bill is for that?

Sarah MacLean 31:14
Oh god no, but not in you know i'm i'm thrilled that there are resources like this but like also just PSA moms and dads out there listening like, you know talk to your kids about all kinds of sex. Oh yeah things that they might be getting into it's going to be horrifying but enjoy embarrassing them

Sierra Simone 31:36
I think there is a there is a corner of fiction that does sometimes get a little bit more into these things and that's fanfiction because I know I have read fanfiction that is a little bit more detail oriented because it's you know, maybe it's written by a young person who like actually googled how to peg the I know I've read some fanfiction that was really illuminating and taught me some things. And I think I actually think in 2019 there's actually a lot of permeability between fan fiction and romance right now. Sure, I think I think a lot of fan fiction readers have grown up to be romance readers because they've been trained by slash fig by you know, reading these alternate universes with their favorite characters falling in love. And so they just sort of naturally graduated into romance, but they expect the same diversity and the same sex positivity that they found in fanfiction, which is really like it's a breath of fresh air, I think.

Jen Prokop 32:40
Yeah, I think that's awesome. I guess I would just like one more thing I would like to turn to in terms of like, cuz I guess my, my, of the three of us, my child is the oldest so I've actually done some of this work. Like I mean, we all you should all you know, you'd be talking to your younger kids about all sorts of things about their rights to their body and all that kind of stuff, right? But, and I can put up like lots of like links and show notes about like, how to talk to your kids about sex and, but like one of the things to like, for me that's really worked and I tell people this is that I like very much like when I sit my son down and we're like talking about this stuff, like just him, like I say to him, I'm like, I get that you're embarrassed, and you don't have to say anything, just like listen to me. And then I like really make it clear. Like, I feel like this is part of my job as your parent like, I'm just doing my job right now. I'm not here to embarrass you. I'm not here to like horrify you I but this is stuff that's like really important to me, that you are that you know about consent that you are being careful that you are like watching out for your friends that you know these like warning signs of like when someone might be in a dangerous situation. right and i think that you know, it's it's something that I think of is like a real responsibilities. Like, you're not going to send your kid off to college without them knowing how to like, do their own laundry. So make sure they know how to like buy condoms, and, you know, like talk about sex. And the thing that I have told my son is over and over again is like, if you can't talk to your partner or like about what you want to do, if you can't say, like, this is what I want to try, this is what I want to do, then you probably shouldn't be doing it. Yeah, right like that. That to me is like, just like the baseline. Like you have to be able to talk to your partner. It's something you're doing together. And that to me, I think feels like you don't have to really get too into the weeds about that is but it's like, if you can't even talk about what you want to do, then maybe you're not ready to actually try doing it.

Sierra Simone 34:44
You know, I think that that actually ties really well into pegging because I think pegging is one of the acts that requires a huge amount of communication. Because if you are penetrating someone with a toy like you yourself are not having a whole lot of Like biofeedback. So what is happening inside their body? And so there's just there's no way to do it without actively communicating as you go along, like you communicate before, like, you know, just basic things like what's the weather today? Like? Is it good about weather? Is it bad weather? Like? It's like a tornado warning then like, we're not going in, but, but then it's like a constant process of communicating throughout and then after, as well to say, like, how did that feel? Was that okay? And there's just, I mean, I don't think I've ever read a pegging scene where there hasn't been some degree of communication, because I think that if you wrote something like that, it would actually be really uncomfortable like emotionally to read because it's such a, it's it just requires that in this it necessitates it.

Jen Prokop 35:56
So do we want to talk about some actual books?

Sarah MacLean 35:59
Well, actually, I want to talk About my book, if if I can go first. Um, so I was thinking I'm, I'm just really, I'm really drawn to what you both are saying about, you know, one being mature enough to be able to ask for what you want. And with, you know, with purpose and with an understanding of your own your own ability to want and, and behave in a certain way but also in this sort of sense that like trust that I'm really interested in the trust that is implicit in asking for in broaching the topic with your partner. Yeah. Because it feels like once you're actually like, in the sheets, like

you've, you've come over the

most impressive hurdle, which is like asking for it right, which is hard. Right? All right. This feels dirty, by the way. Like I feel like every word coming out of my mouth

Jen Prokop 37:00
We're gonna get we're giving the people, Sarah.

Unknown Speaker 37:04
I know.

Sarah MacLean 37:05
So

anyway,

I so anyway, my point is that I think this this issue of trust in conversation with your partner the ability to say, I want this thing I want this thing that's kinky or not kinky or whatever in our relationship and frankly, I mean sexual or otherwise, is a massive hurdle for a relationship, especially in the beginning. And I mean, especially when it comes to sex like, which is awkward and weird and funny and stupid and all those things all right, it's never as perfect as it's certainly not the beginning ever as perfect as it is to pick a page. And so my pick for this is aelia winters. I mean, it feels like she keeps coming back, but winters winters is tied score, which is the second book in her slices of pie series, which follows. It's basically an erotic series focused and centered around gaming company. But in this particular you don't have to

the heroine of this book is

the HR person at this gaming company. And here is a baker.

And we all know I love the baker.

And basically like she goes in to the bakery every morning, I really love the way this flips the script. There are a lot there are a lot of romances where like the businessman hero gets his coffee every day from right like everything about this book kind of turns these, like classic tropes on their head. But he goes into she goes into his bakery every day and she buys coffee every day and they sort of make eyes at each other and they were kind of into each other and then like suddenly they're you know, they're into each other and She is a it's a little BDSM she is in them in, she likes scenes, she likes to be a DOM. And and he has a submissive streak that he knows he has but hasn't like thoroughly explored. And I really like as you all know, like I really like this dynamic with the with the heroine as DOM. So this I knew going in like I picked up this book because I knew going in this was going to scratch an itch for me that you don't see very much but in this particular case, um she's also like she knows she's, there's nothing about this that feels prescribed in the way that erotic romance can often produce a DOM and a submissive where it's like everyone knows their own rules. Everyone knows like exactly how everything goes Dom's know everything is perfect in every way. That's just not how this goes and it lovely And there's this

moment about

halfway through the book and I think about the fact I think it was Eugen who said, like pegging doesn't happen on page one like it. Yeah, it's an act that comes out later.

Jen Prokop 40:12
Meanwhile, I said that and I'm an ally when I talk about mine, but it's gonna be okay. That's like exception that proves the rule. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 40:20
So

Sarah MacLean 40:20
there's, they go into the two of them together, go into a sex, like a sex shop. And the woman behind the counter is like, very friendly. And she's like, welcome. And he turns to the hero turns to the heroine and says, What did you have in mind and I sort of, it feels it all feels very light. There's this new sex shop in our neighborhood that like where there's nothing like the windows are all like open to the street and like it feels like a revelation to go in there. It doesn't feel secret or sword in any way. And I like that about this representation on the in the book. That's sort of an aside. And she says, The heroine says, I thought,

um,

maybe a harness.

Like ellipses in the sentence like it's clear that she feels we're in his POV right so we can't see when we can't see what she's thinking. But like it's so clear that she's like, I know what I want but I feel weird saying it to you like I don't I'm not sure how this is going to go I'm not sure that you'll have me after this like I'm not sure we'll be in the same place anymore. I could be fucking up

and then he says

that sounds fun is it's like to try and then he touches her but just like with one finger like he just like runs a finger down her spine. And she says Yeah, I think so if your game and he says and then he bends down is like super sexy and is like, you want to peg me, Miss Parker and like it's This moment where you're like they're having this like hot, consensual moment, and it's filled with like her. And it begins with her uncertainty with like, yeah, her not being like the perfect DOM and not being able to read like, being in a place that's very authentic and real. It felt like to me. Yeah, that's awesome. Anyway, the rest of the pegging scene is great. All this is to say, like, the rest of the book is fabulous. The pegging scene is great. It's super hot. ilias really, incredibly skilled at this. And, you know, you've heard us talk about early on the podcast before, so I don't have to oversell but I wanted to really, you all said that in it. I just I found that moments. So real. So great. Great.

Jen Prokop 42:48
Yeah. Just a quick shout out. Her latest book three for all also has a pegging scene.

Sierra Simone 42:55
Oh,

Sarah MacLean 42:56
I also think I'm not gonna a good time to break are a person on Twitter who

peg someone in a different way through song?

Jen Prokop 43:15
It's honestly I feel like the most brilliant thing I've ever heard at

least at times when you are the one who like reached out, and we're like hello

Sarah MacLean 43:29
King delighted by it. Her name is Aida. And she is awesome. She's hilariously funny her Twitter handle is shut up Aida. And actually just recently she announced that she has a new job she's joined the writers room at Big Mouth the the the animated show on Netflix that is about teenagers going through puberty, which I think is like the most I'm wild about this show. It's awkward and weird and it's exactly the right representation of what puberty feels. Like, so congratulations to Ada for this but

more importantly, she is the creator

of and we will post this tweet and we will put the music in right now.

Unknown Speaker 44:19
Real quick. No, it's not gay bro. I'm just having fun, bro. I just wanna stick. But bro, I'm being truthful and make yourself visible and let me just imagine a

Unknown Speaker 44:29
bag. I got a strap.

Unknown Speaker 44:30
I gotta press pay for your ass. Hey, I've got a question to ask.

Unknown Speaker 44:35
Do you get your booty in

Unknown Speaker 44:36
the air? Maybe we could do each other's hands stop being homophobic and benya as over it's not like your homies are here. And to be clear, I know you would love it.

Unknown Speaker 44:49
You got a big

Sarah MacLean 45:03
The tweet reads unnormalized pegging at all costs

fucking fabulous rap.

And with that she had that she wrote in like a heartbeat. And my favorite line of it is, uh, I got a strap. I got a fresh peg for your ass. I got a question to ask. Do you see with your booty in the air? Maybe when we're finished, we can do each other's hair.

Jen Prokop 45:36
Anyway, let's feel blessed everybody. It's great.

Sarah MacLean 45:38
You guys my favorite song. My favorite song.

Jen Prokop 45:42
It's amazing. It really is.

Sarah MacLean 45:44
What's important here is that we all get to the point where we've asked, and that's right. enthusiastic verbal vocal consent.

Jen Prokop 45:52
There you go.

Why don't you go next, Sarah?

Sierra Simone 45:57
Yes. Okay. I My book this time is learned my lesson by Katie Roberts. And this is part of her wicked villains series. Which, if you're not on Instagram obsessively following her staging her sex scenes with Barbie dolls, then you should be. But this series follows different Disney villains and sort of kind of alternate universe. They're all in the same city, kind of squaring off against each other. And learn my lesson is about Hades, Hercules and Meg. And it kind of starts out with so Hades owns a kink club. And in in owning this kink club, he's kind of got control over the entire city. His King club is the only neutral ground in this city. And he has information on everyone and Megan's really his His right hand person like she's his submissive, but she's also a switch in the club. And she manages the day to day running of the club like she is as much the mistress of it as he is the master. But at the beginning of the book, they kind of start out in this sort of marriage and trouble place. So they've been together for you know, long time, like 10 years. And something shifted in Hades, right? And like Megan's really feeling like something's changed between them. And so the book opens there at a restaurant and it's supposed to be kind of like a nice dinner date, but it's not going that well. And then this waiter walks in, and he's just like six foot five of like, golden puppy muscle boy. And Hades is like, I want you to seduce him. And you find out later that like Hades has sort of like revenge reasons for wanting this thing to happen. But what happens between Meg and Hercules ends up being Super genuine. And then Hades and Hercules end up having this really genuine connection. And Hayes is definitely like the slither in hero who's anti hero who's kind of bent on revenge who's like, I love zero things. And then by the end of the book, he's like, Damn, and I love two things I'm

Unknown Speaker 48:16
supposed to.

Jen Prokop 48:23
Perfect. So great.

Sierra Simone 48:26
There's a really beautiful pegging scene that were made pigs Hercules while he is, is getting oral sex to Hades.

And what I love

about it is it's everything that I want out of the pegging scene, right, like there's sort of this flip of gender and who's the passive partner and all this stuff. But I also really love I don't want to say how casual It is like, because there is consent involved and there is like, planning and emotional preparation, but it's just a given the Hercules' would be open to this kind of thing. And so it really, it almost makes the default as it should be, which is that there's no stigma attached. You know, in this world that Katie is created, there is no stigma to what we want and what we need to do for ourselves in bed. And so it happens and it's this really like, coalescing scene between the three of them, like it's really the scene where you begin to see like what they could be as a threesome. And not just as an antihero, a puppet and his, you know, like, jaded submissive. And I love the whole book, and I love all the books in the series and she has more books in the series coming out. I think the next one is going to be hook and Tinkerbell. So if you're into that kind of thing, I think that's coming in late, like late winter, like early 2020.

