Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

We are very pro health care workers these days — we love all of you…doctors, nurses, EMTs, home health aides…if you know how to work a stethoscope, we’re into you. This week, we’re taking about some of our favorite medical romances. Listen for Jen getting thoughtful, and Sarah getting wildly inappropriate. We’re all just doing our best.We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!Next week, we’re reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine, and we cannot WAIT. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon (free in Kindle Unlimited!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!).Show NotesAs we all shelter in place, romance twitter has been very entertaining. Julia Kelly posted a thread where she posed her pets as romance novel covers, and everyone had fun with it. Sarah also loved this one about a dog who howls along with the Law and Order theme song.We forgot to tell you last week when we talked about Devil's Bride that Stephanie Laurens has a new book out, The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster. We also have added information about how to pronounce Honoria and details about peach silk.Now is the time to get the BookBub daily romance email. Here's Sarah's Bookbub page.The nurse and doctor books were the backbone of early Mills and Boon romances, and the forerunner of the modern Harlequin Medical Romance; whereas Americans often find big, soapy hospital dramas on TV.Budleigh Salterton looks like a very nice place to hang out unless you are a bored American 12 year old.The roots of American and British romance are different, as proven by this absolutely WRONG LitHub romance essay. (They're wrong about romance a lot.)Sarah has talked about Radclyffe and the origin of Bold Strokes Books, but many of her romances are about doctors or set in hospitals.Jen doesn't really care too much about job details. Sorry not sorry.No one likes a Bloodletter. We want our historical doctors to be foreward thinking. Or as Eloisa James does in When Beauty Tamed the Beast, use a modern TV character like House as model for a hero.In Tempest, Jen spoke out inequities in acess to medical care for black patients, and that's still true today.If you're looking to see some "don't fuck your doctor" romances that definitely fall somewhere on the Simone Scale. Wrong by Jana Aston and Medicine Man by Saffron Kent.Jurgen Klopp wants you to put your hands away, and this amazing thread by comedian Laura Lexx and support all the Liverpool fans out there (especially Jen's brother).Jen's cool TikTok project is up and running, she's interviewing YA authors and hoping to get kids to read while they are sheltering in place.You can order buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordandene.Next time, we'll be reading Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/3/24/s0229-health-care-workers-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 better time than now.

This week we’re reading a favorite of both Sarah & Jen — Stephanie Laurens’s Devil’s Bride! We’re so excited to talk about ridiculous (we mean amazing) nicknames, about 30 page sex scenes, and about how we crushed our SATs thanks to romances like this one! We’re also hoping you are keeping a safe distance from others and washing your hands lots!We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!Next week, we’re reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine, and we cannot WAIT. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon (free in Kindle Unlimited!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.Show NotesPlease stay inside and stay safe if you can, and remember not to believe screenshots from your cousins.Here are some interesting and well-sourced tweets about coronavirus from a Fos (Friend of Sarah).Want to know the other books Jen ordered back in 2001? It was Grand Passion by Jane Ann Krennz, Prince of Swords Anne Stuart, and Innocence by Suzanne Forester. She still swears she didn't read any of them.Captain Jack's Woman was Stephanie Laurens' debut novel, not Devil's Bride. But it's the Bar Cynster that made her such a popular writer.Sometimes (ok, a lot) Jen shit-posts on twitter about conflict and writing. Sarah can't always have eyes on her, sorry.Jen thinks it was Amanda Quick that brought back old-fashioned names, but the only truly great Sylvesteris from disco."Eyes on stalks" is a real phrase, and so is rapaciously. On the other hand, here's a bunch of sex scene euphamisms.The Cynsters were at Waterloo, so we're not sure why busting through the hymen is such work for them.All about the Greek chorus.Lady Osbaldestone does have her own books, as do Devil and Honoria's kids.Veronica Mars illustrates the fan service problem.Jen is obsessed with the idea of "the imperial period" for musicians--and other kids of artists.Next time, we'll be reading Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/3/17/s0228-devils-bride-by-stephanie-laurens 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 has the flu! She wants you to know it’s absolutely terrible and you should all get your flu shots even though she got one and still got the flu but vaccines are good for you. Also, we all want you washing your hands and air high-fiving your friends because it’s wild out there. But you are IN FOR A TREAT this week — as our fave Kate Clayborn is pinch hitting for Sarah, and we’re talking romance sickbed scenes this week! If we have to be hyper focused on sickness, shouldn’t there be yearning and vigiling and a veiled death threat against a doctor (don’t threaten doctors)?We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!Next week, we’re reading Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.Show NotesWelcome Kate Clayborn! She joined Jen this week since Sarah was down and out with the flu.Kate loves a sick bed scene. When we talk about acute vs chronic illness, the sick bed scene is acute rather than chronic. And, as Jen points out, these are almost always about physical rather than mental illness.Some of Jen's favorite sickbed scenes are in Indigo by Beverly Jenkins and Managed by Kristen Callihan -- but we've talked about those books already! Same thing with The Master by Kresley Cole.Kate is a lot more interested in work of all kinds than Jen. It's okay. We're still friends. We even made a hashtag, #Claykop, so we can find all our discussions.We recorded this on Sunday March 8th, so who knows what the coronavirus situation will be by the time you listen to this.Andie Christopher was the first to bring the I'm Baby meme to our attention when she joined us for the cinnamon roll episode.Jen and Kate both suffer from insomnia. Sarah sleeps like a rock.Jen was procrastinating about her report cards--but they're all done now, it's fine.The bedside vigil is kissing cousin to Jen's cold storage fetish, and the way Kate loves it when a hero suffers.Endomitriosis is no joke.The man flu phenomenon.Wash your hands! Don't touch your face!We'll be back next week with Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/3/9/s0227-sickbed-romance-interstitial-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.

We’re talking about women’s friendship in romance this week — how it works, why it’s important, and why we want all our romance heroines to have a squad.We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!Next week, we’re reading Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.Show NotesWe know we shouldn't make the gallows humor jokes about coronavirus, but we did. We hope there won't be a pandemic, but if there is, get your TBRs ready. Jen's excited it won't have anything to do with RITA books.Have you preordered Daring and the Duke yet?Daddy is kind of sexy, but Mike Pence really does call his wife mother, and that's never gonna be sexy.We love Henry Cavill in season 1 of The Witcher. Just watch this video of them kissing. Jen stopped watching when they broke up in episode 7, and Netflix really wants her to finish.The idea for this week's episode came from listener Mary Ann Harlan who wondered, "Do you have an episode on how female friendships in romance disrupt the patriarchy? Or even just how female friendships work in a good way in romance?" I mean, probably just listen to season 1 where we talked about the witches and valkyries.Jen wrote about women's friendship in romance for Galentine's Day. So if you're looking for more recommendations, check it out.Some of the early proto-women friendships in historicals are Lisa Kleypas's Wallflowersand Penelope in the Bridgerton series.Adult friendships are important even if you don't have a best friend.Deficit modeling is a kind of thinking that assumes people can't move forward due to deficits or shortcomings. It's a phrase used in education that blames students and their families for lack of school readiness; for women, it's used when discussing the way they assert themselves.It would be really weird if your ex started dating Lady Gaga.It can be hard to be friends when the other person has more money than you.In abusive relationships, the abuser often separates and isolates the victim from their friends and family in order to control them.The Outsiders by SE Hinton is a really beloved book. One day, Jen's going to write a think piece about how it's all about American identity.Every woman loves the song "I Will Survive." We don't make the rules.Linda would definitely have your back, so follow her on Twitter if you're not already.Looking for new buttons from Kelly? Jen loves Danger Bang! while Sarah is Living Every Week like it's Rune Week. The full set of t-shirts and totes is available now from Jordandene.Wash your hands! Stop touching your face!Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens is next week.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/3/3/s0226-womens-friendship-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 better time than now.

This week we're mixing it up, talking about an author more than a specific book -- the Queen of Dirty Talk herself, Tessa Bailey. But we're not just talking about the sexybits -- we're also talking about working class heroes, women and worry and how awesome it is to watch authors evolve.We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!In two weeks, we’re reading a book that blooded both Sarah and Jen — and approximately 50% of Romancelandia, we think -- Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or your local indie.Show NotesSarah was heading to Birmingham for the Southern Voices Book Festival. The last time she was there, it was when she was a kid going to a Science Olympiad competition. Based on the description of that event, Jen suspects that she was outside orienteering. She's going to see Rachel Hawkins and Naima Simone!Meanwhile, Jen went to see Bug by Tracy Letts at the Steppenwolf Theater, which is known for being the home theater of John Malkovich and also where hope goes to die.Jen wrote about Johanna Lindsey and her New York Times obituary in a column for Kirkus.The hero of Protecting What's His is Derek Tyler, which is Jen's second favorite romance Derek. Derek and Ginger also appear in a follow-up novella, Protecting What's Theirs. Derek also appears as a secondary character in the Crossing the Lines series, where he assembles a team of ex-cons and misfits as a special crime fighting team. Ginger's sister gets her own book in Unfixable.The rise of eBooks made room for indie publishing and small presses like Entangled. Here's the story of how Barabara Freethy took advantage of the Kindle revolution.Enemies to Lovers is one of the most beloved romance tropes. Jen is going to talk about her whole energy theory in an upcoming Kirkus column.This is a romance that deals with class in an unusual way--she's the poor little rich girl, while he's working two jobs because of family obligations to his siblings.Tessa Bailey is the Queen of Dirty Talk. She just is. Jen's favorite is Duke from Worked Up, who is a perfect grunting hero.Jen noticed that several motifs that appear in Asking for Trouble appear in other books -- for example, there is a trip to Atlantic City in Worked Up, and connecting doors in a hotel room in Driven by Fate.Sarah identifies "heroine as rock" as part of Tessa Bailey's core story, Jen noticed the pull between familial duty and individual needs. At first Sarah thought Tessa's most recent book, Love Her or Lose Her, doesn't fit into the core story...but after talking it through, she thinks it fits perfectly.Sarah mentioned the one with a hero who is a recovering alcoholic called Indecent Exposure. Jen also loved it and reviewed it for The Book Queen.Some advice in case you ever need to stop a wedding.Buy buttons and stickers from Kelly at Jen's shop and the newly available full line of t-shirts from Jordandene.Listen to this week's music selections and peruse this episode's transcript.Next time on Fated Mates, we'll be reading Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/2/24/s0225-asking-for-trouble 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 February and it’s winter and it’s grey and dark and we’re all just looking for some books that are quick, dirty and delicious. Or, at least, Sarah & Jen are. If you are, too, this is the week for you!We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!Next week, we’re reading the Queen of Dirty Talk! Sarah and Jen both love Tessa Bailey — so we’ll be talking about our two favorites of her books, Asking for Trouble (Sarah’s) and Protecting What’s His (Jen’s). Find them at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Show NotesSarah had boozy brunch with the RITA Writer’s Room—Nisha Sharma, LaQuette, Adriana Herrera, Andie Christopher, Alexis Daria, and Joanna Shupe (Sierra Simone & Tracey Livesay weren't there). You should maybe check out this awesome video of them in all their slow motion glory.Jen didn’t know what ASMR is either.Valentine’s Day is Go Week for Sarah. Jen wrote about Galentine’s Day for Kirkus. But one thing we can all agree on: Anna Karenina isn’t a fucking romance. Getting hit by a train does not qualify!The 2 for 1 rule: in a male/female romance, she comes twice for every time he comes.If you’re in Chicago, you can see Fated Mates Live at Spring Fling, and at KissCon, it’ll be a podcast ménage special with us, the Wicked Wallflowers, and Heaving Bosoms podcast.What will Craven Day 2021 bring? Stay tuned.Sarah’s friend Rachel Hawkins told Sarah to read A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane, which is a pen name for Meljean Brook, author of The Iron Duke. Is there danger banging? Yes. Is there vengeance banging? Also yes.Jen read and loved White Out by Adriana Anders, which is a romantic suspense novel that takes place in Antarctica. It’s cold, but they still manage to danger bang.Speaking of Danger Banging, Jen’s favorite is in the first of the Kinky Bank Robbers series by Annika Martin. It's honestly more like heat-stroke banging.Jen and Sarah don’t think a quick and dirty read has to be InstaLust, but it does have to get right to the inciting incident.Sarah recommends London Hale (a pen name for authors Ellis Lee and Brighton Walsh) as a reliable quick and dirty read. Start with The DILF (if you're ok with taboo) or Talk Dirty To Me (if you'd prefer something a bit further left on the Simone Scale).Adopt don’t shop when it comes to real pet stores.Breastfeed if you can and if you want to, but if you can’t that’s fine, too. Even if you live in Fucking Berkeley. Or the Berkeley of Brooklyn.Some other of our favorite quick and dirty reads that are mostly in space: Grace Goodwin’s Interstellar Brides and Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians. But if you’re reading the Ice Planet Barbarians,please listen to our friend Dani’s Ice Planet Pod. It’s great.More space romances: Laurann Donner’s New Species series, or Cavas, the one that appeared recently on the USA Today Bestseller list (not the New York Times, Jen misspoke) is one from the Vorge Series. Cynthia Sax has a whole cyborg series. Jen also really liked The Grabbed series by Lolita Lopez.What we're trying to say is that these books are the romance equivalent of The Fast and the Furious series--which is the pinnacle of Jen's favorite movie genre, "Handsome men blow things up."Finally, check out Brill Harper’s alphamallow series. But Jen’s favorite was Altogether, which is very, very hot. Yum. This Mr. Plow is not quite as hot; unless your name is Marge, of course.Buy buttons and stickers from Kelly and t-shirts and totes from Jordandene.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/2/18/s0224-quick-and-dirty-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 better time than now.

