Thanks to romance reading sisters Cait & Kara for their donation to the Romance for Haiti auction last year, and for this fabulous episode idea! We’re talking about the books we’re saving for the darkest of dark hours…the ones we know will be warm blankets of joy. What are the books we keep under glass, for serious break in case of emergency moments? We talk about them here. Also, Eric has informed us that this episode gave him big “up is down vibes” so here we go! There are some big secrets here, too, so please share your own! Let us know which books you’re keeping in the vault by filling out the “What’s in the Vault” form on the main page of the website. Our next read-along will be Kresley Cole’s Munro, Book 18 of the Immortals After Dark series. You’ve probably heard of this series because Fated Mates began as an IAD fan podcast. You can take the girls out of Monster Mash, but you can’t take Monster Mash out of the girls…so we’re reading Munro, obviously. Stay tuned for information on that episode…but also, if you’re inclined to go back to the beginning, here you go. Preorder Munro at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, or B&N.Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! Show NotesThe Romance for Haiti auction was last fall. You can still support Haiti relief efforts via:Ayiti Ademen: Haiti Tomorrow: providing disaster reliefSt. Boniface Hospital: providing medical reliefAyiti Community Trust: providing social services/long term recoveryHow much does it cost to move your books?Our next read along is Kresley Cole's Munro. Stay tuned for more information!

 On this episode, we’re talking about a historical that we like to think of as the full banana. A descriptor which, now that we’re typing it, really covers a lot of ground. It’s Passion week — we’re talking about how Lisa Valdez shook up the traditional historical world in 2005 when she released this erotic historical featuring a widow and a dude who has an extremely large…you know. We talk about what it means for a romance to be erotic and about how this might also be inspirational. We also talk about this as a marker of a significant shift in the content of romance novels, and ask some questions about basic anatomy. Headphones on for this one, y’all!Our next read-along will be Kresley Cole’s Munro, Book 18 of the Immortals After Dark series. You’ve probably heard of this series because Fated Mates began as an IAD fan podcast. You can take the girls out of Monster Mash, but you can’t take Monster Mash out of the girls…so we’re reading Munro, obviously. Stay tuned for information on that episode…but also, if you’re inclined to go back to the beginning, here you go. Preorder Munro at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, or B&N.Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! Show NotesPassion by Lisa Valdez was the first book in a series named the Passion Quartet, but only two were published. Passion in 2005 and Patience in 2010. Passion takes place during Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, commonly called the Crystal Palace Exhibition. The Great Exhibition was well-documented in the book Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition, which is available in its entirety online. Charlotte Bronte was a visitor and wrote about her impression of the exhibits.Lisa Valdez wrote about sex in romance on Jess Michaels's blog back in 2014.America is full of weird controlling shit about sex, like abstinence only education, and the fact that people don't know where the hymen is. You should follow Dr. Jen Gunter and tell your kids about Scarleteen.Sarah mentioned that Marc is a hero very much in the model of Dain from Lord of Scoundrels.Up next, Munro. Stay tuned for more details.

Our Trailblazer episodes continue this week with Jayne Ann Krentz, who has done it all: writing for Vivian Stephens, writing historicals, writing contemporaries, writing space-set, fantasy, and paranormal romance, writing nonfiction about romance. In addition to managing life as JAK, Amanda Quick, Stephanie James and more, she’s also a legend of the genre because of her vocal resistance to the way society, literature and academia talks about romance novels. In this episode, we talk about her journey and the way she continually reinvented herself to keep writing, about the importance of writers’ core stories, about genre and myth making, and about the role of romance in the world. We could not be more grateful to Jayne Ann Krentz for making time for Fated Mates. Next week, our first read-along of the year will be Lisa Valdez’s Passion, an erotic historical published in 2005 that is W-I-L-D. There is a lot of biblical stuff at the world’s fair. Also some truly bananas stuff that…sticks with you. Get it at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, or B&N.Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! Show NotesWelcome Jayne Ann Krentz, she has had lot of pen names, including Jayne Taylor, Jayne Bentley, Stephanie James and Amanda Glass. Now she publishes under 3 names: Jayne Ann Krenz (contemporary), Jayne Castle (speculative fiction romance), and Amanda Quick (historical). She has said, “I am often asked why I use a variety of pen names. The answer is that this way readers always know which of my three worlds they will be entering when they pick up one of my books.”We read Ravished for the podcast in 2021, or three decades ago. You know how it goes in these pandemic times.People mentioned by Jayne: editor Vivian Stephens, author Barbara Delinksy, author Amii Loren, agent Steve Axelrod publishing executive Irwyn Applebaum, author Susan Elizabeth Phillips, author Kristin Hannah, author Debbie Macomber, author Christina Dodd, author Rachel Grant, author Darcy Burke, editor Leslie Gelbman, editor Cindy Wong, editor Patricia Reynolds Smith.

It’s New Year’s Eve and that means it’s time for a special episode of Fated Mates! Also, Ted Lasso Season 2 is complete and that means it’s time for another Roy Kent episode, so we’re saying, “Why not both?” Both it is! Come for this two-hour deep dive on former AFC Richmond team captain and current AFC Richmond coach, Roy Kent and his bangin’ girl, Keeley Jones, Independent Woman…stay for the Bantr about Isaac, Rebecca, Ted and more. We’re talking about the whole season (except for that one episode we’re going to pretend doesn’t exist). Spoilers abound, so if you haven’t watched, do that first!Happy happy new year, Magnificent Firebirds. You were the best thing about 2021 for us. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;We are starting as we mean to go on in 2022 — our first read-along of the year will be Lisa Valdez’s Passion, an erotic historical published in 2005 that is W-I-L-D. There is a lot of biblical stuff at the world’s fair. Also some truly bananas stuff that…sticks with you. We haven’t read it in a while, so we’re telling you to be careful because…honestly, it’s just good sense with this one. Get it at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, or B&amp;N.Show NotesIn January of 2021,&nbsp;sex columnist Sophia Benoit was our guest, and we talked about Ted Lasso. In June of 2021,&nbsp;we aired our first Roy Kent episode.&nbsp;Doc Martens&nbsp;have never been gone, but&nbsp;they are definitely back.Cheers was one of the all great sitcoms, which aired from 1982-1993.&nbsp;Jen's Christmas gift from Mr. ReadsRomance was&nbsp;the BusyBox; Sarah’s Christmas present from her in-laws came from&nbsp;Spare Time Used Books in Paso Robles, California.Hearst Castle&nbsp;is pretty wild, and not just because it has&nbsp;literal wild zebras&nbsp;roaming around on its grounds.You, too, can make a donation to&nbsp;Flatbush Cats.&nbsp;To clarify, Jen watched The Bear Episode the first time around, but skipped in on this rewatch.&nbsp;The “Roy is sorry for not understanding keely”&nbsp;playlist on apple music&nbsp;and&nbsp;also on Spotify.&nbsp;<p class=""...

Holidays are about traditions and it's a Fated Mates tradition to rerun the previous year's holiday episode. So here we are! This year, we’ve added 30 minutes of chatter about two Christmas romances we loved in 2021. You can take Fated Mates to work, but you can’t take the very unsafe for work discussion out of Fated Mates, so headphones in! Much love and many thanks for being with us!Please enjoy this&nbsp;short playlist&nbsp;of holiday music featured on the podcast.For full show notes, see:&nbsp;S02.16: Christmas Romance Novel Recommendations3.5: Holiday Romances: InterstitialRoy and Keely's&nbsp;Sexy Christmas.Check out&nbsp;Whores of Yore.&nbsp;Seamen&nbsp;sing&nbsp;shanties. Sarah's talking about something else.Jen did not make up this thing about&nbsp;St. Nicholas and shoes.&nbsp;The Black Forest in both&nbsp;a place in Germany&nbsp;and&nbsp;a delicious cake.&nbsp;Best Friend Kelly saved this baby's christmas ornaments!TYRANNOSAURUS REX FOR CHRISTMAS!

We’re back to paranormal romance this week — and so excited! It’s been literal years since we’ve done a deep dive like this one, talking about a beloved, long-standing, many booked, series — Nalini Singh’s Psy Changeling series. We’re deep diving on Caressed by Ice, which features a hero who literally experiences physical pain whenever he feels a feeling, so…of course he’s Jen’s favorite. We talk paranormal world building, patriarchy, hero’s feeling feelings, and try to explain the universe of this book. We’re not great at it, but there is about 20 minutes of bantr, so you’ll be fine! There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;We are going to set some wild intentions for 2022 with our first read-along of the year, Lisa Valdez’s Passion, an erotic historical published in 2005 that is W-I-L-D. There is a lot of biblical stuff at the world’s fair. Also some truly bananas stuff that…sticks with you. We haven’t read it in a while, so we’re telling you to be careful because…honestly, it’s just good sense with this one. Get it at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, or B&amp;N.Show NotesCaressed by Ice is the third book in&nbsp;the Psy/Changling series by Nalini Singh. If you want more read-alongs and critiques, check out&nbsp;Melinda and Melanie’s write ups on the Psy/Changling channel at Smexy Books, and&nbsp;the Changeling Cast by Mara/BooksLikeWhoa on YouTube.Johnnie Walker Blue is pretty fancy, and definitely wants to be served over&nbsp;an ice ball.Jeremy Renner is a jerk.&nbsp;If there is a&nbsp;GBBO (which stands for Great British Bake Off, so no need to google it) and Ted Lasso crossover, they better bake biscuits with the boss.&nbsp;Speaking of GBBO, one of the hosts dressed up as Santa and that's nice.We talked about the paranormal explosion of 2006 when we recorded our first IAD episodes, so just&nbsp;listen to season 1 again&nbsp;because&nbsp;Munro&nbsp;is coming. You might also want to listen to our&nbsp;fantasy romance episode with Zoriada Cordova.More about the&nbsp;monster of the week&nbsp;model.<p...