Unknown Speaker 49:56
There you go. Keeping

Unknown Speaker 49:59
Yeah. Um,

Jen Prokop 50:00
that's really interesting because I think that it sounds like we have all found like really different like pegging examples I am going to talk about, and I'm going to preface this by saying it was written right after the election in 2016. And it has a plot that I think, like the most ridiculous part of the plot. The hardest thing to believe is not the pegging on the first date. That is easy to believe it's that this is a love story between a democrat and a Republican. Which I know and I hate myself for recommending it but I feel like I love it so much but I feel like four years ago even it kind of felt like this was a plot that could happen. He really he at the end the republican completely gives it up he like he

quits the party he understand is wrong, but Still, like I don't even know he

Sarah MacLean 51:02
legit pegs the patriarchy is what you're saying.

Jen Prokop 51:07
Yeah, it's

called life, liberty and worship by Tamsin Parker. And it was in the first rogue anthology. So it's called broke desire. And I'm going to guess that if Tamsin was writing this right now, she would write it about like, a Democrat and then like, I thought about voting for Bernie for five minutes. But didn't actually do it like, right anyway.

I voted for George, local. You know, like, when I was eight, in my local school board election, there was only one republican running. So I had

three or four years like a lot of changes what I'm trying to tell you anyway, so here's it's a great, it's a great book if we can just like read Gone away. That one part of it. So, Paige is goes every like, you know, however often to like a spinning class and the guy in front of her, she like thinks he's really cute but she notices that he wears these sort of like political t shirts and she just and then he like gets all sweaty and takes them off and she's like, Oh, I hate this guy. And but he of course it turns out is just like one of those like, sad boys who doesn't want to talk to anybody. And so he finally like sort of, you know, get up the gumption to like ask her out. But unfortunately for him he does it after she sort of overhears like another guy like being real Brody and saying something stupid and and she is just like, fine. I'll go out with you like, come to my come to like this address at 10 o'clock. And in the meantime, she actually is sort of figured out That he writes policy papers for you know, like some sort of competing, whatever wonky thing and she like does respect the way he thinks like even though she doesn't quite agree with his politics because at one time and the school board election he voted Republican. She She liked it so he like shows up and she's basically like, he's like, What's your name? And she's like, you can find out after I have my way with you and basically like, brandishes this her harness, I mean, like, and he it's really amazing. She basically thinks she's gonna like, scare him away. And it's like, the greatest line in this book is he's like,

I've never done this book.

She's, you know, she's like, and she's like, what, fuck the Democrat.

But the thing is, is that she is she takes the response. ability of like penetrating him, like of pegging him really seriously, right. So even though she's, like, furious at him, and really does almost view this as like an act of revenge in some ways for what she thinks he stands for, she is still so careful with him. And she is and he and she's really surprised that he goes for it. She's like, wait, I thought you'd essentially like run, you know, run away. And they, she, like fucks up and basically kicks him out the door. You know, it ends up being like a really like for his show. You know, sometimes I'm just really amazed at what a great author can do with a short amount of time, right. And so, in this case, one of the things I think we really get is, you know, we talked about like, trust a lot right so far and like the other books that you guys have talked about, but pegging is also about power. And I think that's something that page really knows but it Not a power that she takes lightly and she doesn't like cross her like emotional feelings of anger disappointed with him and his kind of what she thinks he stands for, with like the, the very careful like power kind of and responsibility she she has with him in the bedroom. So I think it's like a really interesting one because because there isn't that emotional, or like trust there. It really is like sort of more of a of an act where she's like, I, this is what I want to do. And he's like, yeah, I kind of want you to do it too. But I think it's really hot. I think it's real sexy. And I think it's ultimately she is able after the physical act of begging him to sort of emotionally when they sort of eventually do kind of come clean. Like really say to him like I could never be with someone who believes the things that you believe and he has really has to face like, okay, the republican party I grew up in when I voted in the school board election. No like, right?

It's not

like what I stand for either, right? I mean, he's pro choice and he and he really has to sort of face like, Oh, I this this has changed and and you're right. And so he basically agrees to do the right thing and come over to the side of rightness and goodness and pegging.

Sierra Simone 56:30
We have pegging nice, you know, I really love but that's

I really love that this is your choice because I feel like it more maybe more than Sarah and I as pics represents, like where pegging can go in romance, like outside of like latex and safe words and you know, like, really intentional power structures that are built ahead of time. Like I think that it can represent like that picking can end up being kind of like how anal play is now where it used to be really restricted where you would find anything about the butt. And now, I mean, I sometimes I'm even kind of surprised when it doesn't come up in some contemporary romances as at least like a thing that someone's thinking about. Right? And so I hope that I mean, I really hope that like this is kind of a good bellwether of like, where we can go with it. We can use it as a metaphor as shorthand, but we can also use it as like, spontaneous you know, first aid sex. Yeah.

Love that. I'd be a hell of a first date.

Unknown Speaker 57:39
very memorable.

Sarah MacLean 57:46
That would be a fun thing to try on Tinder. Like just

Unknown Speaker 57:49
we like

Sarah MacLean 57:51
surely swipe right if I will, if I can pay you on the first day.

Jen Prokop 57:57
Yeah, I mean, it would sell you lucked out. Hello. Man, you would lose a lot of Yeah, stinkers.

Sierra Simone 58:04
A lot of stinkers. I mean

Jen Prokop 58:09
you said stinkers.

Sierra Simone 58:13
We need to do you know how we did like the last limb count for ID it's like, we need to have the unintentional pun. count for Sarah.

Unknown Speaker 58:31
Sarah,

Sierra Simone 58:33
yeah, don't don't make a sale.

Jen Prokop 58:38
As we like wrap up, I would like to tell you one of the greatest Twitter accounts ever to be created is at is there pegging? And if a book has pegging in it, they will retweet it.

Sarah MacLean 58:52
So girls,

Sierra Simone 58:52
yeah.

Jen Prokop 58:56
I don't know.

But based on the followers, I know it seems highly likely that someone we know

Sarah MacLean 59:07
guys

doing the Lord's work out here.

Jen Prokop 59:12
That's right now I have got to say it was my job to like list the names of the Peggy and Caldwell and I forgot to get it. I you know, it's like notes I had when we first recorded a month ago. So I think we'll have to put it in show notes, but I do know that like, the person I communicated with, is he is reading and she is famous actually in the past month for freaking out everyone on the fucking internet by getting Colin Firth trending. Remember that? She posted? Like, like, you know, which what's your age? And which, which Darcy Do you like, and all of a sudden, like 50,000 people or something answered her tweet, and everybody else was like, why is Colin Firth trending because they thought he was dead. And I was like, you need to like use your powers for good and not evil. So,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:07
here we are. And here Here we are, here we are.

Jen Prokop 1:00:15
Any last thoughts on

pegging? Before we wrap up this very special episode?

Sarah MacLean 1:00:20
You know what, I'm just going to say that I, I'm always so fucking delighted when Sierra joins us, even though it feels it feels only been once before. It feels like it's been a lot, but it's just been once before. So if you have not, if you skip the first season, or you skip reading ID, I highly, highly recommend you listening to the mcgroove episode of this podcast is not just I mean, you'll learn the plot of margrave which is banana.

But also, there's a lot of

really thoughtful conversation about erotic romance. And there were Sierra I think both of our minds a little bit.

Jen Prokop 1:01:02
Oh my god. Yes. Well, and before Sierra goes to wait, I know I'm not sure if you're going to say this, but I'm pretty sure that she has written a book with pegging. And I was hoping he would end up by

like, talking about your book or giving you a chance to talk about your book too. I mean, hell I'm

Sierra Simone 1:01:20
I'm just such a I'm like such a retiring like shrinking violet.

Jen Prokop 1:01:26
Special guest who has written about this in her books, and somehow she is not doing the right thing by telling us about it. So that's where we're going to like, make sure we go before Well,

Sierra Simone 1:01:35
I didn't want to horn in or maybe I do, maybe morning.

Jen Prokop 1:01:42
I was like, Oh, yeah, he does spam.

Sierra Simone 1:01:51
Yes. So if you are interested in reading any of my books, or reading about pegging or reading and pegging Sienna I have novella called the moon, and it is a very kind of broody, sexy contemporary retelling of Merlin and then way and I know Jen is probably making a face right now. So, I love Even I promise even of Merlin. I love you too. Even if Merlin's not your thing, that's totally okay. Um, but it is. It's a really sort of, I really kind of wanted to explore sort of like, what a spiritual kind of feeling that pegging could generate. So, I use the the pegging scene between the two of them as sort of this final act of like, complete elemental joining, I guess between them. And I think that it's a lot of fun. But if, like, you know, magic and pegging aren't your thing I totally understand. But yes, that is called the

Sarah MacLean 1:02:59
moon. And it's a In the world of the new Camelot series

Sierra Simone 1:03:02
Yes, so I wrote a series called New Camelot. It's a trilogy and it is a contemporary retelling of Are there going to be are and Lancelot. But everyone's in love with each other, and they all have lots of like very angsty sighs amazing. And the moon takes place after the trilogy, but you don't need to read the trilogy. To understand what happens in the moon. It can it can stand on its own.

Sarah MacLean 1:03:27
Got it. And then I just want to say and you know, you can plug your ears if you want here. But if you are new to the podcast this week, and you are a car fan, we did a deep dive read of priest, we will link to that in show notes as well. Don't miss it. We love it. It is one of the transformational texts of the genre. According to me, Oh, stop.

Sierra Simone 1:03:53
So I'm plugging my ears. Now. I'm plugging, I'm plugging.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:58
There's another one.

Jen Prokop 1:04:00
Got it, man.

They got us we got to squeeze them all in before they got

Sarah MacLean 1:04:09
as much as possible.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:12
So there it is. All right. Yeah, picking that was great. That's

Unknown Speaker 1:04:17
what she said,

Sarah MacLean 1:04:19
Where can people find you online after they've decided they love

Sierra Simone 1:04:23
you?

Jen Prokop 1:04:25
And they want to read everything you've ever written?

Sierra Simone 1:04:27
Yes, you can find me on Instagram as the car Simone or on

facebook.com slash the car Simone. And then also I have a Facebook group,

which is pretty awesome. And there's a lot of people who like kind of the dirty books in there. So if that describes us, and that might be a group of people that you would like to talk about 30 books with. And I have a Twitter but I don't go on to twitter.com so don't tweet me because I

Unknown Speaker 1:04:58
guess it's just good.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:01
Yeah, it's just good. Thank you. As always we are already as I mentioned earlier in the podcast we already have a plan for Sears third Oh yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:13
Third time's a charm. Oh god.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:19
Jen what else we have

Unknown Speaker 1:05:20
to say? Please remember to

Sarah MacLean 1:05:22
like and subscribe if you're new to the podcast and you really enjoyed this this is what it's like every week. I mean not always with Sarah but with

you can subscribe and like and leave a review if you feel so inclined.

We you get buttons and other fun things

Jen Prokop 1:05:42
and there is a pegging the patriarchy button actually. And it comes it's like round and then there's like a little like side button. That's just a carrot.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:50
Yes. Yes. There's

Sierra Simone 1:05:52
like a little tiny button that goes with it. This a little carrot and sort of like the

Unknown Speaker 1:05:57
secret

Jen Prokop 1:06:00
Yeah, we could all wear it at like kiss

Sarah MacLean 1:06:02
cons in rW ways and really show and we would know.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:07
Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 1:06:09
So you can do that through Jen's website links and show notes. You can buy

some gear, romance gear t shirts, and other things from my partnership with Jordan Denae links and show notes more to come in the new year in February. So coming soon, a much bigger collection. Our producer is Eric Mortensen.

Jen Prokop 1:06:30
Don't forget to vote the right way and all of your upcoming elections whether they be for the local school board or for you know, the future of American democracy. Share

Unknown Speaker 1:06:41
that to

Jen Prokop 1:06:48
2020 all we gotta do is

Unknown Speaker 1:06:49
vote every election year guys we're

Sarah MacLean 1:06:51
in. Oh my god.

