S06.06: Trailblazer Nalini Singh
Our Trailblazer conversations continue this week with legend Nalini Singh, whose groundbreaking paranormal series changed the game. We talk about the early days of her writing (when she was a kid!) about building her career in New Zealand, about how she came to publish in the US, about her beautiful relationships with readers, about the way she thinks about her series and how the stories hang together, and about her moves into contemporary and beyond.
We are so grateful to Nalini Singh for making time for us, and for her amazing books.
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Show Notes
Welcome Nalini Singh, author of dozens of romance novels, including several popular paranormal series. You should subscribe to her newsletter on her site! We did a deep dive of Caressed by Ice in Season 4.
Preorder her new thriller, There Should Have Been Eight, coming November 21st, right now.
Authors & Books: The Time is Short by Nerina Hilliard, Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jayne Ann Krentz, Yvonne Lindsay/EV Lind, Karina Bliss, Louisa George, Helen Bianchin, Emma Darcy, JD Robb, Meljean Brook.
Publishing Professionals: Berkley editor Cindy Hwang, bookseller Barbara Clendon owner of Barbara’s Books.
A transcript (by a human being!) is available for this episode.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Andrea Jenelle, author of No Doubts, available at
Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
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Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
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Transcript
Nalini Singh 00:00:00 / #: Back then think back to whatever the opportunities were in, say, the US North America for publishing. This is, we have to say this is pre-Indie publishing, pre-eBooks even. Whatever the options were, you have to narrow that down again and again and again by the time you get to New Zealand because very few publishers were taking submissions from outside either the US or the UK. And even books had to be set in America quite often. Or if you're going for the UK publishers that had to be set in London. And I hadn't traveled anywhere at that point. I was a high school kid. And one of the only publishers that was accepting worldwide submissions and were publishing books at Worldwide was Harlequin, Mills & Boon. And then later Silhouette became part of that too. So for me, thinking of how am I actually going to get published, it made a lot of sense to start with the contemporary side of things and start by submitting to Harlequin or Silhouette.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:15 / #: That was the voice of Nalini Singh, one of the first women of color to write extensively in the paranormal romance space, which is something she's going to talk about with us. Author of both the first and second seasons of the Psy-Changeling series.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:33 / #: I love that. I love the way she thinks about that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:36 / #: Along with the Guild Hunter series, the Rock Addiction series and category romances. We're going to talk to Nalini about her journey through romance, the way she perceives herself, the role of New Zealand romance authors, and what it's like to send your first manuscript off when you're a teenager.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:59 / #: The best. This is Fate of Mates everyone. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:06 / #: I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. And without further ado, here's our conversation with Nalini Singh. Welcome, Nalini Singh. We are so excited to have you on Fate of Mates as a trailblazer.
Nalini Singh 00:02:21 / #: I'm so excited to be here. I love the conversations you both have had. Oh, well I obviously, I cannot speak English, on the previous episodes. I really enjoyed. So yeah, it's really fun to be here.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:38 / #: Well, we're so thrilled to have you. We're so thrilled always to have somebody who can talk to us extensively about a subgenre. We immediately, the second we started the Trailblazers, your name went onto the list. So we're so excited to finally be able to do this. Why don't we start with where we start with everyone, which is, how did you come to romance? Why romance?
Nalini Singh 00:03:08 / #: I'm one of those people who has been a lifelong reader from childhood. So I was born in Fiji, which is a very small dot of an island in the Pacific. I think the last time I looked, the entire population is something like 800,000 people across. And it's not one island. We say it's actually islands, lots of islands dotted about. But I remember then, there used to be one big library in Suva City, but then the little mobile book buses would come to school. And that was my favorite.
00:03:43 / #: And I always used to get on and be like, okay, I can't wait until I'm old enough, until they let me go into the grownup section of the book bus because I had to be in the kids and young adult section. And when we moved to New Zealand, there were all these libraries and each of the suburbs has a library, and then there's the big Central City library. And I was just like, this is heaven. So I think my love of writing definitely came from my love of reading. And in terms of how I found myself in romance particularly, I think I started reading romance quite early at the Mills & Boons.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:26 / #: Same.
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:27 / #: Us too.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:29 / #: So do you remember who those authors were, the books that really brought you to the genre?
Nalini Singh 00:04:35 / #: Yeah, yeah. I went to see my aunt at one point, and she was a huge Mills & Boon reader, and she gave me this whole bag of books that I literally brought back on the plane. And I had people like Betty Neal's and is it Anne Mather?
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:54 / #: Ann Mather, sure.
Nalini Singh 00:04:54 / #: Emma Darcy, Miranda Lee, Robin Donnells-
Sarah MacLean 00:05:00 / #: The classics.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:01 / #: Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:05:02 / #: Yeah. The classics. I grew up on those and there was this one book that really made an impact. And I think she only ever wrote six romances, Nerina Hilliard.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:12 / #: Oh, I know that name.
Nalini Singh 00:05:15 / #: Yeah, the Time Is Short. That's the title. And I was obsessed with this book, and it's one of the old school Mills & Boons that were quite thick, quite big books. They weren't the shorter categories now. And it's classic, classic romance. She's dying of this brain tumor. And then she goes to this island and she's falling in love with this guy who's this billionaire kind of thing. I need to reread that because I've still got the copy still. Still got my old copy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:44 / #: I have also bought the first romances I ever read from the bag in my grandma's basement. And listen, they're still bangers. They're still so good.
Nalini Singh 00:05:53 / #: They're so good.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:54 / #: So she miraculously survives the tumor?
Nalini Singh 00:05:57 / #: I think there's an emergency surgery at one point, and I think the surgeon had a traumatic pass, so it was also his... Because it's a bigger book, so you could have some flux and all of that. But yeah, I just fell in love with those books. And I think it was the emotions that looking back, when I was younger, I obviously didn't analyze them in that way. I was just reading for the joy of it. But I think that the emotional impact of those books really, really struck me hard. And that was my gateway into romance. But then I was also reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and a lot of those books actually have a thread of romance. And I was realizing that I wanted more romance in my science fiction and fantasy and more world building fantasy stuff in my romance. So that's how I got into Paranormal Romance. I just squashed together everything I loved. And I remember finding the first paranormal romance as I read, and I was like, "Wow, it's a thing. It's a thing."
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:11 / #: So what was that for you? Because I feel like we talk a lot about 2005 and 2006, there's this huge explosion, but there definitely were vampires before, right?
Nalini Singh 00:07:23 / #: Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:24 / #: So what were the things that you were reading before you started writing Psy-Changelings?
Nalini Singh 00:07:30 / #: Oh, they were actually published before then. So I think some of the authors I was reading was like Christine Feehan, her Dark series was probably one of the first and Sherrilyn Kenyon, those are the two big names that were ahead of the curve. But even more ahead of the curve was Jane Ann Krentz, who under Jane Castle. And even under her Krentz name, I think she wrote-
Sarah MacLean 00:08:01 / #: Sweet Starfire.
Nalini Singh 00:08:03 / #: Yes, Sweet Starfire, Crystal Flame, all of those books. I am an obsessed fan-girl of her just so you know.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:10 / #: So are we.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:10 / #: We had her on-
Sarah MacLean 00:08:14 / #: If you haven't listened to the Jane Ann Krentz episode of Fated Mates go immediately to do that. It will change your entire life.
Nalini Singh 00:08:21 / #: Oh my gosh.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:21 / #: It's so good. Yeah, I think about it all the time.
Nalini Singh 00:08:26 / #: She's such a good speaker. I haven't got to that episode yet, so now, I'm just going to fast-forward through everything and get to it. But yeah, she was doing stuff I think, before almost anyone else. And I have spoken to her and I have listened to her speak and she's like, "Oh yeah, I almost killed my career doing that because nobody was ready for it."
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:48 / #: Well, and that's it too. It's like if you're before the wave, it's easy to just go under as opposed to writing it into claim and a fame.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:58 / #: So can we talk about that wave? Because it feels like it was a huge crashing wave in the early aughts. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how it felt at the time. Was it clear that it was just paranormal was everywhere or coming everywhere?
Nalini Singh 00:09:20 / #: Yeah. There was definitely a lot of authors coming up with paranormal. The funny thing is most people don't realize, but I came in on the end and I remember my editor, so my editor, Cindy Hwang, who I've had for well, 18 years now, I think, something like that. She said they were actually not buying any more paranormals when my book ended up on her desk.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:50 / #: Oh, interesting.
Nalini Singh 00:09:52 / #: Yeah. But she loved Life Dissensations so much she actually went to the publisher and said, "I know we're not buying paranormals, but I think we should buy this one." So I came in when they said paranormal was actually on the down trend.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:08 / #: Interesting.
Nalini Singh 00:10:08 / #: And I think I do believe the reports of its demise were too soon. Too early.
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:14 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:16 / #: Yeah. It didn't feel like it ended that already.
Nalini Singh 00:10:17 / #: It didn't. But yeah, so that was an interesting time because there are a lot of big paranormal names already. The big series were already out there. And then, so I came along and yeah, so it was really good. I found an editor that got me and here we are. But it really was, I think, the heyday of paranormal as a subgenre, because I remember you both probably do as well, on Smart Bitches, Trashy books. They did the Save the Contemporary campaign.
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:52 / #: Save the Contemporary.
Nalini Singh 00:10:53 / #: Yeah. Because-
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:54 / #: Doesn't that seem wild now?
Nalini Singh 00:10:57 / #: I know. And now, contemporary is everywhere, but back then, it was historical and paranormal were really ascendant and you didn't really have very many contemporaries taking the spotlight. And I think it's flipped now. Contemporaries are just rolling the roast and the other subgenres are at the back of it a bit. But I think if you've been around long enough in the industry, you see the cycles. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:24 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:26 / #: There are huge boom and bust cycles. I feel like whatever romance gods there are also ruled like the stock market and the Rockefeller's Bank account, like boom and bust. That's all we know.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:39 / #: Well wait-
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:40 / #: No nothing in the middle.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:41 / #: Before we go much further, I want to name though, that your first book was not Slave to Sensation.
Nalini Singh 00:11:47 / #: No, no.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:48 / #: So could you take us back a little bit and talk to us about the very beginning? Why did you start writing? What were you writing? How did you become a published author?
Nalini Singh 00:12:02 / #: Okay. So like I said, obsessed with romances, obsessed with writing. And I decided quite early that I wanted to write a novel. And funnily enough, one of the first things I wrote was looking back as a science fiction romance. It's like [inaudible 00:12:20 / #]. It's like about a prince with lasers coming out of his eyes and he can't fall in love because there's lasers killing everybody.
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:28 / #: Perfect.
Nalini Singh 00:12:29 / #: I was quite young, okay?
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:30 / #: No, this is perfect.
Nalini Singh 00:12:34 / #: But part of it was the reason... So I started in category romance, and one of the reasons I started, well, there's multiple reasons. One is that I think for world building, I needed to learn all the stuff and I didn't feel... I was still doing it, but I just never had that sweet spot where I felt like I created something different and unique and that everything felt shallow at that stage that I was building. But I had the romance down. I felt like I had the romance down at least. And back then, think back to whatever the opportunities were in, say the US, North America for publishing, we have to say this is pre indie publishing, pre eBooks even.
00:13:27 / #: Whatever the options were, you have to narrow that down again and again and again by the time you get to New Zealand because very few publishers were taking submissions from outside, either the US or the UK, and even books had to be set in America quite often. Or if you're going for the UK publishers, they had to be set in London. And I hadn't traveled anywhere at that point. I was a high school kid and one of the only publishers that was accepting worldwide submissions and where publishing books at worldwide was Harlequin, Mills & Boon. And then later, Silhouette became part of that too.
00:14:14 / #: So for me, thinking of how am I actually going to get published, it made a lot of sense to start with the contemporary side of things and things start by submitting to Harlequin or Silhouette. And I did my first submission in high school, okay?
Sarah MacLean 00:14:34 / #: Amazing.
Nalini Singh 00:14:35 / #: I was so proud. It was a terrible book, but I'm so proud. I wrote a whole book and it was called-
Sarah MacLean 00:14:41 / #: Yeah, that's amazing.
Nalini Singh 00:14:44 / #: The heroine had a broken leg and the title was, and A Broken Heart too. I still have that book, you guys. I made my best friend at high school read it and she was like, "I guess it's good." She wasn't a romance reader at all.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:08 / #: Wait, so what happened? Now I need to know. So you submitted?
Nalini Singh 00:15:13 / #: Oh my God, I should have pulled out.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:14 / #: Did you get a letter back? Did you get letters back?
Nalini Singh 00:15:18 / #: I got not a letter. It's like a, what you call it? Compliment slip.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:23 / #: Yeah, like a little slip.
Nalini Singh 00:15:23 / #: Basically said, no, we don't want it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:23 / #: We received mail from you. That's all we're willing to say.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:30 / #: No of those slips are legendary. Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:15:33 / #: I know. I still have it.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:36 / #: Oh my gosh. But Baby Nalini did a thing. That's amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:40 / #: Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:15:40 / #: I did. And I'm so proud because I knew nobody in the industry. I knew less than nobody. I actually called up the distributor for Mills & Boon in New Zealand and said, "Oh, how can I submit to them?" And they were so nice because Harlequin has those, I don't know if they still do, they had these forms that they had the information on how you could submit. And the distributors like, "Oh, we've got one of these, shall I send it to you?" This is New Zealand guys. They're so nice.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:09 / #: Amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:09 / #: That's amazing.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:13 / #: You know, Nalini, somebody else we talked to had this story.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:16 / #: It was Mary Balogh. She sent it to the warehouse and somebody read it and passed it on.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:21 / #: Forwarded it on. Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:16:23 / #: Yeah. You have to be a self-starter in this industry. And I think back then, that was how you did it. You had to get in front of somebody, and if you didn't know anything, you just rang around and until you found some information.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:38 / #: So at this point, because now there's a very robust community in New Zealand, a romance writing community in New Zealand. But at the time, at least you didn't know about it.
Nalini Singh 00:16:48 / #: I didn't know it. So I'd actually submitted, I would say probably three or four manuscripts, or maybe three. By the time I saw this little article in the local newspaper about the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference. And I think at that time, maybe it was maybe the third or fourth conference, so, I hadn't been around super long, and I was like, "Wow." It's the first time I heard of other people in New Zealand trying to do this, and I knew that Robin Donald and Susan Napier and Daphne Claire wrote for Harlequin. So I knew there were authors in New Zealand who did it, but the idea of actually meeting any of them was just completely... They were celebrities and how was I going to meet them, this kid from the suburbs kind of thing.
00:17:41 / #: And so my mom actually paid for me to go to the conference as my birthday present. So she's always been so supportive. She had to sit there. I was sitting in the kitchen reading the prints with the lasers coming out to her. She's like, "Oh yeah, that's really good." And she's cooking dinner.
Sarah MacLean 00:18:00 / #: Oh, I love that.
Nalini Singh 00:18:04 / #: Yeah. So that was the time I actually met a group of writers, basically any writers. Before then, my only access to writers was probably literary fiction writers that came to school to give talks and stuff. And I still remember walking into that room and it was a very small conference back then, I would say probably less than 50 people. And so it was, we were all in one room and just chatting. And they had speakers and they had actual editors from Mills & Boon because they had offices down here, and they would come and wow, it blew my mind. I learned a lot from RWNZ and it's a really nice community of people and it's very small. It's not associated with any other bigger group, so RWNZ is its own entity. And it's always kept, I think it's heart very well.
00:19:05 / #: And I think when you have a smaller group, it tends to be like that. You tend to stick together more because I think even now, the entire membership is something like 300 people. So it's tiny, just super supportive and so much knowledge. And that's where I learned to actually do proper submissions and stuff. So all this time, I'd just been sending them manuscripts, single-spaced because it cost less money to [inaudible 00:19:32 / #].
00:19:34 / #: Yeah. So that's when I really started to do some crafts, so now, I've learned some crafts. But a lot of my learning, I would say, came from just obsessively writing because I just did it over and over and over again. And then I started submitting and then I actually got picked up out of the slush pile in New York, and I didn't sell the first I think, book that got picked up by the slush pile, but the editor said, "Send it to me directly next time." So I did the next book. And I wasn't even writing three chapters in a synopsis. I was writing four books because at this point, it's book 10. And she asked for revisions and I did the revisions and yeah, that was the book that sold.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:23 / #: Who was that? Do you remember?
Nalini Singh 00:20:26 / #: Yeah, Diane Deitz at Silhouette. She's not an editor anymore. She was my editor for I think, two or three books. But I'll always remember her because she was the one who bought my very, very first book. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:41 / #: And so how old were you when that happened?
Nalini Singh 00:20:48 / #: I got the call for the sale the day before my 25th birthday.
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:54 / #: Wow, that's amazing.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:56 / #: And you'd written 10 books already.
Nalini Singh 00:20:58 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:58 / #: Oh my gosh, what a hustle.
Nalini Singh 00:21:03 / #: I just wanted to do it, the passion of it. That's what I wanted to do. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:10 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is brought to you by Andrea Janell, the author of No Doubts, the fifth book in the Willow Creek series. So as we know, Willow Creek is a nice little small town and Alaric, who is a driven astrophysicist, who has twin daughters who need a chance to reconnect with their aunt, also needs a little bit of time to finish his book, which-
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:38 / #: He probably needs a quiet small town.
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Jennifer Prokop 00:22:18 / #: No, he can't deal with her sunshine, that's Sarah. He's so grumpy.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:21 / #: He cannot deal with the sunshine she is providing turn down service of all kinds, I think. And listen, if you love a bed and breakfast, a grumpy astrophysicist hero and a heroine who just wants to give him a little love, this is for you.
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00:23:01 / #: So when you then really transition from category to paranormal, did you have a sense that you were really, I don't know, it just became such a massive success, the whole Psy-Changeling series? Or did you really feel like it was, like you said earlier you were too late for it. When did you realize that maybe they weren't quite right about paranormal being over?
Nalini Singh 00:23:30 / #: I think when I started to actually, when I became full-time as a writer, because that took several years as well. And also, because I'm super-conservative, even though I quit my day job after selling my first book, people don't do this. I was young and I was like, "You know what? If I'm probably going to quit my day job at any point, it might as well be now, during my eating noodles every night if I have to." I kept doing part-time work for a long time because I really was like, I need to be in a position where I can support myself. Because writing income is very erratic. It's not like a job where you get paid weekly or bi-weekly.
00:24:19 / #: Yeah, I think when I actually went full time, I was like, okay, yeah, this is happening. These books have got legs and yeah. Maybe. Yeah. And I think also, I think it was probably around the same time that the first book actually, so the first book to hit the big bestseller list was I think the fourth book in the Psy-Changeling series. So Mine to Possess hit the extended New York Times bestseller list. And yeah, it really felt like, okay, because prior to that, I was very aware that series don't always get room to spread, that readers don't get interested in them, or for whatever reason, it doesn't strike a chord. And then that's it. Back then, there was no way to finish them. You stopped and you started writing something else. And so it felt like, wow, this is actually picking up readers as it goes along, which is a really nice feeling when you're starting something completely new. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:25:38 / #: So you started the Archangel series. So at some point, you had two paranormal series going. You're a very prolific writer, you produce. So was that something you just had a urge to write, another series in another world? Or were you trying to branch out? What was your thinking about starting a second new series when we already know that series can be a little dicey.
Nalini Singh 00:26:09 / #: Yeah. So you know how I said I wrote obsessively all through school and stuff? So I wrote through uni and I went to law school as well. So I wrote through that. I wrote through being a junior lawyer. So by the time I got to be a full-time writer, I was like, "I have so much time. I have so much time." Because I was so used to writing in really concentrated chunks. I would have 45 minutes maybe, if I was lucky in a day, and I would just write. And so once I got over the, I don't know, if you find this, Sarah, but when I went full time at first I was like, I have so much time. It takes a while to sit.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:49 / #: Yeah, yeah. You waste so much time. I think when you-
Nalini Singh 00:26:52 / #: So much time. Because you don't realize. Yeah. But once I settled down, I realized my writing pace and the way I wrote was such that I had a lot of room to do something else. And I said to my agent, I've already got this one series and it's quite a complex series, and I knew what I wanted to do with it. And I knew the complexity was going to grow. And I thought, I'm going to write some standalones in between, so I'll write standalone stuff, which will be easier on my brain and it'll refresh me between the Psy-Changeling books. And what I did not realize is, I write series-
Jennifer Prokop 00:27:40 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:27:41 / #: Is that you can't stop world building.
Nalini Singh 00:27:43 / #: Yeah. So especially in paranormal or urban fantasy spaces, I wrote Angel's Blood and I kept telling myself it was a standalone. And so now, a lot of people look back and say, "Oh, you put the seven in place and they were all going to have books." No, they weren't. They were just going to exist in this one book was, that was the plan.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:06 / #: That's against the rules of romance.
Nalini Singh 00:28:07 / #: It's quite funny. Everybody was like, "You know you're writing a series?" I'm like, "No, it's one book." But, it was an accidental series, that one. It was just by the time I got to the end, I was like, okay, well, I can't stop now. The world was too big and there was too much I wanted to do with it.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:30 / #: Did you have a group of, because I'm fascinated by writing on the other side of the world right, right now, we're however many hours apart, you're in tomorrow as we talk. Did you have a community of other writers in New Zealand who you were connecting with or were you connecting with the other paranormal authors around the world? What was your community like during all of this?
