06.15: Holiday Romances for 2023
It’s our annual holiday romance episode, and we’re so excited to have you with us! No Santa this year, but we’ve got Toy Runners, audio sexitimes in the Alps, menage in NYC, and more than one snowy cabin just waiting to keep us isolated from the outside world. You’re going to love it. Headphones in, though, please!
We don’t have an episode next week, but we’ll be back with a special guest for our annual New Years Eve episode. In the meantime, we hope you get everything you want from whomever you believe in. Thanks for being with us in 2023 — we can’t wait for what comes next.
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.
Show Notes
We read a bunch of books for the holidays, but mostly they lean Christmas this year. Last year’s episode was just about Santa.
Our listener Katie sent us the Instagram Reel about Daddy December, but it's gone now!
Subscribe to the BookBub daily email. You won’t be sad! I also followed @Shadesnpages who had two different #jinglebooks games, one for Naughty and one for Nice. The Lifetime movie that promised a sex scene failed to deliver, and Jen made a joke about it on Twitter, of course.
Audio porn exists -- check out the British Filth archive on Tumblr, MitchellASMR on Patreon (some free stuff on Patreon without subscription, too), and apparemtly, the place to find audio now is Quinn. Try it here.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Sara Ohlin, author of Winter Wonderland Love,
available at Kindle, Kobo and Barnes & Noble
and
Meredith Schorr, Someone Just Like You,
available at Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble
or your local independent bookseller
S05.34: Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry
This week, we’re talking about one of our very favorite romance novels, Sarah Mayberry’s absolute banger, Her Best Worst Mistake. We talk about how enemies to lovers works best, about how POV changes the whole game with this particular trope, about how Mayberry threads a very difficult needle with the main characters’ past relationship, and about how conflict somehow remains queen, even when not a ton is going on on page. All that, and it’s a novella! An absolute gem.
We hope you love this one as much as we did. Read Her Best Worst Mistake in ebook at Amazon, B&N, Kobo or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Along with giving great writing advice, Sherry Thomas writes an amazing romance. Check out our season 3 deep dive of Ravishing the Heiress.
If you, too, are a fan of Peach schnapps, maybe it’s time to mix up some summer cocktails.
Jaguar is all in the pronunciation when you think about it.
All about mangoes.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Veronica Adler, author of Never More Than Enemies
Available now from Amazon and free with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited,
and
Steamy Lit Romance Conference
August 18th & 19th in Anaheim, CA
Visit steamylitcon.com for tickets and more information,
or head to the main page of fatedmates.net to win a ticket to the conference.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.
S05.13: Here Comes Santa Claus
It’s the Holiday Season™️ and for some reason 2022 Holiday Season has brought romance a sleigh full of Santa romance, which may or may not be a thing you’re into…but either way, here we are! Santa is doing all sorts of naughty business in these romances, and this one is definitely not for the kids. So headphones in, MFers!
While you might not get it in time for the holidays, there’s still time for you to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2022 book collection from Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the eight traditionally published books on the list along with a Fated Mates sticker!
The holidays are hard, but this box is great. And you deserve it. FYI, you can also throw in other books (or a signed Sarah MacLean book!) if you’d like! Let us know what you end up doing with these fabulous books, and don’t forget to tag us on Instagram or Twitter when you unbox (#FMBestof22)!
Our next read along will be KJ Charles’s Band Sinister. We did not fight over which KJ Charles book to read because Sarah is all that is good and gracious in the world and she let Jen win. It is Scorpio season, after all. Get Band Sinister at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
Thank you, as always, for listening. If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your favorite podcasting app, we would be very grateful.
Show Notes
According to Snopes, Coca-Cola didn’t invent our modern image of Santa, but they definitely capitalized on it.
Book Riot also noticed that santa erotica is on the rise, including a link to last year’s Caressed by Ice episode where we briefly discussed the phenomenon.
All about the krampus, Lapland, and why Elf on the Shelf is a cop.
Jen can't take credit for calling Romance "the final boss" because it was Mikki Kendall who said it first: "Romancelandia is the final form of the final boss in the game no one can beat." Am I trying to actually write out the tweets now isntead of just linking in case twitter dies and everything gets deleted? yes.