This year's gonna be 40,000 years long.

Jen Prokop 1:07:01
All right, everybody have a good one

Sarah MacLean 1:07:02
you all so much?

Sierra Simone 1:07:12
Real quick

Unknown Speaker 1:07:21
let me maybe

Unknown Speaker 1:07:33
stop being homophobic and benya

Unknown Speaker 1:07:38
No, you wouldn't love it.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:46
Let me show me

Elizabeth (Voicemail) 1:08:14
Hi, this is Elizabeth, aka is reading can remember the pegging crew. I wish I was sure which one was my first romance. It was so long ago. I think it was either seadrill by Penelope nary Dark of the Moon by Karen robarge. But beloved rogue by Penelope Williamson.

What I am sure is that it was hella problematic and would not hold up to now.

So, the more as to why we asked for this to be this episode to be tagging, I've talked a lot with the members of the peddling crew about why we're so interested in things enrollment. And I think is one of the goals of writing or and or reading romance is to dismantle the patriarchy, there is no clearer metaphor for that then tagging, as per the button taking the patriarchy. And this is sort of a way of undoing all that problematic. text that we read when we were younger, especially those of us who Kingdom romance in the 80s and 90s. Like Ilana, and Broad City says, things have been terrible for women up to and including today. And 2019 has definitely been for me the year of misogyny fatigue along with a lot of other fatigue. romance provides a safe space for fantasy and wish fulfillment. And I think that heading is something that a lot of women can relate to right now in

in not never avenge sense but in a way of taking back power.

I hope that makes sense. And that will and thank you for recording this episode for us and with you guys for doing this. Thank you

S02.15: Romance Recommendations: Stump Jen & Sarah Part 2

It’s the second half of our recommendation podcast! We asked you to ask us for recommendations, and thought it would be fun to recommend on the fly—absolutely no preparation! Instead, we met up at Sarah’s apartment and read your questions sight-unseen (thanks to @bestfriendkelly for collecting them!). What ensued is a killer list of romances that you should all read! And if you missed the first half — head back and listen!

Do not miss the show notes this week, y’all. Really.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!

Next week, we’re releasing a little stocking stuffer for our Christmas Day episode, but we’re back in business on January 1, with the seasonally appropriate (at least in title) Born in Ice, by none other than the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Read Born in Ice at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.

---

Question 1: Beth from Milwaukee asked, "I'm going to Iceland in December for my 10th wedding anniversary! I obviously need a book that has snow/cold and using body heat and -ahem- other activities for warmth. Bonus points if a volcano or other geological feature is a part of the story! Sub genre is not important, and yes I'm aware of the Ice Planet Barbarians."

Our recommendations: From the deep recesses of Jen's brain, the only romance she can think of with a volcano, Eden Burning by Elizabeth Lowell. And that's from the 80s, so fair warning that it's likely to have problematic elements. When it comes to snuggly, warm, only one bed romances, you just need to use the internet! But Jen did write a piece about Only One Bed for Kirkus, which you should read. In the meantime, go watch Joe versus the Volcano, and then talking about Hawaii reminded Sarah of some bananas sounding book by Anne Stuart called Tangled Lies. But a few snowy romances: Beary Christmas Baby by Sasha Devlin or How the Dukes Stole Christmas.

Eden Burning

Tangled Lies

Beary Christmas Baby

How the Dukes Stole Christmas

Question 2: Emily from Washington D.C. want our opinion aobut "the BEST star crossed lovers trope (it always gets me so good)."

Our Recommendations: The reason Sarah thinks that star-crossed lovers have to end up unhappy is Romeo and Juliet, of course. But Jen thinks you should try Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn and Sarah recommends Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan, but comes with a whole suitcase of content warnings for domestic violence. In the interim, Jen read and recommends Forbidden Promises by Synithia Williams, the heroine falls in love with her sister's ex-husband! And of course, coming in the summer of 2020 comes Daring and the Duke by Sarah, which will also work. But you have to wait!

Luck of the Draw

Long Shot

Daring and the Duke

Forbidden Promises

Question 3: Megumi from San Antonio, TX is looking for "a contemporary of someone not Scottish going to Scotland and finding love. (Maybe England but mostly Scotland)"

Our Recommendations: Jen lost her mind and said Unfixable by Tessa Bailey, but Willa is a heroine who goes to Ireland. She thinks it still counts. Sarah recommends a novella by Sophie Jordan called "In a Stranger's Bed" which was a Goldilocks retelling published in the Glamour anthology but which is currently unavailable so come on Sophie, get it together and put your stories up because they are ON FIRE. A few others you can try: A Duke by Default by Alyssa Cole, the Under the Kilt series by Melissa Blue, Getting Hot with the Scot by Melonie Johnson, and Ten Days With the Highlander by Hayson Manning. Also, we didn't know what Adriana Herrera had up her sleeve when we recorded, but Mangos & Misteltoe is ADORABLE, and features to delicious Dominican heroines falling in love on a Scottish Baking Show. It's also a perfect holiday romance!

Getting Hot with the Scot

A Duke by Default

Ten Days with the Highlander

Under the Kilt bundle

Unfixable

Question 4: Becca wants "a funny contemporary, a true romcom, minimal trauma."

Our recommendations: Jen thinks it doesn't exist. Sarah recommends going old school to Jennifer Crusie or Susan Elizabeth Phillips. If it helps, you should know that later this season, we'll be talking about Bet Me and Nobody's Baby But Mine. After we recorded, Sarah realized she should have recommended Christina Lauren, who she adores, and who she believes is one of the few authors writing real RomCom. If you haven't read Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating, it's a very funny, very romantic friends-to-lovers romance! "What happened to romantic comedy" is an existential question for our time.

Welcome to Temptation

Bet Me

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Josh and Hazel

Question 5: Laurel from NC wants a book that "Has marriage of convenience, preferably historical."

Our recommendations: Sarah says Sherry Thomas better than everyone and recommends Ravishing the Heiress. Jen thinks The Duke Buys a Bride by Sophie Jordan might work. Sarah points out that in order to qualify, the marriage has to happen pretty early in the story. The marriage has to be part of the plot the whole time. Once again, there are so many of these we had trouble thinking of them on the spot, but in hindsight, Sarah would like you not to miss Amalie Howard's The Beast of Beswick or Scarlet Peckham's The Duke I Tempted. Bonus story from Jen about a Sherry Thomas YA book about Mulan called The Magnolia Sword.

Ravishing the Heiress

The Duke Buys a Bride

The Beast of Beswick

The Duke I Tempted

Question 6: Cara from Finland wants a book that "Has chosen families strongly included in the plot. Extra points if it's enemies-to-lovers with the heroine's family ready to kick the pining-but-unfortunately-dumbass hero's butt."

Our recommendations: Whoa! That's a lot of asks all at once. Just reread IAD, Cara! This is the plot of Sarah's book A Scot in the Dark, so that's a good place to start. Lots of rock star romances have chosen family, try Kristen Callihan's series, and Managed will be a book that blooded Jen later this season. It's not linked via heroines, but Elle Kennedy's Hotter than Ever is bonkers sexy, a MMF menage, and has lots of found Navy SEAL family. In historicals, there are lots of sisterhood/brotherhood books. Try the Wallflowers series by Lisa Kleypas, or Lorraine Heath's Scoundrels of St. James!

A Scot in the Dark

The Devil in Winter

Idol

Hotter Than Ever

Question 7: Krystal from New Jersey is looking for "Childhood friends to lovers - historical! Where the Male is titled and the woman is not!"

Our recommendations: There are so many that will work here. Sarah recommends Tessa Dare's first series, the Wanton Dairymaids (!!!) should work, try Godess of the Hunt. After recording, of course, a bunch of books came to mind! Try Kelly Bowen's You're the Earl That I Want, Vanessa Riley's The Butterfly Bride, and Loretta Chase's Last Night's Scandal.

Goddess of the Hunt

The Butterfly Bride

Last Night's Scandal

You're the Earl that I Want

Question 8: Rosalie from the Chicago suburbs wants books she "can recommend to my 15 year old son. Have thought about Sarina Bowen’s Ivy Years. Although LJ Shen “Sinner of Saints” series is high school, seems too dark/gritty and I think he would not be able to suspend reality for some of the story lines given he is the same age."

Our Recommendations: Sarah thinks the Sarina Bowen series you mentioned should work just fine. Adult romances that are adventure stories might work are the Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews and Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik. Some actual YA Romance that Jen likes are The Way You Make me Feel and I Believe in a Thing Called Love, which are both by Maurene Goo. One of Jen's favorite YA books of all time is called The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. She also recommneds Not if I Save You First by Ally Carter. Some sports romances we recommend are the WAGS series by Naima Simone, especially Scoring Off the Field. Finally, The Deal by Elle Kennedy might be a good choice.

The Way You Make Me Feel

I Believe in a Thing Called Love

Not If I Save You First

Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks

Polaris Rising

Burn for Me

Scoring Off the Field

The Deal

Question 9: Jemma from Texas is looking for "Found family. Also with lots of good food descriptions. Not necessarily a chef romance though (they stress me out because chefs stay up so late at night; ugh, who does that?)"

Our recommendations: This is such a perfect question for Sarah. She recommends the Recipe for Love series by Louisa Edwards. Another series by the same author is called the Rising Star Chefs. The Opposite of You by Rachel Higginson will work. Finally, American Dreamer by Adriana Herrera, and a series by Sabrina Sol. In hindsight, Sarah basically only recommended books with chefs in them. She's sorry. She has a problem.

Can't Stand the Heat

The Opposite of You

American Dreamer

Delicious Temptation

Question 10: Sara from Albuquerque wants a "Bodyguard trope where the person being guarded does NOT spend the whole book trying to escape the bodyguard because he/she doesn't think there is any danger even though it's incredibly obvious to everyone else. Bonus if the bodyguard character is female."

Our recommendations: Jen recommends Sexy/Dangerous (female bodyguard) by Beverly Jenkins, which is fabulous. Nana Malone has a few, one in her royals seris, and another is Bodyguard to the Billionaire (female bodyguard) -- also, listen to Nana talk about Royal Romance on an interstitial last season!. And! Try HelenKay Dimon's Leave Me Breathless (female bodyguard), Katee Robert's Thalanian Dynasty series (male bodyguard/MMF menage) and Anna Zabo's Reverb (trans male bodyguard).

Bodyguard to the Billionaire

Reverb

Theirs for the Night

Question 11: Molly from Washington has an AMA question about how to organize her Kindle books. She is also looking for a book that "Features a Grumpy/terse older brother’s friend (or older brother of friend) with smart mouth heroine, bonus points for SUPER HOT, some sort of road trip, or problem they have to solve much to their reluctance (trapped on a desert island?) basically Bowen and Mari 😂"

Our answer: : Jen wrote a long thread about how she organizes her Kindle, which you should just read on Twitter. But it takes a lot of time, so clear a day to do it! For the grumpy road trip question, Sarah recommends Right by Jana Aston. This is the second book in a series, the first one is called Wrong and you don't have to read them in order. Also, don't miss Tessa Bailey's Staking His Claim or Fix Her Up! Maybe try Mister McHottie by Pippa Grant. And...have you listened to our Road Trip interstitial?

Right

Fix Her Up

Staking His Claim

Mister McHottie

Question 12: Hero from Paris, France (not Texas!) wants to know what trope would be, and then some books that take you on a "yellow brick road of emotions."

Our Recommendations: We ended up talking about the last books that made us cry. The last book Sarah read that made her cry was Sinner by Sierra Simone. For Jen, it was The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. Jen also thinks Sarah's books are pretty emotional, so start off with her first, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing the Rake. Finally, The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley or Escorted by Claire Kent. Also, we're going to read Alexis Hall's For Real as a book that blooded Sarah, so stay tuned for that!

The Bride Test

Escorted by Claire Kent

The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie

Sinner

For Real

Question 13: Chris from Seattle wants to know how we keep track of all these books! Also, a book that "starts with the main character in jail."

