Illicit Liaisons

Illicit Liaisons: Contemporary Fantasy Romance with Author Mara Heath

• Jenna Harte • Season 2 • Episode 21

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This week, we're joined by author Mara Heath to talk about romance books, bookish drama and hot takes, romance categories, and more.

Mara fell in love with the romance genre when she first started reading the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams series as a teen. Decades later, after working as an English teacher and taking time to be a mother, she's finally become the romance writer she always wanted to be. She's the author of the New Adult Contemporary Romance series The Secrets of Brownhill, with book one, Caged in Silver, releasing last year, and book two, Harnessed in Gold, coming out in August. In her stories, there's nothing Mara enjoys more than matching a soul-searching young woman with the man who truly "sees" her, especially in a setting where the supernatural collides with the real world. Mara lives in Maryland with her husband, son, and elderly cat. When she isn't writing, she enjoys reading, sipping hot drinks, and binge-watching shows from the early 2000s.

Mara's website https://maraheathauthor.com/
Mara's Substack https://maraheathauthor.substack.com/
Mara's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/maraheathauthor/

CURRENTLY READING & RECOMMENDATIONS

Redeeming 6 by Chloe Walsh https://amzn.to/3QHCxXT

Filthy Rich Fae by Genva Lee https://amzn.to/4oVEyMw

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

Valentine Mysteries by Jenna Harte https://amzn.to/4ff6wif

Lion in the Garden https://urnasemper.substack.com/

TENDER & TEMPTING TALES

Tender and Tempting Tales Substack: Subscribe and get a FREE story! https://tenderandtemptingtales.substack.com/

Tender and Tempting Tales on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tendertemptingtales/

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

SPEAKER_02

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, the 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_00

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 fiction game and story universe. I write science fiction stories, including romance, and you can often find me in our anthologies and on Substack.

SPEAKER_02

And today we're really excited to have as our guest host, Mara Heath. Mara fell in love with romance genre when she started reading the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dream series as a teen. And decades later, after working as an English teacher and taking time to be a mother, she's finally become the romance writer she always wanted to be. She's the author of the new adult contemporary romance series, The Secrets of Brown Hill, with book one Caged in Silver releasing last year, and book two, Harnessed in Gold coming out in August. In her stories, there's nothing Ma enjoys more than matching a soul-searching young woman with a man who truly sees her, especially in a setting where the supernatural collides with the real world. Mara lives in Maryland with her husband, son, and an elderly cat. And when she isn't writing, she enjoys reading, sipping hot drinks, and binge watching shows from the early 2000s. And I also have to give a quick shout-out because in reading the website, it also says she loves learning about witchcraft and folklore. And there's a big me too. With that, I I have bookshelves with all that kind of stuff in it. Oh, me too. Me too. Very excited. And of course, Mars website is marheathauthor.com, and her substack is also Maraheath Author.substacks.com. And of course, we'll have links to our website and all the questions on the show in our show notes. I want to welcome you, Mar. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_04

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02

Now, Tara and I like to start all our shows talking about book gossip and news and drama and you know what's going on in the bookish world. Hot takes sometimes we do that. And one thing that we've been seeing a lot coming up on the TikToks and the book talks has to do with subgenre category and trope forward marketing. And it sounds like you're writing in maybe two different genres. And so all of a sudden this becomes more challenging. I know I'm having to deal with that myself. And I'm just wondering about your thoughts and experiences where this may be an issue, either as a writer and someone who's marking yourself on social media, or or maybe even as we look at marketing and decide, will this work?

SPEAKER_04

You said two genres. I'm like probably more like three, four, five. Okay. Well, there you go. Well, what I'm writing is technically called contemporary fantasy romance. And that is supposedly the new urban fantasy. It's supposed to be broader, and so you can include rural settings. But the problem is nobody's ever heard of it. And I think it sounds a little up-bedded, contemporary fantasy romance. Whereas urban fantasy sounds so much cooler. Um, so and of course, you don't see these categories anywhere on promos or even on Amazon. And so, yeah, I can say that on social media. This is contemporary fantasy romance, and I can put all the tropes up there in the trope trees and all that. But when I have to put it under a category, an established category, I have the hardest time because usually it's either romantic or paranormal. And paranormal readers want aliens and vampires and aliens, orcs, and nodding and all that.

SPEAKER_00

Oh god, the Omega Verse stuff.

SPEAKER_04

And romantic readers want Sarah J. Moss, they want savvy FMC and uh tortured MMC and for the story to take place in a whole different world, and mine doesn't. So at least not the first two books. So yeah, it's become tricky to really uh find the right readers when it comes to things like stuff for Kindles or promos or or those sorts of things. So I've had a tricky time, but I like marketing with tropes because then I can get more specific and not have to worry about the broad categories.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Actually, I wrote a story for our upcoming zine, Fantastical Foes, which is all romantic, but I was trying to categorize mine and I ended up calling it urban romanticy. Uh well, because yeah, it's urban fantasy and it's romance, so urban romanticy, why not? Uh and I love urban fantasy, and it's like my favorite form of fantasy. So I was like, well, plainly I'm I'm influenced by that. So I'm just gonna call myself urban romanticy. And if I coin that term and people want to follow me, come on in the pool. And I just remember an article for it and talked about urban romantic for what I think, like okay, I think that this is what it is, and I think it could be in rural settings, but I I I even talked about contemporary fantasy romance as a really like long term that I didn't think would stick, unfortunately, as like a marketing category. Because contemporary romance, like my sister Michelle loves contemporary romance, but she won't read anything unreal. Like, she doesn't want anything unreal. She doesn't want vampires, she doesn't want werewolves, she doesn't want nodding. Oh my god, she would die. So, like the idea of there being like a contemporary romance category that was all unreal stuff, like she would flip the table. And I don't think she's unusual, to be honest with you. So I don't I don't know that like contemporary fantasy romance will stick as a category, which is why I chose urban romanticity. I invite you to the pool.

