S02.44: Freewheeling with Kennedy Ryan

We’re so excited to have Kennedy Ryan with us this week — someone who was blooded not once, but twice by old school historicals! Listen to us talk powerful heroines, her brilliant Queen Move, how so much romance is political and why those old romances are still worth reading — problematic and all.

Summer is here, and next week is the final episode of Season Two, with a few others to come while we take a few weeks off. To read romance novels. Obviously. Season Three begins in August!

While we’re apart, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

Oh, and did you know Sarah had a book out last week? Daring & the Duke is officially here! Get it at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from the wonderful independent bookstore, Savoy Bookshop in RI, where she is for the. month of July!

Show Notes

• Welcome Kennedy Ryan! You know what they say about pastors' kids. Just kidding, she was a late bloomer.

• Teacher Jen would like a moment to talk about vocabulary acquisition: Parents can help kids learn new words by modeling, but reading is really the X factor. You can take this vocabulary test to see the rough size of your own vocabulary, but this information about how kids acquire new words is actually pretty simple: read lots of fiction when you're young.

• Believe it or not, there was never a Carole Mortimer book titled Frustration. But perhaps you might be interested in her other single word titles: Untamed, Gypsy (yikes!), or Witchchild.

• Prince had lots of protégées, including Vanity (Rick James's ex-girlfiend! thank you for that info Cheris Hodges!), Sheena Easton, and so many others. Speaking of Sheena Easton, Prince wrote the lyrics for Sugar Walls and it is pretty dirty. Ava DuVernay was slated to direct a documentary on Prince for Netflix, but stepped down over "creative differences." And if you can ever travel again, Jen highly recommends going on the tour of Paisley Park.

• Jen mentioned that Iris Johansen, Fayrene Preston, and Kay Hooper wrote several series about a family called the Delaneys, and Kay Hooper tells the story of how it happened on her website. PS. the original covers for The Delaneys: The Untamed Years are amazing. And in case you're looking for a house to buy, maybe Iris Johansen's place might be to your liking?

• Going back to the archives, Candace Proctor (who also writes as C.S. Harris) and Penelope Williamson are sisters?

• So, in romances, being a wet nurse is just a plot device. But the history of wet nurses is, to no one's surprise, rather grim. Sunset Embrace is the Sandra Brown book with the wet nurse. In Vanessa Riley's newest-- A Duke, The Lady, and a Baby -- the heroine has to sneak in to feed her own son and manages to get herself hired as his wet nurse. In Romeo and Juliet the nurse said that Juliet was "The prettiest babe that e’er I nursed." In a pinch, Enfamil is the way to go.

• Mary Queen of Scots didn't come to a good end. So maybe just read Shadowheart?

• The Tragic Mulatto is a harmful anti-Black trope.

• Meagan McKinney defrauded the government during Katrina and landed in jail, which is why we are never going to read one of her books for Fated Mates.

Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan

The King Maker by Kennedy Ryan

The Rebel King by Kennedy Ryan

Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale

The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen Woodiwiss

Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins

Beach Read by Emily Henry

The Magnificent Rogue by Iris Johansen

This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen

Night in Eden by Candace Proctor

Sunset Embrace by Sandra Brown

Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale

For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

One Night is Never Enough by Anne Mallory

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah MacLean 0:00 / #
Well, we're almost done with the season but we have saved the best for last Jen.

Jennifer Prokop 0:06 / #
If I could break out into song right now and not scare people away. Maybe I would

Kennedy Ryan 0:13 / #
seriously

Sarah MacLean 0:15 / #
That is the dulcet, melodic, I would think probably tone of Kennedy Ryan one of our very favorites. Welcome Kennedy.

Kennedy Ryan 0:24 / #
Oh my gosh, you guys are my very favorites. I'm always pushing your podcast down people's throats.

Sarah MacLean 0:31 / #
That's what we like to hear.

Jennifer Prokop 0:32 / #
Yes it is.

Sarah MacLean 0:32 / #
T o hear about people just violently requiring people to listen to us.

Kennedy Ryan 0:36 / #
All the time. I was just screenshotting the one you guys did about old school romance. The one you did not too long ago, the Judith McNaught episode, I was shoving down every throat I could find last week so, I'm your pusher.

Sarah MacLean 0:51 / #
I like it. We're here for it. Welcome everybody to Fated Mates. We are really, really excited this week. I didn't know this. I feel Kennedy, you and I, we have just sort of unpacked our friendship to a new level. I had no idea you were such a fan of old school romances.

Kennedy Ryan 1:15 / #
Oh my gosh, yeah, I definitely am. A lot of times people will bring up some of the new stuff. And I'm like, Oh, I haven't read that yet. Sierra Simone and I have a joke because she's like, "how have you read all the old stuff? And there's all this great new stuff you haven't gotten to yet". I just keep rereading the old stuff it's so good. I'm that chick.

Jennifer Prokop 1:40 / #
I'm rereading a lot in these pandemic days. I really am.

Kennedy Ryan 1:44 / #
I have books that are annual rereads for me. Books that are built into my reading schedule. I have to reread this book, once a year. Certain books like, "Flowers from the Storm", like they're just certain books I have to read at least once a year.

Sarah MacLean 1:58 / #
Well, you are a mega Kinsale Stan

Kennedy Ryan 2:01 / #
Oh gosh yes. Mega, Mega. I tell people if you cut me I'm gonna bleed some Kinsale. I adore her. Everybody who knows me knows that.

Sarah MacLean 2:14 / #
Did you start with Kinsale? That how you came to her?

Kennedy Ryan 2:17 / #
No

Jennifer Prokop 2:17 / #
Yeah. Tell us your romance journey. I feel like we should ask everybody this.

Sarah MacLean 2:23 / #
Are we just diving in.

Jennifer Prokop 2:24 / #
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 2:26 / #
We are. I mean, we'll come back around. We're just roaming.

Kennedy Ryan 2:29 / #
I'm ready, roaming romance. I am ready for it. So I think of myself as twice blooded. I started reading romance, well, for me, it's really young. I was in eighth grade. And you have to understand my parents are pastors. So they, they were very careful about what I listened to, what I saw on television, what I read was very much curated in our house. When I was in the eighth grade, one of my friends handed me "A Pirate to Love". I think it was "A Pirate to Love". No, it was "The Wolf and the Dove". And it was this old battered copy. Because I'm, I think I'm older than both of you. This was like, gosh, it was like the late 80s. When I was in the eighth grade because I yeah, I'm 47 so

Jennifer Prokop 3:22 / #
I'm almost 47 so we're very close.

Kennedy Ryan 3:25 / #
I still got you Jen. I still got you.

Sarah MacLean 3:28 / #
I'm so young.

Jennifer Prokop 3:30 / #
It's nice not to be the old lady on the podcast. I guess.

Kennedy Ryan 3:33 / #
I will gladly take the honor of old lady. So I was in the eighth grade. And, you know, I mean, romance was pretty, I mean, as we know it as a genre still really developing. Um, and so she gave me this tattered paperback of "The Wolf and the Dove". Of course, that's what it was. And I just consumed it.

Sarah MacLean 3:57 / #
Yeah,

Kennedy Ryan 3:58 / #
Still Sarah and I talk about it, I think because that was my first romance, medieval still holds a really special place in my heart.

Sarah MacLean 4:06 / #
Well, I mean, we've talked about this. All of us have talked about this. And certainly we've talked about it on the pod. But the these early books like blooded twice, I can't wait to hear who the second blooding is. But blooding twice is really interesting because those early books, I really think they install your buttons, your, you know, Primal sex buttons.

Jennifer Prokop 4:26 / #
I was gonna say plot buttons, but ok.

Sarah MacLean 4:32 / #
Both. Both.

Kennedy Ryan 4:34 / #
Yeah. And I mean, at the time, you know, you're I was in the eighth grade and I had no idea well, this book's kind of rapey or I had no concept of that. It was just like, I'm enjoying this, you know, it was just it was very sensory. I enjoyed the pull. You know, I was reading, you know, Wuthering Heights, or whatever. You know, "Beloved", I was reading literary fiction or whatever they were feeding you in school? And something that was completely pleasure. And also for me, because I was young and I was such a late bloomer, like, don't even ask me when I had my first kiss. It was like 11th grade. For me, it was just all fascinating, honestly, and to see a relationship that way. And there was history, you know, I did, I hadn't known much about the Normans. And, you know, these marriages being, you know, arranged by this king, you know, I didn't know a lot of those things. So I was actually learning those things as I was reading.

Sarah MacLean 5:36 / #
You know, that's one thing that we never talked about is the amount of learning that goes on for romance readers, especially when we're young. I mean, I always joke that like, my SAT scores were really great and verbal and really terrible in math. And the reason why they were great and verbal is because of romance novels, because I knew all the words.

Kennedy Ryan 5:55 / #
Absolutely. And my father, he was the Dean of Students. He's in higher education. And he would, when I was growing up, he would assign, this is gonna sound crazy, he would assign me letters of the dictionary. And I would just read the dictionary and he would come home and he would quiz me on "N", you know, and we would go back and forth until we could stump each other on an "N" word. Oh that sounded bad, bad choice of letters. But you know, and he would say, okay, when you're reading every time you come across a word that you don't know, write it down. And then over the next week, make sure you use it in a sentence.

Sarah MacLean 6:31 / #
You know, what I'm going to start using this for the summer with my daughter, this is such a good idea.

Kennedy Ryan 6:36 / #
It's amazing. And so my dad, that's what he would say, every time you're reading, you come across a word you don't know, write it down, look it up. You try to use it within a week so that it can become a part of your vocabulary. So I was doing that before. Then I started reading romance, you know that. You know,

Sarah MacLean 6:56 / #
You had all different words.

Kennedy Ryan 6:57 / #
All different words. Here's the thing you guys. I didn't know at first to keep it from my parents. I'm walking around, you know, I'm walking around. My mom is like, what is that? And she wanted to take it from me. And so I started smuggling romance novels into my house. I had them stuffed under my mattress, I would go to the library, and I would come out with like, my respectable books, and I would pack my back pack full of all of my, this is what I mean by twice blooded, because when I first came into romance, it was Joanna Lindsey, it was Kathleen Woodiwiss, and then I got into category. So it was Charlotte Lamb. It was Carol Mortimer, it was Robyn Donald, all those one name books by Carol Mortimer, like "Frustration". You're like, I have no idea what that means but I've got to read it. So my bag would be stuffed with all of my romance novels, and I would carry into the house all of my respectable ones. And then I would stuff them into the back of my closet and in my mattresses.

Sarah MacLean 8:02 / #
Oh my god, you turn to a life of crime.

Kennedy Ryan 8:04 / #
I actually did. I turned to a life of crime just to get my kicks.

Sarah MacLean 8:09 / #
The pastor's daughter. It's all there.

Jennifer Prokop 8:12 / #
I'm just like, podcast over.

Kennedy Ryan 8:17 / #
It was awful. It was awful. It was a secret life.

Sarah MacLean 8:20 / #
It was amazing. But you know what, so many of us did that. I don't know if I've ever told this story on the podcast. I've certainly told it in interviews, but I when, you know, when I was young, when I was in middle school, the library was across the Middle School parking lot. And you know, I would go there after school and they kept the romance novels literally in the dark. The lights were turned off in the aisles where they kept romances and I was like, well, this is clearly for me. And I like lurked in the darkness reading, you know, furtively any book that had Fabio on the cover and the reality is its like we are trained from, you know, infancy in romance to hide the reading.

Jennifer Prokop 9:06 / #
Yes. Can I tell you I think we've all had that, that experience. And so the thing that, like hurts me is when fellow romance readers talk about their kids wanting to read romance and them not letting them. And I'm just like

Sarah MacLean 9:22 / #
It's hard.

Jennifer Prokop 9:23 / #
But why? Don't you remember what that was like? Why are you doing that? It's really hard for me and I just keep my mouth shut. I leave romances all over my house. And you all know my extreme effin disappointment that my son cannot be bothered to read them. I'm just like, Oh, my God. I'm always like, Don't you want to take these to your friends?

Kennedy Ryan 9:48 / #
He's like, sure, mom.

Sarah MacLean 9:51 / #
Some day, I hope to have Tessa Dare on the podcast, but one of my favorite Tessa stories, she has a teenage daughter, but right when that you know, 12 or 13, that sort of sweet spot of when you find out that sex exists and you're like, "what is this about"? She got a call, I think from a mom at her school, who was like, all the kids are passing around your books, because they're reading and they're reading all the salaciousness. And Tessa's like, well, I don't know what to say about that. Like, I'm not gonna tell you that it's not a good, like, ultimately, wouldn't you like your kids to know that when they have sex, they should be having it in a thoughtful way with people who care about their pleasure and care about them. Right, and it's a tricky thing. I mean, I get it, I get the hesitance. But yeah, I mean, I can remember just sort of skipping over sex scenes for a long time because I just didn't, yeah, get it. So I mean, especially in those early

Jennifer Prokop 10:59 / #
The year of the euphemism.

Sarah MacLean 11:01 / #
What on earth is going on?

Jennifer Prokop 11:04 / #
What's a velvet cave?

Kennedy Ryan 11:10 / #
What is the member?

Sarah MacLean 11:14 / #
Exactly, like you know it's something is going on.

Jennifer Prokop 11:17 / #
Is this a club that can be joined?

Kennedy Ryan 11:19 / #
I'm still stuck on the velvet cave. Its not so warm.

Jennifer Prokop 11:26 / #
You know satellite radio brings a lot of like, when we used to drive you know back before pandemic times, and had to go places, I heard the song by Sheena Easton and I really remember liking as a kid of sugar walls and almost drove off the road at how filthy it is.

Kennedy Ryan 11:50 / #
Oh, yes.

Sarah MacLean 11:51 / #
Oh, well, I mean, can we talk about Prince?

Jennifer Prokop 11:53 / #
I'm gonna say Prince wrote that right?

Kennedy Ryan 11:55 / #
Oh god.

Sarah MacLean 11:56 / #
Well, yeah. Sheena Easton. So here's my here's a fun fact. And surely this is about to become the musical theme of this episode. One of Eric's like very favorite things is to like drop Prince protege names just in conversation. Yeah and I so I know Yeah, Sheena Easton was a prince protege and he probably wrote that song for her.

Kennedy Ryan 12:15 / #
I'm pretty sure.

Jennifer Prokop 12:17 / #
He wrote all of those sex euphemisms songs.

Kennedy Ryan 12:20 / #
Darling Nikki.

Sarah MacLean 12:27 / #
Oh my boy. I mean,

Kennedy Ryan 12:32 / #
I think Vanity was one of his protege. All of them and my husband had all of them on his wall growing up, he actually saw Prince like in the bathtub before Prince, you know, stopped doing his nasty stuff live. We got a whole, he calls a door, he calls it a hymn. He refers to a door as our hymn. The full extended version now.

Jennifer Prokop 13:16 / #
You guys just this morning Charis Hodges on Twitter posted the most amazing tweet it says, "I was today years old when I found out that Prince stole Rick James's woman and turned her into Vanity". Prince a hero in every way.

Kennedy Ryan 13:35 / #
He rest in purple.

Sarah MacLean 13:39 / #
Kennedy, you just became Eric our producers favorite romance novelist. Yeah. Period. Hands down. You're gonna have to come back again and again.

Kennedy Ryan 13:50 / #
No effort.

Sarah MacLean 13:51 / #
You said vanity. Oh was a prince protege. And now that's it. You're his favorite.

Kennedy Ryan 13:56 / #
I will not be dethroned. I will figure out how to stay at that top spot.

Jennifer Prokop 14:01 / #
There's no one else. We've never met someone who knew so much obscure Prince trivia. To all of our listeners out there, when the world gets back to normal if you're ever in Minneapolis, please go visit, his studio is now like a tour you can go on and we went as a family and it was honestly one of the best like touristy things we've ever done. It was awesome.

Kennedy Ryan 14:30 / #
I would just die. And you know his family has given Ava DuVernay who I mean I have to genuflect when I say her name because she's a goddess. But the family has given her access to like his full catalogue, like hundreds of songs he never published. And she's working on something about his life. Ava and Prince together. Shut the house down.

Sarah MacLean 14:53 / #
Well, so euphemisms, sex euphemism.

Kennedy Ryan 14:56 / #
Yeah, Like the velvet cave, which sounds very woman.

Sarah MacLean 15:00 / #
Similar to Prince, these early sex scenes, that you might not understand exactly what's going on but you definitely know it's dirty.

Kennedy Ryan 15:08 / #
Yes, yes.

Sarah MacLean 15:11 / #
Yeah, okay, so we have Woodiwiss, you are like blooded by the original.

Kennedy Ryan 15:19 / #
Yeah, I mean

Sarah MacLean 15:20 / #
You're like the most powerful vampire.

Kennedy Ryan 15:22 / #
I a m an original. It was, Woodiwiss, you know, if you've ever read "The Wolf and The Dove" like, it does, it has the rapey overtones because, in the beginning, I was about to say I don't want to spoil "The Wolf and The Dove", I mean come on now.

Sarah MacLean 15:45 / #
It's 50 years old I think its ok.

Kennedy Ryan 15:50 / #
You know, when it first starts she does a great job of, redirecting you, misdirecting you for the entire novel, you know, so you think that I hate that I still know these names. You think that Ragnar has raped her? But he hasn't, you know and then so he hasn't raped her, her mother intervened and put some blood on, you know her kirtle.

Sarah MacLean 16:15 / #
Oh, famous blood. All the blood scenes.

Blood on the kirtle trick was and this wolf God doesn't actually rape her, he instead chained her to the foot of his bed and wants everyone else to think that he's raping her. Because he has his machismo that he has to maintain, but he doesn't actually rape her. And when they come together, member to velvet cave, it's painful and we think it's painful because, hey, she's only had sex one time and Wulfgar is hulking with a huge member, but it's really because she's an actual virgin and she wasn't raped.

And everyone knows sex is never painful after the first time. And the first time you bleed, like a gallon of blood.

Kennedy Ryan 17:03 / #
You have to, even though we dont have to display the sheets anymore. It still gushes from your body.

Jennifer Prokop 17:10 / #
I will say I remember a lot of those old historicals where like people displayed the sheets. I will say there's like, there's like installing your buttons. And then there's like, the anti buttons, whatever you read, and I remember like as a teenager reading those scenes and being like, listen, what the fuck this is not ok.

Kennedy Ryan 17:31 / #
Never okay.

Sarah MacLean 17:34 / #
So yeah, but also there's something. It goes back to we've talked about this, whenever we talk about medievals, right, and then being them sort of having that kind of over the top. Wild bananas storyline. And the reality is, is like something about that is really primal for so many of us. And there's something, but again it sort of strips away all the trappings of gentility and hands you a hero who is just raw patriarchy and has to be just destroyed. And you're what, tell everybody what you're reading right now?

Kennedy Ryan 18:17 / #
Well, I'm usually I'm usually so I have come to a place where my life is just really really hectic and most of the books I consume are through audio. So I'm listening to "Forbidden" by Beverly Jenkins.

Jennifer Prokop 18:31 / #
God one of my favorites.

Kennedy Ryan 18:32 / #
I just finished on audio. I'm just telling people because it's spectacular. It's not even historical. I just finished "Beach Read" on audio, which is fantastic.

Sarah MacLean 18:44 / #
I love that book, I really did. Jen hasn't read it but its so good.

Kennedy Ryan 18:48 / #
It's so good. Jen. The writing like sparkles. Anyway, it sparkles. But I everybody who knows me knows that like historical romance is kind of it's like my favorite. And I have all the Kinsale, all they can sell on audio. Certain books they're so old you can't even get them in audio and I love a lot of those, like "Magnificent Rose".

Sarah MacLean 19:16 / #
Iris Johansen.

Kennedy Ryan 19:17 / #
Iris Johansen and you know what's so funny is I caught I said that I was twice blooded. Like when I was first blooded. I only read romance from the eighth grade until my senior year in high school. So I like five years of romance and a lot of that was category and I didn't know

Sarah MacLean 19:32 / #
Wait, so you stopped reading romance, cold turkey?

Kennedy Ryan 19:37 / #
You know, it's like, I know I went into college and I stopped reading romance and I just I don't know if it was because I was adjusting to so many things and there was so much to read and there was so much to do, but I just lost it. You know, when I started reading other things and doing other things and I just kind of lost romance for a really long time. I didn't pick romance back up until I was close to 40 years old. I had, my son has autism, and I had started a foundation for families who have children with autism. And I was running that foundation. And I was of course, raising a child with special needs. And I was advocating for other families. My whole life, like, it was autism and everything I read, everything I consumed was around special needs and waivers. I was drowning honestly. And I needed something for myself, I needed an escape. I needed something that just was purely pleasure for me. And I just remembered how much I loved romance. And I just picked up, I started going to the library again like just on my own picking up some of the things that I loved before, but I don't even remember, Kinsale I don't even think was in the mix. When I was blooded the first time, when I was first blooded I think Iris Johansen was I don't know if you guys remember she used to write for like Silhouette, some category romance.

Jennifer Prokop 21:01 / #
She wrote for Love Swept. They were so good.

Sarah MacLean 21:05 / #
They were so good.

Kennedy Ryan 21:07 / #
And some of the plots were like whoa, like over the top. I'm trying to think of this one it had like magical realism, I cannot remember the name of it. But she was like a, not a sorceress, but it's just it's some I was like

Jennifer Prokop 21:22 / #
I bet it was, "This Fear Splendor".

Kennedy Ryan 21:24 / #
I bet it was, "This Fear Splendor".

Jennifer Prokop 21:27 / #
And the reason I know that is because that's the one where they have sex on the horse and she's some sort of magical like Jensen expert, an expert I yeah, there was like a whole like kind of series where it was like her and Fayrene Preston and Kay Hooper.

Kennedy Ryan 21:45 / #
Kay Hooper, oh my gosh. When you said Kay Hooper and I remembered.

Jennifer Prokop 21:49 / #
And they would write like the three of them would write these trilogies where they each took one person and they would all come out and they did like the Delaneys which I think is what the but yeah, it was a lot.

Kennedy Ryan 22:04 / #
It was a lot right and so I remember that and so I remembered I liked Iris Johansen and I picked up in this whole reblooding, my second blooding, Kinsale was out and Iris Johansen had written the, "Magnificent Rogue". And that's the one I started rereading. And it is fantastic.

Sarah MacLean 22:27 / #
Also medieval.

Kennedy Ryan 22:29 / #
Again, also a medieval. It's and just to give you for anybody, and also I pride myself on kind of obscure historical romances that went, because it's like my secret pride when people ask for my favorite and I say something like, and some people will know these like "Night in Eden" by Candace Proctor.

Sarah MacLean 22:50 / #
Oh, I don't know that one.

Kennedy Ryan 22:55 / #
You guys, okay.

Sarah MacLean 22:56 / #
I'm reading it right now.

Kennedy Ryan 22:57 / #
Do you know Penelope Williamson?

Sarah MacLean 22:59 / #
Yes. Of course.

Kennedy Ryan 23:01 / #
Okay, so Penelope Williamson.

Sarah MacLean 23:02 / #
Wait, first repeat the other one. Now I got a pen cap in my mouth.

Kennedy Ryan 23:06 / #
I'm gonna start with who have the you know, Penelope Williamson, right. So I read some of hers like she wrote. "Wild Yearning". She wrote, she has a medieval that I love and I can't read the name right off the top, but I will anyway so you know, Penelope Williams, Candace Proctor is her sister.

Sarah MacLean 23:24 / #
What's what?

Kennedy Ryan 23:26 / #
When I found that out my mom was completely blown. And one of my favorite novels is "Night in Eden", and this is written like in '95 '97. And it reminds me and you know, everything in that that period was Regency or Medieval or you know, it was

Sarah MacLean 23:42 / #
It was really, it was the heyday of Medievals the early 90s. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 23:48 / #
So this felt so different because "Night in Eden", is about it's in the 1800s I can't remember where in the 1800s maybe mid

Sarah MacLean 23:59 / #
Who cares, yeah, we did a whole episode where we decided readers don't care.

Kennedy Ryan 24:03 / #
Yeah. But I think if I did Regency era, okay, so, um, she, the heroine kills her husband. She had a baby who died. You guys, this is fantastic because it's not even in England. She starts in England. I think she starts in England. And then she gets shipped to New South Wales as a prisoner like

Jennifer Prokop 24:26 / #
Dang.

Kennedy Ryan 24:27 / #
You don't even understand

Sarah MacLean 24:28 / #
Now, I feel like I do.

Jennifer Prokop 24:29 / #
I feel like, I'm like

Sarah MacLean 24:32 / #
Stick to Australia feels real familiar.

Kennedy Ryan 24:35 / #
So good, you guys. And she becomes an indentured servant. And she her baby. She's pregnant. She has her baby in prison. And then she's on the ship on her way to I don't want to give the whole thing away because a lot of people may have never read this.

Jennifer Prokop 24:48 / #
This is probably the first two chapters, who are we kidding I mean.

Kennedy Ryan 24:50 / #
It's at the beginning. I'm not gonna tell you everything because the plot get bananas. The plot gets bananas. You know, we love bananas, but so she gets on the ship. On her way to New South Wales as an indentured servant. Because she killed her husband. She was it was an accident. But of course but

Sarah MacLean 25:08 / #
But what but he was terrible and deserved it surely.

Kennedy Ryan 25:11 / #
But he was terrible. He was cheating on her. Okay, we'll find that out later, so I dont want to spoil things. Anyway, so her baby dies, her baby dies.

Sarah MacLean 25:21 / #
Candace Proctor just breaking rules.

Kennedy Ryan 25:23 / #
Girl, you just, all the rules this is '97.

Sarah MacLean 25:26 / #
Oh my god, it's not that early. Yeah, like to give everybody a frame of reference the Bridgerton's the following year are gonna be out.

Kennedy Ryan 25:35 / #
Wow, I didn't even make that connection.

Jennifer Prokop 25:37 / #
But I do. I feel like there is and I feel like it's true today too, that they're sort of like always a strain of romance that is doing the most.

Kennedy Ryan 25:48 / #
Yeah, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 25:49 / #
Well, it's real fearlessness.

Kennedy Ryan 25:52 / #
You guys you have no idea. This is so fearless. Because the captain who she's going to go work for, you know, work out her term for, he is of course, gorgeous, but he's just lost his wife. He has a baby. She has to nurse the baby. She nurses his baby you guys. Because shes got her milk.

Jennifer Prokop 26:16 / #
Of course she does.

Sarah MacLean 26:16 / #
It's like that Sandra Brown book. That we talked about. There's a old school Sandra Brown from earlier

Jennifer Prokop 26:22 / #
Where shes the wet nurse. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 26:23 / #
Yes wet nurse. Yes. That is the technical term.

Jennifer Prokop 26:30 / #
It's also in Romeo and Juliet isn't the nurse of her. It's her wet nurse.

Sarah MacLean 26:36 / #
It's rich people hired wet nurses back in the day.

Jennifer Prokop 26:42 / #
I hired a wet nurse to it was called Enfamil, god damn, people were like, isn't formula expensive? I was like, I'm gonna send this motherfucker off to college one day. I can afford a can of formula a week my god.

Kennedy Ryan 27:12 / #
I love it. The modern wet nurse. So yeah anyway I won't tell any more but it is fan freaking tastic.

Sarah MacLean 27:16 / #
well I know what I'm reading at the beach next month.

Kennedy Ryan 27:19 / #
God it is so good it has to build that's the other thing is I love the stories that really build and so "Flowers from the Storm" that's why I love Kinsale so much it and a lot of my friends when, I feel like I'm all over the place because you asked what I'm reading now I'm rereading "Magnificent Rogue".

Sarah MacLean 27:34 / #
Right thats what I was angling for. Got a better there's a better story in here. Candace Proctor.

Kennedy Ryan 27:41 / #
Oh gosh, Candace Proctor just nice a "Night in Eden". And so with "Magnificent Rogue". I don't know why I picked it up because I'm listening. I'm listening to "Forbidden" now of course, and I will read things and then listen to them. So I'm listening to that. It's amazing, but I just you know, picked up "Magnificent Rogue" again. And I was like, this is all about women's power, like completely and just to give people a setting it is Medieval. It's asked me to blitz like, well,

Sarah MacLean 28:12 / #
It's Scotland, isn't it?