This week, it’s one of Sarah’s favorites, and by an author Jen has never read! Lorraine Heath is a master of the historical, and this one is near-perfect. It’s complex and nuanced and it has an infidelity plot and THERE IS SO MUCH ANGST!We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!In two weeks, we’re reading the Queen of Dirty Talk! Sarah and Jen both love Tessa Bailey — so we’ll be talking about our two favorites of her books, Asking for Trouble (Sarah’s) and Protecting What’s His (Jen’s). Find them at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Show NotesTurns out Sarah and Jen aren't the only people who think these Apple keyboards are trash--after winning a 2020 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Taika Waititi had quite a bit to say on the subject.Tom Beer is one of Jen's editors at Kirkus, and you should follow him on Twitter.You can read The Smith College Sophian on line, and we'll link to the interview with Sarah onces it goes live.We have Leslie Knope from Parks & Recreation to thank for the glory that is Galentine's Day. Read Jen's column about some books that celebrate women's friendship.A few years ago during #RomBkLove, Shantastic/@bardsong wrote a great piece about disability in romance. You can also check out the blog, Sense and Disability by @Callalily.Kate Reading is an amazing audiobook narrator, she's the one who narrates Lord of Scoundrels.Fridging is a word from comics that is when women characters are killed to motivate a male character, but can be used to describe any time a less powerful or privileged character is used as a plot device. Flat Stanley is a character in children's books, but flat characters you might remember from English class.Harry and Meghan are still taking money from the Duchy of Cornwall.Jen said she was going to go back and read the other books in the trilogy, and they are bundled together on Amazon for $10.The Bechdel Test is a pretty simple way of judging how inclusive movies are of women characters; it's limited but powerful. Jen wrote about external and internal conflict in romance, but we also talked about it on the Priest episode -- and we are always unpacking the way conflict works in romance.Dialogue tags get a bad rap, famously Elmore Leonard claimed that writers should only use "said" and "asked." In this part of the discussion, Sarah mentioned her friend Barry Lyga, a YA author.Jen thinks these three are codependent.Cheating is the third rail of romance. It is. There are some lists on Goodreads of romances that have cheating, but it's complicated and difficult. One Jen read recently was I Want You Back by Lorelei James, but the cheating happened in the past. If you're interested in reading another book about someone who discovers the other family, Jen recommends Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.Next time, we'll be reading Tessa Bailey, The Queen of Dirty Talk. Sarah's choice is Asking for Trouble, and a secondary text is the first one of that same series, Protecting What's His.Buy stickers and buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordan.We are experimenting with some voice to text transcripts, so here's the first one for this episode.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/2/11/s0223-waking-up-with-the-duke 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 we’d get to the rest of our Holiday AMA questions eventually, and Sarah’s on deadline, so this seemed like the perfect week to do it! Join us for a freewheeling hour during which Sarah cannot remember Tessa Thompson’s name, we talk about how much we’d like to meet Sandra Brown, and how romance really does have something for everyone, including an entire series about romance during power outages.Also, we forgot to mention that Tuesday was Derek Craven Day! Lots of fun was had by all goofballs who joined us on the Internet to celebrate, and Lisa Kleypas herself even got involved! If you haven’t read Dreaming of You, you can get it for $2.99 right now in ebook! Also, do not miss this incredible Craven Day thread on Twitter from Steve Ammindown and the Browne Pop Culture Library. And if you want Derek Craven t-shirts? Those exist now!Next week, the book is in and we’re back in business! Lorraine Heath’s Waking Up With the Duke is our next read—a book that blooded Sarah. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Full Show Notes @ FATEDMATES.NET- Question 1: Weird but true: the more specific the request, the more likely we are to come up with a recommendation. So if you just need "enemies to lovers" and you've already read Her Best Worst Mistake, or "friends to lovers" and you've already read Scoring Off the Field, then you just need to google it.- Question 2: Who are we fancasting? These beautiful people: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Henry Cavill, Tessa Thompson, and Tom Hardy. Also, listening to Henry Cavill and Tom Hardy grunt is one of our favorite things.- Question 3: Who do we want to have lunch or tea with? Kresley Cole, obviously! Sarah said Joanna Lindsey. Jen says Julie Garwood. We'd both love to meet Sandra Brown. Jen still can't believe the people she's met, and hopes she was cool like Yolanda.- Question 4: Do we have recommendation for lesbian and f/f romance? Is it more difficult to find? Check out Bold Strokes Books. strands of f/f, and others have different roots. We will keep looking for some history of f/f romance and link to them if we find one. But in the meantime, YA author, critic, and expert Malinda Lo wrote about "The Invisible Lesbian" in YA, and it's right on point and worth your time. But we do have lots of great f/f romances that we love in the photo array below.- Question 5: What about steampunk? Is that ever coming back? We don't know! But all we can do is recommend these ones we do know. Sorry!- Question 6: What is like Harry Potter for grown-ups? Burn For Me by Illona Andrews (Jen also liked the Kate Daniels series). That's it. That's the answer.- Question 7: Books with power outages? Read this Naima Simone series called Blackout Billionares.- Question 8: How to get started with reviewing and NetGalley? You should look at lists that big reviewing clearinghouses make--Kirkus (Jen writes that one!), Booklist, and PW. Just trying to look at some of these lists will give you a sense of what books will be coming out. The Book Queen is keeping a list of 2020 new releaes. But Estelle from Forever Romance wrote a great piece about how to get started with NetGalley.- Question 9: Looking for hardcore enemies to lovers with kids in the mix. Jen recommends Wait For It by Molly O'Keefe. Lord of Scoundrels is great for this, too!- Quesiton 10: Books that made us literally laugh out loud. Jen recommends I Think I Might Love You by Christina C Jones. Sarah recommends It Takes Two by Jenny Holiday. Christina has a huge backlist, and Jenny's newest book, Mermaid Inn, came out last week.- Question 11: Looking for books with a heist plot and polyamory. Jen thinks Katrina Jackson has cornered the market on this request and we have all been blessed by it.- Quesiton 12: A question if there are any romances with a Muslim hero and heroine with on-page sex. Jen couldn't think of any, but asked author Farah Heron. Farah also couldn't think of one, but we do recommend her book The Chai Factor.- Quesiton 13: Jackie from Elyria Ohio (where Jen went to high school!) is looking for historical with a murder and a twist. We recommend Kelly Bowen and Sarah's book No Good Duke Goes Unpunished.- Quesiton 14: Sarah is looking for books with virgin heroes--but hot!- Question 15: A book with a grovel so unconvincing that the character has to do it again. Oh, we have suggestions but also you should check out Jen's treatise on groveling.- Quesiton 16: What are some museums we love? Sarah talked about these in England: The Museum of London, The Foundling Museum, The Soane's Museum, and The British Library. She also loves the Museum of Sex in New York, and the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. Jen doesn't research, but in Chicago, she recommends The Art Institute and the National Museum of Mexican Art. If you're ever in Cleveland, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is so cool, and in Houston, check out the most meditative place Jen has ever been, The Rothko Chapel.(when this aired in Feb 2020, the chape

This one is a RIDE, you guys! We wanted to do something really fun this week—something that would lighten the mood for us and for you. So, strap in, because we’re talking about our favorite Old School Category romances today! We’ve got something for everyone — wolves and dragons and marine biologists and single moms and more wolves! A word of caution this week — we didn’t reread these books before we recorded, and they’re all published in the 80s and 90s, so tread lightly if you decide to read them…and let us know just how wrong we got the plots! (Just kidding, we’re for sure rereading all of them now). Next week was supposed to be the deep dive of Lorraine Heath, but Sarah has a book due, so we’re putting it on hold—but stay tuned, because we’ve definitely got something coming! Waking Up With the Duke will definitely be the next read, though: Get it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Show NotesIf you're looking for a real cool summer sleepaway camp, check out&nbsp;Camp Kupugani. They'll pick your kid up at O'Hare!You can order&nbsp;girl scout cookies online now. Good luck to all of us.If you're in Chicago, I guess you could go to&nbsp;Navy Pier; But if you're in Peru, you should definitely go to&nbsp;Machu Picchu.That American Dirt story is real wild.&nbsp;This review&nbsp;by Myriam Gurba is amazing, and&nbsp;Vox has you covered with an entire explainer.&nbsp;Remezcla has better recommendations&nbsp;for books about the border.If you want to know&nbsp;what makes something a category romance,&nbsp;Love in Panels&nbsp;has a very good explainer. Also,&nbsp;if you're interested in Harlequin covers now, Jen interviewed Tony Horvath for Kirkus.&nbsp;He's the creative director in charge of all of Harlequin series romance. You can also check out&nbsp;Kelly Faircloth's Instagram, where she posts pictures of her favorite old school romance covers.Buying old category romances is easy. Check out&nbsp;ThriftBooks&nbsp;for the best prices and best shipping (Amazon charges for individual items from sellers), but also&nbsp;Better World Books. And if you're lucky enough, local thrift stores and used book stores. For more recent&nbsp;remaindered books, try&nbsp;Book Outlet.We mentioned so many category series today. Check out this blog by&nbsp;Steve Imes&nbsp;with all the category series names and dates, and&nbsp;FictionDB&nbsp;for listings of books by series.Sandra Brown&nbsp;wrote as Erin St. Claire and also Rachel Ryan. She was an&nbsp;80s powerhouse&nbsp;who still writes romantic suspense. The book Sarah mentioned was&nbsp;Honor Bound, but Jen was thinking of a similar book called&nbsp;Hawk O'Toole's Hostage.&nbsp;Ope.Jen reread and reviewed several of&nbsp;her first category romances&nbsp;for the Book Queen. The one about&nbsp;Pink Satin&nbsp;compares the book to the&nbsp;Harvey Weinstein case. It's honestly shocking how little has changed for women in the workplace.White Satin&nbsp;was an early Iris Johansen about figure skating, but that author is also for being the book that inspired the&nbsp;"Who Did it Better on a Horse"&nbsp;post. And at the end of the episode, Sarah mentions that&nbsp;she had a house for sale&nbsp;if you're on the market, BECAUSE IT'S REALLY A MANSION.Brad Pitt is old and still working&nbsp;because of the patriarchy.Deep Tracks&nbsp;is the name of an XM radio station that plays B sides and less popular songs, which is very on brand for the books in this episode.Maybe you'd like to read those goodreads reviews for&nbsp;The Lady and the Dragon. And here is the obituary for the author,&nbsp;Regan Forest.Jen loved&nbsp;Barbara Boswell. She was a fan of the&nbsp;Brady/Ramsey series&nbsp;where a bunch of sisters married a bunch of brothers. And then this one that is&nbsp;Brady Bunch fanfic.&nbsp;Eight is enough, I swear! Was this all&nbsp;Roe v. Wade blowback?You actually can still get&nbsp;Harlequin subscriptions, but the best current Romance subscription is definitely the&nbsp;Bawdy Bookworms box.In Demon Lover, the heroine thinks the hero is a&nbsp;coyote, but he's really an undercover DEA agent.&nbsp;Jen asked the Smart Bitches to help her find it in 2018, when it was available as an eBook, but it isn't anymore! All you need to know is that these 80s covers celebrated the&nbsp;<a...

Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!In two weeks, we’re reading one of Sarah’s picks, Lorraine Heath’s Waking Up With the Duke, which was a tough choice because Lorraine is amazing and Sarah wants you to read all of her books. Read Waking Up With the Duke at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Show NotesJen's disappointed with the iHeartRadio Podscast awards. It's an honor just to be nominated, and that didn't even happen! For your consideration: Best Pop Culture Podcast and Best Fiction Podcast! Come on! Literary Disco wasn't even nominated!Everyone loved The Pegging episode! Jen found this really interesting article too late for those show notes, but why not drop them here? We don't really think that we jumped the shark. Oh, and any chance to drop the "smashing from the back" rap.The 20 minutes Eric cut were about RWA. So just read Jen's article for Kirkus instead. Just kidding. We don't really need D &amp; O insurance. Do we? Either way, Eric should stop harshing our dream mellow.Scotty vs. Scottie.Our Kristen Callihan origin stories: Sarah recommends Evernight in the Darkest London series, but Jen can't help but think of Tony Stark. Jen wrote about Kristen's book The Hook Up in the Who Did it Better in the Library post.Slumpbusters from this week: The Player and Sweet Ruin for Sarah, and two Sophie Jordan books, While the Duke was Sleeping and The Scandal of it All, for Jen. And the shipbuilder book by Holley Trent is called Lowdown Dirty.If you're trying to find the sex scenes in books, Jenny Nordbak from the Wicked Wallflowers Podcast has the sure-fire keyword search word: thrust.The kind of super fancy first class where the seats turn into beds looks pretty great. Recently, we saw this happen in the movie Crazy Rich Asians.Unbuttoning a glove is a huge romantic moment in Lord of Scoundrels and The Age of Innocence.In case you have to travel with a rock band on a bus, the internet provides useful tips, of course! Jen loves this famous tour bus scene from the movie Almost Famous. Also, read Daisy Jones and the Six, which uses interview format to tell the story of the rise and fall of a 70s rock band.Our Rock Star Romance interstitial was our very first interstitial. It's 20 minutes long, and you can listen to it here.Revision is everything, but it is also very hard.Interested in more slow burn romances? Goodreads has you covered.Kerrelyn Sparks is the one who told Sarah romance is like a football game.If you're worried you have an STI like Chlamydia, please see a doctor. Also, if you have kids, make sure they get the HPV vaccination.Being a professional friend is a real job.More about the A in the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.If you're ever in Chicago, you should go to the dining room of the Chicago Athletic Association, check out the trophies, and play some bocce ball.Looking to hang out with us in April? We'll be at KissCon and Spring Fling.Buy buttons and stickers from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordan.Next up, Waking Up With the Duke by Lorraine Heath, a book that blooded Sarah.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/1/20/s0220-managed-by-kristen-callihan 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, <a href="https://fated-mates.tumblr.com" rel="noopener

Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!Next week, we’re talking Kristen Callihan’s Managed, which you may recognize as “SCOTTIE,” which is how Jen refers to it because she loves him so much. We think you’ll love it, too, and if you have time, read the next in the series, Fall, which is one of Sarah’s top 10 romances ever. Read Managed at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Show NotesRWA imploded and it's such a long, complicated story, but this article from Vox and this timeline by Claire Ryan are what will catch you up.Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start: there are seven romance subgenres: historical, contemporary, romantic suspense, paranormal, inspirational, erotic romance, and YA.When it comes to the grandmother of historicals, don't forget that Jane Austen was writing contemporaries.Johanna Lindsey died in October, and her family announced it publicly in December. The New York Times obituary was trash, so read the Washington Post or Entertainment Weekly one instead. Check out the Twitter hastag #MyFirstJohanna for people's stories about their first book by Lindsey (including Sarah's), and maybe listen to our episode on Gentle Rogue.Support Farrah Rochon for an organ in her sister's memory. And come this summer, buy her upcoming book The Boyfriend Project.In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah wrote about what his mother said about her second husband wanting to put her in a cage: For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”Mary Wollstonecraft is all the evidence you need that feminists have been around for a long time.Jen recommends In the Dream House by Carmen Marie Machado, which is about domestic abuse in a queer relationship. The quote from Jose Estaban Munoz is, "When the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper representing a straight present."When talking about The Doctor's Discretion by EE Ottoman, Sarah is very excited about a book called The Butchering Art by medical historian Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, whose sometimes very gross Instagram is amazing. Doctor James Berry was trans man who lived and worked in London in the mid 1800s.If you haven't listened to our episode about Beverly Jenkins's Indigo what are you waiting for?Avon Red was a short-lived series, but then again, so was The Red Shoe Diaries. Sarah recommends On These Silken Sheets by Sabrina Darby from that series.Whores of Yore is a great blog, and definitely proves Jen's assertion that as soon as someone invented cameras, someone else wanted to get naked in front of it. Dr. Kate Lister, who founded the site, has a book called A Curious History of Sex coming out Feb 2020.Next time you are in New York, visit The Museum of Sex. Sarah recommends Hallie Rubenhold's The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris' List (which out of print, but available in audio, and is the book Harlots is based on). Hallie Rubenhold's The Five is not out of print, and also excellent--it is very not a romance, and about the victims of the Ripper killings.KJ Charles is so ridiculously good. Sarah's favorites are Wanted a Gentleman and Think of England and Jen loves Band Sinister. Nicola Davidson's Surrey Sexual Freedom Society series is fantastic. Alyssa Cole's An Extraordinary Union is amazing. Monica McCarty wrote a historical series that imagines Highlanders as being kind of like Navy SEALs. Sarah talked about one of the books in the series, The Arrow on the Scotland interstitial. Honestly, we talked about so many authors, so just click on any one of the images in the photo gallery below for some of our favorites by those authors.But stickers and buttons from Kelly, tees and bags from Jordandene, take our reading challenge, and answer our survey.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2020/1/14/s0219-so-you-want-to-read-a-historical 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/

Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!In two weeks, we’ve got another of Jen’s pics, Kristen Callihan’s Managed, which you may recognize as “SCOTTIE,” which is how Jen refers to it because she loves him so much. We think you’ll love it, too, and if you have time, read the next in the series, Fall, which is one of Sarah’s top 10 romances ever. Read Managed at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.Show NotesWho knows what the RWA situation is when you read this, but as of this podcast, the absolute best source is Claire Ryan's blog post outlining the timeline of events. There was lots of national news coverage, but the "come on girls" comment was on NPR.The 2019 RITA ceremony was amazing, and one that celebrated the history of romance. In between when we recorded this episode and when it was released, RWA cancelled the 2020 RITA awards. When Sarah said "it was a check the organization couldn't cash" she's alluding to a less well-known section of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech."La Nora" is how many people refer to Nora Roberts. Sarah mentions some of her earliest category romances, including Gabriel's Angel, an early Nora from the Silhouette Intimate Moments line. She's also read Naked In Death (Jen hasn't), but Jen loved The Brides quartet, which was probably the last Nora Roberts series she read.Sarah said she feels like readers should at least have read ten percent of an author's backlist for full romance competency. Should the "Ten Percent Rule" be a plank of the official Fated Mates Romance Reader platform? Discuss.When we talk about Nora Roberts, we used a lot of superhero language: her origin story; her vanquishing of a villanous and duplicitous plaigiarist--twice!; owning her own town; her complete dominance of the bestseller lists. None of it is hyperbole. It's possible she actually is a superhero.Lots of authors made statements about the RWA situaton. Here is Nora's, and then JR Ward's.Virginity in romance has come a long way. PS. Virginity is a construct.Somewhere in the 43 minute mark, Jen says "ope," which is the most Midwestern of sayings. If the twitter account Midwest vs. Everybody doesn't make you laugh so hard you wheeze, you're probably part of the everybody.Jen isn't the only one who thinks smoking is a short cut for villainy. She thinks The X-Files is to blame. Also, PSA: vaping is really bad for you, too.Birth control in romance has changed so much, listen to our episode on bodily autonomy for more discussion of this topic.What does it mean to do something in a fugue state?Sarah wrote a column for the Washington Post in December 2019 about how technology is changing romance.Sarah's big thread about why authors shouldn't be afraid of the problematic content in their old romances.If you're interested in a big interesting book about The Troubles, Jen recommends Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe.What's a moor anyways?So you wanted to know what it was like to fly the Concorde?Buying a car? Sounds like that other Grey. Too bad this Gray was a Confederate apologist. Saying the Civil War was about "a way of life" instead of slavery is a classic Lost Cause myth. As Courtney Milan says, the devil doesn't need your advocacy.Buy buttons and stickers from Kelly, tshirt and swag from Jordan, particpate in a 2020 reading challengewith Jen and Sarah, and fill out this survey for Eric.In two weeks, we'll be discussed Managed and Fall by Kristen Callihan. If you have to pick one, make it Managed. As of this episode airing, <a...

