This is a podcast episode inspired by Twitter! If it’s on Twitter, it’s not quite oral history but it’s close?
After a Twitter history thread of hers went viral within the romance community online, I asked Elisabeth Lane, the blogging and cooking genius behind Cooking Up Romance if she’d talk to me on the podcast about it. We start by talking about food and romance, her own recipe development, and her reading, reviewing, cooking, and blogging process.
Then we turn to her Twitter thread whic h was about romance generations of writers. It began as her own investigation as to when GLBTQ characters began to appear in published romances, which led to her questioning what the terms “old guard” and “new generation” of writers defined, and where different writers emerged from: category romance then fanfic.
The thread turned into a very active conversation online, and branched into Melissa Blue tracing the history of Black romance authors, and Corey Alexander examining trans and queer characters, plus Mina V. Esguerra tracing the evolution of Filipino romance authors. There’s a lot to examine in the history of romance, and I’m always learning from the people who examine it from different perspectives. I hope this is as interesting for you, too.
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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
HERE COME LINKS!
You can find Elisabeth Lane on Cooking Up Romance.
And you can find her original Twitter thread here.
There were also follow-up threads! This one is by Melissa Blue, and focuses on Black women in romance publishing history.
Corey Alexander’s thread begins here, focusing on queer and enby (a shortened term for “non-binary”) romance. EE Ottoman also contributed to the thread as well, in multiple tweets.
Mary Lynne Nielsen did a thread about romance prior to 1970, and Jodi McAlister, an Australian academic doing work on romance, discussed developments outside North America.
And Mina V. Esguerra wrote a thread about Filipina romance authors. You can hear Mina talk about her publishing and writing history in the Philippines with RomanceClass in Episode 217. Self Publishing, Happy Ever Afters, and Performing Romance.
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Transcript
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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 288. Every time I say those numbers I’m like, that can’t be right! But no, episode 288 – of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is a fellow blogger! Today I’m talking to Elizabeth Lane of Cooking Up Romance. This is a podcast episode that was inspired by Twitter, and if it’s on Twitter it’s sort of like oral history but not quite. Either way, a Twitter history thread that Elizabeth wrote went viral within the romance community online, so I asked her to come and talk to me on the podcast about it.
Elizabeth Lane is the blogging and cooking genius behind Cooking Up Romance, so we start by talking about food and romance and blogging; her own recipe development; and her reading, reviewing, cooking, and blogging process; there’s a lot involved. Then we turn to her Twitter thread, which was about romance generations of writers. It began as her own investigation as to when GLBTQ characters began to appear in published romances, which led to questioning what the terms old guard or new generation of writers really meant, and then led her to looking at where different writers emerged from: category or fanfic or other places? Elizabeth’s thread turned into a very active conversation online and began to branch out as author Melissa Blue traced the history of Black romance authors and Corey Alexander examined trans and queer characters. Then Mina V. Esguerra, who was a podcast guest some weeks back, traced the evolution of Filipina romance authors. There is a lot to examine in the history of romance as a genre, and I am always learning from the people who examine it from different perspectives, so I hope this conversation is interesting for you as well.
And if after you listen you have questions or suggestions or you want to share your perspective of the history of the romance genre or what you see as interesting patterns or paths within that history, you should email me at [email protected]. You can also record a voice memo and email it to me. Please do not worry; you will sound fabulous.
Now we have two really cool sponsors for this episode and for the transcript, so let me start with the podcast sponsor. This episode is being brought to you by GrantStation. Are you passionate about a cause? Do you by chance work with or support a nonprofit organization? You probably do. Most nonprofit organization staff are women between the ages of thirty and sixty, so this may very well be all or part of your wheelhouse, so head’s up, you’re going to want to listen to this. At GrantStation, we provide the tools for your nonprofit organization to find new grant sources, build a strong grantseeking program, and write winning grant proposals. Do you struggle to identify new funding sources? Let GrantStation do the preliminary work for you. We profile a wide range of funders that accept unsolicited requests, including foundations, corporate giving programs, faith-based grantmakers, association grant programs, giving circles, and more. Does the lack of time limit your ability to submit grant requests? We have tutorials on creating time and making space for grant proposals. Do you have a grant strategy for 2018? Well, we offer a three-pronged approach to help you develop an overall strategic plan to adopting a powerful grantseeking program. And what’s GrantStation, you ask? I’m glad you asked that question! The GrantStation US charitable giving database was developed by grantseekers for grantseekers almost twenty years ago. The goal was, and continues to be, to offer a database that is carefully researched, easy to use, and continually updated. Our narrative approach allows us to include nuanced details about each grantmaker’s funding priorities, geographic focus, and application procedure, which sets us apart from other services which tend to rely on data and statistics. Instead of combing through search results that include sources which are by invitation only, GrantStation allows you to find the grant programs which best suit your organizational needs, including federal grant programs and sources which accept unsolicited letters of inquiry. GrantStation also welcomes you with a clean, user-friendly interface that quickly and easily brings you the information that you need. Our job is to profile a wide range of grantmakers open to supporting the work that you do. Your job is to make sure you have access to those grantmakers. So you can get an annual membership for just $159 and get funded with GrantStation. That is correct, a membership for only $159 for a limited time, plus receive our gift to you: free attendance to Jean Block’s classic webinar, 60+ Great FUNdraising Ideas in 90 Minutes. You will be inspired. You can learn more at grantstation.com, and thank you to GrantStation for sponsoring this episode.
Now each episode of this podcast receives a transcript which is hand compiled by garlicknitter – thank you, garlicknitter – and this week, the podcast transcript is brought to you by A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen. If you like Sarah MacLean and Tessa Dare, you will love this Regency romance. August Faulkner has returned with his eye on expanding his business empire. He is a duke, a scoundrel, and a titan of business, and he wears his roguish reputation as a badge of honor. Clara Hayward is the respected headmistress and above reproach, but ten years ago, she shared a scandalous waltz with August and despite herself has never forgotten the feeling of his arms. Can these opposites find a second chance at romance? RT Book Reviews has raved, “What a way to start the Devils of Dover series!” A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at kellybowen.net or forever-romance.com.
