Illicit Liaisons: Paws & Peril - Romantic suspense with a dog

This week, we celebrate the release of Paws & Peril, a romance zine with stories, articles, games, and more around romantic suspense that include a dog.

We discuss romantic suspense and why dogs make a perfect side character, and more.

Hosts this week include zine editor Rachel Young; zine copyeditor, social media manager, and contributor Tara Leederman; author Marissa Marinello; and managing editor and contributor Jenna Harte.

LINKS TO PAWS & PERIL

Paws & Peril (in KU): https://amzn.to/3NYe9j8

Rachel Young: https://www.facebook.com/rachel.young.1023

Marissa Marinello: https://marissamarinello.com/

Tara Leederman: https://taleederman.substack.com/

Jenna Harte: https://jennaharte.com/


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/

ILLICIT LIAISONS PRODUCED & HOSTED BY

Tara Leederman: https://taleederman.substack.com/

Jenna Harte: https://jennaharte.com/


Outline and Shownotes: T.A. Leederman
Editing: Jenna Harte

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hey romance readers, welcome to Elicit Liaisons with Tender and Tempting Tales, where each week we talk about the good, the bad, and the naughty of romance fiction. I am Jenna Hart. I am a romance author of the Southern Heat Contemporary Romance series and of the sexy Valentine mystery series. And I'm also the managing editor of Tender and Tempting Tales, which is a short story anthology and now magazine for people who like romantic quickies.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hi, I'm Tara Lederman, social media manager here at Tender and Tempting Tales, and I'm also Laura Maven and main fiction writer for Starship Valkyrie, which is 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 ladies, including in our upcoming zine Paws and Peril.

SPEAKER_04 0:45

And today we're here to celebrate the release of Paws and Peril, which is Tender and Tempting Tales' first magazine with stories, feature articles, games, and more. And for that celebration, we have the editors and the writers here. Plus, we're recording this on St. Patrick's Day, so there may be some Irish whiskey involved as well. The luck of the Irish with us. So let's start by introducing Rachel Young, who is the lead editor for Pause and Peril. She's also an editor with Tender and Tempting Tales. She is an author as well, writing under Elaine Francourt. She's won awards for fiction and nonfiction from her local chapter of the Virginia Writers Club, both in 2023 and 2024. She has a short story, Clumsy in Love, in the Tender and Tempting Tales anthology Moonlight, Margaritas, and an upcoming story in Fireworks and Flirtation, which is coming in May. She's currently working on her first novel as well as several other short stories that she plans to submit to various anthologies throughout the year. She lives in rural Sponsylvania County, Virginia, with her husband and two crazy dogs. In her spare time, and of course, what is that? She likes to read, watch anything on crime TV, and spend time with her two grandchildren.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

And I'm also very pleased to introduce my friend and writing buddy Marissa Marinello, who's a SoCalit native here with me, uh, who writes Urban, High Fantasy, and Cozy Romanticy. Um, she's 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. When she remembers to post on socials, it's usually of her four-legged writing buddy or whatever new piece of media has our in her grips. Um, and she has uh honored us with a piece from her West Coast weird uh story world, and I'm very, very excited about it.

SPEAKER_04 2:36

So, welcome to the show. Um, we always like to start, Tara and I, uh talking about bookish drama. And that's what we're gonna do today. And this little bit is it's a little bit old, it's a few months old, but it really fits with the theme of pause and peril, okay? Um and uh, you know, Rachel, when she was putting together pause and peril, she was adamant that there had to be a dog, but the dog could not die, right? Because we all know as authors that uh killing animals is is pretty much a no-no unless it's a necessary part of the plot, right? But a lot of people don't like that. But a few months ago, there was an author that posted on Threads. And if you want book drama, Threads is the place to be. And I'm gonna quote what she said. I'm gonna read that read it to you. And it says, I killed a dog in my book and said there's no afterlife. Then I watched a writing video that said pets can have big roles in books, so be careful. And a beta reader asked me if a dog dies and said she checks a site with a list of books to avoid. Then a dating app guy said my afterlife rule was a hard pass and dipped. Damn people, dog culture is dire. They're a great pet, but stop acting like they have little moons orbiting them. Your behavior is raising your vet bills. They're not a child. Chill. You can find this if you want to look. I'm not gonna name the author because you know I never like to go quite that far uh where someone might go after them. But, anyways, the website she's uh mentioning where the people go look to see if animals die is called doesthedogdie.com. You can go there and look at movies, all sorts of media. Now, of course, people responded kind of negatively, uh, feeling like she was dissing on animal lovers. Uh, but she totally missed the point and doubled down that animal lovers are nuts. She said, and I quote, I figured it would go just like this. People have trouble thinking for themselves. People like to find villains online, killing a dog in a book because it's part of the plot, and then having people online acting like you murdered a human in real life is par for the course. So she was clearly missing the part where people were saying, you can't call people who love their pets nuts, you know, which is what she was saying. Uh, I don't know. What what are what are your thoughts about this? And again, um, there it this is all over threads. If you search for it, you will find it. There's even people who did YouTube videos on it.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

So yeah, I was gonna say, I've actually used does the dogdie.com because I got absolutely sidelined by one in um in I Am Legend specifically in the the movie version, not the book version, but I can't watch that movie again because of that. And there's gonna be days where I need to know first if the if a pet dies, because maybe I'm feeling a little bit emotionally vulnerable that day and I don't want to watch it or I don't want to read it. But I I mean I kind of understand her frustration until she started talking about like they're not your child, you're just making your vet bill worse. That to me screams someone who has never owned a pet, because every pet owner I know, whether they're working animals or you know, beloved lifelong childhood pets, we love our pets, but I don't think it's necessarily to an unreasonable degree. So if you're gonna be like, hey, don't trash my book just because a dog does, I get it and I valid absolutely. But the second you start calling pet owners crazy, you're gonna alienate yourself. Like we're crazy, but we know we are.

