05.48: Grumpy/Sunshine Romance: Exasperated Man™️
We’re talking about a classic trope that we’ve somehow missed over five seasons — Grumpy/Sunshine! Of course our favorite brand of this particular trope is what our friend B.andherbooks calls “Exasperated Man™️,” but we’re talking about the whole continuum of grumps and sunshines, including grumpy women (because it’s 2023, and aren’t most women pretty grumpy, honestly). Check out this list of books, and share your own faves!
Next week, we’re reading Knockout! Get it signed, with exclusive FM swag, from Book Club Bar in NYC), our next read along will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
AI is for scamming, and scamming, and more scamming.
Perhaps you, too, would like to see Denzel Washington not as the enforcer, but as the Equalizer. The 3rd installment will be released on Sept 1, 2023.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Meghan Quinn, author of The Way I Hate Him,
available from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
Pocket Books Book Shop
a queer, feminist, anti-racist indie bookshop online and in Lancaster, PA
Shop online at pocketbooksshop.com or get tickets to see Sarah, Adriana Herrera and Joanna Shupe in person on September 16th!
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S05.47: Fairy Tale Retellings with Zoraida Córdova
We’re talking fairytale retellings today with Zoraida Córdova, the author of Kiss the Girl, a new retelling of The Little Mermaid. We talk about the responsibility of authors when they tackle retellings, about the relevance of fairytales in the world, about the history of fairytales, and about why they resonate so powerfully with us as authors and readers.
After Sarah’s Knockout (preorder it signed, with exclusive FM swag, from her local bookstore), our next read along will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome back, Zoraida Córdova. She was on the podcast back in Season 3 talking about fantasy romance. Kiss the Girl is a Little Mermaid retelling, and the third book in the Meant to Be series. You can check out her other mermaid books, a YA series that starts with The Viscous Deep, or the forthcoming anthology Mermaids Never Drown.
Are we billionaires from winning the MegaMillions? Probably not. But if we did, Jen is planning to renovate the Jackson Park Beach House. The great thing about helping refugees and immigrants is you can do something about that even if you haven’t won the lottery.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Chloe Angyal, author of Pas de Don’t
available now at Amazon, B&N, Kobo & Apple Books.
Use the code FATED25 at chicagoreviewpress.com for 25% off your order.
Jess Bryant, author of Unbreakable Bond,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Melanie Harlow, author of Hideaway Heart,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Preorder Sarah’s Knockout at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books,
at your local independent bookstore, or signed with goodies and
special edition Fated Mates stickers from her
local independent bookstore, WORD in Brooklyn.
S05.46: Fast, Incendiary, Burns: Romance Novels that Start with a Bang!
It’s a million degrees and no one has time for slow burns right now, y’all. This week, we’re talking books that start with a bang — and we mean literally. We talk about how difficult it is to thread the needle on romance that starts with sex, about the tropes that lend themselves to this particular theme, about sex work, one night stands, about erotic romance vs. romance, and about how pulling this set up off takes masterful skill with character. There are so many great books for you in here. Enjoy!
After Sarah’s Knockout (preorder it signed, with exclusive FM swag, from her local bookstore), our next read along will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Jen using the phrase “fast, incendiary burn” to refer to books that start with a bang dates all the way back to season 2. The Twitter thread where Funmi compared slow burns to crockpots is here. If I could figure out how to save it (screenshots, I guess, sigh), I would.
We had Nikki Sloane on to talk about taboo romance, but we also like Jennifer Porter’s definition of erotic romance from a 2019 twitter thread, where she said, “I don't think the sexual relationship has to be the conflict. But sex/sexual interaction/etc has to be critical to the development of the relationship….I think their has to be some type of sexual journey for the main characters for a book to be erotic romance…Ultimately, if there is sex in a romance, it should be important to the couple's journey, but maybe in erotic romance, the main characters need to have a sexual or erotic journey of some sort.”
Knockout arrives on August 22! Join Sarah at her NYC launch party (a real party!) and meet new friends at a romance-specific hang on August 24th. Tickets and details here.
Take Sarah's Mastering the Art of Great Conflict the week of August 6th. More info here.
Head to Yale University to take Sarah & Adriana's writing romance class, and to hear Fated Mates & The Black Romance Podcast talk about oral history and romance.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Rebecca Hecking, author of The Romance Reader’s Wellness Journal
available now on Amazon.
Find more about Rebecca at rebeccahecking.net
and
Avon Books, publishers of Eloisa James’s new Not That Duke,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books
and your local independent bookstore
Preorder Sarah’s Knockout at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books,
at your local independent bookstore, or signed with goodies and
special edition Fated Mates stickers from her
local independent bookstore, WORD in Brooklyn.
S05.45: Emotional Navy SEALs: Divorced Main Characters in Romance Novels
After literal years of requests for this one, we’re finally tackling the divorced main characters in romance! We talk about romance between grown ups, about bad exes and good ones, about marriages that were mistakes and ones that help characters learn. This one is full of contemporaries and historicals, and you definitely don’t want to miss it.
After Sarah’s Knockout (preorder it signed, with exclusive FM swag, from her local bookstore), our next read along, the first of Season Six, will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Jen saw Beyonce for the Renaissance Tour at Solder Field this week for the Renaissance Tour, and also Barbie and Oppenheimer, although not on the same day, so not the full Barbenheimer experience.
Divorce is becoming less common in America, but it might not be a good thing.
A folder with PDFs of this week's articles.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Andie James, author of Lost and Found by the Duke,
available in print and ebook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Delphine Ross, author of The Poetics of Passion,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books
and your local independent bookstore
S05.44: New Romance Novels For Summer 2023
Today, we’re talking about books we’re excited about this Summer! We’re toppling TBRs with books you can get now, books you can preorder, books that are terrific beach reads, books that gave us big feelings, and books that made us really very happy. Enjoy!
For the readers in the group, preorder Sarah’s book, Knockout, now. For the writers in the group, register for her conflict class, at her website.
Our next read along, the first of Season Six, will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsored By
Alyxandra Harvey, author of The Duchess Games,
available in print and audio, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
use the code FATEDMATES for free shipping and 30% off your order
S05.43: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer with Christina and Lauren
We go back to the OG DNA of the contemporary boom of the early 2010s today, with a read along of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, with fabulous fan fic writers turned brilliant romance novelists, Christina Lauren. Christina and Lauren talk about the way the books inspired them to write, helped them find a community, and their fated mates (each other). Jen talks about reading Twilight as a middle school teacher, and Sarah talks about never reading it at all…until now.
Within, we’ll talk about characters feeling big feelings, about how Twilight inspired romance novelists across the board, about third acts that go hard, and about how Alice is unquestionably the best character in the whole thing.
Get Christina and Lauren’s most recent book, The True Love Experiment, wherever books are sold, and this week from Bookshop.org, where you get free shipping and help your local independent bookstore.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome back Christina and Lauren! After listening to them talk about Twilight, don’t forget to pick up their latest book, The True Love Experiment. We’ve had Christina and Lauren on a bunch of times to talk about FanFic, The Soulmate Equation, and the forced proximity trope.
Not sure of the exact article that Lo read about brain scans and married couples, but this seems like a good overview.
And a selection of some of our favorite articles about Twilight:
From The Atlantic: At Its Core, the ‘Twilight’ Saga Is a Story About
From Entertainment Weekly: The Twilight Effect
From The New York Times: Love and Pain and the Teenage Vampire Thing
From Slate: All 349 “Murmurs” in the Twilight Saga, Charted and Ranked
From Salon: Meet the Twilight Dildo Inventor
From Vogue: 56 Thoughts I had While Rewatching Twilight
From Vulture: The Most Horrific Twilight Character Backstories, Ranked by Absurdity and a video about The Rise and Fall of the Vampire Romance Craze in Film and TV.
A Google Folder with PDFs of this week's articles.
The Twilight Series
Sponsored By
Alyxandra Harvey, author of The Duchess Games,
available in print and audio, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
use the code FATEDMATES for free shipping and 30% off your order
S05.42: The Bride by Julie Garwood: A Primordial RomCom
We were devastated to learn of the passing of Julie Garwood, honest to God romance doyenne, last month. Garwood installed many of our buttons, and the buttons of so many romance readers who came up reading “The Four J’s,” and, more importantly, paved the way for romcoms with her wonderfully funny historicals. She was, without question, a trailblazer. While we were unable to interview her for our trailblazer series, we couldn’t let her passing go without an episode, so please enjoy our read along of The Bride, which is a nearly perfect book even now, decades after she wrote it.
While our thoughts are with with Julie Garwood’s family, her friends, and the legions of readers she delighted over her long and legendary career, our endless gratitude is with Julie Garwood herself—for the laughter, the sighs, and the absolute bangers that were her books.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
We were devastated to learn about the death of romance great Julie Garwood. You can read her obituaries in the New York Times and the Washington Post. In 2022, Julie Garwood was a guest on the Smart Bitches Trashy Books podcast.
Are we at the end of the usable internet?
A google folder with PDFs of this week's articles.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Trilina Pucci, author of Knot So Lucky,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Jessica Martin, author of The Dane of My Existence,
available now in print, ebook and audio from
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo,
or from your local independent bookseller.
and
The Smut Lovers Conference,
September 21-24 in Orlando, FL
Use the code FATEDMATES for 15% off all available tickets
S05.41 Worldbuilding in Romance Novels
We’re talking about worldbuilding this week, and you’re getting a glimpse into Jen and Sarah’s everyday non-podcasting romance chatter.
This one is for everyone — we talk about paranormal and historical romance, about what we think fantasy means when it comes to romance, and (most importantly) about how contemporary romance just might require the most worldbuilding of all of it?
Separately, Eric points out the irony of us referring to “two people in a phone booth” in an episode where we talk about how kids today don’t know about cassette tapes.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Donald Trump was indicted and was storing his documents, including some with nuclear secrets, in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.
Thread by Angus Johnson about ChatGPT and writing, which was in response to this article at PW about how AI will soon replace editors.
Sarah’s editor Carrie Feron says, “Your opening has to tell a story and leave the reader asking a question.”
A classic reaction video from Tim and Fred Williams to In the Air Tonight, Questlove was nervous about In the Air Tonight, and a terrific episode of Hit Parade about how Phil Collins changed the sound of drumming.
NPR did a terrific piece about Kennedy Ryan and why she’s so big right now, and we were briefly interviewed talking about her legacy.
Jen tries to make as many of those links as possible into PDFs! Thinking of you in the future times, wondering wtf we were talking about.
Books Mentioned in this Episode
Sponsors
Victoria Lum, author of The Coldest Passion,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Avery Flynn, author of Anger Bang,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES for free shipping and 30% your order
S05.40: STEM Heroines in Romance Novels
It’s heroines in science week here at Fated Mates! STEM heroines are having a resurgence in romance, in no small part because of the rise of “STEMinist romcoms” (citation: Ali Hazelwood and Elena Armas), but we’re talking about everything from astronauts and archeologists to explosives experts and healers and we’ve got a list of books we love throughout romance history. That, and we already talked about The Love Hypothesis earlier this season, so we’re filling your TBR with books you might not have found already. You’ll find historicals, contemporaries, and paranormals on this episode — pick your pleasure!
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
The Canadian wildfires have been exceptionally bad this year, and here’s why.
Climate change continues to impact the way we live now, including announcements from State Farm and other insurance companies that they will not be writing new homeowner’s insurance policies in CA. This was already happening in Florida.
What is a portmanteau?
What is a bluestocking?
A link to our episode recommending read-alikes for The Love Hypothesis, including some other recommendations for STEM heroines.
On Variety’s Actors on Acting series, Ellen Pompeo talked about how humiliating she thought it was to give the “pick me” speech.
A link to a folder with PDFs of links in this week's show notes.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Cara Dion, author of Undeniable,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
Sonia Hartl, author of A Touch Magical,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
S05.39: Trailblazer Mary Balogh
The Trailblazers conversations continue this week with historical romance juggernaut Mary Balogh, whose decades-long career has shaped the Regency romance in both category and single title. We talk about historical accuracy, about research, about love, about staying true to your voice and your purpose, and about who Mary Balogh thinks is writing at the top of the game (spoiler: we agree).
We are so grateful to Mary Balogh for making time for us, and for her beautiful books.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome trailblazer author Mary Balogh. She has written over 80 bestsellers and 37 of her books have been New York Times Bestsellers. Her forthcoming book, Remember Me, will be released next week on June 20, 2023. Preorder now!
Authors Mentioned Catherine Coulter, Barbara Hazard, Edith Layton, Joan Wolf, Mary Jo Putney, Joan Johnson, Jo Beverley
Publishing Professionals Hilary Ross at Harlequin and Claire Zion at Berkley.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Megan Frampton, author of His Study in Scandal,
available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo
and your local independent bookseller.
and
Stephanie Rose, author of The Marriage Solution,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
S05.38: Prologues & Epilogues in Romance
It’s hard to believe it’s taken us this long to do a prologue and epilogue episode! We talk about beginnings and endings and why they exist and why writers should ignore every piece of broad strokes nonsense advice people want to throw at them. Jen says “Prologues are plot and epilogues are character,” and blows Sarah’s mind with her genius (jk, Sarah already knew she was a genius). And yes, we talk about babies. Fair warning!
This interstitial idea came from the Fated Mates Discord, which all of our patrons have access to. Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
You know, Animal Farm is a good book and King Lear is a good play.
There is a very cute family of foxes living in Chicago’s Millennium Park
Apparently this dogs and rosetone thing is a known issue.
Here is an example of the hardline “Prologues are Bad” stance. || ed note: I’m not mad about it, since I have some known hardline stances myself. Ahem. ||
Our list of things good romance prologues do: provide needed backstory, historical information, an inciting incident in the past, an unusual set-up, and showcasing the relationship between the primary characters.
Our list of things romance epilogues do: fan service, bringing the whole gang back together in a series,providing a glimpse into the other character’s POV, The HEA fulfilled, the babylogue, and surprise motherfuckers!
A link to a folder with PDFs of links in show notes.
Books Mentioned this Episode
Sponsors
Adriana Herrera, author of An Island Princess Starts a Scandal,
available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo
and your local independent bookseller.
and
Juniper Butterworth, author of Bewitched,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
The Noveltea Shelf Assured Book Box,
available at novelteabooks.co
S05.37: Fated Mates Live
In March, we had the absolute best time with some of our favorite people at Fated Mates LIVE in Brooklyn! Here, for your enjoyment, is the recording of the wacky, wild night, which we spent with 250 Magnificent Firebirds, including: Tessa Bailey, Andie Christopher, Adriana Herrera and Joanna Shupe, who took the opportunity to announce that evening that she also writes mafia romance as Mila Finelli (*GASP!*)!
We cannot stress this enough: Headphones in!
We were also joined by Amanda Litman, the co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, and by Erin Leafe, the host of our sister podcast, Learning the Tropes! Special shout out to Producer Pat from Learning the Tropes, who helped Eric get the whole event recorded beautifully. You can read more about the whole event at Brooklyn Magazine! [PDF here]
We’re approximating the experience of Fated Mates Live every day over on the Fated Mates Discord, which you can access by becoming a Patron of the podcast! Find out more at: fatedmates.net/patreon.
