Illicit Liaisons
Illicit Liaisons
Illicit Liaisons: Starlit & Spellbound with Urna Semper and T.A. Leederman
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This week, we continue celebrating 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, T.A. Leederman and Urna Semper, about bookish drama, their stories in Starlit & Spellbound, and more.
Urna Semper is a romance author from Argoshaan, known for her books depicting passionate tales of forbidden love between clones and born-humans. Born to a family of scriveners, her breakthrough came with Olava: Fallen into Bondage, followed by Kyrie: Betrayed into Bondage, and Kingdom of Maids. Her most recent projects, The Pearl Crucible and Where All Past Years Are, are available on Amazon.
Urna's Substack https://urnasemper.substack.com/
Urna's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/urnasemperauthor/
T.A. Leederman is a PhD in English Literature and a sci-fi, sci-fi romance, and urban fantasy author based out of Los Angeles, California. She is Lore Lead and central fiction writer for Starship Valkyrie, a science-fiction crisis-simulator game and science-fiction world based out of Los Angeles, which she runs alongside her partner at LA gaming conventions like Strategicon and LFG Con. Her first independent Starship Valkyrie collection, Contact Unknown, is available on Amazon and from her in person at events and conventions.
Tara's Substack https://taleederman.substack.com/
Tara's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/author_taleederman/
MENTIONED ON THE SHOW
Starlit & Spellbound https://link.amazon/B05WqBMrH
Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher https://link.amazon/B0fCSdGGj
Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold https://link.amazon/B0iedkYTz
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold https://link.amazon/B040UN4D6
The Chanur Saga by C.J. Cherryh https://link.amazon/B0907HIJf
Merchanter’s Luck by C.J. Cherryh https://link.amazon/B01qpHq49
In Death series by J.D. Robb https://link.amazon/B0jcEXSXg
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 with Tender and Tempting Tales, where each week we discuss the good, the bad, and the naughty of romance fiction. I am Jenna Harder, romance author of the Southern Heat Contemporary Romance series and the 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 and main fiction writer for Starship Valkyrie, a science fiction game and story universe. I write science fiction stories, including romance, and you can often find me in our anthologies alongside these folks, including in our upcoming spooky fall anthology, Starlet and Spellbound.
SPEAKER_04And today we are still here celebrating the release of Starlet and Spellbound with the second of our podcast episodes. Each of these episodes will feature one or two of the authors in pairs that make thematic sense, or based on the stories they write, or the character of the authors themselves. And in today's episode, we are going to feature Tara writing as T.A. Lederman and Parish Baker writing as Erna Semper. They are regulars in our anthologies, both sci-fi and speculative fiction romance authors, and both editors here at Tender and Tempting Tales.
SPEAKER_01I'll introduce Parish. Erna Semper is a romance author from Argo Shawn, known for her books depicting passionate tales of forbidden love between clones and born humans. Born to a family of scriveners, her breakthrough came with Olava, Fallen into Bondage, followed by Kyrie, Betrayed Into Bondage, and Kingdom of Maids. Most recent projects, The Pearl Crucible and Where All Past Years Are, are available on Amazon. She sends her stories via Ansible directly to the mind of Parish Baker, who is here with us on Earth, giving us stories from the 30th century. Hello, Parish.
SPEAKER_00Hello.
SPEAKER_01I wish I had a muse like that.
SPEAKER_03Who just beam stories directly into your brain? Beam stories.
SPEAKER_01Me too.
SPEAKER_00It's extremely intense. Sometimes you wake up with this massive headache. It's awful.
SPEAKER_01Nothing about the Esperanto. Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_04Well, let me tell you a little bit about Tara. T.A. Litterman is a PhD in English literature and a sci-fi and sci-fi romance and urban fantasy author based out of Los Angeles, California. She is lore lead and central fiction writer for Starship Valkyrie, a science fiction, crisis simulator game and science fiction world based out of Los Angeles, which she runs alongside her partner at LA gaming conventions like Strategic Con and LFG Con. Her first independent Starship Valkyrie collection, Contact Unknown, is available at Amazon and from her in person if you go to these events.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Hello, everybody. It's so nice to be the to be the uh the guest and co-host. All right, folks. It's my favorite time. It's hot take time. All right. On the last episode, we talked a lot about purity culture online when we discussed Elizabeth Wheatley, but Parish brought to my attention and wanted to get to the issue from another angle. And he was wondering where this purity culture and overt desire for clean romance and less smut and or porn was coming from. And like, why does it seem to originate with so many young authors and readers, which I think is very interesting as well. Is this connected to the new wave of conservatism we hear so much about, especially among communities online? Is there something else going on? You both have Gen Z children. What do you think?
SPEAKER_00Well, mine are pretty straight-laced individuals. My daughter specifically refers to what I do as smut. Although now that she's over 18, I have kindly sent her a book or two of it just to annoy her because she was in a different world.
SPEAKER_01I saw that conversation. She asked you for the smut.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I suppose that she did. I try not to malign her too much. She did ask for it. I'm not sure how serious she was. But yeah, and there my when I was like, say, I don't know, 10, and my parents wanted to go to an actual Honest to God movie, and I had to sit there while the movie was going on. I would like put my hands over my face. And because this the uh kissing in the goodbye girl was just more than I could possibly stand. Oh god.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's great. My son, however, is 15, he still reacts the same way. So it's like, I don't know what's up with these. It's like some kind of delayed adulthood. Uh, I don't know if it's I can't differentiate if it's some sort of new strain of conservatism. If it is, I think it's disassociated with anything that we would think of as political. Just because they, I mean, they again back to my childhood or teenhood, drank, smoke, you know, drove off the road into dishes, got teenagers, teenage uh uh cheerleaders pregnant, and that was just the circle of life, a kuma matada. And now it's like these people are like it's like revenge of the nerds. It's like like where what happened to you people? So I think there's something, and and but there, it's like that crosses, as far as I can tell, all kinds of spectrums. I I think there's connected to uh, if I dare, linkage, like kind of me toism kind of thing. People are like drawing lessons off of that. You can't even think about sex, even in a dark room, much less like mog somebody over the coffee machine. It's like there's just like a lot of different pieces coming in. I I have yet to differentiate what's happening, but it is a very weird situation in that.
SPEAKER_01I think that they they might experience cringe and embarrassment in a way that is really intense, right? Like I see people talking about cringe all the time, and I I wonder if writing smut or reading smut is considered cringe among a set of people, or the idea of being vulnerable in that way is a bit cringe. Uh that I'm not entirely sure about certain about. I think there is a pendulum swing though.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna clarify that my kids are millennials. I thought your youngest was Gen Z. Isn't your youngest Gen Z? She's born in '97. I think that makes her Oh, that's a millennial, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's the last millennials. My apologies. Late millennials.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and and my son is definitely he's he's older than her. I knew your son was in the bottom of the Tara and I've had a discussion about the generations and things and how I'm a Gen Xer, so I raised I was raised feral.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04And I and I I suppose I remember wanting to to kind of be different than what I was raised in. My parents, I love my parents, they did a great job. I'm not at all dissing on them, but I do remember wanting to be an at-home mom, and I couldn't afford it, but I worked at home and did all these things, so I probably hovered around my kids more, which is one of the complaints I think people have around the younger generations, is that there's so much hovering. At the same time, I was a lazy mom, so my kids were forced to do chores and make their own lunches and do their laundry at a young age. And um, so when I look at them now, I don't see what we're talking about here. This conservativism, they're like us, they're fairly liberal. My daughter does read romance, her preference is rom-coms, and they all I know have some spice in them. She's read Elle Kennedy, she's read She likes Simile Henry, she's read all those. She has read the Avatar books. Um, her her roommate forced her to read them. Um but normally she's more contemporary rom-com oriented, and all those have spicy bits in them. So I don't really see this, but I do, I am on the internet a lot. And one of the, and and so my tendency is to blame social media on some of this because I think, particularly for younger people, like my daughter was on Facebook for a minute and then decided this is a bunch of nonsense drama, I don't want to be a part of it, like right. So, and and my son's not really, I mean, they have a profile there, but they never do anything there. So she wasn't part of that. Where I has a I have a niece who I think is a Z. She was born in 2000, 2001, something like that. And it's like the internet, TikTok, all those things are very important in terms of depicting an appearance of something, how she looks and how she lives, and how she and and she's not the only one. It's a it feels like there's a large generation of of women in particular who look to the internet and want to show, look, I'm pretty or I'm successful, or whatever it is. And that goes with that trad wife culture that I see a lot.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes, yeah. That's very big on TikTok.