SPEAKER_04 6:16

Like there is a difference between and yeah, and just to be clear, these people hadn't dissed her book, they just said they wouldn't read it because, like you, which is fine. Um and she thought that that was sort of crazy. I mean, it's it we have trigger warnings in so many books now, right? That would be one of them. Um I don't know, Rachel.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

You have puppers. Yeah, I have puppers, and I can't watch or read things like that because to me it's different than killing off a person because they're so innocent. You know, there's there's nothing about them that's conniving or any pet, a cat, a bird, anything. There's nothing in them that's conniving or deceitful or anything like people are. So it's just it's hard to watch them be killed for anything. I forgot about that in I Am Legend. That's that's hard to watch.

unknown 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:09

The one I always think of is John Wick, the puppy.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Oh, that's hard. That was hard. I knew it was coming and I was still an emotional wreck. We had to stop watching the movie, even though I knew it was coming. I think it's because of just how it happens that messed me up so badly. It also does not help that I tragically lost two pets in the last year. So anything involving animal death is gonna hit me hard. But woof, that was a rough one.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah. Yeah, I think this author is out of her mind. I think that there are enough people who really love animals that this is just a crazy take, not even a bad take, it's crazy. Like I stopped watching Stranger Things in season three. Season two, the cat dies, and I understood that it was the plot. It was hearkening back to 80s, nostalgia. I got what they were doing, I didn't like it. I made my husband watch the part fast forward because I couldn't watch it, but I I stuck with it until season three, and then they started killing rats off just gratuitously. And at that point, I stopped trusting you as a storyteller. If you need to show me how edgy and real you are by sitting there and torturing rats for several minutes every episode, I'm done with you. I just I don't like that kind of animal cruelty. I don't own rats. It's not because I'm a rat owner or a rat lover. It's just I I love animals and I just don't like seeing it in a story, even when it's absolutely necessary. I will survive it if it's absolutely necessary. I read where the red fern grows. I know that stories like that are important to teach children especially how to deal with the loss of pets, but you know, there's a point where I'm not here for your freaking verisimilitude of animal death. All right, like I'm not, I don't read books for that. Like it's not why I'm here. And I'm very sensitive to it. And I do use sites like that. I use Reddit to figure out if animals die. I don't like seeing cats die. I just I don't like it, and I don't think that I'm alone. So someone who's like, y'all are crazy for not reading my book, that's so entitled. Like, maybe think of something else to do, show us how serious you are than killing animals off.

SPEAKER_04 8:58

Yeah. Well, again, she was sort of saying that people who love their animals to the degree that they won't read books, you know, where things die, that they're just like over the top. And and yeah, she does talk about them like, you know, the moon is orbiting them or something. But I I mean, that for a lot of people, that is the truth, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

I was gonna say for some people don't have children.

SPEAKER_04 9:22

Yeah, I've had family members who have had a pet that passed and were sort of surprised by how much it impacted them. Yeah, I mean, they were so sad and they were not realizing that thing. Or we know that animals are used in service, not just for the blind, but for comforting people with anxiety, being with elderly people, you know, because it gives them a sense of a social thing. So to poo poo uh people who are like, no, I don't want to read that, and calling them nuts. I mean, yeah, I agree. It's a bridge too far. And it was unfortunate that she wasn't able to sort of see what people were saying. They were just saying, it's not wrong for you to have to kill this dog if that's what the plot asks for, but I have the choice not to read it. Just like I have the choice, like I don't want to read horror, or I have the choice that I don't want to read this, that, or the other. Like, we all have a choice, and we're not nuts.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah. I have a story with a character who experienced sexual assault, and my friend Lisa cannot read that. And she told me, I, you know, I love you, I don't want to read this, and that's fine. I'm not insulted by it, and that's my friend. You know, she won't read it, even though it's me. Like, people have boundaries and you have to respect them. Sometimes people read for different reasons than you read.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

Yeah, you say this about spicy bits. Yeah, you know, our mom will read her stuff, but not the spicy bits. I joke with my mom.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah, I joked with my mom that my boundary for her reading my writing was don't read the spicy bits, please. Like, I know you are an adult woman and you've been reading romance novels since before I was born, but like I don't think I can mentally handle knowing you read that word.

unknown 11:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:05

Well, since we are here to celebrate pause and peril, uh, we're gonna start by uh interviewing Rachel, uh, who is the lead editor of this. It was her concept, her ideas, and uh, she and Tara have been working really, really hard to put this together. So, Rachel, I I'm just curious. I I know we started talking about these doing these little shorter magazines that we could put out a little bit quicker, uh, that still had really uh steamy but romantic stories in them. And you volunteered to do the first and you decided on romantic suspense with a dog. And how did that come about? How did you decide to do that?

