603. Romantic Times Rewind: April 2006 Ads and Features!

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 603 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, Amanda is with me, and we’re traveling back to April 2006 in this week’s Romantic Times Rewind. We’re looking at the ads and features; we’re talking about the cover art for the Immortals After Dark series; we’re talking about why so many author photos featured people leaning to one side. And we talk about the many predecessors to Goodreads that are advertised in this magazine, plus bonus: do not miss the visual aids; there’s a full page of Mr. Romance.

HEADS UP that when I start talking about Redeeming Love, massive TRIGGER and CONTENT WARNING, and I’ll say it during the, during the conversation, but it’s just a big pile of yikes, so be aware that that’s, that’s in there. Oh, it’s such a giant pile of yikes.

You  want to hear something funny? When I was recording with Amanda recently I said that, You notice these magazines, they either have, like, all of your catnip or what she termed a seven-layer bean dip of yuck? And I said that, and she’s like, Oh, now I want bean dip. So did she have bean dip for dinner that night? Yes. Yes, she did. I was very proud! I was very proud. So if, you know, if the podcast is influencing your dinner, our job is good, right?

Hello and thank you to the podcast Patreon community. You’re keeping me going, you get bonus episodes, you’re making sure that garlicknitter gets to do the nifty-dandy transcripts – hello, garlicknitter! – [Hello! I love doing the nifty-dandy transcripts! – gk] – and you’re keeping the show going. Thank you very much for that.

I have a greeting, and I have done research on how to say this, and I hope that I’m saying this right. Hello to Oronhienhawi, a new member of the podcast Patreon! Thank you for joining us! Listener support is a wonderful thing, and if you are a big fan of this podcast or you like what we do, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Support for this episode comes from Age Matters. A hopeless romantic and a reclusive billionaire rewrite the rules of friendship, love, and work in the graphic novel version of the hit webtoon series Age Matters. Age Matters follows twenty-nine-year-old Rose Choi as she tries to pick up her life after her ex-boyfriend cheated on, then dumped her. In need of employment, she takes over her best friend’s odd job to cook and deliver meals to a mysterious boss. This boss turns out to be the twenty-three-year-old CEO of Lime, Daniel Yoon. She finds him too abrasive, while he finds her too desperate, but they eventually learn to get along with each other…and fall for each other. The first volume collects episodes 1 through 15 of the webtoon, which had over 3.6 million subscribers and more than 390 million reads – wow! If you love an addictive slow-burn romance, this one’s for you. Publishers Weekly calls it charming and says it’s got plenty of romantic heat, and you can look for other print versions of your favorite hits from WEBTOON published by Webtoon Unscrolled, available wherever books are sold. You can pick up your copy of Age Matters Volume One by Enjelicious now.

All right, you ready to go back in time to take a look at advertisements from 2006 and a whole page of Mr. Romance, who is a whole – we could do a whole podcast just on that page. On with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah: Time to look at the ads and the features, and I will say, there are a lot of ads, and there are a lot of features. Like, this was a very, very article-heavy issue, including an article that is going to make both of us yell a lot.

I like the cover of this magazine; we talked about it in the reviews. It’s a good-looking cover. It talks a lot about what’s inside the magazine, and the illustration for A Hunger Like No Other was, at that time, very, very interesting. Like, it didn’t –

Amanda: Yeah, the only thing that, like –

Sarah: – it didn’t show their faces; it didn’t have, like, a – like, it’s a clinch, but it’s not from the side. You don’t see their faces much at all, and it’s very tactile. The focus is on their hands, not their faces, which I think is really interesting.

Amanda: So, two things: it’s very reminiscent to me of early 2000s paranormal because she’s wearing like a leather bustier and leather pants?

Sarah: Well, of course!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: You can’t be in PNR if you’re not wearing leather pants! That’s the rule!

Amanda: And it bugs me slightly that they’re ruining the enlarged image of the cover by putting a smaller image of the cover on it.

Sarah: Oh, so they’re covering up the fall of her hair with a picture of the book cover.

Amanda: But it’s like, let the cover just be the image! That’s what you wanted; why – we don’t need to see it twice! I don’t know, that just bugs me of, like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – you’re ruining the image by literally putting a smaller image.

Sarah: You know, it’s weird! Now that I look at this, these covers –

Amanda: They’ve changed.

Sarah: They changed very quickly. Now, they’ve all gotten new covers; they’re all like big close-up of faces. Faces with stuff on top. Sometimes it’s metal; sometimes it’s fire. But the original covers, like the, A Hunger Like No Other had this illustration from the back, but if I remember correctly, No Rest for the Wicked was like a, like a guy. Yeah, no it was a couple; it was the couple with the red sky and the moon and the shirtless guy. So Dark Needs at Night’s Edge and No Rest for the Wicked –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – all had the same cover model, but it was like nipples and abs and low-rise jeans, and that guy got a wax job before he put those pants on.

Amanda: Yeah. I still –

Sarah: The covers changed a lot, and they really didn’t stick with this illustration style.

Amanda: No, I, I mean, like, I think they pivoted –

Sarah: Mm.

Amanda: – early enough –

Sarah: Yeah, they did pivot a little –

Amanda: – in the series –

Sarah: – so it was just this one that looked like this.

Amanda: Yeah, they pivot – I feel like we did a feature when they changed the covers. I feel like we did a feature on the site, her publisher, when the new covers came out.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda: I’m trying to see if I have them on my shelf, but I have, like, a special shelf with all of my, like, series and special editions so they don’t, like, clog up the big one? For the longest time book four was my absolute favorite.

Sarah: Yeah?

Amanda: And I think I picked it up again. So if you’re in Florida, if you’re in Gainesville, Florida, there is an, there’s an amazing Friends of the Library book sale that happens twice a year, and even though I’m in Boston, which is a bigger area than Gainesville, their book sale, their library book sale is trash –

Sarah: Aww!

Amanda: – compared to the Gainesville one. It’s a giant warehouse, so many mass markets…

Sarah: Well, if you think about it, that’s beach reading, right? Mass markets, romance, genre fiction; that’s where you’re going, going to read on the beach!

Amanda: The final day of the sale, everything is ten cents.

Sarah: [Laughs approvingly]

Amanda: Everything is ten cents. I remember I went one time, and I think my haul was I got twenty-one books for nineteen dollars.

Sarah: Damn.

Amanda: But I found an old copy of Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night in mass market. And the other ones, I have them, like, I have the hardcover releases or whatever, but this is like the only one I own in, like, a used mass market edition. But yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t mind these covers so much, but I feel like, you know, paranormals don’t really do this anymore.

Sarah: No. They don’t have the full –

Amanda: They’re not popular.

Sarah: – the full illustrated cover. My favorite is the one I stuck in the document, Deep Kiss of Winter, which was a duology with Gena Showalter, and the way that the light is hitting the cover model’s ab above his belt, it looks like he’s got his dick out. It’s great. It’s my favorite one. The Deep Kiss of Winter, you know where it goes.

So if you look at –

Amanda: Right?

Sarah: – the first –

Amanda: Right there. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, right there. So the first ad that I want to look at is on page 6. It is an ad for Avon Books, HarperCollins, and We know what women want, and it is five books, and four of them are the same color. Apparently what women want is books that are virtually indistinguishable from one another. There’s a Lorraine Heath, a Melody Thomas, and an Anne Mallory, and they are all the same shade of blue. Like, it’s weird. Like, whoever designed the covers for this month was not working together, ‘cause all of these covers look the –

Amanda: It also –

Sarah: – I would, I would mix these up so easily.

