Transcript | Ep. 150: Romance Novel Redemption

Nichole Perkins: If you do like dragons, but you want the dragon to be like secretly a man, you know, that's that's the curse. But he's really wealthy and I don't know. He also just wants to make you his queen like whatever it is that you want. It's out there. If you want to fuck a bear, you can find bear romances. Whatever your little heart desires, It's in a romance somewhere.

[theme music]

Cristen: Caroline, I gotta confess something.

Caroline: You’re working on some fucking-a-bear fan fiction?!

Cristen: I told you not to mention that on the podcast, Caroline! No, that is not what I’m embarrassed about. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m basically a romance novel virgin.

Caroline: Well, why are you embarrassed?

Cristen: Because statistically speaking, Caroline, I feel like I shouldn’t be! So, as I’ve been learning while making this episode, romance novels are the most popular fiction books in the US and UK. It is a BILLION-dollar industry that makes up almost a quarter of the entire fiction market. And yet, I have not sought them out, and confession number two: it’s partly because I bought into the perception that romance novels aren’t worth my time.

Caroline: Folks who've never read much romance do love to hate on it. One scholar described it as "the most popular, least respected literary genre." A genre, it’s worth noting, which has always been largely by, for and about women.

Cristen: And yet! Side-eye be damned. Romance fans are ride or die for these books.

Caroline: So today, we're exploring what romance novels have to offer for readers and writers alike. First up is Nichole Perkins, who you heard at the top of the show. Nichole is the perfect unlady to enlighten us on the pleasures — and potential perils — of reading romance novels. She first came on Unladylike in 2020 when she was hosting the Thirst Aid Kit podcast,which is a show all about lust. She’s also written a ton about pop culture and sexuality.

Cristen: Then, we’re getting into the writing of romance novels with best-selling queer romance author Casey McQuiston. Casey is gonna share their ingredients for crafting love stories AND sex scenes.

Casey: When you look at a romance novel like a lot of people, look at it and just think like, eh, smut. But like, I think that sex in romance novels, it's such an incredible tool for a writer to be able to like create an emotional moment, an emotional scene for two people that you otherwise just cannot hit that note. And I and I think that is what I love about romance and what makes it so hard for me to like read books that aren't romance because of where is the fucking? I'm like, there's things like emotional things in this plot that can only be resolved by these two characters having sex, and I don't understand why the author is withholding this from me, you know?

Caroline: In between our convos with Nichole and Casey, we’re also digging up some dirt on romance novels’ bad reputation — and pinning some of the blame on 90s icon Fabio.

Cristen: It’s all to find out: Why do so many unladies fall in love with romance novels?

[stinger]

Caroline: Welcome back to Unladylike. We're very excited to talk to you today.

Nichole: Thank you so much for inviting me to talk about one of my favorite things in the world, romance novels.

Caroline: Oh man, I, this is Caroline. I'm excited, too. I feel like I was when I was growing up. I was like I'm just going to read all of these like Boxcar Children books. And then there was a distinct moment where like, I found my mother's stash of romance novels, and I was like, I am no longer reading the Boxcar Children.

Cristen: Talk about a pivot.

Caroline: It was a hard pivot.

Nichole: I love that.

Cristen: Well, Before we get before we get completely swept away, Nicole, tell us what you’re reading now.

Nichole: Sure. right now I am, I'm I'm finishing a historical romance kick.

Caroline: What era?

Nichole: I have no idea. Honestly, I just read whatever is going to have someone in hoop skirts and a rake or something like that, you know, I don't really have a preference for like Regency or Renaissance or anything like that. I don't I honestly don't even know the delineations, but I'm just I'm just here for it.

Cristen: I also like thinking about like period romances because my mind always just goes immediately to like all of the intricate like buttons and laces and everything involved. And just like, man, that undressing process.

Caroline: The anticipation.

Nichole: Oh yeah, I love that. I also just love sexual tension. I mean, we get it now. But like the the closeness and the hands touching that means something more, that kind of stuff. But I still I'm still very much a modern woman and I need like, I need the sex. So I don't necessarily like historical romances that are very chaste, but I like them to be, you know, full of tension.

Cristen: So, Nicole, tell us the story of how your love affair with romance novels began.