Nalini Singh 00:28:59 / #: So at first, I had my local group, they're amazing. And you have to remember, the online spaces just didn't really exist the way they do now. So I think there were a few message boards and stuff, but I just wasn't on them. I just wasn't aware of them. I think at that time, you were really online if you were a bit more techy, if you had the knowledge to get into those spaces. So I was very local and I had such an amazing group of people here. I am still friends with them to this day. We still get together regularly.
00:29:38 / #: My friend, Yvonne Lindsay, she wrote tons of books for Desire and she's writing thrillers now under EV Lind. She was one of my first friends. And then Karina Bliss, she wrote the Rock Star books. Louisa George, Tessa Radly, there's so many names. My friend Shah, who is more into marketing side of things. My friend Pera, these are people who have been in my life for 20 years and counting. And it was just such a nice group of people and we supported each other and on the next level up, so these were people I grew with. We all started on the ground floor, we're submitting, we're writing stuff, we're trying things out, we're sharing information.
00:30:25 / #: But on the next level up, we had people like Robin Donald, Daphne Claire, who were really, really generous with their time and just really helped support younger writers coming up. They used to run a romance writing course up north, and they actually invited me up there at one point and they were just so encouraging and telling me, "Yeah, you can do this. This is what maybe you need to do with your work to take it to the next level." So they were brilliant. And then we had the writers from Australia who came over and the conference and stuff like Helen Bianchin and Emma Darcy, just so much knowledge in those heads.
00:31:18 / #: And on the other side of things, there's a bookseller here, Barbara Clendon, she used to run Barbara's books and she's retired from that now. But she was just a wealth of information because she was a small Indie bookseller and she used to bring in books from the US like books we would get nowhere else in the major bookstores because you know the major bookstores just had general spread of books. She was the one who had Christine Feehan and then Sherrilyn Kenyon and JD Robb. And she literally put JD Robb in my hand and said, "You're going to like this book."
00:32:00 / #: I have now read every single J.D Robb ever created. So she was right, but she's still a friend of mine. And just the information that she would share with us, because she kept us up to date with what was actually happening in the industry. She used to actually give little talks and say, "This is what's selling, and this is the new books coming out." And see, I had a really, really lovely community here, and I think I really started to build connections overseas after I attended my very first conference in the US, which was I think in 2006. Yeah, 2006. I was meeting people face to face. And prior to that, oh, I know the Harlequin boards, there were the Harlequin boards. That's where I met people before the conference.
Sarah MacLean 00:32:57 / #: These boards, I was never on those boards, but they were legend. People talk about those boards. They were incredible.
Nalini Singh 00:33:06 / #: I think they were one of the biggest spaces for romance readers and writers to interact. And I made a lot of friends on there that I met for the first time at that conference. And then from there, I felt like I was online a bit more. And so I started to make connections with people in my subgenre because there wasn't really anybody writing that here. So to make those connections, I had to go online and it helped that to Berkeley, my publisher, published a lot of people who wrote Paranormal, and so I was making friends. I got along really well with Meljean Brooke.
00:33:49 / #: And then, yeah, the names are just going [inaudible 00:33:56 / #] on my head, like I said, but there were so many people and we used to get together and do promotion things together and all organized online. So the community has grown now, I think considerably because I've been around a long time and I've met a lot of people, but also, I've met people just online. There's people I've never met in real life, but because we've been friends for so long online, it feels like it's a friendship just as deep. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:30 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of microdose gummies.
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:36 / #: Well, Sarah, let me tell you, as you know, I have been sick.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:40 / #: I know for weeks. Poor baby.
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:42 / #: For weeks. I've never really been this sick. And I am taking a lot of medicine, but I've also been supplementing with some gummies because there have been times in particular, where I'm just so overtired, I almost have a hard time falling asleep. Or another thing that was happening was just the cough. I was coughing so hard and I just wanted to just chill out ever so slightly. And so I have really found, once again, the microdose gummy has really come into play for me. So in that case, it was just managing my pain and helping me sleep a little bit, which is one of the very many benefits of microdosing, which you can find out more by going to microdose.com and finding out about how these gummies can deliver the perfect entry level dose of THC to help you feel in this case, a little bit better.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:38 / #: When you have whatever Jen has,
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:41 / #: Bronchitis forever.
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00:36:16 / #: So you mentioned readers earlier, so can you talk to us a little bit about your reader community? Is there a moment you can share about the personal or emotional impact that your books have had on readers?
Nalini Singh 00:36:33 / #: Yeah. I remember getting my very first email. That was pretty amazing. It was a fan mail, and it was from Nigeria. The first person ever to write to me was from Nigeria. So apparently, it was a huge romance reading community over there, and I actually got letters from there as well. But yeah, one thing that happened after Slave to Sensation, which I guess I wasn't ready for because I hadn't realized what I'd done, so this sounds weird, but I started getting letters saying, "Oh my God, it's so nice to see a person of color as the heroine." And okay, I am a person of color. And I had never realized that all these paranormals I'd read had no people of color as the heroine, the main protagonist. And so I was like, whoa. And then I went back and I looked through all these books and I was like, wow. Yeah.
00:37:42 / #: And so I felt like I did something there that I was giving something to these readers that hadn't existed before. And so that was one thing that happened that really struck me, and it struck with me to this day getting those messages because they just started coming organically. And then I've heard some really heartbreaking letters from readers over the years who've read something at a time when they just needed to read and escape. And that's why I say when someone says romance is escapism, and I say, "What's wrong with that?" Sometimes you need to escape in a really bad situation. And I've cried, some of these letters are so heart-breaking. Actually ended up becoming friends with a lady who wrote to me and said she was going through chemo, and she really wanted to know the end of this particular thing. And she wasn't sure it was going to be out by the time because she was in a bad situation.
00:38:56 / #: And so I actually told her what the... I'm going to cry, but she did beat it. And then we stayed in touch for a long time, and then one day, she didn't reply anymore. And I still think about that, and I think that in the end that she did pass away. But it's these moments that you build connections with people that maybe you will never meet and having an impact on their life, whether big or small.
00:39:33 / #: There's one letter I remember where someone wrote to me, and they just had a bad day. They just had a bad day. Someone yelled at them at work, they got splashed by the bus while they're walking home. They were completely wet. And they came home and there was bills on the floor in the litter box, and they were just crying. And then they saw their book had come, and then they just decided, you know what? They dried off. They opened the book, they made a cup of tea, and they read. And they just found a little piece of happiness. And I think that's just as important. Just those moments we give readers. So I never take it for granted. I think it's such a beautiful connection we can make. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:18 / #: Well, and you do such powerful reader service. You're so connected to readers. I'm a subscriber to your newsletter. I see how much work you put into your newsletters. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about all of that craft that you do, the writing that you do that is for readers without any... They don't have to buy it, you just provide it to them. And I think that's really special and very unique. I don't think there are that many writers who do that kind of work for readers.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:57 / #: And for people who don't know, you have so many short stories, for example, in the Psy-Changeling world, there's all these on ramps that are, it's not just the novels. There's so much extra stuff, and it really is delightful as a reader to feel that there's just more out there.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:15 / #: Well, and it feels like a gift every time an email comes through.
Nalini Singh 00:41:20 / #: So thank you for that. Yeah, it started because I was writing stuff just to explore characters and things, I would just write... Because some of them are vignettes. They're not full short stories, so you have to know the characters to appreciate. And then some of them are full short stories with the beginning and middle and the end. And I remember, because I'm a reader, I am a reader at heart. So it's like, what would I like to get as a reader? And I was like, "I want to know more about my favorite characters." I'm the person who's making up the story in my head after the final page of the book because I want to know what the next bit of the story is. And so I actually asked my readers, I said, "Do you want the stuff?" And they're like, "Of course we want this. What are you talking about?"
Sarah MacLean 00:42:13 / #: Yes, we want the stuff.
Nalini Singh 00:42:16 / #: So that's how it started. And I still do it for the fun of it. I write these at night usually, or just randomly, I'm sitting in an airport, I write it. Because these characters live and breathe in my head, particularly in the series, because I've lived with them so long. They have their own personalities, they have their own quirks, and the timeline of their story continues past the books. And so in the newsletter, it's such a nice way to be able to share that with readers. And yeah, it's just been very organic. And I always think, in my newsletters, what do I like getting from other writers whose newsletters I subscribe to? What makes me happy? What makes me want to open... Because I've always thought of my newsletter as a connection with my readers, so I don't want them to see it and they think, oh, another newsletter, it's just really silly, because we're all subscribed to so many things these days.
00:43:22 / #: So I want it to be something that they actually want to open, that they want to read, and that actually gives them a little bit of happiness in the day. And I always find it so cool when people email me and say, "Oh, I saved it to read with my cup of tea in the afternoon," kind of thing. And I thought, that's so cool. That's what I want. And I used to do it completely on my own. I have an assistant now, so she helps with putting links and all of that, doing the formatting and stuff. So that's really helpful. But the writing is still me because I think it's really important that I'm the one that's speaking to my readers with their newsletter because it is a one-on-one connection with each reader. And I have fun with it.
00:44:04 / #: And I think if somebody else was going to think about doing stuff like this, you have to have fun with it. You have to enjoy it as a writer. And that's what comes through. I write these fun little stories about the bear cubs getting covered in flour because they decided to make a cake in the middle of the night, and that cracks me up. I'm laughing along as I'm writing, and so it doesn't feel like work. It's just like I'm just having a bit of fun.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:35 / #: It's just joy.
Nalini Singh 00:44:36 / #: Yeah, it's just joy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:37 / #: So I have two very good friends named Kelly, and one of them is a huge Psy-Changeling reader. And I was like, "Okay, Kelly, what do you want me to ask Nalini?" And she said, "Is Alice Eldridge ever going to get a story, a vignette? An anything?" And I was like, "I'll ask her." Let's see what she says.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:57 / #: This is the first time for a Trailblazer interview where we've-
Jennifer Prokop 00:45:00 / #: Yes, I know. I was like, I have a very personal question from a friend of mine. Alice Eldridge, what's going to happen?
Nalini Singh 00:45:06 / #: So Alice is an interesting character because even though we have known her for a long time in the book world, the timeline hasn't actually moved very fast. The Psy-Changeling series started in 2079 and we're in 2083 now. And so Alice hasn't had a lot of time to adapt to what's happened. So I've never forgotten her. I never forget any of these people. But with the Psy-Changeling series, there is a very strong overarching story structure. And so it's always like, who is important to this part of that story structure? So sometimes, it's like, well, I can't actually get a character in just because I want to see them, right? Yeah. So the answer is, I haven't forgotten her. And it is possible. It is possible something will happen, but she's not growing really old or anything out there.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:15 / #: I have a structure question for you. I wonder, sometimes you talk to authors, especially authors who do such intense world building in paranormal or urban fantasy, and the series is complete in their head. They maybe haven't gotten to the end, but they know what the end game is. They know how many books there are, they know what the plan is. But Psy-Changeling, there's this intense world building. But it sounds like what you're really saying is you don't have an end in mind. Is it expansive in that way? Or do you have a, eventually we're going to get to this place, idea?
Nalini Singh 00:47:00 / #: So I'm a little bit in between. So basically I think it's really important when you start a series to navigate because it stops the tangential meandering off into-
Sarah MacLean 00:47:11 / #: These extra-
Nalini Singh 00:47:12 / #: La La Land. Yeah. So if you look at the first series of the Psy-Changeling series, book one to book 15, it is a very specific, can I just spoiler things? I'm just going to spoiler.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:24 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:24 / #: Yes, that's fine. Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:47:26 / #: So we begin with silence and by book 15, silence has fallen. So that was the main arc of that first season. That's what I wanted to do. And originally, I thought that would be where the series ended because we have the beginning and we have the ending. And I was really satisfied with the story I told, but then I realized when we got to that point that, what now? I messed everything up for these people.
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:01 / #: [inaudible 00:47:59 / #]. Right?
Nalini Singh 00:48:01 / #: So the problems are still there. So the next season began very naturally from that point, which is okay, we are at that point where silence has fallen, but the silence is not in a great place. They still have the issues that led them to choose silences, choose this life without emotion. And so what were they going to do now? And then I actually had to sit down and think about what I want to do in season two. So season two also is going towards a particular point. So I'm always leading readers towards a particular point. The one thing I don't know is how many books it'll take to get there, because that part, I allow to just happen naturally. It could take 10 books to get to the end of season two, it could take eight books. I don't know. It could take another 15.
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:52 / #: I love that you talk about them as seasons. It feels right.
Nalini Singh 00:48:58 / #: Yeah, because I learned this from watching television because if you look at a really well-written series of television, you'll see the arc, it's complete. And you have that satisfaction even though you might be going into season two with a different arc. And so a really good example of this, it's an old series, is Heroes. The first season of Heroes is really, well-written it. It's structured, so you can see where it's leading. And then you see the series where they start out with a really good concept, but they actually haven't thought of the ending.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:28 / #: And it's messy.
Nalini Singh 00:49:30 / #: And then you don't get... It's messy. So I didn't want the mess. And so always, I consciously... I'm not a plotter as such book by book, but I plot that series arc. I know where I'm taking my readers. I know where we're going to end up, and for me, that's enough. If I have that, it keeps everything else in order if I have that overarching storyline.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:55 / #: And when you say where you're going to end up, is that as clear for you in terms of the couple that that book is going to be? Do you think about it from the character perspective too like there is a big book that we'll be moving toward?
Nalini Singh 00:50:13 / #: Sometimes. Sometimes. And then every so often, I get a bit of a shock because it doesn't quite work out how I think.
Sarah MacLean 00:50:21 / #: Yeah, same.
Nalini Singh 00:50:23 / #: So I leave that open. That's why people say, oh, is so-and-so going to get a book? Maybe. We'll see.
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:29 / #: Yeah. With you.
Nalini Singh 00:50:32 / #: Yeah, because there is growth in the series as well. I am not a person who has mapped up my character arcs five books a ahead. So every so often, someone comes along and is like, I'm really interesting, or there's something unusual happens. And so I like that. I like having the flexibility, but again, because I know the overall arc, it doesn't matter so much. I can let my characters grow naturally and just go with it. Because if a character is growing towards the main story arc, they're the one who's going to end up with the book. And if a character is growing away from the main story arc, they'll still be there in the series, but they might not end up as a main protagonist.
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:25 / #: So you go from paranormal to a rock band and rugby players, and Rock Hard is probably one of my favorite books of all time. I've read that book so many times. So what made you want to step away and do a contemporary series in the middle of all that?
Nalini Singh 00:51:50 / #: I think it was, again, that thing of needing a change for my brain, because at that point, I was writing two paranormal series, so the Guild Hunter Series is a little bit more urban fantasy, and then I've got my paranormal paranormal series, and I was like, I really need something different. And I do like to challenge myself as well just to see if I can do stuff. And quite often, I would just write it, I'll write the book and then give it to my agent is a whole thing. I don't advertise it. I don't tell anyone I'm doing it because I think it's good to just do stuff as a writer for myself and without any pressure. And if it doesn't work, then it's fine. Only I know about it.
00:52:39 / #: Yeah. But the funny thing with Rock Addiction, which started this contemporary books, is I actually started writing that years ago, years before it was published, but I just wasn't in the right head-space to do it. I feel like, I don't know, it just didn't feel right. And then one day, I was going through my works in progress and I was like, oh, I remember this one. And that day, I had it. It just worked. And so I ran with it and it didn't feel different or unusual to me because I did start with category romance, which is contemporary romance in a short format. So I just was able to move into contemporary romance in a longer format, which I think suits me better. I was never a very good category writer. Honestly, I could not sell hardly... I wrote Slave to Sensation because I was just enraged, [inaudible 00:53:35 / #] because I could not sell into category because it's the square box, round whole thing. I just didn't-
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:42 / #: It was the wrong distance for you, right?
Nalini Singh 00:53:44 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:44 / #: Some people run a marathon, some people run a 10K.
Nalini Singh 00:53:49 / #: It was too long. I just like to write longer and stuff. Yeah, so, it just felt really natural to do contemporaries. And so the same with my thrillers that I write now, it's something different. So I have a bit of a break between the paranormals, which I love. I will always write speculative fiction in some way, I think, but it's really nice to do these other things as well. And I feel like I learn new writing techniques with each different thing I do.
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:25 / #: So what would you say are the hallmarks then, of a Nalini Singh book?
Nalini Singh 00:54:31 / #: So it took me a long time to figure this out. Some of my friends are like, oh yeah, this is my... Oh, they used a particular word. There's the fingerprint-
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:41 / #: Core story.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:42 / #: Core story.
Nalini Singh 00:54:42 / #: The core story, yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I don't know. It took me a long time and I realized it's the same thing I like to read is the same thing I write, which is I write families, so not just like blood related families. I write found families. I write friendships that are like family. I have the Arrow squad which is a lethal assassins, but they're all tightly bonded to each other. I have the brothers in the rugby series, [inaudible 00:55:18 / #]. I have the rock band and it's really, really rare for me to write books that are a couple in total isolation. I've realized I write community books, which is, there are links all over the place. People are connected. Probably one of the ones I've written where it is a very isolated story for the romance is Heart of Obsidian.
00:55:44 / #: Yeah. They are very much alone for a lot of their book, but the characters themselves are not alone. So Caleb, who is determined to walk alone and determined not to make any bonds, has somehow still managed to have two best friends.
Jennifer Prokop 00:55:59 / #: Him and his ravine.
Nalini Singh 00:56:01 / #: Him and his ravine. He just wants to be alone in there except for Zahara. And so I don't tend to write super isolated characters because I really love exploring all the bonds of relationships, the romance, of course, the love, but also, friendship, family, what does it mean? What does loyalty mean and what do people do for each other because of the love? Or not just even the positive emotions, but the negative ones as well. Because they're quite complex. People can make choices where you think that's a bad choice, but you can see why they made it. So I love all that stuff. I guess, how would you say it? All the rivers of the human heart. That's my core story is the community. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:03 / #: Well, to that end, what are the books that you hear the most from readers about? Is there a book that you just hear about all the time?
Nalini Singh 00:57:15 / #: Heart of Obsidian. Heart of Obsidian, yeah. It's from the Psy-Changeling series, and then from the Guild Hunter series, it's any of the Elena and Raphael books. Because I think with that series, it's unusual in the sense that it's a romance series, which is there together, but it's like an urban fantasy series, which is they keep coming back in the books. And so a lot of people, it's a long love story, and so people are excited to see them again, but of a single book that is probably Heart of Obsidian.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:53 / #: I believe it. I feel like it's so hard when you are looking forward to a book for books and then to have it be even better than you thought it would be. Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:02 / #: What a gift.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:03 / #: Yeah. Right? It's amazing. It's amazing. So Nalini, I know that this is an impossible question, right? Because we love all of our children equally, but is there a book that is really special to you for any reason? One that you're especially proud of or you had trouble leaving behind or whatever that means to you?
Nalini Singh 00:58:31 / #: So I think, okay, so I'm going to cheat and I'll say two because-
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:35 / #: Allowed. That's allowed.
Nalini Singh 00:58:37 / #: It's for very similar reasons. So Desert Warrior will always have a special place because it was my first published book. I have the poster on my wall, and I remember all the feelings of holding that book in my hand and feeling like, wow, I did it. This voice is out there in the world.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:58 / #: Well, especially since you really walked the road for a long time for that.
Nalini Singh 00:59:04 / #: Yeah. I did it the hard way. And then for the same reason, Slave to Sensation, because Slave to Sensation really catapulted my career into just a whole different level. But I just remember writing that book just compulsively. The story was just in my head, and most of my first drafts are terrible. Nobody sees my first drafts, but this book, a lot of the first draft is in the book, the published book, because it was like the story had been growing and growing and growing in my head all these years, and then it was ready and I just had to type it out. Literally, that's all I did. I lived, breathed that book, and yeah, it is a seminal book in my career, and it is the place where people really heard my name.
01:00:02 / #: When it came out, a lot of people actually said, this is a debut, because they had never heard of me even though I had six other books. So it just is a whole... Yeah, those two books are really pivot points in my life, in my career. So yeah, they'll always have a special place. And the original purple cover of Place to Sensation just still makes my heart thud, because I remember looking at that cover, and I was in Japan at the time I was working in Japan, and the cover came through and I was like, oh... I had a quote by Christine Feehan on it.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:46 / #: Oh, which is so special.
Jennifer Prokop 01:00:47 / #: Oh, yeah.
Nalini Singh 01:00:49 / #: I know, I almost died when she gave me a quote because it was like, she read my book. I was just overwhelmed. And yeah, so two very special books. But it's true. We love all our books. I think every book is the favorite. That's why-
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:10 / #: Yeah, but there are some that are more special. They do feel special. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being with us.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:21 / #: Yeah. This was a real joy. I'm so grateful.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:24 / #: We're so grateful to have you.
Nalini Singh 01:01:26 / #: This is really fun. You two are so easy.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:31 / #: Thank you for your gorgeous books, and thank you for leaving such an indelible mark on the genre.
Nalini Singh 01:01:37 / #: Thank you. I'm still going. We'll see what's next.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:40 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:40 / #: Keep going.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:41 / #: Oh, no, absolutely.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:41 / #: I think we are hungry for more, right? I open that newsletter every time it comes in, so, yeah. I'm here forever.
