Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

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

Adriana Herrera, a FIVE-TIMER, joins us this week to talk about the third-rail of romance…infidelity! We’re talking about cheating, and about all the other bits related to it: mistresses, courtesans, illegitimate children, sex work…and get your pencils ready because (of course) we’re toppling TBRs with this one. Don’t miss Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here! Speaking of BOMBSHELL, it is our next read along! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or at one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders will come with a Fated Mates Sticker! Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.Show NotesWelcome to five-timer Adriana Herrera, our very own Rizzo, and her Pink Lady jacket is on the way. PS. It was only in working on these show notes that Jen realized that Rizzo’s first name is Betty. The phrase “safe romance” is used in online spaces to describe books without a single molecule of infidelity energy. Infidelity in evangelical christianity (and everywhere, honestly) often places the blame on the wife if her husband strays and also on  “the evil other woman” -- in this model, you know who’s not to blame? Men.And that’s pure patriarchy. Lavender wasn’t invented because it’s a plant and its known history dates back 2500 years. Courtesan culture was inextricably tied to colonialism in India, in China, and in the USA.Summer Brennan’s patreon about The Book of Courtesans. Hallie Rubenhold's Covent Garden Ladies, which is the book that inspired the Hulu TV show Harlots, is about Harris's List of London "working girls." The Spanish word for wife is esposa, which means handcuffs or manacles, while the word for mistress is amante, which means beloved.We have had some deep dive episodes where there is infidelity: Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath and Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry ThomasThere are so many bastards in historical romance, partly because it’s an easy on-ramp for creating a character who is an outsider.Ethical non-monogamy is the practice of talking to your partner(s) about the boundaries of your relationship. Polyamorous and Open relationships would fall into this category. On Maryse’s Book Blog, there was a 2015 post about cheating in romance, and most of the titles are self-published and indie.Sarah talked about Lorenzo Lamas and Dynasty and Jen and her brother Mike talked about Santa Barbaraon Adriana’s Instagram Live conversations about telenovelas and soap operas. We are having a live episode of Fated Mates to celebrate the launch of Bombshell on August 24th at 7 eastern, to get a ticket, you'll need to buy a copy from one of these indie bookstores. (If you already pre-ordered from WORD in Brooklyn, you'll get log in details in an email.) The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/8/1/s0351-mistresses-courtesans-and-cheating-in-romance-interstitial-with-adriana-herrera If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

We’re nearing the end of Season Three and we are so happy to be reading one of the most delightful books in modern historical romance, Cat Sebastian’s Unmasked by the Marquess. We talk about Cat’s masterful plotting within a three-act structure, about friendship, trust and sacrifice in relationships, and about writing a modern historical while still delivering the bananas plots that made the early books in the genre the best.We also announce our next Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here! Our next read along is Sarah’s BOMBSHELL! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or signed via Sarah’s local indie, WORD, or one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders from WORD or the launch sponsors will come with a Fated Mates Sticker! Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.Show NotesThe virtual launch event for Bombshell will be on Tuesday Aug 24 at 7eastern/4 pacific. If you pre-ordered a signed book from Word!, keep an eye out for details for how to join the event.Unmasked by the Marquess received excellent reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and the New York Times. A guide to nonbinary pronouns.The audiobook of Unmasked by the Marquess is great, and narrated by Joel Leslie. Cat Sebastian is a fanfiction expert and routinely talks about some of her favorite fics. If you don’t know, the Stucky ship of Cap & Bucky is the most written about ship on Ao3. “Natural child” was the nice way of saying that a child was born out of wedlock. The mean way, of course, is bastard.More about the three act structure.This is a great interview with Cat Sebastian in Jezebel about writing queer characters in historical romance.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/26/s0350-unmasked-by-the-marquess-by-cat-sebastian If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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

