← Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People
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- [00:01]
Eric
Hi, this is Eric. I produce the show. This week, like last week, we will be re releasing one of our Trailblazer episodes from the archives to call attention to the historical Trailblazers Kickstarter that we are working on with Adriana Herrera and Ali Hazelwood to bring you really stunning editions of romances by Beverly Jenkins, Jeannie Lynn, K.J. charles, Lisa Claypas and Loretta Chase. The Kickstarter has six days to go. It ends on June 2nd. You really ought to take a look over at the Kickstarter page to see the wide range of things that are available here. The different books, the audiobooks which are very impressive. Go over, take a look, see if you're interested in buying one of these gorgeous things that gives these brilliant books the love and attention they deserve in the year 2026. That's it from me. Stay tuned for the Trailblazer episode
- [01:18]
K.J. Charles
as historical romance that just have only the vaguest relationship to the actual history of Britain. And there's historical romance that gets really down and dirty into it and where the author has really delved into it. And although I prefer the second kind, but I don't think the first kind should be dismissed because it is doing something else. I don't think every historical romance needs to go. There was only 28 Dukes and most of them had syphilis and no teeth. And everyone's got license. I don't want to read books where everyone's got likes, you know, if I want likes, I'll have young children again. I would rather read a book where they just sort of throw their hands up and just go, okay, we're hairing the hell out of this, you know, because actually Georgia Heyer, although she did loads of research and everything, when she actually did the bits that are really historically rounded, which is to say an infamous army and the other reader, they're awful. They're so boring. They're dreadful. Nobody reads them, nobody wants to read them. The sort of glittery, bally, wonderful, romancy ones, we love them. And it is good that people do that. And I think there is space for both. This is actually something I'm struggling with at the moment because like a fool I tried. I've been trying to write a Duke book. I mean, fundamentally my problem is, and this really does cut quite deep into the fact that I write historical romance, is that I sort of feel like the Atara Stockholsie should have been executed.
- [02:40]
Sarah MacLaine
That was the voice of K.J. charles, an author who helped establish a place for queer historical romance in the modern genre. Writing as she describes her work hair but gayer. In this trailblazer episode, we talk about KJ's writing, about the way she views the historical romance genre, about building communities of queer people on page, and about her work as a romance editor back in the day. For Mills and Boone. You are listening to Fated mates. I'm Sarah MacLaine. I read romance novels and I write them.
- [03:12]
Jennifer Prokop
And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor, although I'm not one to call myself that today because K.J. charles was a real romance editor. And I'm just like, gonna like, be
- [03:21]
Sarah MacLaine
like, okay, well, I, you know, listen, you just have 19 more years to
- [03:25]
Jennifer Prokop
go hire me Mills and Boone, so I can feel real.
- [03:29]
Sarah MacLaine
Oh my God. Imagine what a good job.
- [03:32]
Jennifer Prokop
What a fun job.
- [03:34]
Sarah MacLaine
Just editing presents all the time.
- [03:37]
Jennifer Prokop
The dre, the literal dream. Yes.
- [03:39]
Sarah MacLaine
Anyway, but before we get there, we have something else. We have a little housekeeping for everyone. In case you didn't Download our quick 6 minute episode last week, Baited Mates Live is happening in person in Brooklyn, New York, the best borough of New York City, obviously. March 24th at 7:00pm we suggest you call up all your romance loving friends and make a weekend of it. The 24th is a Friday. March is a great time to come to New York City because it's, you know, maybe a little gray, but not super cold. And it'll be very fun. You can go to a museum, you can go to a show. You can come see us. The tickets include a gift certificate to the romance book table sponsored by Word bookstores in Brooklyn. There will be a bar. There will be lots of other faded Mates listeners to make friends with and Jen and me. And a really delightful spate of special guests, many of whom you all know already.
- [04:43]
Jennifer Prokop
It's been really exciting to see people on Instagram and Twitter talking about, like, getting their friends together and buying tickets and arranging to come into the city for the weekends.
- [04:53]
Sarah MacLaine
Put on a mask, get on an airplane or a train and come see us fatedmates.net live.
- [05:00]
Jennifer Prokop
And now that that's off the table, without further ado, here is our conversation with K.J. charles.
- [05:09]
Sarah MacLaine
Well, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so excited. I don't think we've ever met, so not in person.
- [05:16]
K.J. Charles
I think we've been, we've been on panels, but this is a proper face to face. So that's nice.
- [05:21]
Sarah MacLaine
It's great. So it's nice to meet you. It's nice to see your face.
- [05:23]
K.J. Charles
Yes, you too.
- [05:25]
Jennifer Prokop
So, everybody, as we've mentioned, I'm really excited about our conversation today because I have also hosted a few panels with KJ and I love listening to you talk about romance. And I'm really excited because you were also an editor, which is, you know, a personal interest to me. Not that it's about me, everybody. So we are really excited to have you today on as a trailblazer. And really one of our first questions, just because we love hearing about it, is what was your journey to romance?
- [05:56]
K.J. Charles
Well, my mother had a complete set of Georgette Heyers, which is basically, you know, you do.
- [06:01]
Sarah MacLaine
It'll do it.
- [06:02]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, I'm an immensely fast reader and a voracious one and I always have been so, you know, one of those kids who just sat in the library all summer and yeah, I read extremely quickly. So I was plowing through all of my parents books. They had to remove all the inappropriate ones from the shelves kind of thing. So yes, I'd read through the entirety of Georgette Heyer and, and you know, obviously formative. I was thinking about it and basically Cotillion and these old chains pretty much sum up the two strands of my writing. You know, Cotillion, you've got Freddie, who is this wonderfully, he's not too bright, wonderful, generous heart, immensely kind, and also the superpower of really, really good manners to be deployed like accurately. And then you've got Avon in these old chains, who's basically just a complete amoral son of a so and so. So yeah, those two basically sum up most of my writing. Although it is. I was also reflecting that Georgette Heyer for her era and with the proviso of the kind of person she was and the many prejudices she had. But there's an awful lot of queerness in Georgette Heyer's historical romances. You know, in the Reluctant Widow, the actual hero, who isn't the guy who marries the heroine is, you know, very, very heavily queer. Co in the Corinthian, you've got the heroine who is masquerading as a boy and the fact that the bad guy effectively hints that he's going to blackmail the hero for having taken off a boy in a private, et cetera, et cetera. So there's very strong awareness of non conventional sexuality and then the masquerades is just the most ridiculous cross dressing, gender bending, you know, so there's a lot of that in here. So yeah, it's formative, definitely. And then I kind of didn't follow up my intro. I was more of a fantasy reader to be Honest. But when I was, gosh, about 28 or so and an editor, I got a job at Milton Boom, which to be honest, I took because I was working at an absolutely disastrous company for a lunatic and I needed to get out of there. And Milton Booth happened to be advertising.
- [08:13]
Sarah MacLaine
Take the rope that comes.
- [08:15]
K.J. Charles
It was very much take the road becomes it. You know, I wanted a job that would mean not having to go into that snake pit and they wanted an editor and I stayed there for years and, you know, everything I learned about editing really came from that.
- [08:30]
Sarah MacLaine
When you started at Mills and Boone, aside from hair, did you have any frame of reference for what was going on in romance or.
- [08:37]
K.J. Charles
Not really, no. I haven't been reading any romance at all. I'd. Well, the thing is, because of being an editor, I actually mostly concentrated on reading what I was working on. So when I worked at a travel guide company, I would be reading non fiction or fiction, but set in the country for the travel guide I was working on. And then I moved to a house that was doing politics and history, which I read an awful lot of that. So I wasn't actually reading romance at that time. So Milton Boone came as a complete change of track. But, you know, it was just so, so much more fun. So much more fun.
- [09:16]
Sarah MacLaine
What did you begin with at Mills and Boon?
- [09:18]
K.J. Charles
They plunged you right into it. So basically I was on the medical team, the medical romance team.
- [09:24]
Sarah MacLaine
And we haven't talked a ton about medical romances on the podcast, so.
- [09:28]
K.J. Charles
Oh, see, I love that.
- [09:30]
Sarah MacLaine
It's a very English world, the medical romance.
- [09:34]
K.J. Charles
A lot of our revenue top authors were Australians.
- [09:36]
Jennifer Prokop
They seem Australian to me. More than they.
- [09:38]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, well, no, it pretty much divided English Australia. I can't offhand think of American.
- [09:42]
Sarah MacLaine
In fact, I did not grow up with medical romances. And I mean, I read all of them.
- [09:46]
K.J. Charles
They were kind of. They were not. They were not the big one, but it was a. It was a good team. I like working on it.
- [09:53]
Jennifer Prokop
Listen, Sarah, we grew up with George Clooney on ER though.
- [09:56]
Sarah MacLaine
I know. Well, yeah, I mean, that's not to say that I don't love a doctor romance. That's a separate episode.
- [10:02]
K.J. Charles
But we had some fabulous. So we had Alison Roberts, who was actually a paramedic who wrote such exciting, like really exciting. She did one which is set there was a big earthquake and then there was four stories set around it. It was a wonderful sort of linked series, all starting from the earthquake. Terrific. So good to work on. And she did another trilogy that basically tracked over the progress of one person's pregnancy, for which I had to do the worst Excel spreadsheet in the world. We had to make sure these three books, every single incident, all tracked to this one pregnancy. Well, shoot me. But it had Marian Lennox as well, who is a wonderful one. She divided between what we called. We called it Tender Romance, then, which I think is just. What do you call it? Harlequin Heartwarming. Yeah, it was just Harlequin Romance. Harlequin Romance, as opposed to Harlequin Presents. They've probably changed the name about 15 times since then. But Marian Lennox was. I mean, she was like one of my favorite authors to work with, but she wrote the. And this is kind of quite formative for me because it was a book of hers. I actually looked it up yesterday. It's called Bushfire Bride, and it's one of those. The heroine's got a husband who is in a coma and has been in a coma for eight years. And there's a sequence where she basically says goodbye to him and. Yeah, I'm literally editing this man's. Back in the day. Well, this is back in the day when you edited by hand. You know, you literally had a printout and you made the edits by hand to be input by the copy editor. Because that's how old I am. And.
- [11:28]
Sarah MacLaine
Me, too.
- [11:28]
K.J. Charles
I was literally crying so hard while I was reading this that the copy editor was like, you're gonna have to redo this page. Literally. Tear stains. I mean, God, she absolutely rubbed my thoughts. I can't. In fact, I didn't have to look it up too much. I was thinking, what was that book called? So Bushfire Bride came into my head, and that's 20. 20 years ago, easy. 20 years ago. Amazing. So, yeah, that was. But it was formative because I delved a lot. You know, we did a lot of books. Yeah. The turnover there was absolutely crazy. And I worked. Although I was mainly on the medical team, I worked. Everyone worked across all four. So there's Historical Harlequin Presents, Medical and Tender. That's right. So you worked across them and you got given. And if an editor or author got absolutely sick of one another, you might get them switched in. Plus, I was very fast, so people tended to give me an extra manuscript when there was a panic, on which there almost always was, because, you know, well, you couldn't have a book come in late because of the nature of the publishing. So. And then it. If everything did fall apart, you had to delve into the slush pile and actually pull out a finished manuscript and find out a way to make it publishable within the next week. Amazing. You learn to edit. I tell you what, you learn to edit like that. It's the most fantastic grounding and structural editing because you have to be able to pretty much look at a slushpile manuscript and say, okay, you know, it's got totally good bones, the writing's a bit chonky, but if the author will agree to basically let me do a really massive edit on it, this will work. Or alternatively, you know, this isn't working at all. But here is a thing that I can tell the author to do and if they do it, it will, that will work. But you've got to be able to pretty much X ray the book and look at the structure and, you know, identify what will work and what won't.