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Well, I wanted to do romantic suspense because that's what I enjoy reading, but I thought we could put a dog in it because for what I was saying before, that dogs are unconditional love. They're funny, they're loyal, they're quirky, they're always there for you when you need them. They'll, you know, most of the time they'll they'll die for you if if they have to. They'll, you know, they go to bat for you. And don't we all want that in, you know, a book boyfriend or you know, whoever. So I thought that that would go good with the romantic suspense aspect of it because that's what would ultimately happen in the, you know, in the suspenseful part, you know, you have some kind of danger happening that's that's gonna happen. So I thought those two would complement each other.

SPEAKER_04 12:38

Yeah, yeah, I agree. You did receive several submissions. Uh what were uh what surprised you the most about some of the ones you received? Because they are pretty diverse.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Yeah, I did. I received some several diverse ones, but um I guess how diverse they were, because we just said I was just thinking I get you know, dog submissions. I was thinking dogs, or I thought maybe a werewolf. I didn't get any werewolves, but um yeah, I just you know, I got aliens, I got empathy dogs, I got service dogs, I got all kinds of stuff. So yeah, it was it was amazing. They just ran the gamut.

SPEAKER_04 13:23

When I think of romantic suspense with a dog, I did think a lot. Well, I thought a canine dog, you know, like you know enforcement or you know, things like that. I I did not go into like sci-fi or these other things, so it was really funny so it was it was interesting. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

It was interesting reading everything.

SPEAKER_04 13:45

Was there any particular elements that made any of the story stand out to you?

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Um, the sci-fi story is particularly interesting. I really like that story. And um, no, that one was one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hide now.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

No, that one was one of my favorites. And so the characters in that one were really good. I enjoyed that story a lot.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Thank you, Rachel. Again, I really appreciate how much you advocated for that. I thought that you would read that and be like, nope.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

No, I enjoyed that one. Is there any sort of thing that you want readers to walk away from um after they they've read these three romantic suspense with a dog, but in done in so many different ways?

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Well, I'd like them to get just the gist of what a dog's love is, that in the core of them, they are just loyal and unconditional and trustworthy and steadfast. And you know, they're right there by your side every step of the way. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 14:55

Makes me like my crazy dogs. Remember Doug and Up? Yes. Squirrel. And he's like, I love you. They just met, I love you. Squirrel, squirrel. I have to watch that movie again. It was so good. Well, so Rachel did all this work, read all these stories. She picked three. How fun the three of us are here that she picked. There's there's no no um, I don't know what they call that, nepotism involved here or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

It's a we're a family, the tender and tempting tales family. I like this for our first one. I think that you know it's we it's a proven concept. And you know, I think that having folks from in the family for this first one, you know, it's it's uncertain waters. So I'm glad we're all here.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

Yeah. And the stories are good. You know, I'm not in Rachel. None of us are gonna want to put out something that is, you know, not good. So you can trust the stories are really good. So we're gonna do uh some um ask the authors here some of the things about the story they wrote, and maybe along with that, what inspired the idea of it?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Okay, because the inspiration thing is kind of what ties in with mine a lot. Um, so I originally had a completely different concept for my submission for Pause and Peril that was a dog shifter kind of werewolfy adjacent character. And then I finally got to watch uh Guillermo del Toro's version of Frankenstein over winter break, and I took that concept and threw it out the window, and I was like, okay, but what if? Um, I love classic literature, I love gothic literature, I love fairy tales and myths and legends and stuff. So building the West Coast weird world that I'm doing is a lot of like, what are some fun legends and myths and stories, and how can I twist them or utilize them in like a modern setting? Uh, urban fantasy, Wayne's coat fantasy, I think is the niche subgenre, I think there's so many subgenres. Um, but the idea of like, well, how would I do a like modern Frankenstein? How would I give it a bit of a supernatural twist and a modern sort of gothic, but make it cozy? The challenge of a lot of these is like, I'm gonna do this and make it cozy. Um, but then thinking like, okay, well, dogs are amazing judges of character. Like every dog I've ever owned, every dog I've ever loved has just been the best judge of character, has immediately known when someone was sketchy. And in some cases, has actually like protected and defended myself or my family from that kind of thing, even if it's just by glaring at the person, and I'm like, maybe I shouldn't trust you. So the idea that this monstrous, scary individual, the dog sees them and goes, no, no, this one you trust. This is a good person. And how that immediate sense of trust and knowing the dog and trusting the dog would potentially build a relationship and cause someone to step outside of their comfort zone, their safety to help someone who quite honestly looks like they should be able to defend themselves, but can't for whatever reason. And specifically the scene in Frankenstein that has um the creature learning how to read and learning how to speak. I was like, ooh, how do I do that in urban fantasy? Because that was a scene that, like, oh, that hit me so hard. And all the gorgeous fan art for that movie, too. The the tragedy of the relationships, whether, you know, between all the different characters in that movie, I was like, this so much gorgeous artwork that I was just like, I want to do a thing with this. What do I do with this?

