Illicit Liaisons: Sports romance with Allie Lasky

This week, we're joined by author Allie Lasky to talk about romance books, including what it means to be well-read, sports romance, and more.

Allie Lasky is a queer and AuDHD writer with a hyper-fixation on inclusivity and representation. She loves the color purple, Michigan football, the Detroit Lions, and the Boston Bruins. When she’s not absorbed by a book, she likes to watch sports and spend time with her nephews. A San Diego, CA native now residing in South Carolina, she’s allergic to the cold, rain, snow, and mosquitos. When you read Allie, you’re guaranteed a few things: He falls first… but she comes first, as well as found family, mental health and neurodivergent rep, and body positivity in all shapes and sizes.

Allie's Website https://www.allielasky.com/

Allie on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/allielasky/

BOOKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW

Fourth and Falling by Susan Renee https://amzn.to/4gnx8Q2

Color His World by Taryn Quinn https://amzn.to/4vXgXxD

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas https://amzn.to/4ecqR6Z

The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer https://amzn.to/4uH83Do

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

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 Hart, a romance author of the Southern Heat Contemporary romance series and the sexy Valentine Mysteries, as well as the managing editor of Tender and Tempting Tales, a steamy romance anthology for readers who like quickies.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hi, 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. You can often find me in our anthologies and on Substack.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

And today we're very excited to have as our guest host, Allie Lasky. Ali is a queer and odd DHD writer with a hyperfixation on inclusivity and representation. She loves the color purple, Michigan football, and the Detroit Lions and Boston Bruins. When she's not absorbed by a book, she likes to watch sports and spend time with her nephews. As a San Diego California native, she's now residing in South Carolina. She's allergic to the cold, rain, snow, and mosquitoes. When you read Ali, you're guaranteed a few things. He falls first, but she comes first, as well as found family, mental health, and neurodivergent rep and body positivity in all shapes and sizes. Allie, welcome to the show with us today. Thank you for having me. I'm so glad to be here. I'm really excited. I I love that you don't like cold rain and snow or mosquitoes. I suppose where you are, mosquitoes could be a problem, but maybe and rain.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

You can have rain, right? Yeah, we get rain here, but we don't get the big hurricanes or tornadoes or any of the I'm good with earthquakes, I'm good with wildfires. I don't want the the crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Yeah, so I grew up in California and I'm the same way. The first time I moved east and there was a tornado warning, I was like, I don't know what to do. I know what to do in an earthquake, yeah, but I don't know what to do with a tornado. So there you go. Anyway, we like to start the show with a little bookish drama or news. And one hot take we've been kind of keeping an eye on from Bookstagram to Book Talk to BookTube is the idea that reading a lot of books doesn't mean you're well read. Um, reading a lot of books from one genre is usually what they're saying, doesn't make you well read, with the suggestion that not being well read is bad. And just curious, Allie and Tara, what your thoughts on this might be.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

I think the most important thing is that people keep reading. Audiobooks 100% count as reading, magazines count as reading, nonfiction count as reading. But to be well-rounded, you have to absorb more than just one type of content, one type of I almost exclusively read genre fiction. I almost exclusively read a subset of contemporary romance. That is what I enjoy reading, but I still make sure to broaden my horizons by reading the news, reading articles and magazines, reading nonfiction. I I tend to keep to the same types of fiction, but when I'm branching out into other mediums, I make sure to keep that as varied as possible within the bounds of what it is that I enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yeah. Yeah it's it's important to me that people are well read if they're going to opine about books quite a lot, right? Like if someone's gonna be like, I guess, like a booktuber and they want to talk about books a lot, I would I would expect them to read. And but I think that if if someone has like a bachelor's degree, they're probably, and they actually read their readings from school, they're probably already what I would consider well-read. But also, like I think you can be well-read in a genre, and I think that's great. I if I someone says, I've read, you know, the entire history of science fiction, and I, you know, I've read Asimov and I've read Heinlein and I've read all this, and I I would like to talk to them. That's it's good to be to have depth of reading, to be an expert in something. If someone's well read in the 18th century, that's still someone who's worth talking to. There's nothing wrong with depth. I think breadth can be really important before you talk a lot about books, of course, but I don't think that necessarily being super well read is like necessary just to live life, you know. If if reading's not your thing, that can be fine. I I think the other thing is that I want people to be well read in a genre if they're gonna talk about that genre, you know. Like it's important to me that someone reads science fiction before they poo-poo it or something like that. I think I've said that on this on this podcast before. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