And I will have information about A Duke in the Night in the show notes, as well as links to the thread that I’m talking about, all of the Twitter threads that emerged from this thread; there is a lot to enjoy about this episode.
Now I do have compliments, which is another thing that I enjoy tremendously.
To Ann T.: You are more transfixing and entertaining than baby animals in hand-knit socks in all different sizes.
And to Diane L.: Your smile, your laugh, your hugs, and your kindness are your best accessories, which is why you always look fabulous!
If you would like a handcrafted compliment, I invite you to have a look at our podcast Patreon at patreon.com/SmartBitches. For very small pledges of as little as a dollar a month, you can help support the show, commission transcripts for episodes that don’t have them, and keep the show going into the future.
I also wanted to thank some of the Patreon folks personally, so thanks to Mary, Emily, Anne, Renee, Karina, and Rachel for being part of the Patreon community.
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Are there other ways to support the podcast? Of course there are! You can leave a review wherever you listen or however you listen, and however you listen is awesome with me. You can tell a friend, you can subscribe, you can do whatever works for you, but if you are hanging out with me each week and listening to the show, thank you for that!
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And of course I will end the show with a terrible joke, because I am a terrible human being and these jokes are so bad!
But without any further delay, let’s get to this interview! I want to welcome Elizabeth Lane. On with the podcast!
[music]
Elizabeth Lane: I’m Elizabeth Lane. I write a blog called Cooking Up Romance. I pair romance reviews with recipes, which is really only tangential to sort of what we’re talking about today. [Laughs] I have been, I guess, blogging for – I had to look it up – almost four years now; I can’t believe it. But I’ve been reading romance since I was fifteen, so that’s an embarrassingly long time, and I started out sort of reading, you know, historical romance and then sort of got into category romance of the early 1990s? So that’s sort of more related to, to where we are today.
Sarah: So with your blog, Cooking Up Romance, you read a romance, review it, and pair it with a recipe.
Elizabeth: I do. I, I’m a professional baker, and I love to cook, I always have, and I love to read romance, and one of the things that I think is funny about, about romance is that I think, you know, food is so integral to the sort of dating and courting and –
Sarah: Yes!
Elizabeth: – and process that, that there’s often a lot of food in romance novels, and so it was sort of a fun – and really kind of a way to engage my own creativity sort of within bounds of taking a recipe that, you know, that either the, the characters make or eat in the book and then either inventing it, or if the author was nice enough to include the recipe, which sometimes they do, just making that. Sometimes –
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: – and sometimes it’s not as, it’s not as literal as all that. Sometimes there isn’t food but, you know, something about the setting or a character. I had, had one, there’s a, a trans romance called A Matter of Disagreement by E. E. Ottoman – it’s terrific – where the character smells like lavender and Earl Grey tea, and I went, hmm. [Laughs] So I made a cookie.
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: But, so, you know, the, it’s not, not always literal, but, but frequently, yeah, something they literally ate in the book.
Sarah: That’s very cool! Now how long does it take you to read and review and then create the recipe?
Elizabeth: [Laughs] Oh, don’t ask me that question!
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: So, I mean, it depends on the book, you know. A, a hundred-and-fifty-page category romance is a little different than a, you know, five-hundred-page historical epic. I mean, I do read pretty quickly, but, you know, I would say probably, you know, I guess five to ten hours to finish a book, I guess, and then, I mean, if, it depends on how well the recipe goes, but usually another five to ten to develop a recipe, depending on how many times I have to make it.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And then, you know, writing, writing the review, writing up the recipe, editing the photos. It’s, it’s –
Sarah: Yep.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: It’s a process.
Elizabeth: [Laughs] It’s a lab-, it’s a labor of love is what it is.
Sarah: [Laughs] But you know, you’re right: food and romance go together really, really well. And I saw on Instagram that you got really cool lighting for the holidays. Is that right? Was it a, was it a holiday gift?
Elizabeth: It was, yeah. My husband picked up a set of lighting for me for Christmas because, you know, every, every year I, when daylight savings ends, we either –
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: – we either eat the dinner that I had planned on making the next day, because I can’t photograph it?
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: So things, I make something and, and, and then have to say, honey, we’re ordering pizza because I don’t have time to photograph what I made for dinner.
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: Right, so it, it might have been slightly self-interested, but, but yeah, it was a, it was a pretty great present, because now I can take pictures anytime, which is amazing.
Sarah: And the lights are really powerful.
Elizabeth: They really are; they’re really bright. It really looks like daylight when I turn them on.
Sarah: That’s awesome. So the reason I wanted to connect with you is not just to talk about your blog, which is supremely cool, but the thread that you started on Twitter a couple of days ago – it’s funny how it’s only been, like, five days, and yet it seems like last year, because so much happens. [Laughs] Time is a very strange thing now, right?
Elizabeth: Yes. Yeah, social media time is, is very much its own beast.
Sarah: It’s fast, and it’s exhausting. So you started a thread –
Elizabeth: It can be.
Sarah: – based on a conversation about romance generations of readers and where the different groups of romance readers sort of come from, how they enter the genre, what’s their gateway. Can you tell me about what got you started doing this research? ‘Cause this is considerable research.
Elizabeth: Right, well, you know, it was, I was actually, it’s funny. I, I have to kind of go back a little bit. So in – I’ve always had sort of an appreciation for, for history in context and kind of where things come from, and that’s just, it’s, it’s a fundamental, you know, part of my personality, and, and I think, so when I, when I came back to romance and sort of saw – and this was 2014, I guess? Right, yeah, 2014 – and I saw that, you know, there were e-books and, you know, that there were a lot of e-books – [laughs] – and, and there was sort of, it, it was post Fifty Shades, and so, you know, I started reading, like, Charlotte Stein and Cara McKenna and all these wonderful writers that had completely, were totally new and appeared on the scene since the last time I’d read romance, which was, you know, the mid 2000s I guess, maybe? After I, you know, graduated from college. So where the Twitter conversation started was that, you know, a person that I follow on Twitter who follows me had, had asked about who of the old guard of romance writers include LGBTQ+ representation in their books. And, and it’s funny; I don’t know, Ana Canino-Fluit who, she has her own blog, and she also reviews for, for RT.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: I, I have this sort of mental picture of the two of us looking at each other and saying, you know, well, who’s old guard? [Laughs] Who do we consider old guard?