- [13:21]
Sarah MacLaine
Well, especially because in category there's no flab. I mean, you don't have any space.
- [13:28]
Jennifer Prokop
It's all bones and muscle.
- [13:29]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's really something. So you could, I mean, there was, there was weeks when I did six manuscripts in a week kind of thing, which is insane. You know, like I say, you couldn't, you couldn't. If you were publishing eight presents in a month, you can't publish seven presents. It doesn't work like that. Right, yeah, that's it.
- [13:48]
Sarah MacLaine
People have signed up for their box. Right?
- [13:50]
K.J. Charles
Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, it's completely non negotiable. So I honestly think it was. I couldn't have had a better training in fiction, editorial. It was, you know, because it was so fast and so relentless, but you had to be really super practical.
- [14:06]
Sarah MacLaine
So at what point during that process did you think, I'm going to start doing this myself? Is that, is that how it went or.
- [14:16]
K.J. Charles
So when I was there. Well, you see, I didn't really, I was sort of. I always had it vaguely in mind that it would be nice to write or indeed to have written a book. When I was there. They very kindly let me go off for four months and work from home in Japan. And you know, this is, as I say, 20 odd years ago. So that was a really, you know, pretty advanced things to do. My husband was doing, my then boyfriend was doing stuff in Japan and we lived there for four months. So I did use some of my free time to start writing then. But it wasn't a romance. It was, you know, I wrote a fantasy novel which has never been published, nor should it be. And then I wrote a thriller which was Picked up by Sam Hain and sold about 12 copies, probably deservedly and then. But it didn't occur to me to write a romance at all. I mean, it just never. Partly. I think actually trying to write a romance while you're working at Mills and Booth might actually be a really, really bad idea. Your head might explode. Well, you know, yeah, I couldn't recommend that. I don't think so. It was quite a long time, actually, after. After I had left. And then I got married about a year later. And then about a year after that I had a baby and. And I started writing when the baby was quite small because, you know, you're trying to stay sane. And it was supposed to be a fantasy novel, but at that point, with all the years I'd worked with Milton Boone, basically, romance had, like, coded. My neural pathways are like valleys, you know, my neural pathways would have carved so deeply into my brain. But it just turned into a romance. And that was the Magpie Lord, which was my first published book, my first romance. And, you know, once I sort of just leaned into. Just felt like the most natural thing in the world to do it. So there we are.
- [16:09]
Jennifer Prokop
So it sounds like you mostly edited contemporary romance. So what was the draw for you to historical romance or queer romance? Like, did one of those come first in your brain in terms of the kind of story you wanted to write?
- [16:23]
K.J. Charles
I'm always more interested in historical. The thriller that I wrote was an attempt at contemporary. And, you know, I hated everything about it because I live under a rock. I don't like modern technology and it dates so badly so quickly. And, you know, mobile phones ruin everything because you set up this whole drama. And Tom could literally just phone up and go, oh, yeah, this is what's
- [16:45]
Jennifer Prokop
going on and you've ruined everything.
- [16:47]
K.J. Charles
And then you've got to find a reason for them not to have a mobile. Yeah. So, yeah, historical, obviously, where it's at. And also I like the differences. You know, I like doing the research and I like writing about different times and different people in different places. And, you know, the similarities and differences are just much more interesting to me. So although I didn't read many, I didn't edit rather many historicals at Nelson Boone. Yeah. Because we only did four a month and they had a historical team, so I had like one or two authors. But no, it's always been what I wanted to write. And kind of the other thing is, you know, I'm very pulp focused. A lot of what I write is sort of riffing off the pulp of The Victorian and Edwardian and sort of 1920s period. Because I just really enjoy that. And I enjoy, like, picking that up and running with this and messing about with it and often queering it. Because as anyone who plays with Victorian to 20th century cult will tell you, it's just absolutely ripe for that. You know, it's just fun. It's fun. Yeah.
- [17:55]
Jennifer Prokop
Gosh, it's so fun. I feel like that's the thing I really love about your books is, you know, there was one, and I'm terrible with titles where he was like a taxidermist. Is that right?
- [18:09]
K.J. Charles
Yes. An unseen attraction. Yes.
- [18:11]
Jennifer Prokop
And I was seriously like, why am I really interested in this right now? Why is this such a great time?
- [18:17]
K.J. Charles
I loved doing that, but it wasn't actually what it was meant to be. I pitched it to the publisher as something completely different, but then I couldn't write the thing. I picked it to the publisher aft it turned out to be a terrible idea. And I can't even remember now why taxidermists struck me as a good idea. It's one of the most fun books I've ever read. You know, I did this deep dive into Victorian taxidermy. I've got the most extraordinary bits on my bookshelf. But, you know, I had a whole sequence where he actually taxidermies a canary just because it was so fascinating to me. I was about to inches, literally inches from going and finding someone who would teach me to do it myself.
- [18:51]
Sarah MacLaine
Well, that's the best part about that. You can convince yourself. I always feel like writing historical also gives you it's. It's really best for procrastinators because then we can sort of go off and convince ourselves that learning how to taxiderm is actually work.
- [19:05]
K.J. Charles
It's totally.
- [19:06]
Jennifer Prokop
You had to learn to pick a lock to write that book.
- [19:09]
Sarah MacLaine
I learned to pick a lock to write a lock.
- [19:11]
K.J. Charles
I mean.
- [19:12]
Sarah MacLaine
I mean, it did become very useful when I had to open my mother's, like, cheap, safe.
- [19:16]
K.J. Charles
Okay, that's fantastic.
- [19:18]
Sarah MacLaine
And I've never felt more powerful. This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Kylie Scott, author of End of Story, a new book out this week.
- [19:30]
Jennifer Prokop
We love Kylie Scott here at Fated Mates, and this one sounds like a banger.
- [19:36]
Sarah MacLaine
She's so great.
- [19:37]
Jennifer Prokop
So here's the story. Susie Bowen inherits a charming fixer up from her aunt. And so she is, like, really excited. Like, she's gonna do the whole HGTV scene and, like, revamp the whole thing. And the book starts with a knock on her Door. Her contractor has arrived. And is he hot? He's hot. His name's Lars. That's real hot. Unfortunately, Lars is her ex's best friend.
- [20:02]
K.J. Charles
Oh.
- [20:03]
Jennifer Prokop
And her ex is a real dirtbag. And Lars saw their whole humiliating public breakup and Susie just is like, oh, God, what am I gonn?
- [20:14]
Sarah MacLaine
But she needs a contractor.
- [20:16]
Jennifer Prokop
She does. And Lawrence is available, thank goodness. So I think she's just gonna have to lean into it.
- [20:20]
Sarah MacLaine
Even if it's petty contracting.
- [20:22]
K.J. Charles
It's fine. Whatever.
- [20:24]
Jennifer Prokop
Here's the part that's great. He is tearing down some wall, and they find a divorce certificate hidden in the wall that is dated 10 years in the future and has both of their names.
- [20:37]
K.J. Charles
What? Right?
- [20:38]
Jennifer Prokop
Like, what's going to happen?
- [20:40]
K.J. Charles
Why?
- [20:40]
Sarah MacLaine
What?
- [20:40]
K.J. Charles
What?
- [20:41]
Jennifer Prokop
You and Lars and Susie are gonna have to discover it all together by downloading and reading this book.
- [20:47]
Sarah MacLaine
I mean, as though I wasn't gonna download and read this book anyway. Of course, no matter what it was about, because Kylie's amazing. But this is such a cool idea. I'm gonna read it immediately.
- [20:57]
Jennifer Prokop
Exactly. Have a great time, everybody. You can find end of story anywhere. Ebooks are sold in audio or in print.
- [21:05]
Sarah MacLaine
Thanks to Kylie for sponsoring the episode. One of the things that Jen and I have been talking about a lot recently, there's a woman who is on TikTok and also Twitter, and her. Her handle is baskinsuns. And she's been talking a lot about how in her mind, historical is really more like speculative fiction than it is like. Like. Like historical fiction, like historical fiction. Historical romance is more like speculative fiction than historical romance is like historical fiction. And I think this is a really fascinating way of thinking about the genre, and I wonder if how that strikes you.
- [21:44]
K.J. Charles
I think there's very definitely strands of it. I mean, you know, you've got, I mean, Bridgerton, the TV series, for example.
- [21:52]
Sarah MacLaine
Right?
- [21:52]
K.J. Charles
I mean. Right. But, yeah, but I mean, why not? You know. Well, okay, so there are actually, you know, we could debate this one for hours, and people already have, so I'm not going to go into that. But. But, you know, on the face of it, you could look at that and literally just go, okay, this is a fantasy version where, you know, a large number of the aristocracy of people of color and why should. Why should you not do that? Why is that not a good thing to do? I kind of. I. You know, there's historical romance that just does have only the vaguest relationship to the actual history of Britain, and there's historical romance that gets really down and dirty into it. And where the author has really delved into it. And although, you know, I prefer the second kind, but I don't think the first kind should be dismissed because it is doing something else. But maybe, you know, maybe looking at it as a historical fantasy without magic would always be sort of resolve that argument, if you see what I mean, because it is trying to do something else. I don't think every historical romance needs to go. There was only 28 Dukes and most of them had syphilis and no teeth and everyone's got lace. I don't want to read books where everyone's got lice. You know, if I want lice, I'll have young children again.
- [23:07]
Jennifer Prokop
I don't want to read any books where there's any lice, actually.
- [23:10]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, I would rather read a bit where they just sort of throw their hands up and just go, okay, we're hairing the hell out of this, you know, because actually, Georgia Heyer, although she did loads of research and everything, when she actually did the bits that are really historically rounded, which is to say an infamous army in the other room, they're awful. They're so boring. They're dreadful. Nobody reads them. Nobody wants to read them.
- [23:31]
Sarah MacLaine
No, it's much more fun to read her. Making things up.
- [23:34]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, well, the sort of glittery, bally, wonderful romancy ones. Yeah, we love them. And it is good that people do that. And I suspect that's so. I suspect that's kind of what that person might have been getting at, or at least that's how I feel about it. And I think there is space for both. Very definitely.
- [23:54]
Sarah MacLaine
Right.
- [23:55]
K.J. Charles
This is actually something I'm struggling with at the moment because like a fool, I've been trying to write a Duke book. And my problem with the Duke book, my problem with. I mean, fundamentally my problem is, and this really does cut quite deep into the fact that I write historical romance is I sort of feel like the entire aristocracy should have been executed. And, you know, this. Usually I sort of hand wave this one. And then I started writing a Duke and I've got 60,000 words and I'm just sitting there going, you haven't got any problems that cannot be solved by your money, which you have.
- [24:29]
Sarah MacLaine
Exactly.
- [24:30]
Jennifer Prokop
Money, power, title. Exactly.
- [24:33]
K.J. Charles
I mean, seriously, you don't have any problems. So have a look. So it's. I have not in fact squared that circle yet, and if I've wasted 60,000 words, I'm going to be banging my head against the wall. But currently I feel like I've wasted 60,000 words because I cannot for the life of me.
- [24:47]
Sarah MacLaine
It's poor little rich rich boy, right?
- [24:49]
K.J. Charles
It is. And that's not. That's not that I struggle with. No.
- [24:53]
Jennifer Prokop
And that's not your brand.
- [24:54]
Sarah MacLaine
He didn't like his dad, aj.
- [24:58]
K.J. Charles
Yeah. And you know, the things that could be a problem. Yeah. Oh. Anyway, I won't bore you with my struggles because I'm boring myself with my struggles, but it's a real problem for me.
