Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

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

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

It’s autumn which means it’s time to start talking holiday seasons and holiday romances here at Fated Mates, so this week, we’re talking about one of Jen’s favorite category trilogies—Tiffany Reisz’s Men At Work series from Harlequin Blaze. These are sexy, subversive romances that turn tropes on their head while delivering delight. There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! Our next read-along will be Nalini Singh’s Caressed by Ice, number three (and Jen’s favorite) of the Psy-Changeling series. Get them at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, B&N or at your local indie.Show NotesTiffany Reisz is the author of the Original Sinners series and several category length romances. The Men at Work series was a Harlequin Blaze, a line that ran between 2001-2017. The ghost story one is called The Headmaster, part of a tiny stand alone Harlequin eBook series called Shivers.We’ve talked about the history of category romance on many episodes: our favorite bonkers old categories from the 80s/90s, with Steve Ammidown on the first acquisitions of Vivian Stephens, and with rare book dealer Rebecca Romney. Harlequin at the end of 2021 has 11 different lines: Desire, Heartwarming, Historical, Intrigue, Medical Romance, Presents, Romance, Romantic Suspense, Special Edition, Love Inspired, and Love Inspired Suspense. The Romance Wars section of Rebecca Romney’s romance catalog starts on page 125, and it’s fascinating. Amazon began in 1994, it had 180 thousand accounts in 1996 and a million accounts by the end of 1997. The Sony Reader was on the market starting in 2004, and the first Kindle was in 2007. Kindle Unlimited started in 2014.The Invention of Thanksgiving is a video from The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, it features an interview with Paul Chaat Smith, a member of the Comanche tribe. Debbie Reese has a great thread with resources for children’s books with Native American characters to read or avoid.Sarah recommends the TV show Happy Endings, and Flashdance is has a music video vibe rather than a movie with a plot.Compare and contrast original Loveswept back cover copy to the updated version for Sunny Chandler’s Return by Sandra Brown. Here is an explainer about how there was a traditional belief that Judaism is matrilineal, it is not a belief held by all Jewish people. This essay explains how a 1983 decision from Reform rabbis made room for children of mixed marriages to claim patrilineal descent. Order soon if you want to make sure your Fated Mates Book Pack— 8 of our 10 Best Romance Novels of 2021— from Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/11/19/s0412-the-men-at-work-trilogy-by-tiffany-reisz 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 continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Vincent Virga—author of the Gaywyck trilogy, the first m/m gothic romance, and one of the first m/m romances ending with a happily ever after. He talks about writing gay romance and about the way reading about love and happiness change readers lives. He also shares rich, wonderful stories about his vibrant life as a picture editor in publishing, about the literary set in New York City in the 70s and 80s, about writing during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, about the times in a writer’s life when the words don’t come easily, and about the times when they can’t be stopped. We are honored and so grateful that Vincent took the time to speak with us, and we hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Show NotesWelcome Vincent Virga, author of Gaywyck, the first gay gothic romance, and one of the earliest gay romances with a happily ever after. It was published by Avon in 1980. He has written several other novels, including Vadriel Vail and A Comfortable Corner. He was also the premier picture editor in the book industry. He has been with his partner, author James McCourt, author of Mawrdew Czgowchwz, for 56 years. Their collected papers are housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Today is the 41st anniversary of The Ramrod Massacre in New York City, where Vernon Kroening and Jorg Wenz were killed. Six other men were shot and injured inside the bar or on the streets near the Ramrod. Author Malinda Lo and Librarian Angie Manfredi sound the warning bell about the fights that we are facing around access to books and libraries and calls for book banning happening all around the country. Here is what you can do to help support your local library. Check out Runforsomething.net for ideas about local races where you live. Want more Vincent in your life? Here is a great interview from 2019 on a blog called The Last Bohemians, and this 2011 interview on Live Journal. Daisy Buchanan cries that she's never seen such beautiful shirts in The Great Gatsby, and We Get Lettersis a song from the Perry Como show.People Vincent mentioned: Susan Sontag, Maria Callas, opera singer Victoria de los Ángeles, editor Elaine Markson, Jane Fonda, Armistead Maupin, poets John Ashbery and James Merrill, Hillary and Bill Clinton, editor Alice Mayhew, Gwen Edelman at Avon Books,  Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse, publisher Bob Wyatt, John Ehrlichman from Watergate, author Colm Tóibín, poet Mark Doty, Truman Capote, poet and translator Richard Howard, Shelley Winters, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, and Kim Novak. The museum Vincent was a part of in County Mayo, Ireland, is The Jackie Clarke Collection.The twisty turny secret book that made him a lover of Gothics was Wilkie Collins's Woman in White. Vincent is also a lover of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, and Henry Bellamann's King's Row.A few short pieces abaout the AIDS epidemic: the impact of the epidemic on survivors in the queer community, and how the American government ignored the crisis.

