S06.29: Beauty and the Beast Romance Retellings
An absolute classic for a reason, we’re talking about Beauty & the Beast today — about the trope itself, about how the 1991 Disney movie brought it back to life (yes, we see you, Dain), and about why we love the vibe of scarred and broken men in a castle being found and renovated by whip smart, bookish heroines. Spoiler: It’s patriarchy.
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.
Next week, we’re finally getting to Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Show Notes
Thanks for joining us last week at Fated Mates Live!! We had a great time, and it was amazing to see everyone. Thanks for being on this journey with us. Stay tuned for photos and more recaps—and for the recording of the Live, which will be our May 1 episode.
We love soundtracks, we played the Dua Lipa song from the Barbie soundtrack, and back in the day, the Pretty in Pink soundtrack was Jen’s jam. Cassette tapes anyone?
We have talked about romance retellings of all kinds with Kate Clayborn, and fairy tale retellings with Zoraida Cordova.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Tobie Carter, author of The Bottom Line,
available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
and
Meghan Quinn, author of Bridesmaid for Hire,
available in print, ebook and audio,
at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Hannah Murray, author of Sharing Shane,
available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
S06.27: Enemies to Lovers Romance
A classic among classics, we’re talking enemies to lovers this week! We get to the bottom of what we think of as “enemies,” and how it differs from “rivals-to-lovers” and “friends-to-enemies-to-lovers” and “friends-to-lovers” (jk, we’ll never understand friends-to-lovers). We revisit some of our very favorite romances, talk about stakes, about impossible situations, and about how sexy hating someone can be.
There are a handful of tickets left for Fated Mates LIVE in Brooklyn, NY, on March 23, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel! Join us, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings (one-half of Christina Lauren), Nikki Payne, and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. We’ve even got The Ripped Bodice on hand to sell books, and the room will be available for hanging with other Firebirds after the live! Preorder Kate’s The Other Side of Disappearing three days early (and books from everyone else!) from The Ripped Bodice—links, tickets and more info are at fatedmates.net/live. Preorders for stickers and swag are available at the Romancelandia Shop
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.
Our next read along is Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Show Notes
Pandora Ravenel owns a boardgame company, but I don’t think she made ouija boards. You should watch Only You (1994), directed by Norman Jewison who also directed Moonstruck! Don’t forget how charming Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is, a very different vibe from Ripper Street.
Jen thought about Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips when she read an article about the updating of the gorilla enclosure at the Brookfield Zoo. IYKYK, and if you don't, listen to Jen on Learning the Tropes.
Sarah said there's only one friends-to-lovers romance she likes. It's Christina Lauren's Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Blue Box Press, publisher of Skye Warren’s Blue Moon,
available at Amazon.
and
Parker S. Huntington & L. J. Shen, authors of My Dark Desire,
available in audio, at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S06.26: Himbos in Romance: The Chris Hemsworth Prototype
Sometimes you just have to get to the bottom of something, and that’s what we’re here for. Today, we’re taking an unexpected, unexpectedly thorough look at what might be one of the rarest and most maligned heroes in Romancelandia—the Himbo. He’s darling, he’s sweet, and he’s made of nothing but love and abs. Journey with us as we consider the place of these lovable dummies in the pantheon of this great genre of ours.
We just released a final 25 tickets to Fated Mates LIVE in Brooklyn, NY, on March 23, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel! Join us, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings (one-half of Christina Lauren), Nikki Payne, and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. We’ve even got The Ripped Bodice on hand to sell books, and the room will be available for hanging with other Firebirds after the live! Preorder Kate’s The Other Side of Disappearing three days early (and books from everyone else!) from The Ripped Bodice—links, tickets and more info are at fatedmates.net/live.
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.
Our next read along is Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Show Notes
If you like Matthew Macfadyen in Pride and Prejudice, perhaps you will also like him on Ripper Street.
Coming to Fated Mates Live this month? Go see a musical or a dance performance or eat some pizza when you’re in New York.
Apparently, we’re all talking about himbos, and because of Ken, apparently 2023 was the year of the himbo.
A truly excellent himbo: Chris Hemsworth in Ghostbusters.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Madison Score, author of Bride or Die,
available at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
Alyxandra Harvey, author of The Husband Heist,
available at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Lauren Morrill, author of More Than a Feeling,
available at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
S06.25: It's Romance Law!
Y’all enjoyed Romance Science so much, we figured, why not tackle romance law next! This week, we’re discussing wills and trusts, inheritances, guardianship, and more than a few HR violations! We also begin the episode with an important addendum to Romance Science (apologies to the Passion fans in the crowd).
There’s still time for you to join us for Fated Mates LIVE in Brooklyn, NY, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel, on March 23rd, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings (one-half of Christina Lauren), Nikki Payne, and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. We’ve even got The Ripped Bodice on hand to sell books, and the room will be available for hanging with other Firebirds after the live! Preorder Kate’s The Other Side of Disappearing three days early (and books from everyone else!) from The Ripped Bodice—links, tickets and more info are at fatedmates.net/live.
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.
Our next read along is Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Show Notes
Listen to the Romance Science episode.
Pride & Prejudice won the 2024 romance bracket, hosted by Ali Parker of the RomEverAfter Pod.
Romance biology addendum: the hymen, the Passion episode.
Romance Law probably started with our love of TV Law: LA Law, Ally McBeal, The Good Wife, and Law & Order.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Madison Score, author of Bride or Die,
available at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
Chayla Wolfberg, author of Late Night Love,
available at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
Alyxandra Harvey, author of The Husband Heist,
available at Amazon, or with your subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S06.24: All Dukes are Roofers: Renovation Romance with Nikki Payne
We’re joined this week by the fabulous Nikki Payne, author of Pride & Protest and this month’s new release Sex, Lies & Sensibility to talk about home renovation romance and why we all love it so much! Is it because of competence? Yes. Because we like it when characters have to walk through fire together? Definitely. Because of the metaphor for our lives and futures? Absolutely. We talk about all these things, and how Old School historical really did the business on this trope. And — a bonus! Sarah finally gets to talk with someone about Jane Austen!
Nikki is joining us at Fated Mates Live! Join us in Brooklyn, NY, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel, on March 23rd, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings (one-half of Christina Lauren) and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. We’ve even got The Ripped Bodice on hand to sell books, and the room will be available for hanging with other Firebirds after the live!
Preorder Kate’s The Other Side of Disappearing three days early (and books from everyone else!) from The Ripped Bodice—links, tickets and more info are at fatedmates.net/live.
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.
Our next read along is Heather Guerre’s Preferential Treatment, one of Sarah’s favorite romances of 2022. Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Show Notes
Welcome Nikki Payne, author of Sex, Lies, and Sensibility. She’ll be at the Ripped Bodice on Feb 23, and at Fated Mates Live, along with Kate Clayborn, Lauren Billings from Christina Lauren, and a few hundred Magnificent Firebirds on March 23, 2024. You can get signed copies of her books at East City Books in DC.
Jen had to read A Separate Peace in high school and doesn’t have the best memories of it, to be honest.
The mid-90s were a real high tide for Austen adaptions: in 1995 the movies Clueless and Sense and Sensibility and a miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, and the following year the movie Emma.
A little bit more about the rights of American women to have their own bank accounts, but women’s access to fair credit is still unjust.
A few movies we discussed this week: The Money Pit, Something New, and Baby Boom.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Avon Books, publishers of Tessa Bailey’s Fangirl Down,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
and
Blue Box Press, publishers of Jennifer Armentrout and ’s
Visions of Flesh and Blood: A Blood and Ash/Flesh and Fire Compendium,
available in print and ebook from Amazon.
06.22: A Dish Best Served Hot by Natalie Caña
We’re so excited for today’s deep dive on Natalie Caña’s A Dish Best Served Hot — a sexy, second-chance romance that gave us so many feelings, including delight that Natalie is at the very beginning of her romance writing career! Here we talk about taking big swings in romance, about telling love stories against the backdrop of real life issues, and about how this book’s ending might be the closest thing to Kleypas we’ve read in a long time. Get the book at Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.
We also talk about Fated Mates Live! Join us in Brooklyn, NY, at the gorgeous William Vale Hotel, on March 23rd! Join us along with a collection of special guests and a roomful of other romance-obsessed listeners for a night of romance shenanigans at a live taping of Fated Mates! While we’re never sure quite how it’s going to go, we can guarantee there will be books, booze and bantr…and you’ll leave full of joy from all the fun. We’ve even got The Ripped Bodice on hand to sell books, and the room will be available for hanging with other Firebirds after the live! Tickets and info are at fatedmates.net/live.
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
On March 16 2024, Jen will be at the Forest Park Library for an event called Book Buzz. Use this link to register. It’s all about romance, and Natalie Cana, Nicole Falls, and local Forest Parker Maria Monroe.
Selective mutism is a type of anxiety disorder.
Humboldt Park is a Chicago neighborhood that has been ethnically Latine with the largest Puerto Rican population in the city, for a long time. The gentrification described in the book is a real problem facing the neighborhood. If you were inspired by this story, you can support La Case Norte, a real Humboldt Park organization that supports homeless teenagers.
This whole Arrested Development thing about Army was very funny, just trust us.
The Rock having a tea party with his daughter is very adorable.
February romance articles are coming, including one written by Jen for Kirkus.
You can sign up for the virtual conversation with Sarah and Julia Quinn, hosted by the Illinois Libraries (which includes Oak Park) on Feb 20th, 2024.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
The Meet Cute Bookshop, a romance bookstore in San Diego, CA
find them online at meetcutebookshop.com
Blue Box Press, publishers of Legacy of Temptation
by Larissa Ione, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books
or wherever you get your books.
and
Meghan Quinn, author of The Reason I Married Him, available in print and ebook,
or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
06.20: It's Romance Science!
This one is probably as goofy as we get — we’ve spent six years talking about Romance Science, and now class is in session! We’re talking biology, human physiology, astronomy, neurology, urology, gynecology, obstetrics and dermatology. Basically, we’ve studied this enough to hold multiple MDs & PhDs. If we’re ever on a plane and someone needs a doctor, we’re volunteering. Love doctors count, right? We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed recording.
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
Two brothers who are both in the NFL, that’s romance science. Kylie Kelce seems pretty cool. Too bad we missed her book.
On twitter, you can check out the Male Scent Catalog, and Jen has talked about this flower thing, too.
Conveniently, Jen wrote a review of the book where that guy had Periwinkle eyes, it was called A Very Private Love by Melinda Cross.
What are Palazzo pants, you might be wondering.
When it comes to superheroes, everyone is beautiful and no one is horny. Believe it or not, that’s not even how we ended up on Christopher Reeve as Superman.
You should definitely pee after sex if you have a vagina.
There is a huge difference between a million and a billion, or here’s [another way] to see it11, or another way.
Jen is obsessed with lens wipes, and you will be, too, if you try them.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
1001 Dark Nights, publishers of Just One Summer, a Dirty Dare Series Novella
by Carly Phillips, available at Amazon.
and
Pippa Grant, author of The Bride's Runaway Billionaire, available in print and 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
S06.18: Firefighter Romance Novels
Is it getting hot in here? It is! We’re talking about firefighters this week — arguably the best of the hero(in)es in uniform because, let’s face it, there’s something pretty sexy about someone who will run into flames to save a stranger…let alone to save you. We’re talking about primordial firefighters, about patriarchy (obviously), about the difference between city firefighters and smoke jumpers, and about about the nature of a love interest who puts themself in danger for a living. All that, and they can dead lift you, too.
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
You can watch some movies and shows about firefighters and paramedics: Backdraft, Chicago Fire, and Sky Med.
Here’s a snipped of the scene from Backdraft where they break a car window to get the hose to the hydrant.
Wildland firefighting is dangerous and often underpaid, and the Marshall Project has written extensively on prisoners forced into these jobs. Also, here is a first person account of two men who used emergency fire shelters to survive a wildfire.
Firefighting demographics are actually pretty bad in Chicago, and here’s a libguide (a library designed portal for collecting links/info on a certain topic) from the University of Illinois about this history of women in firefighting.
Too bad about Charmed by the Alien Vampire Firemen!
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Jo Brenner, author of Meet Me In the Dark,
available in print or audio at Amazon,
or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
1001 Dark Nights
publishers of The Wild Card: A Rivers Wilde Novella by Dylan Allen
available at Amazon.
06.15: Holiday Romances for 2023
It’s our annual holiday romance episode, and we’re so excited to have you with us! No Santa this year, but we’ve got Toy Runners, audio sexitimes in the Alps, menage in NYC, and more than one snowy cabin just waiting to keep us isolated from the outside world. You’re going to love it. Headphones in, though, please!
We don’t have an episode next week, but we’ll be back with a special guest for our annual New Years Eve episode. In the meantime, we hope you get everything you want from whomever you believe in. Thanks for being with us in 2023 — we can’t wait for what comes next.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
We read a bunch of books for the holidays, but mostly they lean Christmas this year. Last year’s episode was just about Santa.
Our listener Katie sent us the Instagram Reel about Daddy December, but it's gone now!
Subscribe to the BookBub daily email. You won’t be sad! I also followed @Shadesnpages who had two different #jinglebooks games, one for Naughty and one for Nice. The Lifetime movie that promised a sex scene failed to deliver, and Jen made a joke about it on Twitter, of course.
Audio porn exists -- check out the British Filth archive on Tumblr, MitchellASMR on Patreon (some free stuff on Patreon without subscription, too), and apparemtly, the place to find audio now is Quinn. Try it here.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Sara Ohlin, author of Winter Wonderland Love,
available at Kindle, Kobo and Barnes & Noble
and
Meredith Schorr, Someone Just Like You,
available at Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble
or your local independent bookseller
06.14: Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison
You didn’t think we were going to stay silent during the current dragon frenzy, did you? We absolutely have things to say about dragon heroes, and the one from Thea Harrison’s Dragon Bound in particular — which meant we had no choice but to do a surprise deep dive, read along! We talk about dragon shifters, about the history of dragons in romance, about why we think this is a near perfect example of paranormal romance and road trip romance. Also, if you are looking for rom com, look no further. This is a funny funny book.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Get our Best Romance of 2023 book box from Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, PA. We're excited to be partnering with them on this one!
Dragons are kind of big right now.
A Cowby Christmas Romance, the Lifetime Movie with the sex scene, failed to deliver.
Wikipedia 0, Jen 1. Playing records backwards used to be a big thing everyone was worried about, but then we got over it and it's just something Harry Styles does.
Ladyhawke is a super great movie from the 1985, but then again, we’re old.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Carly Lane, author of The Regency Guide to Modern Life
available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books and your local indie,
Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Virgin,
available at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited,
and
Rochelle B. Weinstein, author of What You Do to Me,
available at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
06.12: Best Romance Novels of 2023
The Best Romance Novels of 2023!
It’s the best and worst task for us, because we read so many fabulous books over the course of the year, and choosing ten is hard, ok? But here they are — ten books we adored—books that delivered all the things we love in romance: sharp edges, sparkling dialogue, strong heroines and smoking hot chemistry.
Buy the Fated Mates Best of Book Pack in one fell swoop from our friends at Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, PA, and get seven of the traditionally published books on the list (many of them with signed book plates) and a Fated Mates sticker! We love the idea of you gifting yourself this box, but maybe you’d like to slide into someone’s text messages with the link as a very excellent gift for you! Or…you can do what Sarah does, and buy the box and spread the love around—sending each of the books to someone on your list.
FYI, Freya Marske’s A Power Unbound is on this list, but it’s the final book in the series, and you really should read this series from the start, so you can elect to add her "A Marvelous Light” to the box, along with a collection of other 2023 books by our favorite people (or a signed Sarah MacLean book!) if you’d like! Let us know what you end up doing with these fabulous books, and don’t forget to tag us on Instagram or Twitter when you unbox!
Check out our “Best Romance Novels” lists from previous years: 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019. (We were 5 minutes old in 2018 and didn’t do a list that year!)
Thank you, as always, for listening. If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your favorite podcasting app, we would be very grateful.
The Best Romance Novels of 2023
Fantastic 2023 Romance By Our Friends
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Piper Rayne, authors of Single and Ready to Jingle
Read it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or Kobo
or wherever you get your audiobooks.
and
Kathryn Nolan, author of Keep You Both
Get it at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
The Book Larder, a community bookstore in Seattle, WA
specializing in cookbooks and food writing. Get personalized shopping help and use the code FATEDMATES for 10% off your order at booklarder.com.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:00 / #: Best of the year.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:04 / #: Hard to believe that it is the end of 2023.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:08 / #: Yeah. I know that everybody, it's like the most cliche thing in the world to say that in November of any year like, "How did we even get here?" But why don't I remember the beginning of this year at all? It's just out of my head.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:25 / #: I don't know. It's truly terrible.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:28 / #: Anyway, do you see I'm wearing these crazy glasses. I'm so sorry that I always look ridiculous now, but I cannot see anymore.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:38 / #: Yeah, the humiliation of that is super real, right?
Sarah MacLean 00:00:41 / #: It's pretty terrible-
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:41 / #: Where you're just-
Sarah MacLean 00:00:43 / #: It's terrible. I'm not that old. By the way, everybody, in a textual message-
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:51 / #: With me earlier today, I mis-numbered Sarah.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:53 / #: Jenny aged me by two in entire years.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:56 / #: Your birthday is in three weeks.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:59 / #: It is Sagittarius season coming up. In fact, actually-
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:02 / #: Well, it's still Scorpio season. So guess what? I'm just going to-
Sarah MacLean 00:01:04 / #: It's Scorpio season.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:06 / #: I'll take what I give you.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:07 / #: Exactly. As we are recording. It is Scorpio season, but when this episode comes out, it will be Sagittarius season. And so I have already begun shouting out my office door. If anybody would like to purchase me a gift anytime in the next month, a very bright light for my desk, which will help me see better would be-
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:30 / #: That would be great.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:32 / #: Welcomed. And I know last week, we talked about Eric's obsession with Wirecutter, and so I'm certain that I'll have a very bright light for my desk that is not at all form and very much function.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:49 / #: Absolutely. I upgraded the bedside lamp.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:54 / #: Because you can't see. Is it because you can't see, Jen?
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:57 / #: The lamp was broken. I think it's probably fixable, but not by me. And then I somehow got, I think, light bulbs that are way brighter and now it's almost too much in there for me. But you know what? It's okay. It's nice.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:08 / #: Welcome everyone, to Fated Mates. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:15 / #: I'm Jennifer Prokop, romance reader and editor, and I just hope that Eric cut all that out and you have no idea what we're talking about. Maybe you're like, "No, they're probably talking about how Jen-"
Sarah MacLean 00:02:25 / #: Taylor swept.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:25 / #: "Went to see two concerts this week."
Sarah MacLean 00:02:27 / #: Oh, yeah, you did. But don't tell them who.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:30 / #: Sure. Well, Trevor Noah I guess wasn't a concert. Comedian. I feel like he's well within the rage of coolness.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:34 / #: Trevor Noah is cool. Sure, sure. He's allowed. He's allowed in.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:40 / #: Good point. Okay, so we're not going to do that. We're just going to talk about romance novels that we loved in 2023.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:46 / #: Which because we are young and relaxed and groovy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:50 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:53 / #: No, but here's the thing. This is our episode. Every year, this is the episode we look forward to the most. We get so excited. We do a lot of scrappy discussion of who should be on the list, who gets to decide which book, who gets to talk about which book. Because often, there are books where we overlap and we love them both very much. And then there's usually a book or two where one of us has read it and the other one hasn't, which is also fun. And this week, this year, I think we have all of those things. As always, let's get the important stuff out of the way.
00:03:27 / #: There are ways for you to support all of these authors, all while supporting a queer, woman-owned, anti-racist, super feminist bookstore in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. An indie bookstore that loves romance so much, they put them all right at the front of the store, right inside the door. This is pocketbooks in Lancaster. You can head over to fatedmates.net/pocketbooks and order this group of books, the box along with some extra titles, which we'll talk about at the end of the episode. So what we've done this year, Pocket has put together the official box and then in classic Fated of Mates fashion, we just can't stop ourselves. So there are a bunch of other books that you'll be able to add on as supplemental stuff, including all of my books, signed. So we're super excited. Many of the books in the box will come with signed book plates and they will also come with Fated Mates stickers, Fated Mates pins and Pocket Books maybe is throwing some things in too. So we're excited. It's going to be interesting drops.
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:39 / #: Yeah. It's maybe interesting drops. But it's going to be okay.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:40 / #: Oh, it's not pins?
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:42 / #: I don't know. We're just trying our best.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:43 / #: We don't know what we're doing. It's fine.
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:44 / #: We don't. You'll get something from us. You'll get a letter from us, which usually happens too. So that's fun. And in general, you'll just be able to be relaxed, read romance novels throughout the rest of the year, just like all gas, no breaks through the end of the year.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:01 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:02 / #: Until 2024.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:02 / #: Reading great books or giving them away. Some people buy the box, they give it to a friend, sometimes they buy the box and they unpack the box and then wrap all the books up for their friends.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:14 / #: I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:15 / #: Listen, I support all of it because in the end, every penny that you spend goes to either a great independent bookseller or...
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:23 / #: A great author. Exactly, okay. So I would like to say before we start, that I am not allowed to put my favorite book of the year on this list because Sarah wrote it. So, sorry everybody.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:35 / #: Oh, listen to that. That was an unplanned.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:38 / #: It was unplanned because she was like-
Sarah MacLean 00:05:39 / #: Unplanned interjection.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:40 / #: Because she was like, "They're not going to let me do it." But listen, I love Knockout Tommy, go Boom. It was amazing. It was dedicated to me and it was my best book of the year. And all week long or weeks we've been planning this, I've been like, "What is wrong with my list?" And then I was like, "Oh, right. Knockout's not on it." So anyway, just throwing that out there.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:57 / #: Well, thank you Jennifer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:59 / #: Don't have a podcast with an author you love because then you can't put her book on the best of year list.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:03 / #: Exactly. Then she says, "Let's not talk about my books."
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:05 / #: Sure. And I just did that.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:06 / #: And let's not talk about my books. But if you haven't read Knockout, you can buy a signed copy of it as an add-on to your box from Pocket Books.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:13 / #: Okay.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:13 / #: And that is that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:14 / #: That's it. Okay. All right. So how do we want to tackle this list, Sarah?
Sarah MacLean 00:06:20 / #: I don't know. Do you want to play our normal game, which is segues?
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:23 / #: Oh yeah, that's true.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:24 / #: One of us starts and then we try to segue in?
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:26 / #: Sure. I think you should start. I think you should start. I also think if I've counted correctly, we're going with a rogue number 11 this year.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:35 / #: Yeah. That's only because I refused.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:39 / #: We put some indies and we couldn't really decide.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:40 / #: I was like, they're indies. I get to call too.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:41 / #: Yeah. We'll just add them. Whatever we want.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:43 / #: Listen, guess what? Everybody we're in charge. We get to do it. We can be chaos.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:47 / #: Exactly.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:48 / #: Tommy goes boom. Okay, I'm going to start with Ashley Herring Blake. I think it actually might be the most recently published book on the list.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:58 / #: Okay.
Sarah MacLean 00:06:58 / #: So Ashley Herring Blake, you've heard me talk about these books before. She's writing a Bright Falls series, which is a contemporary romance series set in a small town called Bright Falls. It's all sapphic, though different combinations of sexuality. So we have now seen two books prior to this. It was a group of some number of women. The important number is three here. And the first two books, the two friends got matched up, they got together, they partnered up, and they are very happy. Living happily ever after. And Iris Kelly, who is the third in the trio, Iris is really very happy for her friends, super-duper happy for her friends, but kind of sad. And the reason why she's sad is not because she also wants to be paired up, but because she really misses her friends.
00:08:11 / #: And I think this is a really nice way of entering this new world of contemporary romance. We talk so much over the year. We have talked a lot about what's happening in contemporaries and what contemporary is trying to do, and how it's really about community now, finding community. And I think there's something very refreshing about a character who's like, "I'm super happy for my friends, but I don't get to see them as much anymore." It's not the same because now we have these other people who I also really love, but it's just not the same. So Iris has a fairly new career as a romance novelist, but she had a rough breakup with an ex. She's bi and her ex wanted to have children and she did not want to have children. And she broke up with this man and her parents were unsettled by this. They didn't love it. They wanted a particular kind of life for her that she does not want herself.
00:09:16 / #: And so she's in this funny place as a character and as a person in the world. And she meets her heroine, Stevie, who is an actress who is involved in a community theater production who's also going through her own shit. If you have been around large groups of lesbians, you know that often... I went to Smith. Caveat, I went to Smith. You know that relationship is really when you break up with somebody as a lesbian, often everybody's so connected that your ex doesn't leave the universe, they just stay. You stay in a friend group and it is a challenge in many ways. So Stevie's ex is now dating another friend in their group. It's all complicated and weird and everybody else in the group is like Stevie, "Is it complicated and weird?" And she's like, "It's not at all. I have a new girlfriend." Except she doesn't. What she has is Iris who's on a whim, trying out for this play or going to be a part of this play, which is a queering of Much Ado About Nothing for those of you who are Shakespeare lovers.
