07.21: Meet My Vibe Criteria: VE Schwab on writing, obsession, and romance outside of Romance

Summary

Fated Mates - Episode 07.21: "Meet My Vibe Criteria: V.E. Schwab on Writing, Obsession, and Romance Outside of Romance"

Release Date: February 4, 2025

Hosts: Sarah MacLean & Jen Prokop
Guest: V.E. Schwab, acclaimed author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and upcoming novel Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

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1. Introduction to the Episode

At the outset ([07:03]), Sarah MacLean warmly welcomes V.E. Schwab to the podcast, expressing excitement about the upcoming conversation. Jen Prokop highlights Schwab's reputation for creating compelling characters with intricate relationships, even outside the traditional romance genre.

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2. Exploring Romance Beyond the Genre

a. Defining Romance vs. Relationship

V.E. Schwab delves into the distinction between "romance" and "relationship" ([08:26]). She emphasizes that while romance often implies a specific trajectory toward a happily ever after, relationships encompass a broader range of dynamics, including friendship, enmity, and evolving connections influenced by the plot's stakes.

Notable Quote:

"I think that the existence of romance does not make a romance." — V.E. Schwab ([09:25])

b. Character-Driven vs. Plot-Driven Narratives

Schwab discusses the importance of character development as the driving force behind a compelling romance, rather than relying solely on plot devices. She contrasts her character-driven works like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue with plot-driven series such as Shades of Magic, illustrating how external conflicts can serve as catalysts for authentic romantic arcs.

Notable Quote:

"There is no romance, romantic arc, love, obsession, whatever it is we're going to use as a word without character first." — V.E. Schwab ([11:36])

c. Authenticity in Romantic Relationships

The conversation highlights Schwab's commitment to portraying romantic relationships that feel genuine and are deeply rooted in character dynamics, rather than forced or artificially constructed scenarios.

Notable Quote:

"I don't ever want to put romance in there that feels inauthentic because of the kind of story I'm telling." — V.E. Schwab ([12:16])

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3. Industry Pressures and Genre Boundaries

a. Marketing and Labeling Challenges

Sarah and Jen discuss the industry's tendency to label books strictly, often forcing works with romantic elements into the romance category, regardless of the story's primary focus. Schwab echoes these sentiments, expressing frustration with how genre labels can limit both readership and creative expression.

Notable Quote:

"There's a continuous pressure to narrow the definitions of those genres instead of allowing them to touch." — V.E. Schwab ([40:36])

b. The Impact of Trends on Storytelling

The hosts and Schwab explore how current trends, like the surge in popularity of "romantasy," can lead to reductive storytelling, where the essence of a genre is overshadowed by commercial expectations. They advocate for more nuanced and flexible genre intersections to foster creative diversity.

Notable Quote:

"When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one." — V.E. Schwab ([39:31])

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4. The Role of Tropes and Character Dynamics in Romance

a. Tropes as Tools, Not Templates

Schwab emphasizes that tropes should serve the story and characters, not dictate them. She criticizes the overuse of simplistic tropes that prioritize romantic outcomes over meaningful character development.

Notable Quote:

"A trope or a dynamic or a setup — if it can be reduced to a hashtag, you know, or if it's a Plot Tag, that does not convince me." — V.E. Schwab ([75:48])

b. Balancing Multiple Dynamics

The discussion underscores the importance of balancing romantic relationships with other character interactions, such as friendships and rivalries, to create richer and more engaging narratives.

Notable Quote:

"Characters are the heart of a good story. And I have to make sure that whatever relationship you are trying to sell, no matter what it is, you have to sell it on its own merits." — V.E. Schwab ([66:22])

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5. Recommendations and Final Thoughts

a. Book Recommendations

Both Sarah and Jen share their favorite works that exemplify romance outside the conventional genre boundaries. V.E. Schwab recommends titles that offer complex character relationships without relying solely on romantic plots.

Notable Mention:

"If you haven't read Milla Vane's A Heart of Blood and Ashes, I believe it’s a must-read for those interested in nuanced romantic dynamics." — Sarah MacLean ([82:59])

b. Encouraging Creative Exploration

Schwab encourages writers and readers alike to explore beyond genre constraints, fostering creativity and preventing storytelling from becoming stagnant or overly derivative.

Notable Quote:

"We choose how much of that hierarchy to give them. It is not just that they're not the lead; it's that we understand that the thing that they're bringing to the story is best in a different size dose." — V.E. Schwab ([76:10])

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6. Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with heartfelt appreciation for V.E. Schwab's insights and a reminder for listeners to explore the recommended books. Sarah and Jen encourage aspiring writers to pursue their unique storytelling voices without being confined by genre expectations.

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Notable Quotes Overview:

• "I think that the existence of romance does not make a romance." — V.E. Schwab ([09:25])
• "There is no romance, romantic arc, love, obsession, whatever it is we're going to use as a word without character first." — V.E. Schwab ([11:36])
• "When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one." — V.E. Schwab ([39:31])

This episode offers a profound exploration of how romance can be interwoven into diverse narratives without being confined to the traditional genre's limitations. V.E. Schwab's perspectives provide valuable guidance for both writers seeking authenticity and readers desiring deeper character-driven stories.

Transcript

[Jennifer Prokop]

Well, it's February, Sarah. A deep, dark time for a romance reader.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh, God. I really feel like. Here we go. Except I don't know that I haven't seen any romance anything. I haven't seen any Valentine's Day anything, and it's. Cause everything's fucking terrible.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Okay, well, not everybody.

[Sarah MacLean]

Welcome to Fated Mates.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Sure. Just. Let's go for it.

[Sarah MacLean]

I want to tell everybody why I have had a rough morning.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Okay, But.

[Sarah MacLean]

Okay, but first of all, welcome, everyone, to Fated mates. I'm Sarah MacLaine. I read romance novels and I write them.

[Jennifer Prokop]

And I'm Jennifer for Pro Cup, a romance reader and editor. And you had a tough morning.

[Sarah MacLean]

I have had a tough morning.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Are we gonna talk about the bird feeder thing?

[Sarah MacLean]

We are gonna talk about my birds. Okay, everybody, so I have a new bird feeder. And I will put a link in, show notes to it, because I love it so much. And my office, where I do all of my work and live like a hermit when I'm writing and recording, is on the second floor of a row house in Brooklyn. And I love one window. It's a tiny little thing, and it has one window. And I put this out. It's like a bird feeder with suction cups on it. And I put it out four or five days ago. And no birds came. And no birds came. And no birds came. And I was like, I don't understand bird feeders. Like, I just. I thought they just came. And then yesterday I was working and birds came, and it was so nice. And I have this, like, very sweet little bird that's brown and has a red head. And I was like, look at that bird. It's brown and it has a red head.

[Victoria Schwab]

And it gave me a lot of joy.

[Sarah MacLean]

Which, you guys, is thin on the fucking ground right now, right this morning.

[Jennifer Prokop]

But thick on your window.

[Sarah MacLean]

Fine, listen, I got birds. It's fine. This morning, I sit down, I'm ready to go. I look out, I say, oh, it's breakfast time. Look at all the birds. There are, like 14 of these little birds, like, bopping around and tweet, tweeting. And I was really happy. And then I got on to record this episode, and Jen. And I was like, jen, look at my birds.

[Jennifer Prokop]

And Jen was like, I can hear them.

[Sarah MacLean]

I can hear your birds. And then I knew that Eric would be grumpy if we did an entire.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Episode with Victoria Schmidt where the birds were tweeting in the background.

[Sarah MacLean]

All we had were birds tweeting. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna take off My bird feeder. And I did. And then for, like, part of the time, the birds were outside my window.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Like, you shut down their restaurant.

[Sarah MacLean]

Where's our restaurant?

[Jennifer Prokop]

It's on the. It's on the list now. It's the place to go. And you made it.

[Sarah MacLean]

Now, here's the thing. I'm gonna. Jen is gonna have to remind me to take my bird feeder down when we do recordings during the. During breakfast time. But also, I was a little concerned when I brought it in that I might have bird flu, and she made me wash hands, which is good.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Well, you know, listen, there might be a bunch of bird shit on the back of your house, which will also make you do this. But in the meantime, I want you to enjoy this nice, beautiful, everybody.

[Sarah MacLean]

I will.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Chirping birds. It was really cute.

[Sarah MacLean]

Put a link to a. I put. I put. I will put a link. I will put a photograph in and also a link to the birdhouse that I am using. And all I will tell you is that it's kind of nice because, you know, who doesn't know about the world right now? Birds. You know who's happy right now? My birds were like, ooh, there's peanut inside this bird mix. Because I read that you put. If you mix in peanuts, they come.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I'm simply. This is not my business, but I support you. I would never put anything on my house that, like, rats could find. But you know what? We're different people in that way.

[Sarah MacLean]

I'm on the second floor. Do rats, like, climb the roof, maybe? Listen, don't tell me about this. I don't know. I don't want to know about your rats. I don't want to know.

[Jennifer Prokop]

This is grumpy sunshine. We're doing our thing.

[Sarah MacLean]

Do not get on any form of communication and tell me all the ways that I am ruining my life, that I'm, like, summoning rats. To me, that is not a way to, like, address my mental health right now. Sure.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Good point. Good point. Good point. Okay, so I'm going to tell a funny story, which I. I've been really laughing at for, like, weeks. And I bet you did not see this, because I spend more time on the discord than you do, which is. Makes sense, because I'm, like, not an author. Like, I'm never gonna, like, run into the buzzsaw of someone being like, oh, and I hated Ralston or whatever people might say. They don't say that on our discord.

[Sarah MacLean]

No one would ever say that.

[Jennifer Prokop]

No one would ever say that. Like, no.

[Sarah MacLean]

No one would Ever hate Ralston. Come on.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I mean, Ralston is the platonic ideal of a romance.

[Sarah MacLean]

Here.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Fight.

[Victoria Schwab]

Okay.

[Jennifer Prokop]

But anyway, so here's the part that was really funny.

[Victoria Schwab]

We're.

[Jennifer Prokop]

At some point, I think it was. I think it was Amanda. Basically, it was like, Jen, like, so am I to understand that you don't have, like, a, you know, like, an assistant who does, like, the advanced work for you and Sarah? And I was. I was kind of like, what do you mean? And she was like, you know, like, if you said, oh, our topic is going to be, you know, whatever, enemies to lovers, like, this person isn't, like, you know, doing the legwork of finding out what's new and giving you a list, then like, you guys, can you imagine? I was like, no, weird.