Amanda: The Sabrina Jeffries cover is also the shade of red that they use in the cover too, so, like, your eye just kind of glazes over it –

Sarah: Yep!

Amanda: – I feel like.

Sarah: The ad is red, and the cover is red. It’s, it’s a weird design choice.

Amanda: But then the next – so it’s, it’s designed to be a two-page ad –

Sarah: Yes, left and right.

Amanda: – so it’s like, what, What women want, and then they have a book with, like, a summoning circle.

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: I was like, that one.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: That’s what – [laughs] –

Sarah: That’s what women want! They want a summoning circle, a cat, and some books!

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Also, look at the Dates from Hell anthology there?

Amanda: I think my mom had this one!

Sarah: It’s a woman in a –

Amanda: ‘Cause my mom was big into Kim Harrison, and I remember seeing this on her shelf.

Sarah: The, the woman has a dress that has a, a halter neck and a low back, so most of her back is open, which means you can’t wear a bra with this dress, which means not for me! And she’s holding a pair of super, super high red heels over her shoulder, and against a moon with a bat flying over it. Like, it is very, very simple but effective cover art, I think.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: And then in the middle there’s Not a Girl Detective with the really long and angular and pointy cartoon characters.

Amanda: I feel like this is a topic for an entirely different podcast episode, ‘cause we could talk for a while about this.

Sarah: Hang on; I’m writing it down!

Amanda: About –

Sarah: What?

Amanda: [Laughs] So there are people who do not like the illustrated covers.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: And I feel like a lot of them are not new readers to the genre, but readers who have been in the genre for a while. And I’m curious if part of the dislike for illustrated covers –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – harkens back to the experience of these covers –

Sarah: Oh –

Amanda: – and what these covers meant in terms of a book and what you’re getting.

Sarah: Ohhh, that’s a really interesting question. Yeah! You could totally be onto something there, because this illustrated cover was very heavily associated with chick lit and what was passing for rom-coms at the time. Oh, that’s really interesting! That’s a really interesting question. I mean, we’ve had these before. I don’t know why everyone gets so upset about them; like, we’ve seen these before! They’ve been really common –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – overseas.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: In the Letter from the Editor to Book Lovers from Kathryn Falk, Lady of Barrow…no, no information about longevity, I’m sorry to say. She’s –

Amanda: Nope.

Sarah: – talking about Mr. Romances semifinals. They apparently were having regional contests all over the place.

Amanda: We’ll talk about that later.

Sarah: Oh yeah, there’s a whole –

Amanda: Don’t worry, everyone –

Sarah: Don’t worry.

Amanda: – we’re not glossing over – [laughs]

Sarah: Don’t worry; there’s so much Mr. Romance coming your way.

But this is my, this is the thing that grabbed my attention: she’s created her late, late father’s ranchette near Galveston:

>> I’ve converted the property into a bed and breakfast/spa for readers, writers, and recovering soldiers who served in Iraq and their families. You are all welcome to visit for a relaxing holiday with all amenities: comfortable rooms, fireplaces, a trout pond, horseback riding, a swimming pool, organic vegetables and herbs, our own honey and local wine, and the purest, sweetest well water for drinking.

She’s also installed two saunas, infrared and Finnish, and a hot tub, and a Russian banya heated by wood.

>> Massages, salt and sugar scrubs, manicures and pedicures and facials are offered every morning in private on the guest house deck overlooking the pool and the palm trees. Email if you’re interested and I will pencil you in. You can treat a soldier if you so prefer.

I had no idea, and I cannot find any record of this, but that sounds kind of fucking amazing.

Amanda: So the thing – you mentioned well water, and I don’t know if well water in Texas is different than well water in Florida –

Sarah: This is the purest –

Amanda: Our well –

Sarah: – sweetest well water for drinking.

Amanda: Our well water definitely had a little bit of a color to it every so often –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – and when it rained very heavily, it smelled like rotten eggs. So.

Sarah: Oh yeah, the sulfur buildup, yep! Yep. Yep, it’s, it’s…

Amanda: So I don’t know if that’s well water everywhere or if it’s just the special blend of Florida well water. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Hang on…

Amanda: But, like, I don’t know, maybe fresh spring water? Spring water’s wonderful. But well water, to me, I don’t get – that does not conjure in my mind freshness.

Sarah: I have no ability to find if it’s still in business. I googled, and I couldn’t really find anything? But that sounds pretty great? I don’t know of anyone who went there; if you know of somebody who went there –

Amanda: Please tell us everything.

Sarah: – reach out. We want to know every detail.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: You were very excited about page 8.

Amanda: It’s like a full interview!

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: With Kresley Cole, which they’ve done before, ‘cause we talked about this before, where she’s talking about, like, Nix’s book, and she’s like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – Shut up! You’re going to get it! Relax. I don’t know; thi-, we’re, what, 2006?

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – so we’re more than fifteen years!

Sarah: We are more than fifteen years into the, the lure, the Lore.

Amanda: I know, and now she announced a novella with people we’ve never met before, so.

Sarah: Halloween Queen [The Witch Queen of Halloween].

Amanda: Sarah asked if I’d read it, and I’m like, I don’t know!

Sarah: The Halloween Queen, right? The Queen of Halloween? Something like that?

Amanda: Something like that.

Sarah: Now, I want to, I want to bring to your attention something that we will find over and over and over in this issue. This is the era in which author photos were almost always someone leaning over. They’re leaning to the right –

Amanda: Yeah, like the –

Sarah: – they’re leaning to the left. Like, everyone is coming in from the side, and Kresley’s photo is her in a black turtleneck and a necklace, and she looks gorgeous, and she’s leaning over to the side. Like, she’s leaning on her arm like, Hey, how you doing?

Amanda: I feel like she used this photo for a long time, too.

Sarah: I mean, it’s a great photo; why wouldn’t you?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: But it is the era of author photos are leaning to one side. Everyone’s just leaning over in their author photos. It’s very funny.

Amanda: I –

Sarah: This is a great interview, though.

Amanda: So at the very end – you know, I, I skimmed through it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: So she moved from central Florida to the state’s panhandle –

Sarah: Oh my gosh, she was your neighbor? [Laughs]

Amanda: I know! We were in the same state!

>> Now living on a bay, the former world-ranked water-skier –

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: >> – no longer gets as many opportunities to practice the sport she loves, but she still spends a lot of time near the water crabbing and fishing. “I have a crab trap, and every day when I pull it up, there’s something new and weird,” says Cole.

Sarah: Yeaahh!

Amanda: And it’s like:

>> Maybe one day she’ll find something odd enough to incorporate into her next paranormal.

I don’t know. The fact that demons don’t jizz until they meet their soul mates? Pretty fucking weird, so I think she’s got it.

Sarah: This interview also reflects something that you said about last month: that you can be more forgiving of romance character traits that are not in a contemporary? She says in this interview:

>> These characters can get away with so much more than humans.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Which I think is a really –

Amanda: One hundred percent.