SPEAKER_04And so I feel like that this might relate to that. But I but the other part of that is I always like to be careful because I'm gonna upset somebody here. The other part is squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? So smart has had a is very loud on the TikTok. Those readers love it, they talk about it, and so and and TikTok pushes them. But that is not to say that there's nothing clean out there. It's just not as it's just well, the my point is it's not as loud. So when people are saying we want less this, it's like there's plenty of the other. The problem isn't that there isn't enough of the other, the problem is it's just very loud. The loud, the squeaky wheel gets all the attention. And so, in my mind, is retrain your TikTok, retrain your social media to deliver what it is that you want, I guess.
SPEAKER_01The clean, I mean the clean romance community, the way they talk about I mean, I follow clean romance authors, I just want to know what they're talking about. And I most of the time I think that they what they're what they post is pretty cool. It's just every once in a while I'm like really, really thrown. I'm like, I'm I'm on the back foot by it. Like, whoa, then where did that come from? Like, I I follow an author who most of the time I think is great, really funny, really like has good equanimity. But when she talks about smut, I I just think that I think she's a little a little off really off about why people read smut, why they why they write it. Well, there's like a there seems to be like an accepted accepted verbiage about smut out there. And I see it on uh on uh Substack as well. Like every once in a while it'll just pop up and like someone like a friend will have liked it, someone who's religious, like maybe like Sam Rob, and I'll be like, oh, what is this? And I'll read it, and it'll be talking about like, well, like less smut is a is a good thing for literature, and like people are addicted to smut. And I'm like, what is this? What is this line? Like, where does this come from? Um there was this idea that porn was addictive, right? And that like people needed to watch less porn, it was really bad for them. And that was a that was a thing in evangelicalism. Um, and it seems like it's it's coming back now, that idea. And yeah, there's a lot of trad wives and stuff like that online. There's like trad girlfriends, the thing. But yeah, when I'll follow this this romance author, and she'll be like, My smut reading experience when she'll say that she she picked up a well, I think what's a young adult or a new adult book at the library that had elves and stuff in it, and was shocked to discover it had smut in it while she was at the park with other children, like she had been traumatized or something by it. And I was just like, So it's a lot of registry of safe books.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, a lot of it goes into why people might prefer clean romance, right? Because some of them just don't, it's it's like some people don't like to see violence in movies, it's some people don't like to read sexy bits, and there's no there's no sort of value judgment around it. It's just I just don't like that, right? But there are some people who gravitate towards the sweet because there is a value behind it. There is the premarital sex is bad, or these things should stay behind closed doors, or whatever they were taught, shame around sex, or it's private, or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01Like and it doesn't even necessarily be married partners and stuff. That's a big one.
SPEAKER_04Not even necessarily religious per se, although it can be, but there's certainly plenty of people who go to church that read spicy romance, so that's you know, but there could be a value system online, there could be a value system around that, and they're the ones who are gonna be the ones more likely to say there's something wrong with these people who want to read these spicy bits, and I and I've said this before. My what's of interest to me is that this push against this calling it, and of course, they could some people will say it's smut if there's anything in like they might call Nora Roberts smut, and hers is quite mild, right? If you I don't know if you've ever read Nora Roberts, but it's compared to some of the stuff we've seen in these.
SPEAKER_01Well, this this author will be told that she's too she has too much spice, but because she's got kisses in her books, right?
SPEAKER_04Like, right, so the definition of you know, what is the definition of smut for some people? But um I I think that, yes, I think what is of interest to me is that there is a lot of this pushback, but there isn't necessarily pushback on how how gruesome and violent some books can be. Um, and in in the same way, like there's other bad things that can be in books that do not get pushback the way people think sex is bad. I'm like, how do you think you got here? You know, like sex is a normal thing, just like love is a normal thing. Um, friendship is a normal thing. Shady murders are not. Yeah, yeah. And then you'd be like, Well, I just don't want to read it. Okay, that's fine. But who are you to start talking about other people who do like to read it, you know?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I think that it's fine for them to want like the book to tell them that it's got spicy. And of course, I'm I'm content warning positive, right? Like, I think that this is one of those cases where you should put the fact that it is spicy on the cover somewhere, right? Like it's got these many chili peppers. Like, I think that standardizing that would be really good. So, you know, in terms of having like a safe book registry, I don't think that needs to be a thing. It would be good if the book itself was like, this is a spicy book, so that when you get the book, you know what you're getting into. That would be really good. So I agree with that, but also the way that these folks talk about this. So this is a young adult book, and it had spice in it. And she was talking about that, like the author was a groomer, like constantly talking about young adult authors who put spice in their books as though they're like child predators. And I really disagree with that. I think that that is a while. I don't think young adult books should necessarily have super spicy scenes in them at the same time. It doesn't make the author a a predator, it doesn't make them a creep, it just means that they have different values from you and they think that teenagers are are mature enough to handle that, right? Yeah and they're thinking of 16 years.
SPEAKER_04Teenagers want to read books that seem real to them, and teenagers have volatile emotions a lot of time, you know, these wild swings, right? They whether it's love toward you know someone, but certainly they also will have you know feelings of wanting to kiss somebody or you know, all those happen before you're 18.
SPEAKER_01Everyone's being so conservative at them and not letting them read anything. Like I do think it should say on there that it has that, right? Because you know if you're picking up a young adult book for a 12-year-old, you don't know. I do think that parents should review, like check reviews for books and stuff like that to see if they're good for a 12-year-old.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Nobody talks about that, right?
SPEAKER_01I I'm talking about it right now. Yeah, but what I'm saying is the sex.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's always, you know, it's always it's always sex. And sometimes it surprises me, you know, um just you know, that how bad people attribute that to.
SPEAKER_00Um the comparison I was coming up in my mind is that that what these people are consciously or unconsciously trying to create is the fact that if we want to call it smut, smut is becoming the romance of the romance world. It's getting further segregated down. Like these people are romance is terrible. These people are even more terrible. Look at these horrible people.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's wrong to to have something that might titillate, is really what they're saying. Yeah, right. Like, they probably won't they would probably never like if they were reading someone like Nora Roberts or you know, in her her ilk, you know, they they might not have a problem with the spicy bits in those because they're quite in my mind, I mean they're on page, but it's quite tame compared to some of the things that we see that I think do title eight. And I think there's a lot of authors who want to do that, and there's a lot of readers who like it, you know.
SPEAKER_00So why let them have what they want, right? I see no reason to get people get a it's again, it's just it's clicks, it's trying to. I'm gonna get all upset about this issue because I think I can drive more engagement.