[Sarah MacLean]

Imagine if. If we were that organized.

[Jennifer Prokop]

We're procrastinators who often sit down and they're like, so, what are we recording about today? Let's just see how it goes.

[Sarah MacLean]

Which is why sometimes we describe a book and it's, like, fully wrong.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Yeah, right. And then there's this character. I don't know her name or her business, but I do remember this one scene.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah, I don't remember the title. It was the red one.

[Jennifer Prokop]

So anyway, I was like, wow, that's a fascinating idea. I just.

[Sarah MacLean]

Can you imagine? Do you think some. Like, some people. Okay, when the radio existed, that was, like, a thing. Like, interns and, like, young people would be like, I want to break into radio.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Listen. That is clearly the case on other podcasts. Like, on other podcasts.

[Sarah MacLean]

Another romance podcast.

[Jennifer Prokop]

No, I mean, like, you know, NPR podcast, Save America.

[Sarah MacLean]

They probably have a person checking facts.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I don't know.

[Sarah MacLean]

But nobody else in politics is checking.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Back, so socks don't exist anymore. Sarah, please.

[Sarah MacLean]

I mean, listen. No, you guys, we're fair. Like, we're just pure vibes.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Pure Etta, pure vibes. Pure vibes.

[Sarah MacLean]

100% vibes.

[Jennifer Prokop]

You can't stop us. You can only hope to contain us. Okay, so anyway, this week, though, as Sarah mentioned, we have a very special guest, and it is a really fun conversation that you are about to hear with V. E. Schwab, author of the Invisible life of Addie LaRue. She has an upcoming book coming out.

[Sarah MacLean]

In June called Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Correct. A lot of people, she does not write romance, but she always has such interesting characters, and a lot of them have romantic relationships, and so we think that you might enjoy. It's a great conversation. So fun.

[Sarah MacLean]

Victoria Schwab has launched a million Ships in the fic sense like her. Readers in every book find two people who they really, really wish would smash. And we're gonna talk with her about why they don't always. And her feelings about romance and about putting romantic arcs and love in all of its forms into books and also about writing, because she's great, and she's gonna recommend some books, and it's gonna be great.

[Jennifer Prokop]

It is gonna be great.

[Sarah MacLean]

It is gonna be great. We know. We recorded it already, so can you confirm it's great?

[Jennifer Prokop]

It is, in fact, great. So.

[Sarah MacLean]

And so here we go. Welcome, Victoria Schwab. We're so excited to have you.

[Victoria Schwab]

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Ch. Romance outside of romance.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I mean, we're coloring outside the lines today, right?

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. We've been trying to make this work for a million years, it feels like, but here it is, officially multiple time zones. We've made it happen. Yes. So you. So, I mean, it almost feels like it's not even necessary to introduce you, because I feel like the whole world.

[Victoria Schwab]

Knows, Victoria, which is a daunting prospect. Please, let's pretend that nobody knows.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, for our purposes, so. But one of the things that I said to Jen from the very beginning when we talked about having you on the podcast was like, I just think there are very few. There are fewer writers than anyone would really expect who can think about craft in this, like, kind of big Broadway. And you have this great podcast where you talk to writers about craft.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

And we'll put links in show notes to everything so people can hear that. But I think one of the questions that we always come back to over and over again, when Jen and I, or when anybody in romance talks to civilians, there's this sort of question of, like, well, isn't kind of anything where there's, like, even a hint of love, you know, romance? And I think we all know that that's not true. And we all kind of know intuitively, like, what romance is and what isn't romance. But I think we're gonn get into that today.

[Victoria Schwab]

I think it's also.

[D]

So.

[Victoria Schwab]

It's so interesting because I always say that, like, the TED talk that I'll give until the day that I die is that everything is fantasy. So it's so funny to take the flip side of this and say everything is not romance. And so, like, I think it's about. We're both kind of deconstructing these capital letters, like, you're deconstructing romance with a capital R. I'm used to deconstructing fantasy with a capital F in terms of both of them, even though one of them we're talking about exclusions and one we're talking about inclusions, we're really just talking about boundaries and like the concept of things fitting into these neat boxes. But also my. My aspect, I usually come at it from the angle of convincing people to read something that they don't think they want to read. You know, people very, very classically will say, I don't read fantasy. And I'm like, okay, but list me some things that you do read. And then they will invariably list me things which are fantastical in some way, because any point of depart fantasy is still fantasy. Whereas we're going to be talking about a little bit the flip side of that argument, which is that the existence of romance does not a romance make.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah, I think that's really true. And one of the things that we want to talk about as we sort of think through how romance. How romance.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

I think what you do so interestingly is you're looking. Well, first of all, I think there. I think there are two sort of big pieces here. One is character, right. And the way character drives a romance, character as an engine for a love story. And I think one of the things that I've been talking about a lot on the podcast and Jen and I have been talking about a lot separately, is this question of character not being plot.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. Character not construct.

[Sarah MacLean]

Exactly. And so I think what you do so well is when you tie in, and I want to get into, you know, all of your books and all of your series and all of your. All of the pairings that you have, you've built over time. But what you're really doing is there is no romance, romantic arc, love, obsession, whatever it is we're going to use as a word without character first.

[Victoria Schwab]

Exactly, exactly. And it is all kind of. I would say that it all comes down to dynamic. Like when you look at how your cast of characters in a story is built is usually there's front and foe, ally and enemy, and there's also, within these kind of circles, a huge amount of potential. Potential for conflict, but also potential for attraction and sometimes at the same time. Right. So I'd say that I approach it more from an idea of what is the relationship that I want to establish. And relationship is the word I use instead of romance, because romantic inclinations can fall under relationship. But also the thing that's so important about relationship as a term is that it evolves. And I think Sometimes when we use the term romance, we don't really account for what comes before and what comes after. And some of that's that in romance as a genre, usually it expects a happily ever after. Whereas when you talk about relationship, I'm really fascinated with the evolution of a relationship between characters based on what's happening with the plot. So it isn't romance's plot. It's more people driven together or driven apart by the stakes of the story, by the firmament of the scope of the plot. And sure, there's room for romance, but also, I don't ever want to put romance in there that feels inauthentic. Because of the kind of story I'm telling. If the stakes are the end of the world, I have a hard time then prioritizing a kiss or a sex scene because I'm like, unless you're doing end of the world boning, which I get it, that's definitely a whole trope unto itself. We got an hour left to live. What are you gonna do? Let's just do it. But in general, because I write fantastical things, there tends to be some kind of external pressure on that dynamic, on that relationship. And so romance would in that situation, feel more forced. So for me, I tend to look at the romantic evolution of a relationship as almost a reward for surviving the rest of the story.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Like, I mean, I'll be really honest, if the world was ending, probably what I would expect is these people to say, yeah, but at least we have each other. And so we have made our own world. And that doesn't matter in the same way. Like, there's no like necessary. Like, I wouldn't necessarily expect those people to like, be like, let's solve that.

[Victoria Schwab]

But that's so interesting, Jen, because that really gets into another divide in story, which is character driven stories versus plot driven stories. And so if you look at something like my series, Shades of Magic, it's a very plot driven story. Plot driven stories still need to have excellent characterization, but the plot is really about external forces. In a character driven story like the Invisible life of Addie LaRue, it is about that internal dynamic. It is about the world of one or of two. And so I think I buy that argument a lot more in a character driven story because it is deeply about the internal machinations of a character and that's, that's their grief, their love, their want, their family, all of these things. Whereas in a plot driven story that can feel like it needs to be more of a subplot. But when you try to make a plot of romance in a, in a plot driven story. That's when I start to think. That's when we get into issues of like insta love or, or things feeling.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Like contrivances or for me, it's like there's only so much real estate, like, right. Like I don't read a lot of hugely long books, right. And so something's got to give. And it feels to me sometimes like, well, which one of these plots are you going to prioritize? And if you pick both, then you sometimes do them both a disservice. Right? Like something has to be primary.

[Sarah MacLean]

This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by the winning ticket by Alison Brian A. Andrews.

[Jennifer Prokop]

So Brianna has gone through a really humiliating breakup and so she returns home to Brisbane with her little dog, kind of feeling pretty pathetic. The last thing she wants to do is live with her parents, but she's at odds and ends, right? What else is she gonna do? So her sister is really determined to like, just get her back out there as soon as possible. And like literally her first night back, they go out and hang out with old friends from high school. And Jake, who was her crush five earlier as they graduated, is looking good. He lives in a great apartment, but he spends a lot of his time working for his father in rural Queensland. And so Jake essentially says, listen, you can live in my apartment until you get yourself back on your feet, but the only deal is when I come back to town, I need to be able to stay with you. And they agree. They strike up their friendship, but I think the question that they then come across very quickly is maybe good friends with benefits be the answer to their conundrum. So this is a really great story about kind of old friends becoming lovers in the most interesting of ways.

[Sarah MacLean]

The winning ticket is the first in Allison Andrews's Circle of Friends series and you can read it in print or ebook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited if your podcasting app supports it. You can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to buy the book. Thanks to Allison Andrews for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Episode.

[Sarah MacLean]

I've heard you say it before, but this concept of romance as reward, it feels like in shades of magic, right? Like there's Lila and Kell and this is the slowest burn. And it's interesting because Jen and I, as long time lifelong romance readers who came out of like the 80s and 90s in Romance where, like, those were fast plot, like there was one straight shot of plot and it was just there to like, service the romance as it moved forward. Right. To put someone in danger, to, like, move something along. For us, Slow Burn doesn't work as well in, say, a contemporary rom com because for us it's like, well, what is the reward?

[Victoria Schwab]

That's not the expectation.

[Sarah MacLean]

And it can only really work for us in a lot of ways in a. In a story like yours where, like, it's.

[Jennifer Prokop]

There's real reasons to keep them apart.

[Victoria Schwab]

Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. Everything that's keeping them apart feels life threatening.

