S03.38: Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas: She's Good
We’re talking Sherry Thomas’s beautiful, unrequited love/marriage of convenience story Ravishing the Heiress this week — we’ll talk about angst, about why we love yearning so much, about our feelings about heroes who are dummies, about homes vs. houses, and about Victorians being E X T R A.
Next week, we’re back with the delightful Christina Lauren to play a very fun game with bananas romance novels and celebrate the launch of their fabulous book (now Sarah’s favorite CLo book), The Soulmate Equation. Preorder it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, or signed from Vroman’s bookstore!
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at your local library or via a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
This is the Eurographics Moon Puzzle that Jen is doing, and it’s too hard.
There is a very funny tweet thread trying to drag the Shadow and Bone TV show, but the replies are terrific.
Jen was texting Sarah in the middle of the night about Ravishing the Heiress, because of the angst!
Here’s an interview where Sherry Thomas talks about how reading romance influenced her as a writer.
We talked about time slip quite a bit on the episode for A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.
Millie is 16 at the beginning of the book, and because Jen forgot to talk about it, she wrote a thread about Sherry’s deep respect for teenage girls.
A little bit about the history of tinned food and the rise of advertising in Victorian England.
All about the dormouse and keeping them as pets, if you’re into that sort of thing. Give us some credit for not making a joke about Of Mice and Men, thank you.
The Victorians were super extra. Here’s a primer on women in business in the Victorian era. Floriography is the Victorian name for the language of flowers, which ascribes meanings to flowers and plants. For example, chrysanthemums and lavender (and yes rosemary is for remembrance is from Hamlet) have very specific meanings. If you’re interested, check out the book Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers by Jessica Roux.
Bees that make honey from the nectar of lavender flowers is a different thing than people who make lavender-infused honey. Now you know!
Infidelity in Romance is tricky, and Sarah’s book Day of the Duchess is an example, and there really aren’t that many out there.
The myth of Cupid & Psyche in literature and art.
In Season 4 of The Crown, the scene where Camilla Parker-Bowles takes Diana is based in truth, but the name of the restaurant was not Menage a Trois.
Raise a glass to the incomparable Olympia Dukakis.
Next up, we’re dialing the banana phone with Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart.
Join BestFriendKelly’s Sticker of the Month Club. If you put Fated Mates in the note, she’ll send a free sparkly Fated Mates sticker. If you’re already a member, drop her a note and she’ll include it with your next sticker.
S03.37: Widows in Romance
We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Widow Books
Notes
Last week, we talked about Big Pharma, and if you want more of that, read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s about the Sackler family and how they made billions on Oxycontin which was a huge factor in the creation of the opioid epidemic.
Daisy Jones and the Six is a great novel, and the full-cast audiobook is supposed to be amazing. The Reese Witherspoon book club is the definition of the full glow-up.
Sarah made some Maple Oatmeal Muffins, and maybe you want the recipe. Why food bloggers include some pre-recipe chatter.
The question of freshman year dorm room decoration is of new significance to Jen since Lil Romance will be heading off to college in the fall. Might we recommend a Pulp Fiction movie poster or some Absolut Vodka ads?
If we’re talking skyscrapers, meaning buildings over 150M (about 500 feet) tall, when this was recorded in April of 2021, Cleveland has 4, Denver has 7, Chicago has 127, and New York has 284. According to wikipedia, only nine cities in the world have over 100 buildings 150M tall. The other seven are Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (118).
Check out the Sassy Podcast and the Babysitter’s Club. No, not that kind of babysitter.
We love the movie Widows.
The merry widow is an opera and a kind of sexy lingerie.
We did an episode on Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe way back in season one.
Primogeniture laws are all about who inherits titles and money and estates, and wasn't changed in England until 2013.
Apparently there are lots of misconceptions about Arabian horses.
More about Victorian era mourning requirements.