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, then there's that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think calling spice authors groomers for putting like a tasteful like spicy bit in a book intended for 16, 17 year olds is uh pretty far. Like this is that's really spicy language. That's one of those words people like to toss out there to Yeah, I know, but it's also like pretty grotesque to say that, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think if you write something for a 16, 17-year-old, that's very different from writing for a 12 or 13. They are teenagers, they are adolescents. Adolescent is different from child. They're not they're not elementary school age and they're not middle grade, they are teenagers, and teenagers are different, they have different brains, they are beginning to become very independent. They are a they're a class of people who are different from small children who should not be treated like small children. It is damaging to do that. And I feel like most people don't even remember being 16 or 17, you know, like they leave that time behind and they have absolute amnesia about it, or they're really judgmental about it. And I don't know if it's what it is, but I'm just in arrested development of always 17, but I have a lot of like empathy for that group of people being treated like 10-year-olds.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think there's a tendency to dismiss the feelings of children, but also teenagers, like, oh, they you know, they'll grow at it, not recognize having forgotten how intense being a teenager can be. The emotion, you know, that love a teenager feels is real, is real. And are they too young to get married and do all? Yes, but it doesn't mean you dismiss the fact that these are very real feelings that they're having and they need an education around how to manage all of it, not just the sexy bits, but you know, uh what being in love means and then being in a relationship, and what's okay and not okay, and yeah. Um, so yeah, but I I think there is a tendency to dismiss the feelings of of younger people. So now that we've solved that problem, yeah, that's right, we've solved it. All right, Parrish, I understand you have a project you're working on right now, and you're currently serializing a sci-fi romance called Lion in the Garden. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_00Well, it kind of feeds off another novel that I should be editing and finishing. But um basically the protagonist in that novel had assistance from a kind of human being. He's like uh a clone, he's like about uh seven, eight foot tall and you know, several feet wide and thick, and he's basically blue and very dangerous and not very chatty and talkative, and he manages to assist them in their problems, and then he takes out for parts unknown, and some people seem to be wanted to hearing more about him. And so this story is basically about him, although it's not from his point of view. He uh he's kind of entered the sort of sort of settled attack region, and he has uh come into contact with an extremely wealthy widow who is in her mid-40s. She's a little cagey about it. She could be nearly 50, and she could be a little over 40, she's not very specific about it, of course. And um they kind of collide, and fun is had by all, but he also is a very his life is extremely dangerous because he's being pursued by the place that he got out of and by other forces in his world who uh basically are going to destroy him when they finally get their hands on him. And so she is now on the run, also, because they have kind of taken over her property because they know that she is that she knows far more about him than they would like uh her to, and that she might know where he is, and they have driven basically driven her off of where she needs to be in the hopes that she will lead them to him, which she is busily trying to do without really meaning to do that. So there you go.
SPEAKER_04Sounds like a blue reacher, a blue reacher, a blue job, you know, this big guy who's wide and he's you know powerful and he's on the run.
SPEAKER_01That's a good marketing tagline for you.
SPEAKER_00A blue reacher. Drip that one under my hat. So, yeah, so that's just happening.
SPEAKER_01I've been reading it eagerly. Uh I I've been reading every single chapter as it comes out. This this book. might be my fault. I I'm fully okay with that. And I love seeing we get we see more of BioCore because we don't we don't normally see them very often in Parish's stuff. So it's actually seeing what they're like and and they there's sort of like a a good force for like a moment in Thessaly affair, but like we just don't we don't really see what they're doing most of the time and right now they're being tremendous dickheads.
SPEAKER_00So yes very much so yeah it's it's probably the most concentratedly spiciest book that I may have written. I think it beats out Olava which was pretty abusive to poor Olava and this this this definitely this definitely goes goes to town. He's every time he and she get together it things happen.
SPEAKER_01I've I've read both I think Olava is more I mean it's more erotica right it's got a lot more like uh like abusively erotic scenes where this one is more tasteful weirdly enough in the one that has a giant blue man in it it's very more of a romance story right you know like it it's got oh of course Olava and because you can't help yourself just ends up turning into a romance.
SPEAKER_00You know you're like watching it like erotica erotica erotica oh it's a romance yeah yeah it ended up that one it's most most people are the other way right they're the sort of like romance romance oh it's erotica but like you're just sort of like a romance that's just it's it's just it's just how it's just how I end up because I I have you know I I think par erotica I don't really a person doesn't really honestly care what happens these people once once they're like done well so are you but my people I have like I have serious concerns for their wellbeing and happiness and I don't want them to like get to the end of the of the story and be and be you know in trouble. I've I I have some difficulty you know planning out just what's going to happen into this book because in in many ways it there is no good way to include this relationship for them because she is she is from the overclass of this world and uh she is a different person than she was when she met him but there's no true way for her to reform because she is who she is and in the society that she is has power in is it is it is the kind of society that it is. And he is outside of that and he is moving out of it as quickly as he possibly can because he really doesn't want anything to do with it for obvious reasons. And in their society he's absolutely a slave without any without any recourse whatsoever. So they the even if she were able to like figure out you know how to look at him and fully understand him outside of the dichotomy of master slave which is her society's basis she's she can be one or the other she can't be both and she can't be independent and he can't be independent because that's his his constant thing is like you know he belongs to himself and she belongs to herself. And she either she's in charge or she's like underneath she gets she's no other way to address the world. So for her to go with him and be with him is is not does not resolve her issues with that. And for him to remain in that society means he gets killed. He has to leave it and eject himself from it. So it's it's I'm and I have a general idea where I'm going but some of the specifics are missing.
SPEAKER_01And also in your world to be clear I mean I I I think you you have sort of two levels of of slave actually because like I I see the clone girls as like they are obviously more chatteled slavery, right? Like they their children are st are born into into bondage and they're you know they but they are still seen as viable sexual objects and basically as as a a form of human. Whereas lambdas like Rados are are much more like treated more like beasts of burden or machines that that break that like object really truly objectified in a way that is very different from the clone the girls. So like yeah they're not seen as viable sexual objects they're they're like horses she's committing a a big a big faux pas here.
SPEAKER_00I mean she's doing something that I don't think you know injecting myself into society and looking around trying to figure out what their what their kink is if you will I don't think he has even rises to that except maybe about those darkest fantasies because his his sword is like excluded from even from society. If there's like a far distant part of the planet where you want to send somebody to dig us and it's probably going to poison them that's where they're going to go. They're they're not hanging around moving the wagon for you. They are literally a thousand miles away they're not anywhere near civilization.
SPEAKER_01Yeah they're like a like a like a class of ogres that's been utilized for for burden it's yeah or like machines that that like operate in the in the bowels of the earth you know or the bowels of of Ephigenia in this case but yeah I I find that very interesting that that that is the person that she's into. All right anyways but your story in Starlet is Lady Chatterjee's lover a second chance at romance story set in the world of Ephigenia just like lie in the garden and we were wondering if you could tell us more about it and your characters I really liked this one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah that was this one was I think I enjoyed writing it more than I have enjoyed a lot of a lot of things it was a very self-contained and tidy story in in the way that some of them haven't been because it was like it it resolves itself very quickly and very practically but the uh nervi the the female main character she gets married at a fairly young age but she marries a guy who's much older and it's it's an arranged marriage because that's just how they roll and so she is her family property or is basically being run by her husband just like it's like in old you know Regency England or something. But she's miserable because he's not he's not an abusive husband. He's just absolutely indifferent to her whatsoever and is just sucking all the life out of her. And so she manages to get a divorce out of him but it's at an enormous cost. And she goes back home and everything is just a mess. And there's everything has basically been you know stripped mine for like you know anything that's saleable anything that's movable. She's totally broke. And so I I this kind of where I started with the story because I knew that's where I wanted her to be because then you have someone come from outside. And so I have that set up and then I just let you know I say well what's what's the what's the the magical element of it well because her maid who is again one of these female individuals who's cloned who's like you know chattel also she's like telling she's good at telling fortunes and in fact in such a fashion that she may literally be doing it because of whatever science or woo-woo if you will that is that makes her what she personally is she's tapped into something and she has some kind of spirit that's on Iphigenia some kind of like some kind of spirit of the planet that pops up every now and again like in the dryad story. Exactly there's there's a different there's a different force that's like biomimetically implanted on the environment that has kind of accepted the arrival of human beings and is and is causing them to behave in ways that they would happily do if you gave them the opportunity. It's kind of like a impulse control where we'll say well this seems to be a basic kind of human society. Let's encourage you to do that and then you'll be fruitful and multiply and my the the planet's original biosphere is like almost destroyed and fading away. So it's like renewing itself by using us. And so she's kind of tapping into whatever that that is around her and she tells her mistress that you know in this kind of fortune telling you know half conscious automatic writing kind of way things are going to get better. Something good is going to happen here. And so that's that's kind of where I where I came up with this story and kind of how it got rolling.