- [25:07]
Sarah MacLaine
It's interesting you bring this up, because I actually think this is a discuss. This is a push pull that's happening. This did not happen in historical romance 20 years ago. Nobody wore it 10 years ago or even 10 years ago. But now those of us, I mean, I've written a thousand dukes, right? And. And you can see it in my writing that I've gone from poor little rich boy to, like, now, like, it's time to burn down the dukedom entirely. Right. Let's set it on fire.
- [25:32]
K.J. Charles
It's really hard not to, isn't it? Because.
- [25:34]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah, I don't do it anymore.
- [25:36]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, exactly. And you. You've. You. Because apart from the else, I don't know about you, but how often do you just sit there and think, so where does this guy's money come from? Oh, well. Yeah.
- [25:45]
Sarah MacLaine
And then. And what's interesting is in the 80s or 90s, you could wave it away. He has plantations, but he pays his workers, Right.
- [25:52]
K.J. Charles
You know, you don't even mention the plantations. It's just. He's just rich, right? It's fine. He's rich. He's got land. We don't talk about the English people working for him. Still less than anyone outside, you know, make it victorious. And how much of his money is coming from empire, which is so colonialism, which say theft, right?
- [26:10]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah, yeah, there. And there are only so many times that you can sort of accept, well, this one got his title, you know, when he was 35, because he did something good. You know, there's not. Yeah.
- [26:21]
K.J. Charles
And if. And if they do that, you know, steal money, it's probably in a war.
- [26:26]
Sarah MacLaine
Like, there's a lot.
- [26:28]
Jennifer Prokop
It's hard.
- [26:29]
K.J. Charles
There is a lot. Yeah, there is a lot.
- [26:32]
Sarah MacLaine
Which is why there's something to this. Like, it's like you said, historical fantasy, you know, but no magic. Because it does feel like in a lot of ways, the work that these books are doing, the social work that these books are doing is. Is not about, obviously, it's very difficult to handle. Like, where did the power come from? Where did the Money come from. But in many cases, in your books especially. Right. The work of your books is very important
- [27:02]
K.J. Charles
currently.
- [27:03]
Sarah MacLaine
It's for. For the world that we live in now for 2023. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, about how you think about the. The job, the. The work of the books in the. In a world where right now like queer people and books about queer people are under attack across the United States and around the world. So, you know, what, how do you do. How do you reconcile the work with the world, I guess is the question.
- [27:29]
K.J. Charles
Oh, Lord.
- [27:31]
Sarah MacLaine
I'm asking, you know, for a friend who is me,
- [27:36]
K.J. Charles
do you mean in the sense of. Yeah, the sort of prince. The guiding principles, as it were? Yeah, I mean, I feel like fundamentally the purpose of romance, I mean, it's twofold, isn't it? You want to give hope and you want to give connection. So, you know, the hope is a romance gives us like a portrayal of a better world where people are loyal and people are loving and someone stands up for you and you've got your family. And you know, it's just. And you know, it's not just hope, it's fulfilled hope. Because you pick up a book thinking, I hope this ends well. And it does because it's a romance novel. And then I think you've got connection in the sense of, you know, you're writing a book that depicts people connecting in a real way. But also, you know, there's a romance community and there's the fact that, you know, when people. If people see a romance novel with someone who looks like them or behaves, you know, a queer person, a black person, whoever, on the COVID and that romance novel is being sold and it's on the shelves of the bookshelf, that's really, really important. And it's all the important if they're taking the books out of the schools and the libraries, which I have to say is a bar terrifying that I, you know, I don't know what your policy on swearing is, but.
- [28:58]
Jennifer Prokop
No, please go where it were.
- [29:01]
K.J. Charles
I mean, when it comes down to it, I want my books to be ones that people, you know, not
- [29:12]
Sarah MacLaine
that
- [29:12]
K.J. Charles
there are places of safety where things work out, even if things don't look like they're going to work out, which I think is important because, you know, there is absolutely a place of very, very low angst romance where everything is totally okay. And I don't write that. But. And you know, I'm really glad it exists because people sometimes need to go there. But I think People also sometimes need to have, you know, the drama and the angst or whatever, but still with the guarantee of everything being okay and still with it. Just, you know, we use fiction to tell ourselves, tell ourselves that the world could be a better place. Fundamentally, that is what fiction is for. It's to, you know, try things out and explore them and you know, say, look, look, here is this thing, this is, this is the way the world could be. And you know, I write the books how the world should have been and you know, how I would like it to be.
- [30:03]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah, I, I think I keep thinking about what we were talking about, about like the Duke's, the Duke situation. And I think part of the reason class is so hard to deal with in romance is like, we all know that many people have found happiness even in the throes of financial instability. Like, of course.
- [30:26]
K.J. Charles
Right. Yeah.
- [30:27]
Jennifer Prokop
But at the same time, we all also know that financial instability does make so many problems go away.
- [30:35]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [30:36]
Jennifer Prokop
And I think like, romance really hasn't quite figured out how to like grapple with some of that. I mean, and I, I know that's like. I'm sorry, I'm like bringing that back, but I was thinking as you were talking too about like how the world should be. Right. Like. And I think so much of what romance is trying to do when it's like found family and this is the way the world should be, is we shouldn't have people that are like, well, I can't really like have the life I want to live right now. Cause I have to work 800 hours a week or whatever.
- [31:03]
Sarah MacLaine
I mean, I think.
- [31:04]
Jennifer Prokop
Or I can't have the life I wanna live because I live in Florida and like these books are being banned and what's that like for my family or my, my, my children. And I think so much of what romance is about is saying we don't have to live like that.
- [31:19]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. And, and, and I think addressing problems, you know, through a fictional lens is a great way of helping people deal with them. I mean, I remember one absolutely lovely bit of mail I got that was from a reader who was going through something like, quite rubbish. I think it might even have been chemo. But she basically said that she. This is gonna sound kind of. Actually it's gonna ring a bell because you're all gonna have done it. But she basically was reading this book of mine where the hero is kidnapped and he's basically trapped in this room and he's just doggedly doing sit ups with a chain on his leg because he's not gonna sit there and do nothing. So he does like a thousand sit ups. And she pretty much said, you know, I was just, you know, I was going through it thinking, well, I'm like, darling. Yeah, I'm like Will Darling doing his sit ups. And you know, if he can do a thousand sit ups, then I can do this thing kind of thing. And actually that's nice. It is, but it's, you know, it's. So it's not just about romance providing an escape, although it does provide an escape. I think, you know, it's. We can, we can all use this. We can all think of characters and almost model ourselves. Yeah. This is why people who. Sex positivity is important or, you know, depicting sexual relationships at work. I'm not going to necessarily say healthy because, you know, another thing, romance style switch is a big matter of discussion. But you know, you can show people starting from a quite an unhealthy place, but you know, you can actually show them starting from an unhealthy place and improving. You can show, you can, you can model all sorts of behavior and people can sort of try them out and apply those ideas to their own situation while they're also reading a highly entertaining book that doesn't feel didactic.
- [32:57]
Jennifer Prokop
Right. Well, and I think for me it's always been like, love is worth it even when you've been hurt.
- [33:04]
Sarah MacLaine
Right.
- [33:04]
Jennifer Prokop
Like, we've all been hurt. I mean, I know it's like very old school, but Those like old 90s romance heroes who are like, I've been hurt once, I can never love again. Like, that means something to me because we all have.
- [33:16]
Sarah MacLaine
Right.
- [33:16]
Jennifer Prokop
I mean, like, I don't think there's anything more brave than like putting your heart on the line again. And I think romance every single time is really saying, like, you know, you might not be called to some big act of bravery in your life, regular people of the world, but you will be called upon to make these, like, small commitments to the people in your lives and say, like, like my community or the people. I mean, that.
- [33:39]
Sarah MacLaine
I don't know.
- [33:39]
Jennifer Prokop
I know that's really cheesy maybe, but like, that really means something to me.
- [33:43]
K.J. Charles
I mean, it does. It's just a thing that I, you know, I'm. I get quite a few letters and you know, people discover the most, you know, if they, if they really see themselves in a character, if they see a dyspraxic character and they've not read one before and it means something to them to be seen or, you know, people who read an absolute shedload of queer romance and then they kind of go, actually, you know, it turns out I might not be success after all. Which happens. So, yeah, it happens to, you know, and that's. Some people who've never had the. Been aware that there was an option, you know, discover that. So they. Yeah, there's this. I think that's. That is the power of romance. It's the power of showing how things could be. And they work out. They guaranteed work out. You know, they don't do a little life on you.
- [34:36]
Sarah MacLaine
And I think that to that point, we've really been very lucky as romance readers and people in the community for the last, however long, decade, because it feels like there was so much less of that representation before. And, you know, we've had. Obviously, we've tried really hard for these particular episodes to bring people in who have been working on representation of all forms from, you know, the beginning of the. You know, the beginnings of the modern genre. But, you know, I think about. It's so rare. It was so rare to see characters who were anything other than cishet, white, thin, you know, rich, rich people, et cetera, before, you know. But now it feels like part of the reason why we asked you to join us is because it does feel like you. When you came onto the scene, there was a shift. Not that you brought the shift.
- [35:39]
K.J. Charles
No, riding away.
- [35:41]
Sarah MacLaine
You were a part of something that was happening on. It was firing on all cylinders. Right.
- [35:46]
K.J. Charles
There's delights, delights. That's what happened.
- [35:49]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah. So I wonder if you could talk. Was there an awareness of that for you as somebody who had come up through. I mean, one of the most classic romance avenues was the sort of Harlequin Mills and Boon pathway. Right. So what you were looking, what were you. What you were working on when you were there was the almost like the purest of romance.
- [36:11]
K.J. Charles
Very much the old school. Yeah.
- [36:14]
Sarah MacLaine
So was there. Did you have an awareness at the time that you started writing or you started being published that something was shifting?
- [36:23]
K.J. Charles
It's actually quite interesting because I sold Magpie Lord to Samhain.
- [36:28]
Jennifer Prokop
Gosh.
- [36:28]
Sarah MacLaine
And Samhain was doing so much of that too.
- [36:31]
K.J. Charles
They were. They were doing a shed load. But even they. They basically went, look, this is Victorian queer fantasy and Victorian queer fantasy romance. And they pretty much said, expect it to sell 12 copies because, you know, it's not even Regency. People don't like historical that much. It's got fantasy, which put a bunch of people off, you know. Sure. They were doing quite A lot. A lot of queer romance. But you were really very much looking at contemporaries, mostly with two. Two bear torsos on the COVID kind. And I did actually go out looking. The only other one I could find was Widdowshin's by Jordan L. Hawke, who was also 19th century. Sure. Where, you know, so same era fantasy, else. And they go, no, that's exactly the right book. You're just here. Yeah, well, how dare you say there isn't one of them. Of course there is.
- [37:22]
Jennifer Prokop
There's one of them.
- [37:23]
K.J. Charles
Yes, well, that's always the way, isn't it? There can be anyone, but. Yeah, but Jordan's self published, so, you know, they. I. My expectations were extraordinarily low. Basically. They. They sort of. They didn't expect it to sell a lot, but they still wanted to do it. And, you know, although they didn't end well, I really respect what they were doing. And then it did sell well. I mean, you know, it sold extremely well.
- [37:47]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah. Do you know why? Do you know how. I mean, obviously it's fantastic and that's why, but was there something that happened? Was there somebody who.
- [37:54]
K.J. Charles
There was a goodread reader who.
- [37:56]
Jennifer Prokop
I've always.