Our recommendations: Jen recommends the book Hard Time by Cara McKenna. The entire Devil's Rock series by Sophie Jordan is fantastic, and the first one is actually called All Chained Up, but you're going to want to read them all. Sarah recommends My One and Only Duke by Grace Burrowes, which starts with the hero in Newgate. Another historical with the hero in jail is The Highwayman by Kerrigan Byrne. Hold by Claire Kent starts with both characters on a prison planet, and there is also an entire series of prison planet books by Emmy Chandler.

All Chained Up

My One and Only Duke

The Highwayman

Guardian

Hold

Question 14: Emily wants to know "How do you find time to read as much as you do? I’m a fast reader but can never seem to carve out enough time to read as much as I want." And also is looking for recommendations for books that are "deeply, utterly romantic and swoony and leaves you with a PROFOUND book hangover. Great, sexy banter is a plus!"

Our recommendations: Jen doesn't watch TV and Sarah starts a book every day. Don't be afraid to DNF! Book wise, Jen knows a book is a real winner if she rereads it, and some of her favorites are Everything I Left Unsaid and The Truth About Him by Molly O'Keefe (famously, this is the only duology/book with a cliffhanger that Jen has ever finished!), Thirsty by Mia Hopkins, Never Sweeter by Charlotte Stein, and she also rereads a lot of Kresley Cole. Sarah recommends Three Little Mistakes by Nikki Sloane.

Everything I Left Unsaid

Thirsty

The Master

Three Little Mistakes

Question 15: Rosa, Daughter of Mexican immigrants living in Oakland, CA wants to know "Is a historical romance where both main characters are people of color. Does this exist?"

Our recommendations: Some #OwnVoices historical authors you should check out are Beverly Jenkins, Alyssa Cole, Rebel Carter, Vanessa Riley, and Piper Huguley. Lydia San Andres has several historicals with Latinx characters, start with A Summer for Scandal. Also, check out the Decades series, which are African-American historicals that focus on each decade of American history. Each book has a different author, so you can check out lots of new writers. Jeannie Lin writes luscious historicals set in China. Forthcoming in 2020, Diana Quincy is coming out with books that feature Middle Eastern characters.

A Summer for Scandal

An Unconditional Freedom

My Fair Concubine

Nighthawk

The Preacher's Promise

Question 16: Rachel from Kansas asks for a book that "Features a heroine who had breast cancer. Your podcast has helped me through my recovery."

Our recommendations: Jen recommends Hooked on You by Kate Meader which has a heroine had a double mastectomy. She is in recovery and does have a cancer scare after finding a lump in her armpit, but it is not cancer. Sarah recommends a contemporary by Brenna Aubrey called At Any Moment, and then When the Duke was Wicked, which is a historical by Lorraine Heath which is based on extensive medical research that is accurate to the time period. Although it's not breast cancer, Sarah references a Nikki Sloane book where the hero is recovering from cancer in another question on today's episode, and that one was Three Little Mistakes.

Hooked on You

At Any Moment

When the Duke was Wicked

Question 17: Katrin from London would "like a book where the hero has a smaller 🍆 (penis)."

Our recommendation: Jen has one that she could think of, which is A Matter of Disagreement by E.E. Ottoman. But that is a difficult request! We are going to keep thinking about it.

A Matter of Disagreement

Our last AMA was from Rosa, who also asked about historical romance with people of color, and she wants to know about the process of cover design.

Our answer: Sarah talked about the process and Jen described what she learned in her conversation with Reese Ryan. Sarah talked about how she does give some advice on colors and why the people in the art department needs visual information for making the best cover. For The Day of the Duchess, Sarah sent a photo of Cate Blanchette as guidance. Inspired by this quesiton, Jen did contact Harlequin and is interviewing someone at Harlequin about their cover design process, and that will be published at Kirkus in January 2020.

Off Limits Lovers

The Day of the Duchess

S02.10: Amnesia Romance Novels

We’re talking about the most scientific of topics today — it’s Amnesia Week! Whether you love or hate it, or believe it simply doesn’t exist, you can’t deny the fact that amnesia has kept a battalion of romance readers in books for nigh on forty years. And of course, we’re talking about Overboard.

Next week, we’re switching things up and running a full recommendation podcast! You asked us questions, and we’re recommending a metric romance ton of books! Don’t miss it!

In two weeks, we’re going to a classic of classics! The read was on both Jen & Sarah’s list—Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, which is on the lions’ share of Best Romance Novels Ever lists. We’ll get into why. Read Lord of Scoundrels at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.

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SHOW NOTES

• Listen, it's Eric FONER. He's kind of a big deal.

• More about how brains develop.

• A twitter thread about Sarah's brain surgeon.

• The kind of Amnesia in books and movies isn't real, but in case you were wondering, all about global amnesia and aphasia.

• Jen & Sarah have seen the 80s version of Overboard 100 times, and the 2018 version no times.

• Speaking of Pregneisa... on the podcast I Don't Even Own a Television, these two guys mostly read it to make fun of it, but then listen to just this snippet of Jeb Lund TOTALLY GETTING ROMANCE.

• Kylie Scott does write about zombies, and threesomes, and rock stars, and getting with your Dad's best friend.

• Jen did write about Lies as an example of an Unreliable Narrator, but she still enjoyed the book!

• Jen couldn't locate the future/present/past thread on twitter, but this is a placeholder in case she ever does.

• No one liked that Chris Pratt movie.

• All about that incel bullshit.

• The Silent Towns is a short story by Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles---which Jen really liked for the most part! Try There will Come Soft Rains instead.

• The Last Man on Earth is a TV show and While You Were Sleeping was a movie.

• Jen likes the scummy, sexy white boy thing Matthew McConaughey has going on.

• "Don't You Forget About Me" is the theme song to The Breakfast Club. No one had amnesia in the movie, they were just teenagers likely to be shitty to each other.

• What's Fair Use?

• Buy buttons from Kelly and shirts from Jordandené.

• Ashley from Southern California was blooded by The Duchess War by Courtney Milan

• Next week we're doing the first of our big romance recommendation podcasts, but get reading Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase -- it's our next read!

The Vintage Book of Amnesia

Pregnesia

Repeat by Kylie Scott

When the Marquess Was Mine

Until You

The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton

Love Will Always Remember

Forgotten Sins

A Baby to Bind His Bride

Tempting the Bride

Bound to the Battle God

S02.08: Competence & Careers in Romance

Today, we’re talking jobs in romance novels—why we love them, when we hate them, what’s the proper work/smooch balance, and what we mean when we say “competence porn.” This is a far reaching, many-rec episode that involves discussion of billionaires, of wealth, of power, of what Sarah means when she says heroes have to be kings, no matter what. We’ll also try to get to the bottom of what an Enterprise Holding, LTD is. Nah, that’s a lie, because who cares?! Oh, and stay tuned for Sarah’s treatise on the importance of local journalism.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Fated Mates in your favorite podcasting platform — subscriptions mean so much! While you’re there, please leave us a like or a review if you feel so inclined!

Next week, we’re taking you to blasphemy town! Or are we?! The read is Sarah’s pick, Sierra Simone’s Priest, which is an erotic romance in first-person hero POV, featuring a priest and an exotic dancer (NB: She is not Catholic). If sex in church is your concern, maybe skip this one, but also know that there’s a lot fo religious allegory in here that is fascinating and brilliant. Content warning for discussion of the Catholic Church and sexual abuse. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.

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Show Notes

• Jen said fossils are boring. It wasn't a good look.

• Defining competence porn.

• Christian Grey at work.

• Despite when Jen said, most sex toys are not made out of neoprene. And please be cautious about the sex toys you buy.

• Imposter syndrome is the worst for everyone but these guys.

• Job versus career versus vocation.

• The Joanna Shupe book about the architect is actually called A Scandalous Deal.

• If you do want to read books about fossils, Amanda Quick and Tessa Dare have them. Eloisa James does not. Manda Collins does. Sarah MacLean does not.

• What's wrong with "Not Like Other Girls."

• What's a bluestocking?

• Doogie Howser was a doctor, not an astrophysicist.

• How to avoid the "What do you do" question.

• The recent Supreme Court case about the rights of queer people to work.

• Sarah mentioned an article about how Americans haven't gotten a raise in 40 years, and Jen mentioned the struggle to stay in the middle class.

• Lori Lightfoot won the Chicago mayor's election, but here's the story about her background and why Black Lives Matter activists are worried.

• The thing Jen made into a job: writing about romance for Kirkus.

• High School Musical 2 had the "I need a college scholarship" plot.

• Roseanne and class on television.

• Jen really hated This is 40.

• Are you in Chicago? Come to Jen's romance book club at 57th Street Books or at Love's Sweet Arrow.

• Divorce has profoundly negative impact on women's financial security.

• Sarah mentioned a twitter thread about mothers telling their daughter's to have separate money and why women get jewelry as wedding gifts.

• All women work, even if they don't have a job outside the home.

• An overwhelming majority of American school teachers are white women.

• You should read Catch and Kill if you can, but the story about how it impacted Ronan Farrow's relationship is also interesting.

• Subscribe to your local newspaper!

• This week, caller Samantha from Kuala Lumpur recommends Spellbound by Nora Roberts.

• Next up is Priest from Sierra Simone.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Nights With Him by Lauren Blakely

A Princess in Theory

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas

A Scandalous Deal by Joanna Shupe

Eternity by Jude Deveraux

Duchess by Design by Maya Rodale

Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh

Ravished by Amanda Quick

One for the Rogue by Manda Collins

A Week to be Wicked by Tessa Dare

Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The Governess Game by Tessa Dare

American Dreamer by Adriana Herrera

American Fairytale by Adriana Herrera

American Love Story by Adriana Herrera

Love Will Always Remember by Tracey Livesay

Beginner's Luck by Kate Clayborn

The Bromance Book Club

What Ales the Earl by Sally Mackenzie

The Merry Viscount by Sally Mackenzie

Rebel by Beverly Jenkins

Something Like Love by Beverly Jenkins

The Prince of Broadway of Joanna Shupe

Passionate Rivals by Radclyffe

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

Loving with a Warrior

Constant Craving by Tamara Lush

Priest by Sierra Simone

Spellbound by Nora Roberts

S02.06: Cinnamon Roll Heroes with Andie Christopher

We heard you! You wanted to talk about Cinnamon Roll Heroes, so here we are, and we’re bringing in an expert on the topic (in real life and in fiction) — Andie Christopher. We’re talking about the evolution and popularization of the beta in the 90s, why they became such a powerful force then, why they’re back now, and why they work so well for some readers! We’ll also talk about dating in 2019, recommend some books (obviously), and talk about Andie’s upcoming, Not the Girl You Marry, which is out November 12!

Transcript Available

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!

Next week, we’re going back to paranormal with the first book in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Dark Lover. It’s a whole ride. Strap in. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie (it’s currently only $2.99 in ebook!).

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Show Notes

• We're so excited to have Andie on the podcast -- her book, Not the Girl You Marry, is out November 12th. Preorder now!

• Do you know the importance of a Sky Pager?

• The Pegging Crew is a nickname we use with love for the folks who bought a change to decide a Fated Mates interstitial topic.

• If you're looking for romances with the Great British Bake Off energy, Sarah recommends Louisa Edwards.-

• Last summer, Jen interviewed Andie for Kirkus.

• Nancy Pelosi is taking care of business.

• Olivia Dade has a great list of cinnamon roll heroes, but this piece from The Onion originated the term.

• The Simone Scale is very different from the Clayborn Curve.

• I guess you can decide for yourself if Father Bell is a cinnamon roll (whispers: especially because this will be a season 2 book that blooded us).

• The only person who can ask for flowers is Barbra Streisand.

• Every time Jen mentions a fainting couch, she's thinking of this most excellent pinterest board by friend of the pod @bandherbooks.

• Some really thoughtful tweets that were in response to our alpha episode: Charlotte talking about lust and care, and Cat talking about baggage.

• The original stern brunch daddy tweet.

• Toxic masculinity is like acid rain, not rain rain.

• The "I'm baby" meme.

• Jess & Marie are pretty great.

• Andie said Gen Z doesn't fuck, but it sounds like they just don't date.

• The romance trailblazer video from this year's RITAs is so great.

Cant't Stand the Heat

Rafe

Priest

The Kiss Quotient

Escorted

The Preacher's Promise

Romancing Mr. Bridgerton

Not the Girl You Marry

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah MacLean 0:00 / #
Okay, so we're just popping this in at the beginning of the cinnamon / # roll interstitial with Andie Christopher, give us a couple minutes, you guys Andie's on her way. But we have a plan and we're very excited about it.