Nalini Singh 01:01:51 / #: Oh, yay. It makes me so happy.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:55 / #: She's great.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:56 / #: She's great. I really was... The story about sending off manuscripts when she was a teenager is amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:05 / #: What an amazing kid. She must have been. My God, when I was a teenager, I was no more prepared to do anything like that than I was to fly.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:12 / #: I could barely write my college essays, everybody. So clearly that was not...
Sarah MacLean 01:02:15 / #: She's writing book after book after book, first of all, and a Broken Heart too.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:24 / #: Honestly. Amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:24 / #: The Greatest.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:24 / #: The Greatest.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:26 / #: The Greatest.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:26 / #: We're going to all be scouring KU for the next couple months, seeing if it'll pop up.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:31 / #: Yeah. No, but what a great story. Every single one of these authors has such a unique story, but it was really interesting to me because you caught it too, as she was talking about how being in New Zealand, she called the warehouse in New Zealand because what else do you do? And I was like, I think Mary Balogh told that same story.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:54 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:56 / #: Mary Balogh also did not live in the United States, although I think at the time she lived in Saskatchewan. But it's just so interesting because you hear so many stories that is a real old-fashioned way of submitting a manuscript. Gone are the days when we wrapped up our paper and mailed it to God knows where in New York City.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:25 / #: The thing that's amazing about it too is, her first book was published in 2003. We are not talking about that long ago. So it really is, when you think about it, when you live through a revolution, it just seems like that's how it happened, and it's no big deal. But when you think about the sea change in publishing. Like she said, there was no self-publishing. You had to go through a traditional publisher. There were only two places that would even consider you if you weren't in the US or the UK. It's almost impossible for us to imagine that now.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:02 / #: No, absolutely. Because now, the world is so small, but she kept... There were so many moments that felt that way to me when she talked about finding a community, which of course, at the time, in the early aughts, there wasn't a hugely vibrant online community of romance people that authors could go to and say, "How do I do this thing?" There was no place to ask questions. There was no hub. These women really were flying without a net.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:32 / #: Yeah. The thing I kept thinking I should ask, and then she was just such an interesting speaker, I didn't really want to interrupt her necessarily in the things that she wanted to talk about, is, I do think one of the ways in which her books are singular is her ability to reboot a long series that is in progress. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:04:57 / #: Well, she talked a little bit about that too, with Psy-Changeling and the way she thinks about it as seasons.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:03 / #: Yes, right? Because many people have said you could start at Silver Silence, which is what I would assume would be the beginning of season two. And it's really interesting because I think that it's so smart for her to say, I took this vision from television seasons. Because if you are writing a long series, you have to provide those on ramps for people, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:05:27 / #: Well, there are movements. When we talked about IID in the first season of this podcast, we broke up the books in movements, and who knows whether or not Kresley Cole felt that those were the proper movements. But what I was getting at when I asked her could she speak a little more about characters and the way she thinks about prepping books or prepping a series for the long haul with characters. I think it's really interesting and it speaks to her obvious past with fantasy and sci-fi, that in her mind, it really is about the overarching world, that's whatever's happening outside of the characters themselves. Because you and I have talked about this so many times. We are obviously intimately familiar with a different paranormal series that is clearly moving toward a final book in the series that is a character book, not a plot.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:29 / #: Right, not a plot. Yeah, exactly.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:32 / #: So I think it's a really interesting difference in the structure of the way you craft a series. I felt like this when we talked about Crest by Ice.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:44 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:46 / #: The world building in Nalini Singh's books is just superior to most other paranormal romance series, I think. And that's not to diminish the world building of other series, but she's just superior.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:02 / #: Yeah. Well, and I loved when she talked about essentially, I was going to do a little standalone and then then, oops, there are seven of them. What are you doing lady?
Sarah MacLean 01:07:14 / #: You grew up reading romance novels, you know the rules.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:17 / #: You know how this works. Yeah. But I think the other thing that is also really interesting to me, and I think Nora Roberts is probably like this. I think Jane Anne Krentz is probably like this, is the people who are just, they're writing the books, but then there's all the other writing that they're doing. I think Christina of Christina Lauren is this, just writing all the time that writing is a reward. And I know for a lot of authors, writing really is work.
01:07:47 / #: And I think that the way that she has figured out a way to take those little vignettes and stories and just kernels of ideas and gift them to her readers is part of what makes, I think, it's just such a rich world. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:06 / #: But don't you feel a little bit like this is particular to paranormal? You mentioned Christina, I think you mean Lauren from Christina and Lauren.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:16 / #: I do mean Lauren. Yes. Sorry. I do mean Lauren.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:18 / #: So setting aside Lauren, who is a special case, I feel like every time we talk to a paranormal author-
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:27 / #: They're just always... Christine Feehan, certainly.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:29 / #: The world is enormous and expansive. And I'm always thinking about them. I think about J.R Ward saying, "I'm the scribe. They just tell me the story." And it sounds wacky when you think about it, when you're talking to one of these authors at a time. But now that we have the joy of the longevity of the series of the Trailblazers, I'm starting to really think like, oh no, this is like-
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:03 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:04 / #: This is paranormal.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:07 / #: She mentioned Meljean Brook, who I have to say everybody, we talked about this when we did our Milla Vane episode, but Meljean Brooke is Milla Vane. And I want her to come on the podcast very badly so we can just grill her about Heart of Blood and Ashes. But also, that's another person who I think clearly is deeply invested in the world in a different way,
Sarah MacLean 01:09:31 / #: The world.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:32 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:33 / #: And that's not to say that historical authors or contemporary authors aren't invested in the world, but its is different field. Or am I wrong?
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:42 / #: No, I think that's a really interesting observation. I think that there's just people who... I just was really fascinated by it. I really liked hearing her talk about how much joy she gets out of playing around in the parts of the world that are not going to be a whole book. But that doesn't mean-
Sarah MacLean 01:10:00 / #: Just writing a [inaudible 01:10:02 / #] and putting it out there. And there is a joy in receiving those as a reader when you're like... And I can understand her. I really appreciated her saying like, "Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad you enjoy them." Because I certainly have written a number of times, just a little tiny thing that's like, here's a little thing that the characters are still doing. And I think, is this navel-gazey? Is this just me satisfying my own desire to return to this world? Do readers really want this? So I don't know, that was very relatable content.
Jennifer Prokop 01:10:36 / #: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing that is fascinating if you think about it is I don't think I'd put together the idea that the world is actually moving so slow. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:10:48 / #: Oh, I know. I didn't realize that either.
Jennifer Prokop 01:10:50 / #: And I thought, that's wild.
Sarah MacLean 01:10:53 / #: So she has to put a character on ice for a while.
Jennifer Prokop 01:10:54 / #: Yeah, they're not ready. And I thought that was also really fascinating because of course, we're thinking in terms of it's been 20, however many books and she's like, it's been three years, everybody calmed down. Calm down.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:08 / #: I enjoyed hearing her talk about craft. I enjoyed hearing her talk about fan service and readers and talk about somebody who just obviously cares about the way the books are received. And of course, when we asked our question about how readers engage with the books, I loved that she was surprised too by this thing that I think we all, many of us were surprised by in the early aughts.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:45 / #: I'm always really interested in the question about how readers respond in general. And we were looking at this before we started recording, right? Hunger Like No Other was the beginning of 2006. Slave to Sensation was the end of 2006. So it's like we saw the paranormal boom, just going and going.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:08 / #: The idea that by the end of 2006, Berkeley was like, "We're done with paranormal," and this was Kresley, J.R Ward, Nalini, there were so many huge series.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:27 / #: And I'm sure they just thought that they were at capacity. How much of a market for this could there really be?
Sarah MacLean 01:12:36 / #: Well, and also, let's not forget, right? It's not quite the same as what's going on now in contemporary. Because when you acquire a paranormal series, you are acquiring a series. You're investing in however many of these books, obviously if it doesn't sell, you're not investing in that many. But the idea is this could become a thing. We could end up with two seasons, 20 books, however many things. Whereas right now, houses are buying one, maybe two books at a time.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:13 / #: Right. Right. Right. So I think that part is really interesting. But I also found myself really thinking about what she said about starting in contemporary to get the romance beats down, but that her true love was always going to be in creating these big worlds, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:13:29 / #: Yeah. Obviously.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:31 / #: I think that's obviously why I... And I think also though, I was really, look, when people talk about, she did not name names when she was talking about TV shows, that started with the great premise, but didn't have an ending in mind. But I always think of Lost. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:13:45 / #: Lost.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:45 / #: Exactly, I said it.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:46 / #: I was so mad.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:47 / #: Right? And I just think it's a big reason I don't trust TV anymore, are shows like that. And so I think that to know that you're in... You know when you're reading one of Nalini's books, that you are in good hands.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:00 / #: It's tight. She knows exactly what she's doing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:04 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:04 / #: Yeah. And when I feel like there is a... Obviously, I want every book to feel that way, but that is a required quality for a paranormal. You have to know that it's going to hang together. My friend Carrie Ryan, who is a YA paranormal author or Y fantasy, she always used to say, the world building is where everybody gets caught up because you think to yourself, how does the magic work? What are the rules? And with Nalini, these characters, these identities have so many rules. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:48 / #: Well, and also she was like, listen, I don't have just one idea. I've got two. And they're in the place at the same time.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:55 / #: Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:56 / #: And they've got this long history.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:58 / #: It's tremendous.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:59 / #: Right? The books are amazing. And it didn't surprise me at all to hear her say that people, Heart of Obsidian is the book that really hits for people.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:08 / #: Well, because everyone was waiting for it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:09 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:10 / #: That's the [inaudible 01:15:11 / #].
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:12 / #: Right. Right. But sometimes that book doesn't deliver. But I think when it does, that's when you have people forever who are like, I can't wait to get to this book. And then it's so good.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:24 / #: Yeah. Absolutely. What I love is she was... I didn't know. I've never met Nalini. I had no idea. She was so young. And now I'm like, oh, great. We have decades more of Obsidians to come.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:35 / #: Right? What a gift.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:36 / #: And I'm like right now thinking maybe I'll go reread that Rockstar series.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:40 / #: Oh God, I love those books.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:42 / #: I know.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:42 / #: I'm sorry, I had to ask about them. I really do.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:44 / #: No, of course. You asked about them. I wanted to know about them too. I'm particularly fond of the fact that you asked a reader fan.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:52 / #: I know. Sorry. Well, this is everybody-
Sarah MacLean 01:15:55 / #: I'm afraid Poor Kelly is getting upset.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:56 / #: My TFA friend, Kelly, I think she knew. I think she knew. She was like, I don't think anybody thinks it's really going to happen. But you know what? I wonder if her hearing the rationale-
Sarah MacLean 01:16:06 / #: She did give her a good reason.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:09 / #: It was a good reason. It was a really good reason.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:11 / #: It's not like me when people ask me and I'm like, "No."
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:14 / #: You're just like, "No."
Sarah MacLean 01:16:14 / #: I don't want to do it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:17 / #: She's like, it's just not ready yet. She's still in the oven.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:19 / #: Maybe. Well, listen, Nalini Singh is going to be writing for another 20 years, everyone.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:24 / #: So I think the thing about, like I said, I feel like there are authors who... She's just so good and every one of her books just sweeps you away, exactly. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:16:37 / #: Yeah. And she seems to be able to do everything.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:40 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:41 / #: Right?
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:42 / #: Right. Romance, thrillers, paranormal.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:45 / #: It's wild. I think some of us, we're just conditioned to do it more, better, different. And I think Nalini is one of them. She's one of those people who is just... We are lucky to be living at a time when she is writing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:05 / #: Absolutely.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:06 / #: Nalini's next book for everyone, it out in November. It is called, There Should Have Been Eight. And it is a thriller. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:17 / #: I haven't read her thrillers, so I haven't-
Sarah MacLean 01:17:18 / #: I haven't either.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:19 / #: So this was going to be-
Sarah MacLean 01:17:19 / #: I'm going to go do that.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:21 / #: I bet they're terrific.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:22 / #: Yeah. This one's set on a remote estate in the New Zealand Alps. And there are seven friends together. And it sounds like maybe there has at some point, been a murder. I love it. I love it. I'm into it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:42 / #: Her books are real comfort reads for me. I've reread Cross by Ice, which we read. I've read a couple times. I've read My favorite, I think it's Rock Hard. I can't, titles, a couple times. I love that book. What a delight.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:56 / #: Yeah. And those rugby books are great. Very fun. For those of you looking for just a great sports romance, she can do it all.
Jennifer Prokop 01:18:06 / #: Well, we are lucky to have her.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:09 / #: We are. We are.
Jennifer Prokop 01:18:10 / #: A treasure.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:11 / #: So, thank you so much to Nalini again for making time for us today. It was a real treat to have her. I am Sarah McLean. I'm here with my friend Jen Prokop. We are together, Fated Mates, and you can find us online at fatedmates.net on Twitter, at FatedMates, on Instagram at FatedMatesPod. And if you super-duper love hanging out with us and you just wish we were more in your ear holes, head over to Patreon and join our Patreon where you have access to our private Discord, where tons of Magnificent Firebirds discuss new episodes weekly and everything else, hourly, minutely, secondly, and you can find information on that at fatedmates.net/patreon. Thanks so much everyone.
S05.30: Christine Feehan: Trailblazer
This week, we’re sharing our fantastic conversation with trailblazer Christine Feehan, an undeniable force in the rise of paranormal romance in the early 2000s. We discuss the genesis of her work, the way she builds her far-reaching worlds, her relationship to readers, her heroes, her sex scenes, and the long and winding path of her career.
Our conversation covers a lot of ground—personal, professional, paranormal and powerful, and we’re so grateful to Christine Feehan for making time for Fated Mates. You’re going to love this one, Firebirds.
Next week, our first read along of 2023 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 to Christine Feehan, author of almost 100 romance novels. Her next book, Ghostly Game, is part of the Ghostwalker series and will be released May 2, 2023.
PEOPLE : editor Alicia Condon at Dorchester and now Kensington, and editor Cindy Hwang at Berkley.
BOOKS: Freckles and The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, Louisa May Alcott, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, Mary Janice Davidson, Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Goldie Thomas, author of The Rake and the Fake
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.
Christine Feehan 00:00:00 / #:
I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. It's a different couple and so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say it's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you, so I wanted them to know what good sex was. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:11 / #:
That was the voice of Christine Feehan, paranormal author, extraordinaire, author of over 100 books and just a superstar of the genre and has been for decades.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:26 / #:
Her first book, Dark Prince, came out in 1999, right at the very beginning of the paranormal boom that we talk about. So, we talk to Christine about her life, how she came to romance, how she came to writing paranormals, and how she continues to write in this subgenre that we all love and wish there was more of.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:50 / #:
Welcome to Fated Mates, everyone. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:55 / #:
And I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:00 / #:
And without further ado, here's our conversation with Christine Feehan.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:06 / #:
Perfect. So thank you so much, Christine, for joining us. We're very excited, in large, part because it feels like you really came to romance in an interesting time and place and way. And so, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you found romance as a reader and then, again as a writer, or was it simultaneous?
Christine Feehan 00:02:32 / #:
Actually, it wasn't simultaneous at all. I started reading when I was very, very young, at a very young age and started writing when I was very young. The minute I could put sentences together, I started making up stories and I would write them down the minute I could, when I could put sentences together. And I think the first time I ever read a romance, I found these old, old books by Gene Stratton Porter, The Harvester and Freckles and those. And I realized there was kind of this romance thing going, and I found it really intriguing. I was probably 10 or even younger. I read books way over my head-
Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
Us too.
Jennifer Prokop 00:03:32 / #:
Us too. No problem.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
One of us.
Christine Feehan 00:03:37 / #:
And then, I started looking for anything I could read that might have some sort of a connection between a girl and a guy, because I wanted a happy ending or a happy anything involved in it. And so, that sort of started me down that path of looking for something happy in the book all the time, so that was sort of my intro to romance. And I found Louise May Alcott, of course, and read everything that she wrote, and I would read that to my grandmother whenever she was ill. I would sit and read to her, and then later, different ones that kind of inspired me for different reasons. Actually, The Bourne Identity, I liked the fact that they worked together. They were equal partners. People I think mostly saw the movie. They didn't really read that book the way it should have been read, but without her, he wouldn't have made it. She really was his equal partner in that book and I loved that. I really read that a couple of times to see how he made that happen and I really liked that. That was one of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:12 / #:
That doesn't surprise me at all, that the Bourne Identity is a text for you. I mean, it makes perfect sense now as a Feehan reader.
Christine Feehan 00:05:22 / #:
Yeah. And then, one really made an impact on me, probably that opened up the whole paranormal world for me, and I read it very early on was a Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz. And I forget how old I was when I read that, but all of a sudden, it was like it opened this whole world to me and I thought, "This is really what I want to write." Plus, I realized that my hero could be flawed and my villain could... I really like that the villain was rounded out so much.
00:06:11 / #:
And so, I started studying villains to figure them out. How did they write these villains and how did they become... You liked them and you didn't like... I mean, there were good things about them as well as bad things. How did they get to be who they were? So, I think they all had such an impact on me. One of the biggest impacts on me for all of my writing was Sherlock Holmes. I read Sherlock Holmes so many times that I literally could quote pages of Sherlock Holmes, of his work. And then, another writer was Laurie R. King, the Beekeeper's Apprentice. I thought that was such a fabulous take on... What she did, you would never expect her to put heroin with him and how she managed to make that work. That was an interesting pairing for me.
Sarah MacLean 00:07:24 / #:
So, at what point during this kind of reading, obviously, you've been an avid reader forever, did you start thinking, "I think I can maybe do this?"
Christine Feehan 00:07:36 / #:
I never did. I always wrote. I always wrote. I had hundreds of manuscripts under my bed. I'd write them and throw them, write them and throw them. I just wrote all the time. It was sort of a compulsion for me. I could not write, I had to write. I had so many stories in my head, I did not think about publishing them. Other people had movie stars and rock stars that they would scream and yell and, "Oh, my God. They're so wonderful. No, for me, it was writers. And so, I never looked at myself and thought I could ever be a writer like they could be, because I kind of worshiped those writers. They were amazing. My first job was in a library, and I would just read every book that I could in that library.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:28 / #:
Living the dream. Well, it's, the other thing that's interesting though about that kind of list of books you named is I think one of the hallmarks of your style is an interest in the paranormal, but not necessarily... Even though the Carpathian series is very much about vampires, but like Jayne Ann Krentz, actually. Like telepathy and what the brain is capable of, so has that also always been interesting to you?
Christine Feehan 00:08:59 / #:
Absolutely. I research so much, and my belief really, is even with vampires, if you look at every society all over the world, you look at what their beliefs are going back hundreds of years, and all of them have something like that in their background. And where does it come from? You have to start thinking if every culture has something like that in it, where does it come from? And if every country pretty much has done these experiments with telepathy and with all these other things, why are they doing them? And after a while, you start getting these answers. You start hitting on things that, "Oh, this did work for somebody. This did work here. This did work there." And after so much research, you're catching up with the future things that they're already doing. Like my Ghost Walker series, I have a hard time keeping ahead of the game, and I research very hard to do that. And I always have primary sources, but it looks, when you write it, like it's way out there, but it isn't.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:29 / #:
Publishing wasn't even on the horizon, it sounds like. And I've done my research, I know you have a large family. So, can you give us a sense of Christine's world, at this point? How does it all fit together?
Christine Feehan 00:10:42 / #:
I taught martial arts for years and women's self-defense. Well, not just women's, I mean, I taught men too, but that was my world. I surrounded myself with that 26, 27 years of that. And I took in a lot of abused children, which you can see in my books and worked with unwed mothers and I had a complete whirl there. Writing was my escape, and when I took my kids to their gymnastics and their sports, I lived out in the country. I lived way out, away from things. So, I had to drive them and I would sit at their practices and write. That's what I did.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:40 / #:
Anybody with kids in sports has done exactly this.
Christine Feehan 00:11:43 / #:
Yeah. I didn't own a computer, I didn't own a laptop. There was no R.W.A., there was none of that. I didn't even know about R.W.A., I just wrote my stories and I did them for me. That was my escape. That was the one thing that I did for myself. And if the kids watched television at night, that's what I did, is I wrote. I wasn't interested in television. We played Dungeons and Dragons, and I told stories to the kids. That was our pastime and our fun together.
Sarah MacLean 00:12:26 / #:
So, at what point did it become... How did it happen? I mean, how did you become Christine Feehan published author?
Christine Feehan 00:12:36 / #:
The thing was that there came a time when I became very ill and my doctor said to me, "You cannot do martial arts anymore." And unfortunately, children want food.
Sarah MacLean 00:12:56 / #:
They do. Generally.
Christine Feehan 00:12:58 / #:
I convinced the, especially the boys, that they did not need to eat and the girls still wanted clothes. So, I had to find a way to feed them and to keep clothes on their back and to pay the bills. And I was working a couple of jobs, but it was minimum wage, and I was like, "Okay, this is not going to work." And my girlfriend said to me, "Send one of your books in." And I said, "It doesn't work like that." One, it was kind of terrifying. I didn't think I really wanted to send... The thought of giving away one of my stories was not a good idea to me, and I also told her they aren't taking anything with vampires in it. And at that point, I had been writing my Carpathian stories.
