S07.05: Some Light Kidnapping: Restraints are for Amateurs
An episode for the old school romance readers in the audience, we're talking about kidnapping this week! A trope that either absolutely works for readers (aka us) or absolutely doesn't, we talk about why that is, how the original romances of the 80s and 90s installed these buttons and how we still see the bones of old school kidnapping in delicious romances of today. That, and Jen reminds Sarah of books she wrote one time.
If you want more romance content, maybe you want to join our Patreon, where you get another episode from us each month, and access to the incredible readers and listeners and brilliant people on the Fated Mates discord! Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.
Next week, our first read along of Season 7 will be Molly O'Keefe's Everything I Left Unsaid duology, selected by Jen which despite the first book being a cliffhanger should not surprise you because she contains multitudes. The second book is The Truth About Him. Read them both and get ready for Jen to talk to you for hours. You will thank us.
Also! We're back on the phonebanking train this election season! Join us Saturdays between now and Election Day to phonebank with fellow romance lovers. Jen & Sarah are joined by special guests who will knock your socks off! Learn more and register at fatedmates.net/fatedstates. If phonebanking isn't your thing, we're also raising money for downticket house and senate races, because state legislatures may not be sexy, but they sure hold all the power. Learn more, and give what you can at fatedmates.net/givingcircle.
Show Notes
Learning the Tropes has covered every Kleypas book if you’re in the mood for that.
Next week, our read along is Everything I Left Unsaid and The Truth About Him by M. O’Keefe, so get to reading.
Books Mentioned This Episode
The Sponsors
June Westwood, author of Grave Temptation, available in print, ebook, audiobook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
KL Parsons, author of Love By a Landslide, available in print and ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Jenni Bara, author of The Foul Out, available in print and ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
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
S03.37: Widows in Romance
We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
Last week, we talked about Big Pharma, and if you want more of that, read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s about the Sackler family and how they made billions on Oxycontin which was a huge factor in the creation of the opioid epidemic.
Daisy Jones and the Six is a great novel, and the full-cast audiobook is supposed to be amazing. The Reese Witherspoon book club is the definition of the full glow-up.
Sarah made some Maple Oatmeal Muffins, and maybe you want the recipe. Why food bloggers include some pre-recipe chatter.
The question of freshman year dorm room decoration is of new significance to Jen since Lil Romance will be heading off to college in the fall. Might we recommend a Pulp Fiction movie poster or some Absolut Vodka ads?
If we’re talking skyscrapers, meaning buildings over 150M (about 500 feet) tall, when this was recorded in April of 2021, Cleveland has 4, Denver has 7, Chicago has 127, and New York has 284. According to wikipedia, only nine cities in the world have over 100 buildings 150M tall. The other seven are Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (118).
Check out the Sassy Podcast and The Babysitter’s Club Club. No, not that kind of babysitter.
We love the movie Widows.
The merry widow is an opera and a kind of sexy lingerie.
We did an episode on Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe way back in season one.
Primogeniture laws are all about who inherits titles and money and estates, and wasn't changed in England until 2013.
Apparently there are lots of misconceptions about Arabian horses.
More about Victorian era mourning requirements.
Historically you couldn’t marry your brother’s widow
All about gorillas and where the live, and actually it turns out a gorilla really could kill you in a fight. Sarah was on Learning the Tropes talking about The Earl Takes All, in case you need more of that.
Spoiler alert about The Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
We have two read-along books in May. On the 12th, we’ll be reading Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. On the 26th, we’ll be reading Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. It’s out of print and not available as an eBook, so order a used copy from Amazon or ThriftBooks, or check out the audio.
Join the "Romance sticker of the month" club
Preorder Bombshell, which comes out August 24th.
Music
S03.20: Romance Families
It's the holidays and we're talking family romances because many of us are with our families or thinking about them this week. No matter whether you have a perfect family life or one that's a bit more of a journey, romances focusing on families have been around from the beginning -- this week, we're talking royal houses like the Westmorelands and the Malorys, the LeVeqs and the Montgomeries, and the Holmeses and the Hathaways. We also talk a lot about our own families...which was unintended, but there it is.
You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order here!
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! For the next week or so, we've got a lot of fun stuff in the hopper -- be on the lookout for a few extra episodes!
And, if you're celebrating this week -- Merry Christmas!
Show Notes
Richard Gere wasn’t old when he filmed Pretty Woman, even though he was going gray.
Samantha Jaxon posted a very upsetting TikTok, and that's all we have to say about that.
The days of the big and small envelope in college admissions are over, but they do have the Common App and that seems nice.
Maybe, you too, would like a karaoke microphone for your future weather-person.
The 1987 movie Roxanne with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah is a Cyrano retelling, and it has lots of very funny jokes and one-liners.
There is one more phone-banking opportunity on January 4, 2021. You should join us!
Bridgerton drops on December 25th, along with Wonder Woman 1984. Virgin River is another Netflix show based on a romance series.
Just a heads up about the photo array, I’m just including the first book of a family series because otherwise it will be overwhelming!
70s and 80s Old School romance series with families include: the Malorys by Johanna Lindsey, The Montgomerys and Taggerts by Jude Deveraux, and the Westmorelands by Judith McNaught.
90s families: the LeVeq family by Beverly Jenkins, The Cynster family by Stephanie Laurens, the Rocking M series by Elizabeth Lowell.
2000s families: Brenda Jackson’s Westmoreland family, the Essex Sisters by Eloisa James, The Holmes Brothers by Farrah Rochon, and the Hathaways by Lisa Kleypas.
2010s families: The Blackshear family by Cecilia Grant, The Ravenels by Kleypas, the Duke’s Daughters by Megan Frampton, the Mackenzie series by Jennifer Ashley, the Greene sisters in the Uptown Girls series by Joanna Shupe, the Talbot sisters in Sarah’s Scandal and Scoundrel series, the von Hasenberg sisters in the Consortium Rebellion series by Jessie Mihalik, the Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews, and the Sullivans by Bella Andre.
Brenda Jackson was the first Black romance author to hit the New York Times bestseller list with the book Irresistible Forces in 2008. It's not a Westmoreland book, but the Westmoreland series is currently 30+ books and growing.
S02.42: Unusual Historicals: Freewheeling with Joanna Shupe
This week it's one of our very faves, Joanna Shupe is back! Joanna has a new book out June 30th -- The Devil of Downtown -- which is basically perfection, so we're talking about why Gilded Age romance is the best, and why everyone should be reading unusual historicals (historicals set outside the Regency in England). Get ready, your TBR will groan after this one!
Oh, and did you know Sarah also has a book out June 30th? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!
As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Oh, and did you know Sarah also has a book out June 30th? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!
As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
This is Joanna's second time on Fated Mates. The first was to discuss the enemies to lovers trope in Prisoner of My Desire and Kiss of a Demon King.
Speaking of IAD: ever seen the IAD spreadsheet of Wonder, created be Sarah Hawley from the Wicked Wallflowers Podcast? Oh, and if you haven't read it, why not do it this summer? There's a group read going on right now on a subgroup of Sarah's Facebook Book Club!
All about Homage, allusion, and allegory in case it's been a while since you were in an English class.
Modern Library! Where are our romances?
Sarah has a bunch of online events this summer.
Many of the old American historicals support an ahistorical white settler, Manifest Destiny, story of Westward Expansion. Savage Thunder was a particularly problematic one, and Jen only read it for the "sex on a horse" scene. Maybe watch some Deadwood instead?
Which came first? Eurocentrism or the Anglophiles?
Gone With the Wind is just Lost Cause propaganda. Don't at us. Speaking of wars: The Napoleonic Wars took place during the Regency, but no one ever really talks about them in Regency romances.
Romance's Regency blueprint was created by Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer.
Nipple piercing has been around for a long time. Look for it in Joanna's next book.
Joanna's fascination with The Gilded Age started with Edith Wharton. The time period is the setting for the Uptown Girls series, but the Gilded Age also has lots of uncomfortable parallels to today. If you're looking for more information about The Gilded Age, you should know that Jack Mulligan was based on real life mobster Paul Kelly. Joanna also recommends the following books: Low Life, The Gangs of New York, and Incredible New York. If you want to hear Joanna talk about The Gilded Age, join her Facebook Group on July 9th, 2020 for a virtual tour!
If you haven't ever been to Ellis Island, it's excellent. It's a dynamic museum with tons of interesting facts about European immigration to New York. Speaking of history, if you're interested in learning about The Great Migration, the setting of A Champion's Heart, you should read The Warmth of Other Suns.
Food is everyone's love language until the jello molds and casseroles start to arrive.
What do you mean you haven't seen The Hudsucker Proxy?
S02.19: So You Want to Read a Historical
We’re launching a Special Romance Report here at Fated Mates — a series of interstitials introducing readers to the subgenres of Romance (there are seven!) — we’re talking about why they exist, what they’re trying to do, what to expect from them, what might have readers hesitating, and where to start! This week, we’re starting with Sarah’s favorite subgenre — Historicals! We’re talking about why they’re sexy, progressive, feminist, and very not boring.
Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!
Next week, we’re talking Kristen Callihan’s Managed, which you may recognize as “SCOTTIE,” which is how Jen refers to it because she loves him so much. We think you’ll love it, too, and if you have time, read the next in the series, Fall, which is one of Sarah’s top 10 romances ever. Read Managed at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
RWA imploded and it's such a long, complicated story, but this article from Vox and this timeline by Claire Ryan are what will catch you up.
Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start: there are seven romance subgenres: historical, contemporary, romantic suspense, paranormal, inspirational, erotic romance, and YA.
When it comes to the grandmother of historicals, don't forget that Jane Austen was writing contemporaries.
Johanna Lindsey died in October, and her family announced it publicly in December. The New York Times obituary was trash, so read the Washington Post or Entertainment Weekly one instead. Check out the Twitter hastag #MyFirstJohanna for people's stories about their first book by Lindsey (including Sarah's), and maybe listen to our episode on Gentle Rogue.
Support Farrah Rochon for an organ in her sister's memory. And come this summer, buy her upcoming book The Boyfriend Project.
In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah wrote about what his mother said about her second husband wanting to put her in a cage: For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”
Mary Wollstonecraft is all the evidence you need that feminists have been around for a long time.
Jen recommends In the Dream House by Carmen Marie Machado, which is about domestic abuse in a queer relationship. The quote from Jose Estaban Munoz is, "When the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper representing a straight present."
When talking about The Doctor's Discretion by EE Ottoman, Sarah is very excited about a book called The Butchering Art by medical historian Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, whose sometimes very gross Instagram is amazing. Doctor James Berry was trans man who lived and worked in London in the mid 1800s.
If you haven't listened to our episode about Beverly Jenkins's Indigo what are you waiting for?
Avon Red was a short-lived series, but then again, so was The Red Shoe Diaries. Sarah recommends On These Silken Sheets by Sabrina Darby from that series.
Whores of Yore is a great blog, and definitely proves Jen's assertion that as soon as someone invented cameras, someone else wanted to get naked in front of it. Dr. Kate Lister, who founded the site, has a book called A Curious History of Sex coming out Feb 2020.
Next time you are in New York, visit The Museum of Sex. Sarah recommends Hallie Rubenhold's The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris' List (which out of print, but available in audio, and is the book Harlots is based on). Hallie Rubenhold's The Five is not out of print, and also excellent--it is very not a romance, and about the victims of the Ripper killings.
KJ Charles is so ridiculously good. Sarah's favorites are Wanted a Gentleman and Think of England and Jen loves Band Sinister. Nicola Davidson's Surrey Sexual Freedom Society series is fantastic. Alyssa Cole's An Extraordinary Union is amazing. Monica McCarty wrote a historical series that imagines Highlanders as being kind of like Navy SEALs. Sarah talked about one of the books in the series, The Arrow on the Scotland interstitial. Honestly, we talked about so many authors, so just click on any one of the images in the photo gallery below for some of our favorites by those authors.
But stickers and buttons from Kelly, tees and bags from Jordandene, take our reading challenge, and answer our survey.
romances we mentioned
nonfiction we mentioned
S02.05: James Malory Gets Bangs: Gentle Rogue
Sarah picked this week’s read without having read it recently, and she shockingly doesn’t regret it! We’re talking Johanna Lindsey’s Gentle Rogue—arguably one of the most beloved texts of the genre, complete with a reformed pirate and a heroine who is having absolutely none of his nonsense. We’ll talk about heroines who are sex positive, about obvious references to the slave trade that are problematic and somehow utterly glossed over, archetypal brothers, and about the shocking lack of plot in this book (which we don’t mind a bit).
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!
In two weeks, we’re going back to paranormal with the first book in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Dark Lover. It’s a whole ride. Strap in. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie (it’s currently only $2.99 in ebook!).
Show Notes
Jen's the romance correspondent for Kirkus, and she recently wrote about Fabio who appeared on the original cover of Gentle Rogue. Also, this piece by Kelly Faircloth about romance covers is amazing.
When Sarah dreamed of Amy Schumer, I wonder if it was anything like this?
7th grade is awful for everyone.
The Magic of You is all about Georgie's brother Warren.
Here's some basic information about slavery in Jamaica and sugar plantations in particular. And the Slave Voyages site is an amazing and well-researched online archive you should also check out, which includes a searchable database of transatlantic boats and the numbers of enslaved people on board each ship.
Although we didn't mention it the podcast, if you're reading romances where white people have weddings, parties, or balls on plantations...that's terrible.
In real life, billionaires are always a problem.
For your consideration: a goodreads list of ugly duckling romances.
