S04.06: Monster Romance with Jenny Nordbak

We’re talking minotaurs and spiders and orcs and gargoyles…it’s Monster Romance week at Fated Mates! Jenny Nordbak of the Wicked Wallflowers and Bonkers Romance podcast joins us to talk about this explosive, extremely popular genre that both intrigues and perplexes us.

Notes

• Welcome Jenny Nordbak. Her first romance, His Leading Lady, was just released, (Jen did the final developmental edit!) and she just started the Bonkers Romance podcast with Melody from the Heaving Bosoms podcast. Check it out!
• Although there is lots of crossover with paranormal or alien, Jenny defines monsters as: creatures who don’t shift into humans, you’d definitely scream if you saw them running down the street, but human enough to be able to bang. Although no one mentioned on the episode, here is the single greatest monster explanation ever seen on twitter.
• The cartoon Sarah refered to is called The Harkness Test, and it's a reference to Dr. Who.
• More about what it means to go into the Amazon dungeon--this, of course, is related to attempts to deplatform sex everywhere on the internet. Besialisty cartoon that Sarah is going to look for
• Baby Jenny imprinted on Fantasia, specifically the centaurs and Chernabog. She also loved the Gargoyles TV show and the orcs in Lord of the Rings.
• What is Knotting?
• Here’s listener Alyssa Long’s terrific thread about monsters and disability. Often, writers use ableist tropes in their monster-creation, and Alyssa’s thread talks about how and why this is harmful. (Any mistakes in the summarizing of this thread are Jen’s!) In that thread, Alyssa shared a great article about ableism in the horror genre, and although we loved The Witcher, it reinforced some of the most common problems with putting disabilities on the screen.
• Sarah is hosting a writing workship to kick of NaNo--register here!

Monster Books

• His Leading Lady by Jenny Nordbak
• Soul Song by Marjorie M. Liu
• Wild Rain by Christine Feehan
• Demon from the Dark by Kresley Cole
• Ensnared by Tiffany Roberts
• Girl's Weekend by CM Nascosta
• Ensnared by the Orc by Tara Phillips
• The Lady and the Orc
• Treasure of the Abyss by Tiffany Roberts
• Wicked Abyss by Kresley Cole
• Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon
• Toxic Desire by Robin Lovett
• Nicholas by Elizabeth Amber
• Morning Glory Milking Farm by CM Nascosta
• Flesh and Stone by Emily Hemenway
• Stalked by the Kraken by Lillian Lark
• Alpha's Warlock by Eliot Grayson
• Lady of Rooksgrave Manor by Kathryn Moon
• Skin by Aveda Vice
• The Beast Prince by Marian Perera

The Rest

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2021/10/18/s0406-monster-romance-interstitial-with-jenny-nordbak
• 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.

00:00 Kick off #NaNoWriMo with Sarah

01:53 Welcome Jenny Nordbak

08:06 Monsters are Hot

09:32 Defining a Monster

13:23 Not the Fun Dungeon

20:21 Jenny's Monster Origin Story

26:01 The Monster Romance Spectrum

29:51 Sponsor: Radish

31:40 Ensnared by the Orc

36:19 Is it Horror or is it Mythology?

42:13 The Lady and the Orc

44:03 Treasure of the Abyss

48:41 Improving the Mechanics

52:03 Morning Glory Milking Farm

55:47 Flesh and Stone

1:00:44 Stalked by the Kraken

1:06:04 The Alpha's Warlock

1:09:58 A Lady of Rooksgrave Manor

1:11:25 Skin

1:15:06 The Beast Prince

1:19:42 Outro