06.31: Romance Novels and Film Adaptation with Yulin Kuang
This week, we’re talking about film adaptation and romance novels with Yulin Kuang, filmmaker and romance novelist. We discuss her work as both a screenwriter and director (she’s writing and directing the adaptation of Emily Henry’s Beach Read), and her debut romance novel, How to End a Love Story, set inside the writers room on a television show between the author of the books the show is adapting (the heroine) and one of the writers in the room (the hero). We talk about why romance adaptations are so difficult to find, why they don’t often hit quite like we expect, and we pitch a few books we’d like to see Hollywood take a crack at.
If you just can’t get enough of us, consider joining our Patreon! You get an extra episode of banter every month and access to the Fated Mates discord, full of people who love romance as much as we do. It’s pretty great, we have to say. Learn more at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Show Notes
Mr. Sunshine is the name of the K-Drama that Jen’s friend Sunhee recommended, but also everyone loves Crash Landing on You.
If you’re in New York City, you can see Sarah and Yulin together in conversation Thursday, April 11, at The Ripped Bodice in Brooklyn. Get tickets here.
Find and follow Yulin Kuang at her website.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Avery Maxwell, author of Love Notes and Lifelines,
available in print, ebook or
with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Devil,
available in ebook, or
with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
S06.24: All Dukes are Roofers: Renovation Romance with Nikki Payne
We’re joined this week by the fabulous Nikki Payne, author of Pride & Protest and this month’s new release Sex, Lies & Sensibility to talk about home renovation romance and why we all love it so much! Is it because of competence? Yes. Because we like it when characters have to walk through fire together? Definitely. Because of the metaphor for our lives and futures? Absolutely. We talk about all these things, and how Old School historical really did the business on this trope. And — a bonus! Sarah finally gets to talk with someone about Jane Austen!
Nikki is joining us at Fated Mates Live! Join us in Brooklyn, NY, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel, on March 23rd, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings (one-half of Christina Lauren) and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. We’ve even got The Ripped Bodice on hand to sell books, and the room will be available for hanging with other Firebirds after the live!
Preorder Kate’s The Other Side of Disappearing three days early (and books from everyone else!) from The Ripped Bodice—links, tickets and more info are at fatedmates.net/live.
If you just can’t get enough of us, consider joining our Patreon! You get an extra episode of banter every month and access to the Fated Mates discord, full of people who love romance as much as we do. It’s pretty great, we have to say. Learn more at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Our next read along is Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Show Notes
Welcome Nikki Payne, author of Sex, Lies, and Sensibility. She’ll be at the Ripped Bodice on Feb 23, and at Fated Mates Live, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings from Christina Lauren, and a few hundred Magnificent Firebirds on March 23, 2024. You can get signed copies of her books at East City Books in DC.
Jen had to read A Separate Peace in high school and doesn’t have the best memories of it, to be honest.
The mid-90s were a real high tide for Austen adaptions: in 1995 the movies Clueless and Sense and Sensibility and a miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, and the following year the movie Emma.
A little bit more about the rights of American women to have their own bank accounts, but women’s access to fair credit is still unjust.
A few movies we discussed this week: The Money Pit, Something New, and Baby Boom.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Avon Books, publishers of Tessa Bailey’s Fangirl Down,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
and
Blue Box Press, publishers of Jennifer Armentrout and ’s
Visions of Flesh and Blood: A Blood and Ash/Flesh and Fire Compendium,
available in print and ebook from Amazon.
S06.09: Sports Romance with Jessica Luther
It’s another sports interstitial! We’re talking sports, balls & sports balls with the brilliant Jessica Luther, sports romance lover, podcaster, and author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape and Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. Everyone came to this one with their own strategy, so we’re talking everything from beach volleyball to hockey, surfing to F1. Of course, we talk about Beckham, but surprisingly, we don’t even say Jurgen Klopp one time.
Our next read along, and last of the year, will be Roan Parrish’s Rend. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Kobo.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome Jessica Luther. You can read her books, Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape and Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan, or listen to her (on hiatus) sports podcast Burn it All Down. Her dissertation is about Retha Swindell and the first integrated women’s basketball team at UT, and she recently wrote about the 50th anniversary of "The Battle of the Sexes."
WNBA stuff we talked about: Teresa Weatherspoon is the new head coach for the Chicago Sky, Allie Quigley and Courtney VanderSloot, Dawn Staley supporting her players, and the WNBA pandemic bubble, and that dumb man who thinks a high school boys basketball team could beat a WNBA team, which by the way dumb men have been saying this about the WNBA for a long time.
Football stuff we talked about: Taylor Swift has caused a spike of interest in the NFL, the SNL skit with the football players, women on TikTok getting their husbands to say that Taylor Swift is putting Travis Kelce on the map, the real life football cupcake shop in Austin, and why it’s a dumb idea to use betting apps on your phone.
MNBA stuff we talked about: That tall man who plays for the Spurs is Victor Wembanyama and he’s 7’4” and it’s honestly quite startling! Bobby Knight was a terrible man. Jen’s too cheap to pay $300 a seat for a Bulls game.
Hockey Stuff we talked about: the openly homophobic NHL banned pride tape this year, and even though they rescinded the ban, it’s still pretty awful for queer players and fans, the Blackhawks abuse scandal.
Racing stuff we talked about: The Racy Books Podcast, F1 racing, Lewis Hamilton, Drive to Survive on Netflix, and NASCAR in Chicago. An important addition: a reader contacted us and let us know about Robbie Wickens, a race car driver who suffered a spinal cord injury in an Indy Car race and has returned to racing.
Soccer stuff we talked about: Ted Lasso and the Beckham documentary on Netflix.
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
Elle Kennedy, author of The Graham Effect,
available at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books,
and at your local independent bookstore
and
Isabel Morin, author of The Whole Truth,
available at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books,
and at your local independent bookstore
and
Avon Books, publishers of A Holly Jolly Ever After,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books,
and at your local independent bookstore
S06.05: Hot For Teacher with Special Guest Lauren Billings
Oh no! Jen has bronchitis or at least something with bronchitis vibes and her voice is barely with us, so Sarah went rogue and brought Lauren Billings, the Lauren half of Christina Lauren, with her! While Jen is taking this week off, Sarah & Lauren are taking this opportunity to talk about a topic that is deeply Not For Jen™️, Hot for Teacher!
We talk about Anne of Green Gables, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other teachers who just might have installed our buttons, and then we get to absolutely crushing TBR piles! Headphones in for this one — it is not for all markets, and you’ve been warned!
Jen will be back next week along with a very fun Trailblazer, and then we’ll be tackling our first read along of Season 6, Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome Lauren Billings, half of author duo Christina Lauren. Lauren and Christina have been guests on the podcast several times, including the forced proximity trope, trope death match, and most recently for the Twilight read along. Find Christina Lauren on Instagram.
Anne of Green Gables! Who knew! And yes, of course Buffy/Giles fic exists in multituteds on AO3. Enjoy, pervs.
Take Sarah's Start Your Romance Novel Today class for beginners on October 29th, virtually.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsored By
Ava Miles, author of The Paris Roommates,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
***
Take Sarah’s Start Your Romance Novel Today Class
October 29, 2023 at 1pm eastern, virtually.
More info (recording available if you cannot make it live) at
sarahmaclean.net/writing-romance
***
Advertise on Fated Mates
We are currently booking ads for Late 2023 and 2024
Visit ads.fatedmates.net for more info
S06.01: Trailblazer Jackie Collins
Season Six! How is this even possible!
Season One gave us a full lAD deep dive (if you’ve never read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, general existential malaise is a really good reason to start), and Season Two gave us The Books That Blooded Us, the books that made us the romance readers we are. Season Three was during a pandemic, and celebrated that thing we were all desperate for—joy. Season Four introduced the Trailblazer episodes, where we featured interviews with the people who have built the romance house over the last fifty years.
Season Five built on all of that, deep diving on books that are new and fabulous, old and transformative, and generally celebrating the vast and magnificent romance pool. Season six will do the same. We’ve got interstitials, trailblazers, read alongs and interviews planned, so head over to your favorite podcasting app and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute.
The season launches today with what we thing is an absolute banger—a trailblazer episode about Jackie Collins, legend, juggernaut, author and lady boss, who was gone too soon.
We’re so lucky to have had a chance to talk to Collins’s daughters, Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman, who were immensely generous with their time and storytelling, to talk about their mother’s life and work. We love this conversation, and are so grateful to Ms. Green and Ms. Lerman for their time.
Remember: Girls can do anything.
Our first read along of the season will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Jackie Collins died in 2015. You should watch the Netflix documentary Lady Boss for more about Jackie’s life, as well as her YouTube channel.
Chels wrote a great essay about the infamous interview between Barbara Cartland & Jackie Collins.
Authors and publishing professionals mentioned: Enid Blyton, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon. Collins's editor was Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Angelina M. Lopez, author of Full Moon Over Freedom,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, your local independent bookstore, or wherever you get your books
and
Max Monroe, author of Best Frenemies
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Pocket Books Book Shop
a queer, feminist, anti-racist indie bookshop
online and in Lancaster, PA
Shop online at pocketbooksshop.com
Jackie Collins 00:00:00 / #: It's only the people who have never read me, they'll say, "Oh, it's full of sex and lust, and it's just trash." When they read me and they haven't before, say somebody's come to interview me from a serious newspaper.
00:00:11 / #: They will go, "Well, I read the book and I wasn't looking forward to it. But really, it's so funny, it's witty and perceptive, and it's a good story, and I couldn't put it down."
00:00:20 / #: That kind of reaction is great. I don't care what they say about me, because I know that the people who are buying my books, understand what I do and enjoy what I do. To me, that means everything.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:31 / #: That was the voice of Jackie Collins. Juggernaut, is that how we describe her?
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:38 / #: Lady Boss.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:39 / #: Lady Boss and author of many terrific books, including Hollywood Wives, which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary with a brand-new edition.
00:00:51 / #: We were so lucky to be able to speak to Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman, Jackie's daughters, about their mom's legacy, about her books, about her writing, and about what it was like to live life with Jackie Collins.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:10 / #: This is Fated Mates. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and critic.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:14 / #: And I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:18 / #: One thing we'll be talking about today, along with Jackie's legacy as an author and her life as a writer, is the Netflix documentary, Lady Boss, which tells the story of Jackie's life. After she died, Tiffany and Rory and Tracy found their mom's extensive diaries, letters and everything.
00:01:43 / #: It's a really terrific viewing experience. If you want to pause and go watch that and come back or listen in on the conversation, I think you'll be really inspired to watch it after. Without further ado, here's our conversation with Tiffany and Rory.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:03 / #: Welcome, Rory Greene and Tiffany Lerman, Jackie Collins' daughters. We are so excited to have you with us on Fated Mates. Thanks for joining us.
Tiffany Lerman 00:02:11 / #: Oh, thank you, Sarah and Jennifer. We're very excited to be here.
Rory Green 00:02:15 / #: Yes, thank you for having us.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:17 / #: For our listeners, we really recommend that you watch the Netflix documentary about Jackie Collins called Lady Boss.
00:02:24 / #: Tiffany and Rory, can you tell us a little bit about before we start talking about your mom as a writer, how did that documentary come into being?
Tiffany Lerman 00:02:33 / #: Well, that's very interesting because she's been gone, gosh, almost eight years now, and it's been really hard for us. She left us with this incredible treasure trove of an archive.
00:02:47 / #: When Rory and I and our other sister, Tracy, were going through everything, she literally had kept every single piece of correspondence and just anything that she had received.
00:03:01 / #: It was this beautiful archive, and we all looked at each other and we just said, "A documentary needs to be made about her. There is so much life here, so much more that people don't know about her." It was so important for us to see if we could get this story made.
Rory Green 00:03:18 / #: This is Rory. One of the things that when the director came on for the documentary, she realized that there was a whole story that our mother, who was just naturally just a storyteller. That was her lifeline was telling stories, but that she'd never actually told her own story.
00:03:36 / #: I think that was also why the director was so inspired by the project, because she thought there's a much more complex story behind this woman than most people who knew of her or had heard of her would ever imagine. She really wanted to make a film that showed our mother as a dimensional person, and the extraordinary trajectory that got her to where she was.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:57 / #: Well, and I think that that's what's so fascinating about it. Obviously, we're a romance novel podcast, so many of the things that Jackie Collins was saying on tape in this documentary felt like things that we have heard before. We have been screaming for years as a genre. It felt like this wonderful experience of seeing somebody who just was such a huge legend, a huge force in publishing, saying it long before Jen and I have been saying it on the podcast.