Kennedy Ryan 28:13 / #
Yes, it is. He's a Highlander. He is a Scottish Earl. And he has an island, Cray coo. I'm not may not be pronouncing that. But he basically bends the knee to nobody. And Queen Elizabeth captures him. And this is before Mary, Mary Queen of Scots is executed. It's like right before she's executed. And it is the the plot is so what is woven so tightly and there's so much I love misdirection. There's so much misdirection, and then he is amazing. Like, he is incredible. He's tall, he has dark hair, he's gorgeous. He's arrogant, but not in like a douchey way in like impotence, you know, kind of way. She wants him, she's fought, she has captured him. She's been trying to capture him for years, been watching him for years and realizes that he's the perfect candidate to do what she needs me to do, which is to marry this young girl who is a royal bastard. We are led to believe and I'm not going to say that it's not because someone might read this. And it's too brilliant for me to give away. Even though it's 30 years old. Anyone who's somebody who's reading it for the first time, and we are, you know, she's the bastard daughter of Mary. And of course, there's all this tension between Mary and Elizabeth. And then James is on the throne in Scotland, like it's all of this royal intrigue. And then there's this girl who is somebodies royal bastard, who has been kept by this evil priest who has been like beating her and who has been feeding her all kinds of religious nonsense for her whole life. And it reminds me of, 0kay, this is what reminds me of McNaught's "Kingdom of Dreams". Wait did I just say that right? Yes. Okay, um, all she wants is home. All she wants is family. She feels like she's been starved for that. And when she sees his clan, because he does have to marry her, he marries her. And

Sarah MacLean 30:17 / #
Isn't it a marriage of, it's they make a deal is not going to be

Kennedy Ryan 30:21 / #
Its a hand fast. That's what they do. So it's short, it's supposed to be short. And the reason he does that is because he recognizes she's a political pawn. And she is, he is all about his Island. You know, he doesn't bend the knee to anybody else. He is like, I'm self contained over here. People want me for my trade routes. We got our own money. I don't want to be in nobody's, I don't want to fight anybody's war. Like he's possessively protective of his people. And she goes, I want to belong. You know, she sees the way he takes care of his people, the way he, because the thing that Queen Elizabeth uses to get him to marry her is that one of his kinsmen is with him and he's like, you can do whatever you want to do to me. I don't care. But then she says, I will hang him right now if you don't marry her. And he does. You know, he's like, you can kill me but you can't touch. He says, I protect what's mine. Nobody's ever gonna hurt with mine. And mine, mine mine, mine,

Sarah MacLean 31:21 / #
Mine, mine, mine mine mine.

That's my id, you know mine mine mine mine mine. But it's not even just applied to her. It's applied to anyone who's under his protection. She compares him to a falcon who spreads his wings over his whole clan and she goes, I want to be in the shadow. Oh my god.

Put it in my veins.

Kennedy Ryan 31:44 / #
She starts to find her power. And she is some royals daughter and he start, he knows that. But she starts to realize it. And she starts to realize she has power even when like even when they have sex like for the first time and second time around. Whatever, she starts to articulate the power for own pleasure, and he teaches her that he's like, you have power over me, I can't resist you. Do you know what I mean? It's like, and then

Sarah MacLean 32:12 / #
I'm going to go back and reread this book right now.

Kennedy Ryan 32:15 / #
There's another woman who comes and she's smiling and she's innocent. And as soon as the door like with all the guys, and as soon as the door closes, she's like, okay, here's, here's what we're gonna do. You know, its like power, she understands the patriarchy she's working inside of, and how to leverage her gifts and her power to get around them. You know, she's always, they're always looking for workarounds. And I love that about this book. And if she becomes, in the beginning, she's timid. She's weak on the surface, but she has this like steel backbone, and you begin to see her rise like and the power, by the end of the book is so clearly her novel. It's so clearly her story. It's so clearly she is the most powerful piece on the whole board. And he recognizes that too. I don't want to give it away, the 30 year spoiler, but at the end even he's like, what do you want me to do? I will leave my clan, I will do this, I will do whatever, you know, it's just the joy of it. So empowering.

Sarah MacLean 33:16 / #
You know what's interesting, though, is we talk so much about these crazy like, over the top plots. And the reality is is like, they're not they don't they're not just, they don't just happen to be they're overt and they have, they are there so that stories like this can overtly discuss power and how women have it and how women use it and where power comes from and how it can be wielded. Yeah, when especially when it's obscure power.

Jennifer Prokop 33:49 / #
I think it's about persistence to right like what we see is like this evolution of women in the face of like, you have to keep if you want to outsmart the patriarchy It's gonna take persistent hard work that you're going to keep doing in as many ways as you can until you get what you want and get what you need.

Sarah MacLean 34:09 / #
But these power moves, are they I mean, what's interesting is that these older plots, I mean, they don't really happen as much anymore in current day, but we still have heroines who can make Queen moves, don't we Kennedy?

Jennifer Prokop 34:28 / #
Oh Sarah.

Kennedy Ryan 34:28 / #
Seg to the way.

Sarah MacLean 34:30 / #
Rim shot!

Kennedy Ryan 34:37 / #
You're as smooth as ribbons.

Sarah MacLean 34:43 / #
No, but so I mean, I'm gonna just I'm just gonna like fangirl over "Queen Move" for a little bit here because I think so. You know, Jen talks a lot about when people sort of hit their Imperial period as writers and I feel like I have always loved your writing. I've always felt like you "take the finger" like you lean into fear when you're writing. And I think that and I think you're a magnificent writer. But "Queen Move" is like, elevated to a new. I mean the whole series but like, "Queen Move" is like, I feel like you are, you're writing at the top of the game, not your game, the game.

Kennedy Ryan 35:24 / #
My mouth is hanging open.

Sarah MacLean 35:29 / #
It just feels to me but part of what's glorious about "Queen Move", is this magnificent heroine, who is just, she you back her up against the wall emotionally right from the start from like page one. And then you unpack. I mean, there's a lot to love about this book. It's also really epic, in the way, that some of these old romances of I can see the bones of your blooding and in this book, you know and part of that is because I've just spent a year with Jen like really unpacking, what the bones of romance are. And it's clear to me that you're, you've been taught to write romance by all the people who taught me to write romance, too. So of course, I'm like naturally drawn to your books. But there's something just like

Kennedy Ryan 36:17 / #
Same because I just finished Daring. So fan girl over here. But you already know that I was texting you the whole time.

Sarah MacLean 36:24 / #
This is my turn. This is, it's my podcast, so I get to talk. So this so there's this epicness about the whole story, especially because you also are telling the story of multiple generations. Yeah. But, um, this I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the evolution of this particular heroine and like, and just tell everybody a little bit about where you came, how you came to her?

Kennedy Ryan 36:50 / #
You know, so the heroines name is Kimba. And for anyone who read "All the King's Men" duet, she is the best friend in The first two books of you know, the duet, "The Kingmaker", and "The Rebel King". And Linux is the heroine in that and just to give context, it's kind of like scandalous in the sense that they're like gladiators. You know, they're like white hat girls. So they start their own political consulting firm specifically to install people in power, who they believe will advance the causes of marginalized people. And so our heroine in those the duet is Native American, she's Yabba pi Apache. And Kimbo of course, is black. And so they are like all about the brown girls all about the black girls all about queer people, like they're all about marginalized groups and making sure that we're putting people in power who are going to advance those causes. And so I won't talk about everything that happens in the duet because that is bananas. That is a lot.

Sarah MacLean 37:54 / #
But like magnificently bananas. I'm here for all these. This is my Like I'm here from contemporary 2020 romance to take these risks, because I think we're still having these conversations. The patriarchy still exists. It's still, it's still coming for marginalized groups and women and, and it feels like these big stories deserve to be told now more than ever. So in some ways, they just have to be twisted a little bit.

Kennedy Ryan 38:26 / #
Yeah I think so and I think one thing that was interesting for me was when you talk about you know, how you're blooded, obviously the book that blooded me once and then twice and my twice blooding. My second blooding, that's when I discovered Kinsale, who is I mean, to me, like Kinsale is like the highest bar you can reach, you know, 'Flowers From the Storm", I adore. I found and I know, I just slipped back in historical mode. I'm sorry. I'll get there.

Sarah MacLean 38:57 / #
Come back around. It's fine.

Kennedy Ryan 38:58 / #
"Flowers From the Storm". When I read it, I just kind of sat there like, I can't even process what just happened, you know, because and I think when you talk about who are the writers who inspire you, I'm not even saying that I'm anywhere close or whatever be to Kinsale, but she is like the little angel on my shoulder when I'm writing because she does not pander to readers. She doesn't say, "Oh, they may not know this word", or she doesn't say,"Oh, this might be too hard". Or she doesn't say "wow, they're gonna have to get through this first". She is fearless. And she's like, either you're with me or you're not? Yes, the Duke is gonna have a stroke. And no, he's not going to speak right for the rest of the book. And yes she's a Quaker and she's gonna say "thee and thou" for the whole book deal with it. You know, it's like she is just and the intricacy of the way she writes in the way she developed plots, it affects me. And that kind of just for an example, when you read "Shadow Heart", which again Medieval, you know she has a medieval, not even a duology because they're standalone, but it's "For My Lady's Heart". Yeah, they're companions for my lady's heart and then years later she writes shadow heart and the hero is the best antihero he has an actual assassin.

Jennifer Prokop 40:20 / #
I love assassins I do.

Kennedy Ryan 40:24 / #
I love assassins. Okay, this is the level of assassin this dude is he's tried there and I think street market and he and again it's Medieval and he needs her to shut up and she's screaming and screaming and to me she doesn't get it. He does that like pressure point face and neck. And she faints. She fainted. And He is ruthless. I know it sounds like an asshole but he's amazing.

Sarah MacLean 40:57 / #
I like that. I know he sounds like an asshole.

Kennedy Ryan 40:59 / #
But this is the thing. She becomes again the same as like with the "Magnificent Rogue", she is the heir to something that he and another guy have been fighting for. She's the rightful heir to it. Like she is the princess. And they've been fighting because the throne has been vacant and she takes the throne. But at the beginning she's just like this simple farm girl you know who is kind of stumbling along and doesn't even know her own power. But there are elements Now think about how long ago, this was elements of BDSM strong elements of BDSM in a Mideval.

Sarah MacLean 41:35 / #
Kinsale is real kinky.

Kennedy Ryan 41:37 / #
She is oh my gosh, when I tell you, and this is the brilliance of Kinsale.

Sarah MacLean 41:43 / #
Jen is like "what is happening"

Jennifer Prokop 41:45 / #
I'm enjoying it all.

Kennedy Ryan 41:48 / #
Okay, so it's a Medieval we're going to I'm going to get back to Queen so sorry. It was a Medieval, we're going right we're moving right along and the whole time I'm in love with him like I'm in love with him because he's magnificent and he is fearless, and he's ruthless, but also protective and obviously really into her. And she discovers that she has these dominant kind of tendencies and he who was like so powerful, so alpha has these, you know tendencies where he wants to be dominated in an instance you know, in sexual situations and so they start to play with that. And I'm the whole time I love dual POV and it's it's just her POV, her POV and the whole time like, gosh, I would love to know what he's thinking. Chapter 17 she has him, he's much taller than she is. He's standing against the wall she is she gets on a step so that she can mount him. And all of a sudden, like chapter 17 or something, it switches to his point of view. We have not heard his point of view for 17 chapter.

Sarah MacLean 42:51 / #
Magnificent. That is a baller move.

Kennedy Ryan 42:56 / #
Baller move like drop the mic.

Jennifer Prokop 42:59 / #
This is where I've got to tell you as a reader, I don't like it. I'll tell you why. Cuz now I'm like, listen, you've been keeping this man from me.

Kennedy Ryan 43:13 / #
But you get him for the rest of the book Jen, the rest of the book. It works so hard. Like, because its around chapter 17 somewhere around there. And then he's there for the rest of the book, it switches points of view for the rest of the book. And it is just anyway, it's magnificent. So that kind of just intricacy, of plot, just saying readers, just come with me, you know, I'm not looking over our shoulder like, Are you still with me? Are you still with me? I'm like, okay, either you're coming or you're not like, Yeah, and I really hope that you do. And I'm going to try to make it as easy for you as possible. But I'm not going to compromise on the story that I want to tell. And I see that, that in Kinsale like that is, it's some, it's just magnificent in her.

Sarah MacLean 43:59 / #
I think this is the thing right Jen, Jen and I were talking this morning about a different book. And we were, we were just having conversation about whether or not she's reading a book that I've already read and and whether or not it worked for her and, and I, here's my problem is as a writer, I really like it when someone takes that risk. Like, no one's ever done this thing before. Maybe it won't work, but I'm going to do it and we'll see. Yeah, right. And I think that that, that confidence, and I do think it is con, I think it's learned. I think sometimes you see that in a debut and it's naive. It's not the right word like Yeah, right. It's just that you've never you don't know what you don't know. And so you just sort of, you're just writing into the wind, and you end up writing some sort of book that really sort of pushes the boundaries of the genre in an really interesting way. But often when we see that in a debut, the following books can't keep up with that. Yeah, so but when somebody like Kinsale pulls this behavior or you, Kennedy, then what you're seeing is confidence in skill, in like the writers confidence in their own skill, but also a sort of very clear belief that readers will follow.

Jennifer Prokop 45:16 / #
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I joked or whatever but like, right, I think it all it things work if the craft is there and one of the things I actually like really struggle with and I can't imagine you two as authors do not either, is the sort of narrative that like writing romance is just like, it's always the same. And you know, it's just this like, silly thing when you know, women are well used to be that women do, you know, that it's just a silly genre. And I think that when people take big risks with craft, their craft as authors, right? I want, I want the world to appreciate. I don't really actually maybe care what the world thinks I want romance readers, at least to appreciate that there's work that goes into this right. Like reader that readers are seeing, you know, again, that Imperial period thing like, right, like we are seeing authors that are making really explicit choices and so given what you just described about this book it actually totally makes sense to me like she unlocks him somehow and now he's on the page.

Sarah MacLean 46:16 / #
And what a great use of sex to in that moment. Anyway, stop right there I'm cutting Jen.

Jennifer Prokop 46:21 / #
No, no, but I think like that's the part I, the thing about like, the bananas books kind of narrative is, we as insiders to the genre, like see what it's doing, but I sometimes feel like outsiders to the genre use it as like a weapon a snicker. That's, you know, I don't really care but I went inside I just want us to appreciate like, craft choices are our craft choices, and it's not accidental people are making decisions and I do like that, despite my earlier.

Sarah MacLean 46:57 / #
I mean, this is one of those things Jen to where it's so I mean, I'm sure I know I know you well enough now that I know that you are very you are really enjoying this conversation with Kennedy. And I think that part of it is the joy of like talking to somebody who knows the history. You know, we're about to, next week, we have an episode recorded with Steve Ammondon and it talks about somebody who just knows every knows the history of the genre and is able to really unpack why. You know, it's like that scene in "The Devil Wears Prada" where. What's her name? Help me, Help me know the other one. Marianda, what's her name? Sarah, the actress though. Meryl Streep or Meryl Streep says to Anne Hathaway like you're wearing yes, that blue sweater.

movie dialogue 47:51 / #
Oscar de la Renta did a collection of civilian gowns and then I think it was the salary or wasn't it who showed civilian military jackets. I think we need a jacket here.

Sarah MacLean 47:59 / #
Yeah. On the cover of Vogue, yes. Like, like meta, like, yeah, you think this is foolish. But it's not. Because it's all, I can show you how it's built. And I think when you talk to somebody who knows the bones of the genre, you can really unpack these questions of why are, why is switching the POV during a sex scene for the first time, to a man? Yeah, power move for the heroine and for the writer. And, and why like we've never seen we don't see that usually in books.

Kennedy Ryan 48:43 / #
And I, I think that kind of intention. Now it feels very intentional. And she can pull it off like she has the craft back it up.

Sarah MacLean 48:52 / #
And there aren't many who can pull that kind of shift. Oh, 17 chapters and then you get a new POV.

Kennedy Ryan 49:00 / #
Absolutly and he stays with, he stays with you for the rest of the novel, you know, switching back and forth, but

Sarah MacLean 49:06 / #
I mean, it's real bold itself. You know who else has done that? Um, Kennedy, have you ever read Anne Mallory?

Kennedy Ryan 49:13 / #
Yes. I can't remember which of hers.

Sarah MacLean 49:15 / #
You read the one I'm sure you read the one that I told you read, probably which is the one with the chest scene, huh? Have you read that one, where she sells herself to basically like, he wins her in a in a bet from her father. And then they play chess for 70 pages. But there's another Anne Mallory and I'll find it I don't remember the title but I will find it and put it in shownotes that does a similar thing. I mean, clearly as an homage to this Kinsale but does a similar thing where for the first like third of the book, you don't get the hero. And then you get the hero. And it's really I remember reading that and just being like, wow, this is a bold move like but Anne writes like she doesn't write romance anymore. Unfortunately. She's another writer who every book was different. Like every book took a different risk.

Jennifer Prokop 50:06 / #
A generation of romance isn't like the same as a generation of people. Right? And so, you know, we're not talking like 25 years, and these are all in the same group. I mean, I think a romance generation is maybe like, 10 years, maybe. Or, you know, and and so it's like, "50 Shades" since "50 Shades" seems like a generation, right? Since like, "Bet Me" and like between "Bet Me" and "50 Shades" was another one. And I think that the thing too, is like when we think about how, like narrative choices have changed over time, right, like that was, it would be very hard to imagine someone doing that today. And not, you know, like, when I first joked about not liking it, it's because I was thinking about 2020 Jen, right, not thinking like, Hey, that was three generations of romance ago. And yeah, and the books just read differently.

Sarah MacLean 50:57 / #
I mean, that probably shattered some readers. Imagine I mean, I bet what's interesting too is I bet readers were really frustrated by the idea. When was that book? Do you? Do you know, Kennedy?

Kennedy Ryan 51:08 / #
No. Are you talking about are you

Sarah MacLean 51:10 / #
The Kinsale?

Chapter 17, Kinsale.

It's "Shadow Heart".

Let me see, maybe 10 years between the companion novel, and like the first one, it's like maybe 10 years between them because I want this one won. This one won, The Rita, which was let me see

It's first published in 2004. In 2004, we've never seen we really rarely saw single POV romance novels. Until, you know, no, 2010.

Jennifer Prokop 51:46 / #
No, that's not true. It was just always the heroine, like all of early romance was heroin only.

Kennedy Ryan 51:55 / #
Well, I don't know because "The Wolf and The Dove", is double point of view. It is omniscient. But it's well, it's double point of view.

Sarah MacLean 52:03 / #
You know those heroes are hard to crack. Cuz that's the problem, right?

Kennedy Ryan 52:07 / #
Yeah. Well, and I think when you talk about the hero we talk about and this I think goes back to you asking me about "Queen Move". And what imprints us like of course those first novels because I was blooded with like "The Wolf and The Dove" and "Agetting out Pirates Love" now "Pirates Love" is racy. But I mean, it's like that alpha male, you know, that it imprints on you and it kind of changes over the years but I find myself still enjoying that dominance but now as a grown woman, now as a, you know, fully understanding feminist, that, that, that primalness, that archetype still appeals to me, but it's it has to be filtered through my philosophy, my personal worldview, my personal belief system now. So I find myself grappling as a reader and as a writer with that line where I feel like you've crossed into male toxicity, or you, you know, I find myself you know, examining that line a lot in my work. And when I wrote, I had to be super super, super careful when I wrote "The All the King's Men" duet, the duology because the heroine is Native American and the hero is white. And there is such a harmful history where in romance, that relationship that power dynamic has been appropriated, has been harmful, has been stereotypica, has been demeaning, has stripped native women of dignity has stripped uh, you know, indigenous people of their, you know, the culture. So even when I was the research that went into that was, it was the hardest research I've ever done. It was a it was a lot. I literally was consulting a medicine man for parts of that book to make sure that I got it right and course had indigenous sensitivity and responsive readers from that tribe and from other tribes. So it was a whole thing. But then I had this alpha male, and it was like, how am I going to have this alpha male with this Native American heroine and not perpetuate that? And it was such a delicate balance, you know, it was starting the relationship had to evolve over the two books, even their sexual, she first of all, she had to be an alpha female, you know, she, it had for me to feel like I was striking the right balance. She was an alpha female. So she was very assertive. She was very powerful. There was no dominating her, you know, he I didn't ever do you know what I'm saying?

Sarah MacLean 54:43 / #
Yes, of course,

Kennedy Ryan 54:44 / #
But even you know, how you might say something like is a savage kiss or something like that, that that word couldn't be in the whole book. You know, it's like, oh, no, you can't do that. Okay, you know, so you there's like this even tighter filter, and I found myself really having to restructure, what the alpha male looked like in that in that context, and then when I wrote it is very different cuz he is very dominant. And also I think that he becomes more sexually aggressive as the book goes on because we start to trust him as an individual. Do you know what I'm saying? Not as a caricature, but I think he can be more in the beginning. He's sexually aggressive, but not in the way he is, by the end of the book, by the end of the second book, because readers know him as a person, they get to know him as a person and to trust him with her, and see that she can trust herself with him without him perpetuating what we've seen before.

Jennifer Prokop 55:43 / #
Can I ask you a question? Because this, and this is really to both of you, which is I feel like there's a big conversation that I mean, really, in the past couple years that romance has been having about, like, sort of like the cinnamon roll versus the alpha and Kennedy like, what you're sort of seemed to be explicitly saying is if I'm interested an alpha hero and I'm writing male/female romance then what I need to create to balance that out as an alpha heroine.

Kennedy Ryan 56:07 / #
Um, I'm sure that it can be done. I'm sure that someone could do it without doing that, I think for the particular novel that I was writing, and the particular history that came with that ethnic mix in a relationship, I made that choice. But I mean, when I got to "Queen Move", I made a different choice, you know, where he is more, more of a cinnamon roll hero. And she is very, very powerful. And he is powerful. He's very, you know, very sexual in the bedroom, very sexually aggressive, and she's aggressive and she knows what she wants. She's in charge of her, her sexuality and her power and they have a conversation about their number. And he's like eight because he's been in a committed relationship for a long time and she's like, I have no idea what my number is. He is very secure. She needs that she probably makes more money than he does. Her job is higher profile. She's very, very powerful. And he is an educator, you know, he starts a school for underprivileged kids, a private school. So he's like, your zip code should not dictate your education. And he starts his private school that's, you know, funded. So he's an educator, and she is electing presidents. And he is completely secure, in the fact, that she makes more money than he does. He's completely secure, in the fact, that she's, you know, on CNN, commentating and he's not, and he's exactly what she needs. So, I don't know.

Sarah MacLean 57:43 / #
An arguably what the world needs in 2020. I mean, he's a model, right? Which is interesting because he sort of is a model, in the way, that a lot of these heroes have always been models like you establish the the hero who walks through fire for the heroine, the alpha here who walks through fire for heroin, and is sort of broken down and rebuilt for her in an image of like parody and partnership. That is, that is the hero that needed to be modeled for many, many years. And now we need a different kind of hero to model.

Kennedy Ryan 58:21 / #
in some cases, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 58:23 / #
But Ezra also, like Ezra isn't a cinnamon roll to the in the sense of like, there's not he's not just all soft all the time.

Kennedy Ryan 58:33 / #
No, no definitely not. No, um, he's introverted. He is very self contained. One thing that was very important for me, some people would call him a cinnamon roll hero like in reviews or in conversations, but he is Black and Jewish. So he's a man of color. And one thing that I think we don't see enough with men of color, whether that's, you know, black men, Latin x men Whatever it is, we don't see them so often, as fathers, as nurturers and he is a single dad. And I really wanted to unpack because he's very strong. He's quiet and strong. He's in direct contrast to Maxim, from the first from the duet who was like a mogul, you know, sustainable energy. And he becomes, you know, a place just as huge, charismatic, like bigger than life figure. And of course, we fall in love with him. But then there's this other guy who is so content with his life. You know what I'm saying? He's so on mission, his mission and he's not comparing himself or his life or his choices or his mission to anyone else's, and he has his own strength. So I want him to be as big and readers hearts as that, you know, living in Atlanta, running his school, doling out his son's vitamins every morning and making sure he doesn't drink Cokeyou know. Investing in his son, and seeing his son as his mission, raising a good human as his mission. I want that hero to be as big in readers hearts as this other guy who is this huge mogul of sustainable energy and ends up being president. You know, I want both. I want us I want readers to see the value of both and how both are fitted to these women. You know how they complement these women and they're exactly what this woman needs. And that's also the choice. We as women have to decide what we need, you know, the essence of feminism, your choice. And she chooses Ezra, you know, well, they they're fated. Fated mates. You know they're the same day their soul mate.

Sarah MacLean 1:00:41 / #
Clear Fated Mates to, I mean the one of my it's so early in the book I can sort of, I mean, it's chapter one.

Kennedy Ryan 1:00:49 / #
You can read it on Amazon.

Sarah MacLean 1:00:51 / #
But when I yeah, you can read it on Amazon. One of my favorites, I guess it's not chapter one. Oh, yeah, I know it is. I don't know. It's early. You can read it on Amazon. So the but it's but it's the moment where she sees him. I mean, this is the magnificent thing, right? Like she sees him at her. She's at her father's funeral. The book begins with her at her father's funeral. Yeah, the prologue, in comes this man who is the boy she loved as a child. I mean, there it is, right? My pure ID, right? But it's the boy that she loved as a child and he has his child is there and so is this child's mother, who you are led to believe, is this man's perfect, beautiful wife. And it is so heartbreaking for to watch this heroine who is buttoned up like at her father's funeral like, cannot refuse this reveal kind of really any emotion. And here she is kind of whacked in the head by this boy she hasn't seen in years, who was her first love right? And then whacked in her head in the head again by the fact that he has This beautiful wife who's with him. And, and then, and this beautiful child and this like perfect and her family, as you're reading this, her family is also just in shambles, I mean, destroyed by the loss of this father figure. And so like the compare the, I mean, it's just the moment. I mean, you read that that scene and it's just so perfectly balanced. And it's I mean, it's just amazing. And then of course, you know, they're not like the wife is not really a wife. And so like it sort of unravels the way a romance novel should.

Kennedy Ryan 1:02:39 / #
Yeah, well, and you know, I think one thing that people someone interviewed me last week and they were like, you don't usually have weddings in your books. I you know, because my weddings are hard. They are hard, but I think a lot of and I will often do weddings and bonus epilogues as opposed to the actual like cannon of the novel itself, and I, I like writing books where the wedding is not the point, you know, so often it feels like

Jennifer Prokop 1:03:07 / #
Yeah, the wedding is never the point, right.

Kennedy Ryan 1:03:09 / #
You know, like getting to the altar, you know, is the point and I, I wrote a series called the grip series. And in the third book, it's a trilogy with the same couple across three novels. And you're like, What is she going to do in that third book, you know, because they get together at the end of the second book, and they get married pretty early in the third book. So I like writing books where the point can't just be that they're happily ever you know, that they get together. There's all these other things and the series that I'm working on now, all the couples are married, you know, it's like, so the point can't just be to marry each other. You know, and I think for me, it's so much more about the journey, and what that looks like, than just them kind of getting together.

Sarah MacLean 1:03:55 / #
Don't you feel that partially that marriage the marriage book becomes more approachable for you as a reader as you age. Yeah, I can remember that when I was a kid marriage of convenience was just my least favorite trope. I just didn't care about how hard it was to be married. Or a second chance, right? With a married couple, who cares, right? But now I feel like there are certain writers who just do it so beautifully. And it's such a complex way of telling a love story.

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:27 / #
But I also feel like isn't that the greatest thing about romance is that like, there's so much there that as you age and grow and change in your life, in your relationships, like there's romances for you, this isn't a genre you have to lose. Because you're your life is different, right? It's and it's as Kennedy proved, it's a genre people can come back to and that's the part it's there's so much diversity and richness in the genre. And just like the types of stories that you can find yourself attracted to is.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:57 / #
Yeah, Kennedy can I Ask a craft question?

Kennedy Ryan 1:05:03 / #
Of course, I don't know if I'm a craft woman.But yes go for it.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:06 / #
I want to talk about that I want to go back to Queen mu because so I talked earlier about how there's this epic kind of generational story that's going on in this book. And I don't want to spoil anything about it. But you make a really interesting choice. And, and I thought, as I was reading it, you know, I knew "Daring and the Duke" was coming. And I have just done this sort of generation not generational, but like, long, long time love story, right? Like childhood love. I know, I know, I sort of feel like we should do this as an Instagram Live too, and just talk about this for an hour. But so well, I'm in if you are so anyway, but the question that I have specifically is, so you make a choice, and it's about 25% of the Is it about a quarter of the book, like, you mean, we're children. We're in the past we're in we're in the childhood. It's a lot time. And I mean, it's not I don't say that. I mean, I loved every page of it. But it's interesting because I mean, I, that I really struggled as a writer with making the choice of like, how much am I going to give them of the childhood versus the adult romance and I wonder if you had that struggle to or how you sort of came, but I also feel like your story being kind of multigenerational required that much energy. I don't know if this is a real question, but I feel like I want to talk about the choice the craft choice of giving readers the past for so long.

Kennedy Ryan 1:06:42 / #
Yes, it is about 20% of the book. Oh, you're probably right, roughly about 20. I think it's about six chapters. Yeah. And I think that what helped probably for me as I was writing it, is that it's so weird, you know, because you can do these time jumps and you get completely confuse readers, and I wanted to be clear about what I was doing because the part that you were just describing, which was, you know, at her father's funeral, and this boy that she, you know, was our first kiss her first, arguably her first love shows up 20 years later, they're seeing each other first time. That's the prologue. And it literally says, two years before the present, and you're like what the heck is that.

Sarah MacLean 1:07:26 / #
Well, but I love that.

Kennedy Ryan 1:07:28 / #
It was like this. Okay, Rita, you're in the present. This happened two years ago. So the prologue says two years before the present, and we see them as adults. And we know that there is a certain intimacy between them not there's obviously some kind of pull. That's there. And I think I had I put that there for those readers who don't want to have trouble with the childhood. You know

Sarah MacLean 1:07:56 / #
Yeah, I mean, I think it had to be there. Yeah,

Kennedy Ryan 1:07:59 / #
Like here's the promise.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:00 / #
yeah, yeah, eventually it's these two.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:03 / #
Yes, it's these two. And the reason I felt like I had to go back and then I think it goes the next the first chapters like 1983. And it's in his mother's point of view. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:14 / #
It's really cool.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:17 / #
It's not even in one of their points of view. It's in his view

Sarah MacLean 1:08:21 / #
Babies, their babies. their literal babies.

