full-length episode, guest host, S02 - Interstitials, interstitial Jennifer Prokop full-length episode, guest host, S02 - Interstitials, interstitial Jennifer Prokop

S02.44: Freewheeling with Kennedy Ryan

We’re so excited to have Kennedy Ryan with us this week — someone who was blooded not once, but twice by old school historicals! Listen to us talk powerful heroines, her brilliant Queen Move, how so much romance is political and why those old romances are still worth reading — problematic and all.

Summer is here, and next week is the final episode of Season Two, with a few others to come while we take a few weeks off. To read romance novels. Obviously. Season Three begins in August!

While we’re apart, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

Oh, and did you know Sarah had a book out last week? Daring & the Duke is officially here! Get it at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from the wonderful independent bookstore, Savoy Bookshop in RI, where she is for the. month of July!

Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah MacLean 0:00 / #
Well, we're almost done with the season but we have saved the best for last Jen.

Jennifer Prokop 0:06 / #
If I could break out into song right now and not scare people away. Maybe I would

Kennedy Ryan 0:13 / #
seriously

Sarah MacLean 0:15 / #
That is the dulcet, melodic, I would think probably tone of Kennedy Ryan one of our very favorites. Welcome Kennedy.

Kennedy Ryan 0:24 / #
Oh my gosh, you guys are my very favorites. I'm always pushing your podcast down people's throats.

Sarah MacLean 0:31 / #
That's what we like to hear.

Jennifer Prokop 0:32 / #
Yes it is.

Sarah MacLean 0:32 / #
T o hear about people just violently requiring people to listen to us.

Kennedy Ryan 0:36 / #
All the time. I was just screenshotting the one you guys did about old school romance. The one you did not too long ago, the Judith McNaught episode, I was shoving down every throat I could find last week so, I'm your pusher.

Sarah MacLean 0:51 / #
I like it. We're here for it. Welcome everybody to Fated Mates. We are really, really excited this week. I didn't know this. I feel Kennedy, you and I, we have just sort of unpacked our friendship to a new level. I had no idea you were such a fan of old school romances.

Kennedy Ryan 1:15 / #
Oh my gosh, yeah, I definitely am. A lot of times people will bring up some of the new stuff. And I'm like, Oh, I haven't read that yet. Sierra Simone and I have a joke because she's like, "how have you read all the old stuff? And there's all this great new stuff you haven't gotten to yet". I just keep rereading the old stuff it's so good. I'm that chick.

Jennifer Prokop 1:40 / #
I'm rereading a lot in these pandemic days. I really am.

Kennedy Ryan 1:44 / #
I have books that are annual rereads for me. Books that are built into my reading schedule. I have to reread this book, once a year. Certain books like, "Flowers from the Storm", like they're just certain books I have to read at least once a year.

Sarah MacLean 1:58 / #
Well, you are a mega Kinsale Stan

Kennedy Ryan 2:01 / #
Oh gosh yes. Mega, Mega. I tell people if you cut me I'm gonna bleed some Kinsale. I adore her. Everybody who knows me knows that.

Sarah MacLean 2:14 / #
Did you start with Kinsale? That how you came to her?

Kennedy Ryan 2:17 / #
No

Jennifer Prokop 2:17 / #
Yeah. Tell us your romance journey. I feel like we should ask everybody this.

Sarah MacLean 2:23 / #
Are we just diving in.

Jennifer Prokop 2:24 / #
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 2:26 / #
We are. I mean, we'll come back around. We're just roaming.

Kennedy Ryan 2:29 / #
I'm ready, roaming romance. I am ready for it. So I think of myself as twice blooded. I started reading romance, well, for me, it's really young. I was in eighth grade. And you have to understand my parents are pastors. So they, they were very careful about what I listened to, what I saw on television, what I read was very much curated in our house. When I was in the eighth grade, one of my friends handed me "A Pirate to Love". I think it was "A Pirate to Love". No, it was "The Wolf and the Dove". And it was this old battered copy. Because I'm, I think I'm older than both of you. This was like, gosh, it was like the late 80s. When I was in the eighth grade because I yeah, I'm 47 so

Jennifer Prokop 3:22 / #
I'm almost 47 so we're very close.

Kennedy Ryan 3:25 / #
I still got you Jen. I still got you.

Sarah MacLean 3:28 / #
I'm so young.

Jennifer Prokop 3:30 / #
It's nice not to be the old lady on the podcast. I guess.

Kennedy Ryan 3:33 / #
I will gladly take the honor of old lady. So I was in the eighth grade. And, you know, I mean, romance was pretty, I mean, as we know it as a genre still really developing. Um, and so she gave me this tattered paperback of "The Wolf and the Dove". Of course, that's what it was. And I just consumed it.

Sarah MacLean 3:57 / #
Yeah,

Kennedy Ryan 3:58 / #
Still Sarah and I talk about it, I think because that was my first romance, medieval still holds a really special place in my heart.

Sarah MacLean 4:06 / #
Well, I mean, we've talked about this. All of us have talked about this. And certainly we've talked about it on the pod. But the these early books like blooded twice, I can't wait to hear who the second blooding is. But blooding twice is really interesting because those early books, I really think they install your buttons, your, you know, Primal sex buttons.

Jennifer Prokop 4:26 / #
I was gonna say plot buttons, but ok.

Sarah MacLean 4:32 / #
Both. Both.

Kennedy Ryan 4:34 / #
Yeah. And I mean, at the time, you know, you're I was in the eighth grade and I had no idea well, this book's kind of rapey or I had no concept of that. It was just like, I'm enjoying this, you know, it was just it was very sensory. I enjoyed the pull. You know, I was reading, you know, Wuthering Heights, or whatever. You know, "Beloved", I was reading literary fiction or whatever they were feeding you in school? And something that was completely pleasure. And also for me, because I was young and I was such a late bloomer, like, don't even ask me when I had my first kiss. It was like 11th grade. For me, it was just all fascinating, honestly, and to see a relationship that way. And there was history, you know, I did, I hadn't known much about the Normans. And, you know, these marriages being, you know, arranged by this king, you know, I didn't know a lot of those things. So I was actually learning those things as I was reading.

Sarah MacLean 5:36 / #
You know, that's one thing that we never talked about is the amount of learning that goes on for romance readers, especially when we're young. I mean, I always joke that like, my SAT scores were really great and verbal and really terrible in math. And the reason why they were great and verbal is because of romance novels, because I knew all the words.

Kennedy Ryan 5:55 / #
Absolutely. And my father, he was the Dean of Students. He's in higher education. And he would, when I was growing up, he would assign, this is gonna sound crazy, he would assign me letters of the dictionary. And I would just read the dictionary and he would come home and he would quiz me on "N", you know, and we would go back and forth until we could stump each other on an "N" word. Oh that sounded bad, bad choice of letters. But you know, and he would say, okay, when you're reading every time you come across a word that you don't know, write it down. And then over the next week, make sure you use it in a sentence.

Sarah MacLean 6:31 / #
You know, what I'm going to start using this for the summer with my daughter, this is such a good idea.

Kennedy Ryan 6:36 / #
It's amazing. And so my dad, that's what he would say, every time you're reading, you come across a word you don't know, write it down, look it up. You try to use it within a week so that it can become a part of your vocabulary. So I was doing that before. Then I started reading romance, you know that. You know,

Sarah MacLean 6:56 / #
You had all different words.

Kennedy Ryan 6:57 / #
All different words. Here's the thing you guys. I didn't know at first to keep it from my parents. I'm walking around, you know, I'm walking around. My mom is like, what is that? And she wanted to take it from me. And so I started smuggling romance novels into my house. I had them stuffed under my mattress, I would go to the library, and I would come out with like, my respectable books, and I would pack my back pack full of all of my, this is what I mean by twice blooded, because when I first came into romance, it was Joanna Lindsey, it was Kathleen Woodiwiss, and then I got into category. So it was Charlotte Lamb. It was Carol Mortimer, it was Robyn Donald, all those one name books by Carol Mortimer, like "Frustration". You're like, I have no idea what that means but I've got to read it. So my bag would be stuffed with all of my romance novels, and I would carry into the house all of my respectable ones. And then I would stuff them into the back of my closet and in my mattresses.

Sarah MacLean 8:02 / #
Oh my god, you turn to a life of crime.

Kennedy Ryan 8:04 / #
I actually did. I turned to a life of crime just to get my kicks.

Sarah MacLean 8:09 / #
The pastor's daughter. It's all there.