00:10:35 / #: Anyway, so she says to Iris, "Would you be willing to fake date me?" And Iris is like, "This actually could be good for me, inspire me. The fake dating will inspire me in my romance writing." And Stevie's like, "This will be good for me because my friends will all believe that I'm over the fact that my ex has fallen in love with somebody else in our group." And so it's just this really big, expansive book about all the different ways that we love and all the complexities of the ways that we love, and how we set boundaries with our families and with our friends and how we learn to be ourselves in these big communities where we start to feel a little bit like fish out of water. On top of it all, Ashley's hilariously funny as a writer. It's just a really fun book. And if you haven't read this series, I am on record for loving it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:27 / #: You love the whole series.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:28 / #: And you should just start from the beginning and enjoy yourselves. So that is Iris Kelly Doesn't Date by Ashley Herring Blake.
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:36 / #: Perfect. Okay. I am going to jump to the whole group has a say in you and your ex being around, right?
Sarah MacLean 00:11:43 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:43 / #: And that book is Jana Goes Wild by Farah Heron. I've talked about this book briefly before. One of my big fears, I don't know if you have the same one when we do this every year, is that recency bias will essentially take over, right?
Sarah MacLean 00:12:02 / #: Yes, absolutely.
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:02 / #: Just whatever I most recently read is on my mind. But I read this book, it came out I think in, I want to say April or May of this year. And I think about this book a lot. So one of the things for me about what makes the book the best of, because of course it's also personal, is that staying power feeling. And this to me, is probably one of the best, if not the best second chance romance I've ever read. And so what it is-
Sarah MacLean 00:12:35 / #: A bold statement.
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:36 / #: I know, it is but this book, it really has stuck with me. I think it's so powerful. So anyway, Jana is a single mother, essentially. Her daughter, Imani... Is co-parenting, let me say. And her daughter, Imani, I want to say Imani's like five or six something, four or five, pretty young. And the father, Anil lives also in Toronto, but she is just furiously angry at him still. And we know from the beginning, and I realize that this might be a deal breaker for a lot of people, but it's essentially the prologue, which is they have this really brief intense fling where they meet and connect, and it is just instant love, the way that they felt about each other and the connection they had. And then she finds out that he is married. And so then it's the end of the prologue and now it's like five years later,
Sarah MacLean 00:13:37 / #: Yikes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:37 / #: She has a baby and he actually has moved to Toronto to co-parent with her. But she has kept the firmest boundaries of anyone. So he picks her up or she drops her off.
Sarah MacLean 00:13:53 / #: Wait, wait, wait. She has an intense one night stand. He's married and she has a baby?
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:56 / #: No, it's not a one night stand, it's a fling. They have a fling for a couple of weeks.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:01 / #: She gets pregnant?
Jennifer Prokop 00:14:02 / #: She gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby and he moves to Toronto. And so-
Sarah MacLean 00:14:08 / #: Scandal.
Jennifer Prokop 00:14:09 / #: You really understand pretty quickly, his wife was-
Sarah MacLean 00:14:12 / #: Something's up with the wife.
Jennifer Prokop 00:14:13 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:13 / #: Okay.
Jennifer Prokop 00:14:13 / #: He's now divorced and it takes... But the book really, here's I think the thing I really admire about it and you know this too, it's so easy to just be like, "Okay, this man is garbage." And that's what Jana has done. She has compartmentalized it really to the point where she's like, "I just don't interact with him. He is the father of my child and so there's things I have to handle with him." But it's all through email, she doesn't try to talk to him, she doesn't see him. And then what happens is there's a big family wedding and it's a destination wedding to where her family is from in Tanzania. So it's really cool because the whole community, this whole Muslim community in Toronto is going to pick up and go to this destination wedding. And there, she cannot keep Anil in his box.
00:15:07 / #: All of a sudden, she has to see him with their daughter, which she didn't really experience. She gets to see the way that her daughter loves him and their relationship is so sweet. All of a sudden, all of the aunties and everybody are like, "Look at what a good dad he is." But that also fuels a lot of her rage, the way that she gets blamed for being this single mother. And he gets all of the strokes for being this great dad and she really has to let go of so much of the past, so much of her fear about making these choices that make her an outsider to her family and her culture, and just really being herself. And I just think she's a powerhouse character.
00:16:01 / #: I think it sounds a lot like when I'm talking about it almost like that it's women's fiction, but it's such a romance, but it's also a romance that is deeply rooted in the idea of family. They're going to make a family together, their extended family is there. She's really determined to move on finally and he is like... It's just very emotional. I don't know. Like I said, this book has really stuck with me months and months after reading about it. I think about it often and I think it's just a really good example of how second chance is really about you have to show all the baggage and you have to show that these people are really different. And this book shows this. We get the whole journey. And so then at the end when they're back together, you really believe in them. I just think it is a spectacular, spectacular romance. I love it so much.
00:17:06 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by the Seattle bookstore, The book Larder.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:13 / #: Jen, I'm so excited. I just learned about this today obviously, and I can't, I'm so excited. I got to go to Seattle. The book Larder focuses entirely on cookbooks and food writing and features everything from new cookbooks to imported cookbooks and signed cookbooks. They offer in-person and virtual author talks on their YouTube page. So you can see cooks, and chefs, and cookbook authors in person showing the whole thing, showing how to cook, how to make cool stuff. They are women owned. Jen, they are magnificent firebirds.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:53 / #: I love this so much.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:55 / #: I'm so excited. It's like all my dream magnificent firebirds have come together. Listen, this is perfect because cookbooks make amazing holiday gifts. I would never buy you one, Jen, but I do buy cookbooks for lots and lots of people at the holidays. They're big, and they're beautiful, and they're full color. And often there are cookbooks that have great storytelling and great writing in them. If you call The Book Larder, you can get a personal interaction with one of the booksellers, and they will help you pick a perfect cookbook, maybe signed, maybe vintage for somebody in your life who loves to cook. If you're in Seattle, you can visit them in Fremont seven days a week. But they have an extensive online shop. You can also call them. They ship everywhere in the world and Fated Mates listeners will get 10% off at The Book Larder right now using the Code Fated mates at checkout online, or I'm sure you could give it to them over the phone.
Jennifer Prokop 00:18:56 / #: Amazing.
Sarah MacLean 00:18:57 / #: You can visit Book Larder at booklarder.com.
Jennifer Prokop 00:19:00 / #: You can also find them on Instagram @Booklarder, or like we said, check out their YouTube channel, which has lots of great content. Thank you to the Book Larder for sponsoring this week's episode. And everybody, get out there and get some great gifts for the upcoming holiday season.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:17 / #: You said that Jana this electric heroine. She's this powerful powerhouse heroine and I'm going to move from there. Then I'm going to go historical to Joanna Shupe's The Duke Gets Even.
Jennifer Prokop 00:19:32 / #: We both love this one.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:34 / #: Well, listen. Most years we say we're not going to talk about books by friends and Joanna is my friend, full disclosure. But sometimes one of your friends writes a book and you're just like, "I got to put it on." And I got to put it on because it was probably my favorite historical of the year. And as everybody knows, I could not let this go without historicals. Okay. So this one, I think you can absolutely read this book on its own. Joanna has done some really deft work here to make sure that it stands by itself. But if you really want a full picture of where we are here, go back to the beginning of the Fifth Avenue Rebels series and start from the beginning. First of all, I'm just giving you a gift there. You should just do that anyway.
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:23 / #: Yeah, just do it.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:23 / #: But The Duke Gets Even is about the Duke of Lockwood. So the whole conceit of the series itself is the Fifth Avenue rebels. We've been watching the Duke of Lockwood over the course of this series, a British Duke, he's come to Newport in the dead center of the Gilded Age to fetch himself an American heiress. He's got a title and he needs the American money, which is literally how history happened. This is real. What we have seen over the course of the whole book is he has successfully chosen or unsuccessfully chosen, like basically every other heroine-
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:01 / #: Oh, yeah. Every other heroine in the book.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:02 / #: In the series, which I think is-
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:03 / #: Not that one.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:03 / #: So delightful. And so he gets engaged or he goes looking and then something falls through and that heroine meets their hero in a prior book. And now here we are, the Duke is here. Listen, he's so sexy. He's so sexy. This book begins, I'm just going to talk about the meet-cute for a second because I think it's so great. Begins with him swimming in the Atlantic off the coast of Newport and it is hot and he's swimming nude. I don't know if he's nude.
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:38 / #: Yes, as one does.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:39 / #: But I'm pretty sure he's nude.
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:39 / #: I'm pretty sure he is. We ret-conned it to be that way.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:41 / #: He's just nighttime and he's just swimming in the fricking Atlantic like a God. And he runs up on this woman who is also swimming in the nude. And he's like, "She's clearly a mermaid."
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:56 / #: So fun. It's so crazy.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:58 / #: So there's no other answer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:00 / #: Obviously, that's it.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:01 / #: They basically wet hump because you can't dry hump if you're swimming.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:10 / #: Oh my God, I'm fine, everybody. Okay.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:12 / #: So they basically wet humped in the Atlantic and then he's like, "Who are you?" And she's like, "It doesn't really matter who I am. Let's not bring names into this, that seems silly."
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:25 / #: Let's not get involved. No.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:26 / #: And he's like, "All right, well why don't you come to my hotel tomorrow and we'll do this for real." And she's like, "Cool." And then the next morning... And so it moves forward and it turns out, so they start to have this secret affair, except it turns out he is engaged to her best friend, at which point, Nelly, who is so cool. All of Joanna's characters are cool because Joanna is so cool. But she's this child. So Nelly's whole story is that she's the child of this incredibly rich railroad magnate, and she's the only child and she just doesn't give a shit. She's like, "I'm going to inherit all this money. I don't need to subscribe to society's expectations for me. I'm just going to live my life. I believe in sexual freedom for women. I think we should have all the same rights as men. I think we should have access to birth control. I'm funding clinics, I'm funding research. I'm funding all this stuff. I'm basically spending all my dad's money on suffrage and shit, no one can tell me what to do." She's the best, right?
00:23:45 / #: No, but she's not the best. She's not a perfect duchess. This is the opposite of what Lockwood needs. He needs somebody who's going to get in line and go meet the Queen, and that is not Nelly's-
Jennifer Prokop 00:23:55 / #: Nelly's not interested.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:56 / #: Nelly's got no plans for that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:23:59 / #: Not interested, no thanks.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:00 / #: So listen, this book is a lot about... What's interesting about it is-
00:24:03 / #: So listen, this book is a lot about ... What's interesting about it is it goes back and forth. We see a lot of the past, so we see them obviously falling for each other in the past of the series because when he's engaged to her best friend, that's the first book in the series, right? It really layers really interestingly. The book is a lot about the past, the truth, what we expect from ourselves and others when we interact with them. Do we expect them to tell us the truth from the beginning? How do we reveal layers of ourselves to each other? How do we think about each other? How do we overcome the past and the way that the past and our realities and our truth make ourselves, make us who we are? And then on top of it, it is so wildly sexy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:24:57 / #: Oh yeah, Joanna knows the job.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:01 / #: It's like finger singing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:25:03 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:03 / #: It's so great. Anyway, go read the Duke Gets Even by Joanna Shupe. Yeah, it's so, so good. Okay, so I have a historical on my list as well, and I think it also plays around with that whole, do we belong together, right? Which of course maybe is the concept of every romance. But Marry Me By Midnight by Felicia Grossman is a gender swapped Regency Jewish Cinderella retelling, and I could not get enough of this book. And this also is a book that I think came out maybe a couple months ago, maybe in August. And again, one of those ones that's really stuck with me because for a different reason.
00:25:48 / #: In this one, one of my favorite things in romance, and I feel like it is unusual, is when you are reading it and you are literally like, there's no way these two are going to work this out. Right? You just really feel that the conflict is so rich between these two, that there is no possible way that it's going to work out, and that to me is one of my favorite feelings. I often joke that is the high I am chasing in every romance. And so in this case, we have Isabella Lira, it's 1832, so I said Regency, but I guess that's Victorian, whatever. Her father has just died and he was ... The Jewish community has a really powerful group of, I don't know, elders, I guess, who help steward the community. And he also co-owned a business with these brothers, the Berab brothers.
00:26:47 / #: Her father died. Of course, she's in mourning and she's full of grief, but these brothers are really doing something super sketch, which is they are trying to cut her family out of the business. And almost like, it's very interesting the way she feels about it. It's almost like they're erasing him, right? The way that they're trying to just almost eliminate his ... The way that he influenced her as part of the community. It hurts her, right? She loved her father. And I think that's really important because she really essentially has to marry in order to secure the business, but it's not because of money. It's because essentially of her father's legacy that she wants to protect.
00:27:42 / #: And of course, what happens is one of these brothers is going to try and marry her, right? That's going to be their way of doing it, so she has to find somebody else. And what happens is she has enlists the help of Aaron Ellenberg, who is a really interesting member of the community. He is essentially like a custodian. He works at the temple. They've provided him with work because he's almost like an orphan. He doesn't have family of his own, and so they want to support him and give him a way to be a part of the community, but it means he has a really interesting perspective.
00:28:24 / #: She is the consummate insider, right? She's the prince, right? She has everything and seems to be so wealthy and has everything she needs. And he is the one who is essentially ... And it's not quite Cinderella because he doesn't have wicked stepsisters, but he does not have that in that way of being in the community that she does. So he agrees essentially to help her by spying on what's going on in the synagogue as things are happening and funneling her information. And she in return is going to give him money that's going to allow him to be his own person rather than being at the mercy of the largess of the community. Right? So it is just a fascinating book.
00:29:14 / #: The tension between them is the sexual tension and the romantic tension between them is so good, but she just cannot see him as a potential partner because she really thinks she has to be ... What would it mean for my father's legacy if I were to marry this custodian, right? So there's all these subplots, there's good guys and bad guys, and this really delicious romance between these two people that on the face of it should have nothing in common. Right? So that whole Cinderella feeling and even the cover of this book is so beautiful and she really is channeling big Cinderella energy. She's got her hair up, and I just think the whole thing is really spectacular. I loved reading this book. I just fell into it, right? I fell into it, and that is the best feeling.
Jennifer Prokop 00:30:09 / #: I love that. It's wonderful. That's Marry Me by Midnight, by Felicia Grossman.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:15 / #: Then I'm going to do my final historical. Well, I guess it's not my final historical, it's my final straight up historical.
Jennifer Prokop 00:30:23 / #: Okay.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:23 / #: That's what I'm going to do. I want to talk about Ana Maria and the Fox. Again, I have talked about this before briefly, I talked about it on the 23 for 23 episode, but this is by Liana De La Rosa. You have definitely seen this book around. The cover is gorgeous. It's beautiful and illustrated and stunning. And Ana Maria is the eldest of three sisters. They're from Mexico, but this book is set against the backdrop of the Mexican War of Independence from France. I think it's the 1860s. France basically attempted to just take Mexico like, Hey, cool, what if you were just French like us?
00:31:13 / #: And so her family is fighting, they're very, very wealthy Mexicans and some of them are staying, but they have sent these three girls to London to live with their uncle in London for two reasons. One, it gets them away from the war itself, and two, they're gone there in order to drum up support from Britain for the war in Mexico against France. Right? So there's this big political thing happening about that in the background.
00:31:45 / #: But these are incredibly wealthy, young sisters and they turn up and also ... I mean, listen, it's historical, so there are definitely moments where ... This is a real historical heroine. At the very beginning of the book, she's just as likely to charm you into giving all of your money to the Mexican cause as she is to yanking her hat pin out of her hair and shiving you on the docks. Either of those things could happen, and I love both of them, no notes.
00:32:19 / #: And then when she gets there, she meets Gideon Fox, who is a member of Parliament and who, because of his own family history, is a staunch abolitionist. Not that you need to have that be your family history for you to be an abolitionist, but it helps in this case. So he is working very, very hard. It's the 1860s. So while slavery is illegal on the island of Britain, the Atlantic slave trade still is legal and he is working very hard to sway members of parliament to vote to make it illegal. And so he has this very strong, very stern way of being because he's like, I'm doing something incredibly important. There is nothing in the world that is more important than the work that I'm doing, capital W, in parliament.
Jennifer Prokop 00:33:13 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:33:14 / #: And she comes in and she's like, I do not disagree. Your work is very important, as is mine. You see what's happening to my people, to Mexico. And then on top of it, there's this layer of she's incredibly wealthy. She has access to all of this high, high level of society in England because of her connections and her wealth, but there are all these little microaggressions that she's having to deal with kind of all the time, which is great.
00:33:45 / #: So of course, two people who are both passionate about their progressive politics and their work, capital W, and the importance of what they're doing and their place in the world, I mean, these two are destined to bang because of course they are. They're going to change the world and they're going to pull on their threads and then they're going to pull on the thread together. It's so-
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:08 / #: I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:09 / #: This is one of those books, you guys, every year, I think to myself, I just want that one romance that makes me feel like this is the work of the genre. This is what we're meant to be writing. And this one is about class, and it's about race, and it's about politics, and it's historical because of course, historical, this is where historical shines, and it's great, it's beautiful. And it could be historical fiction, what you were saying about Jana Goes Wild. It could be shelved in a different place, but it's shelved here and aren't we lucky for it?
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:43 / #: Yeah, I loved it too.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:45 / #: Liana De La Rosa's Anna Maria in the Fox. This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Catherine Nolan, author of Keep You Both.
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:56 / #: Catherine Nolan probably sounds familiar to many of you out there that really loved Rival Radio earlier this year. So in this one we have Paige who is a wedding planner. She is going to take her best friend's Beau and Flora up to their wedding venue where they're going to say yes, and she's just going to be checking off things off of her year-end list. However, an unexpected blizzard traps the three of them together in this cozy cabin, and all of a sudden the chemistry that has been at a low simmer between the three of them is going to burn it up. So Paige, of course, is worried, is this going to break up their friendship? She's got a secret that she's worried is going to cause all a big kerfuffle, but I have every belief that this super steamy MFF novella set on New Year's Eve weekend is going to be the best thing for your holiday season.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:52 / #: This is perfect for anybody who is looking for a cozy holiday novella, a forced proximity story, a snowstorm, a book where everyone's bisexual. We are very excited. You can find it in print, in ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited, and thanks to Catherine Nolan for sponsoring this week's episode.
Jennifer Prokop 00:36:20 / #: You mentioned ... I don't know how, but I am going to talk about a fantasy romance next. This is independently published, so this one will not be in the box, although I do think that the bookstore is going to see if they can order some print copies as an add-on. So this book is called The Midsummer Bride by Kati Wilde, and I think that Kati Wilde writes a perfect 230-page romance, right?
Sarah MacLean 00:36:50 / #: Listen, that is a treat.
Jennifer Prokop 00:36:52 / #: Especially in fantasy, right? I like a light touch with the world building is what I'm going to say, and so this is part of a series. You can totally read this alone because I've only read some of these books. It's called The Dead Lands, which is I think just the name of ... There's a map at the beginning. Okay?
00:37:16 / #: Anyway, there's a queen, her name's Elena, and she has been cursed and she essentially is dying except for the fact that she is wearing these magic rings, and these magic rings were literally a raven flew into her tent one day and dropped them in her lap, and so she put them on, and it's the only thing that is literally keeping her alive from this curse. And the person that cursed her is her uncle because she's the queen, and so he curses her, and it's complicated. Some of this gets unwound later, all the details, but the only hope she has is that a fortune-teller at one point told her that there would be a man who would essentially fall in love with her the minute he saw her and that this man is what's going to be the barbarian warlord.
00:38:12 / #: Hello? You know I was in, I checked right in, Jennifer checked in, who would essentially help her go back and get revenge on her uncle who poisoned her, who wants her crown. So she, through some deductive reasoning, decides that this guy is this man named Warwick, and Warwick has been languishing in a jail cell. So she puts on her queenly finery, and she's supposed to be ... It's like there's something about gold, so she's covered in gold paint and whatever, and this headdress, and she's so weak from this curse that she can barely hold herself up, but she's like, I got to go and convince this prisoner to marry me.
00:38:59 / #: And sure enough, when he sees her, his eyes light up and she's like, wow, it worked. Right? So he agrees essentially to go with her and there's a lot of fantasy stuff happening, whatever. And eventually what we realized is it's not that Warwick thought he was in love with her. It was that he saw these rings and these rings have been stolen from his people. And if he can recover them, he can stop this curse that's been plaguing his land and he thinks she stole them. So he's like, I'm going to marry this woman, get these rings back, take them to my people and forget this woman. So they are immediately at odds.
00:39:40 / #: Now he pretty quickly figures out, oh, he was wrong about her. And oh, actually he is desperately in love with her. Once he sees her real face, he literally just boom. And so they go off on this road trip adventure and all this business and they finally get married and here's the part that's great. Okay, I'm sorry. I know I'm talking.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:04 / #: No, I love it. Go.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:06 / #: Okay, I don't want to spoil it, but I will tell you this part. On the day that they're finally getting married, this woman who's marrying them, this witch or whatever, it's a binding ceremony where there's a red ribbon and they tie it to each other and then they pledge their love, but you can also unmarry people in this world by untying this ribbon. There's a way in which once it gets tied a certain way, if you untie it, you can unmarry the person. And so they get married, and this woman who's marrying them is like, you really should not get married with those rings on because they're full of magic and they might have an unintended consequence on the ceremony.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:47 / #: You might not be able to get unmarried.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:48 / #: And Warwick is like, she can't take them off. She's going to die. At this point, he knows, right? So she has to keep them on, so they go ahead and get married with her wearing the rings. And I am going to tell you, I don't want to spoil it. I'll spoil it for you later. I'm not going to spoil it for everybody here. The third act breakup of this book is the best one I've ever read.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:09 / #: All right, I'm buying it right now.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:10 / #: You should, because-.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:12 / #: I don't even have to know. I don't even have to know what happens. I'm going to read it tonight.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:15 / #: It is so fucking good, everybody. I'm sorry. I just swore it so fucking good.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:23 / #: You're sorry. Well, no one here has ever had anything strange put in their ears by us.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:28 / #: No. So anyway, I just really think that this is a case where the fantasy of it, the world of it is really the super highway to the tension in their relationship and their romance, and it is brilliant, brilliant.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:48 / #: Awesome.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:48 / #: It's so good. Okay, I'm not going to spoil it. I want to though.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:52 / #: So that is, name it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:54 / #: The Midsummer Bride by Kati Wilde.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:58 / #: Okay. So I'm going to do fantasy then because you were just doing fantasy, and this one's a little bit ... There's a caveat with this book for the box.
Jennifer Prokop 00:42:09 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:09 / #: Go ahead. Do you have something to say?
Jennifer Prokop 00:42:11 / #: No, I think you should explain that-
Sarah MacLean 00:42:12 / #: Okay. So I'm choosing as one of my best books of the year, Freya Marske's, A Power Unbound, which is the third book in her last binding series. But here's the thing, this is historical romantasy, but the fantasy, it's 55% fantasy, 45% romance, and so you really do need to read all three of these books to know what's going on. You particularly have to read the second book in the series because the romance in this book begins in the second book.
00:42:48 / #: So the last binding series, I'm not going to get too deep in the weeds on what the premise of the series is, but basically it's historical, it's Edwardian England. Magic exists in the first book, which is called A Marvelous Light. There's a human who is accidentally hired to be into a secret position at the foreign office or the home office where his job is essentially to liaise with the magical community. And he's like, oh, shit, magic happens? Tell me all about it. And it's great. In the first book, which is A Marvelous Light, will lead you into this story, which the overarching story is there are bad people in the magic world who are trying to harness all powerful magic themselves and do bad stuff. It's exactly what you imagine it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:43:45 / #: Listen, it's a classic fantasy trope for a reason.
Sarah MacLean 00:43:47 / #: A classic structure, right? So this merry band of what ends up being ... It's actually seven people. These couples pair up, and there's another person, and they're all working toward this ultimate goal of stopping these bad guys. So in the first book, it's like the setup for the whole thing. The second book is Sapphic, the first book is Male Male. The second book is Sapphic, and set on a ship, and it's basically a murder mystery through the whole thing and it's super fun. And then halfway through that book, we meet these two characters who then become the couple in the final book, which is called A Power Unbound. And this book, Jack Lord Hawthorne, who was this just asshole in the last book, just stern. I mean, immediately, the second he's on page, you're like, well, it's obviously going to be his book. He's perfect in every way, for me, he was just the worst.
