Smart Podcast, Trashy Books Podcast

346: Fuchsia has Followed Us Everywhere: Deep Diving Into Romance Cover Art with Kelly Faircloth

Today I’m chatting with Kelly Faircloth, senior writer for Jezebel.com, and frequent writer of excellent journalism about romance. I’ve interviewed Kelly before, and this time I wanted to talk to her about her Valentine’s Day feature which examined the artists behind the romance cover art we know and love. (CATNIP AHOY!)

She takes a deep dive in that article into the knowledge gap between what we think we know about romance cover art history, and what her research has revealed about what is presumed and what happened. Kelly also examines the individual women whose leadership and artistry shaped what romances looked like then, and now.

Special bonus: my top four almost-titles for this episode:

  • Fuchsia, Teal, or Both
  • Busting Open Historical Bodices
  • Sarah and Kelly Hunt for Boners
  • Fuchsia is indeed a Genre Descriptor

Read the transcript

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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:

You can find Kelly (and @ her if you know where the boner is!) on Twitter @KellyFaircloth, and you can read all her exceptional writing at Jezebel.com.

We also mentioned the following:

 


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Wanna see us record a podcast LIVE?

If you’re attending BookLoversCon in New Orleans, you can!

Thursday May 16 at 3:30pm local time, at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans, Amanda, Elyse and I will be recording a live show, and we hope you’ll join us if you can!

We’re going to play Cards Against Romance Tropes, there might be trivia, and we’ll definitely be silly about something. We’ll be in Imperial 5C – so come on down!

It’s free for attendees of the BookLovers Con, but we are asking folks to register so we know how many chairs we’ll need.

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This Episode's Music

Caravan Palace double album set of Caravan Palace and Panic Our music is provided each week by Sassy Outwater, whom you can find on Twitter @SassyOutwater.

This is from Caravan Palace, and the track is called “Lazy Place.”

You can find their two album set with Caravan Palace and Panic on Amazon and iTunes. And you can learn more about Caravan Palace on Facebook, and on their website.

Transcript

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This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.

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  1. Joy says:

    Kelly, I think you are confusing two covers with your memory of the cover of the Wolf and the Dove. There is a forest one but the hero is clothed. The memorable cover you describe is from Johanna Lindsey’s Tender is the Storm. You get a side view of a naked dude and a red head with her bodice ripped off and it DOES totally look like he’s buried in her bosom.

    Check Pinterest for the ORIGINAL cover since it was re-issued with a really bland cover from the original Avon edition. So many women remember that cover as the one that got them into trouble with their mother, or the one they had to hide to read in public, that it is notorious.

  2. Desiree says:

    Opposite Day Mad Men. Imma keep that one.

  3. KateB says:

    @Kelly Faircloth – omg, I would die for some writing on American soap operas! Most of them are dead now, but I grew up watching ANOTHER WORLD with my mom and in the early 2000’s, when I was in college, I was obsessed with ALL MY CHILDREN. (Who has two thumbs and a script signed by the entire cast and Agnes Nixon? This girl!)

    For some fun reading, I’d recommend Agnes Nixon’s MY LIFE TO LIVE: HOW I BECAME THE QUEEN OF SOAPS WHEN MEN RULED THE AIRWAVES.

  4. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    I really enjoyed the podcast and, as an older woman who lived through the eras mentioned, was especially interested in the reference to Maribel Morgan and THE TOTAL WOMAN, which is the direct ancestor to all that THE SURRENDERED WOMAN crap today. Even back in the 1970s, in my teen years, my friends and I would look at THE TOTAL WOMAN (“Greet your husband at the door wrapped in Saran Wrap!”) and mutter the early seventies equivalent of “that bitch is crazy.”

  5. Kate says:

    Squee! Kelly is my favorite writer at Jez and her cover article was great. I am also weirdly fascinated by these things. My first romance was Shanna and I picked it up because of that crazy day-glo orangey fuchsia cover. We’d just moved and the movers had accidentally left us with a box of someone else’s romance novels which somehow ended up on the top shelf of my closet. My 11 year old self was completely mesmerized by that cover.

    Kelly, won’t Univision even pony up for access to Lexis-Nexis or Proquest Dialog, FFS? Oh yeah, what was I thinking 🙁

  6. JoanneBB says:

    Sarah. Sarah. That joke. I. Can’t. Even.

    Great discussion though! My first romance novels had more the flowy script and bright colours, with maybe a helmet or sword.

    My mother had the clinch covers, and I was a pre-teen prude who was freaked out by them.

  7. SB Sarah says:

    WASN’T THAT JOKE TERRIBLE!

    Seriously, sometimes it takes me a few tries to get through that part of the outro. 🙂

  8. LisaJo885 says:

    Just tried listening to this today, and had to DNF at 17 minutes from the beginning of the intro. I am interested in the topic, but I was distracted by the vast number of “like”, “um”, and “you know” in Kelly’s speech. I just couldn’t do it.

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