I yeah, I have sort of two thoughts around this. The idea of being well read is sort of what you were saying, Ali, is you know, having a broad uh influence or at least uh exposure to ideas and and different kinds of things. And my thought on that is I don't have to do that through reading, right? So if I enjoy reading romance fiction and that's what I want to read, I I can have exposure to other things, going to a museum or going to a concert, or these things that we sort of put out there in the arts world of saying that that makes us well read or well-knowledgeable. I can have those things elsewhere. Because Tara was saying, if you don't like reading, maybe that's not the way you do that. The other thing is I sort of think of reading in two different ways. So I do read a lot of nonfiction, but a lot of times it's not necessarily for enjoyment. It's because there's something I want to learn and I don't hate it, but it's like, oh, this sounds interesting. It might help me with something, a book on writing or something like that. Um, whereas when I am reading for fun, I want to read for fun. I will admit that there's been times because of BookTube, in particular during COVID, where people would gush about books that were outside of what I might have normally picked up. And there's a couple that I picked up and I really liked. So I'm glad that I opened myself up to that. But I do have a problem with the idea of suggesting people are somehow not as intelligent or not good enough, or whatever they're trying to infer based on what they're reading or not reading. This whole idea of creating a caste system of readers just doesn't I just don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

When I see a stack of books and someone says, I read a hundred books this last year, and a lot of them are romantic or something like that, and some random person that doesn't really know them says, You're not well read. I don't really think that's something to say to a person you don't know. Right? Yeah. Like if if my if my sister was reading too much uh mystery and I was like, hey, I think you should broaden your horizons, I'm close to her. And it's it's okay to say to someone you're really close to, hey, I've got this other book. I think that you should broaden your horizons, but I think you're reading too much of this one thing. But someone you don't know, like why do people think that that that's the kind of thing that's in the category of things that it's okay to say with someone they don't know? You you don't know that that's the only things they've been reading. You don't know that those are the only things they've ever read in their life. You don't know if they if they have a PhD in English literature and they're just sick of reading about the 18th century, maybe they want to read romance for a while. Like, leave people alone. You don't know why people are reading, you don't know where they're coming from, you don't know people's context, leave people alone. You can't call people in if you if you are not in the house with them.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

I think there's two different categories here where one is you're not quote unquote, you're not well read if you're only reading one type of genre fiction. And there's the other type where it's you're not well read because you're not reading anything at all. So it's the people who are not reading anything at all or not broadening their horizons that I think we should be encouraging to read more. And that's when we read in different mediums. Um, but when you're only reading genre fiction and you're reading a specific subset of genre fiction, go for it. Just maybe don't speak on authority as this is the only type of fiction that people should be reading.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

I agree with that one. Um, the other thing is that, and and I think this is something that's in your world, Allie, is a lot of indie authors moving toward direct sales and other online opportunities where they have control of their material and how it is sold so that they're less reliant on the booksellers such as Amazon or even the other ones, but also reaching out to maybe smaller sellers like independent bookstores. And I'm just curious what your thoughts or experience of this is.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

So I sell direct on my website, I sell direct via India bookstores, I sell through some major bookstores in my area, and I also sell direct in person at events. I am known for doing events in my area. I do, I think on my calendar right now, I have 37 events for this calendar year. Um, and I'm still booking some more events. Um I'm at farmers markets and pop-ups selling, essentially going door to door, except I'm at a farmer's market, um, selling my books, pitching my books to people who walk by. The more I have control over the distribution system, the more I'm able to connect with the readers. Um, I do an exclusive pre-order on my website. I have a shop on my website. I partner with different indie bookstores for either a pre-sale um before the book comes out. They can pre-order and get started in swag, or after the book is out, uh being able to purchase the book through through the bookstore's channels. Um I love partnering with indie bookstores. It is so rewarding to see both of our businesses grow and blossom and succeed.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah. Do you sell it all through the other big or are you just direct small book? I mean, like, are your books are also on Amazon, or are you just like, nope, I'm gonna do it this way, my way?

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Oh, yeah. All my paperbacks are on Amazon. I am in Kindle Unlimited. I am exclusive to Amazon for ebooks. That is my preference for right now. I'm not ruling out going wide later on down the line. But for my business, the best thing right now is to be in Kindle Unlimited. I am looking to do an ebook pre-order through my website down the line. Um, but I'm not quite ready for that project yet.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

It's a lot of movies. What I love about this, what I love about what you just said, because I haven't heard this before, where they're like, I'm in Kindle Unlimited, but I'm selling my books also direct and off my site and in person. I haven't really heard that before. But what I also love about this is you are building a readership of people who know that you have these opportunities to buy away from Amazon. So if you ended up being one of those authors that for no good reason get booted, you still have opportunities to sell your ebooks. Because I think a lot of authors, they go all their eggs in one basket. And then if that basket tips over and they don't know who bought Amazon doesn't, or none of them, Barnes and Noble, none of them tell you who bought the book. And so, unless you have been building a newsletter list or you have what you're doing in which you have been selling direct, it could be very difficult. You're like starting, you'd have to start over again. So I love this idea.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