00:44:48 / #: And in this book, we learned in the very beginning that he was born with a twin, and he and his twin sister had this intense bond, but also had this incredibly powerful magic, so powerful that the moment she started practicing magic, bad men found her and were like, we have to take your magic from you. And when they were children, they were put through a ceremony where their magic was essentially taken from them and she couldn't bear it, and she died. And so he has lost this sibling, but he's also lost ... It's not only his twin, but she was also the other half of his magic, and so it's just brutal and sad. And now we know why he's been such a jerk for a whole book, but it's all going to be okay because he meets Alan.
00:45:40 / #: Now he has Alan and Alan, who is a journalist and a thief and a writer of sexy stories, he does a lot of things, Alan is getting to the bottom of everything that's been going on in the magic world, of course, of which Hawthorne's past is deeply tied up in it. So Freya's threading this really interesting needle where she's telling this big plot about magic, this big fantasy plot, and then matching up these lovely characters along the way. The prior two books were medium sexy, maybe light sexy, then medium sexy. This one is all the way sexy, very, very sexy, and it's really fun. It's really delicious because it's ... If you love the Magpie Lord series, the KJ Charles series, this one is for you. Now, here's the way this is going to work. A Power Unbound is not in the box because it's the third book in the series-
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:43 / #: And it's hard cover, which makes it hard to include for price reasons.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:46 / #: It's in hard cover, so we wanted to be thoughtful about pricing, but you can select A Marvelous Light as an add-on to the box via pocket this year, and you can start this series. Yeah, I think actually they probably are putting ... I'm not sure, I haven't looked at the page, but I think they are probably putting all three of the books there. So if you want to just jump in, if you're like historical fantasy, sign me up, you are not going to be disappointed. So buy all three or maybe put the other two on your holiday list.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:16 / #: On your to-do list.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:17 / #: Yeah, tell someone you love that they should buy them for you. Can I tell you something? I actually just forgot, Sarah, but I've been in contact with the bookstore. One really cool thing that they're doing this year is they are requesting signed book plates from the authors. So I think the first 100 boxes will have signed books for a lot of these, signed book plates. So I just think that's also really cool. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:43 / #: Fred is Australian, and she, I know, is sending sign book plates for A Marvelous Light. So it's a little bit different this year, but if you want to add that in, I can guarantee that it's a very fun time.
00:47:59 / #: This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Piper Rain, authors ...
Sarah MacLean 00:48:03 / #: Fated Mates is sponsored by Piper Rain, authors of, Single and Ready to Jingle. Okay, so our friend, Kenzie really loves Christmas, Jen-
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:12 / #: Of course.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:12 / #: ... like a whole lot.
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:14 / #: It should be a national holiday.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:15 / #: She thinks, yes exactly, December should be a national holiday. And she has this small business where she party plans around Christmas, she decorates, she throws parties, she comes dressed as an elf. Listen, she accidentally turns up to a blind date dressed as an elf. That's a story for another time. It doesn't go so well that blind date and it doesn't go that well for three reasons. One, it turns out that blind date is with Andrew, who is her brother's best friend, who is also the biggest grump she's ever met, and Andrew hates Christmas. So there is just no way this is going to work out.
00:48:55 / #: Here's the problem, Jen. Andrew has to plan his firm's holiday party and he needs somebody who really is crazy for Christmas to come do that for him, which gives Kenzie an opportunity to not only build her small business, but also prove that she can turn this Grinch into a Christmas loving beefcake sounds like.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:16 / #: Perfect.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:17 / #: So she's going to make his heart grow three times its size.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:21 / #: And something else.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:22 / #: She's going to make something else grow three times its size. And it isn't long until Andrew discovers that there is such a thing as a Christmas miracle.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:30 / #: So everybody you can check out, Single and Ready to Jingle, it is available on ebook, in print and also in audio with dual narration, which I know people really love.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:39 / #: And speaking of audiobooks, you can listen to the first three chapters of, Single and Ready to Jingle at the end of this week's episode. Thanks to Piper Rain for sponsoring.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:53 / #: I don't know how I'm transitioning to my next book, but I'm just going to go ahead and tell you. It is a rom- com. Mickey Chamber Shakes It Up by Charis Reid. And I, gosh, I love this book everybody. Okay, so this, I don't know, you know how you just love a book with great characters? When I'm really thinking about, what is it that drew me to this book, and if you have not read a book by Cherish, she is just a really great writer. She just knows how to, I don't know, there's some people that you just fall into their books and they just know how to take you on this journey.
00:50:30 / #: So Mickey Chambers is young, I think she's 30 or 32 maybe, and she has pieced together, and she is like pure sunshine also. She's pieced together kind of a living as an adjunct at several local universities teaching composition classes. And there's some problems with this. She has a tough time. She doesn't really have great medical insurance. She is kind of constantly trying to make the money work to buy the medicine she needs and pay the rent and all that stuff. And so it's Summer and I think what happens is one of these classes falls through. So she's walking in town and sees this local bar has a help wanted sign.
00:51:20 / #: So she goes into this bar and because she's like, "Look, I'm just going to... How hard can it be to wait tables or be a bartender as a way of just adding some extra money?" And it's really interesting, she has a lot of pride. She has an older, I think he's actually a younger brother who kind of makes enough money and is kind of like, "Let me help you." And she's like, "No, you are not going to help me. I'm going to do it." The bar owner is named Diego Acosta and he is a widower, which I love I'm sorry. I'm not sorry, I love it. And he essentially-
Sarah MacLean 00:51:54 / #: I'm not sorry. I love it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:55 / #: I'm not sorry, I love it. Diego is 42, so he's older than her and he is running this bar that had been his wife's. Now she's been, I think, gone for about five years so the grief is sort of really muted. He misses her, but running the bar and the restaurant was her joy and he was just the guy who kind of kept it running and did the bookkeeping and that kind of stuff. But now he's had to really sort of take over in the front and it's been a real struggle for him.
00:52:25 / #: So he's really stressed, but he also promised his wife that he would go back to school. And so it turns out that he is enrolled for his first online class and who do you think is his adjunct? Mickey Chambers.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:40 / #: Perfect.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:41 / #: Perfect. And you know what, it's really funny-
Sarah MacLean 00:52:44 / #: You know he's my favorite.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:45 / #: Because you know... Yeah, you know what's always really great though is I think because it's online, it didn't really strike as much and also he's her boss. So he's her boss at the bar and she's his teacher at the college and so it all kind of felt like a little even to me. But I also think there's this really beautiful part where she has assigned just a journaling exercise and he wrote about his wife. And I had this moment where I was like, if being a writing teacher, being an English teacher, you do really sometimes read such incredibly personal things.
00:53:25 / #: And I felt like this was sort of like, but it's just really beautifully done, and the way that Mickey can hear what he has to say and is really encouraging of him as a writer. So anyway, there's all this back and forth and it turns out that she's going to be a bartender with him because they've hired another waitress and it's Summer and there's all these crowds and you guys, this book was just a perfect contemporary romance.
Sarah MacLean 00:53:53 / #: Oh, I love it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:54 / #: And I just feel like those are kind of hard to find, but he's grumpy, she's sunshine, but this conflict between them is so rich because of the way that they have some power over each other, but it's just perfect. And even though, I don't know, I had... Adriana recommended this book to me and I was like, "Okay, sure, I'll give it a shot." And I just zoomed right through it. It was that perfect feeling of just being like, "All right, this is how reading a romance should feel."
Sarah MacLean 00:54:30 / #: I love that feeling.
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:33 / #: It's so good.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:33 / #: I love it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:33 / #: So it's Mickey Chambers Shakes It Up, by Charis Reid.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:36 / #: I'm going to go from emotion, like real emotion-
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:41 / #: Feelings.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:42 / #: ... big feelings. So I want to talk about Adriana Anders', We'll Never Have Paris, which I was thinking about holding for the holiday episode, but then I was like, "No, I really love this book. I'm going to put it on the list." So I will probably talk about it again in a few weeks when we do our holiday episode. But it is-
Jennifer Prokop 00:55:01 / #: It's awesome. I love this one too.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:03 / #: It's short and incendiary and it's so great, but in classic Adriana Anders fashion. First of all, anybody who's read Adriana's books knows she brings heat in all forms, which is great. And I mean, it's perfection and I read everything she's written because of that, because they're just great, fast, sexy reads. But she does not stop there. Every one of her books has just a big feeling. She minds her character's backstories for intense emotion.
Jennifer Prokop 00:55:39 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:41 / #: I mean, not one of her characters is left uncrafted, right?
Jennifer Prokop 00:55:46 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:46 / #: I mean, they're all so, they're so beautifully raw. But this is really fun, this is the heroine, Jewels, is an American who is living in Paris and it is Christmas Eve and she's flying back to America tomorrow, Christmas day. Her neighbor in this apartment where she lives, is Colin, who is a grumpy Welshman who hates her, hates her, really is like, "She is loud, she's brash, she's so American, why does she look so hot all the time? I just can't with her.
00:56:25 / #: She's too much altogether," which is all well and good until they're in one of those old Parisian elevators in their apartment building and the power goes on the fritz, yes, and the lights go out and they are stuck in this elevator together. And she's-
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:46 / #: And it's Christmas Eve. Did you say that already?
Sarah MacLean 00:56:48 / #: ... Christmas Eve.
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:48 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:49 / #: And she's wearing her nightgown and it is... And then suddenly there is just this intense moment of, "I hate you, but also I want you. Oh boy, we're stuck in an elevator in Paris and-
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:06 / #: Whatever shall we do?
Sarah MacLean 00:57:07 / #: The book is so dirty and I love it. But also it's really about loneliness and it's really about feelings and the feelings that the holidays can evoke, and about... There's a lot of loss in this book. He's lost his sibling, she's lost a parent, and it just feels emotional and deep and important for the way that we live in the world as humans, and also incredibly sexy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:43 / #: Yeah, and then your antithesis-
Sarah MacLean 00:57:44 / #: And you're not going to feel bad about it. Yeah. And to me this book, also the Kati Wilde, this to me, it's like this is what Kindle Unlimited is for, right? These great, I mean I know that there's a lot of really long books in KU right now, but these 200 page bangers are what I'm in it for.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:05 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:07 / #: And I also think there's something to be said for, I mean, it's literally like we talk about a phone booth.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:15 / #: I guess.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:15 / #: Maybe we should just call them elevator romances-
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:17 / #: I mean, an elevator.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:17 / #: ... right, a literal elevator romance. It's fantastic, really delicious. You are not going to be sad. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:25 / #: I should just tell everybody, I did work on a draft of this book, but-
Sarah MacLean 00:58:28 / #: Oh, it's fine. You didn't pick it. I didn't even know that-
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:30 / #: I know. Yeah, that's right.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:30 / #: ... until this exact moment.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:31 / #: So there's this moment.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:32 / #: So listen-
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:33 / #: But if you're reading the acknowledgements and you're like, "Wait, what's Jen doing?" Sarah picked it and it's fine.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:38 / #: I picked it and I didn't know that. Yeah, so listen, December is in two days. You want a cozy holiday read? This is it. Okay, and my final book, which is not my final book, but it's just the last one that we're talking about, is Zoraida Cordova's, Kiss The Girl, which I have also talked about on the podcast before, which is why I have extras guys, because I've talked about-
Jennifer Prokop 00:59:02 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:03 / #: ... some of these books before.
Jennifer Prokop 00:59:05 / #: And we had Zoraida up to talk about, Fairytale Retellings.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:06 / #: We did and so we talked about it then. But I often find that when we have guests on, we don't do enough talking about their book, we talk about other things, which is the point of the podcast. So this is where I get to talk about Zoraida's book for real and say, this is a retelling... First of all, out of the gate, I want to say this is a closed door romance and it's a retelling of the Little Mermaid. And if you have a tween or a teen in your life who loves Taylor Swift but maybe isn't ready for sexual content in her books or their books-
Jennifer Prokop 00:59:47 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:48 / #: ... this is perfect. This is it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:59:50 / #: Yeah. Yeah. This is a great starter romance you would say.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:53 / #: This main character is not Taylor Swift, but if you have... I mean right now it feels like everybody has one of these-
Jennifer Prokop 00:59:59 / #: Oh, but with the love of music. And I was-
Sarah MacLean 01:00:00 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:00:01 / #: ... that's the woman in a band and a strong, that artistic temperament.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:06 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:00:06 / #: All those things, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:00:07 / #: Yes. Yes. So I mean I just think this is the perfect gift for that kid in your life. It's not YA though, it's also the perfect gift for you, so you'll enjoy it immensely. Okay, so the premise is Ariel, the same names apply.
Jennifer Prokop 01:00:26 / #: I hope so.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:26 / #: Ariel is one of a girl band, like a sort of rock band, superstars, like absolute mega stars, think like One Direction, but sisters. And there are eight of them, seven of them.
Jennifer Prokop 01:00:39 / #: Love it.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:40 / #: There's seven of them obviously. Obviously there are seven of them, seven sirens, the siren seven. And they are having their... The book opens on their farewell concert. They are done now. They are deciding to go their separate ways and try new things with their lives because they have spent their entire, basically young adulthood being celebrities, being pop superstars. And they have never been out from under the thumb of their fairly, fairly, extremely domineering father, right, the King Triton of it all.
01:01:15 / #: So Amitcute, daddy, unfortunately he's not quite as daddy as King Triton could be if King Triton would be, but.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:27 / #: A very different book. I understand.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:28 / #: It's different unfortunately. So Amitcute happens, and so they sneak out. They go to a club in Brooklyn. They've never done anything like this because they have been superstars forever and they meet Eric, who is the lead singer and guitarist for this up and coming band that's about to embark the following day on a tour around the country. But not like a cool tour, we are all in a van doing just sort of getting it done across the country. And for romance reasons, through a confluence of romance reasons. Ariel gets a job as the merch girl for this band and she goes undercover-
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:19 / #: Love it. I'd love it.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:20 / #: ... on this tour bus with this band for their first go around and it's great. It's a road trip romance because of course they make a deal. There's a deal that's made with Eric and his band mates that he won't sleep with the merch girl. But of course they're obsessed with each other almost instantly. They love each other, they think they're... they can't get enough of each other except... So there's that sort of constant tension of like, "But we can't, but we can't." Also, because we're on a bus with all these people.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:53 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:55 / #: Not that kind of book, Jen. And it's just really great because I mean, everyone knows I love a rockstar, everyone knows I love a celebrity, and part of the reason why is because I love somebody who has to step out of the limelight to understand who they are. And that's what this book is. I think Zoraida is one of the best writers writing today in multiple genres. This book is just, it's going to hit you in all the feelings. It's the perfect read for you, for young people in your life, for like I said, if you want to introduce romance to somebody.
01:03:28 / #: It's funny and it's sexy and it's smart and it's thoughtful and it does all the things that rom-coms should be doing right now and also does it with massive amounts of feeling and a big found family, which is great.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:42 / #: Your, the perfect thing.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:44 / #: The perfect thing. And that is Kiss the Girl by Zoraida Cordova and my final book.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:52 / #: That's it, 10.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:52 / #: There it is.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:53 / #: Is that 10?
Sarah MacLean 01:03:54 / #: I think they did the job. I think it's 11.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:55 / #: I think we did the job too.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:55 / #: Oh, maybe it's not. It's 10, counting.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:59 / #: Who knows?
Sarah MacLean 01:04:00 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:01 / #: The thing that's hard always, everybody like, oh, let's say it. We'll go ahead and say the standard disclaimers here at the end, right? These are just books we love that spoke to us for whatever reason, right? There were lots of great romances this year. There are lots of great romances we didn't talk about for various reasons. We cannot wait to hear about the books you loved and yeah, of course-
Sarah MacLean 01:04:21 / #: Please recommend them to us.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:22 / #: Yeah, right.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:22 / #: We're always looking-
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:23 / #: The thing is that's-
Sarah MacLean 01:04:23 / #: ... always.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:24 / #: ... sort of tricky is because we're always constantly reading back lists, some of the best books I read this year I haven't talked about because they were not published in 2023. So keep in mind that the best of is always a moving target in this genre. Mostly what we love is romance. We had a great time reading these books. We think you will have a great time reading these books. And we want to support romance in our libraries, in our local bookstores, in our little free libraries, under our Christmas trees, with our Hanukkah presents, wherever, wherever great romances can be found.
01:04:58 / #: So we hope that you read these and share them. We hope that to hear what your favorite romances are, and just remember lots of great books don't get on the list. And it's not that we don't love them, it's just that we only could choose 10.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:13 / #: That's right. I also just want to give a shout-out to some of our favorite books by our friends this year. Adriana Herrera had, An Island Princess Starts a Scandal, which is a sapphic historical set in 1890s in Paris and is a banger. Kate Clayborn had, Georgie All Along, which is just-
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:34 / #: So great.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:35 / #: ... gorgeous, a gorgeous book by Kate Clayborn. I mean when is she not written a gorgeous book, but there we are, Georgie's for every single girl out there who has ever thought to themselves, "I have to go home and who am I now that I'm back?" And Christina Lauren had, The True Love Experiments, which is a love letter to romance novels-
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:59 / #: It sure was.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:00 / #: ... as Jen will attest. Diana Quincy had, hang on.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:07 / #: The Mark Quest Makes His Move, was that this... This one?
Sarah MacLean 01:06:09 / #: No. No. Diana Quincy had, The Duke Gets Desperate, which is a Regency Castle book. I inherited this castle. No wait, I inherited this castle book. So let's just bang it out even though we hate each other.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:26 / #: Tracey Livingston's-
Sarah MacLean 01:06:27 / #: I don't have complaints.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:28 / #: Yeah, Tracey Livingston's second book in the, American Royalty series came out this summer called, The Duchess Effect. I think she also released a novella, kind of like-
Sarah MacLean 01:06:39 / #: I'm going to talk about it on the Christmas episode.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:40 / #: Oh.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:41 / #: So we're not going to say anything yet. We're going to talk about it on the Christmas... Come back for the Christmas, for the holiday episode. I'm going to talk about it then. And then Sophie Jordan has had her first book in her new series, "The Scandalous Ladies of London, called, The Countess, which is kind of a big, Real Housewives of London, kind of the beginning of a, Real Housewives of London kind of structure. And, The Duke Starts a Scandal, which is her most recent book, and has probably the sexiest cover I have seen all year. Have you seen that one where she's pushing him up against the wall? I'll take it, man.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:19 / #: Yeah, we have read lots of great romances this year. When you look at the pocketbooks list, they have books we recom... They'll have our books. I think it's, Seven Trade Paperbacks and, One Marry Me by Midnight is a mass market paperback. Is that right? No, two mass market paperbacks. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:35 / #: Because it goes fan of-
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:36 / #: Joanna Chu.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:36 / #: The jiu jitsi fan.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:38 / #: Then there'll be sort of these other ones that we've recommended or that are by our friends. And then underneath that you will see books that the bookstore loved. So you can just fill up your box with lots of great romances this year.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:52 / #: And also, I was there a month or so back and I signed all my books for them. So if you're looking for a sign book by me, you can hopefully find it there.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:01 / #: Perfect. Well everybody, that's it. That's our best of 2023. Until next year.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:06 / #: We've done it again. We hope we filled your, to be read piles very, very high. Again, you can visit FatedMates.net/pocketbooks to order the box and any of the supplemental books with it. Let us know what you do with these boxes. We want to see pictures.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:24 / #: Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:25 / #: Post them on the Discord. If you are not a member of our Discord, you can join it now at patreon. com/FatedMates where you'll get more episodes from us, video interviews with authors who we like and know, and also just this raw looking Discord-
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:43 / #: It is a rough gang.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:43 / #: ... full of people who love romance novels. So if you're looking for a place to find your people, that is the place to find your people. I'm Sarah MacLean. I am here with my friend Jen Prokop. We are Fated Mates. You can find us every Wednesday in your ear holes on the podcasting app of your choice, or at FatedMates.net, on Twitter @FatedMates, on Instagram at FatedMates pod. And don't forget that you can stay tuned to listen to the first three chapters of, Single and Ready to Jingle by Piper Rain in audiobook right now.
06.11: Rend by Roan Parrish & the Lift 4 Autism Auction
This week, we’re doing things a little differently! A while back, we donated an episode for bid in the Lift 4 Autism auction, arranged by friend of the pod, Kennedy Ryan. Listener Julie won (thanks, Julie!) and selected Roan Parrish’s Rend for a deep dive read along, which we were so happy to do! After a shocking amount of Bantr, here it is — we’re talking about POV, about sadness in romances, about the way romance represents loneliness, and more.
We’re also taking a bit of time to recommend a group of books that have autism spectrum rep on page and that we, members of our Discord, and other authors adore. Enjoy!
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
If you’re looking to buy stuff, especially this weekend during holiday-sale-extravaganza, you should probably check out Wirecutter.
You should subscribe to the Bookbub daily email, choose what kinds of books you want and watch your wallet!
Order the best of the year box from Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, PA. The Best of 2023 list comes out next week!
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Sheila Masterson, author of The Lost God,
available at Amazon or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Carrie Clark, author of A Capacity for Falling in Love,
available at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Stephanie Rose, author of Raising the Bar,
available at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
S06.10: Men in Fur: Aliens, Warlords, and Vikings
We’re feeling silly and spicy this week, so we’re delivering the silly, spicy niche content you’ve come to expect from us now and then — we’re talking Men in Fur! This one is for alien lovers, medieval warlord stans, and everyone who’s ever messaged us to ask for a Viking interstitial. We’re talking about fur in all it’s function—luxury, warmth, competence, historical necessity—and getting to the bottom of why we like it so much. It’s not the mojo dojo casa house vibe, but it sure is something. Headphones in because fur, and proceed with caution…these Viking books are a lot. You’ve been warned.
Our next read along, and last of the year, will be Roan Parrish’s Rend. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Kobo.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
A Men in Fur Mood Board
Show Notes
- You can preorder our Best of 2023 box from Pocket Books Shoppe...list and episode drop in 2 weeks!
- The Nora Roberts book where the hero smokes is Born in Ice.
- Our Deep Dive on Milla Vane's A Heart of Blood and Ashes.
- Season 1 of Game of Thrones aired in 2011, and Jason Momoa’s character Khal Drago did not wear fur as far as we can tell, but you still deserve nice things.
- Carding wool is strangely calming if you ever have a chance, and all about alpaca fibers.
- If You're ever in York, check out the Jorvik Viking Center. Volcanoes are erupting all the time, no need to worry! If you’re in the mood for some non-romance Viking content, read the short story Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Avery Maxwell, author of Falling Into Forever,
available at Amazon or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Dr. Melissa Dymond, author of Holiday Star,
available at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Avon Books, publishers of Tessa Bailey’s Wreck the Halls,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books,
and at your local independent bookseller.
S06.07: Happy Halloween: Devils in Romance Novels
Jen’s been asking for this for six literal years, and we’re finally doing it! It’s Halloween and we’re talking Devils! Sure, we’ll touch on demons, but aren’t the scariest Devils the granite-jawed feelingless scoundrels who are definitely never going to fall in love? We’re talking Wicked Cynsters in Winter, Scoundrels of Downtown, Deals in Bed with Hades. You’re going to love it. All trick, no treat.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
The Las Vegas Aces won the WNBA championship for the second year in a row, and twitter was actually fun for a few days.
Jen ranted about this dumb Washington Post article about Lee and Andrew Child.
We have some documentaries to recommend: Sarah liked Beckham on Netflix and Jen liked The Supermodels on Apple Plus. Linda Evangalista’s “We don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day” has aged better than Kate Moss’s, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Either way, GenX has some body issues.
Devils are just morality chain when you think about it.
There actually is a place in VA called the Devil’s Bathtub! I wonder if there are any camps nearby.
Here’s a handy explainer on the difference between homophones, homographs, and homonyms from the good people at Merriam-Webster. Looks like Cynster and Sinister would be homophones.
Speaking of Cynsters, listen to our deep dive of Devil's Bride.
Here’s the video about the audiobook of Unhinged.
Are you in Florida? Sarah will be at the Off the Page Book Festival in Sarasota in November.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Monique Fisher, author of Hot for Teacher,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Alyxandra Harvey, author of The Countess Caper,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Megan Montgomery, author of Undertaking Love
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S06.06: Trailblazer Nalini Singh
Our Trailblazer conversations continue this week with legend Nalini Singh, whose groundbreaking paranormal series changed the game. We talk about the early days of her writing (when she was a kid!) about building her career in New Zealand, about how she came to publish in the US, about her beautiful relationships with readers, about the way she thinks about her series and how the stories hang together, and about her moves into contemporary and beyond.
We are so grateful to Nalini Singh for making time for us, and for her amazing books.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome Nalini Singh, author of dozens of romance novels, including several popular paranormal series. You should subscribe to her newsletter on her site! We did a deep dive of Caressed by Ice in Season 4.
Preorder her new thriller, There Should Have Been Eight, coming November 21st, right now.
Authors & Books: The Time is Short by Nerina Hilliard, Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jayne Ann Krentz, Yvonne Lindsay/EV Lind, Karina Bliss, Louisa George, Helen Bianchin, Emma Darcy, JD Robb, Meljean Brook.
