Illicit Liaisons: Bookish News, Drama, and Hot Takes

This week, we discuss bookish news, hot takes, drama and more. Join us and let us know your hot takes.

BOOKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW

The Pearl Crucible by Urna Semper https://amzn.to/4waBkHK

Serialized stories by Urna Semper Substack https://urnasemper.substack.com/

Dead but Not Forgotten by Jenna Harte https://amzn.to/4eEltKh

Back to Us by Jenna Harte free at https://jennaharte.com/

Shadow of Betrayal by Eva LeClerc https://evaleclercauthor.substack.com/


TENDER & TEMPTING TALES

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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_00 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 managing editor of Tender and Tempting Tales, a steamy romance anthology for readers who like quickies.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hi, I'm Terry Lederman, social media manager here at Tender and Tempting Tales, and Laura Maven, a main fiction writer for Starship Valkyrie, a science fiction game and story universe. I write science fiction stories, including romance, and you can often find me in our anthologies and online. And today we also have Parish Baker, who writes as Erna Semper with us. Hi, Parish.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Hello. And I'm I'm here. You're here. I am here. Tell people who you are. Well, I who am I? I am a science fiction author, fantasy author, a romance author receiving stories out from the depths of the universe by unknown technology from the distant future from one Erna Semper. And I am here today because I just was so lucky. Here I am.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Receiving things hot off the Ansible.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

Hot off the Ansible from the 32nd century, yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Yeah. We have sort of roped pair to this. But it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun because today we're doing a roundup of the news, the drama, and the hot takes from winter 2026, both here at Tinder and Tempting Tales in the world of romance. There's been so much news in the bookish world this season. So much going on. A lot of it not great. Plagiarism, lying, stealing, fake giveaways, uh authors crashing out. Uh, and of course, spurious trademark claims. Here's a quick list. We had Crossover Gate. Uh that was the person that trolled themselves, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yes, yes, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

An overweight character or something. Yeah. We had the Heated Rivalry cover scandal, which Chelsea Curto was attacked for having a cover similar to Heated Rivalry, even though Heated Rivalry's cover came out after Chelsea's. We have the Meg Weinstein craziness on X. That was just, I can't even go into that anymore. Um, the book con drama, uh, because we we talked about that one several times. Get that upset anybody drama where uh a reader got upset feeling an author was rude, and there's some question about whether that was really the case. We have the bookish app that dropped and then flopped. Uh, and then of course, we've had a couple trademark dramas. The most recent one was The Hot Girls Read, in which she has actually gone ahead and surrendered her trademark, and then there was the blind date with a book. Not sure what's what's up with that, but anyways, lots of craziness going on in the book world.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Yeah, I I do want to talk about the trademark drama. I to me, that's like this is one of the most important things going on in the bookish world right now because it it keeps happening. I thought that we'd saw in the you've seen the end of this with Cocky Gate with the Omega Verse stuff. I'm just I'm really frustrated with people in the bookish world, whether they're authors or people selling merch trying to trademark things. This is the this is not how trademark is supposed to work. Like, this is not what you do. Like so the the hot girls read thing, particularly the thing that frustrated this uh me about this was if you look at the the folks who were challenging it, they made a lot of good points. US PTO should have never approved this in the first place. I couldn't believe that they even gave her the trademark in the first place because it was not integral to her brand. You know, her brand was not hot girls read. It was it was her own, you know, her it was just one thing that she made merch of. And there were a lot of people before her who had been making this merch, you know. So it's not like you would think of this person when you got something that said hot girls read. You wouldn't immediately be like, oh yeah, that's this person. You would just see it and it would just be like a generic bookish thing that you would get at an event, right? So it it would it would be like it would it would be like someone trademarking panini, you know, or a or a grilled cheese sandwich, you know, it's like with a book, or blind date with a book, yeah. Like this is the kind of product, it is not a thing that is like synonymous with any particular brand, you know. You can you can trademark your the name of your brand. Like we trademarked Starship Valkyrie, you know, but we didn't trademark a bunch of things within it, you know, like a bunch of slogans and things like that, because they're not necessarily synonymous with Starship Valkyrie, and it would be a little trolley for us to go around trademarking every single thing that we had any merch associated with, you know, like as long as our thing says Starship Valkyrie, it's fine, you know? Um, or like it would be like McDonald's trade had trademarked, I think, uh, I'm loving it, because that's kind of synonymous with their brand. It's something they say, you know, d-da-da-da. I'm loving it. That is synonymous with McDonald's. I think a smart thing for her to do would have been to create like a logo word mark. So like a particular design of Hot Girls Read that was more synonymous with her because you can trademark a design, like a particular logo. And I think that would have been very I think that would have been quite valid for her to do. It'd be like, okay, this is my Hot Girls Read. This is the thing I sell, but other people can still do Hot Girls Read. And the way she was talking about it was like she thought she had done that, right? But she didn't. She did the full word mark so for so that nobody else could use it on any of those products, which is that's not what you do. That's not how you do this. So I'm I'm glad that she surrendered it. The challenge made a lot of really good points. And the thing I want to tell people is that right now they're in the pending period for blind date with a book. So if you are a like a bookish creator, someone who creates uh blind date with a book and you sell those, you have standing when the public comment period goes up to challenge it. The USB TO has to do a month of comment period. If you have standing, if you sell this product, please go challenge it before this gets approved by the USB TO. I don't know if they're asleep with a wheel or what's going on, but they did approve Hot Girls Read. So I don't know. She obviously didn't have prior standing. She obviously didn't have prior use. It should have never been approved, but they did approve it. So they might approve Blade Date with a book. So I do think that if you do have standing, you should go challenge it and like be on top of that. It's still pending right now, it hasn't been approved. Hopefully, it's not, but please challenge it. That's where we are with the trademark.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

I don't know how the trademark office works in terms of do they have people that go out and look, or do they distrust what the attorney or the the applicant has sent in? Because you're supposed to investigate sent in a bunch of stuff that they apparently took as that's what it was when it when it wasn't that that okay, she started using this in 2022 or whatever it was, 2020, I can't remember the date. Um, and the idea that she was the first one to do it and use it or whatever, where it would have been easy to see that that was not the case, that somebody else had been using it before. So I don't know whose shoulders it falls on to verify anything that's submitted. I I don't know how it works, but yeah, you would think that somebody somewhere would have said, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