I think I might do farmers markets. I haven't considered farmers markets at all. That's a great idea. We have a bunch here in South Bay. I've been looking for author events specifically, but farmers markets is great. I can do farmers markets. That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, I do a lot of author-specific events, book-specific events. I'm doing an event in August here. I'm co-organizing it. It's called Sip and Spoon. We get 10 romance authors from the area at a brewery and we hang out for the day and sign books. But we the more we do events in our community, the more engaged the community is. We have such a great romance community here where I am in Greenville, and there's so many romance authors, so many romance readers, and they show up. And I had an event a couple months ago, it was in March, and someone came up and bought one of my series. It was a four-book series. I saw her again in June. She said, Oh my God, I read your books. I love them. I need everything else you have. So she bought another, I think it was 10 books. So she bought two series that day, including a back with series that I don't actively promote, but I happen to have at that event. She bought literally every single book I I've written because she liked that first series. And because I met her in March at the event, and we were able to connect and engage and had a great conversation. And it was so rewarding to be able to talk to her that way. And then she came back, she remembered me, she knew exactly who I was, she knew exactly what she wanted. And we again had such a great conversation. It's those connections that I'm trying to make, and it's those connections that are so rewarding to be able to see firsthand this person likes what I'm doing. I'm I'm doing something right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, I just came back from Strategicon and we run Starship Valkyrie games there. And then, you know, I go around with my books. I'm called the Smut Goblin, and I go around with anthologies that have Starship Valkyrie stories in them. And I've been loving the conversations I've been having with folks, like vendors there. They're like little vendors, and we've been having wonderful exchanges about like doing collabs on cool like Starship Valkyrie candles and folks talking about loving the world and loving like playing the game and then seeing it like come to life in the stories. That's really rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

And I I want to ask one behind the scenes question before we move on. And that is do you inventory your books and then ship them from where you are, or do you use something like Book Vault and have them fulfill the order?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

I maintain an inventory and I ship books out. I work with bookstores to sell books wholesale. Um, and I I have a pretty steady shipping business. It's actually behind me here. I have a shipping station and I package books and uh they're all hand signed. They come with stickers and swag and they get wrapped very pretty, and they all come with the personalized thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Awesome. I was just about to ask if you did swag in the box. I I love that idea. I have a cute little swag box right now, and I would love to do that. I love it. All right, yeah. Uh so Ali, we know you have a new release coming out called Instigator, which comes out 8 14, so August. Um, and Arc Sign Ups will be live by the airing of this podcast. Uh the book features a grumpy, autistic hockey player and a billionaire tech genius with ADHD. Um there's a reverse age gap and workplace romance, which feels like a lot of great, interesting elements in sports romance. So I was wondering if we could tell our uh listeners about your book and about your inspiration for it.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Yeah. Um, Aiden is the team captain of the Boston Grizzlies. We've seen him in a couple other books, and he is autistic, but he's never said the words out loud. He's never told anyone. Um, he learned because a fellow teammate is autistic and revealed some of the struggles he was going through. And Aiden kind of self-reflected and realized that that he had something in common. Um, and so he's never said the words out loud. And then we've met Sessie in previous books, and she is fabulous. She is a badass boss bitch, and she she's in charge and she knows it. And they don't know that they've been playing online video games together for seven years. They are best friends online, and they have no idea that this person that they've met in real life, it didn't go very well. But this person that they've met in real life is actually their best friend that knows everything about them except their name. Um and Aiden's sister Haley is friends with Sessie, they're on the board of the Boston Grizzlies together, and Haley sets them up on a blind date. And it doesn't really go very well. Oh no. And they're talking online, and they put the he puts the pieces together, and it's just it's beautiful. Um, and I'm I'm so excited for this book to to come out and to get all the love it deserves because Aiden is just so so grumpy and so autistic, and just I just want to cuddle him.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

I love that. I I love that idea. These are people living in the real world, and I love that we're seeing more of that. When I first started reading romance, it was back in the late 80s, 90s. I think I've said this on a show before. Uh our heroes were pretty much five foot seven women with long blonde hair, six foot two tall men who are muscular, and they might have been somewhat alpha, but now we're seeing more people that reflect the real world. And I I love that. Not that there's not five foot seven women with long blonde hair, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Sessie is she's lost over half her body weight by the time of this story, and she's had skin removal surgery, she's gone through that weight loss journey and she's gotten to be in her best life and her best skin. But she's very self-conscious about her scars, especially because Aiden is a professional hockey player, he's muscular, he's in shape, he's the epitome of fitness, and she is not. And so they have some challenges to get through in that regard. Um, but they they're very much flawed human beings. I don't personally write alpha toxic toxic alpha assholes. That's just not what I like. I like nice, sweet guys you can take home to your mother. Um, so he's very much letting her take the lead, taking a backseat to her being in charge. Um but but not all the time, not always. Um but there's definitely a lack of power and balance. They are perfectly balanced in terms of who gives and who takes.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

