S06.28: HEA or GTFO
The cornerstone of the genre. The one thing that, when thrown into question, is guaranteed to enrage every corner of Romancelandia. We’re talking about Happily Ever After (HEA). Its promise, its importance, its relevance to us as readers, writers and people in the world. We talk about what really makes it hard won and deserved for us — which means yes, we’re talking about grovels and yes, we’re talking about third act break ups, and yes, we’re talking about patriarchy. Because of course we are. You’ve probably heard us talk about all the books we’re mentioning here…greatest hits are hits for a reason, y’all.
There are some minor audio issues with this one. Sorry, folks! It does get better at about 15 minutes in. There are a handful of tickets left for Fated Mates LIVE in Brooklyn, NY, this Saturday, March 23, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel! Join us, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings (one-half of Christina Lauren), Nikki Payne, and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. Get Kate’s The Other Side of Disappearing three days early (and books from everyone else!) from The Ripped Bodice—links, tickets and more info are at fatedmates.net/live.
If you just can’t get enough of us, consider joining our Patreon! You get an extra episode of banter every month and access to the Fated Mates discord, full of people who love romance as much as we do. It’s pretty great, we have to say. Learn more at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Our next read along is Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subsc
Show Notes
Ope! Jen’s mic wasn’t fully connected for the first 10 minutes of the episode, so that’s why it sounds terrible. User error on her part, Eric would never. Hang in there, she figures it out!
Let John Green and the good folks at Crash Course teach you about European History and The Hundred Years’ War.
The 2024 Audie Award winners included The True Love Experiment for best romance.
Three more days until Fated Mates Live… a handful of tickets are left! Join us!
Looking for all kinds of perfect HEA stickers, check out the Romancelandia Shop!
UPDATE: The book Sarah was looking for when she was talking about Enemies to Lovers was Johanna Lindsey’s Prisoner of My Desire. All the content warnings, friends…but if you do wade in, don’t miss our chat with Joanna Shupe where we talk about it from Season 1.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Lorraine Heath, author of In Want of a Viscount,
available in print, ebook and audiobook, wherever books are sold
Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and your local indie.
and
P. Rayne, author of Moonlit Thorns,
available in print, ebook and audio,
at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Avery Maxwell, author of Falling into Forever,
available in print, ebook and with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S06.27: Enemies to Lovers Romance
A classic among classics, we’re talking enemies to lovers this week! We get to the bottom of what we think of as “enemies,” and how it differs from “rivals-to-lovers” and “friends-to-enemies-to-lovers” and “friends-to-lovers” (jk, we’ll never understand friends-to-lovers). We revisit some of our very favorite romances, talk about stakes, about impossible situations, and about how sexy hating someone can be.
There are a handful of tickets left for Fated Mates LIVE in Brooklyn, NY, on March 23, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel! Join us, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings (one-half of Christina Lauren), Nikki Payne, and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. We’ve even got The Ripped Bodice on hand to sell books, and the room will be available for hanging with other Firebirds after the live! Preorder Kate’s The Other Side of Disappearing three days early (and books from everyone else!) from The Ripped Bodice—links, tickets and more info are at fatedmates.net/live. Preorders for stickers and swag are available at the Romancelandia Shop
If you just can’t get enough of us, consider joining our Patreon! You get an extra episode of banter every month and access to the Fated Mates discord, full of people who love romance as much as we do. It’s pretty great, we have to say. Learn more at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Our next read along is Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Show Notes
Pandora Ravenel owns a boardgame company, but I don’t think she made ouija boards. You should watch Only You (1994), directed by Norman Jewison who also directed Moonstruck! Don’t forget how charming Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is, a very different vibe from Ripper Street.
Jen thought about Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips when she read an article about the updating of the gorilla enclosure at the Brookfield Zoo. IYKYK, and if you don't, listen to Jen on Learning the Tropes.
Sarah said there's only one friends-to-lovers romance she likes. It's Christina Lauren's Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Blue Box Press, publisher of Skye Warren’s Blue Moon,
available at Amazon.
and
Parker S. Huntington & L. J. Shen, authors of My Dark Desire,
available in audio, at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S06.10: Men in Fur: Aliens, Warlords, and Vikings
We’re feeling silly and spicy this week, so we’re delivering the silly, spicy niche content you’ve come to expect from us now and then — we’re talking Men in Fur! This one is for alien lovers, medieval warlord stans, and everyone who’s ever messaged us to ask for a Viking interstitial. We’re talking about fur in all it’s function—luxury, warmth, competence, historical necessity—and getting to the bottom of why we like it so much. It’s not the mojo dojo casa house vibe, but it sure is something. Headphones in because fur, and proceed with caution…these Viking books are a lot. You’ve been warned.
Our next read along, and last of the year, will be Roan Parrish’s Rend. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Kobo.
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.
A Men in Fur Mood Board
Show Notes
- You can preorder our Best of 2023 box from Pocket Books Shoppe...list and episode drop in 2 weeks!