Sarah: Right. What does that mean?
Elizabeth: What does that mean anymore? And, and so, you know, I, and so what happened was, is really, I, I was thinking about this over the course of, you know, four hours in yoga and driving home and, and trying to sort of tease out the concept of, you know, new versus old guard and what does that mean? And so really it started out sort of thinking in terms of generations of writers, and specifically, I think, with, through the lens of who might or might not have had significant LGBTQ representation in their books.
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: Where would that have started within sort of – I mean, I hate to call it mainstream romance publishing, but, you know, within Harlequin or Avon or, or the, the big traditional publishers.
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: Mainstream also indicates availability. It’s not just the publishers; it’s also where those books are.
Elizabeth: Right, and where would they have been placed within a romance section? Yeah, and –
Sarah: Yes, exactly! Exactly! It’s, it’s hard to narrow a whole thing down to one word like old guard or mainstream, but yes, I fully, I am with you; I understand all of the words. Keep going! [Laughs]
Elizabeth: Right. So, so, so where it, so really where I, I didn’t go back to, you know, say, Austen or Heyer or the, Victoria Holt or Mary Stewart who wrote Gothics in the 1950s. Where I started was really with The Flame and the Flower, Kathleen Woodiwiss, on the historical side and then Harlequin Presents in 1973, you know, with Anne Mather and Anne Hampson and Violet Winspear.
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: Just because those, those forms are uniquely recognizable to a modern romance reader.
Sarah: Right!
Elizabeth: The – right. So they’re, you know, Harlequin Presents obviously still exists. Historical romance has changed somewhat. I mean, I think mostly in terms of sort of consent and heroine agency and those sorts of things – [laughs] – but, but, but I think people still have, you know, living readers, living writers, still have very fond memories of, you know, picking up The Flame and the Flower, some of those other books and, and really enjoying that at the same level that we enjoy romance as readers now.
So, you know, and then I sort of had to try to figure out, okay, well then, beyond that, who – and I kind of thought, well, maybe I can break it out into normal sort of generations, sort of fifteen-year blocks of time, and I quickly figured out that that wasn’t going to work. Romance just changes too quickly. I think it adapts, you know, with –
Sarah: It really does.
Elizabeth: Yeah – with readers and with, with outside societal forces, like – Sarah MacLean pointed that out sort of later in the thread, but you can sort of track, along with social, sort of social changes, some of the changes that happened in romance. And, and so I, I sort of ended up with, you know, small blocks of time where the writers that I just, from my own reading and from things I’ve read about them, wondered if maybe that representation for, back, going back to the original question, would, would have been present, and so I thought of people like, you know, Nora Roberts and Susan Elizabeth Phillips – who I actually didn’t realize, she started writing historical romance? Just like, like Victoria Dahl, which, who we don’t even think about that in terms of that being that something that she wrote, but apparently that –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: She really did start – and actually, so another thing that hap-, so later in the thread, JoAnn Ross, who’s been writing romance for thirty years, mentioned that, that one of those reasons is that single-title contemporary romance just didn’t exist at that moment. Either you wrote categories or you wrote historical romance, and that was it. That was all readers wanted.
Sarah: Or that was all readers could find.
Elizabeth: Well, that’s also true! [Laughs]
Sarah: Right! [Laughs]
Elizabeth: So who knows, chicken or the egg? How, what, what started first?
Sarah: Right? Exactly!
Elizabeth: And then, you know, it sort of, there, there was sort of a period between, like, the, you know, The Flame and the Flower and, like, really, like, 1987, where that’s really all there was was historical romance and category romance. Single title wasn’t really a thing, and JoAnn and I kind of tried to tease that out, maybe until, by 1987, and the really big ones didn’t start hitting until 1992? 1991, 1992? Christina Dodd, Jennifer Crusie, Suzanne Mal-, Susan Mallery, they all started in, you know, in the early 1990s.
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: So some of the really, really big single title folks didn’t start until, until then. So that was really sort of – I don’t want to lay out the entire timeline, ‘cause people can read the thread, but, but, but I, but that was the, that was the, the genesis of the conversation, trying to figure out, maybe because it, it would, seemed instinctive to me that we would maybe not have seen a lot of LGBTQ+ representation in the historical romance of the time period for sure, but then, you know, where then did it start becoming something that we saw in terms of single-title contemporary –
Sarah: Right!
Elizabeth: – or honestly category romance or, you know, other sorts of things. So that was really what I was trying to do. [Laughs]
Sarah: Right, of course. One of the interesting things that I noticed is that you draw this timeline of years, who debuted in what year, what were they writing, and how did that – where does the, where did the breaks come? Where did the, where did the changes sort of pop out at you when you laid this all out on a timeline? Which is fascinating to me, because I don’t remember numbers, so I don’t remember years and –
Elizabeth: Hmm!
Sarah: I use – you mentioned that Bold Strokes started in 2004, and I was like, no way! But of course it did! It, I think it’s always been there –
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: – and my, my sense of time is so terrible that I look at that and I think, oh! Wow! That’s a really long time ago! But it’s also not! Time is weird. So one of the things that jumped out at me was that, one, you start talking about new school and old school, which I find fascinating, because that’s something I think a lot about, but also that the divide that you point out of authors who didn’t come through category or Regencies and come through fanfic, that really just made my brain explode. How did you –
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – pull those two things out?
Elizabeth: Well, I think I was looking mainly the way that I, at least in terms of the way I was thinking about this thread, this, the resources that I was using were, you know, Wikipedia, author lists, and Amazon for, you know, publication dates, and then also the RITA Awards, because I think that’s, you know, they’re not perfect, and they certainly don’t represent, you know, everything that was going on in romance or, you know, and there, plenty of, you know, downsides to looking at romance from that perspective, but, but it does sort of tell you some things about, you know, what was valued in that moment in romance publishing.
