00:02:36.740I read romance novels and I write them.
00:02:39.020and I'm the host of the Fated Mates podcast, which is a romance novel podcast.
00:02:44.640So this is another installment in our ongoing series on romance. So we've talked about
00:02:50.160contemporary romance. We've talked about queer romance, romance bookstores,
00:02:55.180the world of self-publishing and romance. And today we're going to do a deep dive on historical
00:02:59.820romance. And you are far and away the guest host that everyone begged for.
00:03:04.480Well, I'm so thrilled to hear it, but also just anytime, I feel like anytime anybody in the whole world wants to talk about historical romance, they can call me, text me, write me, carry a pigeon. I'm always ready.
00:03:18.400So beyond like the obvious shifts in time and place, like what do you think sets historical romance apart, either as like a subgenre to read or as a field to work in?
00:03:28.520Yeah, well, I mean, there's the obvious, which you just said, obviously, we're talking about books that are written, although now it sort of feels like what is historical is a interesting question in the sense of somebody told me the other day, and I think they are correct that books written in the 90s, the 1990s, last century, as my child would like to say, is are also historical, which
00:03:53.760no listen it's hard out here are you noticing it's hard out here that makes like john grisham
00:04:00.900like historical novels do you know what i mean it's like oh the the setting of like being a
00:04:06.360lawyer in the 90s like severance is historical fantasy what yeah no so what about writing in it
00:04:17.600what do you think like differentiates the people who are writing in it so i think romance in general
00:04:22.280you've done so many incredible conversations with so many brilliant people and we've all I feel like
00:04:26.720we've all kind of painted a really broad picture of romance and in general romance is a genre of
00:04:32.680feelings and a genre of hope and a genre of sort of this sense of happily ever after being a
00:04:39.180cornerstone of the genre tends to be diminished into well it has to be happily ever after between
00:04:45.400two you know the protagonists right two three however many people are in the book but happily
00:04:50.220ever after means something different, right? It also means that we've left the world in kind of
00:04:54.300a better place. We are on an arc of moral justice, maybe, right, is how I like to think of romance
00:05:02.200in general, although I appreciate that not every romance does this kind of work. But I think for
00:05:08.100historical specifically, it is about dialing all of that up. We have permission in our world
00:05:14.800to dial the feelings up to 11, to dial all the conversation up to 11. The discourse in historical
00:05:23.440can be more overt in a lot of ways than it can be in contemporary, for example. I think we are
00:05:30.040the closest in DNA to romanticcy. We're siblings to romanticcy in a lot of ways because my
00:05:40.860characters, for example, can justifiably punch bad guys in the face, can, you know, do kind of
00:05:48.180wild things. They can blow up Scotland Yard. They can do things that in contemporary would make a
00:05:55.760reader hesitate. But I have permission to be a little bit more bananas. Yeah. No, and I think
00:06:06.100that's part of why it's my favorite genre is because it's transportative in that capacity
00:06:11.240I spend a lot of time thinking about the realities of how the world is today and so when I'm reading
00:06:18.000something that discounts those realities in some way like it becomes an incredible point of narrative
00:06:23.380friction for me whereas historically it can transport you in a way that is like okay I know
00:06:30.880enough about this so that like this all makes sense to me and i think sometimes historians
00:06:35.820specifically historians of a certain period might sometimes have a little bit more difficulty
00:06:40.380consuming historical romances because they are for sure not always different thing yes exactly
00:06:46.400and i think it's kind of like doctors watching er you know what i mean like exactly i think this is
00:06:52.760an exact this isn't exactly my experience and you're like it's not supposed to be exactly your
00:06:56.760experience like we're doing something more interesting here well like i saw a historian
00:07:00.580yesterday on threads posted there was an early photograph of matt damon dressed up in christopher
