S05.30: Christine Feehan: Trailblazer
This week, we’re sharing our fantastic conversation with trailblazer Christine Feehan, an undeniable force in the rise of paranormal romance in the early 2000s. We discuss the genesis of her work, the way she builds her far-reaching worlds, her relationship to readers, her heroes, her sex scenes, and the long and winding path of her career.
Our conversation covers a lot of ground—personal, professional, paranormal and powerful, and we’re so grateful to Christine Feehan for making time for Fated Mates. You’re going to love this one, Firebirds.
Next week, our first read along of 2023 is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Welcome to Christine Feehan, author of almost 100 romance novels. Her next book, Ghostly Game, is part of the Ghostwalker series and will be released May 2, 2023.
PEOPLE : editor Alicia Condon at Dorchester and now Kensington, and editor Cindy Hwang at Berkley.
BOOKS: Freckles and The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, Louisa May Alcott, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, Mary Janice Davidson, Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Goldie Thomas, author of The Rake and the Fake
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.
Christine Feehan 00:00:00 / #:
I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. It's a different couple and so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say it's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you, so I wanted them to know what good sex was. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:11 / #:
That was the voice of Christine Feehan, paranormal author, extraordinaire, author of over 100 books and just a superstar of the genre and has been for decades.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:26 / #:
Her first book, Dark Prince, came out in 1999, right at the very beginning of the paranormal boom that we talk about. So, we talk to Christine about her life, how she came to romance, how she came to writing paranormals, and how she continues to write in this subgenre that we all love and wish there was more of.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:50 / #:
Welcome to Fated Mates, everyone. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:55 / #:
And I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:00 / #:
And without further ado, here's our conversation with Christine Feehan.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:06 / #:
Perfect. So thank you so much, Christine, for joining us. We're very excited, in large, part because it feels like you really came to romance in an interesting time and place and way. And so, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you found romance as a reader and then, again as a writer, or was it simultaneous?
Christine Feehan 00:02:32 / #:
Actually, it wasn't simultaneous at all. I started reading when I was very, very young, at a very young age and started writing when I was very young. The minute I could put sentences together, I started making up stories and I would write them down the minute I could, when I could put sentences together. And I think the first time I ever read a romance, I found these old, old books by Gene Stratton Porter, The Harvester and Freckles and those. And I realized there was kind of this romance thing going, and I found it really intriguing. I was probably 10 or even younger. I read books way over my head-
Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
Us too.
Jennifer Prokop 00:03:32 / #:
Us too. No problem.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
One of us.
Christine Feehan 00:03:37 / #:
And then, I started looking for anything I could read that might have some sort of a connection between a girl and a guy, because I wanted a happy ending or a happy anything involved in it. And so, that sort of started me down that path of looking for something happy in the book all the time, so that was sort of my intro to romance. And I found Louise May Alcott, of course, and read everything that she wrote, and I would read that to my grandmother whenever she was ill. I would sit and read to her, and then later, different ones that kind of inspired me for different reasons. Actually, The Bourne Identity, I liked the fact that they worked together. They were equal partners. People I think mostly saw the movie. They didn't really read that book the way it should have been read, but without her, he wouldn't have made it. She really was his equal partner in that book and I loved that. I really read that a couple of times to see how he made that happen and I really liked that. That was one of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:12 / #:
That doesn't surprise me at all, that the Bourne Identity is a text for you. I mean, it makes perfect sense now as a Feehan reader.
Christine Feehan 00:05:22 / #:
Yeah. And then, one really made an impact on me, probably that opened up the whole paranormal world for me, and I read it very early on was a Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz. And I forget how old I was when I read that, but all of a sudden, it was like it opened this whole world to me and I thought, "This is really what I want to write." Plus, I realized that my hero could be flawed and my villain could... I really like that the villain was rounded out so much.
00:06:11 / #:
And so, I started studying villains to figure them out. How did they write these villains and how did they become... You liked them and you didn't like... I mean, there were good things about them as well as bad things. How did they get to be who they were? So, I think they all had such an impact on me. One of the biggest impacts on me for all of my writing was Sherlock Holmes. I read Sherlock Holmes so many times that I literally could quote pages of Sherlock Holmes, of his work. And then, another writer was Laurie R. King, the Beekeeper's Apprentice. I thought that was such a fabulous take on... What she did, you would never expect her to put heroin with him and how she managed to make that work. That was an interesting pairing for me.
Sarah MacLean 00:07:24 / #:
So, at what point during this kind of reading, obviously, you've been an avid reader forever, did you start thinking, "I think I can maybe do this?"
Christine Feehan 00:07:36 / #:
I never did. I always wrote. I always wrote. I had hundreds of manuscripts under my bed. I'd write them and throw them, write them and throw them. I just wrote all the time. It was sort of a compulsion for me. I could not write, I had to write. I had so many stories in my head, I did not think about publishing them. Other people had movie stars and rock stars that they would scream and yell and, "Oh, my God. They're so wonderful. No, for me, it was writers. And so, I never looked at myself and thought I could ever be a writer like they could be, because I kind of worshiped those writers. They were amazing. My first job was in a library, and I would just read every book that I could in that library.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:28 / #:
Living the dream. Well, it's, the other thing that's interesting though about that kind of list of books you named is I think one of the hallmarks of your style is an interest in the paranormal, but not necessarily... Even though the Carpathian series is very much about vampires, but like Jayne Ann Krentz, actually. Like telepathy and what the brain is capable of, so has that also always been interesting to you?