The Trailblazer series continues this week with Elda Minger—author of contemporary and historical romances, including Untamed Heart, which is the first contemporary romance to feature condom use on the page. &nbsp;Elda talks about writing for Vivian Stephens, about writing about women’s bodies, about reproductive choice and about the way romance made space for women during the 70s and 80s. She shares a collection of gorgeous stories about her life as a reader and writer (and a particularly wonderful detour as a bookseller). About the boom of category and contemporary romance in the 1980s, and about the way writing made her who she is.&nbsp;We are thrilled to have found Elda, and that she took time to speak with us and share her wonderful perspective on the genre with us. We can’t think of a better week to share this episode with you. There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;Next week, we’re reading Nalini Singh’s Caressed by Ice, number three (and Jen’s favorite) of the Psy-Changeling series. Get it at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, B&amp;N or at your local indie.Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Elda Minger, author of over 30 romance novels, including&nbsp;Untamed Heart, Harlequin American Romance #12,&nbsp;the&nbsp;first contemporary romance with condoms&nbsp;used on page.&nbsp;In 1987, Elda wrote a column in RWR&nbsp;(the Romance Writer’s Report, an RWA publication) defending the use of contraception in romance novels.&nbsp;Elda was selling Kathleen Woodiwiss's&nbsp;Shanna&nbsp;at the Chicago bookstore chain&nbsp;Kroch and Brentano’s.Elda first Harlequin American Romances were edited by Vivian Stephens.&nbsp;In this interview with Vivian Stephens from the Browne Pop Culture Library archives, she describes the founding of RWA and her move to Harlequin.Names Elda mentioned: Harlequin editor&nbsp;Evelyn Grippo, Harlequin editorial director&nbsp;Fred Kerner, writing coach&nbsp;Marilyn...

We’re joined this week by author Piper Rayne, who is two authors! Elizabeth Grace (Piper) and Michelle Lynn (Rayne) have written dozens of wildly tropey, wonderfully romantic contemporary romances together. They join us for a few minutes at the start of the episode to talk about how they came to romance and how they write together, and then leave us with a list of questions about publishing, books, and romance recommendations.There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;Our next read-along will be Nalini Singh’s Caressed by Ice, number three (and Jen’s favorite) of the Psy-Changeling series. Get them at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, B&amp;N or at your local indie.Show NotesWe are joined today by&nbsp;Piper Rayne, an author duo who are about to publish their 50th book, My Unexpected Surprise on December 14, 2021. They won the right to decide the topic of an episode after winning an item in Kennedy Ryan's&nbsp;Lift4Autism&nbsp;auction with&nbsp;Kulture City.&nbsp;We mostly talked about and recommended books today, so check out the photo array for all the books we mentioned in today's episode.

It’s autumn which means it’s time to start talking holiday seasons and holiday romances here at Fated Mates, so this week, we’re talking about one of Jen’s favorite category trilogies—Tiffany Reisz’s Men At Work series from Harlequin Blaze. These are sexy, subversive romances that turn tropes on their head while delivering delight. There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;Our next read-along will be Nalini Singh’s Caressed by Ice, number three (and Jen’s favorite) of the Psy-Changeling series. Get them at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, B&amp;N or at your local indie.Show NotesTiffany Reisz is the author of the Original Sinners series and several category length romances. The Men at Work series was&nbsp;a Harlequin Blaze, a line that ran between 2001-2017.&nbsp;The ghost story one is called The Headmaster, part of a tiny stand alone Harlequin eBook series called Shivers.We’ve talked about the history of category romance on many episodes:&nbsp;our favorite bonkers old categories from the 80s/90s, with&nbsp;Steve Ammidown on the first acquisitions of Vivian Stephens, and with&nbsp;rare book dealer Rebecca Romney.&nbsp;Harlequin at the end of 2021 has&nbsp;11 different lines: Desire, Heartwarming, Historical, Intrigue, Medical Romance, Presents, Romance, Romantic Suspense, Special Edition, Love Inspired, and Love Inspired Suspense.&nbsp;The Romance Wars section of&nbsp;Rebecca Romney’s romance catalog starts on page 125, and it’s fascinating.&nbsp;Amazon began in 1994, it had 180 thousand accounts in 1996 and a million accounts by the end of 1997.&nbsp;The Sony Reader&nbsp;was on the market starting in 2004, and&nbsp;the first Kindle was in 2007. Kindle Unlimited started in 2014.The Invention of Thanksgiving&nbsp;is a video from T<a...

This week, we’re continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Vincent Virga—author of the Gaywyck trilogy, the first m/m gothic romance, and one of the first m/m romances ending with a happily ever after.&nbsp;He talks about writing gay romance and about the way reading about love and happiness change readers lives. He also shares rich, wonderful stories about his vibrant life as a picture editor in publishing, about the literary set in New York City in the 70s and 80s, about writing during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, about the times in a writer’s life when the words don’t come easily, and about the times when they can’t be stopped.&nbsp;We are honored and so grateful that Vincent took the time to speak with us, and we hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.&nbsp;There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Vincent Virga, author of&nbsp;Gaywyck, the first gay gothic romance, and one of the earliest gay romances with a happily ever after.&nbsp;It was published by Avon in 1980. He has written several other novels, including&nbsp;Vadriel Vail&nbsp;and&nbsp;A Comfortable Corner. He was also the premier picture editor in the book industry. He has been with his partner,&nbsp;author James McCourt,&nbsp;author of&nbsp;Mawrdew Czgowchwz, for 56 years. Their collected papers are housed at the&nbsp;Beinecke Library at Yale University.&nbsp;Today is&nbsp;the 41st anniversary&nbsp;of&nbsp;The Ramrod Massacre&nbsp;in New York City, where&nbsp;Vernon Kroening&nbsp;and Jorg Wenz were killed. Six...

This week, we’re continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Beverly Jenkins—the first Black author of historical romance featuring Black main characters. We talk about her path to romance writing, about how librarians make the best writers, and about her role as the first Black historical romance novelist. We’re also talking about writing in multiple sub genres, about lifting up other authors, and about the importance of the clinch cover.Thank you to Beverly Jenkins for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story. There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack (which includes Beverly’s Wild Rain!) from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Beverly Jenkins, the author of&nbsp;more than 50 romance novels, and the recipient of the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for historical romance.&nbsp;You can hear&nbsp;Beverly’s interview on the Black Romance History podcast, and last February,&nbsp;Jen interviewed her for Love’s Sweet Arrow when Wild Rain&nbsp;was released. Wild Rain was also one of our&nbsp;best of 2021&nbsp;romance novels.&nbsp;Beverly Jenkins's first agent was Vivian Stephens. You can listen to Julie Moody-Freeman's interview with Vivian&nbsp;in two&nbsp;parts on&nbsp;the Black Romance Podcast.&nbsp;Some of the people Beverly mentioned: sweet romance author&nbsp;Laverne St. George, author&nbsp;Patricia Vaughn, author&nbsp;Anita Richmond Bunkley, publisher&nbsp;Walter Zacharius, editor&nbsp;Ellen Edwards, editor&nbsp;Christine Zika, cover designer Tom Egner, author&nbsp;Shirley Hailstock, author&nbsp;Donna Hill, author&nbsp;Brenda Jackson, editor&nbsp;Monica Harris, author&nbsp;Gay...

It’s time for our favorite episode of the year — the one when we topple TBR piles! It’s our Best Books of 2021 episode — ten books that got us through this wild, not always great year—books with fabulous heroines, heroes who aren’t sure about feelings, delicious sexy bits, and stories that swing for the fences. You will not be disappointed. Buy the Fated Mates Best of Book Pack in one fell swoop from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid the snafus arising all over from supply chain issues. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!&nbsp;Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Best Romance Novels of 2021Hana Khan Carries OnCareless Whispers by Synithia WilliamsScoundrel of My Heart by Lorraine HeathRun Posy Run by Cate C. WellsFor the Love of April French by Penny AimesAll the Best Nights by Hanna EarnestIt Happened One Summer by Tessa BaileyWild Rain by Beverly JenkinsAfter the Billionaire's Wedding Vows... by Lucy MonroeThe Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India HoltonShow NotesYou can order the Fated Mates Best of 2021 box from Old Town Books in Alexandria.&nbsp;The&nbsp;supply chain is a mess,&nbsp;especially for books.Why does it always seem like&nbsp;cosmetics companies are discontinuing&nbsp;your favorite products?&nbsp;“Big mistake, huge,”&nbsp;is a quote from Pretty Woman, of course.&nbsp;Dario is a psychopath, but Jen wasn’t about to let that stop her.&nbsp;Everyone loves Schitt’s Creek, but you don’t need to know about&nbsp;Alexis Rose&nbsp;to enjoy It Happened One Summer.&nbsp;A Star is a Born has&nbsp;a truly terrible ending,&nbsp;<a...

