full-length episode, IAD, interstitial, S05 Jennifer Prokop full-length episode, IAD, interstitial, S05 Jennifer Prokop

S05.20: Shifter Romance: Manimals!

You’ve been asking for a shifter interstitial, and we like to give you what you want. Today, we’re talking manimals! We go back to the beginning and touch on all the shifter/Lycae business that we dealt with in Season 1, and then we talk about all the ways werewolves have evolved into were-other things and then into DNA-splicing experiments. The recs get wild, the plots get weird, and there’s a lot happening!

Our next episode will drop Saturday in honor of the greatest of holidays, Derek Craven Day! To celebrate, we recommend rereading Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You and then enjoying a full hour of our banter about our proudest achievement. In observance of DCD23, we will not be releasing a Wednesday episode next week, but we will be with you all the week after!

Our first read along of 2023 (in February) is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.


Show Notes

Today’s show is apparently brought to you by 1983. The song She’s a Maniac was on the Flashback soundtrack, and Manimal was a television show.

We talked so much about shifters in Season One, you just have to go back. I’m sorry.

Derek Craven Day is coming this Saturday. Please celebrate responsibly.

 

Books Mentioned This Episode

Sponsors

Jess K. Hardy, author of Come as You Are
Get it at Amazon, free on Kindle Unlimited,
visit Jess K. Hardy at jesskhardy.com

and

Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
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S04.06: Monster Romance Interstitial with Jenny Nordbak

We’re talking minotaurs and spiders and orcs and gargoyles…it’s Monster Romance week at Fated Mates! Jenny Nordbak of the Wicked Wallflowers and Bonkers Romance podcast joins us to talk about this explosive, extremely popular genre that both intrigues and perplexes us.

Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Khan Carries On. Find it at: AmazonBarnes & NobleApple BooksKobo, or at your local indie.

This episode sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.


Show Notes

Welcome Jenny Nordbak. Her first romance, His Leading Lady, was just released, (Jen did the final developmental edit!) and she just started the Bonkers Romance podcast with Melody from the Heaving Bosoms podcast. Check it out!

Although there is lots of crossover with paranormal or alien, Jenny defines monsters as: creatures who don’t shift into humans, you’d definitely scream if you saw them running down the street, but human enough to be able to bang. Although no one mentioned on the episode, here is the single greatest monster explanation ever seen on twitter.

The cartoon Sarah refered to is called The Harkness Test, and it's a reference to Dr. Who.

More about what it means to go into the Amazon dungeon--this, of course, is related to attempts to deplatform sex everywhere on the internet. Besialisty cartoon that Sarah is going to look for

Baby Jenny imprinted on Fantasia, specifically the centaurs and Chernabog. She also loved the Gargoyles TV show and the orcs in Lord of the Rings.

What is Knotting?

Here’s listener Alyssa Long’s terrific thread about monsters and disability. Often, writers use ableist tropes in their monster-creation, and Alyssa’s thread talks about how and why this is harmful. (Any mistakes in the summarizing of this thread are Jen’s!) In that thread, Alyssa shared a great article about ableism in the horror genre, and although we loved The Witcher, it reinforced some of the most common problems with putting disabilities on the screen.

Sarah is hosting a writing workship to kick of NaNo--register here!

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