Historically you couldn’t marry your brother’s widow
All about gorillas and where the live, and actually it turns out a gorilla really could kill you in a fight. Sarah was on Learning the Tropes talking about The Earl Takes All, in case you need more of that.
Spoiler alert about The Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
We have two read-along books in May. On the 12th, we’ll be reading Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. On the 26th, we’ll be reading Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. It’s out of print and not available as an eBook, so order a used copy from Amazon or ThriftBooks, or check out the audio.
Join the "Romance sticker of the month" club
Preorder Bombshell, which comes out August 24th.
S03.36: Whiteout by Adriana Anders: You and Me Against the World
This week, we’re tackling Romantic Suspense and reading one of our favorite books of 2020, Adriana Anders’s Whiteout! We talk about all the things romantic suspense has to nail (ha!) to knock it out of the park, why we would literally never be characters in a book set in Antarctica, and the wild feeling of reading a romantic suspense about a virus during a pandemic. Also Sarah talks about how much she loves Adriana Anders’s writing and recommends lots of backlist.
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
Apparently Jen needs more sleep, or else it’s gonna be a real drag on future seasons of Fated Mates.
Jen tweeted about Whiteout a lot, put it on our Best of 2020 list, and even made a meme about it last week.
Reading a book about a virus during a pandemic is kind of wild!
Jen and Sarah are not campers, but we support you. We do like reading books about people doing extremely cold outside things: Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and a new book on Jen’s TBR is The Next Everest by Jim Davidson.
Let Sandra Brown explain romantic suspense to you, and maybe you’d like to read Jack Reacher if you’re into that sort of thing.
We learned some things about Antarctica and staying warm while reading this book:
What is Polar Night? Was it just a coincidence that you released this episode concurrently with the onset of Polar Night in Antartica?
Outside of murdering people for their ice core samples, are people doing crimes in Antarctica?
Thanks to Amy, one of our listeners, we now know that Antarctica TikTok exists.
The two ice stations in the book McMurdo and Vostok are real research stations, and actually there are way more of these stations than you’d think.
Angel calls Ford the Iceman, but not that Iceman.
If you want to read more about racism and greed in American pharmaceutical companies, you might be interested in Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book about the Sackler family, about Pfizer and Moderna and the COVID vaccine, Henrietta Lacks, the Tuskegee experiments, medical colonialism, and the list goes on and on.
Big Bad Wolf by Suleikha Snyder isn’t a critique of big pharma, but it is a fierce critique of the American system of justice.
Chekhov's Gun is an axiom by the playwright about how props on stage must come into the plot.
You can still order the Fated Mates Best of 2020 pack from Old Town Books.
S03.35: Second Chance Romance with Priscilla Oliveras
We’re thrilled to be joined by the wonderful Priscilla Oliveras to talk about second chance romance and her new book (out next week!), Anchored Hearts. We talk about our favorite second chance romances and dig into the Venn diagram of second chance, marriage in trouble, secret baby, childhood sweethearts, and one night stands. We also talk about the hard truths of face transplants, the way characters in romance have to do their own emotional work, and how we love it when they remember every bit of a kiss from a decade before.
Preorder the delightful Anchored Hearts at Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo or from your local indie.
Next week, we’re we’re reading a romantic suspense—Whiteout by Adriana Anders. Find it at Amazon (free in KU!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local indie. You can also get it along with our other picks for best books of 2020 as part of the Fated Mates pack from Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA!
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Books We Discussed
Notes
Welcome Priscilla Oliveras! Her next novel, Anchored Hearts comes out next Tuesday, April 27th. You can order signed copies (bookplates) with recipe cards from Love’s Sweet Arrow. The first in the series, Island Affair, has the fake relationship trope.
Key West things Priscilla mentioned: the half marathon in January, and the Cuban restaurant El Mason de Pepe.
This Goodreads list of second chance romance has over a thousand titles!
Operation Peter Pan moved over 14,000 unaccompanied minors from Cuba to the US between 1960-1962.
We think cliff diving might be a bad idea.
