S03.54: Bombshell has Landed!
Sarah has a new book out, so Jen is playing host this week, and Sarah is playing guest, and Jen is really extremely good at it…so pour yourself a glass of whatever you’re drinking and get ready! And don’t miss the first two chapters of the Bombshell audiobook at the end of the episode!
If you haven’t purchased Bombshell yet, you can find it wherever books are sold, and at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.
This episode wraps up Season 3! Jen’s taking Lil’Romance to college, Sarah’s taking a break from social media, and we’ll be back in September with Season 4. Don’t worry, though, there will be a few little audio treats dropping on Wednesdays so you don’t miss us too much. (we will miss you, though. obviously.)
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.
Show Notes
Bombshell is here! The audiobook is narrated by Mary Jane Wells, and she’s one of Jen’s favorite narrators.
Maybe you want to watch the Amazons fighting in the Wonder Woman movie, just for vibes.
The Soiled S’s are the five Talbot sisters: Seraphina, Sesily, Seleste, Seline, and Sophie. Seraphina and Sophie each had their own books, and Seleste and Seline were married in the background of the series.
A series bible is used by writers as a reference document for the world they’ve made.
Some of our favorite movies with a crew and/or a heist movies: The A-Team, Ocean’s Eight, and the Avengers.
The first of Louisa Edward’s chef romances is called Can’t Stand the Heat.
Queen Victoria was on the throne from 1837-1901, and here is an overview of the hallmarks of her reign and what it was like for women during that era.
Here’s a brief history of Scotland Yard.
The word bombshell dates back to 1708.
S03.50: Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian: a Perfect Modern Historical
We’re nearing the end of Season Three and we are so happy to be reading one of the most delightful books in modern historical romance, Cat Sebastian’s Unmasked by the Marquess. We talk about Cat’s masterful plotting within a three-act structure, about friendship, trust and sacrifice in relationships, and about writing a modern historical while still delivering the bananas plots that made the early books in the genre the best.
We also announce our next Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here!
Our next read along is Sarah’s BOMBSHELL! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or signed via Sarah’s local indie, WORD, or one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders from WORD or the launch sponsors will come with a Fated Mates Sticker!
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.
Notes
The virtual launch event for Bombshell will be on Tuesday Aug 24 at 7eastern/4 pacific. If you pre-ordered a signed book from Word!, keep an eye out for details for how to join the event.
Unmasked by the Marquess received excellent reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and the New York Times.
The audiobook of Unmasked by the Marquess is great, and narrated by Joel Leslie.
Cat Sebastian is a fanfiction expert and routinely talks about some of her favorite fics. If you don’t know, the Stucky ship of Cap & Bucky is the most written about ship on Ao3.
“Natural child” was the nice way of saying that a child was born out of wedlock. The mean way, of course, is bastard.
More about the three act structure.
This is a great interview with Cat Sebastian in Jezebel about writing queer characters in historical romance.
Books Discussed in This Episode
S03.44: The Stage Dive Series by Kylie Scott: #HeroesWhoEat
We’re back to read alongs this week! We’re big Kylie Scott fans here at Fated Mates, and we talked about her Stage Dive series all the way back in Season One on our very first interstitial, and now we’re doing a deep dive. We’d intended to do book three, Lead, but we ended up talking about all four, and honestly, rereading this was pretty great for us. We hope it was great for you, too.
Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
Sarah has a book coming on August 24th! Preorder Bombshell now. You won't regret it.
Everyone is struggling with getting dressed again.
It’s a 1001 in the 1001 Dark Nights series as an homage and allusion to Scheherazade, the story-teller of the Arabian Nights.
We also love the VIP series by Kristen Callihan, and the 4th book in that series, Exposed, comes out next month, July 2021.
On our upcoming episode with Susan Elizabeth Phillips, where she told us that back in the day, “rock stars, actors, and athletes” were not allowed in the early days of romance. We aren’t sure why, but we speculate that it was fear of putting “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and other high roller lifestyles on page.