Auspicious beginning, right? Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!We’re back next week (WE PROMISE!) with Born in Ice, by none other than the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Read Born in Ice at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie. Show NotesJen misquoted a famous scene in Chinatown; it's actually "my sister and my daughter." Yikes.Pretty sure if you're fancasting us into this clip from Grease about the Pink Ladies, Sierra is Rizzo.We've talked a lot about Sierra's books on the podcast, but it was on the Small Town Romance interstitial that Sarah joked all of Sierra's books take place in Menage County, Kansas.The Romance for RAICES auction was the brainchild of Suzanne from Love in Panels and raised TWENTY THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS! You should definitely support her blog and patreon if you can. The crisis on the border is ongoing and getting worse. Please continue to support romance's teams at RAICES and The Young Center.We were going to rickroll you by talking about Peggy Sue Got Married and pirate romances, but we're nice that way and didn't. FWIW, Jen still thinks the plot of Peggy Sue Got Married is haunting.Sierra is also, of course, the founder, owner, and operator of The Simone Scale, which does not include teabagging even, but has been, because she loves us, updated to include pegging. The image is on our website in show notes.We did a lot of research for this episode!Everyone wants the right pegging playlist, and of course there's one on Spotify. What a world! Besides Ariana Grande's Dangerous Woman, we offer up for your consideration Back It Up, Boys by Peaches and Behind the Wheel by Depeche Mode.Here are some Sierra Simone recommended toys and harnesses. She says of the toys, "The small is VERY gently sized and some men may feel more comfortable with a toy is that isn’t a hyper-realistic reproduction of a cock."Elia Winters is a Fated Mates favorite, and we want to thank her for her help thinking through the implicatons for gender essentialism and cisnormativity in this discussion. Buy her books! Her latest Three For All has pegging.Sierra mentioned "that law about gas expanding to fill a space" -- well, I phoned Jonathan, a friend who teaches chemistry, and he says that's called entropy or Boyles Law of Kinetic Molecular Theory. Learn more about it here from Professor Dave, a Jonathan-approved chemistry youtube instructor.Samhain and Ellora's Cave (which was especially messy) were two earlier and now shuttered publishers of erotic romance.Jen Porter wrote a great twitter thread about erotic romance and character development.That's What She Said.Sarah mentioned "the RITA entry window" and goddamn if that's not a bitter pill to swallow right now. She's sorry.A little about what it means to be allosexual.Check out Roan Parrish's short story A Good Old Fashioned Chanukah Pegging, starring Ginger and Christopher from Small Change.Everyone knows you need a flared base on your butt plugs, or at least anyone who follows Jenny Nordbak knows.Romance as sex ed is complicated, but Scarlteen is on the job, and Teen Vogue would never steer you wrong.The Pegging Song that Adriana sent us from Twitter is amazing, and we want to thank @shutupaida for being so gracious about letting us play it during the podcast. Also, be sure to watch Big Mouth on Netflix, because she's writing for it now!I guess Katee Robert isn't the only one staging elaborate scenes with her Barbie dolls.The Rogue Anthologies are pretty great and there are quite a few of them.Jen had to do a major "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

If you want to give us a gift this year, please like/subscribe to/review the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform!We’re back next week with the seasonally appropriate (at least in title) Born in Ice, by none other than the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Read Born in Ice at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesSarah and Jen like a lot of Christmas songs: Silver Bells, Fairy Tale of New York, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (which in fact does have a sad and not-sad version!), God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Carol of the Belles, Rockin' Round the Christmas Tree, Santa Baby, and Baby It's Cold Outside (which just might be super feminist?).This year, there's a new Chanukah romance anthology you should check out called Eight Kisses, and Roan Parrish just released a little snippet of a story about Ginger and Christopher from Small Change called A Good, Old Fashioned Chanukah Pegging.Oh, you aren't familiar with the Carina Dirty Bits line? They are quick and dirty--not thiccand dirty. But whatever works. Also, check out Jen's list of which romances have the best sex in the library.We have lots of favorite romance librarians, but we love Bandherbooks and our favorite archivist is Steve Ammindown at the BGSU Pop Culture Library in Ohio.The Sierra Simone story with the bear is from Hot for the Holidays anthology, but she also has a story with Kennedy Ryan in a 2019 release called Christmas in the City.Did someone say only one circulation desk? Just kidding. It's only one bed.If you want show notes for last year's holiday episode, click here.Our first episode of 2020 will be Born in Ice by Nora Roberts, a book that blooded Jen.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/12/19/s0216-christmas-romance-recommendations 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.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!Next week, we’re releasing a little stocking stuffer for our Christmas Day episode, but we’re back in business on January 1, with the seasonally appropriate (at least in title) Born in Ice, by none other than the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Read Born in Ice at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Question 1: Beth from Milwaukee asked, "I'm going to Iceland in December for my 10th wedding anniversary! I obviously need a book that has snow/cold and using body heat and -ahem- other activities for warmth. Bonus points if a volcano or other geological feature is a part of the story! Sub genre is not important, and yes I'm aware of the Ice Planet Barbarians."Our recommendations: From the deep recesses of Jen's brain, the only romance she can think of with a volcano, Eden Burning by Elizabeth Lowell. And that's from the 80s, so fair warning that it's likely to have problematic elements. When it comes to snuggly, warm, only one bed romances, you just need to use the internet! But Jen did write a piece about Only One Bed for Kirkus, which you should read. In the meantime, go watch Joe versus the Volcano, and then talking about Hawaii reminded Sarah of some bananas sounding book by Anne Stuart called Tangled Lies. But a few snowy romances: Beary Christmas Baby by Sasha Devlin or How the Dukes Stole Christmas.Question 2: Emily from Washington D.C. want our opinion aobut "the BEST star crossed lovers trope (it always gets me so good)."Our Recommendations: The reason Sarah thinks that star-crossed lovers have to end up unhappy is Romeo and Juliet, of course. But Jen thinks you should try Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn and Sarah recommends Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan, but comes with a whole suitcase of content warnings for domestic violence. In the interim, Jen read and recommends Forbidden Promises by Synithia Williams, the heroine falls in love with her sister's ex-husband! And of course, coming in the summer of 2020 comes Daring and the Duke by Sarah, which will also work. But you have to wait!Question 3: Megumi from San Antonio, TX is looking for "a contemporary of someone not Scottish going to Scotland and finding love. (Maybe England but mostly Scotland)"Our Recommendations: Jen lost her mind and said Unfixable by Tessa Bailey, but Willa is a heroine who goes to Ireland. She thinks it still counts. Sarah recommends a novella by Sophie Jordan called "In a Stranger's Bed" which was a Goldilocks retelling published in the Glamour anthology but which is currently unavailable so come on Sophie, get it together and put your stories up because they are ON FIRE. A few others you can try: A Duke by Default by Alyssa Cole, the Under the Kilt series by Melissa Blue, Getting Hot with the Scot by Melonie Johnson, and Ten Days With the Highlander by Hayson Manning. Also, we didn't know what Adriana Herrera had up her sleeve when we recorded, but Mangos &amp; Misteltoe is ADORABLE, and features to delicious Dominican heroines falling in love on a Scottish Baking Show. It's also a perfect holiday romance!Question 4: Becca wants "a funny contemporary, a true romcom, minimal trauma."Our recommendations: Jen thinks it doesn't exist. Sarah recommends going old school to Jennifer Crusie or Susan Elizabeth Phillips. If it helps, you should know that later this season, we'll be talking about Bet Me and Nobody's Baby But Mine. After we recorded, Sarah realized she should have recommended Christina Lauren, who she adores, and who she believes is one of the few authors writing real RomCom. If you haven't read Josh &amp; Hazel's Guide to Not Dating, it's a very funny, very romantic friends-to-lovers romance! "What happened to romantic comedy" is an existential question for our time.Question 5: Laurel from NC wants a book that "Has marriage of convenience, preferably historical."Our recommendations: Sarah says Sherry Thomas better than everyone and recommends Ravishing the Heiress. Jen thinks The Duke Buys a Bride by Sophie Jordan might work. Sarah points out that in order to qualify, the marriage has to happen pretty early in the story. The marriage has to be part of the plot the whole time. Once again, there are so many of these we had trouble thinking of them on the spot, but in hindsight, Sarah would like you not to miss Amalie Howard's The Beast of Beswick or Scarlet Peckham's The Duke I Tempted. Bonus story from Jen about a Sherry Thomas YA book about Mulan called The Magnolia Sword.Question 6: Cara from Finland wants a book that "Has chosen families strongly included in the plot. Extra points if it's enemies-to-lovers with the heroine's family ready to kick the pining-but-unfortunately-dumbass hero's butt."Our recommendations: Whoa! That's a lot of asks all at once. Just reread IAD, Cara! This is the plot of Sarah's book A Scot in the Dark, so that's a good place to st

Get ready for Hester, one of Sarah’s favorite heroines of all time — and Beverly Jenkins’s Indigo, which Jen just read for the first time! We’re talking historical romance, the way romances feel important, sex and intimacy, and all the reasons why everyone should read Beverly Jenkins right now. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!Next week, it’s the second half of our book recommendation, stump Sarah &amp; Jen AMA. The following week we’ll release a tiny little stocking stuffer for our Christmas Day episode, but we’re back in business on January 1, with the seasonally appropriate (at least in title) Born in Ice, by none other than the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Read Born in Ice at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesJen now has critic crushes on&nbsp;Diego Baez&nbsp;and&nbsp;Walton Muyumba.&nbsp;Liz Taylor who is kind of a big deal&nbsp;in the book world wrote an amazing book about Chicago's first Mayor Daley called&nbsp;American Pharaoh.Thanks to the&nbsp;Lincoln RI public library&nbsp;for being awesome.There's actually a lot of great resources for&nbsp;how to teach slavery to kids, so&nbsp;do better white teachers.Here at Fated Mates, we are&nbsp;LaQuette&nbsp;stans. Listen to her talk about discomfort and how important it is&nbsp;in her RITA speech&nbsp;last year.Colson Whitehead's&nbsp;Underground Railroad&nbsp;is an absolute&nbsp;tour de force. Here is a cool site&nbsp;mapping the world&nbsp;of the novel.If you don't know about America's&nbsp;history of lynching, you should learn all about&nbsp;Bryan Stevenson, who spearheaded the effort to create a&nbsp;Lynching Museum. The site&nbsp;Without Sanctuary&nbsp;preserves the history of these postcards (Content warning on that site for obvious reasons.)Gone with the Wind&nbsp;is an example of the pervasive and terrible&nbsp;"happy slave"&nbsp;narrative, which appears over and over again. Know and reject this narrative, not just in adult books, but in those&nbsp;written for kids. And while I'm on the subject, that goes for&nbsp;picture books about monkeys, too.This amazing&nbsp;One Dot One Person map&nbsp;is a stark look at how the legacy of slavery and segregation still impacts where Americans live today.So you want to read all the books about the LeVeq clan? Start with&nbsp;Through the Storm. and although Sarah said "kids" she meant that Hester and Galen's descendents are the main characters in the&nbsp;Edge of Midnight&nbsp;series. One of our favorite romance people is When Fumni Met Romance, and you should definitley read her talking about&nbsp;her love for Indigo&nbsp;and&nbsp;Beverly Jenkins.The internet makes it so much easier to read the stories of enslaved people. Along with the rather amazing (but imperfect)&nbsp;WPA interviews, you can read any number of slave narratives. Remember it was&nbsp;illegal to teach slaves to read, so it's an especailly powerful experience to read slave narratives. If you've never read&nbsp;Frederick Douglass, you should, but Jen also recommends&nbsp;Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.If you are looking for more resources to learn about American slavery, the&nbsp;New York times 1619 Project&nbsp;is amazing. If you are a listener, Jen recommends you listen the&nbsp;Yale open course about The Civil War with professor David Blight.Jen liked an early 80s novel called&nbsp;The Chaneysville Incident, which is about a historian trying to discover the truth about how his family's past intersects with a local legend about the Underground Railroad. Here's a&nbsp;recent interview with author David Bradley&nbsp;when the book was converted to an eBook.The history of&nbsp;the Underground Railroad&nbsp;is part legend, part myth, and part fact. This site talks specifically about&nbsp;the route people fleeing took north through Michigan&nbsp;on the way to Canada.Night Song&nbsp;was the first novel by Beverly Jenkins.All about&nbsp;the Fugitive&nbsp;Slave Act,&nbsp;why it was so terrible, and how we are&nbsp;seeing echoes&nbsp;of it today.Zeus and Athena.Some interesting sites that talk about&nbsp;indigo...

The rest of the internet is obsessed with best of the year lists, so we’re doing it, too! Jen and Sarah have both chosen five of our favorite reads of the year — or of 13 months, if you’re really counting. Tell us what we’ve forgotten here, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook or in comments! Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!In two weeks, we’re moving across the pond to Beverly Jenkins’s Indigo, with one of Sarah’s favorite heroines ever—Hester Wyatt, Underground Railroad conductor! Read Indigo at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesIn between our recording and release of this episode, Kristen Callihan did release a new book, Outmatched, which is cowritten with Samantha Young. But don't miss Scottie from Managed, who will appear later in season 2 as a book that blooded Jen.Munro. That's it. That's the show note.Some of the best of 2019 lists from Bookish, NPR and Kirkus. Sarah's website has all of her past Best of the Year Lists for the Washington Post. Amazon also has a best of the year list, but the Goodreads Award list is strange.Emma Donoghue's Room was a big literary fiction book back in 2010, and it was on all the end of the year lists.Jen will be appearing at The Book Cellar on Dec 7, 2019 if you're looking for something to do. She'll be talking about the best books of the year with other critics.Around the same time we recorded this episode, Kini at SmexyBooks wrote this thoughtful piece about transparency in romance reviewing.Kylie Scott's Repeat was also on our Amnesia episode.Love's Sweet Arrow is a romance-only bookstore in Chicago's south suburbs.Quelle suprise!.Jen also likes Rebecca Zanetti, who also resists romantic suspense that is just "women in peril" plots.Face/Off is a very goofy movie from the late 90s. So of course they're going to remake it.In this Juno Rushdon series, Jen wants the boss's book.We're talking about historicals, but we're not talking about Brazen and the Beast even though Jen wants you to know it's spectacular and you should definitely read it.I guess we're singing this episode: Just One Night is a twist on Phil Collins's One More Night in the Moulin Rouge movie and All Night Long.Jenny Nordbak recommended Dare to Love a Duke to Sarah, and after the unreliable narrators essay, Amy Jo Cousinsrecommended Any Old Diamonds to Jen.Who wouldn't want to talk about Frankenstein, Shelley, and Wollstonecraft?Don't sleep on the Gilded Age.Kennedy's Basketball series is also great. But in The Kingmaker duet, she also tackles the problem of missing and murdered indiginous women and land grabs on Native land. Here is a list of #OwnVoices Native American authors from BookRiot, and another from Smart Bitches, but Jen specifically recommends Pamela Sanderson.Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik.Jen interviewed Robin Lovett for Kirkus. And our friend @Bandherbooks was quite taken with the "space chaise" in this book.Jen and Sarah tried so hard to undersatnd the cinnamon roll phenomenon.Maybe you want to check out Jen's many amazing Pinterest boards featuring very specific romance novel cover kinks.Looking to buy some swag? You can buy Fated Mates buttons from Best Friend Kelly and Sarah has an awesome line of romance themed t-shirts and other swag from Jordanene.This week, our listener-recomended books are <a...