Nichole: OK. It starts off a little sad. My great grandmother passed away when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and we inherited this breakfront like this, this china cabinet from her, and it had a lot of books in it. And my great grandmother could not read. So I was fascinated by the books inside because like, why does she have these books? And most of these books, I later learned were things that her employers had given her. She was a domestic worker. And so when you know, they were finished with the books that they were reading, they would just give them to her, and she would just keep them in this cabinet.

Caroline: One day, little Nichole was looking through her great grandmother’s book stash, and a thick paperback caught her eye. It was a copy of the 1972 romance classic by Kathleen Woodiwiss called The Flame and the Flower.

Nichole: It was kind of purply and on the cover there was a couple embracing and like there was also like an image of a big boat and a plantation. And the story of The Flame and the Flower, you know, by modern standards, it's not. It's not great. Brandon, is this captain from America, and he comes over to England and Heather is this young English flower, of course, and she's running away from something and she gets lost on the docks, and he thinks that she is a sex worker. And so he takes her to his cabin and basically forces himself on her

Cristen: Heather then discovers she's pregnant. Her guardian, her aunt, then forces Heather to marry Brandon for his money.

Nichole: But they end up loving each other on his. I believe he's in Virginia, either Virginia or one of the Carolinas. He has a plantation there. And of course, he is the most magnificent slave owner ever. He is very kind. So there’s a lot that’s a little like, icky, but I love that book. I read it once a year still, to this day, and it really changed the course of romance novel history, like The Flame and the Flower just really blew up publishing industry and helped craft what we now know as the romance genre. Because it was, it was considered fairly explicit for its time, not only because of how the relationship started, but at some point, Heather actually likes sex, she enjoys sex, and that was not really something that was written in romance novels because women always had to be coerced into sex and it was just a part of their duties. But Heather ends up loving sex with Brandon, and so they have a lot of sex and it's good and it's interesting, and she loves it, and it just really just just opened what was possible for romance writers.

Cristen: I had no idea that a seafaring white Brandon was like a genre game changer.

Caroline: The Flame & the Flower sold MILLIONS of copies, and its publication marked the dawn of the modern, mass-market romance novel.

Cristen: The thing that sent it flying off shelves? The sex! In the 50s and 60s, romance novels were kinda prudish, and physical intimacy was often implied. Then, Kathleen Woodiwiss came along and gave readers sexually explicit, Brandon-on-Heather action

Caroline: And readers were like, ooh, I’ll have what she’s having!

Cristen: Buuut like Nichole said, that romance was also … rape-y. In fact, The Flame & the Flower inspired the term “bodice ripper.” Allow me to explain with an excerpt. (*clears throat*) So the morning after their first encounter, Heather sees that “[the] torn chemise was still where he had dropped it after ripping it from her. She picked it up and found it irreparable. “His hands destroy well,” she mused.”

Caroline: Oh my god!

Cristen: Yeahh, it’s a touch problematic.

Caroline: We should also clarify that “bodice ripper” is often used as a pejorative for romance novels in general. But it technically refers to this particular type of historical romance novel. It usually involves a very power-imbalanced, sexually violent relationship, whiiiiich ultimately gives way to romance novels’ most important trope.

Nichole: So a romance novel always has to have a happily ever after or a happily for now, meaning the couple or throuple or whoever it is they get together after overcoming some series of conflicts, right. And then you always have the the tropes, right. So there's like fake dating, enemies to lovers, friends to lovers — like you grew up together and then you realize that you know you're attracted to each other. There is the taboo stuff, which is age gap or like your ex's dad or something like that, or a religious thing where you're falling for the priest or the nun or stuff like that, there all these different things. Anything you like you can find in a romance.

Caroline: Well, do you feel like any of the romance novels you read, especially like growing up, did did they influence you in any way or like influence what you looked for in relationships?