This week, we’re continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Beverly Jenkins—the first Black author of historical romance featuring Black main characters. We talk about her path to romance writing, about how librarians make the best writers, and about her role as the first Black historical romance novelist. We’re also talking about writing in multiple sub genres, about lifting up other authors, and about the importance of the clinch cover.Thank you to Beverly Jenkins for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story. There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack (which includes Beverly’s Wild Rain!) from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Show NotesWelcome Beverly Jenkins, the author of more than 50 romance novels, and the recipient of the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for historical romance. You can hear Beverly’s interview on the Black Romance History podcast, and last February, Jen interviewed her for Love’s Sweet Arrow when Wild Rain was released. Wild Rain was also one of our best of 2021 romance novels. Beverly Jenkins's first agent was Vivian Stephens. You can listen to Julie Moody-Freeman's interview with Vivian in two parts on the Black Romance Podcast. Some of the people Beverly mentioned: sweet romance author Laverne St. George, author Patricia Vaughn, author Anita Richmond Bunkley, publisher Walter Zacharius, editor Ellen Edwards, editor Christine Zika, cover designer Tom Egner, author Shirley Hailstock, author Donna Hill, author Brenda Jackson, editor Monica Harris, author Gay Gunn, marketing expert Adrienne di Pietro, editor Erika Tsang, agent Nancy Yost, Romantic Times owner Kathryn Falk, and Gwen Osborne from The Romance Reader. Here’s more information about 1994, the summer of Black love, and here’s a PDF of Beverly Jenkins’s 1995 profile in People Magazine.

It’s time for our favorite episode of the year — the one when we topple TBR piles! It’s our Best Books of 2021 episode — ten books that got us through this wild, not always great year—books with fabulous heroines, heroes who aren’t sure about feelings, delicious sexy bits, and stories that swing for the fences. You will not be disappointed. Buy the Fated Mates Best of Book Pack in one fell swoop from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid the snafus arising all over from supply chain issues. Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Best Romance Novels of 2021Hana Khan Carries OnCareless Whispers by Synithia WilliamsScoundrel of My Heart by Lorraine HeathRun Posy Run by Cate C. WellsFor the Love of April French by Penny AimesAll the Best Nights by Hanna EarnestIt Happened One Summer by Tessa BaileyWild Rain by Beverly JenkinsAfter the Billionaire's Wedding Vows... by Lucy MonroeThe Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India HoltonShow NotesYou can order the Fated Mates Best of 2021 box from Old Town Books in Alexandria. The supply chain is a mess, especially for books.Why does it always seem like cosmetics companies are discontinuing your favorite products? “Big mistake, huge,” is a quote from Pretty Woman, of course. Dario is a psychopath, but Jen wasn’t about to let that stop her. Everyone loves Schitt’s Creek, but you don’t need to know about Alexis Rose to enjoy It Happened One Summer. A Star is a Born has a truly terrible ending, no matter which version of the movie you watched. Author Aviva Blakeman wrote some really thought-provoking threads about groveling and the grand gesture. Jen still loves the grovel, but Aviva's threads are a great reminder of how many ways there are to write a romance. A Carl Sandburg poem about the fog. You know how Jen is.

2021 has been kind of a mess, honestly, and Sarah hasn’t been reading as much as usual, because *waves hands at the world.* But Hana Khan Carries On is a total delight and exactly the book she needed this year, so we’re reading it with you! We’ll talk about romcoms, authorial voice, podcasting heroines, about how much we enjoy heroes who deserve a bit of cold storage, about writing contemporaries that reflect the time we live in, and about first person narration and why it works really well when it works really well. Also, Sarah tries to get herself invited to hang out with Uzma Jalaluddin and tries to trademark a Ted Lasso reference all in one episode. It’s rough out here. Leave her alone.Get ready for more trailblazers and our Best of 2021 episode this month! Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three holiday themed category romances. Read one or all of them: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday and One Hot December.Show NotesThis week’s book is Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin. Her first novel was Ayesha At Last, which was a Pride & Prejudice retelling. Mindy Kaling is adapting Hana Khan for Amazon. The Folio Society has a new version of Georgette Heyer’s Venetia. The introduction is by Stephen Fry, who is a real champion of poetry, including a great book about the joys of reading and writing poetry called The Ode Less Travelled.The dating app invented for Ted Lasso is called Bantr. If you can’t identify different voices, maybe it’s because we all have podcast voice. In the ReadsRomance family, we call Toronto Clean Chicago….because well, I think it explains itself. The Golden Crescent might be an invented neighborhood for this book, but it seems similar to Toronto’s Crescent Town. If you’d like more information about what it means when food or a restaurant is Halal. Perhaps you do not know about  biryani, an Indian delicacy, or poutine, a Canadian one.Jen was right about the meaning of the word pillory.This book has aspects of the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, which had a terrible ending. From what we can tell, the NPR of Canada is CBC radio.In some recent books, we get an unflinching portrayals of toxic white women on page---characters like Marissa in this book, or Misty in American Dreamer. Adriana Herrera was a guest on last year for an interstitial about the immigrant experience.Our next read-alongs will be the Tiffany Reisz Men at Work series, which is three books. Read one or read them all: Her Halloween Treat, Her Naughty Holiday, and One Hot December.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/11/1/s0408-hana-khan-carries-on-by-uzma-jalaluddin If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