Christine Feehan 00:08:59 / #:
Absolutely. I research so much, and my belief really, is even with vampires, if you look at every society all over the world, you look at what their beliefs are going back hundreds of years, and all of them have something like that in their background. And where does it come from? You have to start thinking if every culture has something like that in it, where does it come from? And if every country pretty much has done these experiments with telepathy and with all these other things, why are they doing them? And after a while, you start getting these answers. You start hitting on things that, "Oh, this did work for somebody. This did work here. This did work there." And after so much research, you're catching up with the future things that they're already doing. Like my Ghost Walker series, I have a hard time keeping ahead of the game, and I research very hard to do that. And I always have primary sources, but it looks, when you write it, like it's way out there, but it isn't.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:29 / #:
Publishing wasn't even on the horizon, it sounds like. And I've done my research, I know you have a large family. So, can you give us a sense of Christine's world, at this point? How does it all fit together?
Christine Feehan 00:10:42 / #:
I taught martial arts for years and women's self-defense. Well, not just women's, I mean, I taught men too, but that was my world. I surrounded myself with that 26, 27 years of that. And I took in a lot of abused children, which you can see in my books and worked with unwed mothers and I had a complete whirl there. Writing was my escape, and when I took my kids to their gymnastics and their sports, I lived out in the country. I lived way out, away from things. So, I had to drive them and I would sit at their practices and write. That's what I did.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:40 / #:
Anybody with kids in sports has done exactly this.
Christine Feehan 00:11:43 / #:
Yeah. I didn't own a computer, I didn't own a laptop. There was no R.W.A., there was none of that. I didn't even know about R.W.A., I just wrote my stories and I did them for me. That was my escape. That was the one thing that I did for myself. And if the kids watched television at night, that's what I did, is I wrote. I wasn't interested in television. We played Dungeons and Dragons, and I told stories to the kids. That was our pastime and our fun together.
Sarah MacLean 00:12:26 / #:
So, at what point did it become... How did it happen? I mean, how did you become Christine Feehan published author?
Christine Feehan 00:12:36 / #:
The thing was that there came a time when I became very ill and my doctor said to me, "You cannot do martial arts anymore." And unfortunately, children want food.
Sarah MacLean 00:12:56 / #:
They do. Generally.
Christine Feehan 00:12:58 / #:
I convinced the, especially the boys, that they did not need to eat and the girls still wanted clothes. So, I had to find a way to feed them and to keep clothes on their back and to pay the bills. And I was working a couple of jobs, but it was minimum wage, and I was like, "Okay, this is not going to work." And my girlfriend said to me, "Send one of your books in." And I said, "It doesn't work like that." One, it was kind of terrifying. I didn't think I really wanted to send... The thought of giving away one of my stories was not a good idea to me, and I also told her they aren't taking anything with vampires in it. And at that point, I had been writing my Carpathian stories.
Sarah MacLean 00:13:56 / #:
That's so true. A paranormal was unsellable, we were told, in the nineties. And so, I guess I have two questions. One is, was it just that you thought, "I'm writing vampires and I'm not reading vampires? There are no vampires to be read. There was Anne Rice and now there is no one else?" Or did somebody tell you, "Oh, you can't sell vampires?"
Christine Feehan 00:14:23 / #:
Yes. I was told that... My friend, a girl girlfriend of mine was writing to sell, and she wanted to go to this thing in San Francisco that later I found out was an R.W.A.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:41 / #:
Sure.
Jennifer Prokop 00:14:42 / #:
Oh, Okay.
Christine Feehan 00:14:44 / #:
Which I didn't know. And she didn't want to go alone, so she asked me to go with her. And I said sure. And there were all these people in there, and I was a little embarrassed because they would say things like, "Well, I've been working on my office for four months, no book." And then somebody else said, "I've been working on my book for 14 years, and I've been working on my book for... I don't know how many..."
Sarah MacLean 00:15:12 / #:
God, this is the entire experience of R.W.A., honestly.
Christine Feehan 00:15:16 / #:
And this went on and on. And then, they get to me and I'm like, "I don't know. I have 300 manuscripts [inaudible 00:15:24 / #]." And a woman who was running the whole thing, later, she came up to me and she's like, "You need an agent." And I, at that time, was not interested in selling and I told her that. And I said, "Well, the latest thing I'm writing are..." She asked me what I was writing and I said romance. And I said, "But they have vampires in them." And she goes, "Oh, those aren't selling. You can't get an editor to even look at them."
Sarah MacLean 00:16:04 / #:
This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Goldie Thomas, author of the Rake and the Fake.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:10 / #:
Sarah, this is a historical romance and it's a debut and the first in The Husband material series. This is a book that's really going to appeal to all of our listeners who love Tessa Dare and Joanna Shupe. And so, we have Charlotte, a seamstress employed at London's most renowned [inaudible 00:16:28 / #], and she is very aware of the class differences between her and the people that come in and partake of her services. And she runs a foul of Nicholas, a charming but badly behaved viscount, and his parents are insisting that he marry as soon as possible. After a maiden Manhattan mix up Nicholas's mother mistakes Charlotte, for this woman who she thinks Nicholas should marry, and there's just all of these shenanigans that happen. This book really deals with big class issues head on. And so, Charlotte, rather than being enamored with the excessive wealth that she is now seeing in real life is, instead like, "Wait, we really need to fix this." So Nicholas, Charlotte have to really figure out how they can be together given this huge difference between them.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:24 / #:
First of all, this sounds like a terrific read. I love it when historical romances really tackle class differences. And you can read The Rake and the Fake by Goldie Thomas right now in print or ebook, wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to Goldie Thomas for sponsoring the episode. Are the 300 manuscripts under your bed also paranormal adjacent?