Jennifer Prokop 8:12 / #
I'm just like, podcast over.

Kennedy Ryan 8:17 / #
It was awful. It was awful. It was a secret life.

Sarah MacLean 8:20 / #
It was amazing. But you know what, so many of us did that. I don't know if I've ever told this story on the podcast. I've certainly told it in interviews, but I when, you know, when I was young, when I was in middle school, the library was across the Middle School parking lot. And you know, I would go there after school and they kept the romance novels literally in the dark. The lights were turned off in the aisles where they kept romances and I was like, well, this is clearly for me. And I like lurked in the darkness reading, you know, furtively any book that had Fabio on the cover and the reality is its like we are trained from, you know, infancy in romance to hide the reading.

Jennifer Prokop 9:06 / #
Yes. Can I tell you I think we've all had that, that experience. And so the thing that, like hurts me is when fellow romance readers talk about their kids wanting to read romance and them not letting them. And I'm just like

Sarah MacLean 9:22 / #
It's hard.

Jennifer Prokop 9:23 / #
But why? Don't you remember what that was like? Why are you doing that? It's really hard for me and I just keep my mouth shut. I leave romances all over my house. And you all know my extreme effin disappointment that my son cannot be bothered to read them. I'm just like, Oh, my God. I'm always like, Don't you want to take these to your friends?

Kennedy Ryan 9:48 / #
He's like, sure, mom.

Sarah MacLean 9:51 / #
Some day, I hope to have Tessa Dare on the podcast, but one of my favorite Tessa stories, she has a teenage daughter, but right when that you know, 12 or 13, that sort of sweet spot of when you find out that sex exists and you're like, "what is this about"? She got a call, I think from a mom at her school, who was like, all the kids are passing around your books, because they're reading and they're reading all the salaciousness. And Tessa's like, well, I don't know what to say about that. Like, I'm not gonna tell you that it's not a good, like, ultimately, wouldn't you like your kids to know that when they have sex, they should be having it in a thoughtful way with people who care about their pleasure and care about them. Right, and it's a tricky thing. I mean, I get it, I get the hesitance. But yeah, I mean, I can remember just sort of skipping over sex scenes for a long time because I just didn't, yeah, get it. So I mean, especially in those early

Jennifer Prokop 10:59 / #
The year of the euphemism.

Sarah MacLean 11:01 / #
What on earth is going on?

Jennifer Prokop 11:04 / #
What's a velvet cave?

Kennedy Ryan 11:10 / #
What is the member?

Sarah MacLean 11:14 / #
Exactly, like you know it's something is going on.

Jennifer Prokop 11:17 / #
Is this a club that can be joined?

Kennedy Ryan 11:19 / #
I'm still stuck on the velvet cave. Its not so warm.

Jennifer Prokop 11:26 / #
You know satellite radio brings a lot of like, when we used to drive you know back before pandemic times, and had to go places, I heard the song by Sheena Easton and I really remember liking as a kid of sugar walls and almost drove off the road at how filthy it is.

Kennedy Ryan 11:50 / #
Oh, yes.

Sarah MacLean 11:51 / #
Oh, well, I mean, can we talk about Prince?

Jennifer Prokop 11:53 / #
I'm gonna say Prince wrote that right?

Kennedy Ryan 11:55 / #
Oh god.

Sarah MacLean 11:56 / #
Well, yeah. Sheena Easton. So here's my here's a fun fact. And surely this is about to become the musical theme of this episode. One of Eric's like very favorite things is to like drop Prince protege names just in conversation. Yeah and I so I know Yeah, Sheena Easton was a prince protege and he probably wrote that song for her.

Kennedy Ryan 12:15 / #
I'm pretty sure.

Jennifer Prokop 12:17 / #
He wrote all of those sex euphemisms songs.

Kennedy Ryan 12:20 / #
Darling Nikki.

Sarah MacLean 12:27 / #
Oh my boy. I mean,

Kennedy Ryan 12:32 / #
I think Vanity was one of his protege. All of them and my husband had all of them on his wall growing up, he actually saw Prince like in the bathtub before Prince, you know, stopped doing his nasty stuff live. We got a whole, he calls a door, he calls it a hymn. He refers to a door as our hymn. The full extended version now.

Jennifer Prokop 13:16 / #
You guys just this morning Charis Hodges on Twitter posted the most amazing tweet it says, "I was today years old when I found out that Prince stole Rick James's woman and turned her into Vanity". Prince a hero in every way.

Kennedy Ryan 13:35 / #
He rest in purple.

Sarah MacLean 13:39 / #
Kennedy, you just became Eric our producers favorite romance novelist. Yeah. Period. Hands down. You're gonna have to come back again and again.

Kennedy Ryan 13:50 / #
No effort.

Sarah MacLean 13:51 / #
You said vanity. Oh was a prince protege. And now that's it. You're his favorite.

Kennedy Ryan 13:56 / #
I will not be dethroned. I will figure out how to stay at that top spot.

Jennifer Prokop 14:01 / #
There's no one else. We've never met someone who knew so much obscure Prince trivia. To all of our listeners out there, when the world gets back to normal if you're ever in Minneapolis, please go visit, his studio is now like a tour you can go on and we went as a family and it was honestly one of the best like touristy things we've ever done. It was awesome.

Kennedy Ryan 14:30 / #
I would just die. And you know his family has given Ava DuVernay who I mean I have to genuflect when I say her name because she's a goddess. But the family has given her access to like his full catalogue, like hundreds of songs he never published. And she's working on something about his life. Ava and Prince together. Shut the house down.

Sarah MacLean 14:53 / #
Well, so euphemisms, sex euphemism.

Kennedy Ryan 14:56 / #
Yeah, Like the velvet cave, which sounds very woman.

Sarah MacLean 15:00 / #
Similar to Prince, these early sex scenes, that you might not understand exactly what's going on but you definitely know it's dirty.

Kennedy Ryan 15:08 / #
Yes, yes.

Sarah MacLean 15:11 / #
Yeah, okay, so we have Woodiwiss, you are like blooded by the original.

Kennedy Ryan 15:19 / #
Yeah, I mean

Sarah MacLean 15:20 / #
You're like the most powerful vampire.

Kennedy Ryan 15:22 / #
I a m an original. It was, Woodiwiss, you know, if you've ever read "The Wolf and The Dove" like, it does, it has the rapey overtones because, in the beginning, I was about to say I don't want to spoil "The Wolf and The Dove", I mean come on now.

Sarah MacLean 15:45 / #
It's 50 years old I think its ok.

Kennedy Ryan 15:50 / #
You know, when it first starts she does a great job of, redirecting you, misdirecting you for the entire novel, you know, so you think that I hate that I still know these names. You think that Ragnar has raped her? But he hasn't, you know and then so he hasn't raped her, her mother intervened and put some blood on, you know her kirtle.

Sarah MacLean 16:15 / #
Oh, famous blood. All the blood scenes.

Blood on the kirtle trick was and this wolf God doesn't actually rape her, he instead chained her to the foot of his bed and wants everyone else to think that he's raping her. Because he has his machismo that he has to maintain, but he doesn't actually rape her. And when they come together, member to velvet cave, it's painful and we think it's painful because, hey, she's only had sex one time and Wulfgar is hulking with a huge member, but it's really because she's an actual virgin and she wasn't raped.

And everyone knows sex is never painful after the first time. And the first time you bleed, like a gallon of blood.

Kennedy Ryan 17:03 / #
You have to, even though we dont have to display the sheets anymore. It still gushes from your body.

Jennifer Prokop 17:10 / #
I will say I remember a lot of those old historicals where like people displayed the sheets. I will say there's like, there's like installing your buttons. And then there's like, the anti buttons, whatever you read, and I remember like as a teenager reading those scenes and being like, listen, what the fuck this is not ok.

Kennedy Ryan 17:31 / #
Never okay.

Sarah MacLean 17:34 / #
So yeah, but also there's something. It goes back to we've talked about this, whenever we talk about medievals, right, and then being them sort of having that kind of over the top. Wild bananas storyline. And the reality is, is like something about that is really primal for so many of us. And there's something, but again it sort of strips away all the trappings of gentility and hands you a hero who is just raw patriarchy and has to be just destroyed. And you're what, tell everybody what you're reading right now?

Kennedy Ryan 18:17 / #
Well, I'm usually I'm usually so I have come to a place where my life is just really really hectic and most of the books I consume are through audio. So I'm listening to "Forbidden" by Beverly Jenkins.