My IP lawyer told me that they're the USPTO is supposed to investigate these things. So just because you've made a claim doesn't mean that it's true. They're supposed to look at your claim and and check things on the internet. Like we had to like make sure that we were in the stream of con commerce, all of our stuff was thoroughly checkable so that USPTO could check to see if we had done those things. Like if they were just believing our lawyers, we could have said any old thing, right? I was assuming that they were doing their duty and checking things, and that if they were just checking her, what they're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah, but if they were just checking her, they could verify yes, she used this in 2021 or whatever. Or they were she had lucky that anybody else was using it.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Yeah, here's the thing is she wasn't using it in 2021, she actually she perjured herself. She had started selling in 2023 and said she had started using it in 2021 and that she had invented it. Any cursory check would show that she perjured herself.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah. Oops. Oops. Well, she did do a video, and I, you know, when you upset a community as much as that did, I don't know how you come back from it, but as Mia Culpas go, I thought she did okay because she didn't come on boo-hooing about being attacked by the bookish community, and she led with I'm surrendering the mark. Yes, she didn't she led with the most important thing, I'm surrendering the mark. And then she went on to explain what uh her thought behind it as a business thing. Okay, no, she's running a business, that makes sense. There's a lot of people who really don't buy that, right? Um, but that would be the reason to do it. I own it and I now I take my competition down. That is business thinking. That's also what made her get in trouble because she also at one point in a video said that she really wasn't, you know, she just wanted to own it as a business thing and she wasn't going to go after people, but in fact, she did with kindness and love. Something like that with love. If you're using this, you need to take it down, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

She seems to think that people won't find that threatening. The moment you start talking about intellectual property, it's a threat.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

It doesn't matter how you say it and how kindly you say it. What she was saying is that I own this, you can't use it anymore. And there's no nothing she can say that says that that's not what she said. It's very clear. We saw it in the post, so yeah. So she did the good thing and she did it quickly. I I don't know that the other place it's trying to do blind date with a book. I don't, you know, they're a book ordering.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Oh, ivory chapters, ivory chapters, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

So at least she did that, but I her business is probably um in the tubes, in the tubes, yeah. She'll have to read it. That's hard to come back from else.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Yeah, you just can't alienate people like that on a broad scale and and assume they're going to want to work with you later.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

Yeah. Yeah. Or buy from you. Yeah. Yeah. She seemed to think this wasn't threatening, and then all she had to do was just say, Well, I own the trademark, so you can't use it now. That's not how that works, honey. You've got to send cease and desist letters, you've got to spend money, and then you've got to take people to you got to take people to cleaners over it. That's why it sounds like a threat. The moment you start throwing IP claims around you are threatening people, do not ever think that you are doing it with kindness and love. It is not kindness and love.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

But you also have to remember the people who are making these things are just people sitting at home. Yeah. With a so with a side hustle. And when you see that, it it could be frightening. Chilling. Yeah, it's absolutely like you get a cease and desist letter. So having an announcement, I own it now. It's like, oh shit, I don't want to get in trouble. So I'm gonna take my stuff down, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:57

The question is how many people lost money over this? How many people threw away merchandise over this? How many people stopped selling a thing that was selling well for a month over this? Like, how many people stopped taking certain merchandise to con to conventions over this? There were a lot of events during this time period. How many of them lost money because of this? And she talks about the harm that she did. I don't think she understands how much harm she could have done over this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

In a in an unrelated kind of world back in the mid-teens and earlier, there were a lot, there's a big move in the Department of, I believe in the Department of Commerce to like regulate exact contents of every kind of chemical or whatnot that you had in fabric and all these things. And they say, well, here's the easy thing. All these all these people just have to do is just like provide a sheet saying what's in this fabric and what's in this wood and what's in this screw, and it's no problem. Um I know from from personal experience with somebody that I knew quite well at the time who was working with doing working at home and making things, that she would have had to produce a stack of documentation against very small amounts of money. It was ruinous. It was, yeah, I doubt it was intended to be that way, but whoever came up with a set of rules had no clue. So the same thing is applying here. You are intruding upon the life of someone who is doing something that is making them a small amount of money and taking a great amount of time. And you're saying, oh, by the way, sweetie, I'm gonna absolutely destroy everything you do out of kindness and love, and and I'm gonna go on with my life, and I'm not going to make a whole lot myself, but I have ruined you. And how would you like to be my friend forevermore? Well, the common threat amongst all these things. Yes, my stickers. The common threat among all these things, I don't think I think people have a little bit of knowledge and absolutely no understanding. They don't understand the laws, they don't understand practices and standards, they don't understand how to relate with other human beings. And so they've they are attacking the dog at the wrong end here, and they are uh demonstrating a shocking amount of ignorance, I think, in all of these different scandals. It's just this weird inability to relate to other people and to reality itself.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Exactly. I completely were so mad that they made a um a Kickstarter to raise money to trademark her business name because she hadn't done that. She had a particular business name. I think she should have trademarked right there. Petty, petty, petty. But I do know that that person has since stopped that.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Well, that person actually used the money instead to file the the the challenge, which was really well done.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah, and the extra money I think was donated uh to the Trevor Project, yes, which I very much approved of. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I I do believe Ali Coe uh donated something from the sticker money from the stickers from some sales, they were donating something to bookish things as sort of their penance. But I you know, I mean they they they were pedaling fast to get back on the right track. And the question is, is it too much, too late, type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Bookish community functions on goodwill, right? And the moment you start trademarking stuff and smacking people around like this and just walking in like you own the place, people get mad at you and they're gonna remember. Yeah, and I don't I mean that was so funny. I don't I think any like lawyer worth their salt would have told her not to do this. That I went and I looked at the filing at the USPTO, and you can see the email for the for the lawyer, and the lawyer's email is that lawyer guy. Oh, really professional, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Oh using legal zoom or something, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

That lawyer that explains everything. She had no advice whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Yeah, the moment someone tells me they have a trademark, immediately go look it up and lawyer, right? The one you can afford because it's an expensive, it's an expensive lesson that she's learned. So no doubt, unfortunately for her. Uh, shall we move on to some hot takes?

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Okay. There's a lot of them lately, and I have found that I'm really enjoying the hot take booktube videos. And generally there's a booktuber, like I a lot of them I've never heard of, but it of course it will pop if I'm looking for hot takes, they pop up. Um, and I write them down for us to discuss. And this particular one, unfortunately, I cannot remember where I got it. And I'm sorry to say, but generally what happens is these booktubers will put out a call, tell me your hot takes, and their listeners, followers will submit hot takes and they respond to them whether they agree or disagree. And one of the hot takes that came through in one of the videos was that contemporary romance can never be five stars. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_03 15:55

So it must be four stars or below is the position.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Well, maybe four point five, four point seven five, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

We both write prospective fiction, and I mean, obviously that's what we like, right? So, I mean, if if someone said I like prospective fiction, so for me, contemporary fiction could never be five stars, I get that, but as a general thing, I feel like something can be five stars as long as it is being good at being the thing that it set out to be, right? So just I always because we're we're editors also, like we receive contemporary romance all the time. I receive contemporary romances, and I say, Is this a really good ex like version of contemporary romance? And a lot of the cases we've received ones where I've been like, Yeah, like your story in Moonlight and Margaritas, Jenna, five-star contemporary romance. Susie's stories, often five five-star contemporary romance. Like, I to me, it's really good at being the thing it set out to be. But I don't really rate things based on my preferences when I'm being an editor because that doesn't make any sense. And I wouldn't rate them on good reads that way. If I set out to read a contemporary romance, I need to judge it on its own standards, not on is it sci-fi romance? Because obviously it's not.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Yeah. Yeah. What are your thoughts, Parish?