SPEAKER_04

I think the word contemporary, you as soon as a reader sees it, they think contemporary romance, and you might even miss the word fantasy.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Yeah, it's dangerous.

SPEAKER_02

But I think I was gonna say, as an independent author, you have some leeway in some of this stuff. Whereas if you were wanted to go the traditional route, it becomes really tricky. I know when I first wrote my Valentine's mysteries, I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted a sleuthing couple that had sex.

SPEAKER_00

Um podcast is called illicit liaison, so people know we're talking about sex.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I was a big fan of Heart to Heart. That's what I wanted to write. And of course, on Heart to Heart, we knew when they were doing the you know what they were doing, it wasn't too explicit, but still it was there. I loved that vibe, their banter, the romance, all that part. That's what I wanted to write. And when I first started pitching it, this was years ago, uh, agents told me to ramp up the heat and sell it as a one-off. And I was like, but I want a series. But of course, to have a series at that time, I would have to take out the heat and sell it as a cozy, right? So a cozy mystery. So that's why I ended up going on my own. And I know of another author who tried who's been working on coining the term row mystery for just that that category. And as an independent author, you can do that. But at the same time, if readers are searching for books, they're not searching row mystery, or maybe not even contemporary urban fan, or whatever. They're not yet, you know. So I think the tropes and using all the words can be helpful. I'm having this same with a new pen name because it is contemporary. I'm thinking of your thing, but there is sort of a sort of a fantasy element. There's a paranormal element, I think. I mean, so I just use all the words. Southern urban paranormal urban fantasy. It's just like all the words. Make it a thing. Yeah, and until it becomes a thing, because romanticy wasn't a thing until it became a thing, right? So yeah. What what's interesting about going with the tropes, which I agree with, I think that's very helpful because that's I think more readers look for that quite a bit. Was a couple weeks ago we had a discussion where someone had a hot take on the internet that they didn't like tropes because it gave away the plot of the book. And I remember thinking, are you kidding me? Do you want us not to give you a description either? In my mind, that gives away the plot way more than tropes. But um, yeah, it's a challenge if you are merging genres or writing genre-adjacent type stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I guess certain tropes do do that. Like he falls first. I could see not wanting that one. I could see that. But honestly, I mean, I I'm a I'm a captive audience on social media, as I often say. And I always see people at least once or twice in a trope post being like, Oh, I find trope marketing so derivative. I want to know what your story is about. I think trope marketing is like content warnings. It's there for the people who sort their reading and are looking for things based on tropes. And they those people absolutely exist. If that's not how you look for books, ignore it. It's okay. It's okay. Like content warnings are there for people who need them. If you don't need them, just ignore them. They're there to help people sort. If you don't need that sorting, then it's fine. Just, you know, find books the way that you find books. But this is to help other people find books. I don't understand why people get so upset about these things. It's a it's a very noisy environment out there. It's difficult to find what you want to read. It's difficult to find your readers as an author. We're all just trying to match up out here, right? It's it's like it's like it's like quick dating, right? Just trying to be like, hey, alien lover. Who wants alien lover? Who wants alien lover? I've got an alien lover. Exactly. Who wants to buy?

SPEAKER_02

We're talking about social media, right? Where you only have an image to stop people quickly, right? And so, of course, on your image, you're gonna have your post. But we also know the recent changes with Amazon. We know that including a list of tropes in your description is also gonna be helpful, right?

SPEAKER_00

So people now use AI to sort, and the AI will come back and be like, hey, this is alien lover. Do you like Alien Lover? Like it just helps the AI figure out what you're writing about too, you know, like giving things little ties helps those systems much much better than like a paragraph does because they don't understand things necessarily. I think writers are just trying to find their readers, and I don't blame writers for doing basically anything for trying to find find their readers as long as it's not gross or mean, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and if it's working, that's what they're gonna do. I mean, that's the thing. If it wasn't working, we wouldn't do it.

SPEAKER_00

Right. I don't put tropes at the beginning of each of the stories in our our anthologies. Like, I help people sort based on that as well. I tell people what the subgenre is and I tell people what the tropes are, and I put content warnings. And if people get to that page and they're like, ew, I hate trope forward marketing, maybe this isn't the anthology for you, but like I would help hope people would just move past that and read the story if that's not something that they need. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So basically, we're just we're keyword marketing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Search engine optimization. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

But I sympathize with trying to figure out what your subgenre is. I think that it's very normal to find yourself in a difficult position between subgenres. Especially if you'd be trying to make a new thing.

SPEAKER_02

If you if you attract the wrong reader, because I know when I first self-published the Valentine Mysteries, the covers were much more mystery-oriented concept, but there's spicy bits in it. And I eventually re-uh covered them with a couple on the cover and led more into the romance aspect.

SPEAKER_04

I think they're perfect. And I don't a lot of trial and error.