Jennifer Prokop 18:31 / #
God one of my favorites.

Kennedy Ryan 18:32 / #
I just finished on audio. I'm just telling people because it's spectacular. It's not even historical. I just finished "Beach Read" on audio, which is fantastic.

Sarah MacLean 18:44 / #
I love that book, I really did. Jen hasn't read it but its so good.

Kennedy Ryan 18:48 / #
It's so good. Jen. The writing like sparkles. Anyway, it sparkles. But I everybody who knows me knows that like historical romance is kind of it's like my favorite. And I have all the Kinsale, all they can sell on audio. Certain books they're so old you can't even get them in audio and I love a lot of those, like "Magnificent Rose".

Sarah MacLean 19:16 / #
Iris Johansen.

Kennedy Ryan 19:17 / #
Iris Johansen and you know what's so funny is I caught I said that I was twice blooded. Like when I was first blooded. I only read romance from the eighth grade until my senior year in high school. So I like five years of romance and a lot of that was category and I didn't know

Sarah MacLean 19:32 / #
Wait, so you stopped reading romance, cold turkey?

Kennedy Ryan 19:37 / #
You know, it's like, I know I went into college and I stopped reading romance and I just I don't know if it was because I was adjusting to so many things and there was so much to read and there was so much to do, but I just lost it. You know, when I started reading other things and doing other things and I just kind of lost romance for a really long time. I didn't pick romance back up until I was close to 40 years old. I had, my son has autism, and I had started a foundation for families who have children with autism. And I was running that foundation. And I was of course, raising a child with special needs. And I was advocating for other families. My whole life, like, it was autism and everything I read, everything I consumed was around special needs and waivers. I was drowning honestly. And I needed something for myself, I needed an escape. I needed something that just was purely pleasure for me. And I just remembered how much I loved romance. And I just picked up, I started going to the library again like just on my own picking up some of the things that I loved before, but I don't even remember, Kinsale I don't even think was in the mix. When I was blooded the first time, when I was first blooded I think Iris Johansen was I don't know if you guys remember she used to write for like Silhouette, some category romance.

Jennifer Prokop 21:01 / #
She wrote for Love Swept. They were so good.

Sarah MacLean 21:05 / #
They were so good.

Kennedy Ryan 21:07 / #
And some of the plots were like whoa, like over the top. I'm trying to think of this one it had like magical realism, I cannot remember the name of it. But she was like a, not a sorceress, but it's just it's some I was like

Jennifer Prokop 21:22 / #
I bet it was, "This Fear Splendor".

Kennedy Ryan 21:24 / #
I bet it was, "This Fear Splendor".

Jennifer Prokop 21:27 / #
And the reason I know that is because that's the one where they have sex on the horse and she's some sort of magical like Jensen expert, an expert I yeah, there was like a whole like kind of series where it was like her and Fayrene Preston and Kay Hooper.

Kennedy Ryan 21:45 / #
Kay Hooper, oh my gosh. When you said Kay Hooper and I remembered.

Jennifer Prokop 21:49 / #
And they would write like the three of them would write these trilogies where they each took one person and they would all come out and they did like the Delaneys which I think is what the but yeah, it was a lot.

Kennedy Ryan 22:04 / #
It was a lot right and so I remember that and so I remembered I liked Iris Johansen and I picked up in this whole reblooding, my second blooding, Kinsale was out and Iris Johansen had written the, "Magnificent Rogue". And that's the one I started rereading. And it is fantastic.

Sarah MacLean 22:27 / #
Also medieval.

Kennedy Ryan 22:29 / #
Again, also a medieval. It's and just to give you for anybody, and also I pride myself on kind of obscure historical romances that went, because it's like my secret pride when people ask for my favorite and I say something like, and some people will know these like "Night in Eden" by Candace Proctor.

Sarah MacLean 22:50 / #
Oh, I don't know that one.

Kennedy Ryan 22:55 / #
You guys, okay.

Sarah MacLean 22:56 / #
I'm reading it right now.

Kennedy Ryan 22:57 / #
Do you know Penelope Williamson?

Sarah MacLean 22:59 / #
Yes. Of course.

Kennedy Ryan 23:01 / #
Okay, so Penelope Williamson.

Sarah MacLean 23:02 / #
Wait, first repeat the other one. Now I got a pen cap in my mouth.

Kennedy Ryan 23:06 / #
I'm gonna start with who have the you know, Penelope Williamson, right. So I read some of hers like she wrote. "Wild Yearning". She wrote, she has a medieval that I love and I can't read the name right off the top, but I will anyway so you know, Penelope Williams, Candace Proctor is her sister.

Sarah MacLean 23:24 / #
What's what?

Kennedy Ryan 23:26 / #
When I found that out my mom was completely blown. And one of my favorite novels is "Night in Eden", and this is written like in '95 '97. And it reminds me and you know, everything in that that period was Regency or Medieval or you know, it was

Sarah MacLean 23:42 / #
It was really, it was the heyday of Medievals the early 90s. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 23:48 / #
So this felt so different because "Night in Eden", is about it's in the 1800s I can't remember where in the 1800s maybe mid

Sarah MacLean 23:59 / #
Who cares, yeah, we did a whole episode where we decided readers don't care.

Kennedy Ryan 24:03 / #
Yeah. But I think if I did Regency era, okay, so, um, she, the heroine kills her husband. She had a baby who died. You guys, this is fantastic because it's not even in England. She starts in England. I think she starts in England. And then she gets shipped to New South Wales as a prisoner like

Jennifer Prokop 24:26 / #
Dang.

Kennedy Ryan 24:27 / #
You don't even understand

Sarah MacLean 24:28 / #
Now, I feel like I do.

Jennifer Prokop 24:29 / #
I feel like, I'm like

Sarah MacLean 24:32 / #
Stick to Australia feels real familiar.

Kennedy Ryan 24:35 / #
So good, you guys. And she becomes an indentured servant. And she her baby. She's pregnant. She has her baby in prison. And then she's on the ship on her way to I don't want to give the whole thing away because a lot of people may have never read this.

Jennifer Prokop 24:48 / #
This is probably the first two chapters, who are we kidding I mean.

Kennedy Ryan 24:50 / #
It's at the beginning. I'm not gonna tell you everything because the plot get bananas. The plot gets bananas. You know, we love bananas, but so she gets on the ship. On her way to New South Wales as an indentured servant. Because she killed her husband. She was it was an accident. But of course but

Sarah MacLean 25:08 / #
But what but he was terrible and deserved it surely.

Kennedy Ryan 25:11 / #
But he was terrible. He was cheating on her. Okay, we'll find that out later, so I dont want to spoil things. Anyway, so her baby dies, her baby dies.

Sarah MacLean 25:21 / #
Candace Proctor just breaking rules.

Kennedy Ryan 25:23 / #
Girl, you just, all the rules this is '97.

Sarah MacLean 25:26 / #
Oh my god, it's not that early. Yeah, like to give everybody a frame of reference the Bridgerton's the following year are gonna be out.

Kennedy Ryan 25:35 / #
Wow, I didn't even make that connection.

Jennifer Prokop 25:37 / #
But I do. I feel like there is and I feel like it's true today too, that they're sort of like always a strain of romance that is doing the most.

Kennedy Ryan 25:48 / #
Yeah, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 25:49 / #
Well, it's real fearlessness.

Kennedy Ryan 25:52 / #
You guys you have no idea. This is so fearless. Because the captain who she's going to go work for, you know, work out her term for, he is of course, gorgeous, but he's just lost his wife. He has a baby. She has to nurse the baby. She nurses his baby you guys. Because shes got her milk.

Jennifer Prokop 26:16 / #
Of course she does.

Sarah MacLean 26:16 / #
It's like that Sandra Brown book. That we talked about. There's a old school Sandra Brown from earlier

Jennifer Prokop 26:22 / #
Where shes the wet nurse. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 26:23 / #
Yes wet nurse. Yes. That is the technical term.

Jennifer Prokop 26:30 / #
It's also in Romeo and Juliet isn't the nurse of her. It's her wet nurse.

Sarah MacLean 26:36 / #
It's rich people hired wet nurses back in the day.

Jennifer Prokop 26:42 / #
I hired a wet nurse to it was called Enfamil, god damn, people were like, isn't formula expensive? I was like, I'm gonna send this motherfucker off to college one day. I can afford a can of formula a week my god.

Kennedy Ryan 27:12 / #
I love it. The modern wet nurse. So yeah anyway I won't tell any more but it is fan freaking tastic.