It may be Thanksgiving week in the US, but that didn’t stop us from recording a monster episode about one of our (and all of Romance’s) favorite books of all time! It’s Lord of Scoundrels week! We’re talking gloves and fans and prologues and why Jessica is one of the best heroines of all time! All that, and Sarah is on a rant about Byron…so don’t miss it!Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!In two weeks, we’re moving across the pond to Beverly Jenkins’s Indigo, with one of Sarah’s favorite heroines ever—Hester Wyatt, Underground Railroad conductor! Read Indigo at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie. Show NotesLord of Scoundrels has its own&nbsp;wikipedia page, which in case you're curious, is kind of unusual.Just look at this gorgeous&nbsp;Lord of Scoundrels embroidery.If you haven't listened to&nbsp;our episode on Dreaming of You, what are you waiting for?Maybe you want to find out&nbsp;what you first ordered in your Amazon account.Jessica Trent is not a&nbsp;Mary Sue.Erin from&nbsp;Heaving Bosoms&nbsp;is famous for&nbsp;not liking epilogues, but it's a pretty good reason why. But&nbsp;prologues are fine.You've been lawyered&nbsp;is from How I Met Your Mother.Sarah wrote the prologue to a new edition of&nbsp;The Transformation of Philip Jettan.Maybe&nbsp;watch out when taking DNA tests.&nbsp;Or not.Stronzo! And maybe&nbsp;some more&nbsp;if you're interested.Love's Sweet Arrow&nbsp;is a romance-only bookstore in the Chicago suburbs. It's awesome.Gentle Rogue&nbsp;started too late.More about Russian&nbsp;religous icons, but maybe you want to&nbsp;buy some.The gloves scene in the&nbsp;Age of Innocence movie.&nbsp;All that repressed longing from&nbsp;Daniel Day Lewis! In the book, it's&nbsp;this chapter&nbsp;where Newland Archer "bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and kissed her palm as if he had kissed a relic."All&nbsp;about&nbsp;Beelzebub.If you want to know about demon seals and&nbsp;the Wroth brothers, then listen to season one of Fated Mates.What does it even mean to&nbsp;dance a waltz&nbsp;in the Continental style? Probably not this&nbsp;Continental-style.The Beverly Jenkins book where the heroine shoots the hero is&nbsp;Tempest.Reading the banns&nbsp;and a list of&nbsp;people who were married&nbsp;at&nbsp;Saint George&nbsp;Hanover Square.You'll be shocked to know that&nbsp;Jen has some theories about internal vs. external conflict.When they're at the wrestling match, Dain says his friend could have "stayed comfortably at home and&nbsp;pumped&nbsp;his wife."She Walks in Beauty Like the Night&nbsp;is a glorious poem, but that doesn't make&nbsp;Byron&nbsp;any less of a&nbsp;scumbag. That&nbsp;Ada Lovelace&nbsp;was Byron's daughter is kind of wild, but we're glad she's known for&nbsp;being her own person. Despite Sarah trying to create an&nbsp;authorship question&nbsp;for Byron, that's not really a thing. There's no such person as the Duke of Summerville. Jen just made that up.If you're interested in The Romantics, you can find&nbsp;Jen's old college syllabus here. Lots of Wordsworth, but no Bryon, which is just fine. But we still love the way Loretta Chase used&nbsp;Don Juan&nbsp;in the text of Lord of Scoundrels.Friend of the pod Adriana Herrera&nbsp;has been reading&nbsp;Lord of Scoundrels&nbsp;for the&nbsp;first time&nbsp;and her&nbsp;tweets about&nbsp;it are&nbsp;honestly the&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ladrianaherrera/status/1199494625637142540" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

Stay tuned for the second half of the episode in December! Next week, just in time for your tryptophan induced coma, we’re talking Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, which was on both Jen &amp; Sarah’s list, and is on the lions’ share of Best Romance Novels Ever lists. We’ll get into why. Read Lord of Scoundrels at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesQuestion 1: Ennis from New York asked, "is like Lothaire by Kresley Cole or Cold Cole Heartby K Webster, where the hero is someone who would be a villain in any other book. A megalomaniac, horribly damaged, murderous, whatever- and a heroine who takes NONE of his shit and brings him to his knees."Our Recommendations: The name of this trope is "morality chain" which might help you on your search for books like this. Sarah's Summer 2020 release Daring and the Duke is perfect for this question, but since it's not out yet, try The Masterpiece Duet by Skye Warren. The first is The King.Question 2: Lesley from Washington DC asked for books "with Jewish heroes and heroines, does not have to be holiday themed."Our recommendations: : Jen suggests Knit One, Girl Two and Cinnamon Blade by Shira Glassman. In fact, Jen was a special guest on the Heaving Bosoms podcast taking about Cinnamon Blade. Sarah recommends Craving Flight by Tamsen Parker and Dalliances and Devotion by Felicia Grossman. Stacey Agdern also writes about Jewish representation in romance and has written some novellas in the Rogue Anthologies. We also mentioned a great point that inspired a great thread by Felicia Grossman about Jewish characters in literature.Question 3: Daniela from Winnipeg had this AMA question: If there was a battle royale between all the IAD heroes, who would win? Does the answer change if they can't use weapons?Our Answer: The Wroth brothers would band togehter, Declan Chase has a real shot, and Lothaire wouldn't care. No matter who wins, Thronos goes down first. Jen mentioned someone who wrote about what would happen if all the US Presidents were in a knife fight. Enjoy.FWIW, Daniela also asked a question we skipped because we couldn't think of anything: A historical that has a silver fox duke and a spitfire heroine who exhausts the hell out of him. IDEAS? Let us know on twitter.Question 4: Kristen from DC! asked, "LGBTQ romance easily available in PRINT for my book club???? We do it through a local indie bookshop, and are having a hard time finding things other than Cat Sebastian/Olivia Waite from Avon."Our Recommendations: Adriana Herrera's American Dreamer series! Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. We think Vanessa North and KJ Charles might be print on demand, which many indie bookstores won't carry. Dreamspinner is a mess right now, but many great authors are there, including LaQuette's latest, Under His Protection, which Jen bought a copy of at Love's Sweet Arrow. Carina titles might be more easily available, so try Syncopation and the rest of the Twisted Wishes series by Anna Zabo. Jen mentioned Being Hospitable by Meka James, but it's just in E. But you should still read it for fun.Question 5: Courtney from the Bodice Tipplers Podcast wants to know what books made us fall in love with the genre.Our answer: Well, just listen to all of season 2 of Fated Mates! But Sarah mentioned Nobody's Baby but Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Jen mentioned a new book that has made her feel that way is The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. Julie Garwood and Jude Deveraux were old-school authors we both loved back in the day.Question 6: Ali in NYC had an AMA and a question: How is Eric Mortensen so good at podcast editing?Our answer: Well, he just is and you should contact him if you need podcast editing help.Ali also wanted recommendations about historicals with witches/magic. Our recommendations: So many of these are old school, because this is not a very popular trope right now, so please proceed with caution. Sarah recommended Bewitching by Jill Barnett and Jen recommended a pair of books by Teresa Medeiros, Breath of Magic and Touch of Enchantment. In fact, Jen reviewed Touch of Enchantment for The Book Queen. Post-recording, we thought of Sex and the Psychic Witch by Annette Blair, which is the first of a series where three sisters use their "magic powers for good and their good looks for seduction."Question 7: Hannah from Texas asked for a romance that "has a Lucy Liu in "Set It Up" type heroine getting her actual HEA. I need ball-busting energy falling in love with a guy/gal/whoever that deserves her."Our Recommendations: Sarah recommended The Takeover Effect by Nisha Sharma which has a corporate espionage plot. Jen was maybe thinking of Set it Off and recommeded Elle Kennedy's Out of Uniform series. Jen mentioned Getting Hotter by Elle Kennedy, but upon further reflection, also thinks The Heat is On (in an anthology called Hot &amp; Heavy) might work. But since Hannah was actually talking about Set it Up, which is about assistants and

Next week, we’re switching things up and running a full recommendation podcast! You asked us questions, and we’re recommending a metric romance ton of books! Don’t miss it!In two weeks, we’re going to a classic of classics! The read was on both Jen &amp; Sarah’s list—Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, which is on the lions’ share of Best Romance Novels Ever lists. We’ll get into why. Read Lord of Scoundrels at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesListen, it's Eric FONER. He's kind of a big deal.More about how brains develop.A twitter thread about Sarah's brain surgeon.The kind of Amnesia in books and movies isn't real, but in case you were wondering, all about global amnesia and aphasia.Jen &amp; Sarah have seen the 80s version of Overboard 100 times, and the 2018 version no times.Speaking of Pregneisa... on the podcast I Don't Even Own a Television, these two guys mostly read it to make fun of it, but then listen to just this snippet of Jeb Lund TOTALLY GETTING ROMANCE.Kylie Scott does write about zombies, and threesomes, and rock stars, and getting with your Dad's best friend.Jen did write about Lies as an example of an Unreliable Narrator, but she still enjoyed the book!Jen couldn't locate the future/present/past thread on twitter, but this is a placeholder in case she ever does.No one liked that Chris Pratt movie.All about that incel bullshit.The Silent Towns is a short story by Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles---which Jen really liked for the most part! Try There will Come Soft Rains instead.The Last Man on Earth is a TV show and While You Were Sleeping was a movie.Jen likes the scummy, sexy white boy thing Matthew McConaughey has going on."Don't You Forget About Me" is the theme song to The Breakfast Club. No one had amnesia in the movie, they were just teenagers likely to be shitty to each other.What's Fair Use?Buy buttons from Kelly and shirts from Jordandené.Ashley from Southern California was blooded by The Duchess War&nbsp;by Courtney MilanNext week we're doing the first of our big romance recommendation podcasts, but get reading Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase -- it's our next read!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/11/11/s0210-amnesia-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 better time than now.

It’s Priest week! Sarah put Sierra Simone’s Priest on her Books that Blooded Her list, and this episode is a ride! Jen’s reading first person narrative, we’re both escaped catholics, Sarah imprinted on The Thornbirds, we’ll get to the bottom of anal sex in church (see what we did there?), and fully disagree about how much guilt is too much guilt for a hero. Plus, you’ll hear us tell you how brilliant we think Sierra is. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!In two weeks, we’re going to a classic of classics! The read was on both Jen &amp; Sarah’s list—Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, which is on the lions’ share of Best Romance Novels Ever lists. We’ll get into why. Read Lord of Scoundrels at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesWe love Sierra Simone! Sarah talked about Sinner on the Best Friend's Sibling episode, and Sierra was a special guest on our MacRieve episode. She'll also be joining us on a very special future interstitial.Will Kresley drop Munro like Beyonce? One can only hope.If you want to join Sarah's FB Old School Romance Book Club group, click here and wait for moderator approval. We (try to remember but sometimes have to be reminded to) post a discussion post for each week's episode there.Have you listened to what we consider to be our sister podcasts: The Wicked Wallflowers, Heaving Bosoms, and Black Chick Lit? We also love Learning the Tropes and RomBkPod. Check them out for all your listening needs.Facebook is garbage and Zuckerberg is aiming for Bond Villain.The modern day dirty priest fantasy is Fleabag, the old school one is The Thornbirds.If you're not following Jen Porter on Twitter, what are you doing with your life?Sierra's Markham Hall series is an erotic retelling of Jane Eyre.Jen doesn't like first person present.What does it even mean to be star-crossed?More about reader response theory.A defintion of "framing device" and how they work in fiction.In the Catholic Church, penance is one of seven sacraments.In case you want to know more about hairshirts as a thing, but please don't wear one.In the Ice Planet Barbarians series, the khui is a mystical thing on the ice planet. That's really all you need to know.More about the history of Rhode Island as a haven for escaped Catholics. No not that kind of escaped Catholic.The 2015 movie Spotlight is about the investigative journalists who broke the story of priest sexual abuse in Boston. In one famous scene, a reporter knock on the door of a retired priest who answers her questions in a shocking way. (All the trigger warnings on that scene, by the way.)Mark Ruffalo the hulk vs Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight.Sarah recommends the audio of Priest.This summer, the Catholic Diocese of Providence released the names of 50 priests who were credibly accused of abuse.Celibacy is a core tenent of Catholic priesthood, but as less and less men enter the priesthood, that might be changing in some interesting ways. Please note that the Vatican is more likely to lift celibacy requirements before they'd allow the ordination of women.Eddie Izzard.If this is the defintiion of an inspirational romance, then Priest qualifies.The Tessa Bailey book with "baby girl" is Fix Her Up. It's hot if you don't mind that sort of thing.<a...

Today, we’re talking jobs in romance novels—why we love them, when we hate them, what’s the proper work/smooch balance, and what we mean when we say “competence porn.” This is a far reaching, many-rec episode that involves discussion of billionaires, of wealth, of power, of what Sarah means when she says heroes have to be kings, no matter what. We’ll also try to get to the bottom of what an Enterprise Holding, LTD is. Nah, that’s a lie, because who cares?! Oh, and stay tuned for Sarah’s treatise on the importance of local journalism. Don’t forget to subscribe to Fated Mates in your favorite podcasting platform — subscriptions mean so much! While you’re there, please leave us a like or a review if you feel so inclined!Next week, we’re taking you to blasphemy town! Or are we?! The read is Sarah’s pick, Sierra Simone’s Priest, which is an erotic romance in first-person hero POV, featuring a priest and an exotic dancer (NB: She is not Catholic). If sex in church is your concern, maybe skip this one, but also know that there’s a lot fo religious allegory in here that is fascinating and brilliant. Content warning for discussion of the Catholic Church and sexual abuse. Get it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesJen said fossils are boring. It wasn't a good look.Defining competence porn.Christian Grey at work.Despite when Jen said, most sex toys are not made out of neoprene. And please be cautious about the sex toys you buy.Imposter syndrome is the worst for everyone but these guys.Job versus career versus vocation.The Joanna Shupe book about the architect is actually called A Scandalous Deal. If you do want to read books about fossils, Amanda Quick and Tessa Dare have them. Eloisa James does not. Manda Collins does. Sarah MacLean does not.What's wrong with "Not Like Other Girls."What's a bluestocking?Doogie Howser was a doctor, not an astrophysicist.How to avoid the "What do you do" question.The recent Supreme Court case about the rights of queer people to work.Sarah mentioned an article about how Americans haven't gotten a raise in 40 years, and Jen mentioned the struggle to stay in the middle class.Lori Lightfoot won the Chicago mayor's election, but here's the story about her background and why Black Lives Matter activists are worried.The thing Jen made into a job: writing about romance for Kirkus.High School Musical 2 had the "I need a college scholarship" plot.Roseanne and class on television.Jen really hated This is 40.Are you in Chicago? Come to Jen's romance book club at 57th Street Books or at Love's Sweet Arrow.Divorce has profoundly negative impact on women's financial security.Sarah mentioned a twitter thread about mothers telling their daughter's to have separate money and why women get jewelry as wedding gifts.All women work, even if they don't have a job outside the home.An overwhelming majority of American school teachers are white women.You should read Catch and Kill if you can, but the story about how it impacted Ronan Farrow's relationship is also interesting.Subscribe to your local newspaper!This week, caller Samantha from Kuala Lumpur recommends Spellbound by Nora Roberts.Next up is Priest from Sierra Simone.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/10/29/s028-competence-amp-careers-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, <a href="https://fated-mates.tumblr.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

Woof, you guys. Woof. This week we’re talking a whole different kind of Vampires (not a single one chained to a radiator…we love u, Conrad) — with JR Ward’s Dark Lover — the first in the Black Dagger Brotherhood Series! We’re talking a LOT this week about toxic masculinity, about the world post 9/11, about what we expect from heroines, about the entire BDB series, and about what the heck is going on in these books. We also get all the titles wrong, as usual.Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!In two weeks, we’re getting more current! The read is Sarah’s Pick, Sierra Simone’s Priest, which is an erotic romance in first-person hero POV, featuring a priest and an exotic dancer (NB: She is not Catholic). If sex in church is your concern, maybe skip this one, but also know that there’s a lot fo religious allegory in here that is fascinating and brilliant. Get it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.Show NotesJR Ward's first pen name was Jessica Bird.Despite Jen's joke about Proust, she's never actually read him.Some of the most famous vampire books in fiction were Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire and Queen of the Damned. And let's not forget Twilight.In romance, you should check out the Argeneau series by Lynsay Sands, or any number of books by Jeaniene Frost. Nalini Singh's Guild Hunters series has a vampire hunter. Sherrilyn Kenyon also has lots of books in this category. In urban fantasy, of course there was the Sookie Stackhouse series, and it's TV adaptation True Blood.In fact, the 90s were full of vampires in the movies and on TV: Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and if you've never seen it, the opening scene from Blade that Jen mentioned.Sarah would like you to consider the fact that very few people know who Mary Shelley is, but Francis Ford Coppola made a blockbuster movie with Bram Stoker's name in the actual title because patriarchy is a helluva drug.Is it romance or urban fantasy?The JR Ward interview was in Louisville Magazine.The Wicked Wallflowers interviewed JR Ward and it's just terrific.Jen read all the RITAs, and she reviewed Consumed in the romantic suspense category and Dearest Ivie in the paranormal category.All about sawed-off shotguns.Sarah said John Michael, but OF COURSE she meant John Matthew. Maybe you should read Lover John Matthew and Xhex.Mary Bly's article about the Black Dagger Brotherhood appears in New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction.The Lessers as Incels.Caldwell is like the world of Gotham... and why it seems so nihilistic.Beth and Wrath's story continues in The King, or as we like to call it here at Fated Mates, Lover Wrath and Beth Part 2.It's Lover Phury and Cormia, and then Lover Rhevenge and Ehlena, and Lover Quinn and Blay.The Susan Faludi book Sarah mentioned is called The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America.We don't think Beth is a Mary Sue, and JR Ward doesn't either.A guide to the waves of feminism.A ferrari doesn't weight 2000 tons. A ton is 2000 pounds.Wellsie is maybe a stand in for Smith vs. Wellesley.Jen was reading Native Son in college when her professor told her blindness is always a symbol. Oedipus blinded himself, and oracles are seers are often blind. Daredevil is blind and can still kick your ass. The other most famous Blind King Jen could find is in Assassin's Creed.Next up is Priest by Sierra Simone.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/10/20/s027-dark-lover 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...