Sarah MacLean 00:13:56 / #:
That's so true. A paranormal was unsellable, we were told, in the nineties. And so, I guess I have two questions. One is, was it just that you thought, "I'm writing vampires and I'm not reading vampires? There are no vampires to be read. There was Anne Rice and now there is no one else?" Or did somebody tell you, "Oh, you can't sell vampires?"
Christine Feehan 00:14:23 / #:
Yes. I was told that... My friend, a girl girlfriend of mine was writing to sell, and she wanted to go to this thing in San Francisco that later I found out was an R.W.A.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:41 / #:
Sure.
Jennifer Prokop 00:14:42 / #:
Oh, Okay.
Christine Feehan 00:14:44 / #:
Which I didn't know. And she didn't want to go alone, so she asked me to go with her. And I said sure. And there were all these people in there, and I was a little embarrassed because they would say things like, "Well, I've been working on my office for four months, no book." And then somebody else said, "I've been working on my book for 14 years, and I've been working on my book for... I don't know how many..."
Sarah MacLean 00:15:12 / #:
God, this is the entire experience of R.W.A., honestly.
Christine Feehan 00:15:16 / #:
And this went on and on. And then, they get to me and I'm like, "I don't know. I have 300 manuscripts [inaudible 00:15:24 / #]." And a woman who was running the whole thing, later, she came up to me and she's like, "You need an agent." And I, at that time, was not interested in selling and I told her that. And I said, "Well, the latest thing I'm writing are..." She asked me what I was writing and I said romance. And I said, "But they have vampires in them." And she goes, "Oh, those aren't selling. You can't get an editor to even look at them."
Sarah MacLean 00:16:04 / #:
This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Goldie Thomas, author of the Rake and the Fake.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:10 / #:
Sarah, this is a historical romance and it's a debut and the first in The Husband material series. This is a book that's really going to appeal to all of our listeners who love Tessa Dare and Joanna Shupe. And so, we have Charlotte, a seamstress employed at London's most renowned [inaudible 00:16:28 / #], and she is very aware of the class differences between her and the people that come in and partake of her services. And she runs a foul of Nicholas, a charming but badly behaved viscount, and his parents are insisting that he marry as soon as possible. After a maiden Manhattan mix up Nicholas's mother mistakes Charlotte, for this woman who she thinks Nicholas should marry, and there's just all of these shenanigans that happen. This book really deals with big class issues head on. And so, Charlotte, rather than being enamored with the excessive wealth that she is now seeing in real life is, instead like, "Wait, we really need to fix this." So Nicholas, Charlotte have to really figure out how they can be together given this huge difference between them.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:24 / #:
First of all, this sounds like a terrific read. I love it when historical romances really tackle class differences. And you can read The Rake and the Fake by Goldie Thomas right now in print or ebook, wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to Goldie Thomas for sponsoring the episode. Are the 300 manuscripts under your bed also paranormal adjacent?
Christine Feehan 00:17:53 / #:
No. They weren't at that time. No.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:56 / #:
So, how did we get to dark prints?
Christine Feehan 00:17:59 / #:
Well, at that time, I had quite a few children. My oldest son was in the Navy, and he came home to visit. I had two daughters who were pregnant, and he was helping out, building a little apartment for one of them. And he came home. He was with a friend, and he came home for lunch. He had a motorcycle, and I made him lunch and we were laughing and talking, and he went out the door and I said, "Did you put on sunscreen?" And he said, "Oh, mom, you're going to be saying that to me when I'm 90." And I laughed and said, "You bet I will." And he walked out the door, and five minutes later, maybe it was five minutes later, no more than that, the phone rang and my future son-in-law gets this call. He was on for if there was an accident. And his brother called him and said, "We've got a call. I'm coming to pick you up." And then, the neighbor called me and said, "I think your son was hit." And I said, "That's impossible."
00:19:26 / #:
But it was him and he didn't make it. And one of my daughters was... Both of them were due, and there was a birthday party I'd been planning the next day for my youngest child and a wedding I was planning. And it's a very interesting thing when you lose a child, and this is for any trauma that people suffer, life goes on all around you, it just keeps going. There's no way to stop it. You can't put the brakes on, and I had to keep planning a wedding. I had to keep two girls who were giving birth. I had a very small child who expected to have a birthday, and I didn't feel anything. I couldn't remember people talking to me, conversations.
00:20:45 / #:
And it lasted forever. It went on forever. I mean, I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to my kids' schools, I participated in everything that I was supposed to do, but I didn't feel anything. And it went on for so long and I thought, "I have to find a way back." And we always played Dungeons and Dragons together, and I always talked to him about vampires, made-up stories. And one of the things we talked about was, why would somebody want to give up your soul? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "If you have no feelings, if you can't feel anything and nothing can touch you..." And I honestly felt like I couldn't see in color anymore. Everything felt so dull. And I thought, "I have to find a way back to the people I love."
00:21:54 / #:
And that's when I started writing dark prints, and I started coming up with this idea that these men had to find that person that could make them feel again and see in color again. And that was my way back to... You never get over it. There's no way to get over it. But I've spoken to many, many people who've had many losses or had much trauma, and everybody has their own way of dealing with it. And that was mine. We shared something, it was Calvert's and I, we shared that. And my youngest son... He's not my youngest, but Brian, he always played Dungeon Masters with a Dragon. Anyway, he played with us and we would talk a lot about it together and eventually, it really helped me. And so, developing that world became very therapeutic for me. And so, that's how that world came about. And it's surprising when people read it. Some people have that, it has that same effect on them. They feel that same way, which I find interesting, that some people get it this, that have suffered loss, where other people have no idea.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:44 / #:
Yeah, but I imagine when a book comes like that and from such a place, it's impossible to imagine. First of all, it's all packed in there because when you write, that's how it goes, whatever you're living is in there. But also, I'm so moved by this story because the Carpathians are... That series is never-ending, right? It's 38 books now. And so, do you feel like every time you go back to them, that you're going back to a similar place you're mining that same love, that same world?
Christine Feehan 00:24:28 / #:
Sure. It's funny how grief will hit you at times, where it comes out nowhere. I mean, it's been a long time for my son. I've lost a granddaughter, I've lost a grandson and all of that is very difficult. You try very hard to, I don't know how to explain it, keep going as the world keeps going. But anybody who's lost parents, anybody, at times it just suddenly comes out of nowhere, and you don't know when it's going to happen.
00:25:23 / #:
But when I write, I can feel that connection, especially in the Carpathian world with Calvert, and it makes me feel very close to him again. And also, there's so many issues in those books, women's issues, miscarriages that women have. And over the years, with so many different friends and so many different young women that have had terrible things happen to them that I've dealt with through martial arts or through other things, I've been able to talk about those things. And then, had women be able to read about them, and then that helps them in their lives. So, I've been grateful to be able to have that opportunity when I no longer can do hands-on help.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:32 / #:
So it's interesting to me too... Probably one of my favorite of your series is Torpedo Ink, and those are characters that are really steeped in trauma. And I mean, that's another thing that sort of ties your books together. People experience terrible loss or grief or trauma, and then this connection is like, how do they survive? Especially can they, through this, access almost parts of themselves, they didn't know that existed. So, when you talk about readers contacting you, is this something that... Like they write you letters, you get emails, how do you connect with readers who are also experiencing this world? Like the emotional... Your worlds are kind of terrible worlds, but people find each other in them. So, how do your readers come to you?
Christine Feehan 00:27:38 / #:
Well, okay, Torpedo Ink is actually my most difficult series to write. When I took in children, I found that boys were treated way differently than girls. When they're molested, they oftentimes are not given counseling. Sometimes they're rejected from their family. The fathers don't want them, and they often are like, especially if they're a little bit older, it's like, "Oh, hey, you should be happy," instead of... It's traumatizing for them, but nobody wants to even talk about it with a boy. And so, I promised myself that someday I was going to address that issue. And I didn't honestly realize when I started looking at files, what I was really getting myself into. Because you have to talk with professionals and you're looking at some file and you're reading this horrible thing that you don't even want to look at anymore. And then, you talk to a professional and you say, "All right, this happened to them.
00:28:59 / #:
What's going to happen to them as an adult?" And he's like, "Oh, he's not going to be normal. His sexual life is not going to be normal." So now, you're going to have to write about this and try to find a happy ending for him. Because to me, I want to make whoever's had anything close to that experience feel hope. That's what you're trying to do, is say, "There's hope for you. Don't give up." And most of the time I get letters. There's been a few times when somebody has come personally to me, when I'm at a convention or something, they've asked to meet with me, and I've talked to them. Most of the time it's a letter and 99% of the time, and it will start out, "Please continue to read this, but I was going to kill myself. And then, I read this book." And oftentimes, especially Torpedo Ink, I think, "I can't write another one of these. I just can't do it." And then, I don't know why I get a letter like that, and I think, "Oh, my God, Christine, now you're going to have to write..."
Jennifer Prokop 00:30:22 / #:
Keep doing it.
Christine Feehan 00:30:23 / #:
"Now you're going to have to write another one." And it's interesting because not everyone gets that those books are about trauma. They don't see it. They don't. And that's always interesting to me, that not everyone gets what the book is actually about. I try to put on there to be careful about reading it. There's triggers for people... But people sometimes just don't see that.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:55 / #:
One of the things that I keep coming back to as you're talking is Jen and I talk a lot on the podcast about how we bemoan the way paranormal has faded over the last decade. And one of the reasons why is because it feels like there seems to be so much more anger and confusion and frustration, and all the things that are happening in the world right now. Paranormal, in so many ways, makes us look at those traumatic or those dangerous or angry or wicked things and face them.
00:31:41 / #:
You said this is about hope, and we always talk about romance as the literature of hope. That is the promise. So, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, as somebody who we really do think is without you, paranormal would not be here in the way that it is. How does paranormal... How did coming to paranormal and writing paranormal and building the sub-genre happen during that time? I mean, obviously, you told the remarkable story about how the Carpathians came to be, but you've never gone away. You've never left that paranormal world. Even when you do leave it, there's always a vibe, right?
Christine Feehan 00:32:29 / #:
Yeah. Well, because for me, I know that other people don't really believe so much in all those things, but I think the world is so big and there's so many interesting unsolved mysteries in it, and I can't stop doing research. I'm like the research nut, and I find everything so fascinating. And I don't necessarily... I know we use the word paranormal, but I always think there's so much out there. And so, to me, I just think maybe it's really all true, and we haven't caught up with it yet. So, to me, it's just extending my imagination and then, trying to find reality in it. And I try to put the book at least 80% facts. I mean, twisting those facts into my fictional world. And then, just a small amount of the paranormal so that when people read it, they're like, "Oh, this could happen. This could be." When I did Lightning Game, most of that was reality. I mean, it's amazing what they're doing with lightning, and you look at it and go, "Holy moly."
Sarah MacLean 00:34:07 / #:
So, could you talk a little bit about that paranormal? I mean, I'm using paranormal now, respecting what you just said, but at paranormal as a subgenre of romance. During that boom, where it just felt... I mean, it just felt like everyone was writing these kind of big, expansive worlds with these heroes who were just larger than life and these heroines who just could match them step for step. What was going on there? Are you able to look back on that time and go, "Oh, this is why we were all doing this thing together." Or, "This was why readers were really drawn to us?"
Christine Feehan 00:34:59 / #:
I think that different times call for different things. People are, at times, they need certain things in their lives, and they're looking for heroes and they're looking for things that make them happy. Unfortunately, I don't honestly know what's happening right now, where everybody seems so angry and weird with each other. It's so strange to me. I don't understand that, but I'm getting kind of old. But I think everybody's imagination was really big and everybody at that time really accepted it. And they went all out and readers were like, "Hey, what do you have for me? I'm willing to read it." And they went for it. So, I think that was a really good time, and people were in a good place. And as things started to crumble, the economy and whatever, then I think that things sort of went downhill. And also, when you get too many people doing the same thing, it runs out. You can only do so many of the same types, and then it gets... There's a lot of repetition. And maybe towards the end, there might have been, I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:36:50 / #:
Were there other writers who you were friendly with, who you were in your group, were inspiring you during that time?
Christine Feehan 00:37:02 / #:
Not in my group. I had a very core group, but I will tell you, I read Mary Janice Davidson, and she made me laugh so hard. I am not the best at writing humor. When I read her, I would laugh so hard and I would just about die. She made me laugh so much. There were certain ones that you'd pick them up and to be honest, I didn't read much in my own genre because I didn't want to step on somebody's voice, but I couldn't help it with her. Every time she had a book come out, I'd go get it, because she just was so funny. But like I say, I don't write very humorously, and I try, but my humor falls flat.
Jennifer Prokop 00:38:01 / #:
So, did you join R.W.A., you mentioned, sort of not knowing what it was? Was that something that-
Christine Feehan 00:38:09 / #:
I had to, at one point, because my house... I was with Dorchester at the time when I first... They were the only ones who would read my book and then they bought it.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:19 / #:
Who was your editor there?
Christine Feehan 00:38:21 / #:
Alicia Condon. Alicia Condon. Okay. Okay. And she was wonderful. She was.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:26 / #:
And she acquired you at Dorchester?
Christine Feehan 00:38:28 / #:
She did, yes. And people always said things about Dorchester, but they gave new authors a chance when nobody else would.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:37 / #:
And took such risk in terms of the content of the books. I mean, I was saying to Jen before we started that one of my very favorite... I write historicals, and one of my very favorite historicals is The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, which, the hero... It's such a different kind of historical, and I just can't... I think it benefited from Dorchester.
Christine Feehan 00:39:03 / #:
I think that they did a really good job at getting people seen when nobody else would even look at them. Not one other house would've... Well, they wouldn't...
Sarah MacLean 00:39:17 / #:
Sure. Vampires, right?
Christine Feehan 00:39:19 / #:
Right, they wouldn't look at it. And she did, and she picked it up, so that was pretty amazing of her to do that.
Sarah MacLean 00:39:29 / #:
And then, you were with Dorchester until Dorchester folded?
Christine Feehan 00:39:34 / #:
I was already being looked at by Berkley. Cindy Wong had already made an offer for me, and I've been with her ever since. She's been my editor for years and years and years. So yeah, I was already with Berkley at that point, but they had a bunch of my books still.
Sarah MacLean 00:39:58 / #:
Because you're such a fast writer. Now, were you build... Now, how was that working? Were you pulling things out from under the bed or...
Christine Feehan 00:40:06 / #:
No, no.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:07 / #:
The bad manuscripts are still under the bed.
Christine Feehan 00:40:09 / #:
No, because the ones under the bed were not polished and they weren't that good.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:15 / #:
I don't believe it, but okay.
Christine Feehan 00:40:16 / #:
No, they're not that good.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:20 / #:
So, because you're so prolific as well, what is it? Almost a hundred books, is that right?
Christine Feehan 00:40:27 / #:
Yes, very close to a hundred books.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:30 / #:
And so, you are really... I mean, you still writing really quickly. You're writing at a self-published pace.
Christine Feehan 00:40:39 / #:
I actually am slowing down a little bit so I can go visit occasionally. Go see my mom, and not my mom, my sisters, occasionally. I have a lot of sisters.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:53 / #:
And do you feel like... You have a big fam... You have a large number of children, a lot of sisters. Do you feel like that those kinds of relationships are part of why you have been drawn so much to Pax? I mean, big communities of characters.
Christine Feehan 00:41:13 / #:
Yeah, I've always loved being in a big family.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:18 / #:
This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of microdose gummies.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:24 / #:
So Lumi Labs, our old friends, you've heard us talk about microdosing and the concept of microdosing before on the podcast. It's commonly associated with psychedelics, with wellness, performance enhancement and creativity. If you're looking to consider microdosing, you can do a quick Google search or you can go to microdose.com and learn more about how taking a microdose gummy might help you just with a little bit of mood enhancement with maybe helping you sleep, which is what they do for me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:57 / #:
For me too.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:58 / #:
Pain, anxiety. Eric takes them for creativity and a general kind of joyfulness across the day. He said to me the other day, "You know what the thing is about these gummies? You take one and you just like, an hour and a half later, just feel like, "I feel like I'm in a good mood."
Jennifer Prokop 00:42:17 / #:
Yes. And listen, we all need that these days. If they didn't put me to sleep, they would definitely help me feel like I was in a good mood. Anyway, microdosing is available nationwide, and we have all tried these gummies, and we think you might enjoy them too, if they're something you're interested in.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:37 / #:
So, you can go to microdose.com and use the code Fated Mates to get 30% on your first order. They have all different kinds of flavors you can try. I'm a particular fan of cotton candy. Lately, I also like one that's orange flavored, so you should try, check it out, give it a try. And thanks, as always, to Lumi Labs for sponsoring this week's episode. Another interesting hallmark of your career is that you have several, very long-running series that you're essentially writing concurrently. And so, this is unusual. A lot of people will start and finish a series and you have a bunch that just are kind of continuing. So, what's your process for deciding what's next, keeping it all straight? That seems like a huge job.
Christine Feehan 00:43:40 / #:
It's very strange, my brain, how it works. A character will come to me and say, "I want my story told." And I can't write... I couldn't write two Carpathian stories in a row because I'd be bored with that world. So, I write that story and then, while I'm writing that story, all of a sudden, another character from another world will jump into my head and start pushing at me. And I have tell it to be quiet. Like, "It's not your turn yet. Wait till I'm finished." And then, that one will will... A lot of times now, because I'll have a contract and they'll want the stories in a certain order order. And so, I had to train my brain to say, "It's going to be like this." And if they mess up the order on me, it's actually difficult now, because my brain would be like, "We have to do it this way."
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:48 / #:
I'm not going to get the titles right, but the head of Torpedo Ink was the husband of the end of the series with all the sisters?
Christine Feehan 00:45:00 / #:
Right, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Prokop 00:45:00 / #:
So, when characters intersect in that way, is that a surprise to you?
Christine Feehan 00:45:07 / #:
Because I wasn't planning on publishing Torpedo Ink. I wasn't going to. And when I had that in there, Cindy said to me, "Do you have these other characters..."
Sarah MacLean 00:45:21 / #:
We have this guy.
Christine Feehan 00:45:23 / #:
And I said, "Well, yeah, but I don't think they're something that I could publish because it's a pretty raw, edgy series." And she said, "Well, let me read it." And that's kind of how that ended up getting published.
Sarah MacLean 00:45:40 / #:
We've had several people on who are edited by Cindy, and it sounds like she is one of those editors who is willing to just again, take the risk with you and trust you to move forward.
Christine Feehan 00:45:55 / #:
She will take a risk. Yeah, she will. She's not-
Sarah MacLean 00:45:56 / #:
That's amazing.
Christine Feehan 00:45:57 / #:
She's pretty fearless, and she's not afraid. If I went to her and said, "I'd like to publish this." And it's like out there, she would say, "Go ahead and write it. Let's take a look at it."
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:14 / #:
Have there been other editors, publishers, I don't know, art directors?
Sarah MacLean 00:46:21 / #:
Oh, wait, can we talk about those early covers, first of all?
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:24 / #:
Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:25 / #:
So, I'm so fascinated but... Listen, I could talk about romance novel covers all day every day. In fact, Jen will tell you, I kind of do, but those early covers, so that first cover of Dark Prints is a clinch. It's like a historical clinch, presumably because no one knew what the heck to do with these books, right?
Christine Feehan 00:46:45 / #:
Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:45 / #:
And then, can you walk us through... Are you able to remember or recall how paranormal became... How it started to look the way it did? Why we moved away from those clinches?
Christine Feehan 00:47:01 / #:
Well, there were funny, funny things that happened with some of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:05 / #:
I love it.
Christine Feehan 00:47:07 / #:
It was Jacque's book and they put him on the cover, and I said, "Well, this cover his spine." Except that he had, or she had red hair. It was a clinch cover, so they washed the cover red.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:32 / #:
Oh, my gosh. The whole cover?
Christine Feehan 00:47:34 / #:
The whole cover. So he is like sunburned. I called him Lobster Boy after that.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:41 / #:
What book is this?
Christine Feehan 00:47:44 / #:
It was Dark Desire.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:45 / #:
I'm looking it up right now.
Christine Feehan 00:47:48 / #:
So, he literally has... He's red and so-
Sarah MacLean 00:47:53 / #:
I think I know what this is.
Christine Feehan 00:47:55 / #:
I did. I called him Lobster Boy. So, every time anybody would refer to him, I would think, in my head, I'd turn it around and he'd be Lobster Boy.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:03 / #:
Oh, no.
Christine Feehan 00:48:06 / #:
And my girlfriend, one of my friends, she just loved him. She called him Pooky face. She'd be like, "Don't you call my-"
Sarah MacLean 00:48:14 / #:
He's orange.
Christine Feehan 00:48:16 / #:
Yes. He is.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:19 / #:
Everybody look down in your podcast right now. We'll show it to you. Yeah, he's orange.
Christine Feehan 00:48:24 / #:
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:26 / #:
How funny.
Christine Feehan 00:48:27 / #:
Yeah. And here's the other thing that happened with that book. This is just a little... So, it starts off with, there was blood in the River of It Running or something, the first sentence. And I had worked on that first chapter a million ways, and he's insane. I mean, when he comes awake, he's totally insane. And if you don't know what happened to him, you would hate that guy because he's an ass. So, you have to start out with him and knowing what happened to him. And I think I wrote that first chapter 40 Different Ways. Well, when they got the book, they're like, "We have to change this first chapter because they have to know that it's a romance, and you can't start out this way." I'm like, "No, I'm not changing it."