Sarah MacLean 27:16 / #
well I know what I'm reading at the beach next month.

Kennedy Ryan 27:19 / #
God it is so good it has to build that's the other thing is I love the stories that really build and so "Flowers from the Storm" that's why I love Kinsale so much it and a lot of my friends when, I feel like I'm all over the place because you asked what I'm reading now I'm rereading "Magnificent Rogue".

Sarah MacLean 27:34 / #
Right thats what I was angling for. Got a better there's a better story in here. Candace Proctor.

Kennedy Ryan 27:41 / #
Oh gosh, Candace Proctor just nice a "Night in Eden". And so with "Magnificent Rogue". I don't know why I picked it up because I'm listening. I'm listening to "Forbidden" now of course, and I will read things and then listen to them. So I'm listening to that. It's amazing, but I just you know, picked up "Magnificent Rogue" again. And I was like, this is all about women's power, like completely and just to give people a setting it is Medieval. It's asked me to blitz like, well,

Sarah MacLean 28:12 / #
It's Scotland, isn't it?

Kennedy Ryan 28:13 / #
Yes, it is. He's a Highlander. He is a Scottish Earl. And he has an island, Cray coo. I'm not may not be pronouncing that. But he basically bends the knee to nobody. And Queen Elizabeth captures him. And this is before Mary, Mary Queen of Scots is executed. It's like right before she's executed. And it is the the plot is so what is woven so tightly and there's so much I love misdirection. There's so much misdirection, and then he is amazing. Like, he is incredible. He's tall, he has dark hair, he's gorgeous. He's arrogant, but not in like a douchey way in like impotence, you know, kind of way. She wants him, she's fought, she has captured him. She's been trying to capture him for years, been watching him for years and realizes that he's the perfect candidate to do what she needs me to do, which is to marry this young girl who is a royal bastard. We are led to believe and I'm not going to say that it's not because someone might read this. And it's too brilliant for me to give away. Even though it's 30 years old. Anyone who's somebody who's reading it for the first time, and we are, you know, she's the bastard daughter of Mary. And of course, there's all this tension between Mary and Elizabeth. And then James is on the throne in Scotland, like it's all of this royal intrigue. And then there's this girl who is somebodies royal bastard, who has been kept by this evil priest who has been like beating her and who has been feeding her all kinds of religious nonsense for her whole life. And it reminds me of, 0kay, this is what reminds me of McNaught's "Kingdom of Dreams". Wait did I just say that right? Yes. Okay, um, all she wants is home. All she wants is family. She feels like she's been starved for that. And when she sees his clan, because he does have to marry her, he marries her. And

Sarah MacLean 30:17 / #
Isn't it a marriage of, it's they make a deal is not going to be

Kennedy Ryan 30:21 / #
Its a hand fast. That's what they do. So it's short, it's supposed to be short. And the reason he does that is because he recognizes she's a political pawn. And she is, he is all about his Island. You know, he doesn't bend the knee to anybody else. He is like, I'm self contained over here. People want me for my trade routes. We got our own money. I don't want to be in nobody's, I don't want to fight anybody's war. Like he's possessively protective of his people. And she goes, I want to belong. You know, she sees the way he takes care of his people, the way he, because the thing that Queen Elizabeth uses to get him to marry her is that one of his kinsmen is with him and he's like, you can do whatever you want to do to me. I don't care. But then she says, I will hang him right now if you don't marry her. And he does. You know, he's like, you can kill me but you can't touch. He says, I protect what's mine. Nobody's ever gonna hurt with mine. And mine, mine mine, mine,

Sarah MacLean 31:21 / #
Mine, mine, mine mine mine.

That's my id, you know mine mine mine mine mine. But it's not even just applied to her. It's applied to anyone who's under his protection. She compares him to a falcon who spreads his wings over his whole clan and she goes, I want to be in the shadow. Oh my god.

Put it in my veins.

Kennedy Ryan 31:44 / #
She starts to find her power. And she is some royals daughter and he start, he knows that. But she starts to realize it. And she starts to realize she has power even when like even when they have sex like for the first time and second time around. Whatever, she starts to articulate the power for own pleasure, and he teaches her that he's like, you have power over me, I can't resist you. Do you know what I mean? It's like, and then

Sarah MacLean 32:12 / #
I'm going to go back and reread this book right now.

Kennedy Ryan 32:15 / #
There's another woman who comes and she's smiling and she's innocent. And as soon as the door like with all the guys, and as soon as the door closes, she's like, okay, here's, here's what we're gonna do. You know, its like power, she understands the patriarchy she's working inside of, and how to leverage her gifts and her power to get around them. You know, she's always, they're always looking for workarounds. And I love that about this book. And if she becomes, in the beginning, she's timid. She's weak on the surface, but she has this like steel backbone, and you begin to see her rise like and the power, by the end of the book is so clearly her novel. It's so clearly her story. It's so clearly she is the most powerful piece on the whole board. And he recognizes that too. I don't want to give it away, the 30 year spoiler, but at the end even he's like, what do you want me to do? I will leave my clan, I will do this, I will do whatever, you know, it's just the joy of it. So empowering.

Sarah MacLean 33:16 / #
You know what's interesting, though, is we talk so much about these crazy like, over the top plots. And the reality is is like, they're not they don't they're not just, they don't just happen to be they're overt and they have, they are there so that stories like this can overtly discuss power and how women have it and how women use it and where power comes from and how it can be wielded. Yeah, when especially when it's obscure power.

Jennifer Prokop 33:49 / #
I think it's about persistence to right like what we see is like this evolution of women in the face of like, you have to keep if you want to outsmart the patriarchy It's gonna take persistent hard work that you're going to keep doing in as many ways as you can until you get what you want and get what you need.

Sarah MacLean 34:09 / #
But these power moves, are they I mean, what's interesting is that these older plots, I mean, they don't really happen as much anymore in current day, but we still have heroines who can make Queen moves, don't we Kennedy?

Jennifer Prokop 34:28 / #
Oh Sarah.

Kennedy Ryan 34:28 / #
Seg to the way.

Sarah MacLean 34:30 / #
Rim shot!

Kennedy Ryan 34:37 / #
You're as smooth as ribbons.

Sarah MacLean 34:43 / #
No, but so I mean, I'm gonna just I'm just gonna like fangirl over "Queen Move" for a little bit here because I think so. You know, Jen talks a lot about when people sort of hit their Imperial period as writers and I feel like I have always loved your writing. I've always felt like you "take the finger" like you lean into fear when you're writing. And I think that and I think you're a magnificent writer. But "Queen Move" is like, elevated to a new. I mean the whole series but like, "Queen Move" is like, I feel like you are, you're writing at the top of the game, not your game, the game.

Kennedy Ryan 35:24 / #
My mouth is hanging open.

Sarah MacLean 35:29 / #
It just feels to me but part of what's glorious about "Queen Move", is this magnificent heroine, who is just, she you back her up against the wall emotionally right from the start from like page one. And then you unpack. I mean, there's a lot to love about this book. It's also really epic, in the way, that some of these old romances of I can see the bones of your blooding and in this book, you know and part of that is because I've just spent a year with Jen like really unpacking, what the bones of romance are. And it's clear to me that you're, you've been taught to write romance by all the people who taught me to write romance, too. So of course, I'm like naturally drawn to your books. But there's something just like

Kennedy Ryan 36:17 / #
Same because I just finished Daring. So fan girl over here. But you already know that I was texting you the whole time.

Sarah MacLean 36:24 / #
This is my turn. This is, it's my podcast, so I get to talk. So this so there's this epicness about the whole story, especially because you also are telling the story of multiple generations. Yeah. But, um, this I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the evolution of this particular heroine and like, and just tell everybody a little bit about where you came, how you came to her?

Kennedy Ryan 36:50 / #
You know, so the heroines name is Kimba. And for anyone who read "All the King's Men" duet, she is the best friend in The first two books of you know, the duet, "The Kingmaker", and "The Rebel King". And Linux is the heroine in that and just to give context, it's kind of like scandalous in the sense that they're like gladiators. You know, they're like white hat girls. So they start their own political consulting firm specifically to install people in power, who they believe will advance the causes of marginalized people. And so our heroine in those the duet is Native American, she's Yabba pi Apache. And Kimbo of course, is black. And so they are like all about the brown girls all about the black girls all about queer people, like they're all about marginalized groups and making sure that we're putting people in power who are going to advance those causes. And so I won't talk about everything that happens in the duet because that is bananas. That is a lot.