00:04:34 / #: I wonder if we could start at the beginning with your mom? I know that you weren't there at the beginning, but I'm so happy to hear there was such a lush archive. One of the things that I really wish, and obviously this is because I'm a nerd and a writer, and I want to talk about books all the time. I wish there was a little more of is, could you paint a little picture of how books and your mother came to be? Because it feels like you don't tumble into being a writer of Jackie Collins' caliber.
Tiffany Lerman 00:05:06 / #: Yeah, that's true. Well, this is Tiffany. We knew that she loved books from a very early age. She read a lot when she was growing up. There's articles where she talks about that.
00:05:19 / #: But for us, the reason we knew that she loved reading so much, was that one of her favorite authors was an English author called Enid Blyton.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:27 / #: Of course.
Tiffany Lerman 00:05:28 / #: Yeah. One of her favorite books growing up that she read growing up, was The Magic Faraway Tree, and she read that to my sisters and I when we were growing up. We have these incredible memories of this specific book, The Magic Faraway Tree. We even read it to our children when they were growing up. I think it holds such importance in her life, because she loved the cast of characters that was part of this book.
00:05:58 / #: It goes into her writing with her cast of characters too, but there was always something happening that was always very exciting. They would go up into the top of the tree and they'd be in a different land. She used to read it to us, she used to do all the character voices too. It was really special because it holds such importance for us. We knew it was very important for her too.
00:06:23 / #: Enid Blyton was definitely one of the authors who influenced her growing up, but then there were others. I know Rory, you can speak about that.
Rory Green 00:06:30 / #: Well, yes. What was interesting is that she was always so character focused, and she would say that the characters wrote her rather than she writing the characters. I think that, as Tiff said, in the Enid Blyton book, there was a different character on every branch. Our mother wrote 31 novels, and one of her expertise was weaving all these different characters together.
00:06:54 / #: She was also good at just painting this brushstroke, like one brushstroke, and you got exactly who she was talking about. I think we know that when she was growing up, she was fascinated, she loved those magical fantasy books, but she also loved crime fiction. One of her favorite books of all time was The Great Gatsby. She loved The Godfather by Mario Puzo, which really influenced her work, particularly when she wrote her epic novel, Chances.
00:07:19 / #: She was very interested in male authors. Particularly, Enid Blyton was a female author, but most of her favorite authors were male, because there weren't that many female authors for her to refer to, which was interesting. She also loved Harold Robbins and Sydney Sheldon, who were her contemporaries at the time.
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:38 / #: I remember those names. I didn't read your mom's books, I was a little too young in the '80s, you know what I mean? But I definitely was super aware of Jackie Collins' books.
00:07:48 / #: They were glamorous in a way that Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins. It felt like this trifecta of these are glamorous writers, writing about glamorous people doing glamorous things.
Rory Green 00:07:59 / #: Yeah, exactly. But what she'd say about Harold Robbins was that she loved his books and she loved the plot line and she loved the characters. She's like, "But the women were always in the kitchen." The women were not at the forefront.
00:08:11 / #: They were not the ones who were being bold and brave, and making the strides and calling the shots. I think that she was so driven to write in a different kind of way, to write essentially at that time how she felt a man could write. She wanted to give herself full permission.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:25 / #: I love this because I feel like you just named all those authors, and I feel like it's so not a surprise, because every one of those authors is such a plot. They're such a story, a storyteller. That's the word that we kept coming back to in the documentary. You've said it already, and those books are big, exciting, interesting stories and so it doesn't surprise me that she was drawn to them.
00:08:52 / #: I wonder if you could talk about the writing piece, because we're obviously fascinated by that process here. Also, it feels like she lived this big, glamorous life. She was a voyeur of sorts in this Hollywood world, this glamorous world. Clearly, was going to parties and meeting people and having this elaborate life, but we know the truth here, which is the books don't write themselves.
00:09:22 / #: What was a day like for her? When did she write and how was writing for her? What was the experience of writing for her? Did she talk a lot about that with you? Were you able to intuit it? I will say my daughter likes to say, "No one knows how hard it is to be the child of an author."
Rory Green 00:09:38 / #: I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:42 / #: If you'd like me to hook you up with her, to mentor her through this challenge.
Rory Green 00:09:47 / #: We'd be more than happy to.
Tiffany Lerman 00:09:47 / #: We can relate. We can relate on so many levels. In every house that we lived in, she always had her dedicated study and that was her workroom. If the study door was closed, you really couldn't or shouldn't go in, but it didn't stop us from going in. We would still always go in. But even from when we were very small, growing up in London, she had the study, but she was very disciplined because she was always there for us.
00:10:15 / #: She'd wake up, she'd make us breakfast, she'd take us to school, and then she would go home and she would write all day. She didn't usually break for lunch either. She would write all day and then she would get back in the car, pick us up from school, and then she was back on mom mode. Yeah, so she was very disciplined. Later on, when we were adults and not living in the house, she still had the beautiful study.
00:10:38 / #: This time it was a little bit bigger and more glamorous because she'd moved to Hollywood, and it was the same thing. If that door was closed, we knew that she was working, but sometimes we'd always go in. It was always fun because sometimes we'd go in and she'd be in the middle of a chapter or a middle of a sentence and she'd say, "Ah, perfect. Sit down. I need to read you this."
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:00 / #: Oh, I love it.
Tiffany Lerman 00:11:02 / #: If she could ever grab any of us, including the grandchildren too, she'd do it all. She'd say, "Sit down, I need to read you this." Then she would read an excerpt from the chapter that she was writing and she'd read in the character voices. I'm sure there's listeners who have listened to her books on tape.
00:11:20 / #: She would do her character voices really, really well. She'd really get into them. It's almost like it is like acting. We knew exactly what the character sounded like and it was very fun for us, because we'd get an idea of what she was working on, and she'd always love our input. What did you think?
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:40 / #: One of the things that was really striking about the documentary was her handwriting. They showed several times, it looked like she was writing it.
00:11:50 / #: Do you remember her writing in longhand or was she the type of person to keep notes places? Obviously, at some point she transitioned to more modern technology.
Rory Green 00:12:02 / #: No, she really never did. Jennifer, she never transitioned to more modern technology. She always wrote in her own handwriting. She had really beautiful script.
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:12 / #: She did.
Rory Green 00:12:13 / #: It's almost like for us, it's so evocative when we see our mother's handwriting, it's like hearing her voice because it was everywhere. Her handwriting was everywhere. She had certain notebooks that was only certain pens that she liked to use. She kept a little spiral notebook in her purse and her handbag. Whenever we went out, I remember going shopping for school uniforms or something.
00:12:35 / #: She'd be taking notes of dialogue of people that she'd be listening to while we're waiting to get our shoes fitted. She was always taking notes. Also, as you say, as a voyeur at parties, she was hiding in plain sight, right? She was but she was doing her research. She was always researching her characters. It was almost like method acting, as Tiff said.
00:12:58 / #: She did have a background in acting, but she brought that, I think, to her whole creative process. The other interesting thing about her space, we're so accustomed to that, to thinking about guys having a man cave, but our mother always had this dedicated space that was her working space. It was like her lady boss cave essentially. She always made sure that she had a space in the house, as Tiff said.
00:13:26 / #: What was so beautiful about it, was she had her desk and she had her chair. There was always a chair opposite her. As Tiff said, she'd welcome us in and we could sit and we could read. But when I remember my childhood, it's almost like what was special was that there was a chair on the other side of the desk, so that we could become part of that process alongside her. She was incredibly disciplined.
00:13:47 / #: She used to say she never got writer's block, but she did get getting to the desk block. Sometimes that was difficult. She marketed herself. She went through seasons. She always had her season of writing a book, would take about a year, maybe a year and a half. But then she had her publicity season and I think the film really delved into this, how she put on almost different personas for those different parts of her life and the different seasons in her life.
Tiffany Lerman 00:14:14 / #: Even up until she passed away, she had handwritten every single one of her books.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:19 / #: Amazing.
Tiffany Lerman 00:14:20 / #: She would sit and she would handwrite everything, so that's why she only released one book a year. There were other authors out there who were coming out with books every couple of months, and she just didn't want to change her process. That was her process. She would hand it over to an assistant who would then type it, and then she would go back to the typed, written manuscript and then she would make corrections.
00:14:41 / #: She had a really interesting and different process that I don't think a lot of authors have. I think everybody is on computers and doing it that way. Hers was just that because she used to say she didn't map out anything, she never wrote outlines. She said her characters would take her there, so she had to handwrite it because it was almost like they took over her whole persona as she was writing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:10 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:16 / #: Pocket Books Shop is one of my favorite places in the universe. It's an anti-racist, feminist, queer, women-owned business in Lancaster, which is right now perfect for fall visit with pumpkin patches and rolling Golden Hills. It's amazing. It's exactly what you want in the fall. But Pocket has launched this very cool thing called Pocket Picks, and it is a monthly subscription exclusively available through them.
00:15:42 / #: The books are curated by the staff at Pocket. You fill out a questionnaire and tell them who and what you love to read. They send you every month, a handpicked book for you and your reading taste, including, Jen, this is amazing. An introductory letter explaining why they're so excited about the book.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:02 / #: So cute.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:03 / #: A sealed letter for when you're finished containing their thoughts.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:08 / #: A spoiler letter.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:09 / #: And analysis.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:11 / #: I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:11 / #: Signed copies when you can get them, letters from the author if you can get them, stickers, bookmarks, et cetera.
00:16:18 / #: If it's a new release during the first week of publication, you get 15% off. What is not to love about this?
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:26 / #: You're going to be there this weekend.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:28 / #: I am. If you're listening to this episode this week, September 13th, on the weekend, Joanna Shoop, Adriana Herrera and I are road tripping to Lancaster, to have a day of talking about romances and meeting romance readers, and hanging out at the bookstore.
00:16:44 / #: We are so excited. Tickets are still available. You can get them all at pocketbooksshop.com. That's books plural, pocketbooksshop.com, or as always, you can check links in show notes. We hope to see you there.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:00 / #: Yeah. Thanks to Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster for being an awesome store and for sponsoring the episode.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:08 / #: Once the book is finished, did she have an editor who was a partner in this, or do you know about this part, I guess? Was there one? Were there more than one? That relationship is always interesting.
Rory Green 00:17:23 / #: It is, it's a fascinating relationship. There were always multiple editors. She also over the years, had multiple publishers, but to be perfectly honest, her first reader always was our father. Again, the Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story, tells the story of how our father was the one to encourage her. She'd always been writing.
00:17:43 / #: One of the things that we didn't mention but we were just completely delighted by, is that after she died when we were going through everything, we found these books that she had started to write when she was 13 years old. They were these things called teenagers, and then she had different installments. There was the French and the America.
00:18:07 / #: Our Aunt Joan did illustrations, which she would then cut out and paste into these books. They're these beautiful books, but the most amazing thing about them, was that there was Jackie Collins on the page at the age of 13. Her voice was right there. That was just astonishing to see at such an early age how she'd been developing that voice.
00:18:26 / #: But she didn't have the confidence when she was a young woman and finishing her novel. It was our father who just adored her and was really just a huge proponent of an advocate for her work, and he encouraged her. Throughout his lifetime, whenever she wrote a book, they were partners in that.
00:18:45 / #: He would be her first reader and he would make notes to begin with, and not extensive notes, because to be perfectly honest, she really didn't like anybody's notes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:18:54 / #: That seems fair. If your characters are speaking right to you, it does seem like a bit of an imposition to have someone else think they know better.
Rory Green 00:19:03 / #: Exactly. But he had some comments. Then she had an editor in London called Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster, who worked with our mother for many, many years, and they had a very close, connected relationship.
00:19:15 / #: Suzanne likes to say that she wished she could run a university called Jackie Collins, because she was so enamored by our mother's creative process. Again, she would give a few comments here and there, but there was very little editing that happened.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:31 / #: But this is so fascinating to me because one of the things that we hear so much, especially in genre fiction and romance especially, is that the books aren't art so much as they are just craft. They're a very nice chair, but you wouldn't hang them on your wall as a painting. I don't mean your mother's books. I mean all of the books in the romance genre and many books in genre in general.
00:19:57 / #: I wonder would your mother have agreed with that assessment that, "I'm a craftsman, not an artist"? Or what was her relationship to the actual creativity process? I know that obviously she put on a persona of Jackie Collins, but Jackie the writer, how did she feel about the work?
Tiffany Lerman 00:20:18 / #: It's going back to what we said at the beginning, she just felt she was a storyteller and she wanted to entertain her readers. I think that was the most important thing for her. She used to say, she'd turn on the television and see the news and see these awful things happening in the world.