Kennedy Ryan 1:08:23 / #
Infants in a bathtub. And, you know, she's orienting us, and it's 1983. And it's Georgia. And she's a Jewish woman who has married a black man in 1983, living in Atlanta, because her husband is on scholarship, you know, at Emory for law school. And she has left her her, her community of faith back in New York, very tight knit community that wasn't sure how they felt about her marrying someone, not even someone who was black, but someone who wasn't Jewish. And so she has had she's had tension with her family, but That's repaired. And she's navigating this whole new she feels she says she basically feels alone in the state, you know, in the whole state, when she goes out with her son people, you know, ask is that your son, you know, these are things that are real experiences. And I was fortunate enough to find people who are actually black and Jewish people who have actually negotiated the duality of those identities. And I definitely did not want to write a tragic mulatto story. You know, I didn't want to do that. And I did not go there. But just showing some of the real difficulty that a family living in that context would be navigating. But just as context, and we get and it begins the friendship because there's a couple of things. One of them is found family, their families live next door to each other and they become their families become close. And that was one of the things I really wanted to build in those childhood chapters. There was this foundation for that what becomes their relationship I want people to see from the beginning, the closeness that is kind of the foundation for everything. So we don't just go like it kind of skips fast, like, Yes, they're babies in chapter one, but we get to chapter two, they're 10 years old, you know, in the chapter three, they're 12 and then chapter four and five and six, they're like, 13 they're in the eighth grade. So it accelerates it starts when they're babies within an accelerates but all of these kind of key moments of childhood and adolescence or think she stutters, you know, when he's there for her and then she has her you know, I'll just say that she has he rcycle, you know, all every girl has had that thing of, oh my god, you know, you ruin a pair of pants and you know, and I was like, and people see it and he's protective of her and wrapping his coat around her waist. And you know, it's like all of a sudden they have their you know, their you know, dance right before they're going to high school and, you know, she's with this, you know, this not great guy who wants to be her first kiss. And she's you know, it's just all this stuff you know the all of the adolescent angst before you're in high school, all of that stuff and they're there for each other.

Sarah MacLean 1:11:10 / #
Well, thats what makes when Ezra leaves. Yeah, when Ezra's parents divorce and his mother takes her, takes him back to New York to her family,

Kennedy Ryan 1:11:21 / #
They don't divorce but or they don't divorce but something happens between the two families that explodes the friendship between those two families and they end up moving away

Sarah MacLean 1:11:30 / #
Ezra's family ends up leaving Georgia and going back to New York and it make the rift between the the end of that sort of intense childhood friendships so emotional and so amazing. And I think it's just such an interesting choice because I have done I've done a few of these childhood or young love to older, more seasoned love stories, and I think I always struggle with time. You know how much time to spend where and I just thought it was such a very important and like really cool choice to just lean into the past. I was brought I was reminded of Lisa Kleypas and "Again the Magic".

Kennedy Ryan 1:12:20 / #
I don't even talk about, "Again the Magic".

Sarah MacLean 1:12:27 / #
Where these two are just so intensely in so like for each other, and it's so clear that they're just that their Fated Mates. And then it breaks. And it it's, it breaks the reader's heart to I mean, it's just, it's really, I mean, you know, I love this book, and I just,

Kennedy Ryan 1:12:48 / #
I love books that do that. Have you not like obscure historical romance. So, you know, who nobody ever talks about, and I think it's because she has some tax troubles and not

Sarah MacLean 1:12:58 / #
Are you gonna say Megan McKinney?

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:07 / #
How did you know that?

Sarah MacLean 1:13:09 / #
Meghan McKinney is a real problematic person.

Is she? But I just knew that she kind of disappeared.

Boy she blooded me too. Yeah.

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:19 / #
She has a book called I think "When Angels Fall" and it's that it's the same thing where he works in her parents stables and their nobility and he is a stable man but he's somebody bastard. Yeah always somebodies bastard. And he ends up becoming like the Earl and then her family is destitute. And it's this whole intense, revenge. He thinks it's revenge. But of course, he's just obsessed with her.

Sarah MacLean 1:13:47 / #
Revenge is the best and worst motivation.

Kennedy Ryan 1:13:51 / #
Yes. So have you so have you read we the ground, "The Ground She Walks Upon", I think that's what it is by Mehgan Mckinny?

Sarah MacLean 1:14:00 / #
I mean i'm sure i that is not one I've read everything Meghan McKinney has written. But I mean we should say you can look this up on Wikipedia it's not a secret but she she lived in New Orleans and after Katrina she perpetuated a very large tax scheme of fraud and she went to prison, so I mean if Wikipedia is to believed that is what happened to Mehgan Mckinney.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:29 / #
Well, I think there's some documented evidence.

Sarah MacLean 1:14:31 / #
There's some there citations.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:35 / #
Hey, I before we wrap up, though, I actually have a

Sarah MacLean 1:14:38 / #
Jen's like, ladies.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:41 / #
Like, let me save you from yourself. No, loving the Mehgan McKinney. Um, here's my question. Kennedy, your love for historical romance is so intense. Have you ever thought about writing one?

Kennedy Ryan 1:14:59 / #
Oh, gosh. so intimidated. I mean, I'm so I'm really intimidated by, I mean, my books are research heavy, but they're not like that type of research and I have thought about it. I honestly have. But I just get so scared. I get so intimidated by it. I don't know why.

Jennifer Prokop 1:15:21 / #
Well, it sounds like you do a lot of people research. Everything I've ever heard about you is how much you like talking to people. And I guess yeah, I can't, you know, dig out somebody from 1820 or whatever.

Kennedy Ryan 1:15:34 / #
Well, I mean, I have usually like, especially with a lot of it is and I think it's maybe my journalism background and all the interviews I always had to do, but it's something I lean into is people who have actually lived things that mirror you know what my characters are doing. So a lot of interviews, lots of conversations, but also lots of reading. I read, read lots of memoirs.

Gosh, for all the king's men. I was literally reading anthropological textbooks. I mean, it was just, it was really intense, but I wanted to get it right. So I think I have, I think I have the tools that I could, if I can just get over. First of all, it had to be something that compelled me, because I don't really write unless I feel compelled. And I know that sounds artsy fartsy. But I have to feel compelled by whatever that thing is at the core. And it's usually something that is happening. For me a lot of times something that's happening in the real world that I want to shine light on in the context of an epic love story. So those are the things that kind of get my wheels turning. But if I could find something like that, that is in a different era, it probably would be I don't know when it would be it might be in the 20s or it might be you know, it might be something like that probably is because I have I love a marriage of art and activism and a lot of what I write, and I would

Sarah MacLean 1:17:03 / #
Well Jazz Age New York, man.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:06 / #
Harlem Renaissance I mean, there's so many Yeah, totally.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:09 / #
Thats what I keep thinking about so I feel if I did venture into it'll probably be around there. There's a you know, because that's also you know, the explosion of literature and culture and just all the things that you know, that were amazing about that period. So

Sarah MacLean 1:17:29 / #
Well, I'll read whatever you write forever. So, Kennedy, thank you so much. Well, you come on again. This was so fun.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:39 / #
Oh my gosh. This was so fun.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:42 / #
It was amazing.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:42 / #
Thank you guys for having me. I'm such a fan and I was so nervous coming on you guys.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:49 / #
Well it was so fun.

Kennedy Ryan 1:17:51 / #
I was like, they're so smart. I'm not even gonna know anything.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:54 / #
No, you were great. You knew all about Prince's many proteges, I was going to say backup singers and I was like that's not the word.

Kennedy Ryan 1:18:05 / #
If no one else wants to be Eric, is it Eric?

Sarah MacLean 1:18:09 / #
That's it you're his new favorite.

Thank you so much, everyone. This is our second to last episode of the season. Jen, tell everyone what they won next week. So I guess I talked about it already.

Jennifer Prokop 1:18:25 / #
Steve Ammidown from the Bowling Green Pop Culture Library is going to be here and we are going to go back and revisit. I'm actually super excited about this. We each read some of the books that were originally acquired by Vivian Stevens. And so we will be talking about some of those early historicals I'm sorry, early contemporaries in that essentially, in in, in series that she like founded and put into place and what those books were doing so we think it's gonna be a really cool episode, and we're gonna all enjoy.

Sarah MacLean 1:18:56 / #
For those of you who've been sort of, you know, curious, whenever we talked about Vietnam, there's a lot of discussion of Vietnam and next week, so, um, you know, get ready for that. And then we're taking some weeks off, but there will be new episodes or at least new content every week. While we are off, but we are back the first week of August with season three. And we are we have a plan. A plan now we have a plan but this is Fated Mates. You can find transcripts for many of our episodes, all the music that's in all the episodes merch and other cool stuff at Fated Mates.net I have a book out came out last week. You can listen you can find "Daring in the Duke" in bookstores, wherever books are sold and listen to last week's episode once you've read "Daring in the Duke" and there's lots of spoilers in there. But most importantly, Kennedy Ryan was with us this week. Her recent book is "Queen Move". It is really truly magnificent. One of the best reads of my You're so far, surely it will be one of the best reads of my year period. Kennedy, where can people find you?

Kennedy Ryan 1:20:07 / #
I'm on Instagram a lot at Kennedy Ryan one and I'm on Twitter and I have a website, you know, all the places, even if you just go to my Instagram and click the link, it takes you all to all the places.

Sarah MacLean 1:20:23 / #
So find Kennedy in all those places and read her books and have a great, have a great couple of weeks.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:35 / #
Hi, my name is Danielle. I am in California and I am a community college teacher. I teach us history. And the book book that blooded me was Jennifer Wilde "Loves Tendered Fury", which now I know is written by a man, that I stole it off my mother was bookcase and read it and then she was like oh, maybe this isn't a good thing for you to read because as you know its a little rapey and then I plowed through like Barbara Cartland and my grandmother's Harlequin series. And eventually I went to graduate school and my grad school friend introduced me to Loretta Chase. And so I'm a big fan of "Lord of Scoundrels". I love your podcast. I love romance novels. They're getting me through the Coronavirus and Trump's presidency. And please don't stop your podcast because I love it. Thanks bye.

S02.43: Daring & the Duke: It's Grace and Ewan Week!

Sarah has a new book out, so Jen is playing host this week, and Sarah is playing guest, and Jen is really outrageously good at it…move over Terry Gross! Find Daring & the Duke wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Apple Books, Books-a-Million, or at your local indie via Bookshop.org.

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Show Notes

• You can listen to all of our walk-up music suggestions on the Fated Mates Spotify playlist. But in case you've never seen The Music Man, the song Marian the Librarian is very cute.

• Sarah wants to be a guest on Fresh Air. (Jen obviously does, too, but has to actual cause to be interviewed. So #TeamSarah.) Do we know anyone who knows Terry Gross?

• If you can't wait, you can listen to us on the Deerfield Public Libary podcast, but we're going to drop it into our own feed later this month. So no worries.

• Jen thinks Sarah is in her imperial period--a phrase Jen learned from listening to the Hit Parade podcast.

• The past year have had some great books about rage and feminism: The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, Good and Mad, and Hood Feminism are three we recommend.

• We put children in factories all day, so of course kids fought, too. Sarah recommends The Fair Fight, a historical novel, about bareknuckle fighting kids.

• Statler & Waldorf are the two old dudes up on the balcony during The Muppet Show.

• The Victorian Age wasn't so great for women and other marginalized people.

• That Jeffrey Epstein documentary is on Netflix.

• Ewan's year-long break was inspired by The Player.

• The myth of Apollo and Cyrene, and also a little about neo-classicism. One of our favorite myth retellings of the past few years, is Circe by Madeline Miller. Jessica Avery presented a paper at the Popular Culture Association about mythology in Sarah's books.

• The Master's Tools will Never Dismantle the Master's House is the name of the essay by Audre Lorde. You should read it.

Wicked and the Wallflower

S02.42: Unusual Historicals: Freewheeling with Joanna Shupe

This week it's one of our very faves, Joanna Shupe is back! Joanna has a new book out June 30th -- The Devil of Downtown -- which is basically perfection, so we're talking about why Gilded Age romance is the best, and why everyone should be reading unusual historicals (historicals set outside the Regency in England). Get ready, your TBR will groan after this one!

Oh, and did you know Sarah also has a book out June 30th? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!

As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

Oh, and did you know Sarah also has a book out June 30th? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!

As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

---

Show Notes

• This is Joanna's second time on Fated Mates. The first was to discuss the enemies to lovers trope in Prisoner of My Desire and Kiss of a Demon King.

• Speaking of IAD: ever seen the IAD spreadsheet of Wonder, created be Sarah Hawley from the Wicked Wallflowers Podcast? Oh, and if you haven't read it, why not do it this summer? There's a group read going on right now on a subgroup of Sarah's Facebook Book Club!

• All about Homage, allusion, and allegory in case it's been a while since you were in an English class.

• Modern Library! Where are our romances?

• Sarah has a bunch of online events this summer.

• Many of the old American historicals support an ahistorical white settler, Manifest Destiny, story of Westward Expansion. Savage Thunder was a particularly problematic one, and Jen only read it for the "sex on a horse" scene. Maybe watch some Deadwood instead?

• Which came first? Eurocentrism or the Anglophiles?

• Gone With the Wind is just Lost Cause propaganda. Don't at us. Speaking of wars: The Napoleonic Wars took place during the Regency, but no one ever really talks about them in Regency romances.

• Romance's Regency blueprint was created by Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer.

• Nipple piercing has been around for a long time. Look for it in Joanna's next book.

• Joanna's fascination with The Gilded Age started with Edith Wharton. The time period is the setting for the Uptown Girls series, but the Gilded Age also has lots of uncomfortable parallels to today. If you're looking for more information about The Gilded Age, you should know that Jack Mulligan was based on real life mobster Paul Kelly. Joanna also recommends the following books: Low Life, The Gangs of New York, and Incredible New York. If you want to hear Joanna talk about The Gilded Age, join her Facebook Group on July 9th, 2020 for a virtual tour!

• If you haven't ever been to Ellis Island, it's excellent. It's a dynamic museum with tons of interesting facts about European immigration to New York. Speaking of history, if you're interested in learning about The Great Migration, the setting of A Champion's Heart, you should read The Warmth of Other Suns.

• Food is everyone's love language until the jello molds and casseroles start to arrive.

• You actually can read lots of books about the 60s.

• What do you mean you haven't seen The Hudsucker Proxy?

The Rogue of Fifth Avenue

The Prince of Broadway

The Devil of Downtown

Kiss of a Demon King

Prisoner of My Desire

Savage Thunder

The Lady Hellion

A Scot in the Dark

The French Lieutenant's Woman

Lions and Lace

American Pharoah

My Fair Concubine

Appetites and Vices

Mr. Impossible

The Black Hawk

The Spymaster's Lady

Under the Sugar Sun

An Extraordinary Union

Let Us Dream

Let Us Dream

A Champion's Heart

The King's Man

Free Fall

A Midnight Feast

Three to Love

S02.41: Audiobooks with Voice Actor Justine Eyre

This one’s for you, audio readers! We’re thrilled to have a freewheeling episode this week featuring the fantastically talented Justine Eyre, who has narrated Sarah’s last seven books! Sarah & Justine had never talked until this conversation, when we were able to ask all the questions we’ve always had about how audiobooks work, and what makes them so great. And stay tuned until the end of the episode, when you can hear the first two chapters of the audiobook of Daring & the Duke, available wherever audiobooks are sold, June 30th!

We might not be doing read alongs until August, but that doesn’t mean your TBR won’t still be groaning under the weight of our recommendations — we’ve got a bunch of rec episodes lined up for summer…

Oh, and did you know Sarah has a book out in two weeks? Order Daring & the Duke from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!

As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

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Wicked and the Wallflower

Brazen and the Beast

Daring and the Duke

Show Notes

• Welcome Justine Eyre! Justine has narrated all of Sarah's books since Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover.

• Join Sarah's Old School Romance Book Club (OSRBC) on Facebook.

• Is Jane Eyre really "our favorite Jane"? Jane Austen would like a word.

• Justine talked a lot about how audiobooks are made, but here's another great explainer about the role of narrators and audiobook production.

• We recorded this before J. K. Rowling's latest terrible TERF rant, so take Jen's praise of Jim Dale's narrationwith a grain of salt.

• Justine mentioned Scott Brick as a mentor, and his site has a guide for those interested in becoming narrators.

S02.40: A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught: A Romance Reader's Romance

It’s the last read-along of Season Two! We’re reading Judith McNaught’s A Kingdom of Dreams, which is the actual book that blooded Sarah when she was wee. This week we’re talking old-school romance, what McNaught was doing with this book and this hero who is so unlike all the heroes who came before him, and why (book) Jennifer is the perfect namesake for (our) Jennifer.

We might not be doing read alongs until August, but that doesn’t mean your TBR won’t still be groaning under the weight of our recommendations — we’ve got a bunch of rec episodes lined up for summer….oh, and did you know Sarah has a book out in three weeks? Order it from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Books-a-Million or from your local indie, or order it signed from her local indie, WORD Bookstore, and get a special edition Fated Mates sticker with your purchase!

As summer approaches, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaugt

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaugt

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught

Show Notes

• Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, was the main character in an excellent 1985 time-traveling movie called Back to the Future.

• Sarah's next book, Daring and the Duke, comes out at the end of the month. Preorder from WORD in Brooklyn and you'll recieve a limited edition yellow Fated Mates sticker.

• Whitney, My Love is an early McNaught historical romance that the author changed because in the original text, the hero rapes and horsewhips the heroine. The hero of A Kingdom of Dreams, Royce Westmoreland, is one of Clayton's ancestors, but we think he is McNaught correcting the record on the Alpha hero. In the IAD novella episode, we talked about the changes in Whitney, My Love. Whitney also came up in the Alpha episode that started the season, because it's impossible to talk about the primordial alphas without talking about the early Alpha.

• More on the four books that comprise the Westmoreland series.

• Who do we talk to get A Kingdom of Dreams on audio? Oh, you can email a request to Audible.

• Jen learned about 1497 on Wikipedia. As one does.

• Women could inherit a title in Scotland.

• Margaret Tudor was Henry VII's eldest daughter, married to James IV of Scotland to bring peace to the border. Fun fact, once James IV died (thanks for nothing, Henry VIII, you were the worst), Margaret acted as Regent until James V of Scotland, but when that didn't work out, she married two other dudes and also staged a coup, so we don't really know why we don't all sing her praise always. Yeah, we do. Patriarchy. Anyway. Sarah didn't learn about Margaret Tudor on Wikipedia, but you can.

• All about the bliaut. Sarah would like you to know she looked up bliauts on Wikipedia after we recorded and now she's an expert. High-fives to all Wikipedia editors. Nothing without you.

• Tinctures, tonics, and teas is Fated Mates shorthand for historicals where medicine women knew various herbal remedies for preventing or ending pregnancy. Or in this case, causing life-long impotence.

• We talked a little bit about the freedom of setting a romance in Medieval times on our Scottish Romance episode, so head over and listen to that if you're interested.

• Jen's obsessed with the idea of the Vietnam Hero, but doesn't know where to start. Probably with finishing the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary.

• Jousting. WTF.

• What would Jurgen Klopp say?

• While we're talking about Judith McNaught and Wikipedia, do not sleep on her page. Divorce celebrations, Coors Brewing Company tie-ins, the invention of the non-clinch romance cover, moving to Dallas after going there on book tour...it has it all.

• Support Black Lives Matter and bail funds in your city or state.

• Shop and support Black-owned Indie bookstores.

• Register to vote. Already registered? Double check.

S02.39: Childhood Friends to Adult Lovers

One of readers’ very favorite tropes this week…sometimes it’s friends-to-lovers and sometimes it’s friends-to-enemies-to-lovers and sometimes it’s friends-to-attempted-murder-to-lovers….we’re talking childhood friends to adult lovers and we will get to the bottom of it! Get ready for way too much music from The Saint. But first things first….Black Lives Matter.

Next week, we’re officially OFFICIALLY reading Judith McNaught’s A Kingdom of Dreams! Get ready for Sarah’s favorite historical of all time. It’s HAPPENING. Find A Kingdom of Dreams at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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Show Notes

• Looking to donate? Here's why supporting community bail funds is so important. The Minnesota Freedom Fund has raised millions of dollars for protestors who have been arrested, and here is an exhaustive list of other collectives and organizaions spearheaded by Black activists.

• Sarah donated to The Brooklyn Bail Fund and Jen to the Chicago Community Bail Fund. Find one in your city or state through the National Bail Fund Network.

• Bookshop.Org has a special link if you want to shop and support Black-owned Indie bookstores.

• Register to vote. And make sure you're still registered. You can also donate to Stacy Abrams's nonprofit, Fair Fight, which is dedicated to ensure voting access for all Americans..

• Jen's friend Susan is putting together a service to help parents keep kids busy this summer, it's called My Camp Box.

• Maybe you'd like to find some more unrequited love romances? And, by the way, Requited is an actual word.

• Jacob imprinting on a baby in the Twilight series was...a thing. But in the MG (middle grade) graphic novel Fake Blood, a bookish boy has a crush on the coolest girl in school, and she just happens to be a vampire slayer.

• Friend of the Pod @Bandherbooks led a read along of Again the Magic a few weeks ago.

• Sarah loves The Saint, a Val Kilmer classic. The author of that NYTimes profile, Taffy Brodesser-Akner also wrote a LitFic novel Jen loved called Fleishman is in Trouble.

• Next time you need details about the exact details of what's happening in a movie, TV show, video game, or book for your kids, check out Common Sense Media.

• Mulan II is a romance. Don't @ Sarah; Alvin and the Chimpunks is a not a romance. Don't @ Jen

• Preorder Daring and the Duke from WORD in Brooklyn and score a special edition yellow Fated Matessticker.

• Next up, A Kingdom of Dreams.

Scoring Off the Field by Naima Simone

Waking up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath

A Rogue by Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean

Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas

Fake Blood by Whitney Gardner

The Highwayman by Kerrigan Byrne

A Dark and Stormy Knight

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Aker

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught

S02.38: Three Little Mistakes by Nikki Sloane: I Think About Kool Aid A Lot

We’re talking about one of the best writers in erotic romance this week—Join us for a deep dive into Nikki Sloane’s Three Little Mistakes, which is one of Sarah’s favorite romances. We’re talking about kink, kink shaming, how to make sex discussions less awkward with new partners and how erotic romance is doing some of the best work in the genre right now…and we’re also going to talk about fruity drinks.

In two weeks, we’re officially OFFICIALLY reading Judith McNaught’s A Kingdom of Dreams! Get ready for Sarah’s favorite historical of all time. It’s HAPPENING. Find A Kingdom of Dreams at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

Three Simple Rules by Nikki Sloane

Three Hard Lessons by Nikki Sloane

Three Little Mistakes by Nikki Sloan

Three Dirty Secrets by Nikki Sloane

Three Sweet Nothings by Nikki Sloane

Three Guilty Pleasures by Nikki Sloane

Show Notes

• Here's Jen Porter on Twitter talking about erotic romance. But just this week, Robin Bradford (winner of the RWA Librarian of the year!) was also talking about why it's a problem that we don't have a clear definition for erotic romance.

• Getting RWA to recoginize erotic romance was such a struggle that there was actually a petition! But now we can (hopefully) all move on to bigger and better things with The Vivian.

• YA books with queer characters are some of the most challenged books in America.

• Sarah also mentioned Sordid, which has non-consensual sex and therefore needs a content warning.

• Ron Charles is cool.

• Nikki Sloane used to live in Chicago and now lives in Kentucky. Looks like Jen's friendship plans have just been foiled.

• Having sex in a porche sounds excruciating, and so does having sex with a porche (WTF!), but Men's Health Magazine to the rescue with this handy (lol) list of best cars to have sex in.

• If you're interested in breath play, please do it safely.

• RIP Tumblr. We miss you.

• Decriminalize sex work.

• Maybe when we can go places again, you might want to rent or buy a yurt in Hawaii.

• Avoid those sugary drinks for yourself and your kids. If you are in Chicago and looking for a dentist, Jen LOVES her dentist Dr. Deaver and Dr. Casimir at Classic Smiles on South Wabash. And she really buried the lede and forgot to mention that Dr. Deaver is not only an amazing dentist, but he was President Obama's dentist!

• Next time: A Kingdom of Dreams.

• Preorder Daring and the Duke from WORD in Brooklyn and you'll get a sweet limited edition yellow Fated Mates sticker.

S02.37: Partner in Danger romance

It’s one of our favorite tropes this week — get your pens out, because we’re talking about about a thousand books that tackle Partner in Danger! You know what we’re talking about: “Oh no! This person I sometimes bone is in danger! WAIT! I am feeling feelings!!!” It’s great. We’re going to talk about why. Sarah would like to apologize in advance, because it was really hot in her house when we recorded, and it scrambled her brain.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, it’s erotica week! We’re reading a book that Sarah loves, Nikki Sloane’s Three Little Mistakes, which we’ve talked about before on the podcast, but we want to deep dive on. Get Three Little Mistakes from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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Show Notes

• As of last week, going outside looks like a pretty safe thing to do.

• In fact, there is less central A/C in New York City. So watch out for the window units.

• Zoom fatigue is real.

• You know, there is quite a large assortment of "Dorothy in the Sheets, Blanche in the Sheets" merch on Etsy. In case you need to talk a call from your editor.

• We all struggle with the illusion of control.

• The trope of the damsel in distress has been around for a long, long time. So let's not fridge more women, mm'kay.

• Friend of the pod Adriana Herrera has some words of wisdom about writing trauma in romance. And also Jen and Adriana did a Facebook Live chat on the topic. (link & audio forthcoming).

• Pour one out for planes. And cars. And alcohol from mysterious European lands.

• In case you missed Blood Blow Jobs: please refer to Fated Mates Season One, Lothaire and Rune.

• Jen looked it up a map. In Reborn Yesterday, the heroine is dropped onto the Belt Parkway, not the Long Island Expressway. Still seems bad.

• Edward saved Bella from a careening van in the school parking lot. And from a bunch of drunk guys.

• The Most Dangerous Game is a pretty great short story, classically used to teach person v. person conflict.

• Morality Chain is a great trope. Look for an upcoming interstitial on this topic soon!

• In Pretty Woman, she rescues him right back.

• Preorder signed copies of Daring and the Duke from WORD bookstore in Brooklyn and you'll get swag from Sarah and this special yellow Fated Mates sticker.

Books referenced this week

Perfect by Judith McNaught

It Happened One Autumn by Lisa Kleypas

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe

The Devil of Downtown by Joanna Shupe

Lothaire by Kresley Cole

A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane

Reborn Yesterday by Tessa Bailey

Hunter by Emmy Chandler

Hold by Claire Kent

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Everything I Left Unsaid by M. O'Keefe

The Truth About Him by M. O'Keefe

Burn Down the Night by M. O'Keefe

Wait for It by M. O' Keefe

Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

The Rogue Not Taken by Sarah MacLean

American Queen by Sierra Simone

Hellfire Riders: Jack and Lily by Kati Wilde

The Secret she Keeps by Helenkay Dimon

The Paperbag Princess

No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean

Protecting the Heiress by Nana Malone

The Master by Kresley Cole

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S02.36: Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie: I wanna mash their faces together.

It’s a Jen week this week! We’re reading Bet Me this week, the book many people put right on the top of Best Contemporary Romance lists — one of Jen’s favorite books and a book Sarah liked to tell people she loved but has now discovered she’d never actually read. Minerva and Cal are absolutely terrific, as is this book, and we’re having a rollicking conversation about fat rep, about friendships in romance, about food (Sarah’s love language), about shoes, and about why grown people at little league games are a weird thing.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

In two weeks, it’s erotica week! We’re reading a book that Sarah loves, Nikki Sloane’s Three Little Mistakes, which we’ve talked about before on the podcast, but we want to deep dive on. Get Three Little Mistakes from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie

Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie

Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie

Show Notes

• We're big fans of Carly Lane-Perry from SyFy Fangirls. We especially like her newsletter, Kissing Books--Jen wrote about grandmothers in romance.

• Is it criticism if it's all positive?

• Baby Foot is sold out, but there are lots of other terrifying alternatives you can try.

• Janet Dailey is famous for plagiarizing Nora Roberts. Before that happened, she wrote the Americana series, with one book set in every state. The one set in Ohio was called The Widow and the Wastrel, and Jen's twitter thread about the book unearthed several early covers for the book.

• Sarah asked if Jenny Crusie is from Ohio? She is.

• This was Sarah's first time reading Bet Me, just like it was Jen's first time reading Gentle Rogue.

• Minerva and Diana probably wish they weren't named after Roman goddesses.

• So: you want to be an actuary. You want to learn about chaos theory. You're wondering about the gender essentialsim of a book with a title like Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus. You want to learn more about the band Cake.

• Love Me Tender is a beautiful song.

