Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

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 & 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&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 is here! The audiobook is narrated by Mary Jane Wells, and she’s one of Jen’s favorite narrators. Maybe you want to watch the Amazons fighting in the Wonder Woman movie, just for vibes. The Soiled S’s are the five Talbot sisters: Seraphina, Sesily, Seleste, Seline, and Sophie. Seraphina and Sophie each had their own books, and Seleste and Seline were married in the background of the series. A series bible is used by writers as a reference document for the world they’ve made. 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 Can’t Stand the Heat.Queen Victoria was on the throne from 1837-1901, and here is an overview of the hallmarks of her reign and what it was like for women during that era.Here’s a brief history of Scotland Yard.The word bombshell dates back to 1708.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/8/21/s0354-bombshell If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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 Farrah Rochon! Her newest book, The Dating Playbook just came out yesterday. She has another football series, the New York Sabres.The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing begin on February 4th, 2022. Here’s an explainer for dressage, an Olympic equestrian event. The horse at the club dressage video on twitter, 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 Summer Games and later changed to Remember Summer (which is available as an eBook), and it was by Elizabeth Lowell not Iris Johansen.How the horses travel to Tokyo, how the ice is made, and other articles about new sports at this year’s Olympics. All about Rune, the Danish Destroyer. In season one, we did a fake engagement interstitial, but it’s a very popular trope in 2021. Texas football culture is legendary, just look at some Texas high school football stadiums, including the one in Katy. If you’re ever in Katy, we highly recommend a trip to Katy Budget Books.You might be interested in this article with statistics breaking down the average age of professional athletes by sport, and this list of oldest professional athletes by sport. The question of which Olympics sports have the oldest and youngest athletes is always a fascinating one. This year, the youngest athletes were 12: Syrian tennis table player Hend Zaza and Japanese skateboarder Kokona Hiraki. The oldest athlete is Australian equestrian Mary Hanna, who is 66.We interviewed Susan Elizabeth Phillips and also did a deep dive on the third book in the Chicago Stars series, Nobody’s Baby But Mine. Pitch was a Fox show that was cancelled before its time. It turns out there are two real life ex-NFL players, Brian Orakpo and Michale Griffin who opened Gigi’s Cupcake shop in Texas. So just read this article over and over again until we get all the deets on Jamie Wesley’s forthcoming series.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/8/17/s0353-sports-romance-interstitial-with-farrah-rochon If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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 Assassin’s Creed first came out in 2007, and now there are so many different versions, and in many of them, you can garrote someone if you are so moved. Sarah's favorite is Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which is set in Victorian London.We mentioned so many movies and TV shows with assassins: John Wick, The Bourne Identity, Gunpowder Milkshake (and its many weapons), Suicide Blonde, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, James Bond, Black Widow, Le Femme Nikita, The Saint, Grosse Pointe Blank, Desperado, and The Witcher.More about some of the super camera angles we are seeing at the Tokyo Olympics.Jack Reacher isn’t as assassin as much as he’s a vigilante. Also, he doesn’t know how to use a washing machine. Rege-Jean Page signed up to make a remake of The Saint, and Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge are remaking Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and we’re not sad about any of it. Iocane powder is from The Princess Bride, of course. Listen when you read Sweet Ruin you'll definitely want to go back to season 1 and listen to our deep dive epsiode. Because it is great. We also talked a bunch about romances with paid killers in the Spy Romance and Mafia Romanceinterstitials.As Jen was working on show notes, she discovered the book Killing Sarai was adapted into a Spanish language action movie called “En Brazos de un Asesino,” which translates to “In the Arms of an Assassin.” You can stream it on any number of services, including Amazon Prime Video.Check out all the programming for Bookstore Romance Day, August 21-22, 2021. We are having a live episode of Fated Mates to celebrate the launch of Bombshell on August 24th at 7 eastern, to get a ticket, you'll need to buy a copy from one of these indie bookstores. (If you already pre-ordered from WORD in Brooklyn, you'll get log in details in an email.)The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/8/10/s0352-assassins-and-hitmen-in-romance-interstitialt If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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 Adriana Herrera, 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. The phrase “safe romance” is used in online spaces to describe books without a single molecule of infidelity energy. Infidelity in evangelical christianity (and everywhere, honestly) often places the blame on the wife if her husband strays and also on  “the evil other woman” -- in this model, you know who’s not to blame? Men.And that’s pure patriarchy. Lavender wasn’t invented because it’s a plant and its known history dates back 2500 years. Courtesan culture was inextricably tied to colonialism in India, in China, and in the USA.Summer Brennan’s patreon about The Book of Courtesans. Hallie Rubenhold's Covent Garden Ladies, which is the book that inspired the Hulu TV show Harlots, is about Harris's List of London "working girls." The Spanish word for wife is esposa, which means handcuffs or manacles, while the word for mistress is amante, which means beloved.We have had some deep dive episodes where there is infidelity: Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath and Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry ThomasThere are so many bastards in historical romance, partly because it’s an easy on-ramp for creating a character who is an outsider.Ethical non-monogamy is the practice of talking to your partner(s) about the boundaries of your relationship. Polyamorous and Open relationships would fall into this category. On Maryse’s Book Blog, there was a 2015 post about cheating in romance, and most of the titles are self-published and indie.Sarah talked about Lorenzo Lamas and Dynasty and Jen and her brother Mike talked about Santa Barbaraon Adriana’s Instagram Live conversations about telenovelas and soap operas. We are having a live episode of Fated Mates to celebrate the launch of Bombshell on August 24th at 7 eastern, to get a ticket, you'll need to buy a copy from one of these indie bookstores. (If you already pre-ordered from WORD in Brooklyn, you'll get log in details in an email.) The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/8/1/s0351-mistresses-courtesans-and-cheating-in-romance-interstitial-with-adriana-herrera If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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 will be on Tuesday Aug 24 at 7eastern/4 pacific. 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 Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and the New York Times. A guide to nonbinary pronouns.The audiobook of Unmasked by the Marquess is great, and narrated by Joel Leslie. Cat Sebastian is a fanfiction expert and routinely talks about some of her favorite fics. If you don’t know, the Stucky ship of Cap & Bucky is the most written about ship on Ao3. “Natural child” was the nice way of saying that a child was born out of wedlock. The mean way, of course, is bastard.More about the three act structure.This is a great interview with Cat Sebastian in Jezebel about writing queer characters in historical romance.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/26/s0350-unmasked-by-the-marquess-by-cat-sebastian If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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 Nicola Yoon! Along with Instructions for Dancing, she and five other Black women authors just published the Blackout anthology, which has been picked up by the Obamas for TV and film for Netflix.Nicola and her husband David Yoon are also creating the Yooniverse, including a new YA romance imprint called Joy Revolution at Random House.Poltergeist and its infamous curse scared everyone back in the 80. Nicola wasn’t sure what imprint she was reading when she found her first romance under her aunt's bed, but she mentioned Harlequin Blaze, one of our all time favorite imprints which was shuttered in 2017. Just a quick reminder that HFN means “happy for now” and HEA means “happily ever after.” YA has evolved over time, a process which has ramped up in the past 20 years and is now a publishing juggernaut. YA is far more progressive that adult romance, but also grapples with the influence of adultreaders of all kinds and gatekeepers who want to stop kids from reading about sex & gender, race, and other issues around identity. According to the Library of Congress, most of the earliest entries from Urban Dictionary date back to 2003.Before Covid, It used to be hard to explain the terrifying rise of HIV was in the 1980s, along with the way the Reagan administration ignored the epidemic. This timeline tells the history of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and here is an explainer for why Covid vaccinations were developed so fast when we still don’t have one for HIV.The Heads of Your Enemies as love language appears in Shadow’s Claim, when Trehan literally gives this gift to Bettina while they are courting. The Wrath and the Dawn is a retelling of the Scheherazade story, which is the framing device for The Arabian Nights. If you are GenX or Millenial and were a reader, you’ll love the book Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction. It's full of images, so read it in paper or on a full-color reading device!Jessica Trent is a different thing entirely than Jessica Wakefield. Along with other changes, the Sweet Valley High twins are size 4 now, which we don’t like at all. I Believe in a Thing Called Love was also just optioned for Netflix, but they aren’t going to have much luck checking The Wirecutter for road spike recommendations, because this was the closest thing I could find to them.“The Hellmouth or whatever,” is a reference to Sunnydale, the setting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can pre-order signed copies of Sarah's Bombshell from WORD in Brooklyn, and you'll get a Fated Mates sticker with your signed book!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/20/s0349-ya-romance-interstitial-with-nicola-yoon If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every

“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&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 NotesTed Lasso season two starts this Friday, and the reviews look great. Also, if you haven't read this GQ profile of Jason Sudeikis, you are missing out.In season 2, we talked about Cinnamon Roll heroes, as compared to Alpha heroes. Grunting is definitely an alpha hero trait. We love Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca) and Juno Temple (Keeley) and that’s all we have to say about that. Apparently, there are ways to watch Apple TV Plus shows even if you don’t have an Apple Device. Who knew! You, too, can bake Ted’s biscuits. USAians have a different relationship with Soccer than the rest of the world. Perhaps you need a primer on the Premier League, promotion and relegation, the average age of Premier League players, and just how popular is Premier League football really is.Fated Mates has a favorite team, it’s Liverpool, and it’s basically because of our favorite stern brunch daddy TM, Jürgen Klopp. Stern Brunch Daddy(tm) is the invention of Andie J. Christopher, friend of the pod, who has a new book out this week! Richmond is a fake team, but that won’t stop you from buying gear to show your team spirit. This year, London was home to six Premier League teams: Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham, and West Ham United.Yes, Jen hates it when young characters make ancient pop culture references in romances, but in this case, Indiana Jones is appropriate for people our age! Go ahead and write I Love You on your eyelids! More about the story of how Brett Goldstein got the part of Roy Kent. Jen’s sister-in-law Janine writes for TV and she’s kind of a big deal! Susan Elizabeth Philips was a guest a few weeks ago, and she talked about the trope of the grizzled veteran at the end of his career and how it’s a hallmark of the Chicago Stars series.Jen mentioned a series of soccer romances--it’s the Atlanta Skyline series by Rebecca Crowley.You know, Roy Kent really should have tried to get that Rolex back. In a New York Times article about adapting romance to TV and film, Outlander showrunner Matthew B. Roberts “found that voice-over sequences left actors standing around with nothing to play against. Interior monologue has to become exterior dialogue. ‘That’s our biggest challenge always.’“It’s witched” was a joke from our very first episode, in case you’re into that sort of thing. That German word (phrase?) is sturm und drang and it means turmoil.No topping from the bottom.Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey is an archetype that values community building over individualism, we like the latest iteration from Gail Carriger.Rupert Mannion is the woooooorst. That darts scene is awesome though, and if you want to read a contemporary romance set in a pub that includes darts playing, Sarah wrote one!Other sports TV shows and movies we mentioned: Friday Night Lights, Sports Night, The League, Bull Durham, and Major League. Maybe you didn’t...

