S03.51: Mistresses, Courtesans, and Cheating in Romance with Adriana Herrera
Adriana Herrera, a FIVE-TIMER, joins us this week to talk about the third-rail of romance…infidelity! We’re talking about cheating, and about all the other bits related to it: mistresses, courtesans, illegitimate children, sex work…and get your pencils ready because (of course) we’re toppling TBRs with this one.
Don’t miss Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here!
Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders will come with a Fated Mates Sticker!
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.
Show Notes
Welcome to five-timer Adriana Herrera, our very own Rizzo, and her Pink Lady jacket is on the way. PS. It was only in working on these show notes that Jen realized that Rizzo’s first name is Betty.
The phrase “safe romance” is used in online spaces to describe books without a single molecule of infidelity energy.
Infidelity in evangelical christianity (and everywhere, honestly) often places the blame on the wife if her husband strays and also on “the evil other woman” -- in this model, you know who’s not to blame? Men.And that’s pure patriarchy.
Lavender wasn’t invented because it’s a plant and its known history dates back 2500 years.
Courtesan culture was inextricably tied to colonialism in India, in China, and in the USA.
Summer Brennan’s patreon about The Book of Courtesans. Hallie Rubenhold's Covent Garden Ladies, which is the book that inspired the Hulu TV show Harlots, is about Harris's List of London "working girls."
The Spanish word for wife is esposa, which means handcuffs or manacles, while the word for mistress is amante, which means beloved.
We have had some deep dive episodes where there is infidelity: Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath and Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas
There are so many bastards in historical romance, partly because it’s an easy on-ramp for creating a character who is an outsider.
Ethical non-monogamy is the practice of talking to your partner(s) about the boundaries of your relationship. Polyamorous and Open relationships would fall into this category.
On Maryse’s Book Blog, there was a 2015 post about cheating in romance, and most of the titles are self-published and indie.
Sarah talked about Lorenzo Lamas and Dynasty and Jen and her brother Mike talked about Santa Barbaraon Adriana’s Instagram Live conversations about telenovelas and soap operas.
We are having a live episode of Fated Mates to celebrate the launch of Bombshell on August 24th at 7 eastern, to get a ticket, you'll need to buy a copy from one of these indie bookstores. (If you already pre-ordered from WORD in Brooklyn, you'll get log in details in an email.)
S03.38: Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas: She's Good
We’re talking Sherry Thomas’s beautiful, unrequited love/marriage of convenience story Ravishing the Heiress this week — we’ll talk about angst, about why we love yearning so much, about our feelings about heroes who are dummies, about homes vs. houses, and about Victorians being E X T R A.
Next week, we’re back with the delightful Christina Lauren to play a very fun game with bananas romance novels and celebrate the launch of their fabulous book (now Sarah’s favorite CLo book), The Soulmate Equation. Preorder it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, or signed from Vroman’s bookstore!
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at your local library or via a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
This is the Eurographics Moon Puzzle that Jen is doing, and it’s too hard.
There is a very funny tweet thread trying to drag the Shadow and Bone TV show, but the replies are terrific.
Jen was texting Sarah in the middle of the night about Ravishing the Heiress, because of the angst!
Here’s an interview where Sherry Thomas talks about how reading romance influenced her as a writer.
We talked about time slip quite a bit on the episode for A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.
Millie is 16 at the beginning of the book, and because Jen forgot to talk about it, she wrote a thread about Sherry’s deep respect for teenage girls.
A little bit about the history of tinned food and the rise of advertising in Victorian England.
All about the dormouse and keeping them as pets, if you’re into that sort of thing. Give us some credit for not making a joke about Of Mice and Men, thank you.
The Victorians were super extra. Here’s a primer on women in business in the Victorian era. Floriography is the Victorian name for the language of flowers, which ascribes meanings to flowers and plants. For example, chrysanthemums and lavender (and yes rosemary is for remembrance is from Hamlet) have very specific meanings. If you’re interested, check out the book Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers by Jessica Roux.
Bees that make honey from the nectar of lavender flowers is a different thing than people who make lavender-infused honey. Now you know!
Infidelity in Romance is tricky, and Sarah’s book Day of the Duchess is an example, and there really aren’t that many out there.
The myth of Cupid & Psyche in literature and art.
In Season 4 of The Crown, the scene where Camilla Parker-Bowles takes Diana is based in truth, but the name of the restaurant was not Menage a Trois.
Raise a glass to the incomparable Olympia Dukakis.
Next up, we’re dialing the banana phone with Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart.
Join BestFriendKelly’s Sticker of the Month Club. If you put Fated Mates in the note, she’ll send a free sparkly Fated Mates sticker. If you’re already a member, drop her a note and she’ll include it with your next sticker.
S02.23: Waking Up with the Duke: Lorraine Heath Breaks A Lot of Romance Rules
This week, it’s one of Sarah’s favorites, and by an author Jen has never read! Lorraine Heath is a master of the historical, and this one is near-perfect. It’s complex and nuanced and it has an infidelity plot and THERE IS SO MUCH ANGST!
We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!
In two weeks, we’re reading the Queen of Dirty Talk! Sarah and Jen both love Tessa Bailey — so we’ll be talking about our two favorites of her books, Asking for Trouble (Sarah’s) and Protecting What’s His (Jen’s). Find them at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
Turns out Sarah and Jen aren't the only people who think these Apple keyboards are trash--after winning a 2020 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Taika Waititi had quite a bit to say on the subject.
Tom Beer is one of Jen's editors at Kirkus, and you should follow him on Twitter.
You can read The Smith College Sophian on line, and we'll link to the interview with Sarah onces it goes live.
We have Leslie Knope from Parks & Recreation to thank for the glory that is Galentine's Day. Read Jen's column about some books that celebrate women's friendship.
A few years ago during #RomBkLove, Shantastic/@bardsong wrote a great piece about disability in romance. You can also check out the blog, Sense and Disability by @Callalily.
Kate Reading is an amazing audiobook narrator, she's the one who narrates Lord of Scoundrels.
Fridging is a word from comics that is when women characters are killed to motivate a male character, but can be used to describe any time a less powerful or privileged character is used as a plot device. Flat Stanley is a character in children's books, but flat characters you might remember from English class.
Harry and Meghan are still taking money from the Duchy of Cornwall.
Jen said she was going to go back and read the other books in the trilogy, and they are bundled together on Amazon for $10.
The Bechdel Test is a pretty simple way of judging how inclusive movies are of women characters; it's limited but powerful. Jen wrote about external and internal conflict in romance, but we also talked about it on the Priest episode -- and we are always unpacking the way conflict works in romance.
Dialogue tags get a bad rap, famously Elmore Leonard claimed that writers should only use "said" and "asked." In this part of the discussion, Sarah mentioned her friend Barry Lyga, a YA author.
Jen thinks these three are codependent.
Cheating is the third rail of romance. It is. There are some lists on Goodreads of romances that have cheating, but it's complicated and difficult. One Jen read recently was I Want You Back by Lorelei James, but the cheating happened in the past. If you're interested in reading another book about someone who discovers the other family, Jen recommends Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.
Next time, we'll be reading Tessa Bailey, The Queen of Dirty Talk. Sarah's choice is Asking for Trouble, and a secondary text is the first one of that same series, Protecting What's His.
Buy stickers and buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordan.
We are experimenting with some voice to text transcripts, so here's the first one for this episode.