Book Episodes
Historical Romance Badassery
To celebrate Women's History Month, I'm highlighting favorite real and fictional badasses. Warning: I mention the word badass many, many times in this episode. Clearly I love me a bit of badassery. Women worthy of official bi...
Love & Romance Over 40: Part 2
I'm really starting to feel that cultural and romantic invisibility cloak that covers women of a certain age. Luckily, there are a few aspirational, sometimes inspiring TV shows and movies that feature people over the age of 40 romancing each other and getting it on — even if it seems that you need to have a beautiful face, well-placed wrinkles and a near-perfect body to deserve the same.
CW: talk of anti-body positivity and toxic Hollywood and cultural beauty standards.
Learning from Romance: Part 3
The lessons keep on coming! In this final episode in my miniseries on what I've learned from romance, I encounter...monster erotica. I'm tardy to the party, so giggle along with me as I explore my "first-won't-be-last" monster fucking romance, and listen to an excerpt from an erotic monster story--full of tentacle sex--by guest author VB Beringer.
Learning from Romance: Part 2
My year of reading romances has modeled so many good things for me, especially stories with the family of choice trope. We're not all lucky enough to be raised in an emotionally healthy family, so reading about how loving, su...
Learning from Romance: Part 1
I've made some surprising discoveries about myself while reading romances this year. The wave of positivity, love, respect and acceptance for all sorts of fictional characters in these stories has encouraged me to love and accept myself, and even discover new aspects of my sexuality.
Royally Romantic
It's the Anglophile edition of the podcast, where I claim to "not be into royalty all that much," and then immediately prove myself wrong. Fake kingdoms in mountainous areas of Europe, fake royalty who always seem to speak with a British accent, commoners lifted from their humdrum, working-class lives as a metaphoric crown is placed on their heads: I might giggle uncontrollably over the contrivances, but I'll watch and read it all.
Romance After Dark
My current fantasy bedroom is full of steam & kink. I'm in the mood, people, so let's read-aloud from some of the hottest, kinkiest romances I've ever read! It's hard to find this level of heat, consent, care AND happy-ever-after on screen, but romance writers have got you covered.
Dear Darling: the Romance of Letters & Messages
There's nothing more intimate than a letter, card, text or message written for your eyes only. The epistolary novel has been popular for centuries, and romantic stories using this device can feel like the best kind of eavesdropping.
The Sweet, Sexy Cinnamon Roll
The sweet, sexy romantic cinnamon roll: there's no better hero in all of Romancelandia. Let's explore this gooey hearted, tender fictional confection and why this character brings all the feels.
Love in Unexpected Places: Her/City of Angels/ Tangled Wires
Intimacy and love can be found in the most unexpected places. In sci-fi and fantasy-tinged romance, that means online, offline, synthetic or organic, from a lab, with creatures on earth or heaven above. Open hearts find love everywhere.
Bodyguard Romance: The Bodyguard/Girl Gone Viral/Dangerous Beauty
Sometimes all I want in this world is strong arms around me, someone who has my back, and a soft place to fall. That's when I pull out a good bodyguard romance. Nothing in the world makes me feel safer than these stories. They've got me dreaming of an avenger, a 24/7 personal protection officer of my very own.
Romantic Recycling: When Harry Met Sally/Groundhog Day
Many contemporary romances are based on, or inspired by, rom-com movies. Turns out recycling romance is good for the narrative arc--and heart as well.
The Romance of Rock
Music romances and seduces listeners, sometimes gently and sometimes with a rough, dirty, driving, relentless hot beat. That kind of romance rocks, and its rockstars are sex on legs.
Sex Positivity: Easy/The Overnight/The Intimacy Experiment
I crave more sex- and age-positivity, a wider range of human sexuality and relationship, in the romantic TV shows and movies that I watch now. Romance novels have always done a great job at representing shame-free sexuality, desire, and fantasy. But the Netflix series Easy and the movie The Overnight also get it right.
Sporty Romance
Romances about people at the height of their physical prowess in pro sports finding love with a partner who matches their wit and talents is a bit unfair to us mere mortals. But I'll live vicariously through these stories all day long.