Smart Podcast, Trashy Books: A Romance Novel Podcast

My guest this week is podcast community favorite Alisha Rai! We start off catching up on our history of podcasting together, our life changes, and the challenges of making children wear coats.

Then it’s enemies to lovers time! Her new book, Enemies to Lovers is out now, and we both brought the good trowels. We dig into the trope to examine how it works, what the essential elements are, and what can easily go wrong. Along the way we touch on:
How much we miss buddy road trip comedies
The weight of being an elder daughter
And her perspective on the threat of AI to authors

Video is available on our YouTube channel!

Special thanks to the sponsor for this episode: Sotto Voce Scents! Listeners get 15% off with code SMART15!
Sotto Voce Scents creates candles inspired by romance novels, like their bestsellers, "Scoundrelwood" and "Rosemary Me." Look for "Only One Bed" and the "Grumpy/Sunshine" duo coming this spring!

Music: purple-planet.com
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You’ve been hearing me talk about this book for awhile, and I am so excited to share with you my conversation with Fortesa Latifi, author of Like, Follow, Subscribe: The Cost of a Childhood Online. Her research into family vloggers and influencers is superb and I’m still thinking about some of the revelations in this book.

We discuss the origins of influencing and family vlogging, the benefits and the harms that arise from becoming popular, and the emotional, financial, social, and personal costs of that relative fame.

CW/TW: this podcast episode contains discussions of child abuse, exploitation, sexual harassment, and pedophilia. Listener discretion is advised.

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We are back in the time machine, heading to July 2000 to check out the Ads & Features from Romantic Times Magazine!

We’re going to talk about Geocities websites, author research, and Hands.

Lots of Hands.

This one is a little spicy, y’all! At about 45 minutes in there’s an extended discussion of anal in romance fiction (as you do) and at about 50 minutes in, we discuss death, mortuary science, and make some allusions to decomposition.

That’s right. Dead bodies and anal sex. This episode is a banger.

Don't miss the visual aids!

Or, watch the show on YouTube!
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Riss M. Neilson joins me today to talk about her new romance, The Bridge Back to You. This is a second chance love story between two exes who unexpectedly inherit shares of the same restaurant – the restaurant that he runs, and that she kind of ran away from.

There is so much to discuss in this book: we talk about characters with chronic illnesses like endometriosis, or mental illnesses like OCD. We talk about the astrology of her characters and what insights she can gain from their charts, and then, she gives us a list of restaurants to try if we’re ever in Providence, Rhode Island. And Riss even expands my theory about which foods are the universal expression of human love.

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Support for this episode comes from Savage Bonds by EV Mitchell, a gritty, paranormal slow-burn body-positive romance with lots of spice, some knotting, and shared psychic sexytimes. Savage Bonds is available now in Kindle Unlimited, or in print from the author's website or your local library!
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We're back in the time machine, heading to July 2000 - for real this time - to check out the reviews in this issue of Romantic Times magazine!

We’ve got anthologies, Carpathians, and several books where we’re pretty sure the happy ending is to throw the entire man away. We also debate who is possessed by demons because it’s a valid question for several of the books we talk about.

A mild warning that when we discuss Mystery & Thriller there is a truly gross plot. It’s a doozy.

And you can watch this one on YouTube if you like!
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