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Yeah, that's it's it kind of treads dangerously on another recent scandal of someone is slaggy entire genre just because they didn't like it. I mean, it's you if if I'm if I am reading uh contemporary romance and I'm gonna like contemporary romance, and I'm gonna have five-star candidates for that for that list. I mean, that's I there's no way to approach it as someone who is a connoisseur of whatever, and say, well, someone has defined my particular liking as four-star worthier below, therefore I will not give it more than four stars because I am intellectually honest and I approve this alleged expert's position. Well, that's that no human being uh should accept that. It's no. If I like contemporary romance and I'm gonna have a five-star author, I know I am, and I'm gonna have a one-star author also. And if you gave me a sci-fi romance, say, hey, read this, I'm gonna hit that thing with a three-star fast than you can imagine, because that's not my bag. So it's it is a nonsensical statement. It means nothing.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Yeah.

unknown 18:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Kaylee Conrad did a really good video on bookish influencers and asking, Do you do these people actually like books? And sometimes I wonder that about some people who read a lot of romance online. I I worry that maybe they they read so much of it that they start to get really spicy and angry.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Well, and I I don't know who made the comment, right? I mean, maybe they only read historical romance, maybe they don't read any romance, right? Um, so but but that's what the the issue is here is that rating is not set, it's not a standard by which we all adhere to. The rating is whatever I say it is for me, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

So this person, that's their rating for them. So I guess in the general sense, the question then becomes are there very good contemporary romances? And and then the question is, what makes a very good contemporary romance? So if like Tara says, if it sets out and meets the expectations and it is executed well, then why not? I I can think of, and I can never remember the title, but Kennedy Ryan, I think, is a very good writer, very good execution of the books, and and the writing along with the execution and the things that are going on, I think are very good. Does that mean a rom-com or a Lucy School or something like that? Can't be a five. I it just depends. If I get a good giggle out of it, and and it's got a good, like I like her Riley Thorne books, and you know, then maybe, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

I I yeah, it's just it's sort of a weird statement to make and and definitely personal, like but it but would be a hot take, right? For me, I could never read a contemporary romance that was five stars. That is a hot take.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yeah, I feel like contemporary romance can get away with phoning it in because like it doesn't have to create a world. I mean, yeah, maybe I'm certainly I I I I certainly know that I like a lot more prospective fiction, and and I often feel like that I feel like prospective fiction writers are sometimes held to a higher standard, but then I read romanticy and it doesn't seem to be the case at all, right? Like it reads contemporary to me, and sometimes it feels like some writers are phoning it in. I think you'd have people phoning it in all over the place, like there are people phoning it in in every single subgenre of romance, right? So totally it's yes, there are people in contemporary romance phoning it in. Shocking. It's people producing a lot of material every year in order to stay to stay current and to pay their bills. So sometimes they're phoning it in. Yeah, shocking.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

And then I guess the question would also be why is it not fine? Is it just because it's a romance? Is there something about romances in particular they don't like?

unknown 21:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

I mean, is it an element of the romance that all of them are bad? Just contemporary. I don't know, it's an interesting thing because like Parrish said, if I read something that isn't in my wheelhouse, I might rank it a little bit lower. There's a book out there, it came out a long time ago, it's called The Night Circus, and it got a lot of buzz. I think it I think the person that wrote it wrote it during Nano Rymo, Aaron Morgenstern, Morganstern, something like that, wrote it during Nano Rimo, and it got a lot of buzz at the time. It was really big. And I remember reading it, and I was like, I am missing something here. And it's not that I didn't like it, but it wasn't a five star read for me. What was done well was done very well with Was the exclamation uh the explanation of the circus, the description of the circus, and all that. The characters, on the other hand, particularly two little main ones. And it was sort of a shock to me that they that the author could so well describe the circus, and yet he couldn't do it with the characters very well. I just just didn't, I didn't like them. I didn't, I didn't they didn't have the depth and everything that the circus had. So I didn't see it for me, not a five-star read, but I was the outlier. Like people loved this book. And it's not that I didn't like it, but I was just like, I I don't like these characters very much. Um so again, rating is all whatever I say it is for me and whatever it is for you.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Yeah, I mean, I think that things get a lot of buzz, people end up reading them a lot in order to stay current, right? When they're when they're talking about stuff in on like like booktube or something like that, or book talk, right? And I think that they want to get views. So I I don't always know that I think that they would have read that if it didn't have a lot of buzz. I don't know they would have liked it if it didn't have a lot of buzz, and a lot of people are already liking it. So to me, that that all feels highly suspect, right? Also, nano rhymes authors I used to be like my my group used to my writing group used to be a nano rhymor group, and I I one thing I know about nano rhymo authors is that all of us are really uneven skill-wise. If you're a nano rhino author, you're learning how to produce a book, and you might be really good at description and really bad at character development. That seems super normal to me.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

And Night Circus is pre-booktube, pre pre-all this that we have now. It was a book that got it got a lot of buzz, but it wasn't what we're seeing now in terms of everybody. I don't know how I heard about it, but I can't even remember the year it came out. We'd have to look it up. But but it was it had gotten eleven.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Oh, that's way before 2011.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

But I just for you too.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

I haven't looked since were really good. And I just remember thinking, I don't know, I I didn't see it.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

So you're you're you've been an agent and you've also been a ghostwriter, and so you have a a much finer understanding of craft than a lot of people do.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Well, but this is goes to readers as well, right? Like they loved it, they didn't get yeah. So maybe me if I were looking at it, of course, in 2011, I was just a low-ly-old writer. Reader, like I didn't know what I know, yeah, what I know now, I didn't know them. And maybe that overshadowed the circus bits overshadowed everything else for other readers. But for me, I I was wanting to read a romance, and I just was like, I don't not these people.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

So I mean one thing I know from from Harry Potter fandom is that people like really crappy characters. People love Severus Snape.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah, crappy character. Yeah, but he was complex too, right? So sure.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

I think people imagine a lot of complexity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

I've I've never I've never read the book.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

It's Alan Rickman, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:10

I've I've never read the book, so I I don't have any any any feeling for it, but uh I've I've heard of it, I've seen the the cover and everything. I can I can understand probably what kind of book that is. It it is very much a world book, I'll bet you. And she's got this the this thing that she's made, and people really groove on that kind of thing. Are people who really do like a well-constructed concept and world, and they're willing to forgive a little bit of wiggle room on the characters just to get the world. So I can people who would like it, I can totally understand why they would totally like it. I get it.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Yeah, I mean, it was unique for the time, right? I I think was part of it. It it was sort of it was so different. Looking at it now, it has 53,000 reviews with an average of 4.4. So solid book. Yeah, solid, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

It's a good it's a good book. There's no disputing it.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Yeah, and and I didn't give it a five. Um, and it has 60 or 5 star, 25 4 star, 11 3 star. I I probably gave it a three. I might have given it a four. I don't know. You heard it here, folks.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Circus romance can never be a five-star, according to Jenna Hart.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

