S03.27: Retellings in Romance Novels with Kate Clayborn
We are joined by the fabulous Kate Clayborn — the first in the Fated Mates five-timer club! — to talk about about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book, Love At First, which you can get wherever books are sold. We talk about the difference between retellings and homages, about Shakespeare and mythology and retellings of classic texts versus modern ones. And of course, we fill your TBR.
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you.
Next week, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's A Matter of Class, a short historical novel. Get it for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or Google Books.
Show Notes
Welcome Kate Clayborn, our first five-timer. She was with us for the Best Friend’s Sibling Interstitial, Kresley’s The Player, the Sickbed Scenes Interstitial, Derek Craven Day 2021, and today’s interstitial on Romance Retellings.
Texas and the rest of America got hit with some espically bad winter weather this February. This is climate change.
Kate released Love at First this week, which is an homage to Romeo and Juliet. Kate’s 2020 book, Love Lettering, is an Overdrive read. Get it today with no wait!
JK Rowling is a problem, and it’s changed the way many Harry Potter fans think about her books.
Yes, yes, the English Teacher memes are so funny. Well take that.
Tl;dr: archetypes are about character,while retellings are about plot.
In Where Dreams Begin, Zachary Bronson is a hero that follows the Beast archetype, and Jen saw it in the scene where Holly first enters his house.
Story can be a safe way to explore terrifying ideas about society and people. For example, both La Lloronaand Medea are about mothers who kill their children, but have a kind of distance that the story of Andrea Yates does not.
Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes writes about storytelling and the universal ID.
Our next read along episode will be A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.
Retellings from Literature
Retellings of Fairy Tales
Retellings from Pop Culture
S03.12: The Immigrant Story and Joy in Romance with Adriana Herrera
The fabulous Adriana Herrera is here for her fourth time to talk about Joy! We had a great time with one of the greatest people this week — talking about the American immigrant experience, how hope and bravery make for beautiful love stories, and listing a huge number of books that we love.
Notes
Welcome back, Adriana Herrera! She’s been on a few times so far: Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night, the food romance episode, and she and Jen talked about trauma in romance. This week, her March 2020 release American Sweethearts appeared on the Publisher’s Weekly Best of 2020 List.
Normalize pegging at all costs.
If you’re going to come to the phone bank this weekend dressed as a romance heroine, might we suggest you drape a mantilla over your head and carry a pistol? You’ll be a dead ringer for Jessica Trent from Lord of Scoundrels. Sarah was on a panel with Loretta Chase a few weeks ago, and I guess the only blessing of these Zoom times is watching these things online. IS THERE A LINK TO THIS?
Adriana has written a few pieces about immigration in romance, one for Bustle and one for Remezcla.
Just a quick primer, because we didn’t clarify these definitions on the podcast and it’s complicated, because both terms are widely used to describe the same group of people--American-born children of immigrants. While Sarah grew up thinking of herself as "first-generation," many modern academics & the Census label her as "second-generation." Here's a cool article on all the terms, and how they've evolved.
Also, it’s useful to know the difference between push and pull factors that drive immigration.
If you want to read a terrific immigrant superhero story, Jen recommends a graphic novel she teaches to her 7th graders, The Shadow Hero by Gene Yang. She’s also really loved his recent release Dragon Hoops.
Adriana loves the podcast On Being, hosted by Krista Tippet. The episode with Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, features some interesting discussion of his own immigrant story.
We do not recommend reading American Dirt, but you should know the story of how and why it was published, some ideas about why publishing was so eager to sell this particular story from a variety of Latinx authors and thinkers.
When Adriana mentioned “the fun kind of thrust” she is referencing Jenny Nordbak’s best advice for finding a sex scene in a book: search for the word “thrust.”
Diacritical marks are symbols added to letters which tells the speaker how to correctly pronounce the word. In The Bride Test, the same words have diacritical marks when spoken by Esme, a character newly immigrated from Vietnam, but do not have them when spoken by Vietnamese-Americans. Also, language loss in the children of immigrant families is a well-documented phenomena.
Take a look at the cultural iceberg.
Jeannette Ng’s piece, Critiquing Cultural Appropriation in Books That Are Kinda Meh, is about the pressure to research and how it undermines the lived experience of #OwnVoices authors.
Jen mentioned a piece in Kirkus called 100 books by Cynthia Leitich Smith, which argues “Before trying to write any character outside one’s lived experience, I recommend reading at least 100 books* by authors from that community. To start.” By the way, Smith is the author of a terrific YA novel called Hearts Unbroken if you’re interested.
Trujillo was terrible! Don’t steal Adriana’s idea to write a story about the Japanese-Dominican people who were living on the border of the Domenican Republic and Haiti.
Ethiopia and its capital Addis Ababa are fascinating places. Adriana and her partner lived there for five years. Also, the lions of Ethiopia are genetically distinct from other lions.
When it comes to holiday shopping, October is the new December. Sarah wrote a long thread of some of her favorite local indies that carry romance. Support them if you can.
The Books
