S03.53: Sports Romance with Farrah Rochon

Today we’re joined by Farrah Rochon, author of The Dating Playbook, to talk sports romances! We talked sports way back in season 1 (links below), but this is one of those tropes we’re always happy to dig into! We get to the bottom of Farrah’s love of football, we talk about competence porn and the human body as a superior tool, and we recommend a LOT of B O O K S!

Don’t miss 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!

NEXT WEEK IS BOMBSHELL WEEK! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders 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.


Show Notes

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S03.52: Assassins and Hitmen in Romance

Surprising absolutely no one, we love an assassin here at Fated Mates! We basically love any character who has been through the wringer and also can kill a man fourteen different ways before dinner. Even better if it’s a heroine, and she’s been hired to kill the hero (or vice versa). Anyway, we’re talking about why these books (and so! many! movies!) scratch that particular itch for us. Spoiler: It’s beautiful people blowing things up, obvi.

Don’t miss 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!

Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders 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.


Show Notes

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S03.51: Mistresses, Courtesans, and Cheating in Romance with Adriana Herrera

Adriana Herrera, a FIVE-TIMER, joins us this week to talk about the third-rail of romance…infidelity! We’re talking about cheating, and about all the other bits related to it: mistresses, courtesans, illegitimate children, sex work…and get your pencils ready because (of course) we’re toppling TBRs with this one.

Don’t miss 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!

Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders 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.


Show Notes

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guest host, interstitial, S03 - Interstitials Jennifer Prokop guest host, interstitial, S03 - Interstitials Jennifer Prokop

S03.49: YA Romance Novels with Nicola Yoon

Two episodes this week! Huzzah!

Today we’re joined by the extremely delightful, extremely brilliant Nicola Yoon to discuss her extremely romantic new book, Instructions for Dancing, and YA Romance in general! We talk about Nicola’s love of romance novels (which she shares with the heroine of her book), about her history with them, and about what makes YA Romance so extremely delicious. We also talk about her new project with the Obamas and her new imprint for young readers at Random House.

Our next read along (next week! we told you it was coming!) 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!


Show Notes

Welcome Nicola Yoon! Along with Instructions for Dancing, she and five other Black women authors just published the Blackout anthology, which has been picked up by the Obamas for TV and film for Netflix. Nicola and her husband David Yoon are also creating the Yooniverse, including a new YA romance imprint called Joy Revolution at Random House.

Poltergeist and its infamous curse scared everyone back in the 80.

Nicola wasn’t sure what imprint she was reading when she found her first romance under her aunt's bed, but she mentioned Harlequin Blaze, one of our all time favorite imprints which was shuttered in 2017.

Just a quick reminder that HFN means “happy for now” and HEA means “happily ever after.”

YA has evolved over time, a process which has ramped up in the past 20 years and is now a publishing juggernaut. YA is far more progressive that adult romance, but also grapples with the influence of adult readers of all kinds and gatekeepers who want to stop kids from reading about sex & gender, race, and other issues around identity.

According to the Library of Congress, most of the earliest entries from Urban Dictionary date back to 2003.

Before Covid, It used to be hard to explain the terrifying rise of HIV was in the 1980s, along with the way the Reagan administration ignored the epidemic. This timeline tells the history of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and here is an explainer for why Covid vaccinations were developed so fast when we still don’t have one for HIV.

The Heads of Your Enemies as love language appears in Shadow’s Claim, when Trehan literally gives this gift to Bettina while they are courting.

The Wrath and the Dawn is a retelling of the Scheherazade story, which is the framing device for The Arabian Nights.

If you are GenX or Millenial and were a reader, you’ll love the book Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction. It's full of images, so read it in paper or on a full-color reading device!

Jessica Trent is a different thing entirely than Jessica Wakefield. Along with other changes, the Sweet Valley High twins are size 4 now, which we don’t like at all.

I Believe in a Thing Called Love was also just optioned for Netflix, but they aren’t going to have much luck checking The Wirecutter for road spike recommendations, because this was the closest thing I could find to them.

The Hellmouth or whatever,” is a reference to Sunnydale, the setting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

You can pre-order signed copies of Sarah's Bombshell from WORD in Brooklyn, and you'll get a Fated Mates sticker with your signed book!

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S03.48: The Ted Lasso episode: Is Roy Kent a Romance Hero?

