Illicit Liaisons
Illicit Liaisons
Illicit Liaisons: Starlit & Spellbound with Marissa Marinello and Miranda Tamrakar
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This week, we celebrate the release of Starlit & Spellbound, our first fall anthology, featuring 10 spellbinding romances with witches, ghosts, fated mates, enemies-to-lovers, forbidden love, curses, fate & more!
We're chatting with two of the authors in Starlit & Spellbound, Marissa Marinello and Miranda Tamrakar, about bookish drama, their stories in Starlit & Spellbound, and more.
Marissa Marinello is a SoCal native who writes urban, high fantasy, and cozy-romantasy. A TTRPG nerd who grew up on Tolkien, musical theater & comics, she's always been inspired by finding the fantastical in the mundane and building amazing worlds to tell rich stories in. Much of her work is inspired by real life moments that spark something more. Her work can be found in several anthologies, and she is an active participant in fandom and her writing group in Southern California.
Marissa's Website https://marissamarinello.com/
Marissa's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mmarinello_author
Miranda Tamrakar was raised in SoCal on a steady diet of books and musicals. She finds joy in creating worlds that chase the same sense of sweeping romance and wonder, sometimes with dragons and sometimes with spies, but always telling a tale of how the right people can change a life. She is inspired by looking at relationships in real life and asking herself, "what if?" When she's not writing, she is winning at cards, losing at elaborate board games, or finding inspiration out in the wild with her husband and two daughters, all of whom are delightfully weird.
Miranda's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/miranda_writes_author/
MENTIONED ON THE SHOW
Starlit & Spellbound https://link.amazon/B05WqBMrH
The Hearth Witch's Guide to Spite & Spellwork by Kiri Callaghan https://link.amazon/B0iT4rGD2
Boneyard Key Series by Jen DeLuca https://link.amazon/B031ZMgJm
Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts https://link.amazon/B02taL129
Midnight Bayou Movie https://link.amazon/B04PLYt5S
Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris https://link.amazon/B02qbcg5M
Write with Harte Preptober/Writevember Challenge https://writewithharte.com/preptober-writevember-2026/
TENDER & TEMPTING TALES
Tender and Tempting Tales Substack: Subscribe and get a FREE story! https://tenderandtemptingtales.substack.com/
Tender and Tempting Tales on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tendertemptingtales/
Tender and Tempting Tales ARC Team: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/team/56782/tender-and-tempting-tales
Calls for Submissions: https://tenderandtemptingtales.substack.com/p/write-for-tender-and-tempting-tales
ILLICIT LIAISONS PRODUCED & HOSTED BY
Tara Leederman Substack: https://taleederman.substack.com/
Jenna Harte: https://jennaharte.com/
Outline and Show Notes: T.A. Leederman
Editing: Jenna Harte
Hello, romance readers. Welcome to Illicit Liaisons from Tender and Tempting Tales, where each week we talk about the good, the bad, and the naughty of romance fiction. I am Jenna Hart, romance author of the Southern Heat Contemporary Romance series and the Sexy Valentine Mysteries, as well as the managing editor of Tender and Tempting Tales, a steamy romance anthology for readers who like quickies.
SPEAKER_01Hi, I'm Tara Lederman, social media manager here at Tender and Tempting Tales, and Laura Maven, a main fiction writer for Starship Valkyrie, a science fiction game and story universe. I write science fiction stories, including romance. You can find me in our anthologies alongside these ladies, including in our upcoming spooky fall anthology, Starlet and Spellbound.
SPEAKER_03And today we are here to celebrate the upcoming release of Starlet and Spellbound with the first of our Starlet Pod episodes. Now, each of these special episodes will feature one or two, maybe three, who knows, authors in pairs or thruples that make that make thematic sense, either based on the kinds of stories they write or the character of the authors themselves. So in today's episode, we feature authors Miranda Tamrocker and Marissa Marinello.
SPEAKER_01Marissa Marinello is a SoCal native who writes urban high fantasy and cozy romanticy. A TTRPG nerd who grew up on Tolkien, musical theater, and comics, she's always been inspired by finding the fantastical and the mundane and building amazing worlds to tell rich stories in. Much of her work is inspired by real life moments that spark something more. Her work can be found in several anthologies, mostly us, and she is an active participant in fandom and her writing group in Southern California.
SPEAKER_03Anne Miranda, also raised in Southern California, and on a steady diet of books and musicals, she finds joy in creating worlds that chase the same sense of sweeping romance and wonder, sometimes with dragons and sometimes with spies, but always telling a tale of how the right people can change a life. She's inspired by looking at relationships in real life and asking herself, what if? When she's not writing, she is winning at cards, losing at elaborate board games, or finding inspiration out in the world with her husband and two daughters, all of whom are delightfully weird. And we have Miranda's Instagram available in the show notes so that you can follow her. And anything we do mention on the show, books, uh, our authors, all that stuff, we will have in the show notes. So you can check it out.
SPEAKER_01All right, folks. Well, welcome you too. It's so good to have you here.
SPEAKER_04Yay, it's good to be here. We got the the SoCal trio and Jenna today. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, I grew up in California, but not in the South.
SPEAKER_04And hilariously, I was born in Virginia.
SPEAKER_01Oh, well, there you go. Now Jenna must be out to our time zone. All right, let's talk about hot takes. This was brought to my attention by the girls, although Marissa and I have both been following it. And Jenna, I think you as well. We've been watching it unfold. But indie fantasy romance uh author Elizabeth Wheatley recently announced that she would be removing the spicy bits from her books and turning them from open door romance into fade to black romance. There was some kerfuffle over DRM and the idea of people's purchase Kindle copies being changed. But I want to be clear in this podcast that Elizabeth appears to have responded to and fixed this by figuring out editions on Kindle. So I don't think that's happening to people, but feel free to correct me. I've seen spicy books to grammar posting that they have removed her from their DNR piles, saying that they no longer wish to read her books and saying that this is purity culture run a mock. I've also seen clean readers applaud this move and in many cases go overboard by declaring that spicy readers are angry because we're addicted to porn. In other words, it's a big old mess indicative of the spicy, clean divide in all the worst ways. And I was wondering what you folks thought.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I when it comes to books and themes and media that you consume, I am very much a there is literally everything out there. Don't like it, don't read it. Don't like spicy, don't read spicy. Don't like clean, don't read cream. Yeah, green, don't like green, don't read green either. Like I'm clearly uncaffeinated and it's already noon. Um, but it just it boggles me that people will get so up in arms about stuff that they don't even want to read. Like it so doesn't affect you because this isn't your type of reading. So, like, go go look for what you want to read. They're out there, they're probably indie authors, go support them. But it's I think unfortunately, this particular debate has also sparked up a lot of like a lot of clean read, you know, clean content readers or whatever. And that a lot of that chunk is very vilifying of each other. And I think that that's at the end of the day, we're all readers, we're all reading romance. That that should unite us and not divide us. Like, you read the stuff you want to read, I'll read the stuff I want to read, and we'll complain about all the other genres or something like that. Like it just boggles me that people get so up in arms and vilifying. That's the thing that bothers me the most, I think, is the vilifying of everybody else.
SPEAKER_00I think you're right. The I was reading more into it, and I caught the initial video where she announced that she was gonna do it, and she said, Hey, this is a personal thing for me. I'm gonna make sure the editions aren't changed, and apparently there was some mix-up, but she fixed it. But the amount of people who just can't live and let live was it was really hard for me because I mean, romance readers kind of get talked down to whatever, like oh, that's not real stories or whatever. It's just it's it's just silly, right? So, like, why are we doing this to each other, to ourselves, to this community? Uh a book with like some chaste kisses and hand holding and a wedding at the end? Wonderful. A book where they're down and dirty every other chapter. Wonderful. The live the lack of live and live is so hard. And and I wish people would recognize like what's the best condiment to eat dumplings with? It's that sweet and sour chili sauce or that sweet and hot chili sauce, right? Right? Sweet and spicy, spicy guys.