If you want to join the OSRBC group (Old School Romance Book Club) on Facebook, make sure to answer the three questions if you want to be admitted.
Andi Arndt is the narrator of all Kylie’s books, including the entire Stage Dive series, and Jen thinks she is terrific.
The Captains’ Vegas Vows has a similar set up to Lick: waking up married in Vegas, and only one of them remembered what happened.
“Retcon” is a word that started out as shorthand for retroactive continuity, and here’s a piece from Merriam-Webster explaining its remarkable elasticity.
Hyperemesis gravidarum is the medical term for severe morning sickness, which affects about one percent of pregnant people.
DC comics claims that Batman doesn’t go down, but the internet and everyone else on twitter and even Zach Snyder disagred. But in all seriousness, maybe it's just another interesting data point about America turning back towards the Hays Code and continuing to remove sex from all kinds of media.
Thelma and Louise does have a great ending, you can’t argue with that. And since 2021 is the 30th anniversary of the film’s release, there are lots of interesting retrospectives on the movie.
Desmond Morris is an English zoologist who outlined the 12 stages of intimacy -- hey, humans are animals, too!
Our July interviews will be with Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Nicola Yoon, and Nikki Sloane. Our July read-along is Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian.
S03.40: Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart - Who Flies in White Linen?!
Continuing our conversation about Bright Bananas on the Romance Tree — this week we’re reading an extreme oldie, Anne Stuart’s Tangled Lies, famous for being a story about a heroine falling for her brother…except he’s not really her brother! It’s a RIDE. We talk about just how odd romance could be back in the day, about how this book might be an ancestor to dark romance, and about how alpha alpha heroes could really get. And then we talk about modern contemporary romance and how things are changing in traditional publishing.
Our next read along in some number of weeks (three? four?) is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org!
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
Bombshell comes out on Aug 24th. You should preorder it from WORD in Brooklyn, which will for sure come with some cool swag, including a special edition Fated Mates sticker. Best Friend Kelly did a Twitter poll asking people about their experiences ordering books + swag from Indie bookstores. Speaking of which, the art by Liz Parkes for The Soulmate Equation is the cutest!
You might need this page as you are reading Tangled Lies.
Speaking of books from your grandma’s attic, look at what HEAapologist found this week! If you want this feeling without having relatives cool enough to leave them lying around, just order a big lot of random romances from eBay. For individual titles, Jen thinks Thrift Books is better than Amazon because you don’t pay shipping for each individual title.
Rob Imes has a page on his blog where he keeps track of all the category lines through 1989. In the case of Tangled Lies, it was first published as Harlequin Intrigue #5, then it was rebranded in the Men Made in America series, and finally part of the Famous Firsts Collection that celebrated Harlequin's 60th anniversary.
Fiction DB is the place to do if you're looking for an author's backlist. Here is Anne Stuart's page, the one where the soldier and the nun have a baby together. Also, Catspaw.
Check out Adriana’s Instagram Live Series about telenovelas. Sarah was on to talk about Falcon Crest, because she imprinted on Lorenzo Llamas in his swim suit. His character's name was Lance Cumson. Sure.Speaking of Adriana, now is the time to preorder One Week to Claim it All. Jen and her brother Mike will be on to talk about Santa Barbara.
In case you don’t remember the movie Sneakers a very similar situation happens when Robert Redford is out for pizza in the 60s. And it looks like Jen & Sarah aren't the only ones who love this movie.
Why we were all afraid of piranhas and quicksand in the 80s. I don’t know why.
The Pondering Padre (from the original cover) looks like Friar Lawrence, but not like Friar Tuck. Please note: not that kind of Priest.
In the introduction, Anne Stuart mentioned being inspired by an old movie called Miss Tatlock's Millions (1948) but when it comes to "ope, maybe we're related" in pop culture, it seems hard not to talk about the influence of Flowers in the Attic and its famous incestual relationship. More recently, it was the Lannister twins in Game of Thrones or the folks in this Slate column.
In romance, it was more common that these attractions were the mark of villainous men lusting after their sisters, such as Prisoner of My Desire by Johanna Lindsey, and others by Bertrice Small and Stella Cameron. A more updated story is Mister Moneybags by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward.