SPEAKER_01And it's got very good fall vibes by the way yes solid fall vibes.
SPEAKER_00I mean I don't want to I don't want to say anything about anybody else's story. I think like for pure fall you can't possibly get any better than this story because it absolutely is about the fall in fact it is happening the last couple of days of fall when the main action the story happens that literally ends at midnight on the last or the day after midnight it ends on the first day of winter because that's yeah that's where it happens.
SPEAKER_01It's also it's it's about seasons of life and I what one thing I really like about it is that we never see divorce in Iphigenia. It's very very rare like I just feel like I haven't seen it very much at all. And it doesn't I know it's possible but it seems very difficult. So it's nice to see it in Lady Chatterjee's lover and like what it does to her life and the way she has to put things back together. I mean there's just a profound sense of ruin and then it it ends happily and I really like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah it's it's it's one of the reasons I've I liked it so much. It's it just it does explore things that I haven't entirely explored. It kind of fits into aspects of my life at this time that were I wanted to look at and under that lens. And um it it's uh it is in a weird way it's kind of a sweet story in its own way uh it is um it has elements uh from uh Midnight Mischief and mistletoe that story is very had a certain amount of humor in it and there is a certain amount of that humor in it also although nervy does not exactly perceive it we're more perceiving it than she is and it's uh it's a solid little thing. I hope people like it well of course they will definitely so uh you know really where I think you just did mention a little bit the inspiration for your story but were there some favorite moments that you were really excited about as you were drafting it there are a couple there's when she first meets the the main male character and he's he's trying they're trying to figure out who each other is because she is you know she's like roaming around the property in the middle of the night because she can't sleep and she's like you know it's this she's like wrapped up in a shawl and her night dress basically and he's she's reading as like you know some girl who's run off from a farm and who's like you know dumb and vulnerable and he's reading as to her as basically a predator because he's this guy riding a horse in the middle of the night and he's armed and he like for all she knows he's gonna grab her and ride off with her. And so like you know both kind of like I just guess sort of a almost jump scare information. It's like ah what are you? And of course he's being the man is a little more you know lean into it and she's definitely like recoil from it. So that moment was kind of interesting for them to negotiate each other's identity to a certain extent that was a fun one. Yeah it's it's a very nice little meat cute thing. And then the fortune telling scenes there's like uh two or three major ones that that happen and those are were interesting because I got to like use their their playing cards which I have done in just card games I've had a a couple of card playing scenes because there's a a game whose rules I have like uh alluded to without defining and that they play with the same deck and but that this uh this girl is using them to tell fortunes with and they're obviously connected to tarot but they're not exactly tarot and adapting some of the visuals on them to fit their semi-science fictional world I enjoyed enjoyed doing that. Like the for instance like the the tower the the tower cards you have the tower they hit struck by letting people fall out of it you know it's either you know destruction or like you know maybe it's turnip set that's opportunity. In this deck it's a a starship that's been you know struck by a body and cosmonauts are flying out of it.
SPEAKER_01So it's like it's it's you it's the same concept but it's a different imagery is kind of fun writing that yeah you should make some tarot cards like a merch for your Starlet and Spellbound needs a tarot card deck from if a game tarot card deck yeah why didn't I think of that for marketing like really weird tarot cards like that would be super cool.
SPEAKER_00I keep buying decks of these things I find like I mean keep being harassed by Instagram really and Facebook also really things I want to buy decks of tarot cards.
SPEAKER_04Like a dudes only bought two so yeah I have several decks I mean they're so pretty and then I I was just thinking what are those because it's like I never pull them out I never use them but when I see them I'm like they're so pretty they're nifty I like or clever or you know I think I have one that's like a fairy tale deck. So I should find a New Orleans one. Anywho for a little extra spice Tara do you have any questions for Parrish?
SPEAKER_01This is this is a kind of weird one but like I I want to know if you have considered bringing back Lysander from Olava. I know Olava is very popular and I was wondering if you were ever wanted to follow up on what happened to that jerk.
SPEAKER_00Well I mean I explore that a little bit in in Fallen from Stars which is slowly editing its way to a semifinal conclusion after all these couple of years. But again he's not kind of main thing I'm he is he's he's one of these elements that kind of crops up and does damage and disappears. And he's done that a couple of times now and I maybe but he's for one thing for one reason that I might not ultimately is just because since he is has touched base with a couple of things and people he's connected to and have touched him I don't want to make too solid of a web amongst all these stories. I mean all of them have at least a tangential connection to each other. All of them have share characters or at least share characters of encountered characters. They're all connected in that sense and I don't want to have a story that like resolved anything that like that at this time just because it would be it would be too much of a good thing. It'd be like doing an episode of something that like explicitly links I don't know Star Trek and Battlestas like there's no possible way this could work out well. So it's like there's no connection.
SPEAKER_01So yeah so that's a well and not necessarily follow up on him and anybody else's story but more like I you know I find myself when I'm reading a lava being intrigued by him like what is up with this guy you know like of course he's he's one of your aristocrats and you know they are they seem manifestly brain damaged sometimes you know like even the best of them I love this Mervy in Lady Chattery's lover being like get off my property no wait come back here just in that very that that very aristocratic way of like like get out of here actually no come back help me but like he's like the worst of them he's the worst possible one of your aristocrats other than other than Nestorana Miss Tessaferana is the actual absolute oh well she is terrible yeah she's she is she's awful yeah and Camilla is pretty bad as well but like he's he's really really bad but like there's also like there's an interesting psychology to him so like I don't know if there maybe he should have a short story or something like that.
SPEAKER_00But then he's like I want to see what happens to this guy with his terrible marriage and his terrible wife and and he's like seems like one of the like the top aristocrats he's got his own private island you're like what is up with this guy he's an intellectual I mean he is he's a very intellectual he's a is he's intellectually curious enough that he reads literature from earth which is like about 16 1700 years out of date for him at this juncture. So but he's but he seems also to have this weird kind of like lack of will when it comes to his fiancee who should be his wife by now and he he's he's he's a dreadful but interesting person but I like there's so much going on I don't know quite how to handle him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah he's like an intellectual he fascinates me for there's like a minute where you can kind of see into him like and then he just totally caves to the to the why he's so interesting like I want to know what's going on with this guy. I don't know if we should see somebody from his perspective I don't know if that sounds horrible.
SPEAKER_00I don't know he's intriguing maybe I'm I'm I'm not close to it but I don't have any any current plans. I mean it's it's one of the reasons is that occasionally things in the story is like I try to avoid a bigger arc I'm not looking for like you know uh you know a game of thrones type of like political resolution this place. There is no resolution this place it is what it is. And we've already in the Festival affair kind of touched on politics which usually doesn't exist in this world because it's not permitted because it's destructive. So for he is a kind of a political animal for him to have any kind of activity at all becomes political so that's kind of one of the reasons I would avoid it.