SPEAKER_04There was it, there was actually something else that I when I was reading up a lot about it today, too, that I'm fairly certain this was one of the reasons why she gave as to why she's removing the spicy content. Oh again, internet, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Internet's really good at that, but if I remember correctly, she was quoted as having saying because she felt like she had to write the spicy scenes at Spicy because of the way she wrote the fighting and combat scenes. And I think that's a really odd take to have because that's equating them to like the same kind of thing. And it's like, well, you're saying now that because you're removing those scenes, but you're still gonna keep the combat the way you wrote it, which that's fine. You you can write really detailed combat and fade to black. Like that that was always something you could do. But saying that you had to because you wrote really graphic combat, I feel like is a really weird direction to to go in.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna say this about I really liked her, and she has some weird takes about lots of things, right? Like she just thinks a lot about everything that she does, and I think her takes can be a little bit weird. I think that's lovely. I like people with weird takes. I'm weird myself. Go ahead, Jenna.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I was just gonna say, well, I had a lot of things sort of coming up in this whole thing. My my first thought overall, why is this a thing? I even put out in my email this week to romance authors saying, I don't know if it's the internet or if it's the a generational thing that something becomes a thing that sh like, why is it a thing? Like, why is this a thing? Right? Why is it why is this a thing? Like, why does it matter? Do you want to answer why I think this is a thing? Well, let me finish because I got lots of them here. Okay, I read the Instagram thread that she posted, and there there seemed to have been a religious element for her for this. She can be her. Like, why is this a that? But that was the virtual signal, right? Like, that was the thing, the purity culture thing. I suspect I would imagine that maybe the spice was a thing for her before. Um, because there's certainly plenty of spiritual religious people out there who write spicy bits, right? So I don't think that alone, but maybe in a commitment to that, she wants to do this. But I have a feeling, and and based on what you said, Marissa, in terms of her feeling pressure to do that, seem to support my thought. What I find interesting is that there, I know writers who have felt pressure to write spicier because it that gets a lot of attention. And things that get attention, you get the idea out there, like, oh, that is what I have to do. I have heard a lot of crazy rules from writers who think things that are not true, but based on the noise or what's being said on the internet, they think is true, right? Um, so so there's that element uh as well. But my thought is if she wants to do this, these are her books, her babies, she can do it. Like, who is any of us to say, like, this is bad, wrong, or whatever? She was very clear, at least in what I saw on the Instagram post, that this was a personal thing to her, that she wasn't telling people not to read this or not to do that. But the other side of that does have to do with the fact that we do not hear this type of thing related to violence in books, right? That it seems to only be spice is the thing that people kind of get up in arms about. I like to read Tammy Hogue. She has some seriously disturbed violence in her butt. Like they're all serial killers that do cray cray stuff, right? We don't really hear about that. Um, or I mean, we know in cozy there's no violence and there's no sex and there's no swearing in a cozy mystery, in a cozy mystery, okay? None of that. But there has to be a dead body, it just can't be strung up and quartered, right? It can be poisoned, right? Like we're so off the page. So, in a whole sort of separate thing is this discussion about why is violence sort of okay, uh, but highly explicit spice, not so much. I don't know. That's a whole different topic. But I this is just one of those things where I'm like, why is this a thing? Like, and I can't figure out if it's because the internet and people have to have content, or there's a generational thing where people just feel like they should have an opinion about everything and tell everybody about it, and not just like this is my opinion, but all y'all are crazy for this, right? Like there's a like there's a a judgment around it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I don't when I see my follow-um, well, I'm a captive audience on Instagram as our social media manager, that's part of it. But I follow both clean writers and spicy writers. I want to see what everyone's talking about. You want to I I like clean romance as well. I think it's good to see what clean romance is talking about. But there is an edge in the clean romance space that is very sanctimonious and very religious. And at the moment, I feel that Elizabeth Wheatley is being used as a ball in a culture war on Instagram. It doesn't matter to a lot of people why she's doing what she's doing. It mostly matters that she is currently the ball in the purity culture war, right? I thought a lot of reactions to her doing this were pretty deranged, actually. And that includes you, spicy readers. Seeing people talk about the fact that they removed her from their their uh their to read piles. I thought that was pretty weird and deranged just because she removed the spice from her books, because they saw her as weighing in with the no spicy crowd, with the clean people. They saw her as being sanctimonious, they saw her as doing this for religious reading reasons and basically bowing to high control religion. And she had said that one of the reasons she didn't she didn't want to have spice in her books anymore is that she saw cockmarks. Feel free to bleep me, Jenna, at a bookstore. Uh she felt like they were objectifying men. And people got on her about, well, men can't be objectified because of because of sexism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I've seen so many reactions to her that I thought were a little bit deranged. People pick picking apart her arguments. This is a sincerely felt religious feeling. I do support her choice. As a spicy writer myself, I support her choice. I think that that's lovely. And I think that it should be a personal choice, and we should let her just be her and not be a ball in a culture. You want to talk about objectification? Elizabeth Wheatley is being objectified right now.
SPEAKER_03It's not okay. There is there is something to be said about that, though, right? Like it there's a time where you see on some uh books that might be targeted toward men, or even in the gaming world, these women with these tiny, tiny waists. Oh, the chain mail bikini, humongous breath, and they're somehow able to wield a sword. And yet we romance authors frequently have bare chested men on their covers, right? Like they're there, I'm willing to be like, okay, what's the difference between big chests, whether it's on a man or a woman, right? Like if that's what you're putting out there to attract a reader, there's something to that. What I feel is unfortunate is in some ways, she she has said the reason she did this and she could do that. And I think because part of the reason was a religious one, that's how come she's become this ball, right? Like had she left that bit out, maybe they would have been, oh, okay. I mean, I have I'm gonna be honest, I have thought about could I do two versions of the Valentine's and take out their spicy bits? Now all of a sudden I got cozy readers who I mean, those stories definitely fit in the cozy world, except for the spice. So I could have a spice version and a non-spice version. I have totally thought about that. But you would have both not not for any, not for some sort of sex is bad, because I mean, we cannot what does the Bible say we're supposed to be fruitful and multiply? Fruitful, multiply, sexy quick, right? Like you have to do that. But my read was like appeal, readers. Readers, these books would certainly appeal to those readers if I took those bits out. So I this is just another thing where I'm like, What do your thing, Elizabeth? And and and I think all writers should be able to do their thing.
SPEAKER_01What's happening in the conversation is that people feel that they're losing her from the spicy side to the clean side, right? She's changing dodgeball teams. So what that means if you're on Instagram enough, you can see that there is a very sharp divide between spicy bookstagram and clean Instagram. And like it is, and it does feel like a culture war. And then on the other side, when when the the the the when the clean romance writers were and and readers were talking about this decision and talking about uh spicy readers being upset by this, their response was not that like this was unreasonable. I mean, there was people who just be like, Oh, this is unreasonable, you should let her do her own thing, which is perfectly fine. Like they are right, but there were people who are like, well, they're so angry and irrational because they're addicted to porn. And when you're addicted to something, you get irrational. And this is what happens when you take away someone's the it's when you take away someone's alcohol or their drug. But I was like, excuse you. Yeah, that's that's the villain. It's not them being angry about losing their drug. Like, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_03And I want to also point out that people who write sweet romance is not all not solely because they have some sort of religious something against it religiously, right? Like, there's plenty of readers out there that don't have that, they just don't want to read that stuff, right? For some reason, it feels too much. They they they want all the sweetness of a of a romance without seeing all those other bits, and it has nothing to do with some sort of value that they have, it's just not something they want to read. Sort of like there's things I don't want to read, and I I don't read horror, I don't like to watch scary horror movies anymore, but it's not because I think they're um Satan, right?
SPEAKER_00Satan like Satan, you know, and I and I think I'll I think I'll chime in here. So one thing is when somebody is a a public figure, like she's followed by a lot of people, a lot of people watch her videos, and they change that upsets people. The the public, once they become attached to a public figure's persona, when it changes, they feel a sense of loss there. But so I do think that might be part of it, but kind of on a personal note, a different perspective here. So I am quite religious, but I believe in letting other people be other people. Everybody is on their own path. What works for me and what what keeps what keeps me in hope and all of these things, that's for me. That's not for anybody else. And I write for Tender and Tempting Tales. I write enough to hit that three killing spice. I've gotten those editorial notes, like punching at Miranda just a little bit. But in my other books, it's my personal projects, it's all fade to black. But I decided, I had a long thought about it. I talked with Marissa a ton about it when she was encouraging me to submit about what's my level? What am I okay with? What am I okay with writing? And it's a very personal choice. So, yeah, she converted to Catholicism, and she feels for maybe that reason or maybe for other reasons that she doesn't want to have this in there. But I'm telling you, there's religious spicy writers out there, and there's clean, real religious writers out there. So, any social group, there's a spectrum, but on social media, everybody wants everything to be polarized. They want to they want to be able to categorize something and find what camp it's in. So I straddle the line. I straddle the line, and that's what I'm comfortable with, and and I'm cool with that. And as for like clean versions, I do actually my kids want to read my stories. So I do um I do make a clean version of my stories for them, and so they can read the tender and tempting tales. Um and I when I'm reading, I read all across the spectrum, but I will skip pages because I'm just not mature enough.