In film, along with Miss Tatlock's Millions, Sarah metioned Crimson Peak (2015), and Jen is kicking herself for not bringing up the terrific movie movie Lone Star (1996).
Jen wrote about paratext on Twitter, which of course turned into a cover conversation.
We have a lot of fun interviews with authors coming up in June, and our next read along (in a couple of weeks) will be Lead by Kylie Scott.
Vulture TV Critic Angelica Jade Bastién wrote a thread asking why she's bored, and wondering what happend to interesting failures. Donald Glover returned to Twitter to blame cancel culture for boring art, but then he canceled his own tweets later.
A few think pieces about why sexual content is being deplatformed on the: who is doing it, and who it impacts. I bet you're shocked to learn its about capitalism and right-wing politics. Why Sarah's Facebook group OSRBC keeps getting dragged into the net.
We have a lot of really fun guests coming up in the next few weeks: Tia Williams, Zoraida Cordova, and Nana Malone. Our next read along (at some point in June) will be Lead by Kylie Scott.
S03.38: Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas: She's Good
We’re talking Sherry Thomas’s beautiful, unrequited love/marriage of convenience story Ravishing the Heiress this week — we’ll talk about angst, about why we love yearning so much, about our feelings about heroes who are dummies, about homes vs. houses, and about Victorians being E X T R A.
Next week, we’re back with the delightful Christina Lauren to play a very fun game with bananas romance novels and celebrate the launch of their fabulous book (now Sarah’s favorite CLo book), The Soulmate Equation. Preorder it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, or signed from Vroman’s bookstore!
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at your local library or via a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
This is the Eurographics Moon Puzzle that Jen is doing, and it’s too hard.
There is a very funny tweet thread trying to drag the Shadow and Bone TV show, but the replies are terrific.
Jen was texting Sarah in the middle of the night about Ravishing the Heiress, because of the angst!
Here’s an interview where Sherry Thomas talks about how reading romance influenced her as a writer.
We talked about time slip quite a bit on the episode for A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.
Millie is 16 at the beginning of the book, and because Jen forgot to talk about it, she wrote a thread about Sherry’s deep respect for teenage girls.
A little bit about the history of tinned food and the rise of advertising in Victorian England.
All about the dormouse and keeping them as pets, if you’re into that sort of thing. Give us some credit for not making a joke about Of Mice and Men, thank you.
The Victorians were super extra. Here’s a primer on women in business in the Victorian era. Floriography is the Victorian name for the language of flowers, which ascribes meanings to flowers and plants. For example, chrysanthemums and lavender (and yes rosemary is for remembrance is from Hamlet) have very specific meanings. If you’re interested, check out the book Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers by Jessica Roux.
Bees that make honey from the nectar of lavender flowers is a different thing than people who make lavender-infused honey. Now you know!
Infidelity in Romance is tricky, and Sarah’s book Day of the Duchess is an example, and there really aren’t that many out there.
The myth of Cupid & Psyche in literature and art.
In Season 4 of The Crown, the scene where Camilla Parker-Bowles takes Diana is based in truth, but the name of the restaurant was not Menage a Trois.
Raise a glass to the incomparable Olympia Dukakis.
Next up, we’re dialing the banana phone with Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart.
Join BestFriendKelly’s Sticker of the Month Club. If you put Fated Mates in the note, she’ll send a free sparkly Fated Mates sticker. If you’re already a member, drop her a note and she’ll include it with your next sticker.
S03.36: Whiteout by Adriana Anders: You and Me Against the World
This week, we’re tackling Romantic Suspense and reading one of our favorite books of 2020, Adriana Anders’s Whiteout! We talk about all the things romantic suspense has to nail (ha!) to knock it out of the park, why we would literally never be characters in a book set in Antarctica, and the wild feeling of reading a romantic suspense about a virus during a pandemic. Also Sarah talks about how much she loves Adriana Anders’s writing and recommends lots of backlist.
