04.16: (Short and) Sexy Christmas Recs
Holidays are about traditions and it's a Fated Mates tradition to rerun the previous year's holiday episode. So here we are! This year, we’ve added 30 minutes of chatter about two Christmas romances we loved in 2021. You can take Fated Mates to work, but you can’t take the very unsafe for work discussion out of Fated Mates, so headphones in!
Much love and many thanks for being with us!
Please enjoy this short playlist of holiday music featured on the podcast.
For full show notes, see:
Roy and Keely's Sexy Christmas.
Check out Whores of Yore.
Seamen sing shanties. Sarah's talking about something else.
Jen did not make up this thing about St. Nicholas and shoes.
The Black Forest in both a place in Germany and a delicious cake.
S04.06: Monster Romance Interstitial with Jenny Nordbak
We’re talking minotaurs and spiders and orcs and gargoyles…it’s Monster Romance week at Fated Mates! Jenny Nordbak of the Wicked Wallflowers and Bonkers Romance podcast joins us to talk about this explosive, extremely popular genre that both intrigues and perplexes us.
Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Khan Carries On. Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie.
This episode sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.
Show Notes
Welcome Jenny Nordbak. Her first romance, His Leading Lady, was just released, (Jen did the final developmental edit!) and she just started the Bonkers Romance podcast with Melody from the Heaving Bosoms podcast. Check it out!
Although there is lots of crossover with paranormal or alien, Jenny defines monsters as: creatures who don’t shift into humans, you’d definitely scream if you saw them running down the street, but human enough to be able to bang. Although no one mentioned on the episode, here is the single greatest monster explanation ever seen on twitter.
The cartoon Sarah refered to is called The Harkness Test, and it's a reference to Dr. Who.
More about what it means to go into the Amazon dungeon--this, of course, is related to attempts to deplatform sex everywhere on the internet. Besialisty cartoon that Sarah is going to look for
Baby Jenny imprinted on Fantasia, specifically the centaurs and Chernabog. She also loved the Gargoyles TV show and the orcs in Lord of the Rings.
Here’s listener Alyssa Long’s terrific thread about monsters and disability. Often, writers use ableist tropes in their monster-creation, and Alyssa’s thread talks about how and why this is harmful. (Any mistakes in the summarizing of this thread are Jen’s!) In that thread, Alyssa shared a great article about ableism in the horror genre, and although we loved The Witcher, it reinforced some of the most common problems with putting disabilities on the screen.
Sarah is hosting a writing workship to kick of NaNo--register here!
S04.03: Secret Baby Interstitial
We’re doing a big one this week — secret babies! We’re talking the babies and the pregnancies—and why they are such a juggernaut in romance. We’re talking about why people are all in on secret babies or absolutely all out on them, we’re pinpointing the itch they scratch and why have they installed such buttons in so many of us, and we’re getting to the bottom to why these secret babies are often sired by billionaires. It’s a ride.
Next week, our first read along is Amanda Quick’s Ravished—which Sarah describes as “Harriet, in a cave, with a rake.” It’s great. Get reading at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie.
Sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.
Show Notes
The secret baby trope can be broken down into secret baby or secret child. Secret pregnancy is just earlier on the timeline, while surprise pregnancy. Often, a secret baby plot happens because there is a fear that the baby is in danger.
More about the word Interstitial.
We recently re-released our bodily autonomy interstitial from 2019.
If you are on Facebook, join Sarah’s OSCRB group (Old School Romance Book Club) if you want more romance talk.
On some old school covers, you see lots of people with gravity defying hair.
Sarah mentioned the “Four Js” and she meant these old school historical romance powerhouses: Johanna Lindsay, Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood, and Judith McNaught.
The most dangerous third rail in romance is cheating.
More about “the heir and the spare.”
The Right Stuff is a movie about astronauts, but Terms of Endearment is the movie where Jack Nicholson plays an astronaut. The movie was released in late 1983, and Long Time Coming was released in 1988.
The Cut went ahead and published two pieces about Sally Rooney’s latest book, and they loved the sex in Rooney's book and think folks want more, but somehow they’ve never heard of genre romance.
Given that description of the book Sarah was looking for, Jen thinks if it exists, it could have been a Harlequin Blaze, rather than a Loveswept or a Desire. But who knows!
Next week, we’re reading Ravished, a 1992 historical about fossils by Amanda Quick. Yes, actual fossils.
S03.52: Assassins and Hitmen in Romance
Surprising absolutely no one, we love an assassin here at Fated Mates! We basically love any character who has been through the wringer and also can kill a man fourteen different ways before dinner. Even better if it’s a heroine, and she’s been hired to kill the hero (or vice versa). Anyway, we’re talking about why these books (and so! many! movies!) scratch that particular itch for us. Spoiler: It’s beautiful people blowing things up, obvi.
Don’t miss Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here!
Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders will come with a Fated Mates Sticker!
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.
Show Notes
The game Assassin’s Creed first came out in 2007, and now there are so many different versions, and in many of them, you can garrote someone if you are so moved. Sarah's favorite is Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which is set in Victorian London.
We mentioned so many movies and TV shows with assassins: John Wick, The Bourne Identity, Gunpowder Milkshake (and its many weapons), Suicide Blonde, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, James Bond, Black Widow, Le Femme Nikita, The Saint, Grosse Pointe Blank, Desperado, and The Witcher.
More about some of the super camera angles we are seeing at the Tokyo Olympics.
Jack Reacher isn’t as assassin as much as he’s a vigilante. Also, he doesn’t know how to use a washing machine.
Rege-Jean Page signed up to make a remake of The Saint, and Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge are remaking Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and we’re not sad about any of it.
Iocane powder is from The Princess Bride, of course.
Listen when you read Sweet Ruin you'll definitely want to go back to season 1 and listen to our deep dive epsiode. Because it is great.
We also talked a bunch about romances with paid killers in the Spy Romance and Mafia Romanceinterstitials.
As Jen was working on show notes, she discovered the book Killing Sarai was adapted into a Spanish language action movie called “En Brazos de un Asesino,” which translates to “In the Arms of an Assassin.” You can stream it on any number of services, including Amazon Prime Video.