Publishing Professionals: Berkley editor Cindy Hwang, bookseller Barbara Clendon owner of Barbara’s Books.
A transcript (by a human being!) is available for this episode.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Andrea Jenelle, author of No Doubts, available at
Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to 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
Transcript
Nalini Singh 00:00:00 / #: Back then think back to whatever the opportunities were in, say, the US North America for publishing. This is, we have to say this is pre-Indie publishing, pre-eBooks even. Whatever the options were, you have to narrow that down again and again and again by the time you get to New Zealand because very few publishers were taking submissions from outside either the US or the UK. And even books had to be set in America quite often. Or if you're going for the UK publishers that had to be set in London. And I hadn't traveled anywhere at that point. I was a high school kid. And one of the only publishers that was accepting worldwide submissions and were publishing books at Worldwide was Harlequin, Mills & Boon. And then later Silhouette became part of that too. So for me, thinking of how am I actually going to get published, it made a lot of sense to start with the contemporary side of things and start by submitting to Harlequin or Silhouette.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:15 / #: That was the voice of Nalini Singh, one of the first women of color to write extensively in the paranormal romance space, which is something she's going to talk about with us. Author of both the first and second seasons of the Psy-Changeling series.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:33 / #: I love that. I love the way she thinks about that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:36 / #: Along with the Guild Hunter series, the Rock Addiction series and category romances. We're going to talk to Nalini about her journey through romance, the way she perceives herself, the role of New Zealand romance authors, and what it's like to send your first manuscript off when you're a teenager.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:59 / #: The best. This is Fate of Mates everyone. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:06 / #: I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. And without further ado, here's our conversation with Nalini Singh. Welcome, Nalini Singh. We are so excited to have you on Fate of Mates as a trailblazer.
Nalini Singh 00:02:21 / #: I'm so excited to be here. I love the conversations you both have had. Oh, well I obviously, I cannot speak English, on the previous episodes. I really enjoyed. So yeah, it's really fun to be here.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:38 / #: Well, we're so thrilled to have you. We're so thrilled always to have somebody who can talk to us extensively about a subgenre. We immediately, the second we started the Trailblazers, your name went onto the list. So we're so excited to finally be able to do this. Why don't we start with where we start with everyone, which is, how did you come to romance? Why romance?
Nalini Singh 00:03:08 / #: I'm one of those people who has been a lifelong reader from childhood. So I was born in Fiji, which is a very small dot of an island in the Pacific. I think the last time I looked, the entire population is something like 800,000 people across. And it's not one island. We say it's actually islands, lots of islands dotted about. But I remember then, there used to be one big library in Suva City, but then the little mobile book buses would come to school. And that was my favorite.
00:03:43 / #: And I always used to get on and be like, okay, I can't wait until I'm old enough, until they let me go into the grownup section of the book bus because I had to be in the kids and young adult section. And when we moved to New Zealand, there were all these libraries and each of the suburbs has a library, and then there's the big Central City library. And I was just like, this is heaven. So I think my love of writing definitely came from my love of reading. And in terms of how I found myself in romance particularly, I think I started reading romance quite early at the Mills & Boons.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:26 / #: Same.
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:27 / #: Us too.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:29 / #: So do you remember who those authors were, the books that really brought you to the genre?
Nalini Singh 00:04:35 / #: Yeah, yeah. I went to see my aunt at one point, and she was a huge Mills & Boon reader, and she gave me this whole bag of books that I literally brought back on the plane. And I had people like Betty Neal's and is it Anne Mather?
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:54 / #: Ann Mather, sure.
Nalini Singh 00:04:54 / #: Emma Darcy, Miranda Lee, Robin Donnells-
Sarah MacLean 00:05:00 / #: The classics.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:01 / #: Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:05:02 / #: Yeah. The classics. I grew up on those and there was this one book that really made an impact. And I think she only ever wrote six romances, Nerina Hilliard.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:12 / #: Oh, I know that name.
Nalini Singh 00:05:15 / #: Yeah, the Time Is Short. That's the title. And I was obsessed with this book, and it's one of the old school Mills & Boons that were quite thick, quite big books. They weren't the shorter categories now. And it's classic, classic romance. She's dying of this brain tumor. And then she goes to this island and she's falling in love with this guy who's this billionaire kind of thing. I need to reread that because I've still got the copy still. Still got my old copy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:44 / #: I have also bought the first romances I ever read from the bag in my grandma's basement. And listen, they're still bangers. They're still so good.
Nalini Singh 00:05:53 / #: They're so good.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:54 / #: So she miraculously survives the tumor?
Nalini Singh 00:05:57 / #: I think there's an emergency surgery at one point, and I think the surgeon had a traumatic pass, so it was also his... Because it's a bigger book, so you could have some flux and all of that. But yeah, I just fell in love with those books. And I think it was the emotions that looking back, when I was younger, I obviously didn't analyze them in that way. I was just reading for the joy of it. But I think that the emotional impact of those books really, really struck me hard. And that was my gateway into romance. But then I was also reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and a lot of those books actually have a thread of romance. And I was realizing that I wanted more romance in my science fiction and fantasy and more world building fantasy stuff in my romance. So that's how I got into Paranormal Romance. I just squashed together everything I loved. And I remember finding the first paranormal romance as I read, and I was like, "Wow, it's a thing. It's a thing."
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:11 / #: So what was that for you? Because I feel like we talk a lot about 2005 and 2006, there's this huge explosion, but there definitely were vampires before, right?
Nalini Singh 00:07:23 / #: Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:24 / #: So what were the things that you were reading before you started writing Psy-Changelings?
Nalini Singh 00:07:30 / #: Oh, they were actually published before then. So I think some of the authors I was reading was like Christine Feehan, her Dark series was probably one of the first and Sherrilyn Kenyon, those are the two big names that were ahead of the curve. But even more ahead of the curve was Jane Ann Krentz, who under Jane Castle. And even under her Krentz name, I think she wrote-
Sarah MacLean 00:08:01 / #: Sweet Starfire.
Nalini Singh 00:08:03 / #: Yes, Sweet Starfire, Crystal Flame, all of those books. I am an obsessed fan-girl of her just so you know.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:10 / #: So are we.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:10 / #: We had her on-
Sarah MacLean 00:08:14 / #: If you haven't listened to the Jane Ann Krentz episode of Fated Mates go immediately to do that. It will change your entire life.
Nalini Singh 00:08:21 / #: Oh my gosh.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:21 / #: It's so good. Yeah, I think about it all the time.
Nalini Singh 00:08:26 / #: She's such a good speaker. I haven't got to that episode yet, so now, I'm just going to fast-forward through everything and get to it. But yeah, she was doing stuff I think, before almost anyone else. And I have spoken to her and I have listened to her speak and she's like, "Oh yeah, I almost killed my career doing that because nobody was ready for it."
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:48 / #: Well, and that's it too. It's like if you're before the wave, it's easy to just go under as opposed to writing it into claim and a fame.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:58 / #: So can we talk about that wave? Because it feels like it was a huge crashing wave in the early aughts. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how it felt at the time. Was it clear that it was just paranormal was everywhere or coming everywhere?
Nalini Singh 00:09:20 / #: Yeah. There was definitely a lot of authors coming up with paranormal. The funny thing is most people don't realize, but I came in on the end and I remember my editor, so my editor, Cindy Hwang, who I've had for well, 18 years now, I think, something like that. She said they were actually not buying any more paranormals when my book ended up on her desk.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:50 / #: Oh, interesting.
Nalini Singh 00:09:52 / #: Yeah. But she loved Life Dissensations so much she actually went to the publisher and said, "I know we're not buying paranormals, but I think we should buy this one." So I came in when they said paranormal was actually on the down trend.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:08 / #: Interesting.
Nalini Singh 00:10:08 / #: And I think I do believe the reports of its demise were too soon. Too early.
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:14 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:16 / #: Yeah. It didn't feel like it ended that already.
Nalini Singh 00:10:17 / #: It didn't. But yeah, so that was an interesting time because there are a lot of big paranormal names already. The big series were already out there. And then, so I came along and yeah, so it was really good. I found an editor that got me and here we are. But it really was, I think, the heyday of paranormal as a subgenre, because I remember you both probably do as well, on Smart Bitches, Trashy books. They did the Save the Contemporary campaign.
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:52 / #: Save the Contemporary.
Nalini Singh 00:10:53 / #: Yeah. Because-
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:54 / #: Doesn't that seem wild now?
Nalini Singh 00:10:57 / #: I know. And now, contemporary is everywhere, but back then, it was historical and paranormal were really ascendant and you didn't really have very many contemporaries taking the spotlight. And I think it's flipped now. Contemporaries are just rolling the roast and the other subgenres are at the back of it a bit. But I think if you've been around long enough in the industry, you see the cycles. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:24 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:26 / #: There are huge boom and bust cycles. I feel like whatever romance gods there are also ruled like the stock market and the Rockefeller's Bank account, like boom and bust. That's all we know.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:39 / #: Well wait-
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:40 / #: No nothing in the middle.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:41 / #: Before we go much further, I want to name though, that your first book was not Slave to Sensation.
Nalini Singh 00:11:47 / #: No, no.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:48 / #: So could you take us back a little bit and talk to us about the very beginning? Why did you start writing? What were you writing? How did you become a published author?
Nalini Singh 00:12:02 / #: Okay. So like I said, obsessed with romances, obsessed with writing. And I decided quite early that I wanted to write a novel. And funnily enough, one of the first things I wrote was looking back as a science fiction romance. It's like [inaudible 00:12:20 / #]. It's like about a prince with lasers coming out of his eyes and he can't fall in love because there's lasers killing everybody.
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:28 / #: Perfect.
Nalini Singh 00:12:29 / #: I was quite young, okay?
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:30 / #: No, this is perfect.
Nalini Singh 00:12:34 / #: But part of it was the reason... So I started in category romance, and one of the reasons I started, well, there's multiple reasons. One is that I think for world building, I needed to learn all the stuff and I didn't feel... I was still doing it, but I just never had that sweet spot where I felt like I created something different and unique and that everything felt shallow at that stage that I was building. But I had the romance down. I felt like I had the romance down at least. And back then, think back to whatever the opportunities were in, say the US, North America for publishing, we have to say this is pre indie publishing, pre eBooks even.
00:13:27 / #: Whatever the options were, you have to narrow that down again and again and again by the time you get to New Zealand because very few publishers were taking submissions from outside, either the US or the UK, and even books had to be set in America quite often. Or if you're going for the UK publishers, they had to be set in London. And I hadn't traveled anywhere at that point. I was a high school kid and one of the only publishers that was accepting worldwide submissions and where publishing books at worldwide was Harlequin, Mills & Boon. And then later, Silhouette became part of that too.
00:14:14 / #: So for me, thinking of how am I actually going to get published, it made a lot of sense to start with the contemporary side of things and things start by submitting to Harlequin or Silhouette. And I did my first submission in high school, okay?
Sarah MacLean 00:14:34 / #: Amazing.
Nalini Singh 00:14:35 / #: I was so proud. It was a terrible book, but I'm so proud. I wrote a whole book and it was called-
Sarah MacLean 00:14:41 / #: Yeah, that's amazing.
Nalini Singh 00:14:44 / #: The heroine had a broken leg and the title was, and A Broken Heart too. I still have that book, you guys. I made my best friend at high school read it and she was like, "I guess it's good." She wasn't a romance reader at all.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:08 / #: Wait, so what happened? Now I need to know. So you submitted?
Nalini Singh 00:15:13 / #: Oh my God, I should have pulled out.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:14 / #: Did you get a letter back? Did you get letters back?
Nalini Singh 00:15:18 / #: I got not a letter. It's like a, what you call it? Compliment slip.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:23 / #: Yeah, like a little slip.
Nalini Singh 00:15:23 / #: Basically said, no, we don't want it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:23 / #: We received mail from you. That's all we're willing to say.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:30 / #: No of those slips are legendary. Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:15:33 / #: I know. I still have it.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:36 / #: Oh my gosh. But Baby Nalini did a thing. That's amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:40 / #: Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:15:40 / #: I did. And I'm so proud because I knew nobody in the industry. I knew less than nobody. I actually called up the distributor for Mills & Boon in New Zealand and said, "Oh, how can I submit to them?" And they were so nice because Harlequin has those, I don't know if they still do, they had these forms that they had the information on how you could submit. And the distributors like, "Oh, we've got one of these, shall I send it to you?" This is New Zealand guys. They're so nice.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:09 / #: Amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:09 / #: That's amazing.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:13 / #: You know, Nalini, somebody else we talked to had this story.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:16 / #: It was Mary Balogh. She sent it to the warehouse and somebody read it and passed it on.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:21 / #: Forwarded it on. Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:16:23 / #: Yeah. You have to be a self-starter in this industry. And I think back then, that was how you did it. You had to get in front of somebody, and if you didn't know anything, you just rang around and until you found some information.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:38 / #: So at this point, because now there's a very robust community in New Zealand, a romance writing community in New Zealand. But at the time, at least you didn't know about it.
Nalini Singh 00:16:48 / #: I didn't know it. So I'd actually submitted, I would say probably three or four manuscripts, or maybe three. By the time I saw this little article in the local newspaper about the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference. And I think at that time, maybe it was maybe the third or fourth conference, so, I hadn't been around super long, and I was like, "Wow." It's the first time I heard of other people in New Zealand trying to do this, and I knew that Robin Donald and Susan Napier and Daphne Claire wrote for Harlequin. So I knew there were authors in New Zealand who did it, but the idea of actually meeting any of them was just completely... They were celebrities and how was I going to meet them, this kid from the suburbs kind of thing.
00:17:41 / #: And so my mom actually paid for me to go to the conference as my birthday present. So she's always been so supportive. She had to sit there. I was sitting in the kitchen reading the prints with the lasers coming out to her. She's like, "Oh yeah, that's really good." And she's cooking dinner.
Sarah MacLean 00:18:00 / #: Oh, I love that.
Nalini Singh 00:18:04 / #: Yeah. So that was the time I actually met a group of writers, basically any writers. Before then, my only access to writers was probably literary fiction writers that came to school to give talks and stuff. And I still remember walking into that room and it was a very small conference back then, I would say probably less than 50 people. And so it was, we were all in one room and just chatting. And they had speakers and they had actual editors from Mills & Boon because they had offices down here, and they would come and wow, it blew my mind. I learned a lot from RWNZ and it's a really nice community of people and it's very small. It's not associated with any other bigger group, so RWNZ is its own entity. And it's always kept, I think it's heart very well.
00:19:05 / #: And I think when you have a smaller group, it tends to be like that. You tend to stick together more because I think even now, the entire membership is something like 300 people. So it's tiny, just super supportive and so much knowledge. And that's where I learned to actually do proper submissions and stuff. So all this time, I'd just been sending them manuscripts, single-spaced because it cost less money to [inaudible 00:19:32 / #].
00:19:34 / #: Yeah. So that's when I really started to do some crafts, so now, I've learned some crafts. But a lot of my learning, I would say, came from just obsessively writing because I just did it over and over and over again. And then I started submitting and then I actually got picked up out of the slush pile in New York, and I didn't sell the first I think, book that got picked up by the slush pile, but the editor said, "Send it to me directly next time." So I did the next book. And I wasn't even writing three chapters in a synopsis. I was writing four books because at this point, it's book 10. And she asked for revisions and I did the revisions and yeah, that was the book that sold.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:23 / #: Who was that? Do you remember?
Nalini Singh 00:20:26 / #: Yeah, Diane Deitz at Silhouette. She's not an editor anymore. She was my editor for I think, two or three books. But I'll always remember her because she was the one who bought my very, very first book. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:41 / #: And so how old were you when that happened?
Nalini Singh 00:20:48 / #: I got the call for the sale the day before my 25th birthday.
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:54 / #: Wow, that's amazing.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:56 / #: And you'd written 10 books already.
Nalini Singh 00:20:58 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:58 / #: Oh my gosh, what a hustle.
Nalini Singh 00:21:03 / #: I just wanted to do it, the passion of it. That's what I wanted to do. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:10 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is brought to you by Andrea Janell, the author of No Doubts, the fifth book in the Willow Creek series. So as we know, Willow Creek is a nice little small town and Alaric, who is a driven astrophysicist, who has twin daughters who need a chance to reconnect with their aunt, also needs a little bit of time to finish his book, which-
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:38 / #: He probably needs a quiet small town.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:40 / #: Listen, very relatable. What he does not have time for is shenanigans, certainly not age gap, grumpy sunshine shenanigans with Farrah, the adorable niece of the owner of this bed and breakfast that he's in. Farrah's whole life has been turned upside down, very topsy-turvy since the pandemic. And she is back in Willow Creek to just have a moment of peace. But as we know, there is no peace in the age gap, grumpy, sunshine, romance.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:18 / #: No, he can't deal with her sunshine, that's Sarah. He's so grumpy.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:21 / #: He cannot deal with the sunshine she is providing turn down service of all kinds, I think. And listen, if you love a bed and breakfast, a grumpy astrophysicist hero and a heroine who just wants to give him a little love, this is for you.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:40 / #: Well, and we've also had readers who are interested in single parents and widowers. So this really hits a lot of the things that sometimes people like in a hero. So you can get No Doubts in print or ebook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thank you to Andrea Janell for sponsoring this week's episode.
00:23:01 / #: So when you then really transition from category to paranormal, did you have a sense that you were really, I don't know, it just became such a massive success, the whole Psy-Changeling series? Or did you really feel like it was, like you said earlier you were too late for it. When did you realize that maybe they weren't quite right about paranormal being over?
Nalini Singh 00:23:30 / #: I think when I started to actually, when I became full-time as a writer, because that took several years as well. And also, because I'm super-conservative, even though I quit my day job after selling my first book, people don't do this. I was young and I was like, "You know what? If I'm probably going to quit my day job at any point, it might as well be now, during my eating noodles every night if I have to." I kept doing part-time work for a long time because I really was like, I need to be in a position where I can support myself. Because writing income is very erratic. It's not like a job where you get paid weekly or bi-weekly.
00:24:19 / #: Yeah, I think when I actually went full time, I was like, okay, yeah, this is happening. These books have got legs and yeah. Maybe. Yeah. And I think also, I think it was probably around the same time that the first book actually, so the first book to hit the big bestseller list was I think the fourth book in the Psy-Changeling series. So Mine to Possess hit the extended New York Times bestseller list. And yeah, it really felt like, okay, because prior to that, I was very aware that series don't always get room to spread, that readers don't get interested in them, or for whatever reason, it doesn't strike a chord. And then that's it. Back then, there was no way to finish them. You stopped and you started writing something else. And so it felt like, wow, this is actually picking up readers as it goes along, which is a really nice feeling when you're starting something completely new. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:25:38 / #: So you started the Archangel series. So at some point, you had two paranormal series going. You're a very prolific writer, you produce. So was that something you just had a urge to write, another series in another world? Or were you trying to branch out? What was your thinking about starting a second new series when we already know that series can be a little dicey.
Nalini Singh 00:26:09 / #: Yeah. So you know how I said I wrote obsessively all through school and stuff? So I wrote through uni and I went to law school as well. So I wrote through that. I wrote through being a junior lawyer. So by the time I got to be a full-time writer, I was like, "I have so much time. I have so much time." Because I was so used to writing in really concentrated chunks. I would have 45 minutes maybe, if I was lucky in a day, and I would just write. And so once I got over the, I don't know, if you find this, Sarah, but when I went full time at first I was like, I have so much time. It takes a while to sit.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:49 / #: Yeah, yeah. You waste so much time. I think when you-
Nalini Singh 00:26:52 / #: So much time. Because you don't realize. Yeah. But once I settled down, I realized my writing pace and the way I wrote was such that I had a lot of room to do something else. And I said to my agent, I've already got this one series and it's quite a complex series, and I knew what I wanted to do with it. And I knew the complexity was going to grow. And I thought, I'm going to write some standalones in between, so I'll write standalone stuff, which will be easier on my brain and it'll refresh me between the Psy-Changeling books. And what I did not realize is, I write series-
Jennifer Prokop 00:27:40 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:27:41 / #: Is that you can't stop world building.
Nalini Singh 00:27:43 / #: Yeah. So especially in paranormal or urban fantasy spaces, I wrote Angel's Blood and I kept telling myself it was a standalone. And so now, a lot of people look back and say, "Oh, you put the seven in place and they were all going to have books." No, they weren't. They were just going to exist in this one book was, that was the plan.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:06 / #: That's against the rules of romance.
Nalini Singh 00:28:07 / #: It's quite funny. Everybody was like, "You know you're writing a series?" I'm like, "No, it's one book." But, it was an accidental series, that one. It was just by the time I got to the end, I was like, okay, well, I can't stop now. The world was too big and there was too much I wanted to do with it.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:30 / #: Did you have a group of, because I'm fascinated by writing on the other side of the world right, right now, we're however many hours apart, you're in tomorrow as we talk. Did you have a community of other writers in New Zealand who you were connecting with or were you connecting with the other paranormal authors around the world? What was your community like during all of this?
Nalini Singh 00:28:59 / #: So at first, I had my local group, they're amazing. And you have to remember, the online spaces just didn't really exist the way they do now. So I think there were a few message boards and stuff, but I just wasn't on them. I just wasn't aware of them. I think at that time, you were really online if you were a bit more techy, if you had the knowledge to get into those spaces. So I was very local and I had such an amazing group of people here. I am still friends with them to this day. We still get together regularly.
00:29:38 / #: My friend, Yvonne Lindsay, she wrote tons of books for Desire and she's writing thrillers now under EV Lind. She was one of my first friends. And then Karina Bliss, she wrote the Rock Star books. Louisa George, Tessa Radly, there's so many names. My friend Shah, who is more into marketing side of things. My friend Pera, these are people who have been in my life for 20 years and counting. And it was just such a nice group of people and we supported each other and on the next level up, so these were people I grew with. We all started on the ground floor, we're submitting, we're writing stuff, we're trying things out, we're sharing information.
00:30:25 / #: But on the next level up, we had people like Robin Donald, Daphne Claire, who were really, really generous with their time and just really helped support younger writers coming up. They used to run a romance writing course up north, and they actually invited me up there at one point and they were just so encouraging and telling me, "Yeah, you can do this. This is what maybe you need to do with your work to take it to the next level." So they were brilliant. And then we had the writers from Australia who came over and the conference and stuff like Helen Bianchin and Emma Darcy, just so much knowledge in those heads.
00:31:18 / #: And on the other side of things, there's a bookseller here, Barbara Clendon, she used to run Barbara's books and she's retired from that now. But she was just a wealth of information because she was a small Indie bookseller and she used to bring in books from the US like books we would get nowhere else in the major bookstores because you know the major bookstores just had general spread of books. She was the one who had Christine Feehan and then Sherrilyn Kenyon and JD Robb. And she literally put JD Robb in my hand and said, "You're going to like this book."
00:32:00 / #: I have now read every single J.D Robb ever created. So she was right, but she's still a friend of mine. And just the information that she would share with us, because she kept us up to date with what was actually happening in the industry. She used to actually give little talks and say, "This is what's selling, and this is the new books coming out." And see, I had a really, really lovely community here, and I think I really started to build connections overseas after I attended my very first conference in the US, which was I think in 2006. Yeah, 2006. I was meeting people face to face. And prior to that, oh, I know the Harlequin boards, there were the Harlequin boards. That's where I met people before the conference.
Sarah MacLean 00:32:57 / #: These boards, I was never on those boards, but they were legend. People talk about those boards. They were incredible.
Nalini Singh 00:33:06 / #: I think they were one of the biggest spaces for romance readers and writers to interact. And I made a lot of friends on there that I met for the first time at that conference. And then from there, I felt like I was online a bit more. And so I started to make connections with people in my subgenre because there wasn't really anybody writing that here. So to make those connections, I had to go online and it helped that to Berkeley, my publisher, published a lot of people who wrote Paranormal, and so I was making friends. I got along really well with Meljean Brooke.
00:33:49 / #: And then, yeah, the names are just going [inaudible 00:33:56 / #] on my head, like I said, but there were so many people and we used to get together and do promotion things together and all organized online. So the community has grown now, I think considerably because I've been around a long time and I've met a lot of people, but also, I've met people just online. There's people I've never met in real life, but because we've been friends for so long online, it feels like it's a friendship just as deep. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:30 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of microdose gummies.
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Jennifer Prokop 00:35:41 / #: Bronchitis forever.
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00:36:16 / #: So you mentioned readers earlier, so can you talk to us a little bit about your reader community? Is there a moment you can share about the personal or emotional impact that your books have had on readers?
Nalini Singh 00:36:33 / #: Yeah. I remember getting my very first email. That was pretty amazing. It was a fan mail, and it was from Nigeria. The first person ever to write to me was from Nigeria. So apparently, it was a huge romance reading community over there, and I actually got letters from there as well. But yeah, one thing that happened after Slave to Sensation, which I guess I wasn't ready for because I hadn't realized what I'd done, so this sounds weird, but I started getting letters saying, "Oh my God, it's so nice to see a person of color as the heroine." And okay, I am a person of color. And I had never realized that all these paranormals I'd read had no people of color as the heroine, the main protagonist. And so I was like, whoa. And then I went back and I looked through all these books and I was like, wow. Yeah.