Jennifer Prokop 0:13 / #
It's really exciting. Sarah made me try it. So we know it works.

Sarah MacLean 0:18 / #
It's true. So we have set up a voicemail box for you guys.For old school level, like you can basically page

Jennifer Prokop 0:30 / #
Oh my god, it's like A Tribe Called Quest song.

A Tribe Called Quest 0:33 / #
Enter your Telephone number or other numeric message.

Sarah MacLean 0:43 / #
So we're going to give you a telephone number, a United States telephone number for international listeners. And you're going to get to call and it's going to go right to voicemail. And you will hear my voice asking you to tell us about the book that blooded you, Jen, what do we want them to tell us?

Jennifer Prokop 1:03 / #
Okay, so I think here's the important thing. We are hopefully going to actually play these audio clips on future podcasts. Yeah,

Sarah MacLean 1:11 / #
you're by giving us voicemail, by leaving us a voicemail you are consenting to us putting it on the podcast.

Jennifer Prokop 1:18 / #
Yeah. So I think it's really important that you probably should just say you're like your first name. You don't have to give us your full name, address please or phone number. Please don't do that.

Sarah MacLean 1:26 / #
Please don't.

Jennifer Prokop 1:27 / #
None of us would like any of your data we we want you to be pleasantly anonymous. Anyway. So you're going to tell us your name. If you would like to-- where you live. That's kind of fun when you started reading romance, some small biographical details, I think to get the flavor. And then I want you to tell us the book and it's really great if its title and author.

Sarah MacLean 1:49 / #
Yes, please. And tell us why.

Jennifer Prokop 1:51 / #
Yeah, like Sarah story where she read Gentle Rogue her desk, right? I think what we're looking for is not like your review of the book, but your memory of the reading of it. right?

Sarah MacLean 2:02 / #
We're interested in like the prime on this of this book. Why this is the book that brought you to romance and kept you here? Um, so that is the story. That is what we're doing. The telephone number is [redacted]. And we are not putting this-- you have to write it down, you guys. We're not putting on the internet because the last thing I need is like cranky readers leaving me voicemail about my books. Don't leave me voicemail about my books.

Jennifer Prokop 2:41 / #
You know what I'll say? Yeah, it's if it's, if it's anything other than like, kind of what we described, we'll probably just delete it. And you know, we're not trying to be mean, but this isn't, you know, there's lots of ways to talk to us on Twitter or whatever. This is really specifically the books to blooded us hotline.

Sarah MacLean 3:01 / #
Okay, we're gonna give you the telephone number during episodes too, but like I said, we're not gonna put it in show notes. We're not gonna tweet it. It's really it's just between all us all US friends.Yeah, you know, 10,000 closest friends. So if you leave us-- pegging crew! Don't leave us messages about pegging.

Jennifer Prokop 3:32 / #
Oh my god. I'm excited about all of it.

Sarah MacLean 3:36 / #
I'm really excited to I can't wait. Tell us about the books that you love-- from the past from the present. Call multiple times. Tell us about multiple books.

Jennifer Prokop 3:48 / #
Sure. And you know, we're not sure exactly how we're how we're going to use this yet. So you know, we don't know exactly how it'll work. So it could be that we get inundated with calls and keep it up for a week or two and take it down. It could be something that goes on for a long time. So no promises anybody, maybe we don't, but we just think it'll be really fun to hear. Yes,

Sarah MacLean 4:09 / #
this could be a very big mistake to we haven't talked, but

Jennifer Prokop 4:13 / #
I don't think it'll be a mistake. I'm just worried it's too much. Like we won't be able to get everybody on right. I mean, you know, you guys seem cool though. I think

Sarah MacLean 4:21 / #
I think we're all gonna we're all grown ups. We're all going to be able to, you know, hold hold firm. I'm very excited that I'm making you all do something old fashioned, like pick up the phone and leave us a voicemail like a a civilized human being.

Jennifer Prokop 4:38 / #
No dick pics.

Sarah MacLean 4:41 / #
Note Yeah, impossible to leave us a dick pic.

Sarah MacLean 4:45 / #
Okay, And we can't wait to hear your voices in our ear holes.

Jennifer Prokop 4:55 / #
Yes, that's right.

Sarah MacLean 4:57 / #
Stay tuned for Andie Christopher and cinnamon / # rolls.

Sarah MacLean 5:02 / #
Well, we made a lot of people mad.

Jennifer Prokop 5:06 / #
They haven't even heard the Derek Craven episode yet, so I don't even know what the hell's going on Sarah

Sarah MacLean 5:13 / #
Well, welcome to Fated Mates everyone it is a beta cinnamon / # roll soft hero week. It's a little late Great British Bake Off.

Jennifer Prokop 5:26 / #
We actually just got an amazing-- someone tweeted us right now and was like, Is there a book where it's essentially set during the Great British Bake Off? Only I don't watch that show. And so it said #GBBO, and I didn't know what it was and I go look it up. So I'm like the wrong person to ask I guess.

Sarah MacLean 5:45 / #
I am the exact right person to ask about that. I don't know about a baking one. But Louisa Edwards did a like Top Chef style romance series which we will play in show notes. More importantly, we should introduce our guest.

Andie Christopher 6:02 / #
Hi.

Sarah MacLean 6:05 / #
Before we're too far down the rabbit hole. Welcome, Andie Christopher.

Andie Christopher 6:11 / #
Hi,

Sarah MacLean 6:12 / #
we are so excited to have you. I can't believe it's taken us until season two.

Andie Christopher 6:17 / #
It's it's taken a long time, but we did record that one episode that Just didn't make it.

Sarah MacLean 6:24 / #
It's actually not that it didn't make it. It's that someone was terrible at recording themselves.

Jennifer Prokop 6:31 / #
Wait, you have no idea everybody Sarah, I'm about to tell you a story you don't even know only Andie and I know-- which is I fucked up the recording the first time it was the three of us and actually accidentally had this master reverb thing on, which was essentially it made me sound like I was in a soccer stadium. And then-- here's what you don't know. I also recorded an interview with Andie because I interviewed her for Kirkus earlier this summer, and at literally 10 minutes before our scheduled phone call. My child-- who we were in Dallas for his volleyball tournament-- played volleyball day then ate a bunch of stuff and then literally barfed all over the hotel room. And I had to clean it all up, and then call and Andie and be like, "Hi, sorry. Thank God you're not in this room with me because it's disgusting." So I'm going to go with Third time's a charm.

Andie Christopher 7:22 / #
I hope so. I hope so.

Jennifer Prokop 7:24 / #
Nobody's gonna barf right now. And I'm not in a soccer stadium.

Sarah MacLean 7:29 / #
I'm really glad and also it's a good day, you guys. It's a really good day, because Nancy Pelosi finally got her shit together and was like, let's impeach the motherfucker.

Jennifer Prokop 7:45 / #
I mean, Yes. I need her to be hard as nails right now.

Andie Christopher 7:50 / #
She was bringing the Big Mom energy during that, during that press conference. She was bringing the "I told you once I told you twice. This is the third time and now we're done."

Sarah MacLean 8:05 / #
You don't get to go to prom. Yeah, if only we actually were prom. And, uh, but basically, what better thing for us to do tonight than to talk about soft, good, sweet heroes who make us happy to be in the world.

Jennifer Prokop 8:27 / #
So true.

Sarah MacLean 8:29 / #
So to a few weeks ago, we released our alpha episode. It was the first interstitial of season two because we decided it was time for us to come, we were going to come hard for all of you with season two. And Jen and I put our stakes in the ground on alphas. And we had, I think, a really thoughtful conversation about alphas and why they exist. And a lot of people on Twitter and in other places asked us a lot of really great questions about: why alphas? and Why not betas? and why not cinnamon / # rolls? And first of all, I just want to repeat something that I feel like we said a bunch on on that alpha episode but clearly needs repeating, and that is that at no point did Jen and I say that romance novels can't exist without alphas. And at no point did Jen and I say that alphas and betas are the only descriptors of heroes. In fact, I think at multiple points we said, this is sort of a dumb way of articulating heroes because they should be more right than one thing. They should have nuance.

Jennifer Prokop 9:43 / #
I don't even know if we said that. I mean, I feel bad. We say it to each other all the time. But on that particular note,

Sarah MacLean 9:48 / #
we definitely did. I went back and checked. I said like good writing requires the hero to be nuance,

Jennifer Prokop 9:54 / #
yeah. characters to be nuanced.

Sarah MacLean 9:57 / #
Exactly. So but what's really the reason why we're here So Jen and I had already started talking about Okay, we're going to have to do, we're going to do a second episode, and we're going to do an episode that'll be about kind of the softer hero. And I don't know, I'm really glad Andie's with us because I think one of the really valuable things for us to talk about, maybe at the very beginning of this, is what makes a cinnamon / # roll versus a beta. I'm not sure I understand all the terms. So can we do that first and really sort of establish what we're talking about? And then I want to talk a little bit about history. And then I want Andie to talk about her brilliant thoughts on why cinnamon / # rolls are working now in a way that maybe they weren't a year, a decade ago or five years ago.

Jennifer Prokop 10:44 / #
So I feel like we should talk about like the origin of that cinnamon / # roll like it comes from The Onion, right? Isn't that what it is? Like?

Andie Christopher 10:53 / #
It's like, it's like this sweet cinnamon / # roll of a human is too good and sweet for this world.

Jennifer Prokop 10:57 / #
Yes. And there's Also a really funny tweet. I should find that-- Yeah, I think it's funny because a lot of people like why cinnamon / # rolls? And I think it's actually a it comes from this Onion piece and I think it's just sort of pervasively became this really funny thing that everyone just really glommed on to as being a great way to describe a certain kind of character. And the fact that, I feel like one of, a pioneering person in terms of like defining it was Olivia dade. And we linked to her list of cinnamon / # roll heroes a bunch of times. But what she says is, "Cinnamon / # roll heroes are supportive, kind people who do their best even when they make mistakes." And so that is what it is that she defines as being a cinnamon / # roll hero. And then she made out, got a whole bunch of people to crowdsource the list and so if you're looking for heroes like this, after we talked about it today, we will link to this list because it is amazing and has, I don't know, 70 or 100 books on it that you might want to check out.

Andie Christopher 12:07 / #
Yeah, I think a couple of my books are on that too, but I'm not sure if those books are quite accurately as cinnamon / # roll-y as I thought they were.

Jennifer Prokop 12:14 / #
interesting.

Andie Christopher 12:15 / #
I mean, I think they are just not quite... I'm not going at.. I'm not on the Simone scale. I'm somewhere on the Claybourne curve.

Sarah MacLean 12:29 / #
I'm gonna go ahead and say that cinnamon / # roll heroes don't even make Simone scale. Her zero point on the access is Darcy, who is not a cinnamon / # roll. So,

Andie Christopher 12:43 / #
Okay, but I was thinking about this today. And I think Father Bell [hero of PRIEST by Sierra Simone] is in some senses.

Sarah MacLean 12:51 / #
What are you saying right now?

Jennifer Prokop 12:57 / #
You Gotta start over again. Time Out. Recalibrate.

Sarah MacLean 13:02 / #
Oh my god no

Jennifer Prokop 13:03 / #
Andie!

Sarah MacLean 13:04 / #
I'm pretty sure Sierra Simone is in London right now at Rare London, and I feel like she just woke up at like 5am and was like there's a disturbance.

Andie Christopher 13:15 / #
she would love me for saying something blasphemous...

Sarah MacLean 13:18 / #
But I will hear your arguments. Miss Christopher.

Andie Christopher 13:24 / #
Okay. For me, the cinnamon / # roll hero's number one priority is the heroine's emotional, mental, and or spiritual well being, physical well being. So that kind of overrides everything else and I think, Father Bell, because we're so in his head, expends a lot of the conflict of the book is trying to put the heroine's emotional, physical and spiritual well being over his own wants and desires that he has attempted unsuccessfully to sublimate.

Sarah MacLean 14:04 / #
Okay, so I think this is really interesting because I guess that all makes that all makes sense to me but what I don't understand is like how is that different than what any romance hero wants? Like? I think about Derek Craven, right? Who was our first book of the of the season or frankly most Kresley Cole heroes-- I mean not, okay, pbviously not Lothaire. But like, you know, there are others. Like all those werewolf heroes. I mean like werewolves...are they, are werewolf cinnamon / # rolls?