• Penn and Teller explain the Cup and Ball trick. Oh, and did you hear Sarah mention it's going to appear in Daring and the Duke? Pre-order from WORD in Brooklyn, and you'll recieve a free limited edition yellow Fated Mates sticker.

• With these many characters, it might as well be a Robert Atlman movie.

• Learn about dyslexia, our understanind of which has dramatically changed over time. Erin McCarthy's Hard and Fast (2009) also has a dyslexic hero.

• Another utterly fantastic family dinner gone wrong scene is in Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz.

• Jeanne Lin knows how to write some really sexy kissing.

• The fairy godmother is a hallmark of Cinderella, and Sarah's own magical modiste is Madame Hebert.

• There are so many homages to great rom-coms of the 90s. Diana loves the music from Julia Roberts movies. Elvis Costello's She appeared in Notting Hill, the lead up to the big wedding was like Four Weddings and a Funeral, and of course Diana turns into a Runaway Bride. Min's visit to the magical modiste is like one of the greatest makeover sequences in movies, Pretty Woman. The "I love your shoes" was like The American President. All the wolf references, of course reminded us of Moonstruck. Cynthie's sexy clothes at the little league game were reminiscent of this great scene in Bull Durham.

• Order buttons from Kelly in Jen's shop, and t-shirts from Jordan Dene.

• Next up, we'll be reading Three Little Mistakes from Nikki Sloan.

S02.35: Freewheeling with Sophie Jordan: The "Taking the Finger" Explainer

Sophie Jordan is back again! She’s got a new book out, The Virgin and the Rogue, and she’s back with us to freewheel about old school romances, aphrodisiac plotlines and just what do we mean when we say “taking the finger?” It’s a delightful hour. You won’t regret it.

We love having you with us! Subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading a book that blooded Jen, Jenny Crusie’s Bet Me! Which you can get bundled with Welcome to Temptation (get this one — it’s $2. cheaper than getting Bet Me alone!) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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Show Notes

• Welcome Sophie Jordan, who was last on the pod talking about The Master. Come on five times and you get a Pink Ladies jacket.

• How are the Introverts faring during the pandemic?

• Chewy.com will deliver your cat litter and also massive bags of cat food.

• Annika Martin's Dark Mafia Prince inspired Sophie and Sarah to coin the phrase "taking the finger," which Jen has co-opted with glee. Not sure what counts as worthy of "taking the finger"? The Simone Scale TM is here for you.

• Jen's "control rods" metaphor is because she's a big old nuclear nerd.

• Aphrodesiac books we know of: The Virgin and the Rogue; Robin's Lovett's Planet of Desire series takes place on a planet where the atmosphere is an aphrodesiac; in A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha Harrison, the grandmother whips up a "come to me" potion; Johanna Lindsey's Secret Fire sounds bonkers; Wild Card is one by Lora Leigh that Joanna Shupe recommends. Does the shortbread in How the Dukes Stole Christmas count? What else have you got?

• Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune taught Jen everything she needed to know about the backbone of good criticism, everything else she's making up as she goes along.

• We talked about bodily autonomy in season one.

• Sarah talked about watching the trailer for this very terrifying 60s movie The Lady in a Cage.

• Order Sophie's signed books from Katy Budget Books and Sarah's from WORD in Brooklyn -- including pre-orders for Daring and the Duke.

• Oh, you want to read Sophie's story about a stablemaster and a maid? No horses were harmed, so it's fine.

The Virgin and the Rogue by Sophie Jordan

Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath

Dark Mafia Prince by Annika Martin

Wicked Mafia Prince by Annika Martin

Savage Mafia Prince by Annika Martin

Dreams of a Dark Warrior by Kresley Cole

Secret Fire by Johanna Lindsey

Toxic Desire by Robin Lovett

The Duke Buys a Bride by Sophie Jordan

A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha Harrison

The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe

The Red by Tiffany Reisz

The Rose by Tiffany Reisz

Aftershock by Jill Sorenson

Judgment Road by Christine Feehan

The Duke Effect by Sophie Jordan

S02.34: Texas! Chase by Sandra Brown: The Original Sexclamation Point

Sometimes there’s a writer who’s so transformative to your experience as a reader that you forget she even was a part of it until you remember, and then you remember every book she’s written. It’s Sandra Brown week here at Fated Mates, and we have loved so many of her romances that we just didn’t know what to read, so strap in, because both Jen and Sarah read Texas! Chase, and then two roads diverged, only to discover some real deep-rooted kinky stuff. Strap in. This one left Eric shellshocked!

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

In two weeks, we’re reading a book that blooded Jen, Jenny Crusie’s Bet Me! Which you can get bundled with Welcome to Temptation (get this one — it’s $2. cheaper than getting Bet Me alone!) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo … and don’t forget your favorite indie, which is probably shipping books right now and definitely needs your patronage!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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Show Notes

• Jen's been thinking about how we're going to archive the Quarantine Times and so are historians. Steve Ammidown was kind enough to make some videos about archiving for Jen's TikTok.

• Turns out that tweet about the Spanish epidimologist was not true! Blessed be the fact checkers.

• Lori Lightfoot is Jen's mayor and her Coronavirus memes are the best.

• Everyone knows who Tom Brady is, but not many people seem to like him.

• Sandra Brown was in the first class of authors acquired by Vivian Stephens. Her Loveswept #1 was Heaven's Price, and her Harlequin American Romance #1 was Tomorrow's Promise. Steve Ammidown was also kind enough to dig into the archives and pull out some early interviews with Sandra Brown and about the founding of Loveswept.

• Benjamin Dreyer definitely wants you to know the difference between the em dash, en dash, and the hypen.

• The Rana Look cover has the author and McLean Stevenson from MASH as the cover models. Whoa.

• You can still join the Doubleday Book Club. Who knew!

• Jeff Wright has a very funny TikTok (which he crossposts to Twitter and Instagram) and a very distinctive way of saying Oh Wow.

• Sheikhs & Native Americans in romance are full of racist, harmful stereotypes.

• Jennifer Porter took the hit on Texas! Lucky for us.

• Oil Futures aren't looking good for the Tyler family; it's not looking great for the rodeo, either.

• The primordal 80s Don. Not him. That was the 70s.

• Sunny Chandler's job as a Mardi Gras costume designer seems pretty sweet. Here's a cool interview with Patricia Halsell-Richardson, a woman who designs Mardi Gras costumes in Mobile.

• A quick primer to the waves of feminism and what people thought about working women in the 80s.

• Sandra Brown's house was blown up for an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. A show that is making a comeback, as it turns out.

• Ann Richards was pretty great, and so is her daughter Cecile.

• GQ has some instructions on how to be a DILF, but our current favorite is by Katee Roberts.

• Slow Heat in Heaven has a plot about dogfighting, but Sarah mentioned a romance where the dogs fall in love back when we talked about non-Sandra Brown category romances.

• The 80s Primetime Soap Operas were a force to be reckoned with.

• Next time, we'll be talking about Bet Me by Jenny Crusie. For some reason, it's cheaper to buy it bundled with Welcome To Temptation. /rolls eyes at eBook pricing on a 20 year old book.

Texas! Lucky by Sandra Brown

Texas! Chase by Sandra Brown

Texas! Sage by Sandra Brown

Dreyer's English

Perfect by Judith McNaught

The Rana Look by Sandra Brown

Love's Encore by Sandra Brown

Sunset Embrace by Sandra Brown

Another Dawn by Sandra Brown

Tomorrow's Promise by Sandra Brown

Heaven's Price by Sandra Brown

Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey

Sunny Chandler's Return by Sandra Brown

Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown

Honor Bound by Sandra Brown

Tiger Prince by Sandra Brown

S02.33: Enemies to Lovers with Tasha Harrison

Tasha Harrison is joining us this week to talk about an old reliable trope — enemies to lovers! This is one of those that we return to again and again — and of course, since it’s a Pandemic, we have to ask…if you’re into enemies to lovers and you haven’t read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, what are you waiting for? Season 1 is here for you! Otherwise, we’re freewheeling with Tasha on everything from the best Chris to the real inspiration for The Wire, so strap in. It’s a ride!

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Sandra Brown! Jen and Sarah will be reading Texas! Chase, but it’s dealers’ choice! Pick your favorite old Sandra Brown or ask us for a rec on Twitter or Instagram! Maybe you want That Rana Look? Or Slow Heat in Heaven? Or French Silk? You can find them wherever books are sold (but the Texas! series isn’t in ebook format yet, sadly) — and don’t forget your favorite indie!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

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A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha Harrison

The Bad in Each Other by Tasha Harrison

The Opposite of You by Rachel Higginson

Grumpy Jake by Melissa Blue

Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren

The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa

Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

Everything's Better with Lisa by Lucy Eden

Chaser by Kylie Scott

The Thing about Love by Julie James

Show Notes

• The internet is so slow.

• Remember that time when Michelle from Destiny's Child felland then got right back up?

• The Fraggle Rock Trash Heap.

• Jen wrote about Enemies to Lovers for Kirkus.

• Apparently, it's called a Proprietary Eponyms when a brand name becomes a verb or common noun.

• The question of whether or not fiction should be "timeless" is one that authors deal with in different ways.

• Robert Redford was a snack. Kevin Costner was named The Sexiest Man Alive, but Jen thinks the only time he was truly sexy was in Bull Durham.

• Can there ever be a definitive ranking of the Chrises? Jen likes Pine, Sarah likes "the Australian one," and Tasha isn't interested in any of them. Sarah has Chris Evans blindness, but Tasha points out that he's got a little of the wild one in him. Check him checking out this reporter's boots.

• We just had Christina Lauren on our show! Beautiful Bastard is better than Fifty Shades in a lot of ways, especially for that elevator scene. Either way, it's a good illustration of the myriad problems with a workplace romance.

• Speaking of Lucy Eden, she and Jen had THE STRANGEST thing happen at the 2019 RWA conference.

• Babies are complicated in romance and complicated in real life. Maybe what we're really going to see is a boom in "marriage in trouble" romance. Kids are complicated, too, especially if you buy the wrong poop bags.

• Tasha's dad inspired the character of Norman Wilson on The Wire! The Baltimore paper The Afro-American can be read online. The real life Baltimore Mayor he worked for was Martin O'Malley.

• These Italian Mayors want you to stay inside. If only all the American governors and mayors were the same. Cardi-B is worried about Coronavirus-- so stay home and stay safe!

S02.32: Taking the Heat by Victoria Dahl: Perfect Books are Perfect

We’re back to a more recent book that taught Sarah about contemporary romance, Victoria Dahl’s Taking the Heat. Use headphones for this one, because we’re talking about the best BJs in romance, the power of a great sex scene, and how we want you all to be in a sex pantheon. We’re also talking about flawed characters, true cinnamon rolls, and why Victoria Dahl is a fricken great author.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

In two weeks, we’re reading Sandra Brown! Jen and Sarah will be reading Texas! Chase, but it’s dealers’ choice! Pick your favorite old Sandra Brown or ask us for a rec on Twitter or Instagram! Maybe you want That Rana Look? Or Slow Heat in Heaven? Or French Silk? You can find them wherever books are sold (but the Texas! series isn’t in ebook format yet, sadly) — and don’t forget your favorite indie!

Also, if you love the music in this or any of our episodes, check out our Spotify playlist, which includes it all!

Taking the Heat by Victoria Dahl

Fanning the Flames by Victoria Dahl

Looking for Trouble by Victoria Dahl

Flirting with Disaster by Victoria Dahl

Taking the Heat by Victoria Dahl

Show Notes

• Sure, Sarah's new computer makes her feel like Lightning McQueen, but it's her new version of Scrivener that is the most exciting thing.

• Jen isn't the only one who likes Starburst jelly beans.

• Sarah has planner envy. We both love Blackwing pencils. If you also love Blackwing pencils, we highly recommend this video by comedian David Rees on Artisinal Pencil Sharpening. There's also a book! We don't quite understand washi tape, but we're happy for those who love it. If you want to talk planners, Nisha Sharma, Kate Clayborn, and Tracey Livesay are your people.

• RIP BEA 2020, we look forward to 2021.

• Jen is addicted to jigsaw puzzles, just like everyone else in the world.

• The city junk problem is actually pretty great.

• Victoria Dahl also writes as Victoria Helen Stone. Jen rediscovered contemporary romance with the Tumble Creek series, and also the Fast Track series by Erin McCarthy.

• Gabe's job was to introduce eBooks to the library. We've come a long way, baby.

• Jackson, Wyoming is the setting of this book, and apparently there's a lot to do there -- like skiing and rock climbing. It's all outdoorsy, so we can't really speak to it.

• The big city to small town trope is a cornerstone of romance. It's just not a corner we visit that often.

• The advice columnist is experiencing a huge resurgence these days, and in the age of the internet, everyone can give advice.

• Some useful resources if someone you know is sharing their thoughts of suicidal ideation.

• That Elizabeth Hoyt book with Winter Makepeace is called Thief of Shadows, and it also has a great blow job scene. In case you're into that sort of thing.

• Watch the Ending of Crocodile Dundee if you've never had the pleasure.

• If you are looking to try a new podcast app, we both love Overcast. Along with being a great listening device, you can use it to find and share any podcast clips online!

• Preorder Daring and the Duke! Support your local indie bookstore, Sarah's is WORD in Brooklyn and Jen's is 57th Street Books in Chicago. And everyone's is Love's Sweet Arrow or The Ripped Bodice.

• Next time, it's choose your own Sandra Brown adventure. We'll both read Texas! Chase, which believe it or not isn't on Kindle, but it is on audio! We'll also post a thread of some other Sandra Brown favorites. And if straight thriller is your thing, try OutFox, which is the one Sarah's mom enjoyed.

S02.31: Forced Proximity romances with Christina Lauren

This week, we’ve got two tremendous guests and we’re coming to you from four different time zones! Coronavirus silver lining — time has literally no meaning any longer. We’re talking to the brilliant duo Christina Lauren about their new book, The Honey Don’t List, and forced proximity romances — which are a crowd favorite…or at least were a crowd favorite until we were all forced into forced proximity! 

Next week, we’re reading Victoria Dahl’s  Taking the Heat. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!)

We hope you’re staying safe! 

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The Honey Don't List by Christina Lauren

Beautiful Stranger by Christina Lauren

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Roomies by Christina Lauren

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

Billionaire's Bargain by Naima Simone

Black Tie Billionaire by Naima Simone

Blame it on the Billionaire by Naima Simone

Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Haven by Rafe Weatherspoon

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

Lord Dashwood Missed Out by Tessa Dare

Whiteout by Adriana Anders

Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole

The Final Six

The Martian by Andy Weir

Show Notes

• Welcome Christina Lauren! Check out their new release, a forced proximity romance called The Honey Don't List. Perhpas, like Sarah, you need to understand the "honey do" list.

• If you're worried about zombies running, there's an app for that.

• Christina and Lauren said their cover reminds them of Lizzo's big inflatable butt at the 2019 AMAs.

• Jen wrote a Kirkus column about why "only one bed" is one of the most delightful subsets of the "forced proximity" trope.

• Amanda Diehl reviews for BookPage and also for Smart Bitches Trashy Books. Here is her inteview with Christina Lauren.

• Sarah mentioned the great New York City Blackout of 2003, but it turns out a field in Ohio caused the problem.

• "He is poison to everyone but her" is of course a reference back to Sarah's favorite IAD book, Sweet Ruin.

• All about wheelwrights.

• Wondering what it's really like for scientists on Antarctica is no place you'd want to be trapped, and certainly no place for a danger bang.

• Outbreak and Contagion are the top movies on Netflix right now.

• You can order The Honey Don't List with signed bookplates from Books a Million, not sure directly how to order from the one in Hunstville, AL, but try calling the store. Check out the audiobook of the Honey Don't List, starring Patti Murin and Jon Root.

• While you're whiling away the hours in self-isolation, don't forget to check out our Spotify playlist, which includes the full versions of every song we've ever used on Fated Mates -- or head over and watch all the music videos of all those songs on our site!

S02.30: Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips : Grandma has her Shotgun

We are feeling really proud of ourselves this week because Nobody’s Baby But Mine was the perfect isolation read for us both. The reread confirmed to both of us that this is, beat-for-beat, one of the best romcoms of all time. We’re talking problematic plots, the 90s, what we expect from jerk heroes and how Susan Elizabeth Phillips is better at flawed characters than anyone else in the game.  

Transcript Available

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

In two weeks, we’re reading Victoria Dahl’s  Taking the Heat. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!)

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Show Notes

• Americans are stress buying chickens. Yes, eggs are more expensive, but this is not a good idea.

• Speaking of chicks, now that Jen knows what happens to the chicks in the hatchery at the Museum of Science and Industry, she's back on Team Train Room.

• One day, we'll be able to visit the Butterfuly exhibit at the Museum of Natural History again.

• Nick Heath and Conor McGahey have figured out a way to keep those announcing skills sharp.

• Jen's interviewing YA authors on TikTok.

• When it comes to the SEP-Multiverse, we like the whackadoodle one at the circus (Kiss an Angel), the one with Bobby Tom (Heaven Texas), the one with the lazy golfer (Lady Be Good), and the one with Sugar Beth (Ain't She Sweet).

• What happened to the Lamont House romance collection?

• Charlotte Stein has a suggestion for authors of contemporary romance.

• Last year, Sarah wrote about technology in romance for the Washington Post.

• We talked about Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe, which is another book about a heroine who has done something very wrong.

• Maybe you're looking for actual secret baby books.

• The one with bad sex is Call Me Irresistible.

• After 9/11, Saturday Night Live and The Onion had to figure out how to be funny again.

• Our next book is Taking the Heat (aka Cunnilingus Gabe) by Victoria Dahl.

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah MacLean 0:01 / #
Jen, I'm so proud of us. We picked the right book this week,

Jennifer Prokop 0:08 / #
We picked the right book! I have not been able to read all week. And I mean, I think that's all of us, right? It's so hard. And I picked this up to read and read it in one sitting.

Sarah MacLean 0:20 / #
I fell right into it. And then halfway through, I texted Susan, and I was like, Susan, I'm rereading Nobody's Baby But Mine right now. And I just had to text you to tell you that you are a genius. And this book is like, as wonderful as it was in when I read it the first time. I mean, it's better now. It's better because I'm older. Like, it's better because I get it more.

Jennifer Prokop 0:50 / #
I was telling Kate that I read this book the first time when I was 10 years younger than they were and now I'm 10 years older. So that is also really wild.

Sarah MacLean 1:00 / #
Yeah, it really changes things. Anyway. Welcome everybody to Fated Mates. I am Sarah McLean. I write romance novels and I read romance novels.

Jennifer Prokop 1:11 / #
And I'm Jen Prokop. I'm a romance critic, and I real shit-talker on Twitter.

Sarah MacLean 1:16 / #
A real big shit talker these days, man. You're like..

Jennifer Prokop 1:19 / #
I'm sorry, everybody. We're all trying to deal with it in our own way.

Sarah MacLean 1:26 / #
We're all just getting through. Jen is a Scorpio. It just happens sometimes.

Jennifer Prokop 1:31 / #
It's true. I've been actually trying to stay off because

it's hard. Twitter is hard. A side from just like a lot of like crazy nonsense information out there because oh, we're still in self isolation, just checking in. Yeah, it's day 15 here in New York. And that's a lot of days.

A lot of days.

Sarah MacLean 1:57 / #
And so a lot of people are just tweeting, whatever they're just retweeting like, whatever nonsense some rando has posted to the internet like it's facts. And a lot of people are just getting stressed. Like yesterday, there was a piece in The Times about people who are stress-buying chickens, baby chicks, which I think is interesting on a couple of levels. Like one: Do we really think we're gonna run out of eggs? Like is that a thing we're concerned about? Because I, we're here-- I'm here like reporting in from ground zero of the pandemic in America-- and I will tell you, we have eggs at our corner store. But also, it seems that people have not realized that when you buy a chick, it takes some time before it becomes a chicken.

So I don't know it seems like a bad idea to panic buy live animals and I tweeted about this and right now Twitter there. I've made like "Panic buying live animals Twitter" a little upset?

Jennifer Prokop 3:03 / #
Well, I, I want them to rethink it. Can I tell you one, I've had a, I don't really do-- I mean, we have cats and I'm down with that, but like barnyard animals are not my jam.

Sarah MacLean 3:16 / #
Why would you do that? We live in a city, it's fine.

Jennifer Prokop 3:19 / #
Yes. But at the Museum of Science and Industry, which is in my neighborhood, one of my favorite exhibits is... and I don't know how they do this, although I now have a friend who works there. And maybe I need to call her and get this information. I've always been curious. They have incubators, and every morning they put out the eggs that are going to hatch that day. And somehow they know because they're like written on the egg.. like you can see, it would be 31, or whatever. That'd be March, the March 31st eggs. And then you can just stand there and watch these chicks like work their way out of this. And it is...I could watch it all day.

Sarah MacLean 3:56 / #
Is it really cool?

Jennifer Prokop 3:57 / #
It is! My son never had the patience for it. It was right next to the train room and I always felt like it screwed me over because I could watch those all day. But I did, when this happened, I found myself really thinking like, but But what about the chicks? Like what? What are they gonna do?

Sarah MacLean 4:16 / #
I think they're probably fine. In fact, they're probably happier. They're not being stared at by by by a bunch of like weirdo children

Jennifer Prokop 4:24 / #
A bunch of Chicagoans who are like, What's going on here?

Sarah MacLean 4:27 / #
I mean, I have to say we took my daughter to the Museum of Natural History to the butterfly exhibit, which happens every year in New York City, in the February March, April months, and they get chrysalises sent from all over the world to the Museum of Natural History here, and you can watch butterflies hatch from the Crysalises, and then they basically turn this this section of the museum into like a butterfly room. These amazing, huge beautiful butterflies from all over the world are living inside this rain forest feeling-- like it's very hot and humid in there lots of big flowers and plants. And it's truly one of the coolest things I've ever seen like watching a butterfly come out of a cocoon.

Jennifer Prokop 5:21 / #
That's awesome.

Sarah MacLean 5:22 / #
Really cool.

And I had never seen it until this year, and I mean, it it's cool watching things hatch and like, it's nature's cool. I mean, I like to look at it under glass.

Jennifer Prokop 5:36 / #
To circle back to "don't panic buy" I don't want those chickens in my backyard or on my porch, I don't know,

Sarah MacLean 5:42 / #
if you live in a city and you are panic buying chicks, You should know that chickens are kind of dirty and they attract rats and you're not going to like what happens when you get rats in your yard and you live in a city because they're gonna come because they exist. There's like the whole thing. Anyway, I'm very concerned about this and I feel like, I have sort of mixed feelings because at the same time I'm really I feel like the silver lining of this whole thing is that New York City has run out of adoptable dogs and cats. And that's really great. Like, that's, like, that's awesome. And now actually probably is a pretty good time to get a puppy speaking as somebody who has a one year old dog that is annoying.

Jennifer Prokop 6:29 / #
Well, it gives you something to do every day.

Sarah MacLean 6:32 / #
I guess you have time to train your puppy which I did not have to have time to do which is why I have a terrible dog now.

Jennifer Prokop 6:40 / #
Well, can I tell you one other really funny thing and we'll put it in show notes is have you seen these videos of sports announcers instead of like, calling like matches, one guy he puts down two bowls of food for his dogs and then calls it like it's a sports match. The Same guy gets out and does something on the street. He called this "pigeon dressage," where he like is filming a group of pigeons and sort of like....

Sarah MacLean 7:08 / #
You can tell has been preparing for this for a long time. He's got two standard legs and and all of his toes. So I've asked him like most of the crackhead pigeons you see around these parts and you can see how keen he has to disassociate himself from the rest, but occasionally blending in momentarily as a feast on is it rice, seed probably vomit. What comes up must go down disgusting.

Jennifer Prokop 7:28 / #
It is. Honestly, it's great. Another American guy, if you send him videos of your cats fighting will like call the cat fight.

Sarah MacLean 7:39 / #
Like a boxing match. Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 7:43 / #
And it is really funny and I keep hoping I'll catch my cats fighting so I can have their fight called

Sarah MacLean 7:50 / #
Man. It is bringing out the very best and the very worst of the internet and also people. I really believe that. Some people are doing some really, really cool things. And some people are doing some really, really terrible things. So you know,

Jennifer Prokop 8:07 / #
Hey, speaking of a cool thing I'm doing. Yeah, I'm interviewing YA authors on TikTok.

Sarah MacLean 8:12 / #
Oh, yeah, you are.

Jennifer Prokop 8:14 / #
I'm gonna post that. We'll post that in the show notes too. And I'll be putting it on my Twitter. I've had like three or four people so far. But the whole idea is just like, if you have kids, or if you're a teacher or librarian, please share them. They're...TikTok videos can only be a minute long. And so they're really quick. It's like four little interviews with each author. And it's really fun. And I'm just like: let's get kids reading.

Sarah MacLean 8:38 / #
I totally agree. And, I mean, whatever. I wish there was more. I wish there was more for writers to be able to do right now. Like, I wish there was a way that I could help people. You know, writers are much less exciting than musicians or actors or whatever, but I'm super excited. About your TikTok project, and some of my friends have done it. And some of them haven't yet and I'm gonna yell at them. Sophie Jordan!

Jennifer Prokop 9:09 / #
People are in a pandemic. And so I can understand why.

Sarah MacLean 9:14 / #
But I saw that Zoriada Cordova did it, and you said Ali Carter's came in, so Thank you to you guys.

Jennifer Prokop 9:21 / #
Gia Krebbs, I think, and then the first one was, oh, Nisha Sharma. Yeah, she was my test case. Yeah, it was great.

Sarah MacLean 9:31 / #
Well, all of that said, we hope you're doing well world. We were really we there was such a great response to last week's episode about health care workers. And, you know, please keep thanking healthcare workers who are really doing the business, and not like the good business. You know, hard, hard business.

But let's get to it because you know, who else is doing the business?

Jennifer Prokop 10:01 / #
Man, I love this book so much.

Sarah MacLean 10:04 / #
So was it both? Was it a mutual pick? What is this book? Who picked this book?

Jennifer Prokop 10:10 / #
I think we definitely were like, let's do Susan Elizabeth Phillips. And I think we I think you were like Nobody's Baby But Mine. And I was like, Yes. Now I love Heaven, Texas. I love that wackadoodle one at the fucking circus. And it was funny, because I've been rereading today the one about the lazy golfer which I want to like put a titles Lady Be Good. I think is that one.

Sarah MacLean 10:36 / #
Lady Be Good and Heaven Texas are related. Right?

Jennifer Prokop 10:39 / #
Yes, yes. Everybody-- Bobby, Bobby Tom, which is?

Sarah MacLean 10:45 / #
Seriously, it's so amazing to me like, there are so many things about Susan Elizabeth Phillips that blow my mind. One of the ones that is probably more pedestrian than anything else, is the fact that she Can name her characters things like Bobby Tom? Or, Sugar Beth. And you're like, yeah, sexy here for it.

Jennifer Prokop 11:11 / #
So I think you you just said this one first and

Sarah MacLean 11:15 / #
Nobody's Baby But Mine is my first Susan Elizabeth Phillips book

Jennifer Prokop 11:20 / #
Really? Okay.

Sarah MacLean 11:23 / #
After which I immediately read every Susan Elizabeth Phillips book.

Jennifer Prokop 11:28 / #
So you didn't read this when it came out?

Sarah MacLean 11:31 / #
I did. I mean, I I read this a long time ago, but I don't. But I it was my first like, I was in college. Again. I thought this was earlier than it was, so I was in college. I would have been in college when it came out. 1997 is that what we decided?

Jennifer Prokop 11:49 / #
Yeah, I looked. I read this when it came out, for sure.

Sarah MacLean 11:54 / #
I don't know if I told the whole story about this, but I went to Smith. And at Smith, our house at Smith is our dorm at Smith. So the rules for for Smith are different-- like going to college at Smith is like going to college on another planet. If you haven't been to Smith it -- always my husband thinks this is like every piece of the Smith experience is just bonkers. And one of the things... so at Smith nobody lives in dorms. You live in houses. Every house has its own kitchen, with its own kitchen staff, which was amazing. And you have to live on campus all four years. If you don't, you have to get special dispensation from the college not to live on campus. And every house is divided into quarters-- so it's you know, first year, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. So there's one quarter of each class in your house and when you come in as a first year. Most people never move houses they start at House that they live in their whole time. So when you meet, when you see Smithies in the wild later in life, invariably the first question that we ask each other is "what House did you live in?" Because like that's the connection, the connective tissue. We don't have, We don't have sororities, every thing is a sorority at Smith. I lived in Lamont house -- shout out to Lamonsters everywhere! And Lamont had a case, and what happens is when you're a senior at Smith, and you're leaving, you have lived in the same, often and you have lived in the same house all four years. And so all your stuff like if you think about it, you've basically lived in an apartment for four years. And so your stuff has just stayed in the house over the summer, and you know, moved from room to room, but I lived in the same room for two years. So like you amass stuff the way you do in life, and it never goes home to your parents' house. It stays in storage until you graduate. And then when you graduate, the seniors in every house have what's called a senior banquet. And at that banquet, they "will on" all their junk to the younger women in the house, so

And one of the things that had been willed down from generation to generation in this house was a romance novel collection. And I inherited it from a senior when I was a sophomore, because I had been basically like taking books out of this romance collection for a year or two. And she willed it to me, and I kept it in my room, junior year and senior year, and I add, and it came with its own bookshelf, and I added a second bookshelf to it. And so people would just would come and they would take books out of take, you know, quote "take them out of the collection" and then when they had romance novels, they would add them back in. And so all these books have these like magnificent marginalia in them. And it was awesome. Like it was so cool and the marginalia was course like super feminist.