[Victoria Schwab]

I was even going through my favorite shelf. I was looking. I have a. My. All my books in my apartment are in like shelved groupings and most of them are all in like rainbow pairings, like rainbow nonfiction, rainbow fiction. But. But I. On my. On my haul shelf, I keep a lot of my favorites. And I was going through them in preparation for this conversation, looking for what I would consider the kind of slow burn romantic element that I like. And it's always everything I picked was in a fantasy or a sci fi.

[Sarah MacLean]

Or speculative because there's stuff happening.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. Of the other constructs, I was looking at like Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, which has an amazing romantic pairing of several of them. But you would never headline with that. So I think it's more about like, what is the headline and then what are the higher, like the hierarchy of needs of the story. And I think it's really important that we as writers and as readers understand those so that we find stories that we jive with. We find stories that serve us and feed us. I would also. I'm a contrarian person, so I'm also always challenging readers to go look for the other thing. Like, can. Can. Can you find. If you are a hardline romance reader, can you find a slow burn that satisfy you? Or does it need to be the headline thing? You know, and maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It really is so specific to the reader.

[Sarah MacLean]

I think what's so special about your collected works is that you've done all these really interesting things that when you said, I try to convince every. I say everything is fantasy one. I think you're very right in a lot of ways when you really deconstruct that as an idea. But I also think, like, what you are doing is so much. So many of the partnerships and the connections that you're making could if refracted through like, kind of a different lens, be a romance. Right.

[Victoria Schwab]

Like I'm talking about.

[Sarah MacLean]

Of course I know how much people on the Internet love Victor and Eli From Vicious.

[Victoria Schwab]

Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

Who are pure enemies. Like, if you have not read this book, it's basically like, you know, it's impossible to imagine these characters ever like each other, except it's very easy to imagine these characters.

[Victoria Schwab]

You want to know what the headline word in that, though, is? Obsession. And there is a real key difference between obsession and romance. And yet they present in really similar ways. And so I'm always really interested when people ship Victor and Eli because their attraction to each other and is absolutely attraction. But. But sometimes we conflate attraction and obsession for love and. Interesting. I think you can make the exact. I make the exact same argument about the Invisible Life of Addie Larue. I. A very contrarian thing to say, but there's love interests in the Invisible Life of Addie Larue. And I would argue it is not a love story for either one. For one, it's a story of intimacy, and for one, it's a story of obsession. So I also think I'm somebody who likes to break things down past the headline of romance and say, okay, but what we're actually talking about is, like, that kind of obsession you have as a teenage girl for your teenage girlfriends. Now, sometimes it's like, me, and it turns out you are gay, and it takes you an extra, like, 20 years. But sometimes it's just that, like, sense of, I want to wear your skin ness of people that you admire, people whose life you envy. People where that blurred line of friendship and enemy and attraction and repulsion. There's so much meaty character work that happens there. And that's the stuff that I'm really interested in. So it's not that I'm not interested in romance. It's just that I'm so interested in dynamic.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. And I think you do it so well.

[Jennifer Prokop]

It's funny you're saying I'm a contrarian because I think of myself as one. But at the same time, I. There's, like, a thing people do that I actually like, super hate. So I'm just gonna, like, who?

[Victoria Schwab]

Tell me right now.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Right. Which is like, okay, this just the.

[Sarah MacLean]

Three of us in our.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Yeah. There's a book I really. There are books I hate. Like, Right. I really hate this called A Little Life. A lot of people, really. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. I've read it, and I've had people say to me, like, but you really secretly must love it to spend this much time thinking about it. And I find this, like, such a deeply insulting thing to say to me that I'm like, no, Sit down. Let me tell you about why I dislike this book so intensely. And I feel like there's a real facile way that some people look at a strong emotion and assume that the root of it is always something positive.

[Victoria Schwab]

I was gonna argue. Yeah, I was gonna argue that point for a second, which is. I mean, I'm not necessarily of that school, but I understand the concept of if something engenders in you an extraordinary visceral response, then it must, on some level have succeeded. But that isn't to say that you have to like it. That just has to say that if the author's goal was to engender a strong response. I loved that book for a year and then I hated it afterward, after I sat with the feelings and realized that they were negative.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Yeah.

[Victoria Schwab]

Well.

[Jennifer Prokop]

And so for me, it was like, instantly negative. And the thing that I. My strong feeling, actually, for me was like one of feeling manipulated by the author.

[Victoria Schwab]

Oh, it's extraordinarily manipulative novel.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Yeah. And I was like, that's not the same as thinking the book succeeded in what it was trying to achieve. Like, I don't actually think that that was the author's goal. Sometimes I think a lot of readers want to put everything into, like, a bucket and say, this is all the same. And I am a person who's really interested, I think, in. You're talking about dynamics. I'm really interested in, like, the boundaries, like, the overlap of. That's kind of fascinating to me.

[Victoria Schwab]

Well, I'm really. I've been thinking about a lot. So my next novel is extraordinarily toxic, and I'm really interested for the conversations.

[Jennifer Prokop]

That is going to engenders in the Midnight Soil.

[Victoria Schwab]

Midnight Soil is a violently toxic relationship novel. It is a story of lovers to enemies, and it is a story of psychological violence in a queer dynamic. It is a story of manipulation. And I am sure. But it's also a story about love. It's a story about what happens when you fall out of love or when you love a version of someone that doesn't exist anymore. And it is so like. It is, on some ways, a love story, but it is. I've been extraordinarily transparent about the fact that it's not a healthy love story. This is not a story that we should aspire to have. One of My big. You're talking about my little life. My big. I won't name the book, but one of my biggest, biggest, biggest issues is when an author presents an extraordinarily toxic dynamic as a Romantic ideal.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yes. I mean, we face that daily here in romance.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. And they present something. And this novel, this author, I believe she was raised on 80s romance novels, which are in so many ways a bit of a role play scenario. Whenever there's kind of like submissive and domination, when it's not stated. When you put that into a YA novel, though, sometimes you're dealing with readers who are young enough to not understand the context of roleplay. And they take a role played archetype and they turn it into a romanticization of that archetype. And so I'm very self aware when it comes to whenever people ship Abby and Luke, I'm like, you're completely free to do it, but let's not pretend that was a consenting relationship. That was a dynamic wherein he made her the loneliest person in the world on purpose so that he could be the one person who mattered to her. That's not a relationship built on trust. But I still think we can have these things.

[Sarah MacLean]

You're talking about one of these, the sort of cornerstone pieces of a great romance. Right. Is. First of all, I will argue, every book is about power, right?

[Victoria Schwab]

Sure.

[Sarah MacLean]

Every story we ever tell that has anything interesting in it is about power. And every relationship we have is about power in life. And so, I mean, Addie Larue is a perfect example of just like how. Because. And I mean, we also were raised on 80s romance novels, right. Like where power becomes. This is not a mystery. The power is everywhere in those books and continues to be now. But there is a balance that comes of that power. And that balancing is where things tip into happily ever after. Right. Like only once we can see, we can stand like in pure equal status can we find happiness. But with this idea of, I think what you do in Addie with, you know, which if you haven't read the Invisible Life of Addie Larue, it's magnificent. And it's about essentially a Faustian bargain.

[Victoria Schwab]

Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

And so I think like this idea of making this deal with the devil and then like that ever being a love story is. But also like, why is that so hot?

[Victoria Schwab]

Victoria? I don't. This is the thing. It is. That's what I'm. I mean, I did what I did knowing what did you know? Yeah, of course I did. I knew it was Harding. It. I mean, my favorite character in Bury Our Bones is the villain. Like, she's hot the whole time. I find her hot from the beginning to the end. I am an apologist. Oh, she's. She bad. But you Know what? It's like, it's fun. I mean, here's the thing. I can. I could do a whole TED Talk on why I think we love the baddies and like, why. I think it's actually about like permission as a consumer of art, as a. As a reader, as a viewer. It is. I mean, I'm working on the finale right now of the villains here. It's literally about villains. But it's this concept of permission to live vicariously and to do vicariously things which society tells us we shouldn't. To have to put away our conscience, to put away our sense of propriety and to simply enjoy ourselves. It is the most hedonistic thing, a villain. And so of course they're intoxicating. They're meant to be intoxicating. And so I think I will. I will go to the ends of the earth to not use the word romance. Right. You hear this all through this conversation. I will say relationship. I will say intoxication. I will say obsession. I will say intimacy. I will say dynamic. And I think it is not that I don't love romance, it's just that I'm so aware of that capital letter on it. And I feel like when we have these conversations so often it shuts down part of us. Because I'm somebody who. I am romance resistant in stories because so often I feel like they displace the other dynamics between characters. So like, I love romance, but I also love sibling dynamics and I also love friends and enemies and I also love all these things. So often feel like they get. They get de billed, they get taken off the marquee when there is a romance to be there.

[Sarah MacLean]

And that's interesting because in romance, capital R romance, they do get taken off the marquee. That's the point. Right. They become B plot. So I have a book coming out this summer also. I know, a month after your book. Yeah. And in the writing. And it's my first non romance ever. Right. And in the writing of it, I struggled so much in the draft in a lot of ways because I was. I had written 19 romance novels.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

And there is a strong romance that runs through it, but it's not the A plot. Right. And for me, the struggle was I really thought, my brain kept saying, like, this isn't like I'm writing a romance novel, but it's not really working. Like it's not doing the thing because.

[Victoria Schwab]

It'S not a romance novel.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Right, right.

[Sarah MacLean]

And I remember getting, you know, 85,000 words. And I should say I did not intend to write a romance novel. When I started this book, like, there was never the plan, but my brain was just, you know, was your intended.

[Victoria Schwab]

Were you making an intended departure? Like, did you sit down and be like, I am not writing a romance novel?

[Sarah MacLean]

I knew the. When I had the idea, I was like, this is not a romance, right? This is a story about siblings. And so I. And about a sort of dysfunctional family and we have the same agent. And I called her at like 85,000 words into this book and I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm not writing a romance novel. And she was like, oh, thank God you finally got there.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Rude.

[Victoria Schwab]

Bless her.

[Sarah MacLean]

And like, she was like, sarah, none of us think you're writing a romance novel, right? It was like a very, like, When Harry Met Sally moment. Like, no one thinks she's ever going to leave. He's ever going to leave her. But, like, to your point, there is this sort of sense of, how do you. In romance, it's the A plot, it's the marquee, but everywhere else, like you said, it just, there's something else. Like, there are other relationships that can be brought up that doesn't mean the romance love story can't be in those books. And I think often what happens is people are so, so intensely opposed to writing a romance that they, like, don't give it the attention as a B plot, a C plot, or whatever. And I think what you do is really interesting because while you might not write a happily ever after, you do care deeply about that relationship being important and powerful and real. And real. And that's because you're very skilled and care about the craft. But also, like, I think it's.

