S08.32: Paris Romance with Kate Clayborn

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Documentary, Society & Culture, Books, Arts

4.9 • 965 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2026

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We Love Paris in the Springtime and we love Paris in The Paris Match by our very favorite, Kate Clayborn. Today, we’re talking about the City of Love itself, with Kate! We talk about the magic of the City of Lights, about the weight it has in romance, and about the mythology it carries with it whenever it’s included in a book. Yes, of course, we talk about Jessica and Dain, but we also celebrate Kate’s new release, The Paris Match! We’re also covering sex workers, chocolatiers, cigarette smokers and heroes who gnaw off their own legs, the Champs de Elysee be damned. Thanks, as always, to Kate for joining us and putting up with our shenanigans.

If you’d like to continue the conversation about Paris, please come join the Fated Mates Discord, which is accessible to our Patreon subscribers. By joining the Patreon, you meet other Fated Mates listeners and get an extra monthly episode from us. Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Our next read along is The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.

Notes

Welcome Kate Clayborn. Her first episodes way back in Season 1 were about Siblings’ Best Friends and then Sexclamation Points!, and since then, she’s been on about a million other times.
Cormac McCarthy has some strong feelings about punctuation and Random House doesn’t like the interrobang, but Sarah’s a rebel.
Green screen technology has come a long way. In this interview, Heated Rivalry cinematographer Jackson Parrell describes how he used the technology in the show, including the scene on the beach in Tampa. Cinematographer Valentina Vee did a really interesting set of videos talking about the use of green screen technology in the show.
The Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet about place that Sarah quoted is Time Does Not Bring Relief.
Kate wrote a round up for People magazine about great books set in and about Paris.
Jen heard about Puppets by Jenna Ryan after being tagged in an Instagram post by WendieReads. But in digging around, Jen discovered the Passages podcast did a deep dive of the book in 2025.
You can read more about the puppet theaters of Paris in this New York Times article from 2019.

The Rest

For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/4/27/0832-the-paris-match-by-kate-clayborn
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

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0:00.0	Well, it's springtime, and so it feels like it's time to talk about Paris, also because
0:05.5	our friend is here, everyone.
0:08.6	Welcome to Kate Claiborne.
0:11.3	My favorite place to be.
0:15.3	People are always like, people are always like, how do you get to be a guest on Thaida Mates?
0:19.2	We're like, like well there are like
0:21.1	four they're in rotation and also I came in at the ground floor exactly exactly I was trying to
0:30.8	remember this morning which book you came for exclamation points no it was before that remember
0:36.6	when you did the brother's best friend or whatever?
0:39.4	Oh, you didn't come for an IAD book.
0:43.4	No, and then I came for exclamation points, which is legendary.
0:47.8	Legendary episode.
0:49.3	I'm honestly surprised if this book was not the Paris match exclamation point.
0:53.3	I mean, what a missed opportunity
0:55.5	that was. Everybody's exclamation points is a very particular kind of sex writing where it's so good
1:03.8	that it ends up in all caps with exclamation points. Yeah. So, yeah, we really, we really did,
1:10.5	that was a deep grammatical dive in that episode. And I don't think people appreciate. It's really academic work going on. I don't think people appreciate the work we did. Everybody can go back and listen to it. Yeah. Wait, what was it? It was the player. Yeah. Our favorite. we still have a group chat everyone it's the only
1:29.1	group chat that we that I have that hasn't been renamed yeah I think I tried to rename it once
1:34.0	and Kate was like absolutely not it felt wrong and now my it's been that way now for eight years or
1:39.8	whatever my 12 year old is always like what what does it mean? I'm like, someday you'll understand.
1:47.2	You're not ready for the deep lore.
1:51.7	Anyway, welcome everyone to Fated Mates.
	...

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