2021 has been kind of a mess, honestly, and Sarah hasn’t been reading as much as usual, because *waves hands at the world.* But Hana Khan Carries On is a total delight and exactly the book she needed this year, so we’re reading it with you! We’ll talk about romcoms, authorial voice, podcasting heroines, about how much we enjoy heroes who deserve a bit of cold storage, about writing contemporaries that reflect the time we live in, and about first person narration and why it works really well when it works really well. Also, Sarah tries to get herself invited to hang out with Uzma Jalaluddin and tries to trademark a Ted Lasso reference all in one episode. It’s rough out here. Leave her alone.Get ready for more trailblazers and our Best of 2021 episode this month! Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Show NotesThis week’s book is Hana Khan Carries On by&nbsp;Uzma Jalaluddin. Her first novel was&nbsp;Ayesha At Last, which was a Pride &amp; Prejudice retelling.&nbsp;Mindy Kaling is adapting Hana Khan for Amazon.&nbsp;The&nbsp;Folio Society has a new version of Georgette Heyer’s Venetia. The introduction is by&nbsp;Stephen Fry, who is&nbsp;a real champion of poetry, including a great book about the joys of reading and writing poetry called&nbsp;The Ode Less Travelled.The dating app invented for Ted Lasso is called&nbsp;Bantr.&nbsp;If you can’t identify different voices, maybe it’s because we all have&nbsp;podcast voice.&nbsp;In the ReadsRomance family,&nbsp;we call Toronto Clean Chicago….because well, I think it explains itself.&nbsp;The Golden Crescent might be an invented neighborhood for this book, but it seems similar to Toronto’s&nbsp;Crescent Town. If you’d like more information about what it means when food or a restaurant is&nbsp;Halal. Perhaps you do not know about&nbsp;&nbsp;biryani, an Indian delicacy, or&nbsp;poutine, a Canadian one.Jen was right about the meaning...

This week, we’re thrilled to have Rebecca Romney with us! Rebecca is a rare books dealer and the woman behind The Romance Novel in English, a 100-lot collection of rare romance novels and other romance-adjacent paraphernalia. We had a great time talking to her about the collection, her motivation to develop it, her hopes for its future at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, and about how romance lovers can start thinking about collecting books! We hope you love this one as much as we did!Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Khan Carries On. Find it at:&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;at your local indie. Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Rebecca Romney. She is the cofounder of&nbsp;Type Punch Matrix, a rare books firm based in Washington DC. She started out working at&nbsp;Bauman Rare Books in Las Vegas.&nbsp;You can also watch her in action from old appearances on Pawn Stars where&nbsp;she routinely broke people’s hearts about the values of their rare books.Rebecca recently put together a collection that was purchased by the&nbsp;Lilly Library at the University of Indiana&nbsp;called&nbsp;The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in English 1769-1999.&nbsp;You can follow Lilly Librarian&nbsp;Rebecca&nbsp;on twitter; they sound like a great resource for romance, and for planning a visit!&nbsp;On the episode, we extensively discuss some of the general themes and specific items in the catalogue. Two authors that didn’t make it into the catalogue because Rebecca couldn’t find copies:&nbsp;Eliza Haywoodand&nbsp;Evelina by Frances Burney.The Elizabeth Lowell book&nbsp;about a gold dealer in Las Vegas is called Running Scared&nbsp;and is part of the Rarities Unlimited series.&nbsp;Gold books aren't really a thing, but&nbsp;gold leaf and illumiated manuscripts are.&nbsp;Here’s an explainer on&nbsp;The Gutenberg Bible&nbsp;and&nbsp;a clip from Pawn Stars where an individual leaf

We’re talking minotaurs and spiders and orcs and gargoyles…it’s Monster Romance week at Fated Mates! Jenny Nordbak of the Wicked Wallflowers and Bonkers Romance podcast joins us to talk about this explosive, extremely popular genre that both intrigues and perplexes us. Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Khan Carries On. Find it at:&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;at your local indie. This episode sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.Show NotesWelcome Jenny Nordbak. Her first romance,&nbsp;His Leading Lady, was just released, (Jen did the final developmental edit!) and she just started&nbsp;the Bonkers Romance podcast&nbsp;with Melody from the Heaving Bosoms podcast. Check it out!Although there is lots of crossover with paranormal or alien, Jenny defines monsters as: creatures who don’t shift into humans, you’d definitely scream if you saw them running down the street, but human enough to be able to bang. Although no one mentioned on the episode, here is&nbsp;the single greatest monster explanation ever seen on twitter.&nbsp;The cartoon Sarah refered to&nbsp;is called&nbsp;The Harkness Test, and it's a reference to Dr. Who.&nbsp;More about what it means to go into&nbsp;the Amazon dungeon--this, of course, is related to&nbsp;attempts to deplatform sex everywhere on the internet. Besialisty cartoon that Sarah is going to look for&nbsp;Baby Jenny imprinted on Fantasia, specifically&nbsp;the centaurs&nbsp;and&nbsp;Chernabog. She also loved&nbsp;the Gargoyles TV show&nbsp;and the&nbsp;orcs in Lord of the Rings.What is...

This week, we’re continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Radclyffe—author of lesbian romances and founder of the LGBTQIA+ publisher, Bold Strokes Books. We talk about her path to romance as a reader and an author, and a publisher, about the early days of queer romance, about the importance of independent booksellers to the queer community, and about how readers find themselves in books.Thank you to Radclyffe for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story. S04.05: Radclyffe: A Trailblazer EpisodeOur next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Kahn Carries On. Find it at:&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;at your local indie. This episode sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Radclyffe, romance author and&nbsp;founder of Bold Strokes Books.&nbsp;The internet archive has preserved&nbsp;her fanfiction site.&nbsp;Bookstores mentioned:&nbsp;Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia,&nbsp;Womancrafts in Provincetown, and an article about the current state of&nbsp;Queer bookstores in America.&nbsp;Publishing and Distributors Radclyffe mentioned:&nbsp;Naiad Press, founded by&nbsp;Barbara Greer,&nbsp;Sarah Aldridge, and Muriel Crawford; Regal Crest Enterprises is now&nbsp;Flashpoint Publications;&nbsp;Fawcett;&nbsp;Bella Booksfounded by Linda Hill; and&nbsp;Alyson Books.Awards mentioned:&nbsp;Lambda Literary Awards, and&nbsp;the RWA Prism awardFurther Reading: Creating a Literary Culture: A Short, Selective, and Incomplete History of LGBT Publishing,&nbsp;Part I,&nbsp;Part

At some point, we were going to have to talk about fossils, right? Ravished is the bluestocking book that started it all for Sarah, and an absolute classic for Jen. On the reread, we absolutely loved it, which just goes to show that Amanda Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) is a total legend. We’ll talk about the appeal of big heroes who know what they want and just go for it, about how difficult it is to write two people who genuinely enjoy each other’s company from the jump, about how awesome it is when a heroine is totally down with doing it in a cave, and about the broad appeal of greatcoats. Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Kahn Carries On. Find it at:&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;at your local indie. Sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.Show NotesRavished was originally published in 1992 by&nbsp;Jayne Ann Krenz, who has a lot of pen names, including Jayne Taylor, Jayne Bentley, Stephanie James and Amanda Glass. Now she publishes under 3 names: Jayne Ann Krenz (contemporary), Jayne Castle (PNR), and Amanda Quick (historical). She has said, “I am often asked why I use a variety of pen names. The answer is that this way readers always know which of my three worlds they will be entering when they pick up one of my books.”The Bluestocking archetype is about a woman who is interested in science and learning in her own right, and is a reference to the&nbsp;Bluestocking Society, which was founded in the 1750s by Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Vesey.&nbsp;Some hallmarks of a&nbsp;gothic novel&nbsp;are “the discovery of mysterious elements of antiquity” and also&nbsp;handsome men in great coats.&nbsp;All about the&nbsp;waltz and why it was so scandalous.&nbsp;Jen’s thread about fossils, which are just&nbsp;a McGuffin.&nbsp;Maybe you are more interested than Jen and would like to learn about&nbsp;how to fake a fossil.&nbsp;Author&nbsp;Vanessa Riley&nbsp;is committed to reviving bananas regency names for men.&nbsp;In A Duke, The Lady, and a Baby, the hero’s name is Busick.

We’re doing a big one this week — secret babies! We’re talking the babies and the pregnancies—and why they are such a juggernaut in romance. We’re talking about why people are all in on secret babies or absolutely all out on them, we’re pinpointing the itch they scratch and why have they installed such buttons in so many of us, and we’re getting to the bottom to why these secret babies are often sired by billionaires. It’s a ride.Next week, our first read along is Amanda Quick’s Ravished—which Sarah describes as “Harriet, in a cave, with a rake.” It’s great. Get reading at:&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;at your local indie. Sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.Show NotesThe secret baby trope can be broken down into secret baby or secret child. Secret pregnancy is just earlier on the timeline, while surprise pregnancy. Often, a secret baby plot happens because there is a fear that the baby is in danger.&nbsp;More about the word&nbsp;Interstitial.&nbsp;We recently re-released our&nbsp;bodily autonomy interstitial&nbsp;from 2019.&nbsp;If you are on Facebook, join Sarah’s&nbsp;OSCRB group (Old School Romance Book Club) if you want more romance talk.&nbsp;On some old school covers, you see lots of people with&nbsp;gravity defying hair.&nbsp;Sarah mentioned the “Four Js” and she meant these old school historical romance powerhouses:&nbsp;Johanna Lindsay,&nbsp;Jude Deveraux,&nbsp;Julie Garwood, and&nbsp;Judith McNaught.&nbsp;The most&nbsp;dangerous third rail in romance is cheating.&nbsp;More about&nbsp;“the heir and the spare.”The Right Stuff&nbsp;is a movie about astronauts, but&nbsp;Terms of Endearment&nbsp;is the movie where Jack Nicholson plays an astronaut. The movie was released in late