00:37:42 / #: And so I felt like I did something there that I was giving something to these readers that hadn't existed before. And so that was one thing that happened that really struck me, and it struck with me to this day getting those messages because they just started coming organically. And then I've heard some really heartbreaking letters from readers over the years who've read something at a time when they just needed to read and escape. And that's why I say when someone says romance is escapism, and I say, "What's wrong with that?" Sometimes you need to escape in a really bad situation. And I've cried, some of these letters are so heart-breaking. Actually ended up becoming friends with a lady who wrote to me and said she was going through chemo, and she really wanted to know the end of this particular thing. And she wasn't sure it was going to be out by the time because she was in a bad situation.
00:38:56 / #: And so I actually told her what the... I'm going to cry, but she did beat it. And then we stayed in touch for a long time, and then one day, she didn't reply anymore. And I still think about that, and I think that in the end that she did pass away. But it's these moments that you build connections with people that maybe you will never meet and having an impact on their life, whether big or small.
00:39:33 / #: There's one letter I remember where someone wrote to me, and they just had a bad day. They just had a bad day. Someone yelled at them at work, they got splashed by the bus while they're walking home. They were completely wet. And they came home and there was bills on the floor in the litter box, and they were just crying. And then they saw their book had come, and then they just decided, you know what? They dried off. They opened the book, they made a cup of tea, and they read. And they just found a little piece of happiness. And I think that's just as important. Just those moments we give readers. So I never take it for granted. I think it's such a beautiful connection we can make. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:18 / #: Well, and you do such powerful reader service. You're so connected to readers. I'm a subscriber to your newsletter. I see how much work you put into your newsletters. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about all of that craft that you do, the writing that you do that is for readers without any... They don't have to buy it, you just provide it to them. And I think that's really special and very unique. I don't think there are that many writers who do that kind of work for readers.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:57 / #: And for people who don't know, you have so many short stories, for example, in the Psy-Changeling world, there's all these on ramps that are, it's not just the novels. There's so much extra stuff, and it really is delightful as a reader to feel that there's just more out there.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:15 / #: Well, and it feels like a gift every time an email comes through.
Nalini Singh 00:41:20 / #: So thank you for that. Yeah, it started because I was writing stuff just to explore characters and things, I would just write... Because some of them are vignettes. They're not full short stories, so you have to know the characters to appreciate. And then some of them are full short stories with the beginning and middle and the end. And I remember, because I'm a reader, I am a reader at heart. So it's like, what would I like to get as a reader? And I was like, "I want to know more about my favorite characters." I'm the person who's making up the story in my head after the final page of the book because I want to know what the next bit of the story is. And so I actually asked my readers, I said, "Do you want the stuff?" And they're like, "Of course we want this. What are you talking about?"
Sarah MacLean 00:42:13 / #: Yes, we want the stuff.
Nalini Singh 00:42:16 / #: So that's how it started. And I still do it for the fun of it. I write these at night usually, or just randomly, I'm sitting in an airport, I write it. Because these characters live and breathe in my head, particularly in the series, because I've lived with them so long. They have their own personalities, they have their own quirks, and the timeline of their story continues past the books. And so in the newsletter, it's such a nice way to be able to share that with readers. And yeah, it's just been very organic. And I always think, in my newsletters, what do I like getting from other writers whose newsletters I subscribe to? What makes me happy? What makes me want to open... Because I've always thought of my newsletter as a connection with my readers, so I don't want them to see it and they think, oh, another newsletter, it's just really silly, because we're all subscribed to so many things these days.
00:43:22 / #: So I want it to be something that they actually want to open, that they want to read, and that actually gives them a little bit of happiness in the day. And I always find it so cool when people email me and say, "Oh, I saved it to read with my cup of tea in the afternoon," kind of thing. And I thought, that's so cool. That's what I want. And I used to do it completely on my own. I have an assistant now, so she helps with putting links and all of that, doing the formatting and stuff. So that's really helpful. But the writing is still me because I think it's really important that I'm the one that's speaking to my readers with their newsletter because it is a one-on-one connection with each reader. And I have fun with it.
00:44:04 / #: And I think if somebody else was going to think about doing stuff like this, you have to have fun with it. You have to enjoy it as a writer. And that's what comes through. I write these fun little stories about the bear cubs getting covered in flour because they decided to make a cake in the middle of the night, and that cracks me up. I'm laughing along as I'm writing, and so it doesn't feel like work. It's just like I'm just having a bit of fun.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:35 / #: It's just joy.
Nalini Singh 00:44:36 / #: Yeah, it's just joy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:37 / #: So I have two very good friends named Kelly, and one of them is a huge Psy-Changeling reader. And I was like, "Okay, Kelly, what do you want me to ask Nalini?" And she said, "Is Alice Eldridge ever going to get a story, a vignette? An anything?" And I was like, "I'll ask her." Let's see what she says.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:57 / #: This is the first time for a Trailblazer interview where we've-
Jennifer Prokop 00:45:00 / #: Yes, I know. I was like, I have a very personal question from a friend of mine. Alice Eldridge, what's going to happen?
Nalini Singh 00:45:06 / #: So Alice is an interesting character because even though we have known her for a long time in the book world, the timeline hasn't actually moved very fast. The Psy-Changeling series started in 2079 and we're in 2083 now. And so Alice hasn't had a lot of time to adapt to what's happened. So I've never forgotten her. I never forget any of these people. But with the Psy-Changeling series, there is a very strong overarching story structure. And so it's always like, who is important to this part of that story structure? So sometimes, it's like, well, I can't actually get a character in just because I want to see them, right? Yeah. So the answer is, I haven't forgotten her. And it is possible. It is possible something will happen, but she's not growing really old or anything out there.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:15 / #: I have a structure question for you. I wonder, sometimes you talk to authors, especially authors who do such intense world building in paranormal or urban fantasy, and the series is complete in their head. They maybe haven't gotten to the end, but they know what the end game is. They know how many books there are, they know what the plan is. But Psy-Changeling, there's this intense world building. But it sounds like what you're really saying is you don't have an end in mind. Is it expansive in that way? Or do you have a, eventually we're going to get to this place, idea?
Nalini Singh 00:47:00 / #: So I'm a little bit in between. So basically I think it's really important when you start a series to navigate because it stops the tangential meandering off into-
Sarah MacLean 00:47:11 / #: These extra-
Nalini Singh 00:47:12 / #: La La Land. Yeah. So if you look at the first series of the Psy-Changeling series, book one to book 15, it is a very specific, can I just spoiler things? I'm just going to spoiler.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:24 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:24 / #: Yes, that's fine. Yeah.
Nalini Singh 00:47:26 / #: So we begin with silence and by book 15, silence has fallen. So that was the main arc of that first season. That's what I wanted to do. And originally, I thought that would be where the series ended because we have the beginning and we have the ending. And I was really satisfied with the story I told, but then I realized when we got to that point that, what now? I messed everything up for these people.
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:01 / #: [inaudible 00:47:59 / #]. Right?
Nalini Singh 00:48:01 / #: So the problems are still there. So the next season began very naturally from that point, which is okay, we are at that point where silence has fallen, but the silence is not in a great place. They still have the issues that led them to choose silences, choose this life without emotion. And so what were they going to do now? And then I actually had to sit down and think about what I want to do in season two. So season two also is going towards a particular point. So I'm always leading readers towards a particular point. The one thing I don't know is how many books it'll take to get there, because that part, I allow to just happen naturally. It could take 10 books to get to the end of season two, it could take eight books. I don't know. It could take another 15.
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:52 / #: I love that you talk about them as seasons. It feels right.
Nalini Singh 00:48:58 / #: Yeah, because I learned this from watching television because if you look at a really well-written series of television, you'll see the arc, it's complete. And you have that satisfaction even though you might be going into season two with a different arc. And so a really good example of this, it's an old series, is Heroes. The first season of Heroes is really, well-written it. It's structured, so you can see where it's leading. And then you see the series where they start out with a really good concept, but they actually haven't thought of the ending.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:28 / #: And it's messy.
Nalini Singh 00:49:30 / #: And then you don't get... It's messy. So I didn't want the mess. And so always, I consciously... I'm not a plotter as such book by book, but I plot that series arc. I know where I'm taking my readers. I know where we're going to end up, and for me, that's enough. If I have that, it keeps everything else in order if I have that overarching storyline.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:55 / #: And when you say where you're going to end up, is that as clear for you in terms of the couple that that book is going to be? Do you think about it from the character perspective too like there is a big book that we'll be moving toward?
Nalini Singh 00:50:13 / #: Sometimes. Sometimes. And then every so often, I get a bit of a shock because it doesn't quite work out how I think.
Sarah MacLean 00:50:21 / #: Yeah, same.
Nalini Singh 00:50:23 / #: So I leave that open. That's why people say, oh, is so-and-so going to get a book? Maybe. We'll see.
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:29 / #: Yeah. With you.
Nalini Singh 00:50:32 / #: Yeah, because there is growth in the series as well. I am not a person who has mapped up my character arcs five books a ahead. So every so often, someone comes along and is like, I'm really interesting, or there's something unusual happens. And so I like that. I like having the flexibility, but again, because I know the overall arc, it doesn't matter so much. I can let my characters grow naturally and just go with it. Because if a character is growing towards the main story arc, they're the one who's going to end up with the book. And if a character is growing away from the main story arc, they'll still be there in the series, but they might not end up as a main protagonist.
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:25 / #: So you go from paranormal to a rock band and rugby players, and Rock Hard is probably one of my favorite books of all time. I've read that book so many times. So what made you want to step away and do a contemporary series in the middle of all that?
Nalini Singh 00:51:50 / #: I think it was, again, that thing of needing a change for my brain, because at that point, I was writing two paranormal series, so the Guild Hunter Series is a little bit more urban fantasy, and then I've got my paranormal paranormal series, and I was like, I really need something different. And I do like to challenge myself as well just to see if I can do stuff. And quite often, I would just write it, I'll write the book and then give it to my agent is a whole thing. I don't advertise it. I don't tell anyone I'm doing it because I think it's good to just do stuff as a writer for myself and without any pressure. And if it doesn't work, then it's fine. Only I know about it.
00:52:39 / #: Yeah. But the funny thing with Rock Addiction, which started this contemporary books, is I actually started writing that years ago, years before it was published, but I just wasn't in the right head-space to do it. I feel like, I don't know, it just didn't feel right. And then one day, I was going through my works in progress and I was like, oh, I remember this one. And that day, I had it. It just worked. And so I ran with it and it didn't feel different or unusual to me because I did start with category romance, which is contemporary romance in a short format. So I just was able to move into contemporary romance in a longer format, which I think suits me better. I was never a very good category writer. Honestly, I could not sell hardly... I wrote Slave to Sensation because I was just enraged, [inaudible 00:53:35 / #] because I could not sell into category because it's the square box, round whole thing. I just didn't-
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:42 / #: It was the wrong distance for you, right?
Nalini Singh 00:53:44 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:44 / #: Some people run a marathon, some people run a 10K.
Nalini Singh 00:53:49 / #: It was too long. I just like to write longer and stuff. Yeah, so, it just felt really natural to do contemporaries. And so the same with my thrillers that I write now, it's something different. So I have a bit of a break between the paranormals, which I love. I will always write speculative fiction in some way, I think, but it's really nice to do these other things as well. And I feel like I learn new writing techniques with each different thing I do.
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:25 / #: So what would you say are the hallmarks then, of a Nalini Singh book?
Nalini Singh 00:54:31 / #: So it took me a long time to figure this out. Some of my friends are like, oh yeah, this is my... Oh, they used a particular word. There's the fingerprint-
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:41 / #: Core story.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:42 / #: Core story.
Nalini Singh 00:54:42 / #: The core story, yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I don't know. It took me a long time and I realized it's the same thing I like to read is the same thing I write, which is I write families, so not just like blood related families. I write found families. I write friendships that are like family. I have the Arrow squad which is a lethal assassins, but they're all tightly bonded to each other. I have the brothers in the rugby series, [inaudible 00:55:18 / #]. I have the rock band and it's really, really rare for me to write books that are a couple in total isolation. I've realized I write community books, which is, there are links all over the place. People are connected. Probably one of the ones I've written where it is a very isolated story for the romance is Heart of Obsidian.
00:55:44 / #: Yeah. They are very much alone for a lot of their book, but the characters themselves are not alone. So Caleb, who is determined to walk alone and determined not to make any bonds, has somehow still managed to have two best friends.
Jennifer Prokop 00:55:59 / #: Him and his ravine.
Nalini Singh 00:56:01 / #: Him and his ravine. He just wants to be alone in there except for Zahara. And so I don't tend to write super isolated characters because I really love exploring all the bonds of relationships, the romance, of course, the love, but also, friendship, family, what does it mean? What does loyalty mean and what do people do for each other because of the love? Or not just even the positive emotions, but the negative ones as well. Because they're quite complex. People can make choices where you think that's a bad choice, but you can see why they made it. So I love all that stuff. I guess, how would you say it? All the rivers of the human heart. That's my core story is the community. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:03 / #: Well, to that end, what are the books that you hear the most from readers about? Is there a book that you just hear about all the time?
Nalini Singh 00:57:15 / #: Heart of Obsidian. Heart of Obsidian, yeah. It's from the Psy-Changeling series, and then from the Guild Hunter series, it's any of the Elena and Raphael books. Because I think with that series, it's unusual in the sense that it's a romance series, which is there together, but it's like an urban fantasy series, which is they keep coming back in the books. And so a lot of people, it's a long love story, and so people are excited to see them again, but of a single book that is probably Heart of Obsidian.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:53 / #: I believe it. I feel like it's so hard when you are looking forward to a book for books and then to have it be even better than you thought it would be. Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:02 / #: What a gift.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:03 / #: Yeah. Right? It's amazing. It's amazing. So Nalini, I know that this is an impossible question, right? Because we love all of our children equally, but is there a book that is really special to you for any reason? One that you're especially proud of or you had trouble leaving behind or whatever that means to you?
Nalini Singh 00:58:31 / #: So I think, okay, so I'm going to cheat and I'll say two because-
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:35 / #: Allowed. That's allowed.
Nalini Singh 00:58:37 / #: It's for very similar reasons. So Desert Warrior will always have a special place because it was my first published book. I have the poster on my wall, and I remember all the feelings of holding that book in my hand and feeling like, wow, I did it. This voice is out there in the world.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:58 / #: Well, especially since you really walked the road for a long time for that.
Nalini Singh 00:59:04 / #: Yeah. I did it the hard way. And then for the same reason, Slave to Sensation, because Slave to Sensation really catapulted my career into just a whole different level. But I just remember writing that book just compulsively. The story was just in my head, and most of my first drafts are terrible. Nobody sees my first drafts, but this book, a lot of the first draft is in the book, the published book, because it was like the story had been growing and growing and growing in my head all these years, and then it was ready and I just had to type it out. Literally, that's all I did. I lived, breathed that book, and yeah, it is a seminal book in my career, and it is the place where people really heard my name.
01:00:02 / #: When it came out, a lot of people actually said, this is a debut, because they had never heard of me even though I had six other books. So it just is a whole... Yeah, those two books are really pivot points in my life, in my career. So yeah, they'll always have a special place. And the original purple cover of Place to Sensation just still makes my heart thud, because I remember looking at that cover, and I was in Japan at the time I was working in Japan, and the cover came through and I was like, oh... I had a quote by Christine Feehan on it.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:46 / #: Oh, which is so special.
Jennifer Prokop 01:00:47 / #: Oh, yeah.
Nalini Singh 01:00:49 / #: I know, I almost died when she gave me a quote because it was like, she read my book. I was just overwhelmed. And yeah, so two very special books. But it's true. We love all our books. I think every book is the favorite. That's why-
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:10 / #: Yeah, but there are some that are more special. They do feel special. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being with us.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:21 / #: Yeah. This was a real joy. I'm so grateful.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:24 / #: We're so grateful to have you.
Nalini Singh 01:01:26 / #: This is really fun. You two are so easy.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:31 / #: Thank you for your gorgeous books, and thank you for leaving such an indelible mark on the genre.
Nalini Singh 01:01:37 / #: Thank you. I'm still going. We'll see what's next.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:40 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:40 / #: Keep going.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:41 / #: Oh, no, absolutely.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:41 / #: I think we are hungry for more, right? I open that newsletter every time it comes in, so, yeah. I'm here forever.
Nalini Singh 01:01:51 / #: Oh, yay. It makes me so happy.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:55 / #: She's great.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:56 / #: She's great. I really was... The story about sending off manuscripts when she was a teenager is amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:05 / #: What an amazing kid. She must have been. My God, when I was a teenager, I was no more prepared to do anything like that than I was to fly.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:12 / #: I could barely write my college essays, everybody. So clearly that was not...
Sarah MacLean 01:02:15 / #: She's writing book after book after book, first of all, and a Broken Heart too.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:24 / #: Honestly. Amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:24 / #: The Greatest.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:24 / #: The Greatest.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:26 / #: The Greatest.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:26 / #: We're going to all be scouring KU for the next couple months, seeing if it'll pop up.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:31 / #: Yeah. No, but what a great story. Every single one of these authors has such a unique story, but it was really interesting to me because you caught it too, as she was talking about how being in New Zealand, she called the warehouse in New Zealand because what else do you do? And I was like, I think Mary Balogh told that same story.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:54 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:56 / #: Mary Balogh also did not live in the United States, although I think at the time she lived in Saskatchewan. But it's just so interesting because you hear so many stories that is a real old-fashioned way of submitting a manuscript. Gone are the days when we wrapped up our paper and mailed it to God knows where in New York City.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:25 / #: The thing that's amazing about it too is, her first book was published in 2003. We are not talking about that long ago. So it really is, when you think about it, when you live through a revolution, it just seems like that's how it happened, and it's no big deal. But when you think about the sea change in publishing. Like she said, there was no self-publishing. You had to go through a traditional publisher. There were only two places that would even consider you if you weren't in the US or the UK. It's almost impossible for us to imagine that now.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:02 / #: No, absolutely. Because now, the world is so small, but she kept... There were so many moments that felt that way to me when she talked about finding a community, which of course, at the time, in the early aughts, there wasn't a hugely vibrant online community of romance people that authors could go to and say, "How do I do this thing?" There was no place to ask questions. There was no hub. These women really were flying without a net.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:32 / #: Yeah. The thing I kept thinking I should ask, and then she was just such an interesting speaker, I didn't really want to interrupt her necessarily in the things that she wanted to talk about, is, I do think one of the ways in which her books are singular is her ability to reboot a long series that is in progress. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:04:57 / #: Well, she talked a little bit about that too, with Psy-Changeling and the way she thinks about it as seasons.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:03 / #: Yes, right? Because many people have said you could start at Silver Silence, which is what I would assume would be the beginning of season two. And it's really interesting because I think that it's so smart for her to say, I took this vision from television seasons. Because if you are writing a long series, you have to provide those on ramps for people, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:05:27 / #: Well, there are movements. When we talked about IID in the first season of this podcast, we broke up the books in movements, and who knows whether or not Kresley Cole felt that those were the proper movements. But what I was getting at when I asked her could she speak a little more about characters and the way she thinks about prepping books or prepping a series for the long haul with characters. I think it's really interesting and it speaks to her obvious past with fantasy and sci-fi, that in her mind, it really is about the overarching world, that's whatever's happening outside of the characters themselves. Because you and I have talked about this so many times. We are obviously intimately familiar with a different paranormal series that is clearly moving toward a final book in the series that is a character book, not a plot.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:29 / #: Right, not a plot. Yeah, exactly.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:32 / #: So I think it's a really interesting difference in the structure of the way you craft a series. I felt like this when we talked about Crest by Ice.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:44 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:46 / #: The world building in Nalini Singh's books is just superior to most other paranormal romance series, I think. And that's not to diminish the world building of other series, but she's just superior.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:02 / #: Yeah. Well, and I loved when she talked about essentially, I was going to do a little standalone and then then, oops, there are seven of them. What are you doing lady?
Sarah MacLean 01:07:14 / #: You grew up reading romance novels, you know the rules.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:17 / #: You know how this works. Yeah. But I think the other thing that is also really interesting to me, and I think Nora Roberts is probably like this. I think Jane Anne Krentz is probably like this, is the people who are just, they're writing the books, but then there's all the other writing that they're doing. I think Christina of Christina Lauren is this, just writing all the time that writing is a reward. And I know for a lot of authors, writing really is work.
01:07:47 / #: And I think that the way that she has figured out a way to take those little vignettes and stories and just kernels of ideas and gift them to her readers is part of what makes, I think, it's just such a rich world. Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:06 / #: But don't you feel a little bit like this is particular to paranormal? You mentioned Christina, I think you mean Lauren from Christina and Lauren.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:16 / #: I do mean Lauren. Yes. Sorry. I do mean Lauren.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:18 / #: So setting aside Lauren, who is a special case, I feel like every time we talk to a paranormal author-
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:27 / #: They're just always... Christine Feehan, certainly.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:29 / #: The world is enormous and expansive. And I'm always thinking about them. I think about J.R Ward saying, "I'm the scribe. They just tell me the story." And it sounds wacky when you think about it, when you're talking to one of these authors at a time. But now that we have the joy of the longevity of the series of the Trailblazers, I'm starting to really think like, oh no, this is like-
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:03 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:04 / #: This is paranormal.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:07 / #: She mentioned Meljean Brook, who I have to say everybody, we talked about this when we did our Milla Vane episode, but Meljean Brooke is Milla Vane. And I want her to come on the podcast very badly so we can just grill her about Heart of Blood and Ashes. But also, that's another person who I think clearly is deeply invested in the world in a different way,
Sarah MacLean 01:09:31 / #: The world.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:32 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:33 / #: And that's not to say that historical authors or contemporary authors aren't invested in the world, but its is different field. Or am I wrong?
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:42 / #: No, I think that's a really interesting observation. I think that there's just people who... I just was really fascinated by it. I really liked hearing her talk about how much joy she gets out of playing around in the parts of the world that are not going to be a whole book. But that doesn't mean-
Sarah MacLean 01:10:00 / #: Just writing a [inaudible 01:10:02 / #] and putting it out there. And there is a joy in receiving those as a reader when you're like... And I can understand her. I really appreciated her saying like, "Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad you enjoy them." Because I certainly have written a number of times, just a little tiny thing that's like, here's a little thing that the characters are still doing. And I think, is this navel-gazey? Is this just me satisfying my own desire to return to this world? Do readers really want this? So I don't know, that was very relatable content.
Jennifer Prokop 01:10:36 / #: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing that is fascinating if you think about it is I don't think I'd put together the idea that the world is actually moving so slow. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:10:48 / #: Oh, I know. I didn't realize that either.
Jennifer Prokop 01:10:50 / #: And I thought, that's wild.
Sarah MacLean 01:10:53 / #: So she has to put a character on ice for a while.
Jennifer Prokop 01:10:54 / #: Yeah, they're not ready. And I thought that was also really fascinating because of course, we're thinking in terms of it's been 20, however many books and she's like, it's been three years, everybody calmed down. Calm down.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:08 / #: I enjoyed hearing her talk about craft. I enjoyed hearing her talk about fan service and readers and talk about somebody who just obviously cares about the way the books are received. And of course, when we asked our question about how readers engage with the books, I loved that she was surprised too by this thing that I think we all, many of us were surprised by in the early aughts.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:45 / #: I'm always really interested in the question about how readers respond in general. And we were looking at this before we started recording, right? Hunger Like No Other was the beginning of 2006. Slave to Sensation was the end of 2006. So it's like we saw the paranormal boom, just going and going.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:08 / #: The idea that by the end of 2006, Berkeley was like, "We're done with paranormal," and this was Kresley, J.R Ward, Nalini, there were so many huge series.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:27 / #: And I'm sure they just thought that they were at capacity. How much of a market for this could there really be?