A thread from EE Ottoman about why pants are not the problem... or the answer.
We love Jen Porter.
Lord of Scoundrels will definitely be making an appearnce in season 2.
Sometimes we don't know if it's better to get bangs or just deal with our feelings.
Why are there so many YA love triangles?
The Bridgertons, in case you don't know.
Jen thinks James Malory is a Mary Sue.
Coming up in two weeks, Dark Lover by J. R. Ward.
An official Romancelandia poll on the best emjoi for pegging. I don't even know what to say.
S02.02: The Alpha in Romance Novels
As we lead into Season Two, and consider the fact that some of our faves are definitely going to be problematic, we’re talking about the alpha hero this week — we’re also tackling the beta hero and the cinnamon roll, and why these archetypes largely don’t work for us. We’re talking romance heroes who changed the game for us and the genre, about how hard it is to turn the alphahole around, and how satisfying it is to watch it happen. We’re also talking the female gaze (of course) and the patriarchy (like always).
Next week, we’re digging into one of our original alphas, Derek Craven! You can find Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie. It's currently $2.99 in digital everywhere, so snatch it up!
Show Notes
The alpha, the beta, and the cinnamon roll.
You should all follow Cora Harrington (lingerie addict) on twitter. It's all so beautiful.
Jen screams about first person a lot, but MOSTLY about first person present.
It was Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown that was all in the male POV, and this review is so great. Jen's going to follow Alaina, the author, on twitter. UPDATE: The Browne Pop Culture Library was able to find the descriptions of Demon Rumm, and as Jen predicted, they were in the back matter of the previous month's books! Thanks, Steve!
Alec Kinkaid, The Montgomerys, James Mallory, and the Westmoreland heroes.
Did you somehow miss us talking about The Professional?
It the Movie may or may not be your cup of tea, but this discussion of Jane Doe with Victoria Helen Stone has some really interesting points about horror and romance.
Bourne from A Rogue by Any Other Name is "Sarah's worst hero" by which she means it was just reall satisfying to break him.
You have to listen to our antiheroes episode if you want to know what it means to "take the finger."
P in V is great, but 2Ps in V is even better.
Hillary Clinton was wrong about romance novels, and Lisa Kleypas explains why.
Adriana Herrera's American Dreamers series is one of our faves.
What it means to be a Kinsey 2.
Romance for Raices has a few more days. Spend enough money and you can pick an upcoming interstitial topic!
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah MacLean 0:00 / #
Umm.....interstitial 2.1 is that what we call them? I don't understand.
Jennifer Prokop 0:05 / #
We're not doing point anything.
Sarah MacLean 0:08 / #
No, we're not using points anymore. That's what that we promised our producer that we would never label anything point anything. But isn't this like season, it's like 201, I don't know, there's like a TV numbering system. We're not going to use it. But it's season two, interstitial one is what it is. No more point five episodes. You guys are gonna have to pay attention to the titles now. I mean, do as we say not as we do.
Jennifer Prokop 0:38 / #
Obviously, you should just listen to everything and not even worry about it. That would be the ideal thing for all of us.
Jennifer Prokop 0:47 / #
So welcome to Fated Mates everyone. Are we rage interstitialing here Sarah?
Sarah MacLean 0:58 / #
I think we are. I'm pretty rage-y about this, and I want to have a talk.
Jennifer Prokop 1:03 / #
I know. Okay,
Sarah MacLean 1:05 / #
Maybe rage is too strong a word.
Jennifer Prokop 1:08 / #
We're unpacking.
Sarah MacLean 1:13 / #
You guys, here's where I'm at. Yesterday, I was walking in the park in Brooklyn, with my dog and my kid, and I had a thought that I didn't love about romance, and I wanted to unpack it. And so I texted Jen this thought, and she immediately called me. It was a Saturday morning at like, 10:30 / #. And she was like, it's too much to text, but these are my thoughts. And we had a whole conversation about patriarchy versus white supremacy versus anti-semitism in romance, and it was like 10:30 / # in the morning, on a Saturday, in my life, and I realized like, this is all I want out of life. Basically to have a thought about romance novels and then be able to fucking hash it out. Like, can we talk it out? And I said to Jen, we're not going to talk that out today, because we're going to talk that out many times over the next, however many episodes, but I said to Jen, recently, I really want to have a conversation about romance in 2019 and how we talk about the alpha. And like what the fuck that is, and why we are so weird about naming alphas and betas or cinnamon rolls or why we obsess over what the hero is in sort of a single word and also like why we resist so much of that character who, as I like to say, scratches an itch in fiction, but who of course we would never date in real life.
Jennifer Prokop 3:14 / #
And what this is really tied into and you and I talked have talked a lot about this, is the fantasy of romance.
Sarah MacLean 3:21 / #
Which is not just the fantasy of the romance novel, but also sort of packed into that is female fantasy, or women's fantasy or marginalized people's sexual fantasies.
Jennifer Prokop 3:38 / #
An example of this is, my favorite thing and romance. is that the heroine's underwear and bra always match.
Sarah MacLean 3:47 / #
Oh, I know. And they set the hero aflame.
Jennifer Prokop 3:52 / #
Yeah. And you know what, I don't think I actually own any matching bras and underwear.
Sarah MacLean 3:58 / #
I think one more time I wore a matching bra and underwear and Eric was like, whoa, what is this? I know. We hit the lottery today.
Jennifer Prokop 4:17 / #
One of my favorite Twitter feeds is that lingerie addict Twitter feed.
Sarah MacLean 4:20 / #
Oh, I don't know that. I'm going to subscribe to it.
Jennifer Prokop 4:23 / #
I think her name's Cora Harrington. I'm not sure. Anyway, and I'm always, these undergarments are gorgeous. I just want to admire them. And in no way in real life do I actually want to wear them. But I love them.
Sarah MacLean 4:44 / #
But also because you and I are, you know, our girls need a house man. They need to be, you know, engineered into clothing. And that sort of floofy frilly perfect underwear, it is not realistic in any way. But man, I love to read about it. I really do
Jennifer Prokop 5:11 / #
I think there's a lot of ways in which romance, and I think you and I agree on this. It's like real, but it's also fantasy. And the intersection of where those things work for some people and not for others is very fascinating to me. And I'm going to tell you, Sarah, I love an alpha. Whatever it is, we're defining that as...I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it.
Sarah MacLean 5:36 / #
And there are very clear reasons why I love it. I mean, you do. Here's the thing, like we've talked for the last I mean, for however many for 39 episodes we talked about, well, not for half of the episodes for 19 or 20 episodes. We talked about "Mine," right? And frankly when you're reading IAD like everybody's the fucking leader of the pack. Everybody's the best, the strongest, the most powerful, the king, the whatever, the primordial. Unbeatable in every way. And these things have often been marked as alpha traits. And I guess they are.
Sarah MacLean 6:27 / #
But that's not why we love them, I don't think. It's part of it. In the immortal words of Sierra Simone, "Power is sexy. I'm sorry, I don't make the rules." And every romance novel is about power, no matter what it is, no matter what kind of hero you're writing, romance novels are about power because relationships are about power. Everybody's relationship, in real life, any relationship you have with anybody else, is about power and parity. And when you have conflict in a relationship in real life or on the page, it's about power.
Jennifer Prokop 7:11 / #
And I would say that romance then to me really fundamentally, when I read it is about figuring outhow to navigate that, how to win at that.
Sarah MacLean 7:29 / #
That's the whole ball game. The navigation of power toward parity is the whole ball game in romance. And so we've talked a lot about the history of the genre on the podcast and as we move forward in season two, we're going to talk a lot more about the history of the genre, and the books that have established themselves as sort of Cornerstone texts in romance, right? How in many of these books, we're dealing with a hero who is in those early days so impenetrable, that literally his point of view is never on the page. We're going to talk about POV much more next week when we talk about "Dreaming of You." But--I'm not talking about first person versus third person here, which is what Jen likes to yell and scream about-- I'm talking about literally the narrator and the reader don't have access to the hero's thoughts at all in these early books.
Jennifer Prokop 8:41 / #
This is like a bit of an aside, It was the first time, and I think it was "Demon Rumm" by Sandra Brown, I was like trying to figure it out, where it was 'this book is only the hero's point of view.' And I'm kind of how did I hear about this? Because there was no Twitter and there's no social media. And it must have been in the back of the book, like coming next month. But I remember that being something worth, like something worth saying like, "Hey, this is happening and it's different and new."
Sarah MacLean 9:13 / #
Yeah. Interesting. But this is the thing right like when you are looking at a hero and those early books, the early Deverauxs, early Lindseys, early McNaughts, early Garwoods, Bertrice Small, we never ever saw the hero. We never saw inside his head. And so we were really dealing in those early days-- in my mind, like, this is me like I'm putting on my scholar hat, now-- in those early days we were looking at distilled patriarchy. The hero was representative of sort of a world that was not accessible to women, not accessible to the heroine, and not accessible to read the reader. And then the heroine starts to chip away at this rigid, stony character and unlocks Alec Kincaid or any number of the Montgomerys or James Mallory or any number of the Westmoreland heroes. And suddenly we have a ball game because we're able to see that the heroine ultimately lays out the hero. To the point, where in some cases, in a McNaught that we will read this season, the hero is literally dying on a battlefield because of the heroine. Because of a promise he made to her and he will not betray that promise because he loves her. So When we see a hero broken to that extent, and then rebuilt in this image of equality, it's delicious for us as readers who subconsciously are keenly aware of our lack of power in many of these relationships.
Jennifer Prokop 11:20 / #
And I think what's really interesting about that is it was so the way I read, I came into romance as a young reader. And yet now, when I read books that are heroine-only point of view, I have to pace myself with them. I can't do it all the time. I find it too hard to get to know the hero, It feels really like a like a bold choice on the part of the author to do such a thing. Because I'm really used now to having access to all of the characters in a romantic relationship in modern Romance and when people go another way it feels like a choice, and a risky one at that. You know, it's just really hard to sell me on the other character without me being able to see inside their head. Whether that be first person or third person it doesn't matter. I'm used to that being something that I get now in romance. I don't know if you feel the same way.
Sarah MacLean 12:29 / #
Obviously this is why one of my biggest challenges. As much as you're the one who, you know, goes to the mad about first person, the challenge with first person is that sometimes you don't get the important information from the perspective of the person that you need it from. So craft-wise one of the rules that we talk about all the time when you talk about POV and romance, and you talk about writing multiple POVs, is that when you are writing a scene, you should be writing the scene in the point of view of the character who has the most to lose. Interestingly, in these early romances, or in romances where you've got a big, bad impenetrable alpha, the character who has the most to lose in those early scenes, is the heroine because she's navigating this power structure and unable to gain enough footing to get herself into a position of power where he can lose something. However, in books like, well, last year when we talked about "The Professional" part of the challenge with "The Professional" is we never saw-- part of the challenge with all three of those books-- is that we never see the moment when the heroine is leaving from the hero's point of view. We just see him go animal. He goes feral. That first one, Alex, or Alexi, what's his name? I don't even fucking remember anymore. It's like those books are out of my head but in "The Professional," we don't see him go feral. In "The Master" we see Maxim run across the field and take the bullet and he's willing to do anything for her. And so we can sort of perceive his feralness. And I'm using feral in a very specific way here. I'm using it on purpose. That is an intentional use of the word feral. And then in "The Player" we see Dimitri punch the car. He can't control himself. And we talked about it in that episode. That's a problem moment. If that happened in real life, to your friend, you would be like, red flag, get the fuck away from that guy.
Jennifer Prokop 14:55 / #
Yeah. All the flags.
Sarah MacLean 14:57 / #
Holy shit. Call the police. That guy's horrible. But when it's happening on the page in a romance novel it's safer for us to love it. And what does that mean?
Jennifer Prokop 15:09 / #
I sometimes wonder if...you have a heroine-only point of view now, or maybe then, too. Maybe as we read some of these old books we'll dig into that. If you have to make that moment-- for the hero in this case, I feel like this really over time with the alpha hero. It's like, to me it's like very tied into MF romance, where it's like a heroine.-- I wonder if you don't have to make that low moment really over the top, because we have, it's the only way to signal to the reader, just how they really feel. Like you've [the author] cut them off from them [the readers]. And so in order for us to get it, does it have to be bigger, and I don't know the answer to that.
Sarah MacLean 16:00 / #
I think it does. I was looking online and somebody was talking about some book and how the low moment, the sort of dark night of the soul moment, was over-the-top. And we hear that a lot with romance like, oh, it's so over-the-top. I get that as a criticism for my books a lot, the the climactic scene is so over-the-top. And of course it's over the top, you have to break them. They have to be crushed. Look, I love every one of my heroes. Certainly I've written heroes who I've not loved most of the book, but by the time I get to that moment, which is usually, I don't know, 90% of the way through the book, I love those heroes. I really do and I don't want them to be broken, but they have to break. Because we have to see them laid low by the idea that they have lost everything, that they have lost everything of meaning. And the reality is, and you'll never convince me otherwise, that's because all I want is to see the patriarchy destroyed. If there's anything that is is a solid metaphor for patriarchy, it's this story. The fighting for power, the arguments about power, the back and forth about that power and the ultimate dismantling of a system and a man who is representative of that system, so that he can do nothing else but be a person who's looking for equality and a mate.
Jennifer Prokop 17:48 / #
I think a lot about--so what does that really mean in the books where it satisfies?
Sarah MacLean 17:56 / #
At some point I want to talk about the fact that you shouldn't be writing this consciously. That's the problem.