SPEAKER_00 18:46

I was so surprised when you sent me this for beta reading because I was expecting a dog shifter and it was like Frankenstein and the surprise! What's what's a happen? No, I loved it, and it was really, really cool, and it was like dangerous and it had a sense of foreboding in it, and it was it was just you know, it was outside of your norm, but I really liked it. It was really cool.

SPEAKER_04 19:03

One of the reasons I was sort of, I don't want to give it away was because that was part of the fun to read and come into the knowledge of what was going on. Because at first you're like, here's this big scary guy, you know, and then just sort of to be led because I find a lot that um gosh, I have this like in trivia or uh crossword puzzles, is that you see something and your mind goes here, and really it's over here, and it takes a little while because you're because everything you're reading, you're reading it along this one track, and then all of a sudden you realize, wait, no, this is I'm totally seeing this. And and I enjoy that when I'm reading. I I enjoy um when I'm thinking I'm going down one path because I have some sort of I don't know, bias or whatever. Um, and then to be nope, we're gonna we're gonna swerve over in this lane over here.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Yeah, I think some of my favorite stories, it's not a like, ha ha, gotcha moment from the author, but it's a if you go back and read it, you will realize there were signs there the entire time. And if you're an obsessive reader about certain things like I can get about stuff, you'll have realized you'll catch some of them, but maybe you won't have completely put it together until the end. And then you're like, oh, I did, I did see that little thing that they did there. Or the re rereadability too is something that I'm I'm trying to strive for with a lot of the urban fantasy stuff of like, you know, what will you notice if you go back and read it a second time?

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Right. The joy to me of a Marissa story, a West Coast weird story, is always the like when you pack it down into a sentence, there is something wonderfully contrarian about it, right? So it's like he's a werewolf, but that's not the problem. The problem is he has commitment issues. Or you know, or you know, like uh he's dating a vampire, you know, but he's actually like the the bravest person at the party. Uh, and he just has an issue with her father. You know, it's like these like little contrarian, like, well, the paranormal part's not the problem. The paranormal part is is the the problem is the human element, right? Right. I love that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:07

Tara, what about you? Where do I start? What inspired you to write it?

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Okay, so uh Sgt. Valkyrie is a science fiction game, a crisis simulator of military science fiction. Um, and it's divided up into public and private ships. And one of those ships, the longest running uh private ship is a Yeris Odyssey, of which I am the player captain. And uh during the run of Odyssey, we've been out in the Skelo Trade Federation for a really long time. And in the Skelo Trade Federation, there are a breed of uh aliens called the Ski Lash, who are canoid, humanoid, sapient, extremely funny species. And while we've been out there, there have been chokes about members of the crew, NPC and otherwise, sleeping with Ski Lash because they're extremely gregarious. Um, and I had a member of my crew who was an NPC named Natsuki Reed who had cybernetic. Um, and who had like dealt with a horrible injury to her cybernetics that we needed to deal with during the run of the game. And that all coalesced together into an idea for Winter Sting. When the call went out, I was making jokes about like, you know, when I was advertising for paws and peril, like, oh, but but the MMC shouldn't be the dog. And I kept saying that. And then it stuck in my head like, but what if the MMC was a dog, but a humanoid, uh, canoid alien dog, and then a Carter of the Golden Steppe was born. Um, in the run of Odyssey, we kept running into these ski lash female captains who were always posing and posturing and very like alpha, like they would get on the comms and be sort of like, you get off of our get off of our territory. Why are you here? I am da-da-da-da-da, really long name, and we would be like, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, okay, yes, we know, we know, yes, this is your territory. You're a very good girl. Yes, thank you. Uh and then I I wanted to make a Megan character who we could take seriously as a romantic lead, and that ended up being wonderful because it's the first time I've written a ski lash character who was like serious, and we weren't just making fun of, and that we could really think about uh seriously and sort of tenderly. And so that was a wonderful experience. I'm really glad that I did it. It was it started out sort of as a joke and then turned into something really important and precious. And I'm really glad that I did it and that uh Rachel advocated for it. So thank you, Rachel.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