The Trailblazers conversations begin this week with the brilliant, fearless Sandra Brown—aka Erin St. Clair and Rachel Ryan. We talk about everything from her first books, acquired by Vivian Stephens for Candlelight Ecstasy, about how Slow Heat in Heaven was her personal game changer, about the beginnings of romantic suspense, and about what makes a Sandra Brown novel, the most recent of which, Blind Tiger, was released last month.Thank you to Sandra Brown for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story. We’ve got an interstitial episode coming your way next week, but our first read along (in two weeks) is Amanda Quick’s Ravished—which Sarah describes as “Harriet, in a cave, with a rake.” It’s great. Get reading at:&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;at your local indie. You have two weeks to read, but in the meantime, sit back, relax, and let us give you a preview of what's to come!&nbsp;Don't forget to like and follow in your favorite podcasting platform!Show NotesWelcome to our first trailblazer,&nbsp;romance legend Sandra Brown. Her latest release is Blind Tiger, which was her 73rd book on the New York Times bestseller list. Blind Tiger is a thriller set in Texas during the 1920s.Prohibition went into effect on January 1, 1920. In Texas, the town of&nbsp;Glen Rose was the Moonshine Capital of Texas.The Ford Model T&nbsp;was the first mass produced American car. Here’s a&nbsp;video of the actual driving experience&nbsp;of the 1915 model. If you’d like to see a bunch of Model Ts in the same place, you can&nbsp;visit the winter home of Thomas Edison in Fort Myers, Florida. Henry Ford visited so often that he eventually bought the home next door. Prohibition and&nbsp;moonshining gave birth to NASCAR.Sandra’s first books were bought by Vivian Stephens&nbsp;for Candlelight Ecstasy under the pen name Rachel Ryan. She wrote for Silhouette under the name Erin St. Clair, and for Pocket as Laura Jordan.&nbsp;Carolyn Nichols at Loveswept wanted authors to use their real names, and now all of Sandra's books have been rereleased under her own name.Sandra appeared on the cover of one of her own Loveswepts,&nbsp;The Rana Look, with actor&nbsp;<a...

Season Four starts today, you Magnificent Firebirds!Season One gave us a full lAD deep dive (if you’ve never read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, general existential malaise is a really good reason to start), and Season Two gave us The Books That Blooded Us&nbsp;-- the books that made us the romance readers we are. Season Three was during a pandemic, so just let us live (but also, there was a Roy Kent episode)! Now, Season Four is here, and we have — dare we say — a plan? We’re going to deep dive on books that are new and fabulous, old and transformative, and generally reveal how vast and magnificent the romance pool can get. We’ve got some great interstitials planned, including some fabulous, brilliant guests on deck…and when Munro is released, we’ll (obviously) drop everything and read with you!But we’ve got something new and different to add to the mix — a collection of interviews with trailblazers of the genre—the people who have built the romance house over the last fifty years. We’re already blown away by who we have on deck, with many many more to come! Stick with us, it’s going to be a terrific ride. We begin our read alongs in two weeks with a delicious book that did not bring romance the bluestocking, but definitely made sure we all knew who she was. It’s Amanda Quick’s Ravished—which Sarah describes as “Harriet, in a cave, with a rake.” It’s great. Get reading at:&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;at your local indie. You have two weeks to read, but in the meantime, sit back, relax, and let us give you a preview of what's to come!&nbsp;Don't forget to like and follow in your favorite podcasting platform!Show NotesThe only Fated Mates episode where one of us was absent was back when&nbsp;Sarah was sick&nbsp;and&nbsp;Kate came on to talk about sickbed scenes--It was&nbsp;March of 2020&nbsp;and we weren’t as Coronavirus-aware as we thought.Keeping our fingers crossed that&nbsp;the FDA will approve the vaccination for kids between 5 and 12.&nbsp;Health care workers are facing&nbsp;increasingly hostile and frightening aggression from anti-vaxxers.&nbsp;We were ahead of the ball on calling&nbsp;<a...

We promised you fun stuff while we are on Hiatus, and here we are! Last week, more than 700 of you joined us for a Fated Mates LIVE to celebrate Sarah’s new book, Bombshell! We had a great time talking to some of our favorite people, playing games, talking about thighsexuality, 19th Century surgery, and, of course, girl gangs in pop culture. Thanks to our faves: Andie J. Christopher, Kate Clayborn, Alexis Daria, Adriana Herrera, Sophie Jordan, Christina Lauren, Diana Quincy, Kennedy Ryan and Joanna Shupe for celebrating with us, and to Northshire Bookstore, East City Bookshop, Katy Budget Books, Old Town Books &amp; Mysterious Galaxy for being fabulous independent bookstores that always support romance novels. We’re starting Season 4 in two weeks…we hope this helps tide you over until then!For more from the event, check this Twitter thread.

Sarah has a new book out, so Jen is playing host this week, and Sarah is playing guest, and Jen is really extremely good at it…so pour yourself a glass of whatever you’re drinking and get ready! And don’t miss the first two chapters of the Bombshell audiobook at the end of the episode! If you haven’t purchased Bombshell yet, you can find it wherever books are sold, and at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.This episode wraps up Season 3! Jen’s taking Lil’Romance to college, Sarah’s taking a break from social media, and we’ll be back in September with Season 4. Don’t worry, though, there will be a few little audio treats dropping on Wednesdays so you don’t miss us too much. (we will miss you, though. obviously.)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 NotesBombshell&nbsp;is here! The audiobook is narrated by&nbsp;Mary Jane Wells, and she’s one of Jen’s favorite narrators.&nbsp;Maybe you want to&nbsp;watch the Amazons fighting in the Wonder Woman movie,&nbsp;just for vibes.&nbsp;The Soiled S’s are the five Talbot sisters: Seraphina, Sesily, Seleste, Seline, and Sophie.&nbsp;Seraphina&nbsp;and&nbsp;Sophie&nbsp;each had their own books, and Seleste and Seline were married in the background of the series.&nbsp;A&nbsp;series bible&nbsp;is used by writers as a reference document for the world they’ve made.&nbsp;Some of our favorite movies with a crew and/or a heist movies: The A-Team, Ocean’s Eight, and the Avengers.The first of Louisa Edward’s chef romances is called&nbsp;Can’t Stand the Heat.Queen Victoria&nbsp;was on the throne from 1837-1901, and here is an overview of&nbsp;the hallmarks of her reign&nbsp;and what it was like for&nbsp;women during that era.Here’s a&nbsp;brief history of Scotland Yard.The word&nbsp;bombshell dates back to 1708.

Today we’re joined by Farrah Rochon, author of The Dating Playbook, to talk sports romances! We talked sports way back in season 1 (links below), but this is one of those tropes we’re always happy to dig into! We get to the bottom of Farrah’s love of football, we talk about competence porn and the human body as a superior tool, and we recommend a LOT of B O O K S! Don’t miss Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here! NEXT WEEK IS BOMBSHELL WEEK! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders will come with a Fated Mates Sticker! 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 NotesWelcome&nbsp;Farrah Rochon! Her newest book,&nbsp;The Dating Playbook&nbsp;just came out yesterday. She has another football series,&nbsp;the New York Sabres.The&nbsp;2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing&nbsp;begin on February 4th, 2022.&nbsp;Here’s&nbsp;an explainer for dressage, an Olympic equestrian event.&nbsp;The horse at the club dressage video on twitter,&nbsp;Snoop Dogg and Kevin Hart watching the same video.The 1984 category romance about a woman competing in Equestrian events at the Olympics was originally called&nbsp;Summer Games&nbsp;and later changed to&nbsp;Remember Summer (which is available as an eBook),&nbsp;and it was by Elizabeth Lowell not Iris Johansen.How the horses travel to Tokyo,&nbsp;how the ice is made, and other articles about&nbsp;new sports at this year’s Olympics.&nbsp;All about Rune, the&nbsp;Danish Destroyer.&nbsp;In season one, we did a fake engagement interstitial, but it’s a&nbsp;<a...

Surprising absolutely no one, we love an assassin here at Fated Mates! We basically love any character who has been through the wringer and also can kill a man fourteen different ways before dinner. Even better if it’s a heroine, and she’s been hired to kill the hero (or vice versa). Anyway, we’re talking about why these books (and so! many! movies!) scratch that particular itch for us. Spoiler: It’s beautiful people blowing things up, obvi.Don’t miss Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here! Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders will come with a Fated Mates Sticker! 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 NotesThe game&nbsp;Assassin’s Creed&nbsp;first came out in 2007, and now there are&nbsp;so many different versions, and in many of them, you can&nbsp;garrote&nbsp;someone if you are so moved. Sarah's favorite is&nbsp;Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which is set in Victorian London.We mentioned so many movies and TV shows with assassins:&nbsp;John Wick,&nbsp;The Bourne Identity,&nbsp;Gunpowder Milkshake&nbsp;(and its many weapons),&nbsp;Suicide Blonde,&nbsp;Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,&nbsp;Kill Bill,&nbsp;Mr. and Mrs. Smith,&nbsp;James Bond,&nbsp;Black Widow,&nbsp;Le Femme Nikita,&nbsp;The Saint,&nbsp;Grosse Pointe Blank,&nbsp;Desperado, and&nbsp;The Witcher.More about&nbsp;some of&nbsp;the&nbsp;<a...