I love that. Well, your current whip is one timer, which will be out in October, and it's apparently based on the song Good Graces by Sabrina Carpenter. Break my heart, and I'll go after your favorite athlete. Is that another?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Uh so yeah, can you tell us more about that? Yeah, I actually had the idea for this story back in 2023 or 2024, and I used to commute to my job and I listened to the radio every day in the car. I loved the morning show. It was just the chemistry between the two hosts and their producer, they were fantastic. I loved listening to them. And I started to think about how everyone has their own relationship with the radio DJ. You everyone hears them in their car, but you all everyone has a different relationship with how they're interpreting and and how how they're reacting to it. And so I had this idea for a superstar hockey celebrity who listens to the radio, and he falls for the radio DJ on the morning show. And she's on the rebound, and she makes she has an interaction with this hockey player, and she finds out that he is her ex's favorite athlete. So she's going to pursue him because she wants to make the ex crazy mad and jealous and go crazy. Um and along the way, they form a friendship. She actually failed at seducing him. Um, but they have they have a friendship that is the basis for their romance. It starts off with a little bit of hinky intentions, but those fall away. And what's left is a true friendship where he respects that she's not ready yet. She's still healing, and he he's patient, he'll wait. He wants her to be ready for so what they have can be healthy and mature and secure. And that they're so fun, she's so snarky. Um, she she's a badass and she's confident in her skin, but she's a little bit shaken from finding her ex with the other woman, and she's just living her best life and trying to put one foot for in front of the other while still navigating professional troubles and just dealing with everything in her life. I like this. This is great.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

I I really love this concept because I am I have a tendency to talk at podcast hosts in my car, to talk at radio DJs in my car, or to talk at them while I'm making dinner, like I'm having a conversation, or I like make Quippy One Lighters at them. And I really like podcasts where things feel chatty, which one reason why I really like that ours, it has this kind of chatty casual feel to it. But I could totally see that like having like a parasocial friendship and My head with like this DJ, right? And then meeting them in real life, and you know, like working on a friendship with them and stuff. And I love the idea of like living that out into a romance. That's really fun.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

And he called into the show. So the entire city gets to hear their flirtation and they get to hear and become invested in it. And there are people who say, Oh, you're the guy from the radio. And that he's not known for being a hockey player. He's known for being the guy on the radio. So called in and talked to her because he doesn't have her phone number. So at one point he says, like, you know, this is the only way I can contact you. Your producer's gonna block my number. And she goes, No, I'm not going to. But I like I'm invested in this. But they have a very public flirtation, and it's so they're so snarky and just that it's so much fun to write.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

That sounds good too.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Add it to my TBR.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

October. And Ali, I know that you're really into sports, which is exactly as it should be for a sports romance author. And you're eagerly watching the Stanley Cup right now. Um, and I was wondering like what moments in sports like really inspire you and make you think of romance like when you're watching, if that happens, you find yourself spinning plots during the airing of a game. And like, and I was wondering what moments are like the most charged during even any given game.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Do you find I love to hate, hate to love when my team is down and surges from behind and comes out with a win. It it stresses me out, it lowers my life expectancy every single day. Um I my problem is the teams I like are terrible and they love to hurt me. And currently, like I I follow the San Diego Padres, and I think they've lost their last three games. Um my hockey team doesn't know how to play third period hockey, and usually they don't know how to play first period hockey either. Um, Michigan football hasn't been terrible, but they're not been great either. And the Lions were great until they collapsed in the last game of the season and missed the playoffs. They were so close to not sucking. And they hurt, it hurts me. Um but I love to follow the storylines of what the athletes are going through, the adversity they overcome and the challenges they face. I engage a lot with the athletes on social media following what they're doing, um, behind the scenes locker room stuff, behind the scenes, behind the the team documentaries, all of that. And they're they're just real people, they're humans, they're fallible. And that's something I really have to remember is that humans are fallible and they're not they're not always the ideal person. They're not always on the pet, they don't always deserve the pedestal we put them on. And when we're talking about it in the sports setting, we get people who are paid millions and millions of dollars to play a game. It's still a game at the end of the day, and we have to remember that they are very talented at what they do and they deserve to be compensated appropriately. But they're still human, they're still flawed.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

The thing that makes me think of Kyle Bush, uh who just passed, who didn't have to. You just think where was the doctor to say, you know what? Maybe we should check him for pneumonia. And by the time he goes, it's too late. He has sepsis. So here's a guy who has everything, he's the number one driver, you know, he's just won this big race and has all the money in the world. He's he's a person, he's not immune to everything else that we he just has more money and gets to do a job that he loves. Actually, I want to ask you while we're here, did you follow that thing a couple years ago with the Kraken where the the so the the young woman who was doing the TikToks is thirsting on the head, and that guy's wife was like, you know, and that I mean, again, like um she was sort of treating them the way that women often get upset about being treated, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah, absolutely. And we have to remember that they are they are humans, they deserve not to be sexually harassed, period, but especially not sexually harassed at work. And when their partners are being attacked just for existing, yeah, when people think they have an ownership over these athletes because they are public figures, they may be public figures, but they don't sign up to become play toys. That's not who they are and what they're doing. They're there to do a job, and their job is to play a game, but they're there to do a job, and they deserve not to be sexually harassed, period. But especially at work. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I get so uncomfortable by that stuff, or when people do like fan fiction about them, like just makes me. I mean, there's nothing wrong with writing sports romance about fictional characters, of course. It's just I I've seen like fan fiction using like real people from like the sports, and it's just because they're they're like f like real they're just because they're like public figures doesn't mean it's okay to like write about them in those situations. It just it like it's like worse than secondhand cringe, it actually like hurts my soul.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, I might be like a story from a headline, but I don't base it off the that person as a person.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