SPEAKER_01Skipping pages is very mature, actually. That is a very mature choice.
SPEAKER_00Shut your hands and start using the words, and sometimes I'm just like, I what?
SPEAKER_04Like, I'm okay with that. I'm good for this.
SPEAKER_01What's not a mature choice is to go on Bookstagram and accuse people of being a porn. That's the immature thing to do. I was really evangelical, and I recognize in this that purity culture that I was raised in. I recognize that strain of like, not only should I not read it, but all these people over here who are reading it, there's something wrong with them, and we need to protect them from themselves. I remember this, you know, and and I I see them sort of gathering steam online and like looking for authors like Elizabeth to be theirs, to be in their team, uh, and trying to interpret her as one of them, one of us, one of and and glorying in this because they think that they've they've scored a point in a in a cultural battle while the spicy readers feel that they've lost. I I do understand why they're upset about feeling like purity culture is has it claimed another author. I think that they're wrong in this case. I understand why they're why they feel overreactive right now. Like I do think that this gets really heated online.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think part of that's a parasocial relationship, too. Yeah, you're welcome to have an opinion about all this. It it's when they move into making a judgment about it toward other people.
SPEAKER_00Or when they or when they devalue the entire thing, like uh, what's a popular example? The Bridgenton book. So what else? Uh uh what is it?
SPEAKER_03Avatar, probably up to the book.
SPEAKER_00Fourth wing, Avatar, all of those things. Yeah. So I have read all of those as a fade-to-black religious author who loves romance. And a lot of people will discount the entire story because there is spicy sex scenes in it. And I'm just like, okay, you're getting it, you're getting it. Excellent. Let's move on to the next drama, let's move on to the next fight scene, let's move on to the next blah blah blah, whatever it is. Because that story, even though it has something that I can't just like tee hee my way through. It's just like, oh my gosh. Um the rest of the story is sometimes it's like fast forwarding through a scene in a movie that like gets to you. If you have an ick, if you have an ick and you're fast forwarding through a scene in a movie, right? They're sharing a toothbrush or whatever, and you're like, oh, this is disgusting. Um it's like that. Like, why can't you fast forward through the movie and enjoy the rest of the Oscar winning performances?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I want to suggest anology that I think would be really good, which would be to be have a Kindle edition of it that like basically says like explicit scene here. You click on it and then you opt into the explicit scene. And if you don't want the explicit scene, you just keep reading.
SPEAKER_04It's like in fanfic how it'll say, like after this sentence, it's spicy, skip to this bit.
SPEAKER_03If you want to argue that spicy bit orange. But if you want to argue that there is a reason for spicy bits to be in books, and skip, I mean, obviously, you can skip, you can skip anything. I skip sometimes descriptions. I'm like, I do not need to know again that this driveway is made of shells, right? Like, you know, I mean, there are people who go overboard on that. But as an author, I would be sort of annoyed that Kindle had a thing where they're gonna skip parts of my book because I wrote those bets, you know, like and there's a reason they're there, you know. And I think we also need to know we're so focused on the highly, highly, highly explicit stuff. I've read a lot of Nora Roberts, she's been publishing since 1979. She's got two sexy bits at least in all her books, and maybe a fade to black or two. They're all the same. I would put them three, three and a half, right? Like they're you go back and read '90s romances, and they're not these high that didn't start coming out till the early 2000s, the highly, highly spicy bits. And there might have been some pushback back then. I don't remember it. Uh, but now, because it just takes up a lot of uh space on TikTok and everything, people are talking about it. If somebody writes a sweet romance that takes the world by storm the way Akatar did, we'll we'll see more of that. That's just how it is, right?
SPEAKER_01I think fanfic has a lot to teach us about opt-in culture, right? Like descriptions, you're opting into descriptions by picking up a book.
SPEAKER_04Tags.
SPEAKER_01Not necessarily opting into explicit sex scenes, right? Like there's a difference between these two things. I do think that right writers should write explicit sex scenes so that they are important to the plot and to the character development. That's a separate matter. But I do think that fanfic has a lot to teach us about this, and that having a place like a drop-down basically where it shows you or not shows you so that you can enjoy the book even without reading the explicit scene, even though you are opting into missing something that might be important to character development, I think it's good to let people opt into that. That's different from description or only reading from dialogue.
SPEAKER_03Does it start? Where does it start? Does it start when he first caresses her face? Does it start from the first kiss? Does it start from like probably up to the writer, right?
SPEAKER_01Probably in and and having an upfront thing like once this turns three chili peppers, I have I have tagged the explicit filter so that you can skip that. But just know that you're going to be getting up to two chili peppers before that. Allow people to opt into their experience to some degree. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And that's a that is a that is a generational difference, I realize. It's just you just be honest with people. Feels like to me. It's not so it's it's a it's you're just giving readers. You're informing them.
SPEAKER_04You're informing them this is what's in it's information with not censorship.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, or they could just go and skip the page. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It just makes it easier for people, basically. Like you're just making it easier for them to skip it, essentially. You're you're it's a it's a respect thing. It's not about censorship, it's respect.
SPEAKER_03I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it allows someone who's younger to avoid it entirely and not see words that their parents don't want them to see. Heck, you could be a parent and and give a teenager this book and said it so they can't ask for the explicit scene, so they can't see the word cock. That's right, internet.
SPEAKER_03Or I think of VC Andrews. You take out some of that stuff and all of a sudden that story isn't the same.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, you probably shouldn't be reading V.C. Andrews if you want clean.
SPEAKER_03Except for you have admitted to reading this book as a child. So, you know, well, there are books that should never go to them.
SPEAKER_01If it's like Nora Robert, you get two spicy scenes and the rest is fine. Okay. If it's VC Andrews, no, right? Like it depends on how spicy the book is and how much is going on in there, right?
SPEAKER_03Like there are certain books where that wouldn't work, but there are books where I'm uncomfortable with telling writers we're gonna let people change how they experience you. I write the book as I write the book, and it's up to the reader on their end, not up for me to sort of tag, okay. You can read this if you don't like the. I don't know. It just would be there for writers to me.
SPEAKER_01It would make it so you could offer a version of the Valentine Mysteries to a clean reader.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but that would I would rather have a set that I have created for it would be for you to create this, or you could do that.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. That's you basically you would have an addition, one edition of the book, and a spicy reader or a clean reader could enjoy it at the same time by either creating it. It would be something you would create. Yes, you would it would be a tool there for you to use it for me. No, no, not for Amazon to use, for you to use, right? But the the writer would have to opt into it and would have to basically tag and give information about what they've done. It'd be for the writers.
SPEAKER_03Listen, if you put up at the front of the books, this is gonna have a murder and sex. I've given them the warning. Well, that's what content is. Now, whatever they come across that bothers them, I've told and of course that's a new thing too, right? Oh, yeah, writers have pushed back on content warnings.
SPEAKER_01Authors pushing back on content warnings also bugs me, right? You like like well, I'm I'm I'm basically spoiling the book by telling you there's sex in it. It's like, I'm sorry, you're a romance author.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, for if if I'm picking up a murder mystery romance, I'm assuming there's gonna be a murder and there's gonna be some spicy. Like that's right, yeah.
SPEAKER_03If you pick up a dark romance, you you assume dark, and yet there are trigger warnings put in those things. Well, let's be honest.
SPEAKER_01When you pick up a dark document, you don't know what exactly they're gonna be, right? Those are important. Like when I pick up a dark romance, I don't know if the darkness is gonna be she's imprisoned for a while or she gets tortured or a dog gets it. I don't know what's going on. Like, give me a trigger warning.
SPEAKER_03No dogs are like am I dark as dark? It's like wanting to go see a horror movie, and you're they need to tell you in advance who's getting slashed, why, and how.
SPEAKER_01Well, there are certain kinds of horror movies I don't want to watch, and I do look for there's certain kinds of horror I don't want to see. I don't mind people getting slashed up, but I don't like the flaw movies. It's too tortury.