We heard you! You wanted to talk about Cinnamon Roll Heroes, so here we are, and we’re bringing in an expert on the topic (in real life and in fiction) — Andie Christopher. We’re talking about the evolution and popularization of the beta in the 90s, why they became such a powerful force then, why they’re back now, and why they work so well for some readers! We’ll also talk about dating in 2019, recommend some books (obviously), and talk about Andie’s upcoming, Not the Girl You Marry, which is out November 12! Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!Next week, we’re going back to paranormal with the first book in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Dark Lover. It’s a whole ride. Strap in. Get it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie (it’s currently only $2.99 in ebook!).Show NotesWe're so excited to have Andie on the podcast -- her book, Not the Girl You Marry, is out November 12th. Preorder now!Do you know the importance of a Sky Pager?The Pegging Crew is a nickname we use with love for the folks who bought a change to decide a Fated Mates interstitial topic.If you're looking for romances with the Great British Bake Off energy, Sarah recommends Louisa Edwards.- Last summer, Jen interviewed Andie for Kirkus.Nancy Pelosi is taking care of business.Olivia Dade has a great list of cinnamon roll heroes, but this piece from The Onion originated the term.The Simone Scale is very different from the Clayborn Curve.I guess you can decide for yourself if Father Bell is a cinnamon roll (whispers: especially because this will be a season 2 book that blooded us).The only person who can ask for flowers is Barbra Streisand.Every time Jen mentions a fainting couch, she's thinking of this most excellent pinterest board by friend of the pod @bandherbooks.Some really thoughtful tweets that were in response to our alpha episode: Charlotte talking about lust and care, and Cat talking about baggage.The romance trailblazer videos from this year's RITAs are so great.The original stern brunch daddy tweet.Toxic masculinity is like acid rain, not rain rain.The "I'm baby" meme.Jess &amp; Marie are pretty great.Andie said Gen Z doesn't fuck, but it sounds like they just don't date.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/10/13/s026-cinnamon-roll-romance-heroes-interstitial-with-andie-christopher 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 picked this week’s read without having read it recently, and she shockingly doesn’t regret it! We’re talking Johanna Lindsey’s Gentle Rogue—arguably one of the most beloved texts of the genre, complete with a reformed pirate and a heroine who is having absolutely none of his nonsense. We’ll talk about heroines who are sex positive, about obvious references to the slave trade that are problematic and somehow utterly glossed over, archetypal brothers, and about the shocking lack of plot in this book (which we don’t mind a bit).Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review!In two weeks, we’re going back to paranormal with the first book in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Dark Lover. It’s a whole ride. Strap in. Get it at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie (it’s currently only $2.99 in ebook!).Show NotesJen's the romance correspondent for Kirkus, and she recently wrote about Fabio who appeared on the original cover of Gentle Rogue. Also, this piece by Kelly Faircloth about romance covers is amazing.When Sarah dreamed of Amy Schumer, I wonder if it was anything like this?7th grade is awful for everyone.Voldemort and his horcruxes.The Magic of You is all about Georgie's brother Warren.Here's some basic information about slavery in Jamaica and sugar plantations in particular. And the Slave Voyages site is an amazing and well-researched online archive you should also check out, which includes a searchable database of transatlantic boats and the numbers of enslaved people on board each ship.Although we didn't mention it the podcast, if you're reading romances where white people have weddings, parties, or balls on plantations...that's terrible.The Georgian, the Regency, the Victorian.In real life, billionaires are always a problem.For your consideration: a goodreads list of ugly duckling romances.A thread from EE Ottoman about why pants are not the problem... or the answer.We love Jen Porter.Lord of Scoundrels will definitely be making an appearnce in season 2.Sometimes we don't know if it's better to get bangs or just deal with our feelings.Why are there so many YA love triangles?The Bridgertons, in case you don't know.Jen thinks James Malory is a Mary Sue.Coming up in two weeks, Dark Lover by J. R. Ward.An official Romancelandia poll on the best emjoi for pegging. I don't even know what to say.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/10/7/s025-gentle-rogue 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 talking about novellas with one of the best novella writers around—Alyssa Cole. Join us, along with Alyssa’s tree frogs, to talk about why she loves the novella format, the trick to writing a short romance, and her upcoming Audible original!Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.We’re back in two weeks with Johanna Lindsey’s Gentle Rogue, set on a ship with a heroine-in-pants and a hero who really deserves everything she delivers him. Find it at: Amazon, B&amp;N, Kobo, Apple Books, or at your local Independent Bookstore!Show NotesUltra-marathoners really do suck down energy gel out there! Soylent Green is people, and therefore not someting Ultramarathoners consume during their races.Sarah uses weird with love. In fact, she crowdsourced a great weird romance list yesterday on Twitter. Head over there to overload your TBR.Robot girlfriends are a thing, I guess. But even more exciting is that Alyssa's audio for The AI Who Loved Me has some big time narrators!Keanu Reeves in the Matrix has his own gel problem.Sarah wrote a novella for a Christmas anthology with Tessa Dare, Sophie Jordan &amp; Joanna Shupe, How the Dukes Stole Christmas, that is newly out in paperback.Alyssa mentioned a KDrama called Noble, My Love that has 15 minute episodes.Ladyhawke is an 80s movie that honestly defies description, but lives on in our memories.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/10/1/s024-novella-romance-interstitial-with-alyssa-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.

We begin the exploration of The Books That Blooded Us with the one that probably least surprised listeners—Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You! We tackle this fabulous, bonkers book (yes, we get to the bottom of the did-he-or-didn’t-he conundrum, and we spend some serious time discussing Joyce). We also talk about how we think Derek Craven changed the romance hero game, what might have been in the water in romance in the early-mid 1990s, and Sarah tells a few stories about her weekend with the queen herself, Lisa Kleypas. Don’t forget to like &amp; subscribe in your favorite podcasting app so you don’t miss a single second of us in your earholes!Show NotesAnyone know if Warby Parker is looking for a podcast to sponser?Sarah &amp; Lisa spent time together because they were signing at Nora Roberts's bookstore, Turn the Page, in real-life Boonsboro, MD. Jen had some hard-core FOMO.February 4th is Derek Craven Day, look at some of our&nbsp;tweets&nbsp;from&nbsp;that&nbsp;day.A reminder of that 1992 election and what we should have learned from Anita Hill. But Stormy Danielsis more in control of her narrative.Josh Lyman never calls it a recession, call it a bagel.We love Steve Ammidown at the BGSU pop culture library.IRL, Matilda was Pamela. But that ending, classic Lady or the Tiger or The Sopranos.The second casino is in Devil in Winter, where Ivo Jenner's daughter falls in love with Sebastian, St. Vincent, whom many think is Lisa's best hero. They are wrong.We're back on Moonstruck with that mother-in-law and "Bring me the big knife!"More about some of those Jungian archetypes.Jen meant coitus interruptus in the Urban Dictionary way, not the Merriam-Webster way.This article seems to think head hopping is more common in roamance, but I don't know if that's true.Close third person POV or Free Indirect Speech &amp; Jane Austen.Have you listened to our bodily autonomy episode?Dangerous Liasons the book has been around for a long time, but Jen is talking about the 1988 movie."She leaves the gun on the table" is a reference to a famous writing precept by Chekhov.Doing spectacles&nbsp;better than F. Scott Fitzgerald.Gentle Rogue is coming up in two weeks.Kelly has some Fated Mates swag and Romancelandia buttons for sale.Derek Craven would never.Fated Mates is produced by Eric MortensenThe RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/9/24/s021-lisa-kleypas-does-spectacles-better-than-f-scott-fitzgerald-dreaming-of-you 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.

As we lead into Season Two, and consider the fact that some of our faves are definitely going to be problematic, we’re talking about the alpha hero this week — we’re also tackling the beta hero and the cinnamon roll, and why these archetypes largely don’t work for us. We’re talking romance heroes who changed the game for us and the genre, about how hard it is to turn the alphahole around, and how satisfying it is to watch it happen. We’re also talking the female gaze (of course) and the patriarchy (like always). Next week, we’re digging into one of our original alphas, Derek Craven! You can find Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie. It's currently $2.99 in digital everywhere, so snatch it up!Show NotesThe alpha,&nbsp;the beta, and the&nbsp;cinnamon roll.You should all follow&nbsp;Cora Harrington&nbsp;(lingerie addict) on twitter. It's all so beautiful.Jen screams about first person a lot, but MOSTLY about&nbsp;first person present.It was Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown that was all in the male POV, and&nbsp;this review&nbsp;is so great. Jen's going to follow&nbsp;Alaina, the author, on twitter. UPDATE: The Browne Pop Culture Library was able to find the descriptions of Demon Rumm,&nbsp;and as Jen predicted, they were in the back matter of the previous month's books! Thanks,&nbsp;Steve!Alec Kinkaid,&nbsp;The Montgomerys,&nbsp;James Mallory, and the&nbsp;Westmoreland heroes.Did you somehow miss us talking about&nbsp;The Professional?It the Movie may or may not be your cup of tea, but&nbsp;this discussion of Jane Doe with Victoria Helen Stone&nbsp;has some really interesting points about horror and romance.Bourne from&nbsp;A Rogue by Any Other Name&nbsp;is "Sarah's worst hero" by which she means it was just reall satisfying to break him.You have to listen to our&nbsp;antiheroes episode&nbsp;if you want to know what it means to "take the finger."P in V&nbsp;is great, but&nbsp;2Ps in V is even better.Hillary Clinton was wrong about romance novels, and&nbsp;Lisa Kleypas explains why.Adriana Herrera's&nbsp;American&nbsp;Dreamers&nbsp;series&nbsp;is one of our faves.What it means to be a&nbsp;Kinsey 2.Romance for Raices&nbsp;has a few more days.&nbsp;Spend enough money and you can pick an upcoming interstitial topic!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/9/17/s022-the-alpha-in-romance-novels-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 better time than now.

We're Back!We promised you we'd be back with Season Two in September, and here we are in September, back with Season Two!We've said farewell to&nbsp;Season One, but we'll never fully be able to quit IAD, so Season Two will be&nbsp;The Books That Blooded Us&nbsp;-- that is, the books that made us the romance readers we are...books that taught us what the genre could be, books that scratched our itch, books that made us lifelong romance readers, books that set us on the path directly to your earholes!Over the season, we'll tackle 10 (or so) books that blooded each of us -- we'll deep dive, discuss, and delight in each other's picks -- and we've got some fun ideas for how you all can share the books that blooded you!So...where do we begin? We begin in two weeks with the primordial text for both of us...the one...the only...Dreaming of You. We'll talk Derek Craven's cockney accent, Sara Fielding's legendary novel, Lisa Kleypas's immense skill with talismans, and we'll get to the very bottom of some of the most controversial bits of this glorious book that the two of us love a whole lot.Get reading, y'all, we've got a lot to say. You can find Dreaming of You at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie. It's currently $2.99 in digital everywhere, so snatch it up!We'll be announcing the schedule for the first few reads later this week -- so you'll have time to read ahead, but in the meantime, sit back, relax, and let us give you a preview of what's to come!Don't forget to like and subscribe in your favorite podcasting platform!Show NotesJen tweeted about Altogether by Brill Harper&nbsp;and then all of Romancedlandia read it. It's deliciously filthy.Read Sarah's drunk texts to Jen and Kate&nbsp;on the Vika group chat. Take a look at these covers for&nbsp;Rebecca Zanetti's Deadly Silence.Sarah was on Wicked and the Wallflowers podcast&nbsp;to talk aboutBrazen and the Beast. You had no idea&nbsp;flag design&nbsp;was so fascinating.Looking back at twitter, it might have been&nbsp;a shared love of Derek Craven that made Sarah and Jen friends. We can't wait to discuss&nbsp;Dreaming of You&nbsp;in two weeks.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/9/9/s021-welcome-to-season-two-1 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.

In July, at the Romance Writers of America annual conference, we had the extraordinarily good luck to record a crossover episode with Jenny Nordbak &amp; Sarah Hawley of The Wicked Wallflowers podcast! We talked about our favorite books with a roomful of librarians &amp; bloggers, and we had the best time. Now, you can, too! Be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting app so you know the moment we return!Subscribe to these other amazing romance podcasts! The Wicked Wallflowers (with Jenny &amp; Sarah)Heaving Bosoms (with Melody &amp; Erin)Learning the Tropes (with Erin &amp; Clayton) The Big Gay Fiction Podcast (with Jeff &amp; Will)Listen to the longer version of the conversation with Sarah (MacLean) that Jenny (Nordbak) talks about in her discussion of Brazen &amp; the Beast. Sarah's hometown library (complete with dark corridors for romance novels) is the Lincoln Public Library in Lincoln, Rhode Island.

Yes, yes, we're on hiatus. But we can't stop, won't stop!In this mini episode, Jen talks to her friend Elizabeth about what we can do when someone judges our romance reading.Be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting app so you know the moment we return!