Books By Our Guests
Books Recommended By Our Guests
S05.36: The Best Kisses in Romance
We’re talking kissing today! So simple and so powerful, there’s no doubt that that first kiss in romance is always an important one. This episode was inspired by our recent readalong of Her Best Worst Mistake, but we talk about some other great books (most of which we’ve talked about before) with truly excellent kisses. Enjoy…and tell us about your favorite kisses in books, movies, tv shows…wherever you get your superior smooching.
We have a Patreon now, and it comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Kissing is the best, and we are obsessed with the first kisses from the following movies and TV shows: Maddie and David from Moonlighting, lots of Angel and Buffy kissing, jump in the wayback machine for Sam and Diane from Cheers, and more recently Jim and Pam from The Office.
The first gay kiss on network TV was on LA Law back in 1991.
In the 80s and 90s, we imprinted hard on movies with great kissing scenes: The primordial kiss that was Han Solo and Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, the “No Kissing on the Mouth” from Pretty Woman and Jen forgot to mention another 90s classic, Poetic Justice with Tupac and Janet Jackson. Hello to that last scene from Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore. People have made entire YouTube videos of great movie kisses.
Why did people use a metaphor about [“Rounding the bases”][11] to discuss sex back in the day? Who knows!
Most of today's links are YouTube videos, but here are PDFs of the things that are text-based links. [11]: https://www.glamour.com/story/lets-settle-this-baseball-and
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Meghan Quinn, author of Royally in Trouble,
available from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
and
Megan Frampton, author of His Study in Scandal,
available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo
and your local independent bookseller.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S05.35: Trailblazer Loretta Chase
The Trailblazers conversations continue this week with the brilliantly talented Loretta Chase, who we adore, and not only because she wrote one of our favorite romances of all time. We obviously talk about Lord of Scoundrels and Jessica and Dain, but we also talk about writing, about the challenges of writer’s block, about the glorious rabbit holes of research, and yes…we ask hard hitting questions about The Mummy. We are so grateful to Loretta for making time for us, and for writing such glorious books.
If you are in New England, you can meet Loretta and Sarah at the Ashland Public Library Romance Festival this Saturday, May 20th in Ashland, MA. Attendance is free! Learn more and register at Eventbrite.
We have a Patreon now, and it comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome author Loretta Chase, author of over 20 historical romance novels. We did a deep dive on Lord of Scoundrels back in season 2.
Authors mentioned: Jayne Ann Krentz writing as Amanda Quick, Susan Holloway Scott, Mary Jo Putney, and Caroline Linden.
Publishing Professionals: Gail Fortune at Berkley, Walker & Co. Publishers and editor Ellen Edwards
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Desirée Niccoli, author of Called to the Deep and Song of Lorelei,
both available for $0.99 this week in celebration of MerMay
and
Avery Maxwell, author of Your Last First Kiss,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Loretta Chase 00:00:00 / #: The main thing about that book was that it was in me. I did not have to find it. It was there and it was demanding to be written. The characters were in my mind very clearly from the beginning, and that never happens. I'm always struggling. I'm always fumbling. It takes me a while to get to know who they are and what do they want and what's the goal, et cetera, et cetera. In this case, it was all very clear to me. The main thing I saw in the beginning was this child who had had this horrible, horrible childhood, badly traumatized, that turned him into this person who's a sort of monstrous. And I thought, what do you do for this person, or what's needed here for some kind of a balance?
00:01:02 / #: And the heroine was there instantly. It was like, okay, she's someone who just gets it. She gets the thinking, she gets the guy thinking, she gets whatever it is. And why is she that way? Because she grew up with boys all the time, and she's just smart and paying attention. I needed someone who could see through him, and Jessica just came to my mind. So they really formed in themselves on the stage, and the rest of it, the rest of that book, I know it sounds mystical and it's like writers shouldn't wait for this to happen because it doesn't usually, but it just wrote itself. It was like a movie and all I had to do was write it.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:47 / #: That was the voice of Loretta Chase, author of Regency Romances single title Historical Romances, and as everyone knows, Lord Of Scoundrels. This is Fated Mates. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:08 / #: And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. You are about to hear our trailblazer episode with Loretta, where she talks about how she came to writing romance, her research process, and why she believes in historical research and folding it so well into her books and her life in romance.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:32 / #: And how it is that Lord of Sundress came to be. Without further ado, let's get into it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:44 / #: Here we are with the Loretta Chase. I'm just going to make words now, just they're going to flow out of me in a rush, because I'm so overwhelmed.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:52 / #: Loretta, we are so thrilled to have you.
Loretta Chase 00:02:56 / #: Oh, thank you for having me.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:58 / #: It's a delight. I don't know that you know this, but we are avowed Loretta Chase fans here at the podcast. We reference your characters all the time.
Loretta Chase 00:03:09 / #: Oh, thank you.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:11 / #: And of course, we've talked a lot about Lord of Scoundrels, so I'm sure we'll get into that as well. But in general, I'm just so thrilled to have you here. Thank you.
Loretta Chase 00:03:20 / #: I feel honored to be here, because I know about your podcast and I think it's just very cool.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:26 / #: Thank you. So we start all of these conversations the same way, and that is to say, how did you come to this genre?
Loretta Chase 00:03:36 / #: I came in a very weird way because I was never a romance reader. My mind was poisoned by my English professors, so I thought very scornfully of romance. And the way I came to it was after I had been writing professionally, and my husband said to me, "Do you want to write video scripts for the rest of your life? What do you really want to do?" And eventually, after much weeping, I admitted that I wanted to write a novel, but I had never been able to. I would write and write and write, and it just went on forever and it didn't have a story, and it didn't make any sense.
00:04:23 / #: And I realized just in that conversation, I made the connection with what I was doing in video and what could be done in a novel. And I realized all I needed was structure. So when you're writing scripts for video, you have a specific structure, you have a message that you want to get across. And I would always ask the clients, "What's the message? Can you tell me in one sentence what you want the audience to come away with?" And I realized the genre fiction does that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:54 / #: It sure does, bless.
Loretta Chase 00:04:55 / #: Yes. So I'm looking at mystery. I'm looking at science fiction. I'm looking at various genres, but it was like, oh, wait a minute, love stories. That's the part of the books that I really like, and maybe that's where I should be working. And yeah, love conquers all. Yes, please. Because it doesn't, in so many of the classic novels, the women are victimized. They die if they have sex. And so, I thought, oh, well, this is a great way to correct that. And I have a structure. I have a structure. I have something I like, which is a love story. And that gave me my start, and it worked nicely.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:47 / #: When you talk about the books or the parts of the books that you always love, the love story, what were you reading before you came to the genre?
Loretta Chase 00:05:59 / #: Well, a good example would be like Charles Dickens, Bleak House. All right. So there's Lady Dedlock and she's had an illegitimate child, and there's no forgiveness for her, she has to die. Anna Karenina, she has an affair, she has to die. Women who follow their sexual inclinations or fall in love outside of the norms of the time, they're punished. And I wanted to rewrite those stories. So actually, I did that with one of mine, not quite a lady, I took Lady Dedlock story as a starting point and said, "Okay, here's a person who had a child out of wedlock. It was kept a big secret, but she's going to have a happy ending."
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:52 / #: So at some point, did you read romance as research, or did you just-
Loretta Chase 00:06:57 / #: Oh, yes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:58 / #: Okay. So I mean, once you decided, wait, I might want to write this, did that happen concurrently or did you stop and think, okay, I'm going to give myself permission to read these books now?
Loretta Chase 00:07:09 / #: I approached it the way I would've approached a project in an English class. I started doing the research.
Sarah MacLean 00:07:15 / #: Do the reading, Loretta.
Loretta Chase 00:07:19 / #: Yes, exactly. So I read maybe hundreds of romances because I was also looking to find where would I fit. So at that time, there was Kathleen Woodiwiss and Johanna Lindsey, and they wrote those big sprawling romances, and I didn't think that was me. And then, I encountered the traditional regencies and I thought, oh, this is perfect. This is a time period I'm very interested in. I love the witty banter. And it was like there were smaller books, so I felt like I could handle that for my first thing. So that was how I ended up there. But there was a lot of research before I actually started trying to write a book.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:14 / #: Your first books are traditional regencies and they're category regencies, right?
Loretta Chase 00:08:20 / #: Right. I wrote for Walker & Company.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:24 / #: Now, wait, that's a name we haven't talked about at all.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:27 / #: I know. I don't don't think we've ever talked about that.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:28 / #: What is that?
Loretta Chase 00:08:30 / #: Wow. When I started writing, there were so many places that were publishing regencies. There were so many lines. I made a big list and I went with Walker because they published hard cover, and I thought that was cool, but I was not expecting to be accepted. That was my thing. And they accepted the book.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:53 / #: So this is Isabella?
Loretta Chase 00:08:55 / #: Yes, yes. And then, I later discovered it was primarily they were publishing for libraries. And that worked out fine because my agent ended up selling the paperback rights to Avon. And it was through Avon that I met my editor, Ellen Edwards, and she was the person who got me to write historical romance, longer books.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:21 / #: How many books did you do with Walker?
Loretta Chase 00:09:24 / #: Six.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:25 / #: Okay. Walker was publishing the hardcovers, and Avon was publishing the paperbacks?
Loretta Chase 00:09:29 / #: Mostly, except for one book. I think Fawcett had published one book. The rest of it were Avon.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:35 / #: And Ellen was always your editor at Avon?
Loretta Chase 00:09:39 / #: Yes, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:40 / #: So obviously Ellen Edwards is a name that we have talked about before and heard many people talk about. Can you give us a sense of what that editorial relationship was like with Ellen? Because it does feel like she had a really special eye.
Loretta Chase 00:09:57 / #: Oh, my gosh. She was amazing. I loved her so much. She would write a little note, three words in the margins, and a whole idea would open up for me, or I would see how I had gone astray. But she wouldn't say, "You've gone astray." She would just ask a little question. And she was so perceptive. When she invited me to write historical romance, I said, I don't think I can do that. I don't think I can write those big books. And she said, "It's just like what you're doing only bigger." And then she said, "Read Laura Kinsale."
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:41 / #: Oh, sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:44 / #: A perfect beginning for you, yeah.
Loretta Chase 00:10:46 / #: Yes. So she knew that I would connect with what Laura Kinsale was writing, and she was absolutely right. She was just so insightful. I can't say enough about her. I think she was a fabulous editor.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:02 / #: So you moved from Walker over to Avon for single titles, and that's the early '90s?
Loretta Chase 00:11:11 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:11 / #: Yeah. And that's sort of what we always clock here as the heyday of there was a really, or maybe not the heyday, but there was a really remarkable sea change in historical right then in the early '90s. And it was led largely by, it seems like Ellen there. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what was going on during that time period. Did it feel like readers were just drawn to historicals? Now, we look back and we say, "Okay, well, Ellen, she'd acquired you and you put out Lord of Scoundrels," which we'll get to. And then she acquired Beverly Jenkins, who was doing what Bev does over there. And Lisa Kleypas' books from the early '90s really were changing the game. And was there something?
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:06 / #: Was there in the water?
Loretta Chase 00:12:10 / #: I'm not sure, but there was something else. I mean, Avon wasn't the only place. This is the interesting thing. A lot of the friends that I made early on were writing regencies for Signet, and then Signet started doing what they were calling Super Regencies, so it was like the traditional Regency, but a bigger story, more sex. And that's a lot similar to what was going on at Avon, although Avon's weren't quite so much in that Regency, not precisely in that Regency mode. So there was definitely something going on in other places. It was just that-
Sarah MacLean 00:12:45 / #: Across the board?
Loretta Chase 00:12:46 / #: Yes, yes. And that Regency sensibility, I think was, for some reason, it ebbs and flows. I've been around for so long because I'm so ancient that I see these ebbs and flows of what people are reading and what they're not reading. I really can't account for it. It's hard to account for what happens with tastes. And I'm not that analytical to begin with. I write what I write and cross my fingers. That's okay.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:20 / #: If you had six books before, oh my God, I've already spaced on the name of that-
Loretta Chase 00:13:25 / #: Walker.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:26 / #: Walker.
Loretta Chase 00:13:27 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:27 / #: Does that mean Lord of Scoundrels was the first Avon book? I'm sort of looking at FictionDB, but it maybe-
Sarah MacLean 00:13:35 / #: No, it was The Lion's Daughter, right?
Loretta Chase 00:13:36 / #: The Lion's Daughter, and then Captives of the Night. And I've always forgotten to tell this story about that transition, but right around the time, I think when I had written Captives of the Night, Jayne Ann Krentz started writing as Amanda Quick, and I think she sort of triggered a sea change in the way we were approaching historical romances because she came with that contemporary romance sensibility, and she was writing romantic suspense.
00:14:15 / #: And when she turned to writing these historical sort of Regency Victorian set, they had that feel to them, and they weren't quite the sprawling books that we were working on at that time. And I'm sure that fed into my thinking when I was writing Lord of Scoundrels, because it's quite a different book from Captives of the Night and The Lion's Daughter. And I think that's part of it was that influence of, wow, this is another way to do this. And there are things that you absorbed by osmosis. And it was only, I mean, actually really, the other day when I was thinking about that, that I remembered about Jayne Ann Krentz and that Amanda Quick thing and how that seemed to have changed things.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:09 / #: I vividly remember as a reader reading Amanda Quick and feeling like this was different. I could tell it was different. And I just was so drawn to those books. And it's not that I didn't love, I of course loved it all, but I vividly remember really feeling like everything about those books was different. And so, it doesn't surprise me to know that that was apparent to the authors at the time as well. New rules almost, for what could be done.
Loretta Chase 00:15:40 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:42 / #: It felt like heroines especially were shifting at the time.
Loretta Chase 00:15:46 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:47 / #: Amanda Quick brought a very different kind of heroine to the Regency.
Loretta Chase 00:15:51 / #: Yes, absolutely. And it was more clearly feminist and more clearly aware of differences in communication between women and men, and addressed some really interesting aspects of male-female relationships that I did not feel as though we had or I was dealing with anyway, in my earlier books necessarily. And then, I started reading some other things. One of the books that was very influential was You Just Don't Understand.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:28 / #: Oh yeah, I remember that. Sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:30 / #: I don't remember that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:34 / #: It was like a pop culture kind of psychology book.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:38 / #: I see. Women and men in conversation.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:39 / #: About women and men in conversation. And it was like the first time I was ever, and this was when I was in college. I was in college from 1991 to 1995, and it was this take, I remember about topping people when you're talking and someone comes along and just talks over you, which I feel like I'm kind of doing now. Sorry, everybody. And it was really a real take at this is how people communicate differently based on how essentially they were raised in their gender identity.