Check out all the programming for Bookstore Romance Day, August 21-22, 2021.
We are having a live episode of Fated Mates to celebrate the launch of Bombshell on August 24th at 7 eastern, to get a ticket, you'll need to buy a copy from one of these indie bookstores. (If you already pre-ordered from WORD in Brooklyn, you'll get log in details in an email.)
S03.49: YA Romance Novels with Nicola Yoon
Two episodes this week! Huzzah!
Today we’re joined by the extremely delightful, extremely brilliant Nicola Yoon to discuss her extremely romantic new book, Instructions for Dancing, and YA Romance in general! We talk about Nicola’s love of romance novels (which she shares with the heroine of her book), about her history with them, and about what makes YA Romance so extremely delicious. We also talk about her new project with the Obamas and her new imprint for young readers at Random House.
Our next read along (next week! we told you it was coming!) is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
Welcome Nicola Yoon! Along with Instructions for Dancing, she and five other Black women authors just published the Blackout anthology, which has been picked up by the Obamas for TV and film for Netflix. Nicola and her husband David Yoon are also creating the Yooniverse, including a new YA romance imprint called Joy Revolution at Random House.
Poltergeist and its infamous curse scared everyone back in the 80.
Nicola wasn’t sure what imprint she was reading when she found her first romance under her aunt's bed, but she mentioned Harlequin Blaze, one of our all time favorite imprints which was shuttered in 2017.
Just a quick reminder that HFN means “happy for now” and HEA means “happily ever after.”
YA has evolved over time, a process which has ramped up in the past 20 years and is now a publishing juggernaut. YA is far more progressive that adult romance, but also grapples with the influence of adult readers of all kinds and gatekeepers who want to stop kids from reading about sex & gender, race, and other issues around identity.
According to the Library of Congress, most of the earliest entries from Urban Dictionary date back to 2003.
Before Covid, It used to be hard to explain the terrifying rise of HIV was in the 1980s, along with the way the Reagan administration ignored the epidemic. This timeline tells the history of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and here is an explainer for why Covid vaccinations were developed so fast when we still don’t have one for HIV.
The Heads of Your Enemies as love language appears in Shadow’s Claim, when Trehan literally gives this gift to Bettina while they are courting.
The Wrath and the Dawn is a retelling of the Scheherazade story, which is the framing device for The Arabian Nights.
If you are GenX or Millenial and were a reader, you’ll love the book Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction. It's full of images, so read it in paper or on a full-color reading device!
Jessica Trent is a different thing entirely than Jessica Wakefield. Along with other changes, the Sweet Valley High twins are size 4 now, which we don’t like at all.
I Believe in a Thing Called Love was also just optioned for Netflix, but they aren’t going to have much luck checking The Wirecutter for road spike recommendations, because this was the closest thing I could find to them.
“The Hellmouth or whatever,” is a reference to Sunnydale, the setting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
You can pre-order signed copies of Sarah's Bombshell from WORD in Brooklyn, and you'll get a Fated Mates sticker with your signed book!
S03.48: The Ted Lasso episode: Is Roy Kent a Romance Hero?
“Hang on,” we can hear you saying, “isn’t this a romance novel podcast?” It absolutely is, and that’s why we’re dropping a very special episode about the character who is the most perfect on-screen version of a romance hero that ever there was: Captain of the AFC Richmond team, Roy Kent. Added bonus, we’re joined by Jen’s brother Erik to talk sports stories (and check in on Jürgen Klopp).
Spoilers abound, so if you haven’t watched Season 1, do that first!
Our next read along is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
Ted Lasso season two starts this Friday, and the reviews look great. Also, if you haven't read this GQ profile of Jason Sudeikis, you are missing out.
In season 2, we talked about Cinnamon Roll heroes, as compared to Alpha heroes. Grunting is definitely an alpha hero trait.
We love Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca) and Juno Temple (Keeley) and that’s all we have to say about that.
Apparently, there are ways to watch Apple TV Plus shows even if you don’t have an Apple Device. Who knew!
You, too, can bake Ted’s biscuits.
USAians have a different relationship with Soccer than the rest of the world. Perhaps you need a primer on the Premier League, promotion and relegation, the average age of Premier League players, and just how popular is Premier League football really is.
Fated Mates has a favorite team, it’s Liverpool, and it’s basically because of our favorite stern brunch daddy TM, Jürgen Klopp. Stern Brunch Daddy(tm) is the invention of Andie J. Christopher, friend of the pod, who has a new book out this week!
Richmond is a fake team, but that won’t stop you from buying gear to show your team spirit. This year, London was home to six Premier League teams: Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham, and West Ham United.
Yes, Jen hates it when young characters make ancient pop culture references in romances, but in this case, Indiana Jones is appropriate for people our age! Go ahead and write I Love You on your eyelids!
More about the story of how Brett Goldstein got the part of Roy Kent.
Jen’s sister-in-law Janine writes for TV and she’s kind of a big deal!
Susan Elizabeth Philips was a guest a few weeks ago, and she talked about the trope of the grizzled veteran at the end of his career and how it’s a hallmark of the Chicago Stars series.
Jen mentioned a series of soccer romances--it’s the Atlanta Skyline series by Rebecca Crowley.
You know, Roy Kent really should have tried to get that Rolex back.
In a New York Times article about adapting romance to TV and film, Outlander showrunner Matthew B. Roberts “found that voice-over sequences left actors standing around with nothing to play against. Interior monologue has to become exterior dialogue. ‘That’s our biggest challenge always.’
“It’s witched” was a joke from our very first episode, in case you’re into that sort of thing.
That German word (phrase?) is sturm und drang and it means turmoil.
Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey is an archetype that values community building over individualism, we like the latest iteration from Gail Carriger.
Rupert Mannion is the woooooorst. That darts scene is awesome though, and if you want to read a contemporary romance set in a pub that includes darts playing, Sarah wrote one!
Other sports TV shows and movies we mentioned: Friday Night Lights, Sports Night, The League, Bull Durham, and Major League.