And I willed it on to my friend Mara, who will, who I'm told willed on to a sophomore when she graduated, and then we lost touch with it, and now the Lamont house romance novel collection has disappeared. We don't know what happened to it in the ensuing 20 years. But all of this is to say that one, I'm very sad that Lamont house collection is gone. And two, that Nobody's Baby But Mine had to have been in that collection that would have been where I would have found it. Somebody would have either put it there or I would have bought it and put it there. But all that is to say that Susan Elizabeth Phillips, like this was my first taste of her and I think it really changed the game for me. It made me realize, one, that single title contemporaries could exist. And they didn't have to be like, like Judith McNaught style contemporaries, like they could be funny; like this might be the first rom com I'd ever read.

Jennifer Prokop 16:07 / #
Yes. Now this was not my first Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I definitely... I was waiting for this one. So I just, look, this would have been, I would have still been in Texas for Teach for America. We moved to California later that summer, and I definitely was still... I didn't read as much when I did TFA because obviously I was completely overwhelmed all the time. But I had read Heaven Texas, which came out before for sure. Right, and the first Chicago Stars series book. So when this came out, I was like, this was, these were the years where really she was on my radar. I have no idea how we found out books were coming out before Amazon or like due dates I don't know if I was just in the Barnes and Noble and was like!!!! or what but this was definitely a book that I read when it came out and was super excited, and it was, Oh, God, those were good years.

Sarah MacLean 17:06 / #
I mean, but here's the thing. It's so funny. It's so funny and Susan is so funny and her writing is just top, top notch humor, right? Oh, yeah, the banter the back and forth between this couple is so cutting and hilarious like they are both entertaining each other and insulting each other all the time. So great. They're such a perfect match.

Jennifer Prokop 17:34 / #
Yes, it felt a lot like the kinds of sitcom humor we saw in the late 90s. When I read it this time, I was like, it's like Friends-- that sort of like really quick back and forth, the banter. And I think that would have definitely appealed to me for sure, right?

Sarah MacLean 17:51 / #
Mm hmm. And then on top of it, it just has that very real sense of like, you know, I've said this to you a bunch of times, I've said this about Susan all the time, but like Susan really nails real people. All her characters are so authentic, like her heroes are and still like really larger than life like our heroes, like Cal is such a fucking asshole. You both hate him and fully understand where he's coming from. Right? Yeah. And Jane to like, she does terrible, a terrible thing. She does a terrible thing.

Jennifer Prokop 18:32 / #
Yeah, I honestly was what was kind of like, this must have been 1987. And then I was like---1997! to write this plot!

Sarah MacLean 18:40 / #
She does a terrible thing. But like, then you're sort of like, but I kind of get it, and also she's the kind of character who would do this terrible thing and like, not entirely see how it was terrible. Until somebody was like you did a terrible thing. And I think... so why don't we talk a little bit about the plot? Because I think if you haven't read Nobody's Baby But Mine, it is bananas. Like it is a bananas premise, but also I think it's important for us to have a conversation about like, how when you come up with a premise like this? Talk about taking the finger!

Jennifer Prokop 19:23 / #
Shit, no kidding! Well, you know what, here's here's the thing. You and I talk a lot about taking the finger, we talk a lot, at least offline. We've been talking a lot about-- I think everyone is: how does contemporary romance move forward? Because Do you talk about what's happening now? Do you ignore it? Charlotte Stein, we're gonna mention on an upcoming interstitial, essentially tweeted out "it's okay with me if nobody ever talks about this."

Sarah MacLean 19:50 / #
I you know, Coronavirus

Jennifer Prokop 19:52 / #
Right. I speculated that maybe it will just, all the books will be kind of post-Coronavirus, like it has happened? But not living through it, but one thing I really think might happen is that we will just get the return to contemporaries like this, that exist in a "kind of" contemporary universe, right? where everything's just really supercharged but it's not real, the real tethers to to reality are about family and not necessarily about like job. Like the things that in this book are like, just bananas, you know, like, Okay, great. Sure.

Sarah MacLean 20:30 / #
Yeah. Well, I mean, I do think this is structurally really interesting, because I think one of the challenges with contemporaries is, and I see this, I see this push-pull, especially now. So now you've got the sort of, largely in the world of contemporaries where the stories are sort of "out of time," like the mafia contemporary that, like there's just bananas stuff going on all the time. Or the taboo contemporaries, where everything's kind of time slipped, versus what are largely the traditional contemporaries that feel like they are placed down in society now. And I think that what's really interesting is this push-pull that you see with a lot of authors who you can kind of tell are trying to figure out how to tell a story, and include conflict and challenge and tell a kind of compulsive, compelling story, but struggling with this idea of doing it in real life. So you we're starting, that's where we start to see the challenges around: Well, can an alpha really exist in a contemporary romance novel right now? Or are they just like, impossible to write in contemporary? Must they all be cinnamon rolls? These kinds of big questions about archetypes and how we do it, while we're writing a world that is struggling with archetypes.

Jennifer Prokop 22:00 / #
But I would also add, so you have that, you have those big overarching character questions. But I would also argue that you have a big setting question. And the way that often plays out is "do I talk about technology that exists now? Or am I dating my book By doing that?" So I can sort of mention texting, But if I mentioned apps... if I mentioned... So I think it's, it's contemporary is really being pushed and pulled on both ends, like, right, what are the kinds of stories we can tell? And then how do we place them down into the world without them being out of date, the minute they get published?

Sarah MacLean 22:39 / #
Absolutely. And I think authors are making two different choices with this, right? On the one hand, some of them are doing this kind of like, well, "we don't want to date the book" thing, which is limiting some of the stories or making some of the stories challenging, right? And some of them are saying like, fuck it, I'm just gonna write Tinder. which is gonna, Which is its own challenge. I mean, like contemporaries, I've said this 1000 times, but like, I think writing contemporaries is one of the hardest things you can do, because you are really struggling with, what, where the book is in the world. But what I want to talk about is this bananas plot. Because I think, because Susan on a number, so you and I were, just before we started recording, admitting that we usually don't read this whole book cover to cover.

Jennifer Prokop 23:26 / #
Oh, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 23:27 / #
I usually start at about 30 30% in when they get to the Mountain.

Jennifer Prokop 23:32 / #
Yes. Like skip the whole beginning.

Sarah MacLean 23:35 / #
I skipped the beginning. And that's because like, for me, when the money starts to come in. Right when they get to the mountains. And it's forced proximity, and they're stuck together. But, um, you know, which now feels like the right kind of book to be reading right now. But reading the first 30% of this book, this time was a real joy for me because Susan, What Susan is doing is she's laying out all of this plot that is truly problematic. Oh, by saying to the reader again and again, I know that's problematic, and so do you, but this is the story.

Jennifer Prokop 24:14 / #
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 24:15 / #
And I fucking love it. I love it.

Jennifer Prokop 24:18 / #
Yeah. I think we talk a lot about how we... I think that's exactly. I don't know what to say, except I'm just like humming because I'm like, here's the thing like, this is the story, right? Like imperfect people do imperfect things. And I and I feel like sometimes we are so worried about really problematic plots because we're worried it means authors means, I think authors worry it means "I'm saying this is okay." And I don't think we for a second think Susan Elizabeth Phillips thinks any of this is okay.

Sarah MacLean 24:55 / #
No, in fact, she says it she name checks it again and again in the text. She talks about so okay for people who haven't read the book, why don't we do the plot? You go.

Jennifer Prokop 25:07 / #
Alright, so it starts off with Cal Bonner. He is a 36 year old quarterback for the Chicago Stars. He's aging out of the NFL but refuses to admit it. He is really, he just wants to stay a young man. And one of the ways he does this is by dating young women. He's never seen on the arms of a woman who was not 20 or 22. And which not... I was that age when I read it, but I was still like... now I'm like: buddy. And so his friends, it's his his birthday. They know he's real sad and depressed about something. They decide that they're going to get him a woman. A hooker basically, right? A sex worker, excuse me.

Sarah MacLean 25:47 / #
But she uses those terms. Yeah, and also Jane doesn't like them.

Jennifer Prokop 25:52 / #
So what happens is...they don't know how to find a classy sex worker, right? Like they don't know how to do this. So They press into service a local bartender, a woman who is pretty much a caricature herself, right? She just wants to, she's like "I'm young. I'm a party girl, I want to bang football players." And if I help them find a classy woman for Cal, I can get it with this other guy. And she essentially serves up her next door neighbor, a physicist named Jane Darlington who really wants desperately to have a child. But she went to college when she was 14 and just doesn't know how to do it. And then, and her reason for agreeing is she was this 180 IQ genius her entire life and was shunned. And so she thinks if she has a baby with somebody really stupid that her, that you know, she'll essentially have a normal child. Some dummy, this dummo will like "even out"

I know when you're like, Oh my god for smart woman that's just all seems like a really bad plan, right?

Sarah MacLean 27:04 / #
Oh, it's so good though. It's so good. She's like, and she's saying it to Janie. No, no, Janie Joanie, the neighbor. And she's like, Look, I just I need somebody stupid. And Joanie is like, what? And she's like, she points to the television is like him, like, I need somebody like that. That Cal Bonner guy, basically. And Joanie's like, Oh, my God, it just fell in my lap. Like, yes, I can get you him. I can get you him.

Jennifer Prokop 27:37 / #
So here's the part that I think is really interesting. And then we'll, I don't maybe I'm jumping ahead. So there she, you know, shows up at this party and she's not really dressed.

Sarah MacLean 27:51 / #
His teammates like, deliver her to him. With a bow on! With a bow on!

Jennifer Prokop 27:58 / #
Oh, God. It's so awkward. Terrible, the whole thing.

Sarah MacLean 28:01 / #
But it doesn't feel sexy. It feels awful, awkward, and terrible. And that's it, again I, we're going to talk about this I hope later, but like that's part of why the book works so well. Susan never makes it sexy.

Jennifer Prokop 28:15 / #
Well, here's the other reason it works so well. She, here's the really unforgivable thing, she tampers with the condom and they have sex, and it really does feel, at that moment, unforgiveable, truly. She does not get pregnant. Two months later, she realizes she's not pregnant and she essentially tracks him down again for another go, and then it's consensual on his part and he just goes in without a condom and sort of can't believe it. And I will say, I think it's incredibly smart of her to play it like this, because this really unforgivable thing, had she become pregnant from the tampered condom. I think it would have, I don't think I would have kept reading.

Sarah MacLean 29:02 / #
Yeah, I think you're right.

Jennifer Prokop 29:04 / #
It's interesting .

Sarah MacLean 29:05 / #
I mean. I don't know that I would. Yeah. It's interesting because I noticed that this read, right? Yes. Like that the second time. He is consensual, bare. Right?

Jennifer Prokop 29:16 / #
Yes. Right.

Sarah MacLean 29:17 / #
But it's interesting because I don't I have never recalled it like that.

Jennifer Prokop 29:24 / #
Oh, no, me neither.

Sarah MacLean 29:25 / #
I will always recalled it as tampered condom. Stolen baby. Yes. And it never bothered me.

I'm like, this is one of those scenarios where like, you have to name the problem and then like, also just acknowledge that like, yeah, It didn't bother me, except in the sense that it did of course bother me-- she does a terrible thing. And I've always known that. Like, I've always from the first second I read this book, known that Jane made a heart horrible horrible decision and trapped Cal into this terrible situation. And no, at no point, does Susan shy away from it. And it's one of those moments It reminded me this time, it evoked for me that Joanna Lindsey Prisoner of My Desire, because you know, which we talked about with Joanna Shupe, on a podcast in season one, but that Joanna Lindsay, the heroine rapes the hero and he's so angry. And in this book Cal is so angry.

Jennifer Prokop 30:37 / #
I understand her reasoning and so therefore it didn't bother me, but I would say the fact that Cal knows that second time is when she gets pregnant, and that was his part of it, too? I feel like yeah, it's why he forgives her, right? I guess is what I..

Sarah MacLean 30:55 / #
Eventually, eventually right? But Jen, she's in cold storage.

Jennifer Prokop 31:02 / #
Oh god, yes. And she deserves to be it. Terrible. And in fact, when he confronts her, one of the things I liked about her, though, is when he confronts her, and he is furious. And we are really like, Oh my god, and she is just like, kind of stuck, and this is when she actually says the words in the title, right? "It's nobody's baby but mine" and she actually stops herself. And it's, actually, that's not true. And it's a really important moment, because we also see, she did something terrible, but she's not lying to herself about it either. And I think that's why it works.

Sarah MacLean 31:46 / #
I mean, there's so much about it. It's so deft. For all the times that I've talked about this book publicly, and on panels, and with readers about how bananas The plot is, and how light. And I always joke: oh, it's fine, it's fine. But the reality is, is that this is so deftly written every second of this, the first 30% of this book is so carefully crafted, so that as a reader you both fully understand these two characters and are fully on the side of both of them, and fully fully against both of them. Like the whole time.

Jennifer Prokop 32:25 / #
It's amazing. It's an amazing feat. It really is.

Sarah MacLean 32:28 / #
It is really magnificent. From a craft perspective, as far as building characters in a contemporary, I mean in anything, but especially in a contemporary, working with like this is kind of really, it's tightrope walking.

Jennifer Prokop 32:44 / #
Yes, and I would also like to point out, the conflict here is is so rich, it's so dynamic, it is constantly changing and moving. It is slow moving and fast moving at the same time. I mean, there's no, this is not people just sitting around talking about their feelings.

Sarah MacLean 33:06 / #
No. So okay, so what happened? So we so are now at a place where Jane is pregnant, and Cal has found out, and he comes to her. She's teaching physics class at her at her University. And he walks in and he sees her and he is like standing leaning against the wall like pure alpha sex. And the whole room is like, "What the fuck is happening?" And he looks at the class and he's like class is over.

Jennifer Prokop 33:35 / #
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 33:37 / #
And my panties just fell right off.

Jennifer Prokop 33:41 / #
I was like, Oh, that's hot. Yeah, it was great. And she's trying to cover, like I was almost done anyway, so we'll just meet again next time.

Sarah MacLean 33:52 / #
So anyway, It's really perfect, but also I want to say he's, he's pissed on a number of levels right? He's pissed that she's having, that one is: she stole a baby from me right? Two is: now he's got to fucking face his mortality. Lik at his age, he can't live the life he was living now because he obviously, he doesn't believe, he refers to it as strays. He doesn't believe in stray kids. And so like he's fucked because he has to marry-- then there's like a little bit of a, it's a little "romance reasons" he's like we have to get married. So they get married and then on top of all of this, then he's really pissed that she thinks he's stupid. Like that's really the worst, almost the worst infraction for Cal

Jennifer Prokop 34:49 / #
Also, that she's old, right?

Sarah MacLean 34:53 / #
Actually he thinks, he thinks she's 28

Jennifer Prokop 34:57 / #
Well, he's outraged she's that old right? She's 34! So he says, tell everyone you're 26. She's like, Okay, sure.

Sarah MacLean 35:06 / #
So anyway, he says, well we've got to get married, and then you're gonna have, we're gonna get married, we're not having a bastard. And she's like, "what the fuck" What? That's not a thing." And he's like, we're not doing it. And then he's like, then you're going to have the baby, and then we're going to get a divorce. And then I'm going to pay, I'll pay. I have my financial duties to the child, but you can't have any of my money. And she's like, Fuck off. Like, I don't want any of this. And he's like, too bad. We're doing it, or I will keep you, I have enough money. I have more money than God and I will keep you in legal fees forever and file for full custody of this baby. And I'll get it because Look who I am.

Jennifer Prokop 35:46 / #
And look what you did to me.

Sarah MacLean 35:47 / #
Yeah, yeah. Um, you're both like, Wow, what an asshole and like, Oh my god, she really did a terrible thing and I get it.

Jennifer Prokop 35:54 / #
This is like the opposite of the secret baby plot in the sense that the secret baby plot, we've talked about this, hinges upon us really believing that the hero wants the heroine more than the baby. That it's like the catalyst, right? And in this case, he's like, I don't want jack shit to do with you, but this is my gonna be my child and I'm gonna I'm not gonna hold any of this against this child, but you, I don't want it. But I want that baby. And it's really interesting because that is the antithesis of what we expect from a secret baby outcome, emotionally.

Sarah MacLean 36:36 / #
But it is, but again, it's really deftly done because he doesn't forget about her. He's thinking about her all the time. You know, him discovering that she's pregnant. There's still so much romance coded into it. I mean, it's so smart. So then they go off, so then they go to get married, a quickie marriage at City Hall, except, of course the Chicago Tribune finds out and then it's everywhere and they have to run. And so they go back to the Carolinas. North Carolina? It's North Carolina, right? Western North Carolina, I don't know if that's the Smoky Mountains or what it is, but it's right

Jennifer Prokop 37:13 / #
it's near Asheville.

Sarah MacLean 37:14 / #
Appalachian Mountains, and they are living, basically he's bought a house that was ownedby a televangelist. And is hideous inside

Jennifer Prokop 37:26 / #
like real cheese ball over the top, you know just terrible.

Sarah MacLean 37:31 / #
And he introduces her to his family and he makes her fake being in love with him.

Jennifer Prokop 37:37 / #
He also makes her fake being terrible to them, Right?remember this part where he's like you You have to be awful.

Sarah MacLean 37:45 / #
Don't make them like you.

Jennifer Prokop 37:47 / #
Yeah, they've had a tragedy in the family. His brother's wife and child died in a car accident and he's like, I don't want them to like you. I don't want them to be close to you when you leave. I want them to not feel this way. And it's it's fascinating because of course, this plays right into-- all she's ever wanted is to be part of a family,

Sarah MacLean 38:08 / #
Right because her relationship, her mother died, Her father was terrible.

Jennifer Prokop 38:12 / #
And so it's again, here's another, we're digging even deeper into this conflict where the one thing she desperately wanted was a family. This baby of her own is going to be her way of doing it. And here is Cal's shiny, amazing family and she can't be a part of it. And they're nice people and she hates it.

Sarah MacLean 38:36 / #
I think we have to talk about Grandma, too-- who gets-- Oh, yeah. Okay, this is another grandma right? Who it's like a Lord of Scoundrels-style Grandma, who smokes and drinks and sits on her porch with a shotgun. Yeah, and also gets it instantly. Like when they're alone that in the first meeting, grandma looks at Jane and says, How old? How old are you? How old Did he tell you to tell us you are?

Jennifer Prokop 39:06 / #
Yeah, you know? And she says, I've never I don't know why he's so committed. And like, Why is he so invested in being young? I mean, she like recognizes that it's all on him.

All of it. And then and then there's also I really believe that the relationship between Cal's parents is really a perfect secondary relationship in this book.

I really, I really want to talk about that too. And so basically, after the grandchild and daughter-in-law died, these fault lines are sort of uncovered in the parents marriage, and that comes into play in the second half in a really interesting way. But really, what we're seeing is this battle of the Titans between Jane and Cal. She realizes hey, maybe I'm not a pushover. And he...there's this part where he talks about how he's "a yeller," he just, that's how he communicates. He can't help it and she is the only woman who's ever really fought him back, who's essentially run run right into the tackle. And that is the part about this relationship that develops-- and is one of my, a lot of my favorite scenes are ones where they are essentially yelling at each other. And in one, when he figures out how old she really is, is the same time. The same time she figures that he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan with a biology degree

Sarah MacLean 39:49 / #
And they are so pissed at each other

Jennifer Prokop 39:53 / #
They actually have like a literal knock them down, drag 'em out fight on grandma's front lawn. But you know what, like, what's amazing is for many authors, that would be like the end of it, but instead like, that's just the beginning. Right? We get a scene where she--this is the one I always remember from the books-- takes all the marshmallows out of his lucky charms.

Sarah MacLean 41:06 / #
Yeah, he's a she's a cereal killer. Right? It's so smart. It's

Jennifer Prokop 41:12 / #
She locks him out of the house and he has to break back in. I mean, and so that's it. And that's the part too, when we talk about taking the finger, right? There are ways in which she really leaned so hard into ... what we're seeing isn't, it's gonna continue to escalate. But in a way where we're both seeing them, like really come into their own as people and lovers, right? It's brilliant.

Sarah MacLean 41:43 / #
It's so, so good. It's so well done. And then on top of it, so the first two times that they have sex, so first of all, I want to say Susan Elizabeth Phillips is one of the only, possibly the only romance novelist who I think can write bad sex. This sex is bad. Yeah, she has another book called Mr.... Shit, I can't remember, Call Me Irresistible, I think is the one that I'm thinking of. But we'll confirm the title and put it in show notes. But the the premise is that the heroine... that somebody's... The hero has been left at the altar, and the heroine's best friend has run from the marriage. And he is legendary. He's known as like the most legendary lover in the world. Everyone knows that, this is one of his claims to fame. He's fantastic. And they fuck and she's like, this is fine. Like it's and it feels fine on the page.

And you're like...I don't, I don't... and I as a romance writer, this is a real struggle. Writing great sex is really hard to do, But writing mediocre or bad sex is even harder, Intentionally mediocre or bad sex is harder. And so the first two times they [Jane and Cal] have sex, they have terrible sex. Iit's just not.... it's fast, kind of first It's a little painful, like there are orgasms involved, but they're not even like great orgasms they're just orgasms. Like it's all very like clinical. And then, and Jane is dressed for both of those encounters. And then she's but then it's like a whole thing. When they get up there to the mountains, and they start to sort of unlock, she refused, he still has never seen her naked. And her nakedness is like a big piece of the puzzle. And then it's almost I don't want to spoil it for those of you who haven't read it because it's really magnificent, but the moment he finally sees her naked. It is one of the greatest laughs I have ever had while reading while reading. Truly like it's, it's a great big belly laugh of a moment and it still gets me even though now I know it's coming.

Jennifer Prokop 44:19 / #
Well and I've spent so long since I've read it I completely forgotten and I was like, oh!

Sarah MacLean 44:26 / #
but it's so, so good in moment, and it's so embarrassing and funny.

Jennifer Prokop 44:31 / #
And tender, right?

Sarah MacLean 44:32 / #
It all feels that way! And then he finally goes to her. And it's one of the most authentic, honest, romantic moments in the book. And it's because it was so horrifying and emotional and embarrassing before. It's just, it feels like Susan just has the, she can peak and valley in a way. It's just there are some writers there. there are writers in every genre who are masters and she's just a master at it.

Jennifer Prokop 45:09 / #
Yeah, it really worked for me. I would say the other thing about this book that's so pleasing, because remember at the beginning we talked about how we both love them both and understand both, but hate them both. So Jane begins the book in cold storage. She's the one who has done something terrible! But Cal is the one who ends up in cold storage at the end and I gotta tell you, I in rereading this, I was like, you know who created my love and devotion to cold storage? It's Susan Elizabeth Phillips! Here is a woman who knows how to make a hero suffer. And so it's really interesting because it's weeks! Basically um, you know, we don't want to have to get into kind of spoiler territory, but she really emotionally cannot commit right? Like they get it, they get to a good place, right? They kind of get past all of this. But what they haven't really beaten is his, he's really stuck in the present. He doesn't want to think about a future, because thinking about a future means thinking about leaving football, and thinking about what's next. And he hasn't ever figured that out and so he can't, he just can't let himself do that. And she has been sort of building these castles in the air about they're... like "this is all going to work out and we're going to be so happy." And what happens is she fucking takes off in her shitty like Ford Escort and goes to live with the you know, the grandmother. And then Cal's mom has also left her husband and these women are living in a Smith College dorm, essentially.

Sarah MacLean 46:55 / #
Oh my god, I'm gonna spoil that scene at night. Yeah, when he comes in to her. So she goes across over onto the other side of the mountain. She leaves him to the other side of the mountain. And the the women take her in. And then there's that magnificent scene where she's asleep. And there's a storm outside and she wakes up and he's there. And it's very Rune and Josie. And he's there. And he's, like, "Come back with me." And she's like, no. And they have a kind of quick conversation. And then his mom is knocking on the door. She's like, "do you have a man in there?" And Jane says yes. And he's like, "Why the fuck did you tell her?" And then the mom is like, "do you want him in there?" And Jane says no. And it's so heartbreaking because of course she does want him in there! but like he's been such an asshole and he's such a dummy and why, like and why why is he such a dummy? And then the mom is like, can you come stay with me? You sleep in my bed with me. And she goes

Jennifer Prokop 48:01 / #
It's really. it's, you know what it's really it is magnificent here's, the other thing, So now is maybe a good time to talk about this B plot love story. Which it's, I love this book but it's ironic, because one of the reasons I haven't read a new Susan Elizabeth Phillips book in a long time. And one of the reasons I stopped is because the secondary romances essentially started becoming like equal, the A and the B romances essentially became indistinguishable in later books. And I didn't really enjoy it. I don't know, maybe I'm just a dummy and I just want I really want the tight focus on the main romantic subplot, and I found myself frustrated by other ones and so it was really interesting because it's around 50% when Cal's parents sort of bubble up as being... okay, we're gonna get their story, and I had forgotten. And I remember as I was reading, I thought Thank God it's not gonna like take over, This was yesterday as I was rereading, thank god this is not going to take over. It's not what I want. But I think there's a couple really brilliant things that happen with this. One is it gives the reader something to focus on while Cal is in cold storage. Because if you really want it to feel like someone is suffering for...you can't just say "two weeks later" right? And it's two paragraphs later. So it gives the readers, it gives our author and the reader something to do while the time is passing. But also it's this really it's like, if Jane and Cal don't get this straightened out now, this is what's gonna happen later. Right? So it's like forewarning A potential bad outcome. And I think it's and that's the part I also thought was really brilliant, along with one of the most heart wrenching stories of a man doing someone dirty I have ever read and I cannot believe I repressed it, I read it again. And it was just as painful,

Sarah MacLean 50:21 / #
It's devastating. the story behind Cal's parents. So Cal's father is a doctor who was in medical school and his mother sold cookies in a hospital, and he'd never he basically like, he denied that he knew and was in love with her

Jennifer Prokop 50:38 / #
that they were married! That was his baby!

Sarah MacLean 50:53 / #
It's so heart wrenching, and she stays with him. And so for me also, there's this piece of like, it feels very real because it feels generationally, like we've talked before about women of a generation, even even just one generation above us like feeling trapped. And not being able to get out of a relationship. That is, that is so upsetting. It's also like there's something in here about education and class, and and all the other... this book. Really for a book that is so hilariously funny, And so romantic, It's also, it's a lot about age. It's a lot about class. It's a lot about like how you prejudge people, it's about education. It's about location. Like, there are so many layers of the way that we judge each other, including people we love.

Jennifer Prokop 51:57 / #
I think the other thing I found myself thinking about about is I, I think this is really a book about the cavalier way in which we talk about women trapping men with pregnancy. But not ever really digging into the many ways that women in unhappy marriages are trapped by marriage. Does that make sense? So it's the whole story about Cal's parents is she trapped him, right? She was 15 when she got pregnant, 16 when she had Cal. He's graduating from high school and she had to stand under the bleachers to go see it because she's basically been kicked out of high school for the thing that they did together. And so the whole story is she trapped him. She was trash and she trapped him and then she had to drop her mountain girl persona to become the doctor's wife, but we see that she was trapped, too. There's a real I don't know, uncovering, I think, of like, what, what is it? What does it mean when we talk about trapping someone into marriage? Like everybody loses. And I I don't know, it was really poignant.

Sarah MacLean 53:11 / #
And it's heartbreaking, because it doesn't come up. They never talk about it. And I know, you know, my mom doesn't listen to the podcast, so I can say this. But like, I feel like my parents didn't talk about so many of the things that were deeply embedded in their marriage. And maybe there are things I don't talk to my husband about that are deeply embedded in our marriage. I don't know, like, maybe this is just marriage, but it feels like that relationship could easily have just never been healed. Like it could have just lived its whole life with the story of Cookie Girl and standing under the bleachers. And you have this kind of moment of deep relief when they finally acknowledge that skeleton and like can move forward in some way

Jennifer Prokop 54:06 / #
Well and that's the part about the cold storage, I think for both Cal...both for for Lynn, Cal's mom, and for for Jane is the first time a man comes back to apologize how how quickly they are I don't know, socialized to just say, okay thank you. Just apologizing once is going to be enough for me and and the way Lynn has to essentially force herself to say, it's still not good enough, I've never in our 37 years of marriage said to you "I deserve more" but I do. and and Jane as well. Like I deserve more, but I deserve more. And it's that's the part about this even though I've made a mistake, even though I did shitty, terrible things, I'm not going to pay for them forever. I still deserve more. It's really powerful. It really is.

Sarah MacLean 55:12 / #
I mean it's really it's fabulous and then it all like she just never gives up, Susan never lets she never lets up, she every like you get to, I don't know like 90% of the way through this book right? There's the fight finally his dad comes in and is like, young lady, you have to talk to my son. And the new quarterback from the Chicago stars is there for some weird romance, and Grandma has her shot gun and like everyone's there like it's like a nonsense play. It's like a farce. Yeah. And you're watching all these people. And you think to yourself Cal's gonna profess His love, and it's finally going to be over and instead The conversation like starts and he's like "everything about you fucking irritates me," and Every woman is like what the hell is wrong?