Sarah: Or what was profitable, yeah.
Elizabeth: [Laughs] Well, yeah. And, and I noticed that, you know, for example, that the RITA categories really sort of expanded quite a bit. And I, you know, it was started in 1980; Romance Writers of America that runs the RITA Awards –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – was started in 1980, and then the, the categories, in terms of the RITAs, really kind of sort of expand dramatically in 1992, and, and a lot of those expansion categories were in that single-title romance, single-title contemporary romance, you know, subgenre. And what was interesting to me about that was that, you know, I’m looking at, you know, people who started in 1981, 1983, in 1992 now winning a lot of those RITA Awards.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And so that sort of struck me as being sort of one sort of wave of, of, of romance writers.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And then, and then going forward, I, I tried to say, okay, well, when did that stop? When did that stop being a thing, that category romance writers would move to single-title romance and then win RITAs later –
Sarah: Yes!
Elizabeth: – down, down the road? And it hasn’t.
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: It, in some ways, it, it really, in some ways it really still hasn’t! I think, you know, people like Jill Shalvis, I think, are a perfect example. She started writing category romance. She’s still –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: – one of the big names in terms of single-title romance, and I think that’s true –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: – of a lot of the New York Times bestsellers, too, which is sort of the, you know – but, as I pointed out in the thread, when you look at sort of the, like, Goodreads year-end winners or nominees, when you look at Bookstagram, sort of you look at that hashtag on Instagram –
Sarah: Mm-hmm?
Elizabeth: – or you look at sort of the Amazon bestseller lists in terms of romance, and that’s not people who came up through category romance.
Sarah: Category. Well, I think one of the reasons for that may also be that the pool of judges in RWA are probably still majority category writers, because you have to be a member of PAN to be a judge in the RITAs, and you have to have met the requirements to join PAN in order to be a member, and then maintain your membership, and then be a judge, so the pool of judges, I suspect – I cannot verify this – may be a larger percentage of category authors, so they’re judging a book with their own writing experience, and that may emphasize category-like writing, and I don’t know when that will shift –
Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s –
Sarah: – or if it will switch.
Elizabeth: Yeah, and it, and honestly, it may not. I mean, I think –
Sarah: May not.
Elizabeth: – one of the things that, you know, one of the ha-, things that happened is that, you know, a lot of self-published writers are not, you know, some of them sort of, I think, in the early days felt like, you know, okay, well, I, I feel like I don’t count in this space –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: – and, and so, you know, and I think it, it was, it may be that some of those people just never join RWA, so it may never, so that –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: – so those RITA Award categories may never, may never really change.
Sarah: And they may not fully reflect everything that is romance, because you can’t really develop an award system that celebrates and acknowledges all of the different kinds of, of romance. I mean, I’m exhausted just trying to think of the logistics of making that happen.
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: I think just this year, now that the, the RITA nominee books are, are being distributed, I think, through, through PDFs rather than print, right.
Sarah: Yep. Yep.
Elizabeth: So, I mean, who knows how that will change –
Sarah: Exactly! It’s impossible to know.
Elizabeth: – that, that could change the RITAs, right, yeah.
Sarah: So you noticed the, the divide almost, or the contrast between the RITA winners and finalists and Amazon bestsellers and Goodreads year-end nominees, and there was more fanfic on one side than on the other.
Elizabeth: Well, I think one of the things that happened, you know, in 2007 the Kindle was introduced –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – and then, you know, two thousand, I think, what was it, oh, 2011 was, was Fifty Shades’ publication –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – and then there was sort of an explosion 2011, 2012, of, you know, self-publishing –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – and at least self-publishing is, you know, noticed by, you know – [laughs] – the sort of trade publications that follow romance, and –
Sarah: Right, right, right.
Elizabeth: – and mainstream media, and certainly there were things going on long before that in terms of, of self-publishing, but it wasn’t, you know, the force that, you know, as someone said in this thread, E. L. James has, I think, 2.3 million likes on, on Facebook, which is astonishing to me. But, but yeah, you know, I think one of the things that I’ve noticed is that, that, yeah, you get, I think, authors who – and I can’t say for sure, and this is sort of where the, this, this logic breaks down; it’s, I think, more instinct than, than evidence at this point?
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: Although there’ve been some anecdotal points made by a few people that, that when they were, you know, reading New Adult romance back a few years ago that it seemed like, you know, a, a very popular fic would show up –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – and then, you know, six to twelve months later it was an NA novel.
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: And so, and so I do think you do, you get some of that. I think also, too, in, in the LGBTQ+ space, you know, a lot of that slash fiction, some of those writers came out of –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – came out of fanfiction rather than coming up through any kind of category romance – [laughs] – market, which there, there still isn’t really one for, you know, for m/m –
Sarah: Yes.
Elizabeth: – or anything else.
Sarah: That’s very true.
Dog: Woof, woof.
Sarah: Oops, ‘scuse me just a sec; hang on just a second.
Elizabeth: Sure.
Sarah: My dogs are with me, and if there is another human or dog within, like, a two-hundred-yard area of the front window, I need to know about it. It, they have to inform me immediately.
Elizabeth: [Laughs]
Sarah: It is a very important thing, so I beg your pardon; I had to tell them to hush.
Elizabeth: Yeah, no problem.
Sarah: Now one of the things, one of the things I found so interesting about your thread was not only that you laid out all of this history and plotted this out; like, what does your notebook look like? Is this like a whole ream of paper?
Elizabeth: Oh, no, this isn’t a notebook. This is all in my head. [Laughs]
Sarah: What?! Wait, seriously?
Elizabeth: Well, and so, and, and this is where I was, this is where I was going earlier, which is what –
Sarah: You’re shitting me. You are – it’s in your head?! Oh my God –
Elizabeth: Well, I do remember –
Sarah: – your brain is amazing!
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: Well, I don’t, I, I don’t remember the specific dates, but I do sort of have this, like, catalog of, you know, I kind of know who wrote what for what imprint and, and I, so I sort of know, like, when the imprint was introduced. I, I don’t know; it, they, yes, okay, so my, my brain’s a strange place. But this is sort of where I was going earlier, which is that –
Sarah: Your brain is amazing.