Sarah MacLean 00:49:25 / #:
How funny.
Christine Feehan 00:49:27 / #:
I go, "Toss the book." "We're not tossing the book."
Sarah MacLean 00:49:36 / #:
Amazing. No. And then, when we first got on with you and you said, "Well, I don't know. Am I a trailblazer?" Christine, Christine...
Christine Feehan 00:49:43 / #:
Here's why.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:44 / #:
This is how paranormals begin, now with the heroes in trauma and then, you just sort of ride the wave until you get to the kissing parts.
Christine Feehan 00:49:54 / #:
I finally just said, "You know that Clinch cover? They're going to know it's a romance."
Sarah MacLean 00:50:00 / #:
Right, exactly. I think they'll know. So, at what point did it feel like... I mean, this is obviously a market thing. This is how the sausage is made a little, but when does everybody realize, "Oh, paranormals need a different look"? Is that just because it started to become... So the market just became more exciting?
Christine Feehan 00:50:21 / #:
I really think when I moved over to Berkley, I think that the marketing people at Berkley kind of-
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:32 / #:
Figured that out.
Christine Feehan 00:50:33 / #:
Yeah, they were the ones. For me, for my team, they were the ones who kind of said, "Okay, we're going to do this differently." Interesting enough, in Germany, my books, all of them, even the Ghost Walkers, all of them have bats on the cover.
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:57 / #:
Okay. Sure, sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:50:57 / #:
It's a can of soup, right?
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:00 / #:
I know. I'm like, "Does Saphian mean Bat and German?" I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:51:03 / #:
That's funny.
Christine Feehan 00:51:04 / #:
Maybe. What else?
Sarah MacLean 00:51:05 / #:
Yeah.
Christine Feehan 00:51:07 / #:
They do very well but...
Sarah MacLean 00:51:10 / #:
Hey, listen. If it ain't broke, right?
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:14 / #:
You can tell I really love your books, but one of the things Sarah and I have talked about a lot is romance comes and goes, right? The way that what's popular as a trope, what kind of sub-genres are popular, what kinds of hero archetypes are popular. These things change over time. And right now, the romance hero has changed a lot, but I don't necessarily think that your romance heroes has have changed a lot. So, how do you... I don't know. Do you feel the push of market forces, or it doesn't matter, your readers are...
Christine Feehan 00:51:57 / #:
I don't look at trends and I don't look at that kind of thing at all. I have to go with whatever I'm passionate about and I have to go with whatever character's in my head, and I just hope my readers will love the story and love the characters. I write the best book that I can. I try every single book to improve and give a better story and sometimes, I succeed. I do my best, but there is no way that I can write a story to the market. It's not going to happen. And I know that, so I don't even try.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:41 / #:
Well, what's amazing is you've made a career out of arguably not writing to market. You wrote vampires before vampires were cool. You moved to shifters before everyone else moved to shifters and it's amazing, the inspiration that you give writers is write your truth.
Christine Feehan 00:53:03 / #:
Well, the series that I'm doing, I know it's a bad thing to call it the murder series. I really shouldn't-
Sarah MacLean 00:53:10 / #:
Not for me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:13 / #:
I think that might be more to market than we'd like to admit, honestly.
Christine Feehan 00:53:17 / #:
Well, I got into that one because one of my daughters does a lot of climbing. She used to live in Bishop, which is up in the mammoth area near Yosemite. And she knows these women and all of them have these incredible stories. And they all became friends, and they would go climbing together, and I would listen to their stories of where they came from. And then, they have these insane jobs. And I was thinking, "Wow, this is amazing." And one day, they were telling me about this hike they'd gone on, and I thought, "what a perfect place for a serial killer." I'm like, "Okay..." They were all going to go on a hike together and camping. And I said, "Okay, girls, I really want you to start looking around for a place where a serial killer might be hanging out, ready to-"
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:20 / #:
Just report back.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:20 / #:
It's totally fine.
Christine Feehan 00:54:24 / #:
So, after that, I started having the girls, every time they go someplace, do that for me. And the next thing I know, they're taking tasers with them.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:34 / #:
I was going to say they stop hiking. They're done with that now.
Christine Feehan 00:54:38 / #:
I kind of ruined it for them. We're talking murder every time we go to the restaurants.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:48 / #:
So, one of the questions that we often ask is, what's the hallmark of a Christine Feehan romance? When a reader picks up a Christine Feehan novel, one of your nearly-100 of them, what do they know they're going to get?
Christine Feehan 00:55:06 / #:
Well, for sure, they're going to get a happy ending. Absolutely sure they're going to get happy ending. I write, always, about, I think, hope and about finding your own version of family. It doesn't matter what the setting is or what the drama that has been... It's about... Or what I want to say genre, but of course, it's romance, but it could be military, it could be suspense, it could be anything. But set in that, there has to be that hope and the finding of family and that happy ending. That's what you're going to get. That's what you're going to find.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:04 / #:
And we didn't talk about this, but it's also going to be super sexy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:08 / #:
Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:09 / #:
And I feel like we should sort of touch on this because I do feel like for me, those early Feehans were-
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:20 / #:
And the late ones.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:21 / #:
No, no. I mean, for me though, Sarah, when I stumbled upon Christine Feehan in the bookstore, it felt like I'd never read anything like this before. And I wonder, can you talk a little bit about that, about really bringing sex to the genre in a lot of ways? I feel like there was, not that it didn't exist before, but there's something about the Feehan sensuality that is different.
Christine Feehan 00:56:53 / #:
Well, to me, the characters are really real. People have asked me that before. I'm not in the book at all. When I'm writing that book, it really is the characters. I don't plot out the book. So the characters are so real to me that I know everything about them from the time they were little. And so, when they're moving through that story, it's all about them. And they're the ones that are having sex or not having sex or whatever's happening to them.
00:57:33 / #:
And so, I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. You're not going to get the same one because they're always... It's a different couple. And so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I step back so far when I'm writing that I'm not there, and really, it's almost plays out like it's reality for them. And so, to me, it's just part of life. I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say, "It's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you." So, I wanted them to know what good sex was, and if you have a book that you can read when no one's around and you can see what good sex is, then it's... When you have a partner, and I can tell you, this is another thing I get lots of letters.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:16 / #:
Oh, interesting. I believe that.
Christine Feehan 00:59:20 / #:
I even had letters from guys who told me they would not cheat on their wives, military guys, because they realized that their wife was too important to them. And I mean, it's amazing. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch, and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody. I mean, when I write something, I don't know who it's going to affect. But I deliberately did put sex in my books for that reason, because I wanted people to know there is good sex. No, that there is, and you should feel something.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:19 / #:
And I love the way you talk about it, as you are so distant from the book itself, you are just writing the book. And I think that's really what a Feehan... That's why it feels so different as a reader or did. In those early books, they felt transcendent because they did feel intense and passionate in that way, that sort of private way.
Christine Feehan 01:00:46 / #:
Yeah. Now, when I started the Leopard series, that was kind of my nod to erotica. Yeah, erotic wasn't a huge, huge thing then. Now, it kind of is, but it wasn't at the time. And so, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to just do a little bit of that." And that was before to Torpedo Ink. And so, I thought, "Oh, I'll put that in my leopard one because it made sense to go there." But then, I started writing Torpedo Ink and I'm like, "Uh-oh, now I've got two."
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:23 / #:
Yeah. That's hot, everybody. I'm okay with it.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:29 / #:
No, the Leopard series. I mean, I remember coming to the Leopard series and just feeling like nobody had ever done anything like that before.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:38 / #:
Yeah. So, I think the question we love to end with is... So, it's kind of a two-part question, I guess. One is, there a book that you hear about over and over again from readers? And then, the question we have for you is there a book of yours that's your favorite, the one that you are most proud of?
Christine Feehan 01:01:58 / #:
Well, the one I hear about all the time from Readers is Dark Celebration. Every single person wants me to write that book over and over and over.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:11 / #:
They can just reread it. They can reread it. Reread it, everybody.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:13 / #:
It slaps every time.
Christine Feehan 01:02:16 / #:
It's so funny.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:17 / #:
And why do you think that is?
Christine Feehan 01:02:19 / #:
I think because it revisits characters they love.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:22 / #:
Yes.
Christine Feehan 01:02:24 / #:
I think that's it.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:25 / #:
It's reader Karen Feeding, right?
Christine Feehan 01:02:28 / #:
So, I think that that's it. What book would I be the most proud of?
Sarah MacLean 01:02:35 / #:
Or the one that's most special to you? People take it in different ways.
Christine Feehan 01:02:41 / #:
Probably the one that's the most special to me is Dark Prince, for obvious reasons. That would probably be the one, I would say.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:49 / #:
Well, thank you for being with us today.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:51 / #:
This was incredible. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us and it's really an honor.
Christine Feehan 01:02:59 / #:
I really enjoyed being with you. Thank you for inviting me.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:06 / #:
Every single one of these goes differently.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:10 / #:
Yeah, it's amazing. I think the thing I liked about our conversation with Christine is how personal it felt. I mean, obviously, not just the stories that she shared, but just you can really feel how reading and writing and thinking about hope and happily ever afters is really something she spent her entire life on. And there's a way that I think that just really came through in that conversation. It was so fascinating.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:39 / #:
Absolutely. She talked a few times about how readers have approached her and talked to her about how special her books are to them and how moving they are and how inspirational and important they are to readers. And every time she told them, I had the same thought, which was, "I think it must be really wonderful to have a conversation, a personal conversation with Christine." She feels like she's present in the moment the whole time, and it was really special.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:14 / #:
I get very distracted by people. I feel like even in my classroom, I'm kind of constantly doing 800 things at once, but you really feel that she probably is such a great mom and a grandma. You know what I mean? Like the attention that she really gives and the way that she talks about... I mean, I'm fascinated too by people who say, "I am a writer. I've always been a writer. I love writing. There's 300 books under the bed."
Sarah MacLean 01:04:41 / #:
A Compulsive Writer. I love that. The sort of, "I would've written with or without publishing." I loved that story about how she got dragged up to an R.W.A. meeting and everybody was like, "Well, I've been working on the same thing for a while." And she's like, "I have 300 books, but I never intended to do this."
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:00 / #:
I also think that that goes hand in hand then with not really worrying about "the market". So, when you are writing in that way and you've had success writing in that way, and you've had readers respond to you in that way, then I think it's really powerful to see someone stay the course.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:24 / #:
I feel like if you are out there right now and you are looking at a manuscript and you think it won't sell you because of the market, hearing Christine talk must be so important and inspirational for you, because we've talked a lot about... We've talked to people like Jayne Ann Krentz, I loved, as she mentioned, Jayne. We've talked about Jayne... When we talked to Jayne, when we talked to J.R. Ward, we've heard the story of people who change genres because, as J.R. Ward puts it, they were fired or it just wasn't selling, so they pivoted. And we've talked so much about how writers have to be nimble to thrive in the genre. And I think what's fascinating is that Christine is nimble and she is full of ideas and shifting and changing, but she stays really true to her brand and to her point of view. And I think that's a really valuable thing to hold onto right now, especially, as we see romance really grappling with those big questions about what comes next and have we oversaturated and these kind of big issues.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:40 / #:
We didn't have a chance to ask her. She has re-released some of her romances.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:45 / #:
Oh, we meant to ask.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:46 / #:
I know, as a sort of-
Sarah MacLean 01:06:48 / #:
And then, we got distracted.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:49 / #:
Author's cuts. With the rise of self-publishing, I think there's a way in which... There's always a market for something. There's always a small dedicated group of readers who are looking for whatever it is that you are selling. It's traditional publishing that has... It can't quite have that leeway to just be like, "Yes." And so, it's really interesting to hear her talk about that Dorchester imprint taking a chance on her and the difference that made. And it's funny because that is not a... I mean, Dorchester, I feel like is not a name I've even ever heard spoken about before in romance.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:36 / #:
I mean, it's really fascinating because I hadn't thought of Dorchester until-
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:42 / #:
We were prepping.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:42 / #:
I was doing research. We were prepping for this episode. You guys, these are the only episodes we actually prep for. We do actually do research before we talk to these people because we are trying to get them to think we're intelligent and so, we know what we're doing. But no, I mean, Dorchester... And now, of course, I want to go back and look a little more at Dorchester. But I was thinking about our conversation with Radcliffe, when we were talking about how these small presses were really the places where big adventures were happening in romance. And obviously, for Radcliffe and for E.E. Ottoman, that was a different kind of thing, that was happening because queer presses had to publish queer books because traditional publishers weren't doing that. But paranormal, I think about those digital-only presses, again, those kind of Ellora's Cave and Sam Haynes and those places that were taking big risks. And so, it doesn't surprise me that one of the mothers of paranormal came up through a place that doesn't exist anymore.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:56 / #:
This is something I don't... I don't know that I've ever heard any author explicitly state as clearly, which is when you write from a place... When she told that, I mean, heartbreaking story of her son's death, that somehow there are some readers who can plug into that and see a, I don't know, see themselves in that too. And I think that's one of the things, we talk so much about romance being about the genre of hope, about feelings. Romance is about feelings, but it's our feelings as readers too. And I think that this is something that I was really impressed at how clear-eyed it felt like she was about that relationship. If I'm writing from this place, it's going to find the readers in that place.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:55 / #:
And I also think there is... Talk about a fearlessness in terms of character and theme, because she really does write about trauma. And maybe we'll put in the show notes a link to the discussion that Jen and Adriana Herrera have had about writing trauma and how romance and trauma kind of do go hand in hand a lot. But it's interesting because I think writing trauma is a thing that we are talking about a lot in the industry without talking about it, really having conversations about how you put these things on the page so that characters and writers and readers can see it in a raw way. I think she even used that word, raw. And these books are not for the faint of heart. They are rough reads, and she is writing into that space in a way that I think a lot of us are afraid to do. And I think it's because she clearly has seen it, she's faced it. And I loved every minute of that conversation.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:19 / #:
Romance gives me so much. But when I kind of interact with someone who has the same root causes, and I've talked about this before. I started reading romance after my parents got divorced. The pain of that was the only thing that made me feel hope and better, was reading romance, that there are people out here who have also gone through painful things and they find a way to love each other. And so, it really is interesting, I think, for me, when you talk to someone who, I don't know, talk about the branches of the romance tree. It feels like we were planted in the same ground.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:01 / #:
Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, that was a very cool conversation. I mean, I should have expected it to be, but...
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:10 / #:
A lot of our trailblazers were really pushing for, "Tell us the story of publishing. Tell us your story through that journey." And that's not what her story was about, and I loved hearing it. It was amazing.
S04.18: Jayne Ann Krentz: Trailblazer
Our Trailblazer episodes continue this week with Jayne Ann Krentz, who has done it all: writing for Vivian Stephens, writing historicals, writing contemporaries, writing space-set, fantasy, and paranormal romance, writing nonfiction about romance. In addition to managing life as JAK, Amanda Quick, Stephanie James and more, she’s also a legend of the genre because of her vocal resistance to the way society, literature and academia talks about romance novels.
In this episode, we talk about her journey and the way she continually reinvented herself to keep writing, about the importance of writers’ core stories, about genre and myth making, and about the role of romance in the world. We could not be more grateful to Jayne Ann Krentz for making time for Fated Mates.
Next week, our first read-along of the year will be Lisa Valdez’s Passion, an erotic historical published in 2005 that is W-I-L-D. There is a lot of biblical stuff at the world’s fair. Also some truly bananas stuff that…sticks with you. Get it at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, or B&N.
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
Welcome Jayne Ann Krentz, she has had lot of pen names, including Jayne Taylor, Jayne Bentley, Stephanie James and Amanda Glass. Now she publishes under 3 names: Jayne Ann Krentz (contemporary), Jayne Castle (speculative fiction romance), and Amanda Quick (historical). She has said, “I am often asked why I use a variety of pen names. The answer is that this way readers always know which of my three worlds they will be entering when they pick up one of my books.”
We read Ravished for the podcast in 2021, or three decades ago. You know how it goes in these pandemic times.
People mentioned by Jayne: editor Vivian Stephens, author Barbara Delinksy, author Amii Loren, agent Steve Axelrod publishing executive Irwyn Applebaum, author Susan Elizabeth Phillips, author Kristin Hannah, author Debbie Macomber, author Christina Dodd, author Rachel Grant, author Darcy Burke, editor Leslie Gelbman, editor Cindy Hwang, editor Patricia Reynolds Smith.
Jayne Ann Krentz 0:00 / #
The thing about genre, the reason it even exists at all, is because it's the device and the mechanism by which we send our values down to the next generation. It's the way we affirm them to ourselves throughout our life, and it's the way a culture keeps its culture intact. It's the myth of the core value of that civilization, whatever it may be, that is going to go down through history and it survives or it doesn't survive, and that's what genre does, it carries the myth.
Sarah MacLean 0:35 / #
That was the voice of Jayne Ann Krentz. I am so excited! (laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 0:42 / #
Jayne Ann Krentz has written, probably, hundreds of romance novels at this point. Her major pen names right now are Jayne Ann Krentz, under which she writes kind of contemporaries, Jayne Castle is where she kind of puts all of her kind of speculative fiction novels, and Amanda Quick is what she writes historicals under, but she has been around for a really long time. She's going to start off by talking about her many pen names, which also include Jayne Taylor, Jayne Bentley, Stephanie James and Amanda Glass.
Sarah MacLean 1:13 / #
Amazing. This conversation, I've had the absolute joy of, you know, sharing meals with Jayne Ann Krentz, and so she is, I knew she was going to be remarkable, but this conversation really, gosh, I felt better for it at the end. I felt smarter about romance at the end, and I felt motivated in a way that I haven't felt motivated in a long time.
Jennifer Prokop 1:13 / #
Yeah, absolutely. Welcome to Fated Mates, everyone. What you're about to hear is our conversation with Jayne Ann Krentz which we recorded last fall in 2021.
Sarah MacLean 1:52 / #
Thank you so much for coming on and making time to join us for this. We're really thrilled to have you! We are avowed Jayne Ann Krentz, Amanda Quick, Jayne Castle fans. Stephanie James fans here! (laughter)
Jayne Ann Krentz 2:09 / #
Wait, let's not name all the names, that just makes me feel like I've been around forever. (laughter) I will say that was never the plan at the start. That was not part, there was no plan to be honest, but if there are any aspiring writers out there, one piece of advice for your takeaway today is for crying out loud, do not use a bunch of different pseudonyms! (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 2:34 / #
Well wait, so let's talk about that, because why not? You have, how many were there? How many are there total?
Jayne Ann Krentz 2:43 / #
Too many and the reason was because back in the old days, a lot of the contracts tied up your name, and if you signed one of those contracts, which of course I did early on, because I just wanted to be published, and it was like no big deal. Everybody writes under a pen name. And then there were two pen names. Because once you leave that house, they've got the name. It stays behind. I don't, I doubt that that appears in modern contracts, I have not heard of that for a long time. But back at the start of the romance rush in publishing, that was not an uncommon feature in a contract. So that's how it started, but it got worse because at some point, I managed to kill off a couple of names including my own. And you do that by low sales, you know, bombed out sales, which we'll get to when we talk about what a fool I was to go into science fiction romance, but it was a good way to kill off your career that time and I did because I wrote under my Jayne Ann Krentz name. So when I destroyed that, I destroyed my contemporary career, and it was at that point that I had to really retrench and figure out how to restart and reinvent myself and that was when Amanda Quick came along. So Amanda Quick is a legitimately acquired pen name, I did that to myself. Jayne Castle happens to be my birth name. I managed to sign that away for awhile, and then Jayne Ann Krentz is my married name. So I'm just under those three now.
Jennifer Prokop 4:28 / #
Now it's just the three, right?
Jayne Ann Krentz 4:30 / #
Yup. (laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 4:32 / #
So I was just thinking, was this only in romance? Did this happen to mystery writers or other genres?
Jayne Ann Krentz 4:41 / #
I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that it was pretty common in the paperback side of the market.
Jennifer Prokop 4:45 / #
Yeah. Okay.
Jayne Ann Krentz 4:46 / #
I don't, yeah, I think it was just kind of a common thing. If you look back, a lot of writers who are writing mystery and suspense today acquired a pen name at some point along the way.
Sarah MacLean 4:57 / #
So I always wondered, you know, you and I have had a lot of conversations over the years, Jayne, about patriarchy and romance, and I always thought the pen names were because of the books, but I guess mystery and sci-fi writers also did the pen name thing.
Jayne Ann Krentz 5:14 / #
The thing about a pen name, if you can get, if the publisher can get that into the contract, all a writer has is her name, and if they tie that up, you're tied to the house. It was just hard business, hard business is what it was.
Jennifer Prokop 5:29 / #
Well and I remember is an early reader of romance in the '80s, when you finally figured out, "Wait, this person is this person?"
Sarah MacLean 5:38 / #
Oh, it would blow your mind!
Jennifer Prokop 5:39 / #
Yeah, because then you were like, "Wait, there's a whole new someone I can look for in the bookstore," or the used bookstore especially, right?
Sarah MacLean 5:47 / #
Wasn't there a Romantic Times, somebody published, every year there was a publication that was like an encyclopedia of the romance novelists and it would say the names, all the names that that particular person was writing under, which when I started, maybe I started 12 years ago, and that was the time when if you wrote in different genres, which I feel like is the Jayne Ann Krentz way, you write a different genre you start a different name, but yeah, now, it's far less common, I think.