“Hang on,” we can hear you saying, “isn’t this a romance novel podcast?” It absolutely is, and that’s why we’re dropping a very special episode about the character who is the most perfect on-screen version of a romance hero that ever there was: Captain of the AFC Richmond team, Roy Kent. Added bonus, we’re joined by Jen’s brother Erik to talk sports stories (and check in on Jürgen Klopp).Spoilers abound, so if you haven’t watched Season 1, do that first!Our next read along is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful! Show NotesTed Lasso season two starts this Friday, and the reviews look great. Also, if you haven't read this GQ profile of Jason Sudeikis, you are missing out.In season 2, we talked about Cinnamon Roll heroes, as compared to Alpha heroes. Grunting is definitely an alpha hero trait. We love Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca) and Juno Temple (Keeley) and that’s all we have to say about that. Apparently, there are ways to watch Apple TV Plus shows even if you don’t have an Apple Device. Who knew! You, too, can bake Ted’s biscuits. USAians have a different relationship with Soccer than the rest of the world. Perhaps you need a primer on the Premier League, promotion and relegation, the average age of Premier League players, and just how popular is Premier League football really is.Fated Mates has a favorite team, it’s Liverpool, and it’s basically because of our favorite stern brunch daddy TM, Jürgen Klopp. Stern Brunch Daddy(tm) is the invention of Andie J. Christopher, friend of the pod, who has a new book out this week! Richmond is a fake team, but that won’t stop you from buying gear to show your team spirit. This year, London was home to six Premier League teams: Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham, and West Ham United.Yes, Jen hates it when young characters make ancient pop culture references in romances, but in this case, Indiana Jones is appropriate for people our age! Go ahead and write I Love You on your eyelids! More about the story of how Brett Goldstein got the part of Roy Kent. Jen’s sister-in-law Janine writes for TV and she’s kind of a big deal! Susan Elizabeth Philips was a guest a few weeks ago, and she talked about the trope of the grizzled veteran at the end of his career and how it’s a hallmark of the Chicago Stars series.Jen mentioned a series of soccer romances--it’s the Atlanta Skyline series by Rebecca Crowley.You know, Roy Kent really should have tried to get that Rolex back. In a New York Times article about adapting romance to TV and film, Outlander showrunner Matthew B. Roberts “found that voice-over sequences left actors standing around with nothing to play against. Interior monologue has to become exterior dialogue. ‘That’s our biggest challenge always.’“It’s witched” was a joke from our very first episode, in case you’re into that sort of thing. That German word (phrase?) is sturm und drang and it means turmoil.No topping from the bottom.Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey is an archetype that values community building over individualism, we like the latest iteration from Gail Carriger.Rupert Mannion is the woooooorst. That darts scene is awesome though, and if you want to read a contemporary romance set in a pub that includes darts playing, Sarah wrote one!Other sports TV shows and movies we mentioned: Friday Night Lights, Sports Night, The League, Bull Durham, and Major League. Maybe you didn’t know that the character of Ted Lasso originated in a series of TV commercials for NBC. Bill Lawrence was a producer for Spin City and Scrubs, which were other funny workplace comedies. In the past few weeks, Italy won the Euro 2020 and Argentina won the Copa America. And the Olympics football competition will be interesting since men’s teams are limited to players under 23 years of age. FYI, the US Soccer Federation is pretty awful. For Generation X and Millenials, soccer was a big deal. If you are interested in a family friendly sports outing, maybe your city has a professional soccer team! The Chicago Fire is awesome, and New York has two teams! The 1994 World Cup was played in the USA, and Sarah remembered the name of defender Alexi Lalas. Now he’s a commentator and we would like him to do better. So there are trick plays in football and . . .  well, football.The last few decades of television have focused on the antihero, and lots of people wonder if that didn’t help create our recent political moment. It’s hard to beat the fan experience of singing You’ll Never Walk Alone at Anfield; but Erik recommends this 2019 video of the team and fans singing after Liverpool defeated Barcelona. The version in the last episode of season 1 of Ted Lasso is this one by Marcus Mumford. Follow AFC Richmond, Ted Lasso, Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein on Twitter. Jürgen Klopp does not have Twitter because "he is a grown man with a job."You can preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word in Brooklyn, buttons and stickers from Best Friend Kelly, and Fated Mates merch from Jordan Dene.