I did not say that. Do not come after me with the night circus. I didn't hate it, I just didn't see what everybody else was seeing because the characters just didn't. I I I just didn't feel them. You know, which drag you down. You know, another hot take we we chose not to do today, but we can do another time, which has to do with chemistry, the the lack of chemistry sometimes in romance. And I yeah, I just wasn't feeling it. But that that's me. That's me. Uh you know, you love it, uh awesome. I'm so happy for you. Yeah, maybe we should move on before I get in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

My my hot ticket's gonna probably get me in trouble. Okay. This is what you know, I I am like a captive audience on Instagram as our social media manager. So I see a lot of like people having hot takes about AI and stuff like that. I one thing that I see a lot is folks assuming that because an author used AI on like one thing, like they made a marketing graphic with it, then they can't be trusted to not use it in other areas, so just to like change their text when they're editing or like write their prose for them. And I I don't know, like to me, this shows a really like a lack of understanding of what being an indie author entails, and like what like what even like using Canva entails and all of that stuff. And I get really frustrated by this take. I I feel like people are just sort of like, well, you've got some AI on you, you are like you are verboten, I have sorted you into the bad box. And for Tender and Tempting Tales, I am very careful to never use AI in any of our stuff. Like, I make our covers so that we know that AI has not been used. That like I do our layout, you know, like we make sure that we do our editing by hand and and do all of our copy editing by hand. We don't use grammarly for it, you know. Like I make all of our marketing graphics by hand, like everything is is made that way so that we can say, like, yeah, we don't use AI. But I don't blame an indie author for making a little quick marketing graphic with AI because they want to get back to writing. It's like this is a hard thing to do. And a lot of people, I'd be like, I had seven years of art training, like like a that's not that's a happenstance that I have that, right? Like, and that's useful, but most writers don't have that. Like most like a lot of older writers struggle with Canva, and I don't blame them for that, you know. I just think it's ridiculous to be sort of like, no, you didn't pay a social media manager to make you graphics, and you didn't pay somebody to like make you this, like like a gorgeous cover, like you used some like asset in Canva that might have been made by AI. You are therefore evil, and I'm putting you in a box. And I just think that's really unfair to people. Like, I I don't think folks realize just how expensive it can be to be an indie author if you're not using any of these tools that you might not even understand might have had AI associated with it. It's snuck into everything. And like it's hard to tell if an asset was made by AI in Canva because sometimes they go into the general pool. And I don't know, I just feel bad for indie authors who get this thrown at their heads. I've had our authors ask me, like, oh, can I use AI to animate this graphic? And I have had to be like, don't do that. I don't want it associated with us. Not because I think it's evil and bad, I think that it's cute that they're playing around with a graphic and making the fireworks go off. I just don't want people to come after them with pitchforks, and I shouldn't worry about that. It's like this is just some obviously.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

They could use a gif, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Right, right. It's just someone who's excited about it, like a like a two leave people alone. I don't know. I I understand that there are a lot of environmental concerns with with AI. I share them. Like, I I would love to see AI regulated in order to prevent it from you know, like consuming all water resources on the planet and stuff like that. I agree with that. I would like to see it regulated to make sure that like people can still make a living use like with their art and so that people are not it's not subsidized to the point where folks can just like throw slop on the internet and make it unusable. I agree with all of that. Going after indie authors is not going to solve the problem. Going after indie authors over a marketing graphic is not going to solve the problem at all, it's just a way for someone to feel powerful. Like, talk to your legislators for the love of God. Don't go after indie authors.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Speaking of legislators, we were uh went on a tour of my capital building in my state, and there is a room that has portraits of all our governors, and we were looking at one of them, and my daughter says, That looks like AI. And it was a painting, right? And I was like, you know, I thought about that one down there too, because his hand's a little wonky, but of course, none of them were, right? These were hand-painted portraits from centuries. Which is sort of speaks to people accuse things of AI that may not be AI, and that's problematic. But here's here's my other take. First of all, authors are going to have a very difficult time staying away from a tools that have AI in them, even if they don't use them.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Pro writing aid, everybody's been using that to edit or Grammarly for years. There's now there are AI thing features in it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Tim Campa.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Try Canva has AI features. And and here's the other thing: these some of these things we have already been using, like take out the background. I just want the thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Oh, yes, yeah. I use background remover all the time.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

It's been around for for years now, right? And it wasn't called AI at the time, it was just remove the background for me. That new separate the layers feature. Oh, magic layers? Yeah, that's AI. Oh my god, that's been a game changer for me. Um, because I might have an image on deposit photo. Uh, I want to change that. But anyway, the other part is we are in a visual and video world now, and you're right. For the time and money it takes for authors to make and do these things is exorbitant. Also that they might be able to sell a few books. And this idea that independent authors, all of them are making six figures, is ridiculous. Most of them are lucky if they make a hundred bucks a month.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

And they've already spent a hundred dollars a year on Canva Pro. They can spend between $30 and $200 on a cover. They've spent four hundred to fifteen hundred dollars on editing. If they want to do audio, they're looking at $5,000. I mean, there's just the expense is more than I think many readers realize. Here's the other hot take when people are saying books are too expensive. Okay, but authors don't get paid didddly poop most of the time, right? We don't have any control over that anymore. Yeah, even for the drift. It's a hard one to balance, you know. Independent authors get to keep more, but their overhead is tremendous to do all the things that particularly the bookish people like to see TikTok videos or whatever. So yeah, it becomes very difficult to not incorporate some use of AI as a tool that makes things more affordable or makes them quicker to go by quicker. And any sort of automate automation, even if it's not AI, they might want that in there too, right? So um, it's a very difficult thing. I I feel bad. All of these things are very fiddly.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Making all of our marketing graphics is very fiddly, you know, and doing our layout to try to save people money is very fiddly. I did the layout for fireworks and flirtation, and as you know, I was very attentive to making sure that we weren't wasting paper when doing different headings and stuff like that from when people had chapters in their short stories, making sure that that wasn't going to a new page to make sure that to keep the book price down so it wouldn't go to more pages, you know. Like that was the thing I was very attentive to, trying to save money for the for the consumer. You know, like we're out here looking out for you guys. And I just think people can be a little, a little bit entitled about this stuff. I understand you're you are you are you know paying your hard-earned money to buy books, and and I love that. I'm I'm loving that about readers right now, but like go to your legislators if you don't like AI. I know I am, I'm going to my legislator and talking about those things. I'm not attacking other creators, you know. Everyone is just trying to make it out here in a very, very crowded and noisy atmosphere, and dealing with the fact that Instagram is constantly changing, like it's preferencing reels. Reels are very time consuming to make, very, very, very time consuming to make, let alone reels that catch people's attention. Yeah, you know, and not everybody is extremely photogenic and can be in skits, right? Like, there are some authors out there who are extremely photogenic. That's not all of them, however. They cannot all do skits in their houses wearing cute little tiaras and looking adorable. Like, that's not everybody. Yeah. I like watching Susie's reels and susies are great. I Marissa's are great. I can do, I could probably my house is covered in toddler toys, you know? Yeah, yeah.