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
Apparently Jen needs more sleep, or else it’s gonna be a real drag on future seasons of Fated Mates.
Jen tweeted about Whiteout a lot, put it on our Best of 2020 list, and even made a meme about it last week.
Reading a book about a virus during a pandemic is kind of wild!
Jen and Sarah are not campers, but we support you. We do like reading books about people doing extremely cold outside things: Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and a new book on Jen’s TBR is The Next Everest by Jim Davidson.
Let Sandra Brown explain romantic suspense to you, and maybe you’d like to read Jack Reacher if you’re into that sort of thing.
We learned some things about Antarctica and staying warm while reading this book:
What is Polar Night? Was it just a coincidence that you released this episode concurrently with the onset of Polar Night in Antartica?
Outside of murdering people for their ice core samples, are people doing crimes in Antarctica?
Thanks to Amy, one of our listeners, we now know that Antarctica TikTok exists.
The two ice stations in the book McMurdo and Vostok are real research stations, and actually there are way more of these stations than you’d think.
Angel calls Ford the Iceman, but not that Iceman.
If you want to read more about racism and greed in American pharmaceutical companies, you might be interested in Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book about the Sackler family, about Pfizer and Moderna and the COVID vaccine, Henrietta Lacks, the Tuskegee experiments, medical colonialism, and the list goes on and on.
Big Bad Wolf by Suleikha Snyder isn’t a critique of big pharma, but it is a fierce critique of the American system of justice.
Chekhov's Gun is an axiom by the playwright about how props on stage must come into the plot.
You can still order the Fated Mates Best of 2020 pack from Old Town Books.
S03.34: Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole: There's Only One Bunk
Rounding the corner on Season Three, and we’re missing Kresley Cole! This week, we read a book neither of us have read before — Kresley’s Captain of All Pleasures. A Victorian pirate book about a ship race. We talk about the magic of the debut romance, why pirates are often times icky, and why setting a book on a boat is risky business.
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading a romantic suspense—Whiteout by Adriana Anders. Find it at Amazon (free in KU!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local indie.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
The requisite coronavirus chat: Sarah was very sick in 2020 and Kate and Jen did a “sickbed scenes” interstitial without her. Jen said someone is going to make a jingle out of “Fauci Ouchie” and it already happened.
Sarah’s upcoming book is available for pre-order. The title is Bombshell and it comes out August 24, 2021. You can read this interview with Sarah when EW did the cover reveal.
Check out Season one, which is all about Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series.
Quite a few of Lisa Kleypas’s earliest novels are out of print and not available as eBooks, but you can probably find them used on eBay or Amazon.
Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake is Sarah’s debut, you should read it.
Borders was a bookstore that closed in 2011. Goodreads was invented in 2007 but took a few years to become popular, but once it was bought by Amazon, it completely stagnated.
Sarah was probably talking about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of practice rule, but how many words would that actually be?
The Stephanie Plum series is now on book number 27, and all Jen has to say is #TeamRanger forever. Don’t @ her.
Here’s Kresley’s FictionDB page for a complete list of her books in order.
Ships vs. boats, if getting those names is important to you, I guess.
The Amazing Race arc of IAD takes place over two books, No Rest for the Wicked and Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night.
Again the Magic was actually published in 2004, a year after Captain of All Pleasures.
The golden age of pirates was between 1650 and the 1730s, and of course our actual knowledge of pirates and piracy is limited. But most recently, of course, there are the Somali pirates. The race in Captain of All Pleasures was probably based on the Great Tea Race of 1866.
Dr. Gunter has some information for you about the hymen.
Hattie ties Whit to a mast in Brazen and the Beast, in case you want more of that.
Next up, Whiteout by Adriana Anders.
S03.32: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria: A Textbook for Human Relationships
We named Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola one of the best romances of 2020, and for good reason. This week, we’re talking about how great romances can be handbooks for great relationships, about why taking risks in romance writing can pay off big time, about what it’s like to be bilingual in America, about why intimacy coordinators are amazing, and about normalizing lube. Enjoy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading…honestly, we don’t know. Stay tuned! Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
If you need to manifest, Sarah's surprise crystal kit came from Crystal Rising.