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&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 Nikki Sloane! We discussed her novel Three Little Mistakes in season two. Her latest release in the Filthy Rich Americans series, The Redemption, won the Holt Award 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 age-gap romance, but when the woman is older sometimes we use the phrase Cougar, which I do not recommend googling! 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. In a Florida high school, 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 The Thorn Birds, and it was revived in pop culture by the TV show Fleabag. We discussed Sierra Simone’s Priest in season two. As we reckon with #MeToo, we are all thinking about and redefining power dynamics in our culture. Incest is a common trope in horror and other gothic stories, it didn’t originate with Flowers in the Attic. Don’t forget to preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word in Brooklyn.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/13/s0347-taboo-romance-interstitial-with-nikki-sloane If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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 Susan Elizabeth Phillips! We talked about an earlier book in the Chicago Stars series, Nobody’s Baby But Mine in season two. Speaking of amazing stories about opera singers, last week, an opera singer in Pennsylvania gave birth in the car while her husband was driving. As it turns out, the Opera in Verona is a pretty big deal! If you’re ever in Chicago, go to The Lyric Opera and then let Jen know because she wants someone to go with her. The Chicago Children’s Choir is amazing, too and they often collaborate with the CSO and Lyric Opera.All you need to know about the totally awesome Chicago Flag, and why it's better than most city flags. 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 if you want to hear more about it. There are really cool things and really bad things about the Chicago River. You can preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word Bookstore in Brooklyn.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/6/s0346-susan-elizabeth-phillips If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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! 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). Stay tuned at the end of the episode for additional reflections from Sarah & 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.AUDIO NOTE: Due to countless irregularities, expected and unexpected, the audio in this episode isn’t up to our normal standards. But it sounds fine. Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&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 our panel of dark romance experts: Kenya Goree-Bell, Nisha Sharma, Joanna Shupe, and 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): is when romantic partners engage “in behaviors that may include role-playing nonconsensual behaviors, or may involve negotiating sexual behaviors where one partner agrees to give up consent during certain behaviors or relationships.” This can include fantasizing about rape and kidnapping, and lots of women have complicated feelings about these fantasies. Dubious consent (dub-con): is the gray area between full, enthusiastic consent and rape. A person hasn't give outright consent to having sex and might not consider it rape; however, some other factor prevents them from saying no. The Aggressor: rather than use hero/heroine, Jo started using aggressor and non-aggressor as a way of talking about chracters who exhibit very non-heroic behavior. The skin suit: What Jen calls the experience of reading a book where she wants more distance between herself and the main characters.The Murder Meal: Sarah noticed that a common trope of dark romance is a meal where blood is shed and people still continue to eat.More NotesYou may have listened to our Morality Chain episode, where we made a graphic explaining how it differs from dark romance. Next month, Nikki Sloane will join us to discuss taboo romance. It’s not Mordor unless you’re a hobbit. Sarah is not opposed to elevensies, so it's fine.Earlier this year, there was a Saturday Night Live skit about women watching The Murder Show. Why do women like reading about serial killers? Did you see this essay in Slate about a woman who thinks she slept with a man who went on to be a serial killer?Game of Thrones and it’s penchant for sexual violence is still influencing pop culture. The only thing that’s forbidden in dark romance is cheating, which shows how firmly these books are rooted in the romance genre, as compared to the rampant cheating by male characters The Godfather and other mafia movies, but this is often rooted in obsession rather than a belief in monogamy. While there's very little (possibly no) research on readers of dark romance, but there's lots of research on the horror genre. Sarah’s friend Micol Ostow, who writes YA horror recommended this essay about  the "spectacle of the ruined body." Meanwhil

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&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 Bombshell now. You won't regret it.Everyone is struggling with getting dressed again. It’s a 1001 in the 1001 Dark Nights series as an homage and allusion to Scheherazade, the story-teller of the Arabian Nights. We also love the VIP series by Kristen Callihan, and the 4th book in that series, 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 “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and other high roller lifestyles on page. 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 liked the Stage Dive series, too.Andi Arndt is the narrator of all Kylie’s books, including the entire Stage Dive series, and Jen thinks she is terrific. The Captains’ Vegas Vows has a similar set up to Lick: waking up married in Vegas, and only one of them remembered what happened. “Retcon” is a word that started out as shorthand for retroactive continuity, and here’s a piece from Merriam-Webster explaining its remarkable elasticity.Hyperemesis gravidarum is the medical term for severe morning sickness, which affects about one percent of pregnant people. DC comics claims that Batman doesn’t go down, but the internet and everyone else on twitter and even Zach Snyder disagred. But in all seriousness, maybe it's just another interesting data point about America turning back towards the Hays Code and continuing to remove sex from all kinds of media.Thelma and Louise does have a great ending, you can’t argue with that. And since 2021 is the 30th anniversary of the film’s release, there are lots of interesting retrospectives on the movie.Desmond Morris is an English zoologist who outlined the 12 stages of intimacy -- hey, humans are animals, too! Our July interviews will be with Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Nicola Yoon, and Nikki Sloane. Our July read-along is Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/6/19/s0344-the-stage-dive-series-by-kylie-scott If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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, preorder from Word Bookstore in Brooklyn. Welcome Tia Williams! Her new release, Seven Days in June, is Reese’s Book Club pick for June. 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. Eva’s website is EvaMercyMe, and her vampire hero is Sebastian. And according to Twitter, all romance Sebastians are good Sebatians. Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown is quite the read, and we talked about it on 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 we talked about it with Kate on an episode about retellings in romance. Drew Barrymore’s memoir Little Girl Lost is the story of her childhood in Hollywood, and definitely was hugely influential and shocking, and it still is worth a read if you can find a copy. It hasn't been digitized! Jen talked to Adriana Herrera about how people might self-harm, cut, and use other extreme coping mechanisms if they have experienced trauma. The Brooklyn Book Festival is not for the faint of heart. More about the quote “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”The Argeneau series by Lynsay Sands started with started with A Quick Bite in 2005, and book 33, Mile High with a Vampire comes out in Sept of 2021. Want to watch that TikTok about The Unhoneymooners? Romancing the Stone is a great movie from the 80s, and “The Joan Wilder!?” is a line from the movie. And, friend of the pod Linda has a t-shirt you might like. What’s looking like a great movie with a similar set up is The Lost City of D with Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock. Next week, we’ll be discussing Lead (and the other books in the Stage Dive series) by Kylie Scott.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/6/13/s0343-writers-in-romance-interstitial-with-tia-williams If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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&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 Zoraida Córdova! Zoraida writes MG, YA, and adult speculative fiction, and also romance under the name Zoey Castile. Puerto Rico is a US territory and residents of the island are American citizens.Why Moscow Mules are served in copper mugs.We love Norma Perez-Hernandez who is an amazing, exuberant editor at Kensington, and if you don’t follow her on Twitter she should. Norma also was on the 2020 Publisher's Weekly Star Watch List. Zoraida’s book The Vicious Deep answers the age-old question of “where does it go,” a similar answer is in Guillermo del Toro's movie The Shape of Water. Speculative fiction asks the question “what if” 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. Reading strategies are for everyone: We love maps in fantasy, so why not in contemporary fiction?Victoria Avyeard was on Sarah Enni's First Draft podcast talking about world building.The Hero’s Journey, or maybe the heroine’s journey. NK Jemisin’s lecture about the cultural iceberg shows writers how to build a world that goes beyond what’s on the surface. An interesting thread from a YA librarian, and another from author Elizabeth May, about why and how romance plots in SFF are pushed into YA. Zoraida hosts a writing podcast with Dhonielle Clayton called Deadline City.Relevant music perormed by: Twin Temple, Marike van Dijk + Katell Keineg, King Missile, Dr. Octagon, and Led Zeppelin. Listen to the full Fated Music playlist on Spotify. 

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 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 Perfect Security was the inspiration for Felicity Faircloth in Wicked and the Wallflower. Although we haven't talk about the cover of Tender is the Storm on Fated Mates, we did discuss another Johanna Lindsey fan favorite, Gentle Rogue. One of Jen's favorite episodes of 99% Invisible is about flag design, probably because it was very complimentary to the Chicago flag. Sarah's is obviously Perfect Security, but she also loved this one on water fountains.If you're looking for other great reads about romance covers, Kelly Faircloth wrote about clinch covers for Jezebel and it is a must read. 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!), A False Proposal, or her most recent, Game of Spies.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/6/7/bonus-99-percent-invisible-podcast-on-the-clinch If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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. & 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&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 Nana Malone back to the pod, and if you want to hear more about the Brown Nipple Challenge, check out her Instagram. She is an amazing author and recently became her own cover model after failing to find good stock photos for her books.If you don’t know how stock photography works, here’s a brief primer on how they can be used to make book covers and teasers. The problems with finding stock photography that is truly diverse is a well-known problem. For most authors, custom photography is cost-prohibitive. Nana’s favorite photographer is Wander Aguiar. If you want to hear more about romance covers and their history, Sarah was interviewed on an episode of the 99% Invisible podcast about covers this week. Head over and have a listen after you listen to this! 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 Violet Gaze Press. And Trad, or traditional publishing, refers to the Big Five (Big Four?) New York publishing houses: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. A little about the history of Kobo and why it’s worth supporting them. No one likes it when the Mary Sue character has no idea what’s going on. Turns out that Ferris Wheel sex is a real thing at Coachella. And Myrtle Beach. And Vegas. And Kindle Unlimited.Daniel Craig jumps on a train. Pierce Brosnon catches a plane.Faberge Eggs have a storied history and are very fancy. The hero of Night Magic is not that John McClane. If you like a Cold War thriller, you might enjoy a bonkers 80s spy thriller, The Charm School by Nelson DeMille. Jen did love Lies, but had some thoughts about the ending and unreliable narrators that you can read after you finish the book. Miss Moneypenny.We also mentioned some movies and TV shows about spies: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, La Femme Nikita, Spy, James Bond, True Lies, The Americans, Kingsman, and The Scarlet Pimpernel.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/5/31/s0341-spy-romance-interstitial-with-nana-malone If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now. ...

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 together.&nbsp;Also,&nbsp;Catspaw.Check out&nbsp;Adriana’s Instagram Live Series about telenovelas. Sarah was on to talk about&nbsp;Falcon Crest, because she imprinted on Lorenzo Llamas in his swim suit.&nbsp;His character's name was Lance Cumson. Sure.Speaking of Adriana, now is the time to preorder&nbsp;One Week to Claim it All. Jen and her brother Mike will be on to talk about Santa Barbara.In case you don’t remember&nbsp;the movie Sneakers&nbsp;a very similar situation happens when Robert Redford is out for pizza in the 60s. And it looks like Jen &amp; Sarah&nbsp;aren't the only ones who love this movie.&nbsp;Why we were all afraid of&nbsp;piranhas&nbsp;and&nbsp;quicksand&nbsp;in the 80s. I don’t know why.The Pondering Padre&nbsp;(from the original cover) looks like&nbsp;Friar Lawrence, but not like&nbsp;Friar Tuck. Please note:&nbsp;not that kind of&nbsp;Priest.In the introduction, Anne Stuart mentioned being inspired by an old movie called&nbsp;Miss Tatlock's Millions (1948)&nbsp;but when it comes to "ope, maybe we're related" in pop culture, it seems hard not to talk about the influence of&nbsp;Flowers in the Attic&nbsp;and its famous&nbsp;incestual relationship. More recently, it was the&nbsp;Lannister twins in Game of Thrones&nbsp;or the folks in&nbsp;this Slate column.In romance, it was more common that these attractions were the mark of villainous men lusting after their sisters, such as&nbsp;Prisoner of My Desire&nbsp;by Johanna Lindsey, and others by Bertrice Small and Stella Cameron. A more updated story is&nbsp;Mister Moneybags&nbsp;by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward.In film, along with Miss Tatlock's Millions, Sarah metioned&nbsp;Crimson Peak (2015), and Jen is kicking herself for not bringing up the terrific movie movie&nbsp;Lone Star&nbsp;(1996).Jen wrote about paratext on Twitter, which of course turned into a cover conversation.&nbsp;We have a lot of fun interviews with authors coming up in June, and our next read along (in a couple of weeks) will be&nbsp;Lead&nbsp;by Kylie Scott.&nbsp;Vulture TV Critic Angelica Jade Bastién&nbsp;wrote a thread asking why she's bored, and wondering what happend to interesting failures.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/05/donald-glover-thinks-fear-of-cancelation-is-to-blame-for-boring-film-and-tv" rel="noopener...