Loretta Chase 00:17:12 / #: So that was very enlightening. And then, that also led to my having conversations with my husband about that, about communication styles. So I think that also influenced the way I dealt with the relationships in my stories.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:27 / #: This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Desirée Niccoli, author of the Haven Cove duology, Called to the Deep, book one, and the Song of Lorelei, book two.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:39 / #: Jen, did you know that in many circles, it is not in fact the month of May. It's the month of Mermay.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:47 / #: Amazing. I feel better for knowing this.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:50 / #: Listen, if you're out there and you are enjoying all the drawings of mermaids that are being posted on social media and all the talk about mermaids that's happening, and you're just cannot wait for this new live action Disney movie, we have the series for you. This one is pretty delicious. And I use that word intentionally because it features Killian Quinn, the captain of an offshore fishing boat that receives a distress call from a sailing ship in a terrible storm early in the book in the Duology. He and his crew head out. They make a big save, they save the crew. And a woman who does not know who she is and has no knowledge of how she got on the boat, turns out this is Lorelei Roth who is not just a normal woman, she is actually a mermaid. And in the world building of this series, mermaids eat people.
Jennifer Prokop 00:18:49 / #: I'm not even mad about it.
Sarah MacLean 00:18:50 / #: Listen, at one point in the blurb it says, "The handsome captain begins to look like a tasty snack in more ways than one."
Jennifer Prokop 00:18:59 / #: Perfect. No notes.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:00 / #: Are they going to get together? What happens when he finds out she's a flesh eating mermaid? Does she eat him and not, I mean, I'm sure-
Jennifer Prokop 00:19:09 / #: Sure. We all know what you're about to say. Here's the thing, everybody, in celebration of Mermay, you can get both books in the Haven Cove duology between May 15th and May 22nd for only 99 cents wherever you buy your eBooks. It's also available in print. Thanks to Desiree for sponsoring this week's episode.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:29 / #: And happy Mermay to all who celebrate. So Ellen brings you over to do these kind of single titles for Avon. You write two, and then you write Lord of Scoundrels, and let's get into it. I mean, because we have to. Tell us about the writing of it, the conception of it, and then because you say, "Well, they weren't like these big sprawling books from before," but Lord of Scoundrels is a epic store. I mean, it covers a lot of ground. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how it came to be.
Loretta Chase 00:20:15 / #: Okay, I had to make myself some notes about this because-
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:19 / #: Long time ago.
Loretta Chase 00:20:22 / #: Well, yes, long time ago, and I write intuitively, so I'm not quite sure what I'm doing most of the time. There were some things that fed into that, but the main thing about that book was that it was in me. I did not have to find it. It was there and it was demanding to be written. The characters were in my mind very clearly from the beginning, and that never happens. I'm always struggling. I'm always fumbling. It takes me a while to get to know who they are and what do they want and what's the goal, et cetera, et cetera. In this case, it was all very clear to me.
00:21:08 / #: The main thing I saw in the beginning was this child who had had this horrible, horrible childhood, badly traumatized, that turned him into this person who's sort of monstrous. And I thought, what do you do for this person or what's needed here for some kind of a balance? And the heroine was there instantly. It was like, okay, she's someone who just gets it. She gets the thinking, she gets the guy thinking, she gets whatever it is, and why is she that way? Because she grew up with boys all the time, and she's just smart and paying attention. So I needed someone who could see through him, and Jessica just came to my mind as... So they really formed in themselves on the stage. And the rest of that book, I know it sounds mystical, and it's like writers shouldn't wait for this to happen because it doesn't usually, but it just wrote itself. It was like a movie, and all I had to do was write it.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:22 / #: That's how it feels.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:24 / #: It is how it feels reading it.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:25 / #: When you read it, you just feel like it's just perfection.
Loretta Chase 00:22:29 / #: Thank you. But I consider it a gift. I got a gift from the writing gods with that book.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:38 / #: You were talking about Dain's like trauma, right?
Loretta Chase 00:22:41 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:41 / #: So what's interesting to me about that is I think a lot of people kind of, I don't know, write about trauma without doing a lot of research on trauma. And at one point, we have a friend who is an expert on trauma, and she was like, "This book does it so perfectly." I mean, was that part also intuitive, or was that something where you really did think like how can I write about his trauma? I mean, I don't know, maybe it all was mystical, but it's hard, I think, to write about traumatized characters without feeling like you're taking advantage of traumatized people. I don't know if that makes sense.
Loretta Chase 00:23:22 / #: It's an empathetic thing, and it's also, if you look back at your own childhood and the way children treat one another, that wasn't so hard for me. I knew quite a bit, I had done quite a bit of research, so I understood about the bullying at Eton, and it wasn't that hard to imagine a child who's been rejected by his family and has dealt with abandonment. I think it was just, I don't know, this is something that writers do. You try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, or you think back to your own childhood and maybe your friends, what happened to them or things you saw in the playground. You're drawing on all of that. So it wasn't as though I studied trauma, I was just imagining, trying to imagine what kind of torturous childhood would make a person just shut everything off.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:32 / #: So obviously, this book struck a chord across romance. I mean, it is a book that was talked about then, it continues to be talked about. It is on every list. It is a book that is held up by so many of us, including us as the best of it, the best of the genre. And I wonder if you could speak to the reception at the time, and it sounds like it was electric for you in the writing, but what happened after?
Loretta Chase 00:25:08 / #: Well, that's what's so funny, it's like when I wrote it, I felt, and I said this to Ellen, I said, "I think this is a pretty strong book."
Sarah MacLean 00:25:19 / #: Sure. That sounds exactly right. I mean, writers are always like, "I think it's okay."
Loretta Chase 00:25:25 / #: And the thing about Ellen-
Sarah MacLean 00:25:27 / #: Oh God, I loved her so much.
Loretta Chase 00:25:29 / #: She used to write 40-page notes on your books, which no one has time to do anymore.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:37 / #: Whoa.
Loretta Chase 00:25:37 / #: But they were so wonderful. Well, she had two little notes on this book. That was it. For Ellen, that never happened, that never happened. So I felt like, okay, this book really holds together, so that was great. But in terms of reception, they sent it out for blurbs, and I got really nice blurbs from various writers, but the book didn't take off or anything. It was just, it did okay. And then, it did win an RWA RITA, but that book took 12 years to earn out its advance.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:19 / #: Oh, wow.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:19 / #: Wow. Really?
Loretta Chase 00:26:21 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:23 / #: And it just was the little engine that could, or did something happen that-
Loretta Chase 00:26:28 / #: I don't know. It started appearing on that All About Romance List as a top book. And then, I think that it might've been really, a lot of word of mouth started so more and more people started reading the book and then it built up momentum. But initially, it was no big deal.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:51 / #: It was just a very good book.
Loretta Chase 00:26:55 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:56 / #: I'm not surprised by it, because I think one of the fascinating things about romance readers, and we've talked about this before, is there are books I love when I read them, but I never want to revisit them. And then, there are books that grow on me over time, and I think that maybe there's something special about romance in that way. And so, it doesn't necessarily surprise me because there are books that when I first read them, I'm like, "It was okay." And then I'm like, "Wait, why have I reread that book now seven times?"
00:27:29 / #: So it surprises me the way things have a hold. I don't know, like a romance, the keeper shelf is no joke. And I think that the cumulative effect of it being on the keeper shelf for so many people, that word of mouth is really powerful. I mean, when I first started talking to people openly about liking romance, I would say to them, they would ask for recommendations. And I'll be like, "I have two for you. And one's historical, one's contemporary. And if you don't like either of them, then you don't like romance." Which you guys, that seems dramatic, but that's what I would tell people. And it was Lord of Scoundrels and Bet Me by Jenny Crusie.
Loretta Chase 00:28:11 / #: Oh, that book. Yes, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:14 / #: Just like terrific.
Jennifer Prokop 00:28:15 / #: These books are what romance is all about. And if you don't like them, then you don't like romance. And that's okay, more for me.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:23 / #: But I also think there's something too, Jessica, I mean, not to keep coming back to the heroines, but I feel like Jessica Trent holds up however many years later, we don't need to count them, Loretta, but I feel like we read Lord of Scoundrels for one of our deep dive episodes a couple of years ago, and did a big episode on it. And if Jessica walked off the page of Lord of Scoundrels right now and walked into a modern historical written this year, she remains as relevant, as amazing, as aspirational as any heroine ever. And I think that is a hallmark of a book that just will forever be one that we hold up. But I'm fascinated to hear that it took 12 years to earn out. Wow.
Loretta Chase 00:29:32 / #: Yep.
Sarah MacLean 00:29:32 / #: Okay. So you've written what is arguably, I mean, not here arguably, but arguably the greatest romance of all time, but we still have to, it hasn't earned out, so you still have to make a living. And I want to talk a little bit here. I think this is a good place to talk about it, because one of the things that we have loved, or that I have loved about your books over the years forever is how much research goes into them, how much love and care you give the worlds that you create. You used to have a blog that I loved very much called Two Nerdy History Girls, which you had with your friend, whose name is now escaping me.
Loretta Chase 00:30:14 / #: Susan Holloway Scott.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:16 / #: Yes. And in that blog, you used to tell these great stories about how dark the ballrooms would actually be in romance novels, or the legendary scene from Lord of Scoundrels is that is the glove scene with the button hook. There's so much discussion where a fan, right, or remember the dueling book with the bird pistols?
Loretta Chase 00:30:45 / #: Yes. Yeah, the bird pistols.
Jennifer Prokop 00:30:47 / #: Right. Which has like, wait, this is a real thing. This is fascinating.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:51 / #: And then, my other favorite, Mr. Impossible, all the Egypt stuff. And I do want to know if that came from The Mummy or not, because that is a discussion that comes.
Loretta Chase 00:31:01 / #: Yes. No, it did.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:04 / #: You heard it here.
Loretta Chase 00:31:05 / #: The Mummy absolutely inspired that book, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:09 / #: You just made a lot of people really happy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:11 / #: Exactly. This has been speculation for a long time, and now we have confirmation. Amazing.
Loretta Chase 00:31:18 / #: Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, wait, I can do this. And I always wanted to write about Egypt. I had been so fascinated by that, particularly what happened in the early 19th century and the discoveries that were made then. But I mean, there were these intrepid women who were involved in that discovery. So yeah, I loved doing the research for that. I have way more books than I ever needed to write that book, something like 50 books on Egypt. And no, having them in the library wasn't enough. I had to own them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:55 / #: We support you. Everyone just buy the books they want.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:59 / #: So talk about the research, because I do think that that is one thing that often historical romance novelists get. People don't realize quite how much research goes into the books because it does feel so invisible a lot of the time.
Loretta Chase 00:32:14 / #: Well, the goal is to make it invisible. You read books and books and make tons and tons of notes and look at all these images, and you're digging into historical newspapers and two lines appear on the page that have to do with that topic. But as Susan and I have often said, we really have to understand it. We have to be able to visualize. We have to feel like we're there in order to make the reader feel as though she's there.
00:32:45 / #: And I love it. I love reading the old newspapers, and it's like, this has been one of the fascinating and positive aspects of technology from the time when I first started writing, when we had no access to anything, and trying to find information on the Regency. We're so dependent on what Georgette Heyer wrote and a limited selection of books and memoirs that were not very accurate. And now, we can get primary sources. And I just love that. I love reading the newspaper and finding an event that happened, say, "Oh, wait a minute, I'm going to use that in a story." It's like, I did that in the last book, Ten Things I Hate About The Duke. I read about this fancy fair that was so crowded with people, and people were fainting because it was crowded. I said, "Oh, I have to set a scene there."
Sarah MacLean 00:33:48 / #: So tell us about the research process. As you said, you're an intuitive writer. Are you researching as you go? Do you sort of have a sense of what you're going to tackle in the book? Do you have a file? How does it work?
Loretta Chase 00:34:04 / #: Initially, what I was doing, I was taking, I think it was Stephen King's advice, and I was, or maybe it was Lawrence Block, somebody. I was researching what I needed to know for the scene. But now, and over the last maybe 20 years, I feel as though I need to get some sense of where I'm going to be with the story, what's the location? And then, I sort of build from there. And I kind of like that method better. I like going through the newspapers and looking at what's happening, say in May of 1832, and thinking about what can I do with that, because there are tons of ideas there for me. So now, it's a little more of a little bit some of the work in advance, but then most of the work as I'm writing.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:04 / #: At some point, Mr. Impossible, that series is not with Avon, that is with Berkeley.
Loretta Chase 00:35:12 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:12 / #: Right. So what happens in that world? How does the shift happen?
Loretta Chase 00:35:21 / #: Well, what happened was I finished The Last Hellion, and I had writer's block. My father had died, and I didn't realize that that was what was going on. It was grief. And I had very bad writer's block, and I couldn't write. And I bought back my contract, and I did not think I was going to write another novel.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:48 / #: Oh, my gosh.
Loretta Chase 00:35:50 / #: And then, what I did, I went back to writing video scripts and that sort of thing for a few years. And then, things change in our personal circumstances, and it became necessary for me to actually get a real job. And I've got myself a new agent, and she put me in with Berkeley. There had been an editor there who had been courting me all during my mental block period, because I was still going to conferences, Gail... Oh, I can't remember her name. Anyway, she had been courting me. She said, "Whatever you write, just can I look at it." And so, she ended up being the editor. So I was at Berkeley for a few years, but then she left Berkeley and my agent wasn't really thrilled with how the books were being sold. And so she-
Sarah MacLean 00:36:46 / #: When was that? That had to have been-
Jennifer Prokop 00:36:49 / #: Early 2000s, yeah?
Loretta Chase 00:36:52 / #: It was early 2000s when I went to Berkeley. And then, let's see, so I wrote Miss Wonderful, Mr. Impossible, and Lord Perfect. Oh, and then I had breast cancer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:05 / #: Oh, it's a small other thing.
Loretta Chase 00:37:09 / #: Oh, yeah. So I was finishing that book. I was finishing Lord Perfect when I had breast cancer, and I had to take a little time off from writing. And then, by that time I was getting ready to go back to work, that was when my agent was saying, "I think we can do better at Avon." And Avon welcomed me back. And the last couple of books in that series were through Avon. Some of these things, it's like your personal life messes things up for you or makes them better or whatever, but that's what happened.
Sarah MacLean 00:37:46 / #: Yeah. I want to go back to this intuitive writing piece too, because it feels like we've known each other for a while, and it feels like one of the magical things about your books is that you write them and you write until you're done, and then the book comes out. It feels like you really do honor the text and the story in a way that many of us, because of the way romance works, don't do. So I wonder when you sort of come to a new series or to a new book, are you waiting for inspiration to strike before you start?
Loretta Chase 00:38:31 / #: No. I start writing, and this has to do with my training in art, which my art professor always said, "If you wait for your inspiration to start, you might be waiting forever. Just start doing the work." So I start doing the work, and I find my way in the course of doing the work. So sometimes, I've been able to write a nice long outline, and that works beautifully, and that did work beautifully for me for a number of books. Other times, I just have to do it by the seat of my pants, because that's the way the book wants to be written, so I have to do whatever. It's hard to say, again, intuitive. I'm doing whatever is working at the time.