In Wild Card and The Highwayman, the heroine doesn't recognize the hero, but the absolute pinnacle of this is the 1997 movie Face/Off with John Travolta and Nic Cage. You honestly have to see it to believe it.
Theodosia is a name we all know from Hamilton. Aaron Burr married Theodosia Bartow Prevost, and it was an age gap romance! she was a decade older than he was. Their daughter Theodosia was their only child to survive to adulthood.
Here is a very nice video of NWSL players sliding on their knees after scoring goals.
That person you liked in high school? You're the one that got away, not the other way around.
Next week, we'll be discussing Whiteout by Adriana Anders.
S03.34: Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole: There's Only One Bunk
Rounding the corner on Season Three, and we’re missing Kresley Cole! This week, we read a book neither of us have read before — Kresley’s Captain of All Pleasures. A Victorian pirate book about a ship race. We talk about the magic of the debut romance, why pirates are often times icky, and why setting a book on a boat is risky business.
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading a romantic suspense—Whiteout by Adriana Anders. Find it at Amazon (free in KU!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local indie.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Notes
The requisite coronavirus chat: Sarah was very sick in 2020 and Kate and Jen did a “sickbed scenes” interstitial without her. Jen said someone is going to make a jingle out of “Fauci Ouchie” and it already happened.
Sarah’s upcoming book is available for pre-order. The title is Bombshell and it comes out August 24, 2021. You can read this interview with Sarah when EW did the cover reveal.
Check out Season one, which is all about Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series.
Quite a few of Lisa Kleypas’s earliest novels are out of print and not available as eBooks, but you can probably find them used on eBay or Amazon.
Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake is Sarah’s debut, you should read it.
Borders was a bookstore that closed in 2011. Goodreads was invented in 2007 but took a few years to become popular, but once it was bought by Amazon, it completely stagnated.
Sarah was probably talking about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of practice rule, but how many words would that actually be?
The Stephanie Plum series is now on book number 27, and all Jen has to say is #TeamRanger forever. Don’t @ her.
Here’s Kresley’s FictionDB page for a complete list of her books in order.
Ships vs. boats, if getting those names is important to you, I guess.
The Amazing Race arc of IAD takes place over two books, No Rest for the Wicked and Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night.
Again the Magic was actually published in 2004, a year after Captain of All Pleasures.
The golden age of pirates was between 1650 and the 1730s, and of course our actual knowledge of pirates and piracy is limited. But most recently, of course, there are the Somali pirates. The race in Captain of All Pleasures was probably based on the Great Tea Race of 1866.
Dr. Gunter has some information for you about the hymen.
Hattie ties Whit to a mast in Brazen and the Beast, in case you want more of that.
Next up, Whiteout by Adriana Anders.
S03.33: Age Gap Romance
Silver foxes, May/December, older heroines/younger heroes. Look, Sarah’s buttons were installed young, OK? We’re talking age gap romances, how they played out in the early days of the genre, how they remain popular today, and what has happened (or not!) in the books to make them viable in 2021. We try to keep this one taboo but not dark, sexy but not erotic…but by the end, we’re not making any real promises.
Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, we’re reading Kresley Cole’s debut, The Captain of All Pleasures. Neither of us have read it, so we’re all jumping into the deep end without a mask on this one! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books. Or find it from your local indie via bookshop.org.
Show Notes
You can buy Iris Johansen’s mansion in Cartersville, GA for a cool 8 million.
Maybe Chaotic Evil isn’t the best writing plan.
Here’s some pop psychology about the May December romance. By the way, the phrase May-December romance apparently dates back to Chaucer. In The Merchant’s Tale, a young woman named May marries a much older man and a confusing idiom was born.
As it turns out the “half your age plus 7” rule is not something Jen made up, because once you google it, you get charts and graphs and articles and everything.
Sarah’s reference to “Every terrifying post on that reddit board” is r/relationships, although r/amitheasshole is always available with some new tale of terrifying bad behavior.