Sarah MacLean 37:54 / #
But like magnificently bananas. I'm here for all these. This is my Like I'm here from contemporary 2020 romance to take these risks, because I think we're still having these conversations. The patriarchy still exists. It's still, it's still coming for marginalized groups and women and, and it feels like these big stories deserve to be told now more than ever. So in some ways, they just have to be twisted a little bit.

Kennedy Ryan 38:26 / #
Yeah I think so and I think one thing that was interesting for me was when you talk about you know, how you're blooded, obviously the book that blooded me once and then twice and my twice blooding. My second blooding, that's when I discovered Kinsale, who is I mean, to me, like Kinsale is like the highest bar you can reach, you know, 'Flowers From the Storm", I adore. I found and I know, I just slipped back in historical mode. I'm sorry. I'll get there.

Sarah MacLean 38:57 / #
Come back around. It's fine.

Kennedy Ryan 38:58 / #
"Flowers From the Storm". When I read it, I just kind of sat there like, I can't even process what just happened, you know, because and I think when you talk about who are the writers who inspire you, I'm not even saying that I'm anywhere close or whatever be to Kinsale, but she is like the little angel on my shoulder when I'm writing because she does not pander to readers. She doesn't say, "Oh, they may not know this word", or she doesn't say,"Oh, this might be too hard". Or she doesn't say "wow, they're gonna have to get through this first". She is fearless. And she's like, either you're with me or you're not? Yes, the Duke is gonna have a stroke. And no, he's not going to speak right for the rest of the book. And yes she's a Quaker and she's gonna say "thee and thou" for the whole book deal with it. You know, it's like she is just and the intricacy of the way she writes in the way she developed plots, it affects me. And that kind of just for an example, when you read "Shadow Heart", which again Medieval, you know she has a medieval, not even a duology because they're standalone, but it's "For My Lady's Heart". Yeah, they're companions for my lady's heart and then years later she writes shadow heart and the hero is the best antihero he has an actual assassin.

Jennifer Prokop 40:20 / #
I love assassins I do.

Kennedy Ryan 40:24 / #
I love assassins. Okay, this is the level of assassin this dude is he's tried there and I think street market and he and again it's Medieval and he needs her to shut up and she's screaming and screaming and to me she doesn't get it. He does that like pressure point face and neck. And she faints. She fainted. And He is ruthless. I know it sounds like an asshole but he's amazing.

Sarah MacLean 40:57 / #
I like that. I know he sounds like an asshole.

Kennedy Ryan 40:59 / #
But this is the thing. She becomes again the same as like with the "Magnificent Rogue", she is the heir to something that he and another guy have been fighting for. She's the rightful heir to it. Like she is the princess. And they've been fighting because the throne has been vacant and she takes the throne. But at the beginning she's just like this simple farm girl you know who is kind of stumbling along and doesn't even know her own power. But there are elements Now think about how long ago, this was elements of BDSM strong elements of BDSM in a Mideval.

Sarah MacLean 41:35 / #
Kinsale is real kinky.

Kennedy Ryan 41:37 / #
She is oh my gosh, when I tell you, and this is the brilliance of Kinsale.

Sarah MacLean 41:43 / #
Jen is like "what is happening"

Jennifer Prokop 41:45 / #
I'm enjoying it all.

Kennedy Ryan 41:48 / #
Okay, so it's a Medieval we're going to I'm going to get back to Queen so sorry. It was a Medieval, we're going right we're moving right along and the whole time I'm in love with him like I'm in love with him because he's magnificent and he is fearless, and he's ruthless, but also protective and obviously really into her. And she discovers that she has these dominant kind of tendencies and he who was like so powerful, so alpha has these, you know tendencies where he wants to be dominated in an instance you know, in sexual situations and so they start to play with that. And I'm the whole time I love dual POV and it's it's just her POV, her POV and the whole time like, gosh, I would love to know what he's thinking. Chapter 17 she has him, he's much taller than she is. He's standing against the wall she is she gets on a step so that she can mount him. And all of a sudden, like chapter 17 or something, it switches to his point of view. We have not heard his point of view for 17 chapter.

Sarah MacLean 42:51 / #
Magnificent. That is a baller move.

Kennedy Ryan 42:56 / #
Baller move like drop the mic.

Jennifer Prokop 42:59 / #
This is where I've got to tell you as a reader, I don't like it. I'll tell you why. Cuz now I'm like, listen, you've been keeping this man from me.

Kennedy Ryan 43:13 / #
But you get him for the rest of the book Jen, the rest of the book. It works so hard. Like, because its around chapter 17 somewhere around there. And then he's there for the rest of the book, it switches points of view for the rest of the book. And it is just anyway, it's magnificent. So that kind of just intricacy, of plot, just saying readers, just come with me, you know, I'm not looking over our shoulder like, Are you still with me? Are you still with me? I'm like, okay, either you're coming or you're not like, Yeah, and I really hope that you do. And I'm going to try to make it as easy for you as possible. But I'm not going to compromise on the story that I want to tell. And I see that, that in Kinsale like that is, it's some, it's just magnificent in her.

Sarah MacLean 43:59 / #
I think this is the thing right Jen, Jen and I were talking this morning about a different book. And we were, we were just having conversation about whether or not she's reading a book that I've already read and and whether or not it worked for her and, and I, here's my problem is as a writer, I really like it when someone takes that risk. Like, no one's ever done this thing before. Maybe it won't work, but I'm going to do it and we'll see. Yeah, right. And I think that that, that confidence, and I do think it is con, I think it's learned. I think sometimes you see that in a debut and it's naive. It's not the right word like Yeah, right. It's just that you've never you don't know what you don't know. And so you just sort of, you're just writing into the wind, and you end up writing some sort of book that really sort of pushes the boundaries of the genre in an really interesting way. But often when we see that in a debut, the following books can't keep up with that. Yeah, so but when somebody like Kinsale pulls this behavior or you, Kennedy, then what you're seeing is confidence in skill, in like the writers confidence in their own skill, but also a sort of very clear belief that readers will follow.

Jennifer Prokop 45:16 / #
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I joked or whatever but like, right, I think it all it things work if the craft is there and one of the things I actually like really struggle with and I can't imagine you two as authors do not either, is the sort of narrative that like writing romance is just like, it's always the same. And you know, it's just this like, silly thing when you know, women are well used to be that women do, you know, that it's just a silly genre. And I think that when people take big risks with craft, their craft as authors, right? I want, I want the world to appreciate. I don't really actually maybe care what the world thinks I want romance readers, at least to appreciate that there's work that goes into this right. Like reader that readers are seeing, you know, again, that Imperial period thing like, right, like we are seeing authors that are making really explicit choices and so given what you just described about this book it actually totally makes sense to me like she unlocks him somehow and now he's on the page.

Sarah MacLean 46:16 / #
And what a great use of sex to in that moment. Anyway, stop right there I'm cutting Jen.

Jennifer Prokop 46:21 / #
No, no, but I think like that's the part I, the thing about like, the bananas books kind of narrative is, we as insiders to the genre, like see what it's doing, but I sometimes feel like outsiders to the genre use it as like a weapon a snicker. That's, you know, I don't really care but I went inside I just want us to appreciate like, craft choices are our craft choices, and it's not accidental people are making decisions and I do like that, despite my earlier.

Sarah MacLean 46:57 / #
I mean, this is one of those things Jen to where it's so I mean, I'm sure I know I know you well enough now that I know that you are very you are really enjoying this conversation with Kennedy. And I think that part of it is the joy of like talking to somebody who knows the history. You know, we're about to, next week, we have an episode recorded with Steve Ammondon and it talks about somebody who just knows every knows the history of the genre and is able to really unpack why. You know, it's like that scene in "The Devil Wears Prada" where. What's her name? Help me, Help me know the other one. Marianda, what's her name? Sarah, the actress though. Meryl Streep or Meryl Streep says to Anne Hathaway like you're wearing yes, that blue sweater.

movie dialogue 47:51 / #
Oscar de la Renta did a collection of civilian gowns and then I think it was the salary or wasn't it who showed civilian military jackets. I think we need a jacket here.

Sarah MacLean 47:59 / #
Yeah. On the cover of Vogue, yes. Like, like meta, like, yeah, you think this is foolish. But it's not. Because it's all, I can show you how it's built. And I think when you talk to somebody who knows the bones of the genre, you can really unpack these questions of why are, why is switching the POV during a sex scene for the first time, to a man? Yeah, power move for the heroine and for the writer. And, and why like we've never seen we don't see that usually in books.

