711. RT Rewind: July 2000 Ads & Features

4 hours ago 1

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

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.

❤ Read the transcript ❤

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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:

We also mentioned:

Are you ready for the Visuals? Here we go!

Show Spoiler

Virginia Henley's the Marriage Prize is the cover feature and the art is a beautiful oil painting of a knight in blue velvet with the requisite mullet kneeling in front of a blonde white woman with long hair and a flower crown in a white gown. She's touching his face amid a garden of pastel flowers with a path to a castle visible int he background

Isn’t this cover gorgeous?

We had a few questions about that feather, and how it got there.

John deSalvo is shirtless with a feather growing out of his head down his neck. He is embracing a woman with red hair and a long blue gown

Julianne MacLean has had a long and awesome career, and her books page is a trip through cover trends. We love this German cover in particular:

The German Cover of Julianne MacLean's book with a frothy painting of a woman with red hair being held by a shirtless man with a mullet because of course she is

It’s Harvey, Mr. Romance 1999! The Tarzan costume was for a European ad, which alas I cannot find online.

It's Harvey! Black and white photos of a man smiling in a loin cloth with long hair, embracing a woman in a bikini and torn short skirt

This was the era when a lot of author websites were on GeoCities. Here’s Virginia Henley’s GeoCities site.

the lower loop of the G holds a picture of Virginia wearing a masquerade mask in silver and purple. Everything is purple. The font is purple comic sands. Her newsletter was last updated in 2002

Purple comic sans!

I do not believe this hat was on this person when this photograph was taken.

My Buffalo Soldier - a sepia toned photograph of a tall black man in a vintage military uniform staring at the reader. A hat has been BADLY photoshopped on to his head. He is being embraced by a white woman holding a parasol and wearing what looks like a waitress outfit - white button down, black skirt

Also, why is she dressed like a waitress at a bistro that has expensive food and metal chairs?

This man is GREEN:

A clip of the full page ad for a Bertrice Small book, A Memory of Love. The man looks green. his skin is greenish. He's wearing an enormous yellow doublet, and he is embracing a woman wearing a long pink gown, with long blonde hair behind her. She has blue eyeshadow on.

And she has blue eyeshadow!!

“Hands,” the subtitle of this episode, refers to the number of author photos that involved posing with hands in places we did not understand.

TO BE CLEAR we are NOT mocking this person’s appearance. That’s a fantastic photograph and this author looks freaking great.

But we do not understand the hand position.

Amanda and Sarah attempting to recreate an author photo where the person's hands are being held up in front of her, one hand clasping the other wrist like claws

Why are the hands like that.

How funny is it that the fact that John DeSalvo is fully clothed in this cover jumped out at us?

A clip of some of the cover of Irish Rogue, in which DeSalvo is power standing in historical clothing including a red jacket over a white shirt that's open slightly to the waist, black trousers and knee high boots.

He’s got all his clothes on AND he’s in a power stance!

An illustration of a black haired white woman in a puffy, ruffled off the shoulder blue gown

And this was the back cover launch ad for the Zebra Ballad line, which featured continuity stories across multiple books by different authors.

The back cover with images of the four Kensington Ballad Romances. all of which are photographs with a white bar on the right side and the title and author below

I still don’t love photograph covers for historicals and for the life of me I can’t figure out why I don’t like them. I’ve been asking myself about this preference for literal years.

Support for this episode comes from Savage Bonds, book two in the Shadowmist Pack series by Evie Mitchell!

If you are looking for a body-positive slow burn romance with very spicy scenes, knotting, an emotional support glory hole, and shared psychic orgasms, listen up.

A gritty, paranormal shifter romance, Savage Bonds follows Lithia, the first female Beta of the Shadowmist Pack, after she is betrayed and imprisoned in a silver-lined torture facility.

Her only lifeline is a voice from the next cell: Kier, a nomad who has been held in isolation for three years. His sanity has been eroded after years of psychic assault, but when he connects with Lithia though a small hole in their shared prison wall, he finds an ally, and a reason to endure.

Together, they must navigate a brutal escape through a burning wilderness to the safety of her pack. And as the pack prepares to dismantle the organisation that imprisoned them, Lithia and Kier must decide if they are brave enough to claim a future built on more than just shared trauma.

While Savage Bonds is the second in the Shadowmist Pack series, it can be read as a near-standalone. One reviewer on Goodreads says, “I enjoyed this book even more than the first in the series! Lithia is my favorite. She’s such a baddie and I love her for it! The world building in this one is awesome too. If you like werewolf romance, this series is for you.”

And I think you need to know about the dedication from author E.V. Mitchell:

To the readers who saw a hole in a prison wall and immediately thought, “…yeah, I’d fist that.” You brave, horny disasters. You trauma-bonded, violence-inclined little gremlins. This book is for you.

Savage Bonds and the Shadowmist Pack series by E.V. Mitchell are available now in Kindle Unlimited, and in print on the author’s website, or in your local library – woohoo! Audiobooks are coming soon.