S04.43: [Sex on the] Beach Reads
It’s July, which means it is officially summer reading time in the northern hemisphere! We’re so excited to share this week’s episode, in which we talk about Beach Reads that aren’t just beach reads but are actually beach reads, by which we mean, romances in which the characters — *ahem* — on the beach. It’s all part of the service we provide here at Fated Mates. We’re taking little trips to Spindle Cove and Lucky Harbor before we take a tour of some very naughty beaches indeed. We hope you’ve got 🔥🔥 beach plans this summer!
Fated Mates Live, in person is happening — if you have tickets to the live show in Alexandria, VA on July 30th — let us know on our Twitter thread (and find friends!). If you didn’t get a ticket, but want to order signed books from participating authors, you can do that at Old Town Books in advance of the event!
Thanks to Avon Books, publishers of Tracey Livesay’s American Royalty, and to Julie Puckrin, creator of SkyMed for CBS Studios and Paramount+.
Next week, we’ve got another interstitial coming your way, but the final read along of season four, in two weeks, is Talia Hibbert’s Get a Life, Chloe Brown. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
Humidity is terrible! And it really does make it difficult to line dry clothes if you're into that sort of thing.
You can see Sarah at Apollycon (Jen will be there, but at the bar); Fated Mates Live in Alexandria is sold out; and preorder signed copies of Heartbreaker from Word in Brooklyn. You can also sign up for Sarah's conflict in romance class, which will be happening virtually the first week of August.
Jen is looking to do a book event at RJ Julia in Middletown CT, or anywhere in CT. Even better if it’s Labor Day weekend. For reasons.
The pineapple thing and the Adirondack chairs thing.
Seal training is called BUD/S. Sure.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publishers of Tracey Livesay’s American Royalty, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit traceylivesay.com
and
Julie Puckrin, creator of SkyMed for CBS Studios and Paramount+
Watch the Skymed Trailer or Stream SkyMed now
S04.42: Brenda Jackson: Trailblazer
Our Trailblazer episodes continue this week with Brenda Jackson, contemporary romance juggernaut, the first African American romance novelist to hit the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, and the author of more than 140 romance novels.
In this episode, we talk about her journey to romance writing — from writing in high school for her friends, while parenting, while thriving in a completely different career. We also discuss her career at multiple publishing houses including BET Arabesque, Silhouette Desire, Kimani, Mira, HQN, and now, with her own publishing company. We also talk about Brenda Jackson’s legendary families — the Westmorelands, the Steeles, the Madarises and the Grangers — about her relationship to readers, about her writing, about covers, about why 36 is a magic age in romance, and about keeping romance alive beyond the pages.
We are thrilled to share this incredible conversation with all of you, and we are so grateful to Brenda Jackson for taking time to talk with us.
Thanks to Blair Babylon, author of Blair Babylon, author of Once Upon a Time, and Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies, for sponsoring the episode. Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.
Interstitial next week, but our next read along is Talia Hibbert’s Get a Life, Chloe Brown. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
Welcome Brenda Jackson, author of over 140 romance novels, with more than 15 million copies of her books in print. Her first romance, Tonight and Forever, was published in August of 1995 and there was a short bio of both Brenda and author Angela Benson in that month's Romantic Times, and her 2001 novel A Family Renuion was the cover story. RT also covered the launch of the Kensington Arabesque line in 1994.
Several authors mentioned in today's episode were also guests on the Black Romance Podcast: Brenda Jackson, Gwyneth Bolton, Rochelle Alers,
In November of 2021, Brenda Jackson signed a deal with The Cartel to bring 25 of her books to the screen. You can learn more about Truly Everlasting, the film Jackson financed, here.
People Mentioned: Romantic Times publisher Kathryn Falk, editor Monica Harris, publisher Walter Zacharius, General William Westmoreland, author Gwynne Forster, author Marcia King-Gamble, author Gwyneth Bolton, author Rochelle Alers, publisher and editor Linda Gill, editor Glenda Howard, and editor Mavis Allen.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Blair Babylon, author of Once Upon a Time, available at in print,
in ebook via Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo and Nook and in audio wherever you get your audiobooks.
Visit blairbabylon.com
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
Transcript
This transcript is temporarily offline. Rev.com made substantial errors with the transcription and refuses to fix them, so it'll take some time for us to repair the damage. If you know of a more reputable transcription service, please let us know.
S04.41: Unputdownable Romance Novels
We don’t even know, y’all, so this week, we’re doing a little bit of flailing and a lot of talking about books we found unputdownable when we read them the first time. We did our very best to avoid repeats — which is difficult this many episodes in! We talk about what makes a book unputdownable (we’ve got buckets!) and about other things too…like our annual reader survey and how skilled a musician Sarah is.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Show Notes
Abortion is lifesaving healthcare. We are devastated and urge you to support the National Network of Abortion Funds, which removes financial and logistical barriers to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and organizing at the intersections of racial, economic, and reproductive justice. They partner with organizations already in place on the ground in places where abortions are banned to do the work of helping people who need abortions.
We’ve talked about bodily autonomy in romance novels before, and in our trailblazer conversation with Elda Minger, she spoke extensively about what birth control and abortion were like for people back in the 70s.
We remain Big Mad. Also, we are here for you, always. Find Jen (mostly) at Twitter and Sarah (mostly) on Instagram.
Sarah broke her ukulele, which is a pretty cool instrument.
It's Lizzo leading the charge to donate proceeds from her tour to Planned Parenthood, joined by (of course) Rage Against the Machine. Although Harry Styles did make a statement about the Dobbs decision.
London Has Fallen is a deeply silly and very entertaining movie that absolutely does not even try to pass The Bechdel Test.
Back when Jen read the first Scorpius Syndrome book, she did notice a funny thing about the main character’s sense of smell.
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publishers of Julie Anne Long’s You Were Made to Be Mine, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit julieannelong.com
and
Leighann Hart, author of Darling Descent
available at Kindle Unlimited
S04.40: Royalty Romance #2
We were going to do a deep dive this week, but then we read the book and decided that was a hard pass! So, we do a very shallow dive and then get to the good stuff this week…talking about Royal romances! We talk about the strange fascination the world has with royalty, about the way fake countries hit the spot, and about why it’s so rare to see a gender-swapped Cinderella story. Sarah also offers a peek at her newest research project, preliminarily titled—Alexbastian: Is Name, In Fact, Destiny? It’s better than a deep dive, we promise.
Fated Mates Live, in person is happening — if you have tickets to the live show in Alexandria, VA on July 30th — let us know on our Twitter thread (and find friends!). If you didn’t get a ticket, but want to join the wait list, you can do that at Old Town Books!
Thanks to Adriana Herrera, author of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, for sponsoring the episode. Thanks, also, to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. Visit microdose.com and use code FATEDMATES to get free shipping & 30% off your first order.
Show Notes
Turns out we are not reading The Dragon and the Jewel…because yikes. Eleanor Plantangenet and Simon de Montfort were real people, but this 1991 romance is too problematic for a full discussion.
Yes, we talked about royalty in romance with Nana Malone back in season 1, but there’s always fresh content!
The Oprah interview with Prince Harry & Meghan Markle is worth a watch, if you can stand all the commercials.
The launch event for American Royalty will be in Richmond on June 28, 2022. Go check it out— Tracey will be joined by Kate Clayborn.
There is a real His Royal Highness Prince Sebastian in Luxembourg, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Order an avatar button from The Romancelandia Shop! This is a great way to announce your presence at in-person events and help people find you. It really works!
Books We Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Adriana Herrera, author of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit adrianaherreraromance.com
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
Transcript for Episode S04.29: Nora Roberts: a Trailblazer Episode
A full transcript is now available for season 4 , episode 29. Enjoy!
Show notes: S04.29: Nora Roberts: a Trailblazer Episode
Nora Roberts 0:00 / #
I got my first royalty check for Irish Thoroughbred, which was my first published Silhouette. And I didn't understand. And I called her and I said, "I got this check and it was, I never had this much money." I said, "They already paid me, because they've given me, you know, $3,000." That was my advance for my first book. And she said, "Nora, they keep paying you." Maybe that was the moment, "Oh! I'm Nora Roberts, and they keep paying me!"
Sarah MacLean 0:30 / #
That was the voice of Nora Roberts. Whoo! It's happening.
Jennifer Prokop 0:37 / #
Yes, it is happening. And you know what, I'm going to say we have been blessed to have amazing people on, but I think you and I both, when we sent the email, when you sent the email to Nora Roberts, were like, what's going to happen? (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 0:55 / #
My favorite is that I texted you and I was like, "Hey, Jen, do you have time to interview Nora Roberts?"
Jennifer Prokop 1:04 / #
Here's the other thing that happened last night. So Mr. Reads Romance said, "What are you doing tomorrow?" And I was like, well, we're going to be recording an interview with this author. And you know, he has no idea who anyone is, bless you all. And I said, "Yeah, with Nora Roberts." And he was like, "Oh, I know that name." I was like, Okay, now I'm nervous. Everyone knows her name.
Sarah MacLean 1:27 / #
Yeah. My in-laws are here this week, because, you know, we're still renovating this house or, you know, putting up bookshelves. And I literally this morning was like, you all need to leave this house. I can't have you in here.
Jennifer Prokop 1:39 / #
Goodbye.
Sarah MacLean 1:42 / #
Welcome, everyone to Fated Mates. I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels, and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 1:48 / #
And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor and you're about to hear our conversation with Nora Roberts.
Sarah MacLean 1:54 / #
Do we need to explain who Nora Roberts is for people who are not Mr. Reads Romance?
Jennifer Prokop 2:02 / #
Actually, go do your homework, and know your betters and come back and listen then. Fine. Here we go. Nora Roberts.
Sarah MacLean 2:13 / #
Okay, so let's get started. I think we should begin, if it's okay with you, at your beginning. How did you come to romance? There's sort of a legend about your romance, your first book.
Nora Roberts 2:27 / #
It's a true legend.
Sarah MacLean 2:28 / #
So good.
Nora Roberts 2:28 / #
It's a true legend.
Sarah MacLean 2:32 / #
Would you tell us?
Nora Roberts 2:33 / #
Yeah, well, first, I was really lucky to grow up in a family of readers. Everybody read in my house. So books were everywhere. So I grew up with stories. My father was a movie projectionist. So those kind of stories do and so I always read, and I always thought everyone made up stories in their head. So I never really thought about being a writer until the blizzard of 1979. But I lived in the country, back, a lane about a quarter of a mile. I didn't have four wheel drive. I had a kindergartener and a preschooler.
Sarah MacLean 3:12 / #
Oh my gosh!
Nora Roberts 3:13 / #
Three feet of snow. And I'm walking to kindergarten day after day, and during the period after I had kids, I started reading Harlequins because I could chain the kids down for a nap, and read a book. So I'm really you know, these are great by Violet Winspear and Anne Mather and all of that, and the Gothic romances, Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt. Mary Stewart, my absolute favorite. So then I thought, well, I'm, I'm going crazy, going crazy. This is, you know, day six -
Sarah MacLean 3:53 / #
Totally understandable!
Nora Roberts 3:54 / #
Of not being able to leave the house. And so I got a notebook, and I just started writing a story down. A notebook, because first, I didn't have a typewriter at that point. And because I couldn't leave my kids. I had to be there or the older one would have murdered the younger one. And I just fell in love. I mean, it's like, this is so much fun! Why didn't I ever think of doing this before? And that, that was it. And I just never looked back.
Sarah MacLean 4:23 / #
Was that your first book? That notebook book?
Nora Roberts 4:26 / #
No, it was my first book, but not the first that I sold.
Sarah MacLean 4:30 / #
So at that point, I mean, so this is 1979, where do you go from there with a notebook full of story?
Nora Roberts 4:39 / #
Well, exactly. There was no Silhouette at that time. There was only really Harlequin. I think Dell had Candlelight Romance, if I remember correctly, it's a long time ago. So I sent things off, you know, cheerfully, to Harlequin, and the rejections, many of them, because I would just start another book and keep going. So that the news was good. And I showed a lot of promise, but they already had their American writer.
Sarah MacLean 5:12 / #
Gosh, we've heard that story again and again. We've already got our American.
Nora Roberts 5:17 / #
Yeah, it was Janet Daily, which you know is a whole nother story.
Sarah MacLean 5:22 / #
Maybe we'll get there.
Nora Roberts 5:23 / #
Yeah, but then Silhouette opened up in 1980 and they were looking for new American writers. And I fit. I was new. I was American. And so I started and sent a book off to them, and I got a phone call. I know it was hot. So it had to have been in the summer. The kids were screaming in the other room. Then Nancy Jackson, with her British accent was on the phone from New York, said they wanted to buy my book. And it was, "What?" (laughter) It was the best moment of my life. And I had just hired Amy Berkower with Writers House as an agent. I mean, like, like the day before.
Jennifer Prokop 6:15 / #
Oh, wow.
Nora Roberts 6:16 / #
And so when I told Nancy, I just hired an agent. (Huffs) "You should have told me that right away. I need to talk with her." And hung up! I didn't know then that Nancy Jackson never said goodbye. That was just her way. (laughter) And I thought, I've screwed myself. Totally. But no, it all worked out.
Sarah MacLean 6:39 / #
And that's, I'm sorry, you said Nancy Jackson?
Nora Roberts 6:42 / #
Nancy Jackson.
Sarah MacLean 6:43 / #
You're still with Amy, all these years later, right?
Nora Roberts 6:46 / #
Oh, yeah. Mmmhmm.
Sarah MacLean 6:47 / #
Nancy was with you for a long time? Or -
Nora Roberts 6:51 / #
Yeah, several years. And then she shifted to Young Adults. I think they, did Silhouette started Young Adult, with some other line.
Sarah MacLean 7:02 / #
Mmmhmm.
Nora Roberts 7:03 / #
And they passed me to Isabel Swift, who is phenomenal. I've been very lucky. And I was with Isabel until I stopped writing for Harlequin.
Sarah MacLean 7:15 / #
So let's talk about that. You write very quickly. And I think everybody who's listening probably knows that. But were you a fast writer, even then in the early days?
Nora Roberts 7:26 / #
It's just my wiring, I'm, I have a fast pace.
Sarah MacLean 7:29 / #
One of the things on my list that I'd like to talk about, and I think this is a good place for us to talk about it, because it probably comes from the early days, too, is you have, I think, when I think as a writer about protecting the work, and making space for the work and for the writing, you are often the first person I think of because you are so focused and so committed to making space for writing and protecting that space. Could you talk about that? Does it come from, you know, having kids screaming outside in the hallway and just insanity?
Nora Roberts 7:58 / #
I can still write, I like the quiet, but I can still write in any situation because I started writing with two kids in the house, but we had rules. We had rules. And when they were little guys, the rule was when I was writing and I was right there. Don't bother me unless there's blood or fire. (laughter) And sometimes there was blood. We never had any fire. But sometimes it was blood and stuff and you deal with it. When they got older and more responsible, it was arterial blood and active fire.
Jennifer Prokop 8:38 / #
These are book titles. Have you ever called a book Blood or Blood or Fire? Because missed opportunity? (laughter)
Nora Roberts 8:45 / #
No, I'm working here. So this was my job, what would they have done? I would have a sitter or daycare, or something. If I've worked in an office outside the home. This is my writing time. This is my job. Now I did write when they were in school, and when they came home from school, I stopped because you got homework, you got snacks, you know you got kids. And I would go back to work when they finally went to bed. And I did that for a lot of years. I was a single parent for a while, so it was just me and them. They outnumbered me. You know, your kids are your first responsibility. But when you've got to work to pay the bills, so the kids don't starve and don't go naked. So you make work.
Sarah MacLean 9:39 / #
Now your kids are grown and one of the things when we were emailing about this time you said you know can we do it on a weekend because the weekdays are my writing days. And I said to Jen, "I think this is something that, you know, I need to internalize as a writer too." It's a job. You sit in the desk and you do the work.
Nora Roberts 9:56 / #
It's a job. It's a really great job, but it's a job,
Jennifer Prokop 9:59 / #
So it's interesting, you talked about starting off in writing in longhand. So how did that change? I mean, obviously, are you a person now who can write on your phone?
Nora Roberts 10:10 / #
Oh, my phone. My God, I don't do anything on my phone.
Jennifer Prokop 10:13 / #
Okay. Well, because I feel like there's a movement now to younger writers who are like, yeah, I wrote this book on my phone. I feel like it's a weird new longhand. Like I just did it where I could. That's where I was, when I could write.
Nora Roberts 10:26 / #
Whatever process works for you is the correct process. There's no one way.
Sarah MacLean 10:31 / #
So at this point you're writing, it's the '80s, and you're writing Silhouettes, and you're writing Harlequins?
Nora Roberts 10:38 / #
No, I never really wrote for Harlequin.
Jennifer Prokop 10:41 / #
Oh, okay.
Nora Roberts 10:42 / #
They bought Silhouette.
Nora Roberts 10:44 / #
I forget when, but I really wrote for the Silhouette imprint.
Sarah MacLean 10:49 / #
Is this the time when you start to really feel like romance is coming? We know the '80s is when the romance world just sort of exploded. And at what point did it really feel like, oh, this is happening. This, this romance is real, the readers are showing up, and this is a big deal.
Nora Roberts 11:09 / #
I don't know that I ever had a like, come to Jesus moment on that. It was all gradual. And I'm, again about the work. So I don't know that I noticed so much. I mean, I went to conferences, and that sort of thing. And I had a local chapter. But I didn't really go to meetings because -
Sarah MacLean 11:34 / #
Of RWA.
Nora Roberts 11:34 / #
Yeah. I mean I went to one meeting of Washington Romance Writers, way, way back. I think my first book was out, and I had sold two more. And I went to my first meeting, and there was some controversy at the time about the Silhouette contract. And most of these women, I'm gonna say, right off, were not published. A couple were, and they're all bitching and whining and carrying on about Clause 19B, I still remember. And one of them turned to me at one point, I didn't know what the hell they were talking about. And she said, "Nora, what do you think about Clause 19B?" And I said, "Oh," because I really didn't know, "I don't read contracts, I sign them." (laughter) And that was the end of that. And it's absolutely true. I have an agent. She reads the contracts.
Nora Roberts 12:35 / #
If she told me not sign, I wouldn't sign it. You know, so it was, it's my community. It was my community. And RWA offered so much support and the local chapters so much support, and information and networking opportunities. And I met a lot of my friends there. People I'm still very good friends with today, but I never really, I mean, it all just sort of built and, and happen. So I couldn't say that I had this, "Oh, my God, look at all this." It was just, I was just writing books.
Sarah MacLean 13:12 / #
So you have a bookstore, in Boonsboro, Maryland. You have several things in Boonsboro, Maryland. But you have a bookstore in Boonsboro, Maryland, and you're so welcoming to new and established writers to come and you do signings every time you have a book out in Boonsboro. And I've been there twice and both times, it's just an amazing experience, because people come from all over the country and world to Boonsboro to meet you and to and to get books signed by you at these book signings. And they stand in line for hours, they wrap around the building. It's an incredible experience. And you also have this very rich reader community online, that you clearly built when the internet arrived. So I'm curious about your relationship with readers and how this community, how you built this community and then the work as you think of it through readers.
Nora Roberts 14:14 / #
I think it's really important to be accessible. And I like being accessible through the internet because you don't have to put makeup on. (laughter) Worry, you know, you haven't had your hair done, so your roots are showing, stuff like that. But I'm happy to hear from readers most of the time. Now, Laura, Laura Reeth is my publicist. She handles social media. If I were to try to do the social media, I wouldn't be writing.
Sarah MacLean 14:47 / #
I would much rather be and she's much better at it anyway. But in the early days, you know, there were message boards on AOL, stuff like that, and I would, I'd go on here and there and it was fascinating. Just fascinating. And you did build relationships. Problems started with some people, and now you've got a target on your back. So they, they just can't help themselves. And we have some problems with that certainly in the social media that Laura does. We just had to put up another post yesterday, you know, knock it off with the, I love that it's the In Death books in particular. I love, love, love these books, but you need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this. You need to do this, this, this! No. I don't. Read them or don't. Like them or don't. Don't tell me how to do my job. I know you used to ghost writer on that last one, because it didn't sound like you. Oh, fuck you. Just completely. Because I've been very clear about that. I work really hard. And I love my work. That's the downside.
Sarah MacLean 16:11 / #
Mmmhmm.
Jennifer Prokop 16:11 / #
Yeah.