Sarah: – a really important consideration. I told this story before, and I, I cut it, so I’ll leave it, this one, ‘cause this is at the start of the series? The, one of the, one of the things I learned from Kresley Cole – we were hanging out at a conference – she’s, so Cole said that one of the reasons why this series started was that her contract had ended; she was writing historicals? I think she was writing Scottish historicals? That’s right –

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: – ‘cause nipples track your boat with GPS. And so she called her editor on a Friday afternoon because she knew that her editor would be at her desk waiting to hear from her friends about what they were going to do that weekend in New York, and so she called her editor late on a Friday afternoon and was like, Hey! So what’s selling? What’s going on? And the editor said something about paranormal series, and Cole was like, Okay! That’s what I’ll write! And that’s the start of the Lore. She’s like, I want to know what’s going to sell; I’m going to write that. And then she came up with this whole Lore and the paranormal Amazing Race and all of that cool stuff.

So moving on to the Mail Bag, there is a letter from the, there is a letter to the editor from Jana Lynn Elzinga from Utah writing about – this is so cute – keeping a book journal on her Palm Pilot. Okay, do you remember Palm Pilots? Did you, like, are you aware –

Amanda: I –

Sarah: – of their existence?

Amanda: I was aware of their existence. I was too young to have them, so I did not have one.

Sarah: So this person, Jana Lynn  has a program called BookBag from Wakefield Software, and it was basically the ha-, the, the precursor to Goodreads.

>> I have to listen, mention my favorite little program, BookBag. I found it last year when I got a Palm for Christmas. I always wanted some sort of computer program so I could keep track of all the books I’ve read, books for myself, and so I could recommend books to others. You enter the book information, get the title, a ratings system. You can also add fields. You get the current status of the book: I’m reading it; I loaned it to Mom; I borrowed from the library. I’ve even got information about four hundred books in mine.

This is so cute! It’s the precursor to Goodreads!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m so charmed by this! I just love this so much. And I will show you in another issue, when I scan it in, there are several articles about, like, Here’s how to use this e-reader; here’s how to use the Bookwise; here’s how to use the, the, the lit format from Microsoft. Like, this was, the magazine had to do so much work to teach people how to access eBooks, ‘cause they were reviewing them? But the number of women who are writing in like, Here’s this little program that I use on my Palm Pilot – and this program is still available. If you have a Palm, you can go to wakefieldsoft.com/bookbag. They’re not updating it, and they’re not selling it, but you can download the installer if you need it, which I think is so cute.

Amanda: Palm Pilot doesn’t exist anymore; like, you can’t buy one ‘cause there’s so many other things, right? Like, they’re just –

Sarah: Mm-hmm; it’s all on your phone now.

Amanda: Geeze.

Sarah: Then there’s also two letters who are very upset that the Regency line from Signet has been discontinued. I apologize for the blurriness of the scan quality on this page. People were very, very sad that Signet Regency was discontinued. That was 2006; I would have thought that was much, much earlier. It’s kind of sad, though, because if Signet had just held on, they could have started releasing all of those Regencies in digital, and it, the –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – the landscape of Regency romance might look a little different right now. Regency in format, not Regency in time periods: two different things.

Now, I am very curious about who the hell Flavia Knightsbridge was. It was a, a pseudonym. They are judging the American Title contest, which was like the writing contest run through the magazine for, you know, aspiring writers. But Flavia Knightsbridge was one of the judges for the elements of the contest, but it doesn’t say, like, what her qualifications are or why she’s doing this. She basically writes a gossip column, and a lot of it is like News! And here’s what this author is doing, and this is what author’s doing. There’s also a blind item, and I’m really excited! Okay –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – this is – [laughs more] – there’s a blind item!

>> Once upon a time in a not so far away world, a dazzlingly successful novelist rushed into a rather silly fray on a fan board to insist she was not trying to copy her heroine’s edgy style in her latest author photo. In the immortal words of Willy, Ms. Author, methinks you protest too much (or is it protesteth too much?). Either way, I’d watch it, or you might get a rep for being a diva beneath that kindly façade you show to the world – well, most of it – and alienating your loving fan base. After all, you’re not Oprah taking down James Frey.

Holy cow!

Amanda: Also, James Frey reference. [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s –

Amanda: Who was this?

Sarah: All right, so authors that were copying their heroines’ edgy style?

Amanda: And who would have been into like a, a fan, like, message board? Who would have shown up?

Sarah: That’s just wild, right? Like, I kind of want to know – [laughs] – who was that, who was so, as the, as the kids say now, terminally online that they would go on –

Amanda: I don’t know!

Sarah: – a fan board and defend themselves that she’s not trying to copy her heroine’s style in her latest author photo? Which is wild if you think about it, ‘cause we’ve looked at author photos where J. R. Ward is always photographed for the Black Dagger Brotherhood in a black leather jacket and sunglasses. Like, this is not new! Rebecca Brandewyne used to dress up like the heroines on the cover, like the illustration on the cover, she would dress herself up for the back cover author photo to look like the front cover. Like, that was a regular thing; I used to look for her books in the used book store ‘cause they were so fun!

That was a very barbed blind item.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, I, I’m fascinated. Fascinated! And it’s funny, ‘cause that’s, that is, that is pretty snide. That is pretty snide for –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – you know, only say nice things. Okay, Kathryn, you got Flavia in here throwing it down. And if you, when I google Flavia Knightsbridge trying to figure out who the hell this was, another person online listed a gossip column from RT written by Flavia Knightsbridge about running into Donald Trump and his kids and his ex-wife together at an event, and they referenced this in some other completely different context, and I’m like, She has just been gossiping for a long-ass time! Who the hell –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – was Flavia Knightsbridge?

Amanda: Someone has to know.

Sarah: Yes.

So if you move on to page 14, there is a really, really cute little quiz where you have five authors, and you have to try to match them to their prom photos. I mean, it’s so cute. It is so stinking cute.

Amanda: The thing is, like, they don’t list the answers; they want you to, like, write in…

Sarah: Yes, you have to write in, and then fifteen readers who correctly match the author prom photo will win a signed copy of Love in the Time of Taffeta by Eugenie Olson. Which I think is a, a book that I discussed in the prior episode.

Amanda: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: Did not get a very good review, because the person, the heroine apparently was a Hot Mess Express. But I can definitely tell who Rachel Gibson is, because she references the person that she was with in a white tux, so if you look at E you can tell that’s Rachel Gibson’s smile; like, their smile is the same?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I cannot tell which one is Lisa Kleypas, whether it’s C or A. I’m thinking it might be A.

Amanda: I know.

Sarah: I mean, Lisa Kleypas has always been so beautiful – [laughs] – and photogenic.

Amanda: She still has that, like, swoop in A, like the swoop with the hair.

Sarah: Yeah, she’s got the swoopy hair.

Amanda: Oh, I think C is Heather, Heather Estay: the same smile and face.

Sarah: Yes! You’re totally right. So Heather Estay is C; Rachel Gibson is E.

Amanda: Sharon Short is D.

Sarah: Sharon Short is D, ‘cause the hair and the smile is the same, which means that Jacquie D’Alessandro is B, and Lisa Kleypas is A. Yeah. Well, do you want to write in and see if you can get a copy of Love in the Time of Taffeta?

[Laughter]

Amanda: If it exists…

Sarah: Go to harpercollins.com/taffeta – you think that site is still up? Harpercollins.com/taffeta: Oops!

>> You’ve reached the end of –

Amanda: No.

Sarah: >> – a chapter. Let us take you back to –

Amanda: Boo.

Sarah: >> – a real page.

Yeah.

Amanda: Let’s just say we’re right. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. Well, we’re totally right. I think that is –

Amanda: Right!