Adriana Herrera, a FIVE-TIMER, joins us this week to talk about the third-rail of romance…infidelity! We’re talking about cheating, and about all the other bits related to it: mistresses, courtesans, illegitimate children, sex work…and get your pencils ready because (of course) we’re toppling TBRs with this one. Don’t miss Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here! Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders will come with a Fated Mates Sticker! 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 NotesWelcome to five-timer&nbsp;Adriana Herrera,&nbsp;our very own Rizzo, and her Pink Lady jacket is on the way. PS. It was only in working on these show notes that Jen realized that Rizzo’s first name is Betty.&nbsp;The phrase&nbsp;“safe romance”&nbsp;is used in online spaces to describe books without a single molecule of infidelity energy.&nbsp;Infidelity&nbsp;in&nbsp;evangelical christianity&nbsp;(and everywhere, honestly) often places the blame on the wife if her husband strays and also on&nbsp;&nbsp;“the evil other woman”&nbsp;--&nbsp;in this model, you know who’s not to blame? Men.And that’s pure patriarchy.&nbsp;Lavender wasn’t invented because it’s a plant and&nbsp;its known history dates back 2500 years.&nbsp;Courtesan culture was inextricably tied to colonialism&nbsp;in India,&nbsp;in China, and&nbsp;in the USA.Summer Brennan’s patreon about The Book of Courtesans. Hallie...

We’re nearing the end of Season Three and we are so happy to be reading one of the most delightful books in modern historical romance, Cat Sebastian’s Unmasked by the Marquess. We talk about Cat’s masterful plotting within a three-act structure, about friendship, trust and sacrifice in relationships, and about writing a modern historical while still delivering the bananas plots that made the early books in the genre the best.We also announce our next Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here! Our next read along is Sarah’s BOMBSHELL! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or signed via Sarah’s local indie, WORD, or one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders from WORD or the launch sponsors will come with a Fated Mates Sticker! 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 NotesThe virtual launch event for Bombshell&nbsp;will be on Tuesday Aug 24 at 7eastern/4 pacific.&nbsp;If you pre-ordered a signed book from Word!, keep an eye out for details for how to join the event.Unmasked by the Marquess received excellent reviews from&nbsp;Kirkus,&nbsp;Publisher’s Weekly, and the&nbsp;New York Times.&nbsp;A guide to nonbinary pronouns.The audiobook of Unmasked by the Marquess is great, and&nbsp;narrated by Joel Leslie.&nbsp;Cat Sebastian is a fanfiction expert and routinely talks about some of her favorite fics. If you don’t know,&nbsp;the Stucky ship of Cap &amp; Bucky&nbsp;is the most written about ship on Ao3.&nbsp;“Natural child”&nbsp;was the nice way of saying that a child was born out of wedlock. The mean way, of course, is&nbsp;bastard.More about the&nbsp;three act structure.This is&nbsp;a...

Two episodes this week! Huzzah! Today we’re joined by the extremely delightful, extremely brilliant Nicola Yoon to discuss her extremely romantic new book, Instructions for Dancing, and YA Romance in general! We talk about Nicola’s love of romance novels (which she shares with the heroine of her book), about her history with them, and about what makes YA Romance so extremely delicious. We also talk about her new project with the Obamas and her new imprint for young readers at Random House.Our next read along (next week! we told you it was coming!) is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.&nbsp;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 NotesWelcome&nbsp;Nicola Yoon!&nbsp;Along with&nbsp;Instructions for Dancing, she and five other Black women authors just published the&nbsp;Blackout&nbsp;anthology, which has been&nbsp;picked up by the Obamas for TV and film for Netflix.Nicola and her husband David Yoon&nbsp;are also creating the Yooniverse, including&nbsp;a new YA romance imprint called Joy Revolution at Random House.Poltergeist&nbsp;and&nbsp;its infamous curse&nbsp;scared everyone back in the 80.&nbsp;Nicola wasn’t sure what imprint she was reading when she found her first romance under her aunt's bed, but she mentioned&nbsp;Harlequin Blaze,&nbsp;one of our all time favorite imprints which&nbsp;was shuttered in 2017.&nbsp;Just a quick reminder that&nbsp;HFN means “happy for now” and HEA means “happily ever after.”&nbsp;YA has evolved over time, a process which has&nbsp;ramped up in the past 20 years&nbsp;and is now a publishing juggernaut.&nbsp;YA is far more progressive that adult romance, but also grapples with the&nbsp;<a...

“Hang on,” we can hear you saying, “isn’t this a romance novel podcast?” It absolutely is, and that’s why we’re dropping a very special episode about the character who is the most perfect on-screen version of a romance hero that ever there was: Captain of the AFC Richmond team, Roy Kent. Added bonus, we’re joined by Jen’s brother Erik to talk sports stories (and check in on Jürgen Klopp).Spoilers abound, so if you haven’t watched Season 1, do that first!Our next read along is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.&nbsp;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!&nbsp;Show NotesTed Lasso season two starts this Friday, and&nbsp;the reviews look great. Also, if you haven't read&nbsp;this GQ profile of Jason Sudeikis, you are missing out.In season 2, we talked about&nbsp;Cinnamon Roll heroes, as compared to&nbsp;Alpha heroes. Grunting is definitely an alpha hero trait.&nbsp;We love Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca) and Juno Temple (Keeley)&nbsp;and that’s all we have to say about that.&nbsp;Apparently, there are&nbsp;ways to watch Apple TV Plus shows&nbsp;even if you don’t have an Apple Device. Who knew!&nbsp;You, too, can&nbsp;bake Ted’s biscuits.&nbsp;USAians have a different relationship with Soccer&nbsp;than&nbsp;the rest of the world. Perhaps you need a primer on&nbsp;the Premier League,&nbsp;promotion and relegation, the&nbsp;average age of Premier League players, and just&nbsp;how popular is Premier League football really is.Fated Mates has a favorite team, it’s&nbsp;<a...

It’s Taboo Romance week! We’re thrilled to be joined by Nikki Sloane, whose books we’ve adored for years here on FM. We talk about what makes a romance taboo, about why readers are drawn to taboo stories, and about whether taboo romance is empirically erotic. Our next read along is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.&nbsp;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!&nbsp;Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Nikki Sloane!&nbsp;We discussed her novel&nbsp;Three Little Mistakes&nbsp;in season two. Her latest release in the Filthy Rich Americans series, The Redemption, won&nbsp;the Holt Award&nbsp;from the Virginia Romance Writers Association and has been nominated for the inaugural Vivian Award from the Romance Writers of America.We had an episode about&nbsp;age-gap romance, but when the woman is older sometimes we use the phrase Cougar,&nbsp;which I do not recommend googling!&nbsp;Taboo romance is difficult to define. But on the episode, we talked about three major ideas: it explores power dynamics, it contains an element of the forbidden, and is makes readers viscerally feel that the relationship is “wrong.” However, Nikki also used the phrase “universal taboos” to describe topics so forbidden--beastality and incest--that they could never be a part of romance.&nbsp;In a Florida high school,&nbsp;the necklines of women and girls were photoshopped (without their knowledge) if there was too much cleavage.We’ve been digging the priest taboo since&nbsp;The Thorn Birds, and it was revived in pop culture by&nbsp;the TV show Fleabag. We discussed&nbsp;Sierra Simone’s Priest&nbsp;in season two.&nbsp;As we reckon with #MeToo,&nbsp;we are all thinking about and redefining power dynamics in our culture.&nbsp;Incest is a common trope in horror and other gothic stories, it&nbsp;didn’t originate with Flowers in the Attic.&nbsp;<p...

We are so excited to have absolute romance legend Susan Elizabeth Phillips with us to discuss every fangirly question we had for her! We talked about her new book, When Stars Collide, the latest in the Chicago Stars series, about her role in inventing the sports romance, about the opera and the way she thinks about her career after a few decades of writing. We had the BEST time. Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.&nbsp;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!&nbsp;Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Susan Elizabeth Phillips! We talked about an earlier book in the Chicago Stars series,&nbsp;Nobody’s Baby But Mine&nbsp;in season two.&nbsp;Speaking of amazing stories about opera singers, last week,&nbsp;an opera singer in Pennsylvania gave birth in the car&nbsp;while her husband was driving.&nbsp;As it turns out,&nbsp;the Opera in Verona&nbsp;is a pretty big deal! If you’re ever in Chicago, go to&nbsp;The Lyric Opera&nbsp;and then let Jen know because she wants someone to go with her.&nbsp;The Chicago Children’s Choir&nbsp;is amazing, too and&nbsp;they often collaborate with the CSO and Lyric Opera.All you need to know about the&nbsp;totally awesome Chicago Flag, and why it's&nbsp;better than most city flags.&nbsp;The Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women anthology, which explored the genre from the perspective of romance authors instead of academics, was published in 1992.Jen was on Learning the Tropes to talk about Kiss an Angel&nbsp;if you want to hear more about it.&nbsp;There&nbsp;are really&nbsp;cool things&nbsp;and&nbsp;really bad things&nbsp;about the Chicago River.&nbsp;<p

We promised you an episode on Dark Romance and truthfully we’re pretty proud of how well we’ve delivered. We’ve got Kenya Goree-Bell, Nisha Sharma, Joanna Shupe and Jo Brenner with us today to dig deep on this subgenre that we don’t read regularly. We are endlessly grateful for their guidance through this end of the romance pool!&nbsp;We talk about what makes a romance “dark,” about how dark romance differs from morality chain and taboo romance, and about why dark romance resonates with so many readers. Oh, and yes, if you’re curious, we fill your TBR pile (obvi).&nbsp;Stay tuned at the end of the episode for additional reflections from Sarah &amp; Jen.CONTENT NOTE: Because Dark Romance can include all sorts of problematic content, we don’t shy away from many of those topics in this episode. Proceed with caution, both in listening and in reading.Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.&nbsp;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!&nbsp;Show NotesWelcome our panel of dark romance experts:&nbsp;Kenya Goree-Bell,&nbsp;Nisha Sharma,&nbsp;Joanna Shupe, and&nbsp;Jo Brenner.The hallmarks and tenets of Dark RomanceAll dubious consent and non-consent romance is dark romance (although not all dark romance has dubcon or nonconsensual elements).It’s about what the HEA is made up of: If the non-aggressor or non-villian moves into the dark (rather than pulling the other into the light), then it would qualify as dark romance.Often the aggressor/villain is static, while the non-aggressor finds their light or strength in the new world they exist in. This person does all the work and learns how to navigate a life around the aggressor and their world. These are not stories of love redeeming, but rather of learning to find love and happiness with the person (people) in front of you.The characters are suffering from current or past psychological or physical trauma. The non-aggressor represents the last bits of humanity that the aggressor has to hold on to. Dark romance explores a relationship where only one person has strains of humanity and the impact it has on a person without it.The evil and violence of the aggressor must take place on the page.Some Terms we'll use on this episodeConsensual non-consent (non-con):&nbsp;is when romantic partners engage “in...

