In this week’s podcast episode, we’re looking at the glorious ads and features for the October/November 1988 issue of RT Magazine.
Thank you to Amy M. for this issue!
You can also find all the RTRW content at our category page for Romantic Times Rewind.
If you want to listen and follow along with this entry, we have more detail in the audio, but you can click play and listen and read and absorb all the visual goodness:
Ok, let’s get started! This is the oldest issue I have in my growing collection, and it is very fragile, with a full color cover and centerfold, but the rest is newsprint paper. Comes off on your hands like you would not believe.
Here’s the cover:
Yup, that’s Napoleon. But get a load of the covers at the bottom! We took a close look at two of them, because fuchsia.
This is Cactus Flower by Shirl Henke ( A | BN | K | AB ):
Sorry these are blurry but good scans can be hard to find. I think that looks like Sabrina Carpenter, first of all. And check out how annoyed that cat looks!
Went out for some catnip and here’s two people schtupping in the middle of the field.
Also is she wearing the flower? Where did his shirt go?
I also found the new cover:
Then there’s this one:
Oooh, a mustache And a mullet!
“A beautiful schoolmarm untutored in love,” but where’d she get that fantastic green cape?
The inside cover is quite something – and we both misread “Catherine Linden” as “Caroline Linden.” The branding is strong! And there’s no way Caroline Linden was writing romance in 1988.
Another display of hair I thought I’d have when I was an adult. That’s some lush colorful illustration, huh?
Well, from here until the centerfold, it’s all black and white, and I had to hunt for color versions.
This issue was EXTREMELY gossipy, too. There are several messages about Sandra Brown’s explicit contemporary:
What was the problem? What was the big scandal? We have no idea.
Check out all the incredible gossip from Flavia Knightsbridge. Her column starts with a very odd picture of Brenda Joyce:
She looks like she’s about to scold me for wearing that out of the house.
And then, well, buckle up, y’all. Flavia was SPICY in 1988!
Darlings, I’m back from California and had a wonderful time.
I want to thank all the P-Flavia Fans out there–that stands for
Pro-Flavia of course–who wrote to me with good stuff for this controversial & sparkling column.
As for the F-Flavia group keep suffering!!
KEEP SUFFERING!! Wow.
We have a little plagiarism mention with very scant details:
I found this article about the alleged plagiarism on Meanjin.com.au.
and then she has a lot to say about Danielle Steel?
A TURQUOISE MERCEDES. Three of ’em? We could not find any pictures, alas.
More mention of Sandra Brown:
A pronouncement about what?!
As near as I can tell, the scandal was about Slow Heat in Heaven, ( A | BN | K | AB ) which was published summer 1988. Geri Reads mentioned in their GoodReads review, “I think this book was way ahead of its time. I’ve read this way back, and I mean way back and it’s safe to say, Cash Bordreaux popped my bad boy cherry. This was written way back when the word ‘Fuck” wasn’t used in romance and heroes are supposed to be good and kind. Cash was none of those things. He says fuck a lot and man-whored his way into my heart. Romance readers nowadays wouldn’t bat an eyelash at Cash’s behavior nowadays but back then, many readers were scandalized. I just loved it.”
Flavia also attended a writers’ conference in Seattle:
which led to another blind item:
No idea who that is about but this one is rather obvious:
Allegedly Bill Dailey, husband of Janet Dailey, set up a hotline to collect the rumors about himself?
And then we have this strange mention of Danielle Steel again:
Seven years ago, Danielle steel was “toting 29 pieces of Vuitton luggage for her book promotions.”
There was a lot of author gossip, as if this is a celebrity gossip magazine. What did Steel do to piss them off?
This ad for Desire in the Sun ( A | BN | K | AB ) featured a sweepstakes!
A five night trip to Barbados?! From Avon books? Can you imagine a publisher doing a five night trip to Barbados for a single book release? And you can enter at local bookstores, too. WOW. Amanda wants to know who won! If you know, please email us!
The cover for the sweepstakes book is YELLOW.
The 8th Annual Romantic Times Convention was in Phoenix, and the program was fascinating!
First, what was the “next 5 years” discussion like? What would they make of 2024?
Second, we have Money Matters including computers and modems!
And then there’s the breakdown of paperback markets that includes Truck Stop Distributors! What were the charts and maps like? I would LOVE to see those. Show me the charts and maps!