SPEAKER_01I see what you're saying that he's like he would touch on world story I just think he's an interesting character.
SPEAKER_04I wouldn't think about world story stuff but yeah I got what you're saying well Terry you have two stories in Starlet and Spellbound um and uh they are but they are quite different they're two really different one is from Starship Falky called Bulvarian Knights and the other is an Erm romantic called Angel Song which is actually a follow-up to a story in Fantastical Foes so let's start with Belvarian Knights can you tell us a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah so I I did two follow-up stories here I'm a I'm a marketer by by trade and I can't help myself so I love to connect stories to encourage people to read other anthologies but they do stand alone so you can read them and not have to read anything else and you'll still be fine. Belvarian Knights is still a follow-up to Corlotta Lights which was in fireworks and flirtation has the same couple in it. So it's Andromeda and Lance from that story. Here they're a few months into their relationship and she goes to to join him on Belvar where the mission has moved from the consulate at Corlana Seda in the Starship Valkyrie universe. As you know like as you might know from Corlotta Lights she is an attache to the this particular consulate under Ambassador Masadi who has moved to to Belvar which is the capital city of the Squila Trade Federation on Kalur, which is the the Skelau home planet. And this is they're much more advanced than the Earth Republic where humans come from probably about 300 years ahead of the Earth Republic technologically and socially so like any mission there is really important. They've gone to sort of help a mission to sort of deal with a problem that has cropped up in what's called the handshake corridor in the machine sector. So machine sector is the sector of space between the Earth Republic and the Skelow Trade Federation and the handshake corridor is this group of stars in the in the the hyperspace portal corridor that the Skelow Trade Federation and humanity have developed in order to make it possible to move through have resources have space stations places to to to be in bar birth and these space stations are sort of collecting groups of Skelow, groups of Varantin who are another species in the Skeletor Trade Federation, human beings, TARDEC who are another species but not in the Trade Federation, also humanoid, and these mixes of people from different societies and from different technological levels are fighting starting to create a lot of problems. And so Masadi is going to to deal with this problem is bringing Andromeda along with him in order to to get some assistance basically sort of like calm down a political situation due to one of these space stations and things going wrong there. And so Andromeda and Lance they they get to reunite and continue their relationship and they're they're having relationship problems. They have some intimacy issues like he's not willing to be fully intimate with her he is always sheathed which means that he never blooms which is like a a way for an amnesoline man to like fully be intimate with someone and he is refusing to do that because he's one afraid of hurting her and two just he's hasn't done it in his adult his adult life so he's got some hesitation about that. And that's sort of where we we find ourselves and then he starts acting very strangely and sort of the the otherworldly weird element of this is that he's got like a nanite infection in his head and I don't want to get further into it from there but like Andromeda has to resolve that issue for him and and help sort of and help him from there essentially it's a very weird it's a lot it's a lot science fiction romance for you you you really need two big things you need an of a scorecard for all the participants and you need a good solid map. Absolutely required yeah we we have the wiki and I did add a glossary like I did in a Corlana lights. So there's a glossary there of of terms for folks and of course you can always go to the wiki if you if you want to but I think the glossary is pretty self-explanatory. And some of it with sci fi romance you just let it wash over you just enjoy the feels don't worry too much about what Belvar is or any of that stuff. Just you know like just just enjoy the enjoy the vibes.
SPEAKER_00Terry is you you wrote Angel's song as a follow up to the story you wrote from I Zine and it's you know fantastic LaFose nice self contained story these Two young people managed to unite over an issue and get things taken care of. And now in Angel Song, you now have a cheating romance, which is including some of the same characters from that story. My question is, what did you do?
SPEAKER_01What did I do? Okay. Well, so okay. Fantastical foes tells the my story in there is Devil's Handiwork. It tells a story of Stephen Crétillon getting together with Thaya Donovan. And these two are actually the parents of the main character of Water's Edge, which is the main novel in the watermarks. It's like the first one, basically. And that that their daughter is the main character. So yeah, spoiler of Devil's Handiwork. These two do get together. But the setup is that I also know that they don't stay together, you know. So while we have a happily for now in Devil's Handiwork, I know that that doesn't last forever. And the reason for that is that, you know, I wrote an enemies to lover story because I know that these two are not very compatible, right? Like they come from two different worlds. She is a witch from Shadow, and he is a very religious Catholic from the mundane. And while they really like each other and are very attracted to each other, they do not have the same value system at all. And that usually does not last. Like I I this is why enemies to lovers is so interesting, right? Because like if you truly have two people who would naturally be enemies who get together, you also have to face the possibility that they cannot be together forever. Because some of the things that that are that make difference between them or cause them to really dislike each other initially may crop up again. And that is the case for Steven and Thea. That like he has a lot of problems. Uh he has a lot of issues. He is a man who is of the mundane, who is very Catholic, but he has the sight which allows him to see shadows, demons, angels, and he always interprets it through a Catholic lens. And Thea is always like, listen, you have this belief system, but that doesn't mean that what you're seeing is actually those things. You're not necessarily seeing a demon in your belief system. You're you're seeing you might be seeing something else, and he's always interpreting it through with a Catholic gloss. You know, and he to some degree interprets her with a Catholic gloss. You are a witch, you know, you are in league with Satan. I need to save you. You know, he always is thinking that way he's tempted by her as though she is a seductress and doesn't quite always see her as a full human being, you know. So that creates problems. Angel Song is from the perspective of Leopold von Engel, who is uh another guardian, and he is like a good old boy from the old world. Uh he's from he's from Germany. Uh and you know, in his mind, Thea should have never married a mundane. And and in Angel's song, we see that he is very attracted to her. And it, yeah, it's a it's a it's a cheating romance. It's basically the beginning of of their romance and the end of her romance with Steven, which was very it was a very difficult thread to very difficult needle to thread, I have to say. It was very, very hard because I got I want that to be a romance, right? And but at the same time, I understand that people from who read Fantastical Foes might really be invested in this other romance over here. But some romances don't last forever, they're happily for now. You know, they're not always happily forever. Yeah. So that's what I did.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you're also serializing Vox Protocol uh over on Substack, right? Uh which is connected to Bulvarian Knights and to Corollana Lights, which was in fireworks. Now, can you tell the readers more about how all these stories thread together and what can they expect?
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Yeah, I I like to connect things, I like to give people a chance to continue to follow a couple to learn more about them, learn more about the world. So I have been serializing Vox Protocol at the same time as these two books have been coming out. So Vox Protocol is a sci-fi romance novel. It actually happens after Belvarian Knights, but you can basically start reading it and be okay no matter what. I try to make sure that I explain what's going on and without worrying too much about spoilers. But yeah, so there's Colorado Lights, beginning of their romance, Belvarian Knights follow up on their romance, dealing with some of their intimacy issues, go into Vox Protocol. In Vox Protocol, Andromeda and Lance and the mission moves to a very special mission at Zaheer, which is the homeworld of the Amnesaline, which is where it's where Lance is from. And that's where we start to learn a lot more about him, where he begins to understand what has happened to his world. In the Odyssey storyline in Starship Valkyrie, uh, Zaheer was attacked by a gamma ray weapon by this cargo cult of priests called the Karabari priests who uh uh attack Zaheer for attacking them. And the gamma ray does just absolutely just horrific damage to Zaheer. It was one, probably one of the worst things we've seen in Starship Valkyrie. Like there are some of these weapons that are sort of from the Galactic Council era that are still drifting around, and this is one of them. It didn't completely destroy the planet, but it has done terrible things to their bio, to like their biosphere. It's done terrible things to one of their continents. Um, and it's also affected them culturally, right? So there's like foods that they're really rely on that they can no longer grow. Andromeda, who's not just an attache, but an agricultural attache, is there to sort of help figure out how they can restore some of their most important food crops and what has gone wrong and why they can't grow them again. So there's a lot about nematodes, if that is if you're into that. And of course, there's we're talking about the the sci-fi romance between her and Lance, but there's also another individual, the Vox, who is the voice of Zaheer with whom she is communicating, who is presenting a sort of challenge to their relationship. So it sort of presents at this point, if you're reading it as a kind of love triangle and and very much like an obstacle to their romance, but everything will end well. I do encourage people to read it. So if you are liking Corlana Lights, you are liking that you're liking Belvarian Knights, you can come and read Vox Protocol for free on my Substack. And if you want to learn more about my stories before you read Starland's Bellbound or Fireworks and Sortation, you can go and read Vox Protocol and be like, oh, I like this, and then go read those stories. Either way.