[Victoria Schwab]

I think the word is neurotic. But yeah, I mean, the thing is, I think I will say I try to give that level of attention to every dynamic in the book, regardless of what it is. And so, yeah, I love a cheeky romance that takes three books, as in Shades of Magic. But, like, I just really like subverting myself. So whatever the expectation is, what kind of book it is, I like subverting that. And so if it's a book that pretends to be a romance or tends to have a romantic headline, I'm like, okay, but what about the enemies in this book? Or, like, if it pretends to be one thing, I think that's just me being, like I say, a bit of a contrarian creative where I think, how can I subvert? And I also think, I think we have to talk about the industry times in which we live, in which we work. Obviously we've, we've been in this, both of us for quite a while and I feel like so we've seen the different eras move through, but we are in an era where there's a huge amount of pressure to market something that has any romance as a romance. And I think that that also does a disservice to readers and to authors. I know I have so many friends right now who have books coming out that have a romance in it that is definitely not headline romance, but it just happens to have a love interest as almost every novel does. And they're being marketed as romance and romantasy and these things because that's what sells according to a set of the market right now.

[Sarah MacLean]

And it's such a disservice because when readers come for that they're naturally going, they're obviously going to be disappointed.

[Victoria Schwab]

Because readers who like something that much do not like things that don't have enough of it. My inclination is to be like, nope, my books have no romance. Because I would rather a reader be pleasantly surprised by 10% of a romance than me say, yeah, sure, there's a romance in this. And they come in and they're not banging by page62 and they're like, what you promised me. Where is my like one, you know, last room, one bed situation? And I'm like, I did not promise you a last room, one bed situation. Like I promised you that there was a romantic element in this book. But I'm really just like, I've always been someone who likes pining. I want you to like be screaming at the page like kiss. And so like for me, I also just think I would much rather play down any readers expectations of romance than play up them and then have someone be like, there wasn't enough.

[Sarah MacLean]

This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Macmillan Audio publishers of Emma Lord's the Rival. Narrated by Jesse Volinski.

[Jennifer Prokop]

So this is a YA romance about Sadie who is a freshman in college and she is in her dream school and her dream school is her dream school because it has the most well renowned like comedy writing magazine, like student run publication in the country. And she is obsessed with it and she has like just this magazine launches, you know, a thousand comedy writers careers and so she is determined to like earn a spot on this staff. And it's like the first day and she goes in and she's like awesome. It's, it's, it's mine for the taking. And who does she See, at this meeting, Sarah. But Seb, who is her high school like arch nemesis.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh boy.

[Jennifer Prokop]

And he's also a family friend, but like, these two just went head to head for every single academic achievement in high school and she got into this college and he didn't. So what is he doing here? Well, it turns out he was a late admit off the waitlist and he is also gunning for this spot on this magazine. So this is the nature of the intense rivalry between them Now. Jesse Valinsky does a great job with this audio. At the beginning, we can just hear every ounce of Sadie's frustration and raw anger and annoyance with Seb. And then as the book goes on, we can just hear the softening in her voice as she realizes that maybe she and Zeb don't have to be rivals. They could be something else.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, if you love Arrivals to Lovers Story, you are gonna love this one. You can listen to the Rival in audio right now, wherever you get your audiobooks. And for fated mates listeners, if you hang around after the end of the episode, you'll get a special sneak peek of the audiobook thanks to macmillan Audio. Also, if your podcasting app supports it, you can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to a sweepstakes where five lucky listeners will receive a free audiobook of the Rival from macmillan Audio. Thanks so much to macmillan Audio, Emma Lord and Jesse Volinski for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I think about this a lot, which is like, romantasy as a term is such a clusterfuck for everybody.

[Victoria Schwab]

It is just like new adult was.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I'm more of a sci fi than a fantasy reader. I would like you to be in space with a blaster, and I'm super happy. My understanding is that like many, many people who read capital F fantasy don't want any romance in it. Like, they don't, you know, they're just not interested in that. And so it just feels like one of these ways where you're like, are we trying to piss everybody off? Like, what are we doing?

[Victoria Schwab]

It feels like it sometimes. Because I would also argue that for a long time, women didn't read most fantasy because it centered men. And then we finally brought in fantasy that didn't center straight white men. And there was this brief little period where it was really exciting. And then all of a sudden it felt like, oh, but if it's going to center women, it has to be capital R romantic fantasy. And there's a lot of romanticity that's really great. But as a fantasy author, I'm like, come on guys, we just got to move the spotlight. And now all of a sudden it's being gendered all over again into the situation of like, oh, well, women don't actually care about the world building. They just care about the romance. And I'm like, okay. But like, that's the same thing you could say about like, well, the dudes just cared about swords like you. We can have, we can have everything. But I feel like whenever we have these mantles that are used to sell books, it always ends up doing a disservice to the books and to the readership and because it just creates this, this rigidity where I'm like, maybe that's just because I'm a person. I'm a weird writer, guys. And like, I don't write things which fit really cleanly into any of the boxes. I tend to like take at least two boxes and mash them together as hard as I can because that's what entertains me. And so I'm somebody who's always been a little frustrated when like, I remember when New Adult happened and everyone was like, in the fantasy sphere, they're like, oh, but it's going to be fantasy but for younger. And I was like, do you understand that the vast, vast, vast majority of protagonists in fantasy are 20? Like, we don't need a separate category for new adult fantasy. We just need you to read fantasy. And so I've kind of like now weathered like five or six of these where I'm like, can we just write stories? Like just, just, just write books and then like find ways that are Venn diagram not hard boundary.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I think it's happening right now with like cozy mystery. I've been, Sarah and I are always like kind of this like mental rule of three. Once you've run across something three times.

[Sarah MacLean]

Then it's a trend, right?

[Jennifer Prokop]

Then it's a trend.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Prokop]

We're like, wait, what's happening here? And I feel like it's a very similar thing where I've read these books where I'm like, it was kind of a shitty mystery and it was kind of a shitty romance. Who is this for?

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, who?

[Jennifer Prokop]

I just am so confused. Can't we just have good books that aren't looking to water down thing? I don't know, to appeal to like a mythical, like the mythical kind of middle of the road reader, I guess. I don't know.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, I mean when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. And this is like how you get Mediocrity. And so I, I feel like I have become the kind of reader because I read about 120 to 140 books a year and I, I, I treat it like really seriously. And I make sure to read across all genres. I don't stick in one section. Probably read as much nonfiction as I do fiction. And so I'm always looking to be proven wrong about what I think I like. And I'm constantly looking for the books that do that. But I find more and more it's the ones that take swings. I don't need you to even land all the swings. But like, I just want you to be weird.

[Sarah MacLean]

That's what I say, like every episode.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, just take these swings. Like I was thinking, like a great, a great example for me of a, a book that I think is highly romantic is how to Lose a. How to Lose a Time War, which is an epistolary sci fi novella between two assassins hunting each other out of time. And like, yeah, oh, I 100 agree with this. Romantic books, but that is not a romance. And I'm so glad that it didn't get marketed into either category. It just got to be a weird ass book. Like now that we have so much accessibility, so much more than we had a decade ago. Feels like we should have less categorization, not more categorization. You know, there should be cross referencing. Like, I would rather, I think, I always love whenever NPR puts out its end of the year list. Because if you look at the way that NPR structures its end of the year list, it is not by normal category. It is purely vibes. And I'm like, that's what I want is I want to be able to like tell you the vibes that I'm looking for. And then you can be like, and I don't care whether it has romance in it or it doesn't. I don't care whether it's fantasy or it's not. Meet Meet my vibe criteria.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Meet my vibe criteria. That's gonna be our subtitle for this episode.

[Victoria Schwab]

Because I, the truth is, I love, I love romance. Like, I just, I wanna.

[Jennifer Prokop]

But not everything is romance. And that's fine.

[Victoria Schwab]

Exactly.

[Sarah MacLean]

And I shoehorn. I do think knowing what I'm getting it in.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, yeah. And as somebody who likes world building, I'm always like, sure.

[Sarah MacLean]

And it's because, I mean, listen, romance is having a time, right? Like, like thanks to the pandemic. You know, it had the. But you know, this began with Colleen Hoover.

[Victoria Schwab]

I was gonna say.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah, those books are not romances like that. Some of them are, but. Some of them are, but they're largely not. But, like, suddenly it was like, well, there's a romance in them, so there are romances, right?

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

And so. And then there's like. And then. Then what ended up happening was over the pandemic, it just became so massive. The, you know, the Emily Henry and the. And, you know, the Dragon books. And like, suddenly all of a sudden, we were like, romance is everywhere. It's dominating, so everybody has to write a romance. And then we started to watch all the other genres, all the lions of other genres in a lot of ways, say, I guess I have to write a romance now. And there's nothing worse than somebody who feels like they have to.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, like, you definitely. Even as a. I mean, I have 25 books. I feel the pressure. Like, I'm not going to because it would fucking suck if I tried to write. It's like, I just. It's not the way my brain works. I don't think that's true. But, yes, I like to skew it. But even I, like, I feel the pressure. I feel like the. I feel like I second guess myself in a way I never used to in terms of the sellability. And then maybe it's just because I came. I came up so small that, like, I had so few readers that it kind of gave me a little bit of a carte blanche to be as weird as I wanted and as unsellable as I wanted to because it was, like, low stakes. And now the stakes have gotten a little higher. I feel like when I sit down to work on ideas, it's not that I get into that feeling, but I feel an awareness that I didn't used to feel when I look at the books coming out and selling. I look at the book selling, I look at the books slated for release, and I definitely feel an insecurity, like, oh, mine aren't necessarily as easy to sum up. Mine aren't as. As easy to hashtag and. And they never have been. But this is the first time that I'm like, oh, dear, should I be trying to think of my hashtags like, what am I doing here?