Jennifer Prokop 56:14 / #
Even the other quarterback,

Sarah MacLean 56:16 / #
He's great the other quarterback, who is younger, but also it's that perfect example of like how it's it reminded me of Kresley, right like when we did A Hunger Like No Other, and we were like she's telling the story of the way romance is shifting, too. Susan...Cal is an old school alpha hero who like is feeling feelings for the first time and doesn't like it. What's his name Tyler? What's his name?

Jennifer Prokop 56:43 / #
Kevin. Kevin Tucker.

Sarah MacLean 56:46 / #
Yeah, Kevin is like a new evolved, cool hero who's deeply in touch with his emotions. And it's like, why don't you understand that ladies like to be treated well? And it's awesome to see the two of them together especially because like it's so overt, the metaphor is so overt like, yes, Cal's a dinosaur, he's a dinosaur in the football field. He's a dinosaur as a man. Like, he has to evolve or he's gonna die.

Jennifer Prokop 57:20 / #
Yeah. And and Jane is, I think one of my favorite moments in here, there are many that are good, is the part where she she locks him out of the house. And she, I mean, we're talking like she dismantles the electronic gate. She locks all of the doors to the house, she fiddles with the alarm. And the way that he gets in is he essentially has to scale the house and go over the roof and through like the doors on like a bedroom on the second floor, and he's actually infuriated that she didn't lock them. Didn't she think he was good enough to get up there and open those doors right?

Sarah MacLean 58:07 / #
Oh my god. It's so perfect though, right? Like I would never think t write that. But it's so perfect

Jennifer Prokop 58:13 / #
It is so perfect.

Sarah MacLean 58:15 / #
It has such a male shitty thing in the moment.

Jennifer Prokop 58:21 / #
Yes, I mean, let's look at the many ways in which she tried to keep me from this house but she didn't do this one thing so she didn't really mean it. And, and that's it like their entire... but the thing that she realizes, and then he's yelling at her. And she stops and thinks, I wonder what it was like when he yelled at he's like these 21 year old women. And she realizes. She stops and she's like, he never would have done that. And that's when she realizes that he's in love with her too. He just won't admit it and doesn't know it. And that's the part where she sees him so much more clearly. He goes down to Texas to see Bobby Tom and is convinced the Bobby Tom is just putting on the the fiction of being happy because no one could ever be happy if they weren't playing football and when he comes back and he like says that her. She's basically like, What the fuck is wrong with this dummy? He thinks football is more important than family? And even Cal's mom is like "he grew up in a happy family. I don't know where this comes from." It is amazing. It is so good.

Sarah MacLean 59:29 / #
It's so perfect. And then the grand gesture at the end. Like where he's like I really wanted to win a football game because that's what football players do. And she's like, what the fuck? And then he's like, but I get it, I get that's not what you need. And everything about it, It's just so good. And it's so cinematic too, we haven't talked about when at the first part, where you know you sort of feel like you're watching a play and some of them in some of the the scenes but it really does feel like I want to see this, I want to see this movie. if somebody said to me "what romance novels should absolutely be a movie" like it feels like this one. It's so fun. It's perfect

Jennifer Prokop 1:00:23 / #
Yeah, I think this is the thing where to me when we talk about like ROM-coms, right which is like a marketing term now but actually meant back then. And in the 90s was prime time for rom-com movies, too. But this manages to hit all of the romance novel beats without humiliating the heroine, which I think is where a lot of ROM coms now go wrong. And really keep a tight focus on the romance while introducing lots of really charming sub, sort of second string characters. There's a lot of like physical comedy and humor, there's a lot of... it is in fact cinematic, that's a great word for it I think it's inventive in a way. it really is putting something on page that was

Sarah MacLean 1:01:19 / #
Jennifer. on past AMA's, you have said "I don't think ROM coms exist."

Jennifer Prokop 1:01:25 / #
Yeah well I mean now. They existed then. I don't I mean... this, Jenny Crusie,

Sarah MacLean 1:01:33 / #
If you are out there, in the ether, listening to us and you are thinking everybody says publishing wants ROM coms What do they really mean? Read the book. Read this book because it beat for beat. It's just exactly what you want in a rom com.

Jennifer Prokop 1:01:51 / #
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 1:01:54 / #
And heavy on the ROM. we talk all the time about how romance is hard as a genre. One of the one of the things that enrages me about the level of disdain that the world has for romance as a genre is the complete disregard for the fact that when you're writing romantic suspense, it has to exist as both suspense and romance. You have to have a mystery and romance when you're writing historical romance, it has to be historically, it has to be a historical novel and also romance. This is a perfectly balanced,

Jennifer Prokop 1:02:34 / #
this book is also 23 years old. So right, and it is it is spectacular.

Sarah MacLean 1:02:43 / #
It is the Lord of scoundrels of rom com,

Jennifer Prokop 1:02:47 / #
This and Jenny Crusie,

Sarah MacLean 1:02:48 / #
I know you really like Bet Me. And for me, I haven't read Bet Me in 25 years. So for me this is like the gold standard, but we're going to do Bet Me, too. Maybe we should do Bet Me next

Jennifer Prokop 1:03:02 / #
Yeah, well this and Welcome to Temptation and Bet Me are... but I mean those were 2000? Welcome to Temptation was 2000, Bet Me was probably 2001, 2002. yes so this was all a really tight and you know maybe and after 9/11 it was just harder to do. I don't know it's really interesting to consider.

Sarah MacLean 1:03:26 / #
Well there was that great moment on Saturday Night Live the the week that they came back after 9/11 and Lorne Michaels stood there with Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor at the time and Lorne Michael said, "Can we be funny?" and Rudy Giuliani said, "why start now?" And so and it's like that. I don't know, I don't know if rom com did exist short of, Maybe it was just to Susan and Jenny. I mean, it was also Laura Zigman. And then of course, there was Helen Fielding like, right in that the sort of wake of 9/11 was the rise of the Chic Lit.

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:08 / #
It's interesting that you talk about the "can we be funny again" thing. Do you remember what was in The Onion when they came back online after 9/11? It was a very a set of very similar types of things. And there's one that is like basically really bitterly funny, which was God holding a press conference, telling people to stop killing people using his name. And I I remember thinking nothing will ever be funny again.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:37 / #
And it will be.

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:39 / #
I know.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:40 / #
I mean, I think it's important. Part of me feels really good about doing this this week. I like the fact that it's a forced proximity story. Like there's some very overt reasons why I think this is a nice choice for this week. But also I'm really glad we did it because it's really funny. I laughed out loud reading this book today.

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:59 / #
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:00 / #
Yeah, today is not a day that is easy to laugh out loud on. So I'm, you know, Susan, I've said this to your actual face. And I texted you this today. And I don't know if you will ever listen to this podcast, but if you do just know that like this book. I mean, it is. It's one of my very, very favorites and I'm so grateful for it.

Jennifer Prokop 1:05:26 / #
Me too. It was really wonderful to read it again.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:32 / #
All right.

So well, we talked about doing that me again, but we'd also talked about the Victoria Dohl.

Jennifer Prokop 1:05:40 / #
Yeah, I don't remember the name. You were like Cunnilingus Gabe, I was like, I don't think that's the title.

Sarah MacLean 1:05:49 / #
Hang on. Eric's gonna be like what now? It feels like when you Google "Victoria Dahl cunnilingus" it should just populate but... Ah, it's Taking the Heat. And it's number three in her girls night out series but you don't have to read the others. It is a proper standalone and Victoria we are going to read, and we are going to talk about sex with Victoria as well. Because and it's gonna be a different kind of conversation than we did about Tessa.... not Tessa Dare....Tessa.

Jennifer Prokop 1:06:29 / #
Tessa. Bailey. the queen of dirty talk.

Sarah MacLean 1:06:35 / #
Yeah, Tessa Bailey, and, and the, but it's about a dude librarian who really likes to eat ladies out. I shouldn't say, that that's gross. That's a gross way of saying it It's about a dude librarian who really likes...

Jennifer Prokop 1:07:02 / #
His nickname is Cunnilingus Gabe, Sarah, I think we all get what he likes to do.

Sarah MacLean 1:07:11 / #
And it's pretty great. But also there's a there's a really beautiful like, the heroine writes an advice column in a small town. He's a librarian. And there's a really great bullying subplot like a school bully subplotthat I really think is beautiful, and I really like this book. So we're gonna do that next. Awesome. Otherwise, what else should you know about us? Oh, call us call us! We are very excited every time you leave us voicemail messages is really saying anything but especially when you tell us about books that blooded you As a romance reader.You can get pins and stickers from Best Friend Kelly. If you just go to our website, you can click on merge and go direct to her store there. Our website is fadedmates dot net, but just be aware of things shifting with post offices. So Jordan Dene, which is where all of my T shirts exist. She is closing the shop until the quarantines slash isolations slash whatever we're calling it today is over because she wants to keep mail workers as safe as possible.

Jennifer Prokop 1:08:28 / #
I would just say everybody, stay safe. stay at home if you can.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:33 / #
Wash your hands.

Jennifer Prokop 1:08:34 / #
Yeah, and be if you are out in the world, be as kind and thoughtful as possible to people who are working on our behalf. And if you see someone being shitty to them, step up and tell that person to buzz off.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:48 / #
Usin those exact words, and also tip your delivery people.

Jennifer Prokop 1:08:55 / #
Oh, like an insane amount. Yes. Whatever you can do.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:58 / #
They're really taken brunt of it. So yeah, love you guys stay safe Keep us posted on the books that you're reading tell us if you've read anything that's as funny as Nobody's Baby But Mine is, we're looking! And have a great week.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:13 / #
Hi Fated Mates fam. My name is Rosalie and the book that blooded me was Susan Elizabeth Phillips' Natural Born Charmer, Book number seven in her Chicago star series and it came out in 2008. Sarah, I think you'll laugh at this. I was at the JFK Airport, going home to Chicago and had just finished a book when they announced a three hour delay. To my dismay, I had nothing to read. So I was roaming and perusing and I saw a mass market paperback with a bright red cover and had this woman in a flowing dark dress and just knew from the cover that this book would get me out of my travel blues. I think it was Kismet because although I didn't start in Chicago ended up in Chicago and I just didn't know how I had missed this entire genre for 32 years of my life. It has really given me an opportunity to see these great authors and understand women in ways I hadn't before. So I really appreciate all the authors who put their hard work out there and to you and Jen Sarah, for talking about it every week. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Bye

S02.29: Health Care Workers in Romance Novels

We are very pro health care workers these days — we love all of you…doctors, nurses, EMTs, home health aides…if you know how to work a stethoscope, we’re into you. This week, we’re taking about some of our favorite medical romances. Listen for Jen getting thoughtful, and Sarah getting wildly inappropriate. We’re all just doing our best.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine, and we cannot WAIT. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon (free in Kindle Unlimited!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!).

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The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster

Passionate Rivals by Radclyffe

The Virgin and the Rogue

Jeremiah by Jayce Ellis

When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James

All Chained Up by Sophie Jordan

Acute Reactions by Ruby Lang

Hard Knocks by Ruby Lang

Tempest by Beverly Jenkins

Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire

Pleasure Unbound by Larissa Ione

Lover Unbound by JR Ward

Medicine Man by Saffron Kent

Wrong by Jana Aston

The Doctor by Nikki Sloan

Show Notes

• As we all shelter in place, romance twitter has been very entertaining. Julia Kelly posted a thread where she posed her pets as romance novel covers, and everyone had fun with it. Sarah also loved this one about a dog who howls along with the Law and Order theme song.

• We forgot to tell you last week when we talked about Devil's Bride that Stephanie Laurens has a new book out, The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster. We also have added information about how to pronounce Honoria and details about peach silk.

• Now is the time to get the BookBub daily romance email. Here's Sarah's Bookbub page.

• The nurse and doctor books were the backbone of early Mills and Boon romances, and the forerunner of the modern Harlequin Medical Romance; whereas Americans often find big, soapy hospital dramas on TV.

• Budleigh Salterton looks like a very nice place to hang out unless you are a bored American 12 year old.

• The roots of American and British romance are different, as proven by this absolutely WRONG LitHub romance essay. (They're wrong about romance a lot.)

• Sarah has talked about Radclyffe and the origin of Bold Strokes Books, but many of her romances are about doctors or set in hospitals.

• Jen doesn't really care too much about job details. Sorry not sorry.

• No one likes a Bloodletter. We want our historical doctors to be foreward thinking. Or as Eloisa James does in When Beauty Tamed the Beast, use a modern TV character like House as model for a hero.

• In Tempest, Jen spoke out inequities in acess to medical care for black patients, and that's still true today.

• If you're looking to see some "don't fuck your doctor" romances that definitely fall somewhere on the Simone Scale. Wrong by Jana Aston and Medicine Man by Saffron Kent.

• Jurgen Klopp wants you to put your hands away, and this amazing thread by comedian Laura Lexx and support all the Liverpool fans out there (especially Jen's brother).

• Jen's cool TikTok project is up and running, she's interviewing YA authors and hoping to get kids to read while they are sheltering in place.

• You can order buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordandene.

• Next time, we'll be reading Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

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S02.28: “It’s Sinister, right?! - Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens

This week we’re reading a favorite of both Sarah & Jen — Stephanie Laurens’s Devil’s Bride! We’re so excited to talk about ridiculous (we mean amazing) nicknames, about 30 page sex scenes, and about how we crushed our SATs thanks to romances like this one! We’re also hoping you are keeping a safe distance from others and washing your hands lots! 

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine, and we cannot WAIT. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon (free in Kindle Unlimited!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.

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Show Notes

• Please stay inside and stay safe if you can, and remember not to believe screenshots from your cousins.

• Here are some interesting and well-sourced tweets about coronavirus from a Fos (Friend of Sarah).

• Want to know the other books Jen ordered back in 2001? It was Grand Passion by Jane Ann Krennz, Prince of Swords Anne Stuart, and Innocence by Suzanne Forester. She still swears she didn't read any of them.

• Captain Jack's Woman was Stephanie Laurens' debut novel, not Devil's Bride. But it's the Bar Cynster that made her such a popular writer.

• Sometimes (ok, a lot) Jen shit-posts on twitter about conflict and writing. Sarah can't always have eyes on her, sorry.

• Jen thinks it was Amanda Quick that brought back old-fashioned names, but the only truly great Sylvesteris from disco.

• "Eyes on stalks" is a real phrase, and so is rapaciously. On the other hand, here's a bunch of sex scene euphamisms.

• The Cynsters were at Waterloo, so we're not sure why busting through the hymen is such work for them.

• All about the Greek chorus.

• Lady Osbaldestone does have her own books, as do Devil and Honoria's kids.

• Veronica Mars illustrates the fan service problem.

• Jen is obsessed with the idea of "the imperial period" for musicians--and other kids of artists.

• Next time, we'll be reading Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens

Devil's Bride ... back cover? or stepback?

devil's bride by stephanie laurens

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S02.27: Sickbed Scenes in Romance with Kate Clayborn

Sarah has the flu! She wants you to know it’s absolutely terrible and you should all get your flu shots even though she got one and still got the flu but vaccines are good for you. Also, we all want you washing your hands and air high-fiving your friends because it’s wild out there. But you are IN FOR A TREAT this week — as our fave Kate Clayborn is pinch hitting for Sarah, and we’re talking romance sickbed scenes this week! If we have to be hyper focused on sickness, shouldn’t there be yearning and vigiling and a veiled death threat against a doctor (don’t threaten doctors)?

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.

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Show Notes

• Welcome Kate Clayborn! She joined Jen this week since Sarah was down and out with the flu.

• Kate loves a sick bed scene. When we talk about acute vs chronic illness, the sick bed scene is acute rather than chronic. And, as Jen points out, these are almost always about physical rather than mental illness.

• Some of Jen's favorite sickbed scenes are in Indigo by Beverly Jenkins and Managed by Kristen Callihan -- but we've talked about those books already! Same thing with The Master by Kresley Cole.

• Kate is a lot more interested in work of all kinds than Jen. It's okay. We're still friends. We even made a hashtag, #Claykop, so we can find all our discussions.

• We recorded this on Sunday March 8th, so who knows what the coronavirus situation will be by the time you listen to this.

• Andie Christopher was the first to bring the I'm Baby meme to our attention when she joined us for the cinnamon roll episode.

• Jen and Kate both suffer from insomnia. Sarah sleeps like a rock.

• Jen was procrastinating about her report cards--but they're all done now, it's fine.

• The bedside vigil is kissing cousin to Jen's cold storage fetish, and the way Kate loves it when a hero suffers.

• Endomitriosis is no joke.

• The man flu phenomenon.

• Wash your hands! Don't touch your face!

• We'll be back next week with Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens.

Indigo by Beverly Jenkins

The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

The Master by Kresley Cole

House Rules by Ruby Lang

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

S02.26: Women's Friendship in Romance

We’re talking about women’s friendship in romance this week — how it works, why it’s important, and why we want all our romance heroines to have a squad.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.

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Show Notes

• We know we shouldn't make the gallows humor jokes about coronavirus, but we did. We hope there won't be a pandemic, but if there is, get your TBRs ready. Jen's excited it won't have anything to do with RITA books.

• Have you preordered Daring and the Duke yet?

• Daddy is kind of sexy, but Mike Pence really does call his wife mother, and that's never gonna be sexy.

• We love Henry Cavill in season 1 of The Witcher. Just watch this video of them kissing. Jen stopped watching when they broke up in episode 7, and Netflix really wants her to finish.

• The idea for this week's episode came from listener Mary Ann Harlan who wondered, "Do you have an episode on how female friendships in romance disrupt the patriarchy? Or even just how female friendships work in a good way in romance?" I mean, probably just listen to season 1 where we talked about the witches and valkyries.

• Jen wrote about women's friendship in romance for Galentine's Day. So if you're looking for more recommendations, check it out.

• Some of the early proto-women friendships in historicals are Lisa Kleypas's Wallflowersand Penelope in the Bridgerton series.

• Adult friendships are important even if you don't have a best friend.

• Deficit modeling is a kind of thinking that assumes people can't move forward due to deficits or shortcomings. It's a phrase used in education that blames students and their families for lack of school readiness; for women, it's used when discussing the way they assert themselves.

• It would be really weird if your ex started dating Lady Gaga.

• It can be hard to be friends when the other person has more money than you.

• In abusive relationships, the abuser often separates and isolates the victim from their friends and family in order to control them.

• The Outsiders by SE Hinton is a really beloved book. One day, Jen's going to write a think piece about how it's all about American identity.

• Every woman loves the song "I Will Survive." We don't make the rules.

• Linda would definitely have your back, so follow her on Twitter if you're not already.

• Looking for new buttons from Kelly? Jen loves Danger Bang! while Sarah is Living Every Week like it's Rune Week. The full set of t-shirts and totes is available now from Jordandene.

• Wash your hands! Stop touching your face!

• Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens is next week.

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

Dear Enemy by Kristen Callihan

Reborn Yesterday by Tessa Bailey

Romancing Mr. Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

Beginner's Luck by Kate Clayborn

Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn

Best of Luck by Kate Clayborn

A Scot in the Dark

A Princess in Theory

A Duke by Default

Roller Girl by Vanessa North

The Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

The Unleashing by Shelley Laurenston

The Undoing by Shelley Laurenston

The Unyielding by Shelley Laurenston

Falling Into Forever by Phyllis Bourne

A Mistletoe Affair by Farrah Rochon

Eve of Passion by AC Arthur

Burn Down the Night by M. O'Keefe

Wait for It by M. O'Keefe

Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone

Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens

S02.25: Asking For Trouble: Tessa Bailey is the Queen of Dirty Talk

This week we're mixing it up, talking about an author more than a specific book -- the Queen of Dirty Talk herself, Tessa Bailey. But we're not just talking about the sexybits -- we're also talking about working class heroes, women and worry and how awesome it is to watch authors evolve.

Transcript available

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!

In two weeks, we’re reading a book that blooded both Sarah and Jen — and approximately 50% of Romancelandia, we think -- Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.

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Show Notes

• Sarah was heading to Birmingham for the Southern Voices Book Festival. The last time she was there, it was when she was a kid going to a Science Olympiad competition. Based on the description of that event, Jen suspects that she was outside orienteering. She's going to see Rachel Hawkins and Naima Simone!

• Meanwhile, Jen went to see Bug by Tracy Letts at the Steppenwolf Theater, which is known for being the home theater of John Malkovich and also where hope goes to die.

• Jen wrote about Johanna Lindsey and her New York Times obituary in a column for Kirkus.

• The hero of Protecting What's His is Derek Tyler, which is Jen's second favorite romance Derek. Derek and Ginger also appear in a follow-up novella, Protecting What's Theirs. Derek also appears as a secondary character in the Crossing the Lines series, where he assembles a team of ex-cons and misfits as a special crime fighting team. Ginger's sister gets her own book in Unfixable.

• The rise of eBooks made room for indie publishing and small presses like Entangled. Here's the story of how Barabara Freethy took advantage of the Kindle revolution.

• Enemies to Lovers is one of the most beloved romance tropes. Jen is going to talk about her whole energy theory in an upcoming Kirkus column.

• This is a romance that deals with class in an unusual way--she's the poor little rich girl, while he's working two jobs because of family obligations to his siblings.

• Tessa Bailey is the Queen of Dirty Talk. She just is. Jen's favorite is Duke from Worked Up, who is a perfect grunting hero.

• Jen noticed that several motifs that appear in Asking for Trouble appear in other books -- for example, there is a trip to Atlantic City in Worked Up, and connecting doors in a hotel room in Driven by Fate.

• Sarah identifies "heroine as rock" as part of Tessa Bailey's core story, Jen noticed the pull between familial duty and individual needs. At first Sarah thought Tessa's most recent book, Love Her or Lose Her, doesn't fit into the core story...but after talking it through, she thinks it fits perfectly.

• Sarah mentioned the one with a hero who is a recovering alcoholic called Indecent Exposure. Jen also loved it and reviewed it for The Book Queen.

• Some advice in case you ever need to stop a wedding.

• Buy buttons and stickers from Kelly at Jen's shop and the newly available full line of t-shirts from Jordandene.

• Listen to this week's music selections and peruse this episode's transcript.

• Next time on Fated Mates, we'll be reading Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens.

Asking For Trouble for Tessa Bailey

Protecting What's His

Protecting What's Theirs

Unfixable by Tessa Bailey

Indecent Exposure by Tessa Bailey

Captivated by Tessa Bailey

Worked Up by Tessa Bailey

Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey

Reborn Yesterday by Tessa Bailey

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah MacLean 0:00
Yeah, I'm big mad. I told Eric we were we were having a late addition to the to the podcast schedule this week.

Jennifer Prokop 0:14
I told Darryl the same thing. I was like, look, so I'm recording tonight and he's like, "only one episode?" I was like, "Yes, it will be roughly 800 hours long."

Sarah MacLean 0:22
I know. You'll never see me again.

Jennifer Prokop 0:24
My fury will not be contained.

Sarah MacLean 0:30
Body autonomy, Jennifer.

Jennifer Prokop 0:33
It's all a girl wants

Sarah MacLean 0:37
I'm just a girl standing in front of the world, asking for you to get your hands out of my uterus.

Jennifer Prokop 0:44
You know, I used to say "my uterus" a lot like people be like, "Why do--" "I'm like my uterus!" And I think back then there are some men in my life who thought it was like charming or funny. I'm like, "Did you think I was kidding? Motherfucker. Get your hands out of my fucking uterus."

Sarah MacLean 1:03
Yeah. Well, Victoria Dahl had this great tweet today about hysteria. And how hysteria is the truth that they always spoke of, but never really wanted to see. And I was like that feels right to me today. So you guys the world is aflame again. It's 2019. So like, again still, I was on the subway today and someone said to me, "I just sometimes wonder like, Am I drinking tea on the Titanic? And is it before or after we hit the iceberg?" Like, this is all fair.

Jennifer Prokop 1:40
Yeah, it's how it feels, right? There's a thing that we talked about at school where it's like, like "the bomb face," right? Something goes so wrong that you just have that thousand-yard stare. And I feel at some point, it's me and every woman I know. And I just want to say I think a lot about the women who live in states where, this, they're on the front lines.

Sarah MacLean 2:07
Yeah. So wait. I think we should, You probably know by now what we're talking about and who we are. If not, this is going to be a crash landing into Fated Mates with Sarah and Jen. I'm Sarah MacLean. I write romance novels. I read romance novels. I like to talk about romance novels.

Jennifer Prokop 2:28
Yeah, and I'm Jennifer Prokop. And I talk about romance on Twitter, and I'm a teacher and I basically believe that nobody's business what's going on in anybody's uterus.

Sarah MacLean 2:42
Yeah, I got it. I agree. Can I just cosign that? And are we done now? Four minutes in? And that's where we stand.

Jennifer Prokop 2:49
here's here's where I think we came up with this idea is what we did was kind of

Sarah MacLean 2:54
it's a what date is it? It's May, it's May something 15?

Jennifer Prokop 2:59
No. 16

Sarah MacLean 3:00
I think 16th but yesterday was May 15, and some real shitty laws were passed in, or a law was was passed in Alabama. Regarding abortion,

Jennifer Prokop 3:12
well, and by the time you hear this, which which should be next Wednesday, the 22nd. It might be that these laws have passed in Missouri and in Michigan. I mean, like these are laws that are like making their way through states.

Sarah MacLean 3:28
Yeah, the Republicans are coming for Roe. And Jen and I are big mad.

Jennifer Prokop 3:36
Yeah, well, and I think the way that we're always both interested in talking about things is like, how does romance-- which is like a genre we both profoundly love-- like help us understand where women are, where women have been, and what our future will be. Kind of in a relationship with our bodies. And I think that, you know, one thing -- We really want to be sensitive for sure. I think there's a lot of like, "if, you know, men could be pregnant, there'd be, you know, like abortion kiosks at every Walgreens" or whatever. And we're not looking to be that has like, I think it that's language is really trans-exclusionary, right. But at the same time, we were really interested in talking about this without talking about gender?

Sarah MacLean 4:34
Yeah. Well, I want to acknowledge the trans men are extra terrified right now and have every right to be. yeah. And I think, you know, I said earlier today to somebody, this is a conversation that needs to be had about every person with a uterus and so I think both of us just want to set that set that out at the start, but this is gonna it's a tough conversation to have without using gendered Yeah. language so forgive us, for..

Jennifer Prokop 5:01
We want to be sensitive to it and we want our listeners to be sensitive to it, too. And so it's a like mea culpa in advance, we're going to try to do our best but we like really welcome feedback, I guess, from for us like, it's important to us to be inclusive, but it's also like a conversation that so tied into the way gender and women's bodies and like actual, like physical parts are seen in the world and perceived in the world that it's hard to imagine that we won't. Like we were just going to do our best, everybody. But we're also, I think it's urgent to talk about it, especially in romance because, as we've talked about many, many weeks, this is the place where, like the interior life of a woman is really like the most fully developed. And for, for I think every woman these concerns about like reproductive organs and how they sometimes feel like they betray us, is one that I think is we're really interested in talking about.

Sarah MacLean 6:12
Yeah, so this episode is going to be different than all of our other episodes, it's still going to have a lot of books in it, where we encourage you to get a pen. Show notes will be extensive, but we're going to talk about bodies and, and the female body, and the parts of it and the things that happen inside us and the reasons why romance has always seemed to be a place where that's a safe conversation and a safe dialogue. For us to have but a big, the big I think reason why we're doing this this week is because yesterday, I asked on Twitter for people to hive mind a list of romances where... in which the heroine has a abortion, has an abortion without shame. And I think we got, what, like 15 books? And I think that is the thing that we should talk about. So we're going to talk about-- so content warning, we're going to obviously talk about abortion. We're going to talk about miscarriage. We're going to talk about stillbirth. We're going to talk about contraception. What else we're going to talk about?

Jennifer Prokop 7:31
My rage.

Sarah MacLean 7:32
A lot of rage, you guys asked for it! See, be careful what you wish for our listeners. Um, so where do you want to begin? You want to begin with [Fanny!] Fanny Hill. "Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," which is an erotic novel, written in 1748. Don't, don't be expecting this to be like Sierra Simone style.

Jennifer Prokop 8:02
I actually am really curious to read it in the light of that statement, a little levity.

Sarah MacLean 8:08
Wikipedia calls it "an erotic novel." That's what I have opened in front of me, because I wanted all the dates in front of me. It's written by a man named John Cleland. And it was published a serialized, So Jen would have loved it {on brand.} In 1748, I did not know this. So 1748 I'm going to repeat that because, holy crap. I did not know this, but John Cleland wrote it while he was in debtor's prison. And, it is considered I'm now just reading from Wikipedia, but "it is considered the first original English prose pornography and the first pornography to use the forum of the novel." It is one of the most banned books in history but is considered by many, including Maya Rodale, to be a primordial romance novel, to use a Kresley Cole term.

Jennifer Prokop 9:13
I actually love that. I love calling it a primordial romance novel.

Sarah MacLean 9:16
I mean, I and I think it probably is. So Fannie Mae-- Fannie Mae, that's a that is where you get your college loans from, which is a different rage. If any Fannie Mae or Sallie Mae? I don't know. Anyway, doesn't matter. Maybe we'll skip all that.

