S05.43: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer with Christina and Lauren
We go back to the OG DNA of the contemporary boom of the early 2010s today, with a read along of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, with fabulous fan fic writers turned brilliant romance novelists, Christina Lauren. Christina and Lauren talk about the way the books inspired them to write, helped them find a community, and their fated mates (each other). Jen talks about reading Twilight as a middle school teacher, and Sarah talks about never reading it at all…until now.
Within, we’ll talk about characters feeling big feelings, about how Twilight inspired romance novelists across the board, about third acts that go hard, and about how Alice is unquestionably the best character in the whole thing.
Get Christina and Lauren’s most recent book, The True Love Experiment, wherever books are sold, and this week from Bookshop.org, where you get free shipping and help your local independent bookstore.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at 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
Welcome back Christina and Lauren! After listening to them talk about Twilight, don’t forget to pick up their latest book, The True Love Experiment. We’ve had Christina and Lauren on a bunch of times to talk about FanFic, The Soulmate Equation, and the forced proximity trope.
Not sure of the exact article that Lo read about brain scans and married couples, but this seems like a good overview.
And a selection of some of our favorite articles about Twilight:
From The Atlantic: At Its Core, the ‘Twilight’ Saga Is a Story About
From Entertainment Weekly: The Twilight Effect
From The New York Times: Love and Pain and the Teenage Vampire Thing
From Slate: All 349 “Murmurs” in the Twilight Saga, Charted and Ranked
From Salon: Meet the Twilight Dildo Inventor
From Vogue: 56 Thoughts I had While Rewatching Twilight
From Vulture: The Most Horrific Twilight Character Backstories, Ranked by Absurdity and a video about The Rise and Fall of the Vampire Romance Craze in Film and TV.
A Google Folder with PDFs of this week's articles.
The Twilight Series
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S03.42: Fantasy Romance Interstitial with Zoraida Córdova
This week, Zoraida Córdova (aka Zoey Castile) joins us to talk about fantasy romance and why it is so hard to find it in the romance pool. We talk about speculative fiction, high fantasy, low fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy, paranormal romance and more, all while trying to figure out just what makes something fantasy and not paranormal (we think we’ve cracked the code). We also talk world building, about maps, and about merman junk.
Our next read along is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! Get the others in the series, too, while you’re at it, because you’ll probably want to read the whole thing.
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!
Fantasy Romances
Notes
Welcome Zoraida Córdova! Zoraida writes MG, YA, and adult speculative fiction, and also romance under the name Zoey Castile.
Puerto Rico is a US territory and residents of the island are American citizens.
We love Norma Perez-Hernandez who is an amazing, exuberant editor at Kensington, and if you don’t follow her on Twitter she should. Norma also was on the 2020 Publisher's Weekly Star Watch List.
Zoraida’s book The Vicious Deep answers the age-old question of “where does it go,” a similar answer is in Guillermo del Toro's movie The Shape of Water.
Speculative fiction asks the question “what if” and is the big umbrella category for science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy (now Black authors in particular suggest we rename this contemporary fantasy), and paranormal.
Reading strategies are for everyone: We love maps in fantasy, so why not in contemporary fiction?
Victoria Avyeard was on Sarah Enni's First Draft podcast talking about world building.
The Hero’s Journey, or maybe the heroine’s journey.
NK Jemisin’s lecture about the cultural iceberg shows writers how to build a world that goes beyond what’s on the surface.
An interesting thread from a YA librarian, and another from author Elizabeth May, about why and how romance plots in SFF are pushed into YA.
Zoraida hosts a writing podcast with Dhonielle Clayton called Deadline City.
Relevant music perormed by: Twin Temple, Marike van Dijk + Katell Keineg, King Missile, Dr. Octagon, and Led Zeppelin. Listen to the full Fated Music playlist on Spotify.