S03.53: Sports Romance with Farrah Rochon

Today we’re joined by Farrah Rochon, author of The Dating Playbook, to talk sports romances! We talked sports way back in season 1 (links below), but this is one of those tropes we’re always happy to dig into! We get to the bottom of Farrah’s love of football, we talk about competence porn and the human body as a superior tool, and we recommend a LOT of B O O K S!

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!

NEXT WEEK IS BOMBSHELL WEEK! 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 Farrah Rochon! Her newest book, The Dating Playbook just came out yesterday. She has another football series, the New York Sabres.

The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing begin on February 4th, 2022.

Here’s an explainer for dressage, an Olympic equestrian event. The horse at the club dressage video on twitter, Snoop Dogg and Kevin Hart watching the same video.

The 1984 category romance about a woman competing in Equestrian events at the Olympics was originally called Summer Games and later changed to Remember Summer (which is available as an eBook), and it was by Elizabeth Lowell not Iris Johansen.

How the horses travel to Tokyo, how the ice is made, and other articles about new sports at this year’s Olympics.

All about Rune, the Danish Destroyer.

In season one, we did a fake engagement interstitial, but it’s a very popular trope in 2021.

Texas football culture is legendary, just look at some Texas high school football stadiums, including the one in Katy. If you’re ever in Katy, we highly recommend a trip to Katy Budget Books.

You might be interested in this article with statistics breaking down the average age of professional athletes by sport, and this list of oldest professional athletes by sport. The question of which Olympics sports have the oldest and youngest athletes is always a fascinating one. This year, the youngest athletes were 12: Syrian tennis table player Hend Zaza and Japanese skateboarder Kokona Hiraki. The oldest athlete is Australian equestrian Mary Hanna, who is 66.

We interviewed Susan Elizabeth Phillips and also did a deep dive on the third book in the Chicago Stars series, Nobody’s Baby But Mine.

Pitch was a Fox show that was cancelled before its time.

It turns out there are two real life ex-NFL players, Brian Orakpo and Michale Griffin who opened Gigi’s Cupcake shop in Texas. So just read this article over and over again until we get all the deets on Jamie Wesley’s forthcoming series.

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S03.52: Assassins and Hitmen in Romance Interstitial

Surprising absolutely no one, we love an assassin here at Fated Mates! We basically love any character who has been through the wringer and also can kill a man fourteen different ways before dinner. Even better if it’s a heroine, and she’s been hired to kill the hero (or vice versa). Anyway, we’re talking about why these books (and so! many! movies!) scratch that particular itch for us. Spoiler: It’s beautiful people blowing things up, obvi.

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

The game Assassin’s Creed first came out in 2007, and now there are so many different versions, and in many of them, you can garrote someone if you are so moved. Sarah's favorite is Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which is set in Victorian London.

We mentioned so many movies and TV shows with assassins: John Wick, The Bourne Identity, Gunpowder Milkshake (and its many weapons), Suicide Blonde, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, James Bond, Black Widow, Le Femme Nikita, The Saint, Grosse Pointe Blank, Desperado, and The Witcher.

More about some of the super camera angles we are seeing at the Tokyo Olympics.

Jack Reacher isn’t as assassin as much as he’s a vigilante. Also, he doesn’t know how to use a washing machine.

Rege-Jean Page signed up to make a remake of The Saint, and Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge are remaking Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and we’re not sad about any of it.

Iocane powder is from The Princess Bride, of course.

Listen when you read Sweet Ruin you'll definitely want to go back to season 1 and listen to our deep dive epsiode. Because it is great.

We also talked a bunch about romances with paid killers in the Spy Romance and Mafia Romance interstitials.

As Jen was working on show notes, she discovered the book Killing Sarai was adapted into a Spanish language action movie called “En Brazos de un Asesino,” which translates to “In the Arms of an Assassin.” You can stream it on any number of services, including Amazon Prime Video.

Check out all the programming for Bookstore Romance Day, August 21-22, 2021.

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.)

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