Jennifer Prokop 9:34
So we're never good with titles! How is that not on brand for us?

Sarah MacLean 9:39
There are there are a lot of editions. If you can find an edition of Fanny HIll with illustrations, they're super graphic. And also you can go on Wikipedia and there are several very graphic illustrations. So you know, enjoy yourselves. Enjoy yourselves. So okay, um, she writes letter there. It's written, it's epistolary, she is telling her own story to, uh, to to the recipient of two letters. And it's basically Fanny's life account, and I'm not going to get too deep into it, but essentially, her parents die, and she goes to London and she gets lured into a brothel. And it's the story of, sort of, her life in the brothel. And the reason why we're bringing up Fannie Mae--Fannie Mae, goddamnit! The reason why we're bringing up Fanny Hill is because, like, ultimately, she gets married to Charles the hero. And so that's why we call it a primordial romance novel. It does end with Fanny in happiness. There's, warning, a whole lot of like, problematic representation or prostitutes in this book, it was written in the 1740s, and it can be, like, very preachy about that. So, obviously, you know, consider the date of publication. Fun fact.

Jennifer Prokop 11:09
I'm gonna retcon this, this that like Sarah from Dreaming of You, that that's what she wrote. Matilda, right? I'm sure that's probably what it is.

Sarah MacLean 11:19
Yeah, yeah. Um, there is a lot of, just to talk about like etymology for a second, there is some discussion that the reason why like, you can call it, like some people call it vagina a Fanny is because of Fanny Hill. Um, so you know, fun facts, just fun little, you know, historical facts. But Fanny, importantly, spends a lot of time in a brothel, working in a brothel, where she loses her virginity. There's a bisexual Madam, I want to say in this book, and you know, there's a lot of sex in all different forms and all different places. And there are a lot of prostitutes who have to terminate pregnancies, and they do it on the page and Fanny sort of articulates how it's done. It's not super graphic if I, you know, if I recall correctly, but it is like abortion is on the page in this book, because of course it is! Contraception is on pages book, because of course it is! And it's 1750, so, let's set aside this idea that any of this is new. Because, as I've said, multiple times ad nauseum over the last few days, like women have been dealing with..

Jennifer Prokop 12:32
Unwanted pregnancies.

Sarah MacLean 12:33
Yeah. Since pregnancy began.

Jennifer Prokop 12:37
Sure. And you know what, it's really interesting because I feel like-- and you and I were chatting about this before we started recording-- that I'm pretty sure like my first introduction to abortion was like women and historical romances. Like somebody knew somebody who knew the right cup full of tea to drink. Yep. Right. And, and even though I can't name specific ones. Like, I just feel like I imprinted on that idea that there was, like there was a woman somewhere in the village who knew how to take care of this business. Yeah. And and that's who you went to see.

Sarah MacLean 13:12
I mean, and she was a midwife, right? Because so one of the things that we talked about all the time, you and I, and I mean, I'm sure we talked about it here, but like, the romance novel, from its very origins, has been a place where, at the beginning, a subset of women, right, like written for women, white women, white cishet women, right? Right, were able to have a dialogue in an enclosed space away from the prying eyes of patriarchy, right. So and we've talked about this over time, as romance has become more inclusive of marginalized people, is has become the literature of happiness and joy, and hope and how Happily ever after. And now in 2019, that's a political act, And it was frankly a political-- It's always been a political act, right, for marginalized people to live happily. Women have been marginalized as a block. ...forever. And so I think what's really interesting here is that when we talk about pregnancy, on the page, and we talk about abortion, on the page, you and I both have the same experience, which is when we were young, and we were reading those historical romances, it was a midwife in the village who was in charge of birthing children and taking care of it, if you didn't want one. And I don't just mean abortion. I mean, like contraception, too. Like it was midwives who had tinctures and tonics and teas. And [Yep] I'm the same way, Jen. Like, I'm pretty sure that I didn't... that my first understanding of abortion came from romance novels, like there was a trick to not getting pregnant.

Jennifer Prokop 15:06
Yeah. And this was something, in pop culture for me, that moment was the movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Now it came out in 1982. And I did not see it, then I would have been too young. But at some point, like later on, right, I mean, I was I was 10 then, right? It's around nine or 10, or whatever. At some point later on, I saw it and there's this like, really matter of fact, like scene where the brother essentially takes, you know, takes this his sister into the clinic and she gets an abortion, and that's that. But I would say, like those to me, but like, really that that didn't even stick out to me the way the romance novel and the sense that like women took care of each other in these moments, was like really powerful for me. Like I often remember it, although you have an example we're going to talk about I

Sarah MacLean 15:57
have a really interesting example. Yeah

Jennifer Prokop 16:00
But for me, it was like women, you know, it's like a woman went to another woman or like whispered among the maids, like somebody knew who this person was. And in that sense, like one of the most powerful like, romances I've read with a miscarriage is called "The Mayor's Mission" by Piper Huguely, where she actually experiences, she has a miscarriage. And Virgil, who's the hero, is kind of like wanting to help Mandy, his wife, and he's like, sort of like, told by, essentially, the the midwife in their village like this is Women's Business. And I think that the reason it stuck out to me is because that very much felt like, I felt that, right? When that midwife says that to Virgil, "this is Women's Business," that even though I feel differently about it today in terms of like how men and reproduction things happen, that ultimately, that was how I imprinted on this idea.

Sarah MacLean 17:03
I mean, I think that it's certainly I feel differently. It's complicated. That should be a show title of this. It's complicated. So I just turned 40. And like, my body's doing all sorts of weird shit. I'm like, I think about all the ways that like, something strange happens, and I think to myself, like, "oh, Is that normal? Like, is that is this just a thing that happens now?" And I don't like say anything to my husband, I call my friends or I asked my sister, or like, I, I sort of reference it in passing to someone who is, you know, has the same parts as me and I say, like, hey, "Has this ever happened to you?" And then suddenly, you have these moments where you're like, "Oh, wait, that has happened to me" and we never... women, I think all the time about Emily Nagoski's "Come As You Are." So, Emily writes, Emily's amazing. Right now, she's sort of everywhere in romance, because she, she wrote these wonderful contemporary romances under the name Emily Foster. The first one is called "How Not to Fall" and the second is called "How Not to Let Go." It's a duology, you have to read both, but they're both published. But she's also a sex educator, and has a PhD in human sexuality. [Oh, wow.] First of all, you want to know who writes a hot hot hot sex scene? Somebody with a PhD in human sexuality like, yeah. Emily's first book, non fiction book, written as Emily Nagoski, is called "Come As You Are," and it's basically like a informational guide to women and sex. And I bought it and it taught me so much about like, what's normal 'cause No one sits women down and says like, no,"here's what sex is like. Here's what's normal. Here's what's not normal. Like, frankly, everything is kind of normal." So and I think and I read this book and it was like, a revelation for me and I was 36 or 37 like, way too, and I've been reading romance novels since I was 11. My God, like, it's something revalatory about, like, lady bits? The fact that I got to it at 36 or 37? I went to Smith, we spent a lot of time talking about lady bits there! So anyway, I think a lot about that and I think a lot about the fact that like, romance has always for me been a place where like women's issues can be discussed without,

Jennifer Prokop 19:41
without fear or shame,

Sarah MacLean 19:42
Without fear, without shame and also with no shrouding, like there's no like, you know, you can go to the woman, the midwife, and she will give you a tincture and it will take care of the business.

Jennifer Prokop 19:55
I also have been reading romance since I was like, you know, a teen, a young teenager. And, but I went to Catholic schools and then I went to a Catholic... I went to Villanov.

Sarah MacLean 20:07
That is the opposite of Smith, I would guess.

Jennifer Prokop 20:10
Yes! In fact, I still have very vivid memories, and I don't remember her name. So you know, I can't name shame, but I remember meeting girls on my floor my freshman year of college, who, like literally didn't really even understand why they got a period,

Sarah MacLean 20:28
Jesus Christ.

Jennifer Prokop 20:29
And I just remember being like, what in fuck are you doing? What are we? And this was, you know, a long time ago, because I'm 45. And I think, I think a lot about like, abstinence only education.. and one of the things I think a lot about is, even though it is not the job of romance to teach sex ed, we are fooling ourselves if we don't understand that many, many readers are are learning about sex. Literally learning.

Sarah MacLean 21:03
Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 21:03
Through this genre.

Sarah MacLean 21:05
Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 21:05
And that is that's a responsibility. I think that we like you can

Sarah MacLean 21:10
Absolutely. You're 100%. Right. And I mean, that's not we didn't have a different, we don't, that's not different between us. I learned about sex from romance novels, without question. And I've told this story before, that I read Beatrice Small's "All the Sweet Tomorrows" when I was 14 and I was like, "Oh shit, I'm gonna get in trouble if my parents see that I'm reading this." You know, I had lactation porn. It was a ride!

Sarah MacLean 21:41
Yeah, you're 100% right. And I do think like, I think romance in those early days didn't shy away from---interestingly, yes, it had purple prose, and yes, there was a lot of euphemism, and what the hell is a throbbing member, and where did what go, and who's what --- But at the same time, you know Jane Feather's "Vixen," which actually was posted 1996, so it's much later than I would have expected. So Jane Feather's "Vixen," this is real old school ones you guys, the hero is just awful. He's awful. It's Guardian / ward. Um, and he's a real, the hero's real bad. But like if you're into like, really rough alphas who are impenetrable and ultimately end up loving their ward. It's you know, solid choice if that's your old school kink. But what's really interesting is so they have sex. He's drunk, he's like real drunk, and he comes home to his manor, and she's there. And he didn't he doesn't know who she is. She's just like, beautiful young woman in his house. And so, and he's super drunk and they have sex. And in the morning after, he's like, "Oh shit, like, what have I done?" And he makes her a tonic and brings it to her and says, and we'll put this image in show notes will put the quote in show notes.

Jennifer Prokop 23:12
It's an amazing thing. Honestly.

Sarah MacLean 23:14
It's astounding because, he basically says to her "Here. Drink this," He is not a good dude. And he's like, "drink this." And she's like, "why?" And he's like, "because it will take care of any unforeseen problems from last night." And she's like, "what problems?" And he's like, "You're an idiot." I think he calls her "a little fool." And he's like, "you could be pregnant." And she's like, "Oh my god, I didn't even think about that." And she takes the drink, and she knocks it back without hesitation, she's like, I don't want to be pregnant. Like, I'm taking this ... I'm taking herbal PlanB, like Jane Feather Regency PlanB. And It's awesome.

Jennifer Prokop 23:19
It's kind of a great scene.

Sarah MacLean 23:30
There are a lot of problems with this book. But right now, today, I read that scene and I sent a screenshot to Jen. And I was like, This is fucking great! And then she says, "Will it work?" And he says, "it'll work." And that's it. And it does work. She doesn't get pregnant. It works.

Jennifer Prokop 24:20
And, like, what I found fascinating about that scene is it does go against type in the sense that he's the one who knows about it, right?

Sarah MacLean 24:28
He's taught, interestingly enough, he is taught how to make this herbal concoction by his first lover.

Jennifer Prokop 24:37
Yeah, well, and what's really interesting, though, is what is though to type is, the sort of virginal young heroine, I mean, who goes to a man's bed for the first time having no fucking idea what's going to happen. And that's another thing I really vividly remember from like early romance, right? Especially historicals: was you know "it's your wedding night" and you know they get some stumbling half assed explanation, if that!, about what's gonna happen.

Sarah MacLean 25:10
you're gonna bleed and then you know Marlo and no good deed goes unpunished with like a gallon of pig's blood because how much show

Jennifer Prokop 25:18
idea no idea and I mean and I think I do remember being really fascinated by like by this, the stories about like, like women are sent like lambs to the slaughter. right? They have no idea what's going to happen and I just I find that fascinating still, right? Like how much I imprinted on this idea that women were there to teach each other because it was a woman-- It was her mother or her sister-- who told her and if she didn't have that, then she had to rely on the goodwill of this lover, her partner.

Sarah MacLean 25:57
I texted with Lisa Kleypas earlier today because I could only think, one of the only romance novels I could think of where where I can name contraception on the page is one of the Hathaway books, Amelia and Cam, at this point, have already been married and Amelia doesn't want to get pregnant. And so she's taking this like herbal tea, which is basically like, what she's drinking every day. Yeah, and it actually doesn't work in the book and she gets pregnant. And interestingly, I I think that's a real thing, too. Look, I mean, like, the actual pill now, with science, doesn't work 100% of the time, so like, these teas definitely didn't work all the time. I texted Lisa and I I sort of said like, "Do you, Am I missing something else? Have you written this and other books?" Because, you know, Lisa's always-- we've talked about this before about Lisa's like talismans--And Lisa is really like fascinated with the history of stuff and she'll get really interested in like the history of like land management and then suddenly that's like a huge piece of a book. So I asked her, and she actually reminded me, and I had forgotten this, that in "Devil in Winter," Evie asks about pregnancy and Sebastian says, "There are all these ways," like he sort of articulates a number of different ways that you can use contraception and he brings up the use of, Hang on-- I'm going to pull up I'm going to pull it up-- He brings up the use of, quote, "little charms," which were Lisa just said to me today, usually gold or silver or sometimes lead, and which yikes. But they were intra cervical, and sometimes even intrauterine devices that

Jennifer Prokop 27:46
like a pre IUD?

Sarah MacLean 27:48
yeah. [Dang] So the idea that these things are on that like Lisa Kleypas setting this on the page, Jane Feather setting this on the page, is a real dialogue in the 90s about how women, how this is women's work. Contraception is women's work! I mean, [yeah], yes, there is no male birth control pill and there's a reason for it. Right like, [sure]. First of all, you know, it unfortunately it is our work to make sure we don't get pregnant. People with uteruses are responsible with make sure it making sure that we don't get pregnant, which is problematic and in an immense way, but reality.

Jennifer Prokop 28:32
Yeah, well and it but it's also because thousands of years of patriarchy has made it so, right? Well, and I would think to like back in old historicals, like about French letters, right? Like I..

Sarah MacLean 28:46
the French letter!

Jennifer Prokop 28:47
How did I I mean, I totally had to like figure that out from context. There was no Wikipedia, there was no Urban Dictionary.

Sarah MacLean 28:54
And they all have like bows on them and like ribbons and you're like, "What the fuck is this?" And then what was amazing is like, I, I can't believe this is the first time we're ever going to talk about "Harlots" on this podcast because I am in love with "Harlots." The show on Hulu, which is set in a bordello in the 1700s. It's like bordello wars, but the set it's in the 1700s. It's amazing. It's super feminist it has a full female writing staff, a full female, female showrunner. Female directors, like the cast is something like 98% women, the speaking cast, like it's very intersectional, they are queer characters, there are characters of color. It's amazing. If you haven't watched "Harlots" you should. But it said a a bordello, and it's the first time I ever saw anybody, any historical anything, show a French letter the way French letters are, which is... hard. They're dried skin, and they have to be soaked in water to use them. I mean, like you guys, show notes are really going to be rich this week because we'll link, Jen and I will work on them together and we'll link to everything. But basically a French letter is it's just, it's like imagine a dried like sausage casing-- that's literally what it is, tied up sheep intestine. It's tied on one end with like, a string as tight as possible. But it can't be tied until it's softened. So you couldn't just grab a condom and go! You had to soak it for, I don't know how long, 45 minutes an hour I don't know. I don't know how long it takes, let's say an hour,

Jennifer Prokop 30:34
2020, 2021, whatever it takes.

Sarah MacLean 30:36
it's like that scene in The Princess Bride when they say, "don't go swimming for at least an hour!" So imagine Carol Kane as your friendly bordello owner but the you know, like, and that shit doesn't work either like tying up a sheep's intestine with a bit of string does not protect you from pregnancy. Which brings us back to you gotta figure out how to manage pregnancy.

Jennifer Prokop 31:06
You and I have been reading long enough that we watched the condom evolution happen in romance.

Sarah MacLean 31:12
So much.

Jennifer Prokop 31:13
You know, it's funny because part of me is like, I don't know, I don't know where I saw it, I don't know if these were conversations I overheard with people, this was pre-social media, But I remember when, like people started sort of saying, like, "you need to have your characters talk about safe sex. This has to be a conversation that happens before they get into bed." And I remember people being like, "oh, but it's gonna ruin the vibe" and yet-- Like, do you remember this? I mean, yeah, this all happened, right? There still people--

Sarah MacLean 31:47
--Not long ago, a pretty big author said, you know, publicly, "Let's just all agree that my characters are all clean and are having safe sex because I don't want to write condoms anymore." Which, look, fine, It's a it's a bit of like a, you know, I don't write contemporaries, but it's a bit of, I imagine, like, "oh, now we have to pause, pause now for a condom break." But like, some people do it really great, first of all. And second of all, it's just good sense, everyone!

Jennifer Prokop 32:17
One of the most interesting conversations I had on Twitter, though, was that gay men now can take PrEP, right, which is essentially instead of using condoms

Sarah MacLean 32:28
Yes, I've seen ads for these on this on TV.

Jennifer Prokop 32:32
One of the things that's like, really interesting is like that can be part of your, like, your Grindr profile or whatever, if you're on PrEP, and in order to keep on it, you have to be tested, I think every, like, every month or whatever, I will get these details right in show notes. And so, you know, one of the things is like in gay romance, that that like sort of conversation might be changing because it's essentially part of the, like part of the scene already. So it's really interesting to me how even the rules for like, like male / female romances might be different from gay romances or lesbian romances in terms of like that safe sex conversation because the way, essentially the ways we can protect ourselves from sexually transmitted diseases and from pregnancy are so different than they were when Jane feather was writing this historical, right, in 1996. [Right.] So and I just think that's really interesting that contraception the sort of putting on a condom is so normalized now I notice it if it's not there.

Sarah MacLean 33:35
In contemporaries, for sure. I mean, like, I've never, I've never written a condom, in a book.

Jennifer Prokop 33:41
No, of course.

Sarah MacLean 33:43
And I partially that's because of, you know, it's because of sheepskin, and soaking, and all that, but I mean, like, Elizabeth Hoyt has written condoms. Lisa uses has used like half a lemon, I want to say, or a brandy soaked sponge, so like there are certainly contraception becomes a part of it and then--

Jennifer Prokop 34:05
Pulling out, I think is one that happens in historicals.

Sarah MacLean 34:05
yeah, I've used pulling out a lot. [sure] and I just you know assume all my heroes are clean.. But the, but again, in contemporaries have to have to clear a different bar I think then historicals do. And that's because of reality, that's because we live in the same world as characters. I think it's really interesting, look we're doing a whole podcast about Kresley Cole, nobody does birth control like Kresley does, where literally Valkyries have to eat, you know demons have a seal, like they're just so there's so many ways that Kresley tackles contraception in like a important way

Jennifer Prokop 34:11
And fertility, right. Yeah, absolutely. Like it's really coded into the world, but in a way that often where women are in charge, versus women being like victimized by it.

Sarah MacLean 34:59
Well, and that's Classic Kresley, right?

Jennifer Prokop 35:02
on brand.

Sarah MacLean 35:03
Where do you want to go from here, Jen?

Jennifer Prokop 35:05
I mean, I want us to talk about miscarriages. And I want us to talk about abortion.

Sarah MacLean 35:09
Well, let's talk about abortion. Because so, I brought up early in the episode, but aside from those early drafts, yeah, you could just you could drink a thing, and it would magically wave away the problem. [Yeah.] We don't have that in contemporaries anymore. I mean, we've never had that in contemporaries. And again, it's because the bar is higher, right. You have to clear a higher bar when it comes to contraception. But we have a couple of problematic things that happen in contemporaries. And we have a couple of, and we have started really see an evolution. I think, like we have seen the normalization of condoms. And I want to say, I want to give a nod to the normalization of Plan B. [Yeah.] Do you want to talk about Plan B?

Jennifer Prokop 35:55
Yeah, I would love to talk about Plan B. So it's really interesting because in that list of 15 books, it wasn't like 15 books where an abortion happened. I think there were like a handful.

Sarah MacLean 36:04
Yeah, five or six.

Jennifer Prokop 36:06
Yeah. And then there was sort of another group where the heroines use Plan B. And one of them I read is by an author named, by an author, Melanie Greene, who I actually know from the Tournament of Books-- Hi, Melanie! And she's written a book called "Roll of a Lifetime." And I read it today. And it's really interesting because the heroine, Rachel, is a single, like a single mother, but they're divorced fathers in the picture, but he's real... he's a real jerk. He doesn't pay his child support on time, he doesn't always, you know, their daughter is two, he doesn't pick her up or drop her off on time, and Rachel is kind of financially stressed, but also, she you know, she's worried enough about him that she doesn't want him having her address, right? So she has like a very guarded relationship with him. And he has this big Greek American family and so there's like a lot of family obligations, and she ends up dating her ex's boss, this guy, Theo is that hero, but they get together and it's kind of like an just like an affair, like very casual and they have sex, like the first time and then a week or two later they're together again, and the condom breaks. And I will tell you, the scene is so matter of fact. And they're just it's just like this interlude they had an hour or two to be together, and he says to her, okay, you go pick up your daughter, Hannah, and you go put her to bed, and I will go to the pharmacy, and I'll pick up the emergency contraception, and then I'll meet you back at your house and you can take it. And it was... and she's like, "Great, sounds like a plan." And I love the detail. Like, you know, sometimes authors just get that one detail right? And here's what it is. He looked it up on his phone before going into the drugstore, because he wanted to know what it looked like.

Sarah MacLean 37:55
You want to get the right thing.

Jennifer Prokop 37:57
Yes!

Sarah MacLean 37:58
That's dreamy.

Jennifer Prokop 37:59
It was! He buys the name brand, and not the generic, because he really wants her to understand that he was taking this seriously. And then when he gets and then this part's actually kind of romantic. I mean, again like,

Sarah MacLean 38:12
Oh god, you're such a romance reader!

Jennifer Prokop 38:14
No wait! Listen to this! Listen to this! He says to her, "I want to stay. I want to stay overnight. I'm worried. I'm, you know, what if? You know it can be painful. You can have cramping, and your daughter's here." And she's like, "Okay, but I called my friend, so I don't want you to stay." And he's like, "okay." But he wanted to and I'm sorry, that's fucking romantic, everybody.

Sarah MacLean 38:38
No, it's perfect. Its nobility, heroic nobility, right? I've said 1000 times, that the hero's, in every romance novel the hero has to be a king. They don't have to be royal. They do have to be a king, and that's heroic nobility. And like, that is a perfect example. That guy's a king of Duane Reed! [yeah] That's a New York drugstore. The king of Walgreens.

Jennifer Prokop 38:59
Of CVS! Right, but here's my point like, yes, it's like a small moment in the book. And then that's it. It's not a big deal. They don't talk about it again

Sarah MacLean 39:06
No! Becasue really, it really shouldn't be. It's a pill that you took after you had sex. It's fine.

Jennifer Prokop 39:12
Yeah, it's fine. And the fact that it is coded as a romantic moment, to me, was really meaningful in this book, because what it's saying is, this is a decision, like we made together, right?

Sarah MacLean 39:26
Its partnership, [Yes.] Look. romance novels are about finding equal partnership, about standing shoulder to shoulder with somebody who you want to spend the rest of your life with, right? Happily ever after in a romance novel involves partnership. And we have seen over the years, a whole lot of books about partnership around pregnancy, partnership around babies-- like the secret baby trope is about noble men who quote, "do the right thing" and marry the girl. Right? And, and are our solid, sound partners in a relationship. And this is also really wonderful partnership. It's, "we're in this together, you are not wholly responsible for not getting pregnant, I'm responsible, too." And like that's real sexy.

Jennifer Prokop 40:24
It was! And you know what? I think it's it, and that's why, I think our conception of that first time you saw a condom-- and it felt fumbling and awkward and weird, right? no, because it's like us saying, it's the couple saying, "our safety is important. Your health and safety is important to me." And this is the same thing, right?

Sarah MacLean 40:46
I would really love, and I'm going to text, I'm going to text, I'm going to tweet at Bowling Green and see if the guy, the people there, know. But I would really love it, if you're a listener, and you can sort of think back to your old school experiences, I'd really love to know who started this condom thing. [Yeah.] Because they were not on the page in those early contemporaries.

Jennifer Prokop 41:10
No, they weren't, never.

Sarah MacLean 41:12
No! Who...

Jennifer Prokop 41:13
When did that happen? Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 41:14
Can somebody find a date? I would guess it has something to do with the AIDS epidemic.

Jennifer Prokop 41:20
Yeah, it must have, right.

Sarah MacLean 41:22
I mean, this is, this is me like super spitballing. But I would be very interested. I'm also going to ask Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel if she's done any research on this, because I feel like somebody out there knows where condoms came from in romance--

Jennifer Prokop 41:37
--when it started. Yeah--

Sarah MacLean 41:38
right? And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they have been there since beginning. Maybe Mills and Boon has been using them forever.

Jennifer Prokop 41:45
I don't. I felt like there was a sea change, though. And I remember it happening, right? And I remember the conversations where people are like, "No way" and then it just happened. And I feel like this Melanie Greene book to me was the perfect example of how Plan B can be used the same way, right?

Sarah MacLean 42:01
Well, that Ruby Lang book. Yes. Which we recommended it on an on a another podcast here, but recently

Jennifer Prokop 42:10
When we did best friend's sibling, right?

Sarah MacLean 42:11
"Clean Breaks." The Heroine is an OBGYN and she, not only does she counsel a character on the page about abortion, the condom breaks. Ruby reminded us today that a condom breaks in that book. And the-- I'm just getting it, I'm just pulling it up-- and the hero basically says like, "I'll marry you." Everyone is like, "Um, no, thank you, first of all. Second of all, like I'm a professional human being. And also a fucking OB, and we're going to get some emergency contraception and it's going to be fine." Right? And, you know, Ruby's awesome and we love her. We stan her hard here.

Jennifer Prokop 42:58
I think the other side of the contraception question, though, is... because Jenny Holiday's whole "Bridesmaids Behaving Badly" series has women dealing with these issues in one way or another. So one of the friends has really severe endometriosis and her period is a plot point, right? Like and how, like how debilitating her pain is. And I've talked about one of those series, she then does get pregnant and has to like really consider: I never thought I'd be a mother. Is this what I want? But Wendy, who's another friend, takes Plan B. And then Jane, another one of them, is... they're going to be childless by choice. And you can only be childless by choice if you have contraception available to you! And so that is a series that aren't fully, for all of them, like weaves in the decisions that women are making-- about who and what they want their futures to be like. And then what, or not, and there's an-- I really like that there's no judgment or blaming. You know, Jane, not wanting kids is not really a thing that-- you know I'm spacing on her name, the one who was like "I would be I would desperately love kids but I have endometriosis"-- She's not mad that her friend doesn't want them. Right. Like it's just women with different choices and they all support each other. And I think that see that whole series is really committed, like Kresley, I think, to really talking about contraception in a, like, a really comprehensive way for different women at different points in their lives and what they want and different couples.

Sarah MacLean 44:39
Yeah, I mean, I think that there is, I think we-- but Jen, you and I've talked so much about the fact that these body issues, these kind of endometriosis, One of my very favorite romance novels of the last few years, is a really beautiful, erotic, friends to lovers romance called "Unconventional" by Isabel love. The heroine, So it's basically like "friends with benefits," like they know each other, they have mutual friends. They are each-- it's like they're the, they're the Marie and Jess in the "When Harry Met Sally" relationship here, they're like,

Jennifer Prokop 45:19
Oh, got it.

Sarah MacLean 45:19
Okay, um, they're like the Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby characters. So, and then they sort of meet through this couple, this middle couple. And they have this like beneficial relationship. She's divorced, because she had to have a hysterectomy when she was very young while she was married to another man. And he left her because he wanted to have children. And so she sort of has this sense of, well, there is no future. There's no long term relationship in my future because I can't have children, and like, that's part of a long term future. She has this relationship with with Charlie--that's the hero's name. And they have this like incredibly sexy relationship that involves exhibitionism and voyeurism. You'll love that part. And there's there are threesomes in it. And like, it's really an incredibly sexy relationship. And he starts to fall for her, and she's so panicked by shame. Like, she has such shame for this reality. I mean, like, this happens to women, and she doesn't, she's, she kind of protects herself and protects herrself from loving him because she's so afraid that he'll reject her. Because, you know, she feels in some way "less than" because she's had something happen to her. And he's ultimately, and he wants kids like he sort of is very open about the fact that he wants kids and she's just like, "I, you know, that's never going to happen, that's not going to happen." And then when it finally sort of, when it's when she reveals It, when she's like, "I love you, but I can't be with you because of this. I would never ask you to give up that dream to be with me." He's like, "I love you. Kids are separate from this. Kids don't-- you I love! kids are an imaginary thing."

Jennifer Prokop 47:16
Right? Right.

Sarah MacLean 47:17
And they have their happily ever after. And it's really beautifully done, because it's very honest. You know, we have all, I mean maybe we have not, I don't want to speak for every woman, but I feel like many, many, many, many women, myself included, have felt over time, sort of shame about things with our bodies that we can't control. [Yeah] and this book does that beautifully. And it feels very authentic and honest, and also super sexy.