00:07:05.900nolan's the odyssey right and he was wearing the like classic like helmet with the like giant you
00:07:11.800know mohawk thing yeah and you know a cape and gladiator sandals and the historian was like you
00:07:18.540have to understand that while all of you are just tripping over how amazing this is historians are
00:07:23.940like this is 10 9-11s and I was like that's that is often how it feels when I meet somebody who is
00:07:34.080who likes historical fiction or who reads biographies or like once you know you often run
00:07:40.340into someone who a dad it's often a dad who has read every biography of Napoleon right and you're
00:07:49.040writing Regency and he's like well you know what's the how are you tackling the Napoleonic
00:07:55.280Wars and I'm like I'm not I'm not in any way tackling that is not my job right right but I
00:08:02.260think it's really interesting because that's not my job on so many levels like it's not the job
00:08:08.020of historical romance to relitigate history it is the job of historical romance to show joy
00:08:14.800throughout history and to show what we do is we use we use history as a kind of wallpaper
00:08:22.680to highlight what is happening now bodily autonomy is a really interesting conversation
00:08:30.060in in relation to romance in general right like abortion you rarely see it on the page in in
00:08:36.240romance um and there are lots of reasons why but historical has always been the genre of like
00:08:42.600tinctures and tonics yep they like have unprotected sex and then like the next day your medieval knight
00:08:49.760goes to the local witch and gets you a tonic and it's like we've been talking about plan b since
00:08:56.840the 70s you know right before there was plan b right yes yeah and you know the thing i always
00:09:03.100think about too is when you look at adaptations of like any classic text the adaptation itself
00:09:07.980always tells you just as much about the present as it does about the source material and so if
00:09:13.720we're looking at like the romances that are coming out now right and even in comparison to
00:09:19.040like I see in like stuff that came out in 2016 how is that different from now how is our thinking
00:09:25.400about bodily autonomy and all of these things and like girl bossing and like all of these different
00:09:30.880threads that are flowing through our understanding of like women and their place in society how is
00:09:35.280that manifesting and then you also like have the incredible playground which i think is pretty
00:09:40.480interesting of like okay what if everyone is rich what if they weren't worried about money off the
00:09:45.900table yeah what if we took money off the table which is a fantasy space right like that's what
00:09:50.560you're saying it's interesting right because i would argue we take money off the table in
00:09:54.540almost all romance absolutely right i think there are lots of different places in romance where the
00:09:59.920fantasy lives large, right? Like I think about billionaire romances or mafia romance. Like I
00:10:05.580think these are true descendants of the historical in a way that like a standard contemporary is not.
00:10:12.580And we can talk about how I think of the family tree if you'd like, but that's sort of down in
00:10:17.400the weeds. But I think that what's interesting is historical has always negotiated class in an
00:10:24.600interesting way right there's always like money is often on the table right because marriage
00:10:29.500in these books is often of convenience or you know i'm abducting in the early ones right like0.99
00:10:36.880i'm abducting this rich girl to like steal her way to scotland so that you know ultimately her
00:10:42.720family wealth becomes my wealth right to pay for me resurrecting my estate which my father has1.00
00:10:50.080ruined. Like it's always with sort of a noble, this like noble idea. So wealth and class is
00:10:56.660always in play or is often in play in historicals, but you're absolutely, no one ends a historical
00:11:03.020poor, right? That's not how that works. Like the way that people are ruined is almost always like
00:11:09.900ruined sexually, right? Like are ruined reputationally in some capacity. Ruined by a man with great teeth
00:11:16.120and abs and that is always far graver although you do have plot points of like ruin financially