[Jennifer Prokop]

This is something I think I have tried to become more at peace with over time, which is. There's a lot of power in, like, the Capital R romance readership, and we know what we want, but there's so much external pressure to, like, label everything with a romance as a romance. And I think there's, like, a lot of kind of tension There, I mean, but like, you mentioned not the Ministry of Time, but I've seen both how to Lose the Time War and the Ministry of Time appear on list as, like, best romances from people who should know better. And I'm like, why are we doing this right? And sometimes I think it's, you know, to appeal to show people, like, hey, the things that you liked about these books you can find in romance. But I also think that there's something I don't know. Like, I am fascinated by all of the ways different players, right? Like, sort of kind of fall into this trap of saleability and it's reductive as well.

[Victoria Schwab]

I know that this conversation has happened on TikTok recently, but I remember somebody tagging like, RF Kuang's Babel as. As like dark academia romance. And it was like, guys, you gotta stop it. Because, like, it's reductive also. Then you're. You're not setting the other readers, like, you're not recommending work in a way that's gonna please readers because you, you need to, like, like, it's great to be surprised if you are the kind of reader who makes space for that. If you're the kind of reader, like, I will pick up books and I will not read the jacket copy and I will not read reviews because I'm just like, hail Mary, what's gonna happen? And, like, because I'm just a curious person, I just like to like, spin the wheel. But if you're not that kind of reader, if you're a kind of reader who is like, here is what I like. I have a limited amount of time and resources I want to read the thing that is going to bring. Bring me comfort, then it is a disservice to market books and it is just a service to try and compartmentalize books, I guess. I guess what I'm saying is, like, I just want our. All of our definitions to be broad. Reaching out instead of reaching in. Like, can we find ways to talk about books and recommend books that don't make them feel more nucleic, that can actually make them feel like, like a chain link fact, right? Can we talk about stories that tell you. Okay, you know what? Leaping from point A from this book over here to point X might not feed you, but, like, what if you went from point A to point B and it took you just a tiny bit outside of your comfort zone? And like, what if you went from B? Okay, you want to draw bigger. What if you go from B to F? Can we take these tiny steps to encourage readership in all directions. Coming into romance and going out of romance to help broaden. Because the other thing that I worry about, and this is going to make me sound like a tired old crow, which I am. But the thing that I worry about here we are from a readership and a writership perspective, right? Which is a huge number of readers also want to write. This is a, this is a creativity in conversation. And the thing that I always, always worry about is derivation and like the, the, the declining reward. And what I mean by that is like if you as a reader or a writer or both, only consume within the genre that you read and write, then your level of inspiration becomes narrower, the level of cross pollination becomes narrower and you end up with work that feels more and more derivative, becomes a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. And the way that interesting novel, new mashups and ideas happen, is by you reaching outside of your comfort zone. It is by a romance writer reaching over to horror. Horror and say, and picking up a horror and having a little seed of an idea from somewhere in that horror novel, making them go, oh, what if I did this? And you're. And like, it's not that you won't get those seeds from within your own genre, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be diminishing returns. And so I worry about it for readers and for writers. I want all of us as consumers of art, because consumers of art become creators of art to constantly be stretching outside of our, our purview, not staying within the safety of it, simply because I don't think it makes us good art.

[Jennifer Prokop]

This week's episode of Faded Mates is brought to you by Max Monroe, author of Playing Games.

[Sarah MacLean]

So this is the second book in Max Monroe's Dixon University series, spelled with a C. Kai Jen, A ck Anyway, and it's about the star quarterback and campus golden boy, Blake Bowden, and who is annoyingly handsome. Jen, Very enigmatic for, for a quarterback and confident and able to charm basically anybody he wants all the time. Now he set his eyes on Lexi, our heroine, who does not do relationships. She doesn't do emotions, she doesn't do distractions. She certainly doesn't do college quarterbacks. But I think that's all gonna change. Lexi has some computer assisted research that she has to complete to complete her dissertation by the end of the semester and she needs to like, put it to the test a little more. So she has decided that she's going to use Blake for the purposes of science and analyze Charm track her own feelings, her body feelings and her, you know, responses for to him emotionally. And prove once and for all that attraction is nothing but science and love certainly doesn't exist.

[Jennifer Prokop]

A little scientific method I got you. So if you would like to check out Playing Games, it is available with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. You can also order it in paperback. So if your podcasting app supports it, you can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to buy the book. Thanks to Max Monroe for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Sarah MacLean]

And it's also about career, right? I think there's space for you as a debut in genre to be like, I've always read this one thing and now I'm writing my version of this thing. And you can do it great and people can love it. But like, if you're talking about legacy, right. Which is a thing that I talk about a lot, right? In, in genre, there is, there comes a point where your legacy, you only have the Runway for legacy if you are constantly evolving, right? Like, if there is always something new.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. Which direction are you going to grow? Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

I would also say like two again in genre. And I mean this in thrillers. I mean, I mean this in like true genre. This is also about sub genre in a lot of ways for some of these authors. Like some of these writers, like, have never read outside of their one thing that they love.

[Victoria Schwab]

That's basically what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

No, I think what I, I agree with what you're saying, which is like.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Head out and read more of everything, right?

[Sarah MacLean]

Everything.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Well, I'm really interested.

[Victoria Schwab]

Start with like, yeah, you take a baby step. Take a baby step over there to.

[Sarah MacLean]

Like take a different time period. Read something with or like you even take some narrative.

[Victoria Schwab]

So I was listening to Julia Whelan's Casanova llc, which is like story within a story. Like even that from a structure like that is a hard line romance. But from a structural standpoint is an education in nested narratives. Like, do things like Rachel Hawkins likes to meld thriller and romance. Like, find the ways to do these things. Like horror and romance fit together beautifully. There are two sides. Like, I think as Tiffany Reese wrote that like erotica is sex plus fear, right. Like find the intersections, find the sex pluses or the fantasy pluses. And so yeah, I think it's all about, like, add more ingredients to the pot.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Yeah, I think that's okay.

[Sarah MacLean]

Like, it's okay. Is I think what we're all saying, like, yes, also.

[Victoria Schwab]

Please, please, I beg you.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Yeah. I'm a huge genre reader. Like, I. I just love genre. But one of the things I think I'm fascinated by is, like, the evolution of a genre. Like, by, like, as you were saying, like, one author or one character throughout, like, a series of books. Like, I was thinking, okay, so I'm a huge Reacher fan. And I. I don't really. I. Mostly on the podcast, I'm like, yeah, I'm reading Reacher again or whatever. But I was thinking about it in terms of this, because Reacher is like, blows into town, you know, maybe has one lover, of course. Right. But, like, you know that classic.

[Sarah MacLean]

No feelings.

[Jennifer Prokop]

But not. But it was really interesting because I was like, is that always true? And so it's. And it mostly is. But the one Reacher book that I think has, like, the most interesting, like, romantic or, like, sexual relationship, it's not really romantic at all because Reacher doesn't have feelings, which is why I love it. Otherwise, how could you be a mass murderer? Everybody. Anyway, but in this one book, which is. It's really interesting. This is the second to last book that Lee Child wrote on his own. It's called the Midnight Line. And the one about. It's also, to me, the one after it really, you could see that his heart wasn't in it anymore. But in this particular book, there's two women. They're twins. And the first one is essentially, like, missing. And she was a soldier who had been, like, deeply wounded in Iraq. Like, her face essentially, like, melted off. Right. I'm sorry. Like, whatever. It's Reacher. So it's going to be kind of violent. And she and her sister essentially is through, like, Reacher reasons, like, is he's going to. They're going to work together to help to try and find this woman. And the. The beautiful. They're beautiful women. Like, so he's like, I know what you looked like before. It's really smart storytelling on Lee Child's part because he can see what the scarred twin. Right. Of course, I don't remember their names because, you know, whatever. Sorry, I didn't do that much research. Right. And so the beautiful one, he can see what the scar twin would have looked like had she not had this experience. Right. And that traumatized her. But he ends up at the end of the book having sex with the scarred twin and not the beautiful one, even though the beautiful one has been hitting on him the whole time. And I thought it was like, a really interesting from a character perspective, because even though Reacher is a beautiful physical specimen, that is not. That is. He is A tool that is not something he's ever been interested in. Like, beauty.

[Sarah MacLean]

Right?

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. Aesthetics are not it.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Yeah. Right. He's far more interested in, like, people for who they are. And he ends up finding the. The scarred twin is so brave, right? He ends up really having to grapple with someone who is, like, in extreme pain from her injuries. And it's. And I just. But I would say, like, this is book 22 or something, right? Like, and it really isn't. It's there these women as characters. It's far more in this, like, romantic, sexual part of this, far more about, like, telling stuff who Reacher is.

[Sarah MacLean]

Right?

[Jennifer Prokop]

And I found myself thinking, like, it's small, but it's small work, right? This is a very small thing that I was interested in it as a romance reader, and I don't know if.

[Victoria Schwab]

Regular Reacher readers even cared, but it's a branch. It's a tendril that is thrown out. And I think that tendrils, especially because those almost are, like, invasive into a readership. That might be the thing that bends a Reacher reader into something, into a new book.

[Sarah MacLean]

And also, to your point earlier, Victoria, like, It's interesting because 22 books in. I mean, Lee Child doesn't have to change the formula, right? Like, the formula. That formula is perfect. It is Campbell's tomato soup, right? And I say that with love. So. But there is something that's a choice. He was like, I'm gonna have to change the formula. And now I'm like, we gotta get Leon to talk about the formula.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, let's find out what that was.

[Sarah MacLean]

Apparently, he. He won't do that, but though, for.

[Jennifer Prokop]

A romance podcast, we'd be like, can to talk about the midnight line. Like, what you weirdos?

[Sarah MacLean]

I mean, he went on that video and he played chess with that chess master for, like, just because he likes chess. We gotta find something he likes that we could talk to him about and sneak it in.

[Victoria Schwab]

Romance and fantasy have this in common. That their existence seems to be like a presumed negation of other topics. Right? People assume that fantasy then doesn't have other things, and people assume that romance does. Mysteries do have other things, right? Like, we assume this about genre. Genre. And it's so interesting. As someone whose work has now grazed the literary fiction sphere, as I call it, which I. I obviously have some.

[Sarah MacLean]

Feelings about that over there.