This problems presented from lack of sex ed are pervasive though historical romance, but how much better are we doing by our kids?
Jen was talking about Marvin Gaye when she mentioned "Everybody wants their own piece of clay" shit.
Diana Palmer has a long, storied romance career, and none of it involves that kind of DP. The first book in the Long Tall Texans series, Calhoun, was published in 1988, and the latest one is #57 in the series, Texas Proud, and was published in October of 2020.
All joking about the Pioneer Woman aside, she does have some great recipes.
It turns out that the “boiling frog” analogy is just a myth, so keep on reading!
The movie Carol is based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt.
The Jessa Kane book with the dirty version of the talk is called His Prize Pupil, in case you want to read it yourself. For science.
Our next read-along episode will be The Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole. If you want more Kresley, all of Season One is for you.
Books Mentioned in This Episode
S03.32: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria: A Textbook for Human Relationships
We named Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola one of the best romances of 2020, and for good reason. This week, we’re talking about how great romances can be handbooks for great relationships, about why taking risks in romance writing can pay off big time, about what it’s like to be bilingual in America, about why intimacy coordinators are amazing, and about normalizing lube. Enjoy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading…honestly, we don’t know. Stay tuned! Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
If you need to manifest, Sarah's surprise crystal kit came from Crystal Rising.
We had a Best of 2020 box available from Old Town Books in Alexandria, and it looks like you can still order it. You can listen to the whole Best of 2020 episode here.
The Applying to College Reddit is probably not a real healthy place for high school seniors to hang out, so I guess if you must, you can be the person who just says reassuring nice things. But if nothing else, portal astrology shows just how desperate people are to make meaning out of the tiniest of clues.
Telenovelas vs. soap operas.
The bilingual spectrum--from receptive to equilingual--and the ways that this is a particularly American issue. Jasmine in YHMAH is a dominant bilingual (so is Sarah). The ways in which writers put languages on the page has changed a lot in the past decade. Watch this video of author Daniel Jose Older explaining why he doesn’t put Spanish in italics.
In the movie Selena, there’s a scene where her father worries about her Spanish skills as she is about to meet Mexican reporters. Although this scene may not be accurate, Selena learned the phonetic Spanish for all her songs since she wasn’t fluent. A more recent series about Selena’s life is on Netflix, check for reviews because neither of us have watched it.
Being an Intimacy coordinator is a real job!
Breaking the 4th Wall is a phrase from TV when the actors directly address the audience. In You Had me at Hola, we see Jasmine or Ashton fall out of character and become themselves during the filming of a scene.
The Penn & Teller cup and ball trick, which we also talked about in the Bet Me Episode.
Little Red Corvette and Sugar Walls are songs about sex, so don't worry about the pop music your kids are listening to these days. It's all gonna be fine.
S03.31: Morality Chain Romance
We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha.
Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
One very important note: we highly recommend doing a thorough search for content warnings for all the books and movies we mention this week.
We love Katee Robert, who we had on as a guest for the menage interstitial. Katee bid on this item at Kennedy Ryan’s Lift 4 Autism auction. It happens every spring, so keep an eye on this page for the 2021 auction if you’d like to pick the topic for a future interstitial.
This week, Katee released Seducing My Guardian, the 4th book in her SUPER HOT Touch of Taboo series. If you'd like to read a morality chain romance written by Katee, we recommend The Bastard's Bargain.
“In springtime, the only pretty ring time” is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It's also possible Sarah knows it from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She would like you to believe that it's from the former, but we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Either way, “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it,” is from Beyonce.
As it turns out, Chicago is a great town for beach volleyball.
It’s hard not to talk about morality chain & dark romance together, but we think they are inverse tropes. The internet definition of Morality Chain is “is a character who is the reason another character is Good.” Jen and Sarah’s current definition is that in morality chain romance, the Love Interest pulls a hero towards humanity and goodness, while in dark romance, the love interest is pulled down into the hero’s lawless world.