Kennedy Ryan 48:43 / #
And I, I think that kind of intention. Now it feels very intentional. And she can pull it off like she has the craft back it up.

Sarah MacLean 48:52 / #
And there aren't many who can pull that kind of shift. Oh, 17 chapters and then you get a new POV.

Kennedy Ryan 49:00 / #
Absolutly and he stays with, he stays with you for the rest of the novel, you know, switching back and forth, but

Sarah MacLean 49:06 / #
I mean, it's real bold itself. You know who else has done that? Um, Kennedy, have you ever read Anne Mallory?

Kennedy Ryan 49:13 / #
Yes. I can't remember which of hers.

Sarah MacLean 49:15 / #
You read the one I'm sure you read the one that I told you read, probably which is the one with the chest scene, huh? Have you read that one, where she sells herself to basically like, he wins her in a in a bet from her father. And then they play chess for 70 pages. But there's another Anne Mallory and I'll find it I don't remember the title but I will find it and put it in shownotes that does a similar thing. I mean, clearly as an homage to this Kinsale but does a similar thing where for the first like third of the book, you don't get the hero. And then you get the hero. And it's really I remember reading that and just being like, wow, this is a bold move like but Anne writes like she doesn't write romance anymore. Unfortunately. She's another writer who every book was different. Like every book took a different risk.

Jennifer Prokop 50:06 / #
A generation of romance isn't like the same as a generation of people. Right? And so, you know, we're not talking like 25 years, and these are all in the same group. I mean, I think a romance generation is maybe like, 10 years, maybe. Or, you know, and and so it's like, "50 Shades" since "50 Shades" seems like a generation, right? Since like, "Bet Me" and like between "Bet Me" and "50 Shades" was another one. And I think that the thing too, is like when we think about how, like narrative choices have changed over time, right, like that was, it would be very hard to imagine someone doing that today. And not, you know, like, when I first joked about not liking it, it's because I was thinking about 2020 Jen, right, not thinking like, Hey, that was three generations of romance ago. And yeah, and the books just read differently.

Sarah MacLean 50:57 / #
I mean, that probably shattered some readers. Imagine I mean, I bet what's interesting too is I bet readers were really frustrated by the idea. When was that book? Do you? Do you know, Kennedy?

Kennedy Ryan 51:08 / #
No. Are you talking about are you

Sarah MacLean 51:10 / #
The Kinsale?

Chapter 17, Kinsale.

It's "Shadow Heart".

Let me see, maybe 10 years between the companion novel, and like the first one, it's like maybe 10 years between them because I want this one won. This one won, The Rita, which was let me see

It's first published in 2004. In 2004, we've never seen we really rarely saw single POV romance novels. Until, you know, no, 2010.

Jennifer Prokop 51:46 / #
No, that's not true. It was just always the heroine, like all of early romance was heroin only.

Kennedy Ryan 51:55 / #
Well, I don't know because "The Wolf and The Dove", is double point of view. It is omniscient. But it's well, it's double point of view.

Sarah MacLean 52:03 / #
You know those heroes are hard to crack. Cuz that's the problem, right?

Kennedy Ryan 52:07 / #
Yeah. Well, and I think when you talk about the hero we talk about and this I think goes back to you asking me about "Queen Move". And what imprints us like of course those first novels because I was blooded with like "The Wolf and The Dove" and "Agetting out Pirates Love" now "Pirates Love" is racy. But I mean, it's like that alpha male, you know, that it imprints on you and it kind of changes over the years but I find myself still enjoying that dominance but now as a grown woman, now as a, you know, fully understanding feminist, that, that, that primalness, that archetype still appeals to me, but it's it has to be filtered through my philosophy, my personal worldview, my personal belief system now. So I find myself grappling as a reader and as a writer with that line where I feel like you've crossed into male toxicity, or you, you know, I find myself you know, examining that line a lot in my work. And when I wrote, I had to be super super, super careful when I wrote "The All the King's Men" duet, the duology because the heroine is Native American and the hero is white. And there is such a harmful history where in romance, that relationship that power dynamic has been appropriated, has been harmful, has been stereotypica, has been demeaning, has stripped native women of dignity has stripped uh, you know, indigenous people of their, you know, the culture. So even when I was the research that went into that was, it was the hardest research I've ever done. It was a it was a lot. I literally was consulting a medicine man for parts of that book to make sure that I got it right and course had indigenous sensitivity and responsive readers from that tribe and from other tribes. So it was a whole thing. But then I had this alpha male, and it was like, how am I going to have this alpha male with this Native American heroine and not perpetuate that? And it was such a delicate balance, you know, it was starting the relationship had to evolve over the two books, even their sexual, she first of all, she had to be an alpha female, you know, she, it had for me to feel like I was striking the right balance. She was an alpha female. So she was very assertive. She was very powerful. There was no dominating her, you know, he I didn't ever do you know what I'm saying?

Sarah MacLean 54:43 / #
Yes, of course,

Kennedy Ryan 54:44 / #
But even you know, how you might say something like is a savage kiss or something like that, that that word couldn't be in the whole book. You know, it's like, oh, no, you can't do that. Okay, you know, so you there's like this even tighter filter, and I found myself really having to restructure, what the alpha male looked like in that in that context, and then when I wrote it is very different cuz he is very dominant. And also I think that he becomes more sexually aggressive as the book goes on because we start to trust him as an individual. Do you know what I'm saying? Not as a caricature, but I think he can be more in the beginning. He's sexually aggressive, but not in the way he is, by the end of the book, by the end of the second book, because readers know him as a person, they get to know him as a person and to trust him with her, and see that she can trust herself with him without him perpetuating what we've seen before.

Jennifer Prokop 55:43 / #
Can I ask you a question? Because this, and this is really to both of you, which is I feel like there's a big conversation that I mean, really, in the past couple years that romance has been having about, like, sort of like the cinnamon roll versus the alpha and Kennedy like, what you're sort of seemed to be explicitly saying is if I'm interested an alpha hero and I'm writing male/female romance then what I need to create to balance that out as an alpha heroine.

Kennedy Ryan 56:07 / #
Um, I'm sure that it can be done. I'm sure that someone could do it without doing that, I think for the particular novel that I was writing, and the particular history that came with that ethnic mix in a relationship, I made that choice. But I mean, when I got to "Queen Move", I made a different choice, you know, where he is more, more of a cinnamon roll hero. And she is very, very powerful. And he is powerful. He's very, you know, very sexual in the bedroom, very sexually aggressive, and she's aggressive and she knows what she wants. She's in charge of her, her sexuality and her power and they have a conversation about their number. And he's like eight because he's been in a committed relationship for a long time and she's like, I have no idea what my number is. He is very secure. She needs that she probably makes more money than he does. Her job is higher profile. She's very, very powerful. And he is an educator, you know, he starts a school for underprivileged kids, a private school. So he's like, your zip code should not dictate your education. And he starts his private school that's, you know, funded. So he's an educator, and she is electing presidents. And he is completely secure, in the fact, that she makes more money than he does. He's completely secure, in the fact, that she's, you know, on CNN, commentating and he's not, and he's exactly what she needs. So, I don't know.

Sarah MacLean 57:43 / #
An arguably what the world needs in 2020. I mean, he's a model, right? Which is interesting because he sort of is a model, in the way, that a lot of these heroes have always been models like you establish the the hero who walks through fire for the heroine, the alpha here who walks through fire for heroin, and is sort of broken down and rebuilt for her in an image of like parody and partnership. That is, that is the hero that needed to be modeled for many, many years. And now we need a different kind of hero to model.

Kennedy Ryan 58:21 / #
in some cases, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 58:23 / #
But Ezra also, like Ezra isn't a cinnamon roll to the in the sense of like, there's not he's not just all soft all the time.