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;The One, and&nbsp;Casual.I don’t know, maybe you’ve heard about&nbsp;there being a fundamental incompatibility between science and religion, but&nbsp;others are pretty sure we can work it out.If you’re not a sportsball fan,&nbsp;Michael Jordan is a kind of a big deal.&nbsp;Aphrodisia was a short-lived Kensington imprint&nbsp;that focused on erotica and erotic romance, it ran from 2006 to 2014. Jen asked if it was&nbsp;Ellora’s Cave, which was another powerhouse erotic romance publisher that shuttered in 2014.&nbsp;A satyr is a magical creature from Greek mythology, so we’re not sure if they 1) have two dicks and 2) if they are covered in soft fur. You’re going to have to use your own imagination.We all hope that Nicholas the satyr&nbsp;is a little sexier that Mr. Tumnus&nbsp;from the movie version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.Slate had a woman asking for advice about her pandemic threesome with two brothers,&nbsp;and you can tell a romance reader didn’t write that advice, because probably they could work that out.&nbsp;Jen alerted Jenny Nordbak immediately, of course.&nbsp;Are you also looking for&nbsp;monster fucking romances?&nbsp;If you need a quick review on&nbsp;alpha traits, listen to our episode from season two.Knotting&nbsp;isn't just for&nbsp;A/B/O, it's also in&nbsp;romance. Same with&nbsp;mPreg&nbsp;romances&nbsp;and&nbsp;DP&nbsp;(which no one has made a list of!), in case you need a primer. Lo is looking for a romance that she thinks is called Passionate Ink about an octopus shifter tattoo artist...Maybe? Christina wants your favorite mPreg romance recommendation. We'll also take marriage of convenience recs and secret scar recs if you're in the mood.More about&nbsp;the word "quim"&nbsp;and&nbsp;how it was used in that Avengers movie.&nbsp;Next up,&nbsp;Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. Buy it used because it's not avaible as an eBook.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/5/16/s0339-the-soulmate-equation-trope-death-match-with-christina-lauren If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your <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 about&nbsp;the dormouse&nbsp;and&nbsp;keeping them as pets, if you’re into that sort of thing. Give us some credit for not making a joke about&nbsp;Of Mice and Men, thank you.&nbsp;The Victorians were super extra. Here’s a primer&nbsp;on women in business in the Victorian era. Floriography is the Victorian name for&nbsp;the language of flowers, which ascribes meanings to flowers and plants. For example,&nbsp;chrysanthemums&nbsp;and&nbsp;lavender&nbsp;(and yes rosemary is for remembrance is from Hamlet) have very specific meanings. If you’re interested, check out the book&nbsp;Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers&nbsp;by Jessica Roux.&nbsp;Bees that make honey from the nectar of lavender flowers&nbsp;is a&nbsp;different thing&nbsp;than people who make&nbsp;lavender-infused honey.&nbsp;Now you know!Infidelity in Romance&nbsp;is tricky, and Sarah’s book&nbsp;Day of the Duchess&nbsp;is an example, and there really aren’t that many out there.&nbsp;The myth of Cupid &amp; Psyche in&nbsp;literature&nbsp;and&nbsp;art.&nbsp;In Season 4 of The Crown,&nbsp;the scene where Camilla Parker-Bowles takes Diana is based in truth, but the name of the restaurant&nbsp;was not Menage a Trois.&nbsp;Raise a glass to the incomparable&nbsp;Olympia Dukakis.Next up, we’re dialing the banana phone with&nbsp;Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart.&nbsp;Join BestFriendKelly’s Sticker of the Month Club. If you put Fated Mates in the note, she’ll send a free sparkly Fated Mates sticker. If you’re already a member, drop her a note and she’ll include it with your next sticker.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/5/9/s0338-ravishing-the-heiress-by-sherry-thomas If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.

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;Denver has 7,&nbsp; Chicago has 127,&nbsp;and&nbsp;New York has 284.&nbsp;According to wikipedia, only nine cities in the world have over 100 buildings 150M tall. The other seven are Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (118).Check out&nbsp;the Sassy Podcast&nbsp;and the Babysitter’s Club.&nbsp;No, not that kind of babysitter.&nbsp;We love the movie&nbsp;Widows.&nbsp;The&nbsp;merry widow is an opera&nbsp;and a kind of&nbsp;sexy lingerie.&nbsp;We did&nbsp;an episode on Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe&nbsp;way back in season one.&nbsp;Primogeniture&nbsp;laws are all about who inherits titles and money and estates, and&nbsp;wasn't changed in England until 2013.&nbsp;Apparently there are lots of&nbsp;misconceptions about Arabian horses.&nbsp;More about&nbsp;Victorian era mourning requirements.Historically&nbsp;you couldn’t marry your brother’s widowAll about gorillas and where the live, and actually it turns out&nbsp;a gorilla really could kill you in a fight.&nbsp;Sarah was on Learning the Tropes talking about The Earl Takes All, in case you need more of that.Spoiler alert about&nbsp;The Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.We have two read-along books in May. On the 12th, we’ll be reading&nbsp;Ravishing the Heiress&nbsp;by Sherry Thomas. On the 26th, we’ll be reading&nbsp;Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. It’s out of print and not available as an eBook, so order a used copy from Amazon or ThriftBooks, or check out the audio.&nbsp;Join the&nbsp;"Romance sticker of the month" clubPreorder&nbsp;Bombshell, which comes out August 24th.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/5/2/s0337-widows-in-romance-interstitial If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no

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?How fast can you get hypothermia?What would really happen to a penis in super cold weather?What's the deal with the red puffy jacket?What was all that other gear Angel and Ford had?What are fat bombs?Do people really burn 6000 calories a day there?Can you really go 300 miles on foot?What is an ice core and why do scientists study them?Are ice tunnels real?Why is flying a plane in Antartica so dangerous?What about driving vehicles?Or swimming?There are mountain ranges in Antartica?What's the terrain like? Is that cravasee thing real?Can you really make a heater out of a tealight candle?Why are there seasons??What is Polar Night? Was it just a coincidence that you released this episode concurrently with the onset of Polar Night in Antartica?Outside of murdering people for their ice core samples, are people doing crimes in Antarctica?How accurate is the movie Arctic with Mads Mikkleson?How's Antartica doing in global climate change?Thanks to Amy, one of our listeners, we now know that&nbsp;Antarctica TikTok exists.&nbsp;The two ice stations in the book&nbsp;McMurdo&nbsp;and&nbsp;Vostok&nbsp;are real&nbsp;research stations, and actually&nbsp;there are way more of these stations than you’d think.&nbsp;Angel calls Ford the Iceman, but&nbsp;not that Iceman.&nbsp;If you want to read more about racism and greed in American pharmaceutical companies, you might be interested in&nbsp;Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book about the Sackler family, about&nbsp;<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;Theodosia&nbsp;is a name we all know from Hamilton. Aaron Burr married Theodosia Bartow Prevost, and it was an age gap romance! she was a decade older than he was. Their daughter Theodosia was their only child to survive to adulthood.&nbsp;Here is&nbsp;a very nice video of NWSL players sliding on their knees after scoring goals.&nbsp;That person you liked in high school?&nbsp;You're the one that got away, not the other way around.&nbsp;Next week, we'll be discussing&nbsp;Whiteout by Adriana Anders.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/4/19/s0335-second-chance-romance-interstitial-with-priscilla-oliveras If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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;#TeamRanger forever. Don’t @ her.Here’s&nbsp;Kresley’s FictionDB page&nbsp;for a complete list of her books in order.&nbsp;Ships vs. boats, if getting those names is important to you, I guess.&nbsp;The Amazing Race arc of IAD takes place over two books,&nbsp;No Rest for the Wicked&nbsp;and&nbsp;Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night.&nbsp;Again the Magic&nbsp;was actually published in 2004, a year after Captain of All Pleasures.&nbsp;The&nbsp;golden age of pirates&nbsp;was between 1650 and the 1730s, and of course&nbsp;our actual knowledge of pirates and piracy is limited. But most recently, of course, there are the&nbsp;Somali pirates.&nbsp;The race&nbsp;in Captain of All Pleasures was probably based on&nbsp;the Great Tea Race of 1866.&nbsp;The history of henna tattoos.&nbsp;A marchioness is a higher rank than an earl.&nbsp;Dr. Gunter&nbsp;has some information for you&nbsp;about the hymen.&nbsp;That’s what she said.&nbsp;Hattie ties Whit to a mast in&nbsp;Brazen and the Beast, in case you want more of that.&nbsp;Next up,&nbsp;Whiteout by Adriana Anders.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/4/13/s0334-captain-of-all-pleasures-by-kresley-cole If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

Silver foxes, May/December, older heroines/younger heroes. Look, Sarah’s buttons were installed young, OK? We’re talking age gap romances, how they played out in the early days of the genre, how they remain popular today, and what has happened (or not!) in the books to make them viable in 2021. We try to keep this one taboo but not dark, sexy but not erotic…but by the end, we’re not making any real promises. Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.Next week, we’re reading Kresley Cole’s debut, The Captain of All Pleasures. Neither of us have read it, so we’re all jumping into the deep end without a mask on this one! Find it at Amazon, Barnes &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;how much better are we doing by our kids?&nbsp;Jen was talking about&nbsp;Marvin Gaye&nbsp;when she mentioned "Everybody wants their own&nbsp;piece of clay" shit.Diana Palmer&nbsp;has a long, storied romance career, and none of it involves that kind of DP. The first book in&nbsp;the Long Tall Texans series, Calhoun, was published in 1988, and the latest one is #57 in the series,&nbsp;Texas Proud, and was published in October of 2020.&nbsp;All joking about&nbsp;the Pioneer Woman&nbsp;aside, she does have some great recipes.&nbsp;It turns out that&nbsp;the “boiling frog” analogy&nbsp;is just a myth, so keep on reading!&nbsp;The movie&nbsp;Carol&nbsp;is based on&nbsp;Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt.&nbsp;The Jessa Kane book with the dirty version of the talk is called&nbsp;His Prize Pupil, in case you want to read it yourself.&nbsp;For science.&nbsp;Our next read-along episode will be&nbsp;The Captain of All Pleasures&nbsp;by Kresley Cole. If you want more Kresley,&nbsp;all of Season One&nbsp;is for you.&nbsp;

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 and become themselves during the filming of a scene.&nbsp;The Penn &amp; Teller cup and ball trick, which we also talked about in&nbsp;the Bet Me Episode.&nbsp;Little Red Corvette&nbsp;and&nbsp;Sugar Walls&nbsp;are songs about sex,&nbsp;so don't worry about the pop music your kids are listening to these days. It's all gonna be fine.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/3/30/s0332-you-had-me-at-hola-by-alexis-daria If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha. Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.Next week, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes &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, the Love Interest pulls a hero towards humanity and goodness, while in dark romance, the love interest is pulled down into the hero’s lawless world.Some examples in pop culture are&nbsp;Spike from&nbsp;Buffy&nbsp;and maybe&nbsp;Barney in&nbsp;How I Met Your Motherr. Also, check out a movie called&nbsp;The Professional, where a child (played by Natalie Portman!) befriends the assassin next door. The Jason Statham one with a kid is called&nbsp;Safe.&nbsp;The Hero’s Journey&nbsp;is very common character archetype in literature and&nbsp;pop culture, but Sarah and Jen are both very taken with Gail Carriger’s description of the alternative archetype,&nbsp;The Heroine’s Journey.&nbsp;If you want more about morality chain, so many of Kresley’s books from The Immortals After Dark series will work,&nbsp;so please listen to season one!&nbsp;Our favorites are&nbsp;Dark Needs at Night’s Edge,&nbsp;Lothaire, and&nbsp;Sweet Ruin.&nbsp;We were divided on whether the character has to be a danger to others in order to qualitfy as morality chain. In the Gamemaker series:&nbsp;The Professional&nbsp;is about an assassin who is a danger to others, while in&nbsp;The Player&nbsp;he’s only a danger to himself.&nbsp;Jen Porter wrote a long thread about what she thinks of as PEA, or problematic ever after, romance.Mickey is "kind of a&nbsp;Fagin-y" as a character, but without the antisemitism. In interesting historical facts, Dickens rewrote&nbsp;Oliver Twist&nbsp;later in life to remove all anti-Semitic characteristics from Fagin, after he'd been criticized for the portrayal of the character. Of course, it's not that simple.&nbsp;Read more about it from Deborah Epstein Nord.&nbsp;Scottie is the main character of&nbsp;Managed, and is classified more as&nbsp;grumpy one/sunshine one, which we argue is just morality chain dialed down.&nbsp;More about how most writers have a&nbsp;“core story."Next week, we'll be reading&nbsp;You Had me at Hola&nbsp;by Alexis DariaThe RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/3/23/s0331-morality-chain-romance-interstitial If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Ba