Jennifer Prokop 18:08 / #
Okay, so Darrell is a big horror movie fan. And he went to see "It" this weekend.
Sarah MacLean 18:15 / #
Did he enjoy it? It looks so scary. It looks so scary.
Jennifer Prokop 18:21 / #
He I think has a really high scary threshold, because he's like, it wasn't that scary. But what was really interesting is I was asking him about the ending, because I was like, Is there a way that horror movies always end that leave you-- as the viewer in this case-- right? Like, it's like that, like, what do you need to have a satisfying romance ending I feel like is I'm always interested in these like genre questions. But the thing I think a lot about in romance is that part of the breaking of the hero is that he has to say I love you. It has to be an emotional journey where part of it is this man admitting, "I have feelings."
Sarah MacLean 19:07 / #
Yeah, I'm human.
Jennifer Prokop 19:09 / #
Yes. "I have feelings. I'm human. I have to speak these feelings out loud." It is part of every romance that it's not just enough for a woman or heroine to say I can tell he loves me by the way he acts, part of the breaking of that hero has to be: I have to say it out loud. I have to feel those feelings. And it's different when they're soft cinnamon rolls the entire time.
Sarah MacLean 19:39 / #
Here's where I'm at. And this is going to be a controversial thing. I'm a little afraid to say it but whenever. When we talk about these soft books, and there is a place for them, because like I appreciate that that's part of the fantasy, too. I have so much to say. I have so many thoughts in my head. But here's the thing. When we talk about these soft books and these soft heroes and these cinnamon rolls and how much we love a hero which wants to hold the heroine, and cook for the heroine, and clean for the heroine, and be the heroine's, you know, person. So, okay, personally, this I'm not afraid to say. These books do nothing for me. I can appreciate them on a literary level, on a romance level. I can say that's a finely crafted book, I can say that's a finely written book, this person's a skilled writer, but they do nothing for me in a primal way. And there's a sort of primalness to romance that I will never give up. You will have to pry it from me.
Jennifer Prokop 20:47 / #
I think we are alike in that way.
Sarah MacLean 20:51 / #
Yeah, I mean, we just did a podcast about Kresley Cole, come on. So there is that, but also, from a craft perspective, from an intellectual perspective, if you start the book with two characters who are both fully realized, decent people, who live in the world and are feminist and anti-racist and perfect in every way, they're all dyed in the wool democrats who love each other and can cook perfectly, then where is there to go? I appreciate that as I say those words I can understand intellectually and emotionally that that's a problematic thing. But then I sort of think to myself, and literally I'm speaking my thoughts as they are coming into my head, but like, then I think to myself, but wait a second. Is it that problematic? Because I'm not saying I want to marry Alec Kincaid. I'm not saying I want to marry whatever. I don't know. Who's my worst hero? Borne. Right? But I am saying I want to read Borne breaking. I want to read Devil freezing to death, realizing that he's fucked everything up. Spoiler alert. But my husband is not those things like my husband is a proper cinnamon roll, like, and I love him for it. So why can't I have my cake and eat it too, Jen?
Jennifer Prokop 22:37 / #
I keep coming back to the question about what the fantasy is? The fantasy for you and me is that the patriarchy can be tamed. And that's what we want to read.
Sarah MacLean 22:51 / #
More now than ever before.
Jennifer Prokop 22:54 / #
More now than ever before. Now again, I feel like it's worth us saying that I think both of us are totally aware that taking the patriarchy out of context of capitalism and racism or whatever, that's what we're doing right now. So I think for me, like you, the cinnamon roll fantasy is just not what I personally really need right now. I read about one a year and really enjoy it but I don't want to read them nonstop. And I think part of it is because that fantasy which is the help-meet fantasy, maybe, maybe that's what it is or the we're going to team up together and already be so far advanced. I don't know. Maybe it's just a different fantasy. Maybe we needed someone on who does love those books to tell us what it is that is hitting that primal need in them.
Sarah MacLean 23:59 / #
It's interesting because I had this conversation with a friend not long ago about the fact that post election, all she wants to do is read beta heroes. And also, pause, because I want to say also that I sort of instinctively loathe the, you know, heroes are all either an alpha or a beta or cinammon roll, or whatever. I hate all that discussion. Any decent writer is writing a complex hero who is many things. So, you know, there's that, and I feel I have to have said that over the course of, you know, all those Wroth Brothers. So she was basically saying I just want to read happy, bantery, joyful, fun, soft heroes. And I was like, that's fair. In the wake of the election, all I want to do is read the most bananas stories. I want every author out there taking the finger, as we discussed last season, and I think part of it is because, basically, if your book isn't about dismantling the institutions of power and privilege and hate that we are living with right now, like, why? But this is the thing, I'm also saying I appreciate that that's not fair. Does that makes sense?
Jennifer Prokop 25:37 / #
I think it's something Kelly and I talk about a lot. The work you decide to do in the world--Everybody's work is different. The work of I'm going to tackle this head on by talking about how you break down the most virulent kind of the patriarchy versus other people's work is maybe not taking the finger. Other people's work is just different. And I think that it's okay to to say that. I think what worries me and you is that I don't want to be told that loving the breaking of the alpha makes me a regressive romance reader.
Sarah MacLean 26:26 / #
Yes. Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 26:29 / #
And I feel like that's the narrative, I'm like, Look, I don't understand your work. And you don't understand my work. I don't know. That's the part I think that's hard.
Sarah MacLean 26:42 / #
I think it's a very specific narrative that we're hearing in a very specific place. So I think this is the thing that we hear about a lot on romance Twitter, but interestingly, I run reading book club on Facebook and you don't hear that so much. I think it's a conversation that is happening in very specific circles, and I think it's worthy of happening, I think that often we lose sight of the idea that women's fantasy or the fantasies of people whose gazes are not traditionally presented as fantasy, or who are not often given like a space to fantasize publicly. Policing that fantasy is a terrible, frankly, regressive way of being. My concern is that when we police fantasy, specifically the fantasy of people whose fantasies are never given a place to exist and thrive, which is what romance has always been, it's been a place for sexual fantasy of people who are not given access to sexual fantasy in the world writ large. If you're not cis, het, white, and male--- your sexual fantasies are not on billboards and in movies. But they are in romance novels. And so if we are policing that fantasy, if we're policing the, I don't know, motorcycle club or the BDSM, or the I don't know, the alpha who is broken and then rebuilt, then are we progressing as a genre? Or are we regressing as one? It should be broadening. When I'm in a reading slump, cinnamon rolls are not the answer. But like they might be the answer to someone else and like, go with God.
Jennifer Prokop 29:02 / #
And that's that's exactly I think that's it, I love that we are broadening. I think it's really more expensive as a genre. We always joke with Kate. She's like, "I don't want to read two Ps in V" and I was like, "Yeah, I do!" And I think that part of it is, I feel like there's so many more places that romance is giving us access to so many more fantasies and so many more kinds of fantasies. But my fantasy still that alpha getting broken and crying and being like, I love you. I still want that one, too. I don't want to lose that as we move forward and have so many more fantasies. I still love that old school fantasy. I do. I probably always will. Because I grew up with it. And because of where we are in the world right now.
Sarah MacLean 30:02 / #
Yeah, I mean, and what's really interesting about it is, I don't think anyone would argue that in the early days, the writers I mean, I don't think anyone would argue that most of the writers of the genre are thinking about representing the smashing of the patriarchy in that moment. I don't think. I don't think Judith McNaught was, "All right, I'm gonna write 'Whitney, My Love' and Clayton's gonna be so much of an asshole. That then like when he is broken at the end, everyone will see that it's a metaphor for women's the women's movement." You would knock me directly over if you told me that that was what Judith McNaught was thinking about when she was writing "Whitney, My Love," I think she just opened up ID and poured it onto the page and we got what we got. And so like, I think this whole conversation should be taken in a sense of like, we're doing a lot of thinking about the work of romance in a way that I think does writers a disservice sometimes. And I say this as somebody who like has gotten in her head about, "well, what is the political ramification of this story?" And suddenly you think to yourself, "well now I'm in the weeds like, now I'm frozen, because I'm terrified that I'm going to do this thing wrong. That I'm going to tell the story of smashing of patriarchy wrong or I'm going to tell the story of whatever this political thing that I want to talk and I'm going to do it wrong." Versus like ultimately, writing with conflict and with pacing and with voice and with you know, character that just like is primal. It's fearlessness.
Jennifer Prokop 32:07 / #
I want to be really clear, when we talk about it being wrong, I think the fear is always, always, always, because it's always the charge right? Hillary Clinton talked about a hero to putting a woman over a horse and riding away with her. Here we are as a genre saying like, "no, it's feminist." And yet people outside the genre are looking at it and saying, "no, it's it isn't." And that is always the push pull. I think, a really primal push pull of romances is: Is it feminist? When is it enough? When is it feminist? When is it anti-racist? When is it, when is it progressive versus when is it regressive? And I think that that question is one that maybe we can't tell until 10 or 15 or 20 years later. Who knows, but you can't convince me it's not and yet I have such a hard time explaining to you why it is. And I don't know what to do about that.
Sarah MacLean 33:14 / #
Wait, why romance is feminist?
Jennifer Prokop 33:17 / #
Yeah, I mean, I are like, Why? I mean, I don't know where the line is.
Sarah MacLean 33:25 / #
Here's my thing. For, whatever, 45 years, the genre was accused of being regressive and anti-feminist. The women's movement was moving women forward and romance novels were taking us back. And I have never ascribed to that for all the reasons that you have heard me for many, many hours of expounding on that. Now, I think what we're hearing though, is from inside the house, we're hearing not all these books are feminist and I think that is where things start to get real dicey. Because I have always said that romance is feminist in two different ways: that, On the one hand, it's feminist because there are the texts that are doing something overtly feminist on the page, the breaking down of the alpha hero, the celebration of the cinnamon roll, these kind of moments where we start to see parity as a construct in the novel, like sexual parity or, you know, whatever. Again we're talking about a very specific kind of feminism here. But then on the other hand, you have the books that are written as one-handed reads, for pure pleasure for women, or for people who, again, have never had their pleasure centered by any form of media including pornography. Then you have an entirely different realm of romance that is doing the work of like identifying basic human pleasure beyond cis het white male. And that also has value.
Jennifer Prokop 35:24 / #
Or cis het white female for that matter.
Sarah MacLean 35:27 / #
It's like cis or het or white or Yeah, it's or AND and OR.
Jennifer Prokop 35:42 / #
When we talk about HEA for all, happily everyone after, to use your language. I think the thing that romance novels have taught me foundationally, and you will never convince me that this is an important, is that you deserve ultimate love and acceptance in your relationships with other people, whether they be romantic relationships or not. Whoever that person is on the page, they deserve people in their lives to say I love you the way you are. And that is right, to me is profoundly radical. And as we see more and more romances that are not just about white ladies, and by white ladies, we see a lot of expansion about what that looks like and what that means and I love those fucking books a whole lot.
Sarah MacLean 36:38 / #
Well, it's Adriana Herrera's American Love Story series. You know, it's that sense that she wrote these, that first book "American Dreamer" or like is a male/male romance, but so much of the love on the page is from families.
Jennifer Prokop 36:57 / #
And I think that's the part that I find, as a woman in the world, the ways in which I've tried so hard to fit into boxes and make people happy and take up less space and less room. And in a romance, the people in the romance are allowed to take up however much room they fucking want to. And that's all I want o read. Except for the patriarchy. They're the ones who can't exist the way they come into the storyl
Sarah MacLean 37:33 / #
And if you think about it structurally, if you think about them as a metaphor, if you think about the general arc of the romance novel, from disperate two or three or however many disparate people come together, experience conflict, and end up in happily ever after. If you think about that as a metaphor for like a larger battle in this in society that we are all fighting every day, then, of course at the end like we're Marvel movies, right? At the end, the good guys win, which means the patriarchy doesn't win. What I worry when you start to hear from inside the romance house like well, alphas are the problem. And it's like of course alphas are the problem. That's the point. Alphas are the problem. And then we see them dismantled on the page by the opposite of an alpha, and then restructured as men worthy of love, which, frankly, I mean, if anything is a fantasy.
Jennifer Prokop 38:56 / #
I mean, god, I love my husband, right? But man it's hard sometimes.
Sarah MacLean 39:05 / #
Over the last couple of months I have fired a lot of men in my life. It's misandry hour with Sarah. I have basically like, I have eliminated a lot of men from tangential roles of my life and, and hired instead smart, savvy women. And I said to my husband the other day I was like, I'm just I'm like, slowly, like eliminating men from my life and I was like, you're lucky I'm a Kinsey two, because you'd be out man.
Jennifer Prokop 39:54 / #
I think the thing though that I I really want to talk about is how much I as a reader need conflict. So you talked about a romance now, it's like the relationships puts these people on the page, and it doesn't matter who they are, but what I need is to see that conflict changes people. Conflict changes the way we relate to each other, it changes the way we think about ourselves, and the best romance to me is always going to be rooted in conflict. I think the cinnamon roll books, the reason I don't find them as primal is because the barriers, just the conflict is lower by design, and I get that, I get that how much I value my relationships right now that are sort of lower conflict. That really speaks to me, but in romance, I still really need to see this be The Clash of the Titans.
