At that point in time, Cigna had sort of developed as kind of the classiest of the

Regency romances. And there were some other little attempts but with Signet even their

print runs which were considered quite healthy then,

were like, for the regency, they were like $60,000.

And then on the second book,

I remember having, I got the pot idea and I told Hillary, we were down in Wall Street at a restaurant, and we were having lunch and I said, Hillary I said the only thing is you know there was

no sex in regencies absolutely zipponada and I said I've got a plot here but you know it I want sex in it and it was at

that point which rarely happens but it was an utter lack of noise in the restaurant and

everybody was like on point and we got a good laugh out of that and I told her what I wanted to do and she

grinned and she said go for it.

And as a result, the print run jumped up to like 130,000.

That was the voice of Catherine Coulter, author of more than 80 novels, including some of the earliest signet regencies.

We'll talk with Catherine about her time at the beginning of the signet line, her work adding sex to signet regencies, and how she evolved into historical

romances and then of course into her longstanding career as a thriller writer.

This is Fated Mates. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor.

I'm Sarah McClain. I read romance novels and I write them. You're about to hear a great

conversation with Catherine Coulter. We're not going to spend a whole lot more time

introducing it. We'll talk more on the back end. So without further ado,

here is our conversation with Catherine Coulter.

We try really hard not to do all the fan-girling, but I have to say the Sherbroke Bride was like the book of my like of the greatest

joy of my life when I read that book right when it came out and so I'm really very

delighted to be talking to you today and thank you so much for making time for us

...