Sarah: – so cute, though, because this is, this is still very much the magazine making the authors into the celebrities and making them into the, like, the, the movie stars of the magazine and just the, the, the cute prom pictures. I don’t even want to know how hard they had to work to get five authors who still have their prom pictures? But that is so cute.

So page 27, there is an ad for Patricia Grasso’s Pleasuring the Prince, and this jumped out at me because of the quotes about prior books. One, for the book To Love a Princess, comes from rakehell.com –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and Seducing the Prince has a review quote from leisurereaders.com. So many review blogs! Rakehell.com, what a great name for a website!

Amanda: I met Patricia Grasso.

Sarah: Really!

Amanda: I, one time I attended the, like, New England Romance Writers, like, meeting?

Sarah: Ohhh!

Amanda: So I attended; I got a, like, a, I got a ride out there, but my ride couldn’t give me a ride home?

Sarah: Oh!

Amanda: Or, like, to the nearest T station? So Patricia kindly offered to give me a ride to the nearest T station, so I could commute back to my apartment.

Sarah: Well, that’s nice!

Amanda: Yeah, she was nice!

Sarah: That’s a nice person! I once ended up –

Amanda: That’s the only context I have for Patricia…

Sarah: Patricia Grasso; she –

Amanda: Never read a book or anything. [Laughs]

Sarah: No, she’s aces. She’s absolutely aces.

Also, there are a lot of ads, like the next page, on 28, there’s an ad for Julianne MacLean, and a lot of the ads for the book also feature the author photo, ‘cause it’s important that you know what the author of the book looks like, I guess? But again –

Amanda: She’s leaning!

Sarah: – leaning over!

Amanda: She’s leaning on something.

Sarah: Leaning over and, you know, it’s a little bit post glamour shot, so people have big hair.

Amanda: So there’s an Editor’s Note on page 31, and I, there’s another Editor’s Note later on that I call out.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: But it says:

>> At press time, Lucy Monroe’s April Berkley sensation novel Tempt Me was unavailable for review.

Sarah: Hmm.

Amanda: We hope to review it in a future issue.

Sarah: Hmmm!

Amanda: What does that mean? How was it unavailable? Did it not arrive in time?

Sarah: They didn’t have a book in –

Amanda: Did the book date get pushed? What happened?

Sarah: I’m wondering, because this was still print, so they needed these books well in advance. I, I want to say three to six months in advance they were probably working.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So I wonder if it just wasn’t, if the book was late, it wasn’t available, but I remember talking to Kathy Robin; she would get pissed when a publisher didn’t send a book that she knew readers were excited about and she had to go hunt it down. She was always really annoyed about that.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: But yeah! Well, I mean, you could always email Lucy Monroe and be like, Listen, in April 2006 –

Amanda: What happened?

Sarah: – what happened with Tempt Me? Why didn’t you get a, why didn’t you get it? So, like, what, what happened? Is everything okay?

Amanda: Yeah! We want to know!

Sarah: We want to know!

Thirty-six to thirty-seven: I have a few things that I want to bring up here.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So 36 and 37 is another two-page, left-right spread, but this one is for Harlequin Books available this April from HQN Books, which is – okay, so HQN, they just like last year or this year, like 2023, 2024, renamed HQN Books because people were confusing it with Harlequin the brand overall – understandably so. So they named it something else. It’s one of the, like, it’s got a road name or a street name. It’s like, I don’t know, Times Square –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – or whatever. But this is HQN Books, and there are one, two, three, four, five, six books across the bottom, but they are less than a quarter of this two-page spread. Most of this is a gigantic close-up of two people whose faces are touching. His nose is resting on her cheek, and she’s looking at the camera. He has got stubble to a degree that it makes me uncomfortable to look at it. I can tell you about her dental health and the state of her gums from this picture. It is so close-up. Do not worry! It will be in the visual aids so you too can be uncomfortable at the amount of stubble –

Amanda: It –

Sarah: – on this guy. Why –

Amanda: – does not look like it would be nice to touch.

Sarah: No! She’s got her hand on his face; I’m like, Don’t touch that; it’s just going to be unpleasant. You’re going to, girl, you’re going to get beard burn. Make him, make him shave.

Why are the books so small in this ad? Why is so much real estate this stock image with the stubble? And Fern, Fern Michaels’ book is called – CONTENT WARNING – Sea Gypsy. And do you remember that one time you were like, Sometimes I just want to take a rolled-up newspaper and go No! Bad! Okay –

Amanda: Bad! Bad!

Sarah: – Fern Michaels! No! Bad! We do not use the word gypsy! Especially not for a white woman in a lavender dress sitting on the bow of a boat, or the side of a boat. She’s going to tip that boat over; she’s going to go in the water. It’s what she deserves.

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: No, no, Fern! Bad!

Amanda: [Laughs] Bad Fern!

Sarah: This ad is so weird! It’s just, it’s so much teeth and stubble! Why?

Amanda: Lots of close shots.

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: Mm, I don’t love it.

Sarah: Would you like to know about her gum health? I could bring this to my, my dental hygienist, and they’d be like, Well, she’s got some inflammation there; she needs to floss. Like, my God!

Then on page 38, there is a full-page, full-color ad on sale April 2006 from Medallion Press, Davie Henderson, Waterfall Glen, and then there is just cliffs and some moss, it’s very green, and there’s a blurry castle, and I’ve got to ask, was Medallion’s entire ad budget for RT? I never saw them anywhere else but inside RT Magazine. Like, is this where they sank their budget, in this magazine? Was that it?

Amanda: I don’t know, but to me this also doesn’t feel like a book ad? It feels like –

Sarah: [Laughs] I know!

Amanda: – a travel ad, like come, Come visit Waterfall Glen in Ireland!

Sarah: Yeah, right? It’s very Ireland. Very Ireland; very –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – green and mossy and cliffs.

Amanda: Yes!

Sarah: It does look like a travel ad. I don’t want to go to Ireland right now, it’s cold and rainy and damp, but that’s gorgeous. Like, it sounds great.

Amanda: Yeah, that’s what it reminded me of.

Sarah: Right?

Page 46, it’s so cute. Page 46.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: You guys, you’re never going to guess. Forty-six.

>> Late-breaking news! RT Book Club’s new website launches with bonus content for subscribers only!

They launched their website! I’m so excited for them.

>> Subscribers will now have access to bonus content, but you will need your seven-digit account number located in the upper left-hand corner of your mailing label. Please disregard any numbers following the first seven. In addition to having immediate access to all of the reviews, you will be able to have access to author spotlights, including Kinley MacGregor and Eloisa James; an Ask the Author feature that will kick off with Lisa Jackson; and the coolest feature: you, the reader, will now be able to rate any or all of the books reviewed on our site!

Amanda: So like Goodreads!

Sarah: Yeah! Again with the Goodreads predecessor. Also, this is my favorite part:

>> Be sure to dig out the blue plastic wrapping your magazine came in so you can get the bonus content!

[Laughs]

Amanda: What?

Sarah: And if you threw it away and the trash went out, well, tough luck. Good luck next month.

Amanda: Oh my God.

Sarah: I do not remember the RT website well enough – and I certainly didn’t look at it in 2006 – to know how that rating system was, was, what that was like, but if you were a subscriber or you used the website and you were able to rat-, rate books, I want to know about it.

Page 47. Okay – [laughs] – I’m sorry to make this, I’m going to, I’m going to make it through reading this sentence, and I’m not going to laugh.