SPEAKER_02

I didn't get too much fussing, but you know, I figured this would be better. Then I'm more likely to attract the reader who's gonna like it that way.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I actually really like that you have a series about one couple. I I mean, I see a lot of series that do like, all right, we're gonna do one couple in this book, and then the next book is gonna be this couple, and then the next couple is gonna be, you know, this couple. But I really think that it's interesting to follow a couple over multiple books because there's more to romance than the meet cute and people getting together, right? Like there's there's more to it. You can actually see like the struggles that a couple goes through. I I like seeing that. I feel like you don't see that enough these days, personally.

SPEAKER_02

There's there's more now than there was when I started. Marie Force has a series of the JD Robb books, obviously. But yeah, I love that. Sleoting couples. That's my jam.

SPEAKER_00

I think there should be more tropes of like what a romantic couple gets together, like what they experience later on in a relationship. I think a lot of the tropes are about how a couple gets together. You know, there's only one, there's only one bed forced proximity, you know, he falls first. Those are all about how a couple gets together in a romance, you know. So you don't see a lot of tropes about like life after getting together, life after marriage or consummation or any of that stuff. But, anyways, we're here to also talk about Mara. So you have a new release coming out called Harnessed in Gold, which comes out on August 10th. And we know this is the second book in your trilogy. So there's not only the excitement of a new release, but drafting the next book thereafter. And I was wondering if you could tell our listeners about your trilogy and what they can expect in this upcoming installment.

SPEAKER_04

Okay, well, that is like the most terrifying question for a writer. What is your book about? Which we say, uh you have your log line and your It's like how's your dissertation going, you know? Yeah. Well, it's like I said, a contemporary fantasy romance. Um it's set in a small college in Western North Carolina in the Appalachians. Um so that's why I couldn't use urban fantasy because it's rural.

SPEAKER_00

Um ex urban fantasy.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I don't know, it's all splitting hairs, isn't it? Um and I I really set out to write about a character, the FMC, who's not your typical kind of tough girl. She's a much softer FMC. And I wanted to explore this idea. And this comes from my own experience of being someone who's very empathetic and very sensitive. Um, what if that were a superpower instead of what we tend to consider a curse? Oh, you're too sensitive, and oh, you know, you're all these energy vampires, and you know, what if that was a good thing, a a power that she could use. And so yeah. She's in the first book, she's 19, turns 20, so she's still young, still trying to figure out who she is. Her name is Beth, by the way. Short for Elizabeth. I don't have any idea where I got that name from. And you know, just really struggling to kind of fit in. She's got this popular frat boy boyfriend, but she just doesn't feel like that lifestyle really fits her. And she's always trying to hide this really sensitive part of herself. And then along comes this new guy, Leo Hawthorne, who sees in her something really special and is the one who realizes that she is actually psychic. So I take it one step further, you know, to into the supernatural, depending on what your view is on psychic abilities, of course.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, so it's like Snooky Stackhouse, or she's still the psychic character and has that. Yes. And I would say that as urban fantasy.

SPEAKER_04

The new one?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. What I read was a woman at a party. Yes. She's making eyes with this man, and she's like, Why am I doing that? Because my boy, and then the boyfriend comes up and uh he's been off smoking something. Um but what I loved about it is he still looked gorgeous. He always looked gorgeous. I mean that was the line. Yes, he has some value.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because he's otherwise a jerk. Yeah, I got a kick out of that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, he doesn't understand her, but this mysterious brown-eyed young man definitely does.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And well, I love the idea that she's looking at him and he's looking at her because that's that universal fantasy. I love that bit, the idea of two destined people. So that was I was meeting across the smoking room, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And he immediately recognizes that she's different. Now, of course, a lot of readers don't like the well, she's different. I'm not like other girls, but she's not because she's psychic. And so that you know, makes her life a lot more complicated. And then throughout the first book, he really kind of helps her accept that and get in touch with that and feel like that is something useful, as well as some of his friends who are also psychic. One of them is also a practicing witch, so Betts gets into the witchy stuff too, and finds that very useful in handling her psychic ability. Then there's a big old bomb drop at the end that I can't spoil that leads into the second book. And then the second book, the one that comes out in August, Harness and Gold, is really kind of a big found family treasure hunt.

SPEAKER_01

And I can't.

SPEAKER_04

With the same couple, with the same couple and his friends and some of her friends, all in this group, yeah, working together.

SPEAKER_02

And you've said it in Appalachia, which has its own, all its own folklore and magic. I know I was looking at that recently, and so I'm assuming you're incorporating a lot of that as well. I am, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

That has just been so much fun to research. I didn't live in the foothills for a short, short while. Um in North Carolina, in South Carolina. In South Carolina, but very close to North Carolina, and I went to Virginia Tech, so I was down there in the the northern southern appellations, I guess. Um so you know, I have a feel for it, but at the at the time that I was down there, I was not exploring folklore or witchcraft or any of that. So researching that has really just been a joy in incorporating that. And there'll be even more of that in book three.

SPEAKER_02

I love that stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I love that stuff.

SPEAKER_02

Now it says here that you are a Gen Xer like me. I watch a lot of Gen X videos on on the YouTube. It makes me feel a good giggle. And it highlighted, I didn't realize how different our childhoods were. But anyway. But I don't know about you, but following all we have tons of romance adaptations. It's not really necessarily new, but there's a boom like in 2026 of romance adaptations, some remakes of old ones, new ones. We're seeing a lot of uh, you know, when we sometime we were watching a movie the other day that came out in the eight, you know, something like I don't know, it's not pretty in pink, but one of those, like you couldn't do it now, right? Some of them you just can't do now. But you know, today they're doing things that are more appropriate, more inclusive, right? And I'm just curious, do you watch adaptations? Uh, are you excited about any of the ones that are upcoming?