“Hang on,” we can hear you saying, “isn’t this a romance novel podcast?” It absolutely is, and that’s why we’re dropping a very special episode about the character who is the most perfect on-screen version of a romance hero that ever there was: Captain of the AFC Richmond team, Roy Kent. Added bonus, we’re joined by Jen’s brother Erik to talk sports stories (and check in on Jürgen Klopp).

Spoilers abound, so if you haven’t watched Season 1, do that first!

Our next read along 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! 


Show Notes

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S03.47: Taboo Romance with Nikki Sloane

It’s Taboo Romance week! We’re thrilled to be joined by Nikki Sloane, whose books we’ve adored for years here on FM. We talk about what makes a romance taboo, about why readers are drawn to taboo stories, and about whether taboo romance is empirically erotic.

Our next read along 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! 


taboo books

Notes

Welcome Nikki Sloane! We discussed her novel Three Little Mistakes in season two. Her latest release in the Filthy Rich Americans series, The Redemption, won the Holt Award from the Virginia Romance Writers Association and has been nominated for the inaugural Vivian Award from the Romance Writers of America.

We had an episode about age-gap romance, but when the woman is older sometimes we use the phrase Cougar, which I do not recommend googling! 

Taboo romance is difficult to define. But on the episode, we talked about three major ideas: it explores power dynamics, it contains an element of the forbidden, and is makes readers viscerally feel that the relationship is “wrong.” However, Nikki also used the phrase “universal taboos” to describe topics so forbidden--beastality and incest--that they could never be a part of romance. 

In a Florida high school, the necklines of women and girls were photoshopped (without their knowledge) if there was too much cleavage.

We’ve been digging the priest taboo since The Thorn Birds, and it was revived in pop culture by the TV show Fleabag. We discussed Sierra Simone’s Priest in season two. 

As we reckon with #MeToo, we are all thinking about and redefining power dynamics in our culture

Incest is a common trope in horror and other gothic stories, it didn’t originate with Flowers in the Attic

Don’t forget to preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word in Brooklyn.

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guest host, S03 - Interstitials Jennifer Prokop guest host, S03 - Interstitials Jennifer Prokop

S03.46: Susan Elizabeth Phillips Interview

We are so excited to have absolute romance legend Susan Elizabeth Phillips with us to discuss every fangirly question we had for her! We talked about her new book, When Stars Collide, the latest in the Chicago Stars series, about her role in inventing the sports romance, about the opera and the way she thinks about her career after a few decades of writing. We had the BEST time.

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! 


Show Notes

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S03.45: Dark Romance: Monsters Need Love, Too.

We promised you an episode on Dark Romance and truthfully we’re pretty proud of how well we’ve delivered. We’ve got Kenya Goree-Bell, Nisha Sharma, Joanna Shupe and Jo Brenner with us today to dig deep on this subgenre that we don’t read regularly. We are endlessly grateful for their guidance through this end of the romance pool! 

We talk about what makes a romance “dark,” about how dark romance differs from morality chain and taboo romance, and about why dark romance resonates with so many readers. Oh, and yes, if you’re curious, we fill your TBR pile (obvi). Stay tuned at the end of the episode for additional reflections from Sarah & Jen.

CONTENT NOTE: Because Dark Romance can include all sorts of problematic content, we don’t shy away from many of those topics in this episode. Proceed with caution, both in listening and in reading.

AUDIO NOTE: Due to countless irregularities, expected and unexpected, the audio in this episode isn’t up to our normal standards. But it sounds fine.

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

Welcome our panel of dark romance experts: Kenya Goree-BellNisha SharmaJoanna Shupe, and Jo Brenner.

The hallmarks and tenets of Dark Romance

  • All dubious consent and non-consent romance is dark romance (although not all dark romance has dubcon or nonconsensual elements).

  • It’s about what the HEA is made up of: If the non-aggressor or non-villian moves into the dark (rather than pulling the other into the light), then it would qualify as dark romance.

  • Often the aggressor/villain is static, while the non-aggressor finds their light or strength in the new world they exist in. This person does all the work and learns how to navigate a life around the aggressor and their world. These are not stories of love redeeming, but rather of learning to find love and happiness with the person (people) in front of you.

  • The characters are suffering from current or past psychological or physical trauma. The non-aggressor represents the last bits of humanity that the aggressor has to hold on to. Dark romance explores a relationship where only one person has strains of humanity and the impact it has on a person without it.

  • The evil and violence of the aggressor must take place on the page.

