It’s 2021, and we’re back on the reading train with one of Sarah’s favorite erotic romances ever, Alexis Hall’s For Real. We dig into sex on the page, how sex and identity work together to make an erotic romance an erotic romance, power dynamics, and the difference between fear & risk. Enjoy!

You still have time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2020 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria Virginia, and get the seven traditionally published books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and a candle from the bookstore! Order here!

Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful! 

Next week, we’re returning to Curvy Girls for an interstitial, and then we’re headed on to Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series! In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame It on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.

Show Notes

• We won Georgia, but then white supremacist terrorists attacked the Capitol. If you want to talk to your kids, here are some suggestions from Facing History and Ourselves, this is a resource for teachers but I think any parent with tweens and teens will find it helpful. If you have little kids, Jen’s friend Elisa is a children’s librarian and recommend the books When a Bully is President and What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book. 
• Answering machines don’t exist anymore. (Well, they probably do, but no one we know uses them.) 
• For Real won the 2016 RITA for Best Erotic romance, and Alexis Hall wrote a blog entry about it. 
• Fear vs. Risk, the short version. Or maybe you want to read whole book about fear, called Nerve by Eva Holland. Jen knows Eva from another online space, but they've never met in person.
• Bluebeard’s attic had some things Jen had to google. 
• Eric Selinger is a romance guy, but also a poetry guy at DePaul. Jen took a workshop with Eric a million years ago (before she started doing romance stuff), and the guy who said “poetry is a laboratory for sentences” was poet Baron Wormser, author of the best book Jen’s ever read about teaching and learning poetry, A Surge of Language. 
• Jen was thinking about what happens when romance authors are forced to read the sex scenes instead of the feelings scenes, like when Stacey Abrams on Stephen Colbert. 
• Sarah talked about chastity belts at the end, and we here at Fated Mates strongly advise against giving the internet the power over your chastity belts and cock cages. SAFETY FIRST! 
• Derek Craven Day is coming, do you have you merch ready? T-shirts and buttons and listen to our discussion of Dreaming of You, of course.

• The Rest

  • For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/1/12/s0322-for-real-by-alexis-hall
  • If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
  • Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.
  • If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.