Sarah MacLean 41:00 / #
Because ultimately, and this is where I'm going to get nerdy about books, but ultimately, isn't the purpose of literature just sort of to mirror our own struggle. I was talking to Sierra Simone about all this not long ago and she said something really, I mean, she Sierra, so of course she said something really smart-- She said something so brilliant to me. And she was basically saying, "when you strip conflict out of a romance novel, what you're basically doing is setting up two people in some sphere of perfect transparent communication and trust from the start." And so as she said to me, and this is direct quote, "it doesn't mirror pain, it doesn't mirror growth, it doesn't mirror joy". I wrote it down because I was like, that's so smart. It's now sticking to my wall. And the reality is, is that , what conflict does is say to a reader, your pain, your growth, your joy is not abnormal. You are okay. This is real, and what you are feeling is real. And look at these two people who are experiencing pain and growth and joy. And frankly, nobody's exploded your boat. So, you know if these two can make it, so can you. And that's powerful.
Jennifer Prokop 42:30 / #
That's all I want.
Sarah MacLean 42:32 / #
Also, there is an argument to be made that like if you have two very, like lovely people on the page together l I don't know. Now I'm sort of thinking like, if you two lovely people on the page together and, are you writing for people who don't have that? Maybe this is...I don't know. Maybe my privilege is showing. I don't know. Maybe my My relationship is, you know, with a person who was kind and decent to me? So why do I want to read about my own life?
Jennifer Prokop 43:07 / #
But that goes back to the idea that different people need different things out of romance and different people need different things out of the media that they consume. When I think about why my husband loves horror so much, I have this theory that it's sort of serving the same function as romance. He's just like, I want to know that people are going to either band together or escape evil.
Sarah MacLean 43:31 / #
It's like mystery novels. A mystery novel where the mystery isn't solved is not a very good mystery novel.
Jennifer Prokop 43:38 / #
I love that there's all different kinds of relationships on page. I love it. I love it even though I still want to read about conflict because you know what, even though I we joke that I like to fight, that's something I really had to learn. It's something that still scares me. And so when I see people in a romance that are in high conflict, it's like, you can do this too. It speaks to me because of who I am. 20 year old Jen did not like to fight. 20 year old Jen was afraid of fighting.
Sarah MacLean 44:15 / #
Yeah. Yeah. And I think romance novels continually model that communication. That conversation that has to happen between two people who love each other, or who are working toward loving each other. Love is messy. Relationships are messy. I mean, I've spent a lot of years in therapy, man.
Jennifer Prokop 44:45 / #
I think that's part of the reason why one of the my favorite romances now is marriage in trouble.
Sarah MacLean 44:52 / #
Isn't that funny how that works. As you age and you age into marriage, you're like marriage in trouble is so much more interesting to me now than it was. When I was 20 I cared not a bit about marriage in trouble.
Jennifer Prokop 45:05 / #
No. And that's because of who we are right now. So when we talk about what's primal or foundational, it's always going to be the intersection of who we are as people and readers, where we are in our lives now, but also what we came up through in terms of our romance history. There's always going to be things that ring that bell because it's like Julie Garland's "The Bride" for me. Always.
Sarah MacLean 45:34 / #
And that's the thing. That takes us back to that sort of alpha question, which is, so now you all know how I feel about the alpha like what I feel that alpha is actually doing. But like, that's intellectual Sarah, like that's Sarah's brain saying the alpha represents patriarchy. If I were teaching and I do teach this class, when I talk about like, who is Christian Grey? Why does he scratch the itch? Because God knows Christian Grey scratched the itch for a hundred million readers. Okay? So I don't want to talk about the quality of the writing. I don't want to talk about the story. I want to talk about any of that. All I want to talk about is why Christian Grey worked. Because he did work and he launched 1000 million billionaires.
Sarah MacLean 46:34 / #
So Christian Grey, I can intellectually tell you why Christian Grey works. He is strong. He has immense power. He's incredibly wealthy. He takes care of her. He makes sure she has food in her fridge, that her car works, that she has money in her bank account. He literally buys the business she works for to fire her boss. She can have a happy job life. And then on top of all that, he manages her orgasms to perfection. All these things cognitively work on a specific level, but so to 1000 other billionaires and so do all the Dukes, so do all the vampires. We've seen a billion rich, powerful, great in the sack kind of heroes. But what is it about that that scratches the itch? I don't know. It's just there. It's built in. But I hate saying that.
Jennifer Prokop 47:52 / #
I mean, we grew up in this society. I feel like in a society where women's financial security is always so precarious, it makes sense that he's a billionaire, but it's not that she's gonna quit working.
Sarah MacLean 48:14 / #
Oh, and he's always around. He's never at work.
Jennifer Prokop 48:18 / #
Men don't have to work in romance. Only women do.
Sarah MacLean 48:22 / #
That's a different kind of interstitial. But truthfully, there's that too. It's the fantasy of he's a billionaire and we have all this, we have immense security, but he always there emotionally for me.
Jennifer Prokop 48:37 / #
And that what he wants is for her to be self actualized.
Sarah MacLean 48:43 / #
It's just id man.
Jennifer Prokop 48:46 / #
Of course it is.
Sarah MacLean 48:48 / #
And I think that's the problem. Look, I'm talking about Christian Gray as a sort of a placeholder for 1000 other heroes. I think 50 Shades worked for very specific reasons during the actual moment in history when 50 Shades was written, but it's so primitive that sort of idea that...it feels like it goes back to like days of hunters and gatherers. There's that sort of primitive itch scratch and I don't understand. I want to be evolved but I'm not there. I love "mine." I love that moment where Alec Kincaid says, what when the question is asked what what do we call her and he says "you call her mine."
Jennifer Prokop 49:47 / #
Here's the thing I think about in terms of 50 Shades and a lot of like the old alphas. You don't really see it as much anymore, but it was certainly part of IAD and it was like part of Twilight, I would say too, is that this extraordinary person would look and instantly recognize that this was the person for them. And there's something really appealing about being seen in a crowd by someone that you think is extraordinary. Christian Grey or Edward Cullen or whoever, and that they're going to pick you out. And I don't really read in the way that I'm like, I'm the heroine. But that idea of being seen immediately as you are extraordinary too, that there is
Sarah MacLean 50:44 / #
Fated Mates.
Jennifer Prokop 50:45 / #
Of course it is. There's a reason that we read IAD together.
Sarah MacLean 50:50 / #
But I've said 1000 times I actually don't really like Fated Mates. But even the opposite of Fated Mates feels like in some ways it's enemies lovers. But even in that moment, it's the being seen moment. Enemies to lovers only works if when the first moment that they interact, it just is explosive.
Jennifer Prokop 51:16 / #
And here's my other thing and I think this is similar for us. Enemies t0 lovers, I'm going to take a 999 times over friends to lovers because it's also really high heat. You can't have enemies to lovers at a low simmer. It is always explosive. And that's it. I love conflict. I want the gas turned up under that pot. Immediately. And that's the thing, all of those books really always come with, Come with the heat. They're comin in hot, and I that's what I want.
Sarah MacLean 52:00 / #
I also think that part of the challenge here, I said this earlier, when I said you know, I hate that we distill everything down to well, is it alpha? Is it beta? What is it? Because I do think I often struggle with the perception of the alpha as being incels. As being I hate women. I'm powerfulful. Women are weak. That's, that's not a good alpha. That's not a good alpha from the start and that alpha, the I hate women, women are weak, women exists for my pleasure, women exist for me to own, like, who's ever written that romance hero?
Jennifer Prokop 52:48 / #
No, I don't like that one.
Sarah MacLean 52:50 / #
But I don't think I've ever even read a book with a hero like that.
Jennifer Prokop 52:54 / #
I think it's a I think it's a misreading. Often those original 80s heroes, and we're going to read some of these, are I was a man who was profoundly hurt and it turned me into a misogynist, because I was so hurt by a woman. And I do not want to be hurt again. I fear being hurt again. That seems different to me.
Sarah MacLean 53:20 / #
Yeah, there's that classic trope in historicals where the hero the hero has had a string of mistresses or a string of relationships that mean nothing. And invariably, like that can be perceived as that can be read as he just he's a misogynist. He doesn't care about women and he doesn't care about women's bodies or women's feelings or anything. Then he meets the one. Yeah, and she's not like other girls. In my mind, I can totally see why that's a misread, meaning why people would read that as that's alpha and I hate it. You know, it's interesting because a lot of people have been talking about Whit, the hero of "Brazen and the Beast" as being an alpha and I'm like, wait, what? Because it feels like he's really not any of the things that people missread alphas as, but he's
Jennifer Prokop 54:21 / #
He's taciturn!
Sarah MacLean 54:22 / #
He's super big. And he doesn't really talk. And yeah, when he throws a punch, it lands hard. But he also lives in aapartment filled with pillows and books by women.
Jennifer Prokop 54:35 / #
He carries candy in his pockets! Look, you're not an alpha if you have candy in your pockets all the time! My God!
Sarah MacLean 54:45 / #
He's definitely submissive in the bedroom. And so I don't even know. I just feel like, be more discerning when you're using those words.
Jennifer Prokop 54:58 / #
Let's define the Alpha then like, let's have that be the thing we end this episode with, like, what does it mean when we talk about the alpha?
Jennifer Prokop 55:09 / #
Define it. So for me, like one hallmark of it is emotionally, not like--- they're going to start the book out of touch with their feelings and afraid of their feelings.
Sarah MacLean 55:22 / #
Yeah. I mean, if we have to define it, like I think that when we define it, like when we define it from IAD perspective, or from like, we're about to read "Dreaming of You," like from Derek Craven's perspective or from any of my hero'd perspectives? Yeah, they're like, emotional,
Jennifer Prokop 55:41 / #
toddlers.
Sarah MacLean 55:41 / #
I mean, yeah, they're like I was, yeah, they're like seedlings. and they just can't, they just have no frame of reference for like, the scope of humanity that they are about to experience and when they actually experience that humanity and that emotion They're fucking done for . And uniformly my heroes are done for.
Jennifer Prokop 56:09 / #
That's all I want, Sarah.
Sarah MacLean 56:14 / #
And I don't think that I mean, like, that's not me. That's all these women who I've read my whole life,
Jennifer Prokop 56:20 / #
I've been because, I've been thinking a lot about it right, I think another thing I often associate the alpha is that they are, and you say this all the time, that they are a King. In whatever it is that they have chosen to do, they are the best at what they do. But that they are always taking care of the people under them. At least like at least in a like a financial or security way, but not in an emotional way.
Sarah MacLean 56:51 / #
But what am i catnip scenes and any romance novel is the scene where the hero is like
Sarah MacLean 56:57 / #
befuddled By his feelings. It's like he just can't. He's like I think I'm having. It's like... Things are weird. Like my tummy is weird, and My head feels weird and she said a thing and it made me feel a thing and I don't, I can't identify any of the words, I have no words for any of it. And like a his servant, or his brother, or his Mom is like, What the fuck is wrong with you-- like you're having feelings?
Jennifer Prokop 57:28 / #
Yeah, hello, this is my favorite thing. My absolute all time favorite thing, Is the person who's like, welcome to the world of feelings.
Sarah MacLean 57:38 / #
What's wrong with you?
Jennifer Prokop 57:40 / #
Worthy! I just want to talk about Derek Craven. We're gonna do it next week.
Sarah MacLean 57:45 / #
But it's the best scene in a romance novel when everybody's like, Yeah, Hi. Welcome. And it's because, it just shows what emotional toddlers they are. And there is a joy to that, there's an immense fantasy like, it is an immense fantasy for so many people, including myself, to be able to say like, I'm whatever. Like, I love my husband a whole lot, but we have these moments. Sometimes I have a moment where I'm like, "I'm sad. And I don't know why." And he's like, "I don't, what does that even mean?" And I'm like, "I just, I'm just like, I need to cry. I need to have a cry." And he's like, "what is happening right now?" And I'm like, "I just help." He just can't like patriarchy is a hell of a drug and it has ruined them too.
Sarah MacLean 58:38 / #
and like the idea that you might have a hero who ultimately discovers that those feelings and is able to interact with them is really cool. And as I say that, I think like Well, that's what a cinnamon roll does from the start. But Then what else is happening? Are they on the run? Is there a murderer?
Jennifer Prokop 59:07 / #
Of course not they're cinnamon rolls.
Sarah MacLean 59:09 / #
Oh my god. I mean, what we really should do an interstitial about cinnamon roll heroes that we love because I do have some that I really love
Jennifer Prokop 59:18 / #
I mean, I feel like there's this joke I used to make, I don't really make it anymore because I think it's probably insensitive, I used to joke like, I need a wife. I need someone who's gonna take care of me. That is a very deep rooted fantasy that I think when I read a really perfect cinamon roll book, that's how I feel. o have someone who's going to take care of me, as opposed to like me taking care of them.