Sarah MacLean 01:12:36 / #: Well, and also, let's not forget, right? It's not quite the same as what's going on now in contemporary. Because when you acquire a paranormal series, you are acquiring a series. You're investing in however many of these books, obviously if it doesn't sell, you're not investing in that many. But the idea is this could become a thing. We could end up with two seasons, 20 books, however many things. Whereas right now, houses are buying one, maybe two books at a time.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:13 / #: Right. Right. Right. So I think that part is really interesting. But I also found myself really thinking about what she said about starting in contemporary to get the romance beats down, but that her true love was always going to be in creating these big worlds, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:13:29 / #: Yeah. Obviously.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:31 / #: I think that's obviously why I... And I think also though, I was really, look, when people talk about, she did not name names when she was talking about TV shows, that started with the great premise, but didn't have an ending in mind. But I always think of Lost. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:13:45 / #: Lost.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:45 / #: Exactly, I said it.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:46 / #: I was so mad.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:47 / #: Right? And I just think it's a big reason I don't trust TV anymore, are shows like that. And so I think that to know that you're in... You know when you're reading one of Nalini's books, that you are in good hands.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:00 / #: It's tight. She knows exactly what she's doing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:04 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:04 / #: Yeah. And when I feel like there is a... Obviously, I want every book to feel that way, but that is a required quality for a paranormal. You have to know that it's going to hang together. My friend Carrie Ryan, who is a YA paranormal author or Y fantasy, she always used to say, the world building is where everybody gets caught up because you think to yourself, how does the magic work? What are the rules? And with Nalini, these characters, these identities have so many rules. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:48 / #: Well, and also she was like, listen, I don't have just one idea. I've got two. And they're in the place at the same time.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:55 / #: Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:56 / #: And they've got this long history.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:58 / #: It's tremendous.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:59 / #: Right? The books are amazing. And it didn't surprise me at all to hear her say that people, Heart of Obsidian is the book that really hits for people.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:08 / #: Well, because everyone was waiting for it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:09 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:10 / #: That's the [inaudible 01:15:11 / #].
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:12 / #: Right. Right. But sometimes that book doesn't deliver. But I think when it does, that's when you have people forever who are like, I can't wait to get to this book. And then it's so good.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:24 / #: Yeah. Absolutely. What I love is she was... I didn't know. I've never met Nalini. I had no idea. She was so young. And now I'm like, oh, great. We have decades more of Obsidians to come.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:35 / #: Right? What a gift.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:36 / #: And I'm like right now thinking maybe I'll go reread that Rockstar series.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:40 / #: Oh God, I love those books.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:42 / #: I know.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:42 / #: I'm sorry, I had to ask about them. I really do.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:44 / #: No, of course. You asked about them. I wanted to know about them too. I'm particularly fond of the fact that you asked a reader fan.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:52 / #: I know. Sorry. Well, this is everybody-
Sarah MacLean 01:15:55 / #: I'm afraid Poor Kelly is getting upset.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:56 / #: My TFA friend, Kelly, I think she knew. I think she knew. She was like, I don't think anybody thinks it's really going to happen. But you know what? I wonder if her hearing the rationale-
Sarah MacLean 01:16:06 / #: She did give her a good reason.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:09 / #: It was a good reason. It was a really good reason.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:11 / #: It's not like me when people ask me and I'm like, "No."
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:14 / #: You're just like, "No."
Sarah MacLean 01:16:14 / #: I don't want to do it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:17 / #: She's like, it's just not ready yet. She's still in the oven.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:19 / #: Maybe. Well, listen, Nalini Singh is going to be writing for another 20 years, everyone.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:24 / #: So I think the thing about, like I said, I feel like there are authors who... She's just so good and every one of her books just sweeps you away, exactly. Right?
Sarah MacLean 01:16:37 / #: Yeah. And she seems to be able to do everything.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:40 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:41 / #: Right?
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:42 / #: Right. Romance, thrillers, paranormal.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:45 / #: It's wild. I think some of us, we're just conditioned to do it more, better, different. And I think Nalini is one of them. She's one of those people who is just... We are lucky to be living at a time when she is writing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:05 / #: Absolutely.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:06 / #: Nalini's next book for everyone, it out in November. It is called, There Should Have Been Eight. And it is a thriller. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:17 / #: I haven't read her thrillers, so I haven't-
Sarah MacLean 01:17:18 / #: I haven't either.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:19 / #: So this was going to be-
Sarah MacLean 01:17:19 / #: I'm going to go do that.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:21 / #: I bet they're terrific.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:22 / #: Yeah. This one's set on a remote estate in the New Zealand Alps. And there are seven friends together. And it sounds like maybe there has at some point, been a murder. I love it. I love it. I'm into it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:42 / #: Her books are real comfort reads for me. I've reread Cross by Ice, which we read. I've read a couple times. I've read My favorite, I think it's Rock Hard. I can't, titles, a couple times. I love that book. What a delight.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:56 / #: Yeah. And those rugby books are great. Very fun. For those of you looking for just a great sports romance, she can do it all.
Jennifer Prokop 01:18:06 / #: Well, we are lucky to have her.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:09 / #: We are. We are.
Jennifer Prokop 01:18:10 / #: A treasure.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:11 / #: So, thank you so much to Nalini again for making time for us today. It was a real treat to have her. I am Sarah McLean. I'm here with my friend Jen Prokop. We are together, Fated Mates, and you can find us online at fatedmates.net on Twitter, at FatedMates, on Instagram at FatedMatesPod. And if you super-duper love hanging out with us and you just wish we were more in your ear holes, head over to Patreon and join our Patreon where you have access to our private Discord, where tons of Magnificent Firebirds discuss new episodes weekly and everything else, hourly, minutely, secondly, and you can find information on that at fatedmates.net/patreon. Thanks so much everyone.
S06.05: Hot For Teacher with Special Guest Lauren Billings
Oh no! Jen has bronchitis or at least something with bronchitis vibes and her voice is barely with us, so Sarah went rogue and brought Lauren Billings, the Lauren half of Christina Lauren, with her! While Jen is taking this week off, Sarah & Lauren are taking this opportunity to talk about a topic that is deeply Not For Jen™️, Hot for Teacher!
We talk about Anne of Green Gables, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other teachers who just might have installed our buttons, and then we get to absolutely crushing TBR piles! Headphones in for this one — it is not for all markets, and you’ve been warned!
Jen will be back next week along with a very fun Trailblazer, and then we’ll be tackling our first read along of Season 6, Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome Lauren Billings, half of author duo Christina Lauren. Lauren and Christina have been guests on the podcast several times, including the forced proximity trope, trope death match, and most recently for the Twilight read along. Find Christina Lauren on Instagram.
Anne of Green Gables! Who knew! And yes, of course Buffy/Giles fic exists in multituteds on AO3. Enjoy, pervs.
Take Sarah's Start Your Romance Novel Today class for beginners on October 29th, virtually.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsored By
Ava Miles, author of The Paris Roommates,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
***
Take Sarah’s Start Your Romance Novel Today Class
October 29, 2023 at 1pm eastern, virtually.
More info (recording available if you cannot make it live) at
sarahmaclean.net/writing-romance
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S06.03: Excellent BIPOC Romance Novels for #23for23
We’re so excited for today’s episode—in which we topple TBRs worldwide in support of the #23for23 Challenge! Spearheaded by Adriana Herrera, Nikki Payne and Nisha Sharma, 23 for 23 encourages romance readers to read 23 books by BIPOC authors about BIPOC characters before the end of 2023.
Nikki Payne joins us for a bit to talk about the challenge and why it’s important, and to lay out some clear ways we can all help boost BIPOC books and authors….and then we get down to business, recommending a truly enormous number of books. Get your pencils ready, you’re going to want to take several notes.
Learn more about the #23for23Challenge and see the full list of participating authors at 23for23.net.
Our first read along of the season will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Contemporary Romance
Historical Romance
Young Adult Romance
Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Paranormal Romance
Sponsors
Pippa Grant, author of The Gossip and the Grump,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Diana Quincy, author of The Duke Gets Desperate
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books,
or your local independent bookstore
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
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S06.01: Trailblazer Jackie Collins
Season Six! How is this even possible!
Season One gave us a full lAD deep dive (if you’ve never read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, general existential malaise is a really good reason to start), and Season Two gave us The Books That Blooded Us, the books that made us the romance readers we are. Season Three was during a pandemic, and celebrated that thing we were all desperate for—joy. Season Four introduced the Trailblazer episodes, where we featured interviews with the people who have built the romance house over the last fifty years.
Season Five built on all of that, deep diving on books that are new and fabulous, old and transformative, and generally celebrating the vast and magnificent romance pool. Season six will do the same. We’ve got interstitials, trailblazers, read alongs and interviews planned, so head over to your favorite podcasting app and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute.
The season launches today with what we thing is an absolute banger—a trailblazer episode about Jackie Collins, legend, juggernaut, author and lady boss, who was gone too soon.
We’re so lucky to have had a chance to talk to Collins’s daughters, Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman, who were immensely generous with their time and storytelling, to talk about their mother’s life and work. We love this conversation, and are so grateful to Ms. Green and Ms. Lerman for their time.
Remember: Girls can do anything.
Our first read along of the season will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Jackie Collins died in 2015. You should watch the Netflix documentary Lady Boss for more about Jackie’s life, as well as her YouTube channel.
Chels wrote a great essay about the infamous interview between Barbara Cartland & Jackie Collins.
Authors and publishing professionals mentioned: Enid Blyton, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon. Collins's editor was Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Angelina M. Lopez, author of Full Moon Over Freedom,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, your local independent bookstore, or wherever you get your books
and
Max Monroe, author of Best Frenemies
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Pocket Books Book Shop
a queer, feminist, anti-racist indie bookshop
online and in Lancaster, PA
Shop online at pocketbooksshop.com
Jackie Collins 00:00:00 / #: It's only the people who have never read me, they'll say, "Oh, it's full of sex and lust, and it's just trash." When they read me and they haven't before, say somebody's come to interview me from a serious newspaper.
00:00:11 / #: They will go, "Well, I read the book and I wasn't looking forward to it. But really, it's so funny, it's witty and perceptive, and it's a good story, and I couldn't put it down."
00:00:20 / #: That kind of reaction is great. I don't care what they say about me, because I know that the people who are buying my books, understand what I do and enjoy what I do. To me, that means everything.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:31 / #: That was the voice of Jackie Collins. Juggernaut, is that how we describe her?
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:38 / #: Lady Boss.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:39 / #: Lady Boss and author of many terrific books, including Hollywood Wives, which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary with a brand-new edition.
00:00:51 / #: We were so lucky to be able to speak to Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman, Jackie's daughters, about their mom's legacy, about her books, about her writing, and about what it was like to live life with Jackie Collins.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:10 / #: This is Fated Mates. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and critic.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:14 / #: And I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:18 / #: One thing we'll be talking about today, along with Jackie's legacy as an author and her life as a writer, is the Netflix documentary, Lady Boss, which tells the story of Jackie's life. After she died, Tiffany and Rory and Tracy found their mom's extensive diaries, letters and everything.
00:01:43 / #: It's a really terrific viewing experience. If you want to pause and go watch that and come back or listen in on the conversation, I think you'll be really inspired to watch it after. Without further ado, here's our conversation with Tiffany and Rory.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:03 / #: Welcome, Rory Greene and Tiffany Lerman, Jackie Collins' daughters. We are so excited to have you with us on Fated Mates. Thanks for joining us.
Tiffany Lerman 00:02:11 / #: Oh, thank you, Sarah and Jennifer. We're very excited to be here.
Rory Green 00:02:15 / #: Yes, thank you for having us.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:17 / #: For our listeners, we really recommend that you watch the Netflix documentary about Jackie Collins called Lady Boss.
00:02:24 / #: Tiffany and Rory, can you tell us a little bit about before we start talking about your mom as a writer, how did that documentary come into being?
Tiffany Lerman 00:02:33 / #: Well, that's very interesting because she's been gone, gosh, almost eight years now, and it's been really hard for us. She left us with this incredible treasure trove of an archive.
00:02:47 / #: When Rory and I and our other sister, Tracy, were going through everything, she literally had kept every single piece of correspondence and just anything that she had received.
00:03:01 / #: It was this beautiful archive, and we all looked at each other and we just said, "A documentary needs to be made about her. There is so much life here, so much more that people don't know about her." It was so important for us to see if we could get this story made.
Rory Green 00:03:18 / #: This is Rory. One of the things that when the director came on for the documentary, she realized that there was a whole story that our mother, who was just naturally just a storyteller. That was her lifeline was telling stories, but that she'd never actually told her own story.
00:03:36 / #: I think that was also why the director was so inspired by the project, because she thought there's a much more complex story behind this woman than most people who knew of her or had heard of her would ever imagine. She really wanted to make a film that showed our mother as a dimensional person, and the extraordinary trajectory that got her to where she was.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:57 / #: Well, and I think that that's what's so fascinating about it. Obviously, we're a romance novel podcast, so many of the things that Jackie Collins was saying on tape in this documentary felt like things that we have heard before. We have been screaming for years as a genre. It felt like this wonderful experience of seeing somebody who just was such a huge legend, a huge force in publishing, saying it long before Jen and I have been saying it on the podcast.
00:04:34 / #: I wonder if we could start at the beginning with your mom? I know that you weren't there at the beginning, but I'm so happy to hear there was such a lush archive. One of the things that I really wish, and obviously this is because I'm a nerd and a writer, and I want to talk about books all the time. I wish there was a little more of is, could you paint a little picture of how books and your mother came to be? Because it feels like you don't tumble into being a writer of Jackie Collins' caliber.
Tiffany Lerman 00:05:06 / #: Yeah, that's true. Well, this is Tiffany. We knew that she loved books from a very early age. She read a lot when she was growing up. There's articles where she talks about that.
00:05:19 / #: But for us, the reason we knew that she loved reading so much, was that one of her favorite authors was an English author called Enid Blyton.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:27 / #: Of course.
Tiffany Lerman 00:05:28 / #: Yeah. One of her favorite books growing up that she read growing up, was The Magic Faraway Tree, and she read that to my sisters and I when we were growing up. We have these incredible memories of this specific book, The Magic Faraway Tree. We even read it to our children when they were growing up. I think it holds such importance in her life, because she loved the cast of characters that was part of this book.
00:05:58 / #: It goes into her writing with her cast of characters too, but there was always something happening that was always very exciting. They would go up into the top of the tree and they'd be in a different land. She used to read it to us, she used to do all the character voices too. It was really special because it holds such importance for us. We knew it was very important for her too.
00:06:23 / #: Enid Blyton was definitely one of the authors who influenced her growing up, but then there were others. I know Rory, you can speak about that.
Rory Green 00:06:30 / #: Well, yes. What was interesting is that she was always so character focused, and she would say that the characters wrote her rather than she writing the characters. I think that, as Tiff said, in the Enid Blyton book, there was a different character on every branch. Our mother wrote 31 novels, and one of her expertise was weaving all these different characters together.
00:06:54 / #: She was also good at just painting this brushstroke, like one brushstroke, and you got exactly who she was talking about. I think we know that when she was growing up, she was fascinated, she loved those magical fantasy books, but she also loved crime fiction. One of her favorite books of all time was The Great Gatsby. She loved The Godfather by Mario Puzo, which really influenced her work, particularly when she wrote her epic novel, Chances.
00:07:19 / #: She was very interested in male authors. Particularly, Enid Blyton was a female author, but most of her favorite authors were male, because there weren't that many female authors for her to refer to, which was interesting. She also loved Harold Robbins and Sydney Sheldon, who were her contemporaries at the time.
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:38 / #: I remember those names. I didn't read your mom's books, I was a little too young in the '80s, you know what I mean? But I definitely was super aware of Jackie Collins' books.
00:07:48 / #: They were glamorous in a way that Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins. It felt like this trifecta of these are glamorous writers, writing about glamorous people doing glamorous things.
Rory Green 00:07:59 / #: Yeah, exactly. But what she'd say about Harold Robbins was that she loved his books and she loved the plot line and she loved the characters. She's like, "But the women were always in the kitchen." The women were not at the forefront.
00:08:11 / #: They were not the ones who were being bold and brave, and making the strides and calling the shots. I think that she was so driven to write in a different kind of way, to write essentially at that time how she felt a man could write. She wanted to give herself full permission.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:25 / #: I love this because I feel like you just named all those authors, and I feel like it's so not a surprise, because every one of those authors is such a plot. They're such a story, a storyteller. That's the word that we kept coming back to in the documentary. You've said it already, and those books are big, exciting, interesting stories and so it doesn't surprise me that she was drawn to them.
00:08:52 / #: I wonder if you could talk about the writing piece, because we're obviously fascinated by that process here. Also, it feels like she lived this big, glamorous life. She was a voyeur of sorts in this Hollywood world, this glamorous world. Clearly, was going to parties and meeting people and having this elaborate life, but we know the truth here, which is the books don't write themselves.
00:09:22 / #: What was a day like for her? When did she write and how was writing for her? What was the experience of writing for her? Did she talk a lot about that with you? Were you able to intuit it? I will say my daughter likes to say, "No one knows how hard it is to be the child of an author."
Rory Green 00:09:38 / #: I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:42 / #: If you'd like me to hook you up with her, to mentor her through this challenge.
Rory Green 00:09:47 / #: We'd be more than happy to.
Tiffany Lerman 00:09:47 / #: We can relate. We can relate on so many levels. In every house that we lived in, she always had her dedicated study and that was her workroom. If the study door was closed, you really couldn't or shouldn't go in, but it didn't stop us from going in. We would still always go in. But even from when we were very small, growing up in London, she had the study, but she was very disciplined because she was always there for us.
00:10:15 / #: She'd wake up, she'd make us breakfast, she'd take us to school, and then she would go home and she would write all day. She didn't usually break for lunch either. She would write all day and then she would get back in the car, pick us up from school, and then she was back on mom mode. Yeah, so she was very disciplined. Later on, when we were adults and not living in the house, she still had the beautiful study.
00:10:38 / #: This time it was a little bit bigger and more glamorous because she'd moved to Hollywood, and it was the same thing. If that door was closed, we knew that she was working, but sometimes we'd always go in. It was always fun because sometimes we'd go in and she'd be in the middle of a chapter or a middle of a sentence and she'd say, "Ah, perfect. Sit down. I need to read you this."
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:00 / #: Oh, I love it.
Tiffany Lerman 00:11:02 / #: If she could ever grab any of us, including the grandchildren too, she'd do it all. She'd say, "Sit down, I need to read you this." Then she would read an excerpt from the chapter that she was writing and she'd read in the character voices. I'm sure there's listeners who have listened to her books on tape.
00:11:20 / #: She would do her character voices really, really well. She'd really get into them. It's almost like it is like acting. We knew exactly what the character sounded like and it was very fun for us, because we'd get an idea of what she was working on, and she'd always love our input. What did you think?
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:40 / #: One of the things that was really striking about the documentary was her handwriting. They showed several times, it looked like she was writing it.
00:11:50 / #: Do you remember her writing in longhand or was she the type of person to keep notes places? Obviously, at some point she transitioned to more modern technology.
Rory Green 00:12:02 / #: No, she really never did. Jennifer, she never transitioned to more modern technology. She always wrote in her own handwriting. She had really beautiful script.
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:12 / #: She did.
Rory Green 00:12:13 / #: It's almost like for us, it's so evocative when we see our mother's handwriting, it's like hearing her voice because it was everywhere. Her handwriting was everywhere. She had certain notebooks that was only certain pens that she liked to use. She kept a little spiral notebook in her purse and her handbag. Whenever we went out, I remember going shopping for school uniforms or something.
00:12:35 / #: She'd be taking notes of dialogue of people that she'd be listening to while we're waiting to get our shoes fitted. She was always taking notes. Also, as you say, as a voyeur at parties, she was hiding in plain sight, right? She was but she was doing her research. She was always researching her characters. It was almost like method acting, as Tiff said.
00:12:58 / #: She did have a background in acting, but she brought that, I think, to her whole creative process. The other interesting thing about her space, we're so accustomed to that, to thinking about guys having a man cave, but our mother always had this dedicated space that was her working space. It was like her lady boss cave essentially. She always made sure that she had a space in the house, as Tiff said.
00:13:26 / #: What was so beautiful about it, was she had her desk and she had her chair. There was always a chair opposite her. As Tiff said, she'd welcome us in and we could sit and we could read. But when I remember my childhood, it's almost like what was special was that there was a chair on the other side of the desk, so that we could become part of that process alongside her. She was incredibly disciplined.
00:13:47 / #: She used to say she never got writer's block, but she did get getting to the desk block. Sometimes that was difficult. She marketed herself. She went through seasons. She always had her season of writing a book, would take about a year, maybe a year and a half. But then she had her publicity season and I think the film really delved into this, how she put on almost different personas for those different parts of her life and the different seasons in her life.
Tiffany Lerman 00:14:14 / #: Even up until she passed away, she had handwritten every single one of her books.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:19 / #: Amazing.
Tiffany Lerman 00:14:20 / #: She would sit and she would handwrite everything, so that's why she only released one book a year. There were other authors out there who were coming out with books every couple of months, and she just didn't want to change her process. That was her process. She would hand it over to an assistant who would then type it, and then she would go back to the typed, written manuscript and then she would make corrections.
00:14:41 / #: She had a really interesting and different process that I don't think a lot of authors have. I think everybody is on computers and doing it that way. Hers was just that because she used to say she didn't map out anything, she never wrote outlines. She said her characters would take her there, so she had to handwrite it because it was almost like they took over her whole persona as she was writing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:10 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:16 / #: Pocket Books Shop is one of my favorite places in the universe. It's an anti-racist, feminist, queer, women-owned business in Lancaster, which is right now perfect for fall visit with pumpkin patches and rolling Golden Hills. It's amazing. It's exactly what you want in the fall. But Pocket has launched this very cool thing called Pocket Picks, and it is a monthly subscription exclusively available through them.
00:15:42 / #: The books are curated by the staff at Pocket. You fill out a questionnaire and tell them who and what you love to read. They send you every month, a handpicked book for you and your reading taste, including, Jen, this is amazing. An introductory letter explaining why they're so excited about the book.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:02 / #: So cute.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:03 / #: A sealed letter for when you're finished containing their thoughts.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:08 / #: A spoiler letter.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:09 / #: And analysis.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:11 / #: I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:11 / #: Signed copies when you can get them, letters from the author if you can get them, stickers, bookmarks, et cetera.
00:16:18 / #: If it's a new release during the first week of publication, you get 15% off. What is not to love about this?
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:26 / #: You're going to be there this weekend.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:28 / #: I am. If you're listening to this episode this week, September 13th, on the weekend, Joanna Shoop, Adriana Herrera and I are road tripping to Lancaster, to have a day of talking about romances and meeting romance readers, and hanging out at the bookstore.
00:16:44 / #: We are so excited. Tickets are still available. You can get them all at pocketbooksshop.com. That's books plural, pocketbooksshop.com, or as always, you can check links in show notes. We hope to see you there.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:00 / #: Yeah. Thanks to Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster for being an awesome store and for sponsoring the episode.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:08 / #: Once the book is finished, did she have an editor who was a partner in this, or do you know about this part, I guess? Was there one? Were there more than one? That relationship is always interesting.
Rory Green 00:17:23 / #: It is, it's a fascinating relationship. There were always multiple editors. She also over the years, had multiple publishers, but to be perfectly honest, her first reader always was our father. Again, the Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story, tells the story of how our father was the one to encourage her. She'd always been writing.
00:17:43 / #: One of the things that we didn't mention but we were just completely delighted by, is that after she died when we were going through everything, we found these books that she had started to write when she was 13 years old. They were these things called teenagers, and then she had different installments. There was the French and the America.
00:18:07 / #: Our Aunt Joan did illustrations, which she would then cut out and paste into these books. They're these beautiful books, but the most amazing thing about them, was that there was Jackie Collins on the page at the age of 13. Her voice was right there. That was just astonishing to see at such an early age how she'd been developing that voice.
00:18:26 / #: But she didn't have the confidence when she was a young woman and finishing her novel. It was our father who just adored her and was really just a huge proponent of an advocate for her work, and he encouraged her. Throughout his lifetime, whenever she wrote a book, they were partners in that.
00:18:45 / #: He would be her first reader and he would make notes to begin with, and not extensive notes, because to be perfectly honest, she really didn't like anybody's notes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:18:54 / #: That seems fair. If your characters are speaking right to you, it does seem like a bit of an imposition to have someone else think they know better.
Rory Green 00:19:03 / #: Exactly. But he had some comments. Then she had an editor in London called Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster, who worked with our mother for many, many years, and they had a very close, connected relationship.
00:19:15 / #: Suzanne likes to say that she wished she could run a university called Jackie Collins, because she was so enamored by our mother's creative process. Again, she would give a few comments here and there, but there was very little editing that happened.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:31 / #: But this is so fascinating to me because one of the things that we hear so much, especially in genre fiction and romance especially, is that the books aren't art so much as they are just craft. They're a very nice chair, but you wouldn't hang them on your wall as a painting. I don't mean your mother's books. I mean all of the books in the romance genre and many books in genre in general.
00:19:57 / #: I wonder would your mother have agreed with that assessment that, "I'm a craftsman, not an artist"? Or what was her relationship to the actual creativity process? I know that obviously she put on a persona of Jackie Collins, but Jackie the writer, how did she feel about the work?
Tiffany Lerman 00:20:18 / #: It's going back to what we said at the beginning, she just felt she was a storyteller and she wanted to entertain her readers. I think that was the most important thing for her. She used to say, she'd turn on the television and see the news and see these awful things happening in the world.