00:39:21 / #: And lately, it seems to be sit down, start writing, see where it goes, figure out the things as you go along, and then it's like go back and make it come together. So it's a construction process. It's not linear at all. And I don't think my mind really is linear. And I don't think even my earlier books were all that linear, but I was able to work out plots in advance in a way that made my life much easier. But I just can't do that lately.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:54 / #: No. I mean-
Loretta Chase 00:39:55 / #: I wish I could.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:55 / #: I'm the same way.
Loretta Chase 00:39:56 / #: But I can't.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:57 / #: Have to.
Loretta Chase 00:39:59 / #: Yeah, you have a vague idea of what you want to do. It was like when I did The Dressmaker Series, for instance, I thought, all right, I'd like to have three sisters. I have some idea of what they're trying to accomplish. I know what they want to do. They want to rule the world. And then, it would be a matter of figuring out, okay, who are they? What are the differences between them? And then, the plots start coming together, but they arise very much out of the characters. So if I don't know the characters, I can't get a story. I would love to be able to write a plot and have the story go with it. Never.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:44 / #: Does that happen for anyone?
Loretta Chase 00:40:46 / #: Never.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:46 / #: I don't believe it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:49 / #: I think character is really king in romance. I think that's, for me, at least as a reader, I feel like when people start with a plot, sometimes I'm like, yeah, but why are these characters here? Right. Wait, yeah, that's not enough. I need to really believe that how they got there.
Loretta Chase 00:41:10 / #: Yeah, they're not puppets.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:13 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Avery Maxwell, author of Your Last First Kiss.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:20 / #: Penny Mulligan is a mess. She has had a disastrous first marriage. She's basically the single mother to three perfect but rowdy boys and an ex-husband who is a bunch of trouble. The only thing she has going for her is the perfect eye candy who shows up bringing coffee to her boss every Wednesday, Dillon Henry. He is just perfect fantasy material, handsome, charming, thoughtful. But she's just not in a place for this.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:51 / #: No. She has three boys and an ex-husband. Nobody has time for new people.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:55 / #: So she is just like, "I'm going to have fantasies about Mr. Wednesday." But then Dillon freaking Henry shows up at her doorstep, and he's totally into her, and he is ready to just figure out a way to take the perfect chaos of her life and turn it into HEA.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:16 / #: Oh, I love it. This is great for anybody who loves a small town romance, for people who are interested in single moms as heroines, friends to lovers, second chance, found family. If you want to read Your Last First Kiss, what a title, you can find it in print or in eBook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thanks as always to Avery Maxwell for sponsoring the episode.
Jennifer Prokop 00:42:49 / #: We talk a lot. I think I know Sarah experiences at a deep level that romance readers connect with the books in such a way that almost everyone we've had on talks about letters they've received from readers. So what do readers tell you about your books?
Loretta Chase 00:43:13 / #: Oh, my gosh. Particularly during COVID, but before, I have had so many messages from people telling me the books help them get through cancer. The books help them get through grief. The books help them get through COVID. And I mean, from the time I started writing romance, I really understood the value. But I think it's had much more of an impact in the last few years of what we do when we write romance. What we're doing for other people when we write romance is we're giving them a place to be where things are, okay, you know it's going to come out right in the end.
00:44:08 / #: And the more difficult the world around you is, the more important it is to have this place where you can go. And I'm all for escapism, and I'm never going to hesitate to say that my books are escapist because they are. And I feel like they should be. Yeah, I've had messages that just made me cry. And I think the last couple of years have been so hard on people that it makes, in my view, romance more important than ever because we're giving them that safe place to be for the time of reading the book.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:52 / #: So you have people who have inspired you over the years, and it sounds like you've had a group of other writers who you've connected with and who love research as much as you. But I wonder if you could talk about who are the people who you have spent who have really kept you going? Because I know that this isn't always an easy job, right?
Loretta Chase 00:45:23 / #: Yeah. Well, Susan Holloway Scott and I have been friends for a million years now, and we talk on the phone a lot. We go to Colonial Williamsburg. We meet up at Colonial Williamsburg almost every year, and she's really important part. She's just been, well, a really good friend, and we can talk. And that's part of the thing too. It was one of the great things I discovered when I started writing romance and I started going to conferences. It's like, oh, wow, I found my tribe. We're talking to other women mostly who are writers, and we're living in that same environment and we're having the same struggles. And that's not something I'm going to be finding in my everyday life. I love my husband, I love my sisters, and I can talk to them about stuff, but not the way you can talk to other writers. So Susan's important.
00:46:27 / #: There have been a lot of people over the years. When I was first starting out, Mary Jo Putney was very, very encouraging to me. She reached out to me, sent me a letter early in my career with my first or second book. There was a little cabal of writers sign, Regency Writers with whom I was friends, and we would get together at conferences. And then, over the years, I've met more people. It's like now I chit-chat with Caroline Linden, so it's evolving. But yeah, that's one of the great things that the great discoveries for me, when I started writing romance, it was finding all these women and they were feminists like me, and we had similar goals, and same kind of fights and the same kinds of... People don't understand what I'm doing, that sort of thing.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:30 / #: Do you feel like that's thing shifting now, or do you feel like we're still getting the same kind of response?
Loretta Chase 00:47:41 / #: I'll tell you, I missed the conferences.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:43 / #: Yeah, me too.
Loretta Chase 00:47:48 / #: It's like, yeah, Zoom is nice, but it's not person to person sitting in the bar or outside a meeting place and hanging out with your friends and talking or meeting new people that way. The personal direct conversations are something I miss very much. I mean, my local writers group, it's like they haven't been able to have a conference because well, once COVID simmered down, and it was possible, it's like, well, we need volunteers and people don't have time and people are overworked. So that's something I... I miss that community, in other words. And with the crash and burn of RWA, that was bad, and romantic times for all the craziness, that was a great way to connect, wasn't it?
Sarah MacLean 00:49:00 / #: It really was. Jen never experienced it. It was a whole ride.
Loretta Chase 00:49:07 / #: So I only did it once, but it was such a trip. I was exhausted afterwards. But it was really wonderful. It was fun.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:15 / #: So this is one of the hard questions, I think, but what do you think is the mark that your books have left on the genre or are continuing to leave on the genre?
Loretta Chase 00:49:35 / #: I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:36 / #: Maybe.
Loretta Chase 00:49:38 / #: I don't know. Someone else would have to tell me what mark they're leaving, because I-
Sarah MacLean 00:49:43 / #: Well, maybe we can try it this way. What do you think is the hallmark of a Loretta Chase novel?
Loretta Chase 00:49:52 / #: Okay. When I first started writing, the one thing that was very, very clear in my mind was that my heroines were going to be strong. They were not going to be victims, so there was that. The second thing was I was never going to write down to my readers. I was always going to assume everyone was smarter than I was. So that's informed what I've done. And then, the other thing is, but the other thing has evolved, which is the research. And I feel as though it's possible for historical romance to get closer to that historical novel approach to research and ground people in the world that you're writing about. But that doesn't mean that it has to be, but that's what I need to do.
00:50:56 / #: So I think it's that the three things is the very strong heroin, the not talking down to people, and the world, trying to create a historical world as close to accurate as I can, but still without violating the trust my readers have that I'm going to keep them in a safe place where things are going to come out right. So I might touch on some ugly aspects of history, but I'm not going to force my readers to live in that because things are crappy enough around them for most people, and that's not what they come to my books for. It's the escape. I want them to have a lovely escape, feel like they're time traveling and dig the heroine the most.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:01 / #: I mean, Sarah and I have both been readers. She's been writing now for-
Sarah MacLean 00:52:05 / #: We don't have to count them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:05 / #: ... however, 20 years, whatever it is. Okay, sorry. We've been reading for a long time. One of our questions is sort of about the ebb and flow of the genre. So how do you think you've seen romance change over time, or do you have thoughts about where you see romance going in the future?
Loretta Chase 00:52:27 / #: There has been ebb and flow for sure, starting out in a world where traditional Regency romances were a big thing, and there are dozens and dozens of lines, and then they kind of lose their popularity. And then, every few years we hear historical romance is dead. So I've heard that a bunch of times, and in fact, I'm hearing it lately.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:53 / #: Me too. But it doesn't die, right?
Loretta Chase 00:52:59 / #: Yeah. It doesn't seem to die. And the readers say they like going there. They want to go there. They want to be transported. They want that time travel aspect. They want to be taken farther away from current reality, and that's what historical romance does. I mean, contemporary romance also takes you away, but there's still that element of the real world's there, and there's some real world things we have to deal with. Whereas my people are going around in their little carriages and they don't know anything about cell phones and YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or any of those things. So it feels like it's an escape to a quieter time.
00:53:49 / #: And I think that, I believe that will continue to be something that people like, people have always read historical books for hundreds of years. They don't always read books that are set in their own time period. So I think that's a continuing interest, but I really am not sure what's going to happen. Things are in an uproar right now. There's a lot of upheaval in the publishing industry, so it's a little puzzling.
00:54:24 / #: In terms of other changes that I have seen, well, there's definitely been one big change for the better, which is when I started out almost pretty much like 99% of the books were by white authors and they were about white people. And now, we have books that have different cultural slants, and we have books that are dealing with different kinds of sexuality. Early in my career, one of my gay friends said to me, "Are there any gay romances?" And I said, "I don't know about any." But now, that's there. So I think those things are great that we have evolved to that point.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:12 / #: So we always like to ask two questions to wrap up. And the first is, which of your books do you hear the most about? Which is the book that readers come to you the most to discuss? And the second is, which is the book that you as the writer feel the most connection to, whatever way that means?
Loretta Chase 00:55:46 / #: Obviously the one I hear the most about is Lord of Scoundrels.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:48 / #: That was an easy, that's a softball.
Loretta Chase 00:55:54 / #: Right. So if we do an in-person thing, and we have a bookstore there and they want to order books, I always have to have Lord of Scoundrels there because people want it. Which is, I mean, that's a gift that people still want to read my book that I wrote a long time ago, particularly in a genre that seems to have such a short shelf life. And in terms of what books I feel the best about or strongest about or love the most or whatever, incredibly proud of Lord of Scoundrels. How can I not be? On the other hand, my favorite book is always the latest book, the one I most recently finished, because I like to feel that I'm getting better as a writer. So I felt very proud of the last two books. I especially felt very proud of Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, and I hope I'm going to feel even better about this next book if I ever get it finished. So my favorite-
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:08 / #: Would you care to talk about that one at all? No pressure.
Loretta Chase 00:57:11 / #: I'm happy to talk about. No, no, it's good.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:13 / #: Jen knows already.
Loretta Chase 00:57:14 / #: People ask.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:15 / #: She's been around me long enough, Loretta. I know I'm like, she knows that these are sticky questions.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:23 / #: I know, exactly. I would never have brought it up if you had not mentioned it first. I just want to put that-
Loretta Chase 00:57:28 / #: Thank you. I appreciate that. But I've done a couple of blog posts because I just get so many. "When's the third book coming out? Is there a third book? What happened to the Blackwoods?" So I had writer's block again. And it started, let's just say there was a political situation going on in the world.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:54 / #: Gosh.
Loretta Chase 00:57:55 / #: That just depressed the daylights out of me and made me crazy, and it was just so incomprehensible, so there was that. And then, in the middle of that comes COVID. And you're thinking, oh wow, this is such a great opportunity. I'm isolated, I can't go anywhere.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:17 / #: No, seems wrong.
Loretta Chase 00:58:17 / #: I'll write a book. Nothing, blank. So I'm sitting in front of the computer every day dutifully, because you don't wait for inspiration, you start writing. And I'm writing every single day, and I'm writing complete garbage, just boring crap day after day after day after day after day. So yeah, that's what happened. And I had to tell my publisher and my agent, I thought, "I'm sorry, I can't deliver. The book's way over." It's like over a year overdue. And I'm just now starting to make it get together, but it's still a struggle. I feel like I'm emerging from the writer's block, but it's not coming the way it should be. So it's been hard. This has been a really tough time. It's not any comfort to know I'm not the only one either. That's no comfort.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:16 / #: I mean, one of the questions, this is a question we get so often, I mean, we writers, and I'm sure you've gotten it a million times, but this question of writer's block, what do you do? How do you come out from underneath it? And now, because you sort of feel like maybe the shroud is being lifted, is there some piece of advice that you have for those of us out here who are also feeling weighted down by the world?
Loretta Chase 00:59:54 / #: I've done a couple of approaches. So the first time I had writer's block, I just walked away and did something completely different, which was writing video scripts. It wasn't all that satisfying, but boy, it pays really well.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:13 / #: Sure, good.
Loretta Chase 01:00:15 / #: But this time, I just felt like I had to keep writing because then I felt like if I didn't keep writing, I would succumb to despair, and I didn't want to go there. So I kept writing. A couple of times, I said, "Okay, I'm going to just stop for two weeks and see if that refreshes my brain. I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go do that." And we have traveled, so refresh the brain. But this time, I've just kept at it. I just keep writing it in the hopes that things will start becoming clear and it's actually working.
01:01:01 / #: The hero and the heroine have very gradually and reluctantly started letting me know who they are and what they want. And so, that's incredibly encouraging to me. And also, it helps if you have someone to talk to that's a trusted professional. And I am very fortunate in my agent and editor, so I can talk to them about things and bounce ideas off them, show the material, and have them come back and give me little bits of inspiration here and there. I think we each have to find our own way out of this. I've heard of people say, "Well, I just walk away for a couple of days and it comes back."
Sarah MacLean 01:01:47 / #: Days?
Loretta Chase 01:01:48 / #: It's like, oh, I'm [inaudible 01:01:50 / #] what happened.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:51 / #: Is that writer's block or is that just like a writer's burp? I mean.
Loretta Chase 01:01:54 / #: Exactly. That's a good analogy. So I think for me right now, what's been working is to just keep writing, just keep writing because I'm a writer. Even if it's crap, it's something, and you never know what's going to come out of it. And that's happened a few times. It was like, I'm writing crap, I'm writing crap, I'm writing... Oh, okay, I can work with this. So that's been the approach. I would not wish this on anybody. It sucks, but there is going to be a book.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:28 / #: Great, we're ready when you are.
Loretta Chase 01:02:30 / #: It's like a terminate. No. I told my agent, I said, "I'm going to write this book. I have to write this book. I need to write this book. I want to write this book." It's going to get written one way or another.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:44 / #: I just want to say this was amazing because I tried to keep my cool the entire time. I want everyone to appreciate that.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:54 / #: If you live in New England or feel like coming to New England, Loretta is going to be at the Ashland Public Library in Massachusetts on Saturday, May 20, 2023, for the RomCon up there. The Ashland Public Library has a great romantic romance novelist event, and it's outdoors, and it's a whole day long, and I'll be there too, and so will Megan Frampton and Caroline Linden, so historical writers. And Sandra Kitt will be there too, who was also a trailblazer. So you can join us there. We'll put ticket information in show notes for everyone, but you can get your copies of all your favorite Loretta Chase books signed.
Loretta Chase 01:03:40 / #: Yes, I'm looking forward to that. I did it last fall and it was so fabulous.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:44 / #: I'm looking forward to it too.