We're on hiatus until September, when we'll start Season 2, but here is a quick hi from Sarah, with a story from her trip to the UK that only Fated Mates listeners will appreciate.Be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting app so you know the moment we return! Show NotesGeorge &amp; Dragon Inn, Clifton, Penrith, UKLowther CastleHugh Lowther, proper reprobate and 5th Earl of Lonsdale

Fated Mates returns with Season Two in September — don’t forget to like &amp; subscribe in your favorite podcasting app so you don’t miss a single second of us in your earholes!And more than all this — thank you for listening to us talk at you about vampires, valkyries, wolf holograms, horns &amp; Rune for 39 weeks — there honestly aren’t words for how much we love you for listening!Team Vertas 4eva! — xoxo Sarah &amp; JenShow NotesThis is&nbsp;The End&nbsp;is by The Doors, and&nbsp;Closing Time&nbsp;is by Semisonic.The&nbsp;RITAs were amazing, and one of the best things about it was this&nbsp;romance trailblazers&nbsp;video.Lila is a&nbsp;face character&nbsp;at Disney.Inside the Mouse&nbsp;is a book you should read, or just this&nbsp;New York Times article&nbsp;where John Jerimiah Sullivan (omg. his essays are so good! Read&nbsp;Pulphead!) trying to figure out the best place to smoke weed there. That&nbsp;Banksey&nbsp;video.Because Disney is&nbsp;too expensive, #TeamReadsRomance suggests&nbsp;Cedar Point if you like roller coasters.Hela's crown in Thor Ragnarok&nbsp;is PRETTY GREAT.It's interesting to think about a&nbsp;framing device&nbsp;and what it does for a story.Sarah's WaPo piece about the&nbsp;Alpha Feminist.All about&nbsp;archetypes&nbsp;and the&nbsp;princess trope.The Room of Requirement&nbsp;is part of Hogwards.When we talked about time, Sarah recommended Kylie Scott's&nbsp;Repeat.Tim Curry as&nbsp;The Darkness in Legend&nbsp;or&nbsp;The Devil in Fantasia.We talked about&nbsp;curvy heroines&nbsp;way back at the beginning of this podcast.Everything Sian owns is&nbsp;in a box to the left.The Beauty and the Beast Library.We're all on&nbsp;Munro Watch.Thanks to everyone for listening to season one of Fated Mates!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/7/20/19-wicked-abyss 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.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform so that you know the moment we start Season Two (in early September)!Next week, it’s the end! WHAT HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! We’re talking Sian (HORNS HORNS HORNS HORNS HORNS HORNS HORNS) &amp; Lila with Wicked Abyss, featuring the literal King of Hell, and the Queen who takes fully no shit from him. Get Wicked Abyss at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie!Show NotesWhat is&nbsp;the appeal of the antihero?Fangirl Jeanne wrote a really interesting thread about why she ships villains and&nbsp;what it means to believe in an HEA for everyone.The&nbsp;Sierra Simone Scale&nbsp;seems relevant here.We here at Fated Mates love a&nbsp;grovel.Morality Chain&nbsp;is a very specific trope.Jen's goodreads search for books with&nbsp;criminal heroes&nbsp;versus&nbsp;criminal heroines.Take a minute to&nbsp;donate to RAICES&nbsp;because we do have&nbsp;concentration camps on our border, and it's so hard to know what to do about it.Jen and Sarah talked about female antiheroes in pop culture:&nbsp;Catherine Zeta Jones in Traffic&nbsp;and&nbsp;Mary Louise Parker in Weeds.Jen's Rita thread about how&nbsp;white guys get to be anitheores.Movie time references: Sarah is Italian, so since there are no Italian mafia guys anymore, watching&nbsp;The Godfather&nbsp;is the only choice. The "one armed man" reference is to&nbsp;The Fugitive.What are we talking about when we talk about&nbsp;billionaire money.A "diamond of the first water"Molly Fader,&nbsp;Molly O'Keefe, and M. O'Keefe&nbsp;are three pen names for one author who really knows her branding. #BlessedWicked Abyss&nbsp;in next and then...we're done with season one.&nbsp;Commence mourning.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/7/29/185-antiheroes-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 better time than now.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.We’re getting down to the wire with Season One of Fated Mates — in two weeks, join us for Wicked Abyss, featuring the literal King of Hell, and the Queen who takes fully no shit from him. Get Wicked Abyss at Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie!Show NotesYou know Kresley is self-publishing when you see it's Valkerie Press.In IAD, a sorceri queen has the most power in that area. Love triangles are very common in YA.- Eloisa James' first novel was Potent Pleasures, the the line Sarah quoted is: "Charlotte was one week short of 17 when her life was changed, falling into two halves like a shiny child's ball: before and after."The best thing that ever happened at Coachella.Uh. While researching for this podcast, Jen realized that Deadmou5 is real.Sarah's hero/heroine/heroine's best friend on the line book is A Rogue By Any Other Name, which you can get in ebook for $1.99 right now!There apparently was a crossover between IAD and Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series. Tell us what you know.Gay romance author and all around good guy Nathan Burgoine explains why "Gay for You" is a problem.No one like a milksop.All about the Kinsey Scale, and Jen thinks of this very funny tweet from her friend Zach every time she hears the phrase "Kinsey scale."Happy Days didn't spin off from something, it was the spinner. Frasier was a Cheers spin-off. The Dacians is not an IAD spin-off. It is IAD. This is canon now.The Arcana Chronicles is Kresley's YA series.Jen recommends The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker if you're interested in a novel about women artists at work.In two weeks, we're finishing Season One (sniff!) with Wicked Abyss!Lost Limb CountArms and Hands (8)1. Conrad cuts off his own hand with a rusty axe so he escape the "witched" chains his brothers locked him in. (Dark Needs at Night's Edge)2. Cadeon has both of his hands burned off in the same scene where he loses an eye. There's description of what Cade's baby fingers look like as they are re-growing. It's...kinda gross. (Dark Desires After Dusk)3. Sebastian pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked)4. Lucia peels all the skin off from her hand in order to free herself from some handcuffs. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)5. In order to retrieve the ring from La Dorada , Lothaire cuts off her finger. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)6. Lanthe and Carrow cut off Fegley's hand so they can use his thumb to unlock their torques. He's later killed. (Demon from the Dark)7. After receiving Lothaire's heart in a box, Ellie cuts off her middle finger and sends it to him. (Lothaire)8. Chloe's shoulder is dislocated in the escape from her auction (MacRieve).Chest and Torso (7)1. Omort severs Rydstrom's spine and punches through his torso in a fight. Sabine saves him and enlists Hag to help heal him. (Kiss of a Demon King)2. Lucia's neck is broken. She regenerates. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)3. On Torture Island, Regin,4. MacRieve,5. and Brandr are vivisected. It's pretty terrible. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)6. Declan's skin is peeled off by the Neoptera as a child. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)7. Lothaire rips out his own heart and sends it to Ellie in a box. (Lothaire)Head, Face, and Eyes (6)1. Bowen loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)2. Cadeon loses an eye and part of his forehead and hair when fighting. It all regenerates. (Dark Desires After Dusk)3. During a rugby match, Garreth has his teeth knocked out and swallows them. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)4. Lothaire kicks out La Dorada's remaining eye and throws her over a cliff. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)5. In the Bloodroot Forest, the tree grows over Lothaire's lips and tongue. (Lothaire)6. After she gains her immortality, Chloe's hair grows, but she cuts it off every morning. (MacRieve)7. Lanthe agrees to have her tongue cut out to save herself and Thronos, knowing she can still use the power of persuasion telepathically. (Dark Skye)Horns (2)8. Cadeon cuts off his own horns to prove to Holly that he is worthy of being her mate. She tells him to let them grow back (Dark Desires After Dusk)9. Malkolm is captured by his enemies in Oblivion and taken to the city of Ash. The publicly cut off his horns and then intend to kill him, but Carrow saves him. (Demon from the Dark)Legs and Feet (3)1. Lachlain tears off his own leg to reach Emma. He regenerates. (A Hunger Like No Other)2. Mariketa's skull is fractured and her leg is torn from her body. She heals herself after Bowen lays on the ground. Ivy grows over her and heals her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)3. Thronos is chasing Melananthe and loses a foot when a portal closes on it. (Kiss of a Demon King)4. While in Pandamonia, Thronos is trapped in a

Next week, we’re tackling the Dacians in two weeks with a two-for-one episode featuring both of these Lothaire spinoff stories, Shadow's Claim (featuring demon-sorceress Bettina and Dacian assassin Trehan) &amp; Shadow's Seduction (featuring Caspion the demon and Mirceo the vampire prince)!Show NotesJen loves hype video, and there are some&nbsp;for the USWNT&nbsp;are amazing.All about&nbsp;advanced reading copies&nbsp;(ARCs) and what it looks like when you get&nbsp;typeset pages.Jen has a new title at Kirkus: romance correspondent. She's been&nbsp;interviewing&nbsp;a lot&nbsp;of authors.Kate Clayborn perfectly described&nbsp;why we love a grunting hero.Only&nbsp;33 Fortune 500 CEOs are women, which is nonsense.Listen to our&nbsp;Curvy Heroines interstitial.Covent Garden&nbsp;and the&nbsp;rookeries.What's a&nbsp;life peerage?Derek&nbsp;Craven&nbsp;forever.What it means to be&nbsp;"on the shelf."Audiobook narrator&nbsp;Justine Eyre&nbsp;is the narrator for Sarah's books. Can you even imagine what would happen if she and Petkoff ever got together and narrated a romance?Preorder Brazen &amp; the Beast at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Kobo,&nbsp;Apple, or&nbsp;Indiebound&nbsp;-- or from Sarah's local indie, WORD, and&nbsp;get it signed and with fun goodies!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/7/20/175-this-isnt-a-podcast-this-is-a-brazen-and-the-beast-hype-episode 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.

Our favorite person, Kate Clayborn, is back with us to wrap up the Game Makers series with THE PLAYER! Join us as Sarah explains all the ways that the damaged hero works for her (Spoiler: It’s Every Single Way), Kate digs deep on Kresley’s liberal use of punctuation, and Jen admits that Sarah was right all along. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.We’re getting down to the wire with IAD, but because we’re completists, we’re tackling the Dacians in two weeks with a two-for-one episode featuring both of these Lothaire spinoff stories, Shadow's Claim (featuring demon-sorceress Bettina and Dacian assassin Trehan) &amp; Shadow's Seduction (featuring Caspion the demon and Mirceo the vampire prince)!Show NotesWecome back,&nbsp;Kate!The Grassy Knoll&nbsp;isn't much of a knoll, anymore. But if you're ever in Dallas, check out the&nbsp;Sixth Floor Museum.This kind of&nbsp;teabagging&nbsp;does not appear on the Clayborn Scale.YA Author&nbsp;Carrie Ryan&nbsp;has smart things to say about first person and&nbsp;scary things to say about zombies.Famous for having a big reveal:&nbsp;The Usual Suspects,&nbsp;The Sixth Sense, and&nbsp;The DaVinci Code. Not famous for a big reveal:&nbsp;Meet Joe Black.We should have asked Adriana Herrera&nbsp;about Dimitri's trauma.Rocky&nbsp;was also a self-made man, and you cannot even convince Jen that the person who invented CrossFit didn't&nbsp;rapturously watch this a million times.Dryer's English&nbsp;is a book that all the writing nerds had a pre-order, and he has&nbsp;strong&nbsp;opinions&nbsp;about exclamation points, but absolutley nothing to say about sexclamation points.Everyone loves&nbsp;foreshadowing.But in romance, no one loves an&nbsp;unreliable narrator.Jen recommends the YA novel&nbsp;One of Us is Lying, or you could kick it old-school and watch&nbsp;Roshomon.Pre-order&nbsp;Brazen and the Beast! and&nbsp;Love Lettering! And read Jen's interviews with&nbsp;Reese Ryan&nbsp;and&nbsp;Marie Tremayne&nbsp;and&nbsp;Robin Lovett&nbsp;on Kirkus.In two weeks, we're back to IAD with the Dacian two-fer:&nbsp;Shadow's Claim&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;Shadow's Seduction!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/6/27/17-the-player 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 talking all things royal! Join us with the fabulously fun Nana Malone to talk about kings, queens, princes and princesses, royal weddings, royal gossip, why Nick Jonas married SO FAR ABOVE HIMSELF, and how we wish poor Kate Middleton could just have a cheeseburger with her friends. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.Next week, we’re finishing up the Game Makers series with arguably Kresley’s most damaged hero, Dmitri Sevastyan! Basically, July is “Sarah’s favorite books” month, so settle in for that…we’ll be joined by one of our favorites, Kate Clayborn, who will reveal the name of our group text thread! Read The Player at Amazon, B&amp;N, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local Indie.Show NotesWelcome,&nbsp;Nana Malone!We were all about talking about songs and music videos today:&nbsp;Royals by Lorde,&nbsp;S&amp;M by Rhianna, and&nbsp;Senorita by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. Bonus&nbsp;hilarious conversation between Jen and her son&nbsp;about that last one.The e is silent.Shawn Mendes in Calvin Klein.All about&nbsp;boy bands,&nbsp;why girls love them,&nbsp;the powerhouse that is BTS, and&nbsp;the many hairstyles of Justin Beiber.Nick Jonas married up...&nbsp;Chasing that happiness, I guess.&nbsp;Priyanka Chopra is unbelievably gorgeous. We stan.Meghan and Harry's wedding&nbsp;was our favorite movie of 2018, but&nbsp;Charles and Diana's&nbsp;makes us sad. Jen's favorite moment is the singing of&nbsp;Stand by Me, but Sarah's daughter likes&nbsp;this yellow lady.Kate Middleton&nbsp;has a new fashion plan.This list on Goodreads has&nbsp;FOUR HUNDRED AND FOUR&nbsp;romances where the hero is a duke.Prince Albert of Monaco married Grace Kelly and&nbsp;her wedding dress&nbsp;is still gorgeous sixty years later.All about&nbsp;the Romanceclass authors&nbsp;and&nbsp;their books.Jen loves John Wick. But then again,&nbsp;who doesn't?The Sierra Simone taboo scale.That Sex in the City episode with&nbsp;the "bum licker,"&nbsp;as Nana said.Sarah wants 16th century Assassin's Creed, so this series by Robin LeFevers about&nbsp;a bunch of teenage assassin nuns&nbsp;is the obvious answer.Have you pre-ordered Brazen &amp; the Beast?We can't keep track of what we're reading, when. Next week,&nbsp;The Player! In three weeks, back to IAD with the Dacian two-fer:&nbsp;Shadow's Claim&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;Shadow's Seduction!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/6/27/165-royals-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 better time than now.

IT’S HAPPENNNINNNGGGGG! Sweet Ruin, Sarah’s favorite book in the IAD series, is finally here and she is BEYOND EXCITED to talk about her favorite Kresley hero and the magnificent, perfect heroine who refuses to back down from their fated matehood. Listen as Jen and Sarah discuss Nix as Warrior Queen, make important demands of fan fiction writers in the IAD universe, and generally discuss why this book is one of the best of the series, without question. Block off some time and be sure to use the bathroom before you start, because this one clocks in at two hours (and we’ve already realized we forgot to talk about a few things — so prepare for updates in future episodes!) Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.In two weeks, we’re finishing up the Game Makers series with arguably Kresley’s most broken hero (don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this ranking on the episode), Dmitri Sevastyan! Basically, July is “Sarah’s favorite books” month, so settle in for that…we’ll be joined by one of our favorites, Kate Clayborn, who will reveal the name of our group text thread! Read The Player at Amazon, B&amp;N, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local Indie.Show NotesShort chapters&nbsp;make for quick pacing.The Morior are like the&nbsp;Super Friends...but&nbsp;evil.All about&nbsp;The Starship Enterprise.More about&nbsp;a witch's familiar.Runes&nbsp;are actually from Norse Mythology. You'd think Rune would&nbsp;use the internet&nbsp;to learn more about them.Rune is&nbsp;poison&nbsp;to everyone but her. Jen's never read&nbsp;The Poisoner's Handbook, but everyone says it's amazing.Thinking about&nbsp;theme as a literary device&nbsp;isn't just for English class.Our twitter friend&nbsp;Aunt Angelique has changed her username, so follow her for&nbsp;interesting tidbits like this.That cock tweet.All about&nbsp;edging.The Mariana Trench&nbsp;is real deep, y'all, but we've still discovered&nbsp;plastic&nbsp;there.Uluru&nbsp;is a&nbsp;sacred place for Aborigines, and&nbsp;Australia reverted to officially&nbsp;using this name in 2002.Revenge is stupid.Jen loves that scene where&nbsp;Captain America beats the shit out of everyone in the elevator.In case you need help finding&nbsp;Shipper Names.The&nbsp;What Would Allixta Do&nbsp;Button.The story of&nbsp;Supergirl.Speaking of our Heaving Bosoms friends, It wasn't Melody,&nbsp;it was Erin&nbsp;who said she doesn't read epilogues!Speed is a romance. Don't at Jen or&nbsp;Bandherbooks.The Player&nbsp;is coming up after our next interstitial!Pre-order Brazen and the Beast, and if you say "Fated Mates" in the notes, Sarah will include a Fated Mates sticker!Click here&nbsp;for the transcript of this episode.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/6/27/16-sweet-ruin 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.