00:20:34 / #: She just wanted to give this escapism to her reader, to take them to another level. To just let them not worry about all these terrible things that were happening in the world, and have this escapism moment where they could just enjoy themselves and go on this ride with her. That's what she used to say.
Rory Green 00:20:56 / #: I think it's fair to say that also that she had gone through a lot of terrible things in her life. She'd had a lot of trauma. Her creative sense was that it was her lifeline. I think that writing kept her alive, and that's why we hear from so many readers, and she did over the years. But in the years since she's died, we've heard from so many readers.
00:21:16 / #: Honestly, that's why we get so frustrated when people are so dismissive of our mother's work and say, "Oh, trashy beach read," because it kept her alive. I do believe that, but it also has been a lifeline for so many of her readers. We've heard from so many people who said, "I changed course of my life, or you gave me hope, or you helped me find the strength that I didn't know I had."
00:21:40 / #: I think that that really came through her work, because that was the same impact it was having on herself as the writer.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:48 / #: Right. Lucky was such an inspiration, I'm sure.
Tiffany Lerman 00:21:51 / #: Yeah. I say this in the documentary, I say, "We heard from so many people, they are in a bad situation." They say, "Well, what would Jackie Collins do? What would Lucky Santangelo do?" Channel the Lucky Santangelo energy but it's true. Because like Rory said, we have so many messages and we read them. We're like, "Oh my goodness."
00:22:15 / #: The way people describe how just reading this novel and making them feel empowered and making them feel confident, that they can make changes in their life, because of a character in a book or because of something that our mom said in an interview, it's really special.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:31 / #: There's a lot of public ways in which her books, and even her as an author for bringing it, for writing this way, was really publicly pilloried.
00:22:42 / #: There's a really shocking scene where she has to sit there and let an audience full of people just tell her she's terrible.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:48 / #: Awful.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:51 / #: And yet, when watching it and afterwards when Sarah and I talked, were sure that many, many more readers had the experience of like, "No, this changed my life." How did she balance?
00:23:04 / #: Did she ever talk about the public perception of her work versus the way that many other readers contacted her? Or was she just like, "This is what I have to put up with because it's the '80s"? I don't know.
Rory Green 00:23:20 / #: Yeah. I think in some ways, she understood that it was just what she had to endure, and she did endure it.
00:23:27 / #: She was very rebellious, our mother, but she was gracious with it.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:32 / #: She is immensely gracious in these interviews.
Rory Green 00:23:36 / #: Right. She was a gracious rebel, so she had to take a lot of shit. But you'll see on so many interviews, and so often, particularly in the '70s and '80s, she's being interviewed by men. They showed some of that in the documentary, and they are being so condescending and so disparaging. She was vilified for being provocative, because she was writing about predominantly men's objectification of women.
00:23:58 / #: She had been objectified as a young woman and continued to be objectified throughout her career, so she was always pushing back against that. I think she knew that would come with some pushback as well, but she was human and she was a sensitive person. She was a creative person, and a lot of creative people are highly sensitive. I think it definitely hurt her, but she was also incredibly resilient.
00:24:22 / #: She had just learned over the years how to bounce back or otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to continue in her career in the way that she did. Also, at the end of the day, as you said, she understood that in fact, that was only a small percentage, the critics, the haters who were lashing out. The majority, she adored her readers, and she was so open to connecting with them and hearing their comments.
00:24:44 / #: Tiff and I always say, "It's such a shame. She would love to be here now, particularly with the rise of all the ways that you can connect via social media." She was tweeting and getting really into Twitter and a little bit on Instagram, but there's so much more now that she would love to be engaged in, because she loved that relationship between her and her readership.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:04 / #: Did she have a group of other writer friends who were in the world with her, who she talked about writing with or who she interacted with?
Tiffany Lerman 00:25:18 / #: Well, she had her contemporaries like Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz. She wasn't in any writing groups or anything with them. She would see them socially, really only socially, and I don't know how much they talked about work, but I do know that they would mingle. They were at dinner parties together, and they definitely emailed. She was very supportive of other authors, especially female authors.
00:25:47 / #: She was always being sent new manuscripts and being asked, "Would you mind giving us a quote about this?" She would always give a lovely quote. She would always read them too. At book signings, lots of the questions from people and fans who would show up at book signings was, "How do I become an author?" She would love to tell people how to start.
00:26:12 / #: She used to say, she'd say, "Pick up a pen and write a chapter, or write a few sentences every day. At the end of the year, you'll have a book."
Sarah MacLean 00:26:24 / #: So simple, so easy.
Rory Green 00:26:28 / #: Exactly, I know. Yeah. But she was encouraging, but she also would laugh about it because she said she had so many people come up to her and say, "Oh, let me tell you about the book that I have in me. I want to write my story." She was like, "That's good. Thank you."
Sarah MacLean 00:26:41 / #: I have my own ideas. It's funny that way.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:44 / #: One of the things that struck, I think both of us when we are watching is that in the new edition of Hollywood Wives, which is its 40th anniversary edition, Colleen Hoover writes the introduction. Colleen Hoover in a lot of ways shares a very similar, I actually wrote it down. There's a part in the documentary where it says she turned women who weren't readers into readers.
00:27:08 / #: I think Colleen Hoover has that same exact profile. We see many people who are like, "I didn't even know I liked reading until Colleen Hoover." I also think there's a way in which she was capturing something about the way in her time, about how women and girls interact with fiction, that does tell us women's stories and girls' stories are stupid or silly. She really taps into that, but she was such an astute business woman in that way.
00:27:39 / #: Was she aware at some point of, "I've harnessed something in the business of writing that no one else is really doing"?
Tiffany Lerman 00:27:49 / #: That's very interesting. Yeah, it's incredible the trajectory that Colleen Hoover has had. I mean it's unbelievable. I think she really would've enjoyed meeting with her and getting to know her now.
00:28:05 / #: But you're right, it's the same. She's given women and readers who never have read before, this opportunity to really enjoy reading when they've never had that inclination to pick up a book before.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:21 / #: Colleen says very clearly that women need to be stronger. Well, this is the quote from Jackie, "Women need to be stronger. Women have always been pushed into positions in the bedroom, the kitchen, the workforce. My books are successful because I'm turning the double standard on its head."
00:28:38 / #: Then Colleen says, "To say that she paved the way for writers like myself, is an understatement. Jackie Collins' daring, unapologetic stroke of the pen, combined with her glorious wit, has single-handedly given creative license to new generations of authors and storytellers."
00:28:53 / #: I think Colleen, it's fair to say she means women and other people who have not been heard over the years and have not been storytellers.
Rory Green 00:29:02 / #: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. I love that sense of giving voice to the voiceless. I think that's why, again, coming back around to the theme of her being a lifeline, I think that's the sense. Because so many people, when they open up the books, it's like they discover, they see themselves reflected.
00:29:21 / #: Or they get lost in this fantasy world and they see possibility. I think she did this beautiful balance of juggling what felt very real and then what felt very fantastical in a way. Because when people think of our mom, they think of, "Oh, it's just glamorous Hollywood." But she actually wrote a very diverse spectrum of characters.
Sarah MacLean 00:29:42 / #: This real sense of women, the heroines of her books being women who thrived, who could thrive. I was talking to somebody in publishing the other day about your mom. We were talking about how the business of publishing referred to your mom and Judith Krantz, and Barbara Taylor Bradford and Danielle Steel as sex and shopping books.
00:30:08 / #: That's how they called them in the back room when they were talking about them in marketing. That often she was mentioned in the same breath as Jacqueline Susann, who of course, was the generation before her. But in Jacqueline Susann's books, people die, the heroines die. In your mom's books, heroines thrive.
00:30:30 / #: Of course, the books are far more than sex and shopping, but publishing was all men at the time, everybody making decisions. There was also this sense of this was so new and such a fresh idea, that we might live this kind of life and also survive. It feels so simple, but transformative.
Rory Green 00:30:54 / #: She was allowing women to take control of their lives through her writing, and they hadn't had this expression or way of being able to do it before. She was allowing this confidence, building this confidence in her readers, and that's what they came away from reading the books with, "Wow, I can do that." That was her motto, "Girls can do anything."
00:31:16 / #: She really instilled that in my sisters and I, that girls can do anything, so we grew up thinking we could do anything basically. Realized there's a much harder world out there, but she raised three very confident young women, and as we grew up, we knew that. I think it relates to her readers too. They felt that they could gain this confidence after reading.
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:48 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Angelina M. Lopez, author of Full Moon Over Freedom.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:56 / #: Well, Jen, as you know, After Hours on Milagro Street, which is the first book in this series, was one of my very, very favorite books of the last year. Now Full Moon Over Freedom is the book that I have been waiting for. It's finally out, it was out earlier this month.
00:32:10 / #: I'm so excited to finally get to talk about it because, all right, our heroine, Gillian Armstead-Bancroft, was the perfect child. She was class valedictorian. She was like town darling. She was a perfect witch, a wife and a mother.
00:32:29 / #: Then she left Freedom, Kansas full of hopes and dreams and having been perfect in every way. Problem is sometime after leaving Freedom, she got cursed.
Jennifer Prokop 00:32:42 / #: Oh, no.
Sarah MacLean 00:32:44 / #: This is not a small curse. This is a pretty big curse. She's not able to do any magic at all. She's lost her whole magical life.
00:32:51 / #: In order to fix it, she has to go back to Freedom to work it all out. By working it all out, through the structure of the book, she has to do a bunch of bad stuff.
Jennifer Prokop 00:33:03 / #: Oh, boy.
Sarah MacLean 00:33:04 / #: One of the bad things she wants to do is just cut loose and have some no strings attached sex. Nicky Mendoza turns up and she thinks this is all great, because Nicky and she were together a long time ago.
00:33:19 / #: He was her first when they were younger, and now he's back for just one weekend. He is the ideal man to launch her down the path of ruination, except Nicky is also cursed. He was cursed from the moment they touched back in the day, when he was cursed to love her forever.
Jennifer Prokop 00:33:38 / #: The best kind of curse.
Sarah MacLean 00:33:40 / #: Stop it, stop it. It's so good.
Jennifer Prokop 00:33:44 / #: Yes, and we love Angelina here on the podcast, so please check out Full Moon Over Freedom. It is available in print, e-book and audio wherever books are sold.
00:33:55 / #: You can also subscribe to Angelina's monthly newsletter and get some fun, cool flashback chapters from Full Moon Over Freedom on her Patreon.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:05 / #: While you're at it, read After Hours on Milagro Street too.
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:08 / #: Yes. Thank you to Angelina M. Lopez for sponsoring this week's episode.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:15 / #: I have a question for you both. Were you, I guess, A, interested in reading your mom's books when you were children?
00:34:22 / #: Were you allowed to read your mom's books when you were children? Once you did, what did that feel like? What does that feel like now?
Tiffany Lerman 00:34:35 / #: Well, she asked us to wait until we were 18. She said, "Just wait until you're 18," so I did. I said, "Okay, I'm going to wait until I'm 18."
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:46 / #: You were the rule follower.
Tiffany Lerman 00:34:48 / #: Yes, yes. I don't know about my sisters. I remember we were living in Los Angeles at the time, but I'd gone back to London to visit family and relatives. I remember starting one of the books while I was in London and I didn't know what to expect. I myself, I'm like a hopeless romantic.
00:35:11 / #: I love good romantic stories, but I also love adventure and all of that, so it was right up my alley. I started reading it, took it on the plane with me, couldn't put it down. Came home, had jet lag, was up until two o'clock in the morning because I had to finish it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:29 / #: Listen, your mom loved this.
Tiffany Lerman 00:35:32 / #: Yeah. She was so thrilled.
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:33 / #: I'm sure she was.
Tiffany Lerman 00:35:34 / #: When I could finally start talking about it with her, she was so, so thrilled. An instant Jackie Collins' mega fan immediately. It was crazy. I was like, "What's happening next? When are you doing this?" Lucky was one of my all-time favorites. I like to say nobody really knows this, I like to say it though. At one point, she wanted to kill off Lennie.
00:36:00 / #: Lucky Santangelo was married, his second marriage was to Lennie Golden, and she really, really wanted to kill him off. I begged her, I said, "Please." I said, "I love them so much. They have such a great marriage. You cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to the fans."
Sarah MacLean 00:36:18 / #: That is some misery. That is serious misery choices.
Tiffany Lerman 00:36:23 / #: I know, I know. I said, "People are going to go crazy if you do that, you can't do it." She wasn't happy with me. She's like, "Okay." I can't remember which book it is, but it's the book when Lennie gets kidnapped.
00:36:33 / #: He's in the cave, he's held hostage in a cave, and that's when he was supposed to die but he didn't. She brought him back and I was like, "Thank goodness."