- [37:57]
K.J. Charles
I don't know if I'm right, but I've always attributed it to this one personal. Good. You know how some reads have. Some of them just seem to have 40 zillion connections. Well, one of them got an arc and just left this absolutely phenomenal review and then it just went boom. Yeah.
- [38:12]
Sarah MacLaine
Because it also feels like fantasy. You scooped up a world of readers who were not being served by romance at all.
- [38:21]
K.J. Charles
Yeah. And there was. Yeah.
- [38:23]
Jennifer Prokop
People.
- [38:24]
K.J. Charles
People love. I mean.
- [38:25]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah.
- [38:25]
K.J. Charles
Look at how much historical fantasy, and indeed queer historical fantasy there is. Now. This is wonderful, wonderful cornucopia. Because I think everyone's always loved it. I don't know why people. Except, you know, one of the most depressing things for me about working with publishers, and I've really experienced this as an editor, is that they just sit there going, that won't sell. Oh, no, that won't sell. Well, how do you know it won't sell? We haven't published one. Well, somebody else did one and it didn't sell.
- [38:53]
Sarah MacLaine
We've tried nothing, kj.
- [38:55]
K.J. Charles
We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas. It's actually. It is literally, it is along the lines of. I've heard people say variants on, if it sold, we'd have already published something. Like, it's.
- [39:06]
Sarah MacLaine
Nobody has new ideas.
- [39:08]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, no, yeah. We'd already know if this kind of thing would sell. There isn't loads of this on the market already, therefore it doesn't sell. And you go, well, why don't we start it? Oh, it's. It is genuinely infuriating. And then you, you. You get through that and then you go through the. There can be only one phase which we have lived through, in which there will absolutely publish a black author, but one black author, you know, we can have one Indian author. Yeah. We can have one queer person on our books, but goodness me, not more. Because, yeah, one is plenty. And then, oh my God, it doesn't sell because you have one book, right?
- [39:46]
Sarah MacLaine
Beverly Jenkins forever.
- [39:49]
K.J. Charles
Well, but I mean, Beverly Jenkins is like this amazing. You know, somebody. Actually, I really hope someone's done a PhD because, you know, she. She sold so much. And then you looking. And then you look back and you think, why weren't they scooping up other black historical romance authors when she was selling and selling and selling? And why was I be going, this is a trend. This is a trend that we can cash in on. And they don't. They Highlander it. They say there can be only one. Well, Beverly Jenkins, you know, right. And then of course, it tips. And then suddenly they go, oh my God, gold rush. And then, you know, then they're scooping up everyone they possibly can because finally they have worked out they can make some money on it. Which obviously, as we know, is a publisher's sole reason for being. And it's slightly. It's maddening to observe. So my experience with especially, you know, queer fantasy historical romance was pretty much that. All my guess are up there is there's a whole bunch of people writing it and a whole bunch of publishers just going, no, that's not going to sell. That's not sell. Sampagne told me it wasn't going to sell even while they published it as presumably an act of charity or something. And then, oh my God, it's upright now. We'll hoover up all the manuscripts that I will absolutely bet you people have been sending in for years and years.
- [41:09]
Sarah MacLaine
Sure. Right. And what's fascinating about that is Samhain is one of those publishers. So talk about that piece of romance history. Because it was so fleeting, it feels like.
- [41:21]
K.J. Charles
And it was.
- [41:22]
Sarah MacLaine
And it was so important at the same time because there was this moment, this crest of a moment where ebooks had just hit. People had just started accepting, you know, E readers as a. As into their lives. There were so many of these small presses that were, you know, taking on authors who larger Publishers were saying, nobody buys that, that there's no market for it. Sam Hain was one. Elora's Cave was doing it in Erotica. There were a number of other queer presses. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit. We've never had anybody on who published with Sam Haynes, so I wonder if you could talk a little about that world, who it was there, what it was, what was going on in the Samhain world. And then, you know, that didn't last for very long.
- [42:16]
K.J. Charles
It didn't last very long. It was very, very unstable. It appears like they've all imploded, haven't they?
- [42:22]
Sarah MacLaine
All of them.
- [42:22]
K.J. Charles
You had to talk hair.
- [42:24]
Sarah MacLaine
That's gone, except for Radcliffe's. But it's different because Bold Strokes is like Radcliffe running the show, right? Yeah.
- [42:30]
K.J. Charles
No, Bald Strokes. I think there's a couple of ones where it's basically people who publish themselves and possibly their friends, and they're very, very specific. But also Espion Romance kind of is differently siloed. So, you know, but for the sort of more general thing that was going on that I was part of. So you had Talk Hair that was. I mean, they were doing some really weird things with covers that were very difficult, and I think it ended poorly. And then Samhain, who were really sort of. They did a lot of exciting stuff and they really put a lot of heart into it. Ended poorly. And then you've got, you know, dreamspinner, who are still going, but.
- [43:13]
Sarah MacLaine
But don't pay their authors.
- [43:14]
K.J. Charles
But don't pay their authors. And, you know, I have very strong views on that.
- [43:17]
Sarah MacLaine
My constant about Dreamspinner. They don't pay their authors.
- [43:21]
K.J. Charles
Don't publish with them. They do not publish with them because they still own large amounts of bat royalties they should never have touched. And then you have Riptide, who imploded in such a spectacular way that there was a whole page article about it in the Guardian, which is a UK newspaper about a small American press going under because of the spectacular nature of their employment.
- [43:41]
Sarah MacLaine
Well, it was so horrifying that it was.
- [43:44]
K.J. Charles
Well, it was horrifying. And, you know, I was one of the people who. I had a book coming out with them and I literally, that time and, you know, it was one of those ones where it was so close to publishing and, you know, I didn't want to publish with them, but it was like a couple of days before and there was an audiobook. So I basically wrote to them and said, you know, I'm very dubious about this. And they literally reverted my rights without the asking because I think they were just automatically.
- [44:09]
Sarah MacLaine
They were just doing it. Yeah, they were just doing it for everybody listening. We'll put a link in, show notes to the Riptide story. But essentially, sort of very broad strokes. There was an. There were allegations of. And, you know, screenshots of an editor harassing, sexually harassing authors.
- [44:27]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, there was. There was a bunch more to it. There was another scandal then. Anyway, the whole. The whole. Without delving any further into that, because, to be honest, we'll never get back on. And I don't.
- [44:36]
Sarah MacLaine
It's not what today is about, but
- [44:38]
K.J. Charles
pulling my hair out, but. But that was actually quite a large part of it. It was a very labile time. It was. You know, there was a great deal of hope. The great deal of people who were in some ways throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick because nobody knew because nobody had been doing it before. Right.
- [44:57]
Sarah MacLaine
It hadn't.
- [44:57]
Jennifer Prokop
It literally hadn't existed.
- [44:59]
K.J. Charles
Yeah. Queer presses had been, you know, these very tiny outfits probably operating out of New York and doing a paperback for, like $20 or something because of the cost, and suddenly you can whack it out there and get it on ebook. And, you know, the numbers were pretty startling because so many people were around the whole world who had been unable to get these books, were able to get these books. But of course, what happened, and which happened with much of romance is, you know, the realization that you could then self publish on Amazon and get 70% instead of 25%. And people started questioning what a lot of those presses, you know, you sell it to Talk Air and they put an absolutely shocking generic cover on it and didn't give you any editorial support or, you know, you get your mates, knock up a cover and put it on Amazon and, you know, wasn't really a. Wasn't really a debate. So I think that's. That. That very heavily lies behind why so many of them didn't survive.
- [45:58]
Jennifer Prokop
I just was doing a library thing and I was talking about, like, a lot of people who self publish will, like, kind of trade services with each other as a way to, like, get books to market. Right. Like, as you said, like, I have a friend who can do a cover and I can do a copy edit and. Right. I mean, it feels like even though it's there, it feels like people are, like, recreating the work of the publisher, like in smaller groups in order to put out good products.
- [46:21]
K.J. Charles
That does exist. I definitely know of people who do it and There's a lot of sort of horse trading with newsletters and mutual support and so on and so forth, which I think, yeah, can be great. I'm always a bit dubious about putting the words community and authors in the same sentence because words, cats in a sack and also. But you know, there are clearly people who do work together to help one another and recommend lots of people who will just email me or DM me and sort of say, can you help with this? Can you tell me somebody you might. Who did he use for? And I think that's. Yeah, that is important. Well, for any marginalized community, but especially when you're, you know, you're trying to, to build it.
- [47:11]
Jennifer Prokop
This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies.
- [47:18]
Sarah MacLaine
So you've all heard us talking about microdosing and the concept of microdosing, which is commonly associated with psychedelics, wellness, performance enhancement and creativity. And we've been talking about Microdose Gummies for a while on the podcast and we've talked a lot about how we use them ourselves. Jen uses them for sleep. I have used them in the last few months as sort of a way to just take the edge off and like come down off of a rough time or a stressful time over the holidays. People use them for creative boosts. We've heard about people who listen using them for pain and anxiety.
- [48:00]
Jennifer Prokop
It's a great product that's going to fit into your lifestyle. Right. So I really love, I was like, the whole idea of like just chilling out in this really stressful time of year has been one way lately that I have found them helping me.
- [48:12]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah. So if you search around the Internet, make have a Google search on microdosing, you'll learn more and you'll learn about all the ways that people are using them out there in the world. Our show today is sponsored by Microdose Gummies, which deliver the perfect entry level doses of THC that help you feel just the right amount of good. And you can find Microdose available nationwide. It'll be shipped directly to your doors@microdose.com you can use the code Fated Mates for 30% off your first order and free shipping. Thanks as always to Lumi Labs and Microdose for sponsoring the episode. Did you have a community coming up? Cats in your sack?
- [48:55]
K.J. Charles
I'm not, I'm, I, I'm not a very good community person. I tend to be fairly. There's a reason I work on my own in the shade, but you Know,
- [49:06]
Sarah MacLaine
I've had our editors or anybody who you felt was like, like helping you to sort of shape the road.
- [49:14]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, there's really. It was also like, you know, I've talked a lot with Alexis hall, obviously queer romance, British, you know, that's been really, really interesting. Jordan Hawke, who I co wrote a book with, and EE Ottoman as well. And that's actually been really important. I think probably I talk to Brits because it is actually a bit separate. Yeah. Romance is so American dominated that it's actually nice. So Talia Hibbert, for example, who is great. And Alexis. And I've also got May Peterson, who is an author of mostly trans or so non binary romance, including fantasy romance, but who's also a really good editor and a book doctor. And she's like, book doctored three books for me and, you know, saved them effectively. So, you know, having someone like that at your back is absolutely invaluable. Yeah. I think, you know, establishing relationships just with people who will actually give your book a read and tell you to, you know, calm down and take a deep breath if you're being given half soul is very important today.
- [50:29]
Jennifer Prokop
Do you think the perception of romance has changed over your career? I mean, coming up from like Mills and Boone to where we are now, like kind of. How has it changed in like any give a crystal ball, like, where are we going?