Amanda: Oh boy.

Sarah: [Laughs] M’kay, first of all, Teen Scene is four books. This is Teen Scene, new books for April; there’s four; one of them –

Amanda: We missed it.

Sarah: Yeah, we totally just blew right by it. Meg Cabot’s Party Princess, Princess Diaries 7, is one of these books. There’s also My Loco Life from Smooch by Lee McClain, Skin by Adrienne Maria Vrettos, and You, Maybe by Rachel Vail, but this is the sentence that absolutely rocked my whole world! Quote:

>> For years, vampire novels came in two flavors: light and a little nutty, and dark and a little gooey!

Amanda: I was like, Like candy bars!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Yeah, like a Milky Way or, like, you know, maybe like a Snickers that has, like, nougat and nuts in it.

Sarah: Can you imagine –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – if you were a bookseller and you’re like, All right, is this vampire novel nutty or is it gooey? Why does the dark mean gooey? Like, does that mean there’s violence?

Amanda: Maybe all the blood.

Sarah: [Laughs] I don’t know!

Amanda: Gooey blood?

Sarah: There’s… [Still laughing]

Amanda: I don’t know what means!

Sarah: There’s always one point when we record these episodes where I just lose control of myself, and now is that time. [Laughs] Nutty and gooey!

Amanda: Nutty and gooey.

Sarah: Why?!

Amanda: Which one are you? The two genders: nutty and –

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yes! I have to wipe my eyes now, because I’m crying. Okay. Nutty and – you know, Colleen Cusick, who wrote this: cheers to you. That is just a total banger almost twenty years later.

Amanda: I hope Colleen wrote that sentence and was like –

Together: Yes!

Amanda: Nailed it.

Sarah: Fuck yeah!

Amanda: This is – like with your – [laughs] – with your Washington Post…

Sarah: Yeah! Portmanteaus!

Amanda: Nailed it!

Sarah: Brunch, Botox, and Bennifer.

Okay, so I need to take you on a ride.

Amanda: Okay, I’m ready.

Sarah: This is, this is a whole –

Amanda: Strapped in and ready.

Sarah: – this is a whole thing. Okay. So if you go to page 53 –

Amanda: Yes, there.

Sarah: There is a full-page ad from Multnomah Publishers for a book called Redeeming Love by the First Lady of Inspirational Fiction, Francine Rivers. And there is a cover quote from Amy Grant, the singer, who at the time was very much making the crossover from Christian pop to straight, like, regular old pop, and it was a big ol’ deal.

Amanda: Yeah, my, my very Christian grandmother, who did Bible study had a lot of Amy Grant CDs.

Sarah: Oh yeah, Amy Grant. Her song, like, “Baby, Baby,” which was a big crossover hit at that point, she wrote that about singing to her child, like her infant, and then in the video she’s, like, singing it to this hot guy, and I remember, like, Christian music fans were just like, No, you can’t have her that close to the guy in the video! What is this? She’s like, Well, I was just going to sing to a room full of babies, but they – [laughs] – put me with this hot guy! And I’m…

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So the reason this caught my attention was Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, at the top in, in – there’s a little foldover in the scan; sorry – it says Nearly 800,000 Copies Sold. Like, my God, that’s a mammoth frigging book! So I’m like, What the hell is this book? So I look it up, and it was a movie in 2022.

Amanda: 2022.

Sarah: It was made into a movie and released two years ago. All right, this is where it gets weird. Okay.

Amanda: Oh boy. Okay.

Sarah: So starring in this movie, it includes Nina Dobrev as the mother of the heroine, and –

Amanda: As a mother. Okay.

Sarah: – Eric Dane, Famke Janssen, and, like, a bunch of people. I was like, Wait, weren’t they on like The Vampire Diaries? Okay.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: So here is Redeeming Love, and I am just going to say TRIGGER WARNING. Ho boy. Okay.

>> During the California Gold Rush, a beautiful young woman called Angel works as a prostitute in the fictional town of Pair-a-Dice.

Pair A Dice. Pair of dice.

>> Despite being the object of desire for the local men, she survives through hatred and self-loathing. Meanwhile, a visiting farmer named Michael Hosea prays for God to send him a wife. Later that day he sees Angel and falls in love at first sight. Flashbacks reveal –

Seriously, CONTENT WARNING for the following:

>> Flashbacks reveal that Angel’s real name is Sarah –

‘Course it is.

>> – and she knows only abuse from men. As a child, she hears her father, Alex Stafford, saying she never should have been born. She learns that her father is married and her mother, Mae –

Played by Nina Dobrev.

>> – is his mistress. Alex eventually cuts off support for Mae, obliging her to become a prostitute and eventually become sick and die. Distraught, Sarah rejects her mother’s Catholic faith. Afterward, Mae’s pimp sells an eight-year-old Sarah to a man called Duke, who renames her Angel and forces her into prostitution. One night, as a teenager, one of her customers is her father, and she knowingly has sex with him to punish him for how he treated her mother. He does not recognize her, but when he finds out, he commits suicide. This prompts Angel to escape from Duke; arrives in California with the hope of –

[Laughs]

>> – beginning a new life –

[Still laughing] Just needed to know that Amanda has put her hood on and has just pulled the drawstring all the way closed, so I’m just looking at her nose peeking out through her, through the hood. This is so amazing.  

This is a Christian movie; this was a movie in 2022; this is two years old. So in the present day Michael marries Angel, and then later on she encounters Duke, and in a moment of desperation later in the movie she regains her faith that she lost after her mother’s death, tells the audience about how that guy was sexually trafficking young girls. Then, then Duke is killed by a mob, and Angel starts a successful mission to rehabilitate other young prostitutes. That’s the movie. Eventually they reunite, and they live happily ever after.

This was, this was made into a movie in 2022. And it was a massive bomb. It cost thirty million dollars to make, and its box office haul was 9.46 million. There is –

Amanda: The book was originally published in 1991.

Sarah: The book was published in 1991. There’s a movie in 2022. There’s a movie tie-in version of this book. You can go on Amazon; this book has like twenty thousand reviews or something like that. But there’s an ad for it in 2006. I have no idea; maybe it’s because Amy Grant said something about in 2006, but what is this book? The, you, I, I wrote, This book is fucked up, and you wrote, Like Flowers in the Attic fucked up? And I just want to say yes! Yes, like Flowers in the Attic fucked up.

Amanda: So I’m on the Wikipedia page for the book –

Sarah: She’s fucking her dad!

Amanda: – not the movie.

>> Francine Rivers produced some earlier historical romances for a series of years before becoming a born-again Christian –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: >> – in 1986, after an eight-year-old boy, who lived in the house adjacent to hers, invited her to church, where she changed. Following her conversion, Rivers did not write for three years, but when she stumbled to the book of Hosea, Rivers felt compelled to write the story.

When it was originally published, it did not have any explicit Christian content until the book went out of print. Rivers got the rights back –

Sarah: And just –

Amanda: – and made additions to the novel, and then it was re-released in 1997. So apparently –

Sarah: So this –

Amanda: – the original book did not have overtly Christian themes.

Sarah: But then the revised edition had a much higher Jesus by volume.

Amanda: Yeah. So Angel’s Christian conversion did not happen in the original book and was later added.