It it might be an inspiration for a story, but I still take the story and run with it. It is not based on a specific person.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Well, a situation, uh totally like being inspired by a situation is great. I think that that's that's awesome. Like ripped from the headlines, you know. I've seen a lot of those, but yeah, not like not the actual person. I think that's super, that's like perfectly appropriate.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yeah, I still think you need to be careful because I know a couple of years ago Ivy Smoke put out a book where everybody had different names, but it was very clearly Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yeah, you need more distance, right? It can't just be like exact situation Taylor Swift has been in, exact description of her, and her name is Kaylor Swift. Like we all know that this is Taylor Swift. Like you're not you're not being clever. We all know what you're doing here.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Yeah, yeah. I think the initials were anyway, the same.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah, at the core, the pop star and the football player or the hockey player, that is not a new story. No, I can name at least four pop star and hockey player or football player stories off the top of my head. But the difference is when you're basing it on a real person and using their characteristics and using their likeness, it's using their likeness that is the problem. And that is grounds for lawsuits. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

And I think it actually had situations that were the same. You know, he had a podcast, he liked her, like all this stuff that we knew from follow, you know, from all the stuff you hear in the gossip, you know, entertainment gossip. Yeah, like all of that was there. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

To then be cute and be like, oh, it's Kayla's swiped. It's like you're insulting our intelligence. We know what you're doing here. Yeah, yeah, and so did her lawyers. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Yeah, that book was not up for very long. I don't think I think it came out pretty quickly. I and I don't know that it was a legal, I mean, it could have been a legal issue, but I think there was some back, you know, backlash about it. Because it is weird when you recognize who they are, it is it's like being a voyeur. Yeah, you know, it's one thing to read about people that are completely made up, but yeah, these are real people and you're imagining them doing doing adult things, especially in a spicy romance.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

You know, it's starting to feel like yeah, yeah, it is um it's inappropriate, yeah. Not even like an illegal thing, there's also you know, there's the moral aspect of it as well. Like, yeah, maybe maybe it's someone who determined, like, oh, this was different enough that it's not illegal, but like also just feels gross.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Yeah, it's weird, yeah. Um, well, you know, we do Tara and I like to do our shows like this where we're just sort of talking and and our guests are, you know, we find out about you, but we also like to have you join in to the discussions that we have, especially about bookish things. I'm just curious. Um, if you you know, we've been asking lots of questions. Do you have any questions of us or things like that?

SPEAKER_00 30:34

I'm curious what you think of the current state of contemporary romance where people are finding their comfort. I see a lot of people are rereading the same books over and over instead of finding new books. I get it, the world is trash. We need to reread things our our comfort reads to to bring us that joy. But I'm curious, especially in the the world of contemporary romance. Um, where do you think people need to find their new books or their new love for reading over again?

SPEAKER_01 31:17

All right, Jenna, you write contemporary romance. I I'm interested in your thoughts on this.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

It's an interesting question. I'm not someone who reads things over again, but I I would understand why people would do that. Sometimes I go back and read scenes in books that I liked. Usually they're highly emotional scenes. Those are my my favorite. Um, and so I could see where people would want to read something again, like you said, that is comforting. I think also there's a bombardment these days of everything, whether it's about books on book talk or whether it's about the world in general. Um, and I I have a sense of a lot of people retreating away from a lot of social media or things like that. Um, but in terms of helping people feel like it's okay for me to read these other things, especially since there is contemporary romance, some of it has gotten uh, we now have dark romance, right? So we do have people who are supposed to be our quote unquote heroes that they might cross the line for some readers that you know that might be difficult. That's why we have the trigger warnings now. Um, and and I will admit that I'm a very picky reader, so I'm not the best person to talk about branching out. Um but I also feel like um that there's so much out there now in romance, there's so many great opportunities for discovering new people, new stories. I mean, you've described your stories, and I'm like, I love those ideas, haven't heard them anywhere. Tell you, right? You're you're not here, I don't know this, right? So um, and so I think for a lot of readers, particularly in the romance, there there's so many, so many, so many choices and and just sort of a willingness to listen to a podcast like this and think, oh, that sounds that sounds really interesting. I'm gonna try that. Uh, you know, I guess I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but that's sort of my sense of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