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 life.&nbsp;In Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Meghan talked about the difference between Hollywood and the monarchy. They also routinely referred to&nbsp;“the Institution” and “The Firm”&nbsp;to distinguish the monarchy from individuals.&nbsp;A few weeks ago,&nbsp;Kate Clayborn joined us to talk about retellings.&nbsp;A Matter of Class&nbsp;gave Jen some&nbsp;Romeo &amp; Juliet feelings.&nbsp;Sarah's dual timeline books are&nbsp;The Day of the Duchess&nbsp;and "The Duke of Christmas Present," which is in the&nbsp;How the Dukes Stole Christmas&nbsp;anthology. Sherry Thomas's&nbsp;Private Arrangements&nbsp;is a fabulous example of it, as well.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/3/15/s0330-a-matter-of-class-by-mary-balogh If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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;Mass Market Max.All about&nbsp;stripped or remaindered books&nbsp;and&nbsp;what happens when a bookstore returns a book to the publisher.&nbsp;How Can You Afford Your Romance Habit?&nbsp;Kindle Unlimited, obviously.&nbsp;You should absolutely get the&nbsp;Libby app (managed by Overdrive)&nbsp;and use it to check books out of your local library. If your library system has&nbsp;Hoopla, you should check it out.&nbsp;Here’s a quick primer on the differences between these apps.It’s essential to subscribe to the&nbsp;BookBub daily email, you can choose from a number of categories. Also,&nbsp;you should follow The Book Queen on Twitter, who posts a daily thread of what's on sale.&nbsp;Finally, you should use&nbsp;eReaderIQ&nbsp;to track authors and specific books, and they will email you when the prices drop.&nbsp;Who do we want to write our Life Story?&nbsp;Kleypas&nbsp;and&nbsp;Kresley.&nbsp;What are the Best Romance Craft Books?&nbsp;OH-IO&nbsp;is what all the Ohioans say. And there’s nothing more midwestern than&nbsp;“ope.”&nbsp;It's "Ope There Goes Gravity"&nbsp;and we&nbsp;will not be taking questions at this time.&nbsp;Sarah recommends the following craft books:&nbsp;Romancing the Beat,&nbsp;Save the Cat, and&nbsp;The Heroine’s Journey.&nbsp;(And here’s the Hero’s Journey).Can a Hero by a Known Kidnapper?&nbsp;Ask St. Vincent, although he doesn’t kidnap the heroine. It depends on the reason for the kidnapping--for example, his childhood home is part of her dowry, meaning&nbsp;A Rogue by Any Other Name&nbsp;or try&nbsp;Dark Mafia Prince. But these stories are less common in contemporaries, unless it’s “dark romance.”Why aren't there more Vibrators?&nbsp;It's such a good question, and we are slowly seeing more of them. Check out&nbsp;Elia Winters' blog where she reviews sex toys. Other books to check out:&nbsp;It Happened One Summer,&nbsp;Happy Endings, and&nbsp;You Had Me at Hola.&nbsp;Why Are there so Many Dukes?&nbsp;Because people buy them.Why don't we have better names for different types of Illustrated Covers?&nbsp;Because we're readers and don't know enough art words? The word cartoon has a childish connotation, and so we think that's why we started using illustrated. Sometimes we hear the phrase&nbsp;"photo-realistic" to describe the previous illustrated style.&nbsp;Did Jane Austen write Contemporaries?&nbsp;Yes.Historical romance are set in the past, and an example of one set in the recent past is&nbsp;Loud is How I Love You&nbsp;by Mercy Brown.Why are Cover Reveals Important?&nbsp;Publicity, and if you want to see a great new cover, check out the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CMAUBNCA8Eq/" rel="noopener...

Ok, so it’s that time of year and Sarah is on deadline, which means we’re just kicking our next read along episode down the road until she’s done (which she swears will be very soon). So, this week, we’ve got a freewheeling episode that we’ve been thinking about for a while — let’s talk about what makes a romance novel a romance novel (hint, it’s not when the heroine is run over by a train). 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.Our next read along is Mary Balogh's&nbsp;A Matter of Class, a short historical novel. Get it for only $2.99 at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo&nbsp;or&nbsp;Google Books.Show NotesWe keep putting Mary Balogh in the corner, but swear to God, our next read-along will be&nbsp;A Matter of Class. Also, we've been pronouncing her name wrong -- it's "Bah-log" not "Bay-lo" We'll get it right on the read along we promise.A couple of weeks ago,&nbsp;Jen asked about what articles romance readers share with people new to genre, and the results were interesting.The Bridgerton effect:&nbsp;Regé-Jean Page on SNL,&nbsp;the Bridgerton musical&nbsp;on TikTok, and the brilliant&nbsp;Patricia A. Matthew in the Los Angeles Review of Books.&nbsp;The Happily Ever After (HEA), or the Happy For Now (HFN), is a requirement if you want to categorize it as romance.Nicholas Sparks doesn’t write romance (per the previous item), but this kiss between&nbsp;Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling&nbsp;was&nbsp;great on film&nbsp;and&nbsp;great on the MTV Movie Awards.&nbsp;Me Before You&nbsp;has horrible disability rep and shouldn't ever appear on anyone's list of Best Romances.&nbsp;Oubliette&nbsp;is a great word. Surprising no one, Sarah likes it&nbsp;because of Labyrinth, obviously.In WandaVivsion, Vision (played by Paul Bettany) asks Wanda, “What is grief if not love persevering?” And&nbsp;it struck a chord with a lot of people.&nbsp;If you're interested in the book about the speed skater and the figure skater, it's&nbsp;Fire on the Ice by Tamsen Parker. It's HOT.&nbsp;In the New York Times, Matthew B. Roberts, a showrunner for Outlander said that one of the difficulties of adapting romance is that "You can’t film a thought."Deus ex Machina&nbsp;never works in a romance novel. I said what I said.&nbsp;Speed is a romance&nbsp;and&nbsp;Jeff Daniels does great eye work.&nbsp;Miss Scarlet and the Duke&nbsp;is a TV show that follows a lot of romance conventions, and Sarah says the sexual tension is terrific. Also,&nbsp;this beard.Jen used&nbsp;Working Girl&nbsp;as an example of a movie where the woman's journey is more important than the romantic arc. Yes, she's dating herself, but whatever,&nbsp;it's an age-appropriate pop culture reference for her!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/3/1/s0328-romance-novels-101 If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

We are joined by the fabulous Kate Clayborn — the first in the Fated Mates five-timer club! — to talk about about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book,&nbsp;Love At First, which you can get wherever books are sold. We talk about the difference between retellings and homages, about Shakespeare and mythology and retellings of classic texts versus modern ones. And of course, we fill your TBR. 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;Next week, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's&nbsp;A Matter of Class, a short historical novel. Get it for only $2.99 at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo&nbsp;or&nbsp;Google Books.Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Kate Clayborn, our first five-timer. She was with us for the&nbsp;Best Friend’s Sibling Interstitial,&nbsp;Kresley’s The Player, the&nbsp;Sickbed Scenes Interstitial,&nbsp;Derek Craven Day 2021, and today’s interstitial on Romance Retellings.&nbsp;Texas and the rest of America got hit with&nbsp;some espically bad winter weather this February.&nbsp;This is climate change.&nbsp;Kate released&nbsp;Love at First&nbsp;this week, which is an homage to&nbsp;Romeo and Juliet. Kate’s 2020 book,&nbsp;Love Lettering, is an Overdrive read. Get it&nbsp;today&nbsp;with no wait!&nbsp;Dr. Jill Biden loves Valentine’s Day.JK Rowling is a problem,&nbsp;and&nbsp;it’s changed the way many Harry Potter fans think about her books.&nbsp;Yes, yes,&nbsp;the English Teacher memes are so funny.&nbsp;Well take that.&nbsp;Tl;dr:&nbsp;archetypes&nbsp;are about character,while retellings are about plot.&nbsp;In&nbsp;Where Dreams Begin,&nbsp;Zachary Bronson is a hero that follows the Beast archetype, and Jen&nbsp;saw it in the scene where Holly first enters his house.&nbsp;Story can be a safe way to explore terrifying ideas about society and people. For example, both&nbsp;La Lloronaand&nbsp;Medea&nbsp;are about mothers who kill their children, but have a kind of distance that the story of&nbsp;Andrea Yates&nbsp;does not.Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes&nbsp;writes&nbsp;about storytelling and the universal ID.&nbsp;Our next read along episode will be&nbsp;A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/2/24/s0327-retellings-in-romance-novels-with-kate-clayborn If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

So you watched the Bridgerton Netflix series and you've torn through the books, and now you're desperate for more historical romance while you wait for Season 2 of Bridgerton?&nbsp;Don't worry, dear readers, these podcasters have you covered. Tuck into our What to Read if You Loved Bridgeron episode for a massive list of historical romance recommendation based on what you might have loved in Bridgerton! Is it boxing? Is it I don't know how sex works? Is it the wigs? Is it the scene with the spoon?! Whatever it is...we've got you covered. And when you're done with this one, go check out our episode on&nbsp;romance series featuring big families!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;Please join us next week to chat with the fabulous Kate Clayborn about retellings in romance and to celebrate the launch of her new book,&nbsp;Love At First, which you can preorder now or get wherever books are sold (even your local indie!) next Tuesday, February 23, 2021.&nbsp;In two weeks, we're back with a read along of Mary Balogh's&nbsp;A Matter of Class, which is one of Sarah's favorite historicals. We'll talk about why then. Get it for only $2.99 at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;Barnes &amp; Noble,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo&nbsp;or&nbsp;Google Books.Show NotesWe have some ideas about winter sports, which is that maybe they are best left to other people. But here are some photos of Chicago’s&nbsp;ice skating ribbon&nbsp;and the&nbsp;sledding hill at Soldier Field, which even has its&nbsp;own snowmaking machines! When the&nbsp;Obama Library&nbsp;is built,&nbsp;Michelle Obama requested they include a sledding hill because she remembered wanting to sled closer to home when she was a kid.&nbsp;In the 90s,&nbsp;they really let Hugh Grant do anything.&nbsp;The Luxe&nbsp;is a gilded age YA series,&nbsp;and the original covers were so gorgeous, as compared to&nbsp;the rejacketing. We are not taking questions at this time. We can't find the video Sarah talks about, probably because it was THIRTEEN YEARS AGO (lolsob), but you can watch this fun one about the cover shoot for Splendor, the final book in the series,&nbsp;here!&nbsp;The comedian who did the Bad TV Impression of Bridgerton is Kieran Hodgson. His YouTube channel was recently emptied of content, which makes us think he's got his own TV show coming, but in the meantime, you can watch the Bridgerton hilarity&nbsp;on his Twitter feed. We recommend you do this immediately.&nbsp;Speaking of rakes, Sarah explained them to Oprah Magazine. We aren’t the only ones who thought&nbsp;the Bridgerton brothers were indistinguishable.A collective noun&nbsp;is the name for a group of things.&nbsp;A Cache of Jewels&nbsp;is a very charming picture book about collective nouns if you’re into that sort of thing.&nbsp;If you love Queen Charlotte’s wigs, you can read this piece in Glamour about&nbsp;the hidden meanings in Bridgerton hairstyles, or&nbsp;follow the wig-maker on Instagram.&nbsp;Here’s a&nbsp;great timeline of the books in the Beverly Jenkins universe&nbsp;made by&nbsp;Scentsational Rynnie.&nbsp;Jen interviewed Ms. Bev on&nbsp;Wild Rain’s release day for Love’s Sweet Arrow.In&nbsp;Heart and Hand, Julie is a member of&nbsp;The Four Hundred,&nbsp;the most exclusive society families. She attended&nbsp;Vassar College, which opened in 1865. To watch Jen’s interview with Rebel Carter, KJ Charles, Caroline Linden, and Amalie Howard,&nbsp;join the Facebook group, The League of Extraordinary Historical Romance Authors.Gunter’s Tea Shop&nbsp;is a real place if you liked&nbsp;that scene with the spoon.Tell us about your historicals where there are duels: We've already got&nbsp;Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake,&nbsp;The Lady Hellion, and&nbsp;The Serpent Prince&nbsp;on our list.Sarah didn’t know Jen was going to bring up Boxing, or she would have been ready to recommend&nbsp;Piper Huguley’s A Champion’s Heart, which is a beautiful inspirational romance.&nbsp;If you want to know more about the connection between writing and boxing, Sarah recommends the Library of America's&nbsp;At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing. Here's more about&nbsp;the fascinating history of boxing gloves.Jen enjoyed two movies about women who box:&nbsp;Girlfight with Michelle Rodriguez&nbsp;and&nbsp;Million Dollar Baby with Hillary Swank.&nbsp;Next week, we'll have Kate Clayborn on to talk about retellings and her new book,&nbsp;Love at First. Our next read along book is&nbsp;A Matter of Class&nbsp;by Mary Balogh.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/2/16/s0326-bridgerton-read-alikes If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon?...