Jennifer Prokop 6:17 / #
I think it's common now. I'll tell you how it's different. I think when people self-publish, they sometimes pick a different name, and I think if especially if the heat level is really different, right? So I've had author friends say, "Well I'm going to try my hand at maybe something more erotic, and you know, is this going to interrupt my brand?" So I feel like it's so much more in control of the author, as opposed to control of the house, so that's a big change.
Jayne Ann Krentz 6:47 / #
Yeah, I think that's very true now. This was the way it was just done in the old days, and the rules were different then.
Sarah MacLean 6:54 / #
Yeah, so let's go back before you were picking pen names. So tell us about, we love the journey, so tell us about the journey. How did you become a writer? And how did you become a romance writer specifically?
Jayne Ann Krentz 7:11 / #
You know I think I just, there was never a point along the way at which I felt I could write romance better than books I was reading. I loved the genre. I found the books, I didn't really find the genre in the way we, anywhere near what we would identify it as today, until I was in, after college, until I was in my '20s. And then that's when I stumbled into Harlequin. They were the only game in town and they weren't even in town. And that was, that did me fine for few, I don't know how long it was that when I was reading them intensely that, before I wanted to try writing one. And it wasn't that I thought I could do it better than the big names at the time, I just wanted to tell the story my way. Most of the stories I was reading, well all of them, looking back on it I think, were very much the British take on the fantasy. And that's a very specific and very tweaked different take than what most American readers respond to.
Sarah MacLean 8:16 / #
Well can you explain, can you talk about that? What does that mean?
Jayne Ann Krentz 8:20 / #
Okay, the quick and easy way to understand it, is that in the British romance, your heroine is marrying up. She's marrying the duke or some version thereof. In the American romance, it's much more of a partnership kind of approach to the romance, and what matters is the man's competence. It doesn't matter what he does, he just better be damned good at it, and that's what counts. So it's a different take. There's also more sass in the American romance, and that may come from our good old 1930s movies, you know, those screwball comedies, and the fast chatter-chatter back and forth from the the 1930s romantic, and often romantic suspense films. I don't know where it came from, but it's just, it was in the American romance almost from the get go. The voice is so different, and it's more of a conversational quick repartee. It actually isn't original with us. I mean that's what Georgette Heyer was doing, but it kind of fell away in the British romance that I was reading and came back big time in the American romance.
Sarah MacLean 9:35 / #
And so when you talk about this, the American romance, these books that you were reading, we're talking about categories, the early categories? Or are you talking about historicals from the '70s too?
Jayne Ann Krentz 9:47 / #
I didn't start reading - (laughs) confession time.
Sarah MacLean 9:51 / #
(laughs) Good! Let's do it.
Jayne Ann Krentz 9:53 / #
I never read historicals. I wanted the contemporary story. I wanted romantic suspense and that was to be found in a contemporary setting in those days. So I never was drawn to the historicals until I managed to kill off my Jayne Ann Krentz career and I had to reinvent myself as Amanda Quick, and then I was starting from scratch because I had no idea how those books worked.
Jayne Ann Krentz 10:18 / #
So, but I'm a librarian, so...
Sarah MacLean 10:21 / #
Okay, so were you a librarian when you were reading and writing?
Jayne Ann Krentz 10:25 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 10:26 / #
And so tell us where you were, and you were?
Jayne Ann Krentz 10:31 / #
Well, probably the lowest point of my library career was one year I spent as a school librarian. That's a calling, not a career (laughs), and I was not called. And then spent the rest of my library career at Duke University Library, and then later, a couple of corporate libraries out West here.
Sarah MacLean 10:54 / #
We interviewed Beverly Jenkins for the series, and she, too, was a corporate librarian. So I feel like there are all these little connections.
Jayne Ann Krentz 11:02 / #
Yeah. Well, that was the most boring work, actually, the corporate work. I mean it was a job and I needed a job, but for me it was much more interesting to work with readers, scholars, students, you know, people who were actually after information, not just the latest drawing for that particular gadget that they got to dismantle. But that's just me. I just happen to like the public work better.
Jennifer Prokop 11:32 / #
Jayne, we read your book, Gentle Pirate, and the heroine was a corporate librarian, I think, right? Was that around the time that you had that job? I mean, this would have been like the very early '80s.
Jayne Ann Krentz 11:45 / #
That was the first book I wrote that sold.
Jennifer Prokop 11:47 / #
Okay.
Jayne Ann Krentz 11:49 / #
There was another book that came out, actually a few months earlier, but it was actually sold after Gentle Pirate. Gentle Pirate was sold into the beginning of the Ecstasy line. That was the line that...
Jennifer Prokop 12:03 / #
Vivian Stephens.
Jayne Ann Krentz 12:04 / #
Vivian Stephens founded, Vivian Stephens was, you know, she really turned the whole American romance industry, book publishing industry on its head. She just totally changed everything. If it hadn't been for her. I don't know how it would have developed, but she was a game changer, and because of her, a lot of what we now take as familiar voices in the genre got their start. It started with Vivian Stephens.
Sarah MacLean 12:32 / #
Yeah, it was that first class with Vivian was you and Sandra Kitt, and Sandra Brown and...
Jayne Ann Krentz 12:38 / #
Some other names that have come and gone that were big at the time...Barbara Delinsky. Yeah, but I was thinking of Amy Lauren.
Jennifer Prokop 12:49 / #
We read that one, too.
Jayne Ann Krentz 12:51 / #
She was Book One, in that line, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 12:55 / #
So you were writing, so you sat down, you put pen to paper. Did you have people who were encouraging you? Was it a secret?
Jayne Ann Krentz 13:03 / #
(laughs) Of course it's a secret.
Sarah MacLean 13:04 / #
Of course it's secret! (laughs)
Jayne Ann Krentz 13:05 / #
You're not going to tell anybody you're trying to write a book until you've actually...
Sarah MacLean 13:11 / #
I don't know. I told everyone. (laughs)
Jayne Ann Krentz 13:17 / #
Back in my day it was not something you said anything, you just, the closest you would have gotten. and I tried a couple times and it was disastrous, was to attend a writers group, a local writers group, but I wasn't really welcome there, because I was really flat out trying to write genre fiction. And romance at the time, was of all the genres, the least of them in terms of respect, and everybody else was trying to write a memoir.
Sarah MacLean 13:44 / #
Still, that's still the case. Everyone in the writing group is writing a memoir. (laughs)
Jayne Ann Krentz 13:50 / #
And I didn't see that as very helpful. What changed that landscape, the business landscape, so that I stopped signing stupid contracts that tied up my name was, again, Vivian Stephens, because she was the one that got us all together for the first Romance Writers of America meeting. And that changed everything for all of us in terms of finally being able to learn about the business.
Jayne Ann Krentz 14:16 / #
Because I'll tell you, the publishers did not want you to know about how it worked. We couldn't read contracts. I mean, it's just this gobbledygook. They still are but now, at least, you've got an agent, usually to help you, or you can get a lawyer to help.
Sarah MacLean 14:29 / #
Right, well, this is important. So you didn't have an agent in these early days selling Harlequins?
Jayne Ann Krentz 14:37 / #
I did eventually but not at the very...
Sarah MacLean 14:38 / #
But most people didn't. They just sort of packed up their manuscript and shipped it off?
Jayne Ann Krentz 14:43 / #
I take it back. I had an agent for the first couple of books and she really ripped me off. So I like to forget that, it was not a good experience. And after that I went solo because I didn't trust agents for a while. So I didn't calm down about agents until RWA. The first meeting of RWA when the agent showed up and you could talk to one and, you know, that's how I met my current agent Steven Axelrod. So...
Sarah MacLean 15:09 / #
Who is an agent for many, many, many of the big names of the genre.
Jayne Ann Krentz 15:14 / #
He was at the time because he was one of the few agents who took the genre seriously and saw that it was going to go big once the US publishers got into the business.
Jayne Ann Krentz 15:27 / #
And so he, he just jumped in early. It was timing, good timing on his part.
Jennifer Prokop 15:32 / #
So going back to these first books you wrote, Gentle Pirate you wrote first? Or did you have things in the drawer that didn't sell? What was that sort of journey to actually getting a contract or actually selling those first books? Where did those stories come from?
Jayne Ann Krentz 15:50 / #
Well, the very first book I wanted to write was actually what we would call futuristic romance, and I wrote a futuristic romance. And tip number two, for any authors out there, it does not pay to be too far ahead of the curve.
Jennifer Prokop 16:07 / #
Yeah, not in genre.
Jayne Ann Krentz 16:09 / #
Yeah, you've got to hit the wave just right to make it work. But, um, but that didn't sell. And then what I was actually reading was contemporary romance, because that's all there was. The reason, to backtrack, the reason I actually wrote the first futuristic romance and had hopes of selling it was because I came across, I was on a student cheap ass tour of Europe, and somewhere on some sidewalk, one of those book kiosks, had some American novels and I was out of stuff to read. And the book that changed my life was on that kiosk, and it was Anne McCaffrey's Restoree.
Jayne Ann Krentz 16:11 / #
Which was, yes, futuristic romance. And I don't think it did her career any good either, because she never wrote another. She moved on to dragons.
Jennifer Prokop 17:05 / #
To great success, right? To great success.
Sarah MacLean 17:07 / #
I mean, who didn't love a dragon.
Jayne Ann Krentz 17:09 / #
But she wrote a really, what we would call today is, you know, straight up what I'm doing with Harmony, and the Jayne Castle name, very much. So that was the life changing thing about that. But after that realized that I couldn't really make a living on the futuristic books, but the thing I was actually reading was contemporary. And that's what I backed off and plunged into.
Sarah MacLean 17:32 / #
So, then walk us through...I have lots of questions. So you're there with Vivian Stephens, and you're the first book, Stephanie James has the first book in one of the lines, right? You have one of the number ones, correct? Or am I making that up?
Jayne Ann Krentz 17:48 / #
I can't remember.
Sarah MacLean 17:49 / #
I might be making that up, but I'm pretty sure you're number one somewhere. So you're writing categories, and you're how many, I mean, this is one of the things that I love about people who were writing categories. How many books? How many publishers are you working for? How many books are you writing a year? What's this look like?
Jayne Ann Krentz 18:07 / #
Well, keep in mind the books are a little shorter than what we think of as a full-length paperback novel. They were probably about 68,000 words. They weren't novellas by any means.
Jayne Ann Krentz 18:18 / #
They were not as long as a full length novel. So and the other thing factored into it, is that you couldn't make a living unless you did three or four year. I mean, if you're trying to make a living at it, you're gonna, and you couldn't build a brand.
Sarah MacLean 18:33 / #
Right. You have to feed the beast. That's what we've been talking about so much. And then at what point do you think to yourself, alright, well maybe, does single title, the bigger books come later?
Jayne Ann Krentz 18:47 / #
Well, there was no market for single title except historicals.
Jayne Ann Krentz 18:51 / #
And I had resisted writing those because I didn't read them, with the exception of Georgette Heyer, which I had read those long in my teenage years, and I didn't think they were modern romances.
Sarah MacLean 19:01 / #
Sure. Well, and they're not, right. They don't have sex in them. They're not quite the same as the modern romance.
Jayne Ann Krentz 19:07 / #
No, not at all. So then after I was a success in category, category, as the publishers were starting to do one-offs. They were starting to experiment with the single title, and they wouldn't let me do it because I was not quite ready.
Sarah MacLean 19:26 / #
Oh, those words, that you're not ready. You hear that all the time from people because there was this idea, would you explain to everybody kind of how the system worked?
Jayne Ann Krentz 19:35 / #
I think the editors didn't have a sense of what really worked in the books with the exception of people like Vivian Stephens. But most of the editors I worked with were not real fans of the genre. They didn't read the books, it was a job and they did it as much as possible by the numbers, because they didn't know, they didn't react to the books themselves. I think that limits your vision of, and then they read outside the genre, and it wasn't romance. So they had a vision of what books outside the genre was and it wasn't romance. So they were probably, in hindsight, were looking for something more along the lines of what we would call women's fiction. You know, big, big book, women's fiction.
Sarah MacLean 20:18 / #
To kind of break you out of romance? The idea was eventually you would be "good enough" and I'm using air quotes for everyone, to get out of romance.
Jayne Ann Krentz 20:27 / #
Yeah, but I didn't want to get out of it. I wanted to write romance.
Sarah MacLean 20:29 / #
Thank you for that.
Jennifer Prokop 20:32 / #
Yeah, thanks.
Jayne Ann Krentz 20:34 / #
And then what happened was, it was a publisher. It was Simon and Schuster, Irwyn Applebaum. He was a publisher at Simon and Schuster. What was the name? What was the imprint?
Sarah MacLean 20:50 / #
Are you talking about Pocket?
Jayne Ann Krentz 20:52 / #
Yeah, Pocket books. Yeah, yeah. He took the first risk of publishing romance writers in big book format and in hardcover, and they just went through the roof. And so he really, eventually, I was published by him, but back at the start I didn't have that good luck. But he's the one that I think, in hindsight, really opened up that market and basically proved to New York publishing that, yes, these women readers will pay full price for a novel.
Sarah MacLean 21:27 / #
So what is your first single title? At what point do you make that switch?
Jayne Ann Krentz 21:33 / #
Well, I guess the first single title will be the one, the science fiction that failed.
Sarah MacLean 21:36 / #
Right. So I'm going to hold it up. This, Sweet Starfire, this is what we're talking about. This is, I'm sure you know about this, The Romance Novel in English which is a catalogue from Rebecca Romney. She's put together a collection of first editions and important works from the genre. She's a rare books dealer, and we're obsessed, Jen and I are obsessed with this.
Jennifer Prokop 21:55 / #
Yes, we are.
Sarah MacLean 21:57 / #
So Sweet Starfire is, I mean, it's not the first time anybody's ever written science fiction in romance, but this is it, right? This, this feels like a moment.
Jayne Ann Krentz 22:08 / #
I think because it was it was a true romance, in the American style. It had everything that the contemporaries had, just a different backdrop.
Jayne Ann Krentz 22:20 / #
And what that brought to the plate was you could do different kinds of plots. You could open up the plots.
Sarah MacLean 22:27 / #
Well, the argument being that Sweet Starfire opens the door to paranormal, as we know it, right?
Jennifer Prokop 22:34 / #
Well done.
Sarah MacLean 22:35 / #
I mean, which is a thing, it's major! There, and, you know, maybe we would have gotten there probably to vampires and everything else, but we got there, I think more quickly, because of you. So it's my podcast, so I get to say it. (laughter)
Jayne Ann Krentz 22:51 / #
I've always divided what's, okay, what Sweet Starfire had and what all my science fiction has is a very psychic vibe.
Sarah MacLean 23:00 / #
Mm hmm.
Jayne Ann Krentz 23:01 / #
And I have always drawn a very bright line between the psychic and the supernatural. So when you say paranormal, I tend to think of the supernatural, I tend to shapeshifters and vampires and witches, which I love to read, but I can't write. They're not, they don't fit my core story. So I've always thought of it as a separate area, and then there's the psychic romance or whatever you want to call it.
Jennifer Prokop 23:27 / #
Which you're still, I mean, those are still the Fogg Lake trilogy, which the, is it the third one comes out in January?
Jayne Ann Krentz 23:36 / #
I just want to take a moment here to say to anybody in the audience, this proves I can finish a trilogy.
Jennifer Prokop 23:42 / #
Well done. But that, it is psychic. It's you know essentially, everybody, the conceit is a fog goes over this town from a mysterious governmental entity and a whole towns full of people develop sort of psychic powers. And then it's like the next generation and the fallout. So it's interesting to hear you draw that line all the way back to books you're writing in the '80s.
Jayne Ann Krentz 24:10 / #
Yeah, I've always felt that difference, but I don't know that readers see it. It's just as a writer, I'm aware of it. But I think the reason I've been attracted to the psychic vibe from the very beginning, is because for me, it enhances the relationship. It gives that extra level of knowing between two people, and connection and bond. And it gives me other plots to play with. It gives me a little outside the box plot sort of thing, I think. But I also think it has a, it works because it's just one step beyond intuition, and most people can get into intuition. Most people believe in intuition. So asking them to take the psychic thing is just that one step beyond, whereas they may not be able to do the vampire thing or the supernatural thing, that may be a step too far for a lot of readers. But I think a lot of readers are fine with the psychic vibe, because everybody thinks they've got one.
Jennifer Prokop 25:10 / #
Right. Fair.
Sarah MacLean 25:12 / #
Wait, I want to go back to it doesn't fit my core story. So you might be the first person who ever explained core story to me, at a lunch at RWA, which I'm sure you do not remember. But I want you to talk about what core story is for, I mean, for everyone, but also, let's talk about yours. Because you seem to know very clearly what your core story is.
Jayne Ann Krentz 25:39 / #
I think I'm pretty familiar with it, because I had to understand it at that earlier point, when I killed off my science fiction career and had to reinvent myself as Amanda Quick, and I had never written a historical. So what I did was, I looked at that science fiction book, the last science fiction book, which was Shield's Lady. And I stepped back and I said, you know, duh, if you take out the rocket ships, and the funny animals and the other planet stuff, what you're really looking at here is a marriage of convenience. And then I thought, well dang, I know where those fit. So, so it was understanding a marriage of convenience, built on mutual trust, is what led me down the road to historicals. And then I realized it's what I always do. And I think it's important for writers to have a sense of their core story. And if you know your core story, you can sum it up in two or three words max. That's how elemental it is, because it has nothing to do with backgrounds, it has nothing to do with plots, it has nothing to do with the eras that you're writing in, it's all about the emotions you're working with, and the conflicts that you're working with. My core story is always founded somewhere on trust. And that's, like, I can write forever about it, because that's pulled from the inside. It's just a deep, deep thing that I am always curious about, interested in, everybody gets violated at one point or another, has their trust violated, everybody's been through that experience. Everybody has taken the risk of trust. You have to do it daily, basically. So it's a risk we're all familiar with, um, and it can wreck a life or it can change a life. And to me, that's all I need. That's just plenty to work with. So I think once you find the conflicts and the emotions that you love to work with, you're going to be able to explore, that's your universe, is what it comes down to. That is your universe, and you're going to write in every corner of that universe, some corner, every corner, for the rest of your career. I think. (laughs) That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
Sarah MacLean 28:00 / #
I think it's a great theory. And it also makes so much sense that you weren't interested in leaving romance, because trust and love go hand in hand so well, that it makes sense. So when you, I want to get to Amanda Quick, the choice to do the Amanda Quick switch. So you say you've killed off your science fiction career. You're not writing contemporary single titles at this point. Is that because they don't exist generally, or you're just not?
Jayne Ann Krentz 28:31 / #
You know I don't think so. I think they were all historical.
Sarah MacLean 28:33 / #
Still at this point.
Jayne Ann Krentz 28:35 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 28:35 / #
Okay, and so you decide, because this is the late '80s?
Jayne Ann Krentz 28:40 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 28:40 / #
Yeah, it feels like the only person I could think of who might have been writing an occasional single title...who wrote Perfect?
Sarah MacLean 28:45 / #
Contemporary.
Jennifer Prokop 28:50 / #
Yeah, contemporary. It was Perfect and...
Sarah MacLean 28:52 / #
McNaught.
Jennifer Prokop 28:50 / #
Yeah, Mcnaught had a couple. And there were a couple...
Sarah MacLean 28:58 / #
But that's a different angle into it, right, because McNaught was writing those big epic historicals and then, so the idea of her being asked to cut 100,000 words out of her books to write category is, I mean, she just wouldn't.
Jennifer Prokop 29:12 / #
Sure. Not going to happen.
Sarah MacLean 29:13 / #
I think Judith McNaught's amazing, but I doubt she'd be very quick to be like, "Yeah, I can write it in a third of the words." So you, at what point do you know you've killed your career?
Jayne Ann Krentz 29:27 / #
The same way you always know it. I couldn't get another contract with that publisher.
Jayne Ann Krentz 29:31 / #
When they stop giving you contracts, that's a pretty big sign.
Sarah MacLean 29:34 / #
Pretty good sign.
Jayne Ann Krentz 29:37 / #
And that's when an agent really earns their keep, in a sense, because it was my agent who sold me as, I had to come up with a proposal he could work with, and it was the Amanda Quick proposal, for my first Amanda Quick book. And he just did a dang good job selling it to Bantam Books at the time, and he sold them without telling who it was.
Sarah MacLean 30:02 / #
That is a story you hear all the time.
Jennifer Prokop 30:05 / #
Yeah.
Jayne Ann Krentz 30:07 / #
And then once they committed to the book, then he could say, "Well, that's Jayne. Yeah, that's Jayne." So, but that's, that's, you know, he did a miraculous job of resurrecting my career at that point.
Sarah MacLean 30:20 / #
Not just resurrecting your career, I mean, suddenly, Amanda Quick, you know, is everywhere. Amanda Quick is one of, Jen and I both...
Jennifer Prokop 30:29 / #
Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 30:30 / #
This is one of the names that we came to romance with.
Jayne Ann Krentz 30:34 / #
I think, I think what I just realized too late, probably should have realized earlier, was that the Regency, which is where I started, it is the perfect background for my voice, and it works just like the '30s is working now for that voice. It's a very similar kind of voice or of conversation and dialogue, just suits my style. Both eras suit my style.