SPEAKER_04All right. And Parrish, once again. Do you have any questions for Tara?
SPEAKER_03Now that you've heard all that.
SPEAKER_00Now that I actually do, I I know that you had a learning curve on writing spice and you ascended that learning curve pretty quickly and you have moved off into alien sex with a couple of different species.
SPEAKER_02Um I'm not done yet.
SPEAKER_00And you're not done yet. How how is that? How is that? How's that working out for you?
SPEAKER_01Pretty well. Yeah, I've I've been called sci-fi smut at its finest. Uh, and I, you know, I've been reading other stuff like you know, I've been reading Ice Planet Barbarians to see, you know, sort of how other sci-fi romance writers are threading this needle. I tend to find myself being more of a sci-fi writer in a lot of ways, which is to say that like I am very interested in nematodes. Uh, I'm very interested in like in cultural and biological differences between people. You know, if you if you put me in something like Ice Planet Barbarians, I would immediately be like, okay, what's the biosphere of this planet? Are there nematodes? You know, like what's going on with all these things? Like, what's the origin of the CUI? You know, like that's my brain, you know? So like I think I lean more sci-fi. So, like, in order to like do romance, I have to like find a way in. I have to find a way to be really interested in. And the way that I do that is like, if I have if there's an alien penis, it's now sci-fi again. It's interesting. I can start thinking about like, oh, what's the biology of that? How would that change their society? Like, how would that control the way that they are with relationships? Or like, how would it affect this? How would it affect that? How would it affect marriages? You know, so like as I've been doing Vox protocol and thinking about amnesaline culture, the fact that they have this blooming mechanism it makes them different from other humans, right? And it changes the way other humanoids treat them, it changes the way people perceive them, and it also changes the way that their marriages work, it changes the way that they create relationships with each other, you know, because they can have kind of like the sort of playful intimacy with each other, and then they can have full intimacy. And the question is, you know, like how do they move from one to the other, and how does that affect their society? Those questions interest me a lot, and that can also create very spicy scenes.
SPEAKER_00I can definitely see that the whole blooming thing, kind of like I I think of the demogorga and stranger things in a in a more small and contained fashion. It's kind of an alarming visual. An alarming visual to me.
SPEAKER_04I think of I think of nodding.
SPEAKER_01Um, whenever I read stuff with nodding, of course, my sci-fi brain goes to work and is like, I'm okay, I want to know more about this. Like, well, how does this affect this werewolf society or whatever it is? A lot of the time, I I think I wrote a piece about this where I was like, wait a minute, okay. So we've got we've got gammas and everything, we've got omegas, we've got we've got betas. I want to know more about the society. And like they'll they'll they'll like do it for a minute, and then they'll be sort of like, and then all of the macrame in her in her in her room, or she went on this other date where he bought her all these books, and I'm like, no, I want to know more sci-fi stuff. It was a nightmare for me.
SPEAKER_04Well, Tara, do you have any questions for us or anything you want to circle back to?
SPEAKER_01Well, I guess my question for you guys is is like, if you do this, you know, if like you if you find yourself reading stuff and your brain immediately goes to work wondering, like, okay, how does this work? I mean, do you find yourself like spinning out over these kinds of questions as you read things? Like, do you immediately want to understand when you're reading something that is that does this, like a like Omega verse or something like that, like what how this society works? Like, does that make your brain uh whir and get really hot like mine does? Or or am I weird?
SPEAKER_00I if I can vibe with a story, if I have like if it has the right note, you know, I'm I don't worry too much about mechanics, if you will, of whatever the situation, whether it's like, you know, Sunny Contemporary or something like in science fiction. And it I I don't have to worry about who does the milk delivery at the coffee shop. I don't have to understand how how an alien penis operates. I just kind of accept these things happen in the background. So I don't get too hung up on that. I only get hung up on the stuff that I write myself, and that that takes a different level of concentration.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I mean I can tell. I mean, like you've got like full star maps, like you are like very obviously being sort of like, well, you know, if the if the axial tilts of the planet is like this, where would the moon be? You know, like I know that you're doing that there, which is good because it makes me less crazy when I'm reading your stuff. I'm immediately like, oh yes, excellent. That seems to make sense. He's thought about it.
SPEAKER_00You should see the calculator that I have. I can tell you the phases of the moon for hundreds of years.
SPEAKER_01I love that.
SPEAKER_00It's it's insane.
SPEAKER_01What about you, Jenna?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I think I pretty much go along, and the only time I might be questioning things is if I come up to something that I clearly don't understand, uh, you know, where you have to know something about that world or how that magic works, or um so usually, yeah, usually I can just go along, take me on this journey. But if I run into something where I'm like, well, that doesn't make sense, or you know, where is that? Or, you know, um, and you know, sometimes I even have this when I'm reading sexy bits where I'm like, How is that possible? You know, like all of a sudden I'm like, well, their arms over here and they're thinking, you know, like I mean, even sometimes something like that, I'm like, I I don't understand, you know, and I'm gonna go back and read.
SPEAKER_03I call that choreography.
SPEAKER_04But definitely in stories in which there might be a paranormal or a sci-fi or you know, some other otherworldly element, you know, the only times I get get a hiccup is if it if it's like, well, I don't understand. Um, and and try like, did I miss something about this world that I need to go back and look at? You know, and I have it on, you know, if I'm watching TV or something, a lot of times I'll have that same thing. I'm like, wait, what? You know, like where'd that come from? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I noticed that Rachel's like this too, where she uh I'll see her reading and she's like when she was reading Angel's song, particularly. She doesn't do this with sci-fi so much, but when she's reading like uh urban romantic, she'll be like, Oh, wait, so you describe thresholds for werewolves this way, and then other other thresholds, and they seem similar. Like, what's the difference? You know, I was like, Oh, you're paying attention. Like that, you have that kind of brain. That's really cool.
SPEAKER_04And I'm detail-oriented, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, she has that kind of like contract.
SPEAKER_04That's why she reads all our contracts. That's right.
SPEAKER_01It's really useful for someone who's reading urban romanticity as well. You know, like some of my beta readers have that kind of brain and some don't. Like, my my husband is like that too. But I just wonder, like, if like whose brain does that and whose doesn't. Yeah, yeah. I'm not that detailed. That's okay. All right. So, yeah, this one was amazing in collection and it was really difficult to put together. And I was wondering, since we have three editors here, I want to talk to you about the process of putting together Starlit. Like, what are what were your favorite moments and highlights and and what was your darkest moment putting this together?