Sarah MacLean 00:36:44 / #: Yes, that's a great story. Good job.
Jennifer Prokop 00:36:47 / #: That's a great story. Gosh, imagine that's like, "My mom did that."
Sarah MacLean 00:36:52 / #: Well, but it makes sense. From a storyteller perspective, Lucky and Lennie were together for a long.
00:36:59 / #: That is a way that you could shake things up and force Lucky, Jen loves a heroine against the wall and who doesn't? But there it is, a dark moment for Lucky but Tiffany saved it.
Tiffany Lerman 00:37:16 / #: She wasn't happy with me, but I think she knew. I think she knew, that's why she did it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:20 / #: Yeah, you were right.
Tiffany Lerman 00:37:22 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:24 / #: That's what happens when there's a seat on the other side of the desk. You get to have that influence.
Tiffany Lerman 00:37:28 / #: Exactly. That was one of my big moments. What about you, Rory?
Rory Green 00:37:32 / #: Well, it's interesting because Tiff and our mom, they were much more aligned in their personalities. We all had a great relationship with her, but I was this highly sensitive, kind of like a fragile child. There's always one in the family. I just feel like I was drawn, I was writing poetry and I was reading Judy Bloom. I had a sense of what mom was doing down the hallway, but I wasn't exactly sure what she was doing.
00:38:04 / #: I think she was quite protective of me particularly, because she knew that she had to hold things back. I also read her work when I was 18. I thought it was fun and fabulous, but it wasn't necessarily be what I would've been drawn to read at that time. It was interesting. We read every single book she ever wrote, of course. We were hugely supportive of her work.
00:38:33 / #: I'm also a writer, so we used to have conversations about writing, which was also really fun for me. But I know as a kid, like probably everybody else around me, was fully getting their sex education from my mother.
Jennifer Prokop 00:38:47 / #: Yeah, I'm sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:48 / #: Well, you were getting yours from Judy Bloom, like many other girls.
Rory Green 00:38:52 / #: Judy had my back covered. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:38:56 / #: Were there books that were favorites with readers? This is always really interesting. Lucky Santangelo, I think clearly.
00:39:04 / #: I heard that name and felt like I was like, "Oh, I remember this," or were there ones that were her favorite?
Tiffany Lerman 00:39:12 / #: Well, definitely Lucky. That's why she continued her in so many books, for sure, Lucky. But one book that really stands out that she loved was called American Star. It's like this epic love story, and it's a fan favorite as well, reader favorite as well. Actually, I need to reread that because I haven't read that in several years, and so I really want to go back to that.
00:39:37 / #: Then also Lovers and Gamblers, it happens to be one of my favorites, but it was also one of our mother's favorites. That was an earlier book, 1978. Yes, so it was before Chances and before Hollywood Wives. It was really when she started writing this epic genre where it took you all over the world and so many stories weaving into each other.
00:40:05 / #: We're so excited right now because it's being adapted to be made into a television show, a television miniseries. We know that she would be thrilled, so we're really excited about that. We can't wait for that to happen.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:21 / #: Sure. Bring these characters to a new generation.
Tiffany Lerman 00:40:26 / #: Yes. Yes, exactly.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:27 / #: I have a question that's also related, which is she recorded her own audiobooks, which audiobooks are so big now.
00:40:37 / #: They just say that this is a sector of publishing that is booming, but she didn't, as far as I can tell, record all of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:48 / #: Was there a reason behind the ones she chose?
Tiffany Lerman 00:40:51 / #: Yeah. To be honest, we don't actually know. I was shocked to discover that Hollywood Wives, that she hadn't recorded Hollywood Wives in audio. It has been recorded and it will be, and it's coming out in July for this 40th anniversary by a fantastic narrator called Emily Tremaine.
00:41:06 / #: But we were quite surprised, and we don't know why that particular one. It might've been a contractual thing, I'm not sure. We don't know why that didn't happen. The other audio that she did record, because of course, at the time she was recording when it was cassette tapes and then it was CDs.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:22 / #: Sure. You would get them in those weird cases.
Tiffany Lerman 00:41:29 / #: Exactly, like 25 tapes or 10 CDs. They often had to abridge the stories, which I'm sure didn't help. But it is super fun to be able to listen to the ones that she did record.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:41 / #: I'm sure.
Rory Green 00:41:41 / #: The other fantastic thing that's happening now is that our niece, India Thain, has been rerecording some of our mother's titles for Simon & Schuster in the UK. She actually did an audio of Lovers and Gamblers, and I believe Lucky was the other one that she did.
00:41:56 / #: It's just such a beautiful thing to see it come full circle because she was the first grandchild. She had a very clear [inaudible] with our mother, and she really had listened to also, as Tiff said, she'd been on the receiving end of hearing our mother read. That's a reflection, hearing her reread the stories now.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:14 / #: That's lovely. I guess that this leans into or leads into a conversation about Jackie Collins, the business woman, because the documentary is called Lady Boss. There's a book called Lady Boss, Lucky is a Lady Boss. Everybody's a Lady Boss in her books and I love it. I'm very much there for that core story, but I'm really fascinated particularly by women in this '70s and '80s in publishing, when publishing was so dominated by men.
00:42:47 / #: Having the really keen business acumen to hold control of their empires and run the show. I wonder if you could talk a little bit, was that intuitive for your mother? Was she always thinking about business as well? I know that she obviously had a business manager who was in the documentary, but it seemed very much like Jackie called the shots. What was the balance between Jackie the writer, and Jackie the business woman, and Jackie the brand? Were they all one thing?
Tiffany Lerman 00:43:25 / #: Well, she was a huge promoter of her books. She worked tirelessly to promote. What we have heard from so many people at the publishing houses, of how she would go out of her way to go in and meet everybody, even people with very small, not necessarily important jobs. She would go into every room, introduce herself, she would take photographs with them.
00:43:54 / #: She was always working and creating these connections at the publishing houses, but also in the bookstores too. She was constantly going in. Rory and I are doing an event at Book Soup in Los Angeles in July for the publication of Hollywood Wives, for the republication, for the new reissue. He was telling us a story how she was always in there saying, "Where are the new books? Where are you placing them?"
00:44:26 / #: But she had relationships with all of the booksellers across the country. She would always go in and either sign books or, "How are sales going? Do you have enough?" When we look back and we see email and correspondence between her and her publisher, she's asking all the important questions, "How many books are being sold? When are they going to be there?" She'd put us to work too.
00:44:48 / #: Whenever we were in a bookstore, we'd have to go and we'd have to look and see how many titles were there. If they were, take it out, put it up on a prominent place on a shelf, so that someone perusing would see, "Ah, Jackie Collins."
Rory Green 00:45:03 / #: But she did have an extraordinary attention to detail, and you can see that in her work. That, of course, spilled over into as you say, Jen, her business acumen. She would proudly say she didn't even finish high school. She didn't consider herself at all well-educated or intellectual in any way whatsoever, but she had this business savvy. It was definitely intuitive.
00:45:29 / #: It was definitely instinctual. She also had a steep learning curve. She learned on the job. She had a good partner in our father who also, again, was alongside her, but she would read every single contract. She'd be asking questions, she'd always stand up for herself. She always would hold her ground and ask for more. She was never in that situation where she was like, "Oh well, I'll just accept what they've given me," no.
00:45:55 / #: I think that she got some of the highest, particularly, certainly for a female author. I think in the '80s, she was awarded some of the highest advances ever in publishing. We have a letter from her agent at the time, Morton Janklow, who passed away recently. They had this longstanding, fascinating relationship where he wrote to her. I think it was the first deal for Hollywood Wives, in fact, and Hollywood Wives was her ninth book.
00:46:23 / #: She was not at the beginning of her career. She had been working her butt off to get to where she was with Hollywood Wives, and she got a million dollar advance, which was unheard of.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:31 / #: No, huge.
Rory Green 00:46:34 / #: It was unheard of. She was quite extraordinary in that she set the bar very high for herself and she kept pushing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:42 / #: She's so clearly a feminist. Was that tied into the way she thought of herself as a feminist, and also the way in which she taught you and your sisters all to think about yourselves as women in the world?
Tiffany Lerman 00:46:56 / #: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Like I said, she taught us to be strong women, to make decisions, not based on being with a man. It was to think for ourselves. She always used to tell me growing up, "I think you should be a director. There's no female directors in the world."
00:47:15 / #: She was looking at that. She was such a trailblazer. She was so ahead of her time in that way of thinking. I think she hadn't liked what she'd seen growing up. She didn't like the chauvinistic tendencies that her father had, and she knew that she didn't want that for herself or for her daughters.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:37 / #: But simultaneously, what a gorgeous representation of how feminism can exist alongside partnership, which is really a big piece of your mother's life, personal life, and also her books.
00:47:51 / #: There is space to be a strong lady boss, feminist, and also have love and partnership, and support and be equal with that partner.
Rory Green 00:48:02 / #: Yes. She was just very focused on equality. That was incredibly important to her. She was so frustrated by the injustices that she saw, particularly around women and the way that women were demeaned or diminished.
00:48:16 / #: As you say, she was walking through these worlds that were just populated by men. She had continued to have a felt experience of that life and she did. She was hugely respected in the publishing industry, but I'm sure she still encountered sexism at every gate.
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:32 / #: Well, as you can see, the way that a lot of men seem to think they knew what she was doing or trying to do, or attempting to do or achieving.
00:48:42 / #: It's really watching that documentary, it was just really, it was bracing is sometimes the word. It was bracing.
Tiffany Lerman 00:48:48 / #: Yes. The other thing that we haven't actually mentioned is that she was, in terms of her writing sex, like putting sex on the page, she was defiant about that.
00:48:57 / #: She was not going to be shamed for that, because that was definitely where she saw the inequality. That men could write whatever sexual experiences they wanted, even from the point of view of the woman.
00:49:08 / #: Yes. That was something that she felt so strongly about, and she refused to be shamed. I never saw her feel any shame around that whatsoever. That, for me, was very inspiring.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:19 / #: A queen.
Rory Green 00:49:20 / #: Also, exposing these men, these Hollywood types. She was exposing them, and she used to say people didn't believe what she was writing. She had to tone down the truth in order to put it in a book.
00:49:34 / #: But since she's been gone, since she died, the scandals that have come out that she literally wrote about. The sleazy producer, the sleazy politician, the corrupt TV producer.
00:49:48 / #: It's one after another scandal that she literally had to tone down in her books, because people wouldn't believe it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:56 / #: Yeah. I found myself really thinking that. That there's a way in which if you have any question about #MeToo being real for a long, long time, read Jackie Collins' books. There's no question that interest in power and money and the privilege.
00:50:14 / #: Especially, I find it very moving to think about taking on the industry that tells you how to see the world. Think about how it filters into we watch TV and movies, and that's how you see the world. To be a woman to say, "I'm going to tell you about that world in a different way." It's a visionary, it really is.
Rory Green 00:50:38 / #: Yeah, she was a visionary. Also, having reread Hollywood Wives, it had been many years since I had read it, but I was just so struck by that when I was reading. I was, "Oh my God, she had named all of it." It was again, right there in those chapters on the page, and she was very exposing. I think that's why at the time, it was quite shocking. Nobody had ever written a book like that, and she would say still that people would still come up.
00:51:07 / #: There was something, she was so interesting with it because she wasn't threatening with it. I do think she threatened men, but somehow I think she also used her own sexuality and her own power. Because she was a very beautiful woman, so she would still attract men, but she told these horrifying. My skin was crawling sometimes reading Hollywood Wives at some of these scenes. I knew they were true.
00:51:27 / #: I knew there were some things that she had experienced personally. She also had a fabulous sense of humor, our mom. A lot of people who have read her books don't know about that. At times, they're just hilarious, so she always had this balance.
Sarah MacLean 00:51:44 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Max Monroe, author of Best Frenemies.
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:51 / #: Katy Dayton is a hardworking teacher and it is spring break, and you know what? She is going to treat herself right. She books herself a vacation rental.
00:51:58 / #: She's going to go have a great time for the week. The last person she wants to get stuck with, especially is her arch-nemesis from work, Mack Houston.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:09 / #: Perfect.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:10 / #: Yet, somehow this man has been accidentally booked into the same spot as her for the week.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:17 / #: No.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:17 / #: Now they're going to have to figure it out, but this involves things like him accidentally seeing her naked.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:27 / #: Isn't that always the way?
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:29 / #: Of course. All she wanted was relaxation, wine and fun in the sun, and instead, she is probably going to go to jail after dealing with this man the way she wants to. Are they going to figure it out?