- The Nora Roberts book where the hero smokes is Born in Ice.
- Our Deep Dive on Milla Vane's A Heart of Blood and Ashes.
- Season 1 of Game of Thrones aired in 2011, and Jason Momoa’s character Khal Drago did not wear fur as far as we can tell, but you still deserve nice things.
- Carding wool is strangely calming if you ever have a chance, and all about alpaca fibers.
- If You're ever in York, check out the Jorvik Viking Center. Volcanoes are erupting all the time, no need to worry! If you’re in the mood for some non-romance Viking content, read the short story Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Avery Maxwell, author of Falling Into Forever,
available at Amazon or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Dr. Melissa Dymond, author of Holiday Star,
available at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Avon Books, publishers of Tessa Bailey’s Wreck the Halls,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books,
and at your local independent bookseller.
S05.01: Season Five! Romance World Domination!
Season Five starts today, you Magnificent Firebirds!
Season One gave us a full lAD deep dive (if you’ve never read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, general existential malaise is a really good reason to start), and Season Two gave us The Books That Blooded Us -- the books that made us the romance readers we are. Season Three was during a pandemic, so just let us live (but also, there was a Roy Kent episode). Season Four introduced the Trailblazer episodes, where we featured interviews with the people who have built the romance house over the last fifty years.
Season Five will build on all this — Deep diving on books that are new and fabulous, old and transformative, and generally reveal how vast and magnificent the romance pool can get. We’ve got great interstitials planned, trailblazer episodes already recorded and waiting for you, and a few new episodes that will focus on the books that are putting romance on the map these days…and where readers should go from there.
We’re excited! Aren’t you? Head over to your favorite podcasting app and subscribe so you don’t miss a moment of it!
In the meantime, today’s episode covers some of the romance new that happened while we were away the publishing DOJ trial, the absolute explosion of great books on August 23rd, and what on earth is happening with TikTok? There's a new theme song! And Jen broke her arm!
Next week is an interstitial, and our first read along of the season is Lisa Kleypas’s Marrying Winterborne. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or at your local indie.
Show Notes
If you’re in MA, check out the Rom-Con, a full day celebration of “rom”ance at the “Con”cord free public library on Sept 24.
That skeleton in your high school might have been real bones. All about the radius and the ulna.
Gross Anatomy was a 1989 movie starring Matthew Modine.
The blood hand job from A Heart of Blood and Ashes continues to amaze new readers, and we are here for it.
Parking at Chicago’s hospitals is so prohibitively expensive that a grieving family created The Jackson Chance Foundation to honor the memory of their beloved son who spent all but 48 hours of his life in the NICU. The Jackson Chance Foundation provides parking assistance and transportation at three downtown hospitals where parking can often run almost $100 per day.
A few useful explainers we found about the PRH vs DOJ trial, a breakdown of why the statistics about books sales are so confusing, and why Stephen King was the government’s star witness.
That NPR article about TikTok, Gen Z, and romance.
The August 23rd Book Bonanza
Other Books Mentioned
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Blair Babylon, author of A Billionaire in Disguise, available at in print,
in ebook via Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo and Nook.
Visit blairbabylon.com
and
Mary Rudder, author of the Kindle Vella series
Love on the Ropes
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S04.37: Groveling in Romance Novels
If there isn’t a grovel, is it even a romance? This week, we’re getting to the bottom of one of our favorite moments in a romance novel — the grovel. Love it or hate it, some of the best loved books of the genre go all in on hero (because let’s face it, it’s almost always the hero) on his knees…and we are here. for. it. We talk about the hows and whys of the grovel, about the reasons we love it, about the difference between a grovel and a grand gesture, and about the books that installed this particular button for us.
This episode is sponsored by Janna MacGregor, author of Rules for Engaging the Earl, and Adriana Herrera, author of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris.
Show Notes
We love a good grovel here at Fated Mates, and back in 2018, Jen wrote an essay on groveling for #RomBkLove
Merriam Webster is the world’s greatest dictionary.
We don’t come from chimpanzees, but we do have a common ancestor.
If you think a character hasn’t suffered enough, you can leave them in cold storage. You have the power!
Jen did the entire breakdown on Kiss an Angel with Erin & Clayton from Learning the Tropes
We did a deep dive on Milla Vane's A Heart of Blood and Ashes because we love it so much. We also did episodes on Lothaire, Sweet Ruin and The Master. The first five seconds of the Sweet Ruin epsiode are a straight shot of Sarah's joy, if you are looking for that sort of thing.
More about the problem of captive (and presumably lacking telepathic prowess) Tigers in America.
Molly Bloom totally would love a good romance novel, btw.
The American President is a pretty great movie, but it also came out back in 1995 when we some of us were still capable of positive feelings about politicians.
Our next read along is The Dragon and the Jewel by Virginia Henley.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Janna MacGregor, author of Rules for Engaging an Earl, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Or get the book in Audio wherever audiobooks are sold.
Visit jannamacgregor.com
and
Adriana Herrera, author of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
revA