Kennedy Ryan 58:33 / #
No, no definitely not. No, um, he's introverted. He is very self contained. One thing that was very important for me, some people would call him a cinnamon roll hero like in reviews or in conversations, but he is Black and Jewish. So he's a man of color. And one thing that I think we don't see enough with men of color, whether that's, you know, black men, Latin x men Whatever it is, we don't see them so often, as fathers, as nurturers and he is a single dad. And I really wanted to unpack because he's very strong. He's quiet and strong. He's in direct contrast to Maxim, from the first from the duet who was like a mogul, you know, sustainable energy. And he becomes, you know, a place just as huge, charismatic, like bigger than life figure. And of course, we fall in love with him. But then there's this other guy who is so content with his life. You know what I'm saying? He's so on mission, his mission and he's not comparing himself or his life or his choices or his mission to anyone else's, and he has his own strength. So I want him to be as big and readers hearts as that, you know, living in Atlanta, running his school, doling out his son's vitamins every morning and making sure he doesn't drink Cokeyou know. Investing in his son, and seeing his son as his mission, raising a good human as his mission. I want that hero to be as big in readers hearts as this other guy who is this huge mogul of sustainable energy and ends up being president. You know, I want both. I want us I want readers to see the value of both and how both are fitted to these women. You know how they complement these women and they're exactly what this woman needs. And that's also the choice. We as women have to decide what we need, you know, the essence of feminism, your choice. And she chooses Ezra, you know, well, they they're fated. Fated mates. You know they're the same day their soul mate.

Sarah MacLean 1:00:41 / #
Clear Fated Mates to, I mean the one of my it's so early in the book I can sort of, I mean, it's chapter one.

Kennedy Ryan 1:00:49 / #
You can read it on Amazon.

Sarah MacLean 1:00:51 / #
But when I yeah, you can read it on Amazon. One of my favorites, I guess it's not chapter one. Oh, yeah, I know it is. I don't know. It's early. You can read it on Amazon. So the but it's but it's the moment where she sees him. I mean, this is the magnificent thing, right? Like she sees him at her. She's at her father's funeral. The book begins with her at her father's funeral. Yeah, the prologue, in comes this man who is the boy she loved as a child. I mean, there it is, right? My pure ID, right? But it's the boy that she loved as a child and he has his child is there and so is this child's mother, who you are led to believe, is this man's perfect, beautiful wife. And it is so heartbreaking for to watch this heroine who is buttoned up like at her father's funeral like, cannot refuse this reveal kind of really any emotion. And here she is kind of whacked in the head by this boy she hasn't seen in years, who was her first love right? And then whacked in her head in the head again by the fact that he has This beautiful wife who's with him. And, and then, and this beautiful child and this like perfect and her family, as you're reading this, her family is also just in shambles, I mean, destroyed by the loss of this father figure. And so like the compare the, I mean, it's just the moment. I mean, you read that that scene and it's just so perfectly balanced. And it's I mean, it's just amazing. And then of course, you know, they're not like the wife is not really a wife. And so like it sort of unravels the way a romance novel should.

Kennedy Ryan 1:02:39 / #
Yeah, well, and you know, I think one thing that people someone interviewed me last week and they were like, you don't usually have weddings in your books. I you know, because my weddings are hard. They are hard, but I think a lot of and I will often do weddings and bonus epilogues as opposed to the actual like cannon of the novel itself, and I, I like writing books where the wedding is not the point, you know, so often it feels like

Jennifer Prokop 1:03:07 / #
Yeah, the wedding is never the point, right.

Kennedy Ryan 1:03:09 / #
You know, like getting to the altar, you know, is the point and I, I wrote a series called the grip series. And in the third book, it's a trilogy with the same couple across three novels. And you're like, What is she going to do in that third book, you know, because they get together at the end of the second book, and they get married pretty early in the third book. So I like writing books where the point can't just be that they're happily ever you know, that they get together. There's all these other things and the series that I'm working on now, all the couples are married, you know, it's like, so the point can't just be to marry each other. You know, and I think for me, it's so much more about the journey, and what that looks like, than just them kind of getting together.

Sarah MacLean 1:03:55 / #
Don't you feel that partially that marriage the marriage book becomes more approachable for you as a reader as you age. Yeah, I can remember that when I was a kid marriage of convenience was just my least favorite trope. I just didn't care about how hard it was to be married. Or a second chance, right? With a married couple, who cares, right? But now I feel like there are certain writers who just do it so beautifully. And it's such a complex way of telling a love story.

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:27 / #
But I also feel like isn't that the greatest thing about romance is that like, there's so much there that as you age and grow and change in your life, in your relationships, like there's romances for you, this isn't a genre you have to lose. Because you're your life is different, right? It's and it's as Kennedy proved, it's a genre people can come back to and that's the part it's there's so much diversity and richness in the genre. And just like the types of stories that you can find yourself attracted to is.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:57 / #
Yeah, Kennedy can I Ask a craft question?

Kennedy Ryan 1:05:03 / #
Of course, I don't know if I'm a craft woman.But yes go for it.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:06 / #
I want to talk about that I want to go back to Queen mu because so I talked earlier about how there's this epic kind of generational story that's going on in this book. And I don't want to spoil anything about it. But you make a really interesting choice. And, and I thought, as I was reading it, you know, I knew "Daring and the Duke" was coming. And I have just done this sort of generation not generational, but like, long, long time love story, right? Like childhood love. I know, I know, I sort of feel like we should do this as an Instagram Live too, and just talk about this for an hour. But so well, I'm in if you are so anyway, but the question that I have specifically is, so you make a choice, and it's about 25% of the Is it about a quarter of the book, like, you mean, we're children. We're in the past we're in we're in the childhood. It's a lot time. And I mean, it's not I don't say that. I mean, I loved every page of it. But it's interesting because I mean, I, that I really struggled as a writer with making the choice of like, how much am I going to give them of the childhood versus the adult romance and I wonder if you had that struggle to or how you sort of came, but I also feel like your story being kind of multigenerational required that much energy. I don't know if this is a real question, but I feel like I want to talk about the choice the craft choice of giving readers the past for so long.

Kennedy Ryan 1:06:42 / #
Yes, it is about 20% of the book. Oh, you're probably right, roughly about 20. I think it's about six chapters. Yeah. And I think that what helped probably for me as I was writing it, is that it's so weird, you know, because you can do these time jumps and you get completely confuse readers, and I wanted to be clear about what I was doing because the part that you were just describing, which was, you know, at her father's funeral, and this boy that she, you know, was our first kiss her first, arguably her first love shows up 20 years later, they're seeing each other first time. That's the prologue. And it literally says, two years before the present, and you're like what the heck is that.

Sarah MacLean 1:07:26 / #
Well, but I love that.

Kennedy Ryan 1:07:28 / #
It was like this. Okay, Rita, you're in the present. This happened two years ago. So the prologue says two years before the present, and we see them as adults. And we know that there is a certain intimacy between them not there's obviously some kind of pull. That's there. And I think I had I put that there for those readers who don't want to have trouble with the childhood. You know

Sarah MacLean 1:07:56 / #
Yeah, I mean, I think it had to be there. Yeah,

Kennedy Ryan 1:07:59 / #
Like here's the promise.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:00 / #
yeah, yeah, eventually it's these two.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:03 / #
Yes, it's these two. And the reason I felt like I had to go back and then I think it goes the next the first chapters like 1983. And it's in his mother's point of view. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:14 / #
It's really cool.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:17 / #
It's not even in one of their points of view. It's in his view

Sarah MacLean 1:08:21 / #
Babies, their babies. their literal babies.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:23 / #
Infants in a bathtub. And, you know, she's orienting us, and it's 1983. And it's Georgia. And she's a Jewish woman who has married a black man in 1983, living in Atlanta, because her husband is on scholarship, you know, at Emory for law school. And she has left her her, her community of faith back in New York, very tight knit community that wasn't sure how they felt about her marrying someone, not even someone who was black, but someone who wasn't Jewish. And so she has had she's had tension with her family, but That's repaired. And she's navigating this whole new she feels she says she basically feels alone in the state, you know, in the whole state, when she goes out with her son people, you know, ask is that your son, you know, these are things that are real experiences. And I was fortunate enough to find people who are actually black and Jewish people who have actually negotiated the duality of those identities. And I definitely did not want to write a tragic mulatto story. You know, I didn't want to do that. And I did not go there. But just showing some of the real difficulty that a family living in that context would be navigating. But just as context, and we get and it begins the friendship because there's a couple of things. One of them is found family, their families live next door to each other and they become their families become close. And that was one of the things I really wanted to build in those childhood chapters. There was this foundation for that what becomes their relationship I want people to see from the beginning, the closeness that is kind of the foundation for everything. So we don't just go like it kind of skips fast, like, Yes, they're babies in chapter one, but we get to chapter two, they're 10 years old, you know, in the chapter three, they're 12 and then chapter four and five and six, they're like, 13 they're in the eighth grade. So it accelerates it starts when they're babies within an accelerates but all of these kind of key moments of childhood and adolescence or think she stutters, you know, when he's there for her and then she has her you know, I'll just say that she has he rcycle, you know, all every girl has had that thing of, oh my god, you know, you ruin a pair of pants and you know, and I was like, and people see it and he's protective of her and wrapping his coat around her waist. And you know, it's like all of a sudden they have their you know, their you know, dance right before they're going to high school and, you know, she's with this, you know, this not great guy who wants to be her first kiss. And she's you know, it's just all this stuff you know the all of the adolescent angst before you're in high school, all of that stuff and they're there for each other.