Christine Feehan 00:17:53 / #:
No. They weren't at that time. No.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:56 / #:
So, how did we get to dark prints?
Christine Feehan 00:17:59 / #:
Well, at that time, I had quite a few children. My oldest son was in the Navy, and he came home to visit. I had two daughters who were pregnant, and he was helping out, building a little apartment for one of them. And he came home. He was with a friend, and he came home for lunch. He had a motorcycle, and I made him lunch and we were laughing and talking, and he went out the door and I said, "Did you put on sunscreen?" And he said, "Oh, mom, you're going to be saying that to me when I'm 90." And I laughed and said, "You bet I will." And he walked out the door, and five minutes later, maybe it was five minutes later, no more than that, the phone rang and my future son-in-law gets this call. He was on for if there was an accident. And his brother called him and said, "We've got a call. I'm coming to pick you up." And then, the neighbor called me and said, "I think your son was hit." And I said, "That's impossible."
00:19:26 / #:
But it was him and he didn't make it. And one of my daughters was... Both of them were due, and there was a birthday party I'd been planning the next day for my youngest child and a wedding I was planning. And it's a very interesting thing when you lose a child, and this is for any trauma that people suffer, life goes on all around you, it just keeps going. There's no way to stop it. You can't put the brakes on, and I had to keep planning a wedding. I had to keep two girls who were giving birth. I had a very small child who expected to have a birthday, and I didn't feel anything. I couldn't remember people talking to me, conversations.
00:20:45 / #:
And it lasted forever. It went on forever. I mean, I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to my kids' schools, I participated in everything that I was supposed to do, but I didn't feel anything. And it went on for so long and I thought, "I have to find a way back." And we always played Dungeons and Dragons together, and I always talked to him about vampires, made-up stories. And one of the things we talked about was, why would somebody want to give up your soul? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "If you have no feelings, if you can't feel anything and nothing can touch you..." And I honestly felt like I couldn't see in color anymore. Everything felt so dull. And I thought, "I have to find a way back to the people I love."
00:21:54 / #:
And that's when I started writing dark prints, and I started coming up with this idea that these men had to find that person that could make them feel again and see in color again. And that was my way back to... You never get over it. There's no way to get over it. But I've spoken to many, many people who've had many losses or had much trauma, and everybody has their own way of dealing with it. And that was mine. We shared something, it was Calvert's and I, we shared that. And my youngest son... He's not my youngest, but Brian, he always played Dungeon Masters with a Dragon. Anyway, he played with us and we would talk a lot about it together and eventually, it really helped me. And so, developing that world became very therapeutic for me. And so, that's how that world came about. And it's surprising when people read it. Some people have that, it has that same effect on them. They feel that same way, which I find interesting, that some people get it this, that have suffered loss, where other people have no idea.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:44 / #:
Yeah, but I imagine when a book comes like that and from such a place, it's impossible to imagine. First of all, it's all packed in there because when you write, that's how it goes, whatever you're living is in there. But also, I'm so moved by this story because the Carpathians are... That series is never-ending, right? It's 38 books now. And so, do you feel like every time you go back to them, that you're going back to a similar place you're mining that same love, that same world?
Christine Feehan 00:24:28 / #:
Sure. It's funny how grief will hit you at times, where it comes out nowhere. I mean, it's been a long time for my son. I've lost a granddaughter, I've lost a grandson and all of that is very difficult. You try very hard to, I don't know how to explain it, keep going as the world keeps going. But anybody who's lost parents, anybody, at times it just suddenly comes out of nowhere, and you don't know when it's going to happen.
00:25:23 / #:
But when I write, I can feel that connection, especially in the Carpathian world with Calvert, and it makes me feel very close to him again. And also, there's so many issues in those books, women's issues, miscarriages that women have. And over the years, with so many different friends and so many different young women that have had terrible things happen to them that I've dealt with through martial arts or through other things, I've been able to talk about those things. And then, had women be able to read about them, and then that helps them in their lives. So, I've been grateful to be able to have that opportunity when I no longer can do hands-on help.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:32 / #:
So it's interesting to me too... Probably one of my favorite of your series is Torpedo Ink, and those are characters that are really steeped in trauma. And I mean, that's another thing that sort of ties your books together. People experience terrible loss or grief or trauma, and then this connection is like, how do they survive? Especially can they, through this, access almost parts of themselves, they didn't know that existed. So, when you talk about readers contacting you, is this something that... Like they write you letters, you get emails, how do you connect with readers who are also experiencing this world? Like the emotional... Your worlds are kind of terrible worlds, but people find each other in them. So, how do your readers come to you?
Christine Feehan 00:27:38 / #:
Well, okay, Torpedo Ink is actually my most difficult series to write. When I took in children, I found that boys were treated way differently than girls. When they're molested, they oftentimes are not given counseling. Sometimes they're rejected from their family. The fathers don't want them, and they often are like, especially if they're a little bit older, it's like, "Oh, hey, you should be happy," instead of... It's traumatizing for them, but nobody wants to even talk about it with a boy. And so, I promised myself that someday I was going to address that issue. And I didn't honestly realize when I started looking at files, what I was really getting myself into. Because you have to talk with professionals and you're looking at some file and you're reading this horrible thing that you don't even want to look at anymore. And then, you talk to a professional and you say, "All right, this happened to them.