Sarah: Wow. Can you imagine?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So yeah, I, I was like, What is this book? What is this movie? What is this? Like, this was the weirdest rabbit hole that I think I have gone on since we started recapping these magazines. That is –

Amanda: And I’ve –

Sarah: – some fucked up shit.

Amanda: – seen this book before.

Sarah: You have!

Amanda: I’ve seen this cover; I’ve seen this book. Obviously never picked it up because I know it’s, based on the cover, not for me, and wow!

Sarah: It’s –

Amanda: Really glad I was right.

Sarah: I’m going to have to put like a heads up like once I know the timestamps? I’m going to have to timestamp that in the beginning of, like, Listen, at this point this is going to get pretty hairy. Like, wow!

Amanda: You’re on a wild ride.

Sarah: So then we come to the article where I’m like, Wow, this didn’t age well!

Amanda: No!

Sarah: This has not held up. Page 54. Would you like to read the headline?

Amanda: It says:

>> Lessons from The Apprentice, or How Donald Trump Inspires Authors

Sarah: Ewww? Like, that’s my only comment here. Ew! Yeah, there’s a two-page article where you can get advice from Donald – [sighs] – Trump. I, I, I don’t think that you should listen to Donald Trump for any aspect of your existence, but least of –

Amanda: Trouble.

Sarah: – least of all your career.

Moving on! Page 58, there is an ad top left: Music Man by Brit Blaise. That is a naked person playing the piano.

Amanda: And I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be, like, the hero or the heroine. I, like, I don’t know whose body that belongs to!

Sarah: Well, if it’s Music Man, I’m going to guess that it’s the her-, hero, but I could be wrong. However, that is still a naked person playing the piano. You better clean that bench when you are done! Excuse me.

Amanda: Oh God. Yeah. And I wonder, like –

Sarah: There is such a thing, such a thing called nudiquette: you put a towel down, for God’s sake.

Amanda: Is it a wooden bench and your ass is just on, like, hard, cold wood?

Sarah: Or is upholstered –

Amanda: Or –

Sarah: – with pleasant –

Amanda: – does it have a fabric top and you’re going to need to steam clean that fabric?

Sarah: Where your balls were. Or it’s pleather and you’re going to peel your ass off like a fruit roll-up when you stand up. It’s just going to go shhhh.

Amanda: That’s the worst. I hate leather furniture; I hate that feeling so much.

Sarah: Well, the great, the great thing about leather furniture is that when it’s cold and you sit down on it, sometimes the leather will fart – [laughs] – ‘cause the air’s caught under your skin and goes pbbbt. But then, if you have pleather in your car and it’s hot, then you’re just, like, flash-frying your butt! It’s terrible! And you get sweat marks on your ass, ‘cause that just makes you sweaty. It’s just, it’s a whole thing.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So, yeah, better, better put a towel down, my guy.

Page 59: this is where I was like, Wait a minute, who the hell is Flavia Knightsbridge? American Title, round four. Vote on the best dialogue scene. So they have these people competing for American Title, and the winners are announced I think at RT. The judges are Leslie Kazanjian – I think I’m saying that wrong – former Silhouette editor; Hilary Ross, former Signet editor; and Flavia Knightsbridge, enigmatic socialite. Who the hell is this? What is this?

Amanda: I wonder, I mean, like, this was before, like, Reddit, right? So I don’t know if there exists any sort of forum where people…tried to, like, suss out or list their best guesses of who actually was Flavia Knightsbridge.

Sarah: I, I want to know. I also need you to know that Reddit was founded in June 2005.

Amanda: What?!

Sarah: Smart Bitches is older than Reddit –

Amanda: That’s shocking to me.

Sarah: – by six months. I am, I am shocked; my jaw is dropped; my world is rocked; my crops are not watered.

The other thing about American Title is that at the end of the competition, the winner will receive a publishing contract with Dorchester and a publicity boost compliments of RT Book Club.

Amanda: Publicity boost; what does that mean? You just get featured in RT Book Club?

Sarah: Like, I guess they get you a feature or you get a cover. I don’t know. That, the, like, I would compete for that level of exposure; that’s very smart.

Amanda: Okay!

Sarah: What the hell is Flavia Knightsbridge?

Amanda: Who are you?

Sarah: Somebody out there knows.

Amanda: Who are you?

Sarah: Somebody knows. Somebody needs to tell me. I won’t tell; I promise I won’t tell.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So on page 62 is twenty-five tips for selling your first book in honor of RT Book Club’s silver anniversary – apparently the magazine’s twenty-five years old. Now these tips are fucking wild. First of all, tip number four is from Karin Gillespie, author of Bet Your Bottom Dollar. Next to touring with the Dixie Divas – remember book tours with a group of authors going out? – the GCC, the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit at Gcc.blog-city.com is the best thing –

Amanda: Does it still exist? Does it still exist?

Sarah: No, Blog-City is long gone, and I looked. You know I pulled that up first. There’s also advice from Robin Schone which is so amazing you need to read this. It’s number eight. Just, you need to read number eight out loud.

Amanda: >> As a thank-you to my fans and to pique their interest, I mailed out special packages that included an autographed book plate; a magnet; a postcard; a “message” from Victoria, who dared to touch the untouchable angel; and a surprise sample of Altoids. My fans loved the package, and upon reading Gabriel’s Woman learned new ways to use the mints.

No, thank you!

[Laughter]

Sarah: I love everything about this, ‘cause Robin Schone was writing hot fucking books. Like, she was one of the earliest, like, erotic authors that I, I discovered. She sent her fans Altoids and was like, You’re going to learn how to use these in this book! [Laughs]

Amanda: Some of these are awful. [Laughs]

Sarah: Also read – now, as a Floridian, I feel that you should read number twenty-three.

Amanda: Twenty-three is by Bonnie Vanak, author of The Cobra & the Concubine, and in parentheses it says (file that under niche marketing, market strategies).

Sarah: I can’t wait for you to read this. I’m so excited I’m quivering in my chair.

Amanda: Twenty-three, and above twenty-three is clip art of a house –

Sarah: [Laughs] Yes!

Amanda: – and a man standing on top of the house with a hammer in one hand and a saw –

Sarah: But…

Amanda: – in the other hand.

Sarah: He’s T posing with the tools. Like –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – he’s doing a full T pose!

Amanda: >> How to sell your first book in hurricane-ravaged Florida: make good friends with a local roofer. As people with blue-tarped roofs woo him with six packs of beer, new plasma TVs, and other enticing incentives, convince your new best friend to cart around your books on his truck and offer service only to those who will buy lots of them. The more books they buy, the further up on the waitlist they’ll go. So for the cost of a few boxes of books plus the cost of a roof, a desperate homeowner gets the job done, and you’ll be a bestseller instantly in Florida.

Awful.

Sarah: [Laughs] Isn’t that just –

Amanda: Awful!

Sarah: – simply off the wall? Like, I really think that Bonnie Vanak was like, I’m just going to write some random stuff here; here we go. There you go.

Amanda: A lot of this is just like, Make sure you have free shit on you to give people –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – like postcards and bookmarks and stuff. Like –

Sarah: Yeah, L. A. Banks said, Always have a stack of postcards with you, and leave one in the check portfolio when you eat at a restaurant. They will talk and spread the word. And you know what? If you had, first of all, if you had L. A. Banks’s covers on postcards and you got one of those as a server, I’m sure somebody in a restaurant was like, Holy crap, what the hell is this? This looks hot! Like, that’s, that’s really smart! That’s a really smart thing!