Nora Roberts 16:11 / #
If I had to do it myself, I wouldn't do it at all, at this point, but Laura is so good at it. That we've got a really nice community on Facebook, on both pages, and I do the blog. And I handle things like I'm wearing my, "I have personally explained the process to you Deborah" sweatshirt. (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 16:35 / #
We all love that.
Nora Roberts 16:36 / #
Because I will, I'm very patient, I think. And I try to be very gracious, because some people don't know they're being offensive. So you give them chances, because, and you try to explain. But then when you just keep at it, you're gonna piss me off. That's really a mistake.
Nora Roberts 17:04 / #
A big, big mistake.
Sarah MacLean 17:06 / #
Well, let's talk about that. One of the hallmarks, I think, of your place in romance and in publishing in general is your intense and important advocacy around the issue of plagiarism because you've experienced it multiple times.
Sarah MacLean 17:23 / #
And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that experience shaped your work, your writing, your life, and then it feels like it happens more in romance or in genre in a really interesting way. And I wonder if you have thoughts on that.
Nora Roberts 17:41 / #
I still remember exactly, I was on a message board. Again, and there's that connection with the readers. And I read this on a message board that this reader had read, Notorious by Janet Dailey, shortly after she had read a reissue, because my book was six, seven years prior to Notorious, Sweet Revenge, and said, they're big chunks that are the same, word for word. And I'm thinking she's wrong. Because I knew Janet. That, that has to be wrong. But my younger son was working in the bookstore that day, and I said, "Bring a copy of Notorious," it was out in paperback, "home with you." And I opened it up to one of the pages that she had cited. And I couldn't believe it. I mean, I literally just lost my breath. There, it was obvious, it was word for word, not just a sentence, but a chunk. And then you look on and there's another chunk, and there's a scene, and on and on and on. And I, it was on a weekend, I called my agent, you know, we started dealing with it, and it was ugly, and hurtful. And I knew her. So then I'd never experienced anything like this. And a lot of the advice was we'll just keep it quiet.
Nora Roberts 19:17 / #
We'll just keep it quiet. She will, you go through, her agent said, go through the manuscript. Go through them, I think they sent me the manuscript, and just take out whatever is in question.
Nora Roberts 19:36 / #
And I actually started to do that.
Nora Roberts 19:39 / #
And I sit was sitting on my deck. And I was doing that and thinking, "this is crazy!" There are pages, and it's like, you take this and I called my agent again. And I said, "Amy!" She was so hot because Janet's agent had just called her to tell me to hurry up, because the publisher wanted to go to a second printing.
Sarah MacLean 20:05 / #
Oh, so they were gonna just take out all of that stuff and reprint?
Nora Roberts 20:09 / #
Oh, you don't back an Irish woman into the corner! And that was it. That was all, that was over. I wanted her blood in my throat after that. That was just, uh-uh.
Jennifer Prokop 20:21 / #
Yeah.
Nora Roberts 20:21 / #
There was an RWA thing coming and she, we agreed that we would keep it quiet and deal with the lawyers, that I would not go to the press. She would not go to the press. We would see, without pulling the book, and then I, I went down to speak to a library, a Friends of the Library thing, the day before an RWA conference in Orlando. And she broke it. She broke the story. So she's a liar, on top of being a thief, and put me in a really big, terrible spot.
Sarah MacLean 20:59 / #
How did she spin it?
Nora Roberts 21:00 / #
Oh she had -- it was inadvertent. It was unconscious.
Jennifer Prokop 21:06 / #
Oh, right.
Nora Roberts 21:06 / #
She was so sorry.
Sarah MacLean 21:08 / #
Ohhh, feel bad for me.
Nora Roberts 21:09 / #
Yes, feel bad for me. I'm the victim here.
Sarah MacLean 21:12 / #
I made a mistake.
Jennifer Prokop 21:12 / #
I don't know how it happened. Boy, I just must have read that thing.
Sarah MacLean 21:15 / #
I don't know how I copy and pasted.
Nora Roberts 21:17 / #
Then I was I was going down the elevator the next morning to get the paper because I'd spent I don't know how many hours dealing with reporters after it broke. and I'm riding in the elevator and I'm reading this article, and it said that, you know, her brother had been sick and this was Janet speaking -
Sarah MacLean 21:43 / #
Oh, the the full banana here.
Nora Roberts 21:45 / #
And her dog died. And I love dogs. I've always loved dogs. I have dogs. I just laughed hysterically and there's some strange woman and I punched the woman you know, not like, "POW", but like, "her dog died!" (laughter) "Oh, no, I'm so sorry." I said, "No, no, you don't get it. That's why she had to steal from me." And she told me it was only the one time because they finally convinced me to talk with her on the phone.
Sarah MacLean 22:17 / #
Oh, and you were friends.
Nora Roberts 22:20 / #
She told me, she swore, she swore to me it was only the one time. And I went up and I got another one of her books, because I had collected them, opened it up and immediately found another book with my work in it.
Nora Roberts 22:37 / #
So two years of court battles, and just bullshit from her lawyer until we settled.
Sarah MacLean 22:45 / #
And why do you think, I mean, do you think there's a reason why you were told to keep it quiet?
Nora Roberts 22:49 / #
Because that's what they want you to do. That's what everyone wants you to do, basically, because it's ugly. And it's hard.
Sarah MacLean 22:57 / #
It really became a conversation in romance writ large. There were factions, right?
Nora Roberts 23:05 / #
And a lot of people were really, really pissed at me.
Sarah MacLean 23:11 / #
Shocking.
Nora Roberts 23:11 / #
A lot of writers were really angry with me. RT did this, Romantic Times did this whole article on, on how I should have left her alone. She's an icon.
Sarah MacLean 23:23 / #
It's really interesting, because it, of course makes you think if these were men, would we be having this conversation?
Jennifer Prokop 23:30 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 23:31 / #
Do you feel like that's part of it?
Nora Roberts 23:33 / #
Oh, absolutely. The press was all, "See? We told you romance was all the same." They made fun of it.
Jennifer Prokop 23:40 / #
Oh, yeah.
Nora Roberts 23:41 / #
And that was, you know, so there you go. But I didn't make fun of it. And, and she lost. So -
Jennifer Prokop 23:49 / #
Right. To me when I think about this, I think this is Nora Roberts saying this is a business and this is not just fun and games and a cute thing we do.
Nora Roberts 24:00 / #
No. This was my my career. This was my work and she stole it. I remember one writer coming up to me at the conference and saying, you know, it's really a form of flattery. Instead of punching her in the face, (laughter) I just said, "You know, if you compliment my earrings, I'm flattered. If you steal them. I'm calling the cops."
Jennifer Prokop 24:26 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 24:27 / #
Yeah. And what's shocking about this, is that it's not the only time it's happened to you. So, it's really, it is something that we see rise up again and again in romance. And I mean, I'm sure it happens in other genres too. But -
Nora Roberts 24:44 / #
Oh yeah.
Sarah MacLean 24:45 / #
Personally, you and I have had many conversations about plagiarism, and I'm really grateful for all of your guidance.
Nora Roberts 24:52 / #
The Brazilian woman really does take the cake. I mean she stole from so many.
Sarah MacLean 24:57 / #
Nora and I were both plagiarized by a woman who pla
Sarah MacLean 25:00 / #
giarized, I think, it was in total, almost 60 authors.
Nora Roberts 25:04 / #
Yeah, almost 60. Just amazing.
Sarah MacLean 25:07 / #
That was fun times. We'll put links in show notes to all of this. So -
Jennifer Prokop 25:11 / #
What I kind of as a reader, more on the reader side struggle with, is this seems like something Amazon could easily cross check. You know, documents against other documents. So -
Nora Roberts 25:23 / #
Oh yeah! Could not agree more.
Jennifer Prokop 25:24 / #
You know turnitin.com exists for students, so why couldn't it exist for Amazon?
Jennifer Prokop 25:29 / #
So I'm curious about your opinion, if you have one about why can't the gatekeeping be to stopping this before it gets out? And then you guys are all stuck trying to sue this woman in Brazil?
Nora Roberts 25:40 / #
Well, I will say that it's difficult for the publishers, although I got a lot of, with um, is it Surya or whatever her name was
Sarah MacLean 25:53 / #
Serruya.
Nora Roberts 25:54 / #
A lot of support from my publisher on that one, but the copyright's in the author's name, not in the publisher's name. So copyright infringement is the author's problem.
Jennifer Prokop 26:05 / #
I see.
Nora Roberts 26:06 / #
And when I when I sued Janet, I got a lot of support from my publisher. There were two. I had more than one at that time. In fact, Silhouette sent me a manuscript that they were going to publish of hers and asked me to look and yeah, she had plagiarized me and then they dropped the book.
Sarah MacLean 26:32 / #
In that one too! Oh, my gosh! You would think she would have pulled everything back at that point and said, "I want everything back."
Sarah MacLean 26:42 / #
Thank you for talking to us about that. Let's move on to more fun conversation. [AD BREAK]
Sarah MacLean 26:50 / #
We talked about your category work. Let's start there with the move from category to single title. How did that happen? Was it you moving as an author? Was it the publisher saying you know Nora, you're so fabulous. We need bigger books, more books.
Nora Roberts 28:50 / #
I always wanted to write romantic suspense. Always, always always, but there just wasn't a market for it, unless you were Mary Stewart or Victoria Holt or Phyllis Whitney. And I remember my agent telling me way back in the day, build a good foundation. That's the first thing you do. So not only did I take that to mean the work and the quality of the work, and your relationship with the readers and everything else and the business, but category, which I respected a great deal or I wouldn't have written them gave me a foundation. How to write an entire story with character, plot, setting, subplots, themes, description. A friend of mine once said, "A book is Swan Lake on the stage with the costumes and the lights, and the choreography, and category is Swan Lake in a phone booth." And that's perfect.
Jennifer Prokop 30:00 / #
Yeah.
Nora Roberts 30:00 / #
You have to learn how to tell a story briefly and still make it good. And I wanted to do something bigger. I knew that I wanted to write suspense. So when I felt like I had an idea and I had built my foundation, I tried with Hot Ice. And yeah, Bantam bought that. And that was the next step to doing, you know, mass market paperback, bigger, romantic suspense sort of books.
Jennifer Prokop 30:41 / #
And you also seem to have a real affinity for a certain kind of fantasy?
Nora Roberts 30:47 / #
Yeah, I love writing fantasy and magics, and fairies and dragons and -
Jennifer Prokop 30:54 / #
You know you really are a triple threat. You know you write straight, kind of contemporary romance, but then as time evolved, there's the romantic suspense, but even the In Death books are futuristic. As you then enter the '90s, where you have kind of more of an opportunity to write single title. How did you balance, I guess, the needs of the market versus your own interest as a writer?
Nora Roberts 31:20 / #
Never think about the market.
Sarah MacLean 31:22 / #
That's good advice.
Nora Roberts 31:23 / #
Think about what I want to write. What interests me, well, the idea that's there, and pulling at me, is much more important to me than the market, but that was after I built my foundation. And then, you know, if I write this book that I really want to write, and it's crap, or nobody wants it, I'm writing another one. Because the market changes. It changes. So by the time I'm going to write this because this is really hot right now, but by the time you write that, and it gets published, it may not be hot anymore. So write what pulls at you. Write what you need to write.
Sarah MacLean 32:06 / #
So let's talk about that, because what pulled at you was the In Death series at some point, and you changed your name for it. So can we talk about that?
Nora Roberts 32:16 / #
Oh, yeah. That. Phyllis Whitney. Oh my God, what a brilliant, the most brilliant woman in publishing. She was CEO of Putnam, when I went there. And she called me one day in that New York accent, "Nora, you need a hobby."
Sarah MacLean 32:37 / #
"You need a hobby!" (laughter)
Nora Roberts 32:38 / #
"You need a hobby." "Phyllis, I don't want hobby. I just want to write." And my agent and Phyllis had both been nudging me to take a pseudonym. Oh, no, I don't, wah wah wah, I don't want to take a pseudonym. Those books have to have my name on it. Blah, blah, blah. And then Amy said to me one day when we're talking about it, after Phyllis and the hobby, she said, "Nora, there's Pepsi, there's Diet Pepsi, and there's caffeine free Pepsi." And I thought, oh, it's marketing. And I can be two popular brands. Let me, I have this idea, this weird idea. Let me play with it. And we'll see. 'Cause I had had this idea for the Eve Dallas character, and, and this setting in New York and all of that. I sort of had all of that, but I thought, I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with that. She's so dark and difficult. You know, I know, I'm not sure what I would do. And then this is like, all right. They want something. I said I would do it, but I would have to do something completely different than what I do. And I started writing Naked In Death, and really, really fell hard. It was a three book contract. I started it thinking it would be a trilogy. So I sort of structured it that way. And by the time I was into the second book, I was really hoping I could, they would do well.
Nora Roberts 34:30 / #
Write 50 more? (laughter)
Nora Roberts 34:30 / #
Yeah. 'Cause I'm loving this. These are so much fun. And I, a lot of people, since we're on this one, think I took the JD so people wouldn't be sure, would think I was a man, and that is not true. They're my son's initials. I just thought that would be fun. I didn't, yeah, they're my son's initials and they wanted me to use a last name that would be close to where people would look for me in the bookstore shelves, so -
Sarah MacLean 35:03 / #
Sure. At the time was it public that you were both?
Sarah MacLean 35:07 / #
Some people keep that a secret.
Nora Roberts 35:09 / #
Yeah. My agent felt it was really important for the books to build on their own. If they were going to build, let them build on their own, and then you'll be two popular brands. And she was right again. As you see, you might understand why I've been with Amy for decades.
Jennifer Prokop 35:31 / #
How is writing a long running series with the same main characters different from writing other trilogies? How does that, as a writer, how do you plan for, okay, it's even work again?
Sarah MacLean 35:46 / #
How do you keep that fresh for yourself, too?
Jennifer Prokop 35:49 / #
Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Prokop 35:50 / #
How does that interact then with the other stories that might be, you might think, oh, this is a three book series. I can conceive of this at the same time.
Nora Roberts 35:58 / #
With the In Death, I know that world and those characters really, really well. I should by this time, 50 odd books. So it's, it's more when I, when I think about what am I going to do with them next? It's what, what will drive them? Usually I'm going to think of the murder. You know, people, a lot of the readers think of them more as relationship books, because they're very attached, as I am, to the people in them, but they're murder books. The murder is the core of it, because if she didn't have a murder to solve, what would she be doing? You know? So I have to think of what, what's around that, and I might have to think, or try to think, what secondary characters might I bring in this time. Sometimes that just, I don't think about them, it just flows with the story. Oh, this is good, Nadine's coming in, because it just makes sense. I enjoy them a lot. I don't have to think about the world. Like when I'm starting a trilogy, I have to build a whole new world again. With the In Death, that world is built. And I just have to follow the rules I set up in 1995 or whenever it was. And I want the characters to evolve and change because people do and their relationships evolve and change. So we're, where are we here, and I then, I just sit down and get started and see what happens. With a trilogy, I have to, I have to have an idea that will work in three parts. A big story that I will tell in three parts, but each has to be self-contained enough. So it has an ending of some sort, but some thread that is going to continue through into the next book and the next for the resolution. And with the trilogies I've been doing the last few years, that means a lot of world building. With Year One, I have to build that whole. And who knew that there would be a global pandemic? At least billions that, and hasn't wiped us all out yet. So there's that. I just had that idea and I have to do that. Even though it's different than, you know, because it wasn't a romance.
Sarah MacLean 38:44 / #
Right. Well, that's what I'd like to talk about. I mean, it really feels to us, you know, when we were talking, before we we started talking with you, it feels to us that there was a kind of significant shift in the way that you wrote or you write and it came, in our mind, somewhere around the Bride Quartet. Are we in the right area?
Nora Roberts 39:07 / #
It might be. It's so not analytical.
Sarah MacLean 39:14 / #
But now, I mean, the difference between the Bride Quartet say and -
Nora Roberts 39:18 / #
Oh, yeah. completely different.
Sarah MacLean 39:18 / #
The Chronicles of The One, right.
Jennifer Prokop 39:21 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 39:21 / #
Exactly. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you have, how you are changing as a writer, how because it seems a lot of times people get to a certain point in their career and they you know, just coast and they write the same book over and over again and you are definitely not doing that.
Jennifer Prokop 39:40 / #
Not doing that.
Nora Roberts 39:41 / #
Well, I get accused of that, though, all the time, by some readers.
Sarah MacLean 39:45 / #
Well, we would never!
Nora Roberts 39:47 / #
And I don't think it's true because I do write in different areas. Many -
Sarah MacLean 39:52 / #
No, it feels like people are not paying attention.
Jennifer Prokop 39:56 / #
Right.
Nora Roberts 39:57 / #
I think that goes back to I have to write what interests me. When the idea comes on, they're not all good ideas. So you have to work on how you're going to articulate that idea and do a story on paper. So with the Bride Quartet, I liked the idea of using the whole wedding thing and have each one of those women, that have their own place in it, yet interact. And of course, you know, the romances. And I think those were the last straight relationship books that I've written. I can't think of anything I've -
Sarah MacLean 40:41 / #
Where the relationship is the primary driver.
Nora Roberts 40:43 / #
Yeah. Where the relationship is the reason. It's the reason. So those were probably the last romances I wrote. The books that come out in the summer in hardcover are generally, they're going to have a relationship in them, because that's what I like to read too. I like books with relationships in them. But the relationship often doesn't start, as it would in most romances, pretty much in the first quarter. even sooner. So they're more thrillers with romantic elements or suspense with romantic elements,
Jennifer Prokop 41:26 / #
Or fantasy with romantic elements. I've just read book two of a series that is kind of more fantasy.
Nora Roberts 41:32 / #
Oh it's The Awakening and then The Becoming.
Jennifer Prokop 41:34 / #
Yes. Yeah, clearly relationships are at the core of the story, but definitely the romance is not the core of the story.
Nora Roberts 41:40 / #
Yeah. Lots of relationships.
Jennifer Prokop 41:41 / #
But it's still so satisfying.
Nora Roberts 41:43 / #
I like writing about family. I like writing about friendships, the family you make, the family you're born with, that sort of thing. I mean, it's the world we live in and those relationships are a part of who we are. So if you're gonna write about people, you write about relationships,
Sarah MacLean 42:01 / #
Do you feel like, appreciating that you don't think about the market, do you feel like the readers have come with you really readily?
Nora Roberts 42:10 / #
Some don't. Some do. Some drag their feet. I had a comment the other day, this woman has read all my books under Roberts, but she just didn't think she would like the Robb books, so and then, I guess a lot of people picked up more books during the pandemic, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna read, so. And you know, she loved them. But she, no, I don't think I want to read something that's set in the future. So and I get that a lot. Or you get men who will read the Robb books, because they think it's a guy. They just automatically think that and then you know, their wife or girlfriend or whatever, haha, you just read Nora Roberts. (laughter) That's a hard one for some men to take.
Sarah MacLean 43:04 / #
Well, with that in mind, it sounds like, I mean between Amy and your publisher and your editor, you know, you have such an incredibly supportive community helping you publish, but I wonder is there ever, has there been over the course of your career, the book that you, the fight you had to fight in order to tell the story you wanted to tell, to make the change to -- has there been a challenge or have you ever had to really, really push for something?
Nora Roberts 43:34 / #
Not for, not to write something now. No, no. No one's ever told me that won't work, or that won't do. Plus, I don't talk about it before I start it.
Sarah MacLean 43:47 / #
Oh and that helped, right?
Nora Roberts 43:48 / #
Never like go I'm thinking of and who would I say that to? My editor? Oh no. She can read. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 43:56 / #
Right.
Nora Roberts 43:56 / #
Now she will often ask, "You know, so what are you working on? You know, can you tell me anything?" And I'll, I'm really bad at it. She knows I'm really bad at it. But I'll try to, you know, walk her through the basics. You know, I'm setting it in, and the one that's coming out, Nightwork in May. When you said it's all over the place because he travels, so it doesn't have until the last part of the book where he settles, you know, she's thinking covers and stuff too. Give me, give me something.
Jennifer Prokop 44:36 / #
Right.
Nora Roberts 44:37 / #
And names and things like that, but I I don't and never did. Now I'll tell you an early story which may explain some of this. After I started selling to Silhouette, I'd sold several books to them, my agent called me up, bearing please, you no longer have to submit a completed manuscript for their contract, you can just submit an outline. And I said, "Great!" Hung up the phone and like, oh, shit. I don't know how to do an outline. (laughter) I don't know what I'm writing until I'm writing it. So what I did, I did three times. I wrote the book, and then I wrote an outline and I sent it in.