[Victoria Schwab]

I know it's weird. It's weird. But Addie Larue is, like, you know, like, shelved in general fiction. And I was like, what's this? How are we hanging out over here. But there's no such judgment. It's so interesting to me that, like general fiction, literary fiction. When I say general fiction for listeners, I'm just talking about non genre. And what's so funny is that a huge number of titles in general fict are genre, but for some reason the powers that be have deemed them literature. And literature means they aren't genre anymore.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. And remember romance got shoved into fiction.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

The fiction sections of independent bookstores as soon as it became trade paperback.

[Victoria Schwab]

Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

Like, they didn't know what to do with it, so they just threw it in with you, with Addie, you know.

[Victoria Schwab]

But we can pick up like, if I go to the general fiction section, the new hardcover release section, not the genre section. I bet those books have all of the things that we're talking about. But for some reason, I can't say what it is, but for some reason, then the. The onus is not on them to pick a lane to stay within a purview to. To exemplify only, you know, one headline. They get to be messy, tangled, exploratory things. And I think it's that that work still is all happening in the genres, but for some reason there's this continuous pressure to narrow the definitions of those genres instead of allowing them to touch.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. Well, there's this great. So we have a series on the podcast called the Trailblazer series where we talk to the people who kind of built the romance house over however many years. Right. And on. So we had Sandra Brown on, who has written in genre, out of genre, has is now, I think probably more of a thriller writer than she is a romance writer. And she talked about going to her first thriller conference and sitting at a table with other. With men. And one saying, oh, now that they've let the women in, we have to, we have to do character.

[Victoria Schwab]

This is, this is making me think, though, about why. Okay, so I've said. Called myself a contrarian a few times. And I think this is why I'm so ordinary is you have to remember. So I came up through ya and that was like, there's already a lot of. Historically, there was a lot of judgment on being a YA author, on like it being lesser than similar. Again, the genres, we all know each other. We all have been through the judgment circus. But like I. I remember going to my first conference as a. What day by author. And because, like, I had very little to my name at that point, I was a debut. They like, give you the worst panel. So I got put on like a 10pm metafiction panel panel at this conference. And I was, they were like, what do we do? I was 23 and I remember I got up on stage with these other three people, all were like 65 year old white men with beards. It was like very uncanny. It was like white man beard, white man beard, white man beard. And, and I got up there and the one on the end turned to me and said, oh honey, I think you're in the wrong room. And like that was the very first panel experience I ever had. And then four years later I wrote my first adult fantasy. So crossing from YA into adult fantasy, I went to my first adult fantasy conference and, and I got the same kind of treatment, like, oh girl, what are you doing here? I think you're in the wrong room. And every time I like stepped into a new arena there was that kind of conversation over and over again of oh hon, I think you're in the wrong room. And, and I think that's why I'm so contrarian about labeling the rooms. I kind of feel like I really just like to take the labels off the rooms because I'm really tired of being told where I should sit. And, and, and I mean this is the reason that I, when I first started publishing fantasy, that I did it as ve. Right. I did it as ve because I didn't want that. And I'll never forget that a fan, like a fan of my work, work, multiple times has happened, came up to me at an event and would say, oh my God, I'm so glad I didn't know you were a woman. I never would have picked this up. And this has happened to me time and time and time and time again. And I just got so tired of like that vibe that, that's the thing is I think I'm really reluctant towards anything, which I feel is in its defining, meant to exclude. And, and, and, and I, and I mean that when, even when people don't mean it to be exclusionary. The fact is that when we create broad categorical labels, what we are doing is also telling books that they don't belong. Oh, you won't be. And I've been told so many times over the course of my career, thankfully it's gotten quieter as I have numerical successes to disprove it. But I've been told so many times you're not mainstream enough, you're not romance.

[Sarah MacLean]

Enough enough, you're not commercial enough, you're.

[Victoria Schwab]

Not, you're too weird, it's too quiet, it's, you know, like over and over and over and over again. And it's a thing now that lives in my bones, it lives in my brain. I hear that every time I sit down to write, I. That is the thing I have to confront before I ever get to the blank page. And I'm not through it, you know, I'm working on what will be my 27th novel. And every time I sit down to work on it, I think, think, are you going to disappoint them? Is it this enough? Is it that enough? Will it be good enough? Are you good enough? What if you're not good? Like, it's just so. I think that my orneriness has come from the last 15 years of just watching labels be used in ways that in the end hurt the writers and hurt the creative process and hurt the industry rather than helping it and hurt the books.

[Jennifer Prokop]

This week's episode of Fated Mates is brought to you by Adriana Herrera, author of A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke.

[Sarah MacLean]

Listen, we've been waiting for this one for a long time. Aurora. It's Aurora's story. This is the third book in Adrianna's Las Leones series. Aurora is the lady physician in 1890s Paris. She is running an underground women's clinic and it is. Is awesome.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Amazing.

[Sarah MacLean]

Here's the problem. Running an underground women's clinic in 1890s Paris puts you in danger's way. And so Aurora is kind of in a constant state of having to like, keep things secret, potentially get harmed by baddies, and really gets herself into a little bit of trouble now and then. Although always good trouble, I gotta say. Good thing for her. Duke Apollo, who got his dukedom in in book one of the series, is back and he is not going anywhere because he not only is willing is there in Paris to stick it to the aristocracy and make sure that everybody knows that he is a powerful duke now, despite all of them wishing otherwise. But he's also there strictly to protect Aurora from whatever's coming her way. And you know, I love this. So these two fall into cahoots and then they fall into bed and then. And Apollo pretty quickly is like, this seems perfect. Why don't you just like, be my duchess? Except Aurora's got a past that she's not sure she wants to share and she's got a future she's not sure she's ready to give up. And how's it all going to work out, Jen?

[Jennifer Prokop]

You're going to find out. And the reason why is because every one of you listening is going to go by this book right now. That's just the way it is. It is available in print and ebook and audiobook, and you can get it wherever books are sold. So if you clack, click. If you click clack, if you click on the chapter title right now, you'll be taken to buy the book. We know that you are going to love it. This book is extraordinary.

[Sarah MacLean]

It is exactly the book you need right now.

[Jennifer Prokop]

It is so thanks to Adrianna for sponsoring this week's episode. You know, the talk of Katie character is one that Sarah and I are very interested in because I think we both believe that, like, character is really what makes a great romance.

[Victoria Schwab]

Of course.

[Jennifer Prokop]

But I think that one of the things that we're seeing is a lot of people approaching romance building. And I'm talking about authors here. Instead of coming at it from characters, they're like, I have a trope plus a meet cute. Here we go.

[Victoria Schwab]

This is the thing, though. You said something that I want to. I love it and I want to expand on it, which is that that characters are the heart of a good romance. But here's the thing. Characters are the heart of a good story. And I experience this a lot coming from writing series. If you do not care about the characters the plot is happening to, you do not care about the plot. Nobody has ever come Back to the 2nd, 3rd, 22nd book in a series and done it for the plot. They come back because they become emotionally attached and invested in the typical. The plot is happening too. And that is really like what we're getting at here. Whether you're writing fantasy, whether you're writing romance, whether you're writing no matter what the headline is, your people better be damn compelling. And the dynamic that's happening between them, whatever the end game is, whatever is happening in the page in the immediate sense, we have to feel invested in it. And I think there are more ways to feel invested than are they going to be together. Sometimes we're invested in the breaking apart. And that is the other side of the coin. And so I think that, you know, that's why I say at the end of the day, I'm just so invested in relationship. Sell me on it. If you are a good enough writer, you will sell me on whatever relationship you are trying to sell, no matter what it is. And if it's good enough, I will buy it no matter what it is.

[Jennifer Prokop]

This makes me think of. And I'm like, I'm not hurting Janet Ivanovich by saying she sold a million books. I hope she has a house In Hawaii. Right. But like, I really loved the first ten. Like, I. Well, I really loved the first eight Stephanie Plum books. Right, right, sure. But at some point, I think there's like more than 30 now. Like. Like, the thing about characters is, like, people change.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

But that's really hard to do. Okay, but when you've like built an empire.

[Victoria Schwab]

This is the thing, though. So I wrote a follow up trilogy. I wrote Shades of Magic and then I have a follow up trilogy, Threads of Power, that's entirely predicated on the idea that even if you give characters a happily ever after, what you're actually giving them is a happily ever after for right now. And the fact is, if you want to write characters that feel like people, the thing about people is that they keep changing and you're going to have good seasons and bad seasons. And everyone was like, are you going to unpick what you did in Shades of Magic to give them a plot and threads of power? I said, I don't need to unpick it. All I need to do is roll the clip, clock forward, because you're gonna have new challenges. That's like, what makes characters feel like people. And I understand that sometimes we want them to be trapped in Amber. We want them to be trapped. And that's what a reread is for. Right. If you want my characters to be trapped in Amber, then reread the book that you're happy where they stopped. Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

It's really interesting that you bring this up because one of the things that I get asked about a lot and I think from readers is, will I ever write a second generation? Right. Like, so I have all these characters who are happily ever aftered and trapped in Amber in a lot of ways. Right. Like, and that's okay with me. That's the job. But when readers come and they say, I want to do a second generation. Some authors have done second generations, Right. The children of whatever. Here's the problem. Like, I really think, like, we are. No matter how great your childhood, no matter how amazing your relationship with your parents, like, like something there, like, kind of fucked you up. It made you something interesting. Like your weird quirks now come from somewhere.

[Jennifer Prokop]

It's a great Philip Larkin poem for a reason, everybody.

[Sarah MacLean]

Why do I take two people who are like, happily ever after and give them a child who's fucked up?

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, exactly. They get an unhappily situation. This is also a difference between what the reader thinks they want and what they actually want. Because the most.

[Sarah MacLean]

What they actually want.

[Victoria Schwab]

The thing I Get told and asked for more than anything else else, is a sequel to Addie Larue. And. And I'm like, I understand why you want that, but you don't actually want that, because what it's going to do is change your relationship to the Invisible Life of Addie Larue. What you want is a short story, sexy coda. What you don't want is a sequel. Because if I give you a sequel, it's not going to go how you want. What you want is fan fiction. And that's why the fan fiction exists. Right? That's not my space. That's. That's your space as readers. And it's so hard because I'm so happy for that readership. But I sometimes think one of the worst things an author could do, and I can always spot it, I swear, I can always spot it, is when the author returns to a world that they had finished because they have the confidence that there will be a readership there, and that's the only reason they returned. Like, there are times when we have more story to tell, but you can tell when somebody comes back to a story that was definitely done, and there's a marked sales difference between that story and their other stories. And suddenly they're very happy to reopen the doors. And I'm like, you know, I. I resist. I would not have written threads of power if. If I didn't have a compelling story reason to do it, because it's just. It's like I like to leave my doors where they are. I like to keep them closed. But I think it's really hard to tell a reader that. That they don't actually want the thing that they think they want.