00:52:42 / #: Is this workplace romance going to be only be one week long, or are they going to take it back to their real world? This is the perfect kind of spicy, standalone romcom readers will love.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:56 / #: You can read Best Frenemies in print, e-book, audiobook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thanks to Max Monroe for sponsoring this week's episode. I think that if we can talk a little bit about Hollywood Wives, because would we say this is the book that launched her into the stratosphere, the stratosphere of publishing it feels?
00:53:22 / #: I think we've touched on why it was so amazing for readers and why readers came to it. Obviously, there's all the things that come with a Jackie Collins' book. It's fun and it's lush, and it's lavish, and it's full of all these stories and people who we see and idolize. It brings them all down in a lot of ways to real life.
00:53:47 / #: But it also feels like normal people like me, would read this book and say, "Oh, wait, I know this guy. I don't know this guy at all. I've never been in Hollywood, but I do know a guy like that." I wonder was that a piece of its appeal, or why were we all so drawn to this book?
Tiffany Lerman 00:54:14 / #: I think she exposed Hollywood in the way it never had been exposed before. I think at the time she wrote it, it was the mid '80s, and movie stars were huge. Well, they always have been. I recently saw an interview with her where she said she was sitting at a lunch with a bunch of friends, and she looked around. It was one of those nice restaurants in Beverly Hills.
00:54:43 / #: She looked around and she saw woman after woman after woman with the same designer purse, designer outfit, nails, perfect hair. She'd say, "Perfect work on their face," or whatever it was. She said, "Who are all these women?" Then she said, "They are the Hollywood wives." She was fascinated by seeing all of them in this restaurant. That's how the impetus, the idea for Hollywood Wives came about.
00:55:08 / #: Because she felt like they were all of the women who were taking care of the men who were in the forefront of Hollywood. There were no producers, directors. The actors were either bimbettes, as they were called, or starlets or on the casting couch or all of that. She just wanted to bring it all to the forefront. From her own personal experiences, we're sure she had experienced a lot of this.
00:55:35 / #: It was very interesting to expose it, and I think that's why people just lapped it up, because they were. They would have these parties when the miniseries. The miniseries was one of the number one miniseries in the '80s, and they would have these watching parties because people would sit there and they'd want to guess who the actor was. There was never anyone specific.
00:55:56 / #: She would just take different characteristics of different actors, different stories that she'd heard from people, whispers here and there. She would make them into one general character and it was a guessing game. She loved to create this guessing game for her readers. I think that's why people just loved it, because it really exposed this other side of Hollywood that hadn't really been written about before.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:19 / #: Yeah.
Tiffany Lerman 00:56:20 / #: She had infiltrated it. She was an insider. Yeah. She did that very deftly because people would trust her. She used to, because we've been watching old interviews with her.
00:56:30 / #: There was one where she says, "Oh, I'm like a bartender and a psychiatrist. People are just drawn to me. They just come and sit themselves down and tell me everything." Meanwhile, she's surreptitiously taking notes under the table.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:44 / #: Yeah, knowing she's Jackie Collins.
Tiffany Lerman 00:56:46 / #: Exactly. That's kind of hiding in plain sight, but her personality was like that. She was such a warm and welcoming person, and people did feel incredibly comfortable with her, but I think that also comes across just her narrative voice. I think that's why readers feel so comfortable. As you said, Sarah, like, "Hey, I know that guy."
00:57:07 / #: Because again, she could just encapsulate a certain character on the page. Whether it was somebody in Hollywood or somebody that you are working with in your office, or a fool or whatever. It's like she was able to just in a short sentence really, they would just jump off the page and you knew exactly who she was talking about.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:28 / #: Right. The ultimate 1980s working girl fantasy is to see that guy taken down, right?
Tiffany Lerman 00:57:34 / #: Absolutely.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:35 / #: She showed us that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:37 / #: Everyone knew this was Joan Collins' sister, and that she had really experienced so many of the things that were in her books. It really feels to me like it was a double-edged sword for her too, because then the assumption was that anything she had written about she had experienced. She was never able to also just take credit for being an amazing writer of fiction.
00:58:02 / #: It was always just the assumption that somehow because she had been to Hollywood parties, that she was just reporting. I think that's another reason why I really respected in the documentary, especially seeing her defending her work as a storyteller. You can sit in a Hollywood party and you're not going to be able to tell the story the way Jackie Collins is.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:27 / #: Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. We often end these conversations asking writers to talk to us about what endures from their books, what the mark is that they've left on fiction.
00:58:43 / #: I feel like this is one of those questions that we're so happy we have you, because often writers, they don't think of it that way. But you all have thought about it this way, I think. What is the mark that your mom left on fiction?
Rory Green 00:59:01 / #: Oh, wow. That's a broad question. You go first. You go first.
Tiffany Lerman 00:59:06 / #: I'll go first. Yeah. What is the mark that she left on fiction? I want to say that it's like she was a door opener, that she was brave enough to open doors that were closed. We talk about the glass ceiling, but somehow I'm thinking about doors with our mother. That she kept opening doors. Even doors that seemed like they were locked, she was like, "I'm going to figure out how to pick this lock. I'm going to get in and I'm going to find my space in that room."
00:59:34 / #: I feel like that's part of her legacy for female authors who have come before her. That's something that Colleen really, as we said, really acknowledges in her forward. I think she was a door opener. She gave women permission to find their voice, to be bold, to be brave. To also not have to contort themselves into what they imagine other people expect for them to be or expect them to write. I think part of her legacy is that she offered people freedom, like creative freedom.
01:00:07 / #: I don't know if she would be able to name that herself if she was still here, because again, it was so intuitive to her. It was just what moved through her, but it's interesting being able to take a step back and think about it objectively. But I would say it was about permission, freedom and door opening.
Rory Green 01:00:24 / #: I agree. I completely agree with what you say. I also feel that she wrote stories that she really wanted to inspire women, and to make women see that there were other options available for them. That they could believe in themselves and believe in their own confidence. I think she used her writing to send a message to women that they could do anything that they put their mind to. That's why she wrote such strong female characters.
01:00:55 / #: That's why Lucky Santangelo is timeless. Look at James Bond. She used to say, "Why do you have to put an age on Lucky Santangelo when there's no age on James Bond? He's gone on for decades, so can Lucky Santangelo." Her message is timeless for her readers, that they really can believe in their own confidence because she did. She said she was a high school dropout and look at what she did. It's a really positive message that she sends.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:27 / #: That's amazing. What a legacy for all of you.
Rory Green 01:01:30 / #: Yeah, we're so lucky. We miss her so much every day. It's such a loss not having her in our lives anymore, it really is.
01:01:38 / #: But her inspiration lives on and her legacy lives on. It's our mission to make her bigger than she ever was before, even bigger than she was. That's really our mission.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:48 / #: Yeah. Well, we are so happy to help do our part.
Rory Green 01:01:52 / #: Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:53 / #: After you've watched Lady Boss, if you like me, would then like to spend the next 48 hours of your life just watching interviews with Jackie Collins being amazing.
01:02:03 / #: You can do that on the Jackie Collins' YouTube channel where you are uploading, or I assume have uploaded and are continuing to upload, incredible interviews where Jackie is just being amazing.
Rory Green 01:02:19 / #: Yeah, they're brilliant. There's so many interviews and you go down this rabbit hole, you could sit for hours. I could be sitting all day watching these incredible interviews. Now what we've started to do with her social media, on her Instagram and her Facebook channels and TikTok as well.
01:02:33 / #: We've started to take these amazing snippets of parts of the interviews with these great soundbites, that I feel like they could go viral. There's definitely a soundbite in there that we've got that's going to go viral where she's saying everything that we spoke about.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:48 / #: Yeah.
Tiffany Lerman 01:02:50 / #: It's super fun for us to be now running the social media channels because we get to still interact with fans, or at least see comments every single day about the impact that she's had. If we ever ask questions like, "Tell us how Jackie Collins changed your life," it's so fun reading the stories.
01:03:07 / #: For us, like this September, she will have been gone eight years, but her energetic presence still feels very vivid because we get to continue her work and work with the estate and the social media, and it's a joy for us.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:24 / #: Well, we'll put links to all of the social media accounts in show notes so our listeners can find them easily. The book is Hollywood Wives. The 40th anniversary edition comes out July 11th in the United States, and I assume all over, but we are so excited.
01:03:42 / #: It is such a romp. I had the best time reading it. Thank you to Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman for joining us today. We are so thrilled to add your mother to the Trailblazer Series. It's beyond exciting for us.
Tiffany Lerman 01:04:00 / #: Thank you so much for the conversation.
Rory Green 01:04:02 / #: Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:04 / #: That might be my favorite Trailblazer episode so far.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:09 / #: What's interesting is, and you and I have talked extensively about, we were reading when Jackie Collins was writing books, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:04:18 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:18 / #: One of the things though is I was very aware of Jackie Collins when I was a teenager, but I didn't really read a lot of Jackie Collins' books. I don't think.
01:04:29 / #: I knew that they were romance adjacent, not necessarily like mainstream romance. I was so inspired by that conversation, all I want to do now is go read every Jackie Collins' book.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:44 / #: I definitely read at least one Lucky Santangelo book, and I remember Lucky Santangelo. I remember the miniseries. I remember my mom, my parents watching that.
01:05:00 / #: I was clearly too young to be watching those, but I was also too young to watch The Thorn Birds and those two are somehow interconnected in my mind as viewing experiences from my childhood.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:14 / #: Watching the documentary, it felt like I was very aware of Jackie Collins as a superstar.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:21 / #: Like a personality.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:23 / #: Yes. I think part of it is there was less channels. The part where she was on with God, who was that guy who did all the interviews with the glasses? I think watching those, like those were shows I watched.
01:05:41 / #: So Dynasty and Joan Collins, all of that was a big part of the ether of that time period. Watching her, I was like, "Oh yeah, I remember seeing this woman. I remember her whole vibe."
Sarah MacLean 01:05:57 / #: Of course, as a romance writer and as a romance person, you stumble across that Barbara Cartland, Jackie Collins' interview periodically. Over the course of the last of my career, I've seen that a few times.
01:06:09 / #: It's so horrifying that someone who arguably was so committed to stories of manners in Barbara Cartland, that clown, would come onto a stage, sit next to someone on a couch, and then just shred them. Jackie comes off as so graceful and gracious, and intelligent.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:38 / #: Yeah, she's not backing down.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:40 / #: Just brilliant. There's no question who wins that, even though Barbara Cartland, if you watch the whole video, we'll put it in show notes, the whole video. Barbara Cartland just talks over her the whole time, it's gross. But Jackie comes off looking amazing, as she always does.
01:06:57 / #: She's so good at the job at taking the questions that we've all fielded over the years. The comments that we've all fielded over the years, and just making people seem small without making, I think, them feel small, which is hard.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:15 / #: Yes, what a trick.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:16 / #: Impossible to do. Listen, I said this at the end of the interview with Rory and Tiffany, but do not miss the YouTube channel where they have curated all of these interviews.
01:07:33 / #: And where we got the clip from Jackie for the beginning of the show. I'm so glad we got to talk about writing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:41 / #: Yes. That was the one part of the documentary, the documentary is about her life and her influence. Of course, it's a lot easier to show that with the footage at hand, but we were really interested in hearing about her life as a writer. Sarah and I had a big list of questions.
01:08:02 / #: We are going into it thinking like, "We're not sure that anyone could answer these questions for someone else." But I was so thrilled, they love their mom as their mom, but they are so respectful of her work. I thought that that really came through and it really impressed me so profoundly. I don't know, I was really moved by that episode in just that conversation.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:27 / #: Yeah. Because there was a real sense, and I think this is something that you find when you think about authors like her, who are personalities. It's hard to imagine them in yoga pants unwashed on deadline, because it seems like Jackie Collins never ever was writing without a full face of makeup, but I'm sure that's not the case.
01:08:54 / #: I was really thrilled to hear about not just process, but her clear dedication to craft. I loved even the little moments where there's just a heartbeat of a moment in our interview where I think Tiffany says, "Oh yeah, she emailed back and forth." Or emailed, "She corresponded with Danielle Steel. She corresponded with Judith Krantz."
01:09:20 / #: It makes sense that those names, that those people would find each other in some way, because who else but Danielle Steel could possibly understand what it was to be Jackie Collins?
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:32 / #: When we talk about to authors about their early life as a writer or a reader, imagine coming across the treasure trove that must be all of your mom's letters and diaries.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:45 / #: Incredible.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:47 / #: The fact that she wrote in longhand, I thought that was like a throwaway question. Then they were like, "Oh, no, no, that's actually what happened."