unknown 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

I could not do a reel with myself. That would not work. It's it's it's extremely I mean, I have so many hot takes that I could make on this, but nobody wants me to do that because I've been very destructive. But that is the the the thing is is to me, is a lot of people stake out these what they feel are very moralistic and very correct positions, and because they're extremely low cost for them to take these positions. I can say I'm against thing A all I like, and I can get people destroyed and ruined and spindled and mutilated, and I can go home feeling like a wonderful person because, of course, naturally I am. But it it what they're functioning as, particularly in this case, is a kind of gatekeeper. I mean, sometimes I see uh covers on Amazon that are obviously quite literally handmade, hand-drawn, or made with like the very most you know, primitive early aughts, you know, software and assets and things. And I I I find that find it charming that they have done this, but I also know how much money they're making. And it is to do anything, even at that scale, is as you say, so terribly time consuming. I spent three hours this morning on on several Instagram reels, okay? And if I make a nickel off that, I will be pleasantly surprised. I didn't go into it expecting that to happen. But for people to not understand what it takes to do anything, even the most terrible and simplistic thing, and believe that I can just shill up, or some person who is just gonna turn around and you use AI herself, as happened to me once. And I can say, but well, I didn't use AI, God knows what my cover person did. I mean, it was a nice, it was nice work. I didn't use it. But it was like, I say it was kind of an eye-opener. I said, Oh my God, this no one's actually doing this, are they? So it you you have to understand, you really, really have to understand what we as creatives are up against. I understand what creatives are up against who are losing work, and you can run to the Trads and complain about that because they're the ones with the cash. I am not. I cannot afford to do anything. I have to do what I can as best as I can, as morally as I can. And that's my terrible hot take, which is probably way over my skis now. So I'll stop.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yeah, you want to get mad at Simon and Schuster. Go get Matt at Simon and Schuster people for some. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

With Hash it, wasn't Hash It did the Ohio Hash it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

No, something that they they were going to publish. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

It was already published in the UK and they were getting ready to release. What I want to make sure that we're clear on here is what we're talking about here isn't you know using generative AI to write the books and do all this stuff. What we're talking about is the tools that authors need to use to help them compile the books or or uh market the books that now, even before when we were using them before, now they do have AI associated with them. And even if the author, like if it's somebody said, Oh, you use pro writing aid, you you know, you used AI. Well, you we've been using pro writing aid for years and it didn't have AI in it, right? And we're still using that tool. And yet, you know, I write in Word, and all of a sudden there's a copilot dude at in the corner. You know, I'm not using it, right? But you know, so it's it's my and Jane Friedman actually had this in a in her email, I want to say a week ago, where somebody else had responded saying authors can't even get away from it. So it's in the tools they're using, whether they use that feature or not. Like Canva obviously has that. And we've been using Canva for years to make our you know videos or our assets to market. Inescapable.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Yeah, I mean, I don't use I don't use magic to create graphics, but a bunch of the graphics that are there available probably you were a magic at some point. It's hard to know which one on a knot. Like it's not like they say which one is drawn and created by magic. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

So I think it's really what was I? I was using something the other day where it's like we can layer, we can do an AI thing over this. I was like, no, that's okay. This is the way I entered it. This is the way I want to use it, you know. Um if I'm adding my document and it says you spelled this word wrong, if I click it and say write it the correct, if like I don't rewrite it, I click the thing and say, Well, fix it. Am I using AI and am I in trouble? That those are the things because there's nuance here. And I think a lot of people aren't recognizing that. That these AI features are tools, many of them we've used before that didn't have AI, but now AI, you know, is a tool that some authors may choose to use because again, just like automation or anything else, it saves us money. This is an expensive thing.

SPEAKER_03 40:13

And if you want to keep book costs down, we if you want any books at all that are not made by the by the five or four or three Trad publishers that there are, uh you you can't push everybody out and say, well, you have to spend a thousand dollars a year to make a hundred dollars a year, and that is for our benefit, so we consider on feeling good about ourselves. That's not how the world is going to work at all.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Yeah, you could easily spend $2,500 to $5,000 to produce one book.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

And now you and now you have to get it, you have to get it to readers, and particularly romance, it's a very competitive thing. How do you do that?

SPEAKER_02 40:51

I mean noisy, it's noisy out there, really hard to even get people's attention to find readers. Yeah. So to say nothing, in fact, that Instagram keeps changing its algorithm. Yeah, right. They snuck reels in and now they're preferencing everything as reels. It's it's really frustrating. Yeah, single single frame story.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

I know TikTok now is preferencing their stories. I'm like, where the what's the difference between a TikTok and a story?

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Why do we have stories now?

SPEAKER_02 41:16

Because of because of Instagram and Facebook, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Instagram has reels because of TikTok. Yeah. You know, and they have stories because of Snapchat, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:26

So the thing I really don't like is all of these the the preference for reels and skits, right? Is it's forcing authors to sell themselves and a parasocial relationship with themselves in order to sell books instead of their books. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

Bad modreal.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

It's yeah, and it's like that preference is a certain, like a person of a certain age, a person of a certain gender, and a person of a certain attractiveness, you know, and and and people without toddler toys around their house, I have to say.

unknown 41:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

People are good light, like being like, I could do this, but where would I put the toddler toys?

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Yeah, I always feel like if I showed my face, they'd be like, Oh, that's an old lady writer. She probably doesn't write what I want to, you know. I'm a I'm a millennial or Z writer and I want to read all this stuff. Even though I feel like I what I write definitely fits into the stuff that they want to read. Oh, yeah. I'm afraid they'll look at me like, oh, that's an old lady.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Guess what, readers? A lot of the things that you you read and like are probably written by middle-aged or older women.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Just let you know.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Middle-aged women built a romance genre.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Yeah. Gen X romance writers watch so that you the the the Gen Z TikTok writers could run.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

It's just there's so many, you know, young writers. Trademark that's what we have in our books. I love watching them on TikTok, and I'm like, I would just look like I would look silly, this old lady doing what they're doing. But not all of it.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

Nothing is a bigger warning there than something like Milo Winter, right? You got people who are selling themselves, their personalities who are really good at marketing, who can't write.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Paris, do you have a hot take on something?