00:20:34 / #: She just wanted to give this escapism to her reader, to take them to another level. To just let them not worry about all these terrible things that were happening in the world, and have this escapism moment where they could just enjoy themselves and go on this ride with her. That's what she used to say.
Rory Green 00:20:56 / #: I think it's fair to say that also that she had gone through a lot of terrible things in her life. She'd had a lot of trauma. Her creative sense was that it was her lifeline. I think that writing kept her alive, and that's why we hear from so many readers, and she did over the years. But in the years since she's died, we've heard from so many readers.
00:21:16 / #: Honestly, that's why we get so frustrated when people are so dismissive of our mother's work and say, "Oh, trashy beach read," because it kept her alive. I do believe that, but it also has been a lifeline for so many of her readers. We've heard from so many people who said, "I changed course of my life, or you gave me hope, or you helped me find the strength that I didn't know I had."
00:21:40 / #: I think that that really came through her work, because that was the same impact it was having on herself as the writer.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:48 / #: Right. Lucky was such an inspiration, I'm sure.
Tiffany Lerman 00:21:51 / #: Yeah. I say this in the documentary, I say, "We heard from so many people, they are in a bad situation." They say, "Well, what would Jackie Collins do? What would Lucky Santangelo do?" Channel the Lucky Santangelo energy but it's true. Because like Rory said, we have so many messages and we read them. We're like, "Oh my goodness."
00:22:15 / #: The way people describe how just reading this novel and making them feel empowered and making them feel confident, that they can make changes in their life, because of a character in a book or because of something that our mom said in an interview, it's really special.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:31 / #: There's a lot of public ways in which her books, and even her as an author for bringing it, for writing this way, was really publicly pilloried.
00:22:42 / #: There's a really shocking scene where she has to sit there and let an audience full of people just tell her she's terrible.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:48 / #: Awful.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:51 / #: And yet, when watching it and afterwards when Sarah and I talked, were sure that many, many more readers had the experience of like, "No, this changed my life." How did she balance?
00:23:04 / #: Did she ever talk about the public perception of her work versus the way that many other readers contacted her? Or was she just like, "This is what I have to put up with because it's the '80s"? I don't know.
Rory Green 00:23:20 / #: Yeah. I think in some ways, she understood that it was just what she had to endure, and she did endure it.
00:23:27 / #: She was very rebellious, our mother, but she was gracious with it.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:32 / #: She is immensely gracious in these interviews.
Rory Green 00:23:36 / #: Right. She was a gracious rebel, so she had to take a lot of shit. But you'll see on so many interviews, and so often, particularly in the '70s and '80s, she's being interviewed by men. They showed some of that in the documentary, and they are being so condescending and so disparaging. She was vilified for being provocative, because she was writing about predominantly men's objectification of women.
00:23:58 / #: She had been objectified as a young woman and continued to be objectified throughout her career, so she was always pushing back against that. I think she knew that would come with some pushback as well, but she was human and she was a sensitive person. She was a creative person, and a lot of creative people are highly sensitive. I think it definitely hurt her, but she was also incredibly resilient.
00:24:22 / #: She had just learned over the years how to bounce back or otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to continue in her career in the way that she did. Also, at the end of the day, as you said, she understood that in fact, that was only a small percentage, the critics, the haters who were lashing out. The majority, she adored her readers, and she was so open to connecting with them and hearing their comments.
00:24:44 / #: Tiff and I always say, "It's such a shame. She would love to be here now, particularly with the rise of all the ways that you can connect via social media." She was tweeting and getting really into Twitter and a little bit on Instagram, but there's so much more now that she would love to be engaged in, because she loved that relationship between her and her readership.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:04 / #: Did she have a group of other writer friends who were in the world with her, who she talked about writing with or who she interacted with?
Tiffany Lerman 00:25:18 / #: Well, she had her contemporaries like Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz. She wasn't in any writing groups or anything with them. She would see them socially, really only socially, and I don't know how much they talked about work, but I do know that they would mingle. They were at dinner parties together, and they definitely emailed. She was very supportive of other authors, especially female authors.
00:25:47 / #: She was always being sent new manuscripts and being asked, "Would you mind giving us a quote about this?" She would always give a lovely quote. She would always read them too. At book signings, lots of the questions from people and fans who would show up at book signings was, "How do I become an author?" She would love to tell people how to start.
00:26:12 / #: She used to say, she'd say, "Pick up a pen and write a chapter, or write a few sentences every day. At the end of the year, you'll have a book."
Sarah MacLean 00:26:24 / #: So simple, so easy.
Rory Green 00:26:28 / #: Exactly, I know. Yeah. But she was encouraging, but she also would laugh about it because she said she had so many people come up to her and say, "Oh, let me tell you about the book that I have in me. I want to write my story." She was like, "That's good. Thank you."
Sarah MacLean 00:26:41 / #: I have my own ideas. It's funny that way.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:44 / #: One of the things that struck, I think both of us when we are watching is that in the new edition of Hollywood Wives, which is its 40th anniversary edition, Colleen Hoover writes the introduction. Colleen Hoover in a lot of ways shares a very similar, I actually wrote it down. There's a part in the documentary where it says she turned women who weren't readers into readers.
00:27:08 / #: I think Colleen Hoover has that same exact profile. We see many people who are like, "I didn't even know I liked reading until Colleen Hoover." I also think there's a way in which she was capturing something about the way in her time, about how women and girls interact with fiction, that does tell us women's stories and girls' stories are stupid or silly. She really taps into that, but she was such an astute business woman in that way.
00:27:39 / #: Was she aware at some point of, "I've harnessed something in the business of writing that no one else is really doing"?
Tiffany Lerman 00:27:49 / #: That's very interesting. Yeah, it's incredible the trajectory that Colleen Hoover has had. I mean it's unbelievable. I think she really would've enjoyed meeting with her and getting to know her now.
00:28:05 / #: But you're right, it's the same. She's given women and readers who never have read before, this opportunity to really enjoy reading when they've never had that inclination to pick up a book before.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:21 / #: Colleen says very clearly that women need to be stronger. Well, this is the quote from Jackie, "Women need to be stronger. Women have always been pushed into positions in the bedroom, the kitchen, the workforce. My books are successful because I'm turning the double standard on its head."
00:28:38 / #: Then Colleen says, "To say that she paved the way for writers like myself, is an understatement. Jackie Collins' daring, unapologetic stroke of the pen, combined with her glorious wit, has single-handedly given creative license to new generations of authors and storytellers."
00:28:53 / #: I think Colleen, it's fair to say she means women and other people who have not been heard over the years and have not been storytellers.
Rory Green 00:29:02 / #: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. I love that sense of giving voice to the voiceless. I think that's why, again, coming back around to the theme of her being a lifeline, I think that's the sense. Because so many people, when they open up the books, it's like they discover, they see themselves reflected.
00:29:21 / #: Or they get lost in this fantasy world and they see possibility. I think she did this beautiful balance of juggling what felt very real and then what felt very fantastical in a way. Because when people think of our mom, they think of, "Oh, it's just glamorous Hollywood." But she actually wrote a very diverse spectrum of characters.
Sarah MacLean 00:29:42 / #: This real sense of women, the heroines of her books being women who thrived, who could thrive. I was talking to somebody in publishing the other day about your mom. We were talking about how the business of publishing referred to your mom and Judith Krantz, and Barbara Taylor Bradford and Danielle Steel as sex and shopping books.
00:30:08 / #: That's how they called them in the back room when they were talking about them in marketing. That often she was mentioned in the same breath as Jacqueline Susann, who of course, was the generation before her. But in Jacqueline Susann's books, people die, the heroines die. In your mom's books, heroines thrive.
00:30:30 / #: Of course, the books are far more than sex and shopping, but publishing was all men at the time, everybody making decisions. There was also this sense of this was so new and such a fresh idea, that we might live this kind of life and also survive. It feels so simple, but transformative.
Rory Green 00:30:54 / #: She was allowing women to take control of their lives through her writing, and they hadn't had this expression or way of being able to do it before. She was allowing this confidence, building this confidence in her readers, and that's what they came away from reading the books with, "Wow, I can do that." That was her motto, "Girls can do anything."
00:31:16 / #: She really instilled that in my sisters and I, that girls can do anything, so we grew up thinking we could do anything basically. Realized there's a much harder world out there, but she raised three very confident young women, and as we grew up, we knew that. I think it relates to her readers too. They felt that they could gain this confidence after reading.
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:48 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Angelina M. Lopez, author of Full Moon Over Freedom.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:56 / #: Well, Jen, as you know, After Hours on Milagro Street, which is the first book in this series, was one of my very, very favorite books of the last year. Now Full Moon Over Freedom is the book that I have been waiting for. It's finally out, it was out earlier this month.
00:32:10 / #: I'm so excited to finally get to talk about it because, all right, our heroine, Gillian Armstead-Bancroft, was the perfect child. She was class valedictorian. She was like town darling. She was a perfect witch, a wife and a mother.
00:32:29 / #: Then she left Freedom, Kansas full of hopes and dreams and having been perfect in every way. Problem is sometime after leaving Freedom, she got cursed.
Jennifer Prokop 00:32:42 / #: Oh, no.
Sarah MacLean 00:32:44 / #: This is not a small curse. This is a pretty big curse. She's not able to do any magic at all. She's lost her whole magical life.
00:32:51 / #: In order to fix it, she has to go back to Freedom to work it all out. By working it all out, through the structure of the book, she has to do a bunch of bad stuff.
Jennifer Prokop 00:33:03 / #: Oh, boy.
Sarah MacLean 00:33:04 / #: One of the bad things she wants to do is just cut loose and have some no strings attached sex. Nicky Mendoza turns up and she thinks this is all great, because Nicky and she were together a long time ago.
00:33:19 / #: He was her first when they were younger, and now he's back for just one weekend. He is the ideal man to launch her down the path of ruination, except Nicky is also cursed. He was cursed from the moment they touched back in the day, when he was cursed to love her forever.
Jennifer Prokop 00:33:38 / #: The best kind of curse.
Sarah MacLean 00:33:40 / #: Stop it, stop it. It's so good.
Jennifer Prokop 00:33:44 / #: Yes, and we love Angelina here on the podcast, so please check out Full Moon Over Freedom. It is available in print, e-book and audio wherever books are sold.
00:33:55 / #: You can also subscribe to Angelina's monthly newsletter and get some fun, cool flashback chapters from Full Moon Over Freedom on her Patreon.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:05 / #: While you're at it, read After Hours on Milagro Street too.
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:08 / #: Yes. Thank you to Angelina M. Lopez for sponsoring this week's episode.
Sarah MacLean 00:34:15 / #: I have a question for you both. Were you, I guess, A, interested in reading your mom's books when you were children?
00:34:22 / #: Were you allowed to read your mom's books when you were children? Once you did, what did that feel like? What does that feel like now?
Tiffany Lerman 00:34:35 / #: Well, she asked us to wait until we were 18. She said, "Just wait until you're 18," so I did. I said, "Okay, I'm going to wait until I'm 18."
Jennifer Prokop 00:34:46 / #: You were the rule follower.
Tiffany Lerman 00:34:48 / #: Yes, yes. I don't know about my sisters. I remember we were living in Los Angeles at the time, but I'd gone back to London to visit family and relatives. I remember starting one of the books while I was in London and I didn't know what to expect. I myself, I'm like a hopeless romantic.
00:35:11 / #: I love good romantic stories, but I also love adventure and all of that, so it was right up my alley. I started reading it, took it on the plane with me, couldn't put it down. Came home, had jet lag, was up until two o'clock in the morning because I had to finish it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:29 / #: Listen, your mom loved this.
Tiffany Lerman 00:35:32 / #: Yeah. She was so thrilled.
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:33 / #: I'm sure she was.
Tiffany Lerman 00:35:34 / #: When I could finally start talking about it with her, she was so, so thrilled. An instant Jackie Collins' mega fan immediately. It was crazy. I was like, "What's happening next? When are you doing this?" Lucky was one of my all-time favorites. I like to say nobody really knows this, I like to say it though. At one point, she wanted to kill off Lennie.
00:36:00 / #: Lucky Santangelo was married, his second marriage was to Lennie Golden, and she really, really wanted to kill him off. I begged her, I said, "Please." I said, "I love them so much. They have such a great marriage. You cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to the fans."
Sarah MacLean 00:36:18 / #: That is some misery. That is serious misery choices.
Tiffany Lerman 00:36:23 / #: I know, I know. I said, "People are going to go crazy if you do that, you can't do it." She wasn't happy with me. She's like, "Okay." I can't remember which book it is, but it's the book when Lennie gets kidnapped.
00:36:33 / #: He's in the cave, he's held hostage in a cave, and that's when he was supposed to die but he didn't. She brought him back and I was like, "Thank goodness."
Sarah MacLean 00:36:44 / #: Yes, that's a great story. Good job.
Jennifer Prokop 00:36:47 / #: That's a great story. Gosh, imagine that's like, "My mom did that."
Sarah MacLean 00:36:52 / #: Well, but it makes sense. From a storyteller perspective, Lucky and Lennie were together for a long.
00:36:59 / #: That is a way that you could shake things up and force Lucky, Jen loves a heroine against the wall and who doesn't? But there it is, a dark moment for Lucky but Tiffany saved it.
Tiffany Lerman 00:37:16 / #: She wasn't happy with me, but I think she knew. I think she knew, that's why she did it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:20 / #: Yeah, you were right.
Tiffany Lerman 00:37:22 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:24 / #: That's what happens when there's a seat on the other side of the desk. You get to have that influence.
Tiffany Lerman 00:37:28 / #: Exactly. That was one of my big moments. What about you, Rory?
Rory Green 00:37:32 / #: Well, it's interesting because Tiff and our mom, they were much more aligned in their personalities. We all had a great relationship with her, but I was this highly sensitive, kind of like a fragile child. There's always one in the family. I just feel like I was drawn, I was writing poetry and I was reading Judy Bloom. I had a sense of what mom was doing down the hallway, but I wasn't exactly sure what she was doing.
00:38:04 / #: I think she was quite protective of me particularly, because she knew that she had to hold things back. I also read her work when I was 18. I thought it was fun and fabulous, but it wasn't necessarily be what I would've been drawn to read at that time. It was interesting. We read every single book she ever wrote, of course. We were hugely supportive of her work.
00:38:33 / #: I'm also a writer, so we used to have conversations about writing, which was also really fun for me. But I know as a kid, like probably everybody else around me, was fully getting their sex education from my mother.
Jennifer Prokop 00:38:47 / #: Yeah, I'm sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:48 / #: Well, you were getting yours from Judy Bloom, like many other girls.
Rory Green 00:38:52 / #: Judy had my back covered. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 00:38:56 / #: Were there books that were favorites with readers? This is always really interesting. Lucky Santangelo, I think clearly.
00:39:04 / #: I heard that name and felt like I was like, "Oh, I remember this," or were there ones that were her favorite?
Tiffany Lerman 00:39:12 / #: Well, definitely Lucky. That's why she continued her in so many books, for sure, Lucky. But one book that really stands out that she loved was called American Star. It's like this epic love story, and it's a fan favorite as well, reader favorite as well. Actually, I need to reread that because I haven't read that in several years, and so I really want to go back to that.
00:39:37 / #: Then also Lovers and Gamblers, it happens to be one of my favorites, but it was also one of our mother's favorites. That was an earlier book, 1978. Yes, so it was before Chances and before Hollywood Wives. It was really when she started writing this epic genre where it took you all over the world and so many stories weaving into each other.
00:40:05 / #: We're so excited right now because it's being adapted to be made into a television show, a television miniseries. We know that she would be thrilled, so we're really excited about that. We can't wait for that to happen.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:21 / #: Sure. Bring these characters to a new generation.
Tiffany Lerman 00:40:26 / #: Yes. Yes, exactly.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:27 / #: I have a question that's also related, which is she recorded her own audiobooks, which audiobooks are so big now.
00:40:37 / #: They just say that this is a sector of publishing that is booming, but she didn't, as far as I can tell, record all of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:48 / #: Was there a reason behind the ones she chose?
Tiffany Lerman 00:40:51 / #: Yeah. To be honest, we don't actually know. I was shocked to discover that Hollywood Wives, that she hadn't recorded Hollywood Wives in audio. It has been recorded and it will be, and it's coming out in July for this 40th anniversary by a fantastic narrator called Emily Tremaine.
00:41:06 / #: But we were quite surprised, and we don't know why that particular one. It might've been a contractual thing, I'm not sure. We don't know why that didn't happen. The other audio that she did record, because of course, at the time she was recording when it was cassette tapes and then it was CDs.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:22 / #: Sure. You would get them in those weird cases.
Tiffany Lerman 00:41:29 / #: Exactly, like 25 tapes or 10 CDs. They often had to abridge the stories, which I'm sure didn't help. But it is super fun to be able to listen to the ones that she did record.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:41 / #: I'm sure.
Rory Green 00:41:41 / #: The other fantastic thing that's happening now is that our niece, India Thain, has been rerecording some of our mother's titles for Simon & Schuster in the UK. She actually did an audio of Lovers and Gamblers, and I believe Lucky was the other one that she did.
00:41:56 / #: It's just such a beautiful thing to see it come full circle because she was the first grandchild. She had a very clear [inaudible] with our mother, and she really had listened to also, as Tiff said, she'd been on the receiving end of hearing our mother read. That's a reflection, hearing her reread the stories now.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:14 / #: That's lovely. I guess that this leans into or leads into a conversation about Jackie Collins, the business woman, because the documentary is called Lady Boss. There's a book called Lady Boss, Lucky is a Lady Boss. Everybody's a Lady Boss in her books and I love it. I'm very much there for that core story, but I'm really fascinated particularly by women in this '70s and '80s in publishing, when publishing was so dominated by men.
00:42:47 / #: Having the really keen business acumen to hold control of their empires and run the show. I wonder if you could talk a little bit, was that intuitive for your mother? Was she always thinking about business as well? I know that she obviously had a business manager who was in the documentary, but it seemed very much like Jackie called the shots. What was the balance between Jackie the writer, and Jackie the business woman, and Jackie the brand? Were they all one thing?
Tiffany Lerman 00:43:25 / #: Well, she was a huge promoter of her books. She worked tirelessly to promote. What we have heard from so many people at the publishing houses, of how she would go out of her way to go in and meet everybody, even people with very small, not necessarily important jobs. She would go into every room, introduce herself, she would take photographs with them.
00:43:54 / #: She was always working and creating these connections at the publishing houses, but also in the bookstores too. She was constantly going in. Rory and I are doing an event at Book Soup in Los Angeles in July for the publication of Hollywood Wives, for the republication, for the new reissue. He was telling us a story how she was always in there saying, "Where are the new books? Where are you placing them?"
00:44:26 / #: But she had relationships with all of the booksellers across the country. She would always go in and either sign books or, "How are sales going? Do you have enough?" When we look back and we see email and correspondence between her and her publisher, she's asking all the important questions, "How many books are being sold? When are they going to be there?" She'd put us to work too.
00:44:48 / #: Whenever we were in a bookstore, we'd have to go and we'd have to look and see how many titles were there. If they were, take it out, put it up on a prominent place on a shelf, so that someone perusing would see, "Ah, Jackie Collins."
Rory Green 00:45:03 / #: But she did have an extraordinary attention to detail, and you can see that in her work. That, of course, spilled over into as you say, Jen, her business acumen. She would proudly say she didn't even finish high school. She didn't consider herself at all well-educated or intellectual in any way whatsoever, but she had this business savvy. It was definitely intuitive.
00:45:29 / #: It was definitely instinctual. She also had a steep learning curve. She learned on the job. She had a good partner in our father who also, again, was alongside her, but she would read every single contract. She'd be asking questions, she'd always stand up for herself. She always would hold her ground and ask for more. She was never in that situation where she was like, "Oh well, I'll just accept what they've given me," no.
00:45:55 / #: I think that she got some of the highest, particularly, certainly for a female author. I think in the '80s, she was awarded some of the highest advances ever in publishing. We have a letter from her agent at the time, Morton Janklow, who passed away recently. They had this longstanding, fascinating relationship where he wrote to her. I think it was the first deal for Hollywood Wives, in fact, and Hollywood Wives was her ninth book.
00:46:23 / #: She was not at the beginning of her career. She had been working her butt off to get to where she was with Hollywood Wives, and she got a million dollar advance, which was unheard of.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:31 / #: No, huge.
Rory Green 00:46:34 / #: It was unheard of. She was quite extraordinary in that she set the bar very high for herself and she kept pushing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:42 / #: She's so clearly a feminist. Was that tied into the way she thought of herself as a feminist, and also the way in which she taught you and your sisters all to think about yourselves as women in the world?
Tiffany Lerman 00:46:56 / #: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Like I said, she taught us to be strong women, to make decisions, not based on being with a man. It was to think for ourselves. She always used to tell me growing up, "I think you should be a director. There's no female directors in the world."
00:47:15 / #: She was looking at that. She was such a trailblazer. She was so ahead of her time in that way of thinking. I think she hadn't liked what she'd seen growing up. She didn't like the chauvinistic tendencies that her father had, and she knew that she didn't want that for herself or for her daughters.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:37 / #: But simultaneously, what a gorgeous representation of how feminism can exist alongside partnership, which is really a big piece of your mother's life, personal life, and also her books.
00:47:51 / #: There is space to be a strong lady boss, feminist, and also have love and partnership, and support and be equal with that partner.
Rory Green 00:48:02 / #: Yes. She was just very focused on equality. That was incredibly important to her. She was so frustrated by the injustices that she saw, particularly around women and the way that women were demeaned or diminished.
00:48:16 / #: As you say, she was walking through these worlds that were just populated by men. She had continued to have a felt experience of that life and she did. She was hugely respected in the publishing industry, but I'm sure she still encountered sexism at every gate.
Jennifer Prokop 00:48:32 / #: Well, as you can see, the way that a lot of men seem to think they knew what she was doing or trying to do, or attempting to do or achieving.
00:48:42 / #: It's really watching that documentary, it was just really, it was bracing is sometimes the word. It was bracing.
Tiffany Lerman 00:48:48 / #: Yes. The other thing that we haven't actually mentioned is that she was, in terms of her writing sex, like putting sex on the page, she was defiant about that.
00:48:57 / #: She was not going to be shamed for that, because that was definitely where she saw the inequality. That men could write whatever sexual experiences they wanted, even from the point of view of the woman.
00:49:08 / #: Yes. That was something that she felt so strongly about, and she refused to be shamed. I never saw her feel any shame around that whatsoever. That, for me, was very inspiring.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:19 / #: A queen.
Rory Green 00:49:20 / #: Also, exposing these men, these Hollywood types. She was exposing them, and she used to say people didn't believe what she was writing. She had to tone down the truth in order to put it in a book.
00:49:34 / #: But since she's been gone, since she died, the scandals that have come out that she literally wrote about. The sleazy producer, the sleazy politician, the corrupt TV producer.
00:49:48 / #: It's one after another scandal that she literally had to tone down in her books, because people wouldn't believe it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:49:56 / #: Yeah. I found myself really thinking that. That there's a way in which if you have any question about #MeToo being real for a long, long time, read Jackie Collins' books. There's no question that interest in power and money and the privilege.
00:50:14 / #: Especially, I find it very moving to think about taking on the industry that tells you how to see the world. Think about how it filters into we watch TV and movies, and that's how you see the world. To be a woman to say, "I'm going to tell you about that world in a different way." It's a visionary, it really is.
Rory Green 00:50:38 / #: Yeah, she was a visionary. Also, having reread Hollywood Wives, it had been many years since I had read it, but I was just so struck by that when I was reading. I was, "Oh my God, she had named all of it." It was again, right there in those chapters on the page, and she was very exposing. I think that's why at the time, it was quite shocking. Nobody had ever written a book like that, and she would say still that people would still come up.
00:51:07 / #: There was something, she was so interesting with it because she wasn't threatening with it. I do think she threatened men, but somehow I think she also used her own sexuality and her own power. Because she was a very beautiful woman, so she would still attract men, but she told these horrifying. My skin was crawling sometimes reading Hollywood Wives at some of these scenes. I knew they were true.
00:51:27 / #: I knew there were some things that she had experienced personally. She also had a fabulous sense of humor, our mom. A lot of people who have read her books don't know about that. At times, they're just hilarious, so she always had this balance.
Sarah MacLean 00:51:44 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Max Monroe, author of Best Frenemies.
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:51 / #: Katy Dayton is a hardworking teacher and it is spring break, and you know what? She is going to treat herself right. She books herself a vacation rental.
00:51:58 / #: She's going to go have a great time for the week. The last person she wants to get stuck with, especially is her arch-nemesis from work, Mack Houston.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:09 / #: Perfect.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:10 / #: Yet, somehow this man has been accidentally booked into the same spot as her for the week.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:17 / #: No.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:17 / #: Now they're going to have to figure it out, but this involves things like him accidentally seeing her naked.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:27 / #: Isn't that always the way?