We are talking about Naima Simone this week — and honestly, we could have picked any of Naima’s series to read because she’s just. that. good. We chose the whole series so we could talk more about the complexities of category romances, about wild plots, about alpha heroes, and about how Sarah is absolute trash for a rich hero and the working class girl on the other side of the tracks. Don’t @ her. Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’ve got Kate Clayborn joining us to talk about her upcoming book, Love at First! After that, we’re back to read alongs, but we’ll announce our next read on next week’s episode…see you then. 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 NotesWe had such a great time on&nbsp;Derek Craven Day. Check out our dedicated&nbsp;Derek Craven Day page. On Derek Craven Day,&nbsp;Lisa revealed the cover&nbsp;of her upcoming release,&nbsp;The Devil in Disguise,&nbsp;which comes out summer 2021.&nbsp;The article in the New York Times about&nbsp;three mothers during the Pandemic&nbsp;was a hard, hard read.&nbsp;We are all&nbsp;experiencing the strange time warp of the pandemic, but&nbsp;some of us even lost a hot year.&nbsp;Maybe you would like to watch the&nbsp;Jem and Holograms movie.&nbsp;Here are some fancy places:&nbsp;The Main Line,&nbsp;the Gold Coast,&nbsp;Park Avenue,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Scarsdale.&nbsp;Lake Forest&nbsp;is fancy, but it was also&nbsp;an actual sundown town,&nbsp;so yikes to that.&nbsp;Here’s&nbsp;a quick primer about category romance&nbsp;from&nbsp;Love in Panels. Right now in February of 2021, Harlequin&nbsp;publishes 66 titles every month&nbsp;in&nbsp;12 different series.&nbsp;We’ve had two previous episodes that were specifically about category romance: a fun one with&nbsp;bananas old school categories, and another with&nbsp;Steve Ammidown about how Vivian Stephens invented the American category. Check out&nbsp;Steve’s new blog about the history of romance.Pre-pandemic,&nbsp;Jen interviewed Tony Horvath from Harlequin about Harlequin’s branding and cover art.&nbsp;Light a candle for&nbsp;Harlequin Blaze.The Military Industrial Complex&nbsp;is a lot to unpack, but&nbsp;maybe you have the time.Jen is not the president and CEO&nbsp;of&nbsp;Great Lakes Cold Storage, but they are hiring.&nbsp;Heterochromia&nbsp;is a thing, but&nbsp;David Bowie just got punched in the face.Naima's newest release is&nbsp;Back in the Texan's Bed.Movies we mentioned:&nbsp;GI Jane, where Demi Moore becomes the first female Navy SEAL.&nbsp;Mystic Pizza, which is not only about dumping fish into a convertible.&nbsp;Four Weddings and Funeral, which has a woman everyone calls Duckface,&nbsp;which is not great!Music:&nbsp;Youngblood by Jem and The HologramsThe RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/2/9/s0325-the-blackout-billionaires-by-naima-simone If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

Happy Derek Craven Day! We’re wearing our t-shirts and buttons, and spending a whole lot of time talking about what Derek Craven would and wouldn’t do with one of our very favorites — Kate Clayborn. Thanks to everyone who played our silly Derek Craven games this year — don’t forget to visit our Derek Craven Day page for charts, graphs and hilarious memes made from your submissions! Also, if you haven’t read Dreaming of You, now’s your chance to get it at a special Derek Craven Day price — $2.99! We love you, and we’re thrilled we can celebrate this, the best of all holidays, with you. Next week, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming with Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series (With a little Derek Craven Day excitement in there, too!) In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame it on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.Show NotesHere's&nbsp;the history of Derek Craven Day in tweets, but also our mantra: there are 2 kinds of Lisa Kleypas readers.Jen was shitposting&nbsp;about Kleypas heroes.&nbsp;Mary Jane Wells&nbsp;and&nbsp;Rosalyn Landor&nbsp;are great audiobook narrators.&nbsp;It’s not Talk Talk,&nbsp;it’s TikTok.&nbsp;All About fabric and paper scissors.No one should test the patience of Nora Roberts,&nbsp;part 231.Kate has strong feelings about&nbsp;Irish Spring.Don’t ever reply all.&nbsp;In case you need an explainer of&nbsp;what happened with Reddit and the stock market&nbsp;last week. We think Derek Craven would enjoy this story.&nbsp;Why backup cameras were invented.&nbsp;They say you can't buy your way onto the Bestseller lists, but&nbsp;it's been done.Kate's question&nbsp;about romance heroes and Halloween.Lisa Kleypas revealed the cover for her new book, Devil In Disguise, today. Take a look!

This week, we’re releasing a new episode on Thursday with guest Kate Clayborn in honor of Derek Craven day, so today we’re rereleasing our Dreaming of You episode from Season 2 so that people can be all caught up before our extremely niche episode for the holiday itself! For full show notes, see: S02.3: Lisa Kleypas Does Spectacles Better than F. Scott Fitzgerald: Dreaming of YouNext week, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming with Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series (With a little Derek Craven Day excitement in there, too!) In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame it on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.

Back in July we had a very fun crossover episode with Erin and Clayton of Learning the Tropes. It was a delight and you should absolutely listen to it. During the event, we received so many questions from listeners that we didn’t have enough time to answer them all…so here we are, answering them! We talk about the kinds of romances we love, Normal People, morality chain and villains turned heroes, COVID and Romance Novels, Ted Lasso, and romance main character names. And, of course, we talk about our mutual adoration for Lisa Kleypas, which is extremely timely, as next week, on February 4th, we will be celebrating Derek Craven Day 2021! So look for a very special episode on Thursday instead of Wednesday next week…and if you want to be a part of it, visit fatedmates.net and take our “Would Derek Craven?” poll (questions change every day until the 4th!). After that, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming with Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series (With a little Derek Craven Day excitement in there, too!) In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame it on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.Show NotesSarah and Jen both adore&nbsp;Blackwing Pencils, but Sarah has really achieved new heights of nerd with her&nbsp;Carl CC-2000 Custom hand crank pencil sharpener.Tessa Bailey is&nbsp;a Fated Mates favorite, and has a new, very charming book out this week called&nbsp;The Sweetest Fix. You should read it.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/1/26/s0324-fated-tropes-ama If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

Nearly two years since our first Curvy Heroines interstitial, which was short and sweet, we’re back with another that is longer and more meandering, but absolutely chock full of recs! We love a curvy heroine, and so do you all, apparently, as our original Curvy Interstitial is our most popular episode of all time! Next week, we’ve got a special crossover episode with Erin and Clayton from Learning the Tropes, and the week after, we’re back to the deep dives with Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series (With a little Derek Craven Day excitement in there, too!) In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame It on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.Show NotesThis piece in Book Riot by&nbsp;Carole Bell&nbsp;argues that fat representation is different than fat acceptance, which is something we grapple with as we’re talking. She also wrote&nbsp;this list of romances with fat representation.If you haven’t read books by&nbsp;Charlotte Stein, you should. Which ones? ALL OF THEM.&nbsp;Fat Monica,&nbsp;if you don’t know, is a reference to the TV show Friends.&nbsp;Watch Olivia Dade talk&nbsp;about where we are now with fat representation in romance.&nbsp;Cult of Glory, a 2020 book about&nbsp;the true history of the Texas Rangers&nbsp;paints a grim picture of the storied law enforcement agents.&nbsp;In case you’re interested, last week Jen was googling “anal hook” and this week she landed on a bunch of Christian websites when she googled&nbsp;the Magi, so she got freaked out and just used a wikipedia link. It's fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Thea de Salle is one of&nbsp;author Hillary Monahan's&nbsp;pseudonyms. Back in the day,&nbsp;Jen wrote about Catholicism in romance based on a later book in the series, The Lady of Royale Street.Luciana Barroso is married to Matt Damon, and she’s a regular person.In Get a Life, Chloe Brown, the heroine suffers from&nbsp;fibromyalgia., and&nbsp;so does the author, Talia Hibbert.We did&nbsp;a whole episode on Alisha Rai’s Serving Pleasure&nbsp;in season two.&nbsp;Jen recently read&nbsp;The Ravenels series by Lisa Kleypas.&nbsp;She’s obsessed with Rhys Winterborne, and&nbsp;West Ravenel&nbsp;is pretty great, too. Don’t worry, Derek Craven is still her favorite, and if you haven’t&nbsp;ordered yourmerch&nbsp;for our upcoming Derek Craven holiday, what are you waiting for?On the show Bridgerton, Penelope Featherington is a curvy girl; however,&nbsp;in the books,&nbsp;she loses weight in the 10 years between when she comes out and when she finally gets her HEA with Colin.&nbsp;Iman&nbsp;is one of the&nbsp;most famously beautiful supermodels&nbsp;in the world, and&nbsp;she married David Bowie in 1992.&nbsp;“That’s what he said”&nbsp;is&nbsp;a long running joke&nbsp;from the sitcom The Office.&nbsp;The Queen’s Gambit&nbsp;is a Netflix show about chess, and&nbsp;Crash Landing on You&nbsp;is a K-Drama about a woman who accidentally paraglides into the DMZ in a tornado.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/1/18/s0323-curvy-heroines-redux If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