Loretta Chase 01:03:46 / #: So Sarah, you're going to have a great time. You're going to have a great time.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:50 / #: I will hopefully not have COVID this year.
Loretta Chase 01:03:51 / #: Don't have that again.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:53 / #: I'm going to try my best. Loretta, this was amazing. You are always amazing. I love hearing you talk.
Loretta Chase 01:04:03 / #: It's wonderful talking to you both. It really is. You have just such a great sensibility and sensitivity about the genre and about the authors. It's really a pleasure. Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:20 / #: Listen, it was special. It just came to her fully formed like Athena.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:27 / #: Or like J.R. Ward. I'm also fascinated by the dichotomy between the way Lord of Scoundrels came to her, and then she didn't say it, but I would imagine that then struggling with writer's block would be all that more painful if you'd had that kind of experience, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:04:45 / #: Yeah, presumably. I mean, I was really grateful to hear her talk about writer's block, actually. I mean, a lot of this, for those of you listening, you probably got the sense that this was more about the writing this conversation than really I think any of them have been, which was obviously really wonderful for me and for probably every writer out there who's listening. But listening to somebody talk about how they struggle with writer's block is really interesting because as I said in the conversation, we get a lot of questions as writers about writer's block, and the instinct is always to just sort of wave it away and say, "Oh, I don't believe in writer's block. Writer's block isn't real. Just keep pushing." It's not a fun job. It's not that you're blocked, it's just that you have to sit your ass in the chair. And so, it was really good to hear her say, "No, it is real". And for those of us who have gone through serious issues, serious grief, anxiety about the world, it can be debilitating.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:54 / #: Yeah. Well, and I was also really fascinated to hear that she's essentially grappled with it twice and that it presented in a different way both times, because I think that's the other, what I feel like is sort of that writer's block is just its own thing. It's a thing, and it's like, no, just like anything, it can manifest itself in lots of different ways. And so, one time she just kind of put everything down and walked away from it and just did something totally different. And then, this time, she really is taking the put your butt in the chair and move through it. And I think that that is also probably really great to, because how you have to be able to say to yourself, "This is what I'm struggling with." It's that it looks different than someone else's block, for example, or it looks different the last time I struggled with this. And I think that's got to be really powerful.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:50 / #: Think about the kind of bravery it takes to say, "I am experiencing this thing. It is related to my, in the original case, grief, and to solve this problem, I'm going to walk away, and buy my contract back." I mean, we haven't talked about that. Nobody has talked to us about that, but that does happen. You can't finish. And so, to get out from under it, you pay the publisher back.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:21 / #: Right, your advance. Right.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:22 / #: And take the book away. But what also just brilliant person she is, I mean, just somebody who clearly thinks so much about the writing. I was not at all surprised when Ellen Edwards said, "Go read Kinsale."
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:44 / #: Of course, we've all, many of us have experienced the way the genre is sort of shamed and the way that people allow themselves to say like, "Oh, I like this." I have a friend who's a reader who mostly read fantasy, and then when she finally said to me, "I like romance too," it came in a very similar way, which was like, I always like those subplots in books, the love story part. So what would it be like to just allow myself to read that part, or write that part.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:23 / #: In Loretta's case, to rewrite those stories and provide them with happily ever afters. Also, what a cool way of coming to it and thinking, I want to write a novel, but I know my brain requires limitations and scope and a strategy, and therefore I'm going to turn to genre.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:50 / #: Because it's going to give me that structure. Yeah. I thought that was fascinating.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:53 / #: We are releasing this episode much later in time than when we recorded it, but it made me think about what, there was a sort of silly article that floated by and social media yesterday about a person who decided they going to write romance, because clearly that's where the money was. Spoiler alert, there was no money for this particular person because they weren't very good at the job. But what's fascinating is the difference between those two avenues. This was Loretta saying, "I have creativity in me. I have the chops to write a novel, but I just need guidelines because if I don't, I'll never tell a story." And what a cool way of coming to romance, and then dominating it. I mean, also what was wrong with readers in 1995, the Lord of Scoundrels was amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:57 / #: That also was a year where there were not, I mean now with the rise of self-publishing, literally thousands of books being released a year more than that. Thousands a week, it feels like, a month. So I'm fascinated to think too, what are the books that are coming out now that it's going to take everybody 10 or 12 years to discover? I mean, that's also what I think of as being the best part about romance is things... Don't get me wrong, I think we all know that things can be dated, or you can read an older book that feels dated in a way. But there is something magical about picking up a book from 25 years ago in romance and having it be just as sort of powerfully moving as it was what the year was published.
01:10:49 / #: And I think that could be true of all of genre fiction. People have heard me talk about Jack Reacher. I've been re-listening to Jack Reacher when I drive, and the biggest change is about technology. And so, it's really fascinating to sort of think, well, what are the things that date a book, and when it's historical, especially when it's rooted in historical research, that doesn't get triggered the same way often.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:19 / #: You're absolutely right. I loved a lot of this conversation. I love that she clocked Jayne Ann Krentz's powerful impact on historicals, which we talked a little bit about in the Jayne Ann Krentz Trailblazer episode. But hearing it from the mouth of Loretta Chase, Jayne Ann Krentz became Amanda Quick and gave us all a blueprint for how to write these books differently. It just makes me smile. It makes me really happy that it was all interconnected in such a powerful way.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:00 / #: Those first Amanda Quicks were late '80s, '88 or '89 maybe.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:07 / #: Yeah, sounds right.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:08 / #: And Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women was 1992.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:15 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:16 / #: It was both the books and the explicit naming of what romance was trying to achieve.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:25 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:26 / #: And I was also really fascinated here to talk about that kind of pop culture book. I can't remember the name of it now, but talking, like the way people talk to each other. I remember reading that book. I remember it wasn't quite like Men Are From Mars, Women or from Venus, like that old dumb thing. And it was really fascinating I think also to think too just about, and we say this all the time, romance is so responsive to what is going on in society, and it was really interesting to hear Loretta name some of those things really explicitly.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:01 / #: She's remarkable. If you have not read a Loretta Chase book, now is your chance. You should read Lord of Scoundrels and then go back and listen to the Deep dive episode that we did. We'll put links in show notes, or go off and read Mr. Impossible set in Egypt. And then, do yourself a favor, give yourself a treat, and watch Brendan Frazier's Mummy and know why romance Twitter.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:28 / #: Sarah, can I confess something?
Sarah MacLean 01:13:31 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:31 / #: I've never seen that movie.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:34 / #: Jennifer.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:36 / #: Wait, what year did it come out? Could someone-
Sarah MacLean 01:13:38 / #: 1999.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:41 / #: Okay.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:41 / #: I know you and I have a little thing coming, a little thing that actually might have already been announced, but if it has not already been announced, we have this little thing happening and maybe a rewatch of The Mummy is a thing that we can do.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:54 / #: A rewatch for you, a watch-watch for me.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:56 / #: A watch-watch for you. Maybe we should have B and her books join us.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:02 / #: I'm writing this down on my... Look, I have a little pad of paper everybody, and it says bad ideas. And I write things down that are good ideas.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:10 / #: Oh, it's ironic.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:11 / #: It is. This note paper does not boss me around. The Mummy. That's a great idea.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:19 / #: You will delight in it because it is part of our mutual favorite genre, beautiful people blowing things up.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:28 / #: I mean, yeah, hello. I mean, I'm sorry, we should be talking about Loretta Chase, but she wouldn't mind. Loretta would understand, I think.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:36 / #: I mean, she wrote a whole book based on it. So I think she's okay.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:39 / #: God, I love those Brennan Frazier movies. I love the one where he's trapped underground with his fusty parents because they think nuclear war is coming.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:48 / #: I know that one.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:49 / #: And then he pops out onto the surface in modern times and it is hilarious. It's so good.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:56 / #: I mean, he was a treat.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:59 / #: Yeah. And he's like a great swing dancer, but you know what I mean? And that was like when swing was really popular.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:04 / #: Cutie pie.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:06 / #: It was, oh my God, I can't remember the title. It's great.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:08 / #: The way I wept when he won the Oscar this year and gave a speech that was just about still being here, just still being here along with the guy from Everything Everywhere All At Once, who was also in Indiana Jones and Goonies. These are, look, our childhood.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:27 / #: Yeah, I think I loved listening to Loretta Chase. I especially really like one of my favorite questions is what is the hallmark of your books. And I loved her answer. In particular, the answer about, I always assume my readers are smarter than me. I pledge to never write down to them. And I think romance readers know. I think we know when that's the case because we are so fine-tuned, so calibrated to hear that those discordant notes of when someone is trying, as you said at the beginning, right to market, I can make money here. These people I can make money off of versus these people have a similar interest in the same stories as me, and I want to write books for them.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:18 / #: And also, when she said that it made me realize that, I mean, and this is not just a hallmark of historicals, but it is a hallmark of historicals that often historical writer, that is something that happens in historicals, where we sort of trust the reader to come along with us on this ride, and we're going to show you the world, and you're going to know the history, and you're going to know what's happening. And if you don't, it's going to be okay. God, she just made me, every time I talk to Loretta, I just feel good about writing historicals. I feel like it's nice to be sort of even remotely in the room breathing the air of someone like her.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:01 / #: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys are going to have a great time.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:04 / #: Oh, yeah. So come see us in... Oh, gosh. We have to make sure this gets out before then.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:10 / #: It's on my bad ideas list, don't you worry.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:12 / #: Oh, all right. Good. So this will be out, it will probably be in the next couple of weeks, this event in Boston. And we hope that you'll join us.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:24 / #: Thanks for having us, everybody. Thanks for having us in your ear holes. And thanks to Loretta Chase for just being... That was a really inspiring conversation. I loved it.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:33 / #: God, for making me just want to put on a murder dress every day.
S05.34: Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry
This week, we’re talking about one of our very favorite romance novels, Sarah Mayberry’s absolute banger, Her Best Worst Mistake. We talk about how enemies to lovers works best, about how POV changes the whole game with this particular trope, about how Mayberry threads a very difficult needle with the main characters’ past relationship, and about how conflict somehow remains queen, even when not a ton is going on on page. All that, and it’s a novella! An absolute gem.
We hope you love this one as much as we did. Read Her Best Worst Mistake in ebook at Amazon, B&N, Kobo or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Along with giving great writing advice, Sherry Thomas writes an amazing romance. Check out our season 3 deep dive of Ravishing the Heiress.
If you, too, are a fan of Peach schnapps, maybe it’s time to mix up some summer cocktails.
Jaguar is all in the pronunciation when you think about it.
All about mangoes.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Veronica Adler, author of Never More Than Enemies
Available now from Amazon and free with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited,
and
Steamy Lit Romance Conference
August 18th & 19th in Anaheim, CA
Visit steamylitcon.com for tickets and more information,
or head to the main page of fatedmates.net to win a ticket to the conference.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.
S05.33: Bingeable Romance Series
After a number of conversations and requests, we’re talking about the best long-running romance series today! We’ve got something for everyone — paranormal, historical and contemporary — and we’re getting your long, lingering summer reading TBR sorted! We talk about why series work so well for romance, what makes them rewarding, and what we’re looking for when we dive in.
Next week, we’ve got another read along! Join us to read one of our very favorite short novels, Sarah Mayberry’s Her Best Worst Mistake, which sets the bar for every other enemies to lovers romance ever. Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo or Apple Books.
Show Notes
There are lots of words for snow, including graupel.
We loved our conversation with Christine Feehan, and it got us thinking about series. This is also a great essay about series from Ilona Andrews, who have lots of great long-running series (some of which we mentioned today) and talk about the difference between episodic vs. progressive series.
Author Heather Burch shared her description of the novel with Sarah as: "an unforgettable character, a relentless threat, and an impossible situation." You can check out Heather's books here.
In this EW interview with Nora Roberts, she said the In Death series was supposed to be a trilogy set in the near future.
Here’s a USA Today interview with Joanna Wylde about writing the Reapers Legacy series.
You can turn off popular highlights, btw.
Our next read along, next week, is Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry.
A folder with those links, you're welcome.
Series Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Max Monroe, authors of Accidental Attachment
Available from Amazon, with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited,
or in audio wherever you listen to audiobooks.
and
Annmarie Boyle, author of Love Me Like a Love Song
Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo or Apple Books.
S05.32: Runaway Brides in Romance
It’s runaway bride week here at Fated Mates and we’re delightedly traveling down memory lane to talk Julia Roberts, Sally Field, the importance of significant lips for a proper mustache, and all the ways we love cold feet on the way to the altar! We discuss all the ways runaway brides can happen in romance, talk about our high expectations for this trope…and Sarah realizes she’s written two of them!
Our next read along is Sarah Mayberry’s Her Best Worst Mistake, an absolute banger of an enemies-to-lovers romance and one of our favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble or Kobo. You are in for an absolute treat with this one.
Show Notes
This week we’re talking about runaway brides (in the past, we also recorded an episode about Waking Up Married). Some of the primordial runaway brides are from movies: Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Runaway Bride (1999).
Sarah recommended an essay called The Bizarre Genre of Runaway Bride Romcoms, which has some other great movie rom-coms: Maid of Honor, Something Borrowed, My Best Friend’s Wedding.
We’re tired of kids' movies. Jen’s last one was Big Hero 6 (that is not hyperbole, she hasn’t seen an animated movie since 2014 when Lil Romance was 11). Other families movies we enjoyed: Ghostbusters (2016) and Fly Away Home (1996).
Growing up in the 80s, “those other channels” that weren’t one of the major networks were called UHF channels, I think?
Whew, the wedding industrial complex is no joke.
Our next read along is Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry.
A folder with PDFs of some of the links above.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
E.F. Dodd, author of A Higher Standard
Available to preorder from Amazon
or on May 16 with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
Sookh Kaur, author of Komal Needs London
Available now from Amazon
or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
S05.31: Stealing Midnight by Tracy MacNish: A+ Fresh
Finally, the read along we’ve been promising! We’re so excited to talk about Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight, a gothic romance from 2008 that delivers what we here at the pod like to refer to as “the full banana.” We talk about bodysnatchers, about science, about dukes in disguise, about twins, and about why historical romance is unmatched. If you know Tracy MacNish, please tell her we love her book, and we’d really appreciate it if she’d write that second one.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.
Show Notes
Let the New York Public Library explain the history of gothic romance to you.
Perhaps you want to know a little bit more about Resurrectionists and grave robbers. Most bodysnatchers were working for people who were learning about human anatomy.
I guess you could watch The Banshees of Inisherin if you want to learn to correctly pronounce the name Padraig.
Should you tell your twins their birth order?
Talking about foils is some real English teacher business.
Sir Gawain was one of King Arthur’s knights
Spanish fly is a real thing, and probably best to stay away from it.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Liza Snow, author of Obedience
Available now from Amazon and free with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
or in full-cast audio.
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.
S05.30: Christine Feehan: Trailblazer
This week, we’re sharing our fantastic conversation with trailblazer Christine Feehan, an undeniable force in the rise of paranormal romance in the early 2000s. We discuss the genesis of her work, the way she builds her far-reaching worlds, her relationship to readers, her heroes, her sex scenes, and the long and winding path of her career.