We had a Best of 2020 box available from Old Town Books in Alexandria, and it looks like you can still order it. You can listen to the whole Best of 2020 episode here.
The Applying to College Reddit is probably not a real healthy place for high school seniors to hang out, so I guess if you must, you can be the person who just says reassuring nice things. But if nothing else, portal astrology shows just how desperate people are to make meaning out of the tiniest of clues.
Telenovelas vs. soap operas.
The bilingual spectrum--from receptive to equilingual--and the ways that this is a particularly American issue. Jasmine in YHMAH is a dominant bilingual (so is Sarah). The ways in which writers put languages on the page has changed a lot in the past decade. Watch this video of author Daniel Jose Older explaining why he doesn’t put Spanish in italics.
In the movie Selena, there’s a scene where her father worries about her Spanish skills as she is about to meet Mexican reporters. Although this scene may not be accurate, Selena learned the phonetic Spanish for all her songs since she wasn’t fluent. A more recent series about Selena’s life is on Netflix, check for reviews because neither of us have watched it.
Being an Intimacy coordinator is a real job!
Breaking the 4th Wall is a phrase from TV when the actors directly address the audience. In You Had me at Hola, we see Jasmine or Ashton fall out of character and become themselves during the filming of a scene.
The Penn & Teller cup and ball trick, which we also talked about in the Bet Me Episode.
Little Red Corvette and Sugar Walls are songs about sex, so don't worry about the pop music your kids are listening to these days. It's all gonna be fine.
S03.30: A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh: It's Grown Up!
We’re headed back to 2007 this week, to talk about Mary Balogh’s A Matter of Class, which Sarah’s editor gave her as assigned reading when she was writing A Rogue By Any Other Name. We’re leaving plot and character aside here and really digging into structure, so expect conversations about timelines, about language and yes…about tense. Because, Jen.
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, it’s a morality chain romance interstitial! After that comes our next read along, which is still in discussion—stay tuned!
Show Notes
For what it’s worth, this is our 119th episode, so time to clarify the pronunciation of MacLean. Say it like the last name of famous movie badass, John McClane from Die Hard. Jen is now very mad at herself and thinking of renaming herself Jennifer Diesel in honor of Vin Diesel and the Fast & Furious movie franchise.
If you liked A Matter of Class, check out Balogh’s Bedwyn and Westcott series. PS, Jen thinks she deserves a lot of credit for not cracking up at “A quiet, stiff hero.”
Sarah’s editor at Avon is Carrie Feron.
Time slip is a narrative structure where stories are not told in chronological order. Here is an entire website about time.
Although Jen couldn’t find the article for “I write what I can’t draw, I draw what I can’t write,” a few people on the internet also give credit to Marjane Satrapi, author of the amazing graphic novel Persepolis.
Sarah’s friend Carrie Ryan writes YA, and she’s the one who talked about the difficulties of secrets in first person narration. Butterfly in Frost by Sylvia Day is a book in first person that didn’t work for Jen. It seemed like the narrator was dissociating, which is different than keeping a secret. Although she never mentioned Butterfly in Frost in the piece, the book inspired Jen to write about the problems with unreliable narrators in romance for Kirkus.
The Crown is a Netflix series that is well-regarded, but the difficulties of portraying the modern years of the monarchy has been well-documented. Read this in case you want to know about Princess Margaret's love life. In Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Meghan talked about the difference between Hollywood and the monarchy. They also routinely referred to “the Institution” and “The Firm” to distinguish the monarchy from individuals.
A few weeks ago, Kate Clayborn joined us to talk about retellings. A Matter of Class gave Jen some Romeo & Juliet feelings.
Sarah's dual timeline books are The Day of the Duchess and "The Duke of Christmas Present," which is in the How the Dukes Stole Christmas anthology. Sherry Thomas's Private Arrangements is a fabulous example of it, as well.