SPEAKER_04

Um, yeah, I've been devouring them, to be honest with you. And like you, I you know, I grew up on the John Hughes movies, right? My husband and I always talk about how 16 candles now, looking back at it, like, oh my goodness, it is so problematic. It really is. And we thought it was cutting edge back then, you know, and daring. But yeah. And so it is really refreshing when I watch things like off campus or heated rivalry to see those same issues dealt with in a just a much less toxic way, in a much more positive way. The women in these shows are much more empowered. Um of course heated rivalry is just I thought it was a beautiful love story. I can't wait to hear more. Um yeah, it's just it's so wonderful how far we have come. And that romance is being welcomed with open arms and popular when it came back when I was young. It was like, oh, romance. Oh, but that's like I don't know, bored housewives. to pick up a bodice ripper at the grocery store or something.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_04

This is really sad. Um so yeah. Yeah I loved off campus too. I just adored it. Because new adult is my thing. Right. I had read the books and I was so excited to see it.

SPEAKER_00

I love that category. I'm so glad that new adult exists. You know, because I like young adult was basically doing both like teenage stuff and new adult. And I know it was creating a lot of controversy. So I'm really glad to see new adult as a category kind of differentiate and and maybe bat down some of that controversy as well.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah I agree. Because I I just love you know late teens, early 20s that age group and being able to explore it, but also letting you know a 21 20, 21 year old be that age and not have to act like a 16 year old.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah and not have to read about a 16 year old and also 16 year olds not having to read about like stuff that happens to the college students you know like I I understand the difference in in need between those two different categories and and you know needing to have them exist and stuff. Well I think it's it would be cool for a 16 year old who really wanted to read new adult like go and read that stuff. It's still good to have that differentiation. So I thought it's right.

SPEAKER_02

Well there's still coming coming of age when you're in college right especially if you go to college right you're in sort of a limbo land right you're not with your parents you're on your own but you're not really on your own because you're in college right there's it's sort of we caught when I went to college I went to college in Oregon it was called Willamette University. We used to call it Camp Willamette I could definitely see that. And yeah it was awesome.

SPEAKER_00

We lived in front row at UCLA and there's nothing adult about that.

SPEAKER_02

Not people with their adult pants on my but even if you know I mean even you know women's fiction a lot of times I think is a coming into their their selves the the women coming into themselves. So you know at any time you can be coming into who you are. Absolutely take it from someone in their 50s it's yeah yeah you're always growing up yeah I my daughter reborrowed the deal which is what off campus is based on by Elle Kennedy she loved that book but she was not happy with the show and I can't remember what it was she also didn't like the hating game. She felt that that was not there was something of an expectation of the book and I know what she's talking about when you it's not even what they've changed it just it didn't capture I I think of the the Janet Ivanovich Stephanie Plum movie it did not capture that those characters in that book at all except maybe grandma Mazer. I think Debbie Reynolds was a good grandma Mazer but she didn't feel that but Bridgerton I felt you know did did a good job.

SPEAKER_00

I think Bridgerton's better than the books to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_02

I haven't read the books because some of the changes they made are good right um what was um red white and royal blue I was really I really felt they did a great job capturing those two young men.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah yeah outlander still waiting for somebody to talk to me about that show I'm I'm I'm taking week off and I'm gonna watch outlander and we're gonna do a whole podcast episode talking about what the fuck happened with Outlander.

SPEAKER_02

And he's like 21 so he's is like new adult you know what is she 27 he's like 21 he's 23 he's 23 and she's 27 I think he was Jamie does Jamie count look listen 18th century new adult is very different.

SPEAKER_04

18th century new adult is a 15 at that age new adult in 1740s is probably 12 right yeah yeah new adult but if you're an apprentice certainly 15 is new adult yeah yeah well that's funny another one that that's so funny I don't know if either of you read any of the Boys of Tommen books by Chloe Walsh. No contemporary um and they're they really straddle the characters are in high school or whatever the Irish equivalent is but it is definitely you know as far as spice goes and um content warnings I think it would definitely fall in the new adult category which for some reason is not in my local library. I think they need that but that I heard recently that they're making that into a show now I think I heard that as well a big old stink on social media about the actors that they've chosen they're all wrong that's not how you imagined him that's how I imagined her no we've picked out the right actor here producers take this person instead how often do we hear that and then when it's done they got it right we heard that about Rob Pattinson you know they're saying it now about the new Darcy because he's blonde.

SPEAKER_00

Darcy isn't blonde and I'm like I am pretty certain Jane Austen never described what Mr Darcy looked like except for handsome and tall shirt handsome tall and rich right yeah I guess all and blonde was the same way when they came out with Daniel Craig a blonde blonde are you kidding me well okay here's what I will say about the blonde thing blonde blonde was notable in the in the Regency period and if he was blonde it's one of those things that would was is more likely to be noted and but the other thing is that like you cannot underestimate the m how much adaptations affect people's vision of a character. There have been so many brunette darcy's since Colin Firth that I can completely understand why people do that.