Well, I wish I could say my story would had any depth or anything to do with it, it it's a traditional romantic suspense story, but it what it involves is a park ranger who's part of the investigative unit, which is something I've wanted to write about for a long time. It's been percolating in my head, and it and because he isn't it is an investigative unit, of course, it was going to be romantic suspense, right? Something taking place in a national park. And it started when I watched, I think it was on Hulu, it was the show about this guy who pushes his wife off a cliff. And it is the park investigative unit who goes in. And I was like, I didn't even know they had that. Like I had no clue, I thought there was just rangers and whatever. Um, and I didn't know they had that, but the minute I saw that, I was intrigued. Um, and so began researching it because I was like, I really want to do something. And then, of course, last last year, Untamed came out, which is about a guy who works for the National Park Service as an investigator. Um, they're like FBI in the national parks, uh, which and that was a really good show. It takes place in Yosemite. So I wanted to do that because it would have been a natural fit. Um, because I live on the East Coast along the Blue Ridge Mountains, which hits the Appalachians and the Alleghenies and all that stuff, I knew it would be along there somewhere because I I know it. Um, and in researching why would people be killing in a national park? Because this was a short story, and I didn't want to be grim. I didn't want to be, you know, the serial killer in the park or whatever. So, in a Google search, when I was looking up crimes in parks, I saw that in the smokies they have a poaching problem of ginsing. And I thought, okay, let's do that. So uh that's what I did. I I set it there. Um, I've got a dead body, and I got his dog, uh a coon hound, because that just seemed like a very southern dog, right? The big floppy ears and the epitome of your best friend, you know, the way they lope along. Um, and he he's the one that goes to find help for his owner, who's who is the dead body, but ultimately he sort of becomes the matchmaker for my uh um travel blogger who's going through, taking a hike um through the forest, and the the park uh ranger inspector dude who is on the trail of these poachers. So that's sort of how mine came together.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

I really like your story, and I like that there's at least like one normal romantic suspense in the lot because otherwise it's kind of weird.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

I may or may not have made a meme about it that I shared with Tara.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Oh god, that meme. Oh god, every time I look at it, it kills me. It's so funny. Oh, I'm sorry, Jenna.

SPEAKER_04 26:19

Yeah, you know, normal can be good unless you're the odd one out, and then you just feel blamed, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:26

You feel vanilla.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yours is yours is very good. Yours is this like the standard, and then there's two ways to beer off of that.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

It is hilarious to me that I'm not the weirdest story in the trio. Yeah, I'm so proud of you for that, Tara.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Thank you. Yeah, we send each other our stories, and we're like, wow, this is gonna be a weird zene if we both get in. This is super weird.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

Yeah, it really is because you know, it's start, you know, mine is very traditional romantic suspense. Marissa's, you know, as you start to read it, feels in the real world, you know, you just and then you begin to see these other things. Terror is like out in outer space, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:09

It's kind of the first time I leaned in, you know. The last two times I've written for Kinder and Tempting Tales, I've tried to read it in a little bit, you know, like I just don't, I want to be, I don't want to freak anyone out, you know. And I don't know if that's actually kind of a mistake. Maybe I need to freak some people out. Like, maybe people are like, this isn't sci-fi enough. So, you know, if you want something really sci-fi, this one is definitely gonna do it for you.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

Speaking of one of the things I would encourage, real quick, go for uh for readers, because you know, this might sound strange, right? But the stories ultimately are the same in terms of two beings coming together and you know falling in love, and there is a little spice in each of them. I think it's a great ride, you know, to have these three that are so different yet the same in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I agree. I mean, I think this is what the zines can do, right? Like, how do you how can you riff on this same theme in three different really wild ways? And this is not only for readers, but also for any writers who are listening who might be thinking of submitting to the zines, like you know, you can we can really look at the theme that's offered to you and and do something really different with it here and experiment.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yeah. So question. Um, speaking of Jenna was talking about researching Gensing, and I was wondering what else you had researched for your story while you were writing it. These are particularly weird stories, and you know, I wanted to know what you ended up researching.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Um okay, I'll I'll go first. Uh so for mine, I actually ended up researching a bunch about like the specifics of how service dogs work and medical alert dogs work for seizures specifically, and looking into a little bit about like like my Google search history had do you dream when you have seizures? And the fascinating information I found out from there because it one of the last things I want to do is to tropify things that involve like actual disabilities or medical issues or things like that. I want it, it's supposed to be weird. It's an urban fantasy story, but I don't like gotta have at least a little bit of reality to make it like that's not how a service dog would work, or that's not how medical alerts work. So I was like, no, no, I'm gonna, if this makes sense for seizures, then that's what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah, you really adhere to that well. I as you know, I was uh I grew up with two people with seizure disorders, and I was like, wait, dreaming? I've never heard of that, but you had done the research on it. You showed it around. I was like, oh wow, that's interesting. So even I, who was raised with people with seizure disorders, learned something about seizure disorders from the amount of research that you did, which was cool.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Yeah. And also looking up to the especially the what breeds of dogs are most often used for this kind of thing. And I was like, because I I vaguely had an idea of the dog in my head, but I was like, I think it's gotta be a mutt, it's gotta be a mix somehow, but which ones?

SPEAKER_00 29:50

He's adorable.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

He's a good boy.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

What about you, Jenna? What else did you research for your story?