Sarah MacLean 45:25 / #
Oh my gosh! (laughter) They gave you more work!
Nora Roberts 45:29 / #
We were together somewhere, I think it was on the Queen Mary, some RWA thing at the bar, and I confessed and she thought that was the funniest. Never mind, Nora, never mind. You don't have to write them. (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 45:42 / #
That's, oh that's really funny.
Nora Roberts 45:46 / #
A synopsis, I guess is what it was. You can, you can sell them synopsis. I still couldn't write a synopsis if you held a gun to my head.
Sarah MacLean 45:53 / #
Oh, no, they're the worst. (laughter) Nora, this one is, some people feel awkward about answering it, but I hope you won't, and that is you are Nora Roberts. And when people talk about romance in the world, you forever will be associated, you know, you are the first name many people think and I wonder if you can speak to, when did you realize that you were something bigger than all of it? (laughter) In many ways. I mean when did you realize that you were, you know this is a Trailblazer episode, this is the Trailblazer series. Let me rephrase it. When did you realize that you were kind of a legend?
Jennifer Prokop 46:36 / #
Nora Roberts!
Sarah MacLean 46:38 / #
You're Nora Roberts!
Nora Roberts 46:38 / #
I think a lot like how romance just, you know, kept rolling and exploding. It just, it was a gradual thing. I think one of the milestones for me was hitting the Times list the first time. That was huge. And that was -
Jennifer Prokop 47:02 / #
Was that Hot Ice or was it something later?
Nora Roberts 47:04 / #
No, that was Geunuine Lies.
Jennifer Prokop 47:06 / #
Oh, okay.
Nora Roberts 47:07 / #
Genuine Lies was the first one to hit and so that sort of thing. And I started this business so naive, another story, which Amy laughed at quite a bit, is I got my first royalty check for Irish Thoroughbred, which my first published Silhouette. And I didn't understand. And I called her and I said, "I got this check." And it was for like, I never had this much money. I said, "They already paid me."
Nora Roberts 47:45 / #
Because they'd given me you know, $3,000. That was my advance for my first book. And she said, "Nora, they keep paying you." (laughter) Maybe that was the moment -
Sarah MacLean 47:56 / #
And you were like this is a good job!
Nora Roberts 47:59 / #
I'm Nora Roberts and they keep paying me! (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 48:05 / #
Well, and you know what, if people buy enough Irish Thoroughbred after this, you're going to see that return on your royalty statement again. (laughter) [AD BREAK]
Jennifer Prokop 49:44 / #
So you were in romance from the beginning and how have you seen the genre changing? Do you think it has changed?
Nora Roberts 50:04 / #
Oh my god, yeah. It's always changed and if you don't change you stagnate. When I first started, the big part of romance was the historicals. Kathleen Woodiwiss, who was the -
Nora Roberts 50:19 / #
Rosemary Rodgers
Nora Roberts 50:20 / #
Yes, that's the name that wouldn't come to me. That was, that was the thing, and I didn't want to write those. I read some and I enjoyed them, but it wasn't like what pulled at me. So what gradually category romance became really big over the course of the '80s, and then contemporary romance became really big. Before that, then, you know, there was gothics, which I did love, you know they had the woman running away and the light in the window.
Jennifer Prokop 50:51 / #
(laughter) Right.
Nora Roberts 50:52 / #
All the covers.
Jennifer Prokop 50:52 / #
Woman running away. A night gown. That house is coming to get me! (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 50:57 / #
Well, you said Victoria Holt. I mean that labels you as a gothic lover from the beginning.
Nora Roberts 51:03 / #
The beauty of romance was always that you could, I will absorb elements from any other genre, from any other area of fiction, as long as you have that core relationship. The two person love story, and emotional commitment, sexual tension, happy ending. You have that, you can do anything, absolutely anything. Use any spoke on the umbrella. Over the course of time, it seemed to me that the two person evolved a bit, so that the sex wasn't about sexual tension and emotional commitment, but is more about 50 Shades of Grey. Let's just have lots and lots of sex. And when I read books like that, and I'm not dissing that particular book, but that sort of thing, I didn't feel the heart. And for me, romance, always had heart, because it was about emotion and commitment. And it seemed to me pieces of the genre were changing again, which you know, things change. And that's not the direction I wanted to go. So I went my direction, and the genre sort of took a different one. Not that there aren't still books that are about two people falling in love and having that sexual tension before they jump into bed and, and then having really good sex is a great part of romance, if it's articulated well. And that commitment again. And that upbeat ending. You've got to give me the upbeat ending. I don't, no. Anna Karenina. She throws herself in front of a train. Why do I want to read that? I don't want to read that. I want to read Jane Eyre. She, everything -
Nora Roberts 53:07 / #
All the horrible things that happened to her but she wins! She wins in the end. That's what I want.
Jennifer Prokop 53:13 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 53:14 / #
When we had Jayne Ann Krentz on, we talked a lot about core story, and is there something that you feel like when you sit down, there's just no way you're going to avoid?
Nora Roberts 53:23 / #
I think one of the most important elements to me, is character. So the characters are key for me. Character is plot to me. If I don't love the characters, or hate them if it's a villain and I'm supposed to. I can't write them well. I can't write their dialogue well if I don't know how they speak. I need to know, whether I put it in the book or not, what they want to eat for breakfast and what they have in their top drawer. Where they come from, why they left there, why they stayed there, what they do for a living, why they do it, and where they do it. So I think most of the readers from feedback, it's the characters that pull them in. And for me as a writer and a reader, it's the characters that pull me in.
Jennifer Prokop 54:23 / #
One of the things for me, I've always really respected about your characters, especially that women always have really interesting jobs. You know, she's an arson investigator or or you know, she's a sculptor. When I talk about how I imprinted on romance, I often talk about that sense that every woman had a cool, interesting job, or was doing something she loved.
Nora Roberts 54:43 / #
Doing something you love. Yeah. Whatever. You were someone's administrative assistant, but you loved being that, that's all great and good. I like writing about strong women or women who find their strength over the course of the book. That's key. I certainly don't want to write about weak men, either, but I'm a woman, and I want to write about women who find, who stand up for themselves or finally stand up for themselves.
Jennifer Prokop 55:18 / #
Do you have books of yours that you consider your favorites? Or that you're most proud of?
Nora Roberts 55:24 / #
No. My favorite book is the one on sale now, because I never have to think about it again. (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 55:31 / #
We hear that a lot.
Nora Roberts 55:33 / #
The least favorite is usually the one I'm working on because it's giving me all the trouble. (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 55:42 / #
Fair.
Sarah MacLean 55:43 / #
There must be books that you feel just landed in the world in a really special way. Do you have books that you hear the most about from readers?
Nora Roberts 55:53 / #
I don't think so. What I try to tell the readers, because it's absolutely true, when they say, "But you need to do this, this and this." I said, "If I listen to you, and I did this, this and then, Reader B over here is going to say, "Why the hell did you do that, that, that? I hate that."" Listening to readers, that way lies madness.
Sarah MacLean 56:19 / #
I'm writing this down. Take note.
Jennifer Prokop 56:20 / #
Yeah, take note.
Sarah MacLean 56:22 / #
Put this on my wall.
Nora Roberts 56:23 / #
You cannot write with a reader over your shoulder. You cannot do it.
Jennifer Prokop 56:26 / #
One of my favorite things on your website is a definitive list of things that Eve and Roarke will never do, and half of them are like get pregnant, have a baby, be pregnant, be worried about being pregnant, babysit. And I was like she must be hearing from readers who really want this and she's like, look, no.
Nora Roberts 56:43 / #
It never stops. No matter how many ways I say no, but, but, but cops have babies. Yes. This cop isn't having one. The changes they don't understand.
Jennifer Prokop 56:56 / #
Right.
Nora Roberts 56:57 / #
Because they're not writers, it would change the direction of the series. And they love the series. But it would be so funny. Babies are, it would be so funny to see Eve pregnant. Yeah, for the next five years, ten years.
Sarah MacLean 57:14 / #
But then she has a baby! (laughter)
Nora Roberts 57:15 / #
And then what is she going to do? Oh, she can give it to Summerset, he'll, he'll - why would you have a baby and then say, "Here. Take care of my kid." (laughter)
Sarah MacLean 57:26 / #
She just gives it to Summerset! (laughter)
Nora Roberts 57:28 / #
She could have a kid, she could adopt one. What's the difference between a biological and adopted child? They're children.
Sarah MacLean 57:35 / #
They still need to eat.
Nora Roberts 57:36 / #
Yes, they need love and they need your attention. They need to be the center of your world. They're entitled to that.
Jennifer Prokop 57:42 / #
Not the murder of the week. It's interesting to me because it feels like that exact push-pull that sometimes what readers want is not really what readers want.
Nora Roberts 57:53 / #
That's exactly right.
Jennifer Prokop 57:55 / #
I said it first. (laughter)
Nora Roberts 57:57 / #
They think they want it, and then they would be like, oh, but she, they're not having sex. Well, no, because the baby's crying! Or you know she's not about getting her face beat in, yeah, 'cause you know, you gotta change the baby's diaper. (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 58:14 / #
That's funny. That sounds grim. Nobody wants that.
Sarah MacLean 58:18 / #
Nora, one of the questions that we always ask is, is there anybody who we should make sure that we've talked about or thought about or names that people should know from the early days? People who maybe still aren't with us, or stopped writing, or writers, designers, editors. You've named a number of people but -
Nora Roberts 58:41 / #
Well, there's my good friend, Ruth Langan. Ruth Ryan Langan. She writes as RC Ryan too. She has many names but Ruth Langan, who I met at the very first RWA conference in Houston in 1981. Ruth and I have been friends ever since. Dixie Browning. Ruth and Dixie and I did a lot of Silhouette: How to Write a Romance workshops when Silhouette used to send us around like this little dog and pony show. It was amazing and great fun. Patricia Gaffney doesn't write any more. She's still with us, but she doesn't write anymore, but oh, she had some marvelous books. Just marvelous books. Mary Kay McComas doesn't write anymore but she wrote for Bantam Loveswept. She wrote a lot of books for Loveswept. These are good friends of mine. Elaine Fox. Mary Blayney. They're all pals of mine. Mary wrote Regency type historicals and Elaine wrote a lot of romcoms. Those are off the top of my head.
Sarah MacLean 59:54 / #
No, that's great. We want to fill these episodes with just as many names as we can. So that's great. Patricia Gaffney. My gosh!
Jennifer Prokop 59:55 / #
I know. That name. I remember those. Yeah.
Nora Roberts 59:58 / #
Yeah, and Ruth, she's still writing. She's like the Energizer Bunny. She never quits.
Sarah MacLean 1:00:14 / #
This was really fabulous. Thank you so much for joining us, Nora.
Nora Roberts 1:00:19 / #
Well, thanks for asking me.
Sarah MacLean 1:00:20 / #
Oh, we loved having you, and we know that all of our listeners are going to just be over the moon when they hear it.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:28 / #
Whoooo (laughs). Listen -
Sarah MacLean 1:00:35 / #
Well, that was delightful.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:36 / #
That was amazing. Yeah, that was amazing.
Sarah MacLean 1:00:38 / #
Listen, the thing that I liked the most about having conversations with Nora Roberts, and I have had three in my lifetime. No, that's not true. A few more. Well, let me start over. The thing that I liked the most about when you talk to Nora Roberts is that there's nothing she won't talk about, because she's Nora Roberts.
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:38 / #
Right!
Sarah MacLean 1:00:38 / #
So what are you gonna do?
Jennifer Prokop 1:00:40 / #
I mean, we talk every time about how different the Trailblazer episodes were. One of the things I found myself thinking was to be a woman who started off not really knowing what royalties were, right? Which is a charming story, of course!
Sarah MacLean 1:01:21 / #
But I don't think that's -- I think that's real.
Jennifer Prokop 1:01:23 / #
Of course!
Sarah MacLean 1:01:23 / #
I think a lot of women who were selling books in 1979 were -- thank god for Amy Berkower!
Jennifer Prokop 1:01:31 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:01:31 / #
It sounds like Nora really, she made such a good decision in that, the earliest days. And we've talked about agents before, and how important an agent is, but the idea that she had somebody who could really help her move through this industry, with purpose and confidence, is amazing. But also, I do think that speaks to a large number of women mostly, in those early days signing contracts, and just sort of on a wing and a prayer,
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:05 / #
I think this still happens. I still think that there are authors -
Sarah MacLean 1:02:09 / #
1000 percent.
Jennifer Prokop 1:02:09 / #
Who sign their first contracts, not really knowing what's going on. But I also think it really speaks to her professionalism, that 15 years later, she is the person who understands entirely that it is not okay for someone to steal from her, and that she is willing to essentially take on publishing, in a way a lot of people probably would not have been. And that I think, that arc really is important to me, because one of the things we're doing is talking about who built the house, and kind of how romance became romance as a genre, but romance is also a business. And one of the things I really appreciate about Nora Roberts is how clear she is that that is what -- she loves telling stories and she loves writing, but she also realizes that it's a business. And I found that I was just really fascinated with that whole part of the conversation.
Sarah MacLean 1:03:09 / #
Yeah, I just, I'm so glad we got to talk about a number of things. I'm really glad we got to hear her talk about, you know, the, the work as a job. I think that is a thing that over the years I have struggled with personally, and a lot of writers struggle with, particularly women writers who are in relationships and have families.
Jennifer Prokop 1:03:36 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:03:36 / #
Because there is a sense that if you are home and you are writing, then that is fluid work -
Jennifer Prokop 1:03:43 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:03:43 / #
And you have time to run and take care of the kids or do the laundry or whatever the thing is. And I mean it felt really kind of life changing when I got that email from her, and she was like, "Can we do it on a weekend?"
Jennifer Prokop 1:03:49 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:03:55 / #
"Because the weekdays are for work."
Jennifer Prokop 1:03:59 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:02 / #
And those kinds of things, there are so many lessons embedded in this interview, I think for all of us, not just writers, but people.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:12 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:12 / #
Take ownership of yourself. Hold the space that is yours. Prioritize your joy and your work and the things that make you feel most you. I feel like there were a lot of moments in this particular conversation that made me feel like oh, that's not just writing advice, that's -
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:34 / #
Life advice.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:40 / #
Everything advice. Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:42 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:43 / #
And I mean, I think that's the part too about protect that work. But you know, that's the thing I think -
Sarah MacLean 1:04:50 / #
Don't think about the market.
Jennifer Prokop 1:04:51 / #
Right. Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:04:54 / #
Don't talk about your projects before you're ready to talk about them, which is obviously a slightly more complicated than when you're early in your career, but -
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:02 / #
Sure, and also be willing to stand up for your work and what's right in a lot of different ways. And I think that's the part that I mean, again, I think anyone could apply that to what they do. I think there's so many ways in which we're willing to collectively kind of give up space. And it's tricky, because our work does define us in a lot of ways, regardless of what that work is, that do what you love mentality. Do what you love, but then be really good at it or -
Sarah MacLean 1:05:37 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:38 / #
Protect it. Or -
Sarah MacLean 1:05:39 / #
Well, I thought it was interesting, because we talked about jobs. Was it Elda Minger who talked about giving women interesting jobs, because you wanted them to see that they could have, be, live however they wanted, and in happiness and success?
Jennifer Prokop 1:05:58 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:05:58 / #
But I thought it was fascinating that what Nora's heroines do, she doesn't give them interesting jobs, because they're interesting jobs. She gives them jobs they would love.
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:09 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:06:10 / #
Right?
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:11 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:06:12 / #
This bedrock concept of happily ever after is embedded in the characters too, in a Nora Roberts novel. You know, maybe this is an urban fantasy. Maybe this is high fantasy. Maybe this is a contemporary romance. Maybe this is something else, but the characters have joy.
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:36 / #
RIght.
Sarah MacLean 1:06:37 / #
They get joy from their lives and their work. And I love that.
Jennifer Prokop 1:06:44 / #
Well I was really inspired, I think too, by thinking about, (sighs) I mean, obviously I love romance, right? That's what I want to read, happily ever after, but I think what she's saying is these characters still win at the end. I might not be writing a romance, but I am still writing characters, who at the end, have come out with a win. And that to me, makes a lot of sense, right? And it makes a lot of sense why readers, for a long time now, have been really drawn to her books,. She can do anything. She's really willing to take big risks with the kinds of stories that she tells. But in the end, if it's Eve and Roarke, or if it's a fantasy or magic, you're still going to have that. You're going to get what you need from a Nora Roberts book, even if it's not -
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:34 / #
Straight romance anymore, right?
Sarah MacLean 1:07:36 / #
And so many love letters in these Trailblazer episodes to category. To the way category not just built the genre, not just exploded the genre in the '80s, not just brought the genre to the US, all of that.
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:53 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:07:53 / #
But in the way that writing category teaches us storytelling.
Jennifer Prokop 1:07:59 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:08:00 / #
And I've said that a thousand times because I really believe that category writers do it better -
Jennifer Prokop 1:08:08 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:08:08 / #
Than all the rest of us. (laughs) And I think they get a real bum rap. I think about this. I think about Jayne Ann Krentz. I think about Elda Minger. I think about many, many people who we have not, I don't know when this one is running. I'm not going to give all the other names that we've interviewed.
Jennifer Prokop 1:08:29 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:08:30 / #
But so many of the Trailblazers have just nailed that. That idea that category is doing the storytelling in a different way, and in a more distilled, in a more refined way.
Jennifer Prokop 1:08:45 / #
It's a really good example of the phrase, "learning on the job."
Sarah MacLean 1:08:49 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:08:50 / #
Right? I mean that's the thing, I think we don't often see that necessarily in action and as clearly as we do. Although I think now with self-publishing we do, where you can really see an author's growth arc as you read their books. And that is something that I think is really cool about romance, but I also think a lot about, I think it's Julia Quinn who says, "Romance is the only genre where people are graded on the quote unquote worst writing as opposed to the best." But we want authors to be getting better on the job. I'm not interested in -
Sarah MacLean 1:09:30 / #
You don't have a choice.
Jennifer Prokop 1:09:32 / #
That's how it should work. Right?
Sarah MacLean 1:09:34 / #
Yeah. I mean, if you think about, it's the only job, aside from maybe comedy? (laughs) Right? Where we have to get better by virtue of putting our product into the world not knowing, right? We can't focus group it. We can't practice. I mean, we can practice but we can't practice over and over and over again to run the mile slightly shorter. We have to put our work into the world and then see if it lands and then try again.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:09 / #
But at the same time, I was very interested in Nora Roberts saying, "I can't think about the market either."
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:16 / #
I have to write what I want to write, and readers are going to go with me or they're not. There's a way in which it's also madness to try and chase the market maybe, right?
Sarah MacLean 1:10:32 / #
I think that's the key, right?
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:33 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:10:34 / #
Chasing the market is just -- and again I mean there's something slightly -- look -
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:35 / #
It's Nora Roberts.
Sarah MacLean 1:10:40 / #
There's a lot different, right?
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:42 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:10:42 / #
I mean, Nora Roberts doesn't have to think about the market anymore.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:46 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:10:46 / #
And when you were writing category in 1980 it was the Wild West.
Jennifer Prokop 1:10:51 / #
Sure.
Sarah MacLean 1:10:52 / #
If you could just deliver 60,000 solid words that was good. We were all eating it up.
Jennifer Prokop 1:11:00 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:11:01 / #
I will say that I think that the challenge now is that, for a lot of romance writers, production, writing fast, being able to write the stepbrother romance at the stepbrother romance time -
Jennifer Prokop 1:11:15 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:11:16 / #
Is a way to survive as a romance writer. I think what's interesting here, and it's something that I wish that we had talked a little bit more about, or maybe the whole conversation is this conversation, but that kind of quick turnaround, chasing the market, making sure that when X is popular you're writing X, is a way to survive in the market. But is it a way to create a legacy? As in the market? And I don't I don't know the answer to that. Because I think we are so early. We're just now what, six or seven years out from that kind of writing in romance. So I will be interested to see how that progresses.
Jennifer Prokop 1:12:04 / #
Right. I mean that's the thing. Self-publishing makes it possible for people to get something out, that's really responsive, that's really fast.
Sarah MacLean 1:12:14 / #
Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 1:12:15 / #
And at the same time, and that's the thing people maybe don't understand, the Nora Roberts pipeline. She's writing books that are going to be published two years from now, probably.
Sarah MacLean 1:12:27 / #
Nora is an incredibly fast writer.
Jennifer Prokop 1:12:30 / #
Yes.