SPEAKER_02

I mean like yeah and I think loud might be edging towards ginger right like right the ginger darcy would have been slow horses right so ginger darcy would have been noted in there in the regen scene if he was ginger she would have said something so that is there's a ginger mr bangley in one of them I can there is yes it's two ginger mr bingleys like that one's very he's a good ginger candidate I think he makes a good candidate yeah he has that kind of personality I I find it interesting when they got Matt upset about Tom Cruise playing Reacher I I enjoyed the Reacher movies but I'm like yeah because Reacher's like 6'4 or remember Vampire Bestad that was a big oh yeah oh my gosh yeah even saw it and then she apologized she was okay yeah isn't that crazy yeah we all have in our head how how things are supposed to be Tom Tom Cruise is a very good list stat.

SPEAKER_00

I mean I would I would never be sad about that I mean I've only ever been mad about a couple of adaptation like casting choices. Mostly I just like you know I let it play out. I think the only time I was upset was it was David Thulis when he was cast to play Lupin. And this is back when I was in high school over this for for Harry Potter I was very upset about David Thuis because he just and I wasn't alone I remember this with like the whole fandom was like no it's not what Lupin looks like. Possibly I think he was just I this is kind of true of Gary Oldman as well but I think that he was just it was decided that he was just kind of too old for the character because he is described as looking young even though he has wrinkles like he like the idea is that he's like this tragic character who is prematurely aged. So David Thule was looking so much older that was like that I think that bothered people. It's like one of the few times I've ever been upset about casting and and you know now now I don't care right because I don't care about Harry Potter anymore. But like it's one of the few times I can remember being really upset about it. You know it's like I think people should probably save their outrage a little bit.

SPEAKER_02

Well then there's the opposite side when you get excited because I'm pretty excited about Olivia Coleman playing Mrs. Bennett. Heck yes but it worries you too right she's gonna steal the whole show. Well I love her oh I saw what they did with persuasion and I'm just like please don't do that again. I was very unhappy with that that I didn't even want I watched about 10 minutes and I went nope I just I couldn't even do it. Yeah so and normally I try to be very open minded about these things. Yeah yeah but I I just I you know I was like this is not that book this is not that character yeah I just I just couldn't do it so anyway. Wuthering heights no that new Wuthering Heights all of those choices were bad a bad across the board terrible needs to turn that into a TV show and do the whole dang book is what they need to do. And there's they need to have a Heathcliff who actually looks like how he's described in the book yeah there's a there's a 90s miniseries that does that oh oh I know which is that the one we took the noche I think so oh god there's so many of them that I can't keep them straight.

SPEAKER_00

I remember I looked into this but when we did the Wuthering Heights episode and I was like and I remember oh yeah there is one of those. I mean I like the 90s adaptations of Wuthering Heights there's a few that do the whole book and that's kind of fun. It's unusual but fun.

SPEAKER_04

Because the side characters are so interesting in that book.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah so Mara you are also an escaped or as I like to call it a lapsed academic just like myself uh and this has been an interesting perspective for me to have if like kind of weird at times in the romance world especially having this like constant critical brain going on in the back of my head and I was wondering how you deal with it yourself in order to write and kind of how to deal with marketing online and deal with other people's stuff. And and I I know it's hard for me so I was wondering how you deal with it.

SPEAKER_04

Unfortunately the gap has been large since I left academia although I did homeschool my son but that was that was quite different. We just read a whole bunch of really good books and talked about him that was pretty much his whole education and he's doing great. So I s and again I went to college in the early 90s and then I taught up through the early 2000s and I remember when I was teaching Clemson and I was teaching in freshman writing and software literature there. And I remember that there was I can't even remember exactly what it was some sort of seminar about romance which I thought was really interesting and I was all excited you know I read my Danielle Steele and my Judevereau and all these things. And this was back when we were still like you were supposed to be embarrassed about that. And so I go to this seminar and there is half the English faculty and they're all women and they're all there talking about the romance writers that they love. And I thought we're gonna go in here and we're gonna talk about how bad romances and you know critique it from the feminist theory point of view and and we did do some of that but it was overall really positive and kind of a celebration of this genre and it was great really awesome.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah and yeah that was yeah Eloisa James is a professor what that Eloisa James is a professor. I don't know her she writes historical romance and she's been around for a long time.

SPEAKER_00

Well Eloisa James is her pen name well one of our authors Jason Rench is also he's a communications professor in New York which is pretty cool. I didn't get to ask him this question but I know you you had said you were a laps academic and it's just it's like me and I was like oh my god how is that I mean my my escape is more recent escape velocity do you still have that like critical like voice in the back of your head being sort of like well you know how would I critique this according to like Marxist theory you know like is this is this too consumptive like is this too much consumption in this you know like buying her love you know like what would what would Susan Sontag have to say about oh yeah definitely um yeah I I've certainly gotten over the romance is you know not worthy issue I've overcome that but yeah the still yeah I still want to approach everything with you know that literary analysis lens um and in some ways it makes it fun in other ways it's just like all right stop thinking about this just enjoy the book and then even you know because I taught for for a while too in taught writing yeah when I'm beta reading for a friend or reading it's like okay I can't look at every little thing I gotta oh yeah picture you know I'm not I'm not grading an essay I never want to have to do that again.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah for real yeah I taught freshman english for for six years and yeah that's still that's still there yeah yeah I don't think it ever goes away it's like a oh god don't tell me that's because I think this introduction these first few pages were for you not actually for your audience perhaps you should reference your audience I see you working through thinking with your characters here perhaps we should be seeing this from the audience's perspective well it's nice to know that never goes away thank you yeah yeah yeah it's it's I noticed when I worked with a lot of new authors you know they they tend to write like they're in school they don't use contractions and that's oh yeah oh my god nearly everybody speaks in contractions and and if you're not using contractions why like what is it about them are they a thousand year old vampire and that's how they talk or like we had contractions a thousand years ago they were just different it's hard to break roles or to end with a preposition to end a sentence with a preposition to write a phrase yeah I love phrases to try she's always trying to combine them together but I love them well sometimes the the flow of it sounds weird to me because I'm not from your your your region.