Sarah MacLean 59:43 / #
It's interesting because I do think this sort of brings up and we're obviously going over because we...welcome to Fated Mates everyone. But one of the things that I think is really interesting, I have this long conversation and she's going to come back on the pod this this season. Adrianna Herrera and I were talking about trauma and romance novels as you as you guys know who were listening last year. Adriana is a trauma specialist and she came she gave us a lot of really interesting insight about MacRieve. And she was a a guest on the Bowen episode. And one of the things that we were talking about in in terms of trauma we were talking about the end of "American Love Story," and I'm not going to spoil it but there the epilogue of "American Love Story" is like this really interesting. Or one of the final scenes of "American Love Story" is what is really interesting moment of marital of like, like marital idol like relationship idol, between the two heroes, where they are both doing serious emotional work, side by side as partners. And we were talking just about how There is room for the book that is telling this modern iteration of the romance, where it's a really authentic representation of the life, the struggles that we had in life, The heroes of this particular book are an activist and the lawyer. And so, they're just, they're never, it feels like these two people just have completely different worldviews. And so, that kind of relationship-- again, though, I've always said this in the hands of a tremendous author works really well--Also, so much conflict, so much emotional internal conflict in that story, because, ultimately, at their core, they have completely different views of like how life should be and, what their purpose is. Which is cool. So actually, forget everything. I Well, first of all, don't forget everything I just said because that's, that's it's a great book and it's a great read because you have these moments of this moment of, there is so much emotional conflict to unpack there. Unlike relationships where just two people who really super like each other, and which is like fanfic and that's a whole nother story but, we should have somebody on we should see if Cat Sebastian will come on, or somebody will come on who like, is really a fanfic lover. To talk to us about the way fanfic has an informed Modern Romance.
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:33 / #
I mean, I think that's it, like we're just trying to unpack all these different things. But for both of us, this question of the alpha and what it's doing and what it's done through time and why it's still it's always going to scratch that itch for us. Like, I don't, I don't want to lose that. There's something, those stories still really speak to me.
Sarah MacLean 1:02:54 / #
I mean, to be fair, Jen, I don't think you're gonna lose that. Those stories readers, I mean, a massive swath of romance readers, love that as a story. You know, I know that because I have a career. I want Sierra to come back on and I want us to talk about fearless romances this season because I think people I think a lot of writers are real afraid to write directly into ID. And I get that. Yeah, that's a scary, that's a scary thing to do. I have been there.
Sarah MacLean 1:03:39 / #
I'm there currently, you know, with the book that I'm writing. And I think, you know, harnessing, finding fearlessness is really difficult as a writer, especially in 2019, because you don't want to do it wrong. You don't want to harm anybody. But I think there are ways for us to tell the stories that have the Sort of high conflict explosive relationships that in a way that doesn't harm but actually you know, entertains and ultimately, pleasures, readers.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:14 / #
That's all I want Sarah.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:16 / #
I know Same, same. Well, let's leave it there for today.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:21 / #
It was last ragey I think then it could have been I think we were really put together.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:28 / #
I agree. I mean, I'm not I'm not mad at anybody. I want everyone to get what they want and what they need out of romance. That's all.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:36 / #
I just don't want anybody to feel like they're wrong for wanting what they want. you can't be both progressive and like an alpha. That's nonsense. Go read your books. That's fine. Like, yeah, you know, and so I think I think that's where I'm at. Like, let's not let-- women's bodies are getting enough policing these days, like let's not police their minds too.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:07 / #
This is Fated Mates everybody. It's the beginning of our new season next week we have our first book, "Dreaming of you" with our favorite, with Jen and mine..?
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:25 / #
With our
Sarah MacLean 1:05:26 / #
Our. I don't know. I don't know you guys I have a copy editor for that stuff
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:30 / #
This is the very reason why possessive pronouns were created.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:33 / #
Exactly why. With our one of our very, very favorite heroes. Top Five for me for sure. Definitely top two! It's Rune and Derek Craven. Anyway, so we will be back next week with a deep dive on that. you will no doubt have a lot of questions and a lot of concerns. If you've never read this book before.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:58 / #
Fine. Jen and I have a list. We're going to talk about it all. Don't worry, you'll be fine.
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:04 / #
We're gonna take care of you.
Sarah MacLean 1:06:05 / #
Yeah. Don't forget to like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. You know, tell your friends about us and find us on Twitter at @FatedMates or on Instagram at @FatedMatesPod. What else? What else you want to say? We are both there's a romance for Raises fundraiser online. I think this is probably the last week of that. So you can head over to the link. We'll put it in show notes. I've got a manuscript critique up for auction. And Jen has a couple of really fun things including a Fated Mates book pack, which is great. So head over and bid on that. All the funds go directly to organizations working on the border. And we are really, really thrilled to be a part of that. Anyway, we love you guys, thank you so much for listening. Go read a book!
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:05 / #
See you next week with Derek Craven
14.5: Space Romance - There Are No Wallflowers in Space!
Well, it was destined to happen sometime—we’re taking the show intergalactic! This week we’re talking about space romance and why it’s totally. fricken. bananas. Discover the series that brought Jen and Sarah together, hear us talk about prison planets, sex planets, the Muppet Show and more. Series by Grace Goodwin, Emmy Chandler, Robin Lovett & Jessie Mihalik.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review. Also — if you have a romance loving friend, please let them know that we don’t just talk about vampires & valkyries, and maybe they’d like us, too?
We’re back to the Game Makers in two weeks with Jen’s favorite of the three books, The Master, and one of our favorites, Sophie Jordan! Get ready for chastity belts and string bikinis! Read The Master at Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local Indie.
Show Notes
Who knew there was so much to say about The Muppets? We both loved Pigs in Space, and Sarah mentioned that General Hospital-style skit. The Muppet Show is streaming on YouTube. And they're still making new ones!
How many dudes were in Dead Poet's Society? Well, there was Robert Sean Leonard. Ethan Hawke. And Josh Fucking Charles, of course. And then these other guys.
Josh Charles and his amazing man hands on The Good Wife, kissing Alica in an elevator.
Oh, and Sarah also likes Sports Night even though Aaron Sorkin is definitely a problem.
Muppets from Space. Omg.
A few early space romances were Sweet Starfire and Warrior's Woman.
Formative 80's space and sci-fi movies: Conan the Barbarian. Back to the Future. Star Wars.
We deserved more than one kiss and real snotty offspring.
"Make is So," says Jean-Luc Picard.
Australia was the original prison island.
You should read The Most Dangerous Game. It's an amazing story.
Robin Lovett is reading Dark Skye.
Aurora Blazing doesn't come out until October, but you can read the first chapter here.
Jen recommends The Chernobyl miniseries and the podcast. Sarah thought she was joking when she said I should go to twitter and ask for nuclear romances, like I hadn't thought of that already.
Sarah recommends Booksmart.
The Master is next, and we'll be joined by Sophie Jordan.
The Moon is not a fucking part of Mars. My God.
Transcript
Movie Dialogue 0:00 / #
And now another controvertable episode of
Jennifer Prokop 0:03 / #
Fated Mates. Welcome everybody. We're going to be talking about space romances. I'm Jen Reads Romance.
Sarah MacLean 0:13 / #
I'm Sarah MacLean. I write romance novels and I read romance novels. And all I want is for a pig's in space-style intro to this, where it's like, "Romance in Space!"
Jennifer Prokop 0:29 / #
Oh God, me too Miss Piggy was formative.
Sarah MacLean 0:34 / #
Man. "Pigs in Space" was the best. Also the -- I forget what it was called, but the General Hospital-style soap opera on the Muppet Show? We're super dating ourselves. Now. I'd like everyone to appreciate.
Jennifer Prokop 0:49 / #
I don't even care because it's amazing. She just, everything was so sparkly and silvery when she was in space. I loved it.
Sarah MacLean 0:58 / #
I know. I know. And it's making me want, I wonder if The Muppet Show's on Netflix? "The Muppet Show should be on something I would love to show my daughter The Muppet Show.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10 / #
Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty sure it's somewhere that's I remember going through that when our son was younger, and really being like, "We got to watch the Muppet Show, man." It's good times.
Sarah MacLean 1:19 / #
Well cause also, as a grown up, you come to Sesame Street with your kids. And then you realize all the good muppets are not on Sesame Street. The good smartass muppets, Miss Piggy, uh Gonzo, Fozzie Bear. None of them are on Sesame Street.
Jennifer Prokop 1:41 / #
One of my favorite Muppet movies is the one with Gonzo being from space. God, what was that one? Hold on. I gotta. I don't. Muppet Movie.
Sarah MacLean 1:54 / #
I don't know. But I do feel like this is giving Eric some meat food.
Yeah, there was a there was a movie that was all about Gonzo and you know who else had had? Okay? The guy from The Good Wife and Dead Poets Society that oh makes me bite my fist because he's still fucking handsome.
Are you talking about Robert Sean Leonard?
Jennifer Prokop 2:16 / #
No I'm not. I'm not about fuck that guy. I'm talking about the other guy. You know the one who was on the Good Wife?
Sarah MacLean 2:21 / #
Ethan Hawke.
Jennifer Prokop 2:22 / #
No. I'm talking about that the other guy. God.
Sarah MacLean 2:25 / #
How many other guys are there in Dead Poets Society?
Shut up. The best guy. The one...
Which one?
Jennifer Prokop 2:32 / #
The one who makes out in on The Good Wife, the one who makes out with her in the elevator?
Sarah MacLean 2:37 / #
You keep saying The Good Wife. It's not gonna make me have seen it.
Jennifer Prokop 2:40 / #
Ah, hold on. I'm like, "Google's my friend."
Sarah MacLean 2:46 / #
You guys, welcome to my life.
Jennifer Prokop 2:48 / #
No, stop it. I'm an amazing person. Just because I can't remember people's names.
Sarah MacLean 2:53 / #
Dead Poets Society is a seminal text for me. It's so. I'm confused by which guy, which boy you're talking about.
Okay, wait, I'm trying to find out. So Alicia, the one with Will Gardner. Okay, so Will Gardener is the name of the guy in The Good Wife. And ahhh I'm, you know.
Will Gardener is the guy.
Jennifer Prokop 3:16 / #
Max Overstreet! He's the guy plays Max Overstreet!
Sarah MacLean 3:19 / #
Wait a second. He's not good. He's a bad guy on ah, in a lot of things.
Jennifer Prokop 3:25 / #
Okay, but in this Muppet Movie with Gonzo he also is fine. I'm just telling you.
Sarah MacLean 3:29 / #
Well, he's fine everywhere.
Yeah, well, God, yes. Oh my God. There's a scene with him kissing Alicia Florrick in the fucking elevator.
Oh. Max Overstreet. You're right. And then.
Jennifer Prokop 3:39 / #
Max Overstreet!
Sarah MacLean 3:41 / #
He's the one that goes on the date and Dead Poets Society. And then what does he do? He brings, it's Josh Charles. Josh Charles night. It's from Sports Night.
Jennifer Prokop 3:51 / #
You know, I'm starting to realize that you and I not remembering names and titles is way deeper. There's a lot of layers to it.
Sarah MacLean 3:59 / #
I know. You guys so I know my faves are problematic but I have an obsession with Aaron Sorkin and the things that he writes and Sports Night is magnificent. And you have to appreciate that me saying that Sports Night is magnificent is it must be super magnificent because I know nothing about any thing involving balls. I mean blow up balls. Although. Wait. I mean, throw ball, kick ball.
Jennifer Prokop 4:04 / #
Sportsballs, Sarah.
Sarah MacLean 4:11 / #
Sportsballs. Although I will say that I was at a signing not long ago and a woman came up to me, a reader came up to me, and if you listen reader, please tell us who you are. Please say hi on Twitter or Facebook or somewhere. Um, she came up to me and she said, "Do you know the difference between you and Tessa Dare?" And I was like, "Well, I mean, we're not the same person. So I know a lot of things that are different about me and Tessa Dare." And she said, Tessa Dare writes about balls and you don't.
And I was like, "Oh," and I realized I really don't. I generally don't involve myself with testicles. Apparently Tessa does everyone. So you know if you've never read Tessa Dare and you're into balls she's for you.
Talk about a close fuckin read. I mean damn girl.
But I did come home and I put balls into that book. Cause I was like, "Well, I refuse to be bested."
Well, Sarah, I'll just circle back around to I'm real embarrassed to tell you the name of this fucking movie that you should watch with your daughter is called Muppets from Space. I's not even complicated. How the fuck could I not think of that? Muppets from Space. Jesus Christ.
Amazing. And is it Pigs in Space, but like a whole movie?
It's like a whole movie, Miss Piggy's for sure in it.
It's like the Wayne's World of the Muppet universe?
Jennifer Prokop 6:00 / #
They're trying to figure out where Gonzo's from, if I remember correctly, but it's really fucking cute. It's one of my favorites. It's really, really cute. So I would recommend it. I feel now, it almost feels dirty to somehow segue to romance from there, but you know, whatever.
Sarah MacLean 6:18 / #
Whatever. Romance and space and here's the interesting thing. It's real dirty in space. I feel romance off planet. It's like suddenly everybody's allowed to write whatever the hell they want.
Jennifer Prokop 6:33 / #
We've talked about this with, with paranormal, right, when you remove people from human society on Earth, you get to break a bunch of different rules. That totally makes sense to me.
Sarah MacLean 6:45 / #
Yeah, it, it actually really does. It's a interesting, because so I when we talked about doing this episode, my instant thought was like, 'Oh, well, we're gonna have to we have to talk about those early ones.' But I don't think there were that many super early romances, but they, there was a Jane Ann Krentz called "Sweet Starfire". The cover's pretty great. The heroine has the most perfect, they're basically just metallic boobs underneath there. They're weaponry.
They're they're very. It's not even perky. It's -- they defy gravity.
There very firm. They are incredibly firm breasts. Um. It's basic...so okay, so the heroine has telepathy, she's telepathic and um she is, well or no, I'm sorry she's not telepathic but she's from this world of people who are telepathic and she doesn't have it. There's some reason why she doesn't have it. And she has to figure it out, and then the hero is basically Han Solo. He's a delivery man in space.
Jennifer Prokop 8:08 / #
My theory, and I will get to this later in the show, is that every good character I love in a space romance is basically Han Solo.