It’s 2021, and we’re back on the reading train with one of Sarah’s favorite erotic romances ever, Alexis Hall’s For Real. We dig into sex on the page, how sex and identity work together to make an erotic romance an erotic romance, power dynamics, and the difference between fear &amp; risk. Enjoy!You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order here!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 returning to Curvy Girls for an interstitial, and then we’re headed on to Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series! In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame It on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.Show NotesWe won Georgia, but then&nbsp;white supremacist terrorists attacked the Capitol. If you want to&nbsp;talk to your kids,&nbsp;here are some suggestions from Facing History and Ourselves, this is a resource for teachers but I think any parent with tweens and teens will find it helpful. If you have little kids, Jen’s friend Elisa is a children’s librarian and recommend the books&nbsp;When a Bully is President&nbsp;and&nbsp;What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book.&nbsp;Answering machines&nbsp;don’t exist anymore. (Well, they probably do, but no one we know uses them.)&nbsp;For Real won the&nbsp;2016 RITA for Best Erotic romance, and&nbsp;Alexis Hall wrote a blog entry about it.&nbsp;Fear vs. Risk,&nbsp;the short version. Or maybe you want to read whole book about fear, called&nbsp;Nerve by Eva Holland.&nbsp;Jen knows Eva from another online space, but they've never met in person.Bluebeard’s attic had&nbsp;some things Jen had to google.&nbsp;Eric Selinger&nbsp;is&nbsp;a romance guy, but also a poetry guy at DePaul. Jen took a workshop with Eric a million years ago (before she started doing romance stuff), and the guy who said “poetry is a laboratory for sentences” was&nbsp;poet Baron Wormser, author of the best book Jen’s ever read about teaching and learning poetry,&nbsp;A Surge of Language.&nbsp;Jen was thinking about what happens when romance authors are forced to&nbsp;read the sex scenes instead of the feelings scenes, like when&nbsp;Stacey Abrams on Stephen Colbert.&nbsp;Sarah talked about chastity belts at the end, and&nbsp;we here at Fated Mates strongly advise against giving the internet the power over your chastity belts and cock cages.&nbsp;SAFETY FIRST!&nbsp;Derek Craven Day is coming, do you have you merch ready?&nbsp;T-shirts&nbsp;and&nbsp;buttons&nbsp;and listen to&nbsp;our discussion&nbsp;of Dreaming of You, of course.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/1/12/s0322-for-real-by-alexis-hall If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

This week, we’re thrilled to be joined by the fabulous Sophia Benoit, sex columnist for GQ magazine and romance novel lover! We talk about romance, about why it’s so hard to talk about sex in the world, about the books Sophia has written and is planning to write, and about Jimmy Butler. Because, obviously.Happy New Year! Next week is our first read along of 2021, Alexis Hall’s For Real! Get it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;GQ sex columnist,&nbsp;Sophia Benoit. She’s absolutely&nbsp;great on twitter&nbsp;and&nbsp;writes an amazing advice column, which is available as a Substack. Her book of essays,&nbsp;Well, That Was Exhausting&nbsp;will be out in the summer of 2021.The Sex and the City reference, of course, it to&nbsp;Carrie Bradshaw’s job as a dating columnist.&nbsp;Captain Sit on my Face.America has&nbsp;a sex education problem.&nbsp;Lollapalooza&nbsp;is very fun and the music is great and&nbsp;every time she’s attended, it has made Jen feel like she’s a million years old.&nbsp;Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina has a famous first line, but the rest of it is very long.&nbsp;HoCo, FauxCo, and&nbsp;Prom is Cancelled.&nbsp;If you’re looking for paranormal,&nbsp;all of season one is a read-along of the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole.&nbsp;The&nbsp;Tom Selleck&nbsp;and&nbsp;Burt Reynolds&nbsp;mustaches of the 80s were quite a thing. And if you look at the&nbsp;original covers&nbsp;of&nbsp;romances from that time, you'll see them in action.Wigs were big in the 1700s.Reddit’s&nbsp;Am I the Asshole (AITA)&nbsp;is&nbsp;a cultural touchstone&nbsp;for so many people.&nbsp;We are adding Jimmy Butler to our list of favorite athletes, which started with&nbsp;Jurgen Klopp. Here is a bunch of Jimmy Butler information for you:&nbsp;about the trade from The Bulls,&nbsp;about his minivan,&nbsp;about his love of country music,&nbsp;about his coffee company,&nbsp;about his teamwork, and&nbsp;about his&nbsp;fashion sense. The third member of the Fated Mates sports team is&nbsp;Ted Lasso.Next week, we’ll be reading&nbsp;For Real by Alexis Hall.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/1/4/s0321-sophia-benoit If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

WELCOME 2021!As is customary on Fated Mates, we’re releasing a special New Year’s Eve episode that requires headphones if you’re in mixed company! We brought some of our most favorite people together for a very special crossover episode of Fated Mates and Andie J. Christopher’s Instagram TV Juggernaut: Drunk Romance History, during which we drink a delightful mix of alcohol and talk about a delightful mix of erotic romance by the queen of the quick and dirty novella—Jessa Kane.We’re talking priests and daddy kink, mafia hitmen, billionaires, husky heroes, stepbrothers and what Joanna Shape refers to as the Kane-Trope-Wheel. Tracey Livesay has a mug with penises on it. Bring in 2021 right. (Also, if you, like Joanna and Jen have read all of the Jessa Kane’s, no worries! She released a new one today—BURLY—just in time for this episode! Shero!)Head over to Andie’s IGTV channel for the video version.NotesOne more chance for phone-banking is Monday 1/4/2021 at 5pm central.Listen to last year's New Year's Eve epsiode on Pegging with special guest, Sierra Simone!Have we mentioned Drunk Romance History on Andie's Instagram?We are joined today by our friends: Andie Christopher, Alexis Daria, Adriana Herrera, LaQuette, Tracey Livesay, Nisha Sharma, and Joanna Shupe.Get Tracey's penis mug here.Normalize sex toys. Today's guests are big fans of LELO products and recommend: The Ora2, The Sona2, and The Gigi2.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/12/31/jessa-kane-new-years-eve-extravaganza If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

It’s the Holidays and the end of 2020 and we don’t really know what’s happening, but Eric is keeping us honest with another AMA! This one was recorded during our Fated States postcard writing party for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — the Democratic candidates for the Senate Runoff in Georgia — answering reader questions that came in during the live recording! We talk about pen names, working class heroes, whether or not you should DNF books, and Rasputin’s penis. Come back tomorrow for a special treat, and get ready for our first read along of 2021, Alexis Hall’s For Real. Get it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo. Show NotesOne more phone banking opportunity for the Georgia Senate runoff is coming up on January 4, 2021 from 5-7 central.&nbsp;Join us!You should watch Drunk Romance History on&nbsp;Andie's Instagram.If you want more romance novels made into TV shows, you should watch&nbsp;Virgin River&nbsp;and&nbsp;Bridgerton.&nbsp;But everyone is watching Bridgerton, so that's great.&nbsp;Jen thinks you should DNF.&nbsp;We rattled off a bunch of historical romances with working heroes.&nbsp;Dreaming of You, of course, and American-set historicals, like&nbsp;Indigo&nbsp;by Beverly Jenkins. In England,&nbsp;A Matter of Disagreement&nbsp;by EE Ottoman,&nbsp;The Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem&nbsp;by Manda Collins,&nbsp;Thief of Shadows&nbsp;by Elizabeth Hoyt,&nbsp;The Lawrence Browne Affair&nbsp;by Cat Sebastian,&nbsp;Honeytrap&nbsp;by Glen Aster Gray. Almost every&nbsp;KJ Charlesbook would qualify, as well as many by&nbsp;Sophie Jordan&nbsp;and&nbsp;Anne Mallory. Also, don't forget Sarah's&nbsp;Bareknuckle Bastards&nbsp;series.&nbsp;Annika Martin&nbsp;writes all the best bananas books.&nbsp;Rachel Hawkins is writing contemporary adult witches under the name&nbsp;Erin Sterling.&nbsp;Some historicals with characters from Imperial Russia? That's tough, but Sarah suggests the Stokehurst Duology from Lisa Kleypas, the first is&nbsp;Midnight Angel.&nbsp;And if you have kids interested in this time period, check out&nbsp;The Family Romonov by Candace Fleming. There is nothing about&nbsp;Rasputin's penis&nbsp;in that book, be assured.

It's the holidays and we're talking family romances because many of us are with our families or thinking about them this week. No matter whether you have a perfect family life or one that's a bit more of a journey, romances focusing on families have been around from the beginning -- this week, we're talking royal houses like the Westmorelands and the Malorys, the LeVeqs and the Montgomeries, and the Holmeses and the Hathaways. We also talk a lot about our own families...which was unintended, but there it is.You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order here!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! For the next week or so, we've got a lot of fun stuff in the hopper -- be on the lookout for a few extra episodes!&nbsp;And, if you're celebrating this week -- Merry Christmas!Show NotesRichard Gere wasn’t old&nbsp;when he filmed Pretty Woman, even though he was&nbsp;going gray.Samantha Jaxon posted a very upsetting TikTok, and that's all we have to say about that.&nbsp;The days of&nbsp;the big and small envelope in college admissions&nbsp;are over, but they do have&nbsp;the Common Appand that seems nice.&nbsp;Maybe, you too, would like&nbsp;a karaoke microphone&nbsp;for your future weather-person.&nbsp;The 1987 movie Roxanne&nbsp;with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah is a Cyrano retelling, and it has&nbsp;lots of very funny jokes and one-liners.&nbsp;There is&nbsp;one more phone-banking opportunity on January 4, 2021. You should join us!Bridgerton drops on December 25th, along with&nbsp;Wonder Woman 1984.&nbsp;Virgin River&nbsp;is another Netflix show based on a romance series.&nbsp;Just a heads up about the photo array, I’m just including the first book of a family series because otherwise it will be overwhelming!&nbsp;70s and 80s Old School romance series with families include:&nbsp;the Malorys&nbsp;by Johanna Lindsey,&nbsp;The Montgomerys and Taggerts&nbsp;by Jude Deveraux, and&nbsp;the Westmorelands&nbsp;by Judith McNaught.&nbsp;90s families:&nbsp;the LeVeq family&nbsp;by Beverly Jenkins,&nbsp;The Cynster family&nbsp;by Stephanie Laurens, the&nbsp;Rocking M series&nbsp;by Elizabeth Lowell.2000s families:&nbsp;Brenda Jackson’s Westmoreland family,&nbsp;the Essex Sisters&nbsp;by Eloisa James,&nbsp;The Holmes Brothers&nbsp;by Farrah Rochon, and&nbsp;the Hathaways&nbsp;by Lisa Kleypas.&nbsp;2010s families:&nbsp;The Blackshear family&nbsp;by Cecilia Grant,&nbsp;The Ravenels&nbsp;by Kleypas,&nbsp;the Duke’s Daughters&nbsp;by Megan Frampton,&nbsp;the Mackenzie series&nbsp;by Jennifer Ashley,&nbsp;the Greene sisters&nbsp;in the Uptown Girls series by Joanna Shupe,&nbsp;the Talbot sisters&nbsp;in Sarah’s Scandal and Scoundrel series,&nbsp;the von Hasenberg sisters&nbsp;in the Consortium Rebellion series by Jessie Mihalik, the&nbsp;Hidden Legacy series&nbsp;by Ilona Andrews, and&nbsp;the Sullivans&nbsp;by Bella Andre.Brenda Jackson was the first Black romance author to hit the New York Times bestseller list with the book&nbsp;Irresistible Forces&nbsp;in 2008. It's not a Westmoreland book, but the Westmoreland series is currently 30+ books and growing.

