Bonus Episode, crossover episodes Sarah MacLean Bonus Episode, crossover episodes Sarah MacLean

Fated Tropes! A Live Episode with Learning the Tropes

We are on hiatus for the rest of July, but never fear! We're still bringing fun content to your earholes!

In June, we recorded a live crossover episode of Fated Mates/Learning the Tropes, during which we played delightful games, talked about books, and got to the bottom (or maybe not) of Learning the Tropes's Clayton's interesting romance kinks. We are delighted to share that episode with you this week!

If you subscribe to both of our podcasts, this will be a duplicate episode this week. If you *don't* subscribe to both podcasts...you definitely should. Find Learning the Tropes wherever you listen to podcasts! Erin and Clayton are two of our favorite people.

Thank you, as always, for listening — we hope you’re having a great (and safe!) July! 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 has a new book out? 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 through the end of July!

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guest host, interstitial, full-length episode Jennifer Prokop guest host, interstitial, full-length episode Jennifer Prokop

S02.45: Vivian Stephens' Acquisitions with librarian Steve Ammidown

It felt fitting that our final episode of Season 2—during which we celebrated so many of the vintage romances that blooded us—would be with someone we could fully geek out with! We are thrilled to have Steve Ammidown, romance nerd and archivist at the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University, with us today to talk about Vivian Stephens and early category romances. To prepare, all three of us read some of the earliest American category romances, and wow were they a ride! We’re talking women who work, marriage in romance, older heroines, the impact of Vietnam on 1980s romances, and more. Strap in!

We’re on hiatus for the next three weeks, but you’ll hear some great alternative content on Wednesdays — including crossover episodes and interviews we’ve done in other places. Thank you, as always, for listening — we hope you’re having a great (and safe!) summer. 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 has a new book out? 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 through the end of July!

Show Notes

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full-length episode, guest host, S02 - Interstitials, interstitial Jennifer Prokop full-length episode, guest host, S02 - Interstitials, interstitial Jennifer Prokop

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

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.

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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.

Show Notes

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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

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full-length episode, interstitial, S02 - Interstitials, audiobooks Jennifer Prokop full-length episode, interstitial, S02 - Interstitials, audiobooks Jennifer Prokop

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!

Show Notes

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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!

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.

KINGDOM OF DREAMS print ad from the May 1989 issue of Romantic Times. via Rob Imes’s Unofficial ROMANTIC TIMES Index.

Ad from the May 1989 issue of Romantic Times. via Rob Imes’s Unofficial ROMANTIC TIMES Index.

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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!

Show Notes

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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!

Show Notes

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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!

Show Notes

Books referenced this week

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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!

Show Notes

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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!

Show Notes

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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!

Show Notes

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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!

Show Notes

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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!

Show Notes

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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! 

Show Notes

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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.  

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!)

Show Notes

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

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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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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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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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