Amanda: M. J. Rose says:

>> Give away at least a hundred copies of your books to people with big mouths.

Sarah: Amazing, right? Just amazing.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: There is an article that if you are reading the full PDF – if you’re in the Patreon, you get the full PDF scan of the entire issue and you can read it, and a lot of people read it and are like, Oh, this is great! There is an article from Colleen Cusick called “Hearts and Crafts: Women’s Fiction Goes DIY from Quilting to Card-Making to Crochet,” and it talks about Debbie Macomber’s knitting books, Jennifer Shever – is it Chiverini? Chiaverini?

Amanda: I think so!

Sarah: Chiaverini’s quilt, Circle of Quilters and all of her Elm Creek Quilt books, and people who do different crafts in their books. It’s very cute.

Page 66: Win a Date with a Zillionaire.

>> If you haven’t entered HarperCollins’s Win a Date with a Zillionaire contest, there’s still time. The prize is a date with wealthy venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who was formerly married to Danielle Steele and is the author of Sex and the Single Zillionaire, available in bookstores now. To enter, write a two-hundred word essay on why you deserve a date with a zillionaire.

Amanda: Just give me money.

Sarah: >> The prize package is worth fifteen hundred dollars and includes airfare, ground transport to and from the airport, hotel, and dinner. The lucky winner, three winners will be selected, where together they will enjoy an elegant, intimate dinner with the debonair Perkins.

So you have to share it with two other people! [Laughs] That’s like, that’s a really weird date!

Amanda: So interestingly enough, I looked, I googled Tom Perkins. And he has, he has since passed in 2016.

Sarah: Oh! May he rest –

Amanda: However, this issue came out, what, April 2006?

Sarah: 2006, yeah.

Amanda: Perkins resigned from HP’s board on May 18th, 2006.

Sarah: Huh.

Amanda: >> – to ferret out the board-level source of media leaks using methods Perkins considered unethical and possibly illegal.

Sarah: Oh!

Amanda: >> – Perkins refused to amend the filing to indicate his reasons for resigning. In response, Perkins disclosed his reasons publicly, triggering an SEC investigation and significant media interest into HP’s leak-finding activities.

There is a main article, “Hewlett-Packard spying scandal,” under this.

Sarah: Oh my goodness!

Amanda: I know!

Sarah: That would have been a very interesting date if that was all happening!

Amanda: Apparently someone pretended to be Perkins using his –

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Amanda: – phone number and social security number.

Sarah: Oh my God! Identity theft! And you got to go on a date with this guy? That must have been so awkward!

Amanda: No, thank you!

Sarah: No, thanks.

Amanda: Also, way to ride your ex-wife’s coattails –

Sarah: Right? You know Danielle was like –

Amanda: – by writing a book.

Sarah: – Could you please leave me out of it?

And you wanted to talk about the ad on the next page! [Laughs]

Amanda: This cover –

Sarah: How silly.

Amanda: So it’s a, it’s an ad for a Fern Michaels book that looks like it’s being released in hardcover. It says Hey, Good Looking, and Fern’s name is definitely way bigger than the title –

Sarah: Well, yeah!

Amanda: – and it has a woman, the lower half of her body, in this, like, coral, gauzy dress and matching heels.

Sarah: It looks like a ballet costume. Like, I would have worn that –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – at a ballet recital, and those heels are kickin’.

Amanda: And she’s precariously balanced on a, like a porch railing. So the only –

Sarah: There’s no way she’s actually sitting on that in the – how –

Amanda: No.

Sarah: It’s –

Amanda: Her knees are bent, so it’s like her butt and feet are the only things touching the railing.

Sarah: – just the tips of the heels! Just the tips of her, of her high heels are on the, on the edge, and that edge is, what, five inches?

Amanda: Maybe.

Sarah: No way her butt’s on that.

Amanda: And in between her bent knees – we’re looking from the side – is a kitten –

Sarah: [Laughs] Yep!

Amanda: – looking down at a Golden Retriever, who’s looking up, so they’re booping noses.

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: [Laughs] In between this lady’s legs?

Sarah: It’s so wild!

Amanda: And I’m sorry; like, I would not be easy breezy beautiful Cover Girl like on this –

Sarah: [Laughs] Railing!

Amanda: – this railing while I have two pets outside.

Sarah: Under your knees!

Amanda: Anyone who has any animal and takes them outside, even just one, there’s no, you don’t get to do this!

Sarah: You certainly don’t perch one ass cheek on the porch rail while your animals go nose to nose.

Amanda: No!

Sarah: It, is the romance –

Amanda: You know someone’s going to bop the other, and it’s –

Sarah: Is the romance between the cat and the dog? [Laughs] ‘Cause they’re the ones looking at each –

Amanda: I don’t know. Hey, Good Looking –

Sarah: – are the ones looking at each other.

Amanda: So I’m like, What in the world?

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: Is this her loungewear, too? She’s just lounging.

Sarah: Is that her nap dress? Remember when everyone had a nap dress in the, in the, during the pandemic? This is her nap dress; it’s very floaty. [Laughs]

Amanda: With the heels; you have to wear the heels with the nap dress.

Sarah: Those heels are so wild.

So if you look at page 122, there’s an ad for the featured eBooks at Ellora’s Cave, and in the top left is Portia Da Costa’s Lessons and Lovers, and there is a, it’s a goiter!

Amanda: Oh.

Sarah: Right? There’s this –

Amanda: Oh boy.

Sarah: – really swollen lump – look, I’m pretty sure that that’s his jawline, but the way it curves and the way the light is hitting it, it looks like she’s –

Amanda: Those shadows aren’t doing him any favors.

Sarah: The shadows are making him look like he’s got some kind of thyroid problem, maybe some mumps? He’s got a goiter, for sure. That’s not good.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: And then we get to the conference. The RT conference advertisements start on page 133, and the 2006 conference, they were in Daytona Beach, which sounds kind of fun, but look at that picture of Daytona Beach. Look at that old-ass beachfront picture.

Amanda: Oh, Daytona.

Sarah: That is wild. The first thing that they talk about, Convention News and Updates:

>> The “FemailersII” welcomes first timers to the convention, an email listserv group formed so newbies and previous attendees could chat, and the network was so successful that the founding members –

You don’t get their full names; it’s Sunny, Julie, Caroline, and Mary Alice.

>> – are beginning a secondary list. You send an email to “femailersII” at – [laughs] – Yahoo Groups.

Amanda: Yahoo Groups!

Sarah: Yahoo Groups! There’s a Fairy Court scavenger hunt hosted by Cheyenne McCray and Eden Robins, and Connie’s Costumes – you could rent a costume. That’s a very smart business.

And then, and then we get the ad. The ad. This, I mean, we could just do an episode about this one page, right?

Amanda: I hate this.

Sarah: All right. Mr. Romance: Meet some of the 2006 Mr. Romance contestants. All right, so no one –

Amanda: No.

Sarah: – has a shirt except for Jason, who’s wearing a tank top. [Laughs] No one is wearing a shirt; some of them are very oily. One guy’s nipples are pointing at me, and one guy’s –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – coming out of the pool! [Laughs] It’s amazing.

Amanda: The thing is, they also have a congratulations to the winner of the Mr. Romance semifinal competition –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – held February 11th in Daytona Beach –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – and I – look, everyone has their tastes, sure.

Sarah: Yes! Yes.

Amanda: I do not know how this man won the semifinals.

