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.
The Books
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!
S03.25: The Blackout Billionaires by Naima Simone: They actually do it in the foyer
We are talking about Naima Simone this week — and honestly, we could have picked any of Naima’s series to read because she’s just. that. good. We chose the whole series so we could talk more about the complexities of category romances, about wild plots, about alpha heroes, and about how Sarah is absolute trash for a rich hero and the working class girl on the other side of the tracks. Don’t @ her.
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’ve got Kate Clayborn joining us to talk about her upcoming book, Love at First! After that, we’re back to read alongs, but we’ll announce our next read on next week’s episode…see you then.
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
We had such a great time on Derek Craven Day. Check out our dedicated Derek Craven Day page. On Derek Craven Day, Lisa revealed the cover of her upcoming release, The Devil in Disguise, which comes out summer 2021.
The article in the New York Times about three mothers during the Pandemic was a hard, hard read.
We are all experiencing the strange time warp of the pandemic, but some of us even lost a hot year.
Maybe you would like to watch the Jem and Holograms movie.
Here are some fancy places: The Main Line, the Gold Coast, Park Avenue, and Scarsdale. Lake Forest is fancy, but it was also an actual sundown town, so yikes to that.
Here’s a quick primer about category romance from Love in Panels. Right now in February of 2021, Harlequin publishes 66 titles every month in 12 different series.
We’ve had two previous episodes that were specifically about category romance: a fun one with bananas old school categories, and another with Steve Ammidown about how Vivian Stephens invented the American category. Check out Steve’s new blog about the history of romance.
Pre-pandemic, Jen interviewed Tony Horvath from Harlequin about Harlequin’s branding and cover art.
Light a candle for Harlequin Blaze.
The Military Industrial Complex is a lot to unpack, but maybe you have the time.
Jen is not the president and CEO of Great Lakes Cold Storage, but they are hiring.
Heterochromia is a thing, but David Bowie just got punched in the face.
Naima's newest release is Back in the Texan's Bed.
Movies we mentioned: GI Jane, where Demi Moore becomes the first female Navy SEAL. Mystic Pizza, which is not only about dumping fish into a convertible. Four Weddings and Funeral, which has a woman everyone calls Duckface, which is not great!