- [50:43]
K.J. Charles
The problem is, the problem is, you know, how do people see romance and all that is, you know, it's such a massive genre that it's really hard. Like, you know, I see people say things about romance and I'm thinking, yeah, but you're looking at like Kindle Unlimited that's full of farm books and, you know, toxic. I don't know what my God, the hell people are doing in there. And then you're looking at the kind of books which are a lot of the kind of books which are getting on the shelves at the moment, which there's much more diversity and there's a much stronger sense of. Yeah, sex positivity and body positivity and all these great things. And then, you know, you've also got this huge strand of. There's always a 50 Shades or a Colleen Hoover, isn't there? Right? Yes. And, you know, and you know, how can we say what do people think of romance when you're simultaneously talking about Tavia Hibbert and Colleen Hoover and whatever godforsaken thing is at the top of the Kindle Unlimited chart? You know, I have different perceptions of those Things that said. So the thing that actually is really striking me at the moment, so you're getting a lot more romance of the kind that I like and read is hitting the bookshelves, you know, boyfriend material and red, white and blue and, you know, Talia again. And yeah, people like Jackie Lau, who's, you know, set out to write romance with Chinese leads because she couldn't get them published. And she just sort of doggedly said, right, I'm going to self publish these because no publisher will take them. And now she's got a. You know, now she's being traditionally published because, you know, she just dug in and did it. So you're getting all those on the shelves. But I don't know if it's the same in the us But I went into Waterstones, the only big book chain we've got left, and there's a table covered in romance novels and the label on it says New Adults. Doesn't say romance anywhere. The word romance hasn't come up.
- [52:35]
Sarah MacLaine
No, they don't like that word.
- [52:37]
Jennifer Prokop
No.
- [52:37]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, well, you know, TikTok. Yeah, well, I mean, do not give me. Those are not new adult books. That's complete rubbish. But they don't, you know, and this is why the cartoon covers bothers me. Not because I don't like them aesthetically, but because it seems to me part of the big branding effort to go, this isn't romance. You know, it looks like chick lit or it looks like lipstick. I mean, there's one. There's a book that's come out recently whose name I probably shouldn't say, but it's okay because I can't remember it. But it's got. The blurb is one of those. Looks like it belongs on Kindle Unlimited. It's one of those ones of. He looks at me with his dark eyes and I see myself falling into the prison of his. Yada, yada, yada, like blank verse, you know, there's black verse and there's no names.
- [53:20]
Sarah MacLaine
And it's so frustrating when you're trying to get information.
- [53:24]
K.J. Charles
There's no names and it's just all this sort of vague. She is my doom, she is my destiny, et cetera. So the blurb is all that, but the COVID really is this absolutely beautiful thing that looks like it belongs on, like a book about a Hungarian countess in the 1940s who's, like, whose family is slowly decaying during the war.
- [53:45]
Jennifer Prokop
You know, she's trying to keep that castle together. It's hard work.
- [53:48]
K.J. Charles
It's the most lit, thick cover you've ever seen. And the blurb is the most horrible KU thing you've ever seen. And the.
- [53:57]
Jennifer Prokop
The book.
- [53:57]
K.J. Charles
I have no idea what the book is.
- [53:59]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah.
- [53:59]
Sarah MacLaine
You know, I completely go over what's in there.
- [54:01]
K.J. Charles
Utterly clashing. Yeah. I don't know.
- [54:05]
Sarah MacLaine
Maybe that's the strategy.
- [54:07]
K.J. Charles
Well, if the strategy is to confuse anyone who knows anything about romance and they have absolutely nailed it.
- [54:14]
Jennifer Prokop
I mean, I saw a book the other day that is absolutely not romance. Just like contemporary fiction. And it had a very kind of generically vector art cover. And I just thought, this is not a romance only problem now.
- [54:28]
K.J. Charles
Right.
- [54:28]
Jennifer Prokop
This is a publishing problem.
- [54:30]
K.J. Charles
It is a massive problem.
- [54:30]
Jennifer Prokop
It's all one big bin to them, I guess. It's a book.
- [54:34]
K.J. Charles
The last two romantic comedies I have bought, both of which had cartoon covers and. Or. Yeah, drawn covers. And were they. Both of them said rom com on the blurb. Neither of them has been a romance. And actually neither of them was a comedy.
- [54:46]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah.
- [54:47]
K.J. Charles
And one of them was all about, like, the heroine's being stalked by her toxic, abusive ex. That's not comedy. Why is that funny? What's going on here? And there's no romance.
- [54:58]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah.
- [54:58]
K.J. Charles
The other one, it's a very good book, but it's literally a book about this woman having this really difficult relationship with her family and her faith and whatever. And she gets engaged to this other guy and then at the end she thinks she might start dating the one that the other guy who's like, really nice, you know, I think I might start dating him in a couple of months. Is not a happy ending. You can't call that a romantic comedy.
- [55:19]
Jennifer Prokop
But they are, right?
- [55:21]
K.J. Charles
Yeah. So where do I think romance is going? I. You know, if the publishers are in charge, I doubt.
- [55:28]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah, exactly. Well, I feel that way.
- [55:31]
Sarah MacLaine
Right.
- [55:32]
Jennifer Prokop
Like, they're like, it would be great if this would just go away. Can we just make money off of you without giving you what you want? That's what we would like.
- [55:39]
K.J. Charles
Yeah. It's kind of baffling to me because, you know, my experience as an editor was very much simply that publishers will do basically anything for money. And I don't understand why it's an asterisk exception. Romance, you know, I mean, especially Mills have been, you know, they were such a good publisher to work for in a lot of ways. And they were completely lent into what they were doing. They were like, they. We had an Internet forum that. Where readers were encouraged to come on and talk to editors. We were literally encouraged at work to sit there and chat with readers on the forums. That was a part of my job. I got paid for that. It's amazing. But, you know, they were groundbreaking and things like that.
- [56:25]
Sarah MacLaine
Well, it is interesting that you bring that up, because it feels like those. Publisher again when you. So you were editing for Mills and boon in the 90s? No.
- [56:36]
K.J. Charles
Yeah. Got to be 20 years ago.
- [56:37]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah. So at that time, there were. There. So there were so few places for readers to find.
- [56:47]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah, right.
- [56:48]
Sarah MacLaine
Authors and publishers and romance has always felt to me like the.
- [56:54]
K.J. Charles
The.
- [56:55]
Sarah MacLaine
The community of romance readers is so active and so eager to. They. Romance readers are so eager to find each other. Because I think of the perception from the outside world that we're all, like, cat ladies or sex crazed. Like, it's one or the other. Right. And there's both.
- [57:13]
Jennifer Prokop
And listen, stop judging me.
- [57:16]
Sarah MacLaine
And so the. The idea being that, you know, because the outside world has this really negative perception of us as readers, when we find each other, we are so grateful to find each other. And the interaction, I think. I mean, speaking to my friends and colleagues who write, not write outside of romance, their relationship with readers is incredibly different than my relationship with readers. And I think that is something that's very special to romance. And so I'm sort of curious about how that world has shifted in your perception, because I remember before I was writing, Avon was doing similar things. Like, there were boards, you know, Tessa Dare and Courtney Milan and others came up through the Avon boards. As you know, they were writing Bridgerton fanfic, essentially. On the Avon boards.
- [58:12]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [58:13]
Sarah MacLaine
And then Avon, you know, had a fan lit contest where Julia Quinn judged the finals. Yeah.
- [58:20]
K.J. Charles
I mean, that kind of thing was amazing. It was wonderful. I basically, you know, I would be talking to people that. I remember giving the call to somebody who was a regular on the Mels and Boone boards. And. Yeah, when we announced, it was wonderful because I got to do it in person. It was one of the best days of my life. I told that in person. I was. She burst into tears. We were at a conference. She burst into tears. And she cried so hard that people were, like, rushing up, thinking she'd have, like, news of her family's death.
- [58:45]
Jennifer Prokop
She was like.
- [58:46]
K.J. Charles
And then we announced it. I love it when they cry. Oh, it's great when they cry. And then we announced it on the harlequin boards, and they just exploded, you know, the sheer joy. But it was also, you know. Yeah. And I had done this because it was a great book and she was a great writer, and I loved doing it. But, you know, Somebody described it as the best piece of pr. Milsen Boone ever had. And it kind of was because all of those people literally saw in real time that one of them. It could happen to you because it did happen to her, you know.
- [59:13]
Sarah MacLaine
Exactly.
- [59:15]
K.J. Charles
Joyous. That's absolutely joyous.
- [59:17]
Sarah MacLaine
And now I feel like the readership is finding us in so many different ways.
- [59:22]
K.J. Charles
Right.
- [59:23]
Sarah MacLaine
Like, there's a constant sense of them being able to touch us on Twitter, on Goodreads, on, you know, in, in all these different places. And I wonder if that's changed the way you think about writing. I often wonder that about myself. Like, do I write differently because I'm interacting so much with readers? And this is a different question from the one that's going around on Twitter right now, which is, are reviews. What's the purpose of reviews? I don't want to talk about that.
- [59:55]
K.J. Charles
No, no.
- [59:56]
Sarah MacLaine
But I'm sort of, I think a lot about, I do think a lot about readers when I write.
- [60:02]
K.J. Charles
Well, you call it, you call them
- [60:03]
Jennifer Prokop
naughts, but I think a lot of
- [60:05]
Sarah MacLaine
writers just don't at all. Jen and I have talked to, you know, however many, and there are so many who are like, I don't think about them at all. I write for myself. And that I'm not, I want to say, for everyone out there. That's not me being, I'm not judging that. Like, that's, no, it's, it's, that's a way.
- [60:19]
K.J. Charles
It's, it's an approach.
- [60:20]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah.
- [60:21]
K.J. Charles
I totally get it because I know people who just, you know, they don't want anything to do with social media. It's a time suck. Yep. And I get people who say, you know, I couldn't write. You know, I don't write my commit. I don't write my committee. I don't have. It's one of the reasons I'm so firm on the reviews are for readers. I'm not sitting here finding out what Blob27 wants to say about it. I don't care.
- [60:43]
Sarah MacLaine
Mental health. I don't know how people survive that.
- [60:45]
K.J. Charles
But yeah, no, I, I have absolutely, you know, I, I. It's not a committee, okay. It's a benevolent dictatorship.
- [60:54]
Sarah MacLaine
Sometimes not even benevolent.
- [60:56]
K.J. Charles
No, it's a benevolent dictatorship. Let's be real. But. And yet I have learned so much from readers, comments and really insightful things, you know, which are not for me, but they are things I have seen because they scroll past on my timeline. And when you see someone who is like really putting the work in to say okay, here's this historical romance. And this is why, you know, this was a misstep. And this hit really badly, and this hurt really badly. And you think, yeah, that is a misstep. And it's potentially a misstep I could very easily have made. And I'm really glad I didn't make it. And I don't want to make it, and I don't. And, you know, the world is full of missteps I could make. I feel like it's. On the one hand, you could paralyze yourself. And on the other hand, you know, I don't. I would rather not hurt somebody than hurt them, you know, I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to say something stupid and crass if I can avoid it. I often say stupid, crass things, but I'd rather not. So I think. I guess it's a fine line, isn't it?
- [62:01]
Jennifer Prokop
I think strictly from a reader point
- [62:04]
Sarah MacLaine
of view, one of the ways I
- [62:05]
Jennifer Prokop
think romance has changed is that, I mean, like, I grew up in a time of, like, I hid my romance novels, right? I think a lot of us did, or I didn't have a community of romance readers. Cause I grew up in a time where there was, like, how was I gonna find those people, right? And so I do think one of the ways, like the. That romance has changed is that romance readers are no longer buying into the narrative of. This is something we should be ashamed of. And I often wonder if that doesn't, like, trickle out in ways that say, as you've said, this hurt me. And I don't come to romance to be hurt. There is an avenue for that to be heard. Not in a personal way, like, this book isn't good, but in a. Right. And I do think that maybe that's what Sarah's talking about writ large. You're more in touch with readers in a way. We didn't have that. I mean, if you've been around long enough, you knew that this was, like, a secret shame. You sculpt down, like, the library aisle or the bookstore aisle and got your books or you got them sent to your house. There's a reason there's not a, like, send the thrillers to your house package.
- [63:12]
K.J. Charles
Right?