I have a I can add on to that. I I I it's weird you ask this because I'm in my branching out era right now. You know, I I've been doing sort of like uh editing work with us, and so I've been receiving a lot of short stories and different like subgenres of romance that I don't I haven't historically read a lot of, you know, and finding out about like categories of romance and subgenres of romance that I haven't seen much about, like medical romance. I didn't even know that was a thing, you know. I found out about medical romance. I was like, ooh, what is that? And it turns out I've actually been watching and reading a lot of medical romance without knowing that's what it was, you know. The one thing in contemporary romance, even though I I enjoy reading the short stories we receive, the one thing that that drives me away from it in the bookstore is I don't like the covers. And this is a preference thing. I'm not saying they are bad, but I don't like the cartoon covers. I feel like I'm being evantilized a little bit by all of them being cartoon covers. I don't mind rom-commy ones and like fun, flirty ones being cartoon covers. But if I'm in the room, if I'm in the romance section and I see the contemporary romance area, they're all this same style of cartoon covers. And there's something like cutesy about it, very like, oh, we're not talking about what we're doing here, you know. And, you know, the the historical romance covers, like the old ones like clinch covers and stuff like that, like I really love those. I think that they're gorgeous, and I think that they're a little more honest about the contents, you know. And I think the romantic ones are really gorgeous, and there's a lot of artistry to them. But a lot of the cartoon covers, like not all of them, but some of them do feel kind of, I don't know, weirdly low effort to me, or really simplistic or cutesy. And that's just my feeling about them. It doesn't mean that that's all of them. I've seen some I've really, really liked and thought were great, but the preponderance of them is it kind of annoys me. That's where I'm at with contemporary romance. I think that there's a comfort food aspect to it. And look, don't worry, look, another cartoon cover. And I worry that there's there's a there's a lack of branching out there, and this is it's the it's the trend right now, and there's always trends in books, and it's perfectly fine. I guess I just get annoyed by there being so much of it, like so many of the covers in the bookstore that are there at like Barnes and Noble in the contemporary romance section looking so similar.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Oh, I have thoughts on that. Um, all right. When you're in Barnes and Noble, it's not reflective of what is the full market. In Barnes and Noble, 99% of those books are trad.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Trad books and indie books are completely different animals, they can't even be in the same conversation.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Yeah, this is the trad in the trad contemporary publishing industry I'm talking about, like just what I see in the bookstore. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

I think a lot of times authors do sort of mimic because the idea is well, if a public publisher is using this as their marketing thing, that must work, it must do that. And you know, it triggers like when I saw those covers in my mind, it was always rom com, right? That was that was sort of the cue. This is rom com. I see a book cover that's dark and has, you know, um this elaborate art over it, might have snakes and vines and a rose or something. I know that's a dark romance, right? Um so in a lot of ways, those are cues. It goes back to something I posted today on our Substack about tropes and how they're used for marketing. And as long as they work, no people are gonna use them. When they stop working, they'll do something else. And I think covers are the same way. I I do sort of agree that some for some books having those covers is a disservice because it doesn't really fit. If I see it and I expect rom-com, I expect rom com. Yeah, right. You know, the moving away from having the the bare chested guy on the cover, I think partly was people wanted to hide what they were reading, yeah, which is why they switched covers. Or two, you know, I've had I I remember trying to advertise and some some images, you know, Meta didn't like.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

That's fair, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

So, you know, there was that, but yeah, it's it's covers are interesting. And how many like Bridgerton's been covered 87 times, recovered 87, not that many, but I was just in the bookstore, and now they have covers that look like the cover of my old timey Barnes and Noble version of Pride and Prejudice, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Yes, I've seen those cover, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:39

So uh yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

I saw a cover that was like for a like a later in life romance, and it was very serious. It was like a divorced woman. She had gone through a lot of tragedy and stuff, but it was a it was a cartoon cover, and I don't know. I was like, I feel like this cover doesn't match this story. And I probably I might not have picked it up if it wasn't just doing like market research, right? Like I was like, what is what are all of these? What do we got here? You know, or all these or all these rom-coms, but it wasn't. No, it was a contemporary romance that was like a more of a later in life mature series. There was some tragedy in it with a cover that didn't match that at all. And and I don't know, I I worry that there's the the saminess makes it difficult to parse.

unknown 38:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Allie, what are your thoughts on the whole expanding contemporary reading?

SPEAKER_00 38:25

I think people are very much comfort reading right now.

unknown 38:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Um, if they're not reading the same books again, they're reading the same authors. And if they're not reading the same authors, they're saying the same genre. Like we were mentioning earlier, they're not branching out, they are very much niche down. And I understand completely because I do the exact same thing, but I think it's also doing us a disservice in that we are not having the opportunity to find new books in new settings, in new worlds. Um I'll be the first to admit I read the same 10 books over and over again. I will hit the end and go back and reread that from that same book from the very beginning over again three or four times in a row because it's such a comfort read. But I picked up some books this week and I read the first couple of chapters of three different books, and all three books were so terrible.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Um and it was so disappointing, and it made me want to go back to my comfort read. Yeah, it was such a letdown, and one of them was very much recommended by a good friend of mine. He said, Oh, book one's okay, but book two gets better. It did not get better, it did not get better. And I understand the impulse for comfort reads, I understand the reason for sticking to things that feel good and are familiar and bring that joy, that dopamine hit. But at the same time, I do want to branch out, I do want to try new things, and there's so many books out there I could read for a hundred years and not read all of them.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

But I would think why we've been struggling with the anthology. What you're saying is that it people are are looking for comfort reads and their comfort genres, and so they might not be willing to branch out. Well, our anthologies are all about discovery, discovering a new author, a new subgenre, a new category, you know, and also short stories themselves. Although I think a lot of people read novels in romance, they don't read short stories. So we're asking people to branch out when they buy one of these a lot, you know, and it's an opportunity, but also I can totally see why it's a risk. Many risks, you know.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