Elizabeth: – [laughs] – that I, when I started back in 2014, and I sort of, it, my immediate instinct was to go back to some of the things that, you know, after I’d read people like Charlotte Stein and Cara McKenna and all these other amazing, you know, new writers, was to go back and start looking at some of the things that I’d read as a teenager, which frankly, since I started – I mean, Julie Garwood isn’t, isn’t too, too bad, but when you go back to someone like Catherine Coulter –
Sarah: Oh dear God.
Elizabeth: – it’s a – [laughs] – yeah, it’s a slightly different story. But then also, you know what, Sandra Brown and, and some of those people who really sort of strongly informed, you know, my, my personal views on, you know, a lot, on, on, well, you know, on sex and relationships –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – and I think for the better, that got me thinking, okay, well, what happened between, you know, that and now, and then also what happened before that in 1995 or whenever it was that I started reading romance? And, and so I picked up some, you know, 1970s categories, and in, I mean, I fell in love with them. They’re so fascinating from just sort of a sociological perspective, because you get sort of the contrast between, you know, a, a fairly, especially in, in terms of Harlequin, a fairly conservative publisher, famously conservative – all the heroines had to be virgins and, you know –
Sarah: Yes.
Elizabeth: – the, the men were all sort of overbearing, and it was still sort of an outgrowth of the, you know, doctor/nurse –
Sarah: Yes.
Elizabeth: – frequently, romance of, you know, Betty Neels and those sort of people.
Sarah: Right. Significant power differentials.
Elizabeth: And – right, sure. And, and then, but then also, this sort of straining toward feminism.
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Straining toward Betty Friedan and the ERA and, and some of the interesting social developments that were having in term, happening in terms of women’s rights in the 1970s, and particularly Carole Mortimer. I, I was reading Harlequins in order for a while, at least the ones that I could find, and when Carole Mortimer came on the scene, there’s an almost palpable shift between her and Violet Winspear and Charlotte Lamb and some of the people who come before her. So much less judgment in terms of, you know, premarital sex –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – children out of wedlock, heroines making the first move, even.
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: Things that we don’t even question now, but that, but that, you know, gosh, reading, you know, reading those, reading a Charlotte Lamb and a, and a Carole Mortimer from 19-, you know, -74, ’78, whenever she started, it is astonishing! It’s astonishingly different.
Sarah: It really is.
Elizabeth: And so, you know, this sort of, this really informed my interest in, in romance history and trying to sort of figure out, you know, where, where, where did all of this start, anyway? And I got to meet her in, in 2014 –
Sarah: No way!
Elizabeth: – Carole Mortimer, at, at RWA in New York. Yeah. And we sat down, and we talked for probably an hour about, you know – actually – [laughs] – ironically, Alexis Hall and his book For Real, which then later, I guess, the following year won, won the RITA for erotic romance. So, and, and talking with her about the shifts –
Sarah: Mm-hmm?
Elizabeth: – in, in romance over the years and how it went from heroine-only point of view to both hero and heroine –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: – so that you no longer had these completely opaque heroes, and you couldn’t write a story that way anymore, and, and the shifts that occurred sort of in, in her memory that were outside of my experience.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And it led me to seek out other people. So, for example, like, you know, JoAnn Ross is another really good example of somebody that I follow on Twitter, and we often have these kinds of conversations –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – about, about, you know, how things, how things were. [Laughs] And then also romance academia: you know, there’s a number of people doing really interesting work. You know, Laura Vivanco is one, and Pamela Regis, Sarah Lyons, and Eric Selinger.
Sarah: I think Pam Regis is working on a history of the genre, like a book that is tracing the history of –
Elizabeth: – of, of U – my understanding is it’s US romance –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: – specifically focused, because of a lot of the current histories, at least the academic histories or business histories, really focus on, more on Mills & Boon.
Sarah: Yes.
Elizabeth: They focus more on sort of the British side of publishing before Harlequin –
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: – bought Mills & Boon. Yeah.
Sarah: And it’s, and it’s interesting when you look at the, sort of the thirty-six-thousand-foot view, how many things sort of jump out at you and how many things have changed. Like, there used to be one way that you got to single title. There was a way –
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: – you got there, and there used to be a way to be published: you wrote a manuscript; then you wrote a query. Then you sent it to an agent; then maybe you got an agent. Then you sent it to a publisher, and then you, maybe you got a contract. And it was like, this is the steps that you follow, and now there’s, like, ninety different ways to enter the market, and what I found so incredible is after you posted this thread, other people picked it up and added onto it, paralleling other, other paths through the history of romance, so you have Melissa Blue writing the history of –
Elizabeth: Yes!
Sarah: – Black women in romance and how not only was there –
Elizabeth: That was terrific.
Sarah: Oh my gosh, it was so incredible, because not only does she trace how –
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: – Harlequin bought Arabesque from BET and then made it into Kimani, which was just shut down, but the, the names that came out of that line, and then you have self-publishing, which is where especially marginalized writers have flourished. The, the, the next line that I, I’m really curious to see is if – because I cannot do this, so I find it so fascinating when people can – that you have the self-publishing fanfic Wattpad connection, which was then brought up by Mina V. Esguerra when she wrote about the, the Filipino timeline of romance, and now how, how that was largely because publishers from in the Philippines started pulling from Wattpad entire books and publishing them. I mean, it is fascinating –
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – to see how just in the last five years, or ten years really, you have this changing path of how you get to, how you get the book to the reader, and where does the reader find the book? It’s, it’s incredible when you sort of plot all of that out. What have been some of the, the things that have surprised since you did this sort of tracing of, of one line of, of history?