BRIDGERTON is nearly here! Make sure you have batteries in your remote and your Netflix subscription is up to date, because on 12/25, Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series is coming to your TV courtesy of Shonda Rhimes! We are EXTREMELY EXCITED, and in honor of the series, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Julia Quinn romance which, *surprise!* isn’t a Bridgerton book!If you want Bridgerton deep dives, do not miss the series at Learning the Tropes with our amazing friends Erin &amp; Clayton. But we’re reading The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever, and we’ve got a LOT to say! Content note: This book and episode discusses miscarriage and pregnancy.You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order here!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’ve got an interstitial, and the following week…honestly, who knows? It’s December! It could be ANYTHING! Show NotesCan we brag for a minute?&nbsp;Our #FatedStates phone bank appeared in the Washington Post this week!&nbsp;Also, if you're looking for phone banking opportunites, we have one&nbsp;tonight 12/16 at 5 central, and&nbsp;another on 1/4/2021.&nbsp;Join us.&nbsp;December 25th is going to be a great day.&nbsp;Bridgerton&nbsp;drops on Netflix and&nbsp;Wonder Woman 1984&nbsp;will be on HBO Max.&nbsp;If you want a podcast tackling all of the Bridgerton books, check out&nbsp;Learning the Tropes.&nbsp;Sarah was on the episode for Sir Philip with Love,&nbsp;which is her favorite. Jen’s favorite is The Viscount Who Loved Me, and if it’s yours maybe you’d like&nbsp;a “mallet of death” t-shirt from Linda. Her shop is on hiatus right now, but she'll be back in the new year.&nbsp;Here’s&nbsp;the Ted talk with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of&nbsp;Eat, Pray, Love.&nbsp;Does Olivia get her own book? Of course she does, it’s called&nbsp;What Happens in London.&nbsp;Sarah’s favorite Jane Austen is Emma.&nbsp;Jen’s favorite Jane Austen is none of them.&nbsp;If you want to see some&nbsp;house party games in action, watch Season 4 of the Crown.Megan Markle recently wrote about her miscarriage in the New York Times.&nbsp;Jen wrote about miscarriage&nbsp;back when she blogged for The Book Queen, and it includes discussion of Sarah’s book,&nbsp;Day of the Duchess.The book with all the former heroes sharing their childbirth war stories is...well, we don't remember. If you do, please tell us!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/12/15/s0319-the-secret-diaries-of-miss-miranda-cheever-by-julia-quinn If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

This week, we tried something a little different—recording a live interstitial episode! We’re talking about Jen’s formative queen, Julie Garwood, and we dig into dialogue, alphas who are instantly gone for their heroines, heroines who tame wild animals, arranged marriages between children, and why every Garwood historical feels medieval whether or not it actually is. We recorded this episode live during a Fated States postcard-writing party to get out the vote for the January 5th runoff election in Georgia. If you’re a Georgia voter, please vote for Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, and let’s finish what we started with the blue wave! If you’re up for it, please consider joining us for a phonebanking session on the evening of January 4th!Next week, in advance of the launch of the Bridgerton series on Netflix (coming December 25th!), we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Julia Quinn novel, The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. Get it at Amazon, B&amp;N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.Show NotesFated States is gearing up to&nbsp;phone bank on the evening of Jan 4 from 5-7 central time.&nbsp;Join us if you can!&nbsp;In Sarah’s&nbsp;OSRBC facebook group, there’s a longstanding search for a book where two people are on a beach and a wave throws them together, and then “oops they’re boning.” A few folks have suggested that maybe it was&nbsp;Pirate by Fabio. So check it out. His co-writer (a ghost writer is when they are unnamed) is&nbsp;Eugenia Rielly.&nbsp;A teenage horror/romance that both Jen and Kelly loved was called&nbsp;The Ghosts of Departure Point. Probably came from&nbsp;the Scholastic Book Club,&nbsp;if we’re being honest.&nbsp;In case you’re wondering,&nbsp;the copyright page will tell you if you’re holding a first printing or first edition. Here’s a bunch of people talking about&nbsp;why the edges of paperbacks were dyed.&nbsp;RT Book Reviews and the RT conference once had&nbsp;Julie Garwood and Jude Deveraux on stage at the same time, and YouTube has the video!&nbsp;When Coronavirus is over, I highly recommend going to&nbsp;KissCon.&nbsp;Nora Roberts is our Queen&nbsp;and last week&nbsp;a poor unfortunate soul named Debra&nbsp;learned that the hard way.&nbsp;Obviously, Luke grew up on&nbsp;Tatooine.&nbsp;Hoth&nbsp;was that ice planet place, which is why the women in the Ice Planet Barbarians series call their new home&nbsp;Not-Hoth.&nbsp;We’d be interested in hearing your interpretation of&nbsp;The Bechdel Test.&nbsp;Jen thinks the women can still talk about men AS LONG AS they also talk about other stuff, but Sarah thought it required no discussion of men at all which is pretty tough to find in romance. FWIW, Jen mentioned it in regards to The Bride because Jamie is so isolated and largely without women friends.&nbsp;We like prologues and epilogues here at Fated Mates, but we understand&nbsp;not everyone&nbsp;agrees.&nbsp;The feud between the families in The Gift is “like the Montagues and the Capulets, but worse.” Speaking of which, Kate Clayborn’s upcoming book,&nbsp;Love At First, is an homage to Romeo and Juliet.This isn't exactly about the&nbsp;life expectancy in Scotland was in 1100, but it's close enough.&nbsp;Vanessa Riley’s site has a great explainer about Black people during the Regency on her site.&nbsp;We talked about the Carribean in the Regency when we read&nbsp;Gentle Rogue.It wasn't a "rip off" of Home Alone, it was just an&nbsp;allusion. Similarly, Nathan's whip reminded Sarah of&nbsp;Indiana Jones.Are these books on audio? Why yes they are&nbsp;and&nbsp;Jen listened to The Bride&nbsp;in between recording and release of the episode and greatly enjoyed it.&nbsp;Boats vs ships.Next week, we're reading&nbsp;The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever&nbsp;by Julia Quinn

There aren’t many recent romances you can point to and categorically label as game changers, but Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game definitely fits this bill. We talk about all the ways we love it, about sparkling dialogue and witty writing and what makes a romcom and how this book changed the cover game for a generation of romance. Oh, and yes, we get to the bottom (jk, there is no bottom) of Jen’s issues with first-person present. You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order before December 5th for Christmas delivery!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’ve got an interstitial, and the following week, in advance of the launch of the Bridgerton series on Netflix, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Julia Quinn novel, The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. Get it at Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Kobo,&nbsp;Apple&nbsp;or at your local indie&nbsp;via bookshop.org.Fated StatesWe were really thrilled to be interviewed by Kelly Faircloth for her article about How Romance Novelists Are Mobilizing Voters in Solidarity With Stacey Abrams.Show NotesThe Hating Game was a juggernaut&nbsp;and&nbsp;will soon be a movie.&nbsp;Bridget Jones’s Diary&nbsp;came out in 1996 and&nbsp;the movie came out in 2001.&nbsp;Enemies to Lovers&nbsp;is a completely beloved romance trope. Rivals to lovers lives within the larger trope and is very fun because it is often a perfectly matched pair on an even playing field. Sarah wrote&nbsp;Brazen &amp; the Beast&nbsp;after being inspired by The Hating Game.Here’s what we mean when we say&nbsp;situational comedy.What is the plural of arch-nemesis?Jen hates present tense, but of course everyone should write what’s right for them.&nbsp;Is it&nbsp;chick lit&nbsp;or is it&nbsp;women’s fiction?&nbsp;Why do these labels even exist? Just go back and read&nbsp;The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing&nbsp;or&nbsp;Good in Bed&nbsp;by&nbsp;Jennifer Weiner.&nbsp;We don’t talk about&nbsp;voice&nbsp;that much, but&nbsp;maybe we should.&nbsp;There was a short lived Harlequin chick lit line called&nbsp;Red Dress Ink&nbsp;in 2001.&nbsp;Here’s what Jen teaches her kids about&nbsp;characterization.&nbsp;The&nbsp;Slate article about interiors&nbsp;and&nbsp;a very thorough rebuttal from Felicia Davin.&nbsp;We talked about&nbsp;another hero&nbsp;who&nbsp;came up through Twilight fanfic.&nbsp;If you like a scene where one main character tells off the family on behalf of their beloved, you should read&nbsp;Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz.In two weeks, we'll be reading&nbsp;The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever.&nbsp;We are getting ready for&nbsp;Bridgerton&nbsp;and&nbsp;Wonder Woman 1984.&nbsp;If you're interested in&nbsp;the Fated Mates Best of 2020 book pack&nbsp;and you want it delivered by Christmas, make sure you order it by 12/5.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/12/1/s0317-the-hating-game-by-sally-thorne If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

The Best Romance Novels of 2020! It’s the best and worst task of the year for us, because we read so many AMAZING books over the course of the year, and choosing ten and not one hundred is hard for us, ok? But here they are — ten gorgeous books that we adored—books with badass heroines, larger-than-life heroes, brilliant structure, and outstanding writing. Buy the Fated Mates Best of Book Pack in one fell swoop from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Support fabulous authors and a woman-owned independent bookstore all at once! 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 get back to doing what we do best: Reading Romance! We’re deep-diving on Sally Thorne’s&nbsp;The Hating Game. Get it at Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Kobo,&nbsp;Apple&nbsp;or at your local indie&nbsp;via bookshop.org.The Best Romance Novels of 2020Fated StatesInterested in phone banking or writing postcards to voters in Georgia? Join us for our upcoming Fated States events: phone banking on&nbsp;12/2/20&nbsp;and&nbsp;1/4/2021&nbsp;and&nbsp;postcards on 12/5/2020.Show NotesConsider buying&nbsp;a Fated Mates pack of 7 of our 10 books&nbsp;(it doesn't include the self-published books) from Old Town Books in Alexandria, Virgina. You can also check out&nbsp;our Bookshop link.Can you believe&nbsp;that RWA debacle&nbsp;was 11 months ago?&nbsp;So you want to hear us talk about&nbsp;A Heart of Blood and Ashes,&nbsp;Like Lovers Do,&nbsp;Queen Move, or&nbsp;The Devil of Downtown?&nbsp;Cold War history is fascinating. Not only&nbsp;all the nuclear stuff, but Sarah's story about&nbsp;K Blows Top&nbsp;sounds fascinating.&nbsp;Some LitFic novels that play around with dual storylines are&nbsp;The French Lieutenant’s Woman,&nbsp;Possession, and the more romance adjacent&nbsp;Secret History of the Pink Carnation.&nbsp;All about&nbsp;danger banging.&nbsp;And of course&nbsp;there’s a button for that.&nbsp;Tammany Hall&nbsp;is often used as a historical example of total police corruption.&nbsp;Up next week, we'll be reading&nbsp;The Hating Game&nbsp;by Sally Thorne.

It’s getting colder out there, so we’re getting hot in here! We’ve got the fabulous Katee Robert with us to talk about ménage romance and why she writes them so well. We get to the bottom of why it always gets shoved into the taboo corner of romance, the fantasy of the trope, and why we like it so very much. Also, we topple the TBR (as usual)!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! Slight change of schedule to accommodate a fun thing we’re up to…next week, just in time for your Thanksgiving sloth, we’re announcing our best books of 2020! The following week, we’re reading Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&amp;N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.Show NotesWelcome Katee Robert! You can’t just make wikipedia pages about yourself. High fantasy has real meaning. When talking about romance, M and F (and NB for nonbinary) are used to inform readers about the gender identity of the main characters. This is an imperfect shorthand, but at this point in our understanding of sex and gender, it seems like the most respectful way to acknowledge that there is a huge range of sexual identities that exist for people of all genders. For example, if we call a book with two women “a lesbian romance” it might not take into account that one character is bisexual, which adds to bi-erasure. So if a romance is labeled M/F, we know there is a man and a woman in a romantic relationship, but that leaves room for the sexual identity of the characters to be fully explored in the book. In romance with more than two people, the order of the letters matters. A book that is MFM would mean that the two men do not have a sexual relationship with each other, while FMM or MMF means that they do. There is nothing taboo about polyamory. Jen liked the progression of menage in Elle Kennedy’s Out of Uniform series. The series starts with a non-swords crossing threesome, Hot and Bothered. The observing one was Heat of the Night (available in the Hot and Heavy anthology), where Ryan watches Annabelle have sex with his roommate. But as the series progresses, there is contact between the SEALs in Feeling Hot and a fully formed menage relationship in Hotter Than Ever. Ellora’s Cave and Samhain were two of the original (and now shuttered) indie publishers that specialized in erotic romance and/or taboo romance. That article in Harpers about how men don’t have friends. The Anita Blake series went through a lot of changes, so just go with Katee’s method and start with #9, Obsidian Butterfly.Katee will be back to talk about morality chain in 2021. Next week, we’ll be airing our Best of 2020 episode, and then the first week of December, we’ll be discussing The Hating Game.