Our conversation covers a lot of ground—personal, professional, paranormal and powerful, and we’re so grateful to Christine Feehan for making time for Fated Mates. You’re going to love this one, Firebirds.
Next week, our first read along of 2023 is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
Welcome to Christine Feehan, author of almost 100 romance novels. Her next book, Ghostly Game, is part of the Ghostwalker series and will be released May 2, 2023.
PEOPLE : editor Alicia Condon at Dorchester and now Kensington, and editor Cindy Hwang at Berkley.
BOOKS: Freckles and The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, Louisa May Alcott, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, Mary Janice Davidson, Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Goldie Thomas, author of The Rake and the Fake
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.
Christine Feehan 00:00:00 / #:
I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. It's a different couple and so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say it's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you, so I wanted them to know what good sex was. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:11 / #:
That was the voice of Christine Feehan, paranormal author, extraordinaire, author of over 100 books and just a superstar of the genre and has been for decades.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:26 / #:
Her first book, Dark Prince, came out in 1999, right at the very beginning of the paranormal boom that we talk about. So, we talk to Christine about her life, how she came to romance, how she came to writing paranormals, and how she continues to write in this subgenre that we all love and wish there was more of.
Jennifer Prokop 00:01:50 / #:
Welcome to Fated Mates, everyone. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:55 / #:
And I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:00 / #:
And without further ado, here's our conversation with Christine Feehan.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:06 / #:
Perfect. So thank you so much, Christine, for joining us. We're very excited, in large, part because it feels like you really came to romance in an interesting time and place and way. And so, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you found romance as a reader and then, again as a writer, or was it simultaneous?
Christine Feehan 00:02:32 / #:
Actually, it wasn't simultaneous at all. I started reading when I was very, very young, at a very young age and started writing when I was very young. The minute I could put sentences together, I started making up stories and I would write them down the minute I could, when I could put sentences together. And I think the first time I ever read a romance, I found these old, old books by Gene Stratton Porter, The Harvester and Freckles and those. And I realized there was kind of this romance thing going, and I found it really intriguing. I was probably 10 or even younger. I read books way over my head-
Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
Us too.
Jennifer Prokop 00:03:32 / #:
Us too. No problem.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
One of us.
Christine Feehan 00:03:37 / #:
And then, I started looking for anything I could read that might have some sort of a connection between a girl and a guy, because I wanted a happy ending or a happy anything involved in it. And so, that sort of started me down that path of looking for something happy in the book all the time, so that was sort of my intro to romance. And I found Louise May Alcott, of course, and read everything that she wrote, and I would read that to my grandmother whenever she was ill. I would sit and read to her, and then later, different ones that kind of inspired me for different reasons. Actually, The Bourne Identity, I liked the fact that they worked together. They were equal partners. People I think mostly saw the movie. They didn't really read that book the way it should have been read, but without her, he wouldn't have made it. She really was his equal partner in that book and I loved that. I really read that a couple of times to see how he made that happen and I really liked that. That was one of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:12 / #:
That doesn't surprise me at all, that the Bourne Identity is a text for you. I mean, it makes perfect sense now as a Feehan reader.
Christine Feehan 00:05:22 / #:
Yeah. And then, one really made an impact on me, probably that opened up the whole paranormal world for me, and I read it very early on was a Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz. And I forget how old I was when I read that, but all of a sudden, it was like it opened this whole world to me and I thought, "This is really what I want to write." Plus, I realized that my hero could be flawed and my villain could... I really like that the villain was rounded out so much.
00:06:11 / #:
And so, I started studying villains to figure them out. How did they write these villains and how did they become... You liked them and you didn't like... I mean, there were good things about them as well as bad things. How did they get to be who they were? So, I think they all had such an impact on me. One of the biggest impacts on me for all of my writing was Sherlock Holmes. I read Sherlock Holmes so many times that I literally could quote pages of Sherlock Holmes, of his work. And then, another writer was Laurie R. King, the Beekeeper's Apprentice. I thought that was such a fabulous take on... What she did, you would never expect her to put heroin with him and how she managed to make that work. That was an interesting pairing for me.
Sarah MacLean 00:07:24 / #:
So, at what point during this kind of reading, obviously, you've been an avid reader forever, did you start thinking, "I think I can maybe do this?"
Christine Feehan 00:07:36 / #:
I never did. I always wrote. I always wrote. I had hundreds of manuscripts under my bed. I'd write them and throw them, write them and throw them. I just wrote all the time. It was sort of a compulsion for me. I could not write, I had to write. I had so many stories in my head, I did not think about publishing them. Other people had movie stars and rock stars that they would scream and yell and, "Oh, my God. They're so wonderful. No, for me, it was writers. And so, I never looked at myself and thought I could ever be a writer like they could be, because I kind of worshiped those writers. They were amazing. My first job was in a library, and I would just read every book that I could in that library.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:28 / #:
Living the dream. Well, it's, the other thing that's interesting though about that kind of list of books you named is I think one of the hallmarks of your style is an interest in the paranormal, but not necessarily... Even though the Carpathian series is very much about vampires, but like Jayne Ann Krentz, actually. Like telepathy and what the brain is capable of, so has that also always been interesting to you?
Christine Feehan 00:08:59 / #:
Absolutely. I research so much, and my belief really, is even with vampires, if you look at every society all over the world, you look at what their beliefs are going back hundreds of years, and all of them have something like that in their background. And where does it come from? You have to start thinking if every culture has something like that in it, where does it come from? And if every country pretty much has done these experiments with telepathy and with all these other things, why are they doing them? And after a while, you start getting these answers. You start hitting on things that, "Oh, this did work for somebody. This did work here. This did work there." And after so much research, you're catching up with the future things that they're already doing. Like my Ghost Walker series, I have a hard time keeping ahead of the game, and I research very hard to do that. And I always have primary sources, but it looks, when you write it, like it's way out there, but it isn't.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:29 / #:
Publishing wasn't even on the horizon, it sounds like. And I've done my research, I know you have a large family. So, can you give us a sense of Christine's world, at this point? How does it all fit together?
Christine Feehan 00:10:42 / #:
I taught martial arts for years and women's self-defense. Well, not just women's, I mean, I taught men too, but that was my world. I surrounded myself with that 26, 27 years of that. And I took in a lot of abused children, which you can see in my books and worked with unwed mothers and I had a complete whirl there. Writing was my escape, and when I took my kids to their gymnastics and their sports, I lived out in the country. I lived way out, away from things. So, I had to drive them and I would sit at their practices and write. That's what I did.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:40 / #:
Anybody with kids in sports has done exactly this.
Christine Feehan 00:11:43 / #:
Yeah. I didn't own a computer, I didn't own a laptop. There was no R.W.A., there was none of that. I didn't even know about R.W.A., I just wrote my stories and I did them for me. That was my escape. That was the one thing that I did for myself. And if the kids watched television at night, that's what I did, is I wrote. I wasn't interested in television. We played Dungeons and Dragons, and I told stories to the kids. That was our pastime and our fun together.
Sarah MacLean 00:12:26 / #:
So, at what point did it become... How did it happen? I mean, how did you become Christine Feehan published author?
Christine Feehan 00:12:36 / #:
The thing was that there came a time when I became very ill and my doctor said to me, "You cannot do martial arts anymore." And unfortunately, children want food.
Sarah MacLean 00:12:56 / #:
They do. Generally.
Christine Feehan 00:12:58 / #:
I convinced the, especially the boys, that they did not need to eat and the girls still wanted clothes. So, I had to find a way to feed them and to keep clothes on their back and to pay the bills. And I was working a couple of jobs, but it was minimum wage, and I was like, "Okay, this is not going to work." And my girlfriend said to me, "Send one of your books in." And I said, "It doesn't work like that." One, it was kind of terrifying. I didn't think I really wanted to send... The thought of giving away one of my stories was not a good idea to me, and I also told her they aren't taking anything with vampires in it. And at that point, I had been writing my Carpathian stories.
Sarah MacLean 00:13:56 / #:
That's so true. A paranormal was unsellable, we were told, in the nineties. And so, I guess I have two questions. One is, was it just that you thought, "I'm writing vampires and I'm not reading vampires? There are no vampires to be read. There was Anne Rice and now there is no one else?" Or did somebody tell you, "Oh, you can't sell vampires?"
Christine Feehan 00:14:23 / #:
Yes. I was told that... My friend, a girl girlfriend of mine was writing to sell, and she wanted to go to this thing in San Francisco that later I found out was an R.W.A.
Sarah MacLean 00:14:41 / #:
Sure.
Jennifer Prokop 00:14:42 / #:
Oh, Okay.
Christine Feehan 00:14:44 / #:
Which I didn't know. And she didn't want to go alone, so she asked me to go with her. And I said sure. And there were all these people in there, and I was a little embarrassed because they would say things like, "Well, I've been working on my office for four months, no book." And then somebody else said, "I've been working on my book for 14 years, and I've been working on my book for... I don't know how many..."
Sarah MacLean 00:15:12 / #:
God, this is the entire experience of R.W.A., honestly.
Christine Feehan 00:15:16 / #:
And this went on and on. And then, they get to me and I'm like, "I don't know. I have 300 manuscripts [inaudible 00:15:24 / #]." And a woman who was running the whole thing, later, she came up to me and she's like, "You need an agent." And I, at that time, was not interested in selling and I told her that. And I said, "Well, the latest thing I'm writing are..." She asked me what I was writing and I said romance. And I said, "But they have vampires in them." And she goes, "Oh, those aren't selling. You can't get an editor to even look at them."
Sarah MacLean 00:16:04 / #:
This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Goldie Thomas, author of the Rake and the Fake.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:10 / #:
Sarah, this is a historical romance and it's a debut and the first in The Husband material series. This is a book that's really going to appeal to all of our listeners who love Tessa Dare and Joanna Shupe. And so, we have Charlotte, a seamstress employed at London's most renowned [inaudible 00:16:28 / #], and she is very aware of the class differences between her and the people that come in and partake of her services. And she runs a foul of Nicholas, a charming but badly behaved viscount, and his parents are insisting that he marry as soon as possible. After a maiden Manhattan mix up Nicholas's mother mistakes Charlotte, for this woman who she thinks Nicholas should marry, and there's just all of these shenanigans that happen. This book really deals with big class issues head on. And so, Charlotte, rather than being enamored with the excessive wealth that she is now seeing in real life is, instead like, "Wait, we really need to fix this." So Nicholas, Charlotte have to really figure out how they can be together given this huge difference between them.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:24 / #:
First of all, this sounds like a terrific read. I love it when historical romances really tackle class differences. And you can read The Rake and the Fake by Goldie Thomas right now in print or ebook, wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to Goldie Thomas for sponsoring the episode. Are the 300 manuscripts under your bed also paranormal adjacent?
Christine Feehan 00:17:53 / #:
No. They weren't at that time. No.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:56 / #:
So, how did we get to dark prints?
Christine Feehan 00:17:59 / #:
Well, at that time, I had quite a few children. My oldest son was in the Navy, and he came home to visit. I had two daughters who were pregnant, and he was helping out, building a little apartment for one of them. And he came home. He was with a friend, and he came home for lunch. He had a motorcycle, and I made him lunch and we were laughing and talking, and he went out the door and I said, "Did you put on sunscreen?" And he said, "Oh, mom, you're going to be saying that to me when I'm 90." And I laughed and said, "You bet I will." And he walked out the door, and five minutes later, maybe it was five minutes later, no more than that, the phone rang and my future son-in-law gets this call. He was on for if there was an accident. And his brother called him and said, "We've got a call. I'm coming to pick you up." And then, the neighbor called me and said, "I think your son was hit." And I said, "That's impossible."
00:19:26 / #:
But it was him and he didn't make it. And one of my daughters was... Both of them were due, and there was a birthday party I'd been planning the next day for my youngest child and a wedding I was planning. And it's a very interesting thing when you lose a child, and this is for any trauma that people suffer, life goes on all around you, it just keeps going. There's no way to stop it. You can't put the brakes on, and I had to keep planning a wedding. I had to keep two girls who were giving birth. I had a very small child who expected to have a birthday, and I didn't feel anything. I couldn't remember people talking to me, conversations.
00:20:45 / #:
And it lasted forever. It went on forever. I mean, I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to my kids' schools, I participated in everything that I was supposed to do, but I didn't feel anything. And it went on for so long and I thought, "I have to find a way back." And we always played Dungeons and Dragons together, and I always talked to him about vampires, made-up stories. And one of the things we talked about was, why would somebody want to give up your soul? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "If you have no feelings, if you can't feel anything and nothing can touch you..." And I honestly felt like I couldn't see in color anymore. Everything felt so dull. And I thought, "I have to find a way back to the people I love."
00:21:54 / #:
And that's when I started writing dark prints, and I started coming up with this idea that these men had to find that person that could make them feel again and see in color again. And that was my way back to... You never get over it. There's no way to get over it. But I've spoken to many, many people who've had many losses or had much trauma, and everybody has their own way of dealing with it. And that was mine. We shared something, it was Calvert's and I, we shared that. And my youngest son... He's not my youngest, but Brian, he always played Dungeon Masters with a Dragon. Anyway, he played with us and we would talk a lot about it together and eventually, it really helped me. And so, developing that world became very therapeutic for me. And so, that's how that world came about. And it's surprising when people read it. Some people have that, it has that same effect on them. They feel that same way, which I find interesting, that some people get it this, that have suffered loss, where other people have no idea.
Sarah MacLean 00:23:44 / #:
Yeah, but I imagine when a book comes like that and from such a place, it's impossible to imagine. First of all, it's all packed in there because when you write, that's how it goes, whatever you're living is in there. But also, I'm so moved by this story because the Carpathians are... That series is never-ending, right? It's 38 books now. And so, do you feel like every time you go back to them, that you're going back to a similar place you're mining that same love, that same world?
Christine Feehan 00:24:28 / #:
Sure. It's funny how grief will hit you at times, where it comes out nowhere. I mean, it's been a long time for my son. I've lost a granddaughter, I've lost a grandson and all of that is very difficult. You try very hard to, I don't know how to explain it, keep going as the world keeps going. But anybody who's lost parents, anybody, at times it just suddenly comes out of nowhere, and you don't know when it's going to happen.
00:25:23 / #:
But when I write, I can feel that connection, especially in the Carpathian world with Calvert, and it makes me feel very close to him again. And also, there's so many issues in those books, women's issues, miscarriages that women have. And over the years, with so many different friends and so many different young women that have had terrible things happen to them that I've dealt with through martial arts or through other things, I've been able to talk about those things. And then, had women be able to read about them, and then that helps them in their lives. So, I've been grateful to be able to have that opportunity when I no longer can do hands-on help.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:32 / #:
So it's interesting to me too... Probably one of my favorite of your series is Torpedo Ink, and those are characters that are really steeped in trauma. And I mean, that's another thing that sort of ties your books together. People experience terrible loss or grief or trauma, and then this connection is like, how do they survive? Especially can they, through this, access almost parts of themselves, they didn't know that existed. So, when you talk about readers contacting you, is this something that... Like they write you letters, you get emails, how do you connect with readers who are also experiencing this world? Like the emotional... Your worlds are kind of terrible worlds, but people find each other in them. So, how do your readers come to you?