S03.29: Your Romance Questions Answered
Sarah is *still* on deadline (WE KNOW), but we’re answering your questions about romance novels, publishing, writing and more. In this episode, we’re talking about stand-alone romance series, heroes who do bad stuff, Jane Austen, cover reveals and more.
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, it’s Mary Balogh’s A Matter Of Class — this is the truth. Get it for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or Google Books.
Show Notes
Sarah and Eric, Sara and Derek!
Jen recommends Let’s Make Art if you’re looking for something fun to power you through until we’re all vaccinated. Check out Kelly’s Romance Sticker of the Month Club.
Next week, we’ll be reading A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh. WE PROMISE!
Why aren't there more Fantasy Romances? Later this spring, we’re having an episode with Zoraida Cordova about fantasy romance. Until then, maybe you’ll be interested A Court of Silver Flames, the newest release from Sarah J. Mass.
When did Series becomes so Popular? We talked about this in our episode about romance families, so you might want to check that out for a longer discussion of this topic.
Perhaps you are like Jen and want to know more about how to turn off the “popular highlights” series on your Kindle.
Oh the 80s and 90s: Lovesepts series with the Delaneys, or Elizabeth Lowell’s series with heroes named after states.
What's the State of Publishing? What are the different Trim Sizes? One of the reasons mass market paperbacks (MMPB) are harder to get is because of a merger between printers, which explains the transition to Mass Market Max.
All about stripped or remaindered books and what happens when a bookstore returns a book to the publisher.
How Can You Afford Your Romance Habit? Kindle Unlimited, obviously.
You should absolutely get the Libby app (managed by Overdrive) and use it to check books out of your local library. If your library system has Hoopla, you should check it out. Here’s a quick primer on the differences between these apps.
It’s essential to subscribe to the BookBub daily email, you can choose from a number of categories. Also, you should follow The Book Queen on Twitter, who posts a daily thread of what's on sale.
Finally, you should use eReaderIQ to track authors and specific books, and they will email you when the prices drop.
Who do we want to write our Life Story? Kleypas and Kresley.
What are the Best Romance Craft Books? OH-IO is what all the Ohioans say. And there’s nothing more midwestern than “ope.” It's "Ope There Goes Gravity" and we will not be taking questions at this time.
Sarah recommends the following craft books: Romancing the Beat, Save the Cat, and The Heroine’s Journey. (And here’s the Hero’s Journey).
Can a Hero by a Known Kidnapper? Ask St. Vincent, although he doesn’t kidnap the heroine. It depends on the reason for the kidnapping--for example, his childhood home is part of her dowry, meaning A Rogue by Any Other Name or try Dark Mafia Prince. But these stories are less common in contemporaries, unless it’s “dark romance.”
Why aren't there more Vibrators? It's such a good question, and we are slowly seeing more of them. Check out Elia Winters' blog where she reviews sex toys. Other books to check out: It Happened One Summer, Happy Endings, and You Had Me at Hola.
Why Are there so Many Dukes? Because people buy them.
Why don't we have better names for different types of Illustrated Covers? Because we're readers and don't know enough art words? The word cartoon has a childish connotation, and so we think that's why we started using illustrated. Sometimes we hear the phrase "photo-realistic" to describe the previous illustrated style.
Did Jane Austen write Contemporaries? Yes.
Historical romance are set in the past, and an example of one set in the recent past is Loud is How I Love You by Mercy Brown.
Why are Cover Reveals Important? Publicity, and if you want to see a great new cover, check out the new cover for The Kiss Quotient.
Can You be a Casual Romance Reader? Yes! You can. Please just tell us to calm down, and maybe just start with our best of lists. Have fun!
Where are the Curvy Heroes? It's so tricky, but we like Marie Liscomb's Champion's Heart series. There's a few from Jessa Kane. But body image issues are present even in children's toys.
What does "Two Ps in V" mean? It's two penises, one vagina. Usually, one P waits its turn, but in The Architect by Nikki Sloan and also Ready and Willing by Cara McKenna, (which is no longer available) it's actually happening simultaneously. Romance really does have everything!