Sarah MacLean 8:17 / #
I mean, it makes sense though, right? Especially, because so I don't know what date. I don't know what date this is, but it had to have been early days. Um, and well, I do know what date the other one is, the other one was written in the, so the other one that sort of is instantly imprinted on my mind is Johanna Lindsay's "Warriors Woman", which is in the Ly-san-ter series, which is spelled Ly dash san dash ter because I don't know dash.
That's how you show that you're an alien culture by having some real weird spelling. Gotta use a bunch of punctuation.
Add in punctuation to make it seem real to me, but I am gonna I know last episode I was like, "We're not gonna read the back cover copy" because it sucks but here's the thing: back cover copy has changed a lot over the years because if I had back cover copy like this, I would make everyone read it all the time. So, here it is. In the year 2139 fearless Tedra De Arr sets out to rescue her beleaguered planet, Kystran from the savage rule of the evil Crad Ce Moerr. Experienced in combat but not in love, the beautiful, untouched Amazon flies with Martha, her wise-cracking, free-thinking computer, to a world where warriors reign supreme--and into the arms of the one man she can never hope to vanquish: the bronzed barbarian Challen Ly-San-Ter. A magnificent creature of raw yet, disciplined desires, the muscle-bound primitive succeeds where no puny Kystran male had before--igniting a raging fire within Tedra that must be extinguished before she can even think of saving her enslaved world.
Jennifer Prokop 10:30 / #
That's a whole lot.
Sarah MacLean 10:31 / #
We're gonna read it y'all.
Jennifer Prokop 10:34 / #
I'm kind of ready to read it right now.
Sarah MacLean 10:36 / #
So it's like this is Conan the Barbarian fanfic. And then there's the you know, and it makes sense. Where Johanna Lindsay was an earthy, you know, Schwarzeneggery kinda lady. Jayne Ann Krentz is more of an intellectual. Uh. You know.
Jennifer Prokop 10:58 / #
Han Solo type of snark guy. We should I swear to God, I always say this but now it's summer so maybe I'm, I'm constantly like, "we should be making BuzzFeed quizzes that go along with this." Like, "Which 70s or 80s space hero Do you imprint on?"
Sarah MacLean 11:20 / #
So anyway, that is where so when I say there were space romance is not new. There were definitely I mean these are huge writers. These are the big names of the 80s writing these space romances 80s and 90s. And so certainly there was there, they appeared here and there, but there are more of them now. And there are more that are sort of well-known and respected and, um, real fucking entertaining, frankly.
Oh, God. Yeah. Well, that's, I think that's, I think what it is too. So here's a little secret about me as a reader, which is. Oh, are you okay?
I was just gonna say um, "Warrior's Woman" is was published in 1990.
Jennifer Prokop 12:11 / #
I am a more of a sci-fi person than a fantasy person. Just in general, right? When I move Back to the Future and movies I loved about space travel and aliens and Star Wars, Star Trek, all of that is way more my jam. And so one of the things about space romances is I um, I feel like there's there's world building but it's less maybe? You know, fantasy. I am not a good enough reader. I'm gonna own that. I'm just like, "Oh shit, who is this guy again?" You know what I mean? I feel somehow fantasy, it requires more of me as a reader in a way that I'm like, "Uhh I'm not good at this." So I do think it's that imprinting thing. When I think about Star Wars, Back to the Future, Star Trek, that whole decade where I was growing up and just I couldn't get enough of it. So part of me is like, "Of course I love these space romances. They're amazing." If Han, I mean all we ever get from Han Solo and Princess Leia is that one fucking kiss or whatever, right? We deserve more. We deserve better. We deserve space threesomes.
Sarah MacLean 13:27 / #
Yeah. laughing We deserve sex planets, so let's just make it so.
Movie Dialogue 13:34 / #
"Make it so. Sir? Do it."
Sarah MacLean 13:40 / #
Um, okay, so we're in. We're in a golden age. I would say.
Jennifer Prokop 13:45 / #
Yes. I love it.
Sarah MacLean 13:46 / #
Of space romance. Well, wait, where should we start? Should we just, should should we start with this series that...
Jennifer Prokop 13:53 / #
Brought us together!
Sarah MacLean 13:55 / #
Oh, well, we should start...laugh everyone thinks that it was IAD but it wasn't I mean Jen and I knew each other through the IAD you know universe,
Jennifer Prokop 14:05 / #
But our real bonding happened...
Sarah MacLean 14:07 / #
Yeah, but our real bonding came over Grace Goodwin
"The Interstellar Bride" series.
I'm so embarrassed by this whole episode.
Jennifer Prokop 14:18 / #
No. I'm not. They're fucking awesome.
Sarah MacLean 14:20 / #
They are.
Jennifer Prokop 14:20 / #
But you know what? I was. I was on a family vacation where there were more people than seats in cars. And so somehow I kept always getting left behind, which I swear didn't mean to happen, but it was get the kids and the grandparents there. And I was like, "Whatever you're going to a kid's movie, it's fine." And I read a ton of these fucking books you guys one after the other. I literally could not get enough of them.
Sarah MacLean 14:44 / #
What's the series name?
"The Interstellar Bride" series.
Yeah. Oh my God. So you guys. Okay, so Jen. Picture this. Let me paint you a picture. So Jen and I are not friends yet. I mean, we're friendly. We like each other on Twitter. We're follow, we follow each other on Twitter. But um, I don't know how it fucking happened. I think it probably happened because "Ice Planet Barbarians". So Sophie Jordan, who is joining us next week for "The Master", is a dear friend of mine and she loves a bananas book just more than anybody in the whole world. And she started reading those "Ice Planet Barbarians" books by Ruby Dixon. And we found ourselves down the rabbit hole, the two of us, and it was you know, we I looked up a week later and I've read like 17 of those blue alien books. It's, the whole week is a blur. And, um, and I would recommend the first, you know, however many you want to read until you're ready, you know, at some point, you'll just overdose on them and then you'll just be like, "Okay, I'm done with these blue alien books."
It's like when you're at a bar and you're drinking. It's the first real night nice of summer and you're drinking maybe some kind of frozen cocktail. They're going down real easy. And then all of a sudden you're like, "Whoa, I just did. Wait, I just overdid it."
Exactly. I imagine it's what, I've never done cocaine, but I imagine it's like coke. You're like, "This is great!" And then you're like, "Whoa, I need a nap."
Yeah, that was it. So we had to shift from that to another similar series, right?
Then we started, so then it was just one of those things where, anytime anybody asked, "What's the craziest thing you've read recently?" We'd be like, "Well, have you read Ice Planet Barbarians?" Because it's weird. I mean, a spaceship crashes. A woman out in this ice planet. She comes she stumbles upon a giant blue alien and he immediately goes down on her. And it's crazy. So whatever. Periodically the "Ice Planet Barbarians" comes up online, and like we talk about how crazy it is. Then Jen, DMs me, I think, "Have you read these Grace Goodwin books?" And I was like, "Well no, but obviously I'm in the mood for another drug." So the structure of these books are, first of all, these are not in KU. "Ice Planet Barbarians" are in KU so you sort of feel like it's free. Grace Goodwin has put her books not. You are paying $3.99 for each one of these books. And I mean, I'm not gonna lie. I gave that money to her for a long time. These are probably not in your library either, you guys. So the first chapter you're like, "Hello. Here's the heroine having sex with two men, or whatever it is."
Jennifer Prokop 17:48 / #
But they're aliens, right?
Sarah MacLean 17:50 / #
There's 4000 books in this series. And the first one, all you know is that she's having sex. She's in the middle of sex with this person and you're like, "This feels like a very jarring entry into a book. But okay, Jen recommended it." So. And then she wakes up and you realize that she has been in a machine. In a sort of, uh,
Jennifer Prokop 17:50 / #
An MRI sex machine.
Sarah MacLean 18:14 / #
An MRI sex machine.
Jennifer Prokop 18:18 / #
Sarah, that's what it is. Hello. Instead of it being a big doughnut, it's like a big vagina.
Sarah MacLean 18:28 / #
And then she wakes up and there's a doctor and the doctor's like, "Oh, hey, you've been matched" to an interstellar, a male of a species on another planet and you are a human. You're basically a fertile human, female, and you're basically going to be shipped off to this dude, wherever you are.
Well, and it's always this alien.
With sex compatibility.
Yeah, and the deal is that at least for the ones I've read, this interstellar bride program right, the other the alien planet, they have pairs of alien men essentially agreed to mate this woman or that's how it works on their planet because it's so dangerous that that way if one of them dies, the other one will be able to you know,
Protect her.
Jennifer Prokop 19:29 / #
Protect her and still be there for her. Now none of them ever die. So it's just these, polyamorous, super sexy threesomes.
Sarah MacLean 19:37 / #
But I will say, male female male.
Jennifer Prokop 19:40 / #
Oh always.
Sarah MacLean 19:40 / #
There's no crossing of the swords. Which is a big bummer for me.
Yeah, I think that's why you and I both are like, "Meh." Here's my other thing, is the the woman on earth who's part of the intake process. Her name is Warden A Gara. And as time went on, in these books, it became clear that she had some sort of backstory herself. And I was like, "It's like a year later, has she ever gotten her own book?" And I do not think so. But I bet we cannot be the only people who are like, "Warden A Gara, where is your book?"
Why doesn't she get herself in the machine?
Jennifer Prokop 20:16 / #
Well, I think she had a mate and something went wrong. And so now she's back in the pool and you know, not ready.
Sarah MacLean 20:23 / #
Sure, sure. So, take your time A Gara. Um, but here's what's really interesting because this is it. These really echo. So I'm really fascinated by the space books because I think they're doing some sort of interesting work, as part of the genre. I mean, this is welcome to Fated Mates everyone. We're gonna talk about, we're gonna try and figure out, why these
Jennifer Prokop 20:49 / #
What it's doing, right?
Sarah MacLean 20:50 / #
What, at first glance, feel like real one-handed reads, if you know what I mean, but I think doing some interesting work and what these books are doing is very similar to what medievals were doing in that they're telling a story about each one of these meetings in these Grace Goodwin books is intergalactic because intermarriage between the two cultures solidifies the relationship between the two planets. It's like your Norman female is sold to a Saxon warrior. Or vice vice versa. I don't remember my history. So I think whatever goes. So that's interesting, there's something going on there. But also then there's this very real sense of woman alone, in a world in a threatening world.
Jennifer Prokop 21:44 / #
Yeah, sure.
Sarah MacLean 21:45 / #
And there's something really compelling about that. In 2019 for me, I've been talking a lot about, you and I haven't talked in a ton about how it feels like now, in 2019, you have to options and romance you have the super soft, really gentle calm love story. Or you have like, space prison planet book. And we're gonna get to. The two. I feel like they're scratching the same itch, socially. Because I'm right now not really that interested in a soft book because I want to see threat. I want to see anger. I want to see women and people in marginalized communities triumphing over, you know, the worst. But I think a lot of people are like, "The world is horrible. And I just want to escape into my like, soft cinnamon roll of a book."
And I think that they're two sides of the same coin, which is how when, we think about like, "What does romance?" How does romance approach the patriarchy?" And I think one of the things we've talked a lot about is, we're excited about the way that it you know, I was reading really interesting thread this morning that was when we talk about romance being by women for women, that it that's that used to be true, but now it's also really trying, I think, at least the books I'm interested in trying to be a place for anyone who's on the downside of the gender spectrum, right? Anyone who's not a cis het male. And so therefore, opening up for non binary for queer people, right? And so I think that these books are really pushing against sometimes too gender dynamics, because one of the big differences I think of in these books is that women aren't always just receptacles or receivers. Sometimes they're fighting back. Sometimes they're the heroine. Sometimes they're saving their mate. Sometimes. I feel like there's a lot of ways in which it's, you put, you put people in space and then sometimes their roles. Whether they be gender roles or work related roles or marriage roles. Kind of, "get a chance to change because now you're in a different society." So I do think that that's, that's what it is too. So it's exploring like, "Who are we in relationship to this institution?" Maybe? Whether it be the prison planet, the meeting, the inter bride program, whatever.
Yeah, I agree. I think there's something really interesting to be said for, for just how these books are. It's weird because almost all of them sort of really solidify in some ways underscore that kind of physical difference between the sort of women as the weaker sex
Hmm, yeah right? Well, cause the aliens are always seven feet tall. It's like a monster dash, right?
Even in, so let's talk about let's talk about Emmy Chandler next. So, if you follow me on Twitter you know that I, about three weeks ago went through this massive Emmy Chandler phase. I was on retreat with a bunch of other authors, somebody recommended, we were talking about, I was with Sophie Jordan, Sophie loves a prison book, we're talking about these prison planet books. And now I can't remember the name of that series either. Anyway, and I had never read them. So I picked up the first of the Emmy Chandler prison planet books. The first one is called Guardian. Oh, it's just called Prison Planet, the series. And so the concept is people get shipped off from planet from, again, it's kind of a star trekky kind of futuristic society where there are many different planet many different planetary planets that are in part of some sort of planetary consortium. And if you commit a crime, you are sent to this prison planet where
Jennifer Prokop 26:22 / #
It's Australia.