- [63:15]
Jennifer Prokop
Nobody needs that. Right. And I just think a lot about the reader is more. We're more aware of the reader because readers are more aware of ourselves.
- [63:27]
Sarah MacLaine
I think that's true.
- [63:28]
K.J. Charles
But I also think people in general have just developed a much stronger idea that they can talk to creators and be Taught back. I mean, you just look at, you know, that sort of powerful genre of memes where you've got some absolute idiots explaining to the creator of a TV show what the TV show is about. Right. But I mean, so I think, I think, you know, the Twitter has almost, you know, given people this, this world idea possibility that, you know, you can talk to your favorite author and they might interact with you and you say anything to them. And yeah, quite often people are at me and I will reply and then I'll go, I didn't think you'd reply, but you literally talk to me. I'm not rude, I'm British. Yeah.
- [64:13]
Jennifer Prokop
I mean, one day you might like talk to that person and have a podcast with them. It's crazy.
- [64:18]
K.J. Charles
But I mean, this is. It is gen. So, you know, and this is, this is not a binding guarantee that I will reply if someone asks me on Twitter.
- [64:24]
Jennifer Prokop
Oh my God.
- [64:25]
K.J. Charles
But I think the possibility of being sucked into the world of that is immensely strong and especially if you don't have a fairly strong sense of self and a fairly. You need a tough fight for that kind of thing. I think if you're the kind of, you know, person who's always looking for feedback and who's devastated by a three star review or whatever. But my only recommendation would be to stay the hell off social media altogether because it'll kill you, you know, and that is unfortunately just the way it is.
- [64:57]
Jennifer Prokop
Do you. Are there books of yours that are like fan favorites? Are there books that you hear about from your readers more than others?
- [65:05]
Sarah MacLaine
I mean, we obviously have our favorites here at Fade of Maze, but yeah, there are.
- [65:10]
K.J. Charles
I mean, you know, the Magpie trilogy, which is my first one, obviously they've been out the longest, but they also seem to have place in library. The tots that nothing will match.
- [65:21]
Sarah MacLaine
It's always those first ones. And you're like, I've written so many others.
- [65:25]
K.J. Charles
I've got so many. Yeah, I've got more translations of those than anything else. It's in now eight languages, which is nice. And you know, tattoos, when people get tattoos, it's usually mag. By law tattoos, the first tattoos are really terrifying. Yeah, it's amazing. It's just.
- [65:42]
Sarah MacLaine
See, all the more reason for you to be worried about Twitter because then you're afraid, oh God, I'm going to say something someday. And then these people have tattoos of our books.
- [65:49]
Jennifer Prokop
My only tattoo is of a James Joyce quote. And he's not alive to really appreciate that about me, so.
- [65:55]
K.J. Charles
Yeah. But you know, also he's not going to get cancelled, then he'll feel dreadful, you have to strike out and get cancelled.
- [66:02]
Jennifer Prokop
I'll be like, God damn it.
- [66:04]
K.J. Charles
No, I think it's incredible the, you know, I see that and it's. I still just sit there in like Jewel Golf smacked or that this thing could possibly be happening, could react like that. But yeah, so no people, I think, I think those are the ones that, that strike. Although, well, in fairness, there's three books in the trilogy and then there's two books in the extended world. So also, I think people have a real opportunity to take a deep dive and roll around in the world, which is nice.
- [66:31]
Sarah MacLaine
So to the same extent, or a similar question, but from the other, from the other side, is there a book that you've written that you feel is. Is the one? This is the one that, you know, 50 years from now, this is the K.J. charles book. I wish everyone, when we talk about
- [66:47]
Jennifer Prokop
you the way people talk about Georgette Heyer, were you like, this was the good one.
- [66:51]
K.J. Charles
Oh, gosh, that's such a hard one, isn't it? Most of them have different things that I'm proud of. I mean, look, if you're asking me sort of which book am I proudest of, it's probably book three of my Will Darling series solely because there was literally no way I was able to write that. But because I published book one just at the start of the Pandemic and I just finished writing book two when I was publishing one because it was, you know, it's self pub and you can do that. And book three, I'm trying to write it in the Pandemic. Plus it's a book three of the same couple trilogy and I put all that work in and I couldn't do the plot at all. It was really plotty and there was a. And I couldn't decide on them. I mean, you know what it was like writing in the Pandemic. But, you know, it had a murder mystery and I wrote the beginning with the same character. First he was the victim and then he was the murderer and then he was the key witness. And, you know, I had to write this over and over again and I just couldn't write this bloody book. And in the worst, it took me 10 months. You know, I can normally write a book in four months. It took me 10 months to write this. I had to stop and write a different book in the middle just to take my mind off things. So the fact that I finished it and the fact that lots of people, you know, Some people sort of would. It's been reviewed as, you know, her best book kind of thing. I think. Yeah, I will eternally be proud. I did that. I'm also actually incredibly proud of the Secret Lives of Country Gentleman, which is the one that is coming out in March with sourcebooks because that is tremendous, everyone.
- [68:29]
Sarah MacLaine
I was very lucky to be able to read it early.
- [68:32]
K.J. Charles
Well, I'm proud of it as a book, but I'm also immensely proud because I've published with Sam Hayne and then I had six books with Love Swept which were only published in E. Which is an experience so phenomenally Rancid that in 2017 I basically switched to self publishing and decided I didn't want anything to do with publishers ever again as long as I lived. And while, you know, started looking to change that a few years later. But so Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen is now my first book that is coming out primarily in print. Source books, this obviously coming out on E. But sourcebooks is print led. It's going to be on bookshelves, it's being promoted. It's had reviews in all the big journals, which is not something you get when you're self published as a rule. And it is actually out there going, look, there is queer historical is on the shelves to buy, being promoted by a publisher and you know, being part of, you know, a tiny part, but a part of that wave of actually getting some representation out there. So I'm just hugely proud of that.
- [69:42]
Jennifer Prokop
Everyone, you can pre order it now. So one last question that we really like because we feel like the, like the history of romance is so unwritten. So and we sort of mentioned this earlier, but when you think about like the people that you've worked with that maybe are not like the unsung heroes of romance, right? Are there people you worked with at Mills and Boone or people that you've worked with even as you self published or at Samhain? Like the, like we like to put the names in show notes just so that like they show up in Google searches. And you know, these are people that we can sort of say like, hey, this, these people were an important part of making romance happen.
- [70:23]
K.J. Charles
Oh, it's hard, isn't it? To sort of define.
- [70:28]
Jennifer Prokop
It's like giving an Oscar speech. Just get in the mood.
- [70:33]
K.J. Charles
I mean, okay, so some of the authors I would think of and I've named some of them before, but the people who have just dug in and written the books about, you know, written the books that publishers weren't taking. So again, Jordan L. Hawke and E.E. osterman, who are writing Trans romance, and Jackie Lau and Talia Hibbert, who are writing, you know, diverse romance. And, you know, who, you know, have driven through and become, you know, really successful. And then you've got, like, the authors of Trans romance who are getting published now. Cause that's happening in Korina. So you've got like, Penny Aames and Chris Ripper and May Peterson who are, you know, just, you know, leading the charge and pushing forwards. And, you know, I want. I want them to explode. Not literally. I want their foots to fell really well. And. And actually also, you know, the people. Because, I mean, Mills have been for a long time, Harlequin, you know, certainly when I came into Romance. Yeah. Very white, basically. It was pretty much very, very heavily white when I was there as an editor. And then you've got people like Therese Beharie and Jadisola James. Jeannie Lynn was with them. You know, people who were actually getting in there and changing things and, you know, being very visibly, you know, writing books about sort of. It's a print. The prince is an actual Nigerian prince. Not the kind who sends emails, but your actual Nigerian print. And, you know, Teresa Harry writes. She's black South African, and she writes books. And she's also moving to traditional publishing category. But all those people, they fought so hard to be seen. And I want them all to be huge successes because they're also all wonderful writers. So that matters. And then in terms of editors, the one who actually really leaps to mind. I wish I knew what she was doing. There was Anne Scott, who was made a Sunheen. And I say this because she gave me the single best piece of editorial advice I had ever received in my life. And one which, you know, I still think about and still becomes relevant every time I write a book because I keep doing the same thing over and over again. But she basically just highlighted the passage and said, this reads like you're explaining the plot to yourself. And I've never been so seen in my life. I know. I can see your face, Sarah. Yeah, exactly. But, you know. Ow. Yeah, but, you know, actually.
- [73:02]
Sarah MacLaine
But also. Yes, absolutely.
- [73:04]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah. I'm like, I'm gonna write that down. That's a good thing to tell people, man.
- [73:08]
Sarah MacLaine
That happens in every book.
- [73:10]
K.J. Charles
But to have an editor who will actually just sit there and say that to you. And it is genuinely every manuscript. Why is this so superior?
- [73:19]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah.
- [73:19]
K.J. Charles
Why is this whole passage so slow and boring? Oh, right, I'm doing it again.
- [73:23]
Sarah MacLaine
Yeah.
- [73:23]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [73:24]
Sarah MacLaine
I'm just Re I'm recapping for myself because I took a little break.
- [73:29]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, exactly. It's shockingly easy to do, but you know, when you get that kind of maxim, you will never forget it. And I, I did a book called the Secret Case Book of Simon Veximal, which is framed as the hero, is a kind of Watson who writes stories about his lover who he works with, and is framed as a letter to the editor. And I actually named the editor Henry Scott after Anne Scott because, you know, she just deserved to be immortalized. But, yeah, no, that kind of thing you just can't forget.
- [74:00]
Sarah MacLaine
That's a great piece of advice.
- [74:01]
Jennifer Prokop
That's great advice.
- [74:02]
Sarah MacLaine
We did a deep dive read along of Van Sinister, so hopefully all of our readers have read the K.J. charles book. But if they haven't, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what makes a K.J. charles book. Because you've written so you've written all over the place in terms of there's magic, Sometimes there isn't magic, sometimes there's more. Sometimes there's more romance, sometimes there's a murder, sometimes there's three books of the same couple. So I wonder, is there something that when you think about yourself and the way you write that you always get from K.J.
- [74:39]
K.J. Charles
charles? I have basically two taglines or taglines which have been bestowed on me. And one of them is romance with body count, which is completely fair. Somebody did an infographic of deaths in my books and it was just horrifying. I'm gonna find that this one, you know, and then like the different animals that people have been killed by and that kind of thing. So, yeah, romance of body count, high murder levels, definitely. And the other one is heyer but gayer, which just sums up everything I. Gayer, hey, but gayer. It sums up everything I aspire to.
- [75:15]
Sarah MacLaine
Oh, my gosh, put it on your tombstone.
- [75:18]
Jennifer Prokop
Oh, listen, tattoo worthy. I'll say it.
- [75:20]
K.J. Charles
Gone Sinister is absolutely gayer, but gayer. And the Will Darling adventures is romance with body counts kind of thing. So those sort of sum up the kind of things I write, albeit over different time periods. But if I had to identify one element that was most present, it is probably the theme of a lonely person finding an alliance, friendships, loyalty, not just from their loved one, but in a larger group.
- [75:49]
Sarah MacLaine
That's the right answer.
- [75:51]
K.J. Charles
And I totted it up because, you know, I know it was your thing before. And as far as I can tell, out of approximately 27 books so far, 23 have this is a thing. So that's quite a lot, but it's so important because, you know, you've got especially, A, I'm writing historicals about a time where there was no social safety net whatsoever. And, you know, if you didn't have a supportive family or a supportive community, you know, you were in so much trouble. And B, you know, I'm writing about queer people who are, you know, take that, what I just said and multiply it by a factor of about 50. And it seems to me that a happy ending very often requires, you know, it takes a village, fundamentally. So I seem to have a drive to give people their best friends and the new best friends and their group and the place where they feel at home. And it's not just with one person. It's. It's got to be bigger than that. So I think that would be me.