00:28:59 / #:
What's going to happen to them as an adult?" And he's like, "Oh, he's not going to be normal. His sexual life is not going to be normal." So now, you're going to have to write about this and try to find a happy ending for him. Because to me, I want to make whoever's had anything close to that experience feel hope. That's what you're trying to do, is say, "There's hope for you. Don't give up." And most of the time I get letters. There's been a few times when somebody has come personally to me, when I'm at a convention or something, they've asked to meet with me, and I've talked to them. Most of the time it's a letter and 99% of the time, and it will start out, "Please continue to read this, but I was going to kill myself. And then, I read this book." And oftentimes, especially Torpedo Ink, I think, "I can't write another one of these. I just can't do it." And then, I don't know why I get a letter like that, and I think, "Oh, my God, Christine, now you're going to have to write..."
Jennifer Prokop 00:30:22 / #:
Keep doing it.
Christine Feehan 00:30:23 / #:
"Now you're going to have to write another one." And it's interesting because not everyone gets that those books are about trauma. They don't see it. They don't. And that's always interesting to me, that not everyone gets what the book is actually about. I try to put on there to be careful about reading it. There's triggers for people... But people sometimes just don't see that.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:55 / #:
One of the things that I keep coming back to as you're talking is Jen and I talk a lot on the podcast about how we bemoan the way paranormal has faded over the last decade. And one of the reasons why is because it feels like there seems to be so much more anger and confusion and frustration, and all the things that are happening in the world right now. Paranormal, in so many ways, makes us look at those traumatic or those dangerous or angry or wicked things and face them.
00:31:41 / #:
You said this is about hope, and we always talk about romance as the literature of hope. That is the promise. So, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, as somebody who we really do think is without you, paranormal would not be here in the way that it is. How does paranormal... How did coming to paranormal and writing paranormal and building the sub-genre happen during that time? I mean, obviously, you told the remarkable story about how the Carpathians came to be, but you've never gone away. You've never left that paranormal world. Even when you do leave it, there's always a vibe, right?
Christine Feehan 00:32:29 / #:
Yeah. Well, because for me, I know that other people don't really believe so much in all those things, but I think the world is so big and there's so many interesting unsolved mysteries in it, and I can't stop doing research. I'm like the research nut, and I find everything so fascinating. And I don't necessarily... I know we use the word paranormal, but I always think there's so much out there. And so, to me, I just think maybe it's really all true, and we haven't caught up with it yet. So, to me, it's just extending my imagination and then, trying to find reality in it. And I try to put the book at least 80% facts. I mean, twisting those facts into my fictional world. And then, just a small amount of the paranormal so that when people read it, they're like, "Oh, this could happen. This could be." When I did Lightning Game, most of that was reality. I mean, it's amazing what they're doing with lightning, and you look at it and go, "Holy moly."
Sarah MacLean 00:34:07 / #:
So, could you talk a little bit about that paranormal? I mean, I'm using paranormal now, respecting what you just said, but at paranormal as a subgenre of romance. During that boom, where it just felt... I mean, it just felt like everyone was writing these kind of big, expansive worlds with these heroes who were just larger than life and these heroines who just could match them step for step. What was going on there? Are you able to look back on that time and go, "Oh, this is why we were all doing this thing together." Or, "This was why readers were really drawn to us?"
Christine Feehan 00:34:59 / #:
I think that different times call for different things. People are, at times, they need certain things in their lives, and they're looking for heroes and they're looking for things that make them happy. Unfortunately, I don't honestly know what's happening right now, where everybody seems so angry and weird with each other. It's so strange to me. I don't understand that, but I'm getting kind of old. But I think everybody's imagination was really big and everybody at that time really accepted it. And they went all out and readers were like, "Hey, what do you have for me? I'm willing to read it." And they went for it. So, I think that was a really good time, and people were in a good place. And as things started to crumble, the economy and whatever, then I think that things sort of went downhill. And also, when you get too many people doing the same thing, it runs out. You can only do so many of the same types, and then it gets... There's a lot of repetition. And maybe towards the end, there might have been, I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:36:50 / #:
Were there other writers who you were friendly with, who you were in your group, were inspiring you during that time?
Christine Feehan 00:37:02 / #:
Not in my group. I had a very core group, but I will tell you, I read Mary Janice Davidson, and she made me laugh so hard. I am not the best at writing humor. When I read her, I would laugh so hard and I would just about die. She made me laugh so much. There were certain ones that you'd pick them up and to be honest, I didn't read much in my own genre because I didn't want to step on somebody's voice, but I couldn't help it with her. Every time she had a book come out, I'd go get it, because she just was so funny. But like I say, I don't write very humorously, and I try, but my humor falls flat.
Jennifer Prokop 00:38:01 / #:
So, did you join R.W.A., you mentioned, sort of not knowing what it was? Was that something that-
Christine Feehan 00:38:09 / #:
I had to, at one point, because my house... I was with Dorchester at the time when I first... They were the only ones who would read my book and then they bought it.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:19 / #:
Who was your editor there?
Christine Feehan 00:38:21 / #:
Alicia Condon. Alicia Condon. Okay. Okay. And she was wonderful. She was.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:26 / #:
And she acquired you at Dorchester?
Christine Feehan 00:38:28 / #:
She did, yes. And people always said things about Dorchester, but they gave new authors a chance when nobody else would.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:37 / #:
And took such risk in terms of the content of the books. I mean, I was saying to Jen before we started that one of my very favorite... I write historicals, and one of my very favorite historicals is The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, which, the hero... It's such a different kind of historical, and I just can't... I think it benefited from Dorchester.
Christine Feehan 00:39:03 / #:
I think that they did a really good job at getting people seen when nobody else would even look at them. Not one other house would've... Well, they wouldn't...
Sarah MacLean 00:39:17 / #:
Sure. Vampires, right?
Christine Feehan 00:39:19 / #:
Right, they wouldn't look at it. And she did, and she picked it up, so that was pretty amazing of her to do that.
