Well, we haven't recorded a podcast episode in like a month.

Yeah, it's real weird. I was like getting ready and I was like, wait, how do I do this again?

We were getting, we were so organized in December and now it's January and we're like,

we don't know what we're doing.

It's okay.

But neither does anybody else, Sarah.

Yeah, it feels like this week just flying by the seat of our pants is how romance does the thing.

Oh, I guess we should welcome everyone to Fated Mates before we dig into the bed of weeds

that we're going to garden.

Yeah, we're not going to talk a whole lot about what's going on in romance except that it's a

shit show.

Yeah. And you can really just Google it and read about it in any national newspaper.

Yeah, that's the part that's real wild.

It's like, I have like, you know, friends of mine who like text me and are like I just heard about

something about a romantic in NPR and I was like yeah yes I mean I'm not gonna lie

there are about 83 things that really fucking piss me off about this whole debacle.

But in the top like five probably is the fact that we get one bite of the apple romance every year for a respectful long form critical

look at the genre. And today it's come on girls. Yeah, wow. And the reality is like I don't

blame them. We deserve it. The news media is shredding romance right now for what's happening at

the Romance Writers of America, which is the largest membership organization

like around writing, but the reality is that the true member like there are a lot of associate members of

RWA, like agents and librarians and booksellers.

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