Maybe you didn’t know that the character of Ted Lasso originated in a series of TV commercials for NBC.
Bill Lawrence was a producer for Spin City and Scrubs, which were other funny workplace comedies.
In the past few weeks, Italy won the Euro 2020 and Argentina won the Copa America. And the Olympics football competition will be interesting since men’s teams are limited to players under 23 years of age. FYI, the US Soccer Federation is pretty awful.
For Generation X and Millenials, soccer was a big deal. If you are interested in a family friendly sports outing, maybe your city has a professional soccer team! The Chicago Fire is awesome, and New York has two teams!
The 1994 World Cup was played in the USA, and Sarah remembered the name of defender Alexi Lalas. Now he’s a commentator and we would like him to do better.
So there are trick plays in football and . . . well, football.
The last few decades of television have focused on the antihero, and lots of people wonder if that didn’t help create our recent political moment.
It’s hard to beat the fan experience of singing You’ll Never Walk Alone at Anfield; but Erik recommends this 2019 video of the team and fans singing after Liverpool defeated Barcelona. The version in the last episode of season 1 of Ted Lasso is this one by Marcus Mumford.
Follow AFC Richmond, Ted Lasso, Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein on Twitter. Jürgen Klopp does not have Twitter because "he is a grown man with a job."
You can preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word in Brooklyn, buttons and stickers from Best Friend Kelly, and Fated Mates merch from Jordan Dene.
S03.47: Taboo Romance with Nikki Sloane
It’s Taboo Romance week! We’re thrilled to be joined by Nikki Sloane, whose books we’ve adored for years here on FM. We talk about what makes a romance taboo, about why readers are drawn to taboo stories, and about whether taboo romance is empirically erotic.
Our next read along is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
taboo books
Notes
Welcome Nikki Sloane! We discussed her novel Three Little Mistakes in season two. Her latest release in the Filthy Rich Americans series, The Redemption, won the Holt Award from the Virginia Romance Writers Association and has been nominated for the inaugural Vivian Award from the Romance Writers of America.
We had an episode about age-gap romance, but when the woman is older sometimes we use the phrase Cougar, which I do not recommend googling!
Taboo romance is difficult to define. But on the episode, we talked about three major ideas: it explores power dynamics, it contains an element of the forbidden, and is makes readers viscerally feel that the relationship is “wrong.” However, Nikki also used the phrase “universal taboos” to describe topics so forbidden--beastality and incest--that they could never be a part of romance.
In a Florida high school, the necklines of women and girls were photoshopped (without their knowledge) if there was too much cleavage.
We’ve been digging the priest taboo since The Thorn Birds, and it was revived in pop culture by the TV show Fleabag. We discussed Sierra Simone’s Priest in season two.
As we reckon with #MeToo, we are all thinking about and redefining power dynamics in our culture.
Incest is a common trope in horror and other gothic stories, it didn’t originate with Flowers in the Attic.
Don’t forget to preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word in Brooklyn.
S03.45: Dark Romance: Monsters Need Love, Too.
We promised you an episode on Dark Romance and truthfully we’re pretty proud of how well we’ve delivered. We’ve got Kenya Goree-Bell, Nisha Sharma, Joanna Shupe and Jo Brenner with us today to dig deep on this subgenre that we don’t read regularly. We are endlessly grateful for their guidance through this end of the romance pool!
We talk about what makes a romance “dark,” about how dark romance differs from morality chain and taboo romance, and about why dark romance resonates with so many readers. Oh, and yes, if you’re curious, we fill your TBR pile (obvi). Stay tuned at the end of the episode for additional reflections from Sarah & Jen.
CONTENT NOTE: Because Dark Romance can include all sorts of problematic content, we don’t shy away from many of those topics in this episode. Proceed with caution, both in listening and in reading.
AUDIO NOTE: Due to countless irregularities, expected and unexpected, the audio in this episode isn’t up to our normal standards. But it sounds fine.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
Welcome our panel of dark romance experts: Kenya Goree-Bell, Nisha Sharma, Joanna Shupe, and Jo Brenner.
The hallmarks and tenets of Dark Romance
All dubious consent and non-consent romance is dark romance (although not all dark romance has dubcon or nonconsensual elements).
It’s about what the HEA is made up of: If the non-aggressor or non-villian moves into the dark (rather than pulling the other into the light), then it would qualify as dark romance.
Often the aggressor/villain is static, while the non-aggressor finds their light or strength in the new world they exist in. This person does all the work and learns how to navigate a life around the aggressor and their world. These are not stories of love redeeming, but rather of learning to find love and happiness with the person (people) in front of you.
The characters are suffering from current or past psychological or physical trauma. The non-aggressor represents the last bits of humanity that the aggressor has to hold on to. Dark romance explores a relationship where only one person has strains of humanity and the impact it has on a person without it.
The evil and violence of the aggressor must take place on the page.
Some Terms we'll use on this episode
Consensual non-consent (non-con): is when romantic partners engage “in behaviors that may include role-playing nonconsensual behaviors, or may involve negotiating sexual behaviors where one partner agrees to give up consent during certain behaviors or relationships.” This can include fantasizing about rape and kidnapping, and lots of women have complicated feelings about these fantasies.
Dubious consent (dub-con): is the gray area between full, enthusiastic consent and rape. A person hasn't give outright consent to having sex and might not consider it rape; however, some other factor prevents them from saying no.
The Aggressor: rather than use hero/heroine, Jo started using aggressor and non-aggressor as a way of talking about chracters who exhibit very non-heroic behavior.
The skin suit: What Jen calls the experience of reading a book where she wants more distance between herself and the main characters.
The Murder Meal: Sarah noticed that a common trope of dark romance is a meal where blood is shed and people still continue to eat.
Notes and Other Links
You may have listened to our Morality Chain episode, where we made a graphic explaining how it differs from dark romance. Next month, Nikki Sloane will join us to discuss taboo romance.
It’s not Mordor unless you’re a hobbit. Sarah is not opposed to elevensies, so it's fine.