SPEAKER_03 42:59

Oh golly, does spice ruin a good plot? How about that, a question for a hot take? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

It's right up there with the can't be five stars.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

That certainly is. That that one crossed my radar extremely recently. Um again, uh you if you're looking for a lot of absolutes in my universe, I don't have money to hand out. And that's that is a thing that can happen, but it's not a thing that necessarily can happen. It's it's a scale sort of thing. On top of scale is expectation. If we have ourselves an anthology apropos of absolutely nothing, full of, you know, 10 to 13 great stories each, which you definitely should head over to Amazon and buy, uh, you're gonna have up to 10,000 words or a little more to accomplish an entire function that probably should take 40 to 50,000 words if you're really working to scale. And in the 40 to 50,000 Word book, you are not going to have five to ten percent of those probably are going to be spicy. But you have to have rather more of that to fit it, you know, to actually get the scene out in a short story. And we had had a discussion of this recently because I was like saying, Well, you should have so many words. And somebody says, Well, I don't know if I just want to classify by words. And then if I said, Well, it's it's really more you've got to have a certain amount to get the kind of scale out. Sometimes I don't feel like I have enough, and sometimes I feel like I have too much. And sometimes I pick up something that somebody's written, I say, this is like every other page, and this is an actual large book. What's going on here? This is this is what's that word against smut. So it's really what are you trying to accomplish? I don't think that you can say that it will. I'd say it can if you're not using the spicy scenes for the purpose that they are intended. If you're just using them to, shall we say, gratify the reader and or yourself, and you're not actually doing it to further the story, that's a that's a problem, but that's a story problem, that's a writing problem. Uh, if you have to actually achieve the function of the story. And if it is by smuddy scenes, then it's by smuddy scenes. If it's by long stretches of dialogue, it's by that. It's by action by action. What's your purpose? What's your point? What's your pleasure? So there you go. That's my hot take.

unknown 45:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

And that was an interesting discussion that had come up over the story, where I, you know, I was like, it it fits three for me, you know, in terms of what we require for three chili peppers. But then finally, in the discussion, understanding what you were looking for, that made sense as as well. So it's more than just they need to meet a three, but you know, the story needs there needs to be some depth to meaning and you know, in terms of what's going on. And I agree, every scene needs a purpose. And it's either driving plot or revealing characters, usually, you know, what we're looking for. So whether it's a fight scene, whether it's a spicy bit, whether whatever it is, it needs to have something going on besides simple titillation. Now, there's a lot of readers out there that are happy just to have scenes thrown in just for titillation. I'm a ghostwriter. I have to write a lot of these scenes. And sometimes I'm like, Here we go again. I feel like this could be, you know, I mean, sometimes it could be, yes, they're gonna do this thing, but I don't, it doesn't feel like I have to show it. It feels like I could just shut the door here and we can move on. Um, but in what my client wants, I end up writing that scene. So I understand that there's readers that are just happy to have that, and that's great. But I do really feel kind of what Paris is saying is that these scenes need to serve a purpose. But but let me also say this when I was writing this new book, uh one of the issues of this book is is this paranormal world where there's a a ritual bonding, and that bonding is sealed when when the it's consummated, right? So that they they have sex and it's consummated, and in this book, he does not want to do that, he does not want to seal the deal, so to speak. Seal the deal. Seal the deal. Having been reading it, that's extremely funny. But they are highly attracted to each other, right? So, and I also I am not a slow burn person, like I it's like I don't want to wait till the end of the book to have this, so you know. So, but there is so there is a scene that you know has a spicy element to it. It is highly erotic. They do not seal the deal there, so but it also, but that's sort of what's layered on top of it, right? Two people highly attracted to each other, suspicious of each other, not wanting to complete this thing, and yet this attraction is there, this pull is there. So it's still it's still part of what's going on, what they do here, because you know, they want to do it, do this thing, but can't, or you know, so in my in my mind, okay, I get to add this bit, but it still reveals things, it's still part of the plot, it's still part of the conflict and tension that's going on between them. When I think about my other books, it's sort of like, well, I know I have to have two or three love scenes in these, you know, in 78 to 80,000 words. So there is a four, you know, I need to have two or three in my mind. That's and but how do I put them in where they make sense and where it's not just you know gratuitous? Yeah, that's a challenge sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

I personally don't like reading spicy scenes where I feel like someone is trying to just check the box, they're trying to make sure that they have the spice element. And I've I've you know, sort of assisting with the editors and making sure things hit the requirements and the guidelines. I have read a quite a number of spicy scenes that have felt to me like they're perfunctory, like they're there because we've required that they be there, you know. And like they're still good, they're well written, you know, like they they hit the guidelines, you know. But like I understand what Rachel and Parish as the editors are saying when they say like this needs more spice or this feels like it needs to be incorporated better. I've actually changed the way I write for the anthologies. That's why I I had that word count thing, is because I feel like if I do aim for a higher word count, I have to do more with the scene than do what I did in Crimson Wake, which was very like, I know I need to check this box, right? And I know I need to do this, and it was very difficult, right? Like, but when I actually incorporate it in and I make it a really a part of the plot and I make it part of the character development, it's much easier to write and it hits the requirement naturally, right? Like it the the and I no longer have to add to the spice because I've I I'm hitting the requirement. I'm actually making them feel like this is not a perfunctory scene. So I have changed the way that I've approached it.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

Um but the hard take is spice ruins a good plot, and I think maybe if there's a spicy bit that maybe doesn't need to be there, I'm not sure that it would ruin the plot. If I mean, if you like the characters and were invested in them, and it's sort of like the epilogue, right? Doesn't need to be there, but sometimes it's fun to read. And so I'm not sure I would I guess it would depend on the book on whether it ruined the plot. It just doesn't always need to be there, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

It's all about the way the author's using it. Like, oh, let me talk about my favorite sci-fi romance from last year, The Pearl Crucible, where the spice definitely elevated the plot. Like a parish dying. I thought that the spice elevated the plot, it really added to what was going on with the characters, you know. So, like, it's about how the author's using it. If you're just checking a box to make sure that there's enough spicy scenes, maybe it can ruin the plot. I don't know. I I I've certainly seen perfunctory spice, but I just skip them. You know, I just just skip ahead. It doesn't ruin anything for me. If I feel like it's perfunctory, I just move move on to the next part. There the rules for the rules for novels are different from the rules for short stories as well, you know. Like in a short story, if if the sex is perfunctory, it's also wasting words that could have been used on plot development, and you're not using it to develop your plot or your characters. I guess it could be kind of annoying. Like it's like, oh, you're wasting 500 words on something that you're not even into, that's lame. But I've rarely seen that.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Yeah, yeah. I I will admit I was the one that was sort of resistant to having the word count. And the reason is is because kind of what we're talking about here. If if if the spicy bit is something that is in the moment fast and furious, and just like, oh, we can't take it anymore, we're gonna do this thing. It's gonna, you know, the pacing is quick. Everything about it is quick, and you still can have the other things like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing this, but man, I really want, you know. Whereas it maybe it's at the end of the story and they're in love, and it's gonna be a much longer, slower type of scene, right? And uh and and both can fulfill the requirements that all of us are saying in terms of a level three, but also having it fulfill that other bit. But you know, the lengths could be quite different, and that's sort of why I was a little resistant to saying we need to have 10% or whatever of that.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

The the 10% rule is is a useful rule of thumb for somebody who's struggling to hit the three chili pepper it mark. If that's happening to you consistently, trying to hit 10% of your word count with spice will help you get over the hump, help you get the hump at the top. Get a rise out of everybody, huh? If you are a very practiced three or higher chili pepper author like Jennifer, it the rule does not, you don't need the rule, right? But if you are like me, yeah, it's a useful thing to utilize. It's a it's a learner's, it's a tray they're training wheels in a way to help you hit that mark. It's not something everybody has to adhere to.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

But you know, like you want to write a book on all the different ways you can write a spicy bit, not you know, not just the different heat levels, but you know, fast and furious, or maybe you've almost just been killed and now you're celebrating life, or you know, now you've just admitted you're in love, it's the end of the book, you know, because those scenes can be all sorts of different ways, and you know.