Jennifer Prokop 47:50
Again, I used that like phrase earlier that sometimes your body betrays you, one. So I want to return to talking about abortion maybe at the end, because there's one book I think that's really interesting by Melonie Johnson. But I want to talk about miscarriage first because I do feel like, and you have written really one of my-- and I, you know I I'm not here to stan for Sarah MacLean all the time--

Sarah MacLean 48:15
--we don't stan for me that often--

Jennifer Prokop 48:18
But "Day of the Duchess" is probably one of my top three favorite romances ever.

Sarah MacLean 48:25
That's very kind.

Jennifer Prokop 48:27
And I think some, but miscarriage is something that romance does put on page. Abortion is something a little different; Miscarriage, it happens a lot. And I, and I actually wrote a whole piece once about it because I was just really curious...what is it that's happening on the page? And like not every miscarriage is sort of doing the same thing. It's mining different like emotional like depths. So I want you to talk about "Day the Duchess," but we can talk.. and I mentioned the Piper Huguley book,

Sarah MacLean 48:57
I should add, "Day of the Duchess" has stillbirth in it. I mean it's a [yeah], it is it's obviously, it's it's a type of miscarriage, but it's a lot. It's very intense. It does happen, it happens right at the very beginning of the book. I know that it, it has, I want, I just want to very strongly content warn this for anybody who who might have trouble with stillbirth as a plot. I mean, I, that book is very personal for me. I have not had a stillbirth. But I have had pregnancy issues. And I was working through some stuff. I wanted to write a book that was about women and the way that we relate to our bodies as failures. And that's because I was going through some stuff. I have had, I-I've had trouble with pregnancy. I've had I had trouble breastfeeding. I have felt a lot of shame about what my body can and cannot do. And I hate that. So many women, one in four women, one in four pregnancies, end in miscarriage and/or stillbirth. And the reality is that we are trained and conditioned to believe that that is a malfunction of our body. And the reality is, is that when 25% of something-- when 25% of times-- something happens, that's not a malfunction. It's just, it's just a thing that happens. And I hate that women are shamed by that. And I hate that it is so emotional and that it is so personal and that it is so private and that we keep it to ourselves and we struggle with so much anger and frustration. [Yeah], and I, that's all in this book. I mean, that's what this book is and yeah,

Jennifer Prokop 51:06
Well and I think the reader's experience is always really different. And one of the reasons that book moved me, right, is like not just because of the grovelling, but because of her journey and--

Sarah MacLean 51:19
You love a grovel.

Jennifer Prokop 51:20
I do love a grovel, but--

Sarah MacLean 51:21
--it is an epic grovel, I will admit.

Jennifer Prokop 51:23
Yeah, yeah, it is, but there's this part in particular where she's basically, she knows something is wrong. And you use, it's like I've called it a miscarriage, but you're, it's like really a stillbirth right?

Sarah MacLean 51:28
She's...very far along.

Jennifer Prokop 51:39
Yeah, she knows something is wrong. And to me, there's this, like the most chilling kind of scene in this book, and it is probably within the first 20 pages, maybe even earlier. She knocks on the door right there. They're separated. And the you know-- whoever answers the fucking door, the footman or whatever-- and she feels like she has to say that there's something wrong with the baby in order to get in the door. That's what I remember, right? And he's like, "there's someting wrong?" And she's like, "With the heir" essentially. And I remember thinking, not only is it this failure of her body, but it was this devastating moment where she knew that this baby was more important than she was in terms of how she was going to get the help she needed. And in that way, I guess, things have not really changed that significantly. But to me it was this, like, heart rending moment. And romance I know delivers those moments. But one of the things I've said to people about this book is: it's the rare romance that starts with the low moment, and it's the lowest of low moments, and then we have to see them recover. And I think it's brilliant and not just because you're sitting here, but

Sarah MacLean 52:59
Well, you're very kind. I mean, I do want to say one thing about that book because it's a-- you know that I struggled with it. Serafina, who is the main character of that book, she's the heroine of that book, believes she's barren. She's told after she loses the child by the doctor-- or the sort of male doctor who's been brought in as a voice of patriarchy-- that she'll never have children again. And so, and she, she has a very specific condition -- medically her stillbirth, her stillbirth is not coincidental. It's medical. It's a condition that actual real human females have. And she ends up believing that she is barren. And at the end, and I'm going to spoil the ending of this book. They have children. And they have them in the epilogue and they have more than one because my-- I realized that I couldn't write, I wanted to write a birth. I wanted to write a live birth. And I couldn't write the next live birth because it would be full of fear.

Jennifer Prokop 54:09
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 54:10
--and terror. So I had to, I had to give them more than one child in that in that epilogue, and I ended up giving them lots of children. But I have received letters-- and I know that there's a lot of discussion in romancelandia about this--the sort of magic child that comes at the end for a barren couple. And I went back and forth. And there are two versions of that epilogue, one where they have children and one where they do not. And we-- my editor and I-- went over it again and again and again. And I actually just pulled the trigger on the epilogue literally the last possible day before it went to print. And I gave them children instead of not giving them children, and I did it for lots of reasons. And I can tell you they were happy either way. And I probably did it for me more than for them. It was this-- "Day the Duchess" is an incredibly personal book for me for many, many reasons. And so for me, it was really important to me that, that experience happened on the page and that they have happily ever after with children. But I want to say that there is there was no reason why they couldn't have happily ever after without children.

Jennifer Prokop 55:34
And it's funny because I know people struggle with that, I don't, I never struggle with it in historicals because I feel like-- some quack told her she couldn't have kids again based on.. what? you know. Yeah. And whereas in a contemporary,I will say the, like, "all of a sudden I just got pregnant because I was with the right man" plot.

Sarah MacLean 55:56
Right. The magic, magic sperm.

Jennifer Prokop 55:57
Yeah, that part -- meh. You can stop that. It's 2019.

Sarah MacLean 56:02
I mean, the baby epilogue is-- it's a lie. It's something that we all sort of need to talk about because it is sort of heteronormative. And there's, you know, there's a lot about it that is, that needs to be unpacked. And I think it's a conversation that it's healthy for us to have as romance, as people who talk about romance. But I also acknowledge that I love a baby in an epilogue, so you know, but I also have a baby and I like baby, so whatever.

Jennifer Prokop 56:30
That's a personal problem.

Sarah MacLean 56:31
If you know-- if your choice is-- it's "your body, your choice", "your marriage, your choice", "your partnership, your choice." And that's all we're just trying to get at.

Jennifer Prokop 56:41
Yeah, there's a lot of books with miscarriages.

Jennifer Prokop 56:44
Yeah, we've talked about that.

Sarah MacLean 56:44
Yeah, I mean, I want to just shout out my favorite Julia Quinn novel, which is "The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever." It may not be Miss Miranda Cheever, but "Secret Diaries of Miranda Cheever" there's a miscarriage in that book that is devastating. I honestly believe that is Julia Quinn's best book, it is emotional and intense. And the miscarriage is so important. But again, it's told through the lens of the heroine's experience. And I know you have thoughts about this.

Sarah MacLean 57:16
Women, if it's happening to your body, it's your experience, you own it.

Jennifer Prokop 57:20
Right? Yeah, I believe that I totally do. And I think it also makes sense to me that romance would like, I don't know, mine miscarriage is a possible topic. Because it is so personal and because so much of romance is about, about hope and about.. and so like exploring the ways in which women experience failure, but then bounce back and figure out who they are after that. I think that for many women-- and I also think you're right, like it's not so--it's very hard to talk about. But then in a book, it gives you a way to like have that experience, right? You're with you're this heroine becomes your friend who is going through this experience. And I think that that is something that, it's a way for us to sort of collectively share our miscarriage stories kind of with each other.

Sarah MacLean 58:16
Sure, you know, loss of a child is normalized in romance, and that's valuable. That's valuable for every woman, every one of that 24% or 25% of women, of pregnancies. What's interesting is that 25% of women before they turned -- before they turn 45, in the United States-- will have an abortion. And we have not normalized abortion.

Jennifer Prokop 58:42
No. No, we sure have not.

Sarah MacLean 58:44
--as a genre.

Jennifer Prokop 58:46
Here's the bad way we've normalized it.

Sarah MacLean 58:49
Uhhh, I hate this way.

Jennifer Prokop 58:50
I do, too. And I'm real fucking over it, which is the hero has been traumatized by bad ex who had an abortion that he didn't want her to have.

Sarah MacLean 59:04
Yeah, she either didn't tell him, and then she told him to stick it to him, Or she didn't tell him she was pregnant and then he found out.

Jennifer Prokop 59:11
Yeah, like, it's real bad.

Sarah MacLean 59:13
Fuck. That. Noise. Burn it with fire.

Jennifer Prokop 59:18
That plot really needs to die. And you know what? Those are plots actually to that have been around a really long time. In one way or another.

Sarah MacLean 59:26
I want to, I'm going to confess something, which is 20 years ago, when those plots were everywhere. I liked that, because I was like, oh-- that again!-- it sort of says, it's code, it's codifying like nobility of the hero, right? Like it's codifying maturity, readiness for commitment, willingness to partner, the ability to be a decent father, and like take responsibility. These are all valuable tools

Jennifer Prokop 59:57
Like some deep well of emotional feeling, too, right?

Sarah MacLean 1:00:00
Sure, sure. It was, it's humanity, It's a hero's humanity coded in there. I get it. It's great shorthand, but at the same time, like it's real problematic shorthand.

Jennifer Prokop 1:00:10
Not right now.

Jennifer Prokop 1:00:12
You know it, for me, it was like pre- and post- Smith College. Pre Smith College there was, "Oh, I love theseevil abortion storylines." And after Smith College, I was like, "No. Absolutely not. Abortion is for everyone."

Jennifer Prokop 1:00:26
And I think it also really, I mean, here's the other thing, though, it doesn't just code something for the hero, it codes something for the heroine, right? Which is that she is committed to mothering and family. It's a very patriarchal way of like making sure we understand that this is "a good one," right? That this heroine is going to be different or better-- and better!-- right, and all those things because she would never do that.

Sarah MacLean 1:00:51
She would never do that to him. That's nonsense. A lot of people have very ordinary abortions, in marriages that are otherwise happy.

Jennifer Prokop 1:01:01
A book I really recommend that it's not a romance, It's called "Scarlet A: The ethics, law, and politics of ordinary abortion." And this woman, I saw her at the Chicago Humanities Festival. And she was this fascinating speaker where she was like, "we have like these sort of like, myths, these sort of abortion stories we tell. And then when we talk to real women who've had abortions, and none of them are true." It It is a great, great book. But I remember we've talked about our love for like kind of category romances in the 80s, and one of a series I really loved was the series by Barbara Boswell where these brothers all married these sisters.

Sarah MacLean 1:01:39
Oh, I love it already.

Jennifer Prokop 1:01:41
I know the Ramseys and the Bradys-- and here's the thing, in one of them, and I really remember this, and in one of them, Erin is the heroine. And she has like kids already, she's-- of course she's still like, she's 24-- and her, you know, she got pregnant right after high school and got married, and now the Dad's out of the picture. And she gets with this new man, and she they're not using birth control because he thinks he's barren because, from his previous marriage, they weren't able to have kids. And of course, now-- all of a sudden-- Erin's pregnant and he says, "You've been cheating on me!" They run into his ex wife at the mall, and the ex wife is like, "I'm just so glad that this happened. You know, it wasn't that I was barren it was that basically like his sperm and my egg like bad body chemistry"-- some 80s bullshit-- but I remember, I vividly remember this plot and and how angry, like rightfully so, Erin was at this ex wife for like, not ever really being honest with the hero right? But it's also super problematic to imagine that somehow she had medical knowledge that he didn't. Right? it's also crazy and it's this right the bad ex, who either withheld Or aborted a child, or whatever is s ... I... it's an automatic like, first of all, I'm not reading your book anymore. And I'm probably not reading you anymore.

Sarah MacLean 1:03:10
Yeah, yeah. I mean, certainly, you know, somebody on Twitter, I sort of ranted a little bit about this on Twitter yesterday, and somebody on Twitter came forward and was like, "In the 90s, I wrote this book." And I was like, "In the 90s, it was a different time!" We all have to have room to grow, right? We have room. We, I talk all the time about the fact that I've been writing for 10 years, what I wrote in 2009 is not representative necessarily, of what I write now in 2019, and like, that's just life. We have to have room to grow.

Jennifer Prokop 1:03:43
Sure. And that's romance. And that romance, right?

Sarah MacLean 1:03:46
We're moving too quickly. we're iterating on society, the whole time. That's fine. What I want is for us to as writers, as responsible citizens of the genre, for us to just try and do better. That's all we can ask for is that everybody try and do better. Can I just have a fun moment? It hasn't been a lot of fun moments, but I want to give a shout out to the only vasectomy I can think of, Jennifer. Which I had not actually thought about until you told that crazy story about the brothers marrying the sisters and the like, how he thought he was barren. And then he thought she was cheating on him. And that he--

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:24
The 80s! They also owned a mall, so it's all bad.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:28
Sure. Of course they did. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:30
The Ramsey Park. Well, the what their last name is Ramsey, the Ramsey Park Mall.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:36
Oh my god. What?

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:37
I actually bought these books on Amazon because I like right. I was like, I gotta have--

Sarah MacLean 1:04:41
Sure. Seminal texts. So... speaking of seminal texts,

Jennifer Prokop 1:04:48
I was like "ha ha." All right, I love you so much right now.

Sarah MacLean 1:04:53
Air high five. So okay, Jude Devereaux, who everyone knows is like my seminal text, "The Black Lyon," at the beginning of my time in romance, Jude Devereaux wrote a family saga, every book, like every book she ever has ever written has been a Montgomery book. And they have this like intense Montgomery, this Montgomery family tree, and the Montgomerys have a lot of twins. A lot. A lot. You're making a funny face.

Jennifer Prokop 1:05:22
Yeah, no, I'm just curious about like, tell me more. Where's this all going?

Sarah MacLean 1:05:25
FYI everybody, Jen and I have a twin interstitial coming. So, I'm not going to give you too much information about the Montgomery twins because I'm sure we'll talk about the full twin experience then, but this is a good one. So at some point, so "Sweet liar" is this contemporary, like wacky kind of time travel-y? ghosty? like St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Chicago period? Like weird... there's a lot packed into this book "Sweet Liar" Hero's name is Michael. I don't remember the heroines name because it doesn't matter. Michael is a twin. And he's like, he has a lot-- There's a lot-- Michael is pretty dreamy and weird and kind of amazing. But there's this legend in the Montgomery family of one of the cousin's got, he's... here... They're so virile, all the men, all the men in the Montgomery family. Virility is also a big piece of romances of a time, right? And they're so virile, and one of the men had a vasectomy, because his wife is like, "I've had too many of your fucking babies. Like, we're not doing this anymore. You're getting a vasectomy." And so he went off and he got a vasectory and he came back and then they had sex, and she got pregnant, and he was convinced she had cheated on him. And she was like, "Fuck you. I'm getting a paternity test for this baby," which she did. And she was like, "see it is your baby, you're just too virile for vasectomy."

Jennifer Prokop 1:06:42
I am dead over here.

Sarah MacLean 1:07:16
If I remember correctly, he buys her like a Porsche and like a 10 carat diamond ring to apologize--

Jennifer Prokop 1:07:24
for basically having super Montgomery sperm--

Sarah MacLean 1:07:26
For basically having crazy Jude Deveraux sperm.

Jennifer Prokop 1:07:31
Oh, guys, that's some good stuff right there, that really is.

Sarah MacLean 1:07:35
You know what, that's the perfect example of like, some crazy shit and romance novel, that definitely coded some real problematic, like virility issues into my life. However, I really love that a vasectory was on the page. And I love that the heroine was like, "fuck you were getting a paternity test." Like, it was great. This isn't actually the heroine of that book, but whatever it's referenced. It's a story that's referenced in there. I like that the vasectory was just codified like, this is a thing that happens even though in this particular case it didn't work because he has super sperm.

Jennifer Prokop 1:08:07
Well, I mean, Hello Sarah.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:09
But obviously, he's a Montgomery, so stay tuned for our twin episode and more Montgomery shenanigans. Um, what else?

Jennifer Prokop 1:08:17
I want to end this episode by talking about this Melonie Johnson book. So I don't know if we're ready for it yet.

Sarah MacLean 1:08:22
Let's do it. Because we're,

Jennifer Prokop 1:08:24
yeah, we're like, we're over an hour, everyone's like, "Oh my god, stop being so angry!" "No, never." Um, here's the thing. One of the things that was really interesting is when you asked on Twitter about abortion books, like there really were a handful, right? So there's a book by Jenny Trout, one of the Tiffany Reisz-- Nora, I guess in one of the Original Sinners books. But I want to talk about this book by Melonie Johnson called "Once upon a Bad Boy," and it doesn't actually come out until June 25, So I don't want to spoil it entirely. But this is one of the few books-- like among a very small list of books-- we could have where like a heroine has an abortion. And, and in this case, it was something that the heroine and hero were like teenage, dating, dated as teenagers. They broke up, it was very sudden. He broke up with her. And then we get, it's 10-11 years later. So now, you know, they're almost 30, and one of the things that's really fascinating about this book, in terms of-- that the exploration of her journey, like the the abortion, is she does not have any regrets at all. About, I mean, she has moments of like, what-if-ism, right? What if, what if I would have made a different choice? She doesn't have any regrets. She doesn't feel any guilt. She doesn't feel like she did anything wrong. But what she has done is kept it a secret for 10 years because women in our society just don't talk about their abortions. And so that the pressure of keeping that all inside is something that has really-- like right, it's it's not the "what she did" that's the problem. It's the pressure to keep it a secret. And this is something that only her grandmother knows. I don't want to spoil the book, or like necessarily talk too much about why it happened. I was, I will be honest, I was really on the fence with it. I'm kind of ready for the heroine who is like, "Fuck yeah, I had abortion" and we just all0. move on. Right. It as matter of fact as taking Plan B but--

Sarah MacLean 1:10:31
--yeah, but is that really authentic?

Jennifer Prokop 1:10:33
Well, I think.. we certainly.. Well, according to "The Scarlet A" book, It is.

Sarah MacLean 1:10:37
No, no, I don't mean that. I mean, I mean, is it authentic for us to just sort of, for many of us to step forward and say--

Jennifer Prokop 1:10:44
Yes, I like Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 1:10:46
"Fuck yeah, I had an abortion." I mean, right. This is the problem, right? Like, we keep, we've spent the entire episode talking about how we keep our bodies secret.

Jennifer Prokop 1:10:57
Yes,

Sarah MacLean 1:10:57
Like we protect, and it's not It's, I mean, in part, its protection, right? Nobody wants--I spent the last two days like, you know, fighting people on the internet. Not everybody has the bandwidth or the desire to do that work. But the truth is, as long as this is, as long as our bodies, as long as the uterus is politicized, speaking up like that is a risk. And it's a risk that we should not expect any woman to have to take like,

Jennifer Prokop 1:11:33
absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 1:11:34
It's a risk that if you are willing to take it-- Jen and I are here for you! like we, I will, I Sarah, will fight you-- will fight for you. I will fight alongside

Jennifer Prokop 1:11:43
But we shouldn't insist that people have to--

Sarah MacLean 1:11:46
Yeah, and I think like there is a certain sense like look, it takes a lot to get past, codified, ingrained shame. And that is not to say that anybody should feel shame about an abortion. And that is to say that like many, many people in society expect you to. And that's, and like the way patriarchy sucks.

Jennifer Prokop 1:12:07
Well, and, you know, a really powerful piece I saw on Jezebel today was sort of like, okay, so for the past two days, everyone, you know, lots of people--women-- are getting out there and sharing their abortion stories, but we're not changing hearts and minds, the people who are closed to this, the people who, you know, think that it's, you know, who are pro-forced birth. Those people don't care about our stories. And I ended up finding, therefore, Sadie is the heroine of this Melanie Johnson book, I therefore-At first I was sort of like, I want you to feel less conflicted. But as the book went on, I ended up really feeling like it was an honest portrayal of, like, sort of--we all have regrets, right. And regret was, you know, it was a man she loved, it was a relationship that ended suddenly, it was, you know, now someone who's back in her life, it's a secret she kept from her best friend. It's, you know, and I, and I really found that journey to her acceptance of-- not the decision she made, she never regrets that decision-- but like the need to hide it. And that felt, I will be honest with you. I have never read anything like it in romance before.

Sarah MacLean 1:13:31
Well, that is a high praise. No matter, no matter what this book is like, that's, I want to read thing-- that we we owe it to women to tell every possible story. We owe it to all people, to all marginalized people to tell every possible story of happiness. And that is, that's our work as writers--as a genre.

Jennifer Prokop 1:13:53
Well, and I think one of the things I kept thinking about, was we talk a lot about representation matters, right? Like it is really vitally important that if you that we're not sort of saying like, okay, I read this romance with a black character, now I've read romance with black characters. No, you haven't! You read one! And part of the problem with there being so few stories in romance where women have abortions is then we hang our entire like hopes, dreams and needs for that book, that story inromance, on this one book.

Sarah MacLean 1:14:29
Right.

Jennifer Prokop 1:14:29
Right. Are these three books? And that is why we need more of them.

Sarah MacLean 1:14:34
We need more. I mean, the fact that.. Jen is right. I mean, I said 15 books the beginning there, there are maybe 15 books on that list. Many of them are Plan B. Some of them have no abortion at all, but have a doctor in them. So if we're talking about fewer fewer than 10, less than 10 books on this list, hive minded from our romance Twitter people, and old school romance, the book club that I host on Facebook-- Which you can join, If you'd like to--

Sarah MacLean 1:15:02
Yeah, we'll put it in show notes. I'm like, "That's an incredible hivemind." And if we can only come up with this number, like there aren't that many more, there really just aren't, I'm sure of it. I mean, every, if again, we go back to one quarter of all American women under the age of 45 have had an abortion. And there are--that is millions of stories!-- and we're not, and what is happening? I mean, it just takes us back to that original question, which is: why in this genre that has made, carved out, such important domestic space-- and I say domestic as, like female centered, like women's centered space; as a genre, as a matter of course, centering the female gaze and female identity and female politics, or women's politics, I should say-- how have we never, how have we not come to a place where there are at least, you know, 250 we can point to?

Jennifer Prokop 1:15:02
we'll put it in show notes.

Jennifer Prokop 1:16:12
Exactly! I mean, and that's the part where when you see how small the sample size is and you know, this Melanie Johnson book-- I'm about where you're going to hear about it next week-- it's going to be available a month later and we will signal boost it, you know, to high heaven once it actually comes out-- because I do think that I found Sadie's journey as like an individual character, and her moments of sadness, and her her sense that she couldn't... I mean, I found it all very moving and I thought, you know what, we deserve to see a woman who was, "Yeah, I kind of have some regrets and sometimes I wish 'What if' and I still know I did the right thing, and it was still my decision to make."

Sarah MacLean 1:16:56
Well, because bodies are nuanced!

Jennifer Prokop 1:16:58
Feelings are complicated!

Sarah MacLean 1:17:00
It is not an easy discussion, which is clear in the in the world. And it's why Jen and I rage so hard when anybody comes at this with a black and white answer. This is a hard conversation to have. And all I think I'm saying is: I stand with women being able to make their own choices about their own bodies. And that's really all.

Jennifer Prokop 1:17:24
That's it. Right? Well, and I think that that's why we don't, we started out talking about trans men and trans women and and sort of bodies and who we are but-- if you believe in bodily autonomy for women, then I think you have to believe in bodily autonomy for everybody. And I think you have to look at people and say, "I want you to be who you are in the world. And I want the world to accept you and that journey for what it is and if romance cannot be there for that in every way, then romance is not doing what it needs to do to support the people who need it the most."

Sarah MacLean 1:18:07
Right? If it's the genre of hope, and happiness, it has to be the genre of hope and happiness for all of us.

Jennifer Prokop 1:18:17
Yeah, no exceptions. No exceptions.

Sarah MacLean 1:18:21
No.

Jennifer Prokop 1:18:22
Except Nazis. Except Nazis.

Jennifer Prokop 1:18:26
But I mean, and that's the part where I find this conversation and these books, you know, and I know we talked about like a probably 50 different books today. And we didn't even talk about all the books that we could have. But I mean, I think we were really interested in exploring what is it that romance is doing really well? Romance is talking about miscarriage. It's talking about grieving and loss. You know, romance is talking about condoms and safe sex. Romance is talking about preventing pregnancy. But it's not really talking at all about abortion. And this is about to be a right that many of us are not going have access to anymore. And that fear is something I would like to see romance normalizing for ourselves as women and for readers. And I get I'm not a writer, right? I don't have to make a living off my book selling and putting my kid through college. You know, I know those risks are out there. But I hope that we all get behind Melonie Johnson's book and prove that there is a market for like nuanced stories about women who make hard decisions for themselves, or easy decisions for themselves, but they make those decisions for themselves.

Sarah MacLean 1:18:35
Except Nazis.

Sarah MacLean 1:18:54
People deserve to have body autonomy. period. Tthat said, what I do want to add is that we are, I think, and this is me sort of looking into my romance crystal ball, I think this week could be, this could have started a sea change among writers thinking about the fact that we don't-- we limit, we create space to talk about bodies, our bodies and how they work. And like you said, we create space to talk about sorrow and shame around the way our bodies work. But we don't we have limit, we have stopped, we've come to a stopping point when we get to this piece of the puzzle. And I think a lot, a lot of romance novelists, I mean, just in the last two days, I've heard from so many writers who acknowledged that they've never tackled it, but they want to. And so I would like to think that a year from now we're going to start seeing in books a little more. I don't think we're ever going to see it every book, like I don't think we're-- and that's not what I'm asking for--But I think we're going to see more and more and more of these stories on the page. And that's all we're asking for. We're just asking for us all to just think a little more carefully about representing that choice that a lot of us have made. And, and I mean a lot! I just, I gave an interview about this today and I just feel like I said at some point, you know, everyone, everyone knows a woman who has who has done this, everyone has interacted with a person who has done this, you may not know, and nobody is asking anyone to risk like I said earlier--

Jennifer Prokop 1:21:28
--if it's not safe for you to share that story, either emotionally or physically or for whatever reason, like I like, no one's gonna push anybody into the limelight. But romance then is a way-- like miscarriage-- where we can share our stories and, there's truth in fiction. I say that to my students all the time.

Sarah MacLean 1:21:49
Romance is a private space. It is private space for people who read romance and it's and it's so far removed from like the prying eyes of the world, the rest of the world. If we can't have this conversation here in our private space, where can we have this conversation safely? And look, the reality is that readers-- there are going to be readers who don't like it. And so it's going to take risk, and it's going to take bravery. And I really am looking forward to the, to the books that come from it.

Jennifer Prokop 1:22:24
Yeah. Well, and you know what? I think your crystal ball is right on because when I think about the books that I talked about tonight, like specifically, right, Jenny Holiday's books, that whole series, the Melanie Green Book, the Melonie Johnson book, these are books that are all 2018 or later.

Sarah MacLean 1:22:41
Yeah, Ruby Lang.

Jennifer Prokop 1:22:42
Right. Ruby Lang. I mean, so we are already we are talking about old books within a lot of the books that we are like talking about right now are RIGHT NOW. So we, these are really the women who are putting these things on the page. They're the forerunners. And if we support these books and buy these books and show that there's a market for these stories, then we work-- we will get more of them. I know that there are books that we missed we tried to cast the widest possible net.

Sarah MacLean 1:23:11
Well, we've only had 48 hours, so we're going to, I'm committed to reading all those books on the list. And so you know, follow me on twitter, follow the Fated Mates Twitter account, and I'll tweet about the ones that are great and hopefully we'll get more. If you have a book, listeners, if you have read a book where there's an abortion on the page, please please rec us you know, good good abortion rep, we want that. Tell us about books that have meant something to you, as representing kind of body autonomy and and the body politic. We're interested in that. Jen and I especially are interested in how, how fertility and contraception and all of that lives on the page. If you can point to an early use of a condom in a contemporary, we want to hear all about it.

Jennifer Prokop 1:24:16
definitely want to hear all about that.

Sarah MacLean 1:24:18
I'm gonna do some research. And you know, again, follow Fated Mates on Twitter, follow me on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, we'll put everything there.

Jennifer Prokop 1:24:24
I mean, I think that's it, we are, it's a call to action, right? Because we know that when you change people's worldview and their empathy and the way they think about the choices we get to make and to have that we change the world. The urgency of this isn't just like, because we want you to have better books to read. It's because when we change the way we think about what our possibilities are, we change our futures.

Sarah MacLean 1:24:53
Well, that's a good place to stop. I think.You're listening to Fated Mates, Everybody. Follow us on Twitter @fatemates follow us on Instagram @fatedmatespod. Go over to our website, fatedmates.net and check out the show notes on your apps or over on fatedmates.net. You can leave comments there. You can talk to us any time. Leave us reviews, all that good stuff. Next week we are back with "Dark skye." Another another broken demon man. He's a demon, right? I mean, a winged demon.

Jennifer Prokop 1:25:35
And I think it's going to be very relevant and interesting conversation. Yeah, to this one that we well. Kresley always is, but I think this book in particular, is really landing at a time where I think it's gonna be really interesting. So, go out and do something you want to do with your body today.

Sarah MacLean 1:25:52
Have a good night.