Some Terms we'll use on this episode

  • Consensual non-consent (non-con): is when romantic partners engage “in behaviors that may include role-playing nonconsensual behaviors, or may involve negotiating sexual behaviors where one partner agrees to give up consent during certain behaviors or relationships.” This can include fantasizing about rape and kidnapping, and lots of women have complicated feelings about these fantasies. 

  • Dubious consent (dub-con): is the gray area between full, enthusiastic consent and rape. A person hasn't give outright consent to having sex and might not consider it rape; however, some other factor prevents them from saying no. 

  • The Aggressor: rather than use hero/heroine, Jo started using aggressor and non-aggressor as a way of talking about chracters who exhibit very non-heroic behavior. 

  • The skin suit: What Jen calls the experience of reading a book where she wants more distance between herself and the main characters.

  • The Murder Meal: Sarah noticed that a common trope of dark romance is a meal where blood is shed and people still continue to eat.

Notes and Other Links

Dark Romance Books

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S03.42: Fantasy Romance Interstitial with Zoraida Córdova

This week, Zoraida Córdova (aka Zoey Castile) joins us to talk about fantasy romance and why it is so hard to find it in the romance pool. We talk about speculative fiction, high fantasy, low fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy, paranormal romance and more, all while trying to figure out just what makes something fantasy and not paranormal (we think we’ve cracked the code). We also talk world building, about maps, and about merman junk.

Our next read along is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! Get the others in the series, too, while you’re at it, because you’ll probably want to read the whole thing.

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!


Fantasy Romances

Notes

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S03.41: Spy Romance with Nana Malone

You are in the right place! Your eyes do not deceive you! We’re actually talking about spy romances this week and no Sarahs were harmed during the discussion, but that’s probably because it was a discussion with one of her favorite people, the fantastic Nana Malone!

We talk about Nana’s immense career, about how she took matters into her own hands and started making the covers she wished to see in the world, about her Brown Nipple reading challenge, about her latest book, a Kobo original, The Spy in 3B, and about porny ferris wheels. Real ordinary stuff. We also get to the bottom of why Sarah doesn’t like spy romances generally, but why she can’t get enough of Mr. & Mrs. Smith retellings.

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!


The Spy Books

Notes

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S03.39: The Soulmate Equation & Trope Death Match with Christina Lauren

It is release week for some of our favorite people, and we’re here to celebrate with them! Join us for a wild conversation about the books Jen refers to as “the brightest bananas on the tree” — each of us has selected a truly wild ride of a book, and we’re going to share them with you! We also talk about their fabulous new release, now Sarah’s favorite CLo book, The Soulmate Equation. Preorder it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, or signed from Vroman’s bookstore!

Our next read along is 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 eye-widening 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

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S03.37: Widows in Romance

We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!

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.

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 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!


Widow Books

Notes

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S03.33: Age Gap Romance

Silver foxes, May/December, older heroines/younger heroes. Look, Sarah’s buttons were installed young, OK? We’re talking age gap romances, how they played out in the early days of the genre, how they remain popular today, and what has happened (or not!) in the books to make them viable in 2021. We try to keep this one taboo but not dark, sexy but not erotic…but by the end, we’re not making any real promises.

Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!

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, we’re reading Kresley Cole’s debut, The Captain of All Pleasures. Neither of us have read it, so we’re all jumping into the deep end without a mask on this one! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books. Or find it from your local indie via bookshop.org.


Show Notes

Books Mentioned in This Episode

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S03.31: Morality Chain Romance

We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha.

Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!

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, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.


Show Notes

One very important note: we highly recommend doing a thorough search for content warnings for all the books and movies we mention this week.

We love Katee Robert, who we had on as a guest for the menage interstitial. Katee bid on this item at Kennedy Ryan’s Lift 4 Autism auction. It happens every spring, so keep an eye on this page for the 2021 auction if you’d like to pick the topic for a future interstitial.

This week, Katee released Seducing My Guardian, the 4th book in her SUPER HOT Touch of Taboo series. If you'd like to read a morality chain romance written by Katee, we recommend The Bastard's Bargain.

“In springtime, the only pretty ring time” is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It's also possible Sarah knows it from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She would like you to believe that it's from the former, but we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Either way, “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it,” is from Beyonce.

As it turns out, Chicago is a great town for beach volleyball.