ONE HUNDRED EPISODES! You’ve seen us through Immortals After Dark, through Books that Blooded Us, and through a presidential election, so if there was any doubt that you’re stuck with us, put that right out of your mind! We love you so much for listening…and we hope you have as much fun listening to this episode as we had recording it!Thanks to Tracey Livesay, Andie J Christopher, Kate Clayborn, Christina Lauren, Adriana Herrera, Nisha Sharma and Joanna Shupe for joining us, and to Steve Ammidown for popping in to say hi! Next week, we have an interstitial coming, and the following week, we’re back on read alongs with Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&amp;N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.Show NotesIn between when we recorded and when you're listening,&nbsp;something great happened.&nbsp;How did Hollywood Squares work? What did&nbsp;the theme song&nbsp;sound like? What does&nbsp;Whoopi Goldberghave to do with it?Fated States will be back! One of our dedicated phone bankers and the head of the OSRBC-IAD book discussion, Caroline,&nbsp;had an amazing experience when she was phone banking the week before the election.&nbsp;And we are&nbsp;not at all jealous about her amazing gift basket from Kresley Cole!&nbsp;Check out&nbsp;Milla Vane on the Wicked Wallflowers podcast.&nbsp;Andie Christopher hosts Drunk Romance History on her Instagram feed every Saturday and it’s hilarious. Sarah joined her Saturday after&nbsp;a full day of Election drinking&nbsp;to talk&nbsp;Suddenly You.Do you know the book where a wave causes accidental penetration for a couple on a beach? NEITHER DO WE!&nbsp;Here’s the link to&nbsp;all the slides for Fuck, Marry, Kill and Would Derek Craven. And here are all the&nbsp;Title Smash&nbsp;slides.&nbsp;We invented a holiday. No big.&nbsp;We love Philadelphia.&nbsp;Gritty was an unexpected hero of the 2020 election. Now you know all about&nbsp;the Philadelphia Left.&nbsp;The Danielle Steele thread&nbsp;from Steve Ammidown at the Browne Pop Culture Library.&nbsp;We really need to talk about the 80s blockbusters&nbsp;The Thorn Birds,&nbsp;Clan of the Cave Bear, and&nbsp;Flowers in the Attic&nbsp;(and&nbsp;powdered donuts).It&nbsp;was Buffy and Spike&nbsp;in the mausoleum, not Buffy and Angel.We can't find the TikTok of Paul Rudd and his son, but instead we'll discuss if&nbsp;anyone knows where Michael J. Fox got his cloning machine?&nbsp;We’ll leave you to contemplate the whole “hero pooping” theory on your own, but&nbsp;we all know for sure that Elvis poops.

The last six weeks have been rough, but Fated Mates listeners and a wild number of Romance Authors made them easier by being a part of Fated States, our weekly phonebanking initiative with Indivisible Action. We don’t know how yesterday went, but we know we are so incredibly proud to have worked alongside so many listeners who volunteered their time to phonebank, and so many amazing authors who donated books to phone bankers!On this episode, we rec books by every author who donated free books to Fated States — all 49 of them! Your TBR is going to be full for years after this one! We promise! Special shout out to Julia Quinn, Suzanne Brockmann, AJ Cousins, Carrie Ann Ryan &amp; Cassandra Carr, who each donated books to EVERY phonebanker, once a week for five weeks.Below, in Show Notes, you’ll find a full list of the books we recommend, and links to Amazon. You can buy print versions of books and support independent bookstores at our bookshop.org shop!AND…thanks to our sister pods, Heaving Bosoms, Learning the Tropes and The Wicked Wallflowers, who donated podcasting swag, and to BestFriendKelly for stickers!IMPORTANT UPDATE: This Thursday, November 5th, we’ll be recording our 100th Episode LIVE on Zoom, and we want you to be there! Join us and special guests, for games, laughter, romance recommendations, and as much joy as you can handle. Sign up here.Next week, we’ll release the 100th Episode for those of you who can’t make it Thursday, and the following week, we’re back on read alongs with Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&amp;N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.

The fabulous Adriana Herrera is here for her fourth time to talk about Joy! We had a great time with one of the greatest people this week — talking about the American immigrant experience, how hope and bravery make for beautiful love stories, and listing a huge number of books that we love.IMPORTANT UPDATE: Next Thursday, November 5th, we’ll be recording our 100th Episode LIVE on Zoom, and we want you to be there! Join us and special guests, for games, laughter, romance recommendations, and as much joy as you can handle. Come on…you know you want something to look forward to next week! Let it be this! Sign up here.We’re putting read alongs on hold for a bit to spend the next few weeks hanging out with some of our favorite people and talking about books and tropes that give us joy, so we hope you’ll join us and keep a pen handy so you can add to your TBR list as needed!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!Fated States!Join us this Saturday, October 31st at 3pm Eastern to flip the country blue! It’s easy, not scary, and there will be prizes! Sign up at the link, watch the video, and come hang out!Remember: "Despair is not a strategy."Donate Donate Donate (if you can). We're thrilled to support "Get Mitch or Die Trying" via ActBlue -- donations to this are immediately split evenly between Senate candidates in electionsText bankPhone bankVote early by mail if you are planning to vote by mail. At this point, the USPS is so slow that your best bet is to drive/walk/bike/rollerskate your ballot to the nearest polling dropbox rather than put it in a mailbox.Vote early in person if your state has early voting.Stay fired up!Show NotesWelcome back, Adriana Herrera! She’s been on a few times so far: Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night, the food romance episode, and she and Jen talked about trauma in romance. This week, her March 2020 release American Sweethearts appeared on the Publisher’s Weekly Best of 2020 List.Normalize pegging at all costs.If you’re going to come to the phone bank this weekend dressed as a romance heroine, might we suggest you drape a mantilla over your head and carry a pistol? You’ll be a dead ringer for Jessica Trent from Lord of Scoundrels. Sarah was on a panel with Loretta Chase a few weeks ago, and I guess the only blessing of these Zoom times is watching these things online. IS THERE A LINK TO THIS?Adriana has written a few pieces about immigration in romance, one for Bustle and one for Remezcla.Just a quick primer, because we didn’t clarify these definitions on the podcast and it’s complicated, because both terms are widely used to describe the same group of people--American-born children of immigrants. While Sarah grew up thinking of herself as "first-generation," many modern academics &amp; the Census label her as "second-generation." Here's a cool article on all the terms, and how they've evolved.Also, it’s useful to know the difference between push and pull factors that drive immigration.If you want to read a terrific immigrant superhero story, Jen recommends a graphic novel she teaches to her 7th graders, The Shadow Hero by Gene Yang. She’s also really loved his recent release Dragon Hoops.Adriana loves the podcast On Being, hosted by Krista Tippet. The episode with Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, features some interesting discussion of his own immigrant story.We do not recommend reading American Dirt, but you should know the story of how and why it was published, some ideas about why publishing was so eager to sell this particular story from a variety of Latinx authors and thinkers.When Adriana mentioned “the fun kind of thrust” she is referencing Jenny Nordbak’s best advice for finding a sex scene in a book: search for the word “thrust.”Diacritical marks are symbols added to letters which tells the speaker how to correctly pronounce the word. In The Bride Test, the same words have diacritical marks when spoken by Esme, a character newly immigrated from Vietnam, but do not have them when spoken by Vietnamese-Americans. Also, language loss in the children of immigrant families is a well-documented phenomena.The Worst Best Man has recently been optioned as a movie!Take a look at the cultural iceberg.Nigeria and SARS and what you can do about it.Jeannette Ng’s piece, Critiquing Cultural Appropriation in Books That Are Kinda Meh, is about the pressure to research and how it undermines the lived experience of #OwnVoices authors.Jen mentioned a piece in Kirkus called 100 books by...

It’s comfort read week! What makes a comfort read, why do we turn to them, what do we want from them, and why on earth do blue aliens fit the bill?! This week, we all need a comfort read, and we’re joined by Dani Lacey, host of Ice Planet Pod and Black Chick Lit Podcast, to talk about all things comfort reads!We’re putting read alongs on hold for a bit to spend the next few weeks hanging out with some of our favorite people and talking about books and tropes that give us joy, so we hope you’ll join us and keep a pen handy so you can add to your TBR list as needed!Also! please join us for a Fated States phonebanking session with Indivisible.org on Saturday — it’s so fun! We love seeing so many of your amazing faces there, hanging out, and lifting each other up through absolute anxiety! Please join us, fellow Fated Maters, and special guests for Fated States Phonebanking Part 5 this Saturday, October 24th at 3pm Eastern to call South Carolina! It’s easy, not scary, and there will be prizes!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 Dani Lacey, host of Ice Planet Pod and Black Chick Lit podcast. Black Chick Lit is a podcast Dani hosts with her friend Mollie, and the focus is books by and about Black women. Ice Planet Pod has different guests every week, and Jen has been on and Sarah will be on!Some of the specific Ice Planet Podcast episodes that Dani mentioned: she did one with her friend Mollie from Black Chick Lit, Jen talked about what would happen if Wedding Magazines existed on that world, and the latest release was with author Katrina Jackson.All about Hoopla and the difference between Hoopla vs Libby (Overdrive). If your public library doesn't have Hoopla, it's probably becasue they can't afford it.You, too, can have a banana phone. Don't tell Sophie, but Sarah's definitely getting her one of these.In the Ice Planet books, the khui is the magic thing that “resonates” to tell the two people that they are a destined to be together--it also allows these shipwrecked humans to survive the ice planet, and also to speak the same language.A couple of times, Dani mentioned “Harlow’s book, and the title of that one is Barbarian Mine.Jen's friend Julie was a little worried about Chuck Tingle being sad when he released Chuck Tingle Pounded in The Butt by a Knockoff Book that Glorifies a Deadly Tragedy and Doesn't Prove Love is Real Then Accepting This as a Sad Side Effect of Making Wider Positive Impact as an Author, but the following week it was Mike Pence Pounded in the Butt by His Handsome Werefly, so he’s probably fine.Magic Mike XXL is a pure, beautiful movie about men and their feelings. We highly recommend it.If you’re a fan of the Stage Dive series, there was a new novella that was released yesterday called Love Song. It’s the book about Adam Dillon, a character that the band mentored in later books in the series.How the Reddit forum AITA (Am I the Asshole) reveals the sexism of everyday life.The two audiobook companies are Tantor and Brilliance, but with the huge rise of popularity in audiobooks, lots of audio in now produced in house.When it comes to the Ice Planet audio, Dani loves the two narrators Hollie Jackson and Mason Lloyd. The Ice Home series, a spin-off of the Ice Planet Barbarians Series, has two new narrators Sean Crisdenand Felicity Munroe. But Jen recently listened to a book narrated by Sean Crisden and it was awesome. So we think you should give the Ice Home audio a try, Dani!Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast and also a book.Books and Series We Mentioned: Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon Barbarian’s Mate by Ruby DixonThe Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon Grace Goodwin's Interstellar Bride Series Barbarian Mine by Ruby Dixon A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane Sweet Ruin by Kresley Cole Lead by Kylie Scott Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins A Chance at Love by Beverly Jenkins The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole Brothers Sinster Series by Courtney Milan Her Halloween Treat by Tiffany Reisz Love All Year a holiday anthology Halloween Boo by Sarah Spade A Winning Season by Rochelle Alers Hidden Legacy Series by Ilona Andrews Jack Reacher Series by Lee Child Welcome to Night Vale is a book <a href="http://www.welcometonightvale.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer"...