Sarah MacLean 1:12:31 / #
So when we talk, when you point to the people who are writing six, seven, eight books a year in independent publishing, in self-publishing, you're talking about Nora Roberts's, right? As she said, Phyllis Whitney said, she called her up and said, "You need a hobby." Because she was just writing too much. (laughter) Quote, "Too much."
Jennifer Prokop 1:12:53 / #
Sure. Sure.
Sarah MacLean 1:12:55 / #
You need a hobby.
Jennifer Prokop 1:12:56 / #
She's like, okay, JD Robb is a hobby
Sarah MacLean 1:12:58 / #
The publisher of HarperCollins should call me and say, "Sarah, stop with your hobbies." (laughter) "We need you to write some more books." (laughter)
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:05 / #
There's so much pressure on authors now to be on TikTok or Twitter or Instagram, and at some point, I am like, what about the books? Right?
Jennifer Prokop 1:13:21 / #
What about the books? What is it costing you?
Sarah MacLean 1:13:23 / #
She said that, right? If she had to do it, she wouldn't do any of it. She's lucky enough, she has her PR person who manages the boards at Nora Roberts headquarters. And I will say that is a thing that a lot of us are asking. How much of this do we, I hate to use the word "have" to do, but I mean, how much of this is a requirement for the job? And how much of this is selling books? Is actually in service to the books? And how much of this time could be better used writing?
Jennifer Prokop 1:14:05 / #
And I think that's the part that every individual author is sort of answering for themselves. I think it's clear from the outside that publishing houses are kind of, "Okay, PR is on you. So make that happen." And that becomes something that feels really -- I can only be sympathetic. This is not me shaming people for being on TikTok by any means. This is me saying, "I just hope that it's not costing you something. Right? I just hope it's not costing you something." And that's the part where I think people have to figure out.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:42 / #
Well, you know what? I hope that it's giving people the joy.
Jennifer Prokop 1:14:47 / #
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:48 / #
That writing gives Nora Roberts.
Jennifer Prokop 1:14:51 / #
Right.
Sarah MacLean 1:14:52 / #
Right. That's what I really took away. I'm not sure that's what she was aiming for us to take away, but my takeaway really was if there's no joy in it, then is it even worth it? And I really think that's so important. And last season we talked so much about joy and romance and the work of romance being about joy. And I don't know. Choose joy. Choose joy and maybe you'll end up like Nora Roberts, which wouldn't be so bad.
Sarah MacLean 1:17:22 / #
And that is all pretty great.
Sarah MacLean 1:17:25 / #
You are listening to Fated Mates. This is the Trailblazers Series. You can go to trailblazers.fatedmates.net to listen to all of the incredible interviews that we have done with other writers who built the house in many many ways. And you can find us on fatedmates.net or on Twitter @FatedMates or on Instagram @fatedmatespod.
Jennifer Prokop 1:22:28 / #
Thanks to this week's sponsors and we'll see you next time.
S04.39: Superhero Romance with Barry Lyga
This week, we’re talking Superheroes! Why is it so rare to see a great romance in a superhero story? Is there really no room for love and capes? Do heroes eat? (spoiler: obviously) — We’re joined by author Barry Lyga, a comics and superhero expert, to discuss all this and more…and to chat about the new YA Superhero anthology, Generation Wonder, in which Sarah has a short story (it’s a romance). We also recommend some great superhero romances and comics, because of course we do.
Do yourself a favor — be sure to check out show notes this week. The visuals are a delight.
Fated Mates Live, in person, is happening!!! We’ll be in Alexandria, VA on July 30th — join us there! We’ll be joined by a ton of our favorites…find more information about the event and get tickets through Old Town Books!
Thanks to Penguin Random House, publisher of Andie J. Christopher’s Thank You, Next, for sponsoring the episode. Thanks, also, to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. Visit microdose.com and use code FATEDMATES to get free shipping & 30% off your first order.
Show Notes
Thanks to Old Town Books, we are going to have a real Fated Mates Live event at Apollycon at the end of July. It will be Saturday evening July 30th in Alexandria. Stay tuned for details.
Welcome Barry Lyga, comics author and editor of the YA superhero anthology Generation Wonder. Sarah has a story in the anthology, and we’ll hope you’ll buy one for the young reader in your life.
There was no kissing in Doctor Strange, but we’ve been promised there will be in Thor: Love and Thunder. In fact, Taika Waititi said Mills & Boon, so...that's official.
Back in the day, romance comics were just as popular as superhero comics. Check out the site Sequential Crush to see the history of romance comics. If after this episode you think you might want to check out more comics, Suzanne’s site Love in Panels is the best place to start.
Comics writer Mark Waid wrote about manhood and comics in an essay that is no longer available online, but Mark is also the author of Irredeemable, a comic about Superman turning villainous. Another essay about how modern superhero movies are romance and sex-free is called Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny.
If you have little kids, check out the Mia Mayhem series of graphic novels.
Jen was on Heaving Bosoms to discuss Cinnamon Blade.
The TV Show about the superheroes going to work is called The Boys.
Exactly one year ago (well, one year ago yesterday), Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker, co-creators of the DC Entertainment-HBO Max adult animated series “Harley Quinn,” told Variety that DC Comics removed a scene from the show of Batman "dining feline" (h/t bleedingcool for this delightful euphemism), saying "Heroes don't do that." As is right and just, the internet disagreed and #HeroesWhoEat and #BatmanGoesDown were born. It was a great day.
For what it's worth, it wasn't just the internet that disagreed. Zach Snyder confirmed that Batman in fact does eat, with one of the greatest tweets of all time. At least, we think so. DC apparently did not care for it. While we like Snyder's version very much, here are some other NSFW images we like almost as much (eye headphones in): From artist @Mrs_Van_Damn; commentary from @realAgdtwinkie; from artist (with excellent commentary) @ArtKhobra; and this one, from artist @rpace, with special love for the pegging crew.
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Penguin Random House, publisher of Andie J. Christopher’s Thank You, Next, available in print, e and audio at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, your local indie, or wherever books are sold.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S04.38: These Books Bang: The Sexiest Romance Novels
Headphones in, y’all. We have sixty-nine (that’s right, 69, by pure unplanned luck!) recommendations for you this week — everything from bonkers to bloody to blazing hot…naughty bits that we believe deliver the whole banana (and sometimes no banana at all, if you know what we mean). Pencils ready…your time starts…now.
This week’s episode is thanks to Julie Block, the Fated Mates listener who won an episode of the podcast in the Romance for Reproductive Justice auction sponsored by The Meet Cute Romance Bookshop and Fizzery in La Mesa, CA. Julie made a generous donation to the Collective Power Fund at the National Network of Abortion Funds, and in doing so, got to pick the episode topic — Books that Bang!
Thanks to Melissa McTernan, author of Married to the Fae Queen, the second book in the Fairy Realm series, for sponsoring the episode. Thanks, also, to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. Visit microdose.com and use code FATEDMATES to get free shipping & 30% off your first order.
Show Notes
Thanks to Julie Block for suggesting this episode and donating to abortion funds for the Romancing for Reproductive Justice Auction, sponsored by The Meet Cute Romance Bookshop & Fizzery, opening fall of 2022 in La Mesa, CA. It is not too late to donate to the Collective Power Fund at the National Network of Abortion Funds.
While we name checked some Fated Mates classic recommendations like Tessa Bailey, Jessa Kane, and London Hale, somehow we recorded this episode without once mentioning the name of Charlotte Stein. So raise a glass to her and all the other authors writing super hot books that we forgot to mention.
Probably you want to see Jen Porter's illustrations of the drilldo. (PS. Protip: you might put "drilldo" in the search field of twitter thinking that Jen's tweets will come up, and that would be a mistake unless you want to see it real and in action. Ask me how I know.)
The WTF Bucket
Bold & Bloody
Fun & Toys
The More the Merrier
Bondage and (chastity) Belts
The Bad Boy Mystique
Hot Historicals
Just Add Milk
Consent & DubCon
Voyeurism & Exhibitionism
I Have Tremendous Upper Body Strength
Oh, no! Feelings!
Just F'ing Hot
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Melissa McTernan, author of Married to the Fae Queen, the second book
in the Fairy Realm series, available in print and through Kindle Unlimited.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S04.37: Groveling in Romance Novels
If there isn’t a grovel, is it even a romance? This week, we’re getting to the bottom of one of our favorite moments in a romance novel — the grovel. Love it or hate it, some of the best loved books of the genre go all in on hero (because let’s face it, it’s almost always the hero) on his knees…and we are here. for. it. We talk about the hows and whys of the grovel, about the reasons we love it, about the difference between a grovel and a grand gesture, and about the books that installed this particular button for us.
This episode is sponsored by Janna MacGregor, author of Rules for Engaging the Earl, and Adriana Herrera, author of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris.
Show Notes
We love a good grovel here at Fated Mates, and back in 2018, Jen wrote an essay on groveling for #RomBkLove
Merriam Webster is the world’s greatest dictionary.
We don’t come from chimpanzees, but we do have a common ancestor.
If you think a character hasn’t suffered enough, you can leave them in cold storage. You have the power!
Jen did the entire breakdown on Kiss an Angel with Erin & Clayton from Learning the Tropes
We did a deep dive on Milla Vane's A Heart of Blood and Ashes because we love it so much. We also did episodes on Lothaire, Sweet Ruin and The Master. The first five seconds of the Sweet Ruin epsiode are a straight shot of Sarah's joy, if you are looking for that sort of thing.
More about the problem of captive (and presumably lacking telepathic prowess) Tigers in America.
Molly Bloom totally would love a good romance novel, btw.
The American President is a pretty great movie, but it also came out back in 1995 when we some of us were still capable of positive feelings about politicians.
Our next read along is The Dragon and the Jewel by Virginia Henley.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Janna MacGregor, author of Rules for Engaging an Earl, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Or get the book in Audio wherever audiobooks are sold.
Visit jannamacgregor.com
and
Adriana Herrera, author of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
revA
S04.36: Jude Deveraux: Trailblazer
Our Trailblazer episodes continue this week with Jude Deveraux, an early historical romance author who broke several publishing barriers over her more than forty year career.
In this episode, we talk about her journey through the Wild West of romance in the late 1970s, her publishing career at Avon Books, Pocket Books and Ballantine. We talk about the judgement and misogyny that circles romance, the buying power of readers, and the way the genre and bookselling has changed. We also talk about her writing process, and what it’s like to be Jude Deveraux. This one is a real joy for us, as we wouldn’t be the readers or writers we are without Jude Deveraux.
This episode is sponsored by Avon Books, publisher of Joanna Shupe’s The Bride Goes Rogue, and Amazon’s Kindle Vella, publisher of Eloisa James’s The Seduction Series.
Show Notes
Like many of our trailblazers, Jude Deveraux’s first brush with romance was Kathleen E Woodiwiss’s The Flame & the Flower. The publisher with “the prettiest covers” in the 1970s she references was Woodiwiss’s publisher, Avon Books.
Books of Jude Deveraux’s that we talk about in depth include: The Enchanted Land (her debut novel), A Knight in Shining Armor (early time-travel romance), Sweet Liar, The Providence Falls series with Tara Sheets, The Girl from Summer Hill, Twin of Ice (the twins!!), and “The Matchmakers” a short story in The Invitation collection (featuring Cale & the angel sex scene).
The Four Js were Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey and Judith McNaught.
People mentioned in the episode: Kate Duffy, editor at Silhouette Books and Pocket Books; Joan Schulhafer, publicist at Pocket Books; Richard Gallen, publisher & packager; Ronald Busch, publisher of Pocket Books; Robert Gottlieb, agent; Linda Marrow, editor at Ballantine/Doubleday/Dell; Kathryn Falk, publisher of Romantic Times Magazine; Kathe Robin, reviewer at Romantic Times Magazine.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Joanna Shupe’s The Bride Goes Rogue, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Amazon’s Kindle Vella, publisher of Eloisa James’s The Seduction series,
available at amazon.com/kindlevella.
S04.35: Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin: Some Real Hero Sh*t
This week, we’re talking about one of our favorite historical romances, Jeannie Lin’s Butterfly Swords. This is one we’ve mentioned on previous episodes, and discussed at length during Jeannie’s Trailblazer episode, as it is the first own voices Asian-set historical romance.
Aside from setting the standard for adventure romance, it’s also a near-perfect road trip romance with one of the hottest slow burns you’ll ever read. We talk about all of it, including the absolutely devastating first kiss—one that should go down in romance history. TL;DR: We love this book hard.
Thanks to Charlotte Howard, author of Secret Verses, and Mila Finelli, author of Mafia Mistress, for sponsoring the episode. Stay tuned after the episode to hear the first chapter of Mafia Mistress in audio!
Show Notes
This week, we’re reading the debut novel Butterfly Swords by romance trailblazer Jeannie Lin. This is the first book in her Tang Dynasty series.
It’s not too late to see Sarah with Christina and Lauren in Connecticut on May 18th, 2022, or Jen with Christina, Lauren, and Sonali Dev in Naperville on May 19th, 2022.
We’re looking for an artist to draw us a magnificent firebird. Maybe it’s you?
So, it’s classic Jen to get titles wrong. Farewell, my Concubine is a movie, and the third book in the Tang Dynasty series is called My Fair Concubine. But, that’s not Li Tao’s book, either–it’s The Dragon and the Pearl.
We talked about Road Trip romance back in season 1.
Time for an interlude from The Princess Bride.
Our next read along is The Dragon and the Jewel by Virginia Henley, first published in 1991.
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Charlotte Howard, author of Secret Verses, available in Kindle Unlimited .
and
Mila Finelli, author of the Kings of Italy Duet
Read Mafia Mistress in Kindle Unlimited or listen wherever audiobooks are sold
S04.34: Celebrity Romance Novels
We’re tackling one of Sarah’s favorite tropes this week — the celebrity romance! We talk about all the ways that her buttons were installed (thanks Judith McNaught) and about how rare movie stars are in romance even now, all these years later. We discuss The Chrises, the appeal of celebrity/normal person pairings, the difference between film/tv romance and rockstar/sports star romance, and about why Americans especially love a celebrity.
Oh, and we get into our own existential despair. Visit fatedmates.net/fatedstates for past episodes of us being Big Mad if you want some inspiration.
Thanks to Avon Books, publishers of Eloisa James’s How to Be a Wallflower for sponsoring the episode. Thanks, also, to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. Visit microdose.com and use code FATEDMATES to get free shipping & 30% off your first order.
Our next read along is Jeannie Lin’s Butterfly Swords. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
A leaked memo from The Supreme Court makes clear the fate of Roe V. Wade, and the other civil rights they’re looking to eliminate next. We’ll be reactivating Fated States soon, and you can listen to some of our previous episodes (RBG, bodily autonomy, elda minger) related to these topics. It’s terrifying and feels like its all unraveling, so just fight where you can, remember we’ve been here before, and you should organize in your local community to help others. Check out the Auction for Reproductive Rights being organized by The Meet Cute Book Shop, and donate to an abortion fund near you.
Good Chrises only, please: Hemsworth, Pine, Pang, and Evans. As we say, name is destiny.
We feel bad about it, but both of us thought about the book Perfect after hearing about the shooting on the movie set Rust. Here is a timeline of how Alec Baldwin ended up with a live weapon.
Perfect takes place is some part of Texas where it snows, and Judith McNaught partnered with Coors to raise awareness of and adult literacy.
We love it when Normal people and movie stars get together.
Harry Styles will be on tour later this year, everyone.
I’m not sure why photographers love “the wet suit photoshoot”, but it’s definitely a thing.
If you think you've bought a book before on Amazon, but it's showing you the buy button. Go to Your Content and Devices and search for the book. You can also search your digital orders.
Charlevoix MI is a cute tourist town on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is very big by the way. Unsure about whether or not merpeople live there, but there are lots of shipwrecks.
The final girl is a horror trope.
Our next read along is Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin.
Celebrity Romance Novels
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Eloisa James’s How to be a Wallflower, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S04.33: Something About You by Julie James: Jack’s A Good Name For A Hero
This week, we’re talking about a beloved contemporary romance, the first in Julie James’s FBI/US Attorney series — Something About You. This one is a fascinating look at a series connected by not the romance standard of friends or families, but by work. Set in Chicago, it contains all the mystery of a romantic suspense without ever straying from the contemporary romance path. The characters are sharp, the writing is clever, the structure is fascinating, and it will likely make you read the rest of the series almost immediately.
Thanks to Avon Books, publisher of Lynsay Sands’s Immortal Rising, and Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste, for sponsoring the episode.
Show Notes
Julie James is the author of 9 books in the FBI/US Attorney series. They are stand alone novels in the world of the Chicago criminal justice system.
The Hyatt Lodge in Oak Brook has a lap pool with lane lines in case you’re into that sort of thing.
The U.S. Attorneys are federal prosecutors and there are 94 districts. Saying out each letter separately “A-U-S-A” is in fact the right way to shorten this title. Jen confirmed it with Erin.
The Peninsula is a fancy hotel in Chicago. Jen is unsure of whether or not it has a lap pool.
After refinishing hardwood floors, you really do need to wait a while before walking on them!
“Taste her blood in her throat” as someone (ahem, Nora Roberts) might say.
You definitely want to see that scene Jen referenced from The Old Guard with Nicky & Joe. Unfortunately, Channing Tatum’s stirring defense of romance in The Lost City is not yet available on YouTube. Watch thisas a placeholder. Or this. You’re welcome.
Christina Lauren is going on a book tour! You can see them with Sarah in Connecticut on May 18th, or in the Chicago suburbs with Jen on May 19th. Join us!
Spiaggia has closed, but it was very fancy in its heyday.
It’s not weird pizza, okay.
Books & Movies Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Lynsay Sands’s Immortal Rising, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or wherever you get your ebooks.
Visit kellycainauthor.com
S04:32: EE Ottoman: Trailblazer
Trailblazer episodes continue this week with EE Ottoman, the first out trans author of romance novels. EE joins us to talk about his journey into romance, about the evolution of trans romance novels, and about the importance of representation in romance. This is a fascinating conversation, and we’re so grateful to EE for joining us to tell his story, and the story of trans romance to date.
An important note: While books by LGBTQ+ authors have been targeted by book bans across the country for decades, the recent bans on books and language around queerness in schools and public spaces make this issue even more pressing. This episode was recorded in the fall of 2021, which is why this specific issue is not a part of our discussion.
Thanks to Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste, and Ava Wixx, author of Virtual Reality Bites, for sponsoring the episode.
Our next read along is Julie James’s Something About You. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore.
Show Notes
Welcome EE Ottoman, a romance trailblazer for being the first trans writer to write romance with trans characters. You can watch the RWA video of romance firsts here.
People and publishers mentioned: Less Than 3 Press; We discussed the shifting landscape of LGBTQ bookstores during our trailblazer interview with Radclyffe and Oprah daily has an extensive list of LGBTQ bookstores searchable by state. The zine bookstore in Chicago is called Quimby’s.
EE Ottoman mentioned authors KJ Charles and May Peterson as being especially supportive on his journey through romance, and notes that Carina Press has been several trans romance titles.
Books with queer characters continue to be the target of book banning across the country, and books with trans characters are the most likely to be targeted.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or wherever you get your ebooks.
Visit kellycainauthor.com
and
Ava Wixx, author of Virtual Reality Bites,
available at Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, and B&N.
Visit avawixx.com and follow her at @avawixx on Twitter.
S04.31: Vampire Romance Novels
At the request of Instagram, we’re talking Vampires today! We’re doing some deep cuts, returning to Kresley Cole for a minute or two, and then digging into worldbuilding, morality chain, why these books lend themselves to massive series, and ultimately…why we love these big toothy jerks. If you’re a paranormal reader, get your pencils ready — especially if you’re new to it, because we’re taking everyone way back to the beginnings of the subgenre!
Thanks to Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste, and Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry an Earl, for sponsoring the episode.
Our next read along is Julie James’s Something About You. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore.
Show Notes
We’ve talked about vampires on past episodes: Kresley’s IAD vampires (Conrad is our favorite); Dark Lover by JR Ward; and last fall, we had Jenny Nordbak on for a monster interstitial.
If you’re in Brooklyn and looking for a bookstore that carries lots of PNR, try The Bookmark Shoppe.
In film, after 9/11, the rise of the anti/superhero to reconcile America's participation in a war. After the economic downturn, it was the rise of zombies to justify the way America was leaving poor people behind. And in this TikTok by Virgolikebeyonce, she suggests we're about to see media that reconciles our obsession with work/capitalism. We at FM have been noting a rise of the regular, blue-collar hero, which would track with this.