SPEAKER_00

So for me it's just a regional thing when I'm editing I'm sort of like this sounds like it should be a contraction according to my Southern California brain.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah I mean some but sometimes I even mess it up right or I'm dictating and and the dictation will not get it right. Yeah sometimes it's guessing it doesn't hear me correctly and it will just guess this is what I think they said. So I have that and I don't always I catch some of that stuff. But yeah it's um I of course struggled with English I still have yet to learn to use the comma but it sounds right take that from before English teacher the other thing is is you know when you're writing I think we're all like this we hear or see in our head what what is going on and and we will layer that as we're reading it back to ourselves or whatever. But when they turned my contemporary romance series when the audios came out on that there was a couple of times the narrator read something with that was not at all how it it was in my head. And it wasn't necessarily wrong it just wasn't how I had heard it. So when I am writing in phrases or something like that there's a very specific way that I'm hearing or seeing that in my head that the reader may just be like doesn't they know how to use a comma in a period I don't know yeah so yeah that's true. And then and as a writer you I mean you could put in there all the different subtleties and explain to your reader exactly how this is being said but then that it would just be so tedious to read I think yeah but then they're like where's the kissing right let's get to the kissing it's okay most of them most of them don't read description anyway and they're skimming the dialogue this broke quite hard actually my sister my own dear dear older sister told me that her like half of her reading group doesn't read description that they only read dialogue it's a real yeah but like okay I like I get that from booktubers but these are like normal people out in the wild who don't have book right yeah like who don't who don't read uh description they only read dialogue and that that blew my mind that absolutely blew my mind because she was Michelle was like oh it'd be cool if we could get one of your anthologies for the book club and and then she tells me that and I'm like nope yeah I've been known to skim if I'm like oh god here we go again um because sometimes I'm like I don't know why this is here which is you know part of if I don't know why it's there why is it there but oh they're there because they they put it there for a reason but I you know sometimes I I'll finish it and I'll be like I still don't know why you wrote that so it's weird the white room syndrome where you've got this whole chapter of a conversation you don't even know where they are when oh yeah yeah yeah at least set the stage a little bit something yeah I saw a funny booktuber one time who was going through people's crazy takes like this and one of them was prologue why is a prologue or why is this or this and that and it was sort of like they should just write what needs to be there and he was sort of like they did it's in the freaking prologue they did put it on the page that's what a prologue is for you got a kick out of him like everything they said he was like that's there where we you know anyway they should just write the words they need they did the prologue the prologue is part of the book part of the book part of the book so funny we had a good kick out of him anyway I had mentioned earlier we obviously clearly just like to get on here and talk about books and romance because sometimes it's hard to find anybody to talk about this stuff with and so we're just curious now that you met us for a little bit if you had any questions for us about what we do or um yeah actually I was you know looking at like tarot what you do and then the anthologies and I have always had the hardest time writing short fiction oh yeah and so I'm and you know I'd love to write some sort of uh reader magnet or a novella and I can't just shut up long enough to condense a story so I guess I'm just really interested in like if any tips or any ideas or or and also like with the serial fiction that you're doing but I'm very I mean it helps to read a bunch of it but I mean I I struggled with this transition myself you know I made this transition but I mean of course I'm still I still write novels you know but I was just sort of a novel writer before last January uh and the first thing I wrote that was like a short fiction that really was like a short piece of fiction like beginning to end complete was for Moonlight and Margaritas.