Sarah: Well, you can…

Amanda: I need to know his competition, and I feel like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – Keke Palmer in that GIF of, like, I’m sorry to this man –

Sarah: I’m sorry to this –

Amanda: – but, like, I’m sorry to this man of, like, You are the semifinalist?

Sarah: And it’s a really close-up shot of him with messy hair and red eyes. Like, he’s got retinal flare.

Amanda: And red cheeks too.

Sarah: Red cheeks and a T-shirt and a fern. Like, half of this picture is a fern!

Amanda: I don’t, like, how?

Sarah: I would also like to say that this page is more diverse and inclusive than most of the magazines that we’ve looked at and many of the RTs that I attended.

Amanda: Yeah, that’s fair.

Sarah:  There’s two, three, three men of, four men of color possibly? Yeah.

Amanda: I’d say four.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now, I did find an article about Michael Ward, who is top row, second from the left. There was an article in Ocala.com. He’s a soldier by –

Amanda: Ocala!

Sarah: Yeah! By day he’s a soldier; by night he’s Mr. Romance. So he might have won this year or the next. A lot of these guys kept coming back to compete, because it was fun.

Rodney Chatman from Bath, Ohio. I have met Rodney so many times, and I am nearly certain that you had your picture taken with Rodney when you and Elyse were at RT.

Amanda: Like, one was like a giant Scottish man, and the –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – other one was like – was it that one?

Sarah: Yes. And you guys are both really, really short. [Laughs]

Amanda: We are very short people.

Sarah: Very, very short. Rodney I met several times. I remember him being very, very polite, and he really liked coming to RT. And I imagine if you’re a body builder this is a good thing to have on your resume; you’re competing for physique purposes, but, like, wow!

Amanda: Sure.

Sarah: I don’t know what Yvan Cournoyer? He is posing in a way that I am, I guess that if you are a body builder this pose makes sense? But he’s like doing a crunch. His –

Amanda: I don’t like it.

Sarah: – pecs are like potato-shaped, and he’s got his thumb right above his belly button like he’s just pressed a button and his abs went frrr!

Amanda: You know, when you, like, do the, do the, like, flattering pose where you’re, like, pushing your boobs together – you know what I mean? – to make them look bigger in a photo, if anyone’s ever done that? That’s what it looks like, of, like, I need to make my pecs look bigger.

Sarah: Yes.

All right, I think I have found, yes, I have found the entry – all right, maybe that’s Rodney? Maybe it’s not, now that I look at it again.

Amanda: Yeah, I have no clue who – this was so long ago.

Sarah: I’m going to put the link – yeah, it’s on our Instagram, this picture. One guy was a huge – and you are so petite. You, like, come up to their belts.

Amanda: Yeah. I, for reference, I’m five feet tall, everybody.

Sarah: Yeah. I don’t know if that’s Rodney; I think it might be? I can’t tell ‘cause the picture’s not clear enough. But yeah, that guy was there every year. Like, he was like an institution. The thing about RT is people came back every year.

I can’t wait to show everybody this ad. Like, this is what it was like, and then there was a pageant, and they would process out in, like, shorts or jeans with their shirts off. They would have historical costumes, but not really. It was a whole thing!

Amanda: I would love a Where Are They Now?

Sarah: Oh gosh, yes.

Amanda: Like, what are they up to?

Sarah: And what was special about this, if you look at the next page, Ethan from All My Children, played by James Scott, is MCing the Mr. Romance competition.

>> British-born heartthrob who recently left his role will bring his wit, charm, and expertise as the host of the cover model pageant.

Amanda: Oh boy.

Sarah: >> We first met this tall, handsome drink of water at a fundraiser where we made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: to be trapped in Daytona Beach for five days with more than a thousand women.

So it was more than a thousand people at the conference at that point.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: >> James was born and raised in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the northeast of England, not far from the village of Barrow, where Kathryn Falk, founder of RT Book Club, holds the title of Lady Barrow.

Yep, that poor guy. I would love to talk to him and be like, Do you have any memories of this, or have you blocked it out?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: The back cover is Ellora’s Cave Men, and I am pretty sure that some of these models are on the Mr. Romance page as well. Like, I recognize some of these guys?

Amanda: Oh yeah. Yeah, no, they’re, they’re there!

Sarah: They’re there.

Amanda: I can tell, yeah!

Sarah: We’ve got a lot of Egyptian gods in loincloths and headdresses, holding ankhs, looking very serious.

So that’s the ads and features of the Romantic Times April 2006. What did you think of this issue, and what did you think of all of these pictures? [Laughs] Mr. Romance. Ah! Such a time.

Amanda: But, like, the, yeah, the cover model stuff at RT was never my bag.

Sarah: Oh.

Amanda: Like, it was, it was neat to see cover models that I actively, like, recognized –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – of, like, Oh! You’re on that book that I liked! Like –

Sarah: I know that guy! Yeah.

Amanda: But that was kind of the extent of it for me. Yeah, I mean, oh boy.

Sarah: Yep. Oh boy.

Amanda: I don’t think you could do that at a current conference.

Sarah: Oh! Definitely not.

Amanda: I think the, like, for example, Steamy Lit Con, right. Tickets went on sale last week?

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: I don’t think the people who are attending Steamy Lit Con want a Mr. Romance competition.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you again for taking this time travel journey with me. I will have a link to the visual aids in the podcast description, and you can always go to rtrewind.com and you’ll get all of the Romantic Times Rewind episodes.

I am curious, though, if you’re enjoying these. Do you like this little glimpse into romance history? Are you enjoying these? Do you like this? I would love to know what you think. You can email me at Sarah, S-A-R-A-H, at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books dot com [[email protected]]. You can comment on the entry on Smart Bitches; you can comment on the, on the visual aids. I would just like to know if you’re enjoying this, because I’m having a really good time, and I hope you’re having a good time too.

I had asked for reviews, because for some reason they all went away, and Apple is a mystery. It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma inside a pain in the ass. And y’all, y’all really came through. And then I realized that I could look at the reviews for different countries, ‘cause Apple is just showing me the United States reviews, but there were other reviews in other countries! Oh my gosh, thank you! Dani says we are one of their absolute faves. Quote:

>> I follow almost five hundred podcasts, some that I just dip in and out of, some that I’ve only listened to a couple of episodes, but then I have a handful that I listen to religiously, and Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is one of those.

Thank you so much, Dani, and thank you for leaving a review. It makes a really big difference in terms of discoverability and internal promotion. Algorithms are so bizarre. So thank you so, so much for leaving reviews; it really means a lot.

I will have links to all of the books that we talked, and again, visual aids, do not miss them. Mr. Romance, it’s amazing.

And I always end with a bad joke. This joke comes from MelodyPrime. Hello, MelodyPrime!

What is a ball of yarn’s favorite kind of book?

Give up? What’s a ball of yarn’s favorite kind of book?

One with a good twist!

[Laughs] I’m actually working on a post for the site where I look at all the SEO book titles – have you seen these on Amazon, where, like, the title of the book is Book Title: A Steamy, Un-put-down-able, Unforgettable Thriller with a Shocking Twist, and that’s the title of the book? I’m starting to collect them because they’ve started to amuse and/or annoy me, or both, so if you’ve seen one, would you let me know? I would love to have it, because I do like a book with a good twist, and I do like yarn, but I don’t need SEO book titles; they’re just silly.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the best of reading. Have a great weekend. We’ll see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find many outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

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