A hegemony explainer.
Tessa Bailey hit #1 on both the USAToday and New York Times bestseller lists with Hook, Line, and Sinker.
The Sherilyn Kenyon situation is truly weird.
Even eBooks can go out of print, for example, The Faustian Brothers series by Evie Byrne.
Our next read along is Something About You by Julie James.
Vampire Romances
Vampire TV Shows
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or wherever you get your ebooks.
Visit kellycainauthor.com
and
Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry an Earl,
available at Amazon.
Visit alyxandraharvey.com
S04.30: Her Night With the Duke by Diana Quincy
This week, we’re talking about one of Sarah’s favorite recent historicals, Diana Quincy’s beautiful Her Night With the Duke, which was on our 2020 Best Romance of the Year list. This one fires on many cylinders, and the conversation it inspired covers a lot of ground. We talk about how you won’t get a better Bridgerton read-alike than this one, about the third-act breakup, why it works and the work it does in a romance, about why widows are allowed to be sexy, about responsibility and aristocracy, about hot golf, and about how modern historicals are really doing the business.
Thanks to Avon Books, publisher of Eva Leigh’s The Good Girl’s Guide to Rakes, and Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste, for sponsoring the episode.
Our next read along is Julie James’s Something About You. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore.
Show Notes
Diana Quincy has written many romance novels, and she also published Regency era mysteries under the name D.M. Quincy. You can find information about her books on her website, on twitter, or on Instagram.
Her Night with the Duke was one of our best of 2020 romances.
Leela taking her knife to her evil brother-in-law's face was just as satisfying as this great scene with Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride.
Here's a brief overview of the history of the Arab community in Manchester, England.
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses dives into storytelling around the world, makes the case that conflict-driven plots are not universal and advocates for making diverse storytelling traditions welcome in literary spaces. This essay from LitHub is a good primer to his argument.
The Clandestine Affairs Series by Diana Quincy
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Eva Leigh’s The Good Girls Guide to Rakes, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or wherever you get your ebooks.
Visit kellycainauthor.com
S04.29: Nora Roberts: Trailblazer
The Trailblazer episodes continue this week with the Queen herself! Nora Roberts joins us today to talk about her longstanding career in romance—from her extremely relatable roots as a mom going mad in a snowstorm, to her deep rooted work ethic, to the plagiarism that rocked the publishing world. We talk about her place in the romance pantheon, about the reasons she thinks her books are so beloved, and about that one time her publisher called to tell her she was writing too much.
It was an absolute pleasure to have Nora Roberts personally explain things to us; we’re beyond grateful to her for making time for Fated Mates.
For more Nora Roberts content, Listen to our Born in Ice deep dive episode from Season 2!
Full transcription now available.
Thanks to Piper Rayne, authors of Sneaking Around With #34, and Kenya Goree-Bell, author of California Love, for sponsoring the episode.
Our next read along is Diana Quincy’s Her Night With the Duke, which was on our Best of 2020 year-end list! Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore. You can also get it in audio from our partner, Chirp Books!
Show Notes
We are thrilled to have Nora Roberts on the podcast today. Take a moment to read this 2009 New Yorker profile about Nora and her career. This 1982 article from the Washington Post, Sharpsburg Writer Turning Romance into Profits, is one of the earliest mentions of her career in the mainstream media.
Nora’s bookstore Turn the Page is located in Boonsboro, Maryland. She hosts a community of readers at her website Fall into the Story, which includes a definitive list of things Eve and Roarke will never do.
Nora Roberts is a staunch defender of writers who have been victims of plagiarism, starting in 1997 when Janet Dailey stole from several of her books. In December 1997, Romantic Times wrote about the plagiarism scandal, and the previous month there were several letters to the editor from romance readers. More recently, Nora sued a Brazilian writer who plagiarized the work of more than 40 romance novelists authors.
Nora Roberts took some time to explain the process to Debra.
Listen to our deep dive episode of Nora Roberts's Born in Ice.
Authors mentioned: Violet Winspear, Anne Mather, Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, Janet Dailey, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rodgers, Ruth Langan, Dixie Browning, Patricia Gaffney, Mary Kay McComas, Elaine Fox, Mary Blayney.
Other people on Nora's team: Publisher Phyllis Grann, Silhouette editor Nancy Jackson, agent Amy Berkower, editor Isabel Swift, editor Leslie Gelbman, and publicist Laura Reeth.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Piper Rayne, authors of Sneaking Around With #34,
available free at Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo & Nook or wherever you get your ebooks, and
in audio at Audible, Apple, Chirp Books and wherever you get your audiobooks.
Get signed books from Piper Rayne’s Etsy shop!
Visit piperrayne.com
and
Kenya Goree-Bell, author of California Love, available free in KU.
Follow Kenya on Instagram; Visit kenyagoreebell.com
S04.28: Boss/Assistant Romance
We’re on a roll delivering interstitials about all our very favorite wild tropes, and this week we’re tackling boss/assistant romances! We’ll unpack the problematic bits, discuss the book that installed these deeply troubling buttons in us both, and fill your TBR pile to overflowing. Get your wallets and library cards ready!
Thanks to Avon Books, publisher of Nisha Sharma’s Dating Dr. Dil, and Piper Rayne, authors of Lessons From a One Night Stand for sponsoring the episode.
Next week, we’ve got a trailblazer episode! Our next read along is Diana Quincy’s Her Night With the Duke, which was on our Best of 2020 year-end list! Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore. You can also get it in audio from our partner, Chirp Books!
Show Notes
The Scholastic Inc. succession drama is honestly deserving of it's own Netflix series. Learn more about it from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Vanity Fair. Publishing loves drama but this is honestly almost too much.
If you're not receiving the Bookbub daily romance deal emails, you should be. Follow Fated Mates while you're there!
Killing the dog is a very bold writing choice.
Harlequin Blaze was a high heat category romance line from Harlequin that published monthly romances from 2001 to 2017. It was replaced with Harlequin Dare, a high-heat digital line.
Mystic Pizza remains a pure problematic fave here at Fated Mates, but we will always stan pouring fish bait in your rich boyfriend's Porsche. He should have told you he had a sister, Kat.
Boss / Assistant Romances
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Nisha Sharma’s Dating Dr. Dil, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Piper Rayne, authors of Lessons from a One-Night Stand,
available free at Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo & Nook or wherever you get your ebooks, and
in audio at Audible, Apple, Chirp Books and wherever you get your audiobooks.
Visit piperrayne.com
S04.27: Nine Questions about Nine Rules
It’s a Very Special Episode™️ of Fated Mates today, celebrating the rerelease of Sarah’s first book, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake! We talk about the book that started Sarah’s romance career, about why it still resonates, about new covers during a pandemic, and yes…we get to the bottom of the age old question: Will Benedick Ever Get a Book?
You can buy the new Nine Rules at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and get signed copies at WORD.
This episode is sponsored by Adriana Herrera, author of The Duke Makes Me Feel and The Romancelandia Shop.
Our read along next week is Diana Quincy’s Her Night With the Duke, which was on our Best of 2020 year-end list! Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore. You can also get it in audio from Chirp Books!
Show Notes
This tweet about Car Talk made Jen laugh. It really was the greatest NPR show of all time, and since they are no dummies, they have in fact made it into a podcast.
Buy the books with stepbacks now, because we aren’t sure how long they are going to last. Lots of folks participate in #StepbackSaturday on Twitter and Instagram to share their favorites.
Sarah's agent at the time was Alyssa Eisner-Henkin, who is still a great YA and children's agent!
Sarah's editor is still Carrie Feron, who has edited romance for her entire career. Authors she has edited include Lisa Kleypas, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Sally Thorne, Jude Deveraux, Elizabeth Lowell and Eloisa James.
The name of the documentary about romance is called Love Beneath the Covers (2016), which is a fascinating look at the romance genre.
Where's My Hero is a romance anthology that featured some of the good guys, and it's available in eBook and print.
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Adriana Herrera, author of The Duke Makes Me Feel, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo
Visit Adriana at adrianaherreraromance.com
and
The Romancelandia Shop, where romance lovers can find stickers, pins, notecards and more.
Use the code FATEDMATES at checkout for a free Fated Mates sticker!
S04.26: Jeannie Lin: Trailblazer
Our Trailblazer episodes continue this week with Jeannie Lin, one of the first authors to write historical romance featuring Asian characters set in Asia. Her debut romance, Butterfly Swords, is set in Tang Dynasty China.
In this episode, we talk about the craft of romance, about preparing for and resisting rejection while finding her own path to publication, about how she honed her storytelling, and about the way cultural archetypes find their way to the page. We also talk about the lightning fast changes in romance over the last twelve years. Thank you to Jeannie Lin for making time for Fated Mates.
This episode is sponsored by The Steam Box (use code FATEDMATES for 10% off) and Chirp Audiobooks.
Next week, we’re talking Sarah’s Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, which will release March 22 in a new trade paperback format. After that, our next read along is Diana Quincy’s Her Night With the Duke, which was on our Best of 2020 year-end list! Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore. You can also get it in audio from our partner, Chirp Books!
Show Notes
This week, we welcome romance author Jeannie Lin, whose newest book in the Lotus Palace Mysteries series, Red Blossom in Snow, comes out next week on March 21, 2022.
Hear us talk about Jeannie Lin's books on our 2020 Best of the Year episode, our Road Trip Interstitial, and our So You Want to Read a Historical episode.
The Tang Dynasty lasted from 618-907, and Empress Wu reigned from 624-705.
RWA's Golden Heart Award was phased out in 2019.
Twitter was launched in 2006 and Goodreads in 2007. Goodreads was acquired by Amazon in 2013. Borders Books closed in 2011.
People mentioned: author Jade Lee, who also writes as Kathy Lyons; author Barbara Ankrum; author Shawntell Madison; author Amanda Berry; author Bria Quinlan; author Eden Bradley of Romance Divas forum; author Kate Pearce; actor Tony Leung; Piatkus editor Anna Boatman; agent Gail Fortune.
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
The Steam Box, a quarterly subscription book box that includes romance novels,
goodies, and toys to help you embrace your sexuality and promote self-love..
Fated Mates listeners get 10% off with code FATEDMATES.
and
Chirp Audiobooks, amazing limited-time deals on select digital audiobooks
and great everyday pricing on everything else—no subscription needed.
Visit Chirp Books to check out all their audiobook deals.
Jeannie Lin 00:00:00 / #: Romance is probably the fastest to change. It's the most reactive, I think, of all the genres. One, because we write so fast. We as a collective, I myself do not write that fast. But, people will speak negatively about writing to market. But, it's not so cut and dry. It's a conversation. Romance as a genre is more of a conversation because it moves so fast and so fluidly and so many people do it. It's hard to put your finger on it, again, that giant nebulous ball.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:32 / #: That was the voice of Jeannie Lin.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:35 / #: Welcome to Faded Mates everyone.
Sarah MacLean 00:00:37 / #: I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:00:41 / #: And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. Jeannie Lin is an amazing romance author and we were really excited to talk to her as a trailblazer for what we consider... Historical romance often gets really pigeonholed into being 19th century European. And obviously, I don't know when this is airing, we will be talking to some other romance authors who were blazing trails in different ways.
00:01:08 / #: But we were really excited to talk to Jeannie because she opened up the door to historical romance set in Asia, but not during the 19th century. So, her first book, Butterfly Swords, and many of her books were set during Tang Dynasty China, which is around 700, 800 AD. We asked her some questions about why she was interested in that time period. And talk about how once somebody goes down an interesting path, and readers love it, other authors can see a path for themselves. She is really fun, engaging. She has great stories.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:49 / #: Great interview.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:51 / #: It's a great interview and we think that you are going to really enjoy hearing Jeannie's past romance.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:56 / #: One thing that didn't come up in the conversation, and I want to just say before we start is that, as much as we love Butterfly Swords and have talked about it on multiple interstitials, we put Hidden Moon, the most recent in her Lotus Palace series, on the 2020 Best of the Year list from Faded Mates. So we're renowned, devout-
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:15 / #: Jeannie Lin fans.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:16 / #: ... Jeannie Lin fans here at Faded Mates, and we can't wait for you to spend a little time with her. It was a real delight. Jeannie, welcome. We're so excited to have you.
Jeannie Lin 00:02:29 / #: I'm really excited to be here. I've been listening and so this is a geeky girl fan moment for me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:36 / #: Awe.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:37 / #: Well, thank you. It's a geeky girl fan moment for us because I was thinking that, I think the first time we talked about a Jeannie Lin book on Faded Mates was the third or fourth interstitial when we did road trips.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:50 / #: Road trips, yes.
Jeannie Lin 00:02:52 / #: Oh, wow. Wow. I've never heard one where you mentioned me. So I think that's... That's probably lucky.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:58 / #: Maybe that's best. I feel like I can't listen to podcasts where people talk about my books, so... I never-
Jennifer Prokop 00:03:04 / #: Better to just-
Sarah MacLean 00:03:05 / #: No, we said nice things. But you don't have to-
Jennifer Prokop 00:03:08 / #: Exactly.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:09 / #: We almost exclusively say nice things. We don't recommend books that we don't love.
Jeannie Lin 00:03:14 / #: I actually had a funny moment when a person from my real life, a person for my real life was like, "Oh, do you listen to Faded Mates? Because they mentioned you." And I was like, "I do listen, but not... I never... Was that mentioned?"
Sarah MacLean 00:03:29 / #: Well, now we're really going to mention you because you're joining us as one of our trailblazers for the season, and we are so excited to have you.
Jeannie Lin 00:03:36 / #: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:40 / #: One of the reasons that we were really interested in talking to you is because we're always looking for people who are doing things that are new and different. And we've talked to people that have been around in romance for a long time. But in 2010 when you published Butterfly Swords, although there had been a book by Jade Lee that had a Chinese heroine, which was set in Shanghai, but in the 19th century. But we are really interested in talking to you because you are so... I think blew off the doors of historical romance by choosing a different time and place than that regular, what I think a lot of readers have been taught to understand about historical romance, which is, it's white characters, in London, in the 19th century.
Jeannie Lin 00:04:25 / #: People didn't fall in love before 1800. Never.
Sarah MacLean 00:04:29 / #: That's just a little backstory maybe for our audience, but we'd love to hear about your path through romance and in writing those books.
Jeannie Lin 00:04:38 / #: Yeah. And it's really good that you mentioned Jade Lee because I was a fan of that series before I ever thought of ever writing a romance at all. And I actually found Jade Lee because I was on a road trip. And this is paper book. The time of paper books. I was on a road trip and I stopped in some... I visit bookstores when I go on road trips. I stopped in a bookstore and I found her book and I was amazed. I had only read the romances that I had been introduced to by my best friend and her mom. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, there are romances set in China." And most of the books were one Caucasian character and then one Asian character, one Chinese character. And then there was actually one book in the series... Stop Me, I'm going to geek out too much, so I'll-
Sarah MacLean 00:05:31 / #: No. That why you're here.
Jennifer Prokop 00:05:32 / #: One of us.
Jeannie Lin 00:05:35 / #: There's one book in the series where it was Chinese, both characters. So it was a Chinese couple. But, it was set in Shanghai, like you said, and I was just amazed and just... I don't know, thrilled to see something different. But on top of that, I also was a big historical romance reader from the 90s era where, I think there were a lot more settings. It was sort of the, "Exotic," settings-
Sarah MacLean 00:06:06 / #: Yes.
Jeannie Lin 00:06:06 / #: ... were more popular then. So it was the idea of, "Oh, historical romances will whisk you away into a different setting, Vikings and Russia." And I know that those are European settings still. But still a little bit more exotic. And I felt that that's where I kind of got my roots of romance reading is in that era of historical romance. And so I always wanted to be whisked away. I wanted to travel somewhere when I read. And that's when I think, I almost feel like in some ways my romances are a throwback, even though people are saying like, "Oh, it's new." Nothing's new. What's old is new again, kind of thing. But that was where I was coming from, as a fan of the historical romance genre and a fan specifically of Jade Lee. And so at one point, I was teaching high school at the time. And teaching high school is probably one of the most emotionally taxing-
Jennifer Prokop 00:07:10 / #: I teach middle school, so I know what you're talking about.
Jeannie Lin 00:07:12 / #: Yeah. So it's like, you're so committed. Your head is always teaching. You're always with your students even when you're not there, even when you're not grading. And there was one point when I was working the summer to prepare for a whole new program, for at risk. I taught in South Central. So it was high risk and low performing schools, urban. And so, on the second day of school, when starting this program, all of a sudden I broke down afterwards and I cried. I was so tired, I was so done. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's day two." Usually I get a couple months in before I cry. And I was like, "I can't do this. This is the beginning of the school year." And my friend was like, "You need to do something for you." I had spent the whole summer teaching and preparing for this small school. And she was like, "You got to do something for you."
00:08:10 / #: And that's when I was like, "Well, I've always wanted to write. I've always wanted to write. And I've always..." You write in your notebook, all throughout my high school years and things like that, I would write little stories that I never intended to show anybody. I showed it to my little sister. And that's about it. And then, so I was like, "Okay, okay, that's the one thing I want to do. Well, I'll try doing that." So I looked for classes on... Because that's me. If you want to learn how to do something, find a class on it. I'm such a student.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:40 / #: Well, that's the teacher thing.
Jeannie Lin 00:08:41 / #: Yeah, yeah. I laugh, because there was a time when I couldn't, I was very nervous speaking. So I went to the library and looked up like, "How to public speak?" Because that's how I do things. So I looked up how to write romance and there was a UCLA extension class taught by Barbara Ankrum.
Jennifer Prokop 00:09:02 / #: Oh, my gosh. How cool.
Jeannie Lin 00:09:03 / #: And I was like, "Okay, okay, this sounds really great. You can take it at night." So I could take it at night after teaching all day. And then I hadn't read her before. So my sister, who was actually in an MFA program. My sister was much more on the path of becoming a professional writer, a bonafide writer way before me. And then she's like, "Well, read one of her books. See if you trust her. See if you can trust her." And I went to the library. I went to the bookstore. I found a couple Barbara Ankrum books, and I was reading them and I was like, "Oh my gosh."
00:09:36 / #: I was crying. I love the books that make you feel that hitch in your chest and you're like... Rings you out. I read romance to actually cry. So good. And she gave me that feeling, I just, all the tension, the emotional tension was so good. So I was like, "Okay, I think this is who I want to learn from." But I was telling my sister, I was like, "I don't think I will ever write emotional tension this well." Because I know I had done these fun little fantasy writings and that was my thing. I didn't feel like my characters were gripping the way Barbara's characters were gripping. And my sister told me something that still sticks with me. She said, "That's not her first draft." So I was like, "Oh."
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:19 / #: That's such a good piece of advice. Oh my gosh.
Jeannie Lin 00:10:23 / #: Just to give you an idea about how-
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:25 / #: Gosh, that's transformational, that moment.
Jeannie Lin 00:10:27 / #: Further advanced my sister was and how a green writer I was, because I was like, "You write something once for fun and you just leave it. You never come back to it."
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:36 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:10:36 / #: It's in your notebook. And I just thought good writers stumbled upon it or were talented or just, they had something that I didn't. But I was like, "Oh, funny that." And so, I took this class. And again, never intending to ever show this book to anyone. I took the class just for fun. Because I was dying-
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:59 / #: Sure. So stressed out at work.
Jeannie Lin 00:11:02 / #: And as I was taking it... Well, right before I took it, my former brother-in-Law, her then fiance, he was also in an MFA program. And he said, "Let me give you some advice." And again, I'm totally green. He's like, "Think about what you want to write, because you're going to go in there and then the first day they're going to say, what do you want to write? And they're going to go around the room and everyone's going to say what they're working on, and then you're not going to have any idea and you're going to freak out. And that's why I ended up writing about nuns for the last two years." And I was like, "Okay."
Jennifer Prokop 00:11:33 / #: That was the first thing that came to his mind first, nuns.
Jeannie Lin 00:11:36 / #: Nuns. Well, he went to Catholic school, so he's like, "Oh, nuns." And then, so I was like, "Okay, okay." And again, I'm hearing this totally green and I think I'm like, "I'll think of some ideas. I'll think of some ideas." And I go to the class and of course, first day, what are you writing? And I was like, "Oh my God, he was right." And so I was like, "Oh, I have this idea. It's a fantasy romance." Because I'd only written fantasy. And it's Western Romance and Eastern Romance. Kind of an east meets west. These warriors, white warriors go to an Asian, Chinese based land and they meet a princess. They get involved in a war. And I'm talking through all this, and I'm sure everyone in that class was like, "This kid. This is the kitchen sink." Oh and there's sword fights.