Sarah MacLean 00:39:29 / #:
And then, you were with Dorchester until Dorchester folded?
Christine Feehan 00:39:34 / #:
I was already being looked at by Berkley. Cindy Wong had already made an offer for me, and I've been with her ever since. She's been my editor for years and years and years. So yeah, I was already with Berkley at that point, but they had a bunch of my books still.
Sarah MacLean 00:39:58 / #:
Because you're such a fast writer. Now, were you build... Now, how was that working? Were you pulling things out from under the bed or...
Christine Feehan 00:40:06 / #:
No, no.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:07 / #:
The bad manuscripts are still under the bed.
Christine Feehan 00:40:09 / #:
No, because the ones under the bed were not polished and they weren't that good.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:15 / #:
I don't believe it, but okay.
Christine Feehan 00:40:16 / #:
No, they're not that good.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:20 / #:
So, because you're so prolific as well, what is it? Almost a hundred books, is that right?
Christine Feehan 00:40:27 / #:
Yes, very close to a hundred books.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:30 / #:
And so, you are really... I mean, you still writing really quickly. You're writing at a self-published pace.
Christine Feehan 00:40:39 / #:
I actually am slowing down a little bit so I can go visit occasionally. Go see my mom, and not my mom, my sisters, occasionally. I have a lot of sisters.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:53 / #:
And do you feel like... You have a big fam... You have a large number of children, a lot of sisters. Do you feel like that those kinds of relationships are part of why you have been drawn so much to Pax? I mean, big communities of characters.
Christine Feehan 00:41:13 / #:
Yeah, I've always loved being in a big family.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:18 / #:
This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of microdose gummies.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:24 / #:
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Jennifer Prokop 00:41:57 / #:
For me too.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:58 / #:
Pain, anxiety. Eric takes them for creativity and a general kind of joyfulness across the day. He said to me the other day, "You know what the thing is about these gummies? You take one and you just like, an hour and a half later, just feel like, "I feel like I'm in a good mood."
Jennifer Prokop 00:42:17 / #:
Yes. And listen, we all need that these days. If they didn't put me to sleep, they would definitely help me feel like I was in a good mood. Anyway, microdosing is available nationwide, and we have all tried these gummies, and we think you might enjoy them too, if they're something you're interested in.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:37 / #:
So, you can go to microdose.com and use the code Fated Mates to get 30% on your first order. They have all different kinds of flavors you can try. I'm a particular fan of cotton candy. Lately, I also like one that's orange flavored, so you should try, check it out, give it a try. And thanks, as always, to Lumi Labs for sponsoring this week's episode. Another interesting hallmark of your career is that you have several, very long-running series that you're essentially writing concurrently. And so, this is unusual. A lot of people will start and finish a series and you have a bunch that just are kind of continuing. So, what's your process for deciding what's next, keeping it all straight? That seems like a huge job.
Christine Feehan 00:43:40 / #:
It's very strange, my brain, how it works. A character will come to me and say, "I want my story told." And I can't write... I couldn't write two Carpathian stories in a row because I'd be bored with that world. So, I write that story and then, while I'm writing that story, all of a sudden, another character from another world will jump into my head and start pushing at me. And I have tell it to be quiet. Like, "It's not your turn yet. Wait till I'm finished." And then, that one will will... A lot of times now, because I'll have a contract and they'll want the stories in a certain order order. And so, I had to train my brain to say, "It's going to be like this." And if they mess up the order on me, it's actually difficult now, because my brain would be like, "We have to do it this way."
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:48 / #:
I'm not going to get the titles right, but the head of Torpedo Ink was the husband of the end of the series with all the sisters?
Christine Feehan 00:45:00 / #:
Right, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Prokop 00:45:00 / #:
So, when characters intersect in that way, is that a surprise to you?
Christine Feehan 00:45:07 / #:
Because I wasn't planning on publishing Torpedo Ink. I wasn't going to. And when I had that in there, Cindy said to me, "Do you have these other characters..."
Sarah MacLean 00:45:21 / #:
We have this guy.
Christine Feehan 00:45:23 / #:
And I said, "Well, yeah, but I don't think they're something that I could publish because it's a pretty raw, edgy series." And she said, "Well, let me read it." And that's kind of how that ended up getting published.
Sarah MacLean 00:45:40 / #:
We've had several people on who are edited by Cindy, and it sounds like she is one of those editors who is willing to just again, take the risk with you and trust you to move forward.
Christine Feehan 00:45:55 / #:
She will take a risk. Yeah, she will. She's not-
Sarah MacLean 00:45:56 / #:
That's amazing.
Christine Feehan 00:45:57 / #:
She's pretty fearless, and she's not afraid. If I went to her and said, "I'd like to publish this." And it's like out there, she would say, "Go ahead and write it. Let's take a look at it."
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:14 / #:
Have there been other editors, publishers, I don't know, art directors?
Sarah MacLean 00:46:21 / #:
Oh, wait, can we talk about those early covers, first of all?
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:24 / #:
Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:25 / #:
So, I'm so fascinated but... Listen, I could talk about romance novel covers all day every day. In fact, Jen will tell you, I kind of do, but those early covers, so that first cover of Dark Prints is a clinch. It's like a historical clinch, presumably because no one knew what the heck to do with these books, right?
Christine Feehan 00:46:45 / #:
Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:45 / #:
And then, can you walk us through... Are you able to remember or recall how paranormal became... How it started to look the way it did? Why we moved away from those clinches?
Christine Feehan 00:47:01 / #:
Well, there were funny, funny things that happened with some of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:05 / #:
I love it.