SPEAKER_00Darkest moments. Darkest moments. I I don't want to get too dark on some of the dark stories. You know, that's that's something, but the kind of that the whole thing about putting together an anthology is that you you have to read the stories in it. And you you would think objectively that's the best part, but sometimes you you get a story and it's like it's not quite there, and you're like, not only are you reading the story, but you're reading the story that selfishly you would like to be there, and you wonder, can it get there, or does it need to get there, or is it another way it can get to a similar place that will tidy things up and make it better? So that's it. You're kind of doing double duty right there. If you read the story, you're reading two or three stories at the same time. That is the same thing. Yeah, and then you gotta like there's some stories that you come into that are like they're they're they're not there, and you but you want to know it is this just me? Is this my problem with the story? And there have been over the last couple of years been a couple of stories. I said surely this is just me. Surely this is I'm I'm just not getting what I'm reading. And so, and if I put enough work into it, I can sometimes I can say, yeah, this is just me. I I'm not I need to set myself outside of whatever my own expectations are and look at the story for what the story is. So those are those are kind of of tough moments, is putting putting the legwork psychologically into not being me and yet being me at the same time.
SPEAKER_01What was a highlight for you?
SPEAKER_00Um I I really hate to see getting done, say getting done with it, because you I don't want to like you know get to the end of life and say, hey, what was a highlight of your life? Well, thank God I'm laying here and I'm almost gone. That's the highlight. I don't want to say the getting to the end of this, but it's such a treat to see the thing put together and become a unified and connected whole. It's it's that the level of excitement that uh that I really enjoy. That actually kind of happens a lot before with the point we are now, or we're at the point of recording it. It hasn't yet come out, but it will be up when it comes when the podcast comes out. So right now I'm like I'm kind of focused beyond that. And that the the moment of triumph is always, although I'll be very happy to handle have it in hand, the moment of triumph has already happened. And when knowing that everything is is all the way it it is meant to be, that that's the thing for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's this good moment. What about you, Jenna? Highlights and dark moments.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. You know, I I've been really excited about this one. I think it's one of our best ones that we've put together. I was really excited that we had a really good timeline going. Um and uh and then all of a sudden uh we were off. And I, you know, part of it is we made some specific invites to people and we had to give them a little extra time and that put us a little behind. And then of course, uh, at the the the week I wanted to have it up to be able to go on pre-sale was a week later than I wanted. But that week I was okay, this is what it's gonna be. And then we kind of discovered the resource that we used to help us in terms of distributing the book and helping us pay all our authors, he was gonna be gone. Oh, okay. And and all of us, and then all of a sudden the crunch was real because if it wasn't up and ready, you know, it wouldn't be coming out until you know October, November, or whenever he comes back. And so that that that was sort of the dark moment because I was having to push people, uh a few people really hard to okay, I need to get this done because we had to make sure the formatting and I had to give it up. And you know, whenever anything goes out to to like Amazon or something, especially if it's a print, uh, you know, sometimes things aren't quite right. And Amazon will say this isn't quite right. So we had to have enough time to be able to make those adjustments. Oh, yeah, the card. Um so that that was that was the toughest moment for me. But overall, I've you know, I just really feel like this is one of our strongest books. I really I think the stories are fun. What I like about them is, you know, we gave the instruction, it had to have the fall vibe, but we also wanted that sort of otherworldly element and kind of the different ways people read that, whether it was ghosts or wishes or just some sort of woo-woo out in the world that isn't really explained very well, you know, the sci-fi, the romantic. So it's nice to have all these different interpretations of what that meant, you know. Uh, so yeah, I I'm really excited about this. I hope people run out and grab it. It's gonna be in Kindle Unlimited. So if you're part of that, definitely gonna want to grab it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Really good way to start your fall. I I have a couple of highlights. I do think that moment where I said in an email, and we are 10, was such a relief. Like I had that kind of moment of like completion, you know. And of course, dark moment, there was a moment when we were thinking, okay, we could do a zine or we could do an anthology. And it was very like, will we, won't we? You know, which direction are we going? We that was like a dark moment when we were trying to decide which direction we were going, where everything felt very uncertain. And you know, a zine is a heavy lift, you know, it's a lot of features, it's it's a it's a lot of different stuff. So the idea of pivoting to a zine, I remember that being a really dark moment. Also the cover doing three, four versions of the cover was like, ah, Amazon, and finding out that that the guy who runs PubShare had had a medical thing coming up. That was very, that was very, oh my god, oh my god, like I can't believe this. This this anthology, I remember I told I told Jenna, if I die before you just throw it in my grave with me. This anthology is exhausting. Yeah, but it all worked out, it looks beautiful, and I'm very, very proud of it. Still very accomplished right now in a way that I haven't uh probably since mistletoe. Mistletoe was also a heavy lift because I was like doing the copy edit in my son's room at three in the morning in a in a rocking chair while trying to protect him from imaginary robots.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and you didn't have to do the formatting. I did the formatting, so that was I didn't have to do the layout.
SPEAKER_01This one it seemed like layout was giving you trouble too. I felt very bad about that.
SPEAKER_04Well, I I don't feel like it gave me the trouble you did with firework, yeah. Um but it was just, you know, when you get it, when it's when you get it, it's like when somebody comes back and says move, and this is for print, right? It only matters for print that if you adjust anything, it can then create problems elsewhere. And so once I had it, I was like, I do not want to change it. Right.
SPEAKER_01You remember that from fireworks. Like someone will be like, Oh, you need to change this. I'm like, Yeah, but if I do that, it's gonna be a cascade of widows and orphans.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. And you know, these are sort of behind the scenes things a lot of readers don't know about in terms of you know, widows and orphans. And I also came across what was it, rivers and something. And I was like, What? Like, I'm not gonna worry about those. But I I will admit, and at least um I have two author names, so and I'm not sure which author name it was. I went in and edited it to make it fit. So I think I took something out. I was like, we don't need this.
SPEAKER_03Um fireworks, I did the Dipper a lot of lights. I did the Dipper Lana lights to make it fit.
SPEAKER_02We'll take that out.
SPEAKER_04There must be there, must be a line in here I can pull out and get rid of this widow and orphan. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I had a line that was spilling over into the next page, and I was like, I can't fix this. This is making so many problems. And I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna edit it. No one will know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. So all right. Well, let's go on to book recommendations. And do you have any spooky sci-fi romance reads you guys recommend? Spooky sci-fi.
SPEAKER_00I gotta say, I really don't. I I I'm not gonna provide you that as a there is a I feel it's not a spooky.
SPEAKER_04How about a spooky or a sci-fi? Like one or the other, maybe.
SPEAKER_01I have a spooky sci-fi.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00Well, you do your Subookies best.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you guys. So spooky sci-fi. I think a really good spooky sci-fi is cryo burn. This is Lois McMaster visual, the later book in the Varkousic and Saga series. And it's it's on this planet where basically everybody is frozen in cryo, but like every single one of them represents a vote. And it's really, really freaky. Like it's it's it's very much speculative science fiction, it's super cool. Um, and like what the spooky thing is that like they're trying to figure out what is happening to these bodies and stuff like that, and people are sort of being like liquidated and stuff, and it's really neat, and it's like it's really spooky, and it gives me the shivers, but I like rereading it. And it's it's also it's got some romantic elements to it and stuff like that. That one's really good and spooky. So is Setaganda. That one is that one's got a lot of good romantic elements as well, but it's very much a science fiction. It's younger Miles on the planet of Setaganda, learning about their genetics project and stuff, and like the the the ladies who are members of the Hout cast are like are in these chairs that have like orbs around them and they can like fly in their little chairs. But no one can see them because they have these like these light orbs around themselves so that no one can see them. Because looking upon them would be like would be like violating. So they don't let anyone see them. And that makes them even more precious and beautiful. Like if if anyone catches a glimpse of them, that's that one's a really good one. So those those are my my recommendations. It's something that's kind of I don't know, the there's a spooky element to both of them, and they're very good speculative science fiction.