Sarah MacLean 01:09:53 / #: She literally never used a typewriter, which is amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:57 / #: Lady Boss, that's all I have to say about that. I just think there's some people for whom writing, it's about storytelling, and I think the Netflix documentary says that over and over again. I feel like there's a pathway to coming to writing that's not about like, "I love books, but I love stories."
01:10:20 / #: It was really fascinating to hear about her life, her writing process, and the way that she worked and the way they perceived that as children. But the story about her reading to them and there was always a chair across the other side of the desk. That was amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:10:38 / #: I'm literally going to put a chair in my office so that when my daughter comes in, I can say, "Sit, sit here." It was a wonderful experience listening and watching. You all, of course, will have just heard the conversation, but it's clear how much these women just loved their mom and were committed to her legacy in a really interesting, powerful way.
01:11:11 / #: Also, I think it's so amazing how the books spoke so much to readers, and being able to hear Rory and Tiffany talk about how readers come to the genre or came to her books, especially at this moment in time. You said this related to Colleen, Colleen Hoover, who wrote the introduction to Hollywood Wives, the 40th anniversary edition. But this real sense of readers coming to these stories for the first time and finding joy.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:52 / #: Something they didn't know they wanted in these books.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:55 / #: I think you can't, as much as we all, I think Jackie Collins lives as this huge, huge overarching personality for so many of us. But I just want to call out 500 million copies of her books have been sold, 40 countries, 32 New York Times bestsellers. I'm reading from the press release from Gallery, the publishers of Hollywood Wives.
01:12:24 / #: She was awarded an Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England in 2013 for her services to literature and charity. When accepting the honor, she said to the queen, "Not bad for a school dropout." A revelation capturing her belief that both passion and determination can lead to big dreams coming true/.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:45 / #: Amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:46 / #: I really couldn't say it any better. It feels like these women that she wrote were so aspirational for so many people.
01:12:55 / #: There was something really powerful about being able to tell a story about somebody who, no matter how down on their luck they got, was definitely going to become a lady boss.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:06 / #: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing that struck me was, especially again, in watching the documentary, is how many of the things that romance readers are still hearing today. It seems times have changed. Then you go back and you're like, "Nope, same old."
01:13:29 / #: The way that makes me feel is, for me personally, is I don't apologize for it. But that scene where an audience full of... In the Netflix documentary, there's a scene where she's on a talk show and people in the audience just stand up and essentially pin a scarlet A to her, person after person, after person.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:52 / #: If you haven't seen the documentary, watching it it's a shock to see. I watched it with Eric, and Eric turned to me and said, "If you had told me about this scene, I wouldn't have believed you, that it was as bad as you said."
01:14:07 / #: Still, just she took one. Listen, Jackie Collins walked so the rest of us could run on that front.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:14 / #: Right. I think that that was the part that was very, I don't know. I think it's funny.
01:14:21 / #: I think that sometimes there's a conversation about the cultural way in which romance readers are always in a defensive crouch. I feel like I'd be like, "See exhibit A, B, C, D, E."
Sarah MacLean 01:14:37 / #: If you think about it, Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, Colleen, Emily Henry, we are seeing it even today, the big giants of whatever the year is, whoever the giant is that year, having to defend. But I do want to say the other thing that really was interesting to me, is I've been thinking over the last couple of weeks since we knew we were going to interview them.
01:15:08 / #: I've been thinking a lot about how we don't talk about Jackie Collins' book as romances, and I don't think they are romances. That's not what they're trying to do. That's not the story or the fantasy that they're selling. They're selling a very different kind of fantasy than romance does, but it sure feels like they're cousins.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:30 / #: Yes, absolutely. Well, and I think it's interesting. I found myself thinking so much about books that were written contemporaneously with Hollywood Wives or in the wake of Hollywood Wives, I would say.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:46 / #: Especially categories.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:47 / #: Yes. That's what I was thinking. I bet that the categories I was reading in 1984 and 1985 about sexual harassment at work, were directly influenced by Jackie Collins.
01:16:07 / #: There's a way in which the things that are happening in the culture always, always trickle into romance. It was really interesting to think, "Oh, I hadn't realized that this was an influence, until we talked to them and heard about it." Then I was like, "Oh, of course."
Sarah MacLean 01:16:28 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:28 / #: Of course, because here is someone who's opening the doors, as Rory said at the end. Opening the doors to here's a new conversation we get to have about what it is like for women at work.
01:16:40 / #: Of course, then once you open the doors, romance is like, "Ooh, there's an open door. Let me step through. Let me see what I can do in that space."
Sarah MacLean 01:16:48 / #: It's hard to imagine. You think about say, Judith McNaught's Perfect, or a number of Sandra Brown books during that time, where they walk right up to the wealth line to these jobs that glitter. It's hard to imagine that they weren't also aware of the dialogue with these books that, as I said my editor told me, were called the sex and shopping books on the other side by the men in sales and marketing.
01:17:29 / #: They weren't, again, not romance, but definitely the wealth piece, the fascination with extremely wealthy, powerful men in those categories and single-title contemporaries of a particular, it's a particular voice that you can see it through line in romance. It had to have been the influence of Collins and Steel, and Krantz and Barbara Taylor Bradford.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:56 / #: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We continue to talk about how every single trailblazer is a gift. This one was so different, but you know what? It was just really fascinating to think about what was the landscape out there.
01:18:12 / #: For sure, it is a fact, I think to say, that many a romance author probably looked at Jackie Collins for the model of, "Here's how I am going to move through the world with these questions. Here's how I am going to talk about my work to a hostile and patriarchal audience. Here's how I am going to ignore them and focus on my readers." It was inspiring.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:44 / #: Yeah. We didn't talk with Rory and Tiffany very much about the armor of Jackie Collins, but one of the things that I was really drawn to was this idea that she put on Jackie. Obviously, her sister was Joan Collins. She basically grew up in Hollywood. Once she was, what, 16, when she came to Hollywood to be with her older sister.
01:19:12 / #: Obviously, she comes by a lot of this glitz and glamour naturally. But the idea of nobody wore leopard print until Jackie Collins started putting on leopard print every time, because she had this affinity with the leopard or the panther or whatever. She has them all, there's this great photograph in the documentary. Maybe we can find it to share here.
Jennifer Prokop 01:19:34 / #: But look down, you'll see it.
Sarah MacLean 01:19:36 / #: With her just surrounded by cheetahs and birds and it's fantastic. I just think this idea of dawning armor to face the world when this is the work that you're doing. When you are constantly shining a light on misogyny and the double standard, and the way women are treated and the way power is passed on from person to person in these places. I think the armor is there because she was literally going to war every time she sat down.
01:20:13 / #: She didn't know what Merv Griffin was going to ask her or what Oprah was going to ask her. When you look at all these interviews, there's always the same. It always dances up to the, "Well, the scenes are so sexy and how do you do it? Who are these salacious people? Can you name names and what did happen with Marlon Brando?" I imagine to field those questions, which are so critical to your brand, and your readers are asking them.
01:20:43 / #: Also, hold to your firm belief that you're doing a thing and that you're a kick-ass writer, as she described herself.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:52 / #: Right. Absolutely.
Sarah MacLean 01:20:54 / #: You got to put on the leopard print to do it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:57 / #: Sure. I think the other thing I was really struck by is outside of Oprah, it was so many men. It was Larry King. I finally remembered his name.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:06 / #: Larry King, that's right. Yep.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:07 / #: I was like, "You know, the glasses?" That it was so many men. You know what, though? I think often about when Stacey Abrams went on the Stephen Colbert show.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:19 / #: Stephen Colbert, and he made her read or was going to.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:23 / #: Yeah. This men calling women to task in this way, it has not changed.
01:21:34 / #: I think I cannot say enough about how if you've not watched this documentary, you should. It is terrific.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:44 / #: Yeah. I'm now a Jackie Collins evangelist. After I watched it, I then spent 48 hours just with that YouTube channel autoplaying in the background, because she's amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:54 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:56 / #: Yeah. That was the first trailblazer we've done with somebody who knew a person, because of course, tragically she passed away six years ago.
01:22:10 / #: But it opened up a whole new world for me in terms of like, "Well, who else could we talk to who would be able to speak like this?"
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:22 / #: About their person.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:24 / #: About their person, yeah. What a joy, was a real joy.
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:31 / #: We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you are going to read some Jackie Collins' books and mainline the '80s, and get out there and watch that documentary.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:41 / #: Yeah, put on your shoulder pads. Don't take any shit.
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:45 / #: Don't take any shit from anybody anymore.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:46 / #: What would Lucky Santangelo do?
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:49 / #: Kick your ass, that's what she'd do. Find her happily ever after.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:52 / #: Oh, and how about that story from Tiffany about how she was like, "You cannot kill Lennie."
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:57 / #: Oh yeah, talk about someone who understands the importance of the HEA.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:04 / #: Tiffany, there's a whole world of romance novels waiting for you when you're ready.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:07 / #: I loved it. I loved the entire thing. It was terrific.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:12 / #: Don't forget to check show notes for all of the information that we talked about just now. Head over and watch Lady Boss. It's on Netflix right now. Pick up Hollywood Wives, which is really deliciously fun.
01:23:30 / #: Yeah. Just ask yourself every day, all day long, "Well, what would Jackie Collins do right now?" That's my new mantra, a different kind of JC.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:44 / #: I don't know how else to end but there, everybody. Thanks for listening. You can check us out at fatedmates.net.
01:23:51 / #: You can join our Patreon to discuss this and other things with our listeners and with us.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:57 / #: Find out more at fatedmates.net/patreon.
Jennifer Prokop 01:24:01 / #: Thank you, Sarah, for that save. You can also find us on Instagram @fatedmatespod, and on Twitter, if it still exists, @FatedMates.
Sarah MacLean 01:24:09 / #: Welcome to season six, everybody. We're starting with a bang.
S05.43: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer with Christina and Lauren
We go back to the OG DNA of the contemporary boom of the early 2010s today, with a read along of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, with fabulous fan fic writers turned brilliant romance novelists, Christina Lauren. Christina and Lauren talk about the way the books inspired them to write, helped them find a community, and their fated mates (each other). Jen talks about reading Twilight as a middle school teacher, and Sarah talks about never reading it at all…until now.
Within, we’ll talk about characters feeling big feelings, about how Twilight inspired romance novelists across the board, about third acts that go hard, and about how Alice is unquestionably the best character in the whole thing.
Get Christina and Lauren’s most recent book, The True Love Experiment, wherever books are sold, and this week from Bookshop.org, where you get free shipping and help your local independent bookstore.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome back Christina and Lauren! After listening to them talk about Twilight, don’t forget to pick up their latest book, The True Love Experiment. We’ve had Christina and Lauren on a bunch of times to talk about FanFic, The Soulmate Equation, and the forced proximity trope.
Not sure of the exact article that Lo read about brain scans and married couples, but this seems like a good overview.
And a selection of some of our favorite articles about Twilight:
From The Atlantic: At Its Core, the ‘Twilight’ Saga Is a Story About
From Entertainment Weekly: The Twilight Effect
From The New York Times: Love and Pain and the Teenage Vampire Thing
From Slate: All 349 “Murmurs” in the Twilight Saga, Charted and Ranked
From Salon: Meet the Twilight Dildo Inventor
From Vogue: 56 Thoughts I had While Rewatching Twilight
From Vulture: The Most Horrific Twilight Character Backstories, Ranked by Absurdity and a video about The Rise and Fall of the Vampire Romance Craze in Film and TV.
A Google Folder with PDFs of this week's articles.
The Twilight Series
Sponsored By
Alyxandra Harvey, author of The Duchess Games,
available in print and audio, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
use the code FATEDMATES for free shipping and 30% off your order
S05.28: Women's Friendships in Romance with Sophie Jordan
Sophie Jordan is back again! She’s got a new book out, The Countess, the first in her Scandalous Ladies of London series, featuring a true Regency squad full of scandalous ladies and answering the question: What if the Real Housewives were actually Regency-era aristocrats? We talk about friendships in old school romances, about why groups of women are game changers in fiction and in real life, and fill your TBR with groups you will absolutely wish you could be friends with.
In two weeks, we’re reading Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Welcome Sophie Jordan. Her newest release, The Countess, is the first in the Scandalous Ladies of London Series. It’s loosely based on the reality TV show, The Real Housewives. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for the first two chapters of The Countess in Audiobook.
In horror, “the final girl” is a trope about who survives.
Check out the Pocket Bookshop next time you’re in Lancaster PA.
Enid is a secondary character from several of Sophie’s books in The Rogue Files series.
Check out the Ice Planet Podcast if you’re a fan of the series.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
The VOW Together Collective, authors of
the LGBTQ+ Longsummer Nights anthology.