[Sarah MacLean]

Exactly. I mean, the other piece of that particular question about the second generation is going back to what you were saying. Like, I. Yes, I leave my characters trapped in Amber. Right. But, like, if I. If you want a second generation, you actually don't want the children. You want the parents again.

[Victoria Schwab]

Exactly.

[Sarah MacLean]

Right. And there's a reason, like, my books end with happily ever after because I have put them through the Wringer until about 20 pages before.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

And so, like, what? You don't actually love these characters Happy Together Forever. You love these characters messy and stupid.

[Victoria Schwab]

We just, like. I know we are running out of time, but we have to talk about the Minions complex because I feel really strongly about this. Okay. Okay. Minions complex is when something that is, in small doses, extremely fabulous gets put into a large dose and is awful. And the thing. The reason I use Minions complex is because I use, I use those movies as an example, which is like when, when Despicable Me came out and you had minions for 5%, everyone was like, I love those minions. And I feel the same way about some of my romantic tiny plots, which is like, yes, you wanted to see more of them because you didn't see much of them them. But there's a lot of dynamics and characters that you don't actually like, you would hate. And I, I get really pet peevey when I see writers do this whenever there's something in their work, whether it's a character dynamic or romance or something that was like a tiny element, even a dialogue quirk. And readers clearly loved it and quoted it. And so then they thought, oh, you know what? I should have 20 more cowbell, right? 25 more of those. And then what happens is they do they just give you a book that's nothing but what that tiny percentage was. And it turn that some things are amazing because we only graze them because we get the smallest possible dose of it. And I think it's tricky as a writer because we can't allow the readers to decide that. We have to decide for them how much they actually want of something. And at what point does it just tip into like, it's just fan fictioning itself.

[Jennifer Prokop]

There are great secondary characters in romance novels where people like bang the drums for like, I want this person to have a book and.

[Sarah MacLean]

And then it's 15 years, for example, Benedict.

[Jennifer Prokop]

But when you then get to their book, they're like, oh, there's not enough juice to squeeze here. They were a great secondary character, but now that they have been escalated. Right.

[Victoria Schwab]

Obviously. And I am very against prescriptive advice, so I'm not saying it can't be done, obviously. I think if the writer has spent enough time understanding that character. I try to write minor characters so that they could be the main character of their story. If we pivoted the scene, if we, if we change the point of view and then I still choose to only let them have a page. If you can pick a character and really know they have a whole plot that's just intersecting our story that we're telling, then that's different. But if truly what they had going for them was they have a really witty comeback every single time the hero does X, then you try to make a whole book of just witty, witty comeback every single page. And it is, it is miserable. This is all to say we choose the percentage that something exists in the story, be it drama, violence, romance, characters. We choose how much of them to come back to the concept of hierarchy. We choose how much of that hierarchy to give them. And I do think it's not just that they're not the lead, it's that we understand that the thing that they're bringing to the story is best in a different size dose.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Well, and I think that's why like, the tropification of romance is sort of a failure. Right. Like I. There's only one bed is actually not enough to build a story on.

[Victoria Schwab]

No.

[Sarah MacLean]

And you don't love it. Here's the thing. You don't love there's only one bed. You love the lead up, the stress. And then you love the takeaway from only one bed. You don't love the thing. You love the work around it.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. I want the 50 pages of you telling me these characters hate each other. I want to know that it's like they cannot stand to share space.

[Sarah MacLean]

Right. You want to know that if they do share space and they're caught, something terrible is going to happen.

[Victoria Schwab]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

You want the rest of it. You don't want that. You don't love the happily ever after. You love the journey there.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Well, and I think the biggest way that I can see this, like, as a fundamental, like, story misunderstanding on the part of authors is then when characters are like, oh no, there's only one bed. And I was like, self awareness on the part of your characters is not actually helping your standing any with like the execution of this trope. Right. Like, this isn't actually how it works. Like having like the wink, wink, break the fourth wall, like act. It's so interesting to me. How so? Anyway, I just feel like what's. What's not happening is like these are not a substitution for good character work.

[Victoria Schwab]

No. A trope or a dynamic or a setup. Like if it can be reduced to a hashtag, you know, or if it's a. If it's a. If it's a booktop hashtag. That does not convince me. It's a plot. Right. Like, it's like, that's fun. I get why we have it. But like it's not enough for me to have confidence in the story.

[Sarah MacLean]

And honestly, as a long term, as a longtime, like reader, first reader, always right for me. I can eas. I say all the time. I can easily imagine never writing another word, but I can't imagine never reading another book. Right. And I think that as a reader, you just don't. It's so. It does me a disservice as A reader for that to be the. That to be the meat of the book, like the trope isn't enough. Because if it doesn't come with all of the craft that it takes to just build that trope in and make it powerful and emotional and burdensome for the characters, then where even are we?

[Victoria Schwab]

And this is where I think, unfortunately, we're running into a little bit right now with some of the rushing of stories to get out there, to come out while trends are hot, is I feel like, you know, I watched it first. It seemed to kind of erode the world building. Right. And I was annoyed, but I understood. Right, okay. Like, world building is not first and foremost in a romantic fantasy. But then it started to erode character. And to your point, the trope became the stand in for the character. And the character needs more than you telling me that one thing about them. There has to be a person under there. And if I don't believe that the people in the story could be real, I'm out. So it's not even that I have an as big of an issue with the, like, the lack of world building or the. It's that I'm supposed to believe that the context, the. The like the contrivance of conflict that you've. That you've chosen is enough to put these two characters together into this maelstrom. Exactly. And the simple existence of a very sexy man who might have wings and a very sexy girl who likes to have a sword. These two things do not a romance make. Like, you can't convince me that simply having the two components with the necessary attractions and sex parts is going to make me believe that they're like, why. Why do I believe that they're attracted. And I think that's what I've started to actually feel like I'm lacking lately sometimes, is the attraction. What's the attraction? It's not. Attraction does not happen by default.

[Jennifer Prokop]

It's just still a pile of Legos on the floor. You haven't snapped them together yet, right?

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, like I say, I am. I'm a very, as you can probably tell, a very persnickety reader. But the flip side of that, when something pulls it off, I'm so happy. I'm so delighted by good books. Like, I'm so delighted by stories that work.

[Sarah MacLean]

We have. We haven't even really talked. I mean, we sort of dropped a few books. Books. And I know that we're. We're very short on time, but is there any. Anything that you. If you were Talk. If you, you have, you have all of our listeners, you said, this is how you lose the time war.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. And then like I say, going back, like, I'm a. I'm a sucker for an ensemble cast. So looking at something like Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows, which is an ensemble cast, it's a heist. It's a fancy. Okay. It's a fantasy, it's a heist, it's an ensemble, it's friends, it's enemies. And then that allows for a lot of, like, material within it. It allows for a lot of potential and a lot of, like, changeable dynamics. And I think what, what really speaks to me is the changeability of dynamics, because then that's where interesting story comes from. My. As a reader, I want my relationship to the characters and the characters relationships to each other to change over the course of every book. I don't want them to, like, stay where they were placed and I don't want it to feel like, oh, well, we just have to get them from this part to this part. I want to genuinely not know whether the characters are going to end up lovers or enemies, whether they're going to splinter apart.

[Sarah MacLean]

You're talking specifically about series now, which is interesting.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah. Because I think that's where it built a series. I mean, so I, I definitely think, think it's easier in a series, weirdly, because you're allowing to have the space. But, like, I mean, this is something I think Aaron Morgenstern does really well. This is something that, like, I just, I mean, even in. Okay. In a novella. I just read Veronica Roth's When Among Crows, that is not a romance, but it has a very sexy romantic pairing in it. Like, things like that, like, they can exist ex. They exist in all shapes in all forms. You know, whether it's top line or not. I think the reason I struggle to come up with them is because a good romantic element is in almost everything. Just the same way that a good antagonistic element. The same way you need antagonisms, you need attractions. So it's tricky. I definitely feel like I'm. I'm in the camp of the hard side on top line romance because I come from the opposite side of it, of it feeling like I have a resistance to it cannibalizing the other dynamics. But I'm so. Because of that, I'm somebody who relies really heavily on recommend personal recommendations and not on, like, what the industry is telling me to read. So I want to know from you too, like, what would you recommend Them to me. To somebody who is really resistant to romance being the headline.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Well, I've never read a book, so I don't know.

[Sarah MacLean]

No, I mean, honestly, Victoria and I feel like I've probably recommended this to you, like, before, but if you haven't read Milla Vane's A Heart of Blood and Ashes, I haven't. There.

[Victoria Schwab]

Okay, okay, hold on. I'm putting it on my list right now.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh, my God, I'm so excited. And then will you please, like, call me?

[Victoria Schwab]

I'm gonna do it. Even though it's got the title of A blank of blank and blank, which, you know.

[Sarah MacLean]

I know, but it's old. Listen, I read it pre pandemic.

[Victoria Schwab]

Okay? Okay, Then we forgive. We forgive a blank of blank and blank if it's not circa 2020 or beyond.

[Sarah MacLean]

Like, but also, remember, traditional marketing happens.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, wait, say it one more time.

[Sarah MacLean]

It's called a heart of Blood and Ashes.

[Jennifer Prokop]

That's amazing.

[Victoria Schwab]

Okay. It's going on my. It's going right now.

[Sarah MacLean]

I mean, I read it. I literally read it on the plane in 2019, flying back from Los Angeles as the pandemic was. I literally came home and had Covid. I was like, one of that first wave of COVID people. And I emailed Jen. I texted Jen from the plane, and I was like, I think I've just read my favorite book of the last, like, decade.

[Victoria Schwab]

Okay, I'm gonna do it. Even though it has dragons and I don't like dragons. And even though it did come out in 2020, that I read it on.

[Sarah MacLean]

The plane, like I said, in March of 2020, not 2018.