00:11:21.960and how do we write that wrong I did read um on the recommendation of one of my readers uh this
00:11:27.720book called The Finest Print by Erin Langston oh yeah terrific right which is about people who are
00:11:33.560bourgeois right like who they're not servants but he's a printer and she is a pulp writer essentially
00:11:40.800like a gothic pulp writer and from her dad is a is a judge but like at that time like that was
00:11:46.180very different right and so i thought that was pretty these people are not erin does not leave
00:11:50.640these people hand to mouth no no you are not worried about like where will their next meal
00:11:54.880come from i did i did notice though that it was the first romance that i had historical that i
00:11:59.940had read where i was like are they gonna get the money like like it felt like that was the
00:12:05.000narrative thrust and they're like because they had even like a leisure at the beginning of each
00:12:08.840chapter which i was like oh this is interesting yeah she really thought carefully about class
00:12:13.740and i think that is something that we negotiate a lot in in historicals although the fantasy is
00:12:20.220always like and i think this is why right money doesn't buy happiness is what we tell ourselves
00:12:27.680right and it doesn't but it sure makes happiness easier right closer to reach yes and i think
00:12:36.120that that is why in romance it is very difficult there are you know a handful of books where you
00:12:42.280could say like at the end i am still worried about how they will get a meal but in the in
00:12:46.920large part and i say all the time on on my podcast uh that like heroes should be kings
00:12:51.760and what i mean and i i it's not that shouldn't be gendered like in general romance heroes and
00:12:58.260heroines and characters should all be like they should act with nobility and you should always
00:13:03.380believe that at the end like they they will reign in whatever their kingdom is and I think like
00:13:11.260removing that discussion from the table or or establishing that as a cornerstone of happily
00:13:17.820ever after it can be why a lot why people are turned off by the genre obviously but also it's
00:13:25.680essential to I think readers being able to lose themselves in the fantasy yes because it is the
00:13:33.720primary concern that animates most of our lives right that's it's too real for romance or it's
00:13:39.680too real for historical at least like I think there are some things that just like historical
00:13:43.520isn't negotiating because it's not joyful yeah so you've written 16 historical romances right
00:13:53.140Yeah, somebody said that to me yesterday. I think I've read, well, 16 novels. I also have like a few novellas.
00:13:59.260And your first contemporary is coming out this summer, right?
00:14:03.040Correct. And that does negotiate money.
00:14:07.300So I would love, like, we can talk a little bit about like how the process of writing it was different.
00:14:11.940But I loved how you mentioned like the family tree.
00:14:14.440So like, how does this, how does where this contemporary land relate to the family tree?
00:14:23.140So I think it's interesting, right? Because The Contemporary is not a romance novel. And I feel
00:14:28.100like I have to say that I think actually, if you don't read romance, if your listeners who don't
00:14:32.920read romance were to pick up this book, they would be like, this is a romance. But I think
00:14:36.860romance readers would be very upset with me if I tried to sell them this book as a romance.
00:14:43.200And so I want to say that upfront, it wasn't sold as a romance. It does not exist in my mind as a
00:14:50.060romance because it is the story of like a deeply dysfunctional family, the children of a billionaire
00:14:56.620tech genius who dies at the very beginning of the book. This is not a spoiler. He's dead on page one.
00:15:02.660And the whole family returns home to a private island off the coast of Rhode Island, which is
00:15:07.680where I grew up, only to discover that their father has left them an inheritance game, right?
00:15:13.840And so they are stuck on this island together for a week with a number of tasks that they have to complete in order to activate the inheritance, right?
00:15:22.920So it's really – this is about, like, families.
00:15:26.900There happens to be – the person who is, like, judge and jurying this game is their father's, like, second-in-command lieutenant, and he's very hot.