SPEAKER_00

My whole writing group is novel writers we're a former nanoRimo group and everyone has been you know struggling I think with short fiction and you see a lot of things in there like there's a pacing to novel writers that's like a way that a novel writer will write you know like more detail very Prustian you know very similitude to give you a sense of like everything that's going on it's a it's a longer pacing I put myself basically through boot camp. I I for a while was submitting to every single anthology I possibly could things for different presses uh contests and stuff and somewhere I I did a thing called short story September I just made myself a little boot camp basically and I did it with my writing group and I wrote a short story every week in September. Wow and somewhere in January of this year it went from this is so hard I feel like I'm like I'm trying to bleed a stone oh this is fun and it took me writing I think 15 short stories before I it was fun. Now it doesn't mean that it's going to take you that long obviously but yeah 30. Yeah I made myself worksheets I did all these different things now I can just sort of write brackets into a short story like in the document each bracket's a thousand words and I just hit the brackets as my my like outline basically and I just write the short story and it's fun and I and like I have a sense of the pacing and how to use my words and each sentence effectively and it's also made me a better novelist I think like it has made me have a better sense of what words do it's given me a sense of when I should be brief and when I should you know go longer. And this is from someone who has like who's written a million words of a of a miniseries and what remains is a million words. It's huge you know so I am very Prussian in my brain you know I I love Clarissa I love Samuel Richardson. I like long stuff you know but writing short writing shorter fiction making you know writing my reader magnet and all of that that has been a very good practice for me. It's very been a very good discipline we would love to have you in an anthology you should submit and and get into that practice I would love to do something for you and help you get it shortened it down and something like that if you're interested I we would love to to see something from you. It would be amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah I I didn't think I would write short when I got con not conned when I got top end of put it together in our world I was like I can't even write short I can't even write short. And sometimes I still struggle getting under 14,000 words or something. But I I ended up doing like the first one I did, I think was around the 7,000 mark, even I was so proud of myself. But that was a second chance, and and uh and it was like basically one long scene, right? He's come back so that made it easy because I was like, look, I don't they already know each other, like I don't I don't have to start from nothing, and then so that first one I did, and then moving on to the next. And I frequently go with either they've known each other for some reason, because again, then then there's a big chunk of that you can take out, they already know each other or a faded element, right? Because in some ways that sort of solves that question is how do you fall in love in 10,000 words if you've only just I think mostly what I've done is I I'm a pantster by nature, but I do like the plot and I do see romance in the certain, you know, I can see all my little beats I have to hit. And when I write short, a lot of it is just pulling out some of those beats and having just the major ones, the the meat cute, the inciting event, what I call an uh-oh, like oops, this we shouldn't be doing this. End point second uh-oh, dark moment. So that sort of helps. I'm one of those ones that struggle through the middle when I'm writing, so in some ways it seems like short would have been easy. Um, but yeah, that's so now I do it. I still struggle. Like if if if my word count is 10,000 words, sometimes I struggle to stay underneath that. But I I did figure out how to do it, and it was just practice, I guess.

SPEAKER_04

What you all are telling me is that I need to practice.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you need to try no magic formula, and the the trick is to try and pick a plot that you that could be short, right? I mean, and I think you know, something that has paranormal or fantasy elements would be harder because there's that all the extra world stuff you have to put in there.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, I do sci-fi romance for every single one of these, it's doing it.

SPEAKER_02

Except Terry, yeah, yeah. And of course, we also include a spicy bit, and that's also you know, you have to make room for that a little bit too. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00

7,000 words of spice. Reading reading the short stories or reading the zines and getting a sense of the kinds of stories that they can do and and understanding that it's not going to be like a full novel arc, you know, that it's really you're just telling a smaller story. And I think if if you if you read one of the zines or read one of the anthologies, those stories will become plain to you, and you'll start to think of stories that you could tell in your own world. I also love to see things that are that are linked to people's existing worlds. I I love as this as the marketing manager, I love marketing and stuff. I love I love a verse.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I said I actually said I set one just outside of Gatlinburg, you know, in the early and there was no woo-woo in it, but I did reference uh I did reference a witch and the lights and you know, spooky things and smoky mountains.

SPEAKER_00

Caesars was like, I want to know more about the witch.

SPEAKER_04

Now the witch needs her own story.

SPEAKER_03

She does need, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And that was that was actually a romantic suspense. So, you know, god, I had to fit a lot into that one.

SPEAKER_00

Those are 7,000 words, the zines are 7,000 words. I was doing the copy edit of that one, and I was like, I want more witch.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and they knew each other, it was her brother's best friend, you know. So, so I was able to usurp some. And I had and I had it so that they had had an encounter before.

SPEAKER_00

We've had like four brothers' best friend stories across the zines and anthologies. I think that is a very good shortcut because it's like we've been in each other's orbit, we know each other. Yeah, there's that kind of forbidden element of like the brother's friend and not wanting to mess with that, and the brother's friend being like, Oh, that's my friend's little sister or whatever. Like, there's a lot of tension already baked into that that you don't have to explain. It's fantastic.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's true. If you pick a basic trope that's already established, and people already understand the source of the conflict.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, forced proximity a lot. It's like, how do these two fall in love with each other? Well, there's Snowden.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

We're stuck on the same cruise ship. Mine were being chased through the woods by the butters.

SPEAKER_00

I helped our the editor of the romantic zine for for that one. That was uh enemies to lovers romantic, and we've read like 11 stories. And I gotta say, that one's that one is hard to pull off, both like establishing a romanticy world and like moving them from enemies to lovers, establishing why they're enemies, establishing how they get together, establishing why they become lovers. Like that is a lot for 7,000 words. That was we read a lot of those and we're sort of like, oh man, this is this this thing we chose was a very difficult ask for people. Yeah, but they were interesting. I like we saw a lot of really cool romanticy worlds, I have to say. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Too bad you couldn't write for our Starlit and Spellback. Well, if you can write fast, you probably could.

SPEAKER_00

You know, we have room. We have room if you got some in a drawer and you want to pull it out.

SPEAKER_04

I have like I have a contemporary romance I started before I started Cages and Silver, you know, about four or five years ago. That's like at 400,000 words at this point because I just kept rewriting my favorite scenes over. I love that. But I I want to I I do want to post that eventually. Obviously, not at 400,000 words.