- [76:52]
Jennifer Prokop
We'll think about how to make that into something catchy like, hey, Urba Gayer. Not sure I'm up to the task, but that, you know, then you have like three romance with a body count hair, but gayer and like, I'll keep working on it.
- [77:05]
K.J. Charles
But actually one of the. I did a series called Society of Gentlemen set in. It's a very realistic type Regency world in that it's politics like cats in a sack, and people like being informed on and sent to prison for their political views and revolution and so on. And one of the heroes is a seditionist and one of the things he repeats throughout the book is, I don't inform. You know, it is his catchphrase. He does not inform. It doesn't matter what you do to him. He's going to be absolutely loyal to his friends.
- [77:38]
Sarah MacLaine
So that's a seditious affair, right?
- [77:40]
K.J. Charles
That's a seditious affair, yes.
- [77:42]
Sarah MacLaine
My favorite of that series.
- [77:44]
K.J. Charles
Yeah, I enjoyed writing that so much.
- [77:46]
Sarah MacLaine
Stylish and Dominic and they're perfect in all ways.
- [77:52]
K.J. Charles
I really enjoyed writing that one because it's got. I mean, it's got a lot of the things that I write about a lot like, yeah, class difference, which is absolutely huge there, and money difference. But also, you know, what to do when you've got genuinely opposing points of view. Because I really feel that most of the time a conflict isn't there's one person who's right and one person who's wrong. It's those people who came at it from a completely different point of view and have to reconcile those points of view. And, yeah, one of them going, I'm sorry, I was totally wrong isn't, you know, it's easier. Kind of how that works, but it's not how it works. Yeah. So I'm very proud of that one.
- [78:27]
Jennifer Prokop
We are pro conflict here at Fated
- [78:29]
Sarah MacLaine
Mates, so on the record, kj, this was wonderful. Thank you so much.
- [78:35]
K.J. Charles
Such a thank you for asking me
- [78:37]
Sarah MacLaine
and talking about your life in romance and your thoughts. We, I'm. I love every time you write a long, a long form piece about what's wrong with writing and romance.
- [78:48]
Jennifer Prokop
Well, and I will say, I mean, we didn't mention it, but KJ's blog is if you want to write romance and you are not reading it, you are doing it wrong. And as an editor, if you are an editor and not giving people like I'm often like, read this, read this because it's so great. I mean, that's the thing. I feel like your editor's eye you can see in the things that you write yourself, but also in the way that you talk about books you've read. I just, it's. We're lucky to have you.
- [79:18]
K.J. Charles
Well, I really scratch my itch because I miss being an editor. I loved being an editor and if they would only pay me enough, I would still be an editor. But you know, it's the way I scratch my itch to like talk authoritatively about books these days is in large part by blogging. And plus I also find that if I blog on a subject that I'm sort of noodling about in my own writing, I often find my granddad used to say, say, how do I know what I think till I hear what I say? And I feel that maybe what I'm doing.
- [79:47]
Sarah MacLaine
That's perfect. No, we do that too. I feel like whenever I'm in deep in a book, I'm like, jen, can we do an interstitial about this thing that I'm working on so that I can read a bunch of books and then noodle it.
- [79:59]
K.J. Charles
So yeah, and you talk about it, but you're not talking about yourself, you're just talking about the problem abstractly. And lo and behold, it turns out that ye right.
- [80:07]
Sarah MacLaine
That's what I think.
- [80:07]
Jennifer Prokop
The solution appears.
- [80:09]
K.J. Charles
That's what I think. Thank God. I knew it was something.
- [80:14]
Jennifer Prokop
Well, thank you so much for being with us. What an amazing conversation. And we wish you the best of
- [80:20]
Sarah MacLaine
luck with the Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which is, as I said, tremendous.
- [80:25]
K.J. Charles
Thank you.
- [80:26]
Sarah MacLaine
And you should all go read it immediately.
- [80:28]
Jennifer Prokop
I had a whole lot of Joy reading it March 7th.
- [80:32]
Sarah MacLaine
March 7th. Thanks, KJ.
- [80:34]
K.J. Charles
Excellent. Well, thank you very much for having me. That Was lovely.
- [80:40]
Sarah MacLaine
What a delight.
- [80:41]
Jennifer Prokop
Oh, she's the greatest.
- [80:43]
Sarah MacLaine
She's so fun.
- [80:44]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [80:44]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah, I've had. I. So during the pandemic, Joanna Shoup has a Facebook group. If you love historical romance, the League
- [80:54]
Sarah MacLaine
of Extraordinary Historical Romance Writers and Readers
- [80:58]
Jennifer Prokop
can be in that space too. Right. And so it's a really fun group. And during the pandemic, I hosted a bunch of, like, kind of zoom chats. Right. Like, remember how desperate we were to just, like, you know, talk about things? And KJ was on once and I was like, oh, wow, this is great. And so I.
- [81:16]
K.J. Charles
One of the things.
- [81:17]
Jennifer Prokop
Can we talk about her, like, working at Mills and Boone stories. So awesome.
- [81:23]
Sarah MacLaine
I know. And so one. One of the things that I just realized before we started recording the, you know, the intro and the outro for this episode is we didn't say this, but I'm.
- [81:33]
K.J. Charles
I'm.
- [81:34]
Sarah MacLaine
I'm sure most of you know that Mills and Boone is Harlequin.
- [81:38]
K.J. Charles
Right?
- [81:38]
Sarah MacLaine
It's just called Mills and Boone in the uk, Australia, Canada. Although I think now in Canada, it's Harlequin. I don't know. Don't quote me on that, but Mills and Boon and Harlequin are crossover publishers, so presents that are published by Mills and Boone can be published by Harlequin, et cetera. I was really fat. I wish. I wish I'd thought to push her more on talking more about medicals because I would really like to know why medicals don't.
- [82:06]
Jennifer Prokop
Aren't an American thing yet don't really
- [82:08]
Sarah MacLaine
sell over here, because I love a doctor, as you know.
- [82:12]
Jennifer Prokop
I really honestly do feel like it. Maybe I joked about er, but I do think that maybe it's a different, like, I think maybe American TV has trained us to expect a different kind of medical thing happening.
- [82:26]
Sarah MacLaine
See, you know what I immediately thought of was like, does it have something to do with insurance?
- [82:31]
Jennifer Prokop
Well, sure. I mean, nothing.
- [82:33]
Sarah MacLaine
Medical issues are so much more stressful for Americans than they are for people. All in all, the rest of the world, Right, because we have to worry about costs.
- [82:41]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah, maybe, maybe.
- [82:43]
Sarah MacLaine
But I don't know. That just went to a bleak place. Anyway, get universal healthcare, everybody. Vote. Vote for politicians who want to give you health care.
- [82:53]
Jennifer Prokop
A whole new romance world will open up to us.
- [82:56]
Sarah MacLaine
Imagine. Imagine if that happened if we go universal healthcare and an entire new world of contemporary romance.
- [83:02]
Jennifer Prokop
What a world.
- [83:03]
Sarah MacLaine
Listen, that's what they should do. They should put out commercials like that in election season.
- [83:08]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [83:09]
Jennifer Prokop
I think the thing that I also, when I think of if. Look, I love K.J. charles's books, obviously we've talked about Ban. Sinister is my favorite. But. But there are writers who have like, different strengths. Right. And one of the things about K.J. charles books is like, they are so. They are impeccably plotted and the pacing is perfect and all of the like, emotional beats, like. Right. Like K.J. charles, as we like to say, like, really knows the job. And so it was really fascinating to hear her talk about like learning, you know, like the neural pathways, like literally being retrained. Right. Yeah.
- [83:44]
Sarah MacLaine
Spending years writing, spending years editing category has to hone that skill better than really anything else, I would think.
- [83:56]
Jennifer Prokop
Absolutely.
- [83:56]
Sarah MacLaine
There's just no. I mean, I talked about this when we did the band Sinister Episode, but there's just no, there's nothing extra in those books. Every word is. Is placed intentionally, every plot point is intentional. I was really fascinated, I was truly, incredibly fascinated by her talking about Heyer and how Heyer has really influenced her work. And that of course, is because when we think about Hayer now, when we look back on it, Hayer's sort of a problematic antecedent.
- [84:27]
K.J. Charles
Right.
- [84:28]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah.
- [84:29]
Sarah MacLaine
And for all of us. And I think what was really interesting to me when she talks about Hayer is how much she acknowledged queer coding in hair.
- [84:38]
Jennifer Prokop
Yes.
- [84:38]
K.J. Charles
Which is.
- [84:39]
Sarah MacLaine
Is not a thing I have ever thought about. I mean, obviously when we talk about, you know, cross dressing heroines and you know, a lot of those, those things that were so essential to romance and continue to be really constant in historicals, it's never really given. I've never thought about them. I've always. I've thought about them coming from hair, but I've never thought about them coming from hair and being possibly intentionally queer coded in hair.
- [85:13]
Jennifer Prokop
In hair.
- [85:14]
Sarah MacLaine
And it made me think, gosh, I. I wish, I wish KJ would write the introductions to a bunch of these hairs. So if you're a publisher out there
- [85:22]
Jennifer Prokop
now, you know who to talk to.
- [85:23]
Sarah MacLaine
Planning to re republish hairs.
- [85:27]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah.
- [85:28]
Sarah MacLaine
Hit up KJ to write some of them. The introductions.
- [85:31]
Jennifer Prokop
I think that this is something. And again, like, we are two straight ladies talking about this. So, you know, I don't want. Yeah, of course, you know, misstep. But I had thought a lot about what she was talking about. You know, these books have existed for a long time, but in small press runs and you know, with Vincent Averga, like in specific bookstores. Right. Like knowing it, you know, so like, how to get those books into your life was charged. Right. And so I think a lot about how, how Angry.
- [86:04]
Sarah MacLaine
I am.
- [86:04]
Jennifer Prokop
Right. That like people are realizing, oh, this is dangerous and you know, these movements to remove queer coded. Not queer coded books. Queer books. Right. It doesn't have to be queer code.
- [86:14]
Sarah MacLaine
We don't have to queer code anymore.
- [86:16]
Jennifer Prokop
Right.
- [86:16]
Sarah MacLaine
Although I think we are going to start seeing it.
- [86:19]
Jennifer Prokop
I just can't get over, I don't know, I. I'm. I'm so upset about us going backwards and I'm so upset about the kids who had to look for queer coding because queerness explicitly didn't exist. And it's just so wrong to be taking that back from young readers, from any readers.
- [86:39]
Sarah MacLaine
Absolutely. I want to pause in our KJ discussion to just say to everyone if you have not listened to our book banning episode, and I know like, there were lots of reasons why people maybe skipped that episode, but. But it is so important to hear the voices of those people who are being impacted directly by book banning. And so we have it. We'll put links in show notes to sits now on the main page of fatamates.net so that everybody can access it. But I encourage you to go listen to that episode so that you can get more informed about what is actually happening in the world right now in the United States especially. I thought that was really interesting. I really thought I was interested in the way that in, like her, the way she talks about historicals. You know, we talked about this too, that there are kind of two schools of historicals, you know, the historicals that are maybe more historical fantasy without magic, as she said. And then what she writes, which is more historical romance purely. And I think that she threaded a really interesting needle there. And I do think, like, there are really interesting things happening on both sides of that line.