Some examples in pop culture are Spike from Buffy and maybe Barney in How I Met Your Motherr. Also, check out a movie called The Professional, where a child (played by Natalie Portman!) befriends the assassin next door. The Jason Statham one with a kid is called Safe.
The Hero’s Journey is very common character archetype in literature and pop culture, but Sarah and Jen are both very taken with Gail Carriger’s description of the alternative archetype, The Heroine’s Journey.
If you want more about morality chain, so many of Kresley’s books from The Immortals After Dark series will work, so please listen to season one! Our favorites are Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, Lothaire, and Sweet Ruin.
We were divided on whether the character has to be a danger to others in order to qualitfy as morality chain. In the Gamemaker series: The Professional is about an assassin who is a danger to others, while in The Player he’s only a danger to himself.
Jen Porter wrote a long thread about what she thinks of as PEA, or problematic ever after, romance.
Mickey is "kind of a Fagin-y" as a character, but without the antisemitism. In interesting historical facts, Dickens rewrote Oliver Twist later in life to remove all anti-Semitic characteristics from Fagin, after he'd been criticized for the portrayal of the character. Of course, it's not that simple. Read more about it from Deborah Epstein Nord.
Scottie is the main character of Managed, and is classified more as grumpy one/sunshine one, which we argue is just morality chain dialed down.
More about how most writers have a “core story."
Next week, we'll be reading You Had me at Hola by Alexis Daria
S03.30: A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh: It's Grown Up!
We’re headed back to 2007 this week, to talk about Mary Balogh’s A Matter of Class, which Sarah’s editor gave her as assigned reading when she was writing A Rogue By Any Other Name. We’re leaving plot and character aside here and really digging into structure, so expect conversations about timelines, about language and yes…about tense. Because, Jen.
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, it’s a morality chain romance interstitial! After that comes our next read along, which is still in discussion—stay tuned!
Show Notes
For what it’s worth, this is our 119th episode, so time to clarify the pronunciation of MacLean. Say it like the last name of famous movie badass, John McClane from Die Hard. Jen is now very mad at herself and thinking of renaming herself Jennifer Diesel in honor of Vin Diesel and the Fast & Furious movie franchise.
If you liked A Matter of Class, check out Balogh’s Bedwyn and Westcott series. PS, Jen thinks she deserves a lot of credit for not cracking up at “A quiet, stiff hero.”
Sarah’s editor at Avon is Carrie Feron.
Time slip is a narrative structure where stories are not told in chronological order. Here is an entire website about time.
Although Jen couldn’t find the article for “I write what I can’t draw, I draw what I can’t write,” a few people on the internet also give credit to Marjane Satrapi, author of the amazing graphic novel Persepolis.
Sarah’s friend Carrie Ryan writes YA, and she’s the one who talked about the difficulties of secrets in first person narration. Butterfly in Frost by Sylvia Day is a book in first person that didn’t work for Jen. It seemed like the narrator was dissociating, which is different than keeping a secret. Although she never mentioned Butterfly in Frost in the piece, the book inspired Jen to write about the problems with unreliable narrators in romance for Kirkus.
The Crown is a Netflix series that is well-regarded, but the difficulties of portraying the modern years of the monarchy has been well-documented. Read this in case you want to know about Princess Margaret's love life. In Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Meghan talked about the difference between Hollywood and the monarchy. They also routinely referred to “the Institution” and “The Firm” to distinguish the monarchy from individuals.
A few weeks ago, Kate Clayborn joined us to talk about retellings. A Matter of Class gave Jen some Romeo & Juliet feelings.
Sarah's dual timeline books are The Day of the Duchess and "The Duke of Christmas Present," which is in the How the Dukes Stole Christmas anthology. Sherry Thomas's Private Arrangements is a fabulous example of it, as well.
S03.29: Your Romance Questions Answered
Sarah is *still* on deadline (WE KNOW), but we’re answering your questions about romance novels, publishing, writing and more. In this episode, we’re talking about stand-alone romance series, heroes who do bad stuff, Jane Austen, cover reveals and more.