We’re back to read alongs this week! We’re big Kylie Scott fans here at Fated Mates, and we talked about her Stage Dive series all the way back in Season One on our very first interstitial, and now we’re doing a deep dive. We’d intended to do book three, Lead, but we ended up talking about all four, and honestly, rereading this was pretty great for us. We hope it was great for you, too. Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.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 NotesSarah has a book coming on August 24th! Preorder&nbsp;Bombshell&nbsp;now. You won't regret it.Everyone is struggling with&nbsp;getting dressed&nbsp;again.&nbsp;It’s a 1001 in the&nbsp;1001 Dark Nights series&nbsp;as an homage and allusion to&nbsp;Scheherazade, the story-teller of&nbsp;the Arabian Nights.&nbsp;We also love the&nbsp;VIP series by Kristen Callihan, and the 4th book in that series,&nbsp;Exposed, comes out next month, July 2021.On our upcoming episode with Susan Elizabeth Phillips, where she told us that back in the day, “rock stars, actors, and athletes” were not allowed in the early days of romance. We aren’t sure why, but we speculate that it was fear of putting&nbsp;“sex, drugs, and rock and roll”&nbsp;and&nbsp;other high roller lifestyles&nbsp;on page.&nbsp;If you want to join the OSRBC group (Old School Romance Book Club) on Facebook, make sure to answer the three questions if you want to be admitted.Beverly Jenkins...

We’re welcoming Tia Williams, author of the wonderful Seven Days in June, to talk about her delicious book, about writing writers, about romances set in New York City, about her youth as a romance reader, and about Drew Barrymore as inspiration, and about The Joan Wilder?!. Our next read along is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! Get the others in the series, too, while you’re at it, because you’ll probably want to read the whole thing. 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 NotesIf you want a signed copy of Bombshell along with a Fated Mates sticker,&nbsp;preorder from Word Bookstore in Brooklyn.&nbsp;Welcome&nbsp;Tia Williams!&nbsp;Her new release,&nbsp;Seven Days in June, is&nbsp;Reese’s Book Club pick for June.&nbsp;In this article in Ebony, Tia talks about her commitment to putting Black love on page and creating rich, interesting lives for Shane and Eva.&nbsp;Eva’s website is EvaMercyMe, and her vampire hero is Sebastian. And according to Twitter,&nbsp;all romance Sebastians are good Sebatians.&nbsp;Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown&nbsp;is quite the read, and we talked about it on&nbsp;the Texas!Chase episode.The question of “what if Romeo and Juliet met as grown-ups” was also the idea behind Kate Clayborn’s Love at First, and&nbsp;we talked about it with Kate on an episode about retellings in romance.&nbsp;Drew Barrymore’s memoir&nbsp;Little Girl Lost&nbsp;is the story of her childhood in Hollywood, and definitely was hugely influential and shocking, and&nbsp;it still is worth a read&nbsp;if you can find a copy. It hasn't been digitized!&nbsp;Jen talked to Adriana...

This week, Zoraida Córdova (aka Zoey Castille) joins us to talk about fantasy romance and why it is so hard to find it in the romance pool. We talk about speculative fiction, high fantasy, low fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy, paranormal romance and more, all while trying to figure out just what makes something fantasy and not paranormal (we think we’ve cracked the code). We also talk world building, about maps, and about merman junk.Our next read along is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! Get the others in the series, too, while you’re at it, because you’ll probably want to read the whole thing. 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 NotesWelcome&nbsp;Zoraida Córdova!&nbsp;Zoraida writes MG, YA, and adult speculative fiction, and also romance under the name Zoey Castile.&nbsp;Puerto Rico is a US territory&nbsp;and residents of the island are American citizens.Why Moscow Mules are served in copper mugs.We love Norma Perez-Hernandez&nbsp;who is&nbsp;an amazing, exuberant editor at Kensington, and if you don’t follow her on Twitter she should. Norma also was on the&nbsp;2020 Publisher's Weekly Star Watch&nbsp;List.&nbsp;Zoraida’s book&nbsp;The Vicious Deep&nbsp;answers the age-old question of “where does it go,” a similar answer is in&nbsp;Guillermo del Toro's movie&nbsp;The Shape of Water.&nbsp;Speculative fiction asks the question “what if”&nbsp;and is the big umbrella category for science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy (now Black authors in particular suggest we rename this contemporary fantasy), and paranormal.&nbsp;Reading strategies are for everyone:&nbsp;We love maps in fantasy, so why not in contemporary fiction?Victoria Avyeard was on Sarah Enni's First Draft podcast&nbsp;talking about world building.The Hero’s Journey, or...

Monday Surprise! We’re so excited to share last week’s episode of 99% Invisible with Fated Mates listeners this week — Sarah’s favorite podcast did an episode about romance covers, and it was thoughtful and respectful and perfect….and not only because she was on it. She’s so grateful to the team at 99% Invisible for having her, and we’re so grateful to them for letting us share the episode with all of you. Enjoy!Show NotesSarah was a guest on&nbsp;last week's 99% Invisible podcast called The Clinch. We're huge fans of the podcast, but it's especially because their episode about locks called&nbsp;Perfect Security&nbsp;was the inspiration for Felicity Faircloth in&nbsp;Wicked and the Wallflower.&nbsp;Although we haven't talk about the cover of&nbsp;Tender is the Storm&nbsp;on Fated Mates, we did discuss another Johanna Lindsey fan favorite,&nbsp;Gentle Rogue.&nbsp;One of Jen's favorite episodes of 99% Invisible&nbsp;is about flag design,&nbsp;probably because it was very complimentary to the&nbsp;Chicago flag.&nbsp;Sarah's is obviously Perfect Security, but she also loved&nbsp;this one on water fountains.If you're looking for other great reads about romance covers,&nbsp;Kelly Faircloth wrote about clinch covers for Jezebel&nbsp;and it is a must read.&nbsp;And Jen wrote about the art of the Harlequin romance cover for Kirkus.This episode of 99PI was produced by Katie Mingle and inspired by her mom, Pamela Mingle, who writes historical romances. Try her debut (with that gorgeous clinch!),&nbsp;A False Proposal, or her most recent,&nbsp;Game of Spies.

You are in the right place! Your eyes do not deceive you! We’re actually talking about spy romances this week and no Sarahs were harmed during the discussion, but that’s probably because it was a discussion with one of her favorite people, the fantastic Nana Malone! We talk about Nana’s immense career, about how she took matters into her own hands and started making the covers she wished to see in the world, about her Brown Nipple reading challenge, about her latest book, a Kobo original, The Spy in 3B, and about porny ferris wheels. Real ordinary stuff. We also get to the bottom of why Sarah doesn’t like spy romances generally, but why she can’t get enough of Mr. &amp; Mrs. Smith retellings. Our next read along in some number of weeks (three? four?) is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! 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 NotesWelcome&nbsp;Nana Malone&nbsp;back to the pod, and if you want to hear more about&nbsp;the Brown Nipple Challenge, check out her Instagram. She is an amazing author and recently&nbsp;became her own cover model&nbsp;after failing to find good stock photos for her books.If you don’t know&nbsp;how stock photography works, here’s a brief primer on&nbsp;how they can be used to make book covers and teasers. The problems with&nbsp;finding stock photography that is truly diverse is a well-known problem.&nbsp;For most authors, custom photography is cost-prohibitive. Nana’s favorite photographer is&nbsp;Wander Aguiar.&nbsp;If you want to hear more about romance covers and their history, Sarah was interviewed on&nbsp;an episode of the 99% Invisible podcast&nbsp;about covers this week. Head over and have a listen after you listen to this!&nbsp;Just in case you need a quick review, there are currently three paths in publishing: self-published, indie, and traditional. It’s common to use “indie” and “self-published” interchangeably, which why Nana described an author as “their own business.” Strictly speaking, Indie means small, independent presses, such as&nbsp;Violet Gaze Press. And Trad, or traditional publishing, refers to the Big Five&nbsp;(Big Four?)&nbsp;New York publishing houses: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon &amp; Schuster.&nbsp;<p class=""...

