Jennifer Prokop 6/7/23 Jennifer Prokop 6/7/23

S05.38: Prologues & Epilogues in Romance

It’s hard to believe it’s taken us this long to do a prologue and epilogue episode! We talk about beginnings and endings and why they exist and why writers should ignore every piece of broad strokes nonsense advice people want to throw at them. Jen says “Prologues are plot and epilogues are character,” and blows Sarah’s mind with her genius (jk, Sarah already knew she was a genius). And yes, we talk about babies. Fair warning!

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Show Notes

You know, Animal Farm is a good book and King Lear is a good play.

There is a very cute family of foxes living in Chicago’s Millennium Park

Apparently this dogs and rosetone thing is a known issue.

Here is an example of the hardline “Prologues are Bad” stance. || ed note: I’m not mad about it, since I have some known hardline stances myself. Ahem. ||

Our list of things good romance prologues do: provide needed backstory, historical information, an inciting incident in the past, an unusual set-up, and showcasing the relationship between the primary characters.

Our list of things romance epilogues do: fan service, bringing the whole gang back together in a series,providing a glimpse into the other character’s POV, The HEA fulfilled, the babylogue, and surprise motherfuckers!

A link to a folder with PDFs of links in show notes.

Books Mentioned this Episode

Lord of Scoundrels

Forbidden

Something Wilder

Love at First

The Boyfriend Project

Wicked and the Wallflower

A Caribbean Heiress in Paris

No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Never Judge a Lady by her Cover

Knockout

The Viscount Who Loved Me

Georgie, All Along

The Love Hypothesis

The Duchess Hunt

Devil's Bride

Burn For Me

Sapphire Flames

Prince of Broadway

Wild Rain

Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes

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

Tattoos are expensive!
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.