Nichole: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I thought that men would be always be tender and caring and put my needs first. Especially like in bed, they would always make sure that I euphemistically received my pleasure first before they did. And I was very much disappointed once I started having sex and having real relationships that that was not always the case. And I was just like, No, how could not read my mind? You're supposed to know me. You know, you're supposed to know me, you're supposed to understand everything. So that was definitely disappointing. And then I had to adjust and realize, that, you just have to say what you want. And if someone can't give that to you, then you have to move on. Another thing about romances in the 80s and the 90s is that men were very jealous and possessive in the books, and they still are to a certain extent, of course. But the way they expressed that was often through violence. They had a hair trigger temper about anybody looking at their woman or wouldn’t want her to be by herself just in case something happened. And I thought that that was hot. I thought that that was great. I loved the idea of, you know, this grumpy guy who who was like this beast who could only be soothed by the heroine, right? And then I experienced some of that in real life and I was like, Oh, this is not cute. This is not this is not great. Like if you're awful to everybody else, but great to me, it's only a matter of time that you're going to be awful to me. And that's not something that came across in romance novels at all. You know, I had to realize, oh, it's a fantasy, right. Right. And, you know, adjust my expectations from there.

Cristen: Well, kind of on the flip side, do you think that romance novels have taught you any kind of worthwhile lessons about love and pleasure?

Nichole: For sure. I have learned that I can. I can be vocal about what I want and desire in a relationship romantically and sexually. I've learned that that honestly, romance novels are a great roadmap for how to navigate what a lot of women want. People are so dismissive of them because they're so woman centered and, you know, they're mostly written by women for women and, you know, just about women's desires. And that's a lot of times people want to laugh at that and mock it because anything that women like is often the subject of mockery. But I've learned that it scares people. In these romance novels, the hero has to be vulnerable. The hero has to be very open and receptive to learning about his love interest. People don't like that because that means that we'll start to expect that from men in the outside world, in the real world. But that's important to me. I want a partner who's going to be vulnerable and open and realize that, you know, there are many ways to make me happy, and if he just paid attention, he could figure that out. And that's what happens a lot of times in romance novels. And so I love that and I've learned to advocate for that in my relationships.

Caroline: But pretty much all the relationships Nichole read about in romances growing up were between white people. Even though the genre contains multitudes of settings, tropes and happily-ever-afters, publishers have had much less imagination when it comes to race.

Nichole: One of the things that I would do as a kid and I still do, like if they're if there are blond people on the cover, I usually skip them because if they're white people with dark hair, I can pretend that they might be like mixed race and just very fair skinned or something like that. And that's that's usually what I - how I would deal with the overwhelming whiteness of romance.

Caroline: For way too long, characters of color in romance paperbacks were rare and typically reduced to racist stereotypes. Major publishers were convinced that white readers would be turned off by what the industry back then called “ethnic romances.”

Cristen: In the 80s, when the world’s largest romance publisher Harlequin finally did start investing in Black romance novels, it segregated them into their own, niche imprint and marketed them exclusively to Black readers.

Caroline: And even though representation in romance novels has improved since then, getting published, promoted and given prime placement in stores can still be an uphill battle for writers of color.

Cristen: So Nichole, today the vast majority of published romance novels are written by white authors. So, what does that tell you about maybe the kinds of stories and romances that readers are missing out on as a result?

Nichole: Oh boy, they're missing out on so much. I have seen white readers respond to black authors about their black romance novels and just say really foul shit. Like, basically, “I can't believe you fall in love in the same way that we do” -

Caroline: What?

Nichole: like, we're not fucking human beings, too. I've seen black authors talk about the way people talk to them at romance conventions and things like that and say those kinds of things like, “I can't believe I enjoyed this as much as I did.” Like why? Why is that so surprising to enjoy a black book that's about love? Black people fall in love, Latino people fall in love. Asian people fall in love. Everybody falls in love. And it shouldn't be this thing where we're constantly told that only white people are worthy of love are only worthy of great love stories because that is not the case by any stretch of the imagination.

Cristen: Nichole had so many great romance novel recommendations that we are rounding them up and posting them on our website and on socials, but for now we’re going to take a quick break.

Caroline: When we come back, we dive into the evolution of the romance novel and we chat with queer romance writer Casey McQuiston.

Cristen: Stick around.

[stinger]

[CLIP: 1981 Harlequin Commercial]

Woman: Besides tears, what more do you want?

Man: You.

Woman: Not if you were the last man on earth!

Man: I’m the only man on earth for you.

