S04.48: J. R. Ward: Trailblazer
The final Trailblazer of Season 4 is a very excellent one—we’re welcoming JR Ward to Fated Mates! Best known as the author of The Black Dagger Brotherhood (a series that blooded Jen), JR began her career writing contemporary romances under the name Jessica Bird before turning to the vampires the romance world adores. In this episode, we talk about the twists and turns of her early career, about the influence of her mother and other powerful women in her life, about the business of being JR Ward, about her process of writing the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and about her relationship to her characters.
We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did, and we are so grateful to JR Ward for spending some time with us.
Thanks to Avon Books, publishers of Beverly Jenkins’s To Catch a Raven, Blackstone Publishing, publishers of Nora Zelevansky’s Competitive Grieving, and Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry a Duke, for sponsoring the episode. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for an audio excerpt of Competitive Grieving.
Next week, we finish out Season 4 as is traditional — with a deep dive episode on Sarah’s summer release, Heartbreaker! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, at your local indie, or signed and with special swag (and a Fated Mates sticker!) from her local indie, WORD in Brooklyn!
Show Notes
Welcome J.R. Ward, author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, a series of paranormal romances. She also wrote category romance under the name Jessica Bird.
We did a deep dive of JR Ward's Dark Lover in Season Two. Listen here.
People Mentioned: editor Hannah Braaten, publisher Jennifer Bergstrom, publicist Andrew Nguyen, editor and publisher Kara Cesare.
Authors Mentioned: Sherilyn Kenyon, Laurel K. Hamilton, Christine Feehan, Kresley Cole, Nora Roberts, Kristen Ashley, Christopher Rice, and Gena Showalter.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors:
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publishers of Beverly Jenkins’s To Catch a Raven, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and your local indie.
Visit beverlyjenkins.net
and
Blackstone Publishing, publishers of Nora Zelevansky’s Competitive Grieving,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Kobo.
Visit norazelevansky.com
and
Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry a Duke,
available at Amazon.
Visit alyxandraharvey.com
S02.23: Waking Up with the Duke: Lorraine Heath Breaks A Lot of Romance Rules
This week, it’s one of Sarah’s favorites, and by an author Jen has never read! Lorraine Heath is a master of the historical, and this one is near-perfect. It’s complex and nuanced and it has an infidelity plot and THERE IS SO MUCH ANGST!
We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!
In two weeks, we’re reading the Queen of Dirty Talk! Sarah and Jen both love Tessa Bailey — so we’ll be talking about our two favorites of her books, Asking for Trouble (Sarah’s) and Protecting What’s His (Jen’s). Find them at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
Turns out Sarah and Jen aren't the only people who think these Apple keyboards are trash--after winning a 2020 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Taika Waititi had quite a bit to say on the subject.
Tom Beer is one of Jen's editors at Kirkus, and you should follow him on Twitter.
You can read The Smith College Sophian on line, and we'll link to the interview with Sarah onces it goes live.
We have Leslie Knope from Parks & Recreation to thank for the glory that is Galentine's Day. Read Jen's column about some books that celebrate women's friendship.
A few years ago during #RomBkLove, Shantastic/@bardsong wrote a great piece about disability in romance. You can also check out the blog, Sense and Disability by @Callalily.
Kate Reading is an amazing audiobook narrator, she's the one who narrates Lord of Scoundrels.
Fridging is a word from comics that is when women characters are killed to motivate a male character, but can be used to describe any time a less powerful or privileged character is used as a plot device. Flat Stanley is a character in children's books, but flat characters you might remember from English class.
Harry and Meghan are still taking money from the Duchy of Cornwall.
Jen said she was going to go back and read the other books in the trilogy, and they are bundled together on Amazon for $10.
The Bechdel Test is a pretty simple way of judging how inclusive movies are of women characters; it's limited but powerful. Jen wrote about external and internal conflict in romance, but we also talked about it on the Priest episode -- and we are always unpacking the way conflict works in romance.
Dialogue tags get a bad rap, famously Elmore Leonard claimed that writers should only use "said" and "asked." In this part of the discussion, Sarah mentioned her friend Barry Lyga, a YA author.
Jen thinks these three are codependent.
Cheating is the third rail of romance. It is. There are some lists on Goodreads of romances that have cheating, but it's complicated and difficult. One Jen read recently was I Want You Back by Lorelei James, but the cheating happened in the past. If you're interested in reading another book about someone who discovers the other family, Jen recommends Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.
Next time, we'll be reading Tessa Bailey, The Queen of Dirty Talk. Sarah's choice is Asking for Trouble, and a secondary text is the first one of that same series, Protecting What's His.
Buy stickers and buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordan.
We are experimenting with some voice to text transcripts, so here's the first one for this episode.