SPEAKER_04 29:57

Uh well, you know, I had to learn, I had to understand how the the investigative units in the national parks worked. You know, not every park has them, they sort of have regional areas, and then they're they're sort of sent out. And I didn't delve too much into that. I'm like, he's here investigating whether he was sent there or not. I in fact have him from there. So uh, but the other thing I do like to do is add elements that anybody from the area might recognize, but maybe not come back and get me on, right? If I get it wrong. And of course, Appalachias are filled with folklore and all sorts of stuff. I'm convinced it's because the Scotch-Irish settled there, and you know, the Irish and the Scottish and and you know, the ancestors of the Celts, you know, these are people who just have an amazing background. And I think they just brought that with them. So the idea that there's this hidden lake I put in there, um, there's a witch who's supposed to, you know, be haunting the woods. So, you know, adding those elements and they're just sort of dropped in um to hint at the fact that our our our blogger was actually from the area um and had um she had a brother, and they would, you know, when you grow up in the woods, you play in the you do all the things in the woods. So she has a big history of being out in these woods and doing that. So, you know, kind of looking at that in the Smoky Mountains around uh Gatlinburg is where I I placed this. So I I did that. So those were probably the two main things that I that I really read. And of course the ginsing poaching. I was like, are people really gonna kill over ginsing, right? Like that was the thing. But when money's involved, people will kill over anything, right? So I decided.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

I thought the witch thing in your story was so tantalizing, but yeah, more about it.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Yeah, it was it was just sort of dropped in there as a joke, right? Um, well, not a joke, but just sort of a um, you know, something that sets them in the area, but not a lot of detail about it necessarily.

unknown 32:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, I liked that. That was really cool. And uh let's see, research. Okay, the weirdest things that I researched for mine were probably you're all gonna laugh. Uh, one, spider venom. Sorry, Rachel. Uh two, how big a spider could be and how much oxygen you had to have for the spider to be that large. Again, sorry, Rachel. Rachel doesn't like spiders.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

I don't either, but for some reason the space ones don't bother me.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Space spiders are okay. Good to know. And the other thing I researched was uh different kind of uh animal uh peanut that are available out in the world that I could uh model our um our uh card or uh our ski lash uh genitalia off of uh without it you know going into omega versing sea race.

SPEAKER_04 33:03

I was about to say this sounds still omega verse, doesn't it? Yeah, I did not do all those things.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

I did not do nodding. I wanted to do something different, so sorry, research other possibilities instead. And there was a joke at Odyssey about um one of Mark R characters received a dick pick from a ski lash and PC. We were we were joking that it was pronged, and so that's canon. Uh so I had to include it. So that's something I researched. I'm sorry again.

SPEAKER_04 33:37

That does not entice you listeners to want to read that. I don't know what will.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

And an author's search history is a thing to behold on this list.

SPEAKER_04 33:51

Yeah. Well, mine's usually how to kill people. So that's you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Can you strangle a scant with bras?

SPEAKER_04 34:02

All right, well, this actually might lead into the next question, which is was there a scene that was particularly fun or challenging to write?

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Tara died. We've lost her.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

Maybe you need to go, Marissa, like Terra put yourself together.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

So for me, one of the biggest challenges is because at the at the very beginning of the story, much like you know, the story that it's inspired from, Drew doesn't have a lot of language capability. So for me, the biggest challenge was how do I get them to the sexy bits while still getting him to a point where he can like communicate all of these things? Because to me, consent is so important in so much romance. Like, I struggle with anything of dubious consent when I'm reading romance, so I want to make sure that it's like, no, no, he is fully capable of communicating this. There's enough time for them to show their interest in each other and for no one to feel like anyone's being taken advantage of in the situation. So trying to get that into the word account, I was like, okay, Google searching. How does developmental language work in a timeline? And also making sure that the dog did not accidentally stay in the room during anything romantic, which was actually surprisingly easy. And then don't kill the dog and don't have them watch you doing the I could do a whole stand-up routine about pets accidentally causing chaos during sexy times.

SPEAKER_04 35:40

Yes. Well then then maybe it needs to go in a book. Another story, another story that could happen. All right, Tara, now that you've pulled yourself together.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Oh, oh have I. Um yeah, so uh my husband can tell you that I uh wrote everything else in the story before I wrote the sexy bit. I left a budget of words for the sexy bit and came back and you know, I actually we went to date night and I I had to talk it through with him. Like, how am I gonna do this? I don't think I can do this, I don't know how to do this. And finally came back and just just pumped it out, did it, sat down, got it done, uh, went back through. And it was actually because I had already gone through the emotional arc with them, I knew where they were, it was okay. It was actually ended up being really good, but it was like like Jenna said, I went from being like a sophomore in high school to like writing sexy fits to like grad school very quickly. It was like I need this, has to be compelling. I cannot just do like you know, tab A and slot B. Like, I I have got to bring people on this ride with me. Okay, so it's like I don't it was a really good exercise because it's not a normal two humans, heterosexual, we're getting married coupling. It's two strangers in the wilderness. One of them is a dog man, and it's it's gotta be sexy, and that that doesn't sell itself. You gotta sell that, you know? Yeah, it's it's very catch up while wearing white gloves, you know. Uh I think I pulled it off. I feel really proud of it. Um, but it was the one of the hardest things I've ever written in my life.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yeah, you should be. You did such a good job with that.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah, it was good.

unknown 37:13

It was good, Jenna.