Narrator: Harlequin presents Novels of Love. Harlequin: number one in great romances by some of the world’s most romantic authors

Chorus of Women: No one touches the heart of a woman quite like Harlequin.

Woman: You’ve won! I belong to you completely now.

Narrator: Read Harlequin novels and fall in love. No one touches the heart of a woman quite like Harlequin.

Caroline: We’re back, lovers. And that sensual clip you just heard was a vintage TV commercial for Harlequin romance novels.

Cristen: You know what, Caroline? Let’s bring back TV commercials for novels.

Caroline: Hard yes.

Cristen: Just like books and reading, sensual or not.

Caroline: Yes, hard agree, for sure.

Cristen: The mass-market romance novel industry that we think of today didn’t start heating up until the 1950s. That’s when the two major romance publishers Mills & Boon and of course Harlequin pulled out all the marketing stops to get American housewives reading romance. They advertised all over women’s magazines like Good Housekeeping. They’d get like mail-in vouchers for a free romance novel into products like laundry detergent and cosmetics. My favorite promotion of all was an actual Harlequin paperback that came stuffed into a jumbo-sized box of Kotex maxi pads.

Caroline: Oh god, I really hope no one ever got confused. Well, in the early 70s, two other industry developments turned romance novels into a cash cow. Harlequin got into grocery stores, and they launched a reader subscription service. Add to that the success of The Flame & the Flower in 1972, and business was officially booming.

Cristen: Not everyone was pumped about it, though. Caroline, I was reading The Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis, and an honestly unsurprising twist jumped out. Second-wave feminists in the 60s and 70s were very anti-romance novel. Which y’know, makes sense given the rapiness and patriarchal gender roles involved in some of them. Buuuut I’m not so sure that I agree with their arguments. In 1970, for instance, a feminist who’s who named Germaine Greer declared, “Romance nourishes disappointed women, creates unattainable fantasy, and is cause and effect of women’s oppression.”

Caroline: Jesus! To which romance fans said fuck off, Germaine Greer, and bring us FABIO!!!

Cristen: OK, I’ve got another romance novel virgin moment for ya, Caroline. My 9th-grade English teacher had an autographed headshot of Fabio on her desk.

Caroline: Oh my god.

Cristen: Listeners, if you’re unfamiliar, Fabio is worth the google image. So, he’s this Italian-American model with long blonde hair and a beefcake bod, and I only recognized him from commercials for a product called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.” So I was VERY confused as to why my English teacher had his photo of the “I can’t believe it’s not butter” guy on her desk. But now - now I know why!!

Caroline: Yeah, she loves butter. So, in the late 80s, Fabio became the cover hunk for romance novels. We’re talking HUNDREDS of covers featuring Fabio, usually bare-chested or shirtless, gripping the heroine super tightly. And y’all, this iconic romance cover pose actually has a name! It’s called a ‘clinch.’

Cristen: By the 90s, Fabio had become a household name. But like we said at the top of this ep, we’re pinning some of the blame for romance novels’ bad reputation on him. Because y’all, his whole he-man schtick also fed into the stereotype of romance novels as softcore porn for pathetic women. And the heteronormativity of it all brings us to another romance representation gap. The genre’s overwhelming straight-ness.

Caroline: Yeah, so if you look back at the early 20th century, you had obscenity laws in the US censoring everything from sex ed and contraception to porn — and under that enormous umbrella was queer sex-and-romance writing. So those laws ended up loosening in the 70s — and that’swhen you start to see a LOT of spicy pulp fiction. But queer ROMANCE, you know, with happily-ever-afters? That didn't hit the mainstream until the 2000s. Thanks to the popularity of digital self-publishing and online fan fiction, publishers really took note.

Cristen: Today, queer romance authors like our next guest are making up for lost time.

Casey: My name is Casey McQuiston. I am in Queens, New York, and I am an author of queer romantic comedies. I've written Red, White and Royal Blue; One Last Stop; and the forthcoming I Kissed Shara Wheeler, which is my first rom com for young adults.

Caroline: Their debut novel Red, White and Royal Blue - about a love affair between the Prince of Wales and the US President's son - was such a hit that it’s being turned into a movie!