Earlier this year, there was a Saturday Night Live skit about women watching The Murder Show. Why do women like reading about serial killers? Did you see this essay in Slate about a woman who thinks she slept with a man who went on to be a serial killer?
Game of Thrones and it’s penchant for sexual violence is still influencing pop culture.
The only thing that’s forbidden in dark romance is cheating, which shows how firmly these books are rooted in the romance genre, as compared to the rampant cheating by male characters The Godfather and other mafia movies, but this is often rooted in obsession rather than a belief in monogamy.
While there's very little (possibly no) research on readers of dark romance, but there's lots of research on the horror genre. Sarah’s friend Micol Ostow, who writes YA horror recommended this essay about the "spectacle of the ruined body." Meanwhile, Jen follows Becky Spratford, a librarian and horror expert, who says that one thing romance and horror have in common is they are both “genres of emotion.”
There’s some research on horror and spoilers from Jonathan Leavitt & Nicholas Christenfeld which indicates that spoilers might allow people to enjoy a story more fully. Perhaps dark romance readers, regardless of what terrible things happen, can safely continue reading because they know there will be an HEA.
Why do we like to watch and read media where characters are undergoing trauma? In The Paradox of Horror: Fear as a Positive Emotion, Katerina Bantinaki explains how readers experience reading about fear and trauma. Related: [(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? By G. Neil Martin.
A highly gendered kind of world exists in many m/f Dark Romances, and the article Her Body, Himself: Gender in Slasher Films by Carol Clover explores how similar themes play out in horror movies. As Nisha said, there are queer and polyamarous dark romance and a few the panel recommends are Soul Survivor by Daniel de Lorne, the Wicked Villains Series by Katee Robert, Trouble or the Darkness trilogy by Nora Ash, and Manipulate by Pam Godwin.
Stockholm Syndrome isn’t real, quelle surprise, but it still a popular idea in pop culture of all kinds. Many dark romance novels show characters using extreme or maladaptive coping strategies in an attempt to heal themselves or others without the help of therapists or medicine, a particularly American problem since so few people have adequate (if any) coverage for mental health.
Dark romance runs long, they’re all “Zack Snyder cut” books. We speculated that there are two reasons for the length of many of these books:
The books are long because the trauma on page must have an equal or greater redemption arc. Readers must believe that the non-agressor has fully accepted the bad deeds of the aggressor in order to believe the HEA.
Many of these books are on KU, which means authors are getting paid by the page. Like Charles Dickens, the incentive is to write longer to increase their pay.
Dark Romance Books
S03.43: Writers in Romance with Tia Williams
We’re welcoming Tia Williams, author of the wonderful Seven Days in June, to talk about her delicious book, about writing writers, about romances set in New York City, about her youth as a romance reader, and about Drew Barrymore as inspiration, and about The Joan Wilder?!.
Our next read along is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! Get the others in the series, too, while you’re at it, because you’ll probably want to read the whole thing.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
The Books
Notes
If you want a signed copy of Bombshell along with a Fated Mates sticker, preorder from Word Bookstore in Brooklyn.
Welcome Tia Williams! Her new release, Seven Days in June, is Reese’s Book Club pick for June. In this article in Ebony, Tia talks about her commitment to putting Black love on page and creating rich, interesting lives for Shane and Eva.
Eva’s website is EvaMercyMe, and her vampire hero is Sebastian. And according to Twitter, all romance Sebastians are good Sebatians.
Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown is quite the read, and we talked about it on the Texas!Chase episode.
The question of “what if Romeo and Juliet met as grown-ups” was also the idea behind Kate Clayborn’s Love at First, and we talked about it with Kate on an episode about retellings in romance.
Drew Barrymore’s memoir Little Girl Lost is the story of her childhood in Hollywood, and definitely was hugely influential and shocking, and it still is worth a read if you can find a copy. It hasn't been digitized!
Jen talked to Adriana Herrera about how people might self-harm, cut, and use other extreme coping mechanisms if they have experienced trauma.
The Brooklyn Book Festival is not for the faint of heart.
More about the quote “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
The Argeneau series by Lynsay Sands started with started with A Quick Bite in 2005, and book 33, Mile High with a Vampire comes out in Sept of 2021.
Romancing the Stone is a great movie from the 80s, and “The Joan Wilder!?” is a line from the movie. And, friend of the pod Linda has a t-shirt you might like. What’s looking like a great movie with a similar set up is The Lost City of D with Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock.
Next week, we’ll be discussing Lead (and the other books in the Stage Dive series) by Kylie Scott.
S03.41: Spy Romance with Nana Malone
You are in the right place! Your eyes do not deceive you! We’re actually talking about spy romances this week and no Sarahs were harmed during the discussion, but that’s probably because it was a discussion with one of her favorite people, the fantastic Nana Malone!
We talk about Nana’s immense career, about how she took matters into her own hands and started making the covers she wished to see in the world, about her Brown Nipple reading challenge, about her latest book, a Kobo original, The Spy in 3B, and about porny ferris wheels. Real ordinary stuff. We also get to the bottom of why Sarah doesn’t like spy romances generally, but why she can’t get enough of Mr. & Mrs. Smith retellings.
Our next read along in some number of weeks (three? four?) is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org!
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
The Spy Books
Notes
Welcome Nana Malone back to the pod, and if you want to hear more about the Brown Nipple Challenge, check out her Instagram. She is an amazing author and recently became her own cover model after failing to find good stock photos for her books.
If you don’t know how stock photography works, here’s a brief primer on how they can be used to make book covers and teasers. The problems with finding stock photography that is truly diverse is a well-known problem. For most authors, custom photography is cost-prohibitive. Nana’s favorite photographer is Wander Aguiar.
If you want to hear more about romance covers and their history, Sarah was interviewed on an episode of the 99% Invisible podcast about covers this week. Head over and have a listen after you listen to this!
Just in case you need a quick review, there are currently three paths in publishing: self-published, indie, and traditional. It’s common to use “indie” and “self-published” interchangeably, which why Nana described an author as “their own business.” Strictly speaking, Indie means small, independent presses, such as Violet Gaze Press. And Trad, or traditional publishing, refers to the Big Five (Big Four?) New York publishing houses: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.
