S05.02: Romance Novel Beginnings: Starting With a Bang!
Not that kind of bang! We’re talking about beginnings today, on the first interstitial of Season 5! This one edges into a bit more writing shop talk than usual, but we’re still name checking lots of favorite books, many of which we’ve done deep dives on already! So consider this your nudge to go back and read some great books we’ve talked about! Also, Sarah has Covid, Jen’s on the mend, Fated States is back, and next week, we’re reading Marrying Winterborne.
Thanks to Lucy Leroux, Eva Moore and Torie Jean for sponsoring the episode. Read Making Her His, Caught a Vibe and Finding Gene Kelly now.
Next week, our first read along of the season is Lisa Kleypas’s Marrying Winterborne. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or at your local indie.
Show Notes
When a book starts in the middle of the action, it’s called in medias res
If you’re in MA, check out the Rom-Con, a full day celebration of “rom”ance at the “Con”cord free public library this Satruday, Sept 24, from 10-3. Tickets are free!
Fated States has returned, and it looks like we’ll be phonebanking every Saturday starting Oct 1 through the election.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Lucy Leroux, author of Making Her His, available in print,
in ebook and via Kindle Unlimited.
Visit authorlucyleroux.com
and
Eva Moore, author of Caught a Vibe, available in print and ebook
at Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and Barnes & Noble
Visit 4evamoore.com
and
Torie Jean, author of Finding Gene Kelly, available in print,
in ebook, and via Kindle Unlimited.
Visit toriejean.com
S03.27: Retellings in Romance Novels with Kate Clayborn
We are joined by the fabulous Kate Clayborn — the first in the Fated Mates five-timer club! — to talk about about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book, Love At First, which you can get wherever books are sold. We talk about the difference between retellings and homages, about Shakespeare and mythology and retellings of classic texts versus modern ones. And of course, we fill your TBR.
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you.
Next week, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's A Matter of Class, a short historical novel. Get it for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or Google Books.
Show Notes
Welcome Kate Clayborn, our first five-timer. She was with us for the Best Friend’s Sibling Interstitial, Kresley’s The Player, the Sickbed Scenes Interstitial, Derek Craven Day 2021, and today’s interstitial on Romance Retellings.
Texas and the rest of America got hit with some espically bad winter weather this February. This is climate change.
Kate released Love at First this week, which is an homage to Romeo and Juliet. Kate’s 2020 book, Love Lettering, is an Overdrive read. Get it today with no wait!
Dr. Jill Biden loves Valentine’s Day.
JK Rowling is a problem, and it’s changed the way many Harry Potter fans think about her books.
Yes, yes, the English Teacher memes are so funny. Well take that.
Tl;dr: archetypes are about character,while retellings are about plot.
In Where Dreams Begin, Zachary Bronson is a hero that follows the Beast archetype, and Jen saw it in the scene where Holly first enters his house.
Story can be a safe way to explore terrifying ideas about society and people. For example, both La Llorona and Medea are about mothers who kill their children, but have a kind of distance that the story of Andrea Yates does not.
Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes writes about storytelling and the universal ID.
Maybe you don't know about the story of Salman Rushdie and the fatwa against him for his novel The Satanic Verses.
Our next read along episode will be A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.
Music
Retellings from Literature
Retellings of Fairy Tales
Retellings from Pop Culture
S03.03: Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James: Romance Has Gotten Hotter And I Think I Like It
If we’re going to talk about the last 10 years of romance — what we’d call modern romance — it’s basically impossible to do that out in the world without someone who doesn’t know much about the genre asking about EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey. This week, Fated Mates is talking about Fifty Shades. Or, rather, we’re talking about what we're really talking about when we talk about Fifty Shades of Grey.
At no point in this discussion do we talk about tampons. You’re welcome.
Next week, we’ve got an interstitial for you! And the week after, we’re deep diving on Milla Vane’s A Heart of Blood and Ashes, which is a long fantasy romance. If you are a reader who needs content warnings, you might want to check out reviews on Goodreads.
Find it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or Bookshop.org.
Show Notes
There are honestly so many articles about Fifty Shades that Jen couldn't possibly even link to them. But the one about the increase in ER visits, necktie sales up 23%, and Jen wrote about the history of romance between Fabio and Fifty Shades.
Drunk Austen went through a rather spectacular break-up last week; we promise never to do this and swear we are full legal partners in our current venture.
Fanfiction brought Christina Lauren, Tara Sue Me, Sally Thorne and so many others to us. And lots of great BDSM was written after Fifty Shades by too many authors to count, but many think of The Original Sinners series by Tiffany Reisz as being truly excellent.
There's a reason why women hate dealing with car salesmen and mechanics. Jen wants you to know that if you're in Chicago and looking for a mechanic, the guys at Ashland Tire and Auto will never treat you like that.
Perhaps you're interested in whether or not Fifty Shades of Grey was copyright infringement?
The 2010 He-cession vs the 2020 she-cession.
Sarah reviewed Grey for the Washington Post, and just a few weeks ago, Midnight Sun (Twilight from Edward's Point of View was released.
Ope. We forgot to talk about Thomas Hardy, so just read this article from The Guardian instead.
Mrs. Robinson refers to a character in the 1967 film The Graduate.
Flat Stanley is a character in a children's book, but here we are talking about the theory that readers insert themselves into a book and become the main character. Many people believed that teenage girls reading Twilight imaged themselves as Bella, for example, but that's deeply rooted in misogny. In Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, Laura Kinsale suggested that women reading romance imagine themselves as the hero rather than the heroine.
Fifty Shades of Grey sold a lot of fucking copies. A lot. A lot!
Lori Perkins was the editor of Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey. You can also check out Hard Core Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, Bestsellers, and Society by Eva Illouz.
Jen refers to Christian as the Marlboro Man, a symbol of a kind of gruff, male, American renegade loner.
BDSM contracts are a thing!
Where does Kink come from? And what Fifty Shades gets right and wrong about kink and BDSM.
In two weeks: A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane. Has at The Book Pushers has a reviw with content warnings, so check that if you need to.
Sarah has a contemporary novella in the Naught Brits anthology which comes out September 15, preorder today!