Sarah MacLean 1:11:10 / #
Well, thats what makes when Ezra leaves. Yeah, when Ezra's parents divorce and his mother takes her, takes him back to New York to her family,

Kennedy Ryan 1:11:21 / #
They don't divorce but or they don't divorce but something happens between the two families that explodes the friendship between those two families and they end up moving away

Sarah MacLean 1:11:30 / #
Ezra's family ends up leaving Georgia and going back to New York and it make the rift between the the end of that sort of intense childhood friendships so emotional and so amazing. And I think it's just such an interesting choice because I have done I've done a few of these childhood or young love to older, more seasoned love stories, and I think I always struggle with time. You know how much time to spend where and I just thought it was such a very important and like really cool choice to just lean into the past. I was brought I was reminded of Lisa Kleypas and "Again the Magic".

Kennedy Ryan 1:12:20 / #
I don't even talk about, "Again the Magic".

Sarah MacLean 1:12:27 / #
Where these two are just so intensely in so like for each other, and it's so clear that they're just that their Fated Mates. And then it breaks. And it it's, it breaks the reader's heart to I mean, it's just, it's really, I mean, you know, I love this book, and I just,

Kennedy Ryan 1:12:48 / #
I love books that do that. Have you not like obscure historical romance. So, you know, who nobody ever talks about, and I think it's because she has some tax troubles and not

Sarah MacLean 1:12:58 / #
Are you gonna say Megan McKinney?

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:07 / #
How did you know that?

Sarah MacLean 1:13:09 / #
Meghan McKinney is a real problematic person.

Is she? But I just knew that she kind of disappeared.

Boy she blooded me too. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:19 / #
She has a book called I think "When Angels Fall" and it's that it's the same thing where he works in her parents stables and their nobility and he is a stable man but he's somebody bastard. Yeah always somebodies bastard. And he ends up becoming like the Earl and then her family is destitute. And it's this whole intense, revenge. He thinks it's revenge. But of course, he's just obsessed with her.

Sarah MacLean 1:13:47 / #
Revenge is the best and worst motivation.

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:51 / #
Yes. So have you so have you read we the ground, "The Ground She Walks Upon", I think that's what it is by Mehgan Mckinny?

Sarah MacLean 1:14:00 / #
I mean i'm sure i that is not one I've read everything Meghan McKinney has written. But I mean we should say you can look this up on Wikipedia it's not a secret but she she lived in New Orleans and after Katrina she perpetuated a very large tax scheme of fraud and she went to prison, so I mean if Wikipedia is to believed that is what happened to Mehgan Mckinney.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:29 / #
Well, I think there's some documented evidence.

Sarah MacLean 1:14:31 / #
There's some there citations.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:35 / #
Hey, I before we wrap up, though, I actually have a

Sarah MacLean 1:14:38 / #
Jen's like, ladies.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:41 / #
Like, let me save you from yourself. No, loving the Mehgan McKinney. Um, here's my question. Kennedy, your love for historical romance is so intense. Have you ever thought about writing one?

Kennedy Ryan 1:14:59 / #
Oh, gosh. so intimidated. I mean, I'm so I'm really intimidated by, I mean, my books are research heavy, but they're not like that type of research and I have thought about it. I honestly have. But I just get so scared. I get so intimidated by it. I don't know why.

Jennifer Prokop 1:15:21 / #
Well, it sounds like you do a lot of people research. Everything I've ever heard about you is how much you like talking to people. And I guess yeah, I can't, you know, dig out somebody from 1820 or whatever.

Kennedy Ryan 1:15:34 / #
Well, I mean, I have usually like, especially with a lot of it is and I think it's maybe my journalism background and all the interviews I always had to do, but it's something I lean into is people who have actually lived things that mirror you know what my characters are doing. So a lot of interviews, lots of conversations, but also lots of reading. I read, read lots of memoirs.

Gosh, for all the king's men. I was literally reading anthropological textbooks. I mean, it was just, it was really intense, but I wanted to get it right. So I think I have, I think I have the tools that I could, if I can just get over. First of all, it had to be something that compelled me, because I don't really write unless I feel compelled. And I know that sounds artsy fartsy. But I have to feel compelled by whatever that thing is at the core. And it's usually something that is happening. For me a lot of times something that's happening in the real world that I want to shine light on in the context of an epic love story. So those are the things that kind of get my wheels turning. But if I could find something like that, that is in a different era, it probably would be I don't know when it would be it might be in the 20s or it might be you know, it might be something like that probably is because I have I love a marriage of art and activism and a lot of what I write, and I would

Sarah MacLean 1:17:03 / #
Well Jazz Age New York, man.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:06 / #
Harlem Renaissance I mean, there's so many Yeah, totally.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:09 / #
Thats what I keep thinking about so I feel if I did venture into it'll probably be around there. There's a you know, because that's also you know, the explosion of literature and culture and just all the things that you know, that were amazing about that period. So

Sarah MacLean 1:17:29 / #
Well, I'll read whatever you write forever. So, Kennedy, thank you so much. Well, you come on again. This was so fun.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:39 / #
Oh my gosh. This was so fun.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:42 / #
It was amazing.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:42 / #
Thank you guys for having me. I'm such a fan and I was so nervous coming on you guys.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:49 / #
Well it was so fun.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:51 / #
I was like, they're so smart. I'm not even gonna know anything.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:54 / #
No, you were great. You knew all about Prince's many proteges, I was going to say backup singers and I was like that's not the word.

Kennedy Ryan 1:18:05 / #
If no one else wants to be Eric, is it Eric?

Sarah MacLean 1:18:09 / #
That's it you're his new favorite.

Thank you so much, everyone. This is our second to last episode of the season. Jen, tell everyone what they won next week. So I guess I talked about it already.

Jennifer Prokop 1:18:25 / #
Steve Ammidown from the Bowling Green Pop Culture Library is going to be here and we are going to go back and revisit. I'm actually super excited about this. We each read some of the books that were originally acquired by Vivian Stevens. And so we will be talking about some of those early historicals I'm sorry, early contemporaries in that essentially, in in, in series that she like founded and put into place and what those books were doing so we think it's gonna be a really cool episode, and we're gonna all enjoy.

Sarah MacLean 1:18:56 / #
For those of you who've been sort of, you know, curious, whenever we talked about Vietnam, there's a lot of discussion of Vietnam and next week, so, um, you know, get ready for that. And then we're taking some weeks off, but there will be new episodes or at least new content every week. While we are off, but we are back the first week of August with season three. And we are we have a plan. A plan now we have a plan but this is Fated Mates. You can find transcripts for many of our episodes, all the music that's in all the episodes merch and other cool stuff at Fated Mates.net I have a book out came out last week. You can listen you can find "Daring in the Duke" in bookstores, wherever books are sold and listen to last week's episode once you've read "Daring in the Duke" and there's lots of spoilers in there. But most importantly, Kennedy Ryan was with us this week. Her recent book is "Queen Move". It is really truly magnificent. One of the best reads of my You're so far, surely it will be one of the best reads of my year period. Kennedy, where can people find you?

Kennedy Ryan 1:20:07 / #
I'm on Instagram a lot at Kennedy Ryan one and I'm on Twitter and I have a website, you know, all the places, even if you just go to my Instagram and click the link, it takes you all to all the places.

Sarah MacLean 1:20:23 / #
So find Kennedy in all those places and read her books and have a great, have a great couple of weeks.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:35 / #
Hi, my name is Danielle. I am in California and I am a community college teacher. I teach us history. And the book book that blooded me was Jennifer Wilde "Loves Tendered Fury", which now I know is written by a man, that I stole it off my mother was bookcase and read it and then she was like oh, maybe this isn't a good thing for you to read because as you know its a little rapey and then I plowed through like Barbara Cartland and my grandmother's Harlequin series. And eventually I went to graduate school and my grad school friend introduced me to Loretta Chase. And so I'm a big fan of "Lord of Scoundrels". I love your podcast. I love romance novels. They're getting me through the Coronavirus and Trump's presidency. And please don't stop your podcast because I love it. Thanks bye.

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