It’s hard not to talk about morality chain & dark romance together, but we think they are inverse tropes. The internet definition of Morality Chain is “is a character who is the reason another character is Good.” Jen and Sarah’s current definition is that in morality chain romance, the Love Interest pulls a hero towards humanity and goodness, while in dark romance, the love interest is pulled down into the hero’s lawless world.

Some examples in pop culture are Spike from Buffy and maybe Barney in How I Met Your Motherr. Also, check out a movie called The Professional, where a child (played by Natalie Portman!) befriends the assassin next door. The Jason Statham one with a kid is called Safe.

The Hero’s Journey is very common character archetype in literature and pop culture, but Sarah and Jen are both very taken with Gail Carriger’s description of the alternative archetype, The Heroine’s Journey.

If you want more about morality chain, so many of Kresley’s books from The Immortals After Dark series will work, so please listen to season one! Our favorites are Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, Lothaire, and Sweet Ruin.

We were divided on whether the character has to be a danger to others in order to qualitfy as morality chain. In the Gamemaker series: The Professional is about an assassin who is a danger to others, while in The Player he’s only a danger to himself.

Jen Porter wrote a long thread about what she thinks of as PEA, or problematic ever after, romance.

Mickey is "kind of a Fagin-y" as a character, but without the antisemitism. In interesting historical facts, Dickens rewrote Oliver Twist later in life to remove all anti-Semitic characteristics from Fagin, after he'd been criticized for the portrayal of the character. Of course, it's not that simple. Read more about it from Deborah Epstein Nord.

Scottie is the main character of Managed, and is classified more as grumpy one/sunshine one, which we argue is just morality chain dialed down.

More about how most writers have a “core story."

Next week, we'll be reading You Had me at Hola by Alexis Daria

MUSIC: Cardi B - Money

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S03.27: Retellings in Romance Novels with Kate Clayborn

We are joined by the fabulous Kate Clayborn — the first in the Fated Mates five-timer club! — to talk about about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book, Love At First, which you can get wherever books are sold. We talk about the difference between retellings and homages, about Shakespeare and mythology and retellings of classic texts versus modern ones. And of course, we fill your TBR.

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. 

Next week, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's A Matter of Class, a short historical novel. Get it for only $2.99 at AmazonBarnes & NobleApple BooksKobo or Google Books.


Show Notes

Welcome Kate Clayborn, our first five-timer. She was with us for the Best Friend’s Sibling Interstitial, Kresley’s The Player, the Sickbed Scenes Interstitial, Derek Craven Day 2021, and today’s interstitial on Romance Retellings.

Texas and the rest of America got hit with some espically bad winter weather this February. This is climate change.

Kate released Love at First this week, which is an homage to Romeo and Juliet. Kate’s 2020 book, Love Lettering, is an Overdrive read. Get it today with no wait!

Dr. Jill Biden loves Valentine’s Day.

JK Rowling is a problem, and it’s changed the way many Harry Potter fans think about her books.

Yes, yes, the English Teacher memes are so funny. Well take that.

Tl;dr: archetypes are about character,while retellings are about plot.

In Where Dreams Begin, Zachary Bronson is a hero that follows the Beast archetype, and Jen saw it in the scene where Holly first enters his house.

Story can be a safe way to explore terrifying ideas about society and people. For example, both La Llorona and Medea are about mothers who kill their children, but have a kind of distance that the story of Andrea Yates does not.

Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes writes about storytelling and the universal ID.

Maybe you don't know about the story of Salman Rushdie and the fatwa against him for his novel The Satanic Verses.

Our next read along episode will be A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.

Music

SKAAR - Five Times

Retellings from Literature

 

Retellings of Fairy Tales

 

Retellings from Pop Culture

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S03.26: What to Read if You Loved Bridgerton

So you watched the Bridgerton Netflix series and you've torn through the books, and now you're desperate for more historical romance while you wait for Season 2 of Bridgerton?

Don't worry, dear readers, these podcasters have you covered. Tuck into our What to Read if You Loved Bridgeron episode for a massive list of historical romance recommendation based on what you might have loved in Bridgerton! Is it boxing? Is it I don't know how sex works? Is it the wigs? Is it the scene with the spoon?! Whatever it is...we've got you covered. And when you're done with this one, go check out our episode on romance series featuring big families!

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.

Please join us next week to chat with the fabulous Kate Clayborn about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book, Love At First, which you can preorder now or get wherever books are sold (even your local indie!) next Tuesday, February 23, 2021.