SPEAKER_04 37:15

I you know, uh for me, the challenging bits are just uh boring again, which had to do with how do you in 7,000 words have a complete relationship, right? Um, including a sexy bit. And so it's sort of why I decided, okay, she's coming back home. And these two know each other. Because how, you know, to meet a perfect stranger and within a day of finding a dead body and being, you know, attacked by poachers and everything, it's a little unrealistic, right after that, to be like, oh, we're gonna live happily ever after, right? So, you know, setting it up where they had known each other. He was her brother's best friend. So there's a trope, people like that, you know. Um, and they had actually an encounter before she had left. And he had sort of said the wrong things afterward, mostly because he felt guilty, because this was his best friend's sister, right? Um, so you know, in 7,000 words, getting all that in and getting getting him to move from where he was to a place where now he would be okay with being with her. Um that to me, that was the challenging, but also fitting in, you know, they're running from poachers, that whole bit. Uh, so there wasn't any particular scene that was was hard. It was just making sure that the whole thing at it at no point felt like um, oh, we're zooming, we've zoomed too fast, or this feels forced type of thing. The end in particular, uh, you know, I wanted to make sure, because I'm running out of words, didn't feel forced. Um, even though, you know, we know they're gonna end up together.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Yeah.

unknown 39:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Well, you did the uh you did the triple mystery thing that I really like in in miniature that you do in the Valentine mystery, especially the first one, which is the the there's the mystery of what what's murder, right? Like who who murdered whom, right? Uh there's the like how are they gonna survive this? They're in danger, how are they gonna get out of this? And then there's the mystery of what happened between these two people that's making them snipe at each other in this way, which is really compelling. I like that triple mystery. And so you're really showcasing what you do, um, like in a Valentine mystery, for instance.

SPEAKER_04 39:31

Hey, good for me. Yeah, I mean, that was the thing because you know, they were friends, they cared about each other, but clearly it didn't go right the last time they saw each other. So, and he's kind of dark and broody, not dark, but he is broody and doesn't really uh share his feelings. Um and she's kind of all out there, right? And she's willing to poke him. I think she calls him Ranger Grumpy or something. So if readers like each of our stories, where will they be able to go and learn more? Like about what is that, West Coast?

SPEAKER_01 40:10

West Coast Weird. Um, so right now, uh all of my West Coast Weird stories are currently published with Tender and Tempting Tales. So that is the start of it. Um, I do have works in progress for larger long-form novels, um, including the one that kind of started this whole craziness uh PAX and Transactions, which is the story of a young woman working at a law firm and finding out that it's run by the Fae. Totally not inspired by real life. I don't know what you're talking about, uh having worked a law firm in over a decade. But uh I'm teasing bits and pieces of it here and there on Instagram. I've been inspired by uh, you know, you guys and some of the other authors working for Tender and Tempting Tales to maybe do a sub stack and do short stories there. We'll see. But uh but yeah, I've got my story with you guys in Midnight Mischief and Mistletoe and Pause and Perils and hopefully more down the road.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Yeah. You've got one coming in Fireworks and Flirtation. I also have your your uh your lead magnet.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Yes, that's right. Yes. The uh the lead magnet available on my website, uh Marsamarinella.com, is the story of how the couple in my fireworks and flirtations story meet, though it is not about their meeting, it just happens to be that that's when they meet. It is more the chaos of yet again, some poor schmuck finding out that the supernatural exists and the chaos that that entails.

SPEAKER_04 41:38

And by the way, we will have links to Marissa's and everybody's websites and information uh in in our show notes.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Uh all right, uh where you can find stuff for Starship Valkyrie. All right, well, I'm a I'm a Push all over the place. I'm in a couple of Rock and Tour press anthologies. That's Merx and Mayhem and Bourbon and Lead, um, with a uh military sci-fi mercenary story and a detective mystery, both science fiction, both in Starship Valkyrie. I'm in with uh Tender and Tempting Tales in uh Moonlight Margaritas, Midnight Misty, and Mistletoe, Pause and Peril, and Fireworks and Flirtation coming up. Uh I've got a sub stack. You can go see stuff weekly over there. And I also have a novel that is um serializing right now called What Remains. You can generally get a chapter every other week um from me when I'm publishing that. Uh and um, gosh, I always have stuff going on. I'm writing more novels right now, uh, hopefully with with more releases this year. And I have an upcoming collection of just my stuff coming as well. This called Contact Unknown. But more importantly, if you like Starship Valkyrie and you love uh the thought of playing with us, you can come out to Strategicon here in sunny California at the LAX Hilton three times a year and play Starship Valkyrie with us live, buy books, uh, get merch, get swag. Uh I'll even sign a book for you. Uh and you get to play Starship Valkyrie, and it's actually really fun. And there's the whole convention beyond that.

SPEAKER_04 42:52

Is there a ski lak? Is that what it's called? Do you have one of them?

SPEAKER_00 42:58

We probably have no ski lash characters in the mix, but we should get a plus.

SPEAKER_04 43:03

I'm like, do they wear pants?