Dorothy Garlock was very upset about historical inaccuracies in Western romance. This quote was incredible:
Not a nice flat rock!
This ad was wild because her whole address was printed:
And that cover looks like it’d be neat in color, right? Let’s see.
Yup! See what I mean about the black and white vs. color versions?
This ad caught my attention because I was pretty sure that was The Fabs:
Check this out in color — you can buy the original art and a print of it from Sharon Spiak!
Wowser, huh?
The ad for Love’s Glorious Gamble ( A ) caught our attention:
I asked Amanda what colors she thought this would be:
Hang on, those are lesbian flag colors! Awesome! (Is he sucking on her shoulder blade?)
Then we arrived at the centerfold, and we had a LOT of questions about this cover:
Why are they in aerobics clothes in a swamp? Where is this set?
It makes even less sense with the summary from Google Books:
Venus Wayne, a free-spirited redhead working as a messenger, is roller-skating through a lobby concourse when she crashes into corporate president, Eli Weldon Tate.
What?!
The heroine has people in her hair:
Ma’am! You’ve got musketeers fighting in your hair!
In the Series Romance Tidbits written by the late Melinda Helfer:
Covers that look alike?! Ah, the more things change.
Then there was this appallingly paltry obituary:
Mary Burchell, whose real name was Ida Cook, died in 1986, though given that RT later announced someone’s death who wasn’t dead, I can understand waiting for confirmation.
However, we need to pause here. Mary Burchell, romance author and one of the founders of the Romantic Novelists’ Association in the UK, used the money she earned writing romance novels to rescue dozens of people from the Holocaust.
She and her sister were superfans of opera, and when they learned of what was happening, they got involved. They rented a flat where refugees would stay when they made it to England, and funded repeated trips to Germany to “watch operas” and also meet with families who were in grave danger. She used her book money to provide financial guarantee for people entering England, and organized patrons and sponsors for other families.
Under the guise of seeing opera performances would meet with people, and then smuggle their jewels and valuables across the border back to England, right under the noses of border guards and Nazis. They would pretend to be silly old ladies wearing diamonds on cheap coats and natter on about opera, transporting a family’s wealth until said jewelry could be reunited with people who made it out of Germany.
Mary and Louise were named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Veshem in 1964. This is a picture of them wearing their extremely cutting edge fashions, which they sewed themselves from patterns from Mabs magazine:
You can read more about their fashion at Clothes in Books.
I mean, the obit isn’t wrong that she traveled extensively, but wow, is that paltry.
I had a note in our recording document that says, “ELBOWS.”
Story checks out. Elbows!
This ad delighted Amanda:
Romance audio on cassette! Except that person in the bathtub is in DANGER. Move the boom box away from the bathtub!
And this was the inside of the back cover:
That was a color page! But here’s the cover for Desert Ecstasy by Connie Mason ( A ):
I’m sure if I re-read this, it will totally hold up and won’t be alarming or problematic at all, no.
And the back cover featured Firestorm by Brenda Joyce ( A | BN | K ):
She has her coming out in San Francisco! Probably meant something different in the book.
I missed an ad and went back for this one:
A climate change ad for a book in 1988! Just wait a few decades, y’all.
Also if you’re curious what the cover looks like:
So that was October 1988!
Remember, if you join the Patreon, you’ll get access to the entire issue as a PDF.
What do you think? Do you remember any of these books?
I can’t see any of the images except for the first one… neither onmy tablet nor on my phone…
I am on a Kindle Fire and do see all of the images.
What a great post, @SB Sarah. I particularly enjoyed the information you shared about Mary Burchell and her sister.
You reminded me, Ida Cook wrote a book about the Burchell sisters, called “Safe Passage”. I think y’all mentioned it here a while back.
Ah, the 80s. So much fuchsia. So much big hair. And yes, that “Desert Ecstasy” won’t be rife with stereotypes and racism at all. Girlfriend also needs to put on some clothes, because her pasty self is going to be burnt red like a lobster in no time dressed like that.
“Desire in the Sun” is AGGRESSIVELY yellow, but I love that an author that big could convince publishers to pony up the dough for contests back in the pre-interwebs days.
I would love to see a photo of your collection of RT magazines. How many do you have now?
I mixed up my description of “Safe Passage”, but the book is by Ida Cook who used the name Mary Burchell. My brain is clearly off today and reading comprehension isn’t my strong suit at the moment.