06.13: Sarah & Jen are Taking Your Questions
It’s December, Jen is in NYC, and we’re taking questions from our Discord and Instagram! Listen to us talk about how we read, what makes us DNF, how we met, the books we loved this year (that weren’t published this year), and more. We love these episodes, and not only because they happen when we’re together on Sarah’s couch, but also because we get to talk directly to you!
Next week’s episode is a surprise deep dive, because y’all are wild about dragons! We’re reading Thea Harrison’s Dragon Bound, available in print and ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo and your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Get our Best Romance of 2023 book box from Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, PA. We're excited to be partnering with them on this one!
You know what we meant when we talked about Bart writing on the chalkboard.
If you’ve never been to New York City at Christmas, we would highly recommend it. This year, the windows at Saks were cosponsored by Dior and celebrated the signs of the zodiac, and it’s pretty awesome. But there’s also the angels and the Rockefeller center tree, and the Bryant Park holiday market.
Jen also went to Back to the Future the musical and ate at the place with two bulls, which was actually called Benny John’s.
Tillie Cole has bigger problems then Jen not liking any mention of cults in the books she reads.
If you’re looking for a romance writer’s conference, check out the Chicago North conference in April of 2024.
Some bookish gifts: a Book stand, a bluetooth page turner for your eReader, and get a stand while you’re at it.
Tracey Livesay made a very funny and very perfect video this week about the rise of Romantasy.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Melanie Greene’s Away with a Stranger,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your ebooks,
Charlotte O’Shay, author of Snowfire,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your ebooks,
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies,
visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off your order and free shipping.
S05.20: Shifter Romance: Manimals!
You’ve been asking for a shifter interstitial, and we like to give you what you want. Today, we’re talking manimals! We go back to the beginning and touch on all the shifter/Lycae business that we dealt with in Season 1, and then we talk about all the ways werewolves have evolved into were-other things and then into DNA-splicing experiments. The recs get wild, the plots get weird, and there’s a lot happening!
Our next episode will drop Saturday in honor of the greatest of holidays, Derek Craven Day! To celebrate, we recommend rereading Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You and then enjoying a full hour of our banter about our proudest achievement. In observance of DCD23, we will not be releasing a Wednesday episode next week, but we will be with you all the week after!
Our first read along of 2023 (in February) is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Today’s show is apparently brought to you by 1983. The song She’s a Maniac was on the Flashback soundtrack, and Manimal was a television show.
We talked so much about shifters in Season One, you just have to go back. I’m sorry.
Derek Craven Day is coming this Saturday. Please celebrate responsibly.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Jess K. Hardy, author of Come as You Are
Get it at Amazon, free on Kindle Unlimited,
visit Jess K. Hardy at jesskhardy.com
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S05.04: What to Read If You Liked The Love Hypothesis...
Today we start one of our new features for Season Five: If You Liked…Read This! We begin with Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, a book that took romance and BookTok by storm last year when it burst onto the NYT best seller list and hung out there for nearly a year, bringing so many new readers (and Reylos!) to romance.
This one is full of tropes romance loves, and we take them topic by topic, recommending read alikes for everything from grumpy/sunshine, to academic romance, to STEM heroines, to that spicy sex scene that was a delightfully unexpected surprise! That, and we’ve got a bunch of Reylo fic recommended from Ali herself (check the end of show notes)!
Notes
ReyLo is the ship name for Kylo Ren and Rey from the Star Wars movies. And the actor who plays Kylo Ren is Adam Driver.
All about Pansexuality.
Censorship on TikTok is so widespread is has its own wikipedia page, which makes it rife for misinformation about sex and sex education.
Small point of order, Jen was at the LPI (Lunar and Planetary Institute), which is close to the Johnson NASA Space Center in Houston. Obviously, she wasn’t at the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), because that’s in California.
Ali Hazelwood’s Books
Pining Main Characters
The Professors
STEM Heroines
Great Banter
Microtropes
Reylo Fic recommended by Ali Hazelwood & Adriana Herrera
$15 New, $15 Used, Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Abash the Little Bird, SecretReyloTrash
All Our Days, voicedimplosives
Can’t Turn Off What Turns Me On, audreyii_fic
Coarse and Rough and Irritating, frak-all
Composure, Skyelo_Ren
Count the Rings, lachesisgrimm
Cupcake Wars, crossingwinter
Embers, Sciosophia
The Girl in Terminal B, nightsofreylo
Juniper and Bergamot, SaintHeretical
Lascivious Weapons, CoraRiley
Let Go (Never Let Me Go), crossingwinter
Light Carries on Endlessly, lachesisgrimm
Misprint, JenfysNest
A Night for Firsts, TheAlchemistsDaughter
Shade on a Sunny Street, tigbit
Sharp Dressed Man, audreyii_fic
She Uses Tangerines, Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
So Long, My Adversary, Like_A_Dove
Something Beautiful but Annihilating, SecretReyloTrash
Why Don’t You and I Combine, Crossingwinter
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Blair Babylon, author of Twisted and Tangled,
available in print and ebook, wherever you get your romance,
and
Emjoy, your audio journey to female pleasure.
Visit letsemjoy.com/mates for your 14 day free trial.