A little about the history of Kobo and why it’s worth supporting them.
No one likes it when the Mary Sue character has no idea what’s going on.
Turns out that Ferris Wheel sex is a real thing at Coachella. And Myrtle Beach. And Vegas. And Kindle Unlimited.
Daniel Craig jumps on a train. Pierce Brosnon catches a plane.
Faberge Eggs have a storied history and are very fancy.
The hero of Night Magic is not that John McClane. If you like a Cold War thriller, you might enjoy a bonkers 80s spy thriller, The Charm School by Nelson DeMille.
Jen did love Lies, but had some thoughts about the ending and unreliable narrators that you can read after you finish the book.
We also mentioned some movies and TV shows about spies: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, La Femme Nikita, Spy, James Bond, True Lies, The Americans, Kingsman, and The Scarlet Pimpernel.
S03.37: Widows in Romance
We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Widow Books
Notes
Last week, we talked about Big Pharma, and if you want more of that, read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s about the Sackler family and how they made billions on Oxycontin which was a huge factor in the creation of the opioid epidemic.
Daisy Jones and the Six is a great novel, and the full-cast audiobook is supposed to be amazing. The Reese Witherspoon book club is the definition of the full glow-up.
Sarah made some Maple Oatmeal Muffins, and maybe you want the recipe. Why food bloggers include some pre-recipe chatter.
The question of freshman year dorm room decoration is of new significance to Jen since Lil Romance will be heading off to college in the fall. Might we recommend a Pulp Fiction movie poster or some Absolut Vodka ads?
If we’re talking skyscrapers, meaning buildings over 150M (about 500 feet) tall, when this was recorded in April of 2021, Cleveland has 4, Denver has 7, Chicago has 127, and New York has 284. According to wikipedia, only nine cities in the world have over 100 buildings 150M tall. The other seven are Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (118).
Check out the Sassy Podcast and the Babysitter’s Club. No, not that kind of babysitter.
We love the movie Widows.
The merry widow is an opera and a kind of sexy lingerie.
We did an episode on Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe way back in season one.
Primogeniture laws are all about who inherits titles and money and estates, and wasn't changed in England until 2013.
Apparently there are lots of misconceptions about Arabian horses.
More about Victorian era mourning requirements.
Historically you couldn’t marry your brother’s widow
All about gorillas and where the live, and actually it turns out a gorilla really could kill you in a fight. Sarah was on Learning the Tropes talking about The Earl Takes All, in case you need more of that.
Spoiler alert about The Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
We have two read-along books in May. On the 12th, we’ll be reading Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. On the 26th, we’ll be reading Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. It’s out of print and not available as an eBook, so order a used copy from Amazon or ThriftBooks, or check out the audio.
Join the "Romance sticker of the month" club
Preorder Bombshell, which comes out August 24th.
S03.33: Age Gap Romance
Silver foxes, May/December, older heroines/younger heroes. Look, Sarah’s buttons were installed young, OK? We’re talking age gap romances, how they played out in the early days of the genre, how they remain popular today, and what has happened (or not!) in the books to make them viable in 2021. We try to keep this one taboo but not dark, sexy but not erotic…but by the end, we’re not making any real promises.
Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, we’re reading Kresley Cole’s debut, The Captain of All Pleasures. Neither of us have read it, so we’re all jumping into the deep end without a mask on this one! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books. Or find it from your local indie via bookshop.org.
Show Notes
You can buy Iris Johansen’s mansion in Cartersville, GA for a cool 8 million.
Maybe Chaotic Evil isn’t the best writing plan.
Here’s some pop psychology about the May December romance. By the way, the phrase May-December romance apparently dates back to Chaucer. In The Merchant’s Tale, a young woman named May marries a much older man and a confusing idiom was born.
As it turns out the “half your age plus 7” rule is not something Jen made up, because once you google it, you get charts and graphs and articles and everything.
Sarah’s reference to “Every terrifying post on that reddit board” is r/relationships, although r/amitheasshole is always available with some new tale of terrifying bad behavior.
This problems presented from lack of sex ed are pervasive though historical romance, but how much better are we doing by our kids?
Jen was talking about Marvin Gaye when she mentioned "Everybody wants their own piece of clay" shit.
Diana Palmer has a long, storied romance career, and none of it involves that kind of DP. The first book in the Long Tall Texans series, Calhoun, was published in 1988, and the latest one is #57 in the series, Texas Proud, and was published in October of 2020.
All joking about the Pioneer Woman aside, she does have some great recipes.
It turns out that the “boiling frog” analogy is just a myth, so keep on reading!
The movie Carol is based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt.
The Jessa Kane book with the dirty version of the talk is called His Prize Pupil, in case you want to read it yourself. For science.
Our next read-along episode will be The Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole. If you want more Kresley, all of Season One is for you.
Books Mentioned in This Episode
S03.31: Morality Chain Romance
We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha.
Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
One very important note: we highly recommend doing a thorough search for content warnings for all the books and movies we mention this week.
We love Katee Robert, who we had on as a guest for the menage interstitial. Katee bid on this item at Kennedy Ryan’s Lift 4 Autism auction. It happens every spring, so keep an eye on this page for the 2021 auction if you’d like to pick the topic for a future interstitial.
This week, Katee released Seducing My Guardian, the 4th book in her SUPER HOT Touch of Taboo series. If you'd like to read a morality chain romance written by Katee, we recommend The Bastard's Bargain.
“In springtime, the only pretty ring time” is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It's also possible Sarah knows it from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She would like you to believe that it's from the former, but we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Either way, “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it,” is from Beyonce.
As it turns out, Chicago is a great town for beach volleyball.
It’s hard not to talk about morality chain & dark romance together, but we think they are inverse tropes. The internet definition of Morality Chain is “is a character who is the reason another character is Good.” Jen and Sarah’s current definition is that in morality chain romance, the Love Interest pulls a hero towards humanity and goodness, while in dark romance, the love interest is pulled down into the hero’s lawless world.