In two weeks, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's A Matter of Class, which is one of Sarah's favorite historicals. We'll talk about why then. Get it for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or Google Books.


Show Notes

We have some ideas about winter sports, which is that maybe they are best left to other people. But here are some photos of Chicago’s ice skating ribbon and the sledding hill at Soldier Field, which even has its own snowmaking machines! When the Obama Library is built, Michelle Obama requested they include a sledding hill because she remembered wanting to sled closer to home when she was a kid.

In the 90s, they really let Hugh Grant do anything.

The Luxe is a gilded age YA series, and the original covers were so gorgeous, as compared to the rejacketing. We are not taking questions at this time. We can't find the video Sarah talks about, probably because it was THIRTEEN YEARS AGO (lolsob), but you can watch this fun one about the cover shoot for Splendor, the final book in the series, here!

The comedian who did the Bad TV Impression of Bridgerton is Kieran Hodgson. His YouTube channel was recently emptied of content, which makes us think he's got his own TV show coming, but in the meantime, you can watch the Bridgerton hilarity on his Twitter feed. We recommend you do this immediately.

Speaking of rakes, Sarah explained them to Oprah Magazine. We aren’t the only ones who thought the Bridgerton brothers were indistinguishable.

A collective noun is the name for a group of things. A Cache of Jewels is a very charming picture book about collective nouns if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you love Queen Charlotte’s wigs, you can read this piece in Glamour about the hidden meanings in Bridgerton hairstyles, or follow the wig-maker on Instagram.

Here’s a great timeline of the books in the Beverly Jenkins universe made by Scentsational Rynnie. Jen interviewed Ms. Bev on Wild Rain’s release day for Love’s Sweet Arrow.

In Heart and Hand, Julie is a member of The Four Hundred, the most exclusive society families. She attended Vassar College, which opened in 1865. To watch Jen’s interview with Rebel Carter, KJ Charles, Caroline Linden, and Amalie Howard, join the Facebook group, The League of Extraordinary Historical Romance Authors.

Gunter’s Tea Shop is a real place if you liked that scene with the spoon.

Tell us about your historicals where there are duels: We've already got Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake, The Lady Hellion, and The Serpent Prince on our list.

Sarah didn’t know Jen was going to bring up Boxing, or she would have been ready to recommend Piper Huguley’s A Champion’s Heart, which is a beautiful inspirational romance.

If you want to know more about the connection between writing and boxing, Sarah recommends the Library of America's At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing. Here's more about the fascinating history of boxing gloves.

Jen enjoyed two movies about women who box: Girlfight with Michelle Rodriguez and Million Dollar Baby with Hillary Swank.

Next week, we'll have Kate Clayborn on to talk about retellings and her new book, Love at First. Our next read along book is A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.

Music

The B-5'2s - Wig

Dustin Bentall - Fresno

Ludacris - Sex Room

Follow the Fated Music playlist on Spotify.

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S03.23: Curvy Heroines Redux

Nearly two years since our first Curvy Heroines interstitial, which was short and sweet, we’re back with another that is longer and more meandering, but absolutely chock full of recs! We love a curvy heroine, and so do you all, apparently, as our original Curvy Interstitial is our most popular episode of all time!

Next week, we’ve got a special crossover episode with Erin and Clayton from Learning the Tropes, and the week after, we’re back to the deep dives with Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series (With a little Derek Craven Day excitement in there, too!) In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame It on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.


Show Notes

This piece in Book Riot by Carole Bell argues that fat representation is different than fat acceptance, which is something we grapple with as we’re talking. She also wrote this list of romances with fat representation.

If you haven’t read books by Charlotte Stein, you should. Which ones? ALL OF THEM. Fat Monica, if you don’t know, is a reference to the TV show Friends.

Watch Olivia Dade talk about where we are now with fat representation in romance.

Cult of Glory, a 2020 book about the true history of the Texas Rangers paints a grim picture of the storied law enforcement agents.

In case you’re interested, last week Jen was googling “anal hook” and this week she landed on a bunch of Christian websites when she googled the Magi, so she got freaked out and just used a wikipedia link. It's fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thea de Salle is one of author Hillary Monahan's pseudonyms. Back in the day, Jen wrote about Catholicism in romance based on a later book in the series, The Lady of Royale Street.

Luciana Barroso is married to Matt Damon, and she’s a regular person.

In Get a Life, Chloe Brown, the heroine suffers from fibromyalgia., and so does the author, Talia Hibbert.