SPEAKER_02 53:17

I I after after we had that debate, I went back and I looked at what probably one of our hotter ones from Fireworks and Fortation, which was Lynn's. And she doesn't spend 10% on it, but it's still she's so practiced at it and so good at it that it like it just feels hot, like you're sort of like in the perspective of the main character so much that the word count doesn't matter. So, like if you're very good at that, it doesn't matter, right? Like, but Lynn didn't have a problem hitting that spice level, like it just depends. If if you're like me and you have you're having trouble with it, the 10% count can really help you.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Yeah, because you don't want word for word's sake, right?

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Well, it's not reason we don't put it in the guidelines, it's just so like, hey, this this writer's having trouble with this. They're like Tara, maybe we should give them this rule of thumb to help them. But if you're not like me, if you're like Lynn and this is easy for you, we're not holding you to that. It doesn't matter, right? Like we're not even noticing as editors. We're almost like, is this erotica? You know, we're on the other side.

SPEAKER_03 54:11

You you you bring up bring up Pearl, and I'll I'll just I'll just roll with that because the the Pearl Crucible, the the main character, the the spicy bit is part of her psychology and how she's relating to the world that she is in, or how she's relating to the story that's happening around her and the person that she people that she is with is because of who she is and how she adapts the experience that she's having to what to the to the spicy part to the story is is a big part of the story. It's without that, the her story does not make nearly as much sense. It so it is it is performing a constructive purpose. If it's not there, then Dernana Fenneck is not who she is.

SPEAKER_02 55:02

Yeah, I am I thought it was really great because it felt like it was like your entire society on Iphigenia, which I know that I don't say the same way you do, but I it's like the entire society of Iphigenia like wrapped up in a bubble. Like I felt like that scene was Ipigenia, which I thought was really cool.

SPEAKER_03 55:16

Like it explained the whole thing. Because you can't just sit down and you say, Well, this is how my crappy world works. I almost use a worse word than that. This is how my crappy world works. Because that's that's like telling, you know, it's not showing, but to see her going through this, and then in another case, refusing to explain in two different cases, refusing to go and narrate her experiences with another person because that's me, that's mine, that's not yours. This one, this is work. This is what I'm supposed to I'm supposed to say. This like I'm supposed to work, I'm supposed to do these things, I'm supposed to obey, I'm supposed to do this with this person because it's not because I'm being forced, because it's natural for me to do that. But she segregates the other experiences. Well, that's mine. You don't need to know about that.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

Yeah, it's almost like the way that the way that she does that, that she segregates her experience with Barcina away is almost like by telling us about Effin, she's working for us too, right? She's like, okay, I'm working for you. I'm sending this through the Ansible because I, you know, like I know that you earthlings also want to like read about this experience. And so I'm gonna work for you as well. But not when I'm with Barcena, that's not for you. Like it that it makes that weirdly explicit, that relationship. Almost like she's a servant for us too. That that is like mind-blowing, anyways. Go read Pearl Crucible. If you haven't read it yet, go read it.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Pearl Crucible. All right, people. Now that we've shared all the hot takes and probably gotten ourselves in trouble, yes, we do have news and things that are going on here at Tinder and Tempting Tales that readers might enjoy. First of all, I am going to be attending SAS 2026 in Richmond. And so not only will I be there with my books, and I have a new pin name series coming out that I am desperate to have there. I I think I'm gonna make it, I think I'm gonna make it. But Tinder and Tempting Tales will also be there, and so I'm really excited to get all the books and all the doodads to give away with that.

SPEAKER_02 57:24

You'll also see one of our editors there, Rachel, which will be there helping Jenna. You can eat Jenna Hart, you can meet Rachel Young, one of our editors. There'll be copies of Moonlight and Margaritas, there'll be copies of Fireworks and Flirtation, we'll have cute little bookmarks. I mean, it's a cute.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

You know, if you want to meet a celebrity, Jenna's mom.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

That's the one, right? Sign up for that.

SPEAKER_02 57:47

Go have a cocktail with Jenna's mom. Everyone loves Jenna's mom. Yep. Yep. And you know, we've got a cute little banner there. Like we'll have our little like QR codes that are shaped like hearts that I made that you you can use to go like look at our our anthologies and stuff like that. And we'll also have book cards for Fantastic Powers because it won't be out in time for Jenna to take it with her. But yeah, go see Jenna. It's gonna be exciting. And we've got fireworks and flotation is out right now. It came out May 18th. Please go go get yourself a copy. We now have we put a larger copy up, so we've changed out layout. So if you got a copy earlier and it's really chonky, that was the five by eight. There's now a six by nine up. We hope that people like it. I thought it looked really pretty. Yes, go get another one. Foes is releasing July 13th. Fantastical foes. That's uh our um our romantic zine, our July issue. Anime Silvers, very, very exciting. And the the cover reveal is running right now as we are recording. Um, Sapphics Call. It's Saphix of Saturn. That's the zine that I am editing that is opening up in August. If you want to write a sci-fi Sapphics story, please do submit. I'm very excited about that. And then we have our release for Starlet and Spellbound, which our next anthology, our anthology, in September. That's gonna be really cool. We are currently editing that right now, and we're waiting on a few people with extensions. It's gonna be pretty darn good. It's witchy, it's paranormal. Uh we have something from Overk that's very exciting. We're gonna have something from Jenna in there, sort of a bewitched rom-com story. We've got something from Parish, which I think is very good. Lady Chatterjee's lover. Yeah, it's a good lineup. We've got our Substack articles and author takeovers going on right now. There's like Substack posts going up about each of the authors that's doing a takeover. Jenna's ran yesterday. Mine was earlier this week. We had one for Parish. We'll be having one for Susie next week and then Marissa later on that week. So everyone's got really cool goodies and giveaways. Please do keep an eye on those. Click on those if it says meet blank author, like click on that. There's gonna be goodies and giveaways for you there. And if you join people's newsletters and stuff, Jenna's takeovers, not her takeover, her giveaway is still going right now, but I think by the time this goes up, it might be over. But she is giving out a $25 gift card. Uh so yeah, there's good reasons to keep an eye on those and and join the giveaways, people. Like, don't let don't let money and free books get away from you. Uh, and then for the podcast, we just had Ali Lasky. Uh Mara Heath is coming next week. We're gonna do a foes cast for everybody in Fantastical Foes, it's gonna be really exciting. And if you are a listening author right now and you have a cool new release coming up, you've got events coming up that you're going to, you've got a really cool work in progress you want to talk about. Please send us a message if you want to come on the podcast and uh and talk to us and we'll see if we can get you scheduled. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