Get it at Kobo, or directly from the Collective at Itch.io
and
Victoria Lum, author of The Sweetest Agony
Available in print or at Amazon,
or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S05.27: Teachers and Librarians in Romance
We’re talking about teachers and librarians in romance today, but don’t worry — not hot-for-teacher kinds of teachers and librarians (someday, Sarah will do that one on her own, maybe). Instead, we’re talking about romances with main characters who are teachers or librarians, in honor of the hardworking, committed teachers and librarians who are fighting book bans all across the United States right now.
And speaking of book bans…we’ve got author, activist and our friend Jarrett Dapier back with us this week to talk about the upcoming Spring off-cycle elections that are taking place around the country in the coming weeks…and how book bans are on the ballot in so many places right now. We encourage you to check the dates of your local elections, and make sure that if school or library board positions are on the ballot, you’ve done some research before you head to the polls!
This episode has some unfixable audio deficiencies. Sorry about that.
You can still get tickets to Fated Mates Live! Join us this Friday, March 24 in New York City with Tessa Bailey, Andie J. Christopher, Mila Finelli, Adriana Herrera, and Joanna Shupe! Amazing stories will be told, many laughs will be had, terrific books will be on sale, and there will be a bar! Get tickets now!
Our first read along of 2023 (soon! we promise!) is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Welcome Jarrett Dapier, author of Mr. Watson's Chickens, back to the podcast. He was a guest on our first book banning episode, click to listen and see the show notes. This is a time for action, not just being a keyboard warrior. Check our your local paper if you have one, your school district website, and your library’s website.
Wondering if there are upcoming elections in your state? Check out Rock the Vote and click on your state. You can find information about off-cycle elections, which is what non-November election are called (not “off brand” as Sarah accidentally said on the pod.)
Moms for Liberty is bad, actually. These groups trying to ban books continue to ramp up their efforts—they are specifically targeting books with any kind of queer characters, regardless of sexual content, books with people of color, and books that tell the accurate story of our history. Other states are looking to ban books with any kind of sexual content. If you are looking for the big picture, you must follow the censorship tag at Book Riot. Reporter Kelly Jensen has been on the front line of this story for years, and if you’re looking for resources this monster thread she keeps pinned to her twitter profile has ideas for how to take action. You should also check out this list to find an anti-censorship group to join in your area.
The story about the library board in Niles, Illinois; an exciting new Right to Read law making it’s way through the Illinois state congress could be duplicated in your state! Call your local rep and senator and tell them you support the freedom to read. Author Laurie Halse Anderson is a model for how you can show up.
As for book recommendations this week, check out the list of romances about librarians from SuperWendy, and this list from Jessica Pryde, Hot for Teacher (but not Mine). And last but not least, Jen’s list of Who Did it Better in the Library.
Books with Teachers and Librarians
Sponsors
Marie Blanchet, author of Skin Deep
Get it at Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S05.26: Dueling in Romance with Chels: Duels are Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Pistols at dawn, y’all! We’re talking about duels today — what they are, why they exist, who fights them, their rules and why they’re so darn sexy when they are really just silly. We’re taking our twenty paces alongside Chels_ebooks, one of our favorite BookTokkers, who has a longstanding love of old school romances and their covers, and a substack that you should subscribe to immediately. Of course, we’re talking TikTok, too. This one is long and fun and full of book recs, so strap in!
You can still get tickets to Fated Mates Live! Join us on March 24 in New York City with Tessa Bailey, Andie J. Christopher, Mila Finelli, Adriana Herrera, and Joanna Shupe! Amazing stories will be told, many laughs will be had, terrific books will be on sale, and there will be a bar! Get tickets now!
Our first read along of 2023 (soon! we promise!) is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
We are thrilled to welcome Chels, the Reigning Monarch of Bodice Ripper TikTok, to the show today. You can also follow them on twitter and subscribe to their substack, The Loose Cravat. In concert with this episode, Chels wrote an essay called Duel, Interrupted: The Underlying Homoeroticism in historical romance's favorite pasttime.
Wondering about those TikTok hit pieces we mentioned? Read the ones from British GQ and London Review of Books. It’s a few years old, but this Wall Street Journal video is a great look at the mysterious TikTok algorithm and how quickly it will rabbit hole you, and a more recent piece from Vox about TikTok’s recent promises to become more transparent, and another one from The Verge about how TikTok suppresses content from disabled users.
The relationship between BookTok and bookselling is complex and difficult to parse because of the lack of transparency around book sales. Check out Where Is All the Book Data by Melanie Walsh, as well as how book-buying habits changed during the pandemic.
Deloping is bad, actually! So If you’d like to learn more about duels, Chels recommends Pistols at Dawn by Richard Hopton and The Duel: A History of Duelling by Robert Baldick. Jen recommends this article about dueling from JSTOR Daily, or this one about American dueling in the Smithsonian, which led her to the Code Duello as one example for the rules of dueling.
Speaking of moral panics, JSTOR Daily has a list of them! I told you it was a good site!
Deuling in pop culture: check out The Duelists by Ridley Scott, this famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and of course, Hamilton.
For some real historical duels, check out: The billiards balls duel, The topless lady duelers in Austria, additional ladies being badass, Humphrey Howarth the naked dueler, and Burr and Hamilton. Senator Brooks caning Senator Sumner on the Senate floor is another thing entirely.
Finally, check out this page from Loretta Chase’s website which describes and links to several videos about the Singing bird pistols from Lord Lovedon’s Duel.
Books With Dueling
Other Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Target
Get it now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Juniper Butterworth, author of Shipwrecked: Being a tale of true love, magic & goats
Get it now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
Follow Juniper and her cheese adventures on Twitter
S05.19: Homecoming Romance with Kate Clayborn
Seven-timer Kate Clayborn returns to the Fated Mates studio (lol, jk there is no studio) to talk about about going home again in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book, Georgie All Along, which you can get this week wherever books are sold! We talk about all the ins and outs of homecoming romances, what sends characters back to the beginning, what readers expect from these books, why they hit so hard and in so many ways, and how this trope intersects with small town romance. All that, and Sarah’s brought an X,Y chart to class.
Next week, we have an interstitial, and then it’s Derek Craven Day 2023! Our first read along of 2023 (in February) is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Welcome Kate Clayborn. Her newest release, Georgie, All Along came out yesterday. She’s been on Fated Mates so many times because we love to talk to her about romance. You can listen to them all here, but considering the time of year, might we recommend the 2021 Derek Craven Day episode?
In case you forgot what your English teacher told you about theme.
Here's Sarah's chart, as promised. Also, you can learn about all about the X and Y axis. And the Z axis. And coefficients. So mathy this week!
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Lillian Lark, author of Deceived by the Gargoyles.
Get it at Amazon, free on Kindle Unlimited,
visit Lillian Lark at lillianlark.com
and
Love’s Sweet Arrow, a romance bookstore in Chicago
Visit lovessweetarrow.com,
and preorder upcoming romance with fun gifts!
S05.06: Redemption Romance with Christopher Rice
In the very best version of “third time’s the charm,” we are finally welcoming Christopher Rice to Fated Mates! A man of many talents, he writes fabulous contemporary romances as C. Travis Rice, and suspense, crime and supernatural thrillers as Christopher Rice. Today we’re talking Redemption Romance in honor of his most recent romance release, Sapphire Spring.
In this episode, we talk about how redemption romances and bully romances work, how tricky they are to write, and why so many of us are so drawn to redemption arcs — particularly when they involve sticking it to our childhood enemies. We had the best time with Christopher, who filled our TBRs…so get ready, because he’s definitely going to fill yours, too.
Thanks to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies, for sponsoring the episode. Use the code FATEDMATES for 30% off and free shipping. Thanks, also, to emjoy for sponsoring the episode. Visit letsemjoy.com/mates for a 14-day free trial.
Show Notes
This week's guest is Christopher Rice, who also publishes under the name C. Travis Rice. He and his best friend Eric Shaw Quinn host a podcast called The Dinner Party Show.
The inspiration for the Sapphire Cove series came from Nora Roberts's Dream Trilogy. The first one is Daring to Dream.
Jean Valjean is the main character in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
A Molly House was a British term for a place where gay men could meet up. Like Victorian Grindr.
The Sapphire Cove Series by C. Travis Rice
Books with Redemption Arcs
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
and
Emjoy, your audio journey to female pleasure.
Visit letsemjoy.com/mates for your 14 day free trial.
S04.39: Superhero Romance with Barry Lyga
This week, we’re talking Superheroes! Why is it so rare to see a great romance in a superhero story? Is there really no room for love and capes? Do heroes eat? (spoiler: obviously) — We’re joined by author Barry Lyga, a comics and superhero expert, to discuss all this and more…and to chat about the new YA Superhero anthology, Generation Wonder, in which Sarah has a short story (it’s a romance). We also recommend some great superhero romances and comics, because of course we do.
Do yourself a favor — be sure to check out show notes this week. The visuals are a delight.
Fated Mates Live, in person, is happening!!! We’ll be in Alexandria, VA on July 30th — join us there! We’ll be joined by a ton of our favorites…find more information about the event and get tickets through Old Town Books!
Thanks to Penguin Random House, publisher of Andie J. Christopher’s Thank You, Next, for sponsoring the episode. Thanks, also, to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. Visit microdose.com and use code FATEDMATES to get free shipping & 30% off your first order.
Show Notes
Thanks to Old Town Books, we are going to have a real Fated Mates Live event at Apollycon at the end of July. It will be Saturday evening July 30th in Alexandria. Stay tuned for details.
Welcome Barry Lyga, comics author and editor of the YA superhero anthology Generation Wonder. Sarah has a story in the anthology, and we’ll hope you’ll buy one for the young reader in your life.
There was no kissing in Doctor Strange, but we’ve been promised there will be in Thor: Love and Thunder. In fact, Taika Waititi said Mills & Boon, so...that's official.
Back in the day, romance comics were just as popular as superhero comics. Check out the site Sequential Crush to see the history of romance comics. If after this episode you think you might want to check out more comics, Suzanne’s site Love in Panels is the best place to start.
Comics writer Mark Waid wrote about manhood and comics in an essay that is no longer available online, but Mark is also the author of Irredeemable, a comic about Superman turning villainous. Another essay about how modern superhero movies are romance and sex-free is called Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny.
If you have little kids, check out the Mia Mayhem series of graphic novels.
Jen was on Heaving Bosoms to discuss Cinnamon Blade.
The TV Show about the superheroes going to work is called The Boys.
Exactly one year ago (well, one year ago yesterday), Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker, co-creators of the DC Entertainment-HBO Max adult animated series “Harley Quinn,” told Variety that DC Comics removed a scene from the show of Batman "dining feline" (h/t bleedingcool for this delightful euphemism), saying "Heroes don't do that." As is right and just, the internet disagreed and #HeroesWhoEat and #BatmanGoesDown were born. It was a great day.
For what it's worth, it wasn't just the internet that disagreed. Zach Snyder confirmed that Batman in fact does eat, with one of the greatest tweets of all time. At least, we think so. DC apparently did not care for it. While we like Snyder's version very much, here are some other NSFW images we like almost as much (eye headphones in): From artist @Mrs_Van_Damn; commentary from @realAgdtwinkie; from artist (with excellent commentary) @ArtKhobra; and this one, from artist @rpace, with special love for the pegging crew.
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Penguin Random House, publisher of Andie J. Christopher’s Thank You, Next, available in print, e and audio at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, your local indie, or wherever books are sold.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S04.22: Sarah J. Maas on Sailor Moon, Writing Sex and Second Books
Oh boy have we got an episode for you! We’re thrilled to have Sarah J. Maas with us to celebrate the release of the second in her Crescent City series, House of Sky and Breath — in this episode, we talk about second books in series, why second books are often so unique and different from the other books in the series, and about how fandom informs Sarah’s work. And of course, because it’s Sarah, we talk about fantasy, about worldbuilding, about moving between YA and adult fantasy, and about writing romance (and sex) on the page. All this, and we talk about some favorite second books, too!
This episode is sponsored by Sara Wetmore, author of Brush Strokes, and Mila Fanelli, author of Mafia Mistress.
Next week, we’ve got an interstitial coming your way, but our next read along will feature some of Sarah (MacLean)’s favorite quick & dirty books by London Hale, the pen name of authors Ellis Leigh and Brighton Walsh. Their Temperance Falls series is full of kinks and tropes and HEAs and while we won’t be talking about all ten books, we’ll definitely be talking about a few of them. Specific titles to follow, but Sarah is for sure going to want you to read Talk Dirty to Me, which is older mayor of the town heroine, younger firefighter and also phone sex operator hero because…obviously. The whole series is free in KU.