00:15:35.540and true mclean hero sort of in this which was unexpected for me because i was sort of i came
00:15:44.140into it thinking well there will definitely be there's also there are some there are a few
00:15:48.160romances throughout this book that are in various stages um or a few i should say like relationships
00:15:54.880throughout this book that are in various stages and i didn't intend for it to have such a like
00:16:01.440powerful through line of romance and then I was like as I was writing I mean that's what I'm
00:16:07.740interested in like I'm interested in in romance and how people come to love each other and come
00:16:13.980to find each other and partner with each other so then there was this sense of what am I writing
00:16:22.300like is this how like it didn't feel contemporary it didn't feel like contemporary romance because
00:16:29.160it is there is a fantasy layer to it right like these characters are trapped on an island they are
00:16:35.760in a battle for bill literal billions right they hate each other and also love each other there
00:16:43.500are feelings dialed up to a million some crazy things happen on this island and you know i said
00:16:51.040justifiable punching in the face which is uh what my friend joanna shoop likes to say is like the
00:16:56.900hallmark of a Sarah McLean novel like it happens it happens in this book right so I think it's
00:17:04.060very difficult to escape your DNA is my thought as a writer I think people would be like this is
00:17:09.800obviously a Sarah McLean novel but also hopefully will be impressed I hope that I could try something
00:17:17.760new and succeed at it I'm halfway through a Scott in the dark so thank you for keeping me up past
00:17:24.540my bedtime last night but uh and and she just punched our villain and I was like this is I can
00:17:31.120see this happening like this sort of this dynamic I can see this cat like I just I I'm so excited to
00:17:37.640see those dynamics in the present tense but that is still in a a realm that is very foreign from
00:17:43.200my own existence yeah I mean that I think that's part of it right like I can't imagine ever writing
00:17:48.920the story of a writer with a family who lives in Brooklyn who like I just cannot that whole like
00:17:57.680write what you know no thank you okay Melody's gonna start yelling at me because we have so
00:18:06.780many questions they're so good and we have to get to them so okay once I said that you were the
00:18:11.300co-host like we really started getting very specific and fantastic questions and this first
00:18:16.940question is specifically for you. So let's hear from Kara. As a listener of Faded Mates podcast,
00:18:22.440I've heard Sarah, Jen, and guests like Adriana Herrera make the case that historical romance
00:18:27.940novels are doing different cultural work than contemporary romance novels. Contemporaries and
00:18:34.060romanticies are currently more popular, especially from the perspective of traditional publishers.
00:18:39.940But Sarah has argued that historicals are engaging with more difficult and pressing
00:18:44.060political topics. And off the top of my head, I can think of storylines I've read recently
00:18:49.200about divorce law, abortion and reproductive care, and women's mutual aid in historicals.
00:18:55.160Can you say more, Sarah, about how and why you think historical romance is the progressive and
00:19:01.040radical edge of the genre right now? So we've kind of talked about this a little bit, but I
00:19:06.100would love to elaborate on it if you have further thoughts. Yeah, I do believe that and not just
00:19:11.240because this is you know my lane right I mean they're leaving that aside I think it is very
00:19:17.800difficult as a writer now I've I feel like I'm obviously an expert because I've written one
00:19:23.060contemporary but it feels like after having written you know all these stories set in
00:19:30.160historical against a historical backdrop I think contemporary becomes very difficult
00:19:34.460when you want to have these deeply political conversations in a genre novel right and I think
00:19:41.040um we talk a lot my friend adriana herrera talks all the time about you know her entry point
00:19:47.900you've talked to so many writers everybody's entry point into a story is different right like
00:19:52.760is it setting is a character is a conflict is it what are the things and she is a theme writer so
00:19:58.440she sits and thinks like what is the theme i want to tackle before i walk into this book that i'm
00:20:04.460about to write and so and i think that if you come into a book for example in 2025 and you're like i
00:20:09.480I want to write a book about bodily autonomy, right?
00:20:11.820I want to write a book about like women's access to safe and available abortion.
00:20:20.180When you do that in a contemporary, your parameters are very different than if you are doing it in a historical where you can build the world in such a way that the conversation can happen.
00:23:38.660And there was a leak of a number of, like, celebrity nudes.
00:23:41.620And the instant response from the world – and I would say, like, my knee-jerk response was, well, why did you have those – you're a celebrity.
00:23:49.860Why do you have those pictures on your phone, right?
00:24:03.200and then I was I was plotting that series and I was like well what does like what is a sex tape0.76
00:24:09.780leak or a sex like a nude photo leak look like in my world how do I and so that book that you're0.83
00:24:18.080reading is about a nude painting right like yeah she sat for a nude for with somebody she trusted0.99
00:24:23.180and he screwed her over and like that happens in the world and what does slut shaming look like0.98
00:24:29.620Right. So I think, again, for us in historicals, it is easier for us to have these conversations because we can we have the freedom and the permission from the reader to lay these like really important conversations alongside the beauty and exceptional nature of the world that these characters live in.
00:24:57.840And I can think of so many of – I mean, I think about – I mentioned Joanna, right?
00:25:03.400Her most recent series ends with a book that is – so many of Joanna's books like end with characters who don't want to get married or don't want to have children.
00:25:13.900Like she's really negotiating these interesting questions about modern day culture in historical because the answer is much bigger in historical, right?