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, it’s Mary Balogh’s A Matter Of Class — this is the truth. Get it for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or Google Books.
Show Notes
Sarah and Eric, Sara and Derek!
Jen recommends Let’s Make Art if you’re looking for something fun to power you through until we’re all vaccinated. Check out Kelly’s Romance Sticker of the Month Club.
Next week, we’ll be reading A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh. WE PROMISE!
Why aren't there more Fantasy Romances? Later this spring, we’re having an episode with Zoraida Cordova about fantasy romance. Until then, maybe you’ll be interested A Court of Silver Flames, the newest release from Sarah J. Mass.
When did Series becomes so Popular? We talked about this in our episode about romance families, so you might want to check that out for a longer discussion of this topic.
Perhaps you are like Jen and want to know more about how to turn off the “popular highlights” series on your Kindle.
Oh the 80s and 90s: Lovesepts series with the Delaneys, or Elizabeth Lowell’s series with heroes named after states.
What's the State of Publishing? What are the different Trim Sizes? One of the reasons mass market paperbacks (MMPB) are harder to get is because of a merger between printers, which explains the transition to Mass Market Max.
All about stripped or remaindered books and what happens when a bookstore returns a book to the publisher.
How Can You Afford Your Romance Habit? Kindle Unlimited, obviously.
You should absolutely get the Libby app (managed by Overdrive) and use it to check books out of your local library. If your library system has Hoopla, you should check it out. Here’s a quick primer on the differences between these apps.
It’s essential to subscribe to the BookBub daily email, you can choose from a number of categories. Also, you should follow The Book Queen on Twitter, who posts a daily thread of what's on sale.
Finally, you should use eReaderIQ to track authors and specific books, and they will email you when the prices drop.
Who do we want to write our Life Story? Kleypas and Kresley.
What are the Best Romance Craft Books? OH-IO is what all the Ohioans say. And there’s nothing more midwestern than “ope.” It's "Ope There Goes Gravity" and we will not be taking questions at this time.
Sarah recommends the following craft books: Romancing the Beat, Save the Cat, and The Heroine’s Journey. (And here’s the Hero’s Journey).
Can a Hero by a Known Kidnapper? Ask St. Vincent, although he doesn’t kidnap the heroine. It depends on the reason for the kidnapping--for example, his childhood home is part of her dowry, meaning A Rogue by Any Other Name or try Dark Mafia Prince. But these stories are less common in contemporaries, unless it’s “dark romance.”
Why aren't there more Vibrators? It's such a good question, and we are slowly seeing more of them. Check out Elia Winters' blog where she reviews sex toys. Other books to check out: It Happened One Summer, Happy Endings, and You Had Me at Hola.
Why Are there so Many Dukes? Because people buy them.
Why don't we have better names for different types of Illustrated Covers? Because we're readers and don't know enough art words? The word cartoon has a childish connotation, and so we think that's why we started using illustrated. Sometimes we hear the phrase "photo-realistic" to describe the previous illustrated style.
Did Jane Austen write Contemporaries? Yes.
Historical romance are set in the past, and an example of one set in the recent past is Loud is How I Love You by Mercy Brown.
Why are Cover Reveals Important? Publicity, and if you want to see a great new cover, check out the new cover for The Kiss Quotient.
Can You be a Casual Romance Reader? Yes! You can. Please just tell us to calm down, and maybe just start with our best of lists. Have fun!
Where are the Curvy Heroes? It's so tricky, but we like Marie Liscomb's Champion's Heart series. There's a few from Jessa Kane. But body image issues are present even in children's toys.
What does "Two Ps in V" mean? It's two penises, one vagina. Usually, one P waits its turn, but in The Architect by Nikki Sloan and also Ready and Willing by Cara McKenna, (which is no longer available) it's actually happening simultaneously. Romance really does have everything!