Continuing our conversation about Bright Bananas on the Romance Tree — this week we’re reading an extreme oldie, Anne Stuart’s Tangled Lies, famous for being a story about a heroine falling for her brother…except he’s not really her brother! It’s a RIDE. We talk about just how odd romance could be back in the day, about how this book might be an ancestor to dark romance, and about how alpha alpha heroes could really get. And then we talk about modern contemporary romance and how things are changing in traditional publishing. Our next read along in some number of weeks (three? four?) is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&amp;N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! 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 NotesBombshell&nbsp;comes out on Aug 24th.&nbsp;You should preorder it from WORD in Brooklyn, which will for sure come with some cool swag, including a special edition Fated Mates sticker. Best Friend Kelly did a&nbsp;Twitter poll asking people about their experiences ordering books + swag&nbsp;from Indie bookstores. Speaking of which, the art by&nbsp;Liz Parkes&nbsp;for&nbsp;The Soulmate Equation&nbsp;is the cutest!&nbsp;You might need this page&nbsp;as you are reading&nbsp;Tangled Lies.Speaking of books from your grandma’s attic, look at what HEAapologist found this week! If you want this feeling without having relatives cool enough to leave them lying around, just order a big lot of random romances from eBay. For individual titles, Jen thinks&nbsp;Thrift Books&nbsp;is better than Amazon because you don’t pay shipping for each individual title.Rob Imes&nbsp;has&nbsp;a page on his blog where he keeps track of all the category lines&nbsp;through 1989. In the case of&nbsp;Tangled Lies, it was first published as&nbsp;Harlequin Intrigue&nbsp;#5, then it was rebranded in the&nbsp;Men Made in America series, and finally part of the&nbsp;Famous Firsts Collection&nbsp;that celebrated&nbsp;Harlequin's 60th anniversary.&nbsp;Fiction DB&nbsp;is the place to do if you're looking for an author's backlist. Here is&nbsp;Anne Stuart's page,&nbsp;the one&nbsp;where the soldier and the nun have a baby...

It is release week for some of our favorite people, and we’re here to celebrate with them! Join us for a wild conversation about the books Jen refers to as “the brightest bananas on the tree” — each of us has selected a truly wild ride of a book, and we’re going to share them with you! We also talk about their fabulous new release, now Sarah’s favorite CLo book, The Soulmate Equation. Preorder it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, or signed from Vroman’s bookstore! Our next read along is out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly eye-widening Tangled Lies at your local library or via a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay &amp; Thrift Books. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesIf you'd like to order signed copies of The Soulmate Equation, check out&nbsp;Vroman's Bookstore&nbsp;or the other book shops on&nbsp;CLo's virtual book tour. Tonight, 5/19/2021, Christina and Lauren are&nbsp;celebrating the launch of The Soulmate Equation with Sarah, Xio Axelrod, and Rachel Epstein.&nbsp;If you want to dive into the Theranos story, Lo recommends the book&nbsp;Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, and the&nbsp;New York Times has a list&nbsp;of recommended things to read and watch.&nbsp;23 &amp; Me&nbsp;and&nbsp;other DNA Ancestry tests&nbsp;can tell you some things: whether or not you think&nbsp;cilantro tastes like soap, and about the size of our&nbsp;hair follicles, but as of right now,&nbsp;science can’t tell you much about your fated mate, I mean soulmate.Questions about the future of technology and how it intersects with humanity make for great television in shows like&nbsp;Black Mirror,&nbsp;<a...

We’re talking Sherry Thomas’s beautiful, unrequited love/marriage of convenience story Ravishing the Heiress this week — we’ll talk about angst, about why we love yearning so much, about our feelings about heroes who are dummies, about homes vs. houses, and about Victorians being E X T R A.Next week, we’re back with the delightful Christina Lauren to play a very fun game with bananas romance novels and celebrate the launch of their fabulous book (now Sarah’s favorite CLo book), The Soulmate Equation. Preorder it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, or signed from Vroman’s bookstore! We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at your local library or via a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay &amp; Thrift Books. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesThis is the&nbsp;Eurographics Moon Puzzle&nbsp;that Jen is doing, and it’s too hard.&nbsp;There is a&nbsp;very funny tweet thread&nbsp;trying to drag the&nbsp;Shadow and Bone TV show, but the replies are terrific.&nbsp;Jen was texting Sarah in the middle of the night&nbsp;about Ravishing the Heiress, because of the angst!&nbsp;Here’s an interview&nbsp;where Sherry Thomas talks about how reading romance influenced her as a writer.We&nbsp;talked about time slip&nbsp;quite a bit on the episode for A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.Millie is 16 at the beginning of the book, and because Jen forgot to talk about it,&nbsp;she wrote a thread about Sherry’s deep respect for teenage girls.&nbsp;A little bit about&nbsp;the history of tinned food&nbsp;and&nbsp;the rise of advertising&nbsp;in Victorian England.All...

We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo. We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay &amp; Thrift Books. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesLast week, we talked about&nbsp;Big Pharma, and if you want more of that, read&nbsp;Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s about the&nbsp;Sackler family&nbsp;and how they made billions on&nbsp;Oxycontin which was a huge factor in the creation of the opioid epidemic.Daisy Jones and the Six is a great novel, and the full-cast audiobook is supposed to be amazing.&nbsp;The Reese Witherspoon book club is the definition of the full glow-up.Sarah made some Maple Oatmeal Muffins, and maybe you want the recipe.&nbsp;Why food bloggers include some pre-recipe chatter.The question of freshman year dorm room decoration is of new significance to Jen since Lil Romance will be heading off to college in the fall. Might we recommend a&nbsp;Pulp Fiction movie poster&nbsp;or some&nbsp;Absolut Vodka ads?If we’re talking skyscrapers, meaning buildings over 150M (about 500 feet) tall, when this was recorded in April of 2021,&nbsp;Cleveland has 4,&nbsp;<a...

This week, we’re tackling Romantic Suspense and reading one of our favorite books of 2020, Adriana Anders’s Whiteout! We talk about all the things romantic suspense has to nail (ha!) to knock it out of the park, why we would literally never be characters in a book set in Antarctica, and the wild feeling of reading a romantic suspense about a virus during a pandemic. Also Sarah talks about how much she loves Adriana Anders’s writing and recommends lots of backlist. Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesIt’s tenterhooks, not tenderhooks.&nbsp;Apparently Jen&nbsp;needs more sleep,&nbsp;or else it’s gonna be a real drag on future seasons of Fated Mates.&nbsp;Jen&nbsp;tweeted&nbsp;about&nbsp;Whiteout&nbsp;a lot, put it on our&nbsp;Best of 2020 list, and even&nbsp;made a meme about it&nbsp;last week.&nbsp;Reading a book&nbsp;about a virus&nbsp;during a pandemic is kind of wild!&nbsp;Jen and Sarah are not campers, but we support you. We do like reading books about people doing extremely cold outside things:&nbsp;Into Thin Air,&nbsp;Into the Wild, and a new book on Jen’s TBR is&nbsp;The Next Everest&nbsp;by Jim Davidson.Let Sandra Brown explain romantic suspense&nbsp;to you, and maybe you’d like to read&nbsp;Jack Reacher&nbsp;if you’re into that sort of thing.We learned some things about Antarctica and staying warm while reading this book:&nbsp;How cold did you say it was again?Why are frostbite and hypothermia so dangerous?<a...

We’re thrilled to be joined by the wonderful Priscilla Oliveras to talk about second chance romance and her new book (out next week!), Anchored Hearts. We talk about our favorite second chance romances and dig into the Venn diagram of second chance, marriage in trouble, secret baby, childhood sweethearts, and one night stands. We also talk about the hard truths of face transplants, the way characters in romance have to do their own emotional work, and how we love it when they remember every bit of a kiss from a decade before. Preorder the delightful Anchored Hearts at Amazon, B&amp;N, Apple, Kobo or from your local indie.Next week, we’re we’re reading a romantic suspense—Whiteout by Adriana Anders. Find it at Amazon (free in KU!), Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local indie. You can also get it along with our other picks for best books of 2020 as part of the Fated Mates pack from Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA!Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Priscilla Oliveras!&nbsp;Her next novel, Anchored Hearts comes out next Tuesday, April 27th.&nbsp;You can order signed copies (bookplates) with recipe cards from Love’s Sweet Arrow.&nbsp;The first in the series,&nbsp;Island Affair, has the fake relationship trope.&nbsp;Key West things Priscilla mentioned: the&nbsp;half marathon in January, and&nbsp;the Cuban restaurant El Mason de Pepe.This Goodreads list of second chance romance has over a thousand titles!&nbsp;Operation Peter Pan&nbsp;moved over 14,000 unaccompanied minors from Cuba to the US between 1960-1962.We think&nbsp;cliff diving might be a bad idea.In Wild Card and The Highwayman, the heroine doesn't recognize the hero, but the absolute pinnacle of this is the 1997 movie Face/Off with John Travolta and Nic Cage.&nbsp;You honestly have to see it to believe it.&nbsp;<p class=""...

Rounding the corner on Season Three, and we’re missing Kresley Cole! This week, we read a book neither of us have read before — Kresley’s Captain of All Pleasures. A Victorian pirate book about a ship race. We talk about the magic of the debut romance, why pirates are often times icky, and why setting a book on a boat is risky business. Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading a romantic suspense—Whiteout by Adriana Anders. Find it at Amazon (free in KU!), Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local indie. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesThe requisite coronavirus chat: Sarah was very sick in 2020 and Kate and Jen did a&nbsp;“sickbed scenes” interstitial&nbsp;without her. Jen said someone is going to&nbsp;make a jingle out of “Fauci Ouchie”&nbsp;and it already happened.&nbsp;Sarah’s upcoming book is available for pre-order. The title is&nbsp;Bombshell&nbsp;and it comes out August 24, 2021. You can&nbsp;read this interview with Sarah&nbsp;when EW did the cover reveal.&nbsp;Check out&nbsp;Season one, which is all about Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series.Quite a few of Lisa Kleypas’s earliest novels&nbsp;are out of print and not available as eBooks, but you can probably find them used on eBay or Amazon.&nbsp;Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake&nbsp;is Sarah’s debut, you should read it.&nbsp;Borders was a bookstore that closed in 2011. Goodreads was invented in 2007 but&nbsp;took a few years to become popular, but&nbsp;once it was bought by Amazon, it completely stagnated.&nbsp;Sarah was probably talking about&nbsp;Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of practice rule, but&nbsp;how many words would that actually be?The&nbsp;Stephanie Plum series is now on book number 27, and all Jen has to say is&nbsp;<a...