00:25:25.720If I choose not to marry in 1880 and I'm, you know, the daughter of a wealthy New Yorker, Gilded Age robber baron, that looks different for me.
00:25:44.420Like, talk to your single friends in their 40s and how they, like, feel like they're never invited to stuff because they don't have a match.
00:27:40.420Okay, so let's work backwards through these questions.
00:27:43.040How have you personally dealt with some of this in your own writing?
00:27:46.600So, I mean, I'm a reader first, right? So when I started reading historicals when I was 11 years old, which was in the 1980s, last century. And so the late 80s, but still. So I cut my teeth in a lot of ways on these what we would call problematic texts.
00:28:07.940and when I was 11 years old I did not understand like what was happening in the world in the 80s
00:28:15.440that would cause these texts to be powerful and important and look the way they did and so um
00:28:22.340I just I we're gonna go backward so I'm just I'm saying that in front at front because I think
00:28:28.500it's important but I think that I have always obviously felt like I am a dyed in the wool
00:28:34.580feminist. I'm like the furthest far left progressive that you can find in many rooms
00:28:40.420that I am in. And for me, I have never had a challenge. I've never had a difficulty reconciling
00:28:49.240my own storytelling with that. Yes. And that is because of heroes. And I think that that is an
00:28:56.140important thing that we don't talk enough about in the 2020s about romance. Like I think romance
00:29:03.160has become so focused on heroin journey. And that is what I would say is it has always been
00:29:10.200focused on heroin journey, but we have in many ways in the last, like since the beginning of
00:29:14.660the pandemic, I've seen a sort of move in the genre toward heroin only journey, right? Like
00:29:20.620a hero is there as a prop. He's already done all of his work, right? He's been to therapy. He now
00:29:26.660like is almost post-feminist in an interesting way and so he is he is there to help the heroine0.98
00:29:34.480reckon with her messiness which i like can i swear because it's fucking terrible that
00:29:40.580it's a concept right right um but what i because i mean look around right like look at who just0.97
00:29:47.080got us into this mess in november like it was men it was white women and men like lots of men
00:29:53.380right so largely white men but so I think there's that I think there's like this kind of question
00:30:00.520of like what are we doing with heroes right now and I think that in the past a lot of these texts
00:30:07.160that we struggle with right in 2025 going back and looking at these and I don't think all of
00:30:13.120them are valuable and I don't think I don't ever recommend anybody start in the 80s with romance
00:30:18.960This is the dark magic, right? You're not ready for that yet. But in the 1980s when these books
00:30:30.300were written, marital rape was not a thing, right? It didn't exist because it was legal for0.76
00:30:37.120that. Women until the 1970s were not able to have their own credit cards if they were married. They1.00
00:30:46.680weren't able to have their own bank accounts if they were married. No fault divorce didn't exist.1.00
00:30:52.160There are so many things about the relationship between men and women in these early texts that
00:30:58.860was being negotiated on page privately with readers, right? So I think that when we look
00:31:06.440back on those texts, we can't look at them just as sort of, you know, I just opened my eyes as
00:31:11.320like a new romance reader in 2025 and like I'm reading this book as though it were written today
00:31:16.680I think we have to acknowledge that we are where we are in romance and in the world because of the
00:31:22.960battles that were being fought in the 80s and 90s and so those texts are complex because they were
00:31:31.500holding a mirror up to a different kind of society and honestly giving women this is how my feminist
00:31:38.280read of these books is they were giving readers a sense of a language a language through which
00:31:48.080they could engage with these concepts and this goes back to my own writing heroes and to the
00:31:56.600heroes is like these heroes had to break right they often entered the scene as like brutal
00:32:04.460stayed alphas who had never felt a feeling they were so they were stiff they were impenetrable
00:32:12.040they were like just everything terrible and by virtue of the heroin they they break right we
00:32:21.100see them crumble and then have to rebuild themselves softer better partners more connected
00:32:29.700to family or to culture or to community. These are stories where we are watching patriarchy be