SPEAKER_00I've got a weird recommendation that is science fiction, but is not spooky, except in a psychological sense, and it's definitely not really a romance. But CJ Sherry's Merchander's luck is kind of good for that because they're the the the basic Too Long didn't read on this is this young man is like the last survivor of a of a of a space freighter family. He owns a ship, he needs a crew, but he cannot give them access to the controls. He has to be constantly and completely in control because he is he knows that he can't trust them for political reasons, and they will take over his ship, and he'll it'll be over to him and his family, of whom he is the only member. And so it's a psychological thing constantly. He's like, you just feel the pressure growing on this guy. And they're like, his crew is like at one point literally about to beat him up to get the passcodes at him because his not being able to trust them is going to get them all killed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01CN Sherry's really good at that. The Channer novels also have some spooky moments, right? Yeah, they do see in the warp jumps. I found all of the jumps really spooky. Like there's like a moment where she's able to walk around and see what's going on. Normally they do the jumps, and certain people can't psychologically handle it, so or certain species can't handle it.
SPEAKER_00Others can like except those kiffs, those kiff are all over the place. Except the kiff. You can't trust them. Can't trust them.
SPEAKER_01They can be awake during jumps, and that makes that that gives them something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All right.
SPEAKER_04So might I have a turn.
SPEAKER_01Do you have one?
SPEAKER_04Well, I was thinking, oh well, my closest spooky might be Black Tagger Brotherhood, but then I decided, no, I'll go with in depth because some of those books take place in the fall. Like there's, you know, I there's 60-something books. And so far we've covered three or four years. So every season is covered. Um, and so some of those will be in the fall, which might be spooky fall. And they take place, I think the book I'm reading now is 2064, something like so. There's a futuristic, there is off-planet type things in there. The world is recognizable. I think anybody reading it would recognize our world, and yet at the same time, there are futuristic elements to it because it is in the future. So, in terms of some of the technology they have. And what's funny is if you go back and read the early books, Naked in Death is the first book, and it was in the 90s, and she talks about these links that they have. Well, today it would be a cell phone, right? They get they can get all this information and all this stuff out of it, they can take fingerprints of the deceased person and figure out who they are. Like all these things we probably have now, right? Well, we do have cell phones now. So it's it's sort of fun to see. Oh, we have some of this stuff now. And we didn't have it back then when she started writing these stories. There is, like I said, there is off-planet type things. They actually have an off-planet prison, they have an off-planet resort. Oh, space prison.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, space prisons were two of my favorite things.
SPEAKER_04I love space prisons, and it takes place, and I want to say around now, the 2020s, I think is when they had something called the urban wars. And it really when I'm Americ, like we have New York, but like Los Angeles is now new Los Angeles. Washington, DC is like new Washington. Like, there are some things that changed in society based on that. Um, so anyway, so I that's my closest thing in terms of what might be science fiction, maybe urban fantasy type of thing.
SPEAKER_01Um it sounds like near future sci-fi. It sounds really funny. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And and like I said, there's like 60 something of these books, and it seems like every season is each. I'm trying to, I just picked up a book, but I can't remember the season that we're in, but at some point we're in the summer, it's hot and humid in New York, but then we go into the fall, and there's always winter and spring, and it's they're set in New York. So, anyway, that would be my recommendation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I also wrote an Urban Fantasy. I also want to recommend an Urban Fantasy to folks for spooky. If you want a spooky book that's urban fantasy, I definitely recommend Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher. That is one of his spookier books. Okay. Yeah, write it down. It involved poltergeist. Well, they're kind of well, what they're they're they're they're phobophages, and these crazy phobophages that are like based off of like creatures from horror movies that just go rampaging through the city and it's like really crazy. That's a good one. It's like in the middle of the series, but you can totally read it out of order. It's a good time. But it's one of my favorite of his books. I people are like, your favorite Dresden file is proven guilty. And I'm like, Yeah, I like to reread it, it's really good. It's a solid book. Ever read a book by a person where they're really like operating in top form and they're just sort of like like firing on all cylinders, that's proven guilty, where it just doesn't have a dull moment, it doesn't stop to breathe except when it needs to. And it like it has its scenes, it has its sequels, it just feels perfectly disciplined, and like it it never has a moment that I don't like. It's just good the whole way through.
SPEAKER_04Speaking of spooky, have you guys watched Widow's Bay? No, no, okay. That I mean, it's it's like this dark humor, and and it's on this island, and you're I mean, my husband and I are watching, and the mayor's trying to uh beef up a tourism. He's invited a writer, but then all of a sudden these weird things start happening, and he and I are trying to decide is this gonna be horror? Is this just it was a like we're trying to decide what what's going on in this, but there's there's sort of this dark humor to it as well, and it stars Matthew Reese, who he was in the Americans, he was in that Mr. Rogers movie. I really like him, he's a Welsh actor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like I like Matthew Reese a lot.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, anyways. I was just curious because there is a sp there's kind of a spooky, like we're trying to figure out like because this guy comes in and he's like, it's happening, and you know, the island is waking up, and we're like, what's going on?
SPEAKER_01You know, I'm thinking that horror comedy might actually manage manage it. I've seen horror comedy try to take off multiple times and sort of just fail several times. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully it's it's actually having a real takeoff now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but we're seeing it in romance too, right? Horror romance, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yes, horror mance, yeah. That doesn't sound right. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't sound right like a horror romance.
SPEAKER_00No, no, there there's there's needs to be more in that word.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Yeah, horror romance feels to me like like two opposite things, somehow like it's like peanut butter and pickles. Like, is this gonna be good or is it not? Like, yeah, I'm not sure if those two things can go together, but I'm interested to find out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yes, yeah, maybe all right.
SPEAKER_01So we are Tender and Tempting Tales. You can find us on Instagram and learn all about our upcoming anthologies and zines. That's Tender Tempting Tales on Instagram. We've got posts going up every day. You can learn more about our authors. You can see our calls for submission. You can also find us on Substack. We put out really great articles every week about romance. You can find out about our calls for submission there, see the homework that goes up. You can also see the podcast will go right into your inbox every single week if you follow us on Substack. We are Tender and Tempting Tales there. You can also follow us on Facebook. We have a Facebook group called Tender and Tempting Tales Readers Group. We would love to see more activity in there, see people who are reading us and hear your thoughts. And of course, the book will be out by the time you hear this podcast. That will be Starlit and Spellbound available on Amazon and KU and in beautiful paperback that took us a long time to format. So please do pick up a copy. It is gorgeous. It's my favorite cover I've ever done. I really hope that people enjoy it. Um, and of course, reviews are very important for anti presses and for all the authors that are in our stories, including us. So if you could take a moment and leave a review, whether you like it or don't like it, we would very much appreciate it either on Amazon or Goodreads or both. Jenna?
SPEAKER_04Yep. And well, first of all, I want to thank both of you for being here today and sharing your stories once again. Again, I think this is one of our best, best books that we've put together so far. So I'm very excited for people to read it. I do want to remind readers that we do have an email list where you can get a free story to kind of get a sense of what a short romance might be like. Because I I think a lot of times romance readers they're skipping the anthologies and we're like, come read them because you get in one sitting an entire HEA, including a little bit of spice for those of you that do not mind a little bit of spice. Maybe you even prefer it. So, yes, if you visit tendontemptingtales.com, you can get a free story there, or you can also get it if you subscribe through our sub stack and just and just see what a short story might be like. And then you can check out any and all of our anthologies or zines, and hopefully you'll be excited about this fall one. If you are a fall reader, one of those ones who puts together your reads based on the seasons, this is the one Starlit and Spellbound. You're gonna want to go grab it. And yeah, that's it. Until next time, peace, love, and happily ever after.