Some examples in pop culture are Spike from Buffy and maybe Barney in How I Met Your Motherr. Also, check out a movie called The Professional, where a child (played by Natalie Portman!) befriends the assassin next door. The Jason Statham one with a kid is called Safe.
The Hero’s Journey is very common character archetype in literature and pop culture, but Sarah and Jen are both very taken with Gail Carriger’s description of the alternative archetype, The Heroine’s Journey.
If you want more about morality chain, so many of Kresley’s books from The Immortals After Dark series will work, so please listen to season one! Our favorites are Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, Lothaire, and Sweet Ruin.
We were divided on whether the character has to be a danger to others in order to qualitfy as morality chain. In the Gamemaker series: The Professional is about an assassin who is a danger to others, while in The Player he’s only a danger to himself.
Jen Porter wrote a long thread about what she thinks of as PEA, or problematic ever after, romance.
Mickey is "kind of a Fagin-y" as a character, but without the antisemitism. In interesting historical facts, Dickens rewrote Oliver Twist later in life to remove all anti-Semitic characteristics from Fagin, after he'd been criticized for the portrayal of the character. Of course, it's not that simple. Read more about it from Deborah Epstein Nord.
Scottie is the main character of Managed, and is classified more as grumpy one/sunshine one, which we argue is just morality chain dialed down.
More about how most writers have a “core story."
Next week, we'll be reading You Had me at Hola by Alexis Daria
S03.27: Retellings in Romance Novels with Kate Clayborn
We are joined by the fabulous Kate Clayborn — the first in the Fated Mates five-timer club! — to talk about about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book, Love At First, which you can get wherever books are sold. We talk about the difference between retellings and homages, about Shakespeare and mythology and retellings of classic texts versus modern ones. And of course, we fill your TBR.
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you.
Next week, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's A Matter of Class, a short historical novel. Get it for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or Google Books.
Show Notes
Welcome Kate Clayborn, our first five-timer. She was with us for the Best Friend’s Sibling Interstitial, Kresley’s The Player, the Sickbed Scenes Interstitial, Derek Craven Day 2021, and today’s interstitial on Romance Retellings.
Texas and the rest of America got hit with some espically bad winter weather this February. This is climate change.
Kate released Love at First this week, which is an homage to Romeo and Juliet. Kate’s 2020 book, Love Lettering, is an Overdrive read. Get it today with no wait!
JK Rowling is a problem, and it’s changed the way many Harry Potter fans think about her books.
Yes, yes, the English Teacher memes are so funny. Well take that.
Tl;dr: archetypes are about character,while retellings are about plot.
In Where Dreams Begin, Zachary Bronson is a hero that follows the Beast archetype, and Jen saw it in the scene where Holly first enters his house.
Story can be a safe way to explore terrifying ideas about society and people. For example, both La Lloronaand Medea are about mothers who kill their children, but have a kind of distance that the story of Andrea Yates does not.
Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes writes about storytelling and the universal ID.
Our next read along episode will be A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.
Retellings from Literature
Retellings of Fairy Tales
Retellings from Pop Culture
S03.26: What to Read if You Loved Bridgerton
So you watched the Bridgerton Netflix series and you've torn through the books, and now you're desperate for more historical romance while you wait for Season 2 of Bridgerton?
Don't worry, dear readers, these podcasters have you covered. Tuck into our What to Read if You Loved Bridgeron episode for a massive list of historical romance recommendation based on what you might have loved in Bridgerton! Is it boxing? Is it I don't know how sex works? Is it the wigs? Is it the scene with the spoon?! Whatever it is...we've got you covered. And when you're done with this one, go check out our episode on romance series featuring big families!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you.
Please join us next week to chat with the fabulous Kate Clayborn about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book, Love At First, which you can preorder now or get wherever books are sold (even your local indie!) next Tuesday, February 23, 2021.
In two weeks, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's A Matter of Class, which is one of Sarah's favorite historicals. We'll talk about why then. Get it for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or Google Books.
Show Notes
We have some ideas about winter sports, which is that maybe they are best left to other people. But here are some photos of Chicago’s ice skating ribbon and the sledding hill at Soldier Field, which even has its own snowmaking machines! When the Obama Library is built, Michelle Obama requested they include a sledding hill because she remembered wanting to sled closer to home when she was a kid.
In the 90s, they really let Hugh Grant do anything.
The Luxe is a gilded age YA series, and the original covers were so gorgeous, as compared to the rejacketing. We are not taking questions at this time. We can't find the video Sarah talks about, probably because it was THIRTEEN YEARS AGO (lolsob), but you can watch this fun one about the cover shoot for Splendor, the final book in the series, here!
The comedian who did the Bad TV Impression of Bridgerton is Kieran Hodgson. His YouTube channel was recently emptied of content, which makes us think he's got his own TV show coming, but in the meantime, you can watch the Bridgerton hilarity on his Twitter feed. We recommend you do this immediately.
Speaking of rakes, Sarah explained them to Oprah Magazine. We aren’t the only ones who thought the Bridgerton brothers were indistinguishable.
A collective noun is the name for a group of things. A Cache of Jewels is a very charming picture book about collective nouns if you’re into that sort of thing.
If you love Queen Charlotte’s wigs, you can read this piece in Glamour about the hidden meanings in Bridgerton hairstyles, or follow the wig-maker on Instagram.
Here’s a great timeline of the books in the Beverly Jenkins universe made by Scentsational Rynnie. Jen interviewed Ms. Bev on Wild Rain’s release day for Love’s Sweet Arrow.
In Heart and Hand, Julie is a member of The Four Hundred, the most exclusive society families. She attended Vassar College, which opened in 1865. To watch Jen’s interview with Rebel Carter, KJ Charles, Caroline Linden, and Amalie Howard, join the Facebook group, The League of Extraordinary Historical Romance Authors.
Gunter’s Tea Shop is a real place if you liked that scene with the spoon.
Tell us about your historicals where there are duels: We've already got Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake, The Lady Hellion, and The Serpent Prince on our list.
Sarah didn’t know Jen was going to bring up Boxing, or she would have been ready to recommend Piper Huguley’s A Champion’s Heart, which is a beautiful inspirational romance.