Show Notes
Sarah’s new book, House of Sky and Breath, was released yesterday on February 15, 2022.
In case you don’t know who MacGyver is, ope.
The Empire Strikes Back is the second in the original Star Wars trilogy, and a perfect example of how the second installment can be influential.
In Arrested Development, it was George Michael with the light saber in the garage.
Some of Sarah’s original fandoms: My Little Pony, Sailor Moon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Goonies.
These kids acted like real jerks on an airplane, and Please don’t do that.
Jen is writing Tommy and Imogen fanfic on twitter with the hashtag #TommyGoBoom.
Some of Sarah and Jen’s favorite Second Books
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Sara Wetmore, author of Brush Strokes, available free in KU.
Visit Sara at sarawetmore.com, or follow her on Instagram at @writingsara.
and
Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Mistress, available free in KU.
Visit Mila at milafinelli.com, or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.
S04.07: A Conversation with Rare Book Dealer Rebecca Romney
This week, we’re thrilled to have Rebecca Romney with us! Rebecca is a rare books dealer and the woman behind The Romance Novel in English, a 100-lot collection of rare romance novels and other romance-adjacent paraphernalia. We had a great time talking to her about the collection, her motivation to develop it, her hopes for its future at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, and about how romance lovers can start thinking about collecting books! We hope you love this one as much as we did!
Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Khan Carries On. Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie.
Show Notes
Welcome Rebecca Romney. She is the cofounder of Type Punch Matrix, a rare books firm based in Washington DC. She started out working at Bauman Rare Books in Las Vegas. You can also watch her in action from old appearances on Pawn Stars where she routinely broke people’s hearts about the values of their rare books.
Rebecca recently put together a collection that was purchased by the Lilly Library at Indiana University called The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in Rare Books 1769-1999. You can follow Lilly Librarian Rebecca on twitter; they sound like a great resource for romance, and for planning a visit!
On the episode, we extensively discuss some of the general themes and specific items in the catalogue. Two authors that didn’t make it into the catalogue because Rebecca couldn’t find copies: Eliza Haywood and Evelina by Frances Burney.
The Elizabeth Lowell book about a gold dealer in Las Vegas is called Running Scared and is part of the Rarities Unlimited series. Gold books aren't really a thing, but gold leaf and illumiated manuscripts are.
Here’s an explainer on The Gutenberg Bible and a clip from Pawn Stars where an individual leaf is available, and here is a page from a 2021 auction site selling a leaf. But remember that bookmaking in China was far more advanced at that time. Or maybe you’d be interested in knowing more about Newton’s Principia.
Although I couldn’t find an article about the history of Jewish booksellers, I did find an interview with Adam Kirsch, an author who wrote a book called The People and the Books, about the importance of books to Jewish people throughout history. On our Trailblazers episode with Radclyffe, she talked about the importance of queer bookstores.
What is the difference between ARCs and first editions? Time to check and see if your copy of The Flame and the Flower to see if it's a first edition.
Jen called it a garage sale and Sarah called it a Tag sale, which is exactly right considering where they grew up.
Foxing isn’t as sexy as you’d think when we’re talking about rare books.
The 2019 Rita ceremony included a video of romance firsts.
In John Markert’s Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present, he discusses a series called Adam that failed because they were romances only from the hero’s point of view.
Time to shake all your Sweet Valley High books out of your closet, fellow Gen-Xers.
S04.06: Monster Romance Interstitial with Jenny Nordbak
We’re talking minotaurs and spiders and orcs and gargoyles…it’s Monster Romance week at Fated Mates! Jenny Nordbak of the Wicked Wallflowers and Bonkers Romance podcast joins us to talk about this explosive, extremely popular genre that both intrigues and perplexes us.
Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Khan Carries On. Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie.
This episode sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.
Show Notes
Welcome Jenny Nordbak. Her first romance, His Leading Lady, was just released, (Jen did the final developmental edit!) and she just started the Bonkers Romance podcast with Melody from the Heaving Bosoms podcast. Check it out!
Although there is lots of crossover with paranormal or alien, Jenny defines monsters as: creatures who don’t shift into humans, you’d definitely scream if you saw them running down the street, but human enough to be able to bang. Although no one mentioned on the episode, here is the single greatest monster explanation ever seen on twitter.
The cartoon Sarah refered to is called The Harkness Test, and it's a reference to Dr. Who.
More about what it means to go into the Amazon dungeon--this, of course, is related to attempts to deplatform sex everywhere on the internet. Besialisty cartoon that Sarah is going to look for
Baby Jenny imprinted on Fantasia, specifically the centaurs and Chernabog. She also loved the Gargoyles TV show and the orcs in Lord of the Rings.
Here’s listener Alyssa Long’s terrific thread about monsters and disability. Often, writers use ableist tropes in their monster-creation, and Alyssa’s thread talks about how and why this is harmful. (Any mistakes in the summarizing of this thread are Jen’s!) In that thread, Alyssa shared a great article about ableism in the horror genre, and although we loved The Witcher, it reinforced some of the most common problems with putting disabilities on the screen.
Sarah is hosting a writing workship to kick of NaNo--register here!
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
Welcome Farrah Rochon! Her newest book, The Dating Playbook just came out yesterday. She has another football series, the New York Sabres.
The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing begin on February 4th, 2022.
Here’s an explainer for dressage, an Olympic equestrian event. The horse at the club dressage video on twitter, Snoop Dogg and Kevin Hart watching the same video.
The 1984 category romance about a woman competing in Equestrian events at the Olympics was originally called Summer Games and later changed to Remember Summer (which is available as an eBook), and it was by Elizabeth Lowell not Iris Johansen.
How the horses travel to Tokyo, how the ice is made, and other articles about new sports at this year’s Olympics.
All about Rune, the Danish Destroyer.
In season one, we did a fake engagement interstitial, but it’s a very popular trope in 2021.
Texas football culture is legendary, just look at some Texas high school football stadiums, including the one in Katy. If you’re ever in Katy, we highly recommend a trip to Katy Budget Books.
You might be interested in this article with statistics breaking down the average age of professional athletes by sport, and this list of oldest professional athletes by sport. The question of which Olympics sports have the oldest and youngest athletes is always a fascinating one. This year, the youngest athletes were 12: Syrian tennis table player Hend Zaza and Japanese skateboarder Kokona Hiraki. The oldest athlete is Australian equestrian Mary Hanna, who is 66.
We interviewed Susan Elizabeth Phillips and also did a deep dive on the third book in the Chicago Stars series, Nobody’s Baby But Mine.
Pitch was a Fox show that was cancelled before its time.
It turns out there are two real life ex-NFL players, Brian Orakpo and Michale Griffin who opened Gigi’s Cupcake shop in Texas. So just read this article over and over again until we get all the deets on Jamie Wesley’s forthcoming series.
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
Welcome to five-timer Adriana Herrera, our very own Rizzo, and her Pink Lady jacket is on the way. PS. It was only in working on these show notes that Jen realized that Rizzo’s first name is Betty.
The phrase “safe romance” is used in online spaces to describe books without a single molecule of infidelity energy.
Infidelity in evangelical christianity (and everywhere, honestly) often places the blame on the wife if her husband strays and also on “the evil other woman” -- in this model, you know who’s not to blame? Men.And that’s pure patriarchy.
Lavender wasn’t invented because it’s a plant and its known history dates back 2500 years.
Courtesan culture was inextricably tied to colonialism in India, in China, and in the USA.
Summer Brennan’s patreon about The Book of Courtesans. Hallie Rubenhold's Covent Garden Ladies, which is the book that inspired the Hulu TV show Harlots, is about Harris's List of London "working girls."
The Spanish word for wife is esposa, which means handcuffs or manacles, while the word for mistress is amante, which means beloved.
We have had some deep dive episodes where there is infidelity: Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath and Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas
There are so many bastards in historical romance, partly because it’s an easy on-ramp for creating a character who is an outsider.
Ethical non-monogamy is the practice of talking to your partner(s) about the boundaries of your relationship. Polyamorous and Open relationships would fall into this category.
On Maryse’s Book Blog, there was a 2015 post about cheating in romance, and most of the titles are self-published and indie.
Sarah talked about Lorenzo Lamas and Dynasty and Jen and her brother Mike talked about Santa Barbaraon Adriana’s Instagram Live conversations about telenovelas and soap operas.
We are having a live episode of Fated Mates to celebrate the launch of Bombshell on August 24th at 7 eastern, to get a ticket, you'll need to buy a copy from one of these indie bookstores. (If you already pre-ordered from WORD in Brooklyn, you'll get log in details in an email.)
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!
S03.48: The Ted Lasso Interstitial: 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
Ted Lasso season two starts this Friday, and the reviews look great. Also, if you haven't read this GQ profile of Jason Sudeikis, you are missing out.
In season 2, we talked about Cinnamon Roll heroes, as compared to Alpha heroes. Grunting is definitely an alpha hero trait.
We love Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca) and Juno Temple (Keeley) and that’s all we have to say about that.
Apparently, there are ways to watch Apple TV Plus shows even if you don’t have an Apple Device. Who knew!
You, too, can bake Ted’s biscuits.
USAians have a different relationship with Soccer than the rest of the world. Perhaps you need a primer on the Premier League, promotion and relegation, the average age of Premier League players, and just how popular is Premier League football really is.
Fated Mates has a favorite team, it’s Liverpool, and it’s basically because of our favorite stern brunch daddy TM, Jürgen Klopp. Stern Brunch Daddy(tm) is the invention of Andie J. Christopher, friend of the pod, who has a new book out this week!
Richmond is a fake team, but that won’t stop you from buying gear to show your team spirit. This year, London was home to six Premier League teams: Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham, and West Ham United.
Yes, Jen hates it when young characters make ancient pop culture references in romances, but in this case, Indiana Jones is appropriate for people our age! Go ahead and write I Love You on your eyelids!
More about the story of how Brett Goldstein got the part of Roy Kent.
Jen’s sister-in-law Janine writes for TV and she’s kind of a big deal!
Susan Elizabeth Philips was a guest a few weeks ago, and she talked about the trope of the grizzled veteran at the end of his career and how it’s a hallmark of the Chicago Stars series.
Jen mentioned a series of soccer romances--it’s the Atlanta Skyline series by Rebecca Crowley.
You know, Roy Kent really should have tried to get that Rolex back.
In a New York Times article about adapting romance to TV and film, Outlander showrunner Matthew B. Roberts “found that voice-over sequences left actors standing around with nothing to play against. Interior monologue has to become exterior dialogue. ‘That’s our biggest challenge always.’
“It’s witched” was a joke from our very first episode, in case you’re into that sort of thing.
That German word (phrase?) is sturm und drang and it means turmoil.
Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey is an archetype that values community building over individualism, we like the latest iteration from Gail Carriger.
Rupert Mannion is the woooooorst. That darts scene is awesome though, and if you want to read a contemporary romance set in a pub that includes darts playing, Sarah wrote one!
Other sports TV shows and movies we mentioned: Friday Night Lights, Sports Night, The League, Bull Durham, and Major League.
Maybe you didn’t know that the character of Ted Lasso originated in a series of TV commercials for NBC.
Bill Lawrence was a producer for Spin City and Scrubs, which were other funny workplace comedies.
In the past few weeks, Italy won the Euro 2020 and Argentina won the Copa America. And the Olympics football competition will be interesting since men’s teams are limited to players under 23 years of age. FYI, the US Soccer Federation is pretty awful.
For Generation X and Millenials, soccer was a big deal. If you are interested in a family friendly sports outing, maybe your city has a professional soccer team! The Chicago Fire is awesome, and New York has two teams!
The 1994 World Cup was played in the USA, and Sarah remembered the name of defender Alexi Lalas. Now he’s a commentator and we would like him to do better.
So there are trick plays in football and . . . well, football.
The last few decades of television have focused on the antihero, and lots of people wonder if that didn’t help create our recent political moment.
It’s hard to beat the fan experience of singing You’ll Never Walk Alone at Anfield; but Erik recommends this 2019 video of the team and fans singing after Liverpool defeated Barcelona. The version in the last episode of season 1 of Ted Lasso is this one by Marcus Mumford.
Follow AFC Richmond, Ted Lasso, Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein on Twitter. Jürgen Klopp does not have Twitter because "he is a grown man with a job."
You can also follow Brett Goldstein's podcast.
You can preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word in Brooklyn, buttons and stickers from Best Friend Kelly, and Fated Mates merch from Jordan Dene.
S03.47: Taboo Romance Interstitial 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!
Show 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.
The book Never Sweeter by Charlotte Stein is not a bully romance, instead it's a book long grovel a few years after the bullying ended. It's amazing.
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.