Sarah MacLean 26:24 / #
Yeah, where there are sectors and each sector has a different kind of criminal in it. And women and men are sent to all the sectors and it's a very intense. Content warning on this. There's a lot of threat of sexual violence in this book. Because obviously, when you are in a position where women and men are imprisoned in a enclosed space, no matter how big the enclosed space like that sexual dynamic is that that dynamic of sex is going to be there between them. And it's overarching. There is a constant threat of sexual violence in these books. But what Emmy Chandler is doing here in that...so the first one is called Guardian and basically a woman is sent to this to this prison planet and then she discovers, she gets to choose her mate, like meat, she gets to choose the man who she is with for 30 days. And then his job is to protect and feed and clothe her and her job is, you know, to pleasure him and he of course, is very noble and heroic. And it all works out sort of fine at the end, although I want to talk about what fine means in the context of some of these books. The second one Hunter is my favorite of them.
Me too. And it's the most dangerous game basically, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So very rich people get to pay money to come down onto the prison planet and hunt killers basically in an enclosed space. So it's like Hunger Games, there's an enclosed space with lots of cameras and things that are monitoring you. In that one, the heroine gets herself put into this enclosed space too. So the hero and heroine are both being hunted by the same man. And the heroine is a technological genius. He is just physical, pure brute physical strength. She is mental. She's just a genius. And so to get so she saves the day in that book with her intellect,
Jennifer Prokop 28:50 / #
Right, and he keeps them safe when they're out in the woods essentially, right? I mean, so it's together they're this unbeatable team. Even against all of the ways in which they're ... the other hunter has weapons has technology as cameras can find them. There's these really terrifying metal dogs that essentially are just if they run into you, they're just gonna rip you to shreds. I mean, it's a classic, like "The Most Dangerous Game" is a classic, short story about a general who essentially creates his own island, right? And he's gonna hunt, the people who get shipwrecked on the island, and he sets up essentially a trap to shipwreck them. And have you read this?
Sarah MacLean 29:38 / #
No. But I mean I know the premise.
Jennifer Prokop 29:40 / #
You know, the trope, right? And it has to be an island the same way this has to be a prison planet, right? You have to be isolated. And even if you can defeat the hunter, how are you going to escape is always the meta question that's kinda underneath, right? There's no real escape from any of it even if you can beat this one, this one guy.
Sarah MacLean 30:04 / #
No. And so the third one, "Champion," is lady gladiator. She gets to choose her, she's sentenced to death, and she gets to choose the way she dies and she chooses fighting as a gladiator on the prison planet for TV. And the only woman who's ever done it. That's real Hunger Games-y. She gets a makeover and she has sponsors. If you loved the Hunger Games, and you wish there had been sex in it, and you are not scared and you are not triggered by sexual violence in any way. Nobody in these books actually, gets raped. But it's ... It's a threat constantly.
Jennifer Prokop 30:51 / #
Or it's happened in the past, right? I mean, in the second one, she's essentially been or no is it?
Sarah MacLean 30:57 / #
I think she kills him before. I mean, you should not, if that is triggering for you at all, you should not read these books. But that third one, "Champion," and you can read these standalone. You do not need to read them in order. But "Champion" is, if somebody said to me like, "I want Hunger Games, but a romance." It's "Champion." Um, anyway, and then they go on from there. But there's something really interesting about these books, especially now in that happily ever after in these books, can't really be happy.
Jennifer Prokop 31:35 / #
Cause the world is not righted.
Sarah MacLean 31:37 / #
They're still on a prison planet. Right? So it's a really odd. There's something very satisfying. They were incredibly satisfying for me as I was reading them. But I really I keep going back to why is because we talk all the time -- one of the big questions that -- I'm sorry, I know I'm talking a lot...One of the big questions we have a lot is it In historical, specifically, is, "Why don't people write poor characters in historical romances?" I mean, in contemporary is too. And the answer has always been well, because it's not, if you're poor, is it happily ever after? If you're more literally worried about where your next meal is coming from. Is it happily ever after? And these people are alone on a prison planet.
Here's what I think it's really about. I think this is the work right? We talk a lot about partnership, right? That's what a romance sort of delivers at the end is, these two individuals have become like a team, right? And now they're going to face whatever struggles to happen together. And I think that's why it ultimately works because even though they're still danger in their future, and we know that. We also know that they have come through something where we trust that whatever their future, right, whatever this future conflict is going to be for them, that they are going to tackle it together. And there's something really appealing about that. Right? And I don't necessarily, by the way, think that that's just a romance thing. I think that's a friendship thing. I think a lot of these books have, build communities of people together, right? I think going back to Ice Planet Barbarians, they all start to work together. And it's literally watching a new society form. Only it's one often where gender differences are irrelevant, or there's more equality. You know, people are essentially literally making a new world for themselves. So I think that's why that's really appealing.
Mm hmm. I agree. And it feels like if they could triumph over these really dark moments. If you can be a lady gladiator and survive, then what can't you do?
Jennifer Prokop 34:12 / #
You got this right? Well, and often I will also point out that almost always those external conflicts are human in nature. Right? So it's you got kidnapped and sent to the ice planet barbarians. These men who set up the the gladiator dome and you're in it or whatever. So they're beating humanity, and then forming something new on this new planet. I mean, I think really profoundly. It's this idea that we're starting over. We're going to do this better. We're not going to end up in 2019. We started there, but we don't have to end up there.
Sarah MacLean 34:53 / #
Yeah, well, what's interesting is that they're not all this kind of gendered? Funkiness and, and that's where I want to go next because I want to go to Robin Lovett's books. Um, Robin Lovett is writing a series called Planet of Desire. The first one is called "Toxic Desire." Fun fact. Johanna Lindsey. No, Johanna Lindsey, wrong. Fun fact, Sophie Jordan and Joanna Shupe both texted me about "Toxic Desire" within 18 hours of each other. I don't think you all have heard Joanna talk about bananas books. You will hear Sophie next week to talk about "The Master." But when they both recommend a book, I know it's gonna be special. So Planet of Desire is Robin Lovett series, where, again, it's futuristic, there's kind of an intergalactic Space Consortium, there's a big bad planet or bad guys.
Jennifer Prokop 36:05 / #
It's the 10 planets Consortium, I think or something right?
Sarah MacLean 36:09 / #
Yeah. Yeah, it's like the EU of space.
Jennifer Prokop 36:11 / #
And the thing that's really interesting, before you launch into this is, all of the, if you're working on one of the 10 planets ships, they demand that you be essentially gender neutral, but what that really means is that you are essentially disguising yourself if you're a woman to present more as a man. And so what happens is they land on this, this sex planet, and the reason it's a sex planet is because there's something literally in the atmosphere, the Desedre or whatever, I don't how to say it.
Sarah MacLean 36:43 / #
Aphrodisiac. The atmosphere itself is an aphrodisiac.
Jennifer Prokop 36:47 / #
And you can't get away from it right?
Sarah MacLean 36:50 / #
You're gonna die. If you don't have sex, you will die.
Jennifer Prokop 36:53 / #
Yeah, masturbating is not enough. It has to be a mutual thing, right?
Sarah MacLean 36:57 / #
Well, masturbating will help for a little bit. Yeah ultimately, you gotta have sex. And it doesn't matter it's can be there it can be. It can be any form of sex with, it's polyamory, queer, queer sex, whatever kind of sex you want.
Jennifer Prokop 37:15 / #
It does not have to be P in V.
Sarah MacLean 37:17 / #
It's about the emotional connection between the two, three, four, however many people.
Then what happens is, people there are as I mean, in the first one, there's an enemy. So the the alien kind of male of the species who's there hates the 10 planets people.
Enemies to lovers. Yeah. Cuz he was on. He was a prisoner on the ship or something? Anyway, he has gold skin. And, and when they when he when anybody has sex with this, this type of creature I mean, not creature but this type of being in the world. Yeah, they then turn gold.
Jennifer Prokop 38:06 / #
I know, it's amazing!
Sarah MacLean 38:06 / #
It's so crazy.
That sex is gonna make you golden.
But that's a really good one because he was this is again, it's a classic old school romance trope. "I was imprisoned by your people. I hate you by virtue of you being those people."
Jennifer Prokop 38:24 / #
And yet here we are together.
Sarah MacLean 38:26 / #
Here we are. We're forced. We are forced together and it's on. It's not only forced proximity, it's for sexual proximity, because if we don't do it, we're gonna die.
Jennifer Prokop 38:37 / #
And this is a whole series then plays around with a bunch of other things. And the second one, there's essentially a sex Olympics, of course.
Sarah MacLean 38:44 / #
Yeah. Well, that also again, we're back to if you like the Hunger Games. Hunger Games read alikes, with Jen and Sarah! Hey scholastic!
Jennifer Prokop 38:59 / #
We're like defiling your intellectual property.
Sarah MacLean 39:03 / #
Um, cuz that second one is sex in an arena. Not gladiators. Fucking.
It's performative. It's in public. It's a voyeuristic. I mean, because then there's...
I really like the whole community though.
Well, the, essentially the people, that alien race that lives on this planet then has developed a certain kind of culture based around this.
The need.
Jennifer Prokop 39:38 / #
I will say this, if you liked the idea of Feveris in Dark Skye. This is this is the series for you. This is your next book after that.
Sarah MacLean 39:50 / #
But I really love it because it's so sex positive. All the people are, "I don't understand. Why are you being so weird about sex?"
Jennifer Prokop 40:00 / #
You know, when we as people on earth travel, I think, at least I would hope most of us have this basic understanding that it's not our place to put our cultural mores on to that new place we're visiting, but to experience, what's going on here? To eat the food of the place, you're going. To try and speak the language, right? We understand that is sort of our responsibility when we choose to travel. But what if when we travel some other world, it really is fundamentally seems wrong with what you've either learned about who you are as a person or your culture. And it's kind of rules and morality. And then it really becomes, again, that conflict level really ramps up because now it's person versus society. And you're like, "Hey, this isn't how I'm supposed to act, but I have to do it in order to survive here." And those kinds of really strong internal conflicts are which are pressure from an external conflict -- that's always a real interesting. I like that. It's real meaty.
Sarah MacLean 41:10 / #
I agree. I mean and I think that's done very well in third book in this series which is just now out is it just out?
Or it, we both just got it from NetGalley let me look.
In the third book in the series, the hero is a person from the homeworld. This is his world. Yes. And because of by virtue of the sex requirement, all the time sex to stay alive on this planet, right? The the characters the people who live on this planet, they don't really believe in love. They don't believe in monogamy. I'm sorry, not love. They don't believe in monogamy. And so the concept of monogamy is incredibly foreign to them, and problematic for them because they're like, "Well, wait a second. Because what if something happens?" Right? Like what if?
You know, your mate has to leave you for a week. You're gonna die. It's just, it's impossible. It's impossible to be monogamous and live on this planet. Right?
Well, and this dude has a special gift.
He's a shaman or something.
Jennifer Prokop 42:20 / #
He's a sex god. He has to share it with the people.
Sarah MacLean 42:24 / #
So yeah. So basically his whole thing is, if you're sick on this planet, he has special energy that he can infuse in you but he has to do it via sex. It's all real bananas. Robin. I mean, what is happening in your head? PS: I love you, Robin. I met you a BA and you're amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 42:46 / #
No, but you know, this is one though, where instead of her just acclimating to his rules. She has. She he acclimates to sort of her culture, right? And she has this real concern about, "It's complicated," of course. But every single one of the conflicts that happens is really about again, "Who am I? Who do I want to be? Should having a sexual relationship with someone make it so that they're my mate for life?" I mean, essentially, it's her drama because of her. You know, she is not even entirely human. She's some other thing too.
Sarah MacLean 43:23 / #
But I think for him, his conflict is really interesting too, because if you're born into a destiny, do you have no other choice? His whole conflict is society versus self. In a very concrete way. "If I take if I do the thing that I want to do for myself, I have to turn my back on this responsibility that I have towards my society." I mean, it's very it is actually very Dark Skye, this kind of in you know if...
Well, Robin is reading Dark Skye right now.
But if Thronos didn't have such a stick up his ass about everything it would be very Dark Skye. So yeah I mean so I've really liked this. I like it for another reason to that I just want to shout out and this is not to say look, most people in romance, are not public about their entire persona. I use a pseudonym. I am Sarah in real life but you know names are all changed and it's funky but a lot of these sex planet books or space books are written under very private pseudonyms. I'm sure partially because they're there is something kind of salacious and scandalous about them at first glance. Robin is very public, she's a public figure. She uses her actual photo and I'm not dissing anybody who doesn't do that, but I just want to give an extra shout out to her for being brave.
She's great. And I think that's what it is, too. I think, fundamentally, you know, I think, sometimes erotic romance gets this really hard rap. "Meh. It's it's just porn." Obviously, no one listening to us thinks that. We don't think that. But I do think books that really examine our sense of self in conjunction with our sexuality and what that means when they aren't necessarily in alignment the way we want them to. That's, that's worth us digging into as a genre. And I think that when you a lot of the books that we've talked about so far already are really doing that and a variety of really interesting ways. And so, yeah, they deserve some credit for pushing against a, I don't know, a boundary that I think a lot of people don't really, it's harder to explore.
Yeah, I really want us to have, as a genre, I want romance, and I think this is something that places like RWA really need to sort, RWA has a lot to sort out, but someday when we get down the list from the really critical things that impact people's actual real lives in the world, I want us to have a real conversation about erotic romance. And, what it means. Why it's valuable. What the difference is between a sexy book and an erotic book. Why we need those books. Why we need to honor those books as as themselves. And I think a lot of these books are doing that work.
Jennifer Prokop 46:27 / #
Yeah, I think so. True. So I want to talk though, because sci fi / space romances aren't always just sex planet books. That's all true and interesting. But there are a couple other ones that I thought that we could talk about. Because I like science fiction so much, maybe I've read more of them. And there's a couple that have come out, in the past year, that I think are worth just mentioning. And then I want to talk about a couple that I just read that I really liked. So I want to talk about "Polaris Rising" by Jessie, is it, Mihalik? I'm not sure how I'm saying her last name correctly.