Love letters are the best because they’re personal and honest and raw and beautiful, and this week—by request—we’re talking about all the different ways romance tells epistolary love stories! Leave us your own version of a love note in comments! Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.&nbsp;Next week, IT IS HAPPENNNINNNGGGGG! We’ll be talking about Sweet Ruin, Sarah’s favorite book in the IAD series, and she is BEYOND EXCITED to talk about her favorite Kresley hero and the magnificent, perfect heroine who refuses to back down from their fated matehood. Block off some time, as we can’t guarantee this will be anything near a normal length episode! Read Sweet Ruin at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie. Also, we promise you won’t be disappointed by the audio of this one!Show NotesIt was @jenalice1 who&nbsp;requested an epistolary interstitial."That INXS song" that played in the universe when Sarah met her husband was&nbsp;Never Tear Us Apart.Sarah didn't like the movie&nbsp;Mystery Men. (Jen did.)Text messaging has come a long way since ICQ, but it looks like there are&nbsp;ICQ nostalgia apps&nbsp;in case you miss it.We muddled through our Kristen Callihan favorites for a while: The one where&nbsp;they fuck in the library, the one&nbsp;with the virgin NFL player with the piercing, and the one&nbsp;with Scottie.When Sarah said "Mr and Mrs Smith&nbsp;but make it gay," Jen was thinking of&nbsp;The Spies Who Loved Her&nbsp;series by&nbsp;Katrina Jackson&nbsp;but couldn't remember them.Salt&nbsp;with Angelina Jolie.Archie was a non-cool name that is&nbsp;experiencing&nbsp;a&nbsp;resurgence.when Jen said Not if I Save You First was "An RWA book," she meant it was a&nbsp;RITA finalist.Atonement, fuck that book.The&nbsp;Crimea?&nbsp;The Napoleonic Wars.A still funny&nbsp;New Yorker cartoon about Power Point.The&nbsp;Vixen and the Vet&nbsp;(not that kind of Vet) has extensive heroine-groveling.The problem of how we should&nbsp;archive our personal electronic communication&nbsp;is soemthing people think about.Multimedia apps for&nbsp;The Waste Land&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ulysses.The&nbsp;Cyrano&nbsp;story is well-entrenched that it has become a trope.A perfect tweet&nbsp;from Kate Clayborn.Pre-order Brazen and the Beast from Word in Brooklyn,&nbsp;mention Fated Mates at checkout, and you'll get a bunch of cool swag.Kelly's business is&nbsp;Resistance Buttons, so check that out.Buy fun stamps, including&nbsp;these&nbsp;that Jen pre-ordered.Write some&nbsp;postcards to voters.Sweet Ruin&nbsp;is coming.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/6/24/155-epistolary-romances 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 back with The Game Makers Series this week — talking with the wonderful Sophie Jordan about her favorite book in the series, The Master! Starring Maxim Sevastyan and the first-time escort who lays him flat (in all ways), This one has all the insane sex stuff of the last Game Makers book, now with birth control insanity, and a sweet nod to holiday traditions…and a trip into the Internet to look at chastity belts.Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.&nbsp;In two weeks, IT IS HAPPENNNINNNGGGGG! We have reached Sweet Ruin, Sarah’s favorite book in the IAD series, and she is BEYOND EXCITED to talk about her favorite Kresley hero and the magnificent, perfect heroine who refuses to back down from their fated matehood. Block off some time, as we can’t guarantee this will be anything near a normal length episode! Read Sweet Ruin at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie. Also, we promise you won’t be disappointed by the audio of this one!Show NotesWelcome&nbsp;Sophie Jordan!You should listen to the&nbsp;Wicked Wallflowers podcast&nbsp;where Sophie talks about her Game Makers Series theory.The politics of&nbsp;lane-sharing at the pool&nbsp;are more complicated then you'd think!In case you don't know what&nbsp;pendejo&nbsp;means.ICYMI: one of our first interstitials was about&nbsp;the escort trope.I guess we did learn&nbsp;more about what Christian was thinking&nbsp;when she fell over the threshold in that 50 shades sequel, Grey.Is there really&nbsp;a morning after shot?The Smart Bitches gave The Master a D!&nbsp;/clutches pearlsIf you haven't read&nbsp;Lord of Scoundrels, you should.I decide who is a&nbsp;Pretty Woman&nbsp;quote. Of course.The&nbsp;Robin Hood Men in Tights chastity belt, or iron underwear as it's more commonly known.Sophie's upcoming book is&nbsp;The Duke's Stolen Bride.You can preorder signed copies of Brazen and the Beast from&nbsp;Word in Brooklyn. You can download&nbsp;Wicked and the Wallflower&nbsp;for $2 all of June."That great Kerrigan Byrne Newgate one" is called&nbsp;The Highwayman.Bitch Planet&nbsp;is an&nbsp;amazing comic.Sweet Ruin&nbsp;is coming!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/6/17/15-the-master 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.

Well, it was destined to happen sometime—we’re taking the show intergalactic! This week we’re talking about space romance and why it’s totally. fricken. bananas. Discover the series that brought Jen and Sarah together, hear us talk about prison planets, sex planets, the Muppet Show and more. Series by Grace Goodwin, Emmy Chandler, Robin Lovett &amp; Jessie Mihalik.Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.&nbsp;Also — if you have a romance loving friend, please let them know that we don’t just talk about vampires &amp; valkyries, and maybe they’d like us, too? We’re back to the Game Makers in two weeks with Jen’s favorite of the three books, The Master, and one of our favorites, Sophie Jordan! Get ready for chastity belts and string bikinis! Read The Master at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesWho knew there was so much to say about The Muppets? We both loved&nbsp;Pigs in Space, and Sarah mentioned that&nbsp;General Hospital-style&nbsp;skit.&nbsp;The Muppet Show&nbsp;is streaming on YouTube. And they're still making&nbsp;new ones!How many dudes were in Dead Poet's Society? Well, there was&nbsp;Robert Sean Leonard.&nbsp;Ethan Hawke. And&nbsp;Josh Fucking Charles, of course. And then&nbsp;these other guys.Josh Charles and his amazing man hands on The Good Wife,&nbsp;kissing Alica in an elevator.Oh, and Sarah also likes&nbsp;Sports Night&nbsp;even though&nbsp;Aaron Sorkin is definitely a problem.Muppets from Space. Omg.A few early space romances were&nbsp;Sweet Starfire&nbsp;and&nbsp;Warrior's Woman.Formative 80's space and sci-fi movies:&nbsp;Conan the Barbarian.&nbsp;Back to the Future.&nbsp;Star Wars.We deserved more than&nbsp;one kiss&nbsp;and&nbsp;real snotty offspring."Make is So," says Jean-Luc Picard.Warden Egara is giving Grace Goodwin the silent treatment.Australia&nbsp;was the original prison island.You should read&nbsp;The Most Dangerous Game. It's an amazing story.Robin Lovett is&nbsp;reading Dark Skye.Aurora Blazing&nbsp;doesn't come out until October, but you can&nbsp;read the first chapter here.Princess.&nbsp;General.Jen recommends The Chernobyl&nbsp;miniseries&nbsp;and the&nbsp;podcast. Sarah thought she was joking when she said&nbsp;I should go to twitter and ask for nuclear romances, like I hadn't thought of that already.Sarah recommends&nbsp;Booksmart.The Master&nbsp;is next, and we'll be joined by&nbsp;Sophie Jordan.The&nbsp;Moon is not a fucking part of Mars. My God.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/6/10/145-romance-in-space-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 better time than now.

We are back from vacation and Torture Island is back — surprising no one more than us! It’s Dark Skye week, Lanthe &amp; Thronos are doing some weird stuff with holey-sheets, y’all. We talk about religion and romance, the work this book does in the larger series, and—as always—patriarchy. Friend of the pod, SS Jaxon joins us, too! Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.&nbsp;We’ve got an interstitial lined up for next week, then we’re back to the Game Makers in two weeks with Jen’s favorite of the three books, The Master, and one of our favorites, Sophie Jordan! Get ready for chastity belts and string bikinis! Read The Master at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesThronos, not Thanos.Childhood best friends to lovers to enemies to lovers is one of Sarah's favorite tropes. She wrote one once, and it's only $1.99 in Kindle!We mention a lot of adventure movies in this episode, including Groundhog Day, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Time Bandits, Labrynth, and The Matrix.We also mention some of classic literature that we think Kresley might be alluding to in Dark Skye, including: Paradise Lost, The Inferno, The Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland, and many Bibilical stories including Jonah and the Whale.At one point Jen calls it "classic sci-fi" when she really meant to say fantasy. Ooops!In case you're planning to read Ulysses, make sure you have a copy of Ulysses Annotated. But I guess now there's an app for that.All about hairshirts. Ouch.If you want more about what it would be like on Feverus, maybe check out Robin Lovett's sexplanetseries.Welcome S.S. Jaxon! Here's her vagina thread and her one about the IAD cult.Are there any people having sex with a sheet with a hole in it?The tale of Icarus. If you haven't read it yet, Daedalus makes an appearance in the novel Circe by Madeline Miller, which Jen highly recommends.More about Bandherbooks love for fainting couches and the space chaise.Munro is in the wind. Someone write us some fanfic.Our next episode will be The Master, the second book in The Game Maker series.Keanu Reeves is very swoonworthy. Have you seen Always Be My Maybe yet? We have very different opinions about it, but agree that Keanu is the best.Lost Limb CountArms and Hands (8)Conrad&nbsp;cuts off his own hand with a rusty axe so he escape the "witched" chains his brothers locked him in. (Dark Needs at Night's Edge)Cadeon&nbsp;has both of his hands burned off in the same scene where he loses an eye. There's description of what Cade's baby fingers look like as they are re-growing. It's...kinda gross. (Dark Desires After Dusk)Sebastian&nbsp;pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked)Lucia&nbsp;peels all the skin off from her hand in order to free herself from some handcuffs. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)In order to retrieve the ring from&nbsp;La Dorada&nbsp;, Lothaire cuts off her finger. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)Lanthe&nbsp;and&nbsp;Carrow&nbsp;cut off Fegley's hand so they can use his thumb to unlock their torques. He's later killed. (Demon from the Dark)After receiving Lothaire's heart in a box,&nbsp;Ellie&nbsp;cuts off her middle finger and sends it to him. (Lothaire)Chloe's shoulder is dislocated in the escape from her auction (MacRieve).Chest and Torso (7)Omort severs&nbsp;Rydstrom's&nbsp;spine and punches through his torso in a fight. Sabine saves him and enlists Hag to help heal him. (Kiss of a Demon King)Lucia's neck is broken. She regenerates. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)On Torture Island,&nbsp;Regin,MacRieve,and&nbsp;Brandr&nbsp;are vivisected. It's pretty terrible. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)Declan's skin is peeled off by the Neoptera as a child. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)Lothaire rips out his own heart and sends it to Ellie in a box. (Lothaire)Head, Face, and Eyes (6)Bowen&nbsp;loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)Cadeon&nbsp;loses an eye and part of his forehead and hair when fighting. It all regenerates. (Dark Desires After Dusk)During a rugby match,&nbsp;Garreth&nbsp;has his teeth knocked out and swallows them. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)Lothaire&nbsp;kicks out La Dorada's remaining eye and throws her over a cliff. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)In the Bloodroot Forest, the tree grows over&nbsp;Lothaire's lips and tongue. (Lothaire)After she gains her immortality,&nbsp;Chloe's hair grows, but she cuts it off every morning. (MacRieve)Lanthe&nbsp;agrees to have her tongue cut out to save herself and Thronos, knowing she can still use the power of persuasion telepathically. (Dark Skye)Horns (2)Cadeon&nbsp;cuts off his own horns to prove to Holly that he is worthy of being her mate. She tells him to let them grow back (Dark Desires After Dusk)Malkolm&nbsp;is captured by his enemies in Ob

Y’all asked for more rants, and boy do we have some for you this week! Alabama passed a terrible law, Georgia and Ohio are right there with them, and other states are following suit. Jen and Sarah are talking bodily autonomy — contraception, pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, hysterectomy and abortion and how they exist in romance novels. Get your pens ready — we’ve got a library full of books to talk about. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.We’re taking a break next week (Happy Memorial Day! Eat a cheeseburger for us!)…but will be back to regular IAD programming in two weeks with Dark Skye. Get ready to have your heart ripped out by these childhood lovers turned enemies turned lovers again! Poor Lanthe has been running from her Vrekener, Thronos since Kiss of the Demon King, and finally she gets her story! Read Dark Skye at Amazon, B&amp;N, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local Indie.Show NotesThat Victoria Dahl tweet about hysteria.More about the forced birth laws sweeping through several states, and where you can donate your money if you're so inclined.How transgender and gender nonconforming people might be especially endangered from this recent spate of laws.Sarah's twitter thread asking about romances with abortion.Fanny Hill and some of the illustrations.Tinctures, tonics, and teas.The portrayal of abortion in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.The perils of abstinence-only education.Romance is a powerful tool for sex-education, but not all authors view it as a responsibility.Romance euphamisms FTW.Screenshots from the scene Sarah referenced in Jane Feather's Vixen.All about the efficacy of birth control.French Letters had to soak for two hours (at least)...oh! And we forgot the best (ACTUAL WORST) part: They were reusable. --scream emoji--Sarah says we should all watch the TV show Harlots, and not just because it shows French letters."220/221 whatever it takes," is a quote from Mr. Mom. Actually, we talked about a lot of 80s movies on today's episode, including The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. But we didn't mention Dirty Dancing which has a botched back alley abortion. We meant to...but this is what happens when you don't take good notes before you rant.This 2011 paper about condoms and birth control in romance is VERY INTERESTING.A link to the Twitter conversation about PrEP.Pulling out is weirdly more effective than you'd think for preventing pregnancy, but not at all effective for preventing STIs.All about Plan B.The Pop Culture Library at Bowling Green University is a place both Jen and Sarah would like to visit. Librarian Steve Ammidown is the 2019 RWA Librarian of the Year.Kelly Faircloth writes great articles about romance for Jezebel.Endometriosis deserves more attention than it gets.What it means to be "childless by choice."Jen's post about miscarriage in romance, and some statistics about how often miscarriages happen.25% of American women have had an abortion.Sweet Liar is the only romance that Sarah can think of that references a vasectomy--please tell us if you've got other examples?The Jezebel article wondering how many more abortion stories we have to share.If you're on FB, check out Sarah's OSRBC (Old School Romance Book club).

The Game Makers Series! Kresley’s first foray into contemporary begins with The Professional, which is some kind of book, y’all. Originally released in three parts over six weeks, The Professional stars Natalie, an American Ph.D. who happens to be the long lost daughter of a Russian mobster, and said mobster’s bodyguard, who can’t get enough of watching her in the tub. Or on his cellphone. Or tied up in a sex club. You’ll see! Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.&nbsp;In two weeks, we’re back to IAD, just like the original Kresley fans were! Get ready to have your heart ripped out by these childhood lovers turned enemies turned lovers again! Poor Lanthe has been running from her Vrekener, Thronos since Kiss of the Demon King, and finally she gets her story! Read Dark Skye at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesWhen we asked about the serialization of The Professional, listener&nbsp;Sarah Asnaashari&nbsp;came to the rescue!Serialization of novels&nbsp;used to be very common, and although we've all heard&nbsp;the myth that Dickens was paid by the word, in fact he was paid by the installment.Roxie Rivera is the author of the&nbsp;Her Russian Protector series, relevant to everyone's interests, she also wrote a "prison planet romance" series under the name&nbsp;Lolita Lopez.Eastern Promises&nbsp;is a great movie.Scroll down this list for the description of Edward's creepiness in&nbsp;Twilight.Sookie Stackhouse is a telepath&nbsp;in the books&nbsp;and&nbsp;TV show. This is an interesting essay on why Hollywood&nbsp;should stop talking about telepathy as a disability.That Wayne's World flashback noise.Jen will never get tired of the&nbsp;greatest real estate listing ever.Real hurricanes form over the Atlantic&nbsp;very similarly to the way Jen describes a hurricane of an alphahole forming.We want characters to have&nbsp;agency.The story of&nbsp;Anastasia Romanov&nbsp;is pretty amazing. Jen recommends this YA book called&nbsp;The Family Romanov&nbsp;for both adults and middle school readers.George Michael's&nbsp;Listen Without Prejudice&nbsp;is an awesome album, and Jen still thinks&nbsp;Freedom&nbsp;is one the greatest music videos of all time. Sarah's theme song is&nbsp;Too Funky.Jen recommends (in that "this book is terrifying way")&nbsp;The Man without a Face: the Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. But if you just want the quick and dirty version, read this story about how&nbsp;Putin stole a superbowl ring from Robert Kraft.The Pirate's Code.Romance author Jayne Ann Krentz often talks about how author's have a "core story."Dark Skye&nbsp;is our next IAD book.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/4/22/13-the-professional 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.