At the same time, it it's sort of like in my mind, the answer, right? You don't invest in 350 pages in an author that you maybe don't know or a story you don't know, whereas you can invest an hour in a you know, one little story in a book and and maybe you love it, or maybe you read the first few pages and like nope, not that, and you go to the next story in it. Um, so in some ways, that could be the answer of getting out of a slump or discovering new things or even new types of reading. I I too am very contemporary romance oriented. So to have an opportunity to read something historical that I might not have normally read, uh, you know, I it's interesting uh to to do that. So I'm gonna I'm gonna tout the anthologies as an answer to this.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

That's the solution as well. But I can see why people would would be like, well, you know, but like I have my 10 books over here that I know are high quality and that will give me dopamine, and the world is not a good source of dopamine right now, and that is 10 short stories and a book full of things that I don't necessarily know that I like. And I totally can see why it's instead of an opportunity for discovery, it's an opportunity for risk, you know.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

I can probably why people a lot of times are picking up the um you know, the adaptations or the the stories that include worlds they know. I think of you know, Pride and Prejudice, and we have all these, we have it from Mr. Darcy, and we have you know all these different things. And I have found a lot of times though I'm kind of disappointed in them, right? Because they're not the original. And if they don't adequately capture what I how I interpret it, then they they sort of become a disappointment. But I could see why people would sort of trend towards, okay, this is adjacent to what I love.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

Yeah, it's fanfiction, it's just it's public fan, it's published fanfiction. I mean, this I think this is why Alchemize is also so popular, right? Like yeah, yeah, it's something adjacent that got people interested in a thing because it was somehow attached to a couple properties they knew that they liked, and then they discovered it that way. It was a way in, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

And it's one of those things where the book is almost always better than the movie. The source material is almost always better than the adaptation.

unknown 42:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

It's often true. As my mom would say, that's what you get for reading. When you're like, well, that didn't happen in the book. Uh I try very hard when I'm watching an adaptation to understand why they made this change and what they had to cut. And I try to be very generous with that. But sometimes I'm like, I don't get it. I don't know why you changed that. I remember when they first were gonna make Twilight, I think MTV had bought it, and they were gonna make Bella athletic and nothing with it and all this stuff, and I'm like, that's not that book.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

I wouldn't mind making her athletic, maybe a clumsy athlete. I would be cool with that. She's just so she's like, she's not interested in anything. Sorry, don't get me going on Twilight.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Don't get me going. My point is, is they bought this book, and then one of the main parts of the character they were like taking, and I was like, that made no sense. Now, the other Bennett sister, they cut huge sizes. Sections of the book out of it. But I understand why they did it because the book is really about Mary, but the show leaned more into the romance. So they cut sections out, they're sort of wheedled in just lightly, but most of it was get that. And I enjoyed it just fine.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

I love adaptations. I actually like the adaptation of the first book of Outlander as a TV show a lot better than I like the book. And I really like the book. I really, really like the book. But I like that that first season of Outlander. Damn good. It is damn good.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Oh man, I watched the end of that. I had thoughts, but that's not on our thing to talk about today.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Yeah, that's going on Outlander. Dangerous. Very dangerous. Or Bridgerton. At this part of the show, we like to talk about our books that we're reading right now, what recommendations we've got, and or just what's what you're excited about. Let's start with Allie.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

Uh so I'm reading an arc of a book that's coming out on June 3rd or 4th. Um, it is called Fourth and Falling by Susan Renee. It is Chef's Kiss Perfect, and I absolutely adore it. And I think everyone should be reading it. Um and I'm reading, I'm mainly reading contemporary sports romance right now. That's really what I'm in the mood to read. Um I am reading Color His World by Taryn Quinn. I just finished that one. It is not sports, but it is a grumpy writer, and she she's so it's so great. Just trust me, you have to read it. Um and yeah, those are the two that I've really, really enjoyed lately.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

That's awesome. How about you, Jenna? I am reading, you know, I've only just started it, but I'm really enjoying it. It's called The Book Witch. I'm not even sure it's a romance, but there is a romance in it. Um it says fantasy, magical realism, contemporary fantasy, and romance with elements of mystery. I got it from my book of the month. It's about uh uh a young witch, she's in her 20s, and their job is to if somebody goes in and messes up the plot of a book, they have to go in and fix it. And one of her all-time favorite series is a noir detective from Chicago. His pages are erasing, she has to go in and get him back on track, kind of fix it. And one of the fun things about reading it as a as a writer, because there's a scene, I I mean, there's no prologue, but there is sort of a setup, and then we're gonna jump like two years. So in the setup, she's gone back to see to fix, she's gotta save the detective and get him off. So the gotta save the book, and the antagonist just does not like lowbrow fiction, so he so he is just going through and trying to ruin fiction, and he tells the character of the book, you're not real, you're made up, blah blah blah blah blah blah. Um, and when when he realizes okay, I'm not real, he starts to get agency, right? He doesn't have to do what he's told. Um, he can do whatever he wants. And there's a there's a line in it where our our witch lady is saying something to the effect of she's heard from authors. Um they get frustrated when their characters start doing whatever they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