00:32:37.460broken down and then remade in equity. And so my writing, I've written that story she talks about
00:32:47.580now, like she's talked about many times, right? And for me, it is the hero's journey as much as
00:32:54.480it is the heroines right like the joy for me and as both a writer and a reader is making men suffer
00:33:00.500or like you know in um Scott in the Dark our hero he he actually really is suffering in ways that
00:33:09.920like I feel sympathy for him not because I mean he has all this money he has all of this power
00:33:14.820but also he's on the fringes of society he cannot find a jacket that fits him like
00:33:20.780poor baby poor big baby I know I just like everything he touches breaks because he's so
00:33:26.480big everyone thinks of him as a sex object and not a marriageable person and I think like that to me
00:33:33.320that's really fascinating to think about like that sort of vulnerability and to access that
00:33:38.580that's a book that's a perfect example a book that I wrote at a time that I probably wouldn't
00:33:43.700write that book the same way this year and like now totally right like poor big baby so sad0.99
00:33:49.000everybody wants to fuck you and you're a duke and you have huge thighs um i the one thing that i0.99
00:33:59.680would also say to alix is that i don't think that like analyzing your pleasure destroys it so maybe0.99
00:34:06.780my like my approach to to texts like this that i that i once loved or even something like twilight
00:34:12.440that i take a lot of pleasure in is like also understanding or thinking about okay what is it
00:34:18.480about this yeah that attracted to me what draws me in what are the narrative devices what are like0.86
00:34:23.680the things that I maybe like don't admit to myself that I really fucking love
00:34:27.780about this and what what has changed you know yeah I mean and your id is your id right like
00:34:34.740I think part of what makes romance so delicious and unmatched is that we are a genre that for
00:34:43.78050 years was like we all our job is is to just like push that pleasure button what you know
00:34:50.260what's your kink you can find it here and i don't mean just like sexual kink i mean the buttons that0.60
00:34:56.140have been installed in your reptilian brain right right and like like melody's favorite which is
00:35:01.500shared bed right only one bed only one bed perfect i write one into every book because i'm like oh
00:35:08.440only one bed is the best that's why i love you sarah thank you melody i mean but this is the
00:35:16.320thing like that's reptilian right like it's if you actually sit with only one bed you're like
00:35:21.040this is nonsense like there's why are there not why is nowhere in the entire like island of britain
00:35:27.800why are there no beds but who cares like it gives you joy
00:35:34.300I just think don't trot that one out as a recommendation yeah if you love it that's okay
00:35:41.180right the the a theory of pleasure of romantic pleasure that I've always ascribed to is that
00:35:48.280it's like what works for you is having the like chess pieces set out the anticipatory chess pieces
00:35:55.260set out in a way that gives you ultimate pleasure right and everyone's chess pieces are arranged
00:36:01.420differently. And it's less about the culmination, like the culmination is always fantastic. But
00:36:07.460it's about the arrangement of those pieces and your pleasurable negotiation of them.
00:36:12.960Yeah. And there's so yeah, whatever that is, it's like, it works for you.
00:36:18.080I mean, the thing that I come to at the beginning of every book when I sort of think,
00:36:22.040okay, what is the story that I'm going to tell? I think a lot about what we call the promise of
00:36:26.400the premise. If I'm going to tell a road trip romance, like what has to happen in the book
00:36:32.100for readers to be delighted? Like my goal is for you to get to the end of a chapter and go,
00:36:40.640oh my God, that was so fun. I got to turn the page, right? If it takes you longer than six
00:36:45.200hours to read one of my books, I have done something wrong. I have failed you, right?
00:36:49.640And in the failing, the failing happens where like I don't deliver on the premise. I don't
00:36:55.880If I'm writing a road trip, like, somebody's going to have to – like, something's going to have to happen with the high women or, like, there's – you know, the carriage is going to have to throw a wheel.1.00
00:37:04.820There's definitely an inn with only one bed.
00:37:07.420They're probably going to bang in a carriage.
00:37:08.880Like, there are all sorts of things that have to happen for me to deliver you the road trip romance you want and that, like, that deep pleasure center that was installed 30 years ago, Alix, by, you know, Joanna Lindsay or whoever, you know, fires.