Cristen: Like Nichole Perkins, Casey’s introduction to romance novels was the product of innocent childhood snooping.

Casey: So I have a sister who is eight years older than me and who I desperately wanted to be like as a kid. You know, I think she deserves a lot of credit for inventing my personality. And and so when I was about 10, she was about 20 and she was she had moved back home for a period of time and she had brought with her all of her supermarket romance novels that she had acquired during her first couple college years. And I just remember like, this is like a summer. It was like some summer in middle school when I would just like, go into her room when she was at work and just like, steal whatever pulpy, trashy thing I could get my hands on. That was really eye-opening for me, especially as someone who attended a school that had abstinence only sex education, I was like, Wow, OK.

Cristen: They were just praying really hard.

Casey: I mean, either way, you're on your knees, so it’s fine.

Caroline: Casey grew up in a Baptist household in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In other words, they were taught purity and chastity, not sex ed. So OF COURSE, Casey devoured any lusty books they could get their hands on, including Twilight.

Casey: And I know that may not count as like a romance novel, but I would argue that it is as horny as most adult romance novels. It's just all really repressed, you know, which I really related to you as a teen who was not getting any action, I was like me and this Mormon girl really know the pain of of sexual repression. And I think that Twilight was just so formative for me and so formative for so many people because it taps into something that so many young romance readers feel, which is like it would be the the most romantic thing in the world if the hottest person in school was obsessed with you

Cristen: Casey loved writing as much as reading. They always dreamed of writing a book but weren't sure what kind. As a teen, they made their first attempt with a sprawling YA fantasy.

Casey: Turns out I am not good at fantasy world building. And that was a hard thing to accept, and I was looking back at all of these projects and the thing that stuck with me about all of these ideas and the thing that was easiest and most fun to do with all of them was the relationships in them. And I was like, well, just relationships, that is a genre, and it's a genre I read, and you know I never really considered that I could write romance. And then I was like, Well, let me just try this and see if it works. And that was Red, White and Royal Blue. I basically wrote it as like a an experiment and I just obsessively worked on that book for a couple of years and I think I just kind of like stumbled into romance, even though it was something that had been a part of my life for so long.

Cristen: So what would you say then, are the ingredients of a good romance novel?

Casey: Oh my God. I mean, I think that every romance novel needs, regardless of the setting, the tropes, is it historical, is it contemporary, romantic suspense, anything is that you need to have two characters that like even if I don't personally like them or they're not my personal type. You need to see what they see in each other, you know? For me, I really think it's important for a love story to be grounded and convincing and for you as a reader to feel really invested and to see how these two characters complete each other and how nobody else could meet their needs the way that this person can. And I think that a great romance novel. I mean, I think it should be sexy. I have nothing against romance novels that fade to black. Some of my favorite romance novels are not super explicit. I wouldn't even call my book super super explicit, but there's there's still ways to have like horniness and sensuality, and I think like there are so many ways that a book can fuck without having actual fucking involved, you know? Like when a book is like 1,000 percent committing to what the author is trying to do. And it's doing it well, like that fucks, you know? And so I just need it to fuck. Like, even if it's not in a sexual way, in like a literary way, I need, I need it to fuck.

Caroline: Well so one of the great things about your books is that they capture this exhilarating feeling of having a crush. So how do you tap into that crush feeling?

Casey: Yeah, OK. If you can't tell. I go through my life romanticizing literally everything, you know? So I mean, I think like getting into the mindset of a crush is pretty easy for me because I mean I can think of being a teenager and like being like, you know, if I didn't actively have somebody I was crushing on, I would be like, it was like I was scouting for a crush. I would be like casting the net out like I think I just it's like, what, like, Isaiah in One Last Stop has this line. They think very much is like how I've always felt about crushes or August is like, you know, like, is it lonely to like, so like, love someone who you know, isn't there with you or doesn't feel the same way? And he's like, You know, even when it's bad, it's good because you've got somewhere to put your hope, you know? And that, to me, is what it's always been about, is just like having that thing to disappear into when you're laying in bed at night trying to fall asleep or that person that like when you picture yourself going to, you know put a lock on the bridge in Paris or going to the beach and having a cute little time, there's always going to be somebody there that you need to picture. At least there was for for me. And so I think I've always just tried to capture that feeling. I think that the heart of romance is yearning, and that's what a crush is.