[Victoria Schwab]

It was the beginning. It was the beginning of a blank and blank and blank. Okay, wait, give me one more.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Okay, I'm gonna give you a sci fi romance because I just read one and I really liked it, and I so. And I feel like there aren't enough of these, so I'm always like, wait, why didn't anybody fucking tell me about this book? So Jesse Mi writes great sci fi romance, but the one I read was called Chaos by Constance Fay. Now it's book three of a series. But I believe in you because I haven't read the first two either. And what happens is it's essentially like, to me, it was very. Okay, you know how in Mad Max Fury Road, the plot is we got to get away from this place. Oh, no. We have to go back to this place. Yeah, right. That is essentially like, the plot. She is. She goes down to a prison planet to essentially save her friends and also retrieve this information. The guy who, like, runs the prison plan, they think is doing, like, experiments on prisoners, and he's trying to turn them into super soldiers. And he's succeeded with one guy, Leviathan, they call him. And when she touches him, she deactivates him. So essentially, like, he is like, you know, I am a cold super soldier. I'm gonna kill everybody. And she sees him doing this, but because of, like, this, there's, like, a reason she. If she touches him where, like, his chip is in his head, he turns back to himself.

[Victoria Schwab]

Oh, get a little bit of a wandavision.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yes.

[Jennifer Prokop]

So then it's like, them trying to escape and her also trying to, like, get him back to his, like, kind of pure.

[Victoria Schwab]

I love that you started with the third book. I'm gonna start with the first because I'm not a heathen. The first book is called Calamity.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Calamity, yeah.

[Victoria Schwab]

And it's by Constance Bay. I will be starting. I will be starting there because as an author, hurts my heart.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Okay, Ms. I am a contrarian. Bringing in rules.

[Victoria Schwab]

No. Okay, I'm sold. I'm sold on both of these. I'm absolutely sold. Also in the sci fi realm. I'm just gonna say one of my favorite. Now, this has no romance, but I would argue it has one of the most delightful platonic relationships. The Murderbot series involves. Yeah, involves.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I think I have the first book, and it's like one of those things where, okay, there's like, this is a very romance thing, so I'm not sure that this. Other people do this. It's in what we call the Vault, which is, like, I've heard it so good and so perfect, and I know I will love it. So I have to save it for when times are really tough. But I would argue that's.

[Victoria Schwab]

I mean, times are pretty tough right now. I mean, I would also say it's about to become. It's about to become a TV show with Alexander Skarsgrd as Murderbot. So. And Murderbot, for anyone who doesn't know, is a gender neutral, which is why I think it's so interesting. I mean, I think the audiobooks are narrated by a femme presenting person. And then. And Murderbots can be played by Alexander Skarsgard. They're fully helmeted, but essentially is a sentient security bot that deprograms it, that deprograms itself, but its primary relationship is with a ship. Like, it just has, like, a very, very amazing relationship with a ship. So there you go. No, you Know, it is for anyone who. I mean, I don't know why I just came on a romance podcast and then recommended the one series that has, like, 10 volumes and not a single ounce of sex in it.

[Sarah MacLean]

But, you know, like, seven seasons into Downton Abbey right now, and I feel that way about down.

[Victoria Schwab]

So they touched a hand. One person has touched the back of somebody else's hand at that point. This is the thing that we need to, like, come back to how hot it is for someone to. To hold hands in the right way. Like, anything can be hot. Anything can be hot. Just as any hot thing can be not hot. Just gonna say.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Also true.

[Victoria Schwab]

I once read a sex on a T shirt. I was like, it turns. Turn the sand to glass. That seems uncomfortable. That seems unsexy.

[Sarah MacLean]

My feelings about all beach sex ever in books, like, that's where my suspension of disbelief just, like, sails off.

[Jennifer Prokop]

I call that itchy. So it is.

[Victoria Schwab]

Oh, dear.

[Sarah MacLean]

Anyway, Victoria, this has been such a joy. I'm so happy we finally made it happen.

[Victoria Schwab]

Thank you for putting up with me.

[Sarah MacLean]

I. We. I think you are just so remarkable as a writer, as a person. I'm. I subscribe to your newsletter because I love your newsletter. Also, everybody always talks about my like, because I. I do my 100 words and I color in a box every time I read 100 words. I got that from your incredible charts.

[Victoria Schwab]

Of like, yeah, my habit track.

[Sarah MacLean]

Live your life life. And I just was like, I can't do a whole habit tracker, but I can definitely.

[Victoria Schwab]

But you can do the thing that matters most. Well, I gotta tell you, I'm in the thick of a first draft, and it's killing me quietly. So it's really nice to get to come on here and talk with you and feel motivated and inspired and get to talk about story for a little while.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, with or without romance, you have a forever reader in me. And. And I'm really grateful. We are both really grateful that you came on.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Absolutely.

[Victoria Schwab]

Thank you for having me.

[Sarah MacLean]

Wait before, but. So let's just do the. Do the. Tell everybody about the next book when it's out.

[Victoria Schwab]

Yes. Okay. So my next novel is a standalone. It's called Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. I like to think of it as a spiritual companion to Addie Larue. If Addie Larue is a novel about immortality and hope, this is a novel about immortality and hunger. It is about three women and how their lives and deaths and lives again intersect and intertwine over the course of 500 years. It is about Vampires. And it's also about rage and taking up space in a world that tries to make you small and falling out of love. And if I had to give it a book talk ish hashtag, it would be lovers to enjoy. Enemies, not enemies to lovers.

[Sarah MacLean]

And where can people find you, Victoria, aside from finding your books? Everywhere. Everybody check show notes. All of Victoria's books will be there.

[Victoria Schwab]

I exist primarily on Instagram. I like, narrowed my focus several years ago and I'm grateful for that. But I've held on to Instagram and then I also you mentioned it, but I write a newsletter, monthly newsletter, totally free. Oh, I thank you. I thank you. And it's a really, really awesome, honest. That's all I can really say about it is like I really try to explore the just like personhood and everything that I'm going through and working through and craft, but also just life. And also I have a pretty dedicated section to filling the creative well and things that are bringing me joy, stuff like that. So that's free. It goes out the first Saturday of every month.

[Sarah MacLean]

Thanks so much, Victoria Schwab, for joining us.

[Victoria Schwab]

Thank you for having me.

[Sarah MacLean]

We said it was going to be great and it was. Anyway, everybody, we are so excited to have had Victoria with us. Thanks to Victoria for joining us. Thanks also to macmillan Audio. This week, don't forget, they're running a cool sweepstakes where you can win one of five copies of the audiobook of Emma Lord's the Rivals. You can find links to that in show notes and also hang on. And at the end of this episode, you'll be able to hear a sneak peek of that audiobook. So that's exciting. I am Sarah McLean. I'm here with my friend Jen Prokop. We are fated mates. You can listen to us every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us online@faded mates.net where all of our show notes, lists of all the books that we talk about in the podcast, information about our sponsors and other things live. We are still on Instagram, still on threads, still on blue sky. But things are fluid in the world and so things are fluid with us. Also, come see me and Joanna Shoup and Adriana herrera on the 11th in Brooklyn at the Ripped Bodice. And join us to celebrate Adriana's new.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Book and talk about your class.

[Victoria Schwab]

Sarah.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh, and if you are having have ever in your life thought to yourself, maybe I want to write a romance novel and put more joy into the world, this is us saying you absolutely should do that. And if you would like a little bit of a primer on how to do that, I am teaching my start your romance novel Today class on February 23rd. It's at 1pm over Zoom, but the recording is available for a month for you to read or for you to watch.

[Victoria Schwab]

And.

[Sarah MacLean]

And it's basically a full beginner class. We're gonna start soup to nuts as though you've never written a word. But I'm gonna give you a sense of how I put together a book, and maybe you'll find that helpful in putting together your own. You can find information on that in show notes, or you can go to my website, sarah mclean.net writing romance anyway, we're all here. We're still here.

[Jennifer Prokop]

We're still here. So are you.

[D]

Why do you sound like you're being chased by a zombie horde? Christina asks in mild alarm. McLaren Hall, I gasp into my phone. Where is it? I'm assuming not where you are. I can count the number of times I have been late on one finger finger the day I was born. End of list. Ever since I came into the world, a week overdue, I have been so reliably on time that I wouldn't be surprised if clocks started resetting themselves around me. Turns out I'm making up for it now, because I'm not just late, but late. Thankfully, Christina's gorgeously manicured nails are clacking on her keyboard on the other end of the line, where she is no doubt still starfished on her bed in our dorm where I left her 10 minutes ago. So there's a McLaren hall and a McLaren Hall 2 across the street from it. Do you know which one you're looking for? No, because it did not occur to me that somewhere in the universe there exists a college campus architect nefarious or lazy enough to do such a thing.

[Victoria Schwab]

Shit, shit.

[D]

I squeak. According to my good friend the Internet, the zine meeting is in the OG McLaren, which is the one next to the fountain, Christina informs me. I do an absurd pivot, like I'm auditioning for a musical, finally spotting the fountain across the street from me.

[Victoria Schwab]

Angel.

[D]

Human. I wheeze gratefully. Goddess among mortals. Okay, but like Sadie, take a beat. Okay, I'm out of beats, I say, looking both ways for cars and booking it across the street. I'm so late. I have negative beats to take. It's an interest meeting. Those always start late. And this is like. Like your big dream zine, right? You can't go in there looking frazzled. I'm not. I glance down at myself and see that not only is one of my sneakers untied, but my carefully chosen floral blue first day of college dress has pit stains deeper than most emotions. The first building I was trying to get into was locked at every entrance, but that sure didn't stop me from sprinting multiple laps around it to make sure that frazzled looking, I concede. One beat, Christina insists. I take a breath and stare at the wide brick building, a small thrill working its way up my spine. Not fear, but anticipation. I earned this opportunity. Every test I pulled, all nighters studying for every school newspaper deadline I raced the clock to meet, all so I could get into Maple Ride University and have a chance to try my hand at getting a staff position on Newsbag, arguably the most famous college zine in the country. Maybe I should be scared. It's taken me years to get this close to the thing I want most. But now I have to prove myself all over again.

[Jennifer Prokop]

Thank you for listening to this clip.

[Victoria Schwab]

Provided to you by macmillan Audio.

[D]

To hear more, look for this title wherever audiobooks are sold.