Elizabeth: You know, I think one of the things that really jumped out at me, and, and I think I, probably because I was looking at it sort of that, through that lens of LGBTQ –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – romance, was just how recent that really is. I mean, I, you know, I, I picked up Charlie All Night by, by Jennifer Crusie, and I read that sort of over the last couple of days because someone mentioned that there’s a, a gay character in it –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – who is, in my, my modern, you know, mind, now that I’ve read series with, you know, male/female and male/male and female/female romance, is sequel bait. I mean, he’s brilliant!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Elizabeth: He’s got this weird quirk about the way he orders food, and he has this, you know, this random sort of relationship that doesn’t go anywhere with this nobody named David that we never really get to know, but it, he just, he seemed like, oh, I want Joe’s HEA!
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: And we’ll never see it. [Laughs]
Sarah: I know!
Elizabeth: And then, but on the other hand you get, you know, Suzanne Brockmann, who, who, you know, started writing I think just about the same time, maybe, you know, 1994 –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – or 1993 to, to Jennifer Crusie’s, you know, 1992, and, and frankly, some of her gay characters have had HEAs now –
Sarah: Yes!
Elizabeth: – so that’s, you know, that’s fabulous!
Sarah: For me, as a reader, Brockmann was one of the first writers I read who took a secondary character coupling through multiple books. So you had a primary romance, and then you had Sam and Alyssa in the background, and they, I believe, were interracial; their romance was over, I want to say, at least five books – I could very easily be wrong with that, because five is a number, and I’m terrible with those.
[Laughter]
Sarah: It’s, like, it’s, it’s, it’s almost, like, painful comedy when my kids come home with math homework, and they’re like, yeah, we’re just going to wait for Dad, and I’m like, yeah, you’re making the right decision there, kids; good job. The, the, she was one of the first writers I read who took a secondary couple’s romance through several books in the backstory, so by the time they got their own romance, readers were like, oh my God, give it to us already; we’re dying. And then she did that again with other characters and brought the gay characters into the, from the background to the foreground, and I, I had not experienced that as a reader –
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: – and I’m not sure how many other readers, or other writers have done that. I also tend to suspect that a lot of the hero point of view that sort of emerged in contemporary came out of a lot of Nora Roberts, because she was also one of the earliest that I remember – again, flawed perspective and limited, you know, view of history – who was writing whole chapters from the hero’s point of view, where it wasn’t a guess. Like, you spent more time with him than her sometimes.
Elizabeth: No, that is true of her earlier stuff.
Sarah: Yeah, so the, the ways in which background characters move to the foreground is also so interesting. I loved this thread so much because every time I read it I think of something else, which of course made me want to, like, call you and be like, so how’d you do this in your brain? How does your brain do that? Can, can that be taught?
Elizabeth: [Laughs]
Sarah: I don’t think, I don’t think brains can be taught to do that. That’s, it’s really extraordinary! Do you want to do more historical threads?
Elizabeth: Gosh, you know, I, one of the things that happened, I think, when, when Mel posted her thread, which was, you, you mentioned –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – is that, so one, one of the first things that she brought up was Vivian Stephens who had been one of the founders of RWA in two thou-, in, in 1980, had been the editor of Dell Candlelight Ecstasy, which was the first category romance imprint to allow non-virgin heroes, heroines.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: Not heroes. [Laughs] A hero’s going to, heroes don’t have to be virgins. But –
Sarah: Tend to get really excited when they are.
Elizabeth: [Laughs] Right; no, it’s true. That’s one of my very favorite things. But –
[Laughter]
Elizabeth: – but what’s interesting about that is that Dell, Dell Candlelight Ecstasy is literally my favorite category romance imprint. It was, you know, Dell in the early 1980s and, and they’re really hard to find, because most places that, even used bookstores –
Sarah: Oh, I love them.
Elizabeth: – that have, you know, most used bookstores that have categories have Harlequins or Silhouettes. They don’t, they don’t break out all the old Dell stuff –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – and they’re not available in e-book, most of them, so –
Sarah: No.
Elizabeth: – you know, they’re really hard to find, and Vivian Stephens, I, you know, when we had that conversation, I, you know, I pulled out a stack of the ones that I have, most notably, at least for our purposes, the one written by Jayne Castle, who’s, you know, Jayne Ann Krentz now, and Amanda Quick, I guess. [Laughs]
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And, and there’s a, an, an editor’s note in the, in the front of, of Jayne, of Jayne Castle’s second book from Vivian Stephens; she was her editor. She gave her her start.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And, and so I’d love to know more about her, and I know there, I mean, obviously, you know, there are people who knew her – [laughs] – still, still living and on Twitter, and I want to find out all about her! And then I, you know, so, so really, sort of that line was particularly interesting to me, just because it intertwined so clearly with things that I know well and love but just didn’t know that about.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: So, I mean, I, I think I, I think I would like to – in fact, I was think, kind of thinking maybe I’d – the thing is, my, my blog is not really the, the ideal place for, for some of this information, which is why I ended up posting it on Twitter. I thought, do I, do I want to write a post? I don’t, I don’t know!
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: But just, it just seemed like a strange place to put it, so I ended up, you know, cataloging it all on Twitter. So, you know, maybe, but Twitter’s so ephemeral, and I think one of the things that I, makes me sad is that, you know, a lot of this, a lot of this history gets lost –
Sarah: Yes.
Elizabeth: – and I think, you know, Sara Craven, who was one of the sort of old, old category writers passed away at the end of last year –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – and she’d been writing for Harlequin for thirty-some-odd years, and, you know, that’s –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: – that’s going to be, you know, more and more common – [laughs] – unfortunately. So, you know, I think having a place to actually preserve the history, other than, you know, the very ephemeral Twitter would be –
Sarah: Twitter.
Elizabeth: – a really cool thing. Yeah.
Sarah: I, I agree. I also love the stories of how some of the books came to be published. It’s often two women inside a larger house going, well, let’s, let’s, let’s do this and see if anyone really yells about it. That’ll be good. [Laughs]
Elizabeth: I need an example.
Sarah: Well –
Elizabeth: I need an example of that. What’s that?
Sarah: Okay, so in the book Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, which is by, I want to say, it’s not market, but it’s very close – Mark-, Markert, I think is right.
Elizabeth: Oh, yeah, John Markert, yeah.