Andie Christopher 14:45 / #
I think the were-- of Kresley levels-- the werewolf in "A Hunger Like No Other" I'm his name is escaping me right now. He's not a cinnamon / # roll, I would say, and like MacReive is not a cinnamon / # roll

Jennifer Prokop 14:59 / #
See! Because I'm like, none of them are, Andie! What the hell are you talking about?

Sarah MacLean 15:03 / #
She's not wrong. Because what about about Lucia and...

Andie Christopher 15:06 / #
Declan.

Jennifer Prokop 15:07 / #
Declan! He's the vivisector!

Andie Christopher 15:11 / #
Sorry!

Sarah MacLean 15:15 / #
Well, we're the same way with all those heroes. Lucia and help, help me.

Jennifer Prokop 15:21 / #
Garreth.

Sarah MacLean 15:21 / #
in the Amazon

Andie Christopher 15:22 / #
Garreth. Yes,

Sarah MacLean 15:23 / #
Garrett?

Jennifer Prokop 15:24 / #
Garreth. Is it Garreth?

Sarah MacLean 15:26 / #
Yeah. Is he a cinnamon / # roll?

Jennifer Prokop 15:28 / #
No.

Andie Christopher 15:29 / #
I think he's a little bit of a cinnamon / # roll.

Jennifer Prokop 15:31 / #
I feel like I have to log off and go lay on a fainting couch. I don't understand anything anybody? Like, Oh,

Sarah MacLean 15:40 / #
All right. So this is really interesting-- somebody, but somebody else tweeted at us. A person named Charlotte, @romansdegare on Twitter, tweeted "I've still got that Fated Mates episode on the brain as I read "Damaged Goods" and starting to wonder if cinnamon / # roll conflict is often I'm caring for you emotionally so I can't lust after you. While alpha conflict is the reverse. I'm lusting after you so I can't care for you." And Jen and I sort of discussed this privately. And like there's something maybe here this, and you said it too. I think Andie when you said: you care about her like emotional and spiritual well being. Then you said, the third thing you said was physical, and I wonder if that's part of it. Like, where the relationship starts versus where it ends.

Jennifer Prokop 16:39 / #
So here's here's what I'm going to suggest, because I right now think-- as my blueprint-- is when I think of cinnamon / # rolls, to me, the pinnacle of cinnamon / # roll-dom is "Rafe" by Rebecca Weatherspoon. And I kind of felt, I literally was like, "I should reread part of it today to like, make sure I'm all on point." And I fell right back into the book. And I think there's a really interesting part. And there's also a really interesting thread someone tweeted us from her, a woman named Kat C, And what she said is cinnamon / # roll heroes are, not cinnamon / # rolls, but she "likes reading books where people are dealing with their baggage in not so aggressive ways." And I think what "Rafe" -- so there's this part in "Rafe" where he is essentially interviewing for the job to be her nanny, Sloan's nanny or her twin girls bailed-- literally, it's like horrifying as a mother-- she basically comes home and finds her six year old girls home alone. And the nanny left the keys to the car and the house keys with a note that said, "I quit. I just don't want to do this anymore." So she's really scrambling to find someone and she ends up getting Rafe, who's been essentially nannying, He's like in his early 30s, for like 10 or 12 years. And Rafe, at the interview says to her, "Um, I think we Have a problem. I've never, I've never nannied for a single mom I'm this attracted to before." And he just has, he's a grown up who can lay it out on the table and put it in front of her, as opposed to.... I don't know, like, stomping around and not admitting he has feelings. So to me a cinnamon / # roll is like, I have feelings, and I actually am aware of them. And I know what to do with them. I don't know you guys like. And the thing is, that to me is the it's because of course, alphas care for people! We talked about that. The difference I think, is

Sarah MacLean 18:36 / #
the emotion. The emotion sneaks up on an alpha.

Jennifer Prokop 18:39 / #
and a cinnamon / # roll person is like, Yes, I have feelings. Duh, who doesn't. And I'll tell you what, it's funny. I'm going to say one more thing. I there are parts of this book. I didn't do a lot of highlighting. There's this one part where they sort of like they kiss and she's like, "I'm not sure I really want to do this" and he's like, "okay, we're gonna leave it up to you." And then he's like, "What do you want?" And she says, "I want you to make this easy on me." And I was like, there you go. He was like, you're right. His communication skills are through the roof. That to me is what makes a cinnamon / # roll a cinnamon / # roll. Being able to communicate,

Andie Christopher 19:17 / #
yeah, can use this words as opposed to like, I want to punch someone.

Jennifer Prokop 19:20 / #
Okay. And in the case of brief, also his cock fine.

Andie Christopher 19:24 / #
I sort of reject the premise that any romance hero that I'm really going to fall in love with does not have a quasi-magical penis. Like, I want I want to be like, I'm vomiting out unicorns the next day thinking about the hero and what he can do with his magical member.

Jennifer Prokop 19:53 / #
I'm just giggling

Sarah MacLean 19:54 / #
I don't think you're alone in this.

Andie Christopher 19:57 / #
I just 100%... I hate, I don't like it when a book has an awkward sex scene between the hero and the heroine. That is the opposite of what my ID wants. Like my ID wants him to like, bang it out, make her see stars

Jennifer Prokop 20:14 / #
into next week!

Andie Christopher 20:15 / #
into next week, every single time. I need it. That's just it's a baseline.

Jennifer Prokop 20:24 / #
Rafe can get it, you guys! I just want you to know. I think part of the reason Rafe is particularly-- I don't read a whole lot of cinnamon / # roll books. This one really worked for me. And I think there are a couple reasons why. One is because I hate cooking and cleaning. And I did not like raising my child. I love my son, you guys, but I didn't... those years when he was really young were really hard for me. I still hate cooking and cleaning and always well. But the idea that a competent man is going to appear and like take over those tasks for me in my house. And also Fuck me into next week. Hello. Sign me up. I mean, I'm sorry. Maybe that's not everyone's fantasy, but I'm going to tell you right now. It is hot. It worked for me.

Sarah MacLean 21:11 / #
Okay, so here's my thing, right? So I was trying to come up with cinnamon / # rolls, who I have loved. And this obviously is a challenge for me. But I, here are two who I've loved. And ironically, it's the same trope, right?

Jennifer Prokop 21:31 / #
Okay, interesting.

Sarah MacLean 21:32 / #
I loved the hero and Helen Hoang's "The Kiss Quotient."

Andie Christopher 21:38 / #
Love him.

Sarah MacLean 21:39 / #
And I loved the hero in Claire Kent's "Escorted." And in both of those cases, we're talking about soft heroes, who are all the things that you are saying-- Able to vocalize emotion, able to understand like their emotional relationship with the world, They've been through therapy, or they have these big families. But at the same time, they're male escorts and highly-- Here you are, Jen--able to bang you into next week

Sarah MacLean 22:25 / #
But also I think there's something, but at the same time, like in that particular dynamic, I think the reason why both these heroes work well for me, is because there is sort of, there is a power structure here. Like they are deeply competent, and sort of teaching the heroine something. And so maybe they're not cinnamon / # rolls at all. I don't know are they?

Jennifer Prokop 22:53 / #
Clearly we're the three wrong people to be talking about this.

Andie Christopher 22:57 / #
I mean, I definitely think--I I haven't read "Escorted." But I definitely think Michael in "The Kiss Quotient" is a cinnamon / # roll. Um,

Sarah MacLean 23:06 / #
I mean, he's got that big family. He cares so much about his sisters and his mom. I mean, He's amazing.

Andie Christopher 23:13 / #
I think there's an interesting sort of layer of conflicts there because like, I think at first, he's not trying to let her into that part of him. So he is a cinnamon / # roll, but he has this, this sort of layer that he keeps between himself, his true self, and his clients. And so I think, you know, part of the conflict and part of them overcoming their conflict is she penetrates that. And the way I think, yeah, so it makes sense,

Sarah MacLean 23:43 / #
Jen!

Jennifer Prokop 23:44 / #
you guys, I'm doing my best.

Andie Christopher 23:48 / #
It's my... I think, penetrate is the right word, because like she's a little bit sort of the alpha in that, in that power dynamic. She really, she gets under his skin. You know, I think in a way, more quickly than... and then he gets under hers.

Sarah MacLean 24:11 / #
Yeah, it's just it's a really interesting question because... so it takes us, So that is the second piece of the question is, is a cinnamon / # roll and a beta the same? Or like is that even worth having -- like do betas even exist? But then I think they kind of do, right? So we talked a little bit about the history of the alpha when we talked about alphas, and we're doing a lot of conversational romance history as we do this season. And so I think it's valuable for us to talk about the history of the beta, right? And again, I think it's important and I just want to qualify when we talk about the history and we say like early books, or we say "the first" right, we're not obviously it's almost never the actual first

Jennifer Prokop 24:58 / #
Yeah, right.

Sarah MacLean 24:59 / #
Like the last six months of my life have been researching romance novels for the RITA award ceremony and Andie was doing that with me, and the most illuminating thing about it was that every time we thought we'd found the first like, five days later, we found an earlier first. So, I think we need to talk about betas and we need to talk about Julia Quinn because while she may not have written the first beta, she definitely is responsible for the popularizing of the beta. And that is because she wrote the Bridgerton series which, if you haven't heard of it, you soon will because Shonda Rhimes is turning it into a Netflix series literally as we speak. And the Bridgertons were this kind of, so Julia had written a couple of books beforehand, but sat down and sort of and wrote this really big boisterous family. Eight children who were named in alphabetical order, and they lived in, they were the children of a viscount. And they lived with their single, their widowed mother, in like a big house in London and they had a big country house and they sort of had these like, bright sparkling dialogue... scenes filled with sparkling dialogue and like, not a ton of plot happens in these books. It begins with a book called "The Duke and I." The plot of "the Duke and I," it's a very streamlined, straightforward plot. It doesn't have a lot of like, complex twists and turns and it doesn't have to because the dialogue is so beautiful and the characters are so bright. There's something very soft and wonderful about these books. But what's interesting is that prior to Julia-- historicals looked like, I mean, literally looks like Derek Craven, right? They, they look like, like these big bananas historicals. And then Julia came in and she wrote this family that was something very different. And the first Bridgerton book, which was "The Duke and I" was published in 2000. And I've spoken to I checked this data with Julia before we recorded because I wanted, I have a theory and I wanted to make sure that it checked out. And she confirmed that "The Duke and I" and "The Viscount Who Loved Me" and "An Offer From a Gentleman," which were published in 2000, 2000, and 2001, we're all very, did very well but like did not blow the doors off. "The Duke and I" did not come out like "50 Shades," although often we think about that as being one of those books now. In fact, the fourth book in the series, which is "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton" is the book that sort of really was the sort of leap into huge for that series. And that book came out in 2002. And I have a theory that, you know, we've talked on this on this podcast and I've talked a lot in the world about post 9/11. There being this kind of boom in paranormal because readers were looking for these like big, huge alphas who could literally save the universe. And they were like, that was safety in fear and sort of existential fear that Americans were feeling post 9/11. But I'm actually wondering if at the same time, we weren't also going through a period where books were getting softer. And there was room for these like soft heroes who were the antithesis of every romance hero we'd seen before. And I'm wondering if we're seeing that now, too. The sort of rise of dark romance on one side, these kinds of like, truly bananas books that are taking the finger on one side, and something else entirely that's happening now in the world.

Andie Christopher 29:13 / #
I -think you're right. I think that actually that jives with my theory of the cinnamon / # roll and why they're appealing

Sarah MacLean 29:21 / #
so do that.

Andie Christopher 29:23 / #
Okay, so I think they're particularly appealing to sort of millennial and Gen Z. single women, or women who have recently been dating, because the cis hetero men that we are dating are fucking terrible.

Jennifer Prokop 29:43 / #
I'm Sorry I laughed.

Sarah MacLean 29:44 / #
Break it down for us Andie

Andie Christopher 29:46 / #
all we want is a nice guy, who we don't have to raise, who doesn't hate us because we don't want to have sex with them right away. Or doesn't think we're a slut if we do who can use his words and cares about whether we have an orgasm-- in a larger sense of than what it says about his own ego. Someone who can actually be a partner instead of someone who is going to destroy your like--who's gonna take your finger. But I think on the other, on the other side of that, you also if you don't if you're dating a lot of, you know, softer gentlemen, who can't make a plan to save their lives. There's an appeal to reading about a man who wants you so much he will, he will plan an abduction. And I think this was like the first thing I said..