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/18/s0348-is-roy-kent-a-romance-hero-the-ted-lasso-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 Taboo Romance week! We’re thrilled to be joined by Nikki Sloane, whose books we’ve adored for years here on FM. We talk about what makes a romance taboo, about why readers are drawn to taboo stories, and about whether taboo romance is empirically erotic. Our next read along is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful! Show NotesWelcome Nikki Sloane! We discussed her novel Three Little Mistakes in season two. Her latest release in the Filthy Rich Americans series, The Redemption, won the Holt Award from the Virginia Romance Writers Association and has been nominated for the inaugural Vivian Award from the Romance Writers of America.We had an episode about age-gap romance, but when the woman is older sometimes we use the phrase Cougar, which I do not recommend googling! Taboo romance is difficult to define. But on the episode, we talked about three major ideas: it explores power dynamics, it contains an element of the forbidden, and is makes readers viscerally feel that the relationship is “wrong.” However, Nikki also used the phrase “universal taboos” to describe topics so forbidden--beastality and incest--that they could never be a part of romance. In a Florida high school, the necklines of women and girls were photoshopped (without their knowledge) if there was too much cleavage.We’ve been digging the priest taboo since The Thorn Birds, and it was revived in pop culture by the TV show Fleabag. We discussed Sierra Simone’s Priest in season two. As we reckon with #MeToo, we are all thinking about and redefining power dynamics in our culture. Incest is a common trope in horror and other gothic stories, it didn’t originate with Flowers in the Attic. Don’t forget to preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word in Brooklyn.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/13/s0347-taboo-romance-interstitial-with-nikki-sloane If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

We are so excited to have absolute romance legend Susan Elizabeth Phillips with us to discuss every fangirly question we had for her! We talked about her new book, When Stars Collide, the latest in the Chicago Stars series, about her role in inventing the sports romance, about the opera and the way she thinks about her career after a few decades of writing. We had the BEST time. Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful! Show NotesWelcome Susan Elizabeth Phillips! We talked about an earlier book in the Chicago Stars series, Nobody’s Baby But Mine in season two. Speaking of amazing stories about opera singers, last week, an opera singer in Pennsylvania gave birth in the car while her husband was driving. As it turns out, the Opera in Verona is a pretty big deal! If you’re ever in Chicago, go to The Lyric Opera and then let Jen know because she wants someone to go with her. The Chicago Children’s Choir is amazing, too and they often collaborate with the CSO and Lyric Opera.All you need to know about the totally awesome Chicago Flag, and why it's better than most city flags. The Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women anthology, which explored the genre from the perspective of romance authors instead of academics, was published in 1992.Jen was on Learning the Tropes to talk about Kiss an Angel if you want to hear more about it. There are really cool things and really bad things about the Chicago River. You can preorder signed copies of Bombshell from Word Bookstore in Brooklyn.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/7/6/s0346-susan-elizabeth-phillips If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

We promised you an episode on Dark Romance and truthfully we’re pretty proud of how well we’ve delivered. We’ve got Kenya Goree-Bell, Nisha Sharma, Joanna Shupe and Jo Brenner with us today to dig deep on this subgenre that we don’t read regularly. We are endlessly grateful for their guidance through this end of the romance pool! We talk about what makes a romance “dark,” about how dark romance differs from morality chain and taboo romance, and about why dark romance resonates with so many readers. Oh, and yes, if you’re curious, we fill your TBR pile (obvi). Stay tuned at the end of the episode for additional reflections from Sarah & Jen.CONTENT NOTE: Because Dark Romance can include all sorts of problematic content, we don’t shy away from many of those topics in this episode. Proceed with caution, both in listening and in reading.AUDIO NOTE: Due to countless irregularities, expected and unexpected, the audio in this episode isn’t up to our normal standards. But it sounds fine. Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful! Show NotesWelcome our panel of dark romance experts: Kenya Goree-Bell, Nisha Sharma, Joanna Shupe, and Jo Brenner.The hallmarks and tenets of Dark RomanceAll dubious consent and non-consent romance is dark romance (although not all dark romance has dubcon or nonconsensual elements).It’s about what the HEA is made up of: If the non-aggressor or non-villian moves into the dark (rather than pulling the other into the light), then it would qualify as dark romance.Often the aggressor/villain is static, while the non-aggressor finds their light or strength in the new world they exist in. This person does all the work and learns how to navigate a life around the aggressor and their world. These are not stories of love redeeming, but rather of learning to find love and happiness with the person (people) in front of you.The characters are suffering from current or past psychological or physical trauma. The non-aggressor represents the last bits of humanity that the aggressor has to hold on to. Dark romance explores a relationship where only one person has strains of humanity and the impact it has on a person without it.The evil and violence of the aggressor must take place on the page.Some Terms we'll use on this episodeConsensual non-consent (non-con): is when romantic partners engage “in behaviors that may include role-playing nonconsensual behaviors, or may involve negotiating sexual behaviors where one partner agrees to give up consent during certain behaviors or relationships.” This can include fantasizing about rape and kidnapping, and lots of women have complicated feelings about these fantasies. Dubious consent (dub-con): is the gray area between full, enthusiastic consent and rape. A person hasn't give outright consent to having sex and might not consider it rape; however, some other factor prevents them from saying no. The Aggressor: rather than use hero/heroine, Jo started using aggressor and non-aggressor as a way of talking about chracters who exhibit very non-heroic behavior. The skin suit: What Jen calls the experience of reading a book where she wants more distance between herself and the main characters.The Murder Meal: Sarah noticed that a common trope of dark romance is a meal where blood is shed and people still continue to eat.More NotesYou may have listened to our Morality Chain episode, where we made a graphic explaining how it differs from dark romance. Next month, Nikki Sloane will join us to discuss taboo romance. It’s not Mordor unless you’re a hobbit. Sarah is not opposed to elevensies, so it's fine.Earlier this year, there was a Saturday Night Live skit about women watching The Murder Show. Why do women like reading about serial killers? Did you see this essay in Slate about a woman who thinks she slept with a man who went on to be a serial killer?Game of Thrones and it’s penchant for sexual violence is still influencing pop culture. The only thing that’s forbidden in dark romance is cheating, which shows how firmly these books are rooted in the romance genre, as compared to the rampant cheating by male characters The Godfather and other mafia movies, but this is often rooted in obsession rather than a belief in monogamy. While there's very little (possibly no) research on readers of dark romance, but there's lots of research on the horror genre. Sarah’s friend Micol Ostow, who writes YA horror recommended this essay about  the "spectacle of the ruined body." Meanwhile, Jen follows Becky Spratford, a librarian and horror expert, who says that one thing romance and horror have in common is they are both “genres of emotion.”There’s some research on horror and spoilers from Jonathan Leavitt & Nicholas Christenfeld which indicates that spoilers might allow people to enjoy a story more fully. Perhaps dark romance readers, regardless of what terrible things happen, can safely continue reading because they know there will be an HEA.Why do we like to watch and read media where characters are undergoing trauma? In The Paradox of Horror: Fear as a Positive Emotion, Katerina Bantinaki explains how readers experience reading about fear and trauma. Related: [(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? By G. Neil Martin. A highly gendered kind of world exists in many m/f Dark Romances, and the article Her Body, Himself: Gender in Slasher Films by Carol Clover explores how similar themes play out in horror movies. As Nisha said, there are queer and polyamarous dark romance and a few the panel recommends are  Soul Survivor by Daniel de Lorne, the Wicked Villains Series by Katee Robert, Trouble or the Darkness trilogy by Nora Ash, and Manipulate by Pam Godwin.Stockholm Syndrome isn’t real, quelle surprise, but it still a popular idea in pop culture of all kinds. Many dark romance novels show characters using extreme or maladaptive coping strategies in an attempt to heal themselves or others without the help of therapists or medicine, a particularly American problem since so few people have adequate (if any) coverage for mental health.Dark romance runs long, they’re all “Zack Snyder cut” books. We speculated that there are two reasons for the length of many of these books: 1) The books are long because the trauma on page must have an equal or greater redemption arc. Readers must believe that the non-agressor has fully accepted the bad deeds of the aggressor in order to believe the HEA. 2) Many of these books are on KU, which means authors are getting paid by the page. Like Charles Dickens, the incentive is to write longer to increase their pay.