SPEAKER_04Black Dagger Brotherhood books. There were there's a couple of books in that series that my friend is like, Oh, you're not gonna really like this one because it involves XYZ. Whereas other dark themes in the other series, that one, but that one didn't bother me. That was the one she assumed would bother me the most. And I was like, No, this is fine. The first book is the one that I almost threw across the room repeatedly for the dark themes. But you know, it's they're dark, but they're for different reasons. So she was being like, Hey, this book is dark because of XYZ versus ABC. If I'm cool with ABC, then like, yeah, fine, whatever, no problem. XYZ is like, well, hey, now I know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't like animal torture and death. I appreciate the dog die, right? That's my big trigger warning out there. Like, I don't want to watch it, I don't want to read about it. Yeah, but like if someone just said, well, dark is dark, dog, dog torture is part of dark, I would tell them, no, like you probably need to warn people if you're gonna torture a dog. It doesn't seem like it's it's necessarily always on the menu. Everything can't be on the menu all the time, right? It's good to kind of let people opt in or opt out. I think information is good.
SPEAKER_03That's what reviews are for. True.
SPEAKER_01Reviews are good for that. Reviews are good for that. It is a lot of information to slog through, though. But like, yeah, it is good. Yeah, reviews are good. Even reviewers are careful about spoilers, which is good, you know. But I I think that authors being honest about that stuff is a good thing. I've I've liked that trend, I've liked content warnings, I've thought that's been good. And I'm one of those people who doesn't need a lot of content warnings. I know there are people who need them more.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's a generational thing. I mean, I'm okay. I like I'm happy to warn people. I don't want anybody to be upset reading a book, right? Or to have something trigger something in them that is difficult. Um I grew up in the where you had to endure it all, right? You just it's like you had to put up with it. So I am all for trigger warnings. I'm not at all saying you have to suck it up buttercup. I'm not that at all. But coming from the creator side, I don't want to give anybody full steam ahead to change my book.
SPEAKER_01Um, no, I don't, this is not for other people to do.
SPEAKER_03It's like people don't like certain things, maybe my book isn't for them. That's the other side of that. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I mean, as a as a as an educator as well, I think that big just because you see a content warning, I don't always think that you should avoid something, right? Like you should challenge yourself. Am I gonna subject myself to a book about torturing dogs? No, I'm not challenging myself with that. No, thank you. Yeah, but there are other challenging subjects that I will go into, right?
SPEAKER_03Does weathering heights have your hard lines content warning? Sorry, what does weathering heights have a trigger warning? That guy was so bad.
SPEAKER_01Being handed that book at 14 with no warning whatsoever might not have been the best thing for me either. It's insane. Like he jumps into the gray jungle for me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I had to read that so many times, and each time I was like, why am I being given?
SPEAKER_03Or you know, Lord of the uh Lord of the Flies, Lord of the Flies, yeah. Oh my god, let's move on to something fun, like Miranda.
SPEAKER_01Miranda's very fun.
SPEAKER_03We're so happy to have you back for Starlit, and I do understand that you have a project you're working on right now that you're plotting a modern-day small town rom-com. Those are fun, set in an enchanting world of fantasy masquerade balls. I love it already. It's tenderly called But Make It Romance. Can you tell our listeners a bit about it?
SPEAKER_00Yes. So I uh I don't know if you've noticed or not, but fantasy masquerade balls or balls in general, like those British and balls or things like that, are um they're just they're popping up all over the place right now. And I was lucky enough to attend the Labyrinth Masquerade Ball a couple years ago with Marissa, and it was a fabulous experience. It was so cool. The the just of raw creativity on display with all the costumes and the pageantry of it. It was it was stepping into a scene from a from a novel. It was very thematic and it was just it was beautiful. It was just the whole you were somewhere else. I was in a different space. I was in this universe that they created. And I think readers, a lot of readers enjoy stepping into this new universe. If you're a if you're a genre reader, right? Like I love fantasy, hardcore fantasy fan, as well as romance romanticy? Great, dig it. Um, so in person, my physical self being transported into a new space. It was amazing for me. And so I just kind of like I just thought about it and like we talk about it all the time, and it just like it it stayed with me. And I was trying to figure out kind of my next my next move because I have a couple novels that I need to um that I need to revise and I need to to finish. But I always like to have something new cooking so I can escape the revision process. I was like, what am I gonna do? And I was like, what? I want something in the uh in the vein of um, I think is it Jen DeLuca that has like the Renaissance Fair romance series or the um Boneyard Key romance series, something that is is kind of everyday people, people that you could be having this sort of thematic experience. And so I thought write what I know and find a way to express that that experience.
SPEAKER_01I hope you'll do noveling November with us, by the way, to finish up one of your books. Yes, or to start that new series, or to start the new October, right? If you wanted to start a new book specifically, I think that might be a good thing for you to do.
SPEAKER_00I would love that. Yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01I want to see Miranda level up into full novelist published, all of that.
SPEAKER_00It's hard. I have two, I have two fully written, one of which I need emotional space to go back through and make sure because I was working through something in that one, apparently. Um the second one is more ready to go. It's just learning about the revision process and making sure that I do it um right and in a way that doesn't end up with me rewriting the book 10 times. I would love that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They have audit worksheets for both for that we use for Finmo's finishing months that you could use while going through them to audit your work.
SPEAKER_00I hope yeah, you guys have built some amazing resources.
SPEAKER_01Oh, thank you. Jenna was my inspiration for many of them.
unknownYay!
SPEAKER_04Okay, Jenna's Preptober stuff was essential to me writing packs and negotiations, the the first draft of the novel. Like it's it would not have happened without that Preptober stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and essential to us creating our own library of more generalized Preptober and right Vember stuff. Ours are because everyone in our our server does different stuff, so ours are more generalized and simpler, but yeah, we we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to do it without Jenna. All right, Miranda. My dear, your story in Starlight is Sacrifice is Love, an enemy Silver's Romanticy Story. Can you tell us a bit about it and your characters? I have read it now so many times that it is seared into my brain. In a good way, mostly in a good way. I'm the coffee editor, so things happen in the cooking process.
SPEAKER_00Things did happen the cooking process. So I accidentally packed a lot of things into this story. It's enemies to lovers, there's like some faded maid stuff going on in there, and it's all exploring friendship and grief and love. And what is love and how does love grow? And what does love do to and for us? So the female lead character, Ine, is she's kind of strong-willed, she's kind of working through and holding things together the best she can, and she's trying to achieve kind of this dream um of helping people and of of kind of giving herself to the community, thinking that it's gonna fix her. And then our male lead, Renier, um, experienced grief alongside Inna, but he handled it in a much different way. He had to go inside and he had to work through it just himself, and it's it just affected the way they interacted with each other and with the people, and and exploring a separation and a reconciliation, and really writing the scene where they're working through this, where they're finally open and honest with each other. Um like it like it was hard. Uh, and just thinking about times when I've had to work through something in a relationship, be a familial, romantic, whatever, and and really be brave enough to shine a light on what's really happening, is I think it's it was it was really intense for me, but in the end, I think really is is going to show kind of the intensity of relationships and what it takes.
SPEAKER_01Awesome.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I mean this is an enemies to lover's romanticity, but I don't this is in if people are wondering that this is connected to Fantastical Foes, and I'm really glad that it's in Starlet because I I I don't think it's quite enemies-yes a lot enough or like that trope so much as like because it's deeper than enemies, right? It's not enemies, they've gone through a thing together and they're they're estranged. And estrangement is a different thing, right? And but I do like the the I do like the idea of like of grief estranging people very much and and seeing them come back together, like that kind of story. And I'm really glad that we get to see it in Starlit. And I like seeing your world expand. Like I like seeing you have more words to play with to be able to expand on this world created.
SPEAKER_00I needed, I needed those extra words. This was short story. This was not Zine story. This was this was anthology short story, not Zine. There was too much in there.
SPEAKER_01The 7,000 words was harsh on all the Aero Fantasy people, especially. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So where did the story come from? Like what inspired it, or what were some of your favorite parts of creating it?
SPEAKER_00I'm not I'm not hugely sure where the the grief part of it came from. It started as just this idea of kind of what would you sacrifice for your community, for yourself, and what would you need to kind of survive that? I don't want to spoilers, but what would you need to kind of survive that? Um, and so that's kind of where the the faded mates part comes in. And I had to think long and hard about why would that be hard for them if they had both committed to do this thing? Why would it be hard for them to be together and do this thing? And I think that's kind of where I had to kind of look back at human nature and like you both want to. What's the problem? And finding what can separate people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Favorite moments. There's a scene where Iné just won't give her near the time of day, and he really needs to talk to her. And so he says, Well, this is going to be embarrassing, and he uh gets her attention quite dramatically in the marketplace. Um I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I just realized I gave you two in a row, Jenna. Um for a little bit more.
SPEAKER_03One of the things we do try to have our authors part of the whole conversation here. So uh Marissa, do you have any questions for Miranda?