Christine Feehan 00:47:07 / #:
It was Jacque's book and they put him on the cover, and I said, "Well, this cover his spine." Except that he had, or she had red hair. It was a clinch cover, so they washed the cover red.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:32 / #:
Oh, my gosh. The whole cover?
Christine Feehan 00:47:34 / #:
The whole cover. So he is like sunburned. I called him Lobster Boy after that.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:41 / #:
What book is this?
Christine Feehan 00:47:44 / #:
It was Dark Desire.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:45 / #:
I'm looking it up right now.
Christine Feehan 00:47:48 / #:
So, he literally has... He's red and so-
Sarah MacLean 00:47:53 / #:
I think I know what this is.
Christine Feehan 00:47:55 / #:
I did. I called him Lobster Boy. So, every time anybody would refer to him, I would think, in my head, I'd turn it around and he'd be Lobster Boy.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:03 / #:
Oh, no.
Christine Feehan 00:48:06 / #:
And my girlfriend, one of my friends, she just loved him. She called him Pooky face. She'd be like, "Don't you call my-"
Sarah MacLean 00:48:14 / #:
He's orange.
Christine Feehan 00:48:16 / #:
Yes. He is.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:19 / #:
Everybody look down in your podcast right now. We'll show it to you. Yeah, he's orange.
Christine Feehan 00:48:24 / #:
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:26 / #:
How funny.
Christine Feehan 00:48:27 / #:
Yeah. And here's the other thing that happened with that book. This is just a little... So, it starts off with, there was blood in the River of It Running or something, the first sentence. And I had worked on that first chapter a million ways, and he's insane. I mean, when he comes awake, he's totally insane. And if you don't know what happened to him, you would hate that guy because he's an ass. So, you have to start out with him and knowing what happened to him. And I think I wrote that first chapter 40 Different Ways. Well, when they got the book, they're like, "We have to change this first chapter because they have to know that it's a romance, and you can't start out this way." I'm like, "No, I'm not changing it."
Sarah MacLean 00:49:25 / #:
How funny.
Christine Feehan 00:49:27 / #:
I go, "Toss the book." "We're not tossing the book."
Sarah MacLean 00:49:36 / #:
Amazing. No. And then, when we first got on with you and you said, "Well, I don't know. Am I a trailblazer?" Christine, Christine...
Christine Feehan 00:49:43 / #:
Here's why.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:44 / #:
This is how paranormals begin, now with the heroes in trauma and then, you just sort of ride the wave until you get to the kissing parts.
Christine Feehan 00:49:54 / #:
I finally just said, "You know that Clinch cover? They're going to know it's a romance."
Sarah MacLean 00:50:00 / #:
Right, exactly. I think they'll know. So, at what point did it feel like... I mean, this is obviously a market thing. This is how the sausage is made a little, but when does everybody realize, "Oh, paranormals need a different look"? Is that just because it started to become... So the market just became more exciting?
Christine Feehan 00:50:21 / #:
I really think when I moved over to Berkley, I think that the marketing people at Berkley kind of-
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:32 / #:
Figured that out.
Christine Feehan 00:50:33 / #:
Yeah, they were the ones. For me, for my team, they were the ones who kind of said, "Okay, we're going to do this differently." Interesting enough, in Germany, my books, all of them, even the Ghost Walkers, all of them have bats on the cover.
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:57 / #:
Okay. Sure, sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:50:57 / #:
It's a can of soup, right?
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:00 / #:
I know. I'm like, "Does Saphian mean Bat and German?" I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:51:03 / #:
That's funny.
Christine Feehan 00:51:04 / #:
Maybe. What else?
Sarah MacLean 00:51:05 / #:
Yeah.
Christine Feehan 00:51:07 / #:
They do very well but...
Sarah MacLean 00:51:10 / #:
Hey, listen. If it ain't broke, right?
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:14 / #:
You can tell I really love your books, but one of the things Sarah and I have talked about a lot is romance comes and goes, right? The way that what's popular as a trope, what kind of sub-genres are popular, what kinds of hero archetypes are popular. These things change over time. And right now, the romance hero has changed a lot, but I don't necessarily think that your romance heroes has have changed a lot. So, how do you... I don't know. Do you feel the push of market forces, or it doesn't matter, your readers are...
Christine Feehan 00:51:57 / #:
I don't look at trends and I don't look at that kind of thing at all. I have to go with whatever I'm passionate about and I have to go with whatever character's in my head, and I just hope my readers will love the story and love the characters. I write the best book that I can. I try every single book to improve and give a better story and sometimes, I succeed. I do my best, but there is no way that I can write a story to the market. It's not going to happen. And I know that, so I don't even try.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:41 / #:
Well, what's amazing is you've made a career out of arguably not writing to market. You wrote vampires before vampires were cool. You moved to shifters before everyone else moved to shifters and it's amazing, the inspiration that you give writers is write your truth.
Christine Feehan 00:53:03 / #:
Well, the series that I'm doing, I know it's a bad thing to call it the murder series. I really shouldn't-
Sarah MacLean 00:53:10 / #:
Not for me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:13 / #:
I think that might be more to market than we'd like to admit, honestly.
Christine Feehan 00:53:17 / #:
Well, I got into that one because one of my daughters does a lot of climbing. She used to live in Bishop, which is up in the mammoth area near Yosemite. And she knows these women and all of them have these incredible stories. And they all became friends, and they would go climbing together, and I would listen to their stories of where they came from. And then, they have these insane jobs. And I was thinking, "Wow, this is amazing." And one day, they were telling me about this hike they'd gone on, and I thought, "what a perfect place for a serial killer." I'm like, "Okay..." They were all going to go on a hike together and camping. And I said, "Okay, girls, I really want you to start looking around for a place where a serial killer might be hanging out, ready to-"
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:20 / #:
Just report back.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:20 / #:
It's totally fine.