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Depends. Depends on who's asking.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Oh my gosh. I want to crochet a little ski lash plush to have a ski lash plush.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:19

Okay, well, my website is jettaheart.com, and just right there on the front page you can see uh the Southern Heat books and the Valentine books. They are all in KU at this point. I am in the process of making a new lead magnet, so I don't have anything for you to sign up for, but it is coming shortly. And then, of course, I have stories. Uh, I have one in Moonlight Margaritas and Pause and Peril. And so um, yeah, that's where that's where I am now, and here. And I do have something in fireworks and flirtation. Yeah, Nate from Skullhaven Bay, my pirates. I I get caught up. Ideas like pirates or agents in national parks. That needs to be in a book. Hey, this is Jenna Hart just jumping in in the middle of the podcast here as I realized that we did not share Rachel's information. Unfortunately, as we were recording this, Rachel was a little bit under the weather, but I wanted to be sure to share her information so you can go ahead and check her out. Rachel writes fiction under the name Alain Francour, and of course, we will have a link to her website in our show notes. She does appear in Moonlight and Margaritas and in our upcoming Fireworks and Flirtation, and of course, is the editor of Pause and Peril. If you visit her website, you can sign up for her newsletter and she has a free little story that you'll get for that. Plus, you should check out her cocktail recipes that she posts on her website, as well as a variety of other fun posts that you can read. And of course, you can find her writing under the name Rachel Young through her golden nib entries that are in anthology form through the Virginia Writers Club. And again, those links where you can pick those up through Amazon will be available in our show notes. And now back to our regular recorded show. Yes, so uh along with stories in Pause and Peril, one of the things we wanted to differentiate it from the anthologies. The anthologies have 10 to 14 stories, depending on you know submissions and how long they all are. But we wanted to do something shorter, something that we could put out more frequently because more romance is always better. And so what we thought with these, like Pause and Peril, the little magazines, we would have three to five stories, but we'd also have some other features. And Tara, I think you should uh share what some of these features are.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Oh, right. It was really fun putting uh Pause and Peril together. It has three stories, so there's a lot of room for features and feature ads and stuff. Uh Jenna and Rachel have been putting together a lot of features for us. Um, Rachel put together a list of different conventions and signings going on around the country for romance readers. So there's um stuff that's going on between April and June that she's collected. And hopefully we'll do lists like that in every zine. So when you get it, you'll sort of have like the quarterly happenings that you can see. We've also got um an article in there by Jenna about romantic suspense. So, you know, you can kind of look at the history of romantic suspense as well as some recommendations of longer novels to go read if you really are liking the genre. Of course, we have our stories. We have the um author confessions, which are little interviews with each one of us, um, uh our pictures, and you know, just fun things that each one of us said about our stories, like, you know, what in God's name possessed me and you know why why Marissa chose Frankenstein, etc. There's also a creature feature, so we have a cute little featurette, and these are graphical um of each of the dogs, including a card door of a golden step. Uh, and uh one of my favorite things to put together was actually uh we have a little thing in there called Lady Tender Tales, and it's a bookish society papers that goes over the news um of the you know society happenings and drama in um the romance world recently, and that was really fun uh for us to put together. Gosh, am I missing anything, Jenna? Oh, there's a bingo card.

SPEAKER_03 47:16

We have a romantic suspense card.

SPEAKER_00 47:18

Never forget bingo. Yeah, I made a bingo card. Um, so there are you know, there are romantic suspense tropes uh and you can go through as you're reading our stories, you can get try to get bingo. If you do think you've gotten bingo from one of the stories, you can pop onto our sub stack, we'll have a post about this. Um, tell us the tropes that you saw in line and where you saw them in a story. So basically, like, oh, you know, I saw this, you know, brother's best friend, and it was these two people and that kind of thing. That way, you know, we know that like where you found it in the story. Uh, and once you get bingo, we'll interview to win um a discount in our shop. We have a lovely pause and peril collection going uh in the Tender and Tempting Tales shop. Um, Rachel selected a bunch of things that she loves, including some things for your pets. Uh, and I did designs for them, fun, bookish slogans, things that work well for going to con, things that work well for your pet, things that work well just for life.

SPEAKER_04 48:06

So who's not gonna want to go get paws and peril?

SPEAKER_00 48:10

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Exactly. I want cute dog merch.

SPEAKER_04 48:15

I want cute dog merch.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

You made a little feeding mat, and there's a little kitty feeding mat as well. So it's not just dog lovers.

SPEAKER_04 48:21

Yeah. Well, I want to thank Rachel for taking the lead on this, our very first easing. I think you've done a fabulous job. I'm really excited about this. Um, and of course, thank you to Marissa and Tara for your stories. And Tara for all your work on all of this that you do behind the scenes because uh it's amazing. And I'm really excited for the pause and peril. I hope that people will go check it out. Uh, it will be over in Kindle Unlimited, so you can go there and get it. I think we are discussing a print version as well.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

I made a print layout.

SPEAKER_04 49:00

So uh if you want to grab that as well, that that would be awesome too. And of course, all the links to everything we've talked about and over to our Tinder and Tempting Tales Substack, links to pause and peril, we will have in the show notes so that you can uh click and go check them out.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

And of course, don't forget to follow us on our Substack and on Instagram. We're Tender Tempting Tales on Instagram, and we are Tender and Tempting Tales on Substack. Uh, we've got stuff every week, a lot of articles from Jenna about romance, and of course our podcast, Elizabeth Liaisons. If you want to follow it from here, uh you can follow us on the Substack.

SPEAKER_04 49:32

Yeah, and once again, thank you everybody, and until next time, this is Jenna, Tara, Marissa, and Rachel from Pause and Peril wishing you peace, love, and happily ever after.