00:12:27 / #: So I'm saying this. And they didn't laugh at me. They were very welcoming. And I also said in that same class, "Oh, I just started reading Nora Roberts. She's pretty good." Yeah, so I'm sure at that point the class was like, "This kid." But I stuck with it. And from that class, I met some people who wanted to continue after the class. And so we started meeting with Barbara as a mentorship. It was a guided critique. So she was still a teacher, guided mentor to us for the next year. And that was really what started me on the path-
Sarah MacLean 00:13:06 / #: That's amazing.
Jeannie Lin 00:13:06 / #: ... of wanting to get serious with this.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:08 / #: How many other... So you were all writing romance at the same time? You were all romance writers?
Jeannie Lin 00:13:14 / #: Yes, yes. So it was specifically a romance class. Because I knew when I said I wanted to write, "I was like, I want to write romance. That's what I read. That's what I love."
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:21 / #: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:13:23 / #: And so we were all pre-published, I guess, or unpublished and at various levels, me probably being the most green. As in I had just discovered Nora Roberts, even though I had read romance for years. I just-
Sarah MacLean 00:13:36 / #: Sure. Everyone has that author they've just never explored.
Jeannie Lin 00:13:39 / #: My best friend's mom didn't read Nora Roberts. She was Jayne Krentz like Joanna Lindsay, but there was no Nora Roberts. So I go into this room, I'm like, "I've discovered this author."
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:51 / #: Oh my God, that's amazing. I love it.
Sarah MacLean 00:13:53 / #: So I want to talk about this group of people. Did you stick... Did you stay with them for many years or was it just the year?
Jeannie Lin 00:14:03 / #: Just a year. And most of them went to my wedding. We were really close.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:08 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:14:08 / #: But I ended up moving a couple years after that. So before I was published, I moved away. But, and one of them has passed away. We kind of went through life things together and we've drifted apart. I still keep in touch definitely with Barbara, though. I still consider her like... I learned everything I needed to know kind of thing. Well, no. That's not true, because I keep on learning. But she really set me on the path.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:37 / #: So, the reason why I asked about them is because I'm really curious always about the way that we build our communities as writers. And so I'm curious, when you moved, as your career has moved, do you have a new community? Do you feel there are people who helped you along the way in really powerful ways? Aside from Barbara, or in addition to Barbara?
Jeannie Lin 00:15:02 / #: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. The first thing I did when I moved to St. Louis was I found the local romance writing group. And I actually knew some people from online on there already, Celia Carson. Right now, my little circle, it's still the same circle I formed right when I moved. It's Celia, Carson and Chantelle Madison, Amanda Berry, Bria Quinlan. So it's like those people have really... There's some people I interact with more online, but there's that close core group and they just get me through. Sometimes they get me through the day.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:39 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:15:40 / #: Sometimes they get me through the book. Sometimes they get me through the whole year of you have newborn children and you have a book that's due and-
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:54 / #: That's rough.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:54 / #: Right, right.
Jeannie Lin 00:15:54 / #: But yeah. That's really... I don't think I could write alone. I've always been... I need a group of people and we keep each other. Even, we all write different things, but we keep each other going. Sometimes it's at the level of critique, but sometimes it's just at the level of emotional support in the sounding board.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:13 / #: It is such a lonely job for a lot of people. I mean, I know some people like it, just to sit alone in their room. But, so community becomes so vital. So was that first book that you're talking about, the book that you started that ultimately became Butterfly Swords?
Jeannie Lin 00:16:29 / #: Yeah. Well, there's the unpublished prequel of which I've never been able to... One day, I'll get it somewhere and just... But yeah, there was a first book. And then I took a long time, took over I think almost two years to finally finish that first book. And it had all those great things I talked about, the sword fights and the princesses. But then at some point I made a decision. I was like, "Okay, I don't have to make it fantasy. I'll make it China. I'll make it Tang Dynasty China." Which is what I was basing my fantasy world on, and I'll just keep on going from there because Joanna Lindsay would... She always had like, "Oh, there's this imaginary European country."
Sarah MacLean 00:17:10 / #: Sure, why not?
Jeannie Lin 00:17:12 / #: So I was like, "Okay, so these guys come from an imaginary European country that made it to China." And I'm just going to go with it. I had no idea.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:20 / #: Listen, I love that. I love it.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:22 / #: I knew nothing.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:23 / #: Well, and then-
Sarah MacLean 00:17:24 / #: You did. But you knew so much because you were a romance reader. I think that's the thing, is the conventions are so different for us.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:31 / #: Yeah, I would say the secret to, "Success," the secret to actually getting this to work, was having no clue. And because having no clue, I had no fear.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:42 / #: Yes. Yes.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:43 / #: I just... Let's just do it. Why not?
Sarah MacLean 00:17:46 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:17:47 / #: And then so that first book, yeah, I cobbled it together. But at the end, there was actually a story there. I was amazed. I was like, "Okay, it's not great, but there's a story." I didn't know it wasn't great either, by the way. I didn't know that.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:58 / #: Awe, well.
Jeannie Lin 00:18:03 / #: And by then I had been reading advice from other places. I had finally joined RWA and Jessica Faus said, "You finished your first book, start querying it, and then start your second book. Why are you just waiting?" So I'm like, "Okay." I was querying that first book, and I just started that second book. And so, that second book is what Butterfly Swords was. And it was just being in that group. As soon as we all started our second books, I was amazed because I couldn't tell that my writing had changed that much, but seeing everybody else's writing, I was like, "Oh my gosh." It's all of a sudden from book one, the end, to starting book two, everyone grew so much. I can feel it, I can hear it, I can see it. And I was hoping the same was true of my book because I couldn't see it in me.
Sarah MacLean 00:18:51 / #: That's interesting.
Jeannie Lin 00:18:51 / #: But yeah, Butterfly Swords was always a book two. And I think if you read it, you'll see there's some characters and things in a backstory that was supposed to already be established.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:00 / #: I have a question just about how you decided to write about the Tang Dynasty. Was that just of personal interest to you? Or, so you were happy to be researching? Or... Because it's such a specific... I mean, any number of dynasties you could have chosen during Chinese history?
Jeannie Lin 00:19:17 / #: Well, the Tang Dynasty is one where women... And again, this is relatively speaking. Women had a measure of independence. Women reached high levels of government. There was an empress during a small portion of the Tang. Not an empress, she actually became emperor. She was considered the emperor. Empress Wu. And so, on top of that, just even at the lower levels, women could seek divorce, women could sue for property. There were some basic things there. Overall, women's rights, they were definitely a lower class, but even those little points would give women a little bit more agency. So I was always attracted to that period. If you are a fan of Chinese history, it's one of the periods that's a golden era. So that was another thing that drew me to it. And then, as any historical fan will tell you the clothes were really, really nice.
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:15 / #: That's awesome.
Jeannie Lin 00:20:19 / #: The clothes and the hair and everything were really... The aesthetic, the Tang Dynasty aesthetic is really attractive to. And so all those things. I didn't do a lot of research until I kind of like, "Okay, now I've made a decision. This is not historical, or this is not fantasy romance. This is going to be historical romance." And I started researching a lot, reading everything and joining historical groups and just starting to absorb as much as I could to start to world build.
Sarah MacLean 00:20:53 / #: This episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by the Steam Box. The Steam Box is a romance book subscription service that features books written by authors from marginalized communities and underrepresented groups. Books are paired with items that celebrate self-love and embrace one's individual sexuality.
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Sarah MacLean 00:21:13 / #: Listen, I could get hard behind one of these boxes.
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Sarah MacLean 00:21:26 / #: Look, that's how you know are evolving in the right direction.
Jennifer Prokop 00:21:31 / #: Absolutely. This is a really cool company. The founder's name is Melissa Gill, and she donates 5% of each box's profits to an organization in the first year of business. The Steam Box donated to Lilith Fund, Families Belonging Together, the National Network to End Domestic Violence and Trans Women of Color Collective.
Sarah MacLean 00:21:50 / #: So you can know that when you subscribe to Steam Box, you're doing well as well as reading well and maybe feeling well. I was lurking on the Steam Box's Instagram feed this morning and the Winter Box, aside from having a bunch of great books in it, also had a face mask and a candle and soaps and a vibrator in the shape of a rosebud so you could get it done beautifully.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:14 / #: Amazing. So you should all check out the Steam Box and support this small business. You can find her website @www.steamylit.com.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:24 / #: That's S-T-A-M-Y-L-I-T.com. As always, you can find more information in show notes about the Steam Box, or if you're using a smart podcasting app, you can click the link, right in the app right now, and for Faded Mates listeners only, using the Code Faded Mates will get you 10% off your subscription. Thanks to the Steam box for sponsoring the episode. Were you querying that first book and then the second book became Butterfly Swords? Or, at what point were you aware of, this is happening? We're publishing this beast?
00:23:02 / #: This is happening. We're publishing this beast.
Jeannie Lin 00:23:04 / #: Well, I set a limit. I set a limit. I said, okay... Because also, all these blogs were saying people make the mistake of querying their first book too long or something like that. So my first book, very quickly, I was like, "Okay, 10 rejections, and it's not going." I could feel it. It's not going anywhere. So I just kept on writing.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:26 / #: You know, I love this. This is very me. You hear those stories about like, people query their books for 40 times and then finally get an editor. I'm like, I would just be done. I would be watching TV.
Jeannie Lin 00:23:37 / #: We'll see, but I set a limit. But I set a limit of 100. I said 100 rejections. And-
Sarah MacLean 00:23:43 / #: Oh.
Jeannie Lin 00:23:44 / #: No, that was for Butterfly Swords. For the first book, I was like 10, and I know, I don't need to hang on. But for the second one, I was like, "Okay, 100 rejections." And I think I might've pulled that number, because you can probably already tell, I'm very much like, I need definitive limits. I need numbers, otherwise I will just, I don't know how much is enough. And so I said 100, and I probably pulled it because an author I liked said something like that. And so I was like, okay, 100. And then I finished the book, and this book finished in two months. Unlike... Well, rough draft-
Sarah MacLean 00:24:17 / #: That's amazing. But still-
Jeannie Lin 00:24:18 / #: Let's say rough draft.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:19 / #: It wrote different? Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:24:20 / #: Yeah, so like two years versus two months, because I knew the answers to all the questions I had before. And plus, I had learned from Barbara that just right forward, instead of getting in your feelings or getting in your head and worrying. And I was like, "Can I just assume all the perfect edits have been made?" And she's like, "Assume all the perfect edits have been made and just write forward," and I had never done that before. And so I was like, okay. If a teacher tells me something, I'm like, okay, I'm going to try.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:49 / #: I love that.
Jeannie Lin 00:24:50 / #: I'm such a good student.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:54 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:24:54 / #: And so I finished it. It took a lot longer than two months to edit it and everything, but when I was querying it, I gave myself 100 and I would track it. And there was a bunch of us, Bria Quinlan was one of those. We were querying our books at the same time. And you're like, "Oh, I got a rejection today. I got a rejection today, and I got a rejection on my birthday." You kind of get to the point where you like the pain. You're like, it hurts, but I kind of felt left out on days when I didn't get a rejection after a while. I'm like, "No, rejections today?" But you kind of get used to it and you're in that grind. And I was laughing when I said a hundred, I didn't realize how close I would get.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:39 / #: What kind of rejections did they look like? Were they thoughtful or just forms?
Jeannie Lin 00:25:44 / #: Form for the most part.
Jennifer Prokop 00:25:44 / #: Forms, yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:25:46 / #: A couple of them were requests that said, "I didn't like it as much," and I would tweak it along the way. And I was still trying to learn and trying to find the secret magic sauce to figure it out. And then at one point, I finally, I entered the Golden Heart.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:00 / #: So let's explain what the Golden Heart is.
Jeannie Lin 00:26:02 / #: Oh, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:04 / #: The Golden Heart, no longer exists, but for a long time, RWA, the Romance Writers of America had an unpublished author contest called The Golden Heart. And you would submit a selection, first 50 or first 100 pages, and it was judged by published authors, and the winners of the Golden Heart were hopefully noticed by agents. That was the idea.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:27 / #: Well, and this was especially important back before people could self-publish on Amazon. So it was really an avenue for, I don't know, that sense of yes, this is someone we... Other romance writers see the potential in these authors.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:44 / #: And now, it was a thing where Joanna Shupe won the Golden Heart, Robin Lovett won the Golden Heart. I mean, there are people who we have talked about on Fated Mates. Jeanie, I didn't know you won the Golden Heart, but-
Jeannie Lin 00:26:58 / #: Yeah. Yeah. So for me, first... It's not the only avenue to publication, but for my book, which was so much of an oddball, people didn't know what to do with it. I entered the Golden Heart. I had been entering a gazillion contests up to then because I wanted feedback. I was kind of a feedback junkie. I need that feedback, otherwise, again, boundaries. I don't know how to look with my own instincts and know what to do. And so I entered the Golden Heart and I finaled in the Golden Heart. And I think that was the start where people started saying, hey, maybe, I'll give it a chance. I started getting requests. More people were taking a look. I definitely noticed there was a line in the sand. As soon as the Golden Heart nominations came out, all of a sudden people started paying attention. It was just this huge boost.
00:27:56 / #: And I think I calculated at some point, but from the Golden Heart nominations to my publication or my first contract, it was a matter of months. So it was that thing of like, you're slogging along for a year, two years, three years. It was three years before... I had started the next book already, The Dragon and the Pearl, and then the Golden Heart nominations came in, and then everyone was requesting, the editors who were judging the Golden Heart were requesting, agents started asking to see things. I got my agent shortly after the Golden Heart nomination, before the Golden Heart ceremony.
00:28:39 / #: And it ended up winning the Golden Heart. I think if it was just nominated, that would've been enough. But it ended up winning. And at that point, the weekend of the win, the weekend of the conference, when the wins were announced that weekend, everybody had rejected me. All the editors, all the houses who had requested were like, "No, just can't." At least they tried. My agent, she told me, she was like, "I'm going to send it to all these houses. I'm going to send it to Avon." Avon says, "They don't even publish what you write because Avon's..." See, I want to say something about this.
00:29:13 / #: Right now with the diversity push, everyone's updated their guidelines. And I say, even if it's lip service, it's important, because before the words said no, Avon was specifically England after a certain period, the Regency period or-
Jennifer Prokop 00:29:34 / #: 19th century.
Jeannie Lin 00:29:34 / #: Yeah, 19th century England or 19th century Europe. I think it was even specifically England for Avon, because everyone wanted Avon. But she was like, "They say they don't want to publish this, but they're going to make an exception someday, and you should be that exception." That was what my agent, Gail Furtune, that was what she was like. She believed it. She believed in me more than I believed in me at that point. But everyone had said no, they just couldn't do it, they couldn't do it.
00:30:03 / #: So I was feeling kind of low, but on the drive, I got out of the airplane and I got a call, and Harlequin was interested. Mills and Boon specifically, Harlequin Mills and Boon was interested. And that's what we went with, because everyone else had said no. I never thought, I just really never thought, and she never thought either, they actually picked it up from the Golden Heart contest. She didn't submit to Harlequin because we didn't think that this was going to fit a category romance at all, length, it was a little long, length or subject matter.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:38 / #: I mean, it is interesting because when you bring up Harlequin. Harlequin, for all that, we talk about the categories being so rigid and having such rigid rules, often it is in the historicals, it's the place where these more unusual or unique historicals have-
Jeannie Lin 00:30:54 / #: And I didn't know that until. I didn't know that until I started working with Mills and Boon. And Harlequin has such a machine that I think they could afford to publish two Regency romances, one Scottish, and one Chinese romance that month, and the cycle of every month. So they actually had the ability to take a risk, and they did. And kind of interesting is I didn't realize that then the editor who did acquire me, I was her first book, so she might've also been young and green and new and... Anna Boatman-
Sarah MacLean 00:31:28 / #: Hungry?
Jeannie Lin 00:31:29 / #: Yeah, hungry. And maybe she also maybe-
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:34 / #: Also didn't know the rules, right?
Jeannie Lin 00:31:36 / #: Maybe it needed a bunch of people who were just like, you know what?
Sarah MacLean 00:31:39 / #: Let's do it.
Jeannie Lin 00:31:40 / #: I don't know any better, let's just go for it.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:42 / #: It's one of the things that we talk about, and we've heard it over and over and over again on Faded Mates, is that there is so much luck in it. It's hard work, and it's having a good book, and it's keeping at it and not giving up, but it's also falling into the lap of the right person, which is tough to wrap your head around, I think, when you have the other stuff.
Jeannie Lin 00:32:12 / #: And like I said, I think Gail being attracted to that book... She was an editor with Berkeley, and she actually loved Chinese history, who knew, kind of thing-
Sarah MacLean 00:32:26 / #: The right person, yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:32:30 / #: Yeah, it just kind of hit the right people along the way to make. And looking back, you're like, yeah, it could have missed at any point, but it just got lucky and happened to hit the right buttons with the right people.
Sarah MacLean 00:32:44 / #: So is there something about Butterfly Swords, that book that you can pull through all of your... Because now of course, you write beyond romance, you write in other genres. You've been around for a decade, which feels like 50 years in romance. Are you able to pinpoint the thing about a Jeannie Lin book, what is a Jeannie Lin book? What does it bring to the reader?
Jeannie Lin 00:33:14 / #: I'd like to hear from readers about this, but I have a feeling in my head what pulls through and there's.. I'm pausing for a bit because there's sort of this kind of double-edged sword. I think I really get deep into the character's head. I know that's not something readers are like, "I read this book because it's deep in the character's head." That's not why readers read a book. They can feel it and sense it, but that's not what they're saying. So I know that there are trademarks that readers recognize, but for me, I really dig into the why's, probably the same way I dig into my own head, very self-reflective of the characters, why they do things and such. It kind of, I like to think, goes into unexpected ways with the characters. So I think that's one of the things that, the characters will take unexpected twists.
00:34:16 / #: And I think that the reason why I say it's a double-edged sword is I think there are some recognized ways, beloved heroes, my heroes are not the standard hero because I think the standard alpha hero has some cultural issues in Eastern or Chinese romance. And actually, I've read papers about this, where at one point the scholars who are physically leaner, not the big burly bearded characters, they were considered more romantic figures, and it was because of just the physical threat of these big burly characters, invaders, conquerors, things like that. So it was like, oh, these big warriors were kind of identified with the conquering forces, and these scholars were considered the native forces of Han culture.
00:35:09 / #: Okay, so what makes a Jeannie Lin book is probably way more research than ever gets on the page, I guess, for me. For me, a lot of this in-depth research that I try to weave in, but I think what makes a Jeannie Lin book for readers is the settings and then the very kind of slow burn emotional-
Sarah MacLean 00:35:30 / #: Oh, absolutely.
Jeannie Lin 00:35:30 / #: Emotional build up.
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:31 / #: That makes sense.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:33 / #: I think I've said, no one writes kissing like you do-
Jennifer Prokop 00:35:36 / #: Oh, they're so good.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:39 / #: Where you are just really like, it's like, oh, it's so lush, and you just really feel the way that the characters are experiencing this. It's so tactile, but it's so emotional. And so yeah, the idea that we're so deep in their heads, that feels so exactly right to me.
Jeannie Lin 00:35:59 / #: And I mean, my inspiration was epic, Chinese dramas, C-dramas. And if you look, if you've seen Shang-Chi, which is not an... It lends a lot from that.
Sarah MacLean 00:36:11 / #: It's epic.
Jeannie Lin 00:36:11 / #: Shang-Chi, Tony Leung in there, and people talk about his eyes and he just has that look. He is my... I've actually based heroes off of his characters, that look, when you're in a Chinese drama, those extreme closeups and those little nuances and those looks and the slight touches are such a big deal, because in that genre, you can't just outright physical affection and things like that, especially in historical, it's something that there's these boundaries. And that's why I like historical romances, because there's these boundaries. You have to show attraction in interesting ways. Everybody loves the Pride and Prejudice, the hand, right? The when he's-
Sarah MacLean 00:36:56 / #: Oh, yeah, right.
Jeannie Lin 00:36:58 / #: He lets go over a hand and you see the closeup of him, the touch is still there in his fingers, even though her hand is no longer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:07 / #: The best.
Jeannie Lin 00:37:09 / #: A lot of that in Chinese drama, and I try to recreate that in my books, and I try to recreate the look, that lush look of Chinese dramas and that sort of emotional tension of like, I want to, but I can't.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:22 / #: Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, the eyes. Okay. Can I ask a question, because I'm also a teacher, did writing change your teaching?