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:29 / #: Of course. All she wanted was relaxation, wine and fun in the sun, and instead, she is probably going to go to jail after dealing with this man the way she wants to. Are they going to figure it out?
00:52:42 / #: Is this workplace romance going to be only be one week long, or are they going to take it back to their real world? This is the perfect kind of spicy, standalone romcom readers will love.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:56 / #: You can read Best Frenemies in print, e-book, audiobook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thanks to Max Monroe for sponsoring this week's episode. I think that if we can talk a little bit about Hollywood Wives, because would we say this is the book that launched her into the stratosphere, the stratosphere of publishing it feels?
00:53:22 / #: I think we've touched on why it was so amazing for readers and why readers came to it. Obviously, there's all the things that come with a Jackie Collins' book. It's fun and it's lush, and it's lavish, and it's full of all these stories and people who we see and idolize. It brings them all down in a lot of ways to real life.
00:53:47 / #: But it also feels like normal people like me, would read this book and say, "Oh, wait, I know this guy. I don't know this guy at all. I've never been in Hollywood, but I do know a guy like that." I wonder was that a piece of its appeal, or why were we all so drawn to this book?
Tiffany Lerman 00:54:14 / #: I think she exposed Hollywood in the way it never had been exposed before. I think at the time she wrote it, it was the mid '80s, and movie stars were huge. Well, they always have been. I recently saw an interview with her where she said she was sitting at a lunch with a bunch of friends, and she looked around. It was one of those nice restaurants in Beverly Hills.
00:54:43 / #: She looked around and she saw woman after woman after woman with the same designer purse, designer outfit, nails, perfect hair. She'd say, "Perfect work on their face," or whatever it was. She said, "Who are all these women?" Then she said, "They are the Hollywood wives." She was fascinated by seeing all of them in this restaurant. That's how the impetus, the idea for Hollywood Wives came about.
00:55:08 / #: Because she felt like they were all of the women who were taking care of the men who were in the forefront of Hollywood. There were no producers, directors. The actors were either bimbettes, as they were called, or starlets or on the casting couch or all of that. She just wanted to bring it all to the forefront. From her own personal experiences, we're sure she had experienced a lot of this.
00:55:35 / #: It was very interesting to expose it, and I think that's why people just lapped it up, because they were. They would have these parties when the miniseries. The miniseries was one of the number one miniseries in the '80s, and they would have these watching parties because people would sit there and they'd want to guess who the actor was. There was never anyone specific.
00:55:56 / #: She would just take different characteristics of different actors, different stories that she'd heard from people, whispers here and there. She would make them into one general character and it was a guessing game. She loved to create this guessing game for her readers. I think that's why people just loved it, because it really exposed this other side of Hollywood that hadn't really been written about before.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:19 / #: Yeah.
Tiffany Lerman 00:56:20 / #: She had infiltrated it. She was an insider. Yeah. She did that very deftly because people would trust her. She used to, because we've been watching old interviews with her.
00:56:30 / #: There was one where she says, "Oh, I'm like a bartender and a psychiatrist. People are just drawn to me. They just come and sit themselves down and tell me everything." Meanwhile, she's surreptitiously taking notes under the table.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:44 / #: Yeah, knowing she's Jackie Collins.
Tiffany Lerman 00:56:46 / #: Exactly. That's kind of hiding in plain sight, but her personality was like that. She was such a warm and welcoming person, and people did feel incredibly comfortable with her, but I think that also comes across just her narrative voice. I think that's why readers feel so comfortable. As you said, Sarah, like, "Hey, I know that guy."
00:57:07 / #: Because again, she could just encapsulate a certain character on the page. Whether it was somebody in Hollywood or somebody that you are working with in your office, or a fool or whatever. It's like she was able to just in a short sentence really, they would just jump off the page and you knew exactly who she was talking about.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:28 / #: Right. The ultimate 1980s working girl fantasy is to see that guy taken down, right?
Tiffany Lerman 00:57:34 / #: Absolutely.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:35 / #: She showed us that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:37 / #: Everyone knew this was Joan Collins' sister, and that she had really experienced so many of the things that were in her books. It really feels to me like it was a double-edged sword for her too, because then the assumption was that anything she had written about she had experienced. She was never able to also just take credit for being an amazing writer of fiction.
00:58:02 / #: It was always just the assumption that somehow because she had been to Hollywood parties, that she was just reporting. I think that's another reason why I really respected in the documentary, especially seeing her defending her work as a storyteller. You can sit in a Hollywood party and you're not going to be able to tell the story the way Jackie Collins is.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:27 / #: Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. We often end these conversations asking writers to talk to us about what endures from their books, what the mark is that they've left on fiction.
00:58:43 / #: I feel like this is one of those questions that we're so happy we have you, because often writers, they don't think of it that way. But you all have thought about it this way, I think. What is the mark that your mom left on fiction?
Rory Green 00:59:01 / #: Oh, wow. That's a broad question. You go first. You go first.
Tiffany Lerman 00:59:06 / #: I'll go first. Yeah. What is the mark that she left on fiction? I want to say that it's like she was a door opener, that she was brave enough to open doors that were closed. We talk about the glass ceiling, but somehow I'm thinking about doors with our mother. That she kept opening doors. Even doors that seemed like they were locked, she was like, "I'm going to figure out how to pick this lock. I'm going to get in and I'm going to find my space in that room."
00:59:34 / #: I feel like that's part of her legacy for female authors who have come before her. That's something that Colleen really, as we said, really acknowledges in her forward. I think she was a door opener. She gave women permission to find their voice, to be bold, to be brave. To also not have to contort themselves into what they imagine other people expect for them to be or expect them to write. I think part of her legacy is that she offered people freedom, like creative freedom.
01:00:07 / #: I don't know if she would be able to name that herself if she was still here, because again, it was so intuitive to her. It was just what moved through her, but it's interesting being able to take a step back and think about it objectively. But I would say it was about permission, freedom and door opening.
Rory Green 01:00:24 / #: I agree. I completely agree with what you say. I also feel that she wrote stories that she really wanted to inspire women, and to make women see that there were other options available for them. That they could believe in themselves and believe in their own confidence. I think she used her writing to send a message to women that they could do anything that they put their mind to. That's why she wrote such strong female characters.
01:00:55 / #: That's why Lucky Santangelo is timeless. Look at James Bond. She used to say, "Why do you have to put an age on Lucky Santangelo when there's no age on James Bond? He's gone on for decades, so can Lucky Santangelo." Her message is timeless for her readers, that they really can believe in their own confidence because she did. She said she was a high school dropout and look at what she did. It's a really positive message that she sends.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:27 / #: That's amazing. What a legacy for all of you.
Rory Green 01:01:30 / #: Yeah, we're so lucky. We miss her so much every day. It's such a loss not having her in our lives anymore, it really is.
01:01:38 / #: But her inspiration lives on and her legacy lives on. It's our mission to make her bigger than she ever was before, even bigger than she was. That's really our mission.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:48 / #: Yeah. Well, we are so happy to help do our part.
Rory Green 01:01:52 / #: Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:53 / #: After you've watched Lady Boss, if you like me, would then like to spend the next 48 hours of your life just watching interviews with Jackie Collins being amazing.
01:02:03 / #: You can do that on the Jackie Collins' YouTube channel where you are uploading, or I assume have uploaded and are continuing to upload, incredible interviews where Jackie is just being amazing.
Rory Green 01:02:19 / #: Yeah, they're brilliant. There's so many interviews and you go down this rabbit hole, you could sit for hours. I could be sitting all day watching these incredible interviews. Now what we've started to do with her social media, on her Instagram and her Facebook channels and TikTok as well.
01:02:33 / #: We've started to take these amazing snippets of parts of the interviews with these great soundbites, that I feel like they could go viral. There's definitely a soundbite in there that we've got that's going to go viral where she's saying everything that we spoke about.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:48 / #: Yeah.
Tiffany Lerman 01:02:50 / #: It's super fun for us to be now running the social media channels because we get to still interact with fans, or at least see comments every single day about the impact that she's had. If we ever ask questions like, "Tell us how Jackie Collins changed your life," it's so fun reading the stories.
01:03:07 / #: For us, like this September, she will have been gone eight years, but her energetic presence still feels very vivid because we get to continue her work and work with the estate and the social media, and it's a joy for us.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:24 / #: Well, we'll put links to all of the social media accounts in show notes so our listeners can find them easily. The book is Hollywood Wives. The 40th anniversary edition comes out July 11th in the United States, and I assume all over, but we are so excited.
01:03:42 / #: It is such a romp. I had the best time reading it. Thank you to Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman for joining us today. We are so thrilled to add your mother to the Trailblazer Series. It's beyond exciting for us.
Tiffany Lerman 01:04:00 / #: Thank you so much for the conversation.
Rory Green 01:04:02 / #: Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:04 / #: That might be my favorite Trailblazer episode so far.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:09 / #: What's interesting is, and you and I have talked extensively about, we were reading when Jackie Collins was writing books, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:04:18 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:18 / #: One of the things though is I was very aware of Jackie Collins when I was a teenager, but I didn't really read a lot of Jackie Collins' books. I don't think.
01:04:29 / #: I knew that they were romance adjacent, not necessarily like mainstream romance. I was so inspired by that conversation, all I want to do now is go read every Jackie Collins' book.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:44 / #: I definitely read at least one Lucky Santangelo book, and I remember Lucky Santangelo. I remember the miniseries. I remember my mom, my parents watching that.
01:05:00 / #: I was clearly too young to be watching those, but I was also too young to watch The Thorn Birds and those two are somehow interconnected in my mind as viewing experiences from my childhood.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:14 / #: Watching the documentary, it felt like I was very aware of Jackie Collins as a superstar.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:21 / #: Like a personality.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:23 / #: Yes. I think part of it is there was less channels. The part where she was on with God, who was that guy who did all the interviews with the glasses? I think watching those, like those were shows I watched.
01:05:41 / #: So Dynasty and Joan Collins, all of that was a big part of the ether of that time period. Watching her, I was like, "Oh yeah, I remember seeing this woman. I remember her whole vibe."
Sarah MacLean 01:05:57 / #: Of course, as a romance writer and as a romance person, you stumble across that Barbara Cartland, Jackie Collins' interview periodically. Over the course of the last of my career, I've seen that a few times.
01:06:09 / #: It's so horrifying that someone who arguably was so committed to stories of manners in Barbara Cartland, that clown, would come onto a stage, sit next to someone on a couch, and then just shred them. Jackie comes off as so graceful and gracious, and intelligent.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:38 / #: Yeah, she's not backing down.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:40 / #: Just brilliant. There's no question who wins that, even though Barbara Cartland, if you watch the whole video, we'll put it in show notes, the whole video. Barbara Cartland just talks over her the whole time, it's gross. But Jackie comes off looking amazing, as she always does.
01:06:57 / #: She's so good at the job at taking the questions that we've all fielded over the years. The comments that we've all fielded over the years, and just making people seem small without making, I think, them feel small, which is hard.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:15 / #: Yes, what a trick.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:16 / #: Impossible to do. Listen, I said this at the end of the interview with Rory and Tiffany, but do not miss the YouTube channel where they have curated all of these interviews.
01:07:33 / #: And where we got the clip from Jackie for the beginning of the show. I'm so glad we got to talk about writing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:41 / #: Yes. That was the one part of the documentary, the documentary is about her life and her influence. Of course, it's a lot easier to show that with the footage at hand, but we were really interested in hearing about her life as a writer. Sarah and I had a big list of questions.
01:08:02 / #: We are going into it thinking like, "We're not sure that anyone could answer these questions for someone else." But I was so thrilled, they love their mom as their mom, but they are so respectful of her work. I thought that that really came through and it really impressed me so profoundly. I don't know, I was really moved by that episode in just that conversation.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:27 / #: Yeah. Because there was a real sense, and I think this is something that you find when you think about authors like her, who are personalities. It's hard to imagine them in yoga pants unwashed on deadline, because it seems like Jackie Collins never ever was writing without a full face of makeup, but I'm sure that's not the case.
01:08:54 / #: I was really thrilled to hear about not just process, but her clear dedication to craft. I loved even the little moments where there's just a heartbeat of a moment in our interview where I think Tiffany says, "Oh yeah, she emailed back and forth." Or emailed, "She corresponded with Danielle Steel. She corresponded with Judith Krantz."
01:09:20 / #: It makes sense that those names, that those people would find each other in some way, because who else but Danielle Steel could possibly understand what it was to be Jackie Collins?
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:32 / #: When we talk about to authors about their early life as a writer or a reader, imagine coming across the treasure trove that must be all of your mom's letters and diaries.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:45 / #: Incredible.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:47 / #: The fact that she wrote in longhand, I thought that was like a throwaway question. Then they were like, "Oh, no, no, that's actually what happened."
Sarah MacLean 01:09:53 / #: She literally never used a typewriter, which is amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:57 / #: Lady Boss, that's all I have to say about that. I just think there's some people for whom writing, it's about storytelling, and I think the Netflix documentary says that over and over again. I feel like there's a pathway to coming to writing that's not about like, "I love books, but I love stories."
01:10:20 / #: It was really fascinating to hear about her life, her writing process, and the way that she worked and the way they perceived that as children. But the story about her reading to them and there was always a chair across the other side of the desk. That was amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:10:38 / #: I'm literally going to put a chair in my office so that when my daughter comes in, I can say, "Sit, sit here." It was a wonderful experience listening and watching. You all, of course, will have just heard the conversation, but it's clear how much these women just loved their mom and were committed to her legacy in a really interesting, powerful way.
01:11:11 / #: Also, I think it's so amazing how the books spoke so much to readers, and being able to hear Rory and Tiffany talk about how readers come to the genre or came to her books, especially at this moment in time. You said this related to Colleen, Colleen Hoover, who wrote the introduction to Hollywood Wives, the 40th anniversary edition. But this real sense of readers coming to these stories for the first time and finding joy.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:52 / #: Something they didn't know they wanted in these books.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:55 / #: I think you can't, as much as we all, I think Jackie Collins lives as this huge, huge overarching personality for so many of us. But I just want to call out 500 million copies of her books have been sold, 40 countries, 32 New York Times bestsellers. I'm reading from the press release from Gallery, the publishers of Hollywood Wives.
01:12:24 / #: She was awarded an Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England in 2013 for her services to literature and charity. When accepting the honor, she said to the queen, "Not bad for a school dropout." A revelation capturing her belief that both passion and determination can lead to big dreams coming true/.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:45 / #: Amazing.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:46 / #: I really couldn't say it any better. It feels like these women that she wrote were so aspirational for so many people.
01:12:55 / #: There was something really powerful about being able to tell a story about somebody who, no matter how down on their luck they got, was definitely going to become a lady boss.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:06 / #: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing that struck me was, especially again, in watching the documentary, is how many of the things that romance readers are still hearing today. It seems times have changed. Then you go back and you're like, "Nope, same old."
01:13:29 / #: The way that makes me feel is, for me personally, is I don't apologize for it. But that scene where an audience full of... In the Netflix documentary, there's a scene where she's on a talk show and people in the audience just stand up and essentially pin a scarlet A to her, person after person, after person.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:52 / #: If you haven't seen the documentary, watching it it's a shock to see. I watched it with Eric, and Eric turned to me and said, "If you had told me about this scene, I wouldn't have believed you, that it was as bad as you said."
01:14:07 / #: Still, just she took one. Listen, Jackie Collins walked so the rest of us could run on that front.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:14 / #: Right. I think that that was the part that was very, I don't know. I think it's funny.
01:14:21 / #: I think that sometimes there's a conversation about the cultural way in which romance readers are always in a defensive crouch. I feel like I'd be like, "See exhibit A, B, C, D, E."
Sarah MacLean 01:14:37 / #: If you think about it, Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, Colleen, Emily Henry, we are seeing it even today, the big giants of whatever the year is, whoever the giant is that year, having to defend. But I do want to say the other thing that really was interesting to me, is I've been thinking over the last couple of weeks since we knew we were going to interview them.
01:15:08 / #: I've been thinking a lot about how we don't talk about Jackie Collins' book as romances, and I don't think they are romances. That's not what they're trying to do. That's not the story or the fantasy that they're selling. They're selling a very different kind of fantasy than romance does, but it sure feels like they're cousins.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:30 / #: Yes, absolutely. Well, and I think it's interesting. I found myself thinking so much about books that were written contemporaneously with Hollywood Wives or in the wake of Hollywood Wives, I would say.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:46 / #: Especially categories.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:47 / #: Yes. That's what I was thinking. I bet that the categories I was reading in 1984 and 1985 about sexual harassment at work, were directly influenced by Jackie Collins.
01:16:07 / #: There's a way in which the things that are happening in the culture always, always trickle into romance. It was really interesting to think, "Oh, I hadn't realized that this was an influence, until we talked to them and heard about it." Then I was like, "Oh, of course."
Sarah MacLean 01:16:28 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:28 / #: Of course, because here is someone who's opening the doors, as Rory said at the end. Opening the doors to here's a new conversation we get to have about what it is like for women at work.
01:16:40 / #: Of course, then once you open the doors, romance is like, "Ooh, there's an open door. Let me step through. Let me see what I can do in that space."
Sarah MacLean 01:16:48 / #: It's hard to imagine. You think about say, Judith McNaught's Perfect, or a number of Sandra Brown books during that time, where they walk right up to the wealth line to these jobs that glitter. It's hard to imagine that they weren't also aware of the dialogue with these books that, as I said my editor told me, were called the sex and shopping books on the other side by the men in sales and marketing.
01:17:29 / #: They weren't, again, not romance, but definitely the wealth piece, the fascination with extremely wealthy, powerful men in those categories and single-title contemporaries of a particular, it's a particular voice that you can see it through line in romance. It had to have been the influence of Collins and Steel, and Krantz and Barbara Taylor Bradford.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:56 / #: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We continue to talk about how every single trailblazer is a gift. This one was so different, but you know what? It was just really fascinating to think about what was the landscape out there.
01:18:12 / #: For sure, it is a fact, I think to say, that many a romance author probably looked at Jackie Collins for the model of, "Here's how I am going to move through the world with these questions. Here's how I am going to talk about my work to a hostile and patriarchal audience. Here's how I am going to ignore them and focus on my readers." It was inspiring.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:44 / #: Yeah. We didn't talk with Rory and Tiffany very much about the armor of Jackie Collins, but one of the things that I was really drawn to was this idea that she put on Jackie. Obviously, her sister was Joan Collins. She basically grew up in Hollywood. Once she was, what, 16, when she came to Hollywood to be with her older sister.
01:19:12 / #: Obviously, she comes by a lot of this glitz and glamour naturally. But the idea of nobody wore leopard print until Jackie Collins started putting on leopard print every time, because she had this affinity with the leopard or the panther or whatever. She has them all, there's this great photograph in the documentary. Maybe we can find it to share here.
Jennifer Prokop 01:19:34 / #: But look down, you'll see it.
Sarah MacLean 01:19:36 / #: With her just surrounded by cheetahs and birds and it's fantastic. I just think this idea of dawning armor to face the world when this is the work that you're doing. When you are constantly shining a light on misogyny and the double standard, and the way women are treated and the way power is passed on from person to person in these places. I think the armor is there because she was literally going to war every time she sat down.
01:20:13 / #: She didn't know what Merv Griffin was going to ask her or what Oprah was going to ask her. When you look at all these interviews, there's always the same. It always dances up to the, "Well, the scenes are so sexy and how do you do it? Who are these salacious people? Can you name names and what did happen with Marlon Brando?" I imagine to field those questions, which are so critical to your brand, and your readers are asking them.
01:20:43 / #: Also, hold to your firm belief that you're doing a thing and that you're a kick-ass writer, as she described herself.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:52 / #: Right. Absolutely.
Sarah MacLean 01:20:54 / #: You got to put on the leopard print to do it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:57 / #: Sure. I think the other thing I was really struck by is outside of Oprah, it was so many men. It was Larry King. I finally remembered his name.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:06 / #: Larry King, that's right. Yep.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:07 / #: I was like, "You know, the glasses?" That it was so many men. You know what, though? I think often about when Stacey Abrams went on the Stephen Colbert show.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:19 / #: Stephen Colbert, and he made her read or was going to.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:23 / #: Yeah. This men calling women to task in this way, it has not changed.
01:21:34 / #: I think I cannot say enough about how if you've not watched this documentary, you should. It is terrific.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:44 / #: Yeah. I'm now a Jackie Collins evangelist. After I watched it, I then spent 48 hours just with that YouTube channel autoplaying in the background, because she's amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:54 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:56 / #: Yeah. That was the first trailblazer we've done with somebody who knew a person, because of course, tragically she passed away six years ago.
01:22:10 / #: But it opened up a whole new world for me in terms of like, "Well, who else could we talk to who would be able to speak like this?"
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:22 / #: About their person.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:24 / #: About their person, yeah. What a joy, was a real joy.
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:31 / #: We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you are going to read some Jackie Collins' books and mainline the '80s, and get out there and watch that documentary.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:41 / #: Yeah, put on your shoulder pads. Don't take any shit.
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:45 / #: Don't take any shit from anybody anymore.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:46 / #: What would Lucky Santangelo do?
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:49 / #: Kick your ass, that's what she'd do. Find her happily ever after.
Sarah MacLean 01:22:52 / #: Oh, and how about that story from Tiffany about how she was like, "You cannot kill Lennie."
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:57 / #: Oh yeah, talk about someone who understands the importance of the HEA.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:04 / #: Tiffany, there's a whole world of romance novels waiting for you when you're ready.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:07 / #: I loved it. I loved the entire thing. It was terrific.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:12 / #: Don't forget to check show notes for all of the information that we talked about just now. Head over and watch Lady Boss. It's on Netflix right now. Pick up Hollywood Wives, which is really deliciously fun.
01:23:30 / #: Yeah. Just ask yourself every day, all day long, "Well, what would Jackie Collins do right now?" That's my new mantra, a different kind of JC.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:44 / #: I don't know how else to end but there, everybody. Thanks for listening. You can check us out at fatedmates.net.
01:23:51 / #: You can join our Patreon to discuss this and other things with our listeners and with us.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:57 / #: Find out more at fatedmates.net/patreon.
Jennifer Prokop 01:24:01 / #: Thank you, Sarah, for that save. You can also find us on Instagram @fatedmatespod, and on Twitter, if it still exists, @FatedMates.
Sarah MacLean 01:24:09 / #: Welcome to season six, everybody. We're starting with a bang.
S05.49: Knockout: #TommyGoBoom
Sarah has a new book out, so as is tradition for our last episode of the season, Jen is playing host, and Sarah is playing guest, and we’re talking about this gorgeous cover, about secrets and power, about Exasperated Man vibes, about characters having to learn lessons, about writing propulsive stories, about how bored Sarah gets by ballrooms and about how fun it is to write in a big fictional, fantasy world. Jen talks about how Bruce Springsteen understands romance novels better than most people.
It’s mostly a spoiler free episode, but you might prefer to finish your read before listening. Enjoy! And don’t miss the first two chapters of the magnificent Knockout audiobook, narrated by the incomparable Mary Jane Wells, at the end of the episode!
If you still haven’t got a copy of Knockout, you can get it signed, with exclusive FM swag, from Book Club Bar in NYC, or at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books, or in print from your local independent bookseller.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Lil Romance is in Europe, and apparently will become very familiar with Eurail. Why because Europe is so small compared to the US, for example, check out this map of the Great Lakes basin compared to the continent of Europe.
Imposter syndrome explained.
Join us in New Haven CT at the Yale Romance Conference Sept 8-9, 2023. We are both very excited to meet Carole Bell, a romance advocate and a crackerjack reviewer. If you are listening to this the day it released, you can tune into Likewise tonight and hear us chatting about Knockout and recommending books.
Read Adriana's An Island Princess Starts a Scandal.
Sounds like if you need to learn more about explosions, gunpowder, nitroglycerine, and TNT, the person to call is Elena Armas. Preorder The Long Game, which comes out on Sept 5, 2023.
Other pirate ship desks include: Chase's desk in Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover, Whit's desk in Brazen & the Beast, and Max's desk in A Duke Worth Falling For.
In 2005, Bruce Springsteen was on VH1’s Storytellers, and his description of the work of Thunder Road is exactly how we think of the work of romance. Watch all the way until the end, when he says, “Nothing left but the ride. So this was my big invitation to my audience, to myself, to anybody that was interested. My invitation to a long and earthly, very earthly journey, hopefully in the company of someone you love, people you love, and in search of a home that you can feel a part of.” A perfect description of the romance genre, Bruce!
The Hell's Belles playlist got a major Knockout update. Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.
Sponsors
Jess Bryant, author of Unbreakable Bond,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Nikki Sloane, author of The Good Girl,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
and
Austen Tea Party A Historical Romance Collection
for Charity, Inspired by Jane Austen
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
all proceeds go to breast cancer research