We’re back to read alongs this week! We’re big Kylie Scott fans here at Fated Mates, and we talked about her Stage Dive series all the way back in Season One on our very first interstitial, and now we’re doing a deep dive. We’d intended to do book three, Lead, but we ended up talking about all four, and honestly, rereading this was pretty great for us. We hope it was great for you, too. Our next read along, sometime in July, is Cat Sebastian’s wonderful Unmasked by the Marquess. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org.Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!Show NotesSarah has a book coming on August 24th! Preorder Bombshell now. You won't regret it.Everyone is struggling with getting dressed again. It’s a 1001 in the 1001 Dark Nights series as an homage and allusion to Scheherazade, the story-teller of the Arabian Nights. We also love the VIP series by Kristen Callihan, and the 4th book in that series, Exposed, comes out next month, July 2021.On our upcoming episode with Susan Elizabeth Phillips, where she told us that back in the day, “rock stars, actors, and athletes” were not allowed in the early days of romance. We aren’t sure why, but we speculate that it was fear of putting “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and other high roller lifestyles on page. If you want to join the OSRBC group (Old School Romance Book Club) on Facebook, make sure to answer the three questions if you want to be admitted.Beverly Jenkins liked the Stage Dive series, too.Andi Arndt is the narrator of all Kylie’s books, including the entire Stage Dive series, and Jen thinks she is terrific. The Captains’ Vegas Vows has a similar set up to Lick: waking up married in Vegas, and only one of them remembered what happened. “Retcon” is a word that started out as shorthand for retroactive continuity, and here’s a piece from Merriam-Webster explaining its remarkable elasticity.Hyperemesis gravidarum is the medical term for severe morning sickness, which affects about one percent of pregnant people. DC comics claims that Batman doesn’t go down, but the internet and everyone else on twitter and even Zach Snyder disagred. But in all seriousness, maybe it's just another interesting data point about America turning back towards the Hays Code and continuing to remove sex from all kinds of media.Thelma and Louise does have a great ending, you can’t argue with that. And since 2021 is the 30th anniversary of the film’s release, there are lots of interesting retrospectives on the movie.Desmond Morris is an English zoologist who outlined the 12 stages of intimacy -- hey, humans are animals, too! Our July interviews will be with Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Nicola Yoon, and Nikki Sloane. Our July read-along is Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/6/19/s0344-the-stage-dive-series-by-kylie-scott If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

We’re welcoming Tia Williams, author of the wonderful Seven Days in June, to talk about her delicious book, about writing writers, about romances set in New York City, about her youth as a romance reader, and about Drew Barrymore as inspiration, and about The Joan Wilder?!. Our next read along is Kylie Scott’s Lead, one of our longtime favorites. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org! Get the others in the series, too, while you’re at it, because you’ll probably want to read the whole thing. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful! Show NotesIf you want a signed copy of Bombshell along with a Fated Mates sticker, preorder from Word Bookstore in Brooklyn. Welcome Tia Williams! Her new release, Seven Days in June, is Reese’s Book Club pick for June. In this article in Ebony, Tia talks about her commitment to putting Black love on page and creating rich, interesting lives for Shane and Eva. Eva’s website is EvaMercyMe, and her vampire hero is Sebastian. And according to Twitter, all romance Sebastians are good Sebatians. Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown is quite the read, and we talked about it on the Texas!Chase episode.The question of “what if Romeo and Juliet met as grown-ups” was also the idea behind Kate Clayborn’s Love at First, and we talked about it with Kate on an episode about retellings in romance. Drew Barrymore’s memoir Little Girl Lost is the story of her childhood in Hollywood, and definitely was hugely influential and shocking, and it still is worth a read if you can find a copy. It hasn't been digitized! Jen talked to Adriana Herrera about how people might self-harm, cut, and use other extreme coping mechanisms if they have experienced trauma. The Brooklyn Book Festival is not for the faint of heart. More about the quote “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”The Argeneau series by Lynsay Sands started with started with A Quick Bite in 2005, and book 33, Mile High with a Vampire comes out in Sept of 2021. Want to watch that TikTok about The Unhoneymooners? Romancing the Stone is a great movie from the 80s, and “The Joan Wilder!?” is a line from the movie. And, friend of the pod Linda has a t-shirt you might like. What’s looking like a great movie with a similar set up is The Lost City of D with Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock. Next week, we’ll be discussing Lead (and the other books in the Stage Dive series) by Kylie Scott.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/6/13/s0343-writers-in-romance-interstitial-with-tia-williams If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.