Christine Feehan 00:54:24 / #:
So, after that, I started having the girls, every time they go someplace, do that for me. And the next thing I know, they're taking tasers with them.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:34 / #:
I was going to say they stop hiking. They're done with that now.
Christine Feehan 00:54:38 / #:
I kind of ruined it for them. We're talking murder every time we go to the restaurants.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:48 / #:
So, one of the questions that we often ask is, what's the hallmark of a Christine Feehan romance? When a reader picks up a Christine Feehan novel, one of your nearly-100 of them, what do they know they're going to get?
Christine Feehan 00:55:06 / #:
Well, for sure, they're going to get a happy ending. Absolutely sure they're going to get happy ending. I write, always, about, I think, hope and about finding your own version of family. It doesn't matter what the setting is or what the drama that has been... It's about... Or what I want to say genre, but of course, it's romance, but it could be military, it could be suspense, it could be anything. But set in that, there has to be that hope and the finding of family and that happy ending. That's what you're going to get. That's what you're going to find.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:04 / #:
And we didn't talk about this, but it's also going to be super sexy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:08 / #:
Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:09 / #:
And I feel like we should sort of touch on this because I do feel like for me, those early Feehans were-
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:20 / #:
And the late ones.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:21 / #:
No, no. I mean, for me though, Sarah, when I stumbled upon Christine Feehan in the bookstore, it felt like I'd never read anything like this before. And I wonder, can you talk a little bit about that, about really bringing sex to the genre in a lot of ways? I feel like there was, not that it didn't exist before, but there's something about the Feehan sensuality that is different.
Christine Feehan 00:56:53 / #:
Well, to me, the characters are really real. People have asked me that before. I'm not in the book at all. When I'm writing that book, it really is the characters. I don't plot out the book. So the characters are so real to me that I know everything about them from the time they were little. And so, when they're moving through that story, it's all about them. And they're the ones that are having sex or not having sex or whatever's happening to them.
00:57:33 / #:
And so, I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. You're not going to get the same one because they're always... It's a different couple. And so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I step back so far when I'm writing that I'm not there, and really, it's almost plays out like it's reality for them. And so, to me, it's just part of life. I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say, "It's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you." So, I wanted them to know what good sex was, and if you have a book that you can read when no one's around and you can see what good sex is, then it's... When you have a partner, and I can tell you, this is another thing I get lots of letters.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:16 / #:
Oh, interesting. I believe that.
Christine Feehan 00:59:20 / #:
I even had letters from guys who told me they would not cheat on their wives, military guys, because they realized that their wife was too important to them. And I mean, it's amazing. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch, and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody. I mean, when I write something, I don't know who it's going to affect. But I deliberately did put sex in my books for that reason, because I wanted people to know there is good sex. No, that there is, and you should feel something.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:19 / #:
And I love the way you talk about it, as you are so distant from the book itself, you are just writing the book. And I think that's really what a Feehan... That's why it feels so different as a reader or did. In those early books, they felt transcendent because they did feel intense and passionate in that way, that sort of private way.
Christine Feehan 01:00:46 / #:
Yeah. Now, when I started the Leopard series, that was kind of my nod to erotica. Yeah, erotic wasn't a huge, huge thing then. Now, it kind of is, but it wasn't at the time. And so, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to just do a little bit of that." And that was before to Torpedo Ink. And so, I thought, "Oh, I'll put that in my leopard one because it made sense to go there." But then, I started writing Torpedo Ink and I'm like, "Uh-oh, now I've got two."
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:23 / #:
Yeah. That's hot, everybody. I'm okay with it.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:29 / #:
No, the Leopard series. I mean, I remember coming to the Leopard series and just feeling like nobody had ever done anything like that before.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:38 / #:
Yeah. So, I think the question we love to end with is... So, it's kind of a two-part question, I guess. One is, there a book that you hear about over and over again from readers? And then, the question we have for you is there a book of yours that's your favorite, the one that you are most proud of?
Christine Feehan 01:01:58 / #:
Well, the one I hear about all the time from Readers is Dark Celebration. Every single person wants me to write that book over and over and over.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:11 / #:
They can just reread it. They can reread it. Reread it, everybody.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:13 / #:
It slaps every time.
Christine Feehan 01:02:16 / #:
It's so funny.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:17 / #:
And why do you think that is?
Christine Feehan 01:02:19 / #:
I think because it revisits characters they love.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:22 / #:
Yes.
Christine Feehan 01:02:24 / #:
I think that's it.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:25 / #:
It's reader Karen Feeding, right?
Christine Feehan 01:02:28 / #:
So, I think that that's it. What book would I be the most proud of?
Sarah MacLean 01:02:35 / #:
Or the one that's most special to you? People take it in different ways.
Christine Feehan 01:02:41 / #:
Probably the one that's the most special to me is Dark Prince, for obvious reasons. That would probably be the one, I would say.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:49 / #:
Well, thank you for being with us today.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:51 / #:
This was incredible. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us and it's really an honor.