Cristen: So obviously, we have the central sort of romantic relationships in your books, but there are also platonic relationships. How do you for your process build in those platonic relationships and like, why are those also important to include?

Casey: My books are like by, about and for queer people. And I think for queer people, especially, there's this really, really singular and unique and beautiful experience of what it is like to experience queer friendship and your queer chosen family. And it's such a big part of life, and it is such a big. You know, it's all of the color of your life, and not to make, that was not a rainbow pun. I'm sorry. You know, it is something that is really important to me as a queer person to communicate to the audience is that this is part of life for queer people and part of being in a queer community is having these really close friendships with really cool people. And and so I always want to build those relationships out. It bothers me sometimes when I read a romance and the main character doesn't have like really any strong relationships in their life outside of the romance because I'm like dude this relationship is not going to be healthy. You need, like I’m worried about what's going to happen after the end of the book. And I think that you should maybe go to like a happy hour or singles mixer or something. I don’t know.

Caroline: We’re gonna take a quick break.

Cristen: When we come back, Casey tells us how they write sex scenes and why consent is super hot.

Caroline: Don’t turn the page!

[stinger]

[CLIP: Caroline reads short excerpt from Casey’s book]

He [Henry] gets right up in Alex’s space, but he doesn’t kiss him. He hovers there, a breath away, his hands at Alex’s hips and his mouth split open in a crooked smirk.

“D’you know what I want,” he says, his voice so low and hot that it burns right through Alex’s solar plexus into the core of him.

“What?”

“I want,” he says “to do the absolute last thing I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

Alex juts out his chin, grinningly defiant. “Then tell me to do it, sweetheart.”

And Henry, tonguing the corner of his own mouth, tugs hard to undo Alex’s belt and says, “Fuck me.”

Cristen: We’re back with romance author Casey McQuiston.

Caroline: And that was an excerpt from Casey’s book Red, White & Royal Blue, which reminder, is about what happens when the Prince of Wales and the son of the US president fall in love.

Cristen: So we got to talk about sex scenes.

Casey: Let's do it.

Cristen: How do you come up with them? Do you have any particular process? For some reason I'm imagining like you at a whiteboard sketching out a scene.

Casey: I mean the ideas that I have I think it's just like well these are the two characters, and this is where the story is right now. And this is like the type of emotional outcome I need to happen from this sex scene. I know there needs to be a moment of physical intimacy here. What type of sex scene would create this emotional moment, you know? Like the Wimbledon scene in Royal Blue. I I needed there to be a moment where Alex would understand what their affair meant to Henry and where he was coming from and why there was this element of like defiance in it for Henry, you know, and why there was this anger kind of smoldering in it and the sense of Henry finally like seizing something that he wanted for the first time in his life. Like, I really wanted Alex to be able to feel that and see that. And so there needed to be this moment where like. I want to throw you in a closet, like right next, like, you know, my family's upstairs and I'm in a shitty mood and like all of that. There needs to be that moment, you know? And so how do I get that across emotionally? Well, they're going to have to fuck at Wimbeldon. You know, what else can you do?

Caroline: Well, how do you think about the role of consent when you write sex scenes?

Casey: Oh, I think it's huge, and I think that, I definitely do go out of my way to typically like have my characters have conversations about not just consent, but like, this is my level of experience, what is yours or or what type of protection are we going to use or have you been with anybody else? And I think a) It's kind of cliché to say now because it's like on T-shirts, but I do think consent is sexy, to vocally express how much you want someone and like be told by someone that they want you, I think is super, super sexy and reading that in a romance novel, I think. You know, I love a bodice ripper as much as the next person, but I do think it's also really sexy when like the bodice is perhaps asked for permission before it is ripped you know. And I think the line like, Can I kiss you? I think is always hot. It's always good. When you read it. It hits every single time. And so I think consent is sexy but I also think it’s really important I think especially for queer romance,it really matters to me to have sex scenes that are safe and consensual and really communicative because I know that like they're going to be people who read my books who have never read a queer sex scene before, and I don't know what they think that queer people get up to in bed, but I want to make sure that they know that queer sex is really cool and wonderful and healthy and not at all dirty or dangerous or anything like that. And so it's really important to me to have these characters who have really exciting and fun and adventurous, but also like caring and loving and sweet sex lives.

