Fated Mates

We’re talking about the mythmakers again this week with a chat about romance’s sister genre, horror! We’re joined by NEA fellow, Bram Stoker Award winner and bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones, and librarian and horror expert Becky Spratford. We talk about Stephen’s l

Revisit this season four episode on your way to or from your local No Kings March!The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2022/4/16/s0431-vampire-romance-interstitial If you wish you

This one is very meta (complimentary): Fated Mates (the duo) explains Fated Mates (the trope) on Fated Mates (the podcast). We can’t believe all these years in, we’ve never talked fated mates! We’re rectifying that right now with a collection of paranormal romances (and a few tha

We’re talking about romance with baking and sweet treats today! This is one of romance’s most common Romance Jobs, and we’re getting to the bottom of the appeal of the bakery in romance. Why do we love it when one character makes masterful desserts? What is so compelling about ch

It’s discoverabilibuddy time! We're dropping our Fall 2026 reads, in which we talk about an outrageous number of romance novels coming out in October, November and December. As a reminder, we have not necessarily read all these books, but they are on our TBRs — time to pour yours

As they say on the Discord, this year’s theme is…Themes! This week, we’re talking about hammers, nails, drills, pipes and more — literal characters who are wielding literal (and metaphorical) tools! We’re hopping in the wayback machine to talk about books from the 00s and early 1

This is a fun one! We’re talking romance novels with numbers in the titles today, a wide collection of books from zero to infinity! While we came prepared to talk about four or five books each, we ended up playing a little impromptu game where we name books for every number we ca

Nine seasons of talking about romance, and no signs of quitting! We’re starting a new season, full of much of our same old nonsense, now with more nonsense, because who needs tropes when you can talk about microtropes! Today, in honor of Season Nine, we’re talking about Cloud Nin

It’s the end of Season 8 (what! how!), and we usually celebrate the end of the season with a read along of Sarah’s new book, but since there is no new book, we have no choice but to go back to the beginning of “The Casino Series,” which is what Sarah calls The Rules of Scoundrels

We are once again celebrating a wide swath of historical romances that are recently published and by authors we’ve not talked much about on the podcast! Saddle up, because we’re talking the Titanic, submissive heroes, heroines against the wall, bodily autonomy and even centaurs!

We’re talking tattoos and body art this week! You might not have a tattoo, but odds are you’ve read a few thousand of them, as romance novels love a main character with a message…right on their skin. We talk about some of our favorite tattoo romances, about what tattoos represent

Why is photography so hot? We’re tackling this question this week, talking about why romance novels featuring photographers work so well and push so many sexy buttons. We’re talking about characters who notice, about characters who are patient, and about characters who carry sexy