Christine Feehan 01:02:59 / #:
I really enjoyed being with you. Thank you for inviting me.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:06 / #:
Every single one of these goes differently.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:10 / #:
Yeah, it's amazing. I think the thing I liked about our conversation with Christine is how personal it felt. I mean, obviously, not just the stories that she shared, but just you can really feel how reading and writing and thinking about hope and happily ever afters is really something she spent her entire life on. And there's a way that I think that just really came through in that conversation. It was so fascinating.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:39 / #:
Absolutely. She talked a few times about how readers have approached her and talked to her about how special her books are to them and how moving they are and how inspirational and important they are to readers. And every time she told them, I had the same thought, which was, "I think it must be really wonderful to have a conversation, a personal conversation with Christine." She feels like she's present in the moment the whole time, and it was really special.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:14 / #:
I get very distracted by people. I feel like even in my classroom, I'm kind of constantly doing 800 things at once, but you really feel that she probably is such a great mom and a grandma. You know what I mean? Like the attention that she really gives and the way that she talks about... I mean, I'm fascinated too by people who say, "I am a writer. I've always been a writer. I love writing. There's 300 books under the bed."
Sarah MacLean 01:04:41 / #:
A Compulsive Writer. I love that. The sort of, "I would've written with or without publishing." I loved that story about how she got dragged up to an R.W.A. meeting and everybody was like, "Well, I've been working on the same thing for a while." And she's like, "I have 300 books, but I never intended to do this."
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:00 / #:
I also think that that goes hand in hand then with not really worrying about "the market". So, when you are writing in that way and you've had success writing in that way, and you've had readers respond to you in that way, then I think it's really powerful to see someone stay the course.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:24 / #:
I feel like if you are out there right now and you are looking at a manuscript and you think it won't sell you because of the market, hearing Christine talk must be so important and inspirational for you, because we've talked a lot about... We've talked to people like Jayne Ann Krentz, I loved, as she mentioned, Jayne. We've talked about Jayne... When we talked to Jayne, when we talked to J.R. Ward, we've heard the story of people who change genres because, as J.R. Ward puts it, they were fired or it just wasn't selling, so they pivoted. And we've talked so much about how writers have to be nimble to thrive in the genre. And I think what's fascinating is that Christine is nimble and she is full of ideas and shifting and changing, but she stays really true to her brand and to her point of view. And I think that's a really valuable thing to hold onto right now, especially, as we see romance really grappling with those big questions about what comes next and have we oversaturated and these kind of big issues.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:40 / #:
We didn't have a chance to ask her. She has re-released some of her romances.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:45 / #:
Oh, we meant to ask.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:46 / #:
I know, as a sort of-
Sarah MacLean 01:06:48 / #:
And then, we got distracted.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:49 / #:
Author's cuts. With the rise of self-publishing, I think there's a way in which... There's always a market for something. There's always a small dedicated group of readers who are looking for whatever it is that you are selling. It's traditional publishing that has... It can't quite have that leeway to just be like, "Yes." And so, it's really interesting to hear her talk about that Dorchester imprint taking a chance on her and the difference that made. And it's funny because that is not a... I mean, Dorchester, I feel like is not a name I've even ever heard spoken about before in romance.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:36 / #:
I mean, it's really fascinating because I hadn't thought of Dorchester until-
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:42 / #:
We were prepping.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:42 / #:
I was doing research. We were prepping for this episode. You guys, these are the only episodes we actually prep for. We do actually do research before we talk to these people because we are trying to get them to think we're intelligent and so, we know what we're doing. But no, I mean, Dorchester... And now, of course, I want to go back and look a little more at Dorchester. But I was thinking about our conversation with Radcliffe, when we were talking about how these small presses were really the places where big adventures were happening in romance. And obviously, for Radcliffe and for E.E. Ottoman, that was a different kind of thing, that was happening because queer presses had to publish queer books because traditional publishers weren't doing that. But paranormal, I think about those digital-only presses, again, those kind of Ellora's Cave and Sam Haynes and those places that were taking big risks. And so, it doesn't surprise me that one of the mothers of paranormal came up through a place that doesn't exist anymore.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:56 / #:
This is something I don't... I don't know that I've ever heard any author explicitly state as clearly, which is when you write from a place... When she told that, I mean, heartbreaking story of her son's death, that somehow there are some readers who can plug into that and see a, I don't know, see themselves in that too. And I think that's one of the things, we talk so much about romance being about the genre of hope, about feelings. Romance is about feelings, but it's our feelings as readers too. And I think that this is something that I was really impressed at how clear-eyed it felt like she was about that relationship. If I'm writing from this place, it's going to find the readers in that place.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:55 / #:
And I also think there is... Talk about a fearlessness in terms of character and theme, because she really does write about trauma. And maybe we'll put in the show notes a link to the discussion that Jen and Adriana Herrera have had about writing trauma and how romance and trauma kind of do go hand in hand a lot. But it's interesting because I think writing trauma is a thing that we are talking about a lot in the industry without talking about it, really having conversations about how you put these things on the page so that characters and writers and readers can see it in a raw way. I think she even used that word, raw. And these books are not for the faint of heart. They are rough reads, and she is writing into that space in a way that I think a lot of us are afraid to do. And I think it's because she clearly has seen it, she's faced it. And I loved every minute of that conversation.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:19 / #:
Romance gives me so much. But when I kind of interact with someone who has the same root causes, and I've talked about this before. I started reading romance after my parents got divorced. The pain of that was the only thing that made me feel hope and better, was reading romance, that there are people out here who have also gone through painful things and they find a way to love each other. And so, it really is interesting, I think, for me, when you talk to someone who, I don't know, talk about the branches of the romance tree. It feels like we were planted in the same ground.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:01 / #:
Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, that was a very cool conversation. I mean, I should have expected it to be, but...
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:10 / #:
A lot of our trailblazers were really pushing for, "Tell us the story of publishing. Tell us your story through that journey." And that's not what her story was about, and I loved hearing it. It was amazing.