Sarah: Markert, yes, okay. So –
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: – he was writing about Jayne Castle’s Gentle Pirate, and Vivian Stephens published it, and one of the things that, that was remarkable about the book was that the heroine had been abused by her deceased husband, and she published it, according to the book, by, and she said because all of the things that are in it are right now, the world today, and it sold out because, well, people were gravitating towards it, and then in the book it says there was no resistance at Dell to publishing these two titles under a new imprint, nor did Stephens, like Mary Ann Stuart at Playboy, have to pitch the novels. “I went to my editor-in-chief, Kate Duffy, and said, ‘I have two books that I think are better than the Harlequin Presents. What do you think?’ And she said, ‘It’s all right with me, but you should probably speak to the Sales Department,’ so I went down and spoke to one guy, Bob Avery, who was president of Sales, and I said the magic words: ‘I think I have something we can pit against Harlequin Presents,’ and he said, ‘Let’s do it!’ It was that simple.” So this massive thing happened because three people were like, all right, go talk to that dude. All right, dude says cool! Let’s do it! Like, it was always, always, always like a, a conversation between a handful of people, and then this massively wonderful change happens in the genre that we love. It was fascinating.
Elizabeth: That’s an amazing story. [Laughs]
Sarah: This book, this book is so, Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry is full of so many little interesting anecdotes. Like you said, the history that doesn’t get recorded, because it really is sometimes a, hey, let’s run it up the flagpole, see who salutes! kind of situation, which is kind of how I live my life, so I have a lot of respon-, I have a lot of respect for decisions that are made of, okay, let’s see what happens! [Laughs] I, I love that there’s, I love that there’s an interest in the history of the books that we love, especially because we’re still always fighting the idea that romance as a genre doesn’t have value, and that it isn’t a valid form of literature, and that it’s denigrated because of all of the reasons we’re so familiar with, but the history of the women who produce it is also really interesting and doesn’t get, doesn’t get traced and plotted as much as I would love it to, and I wish that I had the skills to do it at least – I wish that I had the ability to remember things like numbers and years and time, but I am so grateful that you did this, because it is still blowing my mind. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for this thread. It is incredible, and I’m hoping, I’m hoping that by doing a podcast I can make, I can, like, preserve all of the links and make sure that people see it and sort of make it a bit more permanent in a way that allows you to talk about it. At least that’s my goal here. Like I said, run it up the flagpole; see what happens.
Elizabeth: Well, I really appreciate the chance to, to get on and talk about it, talk about this with you because, you know, you’ve obviously, you, it’s thirteenth year I think I saw?
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Is that right?
Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Thirteen –
Elizabeth: Yeah, so – [laughs] – so you should be on that timeline –
Sarah: Go run it up the flagpole.
Elizabeth: – somewhere, Sarah.
Sarah: I, every time I show up in a, in a, in a timeline like that I’m like, wait, really? Oh, holy crap! It has been a while!
Elizabeth: [Laughs]
Sarah: ‘Cause like I said, very tenuous relationship with time. Every year the site anniversary comes around I calculate it twice, ‘cause I’m convinced that I’m wrong. Like, no way; it’s not thirteen – yeah, it’s thirteen years, because my older son was born the same year as the website, and he will be thirteen this fall. It takes a lot more time to generate a human than it does to create a blog, so he and the site are almost the same age, and, yeah, it blows me away that that’s a thing.
Elizabeth: The history of, of romance, which, you know, unfortunately is, I think, to your point, is, is, I don’t, I don’t know if we call it marginalized, but at least in terms of, in terms of publishing, it doesn’t get a lot of respect.
Sarah: No, not taken seriously.
Elizabeth: That, that, that, you know, a lot of that history is sort of handed down from person to person. I mean, sure there are these, you know, some, some books, but you can’t encompass the entire experience of the romance genre in, you know, the two or three hist-, three or four histories of it that exist.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And, and so I think, you know, having conversations like this and, and being able to, to talk about sort of some of the things that happened in the past and how they impact, you know, what’s happening now is, is interesting and important.
Sarah: I agree. I am so very glad you did this thread, and I’m, I’m glad that I was on Twitter at the right moment to see it. Because also the thing about Twitter is it goes by really quickly! [Laughs]
Elizabeth: It does, yeah. It was a pretty intense twenty-four hours. I had a lot of, I had a lot of, a lot of mentions. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes, you did, which is so awesome!
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I want to thank Elizabeth Lane for being a guest on the show and for talking about this Twitter thread. It might seem strange to create a thread about romance history and then talk about it on a podcast, but you know, a lot of the discussion about romance takes place online in various ephemeral forms, so I figure why not make this discussion happen in multiple places? So thank you so much to Elizabeth. You can find her online at cookupromance.com, which is romance reviews for food lovers. I, I am, I am one of those, it is true. So if you go to cookupromance.com, you will find reviews and recipes, and I’ll be honest with you, there’s also food porn. There’s a whole lot of food porn, so go do it. It’s worth all of the hunger feelings. I now want doughnuts like you would not believe. Okay.
This podcast episode is brought to you by GrantStation. Are you passionate about a cause? Do you work with or support a nonprofit organization? You very well might, because, as I’ve learned, most nonprofit organization staff are women between the ages of thirty and sixty, so this information may very well pertain to you in all sorts of professional development ways, so heads up! At GrantStation, we provide the tools for your nonprofit organization to find new grant sources, build a strong grantseeking program, and write winning grant proposals. Do you struggle with identifying new funding sources? Let GrantStation do the preliminary work! They profile a wide range of funders that accept unsolicited requests, including foundations, corporate giving programs, faith-based grantmakers, association grant programs, giving circles, and more. Does lack of time limit your ability to submit grant requests? We have tutorials on creating time and making space for your grant proposals. Do you have a grant strategy for 2018? Well, we offer a three-pronged approach to help you develop an overall strategic plan to adopting powerful grantseeking programs. What’s GrantStation, you might ask? I am glad you’ve asked, because I’m going to tell you! The GrantStation US charitable giving database was developed by grantseekers for grantseekers almost twenty years ago. The goal was, and continues to be, to offer a database that is carefully researched, easy to use, and continually updated. Our narrative approach allows us to include nuanced details about each grantmaker’s funding priorities, geographic focus, and application procedure, which sets us apart from other services which tend to rely on data and statistics. Instead of combing through search results that include sources which are by invitation only, GrantStation allows you to find the grant programs which best suit your organizational needs, including federal grant programs and sources that accept unsolicited letters of inquiry. GrantStation also welcomes you with a clean, user-friendly interface that quickly and easily brings you the information you need. Our job is to profile a wide range of grantmakers open to supporting the work that you do. Your job is to make sure you have access to those grantmakers. And as someone who used to work in nonprofits, like I worked for – I’m counting – at least four in my employment history, this sounds amazing, and I wish I’d had this, [laughs] when I was working at a nonprofit. You can get an annual membership for just $159 and get funded with GrantStation. Memberships are actually a lot more, so $159 is a limited time offer, plus you can receive our gift to you, free addition to Jean Block’s classic webinar, 60+ Great FUNdraising Ideas in 90 Minutes. You will be inspired, and you can learn more at grantstation.com. And thank you to GrantStation for sponsoring this episode!