Small towns! Jen (Chicago) and Sarah (NYC) do not understand them IRL, but we are talking about them in fiction this week! Listen to us talk about their genesis, what they represent, and why Romancelandia can’t get enough of them. Books by Sierra Simone, Vanessa North &amp; Alisha Rai!Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.&nbsp;Also — if you have a romance loving friend, please let them know that we don’t just talk about vampires &amp; valkyries, and maybe they’d like us, too? In fact — In two weeks, we’re not talking about vampires at all! (Except we kind of are) The Game Makers series read-along begins with Kresley’s first contemporary, The Professional. Get ready for Wroth Brother fanfic that Kresley herself refers to as “way sexier” then IAD. Get The Professional at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesIn case you missed the&nbsp;Signet Regency&nbsp;era of romance.More about the&nbsp;Regency period, and Sarah would like you to know that she knows “a bunch of people” didn’t come between George IV &amp; Victoria. One person did: William IV.Everyone's favorite&nbsp;Darcy&nbsp;and&nbsp;Darcy-esque&nbsp;figure.Jane Austen&nbsp;and her world,&nbsp;Georgette Heyer&nbsp;and hers.Cleveland&nbsp;DOES rock, and yes the&nbsp;Cuyahoga River caught on fire, but that&nbsp;whole story is kind of a myth.Y'all know who Jen means when she talks about&nbsp;Kelly, right?The word Jen was searching for when talking about small town romances was "revisionist."Maybe it wasn't "some Russian" who talked about the two stories.Colson Whitehead&nbsp;is amazing and Jen definitely recommends seeing him in person if you ever have the chance. You can&nbsp;read his post 9/11 essay&nbsp;at the New York Times.The Whiting AwardAll about how Americans live:&nbsp;urban, suburban, or rural.Nora Roberts was profiled in the New Yorker&nbsp;and talks about her favorite small town:&nbsp;Boonsboro.Farrah Rochon&nbsp;also writes a great series of small town romances.How WalMart changes small towns.As it turns out,&nbsp;there is not a Menage County, KS.Did you say&nbsp;RITA books?Jen's favorite cupcake place in Chicago is&nbsp;Sweet MandyB's.A&nbsp;Roller Derby glossary&nbsp;and some&nbsp;video tutorials&nbsp;for all your favorite moves. Stay safe, kids!Montagues &amp; Capulets.&nbsp;Hatfields &amp; McCoys.&nbsp;Chandlers &amp; Kanes.The saddest discovery Jen made while working on this week's show notes is that&nbsp;Hot as Hades&nbsp;is no longer available as an eBook! Oh no!On Twitter, Bree Bridges of Kit Rocha asked people to&nbsp;reply with the size of a "small town."In Brooklyn, go to&nbsp;Butter and Scotch&nbsp;for cake, and based on this website, they have some very Romancelandia-friendly swag.Have you pre-ordered&nbsp;Brazen and the Beast&nbsp;yet?

MacRieve is here and so is friend of the pod, Sierra Simone! We’re so excited to talk about The Full Kresley, what makes erotic romance, The Simone Scale™ of taboo romance, why MacRieve is so tough to read, why Sarah thinks it might be Kresley’s best book, and why Chloe is such a badass. There’s a lot of hysterical laughter, and Sarah is preparing for legal action.Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.&nbsp;In two weeks, we’re starting Kresley’s contemporary series The Game Makers (we’re reading the books in original publication order) with The Professional. Get ready for Wroth Brother fanfic that Kresley herself refers to as “way sexier” then IAD. Get The Professional at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesThe&nbsp;NECRWA conference&nbsp;always sounds so great!I don't even know&nbsp;where to start&nbsp;with Andie Christopher and her Chris Evans obssession.Avengers Endgame, that ol' chesnut.We stan&nbsp;Sierra Simone, and we love The Sierra Simone Scale™. Check out her two latest,&nbsp;Misadventures of a Curvy Girl&nbsp;and&nbsp;A Lesson in Thorns.Debbie Macomber&nbsp;is a queen of small town contemporary romance.You can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me is a play on a very catchy&nbsp;ESPN phrase from back in the day.Adriana Herrera wrote about how to&nbsp;ethically write about sexual trauma&nbsp;for Smart Bitches. She also&nbsp;joined us to talk about Food Romances&nbsp;&amp; her most recent release.Adriana Anders'&nbsp;Under Her Skin&nbsp;explores a story of a woman's traumatic past, as does&nbsp;Long Shot&nbsp;by Kennedy Ryan.Suzanne from Love In Panels wrote a great&nbsp;explainer about content warnings&nbsp;and why we use them.This is a&nbsp;powerful critique of sexual violence in Game of Thrones.Just last year, two books about women and anger were published:&nbsp;Rage Becomes Her&nbsp;by Soraya Chemaly and&nbsp;Good and Mad&nbsp;by Rebecca Traister.More about&nbsp;emotional dysregulation.The&nbsp;Black Lyon by Jude Deveraux&nbsp;is an old school classic.Dick flu is definitely some&nbsp;BDE.You'd be surprised about how much writer's advice you can find about the evils of&nbsp;the info dump.The history of the Wingding.There's an entire subreddit dedicated to&nbsp;ranting about Comcast.Yankee Candle&nbsp;will eff a werewolf up.You can&nbsp;listen to Kresley&nbsp;on the Wicked Wallflowers podcast.Snakes on a plane!The story of&nbsp;Sir Walter Raleigh throwing down his cape&nbsp;for Queen Elizabeth to walk over is not historically accurate, but it still makes for a&nbsp;great scene in Shakespeare in Love.The Fifth Element&nbsp;is a completely rewatchable movie.All about&nbsp;the Mothman, who, it bears pointing out, Lothaire says exists.Here's the beginning of Sarah's stalking&nbsp;of Sierra after reading (and loving)&nbsp;Priest.Next time, we're going off road and have decided we'll be reading the first book in The Game Makers series,&nbsp;The Professional. Here's&nbsp;the reading order&nbsp;for the rest of Fated Mates Season One.Lost Limb CountArms and Hands (8)Conrad&nbsp;cuts off his own hand with a rusty axe so he escape the "witched" chains his brothers locked him in. (Dark Needs at Night's Edge)Cadeon&nbsp;has both of his hands burned off in the same scene where he loses an eye. There's description of what Cade's baby fingers look like as they are re-growing. It's...kinda gross. (Dark Desires After Dusk)Sebastian&nbsp;pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked)Lucia&nbsp;peels all the skin off from her hand in order to free herself from some handcuffs. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)In order to retrieve the ring from&nbsp;La Dorada&nbsp;, Lothaire cuts off her finger. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)Lanthe&nbsp;and&nbsp;Carrow&nbsp;cut off Fegley's hand so they can use his thumb to unlock their torques. He's later killed. (Demon from the Dark)After receiving Lothaire's heart in a box,&nbsp;Ellie&nbsp;cuts off her middle finger and sends it to him. (Lothaire)Chloe's shoulder is dislocated in the escape from her auction (MacRieve).Chest and Torso (7)Omort severs&nbsp;Rydstrom's&nbsp;spine and punches through his torso in a fight. Sabine saves him and enlists Hag to help heal him. (Kiss of a Demon King)Lucia's neck is broken. She regenerates. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)On Torture Island,&nbsp;Regin,MacRieve,and&nbsp;Brandr&nbsp;are vivisected. It's pretty terrible. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)Declan's skin is peeled off by the Neoptera as a child. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)Lothaire rips out his own heart and sends it to Ellie in a box. (Lothaire)Head, Face, and Eyes (6)Bowen&nbsp;loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)Cadeon&nbsp;loses an eye and part of his forehead and hair when fighti

Are you a sports ball fan?! Do we have romances for you! We’ve got the brilliant Jenny Nordbak from The Wicked Wallflowers podcast back for a sports romance interstitial! Listen to us chat about why we love sports books, the alpha, competence porn and books by Kennedy Ryan, Tamsen Parker, and Naima Simone!Next week, it’s (FOR REAL THIS TIME) MacRieve week with Sierra Simone! We’re so excited, and Sierra is the perfect guest for this sex-driven book! Get MacRieve at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesWelcome back to our guest&nbsp;Jenny Nordbak&nbsp;from the Wicked Wallflowers podcast!Everyone loves&nbsp;a trip to the hairdresser.Here's a list of&nbsp;the RITA finalists, and a link to&nbsp;Jen's new twitter account&nbsp;which tracks her reviews of the finalists.Author&nbsp;Bronwen Fleetwood&nbsp;crunched a bunch of&nbsp;RITA data from the past 20 years, which is how we know there are more winners named Susan (and Elizabeth, Barbara, Karen, Jennifer, Ann, Jill, Linda...) than WoC finalists.Famously, the&nbsp;Hugo Awards also struggled&nbsp;with recognizing the best books in their field.Here's what we are talking about when we talk about&nbsp;how PoC are underrepresented in publishing.Um, actully Sarah,&nbsp;Ulysses is a twitter thread.This week, Sarah told&nbsp;a pretty solid competence porn story&nbsp;about her neurosurgeon on Twitter.Kennedy Ryan has been on the Wicked Wallflowers podcast.&nbsp;Twice.Content warnings&nbsp;for Long Shot.Adriana Herrera, author and friend of the Pod, recently wrote a very important piece for the Smart Bitches about&nbsp;how to portray sexual assualt in romance.Why the Ray Rice elevator video&nbsp;is important.Jen's written about&nbsp;the whiteness of hockey romances&nbsp;for The Book Queen. Don't believe Jen? Back in 2012, commenter #11 left a plea for more hockey romances on&nbsp;this Smart Bitches post. I bet they are happy now.Susan Elizabeth Phillip's&nbsp;Chicago Stars series&nbsp;is a romance classic.There's no crying in baseball.Jen reviewed&nbsp;all&nbsp;of Tamsen Parker's&nbsp;Snow and&nbsp;Ice Games&nbsp;series.Olympics atheletes&nbsp;are busy,&nbsp;y'all.6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon&nbsp;was an&nbsp;amusing 90s pop culture game.Tennyson is a romance heroine and&nbsp;a famous poet.Listen to&nbsp;Naima's interview&nbsp;on the Wicked Wallflowers.Fumbled&nbsp;is a new football romance by Alexa Martin, and it deals with&nbsp;CTE.Get ready for&nbsp;MacRieve.

Jen and Sarah were together in the same city in the same room and just couldn’t pass up the chance to do a real-deal AMA while looking at each other’s faces! You asked, we answered…but get ready. There are some weird things in here (mainly said by Jen). Next week, it’s MacRieve week with Sierra Simone! If you think things got weird this week, just you wait! Get MacRieve at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesAt KissCon, Sarah and Sophie Jordan hosted a session called "Bananas Books" and friend of the pod&nbsp;Beth&nbsp;took notes and listed all the titles.Jen's&nbsp;Best Friend Kelly&nbsp;runs&nbsp;The Resistance Button Club, makes&nbsp;avatar buttons, and also designs stickers and swag for Romancelandia.You can see the signed copy of Wicked Abyss&nbsp;on our insta.Jen&nbsp;wrote about making new TBR collections for her Kindle&nbsp;on Twitter.Soren is one of the characters in Tiffany Reisz's&nbsp;Original Sinners series.Check out the&nbsp;IAD fan Facebook group.Check below in the photo array for the Kleypas books with&nbsp;talismans.Fridging&nbsp;is a comics term, and&nbsp;this explainer uses Deadpool 2&nbsp;to explain the history of this problematic trope.Close 3rd person point of view&nbsp;is very common in romance.Unreliable narrators&nbsp;are very uncommon in romance.Here's how to make a&nbsp;Chicago-style hot dog.A quick primer on&nbsp;archetypes.Next week, we're talking about&nbsp;MacRieve&nbsp;with the magnificent&nbsp;Sierra Simone.Sarah's newest book,&nbsp;Brazen and the Beast, comes out in July and you should pre-order it now!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2019/4/15/115-ama-with-jen-amp-sarah 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.

Lothaire is here! We’re so excited, we don’t know what to do with ourselves, but FYI, this is a longer episode than usual -- so get ready! We're talking morality chain romance, how Lothaire is a pure ass but incredibly funny, and how Ellie is pretty much the only mate he could ever have. Also, we love Nix &amp; Lothaire a lot.Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.In two weeks, one of our favorite people, Sierra Simone, is joining us to talk about The Full Kresley, and MacRieve! It's going to be a great time, we promise. Get MacRieve at&nbsp;Amazon,&nbsp;B&amp;N,&nbsp;Apple Books,&nbsp;Kobo, or&nbsp;from your local Indie.Show NotesLearn about&nbsp;tone-policing&nbsp;so you won't make Jen mad.Maybe we haven't recommended audiobook narrator&nbsp;Robert Petkoff&nbsp;to you enough.Justine Eyre is the audiobook narrator who was nominated for an Audie for Sarah's book&nbsp;Never Judge a Lady by her Cover.Love Between the Covers&nbsp;is an amazing documentary about romance, and you might be able to find it on Netflix.Everyone knows the difference between hardback and paperback books, but learn&nbsp;the difference between mass-market and trade paperbacks.During the Lothaire bus tour,&nbsp;Kresley wrote her fans this Facebook letter&nbsp;about the experience.Paul Marron&nbsp;is a very handsome man.The&nbsp;morality chain&nbsp;trope.Other famous series with villains-turned-heroes include Lisa Kleypas's Wallflowers (Devil in Winter), Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane ([Duke of Sin])10, and Sarah's Scandal &amp; Scoundrel (Day of the Duchess).Italy discovers what happens when&nbsp;everyone is raising a mammone.Lothaire breaks his life up into tasks, sort of like&nbsp;Hugh Grant in About a Boy.When Robert Downey Jr. starred at Sherlock Holmes,&nbsp;he can forecast the moves his opponents will make in a fight.On Twitter, Melanie did a very thorough count of all the times&nbsp;Lothaire punched a wall.Lothaire is very funny. Andie Christopher, friend of the pod, is very pro his cock slapping gnomes joke.Old Friends&nbsp;is a very sweet song by Simon &amp; Garfunkle, even if you aren't learning to play the ukulele.Check out the Romance Sparks Joy read-along on&nbsp;Twitter&nbsp;and&nbsp;Facebook. Get&nbsp;M. Malone's Bad Blood&nbsp;for the April 15th Read!MacRieve&nbsp;will be next, and&nbsp;Sierra Simone&nbsp;will be joining us!Lost Limb CountArms and Hands (7)Conrad&nbsp;cuts off his own hand with a rusty axe so he escape the "witched" chains his brothers locked him in. (Dark Needs at Night's Edge)Cadeon&nbsp;has both of his hands burned off in the same scene where he loses an eye. There's description of what Cade's baby fingers look like as they are re-growing. It's...kinda gross. (Dark Desires After Dusk)Sebastian&nbsp;pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked)Lucia&nbsp;peels all the skin off from her hand in order to free herself from some handcuffs. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)In order to retrieve the ring from&nbsp;La Dorada&nbsp;, Lothaire cuts off her finger. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)Lanthe&nbsp;and&nbsp;Carrow&nbsp;cut off Fegley's hand so they can use his thumb to unlock their torques. He's later killed. (Demon from the Dark)After receiving Lothaire's heart in a box,&nbsp;Ellie&nbsp;cuts off her middle finger and sends it to him. (Lothaire)Chest and Torso (7)Omort severs&nbsp;Rydstrom's&nbsp;spine and punches through his torso in a fight. Sabine saves him and enlists Hag to help heal him. (Kiss of a Demon King)Lucia's neck is broken. She regenerates. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)On Torture Island,&nbsp;Regin,MacRieve,and&nbsp;Brandr&nbsp;are vivisected. It's pretty terrible. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)Declan's skin is peeled off by the Neoptera as a child. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)Lothaire rips out his own heart and sends it to Ellie in a box. (Lothaire)Head, Face, and Eyes (5)Bowen&nbsp;loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)Cadeon&nbsp;loses an eye and part of his forehead and hair when fighting. It all regenerates. (Dark Desires After Dusk)During a rugby match,&nbsp;Garreth&nbsp;has his teeth knocked out and swallows them. (Pleasure of a Dark Prince)Lothaire&nbsp;kicks out La Dorada's remaining eye and throws her over a cliff. (Dreams of a Dark Warrior)In the Bloodroot Forest, the tree grows over&nbsp;Lothaire's lips and tongue. (Lothaire)Horns (2)Cadeon&nbsp;cuts off his own horns to prove to Holly that he is worthy of being her mate. She tells him to let them grow back (Dark Desires After Dusk)Malkolm&nbsp;is captured by his enemies in Oblivion and taken to the city of Ash. The publicly cut off his horns and then intend to kill him, but Carrow saves him. (Demon from the Dark)Legs and Feet (3)Lachlain&nbsp;tears off his own leg to reach Emma. He regenerate