Sarah MacLean 47:12 / #
That's how I would say it but we apologize.
Jennifer Prokop 47:14 / #
This is a, now I'm gonna be really honest with you, I think this is the kind of romance light. There is a romantic arc. But I think the big arc is for our heroine, Ada von Hasenberg. And she is essentially and this is my catnip, right? So she is the princess essentially in the in the universe. There's three really powerful houses and house von Hasenberg is one of them. And she's the fifth of six children. And she has all these skills but her real job is going to be to marry somebody for her house. So this is the all the aristocracy stuff, but put in space. And a couple of years earlier she got told she was gonna have to marry somebody. And she was all like, "Fuck all y'all," and she takes off. And so she's on this space adventure and she, at the beginning of the book, has been caught kind of accidentally. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone picked her up who didn't really even know what they had and all of a sudden figures it out. And she gets put in a cell with a guy named Marcus Lock who is essentially the most wanted criminal in the galaxy.
Sarah MacLean 48:27 / #
And hey, Marcus. I wanna say this. He's known as the Devil of Fornax Zero. Which I mean everyone knows if they're called the devil then you definitely are gonna bone 'em. I mean, that's just gonna happen happen right?
And they pretty quickly figure out that they can use each other to essentially escape the ship and she promises like, "Look, I'll pay you a ton of money. If you get me out of here. If you help me get out of here," because she's crazy rich from this crazy rich family and they go on this massive space adventure. And the reason I say it's romance light is, there's a clear romantic arc but I don't think it's the A plot, right? It's like Princess Leia if she didn't have to be fucking dead weighted with Luke and everybody else, right? She is just on her own adventure and it's fucking great. And I loved it because I love, you know she's got blasters, and implants, and she has to go do all this crazy...
The cover. I know that we always joke about covers not being important and whatever read the book, but this covers badass.
And I'm going to tell you I also just read it does not come out till October 1 so maybe this is bad form, but I just read the sequel which is about Ada's sister Bianca. She has been previously married. She went through the house marriage thing. And part of the reason Ada was so sure she didn't want to do it, she saw what happened to her older sister's. Now Bianca's husband is dead. She's back in the house. And there's a big romance between her and the head of house security.
A bodyguard romance!
Jennifer Prokop 50:16 / #
Hello, exactly. And again, I feel like if you go into these books, thinking there's gonna be a romance but it's going to be kind of secondary to this Space Princess plot. Then you like me will be very happy. And I love them cuz they're about competent women.
Sarah MacLean 50:36 / #
I love it. So over the so just to confirm the series is how many books?
Jennifer Prokop 50:42 / #
It's going to be three. The first one is "Polaris Rising." It's out now. And "Aurora Blazing" comes up second.
Sarah MacLean 50:48 / #
And this plot. The meat of the plot is over three by books. It's like Game of Thrones in space.
Jennifer Prokop 50:58 / #
Yep. It sure is. House politics, right? So their house wants something from them. There's all this intrigue between them and the other houses. There's always competition, essentially.
Sarah MacLean 51:12 / #
And each of the books is a standalone romance. It's just the overarching series is the plot.
You know what, I think that people will like that. Because also I do feel like it's more common in science fiction to have the same characters over books, but I like that instead it's like the house. House Van Hasenberg.
Well it flips the script and it makes them more, it actually does make them more romancey. Because, yeah, a romance reader. Well, I mean, Jen, please, if you're recommending these, they have to be complete romances at the end. You're not gonna recommend them if at the end, you're like, "Well, are these two ending up together?"
Jennifer Prokop 51:49 / #
You're gonna get that HEA but what I really liked about it is, I think number two worked for me because they work together more. In "Polaris Rising," there's actually quite a few scenes where they split up and we follow Ada who does her own shit. Saves him a bunch of times. That worked for me too. But, I think if you need them to be on page together all the time, it's not quite the same. But I really like them a lot.
Sarah MacLean 52:20 / #
It sounds like Romancelandia really loves this book. It's on my desk because it's one of my next reads. I mean, it's on my desk with eight other books, but, and I got a puppy this week. I don't know what I'm doing.
Jennifer Prokop 52:30 / #
You're not reading space romances.
Sarah MacLean 52:31 / #
I'm also reading this book. I'm reading this puppy training book that's written by monks. I don't even know who I am.
That's real awkward. Sarah. Real awkward. Are we done?
I think so. No wait. You had a queer space romance.
Jennifer Prokop 52:48 / #
Oh, I do have one I want to shout out it's called "Treason of Truths" by Ada Harper. And it is essentially also a bodyguard romance except, so the queen or the empress, her name Sabine, so of course I was already really into liking her. And then her lover although it's real complicated at the beginning. You can't quite figure it out. Her name is Lyre. L Y R E, is that how you say it? And her job essentially is, she's the spymaster for the empress. But the book opens with her doing some negotiating and you definitely at first like, "Wait is this unrequited love?" Lyre's just super into Sabine but then they get back together and you could tell everybody thinks they're already lovers. It's kind of hidden but there's this great line at the beginning and I was all in where Sabine says something to someone in Lyre thinks, "When she says, 'Thank you,' she can make it sound like, 'Fuck you.'" And I was like, that's my kind of character right there. So that one is one that I I actually have not finished yet. But I've started once I knew we were doing this and I've been really enjoying it but I will admit I'm not there yet. I'm not done yet.
Sarah MacLean 54:08 / #
Oh great. Well I'm glad that we shouted it out. Tell us your favorite space romance because we want to read more of them. I downloaded "Warrior's Woman" like a lunatic earlier so I'm ready. I mean who am I kidding? I'm not reading this monk book. But we are very excited. I'm always jazzed when we can talk about a sub genre of romance that is feels new. Feels fresh. There are just there are only so many wallflower rakes that you know, I mean, I love a wallflower rake. God knows. But
There are no wallflowers in space, Sarah none. And maybe that's why I like it.
I don't think no. This is really fun. It's summer. It's time for space romances. If there were ever a time for space romance. It's summer.
Now, before we go, you wanted to try something new at the end of every episode.
Oh my gosh, I wasn't ready to do it today. But
Do you want me to start?
You start. Yeah. And I've got a thing that I'm yeah, I've got a thing to talk about.
So it's just sharing something fun that we had happened to us or that we did. Is that what it is?
I don't know. No, I'm thinking that it should be a like, "Is there a book that you just recently read that you think is great?" Okay, the recc. Either a book or a movie or show or thing?
Jennifer Prokop 55:38 / #
Oh, okay. So I have been watching Chernobyl on HBO to no one's surprise because everyone knows I know love a nuclear story. But you know, it's been really cool. I know.
Sarah MacLean 55:49 / #
That's so obscure and weird. Oh my god. Have you read Alyssa Cole's mixed signals?
Yeah, but wait, you didn't know that about me. You didn't know
I knew that you, vaguely but I didn't know that it was, you know, a thing you put in your bio. Send me your nuclear romances.
Okay. Actually, there are a few nuclear romances and I have not read them.
Well, that Mixed Signals one, isn't it?
All right. That's Listen, I read nonfiction nuclear books. I've read many, many books about Chernobyl. I know that's real fucking crazy, but I love it. Yeah, so I've read Actually, I'll take a picture. I put it on Twitter. You just don't follow me closely. Enough. I have a whole nuclear shelf anyway,
I have puppy now. I can't I just I can't. I can't Twitter.
Okay, here's what's really cool about if you've watched the show. They also have a podcast that goes along with it. And what's really cool about the podcast is, it's the guy from Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, which I was on one than once. I was on that once and won. But
You were on what?
Jennifer Prokop 56:55 / #
Wait, I'll tell you that in a minute. Wait, and he's interviewing the writer. And what they do is they kind of go through the episode and talk about what parts are true and where they came from and which parts he essentially wrote in. So it's a really cool way of experiencing the show. Kind of like, if you ever have that question when, you're watching something that's based on real events, you're like, "Which parts real which parts aren't?" The podcast is so fun to listen to, as you watch because that, or after you watch, because then you're like, "Oh, that's a composite character. Oh, that dialogue actually came straight from voices from Chernobyl," so I really recommend the podcast in the show.
You can recommend puppy books, I guess.
Nope. No, I you guys, I so I really love the movies, but I don't go to them enough. And that is the thing that is real. But I went to see Book Smart.
Jennifer Prokop 58:00 / #
Oh, I want to see that!
Sarah MacLean 58:02 / #
My lovely friend Megan Frampton, and Megan and I live five or six blocks from each other and in between our houses - this is what's so great about living in a city - is a movie theater. So we met in the middle and we went to see Book Smart, which is, I said to my husband, "It is the greatest last night of high school movie I've ever seen." Basically if you loved all those high school coming of age movies, this movie is about the very last night of high school. Tomorrow morning is graduation. And the heroine is the valedictorian and her best friend, who is the salutatorian - is that how you say that? Salutatorian. And they are adorable workaholic. Well, the valedictorian is an adorable workaholic nerd. And the salutatorian is mega feminist nerd. And they've done nothing but be each other's friends and study to get into the best possible colleges and to do their amazing things after after high school. And then on the last day of school, she discovers that all the kids who she thinks like, "Well, they've just slacked off and not done anything. And they're all going to, you know, nowhere colleges and she's gonna end up being their boss," turns out, they're all going to Yale and Princeton, Stanford and big colleges, and she realizes in the very beginning of this movie, she's basically missed out on high school because she was so panicked for the rest of her life. So she had that one night to rectify it. It's like a buddy movie. And it has all the beats. There's a little there's a little bit of a romance in it. It has all the beats that you love in these movies. If you love these movies, which I do, and I just highly, highly recommend it. It's written by a woman. Produced, it's got a giant female, lots and lots of women working on it. The crew, and it's written by Olivia Wilde who's, you know, awesome talented. Jason Sudeikis, is in it.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:30 / #
Hmm, that sounds so good.
Sarah MacLean 1:00:31 / #
So is Lisa Kudrow.
Well, it's summertime it's time for me to get my movie on so I'm here for it.
If you like a high school movie. But you teach high school you well you teach junior high.
I don't. I teach middle school but you know, my son is in high school and I am always telling him, "Just enjoy high school. Stop fucking falling for this crazy idea that your life will only matters."
I want you to watch it with him and then tell me what he thinks.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:58 / #
I will report back to you.
Sarah MacLean 1:00:59 / #
Yeah, I want to know what real kids - kids on the street - feel. But I really loved it.
Kids on the street are still in bed at 11:30 / # in the morning, fine.
That's a great life.
Jennifer Prokop 1:01:10 / #
It seriously is.
Sarah MacLean 1:01:11 / #
It really is. I would be in bed if I didn't have you know, kids and a dog. And a husband.
Jennifer Prokop 1:01:18 / #
Self-inflicted!
Sarah MacLean 1:01:22 / #
All right, my love's. This was Fated Mates. Don't forget to subscribe, like and subscribe in your favorite podcasting app. Find us on Twitter at Fated Mates. Find us on Instagram at Fated Mates pod. Check out the show notes because Jen is amazing and does beautiful show notes. There will be cover images this year.
Jennifer Prokop 1:01:42 / #
Yeah. Oh yeah. Just a quick reminder everybody that the Moon and Mars are two different places. Have fun in space.
Sarah MacLean 1:02:31 / #
Well masturbating will help for a little bit, but ultimately, you gotta have sex.
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:37 / #
It does not have to be P in V.
Movie Dialogue 1:03:29 / #
Waiter all have with she's having only less pepper
6.5: Freewheeling with Joanna Shupe: Enemies to Lovers Romance
This week, we’re having a fun, far-reaching conversation with the wonderful Joanna Shupe—who loves Kiss of a Demon King a whole lot, immediately saw the echoes of one of the most famous old school romances inside it, and came to talk to us about enemies to lovers romances, but ended up telling us all about that time she spent a lot of time researching penetrative sex in carriages. We had a great time, and hope you do, too!
Our next read-along episode will tackle the final two Wroth brothers with the two IAD novellas, The Warlord Wants Forever (Nikolai) & Untouchable (Murdoch), available in the Deep Kiss of Winter anthology! This will be the last time we tackle vampires until Lothaire, so get your fill!
A Note: There are two version of The Warlord Wants Forever — you want the most recent version.
Show Notes
Joanna Shupe writes delightful Gilded Age romances. Check out this twitter thread where Jen raved about A Daring Arrangement.
Sarah was hunting for that Lora Leigh book on Twitter.
Goodreads reviewers have feelings about Prisoner of My Desire.
Of course there's a YouTube channel of classic clips from Candid Camera.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is an amazing woman. The 1968 film The Lion in Winter stars Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.
Hot Island Nights is the prequel to Her Best Worst Mistake.
Jen also talked about A Matter of Disagreement on Twitter.
Consider this a placeholder in case Joanna shares links from her sex in a carraige research. Jen's a little afraid to google search that one.
A barouche is a real thing, and you can learn more about all of it at the Carriage Museum in Long Island.
We return to IAD next time with two Wroth brother novellas, the first is The Warlord Wants Forever (an earlier version of this was available in an anthology called Playing Easy to Get. It is not HUGELY different, so it's okay if you just have that one--we'll talk about the differences during the episode.) The second is called Untouchable and available in the Deep Kiss of Winter anthology.