We did a whole episode on Alisha Rai’s Serving Pleasure in season two.

Jen recently read The Ravenels series by Lisa Kleypas. She’s obsessed with Rhys Winterborne, and West Ravenel is pretty great, too. Don’t worry, Derek Craven is still her favorite, and if you haven’t ordered your merch for our upcoming Derek Craven holiday, what are you waiting for?

On the show Bridgerton, Penelope Featherington is a curvy girl; however, in the books, she loses weight in the 10 years between when she comes out and when she finally gets her HEA with Colin.

Iman is one of the most famously beautiful supermodels in the world, and she married David Bowie in 1992.

“That’s what he said” is a long running joke from the sitcom The Office.

The Queen’s Gambit is a Netflix show about chess, and Crash Landing on You is a K-Drama about a woman who accidentally paraglides into the DMZ in a tornado.

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S03.20: Romance Families

It's the holidays and we're talking family romances because many of us are with our families or thinking about them this week. No matter whether you have a perfect family life or one that's a bit more of a journey, romances focusing on families have been around from the beginning -- this week, we're talking royal houses like the Westmorelands and the Malorys, the LeVeqs and the Montgomeries, and the Holmeses and the Hathaways. We also talk a lot about our own families...which was unintended, but there it is.

You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order here!

Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! For the next week or so, we've got a lot of fun stuff in the hopper -- be on the lookout for a few extra episodes!

And, if you're celebrating this week -- Merry Christmas!


Show Notes

Richard Gere wasn’t old when he filmed Pretty Woman, even though he was going gray.

Samantha Jaxon posted a very upsetting TikTok, and that's all we have to say about that.

The days of the big and small envelope in college admissions are over, but they do have the Common App and that seems nice.

Maybe, you too, would like a karaoke microphone for your future weather-person.

The 1987 movie Roxanne with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah is a Cyrano retelling, and it has lots of very funny jokes and one-liners.

There is one more phone-banking opportunity on January 4, 2021. You should join us!

Bridgerton drops on December 25th, along with Wonder Woman 1984. Virgin River is another Netflix show based on a romance series.

Just a heads up about the photo array, I’m just including the first book of a family series because otherwise it will be overwhelming!

70s and 80s Old School romance series with families include: the Malorys by Johanna Lindsey, The Montgomerys and Taggerts by Jude Deveraux, and the Westmorelands by Judith McNaught.

90s families: the LeVeq family by Beverly Jenkins, The Cynster family by Stephanie Laurens, the Rocking M series by Elizabeth Lowell.

2000s families: Brenda Jackson’s Westmoreland family, the Essex Sisters by Eloisa James, The Holmes Brothers by Farrah Rochon, and the Hathaways by Lisa Kleypas.

2010s families: The Blackshear family by Cecilia Grant, The Ravenels by Kleypas, the Duke’s Daughters by Megan Frampton, the Mackenzie series by Jennifer Ashley, the Greene sisters in the Uptown Girls series by Joanna Shupe, the Talbot sisters in Sarah’s Scandal and Scoundrel series, the von Hasenberg sisters in the Consortium Rebellion series by Jessie Mihalik, the Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews, and the Sullivans by Bella Andre.

Brenda Jackson was the first Black romance author to hit the New York Times bestseller list with the book Irresistible Forces in 2008. It's not a Westmoreland book, but the Westmoreland series is currently 30+ books and growing.

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S03.18: Julie Garwood Interstitial: Damnit, Sara! (Not our Sarah!)

This week, we tried something a little different—recording a live interstitial episode! We’re talking about Jen’s formative queen, Julie Garwood, and we dig into dialogue, alphas who are instantly gone for their heroines, heroines who tame wild animals, arranged marriages between children, and why every Garwood historical feels medieval whether or not it actually is.

We recorded this episode live during a Fated States postcard-writing party to get out the vote for the January 5th runoff election in Georgia. If you’re a Georgia voter, please vote for Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, and let’s finish what we started with the blue wave! If you’re up for it, please consider joining us for a phonebanking session on the evening of January 4th!

Next week, in advance of the launch of the Bridgerton series on Netflix (coming December 25th!), we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Julia Quinn novel, The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.


Show Notes

Fated States is gearing up to phone bank on the evening of Jan 4 from 5-7 central time. Join us if you can!

Sarah mentioned seeing Berkley editor Cindy Hwang on a panel--it doesn't appear to have been recorded, but here is the description of the panel.

