S07.44: Relentless Competence & Fixers in Romance
Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People
Fated Mates
4.9 • 965 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2025
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's been several years since the last time we talked about the allure of competency in romance, but it's a topic we adore, so here we are again, talking about characters with relentless competence and the characters who love them beyond measure. If you're new here, welcome! We're happy to have you!
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.
Our next read along is Susan Elizabeth Phillips's Natural Born Charmer. You can get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
Notes
- The These Summer Storms tour is a wrap, ending with Sarah in conversation with Rebecca Baumann from the Lilly Library at the Mallow Run vineyard.
- That one movie with Keanu Reeves and a vineyard is called A Walk in the Clouds (1995).
- You can’t grow grapes anywhere, but you can grow them in a lot more places than you’d think.
- The Nora Roberts book about fossils called Birthright, and here’s the manga Dreaming of You. Look at all these editions of Wuthering Heights.
- The Airmont career series.
- Here’s a recent update on the search for Amelia Earhart’s plane from just a few weeks ago.
- Watch the video of Delta’s flight crew uniforms over time.
- Jen was interviewed by Lauren Sarner from the New York Post for an article about love triangles in pop culture because of the return of The Summer I Turned Pretty.
- Ranger vs Morelli has been going on for far too long, or maybe it’s over?
- We last officially talked about careers back in Season 2, episode 8.
- Speaking of fixers, you might enjoy the movie Michael Clayton.
- Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
- Our next deep dive is Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
Books
- Georgie All Along by Kate Clayborn
- Out with Lanterns by Hillary Bowen
- A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera
- Single Player by Tara Tai
- Duke of My Heart by Kelly Bowen
- Pugs & Kisses by Farrah Rochon
- Wanted, A Gentleman by KJ Charles
- Cowboy, It’s Cold Outside by Maisey Yates
- Evernight by Kristen Callihan
- Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan
- The Fixer by Helenkay Dimon
- King by SJ Tilly
Sponsors
- Hillary Bowen, author of Out With Lanterns, available in print and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Bookshop.org.
- Wattpad Books, publisher of Z.W. Taylor's The Pack, available in print, ebook and audio from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Bookshop.org.
- Lumi Gummies, THC gummies available nationwide. Go to Lumigummies.com and use code FATEDMATES for 30% off.
The Rest
- For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2025/7/22/0744-jobs-careers-and-fixers-in-romance
- 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.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm back. |
| 0:00.7 | You're back. |
| 0:02.2 | How's it been? |
| 0:04.4 | Well, what's going on, romance? |
| 0:09.1 | You're a troublemaker. |
| 0:11.2 | You, ma'am, are going straight to romance jail. |
| 0:18.5 | Yeah, I've been away for two weeks, and I have seen people all over the country and I've seen, Jen, I saw so many firebirds. |
| 0:29.1 | That's so awesome, isn't it? |
| 0:30.7 | So many people came out and not just to Fated Mates Live. |
| 0:35.8 | People who went to Fated Mates Live then saw me again in Indiana. I mean, what are you doing? What else are you going to do? It's the Midwest in the... Just drive around. They probably came on their riding mower. The event in Indiana was real nice. It was with Wild Geese Bookshop. Hi, everybody at Wild Geese. They want to do a Fated Mates Live. We've already been to the Midwest. We've got to spread the love. Anyway, it was at Wild Geese Book Shop, and it was real nice. It was at an Indianan... Is that a thing? Indianan doesn't feel like a right word, but we're going to go with that. I'm like, what are you about to say? |
| 1:09.8 | I don't know what's following. An Indianan vineyard. Sure. Now, here's the thing. I didn't expect to find a vineyard in Indiana. You can grow grapes anywhere, Sarah. I don't think that's actually true. What do you know about grape growing? Listen, everybody. You saw that one movie with Keanu Reeves, and now you're an expert. |
| 1:28.3 | I'm actually cracking myself up, the authority with |
| 1:32.5 | which I said that. You really did. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, I don't know anything about |
| 1:37.3 | growing anything anywhere. Then that's how it should be. The point is they took me to a grape, |
| 1:41.6 | a grapevine in Indiana. It was real nice. I was with Rebecca Bowman at the |
| 1:48.4 | Lily Library. Well, we were in, we were at this vineyard, but Rebecca came from the Lily Library. |
| 1:54.6 | They are the head of collections there. And they talked about collecting, which you know, I love to have people talk about because whenever anybody says, hey, you don't have to be a rich asshole to collect books. |
| 2:09.2 | You can just be a person who loves romance. I always think that's transformative. I love watching people's faces when they hear that and like input that. |
| 2:19.0 | So Rebecca did that and then, and it was great. We had a lovely time. One of the things Rebecca said was, in their opinion, some of the coolest collections are collections made by people who love a microtropes. And so what they do is they collect |
| 2:38.4 | every romance novel with a mustache on the cover. That's a pretty terrific idea. So here's my |
| 2:46.4 | question, Jen. What microtrope would you collect? Because I know you and I are collecting trailblazers. |
| 2:56.0 | Right. But that's not the same. You know, what I thought, what I thought this once would be, that would be really actually, really fucking funny. And it's a good transition today's topic. If I actually |
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