S06.35: All About Dukes (in Romance)
This one is for our historical lovers! We’re talking about everyone’s favorite title — Dukes! We get to the bottom of many duke questions, including: Why so many? Why are they always dukes? What’s wrong with princes? How do these guys make their money anyway? What’s with all the normies inheriting dukedoms? What about duchesses? And more! Please remember that everything we are about to say is romance fact. Don’t @ us with real life fact. We don’t want it.
Happy anniversary to our founding Patreon members — it’s one year of our Patreon and our Discord today! We love you a whole lot. Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as we do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Show Notes
The tree thing about pollen and allergens is called botanical sexism (god it’s everywhere) and this claim, like all things, is complicated.
Defining the title of duke. What are the corn laws or the laws about chimney sweeps? You don’t really care—it’s just fossils.
The Reformed Rakes podcast had a recent episode about pregnancy.
The Unites States Congress is comprised of incredibly wealthy people.
In 2009, Tatler got 10 of the 24 living non-royal dukes to sit down for lunch. There’s a photo. It’s exactly what you would expect. This 2021 article from Tatler lists the 4 living single dudes that either are or will be a duke. Shoot your shot, ladies.
Question: has Sarah really written more dukes than fewer?
A Duke: Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, The Rogue Not Taken, A Scot in the Dark, The Day of the Duchess, Daring and the Duke, Heartbreaker, The Duke of Christmas Present, and A Duke Worth Falling For (9)
Not a Duke: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, Ten Ways to be Adored When Landing a Lord, A Rogue by Any Other Name, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover, Wicked and the Wallflower, Brazen and the Beast, Bombshell, and Knockout (9)
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
Louisa Darling, author of
The Matrimony Trap available in ebook from
Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble & Kobo
Faye Delacour, author of The Lady He Lost,
available in print or ebook from
Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble & Kobo
or wherever you get your audiobooks.
Beth Gelman, author of Always Falling Behind,
available in print or ebook, or with
your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Stephanie Rose, author of Second Time’s the Charm
available in print or ebook, or with
your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
06.31: Romance Novels and Film Adaptation with Yulin Kuang
This week, we’re talking about film adaptation and romance novels with Yulin Kuang, filmmaker and romance novelist. We discuss her work as both a screenwriter and director (she’s writing and directing the adaptation of Emily Henry’s Beach Read), and her debut romance novel, How to End a Love Story, set inside the writers room on a television show between the author of the books the show is adapting (the heroine) and one of the writers in the room (the hero). We talk about why romance adaptations are so difficult to find, why they don’t often hit quite like we expect, and we pitch a few books we’d like to see Hollywood take a crack at.
If you just can’t get enough of us, consider joining our Patreon! You get an extra episode of banter every month and access to the Fated Mates discord, full of people who love romance as much as we do. It’s pretty great, we have to say. Learn more at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Notes
Mr. Sunshine is the name of the K-Drama that Jen’s friend Sunhee recommended, but also everyone loves Crash Landing on You.
If you’re in New York City, you can see Sarah and Yulin together in conversation Thursday, April 11, at The Ripped Bodice in Brooklyn. Get tickets here.
Find and follow Yulin Kuang at her website.
the books
Sponsors
Avery Maxwell, author of Love Notes and Lifelines,
available in print, ebook or
with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Devil,
available in ebook, or
with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
S06.19: One Night Stands
It seems impossible that we haven’t done this one, but we haven’t done this one! We’re talking one night stands—the absolute classic that ends up being a part of so many chaotic, wonderful romances. We’re talking about how they work, why its so important for them to make sense in the context of the story, and how the best authors inject emotion into one life-changing moment (often) early in the book. Enjoy!
Our first read along of 2024 is Natalie Caña’s A Dish Best Served Hot. Find it at Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.
If you just can’t get enough of us, consider joining our Patreon! You get an extra episode of banter every month and access to the Fated Mates discord, full of people who love romance as much as we do. It’s pretty great, we have to say. Learn more at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Show Notes
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: the The rom com brackets are out, hosted by Allie Parker of the RomEverAfterPod.
Joy Ride was a great movie, even if Jen bungled the plot description. She was excited, okay!
Sarah and Jen have been doing some other fun reading. Sarah read Jess K Hardy’s forthcoming Lips Like Sugar and she also got some cool paperbacks from the inlaws: Gift of Fire and A Coral Kiss by Jayne Ann Krentz along with Nora Roberts’ Charmed. Jen and Ernie were reading Reacher short stories.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
1001 Dark Nights, publishers of Rock Chick Rematch by Kristen Ashley
available at Amazon.
and
LJ Evans, author of After All the Wreckage, available in print and ebook,
or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Jo Brenner, author of the Bad Heroes Series,
beginning with You Can Follow Me and now complete with Meet Me In the Dark
available in print or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
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.)
S03.37: Widows in Romance
We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
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 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!
Widow Books
Notes
Last week, we talked about Big Pharma, and if you want more of that, read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s about the Sackler family and how they made billions on Oxycontin which was a huge factor in the creation of the opioid epidemic.
Daisy Jones and the Six is a great novel, and the full-cast audiobook is supposed to be amazing. The Reese Witherspoon book club is the definition of the full glow-up.
Sarah made some Maple Oatmeal Muffins, and maybe you want the recipe. Why food bloggers include some pre-recipe chatter.
The question of freshman year dorm room decoration is of new significance to Jen since Lil Romance will be heading off to college in the fall. Might we recommend a Pulp Fiction movie poster or some Absolut Vodka ads?
If we’re talking skyscrapers, meaning buildings over 150M (about 500 feet) tall, when this was recorded in April of 2021, Cleveland has 4, Denver has 7, Chicago has 127, and New York has 284. According to wikipedia, only nine cities in the world have over 100 buildings 150M tall. The other seven are Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (118).
Check out the Sassy Podcast and the Babysitter’s Club. No, not that kind of babysitter.
We love the movie Widows.
The merry widow is an opera and a kind of sexy lingerie.
We did an episode on Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe way back in season one.
Primogeniture laws are all about who inherits titles and money and estates, and wasn't changed in England until 2013.
Apparently there are lots of misconceptions about Arabian horses.
More about Victorian era mourning requirements.
Historically you couldn’t marry your brother’s widow
All about gorillas and where the live, and actually it turns out a gorilla really could kill you in a fight. Sarah was on Learning the Tropes talking about The Earl Takes All, in case you need more of that.
Spoiler alert about The Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
We have two read-along books in May. On the 12th, we’ll be reading Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. On the 26th, we’ll be reading Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. It’s out of print and not available as an eBook, so order a used copy from Amazon or ThriftBooks, or check out the audio.
Join the "Romance sticker of the month" club
Preorder Bombshell, which comes out August 24th.