SPEAKER_02

It really that's when the serialization could be nice. You could go you could go back and start posting chapters as you rewrite them or whatever. You know what? That's a really good idea. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I've been serializing to Substack. Jen has done this, I highly recommend it. And you know, like I mean serialization, people don't notice the word count quite as much. I mean, there are some serialized stories out there that are super long, and like you it can be serialized, and people will enjoy it and not notice the the chonkiness of it because it's got this physical object in their hands that looks like it's 400,000 words.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, think about a lot of the shows that do the same thing, yeah. Yeah, they're kind of repeated subplots over and over again, rehashing, and you don't notice.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Grey's Anatomy. I well, I you do notice in Grey's Anatomy, I gotta say. Eventually, you know how many of those doctors are before. This is the most deadly hospital I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_04

Like vampire diaries. Every time they have some sort of festival there, it was a Mystic Fall, somebody dies. Why didn't you have a multiple?

SPEAKER_02

Like, how is not everybody from this town dead already?

SPEAKER_00

All right, folks. All right, we're getting on to our book recommendations. What are you reading? What's your current romance TV show? Or, you know, what are you reading or watching for the week? Tell our tell our listeners.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I'm actually arc reading for summer right now, but it's not really romance, so I won't go into that. But the the book I read right before that was the fourth in the Boys of Tom and series. Redeeming six, I never remember their numbers. It's Joey and Ethan's story, and it was it just I'm not much of a crier, but I was getting a little weepy with this one.

SPEAKER_02

Is that the one that has like the 13 in the episodes? Yeah, yeah. The booktube or the TikTokers love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

It's very it's they're contemporary romances and they're just incredibly emotional. But I love them. And very Irish too. Oh, I like Irish. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

How about you done a high well?

SPEAKER_02

Of course, in terms of TV and adaptations, I I did finish Outlander. I'm still looking for somebody to tell me or talk to me about what happened. We started watching it again, actually, and I started deciding that Claire is really selfish sometimes.

SPEAKER_00

I love Claire. I've watched it.

SPEAKER_02

When it comes to James Frank, she doesn't for a minute think about the impact of something she did on them. Like she's but I kept she comes back, I fell in love with this man, and Frank has gone two years with his wife missing, and all of a sudden she's back. And then the one time she runs off to the stones to try and come home to Frank, and she's all mad. And Jamie, at one point, he's like, You're ripping my heart out, Claire. It was a great line. Um, she has so much empathy for everybody else, saving the children, saving the people. But these men in her life, I'm just like we can handle it. Anyway, okay, so and I haven't watched off campus because my daughter didn't love it, but maybe I will because you said you did. Um, and I would love your Gen X uh and I've been reading Filthy Rich Fey by Geneva Lee because it is set in New Orleans, it's got the woo-woo, and I'm a little worried that the book I'm actually getting ready to release is may not be quite dark enough. And then I'm trying to decide does it need to be, do I need to do that? Right? I really like the book as it is, but if I push dark, will people be like, that's not very dark? Maybe I have to take the dark element out. So I don't know. So I've been reading that to get a sense of how dark is dark here.

SPEAKER_04

Dark is so relative. I've actually with my first book, I wanted to market it as dark academia, but I didn't think it was dark enough, so I called it dusk academia instead.

SPEAKER_00

I like that. I like that. Maybe I could do that, yeah. Dusky, I like that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's just a little bit dark.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dark light, L-I-T-E. Diod. Dark Zero. There you go. Let's see. Well, now that I'm no longer seeing double, I am back to reading the Valentine Mysteries and reading Finishing Aquitar, and I've been reading Valentine Mysteries are Jenna's, of course. And I've been reading Lion in the Garden by Erna Semper. That's been serializing. That's excellent. That's been really, really good. I enjoy that every week. And also Parish's novella, Case of the Engagement Party, which is getting kind of long in serialization. We're up to like chapter 20. I'm not sure it's novella anymore. In case Erna's listening.

SPEAKER_02

That's close to 40,000 words, right? Depending on how he does it. What does Substack allow you? How many words?

SPEAKER_00

It's not about the words, it's really about the email length. And the thing that that strains the email length is usually graphics, but it's somewhere in the yeah, probably the five to six thousand word range. You start to hit the email limit. Okay. You take your graphic out, basically. And yes, I hit that limit a lot. Usually it's the graphic though. So you can just make the graphic teenier and then you kind of get away with another paragraph. All right, folks. Thank you so much for being with us, Mar. We really, really appreciate it. And it's wonderful to see you.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it was really, really fun. Thank you guys again for having me.

SPEAKER_00

Um please do tell us we have another release coming up or anything else and let us know. We'd love to have you on again. Chat about gen X or perspectives on romance TV shows.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we didn't even get into that. You know, D of Romance, Nora and Sandra, and all of them if you want. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We are Tender and Tenting Tales. You can find us on Instagram. That's Tender Tempting Tales on Instagram. You can also find us on Substack as Tender and Tenting Tales. We have lots of great articles coming out every week about romance. Right now we're doing our author takeovers. This week you can expect Susie Langman, which is going right now, and also Marissa Marinello. These are our two of our contemporary and contemporary paranormal authors. If you want to be an author for Tender and Tending Tales, you can do your own very own takeover with us, and we'd love to have you. All you have to do is take a look at our calls for submission. And we've got several calls coming up, including my zine, Saphix of Saturn. We're looking for Sapphic Sci-Fi romance. So please do look us up on Substack. Jenna.

SPEAKER_02

Mara, I want to thank you again for being with us. This was very fun. I love talking romance with people. Um, and again, you can find Mara at Maraheat Author.com, and the links will be in our show notes. So you can click it and go check it out. And until next time, peace, love, and happily ever after.