We've got a lot of things going on. It feels a little bit like plate spinning.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

It's yes, it's endless plate spinning. I worked 12 hours yesterday on Tender and Temping Tails stuff. Oh my golly. Looking forward to taking some time off after Foes is done.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:40

All right. So instead of book recommendations, I would like you guys to tell our listeners what's new with you as authors and what you're working on.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:47

Okay. Well, I am I got lots of things going on simultaneously because that's how I roll. I am editing a book in real time on my Substack, which is about the third time that I've written it. So I'll be pretty darn good by now.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:00

And when I get that done with being rewriting it, then I have to actually edit it for real to clean up all the garbage. Then I can publish it sometime early next year. Fantastic. That's uh Fallen from Stars, which is a science fiction uh story set in uh around my world, which I will not pronounce, but uh she comes from a different star altogether and happily and innocently comes here as an ambassador. And boy, does that place suck. Uh, I'm also writing uh two more stories uh simultaneously written that world. One is possibly a novella, although sure is getting long. It is.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

I was gonna say, you're on chapter 20 now.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:37

Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm getting there. The case of the engagement party, which is a murder mystery, or as they would say on Evagnaya, they would call it a property destruction mystery. And then also working on a very interesting story about a very large blue man who is an escape slave himself, and he's about seven feet tall, and he has encountered a 40-something-year-old, very bored, wealthy woman who is widowed and has no kids, and who just does not know how to fit him into her life, although she has found at least one way to do so. And I'll let you figure out what that way is. And so those are the big three things I'm working on.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:19

He fits right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:22

If he's careful, he fits fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:25

If I knew you were gonna be with us on the podcast, I would have worn my shirt, my rattles shirt.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:30

Well, it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:31

Our big blue rattles. It's clean. I've got him, he's folded right over there.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:36

It's clean, the story is not.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

Go read Lion in the Garden, people. You need some blue man in your life.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:43

You certainly do.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

Oh my golly, Jenna. Well, the seventh book in the Valentine mystery series, Dead But Not Forgotten, is now up in print. It was it's been up in ebook for a little while, and that is a second edition. The first edition was done in Susan Stoker's world. I got my rights back, and so made the little changes I had to make, but the story is the same. Um and of course, I do have an eighth book planned for that, but you know, uh for two years. Man is still dead in that rowboat. If you're gonna write this book, it is Dead Guy in the rowboat, and you know, we'll see. We'll see. Um, I do have a new prequel, Reader Magnet Back to Us, set in the Southern Heat World. Tells this story of Lexi and Mitch's parents getting together. That one turned out really cute because I had never planned to write that, but I was really happy with how that turned out. It is free, ginnahart.com, go sign up, you'll get it. Um, and then of course, I've been working on a new series under a new pin name set in New Orleans, Shadow of Betrayal, which um currently is getting formatted and the cover is getting finalized. And so my hope is to have it at SAS at this all. I'm really excited about it. I still have a hard time describing what it is, except for Southern Gothic paranormal romance fantasy.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

But I think I would call it a paranormal mafia romance.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

Having read Mafia, it's not mafia, it's a secret society of families who protect the veil, the the barrier between life and death. Each of these four families has a warrior who that is that is the one who is the protector of the veil. Each family has a council member, so there's politics going on. Uh, and there is a in this first book, we don't know it yet, but there is a prophecy that was set up uh in 1830 that will come out through the series. Although I do have a story in uh what is that called? Devious delectable decades. That is the origin story of that, but you do not have to read that. Uh but uh yeah, there's prophecy. This first one is a murder mystery. Uh, there's fated mates, arranged marriages, you know, all the stuff people like. And there is there is some a little bit of spice in it. So is which I've already described to you earlier when we were discussing whether spice ruin is a good plot or not. There is some spice in this, anyways. I'm very excited about this. I hope people love it. So it is right now. You can read on Substack till the end of June. If you do want to go read it there, it's all posted there. Of course, it's good. It's it's raw, it's a raw draft up on uh Substack. It has been revised since then. But anyway, so that's kind of what I'm up to. What are you doing, Tara?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:40

And Jen's gonna be at SAS. Remember, go see Jenna at SAS if you're on the East Coast, people. Yep. I am currently serializing a novel, the Substack myself. Uh I wanted to get in on the action. Mostly I just knew it needed to have something that was an accountability tool to make myself do that instead of just endless decent do like social media management and layout work for for the Press. So I've got Vox Protocol, which is sci-fi romance running on Substack. New chapter is actually up today. We are recording on Friday the 19th. And my newest chapter, chapter three, is now up. And you can go read it. And I think that it's it's coming along pretty well. I've never just like sat down to just write like a straightforward kind of shortish romance before, you know, like all my other stuff is like really long and weird and experimental, and you know, it's it's serializing and cool, but like doing a lot of stuff. So this is very much a like I use Jenna's romance organizer to plot it out, and I don't let the chapters get long get super long and stuff like that. So I hope people like it. Hopefully, um I will be able to chap to publish a chapter a week and be like a normal person.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:45

Um, there's hot takes around chapter length.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:49

I'm sure there are. Here's my hot take. Some people have chapter titles, some people have long chapters, some people have short chapters, yeah, some people don't like chapter titles.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:09

It's okay. Figuring out chapters was probably the hardest thing for me to figure out how I started writing. Yeah. Parish, thank you for joining us today for our dabfest here about hot takes and news.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:22

My pleasure. Happy to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:27

So, folks, check out our Substack. We are on Substack as Tender and Tempting Tales. You can get great podcast episodes every week about romance as well as articles. We have our takeovers running right now. That's great goodies and giveaways you can get and learn all about our authors. You can also take a look at our anthology calls on there if you are a romance author yourself, and perhaps join the Tender and Tempting Tales team. We always have new calls coming up. We've got our zine calls as well as our anthology calls. The next one coming up will be Sapix of Saturn that'll open in August. We would love to have you submit something. We also have our anthologies that are available on Amazon as well as our zines. You can follow the zine series on Amazon and get updated every time a new zine comes out. And don't forget to join our email list. We have a freebie story that was written by Jenna Hart. That's it's about damn time. It is really, really fun. It's a Skullhaven based story. So if you join our email list, you will get that for free in your inbox. And you can also then go read A Matter of Time, which is the follow-up on it that follows Nate, who's the deputy of the main character. Yeah, and they're both a really good time.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

And Jenna, well, I want to thank everybody again for listening to us ramble on romance books. And you know, if you have hot takes of your own that you want to share with us, you know, wherever you're listening to us, there's gonna be a comment, please. So leave us a comment and we can add it to our list to discuss one day. Or maybe we've already discussed it and you're gonna share your thoughts on it too. We would love to hear it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:50

Or news and drama, you know, tell us news you want us to cover.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:53

News and drama, of course. Maybe even books. If there's books we haven't mentioned, you know, there's so many out there. Authors we haven't met yet, we'd love to hear it all because you know, we live for romance. At least I do. I don't know about everybody else. But thank you again for listening. And until next time, peace, love, and happily ever after.