Christine Feehan 00:27:38 / #:
Well, okay, Torpedo Ink is actually my most difficult series to write. When I took in children, I found that boys were treated way differently than girls. When they're molested, they oftentimes are not given counseling. Sometimes they're rejected from their family. The fathers don't want them, and they often are like, especially if they're a little bit older, it's like, "Oh, hey, you should be happy," instead of... It's traumatizing for them, but nobody wants to even talk about it with a boy. And so, I promised myself that someday I was going to address that issue. And I didn't honestly realize when I started looking at files, what I was really getting myself into. Because you have to talk with professionals and you're looking at some file and you're reading this horrible thing that you don't even want to look at anymore. And then, you talk to a professional and you say, "All right, this happened to them.
00:28:59 / #:
What's going to happen to them as an adult?" And he's like, "Oh, he's not going to be normal. His sexual life is not going to be normal." So now, you're going to have to write about this and try to find a happy ending for him. Because to me, I want to make whoever's had anything close to that experience feel hope. That's what you're trying to do, is say, "There's hope for you. Don't give up." And most of the time I get letters. There's been a few times when somebody has come personally to me, when I'm at a convention or something, they've asked to meet with me, and I've talked to them. Most of the time it's a letter and 99% of the time, and it will start out, "Please continue to read this, but I was going to kill myself. And then, I read this book." And oftentimes, especially Torpedo Ink, I think, "I can't write another one of these. I just can't do it." And then, I don't know why I get a letter like that, and I think, "Oh, my God, Christine, now you're going to have to write..."
Jennifer Prokop 00:30:22 / #:
Keep doing it.
Christine Feehan 00:30:23 / #:
"Now you're going to have to write another one." And it's interesting because not everyone gets that those books are about trauma. They don't see it. They don't. And that's always interesting to me, that not everyone gets what the book is actually about. I try to put on there to be careful about reading it. There's triggers for people... But people sometimes just don't see that.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:55 / #:
One of the things that I keep coming back to as you're talking is Jen and I talk a lot on the podcast about how we bemoan the way paranormal has faded over the last decade. And one of the reasons why is because it feels like there seems to be so much more anger and confusion and frustration, and all the things that are happening in the world right now. Paranormal, in so many ways, makes us look at those traumatic or those dangerous or angry or wicked things and face them.
00:31:41 / #:
You said this is about hope, and we always talk about romance as the literature of hope. That is the promise. So, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, as somebody who we really do think is without you, paranormal would not be here in the way that it is. How does paranormal... How did coming to paranormal and writing paranormal and building the sub-genre happen during that time? I mean, obviously, you told the remarkable story about how the Carpathians came to be, but you've never gone away. You've never left that paranormal world. Even when you do leave it, there's always a vibe, right?
Christine Feehan 00:32:29 / #:
Yeah. Well, because for me, I know that other people don't really believe so much in all those things, but I think the world is so big and there's so many interesting unsolved mysteries in it, and I can't stop doing research. I'm like the research nut, and I find everything so fascinating. And I don't necessarily... I know we use the word paranormal, but I always think there's so much out there. And so, to me, I just think maybe it's really all true, and we haven't caught up with it yet. So, to me, it's just extending my imagination and then, trying to find reality in it. And I try to put the book at least 80% facts. I mean, twisting those facts into my fictional world. And then, just a small amount of the paranormal so that when people read it, they're like, "Oh, this could happen. This could be." When I did Lightning Game, most of that was reality. I mean, it's amazing what they're doing with lightning, and you look at it and go, "Holy moly."
Sarah MacLean 00:34:07 / #:
So, could you talk a little bit about that paranormal? I mean, I'm using paranormal now, respecting what you just said, but at paranormal as a subgenre of romance. During that boom, where it just felt... I mean, it just felt like everyone was writing these kind of big, expansive worlds with these heroes who were just larger than life and these heroines who just could match them step for step. What was going on there? Are you able to look back on that time and go, "Oh, this is why we were all doing this thing together." Or, "This was why readers were really drawn to us?"
Christine Feehan 00:34:59 / #:
I think that different times call for different things. People are, at times, they need certain things in their lives, and they're looking for heroes and they're looking for things that make them happy. Unfortunately, I don't honestly know what's happening right now, where everybody seems so angry and weird with each other. It's so strange to me. I don't understand that, but I'm getting kind of old. But I think everybody's imagination was really big and everybody at that time really accepted it. And they went all out and readers were like, "Hey, what do you have for me? I'm willing to read it." And they went for it. So, I think that was a really good time, and people were in a good place. And as things started to crumble, the economy and whatever, then I think that things sort of went downhill. And also, when you get too many people doing the same thing, it runs out. You can only do so many of the same types, and then it gets... There's a lot of repetition. And maybe towards the end, there might have been, I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:36:50 / #:
Were there other writers who you were friendly with, who you were in your group, were inspiring you during that time?
Christine Feehan 00:37:02 / #:
Not in my group. I had a very core group, but I will tell you, I read Mary Janice Davidson, and she made me laugh so hard. I am not the best at writing humor. When I read her, I would laugh so hard and I would just about die. She made me laugh so much. There were certain ones that you'd pick them up and to be honest, I didn't read much in my own genre because I didn't want to step on somebody's voice, but I couldn't help it with her. Every time she had a book come out, I'd go get it, because she just was so funny. But like I say, I don't write very humorously, and I try, but my humor falls flat.
Jennifer Prokop 00:38:01 / #:
So, did you join R.W.A., you mentioned, sort of not knowing what it was? Was that something that-
Christine Feehan 00:38:09 / #:
I had to, at one point, because my house... I was with Dorchester at the time when I first... They were the only ones who would read my book and then they bought it.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:19 / #:
Who was your editor there?
Christine Feehan 00:38:21 / #:
Alicia Condon. Alicia Condon. Okay. Okay. And she was wonderful. She was.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:26 / #:
And she acquired you at Dorchester?
Christine Feehan 00:38:28 / #:
She did, yes. And people always said things about Dorchester, but they gave new authors a chance when nobody else would.
Sarah MacLean 00:38:37 / #:
And took such risk in terms of the content of the books. I mean, I was saying to Jen before we started that one of my very favorite... I write historicals, and one of my very favorite historicals is The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, which, the hero... It's such a different kind of historical, and I just can't... I think it benefited from Dorchester.
Christine Feehan 00:39:03 / #:
I think that they did a really good job at getting people seen when nobody else would even look at them. Not one other house would've... Well, they wouldn't...
Sarah MacLean 00:39:17 / #:
Sure. Vampires, right?
Christine Feehan 00:39:19 / #:
Right, they wouldn't look at it. And she did, and she picked it up, so that was pretty amazing of her to do that.
Sarah MacLean 00:39:29 / #:
And then, you were with Dorchester until Dorchester folded?
Christine Feehan 00:39:34 / #:
I was already being looked at by Berkley. Cindy Wong had already made an offer for me, and I've been with her ever since. She's been my editor for years and years and years. So yeah, I was already with Berkley at that point, but they had a bunch of my books still.
Sarah MacLean 00:39:58 / #:
Because you're such a fast writer. Now, were you build... Now, how was that working? Were you pulling things out from under the bed or...
Christine Feehan 00:40:06 / #:
No, no.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:07 / #:
The bad manuscripts are still under the bed.
Christine Feehan 00:40:09 / #:
No, because the ones under the bed were not polished and they weren't that good.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:15 / #:
I don't believe it, but okay.
Christine Feehan 00:40:16 / #:
No, they're not that good.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:20 / #:
So, because you're so prolific as well, what is it? Almost a hundred books, is that right?
Christine Feehan 00:40:27 / #:
Yes, very close to a hundred books.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:30 / #:
And so, you are really... I mean, you still writing really quickly. You're writing at a self-published pace.
Christine Feehan 00:40:39 / #:
I actually am slowing down a little bit so I can go visit occasionally. Go see my mom, and not my mom, my sisters, occasionally. I have a lot of sisters.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:53 / #:
And do you feel like... You have a big fam... You have a large number of children, a lot of sisters. Do you feel like that those kinds of relationships are part of why you have been drawn so much to Pax? I mean, big communities of characters.
Christine Feehan 00:41:13 / #:
Yeah, I've always loved being in a big family.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:18 / #:
This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of microdose gummies.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:24 / #:
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Jennifer Prokop 00:41:57 / #:
For me too.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:58 / #:
Pain, anxiety. Eric takes them for creativity and a general kind of joyfulness across the day. He said to me the other day, "You know what the thing is about these gummies? You take one and you just like, an hour and a half later, just feel like, "I feel like I'm in a good mood."
Jennifer Prokop 00:42:17 / #:
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Sarah MacLean 00:42:37 / #:
So, you can go to microdose.com and use the code Fated Mates to get 30% on your first order. They have all different kinds of flavors you can try. I'm a particular fan of cotton candy. Lately, I also like one that's orange flavored, so you should try, check it out, give it a try. And thanks, as always, to Lumi Labs for sponsoring this week's episode. Another interesting hallmark of your career is that you have several, very long-running series that you're essentially writing concurrently. And so, this is unusual. A lot of people will start and finish a series and you have a bunch that just are kind of continuing. So, what's your process for deciding what's next, keeping it all straight? That seems like a huge job.
Christine Feehan 00:43:40 / #:
It's very strange, my brain, how it works. A character will come to me and say, "I want my story told." And I can't write... I couldn't write two Carpathian stories in a row because I'd be bored with that world. So, I write that story and then, while I'm writing that story, all of a sudden, another character from another world will jump into my head and start pushing at me. And I have tell it to be quiet. Like, "It's not your turn yet. Wait till I'm finished." And then, that one will will... A lot of times now, because I'll have a contract and they'll want the stories in a certain order order. And so, I had to train my brain to say, "It's going to be like this." And if they mess up the order on me, it's actually difficult now, because my brain would be like, "We have to do it this way."
Jennifer Prokop 00:44:48 / #:
I'm not going to get the titles right, but the head of Torpedo Ink was the husband of the end of the series with all the sisters?
Christine Feehan 00:45:00 / #:
Right, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Prokop 00:45:00 / #:
So, when characters intersect in that way, is that a surprise to you?
Christine Feehan 00:45:07 / #:
Because I wasn't planning on publishing Torpedo Ink. I wasn't going to. And when I had that in there, Cindy said to me, "Do you have these other characters..."
Sarah MacLean 00:45:21 / #:
We have this guy.
Christine Feehan 00:45:23 / #:
And I said, "Well, yeah, but I don't think they're something that I could publish because it's a pretty raw, edgy series." And she said, "Well, let me read it." And that's kind of how that ended up getting published.
Sarah MacLean 00:45:40 / #:
We've had several people on who are edited by Cindy, and it sounds like she is one of those editors who is willing to just again, take the risk with you and trust you to move forward.
Christine Feehan 00:45:55 / #:
She will take a risk. Yeah, she will. She's not-
Sarah MacLean 00:45:56 / #:
That's amazing.
Christine Feehan 00:45:57 / #:
She's pretty fearless, and she's not afraid. If I went to her and said, "I'd like to publish this." And it's like out there, she would say, "Go ahead and write it. Let's take a look at it."
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:14 / #:
Have there been other editors, publishers, I don't know, art directors?
Sarah MacLean 00:46:21 / #:
Oh, wait, can we talk about those early covers, first of all?
Jennifer Prokop 00:46:24 / #:
Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:25 / #:
So, I'm so fascinated but... Listen, I could talk about romance novel covers all day every day. In fact, Jen will tell you, I kind of do, but those early covers, so that first cover of Dark Prints is a clinch. It's like a historical clinch, presumably because no one knew what the heck to do with these books, right?
Christine Feehan 00:46:45 / #:
Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:46:45 / #:
And then, can you walk us through... Are you able to remember or recall how paranormal became... How it started to look the way it did? Why we moved away from those clinches?
Christine Feehan 00:47:01 / #:
Well, there were funny, funny things that happened with some of them.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:05 / #:
I love it.
Christine Feehan 00:47:07 / #:
It was Jacque's book and they put him on the cover, and I said, "Well, this cover his spine." Except that he had, or she had red hair. It was a clinch cover, so they washed the cover red.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:32 / #:
Oh, my gosh. The whole cover?
Christine Feehan 00:47:34 / #:
The whole cover. So he is like sunburned. I called him Lobster Boy after that.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:41 / #:
What book is this?
Christine Feehan 00:47:44 / #:
It was Dark Desire.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:45 / #:
I'm looking it up right now.
Christine Feehan 00:47:48 / #:
So, he literally has... He's red and so-
Sarah MacLean 00:47:53 / #:
I think I know what this is.
Christine Feehan 00:47:55 / #:
I did. I called him Lobster Boy. So, every time anybody would refer to him, I would think, in my head, I'd turn it around and he'd be Lobster Boy.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:03 / #:
Oh, no.
Christine Feehan 00:48:06 / #:
And my girlfriend, one of my friends, she just loved him. She called him Pooky face. She'd be like, "Don't you call my-"
Sarah MacLean 00:48:14 / #:
He's orange.
Christine Feehan 00:48:16 / #:
Yes. He is.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:19 / #:
Everybody look down in your podcast right now. We'll show it to you. Yeah, he's orange.
Christine Feehan 00:48:24 / #:
Yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:48:26 / #:
How funny.
Christine Feehan 00:48:27 / #:
Yeah. And here's the other thing that happened with that book. This is just a little... So, it starts off with, there was blood in the River of It Running or something, the first sentence. And I had worked on that first chapter a million ways, and he's insane. I mean, when he comes awake, he's totally insane. And if you don't know what happened to him, you would hate that guy because he's an ass. So, you have to start out with him and knowing what happened to him. And I think I wrote that first chapter 40 Different Ways. Well, when they got the book, they're like, "We have to change this first chapter because they have to know that it's a romance, and you can't start out this way." I'm like, "No, I'm not changing it."
Sarah MacLean 00:49:25 / #:
How funny.
Christine Feehan 00:49:27 / #:
I go, "Toss the book." "We're not tossing the book."
Sarah MacLean 00:49:36 / #:
Amazing. No. And then, when we first got on with you and you said, "Well, I don't know. Am I a trailblazer?" Christine, Christine...
Christine Feehan 00:49:43 / #:
Here's why.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:44 / #:
This is how paranormals begin, now with the heroes in trauma and then, you just sort of ride the wave until you get to the kissing parts.
Christine Feehan 00:49:54 / #:
I finally just said, "You know that Clinch cover? They're going to know it's a romance."
Sarah MacLean 00:50:00 / #:
Right, exactly. I think they'll know. So, at what point did it feel like... I mean, this is obviously a market thing. This is how the sausage is made a little, but when does everybody realize, "Oh, paranormals need a different look"? Is that just because it started to become... So the market just became more exciting?