Jennifer Prokop 30:59 / #
So as a writer, you're choosing to do something that's really out of your comfort zone, it sounds like. So how was that experience for you? Was it generative? Did you find yourself really? Or was it always like a I would love to get back to my roots? How did that, how did it go for you?
Jayne Ann Krentz 31:19 / #
Well I hadn't been there, so there was no roots to go back to, except the realization that the story I was telling fit that Regency in the way that the old Georgette Heyer had, that I kind of, that's what I clung to. What I worried most about because I was, am, are a librarian, was the research. And that was, to tell you the truth, is the reason I hadn't gone into the historicals in the first place. I had majored in history. I knew how complicated it was, but the lesson I learned very fast, was that when you write, when you write genre, you are writing not the real history, but you're writing the myth. And the myth of the Regency was already there because Georgette Heyer had created it so I just wrote on that.
Sarah MacLean 32:12 / #
So one of the things, when we read Ravished on Fated Mates, we did a deep dive episode on the book, and you know, we love it. And one of the things that we talked about was how, you didn't invent the bluestocking, obviously, Heyer was there before you but there is a difference. Amanda Quick comes on the scene, and suddenly it's like a door opens on historicals. And I'm wondering if you, does that, I mean, first of all, do you think that that's a good read on what was going on? Because it feels like prior to that, you know, you had all of the big, you know, the four J's and you had kind of other historicals that were doing a kind of different thing. And then in comes the Amanda Quick historical with the smart, you know, savvy heroine, the bluestocking, the hero who is her true partner from the start. I mean, going back to your core story now that you've said that, of course, right.
Jennifer Prokop 33:15 / #
Of course. Exactly. That's how I felt too.
Sarah MacLean 33:16 / #
But at the same, and so I, you know, I reread all of your pieces in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women in preparation for this conversation, and we'll get there. But one of the things that you talk about is this idea of the hero as both hero and villain. He plays both roles. And I think that is really true prior to you in historicals, but he doesn't become the hero until much later in those earlier historicals, versus, you know, when you think about the hero of Ravished, he's a decent dude from the jump. And I think that is really, it feels like a Jayne Ann Krentz or an Amanda Quick Regency suddenly was doing a little bit of a different thing. Was that intentional? Or was it you were just doing the different thing?
Jayne Ann Krentz 33:19 / #
It was just intuitive.
Jayne Ann Krentz 33:26 / #
Because that's, that's the kind of character I'd always written. If you read my books from the beginning, my heroes haven't changed much over the years. You know, pretty much my heroes, they do what they do, and that they're infused with my core values in what I think works in the hero and same with the heroines. And I think if you respond to my books or any author's books, it's because, you're not responding so much to the story, the plot, the characters, you're responding to the core values infused into the primary characters. And if and if you respond to those values, you're probably going to go back to those books, that author again and again. If you don't respond to him, it's a boring book, and I think that's how it works. So if you read my books, it's probably because you got my sense of humor. And you have the same, you share a lot of the same core values. The thing about genre, the reason it even exists at all, is because it's the device and the mechanism by which we send our values down to the next generation. It's the way we affirm them to ourselves throughout our life. And it's the way a culture keeps its culture intact. It's the myth of the core value of that civilization, whatever it may be, that is going to go down through history, and it survives or it doesn't survive. And that's, that's what genre does, it carries the myth.
Jennifer Prokop 35:40 / #
I love that.
Jayne Ann Krentz 35:42 / #
That's my theory.
Jennifer Prokop 35:46 / #
That I think is really true. And when I think about myself as a romance reader for 40 years, or however long it's been. It's not that quite that long. I feel like I really do see that, like those arcs. But at the same time, I feel like there's so many ways I can talk about how romance has changed. So for you, what are the things, like they're still the big things that are the same? What are the things that have changed in romance, do you think?
Jayne Ann Krentz 36:15 / #
Those dang cell phones. (laughter) You laugh, but I'm telling you. I know, I know what you mean. And one of the tricks to success in this business is trying not to tie your story down to a particular era, unless you're really telling that era's story. I mean, if, you know, when you do the 1930s, you do the 1930s. But, but if you want the books to have a long life, it's best not to put in any gadgets or...
Sarah MacLean 36:48 / #
Celebrity names.
Jayne Ann Krentz 36:50 / #
Celebrity names, politician's names, history, local ongoing history. Keep it, the more you limit it to the myth and the mythical side of the story, the longer that story is going to survive. But that's, that's a whole other issue here. Clearly, the surface changes all the time. And that's just true of any genre. But the underlying power of the genre that you love to read, whatever that genre is, doesn't change very much. And so I'm still writing relationships that have to overcome the hurdle of trust, and it's not going to change. You know, that has nothing to do with politics or history or social problems. I think the more you deal in social problems, the more you move away from genre, in a sense, because you're dealing with the superficial again, you're back to what's current now, but 20 years from now, that won't be an issue. Some things will be issues, because they're they're universal things. I'm thinking now about women's voting, getting the right to vote. It's an interesting historical detail, and it's an important historical detail. And you can tell stories around it, because the Suffragette movement was so important, but it is, it's a different take. It's, I think what happens when you do that is like, it's like, okay, it's clear to see it set in, in a war. Any book you write set in World War Two, no matter what you do, the war is going to be the primary character. Nothing. In the end, there will be sacrifices, and everything will be sacrificed to doing the right thing in the war. Because that's the other thing that genre does, which is call upon its characters at one point or another, to do the right thing. And we have a sense of, a sense of what a real hero does when the chips are down. We have a sense of what a heroine is supposed to do when push comes to shove, and they do the right thing. That's how, that's, that's all that matters. And that works big time if you're setting the story against an overwhelming backdrop like a world war. It's Casablanca. You never see, you never see any fighting or shooting. It was one gun but you know what I mean.
Sarah MacLean 39:21 / #
War is everything.
Jayne Ann Krentz 39:23 / #
Right. Everybody sacrifices for the war effort. And it's just, I'll never write that story because it's not mine. That does not fit. It doesn't come back to the trust between two people that I want to write about. I can admire it, you know, it's not that, but it's not my story.
Sarah MacLean 39:40 / #
As you're writing, in your career, you know, you've spanned, you know, you started with categories, you've written single titles, you've written sci-fi, you've written historicals, you've written, you write contemporaries now, still. At what point in this journey are you thinking, "Oh my gosh, romance is a big deal. I mean, it's really, there are millions and millions of women out there who are reading these books, largely women."
Jayne Ann Krentz 40:09 / #
Guess when the big checks started coming. (laughter) You know, once the American publishers got into the market, it became a big business really fast, because that's just how the American market works. If it works, it explodes. You know what I mean?
Sarah MacLean 40:22 / #
Everyone's throwing books out all the time.
Jayne Ann Krentz 40:25 / #
You can clutter up the market in a hurry, you know, but that's kind of a normal process. And yeah, I just think that the process of becoming a big business happened really quickly, and simultaneously, or concomitantly, or whatever, right along with it, came the foundation of Romance Writers of America, which gave the romance writer access to information about the business. So we grew up with it, in a sense, that first generation of romance, American romance writers grew up learning fast.
Sarah MacLean 41:03 / #
Because at the time Romance Writers of America was about the business, right? It was about professional writers coming together to share, to information share.
Jayne Ann Krentz 41:12 / #
It was networking.
Jayne Ann Krentz 41:14 / #
We didn't, we didn't have that word for it, but that's what it was. And a lot of the friends I have today, I made back in those early days of networking.
Sarah MacLean 41:21 / #
So talk about that. What was this community like? Who were they? What were you getting from them? How are you interacting?
Jayne Ann Krentz 41:30 / #
Back at the beginning, only published writers were in the group. It later opened up to unpublished writers, but back at the time, we all had the same interests because we were all published, we're all dealing with publishers, we're all dealing with contracts, we're all trying to find agents, you know, that there was a lot of business to discuss, and the other organization, Novelists, Inc., also came along about that time. And gradually, I think people realized that romance writers had a lot of, all the same concerns and interests as the writers in the other genres. So there was some cross networking there too. It wasn't always comfortable, but you knew that there were other writers groups out there that had the same issues and and you could learn from them. So I just think it was the networking thing that today happens online. So it isn't maybe so necessary to have the organizations that, that we just didn't have that online option. I didn't know any other published writers until I went to that first meeting of the RWA, the very first RWA.
Sarah MacLean 42:38 / #
Yeah. Who is the group of people who keep you going?
Jayne Ann Krentz 42:43 / #
Well, Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Kristen Hannah. A lot of it is, are friends I know here, like Debbie Macomber, because we have a lot of us happen to end up in the Pacific Northwest. Christina Dodd. More newer friends who've come along right now, for example, Rachel Grant, who is doing a really interesting, modern, very modern version of the heroine who is an archaeologist, and it's kind of the new Amelia Peabody, but except very modern. And Darcy Burke.
Sarah MacLean 43:18 / #
Were there editors who you feel were essential to the growth, your growth as a writer?
Jayne Ann Krentz 43:26 / #
Yes, and to the genre, because I said back at the beginning, a lot of the editors were not people who actually loved the genre. For a lot of editors, it was a starting point in their careers, which they hoped to move on to other kinds of books, I suppose. But years ago, it's been a few decades now, I can't remember when, editors started coming into the genre, who like Vivian Stephens just loved the books, just have a gut way to buy the books, they can buy them by intuition, because they read the books, they knew how they worked. So editors like Leslie Gelbman, and my editor today, Cindy Hwang, who pretty much invented the whole paranormal publishing industry.
Sarah MacLean 44:14 / #
We should say Leslie Gelbman also edits Nora Roberts. So you've you've probably read something by Leslie Gelbman's authors before.
Jayne Ann Krentz 44:23 / #
And those editors, and they have in turn mentored a group of younger editors coming up, and they choose their people now. They choose their editorial staff knowing that they need writers, they need authors, they need these editors to bring in authors who will work long term, and that takes an editorial eye that loves the basic story.
Sarah MacLean 44:50 / #
Right. So there's this, it feels like there's this editorial mindset of building a career, of buying an author and shepherding. them through the journey.
Jayne Ann Krentz 45:01 / #
Yeah. Yeah. It won't probably last a lifetime, but their careers and the writer's careers in that kind of publishing are very intertwined. There is no getting around it. On the other side of the coin is the self-publishing, the indie published authors, who don't have that kind of connection, and it's a very different publishing world for them. It's an interesting, it's an interesting thing that's happened in the industry, because I think between the two, the writers finding editors who love the books, and the independent writers who don't need gatekeepers, which basically New York editing is a gatekeeping job. And agents are gatekeepers too. But the indie crowd doesn't have to worry about gatekeepers. So between those two groups, they kind of have revolutionized the whole romance genre, in that they have allowed an almost unlimited variety of experiments. And that has kept the genre, keeps it fresh, it keeps reinventing itself because it keeps going new places. Some of the other genres can't say that. They're much more hidebound, much more rigid, in what's acceptable. If you put a vampire cop into a traditional murder mystery, it's not gonna sell. They don't want vampires in there. They know what they want in their murder mysteries and it ain't vampires, but a romance reader will look at it. She may not like that book, but she'll give that story a chance. So the readers were inclined to be experimental too. They'll try something new. And that's, that's just been an amazing thing for the whole genre, because it keeps churning, it keeps changing. It keeps adding and experimenting, and one of the reasons we were able to do that, even in the early days, was because nobody cared enough about romance to make any rules.
Jayne Ann Krentz 47:08 / #
We skated under the radar, and it was very useful for those of us who didn't know there were rules. It's like, "Oh, okay." (laughs)
Sarah MacLean 47:16 / #
So let's talk about this, Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, because I would like to hear the story of how this came to be in 1992.
Jayne Ann Krentz 47:30 / #
I think at that point in my career, I was very successful. I knew a lot of other successful writers. And as the saying goes, we didn't get any respect. And it wasn't that I wanted people to love my books. I understood, I don't read a lot of other people's books too, you know. I have no problem that you don't want to read the books, but the criticism was not proper criticism. It was not literary criticism. It was blowing off not just the the writers, but the readers, and the implication was, they're not well educated. They don't have a lot of money. They're, it just wrote everybody off from from the consumer through the writer.
Sarah MacLean 48:10 / #
And are you talking about specifically academics at this point? Or because there's a very famous late '80s study that came out about romance readers that presents them in this way?
Jennifer Prokop 48:22 / #
Is this Radway?
Sarah MacLean 48:24 / #
The Radway.
Jayne Ann Krentz 48:25 / #
No, I read the book and it's, okay, one of the things I learned about going into academic publishing, which I did one time and we will never do it again (laughter), is that you are expected to take a, what would be the right word, of philosophical slant, and then bring in the proof that shows that your take on it is correct. I've always felt that didn't really, wasn't very helpful, because you can make anything look right, if you bring in the evidence that you want to bring. (laughter)
Jayne Ann Krentz 49:01 / #
Yeah, so I didn't, I didn't, and that was what passed for serious academic criticism. That was nothing compared to the jokes in the newspapers on Valentine's Day.
Sarah MacLean 49:11 / #
Sure. I mean, which still persist.
Jennifer Prokop 49:13 / #
Yeah.
Jayne Ann Krentz 49:14 / #
No, it ranged across the whole scale. So at that point, I was still in my feisty mode, I guess. (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 49:22 / #
I love it.
Jennifer Prokop 49:23 / #
We're still in our feisty mode, so pass the baton right over. (laughter)
Jayne Ann Krentz 49:28 / #
Just go. Run with it. Run with it. But I had been in the business long enough to know that there was one editor out there who straddled both the academic and the genre, and that was Patricia Reynolds Smith. I had met her while she was working for Harlequin. And then eventually she moved into academic, she went back to her roots, which was academic publishing, and was with the University of Pennsylvania Press. So I called her up, and I told her what I had in mind, and I said, "Where would I take a book like this?" And she said, "Right here."
Sarah MacLean 49:29 / #
Terrific.
Jayne Ann Krentz 49:29 / #
So she really is the one I give full credit to for that book, because she knew how to organize it so that it looked academic, so that it was acceptable to an academic reader, and that it met their standards, as well as told our side of the story.
Sarah MacLean 50:25 / #
And it's interesting, because at the beginning of this book, the first line of this book is, "Few people realize how much courage it takes for a woman to open a romance novel on an airplane." And it felt, I mean, I read that again, you know, this week, and it just felt like a shot to the heart because it, I mean, we've all been there, right?
Jennifer Prokop 50:44 / #
And people still feel this way, right? And this 30 years later.
Jayne Ann Krentz 50:49 / #
Why do you think romance readers were early adopters of ebooks? (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 50:53 / #
Exactly. None of your business, right? None of your business.
Jayne Ann Krentz 50:57 / #
Yup.
Sarah MacLean 50:57 / #
But the idea, this kind of transformational idea of turning the text around and saying you're missing the point. This is for the reader. This is about these women, these, largely, women who are experiencing these books, the mythology of these books, the power of these books themselves, privately, had to have been kind of earth shattering for academics, because that's not what they were talking about in those other books, which I also have read.
Jayne Ann Krentz 51:27 / #
Interestingly enough, we have several warmly received reviews from female academics. The harshest critics for that book that I recall, were male.
Jayne Ann Krentz 51:41 / #
And they just didn't get it. It just, even with all our careful explaining, (laughter) apparently we didn't explain it to a lot of men very well, but most of the women I talked to afterward got it.
Sarah MacLean 51:57 / #
Yeah. So you get to, you send out an email, or well, you don't send out an email. (laughter) Wait, how do you get all these people?
Jennifer Prokop 52:08 / #
Exactly!
Sarah MacLean 52:08 / #
Oh my god, what is happening? (laughing)
Jennifer Prokop 52:10 / #
You don't text your friends?
Jayne Ann Krentz 52:13 / #
This, this is that thing called the telephone.
Jayne Ann Krentz 52:16 / #
You dial it.
Jennifer Prokop 52:19 / #
I remember now.
Sarah MacLean 52:20 / #
So you start picking up the phone and calling you know, the biggest names in the genre. Elizabeth Lowell is in here, Mary Jo Putney. Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
Jennifer Prokop 52:28 / #
Sandra Brown.
Sarah MacLean 52:29 / #
Sandra Brown. Stella Cameron. And you say what?
Jayne Ann Krentz 52:34 / #
I tried to explain what I was trying to do. But I've never been the best proposal writer. In terms of explaining, I can write a proposal, but pitching it verbally has always been hard for me. But I, after talking to Pat Smith, the editor, I had a sense of how how to phrase what I was asking for, which is I'm not going to give you a topic. I just want you to tell me what you think makes the books work. What is the appeal of the romance? And 19 authors came back with 19 different essays, that all went together very nicely. It just, they just worked across the spectrum. And that book is still in the libraries today, academic libraries today. And then that was what sort of Pat Smith told me going in, she said, after I was exhausted, because this took a year out of my life.
Jayne Ann Krentz 53:27 / #
You try herding 19 authors! (laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 53:29 / #
Yeah, right. Before email.
Sarah MacLean 53:32 / #
Before email. (laughter)
Jayne Ann Krentz 53:35 / #
And then having to be the one to pass along the edits .
Sarah MacLean 53:39 / #
The notes! How dare you! (laughs)
Jayne Ann Krentz 53:45 / #
Without losing any friendships in the process? You know, it was, but everybody came through and everybody was very gracious about it. So it was an interesting experience all the way around. But she said, "The one thing about this book is that it'll still be around 20 years from now."
Sarah MacLean 54:03 / #
And it is. I mean, it was, I mean, it's been on my shelf since the very beginning of my career. So...
Jayne Ann Krentz 54:09 / #
Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 54:10 / #
I'm really grateful for it. So we talked a lot about what your core story is and what makes a Jayne Ann Krentz novel. I wonder if we could talk about your readers? Do you, I mean, one of the things that really struck me in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women in your introduction, as I said, was centering the reader. And you're, you have this conversation in the introduction where you talk about reader service. And I wonder, we all know, of course, as readers and writers of the genre that readers are really drawn to romance and it's a very different kind of relationship that writers have with romance readers. Do you have any moments that stick out from across your career of times when you've heard from readers or really understood the power of the genre with them?
Jayne Ann Krentz 55:02 / #
I think the thing that surprises me the most, and other writers I know have the same reaction, is how often a reader will take the time to let you know that your book got them through a tough time. And I think it speaks to the underlying communication of the emotional core of those stories. When you are sitting by a bedside of somebody who isn't doing well, you want you want to read something that is speaking to your heart, and speaking to your emotional core, and affirming your own deep core values. And romance does that for women. It does it for men too, I think, but we haven't really gone there, you know, acknowledge this. I am, I'm always surprised at how many male readers romance writers pick up along the way. That they do respond to the books, and often it's the wife buying the book. And then he reads it at home kind of thing. It's an interesting play. I remember asking one male reader who came through an autograph line, he was really, really into the books that he was buying, and he was very excited. And I asked him what it was he, what spoke to him in the stories and he said, and his son was with him, and he said, "My father just came back from the war." This was, he was a Vietnam vet. And the vet said, "I just don't want any more blood." And so he got a story with a little mystery in it, a little suspense in it, a lot of action, but no really grisly, horrifying things. So there may be more of that kind of reader out there than we realize, because so much of modern romance incorporates an element of suspense, which is also that romantic suspense is a, I think, also a really core American story.
Jennifer Prokop 57:08 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 57:09 / #
That's fascinating.
Jayne Ann Krentz 57:09 / #
It's just very popular.
Sarah MacLean 57:12 / #
Jen has a whole - Jen, I know you want to talk about Vietnam, and you should ask your question.
Jennifer Prokop 57:19 / #
So my dad fought in Vietnam. And you know, I read, looking back, I am fascinated by how, so I started reading romance when I was probably 12 or 13. And this would have been like the mid '80s. And so many of these heroes were men back from Vietnam. And I am just personally really - and Sarah's whole college thesis was about Vietnam.
Sarah MacLean 57:48 / #
Women on the homefront during Vietnam
Jennifer Prokop 57:50 / #
Right?
Sarah MacLean 57:51 / #
Probably because of romance novels, I mean, of course, because of romance novels,
Jennifer Prokop 57:55 / #
Sure, of course, right? And I think for both of us, I mean for me, it was just really personal. I still don't really understand my father. And when I read books about war by men, I'm reading about combat, but when I read romance about men coming home from war, I'm reading about my family. And I think that, I've always joked, I'm getting a little weepy. It's hard to talk about, because I feel like my dad's really broken and he still is, and no one, love didn't fix him, right? And I know that that's why I get so angry sometimes when people are like, "Women reading romance." I'm like, "Look, I wanted to live out a world where it was possible for my dad to be fixed by love." And romance gives me that. And I think that I'm just really fascinated by the way that those Vietnam heroes, to me, turned into romantic suspense in a lot of ways, right? Like we, we put it back on page. So I don't know if there's a question there. I think it's your heroes meant a lot to me, because I felt like here's somebody who's talking about how hard it was to live with these men who had come back from war, and didn't know how to be parts of families anymore.
Jayne Ann Krentz 59:12 / #
Now, and that is a common story after every war. It's not just Vietnam. It's every damn war that sent them home. And what happens is, these broken men came home, and the women are left to patch them up as best they can. Sometimes you just can't.
Jennifer Prokop 59:27 / #
Yeah.