If you want to know more about the connection between writing and boxing, Sarah recommends the Library of America's At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing. Here's more about the fascinating history of boxing gloves.
Jen enjoyed two movies about women who box: Girlfight with Michelle Rodriguez and Million Dollar Baby with Hillary Swank.
Next week, we'll have Kate Clayborn on to talk about retellings and her new book, Love at First. Our next read along book is A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.
Books For Bridgerton Fans
S03.23: Curvy Heroines Redux
Nearly two years since our first Curvy Heroines interstitial, which was short and sweet, we’re back with another that is longer and more meandering, but absolutely chock full of recs! We love a curvy heroine, and so do you all, apparently, as our original Curvy Interstitial is our most popular episode of all time!
Next week, we’ve got a special crossover episode with Erin and Clayton from Learning the Tropes, and the week after, we’re back to the deep dives with Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series (With a little Derek Craven Day excitement in there, too!) In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame It on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
This piece in Book Riot by Carole Bell argues that fat representation is different than fat acceptance, which is something we grapple with as we’re talking. She also wrote this list of romances with fat representation.
If you haven’t read books by Charlotte Stein, you should. Which ones? ALL OF THEM. Fat Monica, if you don’t know, is a reference to the TV show Friends.
Watch Olivia Dade talk about where we are now with fat representation in romance.
Cult of Glory, a 2020 book about the true history of the Texas Rangers paints a grim picture of the storied law enforcement agents.
In case you’re interested, last week Jen was googling “anal hook” and this week she landed on a bunch of Christian websites when she googled the Magi, so she got freaked out and just used a wikipedia link. It's fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thea de Salle is one of author Hillary Monahan's pseudonyms. Back in the day, Jen wrote about Catholicism in romance based on a later book in the series, The Lady of Royale Street.
Luciana Barroso is married to Matt Damon, and she’s a regular person.
In Get a Life, Chloe Brown, the heroine suffers from fibromyalgia., and so does the author, Talia Hibbert.
We did a whole episode on Alisha Rai’s Serving Pleasure in season two.
Jen recently read The Ravenels series by Lisa Kleypas. She’s obsessed with Rhys Winterborne, and West Ravenel is pretty great, too. Don’t worry, Derek Craven is still her favorite, and if you haven’t ordered yourmerch for our upcoming Derek Craven holiday, what are you waiting for?
On the show Bridgerton, Penelope Featherington is a curvy girl; however, in the books, she loses weight in the 10 years between when she comes out and when she finally gets her HEA with Colin.
Iman is one of the most famously beautiful supermodels in the world, and she married David Bowie in 1992.
“That’s what he said” is a long running joke from the sitcom The Office.
The Queen’s Gambit is a Netflix show about chess, and Crash Landing on You is a K-Drama about a woman who accidentally paraglides into the DMZ in a tornado.
Curvy Heroine Recs
S03.20: Romance Families
It's the holidays and we're talking family romances because many of us are with our families or thinking about them this week. No matter whether you have a perfect family life or one that's a bit more of a journey, romances focusing on families have been around from the beginning -- this week, we're talking royal houses like the Westmorelands and the Malorys, the LeVeqs and the Montgomeries, and the Holmeses and the Hathaways. We also talk a lot about our own families...which was unintended, but there it is.
You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order here!
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! For the next week or so, we've got a lot of fun stuff in the hopper -- be on the lookout for a few extra episodes!
And, if you're celebrating this week -- Merry Christmas!
Show Notes
Richard Gere wasn’t old when he filmed Pretty Woman, even though he was going gray.
Samantha Jaxon posted a very upsetting TikTok, and that's all we have to say about that.
The days of the big and small envelope in college admissions are over, but they do have the Common App and that seems nice.
Maybe, you too, would like a karaoke microphone for your future weather-person.
The 1987 movie Roxanne with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah is a Cyrano retelling, and it has lots of very funny jokes and one-liners.
There is one more phone-banking opportunity on January 4, 2021. You should join us!
Bridgerton drops on December 25th, along with Wonder Woman 1984. Virgin River is another Netflix show based on a romance series.
Just a heads up about the photo array, I’m just including the first book of a family series because otherwise it will be overwhelming!
70s and 80s Old School romance series with families include: the Malorys by Johanna Lindsey, The Montgomerys and Taggerts by Jude Deveraux, and the Westmorelands by Judith McNaught.
90s families: the LeVeq family by Beverly Jenkins, The Cynster family by Stephanie Laurens, the Rocking M series by Elizabeth Lowell.
2000s families: Brenda Jackson’s Westmoreland family, the Essex Sisters by Eloisa James, The Holmes Brothers by Farrah Rochon, and the Hathaways by Lisa Kleypas.
2010s families: The Blackshear family by Cecilia Grant, The Ravenels by Kleypas, the Duke’s Daughters by Megan Frampton, the Mackenzie series by Jennifer Ashley, the Greene sisters in the Uptown Girls series by Joanna Shupe, the Talbot sisters in Sarah’s Scandal and Scoundrel series, the von Hasenberg sisters in the Consortium Rebellion series by Jessie Mihalik, the Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews, and the Sullivans by Bella Andre.
Brenda Jackson was the first Black romance author to hit the New York Times bestseller list with the book Irresistible Forces in 2008. It's not a Westmoreland book, but the Westmoreland series is currently 30+ books and growing.
S03.18: Julie Garwood Interstitial: Damnit, Sara! (Not our Sarah!)
This week, we tried something a little different—recording a live interstitial episode! We’re talking about Jen’s formative queen, Julie Garwood, and we dig into dialogue, alphas who are instantly gone for their heroines, heroines who tame wild animals, arranged marriages between children, and why every Garwood historical feels medieval whether or not it actually is.
We recorded this episode live during a Fated States postcard-writing party to get out the vote for the January 5th runoff election in Georgia. If you’re a Georgia voter, please vote for Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, and let’s finish what we started with the blue wave! If you’re up for it, please consider joining us for a phonebanking session on the evening of January 4th!