00:41:53.560And he's like, I obviously recognize you, right?
00:41:55.960And it's charming and great. But the structure of this book includes like scripts that they were writing, flashbacks to when they were in college, emails, transcripts from interviews.
00:42:12.740like there's all sorts of there are found objects like flashbacks that last like three four pages
00:42:19.500like if i were writing right now you know however many books in and i wrote a flashback that was
00:42:24.800more than like two paragraphs somebody would be like hey sarah does this whole flashback need to
00:42:29.100be here and nobody but like she this is her debut she didn't know like she didn't know any of these
00:42:35.240rules and so the book sings in a lot of ways because it is so fresh like you she breaks a
00:42:42.120dozen rules and it's fantastic and so i think also this year has been really that last year's
00:42:49.780crop of books was really interesting because i think they they in many ways were all pandemic
00:42:54.700books so there was a very real sense of like all these books feel a little bit raw because we were
00:43:03.240all so raw during that time yeah we run so fast if we are the genre that's moving most quickly
00:43:11.720we're the genre that is constantly reflecting society and specifically perspectives from
00:43:17.340society's society that are not dominant perspectives so like we're getting a lot of
00:43:21.940the rawness in the books and it's really fun to read yeah i know that this the statistics are
00:43:28.360difficult to really track in any sort of way but the growing there are a lot of people i think who
00:43:33.040are coming to romance who maybe had not been deeply familiar with romance before and so i
00:43:38.860think like sometimes it's easiest to like stay with a trope yeah and forget the absolute joy
00:43:44.620of finding a different access point into the things that also press your your pleasure centers
00:43:49.800exactly and I think that on top of all of that there is this sense of romance habit and we talk
00:43:56.600about it this way I talk about it all the time right that romance part of the joy of writing
00:44:02.160romance is and reading romance is like we know the boundaries as readers right like we my covenant
00:44:09.560with you as a reader is that at the end that I will bring you you know very high and I will bring
00:44:15.520you very low and hopefully like break your heart but ultimately I will return you mended to the
00:44:21.480end of the book and like happy for it right joyful for it and I think we're like you know doing ballet
00:44:27.660in a phone booth in a lot of ways because of these boundaries. But when somebody breaks the
00:44:32.640structure and does it well, it's magnificent, right? Absolutely. Okay, our next one. I cannot
00:44:38.100wait for your answer on this one. This one comes from Katie. Many of my favorite series have a
00:44:43.140loving family or a friend group at its core. However, such a literary base lends itself to
00:44:49.340the cop-out of the fertility cult that defines motherhood as happily ever after and pregnancy
00:44:55.940as an indication that a relationship is successful in any sequels.
00:45:00.820Is there discussion amongst authors about how to represent family love,
00:45:04.900sibling relationships, or adult friendships
00:45:07.000without having to insert pregnancy, pun intended, or babies into the equation?
00:45:12.720This was my biggest complaint with ACOTAR.
