S07.26: Romance Novels With a Ticking Clock
Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People
Fated Mates
4.9 • 965 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2025
⏱️ 105 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This one's for those of you who've been asking us to talk more about craft on the podcast! We're talking romances with ticking clocks and clear time frames, about how this impacts conflict and makes books more breathless, and of course about the books that deploy this strategy perfectly. Inside, you'll find road trips and adventures, vacation romances and romantic suspense, house parties and that classic romance chestnut: "I have 30 days to get pregnant." It's going to be fun.
But first, we're talking to Amanda Litman, founder of Run For Something, an organization filling the back bench of the Democratic party, helping people run for local office and make sure that we're holding the line at all levels of government. Tell us if you are running for school board, and we'll proudly donate to your campaign!
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Next week, we're reading Julie Anne Long's What I Did For a Duke, available in print, ebook, and audio at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
The Books
- It Had to Be You and Heaven, Texas by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
- Hot Touch by Deborah Smith
- Whiteout by Adriana Anders
- Waking up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath
- Perfect by Judith McNaught
- Fiasco by Constance Fay
- One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean
- Her Night with the Duke by Diana Quincy
- Along Came Amor by Alexis Daria
- Curvy Girl Summer by Danielle Allen
- Sexy in Stilettos by Nana Malone
- Fan Service by Rosie Danan
- Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas
- One Last Night by Lauren Ford
- Tycoon by Joanna Shupe
- Into the Woods by Jenny Holiday
- One Stormy Night by Jules Bennett
- Sins of a Wicked Duke by Sophie Jordan
- To Catch a Raven by Beverly Jenkins
- Pleasure of a Dark Prince and Lothaire by Kresley Cole
- Something Wilder by Christina Lauren
- Luck of the Draw and The Other Side of Disappearing by Kate Clayborn
- Dionysus in Wisconsin by E.H. Lupton
The Notes
- Join TJ Alexander and Joanna Lowell in a conversation at Astoria Bookshop in Queens, NY on March 31st for a conversation about trans rep in romance, moderated by Sarah.
- Learn more about Run for Something and What You Can Run For in 2026 (don't forget to tell us you're running!), and preorder Amanda Litman's book, When We're in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership wherever you get your books.
- Four Minutes is a very shallow cut, actually.
- This is the good stuff: Casey Kasem’s Top 40 and Friday Night Videos, boom boxes, and cable TV. Also, The Sound of Music on has an actual running time of 2 hours and 52 minutes and an “on-TV- with-commercials" running time of 200 hours and 52 minutes. The best scene is the curtains one, the dancing one, or the tearing down the flag one.
- That leg lamp is a reference to the movie A Christmas Story.
- Conflict defined. Or, next time Sarah gives it in October 2025, attend her conflict workshop. Speaking of tension, how about that moment in Toy Story 3 when they are headed to the incinerator.
- We’ve talked about Ted Lasso season 1 and season 2. Sarah wasn’t the only one disappointed with season 3, Jen felt the ship going down and bailed right out of it.
- In the book Techniques of a Selling Writer, Dwight Swain described his scene and sequel theory.
The Sponsors
- 1001 Dark Nights, publishers of Office Sparks: A Workplace Romance Collection, with novellas by C.D. Reiss, K. Bromberg, Laurelin Paige, and Heather Graham, available in ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
- Lumi Labs, creators of Lumi Gummies. Go to lumigummies.com and use code FATEDMATES for 30% off your order. Lucy Score, author of Story of My Life, available in print, ebook, audio, from Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Jen, here's something fun. I'm excited. Right now, everybody's going to get to hear me have a chat with Amanda Lipman from Run for Something. Because listen, everybody, we know. We are hearing you and we knew that we were being very quiet. And listen, we all need to get there on our own. Hold space for our despair. |
| 0:23.2 | We are holding space, Sarah. |
| 0:25.7 | For the record, I've been loud from the very beginning. |
| 0:34.7 | But here we are, and it's however many months, too many months. |
| 0:36.0 | And we're ready. |
| 0:38.8 | We're ready to start talking and start thinking about what we can do. And one of the things that I kept coming back to is brilliant Amanda Littman |
| 0:45.2 | and amazing run for something, who some of you have heard speak because she spoke at |
| 0:50.6 | baited mates two years ago in New York City. Yes. |
| 0:54.8 | She got up and she said to all of you like, it's time to get activated. |
| 1:00.5 | We want you to run for something. |
| 1:02.0 | And here's the thing she said, and you're about to hear it. |
| 1:04.9 | So like, but I am going to underline it before you start, which is like there are hundreds of thousands of offices that are every year |
| 1:15.5 | up for election across the United States. Tiny jobs in small towns like town clerk. Every summer I go |
| 1:24.8 | to this place in Rhode Island and the town clerk also is the hot dog seller at the beach. |
| 1:28.8 | So like these are like part time jobs in some ways, like but people who want to really like give back to their communities. |
| 1:35.3 | And then like larger jobs like mayor of New York City, but you should not run for that because we have too many of those right now. |
| 1:42.0 | But like what you can do is run for school board or library board or city |
| 1:46.7 | council or town council or whatever other things you can run for, right, on your, on your, in your |
| 1:52.8 | town. And what's wild about this is so few people actually do stand up and do this. So it ends up being like the same five people |
| 2:04.6 | forever in town. And what you will hear Amanda say, and I just want to say it out loud, again, |
| 2:11.5 | is to win a school board election in some small towns in the United States, it costs $1,000. Like, and if you think that you are out |
| 2:22.4 | there, you, listen to me, you, the person who is listening right now. Commuting, walking your dog, |
... |
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