No characters already do that.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Well, that must be why somebody's somebody's messing in my pot. Anyway, so far it's been cute, it's been light. Um, I think what's gonna happen, she does have a end up having a relationship with this fictional detective that gets her in trouble uh with her counts coven or something like that. And then two years later, I think her grandfather's kidnapped or something. So then they're gonna have to work together. Just that's the thrust of the story. But anyways, I've very much been enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

That's great. It's like a holodeck episode of Star Trek.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

Yeah. It's just it's a light, you know, if you're looking so far, if you're looking for something that's just sort of light and soft, cozy, I guess we would use. This has been it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

That's great. I have been reading Aquitar. I'm supposed to write our our romanticy article for Fantastical Foesine, and it occurred to me that I hadn't actually read one of the foundation foundational works in romantic and that I had to go read it. Uh and I'm really liking it. It's really well written. You know, I remember the whole thing we were talking about with Emily Weinstein and the unicorn stuff and everything, and and talking about the quality of romanticy. If this is a foundational text, it ain't bad. Is it my bag? No, but that's fine. Doesn't make it bad. It's pretty good. It's pretty well written.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

I I enjoyed it as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Yeah. I didn't necessarily feel the chemistry between her and Tamlin. Tamlin? Tamlin. Yeah. But no, for what it was, I remember enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

I'm actually enjoying the world building more than anything, and the characterization is really good. Like I like Fayra's, like her her character arc and her like she feels very real. I'm liking that a lot. I mean, to me, it doesn't feel like the romantic the the like fantasy elements have been left to the side at all. I have seen romanticity where I feel like there's a lot of impatience with fantasy. That is not the case here. So that's that's really great.

unknown 49:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

And of course, the first time around, this was a YA book, right? Yeah. And then later got moved into the adult fantasy. Because later books get a little steamier.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

Yeah. You know, it doesn't feel super YA to me. Uh that's the other thing. The reading it feels like a higher uh like the the writing is pretty complex and and deep, deep perspective on a character who's going through a lot. Well, I think that young adults could absolutely relate to it. I could completely see why adult readers enjoy it as well.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

I feel like maybe you're supposed to read Fourth Wing, too. Yes, which I have not read, but that's that was the one that captured that's where the dragon stuff comes from, right? The drag well, the dragon talk. I haven't read it, I have it on my audible, I have it on audio, and they did they did like a dramatization version. Have you seen this in audiobooks now? Some of them are putting out these like dramatized, so I guess like a play or whatever. And and I haven't I downloaded it, but I haven't listened to it yet.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

So I love those, you know, like BBC did those for like classical literature. I have one for Clarissa, which is like a radio play within it has sound effects, the sound of raindrops and and people opening doors and foot footsteps and things like that. It doesn't do the whole book, it's just sort of like a highlights, really. But it's it's wonderful. I love it. It's got music and everything. I mean like the I think the art of the radio playing has been lost, and we need more of them. Thank you so much for being here with us. We really appreciate it. You've been awesome.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

Thank you for having us again to be here.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

It's been it's been really great. And I I love hearing about your books. And I've been loving learning more about sports romance. We've had a couple people on who've been talking about sports romance, and it's been really a revelation to us because neither of us write sports romance, but um, I I enjoyed like heated rivalry when it came out, and I was like, oh my god, this is like a whole world. A whole like this, this, like, this category is just like this like gigantic swath of romance readers that I didn't know anything about. So it's been a wonderful discovery.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

Good, I'm glad.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

And to our listeners, we are Tender and Tempting Tales. You can find us on Substack and read great romance articles every week, written by Jenna Hart, written by me, written by guest writers. Uh, just find us on Substack as Tender and Tempting Tales. You can also find us on Instagram, get updates about our publications, see when we have calls for submission, learn all about our authors. That's TenderTemptingTales at Instagram. You can also find us on Facebook. We have our Tender Tempting Tales reader group. And of course, if you're one of our authors, you should join the author group there. And you can also join our mailing list. We have a freebie story for you that's written by Jenna Hart. It's about damn time, which is a Skullhaven Bay contemporary romance full of delicious pirate lore and friends to lovers. And it's a wonderful story, and I absolutely recommend that you get it. We have a new publication out right now that's Fireworks and Flirtation, a new summer romance anthology, full of all the tropes you love and some you might not know if you love, and romances across the subgenres that came out just a couple of weeks ago. And we hope that you'll pick up a copy. We've got it on ebook. It's in Kindle Unlimited and also in Beautiful Paperback.

SPEAKER_02 52:20

Ellie, I want to thank you again for being here. I've really enjoyed talking with you and learning about your books. I am excited about the two you talked about today. Definitely gonna go and add those to the list. And I do want to remind listeners that we will have links to Ali's website so you can go check out all her books uh, as well as to any of the books that we mentioned on the show. We'll have links to that in our show notes. And until next time, I want to wish you peace, love, and happily ever after.