Caroline: Well, how how do your your character's gender then influence the sex scenes you write?

Casey: I mean,there's so much cool stuff you can do when you have, like one or more people in a pairing kind of moving through different sides of gender in sex because you could have different parts of that gender being validated or addressed or supported in a sexual context. You can kind of slide in and out of different roles with each character. It's just really, really fun and fluid to explore. Queer sex is so cool. This is why I think it's important to write about it because I think it's really kind of limitless, and no offense to straight people and cis people, but I do think that like, queer and trans sex is really cool. And so and so yeah, I think that gender is always an important part of how sex happens. But it also, I think that sex is sex and a good sex scene, regardless of the gender of anybody involved, should produce the same kind of feelings in a reader. That, I think, is what I'm really, really at the end of the day trying hardest to accomplish is getting the reader into the mood.

Cristen: Yeah, what kinds of reactions have you gotten specifically from queer. Well, first question, reactions from queer readers and then, second, reactions from straight readers.

Casey: Oh my God, OK. Queer readers, I've gotten good feedback. like one of my lesbian friends was like, Thank you for writing a book about how it's fun to go down on girls. And I was like, I know! She's like everybody is always writing it so begrudgingly. And I was like, I really appreciate that and I think that, as a as a writer, I do want that to be what is coming across. As far as straight people. It's so funny. I get one of two reactions generally from straight people. And I'm saying, like capital-S straight, like perhaps people who don't know exactly how to act normal about queer sex. Like like so I get people who are either like overly enthusiastic about it where it was like, I get that you're trying to telegraph that you are an ally, but like you don't need to send me like 17 eggplant and tongue emojis in a tweet. Like that’s OK, I don't need that, you know, Or it's like every now and then you get the Amazon review that's like I had no idea that there would be gay sex in this book. But I do think that the bar for what is super explicit is so much lower for queer romance then for straight, because the level of explicitness in my books is on par with, like a lot of romance that you can find on any aisle in Barnes and Noble. But a lot of those books are straight and nobody is like shocked to see straight sex in a romance novel. But a lot of straight people inherently see queer sex as more explicit or dirtier. Or, I guess, for lack of a better word perverse. So they are more shocked to see it in a book and more like scandalized And so that is annoying and just makes me want to continue writing more like more sex scenes in every queer romance novel I ever write until I die. And maybe the next one, I'll just open with a sex scene. So that I don’t have to I just don't have to give people who are like, I got a hundred pages in and then there was gay sex and like, You know, I'm gonna put it on page one and we'll see how you feel.

Caroline: Just title the book Gay Sex.

Casey: I'm gonna title the book, “I brought my strap.” And then. Subtitle. “It's in the backpack.”

Cristen: Well, I'm curious, since you have been reading and especially writing romance novels, how has or as the landscape changed for queer readers and writers in particular in terms of like what publishers are interested in?

Casey: Yeah, I think things have changed a lot really fast. I think things still have very far to go because I would say in 2018, like we first went out on submission with Red, White and Royal Blue to find a publisher, and we did a very limited submission out to only like four editors at four different imprints. And I got no's on three out of four. I definitely did feel like it was a bit of a harder sell than it would be now. I think at that time, and I think still to this day, we are still trying to convince the higher powers that be in romance that queer books can exist in a pleasure space. I do think that it's easier to convince a publisher at like a YA imprint to buy queer romance than an adult romance imprint, because you know, It's like, Oh, this is for the kids and the kids need to see representation. And I think in adult spaces like adult romance, it's like a pleasure space. And it's supposed to be pleasure reading. And I think it's harder to convince those people who've been calling the shots that those imprints for decades to be like, Oh yeah, the queers want to read romance too. And there is an audience that will read this for pleasure, and you don't have to have any more reason just to publish this than that it is about queer love and queer joy and queer pleasure, and that it’s a really good romance and a really good book and and people will read it regardless of whether they're queer or not. You know we’re still catching up a lot. And like, I think we're getting a lot of like white queers out, but like there's still a lot more space, especially for um queer people of color and like trans feminine people to be coming into the romance space and that's why we have to kind of keep the pressure up and keep like busting ass and keep encouraging people to buy queer books and to support queer authors because that shows these publishers that the investment is worth their time and that they should keep investing in people and investing in even more and broader ranges of of authors.