SPEAKER_04Oh, I mean, do you have any ideas for the Epic Fantasy Ball series of what your first couple might be or what their their like what's their meat cute gonna be? Do you think? Is it gonna be the ball, or are you gonna have the meat cute somewhere else?
SPEAKER_01This feels like a plant question.
SPEAKER_04It's not, I legit have no idea. He gave me like two sentences and it was like, tell me everything. I want to know more.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. So the so the it's in the it's in the universe I'm creating is the fable harbor universe for this, and this is going to be the Fabled Fet Masquerade series. And the Meet Cute is going to be between an artist that the event uh planner finds and hires, and it's going to be epistillatory, them kind of getting to know each other because he's not local and they're working together. And um, he just he doesn't buy into like the mood, the vibe, the theme, the just the intense thematics of it. So he's creating these graphics for her, and she's like, but make it romance. And and that's kind of how they meet and how things go, and and it's gonna be a journey for him to learn to buy into the romance.
SPEAKER_04I love that. I I feel like it's got a little bit of grumpy sunshine-ish potential.
SPEAKER_00Is it is going to be a little grumpy sunshine. Yes. I love grumpy sunshine.
SPEAKER_01I feel like that is such a good trope to use. I most people I feel like most people love it. I haven't seen anyone hate it. Does anyone hate grumpy sunshine? Find me a person.
SPEAKER_03Oh golly, there's probably somebody because there are always there's always someone. Which is fine.
SPEAKER_01It doesn't have to be your favorite. Someone being a grump about grumpy. That's fine. I'm cool with that. All right. We'd like to trigger guests as kill host. Sorry, good. What sorry? What say that again?
SPEAKER_00I like it when the grump kind of stays a grump, but now they're but now, but now he's her grimp. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04The grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one. That's my my favorite. They're still grumpy with everyone else except them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's a line in in Downton Abbey where it's it's it's the butler and who becomes his wife. Spoiler for Downton Abbey. And she goes, get her my curmudgeon.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I love that so much. He's talking about Sylvie Lowe. You still want to be with an old curmudgeon like me. You're my curmudgeon. And he still is. He doesn't change, right? Like even getting married, he's still a curmudgeon. And of course, we love to treat our guests as hosts. Miranda, do you have any questions for us or something you'd like to circle back to?
SPEAKER_00So I think a question that I would have for you guys is as you're working on this anthology, I think that you are seeing a lot of kind of uh newer authors, some experienced authors, some newer authors, kind of a mix. And do you have any thoughts on how somebody can kind of grow confident enough to put themselves out like this to submit to something like this? So let me tell you, I was sweating the entire time.
SPEAKER_01Well, you'll notice that I I tend to s reach out and give developmental edits to people, especially if I know them, right? So I've done this to three authors, maybe four at this point. Even if they don't make it in, I try to reach out and give people some notes. I won't be able to do this for Right. Like eventually we'll get so many submissions, hopefully, that it it will become impossible. But for the moment, I have enough spare bandwidth to sometimes reach out and give people some notes on things. I do think it's important to go through the process with us. You know, if you if you submit and get in and go through the edits process with us, it's a really good way of getting experience and learning how to trim your prose, be more concise, and experience brevity. And also just how to work with editors, how to write for other people, not just an audience, but also dealing with editors and their perspectives on things. I think it's a good process. What do you think, Jenna?
SPEAKER_03I think if you've never gotten a rejection or no, you're not submitting enough. Um and it is it's part of writing, it sucks. I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't. You'll hear writers talk about I got a hundred rejections. Um, but now they're a best-selling author. Carrie by Stephen King was in the waste paper basket when his wife pulled it out because he was getting lots of rejections. So the in terms of encouraging people, it's like you just have to do it. But on the on the other side of that, I think having people that who understand writing and what it is you write have a look at it and give you honest feedback that you are willing to sort of take and look at and consider is really important as well. Because you could rack up a hundred rejections and maybe the writing needed that, right? Like maybe it's not, and it's hard to know if it's good enough if you're just submitting. So you I think having somebody else look at it and and help you uh look at it and fix it up to the best it can be. At that point, it's just finding the right place for it at the right time. And you just it's it's a bravery. You got this little baby you're putting out into the world that some people might reject. It's hard not to take it personally. I can tell you from being a former agent and now doing this, it's not fun to reject people like I do not like it. Whether I know you or not, um I do not like it. Um, so it's it's not pe them being mean, it's just there's a standard that it's being held up to, and you can help meet that standard by getting good editing and feedback prior to submission. Follow the submission guidelines, that's the other thing. Good, yeah, goodness gracious. It's constantly, I I cannot tell you how for years it has baffled me. If I tell you Times New Roman 12 point, and you send me Ariel 14, um, I I it just baffles me. And it's and it sounds really I I don't know on the other side what people hear when I say that. Like, what's the big deal? There's a reason agents, editors, and all that ask for this stuff. It's not a suggestion, it's not a it's not even really a test, although it ultimately does become one. Because if you send me Ariel 14, it's much easier to say no, right? If you cannot respect me enough to follow what I've told you to do, what you've told me is that you are not willing to follow directions. And when you're trying to manage 10, 12 people into a manuscript, into a book, if on our end, it's a lot of moving parts. We're tracking down contracts or whatever it is, and if out of the gate you've already indicated you're gonna be a difficult person to because you can't change Ariel Times New Roman, that says something.
SPEAKER_01We've never we've never bounced somebody based on one flub in the guidelines, right? Like, but I will say that if you do something in the structure of your stories formatting where like there's weird margins all over the place and I can't fix it, we can't put you in the manuscript, right? Usually I will fix things before they go into the manuscript. If you've used the wrong font or something like that, not wingdings, but aerial instead of times and robin, don't use wingdings. But we're the big thing is not reading stuff like the homework or not adhering to the the theme. Like we will bounce you on theme, right? We will bounce you on that. If you if you submit to if you submit a fantasy to a sci-fi zine, not saying that that's happened. If you submit me a fantasy, you are not getting in. I will tell you that right now. No, like you have to read this stuff and understand it, or you won't get in. Like, I have definitely received stories that were really good, but didn't fit theme and couldn't be fixed, right? Like they were, like they were not, they didn't hit the subgenre or they didn't have fireworks, even though we said to have fireworks in the story, right? Like that has happened. So make sure that you're paying careful attention to that. Don't just submit something that you have in your drawer without making sure that it actually matches that theme, because then you will not get in. And even if it's a really good story, you won't get in. That's and that's painful because we're like, oh, this is a really good story, but it actually doesn't have the element we're looking for and it's not incorporating it. Like or it doesn't have a spicy bit. That's another one. We definitely bounce people on not having a spicy bit. Not at all. Like if you're not quite up to the spice margin, we might we've often set that edit of like bring it up a notch.
SPEAKER_00I've been one of those people guilty.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01But if it's not even if there's not even a place for it and you're already at word cap, there's nothing to be done, right? Like if you submitted a clean romance to us, there's nothing we can do to to fix that, right? Well, we'll just have to bounce you. So pay special attention to that. We don't want to bounce a good story on a and I would love to technicality of missing something.
SPEAKER_03Development to give more feedback on why we've said no. I mean, that would be nice, but I just don't have the time to do that uh for free in particular, right? I mean, it takes a lot of time to do a developmental edit, more than it is takes to go in and add a comma or something, right? Like, and I'm not discounting Tara's copy editing, but you do developmental edits and you know there's a difference when you're having to go in and address the content and the premise, and is it meeting that and all that kind of stuff? And it would be nice to do that. It's one of the big gripes that writers have. I've had it. Like, why'd you why'd you reject my story? And and agents and editors just they just do not have the time to do that. So it's sort of up to you to try and figure out why did they say no? If your manuscript is getting a lot of no's, maybe you need to take it, get it to a someone you trust to read it and be like, why do you think this is getting a no?
SPEAKER_01Um and it's the reason why I did a retrospective today on the Sapphix of Saturn, because I did get a I did get several good submissions that just didn't hit the theme that I wanted to be as transparent as possible about that while still maintaining while still maintaining editorial ethics and just let people know this is what you can expect from the zine, and to give people some clues as to why they might not have gotten in and to encourage them and to thank everybody who submitted to Sapfix of Saturn. I'm I'm in this is the first time being lead editor and something, and I did want to thank my submitters. So I hope that answers your question, Miranda.