Sarah MacLean 00:37:37 / #: That's a good question.
Jeannie Lin 00:37:39 / #: I think it's all one cycle of teaching and learning for me, and that includes in my professional life, regardless of whether I was teaching or whether I was developing program... I seem to, through my life, switch between teaching and then programming and then going back to teaching. And right now, I'm in both. I'm actually teaching computer programming. It's always a cycle of learning and such. And I think that I fell into that with writing too. It's just a constant cycle of learning. And then I present writing craft workshops and such, at the same time I'm taking classes and learning. So I think that's how it fed in is it really, the introspection.
00:38:28 / #: I think as a writer, you become even more introspective and reflective of how your books are coming out, what you're putting into your books. And it is also an act of... I think teaching, teaching is also a very introspective art. And you beat yourself up the same way and you find your ways to lift up in the same way. And so, I specifically started writing because I needed some sort of net, I needed something to save me from myself when I was just getting so absorbed in the teaching that I was hurting myself. And of course, no use to any of my colleagues or my students if I was in that state. So in that way, that's why I wanted to say it was the whole cycle of introspection and everything, I think, that affected the teaching. I don't know if it... And I think in a zen sort of way, that has to affect the way you actually present or the way you actually treat people. And I can't separate it out, but I would say, okay, the short answer is yes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:36 / #: I did a lot of research about something called pedagogical content knowledge, which is basically content knowledge is... I mean, everybody knows how to divide, do long division, right? Pedagogy is how you teach it. But what people don't understand about teaching is everything you do becomes filtered through your teaching brain and everything I see all day, I'm like, could I use this in the classroom, could I use this in the classroom? And so when you were talking earlier about everything became about the classroom, it seems that it's so permeable. I don't think people understand that that cycle of teaching and learning that you're describing is so real. Even if it's romance novels, it doesn't matter what you're doing in the classroom, it still becomes a big part of how do I learn, how do I teach?
Jeannie Lin 00:40:23 / #: And I actually feel that the act of teaching basically, after teaching high school, after teaching high school in Watts, I felt like I feared nothing. I felt like if you want to reject me, that's not the worst thing.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:37 / #: I was going to say, an agent-
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:37 / #: I could do anything.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:37 / #: Rejection is nothing.
Jeannie Lin 00:40:37 / #: That's just like-
Sarah MacLean 00:40:42 / #: Facing 25 16 year olds.
Jeannie Lin 00:40:43 / #: Barely a flesh wound. I felt like I had no fear.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:51 / #: This episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Chirp, the best audio discounts.
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00:42:25 / #: I'm really interested in this. When you talk about writing, coming to writing, you talk about it so personally that... I mean, and obviously it's personal for all of us, but in your case, you really were using writing as a safe space. And I think there's something there that you were writing romance for yourself in this safe space, a genre that is coded for joy and happiness and comfort at the end of it. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how... So that's the personal piece, but do you ever think about your writing? And maybe not, but do you think about your writing ever in terms of what you're intending to do for the reader? Some of the people we've talked to have said, "Oh, I never think about the reader when I'm writing." What's the relationship with readers in your mind when you're writing?
Jeannie Lin 00:43:16 / #: I definitely think about the reader. It's a conversation, of which I only hear one half of it, but I definitely think. And not any specific readers, of course, but yeah, there is someone I'm talking to. My sister and I discuss writing all the time as well, the ideal reader kind of thing. I am talking to sort of my ideal reader and they talk back and they've shaped me.
Sarah MacLean 00:43:44 / #: And who is that? What does that reader look like?
Jeannie Lin 00:43:47 / #: It's I guess a nebulous concept. And I will say this, I don't do it anymore just because of time and now I have enough reviews that I can't have read every one anymore, but I read every single review or I used to.
Sarah MacLean 00:43:59 / #: That's very brave.
Jeannie Lin 00:44:01 / #: Well, again, like I said, I was teaching chemistry in a low performing district and I was being told to F off by students that I loved. I've been told to off by people that I love today. There's nothing that agent can tell me, there's nothing that reader can tell me that's going to hurt worse.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:23 / #: Thickest of skins.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:25 / #: Yeah.
Jeannie Lin 00:44:25 / #: Plus a little bit of a stereotype, but I had an Asian tiger mom, so I mean... you can't hurt me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:30 / #: You needed to know what everybody was saying, that's fine.
Jeannie Lin 00:44:35 / #: Yeah, you can't touch me. I mean, come on. You just don't like my book.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:41 / #: So did you hear though personally from readers that they were moved by your books? I mean, I assume... Or was it mostly just through the filter of blogs or Goodreads or whatever?
Jeannie Lin 00:44:54 / #: Yes. I hear personally too. I hear personally too, and I really like how some of the reviews in my books are very, very geeky academic, which is what I like. I like that. And so I hear those too. I read it and it becomes all put into this ball of... The ideal reader is this nebulous ball of all of the collections I've put together of what people have said, reacted, my own reactions too. There's the reader, there's the reader half of your brain that read your book and there's the writer half of your brain that wrote your book, and all of that is kind of a nebulous concept. And I can't exactly identify it, but I do kind write something and be like, "Oh, this is pushing the boundaries." My ideal reader has not seen this before or has seen this before, or how this is the next step in where I want to take them and myself and things like that.
Sarah MacLean 00:45:52 / #: I love that-
Jeannie Lin 00:45:52 / #: It is a conversation.
Sarah MacLean 00:45:54 / #: I love that idea. One of the things I like the most when I'm writing is that moment where you think to yourself like, oh, I'm doing something new. This is something that I can feel it stretching-
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:03 / #: ... doing something new. This is something that I can feel it stretching in my brain, and I know readers will also be curious about where I'm going. So it's always nice to hear that other writers are also thinking about it that way. How do you-
Jeannie Lin 00:46:16 / #: And you don't know if we're right. Sometimes you like-
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:18 / #: Fuss with the ideal reader, how do you challenge them.
Jeannie Lin 00:46:24 / #: It keeps you from just talking to yourself and being too self-indulgent, but at the same time, it's a guess because then you'll release the book and then you'll get feedback. You're like, "I was wrong about that one."
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:36 / #: Yeah. That was a misstep.
Jeannie Lin 00:46:39 / #: That didn't work well.
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:41 / #: Yeah. It's so interesting, and I think especially in genre fiction, because the boundaries seem so... I'm really curious about how romance changes over time because, of course, I have my very strong opinions about how things should be right now. And then you go back 10 years or 20 years and think, "Oh no, things are always changing, but we're just where we are now." So is this something where when you look back on, you've talked a little bit about how publishing maybe has at least stated that they're more open to different kinds of stories, but as a romance reader and writer, do you think that romance has changed or can you speculate about where you think we're going?
Jeannie Lin 00:47:25 / #: Oh, romance is probably the fastest to change. It's the most reactive, I think, of all the genres. One, because we write so fast. We as a collective, I myself do not write that fast.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:37 / #: Same.
Jeannie Lin 00:47:38 / #: We write so fast, so we have the ability. People will speak negatively about writing to market, but it's not so cut and dry. It's a conversation. Like romance as a genre is more of a conversation because it moves so fast and so fluidly and so many people do it's hard to put your finger on it because again, that giant nebulous ball of all the different people who write... There are people who are writing throwbacks when you complain and they're like, "Oh, romance is in the eighties. People don't write like that anymore."
00:48:11 / #: No, there are people still writing that and there are people still reading that. And people still writing it well and reading it well and things like that. But okay, so try to focus myself in, how has it changed? I'm going to try to narrow the conversation. When Butterfly Sword was published, it felt so different to a lot of people and so much so that people who were writing things that were not at all close to Butterfly Sword gravitated toward it because they just said, "This just looks different."
00:48:50 / #: There was a ball of different, all the different books are not alike, but still, there seemed to be this line of like, "Oh, this is what's accepted and your book is different. And so people were like, "Now you've opened the door to different books." I'm like, "How?" It's like this one little small example. There's not this... But it really was othered, I guess, for better or for worse, it was this idea of accepted and othered and I was other.
00:49:20 / #: I think that there are still books that are othered, but I think it's opened so much more, and definitely self-publishing Indie Publishing has a big part to do in that and writing directly to the readers and not going through the filters as much and just the why, opening the fire hose, like, "Oh, you have this fire hose now" before romance was already varied. That's why I always felt, I'm like, "If any place is going to accept me, it's going to be romance."
00:49:47 / #: I always thought that starting in because... And the criticisms about romance being narrow or exclusive, they are not incorrect either. Both things can be true, that romance in 2010, I felt was going to be accepting and inclusive in some ways, and the community was definitely accepting because I felt folded in by the community. And not all authors of color have felt that way, so I don't want to discount their experiences either.
00:50:18 / #: But I felt welcomed in many ways, my book eventually, even though it was like, "Oh, you are our little diversity poster girl." But it was still accepted in some ways, but it was still othered. I think now a lot more variety. Sometimes it's like people say that you wrote the book that you wanted to read kind of thing it's like, "Yeah, but now there are books that I do want to read that people are writing," and so I want to read those, romances with characters of color for sure. Still not a lot, right? The diversity report that the roboticist comes out with shows you at least what's being published traditionally.
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:00 / #: Especially here in his historical.
Jeannie Lin 00:51:02 / #: Yeah, tiny, tiny. But still, when it was one, or two, or three people writing historical churches of color. And now there's 20, that's a huge increase. It's still not a lot, but it's a huge increase. So definitely a lot more variety and I think a lot more discussion. I think there were times before when we'd have a discussion and people would be like, "Oh, you shouldn't criticize," or things like that. You would kind of hear this because it was a fragile space where we were getting criticized by so many other genres.
00:51:35 / #: You're like, "Let's not infight." And now it's like, "Yes, some infighting is actually healthy," the gag rules are off and things like that. Then a lot less limitations. Oh, my gosh, in 2010, people were saying things like... A lot of things, baseball romances wouldn't sell. Not to minimize the fact that characters of color, that's a much different issue. People saying characters of color wouldn't sell than baseball wouldn't sell, but still, there were a lot more limits in those ways too, because shelf space was limited and things like that. But anyways, that's a rambling answer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:13 / #: No. I think it's interesting because one of the things I think I've come to believe is that... Okay, I'm going to explain my romance is a volcano metaphor, because I think what it is under the surface, a big actual volcano that looks like Mount St. Helen's or whatever, and then a path opens up, a lava flow, and then everyone's like, "Oh, look, here's the path for us." The people who can blaze those trails, literally, that's why you're here, but it's showing readers and other writers both that there was some kind of way forward.
00:52:53 / #: And yeah, sure, there's still one big mass moving down the mountain that's like Regencies or whatever, but that there's lots... And that readers, I think one of the things I appreciate is I think so many readers are like, "I love this author, and now I will write anything she writes." And so there's a real commitment, I think, in romance readers to our favorite authors too. I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:53:17 / #: We've talked about this on the podcast too, but 2010 is a really interesting year for me. Jen and I have spent a lot of time over fate mates talking about, "Oh, where are the marker years for the genre?" And it's all kind of... Who knows? We're basically making it up as we go. But 2010 is really interesting to me because I started writing romance in 2010 too. And I always say in some ways, there was a door slamming shut behind because my first contract didn't have eBooks in it, which feels ancient.
00:53:55 / #: But I think that that time period, I mean, what Butterfly Swords did in 2010 was open a path in the volcano to combine all of our stories in a way that really felt like traditional publishing was massively shifting. It had to be shifting to keep up. 2010 really marks an end in a lot of ways in my mind, to what had been happening in traditional publishing romance before, because it was right as Indie Publishing was starting. We were just on the cusp of what was about to become this massive world, and somehow those of us who were new in 2010 were all feeling that seismic shift and you were doing it in a really important way.
Jeannie Lin 00:54:49 / #: That's actually an excellent point because at that point, e-publishers, plenty of them who have now digital publishers who have now kind of gone by the wayside, but that was also their upswing. My prequel novella, the Taming of Mei Lin, which was attached to Butterfly Swords that came out an ebook. And that was when people were playing with shorter length historical fiction and ebooks. A bunch of readers were like, "I've never read an ebook before. But I want to read your book, how do I get it?" I remember on my blog posting instructions on how do you buy an ebook. How do you read the Taming of Mai Lin, here are your options. I remember doing that. Thank you for that reminder.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:39 / #: Doesn't it make you feel ancient? You're welcome.
Jeannie Lin 00:55:43 / #: Twitter was coming out. At 2010 was when people were just starting to try to figure out Twitter, and there weren't too many entities on there, and it wasn't as cluttered. And I think what happened with Butterfly Swords is because Butterfly Swords was coming out and Twitter was there. It got swept up in a lot of just good reads. Oh my gosh, you're bringing back all these memories. Good Reads came out at that time.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:11 / #: And Goodreads wasn't owned by Amazon. It was just its own little community-
Jeannie Lin 00:56:15 / #: It's like, "Oh, this site of books is starting up. It's called Good Reads." Because I remember at the time, because Butterflies Swords was coming out at that time because people were talking about it, it got swept up into a lot of these early proto algorithm-type things. I got some sort of feature in Good Reads that I didn't even know about, and I know Harlequin didn't buy because no one knew about this stuff right then, right?
Sarah MacLean 00:56:40 / #: No one was paying money to websites for that. Why would you just throw your money away?
Jeannie Lin 00:56:44 / #: And so people were like, "How did you get that in Good Reads?" And I was like, "I don't have the faintest idea."
Sarah MacLean 00:56:51 / #: That was also the age of, there were two romance blogs and that was it. And if you got reviewed by either of them, you could sell books. It just was a totally different world.
Jeannie Lin 00:57:02 / #: A different world, different world, but on the cusp of change, and we could feel it within the year, borders would go away within the next year. Yeah, you're right. If you were publishing at the time, you were standing on the edge of the fault, the
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:21 / #: Precipice, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:24 / #: And you felt like, "What is happening?" And the people-
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:26 / #: It was a volcano, everybody.
Jeannie Lin 00:57:28 / #: Yeah, volcano. Sorry, volcano.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:30 / #: The people who were publishing before us for many years were like, "What is even happening? This is totally new and I'm not going to survive." And the people who were coming in right after were saying, "Oh, all of that stuff is old news." And it's really, it was a fascinating time. But you're right, you've just named a bunch of things I had forgotten about.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:52 / #: One of the questions, and you've already mentioned quite a few of this, but one of the questions we also are just really curious about is you've already mentioned some folks, but are there other lesser known people, names people wouldn't know, editors, designers, publishers, other authors that you think have left a mark on the genre that you don't think are celebrated as often?
Jeannie Lin 00:58:19 / #: This is tough because everyone I name is way more well-known than me, I think. The first person who comes to mind is Eden Bradley, I'm sure has a couple of pet names, but Eden Bradley. And she writes Erotic Romance. And she was writing Erotic romance when that was making was coming up. And she also was one of the co-moderators or co-foundational members, not founders of a group called Romance Divas.
Sarah MacLean 00:58:57 / #: Oh, sure.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:58 / #: See, I don't know this.
Jeannie Lin 00:59:00 / #: And they're still around, but they've gone through ebbs and flows as well. But that's where I found my first online writing community was right when Romance Divas-
Jennifer Prokop 00:59:08 / #: It was a blog, right?
Jeannie Lin 00:59:10 / #: No, it was a forum. It was a forum. They had a blog, but it was a forum where we would go and ask for advice, and there was a lot of ebook, e-publishing at a time when e-publishing was considered the lower tier, everyone's trying to get a publishing a traditional contract. And so they were really there leading through the changes where a lot of discussion was happening.
00:59:34 / #: And so it's a private forum, but you can join. It wasn't so restrictive, but Eden was there, but I think as an author also. For me, she really exemplified someone who was writing her own thing, trying to move with the changes. I actually got my call when I was in Eden's room at RWA when I got the call because she was leading us through a yoga session. But I think she-
Sarah MacLean 01:00:01 / #: We should explain what that means. What does it mean to get the call, Jeannie?
Jeannie Lin 01:00:03 / #: Oh, the call. Okay. So the call is when we had been in discussions and different people were rejecting, but the call is when you finally get the call from an editor or an acquisitions person, I guess, an editor at a publishing house saying, "We would like to publish your book."
01:00:22 / #: So it was the moment. And they called from England. They called from the UK to say that we want to publish Butterfly Swords. And I was waiting. I had a feeling we had already said it's going to happen, but this was when they actually called and said, "Welcome to Harlequin Mills and Boon. And so many things are going to happen today and all this, and you'll get a contract later." But it was when I spoke to, it was Linda, Linda [inaudible 01:00:53 / #] at the time, and just welcoming me to the publishing world. But I was waiting. I was in a room at RWA doing yoga with Eden. And some other people.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:06 / #: Everybody knows where they were. No one ever forgets where they were then when they-
Jeannie Lin 01:01:09 / #: Exactly, exactly. And they marched me downstairs to get my first-time sail ribbon. It was a moment. It was a moment. But that's what I was saying, it was always been about a community for me. And so Eden kind of exemplifies. She was a person who is a fabulous author. I love her books. It's like her books unfold like a dream. Her voice is so amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:30 / #: Do you have a recommendation for our listeners to start with Eden?
Jeannie Lin 01:01:34 / #: I think it was called The Dark Garden. It was her first book, and when I read it, I was not an erotic romance reader at that time, and I just swept away with it. And I would read... She has one of those voices where I would read the phone book kind of thing if she wrote it. But on top of that, the community building that she does, and then she's just so caring. And then on top of that, so Erotic Romance has gone up and down, so she has weathered a lot of different storms.
01:02:08 / #: All of a sudden with 50 Shades, she kind of shot up again because her book was one of these early books in Erotic Romance, but she just shows me how to handle things with grace. And so she's really been an influence on top of being a fabulous author.
01:02:24 / #: And I remember I was at one of her signings before I was published, and it was a publisher signing, and she was interacting with readers, and she just was recommending other books. She wasn't talking about her books. She was like, "Oh, over there, have you read her books? They're fabulous." And she was just so giving and gracious. And I was like, "I want to be Eden when I grow up."
01:02:48 / #: So I think she's done a lot for other authors and done a lot for Erotic of Romance, done a lot for e-publishing that I think it's just not recognized because it's just naturally kind of... And done a lot for, I think, body positivity, sex positivity. There's a lot, so much in her... Now I feel embarrassed because now Eden's like, "Oh, you never told me these things."
Sarah MacLean 01:03:15 / #: You've done it the best possible way.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:16 / #: It is the best possible way. I think it is hard. I think we're so used to quietly just knowing the people that influenced us. But I love hearing... When we've asked people this question. It has always been, I think, just so really rewarding to hear about there's so many close ties and so many ways in which we really can admire the authors who have done this work before us.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:41 / #: And one of the things that we keep coming back to this season is that largely, the names of these people are not spoken because we don't get as much public coverage as lots of other genres.
Jeannie Lin 01:03:56 / #: And then along the same lines, I think Kate Pierce has been a similar force for me. And like I said, these authors are way bigger, way more well-known than I am. But more should be said about them.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:12 / #: My question at this point is, let's go back to your books because we've talked so much about Butterfly Sword, but let's talk about the larger Jeannie Lin collection. Can you talk a little bit about the shifts that you made over your career, the choices to move? You really ride the genre lines very fluidly, so can you talk about that a little?
Jeannie Lin 01:04:43 / #: Butterfly Swords, I feel was very tropey. I think that's one of the reasons it was picked up. There was something very familiar about it and different, but the same is what everyone always said was the selling point. But after Butterfly Swords and I started working with Mills and Boone, I think I really leaned into the Chinese culture and history side a lot more.
01:05:05 / #: And so my book started veering, even from the second book that I published, the Dragon and the Pearl, and then the third, my Fair Concubine, they start going into much more of a shift into Chinese cultural romances. And then I think the biggest change was at the time when my editor, I think I've said her name before, Anna Boatman, she was so supportive.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:34 / #: She's my editor at too.
Jeannie Lin 01:05:36 / #: Oh, is she? Awesome. Awesome.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:40 / #: We'll take this out as whatever. Now we can just say she's the best.
Jeannie Lin 01:05:43 / #: Okay. She taught me how to write in a way. She taught me how to write with an editor. Because we grew up together.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:53 / #: I don't think I ever realized that you were edited by... Maybe we won't take this out, but I don't think I ever realized that you were edited by England instead of the United States.
Jeannie Lin 01:06:05 / #: It's actually great working with them because their five-page revision letters are so polite.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:14 / #: Oh, that's funny.