Caroline: What have you learned about yourself and your romantic relationships by writing these books?

Casey: Oh my God. I've learned that I was right to romanticize everything in my life. It's given me a lot of material to work with. As as silly and naive as it may sound, I do think that going through the world as a romantic is kind of a fun and beautiful way to live because it's never really boring and I mean I think that everything I've written has been really therapeutic for me. I started writing Red White Royal Blue two years after losing my dad. And so, like all of Henry's grief stuff comes from like a very raw place, and it was actually, like, really, really cathartic to write and to just get that out and have it be part of this really fun and beautiful love story I was trying to write. And I learned a lot about my own gender and sexuality from writing. I've learned a lot about my own desires and wants and needs and relationships I think so much of Red, White and Royal Blue, on some level, came out of you know being somebody who was grieving deeply at the time and subconsciously writing the way that I wished I could be loved and supported through that grief. And that was really helpful in understanding what I wanted and needed out of a partner. And now I have a partner who y’know loves and supports me no matter how much I am going through or how little I'm going through. I think that writing my third book, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, has been probably the most difficult and revelatory emotional experience for me because it's the first book I've ever written that's actually set in the South, and I chose to set it at a school very similar to the one I went to growing up, which is like a extremely conservative kind of evangelical fundie-light Christian school and how like damaging that environment can be. And I had to like really get in there with some deep seated stuff from being a teenager in that environment, and it really taught me so much about extending empathy to my younger self because there were so many things that I didn't even know about myself yet as as an adult until I had to write that book. So yeah. All of that is to say, as any writer will tell you, I think that writing is therapy.

Cristen: All right, final question. Since you are an author, do you have any singular piece of advice for any aspiring romance novelist who might be listening?

Casey: I think for specifically romance authors, I actually think it really relates to a question you guys asked me earlier which is to try to write the way a crush makes you feel. I think that is like, if you can give a reader like that weird little flip in the stomach feeling, then you have done a very good job, my friend.

Cristen: You can listen to Nichole Perkins’ podcast This Is Good For You. Her book, Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be, is out now and available at your local bookstore. Follow Casey over at their delightful TikTok @caseymcquiston. Their first YA romance novel I Kissed Shara Wheeler is out in May.

Caroline: Both Nichole and Casey shared a list of their romance novel book recs. And there’s a lot of great ones. We are going to post that over at unladylike.co in the post for this episode, so definitely go check that out! Y’all can find us at instagram, facebook and Twitter @unladylikemedia. You can also drop us a line at hello@unladylike.co. And you can support Caroline & me directly by joining our Patreon; over there, you’ll get instant access to more than 70 bonus episodes, and a new bonus every week, like our recent answer to a listener who wanted to know whether we have something against the word “girls”. You can find it all over at patreon.com/unladylikemedia.

Cristen: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Michele O’Brien is our associate producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Jared O’Connell. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford and Andi Kristins. Executive producers are Peter Clowney, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Caroline: This podcast was created by your hosts, Caroline Ervin

Cristen: And Cristen Conger of Unladylike Media.

Caroline: Next week… it’s a very special edition of Ask Unladylike with Heather Havrilesky. Heather is known for her fabulous advice column Ask Polly, and she has a new book out about her marriage called Foreverland: The Divine Tedium of Marriage.

Heather Havrilesky: I wanted to write a book about how marriage can be both dreamy and a living nightmare at the same time. And actually, that the experience of marriage is in some ways torments you. It's made to break you. It's made to like, rip apart all of your previous values and reconstruct them. Marriage is this crucible that we don't talk about in our culture very often. We don't talk about how hard it is unless we're talking about marriages that have failed.

Caroline: Heather is going to tell us about her 15-years of divine tedium and answer questions from listeners about marriage regret, how to put yourself first and dealing with a low sex drive.

Cristen: Y’all do not want to miss this episode! So make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you like to listen.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get Unladylike.