S04.38: These Books Bang: The Sexiest Romance Novels
Headphones in, y’all. We have sixty-nine (that’s right, 69, by pure unplanned luck!) recommendations for you this week — everything from bonkers to bloody to blazing hot…naughty bits that we believe deliver the whole banana (and sometimes no banana at all, if you know what we mean). Pencils ready…your time starts…now.
This week’s episode is thanks to Julie Block, the Fated Mates listener who won an episode of the podcast in the Romance for Reproductive Justice auction sponsored by The Meet Cute Romance Bookshop and Fizzery in La Mesa, CA. Julie made a generous donation to the Collective Power Fund at the National Network of Abortion Funds, and in doing so, got to pick the episode topic — Books that Bang!
Thanks to Melissa McTernan, author of Married to the Fae Queen, the second book in the Fairy Realm series, for sponsoring the episode. Thanks, also, to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. Visit microdose.com and use code FATEDMATES to get free shipping & 30% off your first order.
Show Notes
Thanks to Julie Block for suggesting this episode and donating to abortion funds for the Romancing for Reproductive Justice Auction, sponsored by The Meet Cute Romance Bookshop & Fizzery, opening fall of 2022 in La Mesa, CA. It is not too late to donate to the Collective Power Fund at the National Network of Abortion Funds.
While we name checked some Fated Mates classic recommendations like Tessa Bailey, Jessa Kane, and London Hale, somehow we recorded this episode without once mentioning the name of Charlotte Stein. So raise a glass to her and all the other authors writing super hot books that we forgot to mention.
Probably you want to see Jen Porter's illustrations of the drilldo. (PS. Protip: you might put "drilldo" in the search field of twitter thinking that Jen's tweets will come up, and that would be a mistake unless you want to see it real and in action. Ask me how I know.)
The WTF Bucket
Bold & Bloody
Fun & Toys
The More the Merrier
Bondage and (chastity) Belts
The Bad Boy Mystique
Hot Historicals
Just Add Milk
Consent & DubCon
Voyeurism & Exhibitionism
I Have Tremendous Upper Body Strength
Oh, no! Feelings!
Just F'ing Hot
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Melissa McTernan, author of Married to the Fae Queen, the second book
in the Fairy Realm series, available in print and through Kindle Unlimited.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S03.15: Menage Romance with Katee Robert
It’s getting colder out there, so we’re getting hot in here! We’ve got the fabulous Katee Robert with us to talk about ménage romance and why she writes them so well. We get to the bottom of why it always gets shoved into the taboo corner of romance, the fantasy of the trope, and why we like it so very much. Also, we topple the TBR (as usual)!
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Slight change of schedule to accommodate a fun thing we’re up to…next week, just in time for your Thanksgiving sloth, we’re announcing our best books of 2020! The following week, we’re reading Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.
Show Notes
Welcome Katee Robert!
You can’t just make wikipedia pages about yourself.
High fantasy has real meaning.
When talking about romance, M and F (and NB for nonbinary) are used to inform readers about the gender identity of the main characters. This is an imperfect shorthand, but at this point in our understanding of sex and gender, it seems like the most respectful way to acknowledge that there is a huge range of sexual identities that exist for people of all genders. For example, if we call a book with two women “a lesbian romance” it might not take into account that one character is bisexual, which adds to bi-erasure. So if a romance is labeled M/F, we know there is a man and a woman in a romantic relationship, but that leaves room for the sexual identity of the characters to be fully explored in the book. In romance with more than two people, the order of the letters matters. A book that is MFM would mean that the two men do not have a sexual relationship with each other, while FMM or MMF means that they do.
There is nothing taboo about polyamory.
Jen liked the progression of menage in Elle Kennedy’s Out of Uniform series. The series starts with a non-swords crossing threesome, Hot and Bothered. The observing one was Heat of the Night (available in the Hot and Heavy anthology), where Ryan watches Annabelle have sex with his roommate. But as the series progresses, there is contact between the SEALs in Feeling Hot and a fully formed menage relationship in Hotter Than Ever.
Ellora’s Cave and Samhain were two of the original (and now shuttered) indie publishers that specialized in erotic romance and/or taboo romance.
That article in Harpers about how men don’t have friends.
The Anita Blake series went through a lot of changes, so just go with Katee’s method and start with #9, Obsidian Butterfly.
Katee will be back to talk about morality chain in 2021.
Next week, we’ll be airing our Best of 2020 episode, and then the first week of December, we’ll be discussing The Hating Game.