00:45:15.720I was like, why is everyone immediately pregnant?0.99
00:45:18.700They're like, oh, I don't want to have babies for a while,1.00
00:45:21.620especially because maybe your bat baby will kill me.1.00
00:45:24.160and then like they're immediately pregnant and i don't have kids so i also am always seeking0.91
00:45:30.740representations of women who don't feel that same fertility cult yeah um so yeah where does this
00:45:38.680take you so i think there are a couple things one yeah the baby log is a problem uh we all
00:45:45.940face it when we get to the end of a book and go like oh what are we doing now right um here we are
00:45:54.060at the end of this chaos and this is a very known problem right and they are not you are not wrong
00:46:01.260um and i think there are a couple things one i think we are seeing a shift in that uh in romance
00:46:08.500now i think the 2020s have have i can think of you know well this person is not historical but
00:46:15.440kate claiborne for example has never written a pregnancy a baby in an epilogue or anywhere in a
00:46:20.880book and i would be surprised if she ever did joanna shoop like i said often writes characters
00:46:26.380who have no interest in having children or or horrible families like i read a notorious vow
00:46:33.200recently and like that's the worst family that i've ever seen represented um i have written
00:46:40.380i've written my book bombshell the heroine has four sisters who are all there is a joke in it
00:46:46.220that it's like every one of them has been like pregnant for the entirety of their of their
00:46:52.000marriage and she's like i'm good being the fun aunt like i don't want any part of this nonsense
00:46:58.840and they they do not have children and i think also i've been sort of aware of not being that
00:47:05.800interested like the hell's hell's bells is a is a particular situation because like they have a
00:47:09.900they have a job right now like they're working these are working women so i think there's all0.98
00:47:14.800I think all that is relevant um and and shifting but I would say that baby epilogues sell
00:47:22.540fascinating and they sell a lot and if you don't write one you get letters wow so
00:47:32.960well that just emphasizes the the cult of fertility and patriarchy is a hell of a drug
00:47:39.260right it's like it's like it just makes it so much stronger I you know I just finished book two0.96
00:47:44.680of bare knuckle bastards and i love like book two there's a baby because it just i don't know it
00:47:50.280kind of it makes sense like it's just he seems like a real great dad um but book one no baby0.98
00:47:55.780and still no baby in book two i haven't done book three yet but like that to me i thought that
00:48:01.780especially because of the way that these these boys were treated as kids that's different there
00:48:07.240had to be a baby in there right because there was like there were they had this terrible listen like0.99
00:48:12.640they that's a that's a different thing right like they had this view of family that was so fucked0.94
00:48:17.000up yes interestingly i don't write i often don't write sons right like they're i'm gonna spoil it0.64
00:48:22.800but there are no boys in the future for any of those families right and so i'm interested in
00:48:29.880that too like the sort of gender of it all in in the baby logs but um and what it means like
00:48:36.280passing on the line as you can probably tell by now i'm sort of like over passing on the line as
00:48:40.620being an important piece of the puzzle yeah but yeah what I would say is I really love it when
00:48:46.460that rule gets broken but there was a time in my career where an editor would say to me like
00:48:53.020there's got to be a baby at the end here I you know as someone I'm writing a book right now about
00:48:59.760like how different ways of forming friendship and community and family and thinking just about how
00:49:06.060like wards worked right like how there would be people that became important in your life that
00:49:11.920you were responsible for and how we've in many ways lost that that concept of someone who's
00:49:18.220outside of the nuclear family as like someone that you are responsible for does that make sense
00:49:22.980yeah so there's this i don't know if you're you're familiar with it but um gail carager
00:49:27.600wrote a an incredible craft text called uh the heroine's journey it's obviously in conversation
00:49:33.740with joseph conrad's the hero's journey yeah and i think this text is so fascinating because
00:49:38.500it basically talks about like the heroine's journey not being about women but being about
00:49:43.060like a quest for community like the hero's journey is a person goes on a journey alone
00:49:49.440and if they find love or find community that eventually that all is going to have to be
00:49:55.300stripped away for them to achieve yes their heroic you know ideal the platonic ideal of heroism
00:50:02.080Yep. In The Heroine's Journey, what she's arguing is like a character starts alone, but over the course of the storytelling builds community, right? So the Marvel movies, for example, the Avengers movies are good examples of Heroine's Journey because none of them can go it alone. They must ultimately all work together.
00:50:24.120And so this as a concept is really interesting because it is the – for me, it feels like the cornerstone of romance.
00:50:31.900Like all these books way back to the 1970s ultimately end with hero – loner hero, and I mean the male protagonist, having to come to community, right?
00:50:46.860And community in often – in these early books, like it shorthands as family, right?
00:50:54.120And I would say there's also another piece in there that's a little bit bleaker, which is a hero who loves his family and is an active participant as a father in a family is aspirational for a lot of readers, which is bleak as fuck, but here we are, right?0.96
00:51:13.120So, but I do think that currently, I think the question from this person is really interesting because I think modern romance is much more interested in community beyond family, right?
00:51:25.140Like, my current historical series is about a community of women.
00:52:11.440And I think it's in part because I'm much more – I've always said, like, I'm much more interested in, like, characters who act with nobility rather than characters who are noble who are born into it.