S04.41: Unputdownable Romance Novels
We don’t even know, y’all, so this week, we’re doing a little bit of flailing and a lot of talking about books we found unputdownable when we read them the first time. We did our very best to avoid repeats — which is difficult this many episodes in! We talk about what makes a book unputdownable (we’ve got buckets!) and about other things too…like our annual reader survey and how skilled a musician Sarah is.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Show Notes
Abortion is lifesaving healthcare. We are devastated and urge you to support the National Network of Abortion Funds, which removes financial and logistical barriers to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and organizing at the intersections of racial, economic, and reproductive justice. They partner with organizations already in place on the ground in places where abortions are banned to do the work of helping people who need abortions.
We’ve talked about bodily autonomy in romance novels before, and in our trailblazer conversation with Elda Minger, she spoke extensively about what birth control and abortion were like for people back in the 70s.
We remain Big Mad. Also, we are here for you, always. Find Jen (mostly) at Twitter and Sarah (mostly) on Instagram.
Sarah broke her ukulele, which is a pretty cool instrument.
It's Lizzo leading the charge to donate proceeds from her tour to Planned Parenthood, joined by (of course) Rage Against the Machine. Although Harry Styles did make a statement about the Dobbs decision.
London Has Fallen is a deeply silly and very entertaining movie that absolutely does not even try to pass The Bechdel Test.
Back when Jen read the first Scorpius Syndrome book, she did notice a funny thing about the main character’s sense of smell.
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publishers of Julie Anne Long’s You Were Made to Be Mine, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit julieannelong.com
and
Leighann Hart, author of Darling Descent
available at Kindle Unlimited
S02.10: Amnesia Romance Novels
We’re talking about the most scientific of topics today — it’s Amnesia Week! Whether you love or hate it, or believe it simply doesn’t exist, you can’t deny the fact that amnesia has kept a battalion of romance readers in books for nigh on forty years. And of course, we’re talking about Overboard.
Next week, we’re switching things up and running a full recommendation podcast! You asked us questions, and we’re recommending a metric romance ton of books! Don’t miss it!
In two weeks, we’re going to a classic of classics! The read was on both Jen & Sarah’s list—Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, which is on the lions’ share of Best Romance Novels Ever lists. We’ll get into why. Read Lord of Scoundrels at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.
SHOW NOTES
Listen, it's Eric FONER. He's kind of a big deal.
More about how brains develop.
A twitter thread about Sarah's brain surgeon.
The kind of Amnesia in books and movies isn't real, but in case you were wondering, all about global amnesia and aphasia.
Jen & Sarah have seen the 80s version of Overboard 100 times, and the 2018 version no times.
Speaking of Pregneisa... on the podcast I Don't Even Own a Television, these two guys mostly read it to make fun of it, but then listen to just this snippet of Jeb Lund TOTALLY GETTING ROMANCE.
Kylie Scott does write about zombies, and threesomes, and rock stars, and getting with your Dad's best friend.
Jen did write about Lies as an example of an Unreliable Narrator, but she still enjoyed the book!
Jen couldn't locate the future/present/past thread on twitter, but this is a placeholder in case she ever does.
All about that incel bullshit.
The Silent Towns is a short story by Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles---which Jen really liked for the most part! Try There will Come Soft Rains instead.
The Last Man on Earth is a TV show and While You Were Sleeping was a movie.
Jen likes the scummy, sexy white boy thing Matthew McConaughey has going on.
"Don't You Forget About Me" is the theme song to The Breakfast Club. No one had amnesia in the movie, they were just teenagers likely to be shitty to each other.
Buy buttons from Kelly and shirts from Jordandené.
Ashley from Southern California was blooded by The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
Next week we're doing the first of our big romance recommendation podcasts, but get reading Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase -- it's our next read!
S02.01 Welcome to Season Two
We're Back!
We promised you we'd be back with Season Two in September, and here we are in September, back with Season Two!
We've said farewell to Season One, but we'll never fully be able to quit IAD, so Season Two will be The Books That Blooded Us -- that is, the books that made us the romance readers we are...books that taught us what the genre could be, books that scratched our itch, books that made us lifelong romance readers, books that set us on the path directly to your earholes!
Over the season, we'll tackle 10 (or so) books that blooded each of us -- we'll deep dive, discuss, and delight in each other's picks -- and we've got some fun ideas for how you all can share the books that blooded you!
So...where do we begin? We begin in two weeks with the primordial text for both of us...the one...the only...Dreaming of You. We'll talk Derek Craven's cockney accent, Sara Fielding's legendary novel, Lisa Kleypas's immense skill with talismans, and we'll get to the very bottom of some of the most controversial bits of this glorious book that the two of us love a whole lot.
Get reading, y'all, we've got a lot to say. You can find 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!
We'll be announcing the schedule for the first few reads later this week -- so you'll have time to read ahead, but in the meantime, sit back, relax, and let us give you a preview of what's to come!
Don't forget to like and subscribe in your favorite podcasting platform!
Show Notes
Jen tweeted about Altogether by Brill Harper and then all of Romancedlandia read it. It's deliciously filthy.
Read Sarah's drunk texts to Jen and Kate on the Vika group chat. Take a look at these covers for Rebecca Zanetti's Deadly Silence.
Sarah was on Wicked and the Wallflowers podcast to talk about Brazen and the Beast.
You had no idea flag design was so fascinating.
Looking back at twitter, it might have been a shared love of Derek Craven that made Sarah and Jen friends. We can't wait to discuss Dreaming of You in two weeks.