Sarah MacLean 29:56 / #
He will plan...nice

Andie Christopher 30:39 / #
..to Kristin Ashley and I did make her laugh. I was like, I think the appeal of like abduction fiction because I think she was talking about alpha heroes. Like, at least this guy can plan a date.

Jennifer Prokop 31:06 / #
Oh my god,

Sarah MacLean 31:08 / #
don't abduct women, male listeners!

Andie Christopher 31:12 / #
Do not, don't abduct women, but, you know, make a dinner reservation. Don't say, yeah, like where do you want to go? say I want to try this restaurant-- What do you think? it's all about the balance.

Jennifer Prokop 31:26 / #
Can I ask a question? I'm going to throw it out there. I, I do not read, I don't read much inspirational romance unless it's written by Piper Huguley. But I am wondering if the rise of Amish romance, and sort of Christian romance, around the same time-- because my understanding is it's also came about at the same time. If cinnamon / # rolls are essentially a secular version of of a like a more...Like a inspirational hero?

Sarah MacLean 32:05 / #
I don't know. I don't know and I don't know enough about inspirational to be able to speak really thoughtfully on it.

Jennifer Prokop 32:13 / #
I mean, well, maybe we'll just throw it out there for our listeners to do

Sarah MacLean 32:16 / #
if you do. I would love to hear that. You know, Andie thinks that Sierra Simone is out there writing betas.

Andie Christopher 32:24 / #
I didn't say he wasa Beta, I said he was like a little bit of a cinnamon / # roll.

Sarah MacLean 32:30 / #
He's the Conrad Wroth of...

Jennifer Prokop 32:32 / #
Yeah, yeah. He's gonna use that icing for Lub, I mean, I don't know.

Andie Christopher 32:37 / #
Can we talk about stern brunch Daddies.

Jennifer Prokop 32:39 / #
Oh, yeah, sure.

Andie Christopher 32:41 / #
Okay, so this is this is all Sarah's fault.

Sarah MacLean 32:44 / #
It's Andie's genius, though.

Andie Christopher 32:47 / #
Yeah, I did come up with the term. So Sarah posted this picture of Oscar Isaac sitting at like a table, at what looks like a restaurant, like holding a fork and like staring intently at the camera, and she's like, okay, Andie, I see him now. AI was like, Oh, I get what you like you like a stern brunch daddy. A guy who is gonna make sure your Mimosa never goes empty, but then he'll like spank you until you cry later.

Jennifer Prokop 33:11 / #
Sure, sure.

Sarah MacLean 33:13 / #
I mean, he would never allow you to be seated by the kitchen.

Andie Christopher 33:16 / #
Never. Like never he wants to talk to the manager.

Sarah MacLean 33:21 / #
It's true. This is only because I have Chris Evans blindness, meaning if he doesn't look Stern, I don't see him. I'm unable to see him and I have that problem with Oscar Isaac too, because I feel like if he doesn't look Stern, I don't even know what I'm looking at us like a blank face.

Andie Christopher 33:39 / #
Yeah, I mean, he has to serve up a little bit of Derek Craven for you to feel it.

Sarah MacLean 33:43 / #
Precisely. Which is why we're doing this podcast, this episode, because I don't I truly want to understand it. Because it's interesting and I think that what we're coming to is that it is in actual fact a exactly two sides of the same coin. Because everything that, you know, every way that we're articulating this in terms of like care and comfort and protection-- or not protection-- but care and comfort and like ease, right, like softness is ultimately what we want from the alpha on the other side. But it's it's almost like we're talking about when you get to see it in the book, like,

Andie Christopher 33:44 / #
Yeah,

Sarah MacLean 33:44 / #
do you see the transformation in the book? And if you do, it's like that. Then you've started as you know, I'm air quoting. You can't see it, but

Andie Christopher 34:40 / #
right.

Jennifer Prokop 34:41 / #
I don't know. I. I feel like because where

Sarah MacLean 34:45 / #
does the transformation come from the storm brunch?

Andie Christopher 34:47 / #
He just is

Jennifer Prokop 34:48 / #
I feel like cinnamon / # role heroes don't transform--- I feel like heroines do. Their romantic partners transform not them.

Sarah MacLean 34:56 / #
So when you think about Rafe, what's the transformation in the book?

Jennifer Prokop 35:00 / #
It's not, that's, okay. So I think the transformation in the book is for the heroine who in this case her ex husband is real dirtbag. And this is it's the only man she's ever been with. And so to be with Rafe to be with someone who respects, her who--she's this amazing surgeon, right? Who, who she can say, "I want you to make this easy for me" and he listens to her. I mean, it is just a transformitive-- like Andie was saying-- it's a transformative experience for her because she has been used to men disrespecting her and now she does not have to suffer that in her home. Right? And, and, and deep dicking into next week. I mean, this guy really knows how to take care of her in every way. So, but he, I do not see him as being a character who really undergoes change. He is--

Sarah MacLean 35:51 / #
Would we say like, they're, they're perfect from the start? Because Michael in "The Kiss Quotient" is pretty fucking perfect.

Jennifer Prokop 36:00 / #
Well, here's here's what I would suggest, because I actually don't know that I think they're opposites as much as I think it's just trying to achieve something different. And you're, as you were talking, I guess I would say this: to me, the alpha is like, I am pursuing what I want and that's also going to end up being what the heroine wants, we're going to figure it out together. But to me, a cinnamon / # roll hero-- if it's male, female romance-- is like, I know who I am. And I'm pretty happy and I'm wildly attracted to this woman. So my goal is to make sure she's getting what she wants. And I do think that those are different. That's, that's how it reads to me. When it works.

Sarah MacLean 36:41 / #
Yeah,

Jennifer Prokop 36:43 / #
I mean, that's what Michael wants, right for Stella in "The Kiss Quotient." He's like, what do you need from me? What what, how can I move you along this path that you're on? Now? I think he does undergo a journey.

Sarah MacLean 36:54 / #
Okay. But here's the thing, A lot of people came at us on Twitter about this and they were like, they were like, The problem with alphas, the problem with alphas is that they never want, they never want to hold up women and give women what they need. Right? They don't want women to have jobs. They don't want women to, you know, they don't want to support women in their careers or whatever. Right. And I think that that's a really interesting, and that's sort of what you're not saying, You're not in the extreme like that. But like, you're sort of dancing around that too. And that doesn't make very much sense to me in a modern role, like maybe the old romances? In a modern romance-- I've never written a hero who's like, "now you stay home, you don't get to keep running your bar" instead Haven has office in the bar now.

Jennifer Prokop 37:39 / #
So to me, if that's what an alpha is, I don't like it.

Sarah MacLean 37:44 / #
Yeah, well, if there's a parity issue that I think like gets lost in the argument here. Like,

Jennifer Prokop 37:51 / #
I just think alpha heroes if if we're comparing them and I don't even honestly know if it's that useful. Like maybe it's just different things entirely.

Sarah MacLean 38:00 / #
Maybe we're just spinning our wheels.

Andie Christopher 38:01 / #
I think it's hard to write like a really, really close to pure alpha in a contemporary romance Are you like you believe that you want, you would want to be in that same kind of relationship? And so to a certain extent, you know, there's still like alpha heroes and contemporary romance, obviously. But I think they're tempered to a certain degree. If your goal is to write a book that isn't like escapist.

Sarah MacLean 38:31 / #
right Right, right. Yeah. Fantasy right like if it's not you know, 50 shades like billionaire

Andie Christopher 38:40 / #
or like a motorcycle club. If it's not, it's not like um, you know, sort of a world you don't live in right?

Sarah MacLean 38:47 / #
It's not a Harlequin presents,

Andie Christopher 38:49 / #
Right. I mean, I think you can even write like, more pure alphas if you're writing sports romances. You're writing about like, larger than life.

Jennifer Prokop 38:59 / #
I want to go back to me like this really foundational moment in "Rafe" right? She says, "I want you to make this easy for me." And he as a cinnamon / # roll understands that what that means is I'm My job is to figure out what she needs and give it to her. I think if you said to an alpha, I want you to make this easy for me, he'd be like, "great, Just do what I want." And I don't think that means like, don't have a job. I think that just means like, Don't make me feel feelings. Right? Like let's just like have all the sex and stuff. I don't know!

Sarah MacLean 39:31 / #
I don't think it would be, "Don't." I don't think it would be "don't-- just do what I want." I think it would be like "Fine. Who do I pay to fix this problem?"

Jennifer Prokop 39:42 / #
Yes, Right.

Sarah MacLean 39:43 / #
Who do I punch to make you feel better? Like for an alpha he's he's a battering ram. He's like, "What do I have to break to make you happy?"

Jennifer Prokop 39:55 / #
When she says this to Rafe, and I like I said, I think this moment, To me it really spoke to, At its core what it was, when she said, "I just want you to make this easy for me." He understand that. That meant she meant,

Sarah MacLean 40:06 / #
emotionally

Jennifer Prokop 40:07 / #
I'm a little, I'm a little afraid of making decisions. I'm a little tentative, I'm not sure. And his response was, like, "come down here. We're going to figure it out together." Right, which I'm going to tell you it really works for me. I think it's really sexy at every level, but just in a totally different way.

Sarah MacLean 40:24 / #
Yeah, no, I mean, who doesn't want that?

Jennifer Prokop 40:26 / #
Yes. Right.

Sarah MacLean 40:27 / #
That's great.

Jennifer Prokop 40:29 / #
I'm just saying, I think how if I said to Derek Craven-- just make this easy for me-- He's like, good! Leave and go back to Greenwood Corners, so I don't have to think about you because you're freaking me out.

Andie Christopher 40:43 / #
And I mean, like St. Vincent would be like, maybe we should bone. An orgasm will make you feel better.

Sarah MacLean 40:50 / #
Right? But in real life, I mean, this of course, makes perfect sense. In theory, it's it's the moment where you say, I have words Or I have concerns or I have, you know, whatever. And the response is I want I hear that and I want to act to fix them. Like that's a, that's a noble thing. Like, I wish we all had that every day.

Jennifer Prokop 41:15 / #
Well, and I mean, maybe that's the fantasy: that they never tire of us being needy. I mean, I don't know, I mean, I think it's, I liked what Andie said a lot. It's not this idea that someone if we said-- I just want you to make it-- sometimes I literally say to Darrell, he's like, "what do you want for dinner" and I say, "I just want you to decide, that's what I want." Like, literally, that's what I want. I want you to decide I want you to make that decision. I just want you to make dinner appear in front of me. That is what care looks like to me right now.

Andie Christopher 41:48 / #
I mean, there's that there's that meme that you just say "I'm baby." So there's that like, you sometimes just want to like walk in the door and be like, I'm Baby, I get all of the like love and attention and coddling; as opposed to, I feel like, this like applies to some of my friends who you know are in relationships, especially hetero relationships that they feel like they're doing a lot more work.

Jennifer Prokop 42:23 / #
You know what this reminds me of. Okay, so back when I did TFA right after I was out of college, I had a roommate named Amy. And Amy would say the thing that, the first time she said it, I was like, that's the truest fucking thing I've ever heard. She'd had a fight with her boyfriend. And I don't remember exactly how it came up. She was fighting with him, she had this really tumultuous relationship. And she said to me, she's like, "you know, you can't ask for flowers." And like what it meant was if you have to ask for the flowers in order to get them, they mean less. A gesture-- a romantic gesture-- has to be driven by the other person. They have to know that what you need or want is flowers, or that right it comes out of nowhere. And I feel like you would never have to ask a fucking cinnamon / # roll for flowers. You would have to say though, to many alpha heroes: flowers are an actual sign of affection and every once in a while if you bring them to me, I will be happy

Sarah MacLean 43:29 / #
Well, it's it's interesting because there's also I'm sort of like dancing around in my I'm like playing over and over my head this idea that like there's something here about toxic masculinity. Which is these heroes lack that kind of toxicity. They are masculine without toxicity. I retweeted somebody today who was trying to explain, just because we don't want toxic masculinity doesn't mean we don't want masculinity. We don't want acid rain, but We still want rain. I think that's a really useful, Shit. What's a call from the SATs?