Christine Feehan 00:50:21 / #:
I really think when I moved over to Berkley, I think that the marketing people at Berkley kind of-
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:32 / #:
Figured that out.
Christine Feehan 00:50:33 / #:
Yeah, they were the ones. For me, for my team, they were the ones who kind of said, "Okay, we're going to do this differently." Interesting enough, in Germany, my books, all of them, even the Ghost Walkers, all of them have bats on the cover.
Jennifer Prokop 00:50:57 / #:
Okay. Sure, sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:50:57 / #:
It's a can of soup, right?
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:00 / #:
I know. I'm like, "Does Saphian mean Bat and German?" I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:51:03 / #:
That's funny.
Christine Feehan 00:51:04 / #:
Maybe. What else?
Sarah MacLean 00:51:05 / #:
Yeah.
Christine Feehan 00:51:07 / #:
They do very well but...
Sarah MacLean 00:51:10 / #:
Hey, listen. If it ain't broke, right?
Jennifer Prokop 00:51:14 / #:
You can tell I really love your books, but one of the things Sarah and I have talked about a lot is romance comes and goes, right? The way that what's popular as a trope, what kind of sub-genres are popular, what kinds of hero archetypes are popular. These things change over time. And right now, the romance hero has changed a lot, but I don't necessarily think that your romance heroes has have changed a lot. So, how do you... I don't know. Do you feel the push of market forces, or it doesn't matter, your readers are...
Christine Feehan 00:51:57 / #:
I don't look at trends and I don't look at that kind of thing at all. I have to go with whatever I'm passionate about and I have to go with whatever character's in my head, and I just hope my readers will love the story and love the characters. I write the best book that I can. I try every single book to improve and give a better story and sometimes, I succeed. I do my best, but there is no way that I can write a story to the market. It's not going to happen. And I know that, so I don't even try.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:41 / #:
Well, what's amazing is you've made a career out of arguably not writing to market. You wrote vampires before vampires were cool. You moved to shifters before everyone else moved to shifters and it's amazing, the inspiration that you give writers is write your truth.
Christine Feehan 00:53:03 / #:
Well, the series that I'm doing, I know it's a bad thing to call it the murder series. I really shouldn't-
Sarah MacLean 00:53:10 / #:
Not for me.
Jennifer Prokop 00:53:13 / #:
I think that might be more to market than we'd like to admit, honestly.
Christine Feehan 00:53:17 / #:
Well, I got into that one because one of my daughters does a lot of climbing. She used to live in Bishop, which is up in the mammoth area near Yosemite. And she knows these women and all of them have these incredible stories. And they all became friends, and they would go climbing together, and I would listen to their stories of where they came from. And then, they have these insane jobs. And I was thinking, "Wow, this is amazing." And one day, they were telling me about this hike they'd gone on, and I thought, "what a perfect place for a serial killer." I'm like, "Okay..." They were all going to go on a hike together and camping. And I said, "Okay, girls, I really want you to start looking around for a place where a serial killer might be hanging out, ready to-"
Jennifer Prokop 00:54:20 / #:
Just report back.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:20 / #:
It's totally fine.
Christine Feehan 00:54:24 / #:
So, after that, I started having the girls, every time they go someplace, do that for me. And the next thing I know, they're taking tasers with them.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:34 / #:
I was going to say they stop hiking. They're done with that now.
Christine Feehan 00:54:38 / #:
I kind of ruined it for them. We're talking murder every time we go to the restaurants.
Sarah MacLean 00:54:48 / #:
So, one of the questions that we often ask is, what's the hallmark of a Christine Feehan romance? When a reader picks up a Christine Feehan novel, one of your nearly-100 of them, what do they know they're going to get?
Christine Feehan 00:55:06 / #:
Well, for sure, they're going to get a happy ending. Absolutely sure they're going to get happy ending. I write, always, about, I think, hope and about finding your own version of family. It doesn't matter what the setting is or what the drama that has been... It's about... Or what I want to say genre, but of course, it's romance, but it could be military, it could be suspense, it could be anything. But set in that, there has to be that hope and the finding of family and that happy ending. That's what you're going to get. That's what you're going to find.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:04 / #:
And we didn't talk about this, but it's also going to be super sexy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:08 / #:
Oh, yeah.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:09 / #:
And I feel like we should sort of touch on this because I do feel like for me, those early Feehans were-
Jennifer Prokop 00:56:20 / #:
And the late ones.
Sarah MacLean 00:56:21 / #:
No, no. I mean, for me though, Sarah, when I stumbled upon Christine Feehan in the bookstore, it felt like I'd never read anything like this before. And I wonder, can you talk a little bit about that, about really bringing sex to the genre in a lot of ways? I feel like there was, not that it didn't exist before, but there's something about the Feehan sensuality that is different.
Christine Feehan 00:56:53 / #:
Well, to me, the characters are really real. People have asked me that before. I'm not in the book at all. When I'm writing that book, it really is the characters. I don't plot out the book. So the characters are so real to me that I know everything about them from the time they were little. And so, when they're moving through that story, it's all about them. And they're the ones that are having sex or not having sex or whatever's happening to them.
00:57:33 / #:
And so, I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. You're not going to get the same one because they're always... It's a different couple. And so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I step back so far when I'm writing that I'm not there, and really, it's almost plays out like it's reality for them. And so, to me, it's just part of life. I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say, "It's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you." So, I wanted them to know what good sex was, and if you have a book that you can read when no one's around and you can see what good sex is, then it's... When you have a partner, and I can tell you, this is another thing I get lots of letters.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:16 / #:
Oh, interesting. I believe that.
Christine Feehan 00:59:20 / #:
I even had letters from guys who told me they would not cheat on their wives, military guys, because they realized that their wife was too important to them. And I mean, it's amazing. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch, and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody. I mean, when I write something, I don't know who it's going to affect. But I deliberately did put sex in my books for that reason, because I wanted people to know there is good sex. No, that there is, and you should feel something.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:19 / #:
And I love the way you talk about it, as you are so distant from the book itself, you are just writing the book. And I think that's really what a Feehan... That's why it feels so different as a reader or did. In those early books, they felt transcendent because they did feel intense and passionate in that way, that sort of private way.
Christine Feehan 01:00:46 / #:
Yeah. Now, when I started the Leopard series, that was kind of my nod to erotica. Yeah, erotic wasn't a huge, huge thing then. Now, it kind of is, but it wasn't at the time. And so, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to just do a little bit of that." And that was before to Torpedo Ink. And so, I thought, "Oh, I'll put that in my leopard one because it made sense to go there." But then, I started writing Torpedo Ink and I'm like, "Uh-oh, now I've got two."
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:23 / #:
Yeah. That's hot, everybody. I'm okay with it.
Sarah MacLean 01:01:29 / #:
No, the Leopard series. I mean, I remember coming to the Leopard series and just feeling like nobody had ever done anything like that before.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:38 / #:
Yeah. So, I think the question we love to end with is... So, it's kind of a two-part question, I guess. One is, there a book that you hear about over and over again from readers? And then, the question we have for you is there a book of yours that's your favorite, the one that you are most proud of?
Christine Feehan 01:01:58 / #:
Well, the one I hear about all the time from Readers is Dark Celebration. Every single person wants me to write that book over and over and over.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:11 / #:
They can just reread it. They can reread it. Reread it, everybody.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:13 / #:
It slaps every time.
Christine Feehan 01:02:16 / #:
It's so funny.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:17 / #:
And why do you think that is?
Christine Feehan 01:02:19 / #:
I think because it revisits characters they love.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:22 / #:
Yes.
Christine Feehan 01:02:24 / #:
I think that's it.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:25 / #:
It's reader Karen Feeding, right?
Christine Feehan 01:02:28 / #:
So, I think that that's it. What book would I be the most proud of?
Sarah MacLean 01:02:35 / #:
Or the one that's most special to you? People take it in different ways.
Christine Feehan 01:02:41 / #:
Probably the one that's the most special to me is Dark Prince, for obvious reasons. That would probably be the one, I would say.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:49 / #:
Well, thank you for being with us today.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:51 / #:
This was incredible. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us and it's really an honor.
Christine Feehan 01:02:59 / #:
I really enjoyed being with you. Thank you for inviting me.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:06 / #:
Every single one of these goes differently.
Jennifer Prokop 01:03:10 / #:
Yeah, it's amazing. I think the thing I liked about our conversation with Christine is how personal it felt. I mean, obviously, not just the stories that she shared, but just you can really feel how reading and writing and thinking about hope and happily ever afters is really something she spent her entire life on. And there's a way that I think that just really came through in that conversation. It was so fascinating.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:39 / #:
Absolutely. She talked a few times about how readers have approached her and talked to her about how special her books are to them and how moving they are and how inspirational and important they are to readers. And every time she told them, I had the same thought, which was, "I think it must be really wonderful to have a conversation, a personal conversation with Christine." She feels like she's present in the moment the whole time, and it was really special.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:14 / #:
I get very distracted by people. I feel like even in my classroom, I'm kind of constantly doing 800 things at once, but you really feel that she probably is such a great mom and a grandma. You know what I mean? Like the attention that she really gives and the way that she talks about... I mean, I'm fascinated too by people who say, "I am a writer. I've always been a writer. I love writing. There's 300 books under the bed."
Sarah MacLean 01:04:41 / #:
A Compulsive Writer. I love that. The sort of, "I would've written with or without publishing." I loved that story about how she got dragged up to an R.W.A. meeting and everybody was like, "Well, I've been working on the same thing for a while." And she's like, "I have 300 books, but I never intended to do this."
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:00 / #:
I also think that that goes hand in hand then with not really worrying about "the market". So, when you are writing in that way and you've had success writing in that way, and you've had readers respond to you in that way, then I think it's really powerful to see someone stay the course.
Sarah MacLean 01:05:24 / #:
I feel like if you are out there right now and you are looking at a manuscript and you think it won't sell you because of the market, hearing Christine talk must be so important and inspirational for you, because we've talked a lot about... We've talked to people like Jayne Ann Krentz, I loved, as she mentioned, Jayne. We've talked about Jayne... When we talked to Jayne, when we talked to J.R. Ward, we've heard the story of people who change genres because, as J.R. Ward puts it, they were fired or it just wasn't selling, so they pivoted. And we've talked so much about how writers have to be nimble to thrive in the genre. And I think what's fascinating is that Christine is nimble and she is full of ideas and shifting and changing, but she stays really true to her brand and to her point of view. And I think that's a really valuable thing to hold onto right now, especially, as we see romance really grappling with those big questions about what comes next and have we oversaturated and these kind of big issues.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:40 / #:
We didn't have a chance to ask her. She has re-released some of her romances.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:45 / #:
Oh, we meant to ask.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:46 / #:
I know, as a sort of-
Sarah MacLean 01:06:48 / #:
And then, we got distracted.
Jennifer Prokop 01:06:49 / #:
Author's cuts. With the rise of self-publishing, I think there's a way in which... There's always a market for something. There's always a small dedicated group of readers who are looking for whatever it is that you are selling. It's traditional publishing that has... It can't quite have that leeway to just be like, "Yes." And so, it's really interesting to hear her talk about that Dorchester imprint taking a chance on her and the difference that made. And it's funny because that is not a... I mean, Dorchester, I feel like is not a name I've even ever heard spoken about before in romance.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:36 / #:
I mean, it's really fascinating because I hadn't thought of Dorchester until-
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:42 / #:
We were prepping.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:42 / #:
I was doing research. We were prepping for this episode. You guys, these are the only episodes we actually prep for. We do actually do research before we talk to these people because we are trying to get them to think we're intelligent and so, we know what we're doing. But no, I mean, Dorchester... And now, of course, I want to go back and look a little more at Dorchester. But I was thinking about our conversation with Radcliffe, when we were talking about how these small presses were really the places where big adventures were happening in romance. And obviously, for Radcliffe and for E.E. Ottoman, that was a different kind of thing, that was happening because queer presses had to publish queer books because traditional publishers weren't doing that. But paranormal, I think about those digital-only presses, again, those kind of Ellora's Cave and Sam Haynes and those places that were taking big risks. And so, it doesn't surprise me that one of the mothers of paranormal came up through a place that doesn't exist anymore.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:56 / #:
This is something I don't... I don't know that I've ever heard any author explicitly state as clearly, which is when you write from a place... When she told that, I mean, heartbreaking story of her son's death, that somehow there are some readers who can plug into that and see a, I don't know, see themselves in that too. And I think that's one of the things, we talk so much about romance being about the genre of hope, about feelings. Romance is about feelings, but it's our feelings as readers too. And I think that this is something that I was really impressed at how clear-eyed it felt like she was about that relationship. If I'm writing from this place, it's going to find the readers in that place.
Sarah MacLean 01:09:55 / #:
And I also think there is... Talk about a fearlessness in terms of character and theme, because she really does write about trauma. And maybe we'll put in the show notes a link to the discussion that Jen and Adriana Herrera have had about writing trauma and how romance and trauma kind of do go hand in hand a lot. But it's interesting because I think writing trauma is a thing that we are talking about a lot in the industry without talking about it, really having conversations about how you put these things on the page so that characters and writers and readers can see it in a raw way. I think she even used that word, raw. And these books are not for the faint of heart. They are rough reads, and she is writing into that space in a way that I think a lot of us are afraid to do. And I think it's because she clearly has seen it, she's faced it. And I loved every minute of that conversation.
Jennifer Prokop 01:11:19 / #:
Romance gives me so much. But when I kind of interact with someone who has the same root causes, and I've talked about this before. I started reading romance after my parents got divorced. The pain of that was the only thing that made me feel hope and better, was reading romance, that there are people out here who have also gone through painful things and they find a way to love each other. And so, it really is interesting, I think, for me, when you talk to someone who, I don't know, talk about the branches of the romance tree. It feels like we were planted in the same ground.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:01 / #:
Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, that was a very cool conversation. I mean, I should have expected it to be, but...
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:10 / #:
A lot of our trailblazers were really pushing for, "Tell us the story of publishing. Tell us your story through that journey." And that's not what her story was about, and I loved hearing it. It was amazing.
S05.29: Spring Romance Recommendations: Sarah & Jen fill your TBR
We were together for the first time in a while, so we decided to record on Sarah’s couch! We answer questions from the audience at Fated Mates Live, recommend Spring romance novels, fill your TBR pile and bantr. It’s nice.
Next week, we’re reading Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
We had a great time at Fated Mates Live! Thanks to everyone for coming, to The William Vale for being a great location, and to Word bookstores for selling books. Producer Pat from Learning the Tropes was Eric’s co-producer that night! A huge thanks to Grand Central/Forever, Sourcebooks, and Berkley Romance for donating books for us to give away!
If you are ever in Williamsburg, you should go ahead and order some pizza. Jen ordered from Mo’s General and it was delicious.
A primer on the Model Minority Myth.
Some real life examples of people dancing themselves to death. A Splash of Cream at the Alabaster Cafe came out 6 weeks after Morning Glory Milking Farm, but also correlation does not imply causation.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Katherine Grace, author of Just a Fling
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo or Apple Books
and
Goldie Thomas, author of The Rake and the Fake
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books