Next week, in advance of the launch of the Bridgerton series on Netflix (coming December 25th!), we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Julia Quinn novel, The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.
Show Notes
Fated States is gearing up to phone bank on the evening of Jan 4 from 5-7 central time. Join us if you can!
Sarah mentioned seeing Berkley editor Cindy Hwang on a panel--it doesn't appear to have been recorded, but here is the description of the panel.
In Sarah’s OSRBC facebook group, there’s a longstanding search for a book where two people are on a beach and a wave throws them together, and then “oops they’re boning.” A few folks have suggested that maybe it was Pirate by Fabio. So check it out. His co-writer (a ghost writer is when they are unnamed) is Eugenia Rielly.
A teenage horror/romance that both Jen and Kelly loved was called The Ghosts of Departure Point. Probably came from the Scholastic Book Club, if we’re being honest.
In case you’re wondering, the copyright page will tell you if you’re holding a first printing or first edition. Here’s a bunch of people talking about why the edges of paperbacks were dyed.
RT Book Reviews and the RT conference once had Julie Garwood and Jude Deveraux on stage at the same time, and YouTube has the video! When Coronavirus is over, I highly recommend going to KissCon.
Nora Roberts is our Queen and last week a poor unfortunate soul named Debra learned that the hard way.
Obviously, Luke grew up on Tatooine. Hoth was that ice planet place, which is why the women in the Ice Planet Barbarians series call their new home Not-Hoth.
We’d be interested in hearing your interpretation of The Bechdel Test. Jen thinks the women can still talk about men AS LONG AS they also talk about other stuff, but Sarah thought it required no discussion of men at all which is pretty tough to find in romance. FWIW, Jen mentioned it in regards to The Bride because Jamie is so isolated and largely without women friends.
We like prologues and epilogues here at Fated Mates, but we understand not everyone agrees.
The feud between the families in The Gift is “like the Montagues and the Capulets, but worse.” Speaking of which, Kate Clayborn’s upcoming book, Love At First, is an homage to Romeo and Juliet.
This isn't exactly about the life expectancy in Scotland was in 1100, but it's close enough.
Vanessa Riley’s site has a great explainer about Black people during the Regency on her site. We talked about the Carribean in the Regency when we read Gentle Rogue.
It wasn't a "rip off" of Home Alone, it was just an allusion. Similarly, Nathan's whip reminded Sarah of Indiana Jones.
Are these books on audio? Why yes they are and Jen listened to The Bride in between recording and release of the episode and greatly enjoyed it.
Next week, we're reading The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn
S03.15: Menage Romance with Katee Robert
It’s getting colder out there, so we’re getting hot in here! We’ve got the fabulous Katee Robert with us to talk about ménage romance and why she writes them so well. We get to the bottom of why it always gets shoved into the taboo corner of romance, the fantasy of the trope, and why we like it so very much. Also, we topple the TBR (as usual)!
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Slight change of schedule to accommodate a fun thing we’re up to…next week, just in time for your Thanksgiving sloth, we’re announcing our best books of 2020! The following week, we’re reading Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.
Show Notes
Welcome Katee Robert!
You can’t just make wikipedia pages about yourself.
High fantasy has real meaning.
When talking about romance, M and F (and NB for nonbinary) are used to inform readers about the gender identity of the main characters. This is an imperfect shorthand, but at this point in our understanding of sex and gender, it seems like the most respectful way to acknowledge that there is a huge range of sexual identities that exist for people of all genders. For example, if we call a book with two women “a lesbian romance” it might not take into account that one character is bisexual, which adds to bi-erasure. So if a romance is labeled M/F, we know there is a man and a woman in a romantic relationship, but that leaves room for the sexual identity of the characters to be fully explored in the book. In romance with more than two people, the order of the letters matters. A book that is MFM would mean that the two men do not have a sexual relationship with each other, while FMM or MMF means that they do.
There is nothing taboo about polyamory.
Jen liked the progression of menage in Elle Kennedy’s Out of Uniform series. The series starts with a non-swords crossing threesome, Hot and Bothered. The observing one was Heat of the Night (available in the Hot and Heavy anthology), where Ryan watches Annabelle have sex with his roommate. But as the series progresses, there is contact between the SEALs in Feeling Hot and a fully formed menage relationship in Hotter Than Ever.
Ellora’s Cave and Samhain were two of the original (and now shuttered) indie publishers that specialized in erotic romance and/or taboo romance.
That article in Harpers about how men don’t have friends.
The Anita Blake series went through a lot of changes, so just go with Katee’s method and start with #9, Obsidian Butterfly.
Katee will be back to talk about morality chain in 2021.
Next week, we’ll be airing our Best of 2020 episode, and then the first week of December, we’ll be discussing The Hating Game.
S03.13: Fated States Author Recommendations
The last six weeks have been rough, but Fated Mates listeners and a wild number of Romance Authors made them easier by being a part of Fated States, our weekly phonebanking initiative with Indivisible Action. We don’t know how yesterday went, but we know we are so incredibly proud to have worked alongside so many listeners who volunteered their time to phonebank, and so many amazing authors who donated books to phone bankers!
On this episode, we rec books by every author who donated free books to Fated States — all 49 of them! Your TBR is going to be full for years after this one! We promise! Special shout out to Julia Quinn, Suzanne Brockmann, AJ Cousins, Carrie Ann Ryan & Cassandra Carr, who each donated books to EVERY phonebanker, once a week for five weeks.
Below, in Show Notes, you’ll find a full list of the books we recommend, and links to Amazon. You can buy print versions of books and support independent bookstores at our bookshop.org shop!
AND…thanks to our sister pods, Heaving Bosoms, Learning the Tropes and The Wicked Wallflowers, who donated podcasting swag, and to BestFriendKelly for stickers!
IMPORTANT UPDATE: This Thursday, November 5th, we’ll be recording our 100th Episode LIVE on Zoom, and we want you to be there! Join us and special guests, for games, laughter, romance recommendations, and as much joy as you can handle. Sign up here.
Next week, we’ll release the 100th Episode for those of you who can’t make it Thursday, and the following week, we’re back on read alongs with Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.