Jennifer Prokop 44:10 / #
An analogy?

Andie Christopher 44:12 / #
metaphor?

Sarah MacLean 44:14 / #
With the blank colon blank

Jennifer Prokop 44:16 / #
An analogy.

Sarah MacLean 44:18 / #
Yeah, whatever. It's a really useful one of those-- I think there's something there, essentially it's pure, it's and I do think it's contemporaries more than anything else that are doing, this because I mean, if Andie to Andie's point--- it's terrible out there, right? It's like that mement in "When Harry Met Sally" when You know, Carrie Fisher leans back and turns to Bruno Kirby and is like,

movie dialogue 44:52 / #
Tell me I'll never have to be out there again.

Jennifer Prokop 44:54 / #
Yes, that's right.

Sarah MacLean 44:57 / #
This is the moment

Andie Christopher 44:59 / #
I feel like there's all these studies that people, like millennials and Gen Zers or is are literally not fucking. Like Gen Z does not fuck

Jennifer Prokop 45:13 / #
Sad.

Andie Christopher 45:15 / #
I mean it's it's real sad, it's sad for me...on a personal level. But that's why I'm glad we have Sierra Simone in the world. Anyway, but it's real bad, and so it like you just want like a guy who is like, I was thinking-- I want a guy who's gonna open my door for me, and like smack my ass on the way out, but he's gonna know he has permission. Um, he's already he's gonna make sure that's okay. But not like in a needy or clingy way.

Jennifer Prokop 45:50 / #
Yeah, I mean, there are no consent issues with...

Sarah MacLean 45:53 / #
but this is such a fantasy. I mean, what you just asked for Andy is like fucking impossible

Jennifer Prokop 45:59 / #
That is more of a fantasy than anything else, right?

Sarah MacLean 46:01 / #
And that's more, that's more of a fantasy than any of these fucking alphas. The idea that-- well, I want him to get consent, but I want to make sure but he can't be too weird about getting consent, it can't feel needy or unsexy, right? You want it to be both sexy and also very clear. And you know, I wanted to smack my ass, but also respect me. And that's not to say that all of this isn't totally reasonable. But here's what's interesting. That takes, in real life, a long time to build with a partner. But like in these books, these guys just have it all.

Andie Christopher 46:38 / #
Yeah, that's what I mean. I that's when I went when I was like writing the hero in "Not the girl you Marry," I specifically set him up as he has been the perfect boyfriend his entire life, and he's failed at relationships. And that's kind of where he starts. So I tried to like have a cinnamon / # roll with a journey. But I still wanted him to be virtually perfect.

Jennifer Prokop 47:06 / #
Of course I think about um, you know, so many of Christina Lauren's recent heores have been this way-- this kind of truly perfect guy who just hasn't fit right.

Andie Christopher 47:21 / #
And I feel like a lot of Kate Clayborn's heroes are that way, they have either definitely flawed and human and layered, but they're not, you never question that they respect the heroine. That's never of question, and and see her as an equal.

Sarah MacLean 47:42 / #
I'm wondering if this is part of why we're seeing, that we've seen so so many fake engagement stories, too, recently? Yeah. Because you know, in our fake engagement episode, Jen and I talked about the fact that like the fan, the fake engagement is like Like, play acting that fantasy relationship. And in order for that to happen, well, cinnamon / # roll hero can do that.

Andie Christopher 48:11 / #
Yeah, and it's also like a cinnamon / # roll hero like you're faking that perfect relationship. Plus he acts like a human Flak Jacket at something like a wedding.

Jennifer Prokop 48:21 / #
Yeah. You know what I keep thinking? When we talked about alphas, the thing we said was it's the fantasy of the alpha is that the patriarchy can be tamed. I think the fantasy of the cinnamon / # roll is that the patriarchy does not have to be trained. They already come in, they're coming fully trained, but they're fully human. Right? Like, there's no way in which-- they have their feelings, they, they understand consent, like they help, you know, literal helpers around the home and whatever way. I mean, you know, maybe that's it. It's like taming versus training.

Sarah MacLean 49:00 / #
Or maybe I would go one step further maybe this fantasy is the patriarchy doesn't exist.

Jennifer Prokop 49:08 / #
They are still masculine.

Sarah MacLean 49:11 / #
Well, that doesn't mean that --it's not, Again, they're just not acid rain?

Andie Christopher 49:17 / #
It doesn't exist within this one human. It hasn't like it hasn't rotted that person to his core. You don't have to send them to therapy for 10 years before you can even talk to him.

Jennifer Prokop 49:28 / #
Yeah. Or that the Yeah, maybe that's right. The patriarchy has not ruined them.

Sarah MacLean 49:35 / #
No.

Andie Christopher 49:36 / #
Yeah, cuz like a lot of the ones you get you know, if you're just trolling on Tinder you're like, Oh, wow. Oh, wow, you're-- this is this is spoiled. I'm just so mean. I'm so mean. That that's why I'm single is because I mean. You're like, oh, your shirtless picture with like the, you know, sleeping tiger. Just show that you're dick is huge. That? That's rotted to the core. I'm not a cinnamon / # roll and not an alpha really either.

Sarah MacLean 50:09 / #
No Well that's the other thing right? There's this like, perception of alpha as incel. And like that ain't it either.

Andie Christopher 50:17 / #
So no, because an alpha wouldn't-- as opposed to an incel--an alpha would never tell like the heroine she's ugly in order to like, get her to like him, or to get her to care about...

Sarah MacLean 50:33 / #
Yeah, no negging allowed.

Andie Christopher 50:37 / #
Yeah, I think we solved it. You guys, I think.

Jennifer Prokop 50:40 / #
All right, fair.

Sarah MacLean 50:41 / #
Well, now Andie, you have a book coming out with a cinnamon / # roll hero.

Andie Christopher 50:46 / #
I do.

Sarah MacLean 50:47 / #
My favorite kind of heroine, the unlikable kind.

Andie Christopher 50:50 / #
She, so what Jen was saying earlier about like the sort of the cinnamon / # roll hero being A foil to a heroine and who has a bigger journey--. And so a lot of the people who've read early copies of "Not the Girl You Marry," which is out on November 12, have said, most people talk about the heroine, Hannah. And part of that is because I basically poured so much myself into that character. It's a version of the trope in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" with the gender roles updated. The heroine is biracial, It's set in Chicago, which is a place that I've lived. And Jack is a cinnamon / # roll. He's always been the perfect boyfriend. He's a literal, honest to God, choir boy. And he like falls instantly in love with the heroine who is giving him the finger at a bar and He works for like a BuzzFeed like type publication. And he's like a video guy. And he does how- to's. And so his boss tasks him with how to lose a girl, and he, he, the only girl he's met of late is Hannah. And so he sets about losing her by doing all of the terrible things that guys who are spoiled by toxic masculinity do-- like sending dick pics, not being communicative, Trying to make her jealous, all of that dumb shit. And she's an event planner, and she wants to get into weddings, but she's very, very soured on romance and her boss is like, "you don't even believe in love." She's like, "Yes, I do. I'll show you. I just met a guy. I have a boyfriend." And so she like has to continue dating Jack to convince her boss that she's not completely soured on the concept of love. And then high jinks ensue. But her journey really is the more angsty emotional journey. She has to come to believe that she deserves love and belonging from not only jack but from her friends who have been trying to offer it to her. So she has to learn to make herself vulnerable. Jack, on the other hand has to learn to stand up for himself a little bit more and take into account what he wants and, you know, not just surrender to whatever like his girlfriend was. And in that way, he basically has to get Hannah to respect him in a way. Not that he's soft. He's like, I mean, he is soft, but he's not. He's a little like I described him as a cinnamon / # roll from the corner of the pan. He is crusty and

Jennifer Prokop 53:54 / #
that's actually amazing.

Sarah MacLean 53:56 / #
Perfect. Well, so not the girl you marry is out November 12. You can pre order it now from all your favorite bookstores. And we will put links to it in show notes. And Andie, what comes and after that? There's a companion.

Andie Christopher 54:21 / #
There's a second one. So they're both standalone. The second book, it's called "Not that Kind of Guy" has a character from the first book in it and it's actually a workplace romance between assistant State's Attorney in Chicago and her much younger intern who comes from an extremely wealthy, politically connected family. And she sort of just like thinks he's a twerp, like a very attractive twerp. Um, and he is madly in love with on first sight, which is a theme Because that's my id and they're working togethe

Sarah MacLean 55:04 / #
Fated Mates.

Andie Christopher 55:05 / #
It's Fated Mates. I love Fated Mates rope and yeah, high jinks ensue. There's there's a trip to Vegas you know there's a wedding. And yeah, so it's it's still more her journey because she has to like come to terms with the ending of her relationship with her childhood sweetheart and he really just, he needs to learn how to like stand up to his family. Um, so he's he's definitely another cinnamon / # roll because he just, you know, wants to take care of people and he you know, wants people to love him. Um, but he's, he's really hot.

Jennifer Prokop 55:45 / #
Well, that goes will Oh, I mean, that fixes a lot.

Sarah MacLean 55:48 / #
it goes without saying Yeah,

Andie Christopher 55:49 / #
yeah, no, I mean, I fall a little bit in love with him throughout the course of the book. Bridget, the heroine in then the second, in "not that kind of guy" is good friends with her, with the heroine-- becomes good friends with the heroine in the first book. And so there's also that friendship and a sense of found family, which is also it's an id for me in books.

Sarah MacLean 56:21 / #
Well, this is amazing. And I'm so glad that you texted me with your idea about why cinnamon / # rolls work. And I think because I do I mean like, I think you're right. I think Jen and I have been talking-- and not just us, we didn't invent this conversation. But for the last two years we've seen this sort of evolution and romance and it seems to be going so quickly. And there's this sort of sense of people are calling them you know, they're it's you know: is everything a rom com? What's happening with all these illustrated covers? What are we trying to say with these covers? What are we trying to say with the Books? And I think cinnamon / # rolls are somehow wrapped up in this conversation in a really interesting way. And I'm always interested, as you both know, and why things happen and what these books are doing the work that they're doing. And if it is about pure fantasy, first of all, oh, men do better.

Andie Christopher 57:24 / #
I mean, I think it's, I think it's about like convincing readers -- writing the book for me, "Not the Girl you Marry" is about convincing myself that love was possible in a world as broken as this. But my conclusion is, that thesis is, the guy has to be close to perfect. And I think it's like, we don't need to be in relationships. And so I think, why are we in relationships? And I think that's what I think that's what a lot of these books are asking. Like, what are we looking for in partnership? And why bother?

Jennifer Prokop 57:56 / #
You know, the thing I keep thinking about though, the fantasy part, I think is really powerful. And I think romance is really transformative, I think it's often very difficult to sort of, I think the best romances put both characters on a journey. And sometimes that journey happens together and sometimes the journey is a little stronger for one than the other. And I think what I really like about like I said in a cinnamon / # roll, in a male, female, where the cinnamon / # roll is the hero, what I really appreciate the most, is the sense that the heroine's journey is really highlighted. And that it his job to like showcase, what she is capable of and like make that possible. And that to me is--you know, not just that such a man exists but that you know, like self acculizatin, like finding yourself, and in a romantic relationship that your romantic partner makes you better and stronger. I mean, that's something we do all deserve. And I think that this is one really powerful way that romance shows that that can happen. I guess that's what I'd say.

Sarah MacLean 59:11 / #
Well, Andie, thank you so much for joining us.

Andie Christopher 59:15 / #
Thank you for having me. It was so much fun.

Sarah MacLean 59:17 / #
Andy, tell everybody where they can find you online.

Andie Christopher 59:21 / #
I am on I am on twitter @authorandieJ, and I'm on Instagram where you'll mostly see pictures of my dog. My Facebook is also @authorandieJ, and I there you'll see a lot of pictures of my dog. And you know, news about books. but I am I'm mostly shouting on Twitter.

Sarah MacLean 59:48 / #
Well, thank you for coming on Fated Mates. Everyone Next week, we'll be back with another deep dive read from season two, And you can find us on Twitter at Fated Mates or on Instagram at Fated Mates pod. You can buy Fated Mates pins from Kelly @resistancebuttons on Jen's website, jenreadsromance.com. Fated Mates is produced by Eric Mortensen and we will see you all next week. Enjoy your cinnamon / # rolls.