Eric wants to remind you about the Fated Xmas playlists on both Spotify and Apple Music.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Pocket Books Book Shop
a queer, feminist, anti-racist indie bookshop
online and in Lancaster, PA
Shop online at pocketbooksshop.com
Get their “Sapphic Surprise” romance box today!
and
Nikki Sloane, author of The Frat Boy
get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or your local indie.
visit Nikki at nikkisloane.com
04.16: (Short and) Sexy Christmas Recs
Holidays are about traditions and it's a Fated Mates tradition to rerun the previous year's holiday episode. So here we are! This year, we’ve added 30 minutes of chatter about two Christmas romances we loved in 2021. You can take Fated Mates to work, but you can’t take the very unsafe for work discussion out of Fated Mates, so headphones in!
Much love and many thanks for being with us!
Please enjoy this short playlist of holiday music featured on the podcast.
For full show notes, see:
Roy and Keely's Sexy Christmas.
Check out Whores of Yore.
Seamen sing shanties. Sarah's talking about something else.
Jen did not make up this thing about St. Nicholas and shoes.
The Black Forest in both a place in Germany and a delicious cake.
S02.16: Christmas Romance Novel Recommendations
Merry Merry Happy Happy Joy Joy…it’s Christmas and we can’t quit you, so we recorded a little stocking stuffer for you—fifteen minutes of Christmas novella recs, along with a far-too-long discussion of our favorite Christmas Songs.
If you want to give us a gift this year, please like/subscribe to/review the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform!
We’re back next week with the seasonally appropriate (at least in title) Born in Ice, by none other than the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Read Born in Ice at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.
Show Notes
Sarah and Jen like a lot of Christmas songs: Silver Bells, Fairy Tale of New York, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (which in fact does have a sad and not-sad version!), God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Carol of the Belles, Rockin' Round the Christmas Tree, Santa Baby, and Baby It's Cold Outside (which just might be super feminist?).
This year, there's a new Chanukah romance anthology you should check out called Eight Kisses, and Roan Parrish just released a little snippet of a story about Ginger and Christopher from Small Change called A Good, Old Fashioned Chanukah Pegging.
Oh, you aren't familiar with the Carina Dirty Bits line? They are quick and dirty--not thiccand dirty. But whatever works. Also, check out Jen's list of which romances have the best sex in the library.
We have lots of favorite romance librarians, but we love Bandherbooks and our favorite archivist is Steve Ammindown at the BGSU Pop Culture Library in Ohio.
The Sierra Simone story with the bear is from Hot for the Holidays anthology, but she also has a story with Kennedy Ryan in a 2019 release called Christmas in the City.
Did someone say only one circulation desk? Just kidding. It's only one bed.
If you want show notes for last year's holiday episode, click here.
Our first episode of 2020 will be Born in Ice by Nora Roberts, a book that blooded Jen.
3.5: Holiday Romance
It’s the Holiday Season™️, which means it’s time to talk about Holiday romances! Get ready because there are A WHOLE LOT of books in this show. Also, get ready, because next week, on December 26th, instead of releasing our Dark Needs at Night’s Edge episode, we’re releasing a bonus Ask-us-Anything episode as a special holiday present to you!
Show Notes
Our official IAD reread will resume January 2nd, with Néomi (ghost) & Conrad (vampire) and we have so. many. feelings. SO MANY.
- In case you're curious, here's where Jen learned to properly pronounce Therese Beharrie's name. Therese wrote 2 Christmas books this year: A Wedding One Christmas and Her Festive Flirtation, and Jen liked them both.
- Before Sunrise came out in 1995, a sequel Before Sunset in 2004, and a third Before Midnight in 2013. This New Yorker review is a perfect example of everything Jen hates when people review anything romantic, so hate-read it if you're in the mood.
- Jen completely got the name of that chapter book wrong, it's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
- Novellas are really common in romance, maybe more than other genres, and Jen anxioulsy awaits the think-piece explaining why.
- Speaking of novellas: The anthology of Chanukah stories that Sarah mentioned is called Burning Bright; Reindeer Games is an anthology of stories with the snowed-in trope; and in Silver Belles, all the characters are over 40.
- Sarah described the cover of A Holiday of Love as an example of a certain type of old-school book package. But just last year, A Christmas to Remember with Lisa Kleypas, Lorraine Heath, Megan Frampton, and Vivienne Lorret followed the same exact cover protocol.
- Epistolary novels are super fun to read (Jen's favorite is Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Sarah is--unsurprisingly--very pro epistolary romance; her favorite is Kleypas's Love in the Afternoon), but Jen's pretty interested in how they are changing in the age of the internet.
- All three of the books in the Men at Work series by Tiffany Reisz are delightful, but the Thanksgiving one is an absolute classic.
- Last year, Jen ranked Thanksgiving romances for The Book Queen.
- How the Dukes Stole Christmas is pretty great, and here's where Jen talked about Joanna Shupe's novella on twitter.