SPEAKER_03All right, Marissa. We have got Chill Touch Thrall from you and Starlet and Enemies to Lovers, Beauty and the Beast, Faye Romance between a Lord and his captive slash ward. Can you tell us more about that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so speaking of Fantastical Foes, I I had too much fun writing for Fantastical Foes. So I submitted two stories, and Parish and Terror were like, this is good, but more. And I was like, okay, sure. Twist my arm. And it's I I liked the I I love fantasy and folklore. I live, you know, fantasy is one of my favorite genres to read. It's one of my favorite genres to write. So doing another romanticy story was kind of like going back to my roots a little bit and getting to play in those worlds more and legends and lores of fairies and the different ways people use those legends and lores. And like, okay, what's the rules in your fantasy story? And I love the idea of it's very easy to play with the idea of two opposing courts or like different courts that tolerate each other because of mystical nature reasons, but otherwise they'd rather not. And uh, Nyx is a character I've I've had in my back pocket for a thing for a while, but getting to explore how this relationship works with the person who starts as kind of a captor, becomes kind of her boss, and how that relationship changes and grows over time, and what it would take for that relationship to change and grow over time was really fun. And getting to play in a fantasy world and have silly sidekicks and an obnoxious tiny dragon that's upset about being a tiny dragon and things like that is very fun to me.
SPEAKER_01It does have a cozy you always do cozy and it has that cozy fantasy feel to it, which I haven't read a lot of. So it is it's I feel like my sister will really like it. Erin, if you're listening, you're gonna really like this one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I love writing like high stakes fantasy as well, but it's I think for romance, it's actually easier for me to write the stakes so much lower where it's like the real beef is more just between the two of them. Like there, yeah, there's problems happening, but that's someone else's problem. Like you don't gotta worry about that.
SPEAKER_01And it'd be clear, Paris really liked this story a lot. I thought it would be better to tell as a word mark, and I think that it is. Like, I'm very excited to see this larger version. I think you expanding it is really good because it has, like a lot of your stories, has a sense of time in it. A lot of the stories that we do, even the ones that I do, are usually in real time without a lot of types gifts, but you often want to give a sense of time in your stories. And allowing that kind of a slowburn in 10,000 words is hard to do. It's unusual. We did manage it, so it does have that slow burn quality too, which I think is really good.
SPEAKER_04I think I have a hard time. I have a hard time writing romances that are like they meet and then they're like the next day, they're gonna be together. I'm like, uh what? What are you, Ariel? No, this is not fruiting. This is not, no, this is not like Christoph had it right. You guys just met. So I I especially with Nyx specifically, with her relationship and with how this guy's literally her captor for a long time. It this is not the kind of thing where she's gonna fall for him and immediately want to get together with him in a week. This is she has so many trust issues, so many trust issues. Like it takes time to find whether with something within yourself or within the other person to feel comfortable enough to even think about having that kind of relationship. So I can't have Stockholm syndrome being exactly. And so, like, even in Beauty and the Beast, technically months went by, technically, like a year went by. So having this sense of time, but also keeping it within 10,000 words is a fun challenge because I'm like, let's skip to another scene that you have this idea that it's like months later or weeks later or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that the sense of time in it in the slow burn is very good, even though it's in 10,000 words. So this is the second epic romantic tale you've written with us. I've been encouraging you to write more epic romantic, as you know, which is a break from your West Coast Weird project, which I also really love. Can you tell us about the project? I know you should be starting in a romanticy setting later this year, and this is a planned question.
SPEAKER_04Yes, it is a planned question because she's the one who told me to do it. So for so I'm actually going to for write Vember, especially using some of those lovely Preptober things that I know Jen is going to be putting out. I'm actually gonna be taking my Fantastical Foe stories Coldfire Vows and turning it into a full novel because I have so much I can do with that and I have so much I can play. Tara's like cheering me on dancing for me. But it's for those who didn't get a chance to read it, it is another romanticy. It's big epic fantasy kind of vibes. With I had this idea of like there's an epic war going on between two factions of Faye, and the main characters are from opposing sides, so they were really literal enemies to lovers. And the time when I was writing it for the zine, I was like, Oh, I wish I had more room. I wish I had more words because there I could do so much better with this scene, or like this would make more sense if there was like another day, but I don't have time for that. So getting to let that world breathe and expand and play into a full novel will be really, really fun. And I would love to tie it into other romantic stories that are cooking in my brain.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, some short stories read like the seed of a novel, and this one does too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I just I still struggle even now with like however many I've published so far with you guys. I still struggle with getting it to be like beginning, middle, end 10,000 words. Whereas I'm like, can I play with 80? Can I just keep going for forever?
SPEAKER_01Listen, you're getting much better at it. Like you're getting much, much better at it. There's, I don't know, there's a pace to writing short stories, and you are hitting that much more reliably. Like you are doing that thing where it's like you can see someone transitioning from being a novel writer to being a short story writer and knowing how to be brief about that. And it's really cool to watch someone else do that to make that transition. It's nice. Sorry, go ahead, Jenna.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was I didn't think I could write short and then, but something clicks eventually you figure it out, right? Like, okay, I mean I don't need all this stuff. Okay. Um, so well, this story that you have, Chill Touch Thrall, what inspired you to come up with this story idea? Uh, did you? I mean, like, was it did you start out like, oh, I want to do a beauty and the beast retelling? Because there's I love those, they're very popular.
SPEAKER_04Surprisingly, no. So I've been looking forward to this question because the answer is Dungeons and Dragons. Okay. I literally I play a lot of TRPG. I actually started a campaign. I think we started in either 2019 or 2020. I know we played a lot during the pandemic with this specific campaign, but I played Nyx in the campaign. And I had never, she was a warlock class, which basically means that she gets her magic from someone or something else. And I hadn't seen a lot of people playing Archfay Warlocks, and I was like, I love fairy tales, let's go. So my wife was actually the dungeon master for that game. And when I was like early in the campaign reading on like how warlocks worked and like what their motivations were and things like that, I was like, Oh, it could be a parental thing, and it could be a work relationship, romantic. And I was like clutching my pearls, like, who's trying to sleep with their patron? And after more research, everyone is apparently that's hyperbole, but a lot of people and joking about it with with the DM, I was like, I don't think she could do that like early on. I think she's got a lot to have to to go through and work with, and like she does not trust him straight from the get-go. And in the book and the story, it's the same way. She does not trust him. She's like, You are a high fee, you are in charge, you are from opposing sides. I cannot trust you. I have to bide my time and keep my head down to get out of here safely. So the story, Chiltage Thrall, was well, how would that work if she never met her adventuring party? How would that work if she didn't get to go on these grand adventures and she was stuck working for him for a while? And like, how could I make their relationship and romance bloom in a way that still felt true to character? And I was like drafting it, and I'd like to write a section from his point of view and I'd send it to the DM and be like, does this sound like what you were going for? And get laughter back of like, yes, that exactly, yes, down to the tight pants. Perfect. Um, even uh there is a a little sidekick uh who shows up called The Puck, who is personality-wise very similar to the puck from Midsummer and things like that. But the puck was a character from the DD game. He was an NPC stuck as a tiny dragon that my character traveled with and would have to give assignments to. So I was like, well, Puck has to get in the short story somehow. I don't know how, but he's gonna be in there.
SPEAKER_01That was the main thing I wanted to expand, actually. I was like, I want more puck. Like he disappears, what's going on? Why is he a tiny dragon? It felt like an Easter egg, and I wanted it to be more of a thing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was an Easter egg for anyone who had been in that DD campaign with me or had heard me rant about it. But yeah, getting to explore like a lot more of Nyx's internal thoughts and like how she views she she is very calculating. She is very like, okay, if I'm stuck here, how much can I get away with to get out? Like, what do I need to do to get free, to get enough power to feel safe? And over the course of time, what would he have to do to make her feel safe? And whether that's letting her get it herself or giving her the space or things like that. It was very fun to get to write and explore and get to sit there and go, This is my DD character. I'm so proud of her.
SPEAKER_01It doesn't quite read like that, which is good. I mean, like I've seen DD retelling, but very nakedly read DD retellings, and you're like, oh my god, this is somebody's character. Um I I know a lot of gamers, but it was funny to me that like you tripped into it being a beauty of the beast retelling. There's like this moment where we're trying to figure out what the tropes are. And I was like, Oh, it's kind of a like aquitar, it's kind of a beauty of the beast retelling. It even has bitches love libraries, and you were like, Oh my god, it does.
SPEAKER_04Because that was like literally in in the game, one of the gifts he gave her was a book. And I was like, Well, that definitely needs to go in the longer version because that's actually something that builds the relationship and it gives them a way to communicate and something to bond over, and it gave me the opportunity to write really cute scenes because they didn't get to be very cute yet in the campaign. And I was like, Oh, I'm gonna make this real cute. This is gonna be this is gonna be snarky and her panicking and then really cute. And I'm gonna this is gonna be so much fun.