Jeannie Lin 01:06:17 / #: So Anna Boatman, when she also, as your editor moves up... This is one of the things people don't realize, as your editor moves up through the ranks in the publishing house, that could affect you. And so when she moved into single title, she was like, "I know who would write great single title books, Jeanie Linn." And that was offered to me without... We did not submit for that. That was just given to me. It fell in my lap. And so-
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:45 / #: Is that the Gunpowder Chronicles then?
Jeannie Lin 01:06:47 / #: No, this was Lotus Palace series.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:49 / #: Oh, the Lotus Palace series. Okay.
Jeannie Lin 01:06:51 / #: Yeah. It's like I always had in my mind, "Yes, I would like to write single title," because I was already writing longer length. And that's what I always thought. My agent was like, "I always thought we would be single-title authors. Again, for the listening audience, the category is similar to... Categories, they usually fit certain guidelines. They're usually shorter. They were releasing every month, things like that.
01:07:13 / #: Single-titles stay on the shelf a little longer. They're usually longer in length. And so when that happened, and it was the opportunity to write a deeper story, more in-depth, not that I thought my stories were super shallow or anything, but just to go a little deeper into the things I wanted to do and hit on topics that I hadn't before. In the Lotus Palace series, there's the sex trade, there's gambling, addiction, which is actually something that's prevalent in my family and in Vietnamese culture. And things like that.
01:07:50 / #: And so it gave me an opportunity to play around a little bit more with the single titles. The first big shift I felt was writing the Lotus Palace series. The Gunpowder Chronicles was also at the same time, another shift is someone... Steampunk is one of those things where everyone was hoping it would be big, thought it would be big, the fans really like it. But it's one of those things that I think doesn't work if it's popular. Unfortunately, geek culture likes fringe culture as well. And it is really popular, but not popular-
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:31 / #: They're in the same way.
Jeannie Lin 01:08:32 / #: Yeah, in a mainstream way. But at some point, I really liked the geekiness of steampunk and cosplay. And someone suggested, "Why don't you write steampunk?" And I was like, "No, I don't think that way." But the more I researched it was like, "Hey, it's not that far of a leap." And it kind of plays into the science geekiness, history geekiness that I have. I was like, "Let's do it." And again, I knew no better. I didn't know any better. And so that was at the same time I was...
01:09:02 / #: At the same time I was branching out to The Lotus Palace. I also started branching out into Steampunk Fantasy. And I think each of them, they don't feel too far away from where I started, but they're just different ways to explore aspects of psychology and culture and history in different ways.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:23 / #: So which of your books do you hear about the most from readers?
Jeannie Lin 01:09:27 / #: I'd probably say... It's a hard call. It's good that it's a hard call, that it's not a definite answer.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:35 / #: Some people, I mean, this question is really fascinating to me because some people, instantly, there's the book that they hear about.
Jeannie Lin 01:09:43 / #: I think, well, Butterfly Swords still, which is amazing to me. I mean, it's amazing. It's a book that was literally on the shelves for a month in bookstores at a time when eBooks were not huge and things like that. And it's never had a book bub, it's never really had a breakthrough other than it being Butterfly Swords, and people didn't write books like that then. Or no, no, they were. Correction. They were writing books like that. Traditional publishers weren't publishing romances like that then. So Butterfly Swords for sure. But My Fair Concubine, surprisingly, is a sleeper that gets mentioned a lot. When people say the books that they reread, it's My Fair Concubine, and then The Lotus Palace gets mentioned as well. So I would say those three are the ones I hear from readers most often, or I see mentions. Yes, I Google stock myself occasionally. But we all do.
Sarah MacLean 01:10:41 / #: Excited that you have thick skin. You like the war, the battle.
Jeannie Lin 01:10:47 / #: I like the pain. It feels like love to me. Yeah. I always say that. I'm like, Asians don't call it tough love, we just call it love. That's what love is.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:00 / #: Perfect. Is there a book of yours that you are most proud of or that we sort of frame it as that you hope would outlive you?
Jeannie Lin 01:11:13 / #: At this point I would still have to say Butterfly Swords. And the reason why is this, it's taken a long journey I think for me to kind of come back to the acceptance of Butterfly Swords. A long time. Every time someone said, oh, I'm reading Butterfly Swords, and it was like five years after it was written, it was seven years after it was written, I would cringe. I'm like, oh, it's so bad. Don't start with that one. But I wouldn't say anything. Oh, great, I'm glad, please enjoy.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:45 / #: Please enjoy.
Jeannie Lin 01:11:48 / #: I'll just be over here in the corner.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:49 / #: Well, and also there's also that feeling of, I've done a lot more than that.
Jeannie Lin 01:11:53 / #: Yes, I'm a better writer now.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:56 / #: What? Did I peak with number one?
Jeannie Lin 01:11:58 / #: I've learned so much. But I bite my tongue. And I realized readers don't know that. Every book they come to, it's the first. And of course it's 10 years ago, 10 years in historical romance is like-
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:10 / #: A thousand years.
Jeannie Lin 01:12:11 / #: So much changes. So much changes.
01:12:14 / #: Yeah. But still, I've come back to, there's still things that people are finding that they like about it. So that's been reassuring. But also, it was a time... I was in a place then, but Jennifer Lynn Barnes has a talk about writing for your id.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:32 / #: Great. We talked about it. Sarah loves it.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:34 / #: I love it.
Jeannie Lin 01:12:37 / #: I think it was the most inspirational thing for me to read craft wise and emotional, likewise, because it made me accept, I'm like, there are things that people love and this is why. And the things that I hate about it, I don't really hate. I just feel like I'm better than that now. But I don't have to be. It made me feel okay about the things I loved that I put into the kitchen sink of a romance that I wrote.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:03 / #: Jen always talks about first books. The reason why first books resonate so well with readers, especially when you're like you are where you grew up reading romance, is you pack them full of all the things, all the buttons that were installed in you.
Jeannie Lin 01:13:21 / #: But I think there's a raw... I haven't reread it in a long time. In fact, this is how crazy I am. There is a word echo on the first page of Butterfly Swords, and I swear for the last 10 years, I'm like, if I ever get that book back, that is the first thing I'm fixing. That's how Psycho I am about that.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:40 / #: Can I tell you something, Jeannie? You could ask them to change it in the ebook right now, and they would.
Jeannie Lin 01:13:48 / #: No, that would open up a can of worms.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:48 / #: Just letting you know.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:50 / #: Don't read the whole book. Just have to fix that one.
Jeannie Lin 01:13:55 / #: That would open up a whole, oh my gosh. That would just, no, no.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:00 / #: Take it back.
Jeannie Lin 01:14:01 / #: My first words. My first words, when Butterfly Swords arrived... Here's why I say Butterfly Swords. There's so much emotion, as you can hear, when I'm talking about it now. And I think some of that raw motion is in the pages. And so I would say that's the book, I would say.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:16 / #: It's your baby. It's your first baby.
Jeannie Lin 01:14:18 / #: And I want people in 20 years to complain about how tropey and stereotypical it is, and how derivative. I want people to say those things because it's a 20-year-old book. Complain about it. See how outdated it is.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:38 / #: Yes. Right. Well, and we've talked about that sometimes when we go back and read an older historical, I was like, oh, this is where this originated. So if people were saying that about a Butterfly Swords, it would mean that-
Jeannie Lin 01:14:53 / #: But you're a critical reader. People might just pick it up and be like, who is this old, you know, writing these stereotype?
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:00 / #: Listen, if people are still reading your book 20 years after it comes out, that's a win no matter what they're saying. Right?
Jeannie Lin 01:15:07 / #: Yeah. Put me on Blast. And there's nothing I haven't blasted about myself about that book, but the very first time I held that book in my hands, I saw that UPS truck. I was waiting for it. The UPS truck was across the street, and I'm like, it's across the street. And I'm saying this on Twitter, because there was this new thing called Twitter then. Readers and also-
Sarah MacLean 01:15:28 / #: 12 people watching.
Jeannie Lin 01:15:29 / #: Yeah. But my 12 followers were like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, is it the books? Is it the books? And so the books come to the door and I open it up and I pick it up. And my husband can attest to this. The first thing I say is, I have a book. Now I can't fix it anymore because I had it in paper. There was no more, I couldn't fix this. So yeah, I can't open it up and ask Harlequin to fix that because that would ruin me. I'd do nothing else.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:56 / #: So we've talked about how fast changing romance is, and one of the things that's been really interesting as we've done these interviews, to me, is I find myself more and more grateful for eBooks because your book that was on the shelf for one month is still available to be on all of our shelves, right?
Jeannie Lin 01:16:15 / #: Yes, yes. Love that.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:17 / #: Yeah, we're lucky.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:18 / #: And I have a couple dusty copies in my basement for my children.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:22 / #: You can put them on eBay maybe if you ever. Jeannie, thank you so much for being with us today. It was amazing to hear your story.
Jennifer Prokop 01:16:33 / #: We love that. A really fabulous conversation. Thank you.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:35 / #: Oh, this is really fun. This is great. Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:38 / #: Now, while you were talking about Steampunk, I was like, I wonder if Jeannie would come back and do an interstitial on Steampunk with us, because-
Jeannie Lin 01:16:45 / #: I'll put it on the list.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:46 / #: If you're a steampunk reader, Jeannie, and you'd like to join us to talk about that, that would be really fun.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:51 / #: Yeah, anytime.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:54 / #: Jeannie, tell everybody where they can find you.
Jeannie Lin 01:16:57 / #: I'm here and there on Twitter at just Jeannie Lynn, J-E-A-N-N-I-E L-I-N. And then my website is jeannielin.com. Like I said, I'm in and out. I don't have any policy for social media. I kind of just do it as I feel. So you may get me a lot or a little. It's social media.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:23 / #: That's how it works.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:24 / #: And tell us about what's recent or what's coming.
Jeannie Lin 01:17:31 / #: Oh, well, I am working on a book right now. And like every book, you hope it's going to be than the last one, but it's not. I'm working on the sequel or the next book in The Lotus Palace series right now, and it's the follow-up to the Hidden Moon, which came out last year. I actually started an MFA program. And so I'm working on a historical that's set in Vietnam. And that's a scary one for me just because first of all, whole new historical era and one that's not as well-documented because it's actually ancient. It's AD, 40 AD.
Jennifer Prokop 01:18:09 / #: Oh, wow.
Jeannie Lin 01:18:12 / #: And it's the story of the Chung Sisters who were the revolutionary Sisters of Vietnam who fought for independence against Han China, and they actually won. So they're sort of like the Vietnamese version of William Wallace. They actually won back their independence for a glorious three years. But it was the first time that Vietnam defeated China for independence, and it was two sisters who did it. So those are my two current projects. The sisters one's going to take a while because it's a whole new historical era. And then hopefully the next Lotus Palace book will be finishing up within the year.
Sarah MacLean 01:18:53 / #: But you can catch up with The Lotus Palace series while you're waiting for that, and you can buy those wherever you buy your books. So Jeannie, thank you so much for coming to Fated Mates and-
Jeannie Lin 01:19:06 / #: Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.
Sarah MacLean 01:19:13 / #: What a cool person. I don't think I've ever met her in real life, and now I just want to be her friend forever.
Jennifer Prokop 01:19:19 / #: Obviously. I would have been really lucky. I have had her on at least one, maybe two panels. In our Zoom world, it's so much easier to just reach out to someone and be like, hey, do you want to do this thing? And yeah, she's great.
Sarah MacLean 01:19:39 / #: I loved a lot about that conversation. One of the things I like the most is how, we don't really talk about this very much, even though it is the origin story for so many writers, is this idea that you come to romance for the joy of it, for yourself, to come to writing it. And when she said she had come up reading her best friend's mom's historicals, it made sense to me. I mean, you can really see the bones of that in her books.
01:20:08 / #: But the real joy of that for me was her saying I was having a rough time and writing romance saved me, saved my sanity in some ways.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:19 / #: I also thought it was really interesting, I think she's the first person we've talked to so far that has talked about taking a class, that there's-
Sarah MacLean 01:20:30 / #: Learning the craft.
Jennifer Prokop 01:20:31 / #: Right. Learning the craft. And that I think that there's so many different paths to writing romance that we're hearing about, from fan fiction to... And so to have someone say, I kind of went a more traditional route, and that's what worked for me. Because it might inspire people who... I think a lot of people probably recognize themselves in that I like feedback and I like a teacher, and I like this idea of someone else has done it, I don't have to learn it myself. So I was really fascinated to hear just like, yeah, this UCLA extension course.
Sarah MacLean 01:21:07 / #: Amazing. I wish I had had a course like that. I had a very different kind of course that didn't inspire me the way that she did. I really had a false start with one. So that sounds like a good one. I liked when she talked about romance being so fast to change. And when we really dug into the last decade or so of romance, she really had a fascinating perspective that we haven't had before, so far. I mean, we're not done recording trailblazer interviews, but it was really interesting to hear from somebody who has a perspective that's a shorter, a mid-range lens, it feels like, in some ways.
Jennifer Prokop 01:21:54 / #: You and I have talked before about 2010. I don't think I'd put together Jeannie Lynn with 2010. And yet, looking back, I think we are going to keep coming across those years that just seemed to be like 1995, right?
01:22:13 / #: The years where-
Sarah MacLean 01:22:14 / #: Yeah, just transformational years.
Jennifer Prokop 01:22:16 / #: Right. And so I was really fascinated to have somebody remind us of just how big that change was to eBooks, but also that social media, the blogs, the way that all played into it as well, shifting-
Sarah MacLean 01:22:34 / #: Now, it feels like that has all existed for as long as we've all been alive. But those of us who started writing right on that cusp, it is really huge, the amount of change that has happened. And as she was talking, I actually had some other thoughts of people who we need to make sure we put on our trailblazer list because there are just, every time we have one of these conversations, I think, oh, we need to make sure we get that person. So we're going to be doing trailblazers interviews until we're 95, and then someone can come in for us.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:09 / #: We've recorded it all already though. One of the things that I was thinking about a lot too though is, and you talked about this sort of luck, but how much hard work is involved. I think I would like to say there are very few... Writing seems... To say to yourself, I'm going to go ahead and sign up for 100 rejections.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:35 / #: Unbelievable by way.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:37 / #: That that's the number I can bear.
Sarah MacLean 01:23:39 / #: Yeah, no, no, I would've tolerated like six and then I'm out.
Jennifer Prokop 01:23:45 / #: And I think that that's part of the thing too, is not just to say... I mean, I want to be really explicit. All writers go through rejections, but I think it's also really clear that she was fighting a real uphill battle. She was bringing something to market that people thought they didn't want, that they explicitly would say, we don't want or we're not going to publish.
01:24:05 / #: And so the way that the kind of the racism embedded into the genre, into publishing itself, works against authors, certainly, but also readers who then, when her book did come to market... To have a category romance have a decade long impact. I want to talk about that because it is-
Sarah MacLean 01:24:31 / #: I hadn't realized, and I said this with her, but I hadn't realized so much about Jeannie's career really did travel a unique path. I mean, she mentioned the category romance being, it shouldn't be, it defies the rules of category, but it defies the rules of American category. And then she was picked up by British category. Her editor is British, not American. I mean, these are the paths that so many of the trailblazers... I mean, we talked to Radcliffe, her episode is out. So many of these trailblazing people tell stories about finding a path through the woods that is uncommon. Which I guess is the point of trailblazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:25:27 / #: Exactly. I was like, I believe, Sarah-
Sarah MacLean 01:25:28 / #: Wait a second.
Jennifer Prokop 01:25:28 / #: You hit upon our thesis. Look what we've done.
Sarah MacLean 01:25:32 / #: And you know what? That's not to say that there aren't people doing interesting work who are traveling down paths that have been created for them. But I think the thing that is so interesting too, is to hear how all those little things that align bring us the books that we now have.
Jennifer Prokop 01:25:50 / #: Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 01:25:50 / #: And it is 80% hard work and a great book, and 20% just the right person picking it up at the right time.
Jennifer Prokop 01:26:02 / #: And also, it is really interesting. I don't think readers, maybe our listeners, the golden heart in recent years has felt a little bit like a, I don't understand why this thing exists. Every writer could publish themselves. And so to talk and hear a Golden Heart winner talk about the power of that contest, I thought was also really interesting.
Sarah MacLean 01:26:30 / #: I agree. And I think that especially, RWA is so tricky, and we've talked about it before, and I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on RWA because, why? But I think that there was so much discussion when they ended the Golden Heart, because it really did feel like for many of us, the Golden Heart was a support system, a network, and those Golden Heart winners are all a part... One of the things we didn't talk about with Jeannie is, they all had their online private groups and they had their community of finalists who supported each other. I mean, Joanna Chuppe talks so much about the value of those people together and those writers who are all sort of traveling the same path together. And when RWA did away with it, and there was argument that they did away with it because it wasn't making enough money, it was too much work for the people submitting to it because of independent publishing, fewer and fewer people were submitting to it.
01:27:41 / #: And that's all real. But there also is a value to unpublished authors being celebrated for their work. Yesterday I was at a play date with my daughter and I met a mom I had never met before, and we got to talking and she said, "Oh, you're a writer?" And I said, yes. I said, what do you do? She said, "Oh, I'm a stay-at-home mom, but I'm trying to be a writer. I've been writing for". She said she'd been writing the same thing for five years. She's like, "But I try to write every day or every couple of days". And I said, well, then you're a writer.
01:28:19 / #: There is a value to supportive communities around unpublished authors, and there's a value to us naming writing as something valuable, as a valuable product, even if you don't get paid for it.
Jennifer Prokop 01:28:36 / #: I really love that. And that's, as we do these interviews, we're going to come up with more and more of these little pockets of romance history that we'll try to unpack and explain.
Sarah MacLean 01:28:48 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 01:28:48 / #: Well, and the thing that's amazing is the more we do it, the more I realize just how many pockets there are. I mean, we all have our romance reading experience, but it's also finding these other ones.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:00 / #: Yeah. So as you're listening, if there are ever, to that end, if there are ever things that we blow past and we don't talk about that you think are interesting, shoot us a message on Twitter or Instagram or send us an email and let us know and we'll do what we can to explain them. Jen, that was fun.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:18 / #: I enjoyed that one.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:20 / #: I enjoy all of them now.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:21 / #: Me too.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:22 / #: It's amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:22 / #: It's the best. These are the best conversations.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:24 / #: They are.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:26 / #: Okay.
Sarah MacLean 01:29:27 / #: Thanks everyone for joining us. You can find us at Fated Mates Pod on Instagram, at Fated Mates on Twitter, at fatedmates.net to find all of these and some merch and stickers and information and everything you could possibly need about us, more than you could ever want, probably.
Jennifer Prokop 01:29:50 / #: We're generating a lot of content, that's what Sarah's trying to say. But we really love you all. We hope you are all reading great books this week, and thanks for listening.
S04.25: "Waking Up Married" Romance
We’re still doomscrolling, so we’re still releasing goofy, bantr-y episodes about tropes we cannot quit! This week, we’re talking about a very specific one that we adore — Waking up Married! We talk about Vegas, about why you shouldn’t drink and espouse, about The Hangover, and about how…when a trope ain’t broke, you definitely shouldn’t fix it.
This episode is sponsored by Christi Caldwell, author of For Love of the Duke, and BetterHelp Online Therapy.
Next week, we’ve got a trailblazer episode! Our next read along is Diana Quincy’s Her Night With the Duke, which was on our Best of 2020 year-end list! Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore. You can also get it in audio from our partner, Chirp Books!
Show Notes
You might be wondering how Las Vegas became the wedding capital of America.
Jen and Sarah have some strong feelings about phones! The rotary phone was a real trip. Back in 1996, when Jen was in Houston doing TFA, they added 281 to the Houston area codes (yes, she said zip code on the pod, but you know what she meant!), but by now we’re over having area code pride.
Meanwhile, we still want to know why international dialing is so expensive.
I’m sorry to report that we don’t ever think we’ll have a Fated Mates Discord, and whatever Quordle is, that’s not the way Jen’s brain works.
Help us make a Fated Mates glossary by filling out this form.
You should all listen to On Being with Krista Tippet, which is a podcast dedicated to answering questions about what it means to be human.
It’s not wonder kid, it’s wunderkind. Just ask Nate.
Not that kind of Prince Albert.
The Hangover is a very funny movie.
Waking Up Married Romances
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
BetterHelp online therapy.
Fated Mates listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/fatedmates.
and
Christi Caldwell, author of For Love of the Duke, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
Kobo, Apple Books or your local indie.
Visit Christi at christicaldwell.com
