S03.42: Fantasy Romance Interstitial with Zoraida Córdova
This week, Zoraida Córdova (aka Zoey Castile) joins us to talk about fantasy romance and why it is so hard to find it in the romance pool. We talk about speculative fiction, high fantasy, low fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy, paranormal romance and more, all while trying to figure out just what makes something fantasy and not paranormal (we think we’ve cracked the code). We also talk world building, about maps, and about merman junk.
Our next read along is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! Get the others in the series, too, while you’re at it, because you’ll probably want to read the whole thing.
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!
Fantasy Romances
Notes
Welcome Zoraida Córdova! Zoraida writes MG, YA, and adult speculative fiction, and also romance under the name Zoey Castile.
Puerto Rico is a US territory and residents of the island are American citizens.
We love Norma Perez-Hernandez who is an amazing, exuberant editor at Kensington, and if you don’t follow her on Twitter she should. Norma also was on the 2020 Publisher's Weekly Star Watch List.
Zoraida’s book The Vicious Deep answers the age-old question of “where does it go,” a similar answer is in Guillermo del Toro's movie The Shape of Water.
Speculative fiction asks the question “what if” and is the big umbrella category for science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy (now Black authors in particular suggest we rename this contemporary fantasy), and paranormal.
Reading strategies are for everyone: We love maps in fantasy, so why not in contemporary fiction?
Victoria Avyeard was on Sarah Enni's First Draft podcast talking about world building.
The Hero’s Journey, or maybe the heroine’s journey.
NK Jemisin’s lecture about the cultural iceberg shows writers how to build a world that goes beyond what’s on the surface.
An interesting thread from a YA librarian, and another from author Elizabeth May, about why and how romance plots in SFF are pushed into YA.
Zoraida hosts a writing podcast with Dhonielle Clayton called Deadline City.
Relevant music perormed by: Twin Temple, Marike van Dijk + Katell Keineg, King Missile, Dr. Octagon, and Led Zeppelin. Listen to the full Fated Music playlist on Spotify.
S03.31: Morality Chain Romance
We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha.
Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
One very important note: we highly recommend doing a thorough search for content warnings for all the books and movies we mention this week.
We love Katee Robert, who we had on as a guest for the menage interstitial. Katee bid on this item at Kennedy Ryan’s Lift 4 Autism auction. It happens every spring, so keep an eye on this page for the 2021 auction if you’d like to pick the topic for a future interstitial.
This week, Katee released Seducing My Guardian, the 4th book in her SUPER HOT Touch of Taboo series. If you'd like to read a morality chain romance written by Katee, we recommend The Bastard's Bargain.
“In springtime, the only pretty ring time” is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It's also possible Sarah knows it from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She would like you to believe that it's from the former, but we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Either way, “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it,” is from Beyonce.
As it turns out, Chicago is a great town for beach volleyball.
It’s hard not to talk about morality chain & dark romance together, but we think they are inverse tropes. The internet definition of Morality Chain is “is a character who is the reason another character is Good.” Jen and Sarah’s current definition is that in morality chain romance, the Love Interest pulls a hero towards humanity and goodness, while in dark romance, the love interest is pulled down into the hero’s lawless world.
Some examples in pop culture are Spike from Buffy and maybe Barney in How I Met Your Motherr. Also, check out a movie called The Professional, where a child (played by Natalie Portman!) befriends the assassin next door. The Jason Statham one with a kid is called Safe.
The Hero’s Journey is very common character archetype in literature and pop culture, but Sarah and Jen are both very taken with Gail Carriger’s description of the alternative archetype, The Heroine’s Journey.
If you want more about morality chain, so many of Kresley’s books from The Immortals After Dark series will work, so please listen to season one! Our favorites are Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, Lothaire, and Sweet Ruin.
We were divided on whether the character has to be a danger to others in order to qualitfy as morality chain. In the Gamemaker series: The Professional is about an assassin who is a danger to others, while in The Player he’s only a danger to himself.
Jen Porter wrote a long thread about what she thinks of as PEA, or problematic ever after, romance.
Mickey is "kind of a Fagin-y" as a character, but without the antisemitism. In interesting historical facts, Dickens rewrote Oliver Twist later in life to remove all anti-Semitic characteristics from Fagin, after he'd been criticized for the portrayal of the character. Of course, it's not that simple. Read more about it from Deborah Epstein Nord.
Scottie is the main character of Managed, and is classified more as grumpy one/sunshine one, which we argue is just morality chain dialed down.
More about how most writers have a “core story."
Next week, we'll be reading You Had me at Hola by Alexis Daria