In Sarah’s OSRBC facebook group, there’s a longstanding search for a book where two people are on a beach and a wave throws them together, and then “oops they’re boning.” A few folks have suggested that maybe it was Pirate by Fabio. So check it out. His co-writer (a ghost writer is when they are unnamed) is Eugenia Rielly.

A teenage horror/romance that both Jen and Kelly loved was called The Ghosts of Departure Point. Probably came from the Scholastic Book Club, if we’re being honest.

In case you’re wondering, the copyright page will tell you if you’re holding a first printing or first edition. Here’s a bunch of people talking about why the edges of paperbacks were dyed.

RT Book Reviews and the RT conference once had Julie Garwood and Jude Deveraux on stage at the same time, and YouTube has the video! When Coronavirus is over, I highly recommend going to KissCon.

Nora Roberts is our Queen and last week a poor unfortunate soul named Debra learned that the hard way.

Obviously, Luke grew up on Tatooine. Hoth was that ice planet place, which is why the women in the Ice Planet Barbarians series call their new home Not-Hoth.

We’d be interested in hearing your interpretation of The Bechdel Test. Jen thinks the women can still talk about men AS LONG AS they also talk about other stuff, but Sarah thought it required no discussion of men at all which is pretty tough to find in romance. FWIW, Jen mentioned it in regards to The Bride because Jamie is so isolated and largely without women friends.

We like prologues and epilogues here at Fated Mates, but we understand not everyone agrees.

The feud between the families in The Gift is “like the Montagues and the Capulets, but worse.” Speaking of which, Kate Clayborn’s upcoming book, Love At First, is an homage to Romeo and Juliet.

This isn't exactly about the life expectancy in Scotland was in 1100, but it's close enough.

Vanessa Riley’s site has a great explainer about Black people during the Regency on her site. We talked about the Carribean in the Regency when we read Gentle Rogue.

It wasn't a "rip off" of Home Alone, it was just an allusion. Similarly, Nathan's whip reminded Sarah of Indiana Jones.

Are these books on audio? Why yes they are and Jen listened to The Bride in between recording and release of the episode and greatly enjoyed it.

Boats vs ships.

Next week, we're reading The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn

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S03.15: Menage Romance with Katee Robert

It’s getting colder out there, so we’re getting hot in here! We’ve got the fabulous Katee Robert with us to talk about ménage romance and why she writes them so well. We get to the bottom of why it always gets shoved into the taboo corner of romance, the fantasy of the trope, and why we like it so very much. Also, we topple the TBR (as usual)!

Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

Slight change of schedule to accommodate a fun thing we’re up to…next week, just in time for your Thanksgiving sloth, we’re announcing our best books of 2020! The following week, we’re reading Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.


Show Notes

Welcome Katee Robert!

You can’t just make wikipedia pages about yourself.

High fantasy has real meaning.

When talking about romance, M and F (and NB for nonbinary) are used to inform readers about the gender identity of the main characters. This is an imperfect shorthand, but at this point in our understanding of sex and gender, it seems like the most respectful way to acknowledge that there is a huge range of sexual identities that exist for people of all genders. For example, if we call a book with two women “a lesbian romance” it might not take into account that one character is bisexual, which adds to bi-erasure. So if a romance is labeled M/F, we know there is a man and a woman in a romantic relationship, but that leaves room for the sexual identity of the characters to be fully explored in the book. In romance with more than two people, the order of the letters matters. A book that is MFM would mean that the two men do not have a sexual relationship with each other, while FMM or MMF means that they do.

There is nothing taboo about polyamory.

Jen liked the progression of menage in Elle Kennedy’s Out of Uniform series. The series starts with a non-swords crossing threesome, Hot and Bothered. The observing one was Heat of the Night (available in the Hot and Heavy anthology), where Ryan watches Annabelle have sex with his roommate. But as the series progresses, there is contact between the SEALs in Feeling Hot and a fully formed menage relationship in Hotter Than Ever.

Ellora’s Cave and Samhain were two of the original (and now shuttered) indie publishers that specialized in erotic romance and/or taboo romance.

That article in Harpers about how men don’t have friends.

The Anita Blake series went through a lot of changes, so just go with Katee’s method and start with #9, Obsidian Butterfly.

Katee will be back to talk about morality chain in 2021.

Next week, we’ll be airing our Best of 2020 episode, and then the first week of December, we’ll be discussing The Hating Game.

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