- [88:01]
Jennifer Prokop
Right. And I think I love historical God, I love historical so much. And I feel like there's such refuge for me and it sounds like for KJ too in, you know, thinking about who we are now through the lens of who we were then. That's such a powerful way to sort of like, think about the differences. And also I. What I really loved is I think
- [88:23]
K.J. Charles
one of the things you and I
- [88:24]
Jennifer Prokop
is like, romance is fun. Like, romance is fun. It should be fun. It should be fun. And it doesn't always have to be fun. That's not the only mood that romance, you know, kind of can be in. But I really loved because that's one of the things I think about KJ's books is like, I am. You are in for a good time. They rollick. Yes, exactly. And I Think that that's part of the. It's nice to hear an author who is so committed to romance being fun talk about what that means and what that looks like and how you get there, and then to hear that readers respond to it is so powerful. Right.
- [89:06]
Sarah MacLaine
I think she wasn't giving herself enough credit when she talked about how readers interact with her texts, because I think reading KJ's remarkable books with her communities of, you know, supportive communities of characters and the way love is just so beautifully represented in all of these books, I mean, she just does it so, so well. She is one of the best of us in undeniably. And I think for readers, there is such power in that. And I imagine, you know, back in the day when Sam Hain was producing, you know, some of the only ebooks that you could find that were queer romance, KJ must have been incredibly transformational for a lot of readers.
- [90:04]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah, I mean, I. I think a lot about it because one of the things I. I feel is sometimes romance authors develop secondary characters only as, like, bait for later books. Right. And that is not. And look, God, trust me, I love it. But that is not what K.J. charles is doing. Right.
- [90:30]
K.J. Charles
It.
- [90:31]
Jennifer Prokop
And I think it's really important in terms of, from a writing standpoint to really state that.
- [90:38]
K.J. Charles
Right.
- [90:38]
Jennifer Prokop
Like, every single character in her books is there to be themself, not there to just be like, you know, I'm here to support the other characters, or I'm here to be background, or I'm here for a future book. You know, I'm just like. And I really think that that's like a hallmark of her style to me, is how well developed it all is.
- [90:59]
K.J. Charles
Right.
- [91:00]
Jennifer Prokop
Like, no one's there just for a reason. And I think it's. If you're interested as a writer yourself about how to do good secondary character work, you should be reading K.J. charles.
- [91:11]
Sarah MacLaine
Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, you should be reading K.J. charles for a lot of reasons. I mean, her incredible plotting.
- [91:22]
Jennifer Prokop
Yes.
- [91:23]
Sarah MacLaine
And, you know, the, you know, this sounds like you're explaining the plot to yourself is like, oh, yes, I felt harmed by that. But the truth is, is that her plotting is so clean and it. I mean, I don't know if it happens on the first draft or if it happens later, but the way her plots come together is so tidy. And we talked about this. We're sort of rehashing the deep dive that we did. But. But hearing her talk about process in that way was really valuable. And I think also, you know, one of the things that she seemed to be able to do, she seems to have been able to do with her career is really right all around. Like she. You really get the sense from her that, you know, as difficult as it has been in terms of. But it sounds like her publishing journey has been not great all the time. And certainly losing your publisher, your publisher closing, having a terrible relationship with your publishers can really impact what you end up writing. It sounds like for her it has also been really. It has allowed her to really explore.
- [92:37]
Jennifer Prokop
Is this the first predominantly self published author we've had on?
- [92:41]
Sarah MacLaine
Well, we had EE Trailblazer.
- [92:42]
Jennifer Prokop
Oh. And EE Ottoman. And I mean that's probably not a mistake, right? Because.
- [92:47]
Sarah MacLaine
And Radcliffe. I mean, if you think about our queer.
- [92:50]
Jennifer Prokop
Oh yeah, right.
- [92:52]
Sarah MacLaine
You know, with the exception of Vincent. But that's just because it didn't exist probably when Vincent.
- [92:57]
Jennifer Prokop
Sure.
- [92:57]
Sarah MacLaine
I mean it definitely did not exist when Vincent was writing.
- [93:00]
Jennifer Prokop
And I think that this is the thing where we haven't really. I think we are like agnostic when we talk about books. We're just like, this is a good book. We're not really talking about like necessarily the pipeline that brought it. It to your Kindle or to your door. I think that when we think about like this time in romance, right? Like the ability to self publish, right. Like the gatekeeping that exists that then people can circumvent is going to bring us books like K.J. charles, like E.E. ottoman, like May Peterson, right. Like these are books that. And then because of the success of these authors, then we can see how traditional publishing is like, oh, there is a market for this, right. Like that whole discussion of like the ways publishing is like, well, if this sold already, we'd already be selling it. Right. And I think that the only. In that way, self publishing has been such a gift, not just to the queer bromance community, but just to all readers, right. Like I can read books now that I didn't know I would love because. Because publishing didn't think I would buy it. And I think that that part talking about like the journey from traditional, like a kind of traditional independent publisher Samhain down to like the Riptide dream spinner, you know, this has been a circuitous route and I. It's hard to see the. I don't know how to say this right, like the whole story until it's later.
- [94:31]
K.J. Charles
Mm.
- [94:32]
Jennifer Prokop
But I think that we're gonna really look back on. I mean, self publishing is, you know, it gives and it takes.
- [94:43]
Sarah MacLaine
I mean, you and I come at romance, right? With a very. A keen sense of we have to know the past in order to understand what's going on. Right. I don't think everybody comes to romance that way, and I don't think everybody has to. But I think for you and me, there is a. A very real sense of the history informing the present. Right, right. And I think people like KJ teach us that. I mean, I just don't believe that his. That. I don't believe that indie publishing would be where it is if not for those small presses at the beginning. And I think that that is because those small presses, they rode that line between traditional publishing and the structure of traditional publishing and the timeline of traditional publishing and where we are now. Right. And so I think that we are. I think we are very lucky to have had authors like KJ come up through those publishers because I don't think that if we'd sort of immediately gone into where we are now with, like, a giant pool and everybody just throws their stuff into it, we would have the kind of discoverability that we do well.
- [96:03]
Jennifer Prokop
And I think that this is also, you know, I'm thinking a lot about what she was talking about in terms of her readers. Right. The letters she gets from readers. And you couldn't. Everyone. You couldn't see her. Right. But it was like, this is clearly something that moved her deeply. It moved me to, like, hear her talk about it. And I think that this is the part where, you know, what has. In many seasons of faded mates. I hope what people really understand is, like, reading has made me who I am.
- [96:34]
Sarah MacLaine
Right.
- [96:35]
Jennifer Prokop
If you're a reader, the things you read are changing, are making you who you are, realizing who you are. Right. Like, at all kinds of levels. And I just found it really beautiful to think that, you know, self publishing, like, cutting out those gatekeepers has just made room in the world for people who, in romance, in the readership in the world, like, who they are. I just. I don't know. I know this is. I just get on my, like, high horse about romance. How beautiful it is, how, like, much it means to me to know that. I don't know, there's nothing more important about, like, who you are in the world than, like, how you feel about yourself and who you are allowed to love. Right. I don't know. And I just was. I was very moved by the idea that, like, people who have, you know, we've talked about, like, letters, people authors get from readers who are like, I don't like it when you swear. But you know what? Maybe that's worth it.
- [97:35]
Sarah MacLaine
Well, who cares about those letters in comparison to.
- [97:38]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [97:38]
Sarah MacLaine
And I do think we are living in a really fascinating age of romance. And you and I talk about all the different ways that.
- [97:47]
Jennifer Prokop
That.
- [97:48]
Sarah MacLaine
That is true. Right. And it's not all good. Right. But the thing that is good is how easy it is to find yourself in the books. Now, I also think we didn't say this with her, and I wish we had because I do believe that she herself may be responsible for a lot of histor. How historical romance is tackling queerness now.
- [98:20]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [98:20]
Sarah MacLaine
And I, I mean that as, you know, the difference, the sheer difference between even the 90s and early thousands and the way historicals would use queerness as a weapon. Right. Versus Now. You do see queer characters in romance in historical. More. You don't see them as protagonists all the time, but you see them as secondary characters, more tertiary characters. More. And I think KG is a big, big reason why I think so many of us have looked to her books as remarkable texts and also a brilliant model for how to. How to try to do this.
- [99:08]
K.J. Charles
Right.
- [99:09]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah. I mean, and I think that's why we wanted her on.
- [99:12]
Sarah MacLaine
Mm. But we're rethinking the way we think about Trailblazers.
- [99:17]
Jennifer Prokop
Right.
- [99:17]
Sarah MacLaine
Like, we're, we want very much to be collected. The theory of this, this, this batch of episodes, the series is, you know, that we wanted to make sure we had a lot of these voices. And of course, like, for us, we want to make sure we get the older voices as quickly as we can for lots of reasons. But that doesn't mean that people. But KJ's a perfect example of somebody who has transformed the genre.
- [99:47]
Jennifer Prokop
Yes.
- [99:48]
Sarah MacLaine
Right.
- [99:49]
Jennifer Prokop
You know, as a reader, I, you know, it's funny because we've been talking. This is like, not related necessarily to exactly to kj, Charles. But I had this moment this week where I was kind of like, what is it I value as a. Like a romance reader, A longtime romance reader. Right. Like, we see so many, you know, new readers. It's really exciting for so many in so many ways. But I had this moment where I just realized, like, what I really value is, is people who have a lot of interesting ideas.
- [100:16]
K.J. Charles
Right.
- [100:17]
Jennifer Prokop
I just, like, want to read your books if you have interesting ideas. And I, I joked about the book about the taxidermist because if you had told me that I would love a book about taxidermy, I don't think I would have believed you. Right. And yet, obviously, it's just like a set piece in some ways. But her interests, I'm kind of glad I brought up to her talking about, like, how interested she became in it. And I think that that's the thing about KJ, you know, when she said, I have, like 27 books or whatever it is, like, they're not all the same.
- [100:49]
Sarah MacLaine
Not even close to the same, none of them.
- [100:50]
Jennifer Prokop
And I think that that's one of the reasons I think of her as one of my favorite authors is obviously she just does romance so well. But also she is always doing something interesting herself. I can see her challenging herself, and that is challenging and exciting to me.
- [101:08]
Sarah MacLaine
And what's fascinating is when she listed her, the authors who she thought were, you know, important for us to name. Almost all of those authors also do different things every time. Right. Like, Alexis hall has never written the same book twice. So there's a fascinating. She is drawn to other authors who are doing. Who are exploring.
- [101:35]
Jennifer Prokop
Yeah. And that's the thing I feel like when I think about trailblazers, to me, I mean, I think when we first started, it was kind of like you were the first. Obviously, these are the people who are the first to do something or on riding the wave of being the first to do something. But I also think as our thinking has changed, it's kind of like who is figured out a way to, like, write 27 books and keep it fresh. Right. Who has figured out the way? And that is valuable to me because I think that's how we talk about. Right. As she said, like, it's a huge, big tent. Right. Romance is huge. So who are the people that are out there pushing on the corners I'm interested in and how they just think about their work and what they do.
- [102:23]
Sarah MacLaine
All right, well, another trailblazer in the can, as they say. Everyone, this is Fated Mates. Don't forget. Fated mates live is March 24th in New York City. We would love to see you bring your friends tickets and more information@fatedmates.net live. Next week, we've got an interstitial for you.
- [102:46]
K.J. Charles
Yeah.
- [102:47]
Jennifer Prokop
And I would like to just say quick shout out and thank you to Lumi Labs and Kylie Scott for sponsoring this week's episode.
- [102:55]
Sarah MacLaine
We're thrilled to have you all. I'm Sarah McLean. I'm here with my friend Jen Procop. You can find us every week@thetamates.net on Twitter, @thetamates on Instagram, atamates pod. We will see you next week.