If you are new here, welcome, and if you are not, you know that every episode gets a transcript, which is something I am deeply, deeply proud of and very grateful to every podcast transcript sponsor. Today’s podcast transcript and all of the podcast transcripts are compiled by hand by garlicknitter, who is a professional transcriptionist, so I imagine all of this romance podcasting is a little bit different from the other things she normally does. Thank you, garlicknitter! [You’re welcome! This is the fun stuff! – gk] Today’s podcast transcript is brought to you by A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen. If you like Sarah MacLean and Tessa Dare, you will love this Regency romance. August Faulkner has returned with his eye on expanding his business empire. He is a duke, a scoundrel, and a titan of business, and he wears his roguish reputation as a badge of honor. Clara Hayward is a respected headmistress and is above reproach. But ten years ago, she shared a scandalous waltz with August and, despite herself, has never forgotten the feeling of his arms. Can these opposites find a second chance at romance? RT Book Reviews raves, “What a way to start the Devils of Dover series!” A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at kellybowen.net or forever-romance.com, and I will have links to this book in the podcast entry, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.
We also have a podcast Patreon, and I would like to tell you about it for just a few minutes. Your support of the show means the world to me, and every time I get a new notification that someone has signed on as a Patreon sponsor, I am deeply, deeply grateful. If you have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches, you can make a monthly pledge for as little as a dollar a month, and you make a massive, deeply appreciated difference to help the show continue and to help me commission transcripts for past episodes.
I also want to thank some of the Patreon folks personally, so thank you to Savannah, Andrea, Erika, Darlene, Hanna, and Anna. Thank you for being part of the community.
I also turn to that community when I want questions for upcoming interviews or when I have news that I’m excited to share, so if you join the Patreon community, there’s little extras in the feed for you as well.
Are there other ways you can support the podcast? Of course! If you are putting the podcast in your eardrums right now, thank you! You can leave a review wherever you listen or however you listen. You can tell a friend, you can subscribe, or keep putting us in your eardrums, because that is amazing! Thank you so much for hanging out with us each week!
The music you’re listening to is brought to you by Sassy Outwater, and I’m told there has been additional assistance from Ferdinand the Seeing Eye Dog or Guide Dog – I’m not sure if Seeing Eye Dog is the correct term. Ferdinand the Awesome Dog. We have been playing tracks from the Peatbog Faeries live album Live @ 25, and it is a seriously fun album. The spoken parts, which I tend to cut out because it’s hard for me to talk on top of someone else talking? It becomes very difficult to understand. That part is very fun. This track is called “Spiders,” and you can find it on Live @ 25, available at Amazon or iTunes, and you can find the Peatbog Faeries at their website peatbogfaeries.com.
Coming up on the site this week: we have Cover Awe, which is when we look at covers that we really, really like and admire and talk about them a lot. Elyse will also have a recap of The Bachelor finale; you do not want to miss that because she’s got some high-grade sarcasm. We also have Help a Bitch Out requests, new reviews, and a reader request for romances that take place while someone is traveling. I hope you will stop by smartbitchestrashybooks.com and hang out with us!
And of course, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, I will have links to all of the Twitter threads that we talked about, the episode with Mina V. Esguerra if you’d like to listen to that, and additional links for your own interest and research, should you be interested. I will also have links to the books that we mentioned and, of course, links where you can find Elizabeth.
And now it is time for the terrible joke that ends each episode, because I am a horrible person. Are you ready? Okay.
Why did the chef of the Death Star measure everything in cups and teaspoons?
Give up? Why did the chef aboard the Death Star measure everything in cups and teaspoons?
Because they only use Imperial units!
[Laughs] That’s so bad! Okay. All right, I’m going to pull myself together.
So on behalf of Elizabeth and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and we will see you here next week!
[leggy music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Transcript Sponsor
Today’s podcast is sponsored by A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen. If you like Sarah MacLean and Tessa Dare, you’ll love this Regency Romance.
August Faulkner has returned with his eye on expanding his business empire. He is a Duke, a scoundrel and a titan of business– and wears his roguish reputation as a badge of honor. He is a man of many talents, not the least of which is enticing women into his bedchamber. He’s known-and reviled-for buying and selling companies, accumulating scads of money, and breaking hearts.
Clara Hayward is the respected headmistress of the Haverhall School for Young Ladies, and is above reproach. But ten years ago she shared a scandalous waltz with August and despite herself, has never forgotten the feeling of his arms. Even though her head knows that he is only back in her life to take over her family’s business, her heart can’t help but open to the very duke who could destroy it for good. Can these opposites find a second chance at romance?
RT Book Reviews raves “what a way to start the Devils of Dover series!”
A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen is on sale now wherever books are sold. You can find out more at KellyBowen.net, and at Forever-Romance.com.
A quick comment on m/m romances – Dreamspinner has two lines that can best be described as “category romances” so some exist.
This was super interesting to listen to! I’m so glad you decided to follow up with Elisabeth.
I’m late to this podcast party, but I really enjoyed this one in particular!