SPEAKER_01All right, Miranda, for some extra spice. Do you have any questions for Marissa?
SPEAKER_00I do actually embrace yourself. Oh no, no, no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. So you are you have your West Coast Weird series, and then you have been doing these kind of really fantasy series well. Where do you draw the line? Like, would we see fairies or fee or elves or things in your West Coast Weird? Like, where do you draw the line between fantasy and supernatural?
SPEAKER_04Oh, there's definitely Faye and Fantasy in the the West Coast Weird is before I knew there was a paranormal romance tag, I called it urban fantasy with romance because there it's I think Wainscoat fantasy is the the specific, specific sub-sub subgenre where it's like magic exists behind the scenes. You're not supposed to know it's there, but inevitably the main character being a normal human will stumble across it. So the the first novel that I wrote in the West Coast Weird series, the main character works at a law firm and it's run by the Fae. And when I was writing Coldfire Vows, I had this like tee he back of my head, Easter egg moment of, oh man, these characters could be people that I already have in that book. And it's just hundreds and hundreds of years later. Like that would be fun. It doesn't need to be. It might, I still haven't decided yet, but we'll we'll see what happens. But I I think it's very much like when I think romanticy, it's swords and shields and dragons and dead epicness. And I think you know, West Coast Weird is very much the in the modern day, it is the barista is dating a vampire and the sweet little lady who orders a flat white and wants it made a specific way is actually a witch. And you know, the guy selling apples from an orchard is actually a werewolf kind of thing, versus in in high fantasy, it's like everyone knows magic exists. Everyone knows this is this is how it's built into the world at its core, and everybody just knows it and lives with it and has to navigate with it and through it.
SPEAKER_03Sort of like a true blood world. Yeah, like true blood, I would call it. But just like, okay, there's vampires and shifters, and then all the things. You can do more there's Fay, and then there's witch. Everything exists.
SPEAKER_04Everything, yeah, and that it's seeing, like, as I was reading that series and being like, oh, everything exists. I was like, oh, good, because I was kind of already doing that in my brain with West Coast Weird. Like every every story I write in it is a new. Well, what thing am I gonna put in this? What creature is gonna be real?
SPEAKER_01And from its foundations, urban fantasy tends to do that. Like Dresden Fail has both Faye and Ghost, right? You know, it tends to have all those things.
SPEAKER_00I want magical creatures. Let's see some griffins, some unicorns. Yeah, you know, I'm working on it.
SPEAKER_04I'm working on it. I have a I have an idea for one with a dragon-blooded. Uh I haven't decided if they're gonna be a full dragon that can shape shift into a human or if they're going to be dragon-blooded individual in a future West Coast weird story. I have a crow shapeshifter one that I want to do. I have crow. Um, yeah, no, I know you love a crow. I do. I want speaking of rejections, the short story that I submitted that I got ghosted. I didn't even get a rejection. I just got ghosted by the people. It was a queer romance with uh someone who was sort of like a trickster creature, but was from like the sort of um indigenous cultures where coyotes were tricksters and things like that. And that was coyote shape shape.
SPEAKER_01I love that story. I can't believe they ghosted you. I think it's where actually like reach out and reject people. I don't like they just ghost people.
SPEAKER_04And I want to do something with that story specifically because I I really like writing tricksters. Like, I loved writing puck in in Children's Thrall. I love I love writing. Oh, they did. They definitely did. I got the automated response and then I got ghosted. But yeah, they it's a really good story.
SPEAKER_01It's 4,000 words. They wanted a romanticy story with a spicy bit in 4,000 words, Jenna. And she did it. That was rough. We took the machete to that thing. We macheteed that thing so hard. It was it was a job.
SPEAKER_04It was a lot on the cutting room floor. Yeah, just rude. So much on the cutting room floor. Well, but I also I've also been building these what I'm calling the cutting room floor scenes where it's stuff from short stories that I'm like, I can't fit it in, I don't have time for that. It's all going in a Word document somewhere to kind of your darlings. Your darlings. Even if it's just for me to go back and read and go, I loved that. Yeah. Like maybe I'll do something with them someday. We'll see. Yeah. But I also I I don't know what I'm gonna call the romanticy series yet that's sort of been building in my brain with Chill Touch Thrall and with Cold Fire. Vowels, but in my in my document system on my computer, it's called Romanta C with a capital C because it made Tara want to throw something at me when I first said it.
unknownI did.
SPEAKER_01I looked at you held on to that because it made me angry.
SPEAKER_04That's why chill, touch through all. I was I was having too much fun purposefully using the letter C.
SPEAKER_03Tormenting Tara. It's fine, it's a challenge too. One of the things that we're trying to do here is encourage more romance readers to read anthologies, shorter works. And you know, we've got great stories. I think Starlet is one of our best so far, and which is not to say fireworks and margaritas and the rest of them don't have great stories because they do, but there's just something about this one. It must be the magic and the woo-woo in it. It just makes it um, yeah, there's just something about it. And this whole thing started because I go to events and there's always uh like an Ellery Queen magazine and an Isaac Asimov mag with all these short stories. And like, what isn't the one for romance? Because romance is the most read genre out there, and surely people want to read short. And but then I thought, well, I wasn't reading apologies. Why is that? But there's a lot of good reasons for it, right? Like, you want to have a whole EA with a little spice on our end, right? Or I was stuck on what to read for nearly two weeks. I could not, I have I don't know how many books on my shelf, I couldn't pick one, but you I could pick a short story and read it. And if it sucked, I just go to the next story. None of our stories suck, by the way. Just saying you're gonna want to read them all. Anyway, so I I just want people to check out Starlet and our other anthologies. I don't know, maybe you guys have other thoughts about why short stories are really great. But I would love to see more romance readers check them out. I know Amazon has their shorts category, which is one story they can read. For that, hardly any more money. You can get 10. You can get 10. 10 that you can read in one sitting and have a whole beginning, middle to end, falling in love, having having something go bad, and then coming back together and living happily forever or happily for now. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Trying out new indie authors, right, is always a risk, and and trying out new like romantic romance subgenres is a risk, and trying out new romance tropes is a risk. The nice thing about an anthology is that you can try those things out quickly. You can you can find a new indie author that you like, you can find a new subgenre that you like, you can check it out. If you don't know anything about sci-fi romance, we've got sci-fi romance in there that you can check out. If you've never read a romanticy before and you're kind of leery of it, we've got romantic for you to figure out for you to check out. If you've never had a paranormal romance and you don't want to read a whole Sicky Stackhouse novel, we've got you. If you're leery of contemporary romance, like I can be sometimes, we've got some really good contemporary romances to read. If you've never read a billionaire romance but you want to check one out, we've got those in in Margaritas. If you've never read a cruise romance, we've got those. We have sort of something for everyone. We've got tropes that you might not have liked. This is how I discovered that I liked Enemies to Lovers. I really didn't think that I liked Enemies to Lovers, and then I read Chip Happens and was like, hey, this is good. Like I feel like this trope, or you know, like if you're if you're you kind of don't like it in a novel, but think you might like it in a short story, like only one bed or something like that, or forced proximity, we've got those tropes for you to try out. So it's a good way for you to sort of like try something on without committing to a whole novel.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and let me just add, all our books are in KU. So if you're a KU romance reader, they're there for you to jump in and try. And of course, when before they come out, they are available as ARCs. If you're a person who will read and leave an honest, honest review, we have that too. A little late for Starlet at this point to grab one, although I I think it's open until Sunday, which will be past when this goes up. So never mind.
SPEAKER_01Uh we do we have an ARC team, we have an ARC team that's a standing thing. You can sign up for the ARC team and you can be you can receive ARCs in the future. And Sapics of Saturn is coming up. I would love ARC reader. So if you'd like to sign up when you hear this and become a standing arc reader, we would love to have you. If you're looking to like expand your books to our profile and do arcs, we would love to partner with you. We we need a hype team still, and this is a good chance to get in on the ground, groundwood floor. So please do.
SPEAKER_03And if you visit our website, you'll see what we have upcoming. Our next one is gonna be Vows and Valentine's. Exactly. We're gonna have a dark romance zine coming up. So we're trying to hit all the things that romance readers love too, as we as we go through and do these. So please come by. We'll have links in the show notes so you can check them out. Sign up.
SPEAKER_01And now time for book recommendations. What is your favorite spooky season romance read or your favorite cozy fall romance read?