This week, we’re thrilled to have Rebecca Romney with us! Rebecca is a rare books dealer and the woman behind The Romance Novel in English, a 100-lot collection of rare romance novels and other romance-adjacent paraphernalia. We had a great time talking to her about the collection, her motivation to develop it, her hopes for its future at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, and about how romance lovers can start thinking about collecting books! We hope you love this one as much as we did!Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Khan Carries On. Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie. Show NotesWelcome Rebecca Romney. She is the cofounder of Type Punch Matrix, a rare books firm based in Washington DC. She started out working at Bauman Rare Books in Las Vegas. You can also watch her in action from old appearances on Pawn Stars where she routinely broke people’s hearts about the values of their rare books.Rebecca recently put together a collection that was purchased by the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana called The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in English 1769-1999. You can follow Lilly Librarian Rebecca on twitter; they sound like a great resource for romance, and for planning a visit! On the episode, we extensively discuss some of the general themes and specific items in the catalogue. Two authors that didn’t make it into the catalogue because Rebecca couldn’t find copies: Eliza Haywoodand Evelina by Frances Burney.The Elizabeth Lowell book about a gold dealer in Las Vegas is called Running Scared and is part of the Rarities Unlimited series. Gold books aren't really a thing, but gold leaf and illumiated manuscripts are. Here’s an explainer on The Gutenberg Bible and a clip from Pawn Stars where an individual leaf is available, and here is a page from a 2021 auction site selling a leaf. But remember that bookmaking in China was far more advanced at that time. Or maybe you’d be interested in knowing more about Newton’s Principia. Although I couldn’t find an article about the history of Jewish booksellers, I did find an interview with Adam Kirsch, an author who wrote a book called The People and the Books, about the importance of books to Jewish people throughout history. On our Trailblazers episode with Radclyffe, she talked about the importance of queer bookstores. What is the difference between ARCs and first editions? Time to check and see if your copy of The Flame and the Flower to see if it's a first edition.Jen called it a garage sale and Sarah called it a Tag sale, which is exactly right considering where they grew up. Foxing isn’t as sexy as you’d think when we’re talking about rare books.The 2019 Rita ceremony included a video of romance firsts.In John Markert’s Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present, he discusses a series called Adam that failed because they were romances only from the hero’s point of view.Time to shake all your Sweet Valley High books out of your closet, fellow Gen-Xers.

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

This week, we’re continuing our Trailblazer episodes with Radclyffe—author of lesbian romances and founder of the LGBTQIA+ publisher, Bold Strokes Books. We talk about her path to romance as a reader and an author, and a publisher, about the early days of queer romance, about the importance of independent booksellers to the queer community, and about how readers find themselves in books.Thank you to Radclyffe for taking the time to talk to us, and share her story. Our next read along is Uzma Jalaluddin’s Hana Kahn Carries On. Find it at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local indie. This episode sponsored by Radish: Bottomless content; one cute app. Visit radish.social/fatedmates for 24 free coins and to read your first Radish story.Show NotesWelcome Radclyffe, romance author and founder of Bold Strokes Books. The internet archive has preserved her fanfiction site. Bookstores mentioned: Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, Womancrafts in Provincetown, and an article about the current state of Queer bookstores in America. Publishing and Distributors Radclyffe mentioned: Naiad Press, founded by Barbara Greer, Sarah Aldridge, and Muriel Crawford; Regal Crest Enterprises is now Flashpoint Publications; Fawcett; Bella Booksfounded by Linda Hill; and Alyson Books.Awards mentioned: Lambda Literary Awards, and the RWA Prism awardFurther Reading: Creating a Literary Culture: A Short, Selective, and Incomplete History of LGBT Publishing, Part I, Part 2, and Part 3 by Michael Neva in the LARB.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/10/10/s0405-trailblazer-radclyffe 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.