Jayne Ann Krentz 59:28 / #
You know, the damage is too great. And I think the books acknowledge that. They give a happy ending because that's what we're in the business of providing, is a bit of hope at the end. But even with the happy ending, if you say that's unrealistic, and I don't know that it is for everyone. I mean, that in your case, obviously, it was, for the real life. But what those books gave you was the fact that you were not the only person dealing with this. Women across the country were dealing with this, and not always successfully, and they acknowledge that pain, they acknowledge the problem, they acknowledge the damage. Yes, they've tried to fix it with love, but in a way, that's not why you're...
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:13 / #
That wasn't it, right. It was just that it was there.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:00:16 / #
Other people acknowledged it.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:18 / #
I often say that, if you want to read about miscarriage, you should read romance. Because it's another place where it's like, these things happen to people and we go on. And I feel like that's one of the things, to me as a reader, it's the, and I just don't think romance gets enough credit for really...
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:00:38 / #
It doesn't.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:39 / #
Really saying, "Look at what we go through and yet we still persevere or trust each other or find a way." That's why I read romance. Every every single romance gives me that.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:00:52 / #
Because it is affirming a positive core value. It is affirming hope, which ultimately is all we've really got. (laughs) But on the respect side, I will tell you one story that has stuck with me for decades now. And that was years ago, I was at a conference, one of those book fairs. Remember the big book fairs? Seattle used to have a big book fair. And I was...
Sarah MacLean 1:01:22 / #
Remember when we all went places and stood with other people? (laughter)
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:01:27 / #
Those were the days. But I was standing with a crowd of local writers of all genres, because we just have a lot of local writers here. And there was a very well-known science fiction writer, a very well-known mystery writer, a very well-known memoir writer. I mean, there was just a bunch of us standing around. And somebody started whining about how they didn't get any respect. And I being the only romance writer, and I figured I had the biggest...
Sarah MacLean 1:01:57 / #
Oh boy. Was it a man?
Jennifer Prokop 1:01:59 / #
Bite me.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:02:02 / #
I kept my mouth shut, because every single one of those genre writers had the same experience.
Sarah MacLean 1:02:08 / #
Yeah.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:02:09 / #
They might, in turn, have been able to look down on me, but by golly, they felt looked down upon. (laughs) That sense, and that was another insight into the fact that by and large, our country, our culture does not give a lot of respect to genre fiction in general, not just romance. We might get the sharp end of the stick or whatever, but there isn't really a lot of respect for the genres compared to the literary novel. And that, I think, is a huge misunderstanding of the purpose of genres, which, as I said earlier, isn't so much to capture a moment in history, it's to capture values and core cultural beliefs, and affirm them and transmit them. And that's really crucial to a culture. That's more important to a culture, than a piece of snippet of time of that culture, which will never be, will never happen again. So you can write New York City problems or LA problems today or tomorrow, and that's a piece of history that you're doing, but it's the underlying core values that will decide whether or not it's the genre or literary. I think it just has a really important place in our culture. Every culture has a version of genre stories, and that's how humans tell stories, and why they tell them, I think. Because it's really kind of interesting, when you think about why do we tell stories, you know?(laughs) And we, even if you don't read, you're gonna be exposed to stories, you'll be inundated with stories on TV. I mean, it's just roll through.
Sarah MacLean 1:03:48 / #
Well, we talk all the time about, you know, how romance really scratches a kind of primordial itch. It feels, it hits you emotionally first, and then the story waves over you, crashes over you. And I think that's the power of all genre, is this idea that the stories have to be compelling, they have to keep you interested, and you know, keep you turning the pages, in a way that, and I don't, I'm with you. I don't understand why that's somehow less valuable. It feels more valuable in a lot of ways.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:04:24 / #
RIght. I think it's because there's so much of it. Humans, just in general, tend to blow off anything that's got tons of it around. And there we are inundated with stories from film, from TV, from audiobooks, from books. It's just everywhere, so we tend not to give it a lot of respect.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:43 / #
So back to your books. Are there books of yours that you're the most proud of or that you hear the most from readers about?
Sarah MacLean 1:04:52 / #
Maybe those are two different books.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:54 / #
Yeah, could be.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:04:55 / #
I've always heard a lot about Ravished. And that's because it is the most fundamental version of my core story.
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:02 / #
Yeah.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:05:03 / #
And that's it's beauty and the beast thrown in with the trust thing.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:08 / #
For me, it's because Harriet says, "Well, it's not like I'm doing anything with my virginity." (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:15 / #
A classic line forever.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:16 / #
It's the greatest moment in romance history when Harriet says that! (laughter)
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:05:21 / #
What is this doing, yeah? So I hear a lot about that one. But to tell you the truth, I, the book I love best is always the one I just finished. And I suppose that's because it's the one that I just most recently wrote my heart into, you know. And people tend to quote lines back at me. I'll hear lines from books and forget I wrote the line. I think the only line I really remember writing, and it's only because I heard it quoted so many times after the book came out, which was, "Good news. She doesn't need therapy." (laughter) That was from Perfect Partners, and I've heard that line my whole life. (laughs)
Sarah MacLean 1:06:05 / #
Proof Jayne Ann Krentz is not from New York City. (laughter) So that's great. Do you feel like there is a book that you, is there a book of yours that you wish would outlive you? If you could choose one?
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:06:25 / #
It isn't, I don't think of my own books as being that kind of book that would speak to future generations. I don't, it'd be nice if it did, but I don't have a strong sense, it's not part of what I'm trying to write for. But what I hope outlives and lives on is the genre itself. Because I think the romance genre is probably the core genre from which everything else derives. You can't write any of the other genres without that core story of relationships. At least they won't be very interesting stories if you don't. [include romance] So I hope we never, I hope as a culture, we never lose the romance genre, simply because I think it is, it's a critical voice and a critical kind of story that we need, because it's all about the foundation of a union, a family and a community. And that core value is what holds civilization together. So there we go. We need romance to keep civilization going.
Sarah MacLean 1:07:38 / #
Amen.
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:39 / #
So much pressure.
Sarah MacLean 1:07:42 / #
I think that's a perfect place to end. Jen, do you have anything else?
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:45 / #
No, this was unbelievable. I'm going to go lay in my bed and think for a long time.
Sarah MacLean 1:07:53 / #
It really, it's transformational this conversation. It makes you think. I mean, when she said, "genre carries the myth." Stop it. I just, I immediately wrote it down on a post-it note.
Jennifer Prokop 1:08:05 / #
Yes. Well, I mean, so I said at the beginning that we recorded this months ago, right? We're actually recording the topper the week before it airs and this part. And I have been thinking about that part of the conversation for so long. Not only because I think it's so smart about what genre does and why it works the way it does. You know, specifically the thing that she said too about in genre characters are called upon to do the right thing.
Sarah MacLean 1:08:33 / #
Aww, right! It just makes sense!
Jennifer Prokop 1:08:35 / #
It's just to make sense, right? Like this myth making aspect of it. But next week we are going to be talking about a historical romance called Passion. And one of the things that we ended up talking about and I think we've talked about over and over again, is why it is that so many readers will come after historical authors and say, "That's not true." I think a lot of people look at it about like historical accuracy. But it's, when you think about it instead as being no, they're fighting. They don't like the myth changing on them.
Sarah MacLean 1:09:06 / #
They don't like characters doing the right thing in a way that, you know, they aren't used to.
Jayne Ann Krentz 1:09:11 / #
Or they don't like valorizing characters that they've never thought of as being...
Sarah MacLean 1:09:16 / #
Worthy of valor. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:09:18 / #
Yes. And so I was thinking about it so much as I was re-listening because I was like, this, to me really helps understand these are not people that are going to be swayed by, "Oh, but the word cunt has been around for, you know, hundreds of years!" Because that's not, it's not about historical accuracy. It's about, "I don't like that I'm not the primary character in this myth anymore.
Sarah MacLean 1:09:42 / #
Right. The hero of it.
Jennifer Prokop 1:09:44 / #
And I think that that then if you think about these changing mores as being these conversations are a proxy for not just how romance is changing, but how society is changing and who we make a place for, and who gets to be the star of the show? Then those conversations just take on a new kind of relevance and importance. One that I think I would approach in a different way, in the future, after thinking about what what Jayne said.
Sarah MacLean 1:10:13 / #
Yeah. I think that there is such power, I mean, clearly we talked about this in the episode with her, but there's such a sense with Jayne that she carried the banner of romance for a while. And she carried that banner because of this, because of her bedrock belief that romance and genre fiction are the successors of the core stories of us as humans.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:43 / #
And the core stories of us as a society. right?
Sarah MacLean 1:10:46 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:47 / #
I mean, lay me down. Even just saying it I got covered goosebumps, like, "Oh, that's what it is! Of course!
Sarah MacLean 1:10:53 / #
Yeah. I mean, and that's without even talking about core story, which she is so brilliant about. I mean, she was the first person who ever said, "core story" to me, I think. And talk about somebody who just understands her work.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:53 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:11:04 / #
And never deviates from her path. And even with all, I had no idea that so many of these pen names came because she was quote, "failing," right?
Jennifer Prokop 1:11:25 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:11:26 / #
That she had to restart her career so many times. The idea that Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick/Jayne Castle/Stephanie James had to restart, had to reboot is bananas to me, because I do think of her as being the best of us in so many ways. You know, especially coming off the re-read of Ravished that we did.
Jennifer Prokop 1:11:50 / #
We have talked a lot about the Trailblazers in terms of, offline, what are the things that keep coming up over and over again? Vivian Stephens, the role of those, Woodiwiss, right? The things that really were markers for so many of these writers, but the thing that I keep thinking about is, but what about our listeners or the, you know, new, young, up and coming authors to hear that Jayne Ann Krentz was like, "Yeah, I was a failure." I mean I was like...
Sarah MacLean 1:12:19 / #
"My agent told me I should try historicals, and we didn't even tell them I was the author." That is, aside from just being almost unfathomable, the other side of it is so inspirational!
Jennifer Prokop 1:12:37 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:12:38 / #
You know, not to be cheesy about it, but the idea that she, that this kind of rockstar, a true Trailblazer, struggled over and over again and had to reinvent herself over and over again, it's really amazing. Especially because, on the the New Year's Eve episode, I said my sister was looking for an old Stephanie James. Which by the way, we think we found. We'll put in show notes. But there's this idea that failure to the industry also, is, looks very different to readers.
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:19 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:13:20 / #
Then failure to readers, because my sister, who is in her fifties, and read that Stephanie James book in the '80s, does not believe that that book, or Stephanie James are...
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:30 / #
No.
Sarah MacLean 1:13:31 / #
In fact, I had to tell her that Stephanie James was Jayne Ann Krentz. So she was like, "Whatever happened to her?"
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:36 / #
You're like, oh, it's better for you.
Sarah MacLean 1:13:38 / #
She did okay. (laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:40 / #
She's doing all right. That's the part I think that is really, in a lot of ways, just really almost wildly inspiring. Because I think it is so easy in our modern world, or wherever we are right now to think, if I don't, that it has to be a steady, upward trajectory. And if it's not, you know, if it's not that...
Sarah MacLean 1:14:08 / #
You're not an instant bestseller.
Jennifer Prokop 1:14:10 / #
Then you're a failure, and it really speaks to no, this is a marathon, it is not a sprint, and there are going to be times you're going to fall down. There's going to be times you have to, you know, reinvent yourself come up with a new name, abandon a sub-genre you love because it is not the right time to be on that wave.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:31 / #
Fantasy, I mean, speculative fiction, speculative romance, it still doesn't have a strong foothold, and it's not out of line to suggest that Jayne Ann Krentz is the founder of that particular sub-genre, and you know, still, we're still fighting for that to claim space there.
Jennifer Prokop 1:14:52 / #
So, I mean, I think that that's sometimes the hard part about romance is, you know, I think I'm a deeply pragmatic person, and sometimes I'm like, you know, the things I personally, as an individual reader want, like and think are great, or not what the market will bear right now. And you know what? Oh, well, figure out what is going on in the market right now and enjoy it 'til your thing comes back around. I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:52 / #
Yeah. And I think that that's kind of what I took away from this conversation, what I have taken away from most of my conversations with Jayne is you can have both, right? You can both write what you love, and write to market. I mean, there is a space for both of those things. But her pragmatism, to use your word, is a lot about sustaining a career. I mean, sometimes you write to market, because that's what the market wants, and you know, you can deliver it and you know, you can succeed with it. And you know, every one of those books makes room for you to write the book, you know, in space.
Jennifer Prokop 1:16:03 / #
The book, that right, eventually you hope to make room for. There was a part where she was talking about, we were like how's romance changed? And she joked and said, "cell phones," and she was really talking about, essentially, if you are right now, if you're talking about celebrities, or politicians or technology that exists right now, that it really limits you, because your, it kind of almost takes away from that mythological aspect.
Sarah MacLean 1:16:34 / #
Sure.
Jennifer Prokop 1:16:34 / #
And one of the things I found myself, everyone has heard me ranting and raving at some point or another about how annoyed I am when people are using really old pop culture only in their books, and I'm like, well, if you think about it as mythmaking, I guess people our age are really trying to entrench Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the American myth or whatever. But it's really interesting to also think about, I personally think still, when we see that disconnect between the author, and their personal myths, or cultural myths versus their characters, and this, so I just, I found this conversation with her to be so generative in thinking new ways about things that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Sarah MacLean 1:17:21 / #
Yeah. Well, it's also that piece of, you know, the balance of doing the important, romance doing the important work of society, right.
Jennifer Prokop 1:17:32 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:17:33 / #
And also romance placing a character and a love story in a specific time.
Jennifer Prokop 1:17:40 / #
Right,
Sarah MacLean 1:17:40 / #
That, you know, 40 years from now, hopefully, we don't, we don't have that conversation anymore. So I think, I of course, always think about, you know, that is a struggle, that is a particular struggle with contemporaries, but it also is so important for us who don't, for those of us who don't write contemporaries to think about that, because the conversations that our characters are having on page. You know, the the work of the genre is to figure out how to have those conversations without aging the book, dating the book. And maybe sometimes that's impossible, you know, I don't know. I think about that Nora Roberts book we read where the hero smokes all the time.
Jennifer Prokop 1:18:23 / #
Sure.
Sarah MacLean 1:18:24 / #
And it's like, how could she have known?
Jennifer Prokop 1:18:26 / #
Of course. Well, and I mean, I think that's the part where it's like working too hard to make your books out of time sometimes means...
Sarah MacLean 1:18:38 / #
But sometimes, yeah, then you get like, I've been thinking about The Hating Game a lot recently, right? Because as you know, I love The Hating Game so much. And the movie, and one of the things that I think Sally made a real choice about is you have no idea, it's in a city, but the city is very amorphus, right? There's no, there's no city, because she didn't want to place it in, she didn't want to ground it in a place. And I think that there is a reason, that's one of the reasons why The Hating Game is a global success, because everybody can place it in their particular, the city they love the most. And then the movie, put it in New York, and it was like, oh, huh. Now these are New Yorkers in a car, you know?(laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 1:19:25 / #
Right, it changes it.
Sarah MacLean 1:19:26 / #
Why are they driving? (laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 1:19:28 / #
It's and these are I think, really, I mean, I could have this conversation over and over and over again. But I just, like I said, I think the thing that was really interesting for me is, I sometimes get really stuck in this conversation. I'm just you know, annoying the shit out of people saying the same thing over and over again, and I found this conversation with her to really give me new avenues for these questions and new ways to think about the genre itself. Well, I guess I would say also, thank you to everyone for letting me have my Vietnam moment again.
Sarah MacLean 1:19:58 / #
Hey, listen, I will, I will have you and whoever you want to talk to about Vietnam talk about Vietnam anytime. Yeah, but it's interesting because it proves that we don't know what we're doing all the time. It's the Venn, it's that Venn diagram, right? What your English teacher says the author was sure what the author was doing. And we don't know, because we can't, we, you know, that Vietnam thing is a perfect example of we know what we're trying to do sometimes. But when something that massive, you know, and I think about Vietnam or you know, COVID is happening around us, and we're not overtly talking about it, but it's in there, it's in all the text. And so there it is, right, the genre carrying the myth.
Jennifer Prokop 1:20:51 / #
Last week, I ended up reading this book, I actually don't recommend, called Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon, and I found myself really having that moment. It's a nonfiction book by a Stanford professor, really disagreeing with a lot of what he said. And of course, then you can just, you know, take it to Twitter. And one of the things that he ended up talking about was the difference between, he admits that genre essentially is working, you can tell what genre's interested in only by looking at the collective.
Sarah MacLean 1:21:27 / #
I don't disagree with that.
Jennifer Prokop 1:21:28 / #
I absolutely agree with it. I was like, okay, we agree with this, but where we disagreed was him saying, essentially, he talked about Virginia Woolf and how, you know, Mrs. Dalloway, of course, is just superior, because it's the singular work of art as opposed to the genre, and I was kind of like, but that's what I'm actually interested in, is how that collective works.
Sarah MacLean 1:21:54 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:21:54 / #
How does it work, that there is a hive mind where everyone is somehow chewing on the same thing? And I think Jayne answers it for us, right? We're grappling with our own mythmaking. And that is interesting to me, where this guy was sort of like meh, that's, you know, not interesting to him. It's just this totally different perspective. Mrs. Dalloway and genre can exist together. There's no reason to choose one or the other, we can have both. That's what's amazing about it.
Sarah MacLean 1:22:25 / #
One of the things that I've been really struggling with over the last couple of weeks, is, you know, this best of the year lists, right? Not the sub-genre list, not the best mystery of the year, the best romance of the year, but best overall books lists, which a lot of the publishing media are, they're kind of culling together. They, at the end of the year, they cull together what they believe are the best lists, the best of the books of the year, by virtue of what other, what the big critics have all named their ten best books, right? So it's, you know, everybody makes their list of ten, and the ones that are on multiple lists rise to the top. And so of course, if you have, say, The New York Times make a list of the 10 best books of the year, there might be one romance on it. It's rare, but there might be, you know, and other places, too. But that romance or that thriller, or that mystery, or that sci-fi novel, never makes it to that sort of, "and these are the 10 best novels of the year." And so I often think to myself, there's so much missing from these lists, and we know that by virtue of making a list, there's going to be stuff that's missing. But the idea that whole segments of mythmaking text, of myth text, is, are the myths of this time and place and society and culture are missing from these lists and just lost, right? Without Rebecca Romney, they're lost.
Jennifer Prokop 1:22:33 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:22:43 / #
What are we doing?
Jennifer Prokop 1:23:10 / #
So that's it. I mean, I was essentially having the same thought to myself, right. And I think, look, we obviously are genre fans for a lot of reasons, that we love romance for a lot of reasons.
Sarah MacLean 1:24:12 / #
But empirically, right. I don't read sci-fi, but I do think that surely there is a science fiction novel from the year that is remarkable and deserves to be held up as one of the best texts.
Jennifer Prokop 1:24:26 / #
I think, here's my theory. I remember when Stephen King used to be genre, and now he's like literature. And maybe it's just that there has to be, I don't know, maybe you just have to put in your time. I'm not sure.
Sarah MacLean 1:24:46 / #
I don't know. I mean, it's not like Nora hasn't put in her time, you know.
Jennifer Prokop 1:24:51 / #
I think there's a lot of you know, the patriarchy.
Sarah MacLean 1:24:54 / #
Oh, really? Do you think that? (laughs)
Jennifer Prokop 1:24:56 / #
I don't know. Maybe.
Sarah MacLean 1:24:57 / #
Anyway, Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, it's awesome. And it's, every time we have one of these conversations, I think to myself, we're never going to get them all, right. We're never going to get every person who held the banner. But I'm really, really happy we got Jayne.
Jennifer Prokop 1:25:14 / #
Yeah, me too.
Sarah MacLean 1:25:15 / #
And I hope you all were too. I hope you were all inspired the way we were, and you know, overwhelmed the way we were.
Jennifer Prokop 1:25:23 / #
Oh, god, yeah. Even listening to it again, I was like, I'm just gonna sit here for a while. So brilliant.
Sarah MacLean 1:25:29 / #
We're so, so grateful.
Jennifer Prokop 1:25:32 / #
So before we go, it's worth saying that Jayne has a new book coming out on January 18, called Lightning in a Mirror. It is book three of the Fogg Lake trilogy, of which I have read all of them. I mentioned it actually on the episode. And again, this is part of a series that has to do with intuition and you know, like sort of some of the very things that she was talking about. So if you would like to prepare for that you could read the first two books, The Vanishing and All the Colors of Night and then prepare yourself for Lightning in the Mirror which comes out in a couple of weeks.
Sarah MacLean 1:26:07 / #
We are Fated Mates, you are listening to a Trailblazer episode, which we've been doing for all of Season Three and will likely continue to do until we die. (laughter) And you can listen to all the other Trailblazer episodes at fatedmates.net. You can find us @FatedMates on Twitter and @fatedmatespod on Instagram. Please tell us tell us how you're liking the Trailblazer episodes, shoot us emails if you would like Sarah@fatedmates.net or Jen@fatedmates.net. And tell us what you're thinking and shout about these Trailblazers because they deserve it.
Jennifer Prokop 1:26:51 / #
Next week is Passion with Lisa Valdez
Sarah MacLean 1:26:54 / #
Get ready. It's a ride. (laughs)