Silver foxes, May/December, older heroines/younger heroes, look, Sarah’s buttons were installed young, ok? We’re talking age gap romances, how they played out in the early days of the genre, how they remain popular today, and what has happen (or not!) in the books to make them viable romance in 2021. We try to keep this one taboo but not dark, sexy but not erotic…but by the end, we’re not making any real promises. Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.Next week, we’re reading Kresley Cole’s debut, The Captain of All Pleasures. Neither of us have read it, so we’re all jumping into the deep end without a mask on this one! Find it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books. Or find it from your local indie via bookshop.org.Show NotesYou can buy&nbsp;Iris Johansen’s mansion in Cartersville, GA&nbsp;for a cool 8 million.&nbsp;Maybe&nbsp;Chaotic Evil&nbsp;isn’t the best writing plan.Here’s&nbsp;some pop psychology&nbsp;about the May December romance. By the way, the phrase May-December romance apparently dates back to Chaucer.&nbsp;In The Merchant’s Tale,&nbsp;a young woman named May marries a much older man and a confusing idiom was born.&nbsp;As it turns out the&nbsp;“half your age plus 7” rule&nbsp;is not something Jen made up, because once you google it, you get&nbsp;charts and graphs&nbsp;and&nbsp;articles&nbsp;and&nbsp;everything.&nbsp;Sarah’s reference to “Every terrifying post on that reddit board” is&nbsp;r/relationships, although&nbsp;r/amitheasshole&nbsp;is always available with some new tale of terrifying bad behavior.&nbsp;This&nbsp;problems presented from lack of sex ed are pervasive though historical romance, but&nbsp;<a...

We named Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola one of the best romances of 2020, and for good reason. This week, we’re talking about how great romances can be handbooks for great relationships, about why taking risks in romance writing can pay off big time, about what it’s like to be bilingual in America, about why intimacy coordinators are amazing, and about normalizing lube. Enjoy!Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading…honestly, we don’t know. Stay tuned! Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesIf you need to manifest, Sarah's surprise crystal kit came from&nbsp;Crystal Rising.&nbsp;We had&nbsp;a Best of 2020 box available from Old Town Books in Alexandria, and it looks like you can still order it. You can&nbsp;listen to the whole Best of 2020 episode here.The&nbsp;Applying to College Reddit&nbsp;is probably not a real healthy place for high school seniors to hang out, so I guess if you must, you can be the person who just says reassuring nice things. But if nothing else,&nbsp;portal astrology&nbsp;shows just how desperate people are to make meaning out of the tiniest of clues.Telenovelas&nbsp;vs.&nbsp;soap operas.&nbsp;The bilingual spectrum--from receptive to equilingual--and the ways that this is a particularly American issue. Jasmine in YHMAH is a dominant bilingual (so is Sarah).&nbsp;The ways in which writers put languages on the page&nbsp;has changed a lot in the past decade. Watch this video of author&nbsp;Daniel Jose Older explaining why he doesn’t put Spanish in italics.&nbsp;In the movie Selena, there’s a scene where&nbsp;her father worries about her Spanish skills as she is about to meet Mexican reporters. Although this scene may not be accurate,&nbsp;Selena learned the phonetic Spanish for all her songs since she wasn’t fluent. A more recent series about&nbsp;Selena’s life is on Netflix,&nbsp;check for reviews because neither of us have watched it.&nbsp;Being an&nbsp;Intimacy coordinator&nbsp;is a real job!Breaking the 4th Wall&nbsp;is a phrase from TV when the actors directly address the audience. In&nbsp;You Had me at Hola, we see Jasmine or Ashton fall out of character...

We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha. Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!S03.31: Morality Chain Romance InterstitialWhether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.Next week, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.Show NotesOne very important note: we highly recommend doing a thorough search for content warnings for all the books and movies we mention this week.&nbsp;We love&nbsp;Katee Robert, who we had on as a guest for the&nbsp;menage interstitial. Katee bid on this item at&nbsp;Kennedy Ryan’s Lift 4 Autism auction. It happens every spring, so&nbsp;keep an eye on this page for the 2021 auction&nbsp;if you’d like to pick the topic for a future interstitial.&nbsp;This week, Katee released&nbsp;Seducing My Guardian, the 4th book in her SUPER HOT Touch of Taboo series. If you'd like to read a morality chain romance written by Katee, we recommend&nbsp;The Bastard's Bargain.“In springtime, the only pretty ring time”&nbsp;is from Shakespeare’s&nbsp;As You Like It. It's also possible Sarah knows it from&nbsp;Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She would like you to believe that it's from the former, but we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Either way,&nbsp;“If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it,”&nbsp;is from Beyonce.&nbsp;As it turns out,&nbsp;Chicago is a great town for beach volleyball.It’s hard not to talk about morality chain &amp; dark romance together, but we think they are inverse tropes. The internet definition of&nbsp;Morality Chain&nbsp;is “is a character who is the reason another character is Good.” Jen and Sarah’s current definition is that in morality chain romance,

We’re headed back to 2007 this week, to talk about Mary Balogh’s A Matter of Class, which Sarah’s editor gave her as assigned reading when she was writing A Rogue By Any Other Name. We’re leaving plot and character aside here and really digging into structure, so expect conversations about timelines, about language and yes…about tense. Because, Jen. Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you.&nbsp;We hope you’re reading the best books this week.Next week, it’s a morality chain romance interstitial! After that comes our next read along, which is still in discussion—stay tuned! Show NotesFor what it’s worth, this is our 119th episode, so time to clarify the pronunciation of MacLean.&nbsp;Say it like the last name of famous movie badass, John McClane from&nbsp;Die Hard. Jen is now very mad at herself and thinking of renaming herself Jennifer Diesel in honor of&nbsp;Vin Diesel and the Fast &amp; Furious movie franchise.&nbsp;If you liked&nbsp;A Matter of Class, check out Balogh’s&nbsp;Bedwyn&nbsp;and&nbsp;Westcott series. PS, Jen thinks she deserves a lot of credit for not cracking up at “A quiet, stiff hero.”Sarah’s editor at Avon is Carrie Feron.&nbsp;Time slip&nbsp;is a narrative structure where stories are not told in chronological order.&nbsp;Here is an entire website about time.&nbsp;Although Jen couldn’t find the article for “I write what I can’t draw, I draw what I can’t write,” a few people on the internet also give credit to&nbsp;Marjane Satrapi, author of the amazing graphic novel&nbsp;Persepolis.Sarah’s friend&nbsp;Carrie Ryan writes YA, and she’s the one who talked about the difficulties of secrets in first person narration.&nbsp;Butterfly in Frost&nbsp;by Sylvia Day&nbsp;is a book in first person that didn’t work for Jen. It seemed like the narrator was&nbsp;dissociating, which is different than keeping a secret. Although she never mentioned&nbsp;Butterfly in Frost&nbsp;in the piece, the book inspired Jen to&nbsp;write about the problems with unreliable narrators in romance for Kirkus.The Crown&nbsp;is a Netflix series&nbsp;that is well-regarded, but the&nbsp;difficulties of portraying the modern years of the monarchy&nbsp;has been well-documented. Read this in case you want to know about&nbsp;Princess Margaret's love...

Sarah is *still* on deadline (WE KNOW), but we’re answering your questions about romance novels, publishing, writing and more. In this episode, we’re talking about stand-alone romance series, heroes who do bad stuff, Jane Austen, cover reveals and more. Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you.&nbsp;We hope you’re reading the best books this week.Next week, it’s Mary Balogh’s A Matter Of Class — this is the truth. Get it for only $2.99 at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo&nbsp;or&nbsp;Google Books.Show NotesSarah and Eric,&nbsp;Sara and Derek!&nbsp;Jen recommends&nbsp;Let’s Make Art&nbsp;if you’re looking for something fun to power you through until we’re all vaccinated. Check out&nbsp;Kelly’s Romance Sticker of the Month Club.Next week, we’ll be reading&nbsp;A Matter of Class&nbsp;by Mary Balogh. WE PROMISE.&nbsp;Why aren't there more Fantasy Romances?&nbsp;Later this spring, we’re having an episode with&nbsp;Zoraida Cordova&nbsp;about fantasy romance. Until then, maybe you’ll be interested&nbsp;A Court of Silver Flames, the newest release from Sarah J. Mass.When did Series becomes so Popular?&nbsp;We talked about this in our episode about&nbsp;romance families, so you might want to check that out for a longer discussion of this topic.&nbsp;Perhaps you are like Jen and want to know more about how to&nbsp;turn off the “popular highlights”series on your Kindle.&nbsp;Oh the 80s and 90s:&nbsp;Lovesepts series with the Delaneys, or&nbsp;Elizabeth Lowell’s series with heroes named after states.&nbsp;What's the State of Publishing? What are the different Trim Sizes?&nbsp;One of the reasons mass market paperbacks (MMPB) are harder to get is because of&nbsp;a merger between printers, which explains the transition to&nbsp;<a...