SPEAKER_04This is the question that I figured you guys were gonna ask, which is why I didn't ask it because I a question I ask a lot of people is what are you reading right now? I actually just finished. I would definitely consider it a cozy fall, but it is cozy and and I'm working, I'm trying to pronounce this correctly. The author describes it as huga. It's the the Danish word H-Y-G-G-E. Cozy, but the idea of cozy, but there is still danger outside of the cozy.
SPEAKER_01Hugga, hooga, hookah.
SPEAKER_04There we go. Thank you. But I am reading, I just finished reading an arc for arc review purposes of The Hearth Witch's Guide to Spite and Spellwork by Kiri Calaghan. It is the second in her series, and it comes out in October. It is a cozy murder mystery sapphic Sherlock Holmes romance in urban fantasy, and it is so good. It made me feel, I think, almost every single emotion on the spectrum at some point, from like the squeaking and kicking your feet back and forth in excitement to the like, oh my god, are they gonna be okay? to rageous indignation on behalf of the main character. And it's so cute and it's so delightful. And the the pacing and the yearning of these two characters, like everyone in the ARC team was ready to yell at Kiri, like, you're you're torturing us here, Kiri. Come on, like the yearning though.
SPEAKER_01Um as a shout-out, Kiri is a member of the SoCal larger geek community. Yes. Renaissance fairs here and is well known to a lot of people here.
SPEAKER_04Um she's a performer at Labyrinth and all sorts of stuff. But yeah, it's it was a really good read, and I'm now going to be eagerly chomping. It's very fall thing. I think it's the story tech ends right before Halloween. So it is, I'd say cozy fall vibes.
SPEAKER_01Uh Miranda.
SPEAKER_00I mentioned this series before, it's the Boneyard Key series by Jen DeLuca, is speake season. It takes place in Boneyard Key. In Florida, and it's a fictional, it's basically a haunted town. It's like the most haunted town in the US, and it's just these people trying to fall in love while ghosts are doing ghost things, and or trying not to fall in love while ghosts are doing ghost things and failing miserably. So it's very cozy, but it does have the there are stakes, there are things that happen. So I I have very much enjoy that. And that's that's something that last year and and this year, once it's September, I'm starting to pick up my my cozy fall reads. So I read a last the series last year, and I'm gonna reread it this year. Jenna?
SPEAKER_03I don't think this book takes place in the fall, but it it's spooky woo-woo vibe. So if anybody's looking for spooky woo-woo, and this is an older book. This is a Nora Roberts book. It's called Midnight by You. It is set in New Orleans, and we know I'm that's my spirit city. Um, and this book, I you don't want to get it's one of those ones that you can't read it twice the same, right? Like there's this twist in it that I don't know, someone who reads a lot might see it coming. Because you sort of think one thing, it turns out to be a little bit different. But there is kind of like a ghostly thing. There's like a murder that takes place a hundred years prior. But this young man, during like a college break, he he and his friends go to this old house and he is just drawn to it. So later he's finished school, he's become a lawyer, he has bought this house and he's fixing it up, and there's weird things that happen to him. Uh, and then there's locals, and there's like New Orleans vibes and stuff. And they did make a movie about it. It's it's one of the only movies made from a Nora Roberts book that I enjoyed. Um, unfortunately, a lot of hers, I was just like, these are good. I wish somebody would buy her in death, but somebody like stars or HBO or who does who does book adaptations as a series and does them right. I wish they would pick up the in-depth, which is a totally different thing. Anyway, Midnight by You might be my trait just because that twist, I was like, whoa.
SPEAKER_01That sounds like a good one. Yeah, you also like high speak stuff. That sounds fun. Uh, I really like the Sookie Stackhouse series. I tend to actually go back and reread around Halloween, it's a paranormal romance series. Of course, that there are books in that series that I'm not super fond of. Um uh and she does jump around between different different love interests and stuff. And uh, I am an Eric Stan. So I really love the fourth book. That'll be that's my favorite. But Spooky goes, I feel like Sookie Stackhouse does spooky extremely.
SPEAKER_04Oh, definitely.
SPEAKER_01And it's very much an urban romantic. Like it's the for me, it's it's kind of like the the bedrock urban romantic series where it's like we're going beyond paranormal and we're doing a lot of things that urban romantic does. We're doing the higher stakes, we're doing the sort of like the kind of murder mystery edge to it in a lot of things.
SPEAKER_03Like there's a like there's a dead body in every one of them. So absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And that's dead thriller. I want dead bodies. Yeah, I want I want high stakes, I want pulse cannon blasts. I'm I'm here for the higher stakes. So I I like that a lot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you might if you go to the bookstore, they they're they're probably in the mystery section.
SPEAKER_04They're in the they're in the fantasy section. They're fantasy, good, yeah.
SPEAKER_01They're always in fantasy, they're over with the other urban romantic, the urban fantasy. That's where I always find them. They've been, but you'll find them near the Dresden Files, or at least when I was buying them, they were in the Dresden Files section. They could move around. I found them in the romance section one time and it was like, what's happening? And I have found them in the mystery section, but they're usually in sci-fi romance.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because everyone's other books well, except for Midnight Texas. Like most of her other books were just traditional cozy mysteries, right? Theurance stuff like that. Yeah. But I was Anita, oh, what's her name now? Anita, I want to say Bake Blake. That's the the singer. Uh is it Anita Blake? Blake Blake. Yeah. Her series were the same. They're sort of she's got vampires, but then they're like mysteries. It was always like, where do I find this book in the book? Those are urban fantasy and those are also early on, one of the few people early on, both of them who were able, because it was very difficult in traditional publishing. If they could not figure out where to put your book in the in a bookstore, like what shelf it went on, it got very hard to get published. Another thing that independent authors have really pushed to like, we're gonna write cross genre and suck it up, figure it out.
SPEAKER_01I always imagine people in Barnes and Noble going to shelve these books, like that moment in Wally where he's got the cup of spoons and the cup of forks, and he's got a pork.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_01I just see that with someone in in Barnes and Noble going like mystery, science fiction fantasy.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. What do I put it? What do I put? Exactly. Why not have one copy in each section? Exactly. Why not? Right? Like, yeah, yeah. So yeah, learning a lot about publishing on the show these days. I think a lot of people don't know. If your book doesn't sell well in the first six months, it's gone. And I'll tell you what, having books returned, it it would make that's the thing that made me cry because they minus those off your royalties. Gone. Um, yeah. So I don't like that. So there's yeah, a lot of things that writers maybe readers don't know about what goes on behind the scenes, and that's why I don't care if my books are in the bookstore because like I don't want them to send them back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this kind of thing kind of disincentivizes indie authors from wanting to be in bookstores, right? Like if we feel punished or like people can't find our stuff or like the system is too rigid, then like it doesn't incentivize us to want to be in bookstores unless they're specialty or they're willing to come up with another way of helping people to find yeah.
SPEAKER_03And a lot of independent bookstores are allowing consignment and things like that, which takes care of that uh anyway, that hassle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All right, folks. Thank you so much for being here with us. We are celebrating Starlet and Spellbound, which will be coming out Monday, which will actually be the day before this comes out. So if you are listening right now, that means that Starlet and Spellbound has been out for 24 hours. We definitely encourage you to pick up a copy. Remember that reviews are really important for indie presses and helping our authors to get noticed. We are helping to bring to notice a lot of newer and indie authors. So if you would like to support indie authors, this is a good way of doing so. Not only review, but reading our authors, going and following them, giving them some support, and also reading the books that they have as well. You know, all of these authors are working on putting out their own books and they would love to see your support. We are Tender and Tempting Tales. You can follow, you follow us on Instagram as TenderTemptingTales. There is no and in that. Please follow us. You'll see updates on all of our releases, zines, anthologies, everything that we put up on the substack. Our substack is Tender and Tempting Tales. You can read great articles about romance every week. You can get access to the podcast. You can find out about our calls, find out about upcoming releases. Jenna.
SPEAKER_03I want to thank Marissa and Miranda for being here today and sharing all their lovely stories with us. I I really am very excited about Starlet. It's one of my favorites that we've done. So thank you for being here. I also you did mention the challenge. And so if anybody is listening to this and thinking, well, I could write a romance and you want to submit to us, but you haven't written anything, I am running a challenge through Write with Heart. I will have a link to it if you want to check it out. We have a Preptober, which will help you flesh out your romance idea. I have never done in the Preptober or Wright Vember anything about writing short, but I am looking to add that. So something specific for anybody who wanted to submit to us as well. Again, I'll have links to that. Again, thank you all for being here and for being in Starlet and Spellbound. I'm very excited about this. And peace, love, and happily ever after.